    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 10, 2000]
    [Pages 222-225]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Unity Reception
    February 10, 2000

        Thank you very much. Let me say how delighted and profoundly honored
    I am to be here with Senator Daschle and
    Leader Gephardt, with their colleagues
    in the Senate and the House who are here in large numbers, and all those
    who aren't here who are with us in spirit today; how much I appreciate
    Bob Hatcher and Thelma and Jenny Mae for being
    here to remind us of why we're all here in the first place. Their
    testimony makes clear that our agenda is America's agenda, and our
    presence here makes clear that we are united in our support of that
    agenda.
        I know some of our friends on the other side of the aisle have
    suggested that, because this is an election year, we really shouldn't do
    much. Well, I don't think that the two people who just spoke could take
    a year off from their jobs. And since everybody here is still drawing a
    salary, I don't think we could take a year off from our jobs either.
        I want to join with what Senator Daschle and Leader Gephardt have
    said in thanking the members of this caucus for your role in this long
    boom and so much of the social progress we have enjoyed, beginning with
    the courageous vote for the economic plan in 1993. Your commitment,
    constant over the years, to opportunity for every responsible American
    and for a community of all Americans, to a Government that gives
    Americans the tools to live their own dreams, has been absolutely
    critical to anything that our administration has achieved.
        I know that we've had a lot of different policies, but more
    important than all of the specifics was our common commitment. We wanted
    Bob

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    and Thelma to be here today because we believe
    that every American counts. We believe every American should have a
    chance, and we believe we all do better when we help each other. That is
    what we believe.
        Today I received the Annual Economic Report from my Council of
    Economic Advisers. It provides further evidence that Americans have
    built a new economy and that what we believe actually works. The report
    makes clear that this is the strongest economic expansion in history,
    not just the longest, that unlike previous economic expansions which, in
    the end and somewhere in the middle, normally bring you higher deficits,
    slower productivity, and higher inflation, this one has turned it
    around, unlike the 1980's when income inequality increased and many
    hard-pressed working families saw their incomes fall while we were told
    that the expansion was going on. We now see solid income growth across
    all groups of American workers since 1993.
        All groups are sharing in the prosperity by income, by region, by
    race. Now, as my leaders said so eloquently, it is for us here in
    Washington and for the American people to decide what we are going to do
    with what is truly a magic moment. I argued in the State of the Union
    Address that we ought to be thinking about people like Bob and Thelma and Jenny
    Mae, that we ought to ask ourselves, ``What
    are the great challenges before us?'' We ought to clearly state what we
    believe America's goals ought to be and what steps we intend to take
    toward them this year. That is what we are united in doing.
        And let me say--we have a lot of young people here--I want to say
    something now and something to you at the end. Anybody over 30 in this
    audience can recall at least one time in your life and probably more
    than one time when you made a big mistake not because you were under the
    gun but because things were going so well you thought there were no
    consequences. You thought you could relax. You thought you really didn't
    have to think about what you knew was out there plainly before you, so
    you didn't really have to take those tough decisions; just sort of sit
    back, relax, enjoy the things that were going on.
        That is a message that some people suddenly are sending America
    today, and that is dead wrong. We will never, in all probability, have
    another time in our lifetime with so much prosperity, so much progress,
    so much confidence, and so little trouble at home and abroad, to define
    the future of our dreams for the next generation of Americans. And we
    had better take this chance and make the most of it.
        I must say, I have been quite amused by a lot of the commentators on
    both sides of our policy of paying the debt off. Some have said I sound
    like Calvin Coolidge, and others say that I'm using it as an excuse to
    spend money on Americans. All I know is, it works. If we get this
    country out of debt, it means the American people can borrow money at
    lower interest rates to invest in new businesses, to pay their home
    loans, to pay their college loans, to pay their car loans. It means that
    all the young people here for a generation will have a healthier economy
    and a more affordable life than otherwise would have been the case, and
    it will be more possible for us to meet the great challenges of this
    country. That is our united commitment, and we ought to do it.
        We are united in meeting the challenge of the aging of America. And
    believe me, this is not an option. I know things are going well, so we
    can sort of say, ``Well, we'll let this slide a while.'' The people in
    this country, the number of people over 65 are going to double in the
    next 30 years. Now, if we start to prepare for it now--to reform and
    modernize and strengthen Medicare, and to take Social Security out
    beyond the life expectancy of the baby boom generation--we can do it
    relatively painlessly.
        But make no mistake: This country will do it. And if we just fool
    around and ignore this for 10 years, who knows what the economy will be
    like 10 years from now? Who knows what the demands on the American
    people will be like 10 years from now? Now is the time to add a
    prescription drug benefit to Medicare and to take Social Security out to
    2050 and take Medicare out for 25 years--now. Do it now. Save Social
    Security and Medicare for the baby boomers' retirement.
        We know that we live in a marvelous world, where the kids with a
    good education are going to be able to do things their parents could not
    even have imagined. And yet, we know that the penalty of not having an
    education is even greater than ever. We know that it's more challenging
    than ever before because we have a more diverse group of students, from
    different racial, cultural, religious, even linguistic backgrounds. We
    know that right now. And we know

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    that's only going to become a more pronounced trend.
        Within a decade, our largest State, California, will have no
    majority race. Now, we know that. We also know that there's nowhere near
    equal educational opportunity in the country, and we know what the
    challenges are. So we say, now--not later--now is the time for high
    standards, smaller classes, well-trained teachers. Now is the time for
    all the kids who need it to have the preschool and the after-school
    programs they need. Now is the time--not later, now.
        We know that more and more families will have the parents working,
    whether they're single-parent families or two-parent families. And we
    know right now that for all of our success, America gives less support
    to help people balance the demands of childrearing and work than any
    other advanced country.
        We can be proud of what we did with family and medical leave. We can
    be proud with what we did with the Children's Health Insurance Program.
    We can be proud with what we did with the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill to let
    people take their health insurance from job to job. But we know that we
    do not do enough to help people balance the demands of work and
    childrearing. And raising children, like that beautiful little girl, is
    still America's most important work. It always will be. And we know we
    have to do more.
        So we believe now is the time to increase the child care tax credit
    and make it refundable, to help parents do more to pay for college
    tuition, so that we can go beyond where we were with the HOPE
    scholarship, which opens the doors of community college to all
    Americans. With the college tax deduction at 28 percent for all income
    groups, we can open the doors of 4 years of college to all Americans.
        We know we should increase the earned-income tax credit for lower
    income working people. We know we should genuinely ease the marriage
    penalty for both middle and lower middle income groups. We know we
    should do this. We don't know whether 10 years from now we will be able
    to do this, and we don't know what the consequences to countless
    families will be if we don't do it now. We are united in saying, let's
    do it now. We don't have to wait. Now is the time to help families to
    balance the demands of home and work.
        You heard Thelma's story. So you know that the one area where the
    social indicators have not gone in the right direction since 1993 is in
    the number of people who are covered with health insurance. One of the
    wits in our Democratic caucus said to me the other day, ``You know, all
    those insurance companies told me back in 1993 or `94, if I voted for
    your health care plan, the number of uninsured Americans would go up. I
    voted for it, and sure enough, that's what happened.'' [Laughter]
        We know we need a strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights. And
    the Congress has fooled around with it long enough. The time is now to
    pass it. We know we should do more to help enroll more children in the
    Children's Health Insurance Program. Two million children are enrolled.
    This Congress provided enough money for somewhere between 4 and 5
    million children to be enrolled. And we know--and that's why it's so
    important.
        You remember Thelma's story. I was 4 years old, like this little
    girl, once, with a mother who was working and, then, a single mother.
    There are people like her all over the country. One of the most
    important things we have proposed in this Congress is to let the parents
    of children who are in this CHIP program also get insurance. They need
    it. They're working out there. And we ought to do it. And we ought to do
    it now, not later.
        We know the crime rate has gone down to a 30-year low, and it's
    still too high. And we believe not later, now is the time to learn the
    lessons of Columbine and all the other things we've seen and pass
    commonsense legislation to do more to keep guns out of the hands of
    criminals and away from kids. We can do that and honor every
    constitutional provision in our founding document and every fundamental
    value in our society.
        We know we've got to keep putting more police on the street in high-
    crime areas. Who knows, 5 years from now, what kind of condition this
    country will be? Why should any more children die we can save? Why
    should any more crimes be committed we can prevent? Now is the time to
    take strong action to make America the safest big country in the world.
        We know there are still too many people and places that haven't
    participated in this prosperity. We know that. That's why we favor
    increasing the number of empowerment zones, increasing the incentives to
    invest in them, and giving Americans all over this country--people like
    Bob Hatcher--we know there are inner-

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    city neighborhoods where he might be able to put people to work; I think
    we ought to give him the same tax incentives to invest in those
    neighborhoods we give him today to invest in Latin America, Africa, or
    Asia. And we ought to do it now--not later, now.
        We are united in that. And as I look at Senator Feingold, I think I should say one other thing. Unlike the
    other party, we are united--united, down to the last vote in both
    Houses--in saying now is the time to pass meaningful campaign finance
    reform legislation in this Congress.
        We are also united in believing we have to build one America. That's
    why we want to pass the ``Hate Crimes Prevention Act.'' That's why we
    want to end all discrimination in employment. We don't--I'll say again--
    we think everybody counts; everybody ought to have a chance; we all do
    better when we help each other.
        I want to make this last point. I see all these young people here.
    The last time America had a chance like this was when I was about your
    age. I finished high school in 1964. The Nation was heartbroken when
    President Kennedy was killed. But President Johnson lifted our spirits,
    united the country, began to deal with the challenges of civil rights,
    and we believed that our economy would grow on forever. We believed we
    would meet the challenges of civil rights in a lawful, peaceful way. We
    believed we could win the cold war without what ultimately happened in
    the dividing of our country in Vietnam. And we thought it would go on
    forever, and everything was hunky-dory.
        Four years later, when I was graduating from college, it was 2 days
    after Robert Kennedy had been killed, a couple of months after Martin
    Luther King had been killed, and Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for
    reelection. We had riots in the street. The economy came a cropper on
    the burdens of paying for a war and inflation. And all that we thought
    would happen was lost. And the Presidential election in that year was
    decided on the politics of division, something called the Silent
    Majority, which means, ``The world in America is divided between `us'
    and `them.' I'm with `us,' and they're with `them.''' And I have lived
    with that as a citizen for 30 years.
        Now I'm not running for anything. I am not on the ballot. I am
    telling you this as an American. I have waited for 30 long years to see
    my country in a position to pull together and move forward together and
    build the future of our dreams for our children. We dare not blow that
    chance.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:52 p.m. in the Great Hall at the Library
    of Congress. In his remarks, he referred to Robert L. Hatcher, chairman,
    Minority Business Roundtable, who introduced the President; and Thelma
    Pierce, single working mother, who enrolled her daughter, Jenny Mae, in
    the Children's Health Insurance Program.