[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[April 4, 2000]
[Pages 610-614]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department 
Conference
April 4, 2000

    Thank you. Well, the first thing I would like to say is John 
Podesta told me that he emceed this 
retirement dinner for Bob Sunday night. 
And then Hillary came over here for 
breakfast, and I just kind of got lonesome. Nobody had me come over, so 
I just thought I would intrude myself on your meeting. And I'm glad to 
be here.
    I want to say I came for two reasons. First of all, I came to thank 
you for all the support you've given me and for all the work you've done 
for America and for all the people you represent. I have tried, too, to 
be a builder, and the builders of this country, to me, embody the best 
of America. So I want to thank you, because without your help and your 
support, none of the good things that have happened that our 
administration, that the Vice President and I have been part of would 
have been possible.
    And the second thing I wanted to do was to say a special word of 
thanks to Bob Georgine as he retires 
after 29 years. Thank you for your leadership on raising the minimum 
wage, on school construction, on bringing investment to the new markets 
of America that have been left out of our prosperity, on the Patients' 
Bill of Rights, and on all the issues that specifically affect your 
members and working people.
    And I wanted to also thank you for last Labor Day, where you taught 
me to use an electric screwdriver. [Laughter] Now that I'm moving into 
my own home and it's 111 years old, I might need that skill again, 
before you know it. [Laughter]
    Bob and I are both retiring. And at 
least he's doing it voluntarily. I'm term-limited. But I tell you, as we 
look back on the last 7 years, it has been a wonderful experience. And 
again I say, we could not have done it without you. What I'd like for 
you to do now is just take a few minutes with me and think about why we 
are where we are and where we need to go.
    I have my politics, I suppose, partly from the way I was raised by 
my grandparents and my family, partly from what I've learned as a 
Governor in my home State of Arkansas and

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as President, partly from what I've observed about human affairs and 
human nature. But I have come to believe that there are basically two 
big approaches here to American politics: One is, obviously, from the 
bottom up; the other is from the top down. We're on the bottom-up side. 
The other is unite and lift, against divide and conquer. I think that 
most of us believe the way we do because we think everyone counts, 
everyone ought to have a chance, everyone has a role to play in our 
society, and we all do better when we help each other. That's why we 
think everyone should have opportunity, and we should have a community 
of all Americans.
    Now, if you think about where we are today, it seems to me that even 
though I love to hear you cheer for me and for where we are and what 
we've done, the real issue is, what are we going to do with this moment 
of prosperity? You know, people can be tested in adversity, but they are 
also tested when times are good. When you build up a great legacy, what 
do you do with it? And I've worked as hard as I could for the last 7 
years to try to first turn this country around. Just remember what it 
was like when we all--when Al Gore and I showed up here. We had high 
deficits. We had high interest rates. We had no job growth. We had 
social divisions. We had political gridlock. I've worked hard to try to 
turn it around. The country is moving in the right direction. What are 
we going to do with it? And that is the real issue.
    And I would argue that you have a solemn responsibility in this 
election season not only to mobilize your members and their families but 
to reach out to the larger American community to say, ``This is not a 
time for self-indulgence. This is a time to concentrate on our unique 
ability to meet the big, long-term challenges of America, for the most 
vulnerable among us, for the children like those children that are in 
this audience today.'' And I'd just like to begin with one; 
Bob alluded to it.
    In the next 30 years, all the baby boomers are going to retire, and 
we'll only have about two people working for every one person drawing 
Social Security. Not two people total, but--[laughter]--two people. Even 
I couldn't get that done. [Laughter] Two people working for every one 
person drawing Social Security. And so there will be a great question 
here. How are we going to change that? How are we going to accommodate 
the aging of America?
    Well, I'm about to sign a bill which removes the Social Security 
earnings limit, so people who want to work in their later years can do 
so and still draw their Social Security. I think that's a good thing to 
do. But we also have to recognize that we're going to have to make some 
changes in order for Social Security to mean in the 21st century what it 
has meant to the 20th century.
    We're also going to have to make some changes in the Medicare 
program, which was established when President Johnson was here, to make 
it work in the 21st century. And I've asked the Congress, for example, 
to dedicate the interest savings from paying down the debt to the Social 
Security Trust Fund. Why? Because right now, we're paying more in Social 
Security taxes than we're paying out in Social Security. So as we pay 
the debt down, I want to take the interest savings from paying the debt 
down, put it in the Trust Fund. It would now allow us to add about 54 
years to the life of the Social Security Trust Fund and take it out 
beyond the life of the baby boom generation.
    And I hope you'll talk to the Members of Congress. I know a lot of 
Republicans have supported many of your issues, and you have 
relationships with both Republicans and Democrats. This is not a 
complicated deal. The only reason for the Republicans not to support 
this is if they want to privatize Social Security, if they can get the 
Congress and the White House. Now, you need to put the heat on folks to 
say, ``We've got the money now. Let's dedicate it now to saving Social 
Security and taking it out beyond the life of the baby boom 
generation.''
    The other thing we have to do is to modernize Medicare and add a 
prescription drug benefit for our seniors on Medicare. Now, we just 
learned last week that Medicare, which was scheduled to go broke in 
1999, last year--when I took office, they said the Trust Fund would run 
out of money in 1999. We have now taken it out to 2023, and I'm very 
proud of that. But you know, if we were designing a Medicare program 
today, no one would even think about designing Medicare without 
prescription drug coverage, first of all, because there's been so many 
dramatic advances in medication; and secondly, because, again I will 
say, the nature of people over 65 has changed.

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    When Medicare was originally designed, people didn't live much 
longer than 65 years, typically, and this was designed for emergency 
care or for critical care, for hospitals and doctors. Now, any American 
lives to be 65 has got a life expectancy of 83. And more and more, we 
need preventive care and chronic care. And more and more, that is 
prescription medication. No one--if we were starting all over again 
today, we'd never even think about having a Medicare program that didn't 
provide a prescription drug component.
    Now, I've just come from a meeting with the Senate Democrats. And 
the Senate is taking up the budget today, and the Democrats are going to 
try to, first of all, say we should not spend the surplus on risky tax 
cuts; we should first take care of our basic business. Senator 
Robb is going to offer an amendment today, 
supported by Senator Daschle, that makes 
this simple statement: After we modernize Medicare with an affordable, 
broadbased, voluntary prescription drug benefit, then we can move 
forward with sensible tax cuts that aren't so big they undermine our 
ability to save Social Security, pay down the debt, and invest in the 
education of our children. But first things first.
    So the Senate is going to get a resolution by Senator Robb today that says, say yes to Medicare and 
prescription drugs and no to having a big tax cut first. So I hope you 
will support that.
    Now, interestingly enough, a number of people in the Republican 
majority are saying, ``Okay, well, I'll go along with the drug program 
as long as everybody doesn't get it. We ought to stop at the poverty 
level or 150 percent of the poverty level or maybe at the outer reaches, 
some of them 200 percent of the poverty level.'' Let me tell you 
something. They want to say that nobody with an annual income of over 
$16,700 should get help with this prescription drug benefit. I just 
think that's wrong.
    If you think about it, a lot of you have parents, uncles, aunts, 
maybe your older brothers and sisters that are on Medicare. If they have 
a $300 or $400 a month drug bill, which is not all that rare, then 
$16,000 is not all that much money. And since this benefit is 
voluntary--again I will say, I don't think a widow earning $16,000 or 
even $20,000 a year is less deserving of drug coverage than someone who 
is below the poverty line.
    So I hope you will stick up for the proposition that all of our 
seniors should have the option of buying into this insurance program. 
That's what made Medicare work in the first place. That's what made 
Social Security work in the first place. It was a universal program that 
helped middle class people as well as low income people. And this is an 
opportunity to improve the process of aging in America in a way that is 
humane and decent and completely affordable. So we need your help to get 
prescription drug coverage in the Medicare program this year, in the 
right way, for all Americans.
    I also want to thank you for your devotion to the welfare of people 
on the other end of life's age line, for your support for education and, 
in particular, for the work you have done to build bipartisan support 
for school construction and renovation.
    This year I have sent a budget to the Congress which will enable us 
to build or modernize 6,000 schools and to repair 5,000 schools a year 
over the next 5 years. This is terrifically important. We've got the 
largest school population we've ever had. We want to have high standards 
and high accountability. We want to hook all these schools up to the 
Internet. But there are schools in New York City that are still being 
heated with coal--with coal. The average age of a school building in 
Philadelphia is 65 years. I was in a small town in Florida, visiting an 
elementary school where there were 12--12--housetrailers behind the 
school to take the overflow of the students.
    One-third of our schools are in serious disrepair, a lot of them 
literally too old to be wired for the Internet; other kids in trailers 
that need to be in modern classrooms. This is a big issue. We've been 
working on it for 3 years now. This week the Department of Education 
released a State-by-State report, telling us that the need has grown and 
grown. Enrollment is growing; facilities are crumbling. Every year we 
fail to act, the problem gets worse.
    I am very frustrated by those who say, in the majority in Congress, 
that this is not a national responsibility. That is not true. I'm not 
trying to tell people how to build the buildings. I'm not trying to 
prescribe the--we're not trying to micromanage this program. But the 
school districts of this country do not have the money or the means 
right now to do what our children need. We have finally more people in 
the

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schools than we had during the baby boom generation after World War II. 
And we cannot expect them to learn in facilities that are unbearable 
and, in many cases, unwireable.
    So I asked you to work with me. With your help, we actually have now 
a strong bipartisan school construction bill in the House. And thanks to 
you, largely, we have both Republicans as well as Democrats supporting 
this legislation in the Senate and the House. The House bill would 
allocate $24.8 billion to help communities build or renovate these 6,000 
schools.
    So now that you've gotten us some good Republican support, we have 
to get this to a vote. Once it became obvious on the House floor that we 
actually had Republicans supporting this bill and that we could pass it, 
then efforts were made to keep it from coming to a vote. So I say to 
you, there are a lot of people who believe that this year, because it's 
election year, should be a year where nothing gets done. And I have 
challenged every Member of Congress who believes that to relinquish his 
or her salary for a year, because we didn't get to where we are today by 
taking a year off. You don't get to take a year off. Nobody else gets to 
take a year off, and everybody's drawing a paycheck every 2 weeks. There 
is no reason not to continue to move forward.
    Believe me, no matter how much progress we make this year, there 
will still be significant areas of disagreement between our Presidential 
candidates and between the two parties in all the congressional races. 
So let's show up for the American people and do what we can. There is no 
reason--no reason--not to pass the prescription drug benefit on Medicare 
and not to pass the school construction bill this year. And you can help 
us do it. I hope you will.
    Now, I would like to close with the point with which I began, first, 
with a simple thank-you and, second, with a reminder that this year, 
this election year, imposes on all of us an historic responsibility. We 
did not get to where we are today, with 21 million new jobs and the 
lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest female unemployment 
rate in 40 years, the lowest minority unemployment rate ever measured, 
highest homeownership in history, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, 
lowest poverty rates in 20 years, lowest crime rates in 25 years--this 
didn't happen by accident. It happened because we worked together, and 
we had the right ideas, and we were moving in the right direction. It 
happened because we believed in uniting our people and lifting them up 
and not in divide and conquer. It happened because we believed you could 
be pro-business and pro-labor, pro-work and pro-family, you could grow 
the economy and improve the environment, you could balance the budget 
and run a surplus and still invest more in education and give tax relief 
to middle income families.
    A study last week said that the percentage of Federal income tax 
coming out of average families' incomes was the lowest in 40 years. 
That's why we had a unite-and-lift, not a divide-and-conquer theory, and 
because we kept working. And the only concern I have about this election 
year is that people will say, ``Well, we've got the first surpluses 
we've had in 40 years, back to back. Things are going well. Why don't we 
vote for something that makes us feel good in the moment?''
    And I just want you all to listen to this, particularly those of you 
that are about my age. In February we celebrated the fact that we had 
the longest economic expansion in American history. And so I had all my 
economic advisers in, and we were sitting around talking about it. And I 
said, ``Well, when was the last longest economic expansion in history, 
before this one?'' You know when it was? Nineteen sixty-one to 1969.
    Now, let me tell you what happened then. In 1964 I graduated from 
high school, at the peak of this economic expansion. We had low 
unemployment, low inflation, high growth. Everybody thought the growth 
would go on forever. We had a civil rights challenge at home, but Lyndon 
Johnson was President. He'd united the country after President Kennedy's 
assassination, and people believed that the civil rights challenge would 
be met in the Congress and the courts, not in the streets. We were sort 
of involved in Vietnam, but people thought that was a long way away, and 
nobody dreamed it would divide the country. And people thought that we 
would win the cold war because our values and our system were superior, 
and things would just rock right along. That's what we thought in 1964.
    Four years later, in this city, I graduated from college on June the 
8th. It was 2 days after Robert Kennedy had been killed, 2 months and 4 
days after Martin Luther King was killed. Today is the 32d anniversary 
of his death. It was 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he

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couldn't run for President anymore, because the country was divided 
right down the middle over Vietnam and there were demonstrations 
everywhere.
    It was a few weeks before Richard Nixon was elected President on one 
of those divide-and-conquer platforms. And I know a lot of you probably 
voted for him if you were of voting age--that age. But let me just 
remind you of what the message was. The message was, ``I represent the 
Silent Majority,'' which meant that those of us that weren't for him, we 
were in the loud minority. So there was ``us'' and there was ``them.'' 
And then we had all these ``us'' and ``them'' elections. Al Gore and I 
came along and said, ``We want to put people first. We want to unite, 
not divide.'' But just a few weeks after that election in 1968, boom, 
the longest economic expansion in American history was over.
    What's the point of all that? I'm not trying to get you down. I want 
you to be up. There's nobody more optimistic than me in this room today. 
But we need to have a little humility and gratitude for this moment 
we're in. And we need to understand that these things can get away from 
us. And we need to be resolved to make the most of this. This is a 
moment for making tomorrows, not a moment for being distracted or 
indulging ourselves but for making tomorrows.
    We have a chance to build the future of our dreams for our children. 
And the reason I told you that story about the 1960's was not only to 
remind you that nothing lasts forever, and you have to make the most of 
these things, but to tell you that, not as your President but as a 
citizen, I have been waiting for 35 years for my country to have this 
chance. And you can make the most of it.
    So in everything you do this year, you remember this little story I 
told you. And you remember that we have the chance of a lifetime that we 
should be grateful for. And everyone you talk to and everyone you touch 
and everything you say, remind people: This is our moment for making 
tomorrows.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:25 p.m. in the International Ballroom at 
the Washington Hilton and Towers. In his remarks, he referred to Robert 
A. Georgine, president, Building and Construction Trades Department, 
AFL-CIO.