Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Luncheon

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 27, 1999

But by the third incarnation of it, between '88 and '92, the quadrupling of the national debt put us into a position of permanently high interest rates, which gave us stagnant growth, high unemployment, stagnant wages, and the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression. That was the reality we confronted. And we kept getting out of these recessions, but every time we'd get out, we'd go right back in because of the high interest rates.

So Al Gore and I said, "Hey, give us a chance. We're going to try this other thing here." And we went in. And it was an argument in the beginning; that is, the ordinary voters couldn't know who was right because they hadn't tried our way. And then we got in and we found the most partisan atmosphere in modern American history, and my economic plan passed with not a vote to spare and not a vote from a Republican. The Vice President broke the tie in the Senate. And we had only a two-vote victory in the House, which means if one had changed it would have been even and it wouldn't have passed.

Now, we've been through several incarnations. We also put our crime program through. And we passed the Brady bill, which the previous President had vetoed. We passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, the first big leg in our work and family bill, which the previous President had vetoed. We proceeded to clean up toxic waste dumps, clean the air, clean the water, make the food safer. The economy kept getting better, not worse, in spite of their fears.

And they said - when we passed our economic program they said the world would come to an end. They said, "We're going to try it the other way. We're going to cut expenses and increase revenues, until we get this deficit out of our hair." And they said, "Oh no, this is a terrible idea. It will bankrupt the country."

When we passed the crime bill and said we were going to put 100,000 police on the streets, they said, "You'll never do it. Even if you did, it won't bring the crime down." And when we said we could ban assault weapons and do background checks on handgun buyers, and we would keep more guns out of the wrong hands, they said, "Oh, the criminals will have guns, and all you're going to do is unduly burden hunters and sports people."

You remember all these debates. We did one thing; they said another. And so, now, after 6 years and 8 months, we're not having an argument anymore. We can still fight, but it's not an argument over the facts.

Our economic plan has unleashed your energies with low interest rates, and we now have the longest peacetime expansion in history, a 30-year low in unemployment, a 32-year low in welfare, and a 26-year low in the crime rate. We have the highest homeownership in history; the lowest minority unemployment rate ever recorded. And each year, we've set a record for new small business startups.

But the air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is safer. We have done away with 3 times as many toxic waste dumps as they did in 12 years and set aside more land in perpetuity protection than any administration in history except those of the two Roosevelts.