[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 21 (Monday, May 29, 2000)]
[Pages 1168-1174]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner in Chicago, 
Illinois

May 19, 2000

    Thank you very much. Senator Durbin, thank you for those wonderful 
remarks and for your friendship. I want to begin by joining everyone 
else in thanking Fred and Ken for opening their beautiful home. I don't 
know what to make of Torricelli's remark about the concrete. [Laughter] 
Since I'm the only guy here that's not running for anything, I'm 
probably the only person to get away with cracking a joke about it, but 
I'm going to let it go, anyway. [Laughter]
    I will say this, Senator Torricelli, in your shameless pander to 
Mayor Daley--[laughter]--referring to Chicago as the greatest city in 
America, I took the precaution of sending a note to the people who tape 
all my remarks to make sure we delete that so it can't be played in 
Newark the next time you run for election. [Laughter] And I might say, I 
got the mayor to approve of that before I did it. [Laughter]
    Let me say to all of you, I am so proud to be here with these 
members of our Senate caucus and with our candidate. I want to thank all 
the host committee, not just Fred and Ken, but Joe and Yvonne, Lou and 
Bette. And I thank you, Joe Cari, for the work you do for our party 
every day. I could talk all night long just about the people who have 
been introduced tonight.
    Tom Daschle is an extraordinary leader and one of the best people I 
think I've ever known. I'll never forget going to the Pine Ridge Indian 
Reservation in South Dakota with him. The night before we went to visit 
Mount Rushmore, and I told him, I said, ``Tom, you win six Senate seats 
and we'll put your face up there, too.'' [Laughter]
    Senator Torricelli has really been--you can tell just from the way 
he spoke up here tonight that he's so laid back and passive, it's 
amazing--[laughter]. I can't thank him enough for pushing all this.
    I thank my good friend Carl Levin, who's here from Michigan, one of 
the States where I think we'll win a Senate seat, and he'll have a 
genuine partner after this election. And Senator Bayh, who, like me, was 
a Governor,

[[Page 1169]]

and we served together many years. I was once the youngest Governor in 
America; then he got elected. [Laughter] I've spent the last 10 years 
overcoming my resentment--[laughter]--and I've about got it done.
    And my friend Tom Harkin. You know, it's funny to think, sometimes 
when people are in elections together, as we were in 1992, you never 
know how it comes out. And I really--all my life I will think one of the 
best things about my campaign in 1992 was that I had the honor of 
running with Tom Harkin. He is a magnificent human being, and I love him 
like a brother. And he has been kind and generous and steadfast to me 
from the moment that election was over, and I will never forget it. And 
I thank you, sir.
    I want to thank Speaker Madigan for helping all these people--what 
most State Governments think of the interior branch of our national 
system of Government. And I, too, want to thank Mayor Daley for his 
friendship and support, for letting me borrow his brother to be Commerce 
Secretary. [Laughter]
    And I want to thank Tom Carper for running for the Senate. Tom 
Carper and I have been friends for many years. When I was a Governor and 
he was in the House, we worked on the first round of serious welfare 
reform, years and years ago--12 years ago now. And I can tell you--
Senator Bayh, who also served with him, would echo this--there is not a 
more respected Governor in the United States than Tom Carper. He has a 
fabulous record in education and a terrific record in all things related 
to family policy.
    One of the things I sought to do in '92 was to prove that the 
Democratic Party was both pro-work and pro-family. And when I talk about 
what we've tried to achieve around the country, Governor Carper is 
exhibit A. And he's generally thought to be the most likely democratic 
pickup in the entire United States, not because he has a weak opponent--
his opponent is the distinguished chairman of the Senate Finance 
Committee--but because he is such a good man and such a great leader. 
And I thank you for running. We need you, and I'm going to be glad when 
you get there.
    I was making a list here to give you some feel for this. If we pick 
up six House seats, we win the House. And because there are more House 
Members, it's generally considered easier to do than to pick up six 
Senate seats. But I think it's quite likely. There are eight or nine 
States in which we have a legitimate chance of winning a Senate seat. I 
believe there are probably only two States in which the Republicans--
given what I think will be a highly competitive election for President--
will have a chance to win. And if I were a betting person, I would bet 
that they would not pick up more than one. So this is a realistic 
possibility.
    You heard them talking about the stakes, and they couldn't be 
clearer, whether it comes to confirming judges or ratifying foreign 
policy decisions. I'll just give you one example. Normally, in national 
elections, foreign policy doesn't play such a big role if both 
candidates for President, for example, cross some threshold of 
acceptability.
    But there is--I'm grateful, for example, that both the Vice 
President and Governor Bush supported my position on China and supported 
the position of the Senate Democrats on continuing our mission in 
Kosovo.
    But there is an issue in which the majority of Senate Republicans 
and the Presidential nominee apparently are in agreement that, I think, 
has such enormous consequences for the American people that I hope it 
will be hotly debated and thoroughly debated in this election. And that 
is whether we should continue our historic commitment to reducing the 
nuclear threat. When the Senate voted to reject the Comprehensive Test 
Ban Treaty, it sent a shock wave through the world. No one could believe 
that America, which had consistently led the way, through Republican and 
Democrat administrations alike, was walking away from a test ban treaty 
which I was the first head of state in the world to sign. And the 
conventional quick analysis was, well, this is all just politics, you 
know, it's election year--or it was almost election year. They just 
wanted to kind of pop Bill Clinton.
    If you talk to these Senators here, they will tell you a different 
story. They do not believe in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And 
apparently, that is going to be the position of their nominee and their 
platform. And I can just tell you that this is a big deal. I have

[[Page 1170]]

spent a lot of time in the last 7\1/2\ years trying to get an indefinite 
extension of the treaty which commits countries that sign it not to 
proliferate nuclear weapons or materials which can be used to make 
nuclear weapons; trying to get the Chemical Weapons Convention ratified; 
trying to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention.
    I believe that in the years ahead, the threat of a nuclear war which 
hung over us in the cold war between Russia and the United States will 
probably continue to abate, unless something really dumb is done. But 
there will be more challenges from other countries who think, well, we 
need nuclear weapons to prove we are somebody, or because there is 
somebody we feel threatened by and they're trying to develop it.
    And I have worked with this enough now to know that unless you have 
very, very sophisticated systems, the chance of an accidental launch is 
not insignificant, and the chance that conflicts between countries will 
spin out of control is always there. One of the reasons I went to India 
and Pakistan was to try to do whatever I could to minimize the chances 
that they would allow their conflict to escalate to the point when 
somebody, on impulse or fear, might launch a nuclear weapon. So this is 
a huge issue.
    And I guess one of the things--people always ask me, ``What have you 
learned as President?'' One of the things I've learned out of many is 
that the Senate matters even more than I thought it did when I showed up 
in Washington. It really matters, every single vote. And one of the 
things that I hope will happen this year--if you'll forgive me, I won't 
give you a whoop-de-do speech tonight, because I know I'm preaching to 
the saved, as we say at home. [Laughter] But one of the things that I 
hope will happen this year is that we will actually have an honest 
debate on the future of America and that we'll ask the right question. 
And I think the right question is, what are we going to do with this 
magic moment of prosperity and improvement in our social condition and, 
at least in this moment, the absence of a searing domestic crisis or 
external threat?
    And I believe the character of a nation and the wisdom and judgment 
of a nation can be tested just as much at a time like this as in 
adversity. You know, if we all had our backs against the wall, we'd know 
what to do. Now we have to decide. And we have the option not to decide 
and just drift. It would be a terrible mistake. So I hope you will think 
about that.
    And I would just like to just very briefly say a couple of things 
about it. When I was running for President in 1992, and beginning in 
'91, I knew I had to make a good showing in Illinois because Illinois 
and Michigan were the first big elections after Super Tuesday. Back 
then, Super Tuesday was a southern deal, and I figured I'd do pretty 
well. And it was, like, not a fair fight, and so I did pretty well, 
because I was the only guy from my part of the country running. And I'd 
been hanging around down there a long time. [Laughter]
    So I came to Illinois, and I came to Chicago, which is my wife's 
hometown. And I sought out a lot of friends I had here--mostly in the 
African-American community--who were born in Arkansas--there were more 
here than anybody knew. I might have gotten the nomination uncontested 
if anybody knew how many African-Americans in Illinois were born in 
Arkansas. And a lot of you helped me. So I feel a special gratitude to 
you.
    And I remember when President* Bush referred to me as the Governor 
of a small southern State. You know, I was so naive, I thought it was a 
compliment. [Laughter] And I still do.
    * White House correction.
    But to be fair, we knew what the deal was then. The country was in 
trouble. The economy was down; the deficit was exploding; we quadrupled 
the debt in 12 years. As the Vice President used to say on the campaign 
trail, ``Everything that should be down was up; everything that should 
be up was down.'' And the people took a chance on me because they knew 
we had to do something, and I seemed like I had thought about it. And I 
had.
    Now, the test this year is more difficult, because we have to decide 
what to do with our prosperity. And there's not a person in this room 
tonight over 30 years of age that hasn't made at least one mistake in 
your life--not because things were going so badly but because things 
were going well in your

[[Page 1171]]

life, and you didn't think you had to concentrate. There is not a person 
here that can't recall at least some personal or business error you made 
at some point in your life, large or small, because you thought there 
were no consequences to the moment.
    Now, I'm not running for anything, but I can tell you something. 
There is a big consequence to this moment. Because we have not had a 
chance like this to build a future of our dreams for our kids in a long 
time. And I'd like to see this election run on the premise that we're 
not going to try to tear everybody down, that both the candidates for 
President are honorable and mean what they say. But they have to mean 
everything they say. You've got to take what you said in the primary and 
what you said in the--[laughter]--but they mean what they say.
    And if you look at it, it's pretty clear what the choices are. There 
is a huge difference in economic policy, which the Senate will have to 
vote on. We favor--starting with our nominee, the Vice President, all 
the way down the line--an economic program that has a tax cut for the 
American people targeted to what we need, but one that we can afford and 
still pay the debt down and have enough money to invest in children and 
education and science and technology and the things we need to be doing 
as a country.
    And I think that's important, because paying the debt down is one 
reason that interest rates and inflation haven't exploded as we have the 
longest economic expansion in history. And I think it's progressive 
social policy to keep getting this country out of debt because it keeps 
interest rates lower and spreads economic benefits.
    They favor a tax cut that will exceed a trillion dollars over 10 
years. And if you put that with their Social Security proposal, which 
would cost another $800 billion, and their defense proposals, which are 
about, I don't know, probably $200 billion more than ours, it means the 
country will go back into debt. And you have to assume--again, we don't 
have to criticize people; just assume everybody is honorable and they 
intend to do what they say.
    So you have to decide whether you would like to go back to a version 
of the economic policy that existed before I took office, or whether you 
would like to continue to change, but to build on what has produced the 
prosperity the last 8 years. This is a huge decision. And no amount of 
papering it over and talking about it can obscure the fact that every 
time an American votes for Congress, for Senate, or for President, that 
is one of the decisions that that voter is making. And you need to talk 
about that.
    We're making decisions about what to do with the aging of America 
and basically, how to deal with Medicare and Social Security when all 
the baby boomers retire and there are only two people working for every 
one person drawing funds out of those programs. We believe that we can 
make Medicare more competitive, but we're not willing to bankrupt the 
hospitals and the other providers, and we think there ought to be a 
prescription drug benefit for seniors and that every senior that needs 
it ought to be able to buy it. That's what we believe.
    They believe that we should cut the benefit off at 150 percent of 
poverty. Now, the problem with doing that is that half the seniors that 
need it make more money than that. And if you're living on $15,000 a 
year--which is more than 150 percent of poverty--and you get $300, $400, 
$500 drug bills a month to stay alive, pretty soon you've got to decide 
whether you want to eat or have your drugs. So there's a difference 
there.
    On Social Security, it would take me all night long to go through 
the differences; but let me tell you, I've spent years studying this. 
There is a problem there. The system--if we don't do anything, the 
system will run out of money in about 37 years. And it will start 
costing us more before that, in terms of foregone opportunities. And 
that's in spite of the fact that ever since 1983, we've been collecting 
more in Social Security than we're paying out.
    Now, they believe the system could be partially privatized because 
the markets outperform Government bonds and give everybody back 2 
percent of their payroll to invest if they're under a certain age, 
guarantee everybody else the benefits in the conventional system. Sounds 
reasonable. They say, ``Well, we want to get higher rates of return, and 
we want to let ordinary people, including poor people paying Social 
Security, have a

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chance to create wealth.'' I think that's important. Those objectives 
are worthy.
    Here's the problem. If you do that, the system is going to run out 
of money in 2037 anyway; if you start taking out more money right now, 
you have to put in $800 million, at least, over the next 10 years, to 
keep it from going broke just to pay the people you promised to pay. And 
if you put that with a $1.3 trillion tax cut, you're broke again; the 
Government is broke again; we're back in trouble again.
    What we believe is--at least I think most of these Senators do, and 
I know what the Vice President believes is--since the Social Security 
surplus that's been coming in since '83, that you've paid in your taxes, 
is responsible for a lot of our decline in the debt, we ought to take 
that portion of our declining interest rate requirements caused by your 
Social Security taxes and put the savings into the Trust Fund. That will 
take it out to 2057, beyond the life of the baby boom generation.
    Then I believe that there are ways, without having the Government 
interfere with the market, to get the benefits of the markets for the 
Trust Fund. And what we favor--it's much cheaper than their costs--is 
letting the Government or having the Government help lower income people 
have an additional IRA, or I call it a USA savings account, to invest 
however they want, to get into the market, but if they lose the money, 
they'll still have the Social Security.
    Now, you have to decide. The American people have to decide. This is 
a worthy debate, and it ought to be held. If you look at education, 
everybody says they're for education now. We think we ought to be 
modernizing school facilities all over America like Mayor Daley is here 
in Chicago. We think we ought to have a no social promotion policy and 
that every kid who needs to get pre-school should get it, and every 
child who needs to be in an after-school program should have it. And we 
ought to have a strategy for turning around or shutting down failing 
schools, and that's what we ought to fund.
    They say they're for all that, but we shouldn't really require 
anybody to do it when we give them Federal money. That's like me trying 
to be America's principal. You have to decide whether you think we're 
right or they're right. All I know is--I'll tell you this one little 
story.
    In 1996 I got a law through Congress saying that every State had to 
identify its failing schools and develop a strategy for turning them 
around. Kentucky adopted the most aggressive program to do it. I went to 
one of those schools in Owensboro, Kentucky, 2 weeks ago. Two-thirds of 
the kids were on free or reduced lunches. Here is what has happened 
since '96--and, I might say, they also got some of the teachers the 
Democrats fought for to make smaller classes.
    In '96 there were 12 percent of the kids reading at or above grade 
level; today, 57 percent are. There were 5 percent of the kids doing 
math at or above grade level; today, 70 percent are. There were zero 
percent of the kids doing science at or above grade level; today, 64 
percent are. That grade school ranked 18th in the entire State of 
Kentucky with two-thirds of the kids on free or reduced lunches, and it 
was an absolute failure 4 years ago. Ten of the 20 schools in the State 
of Kentucky that are highest rated have half or more of their kids 
eligible for free or reduced lunches. Race, income, and region are not 
destiny if you have high standards in education. That's what we believe. 
Our position works. So you have to decide which one you agree with.
    I think we ought to have HMO reform on Patients' Bill of Rights. I 
saw what the Illinois Supreme Court did the other day. I don't think we 
ought to have to wait for that. I think that people ought to have a 
right to see a specialist if they need it. They ought to have a right to 
go to the nearest emergency room. And I've been a supporter of managed 
care, and I remain a supporter of managed care. But I think we ought to 
pass a Patients' Bill of Rights, and they don't.
    I think we ought to raise the minimum wage, and they don't--and so 
does our crowd here. And I think we ought to do more things to spread 
the benefits of this economic revolution of ours to people in places 
that have been left behind. And we may or may not get a bipartisan 
agreement on that. But these are big issues.
    I could go through a lot more. I'll just mention one or two more. I 
think that--if you ask me what one thing I wanted for

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America is, if I tonight got a vision from the good Lord, and I got a 
message that I had to leave the Earth tomorrow morning, and that I could 
not finish my term, but I could have one wish--not like a genie with 
three, just one--I would wish for everything to be done in this country 
that would heal all the divides of race, of religion, sexual 
orientation. That's why we're for hate crimes legislation, why we're for 
employment and nondiscrimination legislation. And they're against it. 
And I think that's really important.
    You know, this is a smart country. Look at all you folks. Most of 
you do well, unless somebody puts you in jail or locks you in a closet. 
[Laughter] This is a great country. And if we can figure out a way to 
celebrate our diversity and reaffirm our common humanity as even more 
important, we're going to do fine. So this is a big difference; these 
are just a few things.
    On the environment, they think I did the wrong thing to set aside 43 
million acres, roadless acres, in the National Forest. The Audubon 
Society says it's maybe the most important conservation move in 50 
years. I think if they have the White House and the Congress, they'll 
reverse it next year, early next year. One of you mentioned it to me 
when you were going through the line tonight. You ask every Senator 
here--don't take my word for this--we have fought for cleaner air, 
cleaner water, more land set aside; we have proved you can grow the 
economy and improve the environment. And if they have the Government, 
they will reverse a lot of our environmental gains. And I think this is 
important to point out.
    So if people ask you tomorrow why you showed up here tonight--and 
most of you have never met Tom Carper before--tell them you understand 
this: This is an election about what we're going to do with this great 
and good moment, and you're determined to build a future of your dreams 
for your child and for everybody's children.
    The last thing I'd like to say is, I think it's very important that 
we win the White House, and I think we will. But I think you, who have 
come here, there are some things that even you need to be reminded of 
about Vice President Gore. First of all, I am something of an amateur 
historian of the Presidency. And I've spent a lot of time since I've 
been President reading books not only about all the Presidents that we 
all are interested in but some you probably don't know much about, to 
try to get a full, rich picture of the history of America.
    And I'm interested in the institution of the Vice Presidency. In the 
19th century nobody paid any attention to it, in spite of the fact that 
one of our Presidents, William Henry Harrison, died a month after he 
took office; Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; Benjamin Harrison was 
shot and died after 9 months of poor medical care. And still nobody paid 
any attention. If you were to come visit me in the Residence of the 
White House and I took you to my office, you'd see that I work on 
Ulysses Grant's Cabinet table. And there are eight drawers in this 
table--one for the President, one for the seven Cabinet members; no 
drawer for the Vice President. Nobody paid any attention to it.
    William McKinley got assassinated; he was shot. And we were just 
lucky that Theodore Roosevelt was a great President. Warren Harding had 
a stroke. Calvin Coolidge worked out okay. [Laughter] Not great, but 
okay. [Laughter] But it didn't have anything to do with somebody 
thinking about whether he should be President. And Franklin Roosevelt, 
whom I think along with Lincoln were our two greatest Presidents, I 
admire him more than anything. But we're just lucky Harry Truman was a 
very great President. He did not know about the atomic bomb when he 
became President.
    Now, what's all this got to do with this? President Eisenhower and 
President Kennedy took it more seriously and gave more to Richard Nixon 
and Lyndon Johnson to do, and they had more responsibility than their 
predecessors. Then when Jimmy Carter appointed Walter Mondale, he 
notched it up big time. And Vice President Mondale had lunch with the 
President every week, had defined responsibilities, could come to any 
meeting. And Ronald Reagan, to give credit where credit is due, did the 
same thing for George Bush and made him an important figure.
    So if you look at history, you've got--everybody else, here's 
Johnson and Nixon, here's Mondale and Bush, and then here's

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Al Gore. He's probably the only person in the history of America who has 
had a clearly discernible impact on the welfare of the country as Vice 
President. He not only cast the decisive vote on a number of occasions--
from breaking the tie on the budget bill, which started all this stuff 
in '93, to the issue for sensible gun control just a few weeks ago--he 
has been our leader in technology policy, in trying to hook up every 
classroom in the country to computers, in making sure that we had an E-
rate so poor schools could afford to do it. He's run the empowerment 
zone program, which has brought thousands of jobs into poor 
neighborhoods. He ran our partnership with Detroit to try to develop 
high mileage vehicles, and it won't be long until you'll be able to buy 
a car that will get 80 miles a gallon; and a couple years after that, 
you'll be able to buy one made with biofuel, where the conversion ratio 
is a gallon of gasoline to make 8 gallons of that, and then you'll be 
getting 500 miles to the gallon, and the world will be different. And he 
did that. That's what he did. He ran our reinventing Government program 
that has given us the smallest Government in 40 years. And I heard all 
this talk about tough decisions. He supported me on the budget, on 
Bosnia, on Kosovo, on Haiti, on giving aid to Mexico when the people 
were 81-15 against it, on taking on the gun lobby and the tobacco lobby 
for the first time that any White House has consistently done that. And 
he was an ardent supporter of our effort to end discrimination against 
gays and lesbians early. So he has taken tough decisions.
    I want you to know this because this campaign is going to have a lot 
of twists and turns; there will be ups and downs. But he should be the 
President of the United States. Nobody has ever done this.
    But I will say this. He'll have a lot harder job unless you help us 
elect six Senators and at least six House Members. As I said, I could 
tell you a story about every one of these Senators who's here, and our 
candidate, that would make you feel more strongly. One of things I've 
learned as President is, I always knew the Senate was important. I 
admired the whole story of all the great Senators in our history and the 
great creators. But it's even more important than I dreamed it was when 
I became President.
    So the investment you've made tonight is a worthy investment. And I 
just hope when you leave here, some of what I have said has made an 
impression so that you will take every single, solitary opportunity you 
have between now and November to tell people why you came tonight, why 
you stand where you stand, and why this election is so important to our 
future.
    Thank you very much.

  Note:  The President spoke at 10:05 p.m. at a private residence. In 
his remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Fred Eychaner and Ken Lee; 
Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, IL; event host committee members Joe 
and Yvonne Stroud, Lou Weisbach, and Bette Cerf Hill; Joseph A. Cari, 
Jr., finance cochair, Democratic National Committee; Illinois House 
Speaker Michael J. Madigan; and Governors Thomas R. Carper of Delaware 
and George W. Bush of Texas. This item was not received in time for 
publication in the appropriate issue.