[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 19 (Monday, May 17, 1999)]
[Pages 876-878]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner

May 12, 1999

    Thank you so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to join 
those who have spoken before and thank everyone, from our entertainers 
to the caterers to the servers, everyone who made this wonderful evening 
possible.
    I want to thank Senator Torricelli for taking on the leadership of 
the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. It is often a thankless task; 
but we have to recruit good candidates, and then they have to be able to 
get their message out. If it weren't for you, the second part couldn't 
occur. I want to thank Senator Murray, who won a heroic battle for 
reelection in the last election season, when many people thought it 
would not happen, and she won and won big, and she deserved to.
    And I want to thank our leader, Tom Daschle. It is in no small 
measure because of the way he held our Democrats together and the way he 
spoke for and to ordinary Americans from his position in the Senate that 
we did so well in the last election, and we'll do even better in 2000. I 
am honored every day I get to work with him in our leadership effort.
    Now, you've all had a good time tonight, and the last thing you need 
is another long speech. But I would like to try to emphasize something 
Senator Torricelli said and make a real point that I hope you can leave 
with.
    Tomorrow morning, when you're doing whatever else you're doing, if 
someone asks you why you were here tonight, you could say, ``Well, I 
wanted to hear the band,'' or, ``I wanted to taste the food,'' or, ``I 
work for somebody that made me go''--[laughter]--or whatever else. I 
would hope you could give a better answer. And I would hope you could 
tell people why you believe it's important that our party continue to do 
well and that we win more seats in the Senate until we win the majority 
back.
    You know, I'm gratified by what Senator Torricelli said about our 
record. I'm gratified that we've got the longest peacetime expansion in 
history and over 18 million new jobs and that millions of children are 
getting health insurance and 90 percent of our kids are immunized 
against serious diseases for the first time, and we've set aside more 
land in permanent protection than any administration, except those of 
Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. I'm gratified by all that.
    But what you must understand is that even when we have been in the 
minority in the Congress, most of what has been achieved in this 
administration would not have been possible without the support of the 
Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. They deserve a 
full measure of credit for every good thing that has happened in the 
last 6\1/2\ years.
    The second thing I want to say is, it's very flattering, now that I 
can't run for reelection anymore, for Senator Torricelli or someone else 
to say that I did a pretty good job leading our country. But what we did 
in 1993, as a result of the vote in 1992, was to bring back old values 
and to bring new ideas to the American people. And it was the 
combination of reaffirming our devotion to opportunity for all, for 
responsibility from all citizens, for the idea of an American community 
in which every good person could be a part, and the new ideas to prove 
we could reduce the deficit and balance the budget and still double 
spending on education and the environment; to prove that we could 
improve the economy and improve the environment at the same time; to 
prove that we

[[Page 877]]

could value the individual and still say, ``What brings us together 
across all the lines that divide us is more important; our community is 
what makes us great;'' to give entrepreneurs a chance to make a lot of 
money and the stock market a chance to grow and still say that we can't 
rest until we've given every American community a chance to be a part of 
the American dream. It was those ideas that brought America back. And 
that's why in the year 2000, when I will not be on the ballot, it will 
be as important as it has ever been for the Democrats to do better and 
better and better so that those ideas can be made real in the lives of 
every American citizen.
    We've got a lot on our plate this year and next year: saving Social 
Security and Medicare; paying our debt down so we can keep interest 
rates down; continuing to strive for educational excellence and 
education opportunity; many other things. But because of the traumas 
that we have been through in America in the last few weeks and because 
of the conflict in Kosovo, I would like to ask you to think about one 
thing as I close.
    And that is this: It is supremely ironic, particularly for all these 
young people here, that when we dream about the 21st century, we dream 
about a time when people of all ethnic and racial and religious 
configurations will be working together in our country and around the 
world. We dream about capitalizing on this fabulous explosion of 
technology. You can have pen-pals in Mongolia, in Cameroon, and wherever 
else. We think the world will be stronger and smaller and at our 
fingertips, and how wonderful it will be.
    And yet, the only real cloud looming over the world today is the 
oldest demon of human society, the weakness of people when together to 
fear and hate and harm those who are different from us, by race or 
ethnicity or religion or in some other way.
    Now, what we have to do is to say to ourselves, we will be purged of 
that. That's why it's important that we pass this hate crimes 
legislation. That's why it's important that we pass the employment and 
nondiscrimination act. That's why it's important that we move in 
Washington to take sensible steps to protect all our children from the 
dangers of guns. I'm very disappointed that the Senate today did not 
vote to have background checks at these gun shows, like the people of 
Florida voted to do it. That's part of our community.
    In a world in which America is so blessed with so much wealth and so 
much power, it is very easy for others to resent us and to mistake our 
motives, as we have seen in recent days. If we want to be in a position 
to stand up against ethnic cleansing, against genocide, against bigotry 
abroad, we must be good at home. We must reaffirm the fundamental value 
of community to the Democratic Party and the American people. And we 
must acknowledge that our own history has given us plenty of humility 
because of our history of slavery, and because we, too, are guilty of 
cleansing when the American people pushed the Native American tribes off 
their lands without adequate compensation and without any concern for 
how they would govern themselves and make their way in life so long ago. 
And we are still living with the consequences of that.
    But I will close with this story to make this point. If this doesn't 
make you proud to be an American, nothing will. Today, at the request of 
Senator Daschle and his colleagues, Senator Johnson and Senator Conrad 
and Senator Dorgan from North Dakota and Senator Baucus from Montana and 
Representative Pomeroy from North Dakota, I met with 19 tribal leaders 
from Native American tribes from the high plains of America. Even more 
than most other Native American tribes, they have struggled 
economically. They have not yet felt the wonderful rush of all this 
economic opportunity and this very low unemployment rate. Their 
educational system still needs improvement. Their health care needs 
advances. And I met with them and listened to them.
    But at the end of the presentations, the person who was their 
spokesperson stood up and he said, ``Mr. President, we have seen 
America's long journey, and we have been a part of it, from the 
unfortunate beginnings of our relationship to where we are today, 
meeting with the President. And today we signed a proclamation, all of 
us tribal leaders, supporting the United States' stand against ethnic 
cleansing and the murder of innocents in Kosovo, and I want you to know 
that.'' And then--[applause]--oh, it gets better.

[[Page 878]]

    And then another man stood up and he said, ``Mr. President''--
another tribal leader--he said, ``I have two uncles, one was on the 
beach at Normandy in World War II, the other was the first Native 
American fighter pilot in American military history. My great-great-
grandfather was slaughtered by the 7th Calvary at Wounded Knee. And I 
only have one son. But I have seen America's journey, and I would gladly 
have my son go fight to protect the Kosovar Albanian Muslims from the 
fate that we should never see any people endure again.''
    Remember, look around the room tonight. It's the America we want and 
the world we will work for. And I think you should have no doubt about 
which party is more likely to give you that future.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:08 p.m. in the Great Hall at the National 
Building Museum.