[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 8 (Monday, February 23, 1998)]
[Pages 287-290]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Luncheon in Baltimore

February 19, 1998

    Thank you very much. Governor, I'll take that cuff off your hands, 
if you want me to. [Laughter] Thank you for the introduction. Thank you, 
Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I thank Senator Mikulski 
and Senator Sarbanes for being a wonderful team for Maryland, for the 
United States, and for our administration. Mr. Mayor, it's good to be 
back in Baltimore. To State Democratic Chair Peter Krauser, thank you 
for your leadership in our party.
    I'd also like to acknowledge the presence here of our national 
Democratic chair, Steve Grossman, and our new national finance chair, 
Lenn Barrack, from Philadelphia--this is his first noontime event. He 
just came on board. Stand up. [Applause]
    We had a great day today looking at these living classrooms, seeing 
what the young people of Baltimore are doing, announcing the 
administration's clean water initiative. I'd like to just talk very 
briefly--Michael Bronfein was talking about how he had been fooling with 
me now for 6\1/2\ years. That's a big problem, you know, it's hard to 
give a new speech to a person every time you see him after 6\1/2\ years. 
And maybe that's not necessary.
    Some of you may have heard me tell this story, but I once, several 
years ago--I can't remember--Hillary had to go out of town, and I was 
Governor. And the person who ran the fairgrounds where we had all of our 
concerts knew that Tina Turner was coming to town when she started her, 
what was it, ``Private Dancer,'' or whatever that tour was. You know, 
when she came out with her new music, you remember? She was out of the 
limelight, and she came back. I remember she had a saxophone player who 
was a weightlifter--I don't know why I remember that. [Laughter]
    Anyway, so this guy who was my friend called me and said, ``I'll 
give you six tickets, and I want you to come to the concert.'' And so I 
told Hillary--I said, ``Can you cancel the trip?'' She said, ``No, no, 
no. Here's who I want you to take.'' So we got this crowd of people, and 
we went to this concert. And normally, he put me inconspicuously back in

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the middle of the crowd, but he knew that I liked Tina Turner so he put 
me right up on the front row, which is fairly embarrassing if you're an 
elected official. But I loved every minute of it.
    Anyway, Tina Turner sings the whole concert, sings all her new 
songs. In the end, she starts singing her first hit, ``Proud Mary.'' And 
the band plays the introduction, she comes up to the microphone, people 
scream, so she backs off. The band plays the introduction again, she 
comes up to the microphone, people scream. The third time she came up, 
and she said, ``I have been singing this song for 25 years, but it gets 
better every time I do it.'' [Laughter]
    So, Michael, that's what I'll try to do today.
    In the beginning, for the first 5 years here, I really felt that a 
lot of what we were doing was trying to fix things that weren't right 
about the way America worked, to try to make the country work again, 
just to try to get the shackles off the American people. And that's what 
the attempt to balance the budget while increasing our investment in the 
future was about; the attempt to open new markets around the world to 
America's products--still a major issue for our country.
    We only have 4 percent of the world's people, and we have over 20 
percent of the world's wealth. And we want to continue to maintain our 
standard of living; we have to sell something to the other 96 percent. 
And when times are tough for them and they can't buy it, we see it back 
in our own balance sheets.
    I wanted to try to help local communities that were dealing with 
crime problems. I wanted to try to help break the cycle of welfare 
dependence and prove that people on welfare really wanted to go to work 
and could go to work given the right supports for their children and for 
education and for training. And so we went about this work. I think one 
of the reasons there was such a good response to the State of the Union 
is that people could finally feel that life had changed in America and 
that things were working.
    A person in this audience said one of the nicest things a man like 
me could ever hear. When we were shaking hands, she said that I was the 
only President in her lifetime that had ever done anything that affected 
her personally in a positive way. That meant a lot to me. But now we 
should be looking to the future. I think it's very important that we not 
be complacent.
    You know, the fisherman that introduced me earlier today at the 
clean water event--I was so impressed--he said, ``You know, when times 
are going pretty good, the tendency is to be complacent,'' and, he said, 
``That's the worst thing you can do.'' And that's what I would say to 
you. Times are going pretty good for America. Things are in pretty good 
shape for us. But this is a very dynamic time, and the worst thing we 
could do is to be complacent.
    What I attempted to do in the State of the Union was to say, fine, 
I'm glad things are going good; I'm glad we're going to have a balanced 
budget; I'm glad we're going to be able to continue to grow; I'm glad 
crime is down; and I'm glad we've got the lowest welfare rolls in 30 
years. I'm really grateful for all that. But this is not the time to sit 
around and think about this. This is the time to take advantage of this 
moment to try to meet the remaining challenges we have, to seize the 
remaining opportunities, to imagine what America is going to be like in 
the 21st century, and try to do the things that will maximize the chance 
that our dreams can come true.
    And that's what we're going to spend 1998 working on. The Governor 
mentioned the education initiatives. If we want an economy that offers 
opportunity--and you'll say, well, what else do you have to do? You've 
got the lowest unemployment rate in a generation, the lowest inflation 
in a generation, consistently high growth. What else do you have to do? 
I would say to you that there are in my view at least three things still 
that we have to do.
    First, we have to dramatically improve the education and skill level 
of the American people. Finally, we're seeing wages start to rise again 
and incomes start to grow together again after 20 years of increasing 
inequality. But the only way we can all rise together is if everybody's 
got a decent education.
    We know we've got the best system of higher education in the world, 
so I spent the first 5 years trying to open the doors of college to 
everybody. And if you look at what's

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been done with the Pell grants, the work-study positions, the AmeriCorps 
positions, the student loan changes, and the education IRA's and then 
the $1,500 tax credits for the first 2 years of college and then further 
tax credits for junior and senior year and graduate school, I think you 
can really say that we've opened the doors of college education to 
everybody who will work for it.
    But no one believes, having said that, that our elementary and 
secondary education is the best in the world. And we can't stop until it 
is. Now, one of the proposals that I have put forward to the Congress 
and to the American people this year is a proposal that would permit us 
to take some of the funds that will come out of a comprehensive 
resolution of the tobacco issue--funds which should by rights go back to 
State and local government anyway, that should not be kept by the 
Federal Government, and spend those funds so that we can lower the class 
sizes in the first 3 grades to an average of 18 throughout the Nation. 
That will dramatically improve the learning of young children in 
America. And I hope we can do it.
    The second thing we have to do is to continue selling more of our 
products around the world. That's one of the reasons we're working very 
hard to try to help work through this Asian financial crisis and help 
our friends and partners sort of get righted over there, because it's 
not just in their interests, it's in our interests. A third of all of 
our exports go to Asia now. An enormous part of our export growth goes 
there. We have a vested interest in doing what is also the right thing 
to do, which is to be a good neighbor, and try to help work that 
situation out for the countries that are willing to help themselves, and 
to do other things which will continue to open new markets.
    And the third thing we have to do is to bring the opportunities of 
free enterprise, which have brought so many of you to this room today, 
to the neighborhoods and the places where it hasn't reached yet. That's 
why I was so glad that one of you put a corporate headquarters in 
Baltimore's empowerment zone. I thank you for that. I want more people 
to do that all across America. We want to triple the number of 
empowerment zones.
    We want to create a development bank under Secretary Cuomo at HUD 
that can help to spur more business development in inner-city areas and 
isolated rural areas. We want to do some other things that will 
basically focus on the fact that the biggest untapped market for 
American growth now are the unemployed and the underemployed people in 
the isolated neighborhoods of inner-city America and some of our rural 
areas.
    Those are the three things that have to be on the economic agenda.
    What should we do with our social policy? Crime is down; welfare is 
down; drug use is down; out-of-wedlock births are down. What do we have 
to do? Well, a lot. First of all, we have to recognize that we have 
larger responsibilities on the health care front. I want to pass a 
health care ``Bill of Rights.'' I want to let people who are over 55 and 
have lost their health insurance through no fault of their own buy into 
Medicare if they can afford to do that on their own or with their 
children's help. We want a comprehensive tobacco settlement. We want to 
make child care more affordable and of higher quality in America, more 
available to more people. And perhaps most important of all, we want to 
do something profound and, if I could use a Government word, structural 
about the problem of juvenile crime by helping kids stay out of trouble 
in the first place. Perhaps the most important items in the budget that 
haven't received a lot of notice are the funds through the Justice 
Department and the Education Department to give to communities to set up 
after-school programs. Most kids get in trouble between the time school 
lets out and the time their parents get home at night. If you can keep 
kids involved in constructive activities between 3 o'clock in the 
afternoon and 7 at night, we're going to be in good shape in this 
country. So we've got a good program there.
    And finally, let me say we have to have a community approach to the 
future. That means we have to be committed to the environment. It means 
we have to do our part with global warming. It means we have to reform 
our basic systems, like Medicare and Social Security, that are 
profoundly important to the future generations, of all ages.

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    And I will just end on that point. I think that--you know, we hadn't 
had a surplus in 30 years, so we don't quite know what to do. And a lot 
of people have good ideas for it, and they are good ideas. There is 
always another good tax cut. There is always another good spending 
program. I don't think we ought to spend any of the surplus until we 
have secured Social Security for the 21st century. That's a big mistake 
for us not to do that. So that's what we're doing.
    And what I would like to ask all of you to think about--just to step 
back a minute--I have tried to modernize our Democratic Party in this 
administration and to build an alliance for the 21st century that would 
make people think that we could be trusted to govern and get good 
results. But I have also tried to be faithful to the oldest obligations 
of citizens in this Republic. This is a time of great change. At every 
time of great change in our country's history, we have come through it 
stronger and better than ever before because the leaders of America and 
the people--most importantly the people--have accomplished three things. 
You go back and think about it--from the founding to the Civil War to 
the industrial revolution to the Depression to World War II through the 
cold war to the present day--at every time of challenge and change, 
three things have been done to make America stronger.
    We have at every turn always widened the circle of opportunity, give 
more people a chance to pursue happiness. At every turn, we have always 
deepened the meaning of our freedom. Freedom, you could argue, had a 
very narrow meaning when we started out. It only fully applied to you if 
you were a white, male property owner. We have deepened the meaning of 
our freedom. And the third thing we've done is we've strengthened our 
Union against all the arguments that it was a bad thing for us to draw 
closer together as one nation. We have rejected them all and gone 
forward. Over 200 years later, it looks like we did the right thing at 
every time.
    That's what we have a chance to do now. These are good times. It is 
not the time to sit around and pat ourselves on the back and think about 
how good times are. This is a time to prepare for a 21st century that 
will be America's greatest time if we spend these days, when we have 
been given the luxury, the opportunity, and the responsibility to do so, 
preparing for that kind of tomorrow.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 2:54 p.m. in the Harbour Court Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Michael Bronfein, owner, Neighborcare 
Pharmacies.