[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 26, 1996]
[Pages 1360-1363]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Arlington, Ohio
August 26, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all for 
coming out. Thank you for being in such a wonderful frame of mind. Thank 
you for making us feel so welcome. And if you get too hot, we've got 
some water up here. Raise your hand. We don't want anybody to collapse. 
We have doctors; we have nurses; we have lots of water.
    Now, let me say, before I begin I'd like to thank the Arlington High 
School Band for doing such a great, great job. I'd like to thank the 
other people whose names I've been given: Ms. Mary Gould, the piano 
player; the Paragon Barbershop Quartet; Tom Kroske and his band. I'd 
like to thank Mayor Lynne Orwick of Arlington; Judge Reginald Rowtson; 
the mayor of Fostoria, Mr. Jim Bailey; and Paul McClain, the candidate 
for Congress, who spoke earlier, I think. Thank you all for being here. 
Thank you, Mary Ellen Withrow, for doing a great job as the treasurer of 
Ohio and the Treasurer of the United States. I'm proud to have you in 
this administration.
    I want to thank Senator John Glenn for being here with me on this 
train trip through the heartland and for his consistent, patriotic 
leadership for our country and for the people of Ohio in the Senate, to 
build the economy, to protect our interests around the world, to keep 
our defense strong, and to lead--lead--our party in the Congress and to 
help our administration in the most dramatic savings of funds in 
downsizing of Government in modern American history. We now have the 
smallest and most efficient Federal Government since John Kennedy was 
the President of the United States, thanks in no small measure to John 
Glenn of Ohio.
    Thank you, David Brown, for your speech and your passion and your 
commitment to the families and children of this community. Everywhere I 
go--and I've now been in Huntington, West Virginia; Ashland, Kentucky; 
Chillicothe and Columbus and a lot of little places along the way, just 
stopping, saying hello to people--but wherever we've had a rally, I have 
been introduced by a citizen, a citizen who is either doing something 
that is consistent with what our administration has pushed for the last 
4 years or who represents what I'm trying to have happen in America.
    I'm sure a lot of you saw that last week our administration became 
the first one in history to take very strong action to try to limit the 
marketing, distribution, and sales of tobacco to young people. We are 
doing our best, but I want to say to you, we cannot do this all by 
ourselves. We've got to have people in every community in this country 
determined to keep our kids safe from all the influences that are 
destructive to them. They're all our children.
    And with all respect to what was said in the convention in San 
Diego, Reverend Brown here just got up and gave a speech which validates 
the title of my wife's book: It does take a village to raise our 
children, to raise our families, and to build a future.

[[Page 1361]]

    I want to thank my daughter, Chelsea, for coming with me. Hillary 
has gone home to Chicago to welcome us, so she's not here. But Chelsea 
is here. We're having a wonderful time on the train ride, and we thank 
all of you for coming.
    Audience member. Where's Chelsea?
    The President. Where is she? She's right back there. Raise your 
hand. There she is.
    Let me tell you that we're on this train, this beautiful train, 
recreating a trip that many Presidents before me have made, because I 
wanted to go through America's heartland to Chicago. I wanted to see the 
people in this country that I've been working for for the last 4 years. 
I wanted to see your faces, hear your voices, and give you a report on 
where we are and where we're going. And I wanted you to see that this 
train is on track not just to Chicago; we're on the right track to the 
21st century. And we're going to stay there.
    Four years ago--just think about 4 years ago--when I came to the 
people of Ohio, on June 2d, I was officially nominated by the Democratic 
Party in the primary process when the votes in Ohio were announced. At 
the Democratic Convention in July in New York, the delegation from Ohio 
made me the legal nominee of the Democratic Party. And on election 
night, it was when the votes of Ohio were announced that all the 
prognosticators said, ``Bill Clinton will be the next President of the 
United States.'' Thank you, Ohio.
    Now, remember what gave rise to that election. Unemployment was 
high. Wages were stagnant. Crime was rising. A host of unmet social 
challenges were plaguing us. And cynicism was on the rise in America.
    Now look where we are after 4 years. We brought the deficit down 
with a very tough vote in 1993 that our opponents said would wreck the 
economy. And what happened? We got interest rates down. We got new jobs 
going. The deficit has been reduced 60 percent in 4 years. And my fellow 
Americans, there would be a surplus in your national treasury today but 
for the interest we still have to pay on the debt that was run up in the 
12 years before I took office. Let's don't go back and make that mistake 
again.
    And what have we gotten out of it? We have 10\1/4\ million new jobs, 
4\1/2\ million new homeowners. Ten million families have refinanced 
their homes at lower interest rates. Twelve million American families 
have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law so they can 
take a little time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick without 
losing their jobs. We have record numbers of new small businesses, 
record numbers of exports. Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner 
air. We cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than the previous 
two administrations did in 12.
    The crime rate has come down for 4 years in a row. We're putting 
100,000 police on the street, banning assault weapons. The Brady bill 
has kept 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting a handgun, 
and not a single Ohio hunter has lost a rifle, in spite of what the 
other side told you in the 1994 election.
    After a decade, real wages are finally starting to rise again for 
ordinary working people; 15 million American families with the lowest 
wages who are working full time have gotten a tax cut so we can say in 
America, nobody works full time and has kids at home and lives in 
poverty anymore. That's a very important principle that every American 
of any income ought to share. We want all families to succeed at home 
and at work. We can have no greater objective than to help people be 
good parents and successful in making a productive country. College has 
been made more affordable with lower cost college loans with better 
repayment terms. We need to do more, but I feel good about where we are 
compared to where we were 4 years ago.
    What I want you to think about now is where we still need to go. The 
main thing we need to say for the next 70 days is, we ought to stay on 
the right track. We're on the right track; why in the world would we 
reverse course? What we need to do is to lay plainly before the American 
people what still needs to be done.
    First, we know that while the economy has 10 million more jobs, not 
everybody has fully participated in the benefits of this economic 
recovery. We know--we know already that the next generation in the 21st 
century will have more chances to live their dreams than any generation 
of people who ever lived, that America's best days are before us if we 
do what it takes to make sure all these children can participate in that 
future. That's why I say, first of all, we've got to keep the economy 
going. That means balance the budget, keep the interest rates down, and 
don't have unnecessary cuts in

[[Page 1362]]

education, the environment, technology, science, research, Medicare, and 
Medicaid. Protect our people's obligations.
    I also say to you that we know that education is more important than 
ever before. And yes, we've made some strides forward, but we have more 
to do. We must make sure that every classroom in this country has access 
to computers, educational programs, trained teachers and that by the 
year 2000 every single classroom in America, in the smallest rural 
village, in the poorest inner-city neighborhood, is hooked up to the 
information superhighway so every child has the same access to 
information that every other child has.
    We have to make sure that every American family can afford the 
education that is critical to our future, not just for the children but 
for the adults who will be going back to school as well. And I have 
proposed that by the year 2000 we will make the first 2 years of college 
or a community college education just as universal in 4 years as a high 
school education is today by giving American families a $1,500 tax 
credit for the cost of tuition at their community college, a $10,000 tax 
deduction for any educational cost after high school.
    We ought to let people deduct their cost for 4 years for medical 
school, for graduate school, for whatever. We have a vested interest in 
having the most educated people in the world, and we need every family 
to be able to do that, not just those that can afford it.
    I have proposed making it easier for families to save. Today, you 
can't take out an IRA if your income is over $40,000. Under our 
proposal, we'll go up to $100,000 for a couple, in income. And now, 
under a bill just passed by Congress, if there are two people in the 
home, they can both put aside $2,000 a year. And under my proposal 
you'll be able to withdraw from that without any penalty for a college 
education, to finance a first home, to deal with a health care 
emergency. Let's save in a way that helps America. Let's have a tax cut 
we can pay for, balance the budget; that's for children and education.
    I also know--the Reverend was talking about saving our kids. One of 
the biggest problems is that a lot of our kids live in families where 
their parents are working hard and doing the best they can, but they're 
alone too many hours a day. Our proposal would give a tax cut for people 
with children under 13 so they can have some more money, $500 a year to 
pay for child care or help their kids be in some other kind of activity 
after school. And we also want to give more funds to school districts 
around the country so they can be open longer hours. If we could keep 
all the young people in this country involved in positive activities 
between 3 and 6 o'clock, we'd see a lot of reduction in a lot of our 
problems. And we need to do that. And I want to do what I can to help.
    I want to see this become a more responsible country. Yes, the crime 
rate's gone down for 4 years in a row, but we have to finish the job. We 
have voted to put 100,000 more police on the street. We've only funded 
half of them on the schedule we're on. One of the things I intend to do 
if I am reelected your President is to make sure every single one of 
those 100,000 police is on the street.
    Our friends in the other party in Congress disagree with me. They 
voted against the 100,000 police. They tried to repeal it in the budget 
I vetoed. Now they're trying to restrict it again. But I'm telling you 
folks, we can prevent crime and catch criminals if we have more people 
serving their communities out there, visible, who know the kids on the 
streets, who know the neighbors, who know the law-abiding folks. We need 
to finish the job of putting 100,000 police on the street.
    We need to build on the Brady bill. I'm so proud tonight that when 
the Democratic Convention opens one of the people who's going to speak 
is the wife of Jim Brady, who was President Reagan's Press Secretary 
until he was almost killed when President Reagan was shot. And Jim and 
Sarah Brady have spent their lives not as Republicans, not switching 
parties to the Democratic Party, just being Americans trying to say, 
this is crazy for us to keep letting felons get guns.
    And when they passed the Brady bill, I was proud to sign it, and I 
worked hard to pass it. I didn't agree with the politicians who were 
afraid to tell the American people that on this issue the NRA was wrong, 
that it wasn't going to kill anybody to wait 5 days to get a handgun 
while we checked their records. Sixty thousand felons, fugitives, and 
stalkers don't have guns today. We're safer. I'm proud of it. And Sarah 
Brady is going to speak at the Democratic Convention tonight because we 
stood for that, and I'm proud of that.

[[Page 1363]]

    But we have to do more, more to help our streets be safe, more to 
help our families be strong. I just want to mention a couple of things I 
talked about in Columbus today at the police academy. The Brady bill 
today covers felons. It ought to cover violent misdemeanors, 
specifically domestic violence. People that have engaged in domestic 
violence should not be able to have handguns. And we ought to ban cop-
killer bullets. I've been trying to do this ever since I got there. I 
don't understand why in the world we need bullets that pierce 
bulletproof vests. There is not a deer in the woods in America wearing a 
Kevlar vest. We don't need them. The police need them. We ought to do 
it.
    Finally, there are more things we can do for our families and our 
kids. All over America local communities are finding their own 
solutions. I have tried to put the Government on the side of helping 
local communities do whatever they want, whether it's school uniforms 
for junior high schoolers or grade schoolers, or tougher curfew laws or 
truancy laws. I've tried to support the things that gave local 
communities the sense that they were taking responsibility for their 
children's lives. We need to do more.
    We adopted a law which requires all new televisions to have a V-chip 
in it. And the television industry, thank God for them, agreed to rate 
television programs, so within a couple of years parents will be able to 
buy a TV guide and buy a television and decide, if there is 100 channels 
on the television, what things their young children should not see on 
television. I think that's a good thing. We need to finish that.
    We worked hard to get an order from the Federal Communications 
Commission, agreed to by the entertainment industry, that will give us 3 
hours of good, positive educational television programs at nighttime for 
our kids--3 hours a week, in the next couple of years. That's going to 
be a positive thing. But we have to do more. And I ask you all to 
support that. We have got to keep working to make childhood special, 
childhood safe, childhood have integrity, and we all have a 
responsibility for it.
    Let me finally say this: I know there is going to be a lot of debate 
in this election about the tax cut proposal that the other side has 
made, and it sounds good. It's bigger than--I'll tell you right now, 
it's a whole lot bigger than the tax cut I'm promising. I fess up. I 
promise it is. But there is a big difference between the one I'm 
promising you and the one they are. We can pay for mine. I will not 
propose anything in my speech Thursday night to the American people or 
anything in this campaign that cannot be paid for while we still balance 
the budget. Why? What's that got to do with you in this great town? 
Because that means low interest rates, more investment, more jobs, more 
small businesses, higher wages. We have worked too hard for too long 
with high interest rates, nobody getting a raise, and unemployment too 
high. We have turned this thing around. We can't afford to turn back 
now. We have got to do that.
    It also means if you take a tax cut 5 times bigger than mine what 
that means is--according to our friends in the other party, not me--it 
means your interest rates will be 2 percent higher on your home 
mortgage, your car payment, your credit card payments. It also means the 
economy will slow down. It also means they'll have to cut Medicare, 
Medicaid, education, and the environment even more than they did in that 
budget I vetoed. And then when they shut the Government down, I vetoed 
it again. I'm not going to put up with it. I don't think you should. I 
think we can go forward together. We don't need that; we can go forward 
together.
    My fellow Americans, America is on the right track to the 21st 
century. But we have a lot of work to do. We have to be true to our 
values. We have to meet the challenges of the future. But I will say 
again, you look at every child in this audience; that's what this 
election is about. The best days of America are ahead, we just have to 
have the courage and the vision to seize the future. I hope you will 
help me do that. Will you do it? [Applause]
    God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:55 p.m. at Arlington Community Park. In 
his remarks, he referred to Judge Reginald Rowtson, municipal judge, 
Findlay, OH; and Rev. David Brown, pastor, First Christian Church in 
Findlay.