[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 30, 2000]
[Pages 583-585]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in New York City
March 30, 2000

    Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you for coming, all of you.
    And I wanted to say a special word of appreciation to all of our 
musicians here. Thank you for playing tonight. You did such a wonderful 
job. And I want to thank Luther Vandross. 
We've never had a conversation about ``Evergreen,'' but I think it's the 
best love song of the last 25 years. [Laughter] And so I was very happy 
when he sang it tonight.
    I want to thank all of you for coming here. And I will be quite 
brief, because I want to spend time visiting with you and letting you 
say whatever you want to say to me or ask questions or whatever.
    But you know, I'm not running for anything this year. [Laughter] And 
most days, I'm okay about it. I am campaigning to become a member of the 
Senate spouses club, however. [Laughter] And I'm feeling better about 
that.
    But I want to say just a couple things to you, to amplify what my 
good friend Ed Rendell said. When I came to Washington in January of 
1993, our country was, I thought, in quite a bit of trouble. We had high 
unemployment. We had high interest rates. We had quadrupled the debt of 
the country in 4 years. We had no real, serious technology policy, no 
real, serious environmental policy, no real, serious long-term economic 
policy. We certainly had no health care policy.
    And our elections were basically--I thought it almost turned into 
caricature affairs, where basically for several years, even decades, the 
Republicans had succeeded in convincing enough Americans that the 
Democrats were weak on defense, weak on the economy, weak on the budget, 
weak on welfare, weak on crime, weak on this, that, and the other thing. 
We couldn't be trusted with the White House. And the wheels had to 
practically come off before any of us could win. And I happened to be 
standing there when the wheels ran off.
    It wasn't quite that simple. But I guess what I would like to say to 
you is that all of you here in your different ways have been immensely 
successful, or you wouldn't be here tonight. All of you also are capable 
of looking beyond your immediate self-interest, or you wouldn't be here 
tonight, because the other guys would give you a bigger tax cut quicker. 
And yet you're here.
    So the first thing I want to say to you is that all these elections 
are for people to hold jobs. They're not to posture. They're to hold 
jobs. It matters what your vision of the country is. It matters what 
your vision of the job is. It matters what you know and how you go about 
your business and whether you care. In other words, it's a job, the 
Presidency.
    You know, I want Al Gore to be elected 
because I know him better than anybody in this room and most people in 
the world. And I think he's a good man, and I know he's a courageous 
person. And I'm devoted to him, and he's been loyal to me. Yes, that's 
all true. But I also want him to be elected because I think he 
understands the future and has not only the ideas but the experience and 
the work habits to get us there. This is a job. It's not a place just of 
rhetorical or political posturing.
    And the same thing is true of the Congress. And I go about doing as 
much work as I can to try to help all these folks raise enough money to 
be competitive. They're all going to be outspent. You know, our 
candidate for President is going to be 
outspent. Hillary's going to be 
outspent. They're all, no matter how much money we raise, they're all 
going to be outspent.
    But in 1998, we were outspent by $100 million, and we gained seats 
in the House of Representatives in the sixth year of a President's

[[Page 584]]

term for the first time since 1822. Why? Because we had ideas, we had a 
message. People thought we were interested in them, and they thought the 
Republicans were interested in themselves and playing Washington power 
games. And it didn't matter that they had more money; all that mattered 
was, we had enough.
    So I thank you for being here. But I hope that in addition to being 
here, you'll be able to manifest this commitment throughout this year. 
Because this is a profoundly important election, this millennial 
election. And there are real differences between us. The differences 
that we have, from our nominees for President to the nominees for 
Congress, including the big Senate race here in New York, over the 
budget alone, should determine the outcome of the election.
    We want a tax cut, all right, but we think it ought to be small 
enough and targeted enough to help families like those who served us 
tonight and entertained us tonight to raise their kids, provide long-
term care for their parents, get a tax deduction for college tuition, 
afford better child care; induce people like you to invest your money in 
poor areas in America so everybody can be a part of this economic 
recovery and still have enough money left over to pay this country out 
of debt for the first time since 1835; to save Social Security and 
Medicare when all the baby boomers retire and there will only be two 
people working for every one person retired; to invest in world-class 
education and stop investing in things that don't work; to make major 
commitments to science and technology and to basic research.
    So many of you tonight are here because of your achievements in 
health care or in the information revolution, the telecommunications 
revolution, or a combination of both. And I think you share my 
conviction that we need to continue basic research to enable us to build 
a new energy future for America. This is a huge deal. You know, this 
global warming is not a canard. It's not a false threat. It's a reality. 
And the good news is that for the last several years, it is no longer 
true that you have to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to 
grow an economy. In fact, if we were more diligent about building a 
different energy future, we'd be generating even more jobs, by far. And 
I won't bore you with a long wonkish solution why, but if you want to 
talk about it, I'd be glad to. It is stunning to me, the prospects that 
we have.
    You know, in a few weeks I'll have the privilege of announcing that 
the sequencing of the human genome has been completed. What this means 
is that, I think, within 10 years the practice of medicine will be 
totally unrecognizable, as we know it. And a lot of you who have been on 
the forefront of trying to get us to live healthier lifestyles and take 
more preventive action, it will be a joyous treasure trove of 
opportunity that will lead to a lengthening of our lives and the quality 
of life.
    So what I'm trying to say to you is, there's big, big opportunities 
out there. But there are not big guarantees out there. Are we going to 
continue this economic policy that has brought us to this point and 
continue to pay our debt down and continue to be responsible, or not? 
Are we going to invest in education and health care, and science and 
technology, and a different energy future, or not?
    Are we going to assume our responsibilities around the world to try 
to take the world away from a dangerous future of the proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction? Or are we going to agree with the 
Republican Senate, their Presidential nominee, and their nominee here, 
that we shouldn't adopt the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a historic 
abandonment by the Republican Party of their normal bipartisan 
commitment to disarmament? These are big questions.
    So I hope that you will embrace this. You know, a lot of you here 
who have done very well are younger than I am by a good stretch. So I 
just want to--I'll close with this story. I try to tell this story every 
time I have a meeting like this.
    We celebrated in February the longest economic expansion in American 
history--21 million new jobs, a 30-year low in unemployment, a 30-year 
low in welfare, a 20-year low in poverty, a 25-year low in crime. And I 
was happy as a clam. But I--I always try to study the history of my 
country, as well as to think about the future. So I--we had the Council 
of Economic Advisers in there, and I said, ``Well, when was the last 
longest expansion in American history?'' And they said, ``Mr. President, 
it was the 1960's, 1961 to 1969.''
    So for those of you who are my age or older, take a walk down memory 
lane. And for those of you who are younger than me, listen to this. This 
is a magical moment of opportunity in this

[[Page 585]]

country. And most of you are completely immersed in the future and 
imagining all these possibilities. And so am I.
    But when the last longest economic expansion occurred in the 1960's, 
I can tell you--I graduated from high school in 1964--we thought it 
would go on forever, and we thought it was on automatic. We thought--we 
had low inflation. We had low unemployment. We had high growth. We had a 
civil rights challenge, but we thought it would be solved in the 
Congress and the courts, not in the street. We thought we would win the 
cold war because of our innate and self-evident superiority and never 
dreamed the country would be divided over Vietnam. We thought it would 
just happen--1964, when I finished high school.
    Within 2 years, there were riots in the streets over civil rights. 
Within 4 years, when I graduated from college, it was 2 days after 
Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was killed, 
9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson couldn't run for reelection because the 
country was split right down the middle over the war in Vietnam.
    A couple months later, President Nixon was elected on a campaign of 
representing the Silent Majority, which means if you weren't for him, 
you were in the loud minority, beginning the construct we saw all the 
way through the 1980's, right to the '92 election, to the '96 election; 
that you will see in 2000, where the other party tries to divide the 
American people between ``us'' versus ``them.'' And I'm supposed to be 
one of ``them'' because I believe things like we shouldn't discriminate 
against gay people, if they're good, God-fearing, taxpaying citizens and 
they show up and do their duty. I'm for hate crimes legislation. I'm for 
the employment nondiscrimination legislation. So that makes me one of 
``them'' instead of one of ``us''? I don't think so.
    But that was the portrait of what happened between 1964 and 1968. 
And within 4 months after that, the longest expansion in American 
history was history.
    And what I want you to know, you young people here, is, I have 
waited for 35 years for my country to have the chance to build the 
future of our dreams for our children. And I am determined to see the 
politics of America focused on, how can we make the most of the 
sequencing of the human genome? How can we build a different energy 
future? How can we bring economic opportunity to the people and places 
that have been left behind? How can we be a force for peace and 
prosperity and unity in troubled places around the world? How can we 
build one America? That's what I think politics is about.
    If somebody asks you tomorrow morning why you were here tonight, I 
hope you'll give them that answer. This is the best chance you will ever 
have to build the future of your dreams for your children.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:30 p.m. at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Mark Fox and Jeffrey Arnold, dinner co-
hosts; musician Luther Vandross; Edward G. Rendell, general chair, 
Democratic National Committee; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; and Mayor 
Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City.