[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[October 22, 1999]
[Pages 1861-1868]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Kennedy/King Dinner in Alexandria, Virginia
October 22, 1999

    Thank you very much. I guess I ought to begin by saying that all the 
things that Congressman Moran said so 
generously about me, we might all well say about him. He has represented 
you so well. I am delighted to see all of you here, from the leader of 
your Senate

[[Page 1862]]

to the chairman of the State Democratic Party to all the local officials to all the candidates. It 
actually might not have been a bad idea to let all 52 of you talk 
tonight. [Laughter]
    I've been thinking about what I could say tonight that would give 
you something to carry out of here into these legislative races and into 
the great election season next year. We come here in honor of the two 
men whose pictures are behind me. Thirty-one years ago, I was a senior 
at Georgetown University when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were 
killed. One of my roommates was working in Senator Kennedy's office.
    This week I had a wonderful experience. Hillary and I hosted a large 
number of Americans as we celebrated the fifth anniversary of our 
national service program, AmeriCorps, in which, in only 5 years, 150,000 
Americans have already served, working in their communities, earning 
credit for college, making America a better place. And we asked Coretta 
Scott King to be one of the people who 
presented awards to the most outstanding of our young AmeriCorps 
volunteers.
    Last night I went to the home of Senator Edward Kennedy for an event to raise funds for his campaign for 
reelection next year. And the wife of Robert Kennedy, Ethel 
Kennedy, was there; his daughter, Kathleen 
Kennedy Townsend, probably the 
finest Lieutenant Governor anywhere in America, the only person to 
successfully get a State to include in its school curriculum, as a 
required course for graduation, community service--in the spirit of her 
father.
    As all of you know, Edward Kennedy's son, Robert Kennedy's nephew, 
Patrick, is now the chairman of 
Congressman Moran's Democratic Senate 
Campaign Committee, for all the House Members. One of his sons, Joe 
Kennedy, represented Massachusetts in 
Congress. Another of his sons, Chris, 
is being urged to run for Congress in northern Illinois this year. The 
Kennedys and the Kings continue to serve, continue to inspire.
    And Senator Edward Kennedy has been 
faithful to his brother's legacy, based on the sheer body of his 
accomplishments, I think by any measure one of the 10 outstanding people 
ever to serve in the entire history of the United States Senate, in over 
200 years, now.
    But I said last night, when I was a sophomore in high school, Ted 
Kennedy was in the Senate. [Laughter] And 
when I leave after two terms as President, he'll still be in the Senate. 
[Laughter]
    I also want to say a word on behalf of a Senator who wanted to be 
here tonight, my friend of 20 years Chuck Robb. You should know--I hope you won't be offended when I tell 
you, as the father of a college student, that I am very glad he is not 
here tonight, because he's at parents' weekend at Jennifer's college. And just as he stood up for all of you for 
so many years, he's standing up for her this weekend. He gets to escort 
her onto the field for her last field hockey game. Now that's a big deal 
to a daddy, and I am glad he's not here.
    But he's still standing up for you. He 
stood up for you in the Senate when he introduced legislation to help 
the States and school districts build or modernize 6,000 schools. No 
State in the country needs that more than Virginia. He embraced and 
introduced a bill with Congressman Moran to 
fight gridlock in northern Virginia. And I've been lobbied about it 
again tonight. He stood up for you and the environment when he offered 
an amendment last month to protect our beautiful national forests and 
supported me in setting aside 40 million acres for roadless areas in our 
national parks.
    And in 1993, at enormous political peril to himself--when, if anybody in the entire Congress could 
have been justified in taking a dive on a tough vote because of all he 
had been through and because of the difficulties of any Democrat getting 
elected statewide in Virginia--Chuck Robb never blinked. He stood up, 
and he gave courage to other Senators when he said, ``We have to support 
the President's economic plan.'' It passed by one vote, and that's why 
we've got the longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the 
country. He is a brave and good man.
    All the polls say he's behind now 
because he governed and made decisions as a Senator in tough and 
difficult times, and because we Democrats have a hard time in Virginia. 
But I'll make you a prediction. If you stand up for him the way he stood 
up for you all these years, he will be elected in November of 2000 for 
another 6-year term.
    Now, how are we going to do that? What are we going to say? Let's 
begin with the people we honor tonight, and be honest about what our 
problems have been. When Robert Kennedy eulogized Martin Luther King, he 
said, ``Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to

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justice for his fellow human beings.'' King could have said that about 
Robert Kennedy.
    The truth is that a lot of people who could vote either way in an 
election know that we're for love and justice. But they used to 
characterize us, our Republican friends did, in ways that were, to say 
the least, unhelpful at election time. [Laughter] They created these 
sort of cookie-cutter stereotypes of us, you know? We never met a tax we 
didn't like. Couldn't be trusted with the budget and the economy. Soft 
on welfare; soft on crime. Could never be put at the helm of the 
country's affairs. You've heard it all.
    So Jim Moran, Chuck Robb, and a lot of other Democrats set out with me in 1993 to 
change all that, to transform our country, to transform our party, but 
to be absolutely faithful to the guiding principles which have kept us 
Democrats and made this the oldest political party in history. And we 
had some new ideas.
    Basically, Jim sort of hit the essence of 
it when he said I never tried to divide people. You have to understand, 
for a dozen years before I came here, I was Governor, as President Bush 
used to say, of a small southern State. [Laughter] I did not--I was 
proud of it and loved every day of it. [Laughter] But I was not part of 
this Washington political scene, you know? I didn't wake up every day 
and read these columns in the Washington Post that turn you inside out. 
I didn't watch the talk shows on Sunday. I just sort of went about my 
life. When I came to Washington, I had people's business to do. I wasn't 
maneuvering on some greasy pole up or down.
    But it seemed to me that the country was totally paralyzed by what 
was going on in Washington. There was this--everybody had to have a 
liberal position or a conservative position. And the most important 
thing is that people should be fighting, fighting always, and never be 
caught getter together.
    And what I was looking for was a set of unifying policies to turn 
this country around. For example, it was hard to get the Democrats to 
support reducing the budget deficit because the Republicans always 
wanted to do it by cutting education. So I said I believe we can balance 
the budget and increase our investment in education. I believe we can 
follow policies which protect the legitimate interests of laboring 
people--both those in unions and those who aren't in unions--and still 
be pro-business. I believe we can grow this economy and make the 
environment cleaner. I believe we can maintain our military strength but 
realize that it is the moral force of our ideas that is the true source 
of our influence in the world; and that we can go into this post-
communist world and be a great force for peace and freedom. I believe we 
can celebrate our diversity and still find common cause in our shared 
humanity. Unifying ideas.
    And we tried to turn those into specific policy initiatives. Some of 
them were quite controversial because it is always hard to change, and 
people took a chance on me in this country--on me and Al Gore and our 
whole crowd--because we were just making an argument. No one could know 
whether it was true or not. And as we were rocking along in '96, we did 
a little better in the reelection--Virginia we nearly carried, even. We 
did pretty well here. [Laughter]
    But here's what you need to start with saying to people who say 
they're independents: ``Look, this is not an argument anymore. The 
evidence is in, and the policies that the Democrats have followed have 
given us the longest peacetime expansion in history; 19\1/2\ million new 
jobs; the highest homeownership in history; the lowest unemployment in 
29 years; the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years; the lowest poverty rates 
in 20 years; the lowest crime rate in 30 years; the first back-to-back 
balanced surpluses, budget surpluses in 42 years; all accomplished while 
reducing the size of the Federal Government to its lowest point in 37 
years.''
    Now, it doesn't take long to say that. But what I want to say--just 
try to remember that. Because then our Republican friends have a little 
hill to climb. [Laughter] Now, they're pretty good at climbing it; 
they're never in doubt, I've got to give them that. [Laughter] I like 
that the evidence never deters them. I admire that. [Laughter] But we 
don't have to win many--two seats in the Senate, a few more seats in the 
House--to pad your margin.
    There is no answer to that, because we had no support for our 
economic plan from the other party, and most of them opposed our crime 
policy. I had to veto two welfare bills before I got one that required 
able-bodied people to work but didn't hurt the kids and put more money 
into child care.
    These are our policies, and they work. Not because of me. I am just 
grateful I had the

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chance to serve at this time, to be the instrument of trying to move our 
country forward and pull our country together. The ideas are important. 
It doesn't matter how persuasive a person is. In fact, it can be 
dangerous if a person is persuasive and the ideas are wrong.
    What we have stood for works for America. And you need to memorize--
every Democrat needs to memorize that litany. If this expansion goes on 
until February, it'll be the longest economic expansion in history, 
including all the ones with wars. And you just remember that. Lowest 
unemployment rate in 29 years; lowest welfare rolls in 30 years; lowest 
poverty rates in 20 years; lowest minority unemployment rates ever 
recorded, since we've been keeping statistics; highest homeownership in 
history; first back-to-back balanced budgets in 42 years; and the lowest 
crime rate in 30 years. Just remember those things, because the things 
they--all those little things they used to say about us are demolished 
by that set of statistics.
    Then we get to the main event, which is, okay, now we're in this 
shape, now what are we going to do? What are we going to do?
    You know, what I wanted to do in 1992 was to turn the country around 
and pull the country together. And I should say that we also did a lot 
of other things. We passed the Brady bill, and it worked, and it didn't 
do any of the things they said it would do. We passed the family and 
medical leave bill. Fifteen million people took advantage of it. We 
raised the minimum wage, and every year there was a new record set for 
new small businesses started. It worked. It didn't do the bad things 
that they said it would do. And compared to 7 years ago, the air is 
cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is safer; and we set aside more 
land, protected more land, than any administration in the history of 
America except those of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. So you can grow 
the economy and improve the environment.
    So we start with that. Now, what are we going to do?
    You know, the election of 2000 ought to be about change. They do all 
these polls and they say 75 percent of the people want change, and they 
act like I should be upset. And I said, ``If they'd polled me, I'd be in 
the 75 percent, too.'' [Laughter] If somebody ran for President, for 
example, and said, ``Vote for me. I'll do everything Bill Clinton did,'' 
I'd vote against that person. Why? Because this is a country in a 
constant state of renewal, and because, objectively, the world we're 
living in is changing so fast we have to keep moving and moving.
    But what I want to say to you is this--and it's relevant to the 
State elections and to the national elections--8 years ago in 1991 and 
1992, we had to worry about getting this country together again and 
moving this country forward again. Now, we're headed in the right 
direction. Sometimes the most dangerous time in life is when things are 
really rocking along well. [Laughter] Right? I used to have a rule in 
politics: You're always most vulnerable when you think you're 
invulnerable. And it's a good rule in life.
    How many times in our own lives have we squandered some great moment 
by relaxing, by getting diverted, by not thinking about the opportunity 
being presented to us? Every one of you secretly is nodding your head, 
at least inside your head. [Laughter] It is human nature.
    So when the Republicans come along with this siren song, ``Let us 
take all the non-Social Security surplus and give it back to you in this 
huge tax cut,'' it sounded pretty good. One of the most hopeful things 
for the future is the way the American people stood with me and our 
allies in Congress when I vetoed that tax cut bill. They knew better 
than to do that. It was very hopeful. It was very hopeful.
    What I hope the next few days of budget negotiations, the next year 
of work with Congress, and the debate in 2000, will be about is the 
following thing: Okay, we've got this chance; it is the chance of a 
lifetime. Not in my lifetime have we had a chance like this. The economy 
was maybe close to this good by the terms of that time back in the 
sixties, but we had to deal with Vietnam and civil rights. We now have a 
chance to write the future of America and our children in a new 
millennium, and we better not blow it. And that's what this election 
ought to be about. And what are the big issues?
    Very briefly, this is what I think the big issues are. Number one, 
the aging of America. Not only the baby boomers retiring but all of us 
living longer. If we get the results I expect from the human genome 
project, there are young people in this audience whose children will be 
born with a life expectancy of nearly 100 years.
    Now, what do we know right now? Right now we know that in 30 years 
there will be twice as many people over 65, and we know that the

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baby boom generation is bigger than our children. Therefore, since we 
have the money and the opportunity, we should now, move now to save 
Social Security, reform Medicare, and add a prescription drug benefit 
now, not later.
    The second thing, what do we know about the children of America? We 
know that education will be more important to them than ever before. We 
know that they live in a world in which information technology will 
determine all kinds of options in life. We know that they are the first 
generation of children bigger than the baby boom and that they are far 
more diverse racially, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously.
    So what do we know about that? Well, we know, at an absolute minimum 
we have to do more to give them a world-class education. And for me that 
means finishing the work of putting 100,000 teachers out there for 
smaller classes, giving those thousands of modern and new schools, 
having high standards, and giving schools help to turn around problems, 
giving kids more after-school programs and the other mentoring programs 
that they need, but putting the education of these children first and 
recognizing it will be different.
    Third issue--that I think is a huge issue--what have we learned 
about the 21st century economy, with all this long run? Can we keep it 
going? And to me, very important to be faithful to them, can we be 
honest enough to say that in the most prosperous period of American 
history there are still millions of our country men and women who have 
been left behind? Because there are people and places that are untouched 
by this recovery. So is there more that we can do there?
    I would argue for two things. Number one, in terms of poverty, we 
need to continue to do the work that the Vice President has done so well with these empowerment zones and these 
enterprise communities. I wish you could talk to the people who have 
been a part of them. He has mobilized thousands of people across America 
to take their destiny into their hands, to attract investment, to move 
forward. It is amazing. But we'll never have every poor community in an 
empowerment zone. We don't have enough money. That's why it's important 
for the Congress to adopt this new markets proposal I have made. All it 
does is this: It provides some money to help people start things going 
economically, but it gives investors the same incentives to invest on an 
Indian reservation, in the Mississippi Delta, in Appalachia, in a poor 
inner-city community; the same incentive to invest in developing markets 
in America we give them to invest in developing markets in Latin 
America, in Asia, in Africa, and other parts of the world.
    And if we can't bring free enterprise to the poorest parts of 
America now, when will we ever? It's very interesting. We passed this 
financial modernization bill last night, or at least we reached an 
agreement. And I was so moved that all the banks were saying, ``We agree 
with the President. We don't want to get rid of the Community 
Reinvestment Act. We think it's an opportunity to invest in poor 
communities in America, because most of those people are working. They 
want to work harder. They're capable of having new businesses. They're 
capable of doing more.''
    The Democrats ought to be on the forefront. Now is the time to say 
we can bring opportunity to poor people, and the Government doesn't have 
to do it all. The private sector can do it, and we will make it good 
business. That ought to be our cause in this election. We've got to go 
out there and prove that everybody that wants to work, that wants to 
have a chance to start a business, ought to have the same chance that 
those of us who've been blessed to be able to come to this dinner 
tonight have had. I think it is very important.
    Finally--this is something I know Chuck Robb believes, too--I hope that we will stay on the path that 
we're on and say we're not going to spend that Social Security surplus, 
and we're going to hang on to enough money so that over the next 15 
years we can pay off $3\1/2\ trillion of national debt. And in 15 years 
this country will be out of debt for the first time since 1835, when 
Andrew Jackson was President of the United States.
    Now, why should the Democrats be the party? We're supposed to be the 
more liberal party. You've heard it dripped from their lips, our 
adversaries--[laughter]--as if it were a dirty word. Why should the more 
progressive party be for paying off the debt?
    Because it's the progressive thing to do. Because it will keep 
interest rates down. Because it means more businesses and more jobs and 
higher incomes. Because it means, though the economy will doubtless go 
up or down in the future, it'll always be better than it otherwise

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would have been. Because it means that ordinary people will have lower 
home mortgages, lower car payment rates, lower credit card rates; and 
they can send their kids to college with lower college loan rates than 
would otherwise be the case. Because it means when our friends overseas 
get in trouble, like the Asian countries did in the last 2 years, and 
our economies hurt because they can't buy our things anymore, they will 
be able to get out of trouble at lower cost. Every wealthy country in 
this world ought to get itself out of debt in a global economy, set a 
good example, and give people everywhere a chance to live up to their 
dreams. And I want the Democrats to lead America away from the 
wilderness of the 12 years before I came here into a debt-free future.
    There are other things that I could say, I don't want to spend a lot 
of time on. We've got to stay with this environmental issue. We've got 
to prove you can grow the economy and improve the environment. There is 
nothing so dangerous for a country to be in the grip of a big idea that 
is wrong. And most countries still believe--most dominant influence 
centers in most countries still believe that you can't get rich in the 
21st century unless you get rich the same way America got rich in the 
first half of this century, which means that you have to use more energy 
than oil and coal and things that burn, more greenhouse gases and heat 
the climate of the world and cause all these problems. We've got malaria 
going to higher and higher places and showing up in odd places around 
the world. That's just one little example. The thinning of the ice caps. 
All kinds of other problems.
    I am telling you, I have studied this for 22 years. I don't think 
anybody believes that I'm not pro-growth, pro-business, pro-economic 
strength. It is no longer true that you have to grow the economy by 
burning up the atmosphere. It is now possible, technologically, to 
reduce our emission of greenhouse gases and create more high wage jobs 
and a brighter, high-tech future by doing the environmentally 
responsible thing. It is affordable; it is sensible; and we just don't 
know it yet. So we need to be out there.
    And let me just say one thing before I get to the main point I want 
to make. [Laughter] I want you to remember this: the aging, the 
children, the economy, the environment, America, and the world. For all 
the politics around this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty vote, you should 
know that there are a lot of people in the other party that really think 
it's a bad idea. And why do they think it's a bad idea? They say, 
``People can cheat; we don't trust the rest of the world, so why should 
we sign a test ban treaty?''
    Well, my answer is, number one, we're not testing now. We're 
spending $3\1/2\ billion of your money to keep our nuclear weapons safe 
and usable without testing. Even they don't think we ought to start 
testing. So it's easier to cheat now than it would be if the test ban 
treaty were passed. Why is that? Because if somebody tests an 
underground bomb a good ways away and it's not too big, you may think 
it's an earthquake. And if it's small but still usable, you may not 
detect it at all. But if this treaty passes, we'll have over 300 sensors 
out there, all over the world in all the right places, dramatically 
increasing the chances that people can't cheat.
    So the truth is, it's a visceral, ideological thing. They really 
believe that what we need is more bombs, more missile defense, a higher 
wall, a bigger bomb; that we should go into that 21st century by 
ourselves because you can't trust anybody, never mind the fact that the 
cold war is over; never mind the fact that our allies in the cold war 
have all signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; that Britain and 
France, two nuclear powers without anything like the capacity we have to 
maintain their nuclear weapons, aren't worried at all.
    But you need to understand there is a different view here. A lot of 
them feel sort of bad about not paying their U.N. dues, but they're not 
sick about it--I'm sick about it; it's wrong; a lot of them, it doesn't 
bother at all--or passing a foreign affairs budget that has no money to 
fulfill the obligations we solemnly made to the Middle East peace 
process when we've got a chance to actually get it done; that has no 
money to continue to get rid of the Russian nuclear weapons; that has no 
money for America to do its part to help the poorest countries in the 
world get rid of their debt, something the Pope has asked us to do and 
every sensible world leader knows would be good for the economy of 
America as well as for those poor countries.
    So you've got to decide, what do you think our role is? Most 
Americans, I think, including most Republicans who live outside the 
beltway, believe that this is an interdependent world in

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which we ought to work with our friend and neighbors and allies, in 
which we're safer and more secure and more prosperous when we have a 
sense of partnership.
    I'll give you two practical examples. All those people in Kosovo 
were being slaughtered because they were Albanian Muslims. And we went 
in and stopped them because we had the military power to do it, with our 
Allies. But we're very much in the minority in Kosovo now because other 
people are carrying the load. That's what partners do.
    We raised a lot of Cain about what was happening to those poor 
people in East Timor. But it's a long way from our backyard. And because 
we have partners--we're a tiny, tiny portion of the global effort to 
bring humanity and freedom and independence to the people of East Timor, 
because we work with other people. It's a good deal, folks. And if the 
Democrats need to stand up for responsible internationalism and not 
isolationism, that ought to be a part of it.
    But if I were on my last day in office, if you asked me what the 
number one thing I would give to America, if I could give us one last 
gift of citizenship, it wouldn't be solving the aging crisis or the 
long-term economy or the environment or even the problems of the 
children or our role in the world, even though I care about them. I 
would find a way for us to really be one America.
    If you look at all the problems that I've had to deal with, from 
Northern Ireland to the Middle East to the Balkans to the tribal wars in 
Africa--this whole world, on the verge of this modern age of explosion 
in scientific and technological advances, is beset by the most primitive 
failure of human society. We're still afraid of people that aren't like 
us, whether it's because of their race or their ethnicity or their 
sexual orientation. We're afraid.
    So even America, which has had so much success, has a young man like 
Matthew Shepard stretched across a fence, or James Byrd dragged to 
pieces, or a Filipino postalworker murdered in Los Angeles, or a young 
Korean Christian shot as he came out of his church by a guy who said he 
belonged to a church that didn't believe in God but believed in white 
supremacy. And we're doing better than most places, and we have this.
    In one of Hillary's Millennium 
Evenings--which we've been having at the White House, dealing with the 
big subjects of the future--we had a man named Vint Cerf who was one of the founders of the architecture of the 
Internet--sent the first E-mail, 18 years ago, to his wife, because she was so profoundly deaf even hearing aids 
couldn't help her. So he wanted to find a way to talk to her when he was 
at work. That's how the E-mail came about.
    And he was there with a professor named 
Lander, who is a professor of genomics, the 
study of the whole gene structure. And what they were talking about was 
the intersection of computers and learning about the genes, and how we 
couldn't really break down the human gene if it weren't for computers. 
And they said a lot of fascinating things, including the fact that it 
may be that we'll be able to come up with digital, computer-operated 
program devices, tiny ones, that we'll be able to insert in all 
defective parts of the human body. For example, if someone has a spine 
severed in an accident--we've been working on replacing nerves. They now 
believe they may be able to put digital equipment in the spine that will 
replicate the nervous system and allow people to stand up and walk 
again.
    And Mr. Cerf's wife, who was profoundly deaf 
for 50 years, they found--a small digital device was developed, they 
stuck it way down in her ears, and she heard after 50 years and stood up 
and talked about the experience of hearing and what it was like to hear 
the birds for the first time after 50 years and what it was like to go 
to a James Taylor concert now. Those of you who are young, that won't be 
such a big thing--[laughter]--but for me it's a big thing.
    But here's the thing I wanted to tell you. Lander said, ``Look, 
there's 100,000 genes and billions of variations. But the truth is that 
all human beings genetically are 99.9 percent identical.'' And even more 
important--especially here in northern Virginia, where you have all this 
diversity--this is the most astonishing thing. He said if you took any 
genetic group--let me just look around the room. Let's say you took 100 
Pakistanis and 100 Chinese and 100 Mediterranean Europeans and 100 
people from west Africa. He said if you took those groups, there would 
be more genetic differences within the groups, among individuals, than 
there would be between one group and another. Amazing, huh? You remember 
that. It gives scientific support for what our values say.

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    We're a smart country. We nearly always get it right in the end. 
[Laughter] Otherwise we wouldn't be around.
    But I'm telling you that it is--the thing that concerns me most is 
we're on the verge of all these scientific breakthroughs; we're going to 
find out what's in the black holes in the universe; we'll discover 
billions of other galaxies; we'll revise our notion of time itself 
unless we are dragged down by the oldest human failing: being afraid of 
people because they're different from us, which leads to 
misunderstanding, which leads to hatred, which leads to dehumanization, 
which leads to violence.
    Now, the Democrats are now in a position to say, ``Let's go back to 
love and justice and concern, expressed in Martin Luther King's and 
Robert Kennedy's life. And let us do it because you can trust us. You 
know we can run the economy. You know we can get the crime rate down. 
You know we can manage the welfare issue. You know we can manage the 
budget. You can trust us; let's deal with our core problems.''
    So when the Virginia legislature says, ``We're for a Patients' Bill 
of Rights, or we need smaller classes, and we need to do things to 
educate our children,'' it is an expression of our common humanity and 
our mutual responsibilities.
    I just want you to walk out of here armed with the information to 
say, ``Look, this is not an experiment. Our way works. The most 
important thing is for us to go forward together. Give us a chance, from 
the bottom to the top.''
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. in the main ballroom at the 
Alexandria Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gov. 
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland; Coretta Scott King, founder, 
Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; State 
Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw; Kenneth R. Plum, chairman, 
State Democratic Party; 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.