pd08no99 Joint Statement by President Clinton and Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik...

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the American people gave us a chance. But there is no more argument, 
because the results are in. And from the day I became President to this 
day, this is the record: We have 19\1/2\ million new jobs and the 
longest peacetime economic expansion in history, which by February, if 
it continues, will be the longest expansion ever, including all that has 
occurred during our wars; we have the highest homeownership in history, 
the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest inflation rate in 
30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rate 
in 20 years, the lowest teen pregnancy rate in 30 years, the lowest 
crime rate in 30 years, the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 
years; we've paid $140 billion, all for the national debt, the largest 
in history in the last 2 years; and we've done it with the smallest 
Federal Government in 37 years.
    Now, those are not arguments; those are the facts. And it was done 
by a Democratic Party with a modern philosophy rooted in old values that 
proved that we could manage the economy, balance the budget, reform 
welfare, be for high standards and more investment in education, be for 
the right kind of crime policies, and move this country forward. And it 
wasn't easy.
    We had our casualties. One of them is Buddy Darden, sitting right 
back there. He was one of the people who was brave enough to stand up 
and vote for my economic plan. When the Republicans said, falsely, that 
it would raise taxes on all Americans--it didn't; it raised taxes on 
most everybody in this room, including me--[laughter]--but not all 
Americans. And we said, ``Look, everybody's been talking about this 
deficit, but nobody wants to do anything about it. If we don't cut the 
deficit in half in 4 years, we're never going to turn the economy 
around.'' And most everybody in this room has made more from the stock 
market and their investments and the healthy economy and low interest 
rates than the higher taxes of '93 cost. But Buddy Darden's just one of 
the people who was brave enough to lay down his job in Congress to build 
up a better future for our people and our country, and I will never 
forget it.

[[Page 2201]]

    So the first thing I want to say is, these are real numbers. And 
everywhere along the way, we had to fight in the face of bitter partisan 
opposition for our economic plan, for our crime plan, for the right kind 
of welfare reform that required able-bodied people to work, but also 
protected their children's food and medicine, and gave their parents 
more child care. And it's working. It's working. And you should be proud 
of that.
    So the first thing you can say is, ``Well, we gave those guys a 
chance 7 years ago, and it's worked out pretty well.'' Now, that ought 
to be the first part of your answer.
    And the second thing we have to ask ourselves is, now what? You 
know, all these polls say, well--and the press always, because they love 
to kind of stick the knife in and see if you squirm while they're 
sticking you--they're always saying, ``Well, but the polls say 70 
percent of the people want a change.'' And I always say, ``Well, if 
they'd polled me, I'd have been in the 70 percent.'' If someone said, 
``Vote for me; I'll do everything Bill Clinton did,'' I'd vote against 
that person. Why? Because the world is changing very fast. And because 
what I have tried to do, compared to where we were in 1991 and 1992, is 
get this country turned around. It's like turning around an ocean liner 
in the middle of the ocean; you can't do it overnight. And we are moving 
in the right direction. But there are a lot of big challenges out there.
    So the second thing I want you to think about is, what are we going 
to do now? My belief is, since this is the chance of a lifetime to build 
the future of our dreams, we ought to be taking on the big challenges 
and seizing on the big opportunities. And I'd like to tell you what they 
are. And then I'd like to compare our position with the contemporary 
Republican position.
    But first, let me just make a general observation here. Twenty-one 
years ago, when I ran for Governor for the first time--and I was 32 
years old and I didn't know what I was doing, I don't think--I asked 
this kind of old sage in Arkansas, I said, ``You got any advice for 
me?'' I was about 30 points ahead in the polls. He said, ``Yes, Bill.'' 
He said, ``Let me tell you something. In this business, you're always 
most vulnerable when you think you're invulnerable.'' And if you think 
about that, that's a pretty good rule for life. You know, I'm convinced 
one of the reasons that we've had such intense partisan battles in the 
last year is that the majority party of Congress believe they have the 
luxury of doing it because the country's doing so well, so there can't 
be any really adverse consequences to not paying our United Nations dues 
and not ratifying the test ban treaty and not funding the Wye peace 
talks or anything else--fooling around with the environment. Because, 
after all, things are going well and everybody's in a good humor, and so 
this will be treated with a certain amount of frivolity.
    And if you think about it, countries are no different than 
businesses or families or individuals. How many times have you made a 
mistake in your life because you relaxed your concentration or you got 
diverted when things were going well, and you felt that nothing possibly 
could happen very bad? I see a lot of you nodding your heads. This is a 
common human challenge.
    So it is not self-evident that we will use this great moment of 
prosperity and success to do what we ought to do. But if you think about 
the children and the grandchildren that we all have or hope to have, and 
what we owe to them and how, at least in my 53 years, our country has 
never had this kind of a chance before, we'll have a hard time 
explaining why we didn't make the most of it if we don't.
    So here's what I think we ought to be doing to build that bridge to 
the new century for our kids. Number one, we have to deal with the aging 
of America. We're going to double the number of people over 65 in 30 
years. That means we have to save Social Security for the baby boom 
generation, which is a gift not only to the baby boom generation but to 
their children and grandchildren who won't have to support us if we save 
Social Security. It means we have to save Medicare, and we should reform 
it to make it more like the best private sector practices in medicine, 
but also we should add a prescription drug benefit, because 75 percent 
of our seniors don't have affordable prescription drugs.
    It means that we should deal with the children of America. For the 
first time ever in the last 2 years, we have more kids in the

[[Page 2202]]

public schools than we had in the baby boom generation. And they're a 
very different crowd. They are the most racially and ethnically, 
culturally and religiously diverse group of children we have ever had. 
It is true here in Atlanta, where you have more foreign companies 
headquartered than any other city in America. It is true just across the 
river from the Nation's Capital in Washington, in Fairfax County, which 
has the most diverse school district in America, children from 180 
different national and ethnic groups in one school district. It's true 
in my home State of Arkansas, which in the 1980 census had the highest 
percentage of people living in Arkansas who were born there of any State 
in the country except West Virginia, now ranks second in the country in 
the percentage growth of Hispanics. This is a nationwide thing. We are 
changing the whole scope of what it means to be an American in our 
schools before our very eyes. And we must be committed to giving these 
kids, every one of them, a genuinely world-class education.
    We need higher standards; we need more accountability; we need to be 
committed to turn around failing schools or close them down. But we 
don't need to brand kids failures if the system is failing them. We need 
the after-school programs, the summer school programs, the modern 
schools, all of our classrooms hooked up to the Internet, smaller 
classes that we want to bring with 100,000 teachers there. There are a 
lot of things we can do. But we don't get there unless we make it our 
priority.
    We need to deal with the fact that not everybody in our country has 
participated in our recovery. I'll give you some surprising examples. In 
the State of South Dakota, the unemployment rate is 2.8 percent. On the 
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the unemployment rate is 
73 percent. In the Mississippi Delta, we still have in my part of the 
country the poorest part of America, on the average, in the lower 
Mississippi Delta valley. In Appalachia, there are still places where, 
because of their physical isolation, there is no new enterprise and 
opportunity. In many of our inner cities from coast to coast that is so.
    But I'll give you another surprising thing. If you look at New York 
State and you take out New York City and the suburban counties in New 
York, the rest of New York ranks 49th in job growth since I've been 
President--if it were a separate State. That includes Albany, Rochester, 
Buffalo, Syracuse--big towns that you know about.
    I have proposed to double the number of the empowerment zones that 
the Vice President has managed so well over the last 6 years--which put 
intense effort into bringing cities back and rural areas back--and to 
pass something I call the new markets initiative, which would simply 
give people like you the same financial incentives to invest in poor 
areas in America we now give you to invest in poor areas in Latin 
America, in the Caribbean, in Africa, in China. I think that you should 
have those incentives.
    I think we have to do more to build a balance between family and 
work in the 21st century, when almost all parents, fathers and mothers, 
will be working. We have to find a way to extend health care to all of 
our children. We have to find a way to extend child care to working 
families who need it. Only about 10 percent--in spite of the fact that 
we have increased dramatically in my administration, only about 10 
percent of the people who are eligible for child care assistance 
actually get it.
    We need to have a real equal pay law for equal work for women and 
men. We've still got problems there. We need to pass the Patients' Bill 
of Rights. We need to continue to invest in biomedical research. We need 
to make a commitment that everybody who works 40 hours a week should not 
live in poverty. It's time to raise the minimum wage again. I feel very 
strongly about that.
    But the main point I want to make is this: We need an administration 
with a focus on trying to balance family and work so that our goal is 
that people can succeed at home and at work. The most important job of 
any society is raising children. It dwarfs the importance of any other 
job.
    So if people who are at work, either because they want to be or they 
have to be, are worried sick all day that their kids are in trouble, 
they're not going to be very productive workers. On the other hand, if 
people, because they're worried about it, don't go to work at all when 
they want to and

[[Page 2203]]

could, and could make a contribution to our society, we won't be as 
strong a country. We have got to be more deliberate and disciplined in 
creating a framework of support for people to succeed at home and at 
work.
    I can mention a lot of other things. Just let me mention a couple 
more issues that are really important. We need a commitment to build 
21st century communities that are both safe and livable. I told you the 
crime rate's at a 30-year low, and it is. And I'm proud of it. Murder 
rate's at a 32-year low. Does anybody in this audience tonight believe 
that America is safe enough? Of course not.
    So I say we should set ourselves a real goal. If we're the freest 
big country in the world, why shouldn't we be the safest big country in 
the world? Why shouldn't we say, if it worked to put 100,000 police on 
the street, and it gave us a 30-year low in the crime rate--I promise 
you, if you put 50,000 more out there concentrated in the high crime 
areas, we can drive this crime rate down more.
    If the Brady bill kept 400,000 people with criminal or mental health 
backgrounds from buying handguns, and didn't deprive one single hunter 
of a day of deer season or one single sports shooter of one contest, 
then we ought to close the loophole in the Brady bill and apply it to 
the urban flea markets and the gun shows and get some more people out 
there.
    We also ought to recognize that having 21st century communities 
means we have to find a way to preserve the environment and grow the 
economy. We're going to have to do more to provide green space in urban 
areas. More people need to live in cities where you get to drive through 
woods, like we did to come here tonight. And we can do that. We can do 
that. We have a whole agenda before the American people.
    One of the things that I'm proudest of as President is that under 
our administration, we have protected more land than any administration 
in the entire history of America except those of Franklin and Theodore 
Roosevelts', and I'm proud of that. But we have to do more of that.
    So the aging of America, the children of America, the continuing 
poverty challenge of America, balancing family and work, building 21st 
century communities, ensuring the long-term prosperity of America--you 
hear all these people running for President and they're promising all 
these tax cuts and all these spending programs, you just remember one 
thing. We got to the dance that we're enjoying today because we got rid 
of that awful deficit, and we had the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 
years. And that has given us low interest rates and a booming 
environment for entrepreneurs to succeed in. We now have a chance. If we 
stay within the parameters of the budget I sent to this Congress, we can 
actually pay off the debt of America and be debt-free within 15 years 
for the first time since Andrew Jackson was President in 1835.
    Now, if we do that, if we do that, what does it mean? Does it mean 
there will never be another recession? Of course not. But it means no 
matter what, interest rates will be lower, that means more jobs, higher 
incomes, more new businesses, cheaper home mortgages, car loans, and 
college loan payments. Because we have paid the debt down $140 billion 
in the last 2 years, because the aggregate debt is over 1\1/2\--listen 
to this--trillion dollars less than the experts said it would be when I 
became President, that amounts to a tax cut and lower mortgage payments 
of $2,000 a year to the average family, $200 a year in car interest 
payments, $200 a year in college loan payments to the average family in 
America.
    We don't want to forget what got us here. The Democrats are the 
progressive party. We like to invest money in people. We like to help 
people. And we ought to. But we have to do it within a framework that 
says it is this economy that has been our best social program, those 
19\1/2\ million new jobs. Every year a new record in new businesses 
started, creating an environment in which people like a lot of the great 
entrepreneurs here present have been able to be so successful.
    So I say we ought to set a big goal--let's get ourselves out of debt 
over the next 15 years, and then we'll have more money than we know what 
to do with. And our children and grandchildren can look forward to a 
generation of prosperity.

[[Page 2204]]

    You mentioned the world earlier, and how concerned you were. I 
believe that America has special responsibilities that are, if anything, 
even greater now that the cold war's over. And it bothers me that the 
majority in Congress don't want to pay our U.N. dues; that they so 
blithely walked away from a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that 
our nuclear allies Britain and France and 150 other countries had 
signed; that they wouldn't even let us offer the safeguards that 
answered the problems they said were there with the treaty; that it was 
just a political issue.
    It bothers me that they passed a foreign assistance package that not 
only had no money to meet America's commitments that I made--pursuant to 
a 25-year bipartisan involvement in the Middle East peace process--
nothing for the Wye peace accord, to finance it and do our part, when 
we're at a very critical juncture in the Middle East talks, and I'm 
about to go off to Oslo to meet with Prime Minister Barak and Chairman 
Arafat; nothing to continue the denuclearization program started by 
Georgia's Senator Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar of Indiana, the Nunn-Lugar 
program, which has done more to make the world safe than anything else 
we've done lately, because it destroys nuclear weapons in Russia--no 
money for that--no money for America to join everybody from His Holiness 
the Pope to the European Union to Japan in providing debt relief to the 
poorest countries in the world in the year 2000, so they can begin to 
grow and buy our products. Some of them really think that the only thing 
we've got to do is build a bigger bomb and a bigger wall and we'll be 
fine, because the cold war's over. I think that is nuts.
    You know, we went in and won a war in Kosovo so that people could go 
home and not be butchered because of their ethnic and religious 
background. But when we left, the European Union and our other Allies 
are bearing the lion's share of the costs and the burden in Kosovo now. 
We helped to end a terrible, brief, bitter conflict in East Timor, after 
the people there voted for independence, and stopped another ethnic 
slaughter. But when we left, our friends from Australia, New Zealand, 
Malaysia, and other places went in and did the lion's share of the work. 
They needed us to help them get in there, but they did it. We get 
something out of cooperating with other people in the world. And if we 
stop it and we don't want to pay our fair share, then someday we'll be 
confronted with crisis after crisis after crisis where we either got to 
go alone or watch while nothing happens.
    Every President since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman endorsed 
the idea of the United Nations, has understood that America would be 
more influential if we were a good neighbor and a good partner, and did 
a responsible job of paying our fair share. And I think it's important.
    And the last point I want to make is the most important of all. If I 
had to leave the Presidency tomorrow, as much as I have worked on all 
the things we just talked about--the economy, the family, the 
environment, the children, the seniors--and I could give America one 
gift, my one gift would be to give America the ability to be one 
America, to bridge all of the divides.
    It is so ironic that we're celebrating the explosion of technology, 
the explosion of biology, the solving of the mystery of the human 
genome. We look ahead to all these unbelievable things happening, and 
the biggest problem of the world is the oldest problem of human society. 

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