[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 40 (Monday, October 11, 1999)]
[Pages 1887-1890]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Luncheon in Las 
Vegas, Nevada

October 1, 1999

    Thank you very much. Senator Bryan, Senator Reid, Senator Baucus; 
Mr. Mayor, Mayor Jones, and Senator Bernstein--that sounds pretty good, 
doesn't it? [Laughter] Sounds pretty good--[laughter]--and my good 
friend Arthur Goldberg, I had a wonderful day with him in his home in 
New Jersey, and now he's brought me to Paris.
    I went to Paris for the first time 30 years ago this year as a young 
man. And not very long ago, on my way to Bosnia to talk about our 
humanitarian efforts there to save the people of Kosovo from ethnic 
cleansing, I stopped in Paris for a day to see the President of France 
and the Prime Minister, and I had a chance to walk again as I did a 
young man, along the Tuileries and look again at the Eiffel Tower. I've 
already had more dreams fulfilled than I could have asked for in 10 
lifetimes, but I never dreamed I'd actually get to give a speech in the 
Eiffel Tower. [Laughter] So I thank you, Arthur, for one more milestone 
in my life, and I congratulate you on this magnificent creation and the 
success it's enjoying.
    I was thinking about all of you here today, and I was thinking, one 
of the things that I like about Arthur Goldberg and a lot of the others 
of you who have been my longtime friends here, is that you have a sense 
of enlightened self-interest. You're intelligent enough to support 
Democrats so you can continue to live like Republicans. [Laughter]
    And I told someone the other day, I saw how much money Governor Bush 
had raised--you know, I'm thinking of putting that down as one of the 
economic achievements of my tenure in office--[laughter]--that we didn't 
discriminate; we allowed the Republicans to make money, too, in this 
economy. And it's not our fault if they decide to spend it in a way 
different than we would like.
    Let me say, just seriously--I'll be rather brief, but I want to 
first thank you for coming here; and second, to try to give you some 
sense of what is at issue in this coming election year in all of the 
elections, and certainly in these elections for United States Senate, 
every one of which is of genuine national significance.
    First, when Al Gore and I moved to Washington in 1993, into the 
White House, and we started our administration, we had a few very 
definite ideas about how we ought to change our policy--how we ought to 
change our economic policy, our crime policy, our welfare policy, our 
education policy, what our priorities in foreign policy ought to be. And 
we generally were trying to prepare America for the global economy and 
the global society in which we're living for the post-cold-war world, 
with a view to give every person in this country a chance to live up to 
his or her God-given abilities; trying to bring an increasingly diverse 
country closer together, instead of allowing it to become more and more 
torn apart and fractionalized, as so many countries in the world are 
today, over differences of race, religion, and other things. And we 
wanted to try to maintain America's role for peace and freedom and 
prosperity in the world.
    And after 6\1/2\ years, the results, I think, speak for themselves. 
We do have the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years and the lowest 
welfare rolls in 32 years and the lowest crime rates in 26 years. We 
just had back-to-back surpluses in our budget for the first time in 42 
years. And yesterday we learned that we have the lowest poverty rate in 
20 years, the longest peacetime expansion, and the highest homeownership 
in history. These are things we can be proud of. And I am grateful that 
I had the chance to serve and to be a part of these historic 
developments.

[[Page 1888]]

And for all of you that had anything to do with that, I thank you.
    But every country must always have its eyes pointed toward tomorrow. 
And it may seem strange to you, since I can't run again, but I almost 
wish that the theme song of this year's election--the millennial 
election next year, I mean--were the one that we used in 1992, that 
great old Fleetwood Mac song, ``Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.''
    The question is not whether America will change; it is how America 
will change and whether we will build on what we have done that is 
working to meet the large, long-term challenges the country faces in 
this new millennium, or whether we will basically veer off and go back 
to an approach that got us in an awful lot of trouble before. The 
economy has been good so long, most people have forgotten what it was 
like in 1992. Most people forgot what it was like to have year in after 
year out of crime rates rising, welfare rolls rising, and intensifying 
social divisions.
    So I say to you, the question--and I hope you'll keep this in mind 
between now and November of 2000--the issue for every citizen, without 
regard to party, is not whether we will vote for change. The issue is 
what kind of change we will embrace. That is, America is always 
changing. That's why we're still around here after over 220 years, 
because we've always been in the business of recreating ourselves based 
on our bedrock principles. And what difference does it make who's in the 
Senate? It will determine whether we use this moment of prosperity to 
save Social Security so that the baby boomers don't, in effect, bankrupt 
our children with our retirement. It will determine whether we lengthen 
the life of Medicare and add a prescription drug coverage, which is of 
pivotal importance to millions of Americans. Three-quarters of the 
retired people in this country today do not have access to affordable 
prescription drugs, and a lot of the hospital bills that they run up are 
because they did not have the preventive medications that they need.
    It will determine whether we make a commitment to what is now the 
largest, most ethnically and religiously diverse group of people we've 
ever had in our schools, and whether we really believe that they can all 
learn and we're determined to give them a world-class education.
    Yesterday I went to New York, to the IBM Center, to meet with 
Governors and business leaders of both parties to talk about the 
absolute imperative of having world-class standards and genuine 
accountability for all of our school children; the need to end social 
promotion but to give our children the schools they need; to turn around 
failing schools or shut them down; to give kids the after-school and 
summer school and mentoring support they need; but to keep pushing for 
higher standards in education. These are just three big questions.
    I have asked the Congress to adopt a plan that would take Social 
Security out to 2050, beyond the life expectancy of all but the most 
fortunate baby boomers. I'd like to be around then, but it seems sort of 
unlikely. I have asked them to add more than a decade to the life of 
Medicare and to deal with the prescription drug issue. I have asked to 
adopt some truly groundbreaking educational reforms, and I have asked 
them to do it in a budget that would allow America over the next 15 
years to pay down the debt, so that by 2015 we'd be debt-free, for the 
first time since Andrew Jackson was President in 1835. Now, those are 
changes worth fighting for.
    Now, in every case, there are differences among the parties on this. 
I also have to tell you that there are differences in other areas. I'm 
fighting now to get the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified 
in the Senate. Virtually all the opposition we have is coming from the 
other side of the aisle. A dream that was first embraced by Dwight 
Eisenhower, a Republican President, and proposed by John Kennedy, a 
Democrat, who gave us the first temporary test ban treaty.
    It is profoundly important because we are trying to stop countries 
that do not have nuclear power now, and terrorist groups who do not have 
nuclear power now, from getting it. And it will help us not only to 
restrain people who have nuclear weapons from using them ever in the 
future but from seeing the proliferation of these things. Every 
Senator's vote makes a difference. The treaty has to be ratified by two-
thirds of the Senate.

[[Page 1889]]

    I'm trying to get the funds from the Congress to implement the 
agreement I made with former Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mr. Arafat, 
with the help of the late King Hussein, at the Wye peace accords. It's 
absolutely imperative that America do its part if we want the Israelis 
and their partners in the Middle East to keep making peace. It could 
have a huge impact on the life our children lead in the 21st century. 
And the congressional majority so far has been unwilling to fund it. 
Every Senator's vote makes a difference.
    And I can go on and on and on. You know this; you've seen it. But 
it's easy to forget. This State has been profoundly well served by Dick 
Bryan and Harry Reid. And Arthur said he wished I could run again--I 
wish Dick would have run again. [Laughter] I told him, I said, ``He's 
too young to quit. He doesn't even have gray hair, unlike some people.''
    So when you pick someone to succeed him, you have to think about 
this. The person you pick to succeed him is going to lengthen the life 
of Social Security or try to let it wither on the vine, hoping that it 
will be privatized, not really thinking about what's going to happen--
not to the baby boomers; most of us will be fine--what happens to our 
children and their ability to raise our grandchildren, if we leave a 
significant percentage of our people who are my age and younger, in the 
baby boom generation, unable to sustain themselves in retirement?
    What if we don't continue to push to raise standards in education? 
You know, our children have picked up nearly a full grade in reading 
levels in the last 2 years. It didn't happen by accident. Four years ago 
only 16 States had enforceable standards; today, 50 do. Four years ago 
only 11 States had real accountability--that is, for schools, teachers, 
and students; today, only 16 do.
    Now, I can tell you, the Democrats are more likely than the 
Republicans, by a factor of five or six, to continue to push to raise 
standards in education. It could change the whole future of America. We 
are more likely to push for things like the hate crimes legislation and 
other things that are designed to bring us together, across all the 
lines that divide us, and certainly more likely to think about our 
responsibilities in the world.
    You know, people come here, Las Vegas, from all over the world. And 
I know that for many Americans, maybe people living in small towns in 
this State, they'd just as soon, just thinking about it for 30 seconds, 
that we not invest any money anywhere else in the world. But with the 
end of the cold war, a modest investment in our diplomacy can keep 
American men and women in uniform out of wars for decades to come. It 
will save lives; it will give us a more peaceful world. It will also 
protect the international economy, on which our own prosperity depends.
    All this will be determined not only by the Presidential race but by 
the races for the Senate and the races for the House. And it seems to 
me, when you think about the things everybody used--not everybody, at 
least our friends in the opposition--the Republicans used to say about 
the Democrats that they were weak on crime, weak on welfare, weak on the 
budget, weak on foreign policy--all those things they used to say about 
us--``you can't trust them to run the country''--our crime policy has 
helped communities have the lowest crime rate in a generation. Our 
welfare policies have given us the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, 
without doing what they wanted to do, which was to cut the kids out of 
Federally-guaranteed food and medical care and to give more child care 
so people can succeed at home and at work. Our economic policies have 
benefitted not just those of us in this room who can afford to be here, 
but we've also got the lowest poverty rates in 20 years.
    And our continued commitment to fulfilling our responsibilities in 
the world have given us a safer world and will give us a safer world in 
the 21st century, which means a more prosperous world, which is critical 
to a more prosperous America.
    I'd just leave you with this thought: We are 4 percent of the 
world's population; we have 22 percent of the world's income. We cannot 
sustain 22 percent of the income with 4 percent of the people unless we 
have a constructive relationship with the other 96 percent of the people 
in the world. It is of pivotal importance.

[[Page 1890]]

    So it is not only for humanitarian reasons that I have sought to end 
the slaughter in Kosovo and Bosnia, to try to bring peace from the 
Middle East to Northern Ireland, to try to deal with the test ban 
treaty. It's also very much in the immediate daily interest of the 
people of this city, this State, and this Nation. This is a different 
and a better country than it was in 1992, and I'm grateful that I had a 
role to play in it. But don't be deceived here. It wasn't because of me; 
it was because what we did was the right thing to do. It is the ideas, 
the policies, the direction, the conviction of where we're going--that's 
what counts.
    And you can keep America changing in the right way with the right 
decisions in all these elections in 2000. After those elections, I'll 
just be a citizen again, but I took forward to bearing this message for 
the rest of my life. And I thank you for being here to help make America 
work.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:10 p.m. in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant at 
the Paris Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Oscar B. Goodman 
and former Mayor Jan Laverty Jones of Las Vegas; Senatorial candidate Ed 
Bernstein; Arthur M. Goldberg, president and chief executive officer, 
Park Place Entertainment; President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister 
Lionel Jospin of France; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; former Prime 
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel; and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority. This item was not received in time for 
publication in the appropriate issue.