    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [October 28, 1996]
    [Pages 1952-1956]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in University City, Missouri
    October 28, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Good morning, University City! Good
    morning, St. Louis! Good morning, Missouri! Thank you for being here.
    Thank you for your good spirits. Thank you for your support. Thank you
    very much, Mayor Joe Adams, for this wonderful day. I assume the mayor
    arranges the weather in University City every day. It's a beautiful day.
        I want to thank Attorney General Jay Nixon and Treasurer Bob Holden
    and Secretary of State Bekki Cooke, Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson for
    being here. And I want to thank St. Louis' own Bobby McFerrin for that
    great, great musical tribute. Thank you.
        Thank you, Joan Kelly Horn, for running for the Congress and for
    standing up against the Republican Congress and what they tried to do to
    cut education and the environment, to weaken Medicare and Medicaid, to
    allow workers' pension funds to be raided. They say if they keep their
    majority, they're going to do it one more time. You have to decide, and
    Joan Kelly Horn is your alternative, folks. Thank you for being here,
    Joan, and thank you for running.
        I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to Congressman Bill
    Clay and Congressman Dick Gephardt, who are not here today but who are
    working their hearts out for victory in November and who have stood by
    you and for your future. And I want to thank my good friend Governor Mel
    Carnahan for his leadership for Missouri, his support for me. He will be
    a great Governor for the next 4 years. Thank you, Mel Carnahan.
        I'd also like to acknowledge two people in the audience: Senator Tom
    Eagleton, thank you for being here, and former Lieutenant Governor
    Harriet Woods. And the people of Project Vote, thank you for being here.
    Thank you very much.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to be here in University City, a
    model of racial and religious diversity, a city with more than 24
    churches and synagogues, a leader in equal opportunity and racial
    harmony since the 1960's, a stern rebuke to those who would divide our
    country today by race or ethnicity or religion. Thank you for the
    example you have set.
        Folks, I like the cheering in elections. I even like it when our
    opponents show up and cheer. I like it when Americans are enthusiastic.
    It's what America is all about. But I also hope every one of you will
    take a little time in these last 8 days not only to cheer but to think
    and to ponder. This is the last election for President in the 20th
    century and the first election for President in the 21st century. I'm
    glad so many young people are here today because this is about your
    future in a new world, a new era, a new time.
        So as we close this election season, I also want to take some time
    every day to focus on the big issues before us. Yesterday we talked
    about welfare reform. Today I want to talk about how we can keep our
    economy strong by balancing the budget and still investing in the
    priorities that matter to Americans.
        You have to decide who can best lead America into the 21st century.
    You have to decide whether you want to build a bridge to the future or a
    bridge to the past. You have to decide whether you want to build a
    bridge wide enough and strong enough for all of us to walk across
    together, or just say, ``There's the future; I hope you make it.'' You
    have to decide whether we're better off being told we're on our own, or
    whether you believe it does take a village to raise our children and
    educate them and protect our country and build a good future.
        Four years ago I ran for President with a simple vision, and I ask
    you to think about it tonight. When you go home, just take a little time
    and ask yourself, what do I want America to look like 4 years from now
    when we start that new century? What do I want America to look like when
    my children are my age? My answer is simple: I want an America where the
    American dream is alive and well for everybody who is responsible enough
    to work for it. I want

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    an America still the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and
    prosperity. And I want an America relishing, respecting its diversity
    and coming together across its differences in shared values, not being
    driven apart as so many places in the world are today.
        To achieve that America, I have worked hard on a strategy to expand
    opportunity for all, demand responsibility from all, and build an
    American community where everybody has a role to play and a place at the
    table. Four years ago when I came to you and told you this, you in
    Missouri, even here in the Show Me State, had to take me on faith. But
    today you don't have to do it anymore. Today there is a record, and we
    can show you. And that's why they're trying to shout us down, because we
    can show you. We can show you. So today, Missouri, you don't have to
    listen to the shouting, you can look at the showing. You can look at the
    showing.
        We have more evidence today that our economy is on the right track.
    When I ran for President 4 years ago, no challenge loomed larger or
    seemed more difficult to solve than the deficit. The deficit had soared
    to $290 billion, a record high and growing. In the 12 years before I
    took office, our national debt had quadrupled over what it had
    accumulated for the 200 years before. We worked hard to change that. We
    passed a tough economic plan without a single, solitary vote on the
    other side. My opponent and others said we could never reduce the
    deficit. They said we would wreck the economy. They said these tough
    decisions would bring no good.
        Well, we knew sooner or later there would be ``show me'' time. And
    we know now that for 4 years in a row, we have reduced the deficit.
    That's the first time a President has reduced the deficit in all 4 years
    of a term in the 20th century. We know now that our budget would be in
    surplus today if it weren't for the interest we pay on the debt run up
    in just the 12 years before I took office.
        I pledged to you when I ran for President that we would restore
    fiscal discipline to our Government, cut the deficit in half in 4 years.
    I said it was wrong to leave our children a legacy of debt, and we would
    never get Missouri and America's economy growing again until we got the
    deficit down to get interest rates down, so that business loans, home
    mortgages, car payments, and student loan payments were going down. We
    had to get those interest rates down. The deficit was a ball and chain
    holding back our economy.
        Well, today we've got some new good news about exactly how far the
    deficit has dropped since I took office. So, since the young people have
    the biggest stake in it, I want to ask two of your young people, Daraa
    Seward and Matthew Laudano, to join me, and we are going to officially
    announce, along with Frank Raines, the Director of the Office of
    Management and Budget, the 1996 deficit figure. You can listen to them
    and look at the figure, and you decide.

    [At this point, Daraa Seward, Gateway Institute of Technology student,
    and Matthew Laudano, Hazelwood Central High School student, unveiled the
    figures.]

        The President. The last time they were in office, the deficit was
    $290 billion. The 1996 deficit has been cut to $107 billion. That's a
    reduction of 63 percent. That's the lowest level since 1981. But when
    you adjust for inflation, it is the lowest deficit in 22 years. Today,
    the United States has a deficit in its budget that--as a percentage of
    our income--that is lower than that of any other major industrial nation
    on the face of the Earth. This has meant real benefits to the people in
    this audience. It means cheaper auto, home, credit card, business loan
    rates, more business expansion, more job creation, a growing economy,
    providing opportunity again.
        My friends, America has heard a lot of calls in the last several
    days. I would say that these results prove that America is awake and
    moving in the right direction to the 21st century. We are moving toward
    a balanced budget. We are going to continue building prosperity and
    creating jobs.
        What has been the result of all of these efforts? Look at where we
    are now compared to where we were 4 years ago: 10\1/2\ million new jobs
    in America; an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent in Missouri; median
    household income up $1,600 after inflation in just the last 2 years; the
    largest drop in child poverty in 20 years; the lowest rate of poverty
    among senior citizens ever recorded; the highest rate of homeownership
    in 15 years; the welfare rolls down by 1.9 million fewer people on
    welfare today than the day I became President; child support collections
    up 50 percent, $4 billion a year. And I might say in Missouri it's even
    bet-

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    ter. Child support collections in Missouri are up 59 percent under
    Governor Carnahan. Thank you.
        The crime rate has dropped for 4 years and is now at a 10-year low.
    Thank you. Here's a guy with a sign that says ``Cop for Clinton.'' Thank
    you, sir. God bless you. We raised the minimum wage for 10 million
    families on October 1st. Twelve million families have taken advantage of
    the family and medical leave law to take a little time off from work
    when a baby is born or a family member is sick, and our economy is
    stronger because of it.
        Twenty-five million families may get protection because we passed a
    law that says you can't lose your health insurance anymore just because
    you change jobs or somebody in your family's been sick. We passed a law
    to say that new mothers and their newborn babies cannot be forced by
    insurance companies out of the hospital in only 24 hours anymore.
        We lowered the cost of student loans, had the biggest increase in
    Pell grants in 20 years, and gave students the option to pay off their
    loans as a percentage of their income, so no one should be deterred from
    borrowing the money to go to college.
        We are moving in the right direction: more opportunity, more
    responsibility, a greater sense of community. But there is more to do,
    and your vote in this election will make a great difference. Your vote
    will decide, for example, whether we're going to keep this economy
    growing by bringing that 107 number down to zero, balancing the budget
    while continuing to invest in education and the environment, protecting
    our obligations through Medicare and through Medicaid to poor children,
    to the elderly in nursing homes, to families with members with
    disabilities, whether we continue to invest in technology and grow this
    economy for the future; or whether we adopt a $550 billion risky tax
    scheme that will actually raise taxes on 9 million working families,
    require bigger cuts in education, the environment, Medicare, and
    Medicaid than the ones I vetoed last year, and still blow up the deficit
    and weaken the economy and send that number going right up again. Your
    vote will decide. Are you going to help us build that bridge to the 21st
    century? [Applause]
        We have begun to pass health care reform. Your vote will decide
    whether we adopt our balanced budget plan which will give families help
    to keep their health insurance when they're between jobs, which will
    give free mammograms to women on Medicare, which will give help for
    respite care to the over 1\1/2\ million American families that are out
    there caring for a family member with Alzheimer's, and still balance the
    budget. Your vote will decide whether we do that or continue to cut
    Medicare in ways that will allow it to wither on the vine and divide us
    in the future. Your vote will decide. Will you help us build the bridge
    to the 21st century with health care for all? [Applause]
        We have had 4 years of declining crime rates. We've funded nearly
    half of those 100,000 police in our crime bill. The Brady bill and the
    assault weapons ban didn't cost a single hunter a weapon, but 60,000
    felons, fugitives, and stalkers could not get handguns because of the
    Brady bill. And now the law says if you beat up your spouse or your
    child, you can't get a gun either. That's what the law says.
        Now, your vote will decide whether we turn our back on that or
    whether we keep putting 100,000 police on the street; whether we take on
    the problem of violent teen gangs with the same vigilance we went after
    the mob; whether we give our kids something to say yes to by continuing
    to fund the safe and drug-free schools program and opportunities to keep
    children from getting in trouble in the first place; and whether we ban
    bullets whose only purpose is to pierce the bulletproof vests of police
    officers. Your vote will decide whether we do that.
        On welfare reform, your vote will decide a very great deal. We have
    already moved 1.9 million people from welfare to work. We've passed the
    new welfare reform law, which says we will continue as a nation to
    guarantee to the poor medical care and food for the kids and more for
    child care than ever, if the parent goes to work, but now the State of
    Missouri and local communities will have 2 years to turn a welfare check
    into a paycheck.
        It sounds great, but it's just a law. The question is, what are we
    going to do about it? Missouri has a program. Governor Carnahan has a
    plan--I have seen it working here--to bring in people in the private
    sector and offer them real incentives to bring people from welfare to
    work. I have a plan to add another million jobs from welfare to work. I
    have a plan to help cities like St. Louis make the extra steps that
    people with large welfare populations will have to do.

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        It is wrong to tell people they have to go to work and then not have
    a job there. I want to require people to work and have the jobs. And you
    will decide whether we are going to do that. Will you help me build that
    bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        Folks, under great assault by the present majority in Congress, we
    have continued to fight for our environment. When they tried to even
    float a scheme to sell a lot of our national parks, we said no. When
    they tried to cut back on environmental enforcement, we said no. When
    they tried to end our ability to enact new protections for our land, our
    water, our food, we said no.
        We have instead taken more dangerous chemicals out of the air, moved
    to improve the purity of our drinking water, moved to raise the
    standards for our food. We have closed more toxic waste dumps in 3\1/2\
    years than the previous administrations did in 12.
        But there is more to do. And I'll just give you one example. Ten
    million American children still live within 4 miles of a toxic waste
    site. If you'll give us 4 years, we'll clean up 500 more so our children
    will grow up next to parks, not poison. Will you help us build that
    bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        Most important of all, especially here, will you help us give the
    American people a world-class system of education for every single young
    person in America? [Applause] We have worked hard to increase Head
    Start, to raise standards in our schools, to improve efforts at reform
    at the grassroots level. We have increased college scholarships and
    improved college loans and given 60,000 of our young people a chance to
    serve in AmeriCorps, the national service program, and earn their way
    through college.
        But we must do more. And I just want to mention three things, very
    seriously, in this great center of learning. Number one, 40 percent of
    our 8-year-olds still cannot read on their own. Children cannot learn if
    they cannot read. Now, a lot of that is because we're a nation of
    immigrants again, the way we were 100 years ago, and English is not the
    first language. But that's not an excuse. That won't be much help to
    those young people when they're 15 and trying to learn algebra, trying
    to master the most sophisticated aspects of all the other science and
    math and other courses they have to take. I have a plan to mobilize
    30,000 people, reading specialists, to get a million volunteers together
    to go out and solve this problem.
        We just increased the number of work-study slots for college
    students by about 200,000. I want 100,000 of those work-study positions
    to be young college students teaching children to read, so that by the
    year 2000 every 8-year-old in this country can pick up a book and say,
    ``Now I can read this all by myself.'' Will you help us build that
    bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        We want to hook up every classroom and library in the country to the
    information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World Wide Web. What
    that means for all of you who don't have computers at home is that for
    the first time in history, in the next 4 years, for the first time in
    American history we can finally make available to every child in the
    poorest inner-city school districts, in the most remote districts in the
    high plains--every child in every school district, poor, middle class,
    or rich--the same information at the same level of quality in the same
    time in the same way. It has never happened before. Will you help us do
    it in just 4 more years? Will you help us do that? [Applause]
        And finally, will you help us open the doors of college education to
    every single American who wishes to go? [Applause] On the way out here
    this morning I passed the St. Louis Community College. We know now--we
    know that young people who want to get jobs with growing prospects in
    terms of income and security need at least 2 years of education after
    high school. I propose in 4 years to make 2 years of college as
    universal as a high school diploma is today, simply by saying to the
    American people, we will let you deduct from your tax bill, dollar for
    dollar, the typical cost of a community college tuition for 2 years. All
    you have to do is go and make your grades and work hard and be
    responsible, and you can do it.
        I want to let more Americans save in an IRA and withdraw without tax
    penalty if the money is used for a college education, to buy a first
    home, or for medical expenses. And finally, I believe that families
    should be able to deduct up to $10,000 a year for the cost of any
    college tuition. We need to open the doors to college education. Will
    you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]

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        Do you understand what the choices are? Will you help us build a
    bridge wide enough and strong enough for all of us to go? [Applause]
        We need you, Missouri. Thank you. God bless you. Bear down, 8 days.
    Thank you. Show them.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:20 a.m. at city hall. In his remarks, he
    referred to Joan Kelly Horn, candidate for Missouri's Second
    Congressional District.