[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 29 (Monday, July 26, 1999)]
[Pages 1432-1437]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to a Democratic Business Council and Women's Leadership Forum 
Dinner

July 20, 1999

    Thank you very much. I want to thank you all for your welcome, and I 
want to thank my good friend Janice for her instruction. I did know, as 
a matter of fact, that she was from a place called Hope. I didn't know 
that I had the endorsement of her father in quite that way. [Laughter] 
But I appreciate it more than I can say.
    I want to thank John Merrigan and Penny and Susie, and I want to 
thank Joe Andrew and Beth Dozoretz and all of you who have worked so 
hard to put our party on the soundest financial footing. I think Mr. 
Merrigan said we were out of debt for the first time since '91. I should 
point out that we were outspent by $100 million in 1998 and still picked 
up House seats, the first time it had happened in the sixth year of an 
administration since 1822.
    I say that to say that it is not necessary that we have as much 
money as the other side does. You know, the economy the Democrats have 
built has been an equal opportunity beneficiary. And so we have showered 
benefits on Republicans, as well as Democrats. And if they choose to 
misspend their money, there's nothing we can do about it, is there? 
[Laughter] It's a free economy. But it is necessary that we have enough. 
And if we have a good message and we stand for the right things and our 
people are excited, then that is enough, and I thank you for that.
    We were talking at our table--I have a friend who is a New York 
Democrat who heads quite a large American company, and he said he'd 
gotten so exasperated with these Republicans throwing their money around 
he started going up to his friends in New York saying, ``You should give 
money to the Republicans--if your taxes went up in 1993 by more than 
you've made in the stock market, support them. But if the balanced 
budget and the low interest rates and the tripling of the stock market 
have benefitted you more, you ought to be for us. And if you're not, 
you're not even acting in your own best interest, much less the 
country's.'' [Laughter]
    I want to talk to you just very briefly tonight, not so much about 
your own best interests, but about our own best interests. And I want to 
begin by thanking all of you. Thank you for your support, many of you 
for your repeated support over these years; some of you for your 
involvement in this administration, like Dr. Susan Blumenthal--thank you 
very much for being here. Thank you for being so good to me and Hillary 
and to Al and Tipper Gore. And thank you for doing something that has 
been very good for America.
    I want to make just a few brief points, in case somebody tomorrow 
gives you a quiz and asks you why you came tonight. This country was in 
trouble in 1991 and 1992. It was in trouble because we had been in a 
prolonged recession, but even more because we kept coming out of these 
recessions and dripping back in, coming out and drip back in. We hadn't 
had any sustained growth for some time. It was in trouble because the 
crime rates and the welfare rolls were rising. It was in trouble because 
our country was becoming more divided. It was in trouble because the 
political debate in Washington left most Americans cold, because there 
seemed to be a debate between people who essentially were against the 
Government doing anything and people who wanted to preserve the status 
quo of what the Government had been doing. The country was in trouble.
    I ran for President because I had some ideas about how we could 
change things. I believed that we could create a country again in which 
there was opportunity for every responsible citizen, in which we had a 
community of all Americans who were responsible for themselves and for 
each other, in which we led the world for peace and freedom and 
prosperity. But I didn't think we could do it by having the same old 
fights in the same old way. And I knew if the people gave me a chance to 
serve, some difficult decisions would be required.
    Well, it worked out. And we said, look, we're going to cut this 
deficit, get interest rates down, and grow the economy; but we still 
have to invest in education, in medical

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research, in technology, and the environment--we have to do that. We 
said we want more money in education, but we want higher standards and 
more competition, too. We said we believe you can grow the economy and 
improve the environment. We said we thought that you could create a 
society where people who had to work and had children could succeed at 
work and at home. And a lot of that just kind of sounded like political 
rhetoric at the time.
    But what I want to say to you tonight is when people ask you why you 
were here, say, ``Look, the country was in trouble; we elected the 
Clinton-Gore administration; they had friends and allies in the 
Government and the Congress and in the private sector; they implemented 
their ideas; most of the time--not all of the time, but most of the 
time--they were opposed by members in the other party, and it worked 
out.'' Our approach turned out to be right. That's what Janice was 
saying. This is no longer subject to serious debate.
    I was told for 2 years--I saw the Republicans go into the '94 
election telling everybody how we'd raise taxes on people we hadn't 
raised taxes on, and how terrible it was and how it was going to 
bankrupt the country and run the debt up. And we went from the biggest 
deficit in history to the biggest surplus in history, the longest 
peacetime expansion in history, almost 19 million new jobs, the highest 
homeownership in history, the lowest minority unemployment ever recorded 
since we started keeping that data almost 30 years ago. In addition to 
that, we have the lowest crime rate in 26 years, the lowest welfare 
rolls in 30 years; and teen pregnancy, teen drug abuse, teen smoking are 
declining. Things are moving in the right direction in this country.
    So I say to you, first, thank you because we have moved this country 
in the right direction. We did it and proved you could have a better 
environment. The air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is 
safer. Ninety percent of our kids are immunized against childhood 
diseases for the first time in the history of America. Over 100,000 
young people have served their communities in AmeriCorps in 4 years; it 
took the Peace Corps 20 years to get to 100,000 people. We have 
virtually opened the doors of college to every American with the HOPE 
scholarship and the other tax credits and student loans. This is a 
stronger country than it was in 1992.
    And we have done it by relentlessly pushing to bring people 
together, standing against discrimination and against hatred and against 
the politics of division. When I say ``we,'' I don't mean ``me'', 
``we''--I mean, ``we'': we, our party, our allies, the people that 
believed as we did. And along the way we've been a force for peace in 
the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, in Bosnia, in Kosovo. We stood up 
against terrorism and stood up for trade and human rights around the 
world.
    Today I asked the United States Senate to ratify the Comprehensive 
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, first advocated by Presidents 
Eisenhower and Kennedy, first signed by the United States. I signed it 
at the U.N. a couple years ago. We are moving the country in the right 
direction, toward a world that works better for all the people. That's 
the first thing I want to say.
    We're entitled to the benefit of the doubt on the great debates 
going on in Washington today because we just had 6 years of argument and 
it turned out we were right. And I say that in all humility. I am 
grateful for that. The point I'm trying to make is, Joe Andrew always 
says, ``Well, why is Bill 
Clinton doing this? He's not running for anything.'' I came here to say 
not that I was right, but that our ideas were right. And I am grateful 
that I had the chance to be President, to be the instrument of brining 
the country together and moving it forward. But it wasn't me; it was 
that the ideas we had were right. And you've got to get out there 
between now and the next election cycle and hammer that home.
    Before I took office they were killing family leave because it was 
going to bankrupt small business. I signed the family leave bill, first 
thing I did--so we'd have 15 million people take advantage of it. The 
largest number of small businesses formed in any given year--every 
single year I've been President has broken a new record. So the family 
leave law did not wreck the small business economy, it made America a 
place where you could have work and family.

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    And they vetoed and killed the Brady bill before I became President. 
So I signed it first chance I got. And 400,000 people couldn't get guns 
because they had criminal backgrounds. And we have a 26-year low in the 
crime rate. And we've got 100,000 more police on the street, even though 
on the otherside of the aisle they said, ``This won't make a lick of 
difference; these police will never get out there.'' Well, we funded 
them ahead of time and under budget and we have a 26-year low in the 
crime rate.
    So as Democrats we should be proud--not proud as if we did it, proud 
that the ideas we stood for were the right ones and that it actually 
works when you try to create a society where everybody has a chance, all 
the rest of us who are going to do fine regardless, do even better; that 
we all do better when we try to create opportunity for each other, when 
we try to make sure we're responsible for each other in an appropriate 
way and we try to pull together.
    Now, the second thing I want to say is we have to take that fast-
forward to today. What's the great debate in Washington today? What are 
we going to do with the surplus? Now, if I had been running in '92 and I 
had come to you and you had never seen me before, and I said, I want you 
to vote for me so that 6 years from now we'll be having a debate about 
what to do with the surplus, you would have sent me home to Arkansas. 
[Laughter] You would have said, ``This guy has lost it; he doesn't 
understand. We've got a $290 billion deficit; we will always have 
deficits.''
    So what are we going to do with it? First, the good news. There's a 
bipartisan agreement that we shouldn't spend the Social Security 
surplus. That means until we need it to pay for Social Security, we can 
use it to pay down the debt, and that's good. I think we have that 
agreement. I want to see the details, but I think we do. That's good. 
Now the question is what to do with the rest of the surplus.
    Here's what we feel. We feel what we should do is to do the 
following things. Number one, we should fix Medicare and provide a 
prescription drug benefit. Number two, we should have appropriate money 
set aside to continue to invest in education, national defense, 
biomedical research, and the environment. Number three, we believe that 
as the interest on the debt comes down, because our interest payments 
will come down as the debt comes, we should put the savings into Social 
Security so we can run the Trust Fund out to 2053. So when I leave 
office everybody will know Social Security is all right for at least 50 
years, and we can quit worrying about it. Now, that's what we think.
    And you can do what we suggest and still have a tax cut, a 
substantial one. They believe that virtually all the non-Social Security 
surplus should go to a tax cut. And they think it sounds really 
popular--``my tax cut is bigger than your tax cut''--well, if that were 
the whole story that would sound like a pretty good argument. But I say 
we ought to save Social Security and Medicare and not just pay down the 
debt but make this country debt-free for the first time since 1835 and 
continue to invest in education.
    We'll still have money for a tax cut to help families save for long-
term care, for child care, for investments in our country. But we will 
continue--we will not risk running a deficit, destroying the education 
budget, not meeting our defense responsibilities, or not doing one 
single thing to add a day to the solvency of Medicare, and not providing 
the prescription drug benefit. That's the difference. That's the choice.
    So it's just all back to 1993 again, or even back earlier than that. 
Most of you in this room, what are you doing here? You're all in upper 
income groups; you ought to be at their deal, not ours. Why are you 
here? You get more money out of their tax cut. This is very important, 
why you're Democrats, why I am. But 5 years from now you're going to be 
a lot better off, and so is America, if we pay down the debt, save 
Social Security and Medicare, continue to invest in education, and have 
a modest tax cut we can afford.
    You know, if you just think about just three great challenges this 
country faces, we're going to double the number of people over 65 in 30 
years. We hadn't been in this kind of financial shape in forever and a 
day. What in the world are we going to say to our children if we walk 
away from this opportunity to run the Social Security Trust Fund out

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at least 50-plus years? What are we going to say if we walk away from 
our obligation to run the Medicare Trust Fund out until 2025 or beyond, 
and to provide all these elderly people--not all of them poor, a lot of 
them middle class--a little help in dealing with the prescription drug 
program?
    What are we going to say if we adopt a tax cut which causes us to 
cut education when we ought to be investing more in it? What are we 
going to say when 5, 10 years from now some Kosovo comes along and 
America is asked to stand up for human rights around the world? We'd 
say, ``Well, we'd like to do it, but we had that tax cut''--[laughter]--
``and I needed that tax cut.''
    Closer to home, what are we going to say--I've been waiting for 
this, and I never wanted to be the first to raise it because I wouldn't 
have had credibility on it, but now it's in the press--what are we going 
to say if they cut taxes and the markets say, ``Well, we don't need a 
tax cut in the economy like this; we better raise interest rates?'' So 
you get it with one hand and get it taken away with the other and 
everything gets squeezed.
    So I say to you we ought to save Social Security and Medicare; we 
ought to continue to move forward in education. And I want to talk just 
a minute about this paying the debt down. A lot of people--it just seems 
so alien; it's like an alien subject--we haven't been out of debt since 
1835. And for most of this century we shouldn't have been out of debt. 
We needed to have a little debt to invest in infrastructure or to expand 
the economy in times of recession or outright depression. But it's 
different now. Why is it different now?
    I want you all to think about this. You may not agree with me on 
this. I've really thought about this a lot. Why should the Nation's 
progressive party be for taking the country out of debt in 1999 when we 
have still an unconscionably large number of poor children and any 
number of things that we ought to be spending this money on? Here's why. 
We're living in a global economy. Interest rates are set globally; money 
moves globally. The best thing we've done for poor people in America is 
create 19 million new jobs and give tax relief to lower income working 
people and raise the minimum wage--to create an economy, in other words, 
that they could be a part of; to support the Vice President's 
empowerment initiative and the community development banks and all the 
things we've done to try to bring jobs.
    Now, if we get out of debt and if everybody knows we're on the 
target, we're going to be out of debt in 15 years, what happens? 
Interest rates stay down, investments stay high, more jobs are created 
with inflation low, more money for wage increases. Average people pay 
lower interest costs for home mortgages, car payments, credit card 
payments, and college loan payments. And the next time a global 
financial crisis comes along, like the one in Asia, nobody has to worry 
about America gobbling up scarce dollars and driving the price of money 
up. So when our trading partners, who are poorer than we are, need to 
get money because times are tough, they can get it and get it at a lower 
cost, which means they will recover more quickly and we'll start doing 
business more quickly.
    And if you don't think that's a big issue, look what is happening to 
America's farmers because of the collapse of the markets in Asia. Here 
we are at the most prosperous time perhaps in this country's history 
with an absolute disaster in the family farms of America.
    So that's why it makes sense in a global economy for the world's 
richest country to be debt-free, and why it is a progressive thing to 
do--and why, by the way, when you do it, we won't be paying interest on 
the debt anymore. If you were a Member of Congress, you would find that 
before you did anything else you'd have to take about--it used to be 15 
and now 14 cents on every tax dollar to pay interest on the debt we have 
accumulated, largely in the 12 years before I took office. So don't 
forget, you get out of debt, you've also got 14 cents you used to not 
have. And 14 cents of every dollar, all of you pay in taxes, is a pretty 
tidy sum of money. So that's why this is a good thing.
    So I say to you we need to go to the country and say, tax cut, sure, 
but first things first: Save Social Security and Medicare and deal with 
the challenge of America's aging; continue to invest in our children's 
future and in the other basic things we have to have;

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pay that debt off for the first time since 1835 and guarantee America a 
generation of prosperity. Then have a tax cut that we need and can 
afford. That is the debate we ought to have.
    And I can tell you there are lots of other examples. I think we were 
right on closing the gun show loophole, and I think they were wrong. I 
think we were right on the Patients' Bill of Rights, and I don't think 
they were. I say that not because I take any joy in that. I liked it 
when we got together. I liked it when we had big majorities of both 
parties in both Houses voting for welfare reform. I liked it when we had 
big majorities of both parties in both Houses voting for the Balanced 
Budget Act of 1997. I wish it can be that way again.
    But I am telling you, we've got to stand up for what's right for all 
the people. What brings us together as a community? What gives other 
people opportunity they wouldn't otherwise have? What purges our spirit 
from the kind of awful, arrogant hatred that led that terribly disturbed 
young man to kill those people because they were of different races in 
Illinois and Indiana and claim it was a religious imperative?
    I had today a bunch of civil rights lawyers in my office and a bunch 
of high-toned business lawyers who don't practice civil rights law, to 
commemorate the 36th anniversary of John Kennedy bringing 200 lawyers to 
Washington to ask them to lead America's charge in civil rights. And I 
asked them to lead America's charge in trying to integrate our law 
firms, integrate our corporations, and use pro bono legal work to help 
solve the economic and social problems of low income people around the 
country.
    I'll just close with this. One of the greatest weeks of my 
Presidency was a couple of weeks ago when I had the privilege of going 
to Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to East St. Louis, to the Pine 
Ridge reservation in South Dakota, to south Phoenix, and East L.A., 
because I believe that we can keep this economy going better if we get 
people to invest in the areas that have felt none of our recovery. And I 
have a simple proposal: Give Americans like you the same tax incentives 
to invest in poor areas in America we give you to invest today in the 
Caribbean, in Africa, in Asia, and Latin America. I want you to have 
those incentives. I just want poor areas in America to be as attractive. 
Our best new markets for America are here in America.
    But what it reminded me of is all these people, they're just like 
us. Just because they don't have a nice necktie and a nice suit to wear, 
life dealt them a little bit different hand. You know, Janice and I, 
we'd like to have you believe we were born in log cabins we built 
ourselves. [Laughter] But the truth is, you take one or two different 
turns in life and she and I both are back in Hope, Arkansas, doing 
business with each other in our little hometown. Some days I think it 
wouldn't be too bad. [Laughter]
    But I'm just telling you, you think about it, every one of you--you 
think about this when you go home tonight. Why did you come here? Why 
did you come here? If they ask you why you came, tell them because you 
believe we're better off when we all go forward together. Tell them 
because you believe this ought to be one community. Tell them, guess 
what, we tried our ideas in the crucible of excruciating combat for 6\1/
2\ years and the country is better off.
    So it's not like there's no evidence. And before we squander this 
surplus, let's take care of the aging of America; let's take care of the 
children of America; and let's get this country out of debt so we can go 
forward together.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:22 p.m. in the Main Ballroom at the St. 
Regis Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Janice Griffin, chair, and 
Susan Turnbull, vice chair, Women's Leadership Forum; John Merrigan, 
chair, and Penny Lee, vice chair, Democratic Business Council; Joseph J. 

Andrew, national chair, and Beth Dozoretz, national finance chair, 
Democratic National Committee; Susan Blumenthal, former senior adviser 
to the President for Women's Health; and alleged murderer Benjamin 
Nathanial Smith.

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