pd07au00 Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Reception in Palm...

	Web GovRecords.org

    Why should we even be fighting about this? We ought to be saving 
Social Security and Medicare and adding a prescription drug benefit for 
seniors who need it. We ought to be making sure that every kid in this 
country who wants to go to college can go. We ought to be making sure 
that there's economic opportunity for the first time on these Indian 
reservations and in the Mississippi Delta and the Appalachians and all 
these places, in the inner-city neighborhoods. There's plenty to do out 
here.
    We ought to be figuring out how we're going to put a human face on 
the global economy so that those of us like me that believe we ought to 
have more trade will be able to prove it lifts people up and raises 
wages and creates jobs everywhere. We ought to be thinking about these 
big things.
    What are we going to do about global warming? One of the reasons I'm 
for Al Gore for President, besides the fact that he's been my Vice 
President and the best Vice President in history is, we need somebody in 
the White House that understands the future. That's what we ought to be 
talking about.
    Al Gore was telling me about climate change 12 years ago. Everybody 
was making fun of him. Now, even the oil companies admit it's real. He 
was right. He sponsored legislation in the House to make the Internet 
more than the private province of physicists, and a lot of people in 
this room are making a pretty good living because of that.
    And now all your financial and health records are on somebody's 
computer somewhere. Don't you think you ought to be able to say yes 
before somebody else gets them? Wouldn't you like somebody in the White 
House at least who understood that?
    The other day we had this great announcement on the human genome--
did you see it?--with the sequencing of the human genome. I had to read 
for a year so I would understand what I was saying in that 30 minutes. 
Do you think someone--when you get a little genetic map, and all of you 
that are still young enough to bear children, when your children come 
home from the hospital in a couple years, everybody will just have their 
little genetic map that will tell you, you know, what your child is 
likely to be like, what kind of problems you're vulnerable to. It's 
scary and hopeful.
    But do you think your little genetic record should be used by 
somebody else without your permission to deny you a job or a promotion 
or a pay raise or health insurance? Wouldn't you at least like to have 
somebody in the White House that understands that?
    This is a big election, and all this great stuff is out there. And 
you must not allow people to take this casually. Dick Gephardt will be 
the Speaker if the people of this country understand what the issues 
are, what the differences are, what the stakes are. And that's why I've 
tried to be, even though I

[[Page 1739]]

am in a semi-coma tonight and will not remember this tomorrow morning--
[laughter]--I hope I have been somewhat persuasive.
    The kids of this country deserve this. Look, in my lifetime, we've 
only had one other economy that was almost this good in the sixties. And 
we took it for granted, and we thought we didn't have to nourish that 
moment. And it fell apart in the national conflicts over civil rights 
and the war in Vietnam. And all of a sudden, it was gone. And now we've 
waited over 30 years for this chance again. We don't want to blow it.
    And if we don't, believe me, the best is still out there. I've had a 
great time doing this. Massachusetts has been great to us. If you really 
want to tell me that you appreciate what I've tried to do, make him the 
Speaker, make Al the President, make Daschle the majority leader, and 
you will make America's best days ahead.
    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 8:23 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt 
and her husband, Charles Ansbacher, dinner hosts; former President Boris 
Yeltsin of Russia; Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush 
of Texas and Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney; Ed McMahon, 
spokesperson, Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes; and Wayne LaPierre, 
executive vice president, National Rifle Association. This item was not 
received in time for publication in the appropriate issue.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]
                         

[Page 1739-1740]
 
Monday, August 7, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 31
Pages 1721-1786
 
Week Ending Friday, August 4, 2000
 
The President's Radio Address

July 29, 2000

    Good morning. This weekend marks the start of the summer recess for 
Members of Congress. Many are heading home to their districts, and most 
Republicans are meeting in Philadelphia for their party's convention.
    But wherever they go, I hope they will be thinking of the millions 
of Americans for whom summer vacations are not an option, the millions 
who work all summer long, all year long, earning no more than the 
minimum wage.
    I want to talk to you today about giving these hard-pressed 
Americans a much-deserved raise and helping them to live the American 
dream. The face of the minimum wage is the face of America. Every one of 
us knows at least one person who works for minimum wage. It might be a 
member of your family. It might be the person who cares for your 
children during the day or serves you lunch at the shop on the corner or 
cleans your office every night.
    Seventy percent of the workers on the minimum wage are adults; 60 
percent are women; and almost 50 percent work full-time. Many are their 
families' sole breadwinners, struggling to bring up their children on 
$10,700 a year. These hard-working Americans need a raise. They deserve 
it. They've earned it.
    I've always believed that if you work hard and play by the rules, 
you ought to have a decent chance for yourself and for a better life for 
your children. That's the promise I made when I first ran for President, 
and that's the basic bargain behind so much of what we've done in the 
years since, from expanding the earned-income tax credit for lower 
income working people to passing the Family and Medical Leave Act, from 
increased child care assistance to health care for children to helping 
millions and millions of Americans move from welfare to work.
    That's also why, in 1996, we raised the minimum wage to $5.15 an 
hour over 2 years. It's high time we did it again. In fact, it's long 
overdue.
    More than a year ago now, I proposed to raise the minimum wage by $1 
over 2 years, a modest increase that merely restores the minimum wage to 
what it was back in 1982 in real dollar terms. Still, it's no small 
change. For a full-time worker, it would mean another $2,000 a year--
$2,000 more to pay for a child's college education, to cover critical 
health care, to pay the rent. And for a year now, the Republican 
leadership has sat on that proposal.
    Back in 1996, the last time we raised the minimum wage, some of 
these same Republicans called it, and I quote, ``a job killer cloaked in 
kindness.'' They said it would cause--again, a quote--``a juvenile crime 
wave of epic proportions.'' Well, time has not been kind to their 
predictions, and neither have the numbers. Our economy has created more 
than 11 million new jobs since we last

[[Page 1740]]

raised the minimum wage. And study after study shows that a raise in the 
minimum wage is good not only for working families; it's good for our 
entire economy, especially at a time of labor shortages when we want to 
increase incentives for all Americans who can, to find work.
    So this time, unlike the last time, the congressional majority knows 
better than to speak against raising the minimum wage. This time, 
instead of arguing the facts, the leadership is playing legislative 
games, stalling action, and stifling debate. Already, these delays have 
cost the minimum wage worker more than $900 in hard-earned pay. To 
paraphrase Shakespeare, they've come to bury the minimum wage, not to 
raise it.
    For working Americans, the wait grows longer. As recently as this 
week, the majority in Congress was still talking about raising the 
minimum wage, but they couldn't bring themselves to actually do it. In 
the last hours before their recess, they were still working overtime to 
give tax breaks to the tiniest, wealthiest fraction of America's 
families and still doing nothing for the 10 million people who would 
benefit from a boost in the minimum wage.
    This weekend Republican leaders gather in Philadelphia. From their 
seats inside the convention hall, I hope they'll stop a moment to think 
of Americans outside that hall--Americans working in the restaurants, 
the shops, the hotels of Philadelphia, working hard for the minimum 
wage.
    If Republican leaders really want to make their compassion count, 
they ought to join me in getting back to business and raising the 
minimum wage. I hope the majority will join the Democrats to seize this 
moment, to stop the delays, to work with me to help our working 
families.
    Thanks for listening.

 Note:  The address was recorded at 1:03 p.m. on July 28 in Room 606 at 
Barrington High School, Barrington, RI, for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
July 29. The transcript was made available by the Office of the Press 
Secretary on July 28 but was embargoed for release until the broadcast.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]
                         

[Page 1740-1743]
 
Monday, August 7, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 31
Pages 1721-1786
 
Week Ending Friday, August 4, 2000
 
Remarks at a Luncheon for Hillary Clinton in New York City

July 29, 2000

    Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank all of you for making 
us feel so welcome. In particular, I thank you, Albert Kwak and John Ha 
and Gilliam Kim, for your words and your support. I would also like to 
thank those of you in the audience who worked so hard on this event, 
especially Janet Lee, thank you, and my good friend Tony George from 
Cleveland. I thank Lee Ho-Yeon for the song. Wasn't the song beautiful? 
Let's give her another hand for the beautiful singing. [Applause]
    I want to say just a couple of things, if I might, today. First of 
all, I appreciate the previous remarks by Gilliam Kim about the 
relationship of the United States and Korea and South Korea during my 
time. I have been to Korea many times to see the people, the leaders, 
and the United States forces there. We have worked very hard to 
encourage the new direction in North Korea and to support President Kim 
as he has worked to break down the barriers of the past and to build a 
more peaceful future. And I certainly hope it will be successful.
    I feel very good about what has been done, and I appreciate the 
support that this new direction has received from other nations in the 
area. So I hope you will all keep your fingers crossed and keep working 
for it, because it would be a very good thing to make the future in the 
21st century safer for all of the children of the Korean Peninsula and 
all of Asia.
    The second thing I would like to say is that I have worked very hard 
for these last 8 years to make America a place open and welcoming to all 
immigrants, a place of genuine opportunity that supported people who 
worked hard and took care of their families and contributed to their 
communities.
    I have worked against discrimination against all people who come to 
America from other countries, and I've tried to remind our fellow 
Americans that all of us came here from somewhere else. Even our native 
populations once crossed a landmass that no longer exists between the 
Northwest United

[[Page 1741]]

States and the northeastern part of Asia. So I welcome you here, and I 
thank you for your participation in this event.
    The last thing I would like to say is that I heartily endorse what 
was said earlier by Mr. Kim about hate crimes. You know, even though 
America has made great progress in overcoming our past of discrimination 
on the basis of race or ethnic origin or religion, we still have 
instances in our country where people are subject to discrimination. And 
we all know it. We can remember by name some of the victims: James Byrd, 
dragged to death in Texas; Matthew Shepard, stretched out on a fence in 
Wyoming. We know that a former basketball coach in Chicago was killed 
because of his race. We know that a young Korean Christian was killed 
walking out of a church by a fanatic who said he belonged to a church 
that did not believe in God but believed in the supremacy of his race.
    We know, thankfully, these people are a very small minority in our 
country, but we know they have to be rebuked and stopped. And that is 
why we support the hate crimes legislation. Hate crimes are not like 
other crimes. People are singled out for victimhood simply because they 
belong to a certain race or a certain religion. In California not very 
long ago, a bunch of little Jewish children were shot at just because 
they were going into their school, and a Filipino postal worker was 
killed because he was Filipino and because he worked for the Federal 
Government.
    There are very few of these people in our country, thank goodness, 
but we should pass hate crimes legislation to make it clear that we will 
not tolerate discrimination against people simply because of who they 
are. And I hope all of you will support that.
    Now, looking ahead to the future, let me say that I think that 
Korean-Americans can have a big impact on this election, in New York and 
in the United States, if you are willing to participate, not--yes by 
coming to fundraisers, and we thank you for that--but also by reminding 
Americans of what an important occasion this election is. In great 
democracies, people tend to make good decisions in times of crisis 
because they know that there is trouble all around and that change is 
required. In 1992 the American people gave me a chance to be President, 
because there was trouble all around and they knew we had to change.
    But sometimes when things are going very well--when the economy is 
in good shape, when, as you said, there are fewer people on welfare, 
when crime is down, when we are moving toward greater peace in the 
world--people may think there is no consequence to the election; there 
are no differences between the candidates; everything comes wrapped up 
in a pretty package; and no one takes the trouble to open it to see 
what's inside in terms of what an election is about.
    And the reason I say you can make a contribution is, it is the 
nature of immigrants to the United States from Korea, as you pointed 
out, to work hard, to try to strengthen family and community, and to 
always think about the future in good times as well as tough times.
    Democracies tend to make some of their worst mistakes, if you look 
throughout human history, not in the tough times but in the good times--
in the good times. Why? Because it's easy to stop concentrating. It's 
easy to stop working. It's easy to stop trying. It's easy to be fooled 
into thinking that there are no serious consequences to a choice.
    So my message to you today is that I believe that Hillary decided to 
run for the Senate here because she knew how serious this election was, 
because she had spent all of her life as an adult working for children 
and families and better education and health care. She wrote a best 
selling book and gave away 100 percent of the profits to children's 
charities because she thinks that that's the most important issue for 
anybody's future and because she understood that we had worked for 8 
years to turn the country around. And we're moving in the right 
direction, but now we have the chance of a lifetime to build the future 
of our dreams for our children.
    The only thing I worry about in this election, the only thing, is 
that people will either believe it doesn't make much difference because 
times are going along so well--what difference does it make who gets 
elected President or who gets elected to the Senate or who gets elected 
to the Congress, or that

[[Page 1742]]

because things are going along so well and our opponents are making such 
a determined and clever effort to blur the differences, that they simply 
won't understand what the differences are.
    So I ask you not only to support us in this way, as you have today, 
and within the Korean-American community, but to talk to other people in 
this country with whom you come in contact and remind them that good 

Other Popular 2000 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

2000 Presidential Documents Records and Documents