[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[October 11, 2000]
[Pages 2126-2130]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Rally for Representative Ron Klink in 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
October 11, 2000

    Thank you very much. I always learn something when I come to 
Pittsburgh. [Laughter] Today I learned, never ask for another pat of 
butter. [Laughter] And never rent a mule. [Laughter] Let me say, I am 
delighted to be back in western Pennsylvania, and I'm delighted to be in 
this State again with Ron Klink and his wife, Linda, and their two fine 
children and all the people associated with 
their campaign. And Senator, thank you for 
your speech, your leadership of the party. Mayor Murphy, thank you for being such a good friend to me in these 
years we've worked together to help Pittsburgh reach its full potential.
    I thank all the candidates who are out here. I think Catherine Baker 
Knoll is here, and I thank her for 
being here. Thank you, Catherine. And I want to mention your former 
mayor, Sophie Masloff, who was a good friend 
of mine, and State Senator Christine Tartaglione. And thank you, Franco Harris, 
for being here and for being my friend and supporter all these years.
    Now, let me say, I want to thank you for giving some money to Ron 
Klink. [Laughter] And I'll tell you one thing I'm absolutely sure of. If 
more people had done what you did today, he would be ahead, not behind, 
in the polls. Why is that? Because when the American people have enough 
information and enough time to digest it, they nearly always get it 
right. Now, do you have any doubt at all that if every voter in 
Pennsylvania knew what the real records and the real differences between 
these two candidates are, that Ron Klink would win? Do you have any 
doubt at all?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. All right. If you have no doubt at all, then he can 
still win if you get out there and cover the gap between now and 
election day. That's what I want to tell you. I believe that. And I came 
out here--I have been calling people all over the country saying, ``You 
ought to send Ron Klink some money. We can win in Pennsylvania.''
    The people of this State have been very good to me, and I am 
profoundly grateful. We won a big victory here in '92. In '96 I didn't 
get to campaign as much as I wish I had in Pennsylvania because we were 
trying to win some places we hadn't won in a long time, including 
Florida, where we did win. But the people of Pennsylvania stayed with 
me.
    I think this is a pretty simple election here. But what I want to 
tell you is, every one of these races is important. No one in America 
understands more clearly than I do how important every single House race 
is, every single Senate race is, and of course, the race for the White 
House.
    You need to go ask people whether we're better off than we were 8 
years ago. That's what they used to say the test was. My favorite point 
in the last Presidential debate--we're going to have another one 
tonight. We all have our little moments, but my favorite moment was when 
their nominee said, ``Well, I think that 
Clinton/Gore got a lot more out of the economy than the economy got out 
of Clinton/Gore. The American people did this with their hard work.'' 
Now, when they were in, they took credit when the Sun came up in the 
morning. You remember that? [Laughter] ``It's morning in America. Vote 
for us.'' It's morning, right? [Laughter] So they said that. And then 
the Vice President said, ``Yes, the 
American people and their hard work do deserve credit. But they were 
working just as hard back in 1992 and getting different results.'' 
[Laughter] And I thought, goodbye. That was a good answer.
    Now, look, here is the deal. There are differences. They're real, 
and they have consequences in people's lives. And if every voter in 
Pennsylvania understands that and what the differences are and what the 
consequences are, Klink wins. To the extent that there are voters who 
don't understand it, it's harder for him to win. To the extent there are 
voters who think there are two perfectly nice moderate guys running and 
maybe we ought to stick with the moderate guy who's in, it's bad for 
him.
    And this is what they're doing all over the country. They want to 
blur these differences, you know. I mean, butter wouldn't melt in their 
mouth today. It's hard to remember the rhetoric they used just a couple 
of years ago, isn't it?

[[Page 2127]]

``Oh, we're so moderate. We're so nice. We feel so bad about all these 
problems America has. We really want to do something about it.'' 
[Laughter] ``We're glad the Democrats got rid of the deficit and put us 
into surplus and gave us the longest expansion in history. We're glad 
they put 100,000 police on the street, even though we fought them. We're 
glad they cut the welfare rolls in half without taking food and medicine 
away from the kids, like we tried to. We're glad it all worked out. Now, 
please let us stay in.'' [Laughter]
    That's their pitch. I'm laughing because I don't want to cry here. 
[Laughter] And then you ought to ask yourself, well, why is it then, if 
we did the right things, why do they have more money? What does that 
tell you? Because we decided a long time ago, a long time before I ever 
came along, that we thought that the best politics and the best 
economics and the best social policy was what allowed us all to go 
forward together, not just what took care of the people who had the 
ability to give you a financial advantage in a campaign.
    Now, look, we're better off than we were 8 years ago. Ron Klink 
supported the economic policies of this administration. His opponent 
didn't. Ron Klink, you heard him say, supported putting 100,000 police 
on the street. They tried to take it away. Even when the crime rate was 
coming down, they tried to undo what was working. And by the way, they 
promise to undo it if they win the White House and the Congress next 
time.
    We're going up to 150,000 police on the street. We've got crime down 
7 years in a row, down to a 27-year low. And their major commitment on 
law enforcement is to promise to undo the Federal Government's 
commitment to put 150,000 police on the street because they don't think 
we have any business doing it. Never mind the fact that we're all safer. 
Now, how many voters in Pennsylvania know that? Not enough. If they did, 
would it make a difference? I think it would. I believe it would.
    You look at this economics issue. This may be the thing that will 
have the biggest impact on you. We've got a chance now to spread this 
recovery to people and places left behind, to inner-city neighborhoods 
and rural communities and places that lost industries and Native 
American communities--people that still aren't fully part of this. But 
we've got to keep the economy going. We've got to keep the labor markets 
tight. We've got to keep the general progress going if our initiatives 
to spread the economic recovery are going to work and benefit everybody.
    Now, our policy is, we want to give you a tax cut, but we've got to 
be able to afford it, which means we've got to save some money to invest 
in education, in health care, in the environment and national defense, 
in science and technology. And we've got to keep paying down the debt, 
because when we pay down the debt, we keep interest rates lower and the 
economy stronger. That's our position.
    Their position is, ``Vote for us. We'll give a much bigger tax 
break.'' Most middle class people are actually better off under ours, 
but some of you who can afford to buy a ticket today would be better off 
under theirs. So why are you here? You've got to be able to answer this. 
Listen, this is important.
    Their tax cut--the Vice President's is 
about $500 billion. Theirs is about a trillion six, I'd say--maybe a 
little more. They say a little less, but it's clearly about that. Now, 
here is the problem with their tax cut. Number one, it's a trillion six. 
That's lots of money.
    Number two, they have also promised, as Ron said, to partially 
privatize Social Security. He told you about one problem, which is, if 
you take your 2 percent payroll and you lose money, then you lose 
income. But there is another problem with that. Forget about that. Let's 
suppose everybody here under 45 took the 2 percent and made money. There 
is another problem. They're going to guarantee the benefits for 
everybody over 55, which by the time they get it passed will be me. 
[Laughter]
    Now, here is the problem. If Social Security is supposed to go broke 
in 35 years, and you start pulling money out of it like no tomorrow 
because all the young people think they can do more in the stock market, 
but you guarantee everybody's benefits who is 55 or over--and keep in 
mind, if you live to be 65 in America, your life expectancy is 82 now 
and going up--what happens? Well, the money starts running out just as 
your guarantee goes up. So what do you have to do? You have to put more 
money in it.
    And I want to compliment the nominee of 
the Republican Party. In the last debate he acknowledged that he would 
take a trillion dollars from our surplus and put it into Social Security 
to make the commitments to the people over

[[Page 2128]]

55--55 and over--in order to let everybody else take money out. Now, if 
you've got a $1.6 trillion tax cut and a $1 trillion Social Security 
hold, you've already spent $400 billion more than the most wildly 
optimistic estimate of the surplus, which, you can take it from me, is 
probably $400 billion to $500 billion overstated because of built-in 
costs of the Federal Government. And they haven't spent any of the money 
they promised, plus all the Star Wars things they promised and all that. 
I'm telling you, they're going to put us back in debt. That's why the 
economic analysis that I've seen indicates that the Democratic plan, 
the Gore-Lieberman plan, will keep interest rates a point lower a year for a 
decade.
    Now, do you know what a percent a year a decade--you need to go out 
and talk to people here in western Pennsylvania about that. It affects 
this Senate race. Do you know what it means to you if you keep interest 
rates one percent lower a year for a decade? That is the equivalent of 
$390 billion in lower home mortgages, $30 billion in lower car payments, 
$15 billion in lower college loan payments, not to mention lower credit 
card payments, lower business loans, which means more businesses, more 
jobs, higher incomes, and a stronger stock market.
    Now, so you've got a $435 billion tax cut to ordinary Americans by 
getting this country out of debt for the first time since 1835. One 
party will do it. The other won't. And people that vote for President 
and people that vote for Senator ought to know that, because it will 
have a huge impact on whether we can keep western Pennsylvania coming 
back in the next 10 years. I want you to make certain people know that.
    Now, let me just give you another example, health care. When I 
became President, they told me Medicare was going to be broke in 1999, 
last year. We added 27 years to the life of Medicare and did more to 
cover preventive coverage for breast cancer, for prostate cancer. We 
dramatically improved diabetes care. You can keep your health insurance 
now when you change jobs or somebody in your family gets sick. We've 
insured 2\1/2\ million under the Children's Health Insurance Program 
that Ron Klink supported, that has given us a reduction in the number of 
people without health insurance for the first time in a dozen years.
    We have big challenges. You heard him talking about the Patients' 
Bill of Rights. It failed by one vote. If he'd been in the Senate, 
instead of his opponent, I would have signed into law the Patients' Bill 
of Rights already. Now, this is a huge deal. This is a huge deal. Do you 
have a right to see a specialist if your doctor says? Do you have a 
right to keep your doctor if you change health care providers in the 
middle of a pregnancy or a cancer treatment? That's what the Patients' 
Bill of Rights says. Do you have a right, if you get hurt, to go to the 
nearest emergency room, or can they drag you past three or four to get 
to one covered by your plan? And if you get hurt, do you have a right to 
sue because you've been hurt? And if you don't, it's just a patients' 
bill of suggestions, not rights. And most important, does it cover 
everybody, or does it leave a bunch of folks out?
    Now, the HMO's say they don't want this, because they say by the 
time they get sued and everybody gets covered, your health care premiums 
will go up. That bothers me. But guess what? I already put it in for 
everybody covered by the Federal Government. Now, people need to know 
this. In western Pennsylvania, you need to know this. I put the 
protections of the Patients' Bill of Rights in for everybody on 
Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' health, Federal employees' health 
insurance, Federal retirees being covered by health care. Do you know 
what it did to the premiums? They went up a buck a month--a buck a 
month--to give you those kind of protections.
    Even the Republicans' own Congressional Budget Office says that for 
the population at large, it would go up less than $2 a month. Now, I 
would pay a $1.80 a month on my health insurance to make sure that--God 
forbid--if you get hit by a car walking out of this rally, you could go 
to the nearest emergency room. And I think most of you would, too. 
There's a big difference here. The people in western Pennsylvania need 
to know where he is and where his opponent is.
    Now, let me just give you one more, the prescription drugs for 
seniors fight. First, we were for it, and they weren't for anything. And 
then they realized they were in deep trouble. You remember that phrase 
the former President Bush used to use for that--that deep whatever it 
was he used to say. [Laughter] They knew they were in a world of hurt. 
So they came up with a plan, and they said, ``Well, you know,

[[Page 2129]]

this thing might be too expensive, giving Medicare-financed drug 
coverage to all seniors who need it.'' Our plan does that. It says, 
under Medicare you have a voluntary option to buy in. If you're poor, 
we'll pay your premiums. If you're not, you've got to pay a little. If 
you have catastrophic bills, we'll help you with those. That's our plan.
    So they said, ``Well, we can't be caught out here with no plan.'' So 
they went to the drug companies, and they said, ``I'm sorry, guys. We 
can't carry your water unless you give us something to be for.'' This is 
the way Washington works, folks. I'm just telling you. They went to the 
drug companies, and they said, ``Look, we can't carry your water 
anymore. They're going to blow us away here.''
    So they did all these surveys and everything and did this research. 
And they came up with this plan that says, ``The Democrats want the 
Government to take over your drug business, and they want to fix prices. 
And what we want to do is help the poor people get their coverage and 
let everybody else buy insurance and put it all in the private sector, 
which is so much better.'' They tested all this. They got the phrases 
where they sounded right and all that.
    So that's what the fight is between Congressman Klink and Senator 
Santorum, and all over the country. Now, you 
must be sitting out here asking yourself, why wouldn't the drug 
companies want to sell more drugs? Did you ever meet a politician that 
didn't want more votes? Did you ever meet a car salesman that didn't 
want to sell more cars? Did you ever meet an insurance salesman that 
didn't want to sell more insurance? What is this? Why don't the drug 
companies who want everybody who needs the drugs to buy them? It doesn't 
make any sense, does it?
    Here is what is going on. You need to understand this. This is a big 
issue. First of all, the Republicans' plan won't work. They pay for 
people up to 150, 175 percent of the poverty line; 175 percent is 
$18,700, more or less, for a couple. The problem is, half the people 
that need the medicine, because they've got big drug bills, make more 
than that. And there is no private insurance for these people. Nevada 
adopted the Republican plan. Do you know how many insurance companies 
offered drugs under it? Zero. Not one--not one. That's one thing I 
admire about our Republican friends: Evidence never fazes them. I admire 
that. [Laughter] You've got to admire it, you know? ``Don't bother me 
with the facts. Yes, their economic approach worked. Let's reverse it 
anyway and give our friends a big tax cut that we can't afford.''
    So I'm just telling you, this is a big issue. Now, here is the 
problem. You need to make sure people understand this in western 
Pennsylvania, because I'm sure there will be all these ads about how 
they're both for drugs, Klink wants the Government to take it over. 
Medicare is a private health care delivery system, right? You all go to 
a private doctor, private hospitals, financed through Government. It has 
an administrative cost of about 1.5 percent. There is no price fixing 
here.
    You want to know what the real problem is? Why can you go to Canada 
and get drugs cheaper, made in America, than you can here? Because the 
drug companies have spent a lot of money developing these drugs, and 
they spent a lot of money advertising them, and they can't recover those 
costs anywhere but America, because everyplace else fixes prices. Then 
once you pay enough for those drugs to get their advertising and 
development costs back, it's then cheap for them to make another little 
pill, and they can sell it in Canada, Europe, or anywhere.
    And the reason they don't want this bill to pass is, if we get 
enough market power with enough seniors in the same plan, they're 
afraid, not through price fixing but through bargaining, we'll be able 
to get prices that are almost but not quite as cheap as you could buy 
American drugs in Canada. And they think that will cut their profit 
margins down and limit their ability to do research and advertise. That 
is what is going on. That's what this whole deal is about. You never 
read that in the paper, did you?
    Now, I say that so you don't have to demonize the drug companies. 
It's good that we've got them in America. It's good they're developing 
these medicines that keep people alive and improve the quality of their 
lives. But it is wrong to say we're going to solve their problem by 
keeping American seniors from getting the drugs they need to stay alive 
and have good lives. Let's solve the problem of the senior citizens. And 
then, those people have plenty of money and power; let them come down to 
Washington, and we'll help them solve their problem. That's what we 
ought to do.

[[Page 2130]]

    I've taken the time to talk about these issues today, unconventional 
at this kind of event, because I know I won't be back in western 
Pennsylvania, in all probability, between now and the election. And I 
want you to go out and talk to everybody you can find between now and 
the election. Look, these elections are close. Ron Klink can win if 
people understand what the differences are and what the consequences are 
to them, their families, your community, and your country.
    So I ask you, please go out there. Talk to people about where we 
were 8 years ago, where we are today, what Congressman Klink's role has 
been in it, and talk to people about the economic issues, the health 
care issues, the education issues out there. Remember, clarity is our 
friend. We may never have another chance in our lifetime, have a country 
that is this prosperous, making this much progress, and pulling 
together.
    You look at the children in this audience. We've got to do it right 
for them. We may not have another chance in our lifetime to have an 
election like this.
    Again, let me tell you I am profoundly grateful for everything the 
State of Pennsylvania, and especially this part of Pennsylvania, has 
done for me and Al Gore and our administration. The only thing I can 
tell you is, I've worked as hard as I could to turn this country around, 
pull this country together, and move us forward. Now it's up to you. 
Don't miss a person. Every one of you knows hundreds of people who will 
vote on election day but who will never, ever come to an event like 
this, never, never have the chance that you've had to engage in this 
kind of thinking.
    So go out there and tell them what the economic differences, the 
health care differences, the education differences are. And tell them 
the future depends upon making a good decision for Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, 
Ron Klink, and the rest of our crowd.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:25 p.m. in Room S-2 at the David L. 
Lawrence Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to 
Representative Klink's children, Juliana and Matthew; State Senator 
Leonard J. Bodack; Mayor Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh; Catherine Baker 
Knoll, candidate for State treasurer; Sophie Masloff, former mayor of 
Pittsburgh; former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris; and 
Republican Presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. 
Representative Klink was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 
Pennsylvania.