    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 25, 2000]
    [Pages 1031-1035]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional
    Studies Dinner
    May 25, 2000

        Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We had a
    wonderful day today at the White House. For all of you who were there, I
    thank you for coming. I thank my good friend Norm Mineta. He thought he had retired from public life when he left
    the Congress, and he found that there is life after politics, but
    there's no life without politics. [Laughter] I got him back in, and I
    thank him for that.
        I also want to thank the Members of the United States House who are
    here. I have no glasses and this list--[laughter]--so I'm going to show
    my age here. But the chair of the APA Caucus, Bob Underwood; Lane Evans, Shelley
    Berkley, Julian Dixon, Donna Christensen Green,
    and Phil Crane, thank you all for being
    here. I'd also like to acknowledge one Member of Congress who is not
    here, who led our efforts on China PNTR, Bob Matsui. I thank him as well for what he did. Thank you all.
        I want to thank our Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,
    Bill Lann Lee, who is here. I had a lot of fun
    today with Dolly Gee. I think she's still here;
    she's not on her honeymoon yet. Thank you very much for being here. And
    I want to thank all the people at the White House, but especially Laura
    Efurd, in my Office

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    of Public Liaison. The Director of our office, Mary Beth Cahill, came over here with me tonight, and we were
    laughing that--you may know, I had to go to a memorial service for a
    young friend of mine today in Rhode Island. That's why I'm a little
    late. And when I leave you, I'm going to the Sons of Italy dinner.
    [Laughter] So I said to Mary Beth, ``Here we are, two Irish going to the
    Asian-Pacific dinner and the Sons of Italy dinner. Is this a great
    country or what?'' [Laughter]
        Let me begin by just saying a heartfelt thank-you to the members of
    the Asian American Pacific Institute for the support you have given to
    the efforts that Vice President Gore and I have made over these last
    7\1/2\ years. It's meant more than you can possibly know. I was here 5
    years ago, as Norm said, when you launched the institute. You've come a
    long way since then. You have embodied the wisdom of the Chinese proverb
    that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And you
    have taken a lot of steps in the last 5 years.
        You've gotten more Asian-Pacific Americans interested, informed, and
    involved in the political process. You've had an impact on a lot of
    vital issues. You've helped to form more unity among the great diversity
    of the Asian-Pacific community in the United States.
        When I was here in '95, I said, if we only understand what an
    incredible resource our people are, we can have more opportunities than
    any other country. I still believe that. I think no nation is so well
    positioned for this new century, for a global economy and an
    increasingly globalized society as the United States, if we are prepared
    to make the most of our diverse talents, our heritage, our contacts,
    what we know, what we feel, what we understand.
        The first Japanese immigrants came here in 1843. Their spirit helped
    to build this country. The people who came to build the transcontinental
    railroad over 130 years ago, and are still throughout the Mississippi
    Delta and my home region, helped to build this country. The people who
    helped to put the first Asian-American in Congress in 1957 helped to
    build this country. And so have all of you.
        Now there are more than 9 million Americans who trace their roots to
    Asia and the islands of the Pacific, more than 25 nationalities, more
    than 75 languages, hundreds of different ethnic groups, all with a long,
    rich legacy of working hard and overcoming obstacles to pursue the
    American dream. You have greatly enriched the quality and the character
    of the United States, and for that I am profoundly grateful.
        You have strengthened our common values of family, faith, and work,
    and our common vision of a better future for our children. For 7\1/2\
    years, I have tried to reinforce those values and advance that future. I
    am grateful that we are in the longest economic expansion in history,
    with the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years--32 years now--with the
    lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest African-American
    and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded, a 20-year low in poverty,
    over a 10 percent drop in poverty among Asian-Pacific Americans alone.
        Last year the SBA approved loans to the Asian-Pacific community in
    America exceeding $2 billion, more than 3\1/2\ times the amount approved
    in the year before I took office. I have tried to make sure that we
    would go forward together.
        I'm grateful that our social fabric is on the mend, something of
    immense concern to all of you: crime at a 25-year low; teen births down
    7 years in a row; adoptions up 30 percent; welfare rolls cut in half, to
    their lowest level since 1968; expanded Head Start; 90 percent of our
    kids immunized against serious diseases for the first time in our
    history. Twenty-one million people took advantage of the family and
    medical leave law; 5 million families benefited by the HOPE scholarships
    to send their kids to college; 150,000 young Americans, many of them
    Asian-Pacific Americans, have served their communities in AmeriCorps. I
    am grateful for all of that.
        Our country, I believe, is moving to develop a national security
    strategy for the 21st century which keeps a strong defense but relies on
    cooperation wherever possible. And I do believe that far more important
    than the obvious economic benefits, it is the chance to have a more
    secure future. That was the most important reason for the House of
    Representatives adopting the permanent normal trade relations with China
    yesterday, and I'm very, very grateful to them for doing that.
        Now, having said that, you may have noticed that this is an election
    year. [Laughter] Since it's the first time I haven't been on the ballot
    in 26 years, I've hardly noticed it at all, but--[laughter]--I
    understand. Most days I'm okay

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    about it. And so I want to ask you to do something that comes naturally
    to you, whether you're Democrats or Republicans or independents. I want
    to urge you to use this year to mobilize your communities and those
    beyond your communities to have the right approach. Because the great
    question here is, what are we going to do with our prosperity? What are
    we going to do with our increasing social harmony? What are we going to
    do with our relative security in a still dangerous world? How are we
    going to make the most of a moment that truly is unprecedented in the
    lives of all of us in this room?
        And maybe it's never happened to you, but at least I can speak for
    the Irish. Everyone I know over 30 has made a mistake in his or her
    personal or professional life not because things were going so poorly
    but because things were going so well. Sometimes when things are going
    well, you break your concentration. You think there are no consequences
    to taking the momentary benefit instead of the long-term look.
        And I have decided that I will try to devote myself this year to
    getting the American people to take the long view, to say, ``What are we
    going to do with this magic moment?'' And I think we ought to say,
    ``Okay, we can do things now we couldn't do 7 or 8 years ago,'' when I
    was preoccupied, overwhelmingly, with trying to turn the country around
    and get people together and go beyond the divisive politics that had
    paralyzed us into a rhetoric in Washington that I sort of characterized
    as ``I've got an idea. You've got an idea. Let's fight.'' [Laughter] And
    we're trying to move beyond that.
        And that's how we balanced the budget and produced this surplus.
    When I leave office, we will have paid off about $360 billion of our
    national debt. I confess even I didn't think we could do that in 1992.
    If I had gone before the people in '92 and said, ``Vote for me, and when
    I leave office, we'll have 3 years of paying down the debt,'' you would
    have said, ``He seems like a nice young man, but he's a little touched.
    We'd better send him home.'' [Laughter]
        So I ask you to think of that. What are those big questions? Well,
    first of all, in spite of our growing prosperity, there are still people
    in places untouched by it. And we ought to take this opportunity to give
    them a chance to be a part of the American dream. Just for example:
    almost half of all Cambodian-Americans, two out of three Hmong-Americans
    still live in poverty. Over half of the South-Asian-Americans have
    earned a bachelor's degree, far above the 37 percent national average.
    But less than 6 percent of Cambodian- and Laotian-Americans have
    completed college, in an age in which getting a world-class education is
    a prerequisite to full participation in the global economy.
        We can't rest until every community, every family, every individual
    has a chance to be a part of this magnificent opportunity that so many
    of you have worked so hard to create. That's why I signed that Executive
    order establishing the Advisory Commission. The Commission will work on
    ways to get the information we need to make the decisions that ought to
    be made to help the discrete groups of Asian-Pacific Americans that are
    still not fully participating. They will help us to lower the cultural
    and linguistic and other barriers to health and social services. But we
    have to do more.
        Just this week we had what I think is a truly historic meeting in
    the White House that was, understandably, sort of overlooked in the
    great amount of attention given to the China vote. But the Speaker of
    the House of Representatives and more than
    a dozen Members of Congress, equally divided in both parties, came
    together in the White House, and we said, ``Look, we're trying open new
    markets abroad, but we have to create new markets at home. And we want
    to give people the same incentives to invest in poor areas of America
    and in the people of America that aren't fully participating we now give
    people to invest in poor areas throughout the world.'' It's an historic
    moment. And if we pass this legislation--and I believe we will--it could
    be the most significant antipoverty initiative in a generation. I hope
    all of you will support it, without regard to your party.
        What are some of the other big questions? I won't go through the
    answers or what I think are the answers. The important thing is, you
    have to decide what you think the answers are. How are we going to
    guarantee every child a world-class education and make sure everybody
    can go to college? How are we going to make sure that people who work
    for a living don't raise their children in poverty? The child poverty
    rate in America is still about 18 percent, as wealthy as we are. How are
    we going to

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    help people to balance work and family, something that many Asian-
    Americans have been brilliant at, but it's not easy?
        How are we going to make sure that, in this new and difficult world,
    we continue to be a force for peace and reconciliation, and help other
    people resolve their racial and ethnic and religious conflicts that are
    leading to so much turmoil and could disrupt our future? What are our
    obligations to people in the poorest parts of the world that are being
    plagued by AIDS, malaria, and TB, and other problems? All the children
    that are dying out there every day just because they don't have access
    to safe water--if we do something about that, won't that strengthen our
    security and make us more prosperous in the years ahead, because other
    people can raise their children in a good environment?
        And how are we going to build one America here at home, after we
    make our country the safest big country in the world? What are we going
    to do about the aging of America, when two-thirds of our people will be
    working, but one-third will be retired--our adults? Well, maybe more
    older people will work. We lifted the earnings limit on Social Security,
    almost unanimously. It was a very good thing to do. But unless you young
    people dramatically increase your birth rates or we dramatically
    increase immigration when all us baby boomers retire, we have to ask
    ourselves, how can we preserve the integrity of Social Security and
    Medicare--and, I think, add a prescription drug benefit for the
    seniors--in ways that don't burden their ability to raise our children,
    or our children's ability to raise our grandchildren? How can we do
    that?
        And to me, most important of all, still by far, is how can we build
    one America? How can we tear down the remaining barriers between us,
    rooted in our differences?
        I have never believed that we should try to homogenize America. I
    think we're becoming more interesting every day. You obviously agree by
    the reaction you had when I told you I was going to the Sons of Italy
    dinner later. [Laughter] The trick is to respect our diversity, to go
    beyond it, to celebrate our diversity, to actually think it's a great
    thing and have fun with it, but to recognize that the reason we can
    enjoy it is because our common humanity and our common respect for the
    values of our Constitution are even more important than our diversity.
    That's the trick.
        And the first thing we've got to do is make sure everybody has the
    chance to participate. That's why we've got 70 Asian-Pacific Americans
    in the administration. That's why I nominated Bill Lann Lee. And I still hope the Senate will have a blast of
    enlightenment and confirm him. I keep working on that. Before I took
    office, it had been 14 years since an Asian-Pacific American had been
    nominated for a Federal judgeship. We have appointed five so far.
        Yesterday the Senate--I want to thank them--I've given them such
    grief because they've been so slow confirming my appointments, but
    yesterday they did confirm 16 judges. So I thank Senator Lott and the Senate for doing that, and I hope it is the
    beginning of a trend. And I hope that trend will include Dolly Gee from California.
        I think we should adopt hate crimes legislation. I think we ought to
    pass--I think we ought to pass the ``Employment Non-Discrimination
    Act.'' I think that people--I think that every school in this country
    should have programs which bring different people together. And if the
    student body is not diverse, they ought to bring people in from outside
    to talk, to ask questions, to understand what it is about all these
    myriad people that make up America that are different and what it is we
    have in common. I think this is profoundly important.
        And so I will just leave you with this. I've had a great time.
    You've been good to me. I'm not done; we're going to get a lot of things
    done in the next 7 months. But you, through this organization and other
    efforts, have been brought into the mainstream of American public
    debate. You unite people across all kinds of ethnic and cultural lines
    and religious lines because of your common Asian-Pacific heritage--also,
    different philosophical and political lines. But true to your values,
    you can have a pivotal effect in getting America to take this millennial
    year to ask and answer the question, what will we do with this moment of
    good fortune?
        You know, nothing lasts forever. And that keeps us going through the
    bad times, knowing that nothing lasts forever. But in good times, it
    means we must be careful, vigilant. We must nurture and be grateful for
    these opportunities and make the most of them.
        So I ask you to think about that. If I were to receive a vision from
    heaven tonight that I was going to pass from this Earth tomorrow, and I
    could have one wish, and God said, ``Now,

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    I'm not a genie, you don't get three wishes. I'll just give you one,'' I
    would wish for us to be one America, genuinely one America, because
    we've got hundreds of stories in this room that illustrate there is
    nothing that we cannot achieve if we're given a chance, a fair chance,
    and if we understand that everybody matters, everybody has got a role to
    play, and we all do better when we help each other. It's a simple little
    formula in the digital age, but it will carry us right where we need to
    go. And you can make sure it happens.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

     Note: The President spoke at 9:20 p.m. at the Capitol Hilton. In his
    remarks, he referred to former Representative Norman Y. Mineta,
    chairman, Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies;
    Virgin Islands Delegate Donna M.C. Christensen; and Dolly M. Gee,
    nominee for U.S. District Judge for the Central District of California.
    Executive Order 13125 of June 7, 1999, on increasing participation of
    Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Federal programs was published
    in the Federal Register at 64 FR 31105.