[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 35 (Monday, September 2, 1996)]
[Pages 1577-1586]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National 
Convention in Chicago

August 29, 1996

    The President. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, my fellow 
Democrats, and my fellow Americans: thank you for your nomination. I 
don't know if I can find a fancy way to say this, but I accept.
    So many have contributed to the record we have made for the American 
people, but one above all, my partner, my friend, and the best Vice 
President in our history, Al Gore.
    Tonight I thank the city of Chicago, its great mayor, and its 
wonderful people for this magnificent convention. I love Chicago for 
many reasons, for your powerful spirit, your sports teams, your lively 
politics, but most of all for the love and light of my life, Chicago's 
daughter Hillary.
    Four years ago, you and I set forth on a journey to bring our vision 
to our country, to keep the American dream alive for all who were 
willing to work for it, to make our American community stronger, to keep 
America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and 
prosperity.
    Four years ago, with high unemployment, stagnant wages, crime, 
welfare, and the defi- 

[[Page 1578]]

cit on the rise, with a host of unmet challenges and a rising tide of 
cynicism, I told you about a place I was born, and I told you that I 
still believed in a place called Hope.
    Well, for 4 years now, to realize our vision we have pursued a 
simple but profound strategy: opportunity for all, responsibility from 
all, a strong united American community.
    Four days ago, as you were making your way here, I began a train 
ride to make my way to Chicago through America's heartland. I wanted to 
see the faces, I wanted to hear the voices of the people for whom I have 
worked and fought these last 4 years. And did I ever see them.
    I met an ingenious business woman who was once on welfare in West 
Virginia; a brave police officer, shot and paralyzed, now a civic leader 
in Kentucky; an autoworker in Ohio, once unemployed, now proud to be 
working in the oldest auto plant in America to help make America number 
one in auto production again for the first time in 20 years. I met a 
grandmother fighting for her grandson's environment in Michigan. And I 
stood with two wonderful little children proudly reading from their 
favorite book, ``The Little Engine That Could.''
    At every stop, large and exuberant crowds greeted me. And maybe more 
important, when we just rolled through little towns there were always 
schoolchildren there waving their American flags, all of them believing 
in America and its future. I would not have missed that trip for all the 
world, for that trip showed me that hope is back in America. We are on 
the right track to the 21st century.
    Look at the facts, just look at the facts: 4.4 million Americans now 
living in a home of their own for the first time; hundreds of thousands 
of women have started their own new businesses; more minorities own 
businesses than ever before; record numbers of new small businesses and 
exports.
    Look at what's happened. We have the lowest combined rates of 
unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 28 years. Look at what 
happened: 10 million new jobs, over half of them high-wage jobs; 10 
million workers getting the raise they deserve with the minimum wage 
law; 25 million people now having protection in their health insurance 
because the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill says you can't lose your insurance 
anymore when you change jobs, even if somebody in your family has been 
sick; 40 million Americans with more pension security; a tax cut for 15 
million of our hardest working, hardest pressed Americans, and all small 
businesses; 12 million Americans--12 million of them--taking advantage 
of the family and medical leave law so they can be good parents and good 
workers. Ten million students have saved money on their college loans. 
We are making our democracy work.
    We have also passed political reform, the line-item veto, the motor 
voter bill, tougher registration laws for lobbyists, making Congress 
live under the laws they impose on the private sector, stopping unfunded 
mandates to State and local government. We've come a long way; we've got 
one more thing to do. Will you help me get campaign finance reform in 
the next 4 years? [Applause]
    We have increased our investments in research and technology. We 
have increased investments in breast cancer research dramatically. We 
are developing a supercomputer--a supercomputer that will do more 
calculating in a second than a person with a hand-held calculator can do 
in 30,000 years. More rapid development of drugs to deal with HIV and 
AIDS and moving them to the market quicker have almost doubled life 
expectancy in only 4 years. And we are looking at no limit in sight to 
that. We'll keep going until normal life is returned to people who deal 
with this.
    Our country is still the strongest force for peace and freedom on 
Earth. On issues that once before tore us apart, we have changed the old 
politics of Washington. For too long, leaders in Washington asked, who's 
to blame? But we asked, what are we going to do?
    On crime, we're putting 100,000 police on the streets. We made 
``three strikes and you're out'' the law of the land. We stopped 60,000 
felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting handguns under the Brady 
bill. We banned assault rifles. We supported tougher punishment and 
prevention programs to keep our children from drugs and gangs and 
violence. Four years now--for four years now--the crime rate in America 
has gone down.

[[Page 1579]]

    On welfare, we worked with States to launch a quiet revolution. 
Today there are 1.8 million fewer people on welfare than there were the 
day I took the oath of office. We are moving people from welfare to 
work.
    We have increased child support collections by 40 percent. The 
Federal work force is the smallest it has been since John Kennedy. And 
the deficit has come down for 4 years in a row for the first time since 
before the Civil War, down 60 percent on the way to zero. We will do it.
    We are on the right track to the 21st century. We are on the right 
track. But our work is not finished. What should we do? First, let us 
consider how to proceed. Again I say, the question is no longer who's to 
blame but what to do.
    I believe that Bob Dole and Jack Kemp and Ross Perot love our 
country, and they have worked hard to serve it. It is legitimate, even 
necessary, to compare our record with theirs, our proposals for the 
future with theirs. And I expect them to make a vigorous effort to do 
the same. But I will not attack. I will not attack them personally or 
permit others to do it in this party if I can prevent it. My fellow 
Americans, this must be--this must be a campaign of ideas, not a 
campaign of insults. The American people deserve it.
    Now, here's the main idea: I love and revere the rich and proud 
history of America. And I am determined to take our best traditions into 
the future. But with all respect, we do not need to build a bridge to 
the past. We need to build a bridge to the future. And that is what I 
commit to you to do.
    So tonight, tonight let us resolve to build that bridge to the 21st 
century, to meet our challenges and protect our values. Let us build a 
bridge to help our parents raise their children, to help young people 
and adults to get the education and training they need, to make our 
streets safer, to help Americans succeed at home and at work, to break 
the cycle of poverty and dependence, to protect our environment for 
generations to come, and to maintain our world leadership for peace and 
freedom. Let us resolve to build that bridge.
    Tonight, my fellow Americans, I ask all of our fellow citizens to 
join me and to join you in building that bridge to the 21st century. 
Four years from now, just 4 years from now--think of it--we begin a new 
century, full of enormous possibilities. We have to give the American 
people the tools they need to make the most of their God-given 
potential. We must make the basic bargain of opportunity and 
responsibility available to all Americans, not just a few. That is the 
promise of the Democratic Party. That is the promise of America.
    I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we expand 
opportunity through education, where computers are as much a part of the 
classroom as blackboards, where highly trained teachers demand peak 
performance from our students, where every 8-year-old can point to a 
book and say, ``I can read it myself.''
    By the year 2000, the single most critical thing we can do is to 
give every single American who wants it the chance to go to college. We 
must make 2 years of college just as universal in 4 years as a high 
school education is today. And we can do it. We can do it, and we should 
cut taxes to do it.
    I propose a $1,500-a-year tuition tax credit for Americans, a HOPE 
Scholarship for the first 2 years of college to make the typical 
community college education available to every American. I believe every 
working family ought also to be able to deduct up to $10,000 in college 
tuition costs per year for education after that. I believe the families 
of this country ought to be able to save money for college in a tax-free 
IRA, save it year-in and year-out, withdraw it for college education 
without penalty. We should not tax middle-income Americans for the money 
they spend on college. We'll get the money back down the road many times 
over.
    I want to say here, before I go further, that these tax cuts and 
every other one I mention tonight are all fully paid for in my balanced 
budget plan, line-by-line, dime-by-dime, and they focus on education.
    Now, one thing so many of our fellow Americans are learning is that 
education no longer stops on graduation day. I have proposed a new ``GI 
bill'' for American workers, a $2,600 grant for unemployed and 
underemployed Americans so that they can get the training and the skills 
they need to go back

[[Page 1580]]

to work at better paying jobs, good high-skilled jobs for a good future.
    But we must demand excellence at every level of education. We must 
insist that our students learn the old basics we learned and the new 
basics they have to know for the next century. Tonight let us set a 
clear national goal: All children should be able to read on their own by 
the third grade. When 40 percent of our 8-year-olds cannot read as well 
as they should, we have to do something. I want to send 30,000 reading 
specialists and national service corps members to mobilize a voluntary 
army of one million reading tutors for third graders all across America. 
They will teach our young children to read.
    Let me say to our parents: You have to lead the way. Every tired 
night you spend reading a book to your child will be worth it many times 
over. I know that Hillary and I still talk about the books we read to 
Chelsea when we were so tired we could hardly stay awake. We still 
remember them, and more important, so does she. But we're going to help 
the parents of this country make every child able to read for himself or 
herself by the age of 8, by the third grade. Do you believe we can do 
that? [Applause] Will you help us do that? [Applause]
    We must give parents, all parents, the right to choose which public 
school their children will attend and to let teachers form new charter 
schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job. We must 
keep our schools open late so that young people have someplace to go and 
something to say yes to and stay off the street.
    We must require that our students pass tough tests to keep moving up 
in school. A diploma has to mean something when they get out. We should 
reward teachers that are doing a good job, remove those who don't 
measure up. But in every case, never forget that none of us would be 
here tonight if it weren't for our teachers. I know I wouldn't. We ought 
to lift them up, not tear them down.
    We need schools that will take our children into the next century. 
We need schools that are rebuilt and modernized with an unprecedented 
commitment from the National Government to increase school construction 
and with every single library and classroom in America connected to the 
information superhighway by the year 2000.
    Now, folks, if we do these things, every 8-year-old will be able to 
read, every 12-year-old will be able to log in on the Internet, every 
18-year-old will be able to go to college, and all Americans will have 
the knowledge they need to cross that bridge to the 21st century.
    I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which we create a 
strong and growing economy to preserve the legacy of opportunity for the 
next generation, by balancing our budget in a way that protects our 
values and ensuring that every family will be able to own and protect 
the value of their most important asset, their home.
    Tonight let us proclaim to the American people we will balance the 
budget. And let us also proclaim, we will do it in a way that preserves 
Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, the integrity of our 
pensions, the strength of our people.
    Now, last year when the Republican Congress sent me a budget that 
violated those values and principles, I vetoed it. And I would do it 
again tomorrow. I could never allow cuts that devastate education for 
our children, that pollute our environment, that end the guarantee of 
health care for those who are served under Medicaid, that end our duty 
or violate our duty to our parents through Medicare. I just couldn't do 
that. As long as I'm President, I'll never let it happen. And it doesn't 
matter if they try again, as they did before, to use the blackmail 
threat of a shutdown of the Federal Government to force these things on 
the American people. We didn't let it happen before. We won't let it 
happen again.
    Of course, there is a better answer to this dilemma. We could have 
the right kind of balanced budget with a new Congress, a Democratic 
Congress.
    I want to balance the budget with real cuts in Government, in waste. 
I want a plan that invests in education, as mine does, in technology, 
and yes, in research, as Christopher Reeve so powerfully reminded us we 
must do.
    And my plan gives Americans tax cuts that will help our economy to 
grow. I want to expand IRA's so that young people can save

[[Page 1581]]

tax-free to buy a first home. Tonight I propose a new tax cut for home-
ownership that says to every middle-income working family in this 
country, if you sell your home you will not have to pay a capital gains 
tax on it ever, not ever. I want every American to be able to hear those 
beautiful words, ``welcome home.''
    Let me say again, every tax cut I call for tonight is targeted, it's 
responsible, and it is paid for within my balanced budget plan. My tax 
cuts will not undermine our economy, they will speed economic growth.
    We should cut taxes for the family sending a child to college, for 
the worker returning to college, for the family saving to buy a home or 
for long-term health care, and a $500-per-child credit for middle-income 
families raising their children who need help with child care and what 
the children will do after school. That is the right way to cut taxes, 
pro-family, pro-education, pro-economic growth.
    Now, our opponents have put forward a very different plan, a risky 
$550 billion tax scheme that will force them to ask for even bigger cuts 
in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment than they passed 
and I vetoed last year. But even then they will not cover the costs of 
their scheme, so that even then this plan will explode the deficit, 
which will increase interest rates by 2 percent, according to their own 
estimates last year. It will require huge cuts in the very investments 
we need to grow and to grow together and, at the same time, slow down 
the economy.
    You know what higher interest rates mean? To you it means a higher 
mortgage payment, a higher car payment, a higher credit card payment. To 
our economy it means business people will not borrow as much money, 
invest as much money, create as many new jobs, create as much wealth, 
raise as many wages. Do we really want to make that same mistake all 
over again?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Do we really want to stop economic growth again?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Do we really want to start piling up another mountain 
of debt?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Do we want to bring back the recession of 1991 and 
'92?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Do we want to weaken our bridge to the 21st century?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Of course we don't. We have an obligation, you and I, 
to leave our children a legacy of opportunity, not a legacy of debt. Our 
budget would be balanced today, we would have a surplus today, if we 
didn't have to make the interest payments on the debt run up in the 12 
years before the Clinton/Gore administration took office.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. So let me say this is one of those areas in which I 
respectfully disagree with my opponent. I don't believe we should bet 
the farm, and I certainly don't believe we should bet the country. We 
should stay on the right track to the 21st century.
    Opportunity alone is not enough. I want to build an America in the 
21st century in which all Americans take personal responsibility for 
themselves, their families, their communities, and their country. I want 
our Nation to take responsibility to make sure that every single child 
can look out the window in the morning and see a whole community getting 
up and going to work.
    We want these young people to know the thrill of the first paycheck, 
the challenge of starting that first business, the pride in following in 
a parent's footsteps. The welfare reform law I signed last week gives 
America a chance, but not a guarantee, to have that kind of new 
beginning, to have a new social bargain with the poor, guaranteeing 
health care, child care, and nutrition for the children but requiring 
able-bodied parents to work for the income.
    Now I say to all of you, whether you supported the law or opposed 
it, but especially to those who supported it, we have a responsibility, 
we have a moral obligation to make sure the people who are being 
required to work have the opportunity to work. We must make sure the 
jobs are there. There should be one million new jobs for welfare 
recipients by the year 2000. States under this law can now take the 
money that was spent on the welfare check and use it to help busi- 

[[Page 1582]]

nesses provide paychecks. I challenge every State to do it soon.
    I propose also to give businesses a tax credit for every person 
hired off welfare and kept employed. I propose to offer private job 
placement firms a bonus for every welfare recipient they place in a job 
who stays in it. And more important, I want to help communities put 
welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools, 
making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again. 
There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to 
put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these 
families.
    My fellow Americans, I have spent an enormous amount of time with 
our dear friend the late Ron Brown and with Secretary Kantor and others 
opening markets for America around the world. And I'm proud of every one 
we opened. But let us never forget, the greatest untapped market for 
American enterprise is right here in America, in the inner cities, in 
the rural areas, who have not felt this recovery. With investment and 
business and jobs, they can become our partners in the future. And it's 
a great opportunity we ought not to pass up.
    I propose more empowerment zones like the one we have right here in 
Chicago to draw business into poor neighborhoods. I propose more 
community development banks, like the South Shore Bank right here in 
Chicago, to help people in those neighborhoods start their own small 
businesses. More jobs, more incomes, new markets for America right here 
at home making welfare reform a reality. [Applause]
    Now, folks, you cheered--and I thank you--but the Government can 
only do so much. The private sector has to provide most of these jobs. 
So I want to say again, tonight I challenge every business person in 
America who has ever complained about the failure of the welfare system 
to try to hire somebody off welfare and try hard. [Applause] Thank you. 
After all, the welfare system you used to complain about is not here 
anymore. There is no more ``who's to blame'' on welfare. Now the only 
question is what to do. And we all have a responsibility, especially 
those who have criticized what was passed and who have asked for a 
change and who have the ability to give poor people a chance to grow and 
support their families. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century 
that ends the permanent under class, that lifts up the poor and ends 
their isolation, their exile. And they're not forgotten anymore. 
[Applause] Thank you.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century where 
our children are not killing other children anymore, where children's 
lives are not shattered by violence at home or in the schoolyard, where 
a generation of young people are not left to raise themselves on the 
streets.
    With more police and punishment and prevention, the crime rate has 
dropped for 4 years in a row now. But we cannot rest, because we know 
it's still too high. We cannot rest until crime is a shocking exception 
to our daily lives, not news as usual. Will you stay with me until we 
reach that good day? [Applause]
    My fellow Americans, we all owe a great debt to Sarah and Jim Brady, 
and I'm glad they took their wrong turn and wound up in Chicago. I was 
glad to see that. It is to them we owe the good news that 60,000 felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers couldn't get handguns because of the Brady bill. 
But not a single hunter in Arkansas or New Hampshire or Illinois or 
anyplace else missed a hunting season.
    But now I say we should extend the Brady bill, because anyone who 
has committed an act of domestic violence against a spouse or a child 
should not buy a gun. And we must ban those cop-killer bullets. They are 
designed for one reason only, to kill police officers. We ask the police 
to keep us safe. We owe it to them to help keep them safe while they do 
their job for us.
    We should pass a victim's rights constitutional amendment because 
victims deserve to be heard; they need to know when an assailant is 
released. They need to know these things, and the only way to guarantee 
them is through a constitutional amendment.
    We have made a great deal of progress. Even the crime rate among 
young people is finally coming down. So it is very, very painful to me 
that drug use among young people

[[Page 1583]]

is up. Drugs nearly killed my brother when he was a young man, and I 
hate them. He fought back. He's here tonight with his wife, his little 
boy is here, and I'm really proud of him. But I learned something--I 
learned something in going through that long nightmare with our family. 
And I can tell you, something has happened to some of our young people; 
they simply don't think these drugs are dangerous anymore, or they think 
the risk is acceptable. So beginning with our parents, and without 
regard to our party, we have to renew our energy to teach this 
generation of young people the hard, cold truth: Drugs are deadly; drugs 
are wrong; drugs can cost you your life.
    General Barry McCaffrey, the four-star general who led our fight 
against drugs in Latin America, now leads our crusade against drugs at 
home: stopping more drugs at our borders, cracking down on those who 
sell them, and most important of all, pursuing a national antidrug 
strategy whose primary aim is to turn our children away from drugs. I 
call on Congress to give him every cent of funding we have requested for 
this strategy and to do it now.
    There is more we will do. We should say to parolees: We will test 
you for drugs; if you go back on them, we will send you back to jail. We 
will say to gangs: We will break you with the same antiracketeering law 
we used to put mob bosses in jail. You're not going to kill our kids 
anymore or turn them into murderers before they're teenagers.
    My fellow Americans, if we're going to build that bridge to the 21st 
century we have to make our children free, free of the vise grip of guns 
and gangs and drugs, free to build lives of hope.
    I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with a strong American 
community, beginning with strong families, an America where all children 
are cherished and protected from destructive forces, where parents can 
succeed at home and at work. Everywhere I've gone in America, people 
come up and talk to me about their struggle with the demands of work and 
their desire to do a better job with their children. The very first 
person I ever saw fight that battle was here with me 4 years ago, and 
tonight I miss her very, very much. My irrepressible, hard-working, 
always optimistic mother did the best she could for her brother and me, 
often against very stiff odds. I learned from her just how much love and 
determination can overcome. But from her and from our life, I also 
learned that no parent can do it alone. And no parent should have to. 
She had the kind of help every parent deserves, from our neighbors, our 
friends, our teachers, our pastors, our doctors, and so many more.
    You know, when I started out in public life with a lot of my friends 
from the Arkansas delegation down here, there used to be a saying from 
time to time that every man who runs for public office will claim that 
he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. [Laughter] Well, 
my mother knew better. And she made sure I did, too. Long before she 
even met Hillary, my mother knew it takes a village, and she was 
grateful for the support she got.
    As Tipper Gore and Hillary said on Tuesday, we have, all of us in 
our administration, worked hard to support families in raising their 
children and succeeding at work. But we must do more. We should extend 
the family and medical leave law to give parents some time off to take 
their children to regular doctor's appointments or attend those parent-
teacher conferences at school. That is a key determination of their 
success. We should pass a flextime law that allows employees to take 
their overtime pay in money or in time off, depending on what's better 
for their family.
    The FDA has adopted new measures to reduce advertising and sales of 
cigarettes to children. The Vice President spoke so movingly of it last 
night. But let me remind you, my fellow Americans, that is very much an 
issue in this election because that battle is far from over and the two 
candidates have different views. I pledge to America's parents that I 
will see this effort all the way through.
    Working with the entertainment industry, we're giving parents the V-
chip. TV shows are being rated for content so parents will be able to 
make a judgment about whether their small children should see them. And 
3 hours of quality children's programming every week, on every network, 
are on the way.

[[Page 1584]]

    The Kennedy-Kassebaum law says every American can keep his or her 
health insurance if they have to change jobs, even if someone in their 
family has been sick. That is a very important thing. But tonight we 
should spell out the next steps. The first thing we ought to do is to 
extend the benefits of health care to people who are unemployed. I 
propose in my balanced budget plan, paid for, to help unemployed 
families keep their health insurance for up to 6 months. A parent may be 
without a job, but no child should be without a doctor. And let me say 
again, as the First Lady did on Tuesday, we should protect mothers and 
newborn babies from being forced out of the hospital in less than 48 
hours.
    We respect the individual conscience of every American on the 
painful issue of abortion but believe as a matter of law that this 
decision should be left to a woman, her conscience, her doctor, and her 
God. Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare. 
That's why I helped to establish and support a national effort to reduce 
out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy, and that is why we must promote adoption.
    Last week the minimum wage bill I signed contained a $5,000 credit 
to families who adopt children, even more if the children have 
disabilities. It put an end to racial discrimination in the adoption 
process. It was a good thing for America. My fellow Americans, already 
there are tens of thousands of children out there who need a good home 
with loving parents. I hope more of them will find it now.
    I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with a clean and safe 
environment. We are making our food safer from pesticides. We're 
protecting our drinking water and our air from poisons. We saved 
Yellowstone from mining. We established the largest national park south 
of Alaska in the Mojave Desert in California. We are working to save the 
precious Florida Everglades. And when the leaders of this Congress 
invited the polluters into the back room to roll back 25 years of 
environmental protections that both parties had always supported, I said 
no.
    But we must do more. Today, 10 million children live within just 4 
miles of a toxic waste dump. We have cleaned up 197 of those dumps in 
the last 3 years, more than in the previous 12 years combined. In the 
next 4 years, we propose to clean up 500 more, two-thirds of all that 
are left and the most dangerous ones. Our children should grow up next 
to parks, not poison.
    We should make it a crime even to attempt to pollute. We should 
freeze the serious polluter's property until they clean up the problems 
they create. We should make it easier for families to find out about 
toxic chemicals in their neighborhoods so they can do more to protect 
their own children. These are the things that we must do to build that 
bridge to the 21st century.
    My fellow Americans, I want to build a bridge to the 21st century 
that makes sure we are still the nation with the world's strongest 
defense, that our foreign policy still advances the values of our 
American community in the community of nations. Our bridge to the future 
must include bridges to other nations, because we remain the world's 
indispensable nation to advance prosperity, peace, and freedom and to 
keep our own children safe from the dangers of terror and weapons of 
mass destruction.
    We have helped to bring democracy to Haiti and peace to Bosnia. Now 
the peace signed on the White House lawn between the Israelis and the 
Palestinians must embrace more of Israel's neighbors. The deep desire 
for peace that Hillary and I felt when we walked the streets of Belfast 
and Derry must become real for all the people of Northern Ireland. And 
Cuba must finally join the community of democracies.
    Nothing in our lifetime has been more heartening than when people of 
the former Soviet Union and Central Europe broke the grip of communism. 
We have aided their progress, and I am proud of it. And I will continue 
our strong partnership with a democratic Russia. And we will bring some 
of Central Europe's new democracies into NATO so that they will never 
question their own freedom in the future.
    Our American exports are at record levels. In the next 4 years, we 
have to break down even more barriers to them, reaching out to Latin 
America, to Africa, to other countries in Asia, making sure that our 
workers and

[[Page 1585]]

our products, the world's finest, have the benefit of free and fair 
trade.
    In the last 4 years, we have frozen North Korea's nuclear weapons 
program. And I am proud to say that tonight there is not a single 
Russian nuclear missile pointed at an American child. Now we must 
enforce and ratify without delay measures that further reduce nuclear 
arsenals, banish poison gas, and ban nuclear tests once and for all.
    We have made investments, new investments, in our most important 
defense asset, our magnificent men and women in uniform. By the year 
2000 we also will have increased funding to modernize our weapons 
systems by 40 percent. These commitments will make sure that our 
military remains the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the 
entire world.
    We are developing a sensible national missile defense, but we must 
not, not now, not by the year 2000, squander $60 billion on an unproved, 
ineffective Star Wars program that could be obsolete tomorrow.
    We are fighting terrorism on all fronts with a three-pronged 
strategy. First, we are working to rally a world coalition with zero 
tolerance for terrorism. Just this month, I signed a law imposing harsh 
sanctions on foreign companies that invest in key sectors of the Iranian 
and Libyan economies. As long as Iran trains, supports, and protects 
terrorists, as long as Libya refuses to give up the people who blew up 
Pan Am 103, they will pay a price from the United States.
    Second, we must give law enforcement the tools they need to take the 
fight to terrorists. We need new laws to crack down on money laundering 
and to prosecute and punish those who commit violent acts against 
American citizens abroad, to add chemical markers or taggants to 
gunpowder used in bombs so we can crack the bombmakers, to extend the 
same power police now have against organized crime to save lives by 
tapping all the phones that terrorists use. Terrorists are as big a 
threat to our future, perhaps bigger, than organized crime. Why should 
we have two different standards for a common threat to the safety of 
America and our children? We need, in short, the laws that Congress 
refused to pass. And I ask them again, please, as an American, not a 
partisan matter, pass these laws now.
    Third, we will improve airport and air travel security. I have asked 
the Vice President to establish a commission and report back to me on 
ways to do this. But now we will install the most sophisticated bomb-
detection equipment in all our major airports. We will search every 
airplane flying to or from America from another nation, every flight, 
every cargo hold, every cabin, every time.
    My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I know that in most 
election seasons foreign policy is not a matter of great interest in the 
debates in the barbershops and the cafes of America, on the plant floors 
and at the bowling alleys. But there are times, there are times when 
only America can make the difference between war and peace, between 
freedom and repression, between life and death. We cannot save all the 
world's children, but we can save many of them. We cannot become the 
world's policeman, but where our values and our interests are at stake 
and where we can make a difference, we must act and we must lead. That 
is our job, and we are better, stronger, and safer because we are doing 
it.
    My fellow Americans, let me say one last time, we can only build our 
bridge to the 21st century if we build it together and if we're willing 
to walk arm in arm across that bridge together. I have spent so much of 
your time that you gave me these last 4 years to be your President 
worrying about the problems of Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern 
Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi. What do these places have in common? People 
are killing each other and butchering children because they are 
different from one another. They share the same piece of land, but they 
are different from one another. They hate their race, their tribe, their 
ethnic group, their religion.
    We have seen the terrible, terrible price that people pay when they 
insist on fighting and killing their neighbors over their differences. 
In our own country, we have seen America pay a terrible price for any 
form of discrimination. And we have seen us grow stronger as we have 
steadily let more and more of our hatreds and our fears go, as we

[[Page 1586]]

have given more and more of our people the chance to live their dreams.
    That is why the flame of our Statue of Liberty, like the Olympic 
flame carried all across America by thousands of citizen heroes, will 
always, always burn brighter than the fires that burn our churches, our 
synagogues, our mosques--always.
    Look around this hall tonight, and to our fellow Americans watching 
on television, you look around this hall tonight--there is every 
conceivable difference here among the people who are gathered. If we 
want to build that bridge to the 21st century we have to be willing to 
say loud and clear: If you believe in the values of the Constitution, 
the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you're willing 
to work hard and play by the rules, you are part of our family and we're 
proud to be with you. [Applause] You cheer now, because you know this is 
true. You know this is true. When you walk out of this hall, think about 
it. Live by it.
    We still have too many Americans who give in to their fears of those 
who are different from them. Not so long ago, swastikas were painted on 
the doors of some African-American members of our Special Forces at Fort 
Bragg. Folks, for those of you who don't know what they do, the Special 
Forces are just what the name says: they are special forces. If I walk 
off this stage tonight and call them on the telephone and tell them to 
go halfway around the world and risk their lives for you and be there by 
tomorrow at noon, they will do it. They do not deserve to have swastikas 
on their doors.
    So look around here, look around here: Old or young, healthy as a 
horse or a person with a disability that hasn't kept you down, man or 
woman, Native American, native born, immigrant, straight or gay, 
whatever, the test ought to be I believe in the Constitution, the Bill 
of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. I believe in religious 
liberty. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in working hard and 
playing by the rules. I'm showing up for work tomorrow. I'm building 
that bridge to the 21st century. That ought to be the test.
    My fellow Americans, 68 nights from tonight the American people will 
face once again a critical moment of decision. We're going to choose the 
last President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st 
century. But the real choice is not that. The real choice is whether we 
will build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past, about whether 
we believe our best days are still out there or our best days are behind 
us, about whether we want a country of people all working together or 
one where you're on your own.
    Let us commit ourselves this night to rise up and build the bridge 
we know we ought to build all the way to the 21st century. Let us have 
faith, American faith that we are not leaving our greatness behind. 
We're going to carry it right on with us into that new century, a 
century of new challenge and unlimited promise. Let us, in short, do the 
work that is before us, so that when our time here is over, we will all 
watch the sun go down, as we all must, and say truly, we have prepared 
our children for the dawn.
    My fellow Americans, after these 4 good, hard years, I still believe 
in a place called Hope, a place called America.
    Thank you, God bless you, and good night.

Note: The President spoke at 9 p.m. at United Center. In his remarks, he 
referred to actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a horse riding 
accident, and former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who was 
wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. 
His wife, Sarah, is head of Hand Gun Control, Inc. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of these remarks.