Remarks to the western New York community in Buffalo

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 25, 1999

January 20, 1999

Thank you very much. I think you got so excited that you melted the snow for a mile around this arena. Let me ask you, have you ever seen the Vice President so fired up in your life? [Laughter] I want you to know that just before we came in here, we went off into a little room, and he had a quick hit of buffalo wings and Flutie Flakes; that's what he did.

I want to thank the Mayor and Dennis Gorski and Connie Eve and the whole Eve family. Eric worked for us for a long time, then decided to go out and get rich. We forgive him. I want to thank all the community heroes who are here. I want to thank Reverend Smith for that magnificent invocation, which I will remember all my life. I want to thank our wonderful friend, Congressman John LaFalce, one of the most outstanding Members in the House of Representatives, a truly wonderful human being. And I am delighted that Pat and his son, Martin, are here with us today.

I think you could see that Tipper and Al and Hillary and I, we're sort of like a big family. We like going places together. And I love it, because now I don't have to talk about 90 percent of the issues anymore because they already covered them, which was really good. We work together. And we have tried to model what we want America to do.

You know, no one has ever spoken as passionately and consistently for the cause of mental health as well as Tipper Gore has done. I think it's fair to say that at least no one since Eleanor Roosevelt has done as much with the Office of First Lady as Hillary has done. And I am grateful for that. And I am quite confident that in the entire history of the United States no Vice President has had remotely the responsibility and had the positive impact on the people of the United States that Al Gore has had. And I am very grateful to him.

Now, we are here today in this magnificent arena - and I've just got to say one thing about that Vice President. He compared me to the goalie for the Sabres. I was flattered, but I thought - you know, he kept talking about how I was swatting away those flying hockey pucks in Washington. I was flattered, but I thought, I just wish one day they would give me a mask and a few pads when I dodge that stuff.

Anyway, we're delighted to be here. We're here because we are grateful to New York, to western New York, to Erie County, to Buffalo, grateful for the support we received in 1992, grateful for the support we received in 1996, and even more grateful for the fact that this community every day is trying to live and work in the way we want America to live and work in the 21st century.

I know that many of you heard my speech last night. I know that you have listened to the previous speakers. I only want to speak to you about one of the issues, and that is how we're going to meet the challenge of the aging of America, because that affects all of us, not just the old but the very young as well. And I want everyone to understand exactly what I was trying to say last night and why.

But let me make the bigger point. It was, as has already been said, 6 years ago today at noon that I took the oath of office as President. And it seems impossible to me that those 6 years have flown by. They have been, to put it mildly, quite eventful. But I am very, very grateful that we had the chance to serve, grateful for your support, grateful the state of the Union is strong.

But I want you to focus on this: You know as well as I do the world is changing rapidly. You know this community and its economic base and the nature of its society bears not all that much resemblance to the way it looked 30 years ago in terms of how people make a living, what the diversity of the population is, how we relate to each other, and where we imagine we're going in the future.

So I believe that we can't afford just to sit around and pat ourselves on the back and say, "Isn't it great? We've got the longest peacetime expansion in history. Isn't it great? We've got the lowest peacetime unemployment since 1957. Isn't it great that we've got the lowest welfare rolls in 29 years, that all the social problems, all of them, virtually, are getting better?" That's fine.

But the real issue is, what are we going to do with this? Do we seriously believe the crime rate is low enough? Do we believe the schools are good enough? Do we believe all our kids are getting an education? Do we really believe that the rate of drug use among our young people is low enough? Do we believe all these things? I don't think so.

So what I want to say to you is, we ought to be focused on two big things. Number one, bringing the opportunities that the last 3 years have brought to most of America to the rest of America. Just like, last night, I said - we put before the American people last night a plan to develop more communities by putting more private capital in the neighborhoods that haven't received it.

Now, let me ask you something. If we've got the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, and the lowest in peacetime in 41 years, how are we supposed to keep growing the economy without inflation? We have to find new markets. Now, if a lot of the world beyond our borders is in recession, where are we going to find the new markets? I'll tell you where. In the urban neighborhoods and the rural counties where the unemployment rate is still twice the national average.