[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 8 (Monday, March 1, 1999)]
[Pages 311-317]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees
Dinner in San Francisco, California
February 25, 1999
Thank you. Well, thank you very much. First of all, let me say to
our host and his family and to all the rest of you, I have had a
perfectly wonderful time here tonight. And I think that's important. I
say that because a lot of you go to a lot of these events, and I don't
know that you always have a perfectly wonderful time. [Laughter] But
we've had a wonderful time.
I think all of you know you're here to do something of surpassing
importance, and I want to say that, as I was looking at the previous
speakers and those who were introduced who hold public office, I was
sitting here silently thinking to myself, I am very proud to be a member
of my political party.
I am the beneficiary, as no one else here is, of all the work that
these Members of Congress have done. I know things about them all that
we don't have time even to go through. I've had conversations with
Senator Baucus about the environment or how we ought to relate to Asia
over the long run. I've talked to Senator Torricelli at all hours of the
night, usually at my instigation, I might add, about all manner of
issues. Senator Boxer and I are members of the same family in more ways
than one, and I was profoundly grateful that the people of California
reelected her by such a handsome margin.
And Hillary and I both felt privileged to be able to come out here
last year and to campaign for her, for Gray Davis, for all the Democrats
who were elected. Congressman Bonior, Congressman Miller, Congressman
Kennedy--you know I used to be like Congressman Kennedy, too young to
hold office, and I looked younger than I was--[laughter]--but he's a
marvelous leader for our Democratic House Campaign Committee--
Congresswoman Eshoo; Congresswoman Lofgren, who was, I must say to all
of you, a lion on the House Judiciary Committee and a great leader
there; Congresswoman Woolsey.
I want to say what Bob Torricelli said about Nancy Pelosi is right.
I have been on both sides of issues with Nancy Pelosi; there is nothing
more humbling than to have her look at you and tell you why you're
wrong. [Laughter] You know? You just--she doesn't have to do like those
really conservative Republicans who invoke God all the time. She just
looks at you, and you know God is on her side. [Laughter] She never has
to say it,
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you know. And if she really disagrees with you and she gets those--her
eyes seem to get bigger and bigger and sadder and sadder, and you don't
know whether she's going to cry or hit you right between the eyes.
[Laughter] There are few people in public life I admire more for
marrying their heart with their mind than Nancy Pelosi. You should be
very proud of her, and I know you are. But she has really done a great
job.
And Dick Gephardt and I, 11 years ago, had a dinner in the kitchen
of the Governor's mansion, composed of cold McDonald's french fries, not
quite as nice as the one we're having tonight. He came to visit me in
Arkansas, and Jane was there. Hillary was there. We stayed up half the
night talking. It was really the first time I'd ever had a chance to get
to know him, and I can honestly say that, with every passing week, every
passing month, every passing year of working with him, my admiration and
affection for him has grown.
And he has done something a lot of people couldn't do. The Democrats
were in the majority a long time, and I want to talk about how we came
to be in the minority in a moment. But they were in the majority a long
time. And psychologically, it was very difficult for people who had been
in the majority a long time to go into the minority. And a lot of
people, frankly, just got--they just quit. I'll say this for the
Republicans, they don't quit. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms don't quit,
right? [Laughter] And a lot of our guys, they had a hard time, so they
just--they resigned. They left their careers.
And Dick Gephardt realized that because he believed, as did I, as
did all those in this room tonight, that we didn't want America to look
like what we thought would happen if the ``Contract With America''
prevailed. And we didn't agree with it. And we thought that in the end
the American people would support the decisions we've made which cost us
the Congress in 1994. And so he rose to the occasion in a way that I
think was awesome, even to people who had a lot of confidence in him and
admired him. And I can tell you that after the next election, when he
becomes the Speaker of the House, every person in this room will be very
proud that you were here tonight and that you made a contribution to it.
And I thank you.
Now, when the mayor came in tonight I told him I would be for him or
against him, whichever would help most in his election. [Laughter] And
typically, he asked for one of each. [Laughter] But I want to thank the
mayor for always making me feel at home in San Francisco. I thank Art
Torres for his leadership of our party. I thank all of you.
I wish I could think of something to say that you can say to
somebody else that would spread the word beyond the circle of friends we
all have. But as I was going through this magnificent home tonight, and
Bob Torricelli said something that I wish I could have said, because he
said, ``All of you are here because you believe your country will be
better off if you help other people who have things that you already
have--to acquire things that you already have.''
I believe that the things in this time at least that distinguish our
party are things for which this home, this city, and this State are
metaphors. We don't know who laid this stone in the floor. We don't know
who did the marbling work on these beautiful columns or who painted the
walls or put the glass in the ceiling. I don't know who painted that
wonderful painting of Nijinsky in the other room. But I know one thing:
Every one of them--we don't know any of them--they had different gifts,
but they were very special. And we're all better off and enriched
tonight because they had a chance to manifest their gifts. But we're
also better off because they had the chance to manifest their gifts
together. The house was built by the gifts of many people, some of whom
are completely anonymous. The magnificent furniture, the inlaid work on
the desk, the things I saw--I don't have any idea, some of those people
have been dead more than a hundred years. But every one of them had a
gift, and when you put them all together, you have quite a home.
San Francisco and California, they're places where everybody can
feel at home, where the diversity, the richness, the texture of what
will be 21st century America is already evident, and where ideas are
prized, no matter what their source, and where people don't fear change
as long as the change
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occurs in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation. That's
basically what we think America ought to be like, all day, every day.
When Nancy quoted the prayer of St. Francis and talked about all the
places I brought peace to, I thought there are three places that I have
made no progress. I've made no progress, although I've tried, in trying
to get Greece and Turkey to get along. I've made no progress in trying
to resolve the tensions between India and Pakistan. And I'm not sure
I've made any progress at all in bringing peace to Washington, DC.
[Laughter]
But I will say this: This country knows one thing after 6 years,
that all the things that used to be said by the other party about the
Democrats turned out to be wrong. They said we couldn't be trusted to
govern; we couldn't manage the economy; we couldn't deal with crime or
welfare or foreign policy or defense. And the country is in a lot better
shape.
The interesting thing is that it turns out that if you believe
everybody has got a gift to give, that the gifts will only manifest
themselves to the maximum degree if we give them together, and that
Government ought to be about bringing out the best in people and trying
new ideas and moving forward, it turns out it works. It works.
But it wasn't always evident. The reason these Democrats are in the
minority tonight is because in 1994 it was not evident to the American
people that the tough votes they cast for the budget bill in '93 and the
crime bill in '94, the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, and bringing
the deficit down and, at the same time, saying we had to increase our
investment in education--it wasn't apparent in 1994 that the results
would be what they turned out to be.
But the American people, if you give them enough time, nearly always
get it right. That's why we're still around here after more than 200
years. And in 1998, for the first time since 1822, the party of the
President in the 6th year of a Presidency won seats in the House of
Representatives, while being out-spent by $100 million, because of what
they stood for and because of the record that together we had made and
the progress the American people have made.
And I'm not running for anything anymore. I might run for the school
board some day. [Laughter] I'm here because I believe that what we stand
for has not only helped America to come to where we are now as compared
to where the United States and California were in 1991 and 1992 but
because I believe that now the real question is, what will we do with
this moment of prosperity and confidence? And I'd like to be pretty
candid with you tonight and tell you what I have absolute confidence we
should do and what challenges are out there that I haven't quite figured
out exactly how to solve yet. But I am sure that having people in the
majority who believe everyone has a gift, we have to give them together,
and we ought to be bringing out the best in people in public life, are
the people that ought to be mapping the path of the 21st century.
We have to deal now with a surplus. If somebody had told you in
1992, ``If you vote for Bill Clinton, 6 years later he'll be coming
back, and they'll have this big fundraiser, and he'll be saying, the
biggest challenge we've got now is how to deal with the surplus,'' you
would have said, ``I will not vote for that man. He's nuts.'' [Laughter]
``He's kidding.'' But let me just ask you to think--yes, America is
doing well; yes, California is doing well. But we have some big
challenges. And if we expect to win in 2000, we have to show, number
one, that in the next 2 years we're doing everything we can to fulfill
the mandate the voters gave us in the '98 election and, secondly, that
we are still looking to the future.
We've got to deal with the aging of America, the retirement of the
baby boomers, the fact that we're all living longer. Our life expectancy
up over 76 years now. If you live to be 65 in America, your life
expectancy is over 80 years now, soon to be over 85. In the year 2030
we'll have twice as many people over 65 as we do today. We'll have only
two people working for every one person on Social Security.
The Democratic Party, out of its compassion and its sense of
obligation across the generations, created Social Security and Medicare,
and they will both be stretched mightily by the rising cost of health
care, the fact that we're living longer and using more
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health resources, and the fact that the demographics of the baby boom
retirement will put great stresses on us. We now project a surplus for
the next 25 years. There is a way to deal with the aging of America that
will use most of the surplus to save Social Security and Medicare and
pay down the debt.
We will also have to make reforms in Social Security and Medicare,
some of which may be somewhat controversial. But if you believe that we
have to be together, then that's what we've got to do. I was in Tucson
today, speaking to a big community group, and person after person after
person came up and told me that they were literally alive because of
these programs.
I was introduced by an 82-year-old Chinese-American woman who is,
near as I could tell, about 4'8''. She made Barbara Boxer look like a
basketball player. [Laughter] And she was magnificent. She was a
community leader in Tucson and was born in Tucson--a native of Tucson,
Arizona--who talked about being a breast cancer survivor and the
mammography she got because of Medicare and because we had pushed that
and changed the system.
So who do you trust to change this program, and are we going to do
it, and how are we going to do it and be faithful? We have to do it. And
we do it not for the people on these programs now--they're going to be
fine--but so that the baby boomers, like me--and I'm the oldest of the
baby boomers--do not have to go to bed every night worried that we are
bankrupting our children and undermining their ability to raise our
grandchildren.
And now is the time to think about it--now, years ahead of time,
when we have the resources, when we have the ability, before the crisis
arises, before it threatens to weaken the American economy just to find
some sort of solution. That's the first thing we have to do.
The second thing we have to do, as others have said, is to
recognize, frankly, as so many of you have done in many ways, that we
will never be the country we ought to be in the 21st century until every
child gets a world-class education. We will never be. And I think that
means, among other things, continuing our work for better prepared
teachers, smaller classes, hooking up all the classrooms to the
Internet. We're up to 50 percent, by the way.
When the Vice President and I came here for our first NetDay a
couple of years ago, only about 8 percent of the classrooms in America
were connected to the Internet. We're up to 50 percent now, and we will
make our 100 percent goal shortly after the turn of the century. And
that's a good thing. But we need to build or modernize a lot of schools.
We've got all these schools where the kids are going to schools in house
trailers, or they're going to schools in buildings so old they can't
even be wired for the Internet. Many of our cities, the average age of
the school building is 65 years or more. And a lot of those buildings
are magnificent, but they take some money to modernize and to prepare.
I want to end social promotion, but I don't want to declare the
children a failure when the system is failing them. Senator Boxer's
great passion has been getting us more after-school programs. We now
have in this budget enough money for a million children to be in after-
school programs in the United States if it passes. This is an important
thing.
We have to recognize that there is much more we have to do to
balance work and family. Today in Arizona, three different people came
up to me and thanked me for the family and medical leave law, the first
bill I signed as President. But millions of workers are not covered.
They ought to be covered.
We ought to pass the child care initiative Senator Torricelli talked
about. You'd be amazed how many people are out there struggling to work
and having so much of their wages eaten up because they cannot afford
quality child care. We've seen the welfare rolls drop in half, but the
truth is that there are some people who are off the rolls who aren't
working, and others who would leave the rolls gladly if they could only
afford the child care. And we have a child care initiative that we ought
to pass.
Balancing work and family will be one of the signal issues of the
21st century. More and more, two-parent families will be working. More
and more, single parents will have to work. We owe it to America, those
of us
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in positions of responsibility, to lead a country where every person who
wants to work or has to work and who has children can succeed as a
parent and a worker. If we ever get in a position where we accept the
proposition that anybody in this country ought to have to choose, then
we have lost, because we are diminished by either choice. And yet, every
day, people do choose. And every day, people who are working who have
children are making choices sometimes they're not even aware of. And it
erodes the fabric of our common society, and we have to do a better job.
We have to have a commitment in the 21st century that we manifest
now to bring this economic recovery to people in places that haven't
seen it. There are cities in this country now that still have huge
census tracts with double-digit unemployment, rural areas with double-
digit unemployment, Native American reservations where, even though we
now have the lowest unemployment rate in the entire industrial world,
there has been no new investment, and there have been no new jobs.
I have given the Congress an economic package which will provide
incentives to create new investments and new markets here at home. We
ought to do that. Every one of you ought to want every American at least
to have a chance to participate in this recovery. Now, when our economy
is the strongest in at least a generation, if we can't bring economic
opportunity to people who haven't had it now, we will never get around
to it. If we can't prove that free enterprise can work in places it
hasn't reached now, we will never be able to prove it. And I hope you
will support that.
We talked a little about the remarkable sense of community you have
here. One of the things that I want to do--and I was met by someone from
the chamber of commerce at the airport who is an architect, who had a
copy of a publication the Vice President put out on our new livability
initiative--$1 billion to help communities deal with traffic problems,
the need for green space, the need for managed development, $1 billion
to set aside lands in perpetuity.
We have gotten ourselves tied in knots too often in our country
trying to make the choice between our economic growth and the
preservation of our environment and the quality of life. We have decided
to try something different--to put some money out there to acquire some
land that's available on the market and to help communities figure out
how to grow and preserve green space, how to grow and deal with traffic
congestion, how to deal with these things. I think this is very
important.
So, these are some of the things that are on the agenda for us in
this year, along with the very important peacemaking work I hope we will
be continuing to do in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Kosovo,
and in the places I mentioned where we've had no progress, including
Washington, DC. [Laughter] There are two challenges I want to ask you to
think about, because there are people in California that I think are
uniquely qualified to do it.
In order to keep the American economy growing over the long run, we
have got to restore growth to the global economy. For the 6 years I've
been President, in the first 5 years, 30 percent of our growth came from
sales of American products overseas. Now, last year, we had very good
growth, but it didn't come from overseas. We were able to generate
enough activity within our borders and basically hold our own in our
sales. But because of the economic downturn in Asia, the terrible
financial crisis there, and the impact it had in Latin America and the
slowdown there, we had some real difficulties. Our farmers, our steel
industry, our aircraft people had some real problems.
I believe that it is imperative that the United States take the
lead--and we have been working hard on this for a year--in trying to
figure out how to create a financial and trade architecture for the 21st
century that will benefit ordinary people everywhere, that will put a
human face on the global economy, that will enable people to follow
responsible policies and honest and open investment practices to
actually participate, and that will avoid the kind of horrible, wild
swings we've seen in the last 2 years that turned people who worked for
a generation to make themselves middle-class people in Asia into abject
poverty. There were Asian cities where doctors and nurses had to start
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sleeping in the hospitals because they lost their homes when this
collapse occurred.
Now, I can't run all their policies. No President could. And some of
their problems were of their own making. But I want you to know that I
have gotten in touch with the people that I believe are the best minds
in the world on this subject. We are working very hard. I am going to
work very hard for the next year to try to get the countries of the
world to agree on a framework within which steady, solid growth can
occur in a way that will benefit Americans but also fulfill our
responsibility to help others lift themselves out of difficulty. And if
you have any ideas on that, don't be ashamed to present them to me,
because I don't think there is a person in the world who has got an
answer to this issue in the world today.
The second thing I'd like to ask you to think about is an
environmental issue, and that's the issue of climate change. There's no
question in my mind that the world is changing and that the climate is
warming. I was out on the Monterey Peninsula not very long ago, with Sam
Farr, and I think George Miller was there. We had this oceans
conference. And Anna was probably there. We went out on the--and Barbara
was there, I think. We went out on Monterey Peninsula, and these
graduate students took me out into the bay. And we were walking out into
the clear water, and this graduate student said, ``Mr. President, reach
down there and pick up a handful of the stones and the marine life.''
And I did. And the graduate student pointed to this little elemental
form of marine life and said, ``You see this? Twenty years ago, you
could not find this any further north than 50 miles south of here. That
is how much the water has warmed up in 20 years''--this small species,
moving 50 miles north.
I've been working real hard--you probably don't know much about
this, but to avoid an outright salmon war between Washington, Oregon,
Canada, and Alaska, because all the fish keep moving further north. So
now, Canada, Washington, Oregon don't have enough, and Alaska's got more
than they know what to do with, because of the changing nature of the
climate.
Yet, oil prices are very low, and it looks like they're going to
stay low for 2 or 3 years, which makes things like electric cars and
substitute technologies relatively less economically attractive. And we
have a majority in the House of Representatives--and Dick Gephardt will
tell you--that caused this administration to spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars last year appearing before subcommittees to explain why our
efforts on climate change, which include no regulation and no taxes but
tax incentives and research and development for new technologies--we're
not some great conspiracy to bankrupt the American economy.
Now, California is a place that thinks about the future and lives
with the future and has to live with the constant tension of dealing
with these things. And you've adopted all of these tough clean air
standards. So I say to you: I am determined before I leave office to
build a national consensus to tackle this problem in a consistent,
disciplined way for the next 10 years, and I believe the technology is
there to actually promote more economic growth while doing the right
thing with greenhouse gas emissions and turning this situation around.
But if you can give me some ideas about that, as well as contribute
your money to the Democratic majority, I would be grateful. These are
two great challenges that will shape the way our children will live for
the next 50 years, and I want your help.
Now, the last thing I'd like to say is, I thank you for your
citizenship and your concern, especially now. I think that it's fair to
say in light of the events of the last 6 years and the election of '94
and the success that has come to our country that we're all grateful for
and none of us, including me, can take full responsibility for, the
American people have the achievement. But I think we really know now
that it matters if we give everyone a chance to develop his or her gift.
It matters if we believe we're stronger if we become one community and
one America.
It matters if we believe the purpose of politics is to bring out the
best in people. It matters. That's what this next election is about.
That's what your contribution is about. Even if we fix Social Security
and Medicare and do all I want to do in education and bring
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this economic initiative to distressed areas of the country and make
peace everywhere I'd like to make it, problems will never go away. And
the world is changing very fast and no one can foresee all the
developments.
So the best thing to do is pick the right people with the right
values, the right philosophy, and the right approach. The last 6 years
entitled the Democratic Party to the benefit of the doubt. And I believe
that the last 6 years and the debates of the last 6 years put us in a
position to make a very compelling case that we are now not only the
party of Jefferson and Jackson, Roosevelt and Kennedy, but the party of
Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt as well. And we need you. We need
your support.
So I want you to think about this. This is a long way from November
of 2000. But it will pass in the flash of an eye. Hillary said the other
day--we were talking, fixing up a room at the White House--it's part of
her project to try to leave the house in a lot better shape than we
found it--and she said--no, it was in good shape when we found it. Don't
laugh like that. I didn't mean it like that. [Laughter]
But we wanted to do some things for the house, and we were up
putzing around, putting stuff around, you know, and she said, ``Can you
believe we've been here 6 years?'' It doesn't take long to serve a term
or live a life. And ultimately, we will be judged by what we leave for
our successors. I think we want to be judged well. I know you can trust
the people who are here with me tonight to carry on the legacy you
believe in and to build the kind of America our children deserve. You
have helped them to do it, and I am very grateful.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 9:25 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to Gov. Gray Davis of California; Jane Gephardt,
wife of Representative Richard A. Gephardt; Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr.,
of San Francisco; and Art Torres, chair, California State Democratic
Party. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these
remarks.