[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 25 (Monday, June 26, 2000)]
[Pages 1425-1429]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Hillary 2000 Dinner

June 21, 2000

    That was one of my great jokes--[inaudible]--that I intended to be 
president again next year, president of the Senate spouses' club. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say that I love coming to this magnificent home. I'm always 
so happy here. It's a happy place. I love being here. And now I'm here 
as surrogate-in-chief. Hillary is in New York tonight, and I was 
delighted to come by and have a chance to talk to you at the table.
    I would like to just say a couple of things. First of all, thank 
you. I am very grateful that I've had a chance to serve as President. 
And I'm grateful that I had a chance to get elected in a moment where I 
felt that I had some ideas that would change the country for the 
better--and only after I've had years and years and years and years of 
working seriously on these ideas so I could test them, and it turned out 
most of them worked out pretty well. And I feel good about it.
    We've still got a lot of good things going, and I think a lot of 
good things are going to happen in the next 7 months. You may have seen 
yesterday the House--the Senate passed the hate crimes legislation I've 
been pushing for 2 years. A couple of days before that, the House 
reversed itself and decided to leave my process of creating national 
monuments to protect land for all time to come alone. We're moving on a 
lot of the fronts that I hope we'll have some progress on. I think we 
will.
    The second point I'd like to make is that people come up to me all 
the time and say, ``Well, who is going to win this election or that 
election or the other''--except I always say Hillary now, but apart from 
that--and I believe that very strongly. But I think my experience has 
been that the outcome of elections are largely determined by what the 
voters believe the elections are about.
    That's what you were talking to me tonight on the New York City--
what you think the election is about may determine more than anything 
else which candidate you vote for. And what I have been trying to hammer 
home all across the country, to all kinds of audiences--partisan 
audiences, nonpartisan audiences alike--is that this election must be 
about what we're going to do with our prosperity.
    Eight years ago when we were in deep trouble--the economy was down; 
society was divided; we had all kinds of difficulties--everybody knew 
what we had to do. We had to roll up our sleeves and get out of the 
ditch. We had to turn things around. We had to put things moving in the 
right direction. Well, now things are moving in the right direction, and 
the real question is, what do we do with it, not just the budget surplus 
but the confidence, the capacity, to deal with the challenges facing the 
country, to deal with the big opportunities out there?
    And if the American people think that is what we should do, then 
we're going to have a very good election. Because that means it's no 
longer necessary to have one of these sort of mudslinging campaigns 
where everybody tries to convince everybody else that their opponent is 
just one step above a car thief.

[[Page 1426]]

I mean, how many elections have we had like that? That's not necessary. 
You start with the two Presidential candidates, you go through these 
Senate races, these House races, you've got people that make a very 
presentable case for their point of view and that argue it out. And so 
we really can have an election about the future.
    And I worked as hard as I could to turn this country around, get it 
going in the right direction, and that's really what I want to have. If 
you believe that, then there are three things I want you to know--and 
don't laugh. Number one, it's a really big election. How a country deals 
with its prosperity is as important a test of its character and judgment 
as how you deal with adversity.
    There's not a person around this room tonight who cannot remember 
one instance in your life when you made a mistake, not because things 
were going so badly but because things were going so well, you thought 
there was no consequence to the failure to--[inaudible]--if you live 
long enough. Everybody knows that. So this is a big election.
    Point number two, there are real and honest differences between the 
candidates for President, for Senator, for the House, and people, 
historically, pretty well do what they say they're going to do when they 
get in office. Contrary to a popular expression that all politicians are 
a bunch of slugs and don't keep their word, by and large, they do. If 
you look at all the historical studies, they do pretty much what they 
said they were going to do.
    One of the proudest days I've had as President was in '95, when 
things looked so bleak for us, a scholar of the Presidency and the media 
named Thomas Patterson published a report and said I kept a higher 
percentage of my promises to the American people than any of the last 
five Presidents by '95, even though I'd made more, which made me feel 
very good. But most people will do most of the things they say.
    And usually when a President doesn't do it, you wind up being glad. 
For example, aren't you glad that Abraham Lincoln didn't keep his 
promise not to free the slaves? That was one of his 1860 campaign 
promises. Aren't you glad that Franklin Roosevelt didn't keep his 
promise to balance the budget in 1932, when we had 25 percent of the 
people out of work in 1933? It would have been exactly the wrong thing 
to do for him, just like it was the right thing to do for me. So 
basically, you've got a big, important election; you've got real 
differences.
    Now, here's the third thing, only the Democrats want you to know 
what the differences are. Really. The real differences. You see that in 
the way the Republicans are basically trying to make everybody forget 
they had a primary season in which they made a lot of very specific 
commitments, and they don't want to talk about them anymore.
    But I think they're honorable. I think they'll keep the commitments 
they made in the primaries. And it makes it uncomfortable for them when, 
like Mr. LaPierre, the NRA guy, says, ``Well, we'll have an office in 
the White House if Bush wins the election,'' because they want him to go 
away until after the election.
    But there are real differences, and by and large, they relate to how 
we think we ought to manage this moment of prosperity.
    And I'll just say a brief word about the Vice President. I do 
believe by now I know him as well as anybody besides his wife, maybe his 
children. He's been, by far--as a matter of historical fact, he's had by 
far a greater positive impact on the country in this job than anyone who 
has ever had this job.
    Now, I have to make full disclosure. That's a very self-serving 
statement for me because the way the job works, you've got to know what 
the President asks the Vice President to do. But I've spent a lot of 
time studying the Presidency, and I never could figure out why you would 
want a Vice President who didn't go to work every day. I never could 
figure out why the Presidents felt threatened by their Vice President--I 
didn't get all that stuff.
    I picked Al Gore because he basically was in tune with me, and we 
got along together. But he knew things I didn't know. He had experiences 
I didn't have, and he has made an absolutely incalculable contribution 
to whatever good we've accomplished in the White House. And I think he 
should be elected because I agree with his economic plan, as compared 
with the alternative, and we

[[Page 1427]]

need to keep the prosperity going; because I know he'll work harder to 
extend the benefits of our prosperity to other people, whether it's the 
differences they have over the minimum wage or the Patients' Bill of 
Rights or you name it. And because he understands the future. He 
understands issues like climate change and the other energy and 
environmental issues, or the Internet privacy issues, which I predict 
will be very big for all of you over the next 5 or 6 years. All of our 
medical records and all of our financial records and all of our other 
records, everything is on a computer somewhere. I think that's a big 
issue.
    I'm very pro-high technology. I've tried to do everything I could to 
create as many jobs to support a competitive environment with the 
Telecommunications Act and all. But I think these privacy issues are 
going to be big.
    So I think he's good because I like his economic plan. I think he'll 
do more to help everybody participate in our society, and I think he 
understands the future. And it's really important, because the next 8 
years are going to be different from the last 8. The issue is not 
whether we're going to change; the issue is how are we going to change.
    I wouldn't vote for anybody that said, ``Hey, I'd like to be 
President because I'll do everything Bill Clinton did.'' I wouldn't 
support a candidate--that would be wrong. Things are changing too much. 
So that's my take on that.
    Now, in Hillary's case, what I think will happen is she'll go 
through a period of time where--apparently, just looking, I saw Mr. 
Lazio had a film the other day that had me on it, saying something nice 
about him. Well, I'm not like them. If a Republican votes on something 
that I think's good, I'll brag on them. I'm not ashamed of it. I don't 
think you have to say, just because somebody is a member of the other 
party, that they're right over there with Attila the Hun.
    But I kind of--it was a gas that he would try to give the people of 
New York the impression that I'd prefer him to my wife in the Senate. 
[Laughter] Because she would have voted for my economic plan, not 
against it, and she would have voted against the contract on America, 
not for it. She wouldn't vote to shut the Government down and get rid of 
the Department of Education or get rid of the 100,000 police that 
lowered the crime rate in New York and other places. So, there, too, 
there are real differences.
    I think the big issue here on the economic front for both of them--
and it's one that all of you need to think about because you could 
actually be better off the day after it passed with the Republican plan, 
everybody here--the day after it passed. Because basically, what they 
want to do is spend the whole projected surplus on the tax cut, for 
Social Security transition costs and extra defense costs. And what we 
want to do--even though I'm not a candidate, I strongly support this--is 
to set aside at a minimum--at an absolute rock-bottom minimum--at least 
20 percent of this projected surplus which comes then from your Medicare 
taxes, and put it in a Medicare Trust Fund, and get it away from any 
spending, and use it to continue to pay the debt down, and then we want 
to have a tax cut that's much smaller, probably about 40 percent the 
size of theirs--still substantial, but not as big as theirs--slightly 
less than half of it--and we want to invest more money in education and 
research and technology and health care and the environment.
    Now, why is ours better? Because, number one, we may not have--just 
because some economist says we're going to have $1.9 trillion over the 
next 10 years doesn't mean it's going to happen. And I'll bet you 
everybody in this room, in your heart of hearts, says, ``Gee, I hope 
that will happen, but it might not.'' You know, we might not have 4 
years like these last 7 years.
    If I tell you--this gentleman was telling me about his business in 
Buffalo; if I said, ``What's your projected revenue? Are you going to go 
out and not only spend it all, but borrow money on the basis of it, no 
matter what, with no safety net?'' you probably wouldn't do that. And so 
I think if we--I believe if you have sort of a Bush-Lazio tax plan, and 
it passed, you'd all be better off the day after because all of you can 
afford to come here tonight. But you wouldn't be better off if it led to 
a 2-percent increase in interest rates. But in 2 years, the impact it 
would have on the markets, on the overall economy, on the unemployment 
rate, you'd be worse off. And the overall economy would

[[Page 1428]]

be worse off, and we wouldn't have any money to do these things.
    And the way our crowd has it structured is, number one, they're 
going to save 20 percent of the money on the front end and put it into 
Medicare, as long as it materializes, which is good because when the 
baby boomers retire it's going to be hard to--[inaudible]--and we're 
going to keep paying the debt down as fast as we can, which I believe is 
good. I think since there's so much private debt, we should pay the 
public debt down and keep interest rates as low as possible. That's what 
I believe.
    And most of the people I know that have done well in this economy, 
if they have to choose between low interest rates and a growing stock 
market and a tax cut, and if it's either/or, they would choose the 
former every single time. So this is a big issue, and I think it's 
important.
    The second big cluster of issues, I'll say again: what do you 
believe our obligations are to those who haven't done as well in this 
whole thing as we have or those that have got the good jobs, but they 
have other problems.
    The biggest challenge most working families, even upper class 
working families that work for salaries, face today is how to balance 
the burden of raising their children and succeeding at work. Because in 
the United States we have less support for that than our competing 
countries do. We don't do as much to help people pay for child care. We 
don't do as much to make sure they all have affordable health insurance. 
We don't do as much to make sure the kids are all in preschool or after-
school programs. We don't do as much to guarantee that they have family 
leave options so that if the baby is sick or the parents are sick or 
there's a newborn baby, that everybody can get pretty much what they 
need.
    Now, I think this whole cluster of family-related issues, I'll 
predict to you, will be very big over the next decade, because we're not 
all working just to have money to go spend it on things; that's not why 
people do it. They find reward from their work, and they try to run 
businesses that they're proud of, and they want to raise families 
they're proud of. And this all has to be done in the context of a 
certain value structure. And if we've got a country where, in order to 
be a success, you have to just basically walk away from your 
responsibilities as parents, we're in deep trouble here. And this is a 
challenge for every business, for everybody, and we're going to have to 
work through a lot of these issues together.
    But one of the reasons that I think Hillary ought to go to the 
Senate is that she spent 30 years working on this stuff. She knows more 
than anyone I personally know about adoption, about foster care, about 
the children's health care and emotional and nutritional and educational 
needs, about the relationship of early childhood brain development to 
whatever the Government policy is. She has lived with this stuff.
    And I was just kind of surprised when all those New York House 
Members came to see her and asked her to run for the Senate. I was 
surprised she'd even think of it. I said, ``Do you know how much this is 
going to cost you?'' She said, ``You're talking to me about money?'' 
[Laughter] She laughed at me. She said, ``You, who have never cared if 
we had a nickel in the bank''--[inaudible]--and we laughed about it, you 
know, and we admitted that in the end we were kind of public service 
junkies. It's what we care about. [Laughter]
    And for 30 years she's worked for me and worked on the side. The 
whole time we were in Arkansas, she gave away lots of potential income 
every year just to do public service, because it's what she wanted to 
do. And I can just tell you that in a lot of ways she's better than I am 
on a lot of this stuff, and she knows things I don't know. And she will 
be absolutely unbelievable.
    I know there are still some people in New York who say, ``Well, why 
is she doing this, and why are they coming to New York, and why is she 
running for the Senate?'' It's not very complicated. She would prefer to 
do that than go out and get real rich. I mean, that's basically--she 
would prefer to do this work than even be a wonderful commentator and 
talk about it. Arguably, in the modern world, people who have access to 
communications can influence more people because they can just talk to a 
lot of people and convince them to go change their behavior. Not

[[Page 1429]]

her, man. She thinks she's supposed to show up for the job, do it in the 
old-fashioned way--bam, bam, bam. That's what she believes.
    All I can tell you is, I've been around a lot of people, and I've 
never seen anybody that I thought had the gift for public service that 
she does. And so what she's got to do is work like crazy and just keep 
meeting people in New York, and basically chip away at the people who 
are still questioning, ``Well, why is she doing this?'' And at some 
point between now and election day, a critical mass of people will have 
been reached, and they will be talking to other people, who will be 
talking to other people, who will be talking to other people.
    Did you read that little book, ``The Tipping Point?'' Have you all 
read that, how little things make big changes? At some point, we'll 
reach the tipping point in this whole issue, and it will vanish, and I 
think she'll be elected. But she can only do it if we can get our 
message out, which is why it's so important.
    So, anyway, that's my pitch. You've got a good Senator. You've got a 
good Presidential candidate. It's a big election. There are big 
differences, and I do want you to know what they are.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 10:30 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president, 
National Rifle Association; Representative Rick Lazio; and Gov. George 
W. Bush of Texas.