[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 29 (Monday, July 26, 1999)]
[Pages 1392-1397]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Dinner for Senator Tom Harkin in Des Moines

July 16, 1999

    Thank you very much. First of all, thank you, Jerry, for having me 
in your home. The last time, he took me to his golf club; now, he takes 
me to his home. I can't wait for my third trip. [Laughter]
    Thank you, Linda. Thank you all for being here. Governor, thanks for 
spending the day with me, with your Lieutenant Governor and your 
distinguished array of officials and the First Lady from the great State 
of Iowa. I want to thank Tom and Ruth for giving me the chance to come 
down here and be with them. I want to say it's wonderful to see 
Congressman and Mrs. Smith. He did everything he could to educate me 
about agriculture before he left the Congress, and I did the best I 
could to learn. I'm a little slow, but he's working on me still. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say to all of you, first, I want you to know that I wanted to 
come here to say thank you to the people of Iowa. We had a big crowd 
over at the middle school earlier today when we were promoting one of 
the many initiatives Tom Harkin is identified with, our efforts to get a 
modest tax cut through that will lead to $25 billion in construction or 
modification or modernization of 6,000 schools in this country. And so 
we were over there, and there were, I don't know, a few hundred people 
there. And the
air-conditioning was out, so the atmosphere was warm and friendly. 
[Laughter] Secretary Riley and I, having come from the Washington heat, 
felt right at home.
    And so, anyway, we were there and having a good time. And I said, 
``You know, you folks in Iowa ought to be glad to see me; I'm the first 
guy that's been here in weeks that's not running for anything.'' 
[Laughter] And I must say, after 24 years, most of which--25 now--most 
of which time I was running every 2 years, it's a little awkward for me 
to say that. But I want you to know that I am profoundly grateful to the 
people of Iowa for being so good to me and Hillary and the Vice 
President and Mrs. Gore, for voting for us twice, for supporting our 
policies, for giving us a chance to serve.
    And the second reason I wanted to come down here is I love Tom 
Harkin and I am profoundly grateful. You know, I'm not sure--and this is 
no offense to the people of Iowa--but I bet you could get elected and 
reelected Senator from Iowa without being the world's number one 
opponent of abusive child labor in foreign countries. He just did that 
because he thinks it's wrong and because he doesn't want children 
anywhere to suffer when children everywhere should be going to school 
and growing up to decent lives.
    Yes, he's one of the greatest advocates for farmers this country 
has, and we've got an

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earful again today about the terrible dilemmas that our farmers are 
facing. And there's a general consensus, I think, on what causes it. And 
Tom and I both said back in 1994 or '5, when they passed that freedom to 
farm bill, that without a safety net this would happen sooner or later; 
unfortunately, sooner came before later. And we have to act there, and 
we will.
    He also is perhaps the foremost advocate for the disabled in the 
United States Senate, perhaps one of the two or three foremost advocates 
for research and development in new technologies in sciences. There is 
hardly anybody who serves in either House in the United States Congress 
that has the combination of wide interest, deep knowledge, genuine 
compassion, and effectiveness. I have rarely known anyone in public 
office that I thought was as truly good a person and as truly good a 
public servant as Tom Harkin. And you are very lucky to have him.
    And I just want to say a couple of things. You're going to become--
Iowa is once again at the vortex of America's political concerns. And 
everybody is coming here to tell you how great they're going to be if 
you vote for them. And one of the things I think we should posit is that 
most everybody who comes here will actually believe what they say. 
Having been criticized, as Tom noted inside, fairly mildly for a few 
years--[laughter]--it has been my observation that most people in 
politics in both parties actually pretty much believe what they say and 
believe in what they do and show up every day and try to pretty well do 
a good job.
    Forty years ago this year, I took eighth grade science from a guy 
who was a coach and a science teacher named Vernon Dokey. Now, to be 
charitable, he was not the most handsome man I had ever seen. And he 
knew it. He was--he looked sort of like a grizzly bear that had been 
through a meat grinder, but walked out. [Laughter]
    And he would come--it wouldn't be politically correct to do so 
today, but in those days it was bearable--he used to smoke these cheap 
cigars that he had in a cigar holder which he would grit in his teeth 
like that--[laughter]--and he had this sort of highly prominent, well-
chiseled nose, and he was a big, burly guy. And he was not particularly 
conventionally attractive. Interesting--he had a beautiful wife who was 
our social studies teacher, who had a beautiful sister who was my 
geometry teacher. [Laughter]
    And we were 13, and we were crazy, and we were trying to figure out 
how the world works. So old Vernon Dokey says one day in science class, 
he says, ``You kids won't remember a thing I teach you about science, 
but I want you to remember some things I teach you about life.'' He 
said, ``Now, look at me.'' He said, ``I want you to know something. 
Every morning, I get up, and I go in the bathroom; I throw water in my 
face; I put shaving cream on; I shave my face; I wash that shaving cream 
off; I look in the mirror, and I smile, and I say, `Vernon, you're 
beautiful.''' [Laughter] And he said, ``Now, if you kids remember that, 
you'll get a lot further in life.'' [Laughter]
    Now, you think about that. Forty years later, I still remember. So 
if you notice when I fight with the Republicans, no matter how hard I 
fight with them, I don't question their motives or their patriotism or 
their love of country. When I think they're wrong, I say they're wrong.
    Iowa and New Hampshire, because you go first, have a heavy 
responsibility to help to render judgment, if you will, for the country 
about not only candidates but issues. What I want to say to you is that 
I came to the Presidency in 1992, having been Governor of what my 
predecessor affectionately called a small Southern State. And I loved 
every day of it. And to me, politics was about ideas, action, and 
people. It was not about Washington rhetoric, personal destruction, and 
who looked good in the morning paper. It was about ideas, action, and 
people.
    And we believed that we could bring new ideas based on old-fashioned 
Democratic philosophy that everybody who was willing to work for it 
ought to have opportunity in this country; that we had to change to meet 
the changes of the time; and that everybody who was a responsible 
citizen ought to be part of America's community. It was pretty simple, 
really.
    But if that's what was guiding you, then we no longer believed that 
you couldn't, for example, balance the budget and still increase 
investment in education; that you

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couldn't have a strong and effective Government and reduce the size and 
burden of Government. When you heard Tom say that the Vice President ran 
our reinventing Government plan--this is one of those--if you do a 
survey on this, people say, ``I don't care, I still don't believe it.'' 
People do not believe it, but we have the smallest Federal establishment 
since 1962 when John Kennedy was President. We have eliminated hundreds 
of programs, and you can't name one of them. I'll give $5 to anybody in 
this audience who can name two of the hundreds of programs we have 
eliminated. And we have a more vigorous, more effective Government.
    We've got the longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest 
crime rate in 26 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest 
unemployment rate in 30 years, very high wage growth, high business 
startups, highest homeownership in history, the lowest minority 
unemployment in history--all that is only evidence of the important 
thing: All elections are about tomorrow. All elections are about 
tomorrow. And a good record is only evidence of what will be good in the 
future--however, very important evidence.
    And many of these things we've had to fight with our friends on the 
other side, and Tom Harkin was always leading the fight. We said we 
could lower the crime rate, but you had to help these communities put 
police on the street and you had to take more guns out of the hands of 
criminals. Well, they said, ``If you try to put 100,000 police on the 
street, it wouldn't make a lick of difference. And if we checked the 
backgrounds of people that tried to buy handguns in gun shows, all you 
would do is make the hunters mad, and criminals didn't buy guns at gun 
shows, anyway.'' Well, years later, we haven't inconvenienced a single 
hunter, and 400,000 people--400,000 people--were not able to buy guns, 
because of their criminal backgrounds, at gun stores. So our arguments 
were right, and theirs were wrong.
    They said we couldn't balance the budget, and we were going to 
provoke a recession. But we balanced the budget, biggest surplus in 
history, and we doubled our investment in education while we were doing 
it. So we have evidence here.
    So I say to you as you think about the future of your State and 
Nation, there is evidence here. And what I want to say to you is, Tom 
Harkin and I--I'm not running for anything and he's not running for 
anything right yet--[laughter]--but we and all the people that are 
running who are in public office, we're still drawing a paycheck from 
you every 2 weeks, and we should show up for work, and we should do 
things. I tell all the Republicans and Democrats in Washington all the 
time, if we agreed on everything I'm asking us to agree on, there would 
still be stuff for us to fight about. There will always be something to 
have a next election on. But we get hired to show up for work.
    Now, the big question we have before us today is: What are we going 
to do with the surplus; what are we going to do with this period of 
bounty we have? And I would argue--I don't want to repeat my whole State 
of the Union Address, but I want to tell you, I would argue three things 
for sure. Number one, we ought to do whatever we can to deal with the 
aging of America, because when the baby boomers retire, we're going to 
have more people retired and fewer people working to support them. And 
if you want the seniors of this country to be able to have their Social 
Security and their Medicare, and you want them to have it in a way that 
is secure and does not bankrupt their children so they can't afford to 
raise their grandchildren, now is the time to set aside most of this 
surplus to save Social Security and Medicare and provide a prescription 
drug benefit with Medicare. So I think that is a big deal.
    The second thing I think we ought to do is everything we can to keep 
this economy going and then, to reach out and touch the people who have 
not been affected by the recovery. And let me just say on the first, the 
way I want to save Social Security and Medicare will keep us from 
spending that surplus and devote the interest savings on the surplus to 
making Social Security last longer, so we'll make Social Security last 
for more than 50 years, make Medicare last for more than 25 years, and 
make the country debt-free in 15 years, for the first time since 1835. 
Now, these are big things. We should not wait for another election to 
deal with these big things.

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    On the economy, the last thing we've got to do is to try to reach 
the people that aren't affected by the recovery. There are a lot of 
disabled people, as Tom would tell you, who want to go to work and could 
go to work. There are still people on welfare who want to go to work, 
who could go to work. There are whole regions of our country--from 
Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Indian reservations to the 
inner city--that need new investment. And of course, there is the 
problem of the farm, which you are very well familiar with.
    But consider the irony of the lowest 
unemployment rates in the country being in Iowa, North Dakota, South 
Dakota, all these farming States where we're at risk of losing a huge 
percentage of our family farmers unless there is both an emergency 
response and a different long-term course that they have available. So I 
say to you, yes, have the election; yes, have the debate; but let's keep 
on working for what's good for America, and let's not avoid the big 
choices, let's not pretend that we don't have to make them.
    We're in the shape we're in today because we made the tough choices 
and we kept at it, and that's what the country needs to do. And that's 
the gift I want to give you, is that when you see me, you think I'm 
working and not enjoying the sunshine of our prosperity.
    The last point I want to make is this--I thought about this today 
when I was in Iowa. Politics is really personal to me. You know, in this 
debate we just had over the Patients' Bill of Rights, several doctors 
who are here today thanked me for that, thanked Tom for fighting for 
that. Look, here's the issue: More people than not are in managed care 
plans. A lot of them have done a lot of good; they've cut down on a lot 
of inflation and health care costs. But if your doctor says you need to 
see a specialist, no accountant should be able to stop your doctor from 
sending you to a specialist. If you get hit in an accident, you ought 
not to have to go by the nearest hospital to one that's farther way 
because that's the one covered by your managed care plan. Now, if you 
are working for a small business and your small business--your employer 
has to change coverage at some point and you're 6 months into a 
difficult pregnancy, you ought not to have to get another ob-gyn to 
finish your pregnancy. If you are halfway through a difficult 
chemotherapy treatment, you ought not have to get another oncologist to 
finish your treatment. Now, every physician in this audience will tell 
you this happens all the time in America. This is not some radical 
notion; this happens all the time. So all we said was that basically 
everybody in America ought to have the same protections that I gave all 
the people in the Federal programs--Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal 
health employees program, the veterans program--by Executive order. And 
we were actually attacked by our friends in the other party. Tom was 
attacked, because, they said, ``Oh, you're relying on personal stories. 
You're trying to play on the emotions of the people.'' Well, get a life. 
[Laughter] I mean, what is politics about anyway? Why are we doing this?
    Every time I come to Iowa, I think of two things. One of them I got 
hit right between the eyes with today. When I was here for the flood in 
1993, I'd go out to sack my--you know, my sandbags, you were talking 
about that--I'd go out and do my sandbag deal. And I look up, and there 
is this child about so big, with a head about so big--huge bones coming 
out of her eyebrows--very short, large head, knobby elbows, gnarled 
knuckles, knobby knees. This child has brittle bone disease. She's 12 
years old. She has been operated on already more than a dozen times. Her 
bones shatter at will. She has come all the way from Wisconsin to stand 
in the flood in Iowa to help people who are putting the sandbags up, 
literally risking her life.
    So I talked to this kid and I said, ``Where are you from?'' And she 
said--and I said, ``Well, how's your condition?'' Because I've seen--you 
know, she's actually done pretty well. There are a lot of children who 
have that disease never get out of bed, they have to be prone for their 
whole life. But this kid is up walking. She said, ``I told my parents I 
wanted to go down there.'' She said, ``I can't hide my whole life. I've 
got to serve; I've got to be a citizen; I've got to do this like 
everybody else.''
    Then that child started coming to the National Institutes of Health 
for help. Tom 
Harkin--you know, all this money is put in

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the NIH all these years. So am I playing on your emotions? You bet I am. 
What else is there? What else is life about? What is politics about? 
This child has a chance at life.
    And you know what happened? Six years later I go to American 
University and give a speech, and here is this girl, beaming, a freshman 
at American University, still growing, still getting stronger, still out 
there taking chances, doing things other kids wouldn't do with those 
problems, being brave. We didn't--none of us--Tom Harkin and I didn't 
have a lick to do with her courage, her bravery, her heart, her soul, 
her character. But because of what he did, she had a better chance. She 
had a better chance.
    And I'll tell you another story: 1992, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, huge 
rally we're having out in front of Quaker Oats. And I'm working the 
crowd--[laughter]--after the speech, grasping for votes. And there is 
this lady there, this tall white woman, holding an African-American 
baby. And I said, ``Whose baby is this?'' She said, ``This is my baby.'' 
And I said, ``Well, how did you get this baby?'' She said, ``From 
Miami.'' She said, ``This child was born with AIDS, and no one would 
take her, and she was going to be homeless, and so I took her.''
    Now, this is a good story, right? But what you need to know is this 
woman was living in a rented apartment with her two kids because she had 
been left by her husband. And she barely had enough money to support her 
own kids, but she couldn't bear to see this child be left alone, so she 
took in the other child. Okay, fast-forward to today. Today, at that 
middle school, Mama was there, since remarried, doing fine, with her 
daughter, giving me a report on her son, holding that beautiful child 
who is almost too big for me to hold. And she has come repeatedly to the 
National Institutes of Health.
    And I held her today, and I said, ``Jimiya, how you doing?'' She is 
so beautiful. And I have seen her a half a dozen times. She is so 
beautiful; and she said, ``Oh, Mr. President, I'm giving myself my own 
shots, now and I'm going to be just fine.''
    Now, is this playing on your emotions? You bet it is. What is life 
about anyway? Tom Harkin didn't put a heart in that little girl or a 
heart in the mother. But she has a chance because of the kind of things 
he's fought all his public life for. And it is a beautiful story.
    So I just ask you to be faithful to your friend Tom Harkin, to fight 
for the things we believe in. If your friends and neighbors wonder 
whether the President is right or whether the Republicans are right in 
saying we ought to take all the non-Social Security surplus and spend it 
on a tax cut right now and make everybody happy right here before the 
election, tell them that you think we have earned the benefit of the 
doubt with our record, and that, you know, we should not squander this. 
We ought to think about our children's future. We ought to think about 
what we're going to do when the baby boomers retire. We ought to think 
about how we can make everybody a part of this economy. And remember the 
stories. That's part of what makes us who we are.
    It's not about power. It's about ideas and action and, in the end, 
it's about people. When you breathe your last breath, you are not going 
to be thinking about what some arcane political philosophy was that you 
embraced. You're going to be thinking about who you liked, who you 
loved, how you felt when the seasons changed, and what you're proud of 
that you did for somebody else. And I want to be part of a political 
party that tries to give those gifts to America.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Jerry and Linda Crawford; Gov. 
Thomas Vilsack of Iowa, and his wife, Christie; Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson 
of Iowa; Senator Harkin's wife, Ruth, former President and Chief 
Executive Officer, Overseas Private Investment Corporation; former 
Congressman Neal Smith and his wife, Beatrix; American University 
student Brianne Schwantes who suffers from brittle bone disease; and 
Laura Poisel and her adoptive daughter, Jimiya, who was born with AIDS. 
The President also referred to the Federal Agriculture Improvement and 
Reform Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-127). A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks. This item was not received 
in time for publication in the appropriate issue.

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