    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 30, 2000]
    [Pages 568-573]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 568]]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in New York City
    March 30, 2000

        The President. Thank you. Well, thank you, Denise. If I come here one more time--[laughter]--we should
    allocate part of the property tax assessment to me. I love coming here
    to this beautiful, beautiful place. I want to thank you, and I want to
    thank all the people who served us today and provided this wonderful
    meal. I want to thank the WLF, Laura,
    Betsy, Sharon,
    Susan, and Agnes,
    particularly. I want to thank Judith Hope, who
    has proved that someone from Arkansas can make it in New York--
    [laughter]--which is becoming an increasingly important precedent in my
    mind. [Laughter]
        Thank you, Mayor Rendell, and thank
    you Carol Pensky. I was trying to think of what
    I could possibly say, since most of you have heard me give this speech
    100 times. And I was remembering, oh, 12, 13 years ago, maybe a little
    longer, Tina Turner came to Little Rock when she--you know, she went
    away for a long time, and she was abused in her marriage, and she had a
    lot of really tough times. And then she made an album after many years
    of being silent, called ``Private Dancer,'' which made her a big
    international star again. So she was taking and making her tours around,
    and so she came to Arkansas, to this place where we always had concerts.
    And the guy who ran the place knew that I just loved her. So Hillary was
    out of town, I remember, and he gave me like eight tickets on the front
    row, and I took all my pals and sat on the front row.
        So she sings all her new songs; everybody goes nuts. At the end, she
    starts to--the band starts to play ``Proud Mary,'' which was her first
    hit. So she comes up to the microphone, and everybody cheers; she backs
    away. And she comes up again; everybody cheers again, and she said,
    ``You know, I've been singing this song for 25 years, but it gets better
    every time I do it.'' [Laughter] Anyway--I've got to do it. Very
    instructive, I'll never forget it.
        I want to tell you, we're in this beautiful surrounding--I want you
    to know where I was last night. Last night, I was in the Bishop John
    Adams Hall of Allen University, an African Methodist Episcopal college,
    an AME college in Columbia, South Carolina. That's where I was last
    night, at a dinner sponsored by the State Democratic Party, with the new
    Democratic Governor there; Inez Tenenbaum--some of you may know her--she's the
    Commissioner of Education now for South Carolina, longtime active in
    American Jewish colleges, a friend of mine for many, many years; and
    many others, in honor of the African-American Congressman Jim
    Clyburn from that district. It was a real
    picture of a new South, a different place than we have been treated to
    for the last several years in national politics. It was fascinating.
        And I was talking to them about going to Selma a few weeks ago for
    the 35th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and walking over the Edmund Pettus
    Bridge with John Lewis and Hosea
    Williams and Dick Gregory and Coretta Scott King
    and Jesse Jackson, all the people that were in
    Selma 35 years ago. And this whole issue of the Confederate flag being
    on a flagpole in South Carolina was there. And I said, ``I can't say
    anything better to you than when the waving symbol of one American's
    pride is the shameful symbol of another American's pain, we still have
    another bridge to cross.'' And the crowd exploded, and said, ``We're
    going to take that flag off the flagpole.'' And it really made me feel
    proud to be an American, proud to be a Democrat, and proud to be a
    southerner.
        And to see that the old--what we know now about South Carolina, most
    Americans who aren't from there, is that President Bush went to Bob
    Jones--I mean, Governor Bush went to Bob
    Jones University. President Bush went there, too. And President Reagan
    went there, too. Bob Dole went there, too--and I let him get away with
    it because I didn't know it. [Laughter] If I had known it, I wouldn't
    have.
        You can't imagine what a big deal this was to a southerner. Anybody
    that went through the civil rights revolution was more offended by that,
    I think, than anything else--because--it's okay. I'm sure there are a
    lot of--you know, there are good people everywhere. But if you're going
    to go there, you should say, ``I don't agree with your racial and
    religious policies.''
        But what I want you to know is, there's a whole other group of
    people down there. And they're involved in a struggle, mano a mano,

    [[Page 569]]

    with the Republicans for defining the future of that State, and how they
    define it might have a lot to do with what America looks like in the
    future. And this is the struggle that's going on throughout the country.
        I would also tell you that the second-biggest hand that anything got
    in the evening was when the Congressman said that he certainly hoped
    Hillary would be elected to the
    Senate from New York. And that South Carolina crowd erupted.
        I say that to tell you that the reason I love being a member of this
    party and the reason that I am so grateful that I have had this chance
    to serve our country is that we really are now the only available
    national vehicle for the common aspirations of all Americans, people who
    can come to a wonderful lunch like this, people who serve the lunch that
    could never afford to come to one, all kinds of people in between.
        And I just want to say, tell you very briefly--because I'm not on
    the ballot. I'm not running for anything. Most days I'm okay with it.
    [Laughter] Some days I'm not so sure. [Laughter] But what I thought I
    would do today is to try to just give you a little ammunition in an
    organized fashion, based on what's now going on in Washington right now
    and what certainly will be at issue in this election, about what the
    differences are, the practical differences and what the evidence is in
    terms of what works. And I'll start with an interesting thing,
    particularly--it always amazes me at these events. You could all be at
    one of their events and get a bigger tax cut. So let's start with their
    tax policy.
        What's our tax policy? Our tax policy is: We've got a surplus; we
    can afford a modest tax cut as long as it doesn't interfere with our
    ability to balance the budget, keep paying down the debt, and save
    Social Security and Medicare, and have enough money to invest in
    education, health care, and the environment, science and technology, and
    medical research. And if we've got any--but we can have one. But we
    think it ought to be concentrated on increasing the earned-income tax
    credit, which is what low income working families get so they can
    support their kids.
        We think we need a much bigger child care tax credit, and it ought
    to be refundable, because paying child care costs is still one of the
    biggest challenges that working families face.
        With more and more people living longer, the number of people over
    65 slated to double in the next 30 years, and I hope to be one of them--
    [laughter]--more and more families making the loving but expensive
    choice to care for their relatives, we want a $3,000-a-year tax credit
    for long-term care.
        We want a tax deduction that will extend all the way to upper middle
    class people for up to $10,000 for the costs of college tuition. We have
    made with our tax credits, effectively, we've made 2 years of college,
    at least at the community college level, universal in America, one of
    the major achievements of the Clinton-Gore administration. If this
    passes, we'll make 4 years of college access universal. It's very
    important.
        So those are the kinds of tax cuts we want. We want to give people
    who have money big tax breaks if they will invest in the poor areas in
    America that are not part of our prosperity yet. I believe that you
    ought to have the same tax incentive to invest in inner-city
    neighborhoods in New York or Chicago or the Mississippi Delta or
    Appalachia or the Rio Grande Valley or the Native American reservations
    where unemployment rates still run as high as 70 percent on some of
    them--you ought to have the same tax incentives to invest in those areas
    that we will give you today to invest in Latin America or Africa or
    Asia. Not that I want to take the others away; I just want the same
    incentives here in our country.
        Their tax program, under the guise of marriage penalty relief, is to
    get rid of the estate tax entirely and have other things that are
    concentrated overwhelmingly toward upper income people. There's a
    difference, a real difference. And it says a lot about most of you that
    you're here, because most of you would benefit more in the short run if
    you were there with them.
        So what does that tell you about the Democrats? When I ran in '92, I
    said that I had a vision of 21st century America in which every
    responsible citizen had an opportunity, in which we would be a community
    of all people, and in which we would continue to lead the world for
    peace and freedom. And I think that we think that way because,
    basically, we believe everybody counts, that everybody should have a
    chance, that everybody should have a role to play, and we all do better
    when we work together. That's what we really believe.
        And it matters. You should know, there's a huge, gaping difference
    on tax policy. Now, am I right, or are they right? We've had a lot of

    [[Page 570]]

    tax cuts since I've been President: HOPE scholarship tax credit; we've
    doubled the earned-income tax credit; we gave a $500-per-child tax
    credit; and there was a survey that came out the last day of my trip
    when I was gone that said that on ordinary Americans, the income tax
    burden in America, the percentage of income going to income tax--now,
    that's not Social Security or Medicare but just income tax--is the
    lowest it's been in 40 years. So I think we're right. And I'm not
    running--I can't make that case. But you can, and you must.
        What about the budget? What's our budget policy? I want us to pay
    down the debt for the first time since 1835. And I think it's a liberal
    thing to do, not a conservative thing to do. Why? Because if we do that
    in a global economy, interest rates will stay down and ordinary people
    will be able to make their money go further. They'll be able to buy
    cars. They'll be able to take college loans. They'll be able to buy
    homes. And we'll have more money available for businesses to borrow at
    lower interest rates, because the Government won't be doing it, which
    means more jobs will be created. I think it's the right thing to do.
        And I want to also save enough money so that when the baby boomers
    all retire, we'll be able to preserve Social Security and Medicare, and
    we'll have enough money to invest in education. We've got--this
    administration has done more work in more areas in education, I think,
    than anyone in history. And I've got a big program up there now,
    designed to help school districts turn around failing schools or shut
    them down, to provide after-school programs and other remediation
    programs to every kid in every troubled school in America, to finish our
    work of hooking all the schools up to the Internet, to repair 5,000
    schools a year for the next 5 years, and to build 6,000 new ones. And
    this is important.
        Now, what's their program? Their program is--their nominee, just as
    recently as last week, has reaffirmed that he supports a tax cut even
    bigger than the one I vetoed last year. And I can tell you what will
    happen if it passed. Here's what will happen. If it passes, we will go
    back to either running Government deficits, or there will be vast cuts
    in education, where Governor Bush says a lot of things--virtually
    endorsed our program in education to only give out Federal money to the
    schools if they support what works. The problem is, he can't keep his commitments, because he's for a tax cut
    that will mean they'll have to cut education. And not just a little bit;
    I'm talking a lot.
        They won't have any money to help Social Security and Medicare when
    the baby boomers retire, but that's okay with them, because they want to
    privatize both of them. And I think it's a mistake.
        They can't support our plan to provide a prescription drug benefit
    with Medicare, which 60 percent of the people on Medicare need, by the
    way, not just poor people on Medicare. There are a lot of people who
    have middle class incomes who have huge medical bills, that are severely
    distressed by them, and they cannot get affordable coverage for medicine
    when they get older.
        They can't support our program to let the parents of poor children
    that are in our children's health program buy into health insurance
    because they don't have the money, because they're going to give it all
    away in a tax cut. And we'll still have a deficit. Now, there's a big
    difference there.
        And it's not like we don't have any evidence here. Our economic
    policies--we have doubled our investment in education; we've got the
    first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years. And I think the economic
    performance speaks for itself, the longest expansion in history and 21
    million new jobs. So why are we even having this argument? Because we
    really have honest differences here.
        If you look at other issues--I could just mention two or three more.
    Our view of the world--I got tickled the other day. I just got back from
    India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, and I stopped in Switzerland to try
    to make another effort on the Middle East peace. And I noticed a member
    of the other party in the Senate was criticizing me for going to India
    and Pakistan, because I didn't, quote, ``get anything for it.'' That is,
    they didn't agree to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or to the
    other efforts that I'm making to try to stop them from building up
    nuclear weapons.
        Well, they didn't. What he didn't point out is that I lost all the
    leverage I had when the Republican Senate defeated the ratification of
    the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I thought, that is real gall. Man,
    for a guy to stand up and say that, that requires a lot of moxie, you
    know. [Laughter] One of their great strengths is, by the way, they have
    no guilt and no shame.

    [[Page 571]]

    I mean, they'll say anything. [Laughter] You know, you'll never see them
    blink about it.
        But I want to say, there are differences in that. And we do have
    some things in common. I compliment the Republicans that are trying to
    help me help Colombia to reduce the drug flow into America and to shore
    up a brave democratic government's fight there. And the people who are
    criticizing this, saying it's another Vietnam, are just wrong. We're not
    sending soldiers there. All we're doing is supporting the police and
    other efforts to build a civil society and give those farmers some
    reason to stop growing coca and grow something else. I support--I thank
    the Republicans who have helped me with the China agreement, because I
    think it's very important to bring China into the World Trade
    Organization.
        But we have big differences. You know, I want to support the U.N.
    more; most of them want to support it less. I think we were right to go
    into Kosovo and save the lives and the livelihoods of a million Muslims.
    Most of them thought it wasn't worth the trouble, not all of them but
    most of them.
        And so there are real differences here. And the Comprehensive Test
    Ban Treaty is the most stunning one. I mean, I cannot imagine a reason
    for the United States not to sign on to the Comprehensive Test Ban
    Treaty unless you believe that we will be more secure because you think
    we can always win any arms race, so it's okay if everybody else starts
    to get in the nuclear business as well. These are differences.
        I'll just give you two or three others of these things we're
    fighting: The Patients' Bill of Rights, about 190 million Americans in
    these managed care plans, I believe they ought to have access to a
    Patients' Bill of Rights that's really strong and enforceable. And we're
    still fighting that. We may get it, but we're not there yet.
        I think we ought to raise the minimum wage a buck over 2 years. You
    know, the last time I did it, they said it would wreck the economy.
    Since then, the economy's grown even faster than it did before we raised
    the minimum wage. [Laughter] It's not like there's an argument here that
    has any evidence behind it.
        The gun safety legislation, you all know about that. I mean, they
    asked me in my press conference yesterday what I thought about all these
    terrible things Charlton Heston is saying
    about me, and I said, ``I still like his movies, and I watch them every
    chance I get.'' [Laughter]
        But if you look at it--forget about the NRA, here. If you look at
    this view--should we close the gun show loophole and doing background
    checks. Well, when I signed the Brady bill, they all said, ``Oh, it was
    the end of the world as we knew it. The hunters would be bereft, because
    they would be--their lives would be messed up.'' Nobody's missed an hour
    in the deer woods yet, and a half a million people who were felons,
    fugitives, or stalkers haven't gotten handguns. And gun crime is at a
    30-year low in America because of that. But a lot of them still pick up
    these guns at urban flea markets and at these gun shows. And the
    technology is there to do the background check.
        You know, people thought the assault weapons ban was terrible. But
    frankly, it's not as effective as it ought to be, because you can still
    import large capacity ammunition clips and then adapt the guns. And we
    ought to ban them.
        We ought to have child trigger locks. We ought to be investing in
    safe gun technology so if somebody buys a handgun, you can equip it in a
    way that you have to show your fingerprints on the gun before it will
    fire. These things are worth doing.
        And the difference I have--and the Republicans say, ``Well, but you
    just ought to enforce the existing laws more.'' And a lot of you have
    heard me say this, but I want to hammer this home. It's a big issue. We
    have enforced the gun laws more than they were before. Prosecutions are
    up. I've asked for another 1,000 prosecutors and more investigators to
    enforce the existing gun laws, to get--the surprising number of guns
    used in crimes come out of just a few dealers. There's something to
    that. But their position is that guns are the only area of our national
    life where there should be no prevention.
        I said this in the press conference the other day, but I want to say
    it again: If I gave you the following speech, you would think I was
    crazy. If I said, ``You know, I've been flying on airplanes all my life,
    and most people who fly on airplanes are really good people. And it's a
    real pain, especially when you're late and airports are crowded, to have
    to go through these airport metal detectors. And if you've got a big old
    buckle or a highly metallic money clip, you may have to go through two
    or three times. You empty your pockets and everything.

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    And 99.99 percent of the people in those airports are good, honest
    people. Let's just rip those metal detectors out there, and the next
    time somebody blows up an airplane, we'll throw the book at them.'' Now,
    you think about that. That's the argument, right? But most people
    believe that you should prevent as many bad things from happening as
    possible in life. And it's far better to prevent bad things from
    happening, and then if something does happen bad, then you do what's
    appropriate. But these are huge differences.
        The choice issue is going to be huge. The next President will
    appoint somewhere between two and four Justices in the Supreme Court.
    And their nominee's said repeatedly that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision;
    he'd like to see it repealed; he'd like to see it changed. And I can
    tell you, I've seen those guys work up there. This is--I'll put in a
    little plug for Hillary--[laughter]--
    no matter whether a Republican Senator says he's pro-choice or not, they
    will make their lives miserable, should they win the White House, if
    they don't back the White House. You can't imagine--I have seen them
    dance----

    [At this point, a luncheon participant excused herself and said good-bye
    to the President.]

        The President. Good. Bye-bye.
        I have seen these things happen where I've had these Republicans
    come up to me in virtual tears and apologize for the way they were
    voting on first one thing and then another and just say they had to do
    it because they didn't want to lose their committee position or they
    didn't want to lose this, that, or the other thing that was being done.
        Now, I don't think we're going to have a Republican President. I
    think Al Gore's going to be elected. But if
    you care about this issue, you should work harder for Al Gore and for
    people in the Senate that will support that position.
        Now--and I'll just give you one other example. Ed Rendell was
    talking about the Log Cabin Republicans. I know that there have been a
    lot of people in America who won't support me because of the position I
    have taken on gay rights. But I have to tell you, I just don't see how
    you can run a democracy if you say that certain people, no matter how
    law-abiding they are, no matter how honorable they are, no matter how
    talented they are, ought to be discriminated against. I just think it's
    wrong.
        I don't think it's really complicated, and I think we ought to pass
    the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act'' and the hate crimes bill. And
    I stood on the tarmac--let me just say this--I stood on the tarmac in
    Austin, Texas, at the airport and embraced the weeping daughter of James Byrd--who was dragged to death in Texas--who
    came all the way back from Hawaii to lobby for the hate crimes bill,
    pleading with the Governor to meet with her.
    He refused. Finally, he did, because it was a pretty hard case to make,
    why he wouldn't meet with her. And all he had to do was lift his hand,
    and they would have had a hate crimes bill. And it did not pass because
    they did not want it to pass, because they did not believe that gays and
    lesbians should be protected by hate crimes legislation.
        Now, these are facts. And the American people can simply make up
    their own mind. But what you need to know is: When it comes to taxes,
    when it comes to the budget, when it comes to these other specific
    issues, there are huge differences.
        And I don't have to condemn them and engage in the kind of politics
    of personal destruction that others find so helpful. I think most of
    them are good people who really just disagree with us. I don't think
    that somebody with a different political view is an evil person. I think
    our country's really been hurt by all this sort of attempt to believe if
    you don't destroy your opponent, there's something wrong with you.
        I don't believe, by the way, that John McCain is against breast cancer research, either, which was the
    main thing I heard about in the New York primary. And I might tell you,
    that program was supported by me. It was in the defense budget. But that
    was a total misrepresentation of what was going on. It was completely
    unfair. And that's the most charitable word I can think of to
    characterize it.
        But you need to understand here, I'm not running for anything, but I
    care a lot about what happens to my country. Yes, I want Al Gore to be President, because he's been the best Vice
    President in history and because I love him but also, more important,
    because he understands the future, and he's strong enough and
    experienced enough and smart enough and he cares enough about the policy
    issues to lead us there.

    [[Page 573]]

        I'll just leave you with this thought: When we celebrated in
    February the longest economic expansion in American history, and all my
    economic advisers came in and said that, and they were all jumping up
    and down, I said, ``Well, when was the last longest expansion in
    American history?'' For a long time, it had been the longest peacetime
    expansion in history. I said, ``When was the longest expansion of any
    kind in American history?'' You know when it was? Nineteen sixty-one to
    1969.
        Now, here's what I want to tell you about this. A few of you are
    around my age, anyway. I graduated from high school in 1964. John
    Kennedy had just been assassinated. But the country had united behind
    President Johnson, and I was very proud of him. You know, he was from my
    neighboring State, passionately committed to civil rights.
        And when I finished, in 1964, in high school, every kid my age was
    full of optimism. Unemployment was low; inflation was low; growth was
    high. We believed that all the civil rights problems would be solved by
    the Congress and in the courts, peacefully. We believed we would win the
    cold war because of America's values. And no one thought that there
    would ever be any trauma coming out of Vietnam. In other words, we were
    pretty relaxed about being, then, at the high point of the longest
    economic expansion in American history. We thought things were just
    going to take care of themselves.
        Now, a year later there was Bloody Sunday in Selma. Two years later,
    there were riots in the streets. Four years later, when I graduated from
    college, it was 2 days after Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after
    Martin Luther King was killed, 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson couldn't run
    for reelection because the country was split right down the middle.
        And a few months later, Richard Nixon was elected President on the
    first of what became a whole series of what I called ``us'' and ``them''
    campaigns. You remember what his slogan was? He represented the Silent
    Majority. You remember that? Which meant that those of us who weren't
    for him were in the loud minority. And it was a very clever slogan for
    the time.
        But the point is, it was ``us'' versus ``them.'' And we've been
    ``us-ing'' and ``them-ing'' for a long time ever since. And I have done
    my best to end that, here and around the world, because I think it is
    dumb, counterproductive, wrong, and I haven't yet met a person who was
    genuinely happy demonizing other people.
        But I'm telling you this to make this point: I have waited 35 years
    for my country to be in the position that we now enjoy today, where we
    can literally build the future of our dreams for our children, where we
    can be a force for good around the world, where we can take on all these
    challenges.
        But what I want you to know is: I have lived long enough to know
    that the worst thing we can do is take all this for granted, to believe
    that no matter what we could do, that there are no consequences to this
    election, there are no consequences to how we behave in our lives and in
    our communities, that this thing is somehow on automatic and
    everything's just going to be hunky-dory. That's what I thought in 1964,
    and I have waited 35 years for my country to be in this position again.
        So if somebody asks you why you came here today, you tell them what
    I told you, and you tell them we don't want to blow this chance. We have
    fewer crises abroad, fewer crises at home, and a greater opportunity to
    do right. And we're Democrats, and we need to do it.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:27 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Denise Rich, Laura Ross, Betsy Cohn, Sharon
    Patrick, luncheon co-hosts; Susan Patricof, member, national board of
    directors, Women's Leadership Forum; Agnes Varis, president, Agvar
    Chemicals, Inc.; Judith Hope, chair, New York State Democratic Party;
    Edward G. Rendell, general chair, and Carol Pensky, national finance
    cochair, Democratic National Committee; Gov. Jim Hodges of South
    Carolina; Representative John Lewis; civil rights activists Hosea
    Williams and Dick Gregory; Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther
    King, Jr.; civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson; Gov. George W. Bush
    of Texas; Bob Dole, 1996 Republican Presidential candidate; Charlton
    Heston, president, National Rifle Association; and Renee Mullins,
    daughter of murder victim James Byrd, Jr.