[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 28, 1996]
[Pages 1395-1399]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Battle Creek, Michigan
August 28, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank the 
people over across the street--we know you're there; we're glad you're 
here. Thank you. I would like to thank Kathy Bloch for her introduction 
and for the work she's done to support our efforts to stop the 
marketing, the advertising, and the distribution and the sales of 
tobacco to young people. That's not legal, and it ought to stop. Three 
thousand of our young people a day start to smoke, and 1,000 of them 
will die sooner because of it. It's the biggest public health problem in 
the country, and I think it's a good thing that Americans have taken 
action on it again, thanks largely to people like Kathy Bloch and young 
people themselves who have asked us to help them protect a healthy 
future for them, and I thank her for it. Thank you, Mark Schauer, for 
your work and your candidacy. Thank you, Kim Tunnicliff; I thought you 
gave a good, rousing speech.
    I thought to myself when I heard Kim talking, now, if he'd been in 
Congress, that would have been one more vote against that budget that 
slashed Medicare by $270 billion and took away the guarantee of health 
care to the elderly in nursing homes, to poor children, to pregnant 
mothers, and to families with members with disabilities. He would have 
stopped that.
    He would not have voted to cut education and the environment or to 
raise taxes on the lowest income working people or to let $15 billion be 
taken out of worker pension funds. All that was in that budget in 1995 
that I vetoed. And I never did hear our friends in San Diego talking 
about that when they were bragging about how moderate and nice and 
broadminded they were. So I was glad to hear Kim remind you that there 
was a budget battle last year. I did veto it, and thanks to Carl Levin 
and others, we sustained that veto. It would be a good thing to have 
somebody in the Congress

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that wanted to balance the budget and protect our values. I thank you 
for doing that, sir.
    I would like to introduce another Michigan Congressman who's here 
with me. He represents the Upper Peninsula, and I think he is one of the 
most dedicated, upright, hard-working people in the Congress: 
Congressman Bart Stupak and his wife are both here. Congressman Stupak, 
come out here and wave to the folks. Governor Jim Blanchard is here, who 
was the very distinguished Ambassador to Canada. I thank you, Governor 
Blanchard. Attorney General Frank Kelley is here. I thank you, Frank, 
for coming and for your work. Frank Garrison, the head of the Michigan 
AFL-CIO is here with us. And I want to say a very special word of thanks 
to another son of Michigan who is here, who just completed his term as 
the president of the National Education Association, Keith Geiger, who 
was a fearless and wonderful advocate for America's teachers. Thank you, 
Keith Geiger, for being here.
    Finally, I'd like to thank Senator Carl Levin for his leadership for 
Michigan and America, for his fight for America's jobs and his fight for 
ethics in Government, for his fight to give America the kind of 
direction that it needs and deserves. He deserves your reelection for 
his service, and I hope you'll give it to him.
    I'd like to thank the Battle Creek High Band. Thank you very much 
for being here. And I thank the saxophone selection for raising your 
horns. You look good over there. Well, the rest of you can raise your 
horns; you don't have to be a saxophone player.
    I thank Mayor Deering, from Battle Creek, and the principal of 
Battle Creek High School, Bruce Barney; the head of the local community 
action agency, Sherry Keys-Hebron; the president of the AFL-CIO for 
south central Michigan, Richard France; Reverend Albert Thomas; and all 
the others who had anything to do with this event today, including the 
Washington Heights Gospel Ministry, who'll give us music at the end of 
this event. Thank you all very much.
    Folks, I'm glad to be the first President in Battle Creek since 
President Johnson was here in 1965. I'm glad to be the first President 
to come into Battle Creek on a train since President Taft was here in 
1911.
    This train started in West Virginia and went into Kentucky. Then we 
went all over Ohio. Yesterday morning, we started in Toledo and then 
worked our way into Michigan to Wyandotte to Royal Oak to Pontiac and 
last night to a rally at Michigan State University where there were over 
20,000 people. It was an amazing event.
    I took this train to Chicago, the 21st Century Express, for two 
reasons. First of all, I wanted to get a chance, as I go to Chicago to 
accept the nomination of my party for President and begin the last and 
perhaps the most important campaign of my life, to look into the faces, 
into the eyes, into the hearts of the people of America in the heartland 
for whom I have worked and fought these last 4 years. I wanted to see 
you to remember why we're doing all this.
    And secondly, I wanted to make the point that our train is not only 
on the right track to Chicago, it's on the right track to the 21st 
century. And we need to stay on that track. But as one of these 
wonderful signs said, there is more to do. I was very proud of my wife 
last night at the Democratic Convention because she talked about the 
work she's done for the last 25 years, what we learned about it from 
raising our own daughter, and the fact that there is more to do.
    Audience members. Hillary in 2000!
    The President. Let me say very briefly--I want to speak with you, 
and I want to ask you to do something for me. I want you to vote for me, 
of course. I want you to stay with us. But I want to talk to you just a 
few moments this morning about what we've done and where we're going and 
ask you to spend the next 70 days talking to your friends and neighbors 
about it.
    I ran for President 4 years ago because I wanted to lead our country 
into the 21st century with all Americans having the chance to live out 
their dreams. I ran for President because I didn't like the fact that we 
had high unemployment, stagnant wages. We were not meeting our 
challenges, cynicism was on the rise, middle class dreams were being 
dashed, and I knew we could do better. I knew we could do better.
    So I went before the American people and said, I have a simple 
strategy. I want to create a country in which there is opportunity for 
everyone, responsibility from everyone, and where everyone who is 
willing to work hard and do the right thing without regard to their 
race, their gender, where they come from, or anything else about them. 
If you believe in the Constitution,

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the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, you're part of my 
America, and you're going to be part of our America in the future.
    Well, we've been at this for 4 years now, and the people can make a 
judgment. And they can also listen to the ideas we have for the future 
and know there's a darn good chance we can implement them because we've 
done so much of what we talked about 4 years ago.
    On the economy we had a simple strategy: get the deficit down, bring 
the interest rates down, give tax relief to the people who need it most, 
expand our sales of American products around the world, invest in 
science and technology and, most important of all, in the education of 
our people.
    Now, has it worked? Compared to 4 years ago, we have over 10 million 
new jobs, a record number of small businesses, including businesses 
owned by women and minorities. We have a 15-year high in homeownership. 
We have an all-time high in the export of American products. We have an 
all-time high in the creation of American small businesses. I can tell 
you, for the first time in a decade--maybe most important of all to me--
average wages are on the rise again. We've been waiting for 10 years to 
see that start.
    The other party always talked about being against the deficit in 
Government, but in the previous 12 years we increased the debt by 4 
times. Since I've been President, we've cut the deficit in each of the 
last 4 years. It's down by 60 percent. Interest rates are down, 
investments are up, and the economy is growing. Tell your friends and 
neighbors in Battle Creek and around this area that we would have a 
surplus in the budget today and we could have a bigger tax cut if it 
weren't for the interest we're having to pay on the debt that was run up 
in the 12 years before I took office. We'd have a surplus.
    But we have to do more. We can grow this economy faster, we can 
create more jobs, we can raise incomes more if we will work hard 
together. We have to go on and balance the budget to keep the interest 
rates down, but we have to do it in a way that is different from what 
our friends in the opposition tried to do last year. We do not have to 
destroy Medicare or Medicaid or turn our backs on education and the 
environment or do anything to let the stability of working people's 
pension funds be eroded. We can balance the budget and protect our 
values, and that is my commitment to you.
    We can also cut taxes for families in America, but the tax cuts need 
to be targeted to what will do the most good and to something we can pay 
for, and people like me, who don't need it, shouldn't get them, because 
we have to balance the budget. We have to balance the budget and cut 
taxes, and we can do both.
    The tax cut should be targeted. We should give a $500-a-child credit 
for children under 13. We should give people the right to save in an IRA 
with incomes going up to--family incomes of $100,000, and then withdraw 
that money, those savings, without any penalty if they need it for 
health care, to buy a first-time home, or to pay for a college 
education. We ought to do that.
    We should continue to invest in education. We ought to have a 
million children in Head Start. We ought to have a million kids working 
their way through college on work-study. We ought to preserve my lower 
cost college loan program, not do away with it as the other party tried 
to do. And we ought to give people a tax deduction for the cost of 
college tuition up to $10,000 a year and a tax credit worth $1,500, an 
outright credit, to make sure every person in America can get at least 2 
years of education after high school. It ought to be as universal as a 
high school education is today. We ought to make sure that every 
classroom in America not only has computers and trained teachers but is 
hooked up to the information superhighway by the year 2000, every single 
classroom.
    Now, folks, if you're my age and you're not the most computer-
literate person in the world, it may be hard to understand what that 
means. But let me tell you what it means. It means that we now have the 
chance, for the first time in the history of the United States of 
America, to make sure that children in the poorest urban classroom, 
children in the remotest mountain village in America, children in the 
high plains of the West, children everywhere will have access to the 
same high quality information in the same time in the same 
understandable form that children in the wealthiest, best schools in 
America do. That has never happened before. That is revolutionary.
    So that's our opportunity agenda. We also need to continue to fight 
for responsibility. But look where we are compared to 4 years ago:

[[Page 1398]]

The crime rate is down, the welfare rolls are down 1\1/2\ million, and 
child support collections are up 40 percent. We're moving in the right 
direction. Not a single Michigan hunter lost a weapon when the Brady 
bill passed, even though that's what our friends in the opposition were 
saying in 1994 to get votes. I don't know why they didn't repeat that in 
San Diego; I was listening. [Laughter] No, nobody lost a weapon in 
Michigan, but 100,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have not been able 
to get handguns because the Brady bill passed.
    We're halfway home in putting those 100,000 police on the street. 
And we have increased funding for safe and drug-free schools and for 
prevention programs and, I might add, at a time when about the only 
thing in this country that is not going in the right direction, I'm sad 
to say, is teenage tobacco and drug use; they've both been going up the 
last 4 years. I don't think this is a very good time to try to abolish 
our drug-free schools program. We need more D.A.R.E. officers in those 
schools. We need more people in those schools trying to keep the kids 
off drugs in the first place.
    But we've got more to do. Very briefly, I think we ought to ban cop-
killer bullets. Police officers are--[inaudible]--of them. No deer in 
the Michigan woods is wearing a Kevlar vest. Our police officers are. We 
ought to protect them, and they deserve it. And I think if you commit an 
act of domestic violence, you also shouldn't be eligible to get another 
handgun where you can kill somebody.
    And I do not believe that we should stop putting 100,000 police on 
the street. We're halfway home; we need to finish the job. I don't know 
why our friends are interested in killing the 100,000-police program, 
but I do know this: More police on the streets, working with their 
friends and neighbors, knowing the kids, prevent crime in the first 
place and make it safer. We've got 4 years of a declining crime rate. We 
know what works. Four more years, and it will be about where it ought to 
be. Let's keep on going.
    In the area of welfare reform, let me just say this. If every person 
in this country who owes child support paid it, 800,000 women and 
children would go off welfare tomorrow. We have to keep doing better 
with that. Now that we have passed the welfare reform legislation, we 
have guaranteed child care and health care and nutrition to poor 
children and their families. But if you're going to tell people they've 
got to be at work within 2 years, they have to have jobs that they can 
attend. So we now have to create jobs for these people. It is wrong to 
cut people off and put the kids in the street unless people have jobs as 
an alternative, and I am committed to that. So that's our responsibility 
agenda.
    Now let me talk a little about what binds us together as a 
community. First of all, it's our families. Look where we are compared 
to 4 years ago. Twelve million American families have taken advantage of 
the family and medical leave law that we passed with the help of people 
like Carl Levin and Bart Stupak and over the opposition of the leaders 
of the other party. Twelve million Americans took a little time off when 
there was a baby born or a sick parent, and it didn't hurt the economy a 
bit. We're better off because of it.
    And now we just raised the minimum wage for 10 million people. We 
just made 90 percent of our small businesses eligible for a tax cut if 
they invest more in the business and made it easier for people in small 
businesses, where most Americans work, to take out retirement for 
themselves and their employees and to keep those retirement plans if 
they change jobs. That's pro-family. And we adopted in the small 
business bill, in the minimum wage bill, a $5,000 tax credit for people 
who adopt a child, more if the child has a disability. There are 
hundreds of thousands of kids out there that need a good home. I hope 
more people will adopt now that we have passed this law.
    In the area of health care we adopted the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. 
You know what it says to 25 million Americans? ``Okay, now they can't 
take your health insurance away from you just because somebody in your 
family has been sick, or if you lose your job or you change jobs you 
still have a right to keep your health insurance.'' It can help 25 
million of our fellow citizens. That's pro-family.
    What we're doing in implementing this rule on tobacco is pro-family. 
We don't say--we say to adults, you have a right to smoke; you do what 
you want. It's a legal product. But it's illegal in every State in 
America to market or sell tobacco products to children, and we're going 
to do our best to stop it because we want our kids to live longer. 
That's pro-family.
    But we have to do more. On health care, we should make it possible 
for unemployed people not only to keep their insurance as a matter

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of law but to afford it. My balanced budget plan helps unemployed people 
keep their health insurance for 6 months. Our balanced budget plan helps 
families with members with Alzheimer's they're caring for get some 
respite care. Our balanced budget plan says, among other things, that a 
mother cannot be forced to leave a hospital in sooner than 48 hours 
after a baby is born. And I think we have to build on the family and 
medical leave law. I think we ought to let people have just a little 
time off--not a lot, no time for abuse--but a little time off not only 
for a medical emergency, not only for the birth of a child but to take 
their children to regular doctor's appointments and to see the teacher 
once in a great while.
    We can't be a strong community unless we have a strong environment. 
Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner air than 4 years ago. 
We've cleaned out more toxic waste dumps in the last 3 years than in the 
previous 12. We passed the Safe Drinking Water Act, the pesticide 
protection act. We upgraded the standards for safe meat and poultry. 
We're moving in the right direction, but we have to do more. And I'll be 
saying more about this later today, but we need to clean up at least 
two-thirds of the toxic waste dumps in this country in the next 4 years. 
We have delayed it long enough.
    Let me say again, we have to do these things consistent with our 
values. We will not be one community if in the name of balancing the 
budget we give a tax cut that requires us to cut Medicare, stop 
Medicaid's commitment to families with members with disabilities. I 
thought Christopher Reeve was so moving at the Democratic Convention the 
other night. But let me tell you, he's right about research. We're going 
to spend more on research, $1 billion more, because it's important. We 
have doubled the life expectancy for people with AIDS or HIV infection 
in just the last 4 years, doubled it because of research. We may be able 
to extend their lives indefinitely in good, quality ways because of 
research.
    We are about to build a computer with IBM, a supercomputer, because 
of research, that will do more calculations in a minute than a person 
with a hand-held calculator could do in 30,000 years. That is what we're 
getting out of research. He's right. But he's also right--when 
Christopher Reeve said to me--and I thank these people here for coming 
to be with us today--Christopher Reeve said, ``You know, you've got to 
make that fight on Medicaid. You can't let them take away Medicaid 
because not everybody who gets hurt like me has been an actor, has made 
a good living. And even people like me can go broke. Middle class 
families deserve the right to keep working and caring for their family 
members.''
    So, folks, if you believe we're all in this fight together, if you 
agree with the First Lady that it takes a village and we're all part of 
it, if you believe that America's best days are ahead, if you want to 
stay on the right track to the 21st century, will you help us for the 
next 70 days?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. And will you help us for the next 4 years?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. at the Old Train Depot. In his 
remarks, he referred to Kathy Bloch, coordinator, Calhoun County Tobacco 
Reduction Coalition; Mark Schauer, candidate for Michigan House of 
Representatives; Kim Tunnicliff, candidate for Michigan's Seventh 
Congressional District; James J. Blanchard, former Governor of Michigan 
and former U.S. Ambassador to Canada; and Reverend Albert Thomas, Jr., 
pastor, Second Missionary Baptist Church, Battle Creek.