Remarks at a Get Out the Vote Rally in New York City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

November 4, 2000

The President. Thank you. Are you ready to win this election?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. Are you ready to make Charles Rangel the first African-American chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in the United States Congress?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. I want to say a thank you to everyone here. I thank you, Carl McCall, for your great leadership of New York and for your friendship to me and your support of Hillary. Your future is limitless, and you have done a great job for the people of this State. Thank you.

I want to thank Representatives Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney. They and Charlie have been with me all the way. I want to thank your borough president, Virginia Fields, for being here. Assemblyman Denny Farrell, thank you. All the others behind me, Dennis Rivera, Randi Weingarten, Guillermo Linares, Adam Clayton Powell, Lee Saunders, thank you all for being here. And give a big hand to Luther Vandross for showing up and being with us.

You know, when Charlie was saying that I was your President, I leaned over to Luther and I said, "You know, Luther, in another life, if I'd have been a little better musician, I'd have been playing jazz at the Cotton Club instead of running for President." [Laughter]

More than anything else today, I wanted to come by to have this chance to thank you, to thank the people of Harlem and New York City for being so good to me and to Al Gore these last 8 years. And thank you, thank you for your support for my wife. It means more to me than you will ever know. Thanks for hanging in there.

Now look, the temptation is for us to just shout here for 4 or 5 minutes because we're all on the same side, and I'm preaching to the saved. But the truth is that everybody in this great crowd tonight has friends who have never come to hear a President speak or come to any political rally. Is that right?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. But all those people could vote if they understand what's at stake and if they understand what it means for themselves, their families, this great city, and our Nation. So I want you to just give me a couple of minutes to tell you what I hope you will tell everybody you can find between now and when the polls close. Because this race would not he close for President, it wouldn't be close for Senator, it wouldn't be close anywhere in America, I believe, if people could remember where we were 8 years ago and compare it to where we are today, and then if people understood where we're going and what the differences are.

There are three big questions in this election. Question number one, do you want to keep this prosperity going and give it to people who haven't been part of it yet?

Audience members. Yes!

The President. Well, if you do, there is a big choice: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and Hillary and Charlie Rangel. Here's what they say. They say we've got to keep paying down the debt to keep interest rates low because that means lower home mortgages, lower car loans, lower credit card loans, lower college loans, lower business loans. It means more jobs, higher income, more jobs for working people, and more in the stock market. Everybody wins that way. That's how we made this economy recover.

Then they say, let's take what's left and invest it in our kids in health care and education and the environment and a tax cut we can afford for child care, for long-term care, for college education, for retirement. That's what they say.

Now, on the other side, our Republican friends say, "Hey, this is your money, and we re going to give it to you. We're going to give it all to you right now." And here's what they say. They say, "We're going to give you a huge tax cut" -- even though almost everybody in this crowd would be better off under ours--"and then, we're going to privatize Social Security and let the young people have their payroll tax back, and then we re going to spend some money."

Now look, here's the problem. You all clapped for me when I said the economy was better. But people ask me all the time, "What great new idea did you bring to Washington to turn the economy around?" You know what I answer? "Arithmetic. We brought arithmetic back to Washington." [Laughter]

Now, we made the numbers add up. You all can remember this. Everybody remember this: Vice President Gore's opponent says we're in an education recession. He's wrong about that; our schools are getting better. I'll say more about that. I can tell you, everybody can understand this.

The surplus is supposed to be $2 trillion. Forget about all the zeroes. That's a lot of money. Two. Okay? They want to give three-quarters of it in a tax cut, $1.6 trillion--1.6. Then they want to give you, if you're young, your payroll tax back, 2 percent of it. But they've got to promise people that are older, like me, that we can still get our Social Security. And as the Vice President keeps pointing out, you can't spend the same dollar on two different people. So that costs another trillion dollars--1. Then they want to spend a little money, too. They want to spend a half a trillion dollars. That's .5. Now, you add it up-- 1.6 plus 1 plus .5 is 3.1. Three-point-one is bigger than 2. [Laughter]