[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[November 3, 1996]
[Pages 2047-2050]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Springfield, Massachusetts
November 3, 1996

    Thank you. Well, hello, Springfield! Thank you. Thank you for this 
wonderful, wonderful welcome. Thank you for being here in such large 
numbers--I can't even see the end of the crowd back there. Thank you for 
being here in such high spirits. I thank especially all the young people 
that are here tonight. This election is about you.
    My fellow Americans, it's a great honor for me to be here in this 
State which has been so good to me and to our administration, a State 
which has given so much to our Nation. I have wanted to come here to 
this spot for a long time, and now that I see you here I don't know why 
it took me so long. I'm glad to be here.
    Thank you, Mayor Albano, for making me feel so welcome. Thank you, 
Shannon O'Brien, for your remarks. Thank you, Congressman Kennedy, for 
warming up the crowd and for your support and your leadership. Thank 
you, Congressman Olver, and thank you, Congressman Neal. All three of 
these Members of Congress from Massachusetts stood up for America when 
the Government was shut down and the future of America was on the line 
and we were being asked to choose. We stood for your future and refused, 
refused to give in to the blackmail of this Congress, and they deserve 
your thanks forever. Thank you.
    I want to thank all those who have performed here tonight: the West 
Springfield High School Band, the Pottenger School Children's Choir--
they're here somewhere--and the Minutemen Marching Band. Thank you. I 
must say, this is the best sound effects I've ever seen. If I had 
another plane I'd just take them with me for the rest of the day.
    I want to thank Senator Ted Kennedy for so many things. But you will 
never know what it was like these last 2 years, how close we came over 
and over again to having some people lose hard and give in, having some 
people give up on raising the minimum wage, having some people give up 
on finally saying that you can't lose your health insurance just because 
you changed jobs or somebody in your family's been sick, that we would 
give up on passing a law that says we're not going to let insurance 
companies kick women and newborn babies out of hospitals after 24 hours 
anymore. But Ted Kennedy never gave up. He never gave up, and he 
prevailed.
    And thank you, John Kerry, for waging this long, courageous campaign 
many times against the odds, never giving up. Thank you for being a 
voice in Washington, for preserving our environment when it was out of 
fashion. Thank you for helping me to keep putting 100,000 police on the 
street when the Congress tried to stop us and we wanted a safe future 
for our children. Thank you for fighting a long and lonely battle for 
campaign finance reform. Long before it was popular you were there, and 
you will get everlasting credit when it becomes the law of the land next 
year. Thank you, John Kerry. And thank you for sponsoring our 
legislation to open the doors of college education to every single 
American. Thank you.

[[Page 2048]]

    My fellow Americans, 4 years ago when Massachusetts gave me an 
enormous support and sent Al Gore and me to Washington to work for you, 
I had come to you and said we had to get our country moving, we had to 
change the politics of Washington, we had to stop the politics of 
insults and get to the politics of issues. We had to get away from the 
politics of division and embrace the politics of unity. We had to stop 
pointing our fingers at each other and ask what can we do together to 
get this country going in the right direction. You gave me the chance, 
and I came here to say thank you. Thank you for doing that.
    Four years ago, amid a time of high unemployment, rising crime, 
rising frustration, and increasing division, you took a chance on me. 
You took me on faith, and you did not know. You've heard all these 
debates about where we stand and where they stand tonight. But there's 
one thing that hasn't been emphasized. We now have some evidence about 
which side is right. When I became President, the unemployment rate in 
Massachusetts was 7\1/2\ percent. Tonight it is 4.2 percent.
    Incomes are rising for the first time in a decade. Inequality--
inequality among people who are working has gone down by the largest 
amount in 27 years. We have the lowest rates of poverty among senior 
citizens ever recorded. We have 10.7 million new jobs, record new 
businesses, record new exports. The United States is number one in auto 
production again for the first time since the 1970's. We are moving in 
the right direction.
    The crime rate has come down for 4 years in a row. We have the 
lowest crime rate in 10 years. The welfare rolls have dropped for 4 
years in a row as nearly 2 million Americans have found their way to 
work and greater dignity. Child support collections are up 50 percent--
$4 billion a year for the children of this country.
    We have worked hard to change the course of America and bring 
America together. And we have been a force for peace and freedom in the 
world, from the Middle East to Bosnia to Northern Ireland. And there are 
no Russian missiles pointed at any American children tonight for the 
first time since the dawn of the nuclear age. We are moving in the right 
direction.
    You know all the issues, but let me say to you that we are moving, 
at a time of great change, into a new world that we can't fully 
understand. We know that the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed 
back at a rapid rate. We know we are changing the way we work and live 
and relate to the rest of the world. When I became President, there were 
3 million Americans working full-time and living at home and working at 
home. Today, 4 years later, there are 12 million Americans doing it. And 
4 years from now, there will be 30 million Americans doing it.
    When I became President, there was no known cure for stroke. Today, 
we have treatment for stroke because of medical research, for the first 
time ever. And two of the genes that cause breast cancer have been 
uncovered; we may be able to cure it. We are developing a supercomputer 
that will do more calculations in a second than you can go home tonight 
and do on your hand-held calculator in 30,000 years. The world is 
changing, my fellow Americans, and we had better make the right 
decisions about how to respond to that change.
    There is too much personal negative attack in politics and too 
little analysis of what the basis of our differences are. Every issue 
that Congressman Olver, Congressman Neal, Senator Kennedy, Senator 
Kerry, and Congressman Kennedy mentioned--every one can be distilled 
into this: I believe that there are some things that we must do together 
as a nation to help give each other the chance to make the most of our 
own lives--not a guarantee but a chance. They believe you're better off 
on your own. That's what their budget was all about. And now you have to 
decide.
    If their budget were the law of the land tonight, we would have had 
reductions in Medicare, cuts 3 times as great as those that were 
necessary to preserve the Medicare Trust Fund. It would have cost our 
seniors, no matter how poor, $268 more a year, plus more in out-of-
pocket costs over and above that. We would have had the first cuts in 
student loans and Head Start in modern history. We would have had the 
first cuts in the Medicaid guarantee of health care to poor children, to 
middle class families who have family members with disabilities. Even 
they would have repealed the standards of quality care for seniors in 
nursing homes. We would have paralyzed the ability of our Government to 
protect the environment. We would have, in short, divided our country.

[[Page 2049]]

    But they believe that that was right because they believe we're 
better off on our own. And you have to decide. They shut the Government 
down, not once but twice, to force these cuts on the American people. 
And because these Members of Congress stood with me, they said, ``Oh, 
you Democrats will cave in; you're miserable when the Government is shut 
down.'' I said, ``This is not about Government; it's about people. I'd 
rather see the American people inconvenienced for 30 days than 
irreparably damaged for 30 years. We will not give in to your cuts and 
your approach.''
    So now you have to decide about tomorrow, for this election is about 
tomorrow. This is an election of enormous moment, with great 
consequences and clear choices. You should all be happy that the choices 
are as clear as they are. I am well aware that I am not solely 
responsible for the fact that we have 10.7 million more jobs. But we did 
our part. We cut the deficit by 63 percent. We invested in education. We 
expanded the ability of Americans to sell their products around the 
world. And we did other things to grow the economy. That's why we have 
those 10.7 million more jobs. We did it together. I want us to do more 
together. We're not better off on our own. It takes a village to raise a 
child and build a country and build a future.
    So you have to decide whether we will continue our work to balance 
the budget and protect the medical programs that our seniors, our people 
with disabilities, our poorest children depend upon; continue to invest 
in education, in the environment, and technology; and target our tax 
cuts to people who need them for purposes that are needed, education and 
childrearing and buying a first home and dealing with a medical cost--or 
whether we will adopt their scheme, which will blow a hole in the 
deficit, require bigger cuts than the ones I vetoed, and send the 
economy of this State into a tailspin. Will you stand with us to build 
America's future and build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause]
    You have to decide whether we were right to say people shouldn't 
lose their jobs if they have to take a little time off when a baby is 
born or a family member is sick and whether we shouldn't expand the 
family leave law to say people should be able to get a little time off 
to go visit their children's teachers and take their family members to 
the doctor. Will you help us do that? [Applause]
    You have to decide whether we're going to clean up 500 more toxic 
waste sites. You have to decide whether we're going to really implement 
welfare reform in the right way. It's all very well to say people have 
to turn a welfare check into a paycheck. I'm for that, but I want the 
jobs to be there. You can't make people go to work unless there's a job. 
We have a plan to move a million people from welfare to work. Will you 
help us implement it and build that bridge? [Applause]
    You have to decide whether we were right or they were when we passed 
the Brady bill and kept 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers from 
getting handguns. And now people who beat up their spouses and their 
kids won't be able to get them either. You have to decide if we were 
right. You have to decide whether you want us to finish the job of 
putting 100,000 police on the street or let them take away the police 
that are still to be placed. Why in the world they want to do that I 
don't know, but they do. You have to decide.
    And more than anything else, you have to decide where we're going in 
the issues that will affect whether we can grow together. We did pass 
health care reform, but our balanced budget plan would give insurance to 
families who are between jobs for 6 months, would insure another million 
children, would give free mammograms to women on Medicare, would give 
respite care to the nearly 2 million American families caring 
courageously for a family member with Alzheimer's--all paid for. You get 
it in our balanced budget plan. They cannot do it. You have to decide. 
Shouldn't we do more to bring the American people together and help our 
families to succeed at work and at home? [Applause]
    And you have to decide, more than anything else, you have to 
decide--and this is not just a matter of this cheering crowd. Remember 
the changes I described in the beginning. Education will no longer be 
just the province of youth. It will be the work of a lifetime. It will 
become a part of everyone's work life. We will have to learn and learn 
and learn. And we must begin to create an education system for the 21st 
century that gives every American child and every American adult the 
finest educational opportunities in the world. We cannot do it with 
their approach. They want to abolish the Department of Education. I want 
to give you world-class

[[Page 2050]]

education, and you have to decide. You have to decide.
    Thanks to Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry and others, we got 
200,000 more work-study positions for college students in this last 
budget. Here's what I want to do with half of those. And I want to ask 
you college students that have been cheering tonight, I want to ask you 
to help me. We have improved the student loan program. We've given 
70,000 of our young people a chance to serve in AmeriCorps in their 
communities and earn their way to college. We have increased Pell grants 
by the largest amount in 20 years. But we must do more.
    But we have to start with our young children. Do you know that 40 
percent of the kids in this country can still not read a book on their 
own by the age of 8? It may be because we have so many people whose 
first language is not English. But that will be cold comfort to them as 
they move through school and fail to learn. I have a plan to mobilize a 
million volunteers to go into all the land to help parents and teachers 
teach our children to read. And I want 100,000 of those work-study slots 
to go to college students who will earn work-study by teaching children 
to read. Will you help do that? Will you be one of them? [Applause] By 
the year 2000, I want every 8-year-old in America to be able to pick up 
a book and say, ``I can read this all by myself.'' Will you help us do 
it? [Applause]
    Will you help us hook up every classroom and every library and every 
school in Massachusetts, the smallest rural school, the poorest inner-
city school to the information superhighway so that for the first time 
in the history of America, every single child--poor, rich, or middle 
class, urban, rural, or suburban--every child for the first time will 
have access to the same knowledge in the same way in the same time? We 
can revolutionize the education of our children. Will you help us do it? 
[Applause]
    Will you help us open the doors of college to all by saying we will 
give Americans a dollar-for-dollar reduction on their tax bill for the 
cost of a typical community college tuition so every American of any age 
can have at least 2 more years of education as universal as high school 
is today in the next 4 years? Will you help us? [Applause]
    Will you help us to give America's families a $10,000 tax deduction 
a year for the cost of college tuition at any institution of higher 
education, graduate or undergraduate, in the United States? Will you 
help us? [Applause]
    And most important of all, remember now, you may have your mind made 
up, but not everybody does. These are the choices at stake. It's not 
Senator Kerry and his opponent, President Clinton and Bob Dole, 
Democrats versus Republicans. It has fallen to our party and our 
administration at this moment in history to represent the idea that 
America must always put forward at a time of great change. Whenever we 
go through changes, we have the option to be more divided or more 
united. Whenever we have gone through changes, we've had the option to 
try to make sure everyone could prosper so we could move closer to our 
ideals.
    This is not about money. It's about using the resources of America 
to enable people to live up to their God-given capacities. And you must 
decide. The great idea is whether we are going to give each other the 
conditions and tools to give everybody a chance to make the most of 
their own lives, or whether we will say, ``You're on your own.'' The 
great idea is whether we will say, ``There's the 21st century out there, 
America's best days, the time of greatest possibility in human history. 
Yes, there's a big river to ford and a deep valley to go into and a high 
mountain to climb; I hope you get there.'' Or would you prefer our 
approach, where we all roll up our sleeves, without regard to race, 
religion, gender, you name it, and say, ``If you will work hard and do 
your part, we will together build a bridge to the 21st century wide 
enough and strong enough to take us to America's best days.'' Will you 
do that? [Applause] Will you be there Tuesday? [Applause] Will you be 
there between now and Tuesday and bring your friends? [Applause]
    God bless you. Thank you, Massachusetts. I'll see you Tuesday. Thank 
you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:17 p.m. at the Court Square. In his 
remarks, he referred to Mayor Michael Albano of Springfield and Shannon 
O'Brien, former Massachusetts State representative and senator.