[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[October 31, 1996]
[Pages 1995-2001]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1995]]


Remarks in Las Vegas, Nevada
October 31, 1996

    The President. Thank you. I think the first thing I should say is, 
happy birthday, Nevada. I am so glad to be here today, so delighted to 
see all of you here in not only large numbers but with genuine 
enthusiasm. You should feel good about your country and good about our 
future.
    I want to thank the Green Valley High School Band for playing the 
national anthem, thank you; the Las Vegas Academy of International 
Studies, Performing Visual Arts, thank you. I want to thank the 
saxophonists who played here earlier from the musicians union and the 
mariachi band.
    Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, County Commission Vice Chair Paul 
Christianson. You arranged a beautiful day for us here today. I'd also 
like to say a special word of appreciation to a person who is not here 
with us today, the county commission chair, Yvonne Atkinson-Gates. We're 
thinking about her, and we miss her. Senator Dina Titus, Assembly Leader 
Richard Perkins. Thank you, Gladys Knight, for coming and speaking. 
Thank you, Andre Agassi, for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Attorney 
General Frankie Sue Del Papa. And thank you, my good friend Harry Reid.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I owe a lot to a lot of people. I'm on the 
verge of finishing the last campaign I'll ever be in unless I run for 
the school board someday. And I want to say that every time I come here 
to Las Vegas, I think of my wonderful mother who loved this community so 
much and loved to come here. And I wish she were here with me still for 
this election. I want to thank the mayor for always being so kind to 
her. And I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to Governor Bob 
Miller for being there with me in good times and bad--always there, 
always supporting us, always standing up for what was right and standing 
up for Nevada.
    And I want to tell you that something I have said in the Oval Office 
of the White House many times--I'd like to say here in public: I believe 
in Washington, DC, the most underappreciated public servant in the 
United States Senate is Harry Reid of Nevada. He is a remarkable, 
remarkable Senator. You should be very proud of him. You should be very 
proud of him. You know, because he's a gentleman and he's low-key and he 
just says what he has to say in a town where hot air and hot rhetoric 
and divisive actions take precedent, very often the people who really 
make a difference are not appreciated. Harry Reid should be appreciated 
here, and every day he's more appreciated back there in Washington.
    And thank you, Nell Justice, for having the courage to get up here 
and give a speech in front of all these people and for embodying, to me, 
what my job, this campaign, and our common destiny is all about. We are 
about to choose the last President of the 20th century and the first 
President of the 21st century. I believe more strongly than I can say 
that the greatest days of this country lie before us; that if we make 
the right decisions, if we do what we have always done in the past at 
critical times, if we meet our challenges and do it in a way that 
enables us to live more closely toward our values, our young people here 
will live in the age of greatest possibility the world has ever known.
    We are dramatically changing the way we work and live, the way we 
relate to each other and the rest of the world. A lot of these changes 
are very good, but some of them pose very stiff challenges to families. 
I'll give you one example of the changes that are going on.
    When I became President there were about 3 million people working in 
their homes and making a living. The other day I was in Atlanta at a 
rally, and I was introduced by a young woman. She and her husband were 
from Georgia. They were living in New York. They both had jobs there. He 
got a job in Atlanta; they moved back to Atlanta. She's still working 
for her company in New York, in Atlanta, because of the computer. There 
were 3 million people doing that in 1992. There are 12 million people 
doing that in 1996. There will be 30 million people doing that in the 
year 2000. That is just one example.
    The frontiers of knowledge are being pushed back dramatically. The 
life expectancy for people with HIV and AIDS is more than twice what it 
was just 4 years ago. We have uncovered--

[[Page 1996]]

we have discovered, medical researchers, the first real treatment for 
stroke victims that offers promise. Two of the genes which cause breast 
cancer were just uncovered. And I allocated another $30 million to that 
research just a week ago. It is really within our reach not only to cure 
but prevent that disease in the future.
    For the first time, a few weeks ago a laboratory animal with its 
spine completely severed had movement in its lower limbs because of 
nerve transplants to the spine from other parts of the body. These are 
unbelievable things. We just signed a contract, the United States 
Government did, with IBM to build jointly a supercomputer over the next 
couple of years that will do as many calculations in one second as you 
can do at home on your calculator in 30,000 years.
    This world is changing. And America is faced with the question of 
what to do about the changes. When I ran for President 4 years ago, I 
had a vision of what I wanted our country to be like in the 21st 
century. And I'm so glad there are so many young people here today 
because that will be your century. For me, it's pretty straightforward. 
I want every child in America, without regard to race or gender or where 
you start out in life, to have the same chance to live up to your God-
given abilities and the same chance to live out your dreams that I and 
the members of my generation had. You deserve it, and I am determined to 
see that you get it.
    I want our great country to continue to be the world's strongest 
force for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I know that makes me do 
things from time to time that aren't especially popular, whether it's 
trying to stop the bloody war in Bosnia or kick the dictators out in 
Haiti or stand up for the cause of peace in Northern Ireland or try to 
deal with the problems of our neighbors to the south in Mexico. But 
America is stronger today than it was 4 years ago. No Russian missiles 
are pointed at our children today, for the first time since the dawn of 
the nuclear age, and we're moving in the right direction there.
    And I want our country to be coming together around our basic 
values. I want us to be able to celebrate, laugh about, cherish our 
diversity, and say, we're bound together by our belief in the values 
that have made America great, but otherwise we don't discriminate 
against anybody. We want to go forward in an American community in which 
everybody has a place and a role to play.
    Five days before this election, I want you to be upbeat about 
America, optimistic about your future, and determined to make the choice 
that will guarantee that that vision can be made real in your lives and 
the lives of your friends and neighbors. That is the choice.
    For me, it is best expressed in this idea of a bridge to the 21st 
century. I believe that there's a real difference here between Senator 
Dole and me, between Senator Coffin and Congressman Ensign. And I 
believe it's an honest difference. I don't like all this harsh rhetoric 
and personal attacks and attempts to convince people that your opponent 
is no good. I don't think there is very much to that.
    I'm about to end my last campaign. I can tell you this: I've been 
working at this for over 20 years now. Most of the people I've met in 
both parties, from all points on the political spectrum, have loved our 
country, have wanted what was best for it, worked hard and were honest, 
contrary to the image that is often portrayed. There are honest 
differences here, and you should be exuberant that you have a choice to 
make between honest differences.
    I don't believe that we should go into this--I know that there will 
be more individual choices than ever before. I know people can do things 
on their computers and will be able to do more. Pretty soon you can do 
all your shopping by computers. People won't even have to go out the 
door if they don't want to. I know that there will be more opportunities 
for us to do things as individuals. But I still believe that our country 
will only be great if we are determined to build a bridge to the future 
that we're all going to be able to walk across together, if we give 
everybody the tools to make the most of his or her own life. That's what 
I believe.
    And that's the choice. Would we be better off being told, ``You're 
on your own, and we hope you do well,'' or as a person I'm reasonably 
close to once said, do we believe it takes a village to raise a child, 
to build a future, to build a country? That is the choice.
    That was the choice we faced starkly about a year ago when Senator 
Dole and Congressman Gingrich and Congressman Ensign voted for a budget 
that would have cut education for the first time in modern history, 
would have reduced the number of children in Head Start,

[[Page 1997]]

eliminated the AmeriCorps national service program, cut college loans, 
terribly, terribly, terribly weakened the ability of the United States 
to protect our environment and to continue to enhance it.
    It would have repealed for the first time in 30 years our guarantee 
of health care to elderly people in nursing homes, to the very standards 
of care we have in nursing homes. It would repeal the guarantee of care 
to our poorest children and the middle class families who have family 
members with disabilities who can maintain a middle class lifestyle 
because we try to provide decent health care. It would have done all 
that. It would have allowed employers to raid their employees' pension 
funds and actually raise taxes on the hardest pressed working families 
in America. And I vetoed it because I thought it was wrong.
    And they thought it was so right for America, they shut the 
Government down. And they thought that we were such Government lovers, 
because that's the picture postcard cutout that's always made of us, 
that all of us would just sort of cave in and let them have their way. 
And I told them I'd a lot rather see the American people hurt for 3 
weeks than for 30 years; no, thank you, we weren't going to have that 
budget.
    But I don't believe that these people didn't believe what they were 
doing. I think they believed what they were doing was right. But I think 
they were wrong. And that's what you have to decide. Are we going to 
build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past? Are we going to go 
forward together or be told we're on our own? These are big, big 
decisions.
    Now, 4 years ago when the people in Nevada voted for Al Gore and 
Bill Clinton, you took us on faith. You don't have to do that anymore. 
There is a record. And our friends have to face the fact that there is a 
record. We do have 10\1/2\ million more jobs than we had 4 years ago. We 
do have incomes rising for the first time in a decade, about $1,600 over 
the last 2 years for the typical family. We do have the largest drop in 
child poverty in 20 years, the largest drop in income inequality among 
working people in 27 years, the lowest rates of unemployment, inflation, 
and home mortgages combined in 27 years. Those are facts. That's where 
we are. We're going in the right direction.
    We do have a 15-year high in homeownership. We do have 4 years now 
of declining crime rates, which is why every major law enforcement 
organization in America has endorsed the Clinton/Gore ticket for 
reelection, because we have proved we can lower the crime rate.
    We do have 4 years of declining welfare rolls, 1.9 million fewer 
people on the welfare rolls. We do have cleaner air, safer drinking 
water, higher standards for food safety. We do have vast new protections 
for our natural resources: the biggest national park network ever 
created south of Alaska in the Mojave Desert in California; 1.7 million 
acres of wilderness in southern Utah, the Grand Staircase-Escalante 
National Monument. We're cleaning up the Florida Everglades. We're 
moving this country forward, and we have proved, yes, you can grow the 
economy and preserve the environment at the same time. We have proved 
that.
    Ten million people benefited from the increase in the minimum wage. 
Twelve million people took a little time off when a baby was born or a 
family member was sick without losing their jobs because of family 
leave. Twenty-five million Americans may be able to keep their health 
insurance now because we passed a law that says you cannot have your 
health insurance jerked from you because you changed jobs or someone in 
your family has been sick.
    America is a better place because I signed a law that says mothers 
and their newborn babies can't be kicked out of the hospital in 24 
hours, too. We're a better place because we're trying to provide more 
insurance coverage for mental health problems that so many of our 
families face. We're a better place because finally, after so long, way 
too long, we're giving health care and disability benefits to Vietnam 
veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange whose children have spina 
bifida as a result of it. We're a better place because we're doing these 
things together. We're a better place because child support collections 
are up 50 percent, $4 billion a year in the last 4 years. This is a 
better place.
    So I say to you, my fellow Americans, you don't just totally have to 
take it on faith anymore. There is a record. The evidence is there. And 
the question now is, what are we going to do for the future? I know it's 
Halloween, you know. And I understand why on Halloween people like to 
scare other people. But yesterday--with new evidence our economy is 
growing at about 3 percent a year, better than any other industrial 
country; we've got a 5 percent in-


[[Page 1998]]

crease in personal income after inflation this year; we've got the 
highest rate of business investment since John Kennedy was President--
and we've done the things I've described, as they said, having the 
smallest Federal Government since President Kennedy, and we abolished 
more Government programs, more Government regulations and privatized 
more Government operations than the Republicans did in the 12 years they 
ran before our administration. So I understand all that.
    So along comes my opponent yesterday and says we have the worst 
economy in 20 years. Do you believe that?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Is this the worst economy in Las Vegas in 20 years?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. If you think it is, you ought to vote for him. But 
now, the interesting thing is, this being Halloween, is that 2 weeks ago 
he said we had the worst economy in 100 years. I made up 80 years in 
just 2 weeks. I think you ought to feel good. Now, back in February, 
Senator Dole, in a more candid and open and accurate moment, said we had 
the best economy in 30 years--the best economy. That's when he was 
right.
    That doesn't mean we don't have more to do. And one of the things 
that I worry about all the time is--you know, life is about more than 
economics. Most of us work so that we'll have the wherewithal to live in 
the way we want to live, to raise our children well, to enjoy our lives, 
to find some personal fulfillment, to have good lives. And on Halloween, 
even though it's supposed to be ``fright night,'' I always think that 
what I really want is a safer Halloween for all of our children and 
stronger families and safer neighborhoods.
    So I say to you, I want you to feel good about America, and I want 
you to make this choice based on these two big ideas, because we still 
have more work to do. If we want to strengthen our families, we have to 
help parents succeed at home and at work. I was for the family leave 
law; he was against it. We had an honest difference of opinion. He said 
it would hurt the economy, but we've had 3 years of record starts of new 
small businesses and over 10 million jobs. You know who was right and 
who was wrong. The evidence is there.
    And I think we ought to extend family leave. I think people ought to 
be able to go see their children's teachers twice a year and go to the 
doctor's appointment with them without losing their jobs.
    There is nothing more important than helping parents succeed at home 
and at work. If the parents of America have to choose between their 
children or their job, we are in trouble, whichever choice they have to 
make. Their most important job is raising our children, but we have to 
have a strong economy. If we have a strong economy at the expense of 
raising our children, what are we working for anyway? We have got to 
work to create conditions in which everybody believes, ``I can do my 
work, and I can still be a good parent.'' There is no more important 
agenda for America.
    We have to help parents pass their values along to their children, 
and they should be reinforced. That's why I fought for more educational 
television. That's why I fought for a V-chip in new TV's and a rating 
system so you can control what young children see. Every study shows 
that too much violence too young numbs children to the meaning of 
violence and undermines their ability to see other people with dignity 
and respect. We have to deal with that.
    That's why we fought for the safe and drug-free schools program, and 
we got more than double the number of children who now see D.A.R.E. 
officers and others in their schools saying, ``Don't do drugs. They will 
kill you. They will ruin your lives. You deserve a better chance.'' We 
were right to fight for that. That's why I fought to stop the big 
tobacco companies from advertising and marketing cigarettes to children 
illegally. It was wrong.
    Now, in every single one of those instances, Senator Dole disagreed 
with me. That doesn't make him a bad person, but I think I'm right, and 
I think he was wrong about that. And you have to decide who you think is 
right.
    I believe we've got to keep our streets safe. I know it was 
unpopular in Nevada when we passed the crime bill and the Brady bill. I 
know a lot of people in the rural parts of this State were told, ``There 
they go again, those crazy Democrats and that awful President. They're 
going to take guns away from hunters and sports people.'' Well, you know 
something? I grew up in a State where more than half the people have a 
hunting or a fishing license or both. I was shooting a .22 at old tin 
cans when I was 12. But we don't need assault weapons on

[[Page 1999]]

our street. They're designed to kill people. They're designed to kill 
people.
    And that's just like a lot of this stuff. That's what they said 2 
years ago, but now we know. We've got a record. Not a single Nevada 
sportsman has lost a weapon, but 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers 
didn't get handguns because of the Brady bill.
    We're putting more police on our streets--this is unbelievable--if 
we keep going until we get all 100,000 police on the street, instead of 
4 years of declining crime we'll have 8 years of declining crime. We 
might actually be able to feel safe again in every community in this 
country.
    Here again my opponent voted against 100,000 police. Senator 
Coffin's opponent voted to eliminate it, even in the evidence--in the 
face of the evidence that the crime rate was coming down, they voted to 
stop doing it. I don't understand it. But that's one reason, when I was 
in Arizona this morning before I came here, that Bill Bratton, the 
former commissioner of police in New York City and Boston--and in New 
York City, because of community policing, because they put more police 
on the street, they brought the crime rate down 39 percent and the 
murder rate down 50 percent--and he endorsed Bill Clinton and Al Gore 
because he knows we ought to finish the job of putting 100,000 police on 
the street. And I want you to help us do it.
    I believe, as strongly as I can say, that we need to do these things 
block by block, community by community. We have to work together to make 
the American dream work. That's why I wanted someone like Nell Justice 
to introduce me, someone who has taken responsibility for her children, 
someone who's active in her community.
    I don't believe that the President for a moment can take full credit 
for any of the achievements that I've talked to you about. But it is the 
job of the President to do those things which we should do together as a 
country. And it is the job of the President to imagine the future and to 
try to lead the country into a better, brighter future in a way that is 
consistent with our values.
    What we have here in America today is an old-fashioned partnership. 
We're out working today to mobilize another million volunteers to work 
with police officers in their neighborhoods because we know community 
citizen groups can drive the crime rate down. I've asked a million 
volunteers a year to join with us to make sure every 8-year-old can read 
independently by the third grade. These are things we have to do 
together.
    But how we do it, what we do in Washington determines whether you 
can do it here. So you have to decide, do we want to balance the budget 
as I want to and still protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, the 
environment, technology? Or do we want to do what they want to do, which 
is to promise you a big tax cut that will blow a hole in the deficit, 
actually raise taxes on 9 million working people and will require bigger 
cuts in the environment, in education, in Medicare and Medicaid than the 
ones I vetoed? There's a big difference here. It's just an honest 
difference of opinion. I say balance the budget, protect our values, 
invest in our future.
    Do we want to keep reforming health care step by step? We've made a 
good start. My balanced budget plan--which cannot be funded by them--my 
balanced budget plan will help families that are between jobs keep their 
health insurance for 6 months, add another million children to the rolls 
of those with health insurance, provide free mammograms to women on 
Medicare. And for the over 1\1/2\ million families that are courageously 
out there caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's, it will give them 
some respite care. That is hard duty, and that's important, and we can 
do it. I think we ought to do it. Will you help us do that? [Applause]
    And let me say this, especially to the young people: The two biggest 
differences, the two biggest choices you have to make--the first is 
about education. I am telling you, I would not be here today, no way in 
the world would I be here today--I was born to a widowed mother in a 
little town in Arkansas; she married my stepfather, who did not have a 
high school diploma--if it hadn't been for my family drumming into me 
the importance of education and for the opportunities I was given, I 
wouldn't be here today. I know every politician stands up, loves to give 
speeches about self-reliance. Well, the woman who introduced me is self-
reliant. But we all need a hand, too.
    Every politician would like you to believe that he or she was born 
in a log cabin they built by themselves. [Laughter] But that's just not 
true, folks. Educational opportunity is the gift we give not only to our 
children but to our-


[[Page 2000]]

selves, to give us a country that can be free and strong and that can 
grow and go forward together. And we have a lot still to do. Here's how 
we're going to teach every 8-year-old to read, and 40 percent of them 
can't do it. We're going to mobilize 30,000 AmeriCorps volunteers and 
reading specialists to go across this country and get a million others.
    One of the things that we did this year I'm very proud of is to 
allocate 200,000 more work-study slots to college students in the years 
ahead than we've had. And I want 100,000 of those--100,000, half of 
them, to be given to college students who say, ``If you'll give me work-
study money, I'll go teach an 8-year-old to read.'' And I want you to 
help me do that.
    I want us to hook up every classroom and library in every school in 
America to the information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World 
Wide Web. I want every child for the first time in the history of this 
country, whether in a poor district, a remote rural district, a middle 
class or a wealthy one, every child for the first time to have access to 
the same information in the same way at the same time. It will 
revolutionize education in America.
    And I want to open the doors of college education to every single 
American. I want you to help me make community college, at least 2 years 
of education after high school, as universal as a high school diploma is 
today. And it will be easy to do. It will be easy to do. Just let people 
deduct dollar for dollar from their tax bill the cost of the typical 
community college tuition. I want to let people save in an IRA and 
withdraw from it without any tax penalty if the money's used for 
education or health care or homebuying. And I believe we should give 
families a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for the cost of any 
college tuition, undergraduate, graduate, at any school, for people of 
any age. And I can pay for it.
    Now, they believe that--their education agenda is to abolish the 
Department of Education.
    Audience members. Boo-o-o!
    The President. You think about this: Two cents on the dollar at the 
Department of Education goes to administration--or bureaucracy, if you 
want to use the disparaging term; 98 cents of it goes to help educate 
our children. What would it say to the world if America, the greatest 
democracy in the world, were to start the 21st century with no one at 
the President's Cabinet to speak up for the education of our children? I 
say, no. Let's build a bridge to the 21st century with the best 
education system in the world.
    Finally--this may be the most important thing of all--I have spent 
so much time, heartbreaking time, as your President dealing with the 
difficulties of other countries who are consumed by racial, religious, 
ethnic, and tribal hatreds: in Bosnia, people killing one another's 
children because they were Muslims or Croats or Serbs, even though 
biologically they are literally indistinguishable; in Northern Ireland, 
violence continuing, people fighting over battles they fought 3 and 600 
years ago--I can say that, they're my people, but it's crazy--the kids 
over there just want to get on with their lives; in the Middle East, the 
Holy Land for the three great monotheistic religions of the world, 
people still unable to lay down their hatreds of one another, rooted in 
religious differences so old.
    All over the world--in Rwanda we sent American forces to be with the 
French to save hundreds of thousands of lives when the Tutsis and the 
Hutus were killing each other, and neither one of them had enough money 
to get along on, neither one of them could provide for their children. 
And instead of working together to build a prosperous future, they 
preferred to slaughter one another.
    That is why I was so upset when hatred of the Federal Government led 
to the tragedy of Oklahoma City. That is why, when the churches were 
being burned, the synagogues defaced, the Muslim centers being defaced, 
I said, that is not my America. We must stand against it strong and 
hard.
    When the First Lady and our daughter and I went to open the Olympics 
for the United States in Atlanta, it was one of the great moments of the 
last 4 years for us, and I was filled with pride as I looked at those 
people from 197 different national groups walking around the Olympic 
Stadium and thinking, you know, we've got folks from all those places 
here in America; we've got people from everywhere here.
    So I say to you, this is important, too. We cannot say, you're on 
your own. We have to say that if you believe in the Constitution, the 
Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing to 
show up for work or school tomorrow and be a good citizen, we need to 
know nothing else about you. You are part of our America. We're going to 
build a bridge to-


[[Page 2001]]

gether. We're going to walk across it together. And our best days are 
still ahead.
    Will you help me build that bridge? [Applause] Will you be there and 
vote? [Applause] If you've voted already, will you bring someone else? 
[Applause] You can go in the courthouse and do it right now. Be there, 
and we'll have a great celebration for America Tuesday night.
    Thank you. God bless you. And bear down. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:30 p.m. at the Clark County Government 
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Jan Laverty Jones of Las 
Vegas; State Senator Dina Titus; entertainer Gladys Knight; tennis 
player Andre Agassi; Nell Justice, who introduced the President; and 
State Senator Bob Coffin, candidate for Nevada's First Congressional 
District.