Article 4908 of alt.politics.clinton: Path: bilver!tous!peora!masscomp!usenet.coe.montana.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!uicvm.uic.edu!u45301 Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago Date: Thursday, 20 Aug 1992 02:10:15 CDT From: Mary Jacobs Message-ID: <92233.021015U45301@uicvm.uic.edu> Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton Subject: CLINTON/GORE TEXT: RESCUE AMERICA--ST.LOUIS LIBRARY Lines: 309 SEND COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS INFORMATION TO THE CLINTON/GORE CAMPAIGN AT 75300.3115@COMPUSERVE.COM (This information is posted for public education/information purposes. It does not necessarily represent the views of The University.) ======================================================================== REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON AND SENATOR AL GORE ST. LOUIS MAIN LIBRARY ST. LOUIS, MO. 07/22/92 SENATOR AL GORE: Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. What a crowd here today! Way over there behind us, there's another big crowd part of this crowd, way back that way, way down the street that way, in both directions, up on the roof. This is biggest one yet. But ladies and gentlemen, we were told on the way over here that there are more than forty thousand people gathered here for this event today. Let me tell you why I think this is happening. All along this bus tour, on the roadsides, and at the small towns and the large towns and the cities, everywhere, Republicans for Clinton/Gore have been coming to join these crowds. Independents and Perot- supporters for Clinton/Gore have been joining these crowds. We Americans love our country. We want change in this country. People are allowing themselves to hope again. We are tired of politics. We are tired of the politics of distraction, denial, despair, and division. We want the politics of hope, and substance, and accomplishment to get this country moving forward in the right direction again. Before I introduce Bill Clinton, I would like to introduce two other people in words I used last week at the convention, two women who have done more than the last two men in the White House have done in their whole lifetimes for children and families, Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore. I'd like to thank my friend Dick Gephardt for his introduction of me, and tell you what you already know. He stands for integrity, compassion, caring, competence, and leadership in Washington. We need a lot more like Dick Gephardt to help us pass Bill Clinton's programs. Now, ladies and gentlemen, you know Bill Clinton's story. His father died in a tragic accident three months before he was born. He was born into a poor family. His mother had to go to work to put food on the table. His grandparents helped out. But Bill lifted himself up by his bootstraps, worked his way through college, and took that great education, not to make a personal fortune, but to come back home to help the families who were in the circumstances from which he came. And he has gained the reputation of leadership in the field of education by lifting the test scores above the national average with innovative, creative new programs; by implementing new health care programs in his state that form the basis for some of the provisions of the national health insurance program that he has talked about in his campaign; and by creating good manufacturing jobs at ten times the national average. Those are some of the reasons why the other forty-nine governors, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted to name Bill Clinton the best and most effective governor in the United States of America. Now we've got a basic choice to make. Do we want to continue in the same rut we've been in for the last twelve years? Do we want to keep a government that responds only to the wealthy and powerful and privileged few? Do we want a phony environmental President? Do we want a phony education President? Or do we want a change in this country? Do we want a real environmental President? A real education President? Do we want to get this country moving again? Do we want to put people first for a change? Ladies and gentlemen, help us send a message to those in the White House who have turned their backs on the working families of this country. Let's tell Bush and Quayle that it's time for them to go. What time is it? CROWD: It's time for them to go. Again, what time is it? CROWD: It's time for them to go. One more time, loud enough so that they can hear you all the way in the White House. What time is it? CROWD: It's time for them to go. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the next President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton. GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the largest, most enthusiastic, most committed crowd of Americans we have seen on this great trip. Al Gore and I today are ending the first thousand miles of our campaign to change America. We have gone from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to West Virginia to Ohio to Kentucky to Indiana to Illinois and now to St. Louis in a great crusade to give the American people their country back. And all along the way, we have been reminded about what makes this country great--going through the farming communities and seeing the little children lighting sparklers along our way; seeing people hold out their American flags; seeing the Clinton/Gore banners draped across the combines in the fields; seeing America say we want to change this country and put our people first for a change. This great state, the home of Harry Truman, is called the Show-Me State. One thing you cannot say about this administration, you can't say that Bush and Quayle haven't shown you, they have shown you. Look what they have shown you: the worst economic record in the last fifty years, only Herbert Hoover in the twentieth century, matched the economic record of this last administration. When Reagan and Bush came to office, we had the highest wages in the world. We are down to thirteenth and dropping. In every measure of economic performance, we are falling behind. Most people in this crowd today, and most people in this country today are working harder today for less money than they were making ten years ago. Is it right? And what have they given us? The same old, tired idea, they are in the grip of a failed theory. They believe passionately that the only way for America to compete and win in the world is for us to become more unequal and more divided, keep taxes as low as possible on the wealthiest Americans, raise them on the middle class, explode the deficit, and get the government out of the way. What has it brought us? More decline, more inequality, an America that is the mockery of the world. This year, they got their way-- the top one percent of Americans control more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. Did it make us strong? No. What happened? The President goes to Japan and the Japanese Prime Minister says he feels sympathy for the United States. I say this to those who are holding up those "Jobs Now" posters, when I'm your President and Al Gore is your Vice-President, people will look up to us with respect, not down on us with sympathy, because we're going to win again. We want a new day for the Democratic party, and a new day for America. Here we are in St. Louis, Missouri, and you're having an election year here today. And I don't want to get involved in your elections, but I do want to say that you have two Democrats running for governor, both of whom are better than all the Republicans they can dredge up. Al Gore and I woke up this morning and Mayor ... of St. Louis. We ran up to Lafayette Square, we ran back. Neither one of us fainted, and we decided that this was a wonderful city, and Mr. Mayor, we're glad to be here. And I want to thank your Lieutenant Governor, Mel Carnahan, for being one of the first people to endorse me when I was low in the polls, and now that we're up, we're going to change the country together, all of us working together. Let me tell you something. In my announcement speech at the Democratic National Convention, I quoted one of my favorite verses of scripture, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." George Bush mocked that as the "vision thing." He said, "I'm not very good on the vision thing." I hope you never leave a place without a vision, I hope you don't have to live tomorrow without a vision. I hope you never have to raise a child without a vision, or plant a crop without a vision, or start a business without a vision. That's what's the matter with this country today. And I'll tell you something else. We have a plan. We have a plan. Mr. Bush said our plan was smoke and mirrors. Well, he's the world's expert on smoke and mirrors. You decide if it's smoke and mirrors. Here it is, it says, "For too long, our government has been dominated by special interests, our elections controlled by them, our process paralyzed by them. We're going to give the government back to the people again. We're going to invest in jobs, and education, and affordable health care for all Americans, not just a few." Our plan says no smoke and mirrors. We're going to pay for it by taking every dollar by which defense is reduced, and re-investing it here in America to put those people back to work. Why should we throw people out to work, when we can create more jobs in the future. It says, "We're going to open the doors of college education to all Americans. Let anybody borrow the money to go to college. And pay it back, either as a percentage of your income when you go to work, or, better yet, come home to St. Louis, come home to Missouri and work for two years. Be a police officer, be a nurse, be a teacher, work to help kids in trouble. Pay back your college loan by solving the problems of America at home." Our plan says, "If you're a high school graduate and you don't go to college, we want a hundred percent of you to have at least two years of further training in an apprenticeship program to get a good job, not a dead-end job." I'm tired of the dignity being stripped from blue-collar work in America. Our plan says, "We're going to take on the health insurance companies in the bureaucracy and the government regulation, and strip the millions of dollars of waste out of the health care system, to control the costs, to preserve industry and the decency and security of life for average Americans, and provide a basic package of health care to all Americans. We're going to get America in line with the rest of the world." Our plan says, "Every American will have to be more responsible for the future of this country. We want to create more wealthy people in America than Reagan and Bush have, but we've got an old-fashioned idea. We want everybody to get rich by putting the American people to work, producing American jobs, American goods, American services." And so we say, "New incentives for modern plant and equipment, new incentives to start new business, but no more tax breaks for moving your jobs overseas. We will help you to build America again, and we want you to get rich doing it the old-fashioned way." Our plan says, "We're going to liberate the poor. We're going to change the tax system for all those working poor people, who courageously get up every day, work forty hours a week, do their best to raise their children, and they're still in poverty. We ought to have a tax system that says, if you're working hard and playing by the rules, we're going to lift you up and out of poverty in this country today. We're going to have a welfare system that says, "We want you to have more from your country in education and training, and health care for your children, but then when you can go to work, you've got to go to work." Welfare should be a second chance, not a way of life. We're going to have a new idea. Put our people first. Invest in the re-vitalization of our cities and our countryside. Put this money back to where it belongs, in creating jobs and education, so we can compete. There is nothing wrong with this country, except that we're under-organized, under-educated, and under-led, and we're going to change all that in November, if you'll help us. Ladies and gentlemen, people say to me all the time, "Well, that sounds good. But how do I know you're serious?" Well, I'll tell you one way you know I'm serious. Look at the first decision George Bush made, and the first decision I made. Dan Quayle versus Al Gore. I win. I wanted Al Gore to be on my team because he knows more than I do about some things, not cause he'll make me look good every day. The first and greatest Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, said that you can never lift yourself up by putting other people down. Al Gore and I want to lift everybody in America up. We don't want anybody left out. We think you can be pro-business and pro-labor. We think you can be tough on crime and, still, fair to all Americans. And we think you can preserve the environment and develop the economy, and the other side doesn't believe any of that. Ladies and gentlemen, we didn't get into this mess overnight. And we won't get out of it overnight. But we will make progress. The thing that kills a country is when people get up every day, and they don't think that tomorrow will be better, when they think nothing is going to change, when they think nobody cares about them, when it's every person for themselves. We want to restore this country a genuine sense of community and caring, to say we're all in this together. We're going up or down together, without regard to race or region or income. This is America. Let's start acting like it again. And we want you to believe that tomorrow can be better than today. Don't let anybody tell you we can't make these changes. There are countries in the world today where the people are not working as hard, and they're making more money, and they've got health insurance, because their governments put their people first. They know that if you don't take care of people, nothing else works. So if you're sick and tired of the way it's been going, if you want people in control again, if you believe your country is still the greatest country in the world again, if you think we can compete and win again, if you're tired of being heartbroken when you go home at night, and you want a spring in your step and a song in your heart, you give Al Gore and I a chance to bring America back. We will lift the country up. It's time for them to go, and time for us to rescue America. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you.