    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 25 (Monday, June 26, 2000)]
    [Pages 1452-1458]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in San Diego

     June 22, 2000

         Let me say, first of all, Mike, you gave a wonderful talk, and you
    gave a wonderful toast. And I like it either way. [Laughter] And I want
    to thank you and Carol and all of you for the work you did to make this
    a success tonight. I'd like to thank California's first lady, Sharon
    Davis, for being here. I'd like to thank Representative Bob Filner and
    his wife, Jane, who are here. Thank you for being here. Former
    Representative and chief of staff to the Governor, Lynn Schenk, thank
    you for being here.
         And I also would like to thank the leaders of the Barona and Viejas
    tribes for their support and for the example they're setting. We had a
    great talk around the table tonight about the differences among the
    tribes in terms of economic circumstances and potential in Indian
    country throughout America. And it's one of the great honors of my
    Presidency has been the opportunity I've had to spend more time with
    more people from the Native American tribes and the Tribal government
    than any President probably in history. I invited all the Tribal leaders
    to meet me at the White House, for the first time since James Monroe was
    President in the 1820's, that happened. It was quite wonderful. So it's
    been a great thing.
         I would like to thank Bertrand, the owner of Mr. A's Restaurant,
    for a wonderful dinner tonight. Was this great, or what? [Applause] When
    I used to do these back home and we didn't eat like this--[laughter]--I
    feel pretty great about it.
         I'd like to thank Mayor Rendell, who I did--he was looking forward
    to a fairly peaceful retirement of a year or so, and then he was going
    to ascend to the Governorship of Pennsylvania, which I still hope he
    will do. So I told him I had this little part-time job I was interested
    in him doing. And he has part-timed himself all across America,
    exhausting himself, trying to make sure that we preserve the progress in
    this country and preserve the prosperity. And I'm very, very grateful to
    him. He's been a great leader for our party. And all these young people
    that work on these events, I'm grateful to them.
         I'll tell you a story. I don't know about a joke, but I'll tell you
    a story. You gave the Irish blessing so--my people are from a place
    called Fermanagh. They were Irish Protestants living on the border.
    Fermanagh is a little village literally on the border of Northern
    Ireland and Ireland, in the west. And my mother was a Cassidy. So we
    found the Protestant Cassidys. We traced them all the way back to a
    farmhouse built in the 1750's. And I went to Ireland in '95; they
    actually gave me a watercolor of the farmhouse, which is the only--the
    oldest known residence of relatives of mine--at least, any relative
    that's willing to admit it still. [Laughter]
         And you know I've had this remarkable love affair with Ireland,
    because I got the United States involved in the peace process, and it's
    worked out in a remarkable way. I went to Dublin in '95; we had 100,000
    people in the street; it was really one of the great days of my life. I
    turned on the Christmas lights in Belfast, and there were 50,000 people
    there. It's just been unbelievable.
         What happens, especially when you're not running anymore, you tend
    to get a little free with what you say. [Laughter] Sometimes you
    actually commit the sin of saying exactly what you think. [Laughter] I
    can say this because we've had a happy ending now.

    [[Page 1453]]

     [Laughter] You may remember, for a while we got the institutions of
    self-government up to Northern Ireland, and everybody is working along
    together, and then all of a sudden it all gets taken down because they
    can't agree on the decommissioning issue. And it was maddening. And all
    these people had been working for years, many of them a lot longer than
    I had though--that after we had actually ended the Irish civil war and
    we had got it all done, it was all going to pieces again.
         And I said--not thinking about stereotyping the Irish, of which I
    am one--I said, this reminds me--I said these two sides in Northern
    Ireland remind me of two guys that are kind of drunk, and they decide
    they're going to quit drinking. And they walk out of the bar together,
    arm in arm, and right as they get to the swinging door they say, no, and
    they turn around and go back.
         So I was blasted all over Ireland. ``Clinton let us down. He's
    stereotyping the Irish.'' And I was really worried about it until about
    3 days later I got in the mail a copy of a letter to the editor from the
    Irish Times saying, ``I see all this criticism of President
    Clinton for comparing us, and all those things he said.'' And he said,
    ``It is terrible what he said; I've been a drunk all my adult life, and
    I resent being compared to those people.'' [Laughter] So sometimes when
    you're uptight, you've just got to tell a joke and laugh it off and go
    on.
         But anyway, I'm delighted to be here and I'm delighted that--I sort
    of thought there would come a time this year when I'd show up at one of
    these dinners and no one would be there. [Laughter] And so I'm very
    grateful to you. I'm grateful to the people of California, and I'm very
    grateful to the people of San Diego. I've had a special relationship
    with this community from the beginning. I love it here. My family and I
    have had a wonderful set of experiences here. We had a wonderful
    vacation here one year around--a springtime vacation. And I'm
    particularly glad that I came here tonight and somebody showed up.
    [Laughter]
         I got a call last week from a very distinguished citizen of the
    world who said, ``Well, Mr. President, for a lame duck, you're still
    quacking rather loudly.'' [Laughter] So that's what I'm trying to do.
         I would like to just say a couple of things to follow up on what
    Mayor Rendell said. I thank you for coming here, and we'll do our best
    to invest the funds you have given us wisely. But we need your help in
    telling people why you feel this way. People ask me all the time, they
    come up to me and they say, ``Who do you think is going to get
    elected?'' And I always say, ``I think the Vice President is going to
    win.'' I do. I said it a year and a half ago when he was 18 points
    behind in the polls.
         Then they kind of say, ``Do you think
    Hillary is going to win?'' I say, ``Of course''--I mean, what do you
    expect me to say? But I actually believe it. But let me say what I think
    the real issue is in all these Senate and the House and the President's
    race. And I do think we're going to win. But the issue is, what do the
    voters think the election is about? This is one of those deals--we've
    got a lot of trial lawyers in this room. Sometimes the answers people
    give depends upon the way the question is asked, or what you think the
    real question is. And this election--really, the outcome of this
    election is going to be determined, by and large, by what people think
    this election is about.
         And I think if we can demonstrate, number one, that we've been
    working here for 8 years with a core set of ideas designed to give
    opportunity to every responsible citizen and to create a community in
    which any American can be a part; and that we've tried to be a force for
    peace and freedom and prosperity and decency around the world; and that
    what we need to do is to build on that, not undo it--if we can make that
    point, then the second point we need to make is that we have to decide,
    we need to make a conscious decision about what to do with our
    prosperity. I mean, sometimes I feel like a broken record, but I will
    say this over and over and over again. Anybody who is over 30 years old
    can remember at least one time in his or her life when you have made a
    whopping mistake, not because you were faced with adverse circumstances
    but because things were rocking along so well you thought there was no
    penalty to the failure to concentrate. Anybody who is over 30 years old
    can remember at least one time in your

    [[Page 1454]]

    personal life or in your work life when a mistake has been made because
    it seemed that there were no consequences to the failure to concentrate
    because everything was rolling along.
         And if you really listen to the two sides, the other side really
    seems to be saying, ``Look, we need to just take this thing while it's
    coming because nobody can mess up this economy if they try.'' And I
    don't believe that. I think we need to make a conscious decision as a
    people that we have an obligation, a solemn obligation to our children's
    generation, to use this magic moment to deal with the big issues out
    there, the big challenges, the big opportunities of this century.
         Now, if you get that far, then you have to say, what are those
    challenges; what do you think they ought to do; and are there any real
    differences between the parties? And I have to tell you that I think
    it's obvious what we ought to be doing. We need to figure out how to
    keep this prosperity going and spread its benefits to people and places
    who have been left behind.
         We need to figure out how to make people who have jobs better able
    to balance their responsibilities at work and their responsibilities at
    home--something America still has not done enough on. Child care,
    preschool, after-school, health care for the families that are working
    out there that don't have it yet. All of those things.
         We need to figure out how to continue to grow the economy and do
    even better at preserving and improving the environment, and especially
    dealing with the problem of climate change. We've proved that we can get
    the crime rate down. We ought to commit ourselves to making this the
    safest big country in the world. We can do that in 5 years if we made up
    our mind to do it. We ought to commit ourselves to paying America's debt
    off. We're not running deficits anymore; we're running surpluses. I
    think it ought to be a national policy goal to pay off the public debt.
    That's what I believe.
         Now, I have to tell you, that's a very controversial position among
    Democrats, because we also want to spend more money to educate people,
    to provide health care to poor people. But here's why I'm for that. If
    we keep paying the debt down, we'll keep interest rates down. It'll be
    easier for people to borrow money. It will be easier to invest. There
    will be more jobs. There will be higher incomes. And we'll keep the
    expansion going along. And the best social program any government can
    provide is a good private sector jobs. You've got to have a growing
    economy first.
         We wouldn't be here having this conversation. This election
    wouldn't even be about all this stuff. We're sitting here arguing about
    how to spend the surplus, and is it $1- or $2-trillion over the next 10
    years?
         If I had told you in '92, if I had to come to California and I
    said, ``I want you to vote for me, and I'll get rid of this deficit''--
    we'd been running a deficit for 30 years, and we quadrupled the national
    debt in the last 12 years--``now vote for me, and I'll get rid of it.
    And before I'm gone we'll have three different surpluses, and we'll know
    that we can pay off our debt in the first decade of the 21st century.''
    Do you know what you would have said? You would have said, ``He seems
    like such a nice man, but he's slightly daft, and we better send him
    home.'' [Laughter]
         But it happened. People ask me all the time, what magical new idea
    did we bring to Washington in the economic area? And I always say, in
    one word, arithmetic. That is, we stopped playing games with the
    numbers. We stopped promising people something we couldn't deliver. We
    said if we're going to spend the money, we've got to have the money.
         And we made hard choices. I got rid of hundreds of programs so that
    we could double our investment in education while we were cutting the
    deficit. And those things had to be done.
         Now, what's all this got to do with where we are? So here we are
    now. If you believe these big challenges ought to be faced, then you
    have to say, well, are there consequences to the decision of who gets to
    be President? Are there consequences to the decision who gets elected to
    the Senate, who gets elected to the Congress? And I would argue that
    there are big differences between these candidates, and if you'll listen
    very closely to the debate, the Democrats are a lot more interested in
    you knowing what the differences are than the Republicans are. Because
    they

    [[Page 1455]]

    know if you really understand the differences, two-thirds of the people
    agree with us.
         For example, should we say, okay, now we have the surplus at $2
    trillion over 10 years, estimated, projected, over the next 10 years. So
    their policy is to spend over half of it on a tax cut, $1.3 trillion,
    and then to partially privatize Social Security, which--and guarantee
    the benefits of everybody still in the system, which will cost about
    another $800 billion. So there's $2 billion there. And then to pay for
    ``star wars'' and school vouchers and some other promises, so that we'll
    be back into deficits sooner or later in the next decade if we get the
    whole $2 trillion.
         Our policy, as reflected in the Vice President's position, is we
    may not get the $2 trillion. That great line from ``Jerry McGuire''--
    ``Show me the money!'' The problem with all this tax cut stuff, it
    sounds great and most of you would be better off in the short run with
    their policy. But I emphasize, in the short run, because if we have a
    big tax cut with 4 percent unemployment, it will be perceived as
    inflationary; interest rates will go up more than they've already gone
    up; it will slow the economy; it will cut the profitability of your
    investments; and therefore, the projected surplus will not materialize,
    and we'll be right back in the deficit suit.
         So we're put in a position of telling you things you may not want
    to hear, like the Vice President said the other day, why don't we just
    start by saying we're going to save 20 percent of this projected
    surplus, because $400 billion of this projected surplus are taxes you're
    paying for Medicare. So let's just wall it off, use it to pay down the
    debt until we need it, and then Medicare will last a lot longer.
         Why don't we have a tax cut, but less than--and a sizable one, but
    still less than half the one they propose, so we can focus on wealth
    creation for people that can't do it otherwise, help them establish
    their own savings account, child care, sending kids to college, long-
    term care when you've got an elderly or disabled relative who is sick,
    and then save some money to invest in our future--in education, in
    science and technology, in new environmental technologies, in health
    care, and the things that will change our future?
         Now, there's a huge difference. What do you propose to do with the
    surplus? What do you propose to do with this moment of prosperity? It
    will affect economic policy; it will affect social policy. What are the
    other differences?
         Well, we think we ought to bend over backwards and let everybody
    participate. We think the people that served this food tonight, if
    they're working hard and obeying the law, have just as much right as we
    do to benefit from this new economy. That's what we think. And so we
    think we ought to raise the minimum wage; they don't. We think we also
    ought to have a tax cut for working people that have modest wages with
    children at home. We think that we ought to pass the Patients' Bill of
    Rights, and they don't. We think we ought to have a Medicare-based,
    broad-based prescription program for seniors so that people can get
    medicine that can't afford it today, and they don't.
         If we were creating Medicare today, we'd never create Medicare
    without a drug program today. It was a doctor-and-hospital program in
    1965 because that's what medicine was. Now anybody that lives to be 65
    years old has got a life expectancy of 82. And if they take care of
    themselves and they have access to good health care, they could live
    longer.
         In a few days, we'll have an announcement that the human genome
    project is essentially completed, its basic mapping. You will then see
    in the next couple of years this breathtaking explosion of discoveries
    about the pattern and genes that make you more likely to get certain
    kinds of cancer or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, or become overweight, or
    have a heart attack, or whatever. You'll see all this stuff. And you
    will begin to see kind of individualized plans develop for little babies
    when the mothers bring them home from the hospital that will change the
    whole landscape of health care. And it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see
    children being born within the next 10 years in our country and other
    developed countries that are being born with a life expectancy of 90
    years. That is going to change everything.

    [[Page 1456]]

         So if you're going to live that long, it seems to me that the
    society's obligation is for people not only to live as long but to live
    as well as possible. One thing the Congress did on the bipartisan
    fashion--and I applaud everybody who did, including the Republicans, and
    take the earnings limit off Social Security. We need to do that. You
    can't have--if a huge percentage of your population is over 65 and a
    bunch of them are healthy as can be and they want to work, you don't
    want to have an economic incentive for them not to work when you're
    going to have a ratio of people on Social Security to not--of only two
    to one.
         So we have to think of all these things. Now, why am I for Al Gore
    for President? Not just on all these issues. I could go through--let me
    just talk about crime a minute. I want to talk about crime. I want to
    talk about welfare. We got a bipartisan welfare reform bill through, but
    I had to veto two bills. Why? Because I agreed with the Republicans that
    people who were able-bodied on welfare who could work should work, but
    what I did not agree with is that we should abandon the national
    guarantee of health care and nutrition to their children.
         So we finally got a bill. And I said, we've got work requirements
    in here. This is not going to be a disincentive. But we've got to take
    care of these children. So I vetoed two bills, and we finally got one we
    agreed on. I signed it, and they were saying, ``Well, maybe it was too
    weak.'' All I know is, since I became President, we've got the lowest
    welfare rolls in 32 years, and they're less than half the size they were
    in '93.
         On the crime bill, the first time I ever did an event with Ed
    Rendell when he was mayor was on an anti-drug, anti-crime, anti-gang
    event. Ed and I were so dumb, we didn't know crime was a Republican
    issue; we thought it was an American issue. [Laughter] All this idea
    that it's a Republican issue is like that's what's the matter with
    Washington; it's all about words and stuff instead of what are you
    really producing.
         So we had a crime program: put more cops in the streets, do more
    things to keep kids off the street and out of trouble, and take steps to
    get guns out of the hands of criminals and kids. It wasn't rocket
    science. Yes, the improving economy helped the crime rate. Yes, the
    aging population in some places helped the crime rate. Yes, the sort of
    waning of the crack epidemic helped the crime rate. But put more police
    on the streets, giving the kids something positive to do, and doing more
    to take guns out of the hands of criminals and children also had
    something to do with it.
         Now, I realize that it was a political risk. We lost a dozen
    Members of our caucus in the '94 election because they had the guts to
    vote for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, because the NRA
    convinced people we were going to come and take their guns away. A dozen
    gave up their careers so that your kids could be safer. And these people
    are still talking about--now they say if Governor Bush wins, they'll
    have an office in the White House. And figuratively, they will, because
    they've made their commitments, and they'll have to honor them.
         But look here, not a single hunter has missed a day in the deer
    woods because of the Brady bill or the assault weapons ban. [Laughter]
    And when we banned those cop-killer bullets, they still haven't found
    the first deer wearing a Kevlar vest. [Laughter] I mean, there are no
    problems here. What is the deal here? I mean, what is this about? I
    mean, I can say it. One of the reasons that they dislike me so intensely
    is that I grew up in one of the all-time hunting cultures of the world.
         But this is crazy. You can't have a society where you take no
    sensible steps to keep criminals and little children from having access
    to guns. So the Brady bill has kept a half million felons, fugitives,
    and stalkers from getting guns. We've got a 35-year low on gun crime.
         So what do we want to do? Well, we want to close the gun show
    loophole. That means if somebody goes to a gun show, we think we ought
    to do a background check. We want child trigger locks on the guns. We
    want not to import large capacity ammunition clips which can be used by
    people in America to get around the assault weapons ban.
         Now, there is still not anybody going to miss a day in the deer
    woods. All this rhetoric about gun control is crazy. You know, in
    America, we have a constitutional right to

    [[Page 1457]]

    travel, too. The Supreme Court says there is a constitutional right to
    travel. But if you leave here and you get in your car and you go home,
    you'll have seatbelts; you'll have a speed limit. If you've got a little
    baby, you'd have a child restraint law. And you don't ever hear anybody
    griping about car control, do you? Car control, it's a threat to the
    constitutional rights of travel. [Laughter] Car control is if I come get
    your car and put it in my garage. [Laughter] Otherwise, it's highway
    safety.
         So there is a big difference between our two parties in this. And I
    think it's a huge issue. I'm glad we've got a lower crime rate, but this
    country is nowhere near as safe as it needs to be. And I don't think we
    ought to quit until we're the safest big country in the world. Just like
    I don't think we ought to quit paying down the debt until we're out of
    debt. And these are big ideas. You get the drift here. And we're
    different on these issues.
         So the last thing I want to say is, I hope this election will be an
    honest, open debate where we posit the fact that the candidates for
    President and Senate and Congress are basically honorable people who
    intend to keep their commitments and talk about their differences and
    have an honest debate. I think if we do that, I think Al Gore will be
    elected President. I think that all these great candidates we've got in
    California, we've got a chance to pick up several House seats here. I
    think we'll win all of the ones we've got a chance to win because
    they're good candidates and because the voters will agree with us,
    because we've got a record that proves that in the areas where we're
    different we've gotten results, and because we've got new ideas.
         And I just want to say one word about the Vice President. I think I
    probably know him better than anybody outside his family now. There are
    three reasons that I'd be for him if he weren't my Vice President, and I
    didn't feel obligated in a profound and wonderful sense. One is, I agree
    with the economic policy he's articulated. I don't think we ought to
    risk giving away the whole projected surplus on tax cuts and long-term
    spending commitments. I think it's a risky strategy, and it's not worth
    it, and you wouldn't run your family business that way, and you wouldn't
    run your business that way. And we shouldn't run our Government that
    way. We worked a long time to turn this thing around, and we don't want
    to just squander it again.
         Number two, I think he'll work harder to extend the benefits of
    this prosperity to people in places that aren't part of it now, and to
    help average families balance work and child rearing, open the doors of
    college to everybody.
         Number three, I think he understands the future. This is a big
    deal. Al Gore was talking about global warming before most people even
    knew the two words went together. I'm talking years and years and years
    ago he was talking about it. Now, even the major oil companies admit
    that it's real. The first time we ever had lunch together he showed me
    this chart he's got about greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere
    and how much they've gone up. And in the 8 years we've been here in the
    White House, 7 of them were 7 of the 10 hottest years recorded since
    1400.
         Al Gore was talking about the Internet before other people in
    Congress. He's been falsely accused of claiming he created it. That's
    not true. That's like another one of those bum raps. Once somebody says
    something in the press, they just keep on playing it. It doesn't matter
    if it's not true anymore; it sort of acquires it.
         What he said was that he introduced legislation which helped to
    create it, and it did create it as a phenomenon that went beyond a small
    private government research project. Do you know how many sites there
    were on the World Wide Web when I became President? Fifty. How many are
    there now, everyone? Fifty million? Fifty, and now 50 million. He
    understood that.
         He understands that there is all these fabulous possibilities to
    close the digital divide and to do things that we haven't even imagined,
    but we also are going to have to work hard to protect our old-fashioned
    values. For example, if all of our health records and all of our
    financial records are on somebody's computer somewhere, I think that you
    ought to have some privacy protection. And there are some things I don't
    think other people ought to be able to get unless you say okay.

    [[Page 1458]]

     And somebody that understands all the competing the considerations, it
    would be a good thing to have a President that understood that.
         So I think his economic policy is right. I think he'll do more to
    try to help everybody benefit from the things that are going on. And I
    think he really understands the future. And I think that's what you
    want.
         So what I'd like to ask you to do is to go out and tell people who
    want to know why you came here tonight--not to hear me tell Irish
    jokes--that, well, California is a better place than it was 8 years ago.
    They had some ideas, and they turned out to be pretty good, that you
    agree with Gore's economic policy and you think we ought to spread the
    benefits to more people and build one American community. And you want
    somebody who understands the future and can lead us there.
         And on the critical issues, there really are differences between
    the parties, and it's important that they be clarified and uplifted. But
    if the people believe that this election is about whether we can build
    the future of our dreams for our children, we'll be just fine.
         Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:37 p.m. in Dining Room B at Mr. A's
    Restaurant. In his remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Mike and Carol
    Thorsness; Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic National
    Committee; Bertrand Hug, owner, Mr. A's Restaurant; and Gov. George W.
    Bush of Texas. A tape was not available for verification of the content
    of these remarks.