Remarks at a reception for senatorial candidate John Edwards in Raleigh, North Carolina

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 3, 1998

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for enduring the heat. I'll tell the Vice President 100 percent of the people in this crowd believe there is global warming now. [Laughter] Thank you so much.

I'd like to thank all the young people who provided our music over there. [Inaudible] thank you very much. I'd like to thank the Lt. Governor, your Education Commissioner, and the other officials who are here; my old friend, Dan Blue; my former Ambassador Jennette Hyde, and Wallace are here. Barbara Allen, your State chair, thank you very much. I saw Sheriff Baker here. I thank him for being here. I think every county ought to have a sheriff that's 9 feet tall. I wish I could find one everywhere.

I want to thank my good friend, Erskine Bowles, for coming home to North Carolina with me. You should know that on October 1st, when we have that balanced budget and surplus for the first time in so many years, there is no single person in America more responsible for the first balanced budget in a generation than Erskine Bowles, and it's a good thing for this country. And I appreciate it.

I thank my great friend, Jim Hunt. We've been friends for 20 years now, a long time before some of you were born. And we've been out here working to try to improve education and move our country forward, move our States forward.

I want to thank Margaret Rose Sanford, Mrs. Terry Sanford, for being here tonight. Thank you for coming. But most of all, I want to thank John Edwards and his wife and his children for this race for the Senate.

You know, it's just a common place today that you can't beat a Republican incumbent running for the Senate because they have all the money, and that's why campaign finance reform never passes, I might add. [Laughter] And so times are good; people are happy; your opponent has money, he's already in; therefore, you can't win.

And John Edwards said, "I don't think so. I think we can do better." And I appreciate and respect that. I also want to thank them for giving up their anniversary dinner to come here and be with us. [Laughter] I'm not going to talk that long. It will still be open when we finish tonight. [Laughter]

I want to make a couple of brief points. It's hot, and you've heard it all. I feel like the guy that got up to the banquet and said, "Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but not everyone has said it yet so you all sit tight." [Laughter] I'll be very brief.

First, I bring you greetings from the Vice President and the First Lady, who wish they could be here tonight. We want to thank the people in North Carolina who have been our friends since 1992, who stayed with us every step of the way, who believed in us when we were often under attack.

Here are the points I want to make, and they all bear on this race for the Senate. Number one: We came to office in 1992 carried by people who believed our country could do better if we had not only new leadership but new ideas. We not only had the right people, I believe we did the right things. We said, "We want a Democratic Party based on the old virtues of opportunity, responsibility, and community, but with new ideas for the 21st century."

Five and a half years later, we have the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 29 years, the first balanced budget in 29 years, the lowest inflation in 32 years, the highest homeownership in American history with the smallest Federal Government in 35 years, since John Kennedy was the President of the United States.

There were fights over these ideas. When we passed the budget in 1993 that reduced the deficit by over 90 percent, not a single member of the other party was with us. When we passed the crime bill to put 100,000 police officers on the street, which officers had been begging for. I just left Bristol, Tennessee, the airport, all these law enforcement officers standing there in east Tennessee, saying, "Thank you very much for still helping us to keep our community safe." Very few members of the other party were there.

When we passed the family and medical leave bill that's allowed 12 1/2 million people to get a little time off from work when they've got a new baby or a sick parent, most of the people in the other party opposed us.

It was the Democratic Party that said, "Yes, balance the budget, but give 5 million poor children health insurance. Give a HOPE scholarship to make the first 2 years of college free for virtually all Americans. Increase those Pell grants. Increase those work-study funds. Give tax deductibility for the interest rates on student loans. Let's make college universal for everybody who is willing to work for it." That was our party's legacy.

It was the Democratic Party that said, "We can grow the economy and improve the environment; we can't afford to do the reverse." And against often relentless odds, I can tell you today, compared to 6 years ago, we not only have more new jobs, we have cleaner air, cleaner water, safer food, fewer toxic waste dumps, the most land set aside for eternal preservation since the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. We are moving this country in the right direction.