    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 9, 2000]
    [Pages 218-222]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Dallas, Texas
    February 9, 2000

        Thank you. First of all, Fred, thank you for
    what you said. And I thank you and Lisa for being
    wonderful friends to me and Hillary and to Al and Tipper Gore and to our
    party. I thank Jess and Betty Jo for being here tonight. I can't help
    but say, Betty Jo is the niece of former Speaker Carl Albert, who passed
    away in the last couple of days, a great Democrat. And I had a wonderful
    talk with his wife today, and it reminded me of why I have been a
    Democrat all my life. And our thoughts and prayers are with your family.
        I thank ``B'' and Audre
    Rapoport and Garry Mauro for their work here. And I wanted to acknowledge not
    only the mayor, who I think has done a superb job,
    and Senator Cain, thank you for being here, and
    Sally, thank you for being here and for being
    our regional Department of Education person, for all the good work you
    do. But I also want to introduce a former very important person on my
    White House staff, Regina Montoya,
    who is now a candidate for the House, who is here. I want you all to
    help her get elected to Congress. We need to win this seat. [Applause]
    Thank you. She's here, I think.
        I got tickled--I started laughing all over again when Ed Rendell was
    up here talking about the rap that the Republican chairman laid on him after the New Hampshire primary. He said we
    were the candidate of special interests, and he mentioned--what did he
    say--trial lawyers, labor, gays, and Hollywood. [Laughter]
        Let me take you back to 1992. In 1991, I was having the time of my
    life living in Arkansas in the 11th year of my governorship. I had had a
    new lease on life. I loved my job. I could have done it now to kingdom
    come. But I was really worried about my country, because that's the kind
    of stuff that everybody in Washington said, what Ed just said. And there
    was a Republican line and a Democratic line. There was a liberal line
    and a Republican line. And everybody was struggling to be politically
    correct and to be as confrontational as possible, because that is the
    only way you would get your 15 seconds on the evening news.
        I suppose it was perfectly good for the people who got on the talk
    shows all the time and the people who could raise funds for their
    reelection and stay in, but the country was in the ditch. Even when we
    were nominally in a recovery, we couldn't generate any jobs. And we had
    quadrupled the debt in 12 years, and we didn't have much to show for it,
    because we were spending less in real terms on things that we needed,
    like education.
        The reason I ran for President is that I had been working on all
    this stuff for a long time, and it became clear to me there were limits
    to what any Governor or any people could do, or people in their private
    lives could do, to turn America around until we had a National
    Government that had it right--that had the right philosophy, that was
    dynamic and change-oriented and was interested in bringing people
    together and was committed to creating the conditions and giving people
    the tools to succeed in a very different world.
        So I admit that what the chairman of the Republican Party said is
    right, but I don't think he got it right. That
    is, I'm not ashamed of the fact we've got a lot of trial lawyers here.
    I'm not ashamed of the fact that I think, if people have been shafted,
    they ought to be able to go to court and pursue their remedy. I also
    want to say this: I'm also proud of the fact that we've had a real
    relationship. This has not been a political deal. We haven't 100 percent
    agreed on everything. We've had a relationship. It's like being in a
    family or an organization or anything else. It's real here.
        You know, I hear all these--our friends in the other party talk
    about how terrible the trial

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    lawyers are. All I want to know is, if you guys are so destructive, why
    do we have 21 million jobs and the best economy we've ever had? And the
    same thing about the labor unions. Labor enrollments went up last year
    for the first time in many years. I think that's a good thing for people
    to be organized, to be able to not only vent their grievances but, more
    importantly, build partnerships for the future. And if it's so bad, why
    do we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years? And why do we have
    the highest productivity that we can ever remember?
        I plead guilty to believing that we should not deprive people of
    jobs or subject them to violence just because they're gay. I'm guilty of
    that; I believe that. I think anybody that shows up for work and pays
    their taxes and are willing to do whatever it takes to be a good citizen
    of their country ought to be treated with the same amount of respect as
    anybody else. That's what I believe. And I think the evidence is that
    that's right.
        In terms of Hollywood, that's sort of the last refuge of the
    rightwing arsenal there. [Laughter] I was the first person--not a member
    of the Republican Party--I was the first political leader, in 1993, to
    go to Hollywood and ask them to give me a ratings system for television
    for children and to reduce the amount of inappropriate material our
    children were exposed to. And not everybody agreed with it, but again,
    we're in--I have a relationship with a lot of people out there, and we
    got a rating system. I wish it worked better now because it's kind of--
    practically, it's difficult because you've got to worry--if you're a
    parent, you've got to worry about the video games and the TV and the
    movies and all that. And we're trying to work through that.
        But the point I want to make is, my whole idea about politics is
    that we ought to run it the way we--our country--the way we would run--
    we would sensibly run a family or a business or any other common
    enterprise if you were part of a big charitable endeavor here in Dallas.
    I just think that if you look at the way the world works and how it's
    changing, all these trends toward globalization, all the threats that
    are out there from people who are trying to take advantage of
    globalization for their own ends--if you look at all the opportunities
    that are out there through scientific and technological advances, it
    does not make sense for us in this year to revert to the patterns that I
    have spent 7 years trying to break.
        Everybody has got--we're going to divide up sides now, and if you're
    a liberal, you've got to be over here; and if you're a conservative,
    you've got to be over here. And here's your line attacking them, and
    here's your line attacking the other. And let's don't worry about
    whether we ever get anything done or not. I think this is nuts. None of
    you live like this, and none of you have any role at all like this;
    except when you vote, we're supposed be like this.
        I have worked for 7 long years, with the help of people in my
    administration, people like you, to prove that we could have a unifying
    vision that would bring this country together, not in the middle of the
    road but in a dynamic movement forward.
        And look, 7 years ago we had a terrible economy, and now we've got
    the longest economic expansion in history. Seven years ago we had
    worsening social problems, and now we've got the lowest welfare and
    crime rates in 30 years and the lowest poverty rates in 20 years. This
    works, and it's not rocket science.
        And if somebody asked me, ``Well, what is the difference? What did
    you really do that was different as President,'' and you only get a
    sentence or two, I would not say our economic policy, although we have a
    good one, I think, and it's different; or our crime policy, although we
    have a good one, and it's different; or our welfare policy, although we
    have a good one, and it's different; or even our education policy, which
    is profoundly different from what was done before. I would say, I
    believe that everybody counts; everybody deserves a chance; and we all
    do better when we try to help each other. And I believe that we don't
    get anywhere by denying the challenges that are before us so that we can
    continue the comfortable arguments that we've been making in the past,
    instead of taking the uncomfortable but exhilarating march into the
    future.
        That's what this whole deal has been about, and that's what I tried
    to say in the State of the Union Address. Anybody that's over 30 years
    old--we've got a few people who aren't in this room, so they will have
    to learn this--but anybody that's over 30 years old can remember at
    least one time, if not more, in your life when you made a real bad
    mistake, not because times were tough but because times were so good,

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    you didn't think anything could go wrong. And so you just didn't want to
    do what you knew that you ought to do, keep planning, keep thinking
    about the future, make the tough decisions now. Better to be diverted.
    Better to lay down and rest. Better to just indulge yourself for the
    moment. Anybody who has lived any length of time has made a mistake
    under those circumstances.
        That is the question that is facing the United States today. And the
    consequences are far greater for the Nation than they are for any of us
    in our personal lives, because we have never had this kind of chance
    before. So what I tried to say at the State of the Union, what I want to
    say again to you, I hope you will hammer home to everyone you can talk
    about this year is that if there was ever a time when we ought to have
    an election that was a unifying referendum on our common future, it is
    this one, because the economy is in good shape; the society is in good
    shape; we've got a lot of confidence; we have relatively few internal
    crises or external threats. There is nothing to prevent us from saying,
    ``Okay, what's out there that's a big problem or a big opportunity? And
    let's go deal with it.''
        And if we do both, we will be able to literally make the future of
    our dreams for our children. That's what I think the Democrats ought to
    be saying this year. And that is what we represent. We shouldn't be
    denying that we ought to change. If somebody who was running for
    President said, ``Vote for me. I'll do just what Bill Clinton did,'' I'd
    vote against that person because we live in a dynamic time. But if
    somebody says, ``Vote for me. I'd like to go back to the way it was in
    1992 and before,'' I would certainly vote against that person.
    [Laughter]
        So the question is not whether we're going to change; it is how. So
    I think if you know the number of people over 65 is going to double, you
    have to meet the challenge of the aging of America. Putting it off will
    only make it more expensive and more painful. Today we can save Social
    Security for the baby boom generation, extend the life of Medicare, and
    add a prescription drug benefit for the 60 percent of the seniors that
    don't have access to one. We can do it today. We have the money, and we
    have the reforms to save money, and we ought to do it.
        If we know that education is more important than ever before and
    we've got more kids from more diverse backgrounds, we should act today
    to make sure all our kids start school ready to learn and graduate ready
    to succeed: Head Start, after-school programs, school repairs and
    building and modernizing schools, hooking them all up to the Internet,
    training the teachers better, the whole nine yards. There is no excuse
    for us not doing this.
        Test scores are up, graduation rates are up, college-going rates are
    up, but not near where they ought to be--but enough so that we know what
    to do. It would be different if we didn't know what to do. We know what
    to do now. We don't have an excuse. So to squander this moment in
    education would be a great error.
        In health care, I was always--one of my friends in the Congress came
    up to me the other day, and they said, ``You know, they told me, the
    insurance companies did, if I voted for your health care plan back in
    1994, the number of uninsured people would actually go up.'' And he
    said, ``They were absolutely right. I voted for it, and there's more
    uninsured people today than there was when I voted for it.'' [Laughter]
    So we had to find a different approach.
        The only social indicator, just about, that's worse today than it
    was in '93 when I took office is that there are more Americans who work
    for a living without health insurance. So we got this program, and I
    wish you would look at this. Some of you, by the way, who work with the
    agencies in Texas, we've got this program that will enroll 5 million
    kids in the Children's Health Insurance Program of lower income working
    people who can't get health insurance on the job. We've got 2 million
    enrolled now. We've got money for 3 million more. A lot of the ones who
    aren't enrolled are still in Texas--for a lot of good reasons. I'm not
    criticizing anybody, but we just need to go out there and get those kids
    in there.
        And I'd like the Congress to say their parents can be enrolled, too.
    And I'd like the Congress to let people between 55 and 65 who don't have
    insurance--it's the fastest growing group of uninsured people, people
    who take early retirement. They're not old enough for Medicare; they
    don't have insurance. I think they ought to be able to buy into
    Medicare, and we ought to give them a modest tax credit so it's
    affordable.
        Now, this is a big issue. We know that more and more parents will
    work. Either they will

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    be single parents working or two-parent households where both people
    will be working. If we know that and we know right now that for all of
    our success, America does less to support work and family--that is, to
    help working parents succeed as childrearers, which is the most
    important job anybody can have--if we know we don't do enough, we should
    do more.
        We know more and more families, as people live longer, are going to
    be taking care of aging or disabled relatives. We should do more. So I
    recommended to the Congress to increase our support for the child care
    tax credit, to give families a long-term care credit for caring for
    elderly or disabled loved ones, to give parents a tax deduction for
    college tuition up to $10,000 a year so we can open the doors of 4 years
    of college to all Americans. These are big things. Why? Because we know
    there will be big problems 10 or 20 or 30 years from now if we don't
    deal with them right now.
        And I could go on and on. I don't want to give you the whole State
    of the Union Address, but the point I'm trying to make is, the
    Democratic Party is now in a position to say, we have the resources.
    We've worked very hard to get rid of this deficit. We've worked very
    hard to pay the debt down. And we've now got the resources to deal with
    the aging of America, the challenge of the children and their education,
    the challenge of health care, the challenge of balancing work and
    family. We can do it and still get this country out of debt in 13 years
    and still provide extra incentives to places like where I was this
    morning, in the Rio Grande Valley, to give people extra incentives to
    invest in urban neighborhoods, rural areas, Indian reservations, where
    our prosperity hasn't reached.
        And why do we do all that? Because we believe everybody counts;
    everybody ought to have a chance; and we all do better when we help each
    other. That's what I believe. Nobody believes the Democrats anymore are
    weak on the budget, weak on the economy, weak on welfare, weak on crime.
    But we do believe that if somebody is trying, we ought to help them make
    the most of their lives. And we now have 7 years of evidence that that's
    not only a morally defensible thing to do, it not only makes us feel
    better, it actually works.
        So I will close with this, and I don't want to be maudlin, but I can
    pretty well say what I want to because I'm not running for anything.
    [Laughter] First time in over two decades I haven't been on the ballot
    for anything. Some of those guys on the other side may write me out just
    to--[laughter]--they may feel deprived that they're being cut out of one
    more chance to vote against me, but I'm not on the ballot. So I'm just
    telling you this as a citizen.
        Once before in my lifetime, I thought we had a chance to build the
    future of our dreams. In the last economic expansion--that was, until
    this month, the longest one in history; it ran from 1961 to 1969. I
    graduated from high school in 1964. And I think it's appropriate that I
    say this here. Most of the people who now look back at that period date
    the onset of American cynicism to the assassination of President
    Kennedy. That is dead wrong. That is wrong. The country was heartbroken,
    but they rallied. They united. They tried to lift themselves up. Lyndon
    Johnson did a good job of moving the country forward.
        And we believed, when I graduated from high school, that we were
    going to solve the civil rights crisis and the poverty problems of
    America through the orderly legislative process in Congress and working
    with people. We believed we were going to be able to stand against
    communism without having an unacceptable cost at home or around the
    world. We believed that we could do this.
        Four years later, I was at my college graduation, 2 days after
    Robert Kennedy was killed, 90 days after Martin Luther King was killed,
    94 days after Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run for reelection. The
    economy was beginning to shut down. The country was torn apart over
    Vietnam, and we had had riots in the streets of America. I have waited,
    as an American, over 30 years for my country to get another chance to
    build the future of our dreams for our children.
        Most of us get at least one second chance in life, and if we didn't,
    we'd be a long way behind where we are. Our country, in our lifetime,
    has this chance in even better circumstances than existed 30 years ago,
    with science and technology changes that are breathtaking. I believe
    that the young women here may very likely give birth to children who
    will have a life expectancy of 100 years. They will come home from the
    hospital with genetic roadmaps of their children's lives. And if they
    give birth to young daughters that have one of those two broken genes
    that are high predictors of

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    breast cancer, they'll be able to take gene therapies that will block
    them from ever developing in the first place. I believe that will
    happen.
        I believe the young people here will soon be driving automobiles
    that get probably 80, 90 miles a gallon, and within 5 years they'll be
    running on biofuels that will be the equivalent of getting 500 miles to
    the gallon because they require so little oil to produce. I believe
    we'll find out what's in those black holes in outer space. I believe
    we'll be able to keep people with diabetes, adult onset diabetes, alive
    and healthy to a normal lifespan. I believe that we will actually
    develop computers the size of a teardrop that use DNA for computer
    memories more powerful than any human chip, so that you will have tiny
    little computers with a computing power of all the super computers
    today.
        I believe all this is going to happen. I think we'll also have to
    deal with highly sophisticated terrorists and organized criminals and
    drugrunners that have access to chemical and biological and other
    weapons. There will always be enemies of civilization out there. But
    we'll do just fine if we understand that it still comes down to whether
    you believe everybody counts; everybody ought to have a chance; we're
    all going to do better if we work together.
        For 30 years I have waited for this moment. If I contributed at all
    to it, I am grateful. But as a citizen, I implore you, don't let America
    turn away from what works when we've finally got a chance to redeem the
    whole promise of our Nation.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Fred Baron and Lisa Blue; Jess Hay,
    former finance chair, Democratic National Committee, and his wife, Betty
    Jo; Mary Albert, widow of former Speaker of the House Carl B. Albert;
    Bernard (``B'') Rapoport, former chairman and chief executive officer,
    American Income Life Insurance Co., and his wife, Audre; Garry Mauro,
    former Texas land commissioner; Mayor Ron Kirk of Dallas; State Senator
    David Cain and his wife, Sally H. Cain, Region VI Director, Office of
    Intergovernmental and Interagency Affairs, Department of Education;
    Regina Montoya Coggins, candidate for Texas' Fifth Congressional
    District; Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic National
    Committee; and Jim Nicholson, chairman, Republican National Committee.