Remarks at a Democratic Business Council Luncheon

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 27, 1999

Along the way, we got 100,000 young people to serve their communities in AmeriCorps and immunized 90 percent of our kids against serious childhood illnesses for the first time, and opened the doors of college to all with the HOPE scholarship. It's been a pretty good run, but it's not an argument anymore. There are facts.

I never will forget - and the voters returned us to office in 1996. But let's look at these elections, and this one in connection with the others. So in '92 we won because people thought times were tough and they gave us a chance. In '94 we got beat bad. Why? Well, they ran with this contract on America, and they had a plan and a message and it sounded good. And they said that we had raised everybody's taxes, although we hadn't. We raised all of yours, but we didn't raise everybody's taxes. [Laughter] Over 90 percent of the people didn't have their taxes raised.

One of my friends who runs a Fortune 100 company - endangered species in that crowd, he's a Democrat - is going all over New York saying, "If you paid more in taxes than you made out of low interest rates in the stock market in the last 7 years, you ought to be for George Bush, but if you didn't, you ought to stick with us." It's a pretty good argument, isn't it? You might try it. [Laughter]

So anyway, in '92 they took a chance on us. In '94 we lost big. Why? Because people were told we'd raise their taxes, even when we didn't, and they hadn't felt the good economy yet and because we had just passed the crime bill and they terrified everybody saying we were going to take their guns away and because we didn't pass anything on health care, so the people who wanted something done were disappointed, and the people who believed their propaganda that we were trying to have the Government take over the health care system believed it. It was the worst of all worlds and election results showed it. And our obituary was written. Remember that now when you read the papers in the next few months. Our obituary was written: hopeless, helpless, terrible situation. But in '96, we roar back in, bigger victory than '92. Why? Because there was no argument anymore. People had evidence.

And then in '98, we had a plan. In a midterm election, we said, "Hey, we're not tired. We're not burned out. Vote for us, and we'll give you 100,000 teachers. We want to save Social Security and Medicare before we spend the surplus. We want to pay the debt down. We want to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. That's our national plan." And all over America we said it.

And you know what they said in '98. And they said and all the experts said, "Well, are they going to lose five, six, or seven Senate seats? Are they going to lose 20, 30, or 40 House seats?" And instead, while we were being outspent by $100 million - $100 million in 1998 - we lost no Senate seats in the worst year I can remember for Democrats, in terms of whose we had up and whose was vacant, and we picked up five House seats. And it's the first time since 1822 that the party of the President had gained House seats in a midterm election in the 6th year of the Presidency. And only the third time since the Civil War it happened in any midterm election. Why? Because we decided what we were for. We decided ideas matter. Because we put them in, and they made a real difference in people's lives. And people who make the real decision, the voters out there, once they got a chance to take a look at our crowd said, "I think they care more about me than the other guys do."