[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[April 4, 2000]
[Pages 621-624]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
April 4, 2000

    Thank you. First of all, let me say, Carol, 
I am very grateful for those words and for your friendship, and I thank 
you and David for opening your beautiful home. 
Nancy, thank you for being my true friend, and 
I thank you and Harold for being here.
    People are always asking me what I am going to do when I leave 
office. I think tonight would be an appropriate time for me to make the 
announcement: David and Harold and I are going to open a consulting firm for 
political spouses. [Laughter] We're reasonable but not free. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Joe Andrew, who came 
out here from Indiana and gave us a real boost of energy. He took over 
the leadership of the Democratic Party when most people thought it was 
not much of a prize. And then we got Ed Rendell to come help us, and a number of other people. But Joe was 
there, working day-in and day-out, and he was indefatigable, and he was 
enthusiastic when even someone as optimistic as me wasn't sure he should 
be enthusiastic. So we owe you, and we're grateful, and we thank you.
    I want to thank all the people here in our administration family: 
Carrie, thank you for being here; 
Minyon; and I thank Molly Raiser for being here, my former Protocol Chief; and Ann 
Lewis, who has defended me better than anyone 
else--I think--just about--on television consistently, which is a job 
from time to time. [Laughter]
    I would like to make two or three points about why I think what 
you've done is important and why I want to urge you to continue to 
support the Democratic Party, to broaden our base, to reach out to new 
people, and to be especially vigilant in this election year.
    First of all, there is a real difference between these two parties. 
There is a difference on specific issues. Look at what we're debating 
today, gun safety. Last night I called Governor Glendening and Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy 
Townsend in Maryland to 
congratulate them on passing their legislation regarding child safety 
locks and other protections. It didn't have anything to do with people 
hunting in Maryland. They'll still have a duck hunting season this fall 
in Maryland, I'll bet you anything. And all the dire predictions of the 
NRA will be wrong, but kids will be safer. Massachusetts did the same 
thing.
    We're different: We think we ought to close the gun show loophole. 
We think if you buy a handgun at a gun store and you have to get

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your background checked, if you go to a gun show on the weekend you 
ought to do the same thing.
    And it reflects--and we believe in child safety locks, and we 
believe in building safe guns that can only be fired by the adults who 
buy them. We believe in banning the importation of large capacity 
ammunition clips, which make a mockery of the assault weapons ban. And 
there are differences there.
    We're different on the Patients' Bill of Rights. I don't oppose 
managed care myself; I think it's saved America a lot of money. But I 
think that, ultimately, health care decisions ought to be made by 
medical professionals and the patients themselves. And I think that this 
system ought to be priced and structured to support that. So we're for 
that, and we still can't get it out of this Republican Congress. We're 
for a minimum wage increase, and they're not. These are just the things 
that are being debated today.
    Look at their budget. We're for continued big investments in 
education, hiring more teachers in the early grades, repairing 5,000 
schools a year, building or doing major reconstruction on another 6,000 
so that we can have excellent facilities. And they don't support that.
    We're for a tax cut that is affordable and is targeted to what real 
working families need. We want to increase the earned-income tax credit 
because we think low income working people with kids ought to not have 
their children in poverty. We want to increase the child care tax 
credit. We want a $3,000-a-year long-term care tax credit, because so 
many people are having to take care of their parents or their disabled 
relatives. We think the cost of college tuition ought to be tax 
deductible, because we think 4 years of college ought to be universal. 
That's our tax program. Theirs is a lot bigger and a lot different, and 
most of you in this room would be better off under theirs than ours in 
the short run. You are here because you disagree with that, because you 
want us to go forward together. So the first thing I want to say is, 
there's a difference.
    The second point I want to make is, it's not like we don't know 
which one works. That's the amazing thing. This ought to be an easy 
election for the American people, because their nominee for 
President, even though he says he is for 
education, is for a tax cut even bigger than the one I vetoed. And all 
of them have endorsed him, so you would have to conclude that they are 
serious.
    I vetoed a tax cut last year because it would force us to run 
deficits again, and we could never save Social Security and Medicare, 
and we couldn't increase investment in education and science and 
technology and all of these things. So now, they are going to the 
American people saying that ``President Clinton made a mistake. He 
doesn't know what he is doing in his economic program, and the Vice 
President is wrong, their nominee. Elect 
us, and we'll give you an even bigger tax cut than the one he vetoed.''
    Now, they also are going to appoint between two and four members to 
the Supreme Court. And they are clearly on record as being against Roe 
v. Wade and wanting to reverse it. And there are big differences on the 
environment. There are big differences on all these other issues.
    Now, what I want to say to you is, it is not like you don't know 
which one is right. It's not like the American people don't know. We've 
got now--we have 8 years of doing it our way after 12 years of doing it 
their way. And you can look at the difference in the consequences. You 
have got to be able to tell people this in real blunt terms. There is an 
economic difference, and you have evidence. There is a social 
difference.
    They were against--my goodness, most of them were against the family 
medical leave law. They said it would really hurt the small-business 
economy. We've got 21 million new jobs, and 21 million people are taking 
advantage of family and medical leave. And I think you could argue it's 
made our economy stronger, because having people secure at work, knowing 
they can also be responsible in their family life, is a good thing, not 
a bad thing.
    So there is a different economic policy. There is a different social 
policy. By and large, they were against our 100,000 police. They were 
against the Brady bill, against the assault weapons ban, except for a 
handful of them. Now we've had evidence: We now have half a million 
felons, fugitives, and stalkers couldn't get handguns under the Brady 
bill. We've got a 25-year low in crime, a 30-year low in gun crime. So 
the question is, are we going to build on our successes, or change 
course?
    We have proved that you can improve the environment and grow the 
economy. We've got

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cleaner air, cleaner water, safer food. And now we want to take on the 
big challenges like global warming and getting us a more secure energy 
future, which the American people should want after this last scare with 
the oil prices.
    But if you look at what I've had to deal with since 1995--and they 
are trying to weaken our environmental protections and impose further 
burdens on our ability to protect the environment. They think that's 
what is necessary to grow the economy. Now, it's not like--we don't have 
any excuses here. We know, we've tried it their way; we've tried it our 
way. We've got a stronger economy and a cleaner environment.
    So point number one: There are big differences. Point number two: 
We've had a test run, a long test run, 12 years for them, 8 years for 
us. The results are better under our way.
    Now, the third point I want to make, to me, is more important than 
that. And it goes beyond just whether the country is better off, to the 
larger question of, how do you want to live, and how do you want to 
relate to each other and to the rest of the world?
    Basically, I think the reason we have succeeded is that we've had a 
good philosophy that works, that everybody counts; everyone should have 
a chance; everyone has a responsible role to play; we all do better when 
we help each other. Simple ideas; they work.
    We had a big press conference today--a couple of you there--on 
closing the digital divide. It's an empowerment device that I think is 
very important. I think the computer and the Internet--yes, they could 
make American society more divided, but they give us the chance--the 
chance--to lift more people out of poverty more quickly than ever before 
in all of human history, not only in the United States but all around 
the world--if we do it right.
    But we have to be governed by the right philosophy, the right 
values. And that is weighing on my mind a lot. A lot of you have been 
hearing me talk about this--you know it is. But I believe that our 
attitude, our basic approach to life and public life and citizenship, 
determines in large measure how we make the most of this world we are 
living in.
    I'm very grateful--I went this morning--I started off the day at the 
Building Trades, and there were 2,500 people there. And Bob 
Georgine, the head of the union, is 
retiring after 29 years. And it was wonderful, and they were all saying, 
``Thank you very much.'' And it was great for me. You know, you always 
want to think one or two people will miss you when you are gone.
    But the truth is, I feel much more strongly about what we are going 
to do with this election and with our future than I do about the 
achievements of this administration for the last 7 years, and what I am 
going to get done in this last year, because I've worked very hard to 
try to help the American people turn the country around.
    But this is what counts, because now we are in a position to really 
take all this success and do big things with it. We can get the country 
out of debt for the first time since 1835. We can make sure no kids grow 
up in poverty. We can give every child a world-class education. We can 
deal with the challenge of climate change, deal with our energy 
security, and actually create jobs doing it. We can bring economic 
opportunity to the places and people that have been left behind. We can 
be a stronger force for peace and freedom throughout the world because 
of all this success we've had. We can make America the safest big 
country in the world. There are big, big things we can do. We can save 
Social Security and Medicare for all the baby boom generation--big 
things.
    But we have to have the right attitude. We have to really believe 
that everybody matters; everybody ought to have a chance; everybody has 
a responsible role to play; we all do better when we help each other. 
We've got to really believe that. And we've got to act on it. That's 
what this whole election is about.
    It's weighing on my mind now, because today is the 32d anniversary 
of Martin Luther King's death. Five days ago was the 32d anniversary of 
Lyndon Johnson telling us he couldn't run for President again because 
the country was split right down the middle over the Vietnam war.
    Now, I'm not trying to be a downer for any of you; there is not a 
more optimistic person than me in this house tonight. But I'm telling 
you this to make you sober, because we're celebrating the longest 
economic expansion in history. And in February, when it happened and we 
were all patting ourselves on the back--probably a little too much--I 
asked my economic team when the last longest economic expansion in 
history was, and they said, 1961 to 1969.
     And I remember it very well, because I was coming of age. And when 
I finished high school

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in '64, we had low unemployment, low inflation, high growth. We thought, 
oh, this thing was going to go on forever. We had President Johnson 
uniting the country after President Kennedy had been killed. We thought 
he was going to get rid of poverty. We thought all the civil rights 
problems would be handled in the Congress and the courts, not in the 
street. We thought everything would be fine.
    And a couple of years later--so I come to Georgetown, to college, 
this big-eyed kid, believed in America and the promise of America and 
living the American dream, and everything was going to be great. And all 
of a sudden, we've got riots in the streets, and people are fighting 
over the Vietnam war. And by the time I graduated from college, it's 2 
days after Senator Kennedy was killed, and 2 months after Martin Luther 
King was killed, and 9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson couldn't run for 
reelection, and a few weeks before President Nixon was elected on a very 
different idea from the idea I just gave you.
    My idea is unite and lift; theirs was divide and conquer. That's 
what the Silent Majority was all about. Do you remember the Silent 
Majority? If you weren't part of it, you were part of the loud minority. 
That was me. [Laughter] I remember that. But it was ``us'' and ``them,'' 
not ``us'' together. And just a few weeks after that election, poof, the 
longest economic expansion in American history was history, over.
    Now, what's that got to do with today? Well, today, we're blessed. 
We have less internal crisis and external threat, but we're not free of 
those things. And all of life, every day, is a gift. We should be 
humble, humble in the face of this great prosperity of ours and 
absolutely determined to make the most of it.
    So what I want you to do--thank you for your money. Thank you for 
helping us to be able to compete. And don't be discouraged when you see 
they have more than we do. It doesn't matter; they outspent us $100 
million in '98, and we won anyway--in historic terms. All that matters 
is that we have enough to get our message out. But you need to be 
messengers. You need to say, ``I'm for them, because there are 
differences between these two parties.'' You don't have to badmouth 
them; you don't have to demonize them. You don't have to do what they so 
often do.
    You just have to say, ``Look, there are differences between these 
two parties, and I agree with our position on the economy, on crime, on 
social justice, on individual rights, on the concept of community. I'm 
for hate crimes legislation. I'm for the ``Employment Non-Discrimination 
Act.'' I don't believe we ought to single out racial minorities or women 
or gays or anybody else and run them out of our community. As long as 
they're law-abiding citizens, they ought to be protected and be a part 
of our future.'' There are differences, number one.
    Number two, we tried it their way; we tried it our way. Our way is 
better. We've got the evidence. We've got a stronger economy, a cleaner 
environment, a lower crime rate, a more cohesive society, and a strong 
role in the world for peace and freedom.
    Number three, this can get away from us, and we have to make the 
most of it. And the most important thing of all is how we feel about 
ourselves and one another. And we really do believe we all do better 
when we help each other. So we don't want to go back to divide-and-
conquer; we're for unite-and-lift.
    I've waited for 35 years for a day like this. I'm sorry I won't be 
around to keep on doing it. [Laughter] But I'm quite confident that if 
we make the right decisions in this election, the best days of this 
country are ahead.
    The thing that matters is not all that we have done. The thing that 
really matters is what will we do with it and whether we'll all benefit. 
That's why I'm a member of this party. That's why I'm here tonight, and 
why I implore you to be messengers every day between now and November.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 9:29 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Carol and David Pensky; Nancy 
Zirkin, director of government affairs, American Association of 
University Women, and her husband, Harold; Joseph J. Andrew, national 
chair, and Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic National 
Committee; Director of Presidential Scheduling Correspondence Carrie 
Street; Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs 
Minyon Moore; Counselor to the President Ann F. Lewis; Gov. Parris N. 
Glendening of Maryland; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; and Robert A. 
Georgine, president, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-
CIO.