I have to bear so much bad news, I must say that is the only time I have ever been introduced as the bearer of good news. We are glad to see all of you here. We are here to announce some new help for California as you work to come out of the consequences of the earthquake. But first I want to talk about the announcement made just this morning at the Pentagon to which the Vice President referred. This morning we announced the latest round of awards in our technology reinvestment project, which helps companies and workers in defense industries to develop technologies to meet our Nation's commercial and military needs. This is the fourth round of TRP awards we have announced since October. So far, $605 million in competitive Federal grants awarded on merit have gone to firms and communities through this innovative program. It is a cornerstone of our reinvestment and conversion initiative, recognizing that those who worked so hard to win the cold war should not be unduly burdened by cutbacks in military expenditures and that all the work they have done, the expertise they have developed, the barriers that they have broken, should be turned to the advantage of America as we move into the 21st century. The TRP is of special interest to the people of California because California has been on the leading edge of military technology. And converting this know-how for dual use and commercial applications will help our country move into the next century as the economic leader of the world, using things that relate from biomedical and environmental technologies to advanced transportation and communications systems, all rooted originally in our investments in national defense. The projects which have been funded are exciting; they are futuristic; they are farsighted; they have potentially enormous beneficial impact to all the American people. I cannot tell you about all of them-we awarded 50 just today-but let me just mention a couple. One involves the Bay Area Rapid Transit System and Hughes Aircraft. Together they will develop an advanced automated train control system that will identify the precise location of every train, even those in tunnels. That will allow trains to operate at closer distances to each other, and that means the existing infrastructure can double its rider capacity. Another project will establish a technology center in Cerritos, California, to transfer leading-edge composites manufacturing technology to 16,000 small defense and commercial firms just in the Los Angeles area.

Remarks on the Technology Reinvestment Project and Earthquake Relief and an Exchange With Reporters


The University of California at San Diego will work with Alcoa Electronic Packaging and Hewlett Packard to offer displaced defense engineers a 2-year master's program in world-class manufacturing engineering. This will emphasize foreign language training and include an internship in international manufacturing companies. The aim, of course, is to help these folks build on their old skills with new learning to keep them vital and employed and to keep our country competitive in the global marketplace, to provide economic opportunity and shore up military strength, and to ensure that the people who won the cold war will not be left out in the cold. That is what this TRP, the technology reinvestment project, is all about. I will say that on the last round of grants, I think California won-again, I will say, on a purely competitive basis-almost 40 percent of the total dollars. And when you consider the fact that when we started this, the State of California, with 12 percent of the country's population, had over 21 percent of the Nations's military expenditures and has had almost 40 percent of the base closings, the last two rounds of base closings, and over 40 percent of the last round of base closings, it is heartening that in the race for the technologies of the future and, therefore, the jobs of the future, that the whole conversion effort is obviously beginning to work in the way that it ought to work. Let me now say a few words about our continuing efforts to deal with the consequences of the earthquake. In the 5 weeks since the Northridge earthquake, our administration has worked closely with State and local officials, as all of you know, to try to help families, businesses, and communities. We are working to get the whole region back on its feet again. All of you know what the Vice President has already said, that the FEMA Director, James Lee Witt, Secretary Cisneros, Secretary Pena, Mr. Panetta, and many, many others have worked tirelessly to try to deal with the problems that were generated by the earthquake. Immediately after the earthquake, I extended the period for which Federal Government's paid the entire cost of FEMA disaster assistance and increased from 75 to 90 percent the share paid by the Federal Government for FEMA public assistance programs. Now, today we are announcing some loan guarantees which will help to meet the remaining share owed by the State of California.


Congress has appropriated new funds for FEMA, for the Small Business Administration, for the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Veterans Affairs to rebuild these homes and businesses, to house the homeless, to repair the highways and bridges, to restore the damaged schools and other facilities. I do want to say a word of thanks to Secretary Pena for trying to accelerate the construction process. We stood on one of those totally broken sections of highway, and they said it was going to take a year to fix. I know how mad the drivers get at me when we stop traffic at one intersection for 2 minutes here. I multiplied 2 minutes times whatever the number is to get to one year, and it seemed to me that we ought to try to make the contracts go faster. I thank you for that. Recently, your Governor, Speaker Brown, the Senate president pro tem Bill Lockyer, Mayor Riordan, and other officials have asked if there was any way we could lend California the money they believe is needed to pay the State and local share of the FEMA assistance costs. Today I am asking Secretary Cisneros to offer loan guarantees totaling more than $500 million to jurisdictions affected by the earthquake, including the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, and other towns and communities which suffered damages. This loan guarantee authority we are extending to local governments will enable them to obtain loans from private lenders at below-market rates that will take some of the bite out of the cost of recovery. The assistance will be provided under HUD's Community Development Block Grant Section 108 loan guarantee program. I have asked Secretary Cisneros to work with the local governments to work out repayment terms that meet the needs of local communities. The Secretary is also committed to providing technical assistance in preparing the applications and to expedite the review process. This will ensure that the flow of assistance to those in need in southern California will continue without interruption. I have asked the Federal agencies whenever possible to use their discretionary authorities to waive rules and regulations to expedite the delivery of further assistance. This step today builds on these efforts. It reflects a commitment that our administration has made to the people of California, a commitment to do all that we can to help your people work their way out of this disaster, day-in and day-out, until all the work is done.


In recent years, the citizens of southern California, in particular, have endured multiple disasters, from riots to fires and mudslides and now the earthquake. That is what people around here call a character-building experience. I just want you to know that I am committed to ensuring that our Government continues to meet those obligations that we have to give you the opportunity to make a full comeback in the face of this latest setback. Let me just say one other thing, if I might. Even though this is a time of renewal and reconstruction for the people of Los Angeles and California, it is also a day of sadness for many people in that area and for many of the rest of us who believe in the rule of law and appreciate those who enforce it. Yesterday, as all of you know, a rookie policewoman named Christy Lynne Hamilton was shot and killed in the line of duty less than one week after she became a commissioned police officer. A teenager with a semi-automatic weapon hardly gave her a chance to emerge from her patrol car before she was shot down. She received her diploma, as I said, just 5 days ago. At the academy, she was honored by her classmates as being the most inspirational officer candidate. And now her city has lost a policewoman who could have made a difference to people on her beat. Her force has lost its ninth officer this year. Her children have lost a mother. We have pending before the Congress an opportunity to pass crime legislation that is both tough and smart, that would put another 100,000 police officers on the street, a proposal of real value for the cities of California, and at the same time, ban the kinds of semi-automatic weapons that are used for killing people like Cristy Hamilton and which have no justification for sporting or hunting purposes. I hope that we can make this legislation law and that we can do it soon. Many of you in this room have worked for a long time on these issues. Senator Feinstein, in particular, got the semi-automatic weapons ban into the Senate crime bill, and we all thank you for that. All I can tell you is that we are here primarily to celebrate our coming together to overcome the destructive impacts of an act of God.


I am thrilled to be back in the great State of Minnesota, with truly some of the most incredible people anywhere on Earth. You know that. And you know, I hate to bring this up--but we came this close to winning the State of Minnesota. And in 2 years, it is going to be really easy, I think. It is been many, many decades since a Republican did that, and I thought I was going to do it. I needed one more visit, one more speech. No, we are very proud of Minnesota. Let me also say congratulations to the Bulldogs on winning the NCAA Championship hockey tournament. And how many are going to the NHL? They are going to do it. So we are honored to be joined tonight by many wonderful Republican leaders, including our incredible House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He sends a lot of money this way, I want to tell you. I also want to thank and maybe just ask him to come up-we have all night long, right? Do we have time? You know, there-you know, the whole thing going up the trees and down the trees. Tom Emmer, Congressman, loves this State. I also want to thank Lieutenant Governor Michelle Fischbach for being here. It is too much of a deal. Also, a friend of mine and a man who is been incredible and a great supporter, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka. And finally, the person we are all here to support tonight, somebody who is very special-by the way, loves ice hockey--real ice hockey family. In fact, his brother, you know, the coach of the winning women's team in the Olympics. I will tell you, is this a pretty good sendoff for Pete? He was not supposed to do this, but let us hear him. And as you alluded to, the home of college hockey's National Champions, the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs. I am Pete Stauber, and I am running in Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District because, like President Trump, I love this country. I love our freedoms. And I love our Constitution. President, before your election, you made a promise to visit Minnesota. And you promised more jobs, fewer regulations, and a better economy for everyone. Now, jobs are up, unemployment numbers are at a historic low, small businesses and manufacturers are surging, and optimism is at an alltime high.

Donald J. Trump Remarks at a Make America Great Again Rally in Duluth, Minnesota


My blue-collar, commonsense conservative message is resonating throughout the 8th District. President, these people support you. And, Mr. President, these are the same people that are going to send me to Washington so together we can unleash the economic engine in Northern Minnesota. So I did not know he was going to do that, and then he takes out a speech and reads it. He is a great guy, and he loves you, and he loves this country. Remember, I used to say in a little jest, but I really meant it, We are going to win so much. It is what we are doing. President, please, we are winning too much. The people of Minnesota cannot stand winning so much. Please, can we take it easy? So we have created 3.4 million new jobs since election day-3.4. And I have said before, if I would have said that to you during the campaign, those very dishonest people back there, the fake news-- Very dishonest. And we have some people, too, doing that. For instance, I just got back, as you know, from Singapore, where I met Kim Jong Un. And we had a great meeting, great chemistry. They did not want us too. But they-you know, it is like nice to do that. And very interestingly, at first everybody was amazed-amazed that we had the meeting. They could not believe it the first 24 hours. They said, I cannot believe it. You remember that, a while ago? What is the big deal with the meeting? In other words, their bosses said, You cannot say that. So we had a meeting. The President gave away so much. He met with them. What am I supposed to do? Now, sentence one says, a total denuclearization of North Korea. That is what it says. We got back our hostages. And I did not pay $1.8 billion to get back our hostages. We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains. In fact, today already 200 have been sent back. They stopped shooting missiles over Japan. They stopped all nuclear testing. They stopped nuclear research. They stopped everything that you'd want them to stop. And they blew up sites where they test and do the testing. And Kim Jong Un will turn down-and I will tell-he will turn-Chairman Kim will turn that country into a great, successful country.


A year and a half ago, nobody thought that was possible. In fact, before I was elected, everybody assumed we were going to war. In Seoul, you have 28 million people living 30 miles off the border. They do not even need nuclear weapons for that. They have thousands of cannons aiming right on top of Seoul. You could have lost millions and millions of people. But I got along with Kim Jong Un. And these people-you remember, I said, I cannot believe it- He is given away so much. You know what I gave away? But right now you are so safe, and such a great event took place. And all over Asia, they are celebrating the great achievement that we made because you were the ones that put me here. We made-that we made-all over Asia. Everybody knows what a great achievement this is not only for us, but for North Korea, for South Korea, for Japan, for China, for everybody. And I have to say, you know, you have been reading where I have been putting very large tariffs on China. We hit the $250 billion mark. But I want to say, and we have to do that because it has to be balanced, it has to be fair. China and President Xi has really helped us a lot at the border of North Korea. Really helped us a lot, and he is a friend of mine. He is a friend of mine. So you should be very proud of yourselves for what took place, because that was very close to war for many years. And now we can have something where everybody is going to live in peace for a long period of time. So unemployment numbers are among the best in the history of our country. African American unemployment is at its lowest level in the history of our country. Hispanic American unemployment has reached its lowest level ever recorded-the history of our country. And remember I'd go into big stadiums like this that were packed? And by the way, you are very good at real estate. Did you see the thousands and thousands of people outside? That will never be reported by the fake news. But the thousands of people that could not get in. And it would be great if the cameras could take a shot of the arena. So usually, they do not do it. Although honestly, when you have many thousands of people like we have tonight-you know, I was at an event 3 weeks ago where a person from the New York Times said, There was only a thousand people.


I did not even have to do it. And they wrote a slight correction. They were off by many thousands of people. It is fake news, I am telling you. But usually, they do not show the arena. They just show my face. So people would say, Did you have many people there? They have only showed your face. And we all have ego, but I do not want to show my face. I want to show the crowds. Unemployment among women has reached the lowest level, as of today, in 65 years. And most importantly of all, America is respected again. We are fighting to protect American iron, aluminum, and steel and to protect our incredible and very brave miners. But I will tell you, to keep this incredible momentum, I think maybe the most successful that the country has ever had. I think we are now at the most successful level that the country has ever seen. And let me just tell you, because I hear a couple of the fakers, the other day, said, Well, I think it is Obama's economy. They want to put on more regulations. They want to take back your tax cuts, which are massive. They want to take them back, and they want to raise the hell out of your taxes. So we need more Republicans. We have got to get out there in the midterm. We have got to get more Republicans. A vote for a Democrat for Congress is really a vote for Nancy Pelosi and her radical agenda. Democrats want to raise your taxes; increase your regulations; shut down American energy; take over American health care, which has been a disaster with Obamacare; and ship away American jobs. And that is what they will do. If anything bad happens to this country, it will be a disaster for all of you. Make America Great Again. And that is exactly what we are doing. And you know what our new phrase is in 2 years. So the Democrats want open borders. Let them come in from the Middle East; let them come in from all over the place. And by the way, today I signed an Executive order. We are going to keep families together, but the border is going to be just as tough as it is been. Democrats do not care about the impact of uncontrolled migration on your communities, your schools, your hospitals, your jobs, or your safety. Democrats put illegal immigrants before they put American citizens. Illegal immigration costs our country hundreds of billions of dollars.


So imagine if we could spend that money to help bring opportunity to our inner cities and our rural communities and our roads and our highways and our schools. So we have already started the wall. We got $1.6 billion. They want to do anything they can to obstruct and to make sure it does not happen. Oh, we have a single protestor. So we have a single protestor. He is going home to his mom. And tomorrow the fake news will say tomorrow, Massive protests at the Trump rally. So we are going to make it great for Americans. And we are going to take care of people. And we do want people coming across our border, going through our ports of entry, but we want people to come in through merit, not just through luck or happenstance. We want them to come in through merit. And we need people, because we have so many companies now-and you know very well in Minnesota what is happening. They just gave me a runthrough. What is happening in Minnesota is incredible. But we have so many companies moving back into our country. We need people to help, but we want them to come in through the merit system, not a system where we get MS-13 and everybody else that other countries do not want. And the Democrats' open border policies have also allowed MS-13 to break into our country and drugs to pour into our streets. And we are stopping it. We have taken out of our country-and actually-can you believe I have to say this-we have liberated towns. Like it was captured by a foreign country. We have liberated towns out in Long Island. We have taken them out of our country by the thousands. And these countries that send them back, we are putting in legislation-we are not giving them anymore aid. When they send people up. They are sending-you remember those words? They are sending-well, let me tell you, they are sending-and they are not sending their finest. That I can tell you. And what we are doing-what we are doing-we give hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to countries. We have a horrible deal, as an example, with NAFTA and Mexico. They make over a hundred billion dollars on that horrible trade deal where factories were emptied. So many bad things have happened, and we are going to make it a part of NAFTA.


Because you have to mark up thousands of miles coming through Mexico-you come up thousands of miles coming through Mexico, and we are going to stop it. Because he needs a haircut more than I do. But the media never talks about the American victims of illegal immigration. I know them well. I know so many of them. I campaigned with them. What is happened to their children, what is happened to their husbands, what is happened to their wives. The media does not talk about the American families permanently separated from their loved ones because Democrat policies release violent criminals into our communities. We need safety. We need safety. They do not bring cameras to interview the angel moms whose children were killed by criminal aliens who should have never been here in the first place, not even close. They do not want to talk to the angel moms. But as your President, I will always fight to protect American families. I will always fight for an immigration system that defends our borders and takes care of our sovereignty as a nation. I will never sacrifice the safety and security of the American people. And I will never be silent in the face of vicious smears and attacks and the heroic agents and officers of ICE and the Border Patrol who save millions-just the job they do-save thousands and thousands of lives and are so brave and are so tough. If you want to create a humane, lawful system of immigration, then you need to retire the Democrats and elect Republicans to finally secure our borders. Because we need Democrat votes. We have a majority of one in the Senate. We need Democrat votes in the Senate. We need additional votes in the House. We will have the greatest borders, the greatest walls. We need Republicans to get out and put Republicans in. In case you do not know, in the Senate, we need, unfortunately, 60 votes. We have 51 votes. We need Democrats. They will do anything to obstruct, anything to make it as uncomfortable as possible. We are building it. We are building the wall. Under the previous administration, America's rich, natural resources-of which your State has a lot-were put under lock and key, including thousands of acres in Superior National Forest. Tonight I am proudly announcing that we will soon be taking the first steps to rescind the Federal withdrawal in Superior National Forest and restore mineral exploration for our amazing people and miners and workers and for the people of Minnesota, one of the great natural reserves of the world.


And we will do it carefully. And maybe, if it does not pass muster, we will not do it all. But it is going to happen, I will tell you. We have already taken it, as you know, a long way down the road. It is going to make it, from an environmental standpoint, better. As a result of our massive tax cuts, millions of Americans are receiving much bigger paychecks. We have eliminated record numbers of job-killing regulations. By the way-so, a few days ago, it was 500 days. In 500 days, we have cut more regulations than any President in the history of our country, whether it is 4 years, 8 years, or in 1 year-in one case, 16 years. We have cut more regulations in 500 days than any President, even our 16-year President. We have opened up energy exploration in ANWR in Alaska. They have been trying to do that from before the days of Ronald Reagan. We repealed the core of Obamacare. The individual mandate where you pay a fortune for the privilege of not paying for insurance for health care. And let me tell you, we just repealed it. And we would have repealed and replaced Obamacare, although we have gone a long way toward doing that anyway-we just had to do it a longer route. Because we had a gentleman, late into the morning hours, go thumbs down. That was not a good thing for our people, for our country, whether you are Democrat or Republican. We have his vote. We have everybody's vote. We were going in for a routine repeal and replace, and he went thumbs down. We are bringing back our jobs from other countries. We are bringing back our companies from other countries. Many, many companies are coming back to our country. And as far as trade is concerned with other countries, we want fair and reciprocal trade. We do not want stupid trade like we had for so long. We have been ripped off by almost every country on Earth, our friends and our enemies. And I hate to say it, our friends do a bigger and better job than the enemies. And even before we finish off with the trade deals-and we will finish off with the trade deals. People do not realize we have the cards. Because we are the piggy bank that everybody was robbing for 30 years. We are like the piggy bank. Let us go get some more. You look at the European Union.


They put up barriers so that we cannot sell our farm products in. And yet they sell Mercedes and BMW and the cars come in by the millions. And we hardly tax them at all. They do not take our cars. We are going to sell you millions of cars. By the way, you are not going to sell us any. We will not be taken advantage of anymore. We have such potential. We just secured a record $700 billion in funding to rebuild our military, which was in very sad shape. 716 billion. We are ordering new planes. We make the best in the world. We are ordering new ships. We are ordering new military equipment. And we even gave our great warriors a raise. For the veterans, we passed the largest VA reforms in half a century. You could not fire anybody that worked in the VA. They were sadistic in some cases, they were lazy, they were this, they were that. You could never fire anybody, because the accountability, you could forget it. So we passed a bill that they have been trying to pass for almost 40 years. Jim, I am sorry to tell you, you are fired. And even more important-and I did not think I'd be saying this so soon because I would campaign on this-I used to go out during the campaigns-and you know it because I was in Minnesota a lot. But one that is really important to me. And I used to say to myself, I wonder why doctors do not just take care of our great vets. We just passed Veterans Choice legislation. That gives our veterans the care they deserve, the care they earned. Now look, so our veterans were waiting on line for 9 days, for 12 days, for 3 weeks. Someone on line with a minor problem, they ended up having a terminal disease. Now, I said during the campaign, before I knew too much about it, but there is a lot of common sense in life. I say, instead of one of our great veterans waiting for 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks, why do not we let them go see a doctor and pay the bill? And that is what we are doing. And you know, I went to people-I thought about it-I thought, oh, I think I am such a genius. But I went to the vet groups, I went to every- Yes, we have been trying to get that passed, sir, for 30 years. I did not know that.


But what I did know is, I knew how to get it passed, and we got it passed. And by the way, we passed another one. They travel all over the world if they have the money. If they do not , they do not know what to do. If we have drugs that have not been approved yet, but are showing tremendous promise, it did not matter. You could not get it. And the reason was, they did not want to do anything that is going to hurt you. You are not going to be around for 5 weeks. In 5 weeks-I kept saying, Why cannot we do something? If people had the money, they'd travel to Africa, to Asia, to Europe trying to find the cure. They wanted hope. And they could not get it. And this is also-like Veterans Choice, for many years people have tried pass it. And Kevin was a great help, I have to tell you. Kevin McCarthy, who just left the stage, was a great help. And we got right to try passed. And 4 weeks ago, I signed final legislation, and we are very proud. Between the insurance companies and the health care companies and the pharmaceutical companies, it was incredible. But we did that, and now we are bringing down the prices for prescription drugs, way down. So we have made this incredible progress together with your help, with the help of the millions and millions of people that-well, some polls got it right. But they showed up, and the beginning of that night, people are saying, You know, this could be a big problem for the Democrats. They were not liking what they were seeing. They were seeing too many of those hats. They were seeing too many people with-you know that. That was one of the most incredible evenings. Because that is a movement, the likes of which this country has never seen before. You know, we talk about the forgotten men and women. They pay taxes. They do all of the things. And believe me, our people are the smartest and the hardest working. You ever notice they always call the other side-and they do this on- the elite. I have a much better apartment than they do. the deplorables. You know, I was watching when Crooked Hillary made-and by the way, is it--hey, excuse me. Have you been watching what is been going on with the Inspector General's report?


I do not think their wife and husband are too happy about that. What do you think? What do you think? No, but have you been seeing this whole scam? Have you been-do you believe what you are seeing? How-no matter what she did, no matter how many crimes she committed, which were numerous, they wanted her to be innocent. And they just wanted to take all of us. They wanted to put us in trouble. And it is not working too well, I will tell you. But you look at the corruption. Did you ever see anything like it? Really, today more things-that is why they are building up immigration so you cannot see what is going on in Congress. They are building up immigration. They do not want to show what is happening in Congress where this whole scam has been revealed. So they want to stay on immigration where Obama had bigger problems than anybody, where Bush had problems, where other Presidents-they want to stay on immigration because they do not want to go into the halls of Congress, which has totally revealed the Russian scam that is going on. I will tell you something, we want to get along with Russia. Between our military, our oil that we are doing. She wanted to have windmills. We want to compete with the oil. All the things we have done, including sanctions. You know, I wish Crooked Hillary won that election. It would have been a lot better for Russia. So what we want to do is we want to elect more Republicans so that we can deliver on all of the things I am talking about. And I will be honest with you, we are going to deliver anyway. We are going to lift millions of Americans from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity. We are going to lift them. You know, one of the greatest things about all the jobs we have created-to me, the greatest-is that people now do not get stuck in one job and they hate it. They do not want to get up in the morning. They have many, many options. It is a beautiful thing taking place. They can get something-I have always said, you know, when I make speeches on how to be successful-I always say, like the first thing, you have got to love it. You have got to love it. You have got to love your job or you are never going to be good.


These people now that did not have any options-they were hanging on to one job that they hated. They have many, many choices. They get the job they want. And for the first time in 20 years, wages are rising. We are going to build new airports, and we are going to build railways and highways and waterways all across this magnificent land. We have spent, because of horrible decision-making, $7 trillion in the Middle East. And if we want to fix a window, it is , like, a big deal. Remember during the debates, I'd talk about growth. We need growth. Nobody has ever seen growth like we are having right now. President, congratulations on the growth of the United States. And we break every attendance record every single time, just about. We are going to put new steel into the backbone of our country, and we are going to make that steel right here in the United States. We are going to breathe new hope into our communities. We will do it all with American hands and American heart and American pride. And everything we do, we will stand up for our citizens. We will fight for our country. We will stand up for America. And we are going to stand up for the great State of Minnesota. And you are seeing that. Your great State was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their incredible families. They did not have a lot of money; they did not have a lot of luxury. But they had grit, and they had faith, and they had courage, and they had each other. They loved their families, they loved their country, and they loved their God. Together, we are renewing the miracle of the great American Midwest. Do you remember not so long ago, we were producing those cars and we producing all of this stuff? And since then, so many companies went to Mexico and went to other places. We are standing on the shoulders of great American patriots who put down the railroads, built up the highways, and dug out the most amazing Panama Canal, losing thousands of lives in doing it. They crossed the oceans, trekked the deserts, scaled the mountains, created the most incredible republic the world has ever seen. Our beautiful ancestors won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and put a man on the face of the Moon. And I think you saw the other day, we are reopening NASA.


I am most grateful for the generous remarks that you have expressed in welcoming me and the members of my party to your country. As I stand here I think back 22 years ago when I first visited this country and had the opportunity to know the Italian people. For 2 weeks, at that period, as a new young Congressman, I traveled through this country studying the needs of this nation for the Marshall Plan. I visited Rome, Naples, Milan, Turin, and Trieste. I had the opportunity to see a nation then in deep economic troubles, a nation which many thought would be unable to recover from those troubles and regain its economic and political strength. But when I returned to the United States and, along with my colleagues, reported to the Congress, I was confident of the future of Italy because, first, I had seen a great Italian leader, De Gasperi,1 and I knew that he would provide, with his colleagues, the leadership that this nation needed. I also reported with great confidence because I had seen a remarkable people, a people who, in adversity had very great strength, a people who had contributed so much to our country and who now, in this land, were to contribute so much to its recovery--and the recovery of Italy, economically and politically--so that it now ranks among the first nations of the world, so that it now stands as one of the strong allies of the Western Alliance. That recovery is due both to its leaders and to its peoples and I pay tribute to both as I stand here today. Now we look to the future. We look to the future with the new leaders, the leaders that you will provide in your government and that we will provide in ours. As we look to the future we will look to the new purpose of our alliance and of our association together. As I think of that purpose I think of the words of another American President who visited this nation just 50 years ago. His words were spoken before their time but now their time has come. Our task is to set up a new international psychology, to have a new, real atmosphere where what men once considered theoretical and idealistic turns out to be practical and necessary. President, the contribution that you, personally, and that your people have made to the strength of NATO has helped to turn the ideal of collective security into a practical reality. Now, as we seek a new international atmosphere, the strength of the Western Alliance has never been more necessary. A good ally listens 'to her partners.

Remarks on Arrival at the Airport in Rome


I hope I have Joe Lieberman's remarks on the White House television camera back there somewhere. Thank you so much, Senator Lieberman, for we are about to start our 30th year of acquaintance, Senator Lieberman and I are. When I first met him, I had no gray hair. Now I have more gray hair than he does. I thank Joe Lieberman and Cal Dooley for their leadership of this organization; my friend Simon Rosenberg, who has come a long way since he was in the Clinton-Gore war room in 1992. And he did a great job there. And I, too, want to acknowledge Al From and thank him for the inspiration he is given all of us. I want to thank all the Members of Congress who are here and the candidates here who aspire to be in the House or the Senate. I want to reiterate what Joe Lieberman said, and I did not think I could say this 6 months ago, but we now have, I believe, a reasonable chance to pick up enough seats not only to have a majority in the House, which everybody knows and even our adversaries acknowledge, but even in the Senate, thanks in no small measure to the extraordinary people who are running for the Senate seats on our side. Now, let me say, I suppose I do not have to say much tonight because I will be preaching to the saved. But I think it is worth analyzing where we are and where we are going and why the New Democratic coalition is important and why it is important to us to keep faith with the ideas that got this group started, with the ideals, and to keep always pushing to tomorrow. You know, there are a lot of people who say, Well, this election is going to be about change, even if they think the Clinton-Gore team has done a good job or the Democrats have done a good job. This election is about change. Well, I think it ought to be about change, too. I was educated about this issue very well about 10 years ago. Some of you heard me tell this story before, but it is one of my favorite and most instructive political stories. When I was Governor of my State, every year in October, this month, we'd have a State Fair.

Remarks at a New Democrat Network Dinner


And I always had Governor's day at the State Fair, and I'd go out there and give an award to the oldest person there and the couple that had been married the longest and the person with the largest number of great-grandchildren. And then I'd go in this big old shed and get me a little booth, and I'd sit there. And in October of not it was '89, and there was a Governor's race the next year, and I had been Governor by then for 10 years. And this old guy in overalls came up to the Governor's booth, and he said, Bill, are you going to run next year again? And I said, I do not know, but if I do, will you vote for me? He said, I always have, and I guess I will keep on doing it. And I said, Well, are not you tired of me after all these years? And I got kind of and I said you know how politicians are, we hate it when somebody says something like that. So I got kind of hurt, and I said, Well, gosh, I mean, do not you think I have done a good job? He said, Oh yeah, you have done a good job, but you got a paycheck every 2 weeks, did not you? He said, That is what we hired you to do. What we have got to figure out is whether you have got anything left to do. No matter how good a job you do, elections are always about tomorrow, and they should be. America has been changing and sort of reinventing itself on the great pillars of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence for over 200 years, and that is why we are still here. And this coalition came into being and the whole sort of New Democrat/ Third Way movement came into being because we thought not that our party should abandon its principles but that we should break out of a shell and adopt policies that would bring us together and move us into the future. I just want to make a few points as we look to that future. First of all, in 1992, when I went out to the people in New Hampshire and all these other States and into the country and asked then-Senator Gore to join me, and we said, Look, we have got this vision of America in the 21st century.


We want this to be a country where everybody who is responsible enough to work for it has opportunity, where no matter how diverse we get, we are still coming together in one community, where we are still the world's leading force for peace and freedom and prosperity. We want to take this opportunity, responsibility, community agenda and come up with concrete policies and ideas to get the economy moving again, to bring the crime rate down, to bring the welfare rolls down, to empower poor people, to get more young people into college, to raise the standards of our schools and have more choice and competition there. We have got some ideas. And all we were doing is making an argument. And against our argument, what the Republicans said was what they have been saying about Democrats for 30 years, you know, They are too liberal. You cannot trust them with your money. They will raise your taxes. They never met a Government program they did not like. They sleep next to a bureaucratic pile of rules at night. You know, they would not defend the country if their life depended on it. You know, you have heard all that stuff. They had this sort of cardboard cutout image of Democrats that they tried to paste on every candidate's face at election time. And things were sufficiently bad in this country the economy was in terrible shape; the society was divided; the crime rate and the welfare rolls were exploding that people decided to take a chance on the argument. And then we set about trying to turn this country around and made some very tough decisions. And some of our Members paid very dearly for it for the '93 economic plan to turn this country around, for voting for the Brady bill and the crime bill to bring the crime rate down. And about 4 years later, the people decided to give us a they renewed our lease because they could feel things were beginning to change. And then in '98 we had a historic victory in the congressional elections because we had an agenda to keep building on it. We said, Now give us a chance to save Social Security and pass a Patients' Bill of Rights and build and modernize schools. Give us a chance to do some things that will really make a difference here. And now we come up to 2000, and I want to make the following points. Some of them have been made before. You need to memorize this. And the members of the other party unanimously opposed our economic policy; almost all of them are against our crime policy.


We finally, thank goodness, reached an accord on welfare policy, after two vetoes, and that is good. But still there is this sort of partisan rancor when we have evidence that the direction we have taken is right. The people in this room have been part the Members of Congress in this room have been part of the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years, and the lowest crime rates in 26 years. the family and medical leave law, which the previous administration vetoed; doubling the earned-income tax credit; the empowerment zone program, which the Vice President has done so ably; the community financial institutions that are making loans to people that could not get money otherwise; the charter schools we are up to 1,700 from one when I took office; the HOPE scholarships that have opened the doors of college, at least the first 2 years, virtually to every person in this country now; AmeriCorps, which has given over 100,000 young people in its first 5 years a chance to serve their communities, something it took the Peace Corps 20 years to do. So we have been full, all of us, of these ideas, and we have worked along. So when we go into this election cycle, I want you to say, with all respect, you have to make a decision about not whether to change. Since I signed the telecommunications bill, over 300,000 new high-tech jobs have been created. We got this E-rate so we could provide discounts to rural schools and poor schools in the inner cities, so we could hookup all of our classrooms and libraries to the Internet by the year 2000, and it looks like we are going to make it. I was out in California last weekend doing some work for our congressional and Senate candidates in our party, and I was with a lot of people. This great company, eBay you all ever buy anything on eBay on the site? Not working for the company, over 20,000 Americans are now making a living doing business on eBay. They do not work for eBay. They are just doing business on eBay. Over 20,000 people making a living, including a substantial number of former welfare recipients.


So what we have tried to do is to come with new ideas and policies that will really work, and it is not an argument anymore. So say to people, We are for change. The question is, what kind of change are you for? And the way I look at it, we have spent the last 6 1/2 years trying to turn the country around and get it going in the right direction, and things are going well now. But I would like to suggest that the change we need is to say, Okay, now we are moving in the right direction. Let us reach for the stars. Let us write the future of the 21st century. Let us imagine every challenge and every opportunity we have got out there that is really big and go get it. Let us do not change by taking a U-turn and going back to what got us trouble in the first place. You can trust this coalition of people to deal with the aging of America. We are going to double the number of seniors in 30 years. I hope to still be one of them. The baby boomers will then be with us for at least another 20 years. We may or may not ever get an agreement with the Republicans on Social Security reform, but in good conscience, with this surplus, we must at least take the life of Social Security out beyond the reach of the baby boom generation. We have to do that. If we do not agree on anything else, all it takes to take the life of the Social Security Trust Fund beyond the life of the baby boom generation is to commit to take 5 years of interest savings from saving the Social Security taxes, sometime in the next 15 years, and put them in the Social Security Trust Fund. If we do not do anything else, it'll take us out to 2050, and we ought to do it. We ought to modernize Medicare. We ought to employ the most modern practices that you find in the private sector, and I think we ought to add a prescription drug coverage because if we were creating that program today, we would never create it without drug coverage. And 75 percent of the seniors in this country do not have affordable drug coverage. It will keep a lot of them out of hospitals. It will lengthen and improve the quality of their lives. It is the right and decent thing to do, and we can do it if we are also prepared to have some savings in the traditional program. We ought to take the lead in this. We should do it.


The second thing we ought to do is to keep working on the schools. We ought to have more charter schools. We ought to have a no social promotion policy. But we ought to give every kid who needs it an after-school program or a summer school program. We ought to modernize these schools, and we ought to hire the 100,000 teachers. You know, if you ever wonder what the difference in the parties is, you ought to look at the debate going on in education now in the House of Representatives. Now, when the electorate was breathing down their throat in 1998 at the end of the congressional session, the Republicans worked with us to make a huge downpayment on 100,000 teachers to lower class size. And we gave the States money for 30,000 of them. And you ought to read the glowing statements made by such Democratic sympathizers as Dick Armey. In 1998, just last year, the chairman of the House Education Committee, lots of others say, This could have been a Republican program. We are helping these teachers. They thought it was a great idea at election time. No electorate breathing down their throat, they have refused to fund the program anymore and taken out the dedicated funding for the teachers that is already there. This is about big ideas. We have got the largest student population, the most diverse student population in history. They need more and better trained teachers. They need higher standards. They need accountability and they need options so that the kids who are not cutting it do not fail, but find a way to succeed. We have the crime rate, the lowest rate in 26 years. Why do not we have a real goal now? Why do not we adopt as a national goal that we are going to be the safest big country in the world? If we have we have got you may think that is crazy, but everybody thought it was crazy when we said we'd balance the budget, too. I could never have been elected President if I said, If you will vote for me, within 6 years I will give you two surpluses in a row. People'd say, He seems like a nice young fella. We'd better send him home and get him a little help. He is out of his mind. If you do not envision this, it will not happen. Why should we say, We have got the lowest crime rate in 26 years.


But if we are serious about it, we are going to have to do more in prevention. We already have the highest percentage of people behind bars of any country in the world. We are going to have to say there is no rational distinction between a flea market and a gun show and a gun shop. We are going to have to put 50,000 more police out there in the neighborhoods where the crime rate is still too high. We are going to have to do things that help communities that are driving their crime rates down do it everywhere. But I think the Democrats ought to say, We are not satisfied with the lowest crime rate in 26 years. We will never be satisfied until America is the safest big country in the world, and we think we can help to make it that way. Let us talk about the economy. Number one, not everybody is a part of it; and number two, it is changing so fast, if we do not keep working we cannot keep the growth going. So let me just offer you a few ideas that I think are important. These empowerment zones are wonderful, and I want to get more of them. But it is not fair for all the places that are not part of it not to have some help from us to bring enterprise there. If we have learned one thing, we have got the strongest recovery of the last 30 years, also the highest percentage of private sector jobs. We have the smallest Federal Government since President Kennedy was here. But we have not yet figured out how to bring enterprise to every community that has not been part of this recovery. So for those of us who represent and live in the Mississippi Delta or in Appalachia or in represent many of the inner-city areas or a lot of the small towns and rural areas all over this country or the Native American reservations, I have proposed a modest but, I think, important plan. What I want the Congress to do is to pass laws that give us the same incentives to Americans with money to invest in poor areas in America, we give them to invest in poor areas in Central America and the Caribbean and Africa and Asia and throughout the world. The second thing I'd like to say is that I like what we are doing, hooking up all these classrooms to the Internet, and the E-rate allows us to hook them up in rural areas and poor urban areas.


But if you think about it, I believe we could revolutionize the economy of these left-behind places if access to the Internet were as pervasive as access to telephones. So why do not we adopt that as a goal, study it, figure out how to achieve it, say we will not permit there to be any digital divide. That is the policy we have taken with regard to our schools. That is what the E-rate's all about. But what if their parents all had it, too? What if their parents had access to that? What if we why should we be content with the economy we have? If we do not reach our goal, it will be a lot better than it would otherwise, and we will keep things going. I think we ought to think of that. Let me just mention two other things. First of all, I want to mention something that may be sort of politically impolite, but one issue in which our caucus, in my view, is still divided too often in the wrong way, and that is the issue of trade. Here is what I think. You see it all over the world today. There is a move toward protectionism all over the world today, even in places that are doing well. Because we have not figured out how to put a human face on the global economy. Because we have not figured out how to tell people that, sure, there will be more dynamism in this economy, but here is what we are doing to protect the basic rights of working families. Here is what we are doing to try to protect the basic integrity of the environment. Here is what we are trying to do to make sure everyone can benefit from this. So our party needs to take the lead in pushing for trade, but for doing it in a way that says we are determined to put a human face on the global economy. Because if we do not , it is not just in America; you see this everywhere. I see it in the Europeans. I see it in Asia again. I see it the economy is now the strongest, here, it is been in a long time, and yet, the impetus for continuing to trade is not there. We have got 4 percent of the people and 22 percent of the wealth. So if we want to keep strong and wealthy and growing, we have got to do something with the other 96 percent of the people out there.


I have got this big trade meeting coming up we all do in Washington State, in Seattle, in December. And I hope we can try to break down some barriers in other countries. But why should people break their barriers down if they think America's trying to have it both ways? So I think we have to go back at this. And lastly and I think maybe the most important thing of all for the next generation I vetoed that tax bill that the Congress passed, the Republicans in Congress passed, because I was convinced that if I signed it we not only could never meet our obligations to our children and to our seniors and to our future in our investments in science and technology, I was convinced we would never finish the work of paying down our debt. Now, we are paying down our debt now. And if we stay on the plane that I asked Congress to adopt in the budget, we will be debt-free in 15 years, for the first time since Andrew Jackson was President in 1835. Now, why should the Democratic Party be for that? In conventional terms, we are the more liberal party. Why should we be for that? Everybody in this room who is 40 years of age or older, who studied economics in college, was told that a Government should always carry some debt. We were all taught that. Because we are living in a global economy. You look at what happens to these countries that try to hide their money; people still get it out. Interest rates are set in a global economy. If we get America out of debt, it means that all the Americans can borrow more cheaply. If the Government is out of debt, it means lower interest rates for businesses in this country, for home loans, for car loans, for college loans. It means more jobs and higher incomes. It means when our friends overseas who are not as fortunate as we are get in trouble the way the Asians did in the last 2 years, they can get out of trouble at lower cost. I believe, if we do this, it would do more than anything else we could do to guarantee a whole generation of prosperity. Whatever happens in the future, we know not every day of every month of every year from now on will be as good as the last 6 1/2 years have been, but whatever happens in the future, it will not be as bad as it would have been if we keep getting this country out of debt. So I hope all of you will support that.


Well, ladies and gentlemen, I used to think that I was reasonably astute at public affairs, but I do not have any better sense than to get up here and try to speak behind Mayor Powell, Cathy Bessant, and Jesse Jackson. Let me say to all of you, it is wonderful to be here. Madam Mayor, thank you for making us feel so welcome and for your sterling leadership. I am delighted to be here with Jackie, your hero and my friend who is all of our heroes. I am going to go in and shop in a minute-add to the local community. Thank you, Reverend Jackson, for believing that we could keep hope alive in every city and rural area in this country and it could be good business to do so. Joe Stroud of Jovon Broadcasting; my good friend Al From, the Democratic Leadership Council; David Wilhelm, the former Chairman of the Democratic Party from Illinois, who is here with me today. I want to thank Senator Durbin and Congressman Costello, two of the ablest, finest people in the United States Congress. I want to tell you that they are joined here today by other Members of Congress, including Congressman Jim Clyburn, who came all the way from South Carolina; Congressman Paul Kanjorski from the State of Pennsylvania; and Congressman Dale Kildee from Michigan all of whom care about this community and communities like it all across America. I thank them. And I want to thank your neighboring mayor, Clarence Harmon, for coming over from St. Louis, and your former mayor, Gordon Bush, for being here with me. And I want to thank Secretary Cuomo, Secretary Glickman, Secretary Slater, and all the other people from the administration. We have had a great time these last 2 days, going across America. We are going to finish this day, first by shopping at Walgreens, and then we are going to get on an airplane and fly to South Dakota, where we will begin tomorrow at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. So from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to East St. Louis to Pine Ridge, it has been a wonderful trip. But let me ask you something. If you look around this crowd today, I have to make-this is a happy day, a happy day. But I want to say one serious thing off of this subject today, because of a remark that was made earlier by Cathy, that I believe in community development-emphasis, community.

Remarks to the Community in East St. Louis, Illinois


You have been very good to me, to the First Lady, to Vice President Gore, and Mrs. Gore. You have supported our initiatives and especially the Vice President's leadership of all of our community development. We have people from all kinds of backgrounds, all different colors, all different religions. Everybody-all different ages, working for something good. So this is the first chance, my first stop in Illinois since the tragic string of shootings in Illinois and Indiana these last couple of days, that have come to end with the apparent suicide of the alleged gunman. Now, I do not want to say a lot, but I think it is important to note that while we have to wait for all of the details to come in, the early reports indicated that this shooting spree against Jews, Orthodox Jews, against the young Asian students, taking the life of a former basketball coach at Northwestern, an African-American, all were motivated by some blind racial hatred against anybody who did not happen to be white. Is not it ironic that this occurred during the time we celebrated the birth of our Nation on the Fourth of July? That action was a rebuke to the very ideals that got us started. They are also a stern reminder to us that even as we celebrate this, even as we stand up against racial and ethnic and religious hatred in Kosovo, in Northern Ireland, and the Middle East and Africa, we have still got work to do here at home. We must search the hearts of our citizens and search the strength of our communities, that Congress should pass the hate crimes legislation, but we should rid our hearts of hatred immediately. Now, I want to tell you what got us going on this. In 1992, when I ran for ENTITY, I came to East St. Louis, and I said I wanted to create a country in the 21st century where there was opportunity for every citizen, responsibility from every citizen, and a community of all American citizens. I said that we ought to have a new role for Government, that Government could not solve all the problems, but walking away from them did not work very well, either; and that we had to focus on creating the conditions and giving people the tools to make the most of their own lives and to get together across lines that had divided them for too long.


Goodness knows, in the inner cities and the rural areas of our country, lines have divided those who worked hard but had no money and those who had plenty of money but did not believe it could be very well spent in the inner city or in rural areas. retail returning, new jobs, new residents, new hope, Walgreens putting up 400 stores across America, many of them in innercity areas. You heard what Cathy said about opportunities. Let me tell you, the economists talk about something in our inner cities called the purchasing power gap. Let me tell you what that means. That means most people in East St. Louis, even though the unemployment rate is higher than the national average, most people get up and go to work every day. And if you take the money that you earn here as against the money you are able to spend here because of the jobs that are here and the stores that are here, in America as a whole, there is 25 percent more money earned than spent in the inner cities. In Los Angeles, it is 35 percent; in East St. Louis, it is 40 percent. So you can handle this Walgreens and a lot more besides, and we want to see them coming here. And we thank Bank of America for the library, and we thank those involved in the hotel, the bank, the homes being built near here. We also want you to know that we want to do our part. Secretary Cuomo's housing and urban development block grants, along with Bank of America and many department stores, are helping Jackie build the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center near here. So this is what Vice President Gore and I have tried to do with our empowerment zones and our community banks and our vigorous enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act. It says you are supposed to loan money everywhere in America. That law has been on the books for 22 years, but over 95 percent of the money loaned under it, billions of dollars, has been loaned since the Clinton-Gore administration has been in office, and I am proud of that. We made East St. Louis an enterprise community in our first round of empowerment zones and enterprise communities way back in 1994, and because you have done so well, East St. Louis is designated as an empowerment zone for our second round, which means more money being spent here by the Government, more tax incentives for the private sector to put businesses here and to hire the people from East St. Louis and give them good jobs.


Senator Durbin, Congressman Costello, and every Member of the Congress here is committed to creating that second round of empowerment zones and funding them this year. We need help from Republicans and Democrats alike. Now, let me tell you why else we came here today. We want to make two points which all the previous speakers have made. Starting with what the mayor said about location, location, location, accessibility-boy, that was a good rap, was not it? I like that. The first point we want to make is, when the Walgreens' president comes, or when an executive from Bank of America comes, or when Mel Farr comes, and comes to places like this or the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia, the other places we are going, is, hey, there are business opportunities out here. If you have got people who want to go to work and people with money to spend, and they are both in the same place, it is a good place to invest. The second thing we are doing is promoting what you have heard referred to as the new markets initiative. Now, let me just tell you what that is. That is a bill we are going to put before the Congress that says that, if people invest in any high unemployment, high poverty area anywhere in America, inside or outside one of our empowerment communities, they can get a tax credit for the money they put up, and they can go to the bank and borrow money and have it guaranteed, a guaranteed loan by the Federal Government, which will lower the interest rates, which will mean it will be much cheaper for people to invest in communities like East St. Louis than it otherwise would be. Now, the Government is not going to do it, nobody is going to put any money here if they think they are going to lose it. If you put up $100 and you invest it and I give you a 25 percent tax credit, if it is a bad investment, you still lose $75. But it makes it more likely that people will do it. It makes it more likely that they will take a look. It makes it more likely that you will build the kind of relationships which will make people know you and trust you and want to build a common future with you. And that is what we are trying to do. It is not a handout, but it is darn sure a hand up, and you are entitled to it.


And let me say to all of you, it is something that is good for the rest of America. We have had almost 19 million new jobs; the longest peacetime expansion in history; the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded in this country to date. But the unemployment rates are still higher than they are for the rest of the country. Incomes are rising, but they are still lower than they are for the rest of the country. Look, we are all going to have to work hard at this. Nobody's got all the answers. People make these investments one at a time, just like Mel Farr sells his cars one at a time. You can only build one Walgreens on this spot, and somebody had to come up with the money. Somebody had to make the decision. Somebody's got to hire all the people that work here. Somebody's got to train them. Somebody's got to make all these decisions. But what we can do is to create an environment in which more people will want to hold hands with you and walk into the 21st century, so that nobody is left behind, and we all go forward together. You know, in 1960, Look magazine said East St. Louis was an all-American city. It was because of stockyards and shipping yards. It was because of private enterprise. And I just want to make one last point to everybody else in America who is looking at this. I spent a lot of time as your President, now, trying to figure out, how can I keep this economic good time going? When we started, nobody believed we could have an economic expansion that would go on this long. When we started, no conventional economist believed you could have unemployment rates under 4 1/2 percent nationwide without having inflation and high interest rates which would wreck everything. But, you know, all of these young, technological geniuses are figuring out all this new computer technology, and it is rifling through what we all do, and it is making us more productive. And we are doing a good job. But now I say to myself every day when I get up, now, what can I do to keep this going? The only way to keep it going-more growth with no inflation; more jobs and higher wages without bringing it to a halt-is to have new people working and new people buying, new people producing. Those are the people you move from welfare to work.


As we celebrate this last New Year of the 20th century, I want to speak to you about the debt we owe to those who make every season a season of peace for America, the men and women of our Armed Forces. Almost 1.4 million Americans are serving our country on active duty today. Nearly a quarter million of them are overseas, doing what needs to be done as no one else can, whether that means thwarting Iraq's ambition to threaten its neighbors or the world with weapons of mass destruction, or standing watch in Korea on the last fortified frontier of the cold war, or safeguarding the peace in Bosnia, or helping our neighbors in Central America or the Caribbean dig out from natural disasters, or simply giving us the confidence that America will be forever strong, safe, and secure. We rely on our Armed Forces because this is still a dangerous world. We are proud of them because they are the best in the world. And we remember today what makes them the best, not just the quality of our weapons but the quality of our people in uniform. We should never ask them to do what they are not equipped to do, and we should always equip them to do what we ask. The more we ask, the greater our responsibility to give our troops the support and training and equipment they need. to give our troops the tools to take on new missions, while maintaining their readiness to defend our country and defeat any adversary; to make sure they can deploy away from home, knowing their families have the quality of life they deserve; and to make certain their service is not only rewarding but well rewarded, from recruitment to retirement. I am confident our military is ready to fulfill this mission today. Our troops continue to execute complex and dangerous missions far from home with flawless precision, as we have just seen in the Persian Gulf. Our challenge is to retain the ability to do this as we carry out our entire defense strategy. For this reason, we asked Congress to add $1.1 billion to this year's budget to keep our readiness razor-sharp and to improve recruitment. I have also worked with our military leaders to ensure their highest readiness priorities are reflected in our budget request for the year 2000. The budget I will submit to Congress for next year will provide an increase of over $12 billion for defense readiness and modernization through a combination of new spending and budgetary savings. This is the start of a 6-year effort that will represent the first long-term sustained increase in defense spending in a decade.

The President's Radio Address


The members of the Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident have just briefed me on their report. It examines the reasons for the accident. It presents recommendations on what we must do to help prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. And I look forward to reading and reviewing it in thorough detail. And let me give my heartfelt thanks to the members and staff of the Rogers commission. They have performed their task with distinction, and it was an arduous one. To a nation still suffering from the trauma of the loss of the Challenger and her brave crew, it was often a painful duty. Their investigation was thorough and comprehensive and completed within the mandated time. They went in with their eyes wide open and were unflinching in pursuit of the facts. Though saddened and chastened, our nation will be stronger because of their courage and dedication. And as we push forward in our conquest of space and push forward we will our shuttle program will be safer and better prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. I want to thank the Congress for letting the Commission proceed unfettered with its investigation, and also the staff of NASA, the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, and others, whose cooperation made the Commission's report possible. And today we see once again that our true faith as a nation lies in our free and open society. In America we learn from our setbacks as well as our successes. And although the lessons of failure are hard, they are often the most important on the road to progress. We have learned in these past few months that we are frail and fallible, but we have also learned that we have the courage to face our faults and the strength to correct our errors. Because we do not hide our mistakes, we are not condemned to repeat them. Because we are an open society, we have room to grow. We can count on their courage to pull us through the hard places I am speaking now of the American people, because we base our trust on the American people. And that is why we can look to their wisdom, creativity, to show us the way to the future. This has been a difficult passage for America, but we will go on just as the crew of the space shuttle Challenger would have wanted us to. We will use every ounce of American skill, ingenuity, and gumption; and we will work twice as hard and be twice as vigilant.

Remarks on Receiving the Final Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident


When the Committee representing your Federation brought me the invitation to address you this evening, I did not receive them with any very profound enthusiasm. To be confidential for a moment, I may confess that an invitation to make a speech is not the rarest experience that comes into a President's life. But I listened with, I hope, proper politeness, down to the point where your spokesman started explaining that you were to devote an evening to the consideration of a budget. Then I began to take real interest, for the budget idea, I may admit, is a sort of obsession with me. I believe in budgets. I want other people to believe in them. I have had a small one to run my own home; and besides that, I am the head of the organization that makes the greatest of all budgets, that of the United States Government. Do you wonder, then, that at times I dream of balance sheets and sinking funds, and deficits, and tax rates, and all the rest? Yes, I regard a good budget as among the noblest monuments of virtue. It is deserving of all emulation; but there are other topics that afford more obvious inspiration to popular oratory. So when I found that you actually wanted a budget speech, I felt a warming sense of gratitude. Anybody who would deliberately ask for a budget speech ought to be accommodated. I accepted the invitation, and now I want to begin by extending my hearty compliments to my audience. Your practical interest in the budget plan, your adoption of it as the basis of your great charity system, is a fine accomplishment. Wherever the same plan has been adopted, in the financing of benevolences, philanthropies and charities through the Community Chest method, it has been productive of the best results. It has eliminated the waste of indiscriminate charity; but that is not by any means its most commendable accomplishment. Far more useful, I think, is the service it has done in organizing these works of human helpfulness so that we may be sure they will not do more harm than good. Nothing is finer than the open hand and the generous heart that is prompt free and unselfish giving. But modern social science knows, also, that ill directed charity is often directly responsible for encouragement of pauperism and mendicancy.

Telephone Remarks to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City, Assembled at the Hotel Pennsylvania


The best service we can do for the needy and the unfortunate is to help them in such manner that their self respect, their ability to help themselves, shall not be injured but augmented. But, being down, nobody gets up again without honest effort of his own. The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself. Your Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies in New York is the central financial agency, I am told, for no less than ninety one various philanthropies, which receive annual support aggregating $7,000,000. Among them are hospitals, orphanages, a great relief society, a loaning organization, a home for Aged and Infirm. The Young Men's Hebrew Association and the Young Women's Hebrew Association do social and educational work of the greatest value. Especial attention is devoted indeed to educational effort for which technical schools are maintained. That is, of course, precisely what we should expect from a great Jewish organization; for the Jews are always among the first to appreciate and to utilize educational opportunities. Into this entire system of communal services, reaching to every possible department of social relations, the Federation brings order and a proper inter relationship. Duplication of services, which always means multiplication of expense and division of results, is avoided. The man or woman who gives through this agency, knows that the most good will be done, at the least expense. All administrative costs of the organization have averaged less than four cents on the dollar. Other Community Chest activities, which in recent years are getting spread all about the country, make like showings of efficiency and economical management. They have been able, just as your Federation has been able, to enlist the best abilities, the most skilled direction, the widest experience, in systematizing operations that ordinarily are haphazard and wasteful. But, with all of my regard for the strictly business aspect of this splendid modern program, I must emphasize once more that to me the greatest good of these communal organizations of benevolence lies in their immeasurably greater capacity for real good. There is an impressive array of testimony that the average dollar of indiscriminate, well meaning, ignorant donation to charity is mostly wasted. You seek no cold and heartless elimination of sentiment from your charitable works. You have, however, sought to substitute sense for sentimentality; and that is altogether to be desired.


I love you back. Thank you, Secretary Castro, not just for the introduction, but for the great work he is doing on behalf of the American people every single day. I'd like to begin my remarks with a story. I love you too! But look, I have got to tell you this story here. So on an evening about 75 years ago, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, a young man proposed to the woman of his dreams. Any of us who've done that and I have know at that moment he was feeling pretty nervous. And fortunately for him, she said yes. And because apparently he was making the kind of money I was making when I proposed to celebrate, they went to a hot dog stand. But things took a wrong turn. Authorities suddenly pulled up, lined them up, patted them down, demanded to see their IDs, just because they were Mexican American. And when the young man handed over his wallet, the officer pulled the cards out of it and just dropped them on the sidewalk, and then he said, Now you pick them up. I remember getting on my knees and picking them up, that young man said decades later. And we can imagine his fear and his humiliation. What had been a beautiful day had suddenly become an example of occurrences that were happening far too often. And imagine how easy it would have been for him at that moment to turn to despair and to allow the anger and the resentment to feed a cynicism and for him to decide that America could never change. And Ed Roybal never lost faith in himself or in his country. And less than 25 years after he was brought to his knees on the streets of Los Angeles, Ed stood under the Capitol Dome to represent those very same streets in the Congress of the United States of America. He dedicated his life to the idea that America can change, that our Union can become more perfect. And today, his legacy lives on not only in the legislation he passed and the improvements he made in his district, but also in his daughter Lucille, who is here tonight. And he helped start the Congressional Hispanic Caucus because he knew that we are stronger together than we could ever be alone. And that is the same reason I ran for this office 8 years ago, not because I believed in what I could do, but because I believed in what we could do together.

Remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Annual Awards Gala


But thanks to the members of the Hispanic Caucus, thanks to people like Nancy Pelosi who is standing here tonight thanks to the determination and fundamental optimism of the American people, we have made progress. When I took office, the unemployment rate was on its way to 10 percent. The unemployment rate among Latinos hit 13 percent, and we have brought that down to 6.4 percent. When I took office, we were losing about 800,000 jobs a month. Today, our businesses have created jobs for a record 67 months in a row, more than 13 million new jobs overall. When I took office, more than 15 percent of Americans, including nearly one in three Hispanics, lacked health insurance. Today, we have covered another 17 million Americans, including 4 million Latinos, and only 9.2 percent of Americans are uninsured. For the first time on record, more than 90 percent of Americans have health insurance. For the first time ever, insurance companies cannot discriminate against anybody with a preexisting condition. When I took office, we were still too often stuck in a cold war mentality that began before many of us were even born. And today, for the sake of our people, and our entire hemisphere, we have reestablished relations with Cuba, we have turned the page on the failed policies of the past. We have strengthened our relationship with Latin America. We have put forward a plan to invest $1 billion in our shared security and prosperity in Central America. When I took office, hardworking young people Americans in every way but on paper lived in constant fear of deportation. Today, more than 680,000 DREAMers live and study and work freely and openly in the country they have always called home. We have got smarter enforcement priorities, because it makes no sense to focus on separating families when we can be going after felons instead. We are taking new steps to reach out to folks who are eligible to become citizens and attract immigrant entrepreneurs and educate STEM students. We are going to help more husbands and wives of American citizens get their green cards without separating them from their families. And the deferred action policies I announced last year will help millions of mothers and fathers remain in the United States of America with their families, and although it is taking us longer than we hoped, I know we are on the right side of the law, and we are going to keep fighting to prove it. And we have not won every battle. We have still got a lot more work to do.


But when the cynics told us we could not change our country for the better, they were wrong. The high school dropout rate is near the lowest on record, and Latino students are making some of the fastest gains. More Americans are graduating from college. The deficits are down by two-thirds. The amount of foreign oil we buy is down. Why are some of the folks who are running for my office so down on America? Well, no, I am definitely not doing that. But by most measures, we are better off now than we were 7 years ago. And that we know. Of course, none of it comes up in their debates. I mean, they have invented this new reality where everything was terrific back in 2008 when the unemployment and uninsured rates were rising and DREAMers lived in fear of deportation and we were engaged in two wars and bin Laden was still at large. And then, I came along and messed it all up. repealing Obamacare, gutting Wall Street reform, allowing power plants to pollute the air our children breathe. And there is nowhere where they want to go further backwards than on immigration. It was not that long ago that my predecessor, George W. Bush, a Republican a conservative Republican from Texas, with whom I disagreed with on a whole lot of things, made immigration reform one of his core priorities. We cannot build a unified country, he said, by inciting people to anger or playing on anyone's fears or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. That is what he said. Think how much better our economy would be if the rest of his party got the message. Think about how much better off our country would be if Republican politicians had not spent years precisely trying to scare voters with tales of immigrants flooding across our borders and taking our jobs and destroying America as we know it, even though we know that when you look at what is happening at the borders, it is the lowest rates of immigration that we have seen since the 1970s. A clear majority of Americans, including a lot of Republican voters, support reform. That is one of the reasons we got a bipartisan bill through the Senate in 2013. But now some of the very same Republican politicians who championed reform in the past some of whom sponsored these efforts suddenly, they want nothing to do with it. In these circumstances, I always say, do not boo, vote. They cannot hear the boos, but they can hear your vote.


turning against what is right the moment the politics of your base gets tough. Leadership is not fanning the flames of intolerance and then acting all surprised when a fire breaks out. Saying clearly inflammatory things and then saying, well, that is not what I meant until you do it again and again and again. So we have got to decide whether or not we, as Americans, are willing to stand up against this kind of bigotry that the same cruel impulse that Ed Roybal spent a lifetime fighting against. The anti-immigrant sentiment that has infected our politics is not new, but it is wrong. It was directed at Irish folk. It was directed against Italians. There have been generations of immigrants that have been subject to this same kind of attitude, with some of the same stereotypes. And unless you were one of the First Americans unless you are Navajo or Cherokee somebody somewhere came from someplace else. I believe we need an immigration system that is fair and orderly and lawful. I believe that people who come here illegally should have to pay a fine and pay their fair share of taxes and get registered and get right with the law and go to the back of the line before they earn citizenship. But when I hear folks talking as if somehow those kids are different from my kids, as if they are less worthy in the eyes of God, that somehow their families are less worthy of our respect and consideration and care, as if somehow back in the day, everybody had their papers in order when they came here, but now suddenly, nobody has their papers in order I believe we are better than that. If you want to be taken seriously as a leader, you cannot just be against everything. You have got to be for something. You cannot just feed on fear. You should be feeding hope. You should be for fixing our immigration system. You should be for allowing DREAMers and their parents, who have been here for years, to live without fear in the country they love. You should tell the truth, which is that illegal border crossings are lower than they have been in decades and that economists agree that immigration does not hurt our economy, it grows our economy, creating jobs, raising wages for Americans. You do not hear those facts very often, but those facts those are facts. And you have got to recognize that America's greatness does not come from building walls. Our greatness comes from building opportunity. Our greatness comes from building an economy that works for everybody.


Today every man no matter where he stands stands in the center of the world. And we Americans, who want to reduce the distance between friends, believe that no man comes from so far off that he cannot find a welcome among us. So today we welcomed you as a guest in our country. And tonight we welcome you as a guest in our home. About you tonight, Mr. Chairman, though you have come from halfway across the world, you see old friends and you see others who have a deep interest in your country and want to know it better. For most of us, Burma has traditionally been a land of beauty and serenity, of golden temples, elephants, deep forests, and precious gems. But we know that behind that exotic exterior, your country is a land of hardworking people whose goals are very similar to ours. We love our children and we believe in living in peace with our neighbors provided they stay on their side of the fence, and out of our melon patch. to national independence, to progress, and to peace. Both our countries emerged from a colonial past and treasure independence all the more for that. Both have been blessed by Providence with a bountiful land. On the world scene, we both place high value on the just resolution of international differences and on the search for universal peace. This search has led us along different paths for our situations and our responsibilities have not been the same. But the ultimate goal is there one in which we both can share. For our part, I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that just as we shall never shirk our responsibilities, so shall we never fail in our efforts to find a secure and just peace. For the present, the problems of our world place burdens upon us all. And we must be prepared to live with them until all nations have finally become convinced that aggression and terror have no place in human society. The day of peace will eventually come-a day when all nations will be able to live in their own way, free from threat and fear. When that day arrives, we shall be able to devote all our talents and resources to the war against the real enemies of mankind-poverty, sickness, and illiteracy in a vast cooperative effort. Thus shall we raise the hopes and enrich the lives of people throughout the world. Meanwhile, tonight in this room, we are among friends. And we should, for the moment, put aside our cares and. concerns and enjoy each other's company.

The President's Toast at a Dinner in Honor of General Ne Win of Burma


Let me begin by thanking Smith and Elizabeth for having us into this magnificent, beautiful place, for the Democrats again and specifically for Mel Carnahan; and for being such good friends and for being willing to be called Smith Barney and Bailey Smith and other names. I am sure there is a reward for you in heaven for enduring those slings and arrows. I want to thank the other Senators who have come here to express their support for you. I see Senator Boxer back there, Senator Murray, and Senator Cleland. But this is quite an outstanding turnout of your prospective colleagues. I also want all of you to know that I have a different take on this than everybody this race than everybody here who is not from Missouri, because Mel and Jean Carnahan have been friends of mine for along time. Robin has worked with me, and their children I have had a chance to know. I want you to know that you did a good thing tonight, contributing to his campaign, because he was a great Governor and because he is a good man and a good friend and because he will be a good Senator. I am for him in part because when only my mother thought I could be elected President in 1991 and my wife, as she never lets me forget Mel Carnahan was a Lieutenant Governor involved in a very difficult primary for Governor. He had all he could say grace over, and he still endorsed me for President in the Missouri primary. It was a brave and good thing to do, and I will never forget it. And I was the Governor of Arkansas. I was raised idolizing Harry Truman. When I was a young man here in the Senate, I worked for Senator Fulbright and got to watch Stuart Symington up close. And I may be the only person here who is actually known Senator Ashcroft for more than 20 years, besides Mel. We served together as attorney general and as Governor, and we always had a very cordial, personal relationship. But I can tell you that he actually believes all those things that the Republicans say. And I say that not to make you laugh but to say, you know, one of the things I do not like in a lot of these campaigns is, we get into all this name-calling and demonization. We act like, you know, what is really bad about our opponents is, they are doing these bad things, and they do not really believe them. That is not true about him. We can laugh about this, but that is what they think about us.

Remarks at a Dinner for Governor Mel Carnahan


They think we are always playing to some crowd or another. And I think it is important to point out that most of us on both sides actually believe in what we are doing. It is what gives the political system integrity. The main reason that I want to see campaign finance reform, since I am not a candidate for anything anymore, and the main reason I really respect Smith because, you know, if we have campaign finance reform, it'll cost him a little less money, but then he will have to open his home and have evenings where we actually debate the issues, instead of hustle you for money. But the major reason we need to reform the campaign finance system, in my judgment, is that it is almost all the money goes to voter communication, and it is wrong to have unequal levels of voter communication. The people need to hear a full debate on both sides and have a full ability to evaluate the personalities of candidates on all sides in order to make good decisions. And the second main reason we need it is that the people in office and the people who want to get in office have to spend too much time raising money, and they are exhausted all the time, and they do not have enough time to read and think and talk to other people. I would say the third reason you need it is the reason all the press says, which is, you know, the corrupting influence of big money. The truth is that over 90 percent of the time way over 90 percent of the time the people in both parties in the Senate and in the House vote their convictions. And way over 90 percent of the time the people that give you money never ask you for anything, except to keep in touch with them and discuss the issues and talk about things and listen to them if they have got something on their minds. Anyway, to get back to the point I was making, I know both these men. And I do not have to demonize John Ashcroft. When we were young men together, we worked as attorney general together; we worked as Governor. I had a very cordial relationship with him. But he believes in how he is voted in the Senate, and I do not . And we should stop pretending that it does not make any difference who wins, or that it is all some game dominated by who gives money and all that. They won in the elections of '94. We won when we beat the contract on America. The people ratified our decision in '96.


We got together briefly in the welfare reform bill and in the Balanced Budget Act of '97. Then our approach was ratified in the '98 election. And then we won again when I vetoed their huge tax bill in '99, which would have undermined our ability to save Social Security and Medicare, balance the budget, pay off the debt, and keep investing in our future. But we have now had we have got an ongoing debate here about what kind of country we are going to be, what our responsibilities to each other are, and where we are going. Now, I know this man very well, Carnahan. I know him very well. We worked together for years. I went to Missouri more than any other State when we were promoting welfare reform because he did the best job of any Governor in America in requiring people who were able-bodied to get training and to go into the workplace and getting big businesses to help him, but also caring about the welfare of poor people, to make sure that the children had health care and the people had a decent place to live and the child care was there and the transportation was there. He did it right. And if he is in the Senate, he will do it right. I can also tell you that for Democrats, because we believe in activist Government, it is very important that we keep a certain number of innovative Governors coming into the U.S. Senate all the time, because they understand how this stuff works. And it is important that you have people from our part of the country elected to the Senate, so that we can defend it when we have to take tough votes on sensible gun safety measures, for example. It is not a hard vote for people who have no significant rural voters, no significant percentage for getting the NRA mailings all the time. It will be a hard vote for him. And he will take it, and he will do the right thing, but then he will know how to defend it, which is very, very important. But I want those of you who do not know Mel Carnahan to know you have an extraordinary opportunity here. I know this guy. He was there with me when I was practically all alone and running fifth in the polls in New Hampshire. You want somebody that will stay hitched in the tough times and take a decision when it is not selfevidently the right thing to do. He has been a fabulous Governor, and you heard him reel off the issues.