[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[June 27, 2000]
[Pages 1317-1320]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for California State Senator Adam Schiff
June 27, 2000

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Adam. I want to say, first of all, I 
am delighted to be here with you and your entire family. I must say, 
when you introduced your wife, and made that 
crack--you know, I just came back from California, where I was working 
to raise funds for our Democrats. And I had a fundraiser in Los Angeles 
in a place called the ``Garden of Eden.'' [Laughter] I don't recommend 
you do that until after the election--[laughter].
    But anyway, I am delighted to be here. I want to thank 
Representatives Waxman and Pelosi and Lofgren and Farr for being here, and of course, Congressman 
Kennedy, who has done such a great job as 
head of the Democratic campaign committee and is working me to death. 
[Laughter] I told him that we were just five votes short of a majority, 
and I would do anything I could to see that he succeeded, and he has 
more than taken me up on my offer. [Laughter] He acts like he thinks I'm 
still as young as he is. [Laughter]
    Let me say to all of you, there's several reasons I wanted to be 
here tonight. First of all, I admire this man, and I appreciate the fact 
that he is willing to run against an incumbent Congressman. It is not 
easy to beat an incumbent Congressman, especially when they have vast 
national networks to finance their campaign. And I also appreciate the 
fact that he's established a record as a State senator and a prosecutor 
that, I believe, highlights the differences.
    There's Congressman Conyers, thank you 
for being here. Michigan has a great interest in the outcome of this 
election. [Laughter] John does--Adam's election is going to make him 
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. [Laughter]
    He mentioned Tom Umberg--Adam was also a 
Federal prosecutor, as well as a State senator. He's worked for 
commonsense gun legislation. He's worked for smaller class sizes in our 
schools. He's worked for a better environment and sustainable 
development. He's worked for

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a Patients' Bill of Rights. He supports our efforts to help seniors and 
disabled Americans get prescription drugs.
    And the one thing that I want to say to you tonight is that there 
really are significant differences between the parties on the major 
issues. I've done everything I could for nearly 8 years now to try to 
turn our country around, to get things going in the right direction, not 
only to improve the economy but to help the social fabric and to change 
the nature of politics and to give our people a sense of self-confidence 
and a sense of greater unity. And the Members who are here have been 
indispensable to that effort.
    The Senate finally passed hate crimes legislation a couple of days 
ago. Henry Waxman just won a great victory 
in the House against the tobacco interests, who tried to stop us from 
bringing litigation to recover for the taxpayers the damage caused from 
health-related illnesses due to smoking. And we congratulate you for 
your long and, originally, a lonely battle, but we thank you for that.
    But basically--you know, I'm not running for anything. [Laughter] I 
do have more than a passing interest in a Senate race--[laughter]--in 
New York, and all the others, as well. And there's a fellow running for President I think ought to be 
elected. But what I want to see us to do is to sort of make the most of 
this unbelievable opportunity we have. And those of us who are not so 
young anymore know that it may be 50 years before America has a chance 
like this again. And that we dare not squander it.
    So it's important to know that there are differences, honest 
differences. You don't have to run a real bad campaign in this election. 
You know, I've seen so many elections over the last 20 years that just 
made me sick, where both candidates looked like they were trying to 
convince people that their opponents were just one step above a car 
thief. [Laughter] And you don't have to do that now. You can just run on 
the differences. But there are real differences.
    And one key to who's right is, only the Democrats want you to know 
what those differences are. You can just look at it--I've been telling 
you, and I'd just like to run through a few, just the issues I 
mentioned. We have a class size reduction initiative and a school 
construction initiative and a school repair initiative. And the 
leadership of the other party is completely opposed to all of them.
    In the area of law enforcement, we put 100,000 police on the street, 
and we passed the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. The leadership 
of the other party was against them all--even tried to undo, in the 
House, the 100,000 police, and now opposes our efforts to put 50,000 
more police on the street in the highest crime neighborhoods, as well as 
the commonsense gun safety measures: closing the gun show loophole, 
child trigger locks, banning large capacity ammunition clips. These are 
important issues. It makes a big difference who is in Congress.
    The Patients' Bill of Rights: We support it, and they don't. And 
then they all go around saying they do, because they voted for one that 
had no teeth in it. They got permission from the people that didn't want 
a Patients' Bill of Rights to vote for one that had no teeth in hopes of 
confusing the voters about whether there was a real difference between 
the two parties.
    And the biggest issue now that's commanding our attention is the 
question of whether our seniors and disabled Americans who are on 
Medicare should have access to affordable prescription drugs. Now just 
yesterday or today, there was a big article in the press--come on in, 
Representative Sherman, come on in--we're going 
to have a quorum in California here before you know it. [Laughter] There 
was an article in the press showing that in the last year the price of 
prescription drugs--and the overall inflation rate was 3 percent--the 
price of prescription drugs went up 17.4 percent.
    Now, huge numbers of seniors and disabled Americans who need these 
drugs to maintain their quality of life, and sometimes to maintain their 
very lives, cannot afford this. If we were designing a Medicare program 
today, no one would even think about having one without a drug benefit. 
But in 1965, when it was established, it was basically a doctors-and-
hospital program, because that's what happened: People got sick, they 
went to the doctor; if they were sick enough, they went to the hospital.
    Today we know prescription drugs can dramatically reduce the cost of 
hospitalization, whether you have to go at all, or if you have to go, 
how long you have to stay; and can maintain the length and quality of 
life far beyond anything that was imagined 35 years ago. And

[[Page 1319]]

we have the money to do this now. Not only that, this is a gift not just 
to the seniors and the disabled Americans but to their families, who 
will have to support them, or try to, if the rest of us don't through 
the Medicare program. So this is a big deal.
    So what's our position? Our position is, we ought to have an 
affordable prescription drug program through Medicare that all seniors 
can afford to buy into but that is not mandatory for anybody. What's 
their position? Well, they hired a pollster to actually tell them what 
words and phrases to use to make you think they're for our position. I'm 
not making this up. I read it. [Laughter] I don't believe everything I 
read in the press, but since they didn't deny it, I assume it's true.
    And now they've got a proposal, which is: Let everybody buy private 
insurance; we'll subsidize some people. And their proposal--even the 
insurance companies have said--with all the fights I've had with the 
insurance companies, I've got to take my hat to them; they've been 
honest on this--even the insurance companies have said this is not real. 
There are too many people that can't afford this insurance policy. What 
is the deal here?
    And they're going to vote on it, I think tomorrow. And I just was 
told before I came in here they're not even going to allow the House to 
vote on our proposal. Why? Because it might pass in an election year--
[laughter]--because there are just five seats in the majority. And they 
figure there might be six or seven of them that might figure out that 
the voters back home may not just buy the words and phrases; they might 
actually look at the vote.
    Now, what should we do? Well, first of all, we ought to do what the 
Vice President recommended and set aside 
the Medicare taxes and not spend it for tax cuts or spending. Because 
that will take Medicare out to 2030, and that's good for the people on 
Medicare and good for their kids.
    Then we ought to fund a real prescription drug benefit, the kind 
that we would have funded 35 years ago if medicine had been as advanced 
as it is today. And I offered that to the Republican leaders yesterday 
and said that I would work with them on their tax relief package. But we 
should not be under any illusion here. There is a huge difference. Our 
plan benefits the people who need the drugs. Their plan benefits the 
people who make the drugs, who are afraid if we buy all these drugs in 
bulk, we might get a decent price for the seniors.
    Now, I'm not against America's pharmaceutical companies. They do a 
great job in developing drugs. And I'm not even against our paying some 
sort of a premium to do that. But I am against any effort that's trying 
to keep our seniors from getting these prescription drugs. And if we 
were in the majority, this deal would have been done 4 months ago.
    If we were in the majority, we wouldn't be debating here about 
whether we should close the gun show loophole. The people that are 
against it are saying it won't do any good. They used to tell me in '93 
that the Brady bill wouldn't do any good, because all those people were 
buying their guns at gun shows. [Laughter]
    If they were in the majority, we wouldn't be debating whether we 
were going to have smaller classes or whether we were going to modernize 
our schools or what we were going to do to make the most of this moment.
    Now, they can make their case. I'm not saying anything bad about 
them. I'm sick and tired of all that. But there are differences. And 
don't you be fooled. And the whole country is looking at this, because 
here's this fellow who is a State senator, so he represents more people 
in California--a State senator represents more people than a Member of 
the House of Representatives. He's got a perfectly nice life, and he's 
putting his neck on the line to try to represent us. And we ought to 
help him. We ought to help him because of his background, because of his 
experience, because of his vision, but mostly because America needs to 
make a clear-headed choice here.
    All I want--I've found that the American people nearly always get it 
right, if you give them enough time and enough information. Otherwise, 
we wouldn't be around here after over 200 years. They nearly always get 
it right. Sometimes it takes us longer than we should. You mentioned 
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, when he was 
running the first time, had to promise not to free the slaves. Aren't we 
glad he didn't keep that campaign commitment? [Laughter] But finally, 
the people caught up to where they needed to be, and he just kept 
leading us on and leading us on.
    Now, we know what the issues are, and we know where the people are. 
I'm convinced if the voters of his district know Adam Schiff--

[[Page 1320]]

if they know where he stands, if they know the honest differences 
between him and his opponent--this race will be victorious. And I'm 
convinced that will happen in two dozen other places across America 
where we have seats in play.
    So I want you to think about that. The problem with all these 
fundraisers is, you're always preaching to the saved. [Laughter] But 
when you leave here, you will, between now and election day, be talking 
to people all over America, including a lot of people in California.
    And it's important that you not just come to these fundraisers; it's 
important that you take every single opportunity you have between now 
and November to tell people that. We have the chance of a lifetime. We 
have great opportunities. There are real and honest differences. We 
don't have to have a negative election. We can have a positive election 
that's an honest debate. But we can't get there by pretending that there 
aren't differences when there are. On every difference that makes a 
difference, Adam is on the right side, and we've got to send him to 
Congress.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 7:20 p.m. at the Frederick Douglass 
Museum. In his remarks, he referred to Senator Schiff's wife, Eve; and 
Tom Umberg, committee member, California Delegation to the Democratic 
National Convention 2000. Adam Schiff was a candidate for California's 
27th Congressional District.