[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 29 (Monday, July 22, 1996)]
[Pages 1275-1280]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks to the Women's Leadership Forum
July 17, 1996
The President. Thank you.
Q. Love you, Mr. President!
The President. Thank you. [Laughter] I hope you've had half as good
a time tonight as I have. I want to thank Senator Dodd and Chairman
Fowler for being here. I want to thank all of the leaders of the WLF,
and especially I thank my friend Carol Pensky. And I thank you, Cynthia
Friedman, for the enormous work you have done, especially at this time.
We thank you for being such a brave and good friend. Thank you.
I enjoyed being up here with my team. Sometimes I hate to be last,
you know. The very first speech I ever gave as a public official, 20
years ago, January of 1977, I was attorney general. I went to a Rotary
Club installation banquet. It's one of these deals that starts at 6:30;
there were 500 people there. Everybody in the crowd but four people got
introduced; they went home mad. [Laughter] I got up to talk at a quarter
to 10. And the guy that introduced me was the only person there more
nervous than me, and the first words out of his mouth was, ``You know,
we could stop here and have had a very nice evening.'' [Laughter] Now,
he didn't mean it that way. [Laughter] At least I don't think he did.
But we could stop here and have had a very nice evening. [Laughter]
I want to say about Tipper Gore, you know, we share the same
birthday; therefore, we are under the same--but she's younger than I am.
Therefore, we are under the same sign. We have the same sort of
enthusiasm about life. And she is always irreverently puncturing my
balloon. [Laughter] But I appreciate her for many things, but the story
that the Vice President told you about what she said when she heard
Senator Dole was resigning from the Senate is true. If this country had
a hundred people as committed to mental health reform and adequate
mental health care as she is, we could solve that problem in a matter of
months.
I want to say--let me just give you an example--when I tell people
all the time that Al Gore is the most important Vice President in
history and he has done more than anybody else ever has, really I'm
bragging on myself, you know, because I think I showed such good sense
in selecting him. [Laughter] And besides that, the more he does, the
more likely it is I can play golf a couple times a month. [Laughter]
But to give you an example of the sort of range of what he has done
and the difference that he made for our country, it would be impossible
for me to describe to you the extent to which our partnership with
Russia to make the 21st century a better world for all of our children
has been facilitated by this remarkable commission that he and Prime
Minister Chernomyrdin of Russia have. All of the things they have worked
on, all of the problems they have worked out, all the problems they have
avoided developing between our two countries as we move into this period
of transition, it's just been staggering.
And then he came back with no sleep, and the first thing we did
today was to have an announcement that he helped to work out in which
the cellular telephone folks agreed to give 50,000--just as a starter,
not all--50,000 free telephones to all the community citizen patrols
that are working with police departments around the country so they can
call in and help prevent crimes and help deal with medical emergencies.
It's an amazing thing. So this is a lot better country than it
[[Page 1276]]
was 4 years ago in part because of the incredible range and impact of
his labors.
I thank you for the way you received the First Lady tonight. My
friends and family at home used to tell me that if they're shooting at
you it must be because they're afraid you're doing something. [Laughter]
What I would like to say about her is that that book that she wrote was
written sort of out of the experience of her entire life. And the ideas
that were embodied in that book were the ideas she was living by when I
first met her a long time ago now.
And I am more grateful than I can say for the fact that she has been
willing to continue to stand for those things and to fight for those
things at home and around the world in the face of political fire that
came only because she happened to be my wife and I thought she ought to
be able to speak her mind and make this country a better place along
with the rest of us. [Applause] Thank you.
Al pretty much introduced everybody I wanted to introduce. I wish we
could introduce all of our appointees. But I do want to make note of the
fact that we started the three organizations within the Government that
I think are important, and I ought to acknowledge the women who head
those groups: Bonnie Campbell, who heads the Violence Against Women
Office at the Department of Justice; Susan Blumenthal, who heads the
Women's Health Office at the Department of Health and Human Services;
and Betsy Myers, who heads the White House Office of Women's
Initiatives. Thank you very much. [Applause]
And there's one other very senior person in my White House I have to
introduce today because this is her birthday, the Special Assistant to
the President for Public Policy and Public Liaison, Alexis Herman, who
is here tonight. Where is she? [Applause] Thank you.
Now, I saved Ann Richards and Shirley Caesar until last because it
occurred to me that they made me feel right at home; I heard a gospel
singer and then I heard a gospel preacher. [Laughter] And usually when
you hear that where I come from, the last person is supposed to just
pass the plate and go home. [Laughter] But you've already passed the
plate. [Laughter]
And your reaction to Shirley--who was wonderful both in her words as
well as her song, thank you very much, and all of you who came with her.
And to Ann Richards, who can say things and get away with them that the
rest of us can't say--[laughter]--and tells the truth in a way that even
those who don't like it can understand it--makes me think that basically
what I am now doing, as we used to say at home, is preaching to the
saved.
So I want to just make a couple of arguments to you very quickly,
and I hope you will think about it. First of all, what Ann said is
right. I don't care what these polls say, it's better to be good than
bad, because they reflect the choices before the American people. But
the election is a long time from now. And you should look at these polls
as a picture of a horse race that's not over. So forget about the
politics and think about the substance. Just put it out of your mind
except for the substance, what's at stake here.
So I'd like to begin with this: Everybody always talks about this
gender gap as if it's something the Republicans ought to be trying to
close. We've got a few fellows here tonight. I want you to close the
gender gap in our favor. Bring them over here. Don't just preach to the
saved. Talk to people here.
It is simply not true that the issues that are part of the record of
the last 4 years, the differences between us and the things at stake in
the future, are divided in their impact by men and women. That is not
true. That is not true. Everybody has got the same stake in the future
of this country. They may be perceived in different ways, and I'll say
more about that in a minute.
But I want you to go out of here with a commitment to spend some
time every day between now and November trying to talk to people about
what's at stake here and the choices for our country. We are going to
walk into the 21st century on the bridge we build in this election. And
there is no status quo option; we're going to take one way of change or
another, and we'll have to live with the consequences for a very long
time. So we need to think through that and make the right decision.
I just want you to think about three things. Number one, I want you
to think about the
[[Page 1277]]
record. And I'll say no more about it because others have spoken about
it. But it matters because it's an indication of what will happen,
number one, and number two, because the results have been good. We
passed our economic program. They said it would be the end of the world,
the sky would fall, there would be at least a bad recession. And we
said, no, we'll cut the deficit in half, and 8 million jobs will be
created. Well, we were both wrong. We cut the deficit by 60 percent, and
we have 10 million new jobs.
They said they were the party of fiscal responsibility, but they
opposed our deficit reduction plan. And now, this is the first
administration which has lowered the deficit in all 4 of its years in
office since--listen to this--the 1840's. So there is no deficit left in
our budget except that caused by the interest we pay on the debt run up
in the 12 years before I moved to Washington. We have an operating
surplus in our budget today. And you should know that.
The crime rate is coming down for 4 years in a row. And one of the
reasons is because we stood for things: 100,000 police, prevention
programs, the right kind of punishment, and the ban on assault weapons
and the Brady bill and the Violence Against Women Act and Megan's Law.
Those things matter.
And you know, one of the things they used to say caused the gender
gap was all this gun business. Well, not a single hunter or sportsman
has lost his rifle since we passed the Brady bill and the assault
weapons ban. But 60,000 fugitives, felons, and stalkers don't get to
have a handgun because of the Brady bill. We were right, and they were
wrong about that. And I want you to think about it.
There are 1.3 million fewer people on welfare today than there was
the day I became President, not because we've tried to be tough on kids
but because we tried to make it possible for people to go to work and
take care of their children. We've increased child support collections
by 40 percent. And I'm proud of that; that matters. And every American
has a stake in it.
So the first thing I want you to say to people is, look, there's a
record here and the results are good. We're better off than we were 4
years ago.
The second thing I want you to say to people is, this is a happy
election for the voters because there's no guesswork in it. [Laughter]
You know, usually there's a little guesswork. I mean, you took a chance
on me in '92. You heard what they said, that I was out there, Governor
of some place 40 miles west of Podunk, couldn't find my way to the White
House. You heard all that. They said you took a chance on me. None of
that this time. No guesswork. You know what I'm going to do because of
what I have done and because what I'm advocating to do flows naturally
out of it. And you know what they will do because they already did it. I
just vetoed it and stopped it the first time. You know what they'll do.
So tell people, if you want this, if you want fewer people in Head
Start and you think there ought to be fewer college loans, if you think
we ought to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency and stop
cleaning up toxic waste, if that's what you think we ought to do, you
can get that job done. If you believe we ought to eliminate AmeriCorps,
our national service program, which has already given 45,000 young
people a chance to earn some money for college by serving their
communities, it's the symbol of what we're trying to do in this country;
if you believe that we ought to walk away from a 30-year guarantee that
Medicaid has made to the seniors in this country that need help, being
in nursing homes, to poor pregnant women and their little infant babies,
and to families with people with disabilities in them so that they
wouldn't be driven into poverty to get decent care for their families,
you can get that job done. Just vote for them. They did it once. I just
stopped it. If that's what you want. If you think Medicare premiums
ought to be raised twice as much as needs to be just to bail out the
system, but they want to do it more and create a two-tier class of
Medicare, you can have that.
I think that this is a very serious argument. You must make this
argument. There is no guesswork here. You know what I'm going to do; you
know what they're going to do. This is not close. You just decide. And
you have to let people know what decision is out there.
[[Page 1278]]
You know, there shouldn't be a lot of smoke and mirrors, and I don't
want to get into--you know, I was asked the other night on an interview
program that I did for the new television network to name a quality--a
caller called in on E-mail and said, ``Tell me what you admire most
about Senator Dole.'' And I said, ``Well, I don't just admire one thing
about Senator Dole; I admire a lot of things. But the thing I think I
like the most about him is I really believe he loves America.'' And I
believe that. I don't think we need to run a hateful campaign and demean
the people who are our opponents and try to do that. I don't believe in
that.
But we have a very different view here. And we've got to make sure
every single, solitary citizen understands that there are consequences.
That's the second thing I want to say.
The third point and the most important of all is that this election
is about how you want our country to look as we stand on the dawn of the
new century. What do you want it to be like 20 or 30 years from now for
your children and your grandchildren? That's really what it's about.
I want to just mention two things Ann Richards said that got us all
up out of our seat. We thought it was so funny--you clapped. But there
are two germs here of ideas that I want to mention because they have a
lot to do with what I believe we ought to be doing.
The first thing she said that was great is that the other guys think
that the country's in deep trouble because people on welfare stay home
with their children instead of going to work, but the country's in
trouble because middle class women go to work instead of staying home
with their children. And you liked that because it was true. You liked
that; that was sort of funny. And then she said that you ought to be for
me because I wasn't afraid to be around women that were smarter than I
was, or something like that. [Laughter] Whatever she said, strong women
or whatever. And you liked that. [Laughter] And I have to like that. I
have no choice. So I like that. [Laughter]
So I want you to think about this: We're living through a time of
enormous change in the way we work, in the way we live, in the way we
raise our children, in the way we relate to each other, in the way we
relate to the rest of the world. We know there are economic factors that
have caused this. We know there are social factors that have caused
this. And every one of us is worried about meeting the challenges of our
lives and preserving our values that we hold dear. And the reason you
liked both those things is that--in the first thing, the sort of either-
or deal Ann said about welfare, it struck you if not hypocritical at
least internally contradictory. But the truth is that what we want for
poor women, for middle class women, for rich women, and for their
spouses and for their children is the same thing. We want people to be
able to live out their own dreams. And if they want to work or if they
have to work, we want people to be able to succeed at home and at work,
right? We want people to be able to succeed at home and at work.
Now, that is a huge, important idea. Why? Because that's why the
family leave law is important. And I was strong for it, and the nominee
of their party was opposed to it. And I want to expand it in the next
term to cover regular visits to the doctor and regular visits to the
school so parents can have some time to see their children. Why?
Because--that's why pension reform is important. That's why health care
reform is important. That's why all these things are important. Why?
Because you can't divide your life up anymore. You can't pretend that
you're some sort of segmented little person. If you want to have a whole
life, if you want people to be able to live out their dreams, then you
have to make it possible for people to succeed at home and at work. And
if they have to choose one or the other, we're in deep trouble.
What are the other things? Well, the President doesn't mind being
around strong women, strong Vice President, strong anybody else.
[Laughter] Is that a sign of weakness? I don't think so. You know, my
mother, bless her soul, had a lot of interesting qualities--[Laughter]--
but one of the things I learned from her at an early age is that she
never begrudged another soul their success. She never did. If somebody
else was doing well, it made her happy. Even if they didn't like her, it
made her happy. It didn't bother
[[Page 1279]]
her, ever. All she ever wanted to do was to get a fair deal and have a
chance to be happy, too.
And the way we practice our politics will determine whether America
can manage this diversity we have in a way that makes us stronger,
richer, and more together, or a way that divides us more and makes us
weaker and causes us to stagger into the 21st century instead of charge
into it. And this is the biggest problem in the world today.
I mean, Hillary and I went to Northern Ireland in December, and they
were the happiest people you ever saw. People--the Catholics and the
Protestants--cheering, six, seven deep in the street, happy. They
couldn't even remember what they were fighting about. A few
irresponsible people slip the tracks, doesn't take any time, the people
are fighting again, defining their lives in terms of what religion
they're not, which side of the street they don't live on, who they
aren't, who they can look down on, who they can march against or throw a
rock against. It's wrong and it's foolish and it's self-defeating, but
it's so easy.
Bosnia is not a very big country. Biologically, the Croats, the
Serbs, and the Muslims are virtually indistinguishable. But they spent a
lot of time in the last few years slaughtering each other by the tens of
thousands because of what they weren't.
It is the curse of the Middle East that I pray we can find an answer
to. It is driving the terrorism. It's driving terrorism. It's driving
the proliferation of dangerous weapons. It drives children into gangs
and makes them callous about the violence they do to each other. This is
not a little thing. This is a big thing. How do you look at other
people? This is a huge deal.
So I have said before, I'll say again, I think my major job as
President is to get us all to think about how we want to go into the
21st century and what kind of jobs we all have to do to get there. See,
I really believe that the best days of this country are still ahead. I
believe that technology will do more good than harm. I believe when we
get every classroom and every library in this country hooked up to the
information superhighway, you're going to see an explosion of democracy
in learning and you're going to see people able to access things that
would formerly have been beyond their wildest dreams. I believe we're
going to create a lot more jobs than we lose.
I believe that the best days of this country are ahead of us. But we
have to make some simple decisions. And I don't think we can get into
these divisions, like the one Ann said about the welfare and the middle
class mothers. The argument people have about the Government--what was
the argument people were having about the Government when we showed up
here? Well, that the Government should be able to create a program in a
bureaucracy to help solve any problem, on the one hand, or that the
Government was always the problem and should just get out of the way, on
the other. Both are wrong.
What I think we have to do is to create opportunity for everybody--
everybody--which means invest more in education and technology and
research and giving people the tools to make the most of their own
lives. I think we have to expect responsibility from everybody, which is
why I have fought so hard on crime and for the right kind of welfare
reform and for tough child support enforcement and for the Office of
Violence Against Women and for all these things, because we can't
tolerate people who believe they have a right to destroy or limit other
people's lives and walk away from their own responsibility. I think
that's important.
And Al Gore has proved with his reinventing Government project you
can do those things with a Government that's smaller and less
bureaucratic. So, yes, it's smaller and less bureaucratic, but we're
approving AIDS drugs quicker at the FDA than any other major country in
the world. We're selling broadcast licenses at the FCC and making
billions of dollars to put against the deficit. Our emergency management
agency is now the envy of the world, not the goat of the United States.
Our Small Business Administration, you heard, increased loans to women
by 86 percent, to minorities by 65 percent, and cut the budget and
doubled the overall loan volume.
So we can do these things, opportunity and responsibility. But the
most important thing of all is that we've got to make up our minds
whether we're going to go into the 21st cen-
[[Page 1280]]
tury thinking about the gender gap or the religion conflict or whether
it's poor people or middle class people or whether we're going to say,
look, we think we'll try to do something different; we believe we'll go
into the 21st century together. Everybody who is willing to work for
opportunity, everybody who's willing to be responsible, we don't care
what your race is, we don't care what your gender is, we don't care
where you come from, we don't care what you started with. We want to see
you have a chance to live out your dreams if you will define your
existence not in terms of who you're against but in terms of what it
means to be an American working together in one community going forward.
That is the most important thing.
But I'm telling you, this is the curse of the world today. You take
away the cold war and we're not worried about the evil Communists
blowing us up, somebody goes and starts torching a church and pretty
soon it becomes a thing to do in a country founded by people who were
looking for religious liberty.
So I want you to think about this. I want you to go out and talk to
people--it would suit me if you never read an article about the polls
until the day after the election--and say, look, this administration has
a record. It's been good for America. This administration and its
opponent, both the party and the candidate, have clear differences, and
we don't have to guess what they'll do because both of them have already
played their hand.
And most important of all, we've got to go into the next century
with the right kind of change. We can meet our challenges. We can
protect our values but only if we really believe that everybody should
have the chance to live out their dreams and we're determined to give
them that chance, only if we challenge everybody to be responsible and
define their lives not in terms of their ability to abuse people or walk
away from their responsibilities, and only if we respect the differences
among us.
No nation is as well-positioned as the United States to seize the
dreams of the next century. All we have to do is make up our mind that
we're going to do it together.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 8:33 p.m. at the Sheraton Washington Hotel.
In his remarks, he referred to Donald L. Fowler, co-chairman, Democratic
National Committee; Carol Pensky and Cynthia Friedman, national co-
chairs, Women's Leadership Forum; former Gov. Ann Richards of Texas; and
singer Shirley Caesar.