    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 5, 1994]
    [Pages 1517-1519]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Labor Day in Bath, Maine
    September 5, 1994

        Ladies and gentlemen, I know it's raining here today, but you have
    brought a lot of sunshine into my life by the example you've set and the
    work you've done. And I want to thank you for coming out in the rain to
    stand up for the interests of the working families of

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    America on this Labor Day. Thank you for being here.
        I thank our great labor leaders Tom Donahue and George Kourpias for
    being here. I want to thank Buzz Fitzgerald and Stoney Dionne. Tom
    talked about the ironworks being run by two guys named Buzz and Stoney.
    It sounded like a television series. [Laughter] If you do what I expect
    you to do here, we may get a television series out of this yet.
        I also want to say a special word of thanks to my good friend Joe
    Brennan for being here and for presenting himself as a candidate for
    Governor again, to Senator Dutremble and Senator Baldacci for being
    willing to run for Congress at a time when it's not a very popular place
    to be, but it's still an important place to be. And I want to say a
    special word of thanks to Tom Andrews for his leadership in the United
    States Congress to help us rebuild the shipbuilding industry in America
    and help turn this economy around.
        And of course, most of all I want to thank my good friend George
    Mitchell. You know, if George had been commissioner of baseball, they'd
    be back playing again now. And I might say on this Labor Day, there's
    still time for them to go back to work and finish the best baseball
    season in 50 years, and I hope they will.
        Folks, most of what needs to be said here today has been said. But
    for a century now people have been gathering on Labor Day to celebrate
    the dignity of work, its importance to our lives, and to have that last
    long weekend before school starts again and we all go back to work full-
    time.
        I ran for President because I thought this country was in danger of
    going in the wrong direction and because I thought that our people had
    it within them to keep the American dream alive into the 21st century
    for our children and our grandchildren. And I believed then just as
    strongly as I believe today that we have to have a plan, a strategy, a
    vision of what we wish our country to be like and how we're going to get
    there.
        If we're going to keep the American dream of opportunity alive for
    everybody who's willing to work hard and play by the rules, I believe we
    must do three things: We have to have an economy that works, we have to
    empower our people to succeed and win in that economy, and we've got to
    come together again as a community and work together. We cannot afford
    in a global economy to be divided again, Government and business and
    workers fighting each other all the time, people in this country finding
    ways to get in fights with each other instead of ways to pull together
    and make this country great again.
        And our administration has fought for change against some very, very
    powerful enemies of change, against people who often don't seem to
    understand what the stakes are because that's what I want for you and
    your families and your children.
        You heard Senator Mitchell say that we began with an economic
    strategy to get this terrible deficit down. The debt of this country was
    quadrupled in 12 years. We are bringing the deficit down for 3 years in
    a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President. We are doing
    it by cutting spending, asking the wealthiest 1.5 percent to pay more
    taxes, and providing tax breaks to 15 million working families that are
    hovering just above the poverty line because we want them to keep
    working and raising their children, not going into the welfare system.
    In the State of Maine alone, almost 61,000 families got a tax cut, and
    only 3,700 got a tax increase. It was a good deal for Maine. It was a
    good deal for America. And if it hadn't been for Tom Andrews and George
    Mitchell, the plan would have failed, because we passed it by the
    narrowest of margins over the enemies of change.
        We have expanded trade. We have expanded educational and training
    opportunity. But maybe most important of all on this Labor Day, we have
    called for new partnerships in shipbuilding, in airplane building, in
    automobiles, in agriculture. The partnership here that you've heard
    these people detail between labor and management is the thing I came
    here to highlight. Even in the driving rain, the rest of America should
    know that if you can take a 110-year-old company and redesign the
    relationship of labor and management in a new partnership and ask the
    National Government to help you to build a commercial future as well as
    a defense future, then every manufacturing facility in America can do
    the same, and we can rebuild this economy on the strength of your
    example.
        For the first time in 10 years, manufacturing jobs in America have
    increased now for 8 months in a row. They're a part of that 4.1 million
    jobs that George Mitchell talked about. And as we look ahead from this
    Labor Day,

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    let us leave here rededicating ourselves to meet the other challenges
    that face us, to keep this economic recovery going, to keep this
    partnership between business and labor and a partnership with Government
    going, to keep working until every American can have the education and
    training opportunities he or she needs to compete and win, to keep
    working until we turn the terrible situation we have in health care
    around where we're spending more and covering less.
        This is the only advanced country in the world that spends 40
    percent more than everybody else, and we're still losing people with
    health insurance. There are 5 million people in working families just
    like yours who had health insurance a year ago, 5 years ago, who don't
    have it today. My friends, we can do better. And until we do better, we
    will pay the price.
        And let us continue our efforts to change the way the political
    system works. We need more examples of what we had with the crime bill,
    where we broke through gridlock and a few brave Republicans stood up to
    their leadership and said, ``The American people want a solution to the
    crime problems. It's not a partisan problem. It's an American problem,
    and we're going to work on it together.'' We need that in other examples
    as well. We need the Congress to pass the laws reforming the lobbying
    practices and the campaign finance practices in Washington, to help to
    free people to make the courageous decisions that have to be made.
        And finally let me say this, and I want to close with this because I
    want you to think about this as you leave. We've got to get out of here,
    or we're going to raise health care costs by staying in the rain too
    long. [Laughter] We can create more jobs. We can empower you to seize
    those jobs. But unless we get back to good, old-fashioned American
    values of working together in partnership, we're still not going to do
    what we ought to do. Everybody is for change in general, but they can
    always find a reason to be against it in particular. Believe me, there
    will never be a bill in Congress that is perfect, because we are not
    perfect people. There is always some reason we can find to say no, to
    turn away from tomorrow, to be divided from our friends and neighbors.
        This Bath Iron Works is coming back because Stoney and Buzz and all
    the other people put aside their differences to find something they
    could say yes to. This is going to happen in America because this
    administration is working with the tools we have to rebuild the American
    economy in partnership, not sitting on the sidelines and not promising
    you miracles but promising you progress.
        And I ask you as you leave here today to reward people in public
    life who will say yes to America, who will look for ways to come
    together, not be divided, who will ask you to be courageous enough to
    face the tough decisions. That's the real way to make sure we have a
    21st century where the rain brings the sunshine.
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. at the Bath Iron Works shipyard.
    In his remarks, he referred to Tom Donahue, secretary-treasurer, AFL-
    CIO; George Kourpias, international president, International Association
    of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM); Duane (Buzz) Fitzgerald,
    president and chief executive officer, Bath Iron Works Corp.; John
    (Stoney) Dionne, president, IAM Local S6; John E. Baldacci, Maine State
    senator; and Dennis L. Dutremble, president, Maine Senate.