Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Thank you very much for being here tonight. I won't take a lot of time because I want to just sit and visit.…”

“Thank you. Thank you very much for being here tonight. I won't take a lot of time because I want to just sit and visit. But I would like to just begin with a story. Yesterday I was in Wichita, Kansas, coming back from California, and I visited the Cessna airplane manufacturing facility--not the plane facility but their training facility for people they're trying to move from welfare to work. And we went there for a number of reasons. One was to announce that we now have 2,500 businesses who have committed to be part of our partnership to hire people from welfare and put them into the workplace. These 2,500 businesses are small, medium, and large. Seventy-five percent of them are small businesses, but combined they have over 5 million employees. The other reason I went there is because the way this Cessna project works is the way I'd like to see America work, not only in this issue but a lot of others. They receive support for a number of the things they've done from the Labor Department and from the Housing and Urban Development Department, and of course they have the framework of the welfare reform bill. But here's what they do: They go out and take people--many of them the hardest to place people on welfare--and they put them through a 3-month training program. And then if they go through that, they put them through a 3-month sort of pre-job program. And if they get through both, they get an automatic guaranteed job at Cessna at high wages and good benefits.…”