[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 24 (Monday, June 19, 2000)]
[Pages 1343-1346]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a New Leadership Network Reception in Minneapolis

June 10, 2000

    Thank you. Wow! [Laughter] I started off today at 5 o'clock this 
morning in Washington--that's 4 o'clock your time--and I came out to 
Carleton to give the commencement address. And I came here, and I went 
to another event. It's just getting rowdier as I go on. You guys are 
doing great.
    I would like to thank my friend and partner Mayor Rendell from 
Philadelphia, the chairman of our party, for coming out here with us. 
And I want to thank Mike--you and Mary and all the people have done a 
great job with this party--all the sponsors. This is just fabulous. And 
I'm delighted to be here.
    And I want to thank the Fine Line Music Cafe folks, and all the 
people who provided the music. And I want to thank Senator Paul 
Wellstone and Sheila and their kids and grandkids--the whole Wellstone 
family is here today. And Representative Martin Sabo, who's daughter is 
also a candidate here today.

[[Page 1344]]

Your State auditor, Judi Dutcher, I want to thank her for being here.
    Look, this is a good way to spend Saturday afternoon. [Laughter] And 
I realize I, in a way, don't need to give a speech because I'm sort of 
preaching to the saved here. [Laughter] But I would like to say a couple 
of things anyway, if it's all the same to you. I mean, since I'm the 
only one in my administration or in my house who is not running for 
anything this year--[laughter]--I'm afraid I'll get out of practice if I 
don't get to kind of work out a little. So you all just relax; I want to 
give you a little bit.
    First of all, I want to thank the State of Minnesota for voting for 
Bill Clinton and Al Gore twice and giving--[applause]. Secondly, I want 
to thank you for fielding competitive candidates for the House and the 
Senate to help us win back the majority in the United States Congress 
which we--we could do.
    You know, I think Minnesota is a place where people know ideas 
matter. I was here on my education tour not very long ago, and I went to 
St. Paul to the first charter school in the history of the country. And 
you know, since then, since we got in, there was one when I became 
President, and there are now over 1,700 because we have worked so hard 
to get the point out across the country and get the word out that our 
public schools can succeed, and they can educate our kids. Even the kids 
from the most difficult circumstances can learn if we had the right kind 
of educational opportunities for them.
    And that to me sort of symbolizes what Minnesota is all about, high 
ideals--high ideals, high standards, practical approaches to problems 
involving everybody. And I just want to say to all of you that I think 
the election we're about to have is every bit as important as the two we 
just had. Now, in 1992 the country was in trouble, and everybody knew 
it. The economy was in bad shape. The society was growing more divided. 
The political rhetoric in Washington was paralyzed and seemed irrelevant 
to the way most of us live.
    And we've tried to turn that around. We've tried to create a society 
in which there was opportunity for every responsible person and in which 
we were coming together in a more closely knit community, in which we 
were looking outward to the rest of the world and trying to be a force 
for peace and freedom and prosperity and decency. And we tried to 
avoid--[applause]--thank you. What I wanted to say is--and there's been 
a lot of success. We've got the strongest economy in history, and we've 
got a society that's coming together. Crime rate's down; poverty is 
down; the welfare rolls have been cut in half. We have the highest rate 
of minority business ownership in history and the lowest minority 
unemployment in history in America. We have a lot of things that are 
moving in the right direction.
    So, you say, ``Well, how can the 2000 elections possibly be as 
important as the '92 election was when we were in the tank, or the '96 
election was when people were trying to decide whether to ratify the 
direction we were taking?'' I'll tell you why--because once in a 
lifetime do you find a situation like this in America where the economy 
is strong, where the society is coming together, where we've got a lot 
of self-confidence. We're not paralyzed by a crisis at home. We don't 
feel immediately threatened by a crisis overseas, even though there are 
dangers out there. This has never happened before in my lifetime, and 
I'm older than nearly everybody in this room. [Laughter]
    Now, and I can tell you this--how a country deals with its good 
moments is just as stern a test of its character as how it deals with 
its crises. So what do you think we ought to do? I'll tell you what I 
think we ought to do. I think we ought to bring jobs to all the people 
and places that have been left behind. I think we ought to get rid of 
child poverty. I think we ought to give every working family the time 
and the tools they need to take care of their kids, as well as work.
    I think we ought to deal with the fact that when the baby boomers 
retire, it's going to impose new burdens on our society. We ought to 
figure out how to save Social Security and Medicare, provide 
prescription drug benefits to seniors that need it. I think this.
    I think we ought to prove that we can have excellence in every 
school building in America. I think we ought to open the doors of 
college to every American. That's what I talked about at Carleton today. 
I think we

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ought to roll back the tide of climate change and prove we can create 
jobs and clean up the environment at the same time.
    I think we ought to prove we can create a global economy where 
there's more trade and there's higher labor standards and environmental 
standards and we put a more human face on it. I think we ought to keep 
working to get rid of all the hatred that still exists in this country, 
based on race or sexual orientation or religion or ethnic background.
    And I think we ought to maintain our involvement with the rest of 
the world for peace and freedom. This is the one-year anniversary, 
today, of our formal victory in the conflict in Kosovo, where we stood 
up against ethnic and religious cleansing and let a million people go 
home.
    But this is way more than military; it's mostly not military. I was 
ridiculed the other day by one of the leaders of the other party because 
we said that AIDS was an international security crisis for the United 
States. Seventy percent of those cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.
    Now, you tell me--we've got a lot of allies there for freedom and 
democracy, and you have people actually hiring two people for every job 
opening because they assume one of them will die in a few months. We 
have armies where the infection rate is 30 to 40 percent, where a 
country can collapse on us, people that we believe in that we're trying 
to help. So I'm proud of the fact that I think we ought to be investing 
some of your money to find vaccines for AIDS, for TB, for malaria, for 
people overseas that need these things. I think that's right.
    So here's the deal. I'm not running, but I know a little something 
about this election. [Laughter] It's just as important as the other two 
were. If somebody asks you why you're here and why you're doing this, 
you tell them that. It's a big election. It's a big test of a country 
how you deal with all these good times. And we've finally got the 
chance, a chance that we have not had maybe in my lifetime to deal with 
the big problems out there facing America, to deal with the big 
opportunities out there. And there's a huge difference between what our 
party believes and what our nominee for President believes, and what 
they believe.
    You know, whether it is a big issue like maintaining our present 
economic policy or going for a tax cut so big that we'll go back to 
deficits, or a more discrete issue, like raising the minimum wage by a 
dollar over the next few years or not doing it, there's a huge 
difference. And I'm telling you--everything from the appointment of 
justices to the Supreme Court to our economic and environmental and 
health care and educational policies, there is a profound difference.
    And it's not like it was in 1992. In 1992, we made an argument, and 
you gave us a chance. Now, you've got running for President in the 
Democratic Party, the most experienced, effective Vice President in 
history who cast a tie-breaking vote on the economic plan in '93 that 
got us to where we are today; who cast a tie-breaking vote the other day 
to close a gun show loophole that requires child trigger locks; who has 
run our empowerment program which has brought thousands of jobs to some 
of the poorest communities in America; who has managed a big part of our 
relations with Russia, with South Africa, with Egypt, with other 
countries; who ran our reinventing Government program and helped to 
reduce the size of Government, without putting anybody in the streets, 
to its smallest size in 40 years so we could double education funding 
while we were cutting the deficit.
    Now, there has never been anybody that had that kind of impact in 
that job who understands the future better. Along the way, he continued 
with his wife to hold every single year a family conference in 
Nashville, Tennessee, that dealt with things like family leave, health 
care for poor children, mental health parity in health insurance 
policies--the kinds of things that families come to grips with all the 
time Al and Tipper Gore have been working on for 8 years on their own in 
a way that has changed the future of America and what we've been able to 
do.
    Now, here's the thing about elections. Somebody besides those of us 
in this room today get to vote. [Laughter] And most people who get to 
vote don't ever come to an event like this. And most people who get to 
vote may never hear me make this case for Vice President Gore or for our 
candidates

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for the Senate and the House or for the fact that we have honest 
differences.
    Then you get these elections where everybody is trying to convince 
you that anybody that's not in their party, there's something wrong with 
them; there's something bad. That's not true. We just have honest 
differences. Most people do what they say they're going to do when they 
get elected. And I'm just telling you, there are huge differences in 
economics, in health care policy, in environmental policy, in the 
constitution of the courts. I could go through every issue.
    And it's not like '92, when we had an argument. You have evidence. 
We have tested what we believe against what they believe, in ways large 
and small. None of them support our economic policy. They said it was 
going to drive the country in a ditch. We now know it drove the country 
to 22 million jobs and the longest economic expansion.
    Most of them were against our crime policy, the Brady bill and 
putting 100,000 police on the streets. They said it wouldn't do any 
good. They said that all the criminals bought guns at gun shows. Now 
that we're trying to do a background check at gun shows, they say they 
don't buy them there. But back then they said they did. [Laughter] So we 
tested it, and 500,000 guns later not in the hands of felons, fugitives, 
and stalkers; 100,000 more police on the street, more after-school 
programs for our kids--we've got the lowest crime rate in over 30 years. 
This is the right thing to do.
    So go out there and tell people you're supporting the Vice President 
and the Democratic Party, number one, because they believe in 
opportunity for everybody and a community of all Americans. They've got 
good ideas, and they work; number two, because he had a pivotal role in 
it; and number three, because looking to the future, you agree with us. 
Whether it's the Patients' Bill of Rights or getting working families 
access to health care or raising the minimum wage or reversing global 
warming or just continuing to grow the economy in a responsible way and 
reaching out to all kinds of Americans to make them part of our family, 
you agree with us.
    And you tell those people that haven't made up their mind, ``Look, 
there is not an argument now. You've got 8 years of evidence. Go with 
the evidence. Go with the future. Stick with us, and America will be in 
a good place.''
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:44 p.m. at the Fine Line Music Cafe. In 
his remarks, he referred to Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic 
National Committee; Mike Erlandson, chair, and Mary McEvoy, associate 
chair, Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party; Senator Wellstone's 
wife, Sheila; and Minnesota State Senatorial candidate Julie Sabo.