[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 32 (Monday, August 11, 1997)]
[Pages 1211-1216]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Democratic Business Council

August 7, 1997

    Thank you very much. Governor Romer, Tom, thank you. Thank you, Alan 
Solomont. I want to thank all the members of the administration who came 
to be with us tonight, and I thank all of you for your presence here and 
for your support.
    I was--a little insight on Presidential decisionmaking--here are the 
notes my staff gave me. Here are the notes I made at dinner. [Laughter] 
You can have either speech. Which one do you like? [Laughter] Two, two!
    I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how I think you fit into 
all this and what we've been trying to do and where we're going. When I 
ran for President, first, beginning in 1991, I was obsessed with the 
idea that we had to prepare this country for a new century and a 
completely different economy and a whole different way of living and 
relating to each other and the rest of the world and that we didn't have 
any strategy to do it. And I believed that if we were going to succeed 
we had to create a country where, as you've heard me say a thousand 
times, there was opportunity for everyone responsible enough to work for 
it, where we were coming together instead of being driven apart, and 
were we maintained our world leadership for peace and prosperity and 
freedom.
    I thought to do that it would be necessary to save progressive 
Government and to save the progressive political party, to be vital 
forces as part of that future. I thought it was necessary to break 
through a lot of these dichotomies that seem to me to be false: that you 
were either for growing the economy or preserving the environment--if 
you have to choose, we're in trouble--that you couldn't be pro-business 
and pro-labor--if you have to choose, I think in the end the country 
loses--that you couldn't be tough on crime where it was appropriate and 
still be smart and compassionate where it made sense and where it was 
the right thing to do; that you

[[Page 1212]]

couldn't be for respecting our diversity and still believe the most 
important thing is that we wind up being one America. I just think a lot 
of these dichotomies that have always been set up for us to argue about 
and take sides over are choices that we would never make in our own 
lives and that we should not make in the life of our Nation.
    And you heard Tom talking about a little of it and Roy talking about 
a little of it. It seemed to me that the right thing to do for our 
country also in the end would wind up being the right thing to do for 
the progressive cause in America and for the Democratic Party, the 
progressive party in America. We almost had to save ourselves from a 
legacy in some ways that was not entirely of the Democrats own making. 
It was obvious to me that if we didn't do something about the deficit 
there would be no more progressives in America because the middle class 
would always be completely insecure.
    We had a meeting today at the White House and my distinguished 
Treasury Secretary from New York City, Mr. Rubin, was making a comment 
about how people viewed a certain economic situation. And Erskine Bowles 
said--did I say North Carolina? I meant New York. Erskine Bowles is from 
North Carolina. So Erskine Bowles says, ``Mr. President, tell Bob that 
that's like the farmer in Louisiana with three hogs.'' And Bob Rubin 
doesn't know many farmers from Louisiana. [Laughter] So I told him--some 
of you may have heard me tell this story before, but when Huey Long was 
Governor of Louisiana in the middle of the Depression, he was out on a 
country crossroads one day making a speech to all of these farmers. And 
he was railing against people that had too much and how it ought to be 
spread around. And he saw a farmer in overalls and he said, ``Now, 
Farmer Jones, if you had a million dollars, wouldn't you give up about a 
third of it and go out here on these crossroads and spread that money 
around so all the little kids could have plenty to eat and people would 
have a roof over their heads at night?'' He said, ``Of course, I 
would.'' And he said, ``If you had a brand-new Cadillac car, wouldn't 
you ride up and down these roads and take the old folks to the hospital 
and the young people to school that couldn't afford to get there 
themselves?'' He said, ``You bet I would.'' He said, ``And farmer, if 
you had three hogs--'' And he said, ``Now, wait a minute, Governor. I've 
got three hogs.'' [Laughter]
    It seemed to me that we had to restore some economic discipline to 
this country so that people would know that their three hogs would be 
all right. So that people would know that at least they would not be 
robbed of the benefits of their own labor by the defects of the system 
in which they lived.
    And so I proposed what, at the time, was a controversial and very 
difficult budget in 1993, that only members of our party voted for, that 
was predicted to drive us into a recession. And instead in 4\1/2\ years 
it cut the deficit by 80 percent--before this last budget even passed. 
And I'm proud of that. But no one doubts the ability of Democrats to 
manage the economy now.
    I fought for expanded trade, and we had 200 trade agreements, and a 
lot of it was controversial, even within our own party. But it is clear 
from all the economic analysis that 25 percent of the growth that we 
have enjoyed in the United States in the last 4\1/2\ years has come from 
expanded trade, selling more American products and services around the 
world. It is also clear that we have, on matters of principle, always 
kept a more open market so we don't continue to open other people's 
markets who are just going to take advantage of us.
    It was clear to me that if people felt insecure on their streets, in 
their homes and their schools, that we would never feel fully free and 
prosperous even if the economy returned. So we tried to join what was 
already a developing movement toward community policing and other proven 
strategies to fight crime. And I determined that ours would be the first 
administration that would ever take on the issue of the irresponsible 
use of handguns in this country. And I come from a State where more than 
half the people have a hunting or a fishing license or both, and I 
figured if I can't take this one and talk to people and talk sense to 
people, who can?
    And so we did the Brady bill, we did the assault weapons ban. I 
still want trigger locks on these guns that children can get their hands 
on. I think that these are responsible

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things. But we've had a drop in serious crime in every single year, and 
last year we had the biggest drop in violent crime in 35 years. And the 
American people are safer, and they know it. And no one seriously doubts 
the ability of our party to be a responsible partner in keeping our 
streets safer and giving our children a more secure future. And I think 
that's important.
    I had to fight a very difficult battle on welfare. I did not want 
the welfare reform bill to be an excuse to hurt children, and I vetoed 
two bills that I thought were. But it seemed to me that since there was 
already no uniform national benefit, that the States were already in 
effective control over what the size of a welfare check was, but they 
didn't have any real responsibility because the authority was divided 
between the States and the Federal Government. And it seemed to me the 
responsible thing to do was to set up a uniform set of standards about 
how we thought the welfare program ought to work, to put guidelines and 
limits on people who could go to work if there were jobs available and 
required them to do so or to be in education and training programs, but 
to take better care of the children with adequate child care and other 
supports and nutrition and medical care.
    And that's what the welfare reform bill was all about. There were a 
lot of things in it I didn't like--cutting benefits to legal 
immigrants--but as you see, we've largely restored all the things that 
we didn't like. And we now have a bill that is contributing to by far 
the largest drop in the welfare rolls this country has ever seen. And we 
now have the smallest percentage of Americans receiving public 
assistance since 1970--smallest percentage since 1970. Now, I thought 
that was important. I thought it was important that we prove that we can 
conduct the defense and the foreign policy operations of this country. I 
no longer think that's open to serious doubt. This country is stronger, 
more secure, and is helping to build the world of the 21st century in 
the aftermath of the cold war. And I feel good about that.
    I also wanted to do things to increase people's sense of obligation 
to serve. That's what the AmeriCorps program was about. That's what the 
Presidents' Service Summit was all about.
    And finally, let me say, in the Democratic Party, what I tried to do 
is to bring in people who had previously not been active before. And the 
most important things we've done in our party are the Women's Leadership 
Forum, the Saxophone Club, and your group--your group, because we want 
people in this party to feel that they have a home, they have a role, 
and they have a contribution to make, and that their voices will be 
heard.
    Now, we've had a very good first 7 months of this year. The budget 
is a good budget, and it is a progressive one. The tax cuts are 
confined. Some of us have received some criticism from people who 
believe that I should not have signed the tax bill because it had a 
capital gains tax cut, an increase in the estate tax. But let me just 
remind you that Republicans are still in the majority in the Congress. I 
hope it won't be so after '98, but they are now. But 80 percent of that 
tax bill went to the children's tax credit, to education, and to a whole 
array of urban and poor rural redevelopment initiatives designed to 
bring the areas that are still isolated from our prosperity into the 
mainstream--80 percent.
    Secondly, there are strict caps on how much money can be spent in 
the first 5 years and in the second 5 years of this tax program. And 
even with the little we added on to the size of the tax package, it's 
still about one-eighth--one-eighth--the size of the tax bill adopted in 
1981, which led to these permanent deficits. We did not go off in some 
sort of tax-cutting binge designed to erode the future stability of this 
country. And we now estimate with conservative estimates that this 
budget will produce a surplus by 2002 at the latest and a surplus for 
several years thereafter.
    So we are doing the right things, and we've had a good fall. We've 
also invited the first new members to join NATO. We've established 
alliance with Russia and Ukraine. We have worked very hard to get the 
country, for the very first time, to embrace national education 
standards. And I hope all of you will help us get every State in the 
country to do that.

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    We had the Summit of Service that I mentioned, and I launched a very 
important initiative on race relations which will last for at least a 
year, as we examine for the first time in a noncrisis way not only what 
the unfinished business is in America between the white majority and 
African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans but an equally, perhaps even 
more important question over the long run, which is what are we going to 
be like as a nation in 30 years when, unless something happens, there 
will be no majority race in America. And we will become the world's 
first truly great multiracial, multiethnic democracy.
    And unlike--there are many ethnic groups, for example, in a nation 
like Russia, but most of them live in discreet parts of the country. In 
our country, we're going to have 150--actually, more than 150 different 
racial and ethnic groups largely sharing the future together.
    So it's been an exciting time. In the fall, we have a lot of other 
agendas coming up. And let me just mention some of the things that I 
hope to get done in the remainder of this year. I think it's important 
that we continue our work to expand trade. This year we have already 
concluded an agreement on information technology and telecommunications 
services that will amount to a $5 billion tax reduction on American 
products in these areas sold around the world, that will open up 90 
percent of the world markets to American products in an area where we 
lead the world and we are creating very good jobs. We need more of this.
    I know there's going to be a great controversy over this trade 
debate, but let me put it to you this way: We have 4 percent of the 
world's population. We have 20 percent of the world's wealth. The rest 
of the world's economy, even though it's on a lower base, is growing at 
3 times the rate of the American economy--even under the astute 
management of our administration--[laughter]--because if you start from 
a lower base, you grow faster.
    Now, if you want your children to live in a country that may have 
even less than 4 percent of the world's population and still around 20 
percent of the world's wealth because of how hard we work and our skills 
and our ability, there are only two things we can do. The first is to go 
into our cities and our isolated rural areas and make markets and 
taxpayers and successful employers and employees and business people out 
of the people that haven't been reached in our own country, number one. 
And the second is to sell to the other 96 percent of the people in the 
world. This is not rocket science. We don't have an option. And the 
things that we sell by and large are higher value-added products that 
create good jobs in America.
    Are there issues of trade fairness? Of course, there are. We have 
relatively more open markets than other countries. We have done it for 
years as a matter of responsibility to try to help poor countries lift 
themselves up; also keeps us on our toes more and makes us more 
competitive, and that's one reason we're in the shape we're in today.
    Should we fight for a fair deal for our workers? Of course, we 
should. Should we fight to improve the global environment as we increase 
trade? Of course, we should. But we can't walk away from this.
    I'm going to Latin America in the fall. About a year after I took 
office, we had this great Summit of the Americas. And all the countries 
in the Americas said, ``We want to have a free trade area that America 
and that Canada are a part of. We want our future to be with you.'' 
There will soon be a billion people in Latin America, second fastest 
growing area of the world. When I go down there, I want them to believe 
America is still leading the way toward greater prosperity. The rest of 
the world economy is on a fast track. the only question is whether we're 
going to be leading it or dragging up the rear. And I hope we can 
prevail upon the Congress to work through this in a way that is as 
satisfactory as possible to the people who have legitimate concerns 
about the disruptions that the global economy can cause.
    The second thing we're going to try to do is pass the McCain-
Feingold campaign finance reform bill. Now, the good news from my point 
of view--it's not such good news for you; we can still have the 
Democratic Business Council with its price of entry under McCain-
Feingold. [Laughter] But it will eliminate most of the serious questions 
people have about the campaign finance sys

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tem at present, and it will put more pressure on both the Democrats and 
the Republicans to go out and get more people to contribute, to make 
more people feel like they're a part of the system, and that will be a 
very good thing. It will require us to involve more and more and more 
people.
    But let me finally say--this is very important--if it's going to 
work we have to lower the cost of campaigns. And the only way you can 
lower the cost of modern campaigns is to provide free air time or 
drastically reduced air time, which is why I have also worked so hard on 
that.
    We're going to try to pass the juvenile justice bill, modeled on 
what has happened in a number of cities, but especially in Boston 
where--this may surprise you if you don't live in Boston--it has been 
almost 2 full years since a single child has lost his or her life to a 
handgun--almost 2 full years. And again, it's not rocket science. They 
have good community policing. They have good neighborhood block watch 
groups. The neighbors and the police work together. The police and the 
probation officers work together. They make house calls in Boston, just 
like doctors used to. The kids in trouble, they go to the child's home 
and they sit on the couch in the living room and they talk to the 
parents. And unbelievably enough, they have a 70 percent compliance rate 
with probation orders. There's no city in the country that's even close 
to that. Why? Old-fashioned, human contact in an organized, disciplined 
way, doing what is smart as well as being tough. We want to do that 
everywhere.
    We want to begin the work of dealing with entitlement reform. And 
people say, ``Well, there's not an emergency now. Social Security is all 
right until 2029. You just put another decade on the Medicare Trust 
Fund.'' That's true. But when the baby boomers retire, there will be 
just about two people working for one person in his or her retirement 
years. A lot of us will work longer--by choice. But the ratio will be 
awesome.
    By making modest changes now, we can avoid imposing severe changes 
that will have to be made by our children. And for those of us that are 
part of that baby boom generation, which are basically everybody between 
the ages of 34 and 50, it seems to me that we owe it to our children and 
to the strength and long-term health of our economy and our society to 
deal with the long-term entitlement issues now, when by making modest 
changes we can avoid more severe changes later.
    We're going to have to deal with the issue of climate change in a 
responsible way. No one seriously questions anymore that the climate is 
warming and that it is going to have some adverse consequences. The 
question is, how do you do that and grow the economy? Is there a way to 
do it? Of course, there is. If we would change our habits tomorrow, just 
some of our habits, we could with no extra charge, no cost at all on 
society, get rid of 20 percent of the greenhouse gases with presently 
available technology--tomorrow. So what we have to do is to try to find 
a way to organize ourselves, increase our awareness, and do this in a 
way that doesn't cripple the economy. I think we can do that.
    Finally, the First Lady and I are going to have a conference on 
child care in late October. It is still the number one concern of many, 
many, many working people who believe that they cannot afford or find or 
have access to quality, affordable child care.
    Now, those are the things we're going to be doing. In addition to 
that, Eli Segal, who's here tonight, heads my national organization 
where we are mobilizing employers who will agree to hire people from 
welfare to work. Next week we're going to St. Louis to announce several 
hundred businesses that have joined us in that endeavor. We've still got 
a long way to go. We only have about 22 percent of the schoolchildren in 
the country committed, whose leaders have committed to take the national 
test, fourth-grade reading test, the eighth-grade math test, by 1999. 
We're going to keep working on that.
    But the point I want to make is, every single one of these things is 
something that I hope you are proud of, that is part of a dynamic 
mainstream political movement in America, that your contributions and 
your support have made possible. And this is a better country because of 
it. It's a better country because we're not out there trying to split 
everybody all up and divide people every day and keep people full of hot 
air instead of trying to get people together and

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keep working forward and moving forward. And that's what I'm trying to 
build for the future and what I want you to be a part of.
    Let me just say this in closing. Every day I try to imagine what I 
hope the country will be like 30 years from now. And if that guides a 
President and you work back from there, you'll be amazed how much easier 
that makes the decisionmaking process. And when I think of the young 
people that are here tonight, all these fine young people that are 
working for the Democratic Party and did all the work to make this 
possible tonight--what will determine what kind of America they live in?
    Number one, will we succeed in being a truly multiracial, 
multiethnic democracy, where we not only respect but celebrate our 
diversity and still say the most important thing is we're one America? 
Number two, will we stop making excuses for ourselves and finally 
embrace the idea that all children can learn, and we're going to see 
that they learn at internationally accepted levels of excellence? Number 
three, will we reach into the areas that have not been touched by our 
prosperity and figure out a way to hook them into the future? Number 
four, will we figure out a way to grow the economy while enhancing the 
environment? And finally, will we continue to do what it takes to lead 
the world when it comes to peace and freedom and prosperity?
    If we do those things, the best days of this country are still 
ahead. And when we are all much older we can look back on this moment 
and say, because we were here then and because we did what we did, we 
did prepare our country for the 21st century. We saved progressive 
Government for its higher purposes, and we revitalized America's 
progressive party to make it go on.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:35 p.m. in the Colonial Room at the 
Mayflower Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Roy Romer of 
Colorado, general chair, and Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, 
Democratic National Committee; C. Thomas Hendrickson, chair, Democratic 
Business Council; and Eli J. Segal, president and chief executive 
officer, Welfare to Work Partnership.