[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 20 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[Pages 1151-1157]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Luncheon in 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

May 19, 2000

    Thank you so much. I told the folks at our table here that I have 
been in this room many times. The first time I came here was long before 
I was President, but I've been here a lot since I've been in office. 
I've been to a lot of dinners, lunches, meetings. I love this city hall, 
and I love this room, and I never tire of coming here.
    I want to thank all of you, and in their absence, the mayor and your 
former mayor as well, Ed Rendell. He's doing a great job

[[Page 1152]]

as the chairman of the Democratic Committee. I thank the Pennsylvania 
and Philadelphia officials who are here. And I particularly want to say 
how much I appreciate my good friend Susan Bass Levin, running for 
Congress in New Jersey, and Pat Casey and Ed O'Brien, running here. I 
thank Bob 
Borski and Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah and Ron Klink for being my friends 
and allies in the United States House.
    And let me say to all of you, this is an important occasion, and I 
want to say just two personal words, if I might, before I begin. First, 
I'd like to express my deepest condolences for the crash of Pier 34 last 
night, the loss of life, the people who have been injured. The Coast 
Guard has been up here helping with the search and rescue, and I've been 
informed and kept monitored on it. But I know it's a painful thing for 
the city, and I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.
    I'd also like to say to the Casey brothers here that Hillary and I 
send our prayers and best wishes to your mother and your father. He has 
been astonishing these last 7 years. I think his survival and courage in 
the face of his illness is as important as the remarkable persistence he 
showed in his political career.
    I'm going to--Congressman Borski was saying, I've been to a lot of 
great events in Philadelphia. We've had a lot of hot rallies and 
enthusiastic moments, but this is a fairly early period in the election 
process. And so I'm going to do something a little unconventional today, 
but what I would like to do is to kind of just have a talk with you as a 
person who is not on the ballot this year. And most days I'm okay about 
not being on the ballot. [Laughter] The other days that I'm not okay 
about it, you have the Constitution to protect you. [Laughter]
    What I'd like to do is just take a little time to have a talk. I 
would like to tell you what I think this election is really about, what 
the big issues are, and without going into an enormous amount of detail, 
what the major differences are, because this is a profoundly important 
election. We're electing a President who will serve the first full term 
of the 21st century. We have a chance to change control of the House of 
Representatives with a shift of just five seats. We have a chance, 
believe it or not, to be even-up, or even to be one ahead in the United 
States Senate, which is why Ron Klink's election is so important.
    And I can tell you, I think I know a little something about 
Pennsylvania. You've been very good to me and voted for me twice. It's 
my opinion that if his race is competitively funded, I believe he'll 
win. And so I hope you'll help him be competitive, because we need to 
win. I was just sitting here thinking off the top of my head, there are 
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight other seats that could 
shift from Republican to Democrat. There is, I think, a reasonably good 
chance that five of them will do so, if our candidates are well funded.
    There are about four seats that the Republicans believe they have in 
play, and I think a better than 50-50 chance only one of them will shift 
and maybe none. I think the Senate candidate in New York's doing a 
pretty good job of trying to hold on to--[laughter]--and a number of you 
in this room have helped her, and I'm very grateful for that as well, 
and I thank you.
    So this is a big election. Now, very briefly, here's what I want to 
say to you about it. But I do want you to try to remember some of these 
things, because people are going to talk to you about this, and they're 
going to ask you why you came, and they're going to ask you why you are 
where you are.
    It's clear that our country's in better shape than it was 8 years 
ago, that we are moving in the right direction, that we not only have 
the longest economic expansion in history and the lowest unemployment 
rate in 30 years. We've got declining poverty, declining inequality, the 
lowest minority unemployment rates we've ever recorded. We have the 
highest homeownership in history. We've got the lowest crime rate in 
over a quarter century--8 years of decline in a row--welfare rolls about 
half the size they were 7\1/2\ years ago. Ninety percent of our kids are 
immunized against childhood diseases, with over 2 million kids with 
health insurance that didn't have it before. And I could go on and on.

[[Page 1153]]

    We set aside more land than any President in history, any 
administration in history, except those of the two Roosevelt, in the 
continental United States, something I'm quite proud of.
    Now, the first point I want to make is, a lot of you have been very 
good to me over many years, and you have supported me, and you have been 
my personal friends. And I am very grateful for that. And you might have 
been, without regard to the ideas we had or the policies we advocated. 
But the results would not be this, what they are, if we hadn't stood for 
the right things. So what has happened is far bigger than my Presidency.
    Al Gore deserves a lot of credit for it. He's had, by far, more 
influence on the affairs of the Nation than any person who ever served 
as Vice President in that job--by far, not even close. The Congress 
deserves a lot of credit for it. The other people who helped--those of 
you that helped us to be elected and reelected. It was a common 
endeavor, but the consequences that flowed from it happened because what 
we did was right.
    And we were right in the economic fight of '93, when not a single 
Republican voted with us. We were right in the crime bill fight in '94, 
when a handful of them voted for us but not many. We were right to 
insist that if we're going to reform welfare and require able-bodied 
people to work, we shouldn't hurt the kids. We should guarantee their 
food and their medicine and that their mothers have child care and 
transportation if they're going to go into the workplace. And I could 
give you dozens of other examples. So there is a difference.
    Now, I believe the outcome of this election will be determined, in 
large measure, by what people think the election is about. No one else 
will ever tell you that. They'll say, ``Well, this week Bush is up; Gore 
is down. Last week Gore was up; Bush was down. Next week it will be 
something different. The Democrats are here. The Republicans are 
there.'' You hear all this handicapping. I believe that in important 
elections, as you get toward the end, the people come to some sort of 
conclusion about what the stakes are, what is it about anyway. And the 
question that they ask and answer may determine the people they vote 
for.
    I believe that this question is, what are we going to do with this 
moment of prosperity? Most of us have never seen anything like it in our 
lifetime. Something like this comes along once in a lifetime. What is it 
that we propose to do with it? And I hope the answer is, as I said in 
the State of the Union, we're not going to squander it. We're not going 
to indulge ourselves with it. We're going to take on the big challenges 
and seize the big opportunities so that we can build the future of our 
dreams for our children.
    Now, if that's the question, then I believe the Vice President will 
be elected, because he understands the future and he knows how to get us 
there. I believe the Democrats will win the congressional races, because 
they're right on the issues. But the question is important. Now, let me 
just give you a couple of examples.
    Clearly, one big issue is, how can we keep this economic growth 
going, and can we extend it to people in places that have been left 
behind? Big question. Is there any difference in the approach of the two 
parties? Absolutely. What's our belief? Our belief is that we ought to 
have a targeted tax cut that will help people do the essential things: 
take care of elderly or disabled family members; send their kids to 
college; pay for child care; help them raise their children if they're 
making very low incomes. But we ought to save enough money to also 
invest in education and new technologies and scientific and medical 
research, and most important, we've got to keep paying this debt down to 
keep the interest rates down.
    You see right now, every time the Fed meets, there's this big debate 
about whether they should keep raising interest rates, because how long 
can this economy grow without inflation. If we keep paying the 
Government's debt down, we can make it possible for you to borrow money 
at lower interest rates to finance personal costs like cars and homes or 
expansion of businesses. This is a big deal.
    Their position is, we should have a huge across-the-board tax cut 
and other costly items that I believe would ensure that we would go back 
to deficit spending and that would drive interest rates up again. It 
would

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make it very difficult to keep the expansion going.
    Now, I do have some hope that we'll have a bipartisan agreement on 
what I call the new markets initiative to help provide incentives for 
people who invest in the neighborhoods in America, in urban American and 
rural America, that haven't grown. But we still won't be able to get 
that done unless the overall economy keeps growing.
    So there's a huge difference here in economic policy, and it cannot 
be papered over. And the people need to sort of say, ``Well, do we think 
this whole thing is an accident, or do we think this economic policy is 
on automatic, and you couldn't mess it up if you tried. And therefore, 
there are no consequences?''
    I can tell you, I don't believe that. I have worked day and night 
for 7\1/2\ years to make good economic decisions for America. And I 
believe it is imperative that we have a tax cut that we can afford, that 
we invest as much as we can afford but that we keep paying this debt 
down, and make sure that even as we save Social Security and Medicare 
for the baby boom generation, we're continuing to keep the economy 
strong.
    And there is a serious difference here in economic philosophy. And 
so you can decide whether you would like to go back to the--their theory 
is that if they have a huge across-the-board tax cut, and people with a 
lot of money, including more than half of you in this room who would get 
a lot of the money--if you get even more and have lower taxes, that you 
will invest it, and even if interest rates go up and inflation goes up, 
that it will be all right.
    I believe that we ought to confine the tax cut to what we can 
afford, keep investing in education and technology, and keep this debt 
coming down because that's going to keep the economy stronger. And it's 
a big tax cut. You know, the average person is paying $2,000 less in 
home mortgages, $200 a year less in college loan payments and car 
payments than they would have paid if we hadn't gotten rid of the 
deficit. So it's a big deal.
    Now, this is not what you see in the daily headlines, but it's a 
serious issue. And you guys--you ought to be discussing it.
    The second thing is, how are we going to deal with the challenge of 
the aging of America? Now, this is beginning to be discussed in a 
serious way in the headlines, and I like that. That's good for America. 
There are two big--from our point of view--the next President and the 
next Congress will have to deal with the challenge of the aging of 
America primarily in three ways. One, the big issue is, how are you 
going to reform Medicare, and are you going to add a prescription drug 
benefit? Two, how are you going to make sure Social Security doesn't go 
broke, and what else do you want to do with it? And three, how are you 
going to help people deal with elderly or disabled family members that 
need long-term care?
    Now, on those issues I think there are differences, and I'll just go 
through them real quick. There is a chance that we'll reach a bipartisan 
agreement on a long-term care tax credit. If so, I'll be thankful for 
it. It's a good thing to do, and we ought to do it.
    On Medicare, our differences, largely, today are over the nature of 
the structural reforms on Medicare, because I think it's important not 
to mess it up. And the truth is, I think a lot of the health care 
providers need more money to pay for the Medicare program, not less. And 
I believe we should add a prescription drug benefit which I think, over 
the long run, will save money, because we would never design a program 
for seniors today that didn't have prescription drugs.
    Thirty-five years ago, when we set up Medicare, it was basically to 
help people when they got real sick, for doctor bills and hospital 
bills. Now, when people are living longer than ever before, we want to 
keep people well and minimize the costs they impose on the health care 
system and increase the length and the quality of their lives.
    So we've got a big difference between the two parties on this. They 
say we should help people up to 150 percent of the poverty line with 
their medicine, but it would be too costly to go above that. We say half 
the people in the country who lack affordable prescription drug 
coverage--half--are over 150 percent of the poverty line. And if you're 
living on $15,000 a year and you've got a $300-a-

month drug cost or a $500 a month cost, you

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don't have much money left, and you should get help, too.
    They say our program is too costly. We say theirs doesn't really do 
the job and that we have the money and we set it aside, and we can pay 
for it and still pay the debt down and still--and I think I ought to get 
some--I think we, the Democrats, including the Vice President and the 
Members of Congress, should be entitled to the benefit of the doubt on 
this. Why? Because when we took office in '93, Medicare was supposed to 
go broke in '99, last year. Now it's projected to be alive and well 
until 2024. So we have shown that we can control costs, make tough 
decisions. And as I said, I'm not sure we didn't overdo it. I think 
we're going to have to give the health care providers a little of that 
money back. We tried to do it in the budget last year.
    But that's a big difference. Now, on Social Security, there's a very 
interesting debate emerging where the Republican position is essentially 
for younger people paying into the Social Security system--younger is, I 
guess, a relative term. I think younger is anybody today younger than I 
am. [Laughter] But it hasn't been worked out yet, but basically, they 
say, ``Look, we'll guarantee everybody who is on Social Security now and 
people who are near retirement, their retirement benefits. And everybody 
else, we're going to give them 2 percent of payroll back and let them 
invest it, because they can get a higher rate of return than Social 
Security could.'' And it sounds reasonable. And a lot of you who have 
made money in the stock market, it may sound great to you. And they 
point out Social Security is supposed to go broke in 2034, that the baby 
boomers, when they retire, there will be two people working for every 
one person retired. And the rate of return that you get for your 
investment in Social Security they say is very low.
    Now, here's what we say, generally, although there are differences 
in our crowd about this, what we say is: You can't measure Social 
Security's rate of return the way you do everything else, because a 
third of Social Security money goes to take care of disabled people. 
Don't forget that. This is not just a Social Security retirement 
program. This is a program--if you have a child who--God forbid--has a 
paralyzing accident and you're in a limited income group, Social 
Security will help you. A third of this money goes to people with 
disabilities. So a lot of these arguments that are made about what a bad 
investment Social Security is obscure the fact that it is something all 
of us pay to benefit the minority of us that are going to have something 
really difficult happen to our family members.
    But if you just look at the retirement fund, they say, ``Well, the 
stock market always out-performs Government investments over a 30-year 
period,'' which is true. We say, ``What about the poor suckers who 
retire in the bad times when they don't get the 30-year period?''
    Let me just say--and they say Americans ought to be able to create 
wealth; lower income Americans ought to be able to create wealth, just 
like we can. And they're right about that. But there's another way--but 
we say there's another way to do it. This is a serious debate.
    Here's what I want to tell you. Here's the problem with the proposal 
that they made, in my view. Keep in mind, Social Security is supposed to 
go broke anyway in 34 years, right? So if you give everybody under 40, 
or everybody under 50, 2 percent of their payroll back, you will shrink 
the number of years it takes for the thing to go broke, because there 
will be less money being paid into Social Security.
    So they have to pay what are called big transition costs if they 
want to guarantee the Social Security payments for everybody that 
retired or is about to retire--hundreds of billion of dollars. If you 
put that on top of the big tax cut they proposed, we'll certainly be in 
deficits. If the economy goes down, all these discussions become 
academic, because the numbers just get terrible. You may think this is a 
highly technical discussion, but this is your life we're talking about 
here.
    Here's what I think ought to be done. I think that we should allow 
low income people a chance to accumulate wealth, but we ought to do it 
outside the Social Security system with the proposal I made the year 
before last to let people set up savings accounts. And I think--and 
something else you should know--if Congress would simply vote to put

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the interest savings that we get from paying the debt down because of 
your Social Security taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund, we could 
take the life of the Social Security Trust Fund out way beyond the life 
expectancy of the baby boom generation.
    If you spent money directly to give lower income people money to 
save and invest, you could give them a chance to participate in the 
wealth of the country, and you could, in other words, fix the problem 
without running the risk. And the only problem would be for that is that 
those of us in higher income groups would not get 2 percent of payroll 
that we pay in Social Security to invest in the stock market, but most 
of us have already got money or can find money or have the capacity to 
save.
    So this is a big difference. And I welcome this debate, but I 
believe we have the better side of the argument here. I hope you can 
see--I'll just give you--economic policy, Medicare, Social Security, 
huge differences. I haven't even talked about the environment, where 
there are massive differences, or whether we're going to continue to 
provide more affordable health care for working families and children, 
where there are huge differences, or whether we should pass hate crimes 
legislation, where there are huge differences, or Patients' Bill of 
Rights or raise the minimum wage.
    What should our crime control policy be? When I was walking the 
streets with Ed Rendell in 1991, people just took a chance on this. 
We've now had 8 years of declining crime in a row. What works? A 
comprehensive policy: Put more police on the street; punish people who 
should be punished; enforce the laws that are there; have commonsense 
measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children. That's 
our policy.
    Their policy is--I have to drag them kicking and screaming to get 
any more for police--increase the penalties for everything, do nothing 
else to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children. I 
think we should close the gun show loophole. I think that people that 
get handguns ought to have a photo ID that proves that they don't have a 
problem in their background and that they can use the gun safely. I 
think that's reasonable.
    I think we ought to put 50,000 more police on the street. Even our 
Democrats who disagree with me on the gun issue are for putting more 
police on the street. So there's a difference between us and them on 
crime.
    And let me tell you an issue that almost is never at stake in an 
election, but we have serious differences on world peace and security 
this year. Yesterday--I don't know if you saw it, but I'm very 
grateful--I had a handful of Republicans, and I want to thank them for 
joining the overwhelming number of Democrats in voting to support the 
mission we undertook in Kosovo. I know it wasn't popular when I did it, 
but it was the right thing to do. A million people got run out of their 
homes because of their religion and their ethnic background. The last 
time we let that happen in Europe and didn't do anything to stop it, the 
results were not salutary. And I'm proud of what we did in Bosnia and 
Kosovo, and it was the right thing to do. A majority of our party was 
for my position. A majority of theirs was against it.
    They defeated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I think that's a 
terrible mistake. I think we should continue to reduce the risk of 
nuclear weapons. They believe it's an anachronistic document. They 
honestly believe that. It's not a personal attack. I'm saying we have 
honest differences. The only place where our party is still divided over 
trade--and you all know about that--I'm for the China trade agreement 
because I think it's a good deal, economically, and I know it's 
important to our national security.
    But that masks a larger issue that I urge you to look for also in 
this election, which is that we Democrats, even those who disagree with 
me on China, we believe it's going to be impossible to create a global 
economy without also having some sort of global society. And therefore, 
we believe we should be moving toward not only an integration of the 
global economy but a lifting of labor standards, an abolition of child 
labor, an abolition of other labor abuses, lifting of environmental 
standards across the world, so that people all over the world share 
this. And I think our party is united on this. Most of the folks in the 
other party think that that will probably happen anyway if there's more 
trade, and we shouldn't push it.

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    Now, I know most of you probably thought you were just coming to a 
political rally today and not a seminar on trade and all this other 
stuff. [Laughter] But I'm telling you, this is what the election is 
about. If you're worried about how your kids and your grandchildren are 
going to live and what kind of country you're going to live in, it 
really matters. There are differences in economic policy, differences in 
how we'll handle the aging of America, differences in how we'll handle 
health care, the environment, minimum wage, other family-related 
policies, and big differences in what we want to do in education, which 
I didn't even get into.
    Philadelphia, the average school building is 65 years old. We want 
to help you build and repair thousands of schools in this country. They 
think it's not a Federal responsibility. We want to give families a 
$10,000 tax deduction to send their kids to college. That's a tax cut 
we're for. So far we haven't sold them on it. So there are big, big 
differences.
    You look at the kids in this room--I'm just telling you, I worked 
for 7\1/2\ years to try to turn this country around. And I'm not on the 
ballot, and I'm talking to you as a citizen. I have waited all my life 
to see our country in a position to build a future of our dreams. And 
what I hope will happen is that we will not have a mean election. We 
don't have to say they're bad people. We should assume they're honorable 
people and that they mean to do exactly what they say. And they should 
assume the same about us. But we should deal with everything they say, 
not just what comes out in the general election, as opposed to the 
primary. It ought to be a comprehensive record here. But we should 
assume we have two honorable people running for President, honorable 
people running for Congress. We intend to do what we say; they intend to 
do what they say. And you need to say, where are the differences and 
what are the consequences?
    And when you leave here, if somebody asks you what do you think the 
election is about, I hope you'll say, ``It's what are we going to do 
with our prosperity, whether we're going to build the future of our 
dreams for our kids. I want to vote for people who understand the 
future, who can take us there. I don't believe we ought to jeopardize 
the economic policy that has brought us this much prosperity. I think we 
ought to deal with the aging of America in a way that helps promote both 
opportunity and guarantees for people who need it. I think we ought to 
do more to improve excellence in education for everybody. We ought to 
bring economic opportunity to the people who have been left behind. I 
think the Democrats are right on these things, and that's why I'm 
staying here. Look at the minimum wage. Look at Patients' Bill of 
Rights. Look at all these other issues.'' That's what I hope you will 
say.
    But whatever happens, I hope every single solitary soul you talk to 
between now and November, you will tell, ``Look, do not blow this. This 
is the American people's chance to conduct vastly important job 
interviews that will determine what kind of people we're going to be in 
10, 15 or 20 years. And we've never had a chance like this before, at 
least in my lifetime, so I want us to make the most of it.''
    We need a Democratic majority in the House. We need to win these 
other elections--not for partisan reasons but because the divides 
between us, I think, are clear, and I believe we're right. If you think 
that, don't leave your activity when you walk out the door here. Keep 
talking about it.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:18 p.m. in Room 202 at City Hall. In his 
remarks, he referred to Mayor John Street of Philadelphia; Mayor Susan 
Bass Levin of Cherry Hill, NJ, candidate for New Jersey's Third 
Congressional District; Pat Casey, candidate for Pennsylvania's 10th 
Congressional District, his father, former Gov. Robert P. Casey of 
Pennsylvania, and his mother, Ellen; Ed O'Brien, candidate for 
Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District; and Representative Ron 
Klink, candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania.