    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 18, 1996]
    [Pages 1603-1608]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Seattle, Washington
    September 18, 1996

        The President. Thank you, thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you
    that for 5 years I have been coming here. I read all about Washington,
    all about Seattle. This is the very first time it has ever rained on me.
    Now I know I have finally been accepted as one of you, and thank you. I
    am glad to be here. I also have a Seattle Fire Department cap that's
    keeping me a little dry here.
        I want to thank Congressman Norm Dicks, who's up here. We're going
    to send him some help in the United States House of Representatives in
    November, aren't we? [Applause] He and Jim McDermott have had a pretty
    lonely time, and I want to help them. And I know you do, too.
        Let me thank my good friend Mayor Norm Rice for his longtime
    friendship, for the great campaign he ran, for the incredible dignity he
    has shown, and for the sense of unity he and Gary Locke have expressed
    today. It made me proud to be a Democrat and proud to be an American.
        I want to thank Gary Locke for what he said, for the campaign he has
    run, the campaign he is about to run, and the work he will do as the
    Governor of the great State of Washington. He will be a great partner,
    and I will work with him to make this State even greater. Thank you for
    everything you have done to support him, and stay with him until
    November.
        My fellow Americans, I'm glad to see you here. I knew you wouldn't
    be deterred by the rain, but when the Secret Service told me that 30,000
    people had gone through the mags, I knew that you wanted to keep America
    on the right track to the 21st century.
        We are moving in the right direction. And I am proud of the fact
    that since I came here 4 years ago and asked you to support me in
    meeting our challenges, protecting our values, providing opportunity and
    responsibility for all Americans, and bringing this country together,
    not seeing it driven apart, having us relish our diversity instead of
    being destroyed by it, we are moving ahead.

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        We have 10\1/2\ million more jobs than we had 4 years ago. We've cut
    the deficit by 60 percent, the first time since before the Civil War
    it's gone down all 4 years in a row. On October 1st 10 million Americans
    will get an increase in their minimum wage, thanks to the leadership of
    the Democratic Party. Twenty-five million Americans are now going to
    have a chance to keep their health insurance or get it because of the
    Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that says no more can you be denied health
    insurance because you changed jobs or just because someone in your
    family has been sick. And it's high time we did that for the American
    people.
        The crime rate has come down for 4 years in a row. We just got a
    report a couple of days ago that there are one million fewer victims of
    crime than there were. Our crime approach is working. The Democrats were
    right to push it. More police, take the assault weapons off the street,
    enforce the Brady bill, give our kids something to say yes to, ``three
    strikes and you're out:'' it's working, and we need to continue to
    support it.
        There are 1.8 million fewer people on the welfare rolls; child
    support collections are up 40 percent. We have improved the safety of
    our drinking water, our air, our food. We are protecting the natural
    heritage of this country. And I'm very proud that just today I was in
    the Grand Canyon, announcing the creation in Utah of the Grand
    Staircase-Escalante National Monument of 1.7 million acres.
        I am very proud that this week we had an agreement to protect and
    restore salmon to the Columbia River. And I am especially, especially
    proud that just last night we reached an agreement, and high time, to
    protect the old-growth timber in Washington and Oregon. We are moving in
    the right direction.
        Washington is the most trade-dependent State in the country, and I
    am very proud of the fact that we have concluded over 200 trade
    agreements. We are now exporting everything from high-tech equipment to
    airplanes to, yes, even Washington apples around the world in the last 4
    years. And we did it by replacing the old Washington politics of
    personal destruction and who is to blame with a new question, not who's
    to blame, not who we can bad-mouth, but what are we going to do to make
    this country a greater place for every single American who is willing to
    work for it.
        In the two conventions of the great parties held this summer the
    issue before the American people was posed squarely and clearly: Are we
    going to build a bridge to the past or a bridge to the future? Do we
    believe that Government is our enemy, and we should be on our own, or do
    we believe that the First Lady is right: It takes a village, and we're
    going into the future together.
        Rain or shine, I came here to ask you, will you help me build the
    bridge to the 21st century? [Applause] I want to build a bridge to the
    21st century where every American has a chance to reap the bounty of
    America, starting with the finest education system in the world for
    everyone. Forty percent of our 8-year-olds can't read on their own. In
    the next 4 years I want an army of reading volunteers and trained tutors
    to go into our families and into our schools and help our parents and
    our teachers, so that by the year 2000 every single third grader in this
    country can hold up a book and say, ``I read it all by myself.'' I want
    you to help me do that.
        In this great high-tech home, I want us to make sure that every
    classroom in America not only has the computers they need, not only has
    the teachers trained to help the students with the computers, but is
    hooked up to the information superhighway so that we can say for the
    first time in the entire history of the United States, every child in
    every classroom from the poorest inner cities to the most remote
    mountain villages has access to the same learning at the same quality in
    the same time as every single child in the United States.
        And finally, on education, we have to open the doors of college
    education to all Americans. I want to make in the next 4 years at least
    2 years of college just as universal in the United States as a high
    school diploma is today. That is the way to move this country forward. I
    want to give a tax cut for the cost of a typical community college
    education, dollar for dollar, to every American who will go to community
    college and do a good job of any age, so that everybody can say, ``No
    matter what happens to me, I can always go back and get the education I
    need to move up, not down in this competitive global economy.''
        And I want to give every family a deduction for the cost of college
    tuition of up to $10,000 a year for any kind of college cost. It would

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    build America. It would help us grow together. It will move us forward.
    It will build that bridge.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I want to keep this economy going: more trade,
    more trade opportunities, more investment in research. Yes, a balanced
    budget, but let's balance the budget without wrecking Medicare, turning
    our backs on Medicaid's commitment to families with disabilities or
    children that are poor or women that are pregnant or the elderly who
    need our help. And I want to continue to invest in the environment and
    education, not turn our backs on it. And I want you to think about that
    when you vote in Norm Dicks' election and all these other races for
    Congress.
        In 1994 the other party came to Washington, and they said, ``Help us
    make a revolution. We're going to revolutionize America.'' Well, we saw
    what their revolution was. ``You take our cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
    education, and the environment. You let us raise taxes on the 9 million
    poorest working people in America. Let us raid pension funds. Let us let
    polluters write their own environment laws, or we'll shut the Government
    down.'' I told them to shut the Government down. Norm Dicks stood with
    me, and we stopped what they were trying to do.
        And ladies and gentlemen, never forget--never forget--what stake you
    have. The University of Washington is the number one--the number one--
    public institution of higher education in America in the receipt of
    national research funds. This is important to our future. I just
    signed--we just signed an agreement--I didn't actually have to sign the
    agreement myself--but we just made an agreement, my administration and
    IBM, to build a supercomputer over the next couple of years that will
    do--listen to this--will do more calculations in one second than you can
    go home and pick up your hand-held calculator and do in 30,000 years.
        We are going to keep this country on the cutting edge of technology
    if you will give the American people and the people of Washington,
    yourselves and your children, a United States Congress that understands
    we have to invest in research and education and the environment if we're
    going to grow this country. And we can balance the budget and do that.
    Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century where everybody has a
    chance to be responsible--1.8 million fewer people on welfare, moving
    from welfare to work. Here's what that new law says--and this is another
    reason you need Gary Locke as Governor--the new welfare reform law says
    this: We will continue the national guarantee of health care and
    nutrition to people who are poor and on welfare. If they go to work,
    we'll spend more than ever on child care so they don't have to hurt
    their kids. But we're going to take the welfare check and give that
    money to the States so they can decide how both to support people and
    move them, those who are able-bodied, into the workplace within 2 years.
        Now, who do you trust to do right by the poor people of Washington
    and bring them into the mainstream? Gary Locke. I'm committed to helping
    him and the city of Seattle and other cities in this country create a
    million new jobs for those people in the next 4 years. I want you to
    help us both build that kind of bridge to the 21st century.
        And finally, you know, our friends on the other side, they talk a
    lot about crime. They talked tough about crime for 6 years but nothing
    ever happened. We passed the 1994 crime bill. And they came into the
    State of Washington like a tornado into the rural areas telling all
    these people how terrible we were, how we were going to take their guns
    away from them and abolish their right to keep and bear arms. And there
    was a great revolution here in '94 in the congressional races.
        Well, guess what? Unfortunately for them, we've had two hunting
    seasons since then, and not a single hunter in Washington has lost a
    rifle. But we did take 19 kinds of assault weapons off the street and
    60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers could not get handguns because of
    the Brady bill. We were right. They were wrong. You are safer. The crime
    rate's going down. Let them know about it in November and help us build
    a bridge to the 21st century where we're all safe.
        We ought to extend the Brady bill and say, ``If you beat up your
    spouse or your child, you shouldn't be able to get a handgun either.''
    If police put their lives on the lines for us, we ought to say we
    haven't seen any game wearing bulletproof vests. We want to ban those
    cop-killer bullets. And those who are opposed to us are wrong. Let's ban
    them, get rid of them, make our police officers safer and our streets
    safer.

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        We ought to build a bridge to the 21st century that brings us
    together as a community, beginning with strong families. You know what I
    hear all over America as the number one family problem? ``How can I
    reconcile the demands of work and rearing my children? How can I do
    this? I need some help.'' That's why I'm very proud that the first bill
    I signed, over the opposition of the leaders of the other party, was the
    family and medical leave law.
        And since then, 12 million times families have taken advantage of
    that law when a baby was born or a parent was sick so they could take
    care of their families without losing their jobs. And what have we got
    to show for it: 10\1/2\ million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate
    in 7 years, record numbers of new small businesses. We are moving this
    country in the right direction.
        We can help small business the way we have, make it easier for
    people to take out pensions and take them from job to job, give all
    small businesses a tax cut as we have when they invest more in their
    businesses. But don't ask people to hurt their families.
        I want to expand family and medical leave to give people some time
    off to go to doctor's appointments and parent-teacher conferences at the
    schools so people can raise their kids and succeed at work. Will you
    help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        And let me say, finally, we have got to build a bridge to the 21st
    century as everybody in Washington State knows that enables us to grow
    the economy while preserving our environment. We are working to save our
    natural treasures, from the Grand Staircase-Escalante, which I
    mentioned, to getting the gold mine out of the reaches of Yellowstone
    National Park, to saving the Everglades all the way across the country
    in Florida, to improving the quality of our air, the safety of our
    drinking water, the safety of our food. And we have more to do.
        We've cleaned up more toxic waste sites in 3 years than the previous
    administrations did in 12. But we still have a long way to go: 10
    million of our children still live within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump.
    If you'll give us 4 more years, we'll clean up 500 more so children will
    grow up next to parks, not poison. That's the way to build a bridge to
    the 21st century, and I want you to help me do it.
        And finally, let me say this: We have to build a good community in
    America and be a part of a strong community in the world. I spend so
    much of the time you have given me to be President trying to deal with
    the new security challenges of this era, trying to combat the
    terrorists, trying to combat the ethnic hatred, trying to combat the
    spread of weapons of mass destruction, not just nuclear weapons but
    biological and chemical weapons and other sophisticated weapons, trying
    to beat the drug runners and the organized criminals so that we can have
    a world that is open and free, where people can move around and share
    information but our children will be safe.
        If you think about it, a lot of the time I spend is dealing with
    problems that are caused because people refuse to get along with each
    other and behave like sensible adults because people all over this world
    insist on looking down on others because they're of a different race, a
    different religion, a different ethnic group, a different tribe, or in
    same other way different from them. People insist on saying, ``I'm
    important because I'm not you.''
        Well, Seattle is a rebuke to that. Seattle is a place where
    everybody has a home. You look around this crowd today, look around this
    crowd today. There are 197 nations represented in the Olympics and a
    whole lot of them are represented in this crowd of 30,000 in Seattle,
    Washington, United States of America today.
        That's the world I want to live in. That's the country I want to
    live in. We cannot afford--we cannot afford--politicians who are waging
    war on legal immigrants for their own benefits. We cannot afford this
    church burning. We cannot afford the kinds of hatreds and wedge issues
    that have been too much a staple of our politics in modern time.
        Think about the rest of the world. There is no country--no country--
    as well-positioned as the United States for the 21st century. But we
    have to make a decision. Are we all part of one village? Do we want to
    say, ``You're on your own?'' Do we really believe that we're all created
    equal in the eyes of God, or do we need to have somebody to look down on
    so we can feel important? I think you know the answer to that.
        I think we ought to build a bridge to the 21st century that is wide
    and strong so that we can say to anybody we run across, any man or
    woman, boy or girl without regard to anything else, ``All you have to do
    is believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of

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    Independence, show up for work tomorrow or for school, do your best,
    obey the law, love your neighbor as yourself, and you're part of our
    community and we're willing to walk with you into the future.'' Will you
    help me build that bridge? [Applause] We need you, Washington.
        Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:36 p.m. at the Pike Place Market.