[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[May 19, 2000]
[Pages 981-984]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Representative Joseph M. Hoeffel in Philadelphia
May 19, 2000

    Thank you, Joe. Thank you for inviting me here, giving me something 
to do so I didn't have to do the wash this afternoon. [Laughter] 
Marcel, I thought you did a great job. Thank 
you for your leadership of our party. I thank Chaka Fattah, my good friend. We just came from his district where we 
did an education event. And I want to thank Ron Klink for joining us today and for making this race for the 
United States Senate. If he gets enough funding to get his message out, 
I predict to you he'll win. And I hope you'll help him do it. Thank you, 
Ron.
    I'd like to thank all the other candidates and legislators and other 
officials who are here. My good friend Marge Mezvinsky, I thank her for coming here. Marjorie 
is--our children are good

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friends, and so we always have something besides politics to talk about. 
There have been occasions in the last 8 years when that's been a great 
blessing, I might add. [Laughter]
    I am glad to be here for Joe. I was glad to have a lunch in city 
hall earlier for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. You 
may know that if we pick up about five seats, we'll be in the majority. 
And if we hold the seats that represent swing districts like this one, 
we will almost certainly do that, because we're bound to win more than 
five. We just have to hold what we have as well.
    And I want to just make a couple of points here. First of all, I 
appreciate what he said about working. My big problem is not that I 
don't have anything to do, it's that I can't bear to go to sleep now, 
because I realize I've just got about 8 months left, and I want to get 
the most out of every day. But yesterday we signed a bill that you were 
very much involved in, a historic piece of legislation to open trade 
with Africa and the Caribbean Basin, to be--if they do things that will 
help educate their people and give them healthy children, and to do more 
to help our neighbors in the Caribbean and Central America and in 
Africa--a truly historic piece of legislation.
    And we signed another good bill earlier in this session to lift the 
earnings limit for Social Security retirees, so once you become eligible 
to draw, you can go on and earn all the money you want to. And that will 
become increasingly important when all the baby boom generation reaches 
retirement. And under present projections, there will only be two people 
working for every one person drawing Social Security.
    So we're actually capable of doing things, even in this partisan 
election year atmosphere. But I think that how much we get done at the 
end of the year depends in part on whether I'm modestly successful--as 
Joe said, we tend to be--in the budget process, but also in part on what 
the American people are telling their Representatives in Congress about 
this election season.
    And I'll be quite brief, because I realize I'm sort of preaching to 
the choir here; if you weren't for him, you wouldn't be here. And our 
friends in the press will say I came here and we raised money, so they 
probably won't give my arguments out for him. And that's not a 
criticism; there's only so much they can report. But I think it's 
important that you understand that for me, as someone who is not a 
candidate but is still a citizen, I consider the election of 2000 as 
important as the election in 1992 or 1996. And I want you to understand 
why.
    In 1992 the people took a chance on me and Al Gore. You all heard 
then-President Bush refer to me as the Governor of a small southern 
State. I was so dumb and inexperienced, I thought it was a compliment. 
[Laughter] And I still do.
    But anyway, you took a chance on me. I said, ``Look, we've got to 
have a different economic policy. We've got to have a different crime 
policy. We've got to have a different welfare policy. We've got to get 
really serious about education. But we've got to get the economy going 
again or the rest of this stuff won't amount to anything; we'll just all 
be up here making speeches about it.''
    And so the people of America and the people of Pennsylvania and, 
overwhelmingly, the people of Philadelphia and surround took a chance on 
us. And then we had some very tough decisions. The budget, the vote 
Marjorie cast, legendary around here--I got tickled the other day, 
Hillary and I were with somebody, some political expert, who said, ``You 
know, if it weren't for your first 2 years, you'd have the highest 
approval ratings in history.'' I said, ``Yeah, and if it weren't for my 
first 2 years where my approval ratings went down because we made the 
hard, right decisions, the last 6 years wouldn't have occurred.''
    I say that to make this point. What's that got to do with Joe and 
this election year? The issue before the American people is not whether 
we will change. We will. Things are changing too much for us; there is 
no such thing as a standpat status quo. That's not the issue. The issue 
before the American people is how we will change and whether we decide 
that our main mission is to make the most of this magic moment of 
prosperity.
    What are we going to do with the longest economic expansion in 
history? What are we going to do with the fact that crime is down for 8 
years in a row? What are we going to do with the fact that welfare rolls 
have been cut in half? What are we going to do with the fact that we 
have a mechanism for giving our children health insurance, and we've 
immunized 90 percent of them for the first time in history? What are we 
going to do with the fact that we've set aside more land in the 
continental

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United States than any administration in history, except those of the 
two Roosevelts? What does all this mean? What do we propose to do with 
it?
    My strong belief is that we should use this moment to take on the 
remaining big challenges facing the country, because that's the way we 
can build the future of our dreams for our kids. And that means we have 
to keep changing, but we have to keep going in the same direction. And 
that's why Joe's election matters a lot to me, because I think he 
represents what I believe is the right direction.
    And it's important to me that all of you understand that while I am 
immensely gratified by the support I have received from people all 
across America, and especially here--which has been unbelievable here--
the things that have happened have happened because we had a good team, 
not just because I was President, and they've happened because we did 
the right things. And therefore, it's real important, I will say again.
    In many ways, we are being tested as severely in 2000 as we were in 
1992. You know, when people feel a sense of desperation and they think 
the wheel is running off, it doesn't take all that much courage to 
change. I was the beneficiary of a difficult situation, and the people 
said, ``Well, he may be the Governor of a small southern State; he may 
be a little young; he may be a little of this. I haven't voted for a 
Democrat in a long time, but he does seem to have thought through this 
matter; he does seem to have some idea about what should be done about 
the economy. I think we'll take a chance on him.''
    Now, because we've had 8 good years, we've got young 
multimillionaires now who have never been involved in the stock market 
that didn't grow like crazy, who have no memory of what it was like when 
we quadrupled the debt in 12 years and had a $300 billion annual 
deficit. And it is very important that people understand what this 
election is about.
    There may be people up there that think you couldn't mess this 
economy up if you had every effort to do so. I don't agree with that. So 
I think it's important that Joe be reelected because he represents not 
only--he's a good man with good ideas, but he has the right ideas. You 
heard him say--I think we ought to have a targeted tax cut to help 
families with their most pressing needs: with college education for 
their kids; long-term care for parents and disabled family members; with 
child care for those who need that. But I don't think we ought to have 
an across-the-board tax cut that's so big that it will put us back into 
deficits. We just shouldn't do it. We shouldn't do it.
    On the other hand, I think we ought to keep investing in education, 
but I think we ought to invest in what will bring results and not just 
have money untied to results. Let me give you an example. In 1996 the 
Congress voted for a request I had to require all the States to identify 
the schools that were not learning--not producing kids that knew what 
they were supposed to know, failing schools, schools that were low 
performers--and then to develop strategies to do something about it.
    I have been trying for 2 years now to go to the next step and say, 
``You ought to end social promotion and require people to turn these 
schools around or shut them down. But we should provide funding for 
after-school programs, for summer school programs, for mentoring 
programs, and programs to help turn these schools around.'' Now, let me 
just give you one example.
    Kentucky set up a system like this. In 1996 they identified 170 low-
performing schools or failing schools. Within 2 years, 91 percent of the 
schools were off the list. I was in such a school, where over two-thirds 
of the children were eligible for free or reduced lunches, where within 
4 years--listen to this--an elementary school--within 4 years this 
school, which had been miserably failing, produced the following 
results: They went from 12 percent of the kids reading at or above grade 
level to 57 percent; they went from 5 percent of the kids doing math at 
or above grade level to 70 percent; they went from zero percent of the 
kids doing science at or above grade level to 64 percent--within 4 
years. Why? Because they had a system, and because they held the kids to 
high standards, and because they believed they could all learn, and 
because we put teachers in the classrooms to make the classes smaller 
and gave them the money for after-school and summer school programs.
    Now, why am I telling you this? Because beginning with the 
Presidential campaigns and going down to the congressional campaigns, if 
you listen to the rhetoric of both parties, everyone sounds like they're 
saying the same things

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today--we want high standards; we want accountability; we want results; 
we've got to support education--but there is a practical difference. 
We're for putting 100,000 teachers into the schools to make the classes 
smaller because that works; they're not for doing that. We're for 
helping cities like Philadelphia, where the average school building is 
65 years old, build or modernize schools. We're for helping these 
schools where there are more kids in housetrailers than in the school 
building build new schools. They're not for doing that. We believe that 
we ought to specifically fund after-school programs for every child who 
needs it. They think that we ought to just bundle up the money and send 
it down to the States and hope it all comes out right.
    And they've accused me of trying to be America's principal; that's 
not true. We have eliminated, this Democratic administration has 
eliminated, two-thirds of all the regulations that were imposed on 
schools, school districts, and States when I became President. We've cut 
more regulations than any administration in modern history. But we have 
not given up requirements based on what local educators and research say 
works. And so there's a big difference.
    I think he's right about that. We agree about that. But I'm not 
going to have a vote in Congress in 2001. It's important that he does. 
And it's important you understand the differences from top to bottom, in 
economic and education and all these other policies.
    But that's what I want you to think about. We can win the Senate if 
Ron can get enough money. We can win the House. We 
can win the White House. But the people have to decide what the election 
is about.
    You think about this. There's a lot of things--if somebody says, 
``Well what kind of car are you going to buy?'' the first thing you have 
to ask yourself is, what kind of car do you need? And then you say, 
well, what kind of car will you want? And then you say, well, can I 
afford that car? [Laughter] Then after you ask those questions, it more 
or less answers the beginning question, right?
    Who are you going to vote for for President? Well, what do you think 
the election's about? What do you want for your country? Can you afford 
what they're promising? What are the consequences? If you ask the right 
questions, they get you the answer where you start. The same thing for 
Congress. If somebody asks you why you came here today, you say, 
``Because I like my Congressman; he's a good man. He's attentive to his 
duties. He's got the right ideas. He'll change in the right way. And I 
do not want to see America or our State or this congressional district 
blow the best chance we have ever had to build the future of our dreams 
for our children.''
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 4:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom A at the 
Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Marcel 
Groen, chairman, Montgomery County, PA, Democratic Committee; and former 
Representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.