[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 45 (Monday, November 15, 1999)]
[Pages 2348-2353]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Ronald H. Brown Corporate Bridge Builder Award Dinner

November 10, 1999

    I was just sitting here--out there--wondering, Michael, if I need to 
stand up here and announce that I'm changing parties, so that you don't 
lose your tax-exempt status for the foundation--[laughter]--I'd do 
nearly anything for Alma and you and Tracey and Ron--I don't think I can 
quite get there, but--[laughter].
    You know, I had a feeling--the reason I asked for the children to 
speak--they're young adults, I guess--is that after Patrick spoke so 
beautifully, and then after Sol spoke so powerfully, I figured, well, 
what the heck, they've already heard the best speeches of the night 
anyway. [Laughter]
    I wanted you to hear them because I think it's important that you 
see flesh-and-blood examples of why Mr. Trujillo and his company were 
honored tonight. And I think it's important that you see examples of the 
work of the Brown Foundation as embodied in Patrick's remarks, and the 
work that Mr. Trujillo has done as embodied in those two young people, 
because that's really what we're here about.
    I want to thank all of you for being here, and many members of the 
administration who are here--Secretary Slater; Secretary Herman; Maria 
Echaveste, my Deputy Chief of Staff; Minyon Moore, my Political 
Director; Ben Johnson who runs our One America office; Dave Barram at 
the General Services Administration; and maybe many more people. I know 
Fred Humphries is here, who now works for US West, but once worked in my 
campaign. I'm glad that didn't disqualify him for employment in your 
company. [Laughter]
    Most of what needs to be said has been said. I'd like to be very 
personal, if I might. I have just to the right of my desk in the Oval 
Office, right behind the commemorative pin that was issued for Nelson 
Mandela's 80th birthday, a picture of Ron Brown and me sharing a funny 
moment. We shared a lot of funny moments. and we're laughing. And 
sometimes I find myself almost talking to this picture. I confess that 
there are a lot of times when I just miss him terribly.
    Yesterday we gave--Ernie Green is here--yesterday we gave a 
Congressional Gold Medal to the Little Rock Nine. And Ernie and I have 
been friends for more than 20 years. All the Little Rock Nine, because I 
was Governor of Arkansas, I've known for many years. And it was an 
incredibly emotional moment. And I was sitting up there on the little 
stage at the White House, with tears in my eyes. And one of the things I 
was thinking is, gosh, this is another thing I wish Ron were sitting 
here for. He ought to be here for this.
    And I was thinking when I saw Mayor Dinkins out there, who was a 
great friend of Ron Brown, how we all got started in New York in '92. 
You brought Nelson Mandela to meet me the first time. You remember that? 
And what great friends we all became. And I was thinking before I came 
over here tonight--I called the Speaker of the House and Senator Lott 
and pleaded with them--and I don't use that word lightly--to do whatever 
we could possibly do to pass the Africa trade

[[Page 2349]]

bill and the Caribbean Basin initiative before this Congress goes home 
for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that issue wouldn't even be on the 
agenda if it weren't for Ron Brown.
    I was thinking about the incredible conversation I had when I talked 
Ron into being Secretary of Commerce. He thought it was a backwater for 
political appointees who wanted something else. [Laughter] And I said, 
``You don't understand.'' I said, ``I made up my mind that I'm not going 
to give any of these political jobs to people who can't do them.'' And 
if you--one of the--I believe--let me just back up and say, I believe 
that when the history of this administration is written, one of the 
things even our critics will give us credit for is having not only a 
good economic policy but a good way of making economic policy.
    And I discovered when I became President--we have Jim Harmon here, 
the head of the Export-Import Bank--that all these little orbits were 
out there. You had the Treasury Department here, and you had the 
Commerce Department there, and you had the Export-Import Bank and the 
Overseas Private Investment Corporation over there. You had all these 
things spread out. And so it was just like sort of a roll of the dice 
whether you had somebody who was really good and then whether that 
person ever got the President's ear.
    And so we organized a National Economic Council. And Bob Rubin was 
the first leader of it, before he became Treasury Secretary, when 
Senator Bentsen was Treasury Secretary. And we put all these people 
together, including Secretary Herman's Labor Department, to make sure 
that working people were not cut out. And we all worked together. And 
Secretary Slater's Transportation Department was part of it, because 
that's a huge impact on our economy.
    And the Commerce Department is this vast Department. And once Ron 
Brown got a hold of that empire he found that he liked it right well. 
[Laughter] And he discovered that there were a lot of things he could do 
with it. And it was truly a thing of beauty, for those of us who love 
public service and politics, to see Ron run the Commerce Department and 
to see it come alive and to see it reach out for America all around the 
world and to see it reach deep into America--to minority business people 
who had been left behind--and to see this great, sort of unifying vision 
and all this energy he had make the thing fly. It was an amazing thing 
to see.
    And as Sol pointed out in his ungracious reminder of that basketball 
game in Los Angeles--[laughter]--we had a lot of fun, too. And so I 
really miss him in ways, large and small, at the strangest times. I just 
do.
    But tonight I come here, and I see these pictures, and I want to 
smile, not cry. Because if we all live to be 100, it's just a brief 
blink of the eye in the whole sweep of human history. And none of us 
knows whether we have tomorrow or not. And if we do, it's a gift. And 
most of us, or we wouldn't be here tonight in the first place, most of 
us, whatever happens to us from now on, we're going to go out of this 
world ahead.
    And so I think the most important thing I can say to you tonight is 
that he'd be very pleased that we're here honoring his legacy by, number 
one, permitting this foundation to bring young people into politics 
because he thought it was good, politics and public service, and it is--
and if it weren't good, we wouldn't still be here after over 220 years--
and number two, because he believed in commerce, and he thought that 
economic growth and economic opportunity was something more than mere 
materialism.
    The fact that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years and 
the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years and the lowest crime rate in 25 
years, those things are not unrelated one to the other. The fact that we 
are moving in the right direction on all fronts is, in part, the result 
of the expansion of economic opportunity to the lowest African-American 
poverty rates and unemployment rates ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic 
unemployment rate ever recorded, and the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in 
a quarter century. Those things are not unrelated.
    He understood the dignity of work, the dignity of enterprise, the 
dignity of achievement, and the importance of giving everybody a chance 
at the brass ring. And those of us who have been left behind have tried 
to carry on that work in various ways.
    I just want to say one thing here. Our leader, Senator Daschle, is 
here, our Democratic

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leader in the Senate. Not a thing I have done could have been done if he 
hadn't been with me every step of the way--not a thing.
    So we honor young people, and the work of Ron Brown and this 
foundation. And we honor this great company because most people in 
America don't work for the Government, and most of the economy is not 
the Government. And I'm very proud that in addition to having the 
longest peacetime expansion in history, we have the highest percentage 
of jobs created in the private sector, not the public sector, in the 
last 50 years of any economic expansion.
    But in order to make it work, we have to have corporate leaders who 
either have the vision, just because they do, of a unified America, or 
have both the vision and the personal experiences that this great leader 
has shared with us tonight from his own life. And that's a good thing.
    So I ask you to think just about three things before we all go home 
tonight. We have the most prosperous time in my lifetime and the only 
time in my lifetime we've ever had this level of prosperity and this 
level of confidence and no pressing domestic crisis or foreign threat to 
disturb our daily endeavors. So the question I have for you--this is one 
time when I miss Ron and his energy--is, what are we going to do with 
this? Because we know from the ups and downs in our own lives that 
nothing lasts forever. Nothing bad lasts forever. Nothing good last 
forever. Nothing lasts forever. So we have this moment, the only time in 
my lifetime we've ever been like this. What are we going to do with it?
    I have been saying to the American people, if you sit around and 
think about it, how many times had you had a moment like this in your 
personal life or your family life or your business life, where things 
were just rocking along great, and then something bad happened because 
you didn't make the most of the moment. Instead you indulged yourself or 
you got distracted or diverted, or you thought you didn't really have to 
deal with these things that you knew were out there.
    We know what's out there for us. We know the big challenges. We know 
the big opportunities. These children's lives have told us some of them 
tonight. We know we're going to double the number of people over 65 in 
the next 30 years, and we haven't made sure Social Security will take 
care of the whole baby boom generation. We know that Medicare is going 
to run out of money, and 75 percent of our seniors don't have 
prescription drugs.
    We know we've got the biggest group of school children in history, 
and they're more diverse than ever before. And while we've opened the 
doors to college to all Americans now with the HOPE scholarship, the 
increased Pell grants, the deductibility of student loan interests, 
nobody thinks that every child in America is getting a world-class 
elementary and secondary education, and we know they need it.
    You heard that very powerful presentation by Shayla about going to 
the computers after school because of what you did. We had a percent of 
our classrooms connected to the Internet 4 years ago--we have a member 
of the FCC here, Susan Ness; thank you for the E-rate which allows poor 
schools to afford to get into the Internet. And now we're up to 51 
percent. We're going to try to get to 100 percent. But there are a bunch 
of these kids that will never get their schools connected because the 
schools are so old and decrepit, they cannot be wired.
    In Mayor Dinkins' hometown 40 percent of the schools are 70 years 
old or older. We have schools in New York City that are heated by coal 
in the winter, still. So we know these things.
    We know we've got a big environmental challenge in global warming. 
We can deny it all we want to, but we've got the technology to grow 
economics without burning up the environment, and we're either going go 
do it or not.
    So what I want to say to you is, this is a moment where we have to 
decide. And we need people of high energy and vision to remind us that 
we have to decide. You ought to go home tonight and ask yourself, what 
do you think the--no fewer than 5, no more than 10 biggest challenges 
are our country will face in the next 30 years. I bet if we could all 
gather tomorrow night, there would be 80 percent congruence in our list. 
We

[[Page 2351]]

know what the big opportunities and challenges are out there. The issue 
is, what are we going to do about it?
    Are we going to just sort of rock along and say, ``Boy, this is 
peachy-keen, and I'm glad?'' Well, I'm not going to rock along. I've got 
430-some days to be President, and I'm going to hit it every day I can. 
But I won't be President after that. But what I want to say to you is, 
in the coming election season and in the coming years of work we have 
here ahead of us, and in you own work, you have to decide. You know--if 
you just stop and think, you know what the big challenges and the big 
opportunities for America are. This is the only time in my lifetime 
we've ever had the chance to build the future of our dreams without a 
pressing domestic crisis or a threat to our national security. And if 
you believe in what Ron Brown lived for, you will do that, and you won't 
blow the chance.
    The second thing I'd like to say is--I want to say this out of 
respect particularly to what Beau said when he was up here talking about 
his people from Montana. We now have the chance, and maybe the only 
chance, in our lifetime to extend economic opportunity to the people in 
places that have been left behind. Yes, we've got the lowest 
unemployment rate and the lowest minority unemployment rate we've ever 
recorded. That's the good news. The bad news is you know as well as I do 
that there are people in places that have been totally left behind.
    Alma, you talked about New York. You know, if you took away New York 
City and the suburban counties, and you only had upstate New York, it 
would rank 49th in job growth of all the States in the country. That's 
hard to believe. You don't think that about New York. We're talking 
about Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, places with great 
infrastructures of education and talented people but where a lot of the 
economy moved, and it's not been replenished.
    Hawaii, a place that we all think of as a place where we go for fun 
and everything is peachy-keen, the only State in the country that hasn't 
had economic growth in the last 2\1/2\ years because of the collapse of 
the Asian economies.
    That's why I started this new markets initiative, to build on the 
employment zone program that Vice President Gore has so brilliantly run 
the last few years that's brought a lot of economic opportunity to 
discreet places in America. But what I want to do with this new markets 
initiative is, two things: I want to point up all these places in 
America that we ought to be investing in, and I want to give Americans 
the same incentives to invest in developing areas in America we give 
them to invest in developing areas in Latin America and Africa and Asia. 
I want you to invest overseas, but our first and biggest and best new 
markets are here at home.
    You know, Senator Daschle and I were in South Dakota the other day, 
and we went to the Pine Ridge Reservation. And I was--a lot of the tour 
I made through the reservation I was escorted by this beautiful 17-year-
old Native American girl, who was just as articulate and intelligent--
and very wise, I might add, because she had a very tough life. I mean, a 
very tough life. But I thought to myself, why shouldn't this child have 
the same opportunities that my daughter's had. And if she had them, what 
in the world could she do with them, not only for herself but for her 
people.
    Do you know what the unemployment rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation 
is--73 percent. Now, the national unemployment rate is 4.1 percent. I 
think it's even lower in South Dakota. The female unemployment rate of 
the 4.1 percent is the lowest it's been in 46 years. But you still have 
these pockets.
    And if Ron Brown were here, I know what he'd be telling you. He'd be 
saying, now, I want you to hustle up some investment for these areas, 
and we're going to try to get you a tax break, but you ought to do it 
whether you get one or not because it's a huge opportunity, in the inner 
cities, in Appalachia, in the Mississippi Delta, on the Native American 
reservations.
    You would be amazed how much time we spend now with our economic 
team sitting around thinking, how can we keep this good ride going; how 
long can we push this expansion out? We know that technology gave us 
greater productivity than the economists know, and that's part of the 
reason for the expansion. We know we got 30 percent of our growth out of 
technology, another 30

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percent out of exports. How long can it keep going?
    All other economic expansions have ended in one or two ways. Things 
get so heated up that there's inflation; then you have to stop the 
inflation, and the price of breaking the inflation breaks the recovery. 
Or it just runs out of steam. This thing just is chugging along. How can 
we keep it going?
    If you invest in these areas that have been left behind, you create 
new businesses, new jobs, and new consumers. And when you do that, you 
don't have any inflation because you've got new production and new 
consumption. This is a big deal.
    The third thing I'd like to say--and I can't say it any more 
eloquently than Sol Trujillo already said--is--and I told the group next 
door--if someone said to me, ``You've got to go now. You've had a good 
time being President, but your time is up. And we'll give you one 
wish,'' and the proverbial genie showed up. But I didn't get three 
wishes. I just got one. [Laughter] I'd probably mess it up if I had 
three, you know. [Laughter] I got one. I would say, remember these 
children tonight, all three of them. Remember the powerful example of 
this great corporate executive and what he said about how he got his 
start and how many times he could have been stopped.
    I would say the most important thing would be for us to genuinely 
build one America, not just to tolerate one another, not just to avoid 
saying insensitive things, things that would embarrass you at a cocktail 
party or something, and on a more serious note, not even to eliminate 
all the hate crimes, although I dearly want to do that and I hope to 
pass the hate crimes legislation--but I mean an America where we looked 
at each other and we thought: Hey, look around this room; this is one 
great deal here; we're not tolerating each other; we're celebrating each 
other.
    Do we have honest differences? I certainly hope so. It's the only 
way you ever learn anything. But we manage them instead of letting them 
drive us apart. And we actually believe that what enables us to tap the 
benefits of our diversity and have more fun in life is a shared 
understanding that our common humanity is the most important thing.
    If you really strip away what everybody says about Ron Brown, 
everybody that really knows him just liked him because they thought he 
loved life. If you see somebody that loves life and loves people, it's 
hard to dislike them, because it's contagious.
    And if I could just have my little one wish, I would say, if you 
look at the whole history of America, we kept on going because we kept 
on widening the circle of opportunity and deepening the meaning of 
freedom and moving closer toward one America.
    When we started, we had all these guys that wrote this Constitution 
say, ``We're all created equal, and God made it so. But, oh, by the way, 
we've got slavery, and it's unthinkable that women could vote, and we're 
not even going to let white guys vote unless they own land.'' We've come 
a long way since then, right? I mean, we started--even I couldn't have 
voted; my people wouldn't have been landowners. We'd have been hired 
help. So we've come a long way.
    But if you look around the world today, if you look at these 
horrible hate crimes in America, and you look around the world today, 
from Kosovo and Bosnia to Rwanda to the Middle East to Northern Ireland, 
the whole world is still bedeviled in this high technology age by the 
most primitive problem of human society: We're still kind of scared of 
one another. We don't deal with people who are different from us as well 
as we should. And we might rock along doing all right for years and then 
turn on a dime. That's what happened in Rwanda. Just turn on a dime.
    So I say to you, I want you to think about this. When you go home 
tonight I want you to think about what it would be like in 20 years to 
hear Patrick standing where Senator Daschle is. I want you to think 
about what it would be like if Shala headed a program that gave every 
single child who didn't have a computer in his or her home--every single 
one in the country--access to the Internet, so there was no digital 
divide.
    I want you to think about what it would be like if Beau Mitchell 
were the elected president of his tribe, and they celebrated the first 
time in American history that all the Native Americans had unemployment 
rates as low as the country and incomes as high.

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Just think about that. And think about how much better off all the rest 
of us would be, just by going along for the ride and doing our part.
    I'm telling you it's the most important thing. And it's the hardest 
thing in life. And the reason we all felt good seeing these young people 
up here talking tonight is they represented our better selves and our 
hopes for tomorrow.
    If you want to do something to honor Ron Brown, number one, keep 
supporting this foundation because they'll bring those kids up, and 
they'll give them a chance. Number two, keep supporting companies like 
US West because they can really change the face of the future. And 
number three, do whatever you can as citizens to make sure we do not 
squander the chance of a lifetime to build a future of our dreams.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10 p.m. in the Dumbarton Room at the Four 
Seasons Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Alma Arrington Brown, 
widow of Ron Brown, and their children, Michael Brown, Tracey Brown, and 
Ron Brown; Solomon Trujillo, chairman, president and chief executive 
officer, and Frederick S. Humphries, Jr., executive director of public 
policy, US West; Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine; former Mayor 
David Dinkins of New York City; former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; 
and dinner speakers Patrick Lespinasse, Shayla Barnes, and Beau 
Mitchell.