    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 25, 1996]
    [Pages 1339-1344]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Ashland, Kentucky
    August 25, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you very much.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you very much. You have made me very happy
    today. My daughter, Chelsea, and I are delighted to be here. Hillary had
    to leave us in West Virginia to go on to her hometown of Chicago to make
    sure everything was all warmed up for us. We're on the right track to
    Chicago, and we're on the right track to the 21st century.
        I thank Governor Patton for being here. I always enjoy seeing the
    Governor and Mrs. Patton, and I'm glad your mother is here today because
    I want her to hear the President say that if every Governor in America
    had as much energy and drive and determination as Paul Patton we
    wouldn't have the problems we have today. He has really got it.
        I thank Senator Wendell Ford for his words and for being here. I
    also thank the distinguished Congressman from Louisville, Mike Ward, for
    being here. We also have--I know Steve Beshear, the United States Senate
    candidate, and Denny Bowman, a congressional candidate. And I want you
    to send them up there; we need some help. We need some help.
        Wendell Ford was very kind in what he said about me, but let me tell
    you, if it hadn't been for Wendell Ford, if he had gone the other way,
    we would not have voted in 1993 to reduce

    [[Page 1340]]

    the deficit, get the interest rates down, and get the economy going
    again. The deficit is 60 percent lower than it was when I took office;
    it's gone down 4 years in a row, 4 years in a row, for the first time--
    listen to this--the deficit has gone down 4 years in a row for the first
    time since before the Civil War, in the 1840's. A President has done
    that, thanks to Wendell Ford and thanks to Mike Ward. And we did it
    while continuing to invest in education, in environmental protection,
    and protecting Medicare and Medicaid.
        And then, when our friends in the opposition won the Congress, and
    they wanted to remove the guarantee of Medicaid that helps middle class
    people with families in nursing homes, that helps middle class families
    with people with disabilities in them, that helps poor children and
    pregnant women, when they wanted to cut back on education when we should
    be investing more, when they wanted to cut back drastically on our
    ability to protect the environment, when they wanted to give
    corporations permission to take $15 billion out of their workers'
    pension funds, when they wanted to raise taxes on millions of the lowest
    income working people in this country, Wendell Ford and Mike Ward said
    no and made my veto stand up. We said no, and I thank them for it.
        Thank you, Billy Ray Cyrus, for coming. My daughter is glad she made
    the trip now. [Laughter] And so are all the rest of you. When I heard
    you cheering for him when he got off the train, I thought I was just
    sort of the supporting act. I thought I was supposed to go first.
    [Laughter] Happy 35th birthday. I was 35 once. [Laughter] Enjoy it while
    it lasts. We congratulate you on your hard-won success, and we're very
    proud of you. And I know your father, State Senator Ron Cyrus, is here.
    We know he's proud of you, too. Thank you very much for coming to be
    with us.
        I want to thank two of my former colleagues for being here, your
    former Governor, Martha Layne Collins; former Governor John Y. Brown.
    Phyllis George Brown, thank you for being here. I thank the chair of the
    Kentucky Democratic Party, Bob Babbage, and all the other Democrats who
    are here. I thank the bands that played, Unlimited Tradition and the
    Mountain Opry. I wish I had been here. All the band members and the
    cheerleaders from Boyd, Greenup, and Pike Counties, thank you all for
    being here. I thank the folks in West Virginia who came with me and the
    folks from Ohio, including former Congressman and Congressman-to-be, Ted
    Strickland. I'm glad he is here today.
        Folks, most of all, I want to thank Kevin Gunderson. I want to thank
    Kevin Gunderson not only for what he said but, most important, for who
    he is, for not giving up when he was down and out, for refusing to give
    up on a productive life, for being determined to stick up for what is
    good and worthy in all people and to make the most of the abilities God
    has left him, which as you can see here, were many indeed. We thank you,
    sir, and God bless you.
        You know, I was up the road in Huntington, West Virginia, just a
    minute ago, and I was shaking hands with the crowd. And this little girl
    came up to me, and she said, ``Did you really call Kerri Strug at the
    Olympics?'' I said, ``I sure did.'' She said, ``Did she really come to
    the White House?'' I said, ``She sure did.'' I said, ``Not only that,
    she and her family came to New York to my birthday party.'' She said,
    ``Really?'' I said, ``You like her, don't you?'' And do you know what
    she said? She said, ``I got it on tape.'' [Laughter] This little girl
    was about 8 or 9 years old. And I said, ``Well, let me tell you
    something. You save that tape for the rest of your life, and every time
    something bad happens to you, every time you feel desperate, every time
    you feel troubled, you put that tape in the television and you watch
    that little girl with her bad ankle do that vault, and you say, `I can
    get up. I can go on. I can do it. I can do it.' ''
        Why? Why do we all love the Olympics so much? Because it's the way
    we think life ought to be. Everybody gets to show up. Nobody cares about
    your race, your religion, where you're from. All you got to do is be
    willing to play by the rules. You can't get ahead by cheating. Nobody
    gets anything by breaking their opponent's ankles or legs. Nobody gets
    anywhere by standing up in front of a microphone and telling you how
    terrible people their opponents are. You've got to reach down deep
    inside and do something good, just as good as you can do. And because of
    that, even the people that don't get medals come out way ahead. That's
    the way life ought to be. We know that's the way life ought to be.
        Folks, 4 years ago I came to Kentucky because I was worried about
    our country. We had the slowest job growth since the Depression.

    [[Page 1341]]

    We had stagnant wages. We had rising crime. We had neglected challenges.
    And our country seemed to be drifting and dividing toward the 21st
    century. And I had a vision that I thought we owed it to our children to
    pass along, a vision of America in the year 2000 where every child has a
    chance to live out their dreams as long as they're responsible citizens,
    a country where we are bound together across the lines that divide us,
    by our shared values. I don't want us to be divided like these other
    countries, by race and religion and all these other things. I want us to
    say, ``If you believe in the Constitution, the Declaration of
    Independence, the Bill of Rights, and if you show up for work every day,
    you're our kind of person and we're for you and we're going forward
    together.''
        And I wanted our country to be the strongest force for peace and
    freedom and prosperity way into the 21st century. That's what I wanted.
    And 4 years later, I come back to tell you, we are on the right track to
    the 21st century.
        We are on the right track, because Americans from all walks of life
    are doing what you are doing here in Ashland. We are going in the right
    direction because there are people like you everywhere who are working
    at the grassroots level. You have a long history here of helping people
    in your community to build a strong future, from the days when the
    Moonlight School opened the first adult education classes in America to
    the Boyd County School today where Norma Meek runs the Family Resource
    Center, set up by the 1990 Education Reform Act to give our at-risk kids
    not just something to say no to but something to say yes to, positive
    role models, positive alternatives, positive activities, to give our
    kids a future. I want to salute another citizen of this area, Dr. Mary
    Pauline Fox, who has dedicated her entire life to bring health care to
    the people of rural Pike County. That's what we need.
        My strategy for the 21st century is simple: opportunity for all,
    responsibility from all, and a stronger American community where we know
    we have to go forward together and everybody has a role to play. With
    all respect to my opponent, I think it does take a village to raise a
    child, strengthen a family, build a community, and build a country.
        What are the results? Look at the last week. In just the last week,
    over strong opposition, we finally got an increase in the minimum wage
    for 10 million hard-working Americans. And that bill included tax relief
    for 90 percent of the small businesses in this country if they invest
    more in their business. And it made it easier for people in small
    businesses to take out retirement plans for themselves and their
    employees. It was a wonderful bill. It gave a $5,000 tax credit to any
    American family that will adopt a child. It removed the barriers to
    cross-racial adoption. That minimum wage bill was pro-work, pro-
    business, pro-family, pro-America. I'm proud we fought for it, and I'm
    proud we won it.
        We signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health care reform bill that says,
    if you lose your job or somebody in your family gets sick, you can't
    have your health insurance taken away from you anymore. You can't be
    denied the right to health insurance. Twenty-five million Americans can
    be helped by that.
        We passed a welfare reform plan that says we are going to go from
    welfare to work and give people the dignity of work so they can raise
    their children not in dependency but in independence. It was the right
    thing to do.
        But this is the last of the big story. You heard what Senator Ford
    said. In 1993 every single solitary Republican in the Congress voted
    against our economic reform plan. They said it would increase the
    deficit. They said it would cripple the economy. It cut the deficit by
    60 percent. It drove interest rates down. We continued to invest in
    education, the environment, technology, and our future. And guess what?
    Four years later, 10 million new jobs; 4.4 million new homeowners; 10
    million Americans who have refinanced their homes at lower interest
    rates; 12 million Americans who have taken a little time off from work
    when a child was born or a parent was sick under the family leave law
    without losing their jobs; 1.3 million Americans fewer on welfare; a 40
    percent increase in child support enforcement collections. We are moving
    in the right direction, on the right track.
        We protected the pensions of 40 million people. And then when they
    tried to say, ``You can raid the pension funds of workers,'' we said,
    ``No, no, no, we've been down that road before. We just protected them.
    You can't have that $15 billion; it belongs to the workers of America
    and to their retirement.'' Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner
    air. We cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than they did in
    12. We are moving in the right direction, on the right track to the 21st
    century.

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        And what I want to say to you today is as I make my way to Chicago
    and I go to the towns just like this one in the heartland of America,
    I'm doing this for a reason. I want you to know that every day for 4
    years I have gone to that Oval Office and thought about you and what
    would make it easier for you to have strong families, good jobs, safe
    streets, a clean environment, good schools, and a bright future.
        And I want you to fight our fight for the 21st century. Folks, this
    next several years can be the brightest time in American history. There
    will be more opportunities for our children to live out their dreams and
    adults to live out their dreams than ever before. Our kids in this crowd
    today will be doing jobs within a decade that have not been invented
    yet, that have not even been imagined yet. But we have to be ready for
    that future.
        We have laid the basis. We have got the unemployment rate down.
    We've got our economic house in order. We've got the crime rate coming
    down 4 years in a row. We've got the welfare rolls coming down. We've
    got a more peaceful world where there are no nuclear missiles pointed at
    the people of the United States since the dawn of the nuclear age. We
    are moving in the right direction.
        But we have more to do. You know as well as I do, right here in
    Kentucky there are still people that want to work who don't have jobs.
    And you know as well as I do we cannot afford to let this welfare reform
    bill be just a budget cutting measure that leaves poor folks and their
    kids out on the street. We've got to get them jobs to do. You can't tell
    people to go to work unless there's work to go to.
        And you know as well as I do that there are still people right here
    in Kentucky that are working harder and harder, and they still haven't
    gotten a raise. And we know that part of that is a challenge to the
    business community to share their profits fairly with their employees,
    but part of it is a challenge to working people to upgrade their
    education and skills so they can earn more money in this tough global
    economy.
        And I am committed, I am committed to putting education at the top
    of America's agenda and keeping it there for the next 4 years until
    everybody can benefit from the global economy.
        I want to see every classroom in Kentucky and the United States,
    every single one, hooked up to the information superhighway so every kid
    in the poorest hill and holler of Arkansas or Kentucky can have access
    to the same information as the children in the wealthiest schools in
    America. We can do it in 4 years.
        I want ours to be the first administration ever to help the public
    school districts of this country invest in their school facilities to
    upgrade those facilities to give people good, modern places to go to
    school with all the latest developments. If the poor districts need
    help, they ought to get it. If the overcrowded district needs help, they
    ought to get it. We proposed to increase school construction by 25
    percent over the next 4 years, and we can do it under our program.
        And most important, more important than anything else, I want to
    give you a country in which 2 years of education after high school
    becomes as universal in 4 years as high school is today, by giving every
    American family that needs it a $1,500 refundable tax credit for the
    cost of community college tuition for 2 years and giving those same
    families up to $10,000 in tax deduction for the cost of any kind of
    education after high school and giving unemployed workers a skills grant
    worth over $2,000 to take wherever they need to get the training to go
    back to work at a better wage. This is the America I want to build, and
    I want you to help me build it.
        I want you to support me in helping to create jobs not only for
    people on welfare but for single men and for others who are unemployed
    who need the jobs. I want you to support me in building on health care
    reform and saying, okay, we've now said you can't lose your insurance if
    you have been sick or you changed jobs. Now we have got to say, if
    you're unemployed for a long time, you run out of money, we're going to
    help you. We're going to guarantee people health insurance if they're
    unemployed for 6 months. We need to help more people keep their health,
    not lose it and their bankroll as well.
        Let me just say one other thing. In honor of this fine, fine man
    that introduced me, I want you to help me finish our commitment to
    putting 100,000 police on the street. You know, it wasn't so very long
    ago when it was rare for me to meet anyone--anyone--who thought we could
    lower the crime rate. People just took it for granted that the cities
    were dangerous and the little towns in the country were about to get
    that way. People just took it for

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    granted that we were going to have rising crime rates from now on.
        We have had 4 years with the crime rate going down. And it's not a
    mystery: more police in community policing, more police officers in our
    safe and drug-free schools program in the school, telling these kids
    that drugs are dangerous; we don't care what you hear, what you see in
    the movies, what you hear anywhere else, they are dangerous. They're not
    just illegal; they will kill you.
        We have taken those assault weapons off the street, and we've passed
    the Brady bill. And not a single hunter in Kentucky or Arkansas has
    missed a deer season or any other kind of season. Not anybody lost a
    gun. Not anybody. So all that stuff they told you back in '94 when they
    were winning the Congress, saying we were going to get your rifle and
    all that, it was a big load of bull then, and it's a big load of bull
    now. The difference is now you know it because you have had 2 years, and
    you still got your gun. But I'll tell you who doesn't have a gun: 60,000
    felons, fugitives, and stalkers could not buy a handgun because of the
    Brady bill, and we're safer because of it.
        But our friends in the other party, they don't like this 100,000
    police program, and they don't like the safe and drug-free schools
    program. She's talking about one over there--they voted against the safe
    and drug-free school program; then they tried to get rid of it. They
    voted against the 100,000 police program, and then they tried to get rid
    of it. And they're still trying to do away with it. I tell you, this is
    crazy. If the crime rate's going down, we need to put more police
    officers on the street, not back up and undo what we've done to get it
    down. It's not low enough yet. Do you think it's low enough?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Then I say, finish the job and stop those that want
    to turn it around. Let's go.
        And the last thing I want to say is this, folks. We have a lot of
    other challenges--I'll talk more about them at the convention--
    challenges at home, challenges abroad. I've got a lot of other ideas
    about what to do in the next 4 years. But let's look at the big picture.
    We've got to keep this economy going until everybody has a chance to
    benefit from it.
        Now, we've proved that we can get the deficit down and grow the
    economy. I told you this would produce 8 million jobs; it produced 10. I
    told you we'd cut the deficit in half; we cut it by more than 60
    percent. We're doing the right thing.
        Now, we ought to give Americans a tax cut who need it, and it ought
    to be targeted to childrearing and child care and education and to
    expanded IRA's that you can withdraw from for a first-time homebuying or
    health insurance policy or to pay for education. I'm for all that. We
    can afford that kind of tax cut. And it'd be worth a lot to middle
    class, hard-working families. But we cannot afford to go right back
    around and take a U-turn and make the same mistake we made before. And
    that's what the other side is proposing, a tax cut 5 times as big as
    mine that they don't know how they're going to pay for. And you know
    what will happen; it will blow a hole in the deficit. That means higher
    interest rates. That means whatever you get in the tax cut, you'll pay
    right back in your mortgage payment, your car payment, your credit card
    payment. It also means even bigger cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
    education, and the environment than I vetoed when they shut the
    Government down. I didn't put up with it before; I won't put up with it
    again. It is not the right thing for America.
        Now, you look at that train there. If you were on that train going
    to your destination, which is the 21st century, the last thing in the
    wide world you'd want to do is to make a U-turn just because you heard a
    pretty song somewhere along the way. [Laughter] That's a pretty song,
    that big old tax cut. But it's like that contract. Do you remember their
    contract? They never did say word one about it in San Diego, did they? I
    didn't watch it, but somebody told me they listened intently for 4 days
    for their record, and they never talked about their record and their
    contract. Do you remember, it sounded so pretty in 1994? And then the
    consequences came in in '95 and '96. And thank goodness for America,
    Wendell Ford and his friends were there to stand up and say no. But if
    you give them the White House and the Congress, there won't be anybody
    to say no. And they'll get to do their U-turn, and it will sound pretty.
    And then you'll have to deal with the consequences: high interest rates,
    slow growth, and exploding debt.
        Let me just tell you one other thing. The budget of the United
    States of America would be in surplus today--this day--if it were not

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    for the interest we're paying on the debt run up in the 12 years before
    I took office when they quadrupled the debt with all those tax cut
    promises. You wouldn't yourself, in this beautiful town of Ashland--you
    wouldn't yourself go down to the local bank and borrow money to give
    yourself a tax cut, would you? You wouldn't do it. Why would you hire
    somebody else to do something you wouldn't do for yourself?We cannot
    blow up the debt. We can give you a tax cut. It will help you raise your
    kids. It will help you get an education. It will help you with health
    care and homebuying. And we can afford it and still balance the budget
    and protect our priorities and build on the future.
        And the last thing I want to say is this: All this comes down to
    whether we're going to meet our challenges and protect our values,
    whether you believe we can create opportunity and have more
    responsibility, and whether we can go forward together, or whether
    you're better off with somebody telling you, ``The Government's the
    problem. It's not yours. You're on your own. Have a nice life. Here's a
    little money.''
        I believe you know from your life in this great, grassroots, God-
    fearing American community that we are all in this together, we had
    better lock arms and go forward together, and that when America is
    together and we're positive and we act like this fine police officer and
    local government official and we act like that wonderful young girl in
    her Olympic championship, America always wins. Let's stay on the right
    track for the 21st century.
        God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:05 p.m. at Riverfront Park. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky, his wife, Judi,
    and his mother, Irene; musician Billy Ray Cyrus; Ashland City Councilman
    Kevin Gunderson, a former police officer disabled in the line of duty,
    who introduced the President; and U.S. Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug.