pd05oc98 Remarks at a Unity '98 Dinner...

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condition and you need to see a specialist, you ought to be able to see 
one. Number three, if you work for a small business who changes 
providers, health care providers, at a given time during the year, you 
still shouldn't have to change your doctor if you're in the middle of a 
critical treatment.
    Now, let me just graphically demonstrate what that means. This 
happens. These things happen. You remember when you had your first 
child. How would you feel if you were 7 months pregnant and your 
employer says, ``I'm sorry, go get another obstetrician''? If anybody in 
your family has ever had chemotherapy--I've been through that--if your 
family member needs chemotherapy, you sit around thinking; you try to 
figure out ways to make jokes about it. My mother stood there thinking, 
``Well, maybe I won't lose my hair, or when I do, maybe I will finally 
get a wig.'' I never had to--you think--you try to be funny about it. 
And then you wonder whether you're going to be too sick to eat, right? 
In the middle of a chemotherapy treatment, do you think somebody would 
say, ``I'm sorry, go get another doctor''? That's what this is about--
basic things.
    Our bill also protects the privacy of your medical records, which I 
think is very, very important and will become more important in the 
years ahead.
    Now, the House of Representatives, the Republican majority passed a 
bill that guarantees none of these rights and leaves 100 million 
Americans out of what little it does cover. The Senate wouldn't even 
vote on the bill because they didn't want to be recorded, so they shut 
down business.
    That's what this election is about. Don't be fooled about a 
smokescreen. This election is: Are we going to have a Patients' Bill of 
Rights? Is our policy going to be to grow the economy and preserve the 
environment? Are we going to put education first? Are we going to 
stabilize the global economy, so we can continue to grow? Are we going 
to save Social Security first? That's what it's about.
    And if we go out and say, we are Democrats, this is what we're 
running for; we believe elections should be about the people that live 
outside Washington, not about who's crawling on whom in Washington, DC--
everything is going to be fine. So I ask you, go out there and make sure 
that's what it's about.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to luncheon hosts William S. and Star Lerach; 
Leonard Barrack, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; 
Lynn Schenk, candidate for State attorney general; and San Diego City 
Council member Christine Kehoe, candidate for California's 49th 
Congressional District.


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[Page 1908]
 
Monday, October 5, 1998
 
Volume 34--Number 40
Pages 1895-1963
 
Week Ending Friday, October 2, 1998
 
Statement on Social Security

September 26, 1998

    The Republican tax plan drains billions of dollars from the surplus 
before we have done the hard work of strengthening Social Security. 
First things first. I will insist that we reserve the entire surplus 
until we have seized this historic opportunity to save Social Security, 
and veto any bill that doesn't meet that principle. While it is 
regrettable that this plan survived today, I am heartened by the strong 
commitment to fiscal discipline and Social Security shown by those who 
opposed it.


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[Page 1908-1914]
 
Monday, October 5, 1998
 
Volume 34--Number 40
Pages 1895-1963
 
Week Ending Friday, October 2, 1998
 
Remarks at a Unity '98 Dinner in Los Angeles, California

September 26, 1998

    Thank you very much. I hate to begin with a request, but if there 
was any way to turn down some of these lights, I would like it. I can't 
see any of you out there. Can you turn these lights down? It's not a 
nightclub act. But I'd just like to know that you're out there, you 
know? [Laughter] Thank you.
    Let me begin by telling you how very grateful I am for the warm 
welcome you have given me tonight, to those of you whom I saw earlier. I 
thank you especially for the personal messages you had for me and for 
Hillary. You know, even Presidents and their families have to be people, 
too, and that means a very great deal to us. And I thank you more than 
you will ever know.
    I want to thank Haim and Cheryl for having me back in their home and 
having all

[[Page 1909]]

of you here in this beautiful, beautiful setting. I'd like to thank 
Michael McDonald for that wonderful song. We were all up there singing 
but not as well as you. I want to thank the staff of our Unity events, 
the people who catered this wonderful dinner, and the people who served 
it. I thank them all. They did a wonderful job for us. Thank you.
    I want to thank Gray and Sharon Davis for being such good friends to 
Hillary and me and such good friends to the people of California. You 
have to make sure that on election night they're victorious, and I 
believe they will be. I thank you so much for being here. I thank my 
friend, Phil Angelides, for being here and for running for office.
    Let me say to all the Members of Congress here, I'm very proud of 
this Unity event. We began to do this in 1996, to work together through 
the Democratic committee and the Senate campaign committee and the House 
campaign committee. We found that our contributors were relieved because 
they were only being hit once, instead of three times. But we also found 
that when we pooled our efforts, as is always true in life, when we work 
together, we do better. And Nancy Pelosi and Bob Torricelli have done a 
wonderful, wonderful job and a great thing for our country.
    I'd like to thank the other Members who are here. You may have heard 
through the applause what Nancy said about Brad Sherman, that he was on 
Speaker Gingrich's top 10 hit list. Well, for whatever it's worth, he's 
on my top 10 protect list, and I think he's going to win in November, 
thanks in no small measure to your help. And I thank you for that.
    I have a lot of things to be grateful to Henry Waxman for, but one 
thing stands out above all. He has put the public health of the children 
of this country over the interests of the tobacco industry that has done 
so much to undermine it and to stop us from passing comprehensive 
tobacco legislation. He fought that battle a long time before it was 
popular and before we in our administration got into it. And Henry, 
we're going to win sooner or later, sure as the world, and when we do, 
it will be in no small measure because of you. And I thank you for what 
you've done for our children.
    I want to say, too, that I'm very glad Barbara Boxer is here 
tonight. You know she's in a tough race. She's always been in a tough 
race. She was in '92; she is now; she has been since the spring. But I 
think she's tougher than her race is. And I can say this about, to some 
extent, every Member of Congress who's here. But I want you to remember 
that many of the things for which the American people very generously 
give our administration credit, which flow from the economic prosperity 
we have--on one August night in 1993, hung by the thread of a single 
vote--first in the House and then in the Senate. And we did not have a 
vote to spare when we passed the economic plan that brought the deficit 
down 92 percent, before we passed the bipartisan Balanced Budget Act. 
That plan cut taxes for 15 million working families on modest incomes. I 
invested dramatic new monies in health research, as Nancy said, and 
education. It gave real incentives for people to invest in inner cities 
that had been left behind in the development we had enjoyed. And it hung 
by a single vote.
    And Barbara Boxer, who had been elected in a narrow race in 
California in 1992, never blinked. She just went up there and did the 
right thing for America. And now the voters of California should never 
blink. They should go to the polls and do the right thing for California 
and for America and reelect her, because we need her in Washington, DC, 
very, very badly.
    I would also like to thank Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle for their 
sterling leadership of our caucus in the Senate and the House through 
some very, very difficult days and tough decisions. Again, I say to you 
many of the things for which the administration is credited required the 
support of Democrats. Even in the bipartisan legislation, we never would 
have gotten the money to ensure 5,000 children who don't have health 
insurance--5 million children. We never would have gotten the funds to 
give a $1,500 tax credit to virtually every family in the country for 
the first 2 years of college, and tax breaks for the other costs of 
higher education and to expand dramatically the student loan program and 
the scholarship programs if it hadn't been for the leadership of Tom 
Daschle and Dick Gephardt.

[[Page 1910]]

    So every time you think about the good things that I have been able 
to achieve, if a law was required and a change was required, I can tell 
you that if it hadn't been for those two men sharing the same values, 
the same hopes, the same dreams, and being willing to pay the same heat 
it would not have happened. And I want to see them and their 
counterparts rewarded in this election because they have consistently, 
in the majority and the minority, done the right thing for the United 
States. They are builders, not wreckers; they are uniters, not dividers; 
and they ought to be the leaders of the United States Congress.
    Let me just say one final thing of appreciation for the Democratic 
Party. I want to thank the chairs of this event nationally and the 
chairs in California. I want to thank Steve Grossman, who did the right 
thing to go back home to his child; and Len Barrack, our finance chair.
    We've had a wonderful couple of days. Hillary just got back from 
Washington and Oregon, campaigning for our House candidates. She was in 
northern California with Barbara last night, and we got to spend the 
evening with Chelsea, and the morning until noon. And I was in Illinois 
yesterday and in San Jose last night, in Silicon Valley. I went to San 
Diego earlier today, and I'm here, and I'm going on to Texas in the 
morning.
    America knows that it has a decision to make. And I want to talk to 
you pretty seriously about that just for a moment. The kind reception 
you gave me is an indication of a deep feeling that you and millions of 
other Americans have about what's going on in Washington. But what I 
desperately want this election to be about is what's going on outside of 
Washington, in the lives of the American people.
    You know, I ran for this job because I did not believe the country 
was moving in the right direction, and I didn't think we had a vision to 
get to the new century. And I believe that we had some ideas--I and the 
people who were working with me--that would, first of all, make America 
work for ordinary people again; and secondly would bring us together in 
a spirit of reconciliation and community across this incredible 
diversity that we have in our country.
    Indeed, one of the things that I regret the most about so much of 
the rancor of Washington is that it undermines what we so desperately 
need in this country now, which is a deepening spirit of unity and what 
we have in common with our neighbors and friends, no matter what the 
differences are. And I wanted America to be a force for peace and 
prosperity and freedom throughout the world.
    And in the last 6 years, because of what we were able to do 
together, I'm very proud of the fact that we have the lowest 
unemployment rate in 28 years and the lowest crime rate in 25 years and 
the smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years, and we're 
about to have the first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years. I'm 
proud of the fact that we have advanced the cause of peace and freedom 
around the world and that we banned assault weapons at home and passed 
the Brady bill and passed the family and medical leave law and did a lot 
of other things to change life for people who could never afford to come 
to an event like this. I'm proud of all that.
    But the real issue is, what are we going to do with this moment of 
prosperity and confidence? And you showed me once again tonight that 
adversity is not our enemy. Adversity is our friend. It's a harsh 
teacher sometimes. And I think we've all experienced that in one way or 
another in our lives. But it animates us to action and it forces us to 
get to the bottom of ourselves and ask what we really believe in and 
what we really care about and what we're prepared to work for and to 
sacrifice for. No, adversity is not our enemy in this election season, 
but complacency and cynicism are enemies.
    Our opponents in the other party believe that they're going to pick 
up seats in this midterm election and because of what I call the M&M 
syndrome--midterms and money. Even though you're here tonight, they'll 
still have more money than we do for the next few weeks--quite a bit 
more.
    And usually at midterm elections, the electorate is older and 
wealthier and more likely to be Republican. In order for us to win, 
which I clearly believe we can, the American people have to understand 
what the real

[[Page 1911]]

choice is and have to believe that just because times are good doesn't 
mean we can sit on our lead because we can't.
    All you have to do is look around the world today. Ron Burkle and I 
were talking tonight before I came over here about the troubles in Asia, 
the troubles in Japan, the terrible challenges the people of Russia are 
facing, the fear that many of us have that it could spread to our 
friends in Latin America who are actually doing a pretty good job 
running their economies; and what Alan Greenspan said the other night, 
that America could never remain--or at least not forever remain--an 
island of prosperity in a sea of economic distress.
    The world is changing very fast. That's why I have said that we 
ought to be using this time to look at the big problems facing our 
country and to take action. Let me just mention a couple very quickly 
that I think are important and then give you the real comparison of 
what's going on.
    Number one, we're going to have this surplus on October the 1st. 
We've been waiting for it for 29 years and every Member of Congress and 
I in this room, we've been working on it for 6 years. Now, I would like 
to see the red ink turn to black and dry a little. I'm just waiting for 
October 1st, just to take a deep breath and say that's another thing we 
did that was good for America.
    The leaders of the other party, they want to give an election-year 
tax cut. Just a few weeks before the election, it would be popular; it 
would be great politics. But it's wrong. It is the wrong thing to do. 
It's wrong for two reasons.
    One is we need to show stability and discipline. We quadrupled the 
debt of this country in the 12 years before I became President. And now, 
with so much of the rest of the world in trouble, we need to show people 
we have got our head on straight and we are not going to knee-jerk in 
the management of our economy, we're going to be a force of strength and 
stability for the whole world.
    The second, and really the more important issue, is that everybody 
knows the Social Security system we have now is not sustainable when the 
baby boomers retire. It's fine now. And it will be fine for several 
years in the future. But we know right now we cannot maintain the 
present Social Security system and take care of the elderly--and I 
remind you that half of the elderly people in this country are lifted 
out of poverty today because of Social Security. They would be in 
poverty were it not for Social Security, even those that have other 
sources of income.
    Now, I have not said I'm against tax cuts. We have tax cuts in my 
budget, in the balanced budget, for child care, for education, for the 
environment. All I said is we shouldn't spend the surplus on tax cuts 
until we save Social Security for the 21st century. And that's very 
important. Everybody I know--there are some baby boomers here tonight--
everybody between 34 and 52 is a baby boomer. I'm the oldest of them, 
though it grieves me to say so. [Laughter]
    But I can tell you--not very long ago I was home in Arkansas eating 
barbecue with 20 people I grew up with, and very few of them would 
classify as upper middle class. Most of them have very modest incomes, 
they're just good, hard-working Americans doing the best they can to 
raise their kids. But every one of them was plagued with the notion that 

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