    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1999)]
    [Pages 424-428]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Dinner Honoring Representative Sandlin in Texarkana

    March 12, 1999

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to begin just by
    thanking you all for giving me such a wonderful, warm welcome tonight,
    coming up, saying hello, shaking my hand, seeing if I still knew how to
    write my name--[laughter]--taking the pictures. It's wonderful to be
    back here. I have had a lot of incredible times in this community over
    the last 24 years or so. And I've seen a lot of old friends here
    tonight, and I'm delighted to see you.
        I came here for a lot of reasons, but I want to begin by just
    thanking Truman and Anita and the Joyces, the Youngs, the Pattersons,
    everybody else who had anything to do with this. When I was Governor,
    and when I started running for President, no one but my mother thought I
    could win. [Laughter] Maybe on a good day, Hillary did. [Laughter] I
    don't know if anybody else did. Truman Arnold was there for me. The
    people of Miller and Bowie Counties were there for me. And I have never
    forgotten it, and I never will.
        I was sitting here looking at Truman, you know. I just want to tell
    you it's little things that mean a lot to me. I go all over the country,
    and I do these events. And I'm paying more attention to them, I think,
    than I ever have, maybe because they're not for me anymore because I
    can't run for anything. He thanked more people who worked for me who
    never get acknowledged by anybody, anywhere, tonight than anyone in the
    United States of America ever has at one of these events. And I
    appreciate that. That means a lot.
        I also want to thank Molly Beth Malcolm, even though the Congressman
    ragged her a little bit for agreeing to be head of the Texas Democratic
    Party. No matter what you think, it is alive and well, and we have a
    majority of the House delegation, and I hope we increase the numbers
    next time. And I thank you very much.
        I'd like to thank the people who served the food, the people who
    cooked the food. This is the most I've gotten to eat at one of these
    things in a long time. [Laughter] And the people that let me eat, I
    appreciate that, too, although I really didn't need to. I enjoyed it.
    I'd like to thank the band. They were great.
        You know, I wanted to be here tonight for a number of reasons. You
    know, I came home to Hope today, and we dedicated--we had a formal
    dedication of my--they call it my birthplace. I was actually born in a
    hospital, as near as I remember. [Laughter] But I lived there from the
    time I was born until I was 4 years old. And they restored this
    wonderful old house that was built in 1917, and the last time I saw it
    before they started in 1990, it needed condemning. But the people have
    done a wonderful job. And my kinfolks from all over here have given them
    memorabilia and things, and other people have contributed. A lady came
    from the Midwest today and stood out in that cold, driving rain, drove
    all the way from Iowa, I think, to give them a Lionel train, because she
    read that when I was 4 years old, I had a little Lionel train there. And
    she had one that was made in 1950, and she gave it to them. It was a
    wonderful thing for me. And I came here because I wanted to help Max
    Sandlin. And I'd like to tell you something about the connection between
    the two things.
        As I said, I feel incredibly grateful to have had the chance to be
    President. I'm grateful for the people here who have supported me, I'm
    grateful for the people from Arkansas who went to Washington with me.
    Truman recognized Bob and Janis and Nancy Hernreich, and my good friend
    Mack McLarty's here, and we may have some more Arkansans here with me
    tonight.
        But I want you to know that I hope that the good Lord gives me good
    health for a few more years, and I can spend my time being a citizen,
    trying to help other people I believe in stand up and fight for causes
    that I believe in. And after over 20 years in public life, I am acutely
    mindful of the fact

    [[Page 425]]

    that while every politician would like to have you believe that he was
    born in a log cabin that he made himself--[laughter]--the truth is that
    all--any of us, even a President, can hope to do, is to be a part of
    setting a direction of taking the chains off people, creating the
    conditions in which people can make and live their own dreams.
        But I'm here for Max, in part, because I think it's not only
    something I want to do; it's something I think would be good for the
    children of this district and this State and this country. I said today
    at the dedication of my birthplace that when I was born in Hope yea long
    years ago, right at the end of World War II, it wasn't a perfect place.
    It was still segregated, and we had our fair share of flaws in that
    little town. And as Mack McLarty reminded me today on the airplane, we
    even had a gossip or two, God forbid. [Laughter]
        But the children in the blush of optimism and national unity after
    World War II were basically raised to believe at least two things in
    little towns all across America like the one that I came of age in: One
    was to believe they should be personally optimistic, that they should
    have their dreams and live them and believe that they could; and the
    second was to be acutely sensitive to and respectful to other people, to
    never forget that they were part of a community, that the good news was
    they belonged to something bigger than themselves, but they also had a
    responsibility to care for people besides themselves.
        And one of the biggest reasons that I ran for President in 1991 and
    '92 was to give the young people of this generation that feeling back.
    All these young people working for us tonight, you don't have any idea
    what they do when they're not serving you food. But unlike me, they've
    got most of their lives ahead of them. I want them to believe that they
    can live their dreams. I want them to, in fact, have a chance to do it.
        I want them to also believe that in this country that is incredibly
    diverse--I told somebody today the little grade school named after me in
    Hope, Arkansas, now has 27 kids who are first-generation immigrants,
    whose first language is not English. The school district across the
    river, the Potomac River, from Washington, DC, now has children in one
    school district from 180 different national, racial, and ethnic groups.
    We had better remember that we are one community, and that if any of us
    hope to do well, we ought to want our neighbors to do well, too. And we
    ought to be willing to go to some trouble to see that they have that
    chance.
        And so that's what I said today at my little dedication in my home.
    I said I learned that lesson as a little boy in Hope. And if I hadn't
    learned it, we wouldn't be here 50 years later.
        I came here tonight because I like Max Sandlin and because I admire
    him and because he has already had an unusual impact for a person that
    hasn't been in the House any longer than he's been there and shown an
    unusual amount of personal courage and responsibility. And I will just
    give you three examples--[applause]--the other people also like him;
    otherwise my Congressman, former member of my administration,
    Marion Berry, the Congressman from eastern Arkansas, would not be down
    here tonight in the cold and the rain. You don't do that just out of
    some sense of obligation. And there are three reasons.
        Number one, I want you to know he does his work for the district. On
    far more than one occasion, he has personally lobbied me about a
    specific issue relating to this district. That's part of his job. But
    you would be amazed at how many people--so has Marion Berry--
    [laughter]--but he took me to race 20 years ago, so he feels he has a
    right to. But you would be amazed how many people get around the
    President, and then they say, ``Oh, I'd better not bother him with that.
    He's probably thinking about Kosovo.'' Well, I probably am. But the only
    reason I have a right to think about Kosovo is that people from Miller
    County and Bowie County gave me the vote to put me there to do it. And
    he never forgets that.
        Second thing is, he really, deeply believes in the things we're
    trying to do. You could look at him when he was up here talking; he
    wasn't faking it. He believes we were right to fight those who oppose
    us, to put another 100,000 teachers in the classroom so every child in
    this country has a chance in the early grades to be in a small class
    with a teacher that can give that child individual attention so that all
    our kids learn to read and to speak

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    and to be able to learn for the rest of their experience. He really
    believes that we ought to have a Patients' Bill of Rights to protect the
    patients and the right of medical professionals to practice medicine,
    even as we try to manage the health care system.
        We shouldn't manage people's right to a specialist away. We
    shouldn't manage people's right to the nearest emergency room away. We
    shouldn't manage people's right to continue treatment even if their
    employer changes their health care provider in the middle of a pregnancy
    or chemotherapy treatment or something else. He believes that. It's just
    not something he's saying because it happens to sound good this year.
    And he really believes, and this is important, because the Democratic
    Party used to have an image as the party that had promoted the deficits.
    It was never true.
        Even in the 12 years--and remember, I'm not running for anything, so
    I'm entitled--and we've had a pretty good economy, so all I'm asking you
    for is the benefit of the doubt. But I'd like to put this down. Even in
    the 12 years before I became President, when the Democrats had a
    majority in Congress and we quadrupled the debt, the Congress actually
    spent less money than my predecessors asked them to spend. So what I
    wanted to do was to prove that you could be progressive: You could
    believe in community; you could believe in raising the minimum wage; you
    could believe in helping working families with child care; you could
    believe in opening the doors of college with more scholarships and tax
    credits and first make the economy work by bringing the deficit down,
    balancing the budget, getting interest rates down so people would invest
    their money, run the stock market up, start new businesses, put people
    to work and raise wages. I thought good economic policy and good social
    policy would go hand in hand. It turned out to be right. Well, I'm only
    going to be there 2 more years. Max Sandlin believes that. He wasn't
    kidding when he said we ought to pay down the debt.
        If I had come to you in 1992 and said, ``Now listen, before I'm
    done, I'll be coming back here telling you we can pay off the national
    debt,'' you'd have said that guy's too unstable to be President.
    [Laughter] Wouldn't you? Nobody would have believed that. We just took
    it for granted. You know, the deficit would always go up; crime would go
    up; welfare would go up; the country would grow unequal; working people
    would never be able to get ahead again. It turns out not to be true. If
    you do the right things and work at it, consequences flow from that.
        So I'm telling you, I don't want to give you a whole policy speech
    tonight, but if you watch every elected official in Washington, DC, for
    the next year, there will be a zillion issues. You may think I'm wrong
    about some of them, but some of them will determine how the children in
    this room and their children live, way into the 21st century.
        One is, how are we going to handle the fact that America is aging.
    The Second World War baby boom generation, everybody born from 1946 to
    1964, when we all get into the retirement system, there won't be but two
    people working for every one person drawing Social Security. Even before
    that, within 10 years, because life expectancy is going up and the older
    you get the more you need to have medical treatment, Medicare will run
    out of money under the present system, unless we put some more money in
    it and make some changes.
        Now, that's a high-class problem. The older I get, the higher class
    problem that is. [Laughter] But if you think about it, that's a high-
    class problem. It's because of advances in medical science, advances in
    basic health care, things like clean water and immunizations, and
    because people are taking better care of themselves. But it will
    bankrupt the country and the Social Security system unless we make some
    changes.
        So now we've got this chance. Why? Because we've got a surplus and
    because you've got a President who is not running for office and is not
    afraid to tell you a few things you might not like to hear about the
    changes we need to make to make sure this is going to be there 75 years
    from now. And this is not an issue for the elderly. Everybody over 60 in
    this audience, Social Security will be there if you live to be 85. Don't
    worry about it. It's not a problem. It's a problem for people my age and
    the nagging worry we have that if we don't fix Social Security, then our
    children will have to take care of us in a way

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    that undermines their ability to take care of our grandchildren. That's
    what this is about.
        And it's a big issue for America. And it's very easy for politicians
    to get out there and tell you, ``Oh, we'll take care of this down the
    road, and I'm going to give you this surplus back right now in a tax
    cut.'' Well, we ought to have a tax cut this year, but we ought to save
    three-quarters of that surplus until we fix Social Security and
    Medicare. We ought to do that. And we have given the Congress a way to
    do it that will enable us for the next 15 years to buy down the national
    debt while we're making future commitments for Social Security and
    Medicare.
        Now, you know, this is an alien subject in America. We had--as Max
    said, we hadn't balanced the budget in 30 years, now we're talking about
    buying down the debt. But I've been thinking about this. I just got back
    from Central America, one of the places in the world we actually have a
    trade surplus with. That's why I want to help them get over the
    hurricane and because they're our neighbors and our friends.
        A lot of people say, ``I wish we didn't have so much illegal
    immigration.'' Well, a lot of people down there love their children and
    can't make a living for them. That's why they come up here. If we help
    them get over this hurricane and help them make a living down there,
    they'll be good trading partners, and you won't have to worry so much
    about illegal immigration.
        But I got to thinking about it. I'm also trying to do it because
    we're trying to keep the world economy going. But if you talk to any
    farmer that grows crops or raises cattle or hogs, you know this is a
    very tough time to be a farmer. We may have 18 million new jobs; we may
    have the best American economy in history; but you couldn't prove it by
    the grain farmers in the high plains of America. You couldn't prove it
    by most farmers.
        Now, why is that? A big reason is, half the world's in a terrible
    recession because of the Asian financial crisis and because it gave the
    financial flu to a lot of countries in Latin America, and they can't buy
    our stuff anymore. Now, I've got to worry about how to keep this economy
    going.
        So here's the good news: You can save Social Security and Medicare
    and because we'll be paying down the debt, we'll keep interest rates
    down, and we will be better off if things go bad in the world, and we'll
    do even better if they go well in the world. If you pay this debt down,
    it means business loans will be cheaper; therefore, there will be more
    taken, more businesses started, more jobs created.
        It means your kids' college loan will be cheaper. It means your car
    payment, your house payment, and your credit card payment will be
    cheaper. It means America will grow more. It means when Max Sandlin goes
    to Congress every year from now on, every year he'll have to take less
    and less and less money off the top to pay interest on the debt.
        When I became President, 14\1/2\ cents of every dollar you pay in
    taxes had to be taken off the top to pay interest on the debt that had
    been accumulated in the 12 previous years before we could invest in
    education, invest in highways, invest in the environment, invest in
    health care, or give you a tax cut. In others words, when you hire a
    Congressman, you're basically getting 86 percent of a brain--
    [laughter]--or a capacity, because he can't think about 14 cents; 14
    cents, he plunks down off the top end. Now, it's not always bad to go
    into debt. It's not always bad for a nation to do it. But it is a
    terrible thing for a nation to do what we did for 12 years and borrow
    money every year just to keep up with current expenses.
        You build a new building in Texarkana, you borrow the money, build
    the building, advertise it, pay the debt off. You're making a long-term
    investment so you can make a long-term payment on it. But to keep
    borrowing money to go to dinner every night, which is what America did
    for 12 years, is a terrible mistake.
        And I am telling you, we can be out of debt in 17 years. In 15
    years, if you will do this, we will be down to where only 2 cents of
    every dollar you pay in taxes goes to debt service, and the rest can
    then be spent for Social Security or Medicare or education or for a tax
    cut if that's what the people in Congress want then. But let's secure
    the American economy for the long run.
        Let's say--I'm doing my best to help Asia, to help Latin America, to
    ward off wars that can wreck the economy, to keep things going.

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    But we have limited control over events beyond our borders. Maybe I'll
    get this done. Believe me, I am trying. But I want America to be as
    strong as possible no matter what. If it rains, I want us to have a good
    roof up. If the Sun shines, I want us to be able to fly higher. This is
    the right thing to do. Max Sandlin believes that. You saw him up here
    tonight. He wasn't just giving a speech; that's what he believes.
        And the third reason I'm for him is that at a time in the last year
    when a lot of people just worried which way the political winds were
    blowing, that guy was telling people to read the Constitution of the
    United States of America.
        And so I thank you for coming here. I thank you for raising all this
    money. I thank you for sending a signal that you understand that good
    civic leadership is important, and you'll stay with it. I thank you for
    everything you've done for me in two races for President and times in-
    between and many of you for many, many years before.
        But I ask you to think mostly about tomorrow and all the tomorrows
    of the 21st century. I ask you to remember that in a time this dynamic
    we cannot afford to sit back and rest on our laurels. Yes, we've got a
    great economy. Yes, we've got the lowest crime rate in 30 years. Yes,
    the welfare rolls have been cut in half. Yes, we seem to be making
    advances toward peace and security in the world. But things are changing
    in a hurry out there. We don't control everything. Therefore, it is very
    important, with all this prosperity and all this confidence we have,
    that we act on what we can control which is what we do and what we care
    about and what kind of dreams we've got for our kids.
        And you know, we're having a good time tonight, and I didn't really
    mean to get this serious, but I don't know if I'll get to talk to you
    again personally before I leave office. And I'm telling you, we've got a
    chance to make the next 100 years better for America than the last 100.
    But it will be a very different world, and it will move in a hurry. And
    we will have to work hard always to ask ourselves: Is what I am going to
    do going to make it easier for every kid to dream big dreams and have a
    chance to live them; and is what I'm going to do going to make it easier
    for us to come together as a community--in our community, in our State,
    in our Nation and with our friends around the world?
        And I'm telling you, you can boil all this stuff down to that: Are
    we going to make it easier for people to live their dreams? Are we going
    to make it easier and more likely that people will get along together
    and understand that for all of our differences, God made us more in
    common than different? And if the answer to those questions is ``yes,''
    then that's probably the right thing to do. I trust Max Sandlin to find
    that answer.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:05 p.m. in the Truman Arnold Center at
    Texarkana Community College. In his remarks, he referred to event
    cohosts Truman and Anita Arnold, Cary and Lois Patterson, Gene and Mary
    Kay Joyce, and Damon and Doris Ann (D.A.) Young; and Molly Beth Malcolm,
    chair, Texas Democratic Party. This item was not received in time for
    publication in the appropriate issue.