Thank you, Harold, for that kind introduction, and for what you do every day, representing men and women who are genuine heroes. They always have been heroes, but I think the courage and sacrifice that we saw exhibited in this city on September 11^th reminded us that not a day goes by in this country when a firefighter doesn't put his life on the line for the rest of us.

And I'm very grateful for your leadership because you have really brought home to a lot of people who might not have otherwise thought about it, those sacrifices, the reality behind that service. I am honored to work with you, on behalf of firefighters.

I am delighted to be here. I am so pleased to be back for this conversation and to have it here in New York. I'm so glad to see my colleague Senator Bayh here; he's done a tremendous job in the Senate and also leading the DLC. Behind me, Ellen Tauscher, Antonio Riley and Karen Hale represent some of the leaders that have come to the forefront of the Democratic Party through the DLC.

As we gather here just months from the one year anniversary of the horrific day in September, I think it is important for us to pause for a minute and be reminded of what was done for us, the lives that were saved. I was this morning at the Iron Workers Local 40 to make the announcement of the funding to track the long term health implications of living in an atmosphere that was filled with what you find in huge office buildings that have literally been exploded and collapsed because airplanes were turned into missiles full of jet fuel. One of the iron workers whom I've gotten to know because he came down to Washington to talk about having left the job he was in on September 11^th without any regard for his health and safety literally running downtown with his equipment to get to the site to work side by side with the firefighters and the police officers and emergency responders and all the others who came to help -- he gave me a cross made out of the metal from the site ... and I have to say that I've been so privileged to in my years in the White House and my years in public life to have been part of many presentations. But I've never experienced anything like that moment this morning.

I flashed back to September 12^th, when I first went to Ground Zero and I got to the very edge of where it was safe to go and coming out of the haze and smoke were firefighters, dragging their axes exhausted from what had been 24 hours of duty for most of them. It just was one of those moments that made me so grateful to live in a country where people actually sacrifice their lives on a daily basis for each other.

All of us, especially we in New York, salute both the men and women who fight terrorism abroad in places like Afghanistan -- and we'll do everything we can to make sure that they have the support, the resources, the technology that is required for them to do this job -- and we also salute and honor our defenders here at home, we owe them a great debt. Harold, on behalf of all of the men and women who put on a uniform of our military, a uniform of our police officers, our firefighters, or put on a hard hat, I thank you for representing them and reminding us what is really important in our country.

I would also like to thank Al From for inviting me here today, and especially for bringing the 2002 National Conversation to New York. I hope the Democratic Party will once again follow the DLC lead and bring the Democratic Convention to New York as well in 2004. If I'm ever invited to the Republican leadership Council, if there is such a thing, I'll ask them to bring the Republican convention here as well.

My friend Al From is a "first responder" of another kind -- he was a first responder to the needs of the Democratic Party and what ailed us back in the 1980's. I still remember his trip to Arkansas, his meeting with my husband, his passionate advocacy that ideas really mattered and we had to get back to the idea business and we had to stand for something larger than just trying to win elections and it was that philosophy and that passionate advocacy that brings this huge crowd from all over the country here today. It was a simple idea when you strip it all away. Good ideas, rooted in good values makes for good politics. But it took some convincing for us to drive that home.

Al understood from the very beginning, really, before a lot of others did, that the right ideas were more important even than improving technology, organization or fundraising -- that sounds obvious today, but then it was revolutionary, and it required a substantial change in attitude for many of us in our party and it has not always been an easy journey. But Al has never flagged, never given up, always persisted.

Among those who took that journey, of course, was my husband who I think many of you saw last evening. His victory in 1992, he would be the first to tell you was not just a testament to his vaunted talent and hard work, although it was important, but also because of the power of ideas, ideas that he championed, ideas that he believed in, ideas that he took to the people. His successes in the '96 election and what he was able to accomplish in office can easily be traced to those long sessions that were held. I remember especially the long nights of preparing for the Georgetown speeches with Al and Bruce Reed and others. Hammering out ideas when many in the party and the press were only interested in tactics, were only interested in who was up and who was down, why was this unknown Governor from some small state going to give these long speeches about ideas. Well because he knew that ideas would set the groundwork for the campaign to come, and they would provide the context in which the political struggle would take place.

We all know the record of the DLC, the Progressive Policy Institute and, of course, the Clinton-Gore Administration. The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady Bill. Family Leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets. Charter schools. The Earned Income Tax Credit. The welfare to work partnership. The COPS program. The SAFER program. All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work.

The results speak for themselves. Those ideas were converted into policies programs that literally changed millions of lives and, I argue, changed America. Twenty two and a half million new jobs, 7 million people out of poverty, 35 million Americans using the Family Medical Leave Act, record home ownership and college enrollment, the lowest crime rate in 27 years and the lowest welfare rolls in 35 years, the lowest minority unemployment on record, and hundreds of billions of dollars were used to pay down the national debt, and we had the first 3 surpluses in a row in more than 70 years.

Now some have recently called that record a binge.

Young people able to afford college and they call that a binge? Millions climbing out of welfare and into new jobs and that's some kind of excess? People feeling safer in their homes and neighborhoods, investment pouring into impoverished communities, young families getting mortgages and their own homes for the first time, and they say that's overindulgence?

Well, I'm reminded of what Abraham Lincoln said when his commanders complained about Ulysses S. Grant's binges: "Find out," he said, "what brand of whiskey Grant drinks, because I want to send a barrel of it to each of my generals."

As Al From has said, the 1990's economic boom was "not a fluke or a bubble.... the explosion of innovation and entrepreneurship was no hoax, despite the excesses of some companies.... the technology-based New Economy is real."

If all the arrows that were pointing up are now pointing down, and those that were heading down are going back up, blame cannot and should not be placed at the feet of those who led our nation during one of its greatest periods of prosperity and progress in its history.

Remember the national debt clock? It came down in September of the year 2000.

And when did it go back up? Just a few weeks ago. Walk over near Times Square and take a look at our nation's newly mounting debt.

When it comes to fiscal responsibility and economic growth, this Administration is all blame and no game plan. All response and no responsibility.

Words have meaning, however not quite as much meaning as deeds. As this Administration had to learn the hard way, rhetoric alone won't stop the stock market from sliding. The only jobs rhetoric creates are for speechwriters and stenographers.

This Administration and its allies in the Congress lack a vision for our nation's economy. Wall Street knows that. But so does Main Street.

Still, the GOP sticks to its strategy. According to the Washington Post, "the White House hopes to retake the initiative when Congress is on recess," by "starting a heightened public relations campaign to highlight the economy's bright spots and a push to grab the legislative initiative."

The next thing you know, they'll be handing out their own WIN buttons: "Whip Insecurity Now." I'm just amazed that they don't come up with new ideas; they just come up with new PR ploys.

GOP used to mean Grand Old Party. But more and more it's standing for "Gloss Over Problems." And pretend nobody notices. I often say that Washington is an evidence free zone, but this is getting to the point of ridiculousness. It seems not to matter to the administration and their allies in Congress what works. They keep going back and playing the same old, tired songs over and over again.

Ever since they won the Congress in 1994, right through the Presidential campaign of 2000 and the past year and a half of this administration, the Republican economic strategy has consisted of two things: bigger tax cuts and weaker regulations.

That is the answer to everything, no matter what ails you. It's like the old medicine man, "Here, I've got a pill for rheumatism; I've got a pill for headaches." It's just the same pill, it's a placebo. It has no compounds that are going to make a difference to anybody. But they believe that over and over again they can come up with bigger tax cuts and weaker regulation and believe that they have solved, not just a political problem but a substantive one.

Last year they asked that Congress pass their big tax cuts before we had a budget, before we knew what emergencies would arise, before we had an economic forecast that reflected the slowdown. As a result, we've gone from paying down the debt and securing the retirement of the baby boomers to red ink as far as the eye can see and back to raiding Social Security and Medicare for tax cuts for the wealthy.

When President Clinton's SEC chairman, Arthur Levitt, warned in 1998 about dangerous accounting practices and the conflict presented by the same accounting firms keeping the books and being management consultants, the Republicans literally laughed at him. When he tried to stop the practice, they stopped him.

When this Administration took office, they appointed one of the accounting industry's lawyers to chair a "kinder and gentler" SEC.

When Treasury Secretary Larry Summers tried to limit abuses of offshore accounts, the GOP stopped him. When President Clinton vetoed the so-called Securities Reform bill because it almost completely cut off the ability of ordinary investors to sue insiders who defraud them, they overrode the veto.

And when Democrats like Paul Sarbanes proposed tough new corporate reforms, what do you think would've happenned if the Republicans still controlled the Senate?

Well, it is hard to imagine a faster, more heartbreaking turnaround than the one we've seen in the time since this administration took over in Washington. It seems not to matter what the problems are, we get the same rhetoric, and I think America deserves better, we can do better, and it is time to bring America back, back to the values and the common sense and the proven results that we know work.

The fact of the matter is that in addition to the enormous tax cut which is fiscally irresponsible -- especially now -- they bring to the table ideas and issues like these: weaken worker safety standards, weaken environmental protection, weaken medical privacy, weaken pension security. And when you respond that these may not be in the best interest of the people of our country they give you one of those looks like you're from another planet. That you don't understand the way America really works.

Well, I have to confess that for me this is not Monday morning quarterbacking; many of my colleagues and I warned about these consequences early last year when the tax cuts were rolling through Congress. I said to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April of 2001, our goal "should not be accomplished by strangling the government with tax cuts and deficits. Our duty is to.... adopt a fiscal policy that continues our prosperity, not retards it; to pay down our debt, not explode it; to provide prudent tax relief, to invest our surplus wisely consistent with the values and needs of our people, not to waste it."

I warned then, that we were in the midst of a struggle to determine whether we'd have the resources "to maintain America's strength around the world.... to combat terrorism and other new threats."

I said then and would repeat today: A tax cut is not a substitute for an economic plan, no matter how big it is. You can't make up in size what you lack in vision.

That brings me to the theme today's conversation, the core values of the DLC and the Democratic Party: security, opportunity and responsibility.

Now clearly, security covers many things. First and foremost, national security, about which there is substantial agreement between both parties and among Americans throughout our country. We support the President for his leadership in the war on terrorism and we certainly support and pray for the safety and success of our brave men and women who wear our military uniforms.

I was recently up at Fort Drum with the President to thank the 10^th Mountain Division, the most deployed division in the Army, based in Upstate New York, which I'm very proud of. And I told the President on the way there -- it was nice being back in Air Force One talking to the President about the soldiers that I'm proud to represent -- and I said that some of them had been injured in Operation Anaconda and I had heard that they had been medivacked out of Afghanistan to Europe and then to Walter Reed so I went out to see them late one night after the Senate was done and went room to room talking to them and asking them how they were. And their morale was high and they were really proud of what they'd done and what they were doing for our country. And it just made me so grateful that we have young people like these soldiers and we had to do everything possible to support them. It is also clear that we have to be careful about the deployments we make, because we now have the responsibility, as the only remaining superpower, as the only military power that spans the globe, to use our resources wisely and effectively. And there will be wherever possible unity and support behind the President. But it is not unpatriotic to ask hard questions about military engagements and we will do that, also, where it is appropriate.

But after September 11, we know that national security is not only the only security we have to worry about. We must also be focused on homeland security. And I've spent more time worrying about that than almost anything else since September 11^th.

Because of the attack here in New York, and at the Pentagon, we know more has to be done to safeguard and protect targets of opportunity, our ports, our borders, bridges, our tunnels.... our nuclear power plants, our chemical plants. We've always been such a free and open mobile society that this is going to take some readjustment of our attitudes and feelings about what we're willing to give up and what is proper for us to give up in the tradeoff between security and liberty.

But I think we all agree, once again, that we have to strike the right balance. We've got to make sure that we're as safe as possible. That we provide maximum protection against weapons of mass destruction, that we build up our infrastructure, both our physical infrastructure and our health infrastructure because we have to be ready no matter what happens, whether it's a biological, chemical or even radiological attack.

We must do more to empower and provide resources for our first responders who are, in effect, our frontline soldiers here at home. I referenced that when I was thanking Harold for his kind introduction, for his leadership and I want to be very specific about this. Because I know there are many state and local officials in this Conversation and you are on the front lines of making budget decisions about how well prepared we are.

When I went to Walter Reed I asked those young soldiers, "Did you have the equipment that you needed? Did you have every resource? Were you well trained?" And they could tell me that they were. That they felt totally comfortable in fulfilling the mission they were given.

But when I go to fire stations throughout New York, when I go to Police Stations and I ask them, "Do you have what you need, to be ready for any kind of disaster or attack?" They honestly tell me they don't. When I talk to local officials, mayors, county executives, city council members I'm given the same response. We've got to do more to make sure that federal dollars get to the local level and get into the hands of our firefighters, our police officers, and our emergency responders.

I introduced legislation that was very simple; it said that most of our new anti-terrorism, homeland security money would go directly to the people who are our frontline soldiers. That is not how the administration is choosing to allocate it and we've got to be watchful. Because I know that if something happens in Buffalo or Watertown or Albany or where I live in Westchester County, people don't call me, they don't call the Governor, they don't call the President -- they call 911 and they expect somebody to be on the other end, able to send resources to help them deal with whatever the problems are. It would be a terrible injustice if we don't get those dollars to you especially because I know very well many of you are now swimming in red ink because of shortfalls in revenue. And so I hope one thing that comes out of this Conversation is a commitment to equip our homeland security soldiers the same way we equip our men and women in uniform who are fighting for us around the world.

But while we do that we can't take our eye off reducing crime. One of the great victories of the 1990's is that we drove the crime rate down and you know what? It didn't happen by accident. Bill has that great saying, "If you find a turtle on a fencepost ,it didn't get there by accident." Well if you drive the crime rate down to the lowest levels in 30 years, it didn't happen by accident. It happened because we had a really good strategy, a DLC inspired strategy. A strategy that said, "Ok, let's look at this now: at the end of the 1950's we had 3 police officers on the street for every felony. By the end of the 1980's we had 3 felonies for every police officer." That was a clear indication that we were being out-gunned and out-manned by the criminals. So the idea arose, let's have the so-called COPS program, let's use federal resources to put 100,000-plus police on the street, let's use new community policing and comsat techniques to be able to find criminals before they commit crimes.

And it worked. It worked here, in the largest city in our country and it worked in the smallest rural area. And what is the administration's response? Well, let's see, this was a good idea that the DLC and Bill Clinton promoted; therefore we've got to get rid of it. I mean, that's basically the thinking. So their budget would cut the COPS program. So while we're having to prepare for new kinds of attacks, we're seeing money cut from police, from fire, from local law enforcement. It will be no surprise if crime starts to rise again because we are committing an act of unilateral disarmament if we give up these police funds. And all of you who are in local areas and have made use of this and have seen the crime rate fall, please let your Senators and members of Congress know that you're going to fight to continue the COPS program, the law enforcement block grant, the SAFER program so we are prepared to take care of criminals as well as terrorists.

In addition to security issues that seem so clear, military security, homeland security, security against criminals, we have other kinds of security problems that we need to address. Americans want security when it comes to their health, when it comes to the environment, the air they breathe, the water they drink. They need to know that illness will not bankrupt them. They want more power and more choices to deal with their health care needs, from drugs to catastrophic illness to long term care. I also know that many of my constituents worry about long term security issues with respect to the environment, whether it's acid rain or global warming or the connection between the environment and our health, something that I'm absolutely convinced will be a new idea for the 21^st century. It is time we took stock of what we have done for the environment that might possibly have a correlation with rising asthma, rising cancer, rising MS, rising autism and a host of other diseases. We need to track chronic disease the way we track infectious disease.

And everyone today is worried about economic security. That really goes without saying because, look at what's happened: pensions wiped out, people afraid to open their 401K statements. Denial is not just the name of a river in Egypt; it is a state of mind right now in the American investing community. People are worried that Social Security and Medicare won't be there and neither will their pensions nor will any kind of private health care at the rate we're going. Americans deserve more economic security.

They want to know that this security that they counted on will not disappear in a blaze of corporate flameouts or irresponsible fiscal budgets. They especially want to be sure that irresponsible executives and board members don't take their money and run. They simply want some reason to hope that they're going to get back on the track to retirement at some age. All these stories about people who thought they could retire or had retired, having to go back into the workforce competing with younger people. It's not something that I thought we would see at the beginning of this century, and here we are, because of that combination of executive leadership irresponsibility that we have to stand against.

My colleagues and I are working to protect 401Ks and pensions and extend and reform unemployment insurance. Again we're looking for a "third way," for what it is that we need to do in an office park environment as opposed to an assembly line environment, where people are mobile, where they want choices in employment to ensure that they will not be taken advantage of. That they will not be left holding an empty bag. That their children will not have to work just to support them. When it comes to security we know we can bring America back to the values and programs that worked.

Opportunity goes hand in hand because, what really attracted me to the DLC and what really ignited the idea that Democrats were the party of opportunity was this conviction that we could expand the winner's circle. That we could invite more people who were willing to work hard and play by the rules to come on in and have a future that they could count on, that could lift them and their children into the middle class and beyond.

That's why we fought for new markets and empowerment zones. For construction of new classrooms and better schools. That's why we made it easier and less costly for families to get more student loans and created the HOPE scholarships. We're going backwards again, we're finding that it's expensive beyond the means of many families to actually afford to go to college even with this help. And we have to make, Al, universal higher education one of the hallmark ideas of the Democratic party. That's where opportunity really begins.

We really do believe a rising tide lifts all boats. Some of those in the other party believe keeping people in steerage gives the ship more ballast. That is not the way that the Democratic Party views this race to widen the winner's circle. In the deficit driven recovery of the 1980's, only 70,000 people moved out of poverty. I want you to remember this because one of the arguments that we sometimes get back is that, "Well you know, in the 1980's we went into deficits but we created new jobs and then in the 1990's you moved towards surplus and you created more jobs. See? Either works."

In the investment fueled recovery of the 1990's, seven million people did -- 100 times as many! When it comes to opportunity, we can bring America back.

Finally, there is responsibility. This was at the core of the '92 campaign. It has been at the core of everything we tried to do. And thanks to the DLC and the Clinton-Gore Administration, Democrats demonstrated that our party could best bring about a new era of responsibility in American life: through the historic welfare reform law in 1996, which rewarded responsibility and hard work and helped move millions from welfare to work; through Americorps, which has given more than 250,000 young people a chance to work in public service; through the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, which lifted millions out of poverty. The message of all these revolutionary concepts is clear and simple: If you work hard and play by the rules, you can have hope of achieving a decent standard of living for your family. That is one of the unfinished pieces of business for the 21^st century. I don't think any person who works full time should bring home a wage that leaves him or her in poverty. We've got to figure out a way to support work and make work pay!

Notice the balance, the equilibrium, that exists between society and government in the Democratic notion of responsibility. Demands are made, and rewards are given. There is a connectivity, a cause and effect, that forms the basis of the social compact that makes America so unique and so great. There is something behind these ideals; they're not just one-time feel good, sound good, sound bytes. They're rooted in a good understanding of human nature -- how the private and public sector each need to do its part to move people forward. And the way our country needs to feel that the game is not rigged. That we all have a chance.

And that to me may be the greatest threat we face: if Americans start to believe that they can't get ahead no matter how hard they work. That no matter how many long days and nights they put in at their job some guy in the executive suite is going to take the money and run. That no matter who they vote for we're going to end up back in deficits and the debt is going to go way back up and their children are going to be burdened because there's no way that Social Security and Medicare will be there for them.

If there's one message that I hope we take out of this Cnversation it's that security, opportunity, and responsibility really do mean what we say. And that we have not only ideas, but the will to take those ideas to the public and fight them out in elections and fight them out every day on the floor of the Senate and the House and from all the various places from which you come. I hope that we really do take a hard look at the different philosophies. That we sit down with people like Harold was talking about and we begin to have a conversation, not just with each other but with folks who maybe have the wrong idea about what we mean when we say security, opportunity, and responsibility.

Take welfare reform for example. Republicans have come in with some plans about getting to work sooner and working harder, but if you have kids you're not going to get any more child care money, you're not going to get any more help. And people like Evan Bayh said, "Wait a minute, that's not the idea behind welfare reform." It's supposed to go hand in hand, you reform welfare, you provide people with a better job and a better future for themselves and their children. So we say, yes, you can increase work requirements. But if and only if you help people reach their goals by empowering them with education, by providing medical care, by providing child care and transportation.

You contrast that attitude when it comes to their special interests. There, it's just the reverse: our Republican friends are all give and no take. Their interest groups are exempt from responsibility. Estate tax? Don't pay it. Capital gains? Don't tax it. Move your company overseas to avoid taxes during the war on terror? Go for it. Insider trading? Accounting fraud? Don't ask, don't tell.

The same idea can be seen in their education philosophy. They're all for raising standards but they don't want to help poor kids meet those standards. They'd rather just dismantle the public education system with vouchers so that they don't have to pay any more money to teach the kids who are harder to teach. It is not that hard to teach where I live, in Chappaqua. But it is hard to teach in the South Bronx and teachers who teach in the South Bronx should be paid commensurate with the challenge of the job they face every single day! But they ended the 100,000 teachers in the classroom, they ended the school construction that Ellen -- hello, Greg Meeks! There's my friend, Greg Meeks, a wonderful and effective young Congressman who has made such a mark for himself in the House. And he knows that we needed some help with teachers and infrastructure in New York City schools.

They decided that was somebody else's problem, not theirs. So there is a lot that we have to deal with and we're going to have to be willing to roll up our sleeves...and I love that old folks saying, you can't roll up your sleeves if you're pointing your fingers at somebody else. We are not in the blame game, we are in the get the job done game. We are willing to say, we are not perfect, we want to learn all the time, we don't come in with an ideology and never change it no matter what the circumstances.

I was just waiting for the President to say, "since September 11^th and the increase in defense spending that we've ever had, we need to take another hard look at postponing these tax cuts because we need the money right now to make sure that we're secure and we need to provide the kind of support that is needed abroad and at home." So I waited, and I waited, and then their budget came and they asked for more tax cuts!

So I don't think that evidence and results are going to make a difference to this Administration and their allies in Congress. But it will make a difference to voters. The one thing about American voters is, when it's all said and done they respond to what they believe will work. They are eminently pragmatic people and if we have ideas and we take the results that we show worked in the 1990's and we put it together, we have a winning argument for the elections in November and the elections after that.

So, in short, we need more community policing.... and more financial community policing. We need more welfare reform.... and more corporate welfare reform. The guiding principles that we follow are ones that we apply across the board, equal opportunity for all, equal responsibility from all. Special privilege for none and irresponsibility should disqualify you from competing.

If we take that message to the electorate, I believe that we're going to be successful and we have an opportunity to be the majority party once again, in the Congress, in the state legislatures, and eventually in the White House.

The other party has more money, and lots of support from interest groups who want to keep things just the way they are. But with the DLC's new ideas and your energy, I'm convinced that not only can we win, we should win. Because we'll have the ideas that we can put into practice so that the American people can build a better future.

Thank you all very much. God bless you.