[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 43 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[Pages 2541-2545]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Dinner in Boston, 
Massachusetts

October 20, 2000

    When we were in Lowell--first of all, I told Tom Daschle, I said, 
``Don't you think it's amazing Ted Kennedy knows every town I have been 
to in Massachusetts--[laughter]--since I ran for President in 1992?'' 
And at Lowell, he went through every single place, every single stop I 
had made in 8 years. I didn't remember all the places. [Laughter]
    I asked Tom Daschle, I said, ``Do you remember every town in South 
Dakota I've been to?'' He said, ``Yes, Sioux Falls.'' [Laughter] And I 
make a lot of fun of Senator Kennedy, and he makes a lot of fun of me, 
and our families have become close. We've had some wonderful times 
together. But he's going to get his revenge in the end. And as I tell 
everybody, you know, I was in junior high school when Ted Kennedy went 
to the Senate. [Laughter] But when I leave the White House, he will 
still be there. Thank God for that, I must say. [Laughter]
    I love all these folks that were here tonight. Senator Reed I see is 
still back there. And Senator Daschle has been a magnificent leader. I 
talked to Senator Kerry. I know that he had a gathering to talk about 
technology to the Democratic Party tonight, and I saw the Senators who 
were here earlier. But one of the things I'm going to miss most about 
being President is the time I've had to work with them and the 
friendships I've made with them. One of the things I look forward to 
most, if the good people of New York send Hillary to the Senate, is, I 
also get to hang around with them. [Laughter] I will still be the object 
of their occasional abuse, but I'll be able to leave it when I want to. 
[Laughter]
    You know, it's really not fair for Ted to talk about Tom Daschle 
that way on the 22d amendment, because I can promise you that the guys 
that lead the Senate in the other party will be very glad to see me go. 
[Laughter]
    But we've had a great time together. And I know everybody else has 
talked. I just want to make a couple of very brief points. One is about 
politics, but the other, more importantly, is about the long-term 
direction of the country.
    I've always felt that Al Gore would win this election, and I still 
do. I have never wavered in that. When he was 18 points behind a year 
ago, I kept telling everybody, just relax, go on. And I went around 
here--Alan will verify that--he had all these events, and we were waving 
the flag, and I believe that for two simple reasons.
    One is, the issue before the American people is not whether the 
country will change, so it's not change versus the status quo. The 
country is changing. America is changing. The world's changing. The 
issue is, what kind of change and whether we should keep changing in the 
right direction or go back and try what we tried for 12 years before. It 
didn't work out very well for us. It may be packaged a little 
differently, but it's basically the same deal. And I think people will 
get that in the end. I think the undecided voters will come to terms 
with that and decide they want to keep the prosperity going, they want 
to--and they want to keep doing what works.
    The second reason is, I think that they will decide that we have a 
more unifying vision of our country, our relationship to the world, and 
our future, and they will want to embrace it. And that will happen. 
That's what I think is going to happen.
    But in order for that to happen, we have to clarify the differences. 
And in order for that not to happen, they have to blur the differences. 
And that really explains more than any other kind of psychobabble I've 
read the different strategies of the two candidates in the debates.
    You know, I read all that stuff. Most of it's just--everybody's got 
to say something. [Laughter] But the truth is that--and it's harder for 
us than it is for them. It's a lot easier--it's easier to muddy things 
up than it is to clarify them.
    But you watch this thing unfold now the last 3 weeks, and you 
remember what I told you. Clarity is our friend. Cloudiness is their 
friend, right? So we had--just go through the last debate. We wanted 
clarity on a Patients' Bill of Rights, and they didn't, because if 
there's clarity, we win. We want clarity on

[[Page 2542]]

the difference on the Medicare drug program, and they don't, because if 
there's clarity, we win.
    And so I think that that's something you should all keep in mind. 
And to whatever extent any of you can influence anybody anywhere in any 
State that's still up for grabs one way or the other, that's really 
worth doing.
    And I know that this has already been said, but I just want to give 
just you two examples, if I might. This economic issue is very serious. 
People ask me all the time. I was with a bunch of people last night who 
identified themselves as friends of Bob Rubin, and they were telling me 
how great Bob Rubin was. We were up in Connecticut, had a deal for 
Hillary. It reminded me that people come up to me from time to time and 
they say, ``What did you guys do, really, in the economy?''
    By the way, I thought Al Gore's best line in the first debate was, 
the economic line when--George Bush actually had a good line. He said, 
you know, ``I think Clinton/Gore got more out of the economy than the 
economy got out of Clinton/Gore.'' That's pretty cute, isn't it? I mean, 
I thought that was pretty good. [Laughter] Because he said the American 
people did that. Now, this is from--their crowd took credit when the Sun 
came up in the morning when they were in. Do you remember that? ``It's 
morning in America. Reelect us.'' I mean, they did. They took credit for 
the Sun coming up in the morning. It was unbelievable. [Laughter] And 
then they--but everything else, once they got out, it all was an 
accident. [Laughter]
    So he said that. He said it was really the hard work of the American 
people and we just sort of were along for the ride, and Al Gore said, 
``You know, the American people do deserve most of the credit for this, 
but they were working real hard in 1992, also.'' But I thought it was--
see, that's clarity. That's good.
    But--so people ask me all the time, ``Well, what did you and Rubin 
and Lloyd Bentsen and all, what did you do? What new great idea did you 
bring to Washington?'' And I always say, ``Arithmetic.'' [Laughter] You 
know, I mean, here I am in the shadow of Harvard. I hate to say anything 
so pedestrian--[laughter]--and mundane, but that's basically what it 
was. It was arithmetic, you know.
    I just--I thought 2 and 2 still made 4 even in the digital age. Now, 
I'm not kidding. I am not kidding. I believed that fiscal conservatism 
would make social progressive's progress possible. That's what I 
believed. It turned out to be right. I thought if we got rid of the 
deficit and got interest rates down, the economy would boom; we would 
have the money to give modest tax cuts and invest in education and 
technology and the environment and health care and get rid of the 
deficit and eventually start paying the debt down.
    Now, if I had come here 8 years ago and said, ``Vote for me. By the 
time I leave office, we'll be paying down the national debt,'' you would 
have not voted for me. You would have said, ``He's a very nice young 
man, but he's delusional, and we can't afford to have a delusional 
person as President, so''--[laughter]--``we'll send him home.'' Isn't 
that right? Nobody would have believed me if I had come here in 1992 and 
said, ``Vote for me, and by the time I leave office, we'll be paying 
down the national debt. Vote for me, and by the time I leave office, the 
Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy, will be the fiscal conservative, and all 
the so-called conservatives in the Republican Party will be the 
radicals.''
    Now, that's what you've got here. And you know--so, you need to tell 
people this between now and November 7th. This is about arithmetic all 
over again. Yes, our tax cut is just a third of the size of theirs, and 
most of you would get a lot more out of theirs than ours.
    But here's the problem. If you do ours, then you can invest the 
money into education and health care and still pay the country out of 
debt by 2012, which means that in a global economy where money is highly 
fungible and something like a trillion dollars crosses national borders 
every day, you can keep interest rates down and grow the economy.
    It also means you can get rid of the third-biggest item in the 
Federal budget, by the way, which nobody ever talks about. Interest on 
the debt is the third-biggest item in the Federal budget, 12 cents of 
every dollar you

[[Page 2543]]

pay. It was about 14 cents when I took office, headed to 15 or 16. And 
we're paying the debt down.
    But, now, this is arithmetic. So if--you know, there is a big debate 
about whether the projected surplus is $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion, 
and it sounds like a lot of money, and who can keep up with all of that? 
But it's still just simple arithmetic. Their tax cut's about $1.5 
trillion, conservatively. Their Social Security privatization program is 
a trillion dollars. They admitted that. Their nominee admitted that in 
the first debate. Their spending programs are already over $300 billion, 
and they're lower than we are on defense and haven't said what Star Wars 
would cost yet. Now, you're back in deficit. This is arithmetic. And it 
means higher interest rates, and it means you don't free up money to 
invest, and it means the economy will be weaker. Everybody will get a 
tax cut.
    In addition to the tax cut that the Vice President proposes, if 
interest rates are lower, and we reckon interest rates--the Council of 
Economic Advisers says interest rates will be about a point lower a year 
for a decade under the Gore plan. Do you know what that is? That's $390 
billion in lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car payments, $15 
billion in lower student loan payments. It's also lower credit card 
payments, lower business loan payments, so that means every one of you 
in this room would benefit from it but so would all the people who 
served you tonight. It would be a big, huge, across-the-board tax cut 
that would keep the American economy strong. It is arithmetic. And every 
single American ought to understand if they want to keep this prosperity 
going in a global economy, we need to stay in harness with what works. 
We shouldn't be for no change, but we should be changing in the 
direction of what works.
    The second point I want to make is, we have a different view of how 
we should relate to each other and the rest of the world. I think 
America is becoming a more and more interesting place as we become more 
racially and ethnically and religiously diverse. I think that--I think 
it's been a good thing for us that America is kind of coming to terms 
with the whole gay rights movement, and it's not something people have 
to hide anymore. That's what I believe. A lot of people don't believe 
that, but I do. I think it's been good for us.
    I think we--so we have to define what our responsibilities to one 
another are. Ted Kennedy and I earlier were with Marty Meehan--
Congressman Meehan in Lowell. We have different ideas about the kinds of 
things we ought to do to bind each other together, and I'll just give 
you three or four. But every one of them, there is a big difference 
between our Presidential nominee and our party.
    Campaign finance reform, I think, is a good example. You know, one 
reason we'll never get campaign finance reform is--no offense to the 
people that are covering this, but they have to say, ``A plague on both 
your houses,'' because otherwise, they won't feel that they're doing the 
right thing. They've got to tell everybody none of the politicians are 
any good.
    But the truth is, 100 percent of the Democrats in the Congress will 
vote for the Shays-Meehan-McCain-Feingold bill--every one of them. We've 
got them all. And we've got a majority in both Houses. And the reason we 
can't get it there is because the leadership of the other party in the 
Congress and in the race for the President are against it. Now, that is 
the truth.
    Now, why are we for it? I enjoy coming to these dinners. If I were 
running, I would still be glad to have dinner, even if we could relieve 
you of the burden of financing the Democratic Party, because I'd learn 
something. But it's part of the idea of one America. It equalizes the 
power of people's votes. And that's important, so we're for it, and 
they're not. It's different.
    Hate crimes legislation. You got that in the last debate, but they 
didn't go all the way. I wish that the moderator had actually fleshed 
out what the real issue was in the hate crimes bill. You just kind of 
saw them dancing around it. Look, when you strip it all away, here's the 
deal: We're for hate crimes legislation that includes protection against 
gays. Matthew Shepard got stretched on a rack and killed in Wyoming, and 
if there's a Federal hate crimes bill, it means the Federal Government 
can come in and help a severely financially strapped local law

[[Page 2544]]

enforcement jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the crime. In 
other words, there is a serious, substantive law enforcement reason.
    So to answer that--James Byrd's killers are going to get executed, 
or something--it totally blows by the two big issues. Number one, the 
Republicans aren't for it because it protects gays as well as racial and 
religious minorities and people with disabilities, and number two, they 
don't recognize the legitimate Federal law enforcement issue here. So 
we're for this hate crimes bill, and they're not. That's a big deal. I 
think it's part of one America.
    We're for strengthening the equal pay laws to protect the women who 
do equal work and ought to get equal pay, and they're not. It's a huge 
deal, not just to women but to men who live with women who don't get 
paid enough, and therefore, their family incomes are lower. It's a big 
deal.
    Now, those are just three issues, but they have a lot to say about 
who we are--the ``Employment Non-Discrimination Act.'' I could give you 
lots of other examples.
    But my idea here has always been that we should be for two things: 
opportunity for every responsible citizen and a community of all 
Americans who are willing to play by the rules. If you have that, if you 
can create a structure of opportunity for every responsible citizen and 
a community of all Americans who play by the rules, you always fix the 
rest of it.
    If we can build one America and the conditions and tools are there 
for people to do pretty well, the American people will figure out what 
to do with all these other problems. I mean, we could have a lot of 
esoteric arguments about the implication of the human genome project or 
how we're going to protect the privacy of medical and financial records 
on the Internet. And I've got a lot of feelings about all that.
    But I'm just telling you, the two big things we need are a system of 
opportunity for responsible people and a country where everybody counts, 
and we all do better when we help each other. That's what I believe. And 
when you strip it all away, that's why you ought to be for Al Gore and 
Joe Lieberman, and that's why these people ought to be in the majority 
in the U.S. Senate, and that's why we've had some success in the last 8 
years. That's why we've had some success.
    So I will just say to you what I say to everybody. This race is 
tight as Dick's hatband, as we used to say at home. [Laughter] And it's 
going to be, because they have more money than we do, and it's easier to 
confuse than to clarify.
    That's really what's going on here. I mean, you can get all these 
other explanations. I'm just telling you, I've been doing this a long 
time, and I'm not running for anything. [Laughter] This thing is tight 
because they've got more money than we do, and it's easier to confuse 
than it is to clarify. So anything you can do, particularly with people 
who live in States like New Hampshire to the north, where we could win--
and if we win, I think it would be the first time ever that a Democrat 
carried it three times in a row, I believe. I don't think Roosevelt 
carried it three times in a row. But if you know anybody in any of these 
States--and one of you and I were talking about Louisiana tonight, a 
State I still believe we can win.
    But in order to do it, we have to energize and clarify. People have 
got to understand this is a huge deal, and that's the other point I 
should have made. In addition to this kind of favoring confusion, 
they're also dramatically advantaged if most people feel sort of 
comfortable and think this doesn't matter very much, because I can tell 
you, their rightwing is highly energized. They're looking forward to 
getting off course and reversing our crime policy and reversing a lot of 
our other policies.
    One of the specific commitments they've made is to reverse my order 
setting aside 43 million acres of roadless land in the national forests. 
That's a specific commitment they've made. They're going to reverse 
that. The Audubon Society says it's the most significant conservation 
move in 40 years. So they're really energized, because they know where 
the goodies are, and they know what the payoff will be.
    So you can't let people think that this is not a significant 
election. And if you can just clarify the economic choice and the 
choices we make in order to be one nation, including those environmental 
things I mentioned, I

[[Page 2545]]

think it would make a great deal of difference. And you should not 
minimize your ability to have an impact on this election. Every one of 
you would talk to 200 people that never would come to an event like 
this, on their bet between now and the election--you may talk to 300 
people. And clarity is our friend. If people understand the choices and 
the consequences, we win. If the decision is uncertain, then it's more 
difficult for us.
    If you want to keep the prosperity going and you want to keep us 
coming together instead of being divided, you've got to be for Gore/
Lieberman and our crowd of Senators here. And believe me, that's why I 
think we've had some success the last 8 years. And I really think it's a 
mistake to reverse the economic policy, the education policy, the health 
care policy, the environmental policy, the crime policy of this country.
    It's not like we don't have a test run here. We've tried it our way; 
we've tried it their way. Things were better our way. They're just never 
deterred by evidence. I admire that about them. [Laughter] They're 
driven by ideology and the money, and they know what they believe, and 
the evidence is irrelevant. But it's not irrelevant to the voters that 
will determine the outcome of this election.
    But you can help. In addition to your contributions, in addition to 
your presence here tonight, you ought to take it on yourself to turn 
some votes between now and November in the States that will make a 
difference. I'm telling you, you can do it. And just remember: Clarity 
is always harder than confusion, and therefore, we carry the burden. But 
we've also got, by far, the better side of the argument. So when you get 
away the clouds, we win.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:45 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to former Treasury Secretaries Robert E. Rubin and 
Lloyd Bentsen; and Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. 
Bush. This item was not received in time for publication in the 
appropriate issue.