[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[June 30, 2000]
[Pages 1354-1361]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks to the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal
Employees in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
June 30, 2000
Thank you. Well, you know, I was still a little sleepy when I got
here today. [Laughter] I'm pumped. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank
you, thank you. Mr. President McEntee,
congratulations on your reelection. Your job has some advantages over
mine--no term limits, no opponents. Not bad.
I'm delighted to be here with all your officers--Will Lucy, it's good to see you again, and all the AFSCME
officers. I do want to say a special word of appreciation to the vice
presidents from Pennsylvania who are hosting you--Edward Keller, Henry Nicholas, Dave
Fillman. And I want to acknowledge in the
audience a good friend of AFSCME's down in Washington whom I brought
home to Pennsylvania with me today, Congressman Joe Hoeffel. Give him a big hand. [Applause] Joe, thank you for
coming with me.
Let me just say at the outset, I know everything I'm going to say
today will not be news to you. It's almost like preaching to the saved.
But the most important thing that I can say today is a simple thank you.
I am so grateful for the support you've given me and for the work we've
done together. Thank you.
It is fitting that one of America's greatest labor unions is meeting
here in Philadelphia in the millennial year. This city is rich in labor
history. In 1774 the very first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's
Hall, which was built by the very first trade guild in America. In 1792
the shoemakers here in Philadelphia formed the first local craft union
for collective bargaining over 200 years ago. And just as you are in a
city with deep labor roots, you are looking at a President who feels he
has deep roots in AFSCME.
When I was eligible as Governor, I was a dues-paying member of
AFSCME. All the people who worked for me back then said it was the only
check they ever saw me write. [Laughter] I'm grateful for the work you
do every day, watching over our children and our parents, taking care of
the sick and people with disabilities, helping the poor and moving
millions of people from welfare to work, supporting our schools,
improving our environment, making sure not just your members but all
Americans have a better life.
And I am very grateful, as I said, that AFSCME has stood by me since
early in 1992, when only my mama thought I could be elected President of
the United States. In sunshine and rain, you have never backed down; you
have never walked away from the good fight we have waged for the
American people and their future.
And what a long way we've come in these 8 years. Gerry was talking
about it before I came in. But it's worth remembering. In fact, one of
the biggest challenges we have in this election is that things have been
so good so long, a lot of people don't remember what it was like the
last time they had the ball and they carried it.
Together, we've worked hard to give this country the longest
economic expansion in history: 22 million-plus new jobs, the lowest
unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest African-American and Hispanic
unemployment rates ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment rate in
40 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest crime rate in
25 years.
And a lot of things that you care about--the highest homeownership
in history; 90 percent of our kids immunized against serious childhood
illnesses for the first time in history; more land protected forever in
the continental United States than any administration since Franklin
Roosevelt; cleaner air, cleaner water, safer food--21 million people--21
million people have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law,
the first law I signed and a law that was vetoed the last time they had
the White House. Five hundred thousand felons, fugitives, and stalkers
did not get handguns because of the Brady bill. We have a 35 percent
drop in crime rates and in the gun crime. Not a single hunter has missed
a day in the deer woods in spite of all their dire predictions. And the
Brady law was another law that was vetoed the last time they had the
White House.
Five million families have taken advantage of the HOPE scholarship
tax credit for the first 2 years of college. And when I leave office,
[[Page 1355]]
we will have paid down almost $400 billion on the national debt.
So the question is, what are we going to do with this? Now, I want
to give a lot of whoop-de-doo lines, but I want you all to kind of
listen to me now, because you've got a lot of friends, every one of you,
who are not in AFSCME, who don't belong to any labor organization--the
people you spend time with your kids with, the people you go to church
with or synagogue with, maybe people you go bowling with, people you do
other things with. And I want you to know what I think you ought to be
telling them, because it isn't enough for you to show up and vote. It
isn't enough even for you to get all your brothers and sisters in AFSCME
to show up and vote. It isn't enough even to get all of the husbands and
wives of all the AFSCME members to show up and vote. You've got to walk
out of here determined to talk to every person you know and every person
you run into between now and November and tell them why they ought to
vote, for whom they ought to vote, and the reasons they ought to vote
for them.
So this is what I think you ought to say. There are three things
every American needs to know about this election. Number one, it is a
big election; it is real important. Number two, there are real
differences between the parties that you can see in the candidates for President, the
candidates for the Senate, the candidates for Congress, and obviously,
the local races. Number three--and this is a dead giveaway in terms of
who people ought to vote for--only the Democrats want you to know what
those real differences are.
Now, just be patient with me while I go through this. This is a big
election. One of the things that bothers me--I had a friend from Chicago
in to see me this week, and he is a business person, and he's been very
successful the last 8 years. He's 41 years old, quite a bit younger than
me--I hate it, but he is--[laughter]--and he said to me, he said, ``You
know, the thing that bothers me is that I talk to all these people that
I spend time with who don't have anything to do with the Democratic
Party, don't have anything to do with the Republican Party. They're
people I know in my work life. And they don't think there's much of a
difference between Vice President Gore and
Governor Bush. They don't think there's much
of a difference. And they think this economy is rocking along so well,
you couldn't mess it up with a case of dynamite.''
Now, that's what a lot of people think. So the first thing you've
got to tell people is, ``Hey, this is a big election.'' You remember
what it was like 8 years ago and what kind of a mess the country was in.
But I want to tell you something. We've got some young people here, but
there's not a person listening to me today who is over 30 years old, who
cannot remember at least one time in your life, either in your work life
or your personal life, when you made a big mistake not because things
were going so badly in your life but because things were rocking along
so well, you thought there was no penalty for the failure to
concentrate.
Now, every one of us has experienced that, right? Every one of us.
So the first thing we've got to do is get America's head right about
this. This is a big deal. How a country handles its moment of prosperity
and opportunity is just as stern a test of our vision, our judgment, and
our character as how we handle adversity. And in my lifetime, there has
never been a moment like this where the economy was so strong, our
social conditions were improving, the Nation had a lot of self-
confidence, there was no internal crisis or external threat to divert
us, where we really have a chance to build a future of our dreams for
our kids. And we will never be forgiven if we blow this. You've got to
convince people this is a big election. They've got to think about it,
and they've got to show up and stand up and be counted.
Now, the second thing I want to tell you is what you already know.
There are big and honest differences. This doesn't have to be a negative
campaign, but we've got to define what negative is. Negative is what
we've seen too many times over the last 20 years where one candidate
tries to convince the voters that his opponent or her opponent is just
one notch above a car thief. Now, that's negative. Pointing out the
honest differences between you and your opponent in terms of record and
position and statements is not negative. That's informational. There's a
judgment here. There are consequences to the choice. That's not
negative. We can have an honest debate. We can assume our opponents are
honorable people and say we just have honest disagreements, but they're
there.
It tickles me, you know, the Republicans have given us the awfullest
mugging over the last
[[Page 1356]]
20 years, time and time again, and their primary was the roughest
primary I ever saw. The things that the Bush
campaign did to Senator McCain made my hair
stand up on the back of my neck. And now they're all acting like we're
being mean and negative if we point out what their positions are. ``If
you tell the American people where we stand and what we've done and what
we want to do, how dare you do that. The only way you can be positive is
if you let us keep that a secret from the American people until the
election.'' No, thank you. This election is about the differences and
the choices before the American people.
You watch what I tell you. The Republicans are coming here to
Philadelphia--smart choice by them. Good politics. And you listen to
them. And I mean, butter won't melt in their mouth at this--you watch
them. You'll have the awfullest time trying to figure out what the
differences are. They're going to love everybody and help everybody and
do everything, and it's just going to be wonderful.
But there are differences here. We're for a prescription drug
benefit for Medicare that all of our seniors can afford, and they're
not. We're for a real, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights, and they're
not. We're for expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program, that
some of you helped administer, so that the parents of those kids can
have health insurance, and they're not. We're for letting people between
the ages of 55 and 65 who lose their health insurance buy into Medicare,
and they're not.
We're for letting families like you, whether you're in the 15
percent or in the 28 percent bracket, have a 28 percent deduction for
the cost of college tuition, up to $10,000 a year, and they're not for
that. We're for it. We're for expanding the earned-income tax credit,
for lower income working people that have three or more kids, and
they're not. We're for equal pay for equal work for working women, and
they're not. We're for raising the minimum wage a buck over 2 years, and
they're not. How can we not raise the minimum wage?
We're for building or modernizing 6,000 schools and repairing
another 5,000 a year over the next 5 years. We're for that, and they're
not. We're for keeping on until we have 100,000 teachers to lower class
sizes in the first three grades, and they're not.
On the issues that matter most, including the protection of labor
rights, we are different--honestly different. You don't have to believe
they're bad people, but we ought not to hide what the differences are.
Now, you take this prescription drug issue. We think there ought to
be coverage through Medicare that's available and affordable to all
seniors and people with disabilities. That's what I proposed. That's
what you've endorsed. We also think that in the balanced budget law,
that cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals, nursing homes,
home health care agencies, were excessive, and we ought to put some more
money back in there to help ensure quality care.
Now, what's their position? This is important. Now, you're going to
have to talk to people who don't follow this like you do. Probably a
good thing not everybody is as interested in politics as we are;
otherwise, we would just be beating each other up all day. We would
probably never get anything done. But what is their position?
Two nights ago the Republican House passed a plan designed to
benefit the companies that make the prescription drugs, not the people
that need to take them. Theirs is a private insurance plan that most
seniors can't afford. Listen to this. Their own--the House Republicans'
own Congressional Budget Office--not me, their people--say that more
than 50 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries who need drug coverage
won't be able to get coverage under their plan. They say the premiums
will be 50 percent higher under their plan than ours, and the coverage
will be 20 percent less.
So what did they do? They voted for it so they could say they voted
for something, and the drug companies are happy. And then they hired a
pollster--listen to this; this is amazing--they hired a pollster to tell
them what words and phrases to use in Philadelphia and from now until
November to convince you and the American people that they're for
something they're not.
So your job is to say, ``No, thank you. There's a real difference
here. We want the voters of this country to know what the difference
is.''
Now, you take this Patients' Bill of Rights. The Republicans say
they're for it. I was tickled--you know, I've got a passing interest in
this Senate race in New York. So the other day, the Democratic
candidate said that she was for a
real Patients' Bill of Rights, and her opponent wasn't. So you know what
her opponent
[[Page 1357]]
did? He goes on television and says, ``She's being negative. I voted
for''--listen to this; they are so clever; you've got to watch them.
They call me slick? [Laughter] Listen to this. Listen to this. So what
did he say? You all listen to this. You're going to need a shovel to
deal with this between now and November. Now, listen to this. What did
he say? He said, ``How dare her say such a mean thing. I am for a
Patients' Bill of Rights.'' ``A'' Patients' Bill of Rights? [Laughter]
This tie here, it's got a little red on it. That don't mean I'm wearing
a red tie. [Laughter] What is this?
So what happens? The Republicans last night in the Senate, on a
party-line vote, passed ``a'' Patients' Bill of Rights. It's not strong.
It's not real. It is not enforceable. Now, I want to give the
Republicans credit. There were a number of good, brave Republicans who
voted for a real Patients' Bill of Rights in the House, and I appreciate
what they did. [Applause] And the leader--yes, we ought to clap for
them. I appreciate what they did, a number of them did. They broke with
the leadership, and they voted for a real Patients' Bill of Rights. And
because they helped, and all our crowd did, we got a majority in the
House.
The leader of those Republicans, Representative Norwood--here's what he says about this Patients'
Bill of Rights the Republican party supports. The Republican leader for
the real Patients' Bill of Rights called their bill a, quote,
``monstrosity.''
Now, we want a real bill. They want to deflect the issue. They want
to be able to put up these ads and say, ``I voted for `a' Patients' Bill
of Rights.'' So, you see, you've got to help people see through all
this. That's your job. It's my job, but it's your job, too.
And the same thing, you know, on minimum wage. They say, ``Well,
I'll be for a minimum wage if you make it a little less and drag it over
3 years and put it on some regressive plan that will take care of our
constituents.'' And let me just say this--this equal pay thing--I loved
it when you all stood up. They're not even making a pretense of that;
they just don't want to talk about it. They'll say, if you ask them
they'll say, ``Well I'm for equal pay. Everybody in the wide world's for
equal pay. But when you pass a bill, you just make it complicated.''
That's what they said about family and medical leave, ``I hope
people will give it, but we couldn't possibly require it. Because if we
did, it would be just terrible for the economy; it would be bad for
small business.'' Well, we had an exemption for the smallest businesses,
and if it was bad for the economy, if that's what the family and medical
leave law was designed to do, then I did a poor job of it, because we've
got 22 million people taking advantage of family leave, and over 22
million new jobs.
So you've got to tell people, this is where they stand on these
issues--on the school construction issue, on more teachers, on quality
training for all of our teachers, on smaller classes and fewer trailers.
Now, we just got some good news on this school construction issue.
Again, we've got a handful of Republicans in the House that are willing
to buck the trend, but don't forget, partly it's because we're only five
seats away from a majority. But we got the 218th and 219th cosponsors of
the Johnson-Rangel bill. And this is really good news. That means that
we could pass it in the House if we could bring it to a vote. We know
where the Republican leadership stands in the House, and in the Senate
they're equally, if not more, vociferously opposed. So I think our kids
deserve better than this.
And let me tell you something. I'm giving you this speech, but
anytime they want to meet me halfway and pass this stuff, that's good
for America. I'd just as soon take school construction off the election-
year list. I'd a lot rather have our kids out of the housetrailers and
out of the unsafe schools and in school rooms that can be wired to the
Internet and out of schools that are still being heated by coal, than
have a political issue in an election year. And so would you.
And there's a lot of labor issues, too. They won't be talking about
where they stand and what they're going to do for the 600,000 workers
that are injured every year because of poor ergonomics. That's a new
economy problem, and we ought to deal with it. We ought to continue to
protect your health and your work site environment.
Now, look at this--where do they stand on hate crimes? We passed the
hate crimes bill in the Senate this week, and again I want to compliment
the handful of Republicans that voted with us. If they hadn't done it,
we wouldn't have passed it. But the leadership is still against it. I
think it's important that we
[[Page 1358]]
pass hate crimes legislation, employment nondiscrimination legislation.
I think it's long since time that we did that.
Let me just say one other thing about the gun legislation, because I
know there are a lot of AFSCME members that are hunters and probably a
lot of AFSCME members that are NRA members. I once had one of those
jackets you wear in the deer woods so they won't shoot you instead of
the deer that had ``Lifetime Membership'' on it. The NRA liked me once
upon a time when we were doing training programs for kids and solving
border disputes between property owners and hunters.
But you know, there is no excuse for us not trying to keep handguns
out of the hands of criminals and children. We ought to do that. So we
say, ``What's wrong with requiring child trigger locks on guns?'' And
they say, ``Well, if they want to do that voluntarily, it's okay with
us. We don't object to it.'' Don't object to it--what's the matter with
requiring it? They talk about gun control. I don't think it's gun
control to say if you've got a background check log that applies when
you buy a gun in a gun store, it ought to apply when you buy a gun at a
flea market in a city or at a gun show.
If you've got a law that bans the sale of assault weapons that are
meant only to kill people, I don't think there's anything wrong with
saying you ought to also ban the importation of large capacity
ammunition clips which you can put on a weapon that's not an assault
weapon and turn it into an assault weapon. I don't think there's
anything wrong with that. What is wrong with that?
And the only way they ever make this an issue is to scare people,
mostly male hunters, that we're for gun control. Now you know, when you
leave here today, if you drove here and you go home and you're in a new
car, you're in a car with seatbelts, and you may live in a State with a
seatbelt law. If you've got a little baby, you may live in a State with
a child restraint law, and you're certainly going to drive on a road
with a speed limit. But you never hear anybody talking about car
control. Car control is if I come get your car and put it in my garage.
Otherwise, it's highway safety. And this is the same deal here. What are
you talking about?
Now, what they're going to say is, they're for tougher enforcement
of the present gun safety laws, and if we would just enforce our laws,
we wouldn't have any problems. Well, first of all, we've increased
enforcement over what was done in the previous administration, and I
just gave them the biggest increase enforcement budget in history, and
guess what? The House voted against it. So they're going to say they're
for it, but they voted against it. You need to know these things, and
the people need to know these things.
All right, so three points: One, it's a big election. Two, there are
real differences. Three, only our side wants you to know what the
differences are. What does that tell you about how you should vote?
Now, I want to thank you for the support the New Yorkers here have
given to my wife. I thank you for
that. And I want to thank you--[applause]. Thank you. And I want to
thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for the support you have
given to Al Gore. And I want you to--now,
here's what I think you ought to say to non-AFSCME members who ask you
why they ought to vote for him.
And I believe after 8 years, I know him better than anybody outside
his family, and here's what I want you to say. I want you to make four
points: Number one, this country has had a lot of Vice Presidents who
were great Presidents. Thomas Jefferson was a great President who was
Vice President. So was Theodore Roosevelt. So was--this is a test.
[Laughter] Now, I want you to remember this. See, a lot of people don't
know. That's a big problem. People don't know about the Vice President.
So was Harry Truman. Right? And Lyndon Johnson gave us Medicare and
Federal aid to education and all those civil rights laws. So we've got a
lot of people who were Vice Presidents who did great things as
President.
But in the whole history of America--and I study the history of our
country closely--there has never been, ever, a person who, as Vice
President, had remotely the positive impact on the welfare of the people
of the United States that Al Gore has. He's
the best qualified person in my lifetime to run for President.
Now, he broke the tie on the economic
plan of 1993, without which we wouldn't all be sitting here cheering
today, because that's what got the deficit down, the interest rates
down, and the economy going. And as he says, whenever he votes, we win.
[[Page 1359]]
He has led our efforts to run the
empowerment zone program which has brought thousands of jobs to poor
people in poor places that are left behind. He has led our efforts to
hook all of our schools up to the Internet and to make sure that the
poorest schools got a discount rate so they could afford to log on to
the Internet. That wouldn't be a law today if it weren't for Al Gore,
and that's a big deal.
He has led our efforts in the
environmental area to prove we could grow the economy and improve the
environment at the same time, and we've proved you could do that, and
that's a big deal. He has managed so much of the responsibilities where
I've gotten a lot of the credit. He's had--for the first Vice President
ever, he's had big responsibilities for our relationships with South
Africa, with Russia, with Egypt, with many other countries. And on every
tough decision I ever had to make, he was always there. And the American
people need to know this.
There has never been in the history of the country a Vice President
who has had as much responsibility, done as much with it, and had as
much of a positive impact on the people as Vice President. And they need
to know that.
Now, here's the second reason that I think you ought to be for
him and what you ought to say to people.
And I admit, this is self-interested, since I'm about to become a
private citizen, but I would kind of like to see this economic expansion
go on a little while. Now, you need to tell people there is a huge
difference in their economic theory. The Vice President wants a tax cut,
but he wants it focused on the needs of working families, for child
care, long-term care, college education, increasing the tax credit that
we give to the lowest income folks who have got a lot of kids. He wants
it focused on these things. And he wants us to save enough money to
invest in education, in health, in the environment and the future of the
country, and to keep paying the debt down in a way that saves Medicare
and saves Social Security.
Now, let me just tell you something. You need to tell people this,
because the other guys have got a better sounding argument the first
time you hear it. They say, ``Hey, you've got this huge surplus, and
we'll give you a tax cut 3 times the size of theirs, maybe 4 times the
size of theirs.'' But here is the fact: If you add up the cost of their
tax cut, the cost of their plan to partially privatize the Social
Security system--which has other problems, but just the cost of them--
you let younger people start keeping 10 percent of their payroll, all
the rest of the people retiring on Social Security, who is going to make
up the money? The taxpayers are. They're going to put money into the
Social Security system.
So you add up the tax cut, the cost of privatizing the Social
Security system, the cost of missile defense, and the cost of their
other promises, and it adds up to more than the on-budget surplus
projected for the next 10 years. And he says, ``Well, the economy is
doing great. We're going to have all this money.'' Look at what they
say.
Now, I ought to be saying that since we produced these surpluses,
but let me ask you something. Somebody says to you, ``I want the bigger
tax cut,'' you ought to say two things to them. First of all, if you
keep paying down the debt, interest rates will be lower, and one percent
lower interest rate--listen to this--one percent lower interest rates
over the next 10 years saves the American people $250 billion on home
mortgages alone--on home mortgages alone.
But here's the next point. If I ask you--you don't have to answer,
but you answer this question in your mind. What is your projected income
over the next 10 years? You're answering the question in your mind. How
confident are you that that is going to be your actual income over the
next 10 years? And let's suppose you say, ``I'm more than 50 percent
confident.''
Now, if I put a little desk out here and I said I want every one of
you who has projected your income over the next 10 years and you're more
than 50 percent confident where it is, come right up here now and sign a
contract on how you're going to spend it, and you will be obligated--you
will have to spend it regardless--you would think I had lost my mind,
wouldn't you? I wouldn't have many takers. I would be sitting up here at
this desk, all by myself, waiting for somebody to come up here and sign
a contract to sign away your income for the next 10 years.
That's what the Republican tax plan is asking you to do. You need to
say, ``No, thank you. I like this economic expansion. I want interest
rates down. I want Americans to have jobs. I want this economy to keep
growing.''
Okay, so the Vice President's been the
best Vice President in history; he'll keep the prosperity going.
[[Page 1360]]
The third reason: The world is changing fast; we should have a
President who understands the future and can take us there. What does
that mean? I'll give you a couple of examples.
We just announced the whole mapping of the human gene structure, the
human genome. Man, I had to read up for a year just so I'd understand
the announcement I was making. [Laughter]. But you know what it means?
Practically, it means that mothers will take little babies home from the
hospital, and they'll have a map of what their bodies are going to work
like. And they'll know if they're likely to get certain diseases, and
they'll know if they raise them in a certain way, give them a certain
diet, give them a certain medication, they can reduce the likelihood of
that, and their kids will live longer, better lives. It means we may be
able to cure Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and all kinds of cancers and
diabetes. This is a big deal.
But if somebody's got a picture of your gene structure in a computer
somewhere, should they be able to use it to deny you a job or a
promotion or a raise or to deny you health insurance? I don't think so.
Don't you think we ought to have somebody in the Oval Office that really
understands this stuff and all the complications of it? I do. I really
think so.
This Internet's a great deal, man. You know, when I became
President, there were only 50 sites on the whole World Wide Web, and
today, there are over 10 million. The Internet alone is going to give us
the capacity to bring economic opportunity to rural areas in America
that have been left behind. It's great. But all your health records and
all your financial records are on somebody's computer somewhere. Don't
you think you ought to be able to say, yes, before somebody gets into
them?
And wouldn't you like to have somebody who's President who actually
helped to draft the initial legislation in Congress to spread the
benefits of the Internet to the world, who understands this stuff? I
think somebody ought to be President who understands this stuff.
I'll give you another example. Everybody now concedes that the
planet is warming, that the polar ice cap is melting too fast, that the
water levels are rising. We're having more radical variations in weather
events. Nine of the hottest 10 years in the history--since we've been
measuring for 600 years--have occurred in the last 11 years. Nine of the
hottest years in history in the last 11 years. Now, everybody just about
accepts it. Even the oil companies that put a lot of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere, they say it's real; we've got to do something about it.
The first lunch Al Gore and I had after we
took office, in Washington, DC, in the White House, he took out his
little chart and showed me how we were putting more stuff into the
atmosphere in the last 30 years than we have in the previous 500, and
that was going to do things that would change our children's future
forever. It could flood the sugarcane fields of Louisiana, the
Everglades in Florida. It could change agriculture in the Midwest. It
could change our life forever.
Now, we're trying to solve this in a way that keeps the economy
going. But it's a huge deal. Don't you think we ought to have somebody
in the White House that understands the importance of this and knows how
to deal with it, and still grow the economy?
Now, so he's the best Vice President;
he'll keep the economy going; he understands the future. The fourth
reason is, he'll take us all along for the ride. And that's a big deal
to me.
The next President gets somewhere between two and four appointments
to the Supreme Court. They decided 20 cases this year by one vote--20.
And the next President's going to change the balance on the Supreme
Court one way or the other. I want somebody appointing those judges that
believes in individual liberties, personal rights, and wants to take us
all along for the ride.
I want somebody that believes all working families ought to have
health insurance and the ability to send their kids to college and the
ability to send their kids to schools where they have preschool and
after-school programs and real commitment to standards, that really
understands this stuff, that will take us all along for the ride. And I
want somebody who wants us all to go, without regard to race, religion,
gender, sexual orientation--thinks we all ought to go along for the
ride.
This country is growing more diverse every day, and it will be a
godsend in a global economy. Just look around here. Look at the picture
of this--I wish we could see a picture of this group 40 years ago. I bet
it looked different. America looked different. This is a big deal,
folks. It is the biggest deal of all.
[[Page 1361]]
Now, we have an unusual situation this year where both the Presidential
candidates speak Spanish. I'm probably the last President of the United
States in the 21st century who won't speak Spanish, and I may learn when
I get out of office and have time to do it. But there's a difference
here. I'll just give you one example.
There's a guy named Enrique Moreno who
lives in El Paso, Texas. Anybody know who he is? He grew up in the
barrio there, very modest childhood, worked hard, went to Harvard,
graduated summa cum laude, did great in law school. Texas judges said
he's one of the three best lawyers in west Texas. So I nominated him to
the Court of Appeals. The two Republican
Senators from Texas wouldn't even give
him a hearing. They said he wasn't qualified.
What they really meant is, he won't vote
the way we want him to vote. That's what they really meant. As you know,
the Governor of Texas is the Republican
nominee. If he had asked them to give him a hearing, they would have
done it. He didn't say a word. There was no Spanish-speaking plea for
Enrique Moreno, because he's not part of their America. But he is part
of our America. I think we all ought to go along for the ride.
So remember, I am so grateful to you. I will never be able to thank
you enough. You were always there. You'll always be proud of the fights,
even the one we lost on health care. We're looking smarter every day. I
had a Congressman tell me the other day, he said, ``You know, Mr.
President, when I voted for your health care program, they said, `Now,
if you vote for Bill Clinton's health care program, you'll have more and
more people insured by the Federal Government.''' He said, ``I voted for
your health care program, and sure enough, more people are insured by
the Federal Government. Why? Because private insurance keeps dropping
them, and we have to pick them up.'' But in spite of our best efforts,
there's still an unconscionable number of people without health
insurance. We were right to fight for that.
But what I want you to understand is we've come too far to turn back
now. We've changed this country too much to reverse course. And I'm
grateful to you, and you've been wonderful to me today. But the test is
going to be, now that we've got this great big old country turned around
and moving in the right direction, what are we going to do with it?
You go out there and tell everybody, big election, big differences;
we want you to know what the differences are. You go out there and tell
everybody, Al Gore is the best and most
important Vice President we ever had. He'll keep the prosperity going.
He understands the future, and he can lead us there, and he'll take us
all along for the ride.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 9:13 a.m. at the Pennsylvania Convention
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Gerald W. McEntee, president, and
William Lucy, secretary-treasurer, American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Edward Keller, executive director,
Pennsylvania AFSCME Council 13; Henry Nicholas, president, National
Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees Local 1199; Dave Fillman,
director, Southeast Pennsylvania Public Employees District Council 88;
and Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.