Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Wednesday, 14 Oct 1992 16:55:43 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: ==> Clinton Women's Town Meeting Speech

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Information in the public interest which does not imply that it
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Women's Town Meeting
Governor Bill Clinton
Sacramento, California
May 28, 1992
Partial Transcript

Thank you very much and welcome to our Sacramento town hall
meeting on women's issues and thank you Sara Wennignton there is
nothing left for me to say.

You can see why she won that case so many years ago-can't you.  I
want to talk for just a moment about a couple of issues that Sara
mentioned and one at least I didn't hear her talk about that I
think is important.

Let me say as a way of bakground for a couple of minutes on how I
came to be here.  I've been a Governor for 11 and a half years.
I've been on the receiving end of the Reagan-Bush revolution.

I know what its like to be asked year in and year out to do more
for my folks by creating jobs and educating children and
providing health care and solving social problems and bringing
people together and every year told by Washington you do more and
here is less money to do it with don't bother me.

I've seen this government behave irresponsible I've watched our
economy decline.  I've watched middle class collapse and poverty
explode and America lose its economic leadership.

I've seen a President in the last three and half years give
endless speeches about family values and rewarding work and old
fashion virtues and year in and year out we punish family and
work more and more as most families work harder for less money
and spend less time with their children.

The villains in this are pretty easy to point out.  The
administration, the people in Congress who supported these
policies, the dominancy of special interest groups, and citizens
in this country who have been irresponsible who have not rewarded
work and who have gone for short term gains at the expense of our
basic institutions and values.

The answers I think are also pretty clear I don't think it rocket
science.  We could look around at the rest of the countries in
the world that are doing better then we are and we can see that
we got to clearly change to a policy that invests again in
America in our people in our jobs in manufacturing, small
business agriculture moving from a defense to a domestic economy.
That invests in education, health care, the environment and
children and family.

We got to demand a greater amount of responsible from all of our
people from the top to the bottom and we got to come together
again as one community.

This administration has not invested in America it has reduced
investment in America It has aggravated the problems of political
irresponsibility and it has done every thing its could to divide
the American people over issues relating to women and children
specifically.  As well over issues of race and other things as
all of you know.

Know, Sara mentioned things that I think are important or at
least most of them, but I want to go back over it. This
administration's that talks about family values but what is their
family agenda.

Repeal Roe v. Wade, preach to the American people even while
making it harder for mothers to raise their children whether
there in the home or in the work place, or both, as most are
today.

And use them as political pawns as we've just seen in the most
shameful display of Presidential interest as GB's personal
lobbying against the NIH bill that passed the House but not with
a veto proof majority because it permitted fetal tissue research.

That everybody can see would be very valuable in trying to unlock
some of the secrets of the illnesses and diseases that bedevil
children as well as adults.

But here is this bill here is what is does for women.  Here is a
bill in the NIH budget that finally takes account of the fact
that women health research has been grossly under funded and the
health needs of women has been grossly under attended.

And so finally the House passes a bill that substantially
increases the investment in research in ovarian cancer, in breast
cancer-very important to me and a lot of other people in America
because it has hit my family.  More people die from breast cancer
every year than have died in total from Aids- which I also think
he should do more about but I'll come back to that later.

Ovarian cancer, breast cancer, osteoporosis--something that
effects millions of older women in America today; it would set up
an office of women's health, it would have done all kinds of
wonderful things, but GB is personally on the phone calling
Congressman saying vote against this because it permits fetal
tissue research.

Why?  Is that pro-abortion?  Of course not.  Dr. Otis Bowen,
former governor of Indiana, medical doctor, director of the
Department of Health and Human Services under Ronald Reagan, the
person who put in the band on fetal tissue research came to the
Congress and said "I was wrong".

Politics should not interfere with science.  We need to use what
ever means we have available to find the secrets that are
alluding us-to try to solve these health problems.


But GB, he cared more about his political health than the health
of America's women and children and he went to work to save his
political health.

He didn't work this hard to extend unemployment benefits to the
unemployed, after three and a half years we still don't have a
national economic strategy.  He called himself the education
president and tried to recommend funding cuts in all kinds of
education areas.  And we still only have 36% of the eligible kids
in Head Start.

He called himself the environmental president and he destroyed
the central achievement of the Rio conference before we ever get
there.  But boy when he had to go to work to save abortion as a
political issue, he broke a sweat in a hurry.

Now, here he is saving his veto for a bill that would save the
lives of women by the tens of thousand in the future by research
in ovarian cancer, and in breast cancer because of the work in
osteoporosis.

Lord only knows what might be discovered with the medically
responsible use of fetal tissue research, but it is good politics
in this environment for him to go against Dr. Bowan--even Ronald
Reagan never did anything like this.

So you got to decide, is this the kind of government you want?
You want somebody who preaches about family values or somebody
who really values families.  There is a big difference.

If we had a real family policy in this country we would have a
comprehensive maternal and child health network to reduce infant
mortality and low birth weight births.

Everybody who needs the benefit of women and infant children
feeding program would have the benefit of it.

Every child who needs a good strong parent involved pre-school
program would have access to it.  Every child who needs it.

We would have school based health clinics to do sex education in
our schools.

To reduce unwanted pregnancies reduce abortions and save our kids
lives from life threatening diseases like AIDS.

Instead of preaching to women on welfare we would empower them
with education and training and child care and medical coverage
and then we could require them to work when we took care of their
kids.

I am all for these work requirements as long as you don't ask
some one to punish their children.  If this is a nation of family
values let us put women on welfare on a par with women who are
already in the workforce with young children.

They can be required to behave as responsible but you must
empower them first to take care of their children.

No society punishes kids.  If this was really a family values
country our tax code would have two major changes the National
Commission on Children recommended and the Children Defense Fund
has long recommended that we convert the children's tax deduction
into a children's tax credit.

And I recommend that we do this- we can't afford do it in one
year but we could build in over the next three or four years and
return families to the same financial position with regard to the
tax code and their kids they were in thirty years ago.

Every other major country has a kind of family allowance were you
give parents with little children more money to raise their kids
we ought to do the same.

If we were a family values country we would recognize that most
poor people work for a living they are not on welfare.  They work
for a living.

Here is a good conservative principal that Barry Goldwater
embraced almost thirty years ago.  We ought to have a refundable
earned income tax credit sufficient to say this to America: If
you work forty hours a week, and you have a child in the home,
you should not be living in poverty.

The income tax code should lift you above the poverty line.  We
could do that for not very much money.  We could do that for not
very much money and we would be rewarding work and family.  The
things this administration says it values.

Keep in mind, in Los Angeles, when South Central L.A. and much of
the rest of the town burned, most of the people who lived in
those neighborhoods who were poor were workers. They were not on
public assistance.  Most of the people who lived in those
neighborhoods and their children did not burn, did not loot, did
not riot, they stayed home and obeyed the law respected their
neighbors.

They should be rewarded for that.  The tax code should not punish
people who are playing by the rules.

We ought to have a family leave policy.  I wouldn't veto the
Family Leave Act.

For all those people who propose say that it is necessary to
preserve our economy I pose the following question:  Why has
Germany had a growth rate three times the American growth rate
in the last two years?  It's impossible.

They must have lied to us about that, you know why:  Because in
Germany, the average factory worker makes 20% more than the
average American, works a shorter work week, gets a four week
paid vacation every year-not two,has national health insurance,
and family and medical leave.

Why can't we do that?  Because we are under educated, under
organized and under lead.  Not because there is anything wrong
with us.  That's what the matter with us.

Now, last issue is we should repeal Roe v. Wade.  There ought to
be people on the Supreme Court who believe in the Bill of Rights,
including the Right of Privacy, including the right to chose.

Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion.  It is recognizing
that it's a terrible, difficult, painful decision the morality of
which should be debated by people free of criminal law and
government intrusion.  That's what that statement means.

And, let me just say this, twenty years ago when Sara Wennington
argued that case, it was about the right to chose.  In the next
five years, you mark my words, we live in a society in which
someone could put a listening device on the outside of this
building and hear every word you all whisper to each other.

Technology will give us incredible opportunity to simplify and
make less expensive some of our most troublesome problems.

For example, if we had a real national health system, modeled on
Canada or Europe or any other model, we all could get little
health care cards that had all of our basic health information on
it, show up have centralized billing, cut by tens of billions of
dollars the cost of health care.

But you don't want everybody having access to what's on your
computer chip.

There are all kinds of privacy issues which still have to be
resolved in this world we are moving into because of technology.
You start gutting the right to privacy it may be the right to
chose today it may be your right tomorrow if your a man on your
private conversations on your most cherished private information.
This is a big deal.

And if we really respect women, children and families we must
have a right to privacy.