    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 31, 1994]
    [Pages 1915-1918]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Rally for Democratic Candidates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
    October 31, 1994

        The President. Thank you, Senator Wofford. Thank you, ladies and
    gentlemen. Let me say, first of all, before we get into the speech, I
    want to thank the East Allegheny High School Band and the Pine-Richland
    High School Band. Let's give them a hand for playing for us tonight.
    [Applause]
        I am proud to be here with Harris Wofford, with Congressman Coyne,
    with Governor Singel, with your State treasurer Cathy Baker-Knoll, with
    Tom Flaherty and Pete Forrester, Linda Rhodes, and the congressional
    nominees. I hope you will elect them. You have a chance to replace these
    two Members of Congress that are leaving with Mike Doyle and Bill
    Leavens, and I hope you will vote for them.
        Audience members. Yes, we will! Yes, we will!
        The President. Yes, you will.
        Audience members. Yes, we will! Yes, we will!
        The President. I also want to say a word about a few other people
    who are here tonight: the chairman of the Democratic Party, David
    Wilhelm, who has worked so hard for all of us. And I want to say a
    special thanks to some of our friends from the labor movement, without
    whom so many of our candidates--[inaudible]. I thank especially Jerry
    McEntee, the president of AFSCME, who is here; George Becker, the
    president of the Steel Workers, who is here; and Bill George--
    [inaudible]--AFL-CIO.
        You know, this election has a lot of interesting choices. I heard,
    for example, recently that Senator Wofford's opponent criticized people
    who go to the Senate to fight for locks and dams.
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. Anybody who criticizes that has never had to create a
    job or move a product to market. I think western Pennsylvania is lucky
    to have somebody who fights for improvements in the Mon River locks in
    Turtle Creek, Elizabeth, and Charleroi myself, and you ought to keep
    Harris Wofford if for no other reason.
        I read the endorsement of Senator Wofford in the Pittsburgh Post-
    Gazette. And he said, contrary to the paid ads of his opponent, I want
    to quote: ``Senator Wofford is not an advocate of mindless big
    Government. He understands Government can't possibly solve all the
    problems in a nation, that personal responsibility and accountability
    must be engendered and demanded. He remains committed to a mission built
    on service and opportunity, hope and humanity, vision and realism.
    Harris Wofford is a direct descendant of the enlightened public
    officials who gave us Social Security and Medicare, those life-saving
    programs. His opponent is not.'' I couldn't say it better myself.

    [[Page 1916]]

        My fellow Americans, 21 months ago I went to Washington with the
    help of an overwhelming vote from the people of Pennsylvania, with a
    commitment to make Government work for ordinary Americans, to get the
    economy moving again, to prepare our people to compete and win in the
    global economy, to make the world more secure and more prosperous for
    Americans to live and work in. I called it putting people first. Well,
    you know, we still have problems. There are still people who want jobs
    who don't have them, people who are looking for a raise that hasn't
    come, people who are worried about losing their health care. There are
    still problems with crime in our streets and social problems in our
    communities. But I'll tell you something, folks, look at what we found:
    4 years of the slowest job growth since the Depression, 12 years of
    trickle-down economics that blew up the deficit and drove our jobs
    overseas----
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. ----20 years of stagnant wages, 30 years of social
    problems. And after 21 months we are clearly moving in the right
    direction. We are in better shape than we were before.
        I read in one of the papers today, a voter saying, ``Oh, I'm sort of
    disillusioned. I don't know if they've done anything for ordinary
    Americans.'' Well, here is what we've done for ordinary Americans. We
    passed the family and medical leave law. Over 2 million working
    Pennsylvanians with family members can now take some time off when
    there's a child born or a sick parent without losing their job. We
    passed college loans for the middle class for lower interest, longer
    repayment terms, so that everybody can go to college. Over 1.7 million
    Pennsylvanians can take advantage of that. We passed the national
    service program, thanks to Harris Wofford's spirited leadership. Our
    economic program had tax cuts for over 500,000 working families in
    Pennsylvania with children in the home living on modest wages, because
    we, the Democrats, don't believe if you work full time and you've got a
    kid in the house you should be in poverty. We want to reward work and
    parenting. We voted to expand Head Start and to immunize every child in
    this country under the age of 2 by 1996. And on all those issues,
    Wofford was yes; his opponent was no. We're making Government work for
    ordinary citizens, thanks to people like Harris Wofford.
        We made a serious assault on crime for the first time in a
    generation with tougher punishment, more prison space for serious
    offenders, more police for our streets, and prevention programs for our
    kids to keep them out of trouble in the first place. Every last
    Republican who voted against that crime bill knows that every law
    enforcement organization in the United States supported it. And a bunch
    of them voted for it the first time; then it became election year, and
    they flipped and voted no. They didn't care about lowering crime. They
    wanted a political issue. Harris Wofford voted to lower the crime rate
    in Pennsylvania, and you ought to reward him for it.
        And we voted to put our economic house in order: $255 billion in
    spending cuts, 272,000 fewer people working for the Federal Government,
    gave all of the money to you to fight crime in your local communities.
    We voted to change the rules by which we buy things; no more $500
    hammers and $50 ashtrays for us now. And when we did this, what did our
    opponents say? They said, ``If you do this, we will bankrupt the
    economy. The economy will go down. The deficit will go up.'' Well, they
    were wrong. Look at the results: in 21 months, 4.6 million new jobs. In
    Pennsylvania in the previous 4 years, you lost 8,300 jobs; in this 21
    months, 86,800 jobs in the State of Pennsylvania.
        Do you know that if Harris Wofford were a Republican running for
    reelection--now don't boo, listen, because you need to go out between
    now and then and talk to people who are not for him yet, who are not for
    Mark Singel yet, who haven't made up their mind how they're going to
    vote in these congressional races. And I want you to think about this.
    If Harris Wofford were a Republican running for reelection, and he got
    up and said this: ``I should be reelected, my fellow Republicans,
    because I did what you've been begging for for years. I reduced the
    deficit 3 years in a row for the first time since Truman. I am giving
    you the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy. I have given the
    toughest crime bill to the American people in a generation, and I have
    voted for policies that are growing this economy for a change''--if he
    were a Republican, they'd be building a statue to him. And they ought to
    build one anyway. [Applause] You know it. You know it.
        What is their beef? Their beef is, they want in. And so what did
    they do? They said no

    [[Page 1917]]

    to everything--no, no, no--no to middle class college loans, no to
    family leave, no to everything. They refused to compromise on health
    care. They killed lobby reform. They killed campaign finance reform.
    They even killed the Superfund bill to clean up toxic waste dumps.
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. It was an amazing thing, folks. We had the chemical
    companies, the labor unions, and the Sierra Club all for the bill. It
    was almost spooky. They don't agree on when the Sun's coming up in the
    morning. But they agreed that we had to get together and clean up the
    toxic waste dumps in America. No one in America was against it except a
    few more than 40 Republican Senators. And they preferred to leave the
    poison in the ground so they would have a political issue, so Harris
    Wofford----
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. ----so Harris Wofford could not come home to
    Pennsylvania and say he helped to clean it up. Now, that is the truth.
    And now they have this Contract With America.
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. Hey, this is a sweet deal. I wish I could do this a
    week before the election. But I'd turn red; I'd get embarrassed. I
    couldn't do it. [Laughter] But it's a sweet deal. It's a trillion
    dollars' worth of promises: ``I'm going to give everybody a tax cut and
    especially the wealthiest Americans; they'll get lots more. And we're
    going to spend more on defense; we're going to spend more on Star Wars.
    We're going to give everybody everything, and we're going to balance the
    budget.'' Does that sound familiar? ``Well, how are you going to pay for
    it?'' we asked. And they say, ``We'll tell you after the election.''
    [Laughter]
        So we had the House Budget Committee look at how it would be paid
    for. Do you know what their promises would cost if they kept them all?
    They'd have to cut Social Security $2,000 for every American. They'd
    have to cut Medicare $1,800 for every American. And if they abandon it,
    they would explode the deficit and ship our jobs overseas just like they
    did the last time they had power. They had it their way for 12 years.
        I say to you, you think they're not serious about Social Security?
    Their leader once proposed making it voluntary. The Senate candidate in
    Virginia, Ollie North, you know him?
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. He says Social Security ought to be voluntary. That
    means we ought to kill it. That means we ought to kill it. And of
    course, Senator Wofford's opponent says that he would settle for raising
    the retirement age to 70, but it would be higher if he could make it
    higher.
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. Folks, here's my question. I know that this country
    has problems. I know this State has problems. I know not everybody is
    free of worry. But let me ask you something--they had it 12 years. They
    have told us if we give it to them again, they will do it to us again
    just like they did for the last 12 years.
        In 21 months, we have turned this thing around. We're going in the
    right direction. Let's don't turn back now. Let's don't turn back now.
        Let me tell you, I want you to think about this, in closing, every
    one of you, I want you to think about what you're going to do for the
    next 8 days. And I want you to think about it in terms of what I have
    just been doing. You know, I just came home from this trip to the Middle
    East, and I have seen--[applause]--and I want you to think about this. A
    big part of what I said in '92 was that I would give primary attention
    to our problems at home because we couldn't be strong abroad unless we
    were strong at home, but that we could not withdraw from the world, we
    had to be involved in the world. We had to expand trade, and we had to
    make the world more secure and more free. So we've expanded trade. And
    I'm going to Detroit tomorrow. You know what the biggest problem in
    Michigan is today? Overtime. The autoworkers are working too much
    overtime. That is a high-class problem. We need more problems like that.
        For the first time since the dawn of nuclear weapons, no Russian
    missiles are pointed at your children. And we, we here in the United
    States, have been asked to help brave people all over the world as they
    struggle for freedom and democracy. Whether it is in South Africa or
    South Korea, whether it is in the Persian Gulf, in Kuwait and Saudi
    Arabia, or in the Middle East, whether it is in Haiti or in Northern
    Ireland, we are helping.
        And what I want you to know is, why do you think these people want
    us to help? Because they know this is a very great country. And they
    respect our values, our Constitution, our devotion to democracy, our
    appreciation of diversity, and our willingness to change ener-

    [[Page 1918]]

    getically to meet the challenges of every age. That is what they like
    about the United States. To be sure, they admire our military strength,
    but it is the character of our young men and women in uniform that they
    admire even more than our power.
        What I want to say to you folks is that we have to believe in
    ourselves the way they believe in us, not because we're perfect but
    because we can always do better and because we are now doing better
    because we are taking on the problems we ignored too long. We're taking
    on the tough fights, and we're moving in the right direction.
        And what I want each and every one of you to do is to go out of here
    and say what I said to you. Find a friend or a neighbor who is
    undecided, who is a soft no on Wofford or a soft no on Singel or who
    hasn't made up their mind how they're going to vote in these Congress
    races. Find somebody and personally promise yourself you are going to
    seek them out and you are going to say, ``Look at the record. Look at
    the alternative. Look at the future. Don't go back, go forward. Reelect
    Harris Wofford. Elect Mark Singel. Elect these two Congressmen.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you.
    Thank you.
        Just remember, I love western Pennsylvania. You've been wonderful to
    me. But you need to send Harris Wofford back to the Senate, elect Mark
    Singel, and do it. You have 8 days. Talk to everybody you can. Bring it
    home.
        Thank you. God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 6 p.m. in the South Hall at the David
    Lawrence Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Tom Forrester
    and Peter Flaherty, Allegheny County commissioners; Linda Rhodes, State
    Democratic Party chair; and William M. George, president, Pennsylvania
    AFL-CIO. A portion of these remarks could not be verified because the
    tape was incomplete.