[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 26 (Monday, July 5, 1999)]
[Pages 1215-1217]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Production of ``The Iceman Cometh'' in New York City

June 28, 1999

    Thank you. Wow! I would like to thank Bill Haber and Kevin and all 
this magnificent cast for giving us too much to think about. [Laughter] 
Here we are, all reliving our entire family histories--[laughter]--
trying to come to grips with some little common element. And now you're 
supposed to think about being good citizens. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Senator Torricelli and Senator Lautenberg and 
Senator Schumer; Congressman Gephardt, I know is here, and I think 
Congressman Kennedy is. There are a lot of people here from the New York 
and New Jersey and Connecticut delegations. I saw Congressman Rangel, 
Congressman Payne, Congresswoman Lowey.
    Let me just say to all of you, these people have made a great 
sacrifice to give us this gift and to give the DSCC and the DCCC this 
gift. You know, Monday is their day off, and they couldn't even wait 
until the normal time to start; they did it in the middle of the 
afternoon. We took a day out of their lives, and they have given us 
something immeasurably more valuable. So I think we should give them 
another--[applause].
    I hope that as you leave here you know how grateful we all are for 
the work you have done to help us do well in the coming elections, in 
the Senate and the House elections. I hope that you saw this morning the 
announcement that--we did our annual review, our so-called midsession 
review, and it turns out our surplus will be $20 billion more than we 
thought this year. And tomorrow I'm going to announce our Medicare 
reform program, which our Democrats support, that will include for the 
first time a prescription drug

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benefit for seniors, which I'm very proud of and which I think is 
important.
    If we can prevail upon our friends on the other side in the Congress 
to go along with us, just generally with the budget and Social Security, 
we'll have another $155 billion to spend on children and we'll be out of 
debt as a nation for the first time in forever; in 15 years, we'll be 
totally out of debt. So I'm happy about that. And I feel very good about 
the fact that all of this is benefiting all kinds of ordinary citizens.
    But I'd like to just mention one other thing. We saw in this 
magnificent opus of Eugene O'Neill's something about the fragility of 
life, the frailty, the brittleness, the tenderness, the weakness that 
makes life more interesting than politics sometimes--nearly always. 
[Laughter]
    One of the reasons that I became and stayed a Democrat is that I 
always felt that our party was more interested in people, in their 
individual struggles, and we always thought everyone should have a 
chance. And I'd like to just, before you leave, ask you to remember one 
or two things of which I am especially proud for our party, as we have 
tried to deepen the meaning of freedom and responsibility and bring more 
people into our national family and our sense of global community.
    The first is that it was 30 years ago today, not very far from here, 
that the Stonewall riot occurred, which sparked the gay and lesbian 
civil rights movement. I'm proud of the fact that the Democratic Party 
has been clearly and unambiguously for the elimination of all forms of 
discrimination, for the ``Employment Non-discrimination Act,'' for the 
``Hate Crimes Prevention Act,'' for the proposition that every law-
abiding person in this country ought to be treated with equal dignity.
    Today, we are struggling in Kosovo--a very small place, a very long 
way away--for the proposition that people ought not to be slaughtered 
because of the way they worship God or their racial or ethnic heritage, 
as we have done in Bosnia. Today, we're working, along with our friends 
in Ireland and Great Britain, in the 11th hour of an Irish peace 
process. Today, we hold our breath with anticipation as the new 
government is about to take hold in Israel, and I hope and pray that we 
will see a culmination of the peace process there.
    And I'm proud of the fact that our party has stood for the 
proposition that people ought to be able to get along based on their 
common humanity, across all the things that divide them, and that that's 
a--[applause]--of intensity we're striving for.
    Let me say one other thing. We've been through a lot as a country in 
the last several weeks: the difficulties of the conflict in Kosovo; also 
the difficulties we face at home, especially after the horrible loss of 
those children's lives at Littleton. I am still hoping that the members 
of the other party will decide that they really are the candidates of 
law and order and will join us in our attempts not only to support 
community policing, which means that we stand against abuses and for 
building bridges in the community, but that we ought to give the police 
a chance and the children a chance by having sensible restrictions to 
keep guns out of the wrong hands.
    Finally, let me just say I'm profoundly grateful to the people of 
New York and this wonderful city for being so good to Hillary and me and 
to the Vice President and Mrs. Gore; for the Broadway night we had in 
'92 in the campaign; for the magnificent convention; for two great 
electoral victories; for a 50th birthday party I had here, which I will 
never forget--I can still remember when that happened.
    I hope you will continue to stand for these things, which deepen the 
meaning of the word, ``America.'' We have a lot to think about in this 
play; we have a lot to be grateful to these gifted people for. You have 
a lot to be proud of in supporting our party and our ideas and our 
values. And you have done a good thing here today by giving us a chance 
to reflect the views of most Americans in the United States Congress.
    I thank the Members of the House and the Senate who are here. Again, 
I thank you. Good evening.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 7:42 p.m. in the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. 
In his remarks, he referred to producer Bill Haber and actor Kevin 
Spacey. The President also referred to DSCC, the

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Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and DCCC, the Democratic 
Congressional Campaign Committee.