    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 2, 1999]
    [Pages 1369-1371]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
    August 2, 1999

        Thank you very much. I will be brief, but let me begin by thanking
    John Kerry for having us in his beautiful,
    beautiful home. He and Teresa have been very
    good for our country and very good for our party, and I am delighted to
    be here. And I want to thank all of you for coming.
        Let me ask you to think about what I hope we'll be discussing in the
    following way. When I became President, I was trying to make sure that
    America would begin to function again at an acceptable level of
    performance so that the American people, who are basically out there
    getting up every day, working hard, doing a good job, would find some
    way to be better rewarded, and so that we could maximize these sweeping
    changes going through the world in how we work and how we live and how
    we relate to one another, both within this country and beyond our
    borders.
        And so we set about trying to do that, and the results, I think,
    have been quite satisfactory in a lot of ways. And I'm grateful for
    that. If I could just make one point about it, the President does not do
    these things alone. John Kerry's leadership in
    the areas that he mentioned has been nothing short of brilliant. And
    without the support of the people in Congress who are our allies, none
    of it could have happened. So I'm grateful for that.
        Now, I have a year and a half left on my term, and yet, I'm thinking
    more about the long term than I did even when I got here, for the simple
    reason that we are now in a position to think about the long term and
    about how we can do more than just make the country work but how we can
    secure a framework for opportunity for America, for a greater social
    justice, for a greater good at home and around the world than ever
    before. That's why I think

    [[Page 1370]]

    it's important that we not blow this surplus we waited 30 years to
    produce until we have fundamentally secured the challenge of the aging
    of America by doing something about Social Security and Medicare. It's
    why I think it's important that we not, while the economy is rocking
    along very well, pass a tax cut that would undermine our ability to meet
    our commitments in education, the environment, biomedical research, and
    other areas. I think that's very important.
        But I also think we need to be thinking about those fundamental
    things in society that have not fully incorporated what most of you have
    done very well doing, which is riding the wave of the information
    revolution. We have, thanks to the Vice President, done our best to have good policies, whether it was in
    the Telecommunications Act or a lot of other specific issues, some of
    which Senator Kerry mentioned, or just doing no harm. And we've been
    able to, far more than ever before, maximize the use of information
    technology and Government, which is why we now have the smallest
    Government we've had since 1963. But if you really think about it, we
    should not be satisfied with where we are. And I'll just give you a few
    examples.
        In education, we finally have test scores turned around, not only in
    mathematics and science but also in reading, which is really quite an
    important achievement, since so many of our children do not have English
    as their first language. But no one seriously believes we have the best
    system of elementary and secondary education in the world. And we have
    all this diversity in our country. How can we use technology to lift the
    level of all education?
        I'll give you another example. We have now, as you all probably have
    seen, I think we have reached the benefit, the limit of the benefits
    that traditional management can bring in moderating inflation and health
    care costs. When I became President, health care was rising at 3 times
    the rate of inflation and people were dropping coverage dramatically.
    Now, unfortunately, that's continued to happen. But one of the reasons
    that there's this intense debate in Washington over the Patients' Bill
    of Rights is that so many people, including a lot of health care
    professionals, believe that we have reached the limit which you can get
    management-related--traditional, management-related savings out of
    health care without eroding the quality of care.
        What can we do to maximize the impact of all the things that we do
    to make the health care system work better and extend coverage to more
    people? I'll give you a third example. Someone told me in Silicon Valley
    one day that people in high tech businesses work 3 to 9 times faster
    than people in normal businesses do, and Government worked 3 to 9 times
    slower, and therefore, the marriage was impossible, which I thought is
    an interesting observation and painfully accurate from time to time.
        What can we do, what still is out there that we should be doing that
    makes Government more responsive, more accessible to people? And then
    the two that I'm particularly interested in: How can we use technology
    to bring economic opportunity to people in places that are not part of
    this recovery in the United States; and how can we use-it--or can we use
    it to help people bridge a whole generation of economic development
    around the world?
        Ron Dozoretz and I have talked a lot
    about what could be done, for example, for the Indian reservations. We
    were in Appalachia; we were in the Mississippi Delta--a lot of the
    places that are still poor are not in inner-city neighborhoods; a lot of
    places are literally, physically--[inaudible]--from mainstream American
    economic life. And I'm convinced that if we can't figure out ways to
    bring opportunity to these places now, we will never get around to it
    because of the high performance of our economy generally and because
    it's really an opportunity for investors to go into places where there's
    a lot of labor, a lot of willing labor, and the cost of doing business
    is modest.
        It seems to me that while what we've done with the empowerment
    zones, under the leadership of the Vice President, and what I propose that the Congress adopt, which is
    essentially to give the same set of financial incentives to people who
    invest in poor areas in America we give them to invest in the Caribbean
    or Latin America or Africa or Asia, is a good start. But I think there
    has got to be, at least for those people that are physically isolated,
    some thought to how technology can be used to trigger the infusion of
    economic opportunity and, therefore, the inclusion of those people into
    the mainstream of American economic life.
        And finally, politics, which has already been mentioned by Senator
    Kerry--it seems to me

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    that there is, on the one hand, this sort of exponential increase in the
    cost of running campaigns, because we try to--because of the cost of
    communication. Let's not kid--and if you look at the cost of the
    campaigns as compared with the size of the Federal budget, for example,
    it doesn't look like such a big, carrying cost. But it's an enormous
    burden for people who have to go out and raise the money and spend the
    money. And basically we're communicating with each other in traditional
    ways. Most of the costs of the campaign today comes from television and
    mail, and in some places a lot of money is spent on radio and
    occasionally, depending on what the communications are, on newspaper
    advertising. But most of it's TV and mail.
        Increasingly, we see these breathtaking stories of people just
    opening a webpage for a given cause and all of a sudden having 200,000,
    300,000, 400,000 people within a matter of weeks signing on and going
    forward. Is there some way to use the Internet to further democratize
    politics, to energize more people to participate, to energize more
    people to contribute at modest levels, and to lower the relative cost of
    reaching voters or increase the relative impact of voter reach?
        Because if you think about it--like when we run TV ads, there's a
    reason that an ad on the Super Bowl costs so much money. And that is
    that more people are watching it than now watch the evening news on the
    networks combined because they have so many other options. As the
    television audiences become more dispersed, I think you will see more
    sophisticated use of mail to identify, at least, people you think you
    can reach. And that's good, but is there some way we can use this both
    to broaden the base of contributors at modest levels but also to
    increase the relative effectiveness or decrease the relative costs of
    reaching people, so that people feel like they're participating in the
    democracy and so that more people have a chance to participate in ways
    that will make all of us feel better about the way we conduct our
    democracy as we go toward the next century?
        So these are things that I think about a lot. And I think, you know,
    meeting the challenge of the aging of America is a big deal. I think
    meeting the challenge of education is a big deal.
        I'll give you one more example. America's got the lowest crime rate
    in 26 years. I think that's a very good thing. And it's easy to lose
    that when we have these gripping, horrible incidents like we had in
    Atlanta or the horrible thing in Littleton, Colorado. But why shouldn't
    we be the safest big country in the world? I mean, if we have the most
    powerful technology base in the world, we can figure out how to solve
    any other problem. Why can't we think of a way to organize ourselves
    that would make us the safest big country? Why shouldn't that be? Why
    shouldn't we have a big goal that is--and bring to bear all these
    things.
        Nothing is--I agree with John; I think
    that 50, 60, 70 years from now, when people look back and write the
    history of this era, they will conclude that this was a bigger deal than
    the industrial revolution, that this sort of had the combined impact of
    the industrial revolution and the printing press, which produced the
    Gutenberg Bible, and that it was just breathtaking. Now, what we who are
    living through this ought to do--in addition to those of you who are
    good enough to profit from it and contribute to our economy and make our
    society stronger and hire people and do all the good things you're
    doing--we ought to say, if this is profoundly changing the way we work
    and the way we live and the way we relate to each other, by definition
    it ought to be able to be effective in helping us meet society's biggest
    challenges, including those I outlined tonight.
        So I'm very interested in it. I thank you for your presence here.
    And I am all ears.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Senator John F. Kerry and his wife,
    Teresa Heinz; and Ronald I. Dozoretz, founder, FHC Health Systems.