    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 20, 1994]
    [Pages 1815-1817]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Rally for Democratic Candidates in Framingham
    October 20, 1994

        Thank you so much for this wonderful, warm, enthusiastic, passionate
    welcome. And thank you for your commitment to reelect Senator Ted
    Kennedy on November 8th. I want you to send Kevin O'Sullivan and John
    Tierney down there to help us in the House of Representatives to move
    this country forward. And I want to congratulate Mark Roosevelt on
    giving debating lessons to the Republican Party in the last few days.
        I loved Ed Markey's speech, except he said everything that Ted and I
    wanted to say. [Laughter] And he said it very well. It was a great
    defense of a great record by a great supporter of progress in this
    country. I thank Ed Markey.
        I want to say one thing a lot of you may not know. This is serious.
    I want to thank Ed Markey because last spring he called my attention to
    the fact that we had one million military assault-style weapons coming
    into this country from China. And he said we ought to stop it, and we
    did. And I thank him for that. And I also want to thank him for paving
    the way for the information superhighway in Framingham and all along
    Route 128, the birthplace of high technology and the future of the
    information superhighway. Thank you, Ed.
        Ladies and gentlemen, until the last few days this had the earmarks
    of an unusual election, where people were in danger of voting against
    what they're for and for what they're against because of the inordinate
    success of our opponents in talking things to death and confusing
    things, but the fog is beginning to clear in America.
        Twenty-one months ago, you sent me to Washington to try to change
    this country, to make Government work for ordinary people, to bring the
    economy back, to make the world more peaceful and more prosperous, and
    basically to make us feel like we were going in the right direction
    again and that we were coming together again, that we could recover the
    American dream, that we could get to the next century with all the
    children in this room looking at America's best days ahead of us. And I
    come here to tell you that we've still got a long way to go, but
    America's in better shape than it was 20 months ago.
        I know there are a lot of people who want jobs who still don't have
    them. I know there

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    are a lot of people who are working hard who haven't gotten a raise. I
    know that another million Americans in working families lost their
    health insurance last year. I know we still have crime problems and
    social problems. But I ask you to think of this: the social problems,
    the crime, the drugs, the family breakdown, the things that are gripping
    this country, they've been developing over 30 years. The economic
    stagnation of working people, wage earners, has been a problem for 20
    years. We had 12 years of trickle-down economics, of failed economic
    policy that ignored the problems or made them worse.
        And in 21 months, we've got more jobs, lower deficit, the Government
    working for ordinary people, a serious assault on crime. We are moving
    in the right direction. We don't need to turn back now. We need to go
    forward into the future.
        I believe most Americans, without regard to their party, support the
    family and medical leave law. I believe they do. In Massachusetts alone,
    1\1/4\ million working people in Massachusetts alone can now take some
    time off when there's a baby born or a family member sick or an elderly
    person in trouble in your family without losing your job. I believe most
    people are for it. Well, we voted for it. Most of them were against it.
    I believe most people in this State and this country think the Brady
    bill is right, think it is right that we're immunizing all the children
    in this country under the age of 2 by 1996, believe it is right to
    expand Head Start. I believe they like these things.
        These are the changes we are bringing. I believe most people in this
    country think that Senator Kennedy's bill to provide national service to
    give kids a chance to work in their communities and solve problems at
    the grassroots level and earn money for a college education is a good
    thing that looks to the future. It is not a relic of the past.
        I believe most people in this country like the fact that we have
    reformed the student loan program and made 20 million Americans eligible
    for lower interest rates and longer repayment terms on their college
    loans, for middle class Americans; 840,000 people in Massachusetts alone
    eligible to benefit from this program immediately. I think most
    Americans are for it. Every single Republican in the United States
    Congress voted against it. And we gave it to the United States, and I
    think the people are with us and not with them.
        I believe most people in the United States think it was right for us
    to lower the taxes of 15 million working families, people working full
    time with children in the home, because they had modest wages. No one
    should work full time and raise kids and be in poverty. We can do better
    than that. I think people are for that. In Massachusetts, 184,000
    working families had their taxes lowered under our economic plan. And
    every one of the Members of Congress of the opposite party voted against
    it.
        Now, they said if our economic approach passed, instead of what we
    said, the deficit would explode and jobs would go away. That's what they
    said. Well, we've had plenty of time now, and what have we got? It was
    the Democrats, not the Republicans, under our approach that reduced the
    size of the Federal Government, that lowered the deficit 3 years in a
    row for the first time since Truman, that oversaw an economic recovery
    that produced 4.6 million new jobs--and a 2\1/2\ point decline in the
    unemployment rate in Massachusetts alone. They were wrong in what they
    said.
        Now, do we still have problems? You bet we do. There are still
    environmental challenges. There is still political reform. There is
    still welfare reform, And yes, there is still health care reform to
    face. But you should vote for the agents of change, not the agents of
    yesterday.
        I want to tell you something, folks. The ironies of this election
    continue to abound. Imagine this: Suppose Massachusetts had a Republican
    Senator--no, wait, wait, wait; no, listen--suppose Massachusetts had a
    Republican Senator who had voted for legislation to make the Federal
    Government the smallest it's been since John Kennedy was President, to
    reduce the deficit 3 years in a row, for economic recovery that produced
    an explosion of new jobs, for the toughest crime bill in a generation to
    be paid for by reducing the Federal Government, not with new taxes. The
    Republicans would be building a statue to this person. They should be
    building one to Ted Kennedy because that's what he voted for.
        So when you hear them spouting their liberal epithets, you know,
    ``Liberal, liberal, liberal,'' you say, ``All we know is, you guys
    didn't reduce the size of the Federal Government. We did. You guys
    talked about a crime bill. We passed one. You guys badmouthed the
    deficit. We low-

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    ered it. You guys talked about the economy. Our economy is coming
    back.'' Let us reward the agent of change. Let us reward people like
    Senator Ted Kennedy.
        Now, let me ask you this. I want you to draw this clear contrast. I
    was talking to several people just in the last week about Senator
    Kennedy, you know, because they say, ``Oh, he's been there too long.''
    I'll tell you something, you talk to anybody in Washington of either
    party who will tell you the truth, and they will tell you two things
    about your Senator. Number one, there is not a single, solitary Member
    of the United States Senate more interested in new ideas than he is, new
    ideas for the economy, new ideas for education, new ideas for the
    future. And the second thing they will tell you is that in the most
    partisan atmosphere in modern history, he is absolutely the ablest
    Member of the Congress at getting Republicans to vote with him and work
    with him to make this country a better place.
        Now, that is the choice you face: a program that's working, new
    ideas, an approach that is fair to people of all parties. What is the
    alternative? Look at what they did in the last week of the legislative
    session. They said no to environmental legislation. They said no to
    political reform. They, the Republican Senators, killed the Superfund
    bill to clean up toxic waste dumps. Everybody in America was for it, the
    chemical companies, the labor unions, the Sierra Club. We never had a
    bill that all those people agreed on. They couldn't agree on when the
    sun comes up in the morning. There was literally--there was nobody in
    America against the Superfund bill except more than 40 Republican
    Senators. And why? Because they would have rather left the poison in the
    ground than let Ted Kennedy come home and say he helped to clean it up.
    That is wrong. We can do better than that. We must go forward. We can do
    better.
        And let me tell you this: You take this contract on America they put
    out very seriously, and you look at it. You look at what it does. They
    promise you--listen to this, it sounds great, made my ears perk up when
    I heard it--``Give us power, give us power, and we will increase
    defense, revitalize Star Wars, give everybody a tax cut--mostly to the
    wealthy, but we'll tell you about that later--and balance the budget.''
    Presto.
        Does that sound familiar? It's a trillion dollar deal. Now, folks,
    this is election year. It is almost election time. I would love to make
    you a trillion dollars' worth of promises. And with a trillion dollars'
    worth of hot checks, I could show everybody in this house a good time
    tonight. [Laughter] We could have a good time.
        But the job of people and responsibility is to do right, not hold
    out false hopes. It is not to sacrifice the future of our children to
    give people a quick fix today. This is wrong, this contract, and we must
    say it is wrong, and we must vote against it, and we must stand against
    it. This is wrong.
        If you let them do this, they will take us back to where--do you
    remember what it was like in Massachusetts and New England in the
    eighties? They will explode the deficit. You'll have cuts in Medicare.
    You won't have any more statements like, ``I'm helping you with your
    water rates, or your sewer rates.'' They will never fund this crime bill
    to bring the police to the streets of your communities to make them
    safer. These things will not happen. We'll start shipping jobs overseas
    again, and they'll put the economy right back in the ditch, all the time
    trying to find somebody else to blame.
        Stand up against this contract. Stand up against the naysayers.
    Stand up for somebody who said yes to America, yes to the future, yes to
    our children. Don't go back. Reelect Ted Kennedy. Stand up for America.
    Go to the future. God bless you. We can do it.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:45 p.m. in Nevins Hall at the Framingham
    Memorial Building. In his remarks, he referred to Mark Roosevelt,
    Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, and Representative Ed Markey.