[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 38 (Monday, September 27, 1999)]
[Pages 1811-1817]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Luncheon

September 24, 1999

    Thank you. You think that story John told was true? [Laughter] I 
just--you better keep that Republican's name secret, or they'll subpoena 
him before a committee, before you know it. [Laughter]
    I want to thank all of you at the DBC. I want to thank my long-time 
friend John Merrigan, and Mitchell Delk, and my good friend Jan Jones, 
and all the others who have been involved with the DBC. I want to thank 
our finance people, starting with Beth Dozoretz and Frank Katz, and 
going through all of the people who have worked on this event.
    I want to thank all of you who give so consistently to our party, to 
give us a chance to get our message out. Thank you, Joe Andrew; thank 
you, Lou Weisbach, Lottie Shackelford, Janice Griffin. Thanks, Secretary 
Slater, for being here and for being there for me for nearly 20 years, 
now. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Roy Romer for his 
wonderful service to our party. Thank you very much. Thank you.
    Our former chair, Don Fowler, is here. We've got a lot of other good 
folks here. But I wanted to say to all of you that I think it's quite 
important how you think and how you talk about were we are, where we've 
been, and where we're going. So if you will forgive me, I will get down 
to business. I'm sorry I'm a little late, but I had to spend an extra 
amount of time at the DNC, because they had a big crowd there, and I 
wanted to make sure they were thinking right about the moment. And I 
feel the same way about you.
    In 1991, I asked the American people to give me a chance to be 
President. And I said, ``If you'll vote for me, I'll do my best to 
change our party, to change our national leadership, to change the 
direction of our country. I think we need new ideas for the new economy 
and all of the new challenges in our society and the world at large. But 
they have to be rooted in old values of opportunity for all, 
responsibility from all, and a community of all Americans.''
    And I asked the American people to give me a chance. And I made an 
argument for them about what I would do. Then, when the Vice President 
joined the ticket, we reissued our economic plan and asked the American 
people to give us a chance to put people first. And I would like to ask 
you to think about that.
    John said we brought the economy back and brought the Democratic 
Party back to the center. I think we did bring it back to the center, 
but I prefer to think of it as pushing the Democratic Party forward into 
the future, by getting out of making what seemed to me to be completely 
false choices. If you hang around Washington long enough, you learn that 
putting people and issues into categories--I'm sympathetic with people 
in Washington because they have to deal with so many people and so many 
issues--if you put everybody and every thing in a little box, it saves 
you the trouble of having to think. But it's a very poor way to run a 
country and to make decisions about the future of the country.
    So we said, ``Hey, give us a chance. We believe that the Democratic 
Party can be probusiness and prolabor. We believe we can be for family 
values and be against discrimination against women or gays or anybody 
else. We believe we can be for one America and still celebrate our 
diversity. We believe you can grow the economy while you improve the 
environment, not degrade it. We believe that we'll have a better work 
place if we also help workers to succeed at home in their parental 
responsibilities. We believe these things. We believe we can prevent 
crime and be tough on criminals who should be punished.''
    And so, we made this argument. And the results speak for themselves. 
But I want to

[[Page 1812]]

make just a couple of points. Number one, we've got to take a little 
longer walk down memory lane, because the economy's been so good now 
that people can't remember when it wasn't. I saw a poll the other day 
where people think the economy was good when President Bush was here. I 
think they think it was good when Herbert Hoover was here. [Laughter] 
It's been good a long time.
    But it's important to point out that in 1980, when the Reagan 
revolution occurred, the premise of the Reagan revolution--there were 
two premises. One is, Government is your enemy and the cause of all of 
our problems, and you should dislike it and make it as small as possible 
unless it's building defense or pouring concrete. That was the first 
one. The second was, the way to have a strong economy forever and a 
balanced budget forever is to increase spending and cut revenues. Let me 
repeat that. You don't have to laugh, but I want to make sure you heard 
it. [Laughter] The way to balance the budget and have a strong economy 
is to increase spending and cut revenues. That was their whole deal, and 
we proceeded to try it for 12 years. And it got him elected and then 
reelected and then got President Bush to become only the second Vice 
President in American history to become directly elected after the 
President.
    But did it work for a while? As I told the DNC today, my former 
senior Senator, Dale Bumpers, in talking to the Reagan years used to 
say, ``Of course it worked. If you let me write $2 billion of hot 
checks, I'll show you a good time, too.'' [Laughter] So it worked.
    But by the third incarnation of it, between '88 and '92, the 
quadrupling of the national debt put us into a position of permanently 
high interest rates, which gave us stagnant growth, high unemployment, 
stagnant wages, and the longest, deepest recession since the Great 
Depression. That was the reality we confronted. And we kept getting out 
of these recessions, but every time we'd get out, we'd go right back in 
because of the high interest rates.
    So Al Gore and I said, ``Hey, give us a chance. We're going to try 
this other thing here.'' And we went in. And it was an argument in the 
beginning; that is, the ordinary voters couldn't know who was right 
because they hadn't tried our way. And then we got in and we found the 
most partisan atmosphere in modern American history, and my economic 
plan passed with not a vote to spare and not a vote from a Republican. 
The Vice President broke the tie in the Senate. And we had only a two-
vote victory in the House, which means if one had changed it would have 
been even and it wouldn't have passed.
    Now, we've been through several incarnations. We also put our crime 
program through. And we passed the Brady bill, which the previous 
President had vetoed. We passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, the 
first big leg in our work and family bill, which the previous President 
had vetoed. We proceeded to clean up toxic waste dumps, clean the air, 
clean the water, make the food safer. The economy kept getting better, 
not worse, in spite of their fears.
    And they said--when we passed our economic program they said the 
world would come to an end. They said, ``We're going to try it the other 
way. We're going to cut expenses and increase revenues, until we get 
this deficit out of our hair.'' And they said, ``Oh no, this is a 
terrible idea. It will bankrupt the country.''
    When we passed the crime bill and said we were going to put 100,000 
police on the streets, they said, ``You'll never do it. Even if you did, 
it won't bring the crime down.'' And when we said we could ban assault 
weapons and do background checks on handgun buyers, and we would keep 
more guns out of the wrong hands, they said, ``Oh, the criminals will 
have guns, and all you're going to do is unduly burden hunters and 
sports people.''
    You remember all these debates. We did one thing; they said another. 
And so, now, after 6 years and 8 months, we're not having an argument 
anymore. We can still fight, but it's not an argument over the facts.
    Our economic plan has unleashed your energies with low interest 
rates, and we now have the longest peacetime expansion in history, a 30-
year low in unemployment, a 32-year low in welfare, and a 26-year low in 
the crime rate. We have the highest homeownership in history; the lowest 
minority unemployment rate ever recorded. And each year,

[[Page 1813]]

we've set a record for new small business startups.
    But the air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is safer. We 
have done away with 3 times as many toxic waste dumps as they did in 12 
years and set aside more land in perpetuity protection than any 
administration in history except those of the two Roosevelts.
    Along the way, we got 100,000 young people to serve their 
communities in AmeriCorps and immunized 90 percent of our kids against 
serious childhood illnesses for the first time, and opened the doors of 
college to all with the HOPE scholarship. It's been a pretty good run, 
but it's not an argument anymore. There are facts.
    I never will forget--and the voters returned us to office in 1996. 
But let's look at these elections, and this one in connection with the 
others. So in '92 we won because people thought times were tough and 
they gave us a chance. In '94 we got beat bad. Why? Well, they ran with 
this contract on America, and they had a plan and a message and it 
sounded good. And they said that we had raised everybody's taxes, 
although we hadn't. We raised all of yours, but we didn't raise 
everybody's taxes. [Laughter] Over 90 percent of the people didn't have 
their taxes raised.
    One of my friends who runs a Fortune 100 company--endangered species 
in that crowd, he's a Democrat--is going all over New York saying, ``If 
you paid more in taxes than you made out of low interest rates in the 
stock market in the last 7 years, you ought to be for George Bush, but 
if you didn't, you ought to stick with us.'' It's a pretty good 
argument, isn't it? You might try it. [Laughter]
    So anyway, in '92 they took a chance on us. In '94 we lost big. Why? 
Because people were told we'd raise their taxes, even when we didn't, 
and they hadn't felt the good economy yet and because we had just passed 
the crime bill and they terrified everybody saying we were going to take 
their guns away and because we didn't pass anything on health care, so 
the people who wanted something done were disappointed, and the people 
who believed their propaganda that we were trying to have the Government 
take over the health care system believed it. It was the worst of all 
worlds and election results showed it. And our obituary was written. 
Remember that now when you read the papers in the next few months. Our 
obituary was written: hopeless, helpless, terrible situation. But in 
'96, we roar back in, bigger victory than '92. Why? Because there was no 
argument anymore. People had evidence.
    And then in '98, we had a plan. In a midterm election, we said, 
``Hey, we're not tired. We're not burned out. Vote for us, and we'll 
give you 100,000 teachers. We want to save Social Security and Medicare 
before we spend the surplus. We want to pay the debt down. We want to 
pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. That's our national plan.'' And all 
over America we said it.
    And you know what they said in '98. And they said and all the 
experts said, ``Well, are they going to lose five, six, or seven Senate 
seats? Are they going to lose 20, 30, or 40 House seats?'' And instead, 
while we were being outspent by $100 million--$100 million in 1998--we 
lost no Senate seats in the worst year I can remember for Democrats, in 
terms of whose we had up and whose was vacant, and we picked up five 
House seats. And it's the first time since 1822 that the party of the 
President had gained House seats in a midterm election in the 6th year 
of the Presidency. And only the third time since the Civil War it 
happened in any midterm election. Why? Because we decided what we were 
for. We decided ideas matter. Because we put them in, and they made a 
real difference in people's lives. And people who make the real 
decision, the voters out there, once they got a chance to take a look at 
our crowd said, ``I think they care more about me than the other guys 
do.''
    And one real problem almost all people have sooner or later, if they 
stay in politics long enough, is they spend so much time with other 
people in politics, and commentators and experts and pollsters and 
people writing articles, that they forget that this is not about any of 
us. Most of you are going to be all right, no matter what--otherwise you 
couldn't afford to be here. This is about the great mass of people. And 
I hope that you're here because you believe, as I do, that all

[[Page 1814]]

of us do better when the country as a whole does better.
    You know, my economy has made it possible for those Republicans to 
give George Bush all that money. [Laughter] Al Gore told me the other 
day, he said, ``If I'd known this economy was going to make so much 
money for Bush, I'd have voted against your economic plan.'' [Laughter] 
I may start listing that as one of the achievements of my 
administration. [Laughter] See, it just depends on how you talk about 
this stuff--[laughter]--and how you think about it. We're all laughing, 
but I have a very serious purpose here.
    So now we come to 2000. And we're first in this year. I believe that 
the Democratic Party has gotten a long way by being willing to work with 
the Republicans to get something done. We worked with them in '96, 
passed the welfare reform bill that's given us the lowest welfare rolls 
in a generation, but we didn't let them cut off medical care and food to 
those poor kids. And we made them come up with more child care so that 
when people go to work, they can still take care of their kids.
    I believe we were right when we worked with them in '97 on the 
balanced budget bill, because it's continued this remarkable low 
interest rates and recovery of the economy. And I think we still ought 
to work with them, if they'll work with us, to save Social Security and 
Medicare and modernize Medicare with prescription drug coverage, to 
continue to invest in education, to invest in giving people--here's a 
tax cut I'm for: I'm for giving people the same incentives to invest in 
poor areas in America we give them to invest in poor areas around the 
world, so that we can go national with the empowerment zone program that 
the Vice President's done such a brilliant job of supervising in Mayor 
Archer's city of New York and other places.
    But we need to take care of business. We need to do that. And if my 
plan were adopted, we would have the ability to save Social Security and 
Medicare, invest in education, defense, and the other things we need to 
invest in, still have a tax cut we can afford, and get this country out 
of debt for the first time since 1835, which would give us a generation 
of low interest rates and long-term recovery for our children.
    Now, that's why I vetoed their tax bill. And once again, I did the 
Republican candidates for President a favor. Every one of them running 
on the other side is for this Republican tax bill, and if I had signed 
it, it would have made a lie to of every campaign speech they're going 
to give between now and the election about what they'll do, because they 
wouldn't have any money to do it.
    I noticed one of them yesterday said, ``Vote for me, and I'll give 
you new weapons and higher paid soldiers. And everything the Defense 
Department wants, I'll spend more money on''--ignoring the fact that 
we're just about to pay a big pay increase and build new weapons. And I 
thought to myself, this is a nice speech, but if I sign this tax bill 
that he's for there won't be any money for the promise he just made. I 
need to quit helping these Republicans this way.
    But anyway, I vetoed the tax bill because if their bill passes, it 
wouldn't add a day to Social Security, not a day to Medicare--not a day. 
So when the baby boomers retire, all those risks would still be out 
there. It would force big cuts in education. We'd never get the debt 
paid off. It really had no special effort to get economic growth into 
the areas that have been left behind by our prosperity. So I vetoed it. 
But I still want to get things done. And I still want you to help us 
going forward.
    And here's the point I want to make--I just want to make two or 
three points. Number one, the American people say they want a change. 
Guess what? I agree with them. If they polled me in all those polls, and 
said, ``Do you think we ought to change?'' I'd say yes. This country 
only works when it's in a perpetual state of creation and recreation. 
That's how it works. That's why we're still around here after all this 
time.
    Why do you think I worked so hard so that we could just fix this 
country again so then we'd be free to look at these big, long-term 
challenges and seize the big, long-term opportunities, none of which 
were possible to deal with in the shape we were in, in 1992. So I'm for 
change, too. The question is going to be, what kind of change are you 
for?
    Are we going to build on all the good things that are going on now 
to deal with the outstanding big problems and to seize

[[Page 1815]]

 the outstanding big opportunities, or are we going to turn around and 
go back to the approach that got us in so much trouble in the first 
place? That's the question before the American people.
    Do you want to save Social Security, or privatize it and worry later 
what happens to the people that lose in that deal? Do you want to save 
Medicare, or force everybody into a managed care plan even though you 
won't pass the Patients' Bill of Rights? Do you want to keep on with 
this program that's given us the lowest crime rate in 26 years, until we 
have the safest big country on Earth? Or do you want to give crime 
policy back to the NRA?
    These are the questions we have to face. Meanwhile, there is a lot 
we can do now. But there are big questions. Do you really believe 
America's diversity is its strength and we can come together in our 
common humanity? Or do you agree with them that we shouldn't pass the 
hate crimes bill or the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act?'' You've 
got to decide. There are big issues here.
    And these economic issues--would we be better off if their tax bill 
passed, or would they be better off if my modest bill passed and we took 
care of Social Security, Medicare, our investments in our children, 
their education, and got the country out of debt for the first time 
since Andrew Jackson was President? Because even if we voted for 
everything I want now, it could all be revisited next year.
    So these are decisions worthy of a great nation. And I just want to 
say two or three things about the politics of this. Number one, what you 
do is terribly important. It's okay if they have more money than we do 
if we have enough. I will remind you they out-spent us by $100 million 
last time, if you take all their third party committees and all that 
stuff, and we won anyway. Why? Because we had enough, because the people 
out there knew what we stood for, because we had clear, sharp, 
unambiguous message and people heard it.
    Number two, it's very important that you stay in the right frame of 
mind--you know how to talk about this. My philosophy, all the years I 
ran for office--now, I can say this since I'm not running anymore; I get 
to sound like a wise man. I've had a lot of young people come up to me 
and say, ``Mr. President, I want to run for office. Have you got any 
advice?'' And I always say one thing. I say, ``You know, every time I 
was on the ballot, my goal was to make sure that every single person who 
voted against me knew exactly what he or she was doing.'' Now, you think 
about that.
    That's why your role is important. Because in a free society, if the 
people who vote against you know exactly what they're doing, you have no 
beef. None of us have a right to be here, for goodness sake. And the 
reason the money is important is so we can get the message out and to 
have enough. But you need to make sure when you go home and you start 
talking to other people, that people that aren't for us know exactly 
what they're doing and why.
    You know, the American people nearly always get it right if they 
know. One of my favorite stories of what's happened to me, I went back 
to New Hampshire to run for re-election in '96. You know, I love that 
little place with all my heart. They kept me alive when the Republican 
Party and the pundits told them I was dead, and the voters of New 
Hampshire said, ``I don't think so. We're not letting you tell us how to 
run our lives, thank you very much.''
    And then I went back in '96. And they gave Al Gore and me a majority 
of the vote in '96. Unheard of. Both Republicans and independents, I 
believe, have larger numbers of registered voters than the Democrats do 
there. They've been real good to us. But in '94, they participated in a 
whipping we took, and they beat one of their Congressmen because he 
voted for the crime bill.
    So I go back to New Hampshire in '96, and I want you to think about 
this when you read all about this election, now, and all the experts, 
and what all they're telling you about. And we got a big crowd of people 
in Manchester. And I said, ``Get me a bunch of redneck hunters there.'' 
And we had a bunch of big muscle-bound guys, in their plaid shirts, you 
know, waiting for deer season. [Laughter] And so we had them all up 
there, and I said, ``Listen, guys. In 1994, your Congressman voted for 
the crime bill, which banned assault weapons, and voted for the

[[Page 1816]]

Brady bill. And you beat him because of it.'' They all started kind of 
nodding their heads and shuffling their feet, you know. And I said, 
``Here's what I want you to know. I feel terrible about it, because he 
did it for me. And he did it because I needed his vote, and I pleaded 
with him to do it.'' So I said, ``If a single person here has suffered 
any inconvenience in hunting or sport shooting in any way, if all the 
stuff they told you about how we're going to come get your guns and mess 
with your lives, if it was true, then I want every one of you who 
experienced that to vote against me, too, because that guy did it for 
me.'' But I said, ``If that didn't happen, they lied to you, and you 
need to get even.'' [Laughter]
    And so in Republican New Hampshire, we got a majority of the vote. 
Why? Because people got to think about what they really felt and what 
really counted and what had really happened. So I want to remind you of 
something else as you read the paper as happily for the next few months. 
This is September of 1999, a year and 6 weeks before the election.
    In June of 1992, 3 months before the election, on June 2d I won the 
primaries in California, New Jersey, and Ohio and became the first-
round--the certain nominee of the Democratic Party. And the next day, 
the only thing in the press was, ``But who cares if he won all these 
things. We polled in the exit polls the voters in the California 
primary, and they're really for Perot. They don't care anything about 
this guy. We told them that he was no good, and the voters agree with 
us. We laid it out to them, and they ate it, and they're doing exactly 
what we tell them to do.'' That's what they said. This was 3 months, 3 
or 4 months before the election. I was in third place--not second, 
third. It's not a horse race; you don't get any money if you show. 
[Laughter]
    Let me tell you something. They're thinking about this race in Iowa, 
and they're thinking about it in New Hampshire, and they're thinking 
about it in the headquarters of all the candidates. At the sale barn at 
Conway, Arkansas, they're still thinking about the price of cattle. And 
both parties would do well in Washington to remember that if most people 
still think they're giving us a paycheck up here and they want us to 
keep working for them for a little while longer, instead of dissolving 
into political indulgence.
    But don't you believe all these people who write our epithet because 
of the money they have or because of what they say about this, that, or 
the other thing. I'm living proof that they can chisel a lot of 
tombstones for you before you have to lay down. [Laughter] And you don't 
understand, half of this stuff is designed to break your heart and your 
spirit anyway.
    Now, here's what I want to tell you. Who knows what's going to 
happen next year? My gut is we win because we've done a good job for 
America, because we had an argument over ideas and we turned out to be 
right and because I know what the differences are going to be for the 
issues going forward, and I think we're right about that. That's what I 
think.
    But what I really want you to believe is the American people nearly 
always get it right. And they have an extraordinary sense of enlightened 
self-interest. And if sometime during this whole process their minds 
will kick in and then their hearts will kick in and they'll do what they 
really believe is right. And they'll give everybody that wants a vote a 
fair hearing. They'll try to be fair.
    And what we owe to them is to make sure that however they vote, they 
know what they're doing. And then whatever happens, none of us have any 
gripes. But people who get caught up in politics as an end in itself, 
who want the power, the position rather than the purpose, forget that no 
matter how much power you have and no matter how long you serve--and 
I've laughed at people, I said I'm glad we've got this two term limit 
because if I could run three or four more times, I probably would. 
That's true. But no matter how long you serve, in the grand sweep of 
things, it's like a minute or two.
    I went to a memorial service for Lane Kirkland yesterday. He was 
over 75 years old; he seemed like a young fellow to me, because he kept 
his spirit young. But none of us are around here for very long. We don't 
get to live very long. We don't get to serve very long. And we need to 
remember that this is all about the people that served us lunch today. 
This is all about children that Hillary

[[Page 1817]]

and I were with this morning who got adopted because we used the power 
of the Federal Government to end the rules and the bureaucratic snarls 
that kept foster children from moving quickly into adopted homes.
    This is really all about the American people, and it is a gift to be 
able to serve. And I believe it's a gift to be fortunate enough in this 
country to have resources to give. And I think we should walk out of 
this room, thanking our lucky stars that we could be here today, 
thanking God we got the chance to serve and test our ideas, and being 
absolutely determined that we are going to be of good cheer, of strong 
confidence, and we're going to make absolutely sure the American people 
know why we stand for what we stand for and exactly what we intend to do 
in the 21st century.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:40 p.m. in the York Room at the Hyatt 
Regency Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John Merrigan, chair, 
Democratic Business Council; Mitchell Delk, vice chairman, Federal Home 
Mortgage Corp.; Mayor Jan Laverty Jones of Las Vegas; Beth E. Dozoretz, 
national finance chair, Frank Katz, national finance director, Joseph J. 
Andrew, national chair, and Lottie Shackelford, vice chair, Democratic 
National Committee; Lou Weisbach, chief executive officer, HA-LO 
Industries, Inc.; and Janice Griffin, national chair, Women's Leadership 
Forum.