Bill Clinton: “No, well, he had a great game. [Laughter] But one of them happens to be from my home State, Keith Jackson. And he…”

“No, well, he had a great game. [Laughter] But one of them happens to be from my home State, Keith Jackson. And he reminded me when I saw him this morning that his wife was at our rally in Little Rock just last night. So I want to talk to you a few moments about the future because he reminded me of this rally last night. I told the folks at home--a lot of the people who came to see me there have been working for me for more than 20 years now. And I said I want this campaign to be about the future. The record that we have made is relevant because it shows you that we'll do what we say in the future and it shows you that we're on the right track. But what really matters is the future. And I told the folks at home a story I'd like to tell you. In 1984--this makes the point about how elections are about the future--in 1984 I was out on a little country crossroads speaking to a rally way out in the hills in Arkansas, and I gave a barn-burning speech about what a great job I had done as Governor--I thought it was just great--and why they ought to reelect me. And this old boy came up to me in overalls and he said, ``Bill, that's a fine speech you gave. And you do have a good record. But,'' he said, ``that's what we hired you for. You drew a paycheck every 2 weeks, didn't you?'' [Laughter] He said, ``That's what we hired you for. What are you going to do if I renew your contract? That's what I want to know.'' And that's what I tried to tell the American people in Chicago last Thursday night with my fellow Democrats. I'll tell you what we're going to do: We're going to finish building our bridge to the 21st century so every American family has a chance to benefit from a growing economy, from a community that's strong and with safe streets and a clean environment, and every family has a chance to succeed at home with their children and at work, perhaps the biggest challenge American working families face today. So let me talk to you a little about that. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century with the best education system in the world. I want a million children in Head Start. I want every 8-year-old in America to be able to say when they look at a book, ``I can read that all by myself.'' I want every classroom, every classroom and every library in every school in America not only to have the computers they need, not only to have the trained teachers they need but to be hooked up to the worldwide information superhighway. Now, if you're like me and you're sort of in the dark ages when it comes to computers, let me tell you what that means; let me tell you what that means in practical terms. You hook all these computers up, all these classrooms to the Internet, it means that for the first time in the history of the United States of America, the children in the poorest urban schools, the children in the most remote rural schools will have access to the same knowledge in the same time at the same level of quality as the children in the wealthiest schools in the United States. It has never happened before. We can make it happen now. Will you fight for that kind of future for our country? Will you help me do that? [Applause] Now, I also want to make it possible for every--every single American who wants to do it to go to college and to get a good education. And I want to talk to you about three things. Number one, I want to make 2 years of education after high school, what most of us know as a community college degree at least, I want that to be just as universal in 4 years as a high school education is today. And that's why I called for a $1,500 tax credit to the working families of America so that we can pay, through a tax cut, for the cost of tuition at any typical community college in the United States. I want America's working families to have a $10,000 tax deduction for the cost of all college tuition, any tuition your kids have after high school, for the adults or the children. And I want to take all the various training programs we've had over the years and put them in a block and say to you or your friends, if you lose your job or if you're underemployed and you qualify for a Federal training program, we will give you a skills grant worth up to $2,600 a year. You take it where you want. You get the education you need. You start your life again with a better job, a higher wage, and a brighter future. That's the kind of education system I want for America. Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause] I want to allow working families to save more, to take out an IRA and to be able to save the money and withdraw it without penalty to pay for an education, to pay for a first-time home, to pay for a medical emergency. I want you to be able to sell your home and never owe any taxes on the gain. I want this to be a pro-family, pro-growth, pro- education tax package. You ought to have a tax credit for your children who are 13 or under that need more child care, need afterschool care. But let me tell you something about this tax program. It's targeted to working families. It is paid for. It is designed to help promote childrearing, education, and work, the most important things to build strong families and successful workers. The most important thing is, this is all paid for. Now, I want to say something. You can take 1,000 polls, you can talk to every political consultant in Washington and they'll tell you--they'd say to me, ``President Clinton, do not go to a labor rally in Milwaukee and talk about balancing the budget. That bores people to tears. They only think about balancing the budget when the economy's in the tank, and then it seems like a nice thing to do. But nobody really cares about it. It's boring, and besides, it's hard. And people don't want to hear about hard things.'' Let me tell you something. I hope you care about it, because how do you think we got the economy going again? By bringing interest rates down. Why did we bring interest rates down? Because when we reduced the deficit, your Government wasn't in there borrowing all that money, and you could go borrow it. And the demand was less, so the interest rates were lower. Now, our friends in the Republican Party, just last year they put out a little paper that they seem to have forgotten. It said, if we're not on a path to the balanced budget, interest rates will go up to 2 percent. Now they say, ``Don't vote to reelect President Clinton. Vote for us; we'll give you a bigger tax cut.'' They say, ``We'll give you a bigger tax cut.'' Let me tell you about that bigger tax cut. Two things are going to happen. If they actually did it, two things would happen. Number one, if you thought the budget I vetoed was bad with its Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment cuts, with its $15 billion raid on worker pension funds, with its tax increases on the lowest paid workers in America--all of that it had in the one I vetoed--you ain't seen nothing yet. If they pass this tax plan, they'll come back with deeper cuts. Is that what you want for our future? Audience members. No-o-o!”