[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 13, 2000]
[Pages 443-446]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 443]]


Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Luncheon in 
Cleveland, Ohio
March 13, 2000

    Thank you so much. I want to say, first, how honored I am to be here 
with our leader, Dick Gephardt, and how 
much I look forward to his becoming the Speaker of the House. He is a 
truly remarkable human being and a really wonderful leader.
    I want to thank Stephanie Tubbs Jones for welcoming me here and for doing such a good job for 
you. I'm delighted to be here with Marcy Kaptur 
and Dennis Kucinich. And I'm glad to see 
Sherrod Brown up and around. I told him he 
looked like a Roman soldier in one of those 1960's extravaganzas with 
that brace on.
    I want to thank Congressman Jim Barcia 
for coming to Cleveland to be with us today, and Congressman Patrick 
Kennedy, who had to leave. And Mayor 
White, thank you for making us feel so 
welcome. Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, 
thank you for running for Congress. I certainly do hope you win, and I'm 
going to do what I can to help you. I'm glad to see you out here.
    And I want to thank our Senate candidate, Ted Celeste, also for running in this race and for being here today, 
and my good friend Lou Stokes. I told some 
people a story when I was coming out--when I was here with Lou Stokes--I 
wanted to come to Cleveland with Lou before he left the Congress. I was 
here in his district many times when he was in Congress, but the last 
time we visited an elementary school in this district where there was an 
AmeriCorps project and the kids were tutoring these grade school kids--
our young AmeriCorps people were.
    And so we went to this assembly, and I gave a little talk. And then 
I was shaking hands with all these 6- and 7-year-old kids. And I got to 
the very end of the line, and this 6-year-old looked at me, and he said, 
``Are you really the President?'' [Laughter] So help me, this happened. 
I said, ``Yes, I am.'' He said, ``But you're not dead yet.'' [Laughter] 
And it was clear to me that he had learned in school his Presidents were 
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and a part of the job description 
was that you had to be deceased. [Laughter] There's been a day or two in 
Washington in the last 7 years when I thought the kid might have been 
right. [Laughter] But I will always remember that.
    I also am glad to be here today just to say a profound word of 
thanks to the people of Cleveland and the State of Ohio for being so 
good to me and to the Vice President, for giving us your electoral votes 
in 1992, and by a much wider margin in 1996. And I hope the trend 
continues in 2000.
    I'm here primarily, as all of you know, to support these Members of 
the House and the candidates and the drive to restore a Democratic 
majority in the House. And I'm here for three reasons, basically.
    One, they deserve it because they took the tough decisions that 
turned this country around and paid the price for it. We had no votes 
from the other side when we passed the economic plan in 1993, which 
drove interest rates down, investment up, and got this economy going 
again. And they deserve it. They also put their lives on the line to 
vote for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the efforts to 
put 100,000 police on the streets, which has given us a 25-year low in 
crime and a 30-year low in the gun death rate in America. Half a million 
felons, fugitives, and stalkers were denied weapons because of the Brady 
bill. So they have earned it.
    They provided large margins for the Balanced Budget Act in 1997 and 
for every other piece of progressive legislation that has passed, from 
the family and medical leave law to increasing the earned-income tax 
credit to tax relief for working families. And I could just go right on 
down the line: achieving 90 percent of our children with basic childhood 
immunizations for the first time, cleaner air, cleaner water, and a 
growing economy. So they've earned it.
    Two, there are huge differences between the parties still on a lot 
of very fundamental issues. And Dick mentioned a few of them, but I just 
want to tick off three or four. Number one, if you want this economy to 
keep growing, we have to remember to dance with what brought us: We've 
got to keep paying down the debt; we've got to save Social Security and 
Medicare in a way that doesn't cause the baby boomers'

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retirement to bankrupt our children; and we've got to save enough money 
to invest in education and health care.
    We can still have a modest tax cut that will do an awful lot of good 
for a lot of people, to help people pay for health care costs, to help 
people pay for child care costs, to help defer the cost of tuition for 
sending your kid to college, for doing a lot of other things. But we 
have got to first keep the economy strong. We've got a chance to get 
this country out of debt over the next 12 or 13 years, for the first 
time since 1835. And if we do it, we'll have low interest rates for a 
generation and the highest economic growth we've ever had. We'll 
continue this expansion. The Democrats will support that. Our friends in 
the other party will support a tax cut so large that we'd either have to 
cut education, not save Social Security or Medicare, cut defense, or go 
back to running deficits. So it's a clear choice.
    Second is education. Our agenda is clear. We want smaller classes, 
more teachers, better trained teachers. We want to modernize and repair 
schools, which is profoundly important. We want to hook every classroom 
up to the Internet. We want high standards which support the kids, more 
after-school and summer school programs. And we want more efforts to 
give people the excellence that they need. And every single year we have 
to wait until the very end of the legislative session and have a huge 
fight to get our education agenda through. And we normally get about 70 
percent of it, but only because all of us stay together. This will 
become more and more and more important.
    Third, it is important to continue to give more people the chance to 
be a part of this economic prosperity who haven't done it yet. That's 
what our new markets initiative is all about, to give you who can afford 
it the same incentives to invest in poor neighborhoods in Cleveland, in 
Indian reservations, in the Mississippi Delta, in south Texas, and 
places like that that we now give you to invest in Latin America, Asia, 
and Africa. If we can't give the poor areas in America today the 
opportunity to have free enterprise, when will we ever get around to it? 
And I think that's very important.
    The fourth thing I want to mention is health care. It's very 
important. We believe that people between the ages of 55 and 65 that 
lose their health insurance ought to be able to buy into Medicare and 
ought to be given a little help to do it. We believe that people who are 
taking care of aged parents or disabled family members ought to get a 
$3,000 tax credit to help them do it. We believe that the Children's 
Health Insurance Program, which we passed in 1997, should also include 
the parents of those children. And if we did those things, 25 percent of 
the uninsured population in America would have health insurance, and the 
health care providers in this country, many of whom have difficulties, 
would have a lot more cash flowing to them to keep a healthy health care 
system.
    These are just some of the issues. There are big differences. And 
Dick mentioned the final one I want to mention. I have been involved for 
way over 20 years now in law enforcement. The first elected job I ever 
had was as attorney general of my State. I have always believed that we 
could drive crime down and diminish racial and other tensions between 
the police and the community. I have always believed that we had to have 
both smart punishment and smart prevention. I have always believed that. 
And for 7 years we have worked to put more police on the streets, to 
give our children something to say yes to as well as something to say no 
to, and to keep guns away from criminals and kids without undermining 
the legitimate interests of hunters and sports people.
    Now, what I've tried to do, since the Columbine tragedy, in 
particular, and in the aftermath of the terrible deaths in the last 
couple of days, is to say, ``Okay, let's do some more things that make 
sense. Let's require child trigger locks on all new handguns that are 
sold. Let's require background checks at these gun shows and urban flea 
markets, as well as at gun stores. Let's hold parents who are flagrantly 
irresponsible--or other adults, custodial adults--and let 6-year-olds 
get guns, let's hold them responsible for what they do. And let's ban 
the importation of these large ammunition clips.'' We banned assault 
weapons in America, and then people get around it by importing them.
    This is all very sensible. It doesn't affect anybody's hunting, 
doesn't affect any sport shooting. It's no big problem. And all the 
practical problems can be worked out.
    Well, we had a lot of energy after Columbine for doing that. The 
Senate passed a strong bill, because Al Gore broke a tie vote. The House passed a much weaker bill. 
But then they were supposed to get together, pass a compromise, agree on 
provisions, and send it to me. Eight

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months later, they still haven't met. The committees haven't met. So I 
ask them to meet.
    Now, in the aftermath of the terrible losses in Michigan and 
Tennessee--little Kayla Rolland--I thought we 
could have some more energy for doing this. And what happened? The NRA 
started running all these ads attacking me personally--which I didn't 
take personally. I, frankly, was honored by it. But they were--and so I 
agreed to go on ABC, Sam Donaldson's program 
Sunday and answer questions about this. And all I did was to say why I 
was for closing the assault weapons; why I was for banning these large 
capacity ammunition clips, the import of them; why I was for closing the 
gun show loophole; why I was for child trigger locks; and why I thought 
adults who were knowing or reckless in letting little kids get ahold of 
guns ought to be held responsible.
    And then the head of the NRA came on 
after me, and he said--I want to read you what he said, just so you'll 
know that there is a difference here between the two parties and America 
has to choose. He says that I am willing to accept a certain level of 
killings to further my political agenda and Vice President Gore's: ``I believe--I have come to believe that Clinton 
needs a certain level of violence in this country. He's willing to 
accept a certain level of killings to further his political agenda and 
his Vice President's, too.''
    Now, it's quite one thing to say that when you're on national 
television. It's another thing to look into the eyes of a parent who's 
lost a 6-year-old and say that; to visit, as I did, the parents of the 
Columbine kids, or in Springfield, Oregon, or Jonesboro, Arkansas, and 
say that.
    I want you to know this because I'm not trying to put you in a 
depressed mood, I'm trying to fire your energy for the coming combat. 
Maybe he really believes this. But if he 
does, we've got even more trouble than just a horrible political 
mistake. We've got to make up our mind as a country.
    I'm glad the crime rate is at a 25-year low. I'm glad the gun death 
rate is at a 30-year low. I don't know a single living American who 
believes this country is safe enough. The NRA says we ought to prosecute 
gun crimes more. I agree with that, and we have. They're for holding 
adults accountable when they recklessly give kids access to guns; good 
for them. But they're not for anything that is a preventive measure, 
that might require the slightest effort on the part of the people they 
propose to represent, even if making that effort lets everybody else 
live in a safer America. They were against banning cop-killer bullets--
and there weren't any deer in the deer woods wearing Kevlar vests.
    So I regret this. And I'm not going to get in a shouting match about 
it, but I want you to know that there are big stakes here. So I want to 
help these people because they've earned it, and they've given you a 
good country to live in and a stronger America because they're right on 
the issues.
    And the third reason that I want to be for them is the point 
Dick made about wanting to run the House 
in a bipartisan manner and to set a good example. One of the reasons I 
ran for President is that I was completely turned off, as a Governor of 
what my predecessor called a small southern State, at the way that 
Washington was so much in the grip of name-calling and an attempt to 
systematically undermine other people personally. I thought it was 
wrong. And now that I've had some passing experience with it, I feel 
more strongly about it. I'm not running for anything, but I'm telling 
you, this is a great country, and you deserve a better climate than you 
have been getting in Washington, DC. And you've got to have people who 
will stand up and say that.
    I've worked as hard as I could to build one America out here in the 
grassroots, to get people to come together across racial lines and 
religious lines and the other lines that divide us, and to be a force 
for that kind of harmony around the world. But it is difficult for 
America to do that if what they see in the national political leadership 
is this sort of slash-and-burn--well, the kind of stuff I just read you. 
And I think we can do better than that. And I know he'll be better than 
that, and these Members will be better than that.
    Folks, we've got a lot of honest differences of opinion. And maybe 
they're right some times, and we're not always right. But I know one 
thing--we are right to believe that elections ought to be fought about 
what's good for you and what's good for your life and not whether we can 
decimate our adversaries. And that's the kind of Speaker Dick 
Gephardt will be.
    So when people ask you why you came here today, say, ``Well, they've 
done a good job, and they deserve our support. They've got better

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ideas for the future, and that's what matters. And not only that, I like 
the way they will run our Nation's Government. I will feel better when 
they're having arguments up there over policy instead of personalities, 
and when they're trying to put people first and actually get something 
done.''
    Those are three good reasons for you to be here today, and I hope 
you will share those with all your friends and neighbors in this area. 
If you do, you'll dramatically increase the chances of their success in 
November.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:39 p.m. in the lobby at the Playhouse 
Square Center. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Patrick J. 
Kennedy, chairman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Mayor 
Michael R. White of Cleveland; Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, candidate for 
Ohio's 12th Congressional District; former Representative Louis Stokes; 
6-year-old Kayla Rolland, who died after she was shot by 6-year-old 
classmate Dedrick Owens in Mount Morris Township, MI; Sam Donaldson, 
cohost, ABC's ``This Week''; and Wayne LaPierre, executive vice 
president, National Rifle Association.