[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 47 (Monday, November 24, 1997)]
[Pages 1860-1861]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner

November 18, 1997

    Thank you. Thank you very much for being here tonight. I won't take 
a lot of time because I want to just sit and visit. But I would like to 
just begin with a story.
    Yesterday I was in Wichita, Kansas, coming back from California, and 
I visited the Cessna airplane manufacturing facility--not the plane 
facility but their training facility for people they're trying to move 
from welfare to work. And we went there for a number of reasons. One was 
to announce that we now have 2,500 businesses who have committed to be 
part of our partnership to hire people from welfare and put them into 
the workplace. These 2,500 businesses are small, medium, and large. 
Seventy-five percent of them are small businesses, but combined they 
have over 5 million employees.
    The other reason I went there is because the way this Cessna project 
works is the way I'd like to see America work not only in this issue but 
a lot of others. They receive support for a number of the things they've 
done from the Labor Department and from the Housing and Urban 
Development Department, and of course they have the framework of the 
welfare reform bill.
    But here's what they do: They go out and take people--many of them 
the hardest to place people on welfare--and they put them through a 3-
month training program. And then if they go through that, they put them 
through a 3-month sort of pre-job program. And if they get through both, 
they get an

[[Page 1861]]

automatic guaranteed job at Cessna at high wages and good benefits.
    And some of these people have very, very difficult home 
circumstances. They're not just--they're not taking the most well-
educated people who just temporarily hit a bad patch and get on welfare. 
A lot of these folks are high school dropouts. Many of them are women 
who have been abused in a domestic setting. And they actually have a 
housing development across the street from the training center to give 
temporary housing to anybody who either doesn't have a car or has been 
kicked out of their house because of a violent situation.
    And I'm telling you, it was the most exhilarating thing. I was 
introduced by two women who graduated from this program, and then I met 
their children. And when it was all over, I looked at the man who was 
with me and I said, ``This is why I got into public life: to be a part 
of things like this, to change lives in this way, to do something that 
works.''
    And of course, having a good economy has helped. They have 1,000 
more employees than they had 4 or 5 years ago. But the main thing is, 
it's fresh evidence that we can make the country work if we do something 
that makes sense and we do it together and it's consistent with our 
values.
    So for all of you who have made any contribution to the fact that we 
have the lowest unemployment rate and the lowest crime rate in 24 years 
and the biggest drop in welfare in history, and we've grown the economy 
while making the air and water cleaner and the food supply safer and 
having fewer toxic waste dumps, that we've built more jobs but tried to 
help families with the family and medical leave law and tax cuts to 
raise their kids or adopt children or send their kids to college--I hope 
you'll take a lot of pride in that.
    We've got a lot of challenges up the road, but at least no one in 
America could doubt today that we can make this country work and that 
when we make it work for everybody, you see the kind of profoundly 
humbling and awesome stories I saw in Wichita yesterday.
    I'd also like to remind you that elections are contests of ideas and 
perceptions. And I think in a rational world, where everybody had equal 
access to the voters, our party would be in better shape than it is 
today, because in '93 we had a big fight over the economic direction of 
the country, and I think the evidence says we were right and they were 
wrong. But they profited from it.
    In '94 we had a big fight over our crime policy, and we stood up to 
the people who said I was going to take their guns away if we passed the 
Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. And I think the evidence is we 
were right and they were wrong.
    I think the evidence is our environmental policy, our education 
policy, our family leave policy--all these things, I think, our party 
has been on the right side of history and on the right side of the basic 
values of America. And I think the more people like you help us to get 
our message out and make our points, the more you'll change America and 
the more, parenthetically, people will know who did what, when, and why.
    So there is a direct connection between what I saw in Wichita 
yesterday and your presence here tonight. And we have to make a lot more 
of those stories in the future. And I'm very grateful to you for your 
role in doing that.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:44 p.m. in the Chesapeake Room at the 
City Club of Washington.