Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Thursday, 8 Oct 1992 19:57:50 CDT
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: ==> Clinton Orlando 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
 Senior Citizens Picnic
 Lockhaven Park Orlando, FL October 5, 1992

      Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Thank you, Governor
 Chiles.  I want to say, first of all, I am very honored to be up here
 on this platform with three of my colleagues, the governor of
 Florida, the governor of Virginia and the governor of Georgia.

      We represent the kind of Democratic Party that most Americans
 want to vote for, including the Republicans and independents who want
 this country to change.

      I want to thank Lieutenant Governor Buddy McKay who has led my
 campaign here for such a long time.  I want to thank Ruth Warwick for
 being here today.  And my good friend, Mayor Sandy Freeman from
 Tampa.

      And I want to thank your Mayor Bill Ferguson for being here
 today, for endorsing me, and giving me the key to the city.  I hope
 it's the key to the cities votes and heart, too.

      I also want to say that when I came to this community in the
 primary, I saw a lot of things that I liked.  I saw people working
 together across racial and age lines.  I got acquainted with a
 program that the mayor helped started, called COMPACT, who employs my
 young friend who's back there clapping.  He was educated in Arkansas,
 even though he lives in Orlando now.

      It's a program that helps young people with business sponsors
 going into the schools, working with kids, who could get in trouble,
 and helping them to start a better life.  That's the sort of
 partnership I want to bring to all America.  And I learned a lot
 about it in Orlando in the primary.

      I also have to say--I got to mention one person here who is not
 here today named Carol Sismanek.

      She is the vice chair of the Democratic Party, a vice principal
 during today.  And she literally worked herself sick getting ready
 for all of this.  And I want all of us to let her know--she's almost
 within hearing distance of us--how grateful we are for the work she
 did.  Thank you, Carol.

      Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Republicans used to take Florida
 for granted.  But they've been coming here a lot lately.  And since
 they can't run on their record, and they don't have a plan for the
 future, my opponent comes here and distorts my record and my plan for
 the future.

      You know it'd be pretty sad to be president of the United States
 for four years, and the best you could do for a campaign for
 reelection would be to say things about your opponent that aren't
 true.

      Four years from now, if you elect me, I'll still be talking
 about how we can build this country up and move this country forward
 and bring this country together.

      When Mr. Bush came here and traipsed across the state of
 Florida, calling me everything but a blue goose, he neglected to tell
 the people that we had the highest job growth rate of any state in
 the country in the last four years.  His own labor secretary said it
 was enormous.

      When he came here and said I was tax crazy he neglected to tell
 you that my state has the second lowest tax burden in the country.
 And it was George Bush who said read my lips and then raised taxes on
 the middle class, not Bill Clinton.

      He put an ad on television, my opponent did, showing pictures of
 all these folks, and telling how much I was going to raise their
 taxes.  The Washington Post said it was a misrepresentation, and the
 Wall Street Journal said that I wanted to lower taxes on the very
 people he accused me of raising them on.

      He made the whole thing up.  It's pretty sad for a president of
 the United States, after four years in office, to have to make up an
 ad to run a campaign for president.

      My fellow Americans, then he comes down here and tells you I
 want to raised Medicare after he just came out with a program to
 charge the average Medicare family $400 more a year for the next five
 years.

      He gets his positions and mine mixed up, because he doesn't
 believe in any of them.

      And I want to tell you that I think we are better than that.
 Folks, Governor Wilder and I started this Democratic process together
 and this nomination for president, in different ways determined to
 change the Democratic Party.

      We didn't want any more trickle-down economics, but we knew we
 couldn't just have tax-and-spend economics.  We knew we needed a new
 direction for this country, that would be a victory not just of
 political parties but of people; a direction that says, hey, we know
 how you create jobs.  You invest.

      So no more across-the-board tax cuts for the wealthiest one
 percent.  Instead, ask them to pay their fair share, then give them
 incentives to create new plants, new businesses, new farms, new
 housing projects, new technologies.

      Investment, we want to make more millionaires than Reagan did
 and Bush did.  But we want to make millionaires the old fashioned
 way, by having them put the rest of the American people to work, with
 jobs that can be competitive in the global economy.

      We believe that this country cannot restore its economic health,
 reduce its deficit, invest money we need to invest, until at long
 last we finally become the last advanced country in the world to
 control health care costs and provide basic health care to all
 Americans; and we have a plan to do that.

      It is a plan that goes beyond party.  The American Nurses
 Association endorsed the Clinton-Gore ticket.

      The American College of Physicians came out with a plan
 remarkably similar to ours, and George Bush found himself attacking
 doctors, saying the doctors didn't know anything about health care.

      And last week, a bipartisan group, Republicans and Democrats who
 had served in previous administrations, analyzed my plan and the
 president's plan, and said that our plan would save the average
 family more than $1,000 a year more than his by the year 2000, free
 up hundreds of billions of dollars to invest, and provide basic
 health care for all Americans, including the right to buy in to a
 long term care program for people before they're put into poverty and
 before they have to go into a nursing home.

      I think that's what the American people want--a health care
 system that really works for all of us.

      Now, I see all these kids for Clinton signs here.  Let me tell
 you, this country needs a real education president.  Not just someone
 who talks about education at election time, and lectures to others
 about what they should do; but someone who will roll up his sleeves
 and do what each of these governors has had to do to engage the
 energies of our teachers, our administrators, our parents, our kids,
 and create a system that is the envy of the world.

      If you give me a chance, that's what we will do.  We will
 guarantee--folks, we can't make it as a country unless we improve our
 system for education and training for our people.  We've got to say
 to every high school graduate who doesn't go to a four-year college
 we will guarantee you access to two years of further education in a
 community college or an apprenticeship program so you can get a good
 job, not a dead end job.  The rest of America needs it.

      We've got to say--we ought to go into every American workplace
 in the next five years and teach every worker with a job to read, and
 give everybody the chance to get a high school diploma so that the
 people who are working today can get higher earnings and be more
 productive and make us stronger.

      And we ought to open the doors of college education to all
 Americans, without regard to income.  Al Gore and I have a plan to
 create a national service trust fund, a domestic peace corps that
 will provide loans to any American without regard to income to pay
 for a college education, and then let them pay it back either as a
 small percentage of their income, after they go to work; or even
 better, by giving two years of service to their nation here at home,
 as teachers or police officers, or working in housing programs,
 working with the elderly for home health care, working with children
 to keep them out of trouble, working with people with disabilities to
 help them be more independent.

      You just think about it: if every person in Florida who needs a
 college degree and got it, and then paid it back by making Florida
 stronger from the grassroots up with people power, we could solve the
 problems of our nation and generate an incredibly educated workforce
 that would explode economic opportunity all across this country.

      These are the things that we stand for.  We also stand for a
 system, again I will say, that is not trickle down, that is not tax
 and spend.  We are going to have to reduce unnecessary spending.
 We're going to bring this deficit down.  But we're going to do it
 while we're putting the American people back to work.

      Panel after panel after panel of economists have examined my
 plan, the Bush plan, and Mr. Perot's plan.  And the overwhelming
 consensus is that the Clinton-Gore put-people-first plan will do more
 to create jobs and raise incomes than any other alternative before
 you in this election year.  And that is what we've got to do.

      Let me say to you here in Florida, I know the Republicans think
 that Florida belongs to the national Republican Party.  They used to
 say that Democrats left me; I'll tell you something, the Republicans
 have left you.

      If you want evidence of that, you can see the fact that ever
 since the Republican convention Bush and Quayle have been trying to
 run away from the Republican platform, and we're running on ours, and
 proudly.

      If you look at where Orlando is, and where central Florida is,
 and where you're going, what you need is a caring, efficient,
 effective, national government; a president who gets up everyday and
 works on your problems; someone who wants to have a partnership with
 business and labor and education, to open up opportunities for all
 Americans.  And that's what I stand for.

      And behind that, there is a human reality that two- thirds of
 our people are working harder for less money than they were making 10
 years ago; that too many of our people are unemployed; that too many
 of our working people are living in poverty; that too many people
 believe that their children will not do as well as they did.

      My fellow Americans, the American dream is being tested in this
 election.  Some of you are old enough to remember when it was tested
 before.  In 1932, when Roosevelt was elected president, one in four
 of our people was unemployed; half the people in my state were living
 in abject poverty; and a lot of people didn't know where to turn
 next.

      But he said, we can do better; and together we will.  And that's
 what I say to you today.

      I am so tired of seeing the American people divided by issues
 designed to drive a wedge between us to get votes for George Bush.
 Divided by race, divided by region, divided by gender, divided by
 income.  I am tired of it.  I don't want any divisions.

      Everyone of you has a place in the American family that I want
 to lead.

      And I'm so tired of George Bush saying, we can't.  That's all he
 says is, we can't.

      You know, I disagreed with Congress in the past, but Congress
 passed a bill that would have provided $300 million in research for
 breast cancer for women.  My mother would be affected by that; she's
 a breast cancer survivor.

      It would have provided money for osteoporosis, for ovarian
 cancer research, to deal with other health care problems for women.
 George Bush vetoed it for political reasons.

      The Congress passed a bill twice that would have provided basic
 family leave with an exemption for small business, for people when
 they've got a baby born, or a sick child or a sick parent.  You know,
 72 nations--72 nations--will give a working person a little time off
 to go home and take care of their parents or their kids without pay,
 without losing their jobs.

 And this president vetoed that bill twice.  He said we can't do
 something that 72 countries can do.

      And today, Al Gore had to leave this bus trip to go back to
 Washington to try to override the veto of the president of the cable
 television bill, which would have protected all of the Florida cable
 owners from just being ripped off by monopoly.  But the president
 says, we can't.

      Folks, I was raised and most of you were raised in an America
 that was a we-can country.  And we're tired of being told that we
 can't.

      I want you to help us four weeks from tomorrow to build a nation
 that will once again be the envy of the world; where we are decent to
 everybody; where everybody who will work hard and has the courage to
 change has the chance to take control of their own destiny; where we
 don't keep people in dependence, but we move them toward
 independence, whether we're moving people from welfare to work,
 whether we're telling people they can stay in their own homes longer,
 and we'll help them stay independent.

      Just because they're elderly or have a disability doesn't mean
 that they shouldn't have more control over their own lives.  Where
 we're going to tell people you'll still be able to get a loan to
 start a new business; you'll be able to expand your business and do
 well; and you'll be able to get a decent education in this country.

      That's what this election is all about.  This country is going
 in the wrong direction.  We want to put it right.  We want to be
 faithful to the American dream.  We want you to know that we know
 that we can do better, and that you are better than you've been
 getting.

      Will you help us make America what it ought to be? Thank you,
 and God bless you all.  Thank you.  Thank you.


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