    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 4, 2000]
    [Pages 610-614]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department
    Conference
    April 4, 2000

        Thank you. Well, the first thing I would like to say is John
    Podesta told me that he emceed this
    retirement dinner for Bob Sunday night.
    And then Hillary came over here for
    breakfast, and I just kind of got lonesome. Nobody had me come over, so
    I just thought I would intrude myself on your meeting. And I'm glad to
    be here.
        I want to say I came for two reasons. First of all, I came to thank
    you for all the support you've given me and for all the work you've done
    for America and for all the people you represent. I have tried, too, to
    be a builder, and the builders of this country, to me, embody the best
    of America. So I want to thank you, because without your help and your
    support, none of the good things that have happened that our
    administration, that the Vice President and I have been part of would
    have been possible.
        And the second thing I wanted to do was to say a special word of
    thanks to Bob Georgine as he retires
    after 29 years. Thank you for your leadership on raising the minimum
    wage, on school construction, on bringing investment to the new markets
    of America that have been left out of our prosperity, on the Patients'
    Bill of Rights, and on all the issues that specifically affect your
    members and working people.
        And I wanted to also thank you for last Labor Day, where you taught
    me to use an electric screwdriver. [Laughter] Now that I'm moving into
    my own home and it's 111 years old, I might need that skill again,
    before you know it. [Laughter]
        Bob and I are both retiring. And at
    least he's doing it voluntarily. I'm term-limited. But I tell you, as we
    look back on the last 7 years, it has been a wonderful experience. And
    again I say, we could not have done it without you. What I'd like for
    you to do now is just take a few minutes with me and think about why we
    are where we are and where we need to go.
        I have my politics, I suppose, partly from the way I was raised by
    my grandparents and my family, partly from what I've learned as a
    Governor in my home State of Arkansas and

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    as President, partly from what I've observed about human affairs and
    human nature. But I have come to believe that there are basically two
    big approaches here to American politics: One is, obviously, from the
    bottom up; the other is from the top down. We're on the bottom-up side.
    The other is unite and lift, against divide and conquer. I think that
    most of us believe the way we do because we think everyone counts,
    everyone ought to have a chance, everyone has a role to play in our
    society, and we all do better when we help each other. That's why we
    think everyone should have opportunity, and we should have a community
    of all Americans.
        Now, if you think about where we are today, it seems to me that even
    though I love to hear you cheer for me and for where we are and what
    we've done, the real issue is, what are we going to do with this moment
    of prosperity? You know, people can be tested in adversity, but they are
    also tested when times are good. When you build up a great legacy, what
    do you do with it? And I've worked as hard as I could for the last 7
    years to try to first turn this country around. Just remember what it
    was like when we all--when Al Gore and I showed up here. We had high
    deficits. We had high interest rates. We had no job growth. We had
    social divisions. We had political gridlock. I've worked hard to try to
    turn it around. The country is moving in the right direction. What are
    we going to do with it? And that is the real issue.
        And I would argue that you have a solemn responsibility in this
    election season not only to mobilize your members and their families but
    to reach out to the larger American community to say, ``This is not a
    time for self-indulgence. This is a time to concentrate on our unique
    ability to meet the big, long-term challenges of America, for the most
    vulnerable among us, for the children like those children that are in
    this audience today.'' And I'd just like to begin with one;
    Bob alluded to it.
        In the next 30 years, all the baby boomers are going to retire, and
    we'll only have about two people working for every one person drawing
    Social Security. Not two people total, but--[laughter]--two people. Even
    I couldn't get that done. [Laughter] Two people working for every one
    person drawing Social Security. And so there will be a great question
    here. How are we going to change that? How are we going to accommodate
    the aging of America?
        Well, I'm about to sign a bill which removes the Social Security
    earnings limit, so people who want to work in their later years can do
    so and still draw their Social Security. I think that's a good thing to
    do. But we also have to recognize that we're going to have to make some
    changes in order for Social Security to mean in the 21st century what it
    has meant to the 20th century.
        We're also going to have to make some changes in the Medicare
    program, which was established when President Johnson was here, to make
    it work in the 21st century. And I've asked the Congress, for example,
    to dedicate the interest savings from paying down the debt to the Social
    Security Trust Fund. Why? Because right now, we're paying more in Social
    Security taxes than we're paying out in Social Security. So as we pay
    the debt down, I want to take the interest savings from paying the debt
    down, put it in the Trust Fund. It would now allow us to add about 54
    years to the life of the Social Security Trust Fund and take it out
    beyond the life of the baby boom generation.
        And I hope you'll talk to the Members of Congress. I know a lot of
    Republicans have supported many of your issues, and you have
    relationships with both Republicans and Democrats. This is not a
    complicated deal. The only reason for the Republicans not to support
    this is if they want to privatize Social Security, if they can get the
    Congress and the White House. Now, you need to put the heat on folks to
    say, ``We've got the money now. Let's dedicate it now to saving Social
    Security and taking it out beyond the life of the baby boom
    generation.''
        The other thing we have to do is to modernize Medicare and add a
    prescription drug benefit for our seniors on Medicare. Now, we just
    learned last week that Medicare, which was scheduled to go broke in
    1999, last year--when I took office, they said the Trust Fund would run
    out of money in 1999. We have now taken it out to 2023, and I'm very
    proud of that. But you know, if we were designing a Medicare program
    today, no one would even think about designing Medicare without
    prescription drug coverage, first of all, because there's been so many
    dramatic advances in medication; and secondly, because, again I will
    say, the nature of people over 65 has changed.

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        When Medicare was originally designed, people didn't live much
    longer than 65 years, typically, and this was designed for emergency
    care or for critical care, for hospitals and doctors. Now, any American
    lives to be 65 has got a life expectancy of 83. And more and more, we
    need preventive care and chronic care. And more and more, that is
    prescription medication. No one--if we were starting all over again
    today, we'd never even think about having a Medicare program that didn't
    provide a prescription drug component.
        Now, I've just come from a meeting with the Senate Democrats. And
    the Senate is taking up the budget today, and the Democrats are going to
    try to, first of all, say we should not spend the surplus on risky tax
    cuts; we should first take care of our basic business. Senator
    Robb is going to offer an amendment today,
    supported by Senator Daschle, that makes
    this simple statement: After we modernize Medicare with an affordable,
    broadbased, voluntary prescription drug benefit, then we can move
    forward with sensible tax cuts that aren't so big they undermine our
    ability to save Social Security, pay down the debt, and invest in the
    education of our children. But first things first.
        So the Senate is going to get a resolution by Senator Robb today that says, say yes to Medicare and
    prescription drugs and no to having a big tax cut first. So I hope you
    will support that.
        Now, interestingly enough, a number of people in the Republican
    majority are saying, ``Okay, well, I'll go along with the drug program
    as long as everybody doesn't get it. We ought to stop at the poverty
    level or 150 percent of the poverty level or maybe at the outer reaches,
    some of them 200 percent of the poverty level.'' Let me tell you
    something. They want to say that nobody with an annual income of over
    $16,700 should get help with this prescription drug benefit. I just
    think that's wrong.
        If you think about it, a lot of you have parents, uncles, aunts,
    maybe your older brothers and sisters that are on Medicare. If they have
    a $300 or $400 a month drug bill, which is not all that rare, then
    $16,000 is not all that much money. And since this benefit is
    voluntary--again I will say, I don't think a widow earning $16,000 or
    even $20,000 a year is less deserving of drug coverage than someone who
    is below the poverty line.
        So I hope you will stick up for the proposition that all of our
    seniors should have the option of buying into this insurance program.
    That's what made Medicare work in the first place. That's what made
    Social Security work in the first place. It was a universal program that
    helped middle class people as well as low income people. And this is an
    opportunity to improve the process of aging in America in a way that is
    humane and decent and completely affordable. So we need your help to get
    prescription drug coverage in the Medicare program this year, in the
    right way, for all Americans.
        I also want to thank you for your devotion to the welfare of people
    on the other end of life's age line, for your support for education and,
    in particular, for the work you have done to build bipartisan support
    for school construction and renovation.
        This year I have sent a budget to the Congress which will enable us
    to build or modernize 6,000 schools and to repair 5,000 schools a year
    over the next 5 years. This is terrifically important. We've got the
    largest school population we've ever had. We want to have high standards
    and high accountability. We want to hook all these schools up to the
    Internet. But there are schools in New York City that are still being
    heated with coal--with coal. The average age of a school building in
    Philadelphia is 65 years. I was in a small town in Florida, visiting an
    elementary school where there were 12--12--housetrailers behind the
    school to take the overflow of the students.
        One-third of our schools are in serious disrepair, a lot of them
    literally too old to be wired for the Internet; other kids in trailers
    that need to be in modern classrooms. This is a big issue. We've been
    working on it for 3 years now. This week the Department of Education
    released a State-by-State report, telling us that the need has grown and
    grown. Enrollment is growing; facilities are crumbling. Every year we
    fail to act, the problem gets worse.
        I am very frustrated by those who say, in the majority in Congress,
    that this is not a national responsibility. That is not true. I'm not
    trying to tell people how to build the buildings. I'm not trying to
    prescribe the--we're not trying to micromanage this program. But the
    school districts of this country do not have the money or the means
    right now to do what our children need. We have finally more people in
    the

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    schools than we had during the baby boom generation after World War II.
    And we cannot expect them to learn in facilities that are unbearable
    and, in many cases, unwireable.
        So I asked you to work with me. With your help, we actually have now
    a strong bipartisan school construction bill in the House. And thanks to
    you, largely, we have both Republicans as well as Democrats supporting
    this legislation in the Senate and the House. The House bill would
    allocate $24.8 billion to help communities build or renovate these 6,000
    schools.
        So now that you've gotten us some good Republican support, we have
    to get this to a vote. Once it became obvious on the House floor that we
    actually had Republicans supporting this bill and that we could pass it,
    then efforts were made to keep it from coming to a vote. So I say to
    you, there are a lot of people who believe that this year, because it's
    election year, should be a year where nothing gets done. And I have
    challenged every Member of Congress who believes that to relinquish his
    or her salary for a year, because we didn't get to where we are today by
    taking a year off. You don't get to take a year off. Nobody else gets to
    take a year off, and everybody's drawing a paycheck every 2 weeks. There
    is no reason not to continue to move forward.
        Believe me, no matter how much progress we make this year, there
    will still be significant areas of disagreement between our Presidential
    candidates and between the two parties in all the congressional races.
    So let's show up for the American people and do what we can. There is no
    reason--no reason--not to pass the prescription drug benefit on Medicare
    and not to pass the school construction bill this year. And you can help
    us do it. I hope you will.
        Now, I would like to close with the point with which I began, first,
    with a simple thank-you and, second, with a reminder that this year,
    this election year, imposes on all of us an historic responsibility. We
    did not get to where we are today, with 21 million new jobs and the
    lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest female unemployment
    rate in 40 years, the lowest minority unemployment rate ever measured,
    highest homeownership in history, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years,
    lowest poverty rates in 20 years, lowest crime rates in 25 years--this
    didn't happen by accident. It happened because we worked together, and
    we had the right ideas, and we were moving in the right direction. It
    happened because we believed in uniting our people and lifting them up
    and not in divide and conquer. It happened because we believed you could
    be pro-business and pro-labor, pro-work and pro-family, you could grow
    the economy and improve the environment, you could balance the budget
    and run a surplus and still invest more in education and give tax relief
    to middle income families.
        A study last week said that the percentage of Federal income tax
    coming out of average families' incomes was the lowest in 40 years.
    That's why we had a unite-and-lift, not a divide-and-conquer theory, and
    because we kept working. And the only concern I have about this election
    year is that people will say, ``Well, we've got the first surpluses
    we've had in 40 years, back to back. Things are going well. Why don't we
    vote for something that makes us feel good in the moment?''
        And I just want you all to listen to this, particularly those of you
    that are about my age. In February we celebrated the fact that we had
    the longest economic expansion in American history. And so I had all my
    economic advisers in, and we were sitting around talking about it. And I
    said, ``Well, when was the last longest economic expansion in history,
    before this one?'' You know when it was? Nineteen sixty-one to 1969.
        Now, let me tell you what happened then. In 1964 I graduated from
    high school, at the peak of this economic expansion. We had low
    unemployment, low inflation, high growth. Everybody thought the growth
    would go on forever. We had a civil rights challenge at home, but Lyndon
    Johnson was President. He'd united the country after President Kennedy's
    assassination, and people believed that the civil rights challenge would
    be met in the Congress and the courts, not in the streets. We were sort
    of involved in Vietnam, but people thought that was a long way away, and
    nobody dreamed it would divide the country. And people thought that we
    would win the cold war because our values and our system were superior,
    and things would just rock right along. That's what we thought in 1964.
        Four years later, in this city, I graduated from college on June the
    8th. It was 2 days after Robert Kennedy had been killed, 2 months and 4
    days after Martin Luther King was killed. Today is the 32d anniversary
    of his death. It was 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he

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    couldn't run for President anymore, because the country was divided
    right down the middle over Vietnam and there were demonstrations
    everywhere.
        It was a few weeks before Richard Nixon was elected President on one
    of those divide-and-conquer platforms. And I know a lot of you probably
    voted for him if you were of voting age--that age. But let me just
    remind you of what the message was. The message was, ``I represent the
    Silent Majority,'' which meant that those of us that weren't for him, we
    were in the loud minority. So there was ``us'' and there was ``them.''
    And then we had all these ``us'' and ``them'' elections. Al Gore and I
    came along and said, ``We want to put people first. We want to unite,
    not divide.'' But just a few weeks after that election in 1968, boom,
    the longest economic expansion in American history was over.
        What's the point of all that? I'm not trying to get you down. I want
    you to be up. There's nobody more optimistic than me in this room today.
    But we need to have a little humility and gratitude for this moment
    we're in. And we need to understand that these things can get away from
    us. And we need to be resolved to make the most of this. This is a
    moment for making tomorrows, not a moment for being distracted or
    indulging ourselves but for making tomorrows.
        We have a chance to build the future of our dreams for our children.
    And the reason I told you that story about the 1960's was not only to
    remind you that nothing lasts forever, and you have to make the most of
    these things, but to tell you that, not as your President but as a
    citizen, I have been waiting for 35 years for my country to have this
    chance. And you can make the most of it.
        So in everything you do this year, you remember this little story I
    told you. And you remember that we have the chance of a lifetime that we
    should be grateful for. And everyone you talk to and everyone you touch
    and everything you say, remind people: This is our moment for making
    tomorrows.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:25 p.m. in the International Ballroom at
    the Washington Hilton and Towers. In his remarks, he referred to Robert
    A. Georgine, president, Building and Construction Trades Department,
    AFL-CIO.