[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[October 3, 1996]
[Pages 1747-1750]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Buffalo, New York
October 3, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Wow! Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Buffalo! 
Hello, Erie County! You know, Congressman LaFalce, I am on my way to 
Chautauqua to prepare for the debate. And I was listening to you go 
through these steps, and it occurred to me that I ought to take you with 
me. I need to remember--I hope I can remember all those things you just 
said Sunday night in the debate.
    I am glad to be back here in Buffalo. I thank you all for being 
here. I want to say thank you, Mayor Masiello. Thank you, Erie County 
Executive Dennis Gorski. I want to thank the leaders of the State 
Democratic Party, the Deputy Speaker, Arthur Eve, and Mrs. Eve. Now they 
have two sons working for me. Thank you very much. We have Mayor Galie 
from Niagara Falls here. And we have two other candidates for Congress 
here. I'd like to ask them to come forward and wave: Tom Fricano, the 
congressional candidate from the 2d District, and Fran Pordum from the 
30th District. There you are. Thank you, gentlemen.
    And I want to thank the high school band for playing for us. Let's 
give them a big hand. [Applause] The colder it gets the harder it is to 
play one of those instruments, I know. But in Buffalo, this is a heat 
wave, right? [Laughter]
    Let me tell you, I am delighted to be back here in your county, in 
your city. I'm glad to be back in western New York. You know, 4 years 
ago when I came here and asked you

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to help me rebuild the American dream, our country was drifting toward 
the 21st century. We had high unemployment, stagnant wages, the slowest 
job growth since the Great Depression, rising crime, increasing 
inequality among working families, and increasing tensions in our 
society. We were drifting toward the 21st century. And 4 years later, 
we're on the right track, roaring toward the 21st century. And I thank 
you for your support of our efforts.
    We have worked hard to create a country in which the American dream 
is alive and well for all of our people, a country that is coming 
together instead of being driven apart by our diversity, a country that 
is leading the world to peace and freedom and prosperity. And compared 
to 4 years ago, there's a lot of good news: 10\1/2\ million more jobs; 
average family income is up $1,600 after inflation since we passed the 
economic plan that our opponents said would drive the country into the 
ditch. They were wrong, and we were right.
    We have record numbers of new businesses. Ten million people got an 
increase in their minimum wage the day before yesterday, on October 1st, 
when the minimum wage increase went into effect. And we learned last 
week that economic benefits are finally going to all of our working 
people. We had the biggest decline in inequality among wage earners in 
growing incomes in 27 years; the biggest drop in the number of people in 
poverty in 27 years; the lowest poverty rate among senior citizens ever 
recorded; the biggest drop in childhood poverty in 20 years. This 
country is on the right track for the 21st century.
    When I became President our deficit was $290 billion and headed 
higher. We'd quadrupled the debt in 4 years. It is now going down 4 
years in a row, the first time that's happened in any Presidential 
administration since the 1840's, before the Civil War. We are moving in 
the right direction.
    Our deficit would not exist today, we would have a surplus today--a 
surplus today--we would have even lower interest rates, we could cut 
taxes more, we could grow the economy faster if we had a surplus today, 
which we would have if it weren't for the debt run up in the 12 years 
before I became President with the same economic program that our 
opponents are advocating today: Never mind, just cut taxes across the 
board; blow it off; who cares about the deficit. You should care. Why? 
Because if the Government has to borrow money, we're competing with you 
for borrowing money. That means your interest rates go up.
    And that's one thing I want to say: When you think about the 21st 
century, you have to decide. We need a targeted tax cut that is targeted 
to education, to childrearing, to buying that first home, to medical 
emergencies. And it needs to be paid for, dollar for dollar, dime for 
dime. We do not need a huge, explosive, across-the-board tax break that 
goes to people that don't need it, like me, and increases your deficit, 
your interest rates, which means higher car payments, higher college 
loan payments, higher home loan payments, higher credit card payments, 
and higher interest rates for the businesses in Erie County who are 
trying to borrow money to grow their businesses and hire people and get 
this country moving even stronger. I say let's have the right kind of 
tax cut, but let's do it in a way that grows the economy and builds all 
American families and makes us a stronger country. I hope you will 
support that approach.
    Let me say there are also 12 million families that have been able to 
take a little time off from work without losing their jobs when a baby's 
born, when a parent's sick, when a child's sick because of the Family 
and Medical Leave Act. And I want to see it expanded to let families go 
to those parent-teacher conferences and take their children and their 
parents to the doctor without losing their job. It's the right thing to 
do.
    We have made every small business in America eligible for a tax cut 
if they invest more in their own businesses to grow the economy and make 
their businesses and our country stronger. We've made it easier for 
small businesses to take out pensions and for their employees to take 
those pensions from job to job. And that's very important. Only about 
half the American people now have a retirement plan at work. More and 
more of our businesses are smaller business. More and more of our people 
are working there. This is a very important thing, making it easier for 
small-business people to have retirement plans for themselves and their 
employees.
    And we have made it easier for people who are self-employed to take 
out health insurance because they can now deduct more of that health 
insurance premium from their tax bill. We are moving in the right 
direction.

[[Page 1749]]

    We have made 25 million Americans more eligible for health care by 
passing the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill because it says you can't lose your 
health insurance anymore just because you change jobs or someone in your 
family has been sick. We are moving in the right direction to the 21st 
century.
    And in the closing days of this session of Congress, as the American 
people--I don't want to take credit for this; I want to give you credit 
for this--in the closing days of this session of Congress--what a 
difference a year makes. As you heard John LaFalce say, a year ago they 
shut the Government down. But in the closing days of this session, they 
passed legislation that I asked for ending drive-by deliveries, saying 
you couldn't kick mothers and newborn babies out of the hospital within 
24 hours anymore. The doctors and the mothers should make that decision 
based on what's best for the health of the mother and the baby.
    They gave some coverage in the health insurance policies for mental 
health, which is a very important thing to families all across America. 
They covered for the first time--and thank goodness we have finally done 
it--with extra health and disability benefits, children of Vietnam era 
veterans who have spina bifida because their parents were exposed to 
Agent Orange in Vietnam. This is a better country now. We are moving 
forward. We are doing things that are consistent with our values.
    And I'll tell you something else. The crime rate has gone down for 4 
years in a row; there are one million fewer crime victims now than there 
were. The crime rate's not low enough, but you think about it: If we 
could bring the crime down 8 years in a row with a strategy that's 
working, this country may have safe streets, safe schools, safe 
neighborhoods, and the American people may feel genuinely secure again 
in their homes and at work and when their children go off in the 
daytime. That is the America that I'm working for in the 21st century.
    Here in this county, you have benefited from our commitment to put 
100,000 more police officers on our streets. In 1994, Congress passed 
that commitment. And in only 2 years, we have already funded 44,000 of 
those police officers. Now in this budget we're going to keep going 
until we finish the job, more police working to prevent crime as well as 
catch criminals, working with neighbors, working with children, working 
with school groups, working with church groups. This will work. This 
will work.
    Just before I came here today I met with the police officers who 
have been named the Top Cops of the year by the National Association of 
Police Officers, and we celebrated the work done just in the closing 
days of Congress for safer streets. The Brady bill--not very long ago 
this Congress, the majority, was telling people that the Brady bill was 
going to take guns away from folks. Well, it didn't take any guns away 
from hunters, but 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers did not get 
handguns because of the Brady bill. And the Congress in this budget 
actually answered my call to expand the Brady bill in a very limited way 
to say if you've got a felony record, you shouldn't get a handgun. 
That's what the bill says now. Now it says if you have beaten up your 
spouse or your child, you shouldn't be eligible to get a gun either. And 
that is the law of the land, and that's a good thing for America. That's 
a good thing for America.
    And finally, the Congress did something that I really strongly agree 
with and have asked for. They said that if States want to get money from 
the Federal Government to build penal facilities, they have to drug test 
people in prison and on parole. Sixty percent of the heroin and cocaine 
bought in this country is purchased by people who are involved in the 
criminal justice system: they're on bail; they're on probation; they're 
on parole. We ought to test those people. They ought to be treated. And 
we ought to say, look, parole is a privilege, not a right. And if you do 
drugs, you're going back to jail. If you want to stay out of jail, stay 
off drugs. It will make us a safer country, and we're moving in the 
right direction with that.
    And just before I left I signed a bill which stiffens the penalty 
for trafficking in methamphetamine. That's hard to say; ``meth'' is the 
shorthand. You may not even know what it is, but in some parts of our 
country it is in danger of becoming what crack was in the 1980's. And we 
are determined to stop it before it becomes an epidemic.
    That's what I'm trying to do, folks, in all of our problems. I'm 
trying to identify them, get ahead of the curve, and keep America 
growing and going together.
    Let me just say one last thing. I know all of you looked in the last 
2 days as I worked as hard as I could to get the peace process

[[Page 1750]]

in the Middle East back on track and to stop the resumption of violence 
between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I want to ask you to think 
just for a moment, as I close, about how many places in the world people 
are fighting each other because they're of a different religion, a 
different race, a different ethnic group, a different tribe: in Africa, 
Rwanda and Burundi; and Northern Ireland, where I've worked as hard as I 
could to restore the peace process; in Bosnia, where the United States 
and allies from all over the world are working to get people to live in 
peace, where there is literally no ethnic difference, even though they 
say they're different ethnic groups, they're in different religious 
groups, almost by accident of history.
    You see, the whole world today--now that the cold war is over, we 
have reduced the threat of nuclear war; there are no nuclear weapons 
pointed at the children of the United States for the first time since 
the dawn of the nuclear age. But all over the world, we see terrorism; 
we see weapons of mass destruction; we see all of this violence rooted 
in people's desire to hurt other people because they're different from 
them.
    And that's the last thing I want to leave you with. We can go into 
the 21st century as the strongest country in the world, with our best 
days ahead, because America is not about looking down on somebody 
because they're different from you. All you've got to do to be an 
American is to believe in the principles of the Constitution, the 
Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and show up tomorrow and 
be a law-abiding citizen. You can walk across our bridge to the 21st 
century. And I want you to commit to keep building that kind of American 
community where we grow and go together because our best days are still 
ahead.
    Stay with us, and help us build that bridge to the 21st century. 
Will you do it? [Applause]
    Thank you, and God bless you.

[At this point, Representative John LaFalce made brief remarks.]

    The President. I neglected to say this when I was speaking, but I do 
believe the biggest Buffalo Bills fan in the entire United States, 
outside of Erie County, was my late mother and her husband, my 
stepfather. They're pulling for you every week. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. at the Greater Buffalo 
International Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Anthony M. 
Masiello of Buffalo and Mayor James Galie of Niagara Falls, NY. A 
portion of these remarks could not be verified because the tape was 
incomplete.