[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[October 25, 2000]
[Pages 2318-2321]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks at a Reception for Representative Gregory W. Meeks in New York City
October 25, 2000
Thank you very much. Thank you. Let me say, first of all, I am
delighted to be here with Greg and Simone-Marie and their beautiful daughter. Chelsea and I were glad to come by, remembering when Chelsea
was that age. Didn't she do a good job of sitting through her daddy's
speech? I thought it was fabulous. [Laughter] Right in the middle of the
speech, she was
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looking at him. She said, ``Daddy.'' So your name recognition is high
where it needs to be. [Laughter]
I am honored today by the presence of the Manhattan Borough
president, Virginia Fields, and
Assemblywoman Vivian Cook and Senator Malcolm
Smith and our members of the council,
Archie Spigner, Tom White, and Juanita Watkins. Let's
give them all a big hand. [Applause] Thank you for being here.
I feel a great deal of gratitude today, and every day these days--
I'm very grateful to the people of New York for being so good to me and
Hillary and Al and Tipper Gore, for your support in 1992 and 1996. I'm
very grateful for Greg Meeks. He is an outstanding Congressman. He has
supported our economic initiatives, our education initiatives. He's been
a real champion for building one America, and I think he has a brilliant
and limitless future in the House of Representatives.
Let me say to all of you, I know whenever I do an event like this,
in the parlance of my faith, I'm always preaching to the saved, or you
wouldn't be here. But I think that it's important in the last 2 weeks of
this election that we reach out to other people, to tell them how
important it is to vote and what is at stake here.
I have, as you know, more than a passing interest in the elections
in New York this year--[laughter]--because Hillary is running for the Senate and because we now have a
home here, and I want it to be the leader of the country. New York kind
of led the way for us over the last 8 years, and I hope it will continue
to do so.
And I just would like to tell you that not only as President but as
a soon-to-be citizen who has spent a lifetime looking at this country,
studying it, hoping for the best, I think it's important that every
American understand that there are really three great questions in this
election. There may be a thousand questions, but there are three that
override all others for me.
And if I were sitting alone with any of you in a room and we were
just having a conversation and there was no press coverage and no
particular political impact and you asked me what the election was
about, I would tell you exactly the same thing. I think the first
question is, how do we keep the prosperity going and extend it to people
and places that have been left behind? We have the longest economic
expansion in our history, the highest homeownership in history, 22
million jobs, the lowest African-American and Latino unemployment ever
recorded, the lowest female unemployment in 40 years, welfare rolls cut
in half.
We have done a lot of important things. The Vice President has run our empowerment zone program, and thanks
to Charlie Rangel, one of them is here in
New York. And we've worked hard to increase lending to people who have
been traditionally shut out of access to capital.
And I'm grateful for all that. But there's a lot more we can do. We
can keep the economy going, and we can extend it to people and places
left behind. But in order to do it, we have to, first of all, build on
the strategy that got us to this point, fiscal responsibility, investing
in our people and our future, and selling more of our products and
services around the world. That's how we got here, and if we want to
keep making progress, we have to do that.
Now, only Al Gore, Joe
Lieberman, Hillary, and Greg Meeks, that team, will make America debt-
free, will keep paying down the debt until we're debt-free in 2012, will
keep investing more in education and science and technology, in solving
the energy problem, in the environment, and all the things that we need
to be investing for our future, and have a tax cut we can afford as
opposed to one that might be more attractive at election time.
And this is very important, because on everything else rests our
ability to continue to build our prosperity. I always say one of the
things that I wish the American people knew is that if you pay down the
debt and we keep doing it, we'll keep interest rates lower. One of the
big reasons that the American economy turned around is, from the moment
we announced our economic plan after the election in 1992, interest
rates started to drop; the stock market was building; investment began
to flow into America at record levels.
If you pay down the debt, as opposed to spend so much on a tax cut
and privatization of Social Security and other spending that we'll be
back in deficit, interest rates will be about a point lower a year for a
decade. Do you know what that's worth to ordinary people and to people
who are in high-income groups and to people who serve this lunch today?
Three hundred ninety billion dollars in home mortgages savings
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over a decade; $30 billion in lower car payments; $15 billion in lower
college loan payments; lower credit card payments; lower business loans,
which means more businesses, more jobs, and a better stock market.
I think it is quite interesting that in the financial capital of
America, New York City, it's one of the strongest places in the country
for the Gore/Lieberman ticket, because people understand here that keeping
interest rates low is more important to prosperity and to wealth
creation and to keeping the expansion going than having a large tax cut
in the short run.
And so I hope you'll tell people that. We've got to keep the
prosperity going. And if you want to do it, you've got to keep paying
the debt down and then use what's left for investment in education and
the future and for an affordable tax cut. And the people who are on that
program are Al Gore, Joe
Lieberman, Hillary, and Greg Meeks. That's the first thing.
The second thing I want to say is, this country is not just
progressing economically; it's progressing in other ways as well. Just
for example, the crime rate is at a 26-year low. We have a cleaner
environment, cleaner air, cleaner water, safer drinking water, 3 times
as many toxic waste dumps cleaned up in our 8 years than in the previous
12 years under two administrations of the other party. We have, for the
first time in a dozen years, the number of people without health
insurance is going down, thanks to the Children's Health Insurance
Program, and New York has been one of the best States in the country in
enrolling kids.
And the schools are getting better. The dropout rate is down. The
reading and math scores are up. The college-going rate is at an all-time
high. We have had, in the last 5 years, a 50 percent increase in
children taking advanced placement classes, but a 300 percent increase
in Latino kids and a 500 percent increase in African-American kids
taking advanced placement classes in high school, so they can go on to
college. This is a big deal.
Now, what should we do about this? I think we have to continue to
invest in what works. And in every one of these areas--I won't go
through it, but in every one of these areas, if you want to build on
this progress, you've got to be for Gore/
Lieberman, Hillary, and Greg, because there are differences between the
two parties, and they would reverse the policies that we've had in
education and health care, the environment and crime.
So that's the second big question. I think it's a good thing that
America's a safer country. I think we ought to have more police on the
street, not fewer. I think we ought to have more teachers in the
classroom. I think we ought to modernize our schools. I think we ought
to have universal access to preschool, after-school, and summer school
programs for the kids who need it. And I think now we know we can turn
around failing schools, we ought to give out this Federal money in a way
that every State has to identify its failing schools and turn them
around or shut them down and reopen them under new management. That's
what I think ought to be done.
You could find lots of exhibits here in New York. I was in Harlem
the other day, in a grade school that 2 years ago--listen to this--2
years ago 80 percent of the kids were doing reading and math below grade
level. Enter new management, new policies, high expectations,
accountability. Two years later now, same school, same neighborhood,
same kids, 74 percent of the kids are doing reading and math at or above
grade level. We can do this. We can make all of our educational system
work.
That's the second big question. The third big question, maybe most
important of all, is whether we're going to continue to build one
America and be heavily involved in a positive way in the rest of the
world. What does that mean? To me, it means passing strong hate crimes
legislation, being against racial profiling, passing employment
nondiscrimination legislation, passing the immigrant fairness
legislation that is so important that we're fighting for now in the
Congress, continuing to support AmeriCorps, our national service
program, preserving a woman's right to choose, and having a Supreme
Court that will protect the rights of the American people, not restrict
the right of Congress to advance our public interests.
Now, these are big, big issues. And if you believe that it's
important to keep building one America--and there are differences
between the parties from top to bottom on these issues--if you agree
with us, your only choice is Gore/Lieberman,
Hillary, and Greg.
So that's my pitch to you. There are three big issues in the
election: Do you want to keep the prosperity going and build on it, give
it to people and places left behind? Do you want
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to keep the progress going in the environment, in crime, in education
and health care, and build on it? Do you want America to continue to be
a model for harmony, because we're living with each other in an
increasingly diverse society? And I might say one other thing: Do you
want us to continue to be involved in the rest of the world?
I've been working for the last 3 weeks to try to end the violence in
the Middle East, stop the killing, and get the peace process going. We
have worked successfully to end ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. And I
think it's a good thing that we went there, and I think it's a good
thing that we're there now. Even though we only have 15 percent of the
troops in Kosovo and Bosnia, we're important to the preservation of
liberty there.
I don't know how many ethnic groups there are in New York City that
have known in the past people who tried to wipe them off the face of the
Earth, just because of their religion or their ethnic background. And we
have to be a force for this around the world.
Why is the United States, for example, historically so committed to
the preservation of Israel? Because we learned in World War II and we
learned from the Holocaust survivors and their children and people who
have come here the terrible price we pay. We've learned from our own
racial history. We've learned from our own history with the Native
American tribes what happens when people can be denigrated, dehumanized,
killed, and walked away from and ignored, just because of who they are.
So this is a big deal to me. I think building one America and
standing for these values around the world is the most important thing,
even more important than keeping our prosperity going, because Americans
are smart and they're innovative. If they get in a tight, they'll always
figure out how to solve their problems as long as we have the right
value system and as long as we believe everyone counts, everyone
deserves a chance, and we all do better when we help each other.
So if you want that kind of America, working for that kind of world,
your choice is Gore/Lieberman, Hillary, and
Greg. That's my pitch, and I hope you agree.
Let me just say one other thing. I know when the Vice President
sometimes says, ``You ain't seen nothing yet,'' people say, ``Well, he's
running for office. What do you expect?'' But I'm not running for
anything. For the first time in 26 years, I'm not on the ballot. And I
can tell you, I believe that. It takes a long time to turn a country
around. It takes a long time, after a certain order in the world goes
away--in this case, the order imposed by the cold war--to kind of figure
out how to make the most of the new set of arrangements. And I've done
everything I could to turn our country around, to move us forward, and
to pull us together and have the right approach toward the rest of the
world, toward Africa and Latin America, as well as Europe and Asia, to
really reach out and be involved as a force for peace and prosperity.
And I believe the best stuff is still out there.
In my lifetime, our Nation has never before enjoyed at once so much
economic prosperity, social progress, with the absence of domestic
crisis or foreign threat. This is the chance of a lifetime to build the
future of our dreams for our children. But in order to do it--none of us
can imagine what the end results of all these scientific discoveries are
going to be; none of us can see with absolute clarity what the big new
problems of the next 10 years or 20 years will be. But we know one
thing: If we keep the prosperity going, if we build on the social
progress, if we keep building one America, if we keep reaching out to
the rest of the world, America is going to do very well, indeed--the
best chance you may ever have in your lifetime to build the future of
our dreams for our children. And the answer is, I want you to tell
everybody you know, Gore/
Lieberman, Hillary, and Greg.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 1:37 p.m. at the Embassy Suites Battery
Park. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Meeks' wife, Simone-
Marie; State Senator Malcolm A. Smith; and New York City Councilmembers
Archie Spigner, Thomas White, Jr., and Juanita E. Watkins.
Representative Meeks was a candidate for reelection in New York's Sixth
Congressional District.