    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 2, 1996]
    [Pages 142-149]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Salem, New Hampshire
    February 2, 1996

        Thank you very much. I don't know about you, but I think Larry's got
    a real future in this speaking business. [Laughter] I thank him and Joe
    and Mike and Cheryl for welcoming me here. I thank your superintendent
    and your high school principal for making me feel welcome, and your
    students. And I thank the Salem band for playing. They did a very good
    job. I thought it was the Marine Band playing when I first heard. They
    did a terrific job.
        You know, it is true that 4 years ago when I first came here I
    walked into a room with Larry and six other people and I thought I had a
    crowd. We spoke to about 120 people then, and I was overwhelmed by the
    multitude. Tonight there are 3,000 people here and 2,000 more,
    apparently, who wanted to come and couldn't. And I can only say to all
    of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am very grateful to
    you.
        Just before I got off the plane today, when I was flying up here, my
    staff gave me a list of all of the scheduled stops I made in New
    Hampshire just from January 1st until February 18th, 1992, not counting
    the ones in October, November, and December, just the ones in those 6
    weeks. There were 75 different stops on that list.
        I'd like to say something to all of you as this campaign season
    begins again that I have said repeatedly to people in the White House
    for the last 4 years. The New Hampshire primary serves two purposes, not
    one. The obvious purpose that you think about and like and your leaders
    without regard to party have worked so hard to protect is that you have
    the first primary in the Nation. You get the first say. You have a
    disproportionate impact on who is nominated by each party.
        But what you should not underestimate is the other purpose that you
    serve, and perhaps in the long run, an even more valuable one for the
    United States because New Hampshire is a small State with a lot of
    communities and because it is the first primary. When I came here and
    went to town after town after town, to school after school after school,
    to business after business after business, and I sat across tables and I
    sat around coffee shops and I listened to people, and they asked
    questions and they told me of their experiences and I heard what they
    had to say, I learned more about my country than I ever could have
    learned in any other way.
        No one ever runs for President knowing enough about America to be
    President; New Hampshire helps people learn that if you go out and you
    listen and you reach out to the people and you give them a chance to
    share with you. And that happens for people whether they win in this
    State or not. The people always here are unfailingly courteous to the
    candidates and give them a chance to learn about America. You taught me
    a lot about America, and I thank you for it.
        Let me say, when I came here in 1991 and 1992, the focus in our
    country and certainly in this State was overwhelmingly on the condition
    of the economy, on the long recession, on the fact that the unemployment
    rate was so high, on the fact that so many businesses were going
    bankrupt and so many people were looking to the future without hope. And
    I asked the American people, as well as the people of New Hampshire, to
    give me a chance to serve as President because I had a very clear idea
    that in order to move into the 21st century the strongest country in the
    world, we had to provide economic opportunity to everyone, we had to
    expect more responsibility from all our citizens, and we had to pull
    together. And whether we liked it or not, even though the cold war was
    over, we had to continue to be the leading force for freedom and for
    peace in the world. I believed that then, and I believe it tonight, and
    that is the path we have taken.
        Tonight I would like to do, in an abbreviated fashion, what I
    attempted to do in the State

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    of the Union Address last week. I want to give you an account of where
    we have come in the last 3 years and where I believe we have to go.
        Compared with 3 years ago, our economy is stronger, as Larry said.
    We have, combined, the lowest rates of unemployment and inflation we've
    had in 27 years. We have almost 8 million new jobs in this economy. We
    have a million new jobs in autos and construction alone. We have a 15-
    year high in homeownership. For 3 years in a row, we have broken records
    in the number of new businesses started in America. Each successive year
    has been a record high.
        All those things are good things. In New Hampshire the unemployment
    rate has dropped from 7.6 percent to 3.2. For the last 3 years,
    businesses have been growing in number at 8 percent a year instead of
    shrinking, as they did before. Business failures are down. New Hampshire
    has 40,000 new jobs. That is a good record. We should all be proud of
    it. We have implemented the economic strategy I talked about here in
    every community: to cut the deficit in half, to expand trade to all-time
    highs, to invest in education and research and technology, and to sell
    American products all around the world. That strategy is working. We are
    moving forward with it. It is expanding opportunity for the American
    people.
        We have also been a stronger force for peace and freedom, even than
    I had imagined we might be, in the last 3 years. You can look at the
    Middle East, at Northern Ireland, at Haiti, at Bosnia, and you see the
    work of America standing up for peace. You look at the fact that we now
    have almost 180 nations committed not to get involved in the nuclear
    arms race, at the fact that the Russians and others have detargeted
    their nuclear missiles so that now there are no more nuclear missiles
    pointed at any American homes for the first time since the dawn of the
    nuclear age. That is encouraging.
        And perhaps most important of all, there is a real sense that
    Americans are becoming more responsible and are coming together more.
    The crime rate, the welfare rolls, the food stamp rolls, the poverty
    rolls, the teen pregnancy rates, all these are lower than they were, and
    that is a good thing. They're going in the right direction.
        Now, having said all that, all of us know that this country still
    faces some stiff challenges. It is an amazing thing to consider that in
    the last 3 years, we have produced in the United States in each year the
    largest number of self-made millionaires our country has ever produced--
    not people who were given their money, people just like you who earned
    it. And that's something we can be proud of. But we have to face the
    fact that in each of those 3 years most Americans worked harder and
    harder and did not get a raise. Even with 8 million new jobs nearly,
    most people still are working harder just to keep up. In this global
    economy with all of this technology, the pressures operate to hold
    people's wages down and many big companies keep laying people off so
    that there is a greater sense of insecurity.
        A lot of people don't feel that their employer would treat them the
    way the employer at Methuan mills did if something bad happened. A lot
    of those employees are here today, and I thank you for that. And as you
    know, the Feuersteins were guests of Hillary at the State of the Union
    Address. I was honored to have them there.
        But a lot of people feel that, even at work, they're not important
    like they used to be, that maybe they could just be discarded. Millions
    of American families still work harder and harder, and they don't have
    access to health care. That's one thing I tried to do that I didn't get
    done, and I'm not ashamed that I tried and neither is the First Lady.
        Millions of Americans work hard and don't have access to a pension,
    or they can lose it if they move from job to job. There is a lot of
    anxiety out there as well as all this opportunity. And even though the
    crime rate is coming down, we know it's still too high. Even though
    these other indicators I mentioned are coming down, we know we still
    have serious social problems.
        So I say to you as you look ahead, the issue is, what should we do
    now? I would argue we should build on the successes of the last 3 years
    and keep going in the right direction until we have dealt with these
    problems in an adequate fashion, until we have seized our opportunities,
    until we make maximum use of what is before us. That is what we ought to
    do. What we should not do is take a change of course and follow a
    direction that we know has no chance of working. What we need to do is
    bear down and go forward.

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        There are those who say that this is a question of should we solve
    these problems through big Government or not. That, my fellow Americans,
    is a myth. When I came here 4 years ago, I said if you will vote for me,
    I will reduce the size of the Federal Government by 100,000 and put
    another 100,000 police officers on the street. Well, we're putting
    another 100,000 police officers on the street, but we reduced the size
    of the Government by 200,000, and it will soon be 300,000, and it's the
    smallest Government we've had in 30 years. There is not a big Government
    issue out there anymore.
        The real issue before us, as I have seen as I've traveled around New
    Hampshire today--and I have gone into factories; I've looked at
    apprenticeship programs; I've been in an elementary school and looked at
    a computer program; I've seen the Concord schools hooked up to the
    Internet this week. In March, 20 percent of the schools of California at
    one time will be hooked up to the Internet. By the end of this decade we
    are going to see every schoolroom and every library in this country on
    the Internet and the information superhighway. I know that.
        And big Government is not doing these things. The question is not
    whether we should have big Government or not. The question is whether we
    are going to go forward by working together, in which every part of our
    country and every element of our society, including your Nation's
    Government, does its part, or whether we're going to go back to a time
    when people were told to fend for themselves.
        If you look at this room tonight, if you think about this community,
    if you think about any endeavor you have ever been involved in that
    really worked, what works is when people work together, when everybody
    has a chance to fulfill their God-given abilities. When everybody works
    together, we all do better individually. That is the issue before the
    American people: Are we going forward together as a community to solve
    our problems?
        When I came in they gave me a cap for your football team, State
    champion. It had 12 and 0 on it. And I imagine like every good team, the
    team has some stars. But let me say this: There's not a halfback in
    America that can run without a line. You can't do it. If you watched the
    Super Bowl, it was a great football game. There were some great stars
    out there. It was a contest of teamwork.
        And that's the way nations are. You've got to get all of your
    players on the field. Then you've got to make sure they're properly
    trained. Then if they do what they're supposed to do, there has to be
    some kind of reward. And the only way it ever works is if they're all
    working together. That is the issue for America today.
        Whenever a country goes through a period of sweeping change and all
    of the balls get thrown up in the air, there will be winners and losers.
    But for a nation to be everything it ought to be, everyone has to have a
    chance to win. And that can only happen if we go forward together. That
    is what I want you to believe.
        First of all, this country has one big piece of unfinished business.
    We have cut the deficit in half in 3 years, and that is good. We never
    had a permanent deficit at a high level until the 12 years before I
    became President. We are turning that around. We are coming down. But we
    have to finish the job. We have to adopt a credible balanced budget
    plan.
        What will happen? Just think what happened in 1993 when we cut the
    deficit in half. What happens? If people know you're going to balance
    your books, interest rates go down. Car payments go down. Home mortgage
    payments go down. Credit card payments go down. Businesses find it
    easier to borrow money. They invest. They create jobs. Families find it
    easier to make ends meet. This is an important thing to do, and we must
    do it.
        What I want you to know is that after more than 50 hours of
    negotiations, after weeks and weeks among the Republican and Democratic
    leaders in Congress and the Vice President and myself, we have
    identified more than enough savings that are common to both of our
    approaches--more than enough--to balance this budget in 7 years,
    according to Congress's own scorecard. More than enough.
        There are differences which remain. Most of those differences, in my
    view, relate to what our obligations as a Nation are to bind our
    community together. But those differences are not an excuse not to
    balance the budget. They are not an excuse for a work stoppage between
    now and the November election. We are all paid to work every day between
    now and November, and our first job is to finish the job of balancing
    the budget. We ought to do it.
        I can assure you that we can do this while maintaining our
    obligations to our parents, to our children, to the truly poor and the
    families

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    with children with disabilities, and to the future, in terms of our
    investments in education and in protecting the environment. We can do
    that. We could even do that by taking the savings we have in common and,
    in addition to doing all that, we could have a modest tax cut.
        But we have to do it. The time has come to say, look, we've got
    enough in common to do this one big job, balance the budget. We have
    differences over the shape of the Medicare program. We have differences
    over the shape and obligations under the Medicaid program. We have
    differences about our obligations to protect the environment. We have
    differences about what the Nation's obligation is to open educational
    opportunity for all. But we have agreed upon enough savings to balance
    the budget. It is unconscionable not to do it. We must do it, and we
    ought to do it right now and not wait.
        But let me say to you, even if we do that, this country clearly has
    challenges as we move into this new age. Why do we have these
    challenges? First of all, because any time you have a big upheaval in
    the way people work and live, the established patterns of life will be
    disturbed, and a lot of people will seize new opportunities, but others
    will be dislocated. Go home and pick up any history book and look what
    happened in America when we moved from farm to factory, when we moved
    from being a rural country to a more urbanized one. Vast fortunes were
    made. People who had nothing did very well. But a lot of people were
    uprooted and despairing. This always happens when you change the way
    people live.
        We are now moving into a world dominated by technology and
    information. It is exploding. And the good news is, as I saw today--I
    was in Nashua at the Sanders Lockheed plant. It's unbelievable. You
    know, they're making satellites that are going to be put up in the sky
    for literally 10 percent of what it cost us to put a satellite up just 3
    or 4 years ago. And within a matter of a year or so you'll be able to
    have a portable telephone and, literally, you can talk to anybody
    anywhere on the face of the Earth. In the remotest jungle, in the
    remotest desert, in Antarctica, you'll be able to pick up the telephone
    and call somebody. This is incredible.
        But we also know that with all of these open borders and with all of
    this competition, it keeps the pressure down on prices, but it also
    makes it hard for people to get a raise. And we also know if more people
    can do more and more and more and more work because of technology, it
    means that big units can do the same amount of work with fewer people.
    That means we've got to create more jobs with small businesses. It means
    we have to be more attentive to what it takes to get people's incomes up
    and to give them health care, pensions, and access to education for a
    lifetime. That is what we have to do.
        So it also means that when things are changing and people are being
    subject to just literally thousands and thousands and thousands of
    messages bearing down on them every time they turn the television on,
    every day when they wake up, every night when they go to bed, we have to
    work harder to preserve our most essential values and our most important
    institution, which is the American family. We have to work at that. We
    have to make conscious efforts to do it.
        And so I ask you to look with me ahead. This country has made a
    decision that we've got to eliminate the deficit. We're going to keep
    the deficit coming down regardless. We ought to pass a plan that clearly
    balances the budget because of the confidence it will give the American
    people and because it will drive interest rates down and keep growth
    going. We ought to do that.
        But let's look ahead. First of all, we have got to make a national
    commitment to renew our efforts to improve childhood and strengthen
    families. That's what we did when we passed the Family and Medical Leave
    Act, and I am very proud of that. I believe that's what we did when I
    insisted that the telecommunications bill which was passed just
    yesterday in the Congress, a piece of legislation which also will create
    tens of thousands of high-wage jobs in America, require that all new
    cable TV sets be equipped with a V-chip so that parents can decide which
    programs their young children should watch and they won't be exposed to
    excessive violence and other things they believe are destructive.
        I believe that we have to make a commitment as a Nation that every
    young person will have access to the educational opportunities necessary
    to compete and win in the global economy, every young person. There are
    many things involved in that, but beyond hooking up all of the
    classrooms and the libraries to the Internet, we need to give teachers
    and parents and people who operate our local schools the flexibility and

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    the options they need to make whatever changes are necessary to meet
    high standards of excellence. And frankly, our schools need more support
    from our parents. They ought to be willing to turn the television off,
    get the homework done, and see that the work is done in the schools.
        Then we have to make it possible for every young person in America
    who gets out of high school to go on to college or to further education,
    every one--every one. In the last 3 years, we have overhauled the
    college loan program so that now it is easier to get a college loan, and
    as I pledged here in '92, much, much easier to pay it back as a
    percentage of whatever you earn. No one can be bankrupted by borrowing
    money to go to college because of that.
        Now, I have asked the Congress to increase work-study opportunities
    so that a million young people can work their way through school every
    year. I have asked Congress to provide a merit scholarship of $1,000 a
    year to the top 5 percent of every graduating class and every high
    school in America this year. I have asked Congress not to abolish the
    AmeriCorps program which in New Hampshire and so many other States are
    giving our young people a chance to do good things.
        And finally, if there is to be a tax cut, we ought to cut taxes in a
    way that will grow the economy and increase opportunity for people, and
    the best way to do that would be to give the families of America a tax
    deduction for the cost of college tuition. That is where we ought to
    start.
        Now, our third challenge is to face the biggest economic problem we
    have, to give more economic security to those families that are working
    harder and harder just to keep up. How can we do that? First of all, we
    ought to raise the minimum wage. It is too low. If we do not raise it
    this year, within one year the minimum wage will drop to a 40-year low
    in terms of its purchasing power, even though there are millions of
    people out there, principally single mothers, who are raising children
    on the minimum wage. It is hard to raise a family on a modest income
    today; it cannot be done properly on $4.25 an hour. There is no excuse
    for not raising it, and we should raise it.
        Secondly, we should protect our workers' pensions and we should make
    it much easier and less expensive for small-business people to take out
    pensions for themselves, their families, and their employees. It's
    important.
        The next thing we ought to do is to recognize that it's not just
    young people who need an education, it's older people as well. The
    average education of our American people in 4-year colleges is 26 now.
    The average age of people in the 2-year institutions is much higher than
    that.
        We need a system which enables people every time they're out of work
    or grossly underemployed to go back and get education and training--
    every one. The tax deductibility of tuition will help, but it would also
    help if the Congress would adopt my ``GI bill'' for America's workers,
    which gets rid of all these tens and dozens of programs, little programs
    for training, collapses them all, puts them in one big pot, and gives
    every person in America when they lose their job a voucher worth $2,600
    a year for 2 years to get an education and training worthy of this new
    economy.
        Finally, let me say I will never forget the stories I was told in
    New Hampshire 4 years ago of the families that had no health care
    because they lost their jobs or because they had to change jobs or
    because the husband or the wife or the child got sick. That's what we
    all thought insurance was for, for sick people. Turns out, for a lot of
    people it's only good if you're well; if you get sick, you can't have it
    anymore. Now, you know that's true. Maybe I asked the American people,
    through the Congress, to do too much in trying to give health care
    coverage to everybody. But I'll tell you something: It is wrong at least
    not to make affordable health care accessible to every family. And we
    can do that.
        There is a bill before the United States Senate today, a bipartisan
    bill with 43 Democrat and Republican sponsors. The chief sponsors are
    Senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
    And let me tell you what this bill does. This bill does about three
    simple things. It says you can't lose your health insurance just because
    you changed jobs. It says you can't be denied coverage and your family
    can't be dropped just because you or your family has a preexisting
    condition, somebody has been sick. And it says that self-employed people
    and small-business people ought to have the opportunity in every State
    to go into bigger pools so that they can buy health insurance on the
    same competitive terms that

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    people who are in large employer units can do. That's what it says.
        And we ought to pass it. We ought to pass it now. It was voted out
    of the Senate committee with not a single opposing vote, unanimously out
    of the committee in the Senate, and we cannot get it to a vote on the
    floor because people are trying to delay it because the health insurance
    industry is against it. The national chamber of commerce is for it. The
    National Association of Manufacturers is for it. Business and labor are
    for it. Real people are for it. Let's pass it. No other country would
    permit this to happen, and we shouldn't either.
        The fourth thing we have to do is to maintain our fight against
    crime and gangs and drugs until crime is the exception, not the rule.
    It's not enough for the crime rate to go down. It must become the
    exception, not the rule again, in America. I told you in 1992 when I
    came here that I would attempt to put 100,000 more police officers on
    the street, that I would support the Brady bill, that I would support
    limits on assault weapons and protect other weapons.
        Now, I know that New Hampshire is a big hunting State, just like the
    State that I was born in and spent most of my life in and was Governor
    of for 12 years. But I want to tell you, it has now been one year and
    then some since we passed the crime bill with the assault weapons ban.
    And we just had a big deer season in New Hampshire, and there was not a
    single, solitary deer hunter that lost his weapons. We told the truth
    about that. It was an assault weapons ban, not a gun control operation.
    We told the truth about that.
        We took some dangerous weapons off the streets of our cities. We
    protected the police. We protected innocent citizens. Forty-four
    thousand people with criminal records have been unable to buy handguns
    because of the Brady bill, because we did the background check. It was
    the right thing to do. But the most important thing of all is the crime
    rate is coming down and crime is being prevented because of the
    community policing strategies adopted with our help, putting 100,000
    police on the street, and we need to finish the job. We need to keep
    going for 2 more, 3 more years, until we've got them all out there. It
    is the right thing to do.
        Our fifth challenge, and you've been talking about it a lot lately
    in New Hampshire, the Vice President was just here, is to maintain our
    commitment to preserve and enhance the natural environment. I had
    thought that there was a general consensus in our country in both
    parties, including all political independents, number one, that there
    were still problems out there, and number two, that we had to find a way
    to grow the economy while protecting the environment. We could no longer
    sacrifice the environment and say that's the only way we can create
    jobs.
        Let me just remind you of the facts. I know this is the 1990's. But
    when I became President, immediately I found that we had people dying
    because they ate food contaminated by the E. coli virus. And I
    discovered that in the 1990's, we were still testing meat in the way
    we've been testing it for 60 years, the same way dogs do. We were
    sniffing the meat and looking at it. It sounds funny until you think
    about what it could be if it were you. So we changed the meat
    requirement standards and the meat testing standards, and we got new
    technology coming in to make sure the American people are safe.
        In Milwaukee just a few years ago, 100 people died drinking water
    contaminated with cryptosporidium.
        If you think about the weather that our people have endured, the
    bitter snowstorms, the deep floods, the summer fires out West, and one
    of our major news magazines had a cover story just a couple of weeks ago
    saying that the snowstorms were due in part, believe it or not, to
    global warming. Why? Because when you upset the climatic balance, you
    have more extremes in weather, including harder winters as well as
    hotter summers. Nineteen ninety-five was the hottest year in the Earth's
    history, as long as we've been measuring it with this way of
    temperature.
        So I tell you, my friends, the jobs of the future and the incomes of
    the future and the high-tech opportunities of the future are going to go
    to those who can find a way to work to preserve what God has given us,
    not to tear it up. That is a fact; we've got to do it.
        Our sixth challenge--I won't say a lot about this, but I know I have
    to mention it, because I know I have so little popular support for this.
    The United States at the end of the cold war, especially since the
    Russians have now detargeted their missiles and they don't point them at
    us anymore, and because we have so many challenges here at home, is
    often tempted

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    to think, well, we don't really have to get involved with our friends
    and neighbors. We don't have to be involved in Bosnia. We don't have to
    be involved in Haiti. We don't have to even take our time with the
    Middle East or in trying to solve the Irish problem. We don't have to
    really work on all of these other things, getting a comprehensive test
    ban treaty, which I believe we'll get this year, to end nuclear testing
    forever. Why do we have to do that?
        Well, let me just remind you of something. First of all, we do have
    security threats. We have all of these terrorists from overseas that can
    come into this country, as we have seen. Do you want the countries they
    come from to give them up and send them here for justice? Don't you want
    countries to say there's no place you can hide if you're a terrorist; if
    you come to America and blow up a building and kill innocent people, you
    can't go back home and hide?
        Well, if we want those countries to cooperate with us, we have to
    cooperate with them. When people bring all this cocaine into this
    country or heroin into this country, it's not grown here in America. It
    comes from somewhere else. If we want those countries to literally--
    their leaders to put their lives on the line to go after those drug
    cartels, we have to work with them in other ways.
        The gentleman I just named our new drug czar, General Barry
    McCaffrey, a four-star general, has been commanding our Armed Forces
    south of the border. He has been protecting our national interests in
    all kinds of traditional ways, but he's also been very identified in a
    fight to stop drugs coming into the country, working with our civilian
    law enforcement agencies and with foreign governments.
        Do you know in the last year we have seen arrested seven of the
    eight top bosses of the Cali drug cartel, the biggest drug cartel in the
    world. But right next door to Colombia, when Ecuador and Peru got in a
    fight, who did they want to help come mediate it? The United States. I
    just had 10 soldiers down there and we had lots of people from other
    countries and a lot of you may have never read about that, but if I had
    said to them, ``Oh, I'm sorry, we can't be bothered with that, that's
    not our problem,'' then they might say, ``Well, the drugs on your street
    are not our problem.''
        The security threats of today and tomorrow are worldwide problems.
    The organized crime, the drug trafficking, the terrorism, the weapons of
    mass destruction, the people that broke open that vial of poison gas in
    the Japanese subway, these are worldwide problems, so I ask you--we
    should be preoccupied with solving our problems at home, but I ask you
    at least to support me when I make a judgment that it is in your
    interest and our children's future's interest to have America lead the
    cause for freedom and peace in the world.
        And there is one last challenge, and it may be a work that will
    never be done. But we have to keep working to give you a Government that
    you feel you can trust and have confidence in. You know, when I came
    here running for President, I said there are at least four things we
    ought to do to make the Government more responsive. And believe it or
    not, two of them have been done. And this Congress did them, and I
    applaud them, and they did it on a bipartisan basis.
        I said we ought to make the laws that Congress applies to the
    private sector apply to Congress. They did that. Congress ought not to
    accept these lavish gifts from lobbyists, and they should have to
    disclose--lobbyists should have to disclose how much money they spent,
    where they get it from, what they spent it on, and what they're trying
    to do with it. They did that, the lobby vote. That's a good thing.
        We have two down and two to go. The third is the line item veto.
    Where is it? I want it. And they say we're going to get that this year.
    I certainly hope so. And the fourth is campaign finance reform.
        So I ask you to join me in embracing those challenges. And I ask you
    to think about one other thing. This country is in better shape than it
    was 3 years ago, but this country still has a lot of challenges. This
    country needs the right President. I'm glad you think I am the right
    President, but this country is around here after 220 years, still the
    great hope and shining beacon of the world, because of the values
    embedded in the Constitution, because of the values embedded in the
    hearts of the American people, because of the character and strength and
    determination and plain, old-fashioned good citizenship of the American
    people. And I tell you, cynicism is a luxury you cannot afford.
    Pessimism is unwarranted based on the evidence. And not participating in
    the public life of your nation is a cop-out that will become a self-
    fulfilling prophecy.

    [[Page 149]]

        Sometimes I think the greatest moments of my life now are when I am
    able to represent you when I go overseas, because when I get in Air
    Force One and go to another country as a force for peace in Northern
    Ireland, when all those people--you saw it on the television--were in
    the streets screaming, they weren't screaming for Bill Clinton. They
    weren't even screaming for the President of the United States. They were
    cheering the United States. They were cheering America and everything we
    stand for.
        And when I go other places and I talk to foreign leaders, they
    sometimes say to me, ``I read all these surveys in America about how
    pessimistic people are, about how they don't have faith in their
    institutions,'' he said. And foreign leaders all over the world, they
    say, ``How could this be? Your country has a lower unemployment rate
    than other countries, your country has created--'' all the jobs that
    have been created in the seven biggest economies in the world, net, in
    the last 7 years is the number that have been created here. The rest--
    some created a few, some lost a few, they're net out zero. We have all
    the jobs, net. Our deficit today is a smaller percentage of our income
    than any of our major competitors.
        Our country is admired and trusted. Just a few years ago we thought
    we might go to war with Russia. When this issue in Bosnia came up, I met
    with the President of Russia, and he said--the President of Russia
    said--he looked at me and he said, ``Bill, I will send as many Russian
    soldiers as you want to serve under whatever American general you
    name.'' That is a great gift. That is a gift.
        And so I leave you with this challenge. You live in a great country.
    Sure, we've got some problems. We're human beings. Yes, we make some
    mistakes. We're human beings. We are not a superhuman race of people.
    But there is no country on Earth where so many diverse people get
    together and work together so well, no country on Earth with more
    resources to deal with the challenges it faces. And we cannot afford to
    be cynical or skeptical or pessimistic about our future.
        I am moved by you being here more than any words I can say, just
    because you're here and you're enthusiastic and you're full of energy.
    And what I want you to do is to leave this place tonight, and when you
    wake up tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day, you
    tell your fellow Americans, ``You don't have a right to be cynical, you
    don't have a right to be pessimistic. This is the greatest country in
    human history, and we're going to make it greater.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:38 p.m. in the Back Gymnasium at Salem
    High School. In his remarks, he referred to Larry Belair, Salem town
    moderator; Joe Keefe, Mike Garofalo, and Cheryl Breton, Democratic Party
    chairs of New Hampshire, Rockingham County, and Salem, respectively;
    Henry LaBranche, superintendent, Salem School District; Patrick Cobin,
    principal, Salem High School; Aaron and Louise Feuerstein of Malden
    Mills Industries, Inc., who continued to pay employees after their
    Methuan, MA, textile factory burned in December 1995; and President
    Boris Yeltsin of Russia. A portion of these remarks could not be
    verified because the tape was incomplete.