    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 19, 1999]
    [Pages 1258-1264]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
    July 19, 1999

        Thank you very much. John, that was so
    nice. I hope somebody got a tape of it. [Laughter] Next time somebody
    gets mad at me, I'll just turn the tape on and play it. [Laughter]
        I want to thank you and all your officers and Governor Romer and all the people from the DNC here. I'd like to say a
    special word of appreciation to some people who are here, without whom I
    could not do my job: my political director, Minyon Moore; and Karen Tramontano,
    who's done so much work with all of you. I thank them for being here.
    And someone who's here who spends more time with you than me now, but
    without whom I would not be here, my good friend Harold Ickes. And Janice Enright, who's
    also here, thank you very much.
        And I'm delighted to see all of you, but I'm especially glad tonight
    to see emerging from his own rather unique diet control plan,
    Gerry McEntee--[laughter]--thank you for
    coming back to us tonight. Thank you. I told him how good he looked, and
    he said, ``I don't recommend it to anybody.'' [Laughter]
        Let me say the most important thing I can say to you is thanks.
    Thank you for being so good to me and to Al Gore, to Hillary, to Tipper,
    to our entire administration. We are very grateful to you. And thank you
    for fighting not only for your own members, but for the interests of
    Americans everywhere who are not fortunate enough to belong to an
    organized group who can give them voice.
        I sat down 3 or 4 years ago--I wish I had done it again tonight
    before I came here--just one day I had a little time in my office, and I
    wrote down the list of all the things that the labor movement was
    fighting for, with me and the Congress. And only about half of them
    directly affected your members. Most of our members wouldn't benefit
    from an increase in the minimum wage. Most of your members even had
    family and medical leave. Most of your members had the health care
    protections you were trying to get for other people. And I wish that
    more Americans knew how much time and effort and money you spend doing
    things because you believe that you'll be better off if the rest of
    America is better off.
        And I guess--I was in the home of a very wealthy man in Florida a couple of days ago--well, what's today--
    Monday--4 or 5 days ago--who said that he had stayed a Democrat all
    these years because he really thought he'd be

    [[Page 1259]]

    better off if everybody else was better off. And I think that is the
    fundamental issue.
        We were talking around the table here. I have a friend who is the
    head of one of America's largest companies, one of America's most
    profitable companies, who told me that he had taken to going around New
    York telling his fellow business executives, if you paid more in taxes
    in 1993 than you've made in the stock market since, by all means support
    the Republicans in 2000. [Laughter] But if you didn't, you better stick
    with us, and you'll do well. [Laughter] I thought it was an interesting
    argument.
        One of the things that I would like to emphasize tonight, as we look
    at where we are today and we look to the future, is that the ideas that
    we have fought for and the issues we have fought for and the initiatives
    we have pushed are no longer seriously a matter of debate. And that is
    something that you ought to share not only with your members, but they
    ought to share with their friends and neighbors in every community in
    this country.
        It is no longer open to debate whether we were right to reduce the
    deficit while we doubled investment in education and training, starting
    in 1993. We do have nearly 19 million jobs, the longest peacetime
    expansion in history, the highest homeownership in history, the lowest
    minority unemployment ever recorded, the lowest welfare rolls in 30
    years. It's not open to debate now. It's not open to debate that the
    approach we took on crime, which was to prevent as much as we could, put
    more police out there, focus on taking guns away from people with
    criminal records, get our kids more prevention, and then, punish more
    severely the relatively small number of people who commit a very high
    percentage of the crime--we have the lowest crime rate in 26 years. It's
    not a matter of debate anymore. And I think this is important.
        Our country is better for the fact that we have cleaner air, cleaner
    water, safer food, 90 percent of our kids immunized against serious
    childhood illnesses for the first time in the entire history of the
    country. So we have a lot, all of us together, to be proud of. And
    helping other people to do well turns out to be better for all of us.
        John mentioned all those labor issues. If you really go back and
    dissect every issue he mentioned, basically, the contrary position, the
    people that were against us were arguing to their people, if we just
    take a little more away from the working people we'll be better off.
    Well, the truth is, they're doing very well because the working people
    have more.
        We're in a big debate in the Congress right now about whether, in
    the financial reform legislation working its way through Congress, there
    should or should not be a continued, profound commitment to the
    Community Reinvestment Act, that basically says, if you've got a bank
    and a community and you take the community's paychecks as investments in
    your bank, you need to make investments in that community. The law was
    passed in 1977. But it was pretty well moribund until we took office.
    Over 95 percent of the community investment, $17 billion, made in the 22
    years of that law have been made in the 6\1/2\ years that I've been in
    office--investing money into poor areas and in neighborhoods and to
    businesses that normally couldn't get credit.
        Unbelievably enough, there are people in the Congress trying to
    weaken that law. Our financial institutions have never been healthier--
    for obvious reasons. The more you spread economic opportunity, the
    better the rest of us do. And we have always believed, as Democrats,
    that if we widen the circle of opportunity, if we broaden the meaning of
    our freedom, if we reward every responsible citizen, if we create a
    community that's a bigger and bigger and bigger tent where everybody who
    is doing right has a chance to do well, then our country will be
    stronger in ways that go way beyond economics.
        And every single indicator of social health--from unemployment to
    the rates of teen pregnancy and drug abuse and smoking--is going in the
    right direction. Not because all of us are always right on every issue,
    not even because all of us agree on every issue; but our animating
    philosophy is we will make the changes necessary to fit America for the
    21st century and we will do it in a way that gives everybody a chance to
    do well and helps us to grow together, not grow apart. And I think that
    is profoundly important.
        But what I think we should think about in the next year and a half,
    as we continue to fight to move forward in Congress and as we go out
    into the country in a new political season, is saying to people, this is
    not a matter of debate anymore. The evidence is in. The argument cannot
    be refuted. We have shown you that this is right.

    [[Page 1260]]

        And if you look at where we are now--I'd just like to mention two or
    three things. We've got a lot of issues before us in Congress. But if I
    might, let me just start with the lamentable defeat of the Patients'
    Bill of Rights in the Senate. Now, why in the world would anybody be
    against that? Well, you saw all the ads, and they say, ``Oh, this is
    going to really raise health insurance premiums, and we wouldn't want to
    do that and reduce the number of people with health insurance.''
    Remember, that's what they said. They said, ``You know, if you vote for
    Bill Clinton's health program, the number of people with health
    insurance will go down.'' Remember they said that? ``And the number of
    people being insured by the Government will go up.'' And as one Democrat
    said the other day, he said, ``I voted for Bill Clinton's health
    insurance program, and sure enough, the number of people with health
    insurance went down and the number of people the Government was insuring
    went up.'' That's exactly what has happened. Why? Because of the cost of
    the burden.
        Now, again, this was an argument where you had rhetoric and money on
    one side and reality on the other. I put in the protections of the
    Patients' Bill of Rights by Executive order for everybody covered by the
    Federal Government--Federal employees, the veterans, people on Medicare
    and Medicaid, they all have it. Do you know what it cost us? Less than a
    buck--a buck--a month a premium.
        And then the Republicans had the Congressional Budget Office
    estimate the cost of the Patients' Bill of Rights in the private sector.
    And you will all remember all the arguments we've had over the
    Congressional Budget Office, right, as they have--they've erected a
    veritable statue of truth for the Congressional Budget Office. So the
    CBO comes in and says, well, it might cost $2 a month. And then all of a
    sudden the CBO was like Rodney Dangerfield and the Republican caucus--no
    respect any more. And they just discarded it, said, ``Well, I don't
    believe it. I don't believe the evidence; I don't believe the study by
    my own people. I don't believe it. I believe what the health insurers
    told me.''
        And what happened? For the first time--did you ever believe you'd
    see an article which said that the doctors of the country are thinking
    about joining a union, organizing a union? Did you ever think? Why? This
    is not rocket science. If we're going to move into the 21st century,
    should we manage our health care system as well as possible? You bet we
    should. Is there a person in this room or in this country that has a
    vested interest in seeing a dollar wasted when people's lives are at
    stake? Of course not.
        Take McEntee--suppose--no, look, wait a minute. Suppose he goes to a
    doctor at an HMO and says, well, you might have a little blockage, come
    back in 6 months and I'll decide whether you should see a specialist or
    not. Wait a minute. This is the kind of thing that happens all the time.
    The doctor says, ``I think you should see a specialist;'' the person at
    the HMO says, ``No, I'm not sure.'' And I've got a lot of sympathy--I've
    said this a million times--I've got a lot of sympathy for those young
    employees at the HMO's. Those of us who aren't so young anymore, put
    yourself in their position. Suppose you're 25 years old and you're the
    first entry point on the claim. What do you know if you like your job?
    You will never get in trouble for saying no. Right? You never get in
    trouble for saying, no. They'll just kick the decision up. And you
    think, ``Well, sooner or later this will get to a doctor, and if I'm
    wrong, the doctor will do right.'' Now, it may take too long and the
    damage may be irreparable.
        So we said, let the doctors make the call. Maybe they'll do it when
    they shouldn't, but it's worth the risk to save lives and to save
    quality of life and to save health care. We said that if you get hurt--
    God forbid--going out to dinner tonight, a car runs up on the curb and
    hits you, you ought to go to the nearest emergency room, not the one
    your plan happens to cover. And we said that if you're 6-months pregnant
    and you're having a difficult pregnancy, and you work for a small
    business and your employer has to change plans in the middle of your
    pregnancy, you shouldn't be forced to change your ob-gyn, your
    obstetrician. You shouldn't be forced to. Or if you're in the middle of
    a chemotherapy treatment which may determine whether you live or not--
    which is traumatic enough anyway--and your employer has to change
    providers, you ought to at least finish the treatment.
        And all this stuff would cost, they said, two bucks a month. So what
    harm could it do to give that kind of peace of mind to the country? But
    the HMO's said, no; so they beat it. Now, I think the HMO's would be
    better off if America were healthier. I mean, we'd all pay premiums, and
    they'd get to keep more of them because they wouldn't have to spend as
    much

    [[Page 1261]]

    on hospital bills and surgical bills. It's just what I think.
        I believe that we ought to always think about what's best for the
    largest number of our people and the rest of us are going to do fine.
    And if you look at the decisions facing us over this budget--the big
    issues here involve a debate that if I had told you in '92, when you
    were helping me get elected President, we'd be talking about now, you'd
    say, ``You know, I like that young fellow, but he's crazy.'' [Laughter]
    If I had said to you, vote for me and in 6 years we'll be debating what
    to do with this surplus--you think about it; we had a $290 billion
    deficit, we quadrupled the debt in 12 years--I say, ``I want you to vote
    for me because we'll have a huge debate 6 years from now about what to
    do with the surplus''--you'll say, ``That kid is too nuts to be
    President.'' You will never be for him. Right?
        So, we're having the debate. And what they say is, don't let--we
    seem to have an agreement, although it's not complete, on not spending
    the Social Security tax portion of the surplus, and putting that against
    Social Security. And that's a very good thing; I don't want to minimize
    that--although, the agreement is not complete. But then they say,
    ``Well, we'll spend the rest of the surplus on a tax cut; we'll give the
    people back their money.'' It's very appealing--and that their tax cut
    is bigger than our tax cut.
        What they don't say is to fund their tax cut you can do nothing to
    add a day to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, with the baby boomers
    coming down the pike. You will have to have massive cuts in education
    and other domestic spending. They can't even fund my defense budget,
    much less the one they say they're for. And we won't pay the debt off.
        What I have done is to ask the American people to think about today,
    but also think about 10 and 20 years from today--what made us strong.
    And I just mention three things: the aging of America, the education of
    our children, and the health of our economy.
        The aging of America means that we'll have twice as many people over
    65 in 30 years as we do today--twice as many. I hope to be one of them.
    And we'll have more people drawing Social Security and Medicare and
    fewer people working. How are we going to bridge the gap? We have to
    make some changes in the programs, but we also have to put more money
    into Medicare.
        Now, my plan saves most of the surplus for Social Security and
    Medicare. It also makes some reforms in Medicare that require people to
    pay more for the copay for the lab tests that often are overdone, and a
    modest increase in the part B premium according to inflation--which is
    pretty small, anyway--but in return, gets rid of all the copay for all
    the preventive screenings that keep us alive and keep us healthy in the
    first place, and starts a modest, but important, prescription drug
    benefit which would pay half the cost of prescription drugs, up to
    $5,000, for most beneficiaries, and will give subsidies up to 150
    percent of the poverty level and require no copay up to 130 percent, and
    no premium.
        Now, I think this is a good thing to do. I think it will save money
    over the long run. It will keep people out of hospitals. It will keep
    people out of surgery. It will help people who are going to live longer
    anyway to live better, as well as helping a lot of people to prolong
    their lives. And it will relieve--it is not just a program for the
    elderly, because it will relieve their children of the financial burden
    of caring for them so they can invest their money raising their
    grandchildren.
        So I believe that we should save Social Security and Medicare first.
    Then I believe we should continue what we've been doing the last 6
    years, our investments in the things that are fundamental to our future,
    especially the education of our children. You know, by next year we'll
    have every classroom in this country hooked up to the Internet. And
    because of the E-rate we'll be able to subsidize the poor schools, so
    even the poorest children will be able to take advantage of that. That
    means that it won't matter as much as it used to if they don't have
    enough books in the school library. All they've got to have is that
    hook-up and a printer, and they will have just as much access to what is
    in the great libraries of the world as children in the wealthiest
    schools in this country. And I think it's important.
        We gave this HOPE scholarship, this $1,500 tax credit for the first
    2 years of college, and tax credits for the other years of higher
    education. And we've got a proposal now that will provide people access
    to funds for a lifetime of training. And I think we should continue to
    do this. I think this is important. I don't believe that we, in this
    time of good economic fortune, should have a tax cut that is so big it
    would

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    require us to cut education when, plainly, we need to continue to invest
    in it.
        And the third thing I want to talk about is the health of the
    economy itself. You know, I used to carry around with me a sort of 10
    rules of politics. And one of my rules of politics was, when someone
    tells you it's not a money problem, they're talking about somebody
    else's problem. [Laughter] They're never talking about their own
    problem. Life is far more than economics and politics is about more, but
    this is a better country in no small measure because more good people
    can find work and be rewarded for it. And, therefore, it is important
    for us to try to keep this economy going and to spread its benefits.
        And I would just mention two things in that regard that I think are
    profoundly important. First of all, this new markets tour I took last
    week--I went to Appalachia; I went to the Mississippi Delta; I went to
    the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, to East St. Louis, south Phoenix, and
    to East L.A. I saw the urban and rural face of continuing need in
    America. Secretary Slater was there with
    me; many others went. I saw all these people who are dying to work, saw
    a lot of people who are working who are poor. I saw people living in
    conditions that you would think are unconscionable at a time when
    homeownership is at an all-time high and construction is doing well.
        Now, one of the big debates we have in the White House and in the
    Treasury Department is, how can you keep this economic growth going with
    unemployment under 5 percent for 2 years in a row without inflation? One
    way is to extend that to the areas that haven't felt it--because you get
    more workers and more consumers and, therefore, you won't have
    inflation. You'll just be literally adding to the whole rounded economic
    picture.
        So I have asked the Congress, yes, to fund a second round of the
    empowerment zone program the Vice President
    has done such a brilliant job of running; but also to pass laws which
    would give people the same financial incentives to invest in the poor
    areas of America we give them today to invest in poor areas overseas--
    from the Caribbean to Latin America to Africa to Asia. That is
    important. And that's something we ought to do. And our friends in the
    Republican Party ought to be for this. They always say they want tax
    incentives to do everything. This is one where I agree with them,
    because we should lower the relative risk of taking a chance in a place
    that has not known this recovery. But anybody who analyzes it will tell
    you this is the number one opportunity we have to keep this economy
    going.
        And the last thing I want to say about that is, if you adopt our
    plan for saving the surplus, most of it--for Social Security and
    Medicare--we cannot only provide a tax increase for families that's
    worth hundreds of dollars a year--to save for retirement, for child
    care, for long-term care--we can actually make America debt-free in 15
    years for the first time since 1835.
        Now, you ask yourself, why would the progressive party of America
    care about that? Because in the world in which we live--as opposed to
    the world we lived in 60 years ago, when Franklin Roosevelt had to help
    spend us out of the Depression--in the world in which we live the
    interest rates are set globally and money can cross the globe in the
    flash of an eye. Just think about it. If we keep paying this debt down
    until we're out of debt, what does that mean? That means lower interest
    rates; that means more investment, more jobs, more money for wages at
    low inflation. It means working people have lower interest rates for
    house payments, car payments, credit card payments, college loan
    payments. It means that when there's a global financial crisis, as there
    was in Asia 2 years ago, we will be less affected by it. And it means
    the people we sell things to around the world will be able to borrow the
    money they need at a lower cost, too, because we won't be in there
    taking it away to fund our bad habits. I'm telling you, it is a gift we
    could give our children. It would save the lives--the lives of working
    people by keeping interest rates low for a very long period of time.
        Now, I think we have to say, yes, America should get a tax cut, but
    we should save Social Security and Medicare first, and we ought to do it
    in a way that allows us to pay off the debt and continue to invest in
    education, in defense, in the environment, in the things that we have to
    have to keep this country going. And it will keep us coming together.
        Now, I believe that is the right thing to do. But like I said, it's
    not just an argument anymore. Look at the evidence. Look at the
    evidence. When you think about all these people that are out there that
    are still looking for a chance, if we give them a chance, the rest of us
    will do better. That's what I believe.

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        Let me just close with this story. I went to Iowa a couple of days
    ago, had a great time. They had this big crowd of folks. I said, ``You
    all ought to be glad to see me, I'm the only person that's been here in
    months not running for anything.'' [Laughter] But I was in Iowa, and I
    was reminded of two things--in 1993 I went to Iowa when they had that
    flood--you remember the flood we had along the Mississippi--500-year
    flood. And there I was in Des Moines, all this flood and the water
    everywhere. And I went over and I was stacking those sandbags and
    visiting with the people that were doing it. And I looked down and there
    was this tiny child who was 13 years old, but was the size of about a 6-
    or 7-year-old. And I noticed that her bones were bulging everywhere. It
    turned out she has that brittle bone disease that some children are born
    with. Some children never get out of bed with it. She was up and walking
    but there around people stacking sandbags, actually working.
        And she had had, I think, 12 or 15 operations already, and was--
    never had been able to grow--and the knots where her elbows were and in
    all of her joints because her bones had been broken so many times. The
    child's name was Brianne Schwantes. I'll
    never forget her. And I said, ``What are you doing here?'' I said, ``Do
    you live here?'' She said, ``No, sir, I live in Wisconsin.'' But she
    said, ``You know, I saw this on television, and I told my parents we
    ought to go down there and help those people.'' And I said, ``Aren't you
    afraid of getting hurt?'' She said, ``Yes, but you know, I could get
    another break at home. I want to be part of what my country is doing.''
    She said, ``These people need all the help they can get.''
        Last year I went to American University to give a speech. There was
    Brianne Schwantes, 18 years old, a
    freshman at American University, with all of her friends. I brought them
    to a radio address, let them come see me. But what I want you to know
    is, every year from that year, the time I first met her till then, she
    kept coming to NIH getting help. NIH--paid for by taxpayers. Well, my
    daughter--thank God--didn't have brittle bone disease, but I think I'm
    better off that I live in a country that gives a child like that a
    chance to grow up and go to college.
        I was giving a speech in Iowa, and I looked out, and there was this
    beautiful African-American girl smiling. The
    first time I saw her she was a baby, in 1992, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I
    spoke at this rally in front of the Quaker Oats plant. I was working my
    way through the crowd, and there's this real tall white lady holding this African-American baby. And I said, ``Where
    did you get that baby?'' She smiled, and she said, ``That's my baby.'' I
    said, ``Well, where did you get the baby?'' She said, ``This baby was
    born in Miami with AIDS and abandoned, and no one would take her. So I
    thought I should.''
        So I got so interested in this woman and I
    figured, well, gosh, it's nice that a nice middle class lady in a place
    like Iowa would do this. Guess what--this woman had been abandoned by
    her husband, was raising two children on her own, living in an apartment
    where she could barely pay the rent. But she cared enough about a baby
    she never knew to take this child with AIDS,
    not knowing whether she would live.
        I have seen that child about once a year
    since 1992. That child was permitted to come to the NIH to get good
    treatment. And when I was giving that speech in Iowa and I looked out--
    she is tall now, probably above average height for her age, a perfectly
    beautiful child, smiling, lighting up the room. She jumped in my arms,
    and I said, ``Jimiya, you're about to get so big I can't hold you
    anymore.''
        What I want to tell you--what's all that got to do with this? I'm
    glad I live in a country which gave that child
    a chance to have a life. I'm glad I live in a country where people like
    her mother, who had no rational way in the
    world she should have given that child a home, but she did. And what I
    want to say to you is, I'm not running for anything, but, darn it, we
    were right. We have evidence. We were right about Social Security and
    Medicare. And we're right about keeping our commitments to education.
    And we're right about trying to reach out and give people who haven't
    been part of this economic recovery a chance to be part of it. And we're
    right about trying to secure our economic health for the long term. And
    we're right about not cutting anybody out, but cutting everybody in.
        And so you gave those ideas the chance to be proved right. I am
    profoundly grateful that I had the opportunity to be President. I am
    very grateful I am still President, because I think we can do some of
    the most important things that this administration has done in the next
    year and a half. But what I want you to

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    do when you go home tonight is to know in the marrow of your bones that
    what you always believed was right is right, and that you have had a
    chance to demonstrate that you don't have to debate anymore; you don't
    have to worry; you don't have to argue.
        And tomorrow and every tomorrow from now on, you will be able to
    stand up with greater confidence in what you believe because it works.
    And when you get discouraged and when you worry whether if they outspend
    us by $3 million or $4 million, we can prevail, just think about those
    two little girls. And you will know, you will know, that it's worth
    fighting for that kind of America for all the children of this country
    in the 21st century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:03 p.m. in the State Room at the
    Mayflower Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John J. Sweeney,
    president, AFL-CIO; former Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair,
    Democratic National Committee; former Deputy Chief of Staff Harold
    Ickes; former White House assistant Janice Enright; Gerald W. McEntee,
    president, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees;
    Laura Poisel and her adoptive daughter, Jimiya, who was born with AIDS;
    and Alfonso Fanjul, who hosted a Democratic National Committee dinner in
    Coral Gables, FL, on July 13.