Clinton Administration Accomplishments for Supporting Women
                              THE WHITE HOUSE

                       Office of the Press Secretary
                        (Santa Monica, California)

___________________________________________________________________________
______For Immediate Release
November 2, 2000


                         REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                TO THE PEOPLE OF LOS ANGELES AT GOTV RALLY

                     Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza Mall
                          Los Angeles, California


4:20 P.M. PST


     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Whoa.  Are you ready to win this election?
(Applause.)  I want to thank all of you for coming out, for your enthusiasm
and your support.  I want to thank my good friend, Kenny Edmonds.  He
writes a good song and he makes a good introduction, I think.  (Laughter.)


     Thank you, Governor Gray Davis, for your leadership and your
friendship.  Thank you Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante.  Thank you, Art
Torres. Thank you, Representative Hilda Solis.  And to the other officials
who are here, Jenenthea Hayes (phonetic), Assemblyman Herb Wesson, Senator
Kevin Murray, Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas; and Art Pulaski, of the
Federation of Labor.  And I'd also like to thank your speaker, Bob
Hertzberg, and the folks that performed and sang before me here.  Thank you
Holly Robinson Pete (phonetic); thank you, Wycliff Jean.  (Applause.)  And
my good friend, Camryn Manheim, not on stage, but interpreting me.  Isn't
she great?  (Applause.)

     Now, look, I've got to say a few things -- can you hear me?
     AUDIENCE:  Yes!

     THE PRESIDENT:  And you have to indulge me, because I know that I'm
sort of preaching to the saved here today.  And the temptation, therefore,
is just to say things that make us all shout and have a good time.

     But, look, this is a close election and there are, in addition to the
presidency, races for United States Senate -- Senator Diane Feinstein.  And
we have five -- count 'em -- five House seats that the Democrats could win
in the state of California alone on our way to recovering the majority.
(Applause.)

     So I want you all just to let me talk just a few minutes -- not too
loud -- and tell you what I hope you will say to everybody who is not here.
Because every one of you have a lot of friends who have never been to
anything like this.  Is that right?  They never came to hear the President
give a speech or the governor or one of these political deals.  But they
all vote or they could vote if they knew why they were voting.  Is that
right?

     AUDIENCE:  Yes!

     THE PRESIDENT:  So here is what I want to tell you.  Number one, thank
you, thank you, thank you for the support that California, Los Angeles and
Watts have given to me and Al Gore these last eight years.  (Applause.)

     You know, one of the things that I worry about in this election is
that there are a lot of young people of voting age who can't even remember
what it was like back in 1992.  The economy was in trouble, the society was
divided, there were riots in Los Angeles.  The political system in
Washington was pure tone deaf to you across the country in California.

     And Al Gore and I came here and said, give us a chance to put the
American people first, to create opportunity for all responsible citizens,
to create a community that all of you will be a full part of.  And you gave
us a chance.  And we changed America.  (Applause.)

     Now, we have another election and another time to decide.  And what I
want to say to you is, this election is just as important as the one in
which you and California sent me to the White House eight years ago.
(Applause.)

     Now, I learned a question I was supposed to ask at election time from
one of my predecessors, President Reagan.  He said this is the question
we're supposed to ask.  So I'm going to ask, and you answer.  Are we better
off today than we were eight years ago?  (Applause.)

     And let me say what's really important to me.  Yes, I'm grateful that
we've had the longest economic expansion in history.  I'm grateful that we
got the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years.  But what I'm really grateful
for is, in this economic expansion, the middle class and the working poor,
along with the rich folks, benefited.  We all went forward together.
(Applause.)  I'm grateful for the fact that we've got the lowest hispanic
and African American unemployment rate ever recorded -- (applause) -- a 30
percent drop in child poverty, the highest home ownership in history, 15
percent increase in average income.  I'm grateful for that.

     So here's the second question.  Do we want to keep this prosperity
going?

     AUDIENCE:  Yes!

     THE PRESIDENT:  You've got a choice.  Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and
the Democrats will keep the prosperity going by continuing to pay down the
debt, give us a tax cut we can afford to send our kids to college, to take
care of our folks if they get sick and we have to take care of them at
home, for child care, for retirement savings, and they will invest in
education, in health care, in the environment and building our communities.

     Now, the other guys, they say -- listen to this -- they say we've got
a $2 trillion surplus, and it doesn't belong to the government, it belongs
to you.  Well, of course it does.  So they say, here's what we're going to
do with that $2 trillion surplus.  We're going to spend $1.6 trillion on a
tax cut, we're going to spend $1 trillion privatizing Social Security, and
we're going to spend a half a trillion dollars on other things.

     Now, here's the problem.  All you kids in grade school, listen to
this:  $1.6 trillion, plus $1 trillion, plus $.5 trillion is $3.1 trillion.
That's bigger than $2 trillion.  (Applause.)  And what does that mean?
What does that mean to you?  Yes, it means flunking math, but it also means
bigger deficits, after we got rid of them, more inflation, higher interest
rates.

     If you go with Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and the Democrats, they will
keep interest rates about a percent lower every year for a decade.  Do you
know what that's worth to ordinary people?  Listen to this -- 10 years --
listen:  $390 billion in lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car
payments, $15 billion in lower student loan payments; lower credit card
payments, lower business loans, which means more stores at the mall here,
more jobs and a higher stock market.

     With Al Gore and Joe Lieberman and the Democrats, the rich folks keep
getting richer, but so does the middle class and so do the lower-income
working people.  We're all going forward together.  (Applause.)

     So if somebody asks you, well, why should I go vote and why should I
be for the Democrats, say because we've got the longest, strongest, fairest
economy we ever had and because I want to keep it going.  (Applause.)

     Now, I got another question.  It's not just about economics.  There's
something else you need to know.  Compared to eight years ago, the crime
rate has gone down every year, to a 26-year low; the welfare roles have
been cut in half; the environment is cleaner, cleaner air, cleaner water,
three times as many toxic waste dumps cleaned up as in the previous 12
years; more land set aside than any time since Teddy Roosevelt was
president 100 years ago.  (Applause.)

     And the economy kept getting better.  The health care system.
Medicare was supposed to go broke last year.  Now we put 27 years on it.
For the first time in a dozen years, the number of people without health
insurance is going down because 2.5  million kids have gotten health
insurance under our Children's Health Insurance Program.

     Now, in addition to that, the high school dropout rate is going down;
the math, reading and science scores are going up;  college-going is at an
all-time high; the number of African-American and Latino kids taking
advanced placement tests -- courses -- has gone up 300 percent in three
years.  (Applause.)
Now, in every case, we did things that helped that happen.

     So question three:  Do you like this progress and do you want to build
on it?

     AUDIENCE:  Yes!

     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, you have a choice.  Al Gore and Joe Lieberman
and the Democrats, they'll keep working until we get health care for all
our kids; until we have Medicare prescription drugs for all the seniors who
need it, not just a few; until we have a real patients' bill of rights, so
that doctors, not insurance company officials decide what your health care
needs are.  (Applause.)

     They'll keep working for a new, cleaner energy policy so we can keep
growing the economy and breath the air.  They'll work for funds to build or
repair schools.  I don't know how many kids in California, but a whole lot,
are going to school in house trailers or old broken drown schools, and
we're trying to help.  It's very important.

     Now, you also have another choice.  Our friends in the other party,
what's their program?  They say if they win, listen to this -- this is what
they say, not me.  They will abolish our program putting 100,000 police on
the street -- we only have the lowest crime rate in 26 years.  They will
abolish our commitment to putting 100,000 teachers in the classrooms to
lower class size in the early grades.  They will roll back our
environmental standards for clean air and get rid a lot of this land
protection that I have enacted.  And they will not support a real patients'
bill of rights or Medicare prescription drugs for every senior who needs
it.  So you have a choice here.

     But if you want to keep building on the progress, your choice is Al
Gore and Joe Lieberman and the Democrats. (Applause.)

     Now I've got another question for you.  One of the things that I have
tried to do is to make people in Watts feel like they had just as big a say
in the White House as the friends I have in Beverly Hills.  (Applause.)  I
wanted you to feel that the White House was your house, that the government
was your government.  And I have worked for an America that helped
everybody.

     A lady over there just held a sign up that said, "Thank you for the
Family and Medical Leave Act," which, over 22 million Americans have used
to take some time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick without
losing their job.  It's one of the best things we ever did.  (Applause.)

     And we've worked for the minimum wage and family tax relief and the
AmeriCorps program that has given 150,000 of our young people a chance to
serve in their communities, including L.A., and rebuild them and earn some
money for college.  We've tried to give you one America.

     Now, the last question I have is, do we want to keep building one
America and not be divided again?  Yes, we do.  (Applause.)  You've got a
choice.  Al Gore, Joe Lieberman and the Democrats are for strong hate
crimes legislation.  They're for employment nondiscrimination legislation.
They're for stronger enforcement of equal pay laws for women because
there's still too much discrimination there.  (Applause.)  They're for
fairness to all legal immigrants in this country in the distribution of
benefits.  And they're for a Supreme Court and other federal judges who
will protect a woman's right to choose and civil rights and human rights in
this country.  (Applause.)

     Now, in every case, their Republican opponents have a different view
on every one of those issues I just mentioned.  They talk a lot about
bipartisanship.  But we've got a bipartisan majority in the Congress right
now for a patients' bill of rights, for a raise in the minimum wage, for
the hate crimes legislation, for money for school construction, for
campaign finance reform.  But their leaders say no.

     Now, I'm telling you, I believe that the Democrats have a great chance
to win both the House and the Senate.  (Applause.)  But I want you to think
about something in this presidential race.  You know all the struggles I've
been in these last six years, trying to stick up for you.  One reason you
need Al Gore in the White House is that somebody needs to be there if this
crowd stays in to stop their more extremist actions, and he will.
(Applause.)

     Now, I want to say something about the Vice President.  And all I can
do is kind of echo what Governor Davis said.  He has the experience for
this job.  This is something that should be important to the young people
in this audience.  He understands the future, how it will be shaped by the
Internet, by the global economy, by the revolution in science and
technology.  He has accomplished more for the American people as Vice
President than any person who ever held that job before.  (Applause.)

     But, most important, President Kennedy once said that the presidency
is preeminently a place of decisionmaking.  You hired me for eight years to
make decisions that the President is supposed to make.  Al Gore is a good
man who makes good decisions, and with your help he will be a great
president of the United States.  (Applause.)

     So here's what I want you to do.  You've got a few days now.  Every
day you see somebody you know wasn't here today, you tell them you want
them to vote.  You tell them you want to vote for Al Gore, for Joe
Lieberman and the Democrats.  Why?

     Question number one, you want them to vote because you want to keep
this prosperity going.  Number two, you want them to vote because you want
to keep building on the progress of the last eight years.  Number three,
you want their vote because you want to keep building one America.  You
kind of like it thinking that the White House is your house, too.
(Applause.)

     This is a close election; every vote counts.  There is a clear choice.
I cannot thank you enough for how good you've been to me.  (Applause.)  But
let me tell you something:  if you want to build on the prosperity, if you
want to build on the progress, if you want to keep building one America,
you've got a clear choice and a clear responsibility, your only choice:  Al
Gore, Joe Lieberman and the Democrats.

     Thank you and God bless you all.  (Applause.)

     END  4:39 P.M. PST


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