[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 27 (Monday, July 7, 1997)]
[Pages 995-998]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the New England Presidential Luncheon in Boston

June 30, 1997

    Thank you. This is a pretty rowdy group today. [Laughter] And if you 
weren't rowdy before Senator Kennedy talked, you must be now. [Laughter]
    Let me say to the mayor, to Senator Kerry, Senator Kennedy, to all 
the Members of the Congress that I have been with today, the State 
officials, Steve Grossman, Alan Solomont, Governor Mike Dukakis and 
Kitty, who are here, and all of you--Joan Menard--I've probably 
forgotten somebody behind me; I'm testing my memory, which is 
deteriorating rapidly here. [Laughter] I'm delighted to be back in 
Boston, and I'm glad to have the chance to say again, thank you for 
being the number one State in America in the support for Bill Clinton 
and Al Gore in 1996. I'm very grateful to you all. Thank you.
    Thank you for being here for us in 1995, when everyone said that the 
days of our administration were numbered, the Demo

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cratic Party was on the downhill. You know all that stuff they said. You 
were right, and they were wrong, and I thank you for that.
    But most importantly, I thank you because you have helped us to 
prove that it's good for America to give opportunity to everybody who's 
responsible enough to work for it. You've helped us to prove that it's 
good for America to think about the future. You've helped us to prove 
that it's good for America to give everybody a chance without regard to 
race or gender or any other thing that divides us if we are united by 
our shared values and our willingness to be good citizens. You've helped 
us to prove that we can lead the world and be strong at home. And I 
think that all of you should be very proud of that.
    We are trying to prepare this country for a new century in which the 
young people in this audience will be able to do things with their lives 
that most of the rest of us could not even imagine. And I believe we are 
well on our way to doing it. You all know how we're doing today compared 
to 5 years ago. What I want us to think about is how we can be doing 5, 
10, 15, 20 years from now.
    I'm proud of the fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 
24 years and the lowest inflation rate in 30 years and the biggest 
decline in inequality among working people since the 1960's. I'm proud 
of all that. The biggest drop in welfare rolls in history, the biggest 
drop in the crime rate in 36 years, I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the 
fact that we have taken dramatic strides to protect our environment with 
safe drinking water and new clean air standards and new food standards 
and record numbers of toxic waste dumps cleaned up and record land set 
aside in preservation forever. Only the two Roosevelt administrations 
have set aside as much land to preserve for our country's future.
    But there is a lot to do. And you have to be a part of that. Because 
we're going through a transition in which we're changing so fast we can 
never be satisfied with where we are, we have to keep worrying about 
where we're going. And let me just mention one or two things, if I 
might.
    First of all, we're debating this balanced budget plan. If we pass a 
balanced budget that's faithful to the agreement I made, it will have 
the biggest increase in health care for children since Medicaid was 
enacted in 1965--the biggest. Thank you, Senator Kennedy, for leading 
that. It will have the biggest increase in Federal support for education 
since 1965. It will have the biggest increase in Federal support, to 
help everybody in this country who is willing to work go on to college, 
since the GI bill was passed over 50 years ago.
    It is a good budget for the American people, but it is important 
that we be faithful to it. If we are faithful to the agreement, it will 
help cities like Boston to take sites that have been polluted and are 
therefore useless now and clean them up and use them to provide for 
development and new jobs and new opportunities, to make sure this 
economic recovery reaches people who haven't felt it yet. If we are 
faithful to it, we can do all these things.
    The other thing that I am determined to do, that I spoke a little 
about in Washington before I left today, is to get a tax bill out of 
this committee--out of the Congress that helps all the American people. 
We can pay for this tax cut.
    First of all, let me say this: I would not support any tax cut that 
will bring back the bad old days of exploding deficits. I would not do 
that. This tax bill, in the first 5 years, is about one-tenth of the 
cost of the tax bill that was adopted in 1981, when the Reagan 
administration came in and asked us to adopt trickle-down economics. So 
we're not talking about a huge bill here. What we are talking about is a 
bill that is basically the dividend the American people have earned for 
bringing this economy back. And I believe it's important to pass a bill 
that will give everyone a fair chance to participate in it and that will 
be faithful to the budget agreement, which means among other things that 
we have to provide substantial resources to help middle class people to 
raise their children and educate them and then keep on getting an 
education for a lifetime. We have got to make at least 2 years of 
college as universal in the 21st century as a high school diploma is 
today.
    Why did Boston come back? Why is Massachusetts coming back? Just 
drive around this town and look at the concentration of world-class 
universities. Every person in this

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country who gets out of high school and has at least 2 years of fine 
education afterward has a fair chance to get a decent job with a growing 
income. Everybody who doesn't is likely to get a job with declining 
incomes.
    We must not use this tax bill to help people who don't need it too 
much without giving the middle class the tools they need to make higher 
education universal in America in the 21st century. We can do it, and we 
have to do it.
    There are a lot of other things going on there now. We're reviewing 
this tobacco settlement, and again, a lot of people who have fought for 
the public health for years and years and years deserve a lot of credit 
for this. I have no final opinion on it yet, but I will say this: We 
cannot agree to anything which undermines the capacity of the Federal 
Government to protect the public health and the health of our children. 
If this settlement furthers it, we should be for it. If it doesn't, we 
should not. That ought to be the test.
    In the area of crime, let me say the crime rate's going down; that's 
the good news. The bad news is it's still going up among people under 18 
in many places but not in Boston. And the mayor heard me in San 
Francisco last week saying to the mayors, I am trying to pass a crime 
bill for juveniles in this country that will give other cities the tools 
that Boston has used to take us now almost 2 full years without a child 
under 18 being killed by a handgun. If we can do it here, it ought to be 
done everywhere in America, and we can do it.
    And finally, let me say we've had a remarkable amount of success 
moving people from welfare to work. But we have to create about another 
million jobs in the next 4 years. I've done everything I could to 
mobilize the private sector, but we can do more. Many of you have helped 
in this regard, and for that I am grateful. In this budget agreement 
there are specific provisions which will make it easier for us to work 
with cities and the private sector to hire people to move from welfare 
to work.
    But I would just say on that portion of the budget, everyone who 
ever criticized the welfare program and everyone who ever said every 
able-bodied person ought to work, now has a moral obligation to support 
laws that will make sure there are jobs there. You cannot tell people 
they have to go to work unless they have work. That is a big moral 
obligation of this balanced budget, and we dare not pass a budget that 
walks away from that obligation to people. We have said, ``You have to 
work.'' We have to give them the jobs and the chance to build dignified, 
successful lives for themselves and their children.
    The last point I would like to make is this: In the end, the success 
of the United States in the new century will depend upon a remarkable 
partnership between our Government, our private sector, and individual 
citizens. I have been very moved by the things that I have seen 
repeatedly here in Boston in the form of citizen service: the City Year 
program, the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council, all the people that I've 
seen volunteering in various aspects of the effort to keep juveniles out 
of trouble and away from violence. We need more of that.
    And finally, we have got to prove that we can become the world's 
first truly multiracial, multiethnic democracy. A couple of weeks ago, I 
went out to the University of California at San Diego and asked the 
American people to join me for at least a year, and maybe longer, in a 
national conversation about where we are today on the subject of our 
racial differences, what we have to do to make sure that we are thinking 
and acting right about this and what new laws and policies we need.
    I just leave you with this thought: In the United States today, 
there is one State only, Hawaii, that has no majority race. Within 3 to 
5 years, our largest State, California, will have no majority race. 
Today, we have 5 school districts with over 100 different racial and 
ethnic groups represented among the student bodies--5 school districts. 
Within 2 years, we'll have 12, maybe 15. And within 30 years, there will 
be no majority race in the United States. We had better start thinking 
about how we are going to make sure that what we always said, which is 
that America is a place of ideas and ideals, not a place where there is 
a dominant race, a dominant class, a dominant in-crowd--we better make 
sure that's true.

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    And so I leave you with this. The people of Boston and Massachusetts 
have embraced the vision that I have painted for the future, more 
vigorously, more consistently, more ardently than any other place in the 
United States. I ask you to stay with it. Because if you imagine what 
the future is going to be and how we would make it, it is clear that if 
we succeed in becoming the world's first truly multiracial, multiethnic, 
multireligious democracy, we will be better positioned in the 21st 
century, even than we are now, to lead the world toward peace and 
freedom and prosperity and to give our children a better future than any 
generation has ever known.
    That's what I'm dedicated to. We've got 3\1/2\ more years to work 
for it, and your presence here today has dramatically increased the 
chances that we will succeed.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:18 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the 
Copley Plaza Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Thomas Menino, 
of Boston; Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, and Steve Grossman, 
national chair, Democratic National Committee; Mike Dukakis, former 
Governor of Massachusetts and his wife, Kitty; and Joan Menard, 
Massachusetts State party chair.