[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[November 2, 2000]
[Pages 2427-2433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Gerrie 
Schipske in Los Angeles
November 2, 2000

    Thank you. You all sit down. Well, this is a pretty rowdy crowd. 
[Laughter] Nice sign. [Laughter]
    I want to thank--first of all--thank all of you for coming, but I 
especially want to thank Jeremy and Marc 
Nathanson; and my friend of more than 30 
years now David Mixner, who still has no gray 
hair practically. [Laughter] And thank you, Antonio 
Villaraigosa, for being here and for 
your friendship to me.
    And I want to thank Gerrie Schipske for having the guts to run and 
run again and be in here. I enjoyed visiting with Gerrie and 
Flo and the kids back there. You know, I was 
listening to her--she tells a pretty good joke--[laughter]--sort of an 
essential criteria if you want to be in Congress. [Laughter] Better to 
tell one than be one, I always say. [Laughter] You know, my mother was a 
nurse anesthetist. I never met anybody associated with health care who 
didn't have a sense of humor. And you need it in that line of work.
    But she was kind of hung up about me being on page one of the 
Advocate; did you notice that? [Laughter] She was on page 56. I've just 
got to tell you, if we do our job, by less than a week from now you'll 
be on page one of the Advocate, and I'll be lucky to be on page 56. 
[Laughter]
    I think there ought to be more people associated with health care in 
the Congress. Lois Capps, who represents the 
district a little north of here, was a public school nurse and a 
magnificent woman. And we have one or two other

[[Page 2428]]

people in the Congress who did a stint in nursing or health care. One of 
the Republican physicians in the Congress, Greg Ganske from Iowa, was one of the people that gave us the 
bipartisan majority we needed for a real Patients' Bill of Rights.
    When you think about the role that health care plays in our national 
life and all the complex issues that have to be faced, and how much 
money there is behind a lot of the organized positions taken by the 
other party in Congress--I know a lot of you are here because you 
support Gerrie on the human rights issues and all of that, but I'm 
telling you, we need more people who understand health care from the 
human point of view.
    I can't tell you--you know, I could give you, if we had all night to 
talk, I could give you 50 examples that I have personally experienced in 
the last 8 years. So one of the reasons that I'm here for her, apart 
from the fact that I like her and I support her and I agree with her, is 
that we really do need more people who've actually done things with 
their lives that could actually be valuable to people when they have to 
make laws. And so that's good.
    Now, I want to be brief here, because I realize that I'm preaching 
to the saved. [Laughter] But let me tell you, I've been doing this a 
long time. Now, this is the first time in 26 years I haven't been on the 
ballot running for something. I was 27 years old when I started, and I 
lost the race for the House of Representatives--thank goodness--I 
wouldn't have made it here, I guess, if I hadn't. [laughter]. And I've 
loved all these elections.
    I believe in the American political system. You know, I don't know 
how many years David Mixner and I had to wait 
until we actually got to vote for somebody for President that actually 
won. [Laughter] That's not true. I voted for Jimmy Carter, and you did, 
too. But it was a pretty long time there, you know. And I was beginning 
to think I would be on Social Security before I ever had a winning 
election, when I was a kid. [Laughter]
    But I believe in the American political system, and I think, over 
time, the American people are an embodiment of Martin Luther King's 
eloquent statement that the arc of history is long but it bends toward 
justice. That's a very eloquent statement. And we have to not grow 
weary. We have to just keep on working at it.
    But most people are good people. And free people generally tend to 
do the right thing if they have enough information and enough time to 
digest it and enough experience against which to test it. And I say that 
because--I do want to be just a little serious with you tonight. These 
elections are tight. I've been fooling with this a long time now. 
President Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey by a little over a percent. 
President Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by four-tenths of one percent, 
100,000 votes, in the whole country--less than a vote a precinct. 
President Carter defeated President Ford by about a percent.
    So close races for President are not without precedence. But now 
they're manifesting themselves in these races for Congress. Now, it's 
quite interesting because on all of the major issues of the day except 
one or two, the people agree with the direction we've been taking the 
last 8 years.
    Now, what does that lead you to say? What conclusion can you draw 
from that? In so many strange places--for example, when I was trying to 
help James Byrd's children pass the hate crimes legislation in Texas, 
which as you know is no heart of flaming liberalism, a survey came out 
in Austin the day I was there that showed that in Texas, two-thirds of 
the people, without regard to party, agreed that Texas ought to have 
hate crimes legislation that included protection for gays--in Texas.
    On the other hand, a massive amount of voting is always cultural. 
You look around here, people tend to kind of--they hang with their 
crowd, and they kind of vote and kind of go in one direction, and then 
they find it hard to turn around and go the other way. And it takes a 
while for a different issue approach to register. That's part of it.
    Part of it is, a lot of young people can't even remember when the 
economy wasn't this good. You know, they have no recollection of this, 
so they kind of take it for granted. And indeed, the nominee of the 
other party, I can't figure out--sometimes he 
says nothing good has happened in the last 8 years, and then, once in a 
while reality will dawn, and he'll say, ``Well whatever good happened, 
it was an accident. They didn't have anything to do with it''--
[laughter]--which is an interesting thing, because when they were in, 
they took credit when the Sun came up in the morning. [Laughter] They 
even ran a campaign on the Sun coming

[[Page 2429]]

up in the morning. Do you remember that? ``It's morning in America.'' Do 
you remember that? [Laughter] But I do believe--we're all having a good 
time here, but seriously, I think that one of the problems in good times 
is it's easy to forget that they weren't always good, and it's difficult 
sometimes to make the connection between what some people in public life 
have done and the good consequences that have occurred.
    And so everybody feels kind of like, well, this guy sounds good, and 
that woman sounds good, and the other one sounds good, and you know, 
what am I to do here? So you look around, and all these races are tight 
as a tick. In the Presidential race, when I last checked, which was this 
morning, there were roughly a dozen States within two points one way or 
the other--just unprecedented.
    And all over the country, you have races like Gerrie's for Congress, 
and so what is important is that you be able to make a case to people in 
these closing days that includes some of the specifics you know we win 
on, but is part of the general approach.
    And so, I just want to share this with you, because I want her to 
win. And there are four other House seats we can win here. And the Vice 
President and Senator Lieberman are ahead now in the polls in California, but they 
have to win here.
    The whole basis of the Clinton/Gore political success was never 
having to worry about what we called the western wall of the United 
States, anchored with California. We won Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii. 
And then we never had to worry about New York and north; we won 
everything that way. And we always had Illinois, which was my 
wife's home and a place where I had 
spent a lot of time. And we always--and we had Arkansas, so what we had 
to do was, we went out from New York to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and 
out from Illinois to Michigan and Ohio, and then we just went down the 
Mississippi River. And that's more than enough to win, and the rest was 
gravy, because it's an electoral strategy.
    Now, with all this closeness, the same thing is true, as you heard 
Gerrie say, she wants to be one of the Members that gives us the 
majority in the House. We can do that. But we have to win a lot of these 
California seats. There are five seats in California we have a bona fide 
chance of winning.
    So what I'm here to ask you to do--I thank you for giving her money. 
If you can give her some more, you ought to, because she's being 
outspent. If you haven't reached your legal limit or you can give her 
some more, I hope you will do that. But there's something else you could 
do. You could actually take it upon yourselves to be as active as you 
possibly can until the polls close Tuesday night, because every one of 
you has lots of friends who have never been to an event like this. Is 
that right? Don't you? I mean, most of your friends don't come to deals 
like this, do they? They've never been to an event like this where the 
President speaks or where the Governor speaks or people talk about this.
    Even Marc, who has been living on this 
political stuff and has done more than anybody west of the Mississippi 
River to try to make Dick Gephardt 
Speaker, even Marc, most of his friends never come to events like this.
    A lot of your friends wonder what in the world you're doing spending 
your money on this. Isn't that right? [Laughter] They say, why did you 
spend all that money? I mean, you could have been home watching a 
basketball game, right?
    So we're laughing, but let me just tell you seriously. I would like 
to tell you what I wish you would tell everyone you can see, call, 
scream at, or touch between now and Tuesday. And if we were alone in a 
room, you and I, and you asked me, ``Why are you really for Al 
Gore? Why are you really for Gerrie 
Schipske? What have you really learned in 8 years,'' this is what I 
would tell you if you were alone and I had about 5 minutes to talk to 
you. And I think this is something everybody can remember.
    Number one, I learned a lot watching President Reagan, and he taught 
me what the test was for whether a party in office should be returned: 
Are you better off today than you were 8 years ago? And I noticed all 
these folks running this year are comparing themselves to President 
Reagan, so I think we should say that was one thing he was right about. 
And we all agree, and that's a test. So why are we having this debate 
and election?
    More seriously, the important thing about this economic recovery--
and Governor Davis and I were talking about it--
and I agree, by the way, with what Jeremy said about him. There are very 
few people in this entire country that work

[[Page 2430]]

harder and get more done than Gray Davis. If anybody--you ought to 
really be proud. And I sort of think charisma is as charisma does, you 
know? [Laughter] I've always found Governor Davis to be highly 
interesting, especially because he never sees me that he doesn't ask me 
to do something else for California. [Laughter] So I'm honored by that.
    But now, think of--let me just say this. Here's the thing that makes 
this recovery interesting. Yes, it's the longest economic expansion in 
history. Yes, there are 22 million new jobs. But this is the first 
recovery in 30 years where everybody went along for the ride. We have a 
record number of millionaires. We have a record number of billionaires, 
and that's good. But we've also had a 15 percent increase, real 
increase, after inflation, in median income--over $5,000 a year. Median 
income got over $40,000 a year in America for the first time in our 
entire history. We have the highest homeownership in history, the lowest 
female unemployment rate in 40 years, the lowest African-American and 
Hispanic unemployment rate ever recorded. So we're all going along for 
the ride.
    Now, that is very, very important in a free society. Everybody that 
works ought to be rewarded for it. And we believe in policies like the 
minimum wage, like the family leave law, like the earned-income tax 
credit for people with a bunch of kids and a modest income that gives 
them a little extra tax break, that will allow us all to go along for 
the ride.
    But in a larger sense, getting rid of the deficit has helped us all 
to go along for the ride. Why? Because that's the best tax cut of all, 
having lower interest rates. That helps everybody with a home mortgage, 
everybody with a car payment, everybody with a college loan payment, 
everybody with a credit card payment. It helps every small-business 
person that ever has to get a loan to start or expand a business. And 
every American with credit has saved thousands of dollars, most of them 
thousands of dollars a year, because we got rid of the deficit.
    The fundamental fact of the global economy is that conservative 
fiscal policy is progressive social policy, because it helps ordinary 
people and brings money to the Government to invest in education and 
other things.
    Now, why does that matter in this election? This is a huge deal. It 
is estimated that we have a projected surplus of about $2 trillion. That 
sounds like a bunch of money, and people's eyes glaze over. I promise 
you it won't be that much, barring some unforeseen development, because 
the Congress has spent a lot of money and because of the curious way 
that it's calculated. But let's just assume it's going to be $2 
trillion.
    Now, what do the Democrats say? What do Al Gore and Joe Lieberman 
and our Democratic candidates say? They say, ``Okay, first, let's stay 
on this path to pay the debt off in 12 years to keep interest rates 
down. Then let's give people a tax cut we can afford for child care, 
long-term care, sending kids to college, and retirement savings. And 
let's take the rest and invest it in health care, education, the 
environment, and the other critical needs of the country. But first, 
keep the economy strong.''
    What do they say, the other guys? They say, ``Hey, this is your 
money. What's the Government doing keeping your money?'' Which, of 
course, it is your money. And they say, ``We're going to give you a tax 
cut 3 times as big as they are,'' and some of you in this room who can 
afford to be at this event tonight, would actually do better under 
theirs in the short run, and some of you wouldn't, depending on your 
income group. So they say, ``Our tax cut is 3 times bigger than theirs 
because it's your money.''
    But forget about all the zeros, okay? The surplus is 2, okay, the 
projected surplus. Their tax cut, plus the interest cost associated with 
it, is 1.6. But then they want to privatize Social Security, and they 
have now admitted that if we give young people 2 percent of their 
payroll, it will take a trillion dollars out of the Social Security 
Trust Fund. So you've got to spend $1 trillion to replace that, unless 
you want Social Security to go broke earlier. So that's 1.6 and 1. And 
then they want to spend a little money too, which is good. They want to 
be compassionate, and they are interested in spending money too, so they 
want to spend about $500 billion. Now, 1.6 plus 1 plus .5 is 3.1. Three-
point-one is bigger than 2. [Laughter]
    Now you're all laughing, but look, I've spent 8 years working on 
this. People ask me all the time, ``What brilliant new idea did you 
bring to Washington to get the economy going?'' And I always say, 
``Arithmetic.'' [Laughter] I brought arithmetic to Washington--not 
calculus, not trigonometry, arithmetic.
    You're laughing, but I'm dead serious. I'm going to be gone out 
here--you know, if I'm

[[Page 2431]]

fortunate, I'll be one of those guys that will make out like a bandit 
under this Republican tax cut. But look, 3.1 is bigger than 2. What does 
that mean? It means you go back to deficits, which means higher interest 
rates, higher inflation, slower growth.
    Under the Gore/Lieberman plan, interest rates will be about a percent lower 
a year for a decade. Do you know what that's worth to the American 
people? Same thing as a tax cut, lower interest rates: $390 billion in 
lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car payments, $15 billion in 
lower college loan payments, plus the credit card payments, plus the 
business loans, equals more businesses, more jobs, higher incomes, and a 
better stock market.
    So you've got to decide. Do you want to all keep on going together, 
so we'll make more millionaires and more billionaires, but average 
people will do better too? If you do, you only have one choice. You've 
got to vote for Gore and 
Lieberman, and you've got to vote for 
Gerrie, because that's the right decision.
    Now look, I still--I honestly don't believe a lot of people have 
thought this through. And you say, ``Well, how can Al Gore afford to spend all that money?'' Because if you get rid 
of the deficit--the debt, if you pay the debt down, your interest 
payments on the debt go down. The third biggest item in the Federal 
budget is interest on the debt. We take 12 cents out of every dollar you 
pay to the Federal Government and spend that just on the debt. So if you 
quit spending so much on interest, you can spend a lot more on education 
and health care and, yes, even on a tax cut, because you're getting rid 
of that 12 cents.
    Now look, I don't think most people have clearly focused on this, do 
you? So you need to go tell people that if they want to keep the 
prosperity going, if they like where--if they compare where we were 8 
years ago in California and America, with where we are today, we've got 
to do this. And they only have one choice: 
Gore, Lieberman, and Gerrie.
    Now the second thing I want to say is, this country is about more 
than economic progress. We've had a lot of social progress: crime at a 
26-year low; welfare at a 32-year low, rolls cut in half. The air is 
cleaner, 43 million people breathing cleaner air. The water is cleaner. 
We set aside more land than any administration since Theodore Roosevelt, 
and we cleaned up 3 times as many toxic waste dumps as the Republicans 
did in the 12 previous years.
    We have added 26 years to the life of Medicare, which was supposed 
to go broke last year when I took office. For the first time in 12 
years, the number of people without health insurance is going down, not 
up, thanks to the Children's Health Insurance Program, which the 
Governor has strongly supported and administers.
    And in the schools, in spite of all the problems, reading, math, and 
science scores are up; the drop-out rate is down; the graduation rate is 
up. There is, for the first time in our history, almost no difference 
between the African-American and the white high school graduation rate. 
College-going is at an all-time high, thanks in part to the biggest 
expansion in college aid since the GI bill. So all this stuff is going 
in the right direction.
    Now, what's that got to do with anything? Because you've got to make 
a choice. Do you want to build on the progress of the last 8 years or 
reverse it? I'll just give you a couple of examples.
    Our crime policy is opposed by the other party--not just gun safety 
measures. They don't want to close the gun show loophole in the Brady 
law. They actually want to get rid of the 100,000 police program. Our 
education policy is opposed. They want to get rid of the 100,000 teacher 
program. Our environmental policy is opposed. They want to weaken the 
clean air standards and get rid of my order setting aside 40 million 
acres, roadless acres in the national forest, something the Audubon 
Society said was the most significant conservation move in the last 40 
years.
    So, our side, we want to build on--we want to have a safer society, 
a cleaner environment, stronger education programs. And in health care, 
Gerrie's area of expertise, she can tell you better than me the 
differences--perhaps most stark of all. We're for a real Patients' Bill 
of Rights. They're not. We're for a Medicare prescription drug program 
that covers all of our seniors, and they aren't. And that's just the 
beginning. We could provide health insurance to all our kids. We can now 
actually afford to help working families who have no health insurance, 
buy insurance for the parents of the kids in this program. And we're for 
that, and they're not.
    So again, if you want to build on the social progress of the last 8 
years, you only have one

[[Page 2432]]

choice: You've got to vote for Al Gore and 
Joe Lieberman and Gerrie.
    And the third thing that I would like to say, which maybe is the 
most important of all to me, is, I've worked real hard to build one 
America. A lot of you have referenced my work with the gay and lesbian 
community. I met earlier today with a representative of one of the 
Native American tribes who told me that I had done more to try to reach 
out to them than anybody had in a long time, maybe ever.
    I think it's real important for America to be a place that is 
constantly evolving in respect for people, mutual understanding, and 
real interdependent cooperation where we don't just tolerate one 
another. I don't really like the word ``tolerance'' in this context 
because that implies that one dominant group is putting up with somebody 
else that's not as good as they are, but at least they're not kicking 
them around. That's not what this is about. I don't like ``tolerance'' 
in that way, you know? That's not what this is about.
    This is about, you know, actually appreciating the differences among 
us and affirming the common humanity that we share as being even more 
important than the differences. And this is a big deal now, you know. 
We've become wildly diverse, racially, ethnically, religiously. I mean, 
we're going to get more that way. And it's a godsend in a global society 
if we figure out how to be one America, which means you've got to 
respect and enjoy the diversity because it makes America more 
interesting. But you also have to do the rest. You've got to affirm our 
common humanity.
    So, for me, that has meant things like the family leave law and 
having an administration that represents all kinds of Americans and 
having people like the people in this room feel like they have a friend 
in the White House, and it's their White House too, not somebody else's 
White House; that every American can feel comfortable walking in there 
and knowing that you may not agree with everything I do, but at least 
I'm thinking about it, from your point of view as well as mine.
    Now, this is important. And there are a lot of these issues out 
there. And you have a choice to make. I'll just give you a few examples.
    Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Gerrie and our whole crowd, we're for the hate 
crimes bill; we're for the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act''; we're 
for strengthening the equal pay laws for women, which is still a big 
problem; we're for a Supreme Court that upholds not only a woman's right 
to choose but also civil rights, human rights, and the capacity of the 
National Government to protect the American people.
    I'm telling you, there's already a majority on the Supreme Court 
that has struck down provisions of the Brady bill, of the Violence 
Against Women Act, of an age discrimination act, because they want to 
restrict the power of the Federal Government to protect the people and 
to enlist the States in doing that.
    Now, most people don't, I think, really understand this. But on 
every one of those issues I just mentioned, hate crimes, ENDA, equal 
pay, the Supreme Court--and I could mention a bunch of others, but just 
those--the two parties are different. So if you agree with us, you just 
have one choice: You've got to be for Al 
and Joe and Gerrie.
    So you don't have to remember all the specifics I've given you. But 
I'm telling you, you could do a world of good for her, for the other 
four House seats we're trying to win, if everybody you saw in the next 
week, you said, ``You've got to vote, and you've got to vote for our 
crowd. You want to know why? Because if you want to keep the prosperity 
going, you better keep paying down the debt and investing in our future, 
and you only have one choice if you want to do that. If you want to keep 
the social progress going and crime is down, the environment is better, 
the schools are better, the health care system is making improvements, 
you've got to build on that, not reverse it, and the other guys are 
against all the things we're for. And if you want to keep building one 
America, you actually have to work at it. There are things you have to 
do, and we have a program to do it, and the other side honestly 
disagrees with us.''
    You don't have to say a bad word about anybody. All you have to say 
is, if you want to keep the prosperity going--or, as I said at the 
convention here, if you want to live like a Republican, you've got to 
vote like a Democrat. [Laughter] If you want to keep the prosperity 
going, build on the progress of the last 8 years, and keep building one 
America, you only have one choice: Al Gore, 
Joe Lieberman, and Gerrie Schipske.
    Now, this is a big deal. I promise you, you can have an impact on 
this election. All of these

[[Page 2433]]

elections are razor thin. And people, I'm absolutely sure, based on the 
support that the people of California have given me and the Vice 
President in the last 8 years and what I feel out there and what I know, 
that if everyone understood what the differences were, what the stakes 
are, what the consequences are to families and communities and States in 
our Nation, that we would prevail.
    I'm honored to be here today. I'm honored to be here for Gerrie and 
for the Vice President and Senator 
Lieberman. I can tell you that, you 
know, John Kennedy said once that the Presidency was preeminently a 
place of decisionmaking. Half the time over the last 8 years, I've felt 
like it was a place to see if you could work 19 hours instead of 18 a 
day. But in the end, you have to make right decisions. And a lot of 
times, Presidents have gotten in trouble for working too hard, because 
then they weren't clear enough to make good decisions. On the other 
hand, hard work is an important part of the job.
    And I just want to say about Al Gore--I 
know I don't have to say this to you, but it's something else you can 
tell people that I said--experience matters. It matters what you know. 
It matters how hard you work. It matters whether you have done a lot of 
this before. And he has had a more positive impact for the American 
people than anybody who ever served as Vice President before. He makes 
very good decisions, and he will be a very, very good President.
    So please, just every day--don't let those election returns come in 
Tuesday night and you be sick about the outcome of some election that, 
you know, 400 or 500 votes made the difference. You've got to look 
around this room. The people in this room could change 5,000 to 10,000 
votes between now and Tuesday. Look in this room--5,000 to 10,000 votes. 
John Kennedy was elected in the whole country by 100,000 votes.
    Now, I'm telling you, every day between now and the election, say, 
``I want to keep the prosperity going, not risk it. I want to build on 
the social progress, not reverse it. And we've got to keep building one 
America. We've got to go forward together, because if we do, the best is 
still out there. And the choice is clear: Al and Joe and Gerrie.''
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 6:37 p.m. in the Regency Room at the 
Regency Club. In his remarks, he referred to reception hosts Jeremy 
Bernard and Marc Nathanson; gay activist and author David Mixner; 
Antonio R. Villaraigosa, speaker emeritus, California State Assembly; 
Flo Pickett, Ms. Schipske's life partner; Gov. Gray Davis of California; 
and Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. Ms. 
Schipske was a candidate for California's 38th Congressional District.