REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON LABOR DAY KICKOFF JACKSON COUNTY COURTHOUSE INDEPENDENCE, MO SEPTEMBER 7, 1992 Ladies and gentlemen, on this Labor Day, I am proud to be in the hometown of the president who will always be remembered as the working people's president, Harry Truman. I grew up in small Arkansas towns not so different from Independence, places where people know their neighbors. They know when the kids are born, they care when people die, they bear one another's burdens, and they live by their values instead of preaching at other people. You know, Harry Truman's first job was at Clinton's Drugstore. And if you read David McCullough's magnificent biography of Truman, he says one of the things Truman couldn't stand was all the hypocrites standing on the street corner telling everybody how good they were and then sneaking into the drugstore for a shot of whiskey. He said, if you want one, go to a bar and act like a person, quit being a hypocrite about it. On Labor Day in Harry Truman's hometown, it's time for us as Americans to reaffirm who we are and to remember who George Bush is. Harry Truman woke up every day dedicated to doing right by the people with whom he grew up and with whom he lived, the people who work hard, raise their kids, pay their taxes, and play by the rules. Harry Truman did not wake up every morning worrying about how to lower taxes one more time on millionaires. Harry Truman's living legacy is the great American middle class, a living legacy of the generation of Americans who went to college because of the GI Bill, who were able to buy a home because of FHA and VA mortgages, who raised my generation with the hope and the opportunity that all things were possible. George Bush's legacy is the destruction of that very middle class. Harry Truman's living legacy is the civil rights laws that guarantee people who are equal in the eyes of the Lord are also equal in the eyes of the law. And Harry Truman's legacy, yet unfulfilled, is the dream that health care will be a right, not a privilege for every American. George Bush's legacy is the use of the power of the presidency to divide us and the denial that it is possible to control health care costs and provide health care for all Americans. Yesterday I had a homecoming in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the town where I went to public schools and graduated. My teachers and my classmates, the people with whom I first worked were all there. They were good, solid, mainstream Americans. And I said to them and I'll say to you now, many Americans have absolutely forgotten to believe that it's possible that someone who came from them could actually be president and that someone who came from them and cares about them could wake up every morning in the White House worrying about the lives of the American people. But that's exactly what I'll do if you give me a chance to serve. Harry Truman said, and I quote, ``If the working people of this country are well off, whether they work in factories or on the farms, in offices or in stores, this country will get along all right.'' George Bush and Dan Quayle are the kind of Republicans that Harry Truman used to say he told the truth about them and they thought it was hell. As Truman said, they honestly believe that prosperity begins at the top and would trickle down in due time to benefit all people. Well, we've tried it their way for a dozen years now. In 1980, America had the highest wages in the world and now we're 13th. For more than 10 years, most Americans and most people listening to me today have worked longer work weeks for less money to pay more for the basics of life. Isn't that right? And yet for the first time in 70 years, the top one percent of Americans control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Can you believe that a man with this kind of record would be going around the country with a straight face comparing himself to Harry Truman? George Bush cast his first vote against Harry Truman, and he has spent four years fighting against everything that Harry Truman fought for, and we won't let him forget it in the last eight weeks of this election. Harry Truman's great legacy was taking responsibility for his job, making America strong at home and abroad, and building a broad middle class. The Bush legacy is denying responsibility for the problems in the country, focusing on foreign policy and forgetting about the interest of the American people, and destroying the great American middle class. And we won't let them forget it in the next eight weeks of this election. The truth is, the only part of Harry Truman's legacy that George Bush really wants is a victory in the election. And the only job he wants to save is his own. And we won't let them forget it in the next weeks. This election provides Americans their clearest choice in a generation, a choice between hope and fear, between running in place and moving ahead, between more of the same trickle down and embarking on a new course to guarantee old opportunities and the American dream. George Bush wants to put even more wealth in the hands of those who are already wealthy, and I want to create opportunity for all the rest of Americans, too. This election is a choice between two futures, four more years of broken promises, broken hopes, and broken dreams, or a different course. Just last week, we learned that the average American family has lost $1100 in purchasing power, the biggest drop in over 30 years, that another two million Americans, including one in five of our children, sank into poverty, that we lost another 167,000 jobs in the private sector. And when this report came out, the White House said that was encouraging. Since George Bush became president, the only growth we've had in jobs has come in the government he says he despises. There has been nearly 40,000 jobs dropped in the private sector. Think of it, a decline in the private sector. They say that I have not been a good governor of your neighboring state, but my state ranks first in job growth in the last year. And now it is clear that there have been more than 90,000 private sector jobs created in Arkansas since George Bush became president and over 30,000 jobs reduced in the private sector in the country as a whole. And he wants us to believe that he is Harry Truman. He wants us to believe that we're better off. He said yesterday--they said, can you really say we're better off than we were four years ago? He said yes. It reminds me of the story of the fellow that fell out the 10-story window, and when he got to the third story, he looked down and he looked up and he said, so far so good. In the last month, we've learned a little more about what the next four years will be like. With a $400 billion deficit, the wreckage of trickle-down before us, Mr. Bush said, give me four more years, and even though we got a $400 billion deficit, I'll give the rich another tax cut and I'll give you one, too. I'm going to give everybody something. And I'm going to pay for it with spending cuts, and I'll tell you about them a little later. Tune in January. But we know already from what he said that, while he won't ask millionaires to pay a penny more in taxes, he wants the elderly to pay $2,000 more for their medical bills. I'll stay in the rain if you will. Folks, we've had 12 years of trickle down. We can take 12 more minutes of it to turn our country around. George Bush wants an across-the-board capital gains cut for the wealthy, but he wants to charge students 2,000 more dollars in interest for their student loans. He called me a fearmonger for suggesting that foreign corporations whose incomes have gone up should pay their fair share of taxes, but he's recommended cutting 1.2 million disabled veterans off of the roll of disability benefits. On this Labor Day, his answer to the pain of America's working class is more and more pain for the working class. Harry Truman gave the special interests hell. George Bush is giving it to you, and it's time you took your future back. Today is the beginning of this general election campaign in earnest. And I hope to goodness that today is the end, the beginning of the end of George Bush's presidency of broken promises: 15 million new jobs, read my lips, an environmental presidency, an education presidency, a kinder, gentler America. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk--you remember what it said? The buck stops here. But when George Bush became president, he put that sign in the basement and put another sign on his desk. It said: the blame begins here. He has blamed his failures on everything from the Federal Reserve to Saddam Hussein, from Congress to consumers to the press. He says the recession is really over, we just don't know it. And if it's not really over, it's because we have an attitude problem. The buck doesn't stop with George Bush. It doesn't even slow down there. He wants you to believe that for the last four years, he's had to neglect America's problems because he's been so busy saving the world. He has taken responsibility for the courage of the Polish dock workers, for the courage of the people who stood in Moscow and stood atop those tanks. He says, I did that. But when you say, well, what about the auto workers who lost their jobs in Michigan or the garment workers in New York or the computer workers in California, he said, I didn't have anything to do with that. What do you expect of me? I'm just the president of the United States. Harry Truman knew better. At the end of World War II, he helped to lead us, to set up a political and military and economic framework that brought prosperity to America, that brought prosperity to the world, and that eventually led to the collapse of Soviet communism. But he knew that a country that is not strong at home cannot be strong abroad. And he gave workers more dignity, more security and more opportunity than they ever had before. And now I want you to know that if you give me a chance at the end of the Cold War, I will do what Harry Truman did at the end of World War II--more opportunity, more responsibility, an America strong at home as well as strong abroad. I am tired of George Bush saying we can't compete and win, we can't have high wage jobs, we can't control health care costs, we just can't do what other countries do. I say we can. Al Gore and I are a part of a ``we can'' campaign. That's what America is all about. And you don't have to read our lips. You can read our plan. We're handing out 10,000 copies of this book to you today. Not just something I cooked up for a campaign, but the work of more than 10 years of my life trying to figure out what it takes to make sure every man and woman, every boy and girl can live up to the fullest of their God-given capacities. I tell you, my fellow Americans, we've got to go beyond trickle-down economics, not back to tax and spend, but ahead to invest and educate and cooperate and compete and grow, putting people first. That is the economic philosophy that will prevail in the 21st century. We want to give incentives to create jobs for small business people and industry and bring growth back to America. We want to put the American people back to work and educate them and control health care costs, and that's what this plan does. Before you drown, I want to tell you this one final thing. You read this plan and you will see what it does to open the doors of college education, what it does to provide health care to your family, what it does to revive the jobs of America. But you remember this. George Bush's message is, we could do worse, you can't trust Clinton and Gore. They have nothing to run on but negativism and fear. We are running on vision and hope, and we're going to do what Harry Truman did for the next 57 days, go across this country, give 'em hell, and make America what it ought to be again. Thank you and God bless you all.