From: barrett@cc.gatech.edu (James Barrett)
Subject: CLINTON: Portland, ME Speech 9/26/92
Reply-To: barrett@cc.gatech.edu (James Barrett)
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 19:13:38 GMT

            Clinton: We've Got A Lot of Work To Do

    The following is the Reuter transcript of Democratic candidate
Bill Clinton's remarks at a campaign rally in Portland, Me, Saturday,
Sept 26, 1992.:

    GOVERNOR CLINTON:  "Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.
Can you hear me?

    (Crowd yells -- Yes!)

    (One audience member shouts, We love Hillary!)

    You love Hillary?  Good for you.

    (Applause)

    I want to thank Tom Andrews and Deborah for being here for that
wonderful introduction.  I want to say how good it is to see Pat
McGowan again.  I want you to know that I once ran for Congress and
lost, just like he did, by a little bit, but you should not do that
twice to him.  Put him in this time.  I need Pat and Tom in
Washington.

    (Applause)

    We've got a lot of work to do, and I cannot do it unless we have a
group of people fundamentally committed to change this country in the
House of Representatives.  And Tom and Pat fit that bill to a tee.  I
want to also say that I thank in his absence Senator Mitchell, who
called me yesterday.  We had a wonderful talk.

    (Applause)

    I--

    (Planes fly overhead)

    Do you suppose the Republicans control the airplane schedule here?

    (Laughter)

    What'd you say?

    (Audience shouts -- Not for long!)

    Not for long.  That's right.

    (Applause)

    I want to thank Barbara Holt (sp?) and Joe Carr (sp?) and my good
friend Tom Allen, and there are lots of other people who are here, but
I especially want to recognize the group of people who are Veterans
for Clinton/Gore over here--

    (Applause)

    --Mayor Charlie Harlow (sp?), Senate President Charles Pray (sp?),
my good friends Jim and Libbie Mitchell are here, and all of you who
have come today.

    Let me say, I have had a wonderful day.  I was in Boston
yesterday.  We had 45,000 people according to the morning paper there.

    (Applause)

    And then, this morning I began by going back to New Hampshire,
then on to Burlington, Vermont, and now here.  This has been a
wonderful day in New England.

    (Cheers)

    And I would say it represents a new day for America.

    (Applause)

    I think all of us know what the stakes are, but I want to tell you
a story about something that happened last week that sort of
symbolizes what I think is wrong with this administration and how I
hope to put it right.

    Here we are in the midst of the worst economic performance in 50
years.  Here we are with evidence from the census that 2/3ds of our
people are working harder for lower wages than they were making 10
years ago.  Here we are the only advanced nation in the world without
a system of affordable health care for all, with 100,000 Americans
losing their health insurance every last month.  Here we are with 10 %
of the US on food stamps.

    And when the presidential debate commission invited us to East
Lansing, Michigan, last Tuesday, I showed up.

    (Applause)

    But where was George?  Where was George?  I'll tell you where he
was.

    (Where was George?)

    I'll tell you where he was.  Do you know what he did?  I went to
East Lansing, Michigan, to debate the great issues of the day, and he
took an airplane and stopped in every state that borders Arkansas to
bad-mouth my record.

    (Boos)

    And it's interesting.  I mean, George Bush says, well, how can you
expect me to debate Bill Clinton?  He went to Oxford, you know.  I
mean, after all, Bush went to prep school and Yale.  I mean--but he
says, he went to Oxford.

    Then he goes around Arkansas and says that I'm a hayseed from a
backwater, small rural state.  You know, like Maine, a small rural
state.

    (Applause)

    And then, he goes all around the states and he tells them how bad
I am.  He gets all the facts wrong and he forgets to say that my
state's had more private sector jobs created since he's been president
than the rest of the country combined.  He forgets to say that we have
the 2d lowest tax burden in the country, that we've always balanced
our budgets.  He forgets any of the comparisons that are true,
accurate and fair, because this crowd has no vision, no record,
they've run out of ideas, they've run out of energy, they've run out
of time in Washington.  And it is time for them to go.

    (Applause)

    But then, after his day of typical bad-mouthing, doing what he
knows to do best, George Bush flew back in the middle of the night
after the television news had gone off, after all the printing presses
had shut down, when the news window had closed, and then he vetoed for
the 2d time the Family and Medical Leave Act.

    (Boos)

    Now, let me tell you what bothers me about that and why I know we
can do better.  First of all, it's wrong on the merits.  I don't know
if any of you know anyone who ever lost their livelihood because they
had to stop working to care for a sick child or a sick parent or when
a baby was born.  But a couple of years ago, when I finished my
morning jog in downtown Little Rock, I stopped at the local
McDonald's, which is 2 blocks from a homeless shelter.  And I met this
attractive young couple who told me they had a child in our Children's
Hospital who had cancer.

    They lived about a hundred miles from there.  Both of them had
lost their jobs because they wanted to come to the hospital to be with
their child in case he did not survive.  And they were living in a
homeless shelter.

    Senator Gore, as some of you know, had a son who was in a very
serious automobile accident.  When that child was recuperating at the
Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, they met a couple from a
Southern state who had their child up there for special treatment.
They had lost their livelihood because we didn't have family and
medical leave.

    But here's the thing that really irks me.  Do you know how many
countries have family and medical leave?  72.

    So what George Bush said to us again was that 72 nations in the
world can do something for family values that we can't do.

    And you know what?  I was raised to believe this is a can-do
country, and I think we ought to throw the can't-do people out of the
White House.  We're better than that.  We are better than that.

    (Applause)

    This state has suffered economically as much as any state in the
US of America.  I used to serve with your former governor and former
congressman Joe Brennan (phonetic), who's over here, a good friend of
mine.

    (Cheers)

    And we used to sit and talk for long periods of time about the
similarities between your state and mine.  I know what it was like to
go through the last 12 years with trickle-down economics, with no
economic strategy for the future, watching every day this country lose
its manufacturing base and weaken its economy.

    Since this president has been in office, we've lost over 1,300,000
manufacturing jobs; in the last 2 years, average family income--this
is working people--has gone down $1600.  Down.

    As Al Gore's always saying to me, unemployment's going up and
income's going down; poverty's going up, consumer confidence is going
down; bankruptcies are going up.  Everything's that should be up is
already down.  They've got this country upside down, and we want to
turn it right side up.

    (Applause)

    You know, you think about it.  You've got a lot of these signs up
here.  When they say "4 more years," as Al says, it's almost more like
a threat than a promise.

    (Cheers)

    I want you to think about what kind of America we really need.  I
want you to think about all the hard working people and families of
the state of Maine that deserve better.  And I want you to tell the
people of this state and everybody you know across the country in the
next 38 days that we can do better.

    Al Gore and I and our wives and our families and our friends and
all of you who are a part of this campaign have tried to lift the
vision and hope of the American people.  We have tried to offer this
country a new kind of Democratic Party that will broaden the base of
our appeal from the people we have always represented to those who
have been shafted who need to be a part of our cause.

    And if you want any better evidence of that, read our platform.
For the first time in a long time, the Democrats are running on their
platform and the Republicans are running away from theirs.

    (Applause)

    We offer a real economic program.  They offer more denial and
division.  For months and months and months, Mr Bush said there was no
recession.  He said you folks did not know what you were talking
about.

    And then finally, when they admitted there was a recession, he
said it was because we had an attitude problem.

    Let me tell you something.  He's got an attitude problem.  We've
got a policy problem.  And we're going to see them both corrected on
November the 3rd, with your help.

    (Applause)

    I want to ask you just for a moment to think about what it is we
ought to do because I don't want to be like they are, all criticism
and no progress.  I want to stand for something.  I want you to help
me change this country.  I'm not offering you miracles.  I'm offering
you hard work and challenge and progress.

    We have been in the grip of a failed economic theory, trickle-down
economics.  You know what it says.  Keep taxes low on the richest
Americans, get the government out of the way and see what happens.  I
want a leaner, more effective, more active government on the side of
the American people, one that invests in new jobs, educates people,
controls health care costs, faces our problems, and brings us
together.  That is what the American people deserve, and that's what
we're going to give them on Nov 3.

    (Applause)

    You know what creates jobs.  What creates jobs is investment.  So
I say no more trickle-down economics; give people incentives if they
create new factories, new plants, new businesses and new products.
But no more something for nothing.  End trickle-down economics and
invest in the American people.  That's the difference between Bill
Clinton and George Bush.  That's the difference in our approach and
trickle-down.  Send them a message that you don't want it anymore.

    (Cheers)

    I believe with all my heart that you need a real education
president, someone who will guarantee--

    (Cheers)

    --a system that would enable the American people to be educated
throughout their lifetime.  Listen to this.  No president can promise
you to give you any opportunity you are not able to seize yourself.
The average 18-year-old will change work 8 times in a lifetime.  We
need a system of education for that lifetime.

    Let's begin by teaching every adult to read and giving every adult
in the work force a chance to get a high school diploma.

    Let's provide for every young person who does not go on to a
4-year college the opportunity to get 2 years of further education for
good jobs, not dead-end jobs.

    (Applause)

    Let's open the doors of college education to all Americans, not
just a few.

    (Applause)

    I offer the American people a national service trust out of which
any American can borrow the money to go to college, and then pay it
back as a small percentage of their income after their go to work at
tax time so they can't beat the bill, or, even better, by giving 2
years of service to our country before or after college.  Consider
this, what if you all, what if everybody who went to college in this
great country before or after they went said I'll work for 2 years,
I'll work with children, I'll work with the elderly, I'll solve the
homeless problem.  I'll be a police officer, a nurse, a teacher.  I
will serve the country I love, to rebuild the country with people
power from the grass roots up.  Not a government bureaucracy, but a
program to educate the American people and lift our economy and our
future.  We can do it.

    (Cheers and applause)

    Let me--one other thing, and Congress is so important in this.  We
cannot do these things, we cannot bring our deficit down, we cannot
restore health to our manufacturing sector unless we finally, finally
become the last advanced nation on earth to control health care costs
and to provide basic health care to all Americans.

    Now, ever time I say this, every time I say this Mr Bush says,
Bill Clinton wants the government to run the health care system with
the compassion of the KGB and the competence of the House Post Office.
It sounds great, but it's not true.  I would remind all of you that
George Bush for the last twelve years has had socialized medicine, and
you paid the bill.  Put him out here so he can see what it's like for
you to live under the American health care system.

    (Cheers and applause)

    We have offered the American people a health care program that
will control costs, provide health care to everybody, and give you the
choice of your doctors, your hospitals to keep what is good about our
system in tact.  That's why the American Nurses Association endorsed
the Clinton-Gore ticket, the first time they ever did it.

    It is remarkably like the plan offered by America's largest
businesses, by the American Academy of Physicians-- 77,000 doctors
came out for a program like mine.  And the president attacked them,
saying they didn't know anything about medicine.

    Even the head of the conservative American Medical Association
said this week that the Clinton-Gore plan was much more aggressive in
dealing with the problems of high cost of medicine and coverage for
people who don't have it than the Bush plan which puts good money
after bad.  Vote for Bill Clinton, vote for Pat McGowan, vote for Tom
Andrews, and we will give you a health care program the American
people can be proud of.

    (Cheers and applause)

    My fellow Americans--

    (Chants of "We Want Bill")

    That's right.  Hold that sign up.

    Ladies and gentlemen, today the "no debate" president is out there
talking about that subject he is such an expert on--taxes.  He has
actually told the American people today something he knows isn't true.
He said I'm going to raise everybody's taxes.  Now, we all know how
reliable Mr Bush is on taxes.

    (Laughter.)

    He raised yours and didn't pay his--right?

    (Cheers and applause)

    Now, here are the facts.  Under my tax plan, we asked the richest
2 % of the American people to pay a little more money because their
taxes went down and their incomes went up in the 1980s, and we've got
a $400 billion deficit and we need that money to pay for investment
tax credits for incentives to start new businesses and for modest
relief to middle class families, especially those with children.  And
that's all we do.  My state has the 2d lowest tax burden in the US of
America.  Don't believe old George Bush's fear tactics.  After all,
he's the one who told you to read his lips.

    And then the other day, he gave another speech, and he said I made
that mistake once, but I'll never to it again, not ever, ever.  And
then within a day his press secretary said that was not a pledge.

    (Laughter and applause)

    That fellow's been in Washington too long.  When somebody in Maine
or Arkansas says never, ever, they mean never, ever.

    This election is going to be a fight to the finish for 38 more
days between hope and fear.  They will play to you fears.  I will
appear to your hopes.  This election will be a fight between the
courage to embrace new ideas and a new direction for America, not
trickle down, not tax and spend, but invest, educate and compete, face
our problems, grow up in the real world.  That's what we have to do.
These children are entitled to know they have a president and a
government that is fighting the problems of the economy, that believes
you can preserve the environment and advance the economy-- something
Bush doesn't believe--that believes we need a better education policy,
a health care policy, that we have to face problems like AIDS instead
of stick our head in the sands about them.

    (Cheers and applause)

    That we have to do things that will pull us together and move us
forward.

    And so I ask you this, for 38 days, help us to reclaim our
country, not for me, but for you.  And let me ask you one other thing.
Don't get on this train unless you want to ride it after the election,
because I have not come across this country all this long time--I've
been coming here now for more than a year asking you to support
me--just to win an election.  We've got to change this country.

    And the thing that is killing us today, my fellow Americans, is
not the dimension of these problems.  They are profound, they are
complex.  We can't solve them overnight.  Nobody has all the answers,
but we know what direction we need to take.  What is killing has been
the dimension of our disbelief.  There have been too few of us with
hope and courage and the willingness to change.  And that is what has
always characterized America.

    (Applause)

    Think of this:  if you go back through the whole history of this
country, at every critical point in our history, there's always been a
huge fight between the "we can" crowd and the "we can't" crowd,
between the people who think we can do better, and those who think
things could be worse, between those who lift our hopes and those who
pray on our fears.  Whether it was George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson and the founding fathers saying we had to be one nation, and
the other crowd saying, well, that might be tough to take, or Abraham
Lincoln laying his life down to keep a union together, and another
crowd saying, maybe we ought to give it up.  It's an experiment that
was nice but didn't last.  Or Franklin Roosevelt lifting this country
out of the depression.  The "we can crowd", the "we can do better"
crowd, the "we're better than this" crowd.  They are the ones who have
sustained our nation through 200 years.

    I want you to be part of that group of Nov 3 to give this country
back to its rightful legacy and for its rightful future.

    Thank you and God bless you all. Thank you."
------------------OS/2 v2.0 -- Why settle for anything less?--------------------
James C. Barrett (barrett@cc.gatech.edu)|"If your so damned smart, why are
Georgia Tech College of Computing       |  you doing what you're doing, and I'm
                                        |  president of the U.S.?" - G.Bush
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