    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 27, 1996]
    [Pages 1391-1395]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan
    August 27, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you so much.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be back
    at Michigan State. Thank you. I want to thank first Letha Miller for
    that wonderful introduction and for her example. Weren't you proud of
    her? I thought she did a great job.
        I thank President McPherson and your board chairman, Bob Weiss, for
    welcoming me. I know the mayors of Lansing and East Lansing are here.
    And somewhere Senator Levin has a Lansing Lugnuts baseball cap for me. I
    don't know where it is, but I'm prepared to wear it. There it is. What
    do you think? I like it.
        I would like to thank the Olympians who are here from Michigan: Paul
    McMullen, Eric Namesnik, and Mike Castle. I'd like to thank the
    Paralympian, Ed McGinnis. I'd like to thank especially my good friend
    Carl Levin for being here, and I hope you'll send him back to the Senate
    from Michigan. He's a good man who does a good job for you.
        And I want to say a special word about Debbie Stabenow, who is
    running for Congress. I'm very proud of the fact that we put in the
    direct loan program to lower the cost and improve the repayment terms of
    college loans so no one would ever have to decline to go to college
    because of the loan burden. Everyone can pay it back as a percentage of
    their income. I'm very proud that we increased Head Start. I'm very
    proud that we did things for education. And I'm proud that I vetoed the
    budget of the Republican Congress when they tried to undo it all. And I
    believe a great university like Michigan State is entitled to be
    represented in the United States Congress by someone who believes in
    student loans, not someone who tries to abolish them. And I think you
    should make a change.
        Folks, I've had a wonderful couple of days. Hillary and Chelsea and
    I started out on this train in West Virginia, and then Hillary went home
    to Chicago to start our convention, and Chelsea and I went through West
    Virginia, Kentucky, into Ohio. Then this morning in Toledo, Chelsea went
    to hear her mom speak tonight. And thank goodness, since we're a little
    late--I'm sorry we are, but I got to hear her mom speak tonight, too, on
    the train, and she was terrific. I was so proud of her.
        And today we have been in Michigan. This train I'm taking across
    America is going across this heartland of our country for two reasons.
    For one thing, I really wanted to go to this

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    convention to accept the nomination of my party for President for the
    second time, to begin the last campaign I'll ever make, by looking into
    the eyes, the faces, the hearts of the people of this country for whom I
    have worked and fought these last 4 years. And you have made me happy
    and pleased beyond my wildest dreams. I am proud to be an American when
    I look out at you and I see you. But I also wanted you to see this
    train, and I wanted you to see that it is on the right track, not just
    to Chicago, we're on the right track to the 21st century, and we intend
    to stay right on it.
        Four years ago when I came to Michigan and I asked the people here
    to support me in the quest for the Presidency, I did it because it was a
    fight for the future, a future that most of you young people will have a
    lot more of than those of us who now have our AARP cards. [Laughter] I
    did it because I wanted to us to go into the next century with every
    American able to live up to the fullest of his or her God-given
    capacity, every American who's willing to work for it to have a chance
    to live his or her dreams. That, after all, is the great promise of this
    country. And I didn't like the fact that our country had high
    unemployment and stagnant wages and increasing division and unmet
    challenges and rising cynicism, especially among the young, about our
    political system. Well, 4 years later I can come back to you and I can
    say, I wanted to bring hope back to America. There is more hope, more
    progress, because we are better off than we were 4 years ago and we're
    going on the right track into the 21st century.
        I have a simple formula, folks, for what I've been trying to do:
    more opportunity for people, more responsibility from our citizens, and
    a strong sense of American community. The special thing about this
    country is that we are bound together not by race or religion but by our
    shared values.
        In the last 4 years, I have spent so much time as your President
    trying to make peace in other parts of the world. And we've made a lot
    of progress, but we've also got a lot of challenges out there, because
    it is so maddening to see from the Middle East to Bosnia, to Northern
    Ireland, to Rwanda and Burundi and other parts of the world how many
    places in the world are people determined to fight and kill each other
    because of their different races, their different religions, their
    different ethnicity, their different tribal roots. Why do people have to
    look down on each other who are different from them? In my America, if
    you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration
    of Independence and you're willing to show up and be counted every day
    and be good law-abiding citizens, nothing else matters. We're going into
    the future together.
        So I say to you, you look where we are on the question of
    opportunity, you look where we are on the question of people taking more
    responsibility, you look where we are on the question of coming
    together, and I say to you we're on the right track.
        In the last 4 years--let me just mention a few things: We have 10
    million more jobs. We have 4\1/2\ million new homeowners. We have 10
    million homeowners who have refinanced their mortgages at lower rates.
    We have 50 million Americans breathing cleaner air. We have cleaned up
    more toxic waste sites in 3 years than the previous administrations did
    in 12. We have 1\1/2\ million fewer people on welfare. We have a 40
    percent increase in child support payments. We have 2 million people now
    eligible for these direct student loans that you just heard about.
        Just in the last week, look what happened. We raised the minimum
    wage for 10 million people. We gave the small-business people of this
    country a tax cut if they invest more in their business. And we made it
    easier for people to take out pensions for their employees. We made it
    easier for parents to adopt by giving a $5,000 tax credit for people who
    adopt a child, and even more if the child has a disability. There are so
    many kids out there who need a home. What we did in the minimum wage
    bill was pro-work, pro-family, and pro-business. It was a great day for
    America when we signed it.
        And then we signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which said to 25
    million Americans, you can't lose your health insurance anymore if you
    lose your job, if you change jobs, or if somebody in your family has
    been sick. That's what health insurance is for. It was a great day for
    America.
        Audience member. We love you!
        The President. And so--you get the picture. We're moving in the
    right direction. Twelve million Americans have taken advantage of the
    family and medical leave law so they could take some time off without
    losing their job when

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    a baby is born or a parent is sick. We're moving in the right direction.
    It didn't hurt the country.
        I could go on and on and on. I am proud of the progress we have
    made. And I'm proud of some things that didn't happen, too. I want to
    balance the budget. I know that the things that we have done that have
    sparked this economic growth, perhaps more than anything else, is to
    drive the terrible deficit down. It's going to be your problem, the
    young people in this audience, if we don't do something about it.
        When I became President, we had quadrupled the national debt in 12
    years. The deficit was $290 billion and headed higher. Well, 4 years
    later, we've got it down to $116 billion, a 60 percent reduction. And
    those low interest rates--those low interest rates for all of you and
    your families, what do they mean? They mean more investment for more
    jobs. They mean lower payments for credit cards, for cars, for homes.
    They mean a stronger future.
        And I want to balance the budget as much as the next person, and
    more than most, and I have a plan to do it. But when the Republicans in
    Congress sent me that plan that said, ``Take it or leave it, and if you
    don't take it we'll shut the Government down,'' I had to say no. I had
    to say no.
        And I want to remind you again, when you make a decision about for
    whom to vote in the Senate race and the Congress race, I want to just
    remind you one more time about why I said no. Because that budget said,
    ``If you want a balanced budget, Mr. President, you have to agree to big
    cuts in education funding and limits on student loans and abolishing the
    AmeriCorps national service program. If you want a balanced budget, Mr.
    President, you have to agree to huge cuts in environmental investment,
    and undermining the ability of the American Government to protect clean
    air, clean water, and take us in the future. If you want a balanced
    budget, Mr. President, you have to agree to strip the Federal Government
    of the commitment we have made for 30 years to health care for the
    elderly in nursing homes, for middle class families with people with
    disabilities in them, for people who are very poor and pregnant, and for
    little kids.''
        Last night when Christopher Reeve spoke at the Democratic Convention
    so movingly, one of the things that I remembered was my conversation
    with him in which he said, ``Mr. President, I'm glad you didn't let them
    take Medicaid away because not everybody who gets hurt like I did has a
    good income like I had, and it can break anyone who is disabled.'' We
    need to continue to keep faith with the values that made America strong
    and great and noble and good.
        And so I ask you to go with me on to Chicago and into this campaign
    and into the next 4 years, because we still have a lot to do. We have
    challenges that are unmet. We have opportunities that are unseized. We
    have to keep the economy growing. We have to have the right kind of tax
    cut, one that we can afford and still balance the budget and not hurt
    the things we care about, and that is focused first and foremost on
    education.
        I want to make 2 years of college as universal in 4 years as a high
    school education is today. I want to give a tax deduction for families
    for the cost of college tuition, any kind of education after high
    school, undergraduate or graduate, up to $10,000 a year and a $1,500
    credit for those first 2 years. That's a good tax cut. That's a tax cut
    that we can pay for and a tax cut that will more than pay us back in a
    stronger, healthier, more vibrant America.
        I want to see all the high schools in this country, every
    schoolroom, hooked up not only to computers, with trained teachers, but
    hooked up to the Internet, to that information superhighway that will
    allow the poorest schools in America access to the same information in
    the same time at the same quality as the richest schools in America. It
    has never happened in the history of this country. We're going to make
    it happen in the next 4 years.
        I want to tell you that it's not just on economics that we've made
    progress. The crime rate has been coming down for 4 years, but it is
    still too high. It has come down because we're putting 100,000 police on
    the street, because we're emphasizing prevention as well as tough
    punishment, because we banned assault weapons, and because we passed the
    Brady bill. And I want you to think about this: In Michigan, in
    Arkansas, some awful good people in 1994 lost their seats in Congress
    because they had the courage to vote for 100,000 police, a ban on
    assault weapons, and the Brady bill. They had the courage to vote for
    it, and many of their constituents were told, ``The Government is going
    to come take your gun away. They're going to stop you from hunting.
    They're going to stop you from going to the sporting contests.''

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    Well, folks, we've had two deer seasons in Michigan and two in Arkansas,
    and all our hunters still got the same rifles they started with. But
    100,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers could not get handguns because
    of the Brady bill.
        And now I say to you, we've got to keep this going. And every one of
    you young people, you might feel very safe tonight, you may feel very
    secure, but you want to bring your children into the world when you turn
    on the television news at night, if the lead story is a crime story,
    you're shocked, stunned, and surprised. Today, we take it for granted.
    We can change all that. We've got to keep that crime rate coming down.
    And I'll tell you how we're going to do it.
        First of all, we ought to ban cop-killer bullets. I've been trying
    to do it for 2 years. I hear the same thing. I want you young people to
    help us do that. I hear the same thing. They say, ``Oh, this is a
    slippery slope. Pretty soon they'll come get our ammunition.'' I have
    never seen a deer in the woods with a bulletproof vest on. [Laughter]
    I'm not trying to interfere with anybody's hunting. These bullets are
    designed to kill police officers, and they'll kill people, too, and we
    ought to ban them.
        And then we ought to extend the Brady bill, in addition to felons,
    to incidents where violence is used in a domestic setting. If people
    commit domestic violence, they shouldn't be out there with guns where
    they can kill people in the family.
        And finally let me say again--I want you to think about this when
    you vote for Congress--one of the reasons I vetoed that budget that they
    passed, one of the reasons I let them shut the Government down without
    caving in, is that the Congress sought to abolish--the Republican
    leadership sought to abolish our commitment to 100,000 police. Now, why
    in the world they were against it, I don't know. But they sought to
    abolish it once. They sought to do it again. And they're trying to
    restrict it today.
        I'm telling you, folks, the way you make streets safer is to put
    police out there, let them get to know the kids, let them get to know
    the neighbors, let them get to know the reality of what's going on in
    the neighborhood, have people be friends and partners on the streets in
    making streets safe and stopping crime from happening. Keep the safe and
    drug-free schools program going. Get the law enforcement officers in
    there with the grade school kids, with the D.A.R.E. program and other
    things. Give these kids something to look forward to, something to be
    lifted up about. That is the key to the future, and I want you to help
    me do it. It's your future, your safety that is at stake, and I want you
    to help me fight for it.
        I want you to help me fight for a clean environment. I don't want to
    see the proposals that were made in the last 2 years become law because
    there is not a President there to fight against them and to do good
    things. Now, we've had some very good successes here since the people
    have raised up their voices and said, ``We don't like the weakening of
    the environment.'' We just passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. We just
    passed a law to improve the safety of our food and reduce pesticides.
    And these are very, very good things. We just overhauled the meat
    inspection standards for the first time in 70 years; that's a good
    thing. But we've got more to do. We need to clean up two-thirds of these
    toxic waste dumps in the next 4 years. We can do that. We need to
    continue to work to save our national parks. We saved Yellowstone from a
    gold mine; we need to save the Everglades. We need to stop the idea that
    we can sell our national parks. We need to build on our natural
    heritage. We need to build our environment.
        Folks, you get the picture. We're better off than we were. We're on
    the right track. We've still got a lot to do. And it is your future.
        The last thing I want to say is this: If you look around in this
    vast, wonderful, magnificent sea of people, you will see people whose
    ancestors came from all different places. When I went to see the
    Olympics and to start them off and I met with the American Olympic team,
    it made chills run up and down my spine. I thought to myself, if these
    kids didn't have the American uniform on and they were just walking out
    there in the Olympic Village, you wouldn't have a clue where they were
    from. You'd think, well, that person is on the African team and that
    one's on the Korean team and that one's on the Japanese team and that
    one's from the Caribbean somewhere and this one's from Latin America and
    the other one's from Europe and there's somebody from Scandinavia. You
    can be from anywhere and be American.
        And I think one reason we like the Olympics is that everybody gets a
    chance, everybody plays by the rules, you don't get anywhere by
    badmouthing your opponent, you can't get a medal if you break your
    opponent's legs and break

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    the rules. You just got to reach down deep and do the right thing. And
    even if you don't win, you're better off for having tried. That's the
    America I'm trying to build. That's the America I want you to have.
        So I want you to think about it. I want you to think about it
    because we have to fight that. There are always, always going to be
    people that'll try to pit us against one another, look down on this
    group or that group or the other group. And we have to say no. We have
    to say no. If we share the same values and we're willing to show up and
    be law-abiding citizens, we've all got a role to play and all got a
    place in America of the 21st century. There is not a nation on Earth as
    well-positioned for the next century as the United States.
        Many of you in this audience tonight will do jobs that have not been
    invented yet. Many of you will do things that have not been imagined
    yet. The best days of this country are still before us. You will have
    opportunities no previous generation of people have ever had in all of
    human history if--if--we all do our jobs to make opportunity available
    to everybody, to be good, responsible citizens and to realize that we
    have to do this together.
        We are a great country when we are together. If we let people divide
    us and make us small and make us look down on one another, we will never
    reach our potential. But if you look around this sea of folks tonight
    and you say, they're all my brothers and sisters, we're all Americans,
    and we are still the greatest country in human history and our best days
    are still ahead, then they will be. Will you help me? Will you walk with
    me? Will you stay with me for 70 days and on for 4 years and on into the
    21st century? [Applause]
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Good night. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:15 p.m. at West Holden Hall. In his
    remarks, he referred to Letha Miller, student, and M. Peter McPherson,
    president, Michigan State University; Bob Weiss, chairman, Michigan
    State University Board; Mayor David Hollister of Lansing; and Mayor
    Douglas Jester of East Lansing.