[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 39 (Monday, October 2, 2000)]
[Pages 2188-2193]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Dinner in
Brentwood, California
September 23, 2000
The President. Thank you.
Audience member. Four more years! [Laughter]
The President. That's one song we won't sing tonight. [Laughter]
Wow. Well, first, let me thank Michael and Jena and everyone who brought
us all together for a perfectly wonderful evening. I think you've
actually had a good time. I hope you have. I have.
And my friend David Foster, thank you for putting together that
show. It was wonderful. I love Richard Marx's songs. I'm glad I got to
hear Kayla. Nita was stunning. Jessica took my breath away. Those of you
who love opera know there's no 19-year-old in the world who has an opera
voice like that, anywhere. She's amazing.
I love the band. I like the sax player over here. [Laughter] I don't
know that I like that Christian Slater can also sing and that Rob Lowe
plays saxophone better than me. I don't think I like that. [Laughter]
But we all had a lot of laughs tonight. And I'm grateful for what has
been said and for the songs that have been sung.
But I'm especially--I'm just grateful to be here on behalf of my
friend Dick Gephardt. He and Jane have been friends of Hillary's and
mine a long time--and Charlie Rangel, Bob Matsui, Henry Waxman. Brad
Sherman is here. I think Javier Becerra is here. Patrick Kennedy, thank
you for doing such a good job. I know we've got Jane Harman, Mike Honda,
Adam Schiff, Janice Nelson, and Gerrie Schipske here, at least those
candidates, maybe some more.
I want to just talk to you--I won't take long tonight. But I want to
ask you to do something besides give your money. So you have to listen a
little bit.
You might ask yourself why, in the last year of my Presidency, when
things are going so well, I would do what is now 138 events. And you
might say, ``Well, maybe he did a few for Hillary. He had to do that,
but why did he do the others?'' [Laughter]
And I told somebody the other day, this is a strange time in my
life. It's the first time in 26 years I haven't been on the ballot. My
party has a new leader. My family has a new candidate. I'm kind of
trading in the title of Commander in Chief for Cheerleader in Chief.
[Laughter] But I like it. I like it because the whole essence of freedom
and democracy is that nobody is indispensable, but the principles and
the ideals and the energy and the vision of the vast masses of people,
that is indispensable.
I'm doing this partly because we lost the majority because of what
the Democrats were willing to do for you in '93 and '94, and the members
of the other party wouldn't help them. When we adopted the economic plan
and not a one of them would vote for it, they said we were raising taxes
on people we weren't raising taxes on. They said we were going to break
the economy and drive up unemployment and explode the deficit. And we
did it in late '93. And in '94, when the voters were voting, they didn't
yet know whether it would work or not.
We adopted a crime bill in '94, after we passed the Brady bill in
'93 requiring handgun owners to do background checks. Then we adopted a
crime bill to put 100,000 police on the street and banned assault
weapons. And the NRA said we were going to interfere with the hunters.
And we didn't adopt the crime bill until '94, and so when the people
voted, it was--they didn't know whether they were telling the truth or
not.
We tried to provide health care to all Americans. Like Harry Truman
and Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon before us, everybody who ever tried
it, we got beat. We got further, actually, even than Harry Truman did,
and we didn't lose quite as many seats as he did for exactly the same
reason.
And I've had to listen to 8 years of misrepresentation now about
what we proposed. But the people that wanted it were disappointed they
didn't get it. And the people that thought it was a bad deal were
inflamed. And all those things happened, and we lost the majority in the
House of Representatives and the Senate in '94--because they did what
was right for America.
And we've gone from a $290 billion deficit to a $250 billion surplus
because they were willing to lay down their majority. And there were
good people who gave up their careers
[[Page 2189]]
in Congress to turn this country around. There were good people--at
least a dozen of them who lost their seats because they came from rural
districts, where a lot of people had hunting licenses, and the hunters
were told that their Congressman had voted to interfere with their right
to go into the woods and hunt. There was nothing true about it. But the
voters didn't know, and they were in a bad frame of mind. Turnout was
low, and we lost a dozen Members because the NRA told the people--
falsely--that the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban were somehow
designed to interfere with them.
Well, it's different now. They know that the economic plan works.
We've kept interest rates down and gave the country a different future.
The crime rate has dropped for 8 years in a row, a 27-year low, a 35
percent drop in gun crime, and nobody has missed a day in the deer
woods. [Laughter] It's different now.
And so part of me wants to do this because they took the bullets for
what I asked them to do to make America a better place. And they had to
run in 1994, and I didn't. I had until 1996. By '96, everybody said,
``You know, this thing is rocking along pretty good here. We might not
want to mess it up.'' But they paid.
Even more important, they ought to be in the majority because of the
future. And that's the last thing I want to say. In 1996 we didn't win a
couple of seats because people from California didn't vote when the
people on the East Coast called the election for me. So a lot of people
said, ``Well, that's over; I won't go vote.''
What I want to say to you tonight is that--I just want to echo what
Dick said. In my lifetime, which, unfortunately, is now more than a half
century, and most days I'm okay about that, too--[laughter]--but in my
lifetime we have never had, at once, this economic prosperity, social
progress, and the absence of domestic crisis or external threat.
Therefore, we have never had as much of an opportunity to build the
future of our dreams for our children. And the real reason they ought to
be in the majority is not that they were wrongly kicked out in '94,
under the most adverse possible circumstances, can make it possible for
me to sleep easier at night when I leave the White House, knowing that
we helped to bring them back. It's because it's the right thing for
America's future.
Let me tell you what--we could actually in the next few years end
child poverty in America. We could actually provide a world-class
education to all the kids that live in this country. We actually know
how to do it now. I've been working at this for 22 years, and when
Hillary and I started out doing all of this school reform, we thought we
knew what to do, but nobody really knew. Now we know.
I was at a school in Harlem the other day, a grade school, where 2
years ago 80 percent of the children were reading and doing math below
grade level, and 2 years later, 74 percent of the children are doing
reading and math at or above grade level--in 2 years. This can be done
everywhere. This is not rocket science. We know how to do it now. Our
plan will do it.
But they need small classes and modern schools and trained teachers
and the Internet hookups, and they need high standards. And then the
schools that aren't cutting it need to be identified and turned around
or put under different management. It's not rocket science. We know how
to do this now, but we have to decide whether we're going to do it.
We can make America the safest big country in the world, but we have
to decide to do it. We can reverse this global warming--if you've got
little kids, you better care a lot about this--and continue to grow the
economy. But we have to decide to do it.
And my only worry here is that things are going so well, people may
just sort of sidle through the election, thinking there are no real
consequences, not understanding the choices on health care and education
and the economy and the way we relate to the rest of the world. On arms
control, for example, huge differences between the two parties.
So here's what I want to ask you to do. I thank you for your money.
I thank you for the money you've given to Al and Joe and the Democratic
Party. I thank you for the money you've given to the House. Many of you
have given to the Senate candidates. A lot of you have given to Hillary.
If you
[[Page 2190]]
haven't, I hope you will. [Laughter] I thank you for all that.
But remember, every one of you, every day, comes in contact with
tons of people who have never been to one of these events, who never
will go, don't know anybody in public life, but on election day they
will go vote. And I would like to ask you to do something you probably
have never thought of doing, which is to take some time every day
between now and the election to bring this election up to somebody you
know or you come in contact with and tell them why you came here
tonight, why you forked over the money, why you know Dick Gephardt ought
to be Speaker, why you're trying to help us win the Senate, why Al Gore
and Joe Lieberman should be elected. This is very important.
America is going to change a lot in the next 8 years. When Al Gore
says the best is--you ain't seen nothing yet, you may think that's just
a campaign slogan. It might interest you to know that I actually believe
that. We've spent a lot of time these last 8 years just trying to turn
this country around. And it's like--it's why the Titanic hit the
iceberg; you can't turn a big ocean liner around in a split second. And
that's what a nation is like.
And now we've got it turned around. It's going in the right
direction. And we, literally, are free to think about big things. We
could get the country out of debt for the first time since Andrew
Jackson was President. I mean, that's amazing, you know. Isn't it?
Now, it would require you to take a smaller tax cut, but it'll keep
interest rates lower--one percent lower at least for a decade--the
difference in the Republican and Democratic plans. You know what that's
worth? Three hundred and ninety billion dollars in home mortgage
reductions, alone--just in home mortgages, never mind the business loan,
what it will do to the markets and all that.
So you need to do this, not for me, for you, for your kids, and your
grandkids. Because anybody in this room tonight over 30 can remember at
least one time in your life when you made a serious mistake, not because
your life was going so badly but because things were going so well, you
thought you didn't have to concentrate any more.
Now, anybody who's over 30 has made one of those mistakes. I mean a
big one. [Laughter] Unless you've just been comatose, you've made a
mistake like that. Now that's where we are. That's where the country is
today. Are we going to grab a hold of this? Now, a lot of you said some
very nice things, and Kenny Edmonds and his wife, Tracy, they've been
real friends to me, and I appreciated him saying that I was for real.
Whatever that means, that's what I've tried to be all right--for good or
real.
I want to tell you something. I want to tell you what this means to
me. You know, if Dick Gephardt were in the majority, we would have
raised the minimum wage this year. You know what that would have meant?
Ten million more people--10 million more people would be out there
working and having greater dignity in their work and being rewarded for
it. The richest time in the world, this Congress has not restored the
minimum wage in real dollar terms to where it was 15, 16 years ago.
And if he had been the Speaker and we'd been the majority in the
Senate, we'd have a Patients' Bill of Rights. You know, that sounds like
a good thing, but 18 million people a year have their medical care
either denied or delayed, even though the doctors want to give it to the
patients because the insurance industry and the HMO's don't want to do
it--18 million people. We're talking about real people here, 22 million
people who have jobs because of the things we've done together, new
jobs.
So you're talking about--when you hear people talking about this,
there are millions of older people who need to be able to buy medicine.
You know, if you live to be 65 in America, your life expectancy is 82.
And the young women in this audience, because of the human genome
discoveries--those of you who will have babies over the next 10 years,
at least by the end of that cycle, your babies will be born with a life
expectancy of about 90 years.
Now, that's the good news. But what are we going to do to make those
years meaningful? How are we going to keep people healthy in those
years? How are we going
[[Page 2191]]
to make those years not only living years but life-full years? And don't
you think that somebody ought to be able to have good years, even if
they're not rich when they turn 65? That's what this Medicare drug thing
is all about.
You've got people out there, literally can't take medicine that has
been prescribed for them without giving up what they had to spend on
food today. So what I want you to understand is, these are big issues.
One of the reasons that I want Al Gore to be elected is, in spite of all
the people making fun of him and misrepresenting what he said about his
role in the Internet, he understands the future, and he thinks about it.
All your medical records and your financial records are going to be
on somebody's computer. Don't you think you ought to be able to say yes
before somebody gets them? And if you get to say yes, how are we going
to allow the Internet economy to continue to grow? Wouldn't you like
somebody in the White House who understood that and thought about it all
the time?
This is a magic moment. Believe me, the best stuff is still out
there. And this is the last point I want to make. It's late, and I'm
tired, and I'm jet-lagged. But I wanted to go back to what Kenny said,
because Norm Mineta was riding with me up in northern California today,
and he asked me why I did my politics the way I do, or how I came to be
the way I am in public life.
And I said, ``Well, when I was a little boy, I used to get on a bus
two or three times a month and go about 80 miles down the road to my
great uncle's house and sit out on the porch and listen to him talk. He
had about a sixth grade education and about 180 IQ. And when I was a
little boy, he used to say, `Now, Bill, you just sit here, and when
these people come up here, you listen to their stories, and you just
remember everybody's got a story. And the poor man's story is about as
good as a rich man's story and is not but a turn or two in life that
makes a difference between one and the other.' And so I would sit there,
year-in and year-out, and listen to that.''
And then when I became old enough to run for public office, even
when I started working in campaigns, I noticed that every election, the
people told their stories in slightly different ways, almost like there
was a different song every 2 years or 4 years, always with the same
theme, always using the same words, but the stories were always
different.
All of you are in a unique position to make sure that this is an
election devoted to America's stories being heard. If you look at all
the differences between our party and the other party on all the issues,
it basically comes down to this: We think everybody counts; everybody
ought to have a chance; we all do better when we help each other. That's
what we believe.
We believe that our independence as people depends upon recognizing
our interdependence as people, that we are growing closer and closer
together, that we have to reach across all the lines that divide us,
that hate crimes are nutty hangovers from an earlier period where people
were scared of those who were different from them or taught that they
were somehow morally inferior, and that the truth is, America is the
greatest place in the world today because it's the most diverse place in
the world. That's what we believe.
We believe the role of Government is to give people a hand up who
need it, to create the conditions and give people the tools to live
their dreams. But mostly we believe we're so interdependent we need each
other. And all I know is, those ideas, in practice, worked pretty well
the last 8 years. It turns out that what is the right thing to do is
also good economics, good social policy, good crime policy, good
environmental policy.
But when you go home tonight, if somebody asks you why you're a
Democrat, tell them that everybody counts; everybody deserves a chance;
we all do better when we help each other; and everybody has a story.
And I will close with this. Two days ago I went to Flint, Michigan,
a town I spent a lot of time in that's been very good to me. And there
is a bunch of people from Flint, from Arkansas because in the forties
and fifties, after the war, a lot of people in the South couldn't make a
living off the land. And blacks and whites alike exploded out of there.
A bunch of people came to California from
[[Page 2192]]
the South. A bunch of people even went back east to New York.
But in our part of the South, nearly everybody who left went to
Illinois and Michigan. That's why I won those places in '92, when I ran
for President. Those guys are still trying to figure out how I won those
places. They don't understand. Every third voter was from Arkansas. It
was easy. [Laughter]
So anyway, I go to Flint, which lost over half its auto employment.
They went from 90,000 people working in the car plants to 35,000, and
they've had to rebuild. So we put a community computer center in Flint,
and Dick and I are trying to get the Congress now to approve funds to
put a thousand of these across America, so that people even who don't
have computers, whether they're children or older people--can at least
come into these centers, at all hours of the day and night, and try to
get hooked into the new world of the information economy.
The one in Flint is the best one in America that we know of for
working with disabled Americans. And so I went to the center, and I saw
the stuff. And then I spoke to this huge crowd of people with every
conceivable disability and ability known to man. So I went in, and I saw
this software program. And there was this blind woman feeding it into
the computer in braille and pressing a button so it spoke back to her,
and she knew that she had done the right thing. And there was a deaf
person feeding it into the computer, and then it wrote back to her, so
she knew it was real.
And then they took me to this laser technology made for people who
are totally paralyzed or have Lou Gehrig's disease or something else
that keeps you from moving anything but your eyes. And I learned how to
turn lights on and off in a house, start the tape deck and hear the
music. I even wrote ``good morning'' to the people who were with me with
my eyes.
And the person there said, ``You know, we get E-mails every week
from a guy in North Carolina named Joe Martin who's got Lou Gehrig's
disease.'' I said, ``Yes, I know him.'' And I'm just going to tell you
this one story, because we invest a lot to help people with disabilities
access this technology. And remember, I think if they can do it and they
can live their stories, we're all better off. So here's Joe Martin's
story.
When I met him 15 or 16 years ago, he was a very handsome man with a
beautiful wife, who was North Carolina's representative on something
called the Southern Growth Policies Board. And because I was the
Governor of a southern State, we would meet and work together on how to
develop jobs and education in the South. And of all the people I fool
with from all the States that I worked with, I think I liked Joe Martin
the best, which is sort of strange.
His brother was a chemistry professor who became the Republican
Governor of North Carolina. I liked his brother, too. But you wouldn't
expect that guy to be my favorite guy, but I liked him, because he was
serious and he was full of energy. He was vital. He was charismatic. He
was dynamic. He was constant motion. Fast forward 15 years, and he's got
Lou Gehrig's disease, and he continues to go down, and he can't move.
So Joe Martin has lost all the things that I found most attractive,
except the inner qualities, which have deepened. And he is a far more
impressive man today than he was before.
And in about 2 months, Joe Martin will publish a book he wrote with
his eyes. Every day he talks to his wife and children on that computer
with his eyes. And he's still alive because he can say what he knows and
what he feels to other people.
Now, I think it's a good thing that some of your tax money finances
research into technologies like that and tries to spread it to other
people and provides a center like that in Flint, where people can come
who are disabled and get E-mails from--and he writes up there once a
week. He E-mails them with his eyes. And when they know about Joe
Martin, all those other people don't feel sorry for themselves anymore.
I think that is a good thing.
So that's what I want to tell you. To me, this isn't very
complicated. I believe that we are growing more and more and more
interdependent. I believe in order to make the most of the modern world
we live in and all these wonderful technologies, we have to understand
that our enlightened self- interests requires us to try to make sure
every
[[Page 2193]]
man and woman and boy and girl get to live their story, even if they
have to do it with just their eyes. And I believe that the best is still
out there. I nearly know the best is still out there if we make the
right decisions. So thank you for being so nice to me. Thank you for all
the things you said. Thank you for raising the $4 million-plus. But
remember, if every day the people in this room took a little time to
make sure that everyone you know understood what was at stake and why
they ought to stick with us, we'd have the celebration we want on
election night, and most important, you'd have the future that your
children deserve.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 10:44 p.m. at a private residence. In his
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Michael and Jena King; music
producer David Foster; musician Richard Marx; actors Christian Slater
and Rob Lowe; Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, chairman, Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee; Mike Honda, Adam Schiff, Janice
Nelson, Jane Harman, and Gerrie Schipske, candidates for California's
15th, 27th, 28th, 36th, and 38th Congressional Districts, respectively;
and musician Kenneth Edmonds, popularly known as Babyface, and his wife,
Tracy. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these
remarks.