    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 25 (Monday, June 27, 1994)]
    [Pages 1330-1334]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at the Democratic National Committee Dinner

    June 22, 1994

        Thank you very much. Chairman Wilhelm, my good friend Vernon Jordan,
    between the two of you there's nothing left for me to say. [Laughter] I
    thank you for your leadership of our party. I congratulate you and DeGee
    on the upcoming birth of your first child. I thank Vernon and Ann Jordan
    and all those others who worked on this dinner and made it so successful
    tonight. I want to thank Terry McAuliffe and all the cochairs of this
    dinner, the Members of the Congress, the members of the Cabinet, members
    of the administration who are here, and my fellow Americans.
        I have two pieces of good news tonight. The first is that with about
    a half an hour left to go, the United States is ahead in the World Cup
    two to nothing over Colombia. I kind of like this World Cup. It reminds
    me of my campaign. We're the underdog in this deal; I like it.
    [Laughter] The second is far more important, and perhaps most of you
    have already heard, but this afternoon, the United States received
    official confirmation that North Korea is prepared to freeze its nuclear
    program in return for talking to us about those issues. This event, of
    course, is important to all of us, to our children and, if we're
    successful, even to our children's children. It does not solve our
    problems, but it gives us a chance to begin to solve them. It came about
    because of the steadfastness and resolve of our administration and
    working with our allies. In this case, we had an interesting set of
    allies from the very beginning, of course our friends in South Korea and
    Japan, but also in Russia and China. There was a sense that we had to do
    something here.
        It came about because of the deft putting of our case and the case
    for North Korea's coming into the community of nations by another great
    Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter. And tonight, I mentioned it not
    only because it is so important to all of us and to our future but
    because in addition to this being a party gala, it is an American
    celebration.
        When I heard on the way in the themes of the little film you saw on
    our administration, I thought to myself that most of those things we
    have done benefit people without regard to their party and that
    Democrats in 1992 promised a new direction for our country, one rooted
    in the real problems and the real promise of this Nation. I had some
    fairly basic ideas. I thought that we could not be strong abroad unless
    we were strong at home, that we could never be strong at home if we
    tried to withdraw from the world, but that we had to rebuild ourselves
    from the grassroots, based on the real conditions in our country.
        I'll never forget when David Wilhelm suggested that we get on that
    bus. It was easy for him to say; he didn't have to ride on it as long as
    we did. [Laughter] But I think Hillary and Al and Tipper would admit
    that that bus and those trips not only became the symbol of our campaign
    but kept us firmly rooted to the American people. We saw individually
    the people that had been beaten down and had often given up on their
    National Government, Maybe collectively they were cynical and believed
    gridlock was inevitable, but individually, they were full of hope and
    concern. They wanted so much for the promise of America to be alive for
    their children, and they knew that some tough things would have to be
    done.
        There's no way that TV ads could convey what we saw in the eyes of a
    woman on the side of the road in the Middle West one night who told us
    that her husband and she had been married for 35 years, and he had been
    having increasing difficulty holding on to jobs because of the decline
    of the economy. And finally, he had taken a job paying just over $5 an
    hour, and they had lost their health insurance and she was ill. And she
    did not know what to do, but she was absolutely sure that they had
    worked hard and played by the rules.
        There's no way a poll or a commercial could recapture the face of
    the woman I saw in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one day at a Quaker Oats plant,
    holding a child of another race while we were being demonstrated against
    by people who disagreed with my pro-choice position. This woman had a
    pro-choice sticker on, and she had a baby in her arms of another race.
    And I said, ``Where did you get that baby?'' And she said, ``This is my

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    baby.'' And I said, ``Well, where did you get this baby?'' She said, ``I
    got this baby from Florida, and she has AIDS. But somebody's got to take
    care of all these babies with AIDS.'' This woman had been divorced, was
    living in an apartment with her own two children, struggling to make
    ends meet, and she had adopted another child. She said, ``I'm for you,
    and I wish you'd tell those people back there with their signs if they
    feel so strongly about it, come help me adopt these babies and stand up
    for their right to grow up and live a good life.''
        I met a sheriff in east Texas who's got to be the only east Texas
    sheriff in America that subscribed to Rolling Stone--[laughter]--who
    told me he wanted me to pass a real tough crime bill, but not to forget
    that the kids needed something to say yes to as well.
        I wish I could just tell you all these stories. But when I showed up
    here, I knew that, as my Granddaddy used to say, ``There would be a lot
    of slips between the cup and the lip,'' but if I could just keep
    remembering all those people, in the end it would come out all right.
        And what we have tried to do is exactly what I said I would try to
    in the campaign. We've tried to restore the economy, to restore the link
    between the people and the Government, to make it work for ordinary
    people again, to rebuild a sense of work and family and community and
    empowerment of individual citizens, and to move this country into the
    21st century still the greatest country in the world with the most hopes
    for our children.
        If you look at what has happened in the last 18 months, I think you
    can make a pretty compelling case that we're doing the right things. Our
    economy is growing steadily: over 3.4 million new jobs in 16 months,
    more than in the previous 4 years combined; a point-and-a-half-plus drop
    in the unemployment rate; in 1993, more new business incorporations than
    in any year since World War II; the first quarter of this year, the
    first quarter in over 15 years when there was not a bank failure.
        Our Republican friends always talk about how they deplored the
    deficit and they deplored Government spending. But it just kept getting
    bigger when they were in office. And they blamed the Congress. But when
    you look at the facts, the truth is that, in spite of the exploding
    deficits, Congress actually appropriated slightly less money in the
    previous 12 years than the administrations asked for. [Applause] And all
    that about--there's the Congressmen clapping out there, tell you the
    truth. [Laughter] But they were very skilled at saying one thing and
    doing another. And I'm not very good at that, and it embarrasses me, so
    we decided we'd actually try to bring the deficit down.
        Last year, by the narrowest of margins, because we got no help and a
    lot of hot rhetoric, our economic plan passed. And it began a system of
    disciplined budgeting, which will be accompanied by this year's budget,
    the first time in 17 years two Presidents' budgets have been adopted on
    time by the United States Congress. That will give us 3 years of deficit
    reduction for the first time since Harry Truman was the President of the
    United States of America.
        And I want you to know, working with this Congress, this budget, the
    Congress will eliminate over 100 Government programs outright, will cut
    200 more, will not only be reducing defense but will reduce domestic
    discretionary spending for the first time since 1969, in 25 years. And
    still we will spend more money on Head Start, more money on Women and
    Infant Children, more money on school-to-work opportunities, more money
    on education and new technologies for the future. We will invest more in
    people and still cut Government spending, because we hired on to get
    things done not to just talk about them, and that is what the Democrats
    are doing in this town today.
        When you put that with the initiatives in trade that this
    administration has taken--more in 18 months than had been done in a
    generation--we have the basis for the first growth in America in 30
    years that is led by investment and that has no inflation, in 30 years.
    That is what I asked for a chance to work on and what you helped to give
    me. And no amount of rhetoric to the contrary can take away those facts.
        The second thing I said I would try to do is to make Government work
    for ordinary people. And I think we've made a pretty good stab at that.
    With the support of the public

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    employee unions, we have passed budgets which will reduce the size of
    the National Government by a quarter of a million by attrition over 5
    years, and leave us at the end of a 5-year period with the smallest
    Federal work force since John Kennedy was the President of the United
    States. And the money will be used to pay for the crime bill to make our
    streets safer. That is a matter of record.
        We've also begun to make the Government work again. Terry McAuliffe
    told me yesterday that a reporter for a newspaper that is not exactly a
    house organ of the Democratic Party called him and said, ``How did you
    get all these business people to contribute to the Democratic Party?''
    He said, ``Well, the President's got a good probusiness position.'' And
    a reporter starting laughing. One of the real problems here, you know,
    you're always in the most trouble when you think you have nothing to
    learn. [Laughter]
        The Small Business Administration, under the leadership of Erskine
    Bowles, will now let you apply for a loan on a one-page form, something
    small business people have been begging for for years. The Emergency
    Management Agency, which was the source of ridicule and anger and
    frustration and revulsion for years because it was dominated by
    political appointees, now has a Director from my home State who did it
    for a living. And he's the most popular Federal bureaucrat in the United
    States because FEMA has been there in earthquakes and fires and
    tornadoes, when people needed it. Nobody worries about whether the
    Federal Government is going to be there to do its job anymore. Rice
    farmers in northern California, a few weeks ago, for the first time
    ever, shipped their rice out of ports in northern California to sell in
    Japan, because the Government is working for ordinary people again.
        I don't know how many business people I've had come up to me in the
    last year and say, ``You know, I'm a Republican, but you have the only
    administration where the Commerce Department and the State Department
    work together to try to help me do business overseas, and I appreciate
    that.''
        I wanted to break gridlock. For 7 years, the world trade agreement
    was tied up. It was ratified last year by the nations, and we're going
    to implement it this year. For 7 years, 7 years, even after the attempt
    on President Reagan's life, with his fine Press Secretary, Jim Brady,
    surviving by a miracle and campaigning like crazy for the Brady bill,
    for 7 years the NRA and others tied it up in Congress. But we passed it
    last year. For 7 years, even though it had some bipartisan support, the
    Family and Medical Leave Act could not pass the Congress, but we passed
    it last year. No Presidential vetoes--support for families in the
    workplace. For 6 years now, politics has kept the crime bill from
    passing, but we are on the verge of passing the most important piece of
    anticrime legislation in the history of the United States, more
    punishment but more prevention, more police. And the ban on assault
    weapons, which lost just 2 years ago by 70 votes in the House of
    Representatives, passed. We have brought an end to the gridlock in this
    country, and we should not let it go back the other way at election
    time.
        Now we're working on health care. First, the other side said there
    was no crisis; then there was a crisis but we needed a bipartisan
    solution. I said, ``Fine, here's my plan. You tell me how we are going
    to change it, but we've got to cover everybody.'' Then they started
    running ads saying I was trying to give health care to the Government,
    which wasn't true. But I went out and listened to people, and I said,
    well, maybe it is too bureaucratic. So we changed it some more and took
    out some of the mandatory provisions and made it more flexible to try to
    make it more responsive. And then a Republican Congressman from Iowa
    named Fred Grandy stood up and told the awful truth that he and his
    colleagues had been given marching orders to do nothing to cooperate to
    try to solve the health care problems in this country.
        The Governor of Florida was in here today, talking about how he had
    a bill in Florida that was not mandatory but would make the situation
    better, that had the support of every organization in his State. And it
    still died in the senate of the State of Florida because there's a 20-20
    split between Republicans and Democrats. And with all the interest
    groups saying, please do something about health care, every last
    Republican senator

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    still voted against it so they couldn't say he did anything on health
    care.
        Now, in the Senate Finance Committee, there are a couple of
    Republicans who have worked on health care for years, who are trying to
    come together and reach some accommodation. And I can tell you they are
    under withering pressure. But folks, those people who say, ``Let's just
    cover 90 percent and forget about it,'' it won't work. It won't work.
    Three million working Americans have lost their health insurance in the
    last 3 years. We are going backwards. We are the only country in the
    world with an advanced economy that has not figured out how to cover
    everybody.
        Read the article in the Washington Post today about the German
    health care system. The German health care system today takes up a
    smaller percentage of the income of Germany than it did 2 years ago.
    It's about 8.5 percent. Our health care system costs us 14.5 percent of
    our income, and we still can't figure out how to cover--we're not even
    at 85 percent anymore.
        And all the solutions that say, well, let's just not make any tough
    decisions and go up to 90 percent, cost you a double-ton of money in
    taxes, subsidize the poor, most of whom already can at least get
    Medicare, and not do one single solitary thing for the working middle
    class, 80 percent of whom are those who don't have insurance and who are
    terribly insecure. I'm telling you, we have got to face this problem and
    face it now. Harry Truman tried to get us to do it 50 years ago, and we
    didn't do it, and we've been paying for it ever since.
        Let me say that any time you quote Harry Truman now, the Republicans
    stand up and clap, and everybody says, ``Gosh, I wish we had him around;
    it's too bad we don't have anybody like Truman anymore.'' Let me tell
    you something, folks, I came from one of those families that was for him
    when he was living. [Laughter] And a lot of the people that brag on him
    today wouldn't have walked across the street to shake his hand when he
    was in office because he stood up for ordinary people and he told
    extraordinary truths and he tried to get us to face the problems of our
    time. Now, in retrospect, we can see that he did a good job.
        Every midterm election in the 20th century except one, when
    President Roosevelt could not pass Social Security in 1934, every other
    one has seen a loss in both Houses, or at least one House, for the
    President in power, his party. Why? Because there is always a
    disappointment from the bright promise of the Inauguration to the hard
    reality of governing. Governor Cuomo used to say, ``We campaign in
    poetry, and we govern in prose.'' [Laughter]
        But there is a special problem this year. What is it? It is that
    there is so much accumulated cynicism in this country, and people are
    always told about the process, the conflict, the ups, the downs, the
    differences, that a lot of people don't even know what I have just told
    you. And our adversaries are banking on two things: Number one, they
    believe the cynicism of the electorate will, A, cause them to say, ``I
    don't believe it,'' if they hear what we have done and, B, cause them to
    blame those of us who are in if we fail to change because they bring
    back gridlock. And so they think they can be rewarded if they stop
    anything from happening. And the second thing that they hope is that
    they can divert the attention of a significant number of our voters from
    the crying issues that unite us as a people by trying to launch another
    cultural war. And this is not just my opinion. There's a new book out by
    David Frum, conservative and former editorial writer of the Wall Street
    Journal, that you can find adapted in Harper's this week. He says that
    conservatives fail to control the size and cost of Government, and
    they've basically given that up. That's true; we've done a better job of
    that than they did. So instead, he predicts politics in the future will
    become a lot nastier and that the only way to mobilize and excite voters
    will be to trade on our differences on moral and ethnic and racial
    issues.
        I can tell you, folks, we have not survived over 200 years as the
    strongest and oldest democracy in this country by fighting out our
    differences on moral and racial and ethnic issues. And we did not get
    where we are by becoming mired in the luxury--and I use the word
    clearly--the luxury of cynicism.
        You know, the biggest honor I think I've had as your President was
    going to represent us at the D-Day ceremonies. It was one of

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    the most extraordinary events of Hillary's and my life, going first to
    Italy and seeing what our soldiers endured there, being shelled and
    killed on those beaches week after week, not able to get off; going to
    England and seeing the 3,800 graves of people who fought in the air war
    for 2 years before the D-Day invasion and the list of 5,000 names of
    people who never came back, including Joe Kennedy, Jr., and the great
    American band leader, Glenn Miller; and then going to the beaches at
    Normandy. And the thing that struck me overwhelmingly was that these
    people who saved the world, who laid their lives on the line, they
    didn't have an option. They knew what was at stake. And it makes a
    mockery of their sacrifice for us to be cynical about fulfilling our own
    legacy.
        This whole atmosphere that permeates this town now--nothing makes
    any difference, and it's all who's up and down and in and out and all
    that, this obsession with process and conflict over product--it makes a
    mockery of what has gotten us here for 200 years.
        I'm going to tell you something: Most of the people I've known in
    politics for 20 years, both parties, have been honest. Most of them have
    worked hard. Most of them have done what they thought was right. Most of
    the time we fought over things that were honest differences, worth
    arguing and fighting over. And we're about to get ourselves in a fix on
    the dawn of the 21st century. We've got the strongest economy in the
    world. We are the envy of the world. Our diversity is a source of great
    strength and the great, great mother lode of wealth for us in the 21st
    century in the global economy, if we've got sense enough to rescue these
    kids out of these cities, whose lives are being squandered. And the only
    thing that can mess it up for us is if we permitted ourselves to have
    the wrong fights, to believe that we were immoral because we had
    differences over certain issues, and if we permitted ourselves to become
    so cynical that we wouldn't even listen to the truth.
        And I am here tonight to tell you that what you need to do is to go
    out of this room tonight and not just be glad that you gave money to
    this party and to our administration and to our continued efforts but to
    think of your words as a knife that can cut through stone. And every
    time you hear one of your fellow Americans say some cynical and
    nonsensical thing implying that we're all up here just trying to feather
    our nest and it doesn't make any difference what's done and everything's
    in trouble, you tell them the truth, not to benefit me and the Democrats
    in Congress, although to be sure, we'll be benefited for it because we
    have broken gridlock and we are moving forward, but to give Americans
    their citizenship back. We did not get here by being cynics, we got here
    by being believers.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:09 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to David Wilhelm, chairman, Democratic
    National Committee, and his wife, DeGee; dinner chairman Vernon Jordan,
    and his wife, Ann; and DNC finance chairman Terry McAuliffe.