[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[April 26, 1996]
[Pages 640-642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic Reception in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 26, 1996

    Thank you very much. Come on up, Congressman--give Congressman 
Borski a hand for going to his daughter's soccer game. Give him a hand. 
[Applause] One of the things you need to know if you're in public life 
is how to make a proper entrance. [Laughter] And Bob just qualified. 
Actually, I saw him this morning. We were both out running at Fort 
McNair in Washington, DC, and he said he'd be here tonight. And I thank 
him for keeping his word.
    Thank you, Congressman Chaka Fattah, for that powerful introduction 
and for your great service. Thank you, Congressman Tom Foglietta, for 
your friendship and your support. Thank you, Gussie, and thank you, Mina 
Baker Knoll, and thank you, Joe Kohn.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman Fowler, for all the endless nights that you 
go back and forth across America in search of the magical chemistry of 
victory, not just for our party and our candidates but for the kind of 
America we're fighting for. And thank you, Mr. Mayor, for proving that 
the Democratic Party can be the party of the future and the party of all 
the people, the party of compassion and competence, the party of the 
mind and the party of the heart. Thank you all.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply moved by this large outpouring. As 
President Kennedy used to say, I am deeply touched, but not so deeply 
touched as you are tonight. [Laughter] I thank you for your support, and 
I thank you for your commitment to your city, your State, and your 
country. Pennsylvania and Philadelphia have been very, very good to me. 
And as all of you know, this State and this part of our State has a 
special place in my wife's heart and her family history. And we're 
delighted always, either one of us, to have a chance to come.
    I think you know why we're here, or you wouldn't be here. But let me 
just say again very briefly, when I ran for President in 1992 and the 
State of Pennsylvania gave Bill Clinton and Al Gore its electoral votes, 
when Philadelphia gave our ticket a larger margin than President Kennedy 
received here in 1960, we had a very straightforward vision for our 
country, a vision for what we wanted America to look like in the 21st 
century and what we wanted America to be like for all the children that 
are here.
    First, we wanted a country where every person who is willing to work 
for it, without regard to their race, their income, or their background, 
could have a chance to live out their dreams. Second, we wanted a 
country that was coming together, not being driven apart; that was 
reaching across the racial and other lines that divide us to find 
strength in our diversity and our shared values. Third, I wanted to see 
our country continue to be the world's strongest force for peace and 
freedom and prosperity and security, so that we could build a framework 
for the 21st century that would free our children of the worries that 
two World Wars and the cold war imposed upon generation after generation 
after generation of Americans in the 20th century.
    In short, I really believed that if we did the right thing, the new 
global economy could open up the greatest age of possibility our people 
have ever known. I still believe that. And what I come to you to say is 
that we have a record that we can be proud of. Together we've done what 
we said we'd do in 1992. But it is a record to build on, not a record to 
sit on. It is a record to go forward from, and not a record to take a 
radical turn away from. That is what is at stake here.
    The American people in a way are fortunate in this election year. In 
1992, there was a big debate about change or the status quo. That's

[[Page 641]]

not what is at stake in 1996. In 1996, there are two very different 
visions of change that offer us two roads into the 21st century. And the 
next 4 years, like it or not, are going to take us right into the next 
century. The question is, which road are we going to walk into the 21st 
century? That is the question the American people will determine.
    Will we walk the road of those who say that Government is the 
problem in America and the only thing we need to do is to give the 
American people freedom from their Government? Or will we walk with 
those of us who believe that we need a smaller and less bureaucratic 
Government, but Government has a role to play to make sure that every 
American has a chance to make it, that every family has a chance to make 
it, that every neighborhood and every community has a chance to live up 
to the fullest of their God-given capacities?
    I think those of us who want to go forward together will prevail in 
1996 because of you, and I know that you know that, or you wouldn't be 
here. And we don't have to guess about what will happen. You know where 
I am and what I will do. You know where they are and what they will do. 
You know that our approach produced a deficit that is less than half of 
what it was in 1992 when we took office, 8\1/2\ million more jobs, a 
real crime bill instead of 6 years of talking about it. It's putting 
100,000 police on the street and helping communities to drive the crime 
rate down to make our streets safer.
    You know that it produced new and innovative approaches to protect 
the environment while growing the economy. You know that it produced a 
new commitment to the education of all of our children, from expanding 
the Head Start program to expanding the availability of affordable 
college loans, to the national service program that your former Senator, 
Harris Wofford, heads today. You know what we will do, and you know they 
oppose all those things.
    You also know that I have done my best to reach across party lines 
to work with Republicans of good will; that I think this intense 
partisanship--the idea that everybody who is not in your party is the 
enemy of your future and the enemy of your country--is crazy; the idea 
that you should never work with people even if you agree with them on a 
specific issue because there might be some, God forbid, benefit to 
somebody in the other party, is wrong. That is not what made America 
great. There are enough differences that are honest without that kind of 
excessive partisanship.
    And today I finally signed, 7 months late, a budget for this year 
that I would have signed 7 months ago. Why? It continues the reduction 
of the deficit; it continues to cut spending; but it protects education; 
it protects the protection of the environment; it protects Medicare; it 
protects Medicaid; it protects our investment in new technologies and 
the growth of jobs; and it protects the 100,000 police and the 
AmeriCorps program, all things--all things--that the other party tried 
in an intensely, completely partisan way to do away with. That was 
wrong.
    But when we came back and rolled up our sleeves and worked together, 
we did what we should have done: keep that deficit coming down, continue 
to reduce the size of unnecessary Government, but protect our future and 
protect our children and protect the things that bring us together 
instead of driving us apart. That is the way we ought to do things.
    A couple of days ago I signed an antiterrorism bill--the same thing, 
passed in a completely bipartisan way to give us the tools to fight the 
kind of terrorism that we have seen in Oklahoma City, at the World Trade 
Center, in Japan, in the Middle East, indeed, all over the world, the 
use of murder of innocent civilians to achieve a political end. We did 
that in a bipartisan way by putting America first. That is what I 
represent and that's what our party will represent as long as I am the 
President of the United States, and that is what we ought to do.
    So I ask you to keep these things in mind. This is an interesting 
world we're living in. It's full of unpredictable events. Just in the 
last few weeks we've seen the heartbreaking deaths of my friend the 
Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown, and some of our finest young public 
servants and some of our finest business leaders going to Bosnia to try 
to put the power of the American economy behind saving the peace and 
tell those people, you have no future if you hate each other because of 
your religion or your ethnic background. And we are determined now to 
make something positive happen out of that, to use it to strengthen our 
ability to stand for peace.
    We were afraid that the peace was being shattered in the Middle East 
with the fighting in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. But, thank 
God, today they reached an agreement

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to restore the cease-fire and to monitor violations and not to resort to 
that kind of killing again. And yesterday the Palestinians took out of 
their constitution the provision that required them to be against the 
very existence of the state of Israel. This was a good day, a good week 
for peace in the Middle East and moving forward again.
    And on the trip I took to Korea and Japan and Russia, let me remind 
you, it may seem like a long way away, but when I took office the number 
one threat to America's security was said to be the development of a 
nuclear program by North Korea and the prospect that they would have 
nuclear weapons that could be used and could be sold to other countries. 
Now that is not even in the headlines anymore because they're keeping 
their word to build down their nuclear program. And we are committed to 
that.
    In Japan, we've had 21 separate trade agreements with Japan, 21. And 
in those areas, everything from auto parts to cellular telephones to 
autos to rice, in all those areas our exports to Japan are up 85 percent 
and our trade deficit is going down. We are creating jobs with free and 
fair trade, doing the right thing by the American people, and 
maintaining our security partnership with Japan.
    Let me tell you why I went to Russia and how it affects you. Because 
of the work that has been done with Russia as a democracy in the last 3 
years, for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age there is not 
a single, solitary nuclear missile pointed at an American child tonight. 
And I am proud of that, and you should be proud of that.
    But unfortunately, not all the dangers of the nuclear age are behind 
us. We have more work to do to reduce nuclear weapons further. And the 
waste that is left behind--the waste that is left behind could be used 
to make small bombs with many times the destructive power of the bomb 
that blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. So we have to work 
with them to make sure that all that is safe, that it cannot be stolen, 
that terrorists cannot get ahold of it.
    So even these things that happen so far from home affect the way 
your children live on their streets and their neighborhoods and their 
schools and their future. That is why I say again, we have to do three 
things. Every person without regard to their race, their gender, their 
station in life has got to have a chance if they're willing to work for 
it. We have got--we have got to fight these impulses that are dividing 
people all over the world by race, by religion, by ethnic group and say 
no, no, that's not what America is; America is meeting our challenges 
together by sharing our values and working together.
    And we've got to continue to be the force for peace and freedom and 
security in the world that only America can be. And we have to do it by 
saying this is what the Democrats stand for, not big Government solving 
all the problems but a new, smaller, less bureaucratic Government, the 
smallest in 30 years, but one still strong enough to help citizens and 
families and communities make the most of their own lives.
    That is tomorrow's progressivism. That's what we stand for. And if 
any Republicans or independents want to help us, we are not going to be 
blindly partisan, we're going to say come on aboard, grab us by the 
hand, and walk into the future together.
    Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 7:30 p.m. in Franklin Hall at the Franklin 
Institute. In his remarks, he referred to Gussie Clark, Philadelphia 
councilwoman; Mina Baker Knoll, State treasurer candidate; Joe Kohn, 
State attorney general candidate; Donald L. Fowler, national chairman, 
Democratic National Committee; and Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia.