[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[April 2, 2000]
[Pages 594-597]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 594]]


Remarks at a Democratic National Committee and Nevada State Democratic 
Party Reception in Las Vegas
April 2, 2000

    Thank you very much. Well, first, let me say I am delighted to be 
here. When I got up this morning--a little early, because we had this 
shift to daylight savings time--it was cloudy in Washington. And I think 
I made a good swap. [Laughter] I just talked to Hillary on the phone, and I'm on my way to northern California 
to do an event and see our daughter tonight, 
and I think I made a good decision to travel west today. I love coming 
back to Las Vegas.
    I will say--you know, Jan was kind of joshing 
with me on the way in. I said, ``Gosh, I love this house.'' And she 
said, ``Well, you know, I'll give you a lot of variety because I move 
every year.'' [Laughter] And I think she ought to give this place at 
least 18 months. This is a wonderful place, and I'm delighted to be 
here, and I think we all are.
    I want to thank Senator Bryan, as he 
retires. I want to wish him well and thank him for all that he did as 
Senator, Governor, and attorney general. I'm so old and creaky, I served 
with both Dick Bryan and Bob Miller, and I thank 
you, sir, for everything you did. Thank you, and we wish you well.
    I want to thank Harry Reid, and I want to 
thank you, Representative Berkley, for 
helping to get the votes that will guarantee that when I veto that 
nuclear waste bill, the veto will be sustained. And I thank you for 
that.
    I told the people of Nevada in November of 1998 in no uncertain 
terms that if they wanted to have the law observed instead of short-
circuited, they had to reelect Harry Reid, and 
that we needed a Member of Congress from our party who had agreed with 
us here. And you won, and you won. And Harry was like Jack Kennedy in 
1960; he didn't buy a single vote he didn't need. [Laughter]
    And I want to be heard again publicly on this. If it hadn't been for 
your delegation working the Congress, explaining the issue, we would 
never have gotten enough votes on our side--and we did better this 
time--to sustain the President's veto. And I would hope the people of 
Nevada will think about this in this coming Presidential race, because 
I'm not on the ballot, and I won't be here next time. And I'll guarantee 
it; it is an absolute certainty, 100 percent certainty, that there is a 
difference in position between the candidates on this issue.
    Keep in mind, when the study was originally done, there were two 
sites that were thought to be appropriate, possibly. One was in Nevada; 
the other was in rural Texas. So I'll leave it to you. [Laughter] I know 
you can figure this out.
    I want to thank Governor Miller, too, for 
being my great friend and for all the things that we've done together. 
We even took a trip to the Balkans together recently, and we had a good 
time in Bulgaria. I want to thank you, Ed Bernstein, for running for the United States Senate. It's a hard 
thing to do as a private citizen, and I thank you.
    And thank you, Rory Reid, for being the chair 
of this party. I want to thank all the members of the legislature and 
the city council, the county commissioners, Mayor Gibson from Henderson, for being here. I want to thank Ed 
Rendell, my great friend, who when he 
retired as mayor of Philadelphia, I said I had a little part-time job I 
wanted him to do. [Laughter] And he's embraced it with gusto.
    Thank you, Janice Griffin. There was a 
couple here who have not been introduced that I'd like to acknowledge. 
They've come from Chicago, and Lou Weisbach and 
his wife, Ruth--he's the head of our Jefferson 
Trust Program for the Democratic Party. And I want to welcome them to 
Las Vegas and thank them for coming out here with me. And I want to 
thank former Congressman Bilbray for being 
here.
    Let me say one thing about him, as well, I said earlier. We 
celebrated--I will begin and end with this fact--we celebrated the 
longest economic expansion in the history of America in February. It 
happened because when Al Gore and I were elected, we first of all said, 
even before we took office, that we were going to do something about the 
crippling deficit and the debt of our country, which had quadrupled--
quadrupled--in the 12 years before I took office. The deficit was $290 
billion, projected to be about $400 billion this year. And we said we 
would do something about it, and

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interest rates immediately started to drop. Then I presented a program; 
they started to drop again. Then, in August of '93, came decision time: 
Were we finally, after 12 years of irresponsibility, going to actually 
do something about the deficit that was gripping our country?
    Now, don't forget what America was like in 1992: high unemployment; 
high interest rates; low growth; every time we'd get out of a recession, 
we'd fall right back in; social problems getting worse; Washington full 
of name-calling and political division, not much going on. That's what 
was happening.
    And the Republicans made a decision that they would not give us a 
single, solitary vote on the deficit reduction package in 1993--not one. 
And the leadership put the word out; no one could budge. And they told 
everybody this was nothing but a tax increase, in spite of the fact that 
we cut thousands of programs and eliminated hundreds. And they said it 
would wreck the American economy, and they washed their hands of it. 
They said, ``We're not responsible for what happens.'' And they 
certainly aren't. [Laughter]
    And this man, Jim Bilbray, voted with 
me. And he gave up his seat in Congress because of it, because by 1994 
the American people had not yet felt that the economy was doing better. 
They had not felt it. And the Republicans could come out and say, 
``Well, they all voted for tax increases.'' Well, a few of you may have 
had your taxes increased--about 1.2 percent of the American people did. 
The rest either had no tax increase or an income tax cut.
    But we lost a lot of good people in the Congress, and he was one. 
But I want you to know, if he hadn't cast 
that vote, we didn't--we passed that budget by one vote. And everything 
that has happened since, right down to the longest economic expansion in 
history, would not have happened if we hadn't gone from deficits to 
surpluses and gone from high interest rates to low interest rates. And I 
thank you, Mr. Bilbray, for what you did.
    Now, let me say--I want to just get out and say hello to you, and 
it's a warm day, and I don't want you to have to stand a long time in 
the sun. But I want you to think about this. If I were to ask you, 
what's this election about, what would you answer?
    This is my answer: Seven years and a few months ago, Al Gore and I 
took office. And we said we were going to put the people of this country 
first by going beyond the politics of division to try to create a 
country in which there was opportunity for every responsible citizen; in 
which we had one community across all the racial, religious, and other 
lines that divide us; in which we're the leading force in the world for 
peace and freedom and prosperity, and that anybody who wanted to be a 
part of that should have a chance.
    And we have now worked for over 7 years. We not only have the 
longest economic expansion in history and 21 million new jobs, we've got 
the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest minority 
unemployment rate ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment rate in 
40 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rates 
in 20 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years, the highest 
homeownership in the history of the country. Now, that is the record. We 
have also downsized the Government to the point--it's now the size it 
was when Dwight Eisenhower was President, and that was a year or two 
ago. And yet, we're doing more.
    So there's not a real debate here. What we have stood for works. And 
what we have to decide now is, what are we going to do with this moment 
of prosperity? Are we going to give in to our fears, or are we going to 
act on our hopes? Are we going to take the easy way because there seems 
to be no adverse consequence, or are we going to sort of lift our 
visions and take on the big challenges of the future?
    The real issue is, here, not what we've done for the last 7 years 
but, now that we have this moment, what are we going to do with it? And 
my answer to you is quite simple. You get a chance like this once in a 
lifetime, a country does. And we have got to use this moment to take 
care of the big challenges that our children are going to face when they 
grow up. And I'll just mention a few.
    We could create 21st century schools with world-class education for 
all of our kids. But we've got to have high standards, accountability, 
and support, from after-school and summer school programs to computers 
to modernized facilities in a lot of the cities like Philadelphia, where 
the average school building is 65 years old, and in New York, where many 
of the schools, believe it or not, are still heated by coal-fired 
furnaces built in the 19th century. We can build those 21st century 
schools.

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    We can deal with the 21st century family. We have to help people 
balance work and family. What does that mean? It means, among other 
things, I think people ought to get a tax deduction for college tuition. 
I think they ought to get a tax credit for long-term care, because more 
and more families are taking care of their elderly parents or members 
with disabilities. I think that we ought to have a tax incentive for 
child care for working families. Those are the kinds of tax breaks I 
favor.
    I think we ought to raise the minimum wage again. The last time I 
raised it, they said it would increase unemployment. Since then, we've 
had record job growth. People ought to make a decent living. I think 
these are the kinds of things that we ought to do.
    I think that we ought to recognize that when we baby boomers retire, 
there will only be two people working for every one person drawing 
Social Security. And we should move now--now, not then, now--to lengthen 
the life of Social Security to 2053--that's my proposal--out beyond the 
lifespan of the baby boom generation; to save Medicare; to add a 
prescription drug benefit. Sixty percent of the seniors in this country 
today can't afford the prescription drugs they need. We ought to do it 
now.
    We ought to act now to prove we can grow the economy and preserve 
the environment and deal with the problem of climate change and all the 
other environmental challenges we face. It's not necessary to hurt the 
economy to do that.
    You get the idea. I remember one of the members of the other party 
criticized me for going to India and Pakistan because we didn't, so-
called, ``get anything.'' I think we got a lot out of going to India and 
Pakistan. I don't want them to have a war, and I think that we should do 
it. I believe America should be a force for peace and against 
discrimination and hatred, from Kosovo and Bosnia to the Middle East and 
Northern Ireland, to Africa and India and Pakistan. That's what I 
believe.
    Now, all of this is at issue. I'm for Al Gore for President not just because I'm devoted to him, and I 
feel loyalty because he's been the finest Vice President in history, but 
because I know--because I know he understands the future, and he has the 
experience, the ability, and the will to lead us in this direction.
    And I came here to help these folks in Nevada who are running for 
Congress, because I think it's important. Let me tell you something, it 
really matters who is in the Senate. They're going to vote on the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Republicans just voted it down--the 
first time since the dawn of the nuclear age the United States walked 
away from its responsibility to a safer world. But he would vote for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It's a 
big deal. The world these children are going to live in will have all 
kinds of people trying to build small-scale nuclear, chemical, and 
biological weapons. You can't say it doesn't matter just because we're 
out here and things are prosperous today. It does matter.
    It matters who--the next President is going to appoint between two 
and four members of the Supreme Court. Who do you want voting to confirm 
them? You need to think about these things.
    And I will say again, this nuclear waste issue, it will not go away. 
So you need to reelect this fine woman to 
Congress, and you need to vote for a Senator who will fight with us, and 
you need to remember that if you make the wrong decision in the White 
House, you can forget it; it's history. You need to remember these 
things.
    Let me just say again, this is the longest economic expansion in 
history, and I'm proud of it, and I'm grateful I've had a chance to be a 
part of it. And I'm delighted that I have had an opportunity to be 
President, and I love this job. I never would quit if I weren't term-
limited, I don't think. [Laughter]
    But I say this to you as a citizen. The last time we had an 
expansion this long was in the sixties. And when I--I grew up in it. I 
graduated from high school in it in 1964, and I did think it would go on 
forever--low unemployment, low inflation, high growth. I thought all of 
the civil rights problems of the country would be solved in the Congress 
and the courts. I had a President, Lyndon Johnson, who was going to do 
it. I never dreamed the country would be divided over Vietnam in 1964. 
By the time I graduated from college, Robert Kennedy had been killed 2 
days before; Martin Luther King had been killed 2 months before; Lyndon 
Johnson, 9 weeks before, had to get out of the President's race because 
our country was divided over Vietnam.
    Richard Nixon got elected on a campaign saying he was for the Silent 
Majority--which means those of us who weren't for him were outcast

[[Page 597]]

in the loud minority--launching whole decades of divisive politics. And 
just a few months afterward, the longest expansion in American history 
was gone--history. It was over.
    Now, it's a pretty warm day, and we're all in a good humor, and 
there's not a more optimistic person out here by this pool than me. But 
I'm telling you, this is the chance of a lifetime. That's what you're 
here for. Are we going to take on the big challenges, or go back to the 
easy way out? Are we going to pull together across the lines that divide 
us with things like the hate crimes bill and the employment 
nondiscrimination bill, or are we going to go back to ``us'' and 
``them'' politics?
    I've been waiting for 35 years for this to roll around again--35 
years since my country had a chance to build the future of its dreams 
for its children. I'm a Democrat by heritage, instinct, and conviction. 
I'm proud of what we've done. But the best is yet to be. You go out and 
tell people that, and we'll win in November.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:06 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to former Mayor Jan Jones of Las Vegas; former Gov. 
Bob Miller of Nevada; Rory Reid, chair, Nevada State Democratic Party; 
Mayor James B. Gibson of Henderson, NV; Edward G. Rendell, general 
chair, Democratic National Committee; and Janice Griffin, chair, Women's 
Leadership Forum.