    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 8, 2000]
    [Pages 203-205]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 203]]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception
    February 8, 2000

        Thank you very much. Thank you, John.
    Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here tonight and for your
    support for our party. I wanted to just say a few words, and then we'll
    visit a little.
        I did put out the budget yesterday. And I've had a great week. We
    had the State of the Union, and then I went to Switzerland, to Davos, to
    the international economic forum, to talk about what I believe our
    policy ought to be on trade in the 21st century. And before I issued my
    budget, I got to hear my wife make a
    great speech on Sunday when she announced for the Senate in New York. I
    was very proud of her. I thought she did a wonderful job.
        Today I took action on another item I discussed in the State of the
    Union over at the American academy of sciences. I signed the first
    Executive order of the 21st century, protecting the genetic privacy of
    all Federal employees and asking Congress to do that for all employees
    throughout the country. I think that is a very important issue. We're
    going to have all this huge explosion of knowledge when we finish the
    mapping of the human genome. And we want people to participate to the
    maximum possible degree in all benefits that will flow out of that.
        And if we expect that, then we're going to have to make sure that
    they don't lose the right to a job, lose the right to get insurance,
    lose the right to be considered for promotion because their genetic map
    shows that they might have some propensity to some problem. We want
    people to participate in every conceivable way in learning about it so
    that we can develop blocking gene therapies for all the problems people
    have.
        So this is a very, very exciting time for our country. For me, it's
    actually rather interesting. For the first time in probably 24 years to
    see an election season come and go when I'm not on anybody's ballot
    anywhere--[laughter]--it's rather interesting. I'm having a good time.
    [Laughter] I feel like the cat that ate the canary some days.
        But one of the things I would like to say to all of you that I hope
    you will keep in mind throughout this year--as you support us, as you
    talk to your friends, as you make arguments for our candidates, from the
    White House to the Senate and the House and the governorships--is that
    the Democratic Party now has had 7 years of testing our dominant
    philosophy. And I think it's pretty clear, number one, that it works,
    and number two, that it's shared by a majority of the American people.
        Seven years ago when we began, we just had a roadmap for the future.
    We said, ``Look, we believe that there is a reason the country is
    suffering from economic stagnation and social division and political
    gridlock and that Government's been discredited, that we were operating
    under a philosophy that said Government was the problem, that pitted
    people against one another, and that was very good about talking about
    problems like the deficit but not very good about doing anything about
    it.''
        And we came to this town--our whole administration did, beginning
    with the Vice President and me--with a philosophy that said we were
    going to unify this country, that we were going to try to create
    opportunity for everybody, challenge everyone to be responsible, and
    bring everybody together in one community. And we were actually going to
    try to bring Washington together. I must say, we've had more success in
    the country than we have in Washington. [Laughter] But still, it's been
    an exhilarating effort here, and still a challenge every day.
        So now we've had 7 years of these results. And I just want to say
    what I said in the State of the Union Address. I think it is imperative
    that we not squander this moment under the illusion that because things
    are going well for this country there are no consequences to what we
    say, what we do, and what we advocate. We live in a very dynamic world.
    Things are changing very rapidly. We have never had this kind of
    opportunity to shape the future.
        A few of you in this room are as old as I am. I was telling somebody
    the other day that when we passed the milestone to having the longest
    economic expansion in history, the last one that was this long--the next
    to longest one now--was the one that occurred in the decade of the
    sixties. And you probably all remember that it played out under the
    inflationary

    [[Page 204]]

    pressures of what was then known as guns and butter, the Vietnam war and
    our obligations at home.
        When I graduated from high school in 1964, even though the country
    was still hurting over President Kennedy's assassination, we had
    actually come together and lifted ourselves up out of that. And there
    was this sense that there was nothing we couldn't do. Within 2 years, we
    had riots in the streets. The country was deeply divided over the war in
    Vietnam; we had over a half a million people there. Within a couple more
    years, the economy was in terrible shape. And the politics of division,
    basically, began to rule our national campaigns.
        As an American citizen, I have waited now about 35 years for my
    country once again to be in a position to basically be a nation of
    builders and dreamers, where we could shape the future. That's why in
    the State of the Union Address I said we've got to, number one, remember
    what brought us to the dance here. We've got to stay with an economic
    policy that has given us the ability to deal with these things. And I
    know I'm being criticized somewhat, from the right and the left, for
    paying the debt down. But we've got to keep this economy going. To do
    that, we've got to keep interest rates down and confidence sky high. And
    if you want businesses and individuals to be able to borrow more, then
    the Government should borrow less. And it will generally tend to be more
    efficient borrowing.
        Number two, we've got to invest in education; we've got to expand
    health care; we've got to help families balance their roles at home and
    at work; and we've got to continue to stay in the forefront of science
    and technology and meeting the new security challenges of the 21st
    century, especially the challenges of terrorism and biological and
    chemical weapons. We have to do these things.
        But it is within our grasp to shape a future that would have been
    undreamed of just a few years ago. I believe that the Democratic Party
    is the right party to lead this country. Even though it's flattering to
    see the Republicans sort of edging more and more toward our economic
    policy--I think that's a good thing. I think it would be a great thing
    for our country if we had a bipartisan economic policy. It's an
    important part of our national security in the 21st century.
        But we still have radically different approaches to things like
    sensible efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and away
    from children to matters like making educational opportunity real and
    available to all, matters like our obligation to make available the
    access to health care. We've provided--because of the provision that
    Hillary and I and others fought so hard for in the 1997 Balanced Budget
    Act, we got 2 million more children in poor working families with health
    insurance today than we had just 2 years ago--2 million more. I made a
    proposal--and we got funding already, you've already paid for this, you
    don't have to--we have funding already for 3 million more. But I think
    now if we bring those children's parents into the program, we could take
    care of 25 percent of the uninsured people in America, and they're the
    25 neediest percent.
        The second fastest--big group are people between the ages of 55 and
    65 who leave the work force, lose their health care, aren't old enough
    for Medicare. And you'd be amazed how many people that I grew up with in
    Arkansas--we're all moving into this age group--who are affected by
    this. You're talking about a very large number of people. I think we
    ought to just buy them into Medicare--pay the cost, whatever the real
    cost is, give them a modest tax credit so it's more affordable.
        These are big issues. We've got to keep people coming together,
    meeting these basic needs if we want to keep people focused on the
    future. People stop focusing on the future when they have to worry about
    how they're going to keep body and soul together or when they feel
    threatened.
        So we have to keep the momentum up. And believe me, no matter what
    we do--and as I said, I would be elated if we wound up with a bipartisan
    consensus on our economic policy this year--there are going to be
    profound differences in our responsibilities to each other to build a
    strong society. And I cannot tell you how strongly I believe that a big
    part of our economic success has come because we were also doubling our
    investment in education and training and making it clear to ordinary
    people, through increases in the minimum wage, the Family and Medical
    Leave Act, things like this, that we cared about what happened to them
    and we thought they ought to be a part of America's future.

    [[Page 205]]

        So you stay with us. Stay with us as we try to pass the Patients'
    Bill of Rights and the other things we've got on the plate now. And tell
    people the story, that we had a set of ideas, we had a core philosophy,
    and it has worked. And we do need to keep changing America, but we don't
    need to forget what brought us to this point; we need to build on it.
    With your help, we will.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:10 p.m. in the John Hay Room at the Hay
    Adams Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John Merrigan, chair,
    Democratic Business Council.