    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 28, 1996]
    [Pages 1395-1399]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Battle Creek, Michigan
    August 28, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank the
    people over across the street--we know you're there; we're glad you're
    here. Thank you. I would like to thank Kathy Bloch for her introduction
    and for the work she's done to support our efforts to stop the
    marketing, the advertising, and the distribution and the sales of
    tobacco to young people. That's not legal, and it ought to stop. Three
    thousand of our young people a day start to smoke, and 1,000 of them
    will die sooner because of it. It's the biggest public health problem in
    the country, and I think it's a good thing that Americans have taken
    action on it again, thanks largely to people like Kathy Bloch and young
    people themselves who have asked us to help them protect a healthy
    future for them, and I thank her for it. Thank you, Mark Schauer, for
    your work and your candidacy. Thank you, Kim Tunnicliff; I thought you
    gave a good, rousing speech.
        I thought to myself when I heard Kim talking, now, if he'd been in
    Congress, that would have been one more vote against that budget that
    slashed Medicare by $270 billion and took away the guarantee of health
    care to the elderly in nursing homes, to poor children, to pregnant
    mothers, and to families with members with disabilities. He would have
    stopped that.
        He would not have voted to cut education and the environment or to
    raise taxes on the lowest income working people or to let $15 billion be
    taken out of worker pension funds. All that was in that budget in 1995
    that I vetoed. And I never did hear our friends in San Diego talking
    about that when they were bragging about how moderate and nice and
    broadminded they were. So I was glad to hear Kim remind you that there
    was a budget battle last year. I did veto it, and thanks to Carl Levin
    and others, we sustained that veto. It would be a good thing to have
    somebody in the Congress

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    that wanted to balance the budget and protect our values. I thank you
    for doing that, sir.
        I would like to introduce another Michigan Congressman who's here
    with me. He represents the Upper Peninsula, and I think he is one of the
    most dedicated, upright, hard-working people in the Congress:
    Congressman Bart Stupak and his wife are both here. Congressman Stupak,
    come out here and wave to the folks. Governor Jim Blanchard is here, who
    was the very distinguished Ambassador to Canada. I thank you, Governor
    Blanchard. Attorney General Frank Kelley is here. I thank you, Frank,
    for coming and for your work. Frank Garrison, the head of the Michigan
    AFL-CIO is here with us. And I want to say a very special word of thanks
    to another son of Michigan who is here, who just completed his term as
    the president of the National Education Association, Keith Geiger, who
    was a fearless and wonderful advocate for America's teachers. Thank you,
    Keith Geiger, for being here.
        Finally, I'd like to thank Senator Carl Levin for his leadership for
    Michigan and America, for his fight for America's jobs and his fight for
    ethics in Government, for his fight to give America the kind of
    direction that it needs and deserves. He deserves your reelection for
    his service, and I hope you'll give it to him.
        I'd like to thank the Battle Creek High Band. Thank you very much
    for being here. And I thank the saxophone selection for raising your
    horns. You look good over there. Well, the rest of you can raise your
    horns; you don't have to be a saxophone player.
        I thank Mayor Deering, from Battle Creek, and the principal of
    Battle Creek High School, Bruce Barney; the head of the local community
    action agency, Sherry Keys-Hebron; the president of the AFL-CIO for
    south central Michigan, Richard France; Reverend Albert Thomas; and all
    the others who had anything to do with this event today, including the
    Washington Heights Gospel Ministry, who'll give us music at the end of
    this event. Thank you all very much.
        Folks, I'm glad to be the first President in Battle Creek since
    President Johnson was here in 1965. I'm glad to be the first President
    to come into Battle Creek on a train since President Taft was here in
    1911.
        This train started in West Virginia and went into Kentucky. Then we
    went all over Ohio. Yesterday morning, we started in Toledo and then
    worked our way into Michigan to Wyandotte to Royal Oak to Pontiac and
    last night to a rally at Michigan State University where there were over
    20,000 people. It was an amazing event.
        I took this train to Chicago, the 21st Century Express, for two
    reasons. First of all, I wanted to get a chance, as I go to Chicago to
    accept the nomination of my party for President and begin the last and
    perhaps the most important campaign of my life, to look into the faces,
    into the eyes, into the hearts of the people of America in the heartland
    for whom I have worked and fought these last 4 years. I wanted to see
    you to remember why we're doing all this.
        And secondly, I wanted to make the point that our train is not only
    on the right track to Chicago, it's on the right track to the 21st
    century. And we need to stay on that track. But as one of these
    wonderful signs said, there is more to do. I was very proud of my wife
    last night at the Democratic Convention because she talked about the
    work she's done for the last 25 years, what we learned about it from
    raising our own daughter, and the fact that there is more to do.
        Audience members. Hillary in 2000!
        The President. Let me say very briefly--I want to speak with you,
    and I want to ask you to do something for me. I want you to vote for me,
    of course. I want you to stay with us. But I want to talk to you just a
    few moments this morning about what we've done and where we're going and
    ask you to spend the next 70 days talking to your friends and neighbors
    about it.
        I ran for President 4 years ago because I wanted to lead our country
    into the 21st century with all Americans having the chance to live out
    their dreams. I ran for President because I didn't like the fact that we
    had high unemployment, stagnant wages. We were not meeting our
    challenges, cynicism was on the rise, middle class dreams were being
    dashed, and I knew we could do better. I knew we could do better.
        So I went before the American people and said, I have a simple
    strategy. I want to create a country in which there is opportunity for
    everyone, responsibility from everyone, and where everyone who is
    willing to work hard and do the right thing without regard to their
    race, their gender, where they come from, or anything else about them.
    If you believe in the Constitution,

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    the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, you're part of my
    America, and you're going to be part of our America in the future.
        Well, we've been at this for 4 years now, and the people can make a
    judgment. And they can also listen to the ideas we have for the future
    and know there's a darn good chance we can implement them because we've
    done so much of what we talked about 4 years ago.
        On the economy we had a simple strategy: get the deficit down, bring
    the interest rates down, give tax relief to the people who need it most,
    expand our sales of American products around the world, invest in
    science and technology and, most important of all, in the education of
    our people.
        Now, has it worked? Compared to 4 years ago, we have over 10 million
    new jobs, a record number of small businesses, including businesses
    owned by women and minorities. We have a 15-year high in homeownership.
    We have an all-time high in the export of American products. We have an
    all-time high in the creation of American small businesses. I can tell
    you, for the first time in a decade--maybe most important of all to me--
    average wages are on the rise again. We've been waiting for 10 years to
    see that start.
        The other party always talked about being against the deficit in
    Government, but in the previous 12 years we increased the debt by 4
    times. Since I've been President, we've cut the deficit in each of the
    last 4 years. It's down by 60 percent. Interest rates are down,
    investments are up, and the economy is growing. Tell your friends and
    neighbors in Battle Creek and around this area that we would have a
    surplus in the budget today and we could have a bigger tax cut if it
    weren't for the interest we're having to pay on the debt that was run up
    in the 12 years before I took office. We'd have a surplus.
        But we have to do more. We can grow this economy faster, we can
    create more jobs, we can raise incomes more if we will work hard
    together. We have to go on and balance the budget to keep the interest
    rates down, but we have to do it in a way that is different from what
    our friends in the opposition tried to do last year. We do not have to
    destroy Medicare or Medicaid or turn our backs on education and the
    environment or do anything to let the stability of working people's
    pension funds be eroded. We can balance the budget and protect our
    values, and that is my commitment to you.
        We can also cut taxes for families in America, but the tax cuts need
    to be targeted to what will do the most good and to something we can pay
    for, and people like me, who don't need it, shouldn't get them, because
    we have to balance the budget. We have to balance the budget and cut
    taxes, and we can do both.
        The tax cut should be targeted. We should give a $500-a-child credit
    for children under 13. We should give people the right to save in an IRA
    with incomes going up to--family incomes of $100,000, and then withdraw
    that money, those savings, without any penalty if they need it for
    health care, to buy a first-time home, or to pay for a college
    education. We ought to do that.
        We should continue to invest in education. We ought to have a
    million children in Head Start. We ought to have a million kids working
    their way through college on work-study. We ought to preserve my lower
    cost college loan program, not do away with it as the other party tried
    to do. And we ought to give people a tax deduction for the cost of
    college tuition up to $10,000 a year and a tax credit worth $1,500, an
    outright credit, to make sure every person in America can get at least 2
    years of education after high school. It ought to be as universal as a
    high school education is today. We ought to make sure that every
    classroom in America not only has computers and trained teachers but is
    hooked up to the information superhighway by the year 2000, every single
    classroom.
        Now, folks, if you're my age and you're not the most computer-
    literate person in the world, it may be hard to understand what that
    means. But let me tell you what it means. It means that we now have the
    chance, for the first time in the history of the United States of
    America, to make sure that children in the poorest urban classroom,
    children in the remotest mountain village in America, children in the
    high plains of the West, children everywhere will have access to the
    same high quality information in the same time in the same
    understandable form that children in the wealthiest, best schools in
    America do. That has never happened before. That is revolutionary.
        So that's our opportunity agenda. We also need to continue to fight
    for responsibility. But look where we are compared to 4 years ago:

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    The crime rate is down, the welfare rolls are down 1\1/2\ million, and
    child support collections are up 40 percent. We're moving in the right
    direction. Not a single Michigan hunter lost a weapon when the Brady
    bill passed, even though that's what our friends in the opposition were
    saying in 1994 to get votes. I don't know why they didn't repeat that in
    San Diego; I was listening. [Laughter] No, nobody lost a weapon in
    Michigan, but 100,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have not been able
    to get handguns because the Brady bill passed.
        We're halfway home in putting those 100,000 police on the street.
    And we have increased funding for safe and drug-free schools and for
    prevention programs and, I might add, at a time when about the only
    thing in this country that is not going in the right direction, I'm sad
    to say, is teenage tobacco and drug use; they've both been going up the
    last 4 years. I don't think this is a very good time to try to abolish
    our drug-free schools program. We need more D.A.R.E. officers in those
    schools. We need more people in those schools trying to keep the kids
    off drugs in the first place.
        But we've got more to do. Very briefly, I think we ought to ban cop-
    killer bullets. Police officers are--[inaudible]--of them. No deer in
    the Michigan woods is wearing a Kevlar vest. Our police officers are. We
    ought to protect them, and they deserve it. And I think if you commit an
    act of domestic violence, you also shouldn't be eligible to get another
    handgun where you can kill somebody.
        And I do not believe that we should stop putting 100,000 police on
    the street. We're halfway home; we need to finish the job. I don't know
    why our friends are interested in killing the 100,000-police program,
    but I do know this: More police on the streets, working with their
    friends and neighbors, knowing the kids, prevent crime in the first
    place and make it safer. We've got 4 years of a declining crime rate. We
    know what works. Four more years, and it will be about where it ought to
    be. Let's keep on going.
        In the area of welfare reform, let me just say this. If every person
    in this country who owes child support paid it, 800,000 women and
    children would go off welfare tomorrow. We have to keep doing better
    with that. Now that we have passed the welfare reform legislation, we
    have guaranteed child care and health care and nutrition to poor
    children and their families. But if you're going to tell people they've
    got to be at work within 2 years, they have to have jobs that they can
    attend. So we now have to create jobs for these people. It is wrong to
    cut people off and put the kids in the street unless people have jobs as
    an alternative, and I am committed to that. So that's our responsibility
    agenda.
        Now let me talk a little about what binds us together as a
    community. First of all, it's our families. Look where we are compared
    to 4 years ago. Twelve million American families have taken advantage of
    the family and medical leave law that we passed with the help of people
    like Carl Levin and Bart Stupak and over the opposition of the leaders
    of the other party. Twelve million Americans took a little time off when
    there was a baby born or a sick parent, and it didn't hurt the economy a
    bit. We're better off because of it.
        And now we just raised the minimum wage for 10 million people. We
    just made 90 percent of our small businesses eligible for a tax cut if
    they invest more in the business and made it easier for people in small
    businesses, where most Americans work, to take out retirement for
    themselves and their employees and to keep those retirement plans if
    they change jobs. That's pro-family. And we adopted in the small
    business bill, in the minimum wage bill, a $5,000 tax credit for people
    who adopt a child, more if the child has a disability. There are
    hundreds of thousands of kids out there that need a good home. I hope
    more people will adopt now that we have passed this law.
        In the area of health care we adopted the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill.
    You know what it says to 25 million Americans? ``Okay, now they can't
    take your health insurance away from you just because somebody in your
    family has been sick, or if you lose your job or you change jobs you
    still have a right to keep your health insurance.'' It can help 25
    million of our fellow citizens. That's pro-family.
        What we're doing in implementing this rule on tobacco is pro-family.
    We don't say--we say to adults, you have a right to smoke; you do what
    you want. It's a legal product. But it's illegal in every State in
    America to market or sell tobacco products to children, and we're going
    to do our best to stop it because we want our kids to live longer.
    That's pro-family.
        But we have to do more. On health care, we should make it possible
    for unemployed people not only to keep their insurance as a matter

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    of law but to afford it. My balanced budget plan helps unemployed people
    keep their health insurance for 6 months. Our balanced budget plan helps
    families with members with Alzheimer's they're caring for get some
    respite care. Our balanced budget plan says, among other things, that a
    mother cannot be forced to leave a hospital in sooner than 48 hours
    after a baby is born. And I think we have to build on the family and
    medical leave law. I think we ought to let people have just a little
    time off--not a lot, no time for abuse--but a little time off not only
    for a medical emergency, not only for the birth of a child but to take
    their children to regular doctor's appointments and to see the teacher
    once in a great while.
        We can't be a strong community unless we have a strong environment.
    Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner air than 4 years ago.
    We've cleaned out more toxic waste dumps in the last 3 years than in the
    previous 12. We passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, the pesticide
    protection act. We upgraded the standards for safe meat and poultry.
    We're moving in the right direction, but we have to do more. And I'll be
    saying more about this later today, but we need to clean up at least
    two-thirds of the toxic waste dumps in this country in the next 4 years.
    We have delayed it long enough.
        Let me say again, we have to do these things consistent with our
    values. We will not be one community if in the name of balancing the
    budget we give a tax cut that requires us to cut Medicare, stop
    Medicaid's commitment to families with members with disabilities. I
    thought Christopher Reeve was so moving at the Democratic Convention the
    other night. But let me tell you, he's right about research. We're going
    to spend more on research, $1 billion more, because it's important. We
    have doubled the life expectancy for people with AIDS or HIV infection
    in just the last 4 years, doubled it because of research. We may be able
    to extend their lives indefinitely in good, quality ways because of
    research.
        We are about to build a computer with IBM, a supercomputer, because
    of research, that will do more calculations in a minute than a person
    with a hand-held calculator could do in 30,000 years. That is what we're
    getting out of research. He's right. But he's also right--when
    Christopher Reeve said to me--and I thank these people here for coming
    to be with us today--Christopher Reeve said, ``You know, you've got to
    make that fight on Medicaid. You can't let them take away Medicaid
    because not everybody who gets hurt like me has been an actor, has made
    a good living. And even people like me can go broke. Middle class
    families deserve the right to keep working and caring for their family
    members.''
        So, folks, if you believe we're all in this fight together, if you
    agree with the First Lady that it takes a village and we're all part of
    it, if you believe that America's best days are ahead, if you want to
    stay on the right track to the 21st century, will you help us for the
    next 70 days?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. And will you help us for the next 4 years?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. at the Old Train Depot. In his
    remarks, he referred to Kathy Bloch, coordinator, Calhoun County Tobacco
    Reduction Coalition; Mark Schauer, candidate for Michigan House of
    Representatives; Kim Tunnicliff, candidate for Michigan's Seventh
    Congressional District; James J. Blanchard, former Governor of Michigan
    and former U.S. Ambassador to Canada; and Reverend Albert Thomas, Jr.,
    pastor, Second Missionary Baptist Church, Battle Creek.