[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 30 (Monday, July 31, 2000)]
[Pages 1695-1699]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate 
Terry L. Lierman

July 26, 2000

    Thank you very much. Let me say to all of you, I thank you for being 
here. And I want to thank the organizers of this event for holding it in 
this wonderful museum. It's one of Hillary's and my favorite places in 
all of Washington, DC, and I hope you'll always support it and bring 
some people back here. This is a great thing for the women of America, 
this museum, and I'm delighted to be here.
    I want to thank Governor Glendening for what he said and for his 
sterling leadership. Maryland, in so many ways, has led the country in 
education and health policy and so many other things since Parris 
Glendening has been Governor and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has been 
Lieutenant Governor. I am so proud of them. I have been to Maryland more 
than any other State in America the last 8 years, to highlight reforms 
at the State level that work. And it's a real tribute to him. I'm 
grateful to him.
    I also want to thank the Members of Congress who are here and those 
who are gone. I know Steny Hoyer was here; I heard him, with his booming 
voice, speaking when I came in and started taking pictures with a few of 
you. And I thank him and Al Wynn. And thank you, Jim Moran, for being 
here. Thank you, Elijah Cummings, for being here. And thank you, Patrick 
Kennedy, for being here, out there in the crowd, just one of the folks, 
like all the Kennedys. [Laughter] I appreciate you being here. Good for 
you.
    Patrick has been the chairman of the Democratic Congressional 
Campaign Committee, which means he has to go out and make sure all the 
House Members have enough money to get on television. So he's

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just out here checking you all out. He'll probably call you all tomorrow 
for somebody else. [Laughter] But you've done a great job. Thank you, 
Patrick.
    Finally, I want to say a word of appreciation and admiration and 
thanks to Senator Paul Sarbanes--I think not only one of the brightest 
but one of the most wise people in the United States Congress. You are 
very lucky to have him as your Senator. I'm glad to see him and 
Christina here tonight. Thank you.
    And I would like to thank Terry and his entire family, because this 
is a family endeavor, for their commitment to this race and to the 
future of our country. It is not easy to run for Congress today, still 
less to run against an incumbent and to run for a clear reason that 
overrides his or anyone else's individual interests. And I admire him 
for doing it, for taking it on, and for doing it with such gusto. So I 
thank you, and I thank your family.
    Now, it is true, as all of you know, that I've been up most of the 
last 15 days. This will be the first night in 15 nights that I've been 
to bed before 2 o'clock in the morning, and the most of the nights we 
were at Camp David, we went to bed at 3 or 4. The last 2 nights we were 
all up until 5 o'clock in the morning. Somewhere in the middle--I can't 
remember exactly when--I flew to Okinawa and back. [Laughter] So I'm 
just barely here.
    But I'm honored to be here. I'm very grateful to the people of 
Maryland for voting for me and Al Gore twice, for giving us a chance to 
serve, and I thank you for that. I just want to say two or three things.
    First of all, this is a profoundly important election. Ninety-two 
was a big election because the country was in trouble. And the people 
voted for me and gave me a chance, even though most of them probably, 
when they first heard about me running, had the same reaction Abe Pollin 
did. [Laughter] I'll never forget President Bush referring to me as the 
Governor of a small southern State. [Laughter] And when I ran, I was so 
naive, I thought it was a compliment. [Laughter] And you know something? 
I still do.
    But it didn't take rocket science to figure out we needed to make a 
change in the country. But now--it's interesting, a lot of these surveys 
show that people don't know if there is a real difference between the 
Vice President and the Republican candidate's economic policy or the two 
parties--what's the deal here?
    And the first thing I have to drum home is that this is a really 
important election. And a lot of people won't believe that because 
things seem to be going well. You say, ``Well, how can it be so 
important? The economy is strong. We've got a surplus. All the social 
indicators are going well: The unemployment rate is the lowest it's been 
in 30 years; the welfare rolls have been cut in half; the crime rate is 
dropping; teen pregnancy rate is dropping; drug use among young people 
is dropping. What's the big deal here? We have no internal crisis or 
pressing external threat. The United States is involved in making peace 
around the world and all that.''
    I'll tell you what the big deal is. In my lifetime we have never had 
a moment where we had this much prosperity, this much social progress, 
and this much national self-confidence. But the world is changing very 
fast, and there are all these huge challenges and opportunities out 
there. And for the first time in my adult lifetime, we're actually free 
to talk about what we might do to meet them, to build the future of our 
dreams for the children here. And I'm so glad so many kids came to this.
    So the reason it's so important is, I don't know when we'll ever 
have another chance like this. It may be another 35 years. It may be 
another 50 years. And for a democracy, it's normally quite difficult to 
take on big challenges, except when you're under the gun. So I honestly 
believe how a nation deals with this kind of prosperity and all the 
opportunities it presents in a rapidly changing world is just as stern a 
test of our character, our values, and our judgment as how we dealt with 
adversity 8 years ago. And it may be harder.
    There is not a person in this audience tonight over 30 years old who 
can't remember once in your life when you made a big mistake, not 
because things were going so bad but because things were going so well 
that

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you thought there was no penalty to the failure to concentrate. But make 
no mistake, this is a huge election.
    The second thing I want to say to you is that there are big 
differences--huge. And I'll talk a little about some of them in a 
minute.
    And the third thing I want to say is, only the Democrats want you to 
know what the differences are. [Laughter] What does that tell you about 
who you ought to vote for? [Laughter] It beats anything I ever saw. My 
wife's opponent up in New York is running ads with me and Senator 
Moynihan in them; running ads saying, ``I voted for a patients' bill of 
rights.'' The operative word there is ``a,'' as opposed to ``the.'' And 
it's happening all over the country, just blur, blur, blur, take 
advantage of the era of good feelings, out-spend them, and smile them to 
death and hope nobody ever figures out what the differences are.
    There are real differences. And I'll just start with economic 
policy. Today I announced that since this Congress began last year, the 
Republicans have, piece by piece, passed tax cuts equal to the whole 
projected surplus over the next 10 years--the whole projected surplus. 
That's before we spend any money over and above bare inflation, before 
we deal with any emergency, before they spend any of their spending 
priorities. And let me remind you, this is projected. And their platform 
calls for even bigger tax increases. Now, what they want to tell you is, 
``Hey, this economy is so strong, you couldn't mess it up with a stick 
of dynamite. It's your money. I'm going to give it back to you.'' That's 
their line.
    Our line is, ``We got where we are being fiscally responsible. We 
want to keep paying down the debt. We want to have enough money to 
invest in the education of our children, in science and technology, in 
the environment and health care, and we'll give you a tax cut to educate 
your kids, for child care, for long-term care, for elderly and disabled 
people, to help people save for retirement, to help especially lower 
income working people with a lot of kids.'' But we're not going to tell 
you, even in an election year, we can give you more than is prudent 
because we've got to keep the economy strong. And if you keep interest 
rates low, which we'll do and they won't, one percent lower interest 
rates over the next decade is worth $250 billion in lower home 
mortgages--$250 billion--and nearly $50 billion more in lower car 
payments and in college loan payments.
    So here's my pitch to you: If you got one of those letters in the 
mail from Ed McMahon--[laughter]--and it says, you know how it says on 
the envelope, you may have won $10 million. Would you go out the next 
day and spend the $10 million, based on the envelope? Well, if you 
would, you ought to be for them. If not, you better stick with us and 
keep this economy going.
    There couldn't be any bigger difference in economic policy than 
there is in this year. They actually want to go--they think now that we 
have gotten the budget balanced and now we've run a surplus and we've 
paid $300 billion or $400 billion off the national debt, that you'll be 
willing to go back to what they did for 12 years. That's the deal here. 
That's what this election is about on economic policy. It could hardly 
be a starker difference. And you have to decide. And then you've got to 
talk to other people about it.
    Then there is a big difference in social policy. We want to have a 
responsible gun safety approach in America. We want to strengthen the 
Brady bill and close the gun show loophole. We want to stop the 
importation of large capacity ammunition clips. We want child safety 
locks on all the guns in America, like Maryland already requires. And 
Vice President Gore and I believe that people that buy handguns ought to 
have a photo I.D. license, just like a car license, to prove you passed 
a gun safety check and a background check. That's what I believe. They 
honestly don't believe that. I'm convinced they didn't just sell out to 
the NRA; they just agree with them. You don't have to say anything bad 
about them; they just don't believe that.
    Now, we've tried it their way. We've tried it our way. And gun crime 
has dropped 35 percent since we adopted the Brady bill and the assault 
weapons ban, and a half a million people were denied the right to buy 
handguns because they had a criminal background problem or some other 
problem in their background that made them manifestly unfit. You have to 
decide.

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    The NRA says, if the other crowd wins the White House, they'll have 
an office there. That's what they said. That's not a negative campaign 
ad. That's what they said.
    That's another new feature you'll notice in this election. This year 
the Republicans, who pioneered for 20 years negative campaigns, smashing 
us all to bits and telling everybody how terrible we were and how there 
was nothing good about us--they now have sworn off negative campaigns. 
Furthermore, their definition of a negative campaign is if you say how 
they voted. [Laughter] If you tell people how they--how dare you do such 
a thing. How can you be so mean and unfair as to tell people how we 
voted and what we said in the primary, when we hoped no general election 
voters were looking? It's a big deal.
    Look, we're laughing, having a good time. But this is a big deal. 
This is about people's lives. Yes, we've got the lowest crime rate in a 
long time, and yes, I'm proud it has dropped every year. But this 
country is not near safe enough. You know it's not. I know it's not. And 
it's important.
    There is a huge difference in health care policy. Whether we're 
going to provide Medicare for the baby boom generation without 
bankrupting our kids, whether we're going to provide a real, affordable 
prescription drug benefit for all the seniors in our country who need 
it. The bill that they passed won't work, and even if it did, it would 
leave more than half the seniors who need the drug coverage behind. It's 
just crazy. It's not right.
    And I could just go on and on and on. There are real, significant 
differences here. The hate crimes legislation, should we have it or not? 
Employment and nondiscrimination, should we have it or not? It's a huge 
issue.
    The final thing I want to say is that a lot of you talked to me 
tonight about the Middle East peace process. And I don't want to say any 
more than I've already said, except that it's nowhere near over, and I 
think it was a very important 2 weeks. The parties had never before 
really come to grips in an official, face-to-face way with the profound 
differences in the way they imagined their future and the profound 
similarities. But you should not be disheartened.
    But here's what I want to tell you about that. It is the most 
visible and powerful example in the world today about how we define our 
differences and our commonality. You all know that one of the most 
profound differences is over what the future of Jerusalem should be. 
It's interesting, isn't it, that the three great monotheistic religions 
of the world basically grew out of the same soil and look at Jerusalem 
as their Holy City.
    Now, if all these people, billions of them now in the world that 
believe there is just one God who created us all, and they understand 
that reality in slightly different ways, how can it be that what is 
different about them is more important than their common humanity as 
children of God?
    I say that to those of you who saw the accounts over the weekend--
I'm telling you, these are very impressive people on these negotiating 
teams. They're very impressive people. And you thought, ``Well, gosh, 
I'd wish they'd worked out--I wonder why they couldn't work that out. I 
wonder why people ever can't get over their differences to what they 
have in common.''
    You know, why couldn't the Irish and the Catholics in Northern 
Ireland get over it for so long? It's a little-bitty place, smaller than 
Israel, even. Why did all the Orthodox Christians and the Catholics and 
the Muslims in the Balkans bloody themselves in Bosnia and Kosovo and 
before in Croatia? Why do these things happen?
    Well, why do we ever have racial discrimination in America? Why do 
we still have hate crimes? Why does some guy go nuts in the Middle West 
and kill the African-American former basketball coach at Northwestern 
and then shoot a young, Korean Christian walking out of church? And why 
did a crazy guy shoot a bunch of Jewish kids going to their community 
center in L.A., and then kill a Filipino postal worker because he was 
Asian and a Federal employee? Why did Matthew Shepard get stretched out 
on a rack?
    Now, the point I'm trying to make is this--and I'm not accusing the 
Republicans of this. But one of the things that I'm proudest of is that 
the Democratic Party is the more inclusive party in America. We are. I 
was so proud of a man that I think a lot of, actually--a Republican 
United States Senator who gave

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a speech for the hate crimes legislation, using the parable of what 
Jesus said to the woman who was caught in sin and brought to him for 
stoning. And he said to let he who is among you without sin cast the 
first stone. The whole Senate was practically weeping when this guy 
spoke. It was so moving.
    But why is that? Because they were surprised that a member of his 
party and his wing of his party would do such a noble thing. It was a 
noble thing he did. But why were they surprised? Because they expect 
us--the American people expect us to stand up for inclusion for people, 
without regard to their background, their race, their religion, their 
sexual orientation, or their income. They expect us to stand up for 
ordinary people and the left-behind and the broken and the vulnerable. 
And I'm proud of that.
    I tell people this all the time. You ought to be for the Democrats 
this year because our economic policy is right, and it's no time to 
reverse it. You ought to be for us because we'll try to include 
everybody, including those who aren't part of our economic prosperity. 
You ought to be for us because we will think of the future and we want 
the baby boomers to be able to retire without bankrupting their children 
and grandchildren. You ought to be for us because we have a good 
education policy and a good environmental policy.
    But the most important thing of all is, we really do want to take 
everybody along for the ride. And in the end, as I have just learned 
over 15 hard days, that is the most important thing of all.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

 Note:  The President spoke at 8:27 p.m. at the Museum of Women in the 
Arts. In his remarks, he referred to Senator Sarbanes' wife, Christina; 
Abe Pollin, owner, National Basketball Association Washington Wizards, 
and chairman of Mr. Lierman's campaign; Gov. George W. Bush of Texas; 
and Ed McMahon, spokesperson, Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Mr. 
Lierman is a candidate for Maryland's Eighth Congressional District.