[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 47 (Monday, November 24, 1997)]
[Pages 1856-1860]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Democratic Business Council

November 18, 1997

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Tom. Steve Grossman, Alan Solomont, 
and all the people who worked on this dinner tonight, thank you very 
much for being here.

[[Page 1857]]

    I have just returned from a great trip to California. I stopped 
yesterday in Wichita, Kansas, at the Cessna plant, and I saw there a 
picture of why I got into public life. So, I thought I would start by 
telling you what I did. We wanted to go to Wichita, to the Cessna plant, 
because they have what I believe is the best corporate welfare-to-work 
program I have ever seen in America, and because they have support from 
any number of Federal agencies who are helping them to do what they're 
trying to do.
    Cessna has about 10,000, 11,000 employees in Wichita, and they have 
this program called the 21st Street Program, where they built a training 
center for people who have been on public assistance. First, if you want 
to come there, you go through their training program; that's 3 months. 
Then if you like it, you go through a sort of prework program; that's 3 
more months. If you survive them both, they guarantee you a job with 
good income and good benefits.
    And they take the most difficult to place people on welfare--people 
who have almost no education, no skills, people who have been subject to 
terrible cases of domestic abuse. And not only that, if you don't have a 
car or if you've been beat up in your own home, they'll give you an 
apartment across the street from the training center for yourself and 
your kids.
    I went there, and two of these women got up and talked who had 
graduated from this program. And there were over 200 there who had. And 
there were all the local officials, all the State officials in this 
incredible celebration of this partnership, doing basically what we all 
ought to do, anyway--trying to make sure that everybody has a chance in 
life. Once you set up a system where people are required to be 
responsible, you've got to give them an opportunity, and recognizing 
that our destinies are dependent upon one another in very profound ways. 
It was wonderful.
    And when I walked out of that place, the two women that spoke to 
introduce me were by far the most popular speakers there, I can tell you 
that. And they just basically told their life stories. And this lady 
came up to me and she--on the way out, I shook hands with all of the 
people who were graduates of the program. She said, ``You can read about 
me in the morning paper today, and I'm really glad you came.''
    So I pick up the paper, and this woman is a single mother with three 
kids of her own and two twins she took in, trying to raise five kids--a 
high school dropout, abandoned by her husband, desperate. All of sudden, 
she finds this program; she's got a place to live; she's got a training 
program; she's got a future.
    That's why I got into public life, to do things like that. And I say 
that because there is a direct connection between your presence here and 
what we're able to do in the lives of people in the country. And it 
often gets lost. And I think it's a real shame.
    Most of you who come to a Democratic fundraiser do so not in the 
hope of getting a tax cut, you probably--when you help the Democrats, 
you just hope you don't get a tax increase. [Laughter] Most of you who 
come to help us come here because you believe that we are obligated to 
one another, that we have a sense of mutual responsibility for the 
future. And you have kind of a large and expansive hope for what people 
can achieve if they work together to bring out the best in each other. 
That's probably the driving distinction between us.
    But I want you to understand that there is a connection between your 
sitting here and what I'll be doing tomorrow, and then how somebody will 
be affected by it out in the country within a week or a month or a year 
or sometime down the road.
    I was thinking about it sitting at dinner tonight. You know, when I 
became President I said, ``Look, I've got a simple strategy here. I want 
to create opportunity for everybody who is responsible enough to work 
it. I want us to come together, across the lines that divide us, into 
one America. I want us to continue to lead the world for peace and 
freedom. I want a government that is less bureaucratic but gives people 
the tools and the conditions they need to make the most of their own 
lives. That's what I want to do.''
    We started with an economic program that not a single member of the 
other party voted for. Instead, they sounded like Chicken Little. They 
said, ``If you pass the President's economic program, the sky will fall; 
the end

[[Page 1858]]

will come; the deficit will explode; unemployment will increase.''
    Well, 5 years later, they're out there able to brag that they voted 
for a balanced budget. The only reason they could do it is that we had 
reduced the deficit by 92 percent before the balanced budget law ever 
triggered in, because of what we did in 1993 with our Democrats. And it 
was the right thing to do for America.
    Five years later, we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 24 
years. Look at the crime issue--same thing. I couldn't ever figure out 
what was going on in Washington on the crime issue when I lived out 
there in the country. It appeared to me that what happened was, when 
crime got high and things got hot and heavy, that Congress just passed a 
bill and increased penalties for everything in sight. But it had been a 
very long time since anybody had done anything to help people on the 
streets; either catch criminals or keep people out of trouble in the 
first place.
    So I gave the Congress a crime bill that was essentially written by 
police officers, community leaders, and prosecutors: 100,000 more 
police, prevention programs for kids, punish people who are truly bad 
actors, take the assault weapons off the street, don't let people with 
criminal and mental health histories buy a handgun. That's what we did. 
It was pretty simple. It was a police officer's bill.
    We had a bitter, bitter fight in Congress. The leaders of the other 
party fought us. We got a few Republican votes for the crime bill, 
unlike the economic bill, but they were precious few. And we had to 
break an angry, angry filibuster in the Senate. All these, you know, 
omnibus things--we were throwing money away, these police would make no 
difference, the Brady bill would make no difference, the assault weapons 
ban would make no difference.
    All I know is we've now put 65,000 of those 100,000 police out, the 
Brady law kept over a quarter of a million weapons out of the hands of 
people with criminal and mental health histories, the assault weapons 
ban is good--nobody needs an assault weapon to go deer hunting, and I 
ought to know; I'm from a place where people do a lot of it. And I just 
moved last weekend to try to stop people from running through a loophole 
that's so big you could drive a truck through it in sending assault 
weapons back into the United States from foreign places of manufacture 
disguised as sport weapons.
    But anyway, you know, they'd say it wouldn't make a lick of 
difference. All I know is the crime rate has gone down every year for 5 
years, and we have the lowest crime rate in 24 years. And if you talk to 
the police officers of the country, they believe it's because of the 
ideas advanced by the Democratic Party and supported by the Democratic 
Party.
    There are people alive today because we did not cave in one more 
time to the people who didn't want the Brady bill, who didn't want the 
assault weapons ban, who didn't want to do anything different on crime. 
They wanted to talk tough; they liked to do that. But when it came time 
to step up and do something that the police and the prosecutors and the 
community leaders said would work, the Democrats were there.
    Look at the welfare bill. I get sick and tired--I get so tired of 
hearing our friends in the Republican Party and some of our friends in 
the press say, ``Oh, the President caved in and signed the Republicans' 
welfare bill.'' It's a load of bull. And no one could say it and mean it 
and be honest unless they just didn't understand how the welfare system 
works.
    The bills that they passed, I vetoed. And they passed another bill, 
and I vetoed it again. They passed a third bill, and I signed it. Why? 
Because I believe we ought to require able-bodied people to go to work. 
It didn't particularly bother me that we were ending the national 
guarantee of a monthly welfare check and letting the States set the 
guarantee, for the following reason: We have in effect had a State-set 
guarantee for 25 years, something I never read in any article.
    Before the welfare law passed, the most generous State in the Union 
paid a welfare family of three $655 a month; the most tight-fisted State 
paid the same family $187 a month, under the so-called ``uniform Federal 
law.'' There was no uniform Federal law on the check.

[[Page 1859]]

    But I'll tell you what was uniform: food and medicine for the kids. 
So I said, ``If you want me to sign a law requiring people who can work 
to go to work, leave the kids with food and medicine. You try to take 
that away, I'll veto it.'' They did, and I did. And I said, ``If you 
want to make these people go to work, don't make them be bad parents; 
give me some money for child care. Give me some money to create jobs for 
people in the high unemployment areas.''
    And we worked it out, and I signed the bill. It was a great 
bipartisan bill, it had overwhelming bipartisan support, but the only 
reason I could get that bill and that I didn't get overridden on my veto 
was that the Democrats said, ``Require people who are able-bodied to go 
to work, but don't make them give up on their kids. Don't do anything to 
their kids.'' We stood for that, we made it stick, and we made a 
difference.
    And when we did it, there were people on the other side who said, 
``Well, it won't be as effective now.'' All I know is that there are 3.8 
million fewer people on welfare than there were the day I took office--
the biggest drop in welfare in history--largely due to the fact that we 
have a good economy and the right kind of welfare reform system.
    I could give you lots of other examples. The first bill I signed was 
the family and medical leave law--vetoed twice by my predecessor. The 
leaders of the other party thought it was an undue burden on business to 
say that, even for larger employers, that a person ought to be able to 
take a little time off when a child was sick or a parent was dying. But 
I've had more ordinary citizens come up to me personally all over this 
country and thank me for the family and medical leave law than any other 
thing that I've been involved with as President.
    And I personally believe it ought to be expanded to cover regular 
trips to the doctor and a couple of trips to school a year, because one 
of the biggest challenges we face as a nation is balancing the demands 
of work and family. Nobody should have to choose between being a good 
parent and successful at work, because the most important work of any 
nation is raising children. And if we do that right, most everything 
else takes care of itself.
    So I say that there's a direct connection between your presence here 
and the 12 million people that have taken advantage of the family and 
medical leave law; the 8.5 million people whose pensions we saved; the 
13.5 million people who have jobs; the 10 million people who got an 
increase in their minimum wage; the 5 million children who are going to 
get health insurance coverage for the first time now under the new 
balanced budget law; the countless number of people who will now have a 
real tax cut to help them pay for the cost of college tuition; all the 
children that are going to get computers and software and better 
instruction in their schools because we said we're going to hook up 
every classroom and library to the Internet by the Year 2000. There's a 
connection between your support and that happening.
    These things do not happen by accident. They happen because parties 
with philosophies and choices have the power to make those choices and 
bring them to the American people and get them done. And I must--you 
know, I've been criticized by some in my own party--I like to work in a 
bipartisan fashion. I'm always happy to reach agreement. But when the 
tough work had to be done on the deficit, our party did it alone, and 92 
percent of the deficit was gone by the time the balanced budget law 
passed.
    When the tough work had to be done on crime and someone had to stand 
up to the special interest groups that have kept us from doing things we 
should have done years ago, our party did it almost alone. And when 
someone had to remind people that welfare was not just a way to punish 
poor people, it was a way to support work and family, it was the people 
in our party who supported me, saying, yes, require people to go to work 
but, no, don't hurt their kids. They gave us the right kind of law.
    When there was a wholesale assault on the environment, when people 
in the other party--they honestly believed this. I'm not attacking their 
character, I'm attacking their judgment here. They honestly believed 
that most of these environment laws and rules and regulations caused a 
lot more trouble than they were worth, and that they were a terrible 
impediment to the economy. I honestly believe the right sort of 
environmental

[[Page 1860]]

laws grow the economy because they accelerate the movement into new 
technologies, into new fields and dealing with new challenges. That's 
what I believe; I've always believed that. And I think that we permit 
the degradation of our environment at our peril. I think it's an 
obligation we owe our children.
    Well, 5 years later, the air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the 
food supply is safer. We have more to do, but it's safer. We have fewer 
toxic waste dumps, and the economy is the best it's been in a 
generation. I think our idea that you can grow the economy and preserve 
the environment was the right idea. I think the assault they waged on 
the environment that we stopped them from raising was ill-advised and 
unnecessary. And I think now we have 5 years of evidence.
    So when you go home tonight, I want you to think about those folks I 
talked to you about in Wichita. I want you to think about all of the 
millions of people whose lives have been changed for the better by the 
policies that we've implemented, and I want you to realize there's a 
direct connection between the fact that you were willing to stand up and 
put your voice on our side, put your contributions into our efforts, and 
give our side a chance to be heard. You made that all happen. That's 
what the public system we have in America is. That's what it means to be 
a citizen.
    And as you look ahead, I really believe that our country has the 50 
best years facing it that any society has ever known if we do the right 
things--if we do the right things. We've still got a lot of challenges 
out there--economic, educational, entitlement reform, environmental 
challenges--a lot of things. But we have to keep our eye on the ball. We 
should do those things which create opportunity and reinforce 
responsibility. We should do those things which bring us together as one 
community--celebrating our differences, but identifying those values 
that are even more important that bind us together.
    We should do those things that reinforce our role as a beacon of 
freedom and hope and prosperity and security in the world. That's what 
we should do. That's what the Democratic Party stands for. And that's 
what you have stood for. I am very grateful and I hope you will always 
be very proud, not only that you were here tonight but that you have 
contributed to changing the face and the future of this country.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9 p.m. in the Ballroom at the ITT Sheraton 
Luxury Connection Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to C. Thomas 
Hendrickson, chair, Democratic Business Council; Steve Grossman, 
national chair, and Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, Democratic 
National Committee.