    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 9, 1999]
    [Pages 1742-1746]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute Conference in
    Chicago, Illinois
    October 9, 1999

        Thank you. Good morning. You know, I was a little sleepy before I
    came in here and saw you. [Laughter] And I'm ready to go now. I thank
    you very much.
        Let me begin by saying a simple thank you. Thank you for your
    friendship; thank you for your support; thank you for bringing all of
    the children who are here in this audience today to remind us of what
    our deliberations are all about. Thank you, Juan Andrade, for your long leadership and your friendship to me, and
    thank you, Rey Gonzalez.
        Thank you for bringing the Juan Andrade Scholarship award winners
    outside for me to have my picture taken with them. I enjoyed that. They
    were great. People who are worried about America should take a look at
    those young people. They would worry a lot less and feel a lot more
    hope.
        I want to express my appreciation to everyone at the U.S. Hispanic
    Leadership Institute for

    [[Page 1743]]

    working since 1982 on your noble mission of empowerment through
    education and voter participation. Your work has paid off. You see it in
    greater Hispanic participation in elections and in the growing number of
    Latino elected officials, like Congressman Luis Gutierrez. I think he is here today, and I thank him for his work.
        I also want to thank the many dedicated Hispanic members of our
    administration, including my Deputy Chief of Staff, Maria
    Echaveste, who is here; our Director of
    Intergovernmental Affairs, Mickey Ibarra; the
    EEOC Chair, Ida Castro--I know she has been or
    will be on your program--along with George
    Munoz, Aida Alvarez, Henry Solano, Saul Ramirez, and
    Secretary Bill Richardson, and a number of
    other young people in our administration who I've seen wandering around
    here at your meeting, and some of whom have worked on my trip here.
        Let me say that there is another mission that you have followed over
    the years. You have helped to forge unity among the diverse elements of
    Hispanic America. You remind us that there are actually differences of
    ethnicity, national origin, and even, occasionally, of opinion among
    Hispanic-Americans; but that you are united by common values of faith
    and family, hard work, and a common vision of a better America. That is
    America at its best, a diverse nation, now the most diverse in our
    history, and growing increasingly so.
        In a global economy, in a global society, our diversity can be a
    godsend if we make the most of it, if we enjoy it, if we respect it, if
    we honor it, and if we believe that the common humanity that unites us
    is more important than all the differences among us. That thought was
    uppermost in my mind 6\1/2\ years ago when I became President.
        Vice President Gore and I came into office determined to move away
    from the divide-and-conquer politics which had dominated our country for
    the previous 12 years. It had weakened and divided America, and it was
    wrong. We wanted to find a way to unify our country, to unify our
    thinking, to unify our action, and to move our country forward, based on
    values all Americans share: opportunity for all, responsibility from
    all, a community of all our people. With that in mind, we put in place a
    new economic plan, new crime and welfare policies, new education,
    environment, and health policies, new policies to empower the poor and
    elevate citizen service. I think the results speak for themselves.
        We have the longest peacetime economic expansion in history; the
    highest homeownership in history; the lowest unemployment rate in 29
    years; the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years; the lowest poverty rates in
    20 years; the lowest crime rates in 26 years; the smallest Federal
    Government in 37 years; the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42
    years. Along the way we managed to pass the family and medical leave
    law, which has given millions and millions of Americans the right to
    take some time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick without
    losing their jobs. Ninety percent of our children are immunized against
    serious childhood diseases for the first time in our history. Our air
    and water are cleaner; our food is safer. We have opened the doors of
    college with the HOPE scholarship and other increases in financial aid.
    We have opened the doors of health care to 5 million children; 100,000
    young Americans have served in AmeriCorps.
        Just last week we learned that median household income rose 3\1/2\
    percent last year, but for Hispanics it rose at an even faster rate of
    4.8 percent in one year. Even though this community has serious
    challenges, including, I might say uppermost, a high school dropout rate
    that is too high, we now have the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate in
    history, the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in a generation, and a million
    new Hispanic homeowners since 1994.
        In 1993 we doubled the earned-income tax credit for lower income
    working people. It now lifts over a million Hispanics out of poverty. We
    raised the minimum wage that directly benefits 1.6 million Hispanic
    workers, and I think it's time we raised the minimum wage again.
        We increased the number of Small Business Administration loans to
    Hispanic entrepreneurs by 250 percent. We thank Aida Alvarez for her leadership there. And as the Vice President
    recently announced, the SBA has planned to expand lending to the
    Hispanic community even more. We revolutionized welfare in a way that
    allowed the rolls to be cut nearly in half, millions of people to move
    from dependence to the dignity of work, what with more child care, more
    transportation aid, guaranteed food and medicine to children; and we
    have succeeded in reversing the unfair cuts in the welfare reform law,
    restoring benefits to over 600,000 legal immigrants.
        Under the Vice President's leadership,
    we've reduced the naturalization backlog at INS,

    [[Page 1744]]

    streamlining the process to make it easier for immigrants who play by
    the rules to become full partners in America. We have more to do, and I
    ask you to help us with that.
        I'd also like to ask your help with one other thing. In the 1997
    bipartisan balanced budget bill, we created the $24 billion Children's
    Health Insurance Program. It was the largest expansion of children's
    health coverage since the enactment of Medicaid. It required all the
    States to file plans to use this money to enroll children without health
    insurance in the program. This year we finally got all the States
    enrolled. But the alarming thing is that we estimate there are at
    least--at least--4 million more children who could be covered by the
    money that is there waiting for them to provide health insurance who
    have not signed up yet.
        So I ask you, when you go back home, make sure that in your
    community there is a systematic effort underway to get health care to
    every Hispanic child who doesn't have it, who is eligible for this
    program.
        Like you, I believe in the concept of empowerment, so I will mention
    this one last issue. I asked the Vice President to lead our efforts to create over 100 enterprise zones
    and empowerment communities across our country, to generate billions of
    dollars in new private sector investment and public investment in these
    low income areas. You can see them operating from Chicago to
    Philadelphia to Cleveland to Detroit to south Texas to the Mississippi
    Delta to Appalachia. And you can see them working. I have asked for an
    increase in the number of empowerment zones and community development
    banks, and we're fighting for them now in the budget.
        I want to talk to you about what we're going to do next. I thank you
    for your support. I am pleased by the progress we have made. But in
    America we must always be determined to change, to improve, to move
    forward. And we must honestly face the fact that there are still a lot
    of challenges out there that have not been met.
        When I came up on this stage--I'll just give you one example--when I
    came up on this stage, one of the people back here said, ``Mr.
    President, there are some people in our community with disabilities who
    are out there. Be sure and say hello to them on the way out.'' One of
    the important things I'm trying to get passed in this Congress is a bill
    sponsored by Senator Kennedy and Senator
    Jeffords which would allow people with
    disabilities to move into the workplace and still keep their Medicaid
    insurance because they can't get health insurance in the workplace.
    That's the sort of thing we need to be doing.
        I ask you to take just a few minutes and focus on the outstanding
    challenges--places where we haven't made enough progress and places
    where we haven't received enough cooperation from this Congress.
        Let me begin with judicial nominations. I am proud that we have
    succeeded in appointing more Hispanics to the Federal bench than any
    administration in history. And I'm proud that, on the whole, the judges
    I've appointed are the most diverse group in our history: nearly half
    are women or minorities. More than half my current judicial nominees are
    women or minorities, and they are good judges. My appointees have
    garnered the highest ratings from the American Bar Association of any
    President in 40 years.
        Now, I would also say that unlike previous administrations, there
    has been article after article after article saying that I have avoided
    putting ideological extremists on the court, unlike what happened in the
    previous decade or so. So these people are well-qualified, they're
    diverse. You would think the United States Senate would be falling all
    over themselves to confirm them.
        Now, let's look at the facts. Earlier this week I said it was a
    disgrace that the Senate defeated on a straight party-line vote my
    nomination of Ronnie White, a highly
    talented African-American jurist from the State of Missouri that was the
    first African-American to serve on the Missouri State Supreme Court, who
    was endorsed by one of his State's Republican Senators, supported by
    Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, but when he came to the
    floor, for political reasons back in Missouri, 100 percent of the
    Republicans in the majority voted to deny his confirmation and distorted
    his record in capital punishment appeals cases. It was wrong. That's the
    kind of thing that's going on up there that ought to stop.
        But unfortunately, it's not an isolated event. Listen to this:
    Richard Paez, the first Mexican-American
    ever to serve as a judge in the Federal district court in Los Angeles, I
    nominated more than 3\1/2\ years ago for a seat on the ninth circuit
    court of appeals. For more than 3\1/2\ years he

    [[Page 1745]]

    has been waiting for the Senate to confirm his nomination. Is it because
    he's not qualified? No. The American Bar Association said not that he
    was qualified, but that he was well qualified. He received the highest
    rating from the ABA. He has broad, bipartisan support back in California
    and in the legal community. Yet, he still has not been given a Senate
    floor vote. Why? Well, they don't want to vote him down because they
    hope that you will vote with them in the next election, but they don't
    want to vote for him. So this man has been hanging there for 3\1/2\
    years.
        Now, I don't know about you, but if I took 3\1/2\ years to make a
    decision, you wouldn't think I was a very good President. And most of
    you couldn't hold your jobs if you took 3\1/2\ years to do your assigned
    tasks. Can you imagine that? How many times has somebody been on you
    because you took 3\1/2\ hours? [Laughter]
        Another fine candidate for the ninth circuit, a renowned appellate
    lawyer, Marsha Berzon, has been waiting for
    more than 18 months to receive a floor vote. That is, they put these
    people out of committee and they just never bring them up. They just
    disappear somewhere in the dark recesses of the calendar of the Senate.
    Now, I think the treatment of Richard Paez
    and Marsha Berzon is shameless.
        We have also been working to get three other exceptional Hispanic
    nominees confirmed: Judge Julio Fuentes for
    the third circuit; civil lawyer Enrique Moreno for the fifth circuit; and Judge Ronald
    Guzman for the northern district of Illinois,
    here.
        I am pleased to announce that Judge Guzman finally received his
    judiciary committee hearing last week for a vacancy here. But the
    Senate's treatment of Judge White and its
    failure to vote on the outstanding Hispanic nominees that are pending
    creates a real doubt about their ability and their willingness to
    perform their constitutional duties to advise and consent.
        So I urge you to help me get a Senate vote on Judge Paez, Judge Fuentes, Judge
    Guzman, Marsha Berzon, Enrique Moreno. They should
    be confirmed. They should be confirmed. But they ought to be voted on
    one way or the other.
        Now, let me say, in spite of the difficulties we have had with this
    Congress, they're capable of putting partisanship aside and putting the
    country first. We did it on the third try with the welfare bill in '96.
    We did it with the Balanced Budget Act in '97. We did it last year when
    they voted right before the election for my program to put 100,000
    teachers in the schools. And just last week, at the end of this session
    that just concluded, finally, after 2 years of work, a substantial
    bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives passed a strong,
    enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights.
        Now, that bill is a long way from becoming law, but a lot of people
    never thought we could get this far. It gives you the right if you're in
    an HMO to see a specialist if your doctor says you should; to go to the
    nearest emergency room if you're in an accident; to keep your doctor
    through a course of treatment, whether for chemotherapy or a pregnancy;
    and to hold your health care plan accountable if you're injured.
        So we're capable of doing this. I have asked the Congress to do
    more. I have asked them to keep our prosperity going by paying down our
    debt and getting America out of debt in 15 years for the first time
    since 1835. We can do that.
        I have asked them to keep working until the prosperity of this
    moment reaches every community and every person willing to work for it.
    I have asked them to double the number of empowerment zones and
    enterprise communities. And I have asked them to adopt my new markets
    initiative, which would simply say we want the same incentives for
    people with money to invest in poor communities in America we give them
    to invest in poor communities around the world, because people in
    America deserve the chance to be a part of America's prosperity.
        I've asked them to work with me to meet the challenge of the aging
    of America by saving Social Security and modernizing Medicare and adding
    a prescription drug benefit. I have asked them, now that we have the
    lowest crime rate in 26 years, to ask them to join me in making America
    the safest big nation on Earth by closing this gun show loophole in our
    background check law and doing more to keep guns out of the hands of
    children and criminals.
        I have asked them to help me give all of our children--all of our
    children--a world-class education, demanding more from our schools, but
    also investing more. Our agenda is clear: Build or modernize 6,000
    schools; there are too many kids in the schools and too many schools are
    run down or too many kids going to school in trailers. Put 100,000
    teachers out there and focus on the early grades to give our children

    [[Page 1746]]

    smaller classes. Have more after-school and summer school programs like
    Chicago does, so that you can say, ``Okay, we're going to have high
    standards; we're going to end social promotion, but we will not label
    children a failure when the systems fail them.'' We want them to have
    access to the help they need. Close the digital divide; hook up every
    classroom and every library in this country to the Internet at a rate
    even the poorest schools can afford. That's what we're doing.
        I am proud that we won almost $500 million in the 1999 budget for
    the Hispanic education action plan, to make sure Latino children get the
    tutoring, the after-school, the mentoring programs they need to help
    them meet higher academic standards, finish, not drop out of high
    school, and go on to college.
        It will take time for these efforts to have an impact, but you can
    help at the local level. Hold up these young scholarship winners as an
    example to the young people in your communities. We cannot make America
    what it ought to be in the 21st century unless we dramatically reduce
    the 30 percent dropout rate among Hispanic-American children.
        As many of your leaders have told me, not withstanding our best
    intentions in this administration, we have a lot more to do to make sure
    that the States and the school districts who accept Federal dollars
    actually spend those dollars in a way that reaches underserved Hispanic
    students, and we are working on that, as well.
        Let me finally make this one point. I have always wanted an
    administration that looks like America. You've heard me say that a dozen
    times, I bet. More and more, America will look like you. More and more,
    there will be more people listening and more people performing like
    Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez. There will be more books. There will be
    more movies. There will be a bigger part of our culture.
        And what I ask you to do as you rise in dominance and influence, not
    only in our political life but in our cultural life, is never to forget
    your roots and never forget the pain of discrimination or being ignored,
    and make sure that you are always a force for good, for building one
    America.
        If you look around this old world today, the biggest problem I have
    faced as your President in my responsibilities around the world is
    dealing with the racial and the ethnic and the religious and the tribal
    conflicts where people occupy the same land and cannot get along; where
    they continue to believe what is different about them is more important
    than their common humanity; where they fear people who are different
    from them and get to the point where they look down on them and in some
    places--God forbid--they think it's even okay to kill them.
        And if you look all over the world today, we celebrate the modern
    world--modern music, modern culture, the Internet, the decoding of the
    human gene--all these things that are going on. A lot of your young
    people probably want to go to work for these Internet companies, where
    there are dozens and dozens of young people in their twenties now worth
    $50 million. That's chump change to some of them. It's all great, all
    this modern world, but don't forget the biggest problem is the oldest
    problem of the human heart--the fear and hatred of people who are
    different.
        So I ask you to remember this. You are growing in numbers; you are
    growing in influence. You will grow in ways that are good and will make
    America richer, more alive, more textured, more exciting. And it's all
    going to be positive. But don't forget what you've been through. And do
    everything you can to stop it from happening within America and beyond
    our borders. We are still, for all of our modern advances, too much in
    the grip of the oldest fears of the human heart. And your community can
    make all the difference for 21st century America.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:36 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom at
    McCormick Place. In his remarks, he referred to Juan Andrade, Jr.,
    president and executive director, and Rey Gonzalez, board chairman, U.S.
    Hispanic Leadership Institute; singer Ricky Martin; and actress/singer
    Jennifer Lopez.