    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1999)]
    [Pages 449-455]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Stuart, Florida

    March 16, 1998

        If I had any judgment at all, I would not say a word. [Laughter] I
    had forgotten we did some of those things. [Laughter]
        You know, when we came in this magnificent home tonight and I was
    looking around and commenting on the spiral staircase,
    Reverend Jackson said, ``You know, Mr.
    President, you and Hillary live in the White House. Willie and Gloria
    live in a white house. The only difference is they've got more floor
    space, and they're not term-limited.'' [Laughter]
        Let me say to the Garys, to Willie, to Gloria, to your mother, your
    children, your grandchildren how honored I am to be here with all of our
    crew from the White House tonight, along with Joe Andrew and Beth
    Dozoretz from the Democratic Party; how delighted I am to be here with
    my good friend Reverend Jackson who is also my Special Envoy to Africa.
    And I'll say a little more about that in a moment.
        I thank Congressman Hastings and Congressman Deutsch for coming down
    here with me tonight. I thank Bishop Ray and my good friend Bishop
    Graves and the other members of the clergy who are here, and the college
    presidents. I thought the Drifters and Ernestine Diller were both just
    great. And I thank them for entertaining us. And I'd like to thank the
    people who prepared and served our food and our drinks tonight. I thank
    them very much for what they did.
        You know, when Willie was talking about raising the average income
    of African-American households, I thought, you know, I didn't have to do
    anything; he did that all by himself. [Laughter]
        Let me say--I have to say one thing on a serious note--some of you
    are here tonight who meant to be here at noon in Palm Beach. I was
    supposed to have a lunch in Palm Beach at noon. And the reason we
    couldn't do that is that the son of two of our hosts, Mel and Bren
    Simon, dropped dead of a tragic heart attack at a very young age in
    London a couple of days ago. And they're good friends of mine; they're
    wonderful people. They're part owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball
    team, among other things. And I would just like to ask all of you
    tonight--I know that all of us--I called Hillary who knows Mrs. Simon,
    in particular. I called her today when we heard about this, and I just
    talked to them. It just took her breath away. All of us who have been
    parents can only imagine the agony that we would feel. So I ask for you
    tonight, I want to go back to having a good time, but I ask you to say a
    little prayer for them when you go home tonight.

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    It's going to be a hard night for them and a hard few days. And they
    were very generous and very kind.

    They've been very, very good to me, and they've been good citizens for our
    country. And I just would like for you to all remember them.

        Let me say--I really admire--I made a little fun of Willie tonight,
    but I really admire him and Gloria. And I love the fact that they have
    not forgotten where they came from. I love the fact that they had all
    these children up here. I know that we have at least one person here
    from North Carolina who is involved in a similar program of giving young
    people college scholarships for when they're at pivotal points in their
    life, and telling them, ``Look, if you'll just stay in school and make
    your grades, you can go to college.'' And I want to say a little more
    about that in a minute, but that says a lot.
        Now, I was thinking about--I've had all this on my mind a lot
    because, some of you may have noticed, over the weekend I went home to
    this little town in Arkansas where I was born, and they dedicated the
    house that I lived in with my grandparents until I was 4. And they've
    rebuilt it, and they've gotten some of the things back, some pictures we
    had on the walls when I lived there--unbelievable things they've done.
    It's just a little two-story, wood-frame house that my grandparents
    lived in when my grandfather ran a store, little grocery store, and my
    grandmother was a private-duty nurse.
        And before that, my grandfather was a night watchman at a sawmill.
    That was my favorite job he had because I used to go and spend the night
    in the back seat of his car and climb in the sawdust pile. And some of
    you from the South may be old enough to remember when not all sawmills
    were big; they used to be little bitty sawmills and ordinary people
    could go and fool around in them. It was a great thing.
        And I was thinking about Willie's upbringing and Gloria's upbringing
    and Jesse's upbringing that I know a lot about. And I thought the four
    of us sitting here tonight--all people in politics would like for you to
    believe they were born in a log cabin they built all by themselves.
    [Laughter] And the truth is not any of us would be here tonight at this
    nice dinner if we hadn't gotten a lot of helping hands along the way.
    But still it is a great testament to the enduring power of the idea of
    this country that people who have the backgrounds of we four, and the
    backgrounds of many of the rest of you, could be here.
        It is also a great testament to the enduring power of the American
    idea that those of you here who were born prosperous and got more
    prosperous came here tonight to help us and our party because we believe
    we can do better when more Americans do better.
        And I've been thinking a lot about this because I had to go home and
    speak at my birthplace and talk to, among other things, three boys that
    I went to kindergarten with and all my kinfolks, many of whom are way up
    in years now, and think about my remarkable grandfather who--I was born
    on his birthday, and I loved him more than life. He died when I was
    young. But he was the first white person I ever knew in the segregated
    South who told me that segregation was wrong. And he had a fourth or a
    fifth grade education.
        And I watched him live it every day. It was a great gift. I watched
    him run a grocery store before food stamps, and if people came in, they
    were honest and working hard, and they didn't have any money, he gave
    them food anyway. And when he

    died, my mother told me what it was like when they finally found his old
    books from his grocery store. And he had been gone from there 10 or 15
    years, and all these people who had owed him money--he carefully kept it in
    his book, and when they paid off a little, he'd carefully keep it. But he
    never--he always said, ``They're working hard. They're doing the best they
    can. I've got food. They should have it, too.''

        And I was raised in those heady days after World War II, with two
    simple ideas that I've tried to bring back to America in the last 6
    years. One is the idea that everybody should have a chance to live his
    or her dreams. And the second is that we are part of a community. It
    gives us a sense of belonging and imposes on us a sense of
    responsibility, that we can never fully realize our own aspirations
    unless we are doing our part to give others the same chance.

    [[Page 451]]

        And I believe that it's very important that we think about that
    today. Willie told you about all the good things that have happened in
    the last 6 years, and I'm glad he did because it would be unseemly for
    me to talk about them. But also because I don't think that that's the
    most important thing. I said to the American people in my State of the
    Union Address that one of the things that I knew before I became
    President but I couldn't see and feel until I took this job, is just how
    profoundly and how rapidly the world is changing and how we are changing
    the way we work and live and relate to each other, not just in our
    neighborhoods but in our States, in our Nation, and with people way
    beyond our borders.
        And I'll bet whatever it is you do for a living, if you think about
    it, it's different than it used to be because of technology and because
    of who can participate. And what I'd like for you to think about just
    for a few moments tonight is not just how far we've come but what do we
    still have to do. What will the 21st century look like? What about all
    these young people around here who are going to be alive much longer
    than I am; what's it going to be like for them when they raise their
    children and their grandchildren? And what could we do now at this
    unbelievable moment of prosperity and confidence, where our security is
    not seriously threatened, what can we do now to keep the good times
    going, but also to deal with the challenges of America over the long
    run, so that more people have a chance to live their dreams and so we
    have a better chance to come together as a community?
        And I'll just mention a few. Willie mentioned one. America is aging,
    and it's aging for two reasons. One is, health care is better and life
    expectancy is going up. It's already over 76 years. Anybody in this
    audience tonight over 60 who's still healthy has got a life expectancy
    of well over 80 years already. Children being born will do better still.
    And then the baby boomers are going to retire--I'm the oldest of the
    baby boomers, and when we all retire there will only be two people
    working for every one person eligible to draw Social Security.
        So we have to prepare for the aging of America. The first thing I'd
    like to say is, this a high-class problem. We shouldn't bemoan this. The
    only big country in the world where the life expectancy is dropping is
    in Russia because their economy has collapsed; their health care system
    has collapsed; their rate of disease and other problems have gone up.
    They don't have a Social Security problem. We do. And other wealthy
    countries do. It's a high-class problem. We should be happy for this.
    And the older I get, the better it looks. [Laughter]
        But it is wrong for us to let all these folks retire and let us all
    get older, and then say, ``Well, we're not going take care of that, even
    though we have the money to do it now, because we know our children
    will.'' That would be a terrible thing to do, because the last thing we
    need to do is to have all of us in my generation retire and impose on
    our children a big burden which will undermine their ability to raise
    our grandchildren. It is not right.
        And the reason I've said we ought to save more than half of this
    surplus for Social Security is that we can save the Social Security
    system without imposing a burden on our children. We have to do the same
    for Medicare. We have to give families tax credits for long-term care.
    More and more people are taking care of their own parents, or their
    parents are doing something other than going into a nursing home. We
    need to make provisions for this. There are going to be a multitude of
    different things that older people will do when they need some help, but
    they don't have to be completely taken care of 24 hours a day. And we've
    got to help families deal with that.
        So that's the first thing. The second thing we have to do is to keep
    the economy going and reach out to people who have not been part of this
    free enterprise system yet. And let me say--I just went up to Wall
    Street with Reverend Jackson for his second annual conference where
    we're trying to get the people on Wall Street and in New York to invest
    in the areas of America from neighborhoods in New York City to
    Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to south Texas, to the Indian
    reservations of this country, to east Los Angeles, which still haven't
    felt the economic recovery. And increasingly, that includes more

    [[Page 452]]

    and more farmers who are getting hurt because of the problems around the
    world.
        And I presented to the Congress a plan that would get private
    capital--not Government money, private capital--into the inner cities,
    into these small rural areas, on the same terms that we give people to
    invest in other countries today. And I think we ought to do it.
        We've got all these people who are dying to go to work, and there
    aren't any jobs in their neighborhoods; there aren't any jobs in their
    towns; they don't have any investment opportunities; or they're
    businesses that would like to expand, and they can't get capital. And
    all I've asked the Congress to do is to provide the tax credits and the
    loan guarantees for people to invest in high-unemployment areas in
    America that we give them to invest in other parts of the world, not to
    take away the investments from the other part of the world but to just
    give poor American communities the same shot we're trying to give to
    people in other countries. And I think it's the right thing to do.
        The third thing we have to do is to guarantee 100 percent of our
    kids a world-class education. I like this college program because I
    tried to open the doors of college to all Americans. Now every child in
    this country who comes from an upper-middle-income family down can get a
    $1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years of college, tax credits for the
    last 2 for graduate school. We've improved the student loan program and
    more work-study programs. We've now got a mentoring program going on
    where we're bringing college kids in to help work with children who are
    in the seventh and eighth grade, to get them to think about going to
    college.
        But if we can have more people doing what you're doing and telling
    these kids, ``Okay, here's what you can get from the Government in tax
    credits; here's what you can get in the student loans; and by the way,
    here's a scholarship to help defray your costs,'' it will make a huge
    difference.
        We did pass the first installment on that 100,000 teachers. Let me
    tell you what a big deal that is. We have 53 million kids in school
    today. We've got the largest number of children we've ever had and by
    far the most diverse student population. In my little hometown in
    southwest Arkansas, there is an elementary school they have named for
    me, in a little town with 9,700 people now--it's a lot bigger than it
    was when I was born there--9,700 people. In my one little grade school
    in southwest Arkansas, there are 27 children whose parents were not born
    in America and whose first language is not English.
        In Fairfax County School District, across the Potomac River from
    Washington, DC, there are children from 180--let me say this again--180
    different racial, national, and ethnic groups speaking over 100
    different native languages--in one school district.
        Now, if we're growing more diverse--this also is a high-class
    problem--if we're living in a global society, where we have to relate to
    people all around the world, it is good that America is the place that
    has the largest number of people that come from everywhere if, but only
    if, we can have a uniform educational system that gives opportunity to
    everybody and then if everybody has a chance to make a decent living.
    But it's got to start with the schools, which is why we want smaller
    classes, better trained teachers, higher standards, no social promotion.
    But don't brand the kids failures if the system fails them. Give them
    the after-school programs. Give them the summer school program. Give
    them the tutoring programs they need. That is what we need to do.
        So the fourth thing we have to do, let me mention, is to deal with
    the problem of balancing work and family. Hillary and I had an evening
    at the White House last night, one of these Millennial Evenings that she
    has organized to discuss big issues that we'll face in the next 20
    years. And we talked about the changing role of women, what had happened
    to women in the 20th century, how women got the vote, how women began to
    get economic rights, how women assumed larger and larger influence in
    our national life. And I said something about the role of women that
    also might be true for the role of African-Americans and other racial
    groups. I said, you know, for most of this century we've been focused on
    giving people more rights, stopping them from being oppressed, then
    making sure they had absolute

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    opportunity. Once you get those things, you then run into questions of
    how you balance the different rights you have, how people work out the
    different opportunities they have. With most families now, both the
    husband and wife work if there are two parents in the home. And most
    families, they have to do it. Others, they choose to do it, and everyone
    should have the right to do it. But I predict to you that one of the
    biggest challenges for this country for the next 10 or 20 years will be
    how we're going to work out the balance at home and work, because no
    society has any more important job than raising children. And if we
    could do that just right, we'd have about 10 percent of the problems we
    have today. There is no more important job.
        So if we put parents in the position of having to

    choose between being successful at home and successful at work, we have
    lost before we start. There is no way to win that, no way for America to
    come out ahead.

        That is why I've asked to expand the family and medical leave law.
    That's why I've asked for another increase in the minimum wage. I don't
    think anybody that works 40 hours a week and has a kid at home should be
    in poverty. I just don't believe that. I don't think that's right.
    That's why I've asked Congress to pass a child care program that would
    give families on modest incomes a tax credit and other support, so they
    could get quality child care while they have to be at work. That's why
    we have tripled the amount of money we want to give to the schools for
    the after-school programs and the summer school programs--to help people
    balance home and work.
        And the next thing I'd like to say is I think we have to broaden our
    horizon of community and what it means to be a good citizen. I think we
    need, all of us, to think of ourselves in terms of not just the jobs we
    do and how well we do it, not just whether we pay taxes or not and obey
    the law, but whether we have some way of serving our community.
        I was very moved when the bishop told me that these fine young
    athletes who were all introduced earlier, and their families, are
    members of his church and participating in the mission of reaching
    children and helping them. And I thank them for that. One of the things
    that I am proudest of is that we passed what I like to think of as a
    domestic Peace Corps bill to set up AmeriCorps, our national service
    corps, and now over 100,000 young people, some from very poor
    backgrounds, some from wealthy, many in-between, have taken a year or 2
    years of their lives, earned some money for college, just like GI's do
    under the GI bill, and served in their communities, helping to do all
    kinds of things.
        We need to create in our children an ethic of service. And it needs
    to be a part of what it means to be an American. And we need to do it in
    a way that gets us all in touch with people who are different from us,
    so we can learn what the world will be like.
        We need to make sure that we relate not only to ourselves but to the
    rest of the world. I told you Reverend Jackson is my Special Envoy to
    Africa. Today we had members of the governments of 46 African nations
    meeting in Washington. They'll be there tomorrow. I talked to them
    today. He's going to talk to them tomorrow. We're trying to have a new
    partnership with Africa. We're trying to turn a new page. We're trying
    not just to say, ``Oh, yes, 30 million Americans have roots in Africa,
    and yes, we're sorry about the legacy of colonialism and slavery.''
    We're trying to say, ``Let's open a new chapter. Let's have a new
    future. Let's help both countries. Let's do something good.''
        And I just got back from Central America last week. We have millions
    of people in the United States who trace their roots to Central America,
    one of the few regions of the world where we have a trade surplus. All
    those countries racked by civil war, military dictatorship, all kinds of
    oppression--for decades. Now they're all governed by people who got
    elected in honest elections. They all have parliaments full of people
    that used to be at war with each other. They want to be our friends and
    neighbors.
        We see all kinds of people concerned about illegal

    immigration. We ought to be good neighbors. If we're good neighbors, good
    partners, and they can make a living at home by selling to us and buying
    our things, then they won't be coming up here

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    as illegal immigrants. They'll be home, raising their kids, because they
    can make a decent living. That's being a decent neighbor, and we ought to
    do it.

        So I want you--tomorrow my people are coming to the White House.
    Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. And it has been my great honor to be
    the first American President deeply involved in the Irish peace process.
    The next day we have a group from Israel coming. And many people in this
    audience tonight have worked with me on the Middle East peace process. I
    have tried to do this because I want America not to see the world as
    either a hostile place or just a place where we try to make a buck. I
    want us to have a larger conception of our community responsibilities.
        We have common environmental challenges, like global warming. We
    have common public health challenges, like HIV and AIDS. We have a
    common future to make. And I believe with all my heart if we think about
    the 21st century as a period where we will work on creating opportunity
    and community, where we will realize our interdependence, one with
    another, where we will celebrate all these differences and all this
    diversity, but underneath understand that we're basically all the same,
    I think we're going to have a very good future.
        And let me just close with this story. I want to tell you a story
    that I thought about that I told the folks at home when I went to
    dedicate my birthplace. Last year I had a 91-year-old great uncle who
    died. He was my grandmother's brother. And I loved him very much, and he
    helped to raise me when my mother was widowed and went off to study so
    she could be a nurse anesthetist, and my grandparents were raising me.
    And this old man and I were close from the time I was born.
        He and his wife were married for over 50 years, and she came down
    with Alzheimer's. And they had one of these old-fashioned houses with
    gas stoves, so they had to take her to the local nursing facility that
    was tied to our nursing home in this little town because they were
    afraid she'd turn on the stove and forget about it and blow the house
    up. We can laugh--we all laughed about it. It's okay to laugh. I've lost
    two relatives to Alzheimer's. You have to laugh to keep from crying half
    the time.
        And it was an amazing deal. When she got over to the nursing
    facility, for weeks she'd know who she was for about 15 minutes a day.
    And she'd call my uncle, and she said, ``How can you abandon me in this
    old place? Get your rear end over here, and take me home. We've been
    married for 56 years.'' And he'd get over there, and half the time by
    the time he got there she wouldn't know him again. [Laughter]
        And any of you who have had this in your family know. I mean, I lost
    an aunt and an uncle, and you have to laugh to keep from crying. It
    grinds on you. So anyway, my uncle, who also had a grade-school
    education, was one of the smartest men I ever knew. All he ever did the
    whole time I was a boy, no matter how sad I was, or I missed my mother
    or whatever, or whatever was going on, or when I got to be a grown man
    and I lost an election, all he did was keep me in a good humor. He'd
    tell me jokes. He'd tell me not to feel sorry for myself. He'd always
    say funny things.
        So I went to see him one night, about 10 years ago, after his wife
    went into this nursing home. And they'd been married over 50 years. And
    the first 20 or 30 minutes we talked, all he did was tell me jokes and
    tell me stories and think about the old days. And I was walking out and
    for the only time in our life, he grabbed me by the arm. And I looked
    around and he had big old tears in his eyes. And I said, ``This is
    really hard on you, isn't it.'' And he said this, he said, ``Yes, it
    is.'' ``But,'' he said, ``you know, I signed on for the whole load, and
    most of it was pretty good.''
        When you were up there singing ``Stand By Me'' tonight and I thought
    about how the American people have stood by me through thick and thin, I
    would just like to say to all of you, when I talk about community,
    that's what I mean. [Applause] Now, wait a minute. You don't have to sit
    down, because I'm nearly through. [Laughter] Don't sit down. Don't sit
    down. I'm nearly through. Here's the point I want to make: The reason I
    wanted you to come here tonight, the reason I'm thankful for your
    contributions, the reason I'm thankful for what you do is, this

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    country has got to get over believing that our political life is about
    beating each other up and hurting people, instead of lifting people up
    and bringing them together. That is what I've tried to do. That is what
    we stand for. And if we remember that, we're going to do just fine in
    the 21st century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:55 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Willie E. Gary and Gloria Gary, dinner hosts;
    Joseph J. Andrew, national chair-designate, and Beth Dozoretz, national
    finance chair-designate, Democratic National Committee; Bishop Harold C.
    Ray, Redemptive Life Fellowship, who gave the invocation; and Bishop
    William H. Graves, vice chairman NAACP Board of Directors, and Ernestine
    Diller, who sang the National Anthem.