From: Nigel.Allen@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Nigel Allen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton,chi.general
Subject: Clinton on Economics
Summary: text of July 29 speech at Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:57:45 GMT
Organization: Echo Beach

Press release from the Clinton/Gore campaign

 Clinton at Louisiana Superdome on Bush "Taking Responsibility" 
 
   NEW ORLEANS, July 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following are remarks of 
Gov. Bill Clinton at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans today: 
 
   Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to be here today. I 
wanted to get a small crowd in this vast arena to make a statement, 
and as I think you know, we're going over to U.N.O. at 5 to have a 
large rally and I hope you will join us there, but I didn't want to 
pass the opportunity of being in New Orleans today, and not make a 
statement that I think capsulizes for me at least much of what this 
election is all about. 
   Two weeks ago, I stood in Madison Square Garden in New York before 
the Democratic National Party and accepted my party's nomination. I 
promised to put the American people first, challenged us to make a 
new choice based on old values, and agreed to do my best to assume 
the awesome responsibility of the presidency. 
   Over the last two weeks, Al Gore and I, in our bus, and in our 
individual travels, have seen the faces and heard the voices of an 
America yearning to hope and dream and believe again. Across this 
country, astonishing crowds have come out to see us, not just to see 
us, but in search of something far more important -- their chance to 
trust in democracy again, and to give their children a better 
tomorrow. People who get up early and work all day to give their kids 
a better tomorrow.  People eager to roll up their sleeves and build a 
better America. People who want to believe again, to begin again, to 
be proud again. People who feel their government has broken its 
promises and violated their trust. 
   Today I have come here to the Superdome to the spot where that 
trail of broken promises and violated trust began. George Bush has 
talked a great deal about trust lately. Today I was going to talk to 
you about that very famous phrase that George Bush made in this 
stadium four years ago, "Read my lips". 
   I was going to talk to you about his promise of 15 million new 
jobs in the first four years, a promise that is 14 and a half 
million jobs short. A promise of a kinder, gentler nation, a 
promise that has been savaged by the political tactics and the 
division of this own administration. About the only thing we can 
really trust this administration to do is to give us four more years 
of the same failed economic policies. But yesterday, something 
happened that goes beyond even the trust issue, and the gall of this 
administration to hurl the word "trust" at its opponents. 
   It's beyond broken promises and it's about the acceptance of 
responsibility by the president. For yesterday on the day when 
consumer confidence plunged to all-time lows, when home buying is 
going down and unemployment is going up, Mr. Bush sent his leading 
economic advisor to Capitol Hill to deliver a message to an anxious 
people. 
   Speaking on behalf of the president, Richard Darman denied that 
the president bears any responsibility whatever for the sluggish, 
stagnant economy. Mr. Darman pointed the finger of blame everywhere 
but at the Oval Office. Listen to this. The president's chief 
economic advisor, when asked for an explanation of why we have the 
three slowest years of economic performance in 50 years since the 
Great Depression, did the following things: 
   He blamed the Federal Reserve for the slow growth of the money 
supply. He blamed the nation's lenders for the credit crunch. He 
blamed Saddam Hussein for the invasion of Kuwait, which is good blame 
but hardly the cause of our economic problems here at home. And he 
blamed Congress for refusing to enact Mr. Bush's economic program, a 
limited version of trickle-down, which was cooked up for election 
year after three years of no action at all. 
   Yesterday, the chairman of the House Budget Committee asked the 
president's chief spokesperson on the economy, "Does the president 
accept any responsibility whatsoever?" And the spokesman wouldn't 
accept any, not any. Even though, six different times, Mr. Bush and 
his advisors have tried to take credit when they thought the economy 
was moving up. 
   Four years ago, this president promised 15 million new jobs, no 
new taxes, and a kinder, gentler nation. But most important, he 
promised to be president, to accept responsibility. He said that he 
saw his life in terms of "missions, missions defined, and missions 
completed." The mission was an America "moving forward, always 
forward." 
   And four years later, we're moving backward. Most Americans are 
working harder for less money than they were making ten years ago. 
Unemployment now numbers 10 million Americans. Ten percent of our 
people are on food stamps. Other countries' economies are growing 
faster than ours. Since 1980 and the beginning of trickle-down, we've 
gone from first to 13th in the world in wages. We are not moving 
forward, always forward. And all Mr. Bush has to offer is the 
politics of blame, and more of the same. 
   He is still in the grip of a failed idea, still believing the only 
way to make an economy grow in a tough global environment is to cut 
taxes on the wealthiest one percent, raise them on the middle class, 
let the deficit explode, reduce investment in our future, and stay 
out of the economic battleground with other nations. Every major 
economy in the world has a national economic strategy but the United 
States of America. 
   He still believes that, when it comes to offering opportunity for 
ordinary Americans, the best policy for the government is to do 
nothing. He still believes that our top economic priority ought to be 
an across-the-board, short-term capital gains tax cut for the 
wealthiest Americans. A tax cut that gives millionaires an average 
benefit of $100,000, and gives folks earning $50,000 a year or less 
an average of $30.  A tax cut that isn't targeted to long-term 
investment in activities that create jobs and emphasize new 
technologies. A tax cut just like the past 12 years of windfalls 
for the wealthy without jobs for ordinary Americans. 
   Let's face it, when Mr. Bush stood here four years ago and said, 
"Read my lips, no new taxes," what he meant to say was, "No new taxes 
for the rich." 
   This president actually vetoed an economic package passed by 
Congress this year, and fashioned, among others, by Sen. Lloyd 
Bentsen of Texas, a pro-business Democrat, that included much of what 
Mr. Bush says he wanted and even more -- an investment tax credit for 
new plant and equipment, research and development tax credits to keep 
us ahead in the race for new technologies, and other investments to 
get this economy going. Why did he veto the bill?  Because it paid 
for those tax incentives by raising taxes on the top one percent of 
Americans, whose taxes have gone down for the last 10 years, and 
because it didn't include the short-term, across-the-board, capital 
gains tax cuts. 
   We have disagreements about the economy, but the main point I want 
to make to you today is that beyond the trust issue, beyond the 
broken promises, beyond the bad economic policies, there is, 
underneath all this, an even more fundamental issue, and that is the 
failure of the president to assume responsibility for the future of 
this country.  The great presidents of our time have gone beyond 
pointing the finger of blame to assume the burden of responsibility. 
   President Franklin Roosevelt, who assumed office in 1933, and 
lifted us up from the confines of his wheelchair, did not tell us 
that the only the fear was the Federal Reserve.  He said, "The only 
thing we have to fear is fear itself." 
   President Truman had to make the awesome decision about atomic 
weapons to end World War II, and to begin the post-World War II era 
in the Cold War. He didn't blame everyone else for his problems. He 
didn't try to pass the buck, he had a sign on his desk that said, 
"The buck stops here." He would have fired Darman for that statement 
yesterday. 
   President Eisenhower didn't complain the Korean problem was a 
problem he inherited. He said, "Vote for me. I will go to Korea." 
   And President Kennedy, even though he might have done so, did not 
blame his predecessor for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He stood up there 
and said, "It is my responsibility.  And I will assume it." 
   Mr. Bush has gone from voodoo economics to can't-do economics. But 
the American people are a can-do people. And we need a president who 
can get the economy moving again and assume the responsibilities of 
the office. 
   My adversaries have 100 days to rehearse and repeat their 
excuses and their blame and their argument for why America shouldn't 
change. They'll say the Democrats are tax-and-spend, in spite of the 
fact that our program calls for a more aggressive, but leaner, and 
more efficient government that reduces spending in many areas that 
this president has refused to address. They'll say that the Democrats 
are liberals, whatever that means, in spite of the fact that our 
platform is tough on crime, pro-growth, and innovative in the most 
modern and best sense, and emphasizes the personal responsibility of 
every American. 
   And you know what they'll say. They'll say the other guy, that's 
me, is a bum. They'll say, you know, they've got a sign up in 
Houston, he's the failed governor of a small state. It's amazing they 
don't want George Bush to take responsibility for anything that 
happened in America, but they want to hold their opponents 
responsible for everything that happened in their charge. Well, I'll 
take responsibility, if he will. 
   I think the American people are tired of blame placing and 
excuses. I think they want to move to responsibility. And what I want 
to say to you today in this great cavernous stadium is that if this 
president won't use the power of his presidency to help the ordinary 
American people, I will. 
   He has demonstrated that he doesn't have a plan to get the economy 
moving again, but I do. Put the American people first. Invest in 
their potential, in their jobs, their education, their health care. 
Make government a partner with business and labor and education. Help 
America compete and win in the global economy. Don't read my lips, 
read my plan. 
   Give up the idea of a capital gains tax cut that doesn't 
distinguish between short-term investments in speculation and 
long-term investments in new technologies and new jobs. Make America 
the best educated, best trained, best paid work force in the world, 
linked by the world's best systems of transportation and 
communications. Invest in civilian research and development. Turn 
American innovation in the laboratories into American jobs in the 
factories. Open the doors of college opportunity to all Americans. 
   Take on health care cost increases, control health care costs, and 
provide a basic package of affordable health care to every family in 
this country. Reinvest every last dollar of defense cuts in 
retraining defense workers, retooling plants, and reinvesting in an 
American economy for the 21st century. Rebuild our cities, our 
suburbs, our rural areas.  Ask the wealthiest one percent of 
Americans to pay their fair share of taxes again, not to soak the 
rich, but to keep from drowning the middle class, so that we can all 
go forward together. 
   My fellow Americans, we didn't get into this mess overnight.  We 
won't get out of it overnight. But we won't get out of it at all, 
unless we change, unless we abandon trickle-down economics, not in 
favor of old tax-and-spend and divide-the-pie economics, but in favor 
of putting our people first and helping America to compete and win in 
the world economy. 
   We know that investment economics works. We know that when 
business and labor and education and government are on the same side 
working for opportunity in the world, it works. The people of the 
United States are hurting, they need a President who will do what 
George Bush once promised he would do, use the power of the 
presidency to help people. If he won't do it, I know someone who 
will. Thank you very much. 
 -30- 

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