    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 23, 1995]
    [Pages 1664-1671]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the AFL-CIO Convention in New York City
    October 23, 1995

        The President. Thank you very much for the wonderful welcome. Thank
    you, Tom, for the great introduction. I wish I'd been here to hear it.
    [Laughter] But I appreciate it.
        You know, I've taken so many controversial positions in the last 3
    years, I thought I'd come here and tell you what you ought to do in this
    election. [Laughter] You should elect--listen to this--you ought to
    elect an Irish-American from the Bronx who comes out of the Service
    Employees Union. [Laughter] I just want you to know that whatever you
    do, I intend to be there with you every step of the way. And I know how
    important this is. [Applause] Thank you.
        Let me say before I get into my remarks, I have just come, as I
    think all of you know, from Hyde Park and a meeting with President
    Yeltsin of Russia. We made a lot of progress today in agreeing to work
    toward peace in Bosnia, something that concerns every citizen of the
    world whose conscience has been shocked by all the children and other
    innocent people who have been killed there.
        We also agreed on working together, very importantly, to control the
    spread of nuclear materials, something that is a very serious problem in
    the aftermath of the cold war, to minimize the prospect that terrorists
    will ever be able to get small amounts of nuclear material and make
    bombs out of them.
        And finally, President Yeltsin agreed with me that we should go for
    the strongest possible comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty next year.
    And that means we will probably get it, and the world will be much safer
    as a result of it.
        I know that you have--all of you--and I came here more than anything
    else just to thank you, because I know that you have waged a strong and
    passionate grassroots campaign for a year now to oppose the cuts in
    worker safety and job training, in education and health care, being
    considered in the Congress. The White House mailroom is jammed with
    postcards from union retirees. [Applause] Thank you. This may be the
    high-tech age, but you have got the Capitol Hill switchboards groaning
    with calls from your members. And I say, send more. And I know that
    those ads you're running have gotten some Members of Congress suffering
    with heartburn. And we just need to pour it on a little more. I thank
    you for that.
        I come here today with a simple message: This is a very great
    country. You helped to make it that way. We're on the edge of a new
    century. We're living in a time of great change. No one can perceive
    clearly all the implications of that change.
        We know that we've moved from an industrial age to an information
    and technology age, which, as all of you know in your own experience,
    even industry and agriculture is infused today with more technology. We
    know we have moved from the bipolar world of the cold war to a global
    village in which we have dreamed of new possibilities but also a lot of
    new vulnerabilities because of the changes that are going on.
        And we know we've got to somehow harness this change to benefit
    ordinary people in our country and throughout the world. We have to do
    it consistent with the basic values that made America great and that
    make life worth living, values that your movement embodies: a commitment
    to opportunity for every American; to the dignity of work; to the
    commitment that the family should be strengthened and children should be
    nurtured and parents should be hon-

    [[Page 1665]]

    ored; a recognition that we have to go forward or backward together and
    therefore it is crazy for us to be divided by race, by region, by
    income, in any way that in any way saps our strength; and the
    determination to keep this country the strongest nation on Earth. Those
    are the things which have animated the labor movement in the later half
    of the 20th century. And those are the values that will take us into the
    21st century.
        Three years ago, you helped the American people to send me to
    Washington to uphold these values and to turn our economy around. I had
    a commitment to make the American dream real for all Americans in the
    21st century and to make sure that our country would remain the
    strongest country in the world. I had a simple strategy to harness
    change to benefit all of us. I thought we needed to be faithful to the
    mainstream values I just mentioned. I thought we needed a middle class
    economic strategy to grow the middle class and shrink the under class. I
    thought we needed a modern Government that would be less bureaucratic,
    more entrepreneurial, but still strong enough to take care of the
    business that the people need done.
        The lion's share of the credit belongs to you and the rest of the
    American people, but we're moving in the right direction. And I know
    that our policies had something to do with it. We've got 7\1/2\ million
    new jobs in this country, after the slowest job growth in the country
    since the Great Depression, in the 4 years before I took office. We've
    got 2\1/2\ million more homeowners, 2 million new small business people,
    the lowest combined rate of inflation and unemployment in 25 years. Our
    country is safer and stronger. For the first time since the dawn of the
    nuclear age, there's not a single solitary nuclear missile pointed at
    the people of the United States of America. And I'm proud of that. And
    by the grace of God, from Northern Ireland to Haiti to the Middle East,
    now to Bosnia, the United States is a strong partner in pushing for
    peace.
        Maybe most important of all, this country seems to be slowly coming
    together around its values again. It's hard to turn a great country
    around, but when we get going in a certain direction, we can make a real
    difference. In almost every State, in this great city where you're
    meeting, the crime rate is down; the murder rate is down; the welfare
    rolls are down; the food stamp rolls are down. Believe it or not, the
    poverty rate is down, and the teen pregnancy rate has dropped for 2
    years in a row. America is coming back and moving together.
        And we proved you could do it together. Instead of just condemning
    the Government the way my predecessors did, we made a partnership with
    the Federal employees, and in a balanced and fair and disciplined way,
    we tried to downsize the Government so that this big Government attack
    is a myth today. But we left our Government strong enough for the
    employees that are there to do their jobs. And we just didn't throw
    anybody on the street; we gave them good buyout provisions. We tried to
    protect their retirement. We treated them and their families with
    decency and the honor and the respect they were entitled to after the
    years they had served the United States of America. And that's the way
    this ought to be done everywhere.
        Let me tell you what the Federal employees are doing, just a few
    things. I could talk all day about it. But Federal employees working in
    the Commerce Department, in the Export-Import Bank, in other areas, have
    helped to create good jobs, many of them union jobs, in America by
    increasing our exports 4 percent, 10 percent, and 16 percent this year,
    in the last 3 years. A lot of that was done because of aggressive
    actions by people who work for the United States Government.
        The Federal Emergency Management Agency--we've had as many natural
    disasters to deal with in the last 3 years as any time I can remember.
    And it is probably the most popular arm of the Federal Government
    because the Federal employees have been there in a timely, aggressive,
    effective fashion when they were needed, whether it was for floods in
    the Middle West or fires and earthquakes in the West or anything else.
    And I am proud of that.
        And let me tell you something I'm especially proud of. Business Week
    magazine, which is hardly an arm of the Federal Government or the
    Democratic Party, every year gives awards to businesses that perform at
    the highest level of efficiency in a number of categories. And one of
    their categories is for customer service over the telephone. So the
    businesses that compete, for example, are Southwest Airlines or L.L.
    Bean or, you know, anybody that you call on the telephone. You know who
    won this year? The Social Security Administration of the Federal
    Government won that award.

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        These Federal employees operate a Medicare program that has a 2
    percent administrative cost, lower than any private insurance program in
    the United States of America, something you rarely hear about in the
    debate going on in Congress today. They have implemented a crime bill
    that's putting 100,000 police on the streets of America, and they're
    doing it on time and under budget. They have implemented the motor voter
    law, the family leave law, both those things that you helped to get.
        They have been able to be much tougher in capturing large quantities
    of drugs before they come into this country. Without going into a bunch
    of immigrant bashing, they have been able to in a disciplined way
    strengthen our ability to reduce the problems of illegal immigration in
    the United States. And they have fought discrimination, something that
    was out of fashion for the Federal Government to do until this
    administration came in. And I thank them for it.
        And guess what? We've been able to prove you can grow the economy
    and be decent to working people, something that the people who were
    there before and the people who are in the Congress today in dominant
    positions apparently don't believe. If you look at what's happened--and
    I'm sure Tom mentioned a lot of this--but when we repealed my
    predecessors' antiunion Executive orders that denied American workers
    their rights from private industry to public service, it didn't hurt the
    economy. The economy got better, not worse. When we said in no uncertain
    terms that you ought to have a fair, decent, effective NLRB, and we did
    our best to provide that, the economy got better, not worse. It didn't
    undermine the American economy.
        When we refused to go along with repealing Davis-Bacon and the
    service contract law, the economy didn't collapse; it helped to create
    more high-wage jobs, not fewer. And when we began to crack down on
    sweatshops where unscrupulous employers make illegal immigrants work in
    prisonlike conditions, depriving them of the minimum wage, overtime pay,
    a safe workplace, and the right to organize, it will make us stronger,
    not weaker.
        And when we have refused to go along with the attempts of some
    people to weaken our ability to provide a safe workplace, it has not
    weakened the economy; it has helped to make the American economy
    stronger. It is time we accepted a fundamental lesson: Treating working
    people in a decent, fair, humane, enlightened way gives you a stronger
    American economy, not a weaker one.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you.
        Now, we do have some real challenges before us. You and I know that
    this recovery's benefits have not been spread evenly to all Americans.
    We know that we've been in a time of increasing inequality. By the way,
    this is what usually happens when you move from one economic model to
    another. When we move from the agricultural age to the industrial age,
    the labor movement grew up because there were so many people who were
    being exploited, not benefiting from the benefits of the new industrial
    age. So whenever you change in a huge way the way people work and live
    and relate to each other and the rest of the world, some will be well-
    positioned and do well; others will not be.
        That's why people need to come together, because you know in the end
    you cannot sustain progress unless everybody can benefit. That's one of
    the big reasons we had the Great Depression, because people did not
    understand that everybody had to have a stake in the future in order for
    free enterprise to flourish.
        And so we have that happening today, where people who are well-
    positioned tend to do well; others work harder for less and become more
    insecure. There are some fundamental things we have to do about it.
    First and most elementally, it is high time we raise the minimum wage.
    It is wrong--[applause]. Thank you. If we do not do that, next year the
    minimum wage will reach a 40-year low in purchasing power. That is not
    my idea of the 21st century America I want our children and
    grandchildren to live in. I want us to go up together.
        It also will be good business. People will have more money to
    consume, and people who are presently out of the work force will be
    attracted to get back into it. There is no evidence, no evidence, and I
    have read all the studies--at least I've read fair summaries of all the
    studies. I don't want to--[laughter]--there is no evidence that the
    minimum wage, a modest increase in the minimum wage, will cause
    unemployment. There is every evidence that it will strengthen America
    and bring us together.
        The second thing I think we need to do is to make some changes that
    recognize that there

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    is a fundamental difference in the nature of unemployment today and
    unemployment 30 years ago. The unemployment compensation system, the
    whole setup was designed for people who were laid off when there was a
    slowdown and then picked right back up by their employers when the
    economy picked up again. It was designed to give people a way to just
    get by until they got called back.
        As recently as 30 years ago, 80 percent--85 percent of the people
    who were laid off and collected unemployment were called back to the
    same job from which they were laid off. Today, over 80 percent of the
    people who are laid off are not called back to the same job from which
    they are laid off. All of you know that. Therefore, I have proposed
    having the Labor Department, working with the Education Department,
    create a ``GI bill'' for America's workers, which consolidates all of
    our training programs, puts more money into it, and gives every person
    who loses a job a right to get a voucher to take to the program that you
    want, whether it's a union apprenticeship program, a union training
    program, the local community college. Whatever is best needed for the
    people that are unemployed, they ought to have it. And I think we ought
    to do it immediately.
        The second thing that we ought to do--if we're going to have a tax
    cut we ought to target it to working families and what they need the
    most, which is help raising their children, paying for their child care,
    and getting an education. So I think we ought to have a tax deduction
    for the cost of all education after high school. Now, that would help
    working people a lot. That would help.
        The third thing I will say is--and I know we have sometimes
    disagreed on this--I believe that we win when we expand trade. So it's
    not enough to have more free trade, which I favor, we also have to have
    more fair trade. That's what the Japanese auto agreement was about. And
    thank you, Owen Bieber, for supporting us and for finally giving us a
    chance to crack some of those markets that have been denied American
    workers for too long. And we're going to keep doing things like that all
    the way down.
        Against that background, this is how I think you ought to see this
    balanced budget fight. What has worked for us the last 2\1/2\ years?
    Mainstream values, work and family and responsibility and community and
    treating people with dignity, all people, without regard to their race
    or their region or income; believing that you have to lift working
    people up if you want other people to do well: That has worked for us.
    What's worked for us? Middle class economics, help the small business
    people, help the entrepreneurs, also help to grow the middle class
    working people and shrink the under class: That's what works. That's
    what is at stake in this budget battle.
        This is not--I want to say this, and I want you to go home and tell
    everybody you know this--this is not a battle about balancing the
    budget. That has nothing to do with what is going on in Washington
    today. I gave the Congress a balanced budget. You'd be better off if we
    could balance the budget. When we quadrupled the debt in 12 years before
    I showed up, what happened? We had to spend more and more money on
    interest on the debt. We had less and less money to invest in worker
    training, in new technology, and the kinds of things that will grow the
    economy, raise incomes, educate our children.
        It would be a good thing to do. But we have to do that, like
    everything else, consistent with our values and our objectives. That is
    what is at stake. It is, what kind of America are we going to live in?
        I've given the Congress a balanced budget. It cuts all kinds of
    spending. It eliminates hundreds of programs. But it increases our
    investment in education, in technology, in research. It protects instead
    of hurts the old, the poor, the disabled, the little children on
    Medicare and Medicaid. It supports investment in worker safety and in a
    clean environment and in the kinds of national treasures that we share
    together. That is the kind of balanced budget we need.
        And that is what I want to talk to you about. I am not about to do
    something that I think will prevent us from doing what I ran for
    President to do: giving every American a shot at the American dream and
    making sure this is the strongest, finest country in the world in the
    21st century. I am not going to do that. And you shouldn't put up with
    it. You shouldn't put up with it.
        Now, here's what I mean. I'm going to give you the 10 greatest hits
    or so of this present budget. This is not the Letterman show, and so it
    won't all be funny. You may have to laugh a couple of times to keep from
    crying, but here's what this is really about. Here's what the real
    contract is.

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        We all say we believe in honoring our parents for what they have
    done for us. And Medicare is a way of honoring our parents. We have to
    slow the rate of growth of medical inflation. We have to secure the
    Medicare Trust Fund. I presented a budget which will do that.
        We have to recognize that health care is changing. I have no problem
    with giving seniors the option to join managed care plans if they can
    get lower costs or better services. I think we should do that. I'm
    sympathetic with doctors and hospitals and their need to have some
    changes in the law so they can work together to compete with insurance
    companies to provide managed care. I'm not against that. But I'll tell
    you what I am against. I'm against this budget that was passed that,
    believe it or not, makes it easier to commit waste, fraud, and abuse.
    When the Federal Government says up to 10 percent of the money may be
    wasted, they passed a budget to make it easier to commit waste, fraud,
    and abuse but harder for the poorest, the oldest, and the sickest
    seniors to make sure their health care needs are met. That is wrong. I
    don't like it. I won't support it. And if it passes, I will veto it. It
    is wrong.
        I want to talk to you about the Medicaid program. There's a lot of
    AFSCME workers here who work in health care institutions that depend
    upon Medicaid. New York City has a whole health care network that
    depends not just on Medicare but Medicaid. Most people think Medicaid is
    the welfare health program. Let me tell you--70 percent of the Medicaid
    money goes to the elderly and the disabled for nursing home care, for
    in-home care, for physician care. Thirty percent of the Medicaid money
    does go to poor people, not all of them on welfare, some of them even
    working for very poor wages. And most of that money goes to take care of
    the little children. Over one in five children in the United States of
    America is eligible for Medicaid help for health care. And all those
    kids, they may not be in your family, but they're your kids. And 20
    years from now, they're either going to be in jail or in school or in
    the workplace. And they're going to be a big part of our future. And I
    don't know about you, but when I retire, I want them out there working,
    making lots of money, taking care of me. And I want to take care of
    their health right now.
        So my idea of the 21st century is not a Medicaid program that takes
    away the money that helps the poorest seniors to pay their part of the
    Medicare program. That's right; they get rid of it, $10 billion. We help
    the poorest old folks pay their copays. We help them pay the fees they
    owe under Medicare because they don't have any money. There's a lot of
    old folks out there. There's folks still living on $300 a month. This
    budget takes it all away. And there's been a study which estimates that
    it may take at least a million elderly people out of the Medicare
    program.
        I was in Texas the other night at a fundraiser, and a doctor came up
    to me. A doctor came up to me, and he said, ``You keep fighting on
    this.'' He said, ``I've been a doctor a long time. I remember when I did
    not have any older patients, before Medicare, before Medicaid, when I
    had no older patients, because older people were too proud to come to
    the doctor if they couldn't pay their bills. So a lot of them just
    stayed home and got sick and died.'' It is wrong. I will not put up with
    it. It is not right. And you shouldn't put up with it either. It is not
    right. It is not right.
        I want to tell you one more thing about this Medicaid plan. It says,
    ``Oh, we're going to block-grant this to the States. We're going to get
    these terrible Federal rules and regulations out of the States' hair.''
    I was a Governor for 12 years. I used to sing that song. [Laughter] I
    believe in that.
        Our administration--don't you let anybody tell you this is about
    States' rights--our administration has given more waivers, more freedom
    to get out from under Federal rules to State governments to experiment
    with moving people from welfare to work or serving more people, getting
    health insurance to more people, than the last two administrations
    combined. More in 2\1/2\ years than they did in 12 years. This is not
    about giving the States flexibility.
        But let me tell you the kind of things they want to let the States
    do and what they don't want to let the States do, and it will tell you
    what's really behind this. They've adopted their Medicaid programs. And
    among other things, they say that the State ought to get Medicaid block-
    granted and they ought to have the right to get rid of the so-called
    spousal impoverishment rule. That's Government language. You know what
    that means? That means if an elderly couple lived to be 78 years old and
    they've been married 50 years and they're living on their Social
    Security and one of them gets so sick that he or she needs to go in the
    nursing

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    home, they want to give back to the State governments the right to tell
    the one that doesn't go to the nursing home, ``You want your wife or
    your husband to get any help? You've got to sell your car, sell your
    house, clean out your bank account, give it to us, and then we'll give
    you a little help. We don't know how you're going to live.'' I don't
    like that. That is not my idea of the 21st century I want to live in.
        But you know what? In the next breath, do you know what they did?
    They took away from the States--they say, ``We're going to give you lots
    of flexibility and a little less money. And we want you to run it
    however you want to, but, oh, oh, there's one thing you've been doing
    we're not going to let you do anymore. Right now you can bargain with
    the drug companies to get the lowest possible price for drugs for
    elderly people and little kids. And we're not going to let you do that
    anymore, because the drug companies don't want us to. So I'm sorry, you
    will have to do more with less money, but here's something you can't
    do.'' I don't know about you, but I don't get driving up the price of
    drugs and driving old folks into the poorhouse. I don't think that's
    right. That's not the America I want to live in. And I'm going to do
    everything I can to stop it. And I want you to help me.
        Now, I want to talk to you about education. Everybody's for
    education. You ask anybody in the Congress, are you for education? They
    say, absolutely. But you've always got to ask the next question; the
    first question is never enough. I'll tell you--you know, the best story
    I know about that--you know, there's a--this minister was sort of a--not
    a very effective minister, and people would go to sleep in his sermons.
    And he was overcome, and he prayed day-in and day-out for inspiration so
    he could finally give a barn-burning sermon and everybody would stand
    up. And their hearts would be purified, and their spiritual zeal would
    be great.
        So he worked so hard on this. And he showed up, and he gave the
    sermon of his life. And people were stomping and clapping and even in
    this staid church were shouting amen. And he got to the final line of
    his sermon; he said, ``I want everybody that wants to go to heaven to
    stand up.'' And the whole congregation stood up, except one woman that
    hadn't missed church in 45 years. And he was crestfallen. He said,
    ``Sister Jones, don't you want to go to heaven when you die?'' And she
    leapt up, she said, ``I'm sorry, I thought you were trying to get up a
    load to go right now.'' [Laughter]
        So you always got to ask the next question. Everybody's for
    education. Our budget balances the budget and increases our investment
    in education by $40 billion--by $40 billion over 7 years--by making
    choices and setting priorities. Why? Because if 22 percent of the kids
    in this country are poor enough to be on Medicaid, they need a little
    extra help through Head Start to get off to a good start in school,
    because a lot of schools are too poor to have the class sizes they need
    or the computers we want them to have; because a lot of kids are in
    danger going to and from school, and we need to give schools more help
    to remain safe and drug-free; because we want to make it possible for
    everybody to go to college.
        When I ran for President, I came here and I made a specific
    commitment. I said if you will vote for me and get me elected, I'll do
    everything I can to cut the cost of college loans, to improve the
    repayment on college loans, and then to be tougher on people who
    default. We cut the default rate in half, but we also cut the cost of
    college loans. We made repayment easier. And to boot, we added more
    scholarships.
        And enrollment is going up, but nowhere near what we need. I want
    every middle class family in this country and every poor family in this
    country to be able to send their kids to college. And I don't want
    anybody ever from now on to have to walk away from a college education
    because of the cost. That's my idea of the 21st century.
        So when the Congress presents a budget that says, ``No, it's all
    right if several thousand more kids--20, 30, whatever it is--more kids
    don't get to go to Head Start and we have to remove them; it's all right
    if we don't help as many schools with safe and drug-free programs as we
    were; it's all right if a whole lot of schools now can't use that money
    for their poor kids for the smaller classes and the computers; it's okay
    if because the people that lost money on the direct loan program, the
    special interests, want their money back, so we're just going to kill
    this program that the Government's running that's got lower cost college
    loans and better repayment terms. We're going to get rid of that, and to
    boot, we'll get rid of somewhere between 150,000 and 380,000
    scholarships.'' I don't know about you folks, that is not the kind of
    America

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    I want for the 21st century. And I'm going to do everything I can to
    stop it. It is wrong. And it's bad for our economy. It doesn't make
    sense.
        And we're getting a little closer to home now. You say to people,
    are you for family values? Why, of course we are. Who could be against
    it? Most of those who were there last time--they're in the majority
    now--when we asked them to stand up for family values by adopting the
    family and medical leave law, they said no. And we said yes. And there
    are families that are stronger today because of the family and medical
    leave law because they don't lose their jobs when there's a kid sick or
    a parent dying or one of them gets sick. It's a better country. It's a
    stronger country. And it's a stronger economy because of that.
        So what do we mean? Well, family values to me means safe streets, a
    clean environment, economic opportunity, fair taxes, secure pensions;
    let's just start there. Well, at least one House of Congress wants to
    eliminate our program to put 100,000 police on the street and to give
    communities--the only block grant they don't like is the one we passed
    to give communities the power to do what they can to prevent crime, to
    give our children something to say yes to instead of something to say no
    to, the one all the mayors love, all the Governors love, everybody
    thinks is great--they don't like that. Well, making us less safe is not
    my idea of family values.
        Then they want to put 315 of our national parks and other national
    facilities up for sale, including Franklin Roosevelt's home where I was
    today. I know you find some of this unbelievable, but it's true. That's
    on the list. They have proposed to do all kinds of things to make it
    harder to preserve clean air, clean water, safe food. That's not my idea
    of family values. In economic opportunity, there's not a company in
    America that if they could avoid it in 1995 would cut research,
    technology, or training. But this budget cuts research, technology, and
    training. That's not my idea of how to build strong families. And worst
    of all, there's $148 billion of hidden taxes and fees on working
    families while they propose to give people in my income group a tax cut.
    And that's not my idea of the kind of 21st century I want to live in.
        Now, I want you to listen to this. The Wall Street Journal--hardly
    an arm of the Democratic Party--[laughter]--reported the other day that
    if this budget passes with all of the taxes in it and all the tax cuts
    in it, with all the tax cuts in it the group of Americans as a group who
    make less than $30,000 a year, which is 51 percent f the American
    people, will have greater tax hikes than tax cuts. I get a tax cut, and
    we're going to soak people like that?
        You know, in 1993, one of the best things about our economic program
    was that we doubled the family tax credit, the earned-income tax credit,
    which had bipartisan support, signed into law by Gerald Ford, supported
    by Ronald Reagan, increased by George Bush, and we doubled it. Why?
    Because I wanted to be able to say to the American people, ``Look,
    you've got to choose work and family over welfare and dependence. And
    anybody who'll work 40 hours a week with children in the house--I don't
    care how low their pay is--we will not tax them into poverty. We will
    use the tax system to lift them out of poverty.'' That is the principle.
    That is the principle. And it's the right thing to do.
        I mean, I thought the game plan was we were supposed to be growing
    the middle class and shrinking the under class. They want to cut this by
    more than I increased it. They want to kick people out of the middle
    class and then pull the ladder up so poor people can't work their way
    into it. You want to get more people on welfare? Raise taxes on people
    with two kids making $11,000, $12,000 a year, and they will say, no
    thank you. This does not make sense. It violates our values. It violates
    our interest. It is bad for the economy. It is wrong for America. And if
    I can stop it with a veto pen or with my voice or whatever it takes, I
    am going to do everything I can to stop it. And I want you to help me,
    too.
        Audience members. Veto! Veto! Veto!
        The President. This is the last issue I want you to focus on. These
    are great hits. I want you to remember this. I want you to go home, I
    want you to talk to friends in the workplace, and I want you to talk to
    friends who aren't in your union. I want you to talk to people at
    church, at the bowling alley, at the ball park, wherever two or more are
    gathered. I want you to talk to people. I want people to know about
    this. This is their country, ju st like it's your country. This is not
    about me or the Republicans in Congress. It's about the future of the
    American family, the future of the American workplace, the future of the
    United States. And so I want you to listen to this. This is the greatest
    last hit.

    [[Page 1671]]

        During the 1980's, when--you know, that ``everything goes'' decade
    where everything was going to trickle down to ordinary people--thousands
    and thousands of corporations transferred some $20 billion out of their
    employees' pension funds for buyouts and other purposes. An awful lot of
    workers lost their life savings. Last December, one of the proudest
    things I was able to do in the last Congress, even after the November
    election, the Congress passed a bill that saved 8\1/2\ million American
    pensions and stabilized 40 million others that were in danger of being
    in trouble. I don't know what the retirement income of 48\1/2\ million
    Americans is worth to the strength, the stability of America; to our
    pro-family, pro-work values; to our economic future, but I think it's
    worth an awful lot.
        Now, as if we haven't learned anything from the eighties and didn't
    have to do that, this Republican budget would allow companies to
    withdraw money from their workers' pension funds to use it for whatever
    reason they want.
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. For whatever reason they want, corporate buyouts,
    bonuses, any reason.
        Now, folks, we just had to fix this last year. You know, I don't
    remember as well as I used to; my circuits are kind of jammed. But I can
    at least remember what I did last year. [Laughter] That is not my idea
    of what I want America to look like in the 21st century, taking good
    middle class people that worked hard all their lives, paid into their
    pension, showed up at work, did everything they were supposed to, and,
    ``Oh, I'm sorry, your pension is gone.'' One of two things is going to
    happen. Either the Government will have to bail it out again, in which
    case the deficit reduction won't take place. Or we'll throw them into
    the street, and we'll one more time shrink the middle class and grow the
    under class. Say no to that. Say no to looting the pension funds. Say
    no. It's wrong. It's wrong.
        And look, the thing that bothers me about this is that this budget
    would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory This country is in better
    shape than it was 2\1/2\ years ago. We're moving in the right direction.
    What we need to do is build on what we've done, not tear it down. We
    need to build on middle class economics. We need to build on an economy
    that has the largest number of new small businesses in history. We need
    to build on the best time for education in the last 30 years, in the
    last Congress. We need to build on medical reforms that are slowing the
    rate of medical inflation without stripping elderly people of the
    security and dignity of knowing that their health care is there. We do
    not need to tear it down. We need to prove we can make the environment
    and the economy go together, not walk away from our common
    responsibilities.
        Folks, this is about more, even more, than all the things that we
    are concerned about that directly affect any of us individually. This is
    about what kind of country we're going to be. This is about what kind of
    people we're going to be. It's about whether we're going to live by the
    values we all say we believe in. It's about whether the American dream
    is going to be alive in the 21st century. And what we really have to do
    is to do what that sign says. If we'll just stand up for America's
    working families, if we'll just do what we know is right, if we'll use
    every tool at our command--I will use the tools at my command, but I
    want you to go home, and I want you to talk to people in the streets and
    say we're moving this country. This country is going into the 21st
    century. Don't let these people take us back. If it takes a veto, you'll
    have it. But I need you in the streets standing up for America's future.
        God bless you, and thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:35 p.m. in the Imperial Ballroom at the
    Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. In his remarks, he referred to Tom
    Donahue, president, AFL-CIO, and Owen Bieber, former president, United
    Auto Workers.