VARIOUS TOPICS: Speech - Orlando, FL - 10/5/92 Remarks by Governor Bill Clinton Senior Citizens Picnic Lockhaven Park Orlando, FL October 5, 1992 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Governor Chiles. I want to say, first of all, I am very honored to be up here on this platform with three of my colleagues, the governor of Florida, the governor of Virginia and the governor of Georgia. We represent the kind of Democratic Party that most Americans want to vote for, including the Republicans and independents who want this country to change. I want to thank Lieutenant Governor Buddy McKay who has led my campaign here for such a long time. I want to thank Ruth Warwick for being here today. And my good friend, Mayor Sandy Freeman from Tampa. And I want to thank your Mayor Bill Ferguson for being here today, for endorsing me, and giving me the key to the city. I hope it's the key to the cities votes and heart, too. I also want to say that when I came to this community in the primary, I saw a lot of things that I liked. I saw people working together across racial and age lines. I got acquainted with a program that the mayor helped started, called COMPACT, who employs my young friend who's back there clapping. He was educated in Arkansas, even though he lives in Orlando now. It's a program that helps young people with business sponsors going into the schools, working with kids, who could get in trouble, and helping them to start a better life. That's the sort of partnership I want to bring to all America. And I learned a lot about it in Orlando in the primary. I also have to say--I got to mention one person here who is not here today named Carol Sismanek. She is the vice chair of the Democratic Party, a vice principal during today. And she literally worked herself sick getting ready for all of this. And I want all of us to let her know--she's almost within hearing distance of us--how grateful we are for the work she did. Thank you, Carol. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Republicans used to take Florida for granted. But they've been coming here a lot lately. And since they can't run on their record, and they don't have a plan for the future, my opponent comes here and distorts my record and my plan for the future. You know it'd be pretty sad to be president of the United States for four years, and the best you could do for a campaign for reelection would be to say things about your opponent that aren't true. Four years from now, if you elect me, I'll still be talking about how we can build this country up and move this country forward and bring this country together. When Mr. Bush came here and traipsed across the state of Florida, calling me everything but a blue goose, he neglected to tell the people that we had the highest job growth rate of any state in the country in the last four years. His own labor secretary said it was enormous. When he came here and said I was tax crazy he neglected to tell you that my state has the second lowest tax burden in the country. And it was George Bush who said read my lips and then raised taxes on the middle class, not Bill Clinton. He put an ad on television, my opponent did, showing pictures of all these folks, and telling how much I was going to raise their taxes. The Washington Post said it was a misrepresentation, and the Wall Street Journal said that I wanted to lower taxes on the very people he accused me of raising them on. He made the whole thing up. It's pretty sad for a president of the United States, after four years in office, to have to make up an ad to run a campaign for president. My fellow Americans, then he comes down here and tells you I want to raised Medicare after he just came out with a program to charge the average Medicare family $400 more a year for the next five years. He gets his positions and mine mixed up, because he doesn't believe in any of them. And I want to tell you that I think we are better than that. Folks, Governor Wilder and I started this Democratic process together and this nomination for president, in different ways determined to change the Democratic Party. We didn't want any more trickle-down economics, but we knew we couldn't just have tax-and-spend economics. We knew we needed a new direction for this country, that would be a victory not just of political parties but of people; a direction that says, hey, we know how you create jobs. You invest. So no more across-the-board tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent. Instead, ask them to pay their fair share, then give them incentives to create new plants, new businesses, new farms, new housing projects, new technologies. Investment, we want to make more millionaires than Reagan did and Bush did. But we want to make millionaires the old fashioned way, by having them put the rest of the American people to work, with jobs that can be competitive in the global economy. We believe that this country cannot restore its economic health, reduce its deficit, invest money we need to invest, until at long last we finally become the last advanced country in the world to control health care costs and provide basic health care to all Americans; and we have a plan to do that. It is a plan that goes beyond party. The American Nurses Association endorsed the Clinton-Gore ticket. The American College of Physicians came out with a plan remarkably similar to ours, and George Bush found himself attacking doctors, saying the doctors didn't know anything about health care. And last week, a bipartisan group, Republicans and Democrats who had served in previous administrations, analyzed my plan and the president's plan, and said that our plan would save the average family more than $1,000 a year more than his by the year 2000, free up hundreds of billions of dollars to invest, and provide basic health care for all Americans, including the right to buy in to a long term care program for people before they're put into poverty and before they have to go into a nursing home. I think that's what the American people want--a health care system that really works for all of us. Now, I see all these kids for Clinton signs here. Let me tell you, this country needs a real education president. Not just someone who talks about education at election time, and lectures to others about what they should do; but someone who will roll up his sleeves and do what each of these governors has had to do to engage the energies of our teachers, our administrators, our parents, our kids, and create a system that is the envy of the world. If you give me a chance, that's what we will do. We will guarantee--folks, we can't make it as a country unless we improve our system for education and training for our people. We've got to say to every high school graduate who doesn't go to a four-year college we will guarantee you access to two years of further education in a community college or an apprenticeship program so you can get a good job, not a dead end job. The rest of America needs it. We've got to say--we ought to go into every American workplace in the next five years and teach every worker with a job to read, and give everybody the chance to get a high school diploma so that the people who are working today can get higher earnings and be more productive and make us stronger. And we ought to open the doors of college education to all Americans, without regard to income. Al Gore and I have a plan to create a national service trust fund, a domestic peace corps that will provide loans to any American without regard to income to pay for a college education, and then let them pay it back either as a small percentage of their income, after they go to work; or even better, by giving two years of service to their nation here at home, as teachers or police officers, or working in housing programs, working with the elderly for home health care, working with children to keep them out of trouble, working with people with disabilities to help them be more independent. You just think about it: if every person in Florida who needs a college degree and got it, and then paid it back by making Florida stronger from the grassroots up with people power, we could solve the problems of our nation and generate an incredibly educated workforce that would explode economic opportunity all across this country. These are the things that we stand for. We also stand for a system, again I will say, that is not trickle down, that is not tax and spend. We are going to have to reduce unnecessary spending. We're going to bring this deficit down. But we're going to do it while we're putting the American people back to work. Panel after panel after panel of economists have examined my plan, the Bush plan, and Mr. Perot's plan. And the overwhelming consensus is that the Clinton-Gore put-people-first plan will do more to create jobs and raise incomes than any other alternative before you in this election year. And that is what we've got to do. Let me say to you here in Florida, I know the Republicans think that Florida belongs to the national Republican Party. They used to say that Democrats left me; I'll tell you something, the Republicans have left you. If you want evidence of that, you can see the fact that ever since the Republican convention Bush and Quayle have been trying to run away from the Republican platform, and we're running on ours, and proudly. If you look at where Orlando is, and where central Florida is, and where you're going, what you need is a caring, efficient, effective, national government; a president who gets up everyday and works on your problems; someone who wants to have a partnership with business and labor and education, to open up opportunities for all Americans. And that's what I stand for. And behind that, there is a human reality that two- thirds of our people are working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago; that too many of our people are unemployed; that too many of our working people are living in poverty; that too many people believe that their children will not do as well as they did. My fellow Americans, the American dream is being tested in this election. Some of you are old enough to remember when it was tested before. In 1932, when Roosevelt was elected president, one in four of our people was unemployed; half the people in my state were living in abject poverty; and a lot of people didn't know where to turn next. But he said, we can do better; and together we will. And that's what I say to you today. I am so tired of seeing the American people divided by issues designed to drive a wedge between us to get votes for George Bush. Divided by race, divided by region, divided by gender, divided by income. I am tired of it. I don't want any divisions. Everyone of you has a place in the American family that I want to lead. And I'm so tired of George Bush saying, we can't. That's all he says is, we can't. You know, I disagreed with Congress in the past, but Congress passed a bill that would have provided $300 million in research for breast cancer for women. My mother would be affected by that; she's a breast cancer survivor. It would have provided money for osteoporosis, for ovarian cancer research, to deal with other health care problems for women. George Bush vetoed it for political reasons. The Congress passed a bill twice that would have provided basic family leave with an exemption for small business, for people when they've got a baby born, or a sick child or a sick parent. You know, 72 nations--72 nations--will give a working person a little time off to go home and take care of their parents or their kids without pay, without losing their jobs. And this president vetoed that bill twice. He said we can't do something that 72 countries can do. And today, Al Gore had to leave this bus trip to go back to Washington to try to override the veto of the president of the cable television bill, which would have protected all of the Florida cable owners from just being ripped off by monopoly. But the president says, we can't. Folks, I was raised and most of you were raised in an America that was a we-can country. And we're tired of being told that we can't. I want you to help us four weeks from tomorrow to build a nation that will once again be the envy of the world; where we are decent to everybody; where everybody who will work hard and has the courage to change has the chance to take control of their own destiny; where we don't keep people in dependence, but we move them toward independence, whether we're moving people from welfare to work, whether we're telling people they can stay in their own homes longer, and we'll help them stay independent. Just because they're elderly or have a disability doesn't mean that they shouldn't have more control over their own lives. Where we're going to tell people you'll still be able to get a loan to start a new business; you'll be able to expand your business and do well; and you'll be able to get a decent education in this country. That's what this election is all about. This country is going in the wrong direction. We want to put it right. We want to be faithful to the American dream. We want you to know that we know that we can do better, and that you are better than you've been getting. Will you help us make America what it ought to be? Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you. Thank you.