[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 23 (Monday, June 8, 1998)]
[Pages 1047-1050]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the South Dakota Victory Fund Dinner

June 4, 1998

    Thank you so much, Senator Daschle. I wish I had taped that. 
[Laughter] And every time I'd get kind of discouraged or down I could 
just flip on the tape and listen to Tom's voice.
    Thank you all. I thank the other Members of the Senate for being 
here. And, Mayor Barger, thank you for coming. And some of you have come 
from even further away than South Dakota, and I thank all of you for 
being here, for a truly magnificent leader of the Senate and of our 
party and for our country.
    I had a very interesting few days and sort of thinking about the 
past, the present, and the future. I had my 30th college reunion over 
the weekend. And I thought, I don't know where all those years went. I 
had occasion to go to Texas and do a little work for our party and for 
the Members of the House

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of Representatives but also to go into an Hispanic neighborhood that no 
President had visited since Franklin Roosevelt to talk about the 
relationship of the census to the service of the community in building 
it up. Then I came back for a meeting on the situation in India and 
Pakistan and sent Secretary Albright off to meet with the Foreign 
Ministers of China and Russia and Great Britain and France. And they 
issued a very fine statement today, and we're working hard on that.
    Then I went to Cleveland where I had the chance to go to the annual 
convention of something called City Year. It's one of our AmeriCorps 
national service projects that began in Boston. And I visited with them 
in 1991, when I started out, and there were just 100 people. And now 
there are all these young people from all over America, part of nearly 
90,000 people who have been in our AmeriCorps program serving our 
country, earning credits for college.
    And then today I had a chance to appear at the SAVER Summit where 
delegates from both parties and all walks of life in America talked 
about how we can save Social Security for the 21st century and increase 
pension savings and private savings, something that really matters to 
the long-run health of the country. And I got to appear at, in effect, a 
homecoming for me: I went to the Democratic Leadership Conference for a 
meeting of elected local officials around the country.
    And it's just been great, because it's been--for me, it's been a 
week where I've gotten to reflect on the last 30 years and think about 
the next 30 to 50 years. And also, to be humbled a little along the way. 
I was in this great school yesterday in Cleveland, seeing what my 
AmeriCorps volunteers are doing, and I was shaking hands with all the 
kids. And I came up to this young man; he was about so tall. He couldn't 
have been over seven; he was probably six. And he looked up to me and he 
said, ``Are you really the President?'' [Laughter] I said, ``Yes, I 
am.'' He said, ``You aren't dead yet?'' [Laughter] At first, I thought, 
what's a 6 year-old kid doing reading the Washington press every day? 
[Laughter] And then I realized that, in fact, the President was George 
Washington and Abraham Lincoln--he thought part of the job qualification 
was being dead. [Laughter] It was a wonderful thing. I say this just to 
kind of make a setting for the very brief points I want to make.
    When I ran for President in 1992, I thought the country needed a 
different direction. And I came with a certain set of ideas and ideals 
and some very specific proposals to implement. And I couldn't have done 
it if it hadn't been for Tom Daschle.
    Then when we went into the minority in the Senate, and Tom was 
elected leader, and we had to work so closely together, or we never 
would have gotten a balanced budget that also opened the doors of 
college to all Americans who are willing to work for it, through tax 
credits, and scholarships, and grants, and work-study positions--we just 
wouldn't have been able to do it.
    We never would have been able to get a balanced budget that also 
added 5 million children to the ranks of those with health insurance in 
our country. We never would have been able to get a balanced budget that 
would continue to grow the economy, but still invest in the environment 
and in medical research and all the things that will build our future. 
And I never cease to marvel about how much he knows and has to deal with 
and how he has to deal with all these substantive issues which I deal 
with, but unlike me, he also has to figure out how to wind his way 
through the Senate rules and the personalities and this stuff. I just 
never--people ask me these questions--I said, ``I'll call Tom. He'll 
know what to do.'' [Laughter] I don't have to worry about that.
    And I don't think you can possibly imagine how much it means to a 
President to know that there is a leader in the Senate with that kind of 
brain power, that kind of integrity, that kind of energy, and that kind 
of deep compassion for our country. And it's a great national resource. 
He's good in a fight and good when we're making a principled compromise. 
And he's always trying to do what's right for the country. And along the 
way, he sometimes gets me to do a thing or two for South Dakota. 
[Laughter]
    Now, I say that to make this point: We are all very lucky here, each 
in our own way. We wouldn't be able to be here if we hadn't enjoyed some 
good fortune in life. And maybe in our less reflective moments we

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think we earned everything we got, but most of us were not born in a log 
cabin we built ourself. And most of us have had a break or two along the 
way. And I think--the point I'd like to make tonight is I think we're 
very fortunate to be living in this time.
    I'm proud of the fact that we have the lowest crime rates in 25 
years, the lowest welfare rolls in 27 years, the lowest unemployment in 
28 years. We're going to have the first balanced budget and a surplus in 
29 years. We've got the lowest inflation in 32 years, the smallest 
government in 35 years, and the highest homeownership in history. That 
makes me feel proud of our country.
    But the point I want to make--and I guess it's just because I've 
been thinking about it as much as I have this week, although I've felt 
this way always--is that the country is now working as it ought to work, 
and therefore, we now have both the freedom, the emotional space, the 
financial means, and the sense of confidence to look at the larger 
challenges facing us, the long-term problems.
    That's why I liked that SAVER Summit today. When all the baby 
boomers like me get into the retirement, if present trends continue, 
there will only be about two people working for every one person 
drawing. We have got to reform the Social Security system or we won't be 
able to have a decent retirement without unfairly burdening our children 
and their ability to raise our grandchildren. That's a big long-term 
issue.
    Same thing is true about Medicare. We got a person or two here 
today, I think, from Texas--people in Texas have had a real good, fresh 
impression of what climate change is doing because of all the wildfires 
raging in Mexico that are bringing the smoke over into Texas and 
affecting the quality of air and the health care, the health of the 
people there. We don't have to give up economic growth to preserve the 
planet, but we have to change the strategy by which we pursue it. And 
we're smart enough to do that. That's a big long-term problem that we 
need to face.
    We have a great economy, but we don't have the world's best public 
schools--even though we have the world's best colleges. We can't stop 
until every child in this country has the chance to get an excellent 
education.
    We have this great economy with a low unemployment rate, but there's 
still pockets in America, from inner cities to Native American tribes in 
South Dakota, where there has been virtually no impact of the free 
enterprise revolution. And we now have a chance to bring it there.
    Now, if we were up to our ears in alligators and we were worried 
about going broke with the debt and we were worried about all the 
problems that were bearing down on this country when I became President, 
we wouldn't have the space or the confidence or the sense of possibility 
to think about these things. But now we do, and now we must, because 
this window will not stay open forever. In the nature of human events, 
things change. And we are so fortunate.
    It was this week 30 years ago that Robert Kennedy was killed, 
culminating a pretty awful spring for America, just a couple of months 
after Martin Luther King was killed and Washington, DC, burned. I 
remember it very well. I was a student here working for the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, and I put a red cross on my car, and I 
drove down into Washington and delivered supplies to people who were 
living in church basements because they'd been burned out.
    In so many ways, for me, at least, as a young man, what Robert 
Kennedy represented--an attempt to break out of the old orthodoxies, to 
bring people together across the lines that divided us, to kind of go 
beyond politics as usual to actually get something done that would touch 
people's lives and move this country forward together--represents what I 
have tried to do as President.
    For 30 years, because of all kinds of problems we had, divisions too 
often triumphed over unity, and we were too often preoccupied with 
things that were right in front of our nose. Now we have a chance to 
deal with the long-term challenges of the country. Now we have a chance 
to prove that we can be an even more diverse, multiethnic, 
multireligious, multiracial democracy and be more unified. And in a 
world where other people are having trouble dealing with that in almost 
every continent, that's more important than ever before. And for me, I 
think we have a chance to restore not only our country but

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also our party to the direction that was basically interrupted 30 years 
ago when the country divided over war and race, and two of our greatest 
leaders were killed within a few weeks of each other.
    None of that is happening now. And I'm telling you, we have an 
opportunity, but it is also a profound obligation, to give our children 
and grandchildren the America they deserve and the America of our 
dreams, the America most of us growing up thought we could create and 
missed terribly when it wasn't possible. If we do that, it will be in no 
small measure because of the unusual service, in a very difficult 
position of the person we are here to honor tonight.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:25 p.m. at the Sheraton Luxury Collection 
Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Brenda Barger of Watertown, 
SD.