Remarks at a Luncheon Honoring Representative James H. Maloney in Danbury, Connecticut - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 18, 2000

People ask me all the time if I think Hillary is going to win. I tell them, yes. And I do, and I always have, but I do for the same reasons.

But the truth is--I meant precisely what I said when I said, if Jim keeps giving that speech and you all keep giving him enough money to make sure people bear the message--[laughter]--and make sure people hear the message, the race won't be as close as it was last time, because that's where America is and where America wants to go.

But I'm telling you, this is not exactly your standard political speech, but the truth is, I've been doing this a long time now--[laughter]--and I have nearly got the hang of it. [Laughter] And I have observed that very often, an election is determined not so much by who the two candidates are but by what the people think the election is about. Now, I'll get serious a minute.

If the people believe the election is about how much they can get for themselves, today, right now, never mind tomorrow, and never mind my neighbor, we're going to be in a tough fix, folks, and especially if they talk nice about it, you know? [Laughter] "I would like to raise the minimum wage, and I would like to have a Patients' Bill of Bights. And I know all the seniors need prescription drugs, and half of them will be left out if we only take people at 150 percent of the poverty line. I'd like to do all that, and I feel really terrible that I can't. But I've got to keep dishing out this tax cut money." [Laughter]

Now, you're laughing, but times are good. And a lot of people say, "Well, what could be wrong with that? I could use the money." So I'm telling you--you hear me now--it's good that you gave him a check, but it's not enough. You've got 60 days here, and every time you see somebody, you need to talk to them about this election. Every day, when you come home from work or when you end your day, if you are a homemaker or whatever you do, you ought to ask yourself if you've talked to one or two people about the decision that we have to make as a people in this millennial year.

Because I'm telling you, there are profound economic and educational and health care and environmental and criminal justice and what I call one America--how we're all going to live and work together--issues, that there are honest differences--big election, big differences. All the best stuff is still out there. The other side wants to blur over the differences and emphasize how appealing their tax cuts are.

We want to have tax cuts, too, very badly, actually, in the area of the marriage penalty or giving kids--families a tax deduction for their children's college tuition, long-term care credit for elderly and disabled family members that you have to take care of, making it easier for people to save for retirement. We've got quite a nice tax package, but theirs is 3 or 4 times bigger than ours.

But there's a reason theirs is 3 or 4 times bigger--because we don't want to get rid of this whole surplus. We think it's a good thing that we're paying the debt down. We know that we need some money to invest in education and health care, in science and technology, in the future of America. We know we may have some emergency come up. We know we may have some defense crisis develop, where we need to give our military even more than we anticipate. We know that over 10 years we might have a recession, and the money might not all come in.