    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [November 30, 1999]
    [Pages 2177-2180]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project
    Reception in Beverly Hills
    November 30, 1999

        Thank you very much, Antonio. I
    am delighted to be here. I know that all of you have come in support of
    the Southwest Voter Education Project. But I want to thank especially my
    good friend Gloria Molina; and Henry
    Cisneros; Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa--I
    see him over there; we've been making the rounds tonight--Congressman
    Becerra; and I think Lydia
    Camarillo, our DNC CEO, is here. I know this
    is a nonpartisan event, but I wanted to acknowledge her presence there.
    Thank you, Lydia.
        I have known about the Southwest Voter Education Project a long
    time, from the beginning. And one of the great honors I had as President
    was to award the Medal of Freedom to Willie Velasquez posthumously in
    1995. The Southwest Voter Education Project has now registered, I
    believe, over 2 million Latino voters and well over 2,000 voter
    education drives.
        And what I would--I just want to say a couple of things briefly
    tonight. Yesterday I signed the budget that we passed in the Congress
    right before they went home, the first budget of the 21st century. It
    contained the second year's funding for our Hispanic education project,
    which is designed to reduce the gap in high school graduation rates
    between Hispanics and other children and to increase the college going
    rate. And I just give you that as one little example, although it is a
    very big thing--I think this is going to have a huge impact over the

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    years if we keep doing it--of why it is so important for people to be
    registered and to vote.
        I was thinking tonight about the meetings I've had with the Hispanic
    caucus. And Congressman Torres, we miss you.
    I'm glad to see you. Thank you for everything.
        But what I was thinking about is, two things are certain. One is
    that the number of Hispanic Members of Congress will grow. The second,
    maybe more important, is the number of Latino voters in other districts
    will grow. And I honestly believe that the willingness of people to
    register and to vote will have a profoundly significant impact on sort
    of the shape of American politics, on our immigration policies, on our
    education policies, on our economic policies, on the nature of our trade
    policies, and I could go on and on and on.
        I have seen, just in the last two election cycles the profound
    difference it makes in terms of who shows up to vote. In 1998 the
    overall percentage of Americans voting was not that different from 1994,
    but the composition of those who voted was very different. And very
    often 4 or 5 percent of the people, whether they stay or go, will
    reflect the sort of accumulated feelings of maybe 60 or 70 percent of
    the American electorate. And whether they do or not, I can promise you,
    will affect the whole sweep of policy. I'm very conscious of this now.
    And I just want to mention one or two issues.
        It has been, for me, an enormous privilege to serve as President
    these last 7 years. I have had a great deal of help from the most
    diverse group of Americans ever to serve an administration, including
    former HUD Secretary Cisneros. And I am
    very grateful that we have now the results that we have. We've got--in
    February we'll have the longest peacetime expansion in our history. We
    have already nearly 20 million new jobs. We have the lowest unemployment
    in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty
    rates in 30 years. We have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest
    Hispanic and African-American unemployment rates ever recorded, the
    lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic
    poverty rate in a generation, the lowest poverty rate among single-
    parent households in 40 years, the lowest unemployment among women in 40
    years. What I want to ask you is, what do you mean to do with this? What
    do you mean to do with this?
        I had--I see my sister-in-law, Molly, over
    there. We just had my big, extended family and Hillary's family were all
    together for Thanksgiving. And we gathered up at Camp David, and then we
    had some of our friends come in from the area. And I had a bunch of
    little kids there. And this 6-year-old boy looked at me a couple days
    ago, and he said, ``How old are you?'' [Laughter] And I said, ``I'm
    53.'' He said, ``That's a lot.'' [Laughter] And I regretted to say I had
    to agree with him; it was a lot.
        In my lifetime--and that's a lot--our country has never had this
    level of economic prosperity, social progress, and national confidence,
    and at the same time been free of external threats and internal crises,
    so that we are essentially free to face our big challenges and build the
    future of our dreams for our children.
        So the real question is not whether we are going to change, because
    the world is changing at such a rapid rate that that's not an option.
    The real question is, how will we change, and what will we do with this
    chance of a lifetime?
        I hope we will use it to meet the big challenges of the future. But
    I'll bet you every adult in this room can remember at least one, and
    maybe more, times in your personal life, your family life, or your work
    life when you made a big mistake because things were going well. When
    you should have been thinking about the long term, you got diverted,
    distracted, divided, and the moment was lost.
        Now in my lifetime, we have never had a moment like this. We need to
    use it to give all of our children a world-class education. We need to
    use it to dramatically reduce poverty among our children and to bring
    economic opportunity to people and places that have been left out of
    this remarkable recovery. We need to use it to deal with the challenge
    of the aging of America and take Social Security out beyond the life of
    the baby boom generation and extend the life of Medicare and give
    prescription drug coverage to 75 percent of our seniors who can't afford
    the medicine they need today.
        We need to use it to prove we can grow the economy and improve the
    environment. We need to use it to pass the Patients' Bill of Rights and
    extend health care coverage to people who don't have it--these big
    challenges that we can meet.
        But if I had one wish, if somebody said to me, ``Well, you don't
    have another year. I'm sorry, you have to go tomorrow, but we'll let

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    you be the genie, and you can have one wish.'' I would wish to make
    America truly one America. Because if you look at what is bedeviling the
    world today--and this is where you come in--isn't it interesting that as
    you think about the future--somebody sent me an article today on the
    future of the Internet and how it wouldn't be long before everybody
    would be connected to the Internet without needing a personal computer.
    We'll have these little pads that a lot of you already have, and you'll
    get it on your telephone; you'll get it in your television; everybody
    will know everything and all the time. It will be unbelievable.
        We are unraveling the mysteries of the human genome. We're about to
    discover what is in those black holes in outer space. I mean, it's
    unbelievable all this stuff we're going to know. And yet, we are most
    bedeviled in the world by the oldest problem of human society. We still
    are kind of afraid of people who are different from us. They're
    different races, different religions; they're gay; they're this; they're
    that, the other.
        And in America you can see it when a Jewish community center gets
    shot up, Filipino postman gets murdered, African-American basketball
    coach gets killed, and then a young Korean Christian gets killed walking
    out of his church by a guy that just murdered the African-American
    basketball coach. James Byrd gets dragged to death in Texas; Matthew
    Shepard gets stretched over a rack in Wyoming. These things happen. Why?
    Because if you are afraid of people who are different from you, it's a
    short step to hating them. Then it's a short step to dehumanizing them.
    Then it's a short step to justifying violence. And all around the world
    what has bedeviled the world? Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans,
    Bosnia and Kosovo, the African tribal wars. It's just fascinating to me
    that we're on the verge of a new millennium with all this modern stuff
    out there, but our biggest problem is the oldest problem of human
    society.
        So the reason it's important that you understand that your vote is
    your voice, is that you help to guarantee every time you empower people
    that their voices will be heard and that we will somehow understand that
    we're not just supposed to tolerate each other; we're supposed to
    celebrate our differences; not tolerate--that's not good enough--
    celebrate our differences, not because they are the most important thing
    about us, but because they make life more interesting without letting us
    forget our common humanity.
        And that is the only thing that makes democracy the best of all
    systems of government. If everybody participates, you have a high chance
    that we come to the right conclusion. And it is profoundly important. I
    just was thinking, I'm so grateful that we have made these huge steps
    forward in the Irish peace process. I'm very grateful for the progress
    we are making in the Middle East.
        I was just in Kosovo with all those schoolchildren that got to go
    home because the United States and our NATO Allies stuck up for them and
    said they couldn't be wiped out just because of their religion or their
    ethnic background. But I know that if we want to continue to do good
    around the world, we have to be good at home. This Irish agreement, it's
    wonderful. How many people died to get there? And the Middle East, we've
    got a lot of hard decisions to make, but they're not hard when compared
    with the alternative.
        And so I say to all of you, we have a chance to escape that and to
    meet these huge challenges when we've got more resources and more
    confidence and more evidence that we can make progress than any time in
    my lifetime. But we can only do it if we do it together.
        You know, I just came from this gun violence group meeting. And I
    told them that the big fight we had over the Brady bill, the assault
    weapons ban, all these things, they really were sort of whole different
    views of the world about what is the nature of freedom, what is the
    nature of society, what is the nature of our responsibilities to one
    another. You know, to me, I came from a hunting culture, but it was a
    no-brainer to me that we ought to be for the Brady bill and the assault
    weapons ban, because I thought that a modest amount of inconvenience on
    the part of 95 or 99 percent of the people to find the 1 percent of the
    people who had no business with assault weapons, had no business with
    handguns, who were criminals, had other problems in their background. To
    me, that made me more free, not less free, because I think mutuality is
    important, the media. And you believed that.
        And there is no group of Americans that has a bigger stake in our
    getting this right than Hispanic-Americans, the fastest growing
    minority, people who have known all the prejudice and all the promise of
    America, both, people

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    who now are setting all kinds of records in new business growth and
    achievements in every area of our national life, but because we still
    have such a large group of first-generation immigrants, also have the
    highest high school dropout rates, the highest education problems.
         Listen, we can get all this right--we can get all this right--if
    everybody has a voice that is heard. That is why what you are doing is
    so profoundly important.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10 p.m. at the Grand Havana Room. In his
    remarks, he referred to State Assembly Speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa;
    Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina; and Lydia Camarillo,
    executive director, Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project.