[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 32 (Monday, August 15, 1994)]
[Pages 1649-1653]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

August 8, 1994

    Thank you. Thank you very much, Senator Graham. Ladies and 
gentlemen, I hope you'll forgive me. I have my annual August ragweed 
voice. If you don't have allergies and you can't tell whether ragweed 
has come out in Washington, DC, you just wait for me to get my sort of, 
you know, raspy--surely there's a role for me in the movies when I talk 
like this. I could be the guy that delivers the bad news, and that 
wouldn't be any role change I would have to take. [Laughter]
    I want to thank many people. I thank the incumbent Senators who are 
here, Senator Graham and the others who have worked so hard. I also want 
to congratulate the nominees who are here. We have an exceptionally 
outstanding group of people: Bob Carr, Alan Wheat, Tom Andrews, Sam 
Coppersmith, Jim Cooper, all from the House of Representatives, and 
former Congressman Jim Jontz, all of whom have real records of fighting 
for the interests of ordinary Americans in trying to build this country 
and all of whom have a real chance to be elected to the United States 
Senate if we work hard for them.
    Joel Hyatt from Ohio is not here tonight, but he and I were in law 
school together. He's younger than I am. Most people are these days. 
[Laughter] And those who aren't look younger now. Joel Hyatt began a 
program when we were in law school for undergraduates to tutor inner-
city kids and then went on to become famous by making legal 
representation available to ordinary middle class folks. The program he 
started when we were in law school is still operating there, a real 
tribute to his capacity to innovate.
    Richard Fisher from Texas is also not here tonight, but he is 
another longtime friend of mine who worked with me in the Democratic 
Leadership Council and tried to bring new ideas into the party. And 
believe it or not, in Texas, no matter how much the Republicans crow, 
he's got an excellent chance to win there, and we're going to work hard 
for him.
    The attorney general of Delaware is here, Charles Oberly, who--now, 
that's the job I used to have. That's the best job I ever had. I don't 
know why he wants to be in the Senate. When you're attorney general, you 
don't have to hire people or fire them, except your own staff; you don't 
have to raise taxes or cut spending; and when you do things that are 
unpopular, you can blame it on the Constitution. [Laughter] Nonetheless, 
he wants to leave that wonderful institution. And we were together in 
Delaware a few months ago. It was apparent to me, not only from what I 
read in the Delaware papers but from what I saw of him on the stump and 
the reaction of the people of Delaware, that he had an excellent chance 
to win that race.

[[Page 1650]]

    I also want to note the presence here of Jack Mudd from Montana who, 
like me, was a law professor. But unlike me, he became the youngest law 
school dean in America. And it hasn't seemed to do him much harm; he's 
here running for the Senate. Everybody I know in Montana believes that 
he has a great chance to win. That State went Democratic in the last 
election. And it's a very tightly fought State, a very closely contested 
one, but I think he's got an excellent chance to win.
    I'd like to mention three other folks who are here, two from the 
State legislature, Linda Kushner of Rhode Island and Ken Harper of 
Mississippi, and Pat Shea of Utah who used to be counsel for the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, a committee that I worked for when I was 
trying to work myself through college here in the 1960's. I have had the 
occasion to meet and be with all three of them over the years, and I 
highly recommend them to all of you.
    Most of you have heard me speak before. The last thing you need to 
hear is me give another speech, except when I'm hoarse. But I want to 
make a couple of points. I ran for President as an underdog, as a 
challenger. I was buried two or three times before the final vote came 
in. One of the things that I know is that you can't win a race unless 
you want to win for something bigger than yourself and that if you do 
want to win for something bigger than yourself, you have always got a 
chance to win. I know that you can't win in a tough time if you don't 
fight, but if you do fight, you're always in the race. And I know that 
the American people are basically ambivalent about most things in their 
politics today. I think it is largely because of the time in which we 
live. And I think it is an enormous opportunity for us to show 
conviction and direction.
    And I might say--I don't want to single out just one of the Senators 
here, but I am very, very proud of the conviction, direction, and 
strength that Chuck Robb is showing in his heroic fight to be reelected 
to the United States Senate from Virginia. And I want to begin with a 
story from one of his debates, and then I'll end with another one to 
illustrate what this election is all about.
    When I entered the race for President in late 1991, when President 
Bush was at 70 percent approval in the polls and most people, aside from 
my mother, thought I had lost my mind, I did it because I was very 
worried that this National Government had become more about words than 
deeds and that we had become addicted to seeing the Presidents always 
worried about how they were positioned, rather than what they were 
doing, and that we were moving toward the 21st century at a breathtaking 
pace with the economy going down, the deficit going up, the middle class 
being squeezed--genuinely in danger of losing our position of energy and 
leadership and direction in the world. It seemed to me that to keep the 
American dream alive, we had to do some simple things that were not 
being done. We had to restore the economy, empower individuals to 
compete and win in it, rebuild our communities and support our families, 
and make Government work for ordinary people again.
    When I started running for President--I was looking out there--Jerry 
McEntee came out for me fairly early, and a lot of people thought he had 
lost his mind because some people said, ``Well, Clinton's not enough of 
a Democrat; he's always working with Republicans and trying to get 
things done.'' I plead guilty: I did that. I was even popular with the 
previous administration until I filed. [Laughter] I believed, you know, 
that we had all these problems that did not fit very neatly within the 
categories that the Democrats and the Republicans had used in the past, 
and I still believe that.
    But I want to tell you what the problem is and why these races are 
so important with two stories. I'll begin and end with one. The one I'll 
begin with was from Senator Robb's first debate on the Larry King show. 
The other three guys were just pounding, you know, and Marshall Coleman 
looked at him and said, ``You come from conservative Virginia, and you 
pretend to be a conservative, but you are one of the top 10 Democrats 
supporting Bill Clinton in the United States Senate.'' Chuck Robb looked 
at Marshall Coleman and smiled, and he said, ``Yep, and I was one of the 
top 10 Democrats supporting George Bush in the United States Senate. I 
do not believe the purpose of politics is

[[Page 1651]]

to destroy the President, and I've finally got somebody who is trying to 
get the deficit down instead of just talk about it, and so I supported 
him.'' And I never will forget that.
    Now, what's that got to do with anything? You have to decide what 
the purpose of your public life is. Is it to do things that genuinely 
respond to the needs of people, or is it to posture? You remember one of 
the Republican House Members that's leaving the House, Fred Grandy, said 
the other day that his colleagues had been told not to work with us on 
health care. Senator Dole was quoted a few weeks ago as saying, well, he 
understood that some of the Republican Senators wanted to work with us 
on health care and work something out, but ``I've got a party to think 
of.''
    Now, all I know is, when we showed up here, the deficit was going up 
and the economy was going down. And with no help from them, we passed an 
economic program that cut spending by $255 billion, cut taxes on 15 
million working Americans, made 90 percent of the small businesses 
eligible for tax cuts, raised taxes on 1.2 percent of the people but 
devoted all the money to paying the deficit down, made 20 million 
Americans eligible to refinance their college loans at a lower interest 
rate. And not a one of them helped us. They said the sky would fall. 
They said the deficit would go up and the economy would go down. I never 
heard so much Chicken Little talk in my life as we heard a year ago this 
month.
    And they all talked about how we were the tax-and-spend party and 
they were against big government. You just remember this: The Democrats 
alone, with not a single, solitary vote from the opposition party, 
adopted a budget which will shrink the Federal Government to fewer than 
2 million people for the first time since John Kennedy was President--
something they say they're for but couldn't or wouldn't do--that will 
give us 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since 
Harry Truman was President--something they said they were for but 
couldn't or wouldn't do--and has produced 4.1 million new jobs in 18 
months.
    Now, that's why I want these people to win, not because I am an 
abject partisan--my whole record shows that I'm always willing to work 
with people from the other side--but because the voters have to send a 
message to all of us that they expect problems to be solved. If the 
message they send is they'd rather have hot air than firm action to 
advance the cause of middle class people, then the Democrats will start 
behaving the same way.
    We must keep our eyes on doing things, and then we need to stand up 
and do them. Today I had the pleasure of presenting the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom to nine distinguished Americans, one of whom was 
Barbara Jordan from Texas, and I wish she were here tonight. She said, 
``I just don't get it.'' You can just imagine. She said, ``The Democrats 
have a wonderful record; what they need is to fight for it.'' Barbara 
Jordan said that.
    We need this crime bill. It's being held up by people who know if it 
comes to a vote, it'll pass overwhelmingly. So they think they can beat 
it on a technicality--and the American people won't understand it--
called a rule. It's the House equivalent of the filibuster: Beat it, but 
act like you're not.
    The Democrats have put together a bill the Republicans said they 
were for for 6 years but couldn't produce, that every one of us can be 
proud of: 100,000 more police, a 20 percent increase; tougher penalties; 
a ban on assault weapons; a ban on ownership of handguns by children; 
and billions of dollars in prevention programs to give our kids 
something to say yes to. We cannot walk away from it.
    In the health care debate, we have on the floor of both Houses of 
Congress, for the first time in the history of the Republic, bills that 
would provide health care to all Americans--never been done before, 
never even got on the floor before. And yes, there's a lot of 
controversy about it. There's a lot of information and a lot of 
misinformation, some genuine difference of opinion. But we do know some 
things about which there is no dispute. And the burden should be, 
therefore, on those who have no plan.
    We know we spend more on health care than anybody else, 40 percent 
more of our income. We know that even though we do that, we're the only 
country in the world with an advanced economy that hasn't figured out

[[Page 1652]]

how to cover everybody. We know that we're the only country going in 
reverse. There are 5 million Americans today, almost all of them working 
Americans and their children, who don't have insurance who did have 
insurance just 5 years ago. That's not happening anywhere else in the 
world, only here.
    So by what reasoning is it that we say, ``This is good that we spend 
40 percent more than anybody else, do less''? We're the only ones losing 
ground, and we spend billions and billions on paperwork, bureaucracy, 
and administrative costs that no one else spends. We say we are a 
pragmatic people. But we know that in Hawaii, small business insurance 
rates are 30 percent lower than the rest of the country because 
everybody's covered and everybody bears some of the burden.
    Should we try something else? I'm willing to try something else for 
4 or 5 years. I think it ought to be phased in. I think we ought to be 
careful. I think we ought to give the market a chance to work. But I 
think we also should not walk away from what we know works.
    The main thing I want to tell you is this: When we enter this 
debate, what I hope it will be about is the health care of the American 
people, their pocketbooks, the pocketbook of the Federal Government, the 
quality of care, the ability to choose your doctors, and the ability to 
meet the legitimate needs of middle class working people, and not 
politics.
    Last week--and this is the story I want to end with--last week I had 
the honor of doing something that Presidents have done for 44 years: 
that is to present awards every year, with the Attorney General, to four 
young Americans who have either shown great heroism or great public 
service. One of the public service winners was a young woman from Keyes, 
Oklahoma, who was paralyzed in 1990 from the chest down in a car 
accident and since then has spent her time trying to organize children 
not to drink and drive, not to ride with people who drink and drive, and 
always to wear their seatbelts. In other words, instead of being bitter, 
this beautiful child is trying to make sure other people don't have the 
experience she did.
    And so there I was, just totally captivated with this young woman 
and her little sister and her fine father and mother. And her daddy was 
a farmer from Keyes, Oklahoma, way out in western Oklahoma. And we just 
got to talking about health care. And he said, ``You know, I was paying 
$3,400 a year for a limited policy. And my daughter's bills, they were 
all over 2 years ago. We hadn't had any bills in 2 years. But they told 
me I had used up my wellness quotient, and my premium is going to $9,600 
in 2 weeks. So in 2 weeks, we'll be out of insurance.'' And he said--he 
tickled me--he said, ``It's not a political deal.'' He said, ``I'm a 
Republican, Mr. President.'' But he said, ``If somebody's working as 
hard as I'm working and can't even have health insurance for their kids, 
something is wrong somewhere.''
    And so as we begin this debate, there are legitimate differences of 
approach. I welcome them. Nobody's smart enough to know everything about 
this issue. But let us remember that farmer from Keyes, Oklahoma, and 
his fine wife and his two beautiful daughters and ask ourselves, how 
will he send them to college if he can't even pay their health 
insurance? And when we go into these fall elections, let us proudly say, 
``Yes, we're Democrats.'' And when they attack us for being tax-and-
spend, say, ``We cut taxes on 10 times as many people as we raised them 
on. You guys had a bigger Government than we're having. We're just 
trying to solve the problems of the people of the country. We put 
100,000 police on the street without a tax increase by shrinking the 
Federal bureaucracy.''
    We can win the partisan debates if we'll fight. But the main thing 
we need to do is to remember that this is a difficult and confusing time 
for our people. The cold war is over. We're moving to a new era. It has 
not been defined. Every time this happens, the American people become 
vulnerable. At the end of World War I, we were vulnerable to the first 
Red scare and to the Ku Klux Klan. At the end of World War II, the same 
thing happened all over again. The only difference was Harry Truman 
gladly let his popularity drop from 80 percent to 36 percent to keep our 
eye on the ball, to rebuild the country and recapture the rest of the 
world. And in the end, the American people worked through their 
confusion and came back to

[[Page 1653]]

their better nature. And they will now if we can make this election 
about them, not about an argument between Republicans and Democrats, not 
about all these rhetorical hard balls. Let's just stand up and defend 
what we've done, defend what we believe in, and fight for the American 
people. If we do, the crowd we've got in this room can win these 
elections in November.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 7:54 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Gerald W. McEntee, international president, 
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.