[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 26 (Monday, June 30, 1997)]
[Pages 967-972]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Dinner for Senator Carol Moseley-Braun in Chicago, Illinois

June 25, 1997

    Thank you very much, Mayor and Mrs. Daley; Reverend Barrow; 
Representative Jones and Chairman LaPaille; Mr. Houlihan. I'm sorry Paul 
Simon left. I have sat in on so many of his speeches, and he sat in on 
so many of mine--I was sort of getting used to getting back to our old 
routine. I miss Paul Simon in the Senate, but I'm glad he's still here 
caring about Illinois. He doesn't have an ax to grind, and I think we 
ought to listen to his recommendations.
    Let me also say that I had a good time, Mayor, when I got off the 
plane and I took my little helicopter to Meigs Field, soon to be Daley 
Park--[laughter]--and there were still people there when I got out, and 
they said, ``Welcome home, Mr. President,'' and I love that. Chicago has 
sort of become my second home--Illinois has. And you all remember that 
on St. Patrick's Day in 1992, the victory we had here and up in Michigan 
pretty well assured the nomination, and I will always be grateful for 
that.
    And I try to water my Chicago roots whenever I can. You know, we had 
the Bulls at the White House the other day, and Scottie Pippen got up 
and referred to me as his ``homeboy''--[laughter]--after which Michael 
Jordan said that Hillary would always be first in the hearts of 
Chicagoans. That's a battle I was glad to lose. [Laughter]

[[Page 968]]

    The Mayor was terrific leading the mayors this year. He did a great 
job. You should all be very proud of him. And they had a great meeting 
in San Francisco. I was afraid that his tenure might be tarnished by the 
outbreak of civil disobedience here when they started inter-league play 
in baseball. [Laughter] And I want to congratulate you for doing 
whatever was necessary to avoid that. [Laughter]
    Let me say--we're all among friends tonight--I want to make a fairly 
pointed and brief argument for why I'm here and why I hope that Senator 
Carol Moseley-Braun will be reelected. In 1992, when I ran for 
President, I had an idea that we could only change America if we changed 
the way we were doing politics, if we broke out of the debates which 
were always dividing people into yesterday's categories. It's okay to be 
a liberal or a conservative, but it's not okay to be irrelevant in 
American politics. It's not okay to be divisive for the sake of being 
divisive. It's not okay to be interested in rhetoric only and no 
reality. It's not okay to trap yourself in a pattern of conduct which 
never permits progress to occur.
    And it was obvious to me that we had to change what we had to do and 
that we weren't even asking the right questions. So I started with what 
I thought the right question was: What would I like American to look 
like when my daughter is my age? How would I like America to go into 
this new century? What do we need to do to prepare America to go into 
the new century?
    I still believe in what I said then: I want our country in the 21st 
century to be a place where every American without regard to race, 
gender, or background has a chance to live out his or her dreams; where 
our communities are full of citizens who are exercising their individual 
responsibilities for themselves, their families, their communities, and 
their country; where we are celebrating our diversity but coming 
together as one America in a strong united community; and where, because 
we did these things, we can still lead the world to greater peace and 
freedom and prosperity. That's what I still want for our country in this 
new century.
    What is the principal way we have to achieve that? We have to look 
at every significant area of national life and ask ourselves: Does it 
create more opportunity for all? Does it induce more responsibility from 
all? Does it help us build a community of all Americans? If the era of 
big Government and big centralized bureaucracies is over, that doesn't 
let Government off the hook; far from it. In some ways, we should be 
more active. But it does mean we have to focus on what works, which is 
giving people the tools they need to empower them to seize their own 
opportunities and solve their own problems and build their own lives and 
their own community.
    So we took that approach. In the economy we said we have to bring 
the deficit down, it's killing America. But we have to invest more in 
our children, in our future, in technology and science and research. We 
can't just stop investing in medical research because we've got a 
deficit. We have to cut in the right way. And our opponents said it 
couldn't be done. Some of those in our own party said it couldn't be 
done because you couldn't cut and invest. And every single person in the 
other party said that if my economic plan passed in 1993 the country 
would go into a nose dive, we'd have a terrible recession, it would be 
the awfulest thing you ever saw. And so every single one of them voted 
against it, which means that if Carol Moseley-Braun had not been in the 
Senate we would not have prevailed.
    Now, on that alone, she deserves your support for reelection. The 
State of Illinois is a lot better off today than it was on the day I was 
sworn in as President in 1993, and that economic program we passed by 
one single solitary vote in the Senate and the House is a big reason. 
Vice President Gore even had to vote in that. And as he says, whenever 
he votes, we win. [Laughter]
    But she was there. She stood up. She listened to all the naysayers 
and said, ``I don't believe that's right.'' Well, now, before this 
balanced budget plan passed, we cut the deficit by 77 percent; we got 
4.8 percent unemployment rate, the lowest unemployment in 24 years; the 
lowest inflation in 30 years; and something that's very important to 
Democrats, the biggest decline in inequality among working people in 
over 30 years. And Carol Moseley-Braun played a major role in bring

[[Page 969]]

ing that about, and she deserves your support because of it, and I hope 
you will give it to her.
    We thought we could be tough and smart about crime and give the 
streets back to the people if we just listened to people like Mayor 
Daley, who had been a prosecutor, the police officers of our countries, 
the community leaders, and fashioned a crime bill that made sense. We 
did it, and we supported the innovative work going on in communities all 
over this country. Last year we had the biggest decline in crime in 36 
years--in 36 years. And not all but nearly all of the folks in the other 
party opposed us on that and said, ``What we really need is tough talk 
and more jails and nothing else.'' We said, ``What we need is more 
police, tougher punishment on people who are serious offenders, but more 
aggressive efforts to prevent young people from getting in trouble in 
the first place.'' And that strategy has worked. That strategy has 
worked.
    Now, it's not as if this is a debatable point. You know, we've had 
the debate, and now we've got the evidence. And it would seem to me that 
the people of Illinois would want to support someone who is out there 
advocating policies that work and a direction that's good for the 
ordinary citizens of Illinois, for the business community and the 
working people--for the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy--because 
we're going together, and we're going forward together.
    And I could give you example after example of that. But we have 
changed the way politics works in Washington. It drives some people 
crazy, but we've done it. There are lots of people who really, I think, 
in Washington who are just kind of unhappy when the country is happy. 
You know, they would prefer it if the world really worked like those 
talk shows, you know, where people scream at each other and call each 
other names and hurl labels around like they really meant something.
    But out here in the real world, in all those little towns I visited 
on the bus in Illinois in '92 and '96, those people don't need talking 
heads screaming at each other; they need reasoned public debate by 
people who care deeply about their future and what their children's 
lives will be like, actually producing results that make a difference. 
And that's what we're trying to do. And that's what you ought to reward, 
because that's what helps the people of Illinois to build a better 
future.
    And if you just look at this budget debate that we're having, it's a 
historic, marvelous thing. And I still believe, even though we're 
disagreeing mostly because Members of Congress, being contentious as 
they are--some of them don't want to adhere to the terms of the 
agreement at some point. But if you look at that agreement, it would 
balance the budget but it would give us the biggest increase in health 
care investment for children since Medicaid passed in 1965. It would 
balance the budget, but it would give us the biggest increase in 
educational investment for our children since 1965 and the biggest 
increase in access to colleges and universities since the GI bill was 
passed 50 years ago. That's what's in that balanced budget. And make no 
mistake about it, those priorities are there because of our side and 
what we believe and what we brought to the table. And I think they 
deserve to be supported.
    And I'll just give you three specific examples of things that bear 
the imprint of Carol Moseley-Braun: one in the past--I'll give you 
four--two in the budget, and one still in the future.
    Number one, she was a cosponsor of the Family and Medical Leave Act. 
It was the first bill I signed as President. Every month, my staff pulls 
for me a representative sample of mail I get from ordinary American 
citizens, people I've never met, people I never will meet. And among the 
most moving letters I have ever received are those that come from people 
who tell me: ``My wife got sick.'' ``My child got sick.'' ``My father 
was dying.'' ``I got to take a little time off from work without losing 
my job.'' ``I got to be true and faithful to my family and true and 
faithful to my job, and I didn't lose it.'' ``I'm a better employee and 
America is a better place because of the Family and Medical Leave Act.''
    Believe me, if people who thought like us had never attained the 
White House and kept the majority in Congress when we did, it never 
would have become the law of the land. The other side said, ``It's going 
to hurt the economy.'' It was the first bill I signed

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in '93. If it's hurting the economy, it's doing a poor job of it.
    I believe we're a better place when people can succeed at home and 
at work. This is a problem that affects Americans of all income groups. 
A lot of upper income people tear their hair out worrying about how they 
can do what they're supposed to do at work and still do right by their 
children. This family leave act symbolizes the values this country ought 
to stand for.
    Two things in the budget. Number one, in 1993 we knew we would have 
to do something extra if we wanted our cities and people who had 
literally been physically isolated from the mainstream of life to have 
any chance whatever to participate in the free enterprise system and 
succeed. So we created the empowerment zone concept, which Carol 
Moseley-Braun supported and Chicago is participating. We created the 
Community Development Financial Institutions Act to set up banks like 
the South Shore Bank here in Chicago all over America so that people who 
could otherwise never get any credit to start their own business--very 
often a self-employed business--in isolated inner cities and poor rural 
areas would have a chance to do that.
    Hillary did a lot of work on these things when we were still living 
in Arkansas and has been all over the world promoting these kind of 
community financial institutions and these microenterprise businesses 
and loans to them in developing countries. It is amazing how much your 
Government has done to help people who would otherwise be desperately 
poor in countries all over the world to get credit to start their own 
businesses, and we had never done anything to help our own people do the 
same things. Carol Moseley-Braun was a cosponsor of that. In this 
balanced budget amendment we more than doubled the funds for the 
community development financial institutions. Everybody ought to have a 
chance to participate in this economic boom, and it won't be good enough 
for me until everybody does. And that's what she's trying to do.
    Number two, the cities of this country have worked and worked and 
worked to bring back economic vitality, and we now see unemployment in 
our 50 largest cities falling by a third in the last 4 years. We've got 
economic growth coming back, and one of the biggest barriers to growth 
in the city is an environmental problem, where sites have been abandoned 
where economic activity used to occur, and it is not economical for 
someone else to come in and redevelop those sites and put people to work 
because of the cost of environmental cleanup. And our balanced budget--
and these sites, by the way, are called brownfields. Most Americans 
don't know what that is. You read of brownfield--a brownfield is a 
place, almost always in a city, where people used to make money and they 
left, and it's now polluted, and people can't afford to go in and make 
money there again. Otherwise, the cities would very often be the most 
economical places to invest for new business because that's where the 
labor pool is--very often.
    So what we have done is to come up with a strategy to give tax 
credits to people who invest there and also to invest a lot more money 
through the Environmental Protection Agency to try to help clean them up 
so we can have economic vitality coming back to the cities. Carol 
Moseley-Braun is one of the chief cosponsors of the brownfields 
legislation. It's a very important part of Chicago's future and 
important to Illinois. And you ought to be for it.
    And the last thing I want to say is Carol Moseley-Braun is the first 
person who came to me and said, ``Mr. President, I know the National 
Government has never done this before, but we ought to try to do 
something about the crumbling buildings in our country's school 
system.'' We've got too many places like a school district where I was 
in Florida recently, when I had my unfortunate accident, where the 
children were going to school in 17 trailer houses, as well as the 
regular school building. That's how over-crowded they were.
    I was in Philadelphia the other day; the average age of a school 
building in Philadelphia is 65 years of age. Now, a lot of those schools 
are very well built, but they're in poor repair. And there are a lot of 
school districts that simply don't have the property tax base and simply 
don't have a high enough percentage of parents living in the school 
district as property owners to do everything they need

[[Page 971]]

to do to rebuild these buildings. I'm trying to put a computer in every 
classroom and library in the country. It will be of precious little 
comfort if the ceiling is leaking and the windows are cracked.
    And Carol Moseley-Braun said we ought to do something about this. 
And she persuaded me to offer a partial solution to a huge national 
challenge. And in the budget agreement I could not persuade the leaders 
of the Congress, the majority, to go along with it. But I still believe 
in the end we'll get this done, especially if you reelect her, because 
it's the right thing to do.
    But here's a case where she was out front on an issue. She said, 
``We have a national interest. We're fixing to have the biggest increase 
in investment in education from the National Government in a whole 
generation, and we're going to leave tens of thousands of our children 
in substandard physical facilities where it will be very difficult for 
them to learn and for the teachers to teach. And we can't solve the 
whole problem, but we ought to give States and localities the incentive 
to do more and say, `If you will do more, we'll do more to help you. You 
have to carry your load, but if you will, we'll do more to help you.' ''
    That is leadership. That's what you hire people for. You hire people 
to make good decisions, to make your life better, to give you the tools 
to make the most of your own lives and you hire people to look to the 
future and come up with leadership ideas that may not be accepted when 
they're first floated but that have merit, that are right, and that in 
the end are going to prevail if you give the people who are advocating 
them the chance to serve long enough to do it.
    That's my simple case to you. This is a better country today because 
in 1992 the State of Illinois sent Carol Moseley-Braun, a Democrat, to 
the United States Senate instead of her opponent. If you had sent her 
opponent there, the economic program I advanced would have failed by one 
vote and this would be a different country today. You should reward 
people who do things that are good for this country. And it's a better 
country because we have someone like her up there advocating these 
innovating approaches in the environment, in the economy, in families, 
and in education. Listen, our best days are still ahead of us. Don't kid 
yourself, this country has got a brilliant future. But we have to face 
our challenges.
    And I close with this point: About 10 days ago I went out to San 
Diego and gave a speech about race, not yesterday's racial challenges 
but tomorrow's. And I pointed out, among other things, that today we 
already have five school districts in America where the children come 
from over 100 different racial and ethnic groups. In a matter of a year 
or two, we'll have 12 school districts.
    We have a large number of our biggest counties, including this one, 
where there are people from over 100 different racial and ethnic groups. 
Today we have one State, Hawaii, where there is no majority race. In 3 
years, California will join Hawaii, and they represent 13 percent of the 
total population of America. But within 30 years, America will have no 
majority race.
    We must find a way to work with each other across racial lines, to 
sit down and talk honestly with each other, and to realize that we have 
a deep and profound stake in the success of each other's children. 
That's what I couldn't help thinking about when those kids were up here 
singing tonight. You didn't care what color they were, did you? And you 
didn't care what their backgrounds were. And they made you feel better, 
didn't they? You felt better when they were singing than you've felt all 
night long. Why? Because they represented the best of you and all of 
your hopes for the future.
    One of the things I like about Carol Moseley-Braun is she can work 
with different kinds of people. She can reach across the lines that 
divide, and she gets up there every day and tries to get something done. 
And that's why I tried to become your President. That's the test that I 
always wanted to measure myself against. But most importantly, that's 
the right thing for all those children that were up here singing.
    So you think about those things, and think about them today, 
tomorrow, and through November of 1998, and send her back to the Senate 
so that we can keep moving America forward.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

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Note: The President spoke at 8 p.m. in the Ballroom at the Sheraton 
Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Richard M. Daley and his 
wife, Margaret; Rev. Willie Barrow of Operation PUSH; Emil Jones, 
president, Illinois State Senate; Gary LaPaille, chair, Illinois 
Democratic Party; and James Houlihan, Cook County assessor.