[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 29 (Monday, July 25, 1994)]
[Pages 1507-1511]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Democratic Campaign Reception in Portland, Maine

July 18, 1994

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for that wonderful 
welcome, and thank you, Senator Mitchell, for your introduction.
    You know, I came here today, having left Washington, which is very 
hot in the summertime, and I flew to Miami, which is much hotter in the 
summertime. And I thought I would feel out of place when I got up here 
in the northern climate of Maine. But you kindly put these lights up and 
made us all feel right at home. [Laughter] Of course, I may be the only 
person up here who is still standing when this event is over--
[laughter]--but I like the warm welcome you have given.

[[Page 1508]]

    I want to say, too, how glad I am to be here with your State Chair 
Victoria Murphy. She's providing great leadership. She's got a lot of 
energy. I like that. We've got a real ethnic blend up here tonight on 
this ticket: Senator Baldacci--I would do more for him if he'd brought 
me a little pasta tonight so I could eat--[laughter]--Senator Dutremble. 
I want you to send them to Congress because it matters whether they're 
there. You know, if a President doesn't want to do anything, it doesn't 
make much difference who's in Congress. If you get elected to do things 
to move the country forward, you can't do it unless there are people in 
Congress who will help. I need them there. More importantly, you need 
them there, and I want you to send them there.
    I love hearing Joe Brennan remind you that, when we were much 
younger, we served as both attorney general and Governor together. And 
he said he had notes--you know, I've gotten to the point where I can't 
remember anything. Joe, I'd like to have those notes back. [Laughter] I 
will say this: I loved serving with Joe Brennan. And I got to know him 
pretty well. And there's a kind of nice and unusual camaraderie that 
often develops among the people who serve in the Governor's group. I've 
been for him every time he's been on the ballot up here, and I'm glad to 
see that you're going to send him back to the Governor's office where he 
belongs.
    I'd like to say something about Tom Andrews and this Senate seat in 
connection with George Mitchell. Most of you know from my last trip to 
Maine what I think of Senator Mitchell and how much I feel indebted to 
him and how much I think the country is indebted to him. On the night 
that he called to tell me that he was going to announce the next day 
that he would not seek reelection, first of all, I accused him of 
dealing with it on the telephone because he couldn't stand to see a 
grown man cry. [Laughter] And secondly, I talked to him a second time 
and a third time, and finally he said, ``Look,'' he said, ``Tom Andrews 
will run, and he'll win, and he'll be just great.''
    But I want to try to put into some sharp relief what Senator 
Mitchell said about the voting patterns of the parties. You know, I ran 
for President as the Governor of my State because I was worried about 
our country. I was worried about what our future would be like. I was 
worried about what my daughter would grow up to live in. I thought the 
economy was going in the wrong direction, the people were coming apart 
when they ought to be pulling together, and that Government was not 
working for ordinary people. And I believed that in order for us to go 
into the 21st century at this moment of enormous opportunity--the end of 
the cold war, the emergence of a real global village on this planet of 
ours--in order for us to go into that century strong and healthy and 
robust, giving every boy and girl the chance to live up to the fullest 
of their God-given capacities, in a world that was more peaceful, more 
prosperous, more sane, we had to get the economy turned around, we had 
to pull the American people together, we had to get this Government to 
work for ordinary folks again--straightforward, simple, direct 
objectives.
    And the first thing we had to do was to get our economic house in 
order. It was amazing to me the difference between the rhetoric and the 
reality of the politics of the last dozen years. When the other crowd 
was in, they always talked about how much they hated Government and they 
hated tax-and-spend, they hated this, that, and the other thing, and how 
evil the deficits were, and how they were trying to be tough. I looked 
at the facts and I realized that whatever you want to say about 
Congress, they actually appropriated slightly less money than the 
previous two Presidents asked them to spend but not enough to overcome 
the recommendations they made, which cut taxes on the wealthy, raised 
them on the middle class, exploded the deficit, and drove the economy 
downhill.
    And so I asked the Congress to do something hard, not something 
easy; not where we would talk one way and do another but where we'd 
actually do what we said we were going to do: make the tax system fair 
and bring the deficit down. And the Congress voted by the narrowest of 
margins--literally by one vote in both Houses--for a plan that had $255 
billion in spending cuts; provided tax cuts for 15 million American 
working

[[Page 1509]]

families, including almost 61,000 families in Maine; asked the 
wealthiest 1\1/2\ percent of our population, including about 3,700 
families in Maine, to pay a tax increase; provided a tax reduction for 
90 percent of the small businesses in this country that would invest 
more in their businesses--90 percent of them--and basically brought 
about the biggest deficit reduction package in history.
    Then this year, we followed up with a budget that eliminates 100 
Government programs outright, cuts over 200 others, continues to reduce 
by attrition the size of the Federal work force, so that by 1999 it will 
be the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President of the 
United States. These are things that the Democrats did. And at the same 
time we increased our spending on Head Start; we increased our spending 
on education and training of the work force; we increased our spending 
on defense conversion like the project that the Bath Iron Works got here 
to develop commercial shipping; we increased our spending on new 
technologies for the future; we reformed the student loan laws and made 
20 million American students eligible for lower interest rates and 
better repayment terms.
    And we got, as George Mitchell said, 3 years of deficit reduction in 
a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President of the United 
States of America. And what are the results: 3.8 million new jobs; in 
Maine, 17,000 private sector jobs in a year and a half, after 4 years in 
which you lost 30,000 jobs; last year the largest number of new business 
starts in America since the end of World War II. That is the record. And 
the record was established by one vote in both Houses, because the 
rhetoric, the forces against change, hanging on--so they're coming back 
one more time talking about tax and spend. When you hear it in a Senate 
race, you just remember this: When the chips were down, Tom Andrews 
didn't blink.
    When he went up there and cast that vote, he didn't do it for me; he 
didn't do it for the Congress; he didn't do it for the Democratic Party. 
He did it for you. He did it for you. And believe it or not, a higher 
percentage of citizens in the other congressional district in Maine got 
a tax cut than the ones in his own. But he said yes, and his opponent 
said no because the other party gave marching orders that no one who 
wanted to stay in good graces could vote for this plan--no one. They 
were told no, no, no. Well, we said yes to America. We got 3.8 million 
new jobs, a point and a half off the unemployment rate, a growing 
economy, a declining deficit because of that one vote. You need to swell 
those numbers. Send these men to the Congress. Send him to the Senate, 
and send a message to America.
    Now, we got the same thing all over again on issue after issue after 
issue. Now we're trying to get a crime bill out of the Congress. It will 
have bipartisan support if we can just get it to a vote because no one 
will vote against crime now. This is a big deal. This administration and 
our allies in Congress are going to provide a 20-percent increase in the 
number of police officers on the street, not just to catch criminals but 
to deter crime.
    Violent crime has increased by 300 percent in the last 30 years. The 
number of police officers on the street have increased by 10 percent. 
It's not hard to figure out what's going on here. We're also going to 
provide billions of dollars in Maine and all across the country for 
prevention programs, so that young people will have something to say yes 
to, not just something to say no to--never been done before in a crime 
bill, ever in the history.
    We are trying to do things. And now, in the last great battle of his 
career in the Senate, Senator Mitchell's trying to help me pass health 
care reform. And I want to tell you exactly what we're up against. You 
know, 500 years ago the Italian political philosopher Machiavelli said, 
``There is nothing so difficult in all of human affairs than to change 
the established order of things,'' because the people who will lose what 
they have will fight you tooth and nail. That's Arkansas, not 
Machiavelli. [Laughter] But that's what he said. They'll fight you tooth 
and nail, and the people who will benefit will always be a little 
hesitant being unsure of the benefit of change.
    Now, what have we achieved already? For the first time ever in the 
history of the Congress, we have three congressional committees that 
have voted out plans to provide health care for all Americans. That's 
never

[[Page 1510]]

happened before. We never even got a bill out of committee in 60 years 
of trying.
    But again, in this issue, just like on the budget, there's been this 
huge disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality. All those 
television ads they ran against our plan, they said, ``They're going to 
take your choice of doctor away.'' Folks, you're losing your choices of 
doctors now. We're going to give it back to you. They said we're going 
to ration health care. There are 39 million Americans without health 
insurance today. They're being rationed right now. They said that we 
were going to totally mess up this system with bureaucracy and 
regulation.
    Well, let me tell you what we've done. We've made our plan less 
bureaucratic and less regulatory. We've given small business the option 
to join big buyers cooperatives. But most of them will do it so they can 
buy health insurance cheaper instead of more expensive now. Under the 
present system, small business pays 30 to 40 percent more than big 
business and government. We provided more help to small business so they 
can afford to cover their employees more. We have met every criticism 
that's been leveled against us, except we haven't walked away from 
trying to provide full coverage to all Americans and trying to constrain 
the cost of health care and trying to help working families and the 
elderly with prescription drug benefits and long-term care. We haven't 
walked away from that. We're still trying to do the things that America 
needs.
    Now, our opponents say this is bad for small business. But let's 
look at the facts. Most small businesses insure their employees today 
and they're paying an enormous price for it. Why? Because they pay for 
everybody that doesn't cover their employees; because, keep in mind, if 
you get real sick, you show up at the emergency room, you get health 
care, the rest of us pay the bill; and because small businesses don't 
have the bargaining power that big business and Government does.
    Now, what has happened? We're the only country in the world that 
this has happened to. In the last 10 years--10 years ago 88 percent of 
the American people had health coverage; today only 83 percent do. We're 
going in reverse. That's more than one in six Americans. You think, 
well, I'm not one of the one in six. Well, let me tell you, if you're 
very wealthy or you're very poor or you're a politician or you're in 
jail, you'll always have health care. Otherwise, you might lose it. So 
just because you're not one of the one in six now doesn't mean you won't 
be.
    Who have we guaranteed health care to in America? Our elderly on 
Medicare. If you tried to repeal Medicare today there would be a riot, 
wouldn't there? There would be a riot in America, and there ought to be. 
Don't working class, middle class Americans deserve the same thing? I 
think they do.
    Now, we have people that say, ``Well, let's just tinker around, do a 
little here, a little there.'' The problem is that in good conscience 
I'm not against doing a little, but I want it to be a good little, not a 
bad little. The truth is there's a lot of evidence that if you just 
tinker around with some of these recommendations that our opponents have 
put out, you might actually raise insurance rates more, not help working 
people at all, and have more people lose their insurance.
    Now, this is amazing. We spend 14 percent of our income on health 
care. Canada spends 10 percent, Germany spends 8\1/2\ percent. Nobody's 
even close to us. Yet everybody else covers 96, 97, 98 percent of the 
people, and we cover 83 percent. And we're supposed to defend this.
    Yes, our doctors are great; our nurses are great; our medical 
schools are great. We can pay for all that. We can even pay for all the 
terrible tragedies of increased violence, high rates of AIDS and things 
like that, and have money left over if we have the courage to reorganize 
the way health care is financed. This is about finance. This is not 
about anything else.
    So I say to you, we need to complete a battle that was begun by 
Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman that has never been completed. And 
to show you how far our friends in the other party have gone, in 1972--
'71--President Richard Nixon recommended that all Americans be covered 
by health care and that employers and employees split the bill. They now 
think that is a radical, liberal idea. [Laughter] Every time George 
Mitchell has reached out to compromise, they have moved further away. 
This must not be about politics.

[[Page 1511]]

It must not be about rhetoric. It must not be about party. It should be 
about health care, the human beings of the United States of America.
    I just want to tell you one thing. You know, my wife and I have 
gotten about a million letters from Americans. And when I go places, 
normally we'll call some of the letter writers and ask them if they'll 
come meet us, just so the press and the public in communities can see 
these people. I was in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, the other day, a little 
town in western Pennsylvania, and I was introduced by two women. One of 
them's name was Louise. She's not the one on the ad. [Laughter] The 
other one's name was Lynn. One woman was a 62-year-old dairy farmer.
    And you know, I grew up in a farming State, once lived on a farm, 
and that's why I got into politics, I didn't want to work that hard. 
[Laughter] There is nothing more difficult than being a dairy farmer. 
You've got to do it 7 days a week. You can't tell the cows to stop 
growing milk. [Laughter] It's a very tough thing. At the age of 62 this 
woman and her husband lost their health insurance. They just simply 
couldn't afford it anymore. They just kept exploding the price over and 
over and over again. What are we to say to her, ``Here's a country that 
believes in work, family, and community; it's tough luck for you''? The 
other woman, the mother of five children, had her husband stand up, we 
looked at him. We thought they were fine people. They had five kids. She 
had cancer and is recovering, but you know he lost one job, changed it, 
lost their insurance. What do we say to them? What I want you to know is 
it's not just one in six; it can happen to nearly anybody.
    I'm trying to get all these people to leave welfare and go to work. 
They leave welfare, go to work, start paying taxes, lose their health 
care, and pay taxes for somebody else's health care. What do we say to 
them? You know, a lot of these people that demonstrate against me at 
these health care meetings say I'm trying to have socialized medicine 
and all this bull. It's not true. It's private insurance we're 
advocating. They think they ought to put Harry Truman on Mount Rushmore. 
But, now folks, I come from one of those families that was for Harry 
Truman when he was living. [Laughter] And I am telling you, the same 
crowd used the same arguments against Harry Truman. And they bad-mouthed 
him, and they said he was rube, and he didn't deserve to be President, 
even though he had finished the Second World War and led the world in 
organizing the institutions of the post-cold-war era. They talked about 
how he was incompetent and in over his head and didn't know what he was 
doing. And they demeaned him with the same arguments they're using 
today.
    It has always been difficult to change. But we turned this economy 
around. We're opening up the global economy. We're laying the 
foundations for peace and security in the 21st century. But if you want 
us to have money that you pay to the Federal Government to invest in 
education and training and new technology and hope for the future, we've 
got to do something to restrain health care costs and to provide health 
security to all Americans. We have got to do it.
    Now, there is one thing you can do to get it done. You can make your 
voices heard and you can elect these two fine men to the House of 
Representatives. You can elect Tom Andrews to the Senate. You can elect 
Joe Brennan to the Governor's office. You can send a message to America 
that you are on the side of change.
    Thank you. And God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 7:30 p.m. in the Eastland Ballroom at the 
Sonesta Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John E. Baldacci, State 
senator in Maine, and Dennis L. Dutremble, president, Maine senate.