[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 24, 2000]
[Pages 1923-1928]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Representative Lois Capps in Pacific Palisades, California
September 24, 2000

    The President. Thank you.
    Audience member. Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. In your dreams. [Laughter] No way!
    The amazing thing is that Susan and 
Ted should be surprised that I would want to 
come to their backyard. I would be happy to come next Sunday, too. 
[Laughter] Is this a gorgeous place or what? I mean, amazing.
    I want to thank you both for having us here and supporting one of 
the finest people I've ever known in public life. And I know when you 
have a family and your Sundays are

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precious, and I thank you for giving us this time and making it possible 
for all of us to come.
    I want to thank all of you for being here. I thank Representatives 
Becerra and Sherman 
for coming to support Lois, and I thank Senator O'Connell and Kathleen Connell for 
being here. And mostly I just want to thank all of you for being here.
    I want to say just a few words about Representative Capps. I got a 
little choked up when she started talking about my relationship with her 
family. I loved her husband very much. He was a special man, and we had 
a great rally in '96 in Santa Barbara and there were 15,000 or 20,000 
people there with the Sun out and the ocean glistening, you know. And I 
thought we all were just going to levitate off the side of the world. 
[Laughter] If I had done that, it would have been the subject of another 
investigation. [Laughter] ``How did he do that? What was behind that? 
What mysterious foreign entity financed that levitation?'' [Laughter]
    And Laura, who is standing back there, did 
work in the White House for many years, and she worked right behind my 
office, so I saw her several times a day. And she was one of the true, 
good souls in the White House. She kept everybody in a good frame of 
mind, and you couldn't act small around her, not only because she's 
physically big, but because she's big inside, just like her mother.
    So, I'm honored to be here. But I also want to emphasize what Lois 
said. Now, I have worked harder in this election, I think, than any 
other one I've ever been in, although it's the first time in 26 years I 
haven't been on the ballot. [Laughter] This is something like the 140th 
campaign event I've done this year. And I've done these things for 
individual House Members and Senators and for a Senate and House 
committee and for the National Democratic Committee, which basically 
benefits directly Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman. And of course, I've made a 
little extra effort in New York--[laughter]--where I have more than a 
passing interest in the outcome of the race. [Laughter]
    The new joke around the White House is that, now that my party has a 
new leader and my family has a new 
candidate, my title should be changed 
to Cheerleader in Chief, and I'm quite happy with that. But I want you 
to know, first of all, I hope you remember what Lois said, and I hope 
you remember what Susan said about this election.
    I worked as hard as I could, and Lord knows, the people of 
California have been good to me, from the June '92 primary to the 
general election in '92 to the overwhelming mandate I got here in '96. 
And we've worked very hard to turn this country around and to beat back 
the reaction to what we were trying to do that was manifest in the 
Gingrich revolution and the Republicans taking over the Congress and 
many of the extremist things that have been done over the last 5, 6 
years.
    And we've had a great deal of success in actually getting 
affirmative things done, because, as you're about to see, when the 
Congress gets ready to go home, if the Democrats stick with me even 
though we're in the minority, we get a lot of what we want. Otherwise, 
nobody gets to go home. [Laughter]
    So we work all year long just to sort of keep our heads above water 
waiting for the last 3 weeks, and then we all sit there like calm 
Buddhas--[laughter]--waiting for the results to come in. So watch it, 
and see if we can pull it off one more time.
    But now, the American people really do have to decide. I mean, they 
really have to decide whether you think they're right or we are. There 
will be an effort at bipartisan cooperation no matter what happens in 
this election, because if we win the majority, it won't be so big that 
we won't have to work with them. We might even win the Senate back; but 
if we do, it will just be by a seat or so.
    I do believe that the Vice President 
and Joe Lieberman will be elected, and 
they should be, because they have a better plan and they've got a better 
record and they've got a better direction.
    But you have to understand, I know better than anybody alive now the 
enormous consequences of every single seat in the House and every single 
seat in the Senate. And I cannot even begin to tell you, especially for 
the House, what a difference it makes to be in the majority. Because I 
can give you example after example, over the last 5 years, when we had 
enough Republican votes, voting with our side, to do things, and because 
of the way the rules work in the House of Representatives, we couldn't 
even get a vote on a measure, just because we weren't in the majority.

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    I could give you example after example where, because we weren't in 
the majority on these committees, amendments were put into bills 
weakening the environment or undermining the public health or the long-
term public interests of America, where we couldn't get them out 
because, by the time they actually got to the floor, they were in some 
big defense bill or some big other bill that Lois and everybody else had 
to vote for because you can never explain to people at home why are you 
voting against education or against health care or against defense. And 
because we weren't in the majority on these committees, all that 
underbrush was in there.
    And this is really important, and the American people now have to 
decide, because we actually have a chance, because of our economic 
prosperity and because crime is down, welfare is down, teen pregnancy is 
at a recorded low, every social indicator, virtually, is going in the 
right direction. We have a chance to build the future of our dreams for 
our kids. We can have a health care system that really serves everybody, 
in the ways that Lois said, with a Patients' Bill of Rights and the 
Medicare drug issue for the seniors. But also, we can do a lot more for 
people that don't have health insurance, to make it affordable for them 
to buy it. There are still over 40 million Americans that don't have it.
    We can actually provide a world-class education for all of our kids. 
I've been working in education for all of our kids. It's not like--I've 
been working in education for 20 years, and a lot of the teachers here 
will tell you that there have been 20 years of hard work of trying to 
figure out how do you deal with a more and more diverse student body 
from more and more different and often very difficult home backgrounds 
and get a world-class education out there.
    And we had a lot of ideas for a long time, but we now have lots of 
research that shows us how to do it. I was in a school in Harlem in New 
York City the other day that 2 years ago--listen to this--2 years ago 80 
percent of the children in this school were doing reading and math below 
grade level. Two years ago--a failing school by any standard. Today, 2 
years later, with a new principal, a school uniform policy, the smallest 
class size policy, a strong--you know, very high standards and 
accountability--2 years they went from an 80 percent failure rate to 74 
percent of the kids doing reading and math at or above grade level--in 2 
years.
    Now, that can be done everywhere. But you've got school after school 
after school where the kids are piled up in housetrailers out behind the 
buildings. You've got school after school after school in our cities 
where the average school building in many of our cities is 65 years 
old--New York City is still heating schools with coal-fired furnaces 
from the late 19th century--where they can't hook the schools up--the 
classrooms up to the Internet because the buildings won't take the 
wiring.
    So we can do this. But we have to make a decision that we're going 
to make education a priority. We have to make a decision that we're 
going to make our health care a priority.
    We have clearly proved that you can grow the economy and improve the 
environment. And yet, there are explicit commitments in this campaign 
from the other side to roll back the environmental advances of our 
administration. They say we're hurting the economy, so they want to 
relax the air rules, relax the water rules, repeal my order setting 
aside 43 million roadless acres in the national forests, review all the 
national monuments I set aside. They probably oppose what I'm going to 
do to protect the lands of the Big Sur today when I leave here.
    And you have to decide, because if we win 12 seats in the House of 
Representatives, they can't do it. Simple as that. There are vast 
consequences here--education, health care, the environment, crime 
policy. Crime's gone down 7 years in a row. It will be 8 years this 
year, longest drop we've ever had, lowest crime rate in 27 years, gun 
violence down 35 percent. Now, they have said that, notwithstanding the 
evidence, our approach is wrong. [Laughter] ``Don't bother me with the 
facts. We don't like what you're doing.''
    So, you have to decide if you want more sensible things--to keep 
guns out of the hands of kids and criminals, and you want more community 
police on the street. Most people think this is just about the minor 
little combat I've had over the last several years with the NRA. That's 
not true. They've also promised to repeal our bill that first put 
100,000 police on the street and have now put another 50,000 people. 
They say that's not the business of the Federal Government.

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    All I know is, these cities couldn't afford the cops, and since we 
put them on the street, they prevented crime from happening and kept 
more people out of trouble in the first place, and this is a safer 
country, and you have to be safe to be truly free. So there's a huge 
difference here. You have to decide.
    We can get this country out of debt in 12 years, unless we give away 
too much in a tax cut and spend another trillion dollars to partially 
privatize Social Security. Don't forget that in this debate. Whatever 
the tax cut number is, when you hear them debate, whatever the 
Republicans say their tax number is, it's a little bigger than they say. 
But you have to add a trillion dollars on top of that. Why? Because if 
we partially privatize Social Security and half the young people in this 
audience, let's say, under 50--that's young to me--[laughter]--if you're 
really young, you will learn, the older you get, young is somebody who 
is a day younger than you are--[laughter]--and half the people take 
their 2 percent payroll and put it in some sort of mutual fund--most of 
you do better; not all of you would. And then someday, we'd have to come 
around and pick up the pieces of the people that didn't. But they 
promise to give everybody the benefits they've got already under the 
present system if you're 55 or over. So if you take a lot of money out 
of the system but you still have the same payment commitments--right--
you've got to put the money right back in from somewhere else.
    It's a trillion dollars over a decade, plus, their tax cut. If you 
do that, forget it. The country is not getting out of debt. Interest 
rates will be about a percent higher every year for a decade. Under the 
Democratic plan championed by Al Gore and 
Joe Lieberman, if you have interest 
rates one point lower over a decade, do you know what that's worth to 
you? Compare this to the tax cut promises they make. If you keep 
interest rates one point lower, $390 billion in lower home mortgage 
payments; $30 billion in lower car payments; $15 billion in lower 
college loan payments. Or, if my math is right, that's about a $435 
billion tax cut in lower interest rates by continuing to pay down the 
national debt.
    It's interesting. I never thought I'd live to see the day that the 
progressive party in our Nation's Capital was the more fiscally prudent 
one, because that's progressive politics: to give people--everybody 
benefits from lower interest rates. And I haven't even said how much 
money you'd save in business loans and how much it would do for the 
markets and all of that. So you have to understand there are huge 
consequences.
    I've done everything I could do to leave this country in good shape. 
But when Al Gore stands up and says, ``You 
ain't seen nothin' yet,'' that is not just a campaign slogan. I'm not on 
the ballot, and I believe that. I believe that.
    And look, why do I believe that? Because we've turned the thing 
around. It takes a long time to turn a country around. It's like a big 
ocean liner, and you have to work at it steadily all the time. Why did 
the Titanic hit the iceberg? Because they couldn't turn around in a 
split second. They did see it coming.
    So we took our time. We got this thing turned around. It's going in 
the right direction. But all of the great stuff is still out there.
    I was just playing with Lois' grandson. You know, there are young 
people in this audience who will have babies over the next decade that 
sometime in the next 10 years, they will come home with babies that will 
have a life expectancy of 90 years, because of the human genome project. 
We will be able to predict for infants with their gene maps whether they 
are likely to develop certain kinds of cancers or other kinds of 
maladies, and we will then shortly know what kinds of things can be done 
to minimize--you can't eliminate risk or make people live forever--we 
will be able to dramatically minimize the health hazards that are 
predictable in our genes from birth. And when that happens, it will have 
the biggest boost in life expectancy we've ever seen.
    That's the good news. But what are the rest of you going to do with 
all of us old codgers running around here in 30 years? [Laughter] We're 
going to have to totally rethink what old age is. We're going to have 
to--you know, we made a big step on it this year when the Congress voted 
to repeal the earnings limit on Social Security. We have to rethink 
this.
    And we're going to have to totally rethink the nature of our 
obligations to our children. And we're going to have to get all this 
information out there and take advantage of it and still protect your 
privacy rights, because I don't think anybody ought to get your health 
records if you don't say yes. I think that's important.
    So I think it would be a good thing to have somebody who was a 
highly intelligent nurse,

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who knows about education, who understands these issues in the Congress, 
quite apart from California and her particular district and everything 
else. And I think you have to really think about this. I mean, I know 
I'm preaching to the saved today. You wonder why am I going on, because 
you already are for her, right? [Laughter]
    Here's why: Because this is a very tough, competitive district. We 
already went through one fight together in order to hold on to her seat. 
And most of the people who vote on election day have never been to one 
of these events. They've never given any money to a Republican. They've 
never given any money to a Democrat. They've never been to a campaign 
rally. Maybe they see a few TV ads. Nobody ever comes up to them 
personally and says, ``You know, I know Lois Capps, and I'd like to ask 
you to vote for her, and here's why: one, two, three.'' Believe it or 
not, that does not happen to most people.
    And so, I thank you for your money--[laughter]--but if you live in 
her district, I hope you'll take some time between now and the election 
to tell people this is a huge election. In some ways, this is a more 
important election than '92 was. It certainly is one that requires more 
thinking. In '92 California was in trouble; the country was in trouble. 
You took a chance on me, but as I was always say, hey, it wasn't that 
much of a chance, because we were in a ditch, right? We had to do 
something different. [Laughter]
    Now, people have to actually make a decision. What are we going to 
do with all this good fortune? And are we going to be disciplined and 
thoughtful and think about how our children are going to be living 20 
years from now and do these big good things, or are we just sort of--
kind of wander through and pretend like it doesn't matter?
    I'm telling you, I'm not running for anything. I will not be in 
office. All I want to do is to give the best gift I can to my country. 
We cannot squander this. In my lifetime, we have never had a chance like 
this to build the future of our dreams for our children, and what you 
need is people who are voting on election day who understand that they 
have to go in there and that every vote counts.
    If they call this Presidential election on the East Coast, an hour 
and a half before the California polls close, whether you talk to 
somebody to tell them it was important to go vote for Lois might turn 
the tide in these Congress races and whether people think it matters for 
them to go vote. So I just implore you, if you cared enough to come here 
and contribute today, care enough to take every opportunity you can 
between now and election day to tell people about her, about the issues 
between the two parties, about the Presidential race. Talk to people 
about it. Make them think it's important.
    I think it's finally beginning to sink in on people that they've got 
some big decisions to make. I saw yesterday that more people have 
followed the Presidential election than the Olympics. That is good for 
the health of America, but you need to participate in that.
    And I'm telling you, I've been in this business for a long time. I 
basically like most of the people I've known in public life, including 
most of the Republicans I've known--most of them I like better than they 
like me. [Laughter] But I've never known a better human being than this 
woman, ever. And I want you to help her.
     Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:36 a.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts Ted and Susan Harbert; State 
Senator Jack O'Connell; State Controller Kathleen Connell; and 
Representative Capps' daughter, Laura. Representative Capps was a 
candidate for reelection in California's 22d Congressional District.

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