    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 24, 1994]
    [Pages 1612-1616]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1612]]

    Remarks at a Reception for Senatorial Candidate Alan Wheat in
    Kansas City, Missouri
    September 24, 1994

        Thank you very much, Governor Carnahan, for your leadership on so
    many fronts, on health care and welfare reform and for being a good
    friend and a good leader of this State. To you and Mrs. Carnahan, it's
    good to see you again. I have been here to Missouri and to Kansas City
    so much that the Governor and Mayor Cleaver told me that if I came one
    more time I would get a tax bill. [Laughter] But I have such a good time
    it might be worth it.
        I'm honored to be here with your Mayor and Mrs. Cleaver. I thank him
    for his leadership on the crime bill especially. He made a real
    difference in the work that he and the other mayors did. I'm honored to
    be here with Chairman McCarthy, who will be an able replacement for Alan
    Wheat, and with all your other distinguished supporters of Alan Wheat
    and Yolanda.
        I really wanted to come here tonight, and I hope you will give me a
    few moments to tell you why I think this is an important race to our
    country in terms of what it is I have been trying to do as your
    President.
        Two years ago, I ran for President at a time in my life when I
    didn't really want to do it. I was having a wonderful time as Governor
    of your neighboring State. Things were going very well for me and for my
    wonderful family. Our friends, our work, everything, was just perfect.
    And it didn't look like much of a race. At the time when I entered the
    race the incumbent President was at 70-some percent approval. So I not
    only was disrupting a job that I loved and my family life and my friends
    and the routines and the rhythm of normal life out here in the
    heartland, but it looked like it was a fool's errand.
        I did it for a pretty simple reason. I felt very strongly that our
    country was in trouble, that we were going in the wrong direction, and
    that we were coming apart when we ought to be coming together. I thought
    there was a serious chance that we would not go into the next century in
    a position to preserve the American dream for my daughter and for the
    children of this country.
        I thought the leadership that the other party had provided in the
    White House had followed economic policies that were unfair, but more
    importantly didn't work, and talked about the social problems in this
    country in ways that divided us in order to get them votes and turn the
    Democrats into aliens, making voters feel that we didn't somehow share
    their values. But they didn't much do anything about the social problems
    of the country.
        I thought both parties in Washington were guilty of being a little
    too partisan and used rhetoric, throwing at each other these words that
    we heard in sound bites on the evening news that didn't mean much to
    folks that are just living out here in the country, trying to make a
    living and raise their kids and deal with all the problems they face.
    And I thought we needed to take a new direction.
        I believed strongly that we needed to try to form a new consensus in
    America about what the National Government ought to do; that no one felt
    in this global economy, where more and more of our future is determined
    by our competitive ability, that the Government could be a savior, as
    people once felt. But neither, clearly to me, could we afford to have a
    National Government that just sat on the sidelines and preached at us
    except when they were called into play for the special interests. And we
    were given these two different models of what the National Government
    ought to do, and neither one of them made any sense. We really needed
    somebody to go up there and bring common sense, common decency,
    compassion; say, ``Hey, let's identify our problems, identify what the
    National Government has to do, and get after it. Let's be a good partner
    with the American people. Let's create opportunity where we can. Let's
    demand responsibility for the American people to do what they have to
    do. And let's recreate this American community, because when we're
    together, nothing can stop us.'' And I ran on that for President.
        I ran against what had happened for 12 years, more division, more
    diversion, more distraction. The other crowd talked about the balanced
    budget amendment and quadrupled the debt. They told us how much they
    hated Government, and they hung on for all they were worth.

    [[Page 1613]]

    [Laughter] A lot of the ones that bad-mouthed Government couldn't bear
    to live outside Washington, DC. They told us how terrible the Government
    was, and they kept drawing their check every month from the Government.
    [Laughter] They railed against taxes as if they were protecting the
    middle class, but middle class taxes went up and taxes went down on the
    wealthiest Americans. Inequality got worse, and we didn't have much of a
    policy.
        I believed we could do better, so 2 years ago I set out to travel
    this country and try to prove it. Thanks to the leadership that I
    enjoyed here in our campaign in Missouri, and thanks to the fact that I
    had a lot of friends and roots here, and maybe because I was your
    neighbor, you gave me a resounding victory in that election. And I'm
    grateful for that.
        Here's what this is all about right now. And I want you to listen to
    this because this is important. On the night I was elected President,
    with a 10-point margin in Missouri, let me ask you, if I had gotten up
    in my acceptance speech and I had said, ``Folks, thank you for electing
    me. I'm going to keep my pledge to you to get this country moving again
    and to pull this country together again, and within 20 months we will
    have put our economic house in order with the biggest budget cutting in
    history, with the elimination of scores of Government programs; we will
    raise tax rates on only the top 1.2 percent of the people and ask them
    to pay the deficit down, but we'll give a tax break to 10 times that
    many people, 15 million working families who are raising children just
    above the poverty line, because we don't want them to go back into
    welfare, we want them to keep working; we'll make 90 percent of the
    small businesses in this country eligible for a tax cut; we will reduce
    the size of the Federal bureaucracy to its lowest point since John
    Kennedy was President; and we will have 3 years of deficit reduction for
    the first time since Harry Truman was President,'' if I had told you
    that on election night, you would not have believed it. But it has
    happened.
        If I had told you on election night that within 20 months we would
    have done more to expand trade for American products than in any
    comparable time period in 35 years; that NAFTA would lead to a 17-
    percent increase in exports to Mexico and help to fuel the boom in the
    auto industry, adding more employees; that we would have a worldwide
    trade agreement, new initiatives in Asia, new initiatives in Latin
    America; that we would have a real effort for the first time in decades
    to rebuild our shipbuilding industry, our aerospace industry; that we
    would be converting defense industries into engines of commercial
    resurgence with a remarkable innovative, high-tech-oriented defense
    conversion program; if I had told you that we were going to do all that,
    that we would target the inner cities and the poor rural areas, not for
    Government handouts but for free enterprise with community development
    banks designed to put almost $5 billion in loans to people who can go
    into business for themselves, and help make the banks make money as
    well; and that all of this together would produce 4.3 million new jobs
    in 20 months, 8 months of manufacturing growth for the first time in a
    decade in a row, that for the first time in 9 years the United States
    would be voted the most productive country in the world, that there
    would be more than 115,000 new jobs in Missouri, tax cuts for 300,000
    Missourians, with tax increases on only 21,000; if I had told you that,
    you would not have believed it. But it happened. It's so.
        On top of all that, we have passed the most comprehensive education
    legislation in any comparable time period since 1965, increased the
    people in Head Start by 200,000. We're going to immunize 2 million kids;
    by 1996, all kids under the age of 2 will have their shots. We're going
    to have a national program to help States have apprenticeships for young
    people who don't go to college but do want to have good jobs. And we
    have reformed the student loan program so that already 20 million young
    Americans, including over 300,000 right here in Missouri, are eligible
    to refinance their college loans with lower fees, longer pay-out terms,
    lower interest rates. That is so. That has happened.
        If I had said, after 7 years of gridlock in Washington we're going
    to pass the family and medical leave bill, giving 900,000 Missouri
    families the security of knowing that they can be successful parents and
    successful children, as well as successful workers because they won't
    lose their job if they have to take a little time off from work; that we
    would pass the Brady bill after 7 years of obstinate refusal, that the
    crime bill we pass would have every single element I pledged in the
    campaign--100,000 more police officers, that's a 20 percent increase of
    on-street police officers, 100,000 more jail cells for serious
    offenders, tougher penalties for vio-

    [[Page 1614]]

    lent offenders, prevention funds that work, and drug treatment funds,
    and drug education funds to keep these kids out of trouble in the first
    place, a ban on juvenile ownership of handguns and the assault weapons
    ban, and a ban that protects, contrary to what the NRA says, protects
    650 hunting weapons by any encroachment by the Federal Government
    whatever, you would not have believed it. But that is exactly what has
    happened in the last 20 months.
        All the while it has been the Republicans who say they hate
    Government; we've got too much Government. And all the while when they
    had it, Government got bigger and less responsive and less effective.
    But under the Democratic administration, we voted to reduce the size of
    the Federal bureaucracy by 270,000 over 6 years and to put all the money
    into paying for the crime bill to make people safer at the grassroots.
    Under this administration, we made the Emergency Management Agency go
    from the most unpopular to the most popular agency in the Federal
    Government. Ask Governor Carnahan and anybody that dealt with the
    horrible flood in the Federal Government.
        I could keep you here all night doing this. But I want you to know
    the point. The point is, we have taken on tough issues that were
    important to the American people. We have brought real change, and we
    are moving in the right direction. We don't want to turn back now and
    give it back to the other people.
        Of course, there is still work to do. We still have to find a way to
    control health care costs and provide health care security to all
    Americans. We can't go on. In just the last day or so, one of our major
    newspapers carried one more horrible article about how we were spending
    more on health care than any country in the world by light years, and we
    were losing coverage, and small businesses were going broke, and
    families were being left behind. I will never forget the million people
    who wrote to me and to my wife and said, ``Help us. We need health
    care,'' or ``We want to provide it for our employees,'' or ``Somebody's
    got to give us a chance to buy it at affordable rates.'' Yes, we still
    have to do that.
        Yes, we still have to pass welfare reform at the national level. But
    on our own, we've given 17 States, including Missouri, waivers to do
    what they can do at the grassroots level to move people from welfare to
    work. We've made a good beginning.
        Yes, we have to pass campaign finance reform, lobby reform, a whole
    spate of environmental initiatives that are important to the future of
    this country. We still have to pass the world trade agreement in the
    Congress.
        But look what's happened: The economy is stronger; the deficit is
    lower; the tax system is fairer; trade is greater. We are moving
    forward. We are doing it with an administration that is both diverse and
    excellent in terms of geography, race, gender, background. We are in a
    situation where working families, because of the initiatives we have
    taken, are going to be able to be more secure, more safer, in stronger
    communities.
        That is the real record. Now, what is the problem? I'll tell you
    what the problem is. Number one, nobody knows it. Even you didn't know
    some of this stuff, right? [Laughter] You have no way to find out.
        I saw an article the other day where some fellow had done a focus
    group with some people that voted for Mr. Perot in the last election,
    after my press conference, and they heard me reel off some of this. And
    they said, ``You know, I never thought the President was dishonest, but
    I just don't believe that. That couldn't be true. We'd know it.''
        Well, it is true. And you don't know it because you can't find out
    in the fog that surrounds what we do. But it is true. And you must take
    that truth to the voters because it relates directly to why Alan Wheat
    should be a Senator.
        Now, let's be honest. People have real reasons to still be
    frustrated and feel negatively about the Government. They still have
    problems. Many of these initiatives have passed, but people haven't felt
    them yet. The social problems we have in our country, the drugs, the
    breakdown of the family, the rising violence, they've been developing
    for 30 years. The problems working people are having, never getting a
    raise, even when they work harder, because of the global economy,
    they've been developing for 20 years.
        The wrong-headed policies that Washington pursued were in place for
    12 years, and all that anti-Government rhetoric and that negativism and
    that predisposition to believe the worst about anybody that shows up in
    Washington, DC, that's been developing for 12 years.
        I have only been there 20 months, but we're going in the right
    direction, and we do not want to turn back now.

    [[Page 1615]]

        While we have been doing--more jobs, lower deficits, more trade,
    more opportunity, more education, more training, tougher crime bill,
    smaller Government--while we have been doing, they have been talking.
    And they are great at talking. And they have peddled fear and division
    and diversion with unconscionable distortion for so long they feel no
    guilt whatever in whatever they say. And they are good at it. They are
    good at it. Sam Rayburn once said, ``Any old jackass can kick down a
    barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.'' [Laughter] It also takes
    longer to build one than it does to kick one down.
        While we've been saying yes to the American people--here's where
    Alan comes in. I wasn't in Washington a week before they started trying
    to turn me into one of them to all of you. I wasn't in Washington a week
    until one of the Republican leaders said to me, ``You will not get one,
    single, solitary vote for your economic plan, no matter what you do to
    it--nothing.'' And so every one of them voted no when we gave the middle
    class a fair shake in that economic plan, cut taxes for 15 million
    working families. They did it because we asked the top 1.2 percent,
    including some of you in this room, to pay a little more. Every one of
    them voted no.
        When we said, ``Let's do something for the middle class for a change
    and reform this student loan program and give middle class families a
    break so they can borrow the money to go to college,'' every one of them
    voted no, every one. When we said, ``You say you're the small business
    party. Let's lower taxes on 90 percent of the small businesses in this
    country by increasing their expensing provision by 70 percent,'' every
    one of them voted no, every one of them. When we said, ``Let's reduce
    the size of the Federal Government,'' which we did first in that bill,
    every one of them voted no.
        Then when we got to this crime bill, last year the crime bill passed
    with 95 votes in the Senate; 42 to 2, the Republicans voted for it. And
    it was a lot like the bill we ultimately passed--had a few more police
    officers, some more money for prisons. But remember that pork speech
    they gave you? You know how it works: They pass a bill; the House passes
    a bill; you put them together; the final bill comes back. Well, from the
    time they voted 42 to 2 for the crime bill until it came back, there was
    not a lot more money on an annual basis for prevention programs in
    there. In fact, in 4 of the years, there was less money than they had
    already voted for. And many of the programs in there for prevention had
    been cosponsored by Republicans. It was a total bipartisan effort last
    year before the election started. But when they got to talking instead
    of doing, and telling everybody how terrible we all were and how, you
    know, nothing was happening, and they saw it was helping them in the
    polls, they changed like that, and they went from 42 to 2 for it to 6 to
    38 against it. And the six brave people who voted for it, including the
    person that Alan is trying to replace, were excoriated by their leaders
    for betraying the Republican Party who said that the party was far more
    important than bringing the crime rate down in America and saving
    people's lives.
        Now, when we started this health care debate, there were 24
    Republican Senators, 24, on a bill to provide coverage for health care
    for all Americans and to control costs. I didn't agree with the way they
    wanted to do it, but we had the same objective. They said, ``We're for
    covering everybody, too. We want to control costs. Mr. President, we
    think we've got a better idea.'' I said, ``This is wonderful. This is
    what I wanted to do. We'll have a bipartisan consensus. We'll work this
    through.''
        But then they got a memo from their political boss, not elected by
    anybody, who said, ``You must defeat health care at all costs. You will
    give the Democrats too big a victory for the middle class, and we won't
    be able to keep middle class voters by scaring them about values and
    telling them the Democrats aren't like them. You must defeat it.'' So by
    the time the health care legislation got to the floor, how many
    Republicans in the Senate were still for universal coverage and
    controlled costs? Zero. It went from 24 to zero.
        Now, that is what is going on there. We say yes; they say no. You
    hear conflict; conflict and defeat is what you hear. You don't know what
    has been done, and it's hard to assess responsibility. And I went there,
    folks--you remember--I went there saying both parties had been at fault
    in the past. We needed less partisanship, not more. I wanted to reach
    out my hand in this crime bill. I did reach out to the Republicans in
    the House and the Senate. And we got a few of them who were brave enough
    and good enough and cared enough about you to pass that thing.

    [[Page 1616]]

        But I am telling you, this is the most intense partisan atmosphere--
    and why? Because they think they are about to be rewarded for their
    obstreperous tactics. They believe they can sucker the American people
    into voting for what the American people are really against, which is
    too much partisanship, too much gridlock, too much special interest
    politics. And they believe they can do it because folks can't quite
    figure what's going on, and they can say, ``We've got a Democrat in the
    White House and the Democrats in the House and the Senate have more than
    we do.'' Now, that is what is going on.
        So Alan Wheat is important to Missouri. But he's important to the
    country, not because we will always agree, not because we will always
    agree but because he will show up for work in the morning. [Laughter]
    Too many of them show up for talk; or when their leaders say turn right
    instead of left, go back instead of forward, they say, ``Yes, sir, tell
    me where to stand and when to walk.'' Now that is a fact. So I ask you
    to think about that.
        The greatest Republican President, some of us think the greatest
    President we ever had, Mr. Lincoln, once said that you can fool all of
    the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of
    the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. This
    election is going to test that proposition. I think Lincoln was right.
    You can't do it unless people don't know the facts. So I am asking you
    to do more than give money to Alan Wheat. I am asking you to go out and
    tell people the facts. They will peddle fear; we will peddle hope. They
    will say no, and we will say yes.
        Harry Truman said, ``America was not built on fear. It was built on
    courage, imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at
    hand.'' The job at hand is just what it was 2 years ago, to get this
    country into the 21st century with a good future for our children, in a
    world that is more secure, more peaceful, and more democratic, and to do
    it by enabling all of us together to live up to the fullest of our God-
    given capacities. That is the job at hand.
        We are doing the job at hand. Go tell the people of Missouri that,
    and send Alan Wheat to the Senate.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:24 p.m. at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri and his wife,
    Jean; Mayor Emanuel Cleaver II of Kansas City and his wife, Dianne; and
    Karen McCarthy, Democratic candidate for Congress. A tape was not
    available for verification of the content of these remarks.