Remarks to the Democratic Leadership Council

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 17, 2000

January 12, 2000

Thank you. Well, first of all, I think we ought to acknowledge that public speaking is not something Jessica does every day, and I think she did a terrific job. I thank her for coming here.

I want to thank Tommy and Sarah and Maggie and Aliza and Grandmother for coming also, so that you would have a human, real example of the subject I want to address today, and one of the biggest reasons I ran for President.

I thank my old friend Senator Joe Lieberman for his leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council. President and Mrs. Trachtenberg, thank you for welcoming me back to George Washington.

I want to acknowledge two other people in the audience today, without whom many of us would never have been able to do what has been done, and particularly, I am indebted to them: first, Will Marshall, who runs the Progressive Policy Institute of the DLC, who has been at this for well over a decade and come up with so many of the ideas that have been hallmarks of our administration. And I want to thank my long-time friend Eli Segal, who actually gave birth, in fact, to two of our most important ideas, AmeriCorps, our national service program. He set AmeriCorps up, and then he set up the Welfare to Work Partnership, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being hired by private business from the welfare rolls. So thank you both for coming here and for what you have done for our country.

I always get nervous when people start talking about legacies, the way Senator Lieberman did. You know, alliteration having the appeal it does, it's just one small step from legacy to lame duck. I keep hearing that. [Laughter] And I've finally figured out what a lame duck is. That's when you show up for a speech and no one comes. [Laughter] So thank you for making me feel that we're still building on that legacy today.

I want to put the issue I came here to discuss today, which directly affects the Cupp family and so many tens of thousands like them all across America, in the larger context of what we have been about since 1993, in January.

Eight years ago, when I ran for President, I came here to Washington and asked for change in our party, change in our national leadership, and change in our country, not change for its own sake but because in 1992 our Nation was in the grip of economic distress, social decline, political gridlock, and discredited Government. The old answers plainly were obsolete, and new conditions clearly demanded a new approach.

By 1992, we in the DLC had been working for some years on a new approach, rooted in the basic American values of opportunity, responsibility, and community; dedicated to promoting both work and family here in the United States and to promoting America's leadership around the world for peace and freedom, security and democracy. We believed that Government was neither the primary problem, as the new Republicans had been telling us for a decade by then, or the primary solution, as many New Deal Democrats still earnestly believed. Instead, we asked for a new direction for our National Government, with a focus on creating the conditions and providing people the tools to make the most of their own lives and a commitment to a partnership with the private sector and with State and local government, so that the Federal Government would be a catalyst, promoting and experimenting vigorously with new ideas. It would be a smaller and less bureaucratic but a more active Government.

Those of us who were in the vanguard of this movement called ourselves New Democrats, and we said our agenda was a third way, a way to create a vital center that would bring people together and move our country forward. But we were also quick to acknowledge that labels don't define a politician or a political movement, ideas do.

Our new ideas were first built on the premise that we had to discard the false choices that then defined politics here in our Nation's Capital.

We believed, for example, that we could both eliminate the deficit and increase our investment in education, in science and technology, in the truly significant national priorities. We believed we could be pro-business and pro-labor. We believed we could be pro-growth and pro-environment. We believed we could reform welfare to require those who are able to work and still do more for poor children and poor families. We believed we could improve education both by raising standards and accountability and investing more where it was urgently needed. We believed we could help Americans succeed both at work and at home, rather than forcing them to make a choice, as so many, regrettably, still have to do every single day. We believed we could lower the crime rate both with more effective punishment and with more effective prevention. We believed we could lead the world with greater military strength and more diplomatic aid and cooperative efforts with other nations.

We had a whole lot of new policy ideas that we implemented. I'll just mention a few: the empowerment zone program and the reinventing Government program that the Vice President's led so brilliantly; community development financial institutions; AmeriCorps, which now has given over 150,000 young Americans the chance to serve in their community and to earn some money for a college education; the HOPE scholarships, which along with our other college incentives have effectively opened the doors of college to all Americans; the V-chip; trade, with environmental and labor considerations taken into account; after-school programs; 100,000 police; the Brady bill; the family and medical leave law; the assault weapons ban; housing vouchers for people on welfare to move closer to where the jobs are; environmental right-to-know laws; and many, many other ideas, all within this basic framework of opportunity, responsibility, and community, all with a view toward a Government that was less bureaucratic but more active.