    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 15, 1994]
    [Pages 1773-1777]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Fundraiser for Gubernatorial Candidate Bill Curry in
    Bridgeport, Connecticut
    October 15, 1994

        Thank you. You know, I've been telling the people at the White House
    for months, if we could just get the Congress out of town and I could
    get out in the country, we could have a little fun. [Laughter]
        I am delighted to be here with two of the finest Members of
    Congress, Rosa DeLauro and Barbara Kennelly; and with the leaders of
    Bill Curry's campaign, the leaders of the Democratic Party; with the
    State officials, including my longtime friend Attorney General
    Blumenthal; with the mayor of this city and his wife; and with Bill
    Curry and his mother.
        I want to talk a little today about two or three things that I hope
    will help to put this Governor's race in perspective. Let me tell you, I
    used to be a Governor, and it's a pretty good job. There have been a day
    or two in the last couple of years where I wondered why I ever gave it
    up. They used to tell me there were times when I could take a boat out
    in the middle of the Arkansas River and walk back, and the headline
    would be, ``Clinton Can't Swim.'' I know what it means now. [Laughter]
        But I want to say to you today--I want to try, if I can, from my
    perspective to tell you just how important a Governor's race is and just
    why I think Bill Curry is not only the right sort of person for this job
    at this time but also why I think he did a very smart thing in having a
    bright young mayor as a running mate. And the reason is you cannot see
    the role of government anymore as all divided up. You can't look at
    there's a little box, and that's what mayors do; and there's another
    little box, and that's what Governors do; and there's another little
    box, and that's what Presidents do at home; and another little box, and
    that's what Presidents do abroad; there's another little box, and that's
    what people in the private sector do. This country needs to stop
    thinking like that, because we are moving into a global society, not
    just a global economy but a global society, and we have to look at our
    work in terms of partnerships. We have got to get the best out of
    everybody. And we have to have as a goal how to get the best out of
    everybody and how everyone can live up to the fullest of their own
    potential.
        When I was out at the airport just a few moments ago I said, looking
    at our role in the world, this was a day of celebration, a day of
    sorrow, and a day of determination: celebration in the return of
    President Aristide to Haiti and seeing the people dancing in the streets
    for democracy; sorrow, of course, because on the day that the long
    struggle of Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres and Chairman
    Arafat to bring peace to the Middle East was rewarded with the Nobel
    Prize, Corporal Waxman, an Israeli soldier and an American citizen, was
    killed by terrorist thugs who desperately want peace in the Middle East
    to fail so that they can go on and ply their craft of death; and
    determination because our men and women in uniform in the Gulf are
    standing up to one more threat from Iraq to its neighbors, one more
    attempt to bully the United Nations into backing off its resolutions.
        There's a lot to be proud of and a lot to be happy about. Even in
    the terrible tragedy in Israel, you see shining through that the
    determination of the people there to keep working for peace and not to
    turn back, to give not only that troubled region but the rest of us who
    are so caught up in it and its future a different and a better future.
        But if you look at that, and you recognize that we cannot be strong
    abroad unless we are

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    first strong at home, that is the inner strength of America that permits
    us to lead the world in bringing democracy back to Haiti. It is the
    internal strength of America that gave us the power to lead the
    international coalition first in the Gulf war and now in standing up to
    what is happening there. It is the symbolic power of America and the
    fact that we represent the kaleidoscope of the world's cultures and
    ethnic groups and religions that make people wish us to be active in
    helping them to achieve peace in the Middle East or peace in Northern
    Ireland or conducting the elections in South Africa, which we celebrated
    recently with President Mandela's trip here.
        It is very important to understand that. It is the fact that people
    believe that we live by our values that enables us to be trusted when we
    say to the Russians after decades of mistrust, ``We know that the future
    will have differences between us, our interests will be different, our
    opinions will be different, but we ought to go forward as democracies,''
    and that leads us to the point where today, for the first time since the
    dawn of the nuclear age, there are no Russian missiles pointed at the
    people of the United States. That is important to know.
        So we come to this point in our history, as the First Lady said, at
    a point of transition, the end of the cold war, the advent of a global
    economy, with very serious challenges and enormous opportunities. And
    the question is: What must we do in our country to continue to be able
    to celebrate the things we just discussed? What is it that we have to do
    in our time to give new birth to the American dream, to rebuild this
    country, to empower all of our people to be what God meant for them to
    be? What is it that we have to do--that is the question--and how must we
    do it? Those are the things that dominate my thinking as your President
    every day. That's what I think about. That's what I work on.
        It is important not only who is President but what other things are
    going on in this country. One of the things I'm convinced of is that
    Washington is very good at doing some things and not very good at all
    doing others. Second, people have more trust in government that's closer
    to them than they do in governments further away, so even if we are good
    at some things we need to go ahead and let a lot of that be started out
    at the grassroots level. And third, there are just differences from
    place to place. The economic challenges faced by Bridgeport are
    different than the economic challenges faced by Hartford and certainly
    different than those faced by Laramie, Wyoming.
        So I have tried to launch a kind of a revolution in the way we think
    about Government. I don't want a Government anymore that sits on the
    sidelines or just kind of comes into the game to help preserve the
    status quo and organized interest groups. But neither do I think the
    Democrats can afford to make a lot of promises we can't deliver and say
    that we're doing things for people, when what we really ought to be
    doing is empowering people to do more for themselves.
        So let me give you some practical examples in why it matters who the
    Governor is and why it's a good thing the ticket has a mayor on it.
    Example number one: welfare reform. Everybody knows that we've had 30
    years, not 30 months, 30 years, of developing social problems in this
    country. The breakdown of families, the breakdown of community
    structures, it started with the collapse of the economic infrastructure
    of many of our urban areas and rural areas, and it was accelerated by
    changing social patterns. But when people bemoan crime and drugs and
    guns and gangs and violence, it is important to recognize that these
    things have been developing, after all, for quite a long while.
        One of the things we know we have to do is take the families that
    exist now that are dependent on the Government and try to make them
    self-sufficient. That's what welfare reform is all about, making welfare
    a second chance for people that really need it, not a way of life.
        The truth is no one has a magic bullet. I have sent legislation to
    Congress which I believe will be adopted next year, but it rests upon
    the ability of people at the grassroots level to implement it and make
    it work. So we have given 18 States, including Connecticut, I might add,
    permission to cut through all the Federal rules and regulations and
    design their own ways to move people from welfare to work. Just recently
    I gave the State of Oregon permission to take the welfare check and just
    give it to employers who would hire people as an employment supplement.
    It may or may not work, but it's worth trying. In Connecticut, we'll
    know soon enough whether it did. And so will other States in the
    country. This is important, but if you don't have a good Governor, it's
    a bust.

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    First of all, they won't ask for the permission to do it, and secondly,
    they may not be able to carry it off.
        We've given 9 States--in the middle of all this health care rhetoric
    that we've put up with in the last couple of months--9 States have
    gotten permission to go beyond a lot of the Federal rules and
    regulations to try innovative ways to provide health coverage for all
    their people in ways that preserve consumer choice, preserve the private
    health care system, but got out there in ways that would control costs
    and provide more coverage.
        We just passed an education bill that I have worked very hard for
    based--it is rooted in my experience as a Governor that has strong
    national standards for achievement but gives all the initiatives back to
    grassroots schools and school districts, State departments of education.
    It really matters who's out there. Now those are just three examples
    that this Congress has worked with me on to help put decisions back at
    the local level.
        Finally, let me say we're trying to do some things that will really
    bring economic opportunity back to places where it has long been lost.
    This is something I've worked on for a decade. When I was Governor, part
    of my State was the fastest growing part of America, and part of it was
    the poorest part of America. I understand a little about this, and I
    know there is no one formula that works.
        So we are trying to build institutions like community development
    banks to make loans to poor people to start businesses where they live--
    proven to work all over the world, and we're way late in putting them in
    all the cities in America--like enterprise zones and empowerment zones
    and enterprise communities, all these things we're trying to do. These
    are important things, but I can propose all the laws and they can pass
    all the laws, and none of those things will change anybody's life if the
    people at the grassroots level don't know how to do it and aren't
    connected to the real problems of real people.
        So if you want America's economy to be revitalized, you have to have
    a good Governor, everywhere; you have to have people who have a
    partnership; you have to have people who understand these things. This
    guy is a fountainhead of ideas. And he won this primary with a
    grassroots movement, which means that he has people in every community
    who understand what is going on there. That is terribly important to
    whether the President and the country succeed. It really matters.
        I also see a lot of partnership here, and if you'll forgive me, I
    want to say a special word of thanks to your major opponent in the
    primary, Senator Larson, for being here today and for being so strongly
    for you and helping you. Where is he? John, stand up. Thank you very
    much, sir. [Applause]
        Now, that brings it back to what we have to do. Our mission in
    Washington has been to try to make the Government work for ordinary
    people again, bring the economy back, get the American people together,
    to empower people to make the most of their own lives. After 20 months--
    a rather interesting 20 months, I might add--I'd say we've made a good
    start, and we've got a ways to go. And the midterm elections offer the
    American people the chance to decide whether they want to go forward or
    whether they want to go back and try what the opposition party says they
    offer America. We now have clear evidence on both paths.
        If you look at what we've done to make the Government work for
    ordinary people, and the family leave law has already been mentioned, we
    debated for 7 years, we passed it in a couple of months; we provided
    immunizations for all children under 2; another 200,000 seats in Head
    Start for young children; apprenticeship programs were staged to help
    kids who don't want to go to college but want to be in good jobs, not
    low-wage jobs; a dramatic reform in the college loan program that makes
    already 20 million middle class Americans, including over half a million
    in Connecticut, eligible for low interest and longer repayment terms on
    their college loans so that no one should ever again not go to college
    because of the cost of a college education; this is a dramatic thing.
    This is making Government work for ordinary people.
        We are also--you heard Bill talking about the crime bill--you know
    how we paid for the crime bill? Not with a tax increase, not by cutting
    out other Government programs but by a commitment to reduce the size of
    the Federal bureaucracy over 6 years by 270,000. The National Government
    already has more than 70,000 fewer people working for it today than it
    did on the day I took office, and all the money's being spent to fight
    crime. And I might add, that makes the point again. We're shrinking the
    size of the Federal Government to do more with

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    less, and we're giving all the money to communities to fight crime, to
    Bridgeport, to Bristol, to East Hartford, to Norwich. You already have
    these four communities, within 2 weeks after I signed the crime bill,
    were already given grants to hire more police officers--taking the money
    away from Washington, giving it to you at the grassroots. If you spend
    it right, the crime rate will go down. We know that.
        You know, our opponents, the Republicans, always cussed the Federal
    Government for years, but they didn't make it smaller, they just tried
    to make sure their folks were in all those jobs before we took over.
    [Laughter] And they talked about Government waste, but they didn't want
    to do anything about it because they wouldn't have anything to run
    against anymore. So we passed a bill to change the way the Government
    buys $200 billion worth of services a year. You know that we're going to
    save an average of $50 on every purchase the Government makes that costs
    less then $2,500 by getting rid of paperwork and letting competition in;
    no more $500 hammers, no more $600 toilet seats. Poor Al Gore can't go
    on David Letterman anymore--[laughter]--because we did that. The
    Democrats did that. We're trying to make this Government work for you in
    a commonsense way.
        And the second thing we're trying to do is to bring this economy
    back. The first thing I did as President, before I ever took office, the
    first decision I made was that we needed an economic security
    organization. Just like we had a national security operation and a
    domestic policy operation, we needed an economic operation. And I put a
    man from New York named Bob Rubin, who's had a distinguished business
    career, in charge of it, and we have worked from the get-go to make sure
    that everything we do is good for the American economy.
        And if you really talk to people who deal with the Federal
    Government, they'll tell you we've got the best Commerce Department, the
    best Small Business Administration, the best Agriculture Department that
    anybody's seen around there in decades when it comes to promoting
    economic growth and development, the best trade negotiator, because we
    are trying to grow this economy.
        When we put the economic plan before the Congress, which lowered the
    deficit and which provided tax cuts for 15 million working Americans and
    tax increases for the wealthiest one and a half percent, what did our
    adversaries say? They said, ``If this plan passes, the deficit will go
    up and the economy will go down.'' That's what they said, the world
    would come to an end. Chicken Little would not have been as eloquent--
    [laughter]--as they were about how bad that plan was.
        Well, we passed it--thanks to Barbara, thanks to Rosa--without one
    of them being for it, and where are we? We've got 3 years of deficit
    reduction for the first time since Truman was President, 4.6 million new
    jobs, more high-wage jobs in 1994 than the previous 5 years combined, 9
    months of manufacturing job growth for the first time in 10 years, and
    America rated the most productive country in the world at the annual
    vote of international economists for the first time in 9 years. They
    were wrong, and we were right.
        So are we here celebrating? No, not exactly. There are still too
    many people who don't have jobs; there are still too many people who
    have worked for jobs but never get raises. A million Americans lost
    their health insurance last year. We still have to pass welfare reform
    and important environmental legislation and political reform legislation
    like campaign finance reform and lobby reform. And we have to keep going
    until our future is secure. No, we're not satisfied, but we have made a
    very good start.
        What have they done? What is the choice? I want to make three points
    to you. First of all, they voted no every chance they could. Every one
    of them voted no against the economic plan which included, also, the
    middle class college loan. Most of them voted against the Brady bill.
    Most of them voted against the family and medical leave bill. Most of
    them voted against the crime bill, having once voted for the crime bill,
    because it was election season. In the last week of the Senate, on one
    day, there were four separate issues being filibustered. To give you a
    sense of what that means, you know, if there's a filibuster, it takes
    you 60 percent of the Senate to pass it. In the 1800's, we had an
    average of one filibuster every 6 years. In the 1900's, we've had an
    average of one filibuster every year. We had four in one day because the
    ``no'' crowd was trying to shut us down.
        Do you know what they stopped from passing, among other things? The
    Superfund bill to clean up toxic waste dumps. Who was for it? The
    chemical companies, the labor unions, and the

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    Sierra Club. It's the first issue they'd ever agreed on in their lives.
    Every American with a breath and an opinion was for the Superfund
    legislation except the Republican Senators. And why were they not for
    it? Because they didn't want Rosa and Barbara to be able to come back to
    Connecticut and say, ``In the closing days of the Congress, we passed
    the bill to clean up toxic waste dumps.'' They'd rather leave the dumps
    and deny them the credit.
        In the closing days, we had big bipartisan majorities for campaign
    finance reform, for lobbying reform, for a bill to require Congress to
    live under the same laws they impose on private employers, and they
    killed them all with filibusters. Now that's a fact. And they give us a
    little inkling of where they'll go if they get a majority in the
    Congress. Two stunning articles in the Washington Post this week--they
    killed the campaign finance reform and the lobbying bill on the weekend.
    On Monday, the leaders of the Republican party in the House and the
    Senate had a little meeting with the lobbyists. And according to the
    news article, they said, ``Look, we killed campaign finance reform for
    you. We killed lobby reform for you. We share your values, and you
    better give us money, and you better not give the Democrats money, or
    else.'' Then yesterday it was reported that if they could just get
    control, they'd give us a National Government by subpoena with an
    enemies list.
        Now, you have to see that in terms of their Contract With America.
    Remember their contract? They all signed up; they all stood right up
    there and signed on the dotted line. You know what was in that contract?
    They promised just what they did in the eighties, the return to trickle-
    down economics, a trillion dollars in promises, tax cuts for the
    wealthy, more money for defense, bring back Star Wars, don't hurt
    anybody. And when we ask them, ``Well, how are you going to pay for all
    this?'' they say, ``We will tell you later.''
        I'll tell you how they're going to pay for it. The deficit will be
    exploded, Medicare will be cut, veterans benefits will be cut, the
    police program cannot be funded, jobs will start to go overseas again
    just like they did before, and the economy will be in the ditch. But it
    will all happen after the election.
        You know, I mean, this is election time. He wants to win; he wants
    to win; I want you to help our folks in Congress. I would love to stand
    up here and make you a trillion dollars' worth of promises. You know, if
    I could write a trillion dollars' worth of hot checks, I could show you
    a good time, too. [Laughter] That's still real money.
        So they've told us what they'll do. They'll give you trickle-down
    economics and abuse of power politics. Now, that's what they'll do.
    They've had a high old time trying to stop everything and point the
    finger of blame. I love what Bill Curry said, what they're saying is not
    ``What should we do?'' but ``Who can we blame?''
        What we have done is try to turn a light on in this country, to lift
    people's spirits and pull people together and say: We can make the
    Government work for ordinary people. We can do more with less. We can
    empower people. We can get this economy going again. We can stand for
    the best of American ideals around the world. We can make ourselves more
    secure and more prosperous.
        And it won't happen overnight. We're dealing with 30 years of social
    problems, 20 years of economic stagnation, and 12 years of trickle-down
    economics. But it can happen if we keep going forward.
        So I am here to say, if you want this country to go forward, you
    need to elect this good man Governor. And you need to say to the people
    of Connecticut, in every one of these congressional races we must
    decide: Are we going forward, or are we going backward? What do we stand
    for? Do we really want to go back to a Government of idle promises where
    people are simply told what they want to hear, where all their fears are
    played upon, where a majority is created through dividing the
    electorate, or do we want to go forward into a future where we can
    compete and win in an exciting global economy where our diversity is an
    asset and our economic strengths are legendary and every American child
    has a chance to live up to the American dream? I think the answer is
    clear, and I want you to help make it clear in November.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:22 p.m. at the Holiday Inn.