[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 11 (Monday, March 20, 2000)]
[Pages 529-533]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Luncheon in 
Cleveland, Ohio

March 13, 2000

    Thank you so much. I want to say, first, how honored I am to be here 
with our leader, Dick Gephardt, and how much I look forward to his 
becoming the Speaker of the House. He is a truly remarkable human being 
and a really wonderful leader.
    I want to thank Stephanie Tubbs Jones for welcoming me here and for 
doing such a good job for you. I'm delighted to be here with Marcy 
Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich. And I'm glad to see Sherrod Brown up and 
around. I told him he looked like a Roman soldier in one of those 1960's 
extravaganzas with that brace on.
    I want to thank Congressman Jim Barcia for coming to Cleveland to be 
with us today, and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who had

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to leave. And Mayor White, thank you for making us feel so welcome. 
Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, thank you for running for Congress. I certainly 
do hope you win, and I'm going to do what I can to help you. I'm glad to 
see you out here.
    And I want to thank our Senate candidate, Ted Celeste, also, for 
running in this race and for being here today, and my good friend Lou 
Stokes. I told some people a story when I was coming out--when I was 
here with Lou Stokes--I wanted to come to Cleveland with Lou before he 
left the Congress. I was here in his district many times when he was in 
Congress, but the last time we visited an elementary school in this 
district where there was an AmeriCorps project and the kids were 
tutoring these grade school kids--our young AmeriCorps people were.
    And so we went to this assembly, and I gave a little talk. And then 
I was shaking hands with all these 6- and 7-year-old kids. And I got to 
the very end of the line, and this 6-year-old looked at me, and he said, 
``Are you really the President?'' [Laughter] So help me, this happened. 
I said, ``Yes, I am.'' He said, ``But you're not dead yet.'' [Laughter] 
And it was clear to me that he had learned in school his Presidents were 
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and a part of the job description 
was that you had to be deceased. [Laughter] There's been a day or 2 in 
Washington in the last 7 years when I thought the kid might have been 
right. [Laughter] But I will always
remember that.
    I also am glad to be here today just to say a profound word of 
thanks to the people of Cleveland and the State of Ohio for being so 
good to me and to the Vice President, for giving us your electoral votes 
in 1992, and by a much wider margin in 1996. And I hope the trend 
continues in 2000.
    I'm here primarily, as all of you know, to support these Members of 
the House and the candidates and the drive to restore a Democratic 
majority in the House. And I'm here for three reasons, basically.
    One, they deserve it because they took the tough decisions that 
turned this country around and paid the price for it. We had no votes 
from the other side when we passed the economic plan in 1993, which 
drove interest rates down, investment up, and got this economy going 
again. And they deserve it. They also put their lives on the line to 
vote for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the efforts to 
put 100,000 police on the streets, which has given us a 25-year low in 
crime and a 30-year low in the gun death rate in America. Half a million 
felons, fugitives, and stalkers were denied weapons because of the Brady 
bill. So they have earned it.
    They provided large margins for the Balanced Budget Act in 1997, and 
for every other piece of progressive legislation that has passed, from 
the family and medical leave law to increasing the earned-income tax 
credit to tax relief for working families. And I could just go right on 
down the line, achieving 90 percent of our children with basic childhood 
immunizations for the first time, cleaner air, cleaner water, and a 
growing economy. So they've earned it.
    Two, there are huge differences between the parties still on a lot 
of very fundamental issues. And Dick mentioned a few of them, but I just 
want to tick off three or four. Number one, if you want this economy to 
keep growing, we have to remember to dance with what brought us: We've 
got to keep paying down the debt; we've got to save Social Security and 
Medicare in a way that doesn't cause the baby boomers retirement to 
bankrupt our children; and we've got to save enough money to invest in 
education and health care.
    We can still have a modest tax cut that will do an awful lot of good 
for a lot of people, to help people pay for health care costs, to help 
people pay for child care costs, to help defer the cost of tuition for 
sending your kid to college, for doing a lot of other things. But we 
have got to first keep the economy strong. We've got a chance to get 
this country out of debt over the next 12 or 13 years for the first time 
since 1835. And if we do it, we'll have low interest rates for a 
generation and the highest economic growth we've ever had. We'll 
continue this expansion. The Democrats will support that. Our friends in 
the other party will support a tax cut so large that we'd either have to 
cut education, not save Social Security or Medicare, cut defense, or go 
back to running deficits. So it's a clear choice.

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    Second is education. Our agenda is clear. We want smaller classes, 
more teachers, better trained teachers. We want to modernize and repair 
schools, which is profoundly important. We want to hook every classroom 
up to the Internet. We want high standards which support the kids, more 
after-school and summer school programs. And we want more efforts to 
give people the excellence that they need. And every single year we have 
to wait until the very end of the legislative session and have a huge 
fight to get our education agenda through. And we normally get about 70 
percent of it, but only because all of us stay together. This will 
become more and more and more important.
    Third, it is important to continue to give more people the chance to 
be a part of this economic prosperity who haven't done it yet. That's 
what our new markets initiative is all about, to give you who can afford 
it the same incentives to invest in poor neighborhoods in Cleveland, in 
Indian reservations, in the Mississippi Delta, in south Texas, and 
places like that that we now give you to invest in Latin America, Asia, 
and Africa.
    If we can't give the poor areas in America today the opportunity to 
have free enterprise, when will we ever get around to it? And I think 
that's very important.
    The fourth thing I want to mention is health care. It's very 
important. We believe that people between the ages of 55 and 65 that 
lose their health insurance ought to be able to buy into Medicare and 
ought to be given a little help to do it. We believe that people who are 
taking care of aged parents or disabled family members ought to get a 
$3,000 tax credit to help them do it. We believe that the Children's 
Health Insurance Program, which we passed in 1997, should also include 
the parents of those children. And if we did those things, 25 percent of 
the uninsured population in America would have health insurance, and the 
health care providers in this country, many of whom have difficulties, 
would have a lot more cash flowing to them to keep a healthy health care 
system.
    These are just some of the issues. There are big differences. And 
Dick mentioned the final one I want to mention. I have been involved for 
way over 20 years now in law enforcement. The first elected job I ever 
had was as attorney general of my State. I have always believed that we 
could drive crime down and diminish racial and other tensions between 
the police and the community. I have always believed that we had to have 
both smart punishment and smart prevention. I have always believed that. 
And for 7 years we have worked to put more police on the streets, to 
give our children something to say yes to as well as something to say no 
to, and to keep guns away from criminals and kids without undermining 
the legitimate interests of hunters and sports people.
    Now, what I've tried to do, since the Columbine tragedy, in 
particular, and in the aftermath of the terrible deaths in the last 
couple of days, is to say, ``Okay, let's do some more things that make 
sense. Let's require child trigger locks on all new handguns that are 
sold. Let's require background checks at these gun shows and urban flea 
markets, as well as at gun stores. Let's hold parents who are flagrantly 
irresponsible--or other adults, custodial adults--and let 6-year-olds 
get guns, let's hold them responsible for what they do. And let's ban 
the importation of these large ammunition clips.'' We banned assault 
weapons in America, and then people get around it by importing them.
    This is all very sensible. It doesn't affect anybody's hunting, 
doesn't affect any sports shooting. It's no big problem. And all the 
practical problems can be worked out.
    Well, we had a lot of energy after Columbine for doing that. The 
Senate passed a strong bill, because Al Gore broke a tie vote. The House 
passed a much weaker bill. But then they were supposed to get together, 
pass a compromise, agree on provisions, and send it to me. Eight months 
later, they still haven't met. The committees haven't met. So I ask them 
to meet.
    Now, in the aftermath of the terrible losses in Michigan and 
Tennessee--little Kayla Rolland--I thought we could have some more 
energy for doing this. And what happened? The NRA started running all 
these ads attacking me, personally, which I didn't take personally. I, 
frankly, was honored by it. But they were--and so I agreed to go on ABC, 
Sam Donaldson's program Sunday, and answer questions about this. And all 
I did

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was to say why I was for closing the assault weapons; why I was for 
banning these large capacity ammunition clips, the import of them; why I 
was for closing the gun show loophole; why I was for child trigger 
locks; and why I thought adults who were knowing or reckless in letting 
little kids get a hold of guns ought to be held responsible.
    And then the head of the NRA came on after me, and he said--I want 
to read you what he said, just so you'll know that there is a difference 
here between the two parties, and America has to choose. He says that I 
am willing to accept a certain level of killings to further my political 
agenda and Vice President Gore's.
    ``I believe--I have come to believe that Clinton needs a certain 
level of violence in this country. He's willing to accept a certain 
level of killings to further his political agenda and his Vice 
President's, too.''
    Now, it's quite one thing to say that when you're on national 
television. It's another thing to look into the eyes of a parent who's 
lost a 6-year-old and say that, to visit, as I did, the parents of the 
Columbine kids, or in Springfield, Oregon, or Jonesboro, Arkansas, and 
say that.
    I want you to know this because I'm not trying to put you in a 
depressed mood. I'm trying to fire your energy for the coming combat. 
Maybe he really believes this. But if he does, we've got even more 
trouble than just a horrible political mistake. We've got to make up our 
mind as a country.
    I'm glad the crime rate is at a 25-year low. I'm glad the gun death 
rate is at a 30-year low. I don't know a single living American who 
believes this country is safe enough. The NRA says we ought to prosecute 
gun crimes more. I agree with that, and we have. They're for holding 
adults accountable when they recklessly give kids access to guns--good 
for them. But they're not for anything that is a preventive measure, 
that might require the slightest effort on the part of the people they 
propose to represent, even if making that effort lets everybody else 
live in a safer America. They were against banning cop-killer bullets--
and there weren't any deer in the deer woods wearing Kevlar vests.
    So I regret this. And I'm not going to get in a shouting match about 
it, but I want you to know that there are big stakes here. So I want to 
help these people because they've earned it, and they've given you a 
good country to live in and a stronger America because they're right on 
the issues.
    And the third reason that I want to be for them is the point Dick 
made about wanting to run the House in a bipartisan manner and to set a 
good example. One of the reasons I ran for President is that I was 
completely turned off, as a Governor of what my predecessor called a 
small southern State, at the way that Washington was so much in the grip 
of name-calling and an attempt to systematically undermine other people 
personally. I thought it was wrong. And now that I've had some passing 
experience with it, I feel more strongly about it. I'm not running for 
anything, but I'm telling you, this is a great country, and you deserve 
a better climate than you have been getting in Washington, DC. And 
you've got to have people who will stand up and say that. I've worked as 
hard as I could to build one America out here in the grassroots, to get 
people to come together across racial lines and religious lines and the 
other lines that divide us, and to be a force for that kind of harmony 
around the world.
    But it is difficult for America to do that if what they see in the 
national political leadership is this sort of slash-and-burn--well, the 
kind of stuff I just read you. And I think we can do better than that. 
And I know he'll be better than that. And these Members will be better 
than that.
    Folks, we've got a lot of honest differences of opinion. And maybe 
they're right some times, and we're not always right. But I know one 
thing--we are right to believe that elections ought to be fought about 
what's good for you and what's good for your life and not whether we can 
decimate our adversaries. And that's the kind of Speaker Dick
Gephardt will be.
    So when people ask you why you came here today, say, ``Well, they've 
done a good job, and they deserve our support. They've got better ideas 
for the future, and that's what matters. And not only that; I like the 
way they will run our Nation's Government.

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I will feel better when they're having arguments up there over policy 
instead of personalities, and when they're trying to put people first 
and actually get something done.''
    Those are three good reasons for you to be here today, and I hope 
you will share those with all your friends and neighbors in this area. 
If you do, you'll dramatically increase the chances of their success in 
November.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:39 p.m. in the lobby at the Playhouse 
Square Center. In his remarks, he referred to Representative Patrick J. 
Kennedy, chairman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Mayor 
Michael R. White of Cleveland; Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, candidate for 
Ohio's 12th Congressional District; former Representative Louis Stokes; 
6-year-old Kayla Rolland, who was shot and mortally wounded by a 6-year-
old classmate in Mount Morris Township, MI; Sam Donaldson, cohost, ABC's 
``This Week''; and Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president, National 
Rifle Association.