[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 8 (Monday, February 23, 1998)]
[Pages 290-295]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in West Orange, New 
Jersey

February 19, 1998

    Thank you very much. I'd like to begin by thanking David and Sylvia 
for welcoming us to their humble little home here. [Laughter] This is a 
beautiful place. It was worth the trip to see you and your family and 
your beautiful home and your art and to see you here with your friends. 
You didn't have to do this tonight, and we're very grateful to you.
    I'd like to thank Senator Lautenberg and Congressman Pascrell for 
being here and for their support in the Congress for our agenda and our 
attempts to move this country forward. Thank you, Tom Giblin, for 
leading the Democratic Party in New Jersey. Thank you, Mayor McGreevey, 
for a wonderful race. I

[[Page 291]]

was honored to be a small part of it, and there will be another one up 
the road.
    I'd like to thank the leaders of our national party who are here: 
our chair, Steve Grossman; and Lenn Barrack from Philadelphia, who just 
took over as the national finance chair of the Democratic Party. I'm 
afraid that he's going to think that every day is going to be like the 
last 24 hours. We've had three wonderful encounters with people around 
the country. He thinks this is no heavy lifting. [Laughter]
    You know, there are just a little over 650 days, 700 days maybe, to 
the 21st century. And I feel very good about where America is--David 
talked about a little of it. I feel very grateful to have had the chance 
to serve as President in these last 5 years. But I think that the most 
important thing I could say to you tonight is that it would be a real 
mistake for our country to be relaxed about where we are instead of to 
feel that this is an enormous opportunity for us to take care of the 
long-term needs of America and to basically shape a structure of 
opportunity and a structure of security for ourselves and our friends 
around the world that will last us well into the next century.
    They used to say when I was a boy growing up in Arkansas that the 
time to fix the roof is not when it's raining. And so I would say, I 
think--I feel that I've spent the last 5 years trying to fix things in 
America so that the country would basically work again and so that 
people would have the confidence to believe that we really could be the 
masters of our own fate, that if we worked together and did the right 
things in the right way, we actually could move forward. And I don't 
think anyone questions that now.
    So now what we should be doing is, instead of patting ourselves on 
the back for nearly now 15 million new jobs and the lowest unemployment 
rate and the lowest inflation rate in a generation, the lowest welfare 
rolls in a generation, lowest crime rate in a generation, we should be 
thinking about how we can use this moment to look to the future and to 
build it. And I think that is the most important thing I could say to 
you.
    And I'd just like to mention three or four things. With regard to 
the economy, we've changed the image of the Democrats with a bunch of 
tough votes, most importantly, the economic program in 1993, which 
reduced the deficit by over 90 percent before the balanced budget came 
in. Then we had a balanced budget bill last year, a lot of which was 
engineered by your Senator, Frank Lautenberg--you should be very proud 
of him for that--which not only will give us a balanced budget and a 
surplus in the next few years but will do so while giving us the biggest 
investment in children's health and education in a generation and 
literally opening the doors of college to all Americans who will work 
for it. That is a very, very important thing.
    What still needs to be done? I would argue there are two or three 
very important things that still need to be done. Number one, we have to 
recognize that there are still a lot of Americans who have not been 
caught up in this economic prosperity. They are either unemployed or 
they're underemployed, largely because they have limited skills and they 
live in areas where there is no investment. I spent a lot of time trying 
to get Americans to invest in other parts of the world--a lot of you 
invested in various parts of the world. Now we need to bring this spark 
of enterprise to our isolated inner-city neighborhoods and to rural 
neighborhoods. And it's a great opportunity for us to continue to grow 
without inflation. And we have a program as a part of this year's budget 
to do that.
    Secondly, we need to continue to fight against the impulse to 
withdraw from the rest of the world in terms of trade. I suppose it's 
the last remaining ideological battle within the Democratic Party about 
what kind of party we're going to be going into the future. There are 
people who lose when we expand trade, but that's going to happen whether 
we have new agreements or not. Most countries have trading systems that 
are more closed than ours. We have 4 percent of the world's people; we 
have 20 percent of the world's income. If we want to keep 20 percent of 
the world's income when the rest of the world, the developing world, is 
going to grow 3 times as fast as the developed world, we--the math is 
not difficult--we have to sell more to other people. And so I hope we 
can

[[Page 292]]

continue to expand trade and really do more with it.
    The third thing we have to do is to continue to work until we have 
the finest education system in the world. One reason Americans all over 
the country were thrilled--I could see it; I could feel it when I was 
giving the State of the Union Address and I was going through the list 
of things that the Congress has already done: the $1,500 tax credit for 
the first 2 years of college; credits for the junior and senior year and 
for graduate school; bigger Pell grants; more work-study positions; 
cheaper loans that are easier to repay; IRA's for education. One reason 
everybody is so excited about that is that no one in America doubts that 
we have the finest system of higher education in the world, and that if 
you can access it, whether it's at a community college or an Ivy League 
school, whether it's undergraduate or graduate school, that you will not 
only be more fulfilled and be a better citizen, but you'll have a better 
life. No one questions that. By the same token, I don't think any of us 
can say with a straight face that we believe we have the best system of 
undergraduate education in the world--I mean, elementary and secondary 
education in the world. You know that it's not the best system in the 
world, and you know that the quality varies dramatically. That's why 
I've been working for national standards. That's why I've been working 
to connect every classroom in the country to the Internet by the year 
2000. That's why we have a program now to lower class sizes in the first 
three grades to an average of 18 students. If we can pass this program, 
it will dramatically change the future of education.
    All the educational research shows that children who come from 
difficult backgrounds who have a chance to get personal attention from 
teachers and to work with their fellow students because the classes are 
small enough in those early grades have a big leg up in the rest of 
their learning careers. So I think all of that is very, very important. 
And I hope you will support that. That's going to be a big part of what 
we're trying to do. We want to rehabilitate or build 5,000 more schools, 
and we have a program to do that.
    So those are the things that I would like to work on in the economy: 
Give us a world-class system of elementary and secondary education; give 
us an economic system where free enterprise can reach the areas that 
have been left behind; and keep reaching out to the rest of the world--
an economy based on opportunity.
    What do we have to do with our society if we want it to be a truly 
responsible society where every citizen does his or her part and we work 
together? Let me just mention two or three things there. I think the 
most important thing we can do, more important than anything else, is 
helping every citizen to reconcile the competing pressures of work and 
family. Most parents work now. Most parents with children under the age 
of 5, or 4, or 3, or 2 work now. And most of them have to do that.
    That's why I supported the family and medical leave law and why I'd 
like to see it extended to cover more firms. All the research shows that 
small firms have had just as easy a time as larger firms in meeting the 
family and medical leave law. And giving people a little time off when 
their babies are born or their parents are sick bolsters the morale of 
families and makes people more productive in the workplace. I think it's 
important.
    That's why I think we ought to raise the minimum wage again. 
Finally--finally--we are seeing income gains among people in the lower 
40 percent of the earners. For 20 years, our incomes began to split 
apart in America, from about the mid-seventies on. Those of us with good 
educations tended to have our incomes grow more than the economy as a 
whole, and people who didn't have as much tended to have their incomes 
not grow at all or even fall behind. Inflation--that's beginning to turn 
around again.
    But no one who works 40 hours a week and raises kids should be in 
poverty in this country. We shouldn't tax them into poverty. And one of 
the things we did in 1993 that David mentioned was with the earned-
income tax credit. The average family now with an income of $30,000 a 
year or less that has at least two children is paying $1,000 less in 
taxes than they would have paid under the

[[Page 293]]

old system before 1993. I think that's important.
    I think it's important that we implement this child health program 
to extend health insurance to 5 million more kids. There's nothing 
more--every parent in this room has known what it is like to worry about 
your child's health. There's not a single, solitary parent here who 
hasn't had at least one sleepless night at some time during your 
children's childhood over your child's health. Imagine how much worse it 
would be if you didn't think you could afford to take your kid to the 
doctor or if you thought the only way you could do it would be to show 
up at the emergency room and then you would be bankrupt. So I think this 
is important. I think it is terribly important.
    I think it's important that our child care initiative pass, which 
will make child care more affordable to millions of Americans--and 
safer. And I think that it's important that we pass this comprehensive 
tobacco settlement that will give us the tools we need to protect our 
children from tobacco. Every year--still the biggest public health 
problem in America--every day, 3,000 kids illegally start to smoke; a 
thousand of them will die sooner because of it. It dwarfs the threat of 
cancer. It dwarfs the threat of alcoholism. It dwarfs the threat of 
getting killed in a car when you get your driver's license. It dwarfs 
everything. It will cost more young people bigger parts of their future 
than anything else. So we're going to try to pass that this year. And if 
we do, it will open up a whole new vista. That's very important.
    Now, the other thing I want to talk about a little on this is the 
future of health care. Hillary had an idea that we should basically give 
a gift to the country, that our generation should give a set of gifts to 
the country for the millennium. And we thought basically of two things. 
One was that--literally a millennial trust, which she helped to put 
together with all the rest of our people with the theme of remembering 
the past and imagining the future. And so one of the things that we're 
trying to do is to put some of the money, if we can get a tobacco 
settlement, put a big chunk of the money into a research fund that will 
double funding for the National Cancer Institute, have a huge increase 
in funding for the National Institutes of Health, have a big increase in 
funding for the National Science Foundation, support the international 
space station, just do a whole range of things that will help to prepare 
the future for our people.
    In addition, we want to, with public and private money, save the 
Star-Spangled Banner, which, by the way, is in tatters and needs $13 
million to be saved. And our precious documents, all of which--the Bill 
of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution--all of 
them need serious work. That's a very important part of building the 
kind of society we want. We have to both respect our past and always be 
investing in the future.
    The second biggest thing we can do, I think--and this leads to the 
last topic I wanted to mention. I've done everything I could in a world 
which is constantly being torn apart by people's differences to build 
one community in America. I have tried to take the venom out of 
political life, with mixed results. [Laughter] I have done my best to 
bring people together across racial and religious lines.
    And I've also tried to bring us together across generational lines. 
And the most important proposal that we have on the table for this year 
is the proposal that we couldn't even have imagined even a year ago. It 
looks like we're going to balance the budget this year if the economic 
difficulties of Asia don't slow our growth too much. If it does, we'll 
still balance the budget next year. And it is then projected that we 
will have a structural surplus for quite a long time. That is, the 
economy will go up and down, and some years we may have it, and some 
years we may not. But over any multi-year period, if we stay with the 
discipline we have now we're going to start running big surpluses.
    And this is an election year so it's tempting for people to say, 
``Well, here's what I'll promise you with my surplus, I'll give you a 
tax cut,'' or ``I'll give you a spending program'' or whatever. I think 
it is a terrible mistake. I don't think we should spend a penny of the 
surplus until we have secured Social Security for the 21st century.
    And everybody knows--there are surveys which show that young people 
believe it is more likely that they will see a UFO than

[[Page 294]]

that they'll ever draw Social Security. [Laughter] But it's not a big, 
mysterious problem. When Social Security was set up, you couldn't draw 
until you were 65, and the average life expectancy was less than 65. Now 
the average life expectancy for Americans is way up in the seventies. 
For a young girl born today, it's about 80. And for people who live to 
be 65, it's into the eighties today. The fastest growing group of 
Americans are in their eighties.
    Meanwhile, the baby boomers, and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers, 
meaning when I retire, from that year, for 18 years after when people my 
age retire, will be the biggest group of retirees ever put into the 
system. The people coming along behind us in the 18 years thereafter are 
a much smaller group. The people behind them are a smaller group. Only 
now do we have people in school, in kindergarten through the 12th grade, 
that are a bigger group than the baby boomers for the first time ever. 
But it's going to take a while before all of them are in the work force. 
So this is arithmetic. In 1959 there were five people working for every 
one person drawing Social Security. In 2019 or 2029, there will be two 
people working for every person drawing Social Security unless we all 
start working a lot longer or there's a huge influx of immigrants or 
something unforeseen happens.
    But if we make small changes now, and if we husband our money now, 
and if we look at some options for what we can do to make sure we're 
getting the best possible rate of return as long as it's a secure and 
safe return, then we can look at people like the people who have served 
us here tonight who are going to work their whole lives and say, ``You 
may be young, but at least you'll have this basic thing for security 
when you retire.''
    The other thing we have to do, though, is to level with people. 
People retiring now--almost nobody retiring now--can maintain their 
standard of living on Social Security. So we also have to do more to 
help people save for their own retirement and to be honest with them and 
level with them and say, ``You're going to have to do this, but here is 
an attractive way to do it,'' and make it as easy as possible. I think 
that's very, very important. We should save Social Security before we go 
about spending this surplus that hasn't even materialized yet. We were 
in a financial wilderness for 30 years; we're out of it. Let's not get 
back in it just because it's election year.
    And the last point I would like to make is this: The United States 
has an unbelievable opportunity to sort of sail against the tide of all 
the ethnic and racial and religious conflict that seems to be dominating 
the world now, as the cold war recedes to a distant memory and the world 
is not divided into big blocs. You know that people used to worry 
about--little countries used to worry about being treated like little 
specks of metal. And the United States and the Soviet Union were the big 
magnet, and they were all going to be swallowed up into some bloc. Now 
we have to worry about disintegration. You know, everybody wants to be 
separate.
    What we have worked for here in this country always, with increasing 
levels of success, is a way of appreciating the differences between 
people and still being united because we were able to articulate values 
that were more important to us than the differences. So we could 
celebrate our differences because we all knew we were still Americans.
    Now that's become more important than ever before. There are--in the 
school district which is across the river from the White House in 
Virginia, in Alexandria--Fairfax County school district--there are 
people from 180 different national and ethnic groups speaking over 100 
different languages, in one school district.
    The world is coming into America. If we can figure out a way to 
continue to strengthen our Union, to be one America, to celebrate all 
these differences and say, but here are the things that we all agree 
to--read our Constitution, read our Bill of Rights--this is what we all 
agree to, then we are going to have an enormous leg up in the global 
society of the 21st century.
    How much time have we spent around here at the table tonight talking 
about the Middle East or the travails of my people in Ireland and other 
places around the world? But I'm telling you, we're on the right side of 
history, and we have to keep fighting for these things.

[[Page 295]]

    Just today we had the new leader of the Republic of Srpska, the new 
premier, in Washington. And here's a man leading the Serbs saying, ``We 
have to find a way to reconcile the different ethnic groups. We have to 
come to grips with the war crimes. We have to do all these things.'' 
Unheard of--no one could have imagined it just a year ago. We are on the 
right side of history, and we have to keep fighting for these things.
    And the last point I want to make is this: I have tried to change 
the Democratic Party, to modernize it. I have tried to create what you 
might call a new Democratic Party. And I have caused a little bit of 
controversy along the way in doing that. But I have to tell you that the 
longer I go on in this job and the more time I spend reading American 
history, as well as trying to think about the future, the more I realize 
that there are two or three basic functions that a political party has 
to fulfill at every point in our history.
    If you go back through the whole of American history, I believe you 
will conclude, as I have, that there are three great challenges that 
confront the American people at every moment of real change. And the 
party which serves the American people best is the party which embraces 
those challenges and pushes them hardest.
    Now, if you go back to the beginning, you look at that, you look at 
the Civil War, you look at the industrial revolution, you look at all 
the crises of the 20th century, you will see that at every point in time 
we have been asked for ourselves--and increasingly in the 20th century 
for people around the world--to do three things: to widen the circle of 
opportunity, to deepen the meaning of freedom, and to strengthen the 
Union.
    The Republican Party, in fairness, was born out of a desire to save 
the Union. And Abraham Lincoln gave his life to save the Union and to 
make the Constitution mean something when it came to freedom for black 
Americans. And they were the party of the Union and of widening the 
circle of opportunity and of deepening the meaning of freedom all the 
way from Abraham Lincoln through Theodore Roosevelt. And our party had a 
pretty weak record in that period, I'm ashamed to say, and not so good 
in the years just before.
    But if you look at the beginning and if you look at our record from 
Woodrow Wilson forward, I think you would have to conclude, we weren't 
always right on everything, but on balance our party has the stronger 
record when it comes to widening the circle of opportunity, deepening 
the meaning of freedom, and standing up for a stronger Union.
    And that, in a fundamental way, is what my administration has been 
all about--looking toward the 21st century. I'm proud to be a Democrat. 
I'm proud of your support. And I thank you for your help tonight.
    God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:57 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts David and Sylvia Steiner; Thomas P. 
Giblin, chairman, New Jersey State Democratic Committee; Mayor James E. 
McGreevey of Woodbridge, NJ; Steve Grossman, national chair, and Lenn 
Barrack, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; and 
Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia-Herzegovina.