    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 30, 2000]
    [Pages 583-585]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

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

        Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you for coming, all of you.
        And I wanted to say a special word of appreciation to all of our
    musicians here. Thank you for playing tonight. You did such a wonderful
    job. And I want to thank Luther Vandross.
    We've never had a conversation about ``Evergreen,'' but I think it's the
    best love song of the last 25 years. [Laughter] And so I was very happy
    when he sang it tonight.
        I want to thank all of you for coming here. And I will be quite
    brief, because I want to spend time visiting with you and letting you
    say whatever you want to say to me or ask questions or whatever.
        But you know, I'm not running for anything this year. [Laughter] And
    most days, I'm okay about it. I am campaigning to become a member of the
    Senate spouses club, however. [Laughter] And I'm feeling better about
    that.
        But I want to say just a couple things to you, to amplify what my
    good friend Ed Rendell said. When I came to Washington in January of
    1993, our country was, I thought, in quite a bit of trouble. We had high
    unemployment. We had high interest rates. We had quadrupled the debt of
    the country in 4 years. We had no real, serious technology policy, no
    real, serious environmental policy, no real, serious long-term economic
    policy. We certainly had no health care policy.
        And our elections were basically--I thought it almost turned into
    caricature affairs, where basically for several years, even decades, the
    Republicans had succeeded in convincing enough Americans that the
    Democrats were weak on defense, weak on the economy, weak on the budget,
    weak on welfare, weak on crime, weak on this, that, and the other thing.
    We couldn't be trusted with the White House. And the wheels had to
    practically come off before any of us could win. And I happened to be
    standing there when the wheels ran off.
        It wasn't quite that simple. But I guess what I would like to say to
    you is that all of you here in your different ways have been immensely
    successful, or you wouldn't be here tonight. All of you also are capable
    of looking beyond your immediate self-interest, or you wouldn't be here
    tonight, because the other guys would give you a bigger tax cut quicker.
    And yet you're here.
        So the first thing I want to say to you is that all these elections
    are for people to hold jobs. They're not to posture. They're to hold
    jobs. It matters what your vision of the country is. It matters what
    your vision of the job is. It matters what you know and how you go about
    your business and whether you care. In other words, it's a job, the
    Presidency.
        You know, I want Al Gore to be elected
    because I know him better than anybody in this room and most people in
    the world. And I think he's a good man, and I know he's a courageous
    person. And I'm devoted to him, and he's been loyal to me. Yes, that's
    all true. But I also want him to be elected because I think he
    understands the future and has not only the ideas but the experience and
    the work habits to get us there. This is a job. It's not a place just of
    rhetorical or political posturing.
        And the same thing is true of the Congress. And I go about doing as
    much work as I can to try to help all these folks raise enough money to
    be competitive. They're all going to be outspent. You know, our
    candidate for President is going to be
    outspent. Hillary's going to be
    outspent. They're all, no matter how much money we raise, they're all
    going to be outspent.
        But in 1998, we were outspent by $100 million, and we gained seats
    in the House of Representatives in the sixth year of a President's

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    term for the first time since 1822. Why? Because we had ideas, we had a
    message. People thought we were interested in them, and they thought the
    Republicans were interested in themselves and playing Washington power
    games. And it didn't matter that they had more money; all that mattered
    was, we had enough.
        So I thank you for being here. But I hope that in addition to being
    here, you'll be able to manifest this commitment throughout this year.
    Because this is a profoundly important election, this millennial
    election. And there are real differences between us. The differences
    that we have, from our nominees for President to the nominees for
    Congress, including the big Senate race here in New York, over the
    budget alone, should determine the outcome of the election.
        We want a tax cut, all right, but we think it ought to be small
    enough and targeted enough to help families like those who served us
    tonight and entertained us tonight to raise their kids, provide long-
    term care for their parents, get a tax deduction for college tuition,
    afford better child care; induce people like you to invest your money in
    poor areas in America so everybody can be a part of this economic
    recovery and still have enough money left over to pay this country out
    of debt for the first time since 1835; to save Social Security and
    Medicare when all the baby boomers retire and there will only be two
    people working for every one person retired; to invest in world-class
    education and stop investing in things that don't work; to make major
    commitments to science and technology and to basic research.
        So many of you tonight are here because of your achievements in
    health care or in the information revolution, the telecommunications
    revolution, or a combination of both. And I think you share my
    conviction that we need to continue basic research to enable us to build
    a new energy future for America. This is a huge deal. You know, this
    global warming is not a canard. It's not a false threat. It's a reality.
    And the good news is that for the last several years, it is no longer
    true that you have to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to
    grow an economy. In fact, if we were more diligent about building a
    different energy future, we'd be generating even more jobs, by far. And
    I won't bore you with a long wonkish solution why, but if you want to
    talk about it, I'd be glad to. It is stunning to me, the prospects that
    we have.
        You know, in a few weeks I'll have the privilege of announcing that
    the sequencing of the human genome has been completed. What this means
    is that, I think, within 10 years the practice of medicine will be
    totally unrecognizable, as we know it. And a lot of you who have been on
    the forefront of trying to get us to live healthier lifestyles and take
    more preventive action, it will be a joyous treasure trove of
    opportunity that will lead to a lengthening of our lives and the quality
    of life.
        So what I'm trying to say to you is, there's big, big opportunities
    out there. But there are not big guarantees out there. Are we going to
    continue this economic policy that has brought us to this point and
    continue to pay our debt down and continue to be responsible, or not?
    Are we going to invest in education and health care, and science and
    technology, and a different energy future, or not?
        Are we going to assume our responsibilities around the world to try
    to take the world away from a dangerous future of the proliferation of
    weapons of mass destruction? Or are we going to agree with the
    Republican Senate, their Presidential nominee, and their nominee here,
    that we shouldn't adopt the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a historic
    abandonment by the Republican Party of their normal bipartisan
    commitment to disarmament? These are big questions.
        So I hope that you will embrace this. You know, a lot of you here
    who have done very well are younger than I am by a good stretch. So I
    just want to--I'll close with this story. I try to tell this story every
    time I have a meeting like this.
        We celebrated in February the longest economic expansion in American
    history--21 million new jobs, a 30-year low in unemployment, a 30-year
    low in welfare, a 20-year low in poverty, a 25-year low in crime. And I
    was happy as a clam. But I--I always try to study the history of my
    country, as well as to think about the future. So I--we had the Council
    of Economic Advisers in there, and I said, ``Well, when was the last
    longest expansion in American history?'' And they said, ``Mr. President,
    it was the 1960's, 1961 to 1969.''
        So for those of you who are my age or older, take a walk down memory
    lane. And for those of you who are younger than me, listen to this. This
    is a magical moment of opportunity in this

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    country. And most of you are completely immersed in the future and
    imagining all these possibilities. And so am I.
        But when the last longest economic expansion occurred in the 1960's,
    I can tell you--I graduated from high school in 1964--we thought it
    would go on forever, and we thought it was on automatic. We thought--we
    had low inflation. We had low unemployment. We had high growth. We had a
    civil rights challenge, but we thought it would be solved in the
    Congress and the courts, not in the street. We thought we would win the
    cold war because of our innate and self-evident superiority and never
    dreamed the country would be divided over Vietnam. We thought it would
    just happen--1964, when I finished high school.
        Within 2 years, there were riots in the streets over civil rights.
    Within 4 years, 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 over the war in Vietnam.
        A couple months later, President Nixon was elected on a campaign of
    representing the Silent Majority, which means if you weren't for him,
    you were in the loud minority, beginning the construct we saw all the
    way through the 1980's, right to the '92 election, to the '96 election;
    that you will see in 2000, where the other party tries to divide the
    American people between ``us'' versus ``them.'' And I'm supposed to be
    one of ``them'' because I believe things like we shouldn't discriminate
    against gay people, if they're good, God-fearing, taxpaying citizens and
    they show up and do their duty. I'm for hate crimes legislation. I'm for
    the employment nondiscrimination legislation. So that makes me one of
    ``them'' instead of one of ``us''? I don't think so.
        But that was the portrait of what happened between 1964 and 1968.
    And within 4 months after that, the longest expansion in American
    history was history.
        And what I want you to know, you young people here, is, I have
    waited for 35 years for my country to have the chance to build the
    future of our dreams for our children. And I am determined to see the
    politics of America focused on, how can we make the most of the
    sequencing of the human genome? How can we build a different energy
    future? How can we bring economic opportunity to the people and places
    that have been left behind? How can we be a force for peace and
    prosperity and unity in troubled places around the world? How can we
    build one America? That's what I think politics is about.
        If somebody asks you tomorrow morning why you were here tonight, I
    hope you'll give them that answer. This is the best chance you will ever
    have to build the future of your dreams for your children.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:30 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In
    his remarks, he referred to Mark Fox and Jeffrey Arnold, dinner co-
    hosts; musician Luther Vandross; Edward G. Rendell, general chair,
    Democratic National Committee; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; and Mayor
    Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City.