[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[October 20, 2000]
[Pages 2237-2243]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Representative Martin T. Meehan in Lowell, Massachusetts
October 20, 2000

    Thank you for that wonderful welcome. Thank you for coming out to 
help Marty tonight. I told him that now that he had all this support and 
has raised all this money, we needed to go find him an opponent. 
[Laughter] Seems a shame to waste all this energy and support and 
enthusiasm, you know. [Laughter] It's a good thing there aren't many 
more votes he can cast against me. [Laughter]
    Let me say, first, how honored I am to be here. I want to say more 
about Marty in a moment, but I also want to thank Richie Neal for being here and for representing Massachusetts 
so well--he's a wonderful man--and for supporting the efforts that we 
made with the Irish peace process, which, in the beginning, to put it 
mildly, were somewhat controversial.
    I want to thank Senator Kennedy. We've 
spent most of the day together. We flew here today. In an uncommon act 
of sensitivity, he flew to Missouri today for the funeral of the 
Governor of Missouri, who was our nominee for the United States Senate. 
You probably know he died tragically in a plane crash with his son and 
one of his closest aides. He was my neighbor and my very close friend. 
When I looked out today and I saw Ted and Vicki at the funeral, I thought, ``What a great thing to 
do.'' I say this every chance I get. But whatever I have accomplished as 
President, so much of it would never have been possible if Ted Kennedy 
hadn't been there with me every single step of the way, and I cannot 
thank him enough.
    You know, we have a lot of fun together. Today I taught him a new card game so I could beat him. [Laughter] And 
he was convinced I didn't play fair, just because I won and he lost. 
[Laughter] You know, he's going to get the last

[[Page 2238]]

laugh, though, because when he came to the Senate, I was in junior high 
school--[laughter]--and when I leave the White House, he'll still be in 
the Senate, thank goodness for our country's sake.
    I would also like to thank someone in this audience for coming here 
tonight. I was particularly glad to see Niki Tsongas. Where are you? Niki, are you here? She was in the other 
room when I was there. I was really delighted she was here.
    And I want to thank Marty's family for coming tonight at a difficult 
time, beginning with his wonderful mother. Mrs. Meehan, thank you for being here. Thank you. Bless you for 
coming tonight.
    Marty and Ellen and their beautiful baby 
and Marty's mom and the whole Meehan clan met 
me outside, and I understood how he had been elected. [Laughter] 
Frankly, there are so many of them, he doesn't really need you. 
[Laughter] But I'm delighted that you're helping him anyway.
    I wanted to come here--as Senator Kennedy said, I've been to a lot 
of different communities in Massachusetts. I've tried to, in this course 
of my service as President, beginning in the '92 campaign, I've tried to 
make the whole State, to really spend time out in the State of 
Massachusetts to see every part of it and to have a chance to thank the 
people of this State. No State has been better to Bill Clinton and Al 
Gore than the State of Massachusetts, and I am very grateful to you.
    You heard Marty say that when I became President, unemployment here 
was 7.5 percent. Last month it was 2.4 percent, the lowest in 30 years, 
down two-thirds from 1992. So, I want to have a serious talk here, just 
for a minute, about this election coming up, what it means to you, your 
children, your grandchildren, and the future of our country. I want to 
ask you to take some time, a little time every day, to talk to other 
people about it.
    I know that Vice President Gore and Joe 
Lieberman are well ahead in the polls in 
Massachusetts. But you can help them in New Hampshire. You may know some 
people in--if we win this time in New Hampshire, I think it may be the 
first time the Democrats have ever won it three times in a row. But they 
ought to be with us. New Hampshire is a lot better off than it was in 
1992. It's a lot better off. And they've been very good to me, too.
    You might have some friends in Pennsylvania, one of the battleground 
States, or Ohio, a lot of the other places where this election could go 
either way.
    I had the opportunity--gosh, when was it?--yesterday--to appear 
before the Senate and House Democrats, and I said that we should view 
ourselves from here until election day as the ``Weather Caucus,'' 
because if we make things clear, that is, if people understand with 
clarity the choice before them and the consequences of the choice, we 
will win. If they make things cloudy, we'll have a hard time winning. So 
they will be for cloudy; we'll be for clear. What does that say about 
who you ought to vote for right there? [Laughter]
    So I just want to take a minute or two, because everybody here has 
friends who will never come to an event like this. Isn't that right? 
Every one of you has friends that will never come to an event like this, 
but they will show up on election day. You have friends in other States 
where the election could go either way who will never come to an event 
like this, but they will show up on election day.
    And I just wanted to tell you, we've now heard all the debates, and 
the candidates are kind of going into the homestretch, and sometimes 
it's easy to lose the forest for the trees. And you know, I care 
passionately about this election, not just because of my more than 
passing interest in the Senate race in New York. [Laughter] And I might 
add another kind thing Ted did--he went to 
Buffalo with Hillary the other day 
and spoke to an Irish group, and he practically had her with a brogue by 
the time he got through. It was fabulous. [Laughter] And not just 
because I'm so devoted to Al Gore and all 
that he's done, and not just because Joe Lieberman has been a friend of mine for 30 years; but because when 
the Vice President says, ``We've come a long way in the last 8 years, 
but you ain't seen nothin' yet,'' I actually believe that.
    And I'm not running for anything. That's not just political 
rhetoric. I've worked as hard as I know how to turn this country around 
and pull this country together and move us forward, to fight off the 
most bitter partisan attacks in modern American history and just keep on 
going. And it's worked pretty well. And I think you will all agree with 
that.
    But never--never in my lifetime have we had at the same time so much 
economic prosperity,

[[Page 2239]]

social progress, national self-confidence, with the absence of domestic 
crisis or foreign threat to our security. It has not happened in our 
lifetime.
    Now, when you get a situation like that, you have an obligation as a 
free society to build for the future, to seize the big opportunities, to 
deal with the big challenges, to make the most of them. And I'm telling 
you, the only thing that ever bothers me is when I see, well, people 
think that they kind of like both these candidates, and maybe there is 
not much difference, and maybe we should give the other guy a chance or 
this, that, or the other thing, and after all--and things are going 
along fine. Who could mess this up? [Laughter] You know, you hear a lot 
of this talk, don't you? Don't you hear this talk--people talking--and 
what I want to say to you is that we ought to be happy about this 
election, because you have two people we can posit: They're good people; 
they love their families; they love their country; and they will pretty 
well do what they say they'll do if they get elected.
    But make no mistake about it, there are great differences in the 
candidates for President and Vice President, for the Senate and for the 
House, that will have profound consequences. And you've got to decide. 
And I'll just tell you a few of them.
    First of all, I've listened to all these debates, so let me tell you 
what this election is not about. This election is certainly not about 
one of us being--one of our candidates being for big Government, the 
other one being for less Government.
    Let me tell you what the facts are. Now, we had a hard time getting 
those facts into these debates, because they're so inconvenient for the 
other side. And I admire that about the Republicans: The evidence does 
not faze them. [Laughter] They are not bothered at all by the facts. And 
you've got to kind of give it to them. Ask Richie or Marty or Ted. Don't take 
my word for it. The evidence doesn't faze them. They just sort of show 
up and do it anyway. They know what they're for.
    But here are the facts. Under this Democratic administration, 
Government spending is the lowest percentage of national income it's 
been since 1966. Tax burden on average, middle-income Americans is the 
lowest it's been in more than 20 years. Now, the size of the Government 
is the lowest it's been since 1960, Dwight Eisenhower's last year in the 
White House, the year you elected John Kennedy President of the United 
States. That is the size of the Federal Government. Those are facts. So 
when you hear our Republican friends talking about how we're for big 
Government, ask them, where have they been the last 8 years? And if you 
hear somebody who acts like they believe it, fill them in on the facts.
    This election is also not about how our side can't get bipartisan 
action done in Washington, so we need a Republican to rescue us to give 
us bipartisan action. Let me just run through a little of the bipartisan 
action. Once we made it clear to them that we weren't going to let them 
shut the Government down, abolish the Department of Education, and have 
the biggest education and health care and environmental cuts in history, 
and once you made it clear to them that you wouldn't support them if 
they kept doing that, we got a bipartisan welfare reform bill, a 
bipartisan balanced budget bill that had the Children's Health Insurance 
Program, the biggest expansion of children's health care since Medicaid 
in 1965. We got a telecommunications bill that's created hundreds of 
thousands of jobs in America. We got an extension of our bill to put 
100,000 police on the street; we're now working on 150,000. We got a 
bill to put 100,000 teachers in the schools; we're already a third of 
the way home there--all in a bipartisan majority.
    So if somebody says to you, ``I've got to vote for the other guys 
because they're against big Government, or they're for bipartisan 
solutions,'' you say, ``Hello. Stop. Facts.'' Do a fact check here. It 
tickles me. The Republicans are seeking to be rewarded for the harsh 
partisan atmosphere they created. [Laughter] ``We made a mess of this. 
The Democrats will work with us. Give us the White House, and we'll 
behave.'' That's their argument.
    You should say, ``I don't think so. That's not necessary.'' We get 
plenty of stuff done on a bipartisan basis. Ted Kennedy works every day. Marty Meehan's got this campaign finance 
reform bill with Chris Shays. Our problems 
is not bipartisanship. Our problem is that the Republican leadership in 
the United States Senate and in the campaign for the White House are 
against campaign finance reform. One hundred percent of the Democrats 
and a lot of the Republicans are for campaign finance reform. Isn't that 
right?

[[Page 2240]]

    So that's what it's not about. Here's what it is about. One other 
thing it's not about. It's not about change versus the status quo. Al 
Gore is not the candidate of the status 
quo. If anybody running this year ran on the following platform, ``Vote 
for me, and I'll do everything Bill Clinton did,'' I would vote against 
that person. Why? Because the world is changing dramatically.
    So the issue is not whether we're going to change; it is how we're 
going to change. Are we going to keep the prosperity going and build on 
the changes in the last 8 years that are working, or are we going to 
reverse course? That is the question. And that's the way you've got to 
frame it. It's not whether, but how, we're going to change.
    Now, look, here's the deal on this economic business. Our tax cut, I 
admit, is only a third the size of theirs--our candidate's tax cut. But 
most people making under $100,000 do better under ours than theirs. Now, 
why is ours only a third the size of theirs? Because we learned the hard 
way in the 12 years before we got here that if you give it all away 
before it comes in, you may wind up with a lot of red ink on your hands, 
and you don't want to do that again.
    So, we say, ``Let's have a tax cut we can afford for college tuition 
deduction, for long-term care for the elderly and the disabled, for 
child care, for retirement savings, for giving people incentives to 
invest in poor areas in America. But let's save a little money for 
education and health care and the environment, and let's keep paying 
this debt down, because this is a case where fiscal conservatism is 
socially progressive.''
    If you keep interest rates down, the average family is already 
saving a couple thousand dollars on home mortgages because we've kept 
interest rates lower by getting rid of this deficit. If their plan 
passes, because the tax cut is so big--$1\1/2\ trillion, and on top of 
that, they've got a trillion dollar plan to partially privatize Social 
Security--you're already in deficit once you do that, by the way--then, 
they're going to spend several hundred billion dollars over and above 
that--and I can tell you, their estimate of the surplus is too big--
we're going back into deficit. That means higher interest rates.
    Our tax cut for everybody is lower interest rates. If you take 
Gore's plan and you keep paying the debt 
down, interest rates will be a point lower for a decade. Do you know 
what that's worth to you? Listen to this: For a decade, $390 billion in 
lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car payments, $15 billion in 
lower college loan payments, lower credit card payments, lower business 
loan payments means more jobs, more business expansion, higher incomes, 
a better stock market. Our tax cuts for everybody, in addition to the 
specifics, is lower interest rates and getting rid of the debt.
    Now, I'll tell you something else. The third-biggest item in the 
Federal budget is interest on the debt. Every last dollar you pay to the 
Federal Government, it begins with 12 cents going out for interest going 
out for the debt, because when they had the White House, they quadrupled 
the debt in 12 years. We quadrupled the debt in 12 years over the 
previous 200-year history of this country. And I'm getting rid of it--
thanks to them and their voting for me--and we want to keep getting rid 
of it.
    Now, so here's another interesting thing. If you have 8 years of 
a Gore/Lieberman administration, Government spending will be an even 
smaller percentage of income than it will be if you get the Republicans 
in. Why? Oh, yes, we'll spend more on education. We'll spend more on 
health care. We'll spend more on the environment. But we're going to get 
rid of that 12 cents on the dollar you're paying on interest on the 
debt. They're going to keep paying that, and you're going to have higher 
interest rates.
    Now, look, we tried it their way for 12 years, and they want to go 
try it that way again. They want to say, ``Look, the Democrats have got 
things in real good shape now, so let's go on a real tax-cutting binge 
and try it our way one more time and see if it works better the second 
time around.'' That's what this election is about.
    Listen, this is a big deal. People have to understand this plainly. 
It's not like we haven't tried it. You've tried it our way for 8 years, 
and you tried it their way for 12 years before that. And that's all this 
is. You cannot make a $1\1/2\ trillion tax cut, several hundred billion 
dollars' worth of spending and a $1 trillion Social Security 
privatization plan fit into the money that's there. We're going back to 
deficits, high interest rates, less investment in our future, less 
economic growth. Ask people if they really want to take that chance.
    If you want to keep the prosperity going, you better stay with 
Gore and Lieberman and Kennedy and Meehan and 
Neal and our crowd,

[[Page 2241]]

because that's where we're going. This is a big deal.
    Now, I won't go into as much detail on the rest of this, but the 
same thing on every issue. On education, both sides say they're for 
accountability. The difference is, we believe if you're going to hold 
schools accountable for the performance of their children, you ought to 
help them succeed with preschool and after-school programs and more 
qualified teachers in the early grades and modernized schools.
    And they say, ``We don't need to do that. Let's just test the kids 
and see what happens and take the money away if they don't do well.'' We 
think we ought to help empower the schools to do well. We know how to 
turn around failing schools now. There's no excuse not to do it now. All 
we have to do is to develop the system, invest in it, reward it. Big 
difference. They're not for any of those specific things I just said.
    On health care, we say we ought to have a Patients' Bill of Rights 
that's real, and we ought to have a Medicare prescription drug program, 
because if we were creating Medicare today, we would never have it 
without drugs.
    In 1965, when Ted voted for Medicare, medical care was about doctors 
and hospitals. Today, anybody that lives to be 65 in America has a life 
expectancy of 82. The young women in this audience that are still in 
their childbearing years, thanks to the human genome project, will soon 
be bringing home from the hospital babies with a life expectancy of 90 
years.
    Now, that's the good news. But it means you're going to have to 
totally reimagine the aging process. Within a few years, 80 won't be all 
that old. We will think of it as, you know, sort of late middle age. 
[Laughter] But it also means we've got to keep people healthy. We've got 
to keep people strong, and pharmaceuticals are an important part of 
that. So we have the money now, if we don't squander it, to take care of 
the pharmaceutical needs of our senior citizens, not only to lengthen 
life but to improve the quality of life, to keep people out of 
hospitals, to minimize their institutional time in life.
    This is a big deal. And we are for a Medicare program that does 
that. Why? Because Medicare is simply a financing mechanism that has a 
low administrative cost and can serve everybody. They're for serving 
about half the people that need it and telling everybody else they've 
got to get private insurance.
    The insurance companies--you know, Ted 
and I, we've had a lot of fights with the health insurance companies. 
They ought to get a gold star for this. They keep telling us, ``You 
can't write a health insurance policy for this.'' The health insurance 
policy--this is another case where the Republicans are not fazed by the 
evidence. The insurance companies, which are usually with them on 
everything, have told them, ``Hey guys, you can't write an insurance 
policy that people can afford that's worth having.''
    So why don't they want to do it? What in the wide world is wrong 
with giving all the seniors access to the medicine they need? Did you 
ever meet a politician that didn't want more votes? Did you ever meet a 
business person that didn't want more customers? Why do the drug 
companies not want more customers?
    See, you never hear this in the debate because they don't have time 
to go into it, but you need to know this. This is a huge deal, the 
difference in the Democratic and the Republican prescription drug plan. 
The drug companies spend a lot of money developing the drugs and 
advertising them. And every country but the United States where they 
sell the drugs has price controls. So they've got to get 100 percent of 
the cost of developing the drugs and advertising them from you when you 
buy them. And then it's real cheap just to make another pill, so then 
they can sell them in Canada or Europe or wherever and make a lot of 
money.
    Now, I am not demonizing the drug companies. I would still rather 
have them in America. Wouldn't you? I mean, they're great. They uncover 
all these medical miracles, and they provide tens of thousands of 
wonderful jobs. And they've got a problem, because they think if 
Medicare is buying for all the seniors, they'll have so much market 
power, they can get drugs made in America for Americans almost as cheap 
as Canadians can buy drugs made in America. And they're afraid it will 
cut them so low that they won't have the money to make new drugs and to 
advertise them.
    Surely, the answer is not what they posit--to leave half the seniors 
who need the medicine behind. That's not the American way. This is a big 
deal now. This is a huge deal, a big difference between Gore/Lieberman, Meehan, 
Neal, Kennedy, 
our crowd, and their crowd.
    My view is, let's solve the problems of America's seniors. We've got 
the money to do it. And the drug companies have plenty of money

[[Page 2242]]

and good lobbyists, and they can come down to Washington, and we'll 
figure out how to solve their problems. But we've got the cart before 
the horse if we say, ``I'm sorry, here's half the seniors that need 
medicine. We can't give it to them because the drug companies are afraid 
they won't get enough money for their advertising and development 
costs.'' Let's take care of the seniors, then take care of the drug 
companies. That's our position. It's the right position. It is the moral 
position. It's the right thing for America.
    Now, you can go through every other issue--crime, the environment, 
every single other issue--and there are significant differences. But you 
ought to be able to tell people now what the economic differences are, 
what the health care differences are, what the education differences 
are. You ought to be able to tell them. It will affect you, your 
children, your grandchildren, and the future of this country.
    I can also tell you, having worked with him for 8 years and having 
had some experience now with the Presidency, it is fundamentally a 
deciding job. Oh, there's a lot of work. Harry Truman said--I felt like 
this in the Middle East the last couple of days--Harry Truman said that 
his job largely consisted of trying to talk people into doing things 
they should do without him having to ask them in the first place. 
[Laughter] And to some extent, that's right.
    But the President also has to decide: Who are you going to put on 
the Supreme Court? Who are you going to make Secretary of State? Who are 
you going to make Secretary of Defense? Who will be Secretary of 
Education? Who will be Secretary of Health and Human Services? What will 
you send to the Congress? How will you deal with the first major foreign 
crisis you have? What is the future of arms control? How will we deal 
with terrorism and biological and chemical warfare? This is a deciding 
job. And that's the last point I want to make.
    Al Gore makes good decisions. He is 
smart. He knows what he's doing. He's tough. He has good values. He 
makes good decisions. So I'm just asking you to take a little time every 
day between now and the election. This thing is tight, and it is tight 
partly because things are going well, and it's easy to blur the 
distinctions.
    I'll close with the thing that's most important to me. If somebody 
said to me that my time on Earth was over and I got to leave America 
with one wish, what would my one wish for America be? Believe it or not, 
it wouldn't be for continued prosperity. After what I've been through 
with the Middle East and Northern Ireland and the Balkans, growing up in 
the South that was segregated, as I did, what I would wish for America 
is that we could be one country, united across all the various 
differences in this country.
    This is such an interesting place to live now. America is getting 
more interesting every day as we grow more racially and religiously 
diverse. But it's really important. The only way it's interesting is if 
we think we respect our differences, but we think our common humanity is 
even more important.
    And there are all kinds of issues that come up all the time where 
these values are at stake. I think campaign finance reform is one of 
them. Why? Because it basically will equalize the power of people's 
votes. I think stronger enforcement of equal pay laws for women is one 
of them, because it gives equality to the dignity of work.
    I think the hate crimes legislation is important for obvious 
reasons. And you know, the truth is--you kind of got a little of that in 
the last debate--the truth is, we're on one side of those issues, and 
they're on the other. And I think that we're on the side of one America. 
And in a world that's getting smaller and smaller, I think we're on the 
right side.
    So I want to say to you, I'm very--I'm so grateful for what you've 
done for me, for my family and my administration. Nobody's been better 
to us than the people of Massachusetts. I am grateful. I am grateful for 
the chance I've had to serve. I am profoundly grateful that there are 
wonderful people like Marty Meehan who are willing to present themselves 
for public office and serve and do what they do. I'm grateful for that.
    But in America, our public life is always about tomorrow. And the 
tomorrow that counts now is election day, November 7th. Now, you just 
remember: Clarity is our friend, if the American people clearly 
understand what are the differences in economic policy, in education 
policy, in health care policy, in the environment, in crime, and in one 
America.
    How will it affect me, my family, my community, my children, my 
grandchildren? How can I build the future of my dreams for our kids? If 
they really are clear on that, we're going

[[Page 2243]]

to have an enormous celebration on election night. But a lot of this 
work now will be done by word of mouth, one by one.
    So you just remember that every day between now and the election. 
Most of the people you know who will show up and vote will never, ever, 
ever come to an event like this. So you tell them a little bit about 
what you heard tonight.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the 
DoubleTree Riverfront Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Niki 
Tsongas, widow of late Senator Paul Tsongas; Senator Ted Kennedy's wife, 
Victoria Reggie Kennedy; and Representative Meehan's mother, Alice, his 
wife, Ellen T. Murphy, and their son, Robert. Representative Meehan was 
a candidate for reelection in Massachusetts' Fifth Congressional 
District.