[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[August 23, 2000]
[Pages 1693-1698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Mayor Susan Bass 
Levin in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
August 23, 2000

    Thank you. Well, first, this place has wonderful memories for me. I 
remember when I came here in 1992, it was, I think, the Sunday evening 
before the election. The race was close in New Jersey and close in the 
country. And we had this great rally here. And then on election night, 
the people of New Jersey voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and I'll 
never forget it.
    Then in 1996 New Jersey went from giving us a 2-point margin of 
victory to giving us a 16-point margin of victory, one of the largest in 
the entire United States, and I will never forget that. So the first 
thing I'd like to say is, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, 
thank you, New Jersey.
    Now, the second thing I would like to say is, I thought Alexis 
Ettinger was gangbusters. Wasn't she 
wonderful? [Applause] To inspire the young is one of the most important 
responsibilities of any public leader. And if Susan can inspire Alexis, 
that's about as good a recommendation for her representation to Congress 
as anything I can think of, and I really think that's wonderful.
    I want to thank Jon Corzine for being 
here. I know he's been out stirring up the crowd before I got here. But 
I like him. I admire him. I hope that he gets to be a partner with the 
new Senator from New York across the river. [Laughter] We were just up 
in Princeton together with Congressman Rush Holt, another good friend of mine, and I told somebody I love 
reading the press about Jon. You know, people were wailing away about 
the fact that he invested so much money in the primary. And I said, ``I 
don't know what they're complaining about. He's the only rich guy that I 
knew who was spending that kind of money to avoid giving himself a big 
tax cut so he could give the rest of you a better tax cut, a better 
education, a better economy, and a better future.'' I hope you will 
support him and get him to the Senate. We need him.
    And let me say, when Susan and I were walking down the steps 
tonight, I said--I looked at her, and I said, ``I am so glad that you 
gave me a chance to do this for you tonight, because for more than 8 
years now, you have been there for me, every single day, in the good 
times and the bad, in every single way.'' I am so grateful to her.
    And that's another mark of a good leader. If you live long enough 
and you stay in public life long enough and you take on enough issues 
and you make enough adversaries, you will have your bad days as well as 
your good ones. The mayor of Cherry Hill was always there for me and for 
our administration, for what we were trying to do for America, and I 
will never forget it.
    So that brings me to why I am here tonight. Now, if you will let me 
use a colloquialism from my part of the country, I always wonder whether 
I can do any good at events like this because I know that in a way I'm 
preaching to the saved. I mean, if you weren't for her, you wouldn't be 
here. Either that, or you've got a lot of extra money on your hands. 
[Laughter]
    But I want you to listen to me just for a few minutes tonight, 
because what I want to tell you is, number one, I believe she can win, 
and number two, I know she should win, and number three, the only way 
she can win is if you do more than give her money.
    Every one of you--every one of you--has friends who live in this 
district who will vote on election day, people who think of themselves 
as good, upstanding citizens and wouldn't dream of not voting. But they 
don't spend nearly as much time as you do going to events like this. 
They may not know her as well as you do. They may not be living within 
50 miles of here.
    Every one of you has people that you work with, you go out to dinner 
with on the weekends, maybe you worship with, maybe you play golf with 
or go bowling with or your kids play soccer with, or some other way you 
come in contact with people. They will vote, but they don't know as much 
about this as you do. They don't know her as well as you do. They don't 
have as clear an understanding of what the differences between our 
parties, our candidates for President and Vice President, Jon 
Corzine and his opponent, as you do. And I am 
telling you--you know, I've been doing this a long time. [Laughter]

[[Page 1694]]

    The first time I passed out cards at a polling place was in 1954 
when my uncle ran for State representative. I was 8 years old. He served 
one term. His wife made him quit because she thought politics was too 
tough--ha! [Laughter] What did she know?
    Every election is different. This election will turn, in my opinion, 
on what the American people, what the people of New Jersey, and what the 
people of this congressional district think it's about. I was so proud 
of Vice President Gore and his speech last 
Thursday because he gave sort of a mini State of the Union speech. He 
said, ``Okay, here's who I am. Here's what I believe, but let's get to 
the meat of the coconut here. If the President is somebody who works for 
the American people, if you vote for me, here's what I'll do.''
    Now, you've got to be able to tell people why they ought to vote for 
them. You have to be able to put the election for Congress and the New 
Jersey Senate election in the context of what's going on in this country 
today. You clapped for all of Susan's issues, but I want to try to give 
some clarity to the ones she mentioned and then talk about ones she 
didn't, the one that may affect you most of all, that I'm afraid is 
least understood.
    Look, if we started 8 years ago--I had this idea that if we could 
create an economic policy, a social policy, an environmental policy, and 
a foreign policy that would reward opportunity for responsibility, would 
create an American community that stopped dividing us by race, by 
religion, by gender, by sexual orientation, by whatever, and pulled us 
together--even by party, Lord knows I've tried to work with our friends 
in the Republican Party under somewhat adverse circumstances--that we 
could really go into the 21st century with America as the leading force 
for prosperity and peace, for human rights and freedom all around the 
world. And we are today. And I'm grateful.
    But what I want you to understand is, all the best things are still 
out there. The good things that have happened in this country in the 
last 8 years are nothing compared to what all of us together could 
achieve in the next 8 or 10 years if, but only if, we make the right 
choices about our future.
    Everybody in this room, at least who is over 30 years old--you can 
see a lot of nodding heads--everybody in this room over 30 years old can 
remember at least one time in your life when you made an error, a 
mistake, not because things were going so badly but because things were 
going so well you did not believe you had to concentrate, think, or 
dream. You could just sort of wander through the day.
    Now, our country has never been in a position like this before. And 
it may not be like this again in our lifetime, where we have so much 
prosperity and social progress, the absence of crisis at home and threat 
abroad, a projected surplus--we can build the future of our dreams for 
our children. So I will say again, how this race for Congress, how this 
race for Senate, how the Presidential race comes out, how Hillary does 
over in New York, it all depends on what people believe the election is 
about.
    Are we going to build the future of our dreams for our children? If 
so, what do we have to do to give them all a world-class education? What 
do we have to do to deal with the aging of America, to preserve Social 
Security and Medicare in a way that when the baby boomers retire and 
there's only two people working for every one person on Social Security, 
people like me don't bankrupt our kids and their ability to raise our 
grandkids? How are we going to deal with the challenge of global warming 
and still grow the economy? How are we going to take advantage of these 
marvelous changes in medical science, the human genome project, and all 
the other biomedical revolutions that may allow people who are living 
with severed spines to stand up and walk, that may allow people who have 
Parkinson's disease to get over it, that may allow people who are 
certainly going to have Alzheimer's not to get it, that I believe will 
allow young mothers, girls in this audience today, by the time they have 
their babies, will go home from the hospital with a little gene card 
that will tell them how to maximize their children's health and minimize 
the problems, and within 20 years young women will be giving birth to 
babies with a life expectancy of 90 years, you can book it. It will 
happen.
    Now, so how are we going to do all that and still make sure when you 
carry your gene card around, nobody can deny you a job or health 
insurance because of something that's on that card? How are we going to 
bridge the digital divide and hook up all of our schools and make sure 
everybody has got access to computers but nobody has access to your 
health and financial records on those computers unless you say yes?

[[Page 1695]]

    These are big challenges. And there are clear differences. And Susan 
mentioned some, but I'll be more explicit. Let's just go back through 
the ones she mentioned. Education: Test scores are going up; the 
college-going rate is at an all-time high; the African-American high 
school graduation equals that of the white majority for the first time 
in history in the last few years. The schools are turning around. We had 
a very specific strategy to work with the schools: invest more money but 
demand more results; identify failing schools, have more preschool, 
summer school, after-school, mentoring programs, smaller classes in the 
early grades; hook all the schools, including the poor ones, up to the 
Internet.
    Their strategy is, get rid of that stuff and just write a check to 
the State and hope they spend it right. Now, there's a very great 
difference. And don't give it all to the State; have some of it off in 
vouchers. So you have to decide whether you agree with our strategy or 
their strategy. It's not just this woman you like; it will affect 
people's lives how she votes. And you don't have to say anything bad 
about her opponent or anybody else. But you've got to know there's a 
consequence.
    Health care, the Patients' Bill of Rights: Their leadership still 
won't let us bring it up because the HMO's either don't want us to cover 
everybody, or if we guarantee a Patients' Bill of Rights and somebody 
gets hurt, they don't want them to be able to sue and get any help if 
they get hurt. That's like a patients' bill of suggestion; it's not 
rights. [Laughter]
    And look, I support managed care because we can't--I didn't want to 
have an explosion and inflation in health care costs, but ``care'' is 
even more important than ``managed'' in that phrase. And you can't take 
these medical decisions away from the doctors and the people.
    In prescription drugs, I support, and Susan said she supported, Jon 
supports a Medicare prescription drug program that would allow all the 
seniors in this country who need it access to affordable prescription 
drugs through the Medicare program. They support a program that wouldn't 
cover half the seniors in the country who need it.
    Now, I support the pharmaceutical excellence of America. I'm proud 
that we've got all these great drug companies in our country, a lot of 
them headquartered right here in New Jersey. And what they're worried 
about is, if Medicare can buy all these drugs for the seniors, that 
maybe they'll buy them at such a low price that they'll be put in a 
tight--there's got to be a way to resolve that. The answer is not what 
the Republicans want to do, which is to make sure half of the seniors 
can't get the drugs they need. That is not the answer. There's got to be 
a good answer to that.
    So, she says, he says, we say, Al and Joe say, ``Take care of the 
seniors and the drug companies.'' Now, this is a big choice for you to 
make. This is not just another walk in the park here. We're talking 
about millions of people.
    Crime--what's our position? Our position has been 100,000 police on 
the street, prevent as much crime as you can; the assault weapons ban, 
the Brady bill. And our position now is, close the gun show loophole on 
the Brady bill, mandatory child trigger locks, don't let them import all 
these big ammunition clips that you can then hook on to a rifle here and 
make it into an assault weapon. That's our position.
    Now, what's their position? Their position is, ``We were wrong when 
we passed the Brady bill. We were wrong when we passed the 100,000 
police. We're wrong now in putting 50,000 more police on the street, and 
we're wrong trying to do all this.'' Their nominee said just a couple of 
days ago that if he were elected, he would get rid of the 100,000 police 
program, that that was not a national responsibility.
    All I know is, crime is at a 25-year low. Gun crime's down 35 
percent. We tried it their way. We tried it our way. Our way works. Now, 
they say what we should do is have even more vigorous prosecution, even 
though we increased prosecution. We've got a record number of people in 
jail. But when they tried it their way, it didn't work as well.
    And what's their weapons position? Their weapons position is, more 
people should carry concealed weapons, even into houses of worship. 
That's their leadership position.
    Now, they believe that. I'm not saying anything bad about them. 
That's what they believe. But it's not like we haven't had a test here. 
We tried it their way. We tried it our way. Our way works better. And 
America is not as safe as it needs to be. This will have significance. 
I'm telling you, every vote in Congress, every vote in the Senate 
matters. We're talking about the way the children in this room are going 
to have to live.

[[Page 1696]]

    Now, so what have we done? We've got education, health care, and 
crime. Then, she said--and you clapped--she said, ``I'm for preserving a 
woman's right to choose.'' What she didn't say is--what she didn't say 
is, every year there is a wholesale assault on it in one way or the 
other through little riders in congressional legislation. So if you're 
in the House of Representatives, you actually have a chance to protect 
it.
    And I don't know whether Jon said this or not, but the next 
President is going to appoint two to four members of the Supreme Court. 
And the United States Senate has to confirm those members.
    And they have told us--and, again, I accept that this is their 
sincere conviction. This is not a personal criticism. Honorable people 
can have honest differences. But we can't claim we don't know that there 
is no consequence here. Their nominee is 
against Roe v. Wade. And you have to assume, being an honorable person, 
that he will act on his convictions. And you have to assume that their 
Members of the Senate are more likely than ours to vote to ratify those 
judges, because that's what is going to happen. So if this is important 
to you, either way--if it matters to you either way, you need to know 
that you can affect the outcome by the choice you make for Congress and 
for the Senate.
    Now, this is the last point I want to make. And I want to say a 
little something about the economy, because I think maybe the 
differences in economic policy between the Republicans and Democrats 
today are the least understood. And yet, they'll have a huge impact on 
you.
    Now, you all know that we have a large projected surplus. That's 
what we think we're going to get in over the next 10 years. They have a 
very compelling position. Their position is, ``Hey, we had a deficit for 
years. Now we've got a surplus. It's your money, and we're going to give 
it all back to you in a tax cut.'' It takes about 5 seconds to say, and 
it sounds so good. [Laughter] ``It's your money, and I'm going to give 
it back to you in a tax cut, all of it. Why should the Government keep 
your money?''
    Our position is, number one, you should get a tax cut, but it ought 
to be something less than half of theirs in total. Yes, there ought to 
be some marriage penalty and estate tax relief in there, but we ought to 
really focus on helping families who need it pay for college education, 
long-term care, child care, and retirement, to help people who need it, 
do that.
    And by the way, we have to save some money for education and the 
environment and health care and science and technology. And there might 
be an emergency, and we've got to save some money for that. And oh, by 
the way, this is projected income. That means it's not in the bank yet. 
And if you cut the taxes now for all the projected income and the money 
doesn't come in, you've still got the tax cut.
    I told somebody their position reminds me of those letters I used to 
get back when I was a private citizen from that--that sort of Publishers 
Clearing House sweepstakes letters from Ed McMahon. You've seen them. 
``You may have won $10 million.'' [Laughter] You may have. [Laughter] 
And when you got those letters, if you went out the next day and you 
spent the $10 million, you should seriously consider supporting them in 
this election. [Laughter] But if you didn't do that, you better vote for 
Susan and Jon and Al and Joe and 
Hillary, if you live in New York. 
[Laughter] Jon Corzine made a lot of money in investments, ask him. 
Nobody would do this.
    Let me tell you something else, this is before they spend their own 
money. Their Social Security privatization program, it's about a 
trillion bucks over 10 years, and the other things they want to spend 
money on, before they have to deal with emergencies. I'm telling you, 
folks, we don't want to go back to deficits.
    Now, let me tell you one other thing. We have a study from the 
Council of Economic Advisers that says that if their plan were enacted, 
as opposed to the one the Vice President 
and Jon and Susan have endorsed, interest 
rates would go up by one percent a year for a decade. Now, if we keep 
interest rates one percent lower a year for a decade, would you like to 
know what that's worth to you? Two hundred and fifty billion bucks in 
home mortgages, $30 billion in car payments, and $15 billion in college 
loan payments. In other words, one percent lower interest rates is a 
$300 billion tax cut to ordinary Americans who desperately need it, and 
you get the benefit of getting the country out of debt, investing in our 
future, saving Social Security and Medicare.
    Listen, it may take me longer to explain our economic program, but 
I'm sure now that I've done it, you can get the gist here. You've got to 
be able to do that.
    Now, I'm going to close where I've started. It is not good enough 
for you to come here

[[Page 1697]]

for somebody you know and believe in and contribute and go home and 
forget about this. You've got to be like Alexis. You've got to be a volunteer, even if you don't go in 
the headquarters. Every day between now and November you need to go up 
to somebody you know who is not here tonight and say, ``Listen, here is 
why I am for Susan Bass Levin. Here's why I'm for Jon Corzine. Here are the differences on economic policy, education 
policy, health care policy, human rights policy, crime policy''--boom, 
boom, boom, boom--``here's how it's going to affect your life, your 
future, our children's future.''
    And you've got to be able to answer those questions, and you have to 
feel comfortable. And you can remember the Ed McMahon story. I'm telling 
you, this is a big deal. I worked real hard to get our country out of 
debt and get this economy going. And I'm telling you, when I hear people 
say there is no real difference in economic policy, you know, I want to 
just sort of jump in the ocean. I mean, come on, here.
    We've got poverty going down. All income groups have their income 
going up. All the things are going in the right direction. We cannot 
change our economic direction. We need to do more to bring in people who 
still aren't participating in this economic recovery, but we don't need 
to throw away the policy that brought us to this dance we're at, that 
we're enjoying so much. It would be a terrible mistake.
    So think about this. When you go out of here, if you don't remember 
anything else, you remember, you've got to be able to say, ``I am for 
Susan Bass Levin because she's my friend, because she's been a good 
mayor, but because she's right for me and you and our kids and our 
future on education and health care and choice and the environment and 
the economy and crime and our future.'' Look, I can hardly remember an 
election where the choices were any clearer. The rhetoric is not clear 
anymore because they understand now that people don't like all that 
hateful stuff anymore, so they chucked it. And they're talking about 
inclusion. And you're laughing, and we have all made fun of them about 
it, but actually it's a good thing. It's a good thing.
    The words people use matter. And we should say, ``Thank you very 
much for not being so hateful anymore and demonizing your opponents and 
doing all''--we should say--it matters. We should say that. But I'm just 
telling you, the substantive differences are still there.
    Now, I know this woman. I admire her. She will be a great, great 
Member of Congress. But when it's all said and done, it's not those of 
us who hold office that matters; it's those of you who hire us to serve 
and whether we do what you hired us to do.
    I want to close with a little story. I'm surprised I'm going to say 
this, but I want to tell you something. I got off the plane today in New 
Jersey to do these events, and the first person I saw was a young 
businessman from San Francisco. I didn't know he was going to be in the 
line. I was amazed to see him. I hadn't seen him in 4 years, maybe more. 
His name is Steve Sposato. He was there with 
his beautiful daughter, Megan, and her very 
young little sister and his wife.
    The first time I met Steve Sposato, he was 
a grieving young widower with an infant child whose wife was cut down by 
a crazed person with an assault weapon in an office building in San 
Francisco. You may remember that awful incident when it happened. He was 
a Republican, always had been. He was just a businessman. And he 
thought--he couldn't understand why the political system in Washington 
didn't want to stop people like this crazy guy from getting ahold of 
assault weapons and going into office buildings and shooting people like 
his wife.
    He wasn't all that political. He just 
wanted to make sure there wouldn't be any other little girls like his gorgeous little daughter. And I met him. And 
he came and stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and talked about 
this in very moving terms. And he said, ``You know, I'm not a 
politician. I'm not a speaker. I just don't want any more kids to be 
without their parents.'' And he stood and went through that rough fight 
with me in 1994. And thankfully, he met another lady, and they had 
another baby, and I saw beautiful little Megan today and her new little 
sister and her stepmom and Steve's mother who lives on Long Island. They 
all came out to see me. It changed his politics forever.
    Why? Because in the most awful, agonizing way, he had to come to 
terms with the fact that what we do as citizens, whether we like it or 
not, affects how we live as people. And

[[Page 1698]]

that brave, good, fine young man is standing here.
    Now, I hope to goodness not a single living soul in this audience 
has ever gone through anything like this. But I promise you, in some way 
or another, for every single one of you, what you do as citizens affects 
how you live as people. I tell people all the time, politics is not the 
most important thing in life, not even in my life. Being President is 
the second most important job I ever had next to being a father. When 
they get ready to lay you down, you don't think about all the time you 
should have spent at the office; you think about who liked you, who 
loved you, how the flowers smelled in the springtime, what it was like 
to be a child. But politics is supposed to create the conditions and 
give people the tools to shape their dreams, not tear their hearts out.
    When it's all said and done, that's what it's about. In my lifetime 
we have never had this chance before like we have it now. I'm not 
running for anything, for the first time in 26 years. I tell you this as 
a citizen: Make sure Susan wins; make sure Jon wins; make sure Joe and 
Al win. Give this country its best chance.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:40 p.m. in the paddock area of the 
racetrack at Garden State Park. In his remarks, he referred to Cherry 
Hill High School East senior Alexis Ettinger, who introduced the 
President; Jon S. Corzine, candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey; and 
Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. Mayor 
Susan Bass Levin of Cherry Hill was a candidate for New Jersey's Third 
Congressional District.