    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 8, 1996]
    [Pages 1281-1285]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Long Beach, California
    August 8, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
    Thank you, Kevin. Boy, he did a good job, didn't he? Just like he's been
    doing it all his life. If he could get a

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    leave, I'd just take him with me. We'd make an act of it. We'd go on the
    road. [Laughter] Thank you for your work and for your example.
        Thank you, mayor. It's great to be here with you again. It's great
    to be back in Long Beach. Thank you, Leland Wong, for what you said and
    for your work. Thank you, Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis. Thank you,
    Kathleen Connell, your State comptroller. Thank you, Long Beach Harbor
    Commission president George Murchison. And I'm glad to be here with Rick
    Zbur, who wants to go to Congress. Thank you very much. We're glad to
    see you, sir.
        I'd like to thank the members of the Long Beach Harbor Commission
    and the Long Beach council and the Los Angeles council who are here.
    I've been given some names; I'm going to say them. If I miss somebody
    it's all my fault. [Laughter] But I think Nate Holden and Richard
    Alarcon are here from Los Angeles. And Carmen Perez, who is on the Long
    Beach Harbor Commission, Long Beach councilman Del Roosevelt, and Long
    Beach council member Jennie Orapreza are here. Thank you very much. Long
    Beach city attorney James Hahn. And someone told me--Los Angeles--I'm
    sorry. [Laughter] I don't want to put my glasses on, I'm too vain. I
    can't read--[laughter]. I've also been told that a friend of mine, a
    former Congresswoman from New York, Shirley Chisholm, is here in the
    audience. Shirley, are you here somewhere? Somebody told me--I know
    she's here somewhere. Thank you for being here.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to be back here today, glad to be
    back to celebrate the successes of this port, the success of California
    in coming back, and to say this is only the beginning. The best is yet
    to come. We are proud of the leadership of Mayor Riordan and Mayor
    O'Neill and others in the resurgence of these ports. They are the
    largest in our Nation, as has already been said. But they are your
    gateway to the future.
        I am especially proud of the work that Long Beach has done in
    dealing with the consequences of the base closing. I thank the Navy for
    their service here and their contributions here for so very many years.
    I know what a blow the base closing decision was. I know how you can
    take that kind of blow; I've been knocked flat on my back a time or two
    in my life. And I was, frankly, inspired by the determination, the
    energy, the vigor, and the vision of the plan that the people of Long
    Beach put together to bring this community back. It's going to work, and
    we're going to help you, and you're going to make it.
        At the time I took office I was very concerned that our country was
    not going to be prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. I was
    concerned that we had the slowest job growth since the Depression. I was
    concerned that communities in California and throughout the country that
    had been hurt by base closings and other economic adversity were not
    being helped to develop strategies to recover and to rebound in the move
    into the future. I was concerned that our deficit was at an all-time
    high and growing. I was concerned that so many great American industries
    that I knew could compete and win in the global economy seemed to be
    falling behind.
        I've got a simple vision. You know, when we had the previous
    speakers I was sitting here thinking about every one of them and what
    they were saying and what it meant. And then in the end, Kevin sort of
    put it all on the line when he said he was doing his work so that his
    son and future generations would do better. I have a very simple vision
    for our country----
        Audience member. What about a tax cut?
        The President. ----as we enter the 21st century. One is----
        Audience member.  [Inaudible]--tax cut?
        The President. You know, we believe in the first amendment here.
    I'll be glad to answer your question, but they came here to hear me, so
    if you'll talk a bit later--[applause]. Thank you. But I will tell you,
    I'll give you an answer if you'll stop screaming and listen. Number one,
    after I got elected, it turned out the deficit was a lot bigger than we
    were told, and I thought getting the deficit down, getting interest
    rates down, and getting this economy back on its feet was the most
    important thing.
        Number two----
        Audience member. [Inaudible]
        The President. Now, wait a minute, stop screaming. I'm not through
    yet. [Laughter] I want you all to listen to this because you'll have a
    chance to tell this again, and I want you to do it before it's over.
    [Laughter]
        Number two, in this country today the average family of four with an
    income of under $30,000 will have a tax bill $1,000 lower than it was
    when I took office. That's not the whole middle class, but that's a big
    chunk of it, and they're better off because of our plan.

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        Number three, 90 percent--nine-zero--90 percent of the people who
    own small businesses in this country have lower taxes because of the '93
    economic plan.
        Number four, if my version of the balanced budget had passed instead
    of their version, which had excessive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
    education, and the environment, over half--up to 60 to 70 percent of the
    American people would have had a tax reduction, and one we could afford,
    that would have still allowed us to balance the budget without hurting
    the future of America. So that's my answer to your question. Now I'd
    like to go on to the speech.
        I'm kind of glad you asked, and I hope you'll find some more of your
    troops to seed some more of our rallies. [Laughter] And then we'll get
    more truth out to the American people. It'll be a better election as a
    result. Thank you very much.
        Now, where are we? [Laughter] Let me go back to where I started.
    That's politics. Let's talk about the future. What's it going to look
    like when our children are our age? What's it going to look like when
    our grandchildren are our age? That's the real question. I believe that
    we ought to go into the next century with three simple things on our
    mind, three things. And you ought to ask yourself whether you agree. You
    may not agree with all three of them.
        One is, every person in this country who is willing to work for it,
    without regard to their race, their gender, their station in life, ought
    to have a chance--not a guarantee but a chance--to live out their
    dreams.
        Two, we ought to be committed to the proposition that America will
    not be destroyed by the racial, religious, ethnic, and tribal tensions
    that are tearing the rest of the world up, that we're going to be
    stronger as a result of it. We're going to be stronger as a result of
    it.
        Number three, we ought to be committed, even though it costs money
    and it is sometimes difficult, to the proposition that America will
    remain the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity
    because a lot of the threats to our security----
        Audience member. [Inaudible]
        The President. ----terrorism, drugs, organized crime, are things
    that cross national lines.
        Don't pay any attention to those folks. [Laughter] We got a limit of
    one question for a rally here--interruption. [Laughter] The rest of you
    ought to be--if you want to talk to me, come around here later and stop
    screaming.
        Now, that's what we ought to be committed to. And I believe that if
    we are committed to it, we'll be better off. Now, let me ask you to
    think about this: When we started----
        Audience member. You're lying to the American people.
        The President. No, I'm not lying to the American people. Do we have
    10 million more jobs than we did under the previous President, or not?
    Yes. Do we have 4\1/2\ million more homeowners and 10 million people
    that refinanced their home mortgages at lower rates? Do we have 1.3
    million fewer people on welfare and a million and a half fewer people on
    food stamps? Yes. Has the crime rate gone down 4 years in a row?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Did we stop the attempts to gut funding for education
    and the environment and to destroy the Medicare and Medicaid program?
    Yes.
        Now, those are true things. So we're in better shape than we were 4
    years ago. But what I want to say to you is, we've got a long way to go.
    We have to build on what we have done. And trade is one way we're going
    to do it.
        One of the biggest arguments we had in this country--and, frankly,
    it included people in both parties and people that belonged to neither
    party--was whether or not America could benefit from a world in which
    borders were more open and trade was more free. There were some who said
    that because we were a wealthy country and so many countries that were
    interested in trade were poorer than we were and worked for wages we
    couldn't live on, that we could never win if we had open borders and
    worked for freer trade. There were others who said that all we had to do
    was open our borders, and we didn't have to worry about anything else.
        We took a different view. Our view was, if we didn't try to trade
    more, we would get all the burdens of the future and none of the
    benefits, because you can't keep low-cost goods out of America that
    American consumers want to buy. But what we needed was both fair and
    free trade, rules that were fair, rules that gave our people, our
    workers a fair chance to prove they were the most productive in the
    world. And then we needed to get off our duffs and go out in the world
    and try to sell our products. That's what Ron Brown did, and that's what

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    his lasting legacy will be: proving that Americans could compete and win
    with anybody in the world.
        Now, we proved that we were very competitive. The mayor mentioned
    that I was here at the McDonnell Douglas plant not very long ago. We
    have a partnership now with McDonnell Douglas and Pratt & Whitney to
    produce 80 more C-17 airplanes. They're the best transport plane in the
    world, the best ever produced by anybody. That will create 18,000 more
    jobs.
        We've worked hard on this base closing problem all over California.
    I was just up in Monterey County where Fort Ord has become the
    California State University at Monterey Bay. I was in the Presidio the
    other day, where a military base went from being a closed base to a
    national preserve and an environmental treasure for the whole United
    States of America. These things are things that can be done.
        The mayor mentioned Sea Launch a minute ago. That's an international
    project that was just announced by Boeing which will tap into the
    growing market of launching commercial satellites into space. The home
    port will be right here, and that's hundreds of more new, good paying
    jobs for the people of this area.
        So what I want to say to all of you is in the end our attitude
    toward the rest of the world will be determined in part by what the
    political leaders say and what our policies are and the things we
    advocate when we're having these debates. It matters that we started
    meeting for the first time with the leaders of the other Asian-Pacific
    countries--and I do it every year now--and we're broadening our trade
    there and committing them, as well as ourselves, to lowering trade
    barriers. It matters that we've continued and intensified our trade
    relationship with China. It matters that we set up an export development
    office down here to help you export more of your products to the rest of
    the world. That all matters.
        But in the end it matters what you want to do. If you believe in it,
    then you will support what we're trying to do in the Alameda Corridor
    project. You'll make it a reality because you know it will generate more
    jobs by reaching out to the world than by walking away from it.
        You've been kind enough today to compliment two people who were very
    instrumental in this policy we pursued, the late Ron Brown and our
    former trade ambassador and newcomer Secretary, Mickey Kantor, who is
    from southern California. I'd also like to say that the Transportation
    Secretary, Federico Pena, has worked very hard to develop the financing
    and the plan for the Alameda Corridor project. Building that corridor
    will create 10,000 more good paying jobs for the people of this area and
    will generate an enormous amount of economic activity in the future.
        So I want to thank all them. But mostly, I want to thank you for
    looking outward. I want to thank Kevin for standing up here and saying
    with confidence that hardworking people in America can compete and win
    in the global economy. This will work.
        Listen to this: Between 1993 and 1995, California's exports
    increased--not the country's, California's exports--increased by $25
    billion. That's 200,000 more jobs in California just from exports. As
    many as 1 in 10 of your jobs are already related to international trade.
    Not only that, this is changing the nature of the jobs.
        When I took office, about 20 percent of our new jobs were in high-
    wage industries. In 1995, more than 55 percent of the new jobs created
    in the United States paid above average wages, largely because they were
    in the industries and the activities of the future, and they were tied
    into global trade and our ability to be more productive and more
    competitive than anybody else in the things that we do well.
        You are going to benefit if you will continue to support this
    approach. This should be an American issue, not a Republican issue, not
    a Democratic issue. This should be something that we say as Americans
    we're committed to more trade both free and fair. And we are going to be
    aggressive in promoting our economic interests around the world. That
    will help us, but it will help others as well, because it will help
    other people to grow their economy and to be even better trading
    partners with us in the future.
        And we need you to take that position, not just the elected
    officials, you--people on the street, people doing the work, people
    whose children's lives are at stake. You must do these things. And if
    you do there is no stopping our country, and California is coming all
    the way back.
        Let me just make one other comment in closing. If all of you are
    like me--now, it was earlier out here, so you probably didn't have quite
    the pain that we went through on the East Coast--

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    but I lost a lot of sleep during the Olympics. [Laughter] Our family was
    up past midnight nearly every night, watching the very last event. And I
    got to thinking about that, about what we all love about the Olympics
    and about what was special about the American Olympic team. And I'd like
    to make----
        Audience member. We kicked butt!
        The President. Well, that's one thing, all right. [Laughter] I'd
    like to just make an observation about it to you.
        Why do you like the Olympics? I think one reason is--besides the
    fact that Americans are sports nuts and we all like athletics, I think
    we like the Olympics because they work the way we think the world ought
    to work. Everybody shows up, from the smallest island country which has
    three or four athletes to the largest delegations. They all accept the
    rules of the game. They're all treated with respect. Everybody has their
    chance. Everybody gives their best, and even the ones who don't win
    medals are better off for having tried. And when it's all over, people
    feel like they were part of something that was bigger than themselves.
    And that's really how we think the world ought to work.
        You think about it. You can't win a medal if you have somebody go
    break your opponent's legs the night before the contest. [Laughter] No
    one looks up to you if you stand up on a podium and bad-mouth your
    opponent and say how terrible they are, and they're liars, and they're
    no good and how sorry they are. Nobody thinks better of you when you do
    that, when you behave in that way. The only way you succeed is by
    reaching down deep inside for what is best inside you. And when you do
    that, it doesn't matter what's on the outside.
        Now, we think the world ought to work that way. And if you think
    about the American team--when Hillary and Chelsea and I had the profound
    honor of welcoming them to the White House yesterday or going to speak
    to them before the games began or just watching them compete, it
    occurred to me that if they took their USA jackets off and just wandered
    in the Olympic Village with the other athletes, they're the only crowd
    you wouldn't have any idea where they're from. [Laughter] You could see
    them, you could think, well, these athletes are from Africa, and these
    are from South America, and these are from Mexico, and these are from
    India, and these are from Pakistan, and these are from the Middle East,
    and these are from China, and these are from Japan, and these are from
    Scandinavia, and it turns out they're all from America. Because this
    country is not about race, it's about the Constitution, the Bill of
    Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and what we believe in. That's
    what it's about.
        And that's the last thing I want to tell you. I want you to think
    about this when you go home tonight. There were 197 different nations
    represented in the Olympics. Over 150 of those people are represented in
    this county, Los Angeles County. Now, that's the last thing I want to
    leave you with. If you want to create opportunity for everybody, if you
    want this country to lead the world, if you want to keep reaching out to
    the rest of the world, we have to prove to the rest of the world that
    you do not have to base a society on racial prejudice, ethnic prejudice,
    and looking down at other people. Let's lift people up and go forward
    together.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:35 p.m. at the Navy Mole at the combined
    Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. In his remarks, he referred to
    Kevin Schroeder, member, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's
    Union; Mayor Beverly O'Neill of Long Beach; Leland Wong, president, Los
    Angeles Harbor Commission; Rick Zbur, candidate for California's 38th
    Congressional District; and Ronald H. Brown, former Secretary of
    Commerce.