    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 24, 1996]
    [Pages 1652-1656]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Freehold Borough, New Jersey
    September 24, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you, in the back, for being here. Thank
    you, way down under the trees, for being here. Mayor Wilson, it's great
    to be in Freehold. It's great to be in Monmouth County. It's great to be
    here with all of you.
        I want to thank all those officials who are here--Mayor Susan Bass
    Levin, Mayor Cardell Cooper. Governor Florio, it's good to see you.
    State Chairman Tom Byrne, it's good to see you. Senator Ray Lesniak,
    State Senator John Lynch, all the other legislators and local leaders
    who are here.
        Mayor Dave DelVecchio, thank you very much for running for the
    Congress and for making the stakes as clear as you have today. I know
    one thing, if you're representing this district in Congress in January,
    I believe that you will not vote for a Speaker of the House who wants to
    enact a contract on America, I think you will vote for the people of
    this district and their future. And I thank you for running.
        I think we have some students here from the Freehold Borough
    Regional High School; thank you all for coming. You've got a big stake
    in this election, and I'm glad you're here.
        You know, I was told this morning when I got up to come to New
    Jersey, after I went to the United Nations--I'll say more about that in
    a moment--that this magnificent monument commemorates George
    Washington's defeat of a British general in 1778 named Sir Henry
    Clinton. [Laughter] And I thought I would tell you here in the presence
    of these Revolutionary War reenactors who come from the Delaware
    Valley--and they did a great job today, let's give them a hand.
    [Applause] That may have happened in 1778, but in 1996, Clinton is on
    the right side of the battle for America's future.
        And so is Bob Torricelli. You know, I've watched Bob Torricelli in
    Congress for 4 years now. I've watched him fight for legislation. I saw
    him sponsor legislation to require 48 hours as a minimum stay for new
    mothers and their newborns. He and Senator Bradley did that, and it's
    going to be the law of the land within about 48 more hours, I believe,
    when the Congress passes that. It took 4 long years, but I thank him for
    that.
        I saw him sponsor legislation that I have embraced to expand the
    Brady bill. The Brady bill, which was also opposed by the leaders of the
    other party in Congress, basically says you have to wait 5 days while we
    do a background check before you get a handgun. Now, when we passed the
    Brady bill, there was all this screaming and yelling that we would be
    taking people's guns away. And 3 years later every hunter still has the
    same gun, but 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers were not able to
    get handguns. Bob Torricelli was right, and they were wrong. And now, he
    and I believe that the Brady bill ought to be modestly extended to say
    if you have beaten up your spouse or your child you shouldn't get a
    handgun, either. And I think New Jersey agrees with that.
        I understand there's been a little ad running in New Jersey about
    Bob Torricelli's vote for our economic plan in 1993. ``That one vote,''
    they say, ``was the biggest tax increase in history.'' Of course, it
    wasn't. The biggest one in history was in 1982, under President Reagan,
    and he supported it and signed it. I wasn't around.

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        But I'll tell you this--let me tell you about that one vote. The
    next time you watch the ad, you see if you think it's accurate, fair,
    and complete. That one vote cut taxes for 5 times as many families in
    New Jersey as it raised taxes on. That one vote made 90 percent of the
    small businesses in this country eligible for a tax cut when they invest
    more in their business. That one vote gave people in New Jersey who
    wanted to take a chance on investing in a new company a tax break for
    doing it. That one vote cut the deficit more than any one vote in
    history. We've now had 4 years of a declining deficit; it's the first
    time that's happened since the 1840's, before the Civil War. That's what
    that one vote did.
        That one vote--that one vote brought down interest rates for car
    payments, home payments, credit card payments, and business loans. And
    that one vote is a big reason that we have 10\1/2\ million more jobs,
    the lowest unemployment rate in 7\1/2\ years, a 15-year high in
    homeownership, record highs in small business formation and the
    ownership of businesses by women. Yes, that one vote was a pretty big
    vote. It was the right vote for America, and I hope you will remember
    that.
        And I'll tell you something else about that one vote. Because we
    have cut the deficit from $290 billion down to $116 billion, that one
    vote now makes it possible for us to balance the budget without hurting
    Medicare, Medicaid, cutting back on education or environmental
    protection, and to give targeted tax cuts for childrearing, to pay for
    the cost of college education, to pay for health care, to pay for buying
    that first home, and to say to people when you sell your home with a
    reasonable gain, you'll never have to pay taxes on that again. That's
    what that one vote did. Don't forget that one vote.
        So every time you see an ad, ``that one vote'' ought to be a paid
    political commercial for Bob Torricelli and everybody else who had the
    courage to put America's future over short-term demagoguery. We're
    better off today than we were 4 years ago. How could anybody dispute
    that?
        My friends, 4 years ago when I came to New Jersey and asked for your
    support, I said I had a simple vision for our country on the edge of a
    new century. I wanted us to go into the 21st century with the American
    dream alive and well for everyone who was willing to work for it. I
    wanted us to go into the 21st century as a country that respected our
    diversity and relished it, that was coming together more closely as a
    community, not drifting apart as so many other nations of the world are.
    And I wanted us to continue to be the world's strongest nation for peace
    and freedom and prosperity.
        And I say to you today the strategy we adopted, opportunity for all,
    responsibility from all, and a community in which every person has a
    role to play and a part, is working. We not only have a stronger
    economy, the crime rate has gone down for 4 years in a row; the welfare
    rolls are down by nearly 2 million; child support collections are up by
    $3 billion, 40 percent; there are no Russian missiles pointed at the
    children of the United States; and today I became the first head of
    state to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to ban all
    nuclear tests forever.
        Now, this did not happen by accident. These things happened because
    we changed the way Washington works. We got out of who's to blame, and
    we asked, what can we do about our problems? We invited everyone to help
    us. We invited everyone to put aside their partisanship, their
    extremism, to roll up their sleeves and tackle America's problems, seize
    America's opportunities. It worked. That's why we're on the right track.
        Now, you have a great choice to make. And it has been clearly, and I
    must say, candidly articulated, not just by me but also by my opponent:
    Are we going to build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past?
    Are we going to say, ``You're on your own out there. We can't afford
    things like family leave,'' or are we going to say, ``The First Lady's
    right. It does take a village to raise our children and to build up our
    country.''
        You have to make this decision. You heard what Meryl said. My
    distinguished opponent voted against the family leave law four times and
    said this year he still did the right thing, said it was bad for
    business. Well, you tell me how it can be bad for business. Since we
    adopted the family leave law, we've had 10\1/2\ million new jobs, a
    record number of new small businesses in each and every year. I think
    it's good for business if people can succeed at home and they're not
    worried sick about their children all day long while they're at work. I
    think it's better for America if people are good parents. I think

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    they're better workers, they're more productive workers, and this is a
    stronger country.
        But to believe that, you have to believe that we have common
    responsibilities to give each other the conditions and the tools we need
    to make the most of our own lives. It is the big question in this
    election. And we have to come to grips with that. We're celebrating
    family leave today because 12 million times, families in America have
    said to their employers: I'm sorry, but I'm about to have a baby; my
    wife's about to have a baby; my children are sick; my parents are
    desperately ill; I've got to have just a little time off; I'll be back
    to work as quick as I can. And they didn't lose their jobs for that. Is
    that so bad? I think that makes us a better, stronger, more powerful
    country.
        You hear people talking all the time about family values. Well, if
    we're going to talk about family values, shouldn't we value families? Is
    there anything more important in life than doing a good job of raising
    our children? I never go anywhere in America--never--that I don't meet
    families who have at least one or two examples in their own lives where
    they have felt the wrenching conflict between their responsibilities to
    their children or their parents and their responsibilities at work.
        This is just a small step to say, in America we want people to
    succeed at home and at work. In America we know most parents work and
    most parents have to work. In single-parent or two-parent households, we
    just want them to be winners with their kids and winners at work. And if
    you give us 4 more years I'd like to see the family leave law modestly
    expanded. I think it would be a very good thing if parents could also
    take a little time off from work to go to regular meetings with their
    children's teachers and make regular doctor appointments with their
    children or their sick parents. It would make us stronger and our
    economy stronger.
        All across the spectrum, if you look at what is at stake here, I
    offer you a bridge to the 21st century that you have to help build--no
    guarantees but opportunity and the challenge of responsibility and the
    reminder that we have to do it together. Think about our economy. If I
    had told you 4 years ago we'd have 10\1/2\ million new jobs, a 7\1/2\-
    year low in unemployment, virtually no inflation, the lowest combined
    rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 28 years, you'd
    have said that's pretty good, bring it on.
        But we can do better. We can grow the economy faster. We can offer
    opportunity to those who have still not participated in the economic
    recovery. And now that we have passed a welfare reform law that says to
    poor families we'll keep guaranteeing health care and nutrition, and
    child care if you go to work, but now the check itself goes to the
    State, and communities have to devise a way to move able-bodied people
    to work, we have to create jobs for those people. We cannot permit the
    children to be hurt. We have to give their parents a chance to go to
    work, the same chance that all the rest of us want in life. That is what
    we must do. And I hope you'll help me build that bridge to the 21st
    century.
        We can--let me say again--we can balance the budget, and we must.
    That keeps the interest rates down. That keeps your home mortgage rates,
    your car payments, your credit card payments, your business loan rates
    down. But we have to do it in a way that does not divide this country or
    compromise our future. That means protecting Medicare and Medicaid. It
    means investing in education. It means investing in environmental
    protection. It means investing in research and technology.
        Let me just tell you, just in the last couple of years there have
    been breathtaking advances in medical research, in the treatment of
    people with spinal cord injuries, in breast cancer, in dealing with
    AIDS. The life expectancy of people with HIV has more than doubled in
    the last 4 years, thanks to medical research and the rapid movement of
    drugs to the market. Just recently, for the first time ever, a
    laboratory animal with a severed spinal cord had movement in its lower
    limbs because of nerve transplants.
        We have got to keep investing in these things. In the nonmedical
    area we are about to build a supercomputer with IBM, the United States
    and IBM--listen to this--that will do more calculations in one second
    than you can go home and do on your hand-held calculator in 30,000
    years.
        The world is changing. And we owe it to the future to continue to
    invest in making sure that America stays at the head of the pack in new
    technologies, new opportunities, and new jobs for the American people
    and new adventures for our children. And we must do that.

    [[Page 1655]]

        We have to build a bridge to the 21st century that does more of what
    I saw in Uniontown when I visited the school there not very long ago,
    right here in New Jersey. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century
    that gives all of our children the best educational opportunities in the
    world. We want to hook up every classroom and every library in America
    to the information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World Wide Web.
        Let me tell you what that means. It means for the first time in
    history, the children in the most remote rural districts and in the
    poorest urban districts will have access to the same information in the
    same way at the same quality in the same time as every other child in
    America. It will revolutionize education. And we intend to do it if you
    will help us build that bridge to the 21st century.
        We want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which every
    American can go to college, every American of any age. And we propose to
    do it in the following way:
        Number one, more people than ever will be able to save through an
    IRA and withdraw from that IRA tax-free if the savings are used to pay
    for college, medical care, a first-time home.
        Number two, we're going to say in the next 4 years we want a
    community college education to be just as universal in the United States
    as a high school diploma is today. Everybody needs more than a high
    school diploma today and here's how we're going to pay for it. We want
    to say to working Americans, ``If you go to a community college, you can
    deduct from your taxes dollar for dollar the cost of tuition at a
    typical community college in the United States.'' We can do that--no
    bureaucracy, no extra hassle. And we can pay for it in the balanced
    budget amendment.
        And finally, we want to permit every family to deduct the cost of
    college tuition, any kind of college, undergraduate or graduate school,
    up to $10,000 a year from their taxes so that we can educate our people.
    Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        We want to build a bridge to the 21st century of responsibility,
    which means that we have to continue to resist the efforts to stop our
    anticrime program. You want to know what a big issue is in the Senate
    race here and in this Congress race? For reasons that absolutely elude
    me, after 4 years of a declining crime rate, when our strategy embodied
    in the 1994 crime bill to put 100,000 police on the street, have ``three
    strikes and you're out'' and other tough penalties, ban the assault
    weapons, and give our kids some prevention programs--that strategy was
    written by law enforcement officers all over America--for reasons that
    elude me, for the last 2 years the leaders of the other party in
    Congress have done everything they can to repeal it, to stop the 100,000
    police program in its tracks. I do not understand that.
        But if you want a reason to support these two men, that's a good
    one. We've got the crime rate coming down 4 years in a row. If we can
    bring it down 4 more years in a row, it might just be bearable for
    Americans. I think we should finish the job of putting 100,000 more
    police officers on our street. And I hope you'll help me build that
    bridge to the 21st century.
        I hope you'll help Bob Torricelli expand the Brady bill to cover
    those people who abuse their spouses and their children. They should not
    have guns. Torricelli was right: 4 more years, and we'll get that done.
    I hope that you will help us to do things, in short, that will say to
    the American people, we want everybody to be more responsible.
        Finally, let me say we need to prove that we can go forward together
    as one community. A big part of that is the family support system we
    talked about, family and medical leave. Something else I'd like to see
    done--a lot of our people today have to work and want to work to get
    overtime. A lot of people have to do it just to keep their jobs. I'd
    like to see more options for the workers to take some of that overtime
    if they want to, and it's best for the family, in time at home with
    their kids and their parents instead of pay if they decide that's what
    they need to keep their families together.
        We have to look for new and exciting and innovative and different
    ways to grow this economy and support families as they meet the
    struggles and the challenges of the 21st century.
        The last point I want to make about that is that perhaps nothing
    defines us so clearly in terms of our commitment to going forward
    together as whether we're committed to a clean environment for all of
    our people. I'm proud of the fact that since this administration has
    been in office, millions of people are breathing cleaner air; we passed
    a safe drinking water bill; we passed a pesticide protection act; we
    modernized the meat inspection standards for the first time in seven
    decades.

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        We have added to the national park system and protected our most
    precious national treasures, and we cleaned up more toxic waste sites in
    3 years than the previous administrations did in 12. But I am not proud
    of the fact that there are still 10 million American children living
    within 4 miles of a toxic waste site. That is wrong. And if you give us
    4 more years, we intend to clean up the 500 worst sites so we can say
    America's children are growing up next to parks, not poison. Every child
    in America is entitled to that, and I want you to help us build that
    bridge to the 21st century.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I have loved being here today. I'm sorry that
    some distant ancestor of mine strayed in the Revolutionary War, probably
    was just being loyal to where he was born. But 200 years later, I'm
    mighty proud to be here with you, proud to be representing the people of
    New Jersey, grateful for the support you have given me, and asking you
    to think among yourselves not about party, not about politics, but about
    what you want our country to look like when we start a new century in a
    new millennium, and what you want America to be like when your children
    are your age. That is all that matters.
        I believe, as strongly as I can say, that if you want the kind of
    America I believe you do, we've got to build a bridge to the future. We
    can revere our past, but we can't recapture it. The best days of America
    are still ahead.
        The children in this audience today, many of them will do jobs that
    have not been invented yet. Some of them will do work that has not been
    imagined yet. All we have to do is to build the right kind of bridge
    that's broad enough, big enough, and strong enough for all of us to walk
    across. I hope you will help me build it.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:25 p.m. at the Battlefield Monument at
    the Monmouth County Courthouse. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor
    Michael Wilson of Freehold Borough; Mayor Susan Bass Levin of Cherry
    Hill Township; Mayor Cardell Cooper of East Orange; Mayor David M.
    DelVecchio of Lambertville City; James J. Florio, former New Jersey
    Governor; Brendan (Tom) Byrne, Jr., chair, New Jersey Democratic Party;
    and Meryl Frank, who introduced the President. A portion of these
    remarks could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.