[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 40 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[Pages 1904-1908]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Rancho Sante Fe, 
California

September 26, 1998

    Thank you very much. Well, if I had any sense I wouldn't say 
anything. [Laughter] Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Star. Thank you, Len. 
And all of you, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here. 
I'm delighted to see Lynn Schenk, and I'm delighted to see Christine 
Kehoe. And we are determined to see her prevail. If you want to do 
something for what you just stood up for, send her to Congress. Send her 
to Congress.
    I'd also like to thank all of you who have been my friends over the 
years, and some of you whom I have just met today, I am very grateful to 
see you here. I'd like to thank all the people who are responsible for 
our wonderful meal and the terrific musicians. Let's give them a hand. 
Didn't they do a great job? Thank you. [Applause] The Wayne Foster 
Group. Thank you so much. Bless you.
    It's nice to be here in this humble little house. [Laughter] This is 
the first place I've ever been where the fish are worth more than I make 
in a year. [Laughter] Listen, I want to say, this is really a 
magnificent home. It's a real tribute to the work that Bill has done 
over the years and to the feeling that they have for all of us that they 
open their home to us. And I'm very grateful to be here.
    I will be brief. I've had a remarkable couple of days. I was in 
Chicago yesterday, which most of you know is my wife's hometown. And I 
got my Sammy Sosa Chicago Cubs baseball shirt, which was promptly taken 
away from me last night when I met up with Hillary and Chelsea in 
northern California.
    Hillary has been up in Washington and Oregon and San Francisco 
campaigning, made an appearance last night for Barbara Boxer up there. 
And I'm here, and I'll be in Los Angeles tonight and tomorrow. I'm going 
on to El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, and then I'm going back to 
Washington on Sunday night to try to bring to a closure this session of 
Congress with some productive action. But I cannot tell you how much it 
means to me not only as your President but as a person, what you have 
said here and what I have seen all across this country. And I'm 
grateful, and my family is grateful, and I thank you.
    But there is something far bigger than all of us at stake here, and 
that is our country, our system, and where we're going. And I tell 
everybody who comes up to me worrying about this, that the real enemy of 
our party and our principles and our programs and the direction of the 
country is not adversity. Adversity is our friend. It inspires us to 
action. It gives energy. It gives us steel and determination. Our real 
enemy is complacency, or cynicism.
    You know, things are going pretty well for our country now, and I'm 
very grateful that I had a chance to be President, to implement the 
policies that I ran on that I talked about 6 years ago, I think, this 
month, when I was here with Bill and Star at their previous home. I'm 
grateful that we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years and the 
lowest crime rate in 25 years and the smallest percentage of people on 
welfare in 29 years. And in just a few days, less than a week now, we'll 
have the first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years. I'm grateful for 
that.
    But the question is, what are we going to do with it? I'm grateful 
that we've opened the doors of college to virtually anybody now who will 
work for it with tax credits and the deductibility of student loans and 
more scholarships and work-study positions and that we added 5 million 
kids to the ranks of those with health insurance, passed the Brady bill 
and the Family Medical Leave Act. I'm grateful for all that.

[[Page 1905]]

    But what are we going to do with it? What are we going to do with 
it? That's really what's at issue here. Our friends in the Republican 
Party believe they're going to win in the midterms, first of all, 
because they wanted me----

[At this point, birds began chirping in the background.]

    I don't mind the birds; it's just background music. [Laughter] 
Believe me, I've had worse background music lately. [Laughter]
    The Republicans believe they're going to do well in these elections, 
first of all, because in every single election since the Civil War, with 
the President in his second term, the President's party has always lost 
seats at midterm. The second thing they're banking on is money. Even 
though you've been very generous and you've come here, they always have 
more money than we do, especially now that they're in the majority. But 
we have something that money can't buy and that history can't overcome: 
We are on the right side of the issues for America's future.
    The history we want to make tomorrow and the next day and the next 
10 or 20 years is the right history for America. And all we have to do 
is to get enough of our people to understand that, to get enough energy 
out there, to get enough people to show up on election day, and all the 
history in the world won't make a difference, and all the money in the 
world they have won't turn the tide. Because people now know that when 
it came to the budget vote in 1993, which reduced the deficit by 93 
percent before we had the bipartisan Balanced Budget Act, we didn't have 
a single Republican vote. They know we barely had any votes for the 
crime bill when we banned assault weapons and put 100,000 police on the 
street, or for the Brady bill. They know that we had almost all--and 
Democratic votes, barely any Republican votes, for the family and 
medical leave law.
    And if you look at the last year, when this country has had lots of 
challenges, and we had the resources to meet them, what has happened in 
this Congress in the last year? They've killed the tobacco legislation, 
to which Bill alluded. They've killed campaign finance reform. They have 
taken no action on my education program. The other night, in a 
breathtaking move, the Republican leader of the United States Senate 
actually had to shut the Senate down and make people go away for 4 hours 
because it was the only way to keep them from voting on the Patients' 
Bill of Rights. And he knew if we ever got a vote, one of two things was 
going to happen. It was either going to pass, or they were going to be 
punished for killing it--for the insurance companies that wanted to kill 
it. So what did they do? They shut the place down. Unprecedented!
    Now, what this is really about, this election, is not what's going 
on in Washington, DC; it's what's going to go on in the lives of the 
people in San Diego and El Paso and Racine, Wisconsin, and the Northeast 
Kingdom in Vermont and all the places in the country where the people 
live who send people to Washington, DC. That's what really matters.
    And there is a very clear choice about what to do with this moment, 
and I think--if you just think about the things we need to do right now 
to prepare for America's future--I'll just mention five very quickly. 
Number one, we're going to have a balanced budget and a surplus on 
October 1st for the first time in 29 years. They voted in the House and 
may vote in the Senate for a tax cut to start spending the surplus right 
away.
    Now, I remind you, we quadrupled the debt of the country between 
1981 and 1993, when I took office. These surpluses in the years ahead--
they say, ``Oh well, we know we're going to have them, so we can spend 
some now, and it's 4 or 5 weeks before the election, and won't that be 
popular to just dish out a tax cut right here before the election.'' And 
it's the Democratic Party that's standing up for fiscal responsibility 
and saying, no, and I'm saying no. And I'll tell you why.
    First of all, we have waited for 29 years. We have worked for 6 
years to get out of this terrible hole. I would just like to see the red 
ink turn to black and watch the ink dry for a minute or two before we 
run another deficit. Wouldn't you like to see that? Wouldn't you just 
like to see the ink dry? [Applause] You know, they didn't want to wait a 
day just to enjoy this incredible achievement. Now, why is that 
important?

[[Page 1906]]

Because we've got a lot of trouble in the world today in the world 
economy. I was up in Silicon Valley last night where they understand how 
dynamic things are. They live in a perpetual state of change there. But 
so do we all, and we dare not forget it. We forget it at our peril.
    We have to set a standard if we want to keep growing this economy 
that America, of all the countries in the world, is the most solid, the 
most sensible, the strongest country in the world.
    The second reason we shouldn't spend that surplus right now is that, 
before you know it, the baby boomers will begin to retire, starting in 
about 10 years. I'm the oldest of the baby boomers. People between the 
ages of 34 and 52, when we all retire, there will only be about two 
Americans working for every American drawing Social Security. Unless 
something totally unforeseen happens to the birth rate or the 
immigration rate, it will be about two to one.
    The Social Security system today alone keeps half of the seniors in 
this country out of poverty; that is, without it, 50 percent of the 
seniors in this country would be in poverty, even with their other 
sources of income. Now, if we begin today and make modest changes, we 
can preserve the universal character of Social Security in the sense 
that it's a bottom line safety net for people that don't fall into 
poverty. But we can increase the returns, make some other changes, and 
avoid putting an unconscionable burden on our children and 
grandchildren.
    I'm telling you, everybody I know my age is worried about this. I 
was home a few months ago and I had a barbecue about 6 o'clock in the 
evening with about 20 people I grew up with--most of them are just 
middle class Americans, don't make much money. Every one of them said 
they were plagued with the thought that their retirement would be a 
burden to their children and their grandchildren. They're not wealthy 
people. They know they're not going to have enough. But they are plagued 
with the thought that they will have to take money away from their 
children and grandchildren.
    Now, we have worked for 29 years for this. It's the right thing to 
do, anyway, right now because of all the instability in the world, for 
us to stay strong and have this strong economy and have this little 
surplus. But secondly, it's the right thing to do before we--I'm not 
against tax cuts. We have some tax cuts in our budget, but they're all 
paid for. But before we get into that surplus for tax cuts, before we 
spend a penny of it for new programs, we ought to save the Social 
Security system for the 21st century, so that we do not either run a lot 
of seniors into poverty, or undermine the welfare of their children and 
grandchildren. It is terribly important.
    That's a big issue that affects people who live outside Washington, 
DC. The second big issue--it's very important--again related to the 
economy, is I'm doing everything I can to limit the financial turmoil in 
Asia now, to begin to reverse it, and to keep it from spreading to Latin 
America which are our biggest markets, our fastest growing markets for 
American goods and services--everything I possibly can to sort of right 
this instability in the international financial system that you see most 
pronounced in Asia and Russia now but could affect our welfare. Alan 
Greenspan said the other day, more eloquently than I could, America 
could not forever be an island of prosperity. For us to grow over the 
long run, our friends and neighbors all across the world, on every 
continent, who are doing the right thing and working hard need to be 
doing better as well. That's what this International Monetary Fund issue 
is all about.
    For 8 months I have been pleading with Congress just to pay our fair 
share of the International Monetary Fund so we'll have the money to stop 
the financial virus before it spreads across the globe and begins to 
bite us. That's a big issue, and it hasn't been done yet.
    The third thing I want to say is we will never be permanently secure 
in this kind of economy until we can say not only that we have the best 
system of higher education in the world, but that every one of our 
children, without regard to race or income or neighborhood, has access 
to a world-class elementary and secondary education.
    And for 8 months I have had before the Congress, fully paid for in 
the balanced budget, a bill that would lower class sizes to an average 
of 18 in the early grades and put another 100,000 teachers out there to 
teach

[[Page 1907]]

them; that would build or repair another 5,000 schools because the 
schools are overcrowded; that would hook all the classrooms in the 
country up to the Internet by the year 2000; that would build 3,000 more 
charter schools--an issue that California has been on the forefront of--
that would, in short, keep us on the forefront of education. It would 
also reward school districts that have poor performance and a lot of 
kids in trouble if they adopted high standards, accountability, no 
social promotion, but actually helped the kids, and didn't denominate 
them as failures when they're young and they are no such thing.
    I was in Chicago the other day. Chicago used to be the poster child 
of a bad, failing, urban school district. I went to the Jenner 
Elementary School, where every single child lives in Cabrini-Green, one 
of the toughest public housing projects in all of America. In the last 3 
years, their reading scores have doubled and their math scores have 
tripled. Chicago has a ``no social promotion'' policy, but if you fail, 
they don't just say you're a failure. They say you didn't pass the test, 
and you have to go to summer school. The Chicago summer school now is 
the sixth biggest school district in America. [Laughter] Guess what's 
happened to juvenile crime in Chicago. There are now 40,000 kids in that 
city that get 3 square meals a day in the school. So that's also in our 
plan, funds for other troubled districts to follow that model.
    We also have funds for 35,000 young people to pay for their college 
education, and then they can go out and work it off by teaching in 
underserved areas. This is a good program. That's an issue in this 
election. It matters to you and to your future and to your children's 
future and to your grandchildren's future whether we can rescue, revive, 
and make excellent the public educational opportunities of every child 
in this country.
    So those are three things: saving Social Security, stabilizing the 
global economy, putting education first.
    I'll just mention two others. Number one, one of the biggest fights 
I have all the time, convincing people on both sides, is that America 
has to find a way to protect the environment and grow the economy, and 
that if we have to choose one or the other, we're in deep trouble. We 
have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars complying with subpoenas 
from a congressional committee that doesn't want me to give tax 
incentives and spend research and development dollars to figure out how 
to grow the economy and reduce CO<INF>2</INF> emissions. And that's out 
of step with the rest of the world.
    I was in San Bernardino County not very long ago with the head of 
the National Association of Home Builders at a low-income housing 
project, where they had solar reflectors on the roof that are so thin 
now they look like ordinary shingles, and glass that keeps out 40 
percent of the heat and cold and dramatically reduces the power cost. 
And it improves economic growth. It creates jobs and improves the 
environment--big issue.
    But believe me, the budget I'm about to get, unless they change 
their tune, is going to be riddled with things designed to deny that and 
to weaken our environment.
    And finally, to me the thing that embodies as much as anything else 
the great philosophical difference that's at stake now in Washington is 
the debate over the Patients' Bill of Rights. Now, let me set the stage. 
There are 160 million Americans in managed care plans. I have been a 
supporter of managed care. Why? Because when I became President, health 
care costs were going up at 3 times the rate of inflation. It was 
unsustainable. We were going to bankrupt the country. There wouldn't be 
enough money left to spend on anything else.
    But it's like anything else--if the bottom line is just whether you 
save money rather than the bottom line of saving as much money as you 
can consistent with the health of the people that are being treated, you 
get in trouble.
    And now many, many managed care plans have health care decisions 
made by insurance company accountants, and you have to appeal to two 
levels up or more until you finally get to a doctor. Our bill, which has 
the support of 43 managed care companies who are doing this anyway and 
are being punished for it, says this--it says simply, if you get in an 
accident, you ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room, not 
one that's 5 or 10 miles because that's the only one that happens to be 
covered by your plan. Number

[[Page 1908]]

two, if your doctor says that he or she can no longer treat your 
condition and you need to see a specialist, you ought to be able to see 
one. Number three, if you work for a small business who changes 
providers, health care providers, at a given time during the year, you 
still shouldn't have to change your doctor if you're in the middle of a 
critical treatment.
    Now, let me just graphically demonstrate what that means. This 
happens. These things happen. You remember when you had your first 
child. How would you feel if you were 7 months pregnant and your 
employer says, ``I'm sorry, go get another obstetrician''? If anybody in 
your family has ever had chemotherapy--I've been through that--if your 
family member needs chemotherapy, you sit around thinking; you try to 
figure out ways to make jokes about it. My mother stood there thinking, 
``Well, maybe I won't lose my hair, or when I do, maybe I will finally 
get a wig.'' I never had to--you think--you try to be funny about it. 
And then you wonder whether you're going to be too sick to eat, right? 
In the middle of a chemotherapy treatment, do you think somebody would 
say, ``I'm sorry, go get another doctor''? That's what this is about--
basic things.
    Our bill also protects the privacy of your medical records, which I 
think is very, very important and will become more important in the 
years ahead.
    Now, the House of Representatives, the Republican majority passed a 
bill that guarantees none of these rights and leaves 100 million 
Americans out of what little it does cover. The Senate wouldn't even 
vote on the bill because they didn't want to be recorded, so they shut 
down business.
    That's what this election is about. Don't be fooled about a 
smokescreen. This election is: Are we going to have a Patients' Bill of 
Rights? Is our policy going to be to grow the economy and preserve the 
environment? Are we going to put education first? Are we going to 
stabilize the global economy, so we can continue to grow? Are we going 
to save Social Security first? That's what it's about.
    And if we go out and say, we are Democrats, this is what we're 
running for; we believe elections should be about the people that live 
outside Washington, not about who's crawling on whom in Washington, DC--
everything is going to be fine. So I ask you, go out there and make sure 
that's what it's about.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to luncheon hosts William S. and Star Lerach; 
Leonard Barrack, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; 
Lynn Schenk, candidate for State attorney general; and San Diego City 
Council member Christine Kehoe, candidate for California's 49th 
Congressional District.