[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 40 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[Pages 1925-1930]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner Honoring 
Senator Barbara Boxer

September 28, 1998

    First of all, I want to thank Smith and Elizabeth. I'm going to have 
to start paying a portion of the property tax on this home if I come 
here many more times this year. [Laughter] It's such a beautiful place; 
it's a happy place. The children are always around, which makes it more 
happy. It also reminds us what these elections are really all about.
    The story Barbara told is true. I called her one night to see how 
she was doing and ask her about the campaign, make sure she had a theory 
of the case. [Laughter] And I offered to do something here in 
Washington.
    Hillary was just in Washington and Oregon States and then came into 
northern California, where Barbara had a great event with Hillary's mom 
and Tony. Hillary said it was wonderful. Then we had a good night in Los 
Angeles on Saturday night.
    I just got back from Chicago and making three stops in California 
and two in Texas. And I believe that we have an unusual opportunity in 
this election, and one that is unprecedented. But I want you to know why 
I'm glad you're here and why I'll be brief, because I want to go in 
there--you'd rather watch a movie than hear a speech, especially if the 
movie is only a minute long. [Laughter]
    But I'd like to talk to you a little bit about this. In the--
normally, the party of the President in Congress loses, not gains, seats 
at midterm. It is more than normal, it is virtually an unbroken record 
in the second term of the President. But we have things which are 
different now. For one thing, we have an agenda which is dominating the 
national debate, and our adversaries really don't have one. And insofar 
as they do, I think we get the better of the debate. A lot of people 
were worried about the adversity of the present

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moment for me and our family and our administration. But I have never 
believed, in political life, adversity was a big problem. I still 
believe the biggest problem for us is not adversity, but complacency--
and maybe cynicism, people saying, ``I don't like this, so therefore, I 
won't participate.'' People should say if they don't like it, 
``Therefore, I will participate.''
    But all over the country, now, I get these surveys showing our 
candidates and how they're doing. And it'll say, among registered 
voters, the Democrats have a healthy lead, among certain voters in a 
midterm election the Democrat is a point or two behind. What does that 
tell you? Well, the kind of people that vote for us have to go to more 
trouble to vote. We have more low income working people, people that 
struggle with the burdens of child care and transportation and maybe 
ride to work on a bus everyday--you know, where it's a hassle. And when 
there's a Presidential election they show up, because they know they're 
supposed to vote for President. And oftentimes in midterms they don't 
show up, which puts us at a significant disadvantage.
    Therefore, I will say again, adversity is our friend in the sense 
that at least everyone is now thinking about the political debate. I'd 
do nearly anything to help the Democrats get elected, but this is a 
little bit extreme. [Laughter] I want to say that people have been so 
uncommonly kind and generous to Hillary and to me and our family in the 
last few weeks. And I appreciate that. But we shouldn't be diverted from 
the fact that the public who sent Barbara Boxer here and who sent me 
here, what they really want us to do is to fight for them. And if they 
understand that the choice is a choice between saving Social Security 
and being financially responsible before we give a popular election-year 
tax cut that won't amount to much for most ordinary people, but it sure 
sounds good.
    I always heard the Republicans were the party of fiscal 
responsibility; at least that's what they said all those years, although 
the deficit tripled--I mean, the debt tripled--quadrupled in the 12 
years before I got here. But consider this--those of you--I see Ben 
Barnes back there and Marty Russo--those of us who have been involved in 
Democratic politics a long time, I never thought I'd live to see the 
day. I mean, the Republicans are saying, ``It's just 5 weeks before the 
election; we've waited 29 years to balance the budget, but we're willing 
to give it up to give you an election-year tax cut, because it's just 
too good to be true.'' And you can say, ``Well, we're not spending it 
all, or all the projected surplus.''
    And the Democrats are saying, ``Hey, we worked for this for 6 years, 
and we appreciate the fact that you voted with us on the Balanced Budget 
Act, but, oh, by the way, the deficit was cut by 92 percent before we 
passed that bill. And we would just like to see the red ink turn to 
black, and dry, before we start spending it.'' [Laughter] You know, we'd 
just kind of like to see it dry.
    And you know what? I may be dead wrong, but I believe the American 
people agree with us. I think they understand there is a lot of turmoil 
in the world and that the world looks to us to be strong, to do the 
responsible thing, to set a good example, to help get the economy going 
again, number one.
    And even more important, nearly every American knows that when the 
baby boomers retire, the present Social Security system will be 
unsustainable, because there will only be two people working for every 
one person drawing.
    Now, if our objective is what I think it is for 80-plus percent of 
all Americans, which is to find a way to modify the Social Security 
system that keeps its basic benefits--keep in mind one-half--one-half--
the people over 65 in this country today would be in poverty were it not 
for Social Security. So we have to find a way to keep what's good about 
it, but to do it in a way that doesn't require us, when all us baby 
boomers retire, to sock our children and our grandchildren with a huge 
tax increase that undermines their standard of living.
    And I go all across the country and people my age, at least--at the 
end of the baby boom generation--are almost obsessed with this. I had 
barbecue with a bunch of my friends at home the other day--half of them 
didn't have college degrees, none of them were wealthy, a lot of them 
lived on very modest incomes. Every single one of them

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was worried about this. They were tormented by the fact that when we 
retire we will lower our children's standard of living to take care of 
us.
    So it looks like we're going to have a surplus for a few years. I'm 
not against tax cuts. As Barbara said, we've got an education tax cut, a 
child care tax cut, an environmental tax cut in our balanced budget. If 
we can pay for them, fine. But I do not believe we should get into this 
surplus for tax cuts or for Democratic spending programs until we have 
saved the Social Security system for the 21st century and lifted that 
burden off our children and lifted the fear off our generation. I feel 
very strong about it, and I think we can win that argument.
    I think we ought to pass the Patients' Bill of Rights, because I'm 
for managed care, not against it. When I tried to change the health care 
system back in '93 and '94, I supported managed care. Look, we had to 
start managing the system better. In 1993, when I took office, health 
care costs were going up at 3 times the rate of inflation. It was 
unsustainable. It was going to bankrupt the country. But it's like any 
other--a management system--if you have a management system in your 
work, in your business, whatever it is, the purpose of the management 
system is to allow you to perform your primary mission in the best 
possible way at the lowest possible cost. The primary mission of the 
health care system is to help people when they're sick and keep people 
well. That's the primary mission of it. And the problem is that the 
management system has overtaken the mission because of the way the 
economics work.
    I know I don't have to paint you all a lot of pictures, but 
imagine--suppose you were a 25-year-old accountant who dealt with entry-
level reviews of requests from doctors' offices for certain procedures 
in Managed Care Company X. What do you know, every day when you go to 
work, about your job, how you're evaluated, and how you're going to be 
rewarded? You know one thing: You will never get in trouble for saying 
no. You will never--that is the system--you will never get in trouble 
for saying no. These are good people, you know. They have children to 
feed. They have careers to make. They have lives to live. They have 
house payments to make. They will never get in trouble for saying no.
    Why? Because they're always told, ``Well, two layers up in the 
managed care operation there is a doctor, and if you make a mistake and 
they appeal up and the next person makes a mistake and they appeal up, 
eventually a doctor will see it and correct it.'' And believe it or not, 
that often happens. But a lot of times it happens when it's too late to 
do any good for the people who were hurt in the first place, because 
they needed a procedure then or within 3 weeks or 6 weeks. Now, this is 
how it really works. That's what this whole thing is about.
    So our little bill simply says, if you walk outside here--outside 
the Bagleys' home--and somebody races by and hits you in a car and they 
put you in an ambulance, you get to go the nearest emergency room, not 
one halfway across town because that's the one that happens to be 
covered by your plan. It says, if your doctor says he or she can't help 
you, you've got to have a specialist, you ought to be able to see one. 
It says, if your employer changes health care plans in the middle of 
your pregnancy or your chemotherapy treatment, you can't be required to 
stop and get another doctor or obstetrician. Now, this stuff happens. 
I'm not making this up. This happens in America. And it says the privacy 
of your medical records ought to be protected. That's the bill we're 
for.
    The House passed a bill that didn't guarantee any of those rights 
and left 100 million Americans out of what little it did do. When it was 
brought up in the Senate the other night--Barbara can tell you--I've 
never seen this happen. The Republican leader of the Senate was so 
terrified about having his people recorded voting no, but was determined 
not to let them vote yes because their supporters are all on the other 
side--the insurance companies that don't want this--that they shut the 
Senate down for 4 hours to keep the vote from occurring. I've never seen 
anything like it.
    They literally--they just called off--they were in a panic. They 
turned out the lights and got under their desks--[laughter]--killed it 
by stealth and waited for time to

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pass. I'm not exaggerating this. I've been astonished that there hasn't 
been more publicity on this. It was a breathtaking moment in American 
history.
    And when they turned out the lights, I wondered if any of them had 
ever looked at some of the people I've looked at and heard some of the 
stories I've heard, looked at the woman who lost her husband at 45 after 
25 years of marriage, who had a heart problem that could have been 
treated by proper surgery, but by the time they went through 9 months of 
hassling, the doctor had to say, ``I'm sorry, it is too late. I can't do 
anything for you.'' And a few months later, he keeled over and died in 
their front yard. That's just one case.
    So I don't know about you, I think we've got the better side of that 
argument. I'm happy to take into a midterm election an issue like this 
that touches people where they live. I think we've got the better side 
of that argument.
    And I'll just mention two other things. A lot of you are atypical 
for Democrats, you know. Most people in your income groups, maybe in the 
business you do, maybe they're not Democrats. But I'm really proud of 
the fact that I proved that our administration could be pro-business as 
well as pro-labor, pro-growth as well as pro-environment, because I 
believe that. I think to have to make one of those choices puts you in a 
hole before you start.
    And I've really tried to help put our country in the center of the 
emerging global economy. Oftentimes, I was at odds with some people in 
my own party for doing it. But look, now that we have these 16.7 million 
jobs; we need to be honest about where they came from. Thirty percent of 
our growth came from expanding exports. That means that what is morally 
right for us to do in terms of helping our neighbors around the world 
turns out to be in our economic best interest.
    Now, you got all these problems in Asia--some of them I think were 
inevitable once the level of economic activity and movement of capital 
got to the point it did, but you have a quarter of the world in 
recession today and another quarter of the world teetering on the edge. 
You have--some of our biggest trading partners in Asia today are flat 
broke; so that, for example, in the State of North Dakota, which 
basically is a big wheat farming State, they're having a veritable 
depression today. And part of the reason is that we export half our 
wheat, and 40 percent of it goes to Asia, and they're buying 30 percent 
less this year than they did last year because they don't have any money 
to buy our food.
    Now, the International Monetary Fund, I never thought--if you would 
have told me--a lot of things have happened to me that have surprised me 
since I've been here, I admit that, about the nature of politics. But if 
anybody had ever told me that the IMF would be a political issue in a 
congressional election, I would never have believed that because most 
people still don't know what the IMF is. [Laughter]
    But they do know--they do know--that we've got to be able to sell 
what we make around the world. And when you explain to people that the 
International Monetary Fund helps our friends get back on their feet and 
helps prevent the spread of this financial crisis that everybody knows 
about to Latin America, our fastest growing markets, where countries 
have been shaken even though they're doing a good job managing their 
economy, and that the Democratic Party favors keeping our economic 
growth going and continuing to lead the world economically, and we've 
been waiting for 8 months and still can't get this passed, I think 
that's a major issue.
    And I do not understand how in the world a person could say, ``I 
want to be a Senator from California,'' which is more closely tied to 
Asia than any place in the United States--not only economically but 
culturally--``but I do not want to do our fair share in helping to 
restore growth and opportunity in Asia, in markets for California 
products.'' So I'm happy to run on the issues. We've got the better side 
of that argument.
    And let me just say one thing about the education issue. In the 
balanced budget, we have an education plan that I put together, based on 
the over 20 years that Hillary and I have worked in the schools and 
worked with educators and followed the research, and based on what 
education leaders say is needed now. And it's all paid for.

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    Here's what it does--keep in mind, they won't even give us a vote on 
this--put 100,000 teachers out there to lower class size to an average 
of 18 in the first 3 grades. It would build or repair 5,000 schools at a 
time when the kids are in house trailers all over America and when 
school buildings in inner cities are being shut down. It would hook up 
all the classrooms to the Internet by the year 2000. It would give 
college scholarships to 35,000 young people that they could then pay off 
by going into the inner cities and other educationally underserved areas 
to teach. It would create 3,000 charter schools that are doing a lot, as 
Congresswoman Harman knows, in California and other places to reform 
public education.
    And to go back to the point Barbara made, it provides unprecedented 
amounts of funds to school districts that will have high standards, not 
have social promotion, but won't finger children as failures just 
because the system they're in is failing. So if they will have 
tutorials, if they will have after-school programs, if they will have 
summer school programs, we help them to set those things up. That's our 
plan. It's all paid for in the budget, and we cannot get a vote on it.
    So if the American people understand this is about saving Social 
Security for the 21st century, passing the Patients' Bill of Rights, 
putting education at the top of our investment priorities, and keeping 
economic growth going in America and throughout the world, and we're on 
the right side and our adversaries aren't, I think we've got a good 
chance to win that election.
    And I think we've got a good chance to convince people who otherwise 
would not show up, to come, And that's what concerns me. I had hoped 
that by the time I had been here 6 years, we'd have some level of 
greater harmony and bipartisanship here, and that a lot of the divisions 
that I had seen from afar before I became President would get better.
    I do think in the country all the work we've done to bring people 
together across racial and religious and ethnic and cultural lines is 
really biting. I think that there is a greater sense of reaching out and 
unity in America. It isn't true in Washington, but I don't think anyone 
could fairly blame our party or our administration for that.
    And what we've got to do is to give the American people a chance to 
vote for that kind of country. With their majority, this year, the 
leaders of the Republican Party have done a few things. They've killed 
campaign finance reform, which would have cut down on the number of 
these dinners you have to attend every year. [Laughter] They killed the 
tobacco legislation to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco. 
They killed the Patients' Bill of Rights. They killed an increase in the 
minimum wage for 12 million of the hardest working Americans at a time 
when unemployment is low and inflation is low. They took a step 
backwards on saving Social Security first by passing that tax bill in 
the House. They've taken a step backwards on the environment by 
continuing to litter every bill you can find with another environmental 
rider. And they've taken no action on the education agenda and no action 
on the International Monetary Fund.
    And what I'd like to ask you to do when you go home--and there are a 
lot of people here from all over the country--stick up for our people 
who are running. And stick up for the issues and do what you can to make 
sure people understand--everybody that works for you, everybody you come 
in contact with--this is a very important election to vote in. Because 
what the other guys are gambling on is, it's a midterm election and 
people are doing well and they will be relaxing and they won't show up.
    And what we have to say is this is a magic moment all right, but the 
world is not free of difficulty. Things are changing and we've got big 
challenges out there, and we're right on these issues. That the 
Democrats are for saving Social Security, keeping the economy going, 
putting education first, and passing the Patients' Bill of Rights. I 
think that's a pretty good program.
    And I'd like to say one other thing just for the record, because I 
know it's not just us here because this is being covered by the press. 
It is true that Barbara Boxer has been a conscience of the Senate. It is 
true that she stood up for principle. It's true that she is an 
independent voice--she certainly doesn't always vote the way I think she 
ought

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to, and that's good, that's what makes America work. But I think it's 
also important to point out for the record that she has been a very good 
Senator for California.
    I have worked with Jane Harman on issues that affect her district. I 
have worked with many other Members. I've worked with Senator Feinstein 
on the Mojave Desert and other things. But California has a lot of 
people in the Congress; it's the biggest congressional delegation. So 
there's a lot of competition for this. The Member of the California 
congressional delegation who has called me the largest number of times 
to do something very specific for the State of California is Barbara 
Boxer, and I want the voters to know that.
    So you ought to be proud you were here. But when you go home you 
ought to think about what I told you. You don't want to wake up on 
election day or the day after and think that all those polls of certain 
voters were the polls that counted instead of the polls of registered 
voters, which reflects how the people feel. What we have to do is to 
bring the public's feelings to the ballot box in November. You've helped 
Barbara tonight; let's keep working until we can help them all.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:02 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Smith and Elizabeth F. Bagley; 
Dorothy and Tony Rodham, the First Lady's mother and brother; Ben 
Barnes, owner, Entrecorp; and former Representative Marty Russo.