    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [July 2, 1996]
    [Pages 1049-1056]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1049]]

    Remarks to the National Council of Senior Citizens Convention in
    Chicago, Illinois
    July 2, 1996

        The President. Thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you very much. Pretty rowdy group today.
    [Applause] Thank you. I want to----
        Audience members. Down in front! [Inaudible]--on the right!
        The President. What's the problem over here on the right? [Laughter]
        Steve said, you know, he said, ``This room is 285 feet long. It's
    like a giant bowling alley.'' [Laughter] There's kind of a wave that
    goes from right to left here.
        Let me, first of all, thank Lois and Tom for their introductions. I
    want to thank your outgoing president, Gene Glover, for his years of
    outstanding service and wish your incoming president, Harry Gunther,
    well, and say that I hope this means that we have an even better chance
    of carrying Florida than we did before we started, Harry.
        I thank all the distinguished labor leaders who are here: George
    Becker and Jay Mazur, and I see Doug Fraser there. You're looking great;
    I'm glad to see you, Doug. Thank you, and God bless you, sir.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to Steve Protulis. He has
    done a great job for you and a great job for me. Thank you, Steve. And I
    want to recognize one other person apart from the elected officials, and
    that is my great friend Justin Dart, over there. Thank you for
    everything you have done, sir. I'm glad to see you.
        When Tom was up there kind of being rough on the Congress I wanted
    to say, he didn't mean the Members of Congress who are here. [Laughter]
    He didn't mean Dick Durbin or Ed Pastor or Bobby Rush or Luis Gutierrez.
    We thank them for what they did in this Congress. They did a great job.
        And, Mayor Daley, it's good to be in Chicago. And I'll be back
    before you know it. I thank you for having us all here.
        I always love to come to Chicago, and I like to--we flew in a
    helicopter down to Meigs Field, and we got to fly over some of the
    suburbs--and I always reminisce when I do. But a lot of you know that
    Hillary was born in Chicago and grew up in Park Ridge. And I wish she
    were here today, but she is representing our country on a tour of nine
    Central and Eastern European nations. So I talked to her last night;
    she'd just finished the day in Romania. So I wish she were here, but
    she's over there talking about countries who love freedom. [Applause]
    Thank you.
        I want to thank you for something else that I know you feel, and
    that is, it meant a lot to me when I took this recent trip to Europe to
    have the annual meeting of the seven largest industrial countries and
    then a meeting with those countries and Russia about political
    challenges facing the world to know that the people back home were not
    only outraged by the murder of our service people in Saudi Arabia but
    determined to stand against terrorism wherever it exists. And I know you
    must have been proud this morning to read in the newspaper that our
    Federal law enforcement officials thwarted a planned attempt to blow up
    buildings in Arizona. I thank them for that, and I'm proud of them.
        I can tell you this: In this open world of ours where we can all
    move around the world and ideas and information and money and technology
    can move around the world in a split second, we are more vulnerable to
    the organized forces of intolerance and hatred and terrorism. But we can
    also prevent a lot of these things. I have seen it work here in the
    United States in the last 3 years, where we've headed off a number of
    such incidences. I see it happen in the Middle East, where incidences
    not only occur but many more are headed off. And we're going to have to
    work at this, work it together, and other nations need to work with us,
    because this is our common security threat after the cold war. And we
    can whip this if we'll stay together and work together. And we have to
    do that.
        The other thing I'd like to say is that I signed a proclamation late
    last night proclaiming this month as National Unity Month and asking all
    Americans to find ways in their places of wor-

    [[Page 1050]]

    ship or in other places to stand up against this terrible wave of church
    bombings and the desecration of other houses of worship that we are
    seeing across this country. Just before I came to see you I announced
    that we reallocated a few million dollars to the 12 States that have
    seen the great bulk of these church burnings so that every county will
    receive some funds either to hire extra officers or to have people work
    overtime, or to help churches put up security equipment or lighting at
    night, to do something to try to prevent these things from occurring.
        But we also need to change the atmosphere. If you've seen the
    profiles coming out on a lot of the people who have been charged with
    these church burnings, they seem to be no discernible conspiracy but
    instead a lot of people who share common problems, people who have
    disappointments in their own lives, frustrations in their own lives, and
    somehow think instead of saying, ``Well, what can I do to straighten
    myself out or who can I go to''--whom can I go to--``to ask for help,''
    they say, ``Well, I'm just going to be mad and burn a black church.''
        And you know, this is something that is sort of endemic to human
    nature. When you're in a crisis in your life, you can either say, ``What
    can I do to fix it,'' or ``How can I get some help,'' or you can look
    for somebody else to blame or say, ``Well, no matter how bad off I am
    there is somebody that's even lower than I am, and I'm going to punish
    them.'' And we have to stand up against that. We have to change the
    atmosphere in the country.
        Don't forget, this country was founded on a belief in religious
    liberty. A lot of the first people who came to the shores of the United
    States came here because they wanted to come to a place where nobody
    would tell them how to worship God, and they could make their own mind
    up.
        Don't forget that the first amendment to the Constitution not only
    protects the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, and the freedom of
    assembly, it protects the freedom of religion. It is the first amendment
    to the Constitution. And over our entire history we have displayed a
    fidelity to it that has kept our country strong. And we dare not allow
    this to continue without every American of conscience, without regard to
    their race, their region, or their political party, speaking up against
    it. It is wrong, and we must stand together.
        For more than 30 years now, you have been fighting the good fight
    you were cheering about today, fighting first for Medicare and for
    Medicaid and for Social Security and then fighting to protect it. I am
    very proud that one of the things that happened last year with the
    leadership of Senator Moynihan primarily is that we finally made Social
    Security an independent agency, giving the autonomy it needs to fulfill
    its mission.
        You know as well as I do that your fight for the well-being and the
    dignity of American seniors has never been more important than it is
    now. You know that the victories that we won through the veto pen in
    1995 didn't solve the fundamental problem of securing the Medicare Trust
    Fund in a way that honors the dignity of the seniors of this country or
    protects our sense of fairness. I am proud to stand with you. But what
    you do from here forward is central to our mission as we move into the
    21st century.
        When I ran for President, I said to all of you that I wanted to lead
    our country into the next century to ensure three things. I wanted the
    American dream to be a living reality to every person who is willing to
    work for it, without regard to their race, their gender, their region,
    or what they start out with in life. I wanted this country to be coming
    together around all of its ethnic and racial and religious diversity,
    instead of being torn apart the way so many countries around the world
    are. And I wanted this country to continue to be the world's strongest
    force for peace and freedom and prosperity.
        At the end of the cold war, if the world is not going to be divided
    into the Communist and non-Communist world, and if we can force the
    nuclear threat to recede, we still have to have somebody out there
    standing up for human decency around the world and peace and freedom.
    You see that in Bosnia. You see it in Haiti. You see it in the fight
    against terrorism.
        And it seemed to me that in order to accomplish these things we had
    to ask ourselves: Okay, the cold war is over. We're living in a new kind
    of world. All right, we're not dominated by large industrial
    bureaucracies and large government bureaucracies and mass production
    anymore. High technology and the information revolution has changed
    dramatically manufacturing and agriculture and every form of human
    endeavor. So we changed the way we work; we changed the way we live; we
    changed the

    [[Page 1051]]

    way we are relating to the rest of the world--big changes, 100-year
    changes. Now what?
        And it seemed to me that we had to start by saying we have to meet
    these challenges in a way that protects our values. And one of the
    values that has made this country strong for over 200 years is
    recognizing that we are, none of us, in this alone. We have
    responsibilities to each other. That's really what all these debates are
    about.
         So if, for example, if you just take Medicare. If there's a problem
    with Medicare, solve the problem, but don't solve it by asking families
    to go back to the days when they had to choose between health care for
    the parents or college educations for the kids. That's not the answer to
    solve that problem.
        This is about more than money. This is about what we are as a
    people. What are our obligations to our parents, and what are our
    parents' obligations to their grandchildren? How can we make these
    decisions in a way that allows America to grow but to grow together, to
    go forward together, so that we all feel like we're in this together and
    that we're growing stronger because we're holding hands and working
    together?
        Now, that is what I believe we should be doing. And I don't think
    it's very complicated. I think we need a strategy which says our role is
    to create opportunity, not guarantees but opportunity for people to make
    the most of their own lives, to insist that our citizens act with
    personal responsibility, and to build a stronger sense of community, to
    recognize that we're all in this together, we do have certain
    obligations to one another, and we're all going to do better if
    everybody has a chance to do well, and that we can't lift up one group
    by keeping another down. We have to make these decisions together.
    That's the way to do it.
        Take the economy. Four years ago our economy was drifting,
    unemployment was high, the deficit was out of control, we had the
    slowest job growth since the Great Depression. I wanted to chart a new
    course. And I said what we ought to do with this economy is to have a
    disciplined plan to move us into the 21st century with a growing economy
    that everybody had a chance to benefit from. Let's cut the deficit, get
    interest rates down, get investment into creating jobs and homes up.
    Let's continue to invest in the education of our children, the education
    of adults, high technology, research, the things that will create good
    jobs. Let's have more trade, but let's make sure it's not only free
    trade but fair trade. Let's do these things, and it will work.
        I also believed very strongly that we had to do more to help working
    families to succeed at work and to succeed at home. You know, a lot of
    people talk about welfare. Well, one of the things that I figured out
    was we had a tax system that was punishing people at the low end of the
    wage scale who chose work over welfare. We doubled the family tax credit
    called the earned-income tax credit so we could say if you're working 40
    hours a week and you've got a child in the home, we will not tax you
    into poverty. You should be out of poverty. We will lift you out of
    poverty with the tax system. It was pro-family.
        We fought for the family and medical leave law, which simply said if
    you have a sick parent or a newborn baby and you have to take some time
    off work, you won't lose your job. It was a good bill, and it was the
    right thing to do.
        Now, when we passed this economic plan, I predicted that if it
    passed, we'd be able to cut the deficit in half in 4 years and the
    American people would produce 8 million new jobs, even though we were
    going to reduce the size of the National Government. Well, the
    Republicans in the Congress fought us tooth and nail. And I'll give them
    credit; every one of them voted against it. [Laughter] They didn't fool
    around; they were united. [Laughter]
        Speaker Gingrich, then the minority leader, said, ``I believe this
    will lead to a recession next year.'' Now the majority leader, Mr.
    Armey, said of my economic plan, ``Clearly this is a job killer.''
    [Laughter] Senator Gramm said, ``We are buying a one-way ticket to a
    recession. The American economy is going to get weaker, not stronger,
    and 4 years from today the deficit will be higher than it is today and
    not lower.'' Senator Dole said, ``President Clinton knows, and the
    American people know, the plan does not tackle the deficit.'' And John
    Kasich, the head of the Budget Committee, from Ohio, said----
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. Wait, let me quote this. Here is what he said of our
    economic plan, quote, ``This plan will not work. If it was to work then
    I'd have to become a Democrat.'' [Laughter] Well, I want to tell Mr.
    Kasich that Mayor Daley is saving a seat for him at the convention,
    because it works. It does.

    [[Page 1052]]

        I don't know how they define ``work,'' but in 3\1/2\ years the
    deficit, now we know, will be cut by more than half. We know the
    American people did not produce 8 million jobs in 4 years, they produced
    9.7 million jobs in 3\1/2\ years; 3.7 million new homeowners; an all-
    time high in the export of American products; a record number for 3
    years in a row of new businesses starting up. And for the first time in
    10 years, thank goodness, average hourly earnings for working families
    are starting to go up. The lowest combined rates of unemployment and
    inflation in almost 30 years. I think it's fair to say that based on the
    evidence, when it came to the economy, we were right, and they were
    wrong.
        Of course, we have more to do. The minimum wage this year is going
    to drop to a 40-year low in what it will buy if we don't raise it. You
    can't raise a family on 4.25 an hour. And if this Congress really
    believes in work and family values, let them go back and raise the
    minimum wage like they ought to.
        And we ought to pass the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill and pass it now,
    unadulterated, so people won't lose their health insurance when they
    change jobs or someone in their family has been sick. We also ought to
    make sure that we do a number of other things. I've sent a package of
    retirement legislation to the Congress to make it easier for self-
    employed people and small-business people to take out retirement plans
    and then to keep it even if they go through periods of unemployment or
    when they change jobs. There are lots of other things we need to do. But
    the last thing we need to do is to reverse a course that is working.
        I also believe that when people get to the end of their working
    lives, they shouldn't have to worry about whether they can feed
    themselves when they retire. Nor, however, should they have to worry
    about whether Medicare will be there for them.
        Now, I noticed when our friends on the other side debate Medicare in
    Washington, they never tell people that one of the important things that
    we did in our 1993 economic plan was to strengthen the Medicare Trust
    Fund, to add a few years to it. And they attacked us every step of the
    way for trying to do it, and in fact in the '94 election promised to
    undo what we had done to strengthen the Medicare Trust Fund and protect
    the financial integrity of Medicare. It's why we fought for the
    reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, so that seniors can get the
    nutrition and transportation and other services they need.
        It's why I have worked so hard to pass and then to protect that
    crime bill. How many seniors would say that their number one concern
    over the last 5 years has been their personal safety? And again I would
    say, if you just look at the record this administration has worked on in
    the area of criminal justice and law enforcement--we passed the Brady
    bill, requiring a waiting period before people can buy handguns; we
    passed the crime bill, which put 100,000 more police on the street over
    a period of 6 years. I can tell you this: We are ahead of schedule with
    those police officers and under budget. And they are making a difference
    to lower the crime rate in America.
        We passed the ban on assault weapons. And again, the leadership of
    the other side fought us every step of the way. They said we shouldn't
    give the communities any money to try to help prevention programs, to
    spend money to keep kids working in the summertime or giving them some
    things to do after school, instead of to walk the streets. They said
    that this was a waste of money, even though police officers were
    screaming for it all over America, so that our young people could have
    something to say yes to as well as something to say no to.
        They said if we passed the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill,
    we were just going to take everybody's gun away from them. Well, I'll
    tell you something, we've now been through two deer seasons--
    [laughter]--and where I live, every last hunter that hadn't wanted to
    buy a new gun is still hunting with the same rifle they had when those
    guys were trying to scare them to death. But there are some people who
    didn't get guns: 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers didn't get guns
    because of the Brady bill. We were right, and they were wrong.
        Ask Mayor Daley, a former prosecutor, about Chicago. Community
    policing, preventive strategies: the crime rate is down in virtually
    every major city in this country in every major category. Substantial
    drop in the murder rate, just from last year, right here in Chicago. So
    those people who fought the crime bill were wrong. They were wrong. The
    evidence is here. And that has to do with how senior citizens live.
        We know that as we look to the future, we have to find a way to
    control medical inflation. Of course we do. We have to find a way to

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    try to bring inflation in health care down to the level of inflation in
    the country and keep it there. We know that as there's more seniors
    relative to workers in the population, we have to deal with that. We
    know that we have to have integrity in the Medicare Trust Fund. Can we
    do that without creating two classes of people under Medicare? Can we do
    it without destroying the guarantees of Medicaid to families with people
    with disabilities, to elderly people in nursing homes, to poor women and
    their infant children? You bet we can. We've done it before. We can do
    it again, and we will do it.
        Medicaid, most people think, is a program for poor people. The truth
    is only about 30 percent of it goes to help poor families, pregnant
    women, and little children. Seventy percent of it goes to care for our
    senior citizens, most of whom come from middle class families, to enable
    their children to have stable lives and raise their children and educate
    them, and to go to help families with family members with disabilities,
    many of whom can live at home or independently because of Medicaid, many
    of whom are able to raise their children with serious disabilities at
    home without going into bankruptcy or having to give up their jobs
    because of Medicaid.
        Now, can we do things to slow the rate of inflation there, to give
    the people on Medicaid more choices, to have more incentives to do all
    kinds of things? Yes, we can. Should we walk away from the guarantee we
    have given to try to help make people secure in their health care? No,
    we should not. No, we should not. Are there other strategies we can
    follow? You bet there are. What about preventive health care?
        One of the things that I tried to do--it's turned out to be very
    controversial and I now see why no previous President ever wanted to get
    into this--is I believe that we should take strong action to stop the
    advertising, sales, and transference of cigarettes to children. I think
    it's wrong.
        You talk about saving money. Three thousand children a day smoke--
    start smoking--begin. Three thousand children a day begin. One thousand
    of them will have their lives shortened because of it. And along the way
    society will pick up a significant part of the health care bill. Now,
    that's one way to save money.
        Now, I have been amazed at the debate that's injected itself into
    the national campaign on this issue. I notice that Senator Dole
    questioned the other day whether or not tobacco was really addictive for
    everybody. [Laughter] And then, apparently, this morning, when it was--
    he was asked about Dr. Koop, who was President Reagan's Surgeon General,
    a remarkable man, who may be a Republican for all I know--President
    Reagan's Surgeon General, but he has been one of our most outspoken
    advocates of trying to stop smoking among young people--and this morning
    Senator Dole suggested that maybe Dr. Koop had been brainwashed by the
    liberal media. [Laughter] Well, I imagine Dr. Koop was surprised to hear
    that. [Laughter] I believe Dr. Koop knows more about the dangers of
    tobacco than the so-called liberal media or Senator Dole. He's out there
    fighting for our children, and that's what we need more people to do,
    fight for children and not play politics with this issue.
        Medicaid today spends at least $10 billion in Federal and State
    funds to pay for treatment for smoking-related illnesses. Now, if we're
    going to get serious about cutting the costs, that's one way to do it
    without hurting families. It will help families, it will strengthen
    families.
        And finally, let me say that this sort of partisan division has only
    made the Medicare Trust Fund problem worse. Let's face it, we have
    enough savings identified in both the Republican plan and my plan to
    take the Medicare Trust Fund out to a decade right now. And we don't
    know yet whether we won't be able to find more in the development of
    managed care, voluntary options for seniors, and other things that are
    happening in the marketplace right now.
        Now, why don't we go ahead and do this? Why are we holding out? Why
    is the Congress holding out for an agreement that would essentially
    develop a two-class Medicare system, where the older and the poorer and
    the sicker you are, the more likely you are to be in yesterday's
    Medicare that's underfunded; and the younger and healthier and more well
    off you are, the more options you're given to walk away. That's not what
    made Medicare work. What made Medicare work is you say, we have
    obligations to each other, and we're going to fulfill them. We're going
    to do this and solve this together. I think that is the right thing to
    do.
        But you need to understand, every health care program--there is no
    such thing as a problem-

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    free health care program. You have to manage this as it goes along. You
    have to deal with the population, what happens to people, what the costs
    are. But I'd just like for you to remember two things when all these
    people tell you how bad Medicare is, how it needs to be worked over and
    changed and, in effect, deconstructed. I'd just like for you to remember
    two things--the same thing for Medicaid--number one, Medicare has the
    smallest administrative overhead cost of any insurance program, public
    or private, in the entire United States of America, and number two--
    number two and far more important, America's longevity, unfortunately,
    is not as high as some countries, but the main reason is, we have
    lamentably higher rates of violence among young people, we have higher
    rates of AIDS, which kills a lot of young people in this country, and
    our infant mortality rate in some places is still higher than it is in
    some countries. But if you live to be 65 in the United States, you have
    the highest life expectancy of any group of seniors in the world.
    Medicare, Social Security, SSI, that's what did that. Now, I can't
    believe we can't fix the problem of the financing in a way that
    preserves the fact that we have the seniors with the highest life
    expectancy in the world, with a program that already has the lowest
    administrative costs in the world. This is not rocket science. This is
    politics.
        So I would say again, this is a great philosophical divide--should
    we abandon Medicaid's guarantee to poor women and little children----
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. ----to families with disabilities, to the seniors in
    the nursing homes?
         Audience members.  No-o-o!
        The President. No. Should we create in Medicare--we're not talking
    about saving money here; we're not talking about securing the trust fund
    for a decade. We're talking about whether we should create a two-class
    system of care.
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. You know, if I stay healthy--I don't know if I can
    the way things are in Washington--[laughter]--but if I stay healthy, I
    retire as President, and I have a nice pension, you know, I'll probably
    be fine. Their system might be great for me, I could walk away. But what
    about my responsibilities to everybody else? What about everybody
    else's--what about our responsibilities?
        So, again, I would say that the Senate has new leadership and we
    have--we have identified the savings necessary to secure the Medicare
    Trust Fund. Why should we go into a work stoppage just because it's
    election season? Let's go ahead and secure the Medicare Trust Fund for
    another decade. You know how we're going to save the money and you said
    okay, and we can do that.
        I know, you know, we've had a good time today, and I know that I'm
    here preaching to the saved--[laughter]. It makes it easier. But let me
    tell you, there is a serious issue here. We have serious questions to
    deal with. We all know that we're living longer and that the
    distribution of population is changing. We have to come to grips with
    these things. The only thing I'm saying is I believe the seniors of this
    country care about their children and grandchildren and their great-
    grandchildren.
        When I was the Governor of my State, I spent most of my time trying
    to improve the education of our children, and I got most of my support
    for it from people who were in their golden years, who were more than
    happy to come up and invest more money or do whatever it took to make
    sure that their grandchildren had a bright future.
        I do not want to see the generations in this country pitted against
    each other. We can find a clearly nonpolitical, bipartisan, evenhanded,
    sensible solution to any problem the generational changes are going to
    face this country with, as long as we don't use it as an excuse to
    divide this country one from another and to be unfair to the seniors in
    their quest, legitimately, to have a good life. You know it, and I know
    it.
        I want to just say two things in closing. While I think we have
    obligations to you, I am impressed by how many of you still think that
    you've got plenty of energy to exercise obligations to other people, and
    I thank you for that. I thank you for that. I thank you for becoming
    foster grandparents or working with troubled young people or becoming
    mentors and tutors. Those kids need people like you, and we need more
    kids with more seniors helping them one on one.
        I thank those who have joined our National Senior Service Corps. I
    thank those who work with other seniors who aren't as well off as they
    are either financially or physically. I thank you for your wisdom and
    your vigor. And I ask you to bring that wisdom and vigor not

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    just to those who agree with you in the next 4 months, but to others as
    well.
        We have here a very clear choice. And in a way that's a happy thing
    for America because you don't have to guess this time. You know, in lots
    of elections--in lots of election there's a certain amount of guesswork.
    But you know what I will do. First of all, you know that we did what we
    said we'd do, or we got caught trying to do it. [Applause] Thank you.
         Audience members.  Four more years! Four more years! Four more
    years!
        The President. Thank you. Thank you. And that the results have been
    good. Compared to 4 years ago, we're better off than we were on the
    economy. We're better off than we were when it comes to crime. We've
    proved that you can protect the environment and grow the economy. We
    have worked with the States to move people from welfare to work. And
    while others in Washington talked about it, we now have 1.3 million
    fewer people on welfare than we did the day I became President.
        We've proved that you can shrink the size of the Federal Government
    without being cruel to the Federal employees or undermining the quality
    of Federal service. We have proved, in other words, that we could grow
    the economy with opportunity and responsibility and a stronger sense of
    community. That's the first thing.
        The second thing is, there's lots more to do. Our country's
    transformation into the 21st century is far from complete. I proposed
    the other day that we amend the family and medical leave law to let
    people have a few hours off a year to go to regular conferences with
    their kids and make regular doctor's appointments with their parents if
    they need it, or their children if they need it. That's a good thing to
    do, a simple thing to do. I proposed making 2 more years of education
    after high school universal for everyone through a system of tax credits
    that would let everybody go to their nearest community college. And
    there are lots of other things that we have to do.
        And the third point I want to make is, on the you-don't-have-to-
    guess point is, you know where I stand, and you know where they stand.
    And if the American people want the budget that they passed in 1995 that
    I vetoed, they can get it. They can get it. But you need to talk to your
    friends and neighbors about this. Six months into 1997, if they had the
    White House and the Congress, that budget would be the law of the land.
    If you think it's a bad idea that we're putting 100,000 police on the
    street, and you want to remove that commitment and just throw money at
    the problem, you can get that. They did that once, but I stopped them.
        If you think that I was wrong to take on this tobacco issue or wrong
    to require the V-chip in the new television sets so that parents have
    some control over the things their young children watch, if you think I
    was wrong about the family leave law and you don't want it extended, you
    can have someone who agrees with you, who believes--who led the fight--
    who led the fight against everything I said.
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        Audience member. We'll stand with you, Bill!
        The President.  But what I want you to do is not just stand with me,
    I want you to go home and explain it to everybody else. That's what I
    want you to do. I want you to explain it to everybody else. [Applause]
    Thank you. Thank you.
        Now, let me say one other thing. Let me say one thing. I'm going to
    do my best in the next 4 months to give this country back to the people,
    just like I tried to do in 1992. I want this election process to be in
    the hands of the American people, and I'm going to do everything I can
    to see that they get a chance to make these decisions based upon what
    will happen afterward that affects their lives, their children's lives,
    and the future of this country.
        There is no nation in the world as well-positioned for the next
    century as the United States--no nation. All we have to do is to make
    sure that we give people the tools they need to make the most of their
    own lives, do everything we can to ensure responsibility from all of our
    citizens, and remind everybody that we are in this together. This is the
    greatest country in the world today because, in wave after wave after
    wave after wave over 200 years, we have steadily built a bigger group of
    American success stories. I believe we're in this together. That is the
    choice the American people face.
        And if you go out there and remind people of the example and the
    story of your own lives, you can look into the future for people who are
    younger than you are. You can help them to take their blinders off; you
    can help to make sure that they're not distracted. And you can ask them
    to stand up to the finest and best in this country. And that will ensure
    a good

    [[Page 1056]]

    result, not just in November but far more important for our children and
    our grandchildren.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Regency Ballroom at the
    West Tower of the Chicago Hyatt Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to
    Steve Protulis, executive director, and Tom Buffenbarger, board member,
    National Council of Senior Citizens; Lois Wellington, president,
    Congress of California Seniors; George Becker, president, United
    Steelworkers of America; Jay Mazur, president, Union of Needletrades,
    Industrial and Textile Employees; Douglas Fraser, former president,
    United Auto Workers; Justin Dart, former Chair, President's Committee on
    Employment of People With Disabilities; and Mayor Richard M. Daley of
    Chicago. A portion of these remarks could not be verified because the
    tape was incomplete.