[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[October 19, 2000]
[Pages 2220-2222]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Democratic Caucus
October 19, 2000

    Thank you so much for the wonderful welcome. I want to begin by 
saying that it has been a profound honor for me to work with this caucus 
over the last 8 years. I want to thank Tom Daschle, who has been wonderful; and Dick Gephardt, whom I knew well before I became President, but we 
have, I think, built a great friendship, a deeper one, in these last 8 
years. And I'm so proud of him.
    I want to say to all of you that I believe that in these last 2 
weeks and 6 days before the election, the best politics is for us to get 
as much done as we can for America here in the Congress of the United 
States. And in the process of doing that, I think what we ought to seek 
to do is to bring clarity to this debate.
    It looks to me like our friends on the other side in Congress have 
adopted their Presidential strategy. Their Presidential strategy--now 
their congressional strategy--is cloud the issues. Things are doing 
well. They will get by. Our strategy should be, clarify the issues, and 
we'll win big. That is clearly the difference.
    I was very proud of the performance of the Vice President in that last debate. I thought he was great, 
trying to bring clarity. But you've got to give it to the other side. As 
hard as we try to bring clarity, they're real good at clouding up. I 
almost gagged when I heard that answer on the Patients' Bill of Rights 
in Texas. Could you believe that? Here's a guy who takes credit for a bill that he vetoed. And then, 
finally, the guys that were helping him say, ``If you want to be 
President, you can't veto a Patients' Bill of Rights, or people will 
look dimly on it. So you'd better let it pass.'' And then he was 
bragging about how you have a right to sue in Texas. Did you hear that? 
Do you know how that got in? Without his signature. He sort of--so 
they're real good. They cloud. And I've been reading in the press, 
apparently no one thinks that was an exaggeration or something that was 
troubling, but it sort of bothered me.
    And then there is their great argument that you've done nothing 
about health care in 8 years. Look, when we came in, Medicare was going 
broke last year. Now, we put 27 years on it--I think, the longest it's 
been alive in 35 years--not to mention the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, the 
Children's Health Insurance Program, which is what has given us a 
decline in the number of people without health insurance for the first 
time in 12 years.
    Then there was the education recession argument. You know, one of 
the things I admire about our Republican friends is that evidence has no 
impact on them. [Laughter] And you've kind of got to respect that. They 
know what they believe, and they know what they're going to say, and, 
``Don't bother me with the facts.''
    What are the facts? The dropout rate's down. The high school 
graduation rate's up. The college-going rate's at an all-time high. 
Reading and math scores are up. There's been about a 50 percent increase 
in the number of kids taking advanced placement courses, but a 300 
percent increase in Latino children taking advanced placement courses, 
and a 500 percent increase in African-American kids taking advanced 
placement courses.
    Then there was that argument that--the one that tickled me the most 
was, ``Well, the wealthiest Americans have to get tax relief, because 
we're giving tax relief, and what do you expect us to do? I mean, I'd 
just be the President. I can't make decisions about this.'' [Laughter] 
That was their argument, wasn't it? I mean, ``Who are we to make 
decisions? We can't make judgments and choices. I mean, if you're for 
tax relief, you just sort of put it out there, and people just kind of 
come along and get whatever they get. But we didn't decide to give it to 
them. We were for tax relief, and it just happened. I mean, how could we 
possibly make a decision here? I mean, whoever heard of a

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President and a Congress making a decision? I never heard of such a 
thing.''
    What's the point of all this? What's the point of all this? They are 
really good at cloudiness. And we have to be good at a clear weather 
forecast. And we have to be true to what we said we showed up here to 
do. We've got to get everything done we can before the Congress goes 
home, and then what's left, we need to take to the American people with 
clarity.
    But if you just keep this in mind--you know, you've got to have a 
lot of sympathy with them, because the country is so much better off 
than it was 8 years ago. And our economic policy, our education policy, 
our environmental policy, our health care policy, our welfare policy, 
our crime policy--there are big differences between ours and theirs. And 
we tried it our way, and it got better. We tried it their way, and it 
didn't. So they have no choice but to be cloudy. We have no choice but 
to be clear.
    But you have to understand that it's quite a smart strategy on their 
part, and they're very good at it. So what we have to do is be clear. 
For example, they say they're coming back Monday night. We're going to 
work all day Tuesday, and we're going to work Wednesday. And if we don't 
quit, I'm going to one-day CR's, one day, every day. You've got to 
finish.
    Can you imagine a Democrat going home and running for reelection 
saying, ``Vote for me so that next year I can finish last year's 
business?'' [Laughter] Now, we wouldn't do that. And we shouldn't let 
anybody do that. We need to stay here until we resolve this.
    We want 100,000 teachers. We want the school construction funds. We 
want funds to turn around or shut down failing schools and open them 
under new management. We want the funds to double our after-school 
programs. We now got more information, just last week, another study on 
how much good they do. We've got 800,000 kids in those programs. If our 
budget passes, there will be enough for 1.6 million kids.
    And we want the minimum wage, and we want the hate crimes 
legislation, and we want the immigrant fairness legislation. We want 
these things. I think they're important. And the American people ought 
to have no doubt when we leave here, if we don't get the Patients' Bill 
of Rights, it's not because we didn't break our backs for it. It's 
because their interest groups wouldn't let them pass it.
    And let me just mention one other issue I think has gotten sort of 
swept aside in this debate. In addition to the minimum wage, we have 
legislation to strengthen the law to guarantee equal pay for equal work 
for women, and I think we ought to be out there talking to the American 
people about that.
    And let me just say one or two other things. We worked hard here. We 
lost a lot of seats in 1994 because we worked hard to turn this deficit 
around. And we believed that we could get rid of the deficit, increase 
investment in education, and strengthen the economy, in no small 
measure, by keeping interest rates down, which would lead to higher 
growth.
    Now, look, one of the things I think that all of you ought to do 
when you go home is to say--acknowledge very frankly that their tax cut 
is 3 times bigger than the one we're advocating, at least. Now, 
virtually all people with incomes of under $100,000 a year would be 
better off under our proposal, but still, theirs is 3 times bigger. But 
there's a reason for that. We do not believe we can possibly afford to 
go back to the kind of economic policies we had in the 12 years before 
we got here. We do not believe it is good for America to get back in the 
deficit ditch. And whatever you think this surplus is going to be over 
the next decade, I promise you it's going to be less than a $1.6 
trillion tax cut plus a $1 trillion partial privatization of Social 
Security plus the $300 billion or $400 billion they've promised us to 
spend.
    Now, I believe a careful analysis of both proposals will show you 
that if the Vice President and the 
Democratic plan passes, you'll have interest rates lower every year, 
probably about a percent lower every year for a decade. Do you know what 
that's worth? Three hundred ninety billion dollars over 10 years in 
lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car payments, $15 billion in 
lower college loan payments, never mind the lower credit card payments, 
never mind the lower business loan payments, lower farm loan payments, 
more people, therefore, going to work, more businesses doing well, a 
higher stock market.
    Our tax cut for all Americans is lower interest rates, because we're 
not going to get out of the kind of trouble that they had. I just think 
you need to go out here and get everything done you can. I will stay 
here with you. If we don't finish by Wednesday, we're going to day-

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by-day continuing resolutions. We'll do everything we possibly can to 
pass all this education agenda, to pass as much of our health care 
agenda we can, and to do it in a fiscally responsible way.
    But when you leave here, you just think about this. Tell people to 
remember the way it was 8 years ago; to think about the way it is now; 
to look at the changes in crime, welfare, the environment, health care, 
and the economy; and to ask yourself not whether we're going to keep 
changing but what direction will we change in? The country's changing so 
fast and the world is changing so fast, change will be the order of the 
day next year and 5 years from now and 10 years from now. The issue is 
not whether we're going to change; it is, which direction will we take 
as we change?
    And you just think about--think of yourself as America's weather 
corps. They want cloudy, and you want clear. [Laughter] And if you can 
bring clarity to this debate, you get more done here. Then I'll stay 
with you every step of the way, and we'll all have a great celebration 
in about 3 weeks.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 2:46 p.m. in the Cannon Caucus Room at the 
Cannon Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Republican 
Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.