[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[July 29, 2000]
[Pages 1515-1518]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Luncheon for Hillary Clinton in New York City
July 29, 2000

    Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank all of you for making 
us feel so welcome. In particular, I thank you, Albert Kwok and John Ha and Gilliam 
Kim, for your words and your support. I would 
also like to thank those of you in the audience who worked so hard on 
this event, especially Janet Lee, thank you, and 
my good friend Tony George from Cleveland. I 
thank Lee Ho-Yeon for the song. Wasn't the song 
beautiful? Let's give her another hand for the beautiful singing. 
[Applause]
    I want to say just a couple of things, if I might, today. First of 
all, I appreciate the previous remarks by Gilliam Kim about the relationship of the United States and Korea 
and South Korea during my time. I have been to Korea many times to see 
the people, the leaders, and the United States forces there. We have 
worked very hard to encourage the new direction in North Korea and to 
support President Kim as he has worked to break 
down the barriers of the past and to build a more peaceful future. And I 
certainly hope it will be successful.
    I feel very good about what has been done, and I appreciate the 
support that this new direction has received from other nations in the 
area. So I hope you will all keep your fingers crossed and keep working 
for it, because it would be a very good thing to make the future in the 
21st century safer for all of the children of the Korean Peninsula and 
all of Asia.
    The second thing I would like to say is that I have worked very hard 
for these last 8 years to make America a place open and welcoming to all 
immigrants, a place of genuine opportunity that supported people who 
worked hard and took care of their families and contributed to their 
communities.
    I have worked against discrimination against all people who come to 
America from other countries, and I've tried to remind our fellow 
Americans that all of us came here from somewhere else. Even our native 
populations once crossed a landmass that no longer exists between the 
Northwest United States and the northeastern part of Asia. So I welcome 
you here, and I thank you for your participation in this event.
    The last thing I would like to say is that I heartily endorse what 
was said earlier by Mr. Kim about hate crimes. 
You know, even though America has made great progress in overcoming our 
past of discrimination on the basis of race or ethnic origin or 
religion, we still have instances in our country where people are 
subject to discrimination. And we all know it. We can remember by name 
some of the victims: James Byrd, dragged to death in Texas; Matthew 
Shepard, stretched out on a fence in Wyoming. We know that a former 
basketball coach in Chicago was killed because of his race. We know that 
a young Korean Christian was killed walking out of a church by a fanatic 
who said he belonged to a church that did not believe in God but 
believed in the supremacy of his race.
    We know, thankfully, these people are a very small minority in our 
country, but we know they have to be rebuked and stopped. And that is 
why we support the hate crimes legislation. Hate crimes are not like 
other crimes. People are singled out for victimhood simply because they 
belong to a certain race or a certain religion. In California not very 
long ago, a bunch of little Jewish children were shot at just because 
they were going into their school, and a Filipino postal worker was 
killed because he was Filipino and because he worked for the Federal 
Government.
    There are very few of these people in our country, thank goodness, 
but we should pass

[[Page 1516]]

hate crimes legislation to make it clear that we will not tolerate 
discrimination against people simply because of who they are. And I hope 
all of you will support that.
    Now, looking ahead to the future, let me say that I think that 
Korean-Americans can have a big impact on this election, in New York and 
in the United States, if you are willing to participate, not--yes by 
coming to fundraisers, and we thank you for that--but also by reminding 
Americans of what an important occasion this election is. In great 
democracies, people tend to make good decisions in times of crisis 
because they know that there is trouble all around and that change is 
required. In 1992 the American people gave me a chance to be President, 
because there was trouble all around and they knew we had to change.
    But sometimes when things are going very well--when the economy is 
in good shape, when, as you said, there are fewer people on welfare, 
when crime is down, when we are moving toward greater peace in the 
world--people may think there is no consequence to the election; there 
are no differences between the candidates; everything comes wrapped up 
in a pretty package; and no one takes the trouble to open it to see 
what's inside in terms of what an election is about.
    And the reason I say you can make a contribution is, it is the 
nature of immigrants to the United States from Korea, as you pointed 
out, to work hard, to try to strengthen family and community, and to 
always think about the future in good times as well as tough times.
    Democracies tend to make some of their worst mistakes, if you look 
throughout human history, not in the tough times but in the good times--
in the good times. Why? Because it's easy to stop concentrating. It's 
easy to stop working. It's easy to stop trying. It's easy to be fooled 
into thinking that there are no serious consequences to a choice.
    So my message to you today is that I believe that Hillary decided to 
run for the Senate here because she knew how serious this election was, 
because she had spent all of her life as an adult working for children 
and families and better education and health care. She wrote a best 
selling book and gave away 100 percent of the profits to children's 
charities because she thinks that that's the most important issue for 
anybody's future and because she understood that we had worked for 8 
years to turn the country around. And we're moving in the right 
direction, but now we have the chance of a lifetime to build the future 
of our dreams for our children.
    The only thing I worry about in this election, the only thing, is 
that people will either believe it doesn't make much difference because 
times are going along so well--what difference does it make who gets 
elected President or who gets elected to the Senate or who gets elected 
to the Congress, or that because things are going along so well and our 
opponents are making such a determined and clever effort to blur the 
differences--that they simply won't understand what the differences are.
    So I ask you not only to support us in this way, as you have today, 
and within the Korean-American community, but to talk to other people in 
this country with whom you come in contact and remind them that good 
times are great blessings that impose special responsibilities and that 
we may never have another chance to have an election where we can pick 
people and policies that will build the most brilliant future we can 
imagine, that elections are decisions by voters and citizens which have 
far-reaching consequences on how we will live and that the good times 
election are as big a test of our judgment and our values and our 
national character as the tough times election.
    Let me just give you a couple of examples. Beginning with the Vice 
President, and including Hillary and all of 
our Democrats, we think our economic policy is pretty good. We think it 
works for America, and we think it should be continued and intensified 
in the years ahead. What do I mean by that?
    We want to give the American people a tax cut that we can afford 
based on what we think our surpluses will be in the years ahead, to help 
people educate their children, pay for child care, pay for long-term 
care for the elderly and disabled, save for retirement. We want to save 
some money to invest in education and health care and scientific and 
technological research. And we want to keep paying down the national 
debt until America is out of debt, to keep interest rates low so people 
like you can borrow money to start businesses, to buy homes, to send 
your children to college at lower interest rates. That's our policy.
    Their policy is to say to the American people, ``We have a projected 
surplus over the next 10 years of $2 trillion. It is your money. You

[[Page 1517]]

worked for it, and we are going to give it all back to you right now.''
    Now, that sounds very good. What is the problem with it? It is a 
projected surplus. So if we cut taxes right now by the amount of money 
we think we're going to have over the next 10 years, we will cut taxes 
whether the money comes in or not, and we will have no money for 
education, for health care, for investment in the future. And we will 
not pay this debt off, and then, if the projected income figures are 
wrong, we'll be back in deficits, making the same mistakes we were 
making 8 years ago when the American people gave me a chance to change 
this country. That is the big economic issue.
    Their policies will raise interest rates. Our policies will keep 
them lower. Our policies will give people an effective tax cut of 
hundreds of billions of dollars in lower home mortgage rates, lower 
business loan rates, lower college loan rates, lower car payment rates--
clear choice; huge difference. Most people don't know it yet. You can 
help.
    We have differences in education policy, in health care policy. We 
want everybody to have affordable health insurance that they can buy. We 
want older people on Medicare to be able to buy prescription drugs. We 
want to lengthen the life of Social Security and Medicare so that when 
all of the people in the so-called baby boom generation retire, we do 
not impose a burden on our children and their ability to raise our 
grandchildren.
    We want to have a country where the streets are safe for people to 
walk. We have a much lower crime rate now than we did when I took 
office. But I'm sure you believe it's still too high--huge difference in 
the two parties, from the Presidency to the Senate candidates to the 
Congress, on what we would do.
    We believe there are still too many criminals and children who have 
handguns, and it leads to too much violence. We believe that we should 
strengthen our laws in that regard, to do more rigorous background 
checks on people who try to buy guns. We think if someone buys a 
handgun, they ought to get a license like you do with a car, that says 
you have passed a background check and you understand how to use the gun 
safely. They strongly disagree with it.
    It's a big choice. There is no point in pretending that there is not 
a difference here and that it won't have consequences. So these are just 
some of the issues that I wanted to bring up. We favor the hate crimes 
legislation, broad and inclusive. Their leadership is opposed to it--big 
difference.
    So what I ask you to do is, number one, keep being a good example 
for all Americans with your work ethic and your strong families and your 
contributions to community; number two, thank you for being here to help 
Hillary; she will be the most outstanding advocate New York could 
possibly have for children and families, for jobs and health care and 
education; number three, remind your fellow Americans not to go to sleep 
this election year, that what you do in good times is just as important, 
maybe more important, as what you do in bad times in an election, that 
elections are choices with real consequences.
    I am absolutely convinced if the American people and the people in 
New York clearly understand it's a big election, there are big 
differences, and what the differences are, that Hillary will be the next 
Senator; Vice President Gore will be the 
next President; and America's best days are still ahead. That's what I 
believe.
    Now I would like to introduce the First Lady, my wife, by telling 
you that, as far as I know, I have now run my last race. I will never be 
a candidate for anything again. I will spend my time helping other 
people to run for office and to serve our country.
    I have had, since I was a very young man, the opportunity to work 
with literally hundreds of people in public life who were running for 
office, first helping them to get elected, then getting elected myself. 
Now I am returning to my original role as a citizen.
    Of all the hundreds of people I have known, including many 
Presidents and candidates for President, I have never known anyone who 
had the same combination of intelligence and passion and knowledge and 
ability to get things done for children, for families, for education, 
for health care, than my wife does.
    She has never presented herself for public office before. She's 
spent 30 years working for other people and other causes before they 
were popular, when no one else paid attention to them. And I frankly am 
grateful that she has been given the chance by the people of New York to 
run for the Senate, and I hope for the sake of this State and the 
children of our country that she will have a chance to serve, because 
she can do things and she knows things

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that no one else now in our public life can do and know, just because of 
the life she has lived.
    It is a very good thing that she is doing, although I'd just as soon 
we were out relaxing somewhere. [Laughter] I am glad that she wants to 
do it. I am glad that you're helping her, and I hope you will help her 
every day between now and November, because it's the best thing that 
could possibly happen for the people and the future of New York and for 
our country.
    Please bring my wife up now to the floor.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:57 p.m. in the Empire Room at the 
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to luncheon host 
Albert N. Kwok; Korean American Senior Citizens Society of New York 
president John Sehe Jong Ha; Korean American Association of America 
president Gilliam Kim; and President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea. The 
transcript released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included 
the remarks of the First Lady.