    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [October 3, 1996]
    [Pages 1747-1750]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Buffalo, New York
    October 3, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Wow! Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Buffalo!
    Hello, Erie County! You know, Congressman LaFalce, I am on my way to
    Chautauqua to prepare for the debate. And I was listening to you go
    through these steps, and it occurred to me that I ought to take you with
    me. I need to remember--I hope I can remember all those things you just
    said Sunday night in the debate.
        I am glad to be back here in Buffalo. I thank you all for being
    here. I want to say thank you, Mayor Masiello. Thank you, Erie County
    Executive Dennis Gorski. I want to thank the leaders of the State
    Democratic Party, the Deputy Speaker, Arthur Eve, and Mrs. Eve. Now they
    have two sons working for me. Thank you very much. We have Mayor Galie
    from Niagara Falls here. And we have two other candidates for Congress
    here. I'd like to ask them to come forward and wave: Tom Fricano, the
    congressional candidate from the 2d District, and Fran Pordum from the
    30th District. There you are. Thank you, gentlemen.
        And I want to thank the high school band for playing for us. Let's
    give them a big hand. [Applause] The colder it gets the harder it is to
    play one of those instruments, I know. But in Buffalo, this is a heat
    wave, right? [Laughter]
        Let me tell you, I am delighted to be back here in your county, in
    your city. I'm glad to be back in western New York. You know, 4 years
    ago when I came here and asked you

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    to help me rebuild the American dream, our country was drifting toward
    the 21st century. We had high unemployment, stagnant wages, the slowest
    job growth since the Great Depression, rising crime, increasing
    inequality among working families, and increasing tensions in our
    society. We were drifting toward the 21st century. And 4 years later,
    we're on the right track, roaring toward the 21st century. And I thank
    you for your support of our efforts.
        We have worked hard to create a country in which the American dream
    is alive and well for all of our people, a country that is coming
    together instead of being driven apart by our diversity, a country that
    is leading the world to peace and freedom and prosperity. And compared
    to 4 years ago, there's a lot of good news: 10\1/2\ million more jobs;
    average family income is up $1,600 after inflation since we passed the
    economic plan that our opponents said would drive the country into the
    ditch. They were wrong, and we were right.
        We have record numbers of new businesses. Ten million people got an
    increase in their minimum wage the day before yesterday, on October 1st,
    when the minimum wage increase went into effect. And we learned last
    week that economic benefits are finally going to all of our working
    people. We had the biggest decline in inequality among wage earners in
    growing incomes in 27 years; the biggest drop in the number of people in
    poverty in 27 years; the lowest poverty rate among senior citizens ever
    recorded; the biggest drop in childhood poverty in 20 years. This
    country is on the right track for the 21st century.
        When I became President our deficit was $290 billion and headed
    higher. We'd quadrupled the debt in 4 years. It is now going down 4
    years in a row, the first time that's happened in any Presidential
    administration since the 1840's, before the Civil War. We are moving in
    the right direction.
        Our deficit would not exist today, we would have a surplus today--a
    surplus today--we would have even lower interest rates, we could cut
    taxes more, we could grow the economy faster if we had a surplus today,
    which we would have if it weren't for the debt run up in the 12 years
    before I became President with the same economic program that our
    opponents are advocating today: Never mind, just cut taxes across the
    board; blow it off; who cares about the deficit. You should care. Why?
    Because if the Government has to borrow money, we're competing with you
    for borrowing money. That means your interest rates go up.
        And that's one thing I want to say: When you think about the 21st
    century, you have to decide. We need a targeted tax cut that is targeted
    to education, to childrearing, to buying that first home, to medical
    emergencies. And it needs to be paid for, dollar for dollar, dime for
    dime. We do not need a huge, explosive, across-the-board tax break that
    goes to people that don't need it, like me, and increases your deficit,
    your interest rates, which means higher car payments, higher college
    loan payments, higher home loan payments, higher credit card payments,
    and higher interest rates for the businesses in Erie County who are
    trying to borrow money to grow their businesses and hire people and get
    this country moving even stronger. I say let's have the right kind of
    tax cut, but let's do it in a way that grows the economy and builds all
    American families and makes us a stronger country. I hope you will
    support that approach.
        Let me say there are also 12 million families that have been able to
    take a little time off from work without losing their jobs when a baby's
    born, when a parent's sick, when a child's sick because of the Family
    and Medical Leave Act. And I want to see it expanded to let families go
    to those parent-teacher conferences and take their children and their
    parents to the doctor without losing their job. It's the right thing to
    do.
        We have made every small business in America eligible for a tax cut
    if they invest more in their own businesses to grow the economy and make
    their businesses and our country stronger. We've made it easier for
    small businesses to take out pensions and for their employees to take
    those pensions from job to job. And that's very important. Only about
    half the American people now have a retirement plan at work. More and
    more of our businesses are smaller business. More and more of our people
    are working there. This is a very important thing, making it easier for
    small-business people to have retirement plans for themselves and their
    employees.
        And we have made it easier for people who are self-employed to take
    out health insurance because they can now deduct more of that health
    insurance premium from their tax bill. We are moving in the right
    direction.

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        We have made 25 million Americans more eligible for health care by
    passing the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill because it says you can't lose your
    health insurance anymore just because you change jobs or someone in your
    family has been sick. We are moving in the right direction to the 21st
    century.
        And in the closing days of this session of Congress, as the American
    people--I don't want to take credit for this; I want to give you credit
    for this--in the closing days of this session of Congress--what a
    difference a year makes. As you heard John LaFalce say, a year ago they
    shut the Government down. But in the closing days of this session, they
    passed legislation that I asked for ending drive-by deliveries, saying
    you couldn't kick mothers and newborn babies out of the hospital within
    24 hours anymore. The doctors and the mothers should make that decision
    based on what's best for the health of the mother and the baby.
        They gave some coverage in the health insurance policies for mental
    health, which is a very important thing to families all across America.
    They covered for the first time--and thank goodness we have finally done
    it--with extra health and disability benefits, children of Vietnam era
    veterans who have spina bifida because their parents were exposed to
    Agent Orange in Vietnam. This is a better country now. We are moving
    forward. We are doing things that are consistent with our values.
        And I'll tell you something else. The crime rate has gone down for 4
    years in a row; there are one million fewer crime victims now than there
    were. The crime rate's not low enough, but you think about it: If we
    could bring the crime down 8 years in a row with a strategy that's
    working, this country may have safe streets, safe schools, safe
    neighborhoods, and the American people may feel genuinely secure again
    in their homes and at work and when their children go off in the
    daytime. That is the America that I'm working for in the 21st century.
        Here in this county, you have benefited from our commitment to put
    100,000 more police officers on our streets. In 1994, Congress passed
    that commitment. And in only 2 years, we have already funded 44,000 of
    those police officers. Now in this budget we're going to keep going
    until we finish the job, more police working to prevent crime as well as
    catch criminals, working with neighbors, working with children, working
    with school groups, working with church groups. This will work. This
    will work.
        Just before I came here today I met with the police officers who
    have been named the Top Cops of the year by the National Association of
    Police Officers, and we celebrated the work done just in the closing
    days of Congress for safer streets. The Brady bill--not very long ago
    this Congress, the majority, was telling people that the Brady bill was
    going to take guns away from folks. Well, it didn't take any guns away
    from hunters, but 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers did not get
    handguns because of the Brady bill. And the Congress in this budget
    actually answered my call to expand the Brady bill in a very limited way
    to say if you've got a felony record, you shouldn't get a handgun.
    That's what the bill says now. Now it says if you have beaten up your
    spouse or your child, you shouldn't be eligible to get a gun either. And
    that is the law of the land, and that's a good thing for America. That's
    a good thing for America.
        And finally, the Congress did something that I really strongly agree
    with and have asked for. They said that if States want to get money from
    the Federal Government to build penal facilities, they have to drug test
    people in prison and on parole. Sixty percent of the heroin and cocaine
    bought in this country is purchased by people who are involved in the
    criminal justice system: they're on bail; they're on probation; they're
    on parole. We ought to test those people. They ought to be treated. And
    we ought to say, look, parole is a privilege, not a right. And if you do
    drugs, you're going back to jail. If you want to stay out of jail, stay
    off drugs. It will make us a safer country, and we're moving in the
    right direction with that.
        And just before I left I signed a bill which stiffens the penalty
    for trafficking in methamphetamine. That's hard to say; ``meth'' is the
    shorthand. You may not even know what it is, but in some parts of our
    country it is in danger of becoming what crack was in the 1980's. And we
    are determined to stop it before it becomes an epidemic.
        That's what I'm trying to do, folks, in all of our problems. I'm
    trying to identify them, get ahead of the curve, and keep America
    growing and going together.
        Let me just say one last thing. I know all of you looked in the last
    2 days as I worked as hard as I could to get the peace process

    [[Page 1750]]

    in the Middle East back on track and to stop the resumption of violence
    between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I want to ask you to think
    just for a moment, as I close, about how many places in the world people
    are fighting each other because they're of a different religion, a
    different race, a different ethnic group, a different tribe: in Africa,
    Rwanda and Burundi; and Northern Ireland, where I've worked as hard as I
    could to restore the peace process; in Bosnia, where the United States
    and allies from all over the world are working to get people to live in
    peace, where there is literally no ethnic difference, even though they
    say they're different ethnic groups, they're in different religious
    groups, almost by accident of history.
        You see, the whole world today--now that the cold war is over, we
    have reduced the threat of nuclear war; there are no nuclear weapons
    pointed at the children of the United States for the first time since
    the dawn of the nuclear age. But all over the world, we see terrorism;
    we see weapons of mass destruction; we see all of this violence rooted
    in people's desire to hurt other people because they're different from
    them.
        And that's the last thing I want to leave you with. We can go into
    the 21st century as the strongest country in the world, with our best
    days ahead, because America is not about looking down on somebody
    because they're different from you. All you've got to do to be an
    American is to believe in the principles of the Constitution, the
    Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and show up tomorrow and
    be a law-abiding citizen. You can walk across our bridge to the 21st
    century. And I want you to commit to keep building that kind of American
    community where we grow and go together because our best days are still
    ahead.
        Stay with us, and help us build that bridge to the 21st century.
    Will you do it? [Applause]
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    [At this point, Representative John LaFalce made brief remarks.]

        The President. I neglected to say this when I was speaking, but I do
    believe the biggest Buffalo Bills fan in the entire United States,
    outside of Erie County, was my late mother and her husband, my
    stepfather. They're pulling for you every week. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. at the Greater Buffalo
    International Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Anthony M.
    Masiello of Buffalo and Mayor James Galie of Niagara Falls, NY. A
    portion of these remarks could not be verified because the tape was
    incomplete.