    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 12, 2000]
    [Pages 36-42]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council
    January 12, 2000

        Thank you. Well, first of all, I think we ought to acknowledge that
    public speaking is not something Jessica does
    every day, and I think she did a terrific job. I thank her for coming
    here. I want to thank Tommy and Sarah and Maggie and Aliza and Grandmother for coming also, so that you would have
    a human, real example of the subject I want to address today and one of
    the biggest reasons I ran for President.
        I thank my old friend Senator Joe Lieberman for his leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council.
    President and Mrs.
    Trachtenberg, thank you for welcoming
    me back to George Washington.
        I want to acknowledge two other people in the audience today without
    whom many of us would never have been able to do what has been done, and
    particularly I am indebted to

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    them: first, Will Marshall, who runs the
    Progressive Policy Institute of the DLC, who has been at this for well
    over a decade and come up with so many of the ideas that have been
    hallmarks of our administration. And I want to thank my long-time friend
    Eli Segal, who actually gave birth, in fact, to
    two of our most important ideas. AmeriCorps, our national service
    program--he set AmeriCorps up, and then he set up the Welfare to Work
    Partnership, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being
    hired by private business from the welfare rolls. So thank you both for
    coming here and for what you have done for our country.
        I always get nervous when people start talking about legacies, the
    way Senator Lieberman did. You know,
    alliteration having the appeal it does, it's just one small step from
    legacy to lame duck. I keep hearing that. [Laughter] And I've finally
    figured out what a lame duck is. That's when you show up for a speech
    and no one comes. [Laughter] So thank you for making me feel that we're
    still building on that legacy today.
        I want to put the issue I came here to discuss today, which directly
    affects the Cupp family and so many tens of thousands like them all
    across America, in the larger context of what we have been about since
    1993, in January.
        Eight years ago, when I ran for President, I came here to Washington
    and asked for change in our party, change in our national leadership,
    and change in our country, not change for its own sake but because in
    1992 our Nation was in the grip of economic distress, social decline,
    political gridlock, and discredited Government. The old answers plainly
    were obsolete, and new conditions clearly demanded a new approach.
        By 1992, we in the DLC had been working for some years on a new
    approach, rooted in the basic American values of opportunity,
    responsibility, and community; dedicated to promoting both work and
    family here in the United States and to promoting America's leadership
    around the world for peace and freedom, security, and democracy. We
    believed that Government was neither the primary problem, as the new
    Republicans had been telling us for a decade by then, or the primary
    solution, as many New Deal Democrats still earnestly believed. Instead,
    we asked for a new direction for our National Government, with a focus
    on creating the conditions and providing people the tools to make the
    most of their own lives and a commitment to a partnership with the
    private sector and with State and local government, so that the Federal
    Government would be a catalyst, promoting and experimenting vigorously
    with new ideas. It would be a smaller and less bureaucratic but a more
    active Government.
        Those of us who were in the vanguard of this movement called
    ourselves New Democrats, and we said our agenda was a third way, a way
    to create a vital center that would bring people together and move our
    country forward. But we were also quick to acknowledge that labels don't
    define a politician or a political movement, ideas do.
        Our new ideas were first built on the premise that we had to discard
    the false choices that then defined politics here in our Nation's
    Capital.
        We believed, for example, that we could both eliminate the deficit
    and increase our investment in education, in science and technology, in
    the truly significant national priorities. We believed we could be pro-
    business and pro-labor. We believed we could be pro-growth and pro-
    environment. We believed we could reform welfare to require those who
    are able to work and still do more for poor children and poor families.
    We believed we could improve education both by raising standards and
    accountability and investing more where it was urgently needed. We
    believed we could help Americans succeed both at work and at home,
    rather than forcing them to make a choice, as so many, regrettably,
    still have to do every single day. We believed we could lower the crime
    rate both with more effective punishment and with more effective
    prevention. We believed we could lead the world with greater military
    strength and more diplomatic aid and cooperative efforts with other
    nations.
        We had a whole lot of new policy ideas that we implemented. I'll
    just mention a few: the empowerment zone program and the reinventing
    Government program that the Vice President's led so brilliantly; community development financial
    institutions; AmeriCorps, which now has given over 150,000 young
    Americans the chance to serve in their community and to earn some money
    for a college education; the HOPE scholarships, which along with our
    other college incentives have effectively opened the doors of college to
    all Americans; the V-chip; trade, with environmental and labor
    considerations taken

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    into account; after-school programs; 100,000 police; the Brady bill; the
    family and medical leave law; the assault weapons ban; housing vouchers
    for people on welfare to move closer to where the jobs are;
    environmental right-to-know laws; and many, many other ideas, all within
    this basic framework of opportunity, responsibility, and community, all
    with a view toward a Government that was less bureaucratic but more
    active.
        Today, we're in a position to make an assessment--very different
    from 1992. In 1992 Al Gore and I went around the country and made an
    argument to the American people, and they took a chance on us. And our
    friends in the Republican Party said, even after I got elected
    President, that none of it would work. They said our economic plan would
    explode the deficit and bring on another recession. They said our crime
    bill, with 100,000 police and the assault weapons ban and the Brady
    bill, would do nothing to lower the crime rate or the murder rate. And I
    could go on and on and on, through issue after issue after issue.
        Well, back in 1992, it was, after all, just an argument, and the
    American people took a chance. Now I think we can safely say the
    argument is over, for one simple reason: It has been put to rest by the
    record. We have been fortunate enough to implement virtually all the
    ideas that were advocated in the 1992 campaign and most of those
    advanced in the '96 campaign. And we now have 7 years of measurable
    results. Some of them were mentioned by Senator Lieberman, but I think
    it's worth going over again, to set the stage for the point I want to
    make, which is the more important one.
        We have the fastest economic growth in more than 30 years, the
    lowest unemployment rate and the smallest welfare rolls in 30 years,
    over 20 million new jobs, the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, the
    lowest murder rate in 30 years, the first back-to-back surpluses in our
    budget in 42 years, the highest homeownership in history. And in just a
    few weeks, now, we'll have the longest economic expansion in the history
    of the country, including those when we were fully mobilized for
    wartime.
        In addition to that, there has been a definite improvement in the
    social complexion of America. We have the lowest child poverty rate in
    more than 20 years, the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, the
    lowest African-American unemployment and poverty rates ever recorded,
    the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate ever, the lowest Hispanic poverty
    rate in 25 years, the lowest poverty rate among single-parent households
    in 46 years.
        Along the way, we have immunized 90 percent of our children against
    serious childhood diseases for the first time in the history of America.
    We have 2 million more kids out of poverty and 2 million more children
    with health insurance. Twenty million people have taken advantage of the
    family and medical leave law. Over 450,000 people have been denied the
    right to buy a handgun because they were felons, fugitives, or stalkers,
    under the Brady bill. We have cleaner air, cleaner water. We have
    cleaned up 3 times as many toxic waste dumps as in the previous 12
    years.
        And yesterday I had the privilege to go to the Grand Canyon to set
    aside another million acres of land. Now, in the lower 48 States, we
    have protected more land than any administration in American history,
    except those of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt.
        Our country has helped to further the cause of peace from Northern
    Ireland to the Middle East to Bosnia and Kosovo to Haiti; established
    new partnerships with Latin America, Asia, and Africa for economic
    cooperation; restrained the nuclear missile programs of North Korea;
    fought against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program; worked to
    reduce the threat of terrorism, chemical and biological weapons; cut
    thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of Russia and the United
    States; expanded NATO; increased our debt relief and economic assistance
    to the poorest countries of the world. We have helped to minimize
    economic problems in Asia and Mexico and concluded over 270 trade
    agreements, all with a view toward implementing the basic ideas that
    were articulated in 1992 and developed in the years before through the
    Democratic Leadership Council.
        Now what does that mean in practical terms to all of you and
    especially to the young people in this audience? It means for the first
    time in my lifetime, we begin a new century with greater prosperity,
    greater social progress, greater national self-confidence, with the
    absence of an internal crisis or an external threat that could derail
    our further forward movement. This has never happened in my lifetime.
        The first time I came to George Washington University was in
    September of 1964, to a Judy Collins concert in Lisner Auditorium.
    [Laughter] I remember it well. Some of you were not alive

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    then, maybe more than half of you. That's the last time we had this sort
    of economic growth and this kind of range of interest in our country
    toward helping people who had been left out and left behind or were in
    distress. But we were unable to resolve the civil rights challenge at
    home without major crises, including riots in our cities, and our
    efforts to deal with that came a cropper with the costs and the burden
    of carrying on the war in Vietnam.
        In my lifetime, we have never had a chance like this--never. And I
    would argue to you that the most important question today is not what
    we've done for the last 7 years in turning the ship of state around and
    moving America forward, but what are we going to do now that we have the
    chance of a lifetime to build the future of our dreams for our children?
    That's the most important thing. I am gratified by all the results that
    I just recounted to you, but after all, that's what you hired me to do.
    And that's what our administration signed on to do.
        The question is, what are we going to do now? What will you do, as
    citizens, when I am no longer here and I'm just a citizen like you? As a
    country, what will be our driving vision?
        The thing I worry about most is that when people have been through
    tough times and they've achieved a lot, the first thing that you want to
    do is sort of relax. And most everybody here who's lived any number of
    years can remember at least once in his or her life when you made a
    mistake by getting distracted or short-sighted because things seemed to
    be going so well you didn't think you had to think about anything else.
    That can happen to a country just as it can happen to a person, a
    family, or a business. So the great challenge for us today is to make up
    our minds, what are we going to do with this magic moment of promise?
        What I want us to do is to put our partisan divisions aside to
    complete the unfinished business of the last century, including things
    like the Patients' Bill of Rights, sensible legislation to keep guns out
    of the hands of criminals and children, the hate crimes legislation, all
    the things that were still on the agenda when Congress went home, but to
    deal with these big, long-term challenges.
        What are they? The aging of America--the number of people over 65
    will double in the next 30 years. I hope to be one of them. [Laughter]
    The children of America, the largest and most diverse group ever--in a
    globalized information society, education is more important than ever,
    and we must give all of them a world-class education.
        We can make America--yes, we've got the lowest crime rate in over 25
    years, the lowest murder rate in 30 years--no one believes it's the
    safest--safe as it ought to be here. We ought to dedicate ourselves to
    making America the safest big country in the world.
        We've proved that we can improve the environment and grow the
    economy, but we still aren't taking the challenge of global warming
    seriously. And we still not have said explicitly, ``The world has
    changed; it is no longer necessary to grow rich by despoiling the
    environment. In fact, you can generate more wealth over a longer period
    of time by improving the environment.'' America ought to prove that,
    instead of continuing to be a problem and having our heads in the sand
    on the issue of climate change.
        We ought to dedicate ourselves not just to running surpluses but to
    getting America out of debt for the first time since 1835, so that all
    the young people here will have lower interest rates and a healthier
    economy throughout their adult lifetime. We ought to dedicate ourselves
    to bringing opportunity to the people and places who have been left
    behind. We ought to dedicate ourselves to building a world in which
    there is a more human face on the global economy and in which we work
    with our friends and neighbors to deal with the new threats of
    terrorism, ethnic, racial, and religious warfare, and chemical and
    biological weapons.
        And we ought to recognize that in a world in which we know the most
    important job is still--is still--the job that Jessica and her husband have taken on
    of raising these three
    children, we cannot allow--we cannot allow--our
    country to be a place where you have to make a decision about to whether
    succeed at home or to succeed at work. Because if we ever get to the
    point where a significant number of our people have to make that
    decision, we are in serious trouble. And too many have to make it every
    day, anyway, because they can't afford child care, or because of the
    burdens of the basic cost of raising their children in dignity and good
    health imposed on their limited ability to earn money, even in this
    prosperous economy. And that's the thing I want to focus on today,
    because I think when the American

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    family is doing well, the family of America does well.
        In the State of the Union Address, I will put forth my last but
    still a new agenda, rooted in responsibility, designed to create a
    wider, stronger, more inclusive American community and to create new
    opportunity. Today I want to talk about one important element of the new
    opportunity agenda.
        We know that we are now in a position to do more to create
    opportunity or, as Senator Lieberman and Al From say, to expand the
    winner's circle, to include men, women, and children still at the
    margins of society who are willing to work and ought to be rewarded for
    it.
        The ideas that I will advance in the State of the Union will be
    built on what we have been talking about since 1992, advancing our
    understanding of what opportunity means in the information age. For
    example, once textbooks were central to a child's understanding in
    education; today, computers are. Once a ninth-grade education was all
    anyone needed for a job, then a high school education; today, the only
    people who have good chances of getting jobs which will grow over time
    in income, over a longer period of time, are those who have at least 2
    years of some sort of post-high-school education and training.
        One new opportunity agenda tries to take account of these new
    demands but also the new pressures on working families, including the
    need for quality, affordable child care and the importance of being able
    to access health care.
        The main idea here is still the old idea of the American dream, that
    if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to have a decent life
    and a chance for your children to have a better one. That's been the
    basic goal of so much of what we've done, from the earned-income tax
    credit to the empowerment zone program the Vice President ran, to the microcredit program the First Lady's done so much to advance, to increasing the
    minimum wage, to greater access to health care and child care, to the
    partnerships that we have made with so many American businesses to help
    people move from welfare to work.
        Now, I will have more to say about all these other ideas later. But
    I just want to talk a little bit today, in closing, about what we should
    do with the earned-income tax credit, something that you've heard
    Jessica say has already helped the Cupp family
    to raise their children but something that is not as helpful now as it
    was when they first drew it.
        In my State of the Union Address and in my budget for 2001, I will
    propose a substantial increase in the earned-income tax credit. It's a
    targeted tax cut for low income working families.
        In 1992, as has already been said, one of the first things that I
    did as President was to ask Congress to dramatically expand the EITC. It
    had been on the books for some time. It had been broadly supported by
    Democrats and Republicans. President Reagan had hailed it. Everybody
    seemed to like it, because basically it involved a tax credit for people
    who were working and had children--almost all of them have children--and
    who just didn't have enough to get along on.
        It is not just another acronym. The EITC was anonymous, I think, in
    America until a previous Congress tried to do something to it, and then
    all of a sudden it became something we all knew about and liked, which
    was immensely gratifying to me. But the EITC stands for, again I will
    say, the E is about ``earned.'' It's about working. It's about a
    fundamental American value. It's about rewarding people who do what
    they're supposed to do.
        I think every one of you, when Jessica was
    up here talking, describing the conditions of their children's birth,
    their work histories, how they had worked hard to provide a decent home
    for their kids, every one of us was sitting here pulling for them. Every
    one of you identified with their struggle. Every one of you could
    imagine what it would have been like to be the father in the delivery
    room and see these kids come out, one, two, three. [Laughter] Every one
    of you. That's what this country is all about, the dignity, the
    struggles, the triumphs, the joys of daily life that we all share.
        And I think our Government has a responsibility, as part of our
    basic compact with the American people, to make sure that families like
    the Cupps find that work does pay, to make sure that we reward work and
    that we enable them to succeed at their even more important job, raising
    those three little girls. It is still, I will say again, society's most
    important job. And I suspect that every parent in this room today agrees
    with me about that.

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        So these incentives to work are just as important to how life plays
    out for millions of Americans as the rate of economic growth or interest
    rates or debt reduction. Studies from Harvard to Wisconsin have
    confirmed that the EITC is an enormously powerful incentive to work. It
    encourages people who are on welfare, who are unemployed, to move into
    the work force, even in modest-paying jobs, because their income will
    be, in effect, increased; they'll get a check at the end of the year as
    a credit against the taxes they pay, because they're working hard for
    modest income.
        Now, in 1998 the EITC helped more than 4.3 million people make that
    move. That's double the number that were being helped in 1993, when we
    advocated the expansion. This tax credit is a major reason, along with
    the strength of the economy, the rise in the minimum wage, and the
    movement from welfare to work, that there are fewer people in poverty
    today than there have been in over 20 years. It explains why the child
    poverty rate is lower than it's been in over 20 years and why poverty
    among African-American children is the lowest on record and the lowest
    among a quarter century among Hispanic children.
        Now, because we know this works, and we know there are still far too
    many families and children in or near poverty and far too many people
    struggling and working, having a tough time taking care of their
    children, we know there is more to do. Today I am proposing the
    following changes in the EITC.
        First, I want to eliminate the marriage penalty exacted by the EITC
    to make sure that the tax credit rewards marriage and family just as it
    rewards work. It's a big problem.
        Second--the next two are very important to the Cupp family; they
    will affect all the families in our country like them, and there are a
    lot of them--I am proposing to expand the EITC for families with three
    or more children.
        The pressures on these families rise as their ranks increase.
    Twenty-eight percent of them--let me say that again--28 percent of them
    are in poverty, more than twice the rate for smaller families. Our plan
    would provide these families tax relief that is up to $1,200 more than
    what they now receive. The way the EITC works now, it's a really good
    deal if you're working for a very modest income and you have two kids.
    But the benefits drop off dramatically after that. And I don't think we
    ought to make these folks choose among those little girls and others in
    their situation.
        Now, the third thing we're going to do is to give more people more
    incentives to continue to work their way into the middle class. You
    heard Jessica say that when her husband's income
    reached $30,000, the EITC benefit dropped off dramatically. We set these
    ceilings back in 1993, and they haven't been really adjusted since then.
    What we want to do now is to phase the EITC credit out more gradually.
    It has to be phased out, but if it's phased out too sharply, then there
    is, in effect, for families with a lot of kids, almost no net gain to
    earning a higher income. And if he's going to work longer than 40 hours
    a week and he's going to miss more hours at home with those kids, then
    we want him to receive the benefits of that. And again, I say, this is
    not just about this one family; they represent millions of people in
    this country.
        So that's what we're going to do: Eliminate the marriage penalty,
    increase aid to families with three or more kids, and phase the credit
    out more gradually, so there's always an incentive to keep working to
    improve your income and your ability to support your children.
        Now, for families like the Cupps, these new initiatives would mean
    an additional tax credit of $850. That would help them to provide for
    their children or own a home or buy a car that makes it easier to get to
    work and, therefore, to work.
        We dedicate $21 billion to these priorities over 10 years,
    increasing our investment in people without in any way undermining our
    commitment to a balanced budget and to getting us out of debt over the
    next 15 years.
        Opportunity for all is a measure of not only how far we've come and
    where we're going but what kind of people we are. Robert Kennedy once
    said, ``Our society, all our values, are views of each other and our own
    self-esteem.'' The contribution we can make to ourselves, our families,
    and the community around us--all these things are built on the work we
    do.
        The young people here, the students here, are probably beginning to
    think about the work you will do. I hope because you're getting a good
    education, more than anything else, you'll be able to do something that
    you love. And if you do something that you love, I believe that you
    ought to be properly rewarded for it and that you ought also to have the
    freedom

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    to raise a strong family while you're doing it. That's what today is all
    about.
        And if there is anything that America ought to be about in the 21st
    century, it ought to be about finally really creating opportunity for
    all, a responsible nation of all citizens, and a community in which
    everyone has the chance to do the most important work of all: raise
    strong, healthy, happy children.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:45 p.m. in the Dorothy Betts Marvin
    Theatre at George Washington University. In his remarks, he referred to
    Jessica Cupp, who introduced the President, her husband, Tommy, and
    their triplets Sarah, Maggie, and Aliza; Senator Joseph I. Lieberman,
    founder, New Democrat Network; Stephen J. Trachtenberg, president,
    George Washington University, and his wife, Francine Zorn Trachtenberg;
    William Marshall, president and founder, Progressive Policy Institute;
    Eli Segal, president, Welfare to Work Partnership; and Al From,
    president, Democratic Leadership Council.