    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 9, 2000]
    [Pages 213-216]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Luncheon for Representative Ruben Hinojosa in McAllen
    February 9, 2000

        Thank you so much. Well, Congressman, I'm afraid now that this
    meeting has been opened to the press, if the list you just read is
    widely published, every other Member of Congress will be angry at me for
    not doing as well. [Laughter] I want to say a special thanks to your
    Congressman Ruben Hinojosa and Marty,
    and a happy birthday to his little daughter, Karen. He has really done a wonderful job for you. And he
    makes it easy to be helpful.
        I want to thank Zeke and Livia Reyna for their cohosting this event. And I want to thank

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    Alonzo and Yoli for
    having me back in their beautiful little home here. [Laughter] I want
    you to know I agreed to come to south Texas--the first time I wanted to
    come to the valley before I had seen this place. So the first time I
    came out of the goodness of my heart. The second time I came because I
    wanted to come to this place again. [Laughter]
        This is my third trip to the valley as President. And as the
    Congressman said, the Vice President has
    been here twice. Hillary was here
    recently. For all of you who were here I want to thank you, and thank
    you for giving her such a good hand. We had a great send-off on Sunday
    when she formally declared her campaign. And I think she's doing very
    well. I talked to her today, and if you can measure how well you're
    doing by how hard they attack you, which I've always thought was a
    pretty good measure--[laughter]--she's a cinch.
        So I wanted to say to all of you seriously, there are many friends I
    have in this crowd today--the county judges, Senator Truan, others--that I have known for a long time. I first
    came to south Texas and then to the Rio Grande Valley, where I literally
    fell in love with this place almost 30 years ago now, before a lot of
    you in this crowd were even born. When I was a very young man, I
    realized the special quality of the people here, the special quality of
    the community. And I always thought if I ever had a chance to help, I
    would do it. You have given me a chance to help, and it's been an honor
    to do so.
        I just want to say a few words as the only politician you'll hear
    from this year who is not running for anything. [Laughter] I want to
    talk to you not just as a President but as a citizen of this country.
    When I came here to this community on the last night of my campaign in
    1992, some of you were there, and there was a great feeling of
    excitement. And we had a huge voter turnout the next day, and the Vice
    President and I were given a strong victory and a mandate to go in and
    change the direction of our country. We said then, we wanted to put the
    American people first, not Washington politics. We wanted opportunity
    for every responsible citizen. We wanted a community of all Americans,
    and we believed that Government was not the problem or the solution, but
    Government belonged to the people, and it was the job of Government to
    create the conditions and give people the tools that they need to solve
    their own problems and live their own dreams. And we've worked hard on
    that for 7 years now.
        When I was here on that night in 1992, we had a stagnant economy and
    high unemployment. Today, we have the longest economic expansion in
    history, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest Hispanic-
    and African-American unemployment rates ever recorded, and the lowest
    poverty rates in more than 20 years, the lowest female unemployment rate
    in over 40 years. We have tried to do what we said we would do.
        Our society was deeply divided. There was a riot in Los Angeles that
    year and great discontent everywhere. Today, we have the lowest crime
    rates in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, over 2 million
    children lifted out of poverty, almost 7 million people off the welfare
    rolls. We have created empowerment zones around the country in places
    like the Rio Grande Valley to give people the chance to attract economic
    investment. The college-going rate is up by about 10 percent. The
    country is moving in the right direction.
        And as I said, as the person you'll hear from this year who is not
    running for office, the great question that the American people have to
    answer when they vote for Congress, for Senator, for President, is: Now,
    what? Now, what? What are we going to do with this truly magic moment?
    Every person in this audience today who is over 30 years old can
    remember some time in your life when you made a mistake because you
    thought things were going so well, you didn't have to think; you didn't
    have to work; you didn't have to plan; and there was no consequence for
    slacking up.
        Every person here who has lived long enough can remember when you
    made a personal, a family, or a business mistake because things seemed
    to be so good that you really didn't have to do what we should all be
    doing every day with our lives, trying to get better, trying to do more,
    trying always to think about tomorrow.
        Now, what I want to say to you is the last time America had these
    conditions was in the longest economic expansion in history before this
    one, between 1961 and 1969. When I graduated from high school in 1964,
    we had high growth, low unemployment; we were on the way to passing
    civil rights legislation; everybody thought we would be able to resolve
    a lot of

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    those difficult issues in the Congress in debate. The country had been
    heartbroken by President Kennedy's assassination, but we had united
    behind President Johnson, and he had done a masterful job of leading us
    and trying to pass legislation through the Congress, and everybody
    thought it was going to go on forever.
        Within 4 years, we had riots in the streets; the country was deeply
    divided over Vietnam; President Johnson announced he wouldn't run for
    reelection; and Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were killed. And
    in the Presidential election of 1968, a deeply troubled and divided
    people voted for someone who said he represented the Silent Majority,
    which is another way of saying, ``This country is divided between `us'
    and `them.' I'm with `us,' and you don't want `them.'''
        And we have labored under that for 30 years. And for 7 years, I've
    been trying to turn this around. And I feel now, the country is moving
    in the right direction. But I want to tell you this: I'm not running for
    anything. As an American, I have been waiting for more than 30 years for
    my country to have the ability for all of us to join together, hand in
    hand, and build the future of our dreams for our children. That's what
    this is about. And we dare not blow this opportunity.
        You know, some people in life don't get a second chance, and those
    of us who do have to be grateful for it. Now, our whole country has been
    given a second chance, under even better conditions than existed more
    than 30 years ago before all the wheels ran off.
        So I say to you, when I come down here and talk to people about how
    we can make the Rio Grande Valley an oasis of opportunity, to me that's
    part of the long-term challenge of America. We should look at every
    place in America where there is too much poverty and too much
    unemployment and say, ``If we can't bring economic opportunity to these
    places now, when will we ever be able to do it?'' So every place in
    America that has not fully participated in this recovery should have
    dramatic incentives for people to invest there, to create jobs there, to
    put people to work there, to give people a chance to live their dreams
    there.
        Every place in America and all the people in America that don't have
    access to health care--we should do more to provide more people access
    to health care, until everybody has it.
        That's why I said in the State of the Union I wanted to see another
    3 million children enrolled in our health insurance program and over 5
    million parents included in it. I want people, who are over 55 but not
    old enough to be on Medicare, who lose their health insurance, to be
    able to buy into Medicare. And I think they ought to have a tax credit
    so they can afford to do it, because we have to keep moving forward in
    health care.
        We have to keep moving forward in education. That's why I asked the
    Congress to put another billion dollars in Head Start and to provide
    enough funds for every troubled school in this country to give after-
    school or summer school programs to the kids who need it. That's why I
    want the Congress to provide enough money to repair 5,000 schools a year
    for the next 5 years and to build and modernize 6,000 more so all of our
    kids will have a chance to get a world-class education.
        And that's why I have worked so hard to help people balance the
    demands of raising their children and doing their work. That's why I
    want to increase the child care tax credit, why I want to pass an
    increase in the minimum wage, why I want to give families a $3,000 tax
    credit to care for an aging parent or a disabled member of the family--
    one of the biggest problems in America today--why I think we ought to be
    proud of the fact that we've opened at least 2 years of college to
    everybody with these HOPE scholarship tax credits. But I have asked the
    Congress to give the American people a tax deduction for college tuition
    at a 28 percent rate, even if you're in the 15 percent income tax
    bracket, up to $10,000. That would guarantee that everybody in America
    could afford to go to 4 years of college if they did the work and
    learned the things they need to learn to go.
        These are important things that will bring us together. Now, let me
    just say one thing in closing. If you asked me to summarize what it is
    we did that was different over the last 7 years that worked, I could
    talk about our economic policy, which was different. We got rid of the
    deficit, and now I want to pay us out of debt for the first time since
    1835, and if we do that, all the kids here will have low interest rates
    and a strong economy. We had a different welfare reform policy. We said,
    ``Able-bodied people have to work, but we're going to take care of the
    kids. We're not going

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    to punish them.'' We had a different crime policy. We said we ought to
    take--put more police on the street and take guns out of the hands of
    criminals.
        But the most important thing we did was to say, ``We've got a
    different philosophy. We don't want to divide the American people
    anymore. We believe everybody counts; everybody should have a chance;
    we'll all do better individually if we try to help each other do better
    together.''
        So if someone came to me tonight and said, ``I am the angel sent
    from the good Lord, and even though you're having a good time being
    President, you can't finish your term. This is your last day, but I'll
    be a genie, you can have one wish,'' it would not be for all the things
    I talked to you about. It would be to create one America. It would be to
    create a climate in America where we genuinely respected one another,
    where we were genuinely committed to giving one another a chance.
        I see our former attorney general, Mr. Morales, back there. Is there life after politics, Dan? [Laughter]
    I hope that in my lifetime we will see a Hispanic-American Governor of
    Texas, President of the United States, on the Supreme Court, doing all
    these things. I hope that will be true of all the ethnic groups that are
    coming into our country and enriching us.
        But more important than that, even, I hope that all of our children
    will have a chance to define and live their dreams, whatever they are.
    Your Congressman is an unbelievably effective public servant. And it's
    not just because he can worry me to death until I finally say yes; it's
    because he proceeds from the right philosophy. Everybody counts.
    Everybody should have a chance. We'll all do better when we help each
    other. It's worked pretty well for America.
        I just want to ask you from the bottom of my heart--you know how I
    feel about Vice President Gore, you know
    what he's done here in the empowerment zone and other things--but the
    main thing I want you to think about, for all of us, what happens to us
    individually is not as important as the direction the country takes. And
    I have fought very, very hard to keep the poison and the division and
    the animosity and the Washington political games to a minimum in terms
    of their ability to impact you and interfere with what we were all
    trying to do together.
        Now it's up to you again. And all these elections, from the
    Presidency to the Senate and Congress races, the governorships, all
    these elections, they're like giant job interviews. And you have to
    decide not only who to hire but what are they going to do. And just
    remember, as they used to tell me when I was a kid growing up in
    Arkansas: When you see a turtle on a fencepost, chances are it didn't
    get there by accident. [Laughter]
        Here we are. It didn't happen by accident. And we will never forgive
    ourselves if we blow this opportunity. So instead of relaxing, we should
    bear down and lift our sights and open our hearts and hands and make
    this election a time when we seize our deepest, fondest hopes and our
    biggest dreams for our children.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Representative Hinojosa's wife, Martha Lopez
    Hinojosa, and their daughter Karen; luncheon hosts Zeke and Livia Reyna
    and Alonzo and Yoli Cantu; Texas State Senator Carlos Truan; and former
    Texas State Attorney General Dan Morales.