[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[September 19, 1996]
[Pages 1613-1616]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Yelm City, Washington
September 19, 1996

    The President  Hello, Yelm, hello! Wow! Thank you for coming. Thank 
you. I love your signs. Thanks for the Arkansas sign out there; that was 
nice. I want to thank the band for being here, and the choral group. 
[Applause] There you are. And I want to say when I finish speaking--this 
group has written a song, they want to play it for us. And so they've 
got a little microphone over there, and I want us to listen to their 
song. These kids have done so much work, I think we should listen to 
them and give them a little support.
    Let me also tell you that I am delighted to be here. I thank you for 
your warm welcome. I cannot believe the size of this crowd. What's the 
population of this community? Two thousand?
    Audience member. Two people.
    The President. No, not two people--I know that. Now, come on.
    Let me also say to all of you that I'm honored to be here with the 
Vice President and Hillary and Tipper, with our good friend Gary Locke, 
who will be a great Governor of Washington if you will help him for the 
next 6 weeks and 5 days.
    And I want to say that I'm just getting acquainted with Washington 
State's primary system, but as I understand it, you throw everybody in 
and let them run. And I was really impressed that our candidate for 
Congress here, Adam Smith, got more votes than the incumbent 
Congressman. And I'd like to ask him to come up here and just say a word 
of hello to you.
    Adam, come here.

[At this point, Mr. Smith, candidate for Washington's Ninth 
Congressional District, made brief remarks.]

    The President. Thank you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I am so glad to be here today. I'm glad to be 
back in Washington State. I told the big crowd--we had a huge crowd in 
Tacoma this morning, and I told them that yesterday and today, of all 
the times I've been to Washington, yesterday and today are the only 
times it has ever rained on me in Washington State. Now I feel like 
you've finally taken me in as one of your own now that it's raining on 
me like it rains on you all the time. And I thank you.
    Four years ago we came to Washington State and asked you to support 
our efforts to change this country. We asked you to take us on faith. We 
said that we could bring hope back to America, that history was giving 
us a remarkable opportunity to change this country for the better, that 
we did not have to put up with the conditions as they were, high 
unemployment, stagnant growth, stagnant wages, rising crime, a dividing 
country, a more cynical country.
    And I can tell you that after 4 years this country is in better 
shape than it was 4 years ago. We are on the right track to the 21st 
century. Ten and a half million more Americans have jobs; 4\1/2\ million 
more Americans have their own homes; 12 million Americans have been able 
to take some time off from work without losing their jobs when a baby 
was born or a parent was sick because of the family leave law; 10 
million Americans will get an increase

[[Page 1614]]

in their pay on October 1st, when the minimum wage law goes into effect; 
25 million Americans will have a chance to keep their health insurance 
because of the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that says you can't have your 
health insurance jerked or denied because someone in your family has 
been sick or because you changed jobs. This country is moving in the 
right direction.
    The Government's deficit has been cut by 60 percent. It's gone down 
4 years in a row for the first time since before the Civil War. The 
crime rate has gone down for 4 years in a row. The welfare rolls have 
been reduced by 1.8 million. Child support collections have been 
increased by 40 percent--$3 billion. And there are one million fewer 
crime victims than there were last year. We are moving in the right 
direction toward the 21st century.
    And I want to ask you to help America make the right decision 
between building a bridge to the future and reaching back to build a 
bridge to the past, between saying that ``you're on your own and we hope 
you do fine, the Government's always your enemy,'' and saying ``it takes 
a village--yes, the First Lady is right--it does take a village to raise 
our children, to build strong communities, to build strong businesses, 
to build a strong country. And we're going to go forward together into 
the 21st century.''
    I want to ask you to help me build a bridge to the 21st century that 
all of us can walk across by saying, first of all, we're going to have 
the finest educational opportunities in the world for all of our 
children, no matter where they live, in little towns or big cities. I 
want you to help me mobilize an army of reading tutors to go out and 
help parents and schools, to make sure that we change the conditions 
that exist today where 40 percent of the 8-year-olds in this country 
cannot read independently. In the year 2000 I want us to be able to say 
any 8-year-old in America can take out a book and say, ``I can read this 
all by myself.'' And we can do that.
    I want us to make a commitment that we will hook up every classroom 
and every library in every school in the United States to the 
information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World Wide Web, so 
that children can say, ``No matter whether we live in small towns or big 
cities, whether our districts are rich, middle class, or poor, for the 
first time in history we all have access to the same information at the 
same time in the same way. America's education system finally is truly 
equal for all America's children.'' I want you to help me do that.
    I want us to be able to say that we have opened the doors of college 
education to every single person who is willing to work hard and do 
well--every American without regard to age or income should be able to 
go. How are we going to do that? Let people save through an IRA and then 
withdraw without penalty to spend it on a college education. Make the 
first 2 years of college in a community college as universal in 4 years 
as a high school diploma is today by saying you can take off the cost of 
the typical community college tuition right off your tax bill, dollar 
for dollar--a tax credit to educate people for 2 years. Finally, give 
people a $10,000 tax deduction for the cost of all college tuition. That 
will build this country; it will strengthen us; it will open opportunity 
for everybody. Will you help us build that bridge to the 21st century? 
[Applause]
    The second thing we have to do, folks, is keep this economy growing 
strong. I want to have the right kind of tax cut, one that is targeted 
to education, to childrearing, to health care costs, to buying the 
first-time home; we're not imposing taxes on people if they sell their 
home for a gain. But I want these things paid for because we still have 
to balance the budget without bankrupting Medicare, Medicaid, or turning 
our backs on education and the environment. We have to invest in our 
future and honor our obligations to the people that share this country 
with us. And I want you to help me build that kind of bridge to the 21st 
century. I hope you will do that.
    I want you to help me build a bridge to the 21st century where we 
move people from welfare to work and every able-bodied person now on 
welfare is working. But we have to create the jobs to do it. I have a 
plan to work with your new Governor to put a million jobs in America to 
move people from welfare to work. And I want you to help me build that 
kind of bridge. We want to lift these kids up in poor families and lift 
their families up and let them succeed at home and at work, just the way 
you're struggling to do. And I want you to help me build that kind of 
bridge.
    I want you to help me build a bridge to continue our fight to reduce 
the crime rate. Yes, there are one million fewer victims. Yes, crime has 
gone down for 4 years. But it's still too big, it's still too much 
trouble, there are

[[Page 1615]]

still too many of our children in gangs, too many of our children 
turning to drugs, too much random violence. And I want you to help me 
finish the job to complete putting 100,000 police on the street, to 
defeat those in Congress who tried to cut our safe and drug-free schools 
program, to do what we can to make this a stronger country.
    You know, 2 years ago, the State of Washington, in this 
congressional district and others, led the country in embracing Mr. 
Gingrich's Republican revolution. He told you two things that weren't 
so. He said that we'd raised all these income taxes on working people, 
and we were going to break the economy. Well, 10\1/2\ million jobs 
later, we know he was wrong. We've got the lowest unemployment rate in 
7\1/2\ years.
    He said their contract on America would make a better place. And 
then they shut the Government down when we refused to let them wreck the 
Medicare program, break Medicaid's commitments to the old, the poor, the 
disabled, and cut education and environmental protection at a time when 
it's most important, along with raising taxes on 9 million hard-pressed 
working families. When we said no to that, you knew that there was no 
revolution, that it was a reaction. And we didn't like it, and we 
weren't going to put up with it.
    And they didn't tell you about the fine print of their contract on 
America when they ran in 1994. Then they said in the area of crime, 
``We're going to be tougher on crime.'' But what did they try to do? 
What did they try to do? They tried to turn back on our commitment to 
put 100,000 police on the street. They tried to destroy our safe and 
drug-free schools program. They tried to eliminate the things that poor 
kids can say yes to like summer jobs. They opposed the assault weapons 
ban.
    And they told you that the Brady bill was going to take guns away 
from Washington hunters. Well, guess what, folks. It's been 2 years, and 
we've got some friends in the loyal opposition here in the crowd, and I 
welcome them here. I'm glad they're here. But we ought to ask them, when 
you told people to elect all these Congressmen in Washington, that these 
guys were going to lose their guns, how come we've been through two 
hunting seasons and all the Washington hunters still have their guns but 
the crime rate has gone down?
    I'll tell you who doesn't have guns, the 60,000 felons, fugitives, 
and stalkers who couldn't get handguns because of the Brady bill. This 
is a safer country in the last 4 years because of our crime program, and 
they fought it.
    I want you to help us build a bridge to the 21st century with strong 
families and strong, clean communities. I am proud of the fact that we 
passed the family leave law, but I think people should be able to get a 
little time off from work to go to those regular appointments with their 
children's teachers or to take their parents to the doctor on a regular 
basis. That won't bankrupt the economy. It will make us stronger. I ask 
you to help me build a country with stronger families.
    I want you to help me see through our efforts to stop the tobacco 
companies from selling tobacco and marketing it to our children. It's 
illegal. I want you to help me see through our efforts to protect the 
safe and drug-free school programs. I want you to help me see through 
our efforts to get more hours of children's educational programming on 
television and give parents the V-chip and a rating system so they can 
control the programs their younger children see. I want you to help me 
build strong families. Will you help me build that kind of bridge to the 
21st century? [Applause]
    And finally, I want you to help me prove that we can build a strong 
economy and preserve our environment. Just 2 days ago we reached an 
agreement to preserve the old-growth forests in Washington and Oregon, 
and timber jobs are up in the last 4 years since I've been President, 
not down. We reached an agreement to restore the salmon on the Columbia 
River in ways that will help the economy and preserve our natural 
heritage. Yesterday we preserved 1.7 million acres in southern Utah, the 
Cascade-Escalante national monument. It's important.
    We are going to have cleaner air, safer drinking water, purer food, 
because this administration believes that we don't have to roll back 25 
years of bipartisan commitment to environmental protection; we should 
build on it.
    Folks, we can grow the economy of Washington State by preserving the 
environment in a smart way. And so I ask you--let me just give you one 
example. We've cleaned up more toxic dumps in 3 years than were cleaned 
up in 12 years before us. But 10 million American children--look at 
these children here--10 million children still live within 4 miles of a 
toxic waste dump. If you will give us 4 more years, we'll

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clean up 500 more, and we can say, ``Our kids in America, they're 
growing up next to parks, not poison.'' That's the bridge we want to 
build to the 21st century.
    So that's the choice. For 6 weeks and 5 days, the Vice President and 
Hillary and Tipper and I, we're committed to making this a campaign of 
ideas, not insults. We don't want to ask who's to blame; we want to ask, 
what are we going to do about it?
    And we want to ask you, each and every one of you, to give us 6 
weeks and 5 days of hard effort, talking to your friends and neighbors 
about what this election is about. It's about what these children will 
have in America when they are our age. It's about what we will be like 
when we charge into the 21st century. It's about whether we're going 
forward with opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a sense 
of community in this country that says, if you believe in the principles 
of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of 
Rights, if you're willing to work hard and be responsible, we're going 
to build a bridge to the 21st century that you can walk across with us, 
hand in hand, arm in arm. A good future, the best days are still to 
come.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:28 p.m. at Yelm City Park.