[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 36 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Pages 1735-1737]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Labor Day in Bath, Maine

September 5, 1994

    Ladies and gentlemen, I know it's raining here today, but you have 
brought a lot of sunshine into my life by the example you've set and the 
work you've done. And I want to thank you for coming out in the rain to 
stand up for the interests of the working families of America on this 
Labor Day. Thank you for being here.
    I thank our great labor leaders Tom Donahue and George Kourpias for 
being here. I want to thank Buzz Fitzgerald and Stoney Dionne. Tom 
talked about the ironworks being run by two guys named Buzz and Stoney. 
It sounded like a television series. [Laughter] If you do what I expect 
you to do here, we may get a television series out of this yet.
    I also want to say a special word of thanks to my good friend Joe 
Brennan for being here and for presenting himself as a candidate for 
Governor again, to Senator Dutremble and Senator Baldacci for being 
willing to run for Congress at a time when it's not a very popular place 
to be, but it's still an important place to be. And I want to say a 
special word of thanks to Tom Andrews for his leadership in the United 
States Congress to help us rebuild the shipbuilding industry in America 
and help turn this economy around.
    And of course, most of all I want to thank my good friend George 
Mitchell. You know, if George had been commissioner of baseball, they'd 
be back playing again now. And I might say on this Labor Day, there's 
still time for them to go back to work and finish the best baseball 
season in 50 years, and I hope they will.
    Folks, most of what needs to be said here today has been said. But 
for a century now people have been gathering on Labor Day to celebrate 
the dignity of work, its importance to our lives, and to have that last 
long weekend before school starts again and we all go back to work full-
time.
    I ran for President because I thought this country was in danger of 
going in the wrong direction and because I thought that our people had 
it within them to keep the American dream alive into the 21st century 
for our children and our grandchildren. And I believed then just as 
strongly as I believe today that we have to have a plan, a strategy, a 
vision of what we wish our country to be like and how we're going to get 
there.
    If we're going to keep the American dream of opportunity alive for 
everybody who's willing to work hard and play by the rules, I believe we 
must do three things: We have to have an economy that works, we have to 
empower our people to succeed and win in that economy, and we've got to 
come together again as a community and work together. We cannot afford 
in a global economy to be divided again, Government and business and 
workers fighting each other all the time, people in this country finding 
ways to get in fights with each other instead of ways to pull together 
and make this country great again.
    And our administration has fought for change against some very, very 
powerful enemies of change, against people who often don't seem to 
understand what the stakes are because that's what I want for you and 
your families and your children.
    You heard Senator Mitchell say that we began with an economic 
strategy to get this terrible deficit down. The debt of this country was 
quadrupled in 12 years. We are bringing the deficit down for 3 years in 
a row for the first time since Harry Truman was President. We are doing 
it by cutting spending, asking the wealthiest 1.5 percent to pay more 
taxes, and providing tax breaks to 15 million working families that are 
hovering just above the poverty line because we want them to keep 
working and raising their children, not going into the welfare system. 
In the State of Maine alone, almost 61,000 families got a tax cut, and 
only 3,700 got a tax increase. It was a good deal for Maine. It was a 
good deal for America. And if it hadn't been for Tom Andrews and George 
Mitchell, the plan would have failed, because we passed it by the 
narrowest of margins over the enemies of change.

[[Page 1736]]

    We have expanded trade. We have expanded educational and training 
opportunity. But maybe most important of all on this Labor Day, we have 
called for new partnerships in shipbuilding, in airplane building, in 
automobiles, in agriculture. The partnership here that you've heard 
these people detail between labor and management is the thing I came 
here to highlight. Even in the driving rain, the rest of America should 
know that if you can take a 110-year-old company and redesign the 
relationship of labor and management in a new partnership and ask the 
National Government to help you to build a commercial future as well as 
a defense future, then every manufacturing facility in America can do 
the same, and we can rebuild this economy on the strength of your 
example.
    For the first time in 10 years, manufacturing jobs in America have 
increased now for 8 months in a row. They're a part of that 4.1 million 
jobs that George Mitchell talked about. And as we look ahead from this 
Labor Day, let us leave here rededicating ourselves to meet the other 
challenges that face us, to keep this economic recovery going, to keep 
this partnership between business and labor and a partnership with 
Government going, to keep working until every American can have the 
education and training opportunities he or she needs to compete and win, 
to keep working until we turn the terrible situation we have in health 
care around where we're spending more and covering less.
    This is the only advanced country in the world that spends 40 
percent more than everybody else, and we're still losing people with 
health insurance. There are 5 million people in working families just 
like yours who had health insurance a year ago, 5 years ago, who don't 
have it today. My friends, we can do better. And until we do better, we 
will pay the price.
    And let us continue our efforts to change the way the political 
system works. We need more examples of what we had with the crime bill, 
where we broke through gridlock and a few brave Republicans stood up to 
their leadership and said, ``The American people want a solution to the 
crime problems. It's not a partisan problem. It's an American problem, 
and we're going to work on it together.'' We need that in other examples 
as well. We need the Congress to pass the laws reforming the lobbying 
practices and the campaign finance practices in Washington, to help to 
free people to make the courageous decisions that have to be made.
    And finally let me say this, and I want to close with this because I 
want you to think about this as you leave. We've got to get out of here, 
or we're going to raise health care costs by staying in the rain too 
long. [Laughter] We can create more jobs. We can empower you to seize 
those jobs. But unless we get back to good, old-fashioned American 
values of working together in partnership, we're still not going to do 
what we ought to do. Everybody is for change in general, but they can 
always find a reason to be against it in particular. Believe me, there 
will never be a bill in Congress that is perfect, because we are not 
perfect people. There is always some reason we can find to say no, to 
turn away from tomorrow, to be divided from our friends and neighbors.
    This Bath Iron Works is coming back because Stoney and Buzz and all 
the other people put aside their differences to find something they 
could say yes to. This is going to happen in America because this 
administration is working with the tools we have to rebuild the American 
economy in partnership, not sitting on the sidelines and not promising 
you miracles but promising you progress.
    And I ask you as you leave here today to reward people in public 
life who will say yes to America, who will look for ways to come 
together, not be divided, who will ask you to be courageous enough to 
face the tough decisions. That's the real way to make sure we have a 
21st century where the rain brings the sunshine.
    Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. at the Bath Iron Works shipyard. 
In his remarks, he referred to Tom Donahue, secretary-treasurer, AFL-
CIO; George Kourpias, international president, International Association 
of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM); Duane (Buzz) Fitzgerald, 
president and chief executive officer, Bath Iron Works Corp.; John 
(Stoney) Dionne, president, IAM Local S6; John E. Baldacci, Maine

[[Page 1737]]

State senator; and Dennis L. Dutremble, president, Maine Senate.