pd10ap00 Statement on the Death of John Robert Starr...

	Web GovRecords.org

decision in the White House, you can forget it; it's history. You need 
to remember these things.
    Let me just say again, this is the longest economic expansion in 
history, and I'm proud of it, and I'm grateful I've had a chance to be a 
part of it. And I'm delighted that I have had an opportunity to be 
President, and I love this job. I never would quit if I weren't term 
limited, I don't think. [Laughter]
    But I say this to you as a citizen. The last time we had an 
expansion this long was in the sixties. And when I--I grew up in it. I 
graduated from high school in it in 1964, and I did think it would go on 
forever--low unemployment, low inflation, high growth. I thought all of 
the civil rights problems of the country would be solved in the Congress 
and the courts. I had a President, Lyndon Johnson, who was going to do 
it. I never dreamed the country would be divided over Vietnam in 1964. 
By the time I graduated from college, Robert Kennedy had been killed 2 
days before; Martin Luther King had been killed 2 months before; Lyndon 
Johnson, 9 weeks before, had to get out of the President's race because 
our country was divided over 
Vietnam.

[[Page 704]]

    Richard Nixon got elected on a campaign saying he was for the Silent 
Majority, which means those of us who weren't for him were outcast in 
the loud minority, launching whole decades of divisive politics. And 
just a few months afterward, the longest expansion in American history 
was gone--history. It was over.
    Now, it's a pretty warm day, and we're all in a good humor, and 
there's not a more optimistic person out here by this pool than me. But 
I'm telling you, this is the chance of a lifetime. That's what you're 
here for. Are we going to take on the big challenges, or go back to the 
easy way out? Are we going to pull together across the lines that divide 
us with things like the hate crimes bill and the employment 
nondiscrimination bill, or are we going to go back to ``us'' and 
``them'' politics?
    I've been waiting for 35 years for this to roll around again--35 
years since my country had a chance to build the future of its dreams 
for its children. I'm a Democrat by heritage, instinct, and conviction. 
I'm proud of what we've done. But the best is yet to be. You go out and 
tell people that, and we'll win in November.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:06 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to former Mayor Jan Jones of Las Vegas; former Gov. 
Bob Miller of Nevada; senatorial candidate Ed Bernstein; Rory Reid, 
chair, Nevada State Democratic Party; Mayor James B. Gibson of 
Henderson, NV; Edward G. Rendell, general chair, Democratic National 
Committee; and Janice Griffin, chair, Women's Leadership Forum.


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

[Page 704]
 
Monday, April 10, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 14
Pages 691-770
 
Week Ending Friday, April 7, 2000
 
Remarks on Arrival in San Jose, California, and an Exchange With 
Reporters

April 2, 2000

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan

    The President. I just wanted to say that I have heard today the sad 
news that Prime Minister Obuchi has been hospitalized with a stroke. He 
has been a good friend to me personally, a good friend of the United 
States. And he has been a tireless worker to restore the Japanese 
economy and to bring Asia back from its financial crisis.
    And I just wanted to say that the thoughts and prayers of the 
American people are with him, his family, and the people of Japan. We 
hope for a speedy recovery. And in the meanwhile, we will work with 
Acting Prime Minister Aoki to maintain the strong relationship we enjoy.
    But I think Prime Minister Obuchi is a very good man, and I--it's 
sad news for all of us here in America, but we're pulling for his 
recovery, and we will--we will keep our prayers there.
    Thank you very much.
    Q. What are you hearing about--about how he is?
    The President. Nothing. I have tried to get more information, but 
all I know is that he's hospitalized, and the condition was serious 
enough to appoint an acting Prime Minister. That may or may not mean 
anything, you know. My guess is that they'll have to wait a while and 
assess----

2000 Elections

    Q. Mr. President, did you hear--did you hear Mr. Lazio's comments 
today indicating he might get into the New York Senate race?
    The President. No, I have no knowledge of that.
    Thanks.

Note: The President spoke at 9:15 p.m. at Moffett Field. In his remarks, 
he referred to Acting Prime Minister Mikio Aoki of Japan. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of these remarks.


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

[Page 704-709]
 
Monday, April 10, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 14
Pages 691-770
 
Week Ending Friday, April 7, 2000
 
Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Reception in 
Palo Alto, California

April 2, 2000

    The President. Thank you very much. I must say, when Dick was 
talking about all those fights we've taken on, and I got to thinking 
about some more--when I helped Mexico. The morning we gave them 
financial aid, there was a poll in the paper that said, by 81 to 15, the 
people thought it was a mistake. So he kept talking about that. I 
thought, Mr. Gephardt is up there describing a fool,

[[Page 705]]

and now I have to get up and speak. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Jim and Bridget for having us here. It is truly 
beautiful, and I always like to have an excuse to come back. And I want 
to thank my daughter for showing up tonight. Those of you--we were just 
talking around the table about newborns. When your children grow up, 
you're always mildly surprised when they want to spend time with you. 
It's actually quite wonderful. [Laughter] So this is quite nice for us.
    I want to thank the Flying Other Brothers. I wonder how many young 
people here are Dead Heads in the crowd. But they were great. And I 
apologize, they caught me by surprise. They invited me to play with 
them, and I thought, well, these poor men don't know that that saxophone 
mouthpiece has no reed on it. And then after he went back up, I realized 
they had actually pickled me some reeds in a jar there. So you guys will 
have to give me a raincheck; I'll do it some other time. We'll have 
another chance to do it.
    Band member. We'll hold you to it. [Laughter]
    The President. I want to tell you how grateful I am to the Members 
who are here, to Patrick Kennedy and Bob Menendez, to my good friend 
Charlie Rangel, and to Zoe Lofgren and Ellen Tauscher, to Nancy Pelosi 
and Anna Eshoo. California has a marvelous combination of women there. 
We also have Martin Frost from Texas here and David Wu from Oregon. 
We're glad to have them.
    And I want to thank--and maybe others--I want to thank Mike Honda 
and Adam Schiff for being willing to run for the House of 
Representatives, and I, too, believe they will win. I want to also thank 
all of you not only for being here but for the work that we have done 
together actually since I started coming out here in 1991. I wanted the 
Democratic Party in the 1992 election to be the party of the future in 
America. And it was quite obvious to me and to anyone who was paying 
attention that we couldn't be the party of the future unless we came to 
those of you who are making the future.
    And I want to thank you for all the things we've worked on--to pass 
a pro-competition Telecommunications Act in 1996, to change some of the 
laws on exports and deal with the visa issues and a whole range of other 
issues. I want to especially thank--there are many people here, but I 
see John Doerr and Eric Schmidt within my line of sight, who have called 
me on your behalf and badgered me at all hours of the day and night to 
move the Government faster. They said, ``We realize that the Government 
is not in the Internet age, but at least we ought to be out of the stone 
age. Please move.''
    I thank them and all the rest of you who have done that over the 
last 7 years. Dick Gephardt's talked about the issues and the stakes, 
and you're well aware of them. But I would like to say just a few things 
to you.
    First of all, there is a huge difference in these two parties. And 
there is no doubt, as Mr. Gephardt said, that the Democrats are in the 
minority in the House of Representatives today because in 1993 and in 
1994 they had the courage to vote alone, without a single Republican 
vote, to bridle the enormous deficit that had quadrupled the American 
debt in 12 years--it was $290 billion a year when I took office, slated 
to be about $400 billion this year. And we just decided we had to do 
something about it--that if we didn't do it, we'd never get interest 
rates down; we'd never get investment up; we'd never get growth going in 
the American economy. We had a little bit of a recovery; we were going 
to slip out of it. We just knew that we had to do it.
    And from the moment I announced our plan in December of '92, things 
really took off. And then we had the vote, and I'll never forget this--
in August of 1993, when all these Members were having to walk the plank 
and go down and vote--and not a single Republican was going in--all the 
Republicans were saying, ``You know, this is going to be a disaster; 
it's going to be horrible; we're not responsible for anything that 
happens after this.'' And they're not. [Laughter] That's what they said, 
and they were right.
    And then we got into the gun business. We passed the Brady bill, and 
we passed the assault weapons ban, which Senator Feinstein was 
especially active in passing. And oh, they said the world was going to 
come to an end. And we lost--I'm telling you, we lost a lot of Members 
of the House of Representatives on the budget bill, because the people

[[Page 706]]

hadn't felt the benefit of the improving economy by '94, and on the gun 
issue. I'll never forget, when I went back to New Hampshire, which is a 
State like my home State of Arkansas, where more than half the people 
have a hunting license, and I said, ``I want to go into the middle of a 
bunch of hunters''--and I went back in '96, because they beat a 
Congressman up there because he voted for the assault weapons ban and 
the Brady bill. And I told those guys--I remember, there were just all 
these guys in their plaid shirts just looking at me kind of souled up, 
and I said, ``You know, if any of you missed a day, even an hour in the 
deer woods on account of the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, I 
want you to vote against me, too, because that Congressman lost his job 
because of me. But if you didn't, they lied to you, and you need to get 
even.'' And they did.
    I say that because one of the things that I wanted to do when I ran 
in '92 was to change the whole way people thought about politics in 
Washington. Everything was either/or. You know, there was a liberal 
position and a conservative position. There was a Democratic position 
and there was a Republican position. Everybody was supposed to hunker 
down and fight and get their 15 seconds on the evening news. And as a 
result, not very much got done, and we kept getting deeper and deeper 
and deeper in the ditch. And I believed that you could be, for example, 
pro-business and pro-labor. I thought you could be pro-growth and pro-
environment. I thought you could be pro-work and pro-family. I thought 
we could balance the budget, still invest more in education and 
technology and scientific research. And lo and behold, it worked. And I 
want you to understand this. These people here, who have served with me, 
under the most relentless pressure imagined, have stood up for a 
politics that will both unify this country and move us forward.
    You know, I'm not running for anything this year. And most days, I'm 
okay about it. [Laughter] I do have a mild interest in the Senate race 
in New York that I'm--but I come here tonight as much as President as an 
American citizen who has had a unique vantage point on this last 7\1/2\ 
years. And I will say again, there is a huge difference.
    This party--I want to thank Congressman Gephardt. I know you 
probably all saw the big press he got when he came out for a five- or 
six-point plan directed specifically at our high-tech future, or a 
permanent extension of the research and experimentation tax credit--a 
number of other issues that the Democratic caucus has embraced to move 
us forward. But there is a big difference.
    Now, we're in Washington today fighting for some things that I think 
are important. We believe that we ought to stop giving out education 
money to projects that don't work, and only fund those things which do. 
We believe that there ought to be high standards. We think there ought 
to be an end to social promotion. But we think that every child ought to 
have a chance to learn. Children shouldn't be blamed when the system 
fails.
    I thank Governor Davis for his championing the charter school 
movement, and all of you who have helped that. But we also need to have 
after-school programs and summer school programs in these schools. We 
need to close the digital divide and finish the work of hooking up all 
the classrooms to the Internet. And a lot of you have helped us with 
that, and I thank you for that.
    We need to reform the health care system and add prescription drugs 
to Medicare coverage. We need to save Social Security and take it out 
way beyond the life of the baby boom generation--and we can do that if 
we don't have a tax cut that's too big. And that's going to be a big 
deal when all of us baby boomers retire.
    We need to have a tax cut we can afford, and it ought to be targeted 
toward helping people send their kids to college, care for their parents 
and disabled family members and long-term care, and to help working 
people on modest incomes afford their child care and other expenses.
    We need to carry, I think to a much greater degree than we have, a 
commitment to the notion that we can improve the environment while we 
grow the economy. That's what this whole global warming issue is about. 
All over the world, there are people who just don't believe that you can 
get rich unless you put more stuff in the air that heats up the Earth. 
They think you've got to burn

[[Page 707]]

more coal and more oil, and in the digital economy that is not true. It 
is not true.
    Pretty soon, we'll all be driving cars that get 80 miles a gallon, 
and if we can crack the last little chemical barrier, we'll be able to 
have biofuels where you can make 8 gallons of ethanol, for example, with 
only 1 gallon of gasoline. And then we'll all be effectively getting 550 
miles a gallon.
    Pretty soon everybody will be building their houses with glass that 
keeps out more heat and cold and lets in more light. We saved $100,000 a 
year on the White House power bills just by changing the lights in one 
place. I've ordered the whole Federal Government to do what we did when 
we greened the White House. It will be the equivalent of taking 1.7 
million cars off the road. And it's just the beginning.
    These are some of the things where we actually differ with the other 
party. And Dick was talking about the gun issue. Somebody asked me what 
I thought about Charlton Heston the other day saying all those mean 
things about me, and I said, I still like his movies. [Laughter] And I 
do. And I actually liked him--he came to the White House, to the Kennedy 
Center Honors a couple of years ago. And I know that that's the way they 
think. But you have to understand the difference between the two 
parties.
    The Republicans who follow the NRA believe that guns are the only 
area of our national life where we should deal with problems only with 
punishment and no prevention. They say, just throw the book at somebody 
if they violate one of these existing laws, but for goodness sakes, 
don't inconvenience anybody else by closing the gun show loophole, by 
requiring child trigger locks, by banning the importation of large 
capacity ammunition clips, which make a mockery of our assault weapons 

Other Popular 2000 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

2000 Presidential Documents Records and Documents