Bill Clinton: “Thank you for that nice, restrained welcome. [Laughter] It is wonderful to be here with all of you and to see your…”

“Thank you for that nice, restrained welcome. [Laughter] It is wonderful to be here with all of you and to see your enthusiasm. And I thank you for it. I want to thank all of you for being here and for the purpose that you're here. Brian McLaughlin and Lee Saunders and Representative Loretta Sanchez is here. Basil Patterson, I was delighted to see him. Randi Weingarten and so many old friends of mine are here. I want to say a special word of congratulations to Jim Hoffa and Ed Ott on their awards. Thank you for making New York the biggest, strongest union city in America. I also want to thank Greg Tarpinian and the Labor Research Association. You know, when people hear the words ``think tank,'' they don't think about dinners where people behave the way you are right now. [Laughter] They think about really buttondown types, chewing on their pipe stems, musing about the higher things. Well, you're not in an ivory tower, and it's important that people with feet on the ground do the thinking in America. And I thank you for doing it. I would just say one other thing about this dinner tonight, and your work and deciding to honor Jim and Ed. They represent the vitality and the strength and the intensity and the compassion and the direction of the modern labor movement in America. One of the things that I wanted to do when the Vice President and I came into office is to change the way America thought about labor.…”