[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 43 (Monday, October 26, 1998)]
[Pages 2069-2073]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Luncheon Honoring Senator Carol Moseley-Braun in Chicago, 
Illinois

October 16, 1998

    The President. Thank you very much. I think the Senator has to go to 
a radio debate, so I'm going to let her off the hook. She's heard me 
speak a thousand times. You have an excused absence. Let's give her a 
hand. [Applause] You guys have got to stay with her now. Thank you. 
Goodbye.
    I want to thank all of you who are responsible for this today. One 
of the things that Pat Arbor said to me--he said, ``You know, the Union 
League Club took longer than America did to open up membership to women, 
but they elected a President quicker.'' Isn't that right? There's the 
President of the Union League. [Applause] Thank you. Hope the country 
does that before too long.
    Let me say to Pat and to all of you who are responsible for this 
event, I thank you very much. I'd like to thank all the people who 
provided our meal, and I'd like to thank this wonderful pianist for all 
the great music he gave us during lunch. Thank you very much.
    I will be pretty brief here, but I want to make a very important 
point to you. The election in less than 3 weeks now will be very 
important in defining what kind of country we decide to be well into the 
next century, whether we ratify the course that we have been taking for 
the last 6 years. Carol Moseley-Braun talked a lot about it; I'd like to 
give you some sense of what the last few days have looked like to me.
    First of all, they've sort have been a blur because I haven't had a 
lot of sleep. Our country was able to persuade our NATO allies to take a 
strong stand in Kosovo, and we have an agreement, which I think now will 
avoid mass starvation or freezing this winter and move that country on 
the path to peace.
    We have been heavily involved in trying to stabilize the global 
financial system, which, as all of you know, has been very much in 
turmoil, and looking to the long-term need for reform, as well as what 
it takes to fix the short-term crisis.
    Last night until well past midnight, I was talking with Prime 
Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat, trying to make the next big 
agreement in the Middle East peace process. And I'm going to leave you 
after the lunch and one or two other things and go back to Washington to 
spend the weekend in intense efforts there. And I'm convinced they're 
both really trying to breach the gaps between them.
    This morning I woke up to learn with a great deal of pride that John 
Hume and David Trimble had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their 
role in bringing about the peace in Northern Ireland, something that my 
administration and our country have been heavily involved in. And of 
course, we reached agreement on the balanced budget yesterday.
    Let me say, it's been a dizzying week but a wonderful week for our 
country. And I'd like to also say what I said just before I left 
Washington today: This budget would not have been possible unless the 
members of the Democratic caucus in Congress had been united behind me.
    There is a reason that this budget looks like we wrote it and passed 
it, even though our party is in the minority. The Congress has to pass a 
budget. That's not an option. It's the first time in 24 years when there 
was no budget plan passed, but in the end, if you want to go home, 
you've got to pass a budget. And so by standing strong for the things we 
believed in and by having Carol Moseley-Braun and Glenn Poshard and 
other people in our party who agree with the course we're taking say so 
strongly, that's what made this

[[Page 2070]]

possible. And I'd like to just reiterate a couple of the things that 
Carol said.
    This budget, which will continue our balanced budget policy that 
produced the surplus this year, first of all, beat back an attempt to 
provide a popular--or maybe not so popular, come to think of it--tax cut 
just a few days before the election that would have eroded the surplus, 
which I'm totally opposed to, until we save the Social Security system.
    We have to reform Social Security. We've got a bipartisan effort 
working on it. We're going to address it early next year. And we owe a 
lot to the fact that our Members of Congress, in tough races, Carol 
Moseley-Braun and Glenn Poshard--you just think about it--it would be 
easy to say, ``Well, I've got a tough race back in Illinois, and I know 
it's wrong to squander the first surplus in 29 years on what would 
amount to a modest amount of money to most people in Illinois right 
before the election. I know that's the wrong thing to do. We've been in 
the red for 29 years. I know the right thing to do is to save this 
surplus until we reform Social Security. But, boy, I'm in a tough 
race.'' And both of them said, ``No, I'm going to do what's right for 
the people of my State, the people of my country, for our children, and 
our future.'' And on that issue alone, they deserve to be elected on 
election day in a couple of weeks.
    And the second thing we did was to get not only 100,000 new teachers 
to bring average class size down to 18 in the early grades, which is a 
truly historic accomplishment--the National Government has never done 
anything like this before. And I might say, the people who opposed it in 
the other party are the same people that opposed me when I wanted to put 
100,000 police on the street. A lot of them have come here to Chicago. 
And they said, ``Oh, the Federal Government is going to try to take over 
State and local government.'' It was ridiculous. All we did was give 
people the means to put 100,000 more police on the street. We now have 
the lowest crime rate in 25 years. And Carol Moseley-Braun strongly 
supported the crime bill that put that 100,000 police on the street; so 
did Glenn.
    And what we did with the teachers was the same thing. We said, 
``Look we're just going to make this available, so we can have well-
trained, properly educated and examined teachers out there in these 
early grades getting this class size down.''
    We also dramatically increased funding to make sure that we have a 
national reading program, to ensure that all our 8-year-olds can read. 
We put in funds to continue our efforts to hook up every classroom to 
the Internet by the year 2000. And perhaps most important of all over 
the long run after the 100,000 teachers, we have enough money to provide 
for after-school programs for a quarter of a million children, who live 
in tough neighborhoods, who come from difficult home situations, and who 
need to be in school and not on the street after the bell rings in the 
afternoon. This is a terrific thing.
    The third thing we did was to protect the environment. You heard 
Carol talking about it. We not only protected the environment, we passed 
the clean water initiative I gave to Congress, which is designed to 
clean up the 40 percent of the lakes and streams in America that are 
still too polluted to swim or fish in. We passed my anti-global warming 
initiative, a program that is run by Dick Stern's son, Todd, in the 
White House, which was bitterly opposed by the entire leadership of the 
other party, but they know we're right. And in the end, we were able to 
fund it.
    And finally, months and months late, but finally, we secured our own 
economic future by increasing our ability to take responsibility for the 
global economic crisis when the Congress funded America's contribution 
to the International Monetary Fund. All that happened in this budget. It 
is a great budget for the United States of America.
    But I want you to understand, as President, even though I supported 
it strongly, I could not have done it, it would have not have happened, 
if Carol Moseley-Braun and Glenn Poshard, and the other members of our 
party in Congress hadn't stood foursquare with me and made it clear that 
was the condition of passing a budget and getting out of town. And we 
owe them all--every one of them--a great debt of gratitude. They have 
earned our support, and it's going to make a big difference for America.

[[Page 2071]]

    Let me say, elections are always about tomorrow, and this one should 
be too. But yesterday is some indication of tomorrow. I'd just like to 
say I've been in Washington only as long as Carol Moseley-Braun has been 
in the Senate. And I hope earnestly that she'll be in the Senate longer 
than I'll be in Washington. But I have a different view of a lot of 
things than some people who live there. I tend to evaluate people based 
on what they do that affects the lives of people back home. And I'd just 
like to give you a few things that I think you ought to keep in mind, 
besides what I just told you about the budget.
    The economic prosperity we enjoy today started in 1993, when my 
economic plan passed the Senate and the House by one vote. She could 
have said, ``Well, you know, I had a tough race in 1992. I'm going to 
have a tough race in 1996. I don't believe I'll cast a tough vote.'' But 
she did cast the tough vote. In 1997, when we passed the bipartisan 
balanced budget agreement, the deficit had already been reduced by 93 
percent because of Carol Moseley-Braun's vote. The people of Illinois 
should remember that on election day.
    In 1994 we passed the Brady bill. She was a cosponsor of the Brady 
bill. It's kept a quarter of a million guns out of the hands of felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers, saving who knows who many thousands of lives. 
She supported the crime bill that's put all those community police on 
the streets of Chicago and little towns in Illinois all across this 
State.
    She supported the family and medical leave law, the first bill I 
signed. Twelve and a half million Americans have taken some time off 
from work without losing their jobs when a baby is born or a parent is 
sick.
    So I believe she's been right on the issues all along. I know how 
important she was to this budget. One other thing I ought to mention 
about this budget is--it doesn't have much to do with Chicago, but there 
is a lot of agriculture in Illinois, and I vetoed the emergency farm 
legislation because I did not think it did enough for the farmers of 
this country that are in--many of them have been caught up in this 
global financial crisis and are in the worst shape they've been in in 
literally decades. And the support I received from Senator Moseley-
Braun, from Congressman Poshard, and others, was essential in getting us 
a new farm bill, which is a big part of this final agreement.
    Okay, that's my case for yesterday. Do you believe, if her opponent 
had been in the Senate, that he would have been there fighting with me 
for 100,000 teachers?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would he have voted for the Brady bill?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would he have voted for the crime bill?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would he have voted for the Family and Medical Leave 
Act?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would he have voted for my economic plan in 1993?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Now, look to tomorrow. What's this election about?
    Number one, we've got to come back in January and decide all over 
again if we're going to squander the surplus or save it and buckle down 
and fix Social Security.
    Number two, the major education initiative that we did not adopt was 
to provide for 5,000 new or reconstructed schools so that we'll have 
thousands of classrooms for those 100,000 teachers to teach in. Carol 
Moseley-Braun was the first Member of the United States Congress to come 
out for that--the very first one. This has been her deal all along, and 
we are going to achieve that in January. We are going to pass the school 
construction program in January, because the American people are 
overwhelmingly for it, if they will just vote for it on election day.
    Number three, among the many things we did not do in this session of 
Congress was to pass the patients' HMO bill of rights. That may not mean 
anything to some people. It basically means, if you're in an HMO, you 
have a right to see a specialist if your doctor says you need to see 
one; you have a right to go to nearest emergency room if you get hurt; 
you have a right to keep your doctor during a period of treatment, even 
if your employer changes health care providers; and you have a right to 
privacy in your medical records. The bottom line is that health care

[[Page 2072]]

decisions will be made by medical professionals, not by accountants.
    It is no mean thing. It is a big, big issue. Over 160 million of us 
are in managed care. Carol Moseley-Braun was for our bill. It was 
defeated in the House. It was defeated in the Senate by the members of 
the other party who did not support it.
    The third thing we have to do is to finally pass campaign finance 
reform.
    The fourth thing we have to do is to pass the bill--all year long we 
waited--to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco, the biggest 
public health problem in the country today.
    And finally, we should pass a minimum wage increase. It's hard to 
support a family on $5.15 an hour. The only reason we didn't pass it 
this year is that the other party was completely against it, even though 
the unemployment rate is low, inflation is low, and we can do this and 
actually help the economy. The last time we raised the minimum wage a 
few years ago, they told me the unemployment rate would go up and job 
growth would go down. Well, job growth went up, and the unemployment 
rate went down.
    So that's what this is about. This Senator has a good record. I just 
mentioned all these issues, and I asked you if you thought if her 
opponent had been there, would he have voted with me. You said no.
    Now, who is going to vote to save Social Security first? Who is 
going to be more likely to give the American people and the people of 
Illinois, for the very first time in our history, this innovative 
program to build world-class schools for the 21st century? Who is going 
to be more likely to pass campaign finance reform, to stand up for the 
health interest of our children, to stand up for the interest of working 
families? I think you know the answer to that. I think you know the 
answer to that.
    What I want to say to you is that I'm grateful for your presence 
here. I'm grateful for your contributions. I thank you for helping her 
in this way. But it is not enough, because it is not enough in this 
election to persuade people that you have the better side of the 
argument. You heard what Carol said. You also have to persuade them that 
the argument is worth their going to vote on election day.
    And every one of you, you have employees; you have friends who have 
employees; you have other people you know who have contact with large 
networks of people. This election will be determined not simply by who 
has the better side of the argument, or what people agree with in terms 
of what ought to be done, but who shows up.
    And so I think here in Chicago--and this is what Hillary told me to 
say, by the say. She called me right before I got off the plane. She 
said, ``Here in Chicago you would understand that. The only poll that 
counts is the poll that's manifest when people actually move away from 
their telephone and show up at the polling place.''
    So I ask every one of you to think about this. Believe me, we are 
shaping the future of 21st century America. Look at where we are now 
compared to where we were 6 years ago. Whatever anybody else tells you 
about the issues, on every single critical decision I have had to make 
for 6 years to affect the welfare and the future of America, that 
required a vote in Congress to support, Carol Moseley-Braun was there 
with me, standing with me, supporting me, trying to make this a better 
country with a better future.
    She was the very first person in America in the entire Congress to 
say we ought to have a national school construction program for 21st 
century schools and smaller classes. She has supported all these other 
issues. She deserves--but more importantly, you deserve, your children 
deserve, this State deserves to be represented in the Senate by somebody 
who has that kind of vision and that kind of courage and that kind of 
willingness to put herself on the line.
    So I ask you, don't give up, bear down. We can win if you do your 
part.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:25 p.m. at the Union League Club. In his 
remarks, he referred to Patrick H. Arbor, chairman, Chicago Board of 
Trade; Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel; and Chairman Yasser 
Arafat of the Palestinian Authority. This item was not received in time 
for publication in the appropriate issue.

[[Page 2073]]