[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 41 (Monday, October 18, 1999)]
[Pages 2027-2035]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Leadership Council Gala

October 13, 1999

    Thank you. Let me say, first, it's good to be back. I want to thank 
Al From and Senator Joe Lieberman. And I have seen Senator Robb and 
Senator Breaux. I understand Senator Landrieu is here. I saw Cal Dooley, 
and I know there are some other Members of the House here. My former 
Chief of Staff and Envoy to Latin America, Mack McLarty, is here. I saw 
Harris Wofford, who has done a magnificent job with our national service 
program. And I know there are a lot of others here.

[[Page 2028]]

    But I want to say something about Sam Fried, the gentleman who 
introduced me. First of all, he gave a good speech, didn't he? I mean, 
he's got a great gift in capturing our vision. And he also did the 
nicest thing imaginable; he said how much he liked my phrase about 
putting a human face on the global economy, which I use three times a 
day. He didn't tell you the truth. He gave me that phrase, Sam Fried. So 
he could either be a speechwriter or a Senate candidate from Ohio or 
anyplace else he wants to run. But I think we need to recruit people 
from the private sector to run for office with the DLC message. And 
thank you, my long time friend.
    This conference is designed to talk about trade in the global 
economy in the information society. And I want to talk about that 
tonight. But I want to try to put it into some sort of context.
    I began a conversation with many of you, and led by and prodded by 
Al From, 15 years ago now. Tonight we know some things about the Third 
Way and about our credo of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, 
and a community of all Americans. We know some things tonight about that 
that we only believed 15 years ago. We know that if this credo is 
translated into meaningful ideas and real policies, that it's not only 
good politics; it's very good for America.
    In 1992, when Al Gore and I went before the American people, we made 
an argument. And that's all it was; it was an argument. We said, ``We 
want to put people first. We want a country that's run by opportunity, 
responsibility, and community. We want a new economic policy. We want a 
new crime policy. We want a new welfare policy. We want a new 
environmental policy. We want a new foreign policy. We want to make 
America strong, America united, America a responsible partner and leader 
for peace and prosperity and security in the world.'' And it was just an 
argument. Thank goodness it was a good enough argument, under the 
circumstances, to win the election, thanks to an awful lot of you.
    Tonight, it is not an argument anymore. We took those ideas--we took 
the specific commitments of policy; we implemented them. We did what we 
said we would do in our very specific campaign--and I've got to say 
something parenthetically, because I owe this to a lot of you in the 
DLC. I've always believed ideas matter. But when I ran for President, I 
violated all the conventional wisdom. We made more specific commitments 
on more issues than any candidate ever had who was a nominee of a major 
party. And a scholar of the Presidency, Thomas Patterson, said that we 
had kept a higher percentage of those commitments, even though we made a 
larger number of them, than any of the previous five Presidents.
    And what really mattered to me is, when I went back to New Hampshire 
in February of this year, on the seventh anniversary of the New 
Hampshire primary, people there who pay attention to what you say, 
because you have to ask every individual 14 times for his or her vote, 
or you can't play there--and I love the place; you know, it was like 
running back home--but person after person after person came up to me on 
the street that day, not at the Democratic Party event at night, on the 
street, and said, ``Mr. President, it's a good thing we've got an''--
they had an unemployment rate of below 2\1/2\ percent--they said, 
``Things are good here, but the thing we really appreciate is, you did 
what you said you would do.''
    It would not have been possible if I had not been part of the DLC. 
It would not have been possible if we hadn't thought through in advance 
what it was we wanted to do, if we hadn't gone from an identification of 
our guiding values to an analysis of the situation, to a description of 
what we wanted to achieve, to a strategy, to specific tactics. This 
organization made that possible.
    So let me say, first of all, it's not an argument anymore. The 
results are in. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the 
lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 26 years, 
the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the first back-to-back budget 
surpluses in 42 years, the highest homeownership in history, the longest 
peacetime expansion in history. It is not an argument any more; it 
works, and you should be proud of that.
    The other thing I want to say is, a lot of our specific ideas have 
worked. The Vice

[[Page 2029]]

President's leadership in reinventing government has given us the 
smallest Federal establishment since 1962, even though the most active 
executive initiatives in memory.
    We have proved you could grow the economy and protect the 
environment. I went down to Virginia today to a national forest and 
announced that we were going to close 40 million acres of the nearly 200 
million acres of national forest to roadbuilding, to preserve water 
quality and biodiversity and recreational quality.
    We have proved that you can empower poor people to make the most of 
their own lives, with the earned-income tax credit, the empowerment zone 
program, the community development financial institutions, and now the 
new markets initiative.
    AmeriCorps, which was a DLC idea--
national service--has now enlisted over 100,000 young people in the 
service of our country at the community level in 5 years, a goal that 
took the Peace Corps 20 years to reach.
    We also supported the Brady bill. We supported the family and 
medical leave law, two bills vetoed in the previous administration. And 
all of the objections to them turned out to be wrong.
    So I say to you, you can be proud of that. We pursued an aggressive 
policy to become engaged in the rest of the world, to recognize that we 
live in an interdependent world in which we ought to lead. And whether 
it has been pursuing peace from the Balkans to the Middle East to 
Northern Ireland; to building self-capacity to prevent hardship through 
the Africa Crisis Response Initiative to give the African nations the 
capacity to prevent future Rwandas; to developing economic capacities in 
poor countries; to our efforts to combat terrorism and the spread of the 
weapons of mass destruction, we have made progress. And I thank you all 
for that.
    Now, by contrast, it is interesting to me to watch the debate in the 
present election, which I'm not a part of, and to see how people try to 
say, ``Well, maybe there can be a new Republican Party like there is a 
new Democratic Party.'' Remember this: They're like we were in '92; it's 
just an argument.
    The Democratic Party--a heavy majority of the Democratic Party has 
come together to move forward. But their party still is overwhelmingly, 
including all those people they've got running for President--they 
supported that tax cut, which would have completely undermined our 
ability to save Social Security and Medicare and get this country out of 
debt over the next 15 years, and which they said they could pay for, 
even though now they admit they can't even pay for the money they've 
already spent this year. They all stuck with the NRA, and the Republican 
congressional leadership, when we tried to close the gun show loophole, 
after we proved that background checks do not undermine people's 
legitimate hunting and sporting interests. They're over there opposing 
the hate crimes legislation in the face of painful evidence that we are 
still in the grip of bigotry. They're not for the ``Employment Non-
Discrimination Act.''
    We see that on so many other issues. On education, we're for high 
standards, no social promotion, making failing schools turn around or 
close down, and thousands of charter schools. They're still hawking 
vouchers, even though we know the Federal Government only provides 7 
percent of the total educational expenditures in the first place. On 
health care, they're out there all against the Patients' Bill of Rights, 
even though their own Members, who were doctors, in the House of 
Representatives couldn't bear the position that the party had taken.
    So I would say to you, I'm proud of where we are. I'm proud of where 
the Democrats are. I'm proud of where our party has gone. And I still 
believe that when it comes to defining the future, the American public 
will be with the new Democratic Party instead of the right wing of the 
Republican Party which is driving their agenda.
    And we saw it again tonight when they rejected on a party-line vote 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, after it had been ratified by 11 of 
our NATO Allies, including Britain and France, nuclear powers, endorsed 
by the President and four former Chiefs of Staff of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, 32 Nobel laureate physicists, the heads of our own nuclear 
weapons labs. They basically said, ``Don't bother me with that. I just 
don't think it's good.'' And it now has come out,

[[Page 2030]]

of course, that there was a partisan commitment to vote against the 
treaty by more than enough to defeat it before it was ever brought up 
and anybody ever heard the first argument.
    We are trying to work with Republicans, independents, and Democrats 
to move this country forward. That is the difference in the new 
Democratic Party. And we are still confronting a level of extremism and 
partisanship which is truly chilling for the long-term interests of 
America.
    But tonight I ask you not to think about our differences with the 
Republicans but to think about the one remaining issue on which we have 
not forged a consensus within our party. And that is how we're going to 
respond to globalization, to the global economy, the information age, 
and the whole nature of how we relate to other countries in terms of 
economics, the environment, and trade.
    For all of our changes, we had overwhelming majorities of both 
parties in both Houses voted for the Balanced Budget Act, overwhelming 
majorities of our party in both Houses voted for welfare reform. We are 
still not of one mind, and we do not have a consensus on the way forward 
with trade. So tonight I would like to talk to you about what I think we 
should do and where I think we should be, not only because I think we 
have serious responsibilities to the rest of the world but because we 
know that, until the Asian financial crisis, 30 percent of our growth in 
this marvelous expansion came from the expansion of trade and the 
opportunities that we found there.
    I believe a strong, properly constructed global trading system is 
good for all the nations of the world. I know it's good for America 
because of the evidence of what has happened here. Today, the worst of 
the global financial crisis is behind us, and I think the time has come 
to take an important step forward. I believe we can make our economy 
even stronger and make open trade an even greater force for peace and 
prosperity in the new century.
    I know some believe that isolating ourselves from the world will 
shield us from the forces of change that are causing so much disruption, 
so much instability, and so much inequality. I understand why they fear 
it, but I disagree that they can hide from it. America can only seize 
the problems of the new century if we shoulder our responsibility to 
lead to a responsible system of worldwide trade.
    If we fulfill that responsibility, if we lead boldly and resolutely, 
pairing solid principles with concrete proposals, we can fulfill our 
promise in the global economy and help other people as well. We can 
create for billions of people the conditions that allow them to work and 
live and raise their families in dignity, and I might add, we can give 
those nations the kind of greater prosperity necessary to have more 
responsible environmental and public health policies. We can expand the 
circle of opportunity, share the promise of prosperity more widely than 
ever, and in so doing also help to bring down walls of oppression in 
other countries. We can, in short, put a human face on the global 
economy.
    How are we going to do it, and how are we going to begin? In a 
little more than a month's time, in Seattle, Washington, our Nation will 
host a gathering of leaders from government, business, labor, and civil 
society. That meeting of the World Trade Organization will launch a new 
round of global trade talks that I called for in my State of the Union 
Address last January.
    We've had eight such rounds in the last 50 years, helping trade to 
grow fifteen-fold worldwide. It's no coincidence that this period has 
seen the most rapid sustained economic growth ever recorded. Every trade 
round in this half-century has served to expand frontiers of 
opportunity, to expand the circle of prosperity and the rule of law and 
the spread of peace. I want the round we launch in Seattle to do the 
same.
    But I also want it to be a new kind of trade round for a new 
century, a round that is about jobs and development, a round about 
broadly shared prosperity, about improving the quality of life and work 
around the world. I want to ensure that the global trading system of the 
21st century honors our values and meets our goals.
    Of course, different nations will bring different perspectives and 
different interests. To reach a truly global agreement, of course, we've 
got to work together in good faith. America will do its part.

[[Page 2031]]

    Tonight I want to set out our agenda for Seattle and the ways we 
intend to expand opportunity from the world's oldest business, farming, 
to its newest, electronic commerce.
    First, we want to ensure that in this round agriculture is treated 
as fairly as other sectors in the global economy. That's long overdue. 
In America, farmers are the lifeblood of our land, as they are in so 
many other places. They help to fuel our unprecedented prosperity. 
Unfortunately, too few of our farmers are reaping the bounty they 
themselves have sown. Flood and drought and crop disease, as well as the 
financial crisis in Asia, have threatened the livelihoods not only of 
many farmers but of some entire farm communities.
    Every American has a stake in the strength of agriculture. So let's 
be clear: One way we can revive the rural economy in America is to open 
markets abroad. The family farmer in America finds trade not an 
abstraction. It is vital to the bottom line and to their survival.
    America is the largest exporter of agricultural products in the 
world. One in every three acres planted here is growing food for abroad. 
Five years ago, during the last trade round, we joined with our trading 
partners to put agriculture on the WTO's agenda. In Seattle, we should 
move forward fairly but aggressively to expand our opportunities for 
farmers and ranchers.
    We must eliminate export subsidies. All farmers deserve a chance to 
compete on the quality of their goods, not against the size of other 
countries' Government grants. In the European Union, fully half of the 
overall budget is spent on agricultural subsidies. The EU accounts for 
85 percent of the world's farm export subsidies--85 percent. This stacks 
the deck against farmers from Arkansas to Argentina to Africa. In 
Seattle, we'll work to end this unfair advantage and level the playing 
field.
    At the same time, we have to lower tariff barriers. Tariffs remain 
much too high, and on average, they're 5 times higher abroad than they 
are in America. And we must work to reduce the domestic supports that 
distort trade by paying farmers to overproduce and drive prices down. 
These steps will help farmers to produce the vast and varied variety of 
food for the best possible prices. The benefits will accrue not just to 
them but to the global fight against hunger and malnutrition.
    We should also see that the promise of biotechnology is realized by 
consumers, as well as producers, and the environment, ensuring that the 
safety of our food will be guaranteed with science-based and transparent 
domestic regulation and maintaining market access based on that sound 
science.
    Second, we can lift living standards worldwide if we level the 
playing field for goods and services. Manufacturing remains a powerful 
engine of our own economic growth; it generates nearly a fifth of our 
GDP and two-thirds of our exports. It employs more than 18 million 
Americans in good jobs. This sector has grown since 1992, accelerated 
greatly by expanded trade, boosted by agreements made at previous trade 
rounds. If the Asian crisis has hurt our manufacturers--and it certainly 
has--it's because expanded trade is vital to their economic health, and 
it will remain so.
    Since 1948, we have cut major industrial nations' tariffs on 
manufactured goods by 90 percent. Where they remain too high, we can do 
better, beginning in Seattle where we'll join other nations in pressing 
to lower barriers even further, some entirely and immediately.
    Eight key industries, from an environmental technology to medical 
instruments to chemicals to toys, stand ready to take this step now. 
They account for nearly a third of our exports. So let's take that step 
at Seattle and set ambitious goals for other manufacturing sectors.
    And there's one special aim we should achieve at Seattle: We should 
follow the lead of Korea and Hungary and work together on an agreement 
to promote transparent procedures and discourage corruption in the $3.1 
trillion government procurement market worldwide.
    We should set equally ambitious goals for services. Trade is no 
longer just agricultural and manufactured goods. It's construction and 
distribution and entertainment. America is the world's largest exporter 
of services, in quantity and quality. And though we've made really 
important advances in agreements on

[[Page 2032]]

financial and communication services, too many markets remain closed to 
us. In Seattle, I want to open those markets more fully and unlock the 
full creative and entrepreneurial potential of our people.
    Third, we have to have a trading system that taps the full potential 
of the information age. The revolution in information technology can be 
the greatest global force for prosperity in this century. Last year, in 
the U.S. alone, electronic commerce totaled about $50 billion. That 
number may reach $1.4 trillion in 3 years. Three years later almost half 
our work force will either be employed by the new information industries 
or rely on their services and products.
    Around the world, the number of Internet users may reach 1 billion 
in 5 years. Now, currently, no country charges customs duties on 
telephone calls, fax transmissions, E-mail, or computer links when they 
cross borders. That's the way it should be. The lines of communication 
should not crackle with interference.
    Last year the world's nations joined the U.S. in placing a 
moratorium on tariffs on E-commerce. In Seattle, we should pledge to 
extend that ban and reach a second agreement to eliminate remaining 
tariffs on the tools of the high-tech revolution.
    Fourth, as I have often said, in the immortal words of Sam Fried, we 
must put a human face on the global economy. We're Democrats; we've got 
to make sure this deal works for ordinary people. We need to ensure 
working people everywhere feel they have a stake in global trade, that 
it gives them a chance for a better life, that they know that spirited 
economic competition will not become a race to the bottom in labor 
standards and environmental pollution.
    I know to some people in some nations open trade seems at odds with 
these basic human goals, but I think the opposite is true. A strong 
system of trade and a dialog like the one we'll begin in Seattle are our 
best means to achieve those goals.
    For those of us who believe the global economy can be a force for 
good, our defining mission must be to spread its benefits more broadly 
and to make rules for trade that support our values. It is nothing more 
than an international commitment to doing what we're trying to do here 
with the new markets agenda and with the empowerment zones. I really 
believe, if we work it right, we can bring the benefits of enterprise to 
the people and the places in America that have not yet felt it, from 
Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the Indian reservations to the 
inner cities. And I feel that way about the rest of the world.
    So I ask you to support our efforts to have international 
organizations work to protect and enhance the environment while 
expanding trade and to have a decent regard for the need to have basic 
labor standards so that people who work receive the dignity and reward 
of work.
    The American agenda in Seattle includes a thorough review of the 
round's environmental impact, as well as win-win opportunities that 
benefit both the economy and the environment. We will continue to ensure 
that WTO rules recognize our right to take science-based health, safety, 
and environmental measures even when they are higher than international 
standards.
    In Seattle, the WTO should also create a working group on trade and 
labor. And I know you're going to have some labor people here tomorrow, 
and I congratulate you on that. We have got to keep working on this and 
banging our heads together until we reach a consensus that is consistent 
with the reality of the modern world and its opportunities and 
consistent with the values that we both share.
    How can we deny the legitimacy or the linking of these issues, trade 
and labor, in a global economy? I think the WTO should commit to 
collaborate more closely with the International Labor Organization, 
which has worked so hard to protect human rights and to ban child labor, 
and with the International Environmental Organization. To facilitate 
this process, in the last year or so, I have gone to Geneva twice, once 
to talk about new trade rules for the global economy and once to meet 
with the ILO to talk about the necessity of banning child labor 
everywhere in the world.
    This organization needs to be on the forefront of integrating our 
objectives and trying to build a global economy that will promote open 
trade and open prosperity and lift the

[[Page 2033]]

standards of living and the quality of life for people throughout the 
world. They should be reinforcing efforts, not efforts in conflict.
    I also believe that the WTO itself has got to become more open and 
accessible. You know, every NGO, just about, with an environmental or a 
labor ax to grind is going to be outside the meeting room in Seattle, 
demonstrating against us, telling us what a terrible thing world trade 
is. Now, I think they're dead wrong about that. But all over the world, 
when issues come up, a lot of people representing these groups have some 
legitimate question or legitimate interest in being heard in the debate. 
And the WTO has been treated for too long like some private priesthood 
for experts, where we know what's right, and we pat you on the head, and 
tell you to just go right along and play by the rules that we preach.
    The world doesn't work that way anymore. This open world we're 
trying to build, where anybody can get on the Internet and say anything, 
is a rowdy, raucous place. And if we want the world trading system to 
have legitimacy, we have got to allow every legitimate group with any 
kind of beef, whether they're right or wrong, to have some access to the 
deliberative process of the WTO. And I hope you will support that.
    Finally, let me say, we have got to expand the family of nations 
that benefit from trade and play by the rules. In Seattle and beyond, we 
have to be guided by Franklin Roosevelt's vision, a basic essential to a 
permanent peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men 
and women and children in the world. Freedom from fear is eternally 
linked with freedom from want.
    It was this understanding that led the generation of postwar leaders 
to embrace what was still a revolutionary idea: that freedom, not just 
of commerce but of governments and ideas and human transit, was the 
surest route to prosperity for the greatest number of people. This new 
round should promote development in places where poverty and hunger 
still stoke despair.
    We just went over, I think in the last 24 hours, 6 billion people on 
the face of the Earth. Half of them live on $2 a day or less; 1.3 
billion live on $1 a day or less. One of the reasons that I want to 
expand the reach of global trade is because I want more people to be 
able to lift themselves up. One of the reasons I want to expand the 
reach of global technology is that I believe if we work to bridge the 
digital divide here at home and around the world, we can help poor 
people in poor countries skip 20 or 30 or 40 years in the ordinary pace 
of development because of the explosion of technology. And I believe we 
can prove to them that they grow a middle class and grow a wealthy 
country without have to pollute the atmosphere, as their forebears did 
in the industrial era. I believe that.
    But for those who share our views and our party, we must make clear 
there is no easy way to this. We can't get this done if we're not 
willing to build a global economic system and tear down these trade 
barriers and trade with people more and give them access to our markets 
and try to get our technology and our investments into their markets and 
build the right kind of partnership.
    We can't just say we want all these things and then always find some 
reason to be against whatever trade agreement is worked out. We have got 
to have a global trading system, and we're either going to keep pushing 
it forward, or we're going to fall behind.
    Let me just say, to kind of amplify this, there are some specific 
things that I hope we will do to show that we're acting in good faith. I 
hope we will get congressional approval in this session of Congress to 
expand our trade with Africa and the Caribbean Basin. I have proposed 
two initiatives there. There is broad bipartisan support for it. I hope 
and pray we will get that out of this session of Congress.
    I hope we will bring more countries into the WTO in Seattle. Thirty-
three nations are applying for WTO membership today. Two-thirds once had 
communist command and control economies. It is remarkable and hopeful to 
all the--listen to this--Albania, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and 
Mongolia wanting to enter the world trading system.
    This is not charity. This is an economic and political imperative. 
It is good for us because we want more trading partners. Never forget, 
your country has 4 percent of the world's people and 22 percent of its 
wealth. We've go to sell something to the other 96 percent if we want to 
hold on to our standard

[[Page 2034]]

of living. And the more people we bring into our network of possibility, 
the better they do, the better we'll do. It is very, very important to 
remember this.
    It's also important to remember that as these countries that are new 
to the experience of freedom and the rule of law and cooperation with 
other nations that has no element of coercion in it--they are new to all 
this--the more they have chance to be a part of it, the more they will 
like it and the more they will become a part of an international system 
of democracy and law that is so important to the future of our children.
    In that same spirit, I am still determined to pursue an agreement 
for China to join the WTO on viable, commercial terms, again, not as a 
favor, but to reinforce China's efforts to open, to reform its markets, 
to subscribe to the rules of the global trading system, and, inevitably, 
as more and more people have access to more and more information, more 
and more contacts, to feel that stability comes from openness and not 
repression of thought or religion or political views.
    What is at stake here is more than the spread of free markets or the 
strength of the global economy, even more than the chance to lift 
billions of people into a worldwide middle class. It is a chance to move 
the world closer toward genuine interdependence rooted in shared 
commitments to peace and reconciliation.
    This is a moment of great promise, a moment where we have to lead. A 
lot of things happen in this country that send mixed signals to people 
around the world that I regret. And most of them come out of the 
initiative of the other party in Congress: the failure to pay our U.N. 
dues; the failure to embrace the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; the 
abysmal budget for foreign affairs, when we can spend a little money in 
helping our neighbors and get untold benefit; and the zeroing out of our 
market-oriented initiative to meet our responsibilities to reduce global 
warming.
    But one thing is still on our plate: We have not granted renewed 
fast-track authority; we are not pursuing the Free Trade Area of the 
Americas; we haven't yet passed the Africa trade initiative and the 
Caribbean Basin one, although I think we might get that done, because in 
our party, we have not been able to resolve these conflicts.
    They've got a lot more work to do in their party than we do in ours, 
as I explained at the outset. We have worked through where we are on 
budget discipline, on economic management, on foreign policy, on 
environmental policy, on crime policy, on education policy, on health 
care policy. There has been an enormous modernization of the thinking 
and direction of the Democratic Party, and we can be proud of it. But we 
can't go to the American people and say we have a whole vision for the 
future that will be a unifying vision until we get over this one last 
big hump.
    This is an exciting issue, and it is a difficult issue. And the 
labor people who will come here tomorrow have real interests at stake 
which ought to be heard. The environmental community people have real 
interests at stake which ought to be heard. But we're going to globalize 
one way or the other, and we'll be at the front of the line or the back 
or somewhere in the middle. And I believe it is profoundly in our 
interest and in the interests of the world for America to be leading the 
pack.
    And I promise you, if we take initiative, it will lead to a cleaner 
environment and higher labor standards and more values that are 
consistent with ours, including letting more people be part of the 
process.
    So what you are doing here is real, real important. It's our last 
big challenge to be the party that reflects the values, the heart, and 
the dreams of 21st century America.
    Good luck, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:30 p.m. at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Al From, president, Democratic Leadership 
Council; Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Representative Calvin M. 
Dooley, cofounders, New Democrat Network; event chair Samuel P. Fried, 
senior vice president and general counsel, The Limited, Inc., who 
introduced the President; and Thomas Patterson, professor of Government 
and the press, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

[[Page 2035]]