[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 25 (Monday, June 22, 1998)]
[Pages 1137-1142]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner

June 16, 1998

    Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Herb and Patrice 
for having us here--first in their beautiful home, now in this beautiful 
tent--sitting on these wonderful chairs. [Laughter] I have great 
feelings about Denmark and recently had a wonderful visit there.
    I'd like to thank my good friend Governor Romer--and my colleague of 
many years--

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and Len Barrack for their work for our party; our former chairman, Don 
Fowler, is here; Carol Pensky, thank you for being here. And I'd like to 
thank the California Members of Congress, Representatives Becerra, 
Filner, and Sanchez, for coming.
    And I want to thank Herb and many of you also in this room for your 
real passionate concern for the District of Columbia. I have never been 
around Herb Miller--and I've been around him a lot--I have never been 
around him when he didn't talk about DC. First I thought maybe he's a 
shy man who had limited interests. [Laughter] Then I realized he was a 
passionate man who was determined to change the future of this city, and 
I was mightily impressed.
    Let me make just a couple of comments, one of which bears at least 
indirectly on the District of Columbia. In 1992, when I was running for 
President, in the beginning when only my mother thought I could win, I 
was the fifth best known candidate in New Hampshire. I ran because I was 
genuinely concerned about our country, because I didn't think we were 
moving in the right direction and I didn't think we had a unifying 
vision or a strategy to achieve the vision. And I knew what I wanted. I 
wanted this country to get ready for this new century and this whole new 
way of living and working and relating to each other.
    And I believed that in order to do it, we would have to dramatically 
reinvigorate the system by which all Americans are given opportunity if 
they're responsible enough to work for it. I believed we would have to 
broaden our attitudes about freedom and equality. I believed we would 
have to strengthen the bonds of our national community. I thought we 
would have to renew our commitment to lead in the world and take some 
tough decisions in places like Haiti and Bosnia and Northern Ireland and 
the Middle East if we expected to move the country--and the world--
toward a better tomorrow.
    And you know, tonight I am very, very grateful that this country has 
the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 28 
years, the lowest welfare roles in 29 years. We're about to have the 
first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years, the lowest inflation rate 
in 32 years, the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, and the 
highest homeownership in the history of the country. I am very grateful 
for that.
    But let me say, I say that not to be self-serving, because I can't 
claim all the credit for that. Most of the credit goes to the American 
people, all of you, and the billions of decisions that are made here 
every day. But it matters what the direction of the country is. It 
matters what the driving policies of the country are. And if ideas are 
translated into action, they have consequences.
    So I'm proud of my party, too. I'm proud of the fact that we said we 
were going to leave behind the old, outdated political fights of the 
past, that we would work with the Republicans wherever we could; that we 
wanted a Government that was smaller but still strong enough to do the 
job, and it focused on giving people the tools they need to make the 
most of their own lives. And I'm proud of the fact that we focused on a 
lot of big questions for ordinary people, like, how do you balance work 
and family; how can you get education for a lifetime; how can we open 
the doors of college to everybody who's willing to work for it?
    And in addition to all of those statistics I gave you, we literally 
have just about opened the doors of college for everybody willing to 
work for it: a $1,500 tax credit for the first two years of college; tax 
credits for the junior and senior year and for graduate school and for 
lifetime learning; and more Pell grant scholarships and work-study 
programs and the AmeriCorps national service program. I'm proud of that 
stuff. I'm proud of the Family and Medical Leave Act and AmeriCorps and 
the fact that we're extending health insurance to 5 million little 
children who wouldn't have it otherwise. But it all has to work 
together.
    And here's the point I want to make tonight. I didn't come here to 
make this comment and say, therefore, you should only vote for Democrats 
for the rest of your life because we've had 5\1/2\ good years. I never 
will forget when I was contemplating running for a fifth term as 
Governor of Arkansas, and I'd already been Governor almost 10 years, and 
we had Governor's Day at the State Fair. And I went out to my little 
booth, and I'd

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sit there and visit with people all day long. This old boy in overalls 
came up to me, and no one had ever run for a fifth term to serve 14 
years before, and I'd already been in 10 years, even though I was 
reasonably young. So this guy came up to me in overalls and he said, 
``Bill, are you going to run for Governor again?'' And I said, ``Well, 
if I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``Yeah, I will. I always have. 
I guess I will.'' I said, ``Aren't you sick of me by now?'' He said, 
``No, but nearly everyone else I know is.'' [Laughter] And I said, 
``Well, don't they think I've done a good job?'' He said, ``They think 
you've done a wonderful job, but that's what they hired you to do. You 
get a paycheck every 2 weeks like everybody else''--interesting thing--
``that's what we hired you to do.''
    I say that to make this point. When a country has things going along 
pretty well, there are two conceivable responses: You can become smug 
and complacent and think you're doing everything right, and sort of lay 
back and relax and enjoy it; or if you're smart, particularly in a time 
like this, you realize that in spite of all the good things that have 
happened in America we still have challenges that are unmet here, and 
the waters are roiling, the changes are still going on in the globe. And 
the only way to keep the good times going is to keep ahead of change, 
and to keep pushing for change, and to take advantage of the fact that 
so much has been done and that frees us up to look at the long-term 
challenges.
    Now, if I could just give you an example, I mean, 8 or 9 years ago, 
people looked at Japan and thought that they would never have another 
problem as long as any of them lived. They have a lot of problems. I say 
that not to be critical but to say that any great society has to 
continue to be willing at every turn, at every challenge, to make the 
difficult decisions necessary to keep moving forward.
    And if you look at the level of uncertainty in the world, whether 
it's economic uncertainty or political uncertainty, even though things 
are going great for us, that alone ought to be a big argument for the 
American people in this election year saying, ``Okay, we're glad things 
are going well, but we want to know what we're going to do in the 
future. We want to take advantage of the financial stability we have and 
the emotional confidence we've been given to look at the long-run.''
    And if I just might mention three or four other things that I 
believe our Democratic Party needs to be continuing to push. Now, I 
intend to continue to push until we either get it done or I leave office 
in January of 2001. One is we must not spend this surplus that we are 
finally going to accumulate after 30 years until we have first taken 
care of the responsibility we have to reform Medicare and Social 
Security, to take account of the retirement of the baby boomers. We have 
a moral obligation to people--and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers--we 
have a moral obligation not to bankrupt our children and undermine their 
ability to raise our grandchildren. And so I know that everybody wants 
to--you know, we'd all like to have a tax cut or maybe some spending 
program or something. First and foremost, if you look at the long-term 
financial trends, we must act now when, with more modest changes, we can 
strengthen this country for 50 years and have us coming together instead 
of being driven apart.
    Second, we must do something to give all of our children access to 
world-class education from kindergarten through 12th grade. We've got 
the best system of higher education in the world. I was reading today, 
just an article about a Chinese entrepreneur in China--you know, a lot 
of the media are running stories about China now because I'm about to go 
there--and about how this fellow in China who was making a killing with 
an Internet company had gotten a PhD at Texas Tech and how he hated to 
give up his cowboy boots and cowboy hat to go home to China, but his new 
riches were compensating for it.
    Everybody knows we've got the best system of higher education in the 
world. No serious person believes that America will reach its full 
potential unless and until we give world-class education and can prove 
we can do it in K through 12. I can tell you that I have seen enough of 
the changes that have happened in the city of Chicago, which may have 
had the worst big city school system in the country a few years ago, to 
know that we can all do that. And time doesn't permit

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me to go into it, but that's a big challenge. That's something I think 
about all the time.
    The third thing we have to do is prove we can grow the economy and 
preserve the environment. And I will just give you, if I might, a couple 
of examples. We had the first ever oceans conference last week in 
California at Monterey, on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula. There is a 
dead space in the Gulf of Mexico the size of the State of New Jersey. 
Why? Because of runoff into the Mississippi River, which in turn runs 
into the Gulf of Mexico. Is it inevitable? Would we have to give up 
economic growth to stop that? No, we wouldn't. If you go to Lake Tahoe, 
for example, which has other environmental problems, they don't have any 
runoff when they build a golf course there or a housing development, 
because they have agreed, among themselves, to high standards which will 
not permit that kind of pollution of that lake.
    I'll give you another example, even more profound but related to the 
quality of the ocean. And let me say, if we upset a huge amount of the 
very fabric of life on Earth comes out of the ocean and sustains us--71 
percent of the Earth's surface is ocean. The depths are--to the bottom 
of the deepest part of the ocean is about 7 miles down, and we know less 
about that by far than we know about the Moon. We now know less about it 
than we know about Mars. We need to go there. We need to know what's 
there. We need to preserve this. This is about how we live. It has 
nothing to do with hurting the economy.
    The other thing I want to say is that I am absolutely convinced that 
the climate of this Earth is warming and that it is warming at an 
unsustainable rate and that we will pay a terrific price unless we find 
a way to grow the economy and reduce global warming by reducing 
greenhouse gases. The good news is we can do it. All we have to do is 
make up our mind to do it.
    When I was in Monterey, two young Stanford graduate students--fine 
looking young people, bright, full of life and energy--took me out into 
the bay there. When the tide went out, we were walking out on the rocks 
and looking at the sea otters and the harbor seals. And they started 
picking up little snails. And they said, ``You want some evidence of 
climate change and global warming? See these little snails here in 
Monterey? Fifty years ago, these snails were not found north of Los 
Angeles. But all the wildlife is moving north now.''
    I can tell you, one of my big problems with our best partner in the 
world, Canada, is that what our salmon fishermen are fighting all the 
time. You know why? Because all the salmon are moving north. So there 
are more in Alaska and fewer in Canada because of climate change.
    Now, we have proved--every environmental challenge we've had for the 
last 30 years, we have proved we could lower pollution and increase 
growth. I have not proposed anything to deal with these challenges that 
will bankrupt the American economy, and I have proposed to deal with it 
in a free market, technology-oriented way. But I'm telling--to deny the 
fact that we are dramatically changing the environment in which our 
children and grandchildren will live is shear folly.
    There's now a phenomenon which many people in international cities 
with international airports will tell you, called ``airport malaria.'' 
And it's being spread primarily because mosquitoes carrying malaria are 
being found at higher and higher and higher and previously cooler 
climates, infecting people who've never had it before, who don't know 
they have it, get on airplanes, fly into Orly Airport, bump into you; 
you get back to New York, and you found out you got malaria. All of this 
is a function of both the increasing globalization of the economy and 
society and the warming of the climate.
    Now, it may not make today's headlines, but when we've got the 
lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, I think you want your President 
and your Congress and your country thinking about what kind of problems 
are going to have to be solved if we're going to be the greatest country 
in the world 50 years from now.
    Let me just give you another one, one that I mentioned about Herb. 
We have to do something about our inner cities, about our Native 
American reservations, and our rural

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areas, which have not felt this economic recovery, whether it's 
restructuring our tax system to finding other ways to get incentives in 
there, whatever it takes. If we're not going to do it now, when will we 
ever do it? If we can't do something about urban America, if we can't do 
something for people who are, in effect, in economic enclaves of 
disempowerment on Native American reservations and in rural areas, when 
are we ever going to do it?
    The unemployment rate is under 5 percent. You think we could even 
think about this if the unemployment rate were 9 percent? If I were up 
here giving this speech, my successor, whoever it is, the unemployment 
rate goes up to 9 percent, you would think I had flipped a gasket. You'd 
want to know how we could get the whole show on the road.
    But think about how we can continue to grow the American economy, 
lower the unemployment rate, and not have inflation, invest where there 
is underinvestment. It's good economics now; it won't be forever. That's 
why what Herb and a lot of you are trying to do in Washington, DC, is so 
important and why we need it going on everywhere and why the United 
States should have a framework to support it.
    One other issue--I could give you a thousand, but really, I think 
there are only about eight big issues, but I only want to mention one 
other. I spoke at Portland State University, Saturday, about immigration 
and about the new challenge of race as we move into the 21st century. 
And I want you to think about what's happening in America as against 
what's happening in the rest of the world.
    I introduced a family at Portland State, a Mexican-American 
immigrant who came here 12 years ago--a woman who came here 12 years 
ago, didn't speak a word of English, didn't graduate from high school in 
Mexico--got her master's degree in education last Saturday at Portland 
State, a community college organized--originally, it's a university 
now--it was originally organized to serve soldiers under the GI bill 
after World War II.
    So she came here 12 years ago, didn't speak a word of English, got 
her master's degree. Her son got his bachelor's degree in business; he 
worked full-time for 7 years and went to school on the side to get his 
degree. And her second son is getting his master's degree in education 
next year. That's the best of the immigrant story.
    Now, in a global economy and a global society, it seems to me that 
our increasing diversity is a huge asset as long as everybody is pulling 
their own load and everybody has a fair chance to pull their own load, 
and we don't feel like we're losing America. And I've really spent a lot 
of time trying to challenge the American people to think about this and 
get over our notion that America is about race. America is not about 
race; it's about our common embrace of humanity. It's not even about a 
place; it's about a promise.
    And if you look at the whole rest of the world today, all the places 
that are really just all torn up and upset, or having trouble because 
now that the cold war is over and we don't get to divide up into 
communist and noncommunist camps, like one team has on red uniforms, the 
other one's got on green. In too many places, we're reverting to lowest-
common-denominator divisions: race, religion, ethnicity. Whether it's 
Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, India and 
Pakistan, you name it, you find me a real hot place in the world, and 
I'll show you some people that are defining themselves by being able to 
look down on somebody else because they're of a different race or 
religion or ethnic group.
    And so I say--that's the last thing--I think America should take 
this opportunity. We will never have any more self-confidence than we do 
right now. And now is the time for us to think about what it's going to 
be like when we are a truly multiracial, multiethnic democracy 50 years 
from now, when there is no majority race in the United States of 
America. Will it still be our America? You bet it will, if we do the 
right things.
    So I say to you, I think you've done a good thing by coming here 
tonight, because you're financing what I hope will be a permanent engine 
of progressive ideas to move America into the future, moving beyond 
partisan politics and power politics for the sake of it, toward a 
rigorous, passionate focus on what's really best for our children. 
That's what I've tried to do, and that's what I think our party 
represents.

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    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Herbert and Patrice Miller; Gov. 
Roy Romer of Colorado, general chair, Leonard Barrack, national finance 
chair, Donald L. Fowler, former national chair, and Carol Pensky, 
treasurer, Democratic National Committee.