[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 27, 1996]
[Pages 1373-1378]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to Employees at the Chrysler Jeep Plant in Toledo
August 27, 1996

    The President. Thank you. I'm glad to see you, and I'm glad to be 
here.
    Audience member. Put the hat back on!
    The President. I can't talk with a hat on. [Laughter] My brain's not 
working. It's only--it's early, you know. [Laughter] But you'll see me 
with this on again. I'll run in it, play golf in it.
    I want to thank Dennis Pawley for what he said out here a few 
minutes ago and for the leadership that he's given to Chrysler and our 
partnership. I want to thank your plant manager for showing me around 
and bragging on you. I thank my old friend Rob Liberatore for coming 
from Washington for Chrysler, and Lloyd Mahaffey and Bruce Baumhower, 
and Ron Conrad and all the people from the UAW. And one of your members 
behind me gave me this very old UAW pin, and I'll collect it and it will 
have a prominent place in the White House in my collection. So I'm glad 
to have that.
    I'll tell you, I was listening to the mayor talk, listening to Marcy 
talk, and I thought there's more energy in Toledo than any other place 
in America. I never heard such--[applause]. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for 
what you said and for the partnerships we've had both in building up the 
economy and trying to tear down crime. And in both places you've worked 
hard when we've worked together, and I thank you for that. Thank you, 
Marcy Kaptur, for being perhaps the most ferocious defender of middle 
class economics and middle class values in the Congress of the United 
States. Thank you, John Glenn, for all you have done for this State and 
this country, for your partnership with me in helping to rebuild our 
economy and helping to make this a safer world.
    You know, I've heard Senator Glenn introduced a lot, and two things 
I rarely ever hear--one I want to tell you is that he said we have 
downsized the Government. We had to. We wanted to put 100,000 more 
police on your streets, and we had a big Government, and we had a huge 
deficit. We had to find some way to pay for it. We couldn't just pay for 
it with a tax increase, so we reduced the size of Government. But you 
never hear about it in America, and I'm proud of that because we did it 
in a good way.
    Of the 250,000 fewer people that are working for the Federal 
Government today, fewer than 1,800 were involuntarily separated. We gave 
those folks early retirement. We helped them find other jobs. They went 
on to other careers in dignity, so they could support their families and 
go forward into the future. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of that. 
And John Glenn was one of the people who found ways for us to save money 
and to do things so we could do that and treat people humanely. He 
played a major role in that, especially in the first 2 years of my 
administration. And there are families out there who can thank God that 
he found ways to save money, for example, in the way the Pentagon bought 
their purchases and deal with the personnel systems. All that's real 
people, and it matters.
    And speaking of real people, I hope you were proud of Todd last 
night. He was great at the

[[Page 1374]]

Democratic Convention. I've been asked several times by the press, why 
do we have Todd Clancy? Why do we have Mike Robbins, the Chicago police 
officer who was riddled with bullets in an assault weapons hail on the 
street of Chicago after serving our country in Vietnam and Desert Storm 
and never being wounded? Why did we have that young Puerto Rican 
American woman who was an AmeriCorps volunteer and is now going to go on 
and be a doctor after being a high school dropout? Why do we have these 
people talk? Why do we have the superintendent of schools in Seattle, 
Washington, who is an Army General?

[At this point, an audience member required medical attention.]

    The President. We need a doctor here. My doctor is here--can we get 
somebody over here?
    And I want you to--we're okay; we've got somebody here now. I want 
you to know why we asked citizens to go to a political convention and 
kick it off. Why do we have Jim and Sarah Brady, lifelong Republicans, 
come and talk? Why do we ask Christopher Reeve, a man who's not 
particularly political but is a shining example of the kind of courage 
never to give up, to talk about the importance of Government research 
and the importance of continuing the Medicaid program so we don't cut 
off middle class families who don't have a lot of money to deal with 
disabled people in their family and keep guaranteeing them their health 
care so they can keep their good jobs? Why did we do all that? Because 
people lose the connection between what is done in Government and what 
happens in your daily lives. It's easy to lose that connection. It meant 
an awful lot to me when Dennis Pawley talked about how I asked to meet 
with the representatives of the auto industry soon after my election as 
President, and I said we'd put a premium on that. I knew that America 
could not lose its auto industry. I knew we could be number one again. 
And I think the best way to say that and to show the connection between 
what we do in Washington and what you do in Toledo is to have a person 
like Todd Clancy tell a personal story that shows how America's life can 
be changed if we work together and do the rights things. And I know you 
are proud of him, and so am I.
    And I was proud to be here today to see the 2 millionth Jeep roll 
off the assembly line. I love that. You proved one more time that 
whenever we're given a chance to compete, we can be the best in the 
world. We can be the best in the world. And you have made us proud. That 
was true in World War II when that old Jeep was made.
    And I want to just tell you, I'm getting a little sensitive about my 
age. I just became eligible for my AARP card. [Laughter] But I am so old 
that when I was a little boy, 6 years old, the first time I ever crawled 
under a car, my stepfather owned a little Buick dealership in a little 
town in Arkansas where he came from, but we also owned a Henry J--an old 
Henry J Kaiser--and we owned a late 1940's model Jeep. And back then, 
the civilian Jeeps looked just like the military Jeeps. Just think how 
rich I'd be if I'd saved that thing. I wish we had never gotten rid of 
it.
    But I feel real nostalgic here today, and I thank you. But I also 
want to thank you for what you're doing because I had the privilege to 
do something I wish every one of you could do. I went in to the showroom 
of an auto dealership in Japan where they were selling the Jeeps that 
you made here in Toledo. And I was swelling with pride. And I spoke to a 
Japanese family who told me how grateful they were that they had a 
chance to look around for what they thought was the very best vehicle 
for their family. And believe me, these people had looked around; they 
knew more about that Jeep than some of us do. [Laughter] It was amazing. 
And they said they were grateful to have a chance to buy the product of 
your hard, productive labor. I wish every one of you could have that 
experience. You would have been so proud. And I was swelling with pride 
for you and for our country because of what you did. And I thank you for 
that as well.
    But you know, Marcy had it right, the purpose of politics and the 
purpose of work is to enable people to live out their dreams, to enable 
them to raise strong families and build strong communities and advance 
the cause of freedom. That's the purpose of all this. And that's what 
we're trying to do. We've had a pretty good week, and as I've been 
saying on this train, we're not only on the right track to Chicago, 
we're on the right track to the 21st century. And we need to stay right 
on it.
    Before I got on this train, last week I signed a bill that raised 
the minimum wage for 10 million Americans, people that are working hard

[[Page 1375]]

and deserve it. And while I'm at it, I'd like to pay another compliment 
to the labor movement, not just to the UAW but to the whole labor 
movement. Organized labor worked as hard as any group in America to 
raise the minimum wage. There are very few labor union members in any 
union that make the minimum wage or anything real close to it. But the 
laboring people of this country, through their organized leadership, 
labored for the minimum wage because they want all people who work for a 
living to have the dignity and the reward of work. And I think Americans 
should be grateful to the labor movement for standing up for the minimum 
wage.
    That bill, by the way, also made it easier for people who work in 
small businesses to do something that you can do. We made it a lot 
easier for small businesses to take out a retirement plan and for people 
who work for small businesses to keep that retirement when they move 
from job to job. We made it easier for families to adopt children, 
offering a $5,000 tax credit to anybody who would adopt a child, an even 
bigger one if the child has a disability. We removed the barriers to 
cross-racial adoption. That bill was pro-business, pro-labor, and pro-
family. It was a good day for America when it became the law of the 
land. And I thank Congresswoman Kaptur and Senator Glenn for their 
strong support of it.
    I signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health care bill, a bill that we've 
needed a long time, a bill that says to 25 million Americans who'll be 
affected by it, ``Nobody can deny you insurance anymore if somebody in 
your family's been sick, and it can't be taken away from you if you have 
to change jobs.'' That is a very, very important advance for America.
    So I feel good about what's been happening.
    Audience member. We feel good, too!
    The President. And I thank you.
    This global market is a tough thing to operate in. When I became 
President, I decided that we didn't have an option to walk away from the 
trading world, and we got some benefits from it. But if we were going to 
have free trade, it had to be fair. It had to be fair to our workers, 
fair to our environment, fair to our children, fair to our future. I was 
prepared to have us compete on a fair and equal footing with anybody, 
anywhere. But it had to be that way. And we worked very, very hard to 
enable you to reap the benefits of becoming the most productive auto 
industry in the world again.
    You know, just 4 years ago, this plant exported 17,500 Cherokees 
and, this year, 41,500. That's what you did. That means 700 more good 
middle class jobs and strong families, 700 more Americans with a success 
story to tell. And that's why Todd Clancy went to Chicago to talk to 
America, to remind America that there is a connection between what we do 
or fail to do in Washington and how you live in Toledo and all across 
the United States.
    Now, let me say just one or two other things. John Glenn talked 
about what was said or not said by our friends in San Diego. Well, 
that's politics; you can't expect them to be out there promoting us. 
[Laughter] I mean, I didn't hold it against them. But on the other hand, 
it is a fact that today the unemployment rate in Ohio is under 5 
percent. It is a fact that America has more than 10 million more jobs. 
It is a fact that we've got 900,000 new construction jobs. It's a fact 
that 4.4 million Americans have become homeowners for the first time and 
10 million more have refinanced their mortgages at lower interest rates 
because of what has been done.
    It is a fact that we have negotiated 200 new trade agreements to 
open new markets and give American workers a fair break. It is a fact 
that for the first time in history we're also exporting, in addition to 
autos and auto parts to Japan, things like rice--which I never thought 
I'd live to see, coming from the largest rice-producing State in the 
world--and cellular telephones, and all manner of other things. And in 
the 21 areas covered by our Japanese trade agreements, exports are up a 
total of 85 percent in just 4 years. America can compete.
    And what has happened is that, thanks to you and people like you all 
over this country, and especially--it's already been noted we have 
Senator Riegle, Governor Blanchard, a lot of very distinguished citizens 
from Michigan here. They know a little something about cars, too. 
[Laughter] And thanks to the people of Ohio and Michigan and the other 
places where automobiles are produced, for the first time since the 
1970's, America--America--is the number one producer and seller of 
automobiles again in the entire world.
    Now, I want to say to you, we need to focus on what we're going to 
do to keep this going. We can't backslide; we have to go forward. It

[[Page 1376]]

means that this trade work has got to continue. We have got--we have 
got--to do what brought you to this point. We have to keep opening more 
markets. We have to watch it that markets don't get closed. We do have 
to be prepared to impose sanctions if people don't treat our workers and 
their families fairly. We have to be prepared to be firm in this, to 
keep trying to build an open trading system that is both open and fair, 
not only to us but to other wealthier countries as well.
    We want to lift countries up to our level. We don't want to see 
people dragged down to the lowest level in the global economy. We want 
it to lead to growth everywhere. The more other people do well, the more 
they will be able to buy our products, and other countries and their 
leaders need to know that. There is nothing in it for them to try to 
force down the American standard of living. They should be trying to 
lift the standard of living of the people in their own countries. And we 
will help if they will do that.
    Let me say this is not a particularly stimulating issue, I know, but 
that's why it's so important that we keep bringing this deficit down to 
balance the budget. You need to know that its not just a question of the 
debt we would leave to your children; it's a question of how you live 
right now.
    Why? Because from the moment I announced after I was elected 
President that we were going to have a serious attempt to get rid of 
this deficit after our national debt had gone up by 4 times in only 12 
years, interest rates started to fall. In addition to the trade 
agreements and your efforts, it was those falling interest rates that 
have helped the American economy come back. When the interest rates go 
down, what does that mean? That means your home mortgage payment goes 
down. That means your credit card payment goes down. That means people's 
monthly car payment goes down. That means more people buy cars, more 
people buy homes, more people buy other things. And they are more 
stable. Their income goes further.
    Most important, it means that interest rates for companies like 
Chrysler go down, and companies big and small can borrow money, invest 
it, build new businesses, hire new people, and keep this economy going. 
We've got average wages finally going up in this country for the first 
time in a decade in the last year or so. We've got to keep it going. We 
can't turn that around. We can't turn that around.
    Now, that's why every middle class American working family should 
care about financial responsibility. And that's why if we stay on a path 
and we balance this budget in the right way--I say the right way--we can 
have a growing economy. The right way is to do it without having 
crippling cuts in the things that are important to our future and 
important to our obligations. That means we have to balance the budget 
without cutting back on education, from college loans to Head Start, 
without eroding our protection for the environment, without eroding our 
obligations to people who need help, families with disabilities, poor 
children, the elderly in nursing homes through the Medicaid program, and 
without doing more to Medicare than is necessary to balance the budget 
and stabilize the Medicare program. I don't support those excessive 
cuts, and we don't have to have them.
    It also means that we can have tax cuts for working families, but 
they need to be tax cuts we can afford. Because if you have one that's 
more than you can afford, your interest rates will go up and it will 
turn right back around and take away from you what you were going to get 
in a tax cut.
    So, yes, we should give people tax relief, for children under 13 a 
tax credit. We should give people like you greater access to an IRA and 
let you withdraw from it with no penalty to buy that first home or 
educate your kids or deal with a medical emergency.
    We should allow you--I have proposed a tax credit that will make 
community college as universal as a high school education is today, a 
$1,500 tax credit a family for the first 2 years of education after high 
school, a $10,000 deduction for the cost of all college tuition--$10,000 
a year. That will help a lot of you send your kids to college. Now, we 
can afford that. We can afford that. But even though it's election year, 
I'm not going to stand up and tell you that you can have something that 
I don't think we can afford. You wouldn't go to the bank and borrow 
money to give yourself a tax cut, and you shouldn't ask me to do the 
same thing. [Laughter] I am going to do what I think is right to keep 
this economy going. I want more stories like Toledo. I want more stories 
like Toledo.
    And let me say that for all of our talk about the role of Government 
and my administration

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and my personal commitment, the real credit for this today goes to you, 
to you and the American people who are supporting you. But you can have 
the best government policies in the world, but if the workers aren't 
productive, it doesn't work. You can have the best policies in the 
world, but if labor and management fight all the time instead of working 
together, it doesn't work.
    You're sitting here in the oldest automobile plant in the world--I 
mean, in this country. More than one story, I noted. [Laughter] And the 
first question I asked your folks here in management, I said, ``How in 
the wide world can you make this plant with''--what do you have, 4\1/2\ 
million square feet in more than one floor--I said, ``How can these 
people do this? How can you sell these Jeeps all over the world?'' And 
they said, ``The workers did it. They did it. They overcame the 
adversity. They did the production.''
    That's another thing. All that Government can do--and this is the 
role of the Government--the role of the Government is to create the 
conditions and give you the tools to make the most of your own life. Not 
a guarantee but a chance--there are no guarantees. That's what the 
Communist system found out. That's why it collapsed. Not a guarantee but 
a chance. You seized the chance. And the company deserves a lot of 
credit.
    I have challenged other companies to follow this lead--70 percent of 
you in continuing education courses, a generous bonus program, sharing 
the profits. Every company ought to share the fruits of its progress 
with the workers who make that progress possible. And I honor that. I 
honor that. I want everyone in America today who works hard for a living 
to see the example of what happened in Toledo. Because if every company 
worked in partnership with its workers, if every company made it 
possible for its workers to continue their education and become more 
productive, if every company were committed to sharing a fair share of 
the profits with labor as well as management and shareholders, this 
country would be even stronger, we would be growing even faster, we 
would be going into the future in even better shape. I think that's what 
we have to do.
    The last thing I want to say is, we have to face our common 
challenges together. Government can't solve a lot of these problems 
alone. We have had a remarkable partnership on the environment. I 
believe we can grow the economy and protect the environment. I think 
we've proved that. We've improved the quality of our drinking water. 
Fifty million people are breathing cleaner air. We have cleaned up more 
toxic waste dumps in 3 years than were cleaned up in the previous 12. 
We've revolutionized the meat standards so you can have safer meat. We 
just decided--we just overhauled the standards for pesticides going into 
your food so your children will have safer food.
    We can do things to grow the economy and protect the environment, 
and we have to work together. And we can find ways, actually, to create 
jobs. One of the things that Marcy Kaptur said today that struck home 
with me the most was that we deserve--our people deserve in these city 
areas, with their ethnic diversity, their religious diversity, all their 
diversity, where so much industry has moved out, they deserve the chance 
to make a living. And we have got to find ways to give them that chance.
    As hard-working Americans, I want to leave you with two thoughts 
about that. Number one, if we do it right, the environment gives us a 
chance to do that. The biggest new investment in manufacturing in New 
York City in the last several years is a company making recycled paper 
products in the Bronx. What did we do for that company? The main thing 
we did was just--I signed an Executive order directing the Federal 
Government to buy a certain percentage of its products in recycled 
paper. Now a lot of those urban folks are working on a way to help the 
environment, and they've got manufacturing jobs. That's an important 
thing.
    The second thing I want to tell you is this. As hard-working people, 
I know that all of you support the idea that we ought to reform welfare 
in a way that enables poor folks to go to work and raise their kids, 
just like you're trying to do. Now, we have reduced the welfare rolls by 
a million and a half in 4 years--and I'm proud of that--by moving people 
from welfare to work and requiring people who can work to go to work.
    Now, I just signed a bill that changes structurally the way welfare 
works. It says at the national level we're going to guarantee poor 
families the health care that they need. We're going to guarantee poor 
children the nutrition they need. We're going to guarantee that there 
will be more money put into child care for working poor people, because 
they can't afford

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to pay it. But we're going to take what used to be the welfare check 
itself, the Federal portion and the State portion, we're going to let 
the State decide how to spend that money to try to spend it in a way 
that will move more people from welfare to work and put strict time 
limits on the limit of time that able-bodied people can stay on welfare.
    Now, that's good, but if they're going to do that, if you're going 
to require people to go to work, they have to have work. They have to 
have a job to go to. So I want you, just the way you fought for the 
minimum wage, to say what we want for poor families in this country is 
what we want for ourselves. We want people to have the dignity of work 
and the success of raising their kids, and we are committed to real 
welfare reform. Yes, require people to work, but make sure you require 
them to do work because the work is there.
    If we will continue to work together to create an America where 
everybody has a chance to live up to their God-given capacities and live 
out their dreams, this country's best days are still ahead. If you ever 
doubt that this country's days are still ahead, think about your story. 
Think about your 2 millionth Jeep. Think about all the right-hand drive 
vehicles you're selling all over the world. Think about how far you've 
come. Think about the success stories that you represent. Any one of you 
could have done what Todd did last night, and we want every American to 
be able to tell that same story.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 10 a.m. in the courtyard. In his remarks, 
he referred to Dennis Pawley, executive vice president, manufacturing, 
and Rob Liberatore, vice president, Washington affairs, Chrysler Corp.; 
Lloyd Mahaffey, region 2B assistant director, United Auto Workers; Bruce 
Baumhower, president, and Ron Conrad, chairman, Jeep unit, UAW Local 12; 
and James J. Blanchard, former Governor of Michigan.