Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1992 19:59:16 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: ==> Clinton North Carolina State Speech

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Information in the public interest which does not imply that it
is the opinion of UIC.  Contact 75300.3115@compuserve.com for
further information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton
 North Carolina State University
 Court of North Carolina
 October 4, 1992

      Ladies and gentlemen, let me say that when I was a  young man
 starting out in public life when I became governor in 1979, Jim Hunt
 was the governor of North Carolina.  I have now served for 12 years
 with 150 governors.  He's still one of the very best I ever served
 with.

      I wanted so much to come here today because a great deal of what
 I tried to do in my state for education and for jobs was inspired by
 the example of Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford, and I want you to elect
 Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford to help me change this country.

      I also want to give one to the national press here.  This is
 North Carolina State, the home of the wolf pack.  Now some of these
 people who cover me every day, they think they're the wolf pack.  But
 you're the real wolf pack; I know you are.  Let me say to all of you,
 I have always viewed North Carolina as a state that was committed to
 the future, to building the future, to education, to a competitive
 economy, to seeing that every person got to live up to the fullest of
 their God-given abilities.

      A year and a day ago, I entered this race for president because
 I did not want my child to grow up to be part of the first generation
 of Americans to do worse than their parents; because I had worked as
 hard as I knew how for a dozen years  -- Because I had worked as hard
 as I knew how for a dozen years.  And you heard Governor Hunt.  My
 supporters will tell you that our state has the  first,
 highest-ranking job growth in America in the last year; that's true.


      We could say that we actually have created more private-sector
 jobs in my state than in the whole rest of the country under the Bush
 administration--and that's true.   But the truth is that we cannot
 turn this country around unless we do it together and unless we make
 a deliberate decision to take a different course.

      For 12 years now, we have been in a grip of an economic theory
 that has had its chance.  In 1980, George Bush called trickle-down
 economics ``voodoo economics.''  In 1988, he pledged to implement
 it.  In 1992, he's offering four more years of it.  Now in the last
 12 years, in the last 12 years we've had a chance to see if it
 works.  In 1980, we had the highest wages in the world.  Now we're
 13th and dropping.  The census figures show that two-thirds of our
 people are working harder for lower wages than they were making ten
 years ago.  We just had the first year in which we had a decline  in
 manufacturing production.  It had never happened to us before.  And
 in 3 and a half years, we've actually had a decline of 35,000 jobs in
 employment--no new jobs in the private sector.  The only job
 growth--in the government--Mr. Bush deplores.

      We have seen the deficit double.  And, according to the Heritage
 Foundation, a conservative group, this administration has added more
 regulations to the lives of the American people than any in the last
 20 years.  They have had their chance.  It's time for them to go.

      You know every now and then, I have to say I want to thank North
 Carolina for being so kind to my wife when she's been here  --and for
 being so good to my running mate, Senator Gore, when he's been here.
 Al Gore's got a great line that I'm going to steal since he's not
 here.  He says when he hears the Republicans chanting ``four more
 years,'' it sounds more like a threat thana promise.

 Let me tell you, I do not seek in this election a victory of party.
 I have been a Democrat who has not shrunk from criticizing my own
 party when I thought it was wrong.  I seek a victory for the American
 people--for all the people, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, men
 and women, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, people all across
 America.  And in the last few days, a stunning thing has begun to
 happen in this campaign.  People have begun to come to the campaign
 and to evaluate it on the basis of the ideas I have been advocating
 for a year in this campaign and for years and years in my own public
 life.

      So just look what has happened lately.  In Silicon Valley a
 couple of weeks ago in northern California, 21 of the executives of
 the fastest-growing companies in the country endorsed the
 Clinton-Gore campaign.  And two-thirds of them were Republicans.
 They endorsed it.

      In Chicago, 400--four hundred--400 business executives in
 Chicago--over a third of them Republican--endorsed our campaign.

      Admiral William Crowe, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
 for Presidents Reagan and Bush, endorsed our campaign.

      And look at this.  The other day, every time I say that we have
 to join the ranks of all the other advanced countries to control
 health care costs and provide basic health care to all Americans, Mr.
 Bush says, ``Oh, we can't do that.'' Well, guess what?  Last week, a
 group of people who served in the last Republican and Democratic
 administrations over the last 20 years  said that the health care
 plan that I have proposed would save the average American family
 $1800 a year by the 2000.  Eighteen hundred dollars a year; that
 every American would have health insurance.  Now these are
 Republicans saying this.  And they said the Bush plan would leave 27
 million Americans and not control costs.

      You tell me who's better for America's future.  We've got better
 ideas.   My fellow Americans, the job for us in this election is not
 just to make the case against the president.  What is makes that
 case.  What is--this election is about what is.  The question is what
 is going to happen the day after the election.  And I have tried so
 hard to keep this campaign a campaign of ideas, of issues, of the
 differences of opinion and conviction and record about where we're
 going.

      I do not want this campaign to degenerate into another
 mud-slinging contest.  But I'll tell you something.  When you see all
 these negative ads the Republicans put on distorting my record, you
 just remember:  in 1988, they got in with Willie Horton, and then
 they gave us the worst economic performance in 50 years.  Don't be
 suckered again.  Stand up for what's good and positive.

      Hold us to this standard.  When we get to the debates--we
 finally got some debates.  I showed up for two, and nobody did.  But
 we finally got some.  When we get to the debates and we're discussing
 our ideas, hold us to this standard.  Hold yourself:  How will this
 affect me  and my family and my children and my grandchildren? Are
 these people up there talking about themselves, or are they concerned
 about me and my future?  That's what this election is about.  It's
 about you.  It's about what we're going to do the day after the
 election.

      And there has already been too much focus on things that don't
 have a lick to do with what's going to happen after the election.
 But I'm going to give you a campaign that does.  And so I ask you
 this:  I ask you to take the time between now and a month from you,
 between now and four weeks from this coming Tuesday, not only to
 think about what you want but to talk to your friends and
 neighbors--not only here in North Carolina but throughout this
 country.  We have got to move away from trickle-down economics.  We
 do not need tax-and-spend economics.  What we need is a new direction
 to invest in American jobs, American education, American health care,
 a plan to bring us together and lift us up and make us competitive
 again.

 We need to accept some big ideas and commit ourselves to them.  Idea
 number one:  the wealthiest Americans should pay a little more, but
 should be given incentives to avoid their taxes, not by  buying
 Mazaratis or vacation homes, but by buying new plants, new equipment,
 new businesses, new technologies-- putting the American people back
 to work again.  Let's lift the American people up and put them to
 work.

      Number two:  we live in a world where what we earn depends on
 what we can learn.  It's time we had a real education president and a
 real commitment to educate all our people.

      What does that mean?  It means Head Start for all the kids who
 need it.  It means that in the rural schools in North Carolina and
 Arkansas and the inner-city schools all across this country there
 ought to be access to technology and laboratory equipment and smaller
 classes in the early grades, and the opportunity to learn and really
 grow.  It means we need a system of lifetime learning which includes
 this, number one:  give every high school graduate who does not go on
 to college the guarantee of at least two years in a community college
 or some other apprenticeship training program.

      North Carolina has the highest percentage of people over the age
 of 18 in two-year institutions of education of any state in the South
 because of the network you've built here.  And that's one reason you
 still have such a good manufacturing environment here compared to
 other states.  Everybody in America should have access to that, 100
 percent of the kids.

      It means that, in the next five years, we should teach every
 American who has a job but who can't read to read and give them all
 the chance to get a high school diploma so they can learn, too.  And
 it means we should open the doors of college education to all
 Americans without regard to income.  As I look around this wonderful
 crowd today, I'm reminded of a sad statistic.  The college drop-out
 rate in America is more than twice the high school drop-out rate, and
 one reason is the exploding cost of college education in our
 lifetime.

      Al Gore and I want to guarantee that every American will be able
 to go to college and stay in college by substituting for the existing
 student loan program a national trust fund out of which any American
 can borrow the money to finance a college education, no questions
 asked.  And then any American would have the opportunity to pay it
 back in one of two ways at his or her choice--either as a small
 percentage of their income after they go to work; or even better, by
 being part of a plan to rebuild America, a domestic peace
 corps--being teachers, police officers, working with the elderly,
 working to help people with disabilities be independent, working with
 children, working on housing projects.

      You just think about it.  We could solve America's problems and
 educate a whole generation of Americans. It would be the best money
 we ever spent, and we want to do it.  We should do it.  We have to do
 it.

      The third big idea:  we've got to say we are tired of being told
 that we can't do this.  America will become the last advanced
 industrial country in the world to bring health costs in line with
 inflation and provide basic health care to all of our people,
 including long-term care to promote independence for the elderly and
 for people with disabilities.

      Fourth big idea--big difference between our ticket and theirs:
 we believe that if you have a good environmental policy and you do it
 right, it will create jobs for America, not undermine the American
 economy.

      Fifth idea:  no matter who wins, there will be a reduction in
 defense.  But we believe we ought to spend every last dollar by which
 we reduce defense in making America strong at home by investing it in
 transportation, communication, environmental clean-up, putting the
 American people back to work, creating jobs for our people, and
 making our states stronger and our communities stronger.

      We know we have to reduce the deficit.  But the main way to
 reduce the deficit is to control spending in health care.  That is
 the biggest element in the deficit.  I have offered $140 billion in
 spending cuts.  I believe in control of spending.  But you can't
 reduce the deficit with a big middle-class tax increase that will
 drive unemployment and drive the economy down.  Let's increase
 investment, put people back to work, and bring the deficit down.
 That's the way to do it.

      And finally, let me say that I think that we all going to have
 to change and assume more responsibility.  There will be something
 for each of us to do that will require us to change.  People who run
 major companies will have to follow their best examples.  They can't
 raise their pay by more than their profits and their workers' pay go
 up.  Instead, they'll have to be more productive in creating jobs and
 incomes and opportunities here.  Then everybody will make more money.


      People who work in work places, no matter what kind, will have
 to be committed to be re-educated continuously for a lifetime, and to
 recreate what they do every day, if that's what it takes to be more
 competitive and more productive.

      People on welfare should be given more investments in education
 and support for their kids, and then required to work when they can
 because people should move from welfare rolls to payrolls.
 There's something for all of us to do--but two things to remember.
 This country never got anywhere by being divided, and we have been
 divided by race and by region and by income and by religion.  Why, at
 that Republican convention, they had people up there calling for a
 religious war, saying some of us weren't real Americans, saying our
 families weren't real families.

      Let me tell you something.  Everybody's got a place in my vision
 of America who plays by the rules and works hard.  And the last thing
 I want to say is.  We never got anywhere in this country's history by
 denying our problems or saying we can't.  Magic Johnson resigned from
 the AIDS Commission and endorsed me because he got tired of denying
 the problem of AIDS.  I'll face it.  I'll deal with it.  The other
 day, President Bush vetoed for the second time the Family and Medical
 Leave Act.

      Look at this sign:  ``Give George four years of family leave.''
 I like that.  Now that bill contained an exemption for small
 businesses that would have a hard time of giving an employee 12 weeks
 of unpaid leave.  So with that exemption, it would give you 12 weeks
 of unpaid leave when there was a baby born or a baby sick or a parent
 sick without losing your job.

      I don't know if you've ever known anybody like that.  But I'll
 bet a lot of you have been in that situation.  A couple of years ago,
 I was completing my morning jog in downtown Little Rock and I stopped
 at the local McDonald's to get a cup of coffee.  And it's two blocks
 from the nearest homeless shelter.  And there was this real
 attractive young couple in there, and they engaged me in
 conversation, and they told me they lived 100 miles north of Little
 Rock.

      They had a child with cancer that they'd brought to the Arkansas
 Children's Hospital.  They had both lost their jobs because they
 wanted to be there with their child in case the child did not survive
 the treatment.  And they were living in a homeless shelter.

   Now that doesn't have to happen to you but once before you get the
 idea.  Now here's the interesting thing.  Guess how many countries
 have family leave.  This is even a bigger deal.  At least not all
 poor countries have medical coverage.  All the other advanced
 countries have systems that are covering everybody and controlling
 health care costs.

      Guess what?  Seventy-two nations have a family leave law--72.
 And this fellow in the White House says we can't do that; that there
 are 72 countries that can do something and we can't.  let me tell you
 something.  I was raised to believe when I was the age of the
 students in this audience that this is a can-do country, not a
 can't-do country, and it's time to say ''we can'' again.  We  can.

      I ask you again for your prayers, your support, your guidance
 and your willingness to work for 30 days to change this country.  In
 30 days, the American people will make a decision that will chart the
 course of this nation well into the next decade.  And we know now
 from the texture of the arguments being made by me and by my
 opponents what the shape of that decision will be.  It will hope
 against fear.  It will be the same old ideas versus new ideas.  It
 will be the courage to chart a new future versus the proven path of
 slow decline.

      And, my fellow Americans, this country never got anywhere except
 by facing up to its challenges and having the courage to change.  If
 you look at the whole history of America, from the time 13 republics
 became one country, that was a miracle we now take for granted.  It
 took a lot of courage to do that, for their early states to give up
 their independence, their armies, their currencies, their economies
 and come together to write a constitution.

      It was a courageous thing we take for granted.  If you look at
 what happened to us in the Civil War when we were so divided and
 Abraham Lincoln laid down his life to keep this country together.
 And many people said, ``You ought to give up.  You lost your best
 general, Robert E. Lee.  He's fighting for the other side.  Your wife
 lost three brothers fighting the Confederacy, and you're trying to
 hold this country together.''  And he literally laid down his life
 for this country.

      We take it for granted now that we're all here together.  But
 there were plenty of times when the odds were that we'd have been
 divided and not an America any more like we used to be.  If you think
 about the Depression, when Roosevelt became president, you know that
 one in four Americans was out of work, and in my state, half the
 people were living in abject poverty?  When World War II started, the
 allies didn't win a battle for two years.

      We take it for granted that the Depression was going to be over,
 that we would win the war, that everything would be hunky-dorey.
 That is not true.  It was not foreordained.  The American people had
 the courage to do what it took to change.

      And now once again, we are being called upon at the end of the
 Cold War to seize a new future, to seize all these unbelievable
 opportunities that are out there before us.  And we can.  It could be
 the years  this nation ever had--but only if we have the courage to
 change.

      Will you help me do that?  Will you help me?  God bless you.
 Thank you very much.


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