    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [December 11, 1999]
    [Pages 2283-2287]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Unity Reception in Coral Gables, Florida
    December 11, 1999

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Gene.
    Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a
    little hoarse. I've been battling a big cold today. I've had an amazing
    few days. A couple of days ago we announced that we were going to start
    the peace talks again, after 4 years of hiatus, between Israel and
    Syria, and it's been a wonderful thing. And then I

    [[Page 2284]]

    had a very sad duty to go up to Worcester, Massachusetts, to the funeral
    of those firemen--you may have seen. And then I went home to Arkansas
    yesterday. So somewhere along the way I caught a cold, and my voice is
    not the best. And I thank you for indulging me.
        I'm always glad to be back here. I love this hotel. [Laughter] I
    love the golf course. [Laughter] I love the people. And Gene
    Prescott has been very good to me and to many
    members of my family, and I thank him for that. And I thank all of you
    for coming.
        I know there were Members of the Senate and the House who were here
    earlier, and they've gone to the next event. I do want to recognize
    State Representative Elaine Bloom, who is
    running for Congress and who is going to be a Member of Congress if she
    gets adequate financial support to help her win. And so thank you very
    much for coming.
        Let me say to all of you, this has been a pretty emotional day for
    me in Florida, because it was 8 years ago this week that I came to
    Florida to the Democratic Convention when they were having straw poll.
    And this straw poll had been mightily hyped because it was going to be
    the first vote of any kind in the 1992 Presidential season. At the time,
    as I remember, I was running fifth in New Hampshire in the polls.
        And I had been to the Florida Democratic Convention already by 1991,
    three previous times in the eighties, thanks to Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles. I had been in '81, '83, and '87, and
    had a wonderful time. But on this special day, we had worked very hard,
    and the Florida Democrats worked me very hard. They made me go to all of
    these little caucuses and answer all these questions. I must have
    answered a thousand questions. I was so exhausted by the time I finished
    visiting more than a dozen of these caucuses, answering hundreds of
    questions, I got to where I wondered what I was doing in this business.
    But we won over 50 percent of the vote in the Florida straw poll, at a
    time when we were running fifth in the national polls. And a lot of you
    in this room were a part of that endeavor. I thank you for that.
        And I came back today to go up to Orlando to the Democratic
    Convention just to thank those people who gave me my start on the road
    to the Presidency; and also to thank Florida for voting for me and for
    Al Gore in 1996, which is the first time in 20 years this State had
    voted for a Democratic ticket.
        Gene has already said a lot of what he might say about the record. I
    just wanted to make a couple of points. In 1991, when I decided to run
    for President, I did so not because I had anything personal against
    President Bush. I actually like him quite well,
    and I had often worked as the representative of the Governors, both the
    Republicans and the Democrats, with the White House, for years and
    years. I did it because our country was at a time of economic distress,
    social decline, political division, and the whole enterprise of
    government was discredited. And I had worked for more than a decade as a
    Governor to try to bring people together instead of driving them apart
    and to try to figure out what makes the economy tick in the modern
    world.
        And so I asked the American people to give me a chance to create a
    society where there was opportunity for every responsible citizen, and
    where we had a community of all, where everybody could participate. And
    Gene mentioned a little of this, but you know, I think the interesting
    thing is--it is true that in February we will have the longest economic
    expansion in history. We already have the longest peacetime economic
    expansion in history, but, you know, in wartime, you're fully mobilized,
    so they tend to last longer. We're going to outdo all the wartime
    expansions if we keep on plugging until February. And that's a great
    tribute to the American people.
        But it also happened because we made some tough decisions. We got
    rid of this deficit; we turned it into a surplus. We got the interest
    rates down. We stopped taking money away from you that you might need to
    borrow to expand a business or to start a new one or to make a home loan
    payment or a car payment or a college loan payment. And the strategy has
    worked.
        But I think it's important to point out that we don't just have the
    lowest unemployment rate the actual figure is 30 years, the lowest
    female unemployment rate in 40 years, but our society is coming
    together. We have the lowest single-parent household poverty rate in 46
    years, the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in 25 years, and the lowest
    African-American poverty rate ever recorded and the lowest Hispanic and
    African-American unemployment rates ever recorded; we've been keeping
    statistics for about

    [[Page 2285]]

    30 years, now. So we're coming together as a society.
        And we're also beginning to look at things that have been long
    ignored. We have 90 percent of our little children immunized against
    serious diseases for the first time in the history of the country. Two
    million more kids have health insurance now than they did in 1997. Seven
    million young people have gone to college under the HOPE scholarship, a
    $1,500 a year tax credit that, in effect, opens the first 2 years of
    college to all Americans. Ten million got an increase in the minimum
    wage. More than 20 million took advantage of the Family and Medical
    Leave Act. These things are important.
        In the last legislative session of Congress, we got 100,000 teachers
    to get the class size down in the early grades. We got 50,000 more
    police to keep driving the crime rate down. We got 60,000 vouchers to
    give to people on welfare so they can move from welfare to work and find
    a place to live where they work. We are moving this country in the right
    direction.
        But I want to tell you why I'm glad you're here tonight, because I'm
    not much on looking back, except as it's evidence of where we're going.
    All elections are about tomorrow. I never will forget when I ran for
    Governor for the fifth time. I went out to the State Fair before I'd
    announced; and I used to have Governor's Day at the State Fair. And I'd
    just sit there at this little booth, you know, a fair booth, and anybody
    that wanted to come up and talk, could.
        This old boy in overalls, who was about 70 years old, came up to me
    and he said, ``Bill, are you going to run again?'' I said, ``I don't
    know. If I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``Yeah, I guess so. I
    always have.'' I said, ``Well, aren't you sick of me?'' He said, ``No,
    but everybody else I know is.'' [Laughter] And I got kind of puffed up,
    and I said, ``Well, don't you think I've done a good job?'' He said,
    ``Well, sure you've done a good job, but you drew a paycheck every 2
    weeks, didn't you?''--it's very interesting--``That's what we hired you
    to do. We hired you to do a good job.'' So what I want to say to you is,
    I hope you will go out and share this record. These statistics are
    stunning. But they are evidence of the direction we need to take.
        It's been an honor to serve. And nobody's entitled--none of us, not
    even the Vice President--none of us are
    entitled to a vote because we did a good job. And I'm not running for
    anything. But it is evidence of the job that will be done if we stay
    going in this direction.
        It is not about whether we will change, but what kind of change
    we'll have. And I want you to know I could not have done anything if I
    hadn't had the support of like minded Democrats in Congress, people who
    wanted to change the Democratic Party and change the country. Elaine
    Bloom is one of those people. She was out here
    for me in 1991. I'd like to see her have a chance to serve. I think she
    could make a big difference. And that's why you're here; this is
    important.
        This is the last thing I'm going to say. Tomorrow morning or next
    week or next month, somebody might ask you why you ponied up the money
    and came to this thing. And I hope you'll be able to give an answer, and
    I hope your answer is, number one, there's not much argument about
    whether these people delivered. They've had 7 great years for our
    country. The ideas they brought, the direction they changed was right.
    Number two, the next election should be about America meeting the big
    new challenges of the 21st century, not about short-term, divisive,
    narrowminded politics.
        And let me just say, in my lifetime--I had a bunch of kids up to the
    house at Camp David Thanksgiving weekend, and this little 6-year-old
    girl who is the daughter of a friend of mine said, ``Now, how old are
    you again?'' And I said, ``I'm 53.'' And this 6-year-old girl, her eyes
    got big and she said, ``Oh, that's a lot.'' [Laughter] And I have to
    admit she was right. [Laughter] But what I want to tell you is, in these
    lot of years that I've had the privilege of being on this Earth, never
    before in my lifetime has our country had this combination of economic
    success, social solidarity, national self-confidence, with the absence
    of an internal crisis or an external threat. It had never happened to me
    before in my lifetime. And what I have learned in these 53 years is that
    no set of conditions last forever. This is a time of rapid change. We
    will never forgive ourselves if we do not use this moment to shape the
    future of our dreams for our children.
        We've got to deal with Social Security and Medicare, the aging of
    America, take Social Security out beyond the baby boomers' lives,
    lengthen Medicare, add a prescription drug benefit so the 75 percent of
    the seniors who can't afford the medicine they need can get it.

    [[Page 2286]]

        We've got to deal with the education of the largest and most diverse
    group of schoolchildren in history, and we've got to do it in a very
    serious and disciplined way. We have to help people do more to balance
    work and family. Nearly every parent is working now. We need more
    investments in child care and health care for children and equal pay for
    women. We need to broaden the reach of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
    We need to do these things.
        We need to continue to protect the environment while we grow the
    economy. I'm convinced, folks that this--I'm not running for anything,
    and I'm convinced this climate change problem is real. And you could
    have in five or six decades a substantial part of the Everglades under
    water if we don't aggressively move to try to reverse this. And what I
    want to tell you is we can grow the economy even quicker if we do the
    right things environmentally than if we don't. You don't have to give it
    up anymore.
        Just two other things that I hope you will say. There are still
    people in places that this economy has left behind: Appalachia, the
    Mississippi Delta, the Indian reservations, a lot of inner-city
    neighborhoods. But we have a strategy to try to bring free enterprise--
    not government jobs, free enterprise--to those places. And keep in mind,
    that's one way to keep growing this economy and keep this expansion
    going without inflation. If you invest in a new area, you create new
    businesses, new jobs, and new consumers. You're not adding to
    inflationary pressures.
        And I will over simplify. Essentially, what we want to do is to give
    people who can come to political fundraisers the same incentive to
    invest in poor areas in America we give them today to invest in poor
    areas in Latin America or Asia or Africa. I'm for that, too, by the way.
    But I think if we can't give people the incentives to put free
    enterprise in America in places that are left behind, if we can't do
    this now, we're never going to get around to it.
        You know, the national unemployment rate is 4.1 percent. Do you know
    what the unemployment rate on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is in
    South Dakota, the home of the Lakota Sioux, the tribe of Crazy Horse?
    Seventy-three percent. I've been there now. There are plenty of
    intelligent people there. There are a lot of yearning young children who
    want a good education. There's plenty of things we could do there. And
    there's 120 years of history that explains why this is so, and I won't
    bore you with it. But I'm just telling you, I hope that you will say,
    ``I came there and I'm still--I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I wrote the
    check, because they've got a good record, and because they want to take
    on the big questions of the 21st century: the aging of America; the most
    diverse group of kids we've ever had; the balancing of work and family;
    the balancing of the environment and the economy; bringing economic
    opportunity to poor people; and'' the last thing I'd say is ``creating
    truly one America.''
        We had a fascinating time the other night. Hillary had these two guys come to the White House for one of
    these Millennium Evenings she has that we put out on the Internet all
    over the world. So this one man, Vint Cerf,
    was one of the men who created the architecture of the Internet, and he
    mailed the first E-mail 18 years ago to his profoundly deaf wife, who was so deaf she could not hear with the aid of
    even the most powerful hearing aids, and he wanted to talk to her when
    he was at work. That's how the E-mail started. And the other guy was
    Professor Lander from Harvard, who's one of the
    scholars of the human genome, this rapid thing we're doing to--you may
    have seen, we found 33 million components of one of the chromosomes. Did
    you see that last week? I mean, we're basically trying to map the whole
    genetic structure of the human body. So Dr. Lander knows about this.
        Well, a lot of what they were talking about was how you couldn't do
    the science without the computer technology, and how the computer
    technology was going to amplify the science. For example, last year I
    was really happy that we transplanted nerves from the legs to the spine
    of a laboratory animal for the first time and got movement in the lower
    limbs. They now believe that a quicker answer to the problems of people
    who have spinal cord injuries, that maybe the development of microchips
    that are programmed to reflect an individual mapping of every person's
    injury, and to send out electrical impulses that replicate what the
    nerves do.
        They believe that in 3 or 4 years, every young mother will come home
    with a baby and a genetic map. That'll be kind of scary; they'll tell
    you all the things that might happen to your baby, but they'll also tell
    you all the things you can do to minimize the chances that they'll
    happen. And most of my friends in the field believe

    [[Page 2287]]

    that some time fairly early in the next century, the average child will
    live to be 100 years old, have a 100-year life expectancy.
        A lot of my friends who are interested in space say that we may find
    out what's in those black holes in the universe. And everybody knows
    that we're going to start having a lot more E-commerce and Internet
    connections, in ways we couldn't have imagined. I'll give you just one
    little example. Did you all ever buy anything on eBay? It's a trading
    site on the Web. There are now over 20,000 people that make a living on
    eBay. They don't work for eBay; they make a living buying and selling on
    eBay. And a number of them used to be on welfare. So if you can get
    Internet access to be as dense in America as telephone access, a lot of
    these poor people that worked their way out of poverty, they'll figure
    out how to do it.
        So this is, anyway, to put it mildly, a very exciting time to be
    alive. And I think it is quite interesting that, with all this modern
    stuff going on, the biggest problem we've got is the oldest problem of
    human society with all this racial and religious and ethnic hatred, and
    hatred of gays. You know, it's just like, okay, so we're living in a
    modern world, but we can't let any of this stuff go. There are people
    and groups that don't think they count unless they've got somebody to
    look down on.
        And if you look at what's taking my time as your President around
    the world--the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, tribal
    wars in Africa, and a lot of things that are indirectly related to
    that--it's the biggest problem in the world.
        One of the worst things you read about--crime rate keeps going down
    in America, but you've got all these hate crimes: black basketball coach
    in Illinois, Korean Christian coming out of his church, both killed by a
    guy who belonged to a church that said they don't believe in God; they
    believe in white supremacy. An angry guy up in L.A. shoots all these
    Jewish kids going to their synagogue schools and then goes and kills a
    Filipino postman. Matthew Shepard, James Byrd.
        Did you see the pictures in the paper yesterday of the two soldiers,
    one 18 and one 21? The 18-year-old beat the one that was 21 to death
    with a baseball bat because he was gay. I've said this a lot, but my
    heart broke for both of them.
        People have to be taught this kind of stuff. And I'm very proud of
    the fact that I belong to a political party that believes everybody has
    a place at the table, everybody ought to have a chance, and we ought to
    take a little extra trouble to help bring people in that need a helping
    hand.
        I believe that, and I think now you've had 7 years--and I hope
    you'll think about this when Mr. Connerly
    comes down here and puts his anti-affirmative-action initiative on the
    ballot--we've now had 7 years to prove that our way works better.
    America's better off when you help everybody to participate, not worse
    off.
        And if I could have one wish, it would be--just one; if somebody
    came, you know, one of those little angels came to me at night and said,
    ``I'm sorry, Mr. President, you have to check out tomorrow morning. You
    can't stay 14 months, but we'll give you one wish. What would you
    like?'' As much as I want to do something about the aging challenge and
    the children and all these other things, I would say, I'd like to leave
    America united across the lines that divide us--not just tolerating our
    differences, but celebrating them; and reaffirming the fact that our
    common humanity is more important than all these interesting
    differences.
        There's no country in the world as well-positioned as we are for the
    next 50 years of what's going to happen. But we have to be willing to
    deal with these long-term challenges. If this election is about that
    question--what are we going to do with this unique moment in our
    history?--then our side will win.
        And I hope that when people ask you, why are you doing this, you'll
    tell them about the last 7 years, but you'll also talk about your dreams
    for the next 20.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:45 p.m. in the Altamira Room at the
    Biltmore Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gene Prescott, president,
    Biltmore Hotel; Ward Connerly, chairman, California civil rights
    initiative; Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president of Internet
    architecture and technology, MCI WorldCom, and his wife, Sigrid; and
    Eric Lander, director, Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome
    Research.