[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 50 (Monday, December 18, 2000)]
[Pages 3042-3044]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Nebraska 2000 Victory Reception in Omaha, Nebraska

December 8, 2000

    Thank you very much. First, let me say to my great friend Vin, to 
Laurel, thank you for having me here. It took me a little while to get 
to Nebraska. [Laughter]
    I was at Offutt, and I told the crowd, I said, one of my, sort of, 
critics said, ``It'll be a cold day when the President comes to 
Nebraska.'' [Laughter] So I just picked a cold day and showed up. 
[Laughter] And I'm very glad all of you came. And I'm glad that this 
wonderful home has been opened to us and previously, a few months ago, 
to Hillary, something for which I'm very grateful. I expect some of you 
were here that night, and I'm very grateful for that.
    I want to say congratulations to Ben and to Diane. It's great news 
for me. You know, I served with both Ben Nelson and Bob Kerrey when I 
was a Governor. I had a hard time getting a promotion. I was a Governor 
for 12 years--[laughter]--and I never got bored with it. I'd be happy if 
I were doing it, still. But we served together, and I was thrilled when 
Ben genuinely mustered the courage--both of them, together--to run 
again.
    I've been through that deal, where you run for something and it 
doesn't work out. And then it's all very well--everybody else is telling 
you run to again, but they don't know how bad it hurts when it doesn't 
work--[laughter]--and the sort of pain threshold you have to cross to 
gather yourself together again. And they did it, and I really believe 
he'll be an excellent Senator. And we need people representing our party 
in Congress who have a sense of compassion and who are

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progressive, but who can be trusted to manage the economy, as well.
    Because the thing that we have proved, I think, in the last 8 
years--and I'm coming to Bob Kerrey on this--is that the most 
progressive social policy begins with a good economic policy that keeps 
interest rates down, lets the private sector grow, creates jobs with low 
unemployment, makes it possible for people to borrow money to start or 
expand businesses, to pay for college loans or car loans or credit cards 
or home mortgages.
    That's why we've got over two-thirds of the American people in their 
own homes--over 70 percent in Nebraska--for the first time in the 
history of the country, because we've had a combination of--we had a 
good progressive policy on health care, on education. We had a balanced 
policy on crime. But it started with an economic policy that would work. 
And when you put it all together, we wound up with more economic 
progress and social progress than the country has had, certainly, in our 
lifetime.
    So I'm very grateful for that. But in order to do it, you have to 
have the right balance of people in the Congress and, certainly, 
representing our party. So I'm glad he's going to Congress--to the 
Senate, and he's going to have a partner in the new Senator from New 
York, which I'm also very proud of. [Laughter]
    Bob Kerrey and I served together a long time ago. We've been 
together in a lot of places. We were even at the Indianapolis 500 once. 
You remember that? Nineteen eighty-six or '87, a long time ago. And 
we've been friends a long time. I had very mixed feelings when he 
announced that he wanted to retire from the Senate. I was happy for him, 
because I think he's got a truly exciting opportunity, which I believe 
will still keep him in the spotlight in national political life, at 
least I hope it does. I was sorry for the people of Nebraska and sorry 
for the United States Senate, because the Senate will be a poorer place.
    When I was a young man in college, I worked in the United States 
Senate. And it was a time that was very contentious and quite partisan 
in some ways. We were having all the civil rights and the Vietnam war 
battles of the late Johnson years, when I went to work in the Senate. 
But the Senate was a place where there were 8 or 10 or 15 people that 
everybody, without regard to their party, respected and thought, you 
know, these people talk--they weren't carrying the party line. They 
weren't just trying to hurt somebody. They were standing up there, 
saying something that they really believed would make America a better 
place. Even if they didn't agree, no one really believed that they were 
just motivated by kind of blind partisanship or power grabbing or 
manipulation. They believed it was right.
    And I think Bob Kerrey has been that kind of Senator. He's been 
willing to disagree with everybody, including me--[laughter]--if he 
thought it was right. But the main thing is, he's kept us debating 
issues that we ought to be talking about. And the real problem with all 
this intense partisanship--and by the way, with the exponential cost of 
campaigns--and what it does to both sides is that it tends to freeze 
people into yesterday's position, at the very time they should be 
debating what tomorrow's position ought to be. Well, Bob was always 
thinking about what tomorrow's position ought to be. And America is 
always about tomorrow. And that's the last point I want to make.
    You know, it's gratifying for me for people to come up and say, oh, 
I feel like I got a leg in the grave, and people say, ``Oh, I'm going to 
miss you and all this, and thank you for it.'' [Laughter] But it's been 
an honor to serve. I've loved it. Even the bad days were good. I would 
do it all again tomorrow in a heartbeat. But what I want to say to you 
is, the most important thing is that we do the right things, that we 
have good ideas, good values, work together, do the right thing.
    If we hadn't been doing the right things in the last 8 years, I 
could have given the same speeches, and the results would not be the 
same. It's not about talking; it's about doing the right thing. So 
that's another reason I'm glad you're here today. And I want to ask you 
to keep supporting the direction that our party has taken, generally 
represented by those of us who are standing up here, because the country 
desperately needs--and basically even people who don't

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know they do, agree with the direction that we've taken in the last 8 
years.
    About two-thirds of the people support what we're trying to do. They 
just can't bring themselves to vote for us in an election. [Laughter] 
That's the truth. That's the truth. And so this is very important, 
because I've worked as hard as I could to get the country turned around. 
It's been 50 years since we've paid down the debt 3 years in a row. If 
we keep going--if we keep going, in somewhere between 9 and 12 years, 
depending on what judgments are made by my successors in the Congress 
and the White House, America could be out of debt for the first time 
since 1835. And I can't tell you what that means.
    In a global economy where we compete for every dollar with people 
all over the world and where, so far, we've been doing so much better 
than everybody else--we keep buying more than we're selling--to pay that 
debt off guarantees a whole--all these young people here, we'll give 
them 20 years of lower interest rates, a stronger economy, higher 
productivity, a whole different future. That's just one example.
    So I'm going to try to be a good citizen, and I'm going to try to 
help work on the things that I worked on as President as a private 
citizen but to do it in a way that doesn't get under foot of the next 
President. And I have loved doing this. But the most important thing is 
that people like you stay active in our party and keep pushing us to be 
thinking about tomorrow. Just keep pushing us toward the future, keep 
moving, and keep reaching out like a magnet.
    And again, I would like to thank Ben. I would like to thank Bob 
Kerrey for the 8 years that we have worked together, President and 
Senator, and the many years of friendship before that. I want to thank 
Peter Hoagland, who came down from Washington with us today, for the 
years that we worked together when he was a Congressman from Nebraska.
    I want to say to you that the best days of this country are still 
out here. We've had 8 good years, but if we build on it instead of 
reverse it, it's just going to get better.
    But keep in mind, I will say again: It's more important that the 
people be pushing toward tomorrow than who has a particular office. As 
long as we're open to the proposition we have to keep working; and we 
have to keep working together; everybody counts; everybody deserves a 
chance; we all do better when we work together. That's what the 
Democrats believe, and if we keep doing it, we're going to be just fine.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:38 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to Vinod Gupta and Laurel Gottesman, reception 
hosts; and Senator-elect Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and his wife, Diane. 
This item was not received in time for publication in the appropriate 
issue.