Remarks at a Unity '98 dinner in Los Angeles, California: September 26, 1998

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 5, 1998

Let me begin by telling you how very grateful I am for the warm welcome you have given me tonight, to those of you whom I saw earlier. I thank you especially for the personal messages you had for me and for Hillary. You know, even Presidents and their families have to be people, too, and that means a very, great deal to us. And I thank you more than you will ever know.

I want to thank Haim and Cheryl for having me back in their home and having all of you here in this beautiful, beautiful setting. I'd like to thank Michael McDonald for that wonderful song. We were all up there singing but not as well as you. I want to thank the staff of our Unity events, the people who catered this wonderful dinner, and the people who served it. I thank them all. They did a wonderful job for us. Thank you.

I want to thank Gray and Sharon Davis for being such good friends to Hillary and me and such good friends to the people of California. You have to make sure that on election night they're victorious, and I believe they will be. I thank you so much for being here. I thank my friend, Phil Angelides, for being here and for running for office.

Let me say to all the Members of Congress here, I'm very proud of this Unity event. We began to do this in 1996, to work together through the Democratic committee and the Senate campaign committee and the House campaign committee. We found that our contributors were relieved because they were only being hit once, instead of three times. But we also found that when we pooled our efforts, as is always true in life, when we work together, we do better. And Nancy Pelosi and Bob Torricelli have done a wonderful, wonderful job and a great thing for our country.

I'd like to thank the other Members who are here. You may have heard through the applause what Nancy said about Brad Sherman, that he was on Speaker Gingrich's top 10 hit list. Well, for whatever it's worth, he's on my top 10 protect list, and I think he's going to win in November, thanks in no small measure to your help. And I thank you for that.

I have a lot of things to be grateful to Henry, Waxman for, but one thing stands out above all. He has put the public health of the children of this country over the interests of the tobacco industry that has done so much to undermine it and to stop us from passing comprehensive tobacco legislation. He fought that battle a long time before it was popular and before we in our administration got into it. And Henry, we're going to win sooner or later, sure as the world, and when we do, it will be in no small measure because of you. And I thank you for what you've done for our children.

I want to say, too, that I'm very glad Barbara Boxer is here tonight. You know she's in a tough race. She's always been in a tough race. She was in '92; she is now; she has been since the spring. But I think she's tougher than her race is. And I can say this about, to some extent, every Member of Congress who's here. But I want you to remember that many of the things for which the American people very generously give our administration credit, which flow from the economic prosperity we have - on one August night in 1993, hung by the thread of a single vote - first in the House and then in the Senate. And we did not have a vote to spare when we passed the economic plan that brought the deficit down 92 percent, before we passed the bipartisan Balanced Budget Act. That plan cut taxes for 15 million working families on modest incomes. I invested dramatic new monies in health research, as Nancy said, and education. It gave real incentives for people to invest in inner cities that had been left behind in the development we had enjoyed. And it hung by a single vote.

And Barbara Boxer, who had been elected in a narrow race in California in 1992, never blinked. She just went up there and did the right thing for America. And now the voters of California should never blink. They should go to the polls and do the right thing for California and for America and reelect her, because we need her in Washington, DC, very, very, badly.

I would also like to thank Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle for their sterling leadership of our caucus in the Senate and the House through some very, very difficult days and tough decisions. Again, I say to you many of the things for which the administration is credited required the support of Democrats. Even in the bipartisan legislation, we never would have gotten the money to ensure 5,000 children who don't have health insurance 5 million children. We never would have gotten the funds to give a $1,500 tax credit to virtually every family in the country for the first 2 years of college, and tax breaks for the other costs of higher education and to expand dramatically the student loan program and the scholarship programs if it hadn't been for the leadership of Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt.

So every time you think about the good things that I have been able to achieve, if a law was required and a change was required, I can tell you that if it hadn't been for those two men sharing the same values, the same hopes, the same dreams, and being willing to pay the same heat it would not have happened. And I want to see them and their counterparts rewarded in this election because they have consistently, in the majority and the minority, done the right thing for the United States. They are builders, not wreckers; they are uniters, not dividers; and they ought to be the leaders of the United States Congress.