    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 28, 2000]
    [Pages 543-545]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Reception for Representative Debbie Stabenow
    March 28, 2000

        Thank you. Now, only a politician who is not running for office
    would take a stand on the Final Four before the results are in.
    [Laughter]
        Thank you very much. Debbie, I am a huge basketball fan. And I
    already lost my State school and my daughter's alma mater in the NCAA,
    so I'm just watching it with great fascination. It's been a good
    tournament.
        I want to thank Senator Torricelli
    for all that he has done for the Democrats, and the Senate candidates in
    particular. And I thank Carl Levin for more than
    I can say. You have no idea all the good things that he does in the
    Senate, many of which are not vote-getting issues; they'll never make
    the headlines. But someone needs to be going to work every day who cares
    about public policy and good Government and the way this country works.
    And Carl Levin does. You should be really proud of him. He's a really
    good man.
        I want to thank Gary and Bill and Michelle for
    helping Debbie to raise the money necessary to wage a campaign against
    an incumbent Senator of the other party. It's a difficult thing to do.
    And she is in good shape, but she needs your support to do it. And I
    want to thank John Conyers and Sandy
    Levin for being here, and so many other of
    my friends from Michigan who helped me these last 7 years and a couple
    of months. I thank you very much.
        I was thinking to myself, ``What am I doing here? I'm not running
    for anything.'' [Laughter] I'm trying to get this fine Member of
    Congress a 6-year term, and I'll never even have the privilege of
    working with her. Well, one reason is, on principle this year, I'm very
    big on women going to the U.S. Senate. I have a passing interest in a
    lot of these elections. [Laughter] But I would like to--I'll be very
    brief, because she's already told you why she's running.
        I think it's important that we remember that things were different
    in 1992 when I ran for President. We had economic distress. We had
    social decline. We had political division. And we basically had drift
    and gridlock in Washington.
        And I believed that this country could build a bridge to the new
    century with an America that offered opportunity for everyone who is
    responsible enough to work for it, with an increasingly diverse America
    that cherished that diversity but thought our common humanity was more
    important, with an America that continued to lead the world for peace
    and freedom and prosperity. And we're in better shape than we were in
    1992, and for that I am very grateful. And for the opportunity I've had
    to serve, I am profoundly grateful.
        But the real thing I would like you to think about is: What is it
    that we propose to do with this prosperity? You know, I've reached an
    age now when my memory stretches back long enough that I know that
    nothing lasts forever. And in tough times, that's reassuring. In good
    times, it should be sobering.
        This is a moment of phenomenal opportunity for our country. And a
    lot of the--I'm glad to see so many young people here, because you've
    got most of your lives in front of you. And it's very important that we
    take this moment to deal with the big challenges, the big problems, the
    big opportunities in the new century, in a world that is coming closer
    and closer together, in a world where increasingly what matters is
    whether you believe every person counts and every person is given the
    ability to develop his or her God-given potential.

    [[Page 544]]

        You know, I just got back from India and Bangladesh and Pakistan,
    and I made a stop over in Switzerland to keep working on the Middle East
    peace process. But I'll tell you an interesting story. I was in this
    little village in India, one of the hundreds of thousands of little
    villages in a country with over 900 million people, with a per capita
    income of $450 a year, one of the poorest places on Earth.
        So I go to this little village, and I meet the local government. And
    it's required now that all the different tribes and castes have an
    opportunity to be represented, and 30 percent of all the local
    governments are women--elected officials.
        And I meet the women's dairy cooperative. And these women took over
    the milk business because they got a little machine that tested the fat
    content of milk, so they weren't cheating anybody out of their money
    anymore. And--now keep in mind, I'm in one of hundreds of thousands of
    villages, right, in a country with a rich and diverse texture but a low
    per capita income. Every single transaction that the dairy cooperative
    made was recorded on a computer. Every woman that brought milk in there
    got a computer printout of what the fat content was, what the price was
    that day, then got an accounting out of the same computer on who bought
    the milk and when she got her money.
        Then I go into the local government in this tiny village, and I see
    there the computer in the community center. And every person can come in
    and get on that computer in English or Hindi. And many of the things you
    can find, you can get even if you can't read, because of the software,
    the sophistication of the software. So poor village women can come in
    and see how they're supposed to care for their newborn babies in their
    first year of life. They pull it up on the screen, and then they had a
    printer, and they got it out. And it's just as good information as you
    can get here or in any other place in America, in the finest doctor's
    office in the land. This is going to be a very different world in the
    next 5 or 10 years.
        I went to Hyderabad in India, which is sort of their high-tech
    capital, and the head of the State Government there now offers 18
    different government services on the Internet, including getting your
    driver's license. Nobody ever has to wait in a line in the revenue
    office. [Laughter] Do not move to India just yet. [Laughter] We will get
    that done, but you get the picture, right?
        Today I met--when President Mubarak from
    Egypt was here today and we met with a bunch of Egyptian-Americans, one
    of them was a Nobel Prize-winner from Caltech. Another was a high
    official at the World Bank. Another was a big high-tech company
    executive. Another one ran a big biotech company. We talked a lot about
    the human genome and the sequencing of it, and how we were going to
    allow people to patent legitimate discoveries, but how we had to keep
    the basic information affordable so that the developing countries and
    poor people around the world and in this country could also benefit from
    the discoveries. I mean, we're talking about no more Alzheimer's and
    cures for Parkinson's and detecting cancers when they're just a few
    cells. These are amazing things.
        And the reason that I'm here tonight, even though I'm not running,
    is that I don't want our country to blow this opportunity. What's the
    big problem in all these peace negotiations around the world? People
    want peace. Young people like you, they're thinking about their future;
    they want a whole different world. They're not all caught up--it's a
    question of people's impulses, the basic good human impulses at war with
    old ideas cherished by people who can't let go.
        We have an American version of that, I think, in this contest here.
    One of the reasons that I want Al Gore to
    be elected President is that I know from personal experience he
    understands the future, and he knows how to take us there.
        And you can't--most of what is written is written about politics and
    politicians acts as if policies are inconsequential and acts as if
    things that really affect the lives of millions of people don't matter.
    But I would argue to you that the details of our welfare program
    mattered. The details of our education program mattered. The details of
    our environmental program mattered. The details of our anticrime program
    mattered. It matters what you do. The details of our approach to science
    and technology mattered. These things matter.
        This is not about a bunch of hot air and slogans and positioning.
    This is about whether this country, at its moment of maximum prosperity
    and opportunity and minimum threats from abroad and from within, will
    take the chance that we have had never before in my lifetime, except
    maybe in the 1960's, before all

    [[Page 545]]

    the wheels ran off, to write the future of our dreams for our children.
    That's what this whole thing is about. Don't make any mistake about it.
    That's what the whole thing's about.
        I worked hard to try to help turn this country around and get us
    moving in the right direction. But the big benefits are still out there
    to be reaped. Wouldn't you like your country to be the safest big
    country in the world? Wouldn't you like your country to be a place where
    every working parent could also succeed at rearing their children
    because there was adequate child care? Wouldn't you like your country to
    be a place where every child, no matter how poor, was held to high
    standards but had high opportunities in education; where there was no
    digital divide; where there were economic opportunities in the poorest
    urban and rural neighborhoods and on every Indian reservation in the
    country? And I could go on and on and on. That's what this whole deal is
    about.
        And I'm telling you, if I can do anything this year, I am going to
    try to convince the American people only to vote for those people that
    understand the future and are prepared to do what it takes to get us
    there--and all of us, together. That's why I'm here.
        And I hope tomorrow, if people ask you why you were here, you will
    tell them that--because Debbie Stabenow is a great human being, a great
    public servant, and she will take us there.
        Thank you very much.

     Note: The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. in the Columbia B Room at the
    Hyatt Regency Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to reception hosts
    William and Michelle O'Reilly; Gary Torgow, finance chair, Stabenow for
    Senate; and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Representative Stabenow
    was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Prior to the President's
    remarks, Representative Stabenow presented him with a Michigan State
    University T-shirt in recognition of the men's basketball team's Final
    Four standing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association
    tournament. The transcript was released by the Office of the Press
    Secretary on March 29.