[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 30 (Monday, August 2, 1999)]
[Pages 1486-1491]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Luncheon in Aspen

July 24, 1999

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, first of all, I'm sorry that 
there's some people out there under umbrellas. I'm tempted to say, thank 
you very much; we're right; they're wrong; thanks for the money; go out 
and work hard; goodbye. [Laughter] But what the heck. [Laughter]
    I'd like to thank all the Members of Congress and the members of the 
administration who are here, and all the people from the DNC. I'd like 
to thank the people who served our food, and I'd like to thank these 
young people who provided such wonderful music for us. Thank you very 
much.
    But I would especially like to thank Mel and Bren for making the 
extraordinary effort, first of all, to have this event, and secondly, to 
change it around. And it's been perfectly beautiful. Thank you so much. 
I'm grateful to you.
    I appreciate very much the support that so many of you have given us 
over the years, to me and to Hillary, to the Vice President and Tipper, 
to all of our administration, the chance you've given us to make this a 
better country. I will try to be as brief as I can here, but I want you 
to think about this question: What will you say tomorrow if someone asks 
you why you were here today? And will it be a good reason for them to 
join you politically? And is it something that will sustain

[[Page 1487]]

your efforts as you talk to your friends and neighbors over the next 
year and a half? That's really important to me.
    You know, yesterday, when Hillary and I had the privilege to go as 
friends and as representatives of the United States to the memorial 
service for John Kennedy, Jr., and Carolyn Bessette, I, like everyone, 
was profoundly moved by the eulogy that Senator Kennedy gave, the last 
sentence of which was, ``Like his father, he had every gift but length 
of life.'' I say that not to be morbid, but to remind us all that life 
is fleeting and fragile.
    When I was a boy growing up, I was obsessed with the fact that my 
own father had died at 29, before I was born. These things don't affect 
families evenly; there is no rhyme or reason to it. But they serve as a 
reminder to those of us who are privileged to get up for yet another day 
of life that there are responsibilities associated with good fortune, 
and the way we can honor our loved ones who aren't here and honor those 
who have given so much to our country whose time was cut short is to be 
good citizens and to be visionaries and to remember that even the oldest 
people on Earth last a very short time in the grand scheme of things. So 
it always pays to think about tomorrow.
    When I ran for President, I did so because--not because I had any 
hostility of the kind we had become so used to in politics to the then 
administration. I actually like President Bush very much personally. I 
had a lot of friends in the administration. I often represented the 
Democratic Governors in negotiations with them. I did it because I 
thought the ideas that were driving the policies were wrong and because 
there was no animating vision to get this country into the 21st century.
    And I hope very much that all that we're seeing now is some 
indication that we are about to return to that sort of politics, that we 
can actually have an honest debate about whether--not whether somebody 
is a good or a bad person, but whether they have good or bad ideas and 
what the consequences will be.
    But I would like to say, if someone asks you why you were here, the 
first thing you ought to say is that the Clinton-Gore administration 
came to power with certain ideas that were different from the ideas that 
had been put forward in the past: that Government was neither the enemy, 
nor the solution, but should be a partner in creating the conditions and 
giving people the tools empowering them to make the most of their own 
lives; that we had to reduce the deficit and we could do it and still 
increase our investment in critical areas like education; that we could 
grow the economy and improve the environment; that it was not necessary 
for people to choose between being successful as workers and being 
successful as parents. Those are just some of the things that we said we 
believed.
    And what you can say is, ``Hey, they came in; they put their ideas 
into action, and they worked. So the first reason I showed up is it 
worked, and it was different.''
    I said before, I will say again, I'm so gratified whenever someone 
comes up and says they think I've done a good job as President and they 
think I've been able to involve the American people in this; I'm 
grateful. But I want you to understand, I could be the greatest speaker 
since Cicero, and if our ideas were wrong, the country would still be in 
the wrong place. The most important thing is to have the right ideas, 
the right vision, and a good team implementing it.
    I could not have done anything that I have achieved if I hadn't had 
Al Gore as Vice President, because he's plainly the best Vice President, 
with the largest amount of responsibility, in the history of the 
Republic. It is plainly not even close. And I couldn't have done it 
without the help of our friends in Congress. Even when we've been in the 
minority in Congress, as long as they stayed with me, I knew in the end 
we could prevail on all of the great issues. I couldn't have done it 
without those of you who have helped us.
    So, first say, ``They had some ideas; they put them into effect; and 
they worked.'' It's not just that we have the longest peacetime 
expansion in history, the lowest minority unemployment in history, the 
highest homeownership in history. We also have a 30-year low on welfare 
rolls, a 26-year low in the crime rate. Teen pregnancy, teen smoking, 
teen drug use is down. Test scores are up in our schools for the first 
time in years in

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the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, in both reading and math, which is a big 
deal because every single year we have more and more of our kids whose 
first language is not English. So this country is moving in the right 
direction. The air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is purer 
than it was before. We set aside more land, protected it or preserved 
it, than any administration except those of the two Roosevelts. We've 
had a hundred--that's big in Colorado--we had over 100,000 young people 
serve this country through AmeriCorps, our national service program, in 
communities all over America, earning money to go to college. That 
happened in 4 years. It took the Peace Corps 20 years to reach 100,000. 
Ninety percent of our children immunized against serious childhood 
diseases for the first time ever. We've had a more active Government, 
but we now have the smallest Government in terms of employment we've had 
since 1962, when John
Kennedy was President. So we had these ideas; we put them into effect; 
and they worked. So I hope you will say that to people.
    The second thing is I hope you will say you were here because you 
agree with what we should do now, because we can't just sit on our lead. 
The question now is, we've spent 6 years trying to get this country to 
work again, just trying to have it work, knowing that we could work 
together; that the economy could sustain growth; that we could bring the 
crime rate down, something a lot of people didn't believe we could do 
anymore; that we could get rid of the deficit. So what are we going to 
do now? What are we going to do?
    And there are these two competing visions. I'll give you the 
Republican vision in the argument most favorable to them. If one of them 
were here, they'd say something like this: ``Look, we agree with the 
President; we'll take the surplus that's attributable to Social Security 
taxes, and we won't spend it anymore. And so that can be used to pay 
down the debt some. But we think we ought to give you the rest of the 
money because it's your money; it's your tax money; and if we leave it 
in Washington''--I heard this, I heard them on the floor the other day. 
I watched them on C-SPAN, and one of their young leaders said, ``If we 
give them the money, they will spend it on their friends.'' ``Their 
friends.''
    Now, that's their argument. Our argument is, we have a once-in-a-
lifetime chance to deal with the long-term challenges of the country. 
And if we have a tax cut as big as they want, we'll never do it. We've 
got to deal with the aging of America, the doubling of the number of 
people over 65 in 30 years. And therefore, we ought to use a lot of this 
surplus not only to set it aside, but to pay down--to extend the life of 
Social Security, extend the life of Medicare, provide more preventive 
screenings for older people so they don't get sick in the first place, 
and provide for a modest prescription drug benefit, because three-
quarters of the seniors in this country don't have it. And if you set 
aside the surplus and you do it in the right way for both Social 
Security and Medicare, you can then deal with another big challenge 
which is the long-term health of the economy, because we could make 
America debt-free for the first time since 1835 in just 15 years, 
guaranteeing long-term stability, lower interest rates, higher 
investment, a stronger economy--debt-free.
    If I had told you in 1992, when I was running for President, ``Elect 
me, and 6\1/2\ years later I'll come back, and we'll talk about what to 
do with the surplus and how to make America debt-free,'' you would have 
said, ``He's a nice young man, but that's hopeless. The kid, he is 
clueless. He doesn't have any idea what's going on.'' But it is before 
us now, and we have to decide what we're going to do.
    We also have to realize that if their tax cut passes, it will 
require huge cuts in education, in the environment, in biomedical 
research, even in national defense, which they say they support--massive 
cuts.
    And we have a tax cut that's smaller, that helps families to save, 
to deal with long-term care and child care, primarily. Also helps us to 
build modern schools and gives people like you incentive to invest in 
the poorest areas of America by giving you the same tax incentives 
through tax credits and other mechanisms to invest in Indian 
reservations, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the inner city that 
you have right now if you want to invest in the Caribbean, in Africa, 
and Latin

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America or Asia, which I think is very important.
    So they'll say, ``Well, our tax is bigger than your tax cut.'' You 
ever heard those arguments when you were a kid, you know, the sixth 
grade? [Laughter] ``My daddy drives a bigger car than your daddy does.'' 
And if that's the argument, we don't do very well. If that's the 
argument, why are you here? Most of you should be over there with them.
    But you know life is fleeting. This is the opportunity of a 
lifetime. We have never had an opportunity like this, none of us in our 
political lifetime. And we have these big, looming challenges: how to 
keep the economy going, how to deal with the aging of America, how to 
deal with the needs of all of our children for a world-class education. 
And we've got a way to deal with them now. And we have proved that if we 
deal with them, the economy will be stronger, and we'll all do better.
    So I hope you'll say, ``The second reason I'm there is they're 
having a big debate in Washington about what to do with this prosperity, 
and I agree with the Democrats. I think we ought to deal with the long-
term challenges of this country.''
    And the final thing is, I think the real difference between us is 
how we define community in America. Some Republicans obviously are very 
harsh and negative; some are very soothing and nice, and they like to 
get everybody together. There are all kinds of reasons. I don't like 
this personal attack business, but the question is, do you believe that 
each and every person in this country is important to our common 
success, and do you believe that each and every person in this country 
should have a right to be treated with dignity? And how do you define 
that?
    Is the American community all those people who say they believe in 
the same things, or is it all of us who are responsible citizens who are 
entitled to be treated in a certain way and have a certain set of 
opportunities? I'll just give you two or three examples where there is 
almost a complete difference of opinion in the modern parties today, 
from the left to the right in the Democratic Party and from the left to 
the right in the Republican Party.
    Almost all of us are for the Patients' Bill of Rights. Almost all of 
them supported killing it in the Congress. Why? The health insurance 
companies say it will raise your health insurance premiums if your 
doctor says you need to see a specialist, and they can't stop it; if you 
get to go to the nearest emergency room; if you get to keep your doctor 
during the course of treatment even if you change your HMO provider. I 
think we're right and they're wrong. Even they say it only raises your 
insurance premiums $2 a month. I think it's worth $2 a month to give 
people the security of a decent health care system.
    But all of them, from top to bottom, were against it, just about. We 
got a handful of votes.
    I believe we ought to control--close the gun show loophole. We did 
the Brady bill--I remember when we did pass the Brady bill, they said, 
oh, this was the end of the world. They beat a bunch of our House 
Members in '94 over the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, and they 
said, oh, the hunters were going to all lose their weapons. And I 
remember going back to New Hampshire in '96--now, by the way, 400,000 
people with criminal backgrounds have not gotten a handgun because of 
the Brady bill. And I remember talking to all of these hunters in New 
Hampshire, saying, ``You beat a Congressman in '94 here because he voted 
for the Brady bill. And he did that because I asked him to. So if there 
is a single hunter here that has been inconvenienced in your hunting, I 
want you to vote against me, too. But if you haven't, they didn't tell 
you the truth, and you need to get even.'' Our victory margin in New 
Hampshire went from one to 13.
    People knew they were being sold a bill of goods, once they saw it. 
So now we come along and say, but there are still a lot of criminals 
buying guns at these gun shows and urban flea markets, and let's do a 
background check there. And well, you would think it was the most 
burdensome thing that we had ever come up with. So our crowd said, 
``Let's do it,'' and their crowd said, ``Let's don't.''
    How do you define community? What does it really mean to say, ``I 
think it's worth a lot to keep every kid we can keep alive,

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a lot.'' You don't see--I told somebody--you never hear anybody anymore 
complain about going through an airport metal detector, saying, ``I 
really resent this; my constitutional right to travel is being 
infringed.'' [Laughter] You're laughing, but you know, there was a lot 
of apprehension when we started this. All you had to do was think about 
your plane being hijacked.
    But we ought to think--we ought to support this because we should 
think about not just ourselves being the victims; we should think about 
our neighbors being the victims.
    We're in Colorado. Our hearts were broken by Columbine. I was elated 
by those 90 kids from Colorado who came, Republicans, Democrats, 
Christians, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans--all kinds of 
people--90 kids from Colorado descended on the Congress last week, 
asking them, what in the living heck had happened to them? Had they 
forgotten about Columbine? Where was their gun safety legislation? It 
was fabulous. It was fabulous.
    But what I want to say to you is, what we forget is 13 kids get 
gunned down in this country every day. It's worth to us--we should go to 
a little trouble to try to keep more of them alive. That's what 
community means to me. We should go to a little trouble to try to keep 
more of them alive.
    So I just give you those examples. There are a lot more. The hates 
crime legislation--from top to bottom on their side, there's not a 
handful of them who want us to pass the hates crime bill that explicitly 
protects gays. Well, I think we should. I think about that Matthew 
Shepard out in Wyoming and his fine family; I think about the friends 
that we all have. Haven't we learned that we have nothing to fear from 
law-abiding citizens who are different from ourselves, as long as we 
treat them with dignity and respect, whatever their differences are, 
whether they're religious or whatever? I think this is a big deal. It's 
part of the way we define community.
    I never will forget the first conversation I ever had about this 
with one of Evan's colleagues, Senator Chuck Robb from Virginia, 
represents a very conservative State, President Johnson's son-in-law. I 
believe he saw more combat than any Vietnam veteran in the United States 
Congress. Distinguished Marine combat veteran in Vietnam. He looked at 
me without blinking an eye, and he said, ``I am for this.'' And he said, 
``I am for anything.'' He said, ``I served with people who risked their 
life for this country, who were gay, and we ought to give them the 
protections every other citizen gets.'' And to me, that's part of 
community.
    Let me just close with this story. Some of you have heard this 
before, but I was on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota 
recently, with the chairman of the Oglala Sioux, the tribe of Crazy 
Horse. And the new chairman's name is Harold Salway. He was in the White 
House with 19 of the tribal chieftains from the high plains to talk 
about their terrible economic and social problems, which are a stain on 
this country, I might add, that we have to do something about.
    And at the end of the meeting--Lynn Cutler is smiling; she was 
there, and she's heard me tell the story--there was not a dry eye in the 
place and no one could breathe when Harold Salway stood up, and he said, 
``Before we go, I want to tell you that we are for your position in 
Kosovo.'' Keep in mind, these people represent the poorest Indians in 
America; they come to see me; they tell me they want to say, we're for 
your position in Kosovo. And he said, ``You see, we know a little about 
ethnic cleansing.'' He said, ``My great-grandfather was killed at 
Wounded Knee.'' But he said, ``This is America. I had two uncles. One 
was on the beach at Normandy; one was the first Native American fighter 
pilot in the history of the U.S. military. And here today their nephew 
is with the President of the United States.'' He said, ``I only have one 
son. He means more to me than anything. But I would be proud to have him 
wear the uniform of my country to fight against ethnic cleansing in 
Kosovo.''
    Community. Why do we fight for peace in the Middle East? Why do we 
work for it in Northern Ireland? Why do we ask people to 
stop<SUP>*</SUP> killing each other in Africa? Why do we try to get the 
American people to look at the interdependent nature of the world? Why 
do all of you who are quite comfortable believe that these young people 
who have served us today ought to all be able to go

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to college, so we ought to raise the minimum wage periodically to make 
sure people who work are not in poverty? We honestly believe that it is 
not only the right thing to do, but that we are better off when others 
are.
    <SUP>*</SUP> White House correction.
    Senator Kennedy yesterday carried a great burden, as he has for more 
than 30 years now. I'd like to close with a reminder of something he 
said when his brother was killed in 1968, and once before he had to give 
a eulogy that the world listened to. And at the end of it he said that 
he and his family hoped that what his brother wished for others and what 
he was to them would someday come to pass for all the world.
    That is the dream that animates us. Tomorrow, if they ask you why 
you were here, give them a good answer.
    Thank you. God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:13 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks he referred to luncheon hosts Melvin and Bren Simon; murder 
victim Matthew Shepard; and Senator Evan Bayh.