[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 23, 1994]
[Pages 1843-1846]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Rally for Democratic Candidates in Seattle, Washington
October 23, 1994

    The President. Thank you so much. Thank you.
    Audience member. Give them hell!
    The President.  You're going to help, aren't you?
    Thank you, Governor Lowry, for your friendship and your support and 
your leadership here. Thank you for all the things you said. Thank you, 
ladies and gentlemen, for making me feel so very welcome today.
    I hope all the folks who have joined us here who will tell the rest 
of the world about what we did, took notice of Larry Brown from Boeing 
and Sergeant John Manning and Mikelle Mathers. You see, they represent 
the real Washington and the real America we ought to be concerned about 
in this country. They're the kind of people that my friend Norm Rice 
works for every day. They're the kind of people that the members of this 
congressional delegation support.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to the ones who are here, to 
Norm Dicks, for his friendship to me and his leadership, especially on 
defense issues; to Jim McDermott, for his courageous and never-flagging 
struggle to get all Americans health care; to Mike Kreidler, who in his 
first term has worked so hard to combat violence and to cut the deficit 
while the Republicans just talked about it. I want to thank Maria 
Cantwell for a lot of things, but especially for working so hard, along 
with Senator Murray, to make sure Washington continues to be a center of 
innovation in software and computer technology, to work with government 
and industry partnerships to make sure that this is part of our 21st 
century economy and part of your 21st century future. Before he leaves 
the Congress, I want to thank Al Swift for being a good friend and a 
good supporter and ask you to replace him with Harriet Spanel.
    And I want to say, every time I am around Ron Sims, I like him more 
and more and more. I was sitting there listening to his speech today, in 
the place where we were just before we came over here, thinking about, 
you know, this will be a real dose for the U.S. Senate, I mean, a real 
person. Instead of somebody that postures about being tough on crime and 
then votes against the crime bill, you've got a guy who goes out and 
puts his life on the line to try to fight crime and violence and give 
kids a better chance at life. Instead of pontificating about family and 
work, you've got a man who's worked all his life, raised a good family, 
and then spent a fair amount of his time trying to make sure everybody 
else could raise their family, too. So I hope you will bring him home in 
the next 2 weeks, and I want to say more about that. But I can tell you 
it will not only be good for you, it would do the rest of the United 
States Senate, especially the crowd on the other side, a world of good 
to have to deal with somebody who's actually lived about the things they 
spout off about all the time.
    Folks, I think it would not be an overstatement to say that this is 
kind of an unusual election. [Laughter] And the psychology is sort of 
strange. And there is a huge gap between what is actually going on and 
what people have been told for 2 years is going on, a huge gap. Now, 
this is a very great country and a very good country. And given the 
information and

[[Page 1844]]

the facts, the people will nearly always do the right thing.
    But I want you to think about this: I went to Washington 21 months 
ago to restore the American dream, to get our country together, to take 
up problems too long ignored because my predecessors didn't want to deal 
with all the heat that would come down, to seize opportunities that we 
had too long walked away from.
    My mission was pretty simple: I wanted to put Government on the side 
of ordinary Americans. I wanted to do it by supporting work and family 
with things like family leave and tax cuts for working people who work 
full time and have kids in the home that are just barely above poverty, 
and they ought never to be in poverty if you work full time and you got 
kids in your house. I wanted Government to be on the side of ordinary 
Americans by empowering people so they could assume responsibility for 
their own lives. That's what our bill to have school-to-work 
apprenticeships was about, so that young people that don't go to college 
can at least train for good jobs. That's what the middle class college 
loan program was all about, to give lower interest rates and longer 
repayment terms so that nobody--I mean, nobody--ever walks away from a 
college education because they're afraid they can't afford to go or will 
never be able to pay their debts back.
    With 30 years of accumulated social problems, I wanted a serious 
attack on crime and violence. That's what the Brady bill and the crime 
bill and all of its facets was all about. That's what our welfare reform 
efforts, to liberate people so they can succeed as parents and workers 
and won't be on the dole for a lifetime--that's what that is all about.
    I wanted to get this economy going again. That's what bringing down 
the deficit and investing more in new technologies and expanding trade 
for Washington State and all the other States in the country--that's 
what that was all about, to get the economy going again. And I wanted to 
change the way the Government works. I wanted us to do more with less. 
There are more than 70,000 fewer people working for the National 
Government than there were the day I took office. There will soon be a 
reduction in the life of this budget of about 270,000. Our Government 
will be the smallest it's been since John Kennedy, and every cent of the 
savings will go back to you at the grassroots to help you fight crime 
and build a more just society.
    I wanted to make a world more peaceful and prosperous. That's what 
all these trade expansions are all about. That's what's selling all this 
high-tech material and products and the airplanes and the apples--that's 
what it's all about, letting people prosper in a global economy. I 
wanted you to be safer. And that's why I'm so proud of the fact that 
these little children are the first generation of Americans since the 
dawn of nuclear power that do not have Russian missiles pointing at 
them. I am proud of that, glad they will not have to worry about a North 
Korean nuclear power threatening their future, glad the Chinese have 
agreed not to sell their dangerous missiles.
    I wanted a world in which we could have a more peaceful and 
prosperous and democratic future. I'm proud of what we did in helping 
the election in South Africa and the peace process in Northern Ireland 
and standing up to Saddam Hussein and bringing Father Aristide back to 
Haiti. I am proud of what we've been able to do to contribute to peace 
in the Middle East. And I hope you will pray for me and all those in the 
Middle East next week as we try to take the next big steps.
    Now that I told you this, let me ask you this: If Jim McDermott and 
Norm Dicks and Maria Cantwell and Mike Kreidler were Republicans running 
for reelection, and they said, ``Look, I gave you the smallest Federal 
Government since Kennedy, 3 years of deficit reduction for the first 
time since Truman, an explosive amount of economic growth, and finally 
some high-wage jobs coming back into our economy and the toughest crime 
bill in history,'' the Republican Party in Washington would be building 
a statue to each of them, not running against them. What is this? Isn't 
that right? Isn't that right? [Applause]
    What is going on here that they say these people are the apostles of 
big Government and they're wildly liberal and they're for taxes? Eight 
times as many Washington citizens got a tax cut as a tax rate increase 
in our economic program. Don't you forget that.
    How could people believe this? What is going on? Well, I'll tell you 
something, we live in a time when the negative is louder than the 
positive. The American people will nearly always, nearly always do the 
right thing if they know what it is. It used to be people didn't have 
enough information; now they have too much. And sometimes the people--
and it's not

[[Page 1845]]

all true, and it's hard to know what's relevant and what's irrelevant 
and what's important and what's not important. And people are just 
screaming at them all the time, trying to keep them in a turmoil, upset, 
agitated, disoriented. That's what our adversaries try to do. They 
figure if they can make people mad enough and disoriented enough, 
they'll just lash out at whoever's in and they will forget about what's 
happening.
    I was telling some folks this morning that a few months ago in one 
of my rarer times when I had a little time to reflect, I sat down with a 
pencil and a piece of paper, and I made out a list of everything I'd 
ever done in my life to make a living, from the time I went to work in a 
grocery store when I was 13, to clearing land, to cutting grass, to 
building houses, to having a wholesale comic book operation. I've done a 
lot of interesting things. And the thing I was trying to think of, is 
there any job I ever had that's like the job I've got now? [Laughter] 
And was it Governor? Well, Governor was a little like it, but the job 
that's most like the one I've got now was one I didn't ever make any 
money at. It was when I was in civic clubs in high school, and we used 
to do car washes to raise money. Kids still do that, don't they? And I 
liked to be the guy that wiped off the windshield. That's kind of what 
we need to do now.
    You think about it: If you're driving a car around and the 
windshield's all dirty, you'll think it's about to storm if the sun's 
shining bright. And if there are lots of things on the window, you'll 
think there's all kind of problems in the road, and it's just as clear 
as can be. And if it's really messed up, there may be a problem out 
there, and you won't see it, and you'll run smack dab into it. 
[Laughter] That's what I've got to do. We've got to wash America's 
windshield off in the next 2 weeks so they can see the light coming in.
    I look at Ron Sims; I think of the life he has lived and the values 
that virtually pour out of him when he talks. And I think, I don't 
believe most people in Washington State want a Senator who voted against 
family leave, against college loans, against tax breaks for low-income 
working people, against deficit reduction, voted for the crime bill and 
then against it when it became a political deal. I don't think they want 
that.
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. These people--you know, I don't think they want a 
Government that just screams and shouts and says no, no, no, no, a 
Government of fear, not hope; a Government of blame, not responsibility.
    You know, look what happened in the Senate at the end of this 
session. In the 1800's we had a filibuster, that is, a talkathon, about 
once every 6 years. And people said, well, once every 6 years something 
will come along, and you don't want to rush it; you just ought to talk 
it to death to make sure you're doing the right thing. And then in the 
1900's we got more verbose, and we've had about one a year. The partisan 
atmosphere has gotten so intense that in the last week, on the last 
weekend of this session of Congress, we had four filibusters on four 
different issues in one day. That is what they are doing.
    You take--let me just give you one example, the Superfund bill that 
their delaying tactics killed. There was nobody in America against the 
Superfund bill, hardly. We had the chemical companies and the labor 
unions and the Sierra Club. Shoot, those folks never agreed on anything. 
You couldn't get them to agree on what time the Sun was coming up 
tomorrow morning. [Laughter] But they agreed on the Superfund bill. They 
wanted to clean up those toxic dumps. Nobody in America was against it 
except slightly more than 40 Republican Senators. And they knew that no 
way we could ever get it up. And why were they against it? Because they 
would have rather left the poison in the ground than let Maria Cantwell 
and Mike Kreidler and Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott come back here and 
say they helped to clean it up. That is the truth.
    And so I say--and now they say, ``Give us power and we'll--give us 
power, we'll give everybody a big old tax cut, especially if you're 
really rich. And we'll spend lots more on defense, and we'll spend lots 
more to revitalize Star Wars, and we'll balance the budget.'' [Laughter] 
Does that sound familiar?
    Now, that costs a trillion dollars. You say, ``Well, how are you 
going to pay for this?'' They say, ``We'll tell you after the 
election.'' [Laughter] You know how it'll be paid for? You know what it 
would take? It would take a 30 percent across-the-board cut in every 
program in America. What will happen is just what happened before. It 
will explode the deficit. It will lead to unwise cuts--and we have cut 
Government;

[[Page 1846]]

they haven't--and it will lead to shipping our jobs overseas instead of 
bringing them back home to Washington State.
    We have to say, ``We tried that once. Thank you very much. We don't 
want to go back to the trickle-down economics and the divisive social 
policies that you gave us before. We don't want to go back. We don't 
want to go back.''
    I want you to think about this. I want you to think about this in 
the 2 weeks and a few days that remain. We've still got a lot of 
challenges in this country. We've got economic challenges. We've got 
social challenges. We've got important political reform and 
environmental and health care and welfare challenges to face. But this 
country's in better shape than it was 21 months ago. We have a 
Government that's done some important things for ordinary Americans. 
We've taken a serious stand against crime. There are more jobs. There is 
a lower deficit. It is a more peaceful world. We are in better shape.
    What we need to do now is to say to the American people and to say 
to the people in Washington, ``Look, it's up to you now. You've got to 
keep going into the future. You don't want to turn back now. You've got 
to choose hope over fear. You've got to empower people, not let somebody 
grab power with a bunch of cheap promises from yesterday. You have got 
to look at the future as it is and look at the facts as they are.''
    We've got to have everybody here thinking about what I did as a 
little boy. If you'll go out and you'll wipe off the windshields, if you 
will turn the lights on in Washington State, you will have Ron Sims for 
a United States Senator, and you will have these Congressmen back, and 
we'll have America going forward into the future.
    Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you. You can do it. You can 
do it.
    One more thing. Don't you dare walk out of here and just think about 
the cheering. Spend your time for the next 2 weeks talking to people who 
weren't here. Go have a cup of coffee with your neighbor. And if they're 
mad and upset and fuming, ask them to relax, take a deep breath, look at 
the pretty fall coming on, and talk about your country. The people of 
this country will do the right thing if they know the facts. And each of 
you should make a personal commitment to doing that, not only for them 
but for these kids here. You can do it. Turn the lights on. You can do 
it.

Note: The President spoke at 2:36 p.m. in the Flag Pavilion Room at the 
Seattle Center. In his remarks, he referred to Larry Brown, Boeing 
machinist; John Manning, Seattle police officer; Mikelle Mathers, 
AmeriCorps volunteer; Mayor Norman B. Rice of Seattle; and Harriet 
Spanel and Ron Sims, congressional candidates.