[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 9 (Monday, March 8, 1999)]
[Pages 350-353]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Senator Robert G. Torricelli in Newark, New 
Jersey

March 3, 1999

    Thank you for the wonderful, wonderful welcome, and I want to 
congratulate everyone who had anything to do with building this 
magnificent Performing Arts Center. It's a fabulous place.
    I would like to thank the people whose presence brightened our night 
tonight. I thank Cissy Houston and my friend Kevin Spacey. I thank 
Gloria Gaynor. I was--when she was singing her songs, we were all back 
there singing offstage. And they said, now--they made me stand way back 
so no one could possibly take an embarrassing picture of me pretending 
that I was young again, and off key. And I was trying to decide whether 
I was--it was more appropriate for me to sing ``I Will Survive,'' or --
[laughter]--actually, I sort of like ``I'm Never Going To Say Good-bye'' 
better. [Laughter.]
    I say that because the people of New Jersey have been wonderful to 
me, and I am profoundly grateful. I remember so well my first big 
political event here--Bob Janiszewski had me there--and thank you, Bob, 
and all the people from that magnificent county Democratic organization. 
And I had lost my voice that night, and they stuck with me anyway, which 
I really appreciate.
    I'd like to thank Congressman Payne, Congressman Pallone, 
Congressman Holt, and Congressman Rothman for flying up on Air Force One 
with me tonight and for doing New Jersey proud every day in the United 
States Congress. And I want to thank Mayor Sharpe James and the other 
mayors and State assembly people who met me at the airport. And I thank 
Charles Kushner and Steve Ross for doing a great job on this event 
tonight.

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I thank your State Democratic chairman, Tom Giblin, and your assembly 
leader, Joe Doria, who tells me we have a chance to win the assembly 
this year. And I want you to do that.
    And most of all, I want to thank Bob Torricelli for many things, for 
being a great advocate. He is a ferocious advocate for New Jersey, for 
America, for democracy and human rights throughout the world; now, for 
the proposition that it's high time the Democrats took back the Senate, 
and he's leading our campaign committee. And he has been my friend, in 
good times and bad. And I will never forget it. I'm honored to be here 
tonight.
    Bob was up here talking, and I thought: Shoot, he's giving my 
speech; I won't have anything to say when I get out there. [Laughter] 
Let me just say to all of you, again, I am profoundly grateful that the 
people of New Jersey twice voted to give their electoral votes to the 
Vice President and to me. I am grateful that Hillary and I and all of us 
in our administration had the chance to serve these last 6 years, to 
work to create the conditions and give the American people the tools 
that brought us to this day. How different this is than America was 6 
years ago.
    And I am grateful for that. I don't for a moment claim all the 
credit for every good thing that has happened in this country, but I do 
believe when I came to the people of New Jersey in 1992 and said we 
needed to change the direction of this country; we need to go back to a 
commitment to give opportunity to every responsible citizen; and we need 
to remind the American people that we're all one community across all 
the lines that divide us; and that we can only do well individually if 
we're committed to giving every American and every American family and 
every American community the chance to be a part of the future we dream 
for our own children.
    And I'm glad and grateful that we have the lowest peacetime 
unemployment rate since 1957 and the longest peacetime economic 
expansion in history and the lowest crime rate in 30 years and welfare 
rolls cut in half and 90 percent of our kids immunized for the first 
time ever and the doors of college open to all Americans. I am simply 
grateful to have had the chance to participate in what we have done 
together as a nation.
    But I want to say to you in more pointed and more specific terms 
what Bob just said. This country has been through a lot in the last 10, 
15 years. We've had a lot of triumph. We've overcome a lot of economic 
and social trauma. And the easy thing to do when things are going well 
is to relax, maybe even go back to the old ways, go back to the stand 
patter. And I have to tell you that I think that would be a terrible 
mistake.
    I am encouraged that the American people agree. In 1998, when our 
party picked up seats in the House of Representatives for the first time 
in the 6th year of a Presidency since 1822--including Russ Holt--it 
happened because we had the national agenda. We didn't stand back and 
say, ``Vote for us because we've got a surplus. Vote for us because 
we've got a good economy.'' We said, ``Vote for us because we have a 
chance to meet the big challenges still facing this country. Vote for 
us, and we will save Social Security. We will modernize our schools. We 
will pass the Patients' Bill of Rights. We will keep the American 
economy going in the right direction. We have an agenda.''
    And so I say tonight, the thing I like most about Bob Torricelli is 
if you didn't want to be a Senator to have the honor of the title, he 
wanted to be a Senator to get up every day and get something done to 
help the lives of ordinary people in New Jersey, in the United States, 
and throughout the world.
    And I can say to you--so many of you came through the line and said 
something specific to me about the peace process in the Middle East or 
democracy in Asia or in our own hemisphere or some specific domestic 
program, when we were visiting earlier, those of you who came through 
and talked to me--I think it is important that if the Democratic Party 
wishes to be the majority party over the long run, in the Congress and 
in the White House, that we continue to be both the conscience and the 
engine of America's civic life.
    We have big challenges. If I haven't learned anything in the last 6 
years, it is how quickly things are changing within and beyond our 
borders and what a terrible mistake it is to believe that, just because 
things are

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good today, they'll be just fine tomorrow if you don't do anything else. 
That would be a significant mistake.
    So I just want to say three or four things. I ask for your support, 
for your Members of Congress and for your Senator. And I ask you to 
fight for these things in the coming years when you have the election 
this year in New Jersey, next year for the Senate and the Congress races 
and in the Presidency.
    Number one, we have got to face the fact that like every advanced 
country in the world, we are getting older as a nation. There will be 
twice as many people over 65 in 30 years as there are now. There will 
only be two people working for every one person retired and drawing 
Social Security. The present system cannot be sustained unless we do 
something about it. And I do not think what we should do about it is 
forget about it, because half the people in America today over 65 are 
out of poverty only because, in addition to their other income, they 
draw Social Security.
    So I have said the first thing we've got to do is deal with the 
challenge of the aging of America, which means we have to save Social 
Security; we have to save Medicare for the 21st century. And the right 
way to do it--the right way to do it is to realize that it is also an 
enormous opportunity if we do it properly.
    I want to set aside a little over three-quarters of this surplus 
that we think will come out in the next 15 years until we save Social 
Security and Medicare. Since we don't need the money right away, in the 
ensuing 15 years we can buy in the debt. And if we pay down the public 
debt for 15 years with this surplus, let me tell you what will happen. 
Fifteen years from now our country will have the smallest debt it's had 
since 1917, before we went into World War I. Fifteen years from now, 
when your Members of Congress go to vote on the budget, instead of 
taking 13 cents of every dollar you pay in taxes off the top to pay 
interest on the debt, it will be down to 2 cents. And they will be 
putting the money into Social Security, into Medicare, into education, 
into medical research, into protecting the environment, into growing the 
economy, into building America.
    And in the meanwhile, because we'll be doing that, interest rates 
will be lower; business loans will be lower; college loans will be 
lower; consumer credit will be lower; home mortgages will be lower. 
There will be more jobs, higher income, and more prosperity.
    Now, the easy thing to do is to say, ``We've got this surplus. We've 
waited 30 years. Let's give it away. Let's give it back to the American 
people in a tax cut because it's your money anyway.'' Well, it is your 
money, anyway, but you would be better off with a strong, healthy 
American economy and preserving our obligations for the 21st century, 
saving Social Security and Medicare. And that is what we ought to do.
    We can do that and still have a sizable tax cut and invest more in 
education and meet our national security needs. But we ought to put 
first things first. And we will rue the day that we missed the 
opportunity to meet our obligations to the next generation of elderly 
and to lift from their children and grandchildren the burden of knowing 
that they have to care for their parents more than they should and their 
incomes will be eroded.
    We can make the 21st century more secure, more vital, and 
economically stronger. That is the first and most important mission we 
have. We have to do more for the children and families of the 21st 
century. We're a long way from guaranteeing excellence in education for 
every child. I have loved going into the schools of New Jersey. I have 
loved seeing the proliferation of computer technology for poor students 
and immigrant families, as well as for those of middle class and upper-
income children and their families. But we have a long way to go, and we 
have to do better.
    We have a long way to go before we can honestly say that we have 
made it possible for every working family in this country to succeed 
both at work and in raising their children. That's why we have a major 
child care initiative. I cannot tell you how many million families every 
day are confronted with nagging worries--even in this prosperous 
economy--about whether they can meet their obligations at work and still 
afford quality child care for their kids. And I will not rest until I 
believe every American family can do both and take care of their 
children and their job.

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    I am proud that the air is cleaner and the water is cleaner and 
there are fewer toxic waste dumps and the environment is making 
progress. And I am proud of the fact that the Democrats proved that you 
could grow the economy and improve the environment at the same time, 
something our friends in the other party always denied. That is not 
true. You can grow the economy and improve the environment at the same 
time. But we now have a $2 billion livability agenda before the Congress 
that's terribly important to me. Why? Because it will help communities 
deal with everything from traffic congestion to the need for more green 
space, it will help us to set aside precious lands in urban areas and 
remote wilderness, and we ought to do it to continue our work.
    And let me just say one last thing that you, here in New Jersey, 
know is true. Not every neighborhood in every city or every small town 
or every rural area has participated in this recovery. And I have asked 
the Congress to pass a comprehensive plan to create new markets for 
American business and new jobs right here at home, by giving the same 
kind of incentives to people to invest and create private sector jobs in 
poor urban and rural and small town neighborhoods that we already give 
people to invest overseas. If it works there, it will work here, and we 
should support it.
    Finally, let me make one other point. We've had a wonderful night, 
and I don't have to give my State of the Union Address to you again. But 
if you asked me today what is the distinguishing characteristic of what 
it is we have tried to do, Senator Torricelli and I and our allies over 
the last 6 years, and what is the difference between what you have tried 
to do and what those who have opposed you have tried to do, I would say 
it is this: Number one, we believe that we have an obligation to give 
every single American the ability to live out his or her dream. And 
number two, we believe that with all that divides us, by race, by 
region, by culture, by religion, by lifestyle, by whatever, we still 
have to make one family.
    When some of you were going through the line tonight saying thank 
you for what you've done in the Middle East, thank you for what you've 
tried to do in Northern Ireland, what we're trying to do in Kosovo to 
head off another bloodshed, what I'd still like to do on the Indian 
subcontinent and other places in the world, what we've tried to do in 
helping to end tribal wars in Africa, you think about it. Here we are, 
on the verge of a new millennium in this high-tech age, and what are we 
worried about? We're worried about people getting hold of high-
technology information and weapons to pursue ancient hatreds or age-old 
greed, whether they're organized criminals or drug traffickers or people 
fighting these awful religious and racial wars all across the world.
    If you want America to do good in the 21st century, America first 
must be good at home. We must be a country of all Americans under the 
law. And I have said this before, but I have tried to make the 
Democratic Party and our administration faithful to the traditions not 
only of Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt but also to those 
of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. We have embraced the best of 
America's past, to prepare for America's best days in the 21st century. 
And I can't think of any Member of Congress who can do more to give us 
the kind of America that all our children deserve than Bob Torricelli.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:04 p.m. in Prudential Hall at the New 
Jersey Performing Arts Center. In his remarks, he referred to 
entertainers Cissy Houston, Kevin Spacey, and Gloria Gaynor; Hudson 
County Executive Bob Janiszewski; Mayor Sharpe James of Newark; event 
cochairs Charles Kushner and Steve Moses; and State Assembly Minority 
Leader Joseph V. Doria, Jr.