[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 9 (Monday, March 6, 2000)]
[Pages 418-421]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Elaine Bloom in 
Miami, Florida

February 29, 2000

    Thank you. Well, I was looking out at the beautiful vista--first, I 
was looking down on you. Did you see me up there? And I was looking at 
this magnificent home and thinking how fortunate we are, all of us, to 
be in this country at this moment, to be free citizens, to be able to 
come here to support someone in whom we believe.
    I want to begin by thanking Phil and Pat Frost. They have been with 
me a long time, too, and I am honored to be here in their magnificent 
home. I want to thank all of you who helped to spearhead this immensely 
successful event for Elaine tonight. I want to say that I'm glad that 
her children, David and Anne, are here, and I'm sorry the judge couldn't 
come. But far be it for us to get him in trouble. We want him to stay on 
the bench and make good decisions. [Laughter]
    I want to say how grateful I am for the friendship and support I 
have enjoyed from Congressman Peter Deutsch and his wife, Lori, who is 
here. And I thank them so much for their service to the United States. 
And Representative Sally Heyman, we're glad you're here.
    And I want to say a special word of thanks to my longtime personal 
friend Bill Nelson. I am thrilled that he is running for the Senate and 
thrilled he is doing so well.
    I want you to know why I'm here tonight, besides the fact that I've 
been dying to see Phil and Pat's house. I'm here for three reasons. One 
is, Elaine was there for me when only my mother thought I could be 
elected. [Laughter] And she reminded me tonight that when we first met, 
she said, ``Now, look, I'm going to ask you some questions, but I want 
you to know in advance I'm going to be for you anyway, so you don't have 
to tailor your answers, just shoot me straight.'' And we've been 
shooting each other straight now for, well, more than 8 years.
    I'll never forget when the first significant victory I won was in 
the Florida Democratic Convention when they had this straw poll. And 
Elaine and some of my other supporters hauled Hillary and me from 
meeting to meeting to meeting. I thought New Hampshire was tough till I 
met these people in all these little caucuses, you know. I had to answer 
400 questions. When I got through with that caucus, I said, ``I hope we 
did well, but I'm so tired, I don't care whether we win or not 
anymore.'' [Laughter] It was an amazing experience. And we had a lot of 
opponents, a lot of good people running for

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President in 1992. And we got a majority of the Florida Democrats at 
that caucus, and I feel profoundly indebted to Elaine Bloom.
    The second reason I'm here is because she embodies the philosophy 
that we call the new Democratic philosophy that is conservative in part 
but also liberal in part. I believed, when I ran for President, that 
there was something really wrong with the way things were going in 
Washington. I felt that it bore no reasonable relationship to the work I 
had done for a decade as Governor, the work that she was trying to do 
here in the legislature with people like Governor Chiles and Governor, 
now Senator Gramm before him. The work of getting people from different 
walks of life together, defining goals, defining opportunities, defining 
problems, then figuring out what to do about them.
    Washington was a place where, maybe because people felt they were so 
far from their constituents and it was so hard to get that 15 seconds on 
the evening news at night, they seemed to me to be more interested in 
sort of lobbing rhetorical bombs at one another and putting each other 
in little boxes and repeating over and over and over again the fights of 
yesterday as America kept moving into tomorrow.
    I was absolutely convinced then that there was nothing wrong with 
this country that couldn't be fixed by what was right with it. And so, 
with Elaine's help, with the Frosts' help, with a lot of you in this 
room, I asked the American people to give me and then give me and Al 
Gore a chance to see if a unifying philosophy of opportunity for every 
American and responsibility from every American and a community 
including all the people of this country could lead us to new ideas and 
a new direction. And now it's worked out pretty well.
    And I am immensely gratified to have been a part of the progress 
this country has made. I'm proud of it, and I know I am not solely 
responsible for it. If it hadn't been for--[applause]--Thank you. It 
wouldn't have been possible if this country weren't the greatest 
environment for entrepreneurs and business people in the world. It 
wouldn't have been possible if the American people weren't committed to 
working harder and smarter, and as the economy grew they didn't ask for 
inflationary pay increases. They understood they were in a world 
economy, and they ought to be tied to the growth of their enterprises. 
It wouldn't have been possible without the support of the members of my 
party in Congress, who, without any help from the Republicans, voted to 
bring the deficit down in 1993, got interest rates down, and started 
this long job-creating boom. So I am very grateful.
    But the third reason I'm here is the most important of all, and that 
is that in 11 months or so I'll be just another citizen, but the work of 
America goes on. We've turned this country around. We're moving in the 
right direction. But if you really think about what you'd like America 
to be, there's a great deal yet to be done.
    Yes, we've turned deficits to surpluses. But I think we ought to 
take this country completely out of debt, for the first time since 1835, 
to keep interest rates down for a new generation. Yes, the schools are 
getting better and more of our kids are going to college. But I don't 
think we ought to stop until we've got the certainty that every child, 
without regard to race or income, can get a world-class education and 
every person can go on to college and stay there for 4 years and not 
have to drop out because of the cost.
    I don't think we should stop until we find a way for every American 
to have affordable health care, until we find a way to--[applause]--
thank you. And Florida--I don't think we should stop until we know that 
when the baby boom generation retires--and I'm the oldest of the baby 
boomers; that's everybody born between 1946 and 1964--when we all get 
into our retirement years, there will only be two people working for 
every one person drawing Social Security. And I don't believe we should 
stop until we have modernized Social Security and Medicare for the 21st 
century and secured it so that the baby boomers can retire without the 
gnawing worry that we will be an awesome burden to our children and our 
children's ability to raise our grandchildren.

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    And I can tell you, the people my age, we think about this a lot. 
And I'm trying to get this Congress to lengthen the life of Social 
Security, to lengthen the life of Medicare, to add a prescription drug 
benefit, but we can't stop until that's done. I'm proud of the fact that 
we've done a lot to save the Everglades, but I don't think we should 
stop until we reverse the tide of global warming and prove we can grow 
the economy as we improve the environment.
    I'm proud of the fact that we've made progress for peace and freedom 
around the world, but there are still threats from biological and 
chemical and nuclear weapons. There are threats from terrorists. And 
there are still profound problems in every corner of the world that 
people have because of their racial, religious, ethnic, and tribal 
differences. And we shouldn't stop.
    And I can tell you that it profoundly matters who is in the 
Congress. It's a big deal whether Bill Nelson gets elected to the Senate 
or not, more than you can imagine. There's going to be somewhere between 
two and four justices appointed to the Supreme Court. I hope that Vice 
President Gore will be making those appointments, but the ultimate 
backstop is the Senate.
    That's another reason I'm so interested in the Senate race from New 
York--one of many. [Laughter] And I want to thank--so many of you 
tonight said something nice about Hillary or said you were helping her, 
and I'm very grateful to you for that.
    It matters because we're going to have to decide whether to follow 
the path of fiscal responsibility or not. We have doubled spending on 
education and training in my term, while getting rid of the deficit. And 
we did it by giving you the smallest Government in 40 years, by 
eliminating hundreds of programs. Was that a conservative decision or a 
liberal decision? Well, it was conservative: We got rid of the deficit. 
It was liberal: We doubled spending on education and training. That's 
the kind of discipline and values and vision we need. It matters.
    And finally, I'd like to thank all the law enforcement people who 
are here for supporting Elaine Bloom. One of the reasons I wanted to be 
identified with her is that she knew you could be a Democrat and still 
believe we ought to drive the crime rate down and that you could be 
tough and smart about crime. That's very important to me.
    I don't know if you had a chance to watch the news tonight, but a 6-
year-old child near Flint, Michigan, shot another 6-year-old child and 
killed her today. Now, I don't know all the facts yet. I thought I had 
them, and I didn't. The first version I had wasn't right, but anyway, 
somehow--what's a 6-year-old kid doing with a gun, anyway? And what can 
we do about it?
    I've supported putting 100,000 police on the street. I've supported 
more efforts in the drug war. I've supported putting 50,000 more police 
out there now in high-crime areas. But we've got to do more to keep guns 
out of the hands of criminals and away from children. We just do. 
There's a huge difference there. Is that conservative or liberal? The 
NRA crowd says that's liberal. I think that I'm trying to conserve life. 
I think it's conservative in the best sense, and I think it's the right 
thing to do.
    So I'm here because I feel obligated to a woman I love, not only 
because she supported me, because when she disagreed with me or was 
worried about it, she'd call and chew me out about it. And I like that. 
Too many people are afraid to tell Presidents what they think, and 
that's what gets Presidents in trouble. She was a true friend. She 
always told me exactly what she thought. I'm here because she shares my 
philosophy. But mostly I'm here because of you, and because when I'm 
just a citizen and I'm not President anymore, I want my country to do 
well.
    I said something today at lunch I'd just like for you to think 
about, and I'll say it much briefer tonight. The last time we had--we 
now have the longest economic expansion in history. The last longest 
economic expansion in history was 1961 to 1969, the years in which I 
grew up, graduated from high school, went to college, and finished 
college.
    When I graduated from high school in '64, Lyndon Johnson was 
President, passing civil rights legislation. We thought the economy 
would boom forever. We thought the civil rights problems would be solved 
in law, not in the streets. We thought we would prevail in the cold war 
without any division in our country.

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    When I graduated from college 4 years later, it was 2 days after 
Robert Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was killed, 
9 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he couldn't run for reelection. The 
streets of Washington had burned after Dr. King was killed, and this 
country was divided right down the middle on the Vietnam war, and we 
were divided in a Presidential election where President Nixon said he 
represented the silent majority, which meant those who disagreed were in 
the loud minority, people like me.
    And we've been having these ``us'' and ``them'' elections ever 
since--``us'' and ``them'' politics. Now, the country has been turned 
around, but we have big challenges out there. And what I want to say to 
you is that, in 1964, if anybody told us the wheels had run off by 1968, 
no one would have believed it.
    This is not just a time for celebration; this is a time for humility 
and for resolve. As a citizen--not as President, as an American--I have 
been waiting for 35 years for my country to be in a position to build a 
future of our dreams for our children. That work will have to be done by 
the people who will be here after the 2000 election.
    That's the most important reason I am here. I trust Elaine Bloom 
with my daughter's future, with my grandchildren's future, with the 
future of America. And I ask you all to be vigilant and disciplined and 
active in this election. Just because we're doing well doesn't mean you 
can relax. You should feel a heavier obligation. And whenever you are 
tempted to think it doesn't matter, you remember this story I told you 
tonight. I have waited 35 years. We've got a second chance, and we need 
to make the most of it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 7:25 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Phillip and Patricia Frost, reception hosts; 
Elaine Bloom's husband, Philip, a judge in Florida's Eleventh Circuit, 
and her children David and Anne; State Representative Sally Heyman; 
Senatorial candidate Bill Nelson; and 6-year-old Kayla Rolland, who was 
shot and mortally wounded by a 6-year-old classmate at Theo J. Buell 
Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, MI. Elaine Bloom is a 
candidate for Florida's 22d Congressional District.