Remarks at a Luncheon for Representative Michael P. Forbes in New York City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents,  May 1, 2000  

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April 24, 2000

Thank you very much. Well, first, I want to thank Bill and Nancy for having us in their beautiful apartment. I must say, they've been so wonderful to Hillary and me. I'm going to forgive them because they stripped me of one of my important legacies today.

I felt a little awkward standing up here on these beautiful stairs. And now people will never be able to say what one man came up to me and said when I was out in the West recently. He said, "I'll tell you one thing, Bill, they will never say that when you were President you looked down on the American people." [Laughter]

But I actually enjoyed it up there. I could see everyone's face. I was thinking how proud I am to be here and to be here with you.

I want to thank Congressmen Nadler, Towns, and Ackerman for being here. And, Gary, thank you for rounding out the funds race today. That was a--[laughter]. Gary Ackerman just went to India with me. I heard how many people lived in India--over 900 million people. Do you know every third person I met knew who Gary Ackerman was? [Laughter] It was very disorienting. It was utterly amazing.

Let me say, these three people have really represented not only New York but the United States very well. And you can be proud of them. Jerry Nadler is everyone's conscience, including mine when he thinks I'm straying too far. Ed Towns was with me in 1991, when only my mother thought I could be elected President. [Laughter] So I really like them very, very much.

I want to welcome again Mike and Barbara and Abby--who is going to be a teacher, by the way. She's a senior at the University of Virginia, and she's going to be a teacher. We ought to give her a hand. [Applause]

And I want to be brief but fairly pointed here. I believe that Mike Forbes became a Democrat because of his convictions on education, the environment, the Patients' Bill of Rights, campaign finance reform, prescription drugs for seniors, continuing the economic path the country is on, doing more for the poor, and being even more aggressive in education. That's why I think he did it. I don't think it's very complicated.

In a larger sense, I think he did it because we have been able to prove in the last 7 years that our party can be for economic growth and for improving the environment, that we can be pro-business and pro-labor, that we can be pro-work and pro-family. And divisive politics, which have served the other party rather well from election to election, are no way to run a country, particularly a country in a global economy, an increasingly globalized society, where diversity and the power of the mind is becoming more important every day.

What I want to say to you is that there will be an attempt in this election to blur the distinctions between the parties in the hope that the traditional advantage that our friends in the Republican Party have enjoyed among large voting blocks around the country will be there and that they will basically make people sort of feel like it's okay if they win, things are going so well, and there are no consequences.

What I want you to understand is there are sharp consequences to whether we hold the White House and whether we win the House and whether we pick up seats in the Senate--sharp, dramatic consequences that will make a significant difference in the lives of the American people. And I'll just give you a few, but I think it's important. You need to tell people that if they want to vote for person X or person Y, there are consequences.

Number one, on the economy: Our position is we ought to keep paying down the debt; save Social Security and Medicare; provide a prescription drug benefit for seniors; make substantial investments in education, health care, and the environment, science and technology; and then we can afford a tax cut, but it's a modest one designed to help people who need help most to educate their kids, to provide child care for them, to provide for health care; and that we ought to give people like those of you in this room who can afford to be here a tax cut if you help us solve some of our biggest problems.

I want to give you the same tax benefits to invest in poor areas in America we give you to invest in poor areas overseas. I want to give you tax incentives to produce or to purchase energy-efficient products that will help us deal with climate change and other things that are investment oriented. We had an investment strategy to get this economy going again, and it worked, and we ought not to abandon it.

Their strategy is to pass a tax cut even bigger than the one I vetoed before. And they'll do it. You have to assume the/re honorable people. [Laughter] People normally mean what they say in elections. There have been a lot of studies done on politicians and--even though I'm proud to say that one said that I had kept a higher percentage of my campaign promises than the last 5 Presidents, even though I made more, in more detail. By and large, people who run for President do what they say they're going to do when they get in. So you have to assume that when they run for President and for Congress, based on a tax cut even bigger than the one I vetoed--which will certainly take us back to deficits and higher interest rates and slower growth--that they mean it.