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                     "TAKING RESPONSIBILITY"
                      Governor Bill Clinton
                       Louisiana Superdome
                     New Orleans, Louisiana
                          July 29, 1992


Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to be here today. I
wanted to get a small crowd in this vast arena to make a statement,
and as I think you know, we're going over to U.N.O. at 5:00 to have
a large rally and I hope you will join us there, but I didn't want
to pass the opportunity of being in New Orleans today, and not make
a statement that I think capsulizes for me at least much of what
this election is all about.

Two weeks ago, I stood in Madison Square Garden in New York before
the Democratic National Party and accepted my party's nomination. I
promised to put the American people first, challenged us to make a new
choice based on old values, and agreed to do my best to assume the
awesome responsibility of the Presidency.

Over the last two weeks, Al Gore and I, in our bus, and in our
individual travels, have seen the faces and heard the voices of an
America yearning to hope and dream and believe again. Across this
country, astonishing crowds have come out to see us, not just to see us,
but in search of something far more important -- their chance to trust in
democracy again, and to give their children a better tomorrow. People
who get up early and work all day to give their kids a better tomorrow.
People eager to roll up their sleeves and build a better America. People
who want to believe again, to begin again, to be proud again. People
who feel their government has broken its promises and violated their
trust.

Today I have come here to the Superdome to the spot where that trail
of broken promises and violated trust began. George Bush has talked a
great deal about trust lately. Today I was going to talk to you about that
very famous phrase that George Bush made in this stadium four years
ago, "Read my lips".

I was going to talk to you about his promise of fifteen million new jobs
in the first four years, a promise that is fourteen and a half million jobs
short. A promise of a kinder, gentler nation, a promise that has been
savaged by the political tactics and the division of this own
administration. About the only thing we can really trust this
administration to do is to give us four more years of the same failed
economic policies. But yesterday, something happened that goes beyond
even the trust issue, and the gall of this administration to hurl the word
"trust" at its opponents.

It's beyond broken promises and it's about the acceptance of
responsibility by the President. For yesterday on the day when consumer
confidence plunged to all-time lows, when home buying is going down
and unemployment is going up, Mr. Bush sent his leading economic
advisor to Capitol Hill to deliver a message to an anxious people.

Speaking on behalf of the President, Richard Darman denied that the
President bears any responsibility whatever for the sluggish, stagnant
economy. Mr. Darman pointed the finger of blame everywhere but at
the Oval Office. Listen to this. The President's chief economic advisor,
when asked for an explanation of why we have the three slowest years
of economic performance in fifty years since the Great Depression, did
the following things.

He blamed the Federal Reserve for the slow growth of the money
supply. He blamed the nation's lenders for the credit crunch. He blamed
Saddam Hussein for the invasion of Kuwait, which is good blame but
hardly the cause of our economic problems here at home. And he
blamed Congress for refusing to enact Mr. Bush's economic program,
a limited version of trickle-down, which was cooked up for election year
after three years of no action at all.

Yesterday, the chairman of the House Budget Committee asked the
President's chief spokesperson on the economy, "Does the President
accept any responsibility whatsoever?" And the spokesman wouldn't
accept any, not any. Even though, six different times, Mr. Bush and his
advisors have tried to take credit when they thought the economy was
moving up.

Four years ago, this President promised fifteen million new jobs, no new
taxes, and a kinder, gentler nation. But most important, he promised to
be President, to accept responsibility. He said that he saw his life in
terms of "missions, missions defined, and missions completed."  The
mission was an America "moving forward, always forward."

And four years later, we're moving backward. Most Americans are
working harder for less money than they were making ten years ago.
Unemployment now numbers ten million Americans. Ten percent of our
people are on food stamps. Other countries' economies are growing
faster than ours. Since 1980 and the beginning of trickle-down, we've
gone from first to thirteenth in the world in wages. We are not moving
forward, always forward. And all Mr. Bush has to offer is the politics
of blame, and more of the same.

He is still in the grip of a failed idea, still believing the only way to
make an economy grow in a tough global environment is to cut taxes on
the wealthiest one percent, raise them on the middle class, let the deficit
explode, reduce investment in our future, and stay out of the economic
battleground with other nations. Every major economy in the world has
a national economic strategy but the United States of America.

He still believes that, when it comes to offering opportunity for ordinary
Americans, the best policy for the government is to do nothing. He still
believes that our top economic priority ought to be an across-the-board,
short-term capital gains tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. A tax cut
that gives millionaires an average benefit of $100,000, and gives folks
earning $50,000 a year or less an average of thirty dollars. A tax cut
that isn't targeted to long-term investment in activities that create jobs
and emphasize new technologies. A tax cut just like the past twelve
years of windfalls for the wealthy without jobs for ordinary Americans.

Let's face it, when Mr. Bush stood here four years ago and said, "Read
my lips, no new taxes," what he meant to say was, "No new taxes for
the rich."

This President actually vetoed an economic package passed by Congress
this year, and fashioned, among others, by Senator Lloyd Bentsen of
Texas, a pro-business Democrat, that included much of what Mr. Bush
says he wanted and even more -- an investment tax credit for new plant
and equipment, research and development tax credits to keep us ahead
in the race for new technologies, and other investments to get this
economy going. Why did he veto the bill?  Because it paid for those tax
incentives by raising taxes on the top one percent of Americans, whose
taxes have gone down for the last ten years, and because it didn't
include the short-term, across-the-board, capital gains tax cuts.

We have disagreements about the economy, but the main point I want
to make to you today is that beyond the trust issue, beyond the broken
promises, beyond the bad economic policies, there is, underneath all
this, an even more fundamental issue, and that is the failure of the
President to assume responsibility for the future of this country.
The great Presidents of our time have gone beyond pointing the finger
of blame to assume the burden of responsibility.

President Franklin Roosevelt, who assumed office in 1933, and lifted us
up from the confines of his wheelchair, did not tell us that the only the
fear was the Federal Reserve.  He said, "The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself."

President Truman had to make the awesome decision about atomic
weapons to end World War II, and to begin the post-World War II era
in the Cold War. He didn't blame everyone else for his problems. He
didn't try to pass the buck, he had a sign on his desk that said, "The
buck stops here." He would have fired Darman for that statement
yesterday.

President Eisenhower didn't complain the Korean problem was a
problem he inherited. He said, "Vote for me. I will go to Korea."

And President Kennedy, even though he might have done so, did not
blame his predecessor for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He stood up there and
said, "It is my responsibility." And I will assume it.

Mr. Bush has gone from voodoo economics to can't-do economics. But
the American people are a can-do people. And we need a President who
can get the economy moving again and assume the responsibilities of the
office.

My adversaries have one hundred days to rehearse and repeat their
excuses and their blame and their argument for why America shouldn't
change. They'll say the Democrats are tax-and-spend, in spite of the fact
that our program calls for a more aggressive, but leaner, and more
efficient government that reduces spending in many areas that this
President has refused to address. They'll say that the Democrats are
liberals, whatever that means, in spite of the fact that our platform is
tough on crime, pro-growth, and innovative in the most modern and best
sense, and emphasizes the personal responsibility of every American.

And you know what they'll say. They'll say the other guy, that's me, is
a bum. They'll say, you know, they've got a sign up in Houston, he's
the failed governor of a small state. It's amazing they don't want George
Bush to take responsibility for anything that happened in America, but
they want to hold their opponents responsible for everything that
happened in their charge. Well, I'll take responsibility, if he will.

I think the American people are tired of blame placing and excuses. I
think they want to move to responsibility. And what I want to say to you
today in this great cavernous stadium is that if this President won't use
the power of his Presidency to help the ordinary American people, I
will.

He has demonstrated that he doesn't have a plan to get the economy
moving again, but I do. Put the American people first. Invest in their
potential, in their jobs, their education, their health care. Make
government a partner with business and labor and education. Help
America compete and win in the global economy. Don't read my lips,
read my plan.

Give up the idea of a capital gains tax cut that doesn't distinguish
between short-term investments in speculation and long-term investments
in new technologies and new jobs. Make America the best educated,
best trained, best paid work force in the world, linked by the world's
best systems of transportation and communications. Invest in civilian
research and development. Turn American innovation in the laboratories
into American jobs in the factories. Open the doors of college
opportunity to all Americans.

Take on health care cost increases, control health care costs, and
provide a basic package of affordable health care to every family in this
country. Reinvest every last dollar of defense cuts in retraining defense
workers, retooling plants, and reinvesting in an American economy for
the twenty-first century. Rebuild our cities, our suburbs, our rural areas.
Ask the wealthiest one percent of Americans to pay their fair share of
taxes again, not to soak the rich, but to keep from drowning the middle
class, so that we can all go forward together.

My fellow Americans, we didn't get into this mess overnight. We won't
get out of it overnight. But we won't get out of it at all, unless we
change, unless we abandon trickle-down economics, not in favor of old
tax-and-spend and divide-the-pie economics, but in favor of putting our
people first and helping America to compete and win in the world
economy.

We know that investment economics works. We know that when
business and labor and education and government are on the same side
working for opportunity in the world, it works. The people of the United
States are hurting, they need a President who will do what George Bush
once promised he would do, use the power of the Presidency to help
people. If he won't do it, I know someone who will. Thank you very
much.

End of Remarks