[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 35 (Monday, September 6, 1999)]
[Pages 1675-1678]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Bridgehampton, New 
York

August 29, 1999

    Well, thank you very much. [Laughter] I must say, I thought Hillary 
was going to say, ``If you think it's windy now, wait until Bill gets up 
to talk.'' [Laughter] I feel badly about this wind. It came up about the 
time I was explaining the finer points of voodoo around our table--
[laughter]--and the conviction that Haitians and others have that the 
spirits of light and darkness are more or less in equal balance and they 
manifest themselves in all kinds of physical ways. And all of a sudden 
the lights started moving and--[laughter]--so we'll just have to hope 
the good guys win tonight.
    Let me just say first to Craig and Jane, I'm very, very grateful to 
be in their home here--I've also been in their home in New York City. 
Thank you, Brian; thank you, Robert. They're quite wonderful people--
among other things, when I came to see them in New York they provided 
me, since I had a little down time, with a tenor saxophone, and so I 
played a tune for them. So I got here tonight, and the horn was here 
again. But I didn't put them through it again. [Laughter] But it was 
very touching, and I thank you for that.
    I also want to thank all of those who are here. Jon, thank you and 
Richie for entertaining. Jon Bon Jovi has been very good to me; he has 
played for me a number of times over these last 6\1/2\ years, and I 
thought they were terrific tonight, and I thank them for being here. I 
want to thank the people who prepared the wonderful dinner and all those 
who served it and all the volunteers who have been part of this tonight. 
And I would like to just make a couple of brief points.
    Somebody will ask you tomorrow why you came here tonight. And I 
wonder what you will say: ``I wanted to see their house; it looked kind 
of interesting.'' [Laughter] ``I wanted to hear the music. I hear the 
food was going to be great. The restaurant was closed tonight.''
    I'd just like to offer a few things that I hope you'll think about. 
First of all, New York has been very, very good to me and to 
Hillary, to Al and Tipper Gore, to our whole administration. We had a 
wonderful convention here in '92. I had a very interesting, eventful 
primary here in '92, but it came out okay. And then the State voted for 
us big in '92 and then, breathtakingly in '96, and I'm very grateful.
    But in 1992 I asked the country and I asked the people of this State 
to take a chance on me, on my family, my Vice President, my 
administration, and on a whole new direction for the country. I saw a 
survey the other day which said that things had been going so well in 
our country for so many years now, nobody could--people have no memory 
of what it was like in '91 and '92. They've forgotten entirely.
    But the economy was in the tank, and the country was divided, and 
the social problems were worsening. And we had a lot of challenges 
around the world that weren't being addressed. And, you know, I lived a 
long way from Washington, DC, but it seemed to me that we were working 
on the wrong things and not working on the right things. And I asked the 
American people to give me a chance to create a country in which there 
was opportunity for all who were responsible, in which we could build a 
community of all Americans, in which we could be a force for

[[Page 1676]]

peace and freedom and justice around the world. And so you took a 
chance.
    The first thing I hope you'll say--and one of you said this to me 
tonight--when you go home and they ask you why you came, is that it was 
a good chance to take and it worked out all right; that we've got the 
longest peacetime expansion in history and the lowest crime rate in 26 
years and the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years and the lowest minority 
unemployment ever recorded and the highest homeownership in history; 
that our country has been a force for peace and freedom, from Northern 
Ireland to the Middle East to the Balkans; that we have tried to include 
all Americans in our future.
    The second thing I hope you'll say--because, as Joe Andrew said 
earlier, politics is always about tomorrow--is that you think we're 
right about the things we're talking about for today and tomorrow. You 
know, I'm not running for anything anymore. Joe Andrew used to have a 
great line in his speeches: ``Bill Clinton doesn't have to be here; he's 
not running for anything anymore.'' That's where Hillary started running 
for something, now I do have to be here--[laughter]--in a different 
role.
    But I believe this anyway, and I want you to think about this. Once 
in a lifetime--once in a lifetime--if you get real lucky, maybe twice--a 
country, like a person, has a moment that is either seized or 
squandered. You may have a lot of wonderful moments, but some will be 
greater than others. Mr. DeNiro has made a lot of great movies, but some 
were greater than others. Steven Spielberg and Kate and I, we were 
talking with Hillary and Chelsea on the way over about the greatest 
moments of his movie career. Countries are like that, just like in your 
personal life.
    A time like this comes along once in a lifetime, where we went from 
having--we quadrupled our debt in 12 years, and now we've got the 
biggest surplus we ever had. And we project for 15 years or more we'll 
have it. Oh, there will be ups and downs in the economy but, on average, 
it will be there. Now, what are we going to do with it?
    Our friends in the other party, they say that all that's not 
attributable to Social Security taxes; we ought to give it back to you 
in a tax cut. And that's very popular, especially in this crowd. Some of 
you will say you ought to have your head examined, because every one of 
you should be over there with them tonight.
    We say we ought to face the challenges facing our children. And I'll 
just give you three real quick. The aging of America--there will be 
twice as many people over 65 in 2030 as there are now. I hope to be one 
of them, so do most of you. If we don't save Social Security and 
Medicare and do it in a way so that the children of the baby boomers 
don't have to support them so they'll be free to support their children, 
we're going to have an enormous amount of heartache and difficulty in 
this country. But if we do it, you'll have people living longer and 
better than ever before. The children of the baby boomers will be free 
to pursue their own destiny, and they'll be free to raise their 
grandchildren in the best possible way.
    The second thing we ought to do is face the fact that we've got more 
kids in this country in school than ever before--over 53 million of 
them. More of them come from families whose first language is not 
English than ever before. But it's a godsend in a global society if we 
can give every single one of them a world-class education.
    The third thing we ought to do is figure out how we can keep this 
economy going and how we can bring it to people who haven't felt it yet. 
Because I can tell you, in spite of all the prosperity the last 6\1/2\ 
years, there are inner-city communities, there's the Mississippi Delta, 
there are places in Appalachia, there are all these Indian reservations 
in America, there are small towns in upstate New York--which, if it were 
a separate State, would rank 49th in job creation in the last 5 years--
where the sunshine of all this prosperity has not reached. We all hope 
there won't be other interest rate increases. We say, ``Gosh, let's keep 
interest rates down and keep growth going.'' You want to expand the 
economy with no inflation, invest in the places that haven't had any 
growth. These are big deals.
    Now, my view is we ought to take most of this surplus in the next 15 
years and reform and save Medicare, run Social Security's life out to 
about 2053--that ought to take care of all the baby boomers; I'm the 
oldest of

[[Page 1677]]

the baby boomers. I don't think I'll be alive in 2053; I'd like it 
awfully well if I was. But most of us will be gone by then, and we'll 
return to some more normal population distribution. And meanwhile, our 
children will not have to worry about taking care of us in our dotage, 
and our grandchildren will have a better future.
    We ought to invest in education, in the things we know that work, 
and recognize that the poorest children in this country need the richest 
education if we're going to have the kind of future we want.
    We ought to pay this country's debt down. You know, we could get out 
of debt in 15 years for the first time since 1835. And we'd have low 
interest rates for a generation, and people like us would do just fine 
if we did that.
    Now, we also ought to do things that bring our community together. 
Congressman Forbes changed parties because he got sick and tired of the 
leadership of his party turning a deaf ear when he said we're going to 
have more and more people in managed care and we may have to do it. It 
may not be a bad thing. But you've got all these hospitals going broke. 
You've got doctors wanting to quit or join unions. And you've got people 
who are tearing their hair out. We've got to have a Patients' Bill of 
Rights so that we have quality care as well as properly managed care. 
Because he thought we ought to be investing in education, not cutting 
it.
    Carolyn McCarthy, another Congresswoman from Long Island, was a 
Republican, became a member of our party because she lost her husband, 
had her son subject to grievous injury--because this is the only big 
country in the world that has no sensible restrictions on firearms, 
until we passed the Brady bill, which was vetoed in the previous 
administration, which kept 400,000 people with criminal backgrounds from 
getting guns and saved God knows how many people. But we still have 
serious problems in the law. That's important to me.
    I supported an increase in the minimum wage, because I don't think 
anybody that works for a living and has kids at home ought to be in 
poverty. And I believe those people should get big tax increases--tax 
cuts, I mean--people who have modest wages and have children at home. 
They got the biggest tax cuts, percentagewise, of anybody in this 
administration in the last 7\1/2\ years, because I don't think anybody 
who works full-time and has a child at home should be in poverty. And I 
don't think you do, either.
    Now, these are major issues. What kind of a community are we? Look, 
can you believe this with all the good fortune we've had, and just a 
couple of weeks ago, some guy listens to some racist kook and goes out 
and murders an African-American former basketball coach, shoots Asian 
students in the street. This guy the other day in Illinois and Indiana, 
going on that shooting spree. Then we had another shooting, of the 
children at the Jewish child center in Los Angeles. And the same guy 
murdered a Filipino-American because he was Filipino and because he 
worked for the United States Government and the Post Office. We had that 
young Matthew Shepard being killed in Wyoming. The Democratic Party 
wants to pass hate crimes legislation. We want to pass employment 
nondiscrimination legislation. We want to have people in our future 
without regard to their race, their sexual orientation, their politics, 
or anything else.
    Now, why? Because we need all those people. Because we--if you 
believe in free markets and free societies, you have to believe that 
everyone should freely have the chance to live their dreams, and that 
there ought to be a framework which makes it possible for them to do it.
    I want to close--before we get blown away--[laughter]--with one 
story. I went to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota the 
other day--some of you may have seen it--on this new markets tour, 
organized by a man, Gene Sperling, my National Economic Counselor, who 
also happens to be in the audience here.
    Before I did that, I had the 19 tribal leaders from the northern 
high plains come to see me, from North and South Dakota and Montana. 
They are probably the poorest of all of our Indian tribes. And they had 
this meeting with the President--and I had five and six Cabinet members 
there. And they went through their little presentation, you know, and 
everybody said what they had to say about what their needs were.

[[Page 1678]]

    And at the end, Harold Salway stood up, who is the president--they 
now call them presidents--of the Oglala Sioux, the tribe of Crazy Horse, 
in South Dakota. And he was standing there, and he said that the chiefs 
wanted to tell me that they supported what I had done in Kosovo, in 
saving the Kosovar Albanians.
    And he started talking. He's not very tall, but he's very dignified, 
and you could have heard a pin drop. And he said, ``Mr. President,'' he 
said, ``my great-great-grandfather was massacred at Wounded Knee. We 
know something about ethnic cleansing. But,'' he said, ``I had two 
uncles. One was on the beach at Normandy. The other was the first Native 
American fighter pilot in the history of the United States military.'' 
He said, ``And now I am here in the White House meeting with the 
President. I have only one son, and he means more to me than anything in 
the world, but I would be proud to have him wear a uniform and go fight 
for the freedom of the people of Kosovo, to be free from being 
slaughtered because of their ethnic background or the way they worship 
God. This is America, and I'm proud of what we're doing here.''
    I hope tomorrow, if somebody asks you why you were here, you'll say, 
``Because we took a chance and it worked out; because we've got the 
chance of a lifetime to do the right things for the future; and because 
more than anything else''--believe me, if I could leave office with one 
wish for America, it would be that somehow we would find a way to lay 
down all these idiotic ways of looking down on one another, and find 
some way to lift each other up.
    And the last thing I want to say is this. I have been privileged in 
my life to work with thousands of people in public service. And 
notwithstanding the intense partisan rancor of the last few years, my 
experience is that what you have been subject to is atypical. Most of 
the people I have known in public life, Republicans and Democrats, were 
honest, hard-working, decent people who had honest differences of 
opinion, and got up every day and tried to make this country a better 
place.
    But I'm telling you, of all the people I have ever known in public 
life, the ablest, the smartest, the most passionately dedicated, is the 
person who wants to be the next United States Senator from New York.
    Thank you, and goodbye. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 10 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Craig Hatkoff, Jane Rosenthal, 
Brian Ward, and actor Robert DeNiro; musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Richie 
Sambora; Joseph J. Andrew, national chair, Democratic National 
Committee; and movie producer/director Steven Spielberg and his wife, 
actress Kate Capshaw.