[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 20, 2000]
[Pages 1881-1884]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Dinner
September 20, 2000

    Thank you. Please be seated. Well, in case you haven't figured it 
out, I'm the warmup act for Los Lobos--[laughter]--and Nydia 
Rojas and Elvis Crespo 
and Tito Puente, Jr.
    Let me thank you, Lucille, and all 
the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for all you have done 
with me and for me these last 8 years. I thank the Institute board 
members for supporting these fine public servants. I thank the members 
of my administration who have done so much to make sure your concerns 
were heard, including Maria Echaveste, 
Mickey Ibarra, Aida Alvarez, Bill Richardson, Louis 
Caldera. And I understand we have the honorary 
Hispanic caucus in the Cabinet here tonight, Secretary Herman, Secretary Slater, and 
Secretary Mineta. I thank them for coming 
as well.
    Because our administration has looked like America, we've been able 
to--I hope--serve America better. For example, under Secretary 
Caldera, the Army is cosponsoring a series of 
public service announcements targeted at young people between the ages 
of 12 and 14, many of them Hispanic, focusing on the benefits of staying 
in high school and getting a diploma. I thank him for that, and I thank 
you for that.
    Last week in Philadelphia, I had an incredible experience--really 
Sunday, the first day of this week. I went there to dedicate and lay the 
first construction beam on what will be America's Constitution Center, 
where people will be able to go to Philadelphia, learn about how we got 
started as a nation, learn about how the Constitution was put together 
and what is in it and how it applies through countless decisions of the 
United States Supreme Court to all Americans down to the present day. I 
also had the opportunity to help to swear in as new citizens 73 
immigrants from 23 different nations.
    And I told them something that the American people and the Members 
of Congress should never forget: 8 of the 39 men who signed the 
Constitution were immigrants, including Alexander Hamilton, the first 
Secretary of the Treasury, born in the West Indies, and James Wilson of 
Pennsylvania, who spoke with a heavy Scottish brogue.
    From the very beginning, our country has benefited from immigrants. 
When I went to Germany 4 or 5 years ago, I presented to the German 
Chancellor a copy of the Declaration of Independence which was printed 
the day after it was signed, July 5, 1776, in Pennsylvania, in German, 
because so many of the people who lived in Pennsylvania at that time had 
German as their first language and spoke limited, if any, English.

[[Page 1882]]

    It is very important that we not forget that we have always been, we 
always will be, and God willing, we will always be strengthened by the 
fact that we are a nation of immigrants.
    This has been a great week for me and the Latino community. 
Yesterday Lucille and the whole 
Congressional Hispanic Caucus came to see me, and we went over the 
remaining issues of this year. They, once again, gave me my marching 
orders. [Laughter] And last night Jimmy Smits 
had me to the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, and some of you 
perhaps were there. I had a wonderful time. And tonight I am with you, 
in all probability, and hopefully, the last American President who does 
not speak Spanish.
    And I say that because I am very proud to have been President of the 
United States during the time when the Latino community of America truly 
came of age as a political, a cultural, and an economic force. I thank 
you for that.
    The main thing I came here to do tonight is to say that, a simple 
thank you. I thank the members of the Caucus for working with Al Gore 
and me for these last 7\1/2\ years. Think of what we have done together 
that would not have been possible without you, and without all the 
people throughout America who support you.
    Together we passed a new economic plan in 1993, which got rid of the 
worst deficits in our history, is paying down the debt, and has given us 
the longest economic expansion in history. It has also given us the 
lowest Hispanic unemployment rate ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic 
poverty rate in a generation, a median income for Hispanics rising even 
faster than for the population as a whole, a million new Hispanic 
homeowners in the last 5 years.
    Together we passed the family and medical leave law, which has given 
25 million of our fellow citizens a chance to take some time off from 
work when there's a newborn baby or a sick family member, without losing 
their job. Together we passed an historic crime bill that put more 
police on our streets, take more guns off our streets, give kids more 
things to do to stay out of trouble and get involved in positive 
conduct. It was opposed by most of the members of the other party, but 
today, after 7 years of straight decline, crime is at a 27-year low.
    Together we doubled the earned-income tax credit, which cut taxes 
for 15 million of our hardest working families, including more than a 
million Hispanic families. Together we raised the minimum wage, which 
benefited nearly 2 million Hispanics. And it's high time we raised it 
again, and I hope you will support that.
    Together we doubled funding for education and training and put in 
place the Hispanic Education Action Plan for programs to improve Latino 
student outcome. And though there are still troubling gaps, Hispanic 
students now are scoring higher on math tests, greater percentages are 
completing high school, graduating from college, and getting advanced 
degrees. In fact, the college-going rate among Hispanic-Americans has 
increased by 50 percent over the last 6 years, and the number of 
children--the number of Latino children in our high schools taking 
advanced placement tests--which means they mean to go to college; 
otherwise, why go through all that hassle? [Laughter]. Listen to this--
the number of Hispanic children taking advanced placement courses has 
increased by 500 percent in the last 5 years.
    Together we created 100 empowerment zones and enterprise 
communities, community development banks, doubled small business loans 
to minorities, tripled them to women. And under the leadership of the 
Vice President, these empowerment zones 
have helped to bring thousands of jobs to people in places who have been 
left behind for too long.
    We provided health insurance coverage under the Children's Health 
Insurance Program to 2 million children, and we're determined to add 3 
million more. We revolutionized welfare; the welfare rolls have been cut 
in half. We fought steadily to restore the benefits that were wrongfully 
cut from legal immigrants, and we're going to keep fighting to restore 
the Medicaid and CHIP coverage for children and pregnant women who are 
legally in the United States.
    And with the strong leadership of the Hispanic Caucus, we will 
continue to push the majority in Congress for a vote on the ``Latino and 
Immigrant Fairness Act.''
    Now, none of this would have happened without you. And I want you to 
know that all I feel is immense gratitude that the people of my country 
gave me a chance to serve, to implement the ideas that I brought to the 
American people in 1992 and 1996, to build a bridge to the new century 
and the new millennium that we could go across together. But when the 
Vice President tells you, ``You ain't seen 
nothing yet,'' I want you to know I believe he is right.

[[Page 1883]]

    Why? Because we have spent so much time in the last 7\1/2\ years 
trying to turn the ship of state around, and it takes a while to do 
that. It's like having an ocean liner in the middle of the ocean, and 
you're trying to avoid an iceberg. Will it be ``Titanic'' or a happy 
story? You know you can't do it like this. It takes time. Now we have 
turned around. We're going in the right direction. We're moving forward 
together.
    And what I want to ask you to do is to think about, what now? You 
know, we could actually end poverty for all the children of America. We 
could actually bring economic opportunity, real jobs, to all the 
communities that have been left behind, from the Native American 
reservations to the rural communities of the Delta and the Appalachia to 
the inner cities that still aren't prospering. We could get this country 
out of debt over the next 12 years, for the first time since Andrew 
Jackson was President in 1835. And I might add, if we did that, instead 
of squandering the surplus on a tax cut that's too big, it would keep 
interest rates a point lower for a decade, which would save people like 
many of you in this audience and the people who you represent, in 10 
years, $390 billion in home mortgage costs alone.
    Now, so I know this is not a political evening. [Laughter] But it 
should be an evening for citizenship. So if you want to fulfill these 
dreams, if you want to meet the challenge of the aging of America when 
we baby boomers retire and there will only be two people working for 
every one person on Social Security, if you want Medicare and Social 
Security not to go broke and you think our seniors deserve prescription 
drugs, the election matters.
    If you want a Patients' Bill of Rights, the election matters. If you 
want to stick with a strategy to lower crime that lifts children up and 
keeps guns out of the hands of criminals and kids, the election matters.
    I'll tell you something else. If you want to put an end to delay and 
discrimination against highly qualified minority candidates for the 
Federal courts, the election matters.
    Now, I am proud, as Lucille said, that our administration has 
appointed more Hispanics to the Federal bench than any in history. But 
it has been an unbelievable fight. It took 4 years just to get a vote 
that put the very able judge Richard Paez on 
the ninth circuit--4 years. Now we're fighting for another great 
candidate, El Paso lawyer Enrique Moreno.
    Now, listen to this. You would think that the Texas Republicans 
would be delighted to support someone like Enrique Moreno. He graduated summa cum laude from his university, 
near the top of his class in law school. A panel of State judges in 
Texas said he was one of the three best lawyers in west Texas. He got 
the highest rating from the American Bar Association. So what did the 
two Senators 
from Texas say? ``He wasn't qualified to be on the Court of Appeals.'' 
And I might add, for reasons that escape me, none of the other elected 
Republicans in Texas have said a word about it.
    Now, I can't ask you to vote for anybody tonight. I don't want to 
endanger your tax exempt status. [Laughter] But if you want an end to 
this kind of delay and denial, it would really help if you had Al 
Gore and Joe Lieberman and Senators like Hillary in the United States Senate. If you want to see 
investments made in the enforcement of our gun laws, our civil rights 
laws, and holding tobacco companies accountable and shrinking the 
citizenship backlog at INS, it would help if you had Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman, and Jose Serrano as chairman of 
the House Committee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary 
Appropriations.
    If you believe that there should be new market investment incentives 
to spread prosperity to people in places that have been left behind, it 
would help if you had Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman, and Nydia 
Velasquez as chairman of the House Small 
Business Committee. If you want the interest of the American people to 
be the agenda of America's Government, it would help if you had Al Gore 
and Joe Lieberman, and if you had in a leadership position Bob 
Menendez, the vice chair of the House 
Democratic caucus.
    There's an old Mexican proverb that says, El que no siembra, no 
levanta; he who does not sow does not harvest. In my lifetime, which, 
unfortunately, is longer than most of yours in this audience--and most 
days I'm all right about it--our country has never had a chance like 
this. When I became President on January 20, 1993, I dreamed that I 
could leave office with my country in the position to make the most of 
this magnificent new millennium; to stay on the far frontiers of science 
and technology and do it in a way that helps all people, not just a few; 
to lift us all together; to build a future

[[Page 1884]]

of our dreams for our children; to go forward as one America. But 
anybody in this audience who is over 30 knows that sometimes it's harder 
to make a good decision when times are good than when they're tough. 
[Laughter]
    I laugh, you know--the American people took a big chance on me in 
1992. I can only imagine how many people walked into the polling place 
on election day in 1992 and said, ``I wonder if I should really vote for 
that guy. I mean, President Bush says he's just a Governor from a small 
southern State. I don't even know where it is.'' [Laughter] ``He's 
probably too young for the job. Oh, what the heck, it's not much of a 
chance. The country is in the ditch.'' [Laughter] I mean, that's 
basically what happened. It wasn't that big a chance. [Laughter]
    Now, that's not true anymore. It's not true anymore. And we all have 
a responsibility to our fellow Americans to think deeply about this 
election, to dream of what we want America to look like in 10 years or 
20 years, and then to go out and choose the course that will take us 
there. That is what we have to do.
    And this is the last thing I want to tell you. I'm very proud of all 
these economic advances. I'm glad of the contributions we made to a 
strong economy that enabled more of you than ever before to afford a 
ticket to come here tonight. I'm glad about that. But if I could only 
have one wish as President for you as I leave, even more than continued 
prosperity, I would wish for us to have the wisdom and the tenderness to 
go forward as one America, across all the lines that divide us.
    We are a good people. We are a smart people. We'll do fine in the 
face of all adversity. But we still have a lot to let go of. We've got 
to learn to trust each other, even if we come from different cultures 
and different backgrounds. We've got to learn to feel deep, abiding, 
bursting pride at our roots and our faith and still respect those who 
are different and understand that our common humanity is the most 
important fact of life there is.
    If we do that, if we do that, believe me, you ain't seen nothing 
yet. And so I say, I had a wonderful time. Even the bad days were good, 
thanks in no small measure to many of you who always were the wind at my 
back. But believe me, it's there for you now. And when you hear all this 
fabulous music tonight, and the Vice President comes out here and says in his emotional and heartfelt 
Spanish what he's got to say--[laughter]--you just keep thinking one 
thing. I don't want you to forget, in a quiet place, this country 
operates not just by the leaders but, more important, by the people.
    Harry Truman said when he left the White House he would resume the 
most important title any American could have, that of citizen. And you 
are what makes this country great. You are what makes this country go. 
If you liked the last 8 years, if you believe you ain't seen nothing 
yet, you must ask yourselves, what do I have to do to make sure the 
right choice is made, and what do I have to do to build one America? If 
we all do that, the best is yet to be.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 7:23 p.m. at the MCI Center. In his 
remarks, he referred to singers Nydia Rojas and Elvis Crespo; musician 
Tito Puente, Jr.; Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, chairwoman, 
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute; and actor Jimmy Smits.