[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 24 (Monday, June 19, 2000)]
[Pages 1358-1360]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Hispanic Caucus 
Reception

June 13, 2000

    Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here. Thank you 
for your support for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I want to thank 
Patrick Kennedy for his heroic work in raising money for all our 
congressional candidates. Thank you, Lucille, for your leadership.
    Unlike Congressman Kennedy, I am going to introduce the Members of 
the Hispanic Caucus here because, unlike Congressman Kennedy, I need 
them to vote for me several more times this year. [Laughter] So since 
we're all standing up already, I'd like to ask them to raise their hands 
as I call their names. If I miss anyone, don't be bashful: Solomon Ortiz 
from Texas, there he is; Xavier Becerra from Los Angeles--[inaudible]--
Ed Pastor from Arizona; Nydia Velazquez from New York; Bob Menendez from 
New Jersey, Bob; Carlos Romero-Barcelo from Puerto Rico--[inaudible]--
Ruben Hinojosa from South Texas, there he is; Silvestre Reyes from El 
Paso, there he is; Ciro Rodriguez from Texas--Ciro, where are you?--
Charlie Gonzalez from San Antonio; Grace Napolitano from California, 
there she is back there; and for me, at this particular moment, most 
important of all, because day before yesterday he had his first hole in 
one, Representative Joe Baca from California. And he is so shameless 
about it that, if you doubt it, he is carrying the authentic certificate 
proving that he is. [Laughter]
    Ladies and gentlemen, I will be brief. Members have to go to a vote 
in a few minutes. I want to first of all thank all of them, because 
without them, nothing that we have accomplished--the Vice President and 
I, in our administration--would have been possible. We carried an 
economic plan in 1993 by one vote, which set off this economic explosion 
we've enjoyed in the last 8 years. It would not have been possible 
without the Hispanic Caucus.
    And whether it was on our welfare policy, where we said: We are for 
work, but we're also for family; require people to work who can work but 
don't take the food stamps and the medical care away from the poor 
children--the Hispanic Caucus made it possible for us to hammer out that 
compromise. On crime, on education, on every single issue, they were 
there. And we do--we have the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever 
recorded, the lowest poverty rate among Hispanics in a generation, a 250 
percent increase

[[Page 1359]]

in SBA loans to Hispanic-owned businesses, and as it's already been 
said, the largest number of Hispanics in high positions in our 
administration and in our courts in history.
    Now, what I want to say to you is, elections are always about 
tomorrow, not about yesterday. If we did a good job, after all, it's 
just what you hired us to do. I remember once I was asking a guy to vote 
for me for reelection as Governor of Arkansas. And I said, ``Well, don't 
you think I've done a good job?'' He said, ``Sure you have, but you got 
a paycheck every 2 weeks too, didn't you?'' He said, ``That's what I 
hired you to do.'' [Laughter]
    What I want to say to you is that I think the outcome of these 
elections for Congress and the outcome of the election for the President 
are every bit as important as the elections of 1992 and 1996. I worked 
very hard when this country was in trouble to turn it around, to put the 
economy, to put the people of this country first, to, in the words of my 
'96 campaign, build a bridge to the 21st century.
    Now the great test the American people face is, what is it we intend 
to do with our good fortune, with this moment of possibility? I think we 
ought to use it to meet the big challenges of the country. I think we 
ought to use it to keep paying down the debt, to keep the prosperity 
going but to extend the prosperity to people and places who have been 
left behind. I think we ought to give tax incentives to investors who 
invest in the poor areas of America the same incentives we give them to 
invest in poor areas in Africa and Asia and Latin America. I think 
that's important. I think we ought to make after-school care and 
preschool universal for all of our children who need it. I think we 
ought to have--I think we ought to modernize our schools and ensure 
they're all hooked up to the Internet. I think we ought to provide more 
options for working families to get health care. We ought to pass the 
Patients' Bill of Rights. We ought to allow working families whose 
children are in our Children's Health Insurance Program to buy into it 
themselves. We ought to have middle class tax relief for long-term care, 
for child care, and to help all families pay for a college education. I 
think we ought to take on these big challenges.
    And while it is now fashionable for both parties to court the 
Hispanic vote--indeed, both candidates speak Spanish and love to do it--
I hope very much that I am the last President in American history who 
can't speak Spanish. I think from now on everyone will have to speak 
Spanish. [Laughter] And within a year or 2, when I get a little private 
time, I may be able to speak Spanish, too. I'm going to work on it. 
[Laughter]
    But what I want to say to you is, there is a difference. There is a 
difference in the Congress, and there is a difference in the race for 
the White House. One party supports the Patients' Bill of Rights, and 
the other opposes it. One party is for raising the minimum wage, and the 
other is not. One party is trying to expand health insurance coverage to 
poor working families, and the other has not endorsed it. One party 
wants a big tax cut that will keep us from paying down the debt; the 
other party--ours--we want an affordable, middle class tax cut that will 
enable us to continue to pay down the debt and invest in the education 
and health care and future of our children.
    We all say that we favor broad participation, but I'll just give you 
one example. I named an Hispanic lawyer from El Paso, named Enrique 
Moreno, to the Federal Court of Appeals. He graduated summa cum laude 
from his university. He graduated near the top of his class in law 
school. A panel of State judges in Texas said he was one of the three 
best lawyers in his part of the State. He got the highest rating from 
the American Bar Association. But the two Republican judges from Texas--
Senators from Texas--said he wasn't qualified to sit on the Court of 
Appeals. And I haven't heard a peep, I might add, out of any of the 
other elected Republicans in Texas about this.
    So I say to you, there's a difference. There is a difference. And 
sometimes it can be as stern a test of a country's character and 
judgment, how it handles its prosperity as how it handles its adversity. 
After all, when the American people took a chance on me in 1992, we had 
our backs to the wall; we were in trouble. And people were willing to 
let us make a few changes. Now, the danger is

[[Page 1360]]

that people will think, ``Oh well, this economy has been so good, so 
long, nobody can mess it up''--[laughter]--or that everybody seems so 
nice, nobody can do anything too bad. There is a difference. These 
people should be in the majority in the House. We should hold the White 
House. We should win the Senate.
    And you can go and tell people, ``Look, it's not as if they're 
taking a big chance. You've got evidence now. We were divided all the 
way along on economic policy, on crime policy, on welfare policy, on 
education policy, on environmental policy. And the evidence is in. And 
the ideas are out there. The best days of this country are still ahead. 
The best days for Hispanic America are still ahead. But we have got to 
make the right choices.''
    You made a good investment coming here tonight, and I want you now 
to make your investment good by taking every opportunity, every day, 
between now and November, to make the same arguments, in your own way, I 
made to you tonight.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

 Note:  The President spoke at approximately 7:50 p.m. in the Chinese 
Room at the Mayflower Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to 
Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard.