[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 34 (Monday, August 28, 2000)]
[Pages 1908-1912]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Representative Debbie Stabenow
in Bingham Farms, Michigan

August 22, 2000

    Thank you very, very much. I want to begin by saying thank you to 
Brian and Jennifer for opening their home. This is such a beautiful 
place. And the backyard is wonderful, and the weather has cooperated. 
It's an omen, Debbie.
    I want to thank Senator Carl Levin for being here. I wish I could 
tell you all the times over the last 8 years that I have seen Carl Levin 
time and time again stand up on the floor of the Senate and do the right 
thing, not only for Michigan but for the people of the United States. He 
is a magnificent

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United States Senator, and he deserves a good fight--[inaudible].
    I don't know if John Conyers is here. I heard he was coming. Hello, 
John, it's nice to see you. Let me say that one of the corollary 
benefits of electing five more, six more Democrats to the House of 
Representatives is that John Conyers will be the chairman of the House 
Judiciary Committee, and it will be a credit to the United States. And I 
thank you.
    Millie, I'm glad to see you. You look good in that Medal of Freedom. 
[Laughter] And you earned it. And I want to say a special word of thanks 
to Doreen and David Hermelin for 9 years of friendship and support, for 
doing such a magnificent job in Norway, and David has made me laugh from 
Michigan to Washington to Oslo. And I suspect I'm not the only person in 
this crowd besides your family that feels deeply indebted to you for 
being a magnificent human being. And I thank you so much.
    Now, this is an unusual election for me. It's the first time in 26 
years they've had one that I'm not running for something. [Laughter] 
Most days I'm okay about it. [Laughter] My family has a new candidate, 
making Debbie my second favorite Senate candidate who is a woman running 
in America today. [Laughter] And I thank the Hermelins for helping her, 
as well.
    My party has a new leader, and I thought he did a magnificent job 
last Thursday night. And Michigan is very, very important to what 
happens this year. It is not an accident that early Tuesday morning 
Hillary and I got up in Los Angeles and flew across the country to drive 
to Monroe, Michigan, for the symbolic handoff with the Vice President 
and Tipper Gore. It is profoundly important. It's also important because 
of this Senate race.
    I admire Debbie Stabenow. I admire her for the work she's done in 
the Congress. I admire her for standing up for what she believes. I 
admire her for leaving the confines of a safe House seat and the 
prospect of being in the majority in the House of Representatives to 
take a step of challenging an incumbent Senator. I want her to win, and 
she can win, and she should win if all of you will do what you can to 
help her between now and November.
    Now, as I said the other night in Los Angeles, this is a big 
election. And every Senate seat, every House seat is important, and 
obviously the White House is a profoundly important thing. But the only 
thing I'm worried about in this election is that we might get all the 
way to November, and people might not understand because things are 
going so well that it is a big election with big choices and big 
differences.
    I am absolutely convinced if the people of Michigan understand what 
the choices are and what the consequences to them and their families 
are, that Debbie will be elected and that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman will 
be elected. That's what I believe. I believe that, and so I thank you 
for your contributions; I thank you for coming here. But I just want to 
take 2 minutes to say what I tried to hammer home last night and to make 
a couple of other points--or last week.
    Number one, we started 8 years ago with a simple vision that America 
in the 21st century ought to be a place where opportunity is alive for 
every responsible citizen, where without regard to our backgrounds and 
our differences, we are coming together, not being driven apart, and 
where we're still the world's leading force for peace and freedom.
    Now, we had a strategy: prepare people for this new era by creating 
the conditions and giving the people the tools to make the most of their 
own lives and giving everybody a chance. Get the roadblocks out of the 
way and give people a hand up who needed it. We just got fresh evidence 
today that that's working. Today we got the 4-year results on our 
welfare reform efforts. Welfare rolls now are at a 35-year low in the 
United States of America, something you can all be proud of.
    But I want to reiterate something else I said. I believe all the 
best things--for all the good things that have happened in America the 
last 8 years, even greater achievements are out there if, but only if, 
we focus on the big challenges and make the right choices. And there's 
some big challenges out there. If we have the longest economic expansion 
in history, how are we going to keep the prosperity going and extend its 
benefits to people in places left behind? How are we going to get 
America out of debt for the first time since 1835? How are we going to 
meet the

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challenge of the aging of America? When the baby boomers like me are all 
over 65, there will only be two people working for every one person 
drawing Social Security.
    How are we going to meet the challenge of the children of America, 
the largest and most diverse group of children we have ever had? Will 
they all get a world-class education, or not? How are we going to meet 
the challenge of balancing work and family in a world where most parents 
have to work?
    How are we going to meet the challenge of staying ahead in science 
and technology and protecting our values? When all your medical and 
financial records are on the Internet, when all of us have a little gene 
card that says everything that's wrong with us, how are we going to 
protect our privacy and keep people from depriving others of health 
insurance or a job?
    How are we going to meet the challenge of global warming and still 
keep the economy going? How are we going to deal with even greater 
racial, religious, ethnic, and other diversities? And what will it take 
for us to continue to lead the world toward the kind of peace I've 
worked so hard for, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland to the 
Balkans? What will it take?
    Now, don't let anybody tell you there are no big issues in this 
election. This is big stuff. And how a country deals with its 
prosperity, its good times, is just as stern a test of its judgment, its 
values, its character as how you deal with adversity. After all, when I 
came to Michigan in 1992, and asked the people to vote for me, it didn't 
take a stroke of genius to understand that we had to do something 
different. As Al Gore used to say, ``Everything that should be up was 
down. Everything that should be down was up.'' We couldn't keep doing 
the same things.
    Now we have to think about how to meet these challenges. And I just 
want to mention two or three things that I think are profoundly 
important. I could talk about a dozen, but I'll just mention three.
    First, on health care: This United States Senator would vote for, 
not against, the Patients' Bill of Rights, would vote for a Medicare 
drug program that all of our seniors who need it could have access to. 
That is important.
    The second thing I want to talk about a little bit is the economy, 
and that relates to the attack that's been leveled against her by her 
opponent. I saw the other day--I was reading the papers, getting ready 
to come here, that her opponent says, ``Well, you know, she'll go vote 
for that big drug program, she and Carl Levin. There's just going to be 
like a $600 million tax or a billion dollar tax. It's just going to be 
terrible.'' I heard all that. It's like, we're going to spend too much 
money.
    Now, I want you to listen to this because this is the most important 
distinction that will affect everybody that I think is not well 
understood. What are we going to do with our surplus, and how is it 
going to affect the economy? Here's our position. Our position is we 
have a large projected surplus; we should, however, not spend it all 
today, first, because it hasn't come in; it's a projected surplus. So 
what should we do with it? Here's what we say. We say we want to give 
the American people a tax cut we can afford, that includes marriage 
penalty relief, college tuition deduction, help for child care, for 
long-term care for an elderly or disabled relative, for saving for 
retirement.
    We think we have to save some money back to invest in education and 
in health care, including this Medicare prescription drug program. We 
think we have to save some money back so that we can lengthen the life 
of Social Security and Medicare, to get it out beyond the life 
expectancy of the baby boom generation, so that when we retire we don't 
bankrupt our kids and their ability to raise our grandchildren. And if 
we do it that way, we can get this country out of debt over the next 10 
or 12 years, for the first time since 1835, a year before Arkansas and 
Michigan became States.
    Now, that's our position. Their position sounds better the first 
time you hear it, and it doesn't take as long to say it. Their position 
is, ``Hey, we've got this big projected surplus. It's your money. Vote 
for us. We're going to give it all back to you.'' Sounds great. Doesn't 
take as long to say. Here's the problem.
    It is literally true that their combined tax cut promises spend all 
the projected surplus

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and then some, leaving nothing for education, health care, the 
environment, nothing for emergencies, nothing for their own spending 
promises, their Star Wars promise, their promise to partially privatize 
Social Security, which alone would cost a trillion dollars. And most 
important of all, the money is not there yet.
    Now look, this is a big deal. The Council of Economic Advisers has 
estimated that even if all this money comes in, the plan that Debbie and 
Carl would vote for would keep interest rates one percent lower every 
year for a decade than their plan, if all the money comes in. In other 
words, best case. You know what that's worth to you? Two hundred fifty 
billion dollars in lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car 
payments, $15 billion in lower college loan payments. In other words, 
another $300 billion tax cut.
    Our plan costs way less than half of what theirs does and gives more 
money to two-thirds of the American people. Now, nearly everybody in 
this room would be better off under their plan the first year, because 
it helps people who can afford to go to fundraisers like this. 
[Laughter] And I hope I'll be one of them next year. [Laughter] But 
what's the problem? Every one of you will be worse off as soon as those 
interest rates started going up and the stock market started going down 
and the economy started getting weaker.
    This is a huge deal, not widely understood. You have to find a way 
to tell your friends and neighbors: We have worked too hard to get this 
country out of the ditch; we have worked too hard to get rid of this 
deficit; we can't show up next year and say, ``Here's our projected 
surplus. Let's give it all away in a tax cut.'' And the drug program 
that she supports can easily be funded to help every senior citizen who 
needs it in this country and still have a tax cut, and still get us out 
of debt.
    And if all the money doesn't come in, we've got a cushion built into 
ours. Now, you've got to hammer this home. Think how hard we've worked 
together as a country to turn it around economically, to get interest 
rates down, to make investments pay off, to generate jobs and create 
hope and opportunity. And in some blinding flash should we just throw it 
away by giving away all of our projected income?
    I say all the time it really reminds me of these letters I used to 
get, back when I was a civilian, in the mail from the Publishers 
Clearing House, those sweepstakes letters signed by Ed McMahon: ``You 
may have won $10 million.'' That's what your projected income is: ``You 
may have won $10 million.'' Well, if you spent the money the next day, 
you probably shouldn't vote for her. [Laughter] But if you didn't, you 
should vote for Debbie Stabenow; you should vote for Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman and support Carl Levin and keep this prosperity going. This is 
a profoundly important issue.
    The last thing I want to say is this: A United States Senator has to 
cast important votes that are more important than economics, that go to 
the heart of who we are as a people and how we live and whether we're 
going to be one America, whether we're going to respect everybody's 
privacy and everybody's rights and everybody's diversity--the hate 
crimes legislation, the employment nondiscrimination legislation, and 
maybe most important of all, ratifying or failing to approve Justices 
appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
    Now, the next President of the United States will have between two 
and four appointments to the Supreme Court. I had two in my first term, 
and I'm proud of the job they're doing. And I never asked them to 
reflect every view I had, but I do think it is important that we have a 
President who will appoint Justices that will stick up for basic civil 
rights, including the right to choose, and Senators who will vote to 
ratify such judges.
    And if this is an important issue to friends and neighbors of yours 
and people you know, you cannot let them pretend that the vote in the 
Senate race or the vote in the President's race is not going to have an 
impact on this.
    So I will say again, if you believe in the Patients' Bill of Rights 
and the Medicare drug benefits that all seniors can afford, you've got 
to vote for Debbie and Al and Joe. If you believe that we should get 
this country out of debt and keep the prosperity going and save some 
money to invest in education and health care and have a tax cut

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we can afford, you've got to vote for Debbie and Al and Joe. If you 
believe in a woman's right to choose and if you believe in the hate 
crimes legislation and building one America that we can all be a part 
of, you've got to vote for Debbie and for Al and Joe.
    That is clear. And you have to do what you can. This is the most 
important thing of all. I know I am, if I might use an expression out of 
my faith, I know I am preaching to the saved today. But what I'm trying 
to say to you is, it is not good enough even for you to come here to 
this fundraiser. Every one of you, every one of you, has friends who may 
not even be Democrats, but they certainly aren't as interested in 
politics as you are. They never come to fundraisers like this. They 
don't think about this stuff all the time. But they're good citizens, 
and they will show up and vote. And they have to understand it's a big 
election with big choices, with big differences that have huge 
consequences to the lives our children will have.
    So I implore you, if you believe in what you did in coming here 
today, go out there and tell people if they want to keep the prosperity 
going and extend it, if they want to get this country out of debt, if 
they want to see all our seniors have the medicine they need as more and 
more of us grow older, if they want to preserve a right to choose for a 
woman and the right to build one America without regard to all the 
differences that make this a great and interesting country, there is 
only one choice in this election: Debbie Stabenow, Al Gore, and Joe 
Lieberman.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 6:55 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to reception hosts Brian Hermelin, president, 
Active Aero, Inc., and his wife, Jennifer; Mr. Hermelin's father, David 
B. Hermelin, former U.S. Ambassador to Norway, and his wife, Doreen; and 
political activist Mildred (Millie) Jeffrey, to whom the President 
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 9. Representative 
Stabenow is a candidate for U.S. Senate from Michigan.