[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.