[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 45 (Monday, November 13, 2000)]
[Pages 2785-2790]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Get Out the Vote Rally in New York City

November 4, 2000

    The President. Thank you. Are you ready to win this election?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. Thank you for coming out. Thank you for your warm 
welcome. I want to thank the president and Mrs. Steinberg and Provost 
Gale Stevens for welcoming me here to LIU, along with your student body 
president, who is also there. I want to thank my good friend Carl McCall 
for making these stops with me today and for all the support he has 
given to Hillary and the superb job he has done for the people of New 
York.
    And I want to thank Judith Hope for taking over the Democratic Party 
when we were not in very good shape and working her heart out and for 
showing such leadership.
    And my Brooklyn buddies over here--in early 1992, when only my 
mother thought I could be elected President--[laughter]--Clarence Norman 
and Major Owens were there for me, and I will never, ever, ever forget 
it. Thank you, and God bless you.
    You know, this has been a great day for me to go around and campaign 
for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and for Hillary, to go to the Bronx, which 
has also been very good

[[Page 2786]]

to me, to go down to Harlem with Charlie Rangel, who will be the next 
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if we win this election. 
But I am honored to finish in Brooklyn because, as you heard Major and 
Clarence say, New York City has been wonderful to me and to Al Gore 
these last 8 years. Shoot, we've even gotten a pretty good vote out on 
Staten Island. Queens has been great; the Bronx has been great; 
Manhattan has been fabulous; but Brooklyn always came in first and gave 
us the biggest vote, and I thank you for that.
    But I also am glad to be here at LIU and to have so many--soccer, 
softball, volleyball--I'm glad to be here because, fundamentally, this 
is a race about the future. It's a race about 21st century America, and 
the young people in this audience have more at stake than anyone else.
    So I know you're all committed or you wouldn't be here. And it's 
easy for me to just sort of give you one applause line after another. 
But I want to ask you as a personal favor to just let me talk to you for 
a few minutes in a conversation. Why? Because the election is still a 
few days away, and because there are thousands upon thousands of people 
in New York and many of you have friends in other States who haven't 
even decided whether to vote yet, much less for whom to vote. All that 
talk about the base, that's a fancy way of saying if the people that are 
for our side actually show up and vote, we will win. If a higher 
percentage of the people that are for their side show up and vote, then 
we could lose, even if most people are really for us.
    And so what I want to ask you to do when you leave here tonight is 
to take some time tomorrow and the next day and all the way through 
election day to tell people why they ought to vote--especially the young 
people--what the stakes are, what the choice is, and what the 
consequences are. I don't have any doubt in the world that if people 
really understand what this election is about and what the honest 
differences are, that we will prevail.
    So here's what I'd like for you to say. First of all, remember what 
it was like 8 years ago. It's hard for a lot of younger voters to 
remember this. The economy was in the dumps; the society was divided; 
the political system was completely unresponsive. Al Gore and I came to 
the American people and we asked you to give us a chance to put the 
American people first, to provide opportunity for every responsible 
citizen in a community of all the American people--and I mean all, never 
mind your race, your ethnic background, whether you're an immigrant or 
native-born; never mind whether you're old or young, rich or poor, 
straight or gay, disabled or physically unchallenged. If you work hard 
and you obey the law, you're part of our America and part of our 
American family, and we want you to go forward with us.
    Congressman Greg Meeks--give him a big hand there, come on up--from 
Queens. [Applause] You were just with Hillary? Good for you. [Laughter]
    Now look, so 8 years ago we did that. We came in, you gave us a 
chance. And it's a different country now. It's a totally different 
country. We have the longest economic expansion in history, 22 million 
new jobs. So here's the first question, do you want to keep building on 
this prosperity and extend it to the people who haven't felt it yet? Do 
you want to keep it going?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. That's the first question you ought to ask every 
voter. Somebody tells you, ``Oh, it doesn't make any difference whether 
I vote or not.'' Think about where we were 8 years ago and look at where 
we are now economically. And if you want to build on it and extend this 
prosperity to the people that have been left behind, then you've got a 
choice: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Hillary, Major and Greg. You know 
what our position is? How do you keep it going? First, keep paying the 
debt down to keep interest rates down. Why is that important to you? 
Because if you keep interest rates down, it means that you pay lower 
home mortgage payments, lower car payments, lower college loan payments, 
lower credit card payments, lower business loan payments. It means more 
jobs, higher income, a bigger stock market, a growing economy. They 
quadrupled the debt, and we're paying it down.
    Then we say, let's take the money that's left and invest it in the 
education and health

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care of our people and our environment, in building our community, and 
in a tax cut we can afford--for child care, long-term care, college 
tuition costs, retirement.
    Now, they say that we're not giving you a big enough tax cut, and 
they're promising you the Moon right up front. They offer a tax cut 3 
times as big as ours--although, most of you would actually get more 
money under ours--and then they say, in addition to that, ``For all you 
young people, we're going to privatize Social Security; we're going to 
let you take 2 percent of your payroll tax and invest it in the stock 
market, and you'll make more money.'' And then they say to people my age 
and older, ``But don't worry; we're going to give you all your benefits. 
They're going to take the money out, and we're still going to pay you 
your benefit.'' And then they say, ``Here's some money we'd like to 
spend.''
    Now, look, here's the first big difference--this is a huge deal for 
you, especially you young people. Difference number one: People ask me 
all the time, ``What great new idea did you bring to economic 
policymaking in Washington to help turn this economy around?'' And I 
always have a one-word answer, ``arithmetic.'' [Laughter] Not algebra, 
not trigonometry, not calculus--arithmetic. Anybody in elementary school 
can do this math. Follow this:
    They project--the Government does, the Republicans do--a surplus of 
about $2 trillion over the next decade. And that's a lot of money, but 
forget the zeros, just say 2. Now, they acknowledge that their tax cut 
plus the interest cost associated with it is three-quarters of that--
1.6. And then they want to privatize Social Security. And as the Vice 
President keeps pointing out, you can't give the same trillion dollars 
twice.
    So if you young folks take your trillion out, it's not going to be 
there to pay my Social Security check, right? So that money has got to 
come from somewhere. That costs a trillion dollars--1. And then they 
want to spend a little money, too, a half a trillion dollars. That's .5. 
Now, there's a $2 trillion surplus. They propose to spend 1.6 plus 1 
plus .5, or 3.1--3.1 is bigger than 2. [Laughter]
    That's it. This is not rocket science. That's it. If you do that, 
you're back in debt; you've got higher interest rates. You pay more for 
college loans, home mortgages, car payments, credit card payments. 
Businesses pay more to borrow money. Therefore, they hire fewer people, 
and the stock market doesn't grow as much, and nobody makes as much 
money, and the economy doesn't grow like it would. This is a huge 
difference.
    So we say--our leaders, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, Greg, and 
Major, they say, ``Look, we'd like to give you more, but it's not fair; 
you can't do it all at once. You just can't take the money and run. 
We've got to keep this economy going.'' So question number one, if you 
want to keep the prosperity going, you just have one choice: Al Gore, 
Joe Lieberman, Hillary, Major, and Greg.
    Okay. Second question. This is not just a country that's better off; 
this is a better country--crime at a 26-year low; the number of people 
without health insurance going down for the first time in 12 years; 2.5 
million more kids with health insurance; the environment getting 
cleaner, we've tripled the number of toxic waste sites we've cleaned up 
over what they did in 12 years; we have cleaner air, cleaner water, 
safer drinking water, and we set aside more land for internal protection 
than any administration since Theodore Roosevelt almost 100 ago.
    The schools are getting better. On the national test scores, the 
math scores are up; the reading scores are up; the science scores are 
up; the dropout rate is down. African-American high school graduation 
rate was almost exactly equal to white high school graduation rate last 
year for the first time in history. The college-going rate is at an all-
time high, thanks in part to the biggest increase in college aid in 50 
years under this administration.
    Now, second question, do you want to build on this progress and not 
reverse it? Don't you want to do better? Wouldn't you like it if our 
streets were safer, our environment was cleaner, we had more people with 
health insurance, and we had even more educational opportunities and 
more of our schools worked well? If you do, you've got a choice. Al 
Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, and our Democrats in the House, do you 
know what they want? They want, number one, on crime, to keep putting 
more police

[[Page 2788]]

on the street, keep taking steps to get guns out of the hands of 
criminals and kids.
    Number two, they want a clean energy future, so that you don't have 
to worry sick in New York every winter about whether you'll have enough 
home heating oil or whether, if you've got it, you can afford it.
    Number three, they want to continue to insure more kids, until all 
kids are insured, then their working parents are insured. We pass a 
Patients' Bill of Rights and a Medicare prescription drug program for 
all the seniors in this country who need that.
    Number four, they want to keep working on the schools. You heard 
Major talking about that. If we win a majority in the House, he'll be 
the head of the Education Subcommittee, and I won't have to worry about 
education anymore. What do we want to do with schools? Universal 
preschool and after-school for all the kids who need it; smaller classes 
in the early grades, with 100,000 new teachers; school construction 
funds to build schools and repair schools, so kids are not going to 
substandard schools and they have the facilities they need to get a good 
education; funds to help turn around failing schools and a tax deduction 
for the cost of college tuition--that's our program.
    Now, you've got a choice. You have a choice. What does the other 
side want? Here's what they promise to do. On crime, they promise to 
repeal our program to put 100,000 police on the street. It works--never 
mind that, they're still going to repeal it. They say the Federal 
Government shouldn't be doing it, even if our streets are safer.
    In education, they promise to repeal our commitment to putting 
100,000 teachers in the classroom. They don't support what we want to do 
on school construction or universal preschool or after-school or tax 
deductibility for college tuition. On the environment, they think the 
only answer is to drill more oil. They don't believe in what we're 
trying to do with alternative energy and energy conservation. And in 
health care, they do not support the Patients' Bill of Rights or the 
Medicare drug program for all of our seniors or the plans we have to 
expand coverage to children and their parents. You couldn't have a 
bigger choice.
    Now, you can either build on the progress of the last 8 years or 
reverse a lot of it. But if you want to build on it, you've only got one 
choice: Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, Major, and Greg.
    Here's the third question. We're going to do this at the end one 
more time, because I want you to do this to people. You look at this 
crowd. The people in this room could reach another hundred thousand 
voters between now and election day with no sweat. Most of the people 
you know have never come to a rally like this. Isn't that right? Most of 
you have friends who have never come to a rally like this.
    This is Saturday night. Most of the kids here probably have friends 
who wonder what you're doing at a rally like this on Saturday night. Is 
that right? [Laughter] Okay, so this is your job. When you leave here, 
you've got to be able to do this.
    The third point is, maybe the most important of all, is that in the 
last 8 years, we have not only made economic and social progress; we 
have grown together as one America. The thing that's most important 
about this economic expansion is that it helped everybody. We have the 
lowest Latino and African-American unemployment ever recorded; average 
incomes are up over $5,000 after inflation; senior poverty is down below 
10 percent for the first time ever; child poverty down 30 percent; 
overall poverty at a 20-year low; welfare rolls at a 32-year low, cut in 
half.
    We're going forward together. It wasn't just that rich people made 
more money, middle class people and lower income working people did, 
too. And we need to keep going forward together. And it wasn't just 
about money.
    When the Republicans urged us to end affirmative action, we said, 
don't end it, mend it, and we kept it. We continue to enforce the civil 
rights laws and involve people in the work of the Government, all kinds 
of people. And to try to break down barriers of discrimination.
    Now, if you want to keep building one America, you've got a huge 
choice here. And I'll just give you a few of the issues.
    Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, and our crowd, here's what they're 
for--just listen to this: hate crimes legislation, employment

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nondiscrimination legislation, legislation to guarantee equal pay for 
women in the work force, legislation to guarantee fair treatment for 
legal immigrants, no matter where they're from, and Supreme Court and 
Federal court appointments that will protect civil rights, human rights, 
and a woman's right to choose.
    Now, in every one of these issues--in every single one of these 
issues--the leaders of the other party have a different position--every 
one of them. No on hate crimes, no unemployment nondiscrimination, no on 
the equal pay law for women, no on the court appointments to protect a 
woman's right to choose--every one of them a different position.
    So if somebody tells you that, why should they vote, there's no real 
difference, you have to say, oh, no. If you want to keep the prosperity 
going and build on it, if you want to keep the social progress going and 
build on it, if you want to keep building one America, you only have one 
choice: Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, Major, and Greg.
    Now, let me ask you this: Don't you believe if you told everybody 
you knew of voting age just what I told you and what the three big 
issues were in the election, that the overwhelming majority of them 
would vote for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Hillary? Don't you believe 
that? [Applause] So I want you to think about this.
    A lot of you have friends in neighboring States that are close in 
the Presidential election. A lot of you have friends here in New York 
who are trying to decide whether they should vote. A lot of you have 
friends who say, ``Oh, I just saw a couple of TV ads; it's all just a 
mess to me; I don't know what the deal is here.'' You've got to tell 
them what the deal is. This is a big thing. And young people have the 
biggest stake of all in this election.
    Even when it comes to preserving Social Security, you've got a big 
stake. Why? Because when people my age retire, the baby boomers, there 
will only be two people working for every one person drawing Social 
Security. The reason we want to preserve Social Security is not just for 
us; it's so our retirement does not bankrupt our kids and their ability 
to raise our grandkids. Even that is a young person's issue.
    Now I just want to say something real personal in closing. I believe 
I know Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Hillary better than virtually any 
other voter in the country. [Laughter] As a matter of fact, I'm quite 
confident that I'm the person who knows the three of them put together 
the best of anybody who will vote. And I've had some passing experience 
with the White House in the last 8 years. [Laughter]
    So I want to tell you a couple things that are personal about this. 
John Kennedy said the Presidency is a place of decisionmaking. Vice 
President Gore has more experience than his opponent. Vice President 
Gore, whether it was in hooking up our schools to the Internet or trying 
to develop new high-mileage vehicles or reducing the size of the Federal 
Government and putting more services on computer or helping to bring 
economic opportunities to poor areas or helping us to stand up for 
freedom around the world, he has done more good in the position of Vice 
President than anybody that ever held the job. Second, he has more 
knowledge. Third, he works harder than just about anybody I've ever 
known, and it matters how hard you work. Fourth, he's a good student; he 
keeps on learning, and it's a job that is constantly a learning 
experience. Even today I learned something new about my job--even today. 
And finally, he makes good decisions.
    So what I want you to think about in your mind is, you know what the 
three big issues are. You also have a candidate who's a good man, who 
makes good decisions, who will be a great President. And I want you to 
tell that to people you know.
    This whole set of ideas I just went over with you grew out of a 
political movement I was part of, that Joe Lieberman was a part of. He 
understands the basis, the intellectual basis, of the policies that we 
implemented that I just discussed, as well or better than anybody else 
in the entire United States Congress. He's a perfect partner for Al 
Gore.
    Let me say one other thing. I think we're going to win the House. I 
think we've got a good chance to win the Senate. But you remember what 
Major Owens said, too, when you talk to people. If for some reason we 
didn't, there needs to be somebody there

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to stop the extremism of the Republican leaders in Congress and Al Gore 
will do that.
    Now, let me tell you something about Hillary. I've known her for 30 
years, next spring. We just celebrated our silver wedding anniversary. I 
know you want to discount what I say, but I'm telling you this also as 
somebody who has known hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in 
public life, elected officials. Maybe tens of thousands, I don't know. 
I've known a bunch of people in politics. [Laughter]
    There is nobody I know who knows more about children and family, 
health care, and education and bringing economic opportunity to 
distressed places--knows more about all five of those subjects--than 
her. She's worked on some of those issues for 20 years. She's worked on 
some of those issues for 30 years.
    And all those 30 years, she never asked anybody to do anything for 
her, never. She was always working on someone else's commission, 
starting some new organization, volunteering for some new civic endeavor 
to create some new effort, or lobbying for some bill or campaigning for 
me or some other politician. It wasn't until some of the people in the 
New York House delegation asked her to start looking at running for the 
Senate and traveling around the State. And she had never before asked 
anybody to do anything for her. But all this time, she's been working on 
these things.
    And I can tell you something based on my knowledge of all the people 
I've known in public life. There is nobody that has a better combination 
of brains and heart and determination and knowledge and the ability to 
get things done, even with people who don't agree with her. You will be 
so proud of her.
    So are you going to do what I asked you to do? [Applause] Are you 
going to go tell people what's at stake? [Applause] Are you going to ask 
them if they want to keep the prosperity going? [Applause] Are you going 
to ask them if they want to build on the progress of the last 8 years? 
[Applause] Are you going to ask them if they want to keep building one 
America? [Applause] And what's the answer? Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, 
Hillary, Major, and Greg.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

 Note:  The President spoke at 7:53 p.m. in the gymnasium at Long Island 
University in Brooklyn. In his remarks, he referred to David J. 
Steinberg, president, Gale Stevens Haynes, provost, and Simone Knight, 
student body president, Long Island University; Mr. Steinberg's wife, 
Joan; H. Carl McCall, New York State comptroller; Judith Hope, chair, 
New York State Democratic Party; New York State Assembly member Clarence 
Norman, Jr., 43d District, Kings County chair. Representative Major R. 
Owens is a candidate for reelection in New York's 11th Congressional 
District; Gregory W. Meeks is a candidate for reelection in New York's 
Sixth Congressional District.