[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

[[Page 1774]]

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.

[[Page 1775]]

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

[[Page 1776]]

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

[[Page 1777]]

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.