Remarks at a Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project Reception in Beverly Hills

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 6, 1999

November 30, 1999

Thank you very much, Antonio. I am delighted to be here. I know that all of you have come in support of the Southwest Voter Education Project. But I want to thank especially my good friend Gloria Molina; and Henry Cisneros; Assembly Speaker Villarraigosa--I see him over there; we've been making the rounds tonight; Congressman Becerra. And I think Lydia Camarillo, our DNC CEO, is here. I know this is a nonpartisan event, but I wanted to acknowledge her presence there. Thank you, Lydia.

I have known about the Southwest Voter Education Project a long time, from the beginning. And one of the great honors I had as President was to award the Medal of Freedom to Willie Velasquez posthumously in 1995. The Southwest Voter Education Project has now registered, I believe, over 2 million Latino voters and well over 2,000 voter education drives.

And what I would--I just want to say a couple of things briefly tonight. Yesterday I signed the budget that we passed in the Congress right before they went home, the first budget of the 21st century. It contained the second year's funding for our Hispanic education project, which is designed to reduce the gap in high school graduation rates between Hispanics and other children and to increase the college going rate. And I just give you that as one little example, although it is a very big thing--I think this is going to have a huge impact over the years if we keep doing it--of why it is so important for people to be registered and to vote.

I was thinking tonight about the meetings I've had with the Hispanic caucus. And Congressman Torres, we miss you. I'm glad to see you. Thank you for everything.

But what I was thinking about is, two things are certain. One is that the number of Hispanic Members of Congress will grow. The second, maybe more important, is the number of Latino voters in other districts will grow. And I honestly believe that the willingness of people to register and to vote will have a profoundly significant impact on sort of the shape of American politics, on our immigration policies, on our education policies, on our economic policies, on the nature of our trade policies, and I could go on and on and on.

I have seen, just in the last two election cycles the profound difference it makes in terms of who shows up to vote. In 1998 the overall percentage of Americans voting was not that different from 1994, but the composition of those who voted was very different. And very often 4 or 5 percent of the people, whether they stay or go, will reflect the sort of accumulated feelings of maybe 60 or 70 percent of the American electorate. And whether they do or not, I can promise you, will affect the whole sweep of policy. I'm very conscious of this now. And I just want to mention one or two issues.

It has been, for me, an enormous privilege to serve as President these last 7 years. I have had a great deal of help from the most diverse group of Americans ever to serve an administration, including former HUD Secretary Cisneros. And I am very grateful that we have now the results that we have. We've got--in February we'll have the longest peacetime expansion in our history. We have already nearly 20 million new jobs. We have the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty rates in 30 years. We have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest Hispanic and African-American unemployment rates ever recorded, the lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in a generation, the lowest poverty rate among single-parent households in 40 years, the lowest unemployment among women in 40 years. What I want to ask you is, what do you mean to do with this? What do you mean to do with this?

I had--I see my sister-in-law, Molly, over there. We just had my big, extended family and Hillary's family were all together for Thanksgiving. And we gathered up at Camp David, and then we had some of our friends come in from the area. And I had a bunch of little kids there. And this 6-year-old boy looked at me a couple days ago, and he said, "How old are you?" [Laughter] And I said, "I'm 53." He said, "That's a lot." [Laughter] And I regretted to say I had to agree with him; it was a lot.

In my lifetime--and that's a lot--our country has never had this level of economic prosperity, social progress, and national confidence, and at the same time been free of external threats and internal crises, so that we are essentially free to face our big challenges and build the future of our dreams for our children.

So the real question is not whether we are going to change, because the world is changing at such a rapid rate that that's not an option. The real question is, how will we change, and what will we do with this chance of a lifetime?

I hope we will use it to meet the big challenges of the future. But I'll bet you every adult in this room can remember at least one, and maybe more, times in your personal life, your family life, or your work life when you made a big mistake because things were going well. When you should have been thinking about the long term, you got diverted, distracted, divided, and the moment was lost.