    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 19, 2000]
    [Pages 985-991]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner in Chicago,
    Illinois
    May 19, 2000

        Thank you very much. Senator Durbin,
    thank you for those wonderful remarks and for your friendship. I want to
    begin by joining everyone else in thanking Fredand Ken for opening their beautiful
    home. I don't know what to make of Torricelli's remark about the concrete. [Laughter] Since I'm the only
    guy here that's not running for anything, I'm probably the only person
    to get away with cracking a joke about it, but I'm going to let it go,
    anyway. [Laughter]
        I will say this, Senator Torricelli, in your shameless pander to Mayor Daley--[laughter]--referring to Chicago as the greatest
    city in America, I took the precaution of sending a note to the people
    who tape all my remarks to make sure we delete that so it can't be
    played in Newark the next time you run for election. [Laughter] And I
    might say, I got the mayor to approve of that before I did it.
    [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you, I am so proud to be here with these
    members of our Senate caucus and with our candidate. I want to thank all
    the host committee, not just Fred and Ken but Joe and Yvonne, Lou and Bette. And I thank you, Joe Cari, for the work you do for our party every day. I could talk
    all night long just about the people who have been introduced tonight.
        Tom Daschle is an extraordinary leader
    and one of the best people I think I've ever known. I'll never forget
    going to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota with him. The
    night before we went to visit Mount Rushmore, and I told him, I said,
    ``Tom, you win six Senate seats and we'll put your face up there, too.''
    [Laughter]
        Senator Torricelli has really
    been--you can tell just from the way he spoke up here tonight that he's
    so laid back and passive, it's amazing--[laughter]. I can't thank him
    enough for pushing all this.
        I thank my good friend Carl Levin, who's here
    from Michigan, one of the States where I think we'll win a Senate seat,
    and he'll have a genuine partner after this election. And Senator
    Bayh, who, like me, was a Governor, and we served
    together many years. I was once the youngest Governor in America; then
    he got elected. [Laughter] I've spent the last 10 years overcoming my
    resentment--[laughter]--and I've about got it done.
        And my friend Tom Harkin. You know, it's
    funny to think, sometimes when people are in elections together, as we
    were in 1992, you never know how it comes out. And I really--all my life
    I will think one of the best things

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    about my campaign in 1992 was that I had the honor of running with Tom
    Harkin. He is a magnificent human being, and I love him like a brother.
    And he has been kind and generous and steadfast to me from the moment
    that election was over, and I will never forget it. And I thank you,
    sir.
        I want to thank Speaker Madigan for
    helping all these people--what most State Governments think of the
    interior branch of our national system of government. And I, too, want
    to thank Mayor Daley for his friendship and
    support, for letting me borrow his brother
    to be Commerce Secretary. [Laughter]
        And I want to thank Tom Carper for
    running for the Senate. Tom Carper and I have been friends for many
    years. When I was a Governor and he was in the House, we worked on the
    first round of serious welfare reform, years and years ago--12 years ago
    now. And I can tell you--Senator Bayh, who also
    served with him, would echo this--there is not a more respected Governor
    in the United States than Tom Carper. He has a fabulous record in
    education and a terrific record in all things related to family policy.
        One of the things I sought to do in '92 was to prove that the
    Democratic Party was both pro-work and pro-family. And when I talk about
    what we've tried to achieve around the country, Governor Carper is exhibit A. And he's generally thought to be the
    most likely Democratic pickup in the entire United States, not because
    he has a weak opponent--his opponent is
    the distinguished chairman of the Senate Finance Committee--but because
    he is such a good man and such a great leader. And I thank you for
    running. We need you, and I'm going to be glad when you get there.
        I was making a list here to give you some feel for this. If we pick
    up six House seats, we win the House. And because there are more House
    Members, it's generally considered easier to do than to pick up six
    Senate seats. But I think it's quite likely. There are eight or nine
    States in which we have a legitimate chance of winning a Senate seat. I
    believe there are probably only two States in which the Republicans--
    given what I think will be a highly competitive election for President--
    will have a chance to win. And if I were a betting person, I would bet
    that they would not pick up more than one. So this is a realistic
    possibility.
        You heard them talking about the stakes, and they couldn't be
    clearer, whether it comes to confirming judges or ratifying foreign
    policy decisions. I'll just give you one example. Normally, in national
    elections, foreign policy doesn't play such a big role if both
    candidates for President, for example, cross some threshold of
    acceptability.
        But there is--I'm grateful, for example, that both the Vice
    President and Governor Bush supported my position on China and supported the position
    of the Senate Democrats on continuing our mission in Kosovo. But there
    is an issue in which the majority of Senate Republicans and the
    Presidential nominee apparently are in agreement that, I think, has such
    enormous consequences for the American people that I hope it will be
    hotly debated and thoroughly debated in this election. And that is
    whether we should continue our historic commitment to reducing the
    nuclear threat.
        When the Senate voted to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
    it sent a shock wave through the world. No one could believe that
    America, which had consistently led the way, through Republican and
    Democrat administrations alike, was walking away from a test ban treaty
    which I was the first head of state in the world to sign. And the
    conventional quick analysis was, well, this is all just politics, you
    know, it's election year--or it was almost election year. They just
    wanted to kind of pop Bill Clinton.
        If you talk to these Senators here, they will tell you a different
    story. They do not believe in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And
    apparently, that is going to be the position of their nominee and their
    platform. And I can just tell you that this is a big deal.
        I have spent a lot of time in the last 7\1/2\ years trying to get an
    indefinite extension of the treaty which commits countries that sign it
    not to proliferate nuclear weapons or materials which can be used to
    make nuclear weapons; trying to get the Chemical Weapons Convention
    ratified; trying to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. I
    believe that in the years ahead, the threat of a nuclear war which hung
    over us in the cold war between Russia and the United States will
    probably continue to abate, unless something really dumb is done. But
    there will be more challenges from other countries who think, ``Well, we
    need nuclear weapons to prove we are somebody, or because

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    there is somebody we feel threatened by and they're trying to develop
    it.'' And I have worked with this enough now to know that unless you
    have very, very sophisticated systems, the chance of an accidental
    launch is not insignificant, and the chance that conflicts between
    countries will spin out of control is always there. One of the reasons I
    went to India and Pakistan was to try to do whatever I could to minimize
    the chances that they would allow their conflict to escalate to the
    point when somebody, on impulse or fear, might launch a nuclear weapon.
    So this is a huge issue.
        And I guess one of the things--people always ask me, ``What have you
    learned as President?'' One of the things I've learned out of many is
    that the Senate matters even more than I thought it did when I showed up
    in Washington. It really matters, every single vote. And one of the
    things that I hope will happen this year--if you'll forgive me, I won't
    give you a whoop-de-do speech tonight, because I know I'm preaching to
    the saved, as we say at home. [Laughter] But one of the things that I
    hope will happen this year is that we will actually have an honest
    debate on the future of America and that we'll ask the right question.
    And I think the right question is, what are we going to do with this
    magic moment of prosperity and improvement in our social condition and,
    at least in this moment, the absence of a searing domestic crisis or
    external threat?
        And I believe the character of a nation and the wisdom and judgment
    of a nation can be tested just as much at a time like this as in
    adversity. You know, if we all had our backs against the wall, we'd know
    what to do. Now we have to decide, and we have the option not to decide
    and just drift. It would be a terrible mistake. So I hope you will think
    about that.
        And I would just like to just very briefly say a couple of things
    about it. When I was running for President in 1992, and beginning in
    '91, I knew I had to make a good showing in Illinois because Illinois
    and Michigan were the first big elections after Super Tuesday. Back
    then, Super Tuesday was a southern deal, and I figured I'd do pretty
    well. And it was, like, not a fair fight, and so I did pretty well,
    because I was the only guy from my part of the country running. And I'd
    been hanging around down there a long time. [Laughter]
        So I came to Illinois, and I came to Chicago, which is my wife's
    hometown. And I sought out a lot of friends I had here, mostly in the
    African-American community, who were born in Arkansas. There were more
    here than anybody knew. I might have gotten the nomination uncontested
    if anybody knew how many African-Americans in Illinois were born in
    Arkansas. And a lot of you helped me. So I feel a special gratitude to
    you.
        And I remember when President* Bush referred to me as the Governor
    of a small southern State. You know, I was so naive, I thought it was a
    compliment. [Laughter] And I still do.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        *White House correction.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        But to be fair, we knew what the deal was then. The country was in
    trouble. The economy was down; the deficit was exploding; we quadrupled
    the debt in 12 years. As the Vice President used to say on the campaign
    trail, ``Everything that should be down was up; everything that should
    be up was down.'' And the people took a chance on me because they knew
    we had to do something, and I seemed like I had thought about it. And I
    had.
        Now, the test this year is more difficult, because we have to decide
    what to do with our prosperity. And there's not a person in this room
    tonight over 30 years of age that hasn't made at least one mistake in
    your life not because things were going so badly but because things were
    going well in your life, and you didn't think you had to concentrate.
    There is not a person here that can't recall at least some personal or
    business error you made at some point in your life, large or small,
    because you thought there were no consequences to the moment.
        Now, I'm not running for anything, but I can tell you something.
    There is a big consequence to this moment, because we have not had a
    chance like this to build a future of our dreams for our kids in a long
    time. And I'd like to see this election run on the premise that we're
    not going to try to tear everybody down, that both the candidates for
    President are honorable and mean what they say. But they have to mean
    everything they say. You've got to take what you said in the primary and
    what you said in the general--[laughter]--but they mean what they say.
        And if you look at it, it's pretty clear what the choices are. There
    is a huge difference in economic policy, which the Senate will have to

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    vote on. We favor--starting with our nominee, the Vice President, all the way down the line--an economic program
    that has a tax cut for the American people targeted to what we need, but
    one that we can afford and still pay the debt down and have enough money
    to invest in children and education and science and technology and the
    things we need to be doing as a country.
        And I think that's important, because paying the debt down is one
    reason that interest rates and inflation haven't exploded as we have the
    longest economic expansion in history. And I think it's progressive
    social policy to keep getting this country out of debt because it keeps
    interest rates lower and spreads economic benefits.
        They favor a tax cut that will exceed a trillion dollars over 10
    years. And if you put that with their Social Security proposal, which
    would cost another $800 billion, and their defense proposals, which are
    about, I don't know, probably $200 billion more than ours, it means the
    country will go back into debt. And you have to assume--again, we don't
    have to criticize people; just assume everybody is honorable and they
    intend to do what they say.
        So you have to decide whether you would like to go back to a version
    of the economic policy that existed before I took office, or whether you
    would like to continue to change but to build on what has produced the
    prosperity the last 8 years. This is a huge decision. And no amount of
    papering it over and talking about it can obscure the fact that every
    time an American votes for Congress, for Senate, or for President, that
    is one of the decisions that that voter is making. And you need to talk
    about that.
        We're making decisions about what to do with the aging of America
    and basically, how to deal with Medicare and Social Security when all
    the baby boomers retire and there are only two people working for every
    one person drawing funds out of those programs. We believe that we can
    make Medicare more competitive, but we're not willing to bankrupt the
    hospitals and the other providers, and we think there ought to be a
    prescription drug benefit for seniors and that every senior that needs
    it ought to be able to buy it. That's what we believe.
        They believe that we should cut the benefit off at 150 percent of
    poverty. Now, the problem with doing that is that half the seniors that
    need it make more money than that. And if you're living on $15,000 a
    year--which is more than 150 percent of poverty--and you get $300, $400,
    $500 drug bills a month to stay alive, pretty soon you've got to decide
    whether you want to eat or have your drugs. So there's a difference
    there.
        On Social Security, it would take me all night long to go through
    the differences; but let me tell you, I've spent years studying this.
    There is a problem there. The system--if we don't do anything, the
    system will run out of money in about 37 years. And it will start
    costing us more before that, in terms of foregone opportunities. And
    that's in spite of the fact that ever since 1983, we've been collecting
    more in Social Security than we're paying out.
        Now, they believe the system could be partially privatized because
    the markets outperform Government bonds and give everybody back 2
    percent of their payroll to invest if they're under a certain age,
    guarantee everybody else the benefits in the conventional system. Sounds
    reasonable. They say, ``Well, we want to get higher rates of return, and
    we want to let ordinary people, including poor people paying Social
    Security, have a chance to create wealth.''
        I think that's important; those objectives are worthy. Here's the
    problem: If you do that, the system is going to run out of money in 2037
    anyway; if you start taking out more money right now, you have to put in
    $800 million, at least, over the next 10 years, to keep it from going
    broke just to pay the people you promised to pay. And if you put that
    with a $1.3 trillion tax cut, you're broke again; the Government is
    broke again; we're back in trouble again.
        What we believe is--at least I think most of these Senators do--and
    I know what the Vice President believes is,
    since the Social Security surplus that's been coming in since '83, that
    you've paid in your taxes, is responsible for a lot of our decline in
    the debt, we ought to take that portion of our declining interest rate
    requirements caused by your Social Security taxes and put the savings
    into the Trust Fund. That will take it out to 2057, beyond the life of
    the baby boom generation.
        Then I believe that there are ways, without having the Government
    interfere with the market, to get the benefits of the markets for the
    Trust Fund. And what we favor--it's much cheaper than their costs--is
    letting the Government or having the Government help lower income people
    have an additional IRA, or I call

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    it a USA savings account, to invest however they want, to get into the
    market, but if they lose the money, they'll still have the Social
    Security.
        Now, you have to decide. The American people have to decide. This is
    a worthy debate, and it ought to be held.
        If you look at education, everybody says they're for education now.
    We think we ought to be modernizing school facilities all over America
    like Mayor Daley is here in Chicago. We
    think we ought to have a no-social-promotion policy and that every kid
    who needs to get pre-school should get it, and every child who needs to
    be in an after-school program should have it. And we ought to have a
    strategy for turning around or shutting down failing schools, and that's
    what we ought to fund.
        They say they're for all that, but we shouldn't really require
    anybody to do it when we give them Federal money. That's like me trying
    to be America's principal. You have to decide whether you think we're
    right or they're right. All I know is--I'll tell you this one little
    story.
        In 1996 I got a law through Congress saying that every State had to
    identify its failing schools and develop a strategy for turning them
    around. Kentucky adopted the most aggressive program to do it. I went to
    one of those schools in Owensboro, Kentucky, 2 weeks ago. Two-thirds of
    the kids were on free or reduced lunches. Here is what has happened
    since '96--and, I might say, they also got some of the teachers the
    Democrats fought for, to make smaller classes.
        In '96 there were 12 percent of the kids reading at or above grade
    level; today, 57 percent are. There were 5 percent of the kids doing
    math at or above grade level; today, 70 percent are. There were zero
    percent of the kids doing science at or above grade level; today, 64
    percent are. That grade school ranked 18th in the entire State of
    Kentucky, with two-thirds of the kids on free or reduced lunches, and it
    was an absolute failure 4 years ago. Ten of the 20 schools in the State
    of Kentucky that are highest rated have half or more of their kids
    eligible for free or reduced lunches. Race, income, and region are not
    destiny if you have high standards in education. That's what we believe.
    Our position works. So you have to decide which one you agree with.
        I think we ought to have HMO reform on Patients' Bill of Rights. I
    saw what the Illinois Supreme Court did the other day. I don't think we
    ought to have to wait for that. I think that people ought to have a
    right to see a specialist if they need it. They ought to have a right to
    go to the nearest emergency room. And I've been a supporter of managed
    care, and I remain a supporter of managed care. But I think we ought to
    pass a Patients' Bill of Rights, and they don't.
        I think we ought to raise the minimum wage, and they don't--and so
    does our crowd here. And I think we ought to do more things to spread
    the benefits of this economic revolution of ours to people in places
    that have been left behind. And we may or may not get a bipartisan
    agreement on that. But these are big issues.
        I could go through a lot more. I'll just mention one or two more. I
    think that--if you ask me what one thing I wanted for America is, if I
    tonight got a vision from the good Lord, and I got a message that I had
    to leave the Earth tomorrow morning, and that I could not finish my
    term, but I could have one wish--not like a genie with three, just one--
    I would wish for everything to be done in this country that would heal
    all the divides of race, of religion, sexual orientation. That's why
    we're for hate crimes legislation, why we're for employment
    nondiscrimination legislation. And they're against it. And I think
    that's really important.
        You know, this is a smart country. Look at all you folks. Most of
    you'd do well, unless somebody put you in jail or locked you in a
    closet. [Laughter] This is a great country. And if we can figure out a
    way to celebrate our diversity and reaffirm our common humanity as even
    more important, we're going to do fine. So this is a big difference;
    these are just a few things.
        On the environment, they think I did the wrong thing to set aside 43
    million acres, roadless acres, in the national forests. The Audubon
    Society says it's maybe the most important conservation move in 50
    years. I think if they have the White House and the Congress, they'll
    reverse it next year, early next year. One of you mentioned it to me
    when you were going through the line tonight. You ask every Senator
    here--don't take my word for this--we have fought for cleaner air,
    cleaner water, more land set aside; we have proved you can grow the
    economy and improve the environment. And if they have the Government,
    they will reverse

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    a lot of our environmental gains. And I think this is important to point
    out.
        So if people ask you tomorrow why you showed up here tonight--and
    most of you have never met Tom Carper
    before--tell them you understand this: This is an election about what
    we're going to do with this great and good moment, and you're determined
    to build a future of your dreams for your child and for everybody's
    children.
        The last thing I'd like to say is, I think it's very important that
    we win the White House, and I think we will. But I think you, who have
    come here, there are some things that even you need to be reminded of
    about Vice President Gore. First of all, I
    am something of an amateur historian of the Presidency. And I've spent a
    lot of time since I've been President reading books not only about all
    the Presidents that we all are interested in but some you probably don't
    know much about, to try to get a full, rich picture of the history of
    America.
        And I'm interested in the institution of the Vice Presidency. In the
    19th century nobody paid any attention to it, in spite of the fact that
    one of our Presidents, William Henry Harrison, died a month after he
    took office; Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; Benjamin Harrison was
    shot and died after 9 months of poor medical care. And still nobody paid
    any attention. If you were to come visit me in the Residence of the
    White House and I took you to my office, you'd see that I work on
    Ulysses Grant's Cabinet table. And there are eight drawers in this
    table--one for the President, one for the seven Cabinet members; no
    drawer for the Vice President. Nobody paid any attention to it.
        William McKinley got assassinated; he was shot. And we were just
    lucky that Theodore Roosevelt was a great President. Warren Harding had
    a stroke. Calvin Coolidge worked out okay. [Laughter] Not great, but
    okay. [Laughter] But it didn't have anything to do with somebody
    thinking about whether he should be President. And Franklin Roosevelt,
    whom I think along with Lincoln were our two greatest Presidents, I
    admire him more than anything. But we're just lucky Harry Truman was a
    very great President. He did not know about the atomic bomb when he
    became President.
        Now, what's all this got to do with this? President Eisenhower and
    President Kennedy took it more seriously and gave more to Richard Nixon
    and Lyndon Johnson to do, and they had more responsibility than their
    predecessors. Then when Jimmy Carter appointed Walter Mondale, he
    notched it up big time. And Vice President Mondale had lunch with the
    President every week, had defined responsibilities, could come to any
    meeting. And Ronald Reagan, to give credit where credit is due, did the
    same thing for George Bush and made him an important figure.
        So if you look at history, you've got--everybody else, here's
    Johnson and Nixon, here's Mondale and Bush, and then here's Al
    Gore. He's probably the only person in the
    history of America who has had a clearly discernible impact on the
    welfare of the country as Vice President. He not only cast the decisive
    vote on a number of occasions--from breaking the tie on the budget bill,
    which started all this stuff in '93, to the issue for sensible gun
    control just a few weeks ago--he has been our leader in technology
    policy, in trying to hook up every classroom in the country to
    computers, in making sure that we had an E-rate so poor schools could
    afford to do it. He's run the empowerment zone program, which has
    brought thousands of jobs into poor neighborhoods. He ran our
    partnership with Detroit to try to develop high mileage vehicles, and it
    won't be long until you'll be able to buy a car that will get 80 miles a
    gallon; and a couple years after that, you'll be able to buy one made
    with biofuel, where the conversion ratio is a gallon of gasoline to make
    8 gallons of that, and then you'll be getting 500 miles to the gallon,
    and the world will be different. And he did that. That's what he did. He
    ran our reinventing Government program that has given us the smallest
    Government in 40 years. And I heard all this talk about tough decisions.
    He supported me on the budget, on Bosnia, on Kosovo, on Haiti, on giving
    aid to Mexico when the people were 81-15 against it, on taking on the
    gun lobby and the tobacco lobby for the first time that any White House
    has consistently done that. And he was an ardent supporter of our effort
    to end discrimination against gays and lesbians, early. So he has taken
    tough decisions.
        I want you to know this because this campaign is going to have a lot
    of twists and turns; there will be ups and downs. But he should be the President of the United States. Nobody has
    ever done this.

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        But I will say this. He'll have a lot
    harder job unless you help us elect six Senators and at least six House
    Members. As I said, I could tell you a story about every one of these
    Senators who's here, and our candidate, that would make you feel more
    strongly. One of the things I've learned as President is, I always knew
    the Senate was important. I admired the whole story of all the great
    Senators in our history and the great creators. But it's even more
    important than I dreamed it was when I became President.
        So the investment you've made tonight is a worthy investment. And I
    just hope when you leave here, some of what I have said has made an
    impression so that you will take every single, solitary opportunity you
    have between now and November to tell people why you came tonight, why
    you stand where you stand, and why this election is so important to our
    future.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:05 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Fred Eychaner and Ken Lee; Mayor
    Richard M. Daley of Chicago, IL; event host committee members Joe and
    Yvonne Stroud, Lou Weisbach, and Bette Cerf Hill; Joseph A. Cari, Jr.,
    finance cochair, Democratic National Committee; Illinois House Speaker
    Michael J. Madigan; and Governors Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and
    George W. Bush of Texas.