president of the united states -- former president of the united states -- someone who has celebrated the successes of every sim persngle person in thm and through his work many of us have had the opportunity to succeed as well. bill clinton. >> thank you, ladies and gentlemen. thank you. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, secretary mivilsack.

i'm glad to see you wearing your cowboy boots. washington has not totally changed you. i love tom vilsack and his wife christie. when you get in the back of an s.u.v. and driver all offense hell's half acre with a person you get to nknow him. i admire him. i was delighted president obama appointed him. and i feel good about the future of rural america because he is there. [applause] >> thank you, harold ford jr., for your friendship and fidelity to the d.l.c. and for what you said about al tonight. thank you, bruce reed, for all of your wonderful service in the white house and your friendship to me and for leading the d.l.c. and for what you said tonight. thank you, will marshall, thank you gyinger and sarah and jenny.

and mark. and thank you, elizabeth. this is really all for you, after all. i would like to thank those who, like me, had the benefit of serving as chair of the d.l.c. they are all here and they have all been introduced. but it was a club i wanted to be part of. and world championship really blessed in those early years by chuck robb and sam nunn and dick gephardt, later joe lieberman, ev evan bayh. by senator carper, and there is a really, i think, magnificent person that will speak after me that proves the d.l.c. fellows program, rachel storch i'm glad you are hear representing the

state and local representatives affiliated with the d.l.c. that was a really good movie. it had the virtue of being at least except for the stuff about me, true. i think secretary sebelius may be here. we were together at a previous event and i have a little more to say about that in a minute. but i loved getting involved in the d.l.c. for one thing, i was just tired of getting beat. and i'm old enough now to know what it was like to get beat over and over and over again. essentially, here is what happened to us. national elections and the standing of national political parties are determined by they things. the political culture. the conditions at election time.

and the quality of the candidates. for much of the 20th century the political culture of america kept us coming together and looking for common sense solutions because both parties had about a w40% base and there were 20% that can go either way and that gave pressure for people to trustruggle to find s way to come together. it also meant that even if you ran a bank robbery you would get 40% for president. we only departed that significantly once when president roosevelt won 63% in 1936. 1968 was one of the most difficult years in american history. certainly in modern history. it was traumatic in many ways. voters brought all kinds of fears and ankler a anger and fr to the polls, a not so great

economy. by those standard it looks pretty good today. concerns about riots in the streets and the rye iising wome movement, controversy over the vietnam war, role of the military. just about everything was being questioned. around the shattering of all of that affected a realignment in american politics. we democrats kept our 40% base but the republican base rose to 45%. as people that normally voted democrat moved into the republican category largely over their values and social issues that made them often vote against their economic interests. and over the sense that we were either out of touch with them or too tied to the past. once you realize that math, it explains what happened the next

30 years. we had to win two-thirds of the undecided rote decidedecided v presidential election and the congressional seats we held on to were largely a function of de deep-seated personal loyalties to the member of congress which overrode the issues of the day. that is why we only had two presidents between 1968 and 2 8 2008. and why i was fortunate enough to be re-elected but the only president since roosevelt. don't clap. this is serious. al from deserves a serious speech. it is really important that you understand the role he played. now, what did jimmy carter have in 1976 and 1992?

we had two of the three factors. i think we were better candidates and we had lousy conditions. when the other guys were in. so, we were able to prevail. but they still had the culture. and a lot of what happened to us in 1994 was about culture. the n.r.a. took out about 12 or 15 members of our house. now look at what began to happen in my second term. our bases began to even up. and there were two reasons for that. one of which al from and bill clinton had nothing to do with. america was growing more diverse racially, religiously, culturally. and, therefore, by nature, more communi

communitarian and less tolerant of the politics of division. the other al from had a lot to do with. people didn't believe president reagan's lines any more about government messing up a two-car parade because they believed government could perform and had a role to lay in giving us -- a role to play in giving us the shared future. the bases were pretty well even in 2000, and president bush ran a very, really a brilliant campaign. that xscompassionate conservati may be the best showilogan of m adult because they said we will give you everything president clinton did with a smaller tax. never mind the details that were not so pretty. so, al gore got more votes but not must have to stay out of the supreme court where president bush was elected 5-4.

and then he was re-elected in 2004 all right. we were still in sort of the capsule of fear from 9/11. and we never had defeat add president involved in a military conflict. but it was the smallest margin of victory since woodrow wilson's victory in 1916. then in 2006 we won the congress back. it was the first time since 9/11 we were free to think about all of the things we cared about. it of the first time in the 40-year cultural run of the republicans when we had had an opportunity to see what would happen if what they talked about was actually done. because president bush had a republican congress. and the american people didn't like it very well. i remember on the morning after the election i said, you know, -- in 2006 -- i told hillary, if

we don't nominate a convicted felon, we are going to win, the democratic nominee will be the president of the united states the 2008 election. because you could just see the two things going together. people believed in the promise of their country and we were culturally a different country. one of the things that i think made president obama's election possible is that we are not a biracial country any more, we are a multi-racial country. we don't have any time to do anything but appreciate our differences. we are wholly intolerant now of the staples of meamerican polits for much of the last 40 years. we want to build what the d.l.c. advocated from the get-go, a country of one community with shared responsibilities and opportunities and a genuine sense of belonging. so, yes, the demographics will a

lot to do with it. but by 2008 president obama had a bigger base to run from than senator mccain did. and we had a better candidate and they had bad conditions. these things are important because it is easy to forget, amid all of the criticism and some of the praise, what a frowned profound impact elections have on people's lives. i was thinking about all of the trips we took crammed into planes when both of us were over weig weight. going first one place and then the other in the 1980's trying to drum up support for the d.l.c. how we held our breath at a williamsburg conference, then the meeting in new orleans, then the meeting in cleveland.

and one of my good friends, reverend jackson, called us the democrats for the leisure class. some of our liberal friends said we were republican like because we talked about trade and national security and welfare reform. and holding families together. they forgot we also talked about strategies to reduce poverty, collect child support, promote educati education, and that we were very explicit early on in saying we would not practice discrimination against anybody or play the politics of race, gender or sexual orientation or immigration versus natural born or anything else. we were always in the right place on that. but we thought we needed to break out of the or owe docks si of -- orthodoxy of the past.

then after i was elected some critics said we must not be anything because we wanted politics that went beyond the partisan dichdz vides of the 19. but 2008 some thought that was a good thing to do. and i understood it. it was so easy to cover politics until we came along. just like the gun fight at the o.k. corral, or playing checkers, there are two kinds of pieces. one is one color and the other is the other and it spared you the trouble of thinking. it was like a prizefight. you just picked one fighter and waited for one to knock the other out. except we had weights around our ankles and it was hard to move in the ring. then there were those who said, after this was all said and done and we finally saw what could happen when we elected an

extremely able and brilliant person president in an environment where we finally have a cultural majority and lots of interesting problems to work on and great talent, that somehow the d.l.c. has become irrelevant. i read all of this stuff. i owe you this for your 25 years. i have three things to say to people who believe this organization is not relevant. especially those who can keep giving money it bruce reed. number one, as you saw from the film, the approach did work. and it worked in ways that you didn't have time to put into the film. we didn't just have 23 million new jobs and record home and business ownership and record minority and business ownership and the lowest rate of minority poverty reported since we have been keeping statistics.

there were three other things i think that need to be pointed out about how much this worked in a world that is gripped by instability and inequality. first, in the eight years i had the honor to serve we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty as moved out of poverty in the previous 12. only 50% more jobs, private sector jobs, but 100 times as many moved out of poverty. and it was with d.l.c. ideas lick doubling the earned income tax credit which alone took over two million kids out of poverty. number two, yes, we were for pretrade, but we also advocated labor and environmental standards and lifting the bottom, and in six of the eight years i served we gained, not lost manufacturing jobs. we lost in all eight years under the past administration. number they, for the only time

since the early 1970's, after we went off the gold standard and joined the international financial system, in the second term the incomes of the bottom 20% increased in percentage terms slightly more than the incomes of the top 20% an income inequality did not increase. it did not happen before and it hasn't happened sense. i believe president obama's economic program is adopted in full it will happen again. so, the first thing i would say to people who say what is the d.l.c. for, first of all, it worked and the american people have proven in election after election after election that they are interested in people who will get the show on the road and do something that works. the second they can i would say is we have been honored, i think those of us who were part of the d.l.c., by the people and the policies that president obama

has supported. i'm delighted that hillary and rahm emanuel, larry summers, ken salazar and janet napolitano, kathleen sebelius and tom vilsack all occupy hi positions. the president thinks they share his values. i was delighted that after the thrust bill passed the first major bill signed was the dramatic expansion of america co corp. of service opportunities. that congress passed a bill which will by 2017 expand amer correspo correspond. that is what we advocated in 1992. it took 25 years but it was 25 years well spent. [applaus [applause] >> the president and vice president biden who have revived the cops program.

and it is important. the president is advocating a sweeping national direct loan program to cut the cost of colle college. that, too, was a d.l.c. idea. we made that an option with income contingent repayment for college students much and when we did it the students of america saved $9 billion repaying their college loans, $1,300or every $10,000 they borrowed and taxpayers saved $4 billion because no one defaulted on their loans. barack obama is right about this but the d.l.c. first proposed in. i'm pleased that they have revitalized the community development financial institutions bill and funded it. funding microcredit. again, it is something that we all ran on. i'm pleased we have a secretary of education who believes in public school choice and charter

schoo schools. the d.l.c., i believe, was the first organization to talk about charter schools. i went all over america advocating it in 1992 and finally one guy i knew pretty well in a state where we had a primary and he said bill i don't know what the heck are talking about how many of those schools are there in america? >> i said one. where is it? minnesota. how many can set them up. as far as i know, two, minnesota and arkansas. but you think about it. if we did it, it would make a difference. by the time i left office we had 2,000 charter schools, the congress had given fund for 3,000 and now we have schools in new york city, am where i foundation is, in poor neighborhoods where there are 20 applicants for every one seat open in the charter schools. you should be proud of that, al from. i love the fact that the president appointed a secretary

of education committed to that kind of reform. so, that is my second point. it doesn't matter that president obama wasn't a card carrying founder of the d.l.c. it doesn't matter that he has a special tile and brand. he has put a lot of people who think like us and were part of or ranks and a lot of ideas that were hatched in al's brain or in the lab of will marshall and bruce reed and al and all the other young people that worked for the d.l.c. front and center because he's got a good test. will it work? the third thing i would like to say, and the most important thing by far, is that any organization committed to finding new ideas that meet real challenges will never be out of fashi fashion. there will never be a new time -- i was under no illusion when

was president that no matter how good a job i did that i could make all the problems of america go away. my goal was to leave you with a new set of problems. i didn't want you to be stuck in the same old box like the laboratory animal running around in a cage in a circle. and you just think about the challenges facing the president now and the congress. i think we are going to get a health reform bill. i think that -- i have been waiting all my life for this and i think -- [applause] >> i think that we will get one that has some republican support, one that won't be filibustered. but if we just have universal covera coverage, without doing something to break the cost spir spiral, five years from now we won't have universal coverage any more because we won't be able to afford it. we are spending $800 billion more than if we had any other country's health system and if we had that we would have better

outcomes, any other wealthy country. so, the d.l.c. should be part of this debate and we should posit as democrats we have a moral obligation to make health care affordable to everybody, including all those parents i saw with autistic kids, or kids born with problems at birth that they couldn't manage. i was sick of seeing unemployed people come to me telling me they had had to give up their jobs and go on medicaid so the kid could stay alive around when they went back to work so the rest of the family could eat their child might die. we have a moral obligation to extend coverage but we have an obligation to the next generation not to bankrupt them by continuing the same cost curve. if you look at the problems of medicare when all the baby boomers get into medicare, only 20% of the financial burden of medicare is because of the greater numbers. 80% is because of projected inflation in healthcare cost.

so, that is a job for the d.l.c. i think that the congress will pass a climate change bill. senator lieberman, thank you for your years of work on it. i think they will pass a good climate change bill. but if we can't prove that we can do this in a way a creates more jobs and creates economic opportunity and works to enrich the lives of all americans, we won't meet the targets even if they pass the bill. and even if we do, other countries won't. so, the d.l.c. has always been practical and tried to merge federal policy with state and local actors in the private sector. we need to be on the forefront of that. we still have big problems in education. we have lots of successful charter schools and regular public schools.

we still, 25 years plus, 26 years now after the issuance of the nation at risk report, have not figured out how to replicate excellence. until we do, we are compromising the future of of this country. we still have the best system of higher education in the world but we have fallen to 10th from first in the percentage of people between 25 and 35 that have four-year degrees because we priced it out of range. we have to figure out how to improve the delivery system. what i did won't work any more. after i gave you the biggest increase in college aid since the g.i. bill in my second term the benefits of that to real students were gone within give or six years. zero. none. it was because of inflation and college costs. 17 states have allowed their colleg

colleges, community colleges, to offer four-year degrees to change the delivery. the d.l.c. ought to figure out how to change the delivery system so we can have the number one percentage of people with four-year degrees in our country, if you care about keeping america ahead of the curve. we haven't solved the trade dilemma. how do you spread the benefits? we have to do that. we have some serious national security issues. throughout history and all exercises of military power offense wins first and people figure out a deafense. meanwhile, with conflict becoming more bloody we have to find more people that are willing to entertain our values, win-win solutions, a common community. we have seen ample evidence

since the end of world war ii that whenever they fight on their even turf the weak can defeat the strong particularly if they don't represent a nation state. i support what secretary gates is trying to do to more thannize the military but we need to be part of the debate wach. what kind weapons systems do we need? have we planned for the right navy and aren't you embarrassed that half of the money is spent in a country before it gets to the places intended? hillary wants to revolutionize that. you need to help her put 0i% of the money we appropriate into the country where it was meant for. so, i say this to make the following point. the best tribute i can give to you is that all of your critics were wrong and were right. and i say that in good humor and

gratitude. because you could have quit, you could have given up. you and ginger started out in the civil rights movement and spent half of the 1980's being derided as a closet conservative who didn't care anything about that. but you didn't give up. and you now have evidence that what you did worked. you have the compliment that people you worked with for years and policies you advocated have been embraced by our new president and he is succeeding and doing a good job with them. and you have the sure knowledge that as long as people are people we will need a new generation to pick up the torch that you carried so nobly. i would never have become president without you and the d.l.c. i know that. but the most important thing is, when i was fortunate enough to

win, from the transition you worked on until the day i left office, i never one day had to wake up in the morning wondering what i was going to do, because you helped me to realize the importance of ideas and policies and answering the simple question, how are you going to turn your good intentions into real changes in people's lives. most people in politics debate what are they going to do and how much are they going to spend on it. we spend almost no time debating how do we propose to do it, whatever it is, how much money we don't or do have. you spent your life in the "how" business and that is what i try to do in my foundation. i "yowe you more than i can eve say and i love you more than i have words to express. and those here who know what the last 25 careeyears are like wou

have to say are much better than they would have been if al from and the d.l.c. were not there. thank you and god bless you. [applause]