[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[November 10, 1999]
[Pages 2060-2066]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a National Coalition of Minority Business Award Dinner
November 10, 1999
Thank you very much. Thank you. Whew! This is a pretty rowdy crowd
tonight. We may have to sing that song before we're done. [Laughter]
Chairman Garrett, when you were sort of
introducing Weldon, and you kept reading
all those quotes about his influence, and this, that, and the other
thing--and I thought, this can all be distilled in one sentence: Bill
Clinton does what he asked him to. [Laughter]
I want to thank Weldon and Mel for having me here. And I want to thank you,
Chairman Garrett, and the board and all of
you who made this dinner possible tonight. I want to thank
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the members of the administration who are here. Secretary Slater--
do you know what I thought about when
Secretary Slater got up to read Reverend Jackson's letter? If Jesse had known Rodney was going to read for
him, he probably would have come back for fear that Rodney would read it
better than he would. [Laughter] I'll pay for that later. [Laughter]
I want to tell you, I think Reverend Jackson is where he ought to be tonight, and you should know
that he's been with me every step of the two new markets tours we have
taken, and it's been a great joy. We've been friends for many years. I
can still remember when we ate french fries in the kitchen of the
Arkansas Governor's mansion, more than a decade ago, and talked about
how foolish it was that we weren't trying to include all Americans in
the economic mainstream of our life. And he was on this road before I
was, and I'm glad that we're walking it together now.
I want to thank Secretary Alexis Herman
and Aida Alvarez for their leadership. There
are others here in this administration. Alvin Brown does a wonderful job for the Vice President and for me, leading our empowerment zones and
enterprise community initiative. And one of the things I want to
compliment him on is that we just got--among the victories in this last-
minute budget process is we've now fully funded the second round of
empowerment zones to give more poor communities opportunities. Thank
you, Alvin.
I told Aida Alvarez that if Weldon really had the guts to tell Erskine Bowles that she was the best Administrator of the SBA, we
could all enjoy his misery tonight--[laughter]--because you have done a
wonderful job. And there are others who are here. Bill Lann Lee, the head of the Civil Rights Division; thank you,
sir, for your leadership. And I see Dave Barram, the Government's landlord, GSA; thank you for what you
have done here. And Fred Hochberg, at the SBA,
out there. And a person who used to be a part of this administration who
had a lot to do with ``mend it, don't end it,'' and a lot of other good
things, Deval Patrick. Thank you for being
here tonight. Bless you, sir.
And thank you for acknowledging Minyon Moore, my political director; and Ben Johnson who runs our One America office; and my good friend
Ernie Green. I tell you, I wish every one of
you had been in the White House yesterday for that Gold Medal
celebration for the Little Rock Nine. It was one of the most moving
things that I have ever been involved in.
I want to also acknowledge the Members of Congress here tonight,
that I believe are here: Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard; Congressman Ruben Hinojosa, my good friend from south Texas; Congressman John
Conyers is here, obviously.
And I want to pay special recognition to one other person who is
here, because he's up for reelection next year; he needs your help, and
he is one of the most courageous Members of the United States Congress.
If ever we had a friend who deserves to be reelected, it's Senator Chuck
Robb from Virginia. And I want to ask him to
stand up. [Applause]
He may well be the greatest Virginia--greatest Governor Virginia had
since Thomas Jefferson, in his record in education and in so many other
ways. We served together, and I have seen him cast vote after vote in
the Senate, knowing that it might cost him his seat. And he just gets up
every day and does what he thinks is right. He deserves the support of
every thinking person in America who cares about the direction of the
United States Senate. He's got a hard fight. I believe he's going to
win, but he has to have all kinds of help, financial, vote, and
otherwise, to win. And I want to urge you to support him in every way
you can.
I'm told that Mayor David Dinkins from New
York is here tonight. If he's here, or was here, anyway--and if you're
not here, I still think you're great. [Laughter] You've heard this
speech before.
I thank you for this award. You know, I always feel generally that
Presidents shouldn't receive awards, that having the job is award
enough. But I confess I kind of like this one. [Laughter] And I'm going
to put it on my desk in the Oval Office tomorrow, so you'll begin to see
it on television, and you'll know how much I like it.
You told that joke about ``Lift Every Voice and Sing.'' I remember
one time Vernon Jordan and I sang that song to a group of unbelieving
people on Martha's Vineyard. [Laughter] You know, this is all beginning
to cause me some difficulty. Last night I spoke to a Hispanic Democratic
dinner, and I was introduced by my friend Miguel Lausell from Puerto Rico. And he stood up and said, ``This
President has a Latino soul.'' [Laughter] And not long ago, Toni
Morrison said that I was--Toni Morrison, the
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Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American writer, said that I was the
first black President America had ever had. [Laughter] So I thought to
myself, now I'll never be able to go home to Ireland. What am I going to
do? [Laughter]
All of this that we're laughing about really stems from something I
deeply believe. I believe it about America, but I believe it about every
person's journey through life. We all struggle, and we all fail. But we
all struggle to live a life of integrity, which means literally that we
are integrated, that our mind and our body and our spirit are in the
same place at the same time, centered and connected to other human
beings. And I've always believed that, in so many ways, the purpose of
politics is to find a unifying vision that will allow people to release
the barriers that keep them from one another so they can join hands and
enhance our common destiny.
It's been a privilege to serve. I don't really deserve any awards. I
got to be President, and it's the greatest honor that any American could
ever have. Your success is the greatest award I could get, because the
mission of our country, the eternal mission of our country is to deepen
the meaning of our freedom and widen the circle of opportunity and
strengthen the bonds of our community. And it turns out that trying to
make sure that everybody shares in our prosperity is not only the
morally right thing to do, it's good for all the rest of America, too,
which is why all these businesses are here tonight. So we have come a
long way by following the admonition of the Scriptures to be doers of
the Word and not hearers only.
Twelve years ago, or in the 12 years before the Vice President and I
came here, we had a very different view, I think, of ourselves as a
country, which dominated Washington, and a very different economic
philosophy. But in the end, by 1992, it had brought us to a place where
we had economic distress and social division, with a Government that had
been discredited by the people who were running it, who said the
Government was the problem. And even though along the way I thought they
did some quite good things--standing up against communism, signing the
Americans with Disabilities Act--but all the time telling us that the
Government was the problem. And also defying the basic laws of
arithmetic when it came to doing our budget. [Laughter]
So in 1992 Vice President Gore and I asked the American people to
give us a chance to put people first, to be driven by a vision of
opportunity for all, but responsibility from all Americans. I always
thought, contrary to the prevailing political rhetoric, that most people
wanted to be responsible and would respond to a challenge to do that and
to build a community of increasingly diverse Americans.
We had some new ideas about the economy, about welfare, about crime,
about the environment, about national service, about America's role in
the world. And with the help of a lot of you here, the American people
gave us a chance to try our ideas. And after 7 years, the results are
in. And I am very grateful that we have the longest peacetime expansion
in our history. By February it will be the longest economic expansion in
American history, including the Second World War and World War I and the
times we were fully mobilized: nearly 20 million new jobs; a 30-year low
in unemployment; a 32-year low in the welfare rolls; a 25-year low in
the crime rate; 20-year low in the poverty rates; the first time we've
had back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years, with the smallest Federal
Government in 37 years. You've been a part of that. That's the America
you have made because you have been given a chance to make it. And you
should be very proud of yourselves for the role you played in it.
Along the way, we tried to make sure that people who worked 40 hours
a week and have kids in their homes should not be poor. So we doubled
the earned-income tax credit and cut taxes for 15 million working
Americans, raised the minimum wage, and I hope we're about to raise it
again. We passed the Brady bill, which has now kept 400,000 people with
criminal or other problem histories from getting handguns, giving us the
lowest murder rate in 30 years.
We fought for and won an increase in children's health coverage that
will enable us, I hope and believe, over the next year or so, to cover 5
million more children with health insurance. Ninety percent of our kids
are immunized against serious childhood diseases, for the very first
time in our history. We've expanded Head Start, and the family and
medical leave law has now enabled over 15 million Americans to take a
little time off from work without losing their jobs when a baby is born
or a parent's sick.
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We've opened the doors of higher education with the HOPE scholarship
and other tax credits and more Pell grant fundings and tax deductibility
for interest on student loans. The air is cleaner. The water is cleaner.
The food is safer. We set aside more land in protected areas than any
administration in the history of this country, except those of Franklin
and Theodore Roosevelt.
One hundred and fifty thousand young Americans, and some not so
young, have entered the AmeriCorps program and served in their
communities all across America, solving problems and working with
people, helping children, dealing with natural disasters, rebuilding
dilapidated housing, doing any number of things to make our country a
better place. And we have made a clear commitment to building one
America in the 21st century.
We've tried to reach out, I might add, in ways that are not always
apparent. You know, and you've made--I like that joke about how my
administration doesn't look like the one on ``West Wing.'' I don't
recognize that White House, you know? [Laughter] It's a cute show, but
it ought to be more diverse, because America is. And our administration
is. You know that. You know of the record of our appointments to the
Federal bench and the efforts to increase the effectiveness of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. We've also, I might add, tried to
make sure that people who have different political views than mine had
their rights respected, that all Federal employees were citizens and
could be citizens, that the religious convictions of Federal employees
and children in our schools could have the widest possible protection.
So I haven't tried just to bring into this tent of one America people
who will vote for me at the next election, but all people who should
feel that they have a place at America's table.
But we have made a special effort on the economic front to help
people who have traditionally been left behind. We've increased by 2\1/
2\ times the number of small business loans to African-American
entrepreneurs, and by 2\1/2\ times the number of SBA loans to Hispanic
entrepreneurs since 1992. And beneath those economic statistics that I
just ran off--the 30 years, 30 years, 20 years; I wish you all could
remember that and just tell everybody between now and the next
election--[laughter]--we have the lowest levels ever recorded of
African-American poverty and child poverty, the lowest Hispanic poverty
rate in a generation, the lowest female unemployment rate--listen to
this--lowest female unemployment rate in 46 years, and the lowest
African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded since we
started separate statistics in the 1970's.
Now, I think the important question is, what do we intend to do with
this? You know, I worked as hard as I could, and I will continue to
every day for the next 430-some-odd days I have to be President, to keep
this country going in the right direction, to build that bridge to the
21st century we talked about in 1996. A nation is almost like a vast
ocean liner out in the Pacific somewhere. To turn it around, you can't
do it on a dime; it takes time. And we've worked hard for 7 years, and
the country is moving in the right direction. The question is, what are
we going to do with it?
This is the only time in my lifetime that we have had this level of
economic strength, free of any pressing domestic crisis or foreign
threat, so that we literally can look ahead into this new millennium and
say, what would we like America to be for our children and our
grandchildren? Because as good as things are, we know two things. We
know, number one, nothing stays the same forever, good or bad. So like
all moments, this one will pass. Something will happen sometime down the
road. Nothing stays the same forever. The second thing we know is, we
know right now that we have some big challenges still out there. I'll
mention some I won't talk about tonight in any detail, but just you
ought to think about them. We know right now that the number of people
over 65 is going to double in the next 30 years, and we'll only have two
people working for every one person drawing Social Security. We have to
decide right now whether we're going to deal with that.
We know right now that Medicare is supposed to run out of money in
15 years and that 75 percent of the elderly people in this country can't
afford prescription drugs. We know right now that we have, for the first
time, a generation of schoolchildren bigger than the baby boom
generation, and they're much, much more diverse. In Senator Robb's home
State, just across the river from the White House, the Alexandria School
District has children from 180 different racial and ethnic groups whose
parents
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speak 100 different languages--one school district. And we know that
while we have the best system of higher education in the world, and this
administration has succeeded, literally, in opening the doors of college
to everybody who is willing to work for it now, no one can seriously
assert that every one of our children is getting a world-class
education, kindergarten through 12th grade. And we know if we really
want to have one America, we have to deal with that.
We know right now that people who are connected to the Internet and
are computer-literate and understand that have big economic advantages.
Even poor people get big economic advantages. I learned in northern
California last week that this company, eBay--I bet a lot of you have
bought things from eBay, you know eBay--you know there are now over
20,000 people making a living off eBay? Not working for the company;
trading through the site. Many of them, I learned from the company
people, used to be on welfare. So we know that it makes a huge
difference, and yet we know there's a digital divide out there. The Vice
President and I have worked hard to close it in the schools.
Four years ago, we had only 4 percent of our schools and classrooms
connected to the Internet. Now, 51 percent are, and we're trying to make
sure 100 percent are by the end of next year. We're getting close. But
there are kids out there in schools that cannot be wired because they
are so old and in such disrepair. Forty percent of the schools in New
York are over 70 years old. Some of them are still heated by coal. The
average age of school buildings in Philadelphia is 65 years. And I could
go on and on. I was in a little town in Florida not very long ago, a
little town, where there were 12 trailers out behind the grade school.
So this is a challenge; we know about this.
I know, and I hope that you believe, that there is really an
environmental challenge that the whole world faces in this climate
change business and that if we continue to warm the climate at this
rate, at some time in the next century the water levels will rise as the
polar ice caps melt; the sugarcane fields in Louisiana will be flooded;
much of the Florida Everglades will be flooded; some island nations
could disappear; and the whole quality of life in America could be
changed. The distribution of agricultural opportunity could be
irrevocably altered.
But we also know that you don't have to burn more greenhouse gases
to get rich anymore, as a nation. It's not necessary. There are
technological advances that are now available, and those that will soon
be available, which will enable us to totally change that. Congressman
Conyers and I went to the Detroit auto
show together, and we looked at automobiles that use mixed gasoline and
electrical engines that will soon become commercially available, that
get 70 miles a gallon, and that can be economical even at presently
relatively low gasoline prices. But we have to. We know that.
We know that in the future we'll have to deal with the challenges
from terrorists and drugrunners and organized criminals around the
world, and they'll increasingly work together, and they will use the
very things that we're using--the Internet and technology and the
openness of borders--against us. We know that. What are we going to do
about it?
I say all these things not to alarm anyone, but to say that we know
right now what most of the large challenges of the next 30 years will
be, and right now, for the first time in my lifetime, we have the
prosperity and the confidence and the coherence to deal with them. But
they require decisions.
I said yesterday, when we were celebrating Ernie and the other members of the Little Rock Nine, that
the things that those kids did when they walked up the steps and into
the schools and they were abused and they were run off and they went
through this trial is they forced everybody else to make a decision.
Before that I was like everybody else; I thought segregation was a
terrible thing, but I never had to really speak about it. I was 11 years
old; what the heck did it matter to me? I was more worried about when
recess was, or something. You know, it was just the way things were. But
sometimes when people act, they change everything. And everybody had to
make a decision then. Because there it was. Well, that's where we are
now. Except there is no crisis, so we don't have to make a decision. We
can just wander on and not deal with this.
Now, how many times in your personal life, in your family life, or
in your business life, have you made a mistake because you thought
things were going so well you could afford to be distracted, diverted,
or indulgent? How many times? It happens to everybody. There's not a
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person in this room that hasn't happened to. It is human nature.
And so I say to you, the greatest honor I could have is to know that
you will work with me for the next 430-some-odd days and that you will
continue to work to make sure that we do not blow this precious moment.
This is an incredible opportunity and an enormous responsibility. And
it's never happened in my lifetime, ever. Not once have we ever had this
much prosperity, this much confidence, and the absence of a pressing,
convulsing domestic crisis or foreign threat. And we will never forgive
ourselves if we let our children and our grandchildren down by not
looking into the future and saying, here are the big challenges facing
this country, and we intend to meet them.
And I just want to mention two more. Number one is there are people
in places which still have not participated in this prosperity. That's
what the Vice President's employment zones
and enterprise community initiative has been all about. That's why we
worked hard to establish these community development financial
institutions that some of you have participated in. That's why we worked
so hard to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act and then to save it in
this last banking legislation, because 95 percent of all the lending
ever made under that 22-year-old law has happened since this
administration has been in office.
And that's what this new markets initiative is all about. We will
never have every single neighborhood in an employment zone; we can only
pick those that have their act together and have the biggest problems
and try to make the fairest judgments we can. So what I have sought to
do by going around the country is to say, look, there are all these
other places, and shouldn't we at least give investors in America the
same incentives to invest in poor areas in America we give them to
invest in poor areas in Latin America or Africa or Asia? I support
American investment around the world. I am trying to pass right now the
Africa trade bill and the Caribbean Basin initiative before this
Congress goes home. But I believe that the most important markets we
have are the untapped markets still in this country that need to be
developed.
So I ask you to think about that. You'd be amazed--again, this is
another example where doing--what the right thing to do is also good for
the rest of America. You would be amazed how much time we have spent
over the last year and a half figuring out how can we keep this economic
expansion going. All previous economic expansions have come to an end
either because the economy gets so heated up that we get inflation--and
then when you break the inflation, the medicine to break the inflation
is so strong, it breaks the recovery--or because the recovery just runs
out of steam.
Now, we've kept this one going, largely thanks to you and people
like you. Thirty percent of it has been powered by technology; 30
percent of it, until this Asian financial collapse, was powered by
exports. Traditional economic theory dramatically underestimated the
impact of technology to increase productivity and underestimated the
impact of open markets in holding down inflation.
So we can keep it going. But to keep it going, with unemployment at
4.1 percent, what have we got to do? If you go into a neighborhood in an
inner city, if you go into an abandoned small town that lost its factory
and has nothing left, if you go into a Native American reservation--Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota--there are plenty of smart people up
there. I walked up and down the street with a 17-year-old girl that is
as intelligent as any high school child I've talked to since I've been
President. But they have 73 percent unemployment. That is wasted human
potential. And if you invest there, you create new businesses, new jobs,
and new consumers and new taxpayers, and you grow the economy without
inflation, by definition, because you are getting both new producers and
new consumers. This is the right thing to do for the people that are
there. It's the right thing to do for the rest of us because we want
this ride to go on just as long as it can.
The other thing I want to say is, if I could leave America with one
legacy, and somebody said to me tonight, ``Well, you're going to have to
go now, and we'll give you one wish.'' You know, the genie deal.
[Laughter] ``But you don't get three wishes; you just get one,'' I'd
still pick one America. Why? Because I think when we're getting along
and when we're not just tolerating each other, but when we respect and
like each other, when we've got a framework for dealing with our honest
differences that enables them to be worked out without everybody falling
out, the American people nearly always get it right. I mean, why do you
think we're
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around here after over 220 years? Look at all the stuff we've weathered.
I mean, we had these Founding Fathers who said we're all created equal,
and they were slaveholders. And even white guys couldn't vote if they
didn't own property, never mind the women, right? We worked it out. So
now we just kept on working at it, and we worked it out. But what is the
signal measure of our progress? We kept finding ways to bring more and
more and more people into the circle of freedom and opportunity. And
then their minds figured out how to maximize the benefits of the
industrial revolution, how to provide mass education, how to integrate
immigrants from all over the world into the mainstream of American life.
This one America deal is much bigger than just sort of, feel good;
let's all be nice; don't anybody be prejudiced or say anything at a
dinner party you'd be embarrassed by. [Laughter] And, to be serious,
it's much more than being tough on people who commit hate crimes,
although I badly want that hate crimes legislation to pass. It is an
understanding about the way we should live if we all want to do well. It
is in the nature of the American idea and the core of what it means to
be a human being.
Isn't it interesting to you--I mean, do you ever think about this?
We continue to have these horrible hate crime incidents in America, and
then we see these other countries convulsed by the tribal slaughter in
Rwanda; the awful, terrible treatment of the Kosovar Albanian Muslims in
Kosovo; the treatment of the Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia; the continuing
conflict among the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland which we're
trying to bring to an end; the continuing conflict in the Middle East.
What is the common element in that and the hate crimes?
It is that, for all of the wonders of the modern world, we're most
bedeviled as societies by the oldest problem of folks living together:
We still have a hard time with people who aren't like us, you know, have
a hard time with people that aren't like us. And yet, the truth is, when
we get over it and let it go, we find that life is a lot more
interesting than it used to be. I told somebody last night, the first
time I went to a Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Francisco, I thought,
where has this been all my life? [Laughter] Man, I like this. Where has
this been? I like this. So, we're laughing, but there's a grain of truth
here. Why do American Christians buy books by the Dalai Lama in record
numbers, about the ethics of the new millennium? Because he has a very
important piece of the truth, and he's very important peace inside.
So I say to you, look for the unifying vision and continue to work
for it. And be clear and focused on the magic moment in which we live.
Be humble enough to know it will not last forever; it is not in the
nature of human affairs. And if you really want to honor what you have
done and the spirit of this award, which you have so kindly given me,
make the most of this moment. It is the chance of a lifetime to build
the future of our dreams.
Thank you.
Note: The President spoke at 8:16 p.m. in the Corcoran Ballroom at the
Four Seasons Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to James F. Garrett,
chair, and Weldon Latham, general counsel, National Coalition of
Minority Business; Melvin E. Clark, Jr., president and chief executive
officer, Metroplex Corporation; civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson;
former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Deval Patrick; Ernest
Green, one of the Little Rock Nine; attorney Vernon Jordan, long-time
friend of the President; and Miguel Lausell, chair, Hispanic Leadership
Council.