Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Friday, 9 Oct 1992 21:47:07 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: ==> Clinton On America's Children

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Information in the public interest which does not imply that it
is the opinion of UIC.  Contact 75300.3115@compuserve.com for
further information.
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Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton
San Gabriel Civic Auditorium
August 14, 1992



Ladies and gentlemen, it's not enough to fry and egg on the pavement out
here today.  Last time I gave a speech in a crowd this hot, we were
dedicating a bridge that had been blown away by a tornado in my home state.
And my senior senator was there, and I bet him $5 I could give a shorter
speech.  He spoke a minute and five seconds; I spoke 48 seconds.  I
pocketed $5, and never lost that community again in an election.
  And I don't want anybody to expire here.  But you came out, and I'll talk
just a little longer than 48 seconds, but not so long as to cause you any
discomfort, I hope.
  I want to thank your mayor who met me today when I came in and gave me a
cordial welcome to the city and gave me a little model of your mission bell
and the title of the city is a city with a mission.  I thought that was a
wonderful thing to say in the shadow of your mission here.  And I hope
you'll always have a mission, Mayor.
  I want to talk to you for a few minutes today about my mission.  It is to
restore growth and health to this economy; to restore genuine opportunity
to the American people who work hard and play by the rules; to help us to
come together as a country, not drift apart; and to make this country what
it ought to be for our children and our grandchildren.
  You know that our great country has some profound problems.  The census
figures alone, that's one of the problems, President Bush; I agree
with that, but look...
  But let's be open with one another.  We've had problems for more than a
decade now, as our nation has been subject to more and more competition for
every economic opportunity we have; as we have failed to produce the level
of education and training among our people that we ought to; and as we have
neglected one of the most fundamental things in any society, our health
care system, so that it gets more expensive every year and less secure.
  We have two gentlemen here wearing their veterans' caps.  Ask them what's
happened to the veterans health care network in America in the last 10
years.  It is because we are the only nation in the world that refuses to
control health care costs and provide a basic system of comprehensive
health care for all Americans.
  All of our competitors are doing that, and we aren't.
  Ten years ago, we had the highest wages in the world. We're now down to
13th.  We have the highest percentage of our people behind bars, the
highest rate of poverty of any advanced nation.  We are 21st in infant
mortality. We are not competing or developing the capacities of our people.
And we are running the serious risk of raising the first generation of
Americans to do worse than their parents.
  Many of you here come from immigrant families.  This is a wonderful
picture of America, this crowd today.  I wish every American could see this
crowd today.
  The promise of the Statue of Liberty has always been the promise of
personal freedom, and the promise that if you work hard and play by the
rules, you'll be rewarded.
  In this country today we're running the risk that if you work hard and
play by the rules, you won't be rewarded.  And I believe it's because we
have for 12 long years been in the grip of a failed economic theory called
trickle-down economics.
  The idea is that if you just keep taxes low on the wealthiest Americans,
and get the government out of the way, except when they need help, we'll
generate investments in jobs and growth of opportunity.
  Well, it doesn't work that way.  For one thing, over 85 percent of the
new jobs that have been created in this country in the last 12 years have
been created by small business people in units of under 50.
  For another, the countries that are growing rapidly-- Germany, Japan, the
Asian economies--have national economic strategies, not focused on
government regulations, but government partnerships with business and labor
and education to produce a high wage, high growth, high opportunity
society.
  Now, that's what I want.  I want to replace trickle- down economics with
people-first economics.  I want to replace a theory that doesn't work with
a theory that does.
  And I know it will work.  Let me just give you one example of how the
world would have been different under a real, effective, people-first
theory in the last four years.  Look at California.  How many defense
workers do you have out of work? How many scientists and engineers and
technicians and factory workers who won the Cold War for this country have
been put out in the cold because of defense cuts.
  Does that mean there should have been no defense cuts? Of course not.  We
can't continue to spend more of our income on defense than any of our
competitors when the whole purpose for the major defense effort, defending
against the Soviet Union, has changed.
  But what it does mean is that we should have defined our new defense
needs, made sure we had the technological capacity to meet those needs, and
then honor our commitment to the people whose jobs are going to be lost by
reinvesting every dollar of defense cuts into building an economy for the
21st century here at home.
  You just think about it.  New systems of transportation, new systems of
communication.  California needs a high-speed rail network; why shouldn't
defense contractors be building fast trains instead of walking the streets
and joining unemployment lines?
  Let me give you another example of how the world would be different with
respect to California.  Under the president's theory, under the Bush-Quayle
theory, any time you do anything to help the environment, you hurt the
economy.  So he goes down to Rio de Janeiro, to the earth conference, and
spends all of his time, and all of his energy, making sure we don't have a
treaty on global warming which would commit us to reduce our emissions of
carbon dioxide in this country and to produce high mileage vehicles.  He
said, we can't do it.
  The Germans said, we can do it.  The Japanese said, we can do it.  The
rest of Europe said, we can do it.  The emerging countries and Asia said,
we can do it.
  America said, we can't do it.  If we have a healthy environment, we'll
hurt the economy.
  So what happened?  In Rio de Janeiro, the Germans and the Japanese are
down there selling all the other countries high tech environmental cleanup
technologies that Americans ought to be producing. And they now have 70
percent of the American market for environmental technologies; ought to be
taken up by small business people in places like this community; they
belong to foreign companies because we haven't invested in research and
development and nurtured those businesses.
  One of the reasons I put Al Gore on this ticket with me is because he
understands you can't grow the economy without protecting the environment.
  Let me just mention two other things, which are very important to me. We
live in a world where what you can earn depends on what you can learn, and
where you are going to have to define job security.
  Job security in America used to mean showing up at a place when you were
about 20 years old and knowing you could work there for 40 years and draw
retirement, and every year you'd be doing the same thing and making a
little more for it. That's never going to happen again.  NO public official
can promise you to do that, because we live in a world which is turning
over so rapidly.
  The average 18-year-old will change work eight times in a lifetime.  And
anybody who stands up in front of you at election time and promises you to
make it the way it used to be is not telling you the truth.  So the issue
is, are we going to make these changes in the world friendly to us, or are
they going to undo us?  The only way they can be friendly to us is if we
have a new definition of job security, which is, continuously reeducating
our work force, and making sure that we are continuously investing in new
technology, and making sure that when we lose one kind of work, there is
always another kind of work there.  And if we work hard, and get educated,
we'll be able to make more money than we used to make.
  That is the task.  But in America, we don't do that. This is the only
advanced country that doesn't say what I want to say to our high school
graduates: you finish high school and you don't want to go to college?
Everyone of you, 100 percent of you, will have a chance to go into a
two-year apprenticeship training program where you work and get education
and training so you can get a good job, not a deadend job, and you'll
always be competitive no matter what changes occur.
  And in this world, we ought to make a college education available to
every American.  Every American ought to have access to college.
  Here is the way it will work.  There is some responsibility involved
here.
 Everybody would have a chance to borrow money from a trust fund and pay it
back either as a percentage of their income when they go to work, and
unlike the present system, you'd have to pay it at tax time, so you
couldn't beat the bill; or even better, the young people of our country
could pay off their college loans by doing two years of work for our
country here at home, be a teacher, be a police officer, work with kids in
trouble, help to clean up the environment.
  We could solve the problems of America and educate a whole generation of
Americans. We've got to do it.
  The other thing I will say again we have to do, we've got to get hold of
health care costs.  We've got to make health care available to all
Americans.  We've got to do it in ways that are practical, and that don't
bankrupt the small-business community.
  But let me just tell you, we're in California today, my wife and daughter
are out in Hawaii campaigning.  At least that's what they say they're doing
out there.
  In Hawaii, where 98 percent of the people have health insurance, the
health insurance premiums are 50 percent lower than they are in the United
States.  Why?  Because they took on insurance reform.  They stopped wasting
so much money on insurance companies and on bureaucracy, because they
emphasized basic primary preventing health care; because they gave real
incentives for businesses to get together and to join together; and to buy
health care up front, so that you don't just have more services provided
than you needed; so that small business can flourish and people can have
health care at the same time.
  If we don't do that, you're not going to get ahead of the government
deficit; we're never going to restore our competitive position in
manufacturing; we cannot turn this country around.  You must vote to change
the president if you want affordable health care for all Americans, and
that is something I commit to you.
  The last thing I want to say is, there is a lot of talk in this campaign
about family values.  What are those values?  Loyalty to the members of
your family; taking care of your children; raising them in dignity with
good values; and raising them to believe that if they play by the rules,
they'll be rewarded with a good life.
  If we believe in family values, when then don't we provide a basic system
of health care for pregnant women and their little children?
  If we believe in family values, why don't we guarantee that in bigger
businesses that can afford it, when people take off a little time when a
baby is born or a parent is sick, they don't get fired?
  Why don't we support initiatives that will help people to raise their
children?
  If you look at Los Angeles County where the riot occurred, one of the
most important stories that was never told about Los Angeles County is that
the vast majority of working people who were still in poverty even though
they were working played by the rules and obeyed the law, and their
children stayed home and didn't riot.
  I believe that we ought to have a law in this country that says, you work
40 hours a week, and you've got a child in your house, our tax system ought
to give you money if necessary to life you above the poverty line.  We're
going to reward work and family.
  We are going to say that's what we believe in.
  We're going to reward personal responsibility.  I've been working for
more years than I care to remember on this welfare problem.  And let me
tell you something, I've interviewed hundreds of people involved in running
the welfare system including countless numbers of people on welfare
themselves.
  People don't stay on welfare because of the check. They do it because
they either can't get a job, or if they get a job, their children lose
their health insurance.
  Or they can't afford child care.  So here's my system for welfare reform:
educate and train people; cover the child care; cover the medical coverage;
require them to take jobs; make it mandatory.
  And if there are no jobs, after a certain length of time, provide
community service work, restore the value of work, but support the value of
child rearing.
  You cannot ask people to sacrifice their children's interests.
  These are the kinds of ideas that I want to bring to the White House.
But  I need your help to do it.
  And let me just say one final thing.  When the Republicans meet down in
Houston, they're going to do what they always do, they're going to tell you
you can't trust Bill Clinton and Al Gore.  They got a bunch of crazy ideas.
Yes, they represented moderate to conservative states like Arkansas and
Tennessee.  We created almost as many private sector jobs in Arkansas in
the last three years as this administration has in the entire United
States.
  But they're going to tell you, they're dangerous people.  They're going
to take your guns away, tax your income away, trample on your values.
They'll do that, because they can't run on their record.  It's the worst
economic record in 50 years.  And because they have no vision for the
future.
  So I want to ask you, since you stayed out here in this hot weather, make
something happen.  Turn up the heat on them.  Don't let this election be
about negative things.  Make it a vote for the future, as opposed to the
past, for new ideas as opposed to failed ideas, for hope as opposed to
fear, for unity as opposed to division.
  Stand up for your country and fight, and help me turn this country around
and we will give you an America that you deserve.
  Thank you, and God bless you all.


Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton