[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[October 31, 1996]
[Pages 1990-1994]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona
October 31, 1996

    Thank you. Hello, Arizona! Good morning. Let's give the band a hand. 
[Applause] Thank you very much. Are you going to the Rose Bowl? 
[Applause] Are we going to win on Tuesday? [Applause] I want to thank 
the people who performed before I came here: the ASU Student Saxophone 
Combo, the Mariachi del Sur, the Clan/destine, the Tempe High School 
Marching Band--again, thank you--and Jeff Goodman. I thank those who 
spoke earlier, including the students, Sadohana Stone and Michelle 
Carson, the legislators who were here, the other candidates, the vice 
mayor. And I want to say to Juan Roque, you're having a great season, 
and I wish you would play offensive line for me for the next 5 days. 
Thank you. I thank Governor Rose Mofford, my friend and former 
colleague. Thank you, Congressman Ed Pastor, Mrs. Pastor. Thank you, 
Steve Owens, for running for Congress and trying to turn the Congress 
around and put it back on the side of the American people and their 
future. Thank you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank Bill Bratton for coming all 
the way to Arizona to endorse our candidacy, to be here with Mike 
Petchel. While Bill Bratton was the police chief of New York, violent 
crime decreased almost 40 percent, the murder rate was decreased by 50 
percent. We can make our streets safer for our children and their future 
if we all work together. Thank you, Commissioner Bratton, for being 
here.
    Five days from today, the American people will choose the last 
President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st 
century. I am very, very glad that there are so many young people here 
today because this election is about your future.
    You know, there are many different issues in this election, many 
matters on which Senator

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Dole and I disagree, many matters on which I disagreed with Senator Dole 
and Speaker Gingrich over the last 2 years. But the big issue that 
embraces them all is what you want America to look like when we cross 
that bridge into the 21st century and what you are prepared to do to get 
us there.
    I want an America where the American dream is alive and well for any 
person responsible enough to work for it, without regard to race or 
gender or background or where they start out in life. I want everybody 
to have a chance to live up to their God-given capacities. I want an 
America that is still the world's leading force for peace and freedom 
and for prosperity. And I want an America that is rejecting the racial, 
the ethnic, the tribal, the religious division that is tearing apart so 
much of the rest of the world and says we're going forward into the 21st 
century as one community together. We need each other, and we'll do 
better when we work forward together. Will you help me build that kind 
of America? [Applause]
    Four years ago, when I came to the American people with Al Gore and 
said we wanted a different kind of political direction, we wanted to 
break out of the mold of the old debates and take America forward, we 
thought the right and left, liberal and conservative debate was sterile 
and outdated and the issue was what we had to do together to move our 
country forward, the American people took me on faith--and we came 
within one percentage point of carrying Arizona. I hope you'll help us 
do just a little better on Tuesday.
    But today, you don't have to do that. There is a record. You can 
make a judgment based on the evidence about whether this approach is 
going to make you more likely to live out your dreams in the 21st 
century, more likely to make this a more responsible and caring society 
in the 21st century, more likely to preserve the greatness that has 
always been America's hallmark.
    Compared to 4 years ago, we have 10\1/2\ million more jobs. We have 
the lowest combined rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages 
in 27 years, the biggest drop in inequality among working families in 27 
years, the biggest drop in child poverty in 20 years, the highest 
homeownership rates in 15 years. The deficit has been cut in all 4 years 
of an administration for the first time in the 20th century. We are 
moving in the right direction.
    The crime rate is down for 4 years in a row and is now at a 10-year 
low in America, the welfare rolls have been reduced by 1.9 million, 
child support collections have been increased by $4 billion a year--50 
percent. We are moving in the right direction.
    Just in the last few weeks, we've seen the minimum wage go up for 10 
million people, 25 million Americans protected by a law that now says 
you cannot lose your health insurance if you move from job to job or 
someone in your family gets sick, a law that says insurance companies 
can no longer kick mothers and their newborn children out of the 
hospital after only 24 hours. We are moving the right direction.
    Income for the typical family is up about $1,600 in the last 2 
years. Our air is cleaner. Our drinking water is safer. We have 
preserved our natural heritage; we fought all the vicious attacks on the 
environment by the members of the congressional majority who even wanted 
to sell some of our national parks, and instead we've expanded more 
lands we're protecting. We are moving forward and growing the economy 
while preserving our environment. We are moving in the right direction.
    Just in the last couple of days, we've seen that our annual growth 
rate is about 3 percent, that business investment increased by almost 19 
percent, the highest rate since the Kennedy administration. Incomes are 
rising nearly 5 percent, and in the face of that news and 10\1/2\ 
million jobs, yesterday my opponent said that we had the worst economy 
in 20 years. Well, 2 weeks ago he said we had the worst economy in 100 
years. We've made up 80 years in 2 weeks. That's a good record. We need 
to do more of that. Way back in February, my distinguished opponent said 
what he knows is the truth when he said we actually had the best economy 
in 30 years. We are moving in the right direction, and we need to do 
more.
    As I stand here in this wonderful State, I know that one of the 
things most people in Arizona have felt over the years, consistently, is 
that we don't need a big, bureaucratic Government in Washington telling 
us what to do and that we do need fiscal responsibility. But I ask you 
to look at the record on this.
    Our administration has lowered the size of the Federal Government by 
nearly 250,000; it is now as small as it was when John Kennedy was 
President. We have eliminated more Government regulations, more 
Government pro-


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grams, we have privatized more Government operations in 3\1/2\ years 
than my Republican predecessors did in 12 years. Our budget would be in 
surplus today if it weren't for the debt they ran up in the 12 years 
before I took office. We are moving in the right direction.
    The issue here today is not big Government or small Government. It 
is, what do we have to do together to give each other the tools to build 
strong lives, strong families, strong communities, and a strong nation? 
There are those who honestly believe that we shouldn't do much together, 
that you're better off, your fiber will be greater if you're just told, 
``You're on your own.'' And then there are those of us who believe that 
it does take a village to raise a child, to build families, to make our 
streets safe. There are those who believe they can say, ``There's that 
great, big future out there; there is a rushing river you have to cross; 
there's a big valley you have to get down through; there's a huge 
mountain you have to get across; I hope you make it. Good luck.'' And 
then there are those of us who say that future out there is for all of 
us, and it'll be better for all of us if we just go on and build a 
bridge big enough, wide enough, and strong enough for all of us to walk 
across together. Will you help us build that bridge to the 21st century? 
[Applause]
    On this Halloween day, we can make a lot of jokes, and I was 
thrilled to see all the people along the roadway already in their 
Halloween costumes and their masks on. But one serious thing I'd like to 
say about Halloween--Hillary and I always loved the fact that our 
daughter loved Halloween, always wanted her own costume every Halloween, 
still likes to go out trick-or-treating. But one of the things that I 
think is important on Halloween is we remember that we want Halloween to 
be ``fright night,'' but ``safe night'' for our families and our 
children. And we ought to think about today what I think is the critical 
thing for American families, which is, how can we make our families 
safe, how can we give them a clean environment, and how can we make it 
possible for parents to succeed economically while they raise their 
children responsibly?
    Everywhere I go in America, people say to me, ``I'm having problems 
doing the right thing by my kids and working.'' The average working 
family is spending more hours a week at work today than 25 years ago. So 
today I want to just take a minute to ask you what you think would build 
strong families, and would we be better off saying, ``You're on your 
own,'' or ``Here's what we can do together to give you the tools to 
build a stronger family life.''
    I supported the Family and Medical Leave Act. Now, my opponent led 
the opposition to it and tried to kill it with a filibuster in the 
Senate because he honestly believed--he honestly believed that it would 
be bad for the economy. But now we know. After 3 years, 12 million 
people have taken advantage of the family leave law to take a little 
time off from work without losing their jobs when a baby is born or a 
family member is sick. We have 10\1/2\ million new jobs, record numbers 
of new small businesses. This economy is churning along. We're moving in 
the right direction. You help the economy if you help parents take care 
of their children. They do better at work, and they feel better.
    And I'd like to see the family leave law expanded a little bit so 
parents can go see their children's teachers twice a year and take them 
to the doctor without losing their jobs. I believe when parents earn 
overtime, they ought to have the option to take that overtime in pay, or 
if their parents or their children or their spouses are sick, I think 
they ought to be able to take that overtime in time with their families. 
That's the choice of the people who earn it. It'll make stronger 
families. But you have to decide.
    I believe we value families when we have welfare reform that is good 
to children but tough in work requirements, that requires teen mothers 
to live at home or in a supervised setting and stay in school to draw 
benefits, and requires able-bodied people to go to work but gives them 
the child care and the jobs there to do the work and succeed at home and 
at work, just the way we want for everybody else in this society.
    And I believe we value families when we open the doors of college 
education to all Americans. My fellow Americans, in the 12 years before 
I became President--and this is no one in particular's fault, but many 
of you will know this--the only basic thing in a family's budget that 
increased at a higher inflation rate than health care was the cost of a 
college education. We have worked hard through AmeriCorps to give 70,000 
more young people a chance to work their way through college by serving 
in their communities. Some of you are here today. Thank you, and God 
bless you. We reformed

[[Page 1993]]

the student loan program to give 10 million students lower cost loans 
and the right to repay those loans as a percentage of their income so 
they would never go bankrupt trying to repay their college loans after 
they got out.
    But I want to do more. I believe we should make 2 years of education 
after high school as universal as a high school diploma is today by 
giving people a dollar-for-dollar reduction on their taxes for the 
typical cost of a community college if they go there and make their 
grades, and I think we can do it. I believe we strengthen our families 
if we give a $10,000-a-year tax deduction for the costs of any college 
tuition at any level for people of any age, and I intend to do it.
    I do not believe we will strengthen our economy or our families or 
our future by doing what my opponent has advocated: cutting the student 
loan program and abolishing the Department of Education and entering the 
21st century as the only country in the world with no one to speak for 
the education of our children at the President's Cabinet. I will not do 
that. I will improve education in America, working with you and our 
teachers for all Americans.
    I believe we strengthen families when we take steps to protect our 
young children from gangs and guns and drugs and tobacco. I worked hard 
for the crime bill that Commissioner Bratton talked about. A lot of 
people in Arizona and my home State of Arkansas and other places voted 
against people who supported the crime bill because they said we were 
trying to take their guns away. Well, now we know. It's been 2 years. 
Not a single hunter or sportsperson in Arizona or Arkansas has lost a 
weapon, but 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers did not get handguns 
because of the Brady bill. We were right, and they were wrong. They were 
wrong.
    We are in the midst of putting these 100,000 police on the street. 
We've funded about half of them. My opponent led the fight against the 
100,000 police, then passed a budget that abolished them. Then when I 
vetoed the budget, they shut the Government down, trying to force us to 
stop putting police on the street. I couldn't believe it. But I'll tell 
you one thing, we're going to keep doing it because it's making our 
communities safer.
    I believe we strengthen families by supporting the safe and drug-
free schools program and doubling the number of people who are in it and 
getting that message out to our young children, when they're young 
enough to listen, that drugs can kill you. They're wrong. They're not 
just illegal; they're wrong and they can kill you. Turn around; don't do 
it. I believe that's making a difference, and I think our opponents were 
wrong when they tried to cut the safe and drug-free schools program in 
half and deprive 23 million children of the chance to get that message. 
And I'm going to keep on going until we turn that around, and I want you 
to help me do it.
    I believe we were right to take on the big tobacco interests and say 
you have to stop selling and marketing tobacco to children in this 
country; it is wrong. Even though we have taken that action officially, 
it's being challenged in court. My opponent is opposed to it. We may not 
get that fight won unless you make the right decision on election day. I 
think it would be folly--3,000 young children in America begin smoking 
cigarettes every day; 1,000 of them will die sooner because of it. It is 
wrong. We should stay on the course we're on, and I ask you for your 
help to protect our families and our future.
    I believe that we support stronger families when we do things which 
support grassroots community action. I have worked hard to help to 
mobilize another one million volunteers in citizen action groups to work 
with police officers to get rid of gangs and guns and drugs on the 
streets. I want to recognize a person here with me who is sitting with 
me, Delia Gonzalez, the first president of the Escalante Neighborhood 
Association here in Tempe, for the work that she and others have done. I 
want one million more people doing that work, and we will get it in the 
next 4 years if we do it.
    Folks, you have to decide. You have to decide if our families will 
be strengthened if we do what I want to do, which is to balance the 
budget but to do it in a way that continues to invest in education, in 
the environment, in research, in technology, in protecting Medicare 
while reforming it, and saying we are not going to take away the 
guarantee of health care from our poorest children, from families with 
disabilities, from seniors in nursing homes. We're not going to repeal 
the standards of quality care. We're going to go forward. That's what I 
want to do, not adopt some risky tax scheme that will blow a hole in the 
deficit.
    I believe we should stay the course in bringing the crime rate down. 
I believe we should

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get tougher on dangerous gangs. I believe we can do more if we finish 
the work of giving our children something to say yes to instead of just 
saying no to them. We have to give them a future that is worthy of their 
dreams, their aspirations, and their potential, and I want you to help 
me do it. Will you do it? [Applause]
    Your vote will decide whether we strengthen our families by giving 
our children world-class education, whether we mobilize a million 
volunteers, including college students all over America, to make sure 
every young person can read a book independently by the third grade. I 
want you to know, just before the Congress went home, I signed a bill 
that created 200,000 more work-study positions. I want 100,000 of them 
to go to people who say, ``I want every 8-year-old to be able to pick up 
a book and say `I can read this all by myself.' '' Will you help us do 
that? [Applause]
    Will you help us connect every classroom and library in America to 
the Internet and the World Wide Web, the information superhighway? Will 
you help us open the doors of college education to all? [Applause] I say 
again, the issue for Arizona, the issue for America is this: We stand on 
the threshold of a new century, on the threshold of a very different 
time. All of you know that we are undergoing dramatic changes in the way 
we work and live and relate to each other and the rest of the world. We 
are becoming an increasingly global society. We are working in different 
ways. When I became President, only 3 million Americans made their 
living by working at home. Today, 12 million do. In 4 years, 30 million 
will. That's just one example.
    We are pushing back the frontiers of learning as never before. When 
I became President, AIDS was still thought to be a death sentence. The 
life expectancy of people with HIV and AIDS has more than doubled in the 
last 4 years, thanks to medical research and faster movement of drugs. 
We have now, for the first time ever, medical treatment for strokes. 
We've identified two of the genes that cause breast cancer, and we may 
be able to eliminate it entirely. For the first time ever, laboratory 
animals with their spines completely severed have regained movement in 
their lower limbs through nerve transplants to the spine from other 
parts of their bodies. We are building a supercomputer in cooperation 
with IBM that will do more calculations in a second than you can do on a 
hand-held calculator in 30,000 years. We are moving into a very 
different future. And what you have to decide is whether you have the 
courage to say, ``I believe that our best days are still ahead, if we 
have opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and an American 
community in which we all have a part to play and a place at the 
table.''
    You have to decide whether we're going to go into the future by 
saying, ``You're on your own,'' or whether we're going to build a 
bridge. And you have to decide whether you're really willing to say, 
``Whether you're Hispanic or African-American or Asian-American or 
Native American or Polish or Irish or whatever, it doesn't matter. If 
you believe in the Declaration of Independence, in the Bill of Rights, 
in the Constitution, if you're willing to show up tomorrow and work or 
study and do your job as a citizen, we don't need to know anything else 
about you. You are part of our America, and we're going forward.'' Will 
you help me in Arizona to build that bridge? Will you be there on 
Tuesday? Will you talk to your friends? [Applause]
    God bless you. Let's do it. Your best days are ahead. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:23 a.m. on the lawn at Grady Gammage 
Auditorium. In his remarks, he referred to Jeff Goodman, who sang the 
national anthem; Vice Mayor Joe Lewis of Tempe; Arizona State University 
football player Juan Roque; Rose Mofford, former Governor of Arizona; 
Representative Ed Pastor and his wife, Verma; Steve Owens, candidate for 
Arizona's Sixth Congressional District; and Michael Petchel, president, 
Phoenix Law Enforcement Officers Association.