Remarks at a reception honoring senatorial candidate Charles Schumer in New York City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 19, 1998

October 12, 1998

Thank you very much. What a gift. Thank you. Now you all have us in the right frame of mind. Let me say to all of you, I thank you for the warm welcome. I thank Iris and Jessica and Alison and all of Chuck's and Iris' family for being here. And I thank you for being part of Chuck's family at this important time.

I'm delighted to have the chance to be here with a number of distinguished New Yorkers, and I just want to mention a few. First I'd like to thank Gerry Ferraro and Mark Green for being here and showing their support. It means a great deal to me to see them put the profoundly important issue of this Senate seat first and their concern for the people of New York first. I'll never forget it, and I hope none of you do as well.

I'd like to welcome City Councilman Tony Weiner, the successor to Chuck Schumer in the United States Congress, for being here. And I don't want any of you to forget how terribly important it is to reelect our wonderful State comptroller, Carl McCall, who is also here. Thank you very much, Carl. Our candidate for attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who's here; thank you, Eliot, for being here.

I told Eliot earlier tonight that's the best job I ever had. [Laughter] When I was attorney general, I didn't have to hire people or fire them, appoint people or disappoint them, raise taxes or cut spending, and if I did the first thing unpopular, I could always blame it on the Constitution. [Laughter] But it really matters who has the job, and I hope you'll help him. Thank you for being here, Eliot.

I'd like to welcome Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, Assemblyman Robert Ramirez, and City Councilmen Walter McCaffrey and Ken Fisher - all of them. Thank you all for being here. And I know our State party chair, Judith Hope, is here, and I want to thank her for the wonderful job she's done for New York.

Now, I told Chuck Schumer when he decided to take on this Herculean task that if he ever needed anybody to fill in for him, just to call me, and I'd try to do it. [Laughter] So here I am.

I want to say I've been a little bit amused by some of the things that have been said in this Senate race, including, apparently, the contention that Mr. Schumer doesn't have a good voting record in the Congress. And I don't see how any Republican could criticize any Democrat for not voting in Congress this year. I mean, this Congress has worked fewer days than any Congress I can remember. It's the first Congress in 24 years not to pass a budget resolution. And the reason they're still there so close to the election is they blew the 9 months before. So nobody in the Republican party should be blaming any of the Democrats for what they didn't do. And I hope you'll remember that when you see that ad.

Let me just say, they're showing some real progress now, and we're working with them in good faith. But if it weren't for these negotiations, now 11 days after the beginning of the new budget year, if it weren't for the fact that we're still there, finally looking at education and some of the other serious issues before us, this Congress would be known as the one that killed campaign finance reform, that killed the tobacco legislation designed to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco, that killed the Patients' Bill of Rights, that killed the minimum wage, that continued the assault on the environment, that attempted to divert the surplus before we could save Social Security first, and had taken no action to date on either education or the imperative nature of investing in the International Monetary Fund so that our country can continue to lead the world in this time of financial turmoil.

Now, if I were a part of their caucus, I don't believe I would be criticizing someone like Chuck Schumer for not showing up for duty. Let me tell you some of the things he did vote for. In 1993, when a single vote would have turned the tide the other way, Chuck Schumer voted for my economic plan that reduced the deficit 92 percent, before the Balanced Budget Act - the bipartisan Balanced Budget Act of 1997 passed - 92 percent of the work done. If he had not voted that way, the whole thing would have failed because we didn't have a vote to spare. That's just one of the many issues on which he differed from his opponent, and I think Chuck Schumer was right. And I think you do, too.

We now have the first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years as a direct result of that courageous vote. Then, in 1994 Chuck Schumer authored the Brady bill, now the Brady law. Now a quarter of a million felons and fugitives have been denied the ability to buy handguns - a quarter of a million - saving goodness only knows how many lives. He voted yes; his opponent voted no. So when there really was a vote that mattered, I believe Chuck Schumer was right, and I think the people of New York do, too.

When the vote in 1994 on the crime bill came up, and in the United States Senate there was this incredible effort - that I never shall forget as long as I live - by the leadership of the other party, then in the minority in the Senate, to prevent us from getting a vote to put 100,000 police officers on the street, to put the Violence Against Women Act into motion, to ban 19 kinds of assault weapons designed only to kill people, and in the Senate they were doing everything they could to keep it from even coming to a vote - the assault weapons ban, the 100,000 police, the programs to keep our children out of trouble in the first place, the Violence Against Women Act - Chuck Schumer was where he always is, out there leading the fight for public safety and civility and decency on our streets and in our neighborhoods and in our schools. And his opponent was on the other side.