[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 50 (Monday, December 20, 1999)]
[Pages 2607-2610]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Unity Reception in Coral Gables

December 11, 1999

    Thank you very much. Well, first of all, I want to thank Senator 
Torricelli for that uncommonly generous introduction. He thwarted one of 
my rules of politics. Normally, when you get an introduction like that, 
it's from someone you've appointed to a good office. [Laughter] And so 
he just did it out of the goodness of his heart and a laundry list of 
what I'll have to do for New Jersey next year. [Laughter] And I thank 
him for that.
    I want to thank Congressman Kennedy for his leadership. He's done a 
wonderful job. And his father, who is a very, very close friend of mine, 
is actually proud of him, but too proud to admit it--that he has a son 
as the only chairman in the Kennedy family.
    I want to thank Bill Nelson and his wonderful wife, Grace, for 
making this race for the United States Senate. And I want to thank my 
longtime friend Elaine Bloom, who was on my committee when I started in 
Florida in 1991, for making this race for Congress. And she can win this 
race if she gets the kind of support that I see around this place 
tonight.
    And most important of all, I want to thank Chris and Irene for 
letting me come back again to this humble abode--[laughter]--that makes 
the White House look like public housing. [Laughter] You know, you look 
out here and you expect Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn to come up 
on the African Queen any minute. [Laughter] I mean, it is amazing. I 
want to thank them for their generosity. I want to thank Andrew, 
Kristina, and Angela for being here--their wonderful children.
    Thank you, Gene Prescott, for having us over to your and Coral 
Gables great hotel, which I love so much. And thank you, ladies and 
gentlemen, for being here.
    You might ask yourself, what am I doing here, besides the fact that 
I would come to see Chris and Irene at the drop of a hat. I'm not 
running for anything, and I can't. I'm here because, number one, the 
things that we've done in the last 7 years would not have been possible 
had it not been for the support of the Democrats in the House and the 
Senate. And I've worked with the Republicans whenever I could. I think 
the record will reflect, when all the evidence is in, that I have been 
far more forthcoming toward them than they have toward me--although we 
had a pretty good little mutual deal going at the end of the last budget 
session.
    But the truth is that when it came to the '93 budget, which started 
this economic recovery and started us on the road to getting rid of the 
terrible deficit, it was only members of my party that voted for it. We 
would never passed the Brady bill or the crime bill of '94, with its 
100,000 police and its assault weapons ban, if it hadn't been for the 
members of our party. We would have never been able to defend the 
environment and continue to make the progress we have from the 
Everglades to the redwoods in California to setting aside 40 million 
acres, roadless acres, in our national forests, if it weren't for the 
Democrats.
    We wouldn't have 2 million more children with health insurance since 
1997 if it weren't for the Democrats. And if we had a few more 
Democrats--in this last session, we did get 100,000 teachers, 50,000 
police, 60,000 housing vouchers for poor people to move from welfare to 
work. We doubled the after-school programs, and we got money for the 
first time for States to turn around or shut down schools that are 
failing. So we had a good run. But if we had a few more Democrats, we 
also would have gotten a Patients' Bill of Rights, an increase in the 
minimum wage, hate crimes legislation, and goodness knows what else--
something that's very important to Florida--we would have gotten a 
national effort, the first national effort ever, to try to help school 
districts build or repair school facilities. This is very important.
    You know, I went to Jupiter not very long ago--some of you may 
remember that--they had 12 housetrailers out behind the grade school. 
And I was up in Tampa, and there was a woman who was in my high school 
class, and in my grade school graduating class, who is in the 
administration of the school district in Tampa. And we were great

[[Page 2608]]

pals from the time we were 9 years old. And, you know, I went to Tampa 
High School, and they had four or five housetrailers out behind the high 
school. And at a time when we think education is so important, I think 
it's a good reason for having a few more Democrats.
    I want you to understand that, number one, what we have done would 
not have been possible without them, the people they represent; and 
number two, the country has a lot more to do.
    I've given a lot of speeches today. I started out at the Florida 
Democratic Convention where, 8 years ago this week, I got the first 
victory I received in the Presidential primaries, in the Florida straw 
poll--where we got over a majority of the vote and I went from being an 
anonymous person who was running fifth in the national polls to somebody 
who actually had a chance. And then it took us 4 more years of hard 
work, but we won Florida in the Presidential election in '96, Al Gore 
and I did. And I'm very grateful for that. So my heart is full of 
gratitude tonight.
    But I want to just say a couple of things really quickly. First of 
all, people will probably ask you why you came here, and whether it was 
worth the money. And you need to have an answer other than that you 
wanted to visit Chris and Irene's house. I'm being serious now.
    We are about to have the millennial election. This country has been 
around here for more than 200 years because more than half the time we 
make the right decisions.
    And I want to tell you a story. One of my brothers-in-law is here. I 
got my big extended family together, including my two nephews, for 
Thanksgiving up at Camp David. And then after Thanksgiving, I had some 
of my friends come up because they had little kids to play with the 
nephews. And on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, this 6-year-old 
girl came up to me, this beautiful child, and she looked at me, and she 
said, ``Now, how old are you anyway?'' [Laughter] And I looked at her, 
and I said, ``I am 53.'' And she said, ``Oh, that's a lot.'' [Laughter] 
Which lamentably is the truth.
    But what I want to say to you--and I'd like for you all to remember, 
search your own memories--in my lifetime we have never had a time like 
this, where we had this much economic prosperity, this much social 
progress, this much national self-confidence, and the absence of any 
overwhelming crisis at home or threat from abroad. It has not happened 
in my lifetime.
    So I'm very glad that I could be President in these last 7 years, 
and that I've got 14 more months to try to keep chunking away at this, 
and move this country forward. I think we have built a bridge to the 
21st century. I think we have turned the country around. I'm elated by 
it. And I feel gratified by it.
    But the real issue is, what are we going to do now? And I'll bet you 
anybody here who's lived any number of years can remember a time--in 
your personal life, your family life, or your work life--when things 
were going so well you lost your concentration, you thought it would 
last forever, but you got divided or distracted, and something bad 
happened; or at least you didn't maximize your opportunities.
    Well, countries are no different from that. And this country, while 
things are going very well--it is true--we have the lowest unemployment 
rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest 
poverty rates in 20 years, the highest homeownership in history, 20 
million jobs, and, come February, the longest economic expansion in the 
history of the country. Things are going well for us.
    But it is important that we all understand that this country is 
going to have big challenges and big opportunities early in the next 
century. And we have never had a chance before, in my lifetime, to shape 
the future of our dreams for our children.
    So when people ask you why you were here tonight. I think you ought 
to say, well, it's not much of an argument anymore. That crowd did a 
pretty good job. They've got a good record, but, more importantly, 
they're focused on the right things.
    The outcome of the elections of 2000 will be determined, in my 
judgment, if we work hard enough not on whether they will have more 
money than we will--they will; they will have more money than we will. 
So the question is, will we have enough?
    But the real question is, the outcome, in my judgment--I've been 
doing this a long

[[Page 2609]]

time--will turn on what the election is about, which is why you have to 
be able to say that to people. When people ask you why you were here, 
you have to be able to give an answer.
    And what I think we ought to be focused on--you ought to say, I'm 
for the Democrats because they've done a good job, and because they will 
do the best job of dealing with the big opportunities and the big 
challenges before this country. And I do not want to see us squander the 
opportunity of a lifetime, at least the opportunity of 53 years.
    What are we going to do? You live in Florida. What are we going to 
do about the aging of America? There will be twice as many people over 
65 in 30 years. We have got to run Social Security out beyond the life 
expectancy of the baby boomers. We've got to run Medicare out and 
provide a prescription drug coverage for these poor elderly people, 75 
percent of them can't afford their drugs.
    We've got to do something to give all these kids--we've got the 
largest and most diverse student population we've ever had--we've got to 
give all of them a world-class education. One of the things I'm proudest 
of Al Gore for is that 5 years ago we decided we were going to hook up 
all the poor schools as well as the rich schools to the Internet. And we 
got the so-called E-rate, which gives discounts of up to 90 percent to 
the poor schools. Five years ago, 4 percent of the classrooms and 14 
percent of the schools were hooked up. Today, over 50 percent of the 
classrooms; over 80 percent of the schools have an Internet connection. 
We're committed to this. But there's a lot to do.
    Doesn't it bother you that we've had this great economic recovery, 
and there are still people in places that have been left behind? How are 
we going to keep it going?
    Well, we ought to keep--first of all, we ought not to have a tax cut 
so big we can't pay the debt down. Under my budget we'll be out of debt 
in 15 years, for the first time since 1835. And that means lower 
interest rates on everything. The average American family today is 
saving $2,000 a year in home mortgage costs, $200 a year on car payment 
costs, and $200 a year on college loan costs because we're paying the 
debt down, not running it up.
    Number two, we ought to give big financial incentives, tax credits 
and loan guarantees, to people who will invest in poor areas in America. 
I've got a proposal before the Congress that says, look, let's give 
Americans who have the money to do it the same incentives to invest in 
poor areas in America they get to invest in poor areas in Latin America, 
in Africa, in Asia. I think it's very important.
    We have Indian reservations where the unemployment rate is over 70 
percent. We have lots of counties where the unemployment rate is over 20 
percent in rural America. We've got to do that.
    And finally, we have to find a way to live together better. You 
still--all these hate crimes are small examples of the big wars in 
Bosnia, in Kosovo, the continuing conflict in the Middle East. It's the 
same thing. People still, in this most modern of all age, define 
themselves in very primitive ways--they're scared to death of people who 
are different from them--different race, different religion, different 
ethnic group. Some are gay; some are straight. They get scared. And once 
you're scared of somebody, you didn't like them very much; you can't 
trust them; so it's a short step to dehumanize them, after which it's 
okay to be violent against them.
    The number one challenge this country faces is building one America 
across all lines that divide us. And in some ways, I'm prouder of the 
work we've done in that than all the economic prosperity we've had. And 
if I had just one wish for America, it would be that we would be able to 
somehow unlock that mysterious set of factors that keep people apart. I 
wish every one of you had been with me in Kosovo the other day when I 
was over there with 2,000 kids in a school, and all these little kids 
coming up to me thanking me because the American soldiers had let them 
go home. And they had been--800,000 of them--driven out of their homes, 
ethnically cleansed. It would have made you so proud to be an American.
    But just remember, when you see those things going on and then you 
see an African-American like James Byrd dragged to death in Texas, or a 
gay man like Matthew Shepard stretched out on a rack in Wyoming, or a 
crazy person kill a Korean Christian coming out of church in Indiana, 
right after he shot

[[Page 2610]]

down an African-American basketball coach in Illinois, it's the same 
thing.
    So somebody will say, ``Well, why did you go there?'' Say, ``Well, 
that crowd did a pretty good job, and I'm better off than I was 7 years 
ago, and the whole country is.'' But the main thing is, we have a 
profound responsibility to meet the big challenges of the future: the 
aging of America, the children of America, the balancing of work and 
family, growing the economy and the environment, bringing opportunity to 
poor areas, and building one America.
    That's why I came down here tonight. I'm not running for anything, 
but I haven't done all this work to see it squandered by people who lose 
their concentration. If the election is about the right subject, we will 
win. And you have helped us immeasurably tonight. But I ask now for your 
voice, your compassion, and your consistent commitment all the way to 
November of 2000.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:13 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks he referred to reception hosts Chris and Irene Korge and their 
children Andrew, Kristina, and Angela; and Gene Prescott, president, 
Biltmore Hotel.