    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 10, 1996]
    [Pages 1528-1532]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1528]]

    Remarks to the Community in St. Louis, Missouri
    September 10, 1996

        The President. Thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it is
    wonderful to be here. Thank you for this vast sea of people. Thank you
    for all these wonderful signs: ``Students for Clinton,'' ``Teachers for
    Clinton,'' ``Cardinals and Clinton,'' ``Seniors for Clinton.'' There's
    one that says, ``I'm from Haynes, Arkansas.'' ``I'm from Hope,
    Arkansas.'' Good for you. My favorite one is that one back there that
    said, ``I'd vote for anyone smart enough to marry Hillary.'' Thank you
    very much.
        Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I want to thank all these people
    who are here with me. I want to thank my friend Al Green for singing the
    national anthem. Wasn't he great? I want to thank those who preceded us
    on the program: your comptroller, Darlene Green; your president of the
    board of aldermen, Francis Slay; Representative Skelton, our Democratic
    chair; the county prosecutor, Bob McCulloch; Dr. Hammonds, the
    superintendent; all the principals who are here; the people from the
    school board; the State treasurer, Bob Holden; the secretary of state,
    Becky Cook; Joe Carmichael, our State Democratic chair. Senator Banks,
    thank you for being here.
        Thank you, Gateway Elementary and Middle Schools, for welcoming us
    here. I love this place. I also want to introduce just one person I
    brought with me, my deputy campaign manager, the former Congressman from
    Missouri and former nominee to the United States Senate, Alan Wheat is
    here with me today--a great American. I thank him.
        I want to thank your mayor for his aggressive leadership in
    education and housing and fighting crime, in proving that this city can
    be given back to its people and that, just as the motto of this school
    says, if you empower people and give them a chance to make the most of
    their own lives, they will do it. That's his philosophy, and that's what
    we're doing together.
        I want to thank Governor Mel Carnahan for being one of the most
    enlightened and progressive Governors in the entire United States, for a
    person who believes that welfare reform means putting people to work,
    not putting them on the street, and giving our children and our families
    a better chance at a better future.
        I want to say a thank you to Joan Kelly Horn for being willing to
    put herself on the line and run for the Congress again against the well-
    financed members of the other party, knowing that they are wrong and she
    is right. And you need to prove her right on election day.
        I want to thank Congressman Dick Gephardt for being a great majority
    leader, a courageous minority leader, a man who is the best prepared
    person in the country to be the next Speaker of the House of
    Representatives, and I hope you will help him to do that.
        And when I heard your own Congressman, Bill Clay, up here talking--
    what I want you to know is that when he's in a room alone with me in
    Washington he sounds just like he does when he's up here talking to you
    over a microphone. [Laughter] He's the same person every place and every
    time, and he loves, he loves the children of this district and of this
    country. He believes in education. And if you make Dick Gephardt the
    Speaker, you will make him the chairman of the House Education
    Committee, and that will be a good thing for America.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I'm honored to be back in St. Louis. We had
    one of the most memorable rallies ever here in 1992. I know we're a
    little late today, and I want to tell you the main reason we are, and I
    hope you'll understand and be glad. I had to take a little time in
    Kansas City to make a statement about a very momentous event that
    occurred today in New York City.
        The United Nations has begun to meet again, and today, by an
    overwhelming vote, with only three nations in the entire world
    dissenting, the nations of the world voted to end nuclear testing once
    and for all in the entire world.
        I came into office determined to lift the cloud of nuclear threats
    from our children and our future. We got the countries of the world to
    agree not to sell or develop nuclear weapons and give them to other
    people. We ended a nuclear program in North Korea. We finally succeeded
    in removing most of the nuclear weap-

    [[Page 1529]]

    ons from any place within the old Soviet Union. There are no nuclear
    missiles pointed at the children of the United States tonight for the
    first time since the dawn of the nuclear age.
        And now, if we can see this all the way through, with the vote of
    these nations today it means that we will be able to take another giant
    step toward ensuring the safety of our planet and our children and the
    children of the world if we can ban forever nuclear testing, a dream
    first born by President Eisenhower and President Kennedy so long ago.
    It's a great day for America and a great day for the world.
        Just a few days ago, after the Democratic Convention in Chicago, we
    started a trip on the bus, Hillary and I and Al and Tipper Gore, in Cape
    Girardeau, Missouri. We had a huge crowd there on a hot day, once again
    demonstrating that our country is on the right track to the 21st
    century. Do you believe that? [Applause] We are.
        Compared to 4 years ago, we've got the lowest unemployment rate in
    7\1/2\ years, 10\1/2\ million new jobs, wages going up again for the
    first time in a decade, 4 years of record--record starts of new small
    businesses, record numbers of women and minorities owning businesses in
    this country. We have a 15-year high in homeownership. I am proud of
    these things. We're moving in the right direction.
        Fifteen million hard-working American families got a tax cut so they
    would always want to stay off welfare and keep working; 12 million
    families got to take a little time off from work without losing their
    jobs for the birth of a baby or the illness of a parent; 40 million
    Americans got their pensions protected; 10 million Americans on October
    1st are going to get an increase in their minimum wage. Every small-
    business person in the country will be eligible for a tax cut if they
    put more money into their business to improve their productivity so they
    can hire more people or give their employees a raise. This country is
    moving in the right direction. I'm telling you, we are moving in the
    right direction, and we don't need to turn back now.
        Here in St. Louis I was talking to the mayor about something called
    the brownfields initiative. That doesn't mean anything to most of you,
    but it will before long. A brownfield is a place where there used to be
    jobs in a city where there's now nothing but pollution. And what we aim
    to do is to clean up those brownfields so we can get rid of the
    pollution and bring back the jobs. And we're going to do it all over
    America, and we're going to do it right here in St. Louis.
        We cleaned up more toxic waste sites in the last 3 years than were
    cleaned up in the previous 12 years. We brought the deficit down in each
    of the 4 years I've been President for the first time since before the
    Civil War, to take the debt off our children and keep the interest rates
    down on their parents. There are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare,
    and child support collections are up 40 percent. This country is moving
    in the right direction.
        I came into this job that you gave me--and Missouri sure played a
    big role in giving me this job for 4 years, and I thank you--with a
    simple vision for these little children here. I wanted us to go into the
    next century with the American dream alive and well and real for every
    person who is willing to work for it.
        I wanted us to be one strong community coming together, not drifting
    apart; made stronger by our differences, not made weaker by them. I
    wanted us to continue to lead the world for peace and freedom and
    prosperity, and we are on the right track.
        And let me say that I have tried to practice the politics of what to
    do instead of who's to blame. I don't care much about who's to blame,
    but in elections you do have to make choices, and it's important to know
    what decisions are being made. And when you think about Bill Clay and
    Dick Gephardt or Joan Kelly Horn, when you think about the races for
    Congress and the race for President, there are some things that are
    important to know.
        In 1993 and 1994, we said yes to reducing the deficit in a way that
    was fair to all Americans and continued to increase our investment in
    education, in protecting the environment, in protecting Medicare and
    Medicaid. And the folks on the other side, they said no. We said yes to
    a crime bill that put 100,000 police on the street and banned assault
    weapons; and they said no. We said yes to a less expensive student loan
    program that gave young people the option to repay it as a percentage of
    their income. And all of them said no. We said yes to the AmeriCorps
    program that gives people a chance to solve problems in their
    communities and earn money for college, and the leaders of their party
    said no. We said yes to the family leave law, and the leaders of their
    party said no. We said yes to a tax cut for the 15 million Americans

    [[Page 1530]]

    with children in their homes that are working the hardest for the most
    modest wages, and they all said no. We said yes to the minimum wage
    increase, and most of them said no. We said yes to more funds for Head
    Start, for smaller classes, for safe and drug-free schools, and they
    said no.
        And then, when they had their turn, they said we'll balance the
    budget by giving people like the President, who didn't need it, a tax
    cut and cutting Medicare, destroying Medicaid's guarantee of 30 years to
    poor children and pregnant women and middle class families with members
    with disabilities and the elderly in nursing homes, by cutting back on
    education when we need to be investing more, by weakening our
    environmental protection when we need to be doing more. That's what they
    said yes to. And then we had our chance, and we said no. We said no.
        And that's really what this election is all about. It's a clear,
    unambiguous choice about building a bridge to the future or going back
    to a past that didn't work the first time. That is the choice. It's a
    choice between building a bridge that's wide and strong enough for all
    of us to walk across arm in arm or trying to recover a past that is not
    recoverable.
        My fellow Americans, that's what this election is about. I want to
    build a bridge to the future that keeps our economy growing strong so
    that every single person who is willing to work has a chance to work and
    to be a part of the American dream. Will you help me build that bridge?
    [Applause]
        Now, that means we do have to balance the budget. Every time I say
    this in Washington all the experts say, ``Now, Mr. President, don't go
    into a city where most of the voters are Democrats anyway and talk about
    balancing the budget because it bores people. People don't care about it
    unless the economy's in bad shape, and then they think it will fix it.''
        Let me tell you why you ought to care about it. Our Republican
    friends said something last year I agree with. They said if we had no
    plan to balance the budget, interest rates would be 2 percent higher, so
    the Government would be borrowing money, the same money you're trying to
    borrow. You know what that means? You figure it out when you go home
    tonight. What would 2 percent mean on your home mortgage, your car
    payment, your credit card payments? It's a lot of money. What would 2
    percent mean to all these business people? You want to borrow money in
    St. Louis and start new businesses or extend their businesses so they
    can hire more people. That's a lot of money. It would be bad for the
    economy.
        So we say, yes, let's balance the budget, but let's do it without
    gutting Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. Yes, let's
    have a tax cut, but let's have a tax cut to people who need it, to help
    them raise their children and educate their children and save for a home
    and save for a college education and save for health care. And let's pay
    for that tax cut.
        Let's don't go back. Let's don't go back and adopt an unwise tax
    program that sounds so great. ``Oh, I'll give you more money,'' they
    say. What they don't say is, ``I'll give you more money and then we'll
    have to cut Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment even more
    than we tried to cut it before, and the deficit will go up so you'll
    have higher interest rates.'' I say let's build that bridge to the
    future. We don't want to go back to that past. We tried it the first
    time and we didn't like it. Let's keep going. Will you help me build
    that bridge to the future? [Applause]
        Ten million American children, 10 million of them are still living
    within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump. If you will stick with us, we'll
    clean up two-thirds of those, the worst ones in the next 4 years, so
    that all of our children will be growing up next to parks, not poison.
    Will you help me build that bridge to the future? [Applause]
        We want to finish the job of putting 100,000 police on the street.
    We've got the law on the books, but they've tried twice to stop it. I
    don't know why. The crime rate is down dramatically. The murder rate in
    St. Louis has dropped dramatically. It is not complicated. We've got
    police on the street working with the friends and neighbors of people
    who care about their neighborhoods and their children. We can bring the
    crime rate down. We've got it down for 4 years in a row. If we bring it
    down for 4 more years in a row, we may finally get to where we like
    living in this country and we feel secure in all of our neighborhoods,
    in all of our cities. Will you help me build that kind of bridge to
    America's future? [Applause]
        My opponent said just the other day that he still thought Mr. Clay
    and Mr. Gephardt and I were wrong in passing the family and medical
    leave law, said it was antibusiness. All the bill

    [[Page 1531]]

    says is, if you work in a business with 50 or more employees and your
    spouse is about to have a baby or you are or your mama or your daddy's
    real sick or your baby's real sick, you can take just a little time off
    from work without losing their job. Now, you tell me, is that
    antibusiness?
        Audience members. No-o-o!
        The President. If it's antibusiness, how did this economy produce
    10\1/2\ million new jobs? That's more jobs, more job growth, faster rate
    than any Republican administration in 70 years. It's not antibusiness.
    It's good for America when people can raise their families and be good
    to their kids and succeed at work. Will you help me build that kind of
    bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        Most important of all, I look at this beautiful, beautiful
    educational complex, and I look at the even more beautiful children out
    here. I know and you know that the only way, in the world we're living
    in and certainly in the world we're moving to, that we can protect all
    of our children and give them a chance to live up to their God-given
    abilities is to have education that is world-class quality for every
    child in America. Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st
    century? [Applause]
        I was told that this is the first new school construction in St.
    Louis in 25 years. We've got the largest number of young people in
    school today in American history. I was in a school the other day in
    Tampa, Florida, a beautiful old school, where there were five or six
    trailers outside, prefab buildings that had to be brought in just to
    house the students.
        One of the things I want to do is to have the National Government
    help those cities and those school districts that are willing to make an
    extra effort at school construction to rehabilitate old buildings or
    build new ones so that we can help them bring the interest rates down
    and lower the cost of school construction if they will make the extra
    effort. Will you help me do that? [Applause]
        Let me tell you something else I think we ought to do. Forty percent
    of the 8-year-olds in this country--40 percent of the 8-year-olds in
    this country--are still not able to read a book on their own.
        Audience member. Not in Gateway!
        The President. But we know--we know--you said not in Gateway--that's
    the idea. What I want them to say is, ``Not anywhere. Not in Gateway,
    not anywhere.'' We know if our young people can't read, they can't learn
    other more complex subjects. They won't be able to write, use the
    language, learn another language, master computers. We know this is
    important.
        I want to mobilize an army of reading tutors, starting with the
    AmeriCorps volunteers, the young people on work study, specially trained
    teachers and volunteers so that we can go into the schools of this
    country and help the teachers and help the parents and say by the year
    2000 every 8-year-old boy and girl in America will be able to pick up a
    book and look at it and say, ``I can read it by myself.'' Will you help
    me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
        Let me say one other thing. We've got the chance now for the first
    time in the history of our country to give every child, no matter where
    that child lives, no matter how poor their neighborhoods, the same
    access to the same information in the same way at the same time as the
    children of the wealthiest school districts in America, because of
    technology. It requires computers in every classroom. It requires
    trained teachers on those computers. And it requires us in the next 4
    years to hook up every one of those classrooms in every school in
    America to the information superhighway, to the Internet, the World Wide
    Web. Once we do it, education will truly be democratic and open to all
    Americans. Will you help us build that bridge to the 21st century?
    [Applause]
        And finally, let me say, we have got to put a college education
    within reach of every single American who wants to go and is willing to
    work. The scholarships, the AmeriCorps program, the improved student
    loan program, all this has helped. But we want to do more. I want us in
    the next 4 years to make at least 2 years of community college education
    as universal for every American of any age who wants to do it as a high
    school education is today. Will you help us do that? [Applause]
        I want to do it in the following way. I want us to say to everybody,
    we will give you a tax credit, a refundable tax credit for up to $1,500
    a year. That will cover the typical community college tuition in any
    State at any community college. Nearly every American lives within
    driving distance of a community college, and every American needs at
    least that much education. That's the right kind of tax cut for America,
    to send the American people to school. I want

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    to give the American families a tax deduction for the cost of any
    tuition after high school, undergraduate, postgraduate, you name it, at
    any age, up to $10,000 a year. Will you help me do that? [Applause]
        That's the kind of bridge I want to build to the 21st century. I
    believe that we owe it to the children and to their parents to build a
    country in which people can succeed at home, raising their kids, and at
    work; where everyone who wants to get another education or more
    education has the chance to do it; where we say, you do not have to
    wreck the fabric of America's community to balance the budget. If you do
    it in the right way, it will make America a stronger community. That is
    the kind of America I want to build.
        And let me tell you, folks--this election, you just heard, is 56
    days from today, 8 weeks from today. In the next 8 weeks you think about
    how many people you're going to speak with. Think about all your friends
    and family members, everybody you might talk to on the telephone living
    inside or beyond the borders of the State of Missouri. And I want to
    just ask you to remember this--this is a wonderful rally; you've made me
    very happy today--but I want you to remember what I said. These are big
    choices, and the choices you make in the races for Congress and the
    choice you make in the Presidential race is a choice that has more to do
    with you than us. It has more to do with these children. They have all
    their tomorrows in front of them. And we owe it to them to make sure
    that our best days are still ahead. We owe it to them to make sure that
    the future is brighter than any of our glorious past.
        And we can do it. We have it within our means if we have the vision
    and the will and if we make up our mind, each and every one of us, to be
    good citizens.
        Yes, we have done a lot in the last 4 years, but the last 4 years is
    just an indication of what we can do in the next 4 and the years beyond
    if we will build that bridge together. Would you help me do that?
    [Applause]
        Thank you. God bless you. Let's go get it.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:25 p.m. at Samuel Shephard Gateway
    Educational Park. In his remarks, he referred to singer Al Green;
    Darlene Green, St. Louis city comptroller; Francis G. Slay, president,
    St. Louis board of aldermen; Robert P. McCulloch, St. Louis County
    prosecutor; Cleveland Hammonds, superintendent, St. Louis public
    schools; Joseph Carmichael, Missouri State Democratic chair; State
    Senator B.J. (Jet) Banks; Mayor Freeman R. Bosley, Jr., of St. Louis;
    and Joan Kelly Horn, candidate for Missouri's Second Congressional
    District.