    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 30, 1996]
    [Pages 1422-1424]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Beginning a Bus Tour in Cape Girardeau, Missouri
    August 30, 1996

        The President. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all
    I am thrilled to see you here in such large numbers and with such
    enthusiasm. It's good to be in Cape Girardeau. It's not the first time
    I've ever been here, but it's the first time I've ever been here as
    President. And the last time I was here as a private citizen, I just
    stopped and got a Coke and nobody came out to see me. It's pretty nice
    to be here with 30,000 of our best friends. Thank you. Thank you.
        I want to say a word of thanks to some folks who haven't been
    recognized yet, but I used to do this, and they're the people that
    provided our music. They're over there in those hot uniforms: the
    Southeast Missouri State Band, the Cape Girardeau Central High School
    Band, the Jackson High School Band, the Fredericktown High School Band,
    the Farmington High School Band. Thank you for the music. Thank you. You
    were great, and we appreciate you.
        Thank you, Governor Carnahan, for being my friend and being a great
    leader for Missouri, for creating jobs and advancing education and
    moving people from welfare to work. I want to say one thing about Mel
    Carnahan. While there was a lot of political rhetoric in Washington
    about welfare reform, Mel Carnahan developed an idea, a plan to help
    move people from welfare to work. We approved it. He's implementing it.
    And I want you to know there are, in addition to 10 million more
    Americans at work, there are 1.8 million Americans fewer on welfare than
    there were the day I became President, thanks in part to the leadership
    of people like Mel Carnahan.
        Thank you, Emily Firebaugh, for presenting yourself as a candidate
    for Congress, for undergoing the rigors of the campaign, and for
    understanding what is at stake. Ladies and gentlemen, what she said is
    true. And what I said to the convention last night is true. Last year
    there was, and this year there has been, a competition of balanced
    budget plans. Let me remind you that they always talked about balancing
    the budget, but when I became President, the debt of this country had
    been quadrupled in 12 years. We cut it by 60 percent in 4 years. And you
    would have a surplus today if it weren't for the interest we have to pay
    on the debt run up in the 12 years before I became President.
        And so, I said, ``Here's a balanced budget plan. It has a tax cut to
    pay for education and childrearing. It's targeted to middle class
    families. It invests in education. It invests in the environment. It
    invests in research and technology for the future. It protects Medicaid
    for the elderly in nursing homes or poor children, for families with
    members with disabilities. And it protects Medicare. Take it.''
        They said, ``No. Here's a balanced budget plan. It cuts Medicare too
    much. It cuts Medicaid too much. It divides Medicare into a two-class
    system. It removes the guarantee of Medicaid coverage for people in
    nursing homes, for families with disabilities, and for poor children. It
    cuts education. It cuts the environment. It lets companies raid $15
    billion of their workers' pension funds. And it raises taxes on the
    hardest working, lowest paid working people with children in this
    country. You take that, or we'll shut the Government down.''
        I said no. I said no. But as I said yesterday, I have done my best
    to change the politics of Washington, DC, to make it more like life in
    Cape Girardeau. I am sick and tired of Washington taking up the
    headlines over who's to blame. I think the question is not who's to
    blame; it's what are we going to do to make America a

    [[Page 1423]]

    better country and to give our children a better future?
        So it's not enough to blame and to say no. We have to say yes. We
    have to have the right kind of balanced budget. That's one of the
    decisions we can make if we had people like Emily Firebaugh in the
    United States Congress. I hope you'll send her up there and give her a
    chance to serve.
        I want to also, if I might, echo something Hillary said. I know that
    we're pretty close to Arkansas here. And if I had doubted it, there's a
    bunch of my friends from northeast Arkansas in this crowd. I thank you
    for coming, all the people who came up from Arkansas that are over here
    to my left.
        We've got some water here. And if anybody passes out in the heat,
    we've also got a bunch of medics here. So just wave your hand; they're
    all looking for you. What did she say?
        Audience member. [Inaudible]
        The President. Thank you. That we have a lot of nurses here, that's
    what they were saying.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I came into Chicago on a train from West
    Virginia to Kentucky, to Ohio, to Michigan, to Indiana, and then into
    Chicago. I did it to say that America is on the right track to the 21st
    century, but I did it to see people like you, the people we've been
    working and fighting for for 4 years. We left Chicago on a bus to get
    back on the roads that we drove in 1992 because Hillary and I and Al and
    Tipper, we want to see the face of America, and we want you to know that
    we're going to build a bridge to the 21st century that all of you can
    walk across with your families, with your children, and with your
    neighbors.
        I want to do every single solitary thing I talked about last night,
    to create more opportunity, to inspire more responsibility in our
    people, and to build a stronger sense of community. I don't want to go
    over all that, but I do want to remind you of a couple of things that we
    are going to do to build that bridge.
        We're going to make 2 years of college as universal in the next 4
    years as a high school education is today. We're going to give America's
    families a tax deduction for the cost of college tuition up to $10,000 a
    year. We're going to enlist 30,000 mentors to mobilize an army of one
    million people to work with parents to help their children read so that
    when we get to the year 2000, there will not be 40 percent of our third
    graders unable to read on their own. Every third grader in America will
    be able to read a book on his or her own.
        We're going to pass the right kind of tax cut, a tax cut involving a
    credit for $500 for children 13 and under, a tax deduction for the cost
    of college tuition, a $1,500 tax credit for the cost of community
    college, an IRA that families making family incomes up to $100,000 can
    take out every year and then withdraw tax-free to pay for health
    insurance, a first-time home, or the cost of a college education. This
    is the right sort of tax program for America.
        And we're going to say to middle income families, we're going to
    help you get in your home. We've got the highest rate of homeownership
    in 15 years. We've got the highest rate of minority homeownership in the
    history of America. We're going to take it in the next 4 years--over
    two-thirds of the American people will be in their own homes. And we
    want to say when you sell that home and move into another one, if we
    have our way you will never owe any taxes on the gain you have when your
    home goes up again for that.
        But folks, these tax cuts are paid for line by line, dime by dime.
    We've still got to balance the budget. That's why our friends and our
    opponents' tax plan, which is 5 times bigger and sounds sweeter, is just
    flat wrong because it will require us to make even bigger cuts in
    Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment than the budget I
    vetoed. You don't want that, do you?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. And when they get through with that, they still won't
    have balanced the budget, so they'll blow a hole in the deficit. Now,
    that's boring compared to a check in your pocket. But let me ask it to
    you this way: Would you go to the bank in Cape Girardeau and borrow
    money to give yourself a tax cut?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. Well, why would you hire somebody to do it for you?
    Now, you think about it. What happens is, if you borrow the money to
    give yourself a tax cut, everybody else is borrowing money, you're going
    to drive interest rates up; your car payment, your credit card payment,
    your home mortgage payment will be higher.
        Last year our Republican friends said it would be higher by 2
    percent. That means they'll take your tax cut away, weaken the economy
    and, most important, it will be harder for business

    [[Page 1424]]

    people here and throughout the country to borrow money, to expand their
    businesses, to start new businesses, to hire new people, to raise their
    wages. Let's have the right kind of tax cut, balance the budget, keep
    the interest rates down, keep the economy of Missouri and the United
    States of America going. That is the right thing to do.
        We're going to prove you can protect the environment and grow the
    economy. There are 10 million kids living within 4 miles of a toxic
    waste dump. If you vote for us, we're going to clean up two-thirds of
    them in the next 4 years and make our kids grow up next to parks, not
    poison. That's the right thing to do for America's children.
        We're going to build on our efforts to strengthen America's families
    and to help people succeed at work and at home. In all the crowds that I
    have been before over the last 4 years, when real Americans, ordinary
    Americans, hard-working Americans, the backbone of this country come
    out, I look and talk to people, and I don't ever meet a family that
    hasn't had some point in their lives where there's been a real challenge
    between the duty to raise their children well and their obligations at
    work.
        That's why we passed the family and medical leave law and gave 12
    million Americans a chance to take some time off for a baby's birth or a
    parent's sickness without losing their jobs. And that's why we want to
    expand the family and medical leave law, so people can take a little
    time off to go to those parent-teacher conferences and the regular
    doctor's appointment with their kids. And we think there ought to be
    flextime rules so that if you earn overtime, depending on what's best
    for your family, you get to decide whether to take the overtime in money
    or extra time off if your children need it. That's the kind of America
    we're trying to build, stronger families for a brighter future working
    together.
        Will you help us build that bridge to the 21st century?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Will you say that in America, if you believe in the
    Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if
    you're willing to work hard and play by the rules, we don't care what
    your race is, what your gender is, what your income is, where you're
    from, or where you started, you're all going across that bridge together
    with us, we're going arm in arm, together and strong? Can we do that?
    Will you help us for 68 days, all the way to November?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:57 p.m. at Capaha Park. In his remarks,
    he referred to Emily Firebaugh, candidate for Missouri's Eighth
    Congressional District.