    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 13, 2000]
    [Pages 443-446]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 443]]

    Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Luncheon in
    Cleveland, Ohio
    March 13, 2000

        Thank you so much. I want to say, first, how honored I am to be here
    with our leader, Dick Gephardt, and how
    much I look forward to his becoming the Speaker of the House. He is a
    truly remarkable human being and a really wonderful leader.
        I want to thank Stephanie Tubbs Jones for welcoming me here and for doing such a good job for
    you. I'm delighted to be here with Marcy Kaptur
    and Dennis Kucinich. And I'm glad to see
    Sherrod Brown up and around. I told him he
    looked like a Roman soldier in one of those 1960's extravaganzas with
    that brace on.
        I want to thank Congressman Jim Barcia
    for coming to Cleveland to be with us today, and Congressman Patrick
    Kennedy, who had to leave. And Mayor
    White, thank you for making us feel so
    welcome. Maryellen O'Shaughnessy,
    thank you for running for Congress. I certainly do hope you win, and I'm
    going to do what I can to help you. I'm glad to see you out here.
        And I want to thank our Senate candidate, Ted Celeste, also for running in this race and for being here today,
    and my good friend Lou Stokes. I told some
    people a story when I was coming out--when I was here with Lou Stokes--I
    wanted to come to Cleveland with Lou before he left the Congress. I was
    here in his district many times when he was in Congress, but the last
    time we visited an elementary school in this district where there was an
    AmeriCorps project and the kids were tutoring these grade school kids--
    our young AmeriCorps people were.
        And so we went to this assembly, and I gave a little talk. And then
    I was shaking hands with all these 6- and 7-year-old kids. And I got to
    the very end of the line, and this 6-year-old looked at me, and he said,
    ``Are you really the President?'' [Laughter] So help me, this happened.
    I said, ``Yes, I am.'' He said, ``But you're not dead yet.'' [Laughter]
    And it was clear to me that he had learned in school his Presidents were
    George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and a part of the job description
    was that you had to be deceased. [Laughter] There's been a day or two in
    Washington in the last 7 years when I thought the kid might have been
    right. [Laughter] But I will always remember that.
        I also am glad to be here today just to say a profound word of
    thanks to the people of Cleveland and the State of Ohio for being so
    good to me and to the Vice President, for giving us your electoral votes
    in 1992, and by a much wider margin in 1996. And I hope the trend
    continues in 2000.
        I'm here primarily, as all of you know, to support these Members of
    the House and the candidates and the drive to restore a Democratic
    majority in the House. And I'm here for three reasons, basically.
        One, they deserve it because they took the tough decisions that
    turned this country around and paid the price for it. We had no votes
    from the other side when we passed the economic plan in 1993, which
    drove interest rates down, investment up, and got this economy going
    again. And they deserve it. They also put their lives on the line to
    vote for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the efforts to
    put 100,000 police on the streets, which has given us a 25-year low in
    crime and a 30-year low in the gun death rate in America. Half a million
    felons, fugitives, and stalkers were denied weapons because of the Brady
    bill. So they have earned it.
        They provided large margins for the Balanced Budget Act in 1997 and
    for every other piece of progressive legislation that has passed, from
    the family and medical leave law to increasing the earned-income tax
    credit to tax relief for working families. And I could just go right on
    down the line: achieving 90 percent of our children with basic childhood
    immunizations for the first time, cleaner air, cleaner water, and a
    growing economy. So they've earned it.
        Two, there are huge differences between the parties still on a lot
    of very fundamental issues. And Dick mentioned a few of them, but I just
    want to tick off three or four. Number one, if you want this economy to
    keep growing, we have to remember to dance with what brought us: We've
    got to keep paying down the debt; we've got to save Social Security and
    Medicare in a way that doesn't cause the baby boomers'

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    retirement to bankrupt our children; and we've got to save enough money
    to invest in education and health care.
        We can still have a modest tax cut that will do an awful lot of good
    for a lot of people, to help people pay for health care costs, to help
    people pay for child care costs, to help defer the cost of tuition for
    sending your kid to college, for doing a lot of other things. But we
    have got to first keep the economy strong. We've got a chance to get
    this country out of debt over the next 12 or 13 years, for the first
    time since 1835. And if we do it, we'll have low interest rates for a
    generation and the highest economic growth we've ever had. We'll
    continue this expansion. The Democrats will support that. Our friends in
    the other party will support a tax cut so large that we'd either have to
    cut education, not save Social Security or Medicare, cut defense, or go
    back to running deficits. So it's a clear choice.
        Second is education. Our agenda is clear. We want smaller classes,
    more teachers, better trained teachers. We want to modernize and repair
    schools, which is profoundly important. We want to hook every classroom
    up to the Internet. We want high standards which support the kids, more
    after-school and summer school programs. And we want more efforts to
    give people the excellence that they need. And every single year we have
    to wait until the very end of the legislative session and have a huge
    fight to get our education agenda through. And we normally get about 70
    percent of it, but only because all of us stay together. This will
    become more and more and more important.
        Third, it is important to continue to give more people the chance to
    be a part of this economic prosperity who haven't done it yet. That's
    what our new markets initiative is all about, to give you who can afford
    it the same incentives to invest in poor neighborhoods in Cleveland, in
    Indian reservations, in the Mississippi Delta, in south Texas, and
    places like that that we now give you to invest in Latin America, Asia,
    and Africa. If we can't give the poor areas in America today the
    opportunity to have free enterprise, when will we ever get around to it?
    And I think that's very important.
        The fourth thing I want to mention is health care. It's very
    important. We believe that people between the ages of 55 and 65 that
    lose their health insurance ought to be able to buy into Medicare and
    ought to be given a little help to do it. We believe that people who are
    taking care of aged parents or disabled family members ought to get a
    $3,000 tax credit to help them do it. We believe that the Children's
    Health Insurance Program, which we passed in 1997, should also include
    the parents of those children. And if we did those things, 25 percent of
    the uninsured population in America would have health insurance, and the
    health care providers in this country, many of whom have difficulties,
    would have a lot more cash flowing to them to keep a healthy health care
    system.
        These are just some of the issues. There are big differences. And
    Dick mentioned the final one I want to mention. I have been involved for
    way over 20 years now in law enforcement. The first elected job I ever
    had was as attorney general of my State. I have always believed that we
    could drive crime down and diminish racial and other tensions between
    the police and the community. I have always believed that we had to have
    both smart punishment and smart prevention. I have always believed that.
    And for 7 years we have worked to put more police on the streets, to
    give our children something to say yes to as well as something to say no
    to, and to keep guns away from criminals and kids without undermining
    the legitimate interests of hunters and sports people.
        Now, what I've tried to do, since the Columbine tragedy, in
    particular, and in the aftermath of the terrible deaths in the last
    couple of days, is to say, ``Okay, let's do some more things that make
    sense. Let's require child trigger locks on all new handguns that are
    sold. Let's require background checks at these gun shows and urban flea
    markets, as well as at gun stores. Let's hold parents who are flagrantly
    irresponsible--or other adults, custodial adults--and let 6-year-olds
    get guns, let's hold them responsible for what they do. And let's ban
    the importation of these large ammunition clips.'' We banned assault
    weapons in America, and then people get around it by importing them.
        This is all very sensible. It doesn't affect anybody's hunting,
    doesn't affect any sport shooting. It's no big problem. And all the
    practical problems can be worked out.
        Well, we had a lot of energy after Columbine for doing that. The
    Senate passed a strong bill, because Al Gore broke a tie vote. The House passed a much weaker bill.
    But then they were supposed to get together, pass a compromise, agree on
    provisions, and send it to me. Eight

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    months later, they still haven't met. The committees haven't met. So I
    ask them to meet.
        Now, in the aftermath of the terrible losses in Michigan and
    Tennessee--little Kayla Rolland--I thought we
    could have some more energy for doing this. And what happened? The NRA
    started running all these ads attacking me personally--which I didn't
    take personally. I, frankly, was honored by it. But they were--and so I
    agreed to go on ABC, Sam Donaldson's program
    Sunday and answer questions about this. And all I did was to say why I
    was for closing the assault weapons; why I was for banning these large
    capacity ammunition clips, the import of them; why I was for closing the
    gun show loophole; why I was for child trigger locks; and why I thought
    adults who were knowing or reckless in letting little kids get ahold of
    guns ought to be held responsible.
        And then the head of the NRA came on
    after me, and he said--I want to read you what he said, just so you'll
    know that there is a difference here between the two parties and America
    has to choose. He says that I am willing to accept a certain level of
    killings to further my political agenda and Vice President Gore's: ``I believe--I have come to believe that Clinton
    needs a certain level of violence in this country. He's willing to
    accept a certain level of killings to further his political agenda and
    his Vice President's, too.''
        Now, it's quite one thing to say that when you're on national
    television. It's another thing to look into the eyes of a parent who's
    lost a 6-year-old and say that; to visit, as I did, the parents of the
    Columbine kids, or in Springfield, Oregon, or Jonesboro, Arkansas, and
    say that.
        I want you to know this because I'm not trying to put you in a
    depressed mood, I'm trying to fire your energy for the coming combat.
    Maybe he really believes this. But if he
    does, we've got even more trouble than just a horrible political
    mistake. We've got to make up our mind as a country.
        I'm glad the crime rate is at a 25-year low. I'm glad the gun death
    rate is at a 30-year low. I don't know a single living American who
    believes this country is safe enough. The NRA says we ought to prosecute
    gun crimes more. I agree with that, and we have. They're for holding
    adults accountable when they recklessly give kids access to guns; good
    for them. But they're not for anything that is a preventive measure,
    that might require the slightest effort on the part of the people they
    propose to represent, even if making that effort lets everybody else
    live in a safer America. They were against banning cop-killer bullets--
    and there weren't any deer in the deer woods wearing Kevlar vests.
        So I regret this. And I'm not going to get in a shouting match about
    it, but I want you to know that there are big stakes here. So I want to
    help these people because they've earned it, and they've given you a
    good country to live in and a stronger America because they're right on
    the issues.
        And the third reason that I want to be for them is the point
    Dick made about wanting to run the House
    in a bipartisan manner and to set a good example. One of the reasons I
    ran for President is that I was completely turned off, as a Governor of
    what my predecessor called a small southern State, at the way that
    Washington was so much in the grip of name-calling and an attempt to
    systematically undermine other people personally. I thought it was
    wrong. And now that I've had some passing experience with it, I feel
    more strongly about it. I'm not running for anything, but I'm telling
    you, this is a great country, and you deserve a better climate than you
    have been getting in Washington, DC. And you've got to have people who
    will stand up and say that.
        I've worked as hard as I could to build one America out here in the
    grassroots, to get people to come together across racial lines and
    religious lines and the other lines that divide us, and to be a force
    for that kind of harmony around the world. But it is difficult for
    America to do that if what they see in the national political leadership
    is this sort of slash-and-burn--well, the kind of stuff I just read you.
    And I think we can do better than that. And I know he'll be better than
    that, and these Members will be better than that.
        Folks, we've got a lot of honest differences of opinion. And maybe
    they're right some times, and we're not always right. But I know one
    thing--we are right to believe that elections ought to be fought about
    what's good for you and what's good for your life and not whether we can
    decimate our adversaries. And that's the kind of Speaker Dick
    Gephardt will be.
        So when people ask you why you came here today, say, ``Well, they've
    done a good job, and they deserve our support. They've got better

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    ideas for the future, and that's what matters. And not only that, I like
    the way they will run our Nation's Government. I will feel better when
    they're having arguments up there over policy instead of personalities,
    and when they're trying to put people first and actually get something
    done.''
        Those are three good reasons for you to be here today, and I hope
    you will share those with all your friends and neighbors in this area.
    If you do, you'll dramatically increase the chances of their success in
    November.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:39 p.m. in the lobby at the Playhouse
    Square Center. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Patrick J.
    Kennedy, chairman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Mayor
    Michael R. White of Cleveland; Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, candidate for
    Ohio's 12th Congressional District; former Representative Louis Stokes;
    6-year-old Kayla Rolland, who died after she was shot by 6-year-old
    classmate Dedrick Owens in Mount Morris Township, MI; Sam Donaldson,
    cohost, ABC's ``This Week''; and Wayne LaPierre, executive vice
    president, National Rifle Association.