    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 29, 1996]
    [Pages 1409-1417]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1409]]

    Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National
    Convention in Chicago
    August 29, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, Mr.
    Vice President, my fellow Democrats, and my fellow Americans, thank you
    for your nomination. I don't know if I can find a fancy way to say this,
    but I accept. [Applause] Thank you.
        So many have contributed to the record we have made for the American
    people, but one above all, my partner, my friend, and the best Vice
    President in our history, Al Gore.
        Tonight I thank the city of Chicago, its great mayor, and its
    wonderful people for this magnificent convention. I love Chicago for
    many reasons, for your powerful spirit, your sports teams, your lively
    politics, but most of all for the love and light of my life, Chicago's
    daughter, Hillary.
        Four years ago, you and I set forth on a journey to bring our vision
    to our country, to keep the American dream alive for all who were
    willing to work for it, to make our American community stronger, to keep
    America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and
    prosperity.
        Four years ago, with high unemployment, stagnant wages, crime,
    welfare, and the deficit on the rise, with a host of unmet challenges
    and a rising tide of cynicism, I told you about a place I was born, and
    I told you that I still believed in a place called Hope.
        Well, for 4 years now, to realize our vision we have pursued a
    simple but profound strategy: opportunity for all, responsibility from
    all, a strong united American community.
        Four days ago, as you were making your way here, I began a train
    ride to make my way to Chicago through America's heartland. I wanted to
    see the faces, I wanted to hear the voices of the people for whom I have
    worked and fought these last 4 years. And did I ever see them.
        I met an ingenious business woman who was once on welfare in West
    Virginia; a brave police officer, shot and paralyzed, now a civic leader
    in Kentucky; an autoworker in Ohio, once unemployed, now proud to be
    working in the oldest auto plant in America to help make America number
    one in auto production again for the first time in 20 years. I met a
    grandmother fighting for her grandson's environment in Michigan. And I
    stood with two wonderful little children proudly reading from their
    favorite book, ``The Little Engine That Could.''
        At every stop, large and exuberant crowds greeted me. And maybe more
    important, when we just rolled through little towns, there were always
    schoolchildren there waving their American flags, all of them believing
    in America and its future. I would not have missed that trip for all the
    world, for that trip showed me that hope is back in America. We are on
    the right track to the 21st century. [Applause] Thank you.
        Look at the facts. Just look at the facts: 4.4 million Americans now
    living in a home of their own for the first time; hundreds of thousands
    of women have started their own new businesses; more minorities own
    businesses than ever before; record numbers of new small businesses and
    exports.
        Look at what's happened. We have the lowest combined rates of
    unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 28 years. Look at what
    happened: 10 million new jobs, over half of them high-wage jobs; 10
    million workers getting the raise they deserve with the minimum wage
    law; 25 million people now having protection in their health insurance
    because the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill says you can't lose your insurance
    anymore when you change jobs, even if somebody in your family has been
    sick; 40 million Americans with more pension security; a tax cut for 15
    million of our hardest working, hardest pressed Americans, and all small
    businesses; 12 million Americans--12 million of them--taking advantage
    of the family and medical leave law so they can be good parents and good
    workers. Ten million students have saved money on their college loans.
    We are making our democracy work.
        We have also passed political reform, the line item veto, the motor
    voter bill, tougher registration laws for lobbyists, making Congress
    live under the laws they impose on the private sector, stopping unfunded
    mandates to State and local government. We've come a long way; we've got
    one more thing to do. Will you help me

    [[Page 1410]]

    get campaign finance reform in the next 4 years? [Applause] Thank you.
        We have increased our investments in research and technology. We
    have increased investments in breast cancer research dramatically. We
    are developing a supercomputer--a supercomputer that will do more
    calculating in a second than a person with a hand-held calculator can do
    in 30,000 years. More rapid development of drugs to deal with HIV and
    AIDS and moving them to the market quicker have almost doubled life
    expectancy in only 4 years. And we are looking at no limit in sight to
    that. We'll keep going until normal life is returned to people who deal
    with this.
        Our country is still the strongest force for peace and freedom on
    Earth. On issues that once before tore us apart, we have changed the old
    politics of Washington. For too long, leaders in Washington asked who's
    to blame. But we asked, what are we going to do?
        On crime, we're putting 100,000 police on the streets. We made
    ``three strikes and you're out'' the law of the land. We stopped 60,000
    felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting handguns under the Brady
    bill. We banned assault rifles. We supported tougher punishment and
    prevention programs to keep our children from drugs and gangs and
    violence. Four years now--for four years now--the crime rate in America
    has gone down.
        On welfare, we worked with States to launch a quiet revolution.
    Today there are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare than there were the
    day I took the oath of office. We are moving people from welfare to
    work.
        We have increased child support collections by 40 percent. The
    Federal work force is the smallest it has been since John Kennedy. And
    the deficit has come down for 4 years in a row for the first time since
    before the Civil War, down 60 percent on the way to zero. We will do it.
        We are on the right track to the 21st century. We are on the right
    track, but our work is not finished. What should we do? First, let us
    consider how to proceed. Again I say, the question is no longer who's to
    blame but what to do.
        I believe that Bob Dole and Jack Kemp and Ross Perot love our
    country, and they have worked hard to serve it. It is legitimate, even
    necessary, to compare our record with theirs, our proposals for the
    future with theirs. And I expect them to make a vigorous effort to do
    the same. But I will not attack. I will not attack them personally or
    permit others to do it in this party if I can prevent it. [Applause]
    Thank you. My fellow Americans, this must be--this must be--a campaign
    of ideas, not a campaign of insults. The American people deserve it.
        Now, here's the main idea. I love and revere the rich and proud
    history of America, and I am determined to take our best traditions into
    the future. But with all respect, we do not need to build a bridge to
    the past; we need to build a bridge to the future. And that is what I
    commit to you to do.
        So tonight, tonight let us resolve to build that bridge to the 21st
    century, to meet our challenges and protect our values. Let us build a
    bridge to help our parents raise their children, to help young people
    and adults to get the education and training they need, to make our
    streets safer, to help Americans succeed at home and at work, to break
    the cycle of poverty and dependence, to protect our environment for
    generations to come, and to maintain our world leadership for peace and
    freedom. Let us resolve to build that bridge.
        Tonight, my fellow Americans, I ask all of our fellow citizens to
    join me and to join you in building that bridge to the 21st century.
    Four years from now, just 4 years from now--think of it--we begin a new
    century, full of enormous possibilities. We have to give the American
    people the tools they need to make the most of their God-given
    potential. We must make the basic bargain of opportunity and
    responsibility available to all Americans, not just a few. That is the
    promise of the Democratic Party. That is the promise of America.
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we expand
    opportunity through education, where computers are as much a part of the
    classroom as blackboards, where highly trained teachers demand peak
    performance from our students, where every 8-year-old can point to a
    book and say, ``I can read it myself.''
        By the year 2000, the single most critical thing we can do is to
    give every single American who wants it the chance to go to college. We
    must make 2 years of college just as universal in 4 years as a high
    school education is today. And we can do it. We can do it, and we should
    cut taxes to do it.
        I propose a $1,500-a-year tuition tax credit for Americans, a HOPE
    scholarship for the first

    [[Page 1411]]

    2 years of college to make the typical community college education
    available to every American. I believe every working family ought also
    to be able to deduct up to $10,000 in college tuition costs per year for
    education after that. I believe the families of this country ought to be
    able to save money for college in a tax-free IRA, save it year-in and
    year-out, withdraw it for college education without penalty. We should
    not tax middle income Americans for the money they spend on college.
    We'll get the money back down the road many times over.
        I want to say here, before I go further, that these tax cuts and
    every other one I mention tonight are all fully paid for in my balanced
    budget plan, line by line, dime by dime, and they focus on education.
        Now, one thing so many of our fellow Americans are learning is that
    education no longer stops on graduation day. I have proposed a new ``GI
    bill'' for American workers, a $2,600 grant for unemployed and
    underemployed Americans so that they can get the training and the skills
    they need to go back to work at better paying jobs, good high-skilled
    jobs for a good future.
        But we must demand excellence at every level of education. We must
    insist that our students learn the old basics we learned and the new
    basics they have to know for the next century. Tonight let us set a
    clear national goal: All children should be able to read on their own by
    the third grade. When 40 percent of our 8-year-olds cannot read as well
    as they should, we have to do something. I want to send 30,000 reading
    specialists and national service corps members to mobilize a volunteer
    army of one million reading tutors for third graders all across America.
    They will teach our young children to read.
        Let me say to our parents: You have to lead the way. Every tired
    night you spend reading a book to your child will be worth it many times
    over. I know that Hillary and I still talk about the books we read to
    Chelsea when we were so tired we could hardly stay awake. We still
    remember them, and more important, so does she. But we're going to help
    the parents of this country make every child able to read for himself or
    herself by the age of 8, by the third grade. Do you believe we can do
    that? Will you help us do that? [Applause] Thank you.
        We must give parents, all parents, the right to choose which public
    school their children will attend and to let teachers form new charter
    schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job. We must
    keep our schools open late so that young people have someplace to go and
    something to say yes to and stay off the street.
        We must require that our students pass tough tests to keep moving up
    in school. A diploma has to mean something when they get out. We should
    reward teachers that are doing a good job, remove those who don't
    measure up, but in every case, never forget that none of us would be
    here tonight if it weren't for our teachers. I know I wouldn't. We ought
    to lift them up, not tear them down.
        We need schools that will take our children into the next century.
    We need schools that are rebuilt and modernized with an unprecedented
    commitment from the National Government to increase school construction
    and with every single library and classroom in America connected to the
    information superhighway by the year 2000.
        Now, folks, if we do these things, every 8-year-old will be able to
    read, every 12-year-old will be able to log in on the Internet, every
    18-year-old will be able to go to college, and all Americans will have
    the knowledge they need to cross that bridge to the 21st century.
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we create a
    strong and growing economy to preserve the legacy of opportunity for the
    next generation, by balancing our budget in a way that protects our
    values and ensuring that every family will be able to own and protect
    the value of their most important asset, their home.
        Tonight let us proclaim to the American people, we will balance the
    budget. And let us also proclaim, we will do it in a way that preserves
    Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, the integrity of our
    pensions, the strength of our people.
        Now, last year when the Republican Congress sent me a budget that
    violated those values and principles, I vetoed it. And I would do it
    again tomorrow. I could never allow cuts that devastate education for
    our children, that pollute our environment, that end the guarantee of
    health care for those who are served under Medicaid, that end our duty
    or violate our duty to our parents through Medicare. I just couldn't do
    that. As long as I'm President, I'll never let it happen. And it doesn't
    matter if they try

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    again, as they did before, to use the blackmail threat of a shutdown of
    the Federal Government to force these things on the American people. We
    didn't let it happen before. We won't let it happen again.
        Of course, there is a better answer to this dilemma. We could have
    the right kind of balanced budget with a new Congress, a Democratic
    Congress.
        I want to balance the budget with real cuts in Government, in waste.
    I want a plan that invests in education, as mine does, in technology,
    and yes, in research, as Christopher Reeve so powerfully reminded us we
    must do.
        And my plan gives Americans tax cuts that will help our economy to
    grow. I want to expand IRA's so that young people can save tax-free to
    buy a first home. Tonight I propose a new tax cut for homeownership that
    says to every middle income working family in this country, if you sell
    your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever, not
    ever. I want every American to be able to hear those beautiful words,
    ``Welcome home.''
        Let me say again, every tax cut I call for tonight is targeted, it's
    responsible, and it is paid for within my balanced budget plan. My tax
    cuts will not undermine our economy, they will speed economic growth.
        We should cut taxes for the family sending a child to college, for
    the worker returning to college, for the family saving to buy a home or
    for long-term health care, and a $500-per-child credit for middle income
    families raising their children who need help with child care and what
    the children will do after school. That is the right way to cut taxes:
    pro-family, pro-education, pro-economic growth.
        Now, our opponents have put forward a very different plan, a risky
    $550 billion tax scheme that will force them to ask for even bigger cuts
    in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment than they passed
    and I vetoed last year. But even then they will not cover the costs of
    their scheme, so that even then this plan will explode the deficit,
    which will increase interest rates by 2 percent, according to their own
    estimates last year. It will require huge cuts in the very investments
    we need to grow and to grow together and, at the same time, slow down
    the economy.
        You know what higher interest rates mean? To you it means a higher
    mortgage payment, a higher car payment, a higher credit card payment. To
    our economy it means business people will not borrow as much money,
    invest as much money, create as many new jobs, create as much wealth,
    raise as many wages. Do we really want to make that same mistake all
    over again?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Do we really want to stop economic growth again?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Do we really want to start piling up another mountain
    of debt?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Do we want to bring back the recession of 1991 and
    '92?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Do we want to weaken our bridge to the 21st century?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Of course we don't. We have an obligation, you and I,
    to leave our children a legacy of opportunity, not a legacy of debt. Our
    budget would be balanced today, we would have a surplus today, if we
    didn't have to make the interest payments on the debt run up in the 12
    years before the Clinton/Gore administration took office.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. So let me say, this is one of those areas in which I
    respectfully disagree with my opponent. I don't believe we should bet
    the farm, and I certainly don't believe we should bet the country. We
    should stay on the right track to the 21st century.
        Opportunity alone is not enough. I want to build an America in the
    21st century in which all Americans take personal responsibility for
    themselves, their families, their communities, and their country. I want
    our Nation to take responsibility to make sure that every single child
    can look out the window in the morning and see a whole community getting
    up and going to work.
        We want these young people to know the thrill of the first paycheck,
    the challenge of starting that first business, the pride in following in
    a parent's footsteps. The welfare reform law I signed last week gives
    America a chance, but not a guarantee, to have that kind of new
    beginning, to have a new social bargain with the poor, guaranteeing
    health care, child care, and nutrition for the children but requiring
    able-bodied parents to work for the income.

    [[Page 1413]]

        Now, I say to all of you, whether you supported the law or opposed
    it, but especially to those who supported it, we have a responsibility,
    we have a moral obligation to make sure the people who are being
    required to work have the opportunity to work. We must make sure the
    jobs are there. There should be one million new jobs for welfare
    recipients by the year 2000. States under this law can now take the
    money that was spent on the welfare check and use it to help businesses
    provide paychecks. I challenge every State to do it soon.
        I propose also to give businesses a tax credit for every person
    hired off welfare and kept employed. I propose to offer private job
    placement firms a bonus for every welfare recipient they place in a job
    who stays in it. And more important, I want to help communities put
    welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools,
    making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again.
    There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to
    put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these
    families.
        My fellow Americans, I have spent an enormous amount of time with
    our dear friend, the late Ron Brown, and with Secretary Kantor and
    others, opening markets for America around the world. And I'm proud of
    every one we opened. But let us never forget, the greatest untapped
    market for American enterprise is right here in America, in the inner
    cities, in the rural areas, who have not felt this recovery. With
    investment and business and jobs, they can become our partners in the
    future. And it's a great opportunity we ought not to pass up.
        I propose more empowerment zones like the one we have right here in
    Chicago to draw business into poor neighborhoods. I propose more
    community development banks, like the South Shore Bank right here in
    Chicago, to help people in those neighborhoods start their own small
    businesses. More jobs, more incomes, new markets for America right here
    at home making welfare reform a reality. [Applause]
        Now, folks, you cheered--and I thank you--but the Government can
    only do so much. The private sector has to provide most of these jobs.
    So I want to say again, tonight I challenge every business person in
    America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system
    to try to hire somebody off welfare and try hard. [Applause] Thank you.
    After all, the welfare system you used to complain about is not here
    anymore. There is no more ``who's to blame'' on welfare. Now the only
    question is what to do. And we all have a responsibility, especially
    those who have criticized what was passed and who have asked for a
    change and who have the ability to give poor people a chance to grow and
    support their families. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century
    that ends the permanent under class, that lifts up the poor and ends
    their isolation, their exile. And they're not forgotten anymore.
    [Applause] Thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century where
    our children are not killing other children anymore, where children's
    lives are not shattered by violence at home or in the schoolyard, where
    a generation of young people are not left to raise themselves on the
    streets.
        With more police and punishment and prevention, the crime rate has
    dropped for 4 years in a row now. But we cannot rest, because we know
    it's still too high. We cannot rest until crime is a shocking exception
    to our daily lives, not news as usual. Will you stay with me until we
    reach that good day? [Applause]
        My fellow Americans, we all owe a great debt to Sarah and Jim Brady,
    and I'm glad they took their wrong turn and wound up in Chicago. I was
    glad to see that. It is to them we owe the good news that 60,000 felons,
    fugitives, and stalkers couldn't get handguns because of the Brady bill.
    But not a single hunter in Arkansas or New Hampshire or Illinois or
    anyplace else missed a hunting season.
        But now I say we should extend the Brady bill, because anyone who
    has committed an act of domestic violence against a spouse or a child
    should not buy a gun. And we must ban those cop-killer bullets. They are
    designed for one reason only, to kill police officers. We asked the
    police to keep us safe. We owe it to them to help keep them safe while
    they do their job for us.
        We should pass a victims' rights constitutional amendment because
    victims deserve to be heard; they need to know when an assailant is
    released. They need to know these things, and the only way to guarantee
    them is through a constitutional amendment.
        We have made a great deal of progress. Even the crime rate among
    young people is finally

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    coming down. So it is very, very painful to me that drug use among young
    people is up. Drugs nearly killed my brother when he was a young man,
    and I hate them. He fought back. He's here tonight with his wife, his
    little boy is here, and I'm really proud of him. But I learned
    something--I learned something in going through that long nightmare with
    our family. And I can tell you, something has happened to some of our
    young people; they simply don't think these drugs are dangerous anymore,
    or they think the risk is acceptable. So beginning with our parents, and
    without regard to our party, we have to renew our energy to teach this
    generation of young people the hard, cold truth: Drugs are deadly; drugs
    are wrong; drugs can cost you your life.
        General Barry McCaffrey, the four-star general who led our fight
    against drugs in Latin America, now leads our crusade against drugs at
    home: stopping more drugs at our borders, cracking down on those who
    sell them, and most important of all, pursuing a national antidrug
    strategy whose primary aim is to turn our children away from drugs. I
    call on Congress to give him every cent of funding we have requested for
    this strategy and to do it now.
        There is more we will do. We should say to parolees: We will test
    you for drugs; if you go back on them, we will send you back to jail. We
    will say to gangs: We will break you with the same antiracketeering law
    we used to put mob bosses in jail. You're not going to kill our kids
    anymore or turn them into murderers before they're teenagers. My fellow
    Americans, if we're going to build that bridge to the 21st century we
    have to make our children free, free of the vise grip of guns and gangs
    and drugs, free to build lives of hope.
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with a strong American
    community, beginning with strong families, an America where all children
    are cherished and protected from destructive forces, where parents can
    succeed at home and at work. Everywhere I've gone in America, people
    come up and talk to me about their struggle with the demands of work and
    their desire to do a better job with their children. The very first
    person I ever saw fight that battle was here with me 4 years ago, and
    tonight I miss her very, very much. My irrepressible, hard-working,
    always optimistic mother did the best she could for her brother and me,
    often against very stiff odds. I learned from her just how much love and
    determination can overcome. But from her and from our life, I also
    learned that no parent can do it alone. And no parent should have to.
    She had the kind of help every parent deserves, from our neighbors, our
    friends, our teachers, our pastors, our doctors, and so many more.
        You know, when I started out in public life with a lot of my friends
    from the Arkansas delegation down here, there used to be a saying from
    time to time that every man who runs for public office will claim that
    he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. [Laughter] Well,
    my mother knew better. And she made sure I did, too. Long before she
    even met Hillary, my mother knew it takes a village, and she was
    grateful for the support she got.
        As Tipper Gore and Hillary said on Tuesday, we have, all of us in
    our administration, worked hard to support families in raising their
    children and succeeding at work. But we must do more. We should extend
    the family and medical leave law to give parents some time off to take
    their children to regular doctor's appointments or attend those parent-
    teacher conferences at school. That is a key determination of their
    success. We should pass a flextime law that allows employees to take
    their overtime pay in money or in time off, depending on what's better
    for their family.
        The FDA has adopted new measures to reduce advertising and sales of
    cigarettes to children. The Vice President spoke so movingly of it last
    night. But let me remind you, my fellow Americans, that is very much an
    issue in this election because that battle is far from over and the two
    candidates have different views. I pledge to America's parents that I
    will see this effort all the way through.
        Working with the entertainment industry, we're giving parents the V-
    chip. TV shows are being rated for content so parents will be able to
    make a judgment about whether their small children should see them. And
    3 hours of quality children's programming every week, on every network,
    are on the way.
        The Kennedy-Kassebaum law says every American can keep his or her
    health insurance if they have to change jobs, even if someone in their
    family has been sick. That is a very important thing. But tonight we
    should spell out the next steps. The first thing we ought to do is to
    extend the benefits of health care to people who are unemployed. I
    propose in

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    my balanced budget plan, paid for, to help unemployed families keep
    their health insurance for up to 6 months. A parent may be without a
    job, but no child should be without a doctor. And let me say again, as
    the First Lady did on Tuesday, we should protect mothers and newborn
    babies from being forced out of the hospital in less than 48 hours.
        We respect the individual conscience of every American on the
    painful issue of abortion but believe as a matter of law that this
    decision should be left to a woman, her conscience, her doctor, and her
    God. But abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.
    That's why I helped to establish and support a national effort to reduce
    out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy, and that is why we must promote adoption.
        Last week the minimum wage bill I signed contained a $5,000 credit
    to families who adopt children, even more if the children have
    disabilities. It put an end to racial discrimination in the adoption
    process. It was a good thing for America. My fellow Americans, already
    there are tens of thousands of children out there who need a good home
    with loving parents. I hope more of them will find it now.
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with a clean and safe
    environment. We are making our food safer from pesticides. We're
    protecting our drinking water and our air from poisons. We saved
    Yellowstone from mining. We established the largest national park south
    of Alaska in the Mojave Desert in California. We are working to save the
    precious Florida Everglades. And when the leaders of this Congress
    invited the polluters into the back room to roll back 25 years of
    environmental protections that both parties had always supported, I said
    no.
        But we must do more. Today, 10 million children live within just 4
    miles of a toxic waste dump. We have cleaned up 197 of those dumps in
    the last 3 years, more than in the previous 12 years combined. In the
    next 4 years, we propose to clean up 500 more, two-thirds of all that
    are left and the most dangerous ones. Our children should grow up next
    to parks, not poison.
        We should make it a crime even to attempt to pollute. We should
    freeze the serious polluter's property until they clean up the problems
    they create. We should make it easier for families to find out about
    toxic chemicals in their neighborhoods so they can do more to protect
    their own children. These are the things that we must do to build that
    bridge to the 21st century.
        My fellow Americans, I want to build a bridge to the 21st century
    that makes sure we are still the nation with the world's strongest
    defense, that our foreign policy still advances the values of our
    American community in the community of nations. Our bridge to the future
    must include bridges to other nations, because we remain the world's
    indispensable nation to advance prosperity, peace, and freedom and to
    keep our own children safe from the dangers of terror and weapons of
    mass destruction.
        We have helped to bring democracy to Haiti and peace to Bosnia. Now
    the peace signed on the White House lawn between the Israelis and the
    Palestinians must embrace more of Israel's neighbors. The deep desire
    for peace that Hillary and I felt when we walked the streets of Belfast
    and Derry must become real for all the people of Northern Ireland. And
    Cuba must finally join the community of democracies.
        Nothing in our lifetime has been more heartening than when people of
    the former Soviet Union and Central Europe broke the grip of communism.
    We have aided their progress, and I am proud of it. And I will continue
    our strong partnership with a democratic Russia. And we will bring some
    of Central Europe's new democracies into NATO so that they will never
    question their own freedom in the future.
        Our American exports are at record levels. In the next 4 years, we
    have to break down even more barriers to them, reaching out to Latin
    America, to Africa, to other countries in Asia, making sure that our
    workers and our products, the world's finest, have the benefit of free
    and fair trade.
        In the last 4 years, we have frozen North Korea's nuclear weapons
    program. And I am proud to say that tonight there is not a single
    Russian nuclear missile pointed at an American child. Now we must
    enforce and ratify without delay measures that further reduce nuclear
    arsenals, banish poison gas, and ban nuclear tests once and for all.
        We have made investments, new investments, in our most important
    defense asset, our magnificent men and women in uniform. By the year
    2000, we also will have increased funding to modernize our weapons
    systems by 40 percent. These commitments will make sure that our
    military remains the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the
    entire world. We

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    are developing a sensible national missile defense, but we must not, not
    now, not by the year 2000, squander $60 billion on an unproved,
    ineffective Star Wars program that could be obsolete tomorrow.
        We are fighting terrorism on all fronts with a three-pronged
    strategy. First, we are working to rally a world coalition with zero
    tolerance for terrorism. Just this month, I signed a law imposing harsh
    sanctions on foreign companies that invest in key sectors of the Iranian
    and Libyan economies. As long as Iran trains, supports, and protects
    terrorists, as long as Libya refuses to give up the people who blew up
    Pan Am 103, they will pay a price from the United States.
        Second, we must give law enforcement the tools they need to take the
    fight to terrorists. We need new laws to crack down on money laundering
    and to prosecute and punish those who commit violent acts against
    American citizens abroad, to add chemical markers or taggants to
    gunpowder used in bombs so we can crack the bombmakers, to extend the
    same power police now have against organized crime to save lives by
    tapping all the phones that terrorists use. Terrorists are as big a
    threat to our future, perhaps bigger, than organized crime. Why should
    we have two different standards for a common threat to the safety of
    America and our children? We need, in short, the laws that Congress
    refused to pass. And I ask them again, please, as an American, not a
    partisan matter, pass these laws now.
        Third, we will improve airport and air travel security. I have asked
    the Vice President to establish a commission and report back to me on
    ways to do this. But now we will install the most sophisticated bomb-
    detection equipment in all our major airports. We will search every
    airplane flying to or from America from another nation, every flight,
    every cargo hold, every cabin, every time.
        My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I know that in most
    election seasons foreign policy is not a matter of great interest in the
    debates in the barbershops and the cafes of America, on the plant floors
    and at the bowling alleys. But there are times, there are times when
    only America can make the difference between war and peace, between
    freedom and repression, between life and death. We cannot save all the
    world's children, but we can save many of them. We cannot become the
    world's policeman, but where our values and our interests are at stake
    and where we can make a difference, we must act and we must lead. That
    is our job, and we are better, stronger, and safer because we are doing
    it.
        My fellow Americans, let me say one last time, we can only build our
    bridge to the 21st century if we build it together and if we're willing
    to walk arm in arm across that bridge together. I have spent so much of
    your time that you gave me these last 4 years to be your President
    worrying about the problems of Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern
    Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi. What do these places have in common? People
    are killing each other and butchering children because they are
    different from one another. They share the same piece of land, but they
    are different from one another. They hate their race, their tribe, their
    ethnic group, their religion.
        We have seen the terrible, terrible price that people pay when they
    insist on fighting and killing their neighbors over their differences.
    In our own country, we have seen America pay a terrible price for any
    form of discrimination. And we have seen us grow stronger as we have
    steadily let more and more of our hatreds and our fears go, as we have
    given more and more of our people the chance to live their dreams.
        That is why the flame of our Statue of Liberty, like the Olympic
    flame carried all across America by thousands of citizen heroes, will
    always, always burn brighter than the fires that burn our churches, our
    synagogues, our mosques--always.
        Look around this hall tonight--and to our fellow Americans watching
    on television, you look around this hall tonight--there is every
    conceivable difference here among the people who are gathered. If we
    want to build that bridge to the 21st century we have to be willing to
    say loud and clear: If you believe in the values of the Constitution,
    the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing
    to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family and we're
    proud to be with you. [Applause] You cheer now, because you know this is
    true. You know this is true. When you walk out of this hall, think about
    it. Live by it.
        We still have too many Americans who give in to their fears of those
    who are different from them. Not so long ago, swastikas were painted on
    the doors of some African-American mem-

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    bers of our Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Folks, for those of you who
    don't know what they do, the Special Forces are just what the name says:
    they are special forces. If I walk off this stage tonight and call them
    on the telephone and tell them to go halfway around the world and risk
    their lives for you and be there by tomorrow at noon, they will do it.
    They do not deserve to have swastikas on their doors.
        So look around here, look around here: Old or young, healthy as a
    horse or a person with a disability that hasn't kept you down, man or
    woman, Native American, native born, immigrant, straight or gay,
    whatever, the test ought to be, I believe in the Constitution, the Bill
    of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence; I believe in religious
    liberty; I believe in freedom of speech; I believe in working hard and
    playing by the rules; I'm showing up for work tomorrow; I'm building
    that bridge to the 21st century. That ought to be the test.
        My fellow Americans, 68 nights from tonight the American people will
    face once again a critical moment of decision. We're going to choose the
    last President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st
    century. But the real choice is not that. The real choice is whether we
    will build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past, about whether
    we believe our best days are still out there or our best days are behind
    us, about whether we want a country of people all working together or
    one where you're on your own.
        Let us commit ourselves this night to rise up and build the bridge
    we know we ought to build all the way to the 21st century. Let us have
    faith, American faith that we are not leaving our greatness behind.
    We're going to carry it right on with us into that new century, a
    century of new challenge and unlimited promise. Let us, in short, do the
    work that is before us, so that when our time here is over, we will all
    watch the sun go down, as we all must, and say truly, we have prepared
    our children for the dawn.
        My fellow Americans, after these 4 good, hard years, I still believe
    in a place called Hope, a place called America.
        Thank you, God bless you, and good night.

    Note: The President spoke at 9 p.m. at United Center. In his remarks, he
    referred to actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in an equestrian
    accident; and Sarah Brady, head of Hand Gun Control, Inc., wife of
    former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who was wounded in
    the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.