[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 26, 1996]
[Pages 1368-1373]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Toledo, Ohio
August 26, 1996

    The President. Thank you so much to the citizens of Toledo. Thank 
you very much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for 
making us feel so very welcome tonight. Now, I want to tell you first of 
all, I love Toledo, and I love to spend the night here. I love to run 
along the water here in the morning. And I'm delighted to be back. I've 
still got my Toledo Mud Hens cap. And I'm glad to be back. I also want 
to tell you that if you saw

[[Page 1369]]

Senator Glenn and I talking a little while the program was going, you 
need to know that at some point in about 15 minutes I'm going to stop, 
and the whole country is going to see you, because we're going to be 
talking back and forth to our convention in Chicago. So I want you to 
help me. Will you do that? [Applause]
    Now, in the meanwhile, I'd like to talk to you a few moments. First, 
I want to acknowledge your mayor and thank him for his vigorous 
leadership to help develop Toledo economically and to help fight the 
crime problem and working with us on it.
    Secondly, let me say, there is not in the entire United States 
Congress another Member of the Congress who is as active and energetic 
and aggressive and effective on behalf of the constituents as Marcy 
Kaptur is for you. She's fought for your jobs; she's fought for your 
welfare; she's fought for your values. You can be proud of her.
    And let me say of Senator Glenn, I have known very few people in 
public life that I would say I admired as much as John Glenn. He is an 
American hero and a national treasure. He's too modest to tell you, but 
we did downsize the Government, but we didn't put those Federal 
employees in the street. We didn't cast them off and forget about them. 
We gave them early retirement. We helped them find other things to do. 
And we used the opportunity of the savings to do things like put 100,000 
more police back on your streets, to bring your deficit down. And we 
used ways to save money and increase the effectiveness of national 
defense, increase the effectiveness of our ability to respond to 
emergencies. We cut the budget of the Small Business Administration, for 
example, and doubled the loan volume. We did those kind of things, in 
large measure in 1993 and 1994, with the help and leadership of John 
Glenn. And he deserves a lot of credit for it.
    I also--a lot of Ohioans know that Senator Glenn is one of America's 
leaders on the problem of nuclear proliferation. That's a big old word, 
but I'll tell you what it means now. During this administration--and 
thanks in no small measure to the leadership of John Glenn--for the 
first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, on this night, this 
beautiful night, there is not a single nuclear missile pointed at a 
child in the United States of America. And we can be proud of that.
    I want to thank the CitiFest organization for helping this to become 
possible. I want to thank our Lucas County Democratic chair, Keith 
Wilkowski, for his work on this. And I want to mention two other folks, 
one, the gentleman to my right who is sitting over there with Chelsea. 
He's one of yours. His name is Robert Wyckoff. He was wounded fighting 
for your country in World War II, but he had never received, after all 
these years, the combat medals he earned, including a Bronze Star and a 
Purple Heart. Well, 50 years too late, on our train tonight, just before 
we got to Toledo, it was my great honor to pin on Robert Wyckoff the 
Bronze Star and the Purple Heart he earned for our country before. Would 
you stand up, sir? Let's give him a hand. [Applause] Thank you.
    There's another person I want to introduce tonight who is not here, 
and you'll understand in a minute. Marcy gave Chelsea the keys to the 
Jeep. [Laughter] One of the things I'm proudest of in America's economic 
recovery is that for the first time in 20 years, the United States is 
the auto capital of the world. We're producing more cars than the 
Japanese, and we're selling more around the world. And tonight, tonight 
in Chicago at our convention, an autoworker from Toledo named Todd 
Clancy is speaking on behalf of the working people of America. And I 
know you can be proud of him.
    We have had a wonderful time. We've been to West Virginia, Kentucky. 
We've been all over Ohio. We started this morning at the State police 
training academy in Columbus. We've been to Arlington. We had an 
unbelievable rally in Bowling Green. We are having a good time taking 
the train across America's heartland, a train that gives me a chance to 
thank you for giving me the chance to serve as your President, to say 
that I have worked for you, and to look in your eyes and tell you we've 
been up there for 4 years every day trying to help you go forward. And 
we'd like 4 more, because America is on the right track, the right 
track.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're on the right 
track. And I'll tell you, I want you to watch our convention. We're 
going to have a good time. And I'm glad a few of our friends from the 
other party showed

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up tonight with their signs. You're welcome here. We're glad to have you 
here.

[At this point, there was a disturbance in the audience.]

    Audience members. Boo-o-o!
    The President. No, don't boo them. Don't boo them. Don't boo them. 
We're glad to have them here. But our convention is going to be a little 
different. We're not going to hide our leaders. We're going to parade 
them out on the stage and say we're proud of them. And I have read our 
platform. I'm proud of it, and we're all glad to run on it. We're not 
running away from it. And we don't need to avoid our record or distort 
it. We'll just run on our record and on our ideas for the future. We're 
proud of it. We're proud of it. We're proud of it.
    I want you to think about what has been going on for the last 4 
years. When I came to see you 4 years ago and I asked you to take a 
chance on me, I had never worked as an elected official in Washington, 
DC. I ran for President because I was worried about what was happening 
to my country, because we had high unemployment and stagnant wages, 
because we had a rising crime rate, a host of unsolved social 
challenges, a widening rift among our people, a growing sense of 
cynicism about the ability of political leaders to make a difference in 
ordinary people's lives. And I was sitting out there in my home State 
going to work every day as our State's Governor, and I didn't like it 
and I decided I'd try to make a difference. And I asked you to help me.
    And on June 2, 1992, the votes of Ohio gave me a majority of the 
delegates I needed to be nominated. In July of 1992, at the national 
convention, the delegation from Ohio cast the votes that put me over the 
top. And as John Glenn said, in November of 1992, when they called Ohio 
for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the commentator said, ``As Ohio goes, so 
goes the Nation. They will win the election.''
    And so tonight, my friends, I come to you to make a report, to say 
we are on the right track, but we have more to do; to ask you to join 
with me for the next 70 days to tell your friends and neighbors, whether 
they're Democrats, Republicans, or independents, about what has happened 
in America these last 4 years, what the choice is in this election, and 
what we still have to do.
    Look at the record. Look at the economy. You heard Senator Glenn say 
that we brought the deficit down in all 4 years of this administration 
for the first time since before the Civil War. That's the last time that 
happened, in the 1840's. I'm proud that our Democrats did that. I wish 
we had had some help from the folks in the other party, but I'm glad we 
did it anyway. I'm glad we did it. We paid a price for it, but I'm glad 
we did it.
    Do you know that we would have a surplus in Washington today in your 
budget--a surplus--were it not for the interest run up when we 
quadrupled the national debt in the 12 years before I took office. If we 
didn't have to pay interest on the debt in the 12 years before I took 
office, we'd have a surplus in that budget today. We've got to keep on 
going until we balance it, to keep the interest rates down and the jobs 
coming back to America. That's what we need.
    But we have to balance that budget in the right way. Last year, I 
presented a balanced budget. The congressional leaders presented their 
balanced budget. They passed theirs and didn't want to talk about mine. 
And I vetoed it because it had cuts that were too big in education and 
the environment, in Medicare and in the Medicaid guarantees for our 
people. I vetoed it because it raised taxes on the poorest working 
people in America. I vetoed it because it allowed workers' pensions to 
be raided by corporations, and we spent the whole last several years 
trying to secure workers' pensions. So yes, I did. But I'm still for 
balancing the budget. We have cut the deficit 60 percent, and we're 
still going to do it. But we're going to do it in the right way. They 
can shut the Government down if they want to. I will not be blackmailed, 
not ever. We're going to do it in the right way.
    Let's look at education. Today, there are more children in Head 
Start. Our schools have funds to promote safe and drug-free schools that 
they didn't have before. They have funds that help them to stay open in 
after hours--we need a doctor here. We got one. Thanks. They have funds 
to stay open after hours when these kids often need someplace to go so 
they don't get in trouble. There are literally hundreds of thousands of 
young people who now have lower cost college loans because of the 
initiatives we have. And the AmeriCorps program has given young people a 
chance to serve in their community and earn money for college. Those are 
things

[[Page 1371]]

we did, and we're proud of it. We're proud of it.
    But, my friends, we must do more. We ought to put a million children 
in Head Start. We ought to hook up every classroom in America not only 
with computers and qualified teachers but hook them all up to the 
information superhighway so every child has access to the best 
education. And we need to make the first 2 years of education after high 
school as universal in the next 4 years as a high school education is 
today. If you vote for me, that's just what we're going to do.
    I want to give a tax credit worth $1,500 to every family so you can 
go to a community college. And every single American will know, at the 
very least, we can all get a community college education. Whatever our 
age, whatever our station in life, we can all get it. I want to give 
every working family in this country a tax deduction worth $10,000 a 
year for the cost of college tuition for the kids or the parents to 
educate our people. That's what we still have to do.
    Look where we are with health care. We've worked hard to get the 
inflation rate down in health care. For the first time in 30 years this 
year, it's running below the overall inflation rate in the economy. And 
right before I left to come on this trip, I signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum 
health care bill which says to 25 million Americans--25 million 
Americans--no longer can you lose your health insurance because you 
changed jobs, and you can't be denied because somebody in your family 
got sick. It is a good bill. It is a good bill.
    But we need to do more. In our budget we also say--and you know here 
in Toledo from your lean years, there are a lot of good people who 
sometimes have to be unemployed for longer than they'd like until they 
get another job. We think we ought to help the unemployed to keep their 
health insurance for at least 6 months, and their kids. We believe older 
women ought to be able to get mammographies. We believe people who are 
caring for their parents because they've got Alzheimer's disease ought 
to be able to get a little help with respite care to keep the families 
together and keep going. We like that. We believe in that. And we can 
afford that.
    If you look at where we've come in crime, for 4 years in a row now 
in the United States, the crime rate, including the violent crime rate, 
has dropped. I am very, very proud of that, and I know you are, too. But 
you also know that the crime rate is still too high and we have to do 
more. We're about halfway home in putting those 100,000 police on the 
street. We have to finish the job. That's a big difference between the 
two parties, I guess, philosophical difference. They voted against the 
100,000 police, and they've tried to do away with it a couple of times. 
And I've said no every time because I know that if you've got those 
police on the street they're not only going to catch criminals, they're 
going to prevent crime, they're going to get to know the kids, they're 
going to get to know people that can help to work with the children and 
say, ``Don't commit that crime in the first place.'' Let's finish the 
job with 100,000 police in the next 4 years.
    Let's finish the job with the Brady bill. It's kept 60,000 felons 
and fugitives from getting handguns. And not a single Ohio hunter has 
lost their weapon. But you know what? We ought to finish the job of 
protecting our police officers and people at home. I believe that if 
someone has committed a crime of domestic violence against a member of 
his or her family, they ought to be covered by the Brady bill, too. They 
shouldn't have a weapon they can kill somebody with. And I think we 
ought to ban those cop-killer bullets. They don't do any good on the 
hunting trail, but they do a lot of harm in America.
    If you look at where we are on welfare reform, I've worked hard for 
4 years to move people from welfare to work. Seventy-five percent of the 
people in this country were under welfare-to-work experiments before 
Congress passed the welfare bill I signed, and we reduced the welfare 
rolls by 1.5 million people. We can be proud of that. But now--now that 
we have a new law that says that you're on welfare and you're able-
bodied, we'll give your children health care, we'll give you child care, 
we'll protect your food stamps, but you've got to go to work if you 
can--we've got to create work so people have the jobs they need.
    We've worked hard to protect the environment. We've cleaned up more 
toxic waste dumps in 3 years than they did in 12, and I'm proud of that. 
Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner air, and I'm proud of 
that. The meat standards are higher, the protection against pesticide 
poisoning is better, and I'm

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proud of that. But we have to do more. We ought to clean up two-thirds 
of the waste dumps in this country and keep on proving you can grow the 
American economy and protect the environment for our children. We know 
we can do that.
    Most important of all, my fellow Americans, I have tried as hard as 
I know how to say that we're going to get into the 21st century with the 
American dream alive for everybody who's responsible enough to work for 
it. We're going to get into the 21st century with America leading the 
world for peace and freedom and prosperity if--but only if--we make up 
our mind we have to go into that future together, as one community. I 
don't like the fact that people are too often divided here by race, by 
religion, and by all kinds of other categories just to try to put 
somebody down so somebody else can be lifted up. That's not the America 
I want to live in.
    Look at what I dealt with as your President, trying to make peace in 
the rest of the world. Look at the Middle East. Look at Bosnia. Look at 
Northern Ireland. Look at the problems in Rwanda and Burundi in Africa. 
You'd think in those poor countries, where people don't have enough to 
get along, they'd want to roll up their sleeves, work together, and try 
to help lift each other up. But place after place after place, people 
define themselves by being able to look down on their neighbors, and 
it's wrong. But we've got to fight it in America. That's why we've got 
to stand against those church burnings in the South. That's why if a 
synagogue is marked up or an Islamic center is defaced, we've got to 
stand against that, too. In my America, you can be whatever you want to 
be. As long as you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the 
Declaration of Independence and you're willing to show up, pay your 
taxes, work hard, and obey the law, you're a part of my America and 
we're going into the future together. That's what I believe.
    And so we're on the right track to Chicago and to the 21st century. 
The best days of this country are still before us. Our children will do 
things we haven't even imagined yet. These children in this crowd 
tonight will have lots of jobs that haven't been invented yet if we do 
what we know is right, to create more opportunity for all Americans, to 
get more responsibility from all Americans, and to go forward and grow 
forward as one American community. That will take America into the 21st 
century. That will keep Toledo growing and going. That will make us 
very, very strong and keep us the hope of the world. That is the 
commitment I want from you. Will you help me for the next 70 days?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. Will you be there on election day?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. We passed the Family and Medical Leave Act--I love 
all these signs--we passed the Family and Medical Leave Act to help our 
families. Twelve million American families got to take some time off 
without losing their jobs when a baby was born. Will you help us keep it 
and expand it? Will you stand for things like that? [Applause]
    And in the next 4 years, are you willing to stand up and keep 
helping us try to move this country forward, not only by passing laws in 
Washington but by lifting people up in Toledo? Do you believe that we 
have to take responsibility for our children? And do you believe that if 
you're a parent you need to raise your kids and take responsibility, but 
you need help from the local teachers, from the local churches and 
synagogues, from the people who run the police departments and the 
people who look after the hospitals and the people who look after the 
health of your food? I guess what I'm trying to tell you folks is, I 
think my wife was right, not them: It does take a village to raise a 
child.
    If you believe all that--if you believe all that, you're part of the 
new Democratic Party. And we're going together into the 21st century 
because we're on the right track, the country is on the right track, and 
we're going to take the right track all the way into the best days 
America has ever, ever, ever known.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

[After a pause, the President spoke by satellite to the Democratic 
National Convention in Chicago, IL.]

    The President. Folks--hello, Chicago! Can you hear us? This is 
Toledo, and we say hello and thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.
    Well, folks, I just want to say to our delegates in Chicago, if they 
can hear me--Josh, can they hear me in Chicago? I want to say to the 
folks in Chicago, Chelsea and I are proud to be here with Senator Glenn 
and Congresswoman Kaptur and Mayor Finkbeiner in Toledo.

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    We're proud we're bringing the 21st Century Express to Chicago 
because America's back on track, and we're on the right track for the 
21st century. We're coming right at you. And we want you to know that 
those of us who are here in Toledo tonight are proud of you in Chicago.
    Thank you, Christopher Reeve; thank you, Sarah and Jim Brady; thank 
you, all who spoke. Thank you for loving America. Stay with us, and 
we'll be there.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:46 p.m. at Promenade Park. In his 
remarks, he referred to Mayor Carty Finkbeiner of Toledo; Joshua A. 
King, Director of Production, White House Office of the Press Secretary; 
actor Christopher Reeve; and Sarah Brady, head of Hand Gun Control, 
Inc., wife of former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady.