[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 27 (Monday, July 8, 1996)]
[Pages 1166-1174]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks to the Convention of the National Council of Senior Citizens in
Chicago, Illinois
July 2, 1996
The President. Thank you very much. Pretty rowdy group today. Thank
you. I want to--what's the problem over here on the right? [Laughter]
Steve said, you know, he said, ``This room is 285 feet long. It's like a
giant bowling alley.'' [Laughter] There's kind of a wave that goes from
right to left here.
Let me, first of all, thank Lois and Tom for their introductions. I
want to thank your outgoing president, Gene Glover, for his years of
outstanding service and wish your incoming president, Harry Gunther,
well, and say that I hope this means that we have an even better chance
of carrying Florida than we did before we started, Harry.
I thank all the distinguished labor leaders who are here, George
Becker and Jay Mazur. And I see Doug Fraser there. You're looking great;
I'm glad to see you, Doug. Thank you and God bless you, sir.
I want to say a special word of thanks to Steve Protulis. He has
done a great job for you and a great job for me. Thank you, Steve. And I
want to recognize one other person apart from the elected officials, and
that is my great friend, Justin Dart, over there. Thank you for
everything you have done, sir. I'm glad to see you.
When Tom was up there kind of being rough on the Congress I wanted
to say, he didn't mean the Members of Congress who are here. [Laughter]
He didn't mean Dick Durbin or Ed Pastor or Bobby Rush or Luis Gutierrez.
We thank them for what they did in this Congress. They did a great job.
And, Mayor Daley, it's good to be in Chicago. And I'll be back
before you know it. I thank you for having us all here.
I always love to come to Chicago, and I like to--we flew in a
helicopter down to Meigs Field, and we got to fly over some of the
suburbs--and I always reminisce when I do. But a lot of you know that
Hillary was born in Chicago and grew up in Park Ridge. And I wish she
were here today, but she is representing our country on a tour of nine
Central and Eastern European nations. So I talked to her last night; she
just finished a day in Romania. So I wish she were here, but she's over
there talking about countries who love freedom. [Applause] Thank you.
I want to thank you for something else that I know you feel, and
that is, it meant a lot to me when I took this recent trip to Europe to
have the annual meeting of the seven largest industrial countries and
then a meeting with those countries and Russia about political
challenges facing the world to know that
[[Page 1167]]
the people back home were not only outraged by the murder of our service
people in Saudi Arabia but determined to stand against terrorism
wherever it exists.
And I know you must have been proud this morning to read in the
newspaper that our Federal law enforcement officials thwarted a planned
attempt to blow up buildings in Arizona. I thank them for that, and I'm
proud of them.
I can tell you this: In this open world of ours where we can all
move around the world and ideas and information and money and technology
can move around the world in a split second, we are more vulnerable to
the organized forces of intolerance and hatred and terrorism. But we can
also prevent a lot of these things. I have seen it work here in the
United States in the last 3 years, where we've headed off a number of
such incidences. I see it happen in the Middle East, where incidences
not only occur but many more are headed off. And we're going to have to
work at this, work it together, and other nations need to work with us,
because this is our common security threat after the cold war. And we
can whip this if we'll stay together and work together. And we have to
do that.
The other thing I'd like to say is that I signed a proclamation late
last night proclaiming this month as National Unity Month and asking all
Americans to find ways in their places of worship or in other places to
stand up against this terrible wave of church bombings and the
desecration of other houses of worship that we are seeing across this
country.
Just before I came to see you I announced that we reallocated a few
million dollars to the 12 States that have seen the great bulk of these
church burnings so that every county will receive some funds either to
hire extra officers or to have people work overtime, or to help churches
put up security equipment or lighting at night, to do something to try
to prevent these things from occurring.
But we also need to change the atmosphere. If you've seen the
profiles coming out on a lot of the people who have been charged with
these church burnings, they seem to be no discernible conspiracy, but
instead a lot of people who share common problems, people who have
disappointments in their own lives, frustrations in their own lives, and
somehow think instead of saying, ``Well, what can I do to straighten
myself out or who can I go to''--whom can I go to--``to ask for help,''
they say, ``Well, I'm just going to be mad and burn a black church.''
And you know, this is something that is sort of endemic to human
nature. When you're in a crisis in your life, you can either say, ``What
can I do to fix it,'' or ``how can I get some help,'' or you can look
for somebody else to blame or say, ``Well, no matter how bad off I am
there is somebody that's even lower than I am, and I'm going to punish
them.'' And we have to stand up against that. We have to change the
atmosphere in the country.
Don't forget that--don't forget, this country was founded on a
belief in religious liberty. A lot of the first people who came to the
shores of the United States came here because they wanted to come to a
place where nobody would tell them how to worship God, and they could
make their own mind up.
Don't forget that the first amendment to the Constitution not only
protects the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, and the freedom of
assembly, it protects the freedom of religion. It is the first amendment
to the Constitution. And over our entire history we have displayed a
fidelity to it that has kept our country strong. And we dare not allow
this to continue without every American of conscience, without regard to
their race, their region, or their political party, speaking up against
it. It is wrong, and we must stand together.
For more than 30 years now, you have been fighting the good fight
you were cheering about today, fighting first for Medicare and for
Medicaid and for Social Security and then fighting to protect it. I am
very proud that one of the things that happened last year with the
leadership of Senator Moynihan primarily is that we finally made Social
Security an independent agency, giving the autonomy it needs to fulfill
its mission.
You know as well as I do that your fight for the well-being and the
dignity of American seniors has never been more important than it is
now. You know that the victories
[[Page 1168]]
that we won through the veto pen in 1995 didn't solve the fundamental
problem of securing the Medicare Trust Fund in a way that honors the
dignity of the seniors of this country or protects our sense of
fairness. I am proud to stand with you. But what you do from here
forward is central to our mission as we move into the 21st century.
When I ran for President, I said to all of you that I wanted to lead
our country into the next century to ensure three things. I wanted the
American dream to be a living reality to every person who is willing to
work for it, without regard to their race, their gender, their region,
or what they start out with in life. I wanted this country to be coming
together around all of its ethnic and racial and religious diversity,
instead of being torn apart the way so many countries around the world
are. And I wanted this country to continue to be the world's strongest
force for peace and freedom and prosperity.
At the end of the cold war, if the world is not going to be divided
into the communist and non-communist world, and if we can force the
nuclear threat to recede, we still have to have somebody out there
standing up for human decency around the world and peace and freedom.
You see that in Bosnia. You see it in Haiti. You see it in the fight
against terrorism.
And it seemed to me that in order to accomplish these things we had
to ask ourselves: Okay, the cold war is over. We're living in a new kind
of world. All right, we're not dominated by large industrial
bureaucracies and large government bureaucracies and mass production
anymore. High technology and the information revolution has changed
dramatically manufacturing and agriculture and every form of human
endeavor. So we changed the way we work; we changed the way we live; we
changed the way we are relating to the rest of the world--big changes,
100-year changes. Now what?
And it seemed to me that we had to start by saying we have to meet
these challenges in a way that protects our values. And one of the
values that has made this country strong for over 200 years is
recognizing that we are, none of us, in this alone. We have
responsibilities to each other. That's really what all these debates are
about.
So if, for example, if you just take Medicare. If there's a problem
with Medicare, solve the problem, but don't solve it by asking families
to go back to the days when they had to choose between health care for
the parents or college educations for the kids. That's not the answer to
solve that problem.
This is about more than money. This is about what we are as a
people. What are our obligation to our parents, and what are our
parents' obligation to their grandchildren? How can we make these
decisions in a way that allows America to grow but to grow together, to
go forward together, so that we all feel like we're in this together and
that we're growing stronger because we're holding hands and working
together?
Now, that is what I believe we should be doing. And I don't think
it's very complicated. I think we need a strategy which says our role is
to create opportunity, not guarantees but opportunity for people to make
the most of their own lives, to insist that our citizens act with
personal responsibility, and to build a stronger sense of community, to
recognize that we're all in this together, we do have certain
obligations to one another, and we're all going to do better if
everybody has a chance to do well, and that we can't lift up one group
by keeping another down. We have to make these decisions together.
That's the way to do it.
Take the economy. Four years ago our economy was drifting,
unemployment was high, the deficit was out of control, we had the
slowest job growth since the Great Depression. I wanted to chart a new
course. And I said what we ought to do with this economy is to have a
disciplined plan to move us into the 21st century with a growing economy
that everybody had a chance to benefit from. Let's cut the deficit, get
interest rates down, get investment into creating jobs and homes up.
Let's continue to invest in the education of our children, the education
of adults, high technology, research, the things that will create good
jobs. Let's have more trade, but let's make sure it's not only free
trade but fair trade. Let's do these things, and it will work.
I also believe very strongly that we had to do more to help working
families to succeed at work and to succeed at home. You know, a lot of
people talk about welfare.
[[Page 1169]]
Well, one of the things that I figured out was we had a tax system that
was punishing people at the low end of the wage scale who chose work
over welfare. So we doubled--we doubled the family tax credit, called
the earned-income tax credit so we could say if you're working 40 hours
a week and you've got a child in the home, we will not tax you into
poverty. You should be out of poverty. We will lift you out of poverty
with the tax system. It was pro-family.
We fought for the family and medical leave law, which simply said if
you have a sick parent or a newborn baby and you have to take some time
off work, you won't lose your job. It was a good bill, and it was the
right thing to do.
Now, when we passed this economic plan, I predicted that if it
passed, we'd be able to cut the deficit in half in 4 years, and the
American people would produce 8 million new jobs, even though we were
going to reduce the size of the National Government. Well, the
Republicans in the Congress fought us tooth and nail. And I'll give them
credit--every one of them voted against it. [Laughter] They didn't fool
around; they were united. [Laughter]
Speaker Gingrich, then the minority leader, said, ``I believe this
will lead to a recession next year.'' Now the majority leader, Mr.
Armey, said of my economic plan, ``Clearly this is a job-killer.''
[Laughter] Senator Gramm said, ``We are buying a one-way ticket to a
recession. The American economy is going to get weaker, not stronger,
and 4 years from today the deficit will be higher than it is today and
not lower.'' Senator Dole said, ``President Clinton knows, and the
American people know, the plan does not tackle the deficit.'' And John
Kasich, the head of the Budget Committee, from Ohio, said----
Audience members. Boo-o-o!
The President. Wait, let me quote this. Here is what he said of our
economic plan, quote, ``This plan will not work. If it was to work then
I'd have to become a Democrat.'' [Laughter] Well, I want to tell Mr.
Kasich that Mayor Daley is saving a seat for him at the convention,
because it works. It does.
I don't know how they define ``work,'' but in 3\1/2\ years the
deficit, now we know, will be cut by more than half. We know the
American people did not produce 8 million jobs in 4 years; they produced
9.7 million jobs in 3\1/2\ years; 3.7 million new homeowners; an all-
time high in the export of American products; a record number for 3
years in a row of new businesses starting up. And for the first time in
10 years, thank goodness, average hourly earnings for working families
are starting to go up. The lowest combined rates of unemployment and
inflation in almost 30 years. I think it's fair to say that based on the
evidence, when it came to the economy, we were right, and they were
wrong.
Of course, we have more to do. The minimum wage this year is going
to drop to a 40-year low in what it will buy if we don't raise it. You
can't raise a family on 4.25 an hour. And if this Congress really
believes in work and family values, let them go back and raise the
minimum wage like they ought to.
And we ought to pass the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill and pass it now,
unadulterated. So people won't lose their health insurance when they
change jobs or someone in their family has been sick. We also ought to
make sure that we do a number of other things. I've sent a package of
retirement legislation to the Congress to make it easier for self-
employed people and small-business people to take out retirement plans
and then to keep it even if they go through periods of unemployment, or
when they change jobs. There are lots of other things we need to do. But
the last thing we need to do is to reverse a course that is working.
I also believe that when people get to the end of their working
lives, they shouldn't have to worry about whether they can feed
themselves when they retire. Nor, however, should they have to worry
about whether Medicare will be there for them.
Now, I noticed when our friends on the other side debate Medicare in
Washington, they never tell people that one of the important things that
we did in our 1993 economic plan was to strengthen the Medicare Trust
Fund, to add a few years to it. And they attacked us every step of the
way for trying to do it, and in fact, in the '94 election promised to
undo what we had done to strengthen the Medicare Trust Fund and protect
the financial integrity of Medicare. It's why we
[[Page 1170]]
fought for the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, so that
seniors can get the nutrition and transportation and other services they
need.
It's why I have worked so hard to pass and then to protect that
crime bill. How many seniors would say that their number one concern
over the last 5 years has been their personal safety? And again I would
say, if you just look at the record this administration has worked on in
the area of criminal justice and law enforcement--we passed the Brady
bill, requiring a waiting period before people can buy handguns; we
passed the crime bill, which put 100,000 more police on the street over
a period of 6 years. I can tell you this: We are ahead of schedule with
those police officers and under budget. And they are making a difference
to lower the crime rate in America.
We passed the ban on assault weapons. And again, the leadership of
the other side fought us every step of the way. They said we shouldn't
give the communities any money to try to help prevention programs, to
spend money to keep kids working in the summertime or giving them some
things to do after school, instead of to walk the streets. They said
that this was a waste of money, even though police officers were
screaming for it all over America, so that our young people could have
something to say yes to, as well as something to say no to.
They said if we passed the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill,
we were just going to take everybody's gun away from them. Well, I'll
tell you something, we've now been through two deer seasons--
[laughter]--and where I live, every last hunter that hadn't wanted to
buy a new gun is still hunting with the same rifle they had when those
guys were trying to scare them to death.
But there are some people who didn't get guns: 60,000 felons,
fugitives, and stalkers didn't get guns because of the Brady bill. We
were right, and they were wrong.
Ask Mayor Daley, a former prosecutor, about Chicago. Community
policing, preventive strategies: the crime rate is down in virtually
every major city in this country in every major category. Substantial
drop in the murder rate, just from last year, right here in Chicago. So
those people who fought the crime bill were wrong. They were wrong. The
evidence is here. And that has to do with how senior citizens live.
We know that as we look to the future, we have to find a way to
control medical inflation. Of course, we do. We have to find a way to
try to bring inflation in health care down to the level of inflation in
the country and keep it there. We know that as there's more seniors
relative to workers in the population, we have to deal with that. We
know that we have to have integrity in the Medicare trust fund. Can we
do that without creating two classes of people under Medicare? Can we do
it without destroying the guarantees of Medicaid to families with people
with disabilities, to elderly people in nursing homes, to poor women and
their infant children? You bet we can. We've done it before. We can do
it again, and we will do it.
Medicaid, most people think, is a program for poor people. The truth
is only about 30 percent of it goes to help poor families, pregnant
women, and little children. Seventy percent of it goes to care for our
senior citizens, most of whom come from middle class families, to enable
their children to have stable lives and raise their children and educate
them, and to go to help families with family members with disabilities,
many of whom can live at home or independently because of Medicaid, many
of whom are able to raise their children with serious disabilities at
home without going into bankruptcy or having to give up their jobs
because of Medicaid.
Now, can we do things to slow the rate of inflation there, to give
the people on Medicaid more choices, to have more incentives to do all
kinds of things? Yes, we can. Should we walk away from the guarantee we
have given to try to help make people secure in their health care? No,
we should not. No, we should not. Are there other strategies we can
follow? You bet there are. What about preventive health care?
One of the things that I tried to do--it's turned out to be very
controversial and I now see why no previous President ever wanted to get
into this--is I believe that we should take strong action to stop the
advertising, sales, and transference of cigarettes to children. I think
it's wrong.
[[Page 1171]]
You talk about saving money. Three thousand children a day smoke--
start smoking--begin. Three thousand children a day begin. One thousand
of them will have their lives shortened because of it. And along the way
society will pick up a significant part of the health care bill. Now,
that's one way to save money.
Now, I have been amazed at the debate that's injected itself into
the national campaign on this issue. I notice that Senator Dole
questioned the other day whether or not tobacco was really addictive for
everybody. [Laughter] And then, apparently, this morning, when it was--
he was asked about Dr. Koop, who was President Reagan's Surgeon General,
a remarkable man, who may be a Republican for all I know--President
Reagan's Surgeon General, but he has been one of our most outspoken
advocates of trying to stop smoking among young people--and this morning
Senator Dole suggested that maybe Dr. Koop had been brainwashed by the
liberal media. [Laughter] Well, I imagine Dr. Koop was surprised to hear
that. [Laughter]
I believe Dr. Koop knows more about the dangers of tobacco than the
so-called liberal media or Senator Dole. He's out there fighting for our
children, and that's what we need more people to do, fight for children
and not play politics with this issue.
Medicaid today spends at least $10 billion in Federal and State
funds to pay for treatment for smoking-related illnesses. Now, if we're
going to get serious about cutting the costs, that's one way to do it
without hurting families. It will help families, it will strengthen
families.
And finally, let me say that this sort of partisan division has only
made the Medicare Trust Fund problem worse. Let's face it, we have
enough savings identified in both the Republican plan and my plan to
take the Medicare Trust Fund out to a decade right now. And we don't
know yet whether we won't be able to find more in the development of
managed care, voluntary options for seniors, and other things that are
happening in the marketplace right now.
Now, why don't we go ahead and do this? Why are we holding out? Why
is the Congress holding out for an agreement that would essentially
develop a two-class Medicare system, where the older and the poorer and
the sicker you are, the more likely you are to be in yesterday's
Medicare that's under-funded; and the younger and healthier and more
well off you are, the more options you're given to walk away. That's not
what made Medicare work. What made Medicare work is you say, we have
obligations to each other, and we're going to fulfill them. We're going
to do this and solve this together. I think that is the right thing to
do.
But you need to understand, every health care program--there is no
such thing as a problem-free health care program. You have to manage
this as it goes along. You have to deal with the population, what
happens to people, what the costs are. But I'd just like for you to
remember two things when all these people tell you how bad Medicare is,
how it needs to be worked over and changed and, in effect,
deconstructed. I'd just like for you to remember two things--the same
thing for Medicaid--number one, Medicare has the smallest administrative
overhead cost of any insurance program, public or private, in the entire
United States of America, and number two--number two and far more
important, America's longevity, unfortunately, is not as high as some
countries, but the main reason is, we have lamentably higher rates of
violence among young people, we have higher rates of AIDS, which kills a
lot of young people in this country, and our infant mortality rate in
some places is still higher than it is in some countries. But if you
live to be 65 in the United States, you have the highest life expectancy
of any group of seniors in the world. Medicare, Social Security, SSI,
that's what did that. Now, I can't believe we can fix the problem of the
financing in a way that preserves the fact that we have the seniors with
the highest life expectancy in the world, with a program that already
has the lowest administrative costs in the world. This is not rocket
science. This is politics.
So I would say again, this is a great philosophical divide--should
we abandon Medicaid's guarantee to poor women and little children----
Audience members. No-o-o!
[[Page 1172]]
The President. ----to families with disabilities, to the seniors in
the nursing homes?
Audience members. No-o-o!
The President. No. Should we create in Medicare--we're not talking
about saving money here; we're not talking about securing the trust fund
for a decade. We're talking about whether we should create a two-class
system of care.
Audience members. No-o-o!
The President. You know, if I stay healthy--I don't know if I can
the way things are in Washington--[laughter]--but if I stay healthy, I
retire as President, and I have a nice pension, you know, I'll probably
be fine. Their system might be great for me, I could walk away. But what
about my responsibilities to everybody else? What about everybody
else's--what about our responsibilities?
So, again, I would say that the Senate has new leadership and we
have--we have identified the savings necessary to secure the Medicare
Trust Fund. Why should we go into a work stoppage just because it's
election season? Let's go ahead and secure the Medicare Trust Fund for
another decade. You know how we're going to save the money and you said
okay, and we can do that.
I know, you know, we've had a good time today, and I know that I'm
here preaching to the saved--[laughter]--it makes it easier. But let me
tell you, there is a serious issue here. We have serious questions to
deal with. We all know that we're living longer and that the
distribution of population is changing. We have the come to grips with
these things. The only thing I'm saying is I believe the seniors of this
country care about their children and grandchildren and their great-
grandchildren.
When I was the Governor of my State, I spent most of my time trying
to improve the education of our children, and I got most of my support
for it from people who were in their golden years, who were more than
happy to come up and invest more money or do whatever it took to make
sure that their grandchildren had a bright future.
I do not want to see the generations in this country pitted against
each other. We can find a clearly nonpolitical, bipartisan, even-handed,
sensible solution to any problem the generational changes are going to
face this country with, as long as we don't use it as an excuse to
divide this country one from another, and to be unfair to the seniors in
their quest, legitimately, to have a good life. You know it, and I know
it.
I want to just say two things in closing. While I think we have
obligations to you, I am impressed by how many of you still think that
you've got plenty of energy to exercise obligations to other people, and
I thank you for that. I thank you for that. I thank you for becoming
foster grandparents or working with troubled young people or becoming
mentors and tutors. Those kids need people like you, and we need more
kids with more seniors helping them one on one.
I thank those who have joined our National Senior Service Corps. I
thank those who work with other seniors who aren't as well off as they
are either financially or physically. I thank you for your wisdom and
your vigor. And I ask you to bring that wisdom and vigor not just to
those who agree with you in the next 4 months, but to others as well.
We have here a very clear choice. And in a way that's a happy thing
for America because you don't have to guess this time. You know, in lots
of elections--in lots of election there's a certain amount of guesswork.
But you know what I will do. First of all, you know that we did what we
said we'd do, or we got caught trying to do it. [Applause] Thank you.
Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more
years!
The President. Thank you. Thank you. And that the results have been
good. Compared to 4 years ago, we're better off than we were on the
economy. We're better off than we were when it comes to crime. We've
proved that you can protect the environment and grow the economy. We
have worked with the States to move people from welfare to work. And
while others in Washington talked about it, we now have 1.3 million
fewer people on welfare than we did the day I became President.
We've proved that you can shrink the size of the Federal Government
without being cruel to the Federal employees or undermining the quality
of Federal service. We have proved, in other words, that we could grow
the economy with opportunity and respon-
[[Page 1173]]
sibility and a stronger sense of community. That's the first thing.
The second thing is, there's lots more to do. Our country's
transformation into the 21st century is far from complete. I proposed
the other day that we amend the family and medical leave law to let
people have a few hours off a year to go to regular conferences with
their kids and make regular doctor's appointments with their parents if
they need it, or their children if they need it. That's a good thing to
do, a simple thing to do.
I proposed making 2 more years of education after high school
universal for everyone through a system of tax credits that would let
everybody go to their nearest community college. And there are lots of
other things that we have to do.
And the third point I want to make is, on the you-don't-have-to-
guess point is, you know where I stand, and you know where they stand.
And if the American people want the budget that they passed in 1995 that
I vetoed, they can get it. They can get it. But you need to talk to your
friends and neighbors about this. Six months into 1997, if they had the
White House and the Congress, that budget would be the law of the land.
If you think it's a bad idea that we're putting 100,000 police on the
street, and you want to remove that commitment and just throw money at
the problem, you can get that. They did that once, but I stopped them.
If you think that I was wrong to take on this tobacco issue, or
wrong to require the V-chip in the new television sets so that parents
have some control over the things their young children watch, if you
think I was wrong about the family leave law and you don't want it
extended, you can have someone who agrees with you, who believes--who
led the fight--who led the fight against everything I said.
Audience members. No-o-o!
Audience member. We'll stand with you, Bill!
The President. But what I want you to do is not just stand with me,
I want you to go home and explain it to everybody else. That's what I
want you to do. I want you to explain it to everybody else. [Applause]
Thank you. Thank you.
Now, let me say one other thing. Let me say one thing. I'm going to
do my best in the next 4 months to give this country back to the people,
just like I tried to do in 1992. I want this election process to be in
the hands of the American people, and I'm going to do everything I can
to see that they get a chance to make these decisions based upon what
will happen afterward that affects their lives, their children's lives,
and the future of this country.
There is no nation in the world as well-positioned for the next
century as the United States--no nation. All we have to do is to make
sure that we give people the tools they need to make the most of their
own lives, do everything we can to ensure responsibility from all of our
citizens, and remind everybody that we are in this together. This is the
greatest country in the world today because, in wave after wave after
wave after wave over 200 years, we have steadily built a bigger group of
American success stories. I believe we're in this together. That is the
choice the American people face.
And if you go out there and remind people of the example and the
story of your own lives, you can look into the future for people who are
younger than you are. You can help them to take their blinders off; you
can help to make sure that they're not distracted. And you can ask them
to stand up to the finest and best in this country. And that will ensure
a good result, not just in November, but far more important for our
children and our grandchildren.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Regency Ballroom at the
West Tower of Chicago Hyatt Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Steve
Protulis, executive director, and Tom Buffenbarger, board member,
National Council of Senior Citizens; Lois Wellington, president,
Congress of California Seniors; George Becker, president, United
Steelworkers of America; Jay Mazur, president, Union of Needletrades,
Industrial and Textile Employees; Douglas Fraser, former president,
United Auto Workers; Justin Dart, chairman, Justice for All; and Mayor
Richard M. Daley of Chicago. A portion of these remarks could not be
verified because the tape was incomplete.
[[Page 1174]]