[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 44 (Monday, November 4, 1996)]
[Pages 2195-2200]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in Springfield, Virginia

October 27, 1996

    The President. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, ladies and 
gentlemen, Senator Robb called me about a week ago, and he said, ``You 
know, my father-in-law was the last Democrat to carry the State of 
Virginia. But I think if you'll come across the river and see us, you 
might be the next.'' And here I am.
    I want to thank Chuck Robb and his wonderful wife, Lynda, for being 
such great friends to Hillary and to me for, well, a long, long time 
now. I want to thank him for his courage, his character, and his 
integrity in serving the people of Virginia and setting a model for 
people all across America. I want to thank Congressman Jim Moran and 
Congressman Bobby Scott for the work they've done for you and for 
America, and I'm glad you're sending them back to the Congress to serve 
for 2 more years.
    Thank you, Lieutenant Governor Don Beyer, for your leadership and 
for your future leadership for Virginia. Thank you, Senator Yvonne 
Miller. Thank you, Kate Hanley. Thank you, Sue Wrenn, and thank you, 
Ellen Malcolm. Thank you, Bruce Hornsby, for playing the national anthem 
and for always being there for us.
    And I want to thank the Lee High School Band over here. Let's give 
them a hand, the high school band. [Applause] Thank you for being here. 
I'd also like to tell you today, since our campaign is about the 21st 
century, I brought with me the President's adviser on science and 
technology--a key to the 21st century--a seventh generation Virginian, 
Dr. Jack Gibbons. Thank you for coming with me, Jack.
    Folks, on any day this would be a great crowd in Virginia. But on 
this beautiful fall day, when the Redskins are playing and on a streak 
and the Marine Corps Marathon is going on, this is an unbelievable 
crowd. Thank you for being here.
    Of course, you know, ever since I saw that ad with Chuck Robb's body 
and Mark Warner's head, I thought maybe you showed up

[[Page 2196]]

to see if some medical miracle had been developed. [Laughter] I didn't 
know there was anything wrong with Mark Warner's body or Chuck Robb's 
head until I saw that. I'm still trying to figure out what it's all 
about. I'll tell you one thing, I don't think it was about you and your 
interests and your future.
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. But Mark Warner is committed to you and your 
interests and your future. Mark Warner supports the Family and Medical 
Leave Act that's allowed 12 million families to take some time off when 
their babies were born or their family members were sick. He supports 
our efforts to put 100,000 police on the street and our violence against 
women program in the Department of Justice. He supports our targeted tax 
cuts to help people pay for a college education. He does not support the 
other party's agenda of abolishing the Department of Education. So I say 
to you, this election is about the future. It is not about the 
Democratic or Republican Party; it's about which vision is right for our 
future.
    Thomas Jefferson was elected President as the first President of the 
19th century. Three distinguished Virginians, Thomas Jefferson, James 
Madison, and James Monroe, not only helped to found our country, they 
led us into a new century. Thomas Jefferson made the most important 
decision of my political life, a long time before I showed up; he bought 
the Louisiana territory. If he hadn't done it, I wouldn't be an American 
and I couldn't be here running today.
    I say that to make this point. Believe me, when he bought the 
Louisiana territory for $15 million and more than doubled the land size 
of the United States--and by the way, that was the entire annual budget 
of the Government at the time. Can you imagine what you'd do to me if I 
tried to spend the annual budget of the Government on anything? 
[Laughter] And a lot of people thought he had lost his famous reason. He 
could not have foreseen the full implications of everything that would 
flow out of that decision. He could not have known that there would be 
all the things that happened in the 19th century, a great Civil War, two 
great World Wars and a depression in the 20th century, and that 
somewhere in a small town in that vast expanse of land that he bought, 
150 years later some other young American would be born who would have a 
chance to grow up and be President. He did it because he had this vision 
of the future. And that's what I want to talk to you about today.
    Just before I came over here, I met with a lot of cancer advocates, 
people who have worked on research and treatment and prevention, people 
who have worked especially on breast cancer. I announced $30 million in 
extra funding for breast cancer genetic research because we just 
discovered two of the genes that cause breast cancer. It may enable us 
to prevent it forever.
    Now, let me just talk about some of the other things that have 
happened in the last 4 years. Because of research and faster approval of 
drugs, we have more than doubled the life expectancy of people with HIV 
and AIDS. It's on its way to becoming a chronic illness. We developed 
the first treatment for stroke ever. We have seen, for the first time 
ever, in laboratory animals whose spines were totally severed, movement 
in the lower limbs by the transfer of nerves from other parts of their 
bodies to the spine. This has enormous implications for military 
veterans, accident victims, and others who have been confined in their 
movements because of damage to their spines. We just signed a contract 
with IBM not very long ago to develop a supercomputer in the next couple 
of years that will do as many calculations in a second as you can do on 
a hand-held computer in 30,000 years.
    Now, that is the world we're going into. I appreciate what Senator 
Robb said. We are better off than we were 4 years ago. We are moving in 
the right direction. But the issue is, where are we going? What is our 
philosophy?
    Again, I say, this is a period not all that unlike 200 years ago. 
It's not about party; it's about vision. Mark Warner, Chuck Robb, Bobby 
Scott, Jim Moran, Don Beyer, we share a vision about the things we must 
do together as a nation, in our States, in our communities to help each 
other make the most of our own lives, to seize those opportunities for 
the 21st century, and to move this country forward. That's the issue. 
Are we going to build a bridge to the future big

[[Page 2197]]

enough and strong enough for us all to walk across? Are you willing to 
help? [Applause] Do we really believe we would be better off if their 
vision had prevailed for the last 4 years?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would we be better off if there were no family and 
medical leave law?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would we be better off it we cut student loans 
instead of increasing them?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would we be better off if we cut Head Start instead 
of increasing it?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Would we be better off it we hadn't made those 
300,000 loans to women business owners?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Of course not. Would we be better off if we hadn't 
cleaned up those toxic waste dumps--more in 3 years than they did in 12?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. This is not about party; it's about you, how we're 
going to live together and whether we should work together to give each 
other the tools to make the most of our future. Do you believe we'd be 
better off, as they say, if you were left on your own? Or do we believe 
it takes a village to raise our children and build a country and build a 
future? [Applause]
    In Virginia, the State with the longest and proudest and richest 
history of all in leading America in the right direction, the State 
which gave us the people who led us into a new century 2 years ago, your 
votes will decide whether we balance the budget and move away from the 
dangerous and reckless fiscal policies that quadrupled our debt in the 
12 years before I came to Washington and whether we balance that budget 
in a way that keeps interest rates coming down and the economy growing 
but still protects the fundamentals of educational investment, research 
investment, protection of the environment, Medicaid's guarantee of 
health care to people with disabilities, to poor children, to seniors in 
nursing homes and the integrity of the Medicare program which has given 
us the longest living, the highest life expectancy for senior citizens 
of any country in the entire world. You have to decide.
    You have to decide, now that we have passed the family and medical 
leave law, whether you agree with me that we ought to extend it a little 
bit so that parents can go to see their children's teachers twice a year 
without losing their jobs or take their family members to the doctor, 
whether people who work for overtime should have the decision in their 
hands about whether to take their overtime in cash or time with their 
families if their families need them at home.
    You will decide about where we go in health care. We've now said you 
can't lose your health insurance just because you change jobs or someone 
in your family has been sick. We have said you cannot have an insurance 
company force a mother and a newborn baby out of a hospital in just 24 
hours. We've said we're finally going to give some equal treatment to 
families with mental health problems. They deserve treatment, too. And 
after long, long years of advocacy by veterans like Chuck Robb, we have 
finally said to our veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam 
and whose children got spina bifida as a result, finally you're going to 
get the health care support and the disability you have deserved for so 
long.
    Now you must decide. Their dangerous tax scheme would blow a hole in 
the deficit; require bigger cuts in medical programs, education, the 
environment, and research; and weaken our economy.
    Our balanced budget goes further in health care. We want to give 
people help in keeping their health insurance for their families when 
they're between jobs. We want to make mammograms free for women over 65 
on Medicare. And we want to say to the over 1\1/2\ million families who 
are courageously caring for family members with Alzheimer's, you ought 
to have some respite care; you're saving the health care system money; 
you're keeping your families together; we know how tough it is, and 
we're going to help you. That's all in our balanced budget plan. You 
have to decide.
    We have worked to reduce the welfare rolls by 1.9 million while our 
friends on the

[[Page 2198]]

other side were just talking about it, acting as if all you have to do 
is pass a law. Before there ever was a new welfare reform, we took the 
rolls down 1.9 million, moving people from welfare to work, working with 
43 States. Now there is a new law. Here's what it says: The National 
Government will continue to guarantee to poor families health care and 
food for the children and more for child care than ever when someone 
moves from welfare to work. But every State and local communities now 
will have 2 years in which to turn, for an able-bodied person, a welfare 
check into a paycheck.
    But that's just a law. Are we going to walk away now, or are we 
going to say, if we're going to require poor people with little children 
to go to work, we've got to make sure the work is out there? I have a 
plan to create those jobs; we have to decide whether we want them or 
not.
    Compared to 4 years ago, we have taken unbelievable amounts of 
dangerous chemicals out of our air. We've lifted the quality of our 
drinking water. We've improved the safety of our food. We've cleaned up 
more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than they did in 12. We have worked to 
protect our precious national heritage and beat back their ill-advised 
plan to actually sell off some of our national parks. Now we have to 
decide whether we're going to go forward, continuing to clean up 
waterways that need to do it, continuing to uphold high environmental 
standards, and cleaning up 500 more of those toxic waste dumps so our 
children will be growing up next to parks, not poison. Let's don't turn 
back on environmental protection. Let's go forward and prove we can grow 
the economy and protect our environment.
    Most of important of all, here in Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson 
first envisioned the need for free public school for all people, before 
others even thought most people should go to school, we are now on the 
threshold of an era in which what we earn depends on what we can learn, 
in which whether we can solve the medical problems of our time depends 
on what we can learn, in which our ability to preserve world peace and 
promote harmony depends in part on how much we can learn.
    I want to give this country the finest educational system in the 
world when I leave office in the 21st century. I want us to have high 
standards, high accountability, and more freedom for principals, 
teachers, and parents to create those conditions in every school in 
America where those standards can be met. I want us to see a time when--
different from now--today, 40 percent of our 8-year-olds still cannot 
read a book on their own. Part of it is because we're blessed by having 
so many 8-year-olds whose parents come from other places and whose first 
language is not English. But I have a plan to mobilize AmeriCorps 
volunteers and reading tutors, 30,000 of them, to go out and generate a 
million volunteers to help our parents and our schools teach every 8-
year-old so that by the year 2000 every single third grader in America 
can pick up a book and say, ``I can read this all by myself.'' You have 
to decide.
    We have to create a world where for the first time all our children 
have access to the same quality education. And we can do it. If we can 
hook up every classroom and every library and every school in America to 
the Internet by the year 2000--for those of you who aren't great 
computer experts, what it means is that for the first time in the 
history of the country, kids in the smallest rural community in 
southwest Virginia, kids in the poorest inner-city school districts will 
have access for the first time ever to the same quantity and quality of 
information in the same time, in the same way as children in the richest 
districts in America do. It has never been done before. It is high time 
we did, and we're going to do it if you'll help us to stay with us.
    And finally, you have to decide whether we are going to open the 
doors of college education to all. In the last 4 years, we've given 
60,000 young people a chance to serve their communities in AmeriCorps 
and earn their way to college. Our friends on the other side opposed it. 
We have given 10 million young people the opportunity to get lower cost 
college loans and to pay those loans back now as a percentage of their 
income, so that no one can ever be bankrupted by borrowing the money to 
go to college. Our friends on the other side opposed it.

[[Page 2199]]

    Now is the time to finish the job. And I want to do three simple 
things to help you, whatever your age--whatever your age--go on and get 
a college education.
    Number one, I propose to let families save more for IRA's and 
withdraw from the money without penalty if they're using it to pay for 
education or buying a first home or dealing with medical costs.
    Number two, I want 2 years of education after high school to become 
as universal in 4 years as a high school diploma is today. And we can do 
that--no bureaucracy, no program--simply say to people we will let you 
deduct dollar for dollar from your tax bill the cost of a typical 
community college tuition. If you will go, work hard, make your grades, 
and be a good citizen you can go to community college--everybody, 
without regard to income.
    And finally, in this State which has such a fabulous tradition of 
higher education, it is long since time that we gave our families a tax 
deduction of up to $10,000 a year for the cost of any tuition at any 
institution of higher education, graduate or undergraduate. That is what 
I propose to do.
    Now, that is what we are working for. What is their education 
vision? Abolish the Department of Education.
    Audience members. Boo-o-o!
    The President. No word about standards, no word about 
accountability, no word about empowerment of teachers and principals and 
parents, no word about teaching our children to read or hooking them up 
to the Internet or opening the doors to college for all. This is not 
about party. This is about people; this is about the future of America.
    And I leave you with this thought. Thomas Jefferson said--and if you 
go to the Jefferson Memorial you see it inscribed there--``I tremble for 
my Nation, to think that God is just when I consider slavery.'' We spent 
an enormous amount of our blood and time and effort getting over the 
racial discrimination that was at the core of our creation. We fought a 
Civil War to keep the country together. We went through a civil rights 
revolution to live up to the meaning of the Constitution. We had to 
amend the Constitution to do it. And we're still struggling with it.
    But for the last 100 years--starting about 100 years ago, we have 
become increasingly a nation of greater racial and ethnic and religious 
diversity. So that now, in Northern Virginia alone, there are more 
people, from more countries, with more native languages and more 
different religions than any of our Founders ever could have imagined. 
That means, however, that we have both the greatest challenge the modern 
world is facing today in our borders and the most fabulous opportunity.
    Consider how much of your time I spend as President dealing with 
other people around the world who simply cannot get along because of 
their religions, their racial, their ethnic, or their tribal 
differences. Consider how many people there are in the Middle East; in 
Northern Ireland; in Burundi; in Rwanda; in Bosnia, the bloodiest 
battleground of Europe since World War II, and countless other places 
who draw all their strength in life by saying, ``Well, whatever's wrong 
with me, thank God I'm not them,'' who get up every day and think, ``My 
life has meaning because there's somebody who's different from me I can 
hate.''
    And what has it led to in Bosnia? People killing other people's 
children. What has it led to in the Middle East, the home of the three 
great monotheistic religions in the world? On this Sunday, I called the 
leaders of the talks now going on in the Middle East and pleaded with 
them again to resolve their differences, to preserve what is a holy land 
for so many of us so that their children can grow up in peace and 
dignity and honor.
    America's soldiers went to Rwanda and to Somalia to save hundreds 
and hundreds of thousands of people who should have been able to get 
along. America's soldiers are today in Bosnia, saving the lives of 
people who should have been able to get along.
    On the other hand, if you look at how small the world is getting, 
and if you look at our base, our economic base, our resources, our 
capacity to produce, our educational system, our connections with the 
rest of the world, our diversity is a miracle of opportunity as we stand 
on the threshold of the 21st century.
    And so I say again, as important as all those specific policies are, 
it's also important that

[[Page 2200]]

we make up our mind that we're going to build that bridge to the 21st 
century together; we're going to walk across it together. We're going to 
say to each other, ``If you believe in the Declaration of Independence, 
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, if you're willing to show up 
tomorrow and do your job or go to school and do what you're supposed to 
do, we don't need to know anything else about you. You're part of our 
America. We're going forward with you. We're going forward with you.''
    So I ask you to decide. This election is not very far away. Most 
people in Virginia have been voting against members of my party for 
President for over three decades now. And I know how hard it is to break 
a habit. [Laughter] But one of the things we all teach our kids is that 
some habits have to be broken.
    I want you to go out from this place and spend the next 9 days and 
tell your fellow Virginians they did a great thing for America when they 
and their native sons led us into the 19th century 200 years ago. And 
Virginia can help lead America into the 21st century 9 days from now.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:50 p.m. at Lee High School Park. In his 
remarks, he referred to State Senator Yvonne Miller; Katherine K. 
Hanley, chair, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; Sue Wrenn, chair, 
Virginia Democratic Party; Ellen Malcolm, president, Emily's List; 
musician Bruce Hornsby; and senatorial candidate Mark Warner.