[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 44 (Monday, November 6, 2000)]
[Pages 2747-2751]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Friends of Jane Harman Reception in Beverly Hills

November 2, 2000

    Well, thank you very much. I have had a wonderful time tonight. And 
after Alex Winnick gave his speech, I thought, there's nothing for the 
rest of us to say. [Laughter] He made the case for Jane. Thank you very 
much, Alex. And I thank you, Gary, and thank you, Karen, for having us 
here. I would like to hear the whole history of this building. I wish 
these walls could talk. This might be one of the tamer events it would 
speak of. [Laughter]
    Gary Winnick has been a friend of mine for some time now, and I'm 
quite thrilled by the success that Global Crossing has had. And it's 
interesting to me, and I think it's fitting that they're now housed in 
this historic site.
    I'd like to thank Governor Davis and Sharon for being such good 
friends to Hillary and me. I think Gray has been a great leader for 
California. And I thank him very, very much for all the support he's 
given to me over the years and all the work we've done together. And you 
might be interested to know, even though I have just 11 weeks left, even 
today in the car he was grinding on me to do one

[[Page 2748]]

last thing--[laughter]--for California before I left office. And 
eventually I'll say yes just to be relieved of the pain of having Gray 
work on me. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Jane and Sidney for being great friends. I've been 
in their home in Washington. I've been in Sidney's plant in southern 
California. We had a great, great day there. And I have worked with Jane 
very closely. I was trying to think what, if anything, I could say to 
add to what has already been said this evening. Alex really did do a 
very good job of making the case. But I want you to know a couple of 
things.
    First of all, when I met Jane Harman, I thought she represented the 
sort of person that I was trying to bring into the Democratic Party to 
get to run for office. And I thought the district she represented was 
the sort of district I thought the Democrats had to be able to campaign 
in and carry if we were going to become the majority party in America, 
mostly because of the ideas we shared.
    You know, we believed that you have to be fiscally conservative in 
order to be socially progressive in a world where all the capital 
markets are global, and if you have an irresponsible policy and you run 
big deficits, your interest rates are going to be high; your economy is 
going to be weak, and nothing the Government can do can change that. We 
believe that you have to be able to have an economic policy that helps 
business and labor. We believe that you have to be able to improve the 
environment and grow the economy. And she has always had kind of a 
unifying view of politics which I thought made a lot of sense.
    The second thing that impressed me is that she was such a good 
advocate for the people in her district, particularly the aerospace 
industry. And it's easy now to forget just how tough things were in 
January of '93. And I can tell you I wasn't President very long before 
Jane Harman made sure I knew just about as much as she did about all 
that and I had my to-do list from her. [Laughter]
    So she has, I think, proven that she is a good Member of Congress, 
indeed, a truly outstanding one. But she also stood up there and cast 
that vote. She came very close to losing her election in 1994. Why? 
Because nobody is for deficits; nobody is for debt; but nobody wanted to 
do anything about it because by the time we got around to doing 
something about it in 1993, the problem was so great that there was no 
painless solution.
    And if there's anything that a politician hates, it's to inflict 
pain and then to have to stand for reelection before the pain can be 
proved to be good. [Laughter] And that's basically what happened to us 
in '94. The economy was getting better, but no one knew it yet. And we 
also lost a dozen Members over the assault weapons ban in the Brady bill 
because the streets were getting safer, but no one felt it yet. The NRA 
took about 12 of our crowd out because they voted for the assault 
weapons ban and the Brady bill.
    But Jane hung in there, and we kept working together until she left 
the House. I was surprised and thrilled that she decided to run again. 
All of you know that she is in a tight race. There are a couple of 
reasons why. One is, the Republicans have more money than we do, and 
they do not want to lose the majority in Congress, so they are throwing 
a double ton of money into every one of these races where we have a 
chance to win. And in California, we have a chance to win five seats. 
And they have, they believe, a chance to win one--and I hope they're 
wrong about it--Congressman Dooley's seat. I kind of think they are, 
because he's such an extraordinary man. But anyway, they have a lot of 
money, and they're putting it in.
    Since they can't win on the issues that are really before the 
Congress--they can't win the fight on the Patients' Bill of Rights or 
whether Medicare should have a prescription drug program or whether we 
should have hate crimes legislation or campaign finance reform or you 
name it--there has to be some bomb-throwing. And if you look at all of 
their campaigns all over the country, that's basically what they're 
doing. And so, you just have your tailored bomb. So Jane now has her 
tailored bomb.
    So I want to tell you something. I know exactly what they've been 
saying. She worked very hard for you when she was in the Congress. She 
worked me harder than 90 percent of the people in the Congress--me, 
personally--to do things for her district. She's one of the smartest 
people I dealt with, and she had a good philosophy. I think she ought to

[[Page 2749]]

go back to Congress, and I want you to help her go back to Congress.
    Now, I'm going to ask you to do something else. The hour is late, 
and I know you're all tired, but this is an interesting election. The 
Presidential race is just tight as can be. There's 10 or 12 States 
within two points, one way or the other. And the election will either be 
decided by the movement of people from undecided to one or the other 
candidates or by the fact that one candidate's supporters want to vote 
more than the other candidate's supporters.
    And there are all these House races and Senate races that are tight 
as can be. A lot of it favors us. I think the chances are quite high 
that we can win the House back. We even have an outside chance to win 
the Senate back. So all over the country--why is it, why are people 
converging and being split right down the middle in all these races? 
Part of it may be there's so much money involved that the stuff is so 
confusing that people just kind of fall off one way or the other. I 
think part of it is that a lot of people don't remember what it was like 
8 years ago, particularly younger voters. And we tend to take it for 
granted that all this stuff just happened. It was just an accident.
    And so this is an interesting debate they're having about how big 
the tax cut should be and what shape it should be; an interesting debate 
they're having about whether Social Security should be privatized and, 
if so, how much and in what way; an interesting debate they're having 
over the crime policy, the education policy or whatever.
    I just want to make a couple of points very crisply. But they're 
very important to me, and if you and I were alone and there were no 
press in the room and you asked me about this race, I would tell you 
this exactly if we were alone.
    The first thing is, if you really want to maximize the chance of 
keeping this prosperity going, you ought to vote for Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman and Jane Harman. Why? Why is that? Well, people ask me all the 
time, ``What great new idea did you and Bob Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen and 
all those guys bring to Washington to turn the economy around?'' And my 
answer is always a simple, one-word answer, ``Arithmetic.'' [Laughter] 
We brought arithmetic back to Washington.
    And we said we're going to get rid of all this deficit; we either 
had to raise money or cut spending or do a little of both. And since it 
was impossible and wrong to raise as many taxes as it would take to get 
rid of the deficit and impossible and wrong to cut spending as much as 
it would take to get rid of the deficit, we did a little of both, and we 
got rid of it. And now we're running a surplus. We've gone from the 
biggest deficit to the biggest surplus. But we did it by arithmetic. No 
phoney, rosy scenarios, no pretending money was there when it wasn't, no 
pretending we were cutting spending when we weren't. We just practiced 
arithmetic.
    Now, what's that got to do with this race? The Republicans offer a 
tax cut that is more attractive to most of you who can afford a ticket 
to come here tonight, in the short run. It's 3 times as big as the 
Democrats' tax cut. And then they offer a partial privatization of 
Social Security that's quite attractive to young people who think 
they'll make a killing in the stock market. And therefore, if they get 2 
percent of their payroll, they can make more out of it than if they just 
get Social Security the way the older folks have always gotten Social 
Security. And then they got a few spending promises of their own.
    Here's the problem. The surplus is projected to be $2 billion. And 
believe me, that's very optimistic. Their tax cut and the associated 
interest cost is $1.6 trillion. It costs a trillion dollars to partially 
privatize Social Security, and they promise to spend another half a 
trillion. Now, 1.6 plus 1 plus .5 is 3.1; 3.1 is bigger than 2. 
[Laughter]
    Now look, I want you to laugh about it, but look, I'm telling you. 
You want to know what we did for the country? We brought arithmetic back 
to Washington. Jane Harman nearly lost her seat in 1994 because she 
voted to restore arithmetic to the Federal budget. And everybody is for 
that in general and against it in particular, because nobody wants their 
taxes raised, nobody wants their program cut.
    So we did it. But we went through all of this agony, and we got this 
thing turned around. Now, we can afford a tax cut, but it can't be that 
big. And if somebody wants--

[[Page 2750]]

you can argue the policy of privatizing Social Security. You think it's 
a good idea or bad idea, but you can't pretend you don't have to pay for 
it. And that's what the Vice President says when he talks about the 
money being promised to two different groups. If you take your payroll 
out, that's $1 trillion over 10 years. They still need the money to pay 
for the people they promised the benefits to. That's why it takes 
another trillion out of the surplus.
    So believe me, this is important. My Council of Economic Advisers 
believes that interest rates will be about a percent lower under Gore's 
plan and under anything the Democrats would vote for because we promised 
to pay the debt down. And you ask yourself: Well, then, how can you 
promise to spend more than they did? Answer: If you pay the debt down, 
interest on the debt goes down; it's now the third-biggest item in the 
Federal budget; and as you shrink it, it leaves you money to spend on 
education, health care, or tax cuts--for that matter, anything you want.
    But my point is, this is a big deal to you. The good thing about 
this economic expansion is that it has more billionaires, more 
millionaires, but the average median income increased 15 percent in real 
dollar terms, and the median income is over $40,000 for the first time 
in history, so ordinary Americans also benefit. It's the first time in 
30 years we've had an economic expansion that benefited everybody from 
lower middle income workers to the wealthiest Americans, everybody 
together. Now, that's important.
    If you abandon arithmetic in this election, you will have higher 
interest rates, more inflation, slower growth, and more uneven 
prosperity. Some of you will do just fine, but even within the same 
income group, some won't. Now, this is a huge deal. I'm telling you, if 
you're interested in economics, this is the most important issue in Jane 
Harman's race for Congress and in the race for President.
    The second point I want to make is, it's not just a matter of 
keeping the prosperity going. It's a matter of what kind of country we 
are and whether you want to keep building on the social progress of the 
last 8 years. Compared to 8 years ago--not just the economy--the crime 
rate is down to a 26-year low; 43 million more people are breathing 
clean air; the water is safer; 3 times as many toxic waste dumps have 
been cleaned up as under the previous 12 years. We set aside more land 
in permanent protection than any administration since Teddy Roosevelt a 
hundred years ago.
    There's more. The number of people without health insurance is going 
down for the first time in 12 years. And listen to this, in spite of all 
the press you hear, nationwide, on the national tests of our students in 
school, reading scores, math scores, science scores are up; the dropout 
rate is down; the college-going rate is at an all-time high; the 
African-American high school graduation rate is virtually identical to 
the white graduation rate for the first time in the history of the 
country; in the last 5 years there's been a 300 percent increase in the 
number of African-American and Latino kids taking advanced placement 
classes to go on to college. Now that's the facts.
    In every single case, I believe there is a policy we have pursued 
that she voted for that contributed to, did not totally cause, but 
contributed to those good results. And in every single case, there is a 
difference between the two parties. And I will just give you a few 
examples. One of the reasons the crime rate went down is, we put 100,000 
police--now more, about 120,000--on the street in community policing, 
and they stopped a lot of crime from being committed in the first place. 
The other party is committed to abolishing that program. They say it's 
not the proper province of the Federal Government to help local 
communities hire police. You've got a choice here. The only problem for 
their position is, we do have evidence here. We've got crime at a 26-
year low.
    Number two, we're trying to put 100,000 police on the--I mean, 
100,000 well-trained teachers in the schools for smaller classes. They 
promise to abolish that. They say the Federal Government has got no 
business doing that or helping schools deal with their construction 
needs. You've got all these kids going to school in housetrailers and 
old broken down schools, and we can help them, the school districts, to 
modernize. They say

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we shouldn't do it. So you've got a choice there.
    You heard Jane or Alex Winnick talked about the Patients' Bill of 
Rights. We're for it, and they're not, this whole idea that I have been 
obsessed by for years about building one America. Hate crimes: We are 
for it; they're not. Employment non-discrimination: We are for it; 
they're not. Stronger enforcement of equal pay laws: We're for it; 
they're not. I could go on and on. But you get the picture here. There 
are real differences.
    So I think what you need to do, if you live in Jane's district or 
you have friends who live there, if you live in another district in one 
of these other contested races, you need to tell people, ``Look, there 
are huge differences here. There are real clear choices. These choices 
will have real consequences to you, your family, your community, and 
your country.'' And you just have to say, ``You know, do you want to 
build on the prosperity or reverse the policy? Do you want to build on 
the social progress of the last 8 years or reverse the direction?'' 
These are simple questions. I think the answer should be yes. If the 
answers are yes, you have to vote for Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and Jane 
Harman. This is not rocket science.
    And it's not like we don't have any evidence here. We tried it our 
way for 8 years, and we tried it the other way. Our way works better. 
You can look at the evidence in the lives of the American people.
    Just one last thing I would like to say is a plug for the Vice 
President. He understands the future. He is by far more experienced. He 
makes real good decisions. And John Kennedy said the Presidency is 
preeminently a job of decisionmaking. And he would be a good President. 
And God forbid, if we shouldn't win the Congress, somebody's there to be 
there to put on the brake. [Laughter] And you've seen that for 6 years, 
too. Some of the best things I've done as President involved things that 
I stopped from happening, as well as things that we made happen.
    But you ought to send Jane back to Congress. She's earned it. And if 
you want to keep the prosperity going and you want to keep the progress 
going, you ought to reward somebody who literally was willing to risk 
her career at the very beginning to turn California and America around. 
It worked, and it will work again if you'll put her back.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:05 p.m. at the Global Crossing Plaza. In 
his remarks, he referred to reception hosts Gary and Karen Winnick and 
their son Alex; Gov. Gray Davis of California and his wife, Sharon; Ms. 
Harman's husband, Sidney Harman; and former Secretaries of the Treasury 
Robert E. Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen; Jane Harman is a candidate for 
California's 36th Congressional District. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.