[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 37 (Monday, September 15, 1997)]
[Pages 1304-1308]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Dinner

September 9, 1997

    Thank you very much. First I want to thank Steve Grossman for his 
leadership and his dedication. I had an opportunity to be with Steve and 
his wife during my holiday, and I met his son, who was singing for me 
with the Princeton Glee Club. You saw Steve standing here--his son is 
6'5'' and weighs 290 pounds. [Laughter] So I tell you that to say, do 
not underestimate this man. [Laughter] He has hidden power that 
manifests itself in all kinds of interesting ways.
    I thank Tom Hendrickson for the work that he's done on the 
Democratic Business Council. I love this group, and I'm very proud of 
the fact that since I've been President we've added hundreds and 
hundreds and hundreds of members to this group, people we asked to give 
contributions that are quite generous but by today's standards are still 
fairly moderate, because we want to get large numbers of people who want 
to participate with us in making the future for the Democratic Party.
    I thank Alan Solomont. And I want to thank my Budget Director, Frank 
Raines, for coming tonight. After he engineered the balanced budget 
agreement, I thought he would never do anything else for the rest of his 
life. [Laughter] He thought he was entitled to retire, but I said no.
    I had a great day today. I hope you did. I had a great day. I met 
with some wonderful people. I was able to see some progress in a lot of 
areas where we've been working hard. But I started the day--or I didn't 
start the day but in the middle of the day, at noon, I went to American 
University to give a speech about what I hoped we would do in the last 3 
months and couple of weeks of this year. And it's a fascinating place, 
American University. They have students from over 140 different racial 
and ethnic and national groups. Ninety percent of the students are 
involved in community service. That's an astonishing thing.
    American University 34 years ago was the site of President Kennedy's 
famous speech on arms control in the cold war. And many people believe 
it was the finest speech he ever gave. What I reminded the students of 
today was that in that speech, instead of just focusing on the problems 
that existed then between the United States and the Soviet Union, John 
Kennedy actually imagined a world where there was no more cold war, 
there was no more communist threat, our two nations were no longer 
enemies. We are now living in the world that he imagined 34 years ago.
    And I made that point to tell them that they had to imagine the 
world they wanted to live in in the 21st century, and that everything I 
have done for the last 4\1/2\ years was a product of what I had imagined 
we would do and should do as a country.
    It was almost 6 years ago that I announced for President at a time 
when our country was

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in a very different position than it is now, when we seemed to be 
drifting into the future and be more divided than we ought to be and 
somewhat uncertain about what our role in the world ought to be. It 
seemed to me clear that we were going through a time where people were 
dramatically changing the way they work, the way they live, the way they 
relate to each other, the way we relate to the rest of the world, and 
that what is always called upon at a time like that is to take a new 
course that is consistent with the oldest values of this country.
    And to me, my whole work has always been about three things: One, 
creating opportunity for everybody responsible enough to work for it; 
two, making sure our country remains the leading force for peace and 
freedom and prosperity in the world; and three, making sure that out of 
all of our differences, which are legion, we still come together as one 
America. Opportunity, responsibility, community: Those are the things 
that I think about every day. And I've been thinking about them every 
day for 6 years and, indeed, even longer than that.
    Now, we can be proud of where this country is. The country has got a 
lot of genuine hope and a lot of solid achievement. Before the budget 
was balanced, thanks to the work that the Democrats did in 1993, we had 
reduced the deficit by 80 percent. We had a historic drop in the welfare 
rolls. We had huge drops in the crime rate. You have places in inner 
cities and isolated rural areas that are beginning to see a renaissance 
of growth and development again where there hasn't been any in a very 
long time.
    Now, this balanced budget agreement not only gives us the first 
balanced budget since 1969, when President Johnson presented his last 
budget before leaving office, it also gives us the largest increase in 
health investment since Medicaid in 1965, which will be used primarily 
but not exclusively to provide health insurance for about 5 million 
children that don't have it now. It provides the largest investment 
increase in education since 1965, which will be used, among other 
things, to make sure we reach our goal of hooking up all the classrooms 
and the libraries to the Internet by the year 2000, adding large numbers 
of children to the Head Start rolls, putting another 100,000 work-study 
positions in for college students, and doing a number of things that 
will help make our schools better. And finally, of course, we passed the 
tax portions of the bill, which among other things--and I think most 
importantly--essentially opened the doors of college education to all 
Americans who are willing to work for it, so that we can now say to a 
child struggling in a family, maybe having a hard time making ends meet, 
``If you stay in school, if you make decent grades, and if you'll work 
for it, you can go to college. You'll either get a Pell grant or a work-
study position or get a tax credit that will send you to college. You do 
not have to worry about that anymore.''
    So that's all very encouraging. But what I think is important is 
that we recognize we're living in a very dynamic time, and we have to 
keep pushing. I'm glad we have 13 million new jobs. I'm glad the 
unemployment rate is the lowest in 24 years. I'm glad the inflation rate 
is the lowest in 30 years. I'm glad that consumer confidence and 
business investment are at record highs. I'm glad about all of that. But 
it is not enough. I'm glad the crime rate has dropped, but it's still 
too high. And under our welfare reform law, we have to move even more 
people from welfare to work in order to meet the requirements of the law 
and avoid hurting any children, which we don't want to do.
    So we have a lot more to do. And today I talked to the students at 
American University--I'll just say very briefly--about the things we're 
going to try to do just between now and the first of the year. First, we 
have to pass appropriation bills which implement the budget. I think 
it's very important that you understand the balanced budget agreement is 
a 5-year budget plan that enacted the tax cuts and the budget numbers 
for Medicare and Medicaid and the other so-called entitlements. But for 
education, transportation, everything else, we have to pass a budget 
bill every year for those things that is faithful to that agreement. So 
that's the first thing we have to do.
    And in that agreement, in education, which is terribly important to 
me, we're also fighting a little battle underneath the screen which I 
hope has become more public in the last few days, to try to preserve the 
ability

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of the Department of Education to contract with a bipartisan group 
established by Congress to develop examinations in reading and 
mathematics for fourth and eighth graders so that we'll have national 
standards for the first time that will apply to all of our children.
    The tests are voluntary, and they are not designed to be used for 
any reason to punish the kids but just to see whether our children are 
learning to read by the fourth grade and whether they know the math they 
need to know by the eighth grade. We're the only major country in the 
world that doesn't have national academic standards tied to 
international norms. To pretend that English is somehow different in 
Montana than it is in Maine, or that math is somehow different in 
Washington--Northwest Washington--than it is in southern Florida is pure 
folly.
    And I am immensely gratified that a significant number of States, 15 
big cities, 6 of the 7 largest big-city school districts in the country 
have said, ``We would like to participate in this. We're not afraid. We 
want to know where we are and how we can do better.'' That will be a big 
fight.
    Then we're trying to pass a juvenile justice bill that will help to 
deal with what I consider to be the biggest threat to our civil society 
on the crime front, which is that crime had been going up dramatically 
among--most dramatically among people under 18. Now it's leveled off in 
the last couple of years, and we hope it's going down. But we still have 
a lot to do to keep our kids out of gangs, off drugs, away from guns, in 
school, living positive lives.
    And I just want to point out, since Mr. Grossman and Mr. Solomont 
are from Massachusetts and they're very proud of it, that our juvenile 
justice bill is modeled in large measure on the program that has been 
operating in Boston, where it has been about 2 years now--2 full years--
since any person under the age of 18 has been killed by violent guns. 
That's an amazing thing. And so we can do this, but it's very important.
    The third thing we're going to try to do is to make sure that I get 
the authority that Presidents have been given since the 1970's to 
negotiate trade agreements, comprehensive trade agreements that can be 
presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote. That's very controversial 
now, I think because some people have ambivalent feelings about the 
trade agreements we signed with Canada and Mexico. I think the evidence 
is pretty compelling in the positive side there, but the main thing we 
have to understand is that this fast-track authority I'm seeking has 
nothing to do with that.
    The question is, are we going to continue to lead the world to open 
up markets for American products worldwide? Are we going to continue to 
lead the world in targeting specific sectors of the economy where we 
have a particular advantage, like telecommunications? Are we going to 
continue to lead the world toward freedom and open markets by reaching 
out our hand to our neighbors to the south of us, like Chile and 
Argentina and Brazil, where 70 percent of the increase in America's 
trade in the last year has come from our neighbors in this hemisphere 
and to the south? And I do not believe that we dare walk away from that 
world leadership.
    We negotiated over 200 trade agreements since I've been President. 
About 25 percent of our growth, of those 13 million jobs, has come 
directly because of the expansion of American trade. We can compete with 
anybody, and if I have anything to say about it, that's exactly what 
we're going to do, because America's national interest requires that we 
continue to lead the way.
    Now, two or three other things I want to mention. The McCain-
Feingold campaign finance reform bill will be up, and if it passes, it 
means all of you can still be here. [Laughter] But it would set a lid on 
contributions of about $20,000, I think. It would have other 
restrictions. And combined with our efforts to get free or reduced air 
time for candidates, it could really dramatically change the way 
politics works.
    Now, every year I've been President we've had a campaign finance 
bill up in the Congress that was a good bill. And every year I've 
supported it, and every year it's died because of a filibuster in the 
Senate. And the people who don't like it promise that's what's going to 
happen this time. All I can say is, this time everybody in America will 
know about it for a change, and that's something to be said for that.

[[Page 1307]]

    So I hope those of you--I personally don't believe it's a bad thing 
for people to contribute to their political parties. Even when our 
friends in the Republican Party get contributions from people that agree 
with them, I think that's a good thing. What is a bad thing is that the 
campaigns cost so much today that the restrictions and the rules set up 
in 1974 have been totally overwhelmed by the sheer cost of campaigns. 
And you know most of it is in communications costs, in television, in 
radio, in direct mail, and anything else. We have a chance to change 
that now, and I'm going to do my best to do it.
    And finally, on the domestic front, a big global issue is this issue 
of climate change. I am convinced that the climate is changing. I am 
convinced that the industrialized world, now aided by the developing 
world, has put so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that the 
climate is warming. It is leading to more extreme climatic events all 
across America. Most of you, wherever you're from, can think of a more 
disruptive pattern of climate. A man told me just last week that he was 
leaving the place where he had lived for the last decade because the 
climate had changed so dramatically it was not at all like what it was 
when he moved there 10 years ago.
    I say this to make this point: The countries of the world recognize 
that they need to reduce the greenhouse gases they're putting into the 
atmosphere. But it's kind of like two people standing in an airplane 
with their parachutes on; everybody wants the other person to go first. 
Nobody wants to jump unless everybody does. And there's always going to 
be a reason not to do it. But the truth is that we are committed, all of 
us, including the United States, to embracing in Japan this December a 
goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions significantly by early in the 
next century. And we have to find a way to do it that still permits the 
economy to grow.
    Now, we know that right now, if we all just change behavior, with 
available technology, with no cost, we can reduce it by 20 percent--
right now, with available technology, at no cost. You cannot make me 
believe that we can't find a way to do this and still grow the American 
economy. And I have invested too much time and effort to create those 13 
million jobs to see them all go away, but neither am I prepared to say 
that my grandchildren will live in a world that's hardly fit to live in 
because we couldn't take care of the environment that God gave us. And I 
refuse to believe that we have to make the choice. We don't. We're going 
to do this. We're going to do it right, and we're all going to do it 
together. But it's going to be a hard fight, and I'd like to ask for 
your support.
    Finally, let me say, in terms of what we're going to try to get done 
between now and the first of the year: The Secretary of State is in the 
Middle East today. We are working very hard in Bosnia. The situation 
with regard to peace in Northern Ireland is better than it has been in a 
very long time, and we are hopeful and work very hard there. I think 
that you can see that the involvement of the United States is critical. 
And I intend to maintain it, and I intend to see that we prevail 
wherever we possibly can.
    And the last point I wish to make is this: I'm going to try to step 
up over the next few weeks my public involvement in this racial dialog 
that I called for at San Diego State University--the University of 
California at San Diego, excuse me--not very long ago. I strongly 
believe that the diversity in this country is a godsend for the 21st 
century, with the global society. If you want one example, Congress 
became acquainted with the fact that there were seven economies in 
Africa that grew at greater than 7 percent last year. So we had no 
trouble getting Republicans, as well as Democrats to support the Africa 
trade initiative we put together, because it wasn't about black and 
white, it was about green. [Laughter]
    And I don't say that--that's not a criticism of the Republicans. I 
am very grateful--I am very grateful for the bipartisan support we had. 
And I think that--if you look at the fact, where else could you go--I 
went to the American University, there's people from 140 different 
national groups there. In a global society, that is a godsend. But very 
few people have taken the time to think about what are the problems 
we've got that are still unresolved. How can we expect to do without 
racial problems if everybody doesn't have an economic opportunity and an 
education opportunity? And what will it

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be like when there is no majority race in California, our biggest State? 
We'll know within a decade. What will it be like when there is no 
majority race in the entire country? We'll know within three or four 
decades.
    Now is the time to think about this. Now is the time to prepare for 
it. Why? We're living today without a cold war, in part because people 
in John Kennedy's time imagined that there would be a time when there 
would be no cold war. They never lived to see it, most of them. Only a 
few are still around who in the beginning of the cold war imagined that 
it would come to an end. But their imagination made all the difference. 
And how we imagine the 21st century and then go about giving meaning and 
reality to our imagination will make all the difference.
    That's really why you're here. That's really what we're going to try 
to do with your investment. And that's what I think will make the 
biggest difference to our people.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:50 p.m. in the Crystal Room at the 
Sheraton Carlton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Steve Grossman, 
national chair, and Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, Democratic 
National Committee; Mr. Grossman's wife, Barbara; and C. Thomas 
Hendrickson, chair, Democratic Business Council.