Remarks at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Dinner in Brentwood, California - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 2, 2000

September 23, 2000

The President. Thank you.

Audience member. Four more years! [Laughter]

The President. That's one song we won't sing tonight. [Laughter] Wow. Well, first, let me thank Michael and Jena and everyone who brought us all together for a perfectly wonderful evening. I think you've actually had a good time. I hope you have. I have.

And my friend David Foster, thank you for putting together that show. It was wonderful. I love Richard Marx's songs. I'm glad I got to hear Kayla. Nita was stunning. Jessica took my breath away. Those of you who love opera know there's no 19-year-old in the world who has an opera voice like that, anywhere. She's amazing.

I love the band. I like the sax player over here. [Laughter] I don't know that I like that Christian Slater can also sing and that Rob Lowe plays saxophone better than me. I don't think I like that. [Laughter] But we all had a lot of laughs tonight. And I'm grateful for what has been said and for the songs that have been sung.

But I'm especially--I'm just grateful to be here on behalf of my friend Dick Gephardt. He and Jane have been friends of Hillary's and mine a long time--and Charlie Rangel, Bob Matsui, Henry Waxman. Brad Sherman is here. I think Javier Becerra is here. Patrick Kennedy, thank you for doing such a good job. I know we've got Jane Harman, Mike Honda, Adam Schiff, Janice Nelson, and Gerrie Schipske here, at least those candidates, maybe some more.

I want to just talk to you--I won't take long tonight. But I want to ask you to do something besides give your money. So you have to listen a little bit.

You might ask yourself why, in the last year of my Presidency, when things are going so well, I would do what is now 138 events. And you might say, "Well, maybe he did a few for Hillary. He had to do that, hut why did he do the others?" [Laughter]

And I told somebody the other day, this is a strange time in my life. It's the first time in 26 years I haven't been on the ballot. My party has a new leader. My family has a new candidate. I'm kind of trading in the title of Commander in Chief for Cheerleader in Chief. [Laughter] But I like it. I like it because the whole essence of freedom and democracy is that nobody is indispensable, but the principles and the ideals and the energy and the vision of the vast masses of people, that is indispensable.

I'm doing this partly because we lost the majority because of what the Democrats were willing to do for you in '93 and '94, and the members of the other party wouldn't help them. When we adopted the economic plan and not a one of them would vote for it, they said we were raising taxes on people we weren't raising taxes on. They said we were going to break the economy and drive up unemployment and explode the deficit. And we did it in late '93. And in '94, when the voters were voting, they didn't yet know whether it would work or not.

We adopted a crime bill in '94, after we passed the Brady bill in '93 requiring handgun owners to do background checks. Then we adopted a crime bill to put 100,000 police on the street and banned assault weapons. And the NRA said we were going to interfere with the hunters. And we didn't adopt the crime bill until '94, and so when the people voted, it was--they didn't know whether they were telling the truth or not.

We tried to provide health care to all Americans. Like Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon before us, everybody who ever tried it, we got beat. We got further, actually, even than Harry Truman did, and we didn't lose quite as many seats as he did for exactly the same reason.

And I've had to listen to 8 years of misrepresentation now about what we proposed. But the people that wanted it were disappointed they didn't get it. And the people that thought it was a bad deal were inflamed. And all those things happened, and we lost the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate in '94--because they did what was right for America.

And we've gone from a $290 billion deficit to a $250 billion surplus because they were willing to lay down their majority. And there were good people who gave up their careers in Congress to turn this country around. There were good people--at least a dozen of them who lost their seats because they came from rural districts, where a lot of people had hunting licenses, and the hunters were told that their Congressman had voted to interfere with their right to go into the woods and hunt. There was nothing true about it. But the voters didn't know, and they were in a bad frame of mind. Turnout was low, and we lost a dozen Members because the NRA told the people--falsely--that the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban were somehow designed to interfere with them.

Well, it's different now. They know that the economic plan works. We've kept interest rates down and gave the country a different future. The crime rate has dropped for 8 years in a row, a 27-year low, a 35 percent drop in gun crime, and nobody has missed a day in the deer woods. [Laughter] It's different now.