Bill Clinton: “Reception in Beverly Hills November 30, 1999 Thank you very much, Antonio. I am delighted to be here. I know that all of…”

“Reception in Beverly Hills November 30, 1999 Thank you very much, Antonio. I am delighted to be here. I know that all of you have come in support of the Southwest Voter Education Project. But I want to thank especially my good friend Gloria Molina; and Henry Cisneros; Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa--I see him over there; we've been making the rounds tonight--Congressman Becerra; and I think Lydia Camarillo, our DNC CEO, is here. I know this is a nonpartisan event, but I wanted to acknowledge her presence there. Thank you, Lydia. I have known about the Southwest Voter Education Project a long time, from the beginning. And one of the great honors I had as President was to award the Medal of Freedom to Willie Velasquez posthumously in 1995. The Southwest Voter Education Project has now registered, I believe, over 2 million Latino voters and well over 2,000 voter education drives. And what I would--I just want to say a couple of things briefly tonight. Yesterday I signed the budget that we passed in the Congress right before they went home, the first budget of the 21st century. It contained the second year's funding for our Hispanic education project, which is designed to reduce the gap in high school graduation rates between Hispanics and other children and to increase the college going rate.…”