Bill Clinton: “For two reasons. One is, Christopher Reeve made an impassioned plea for research. In my budget we have consistently…”

“For two reasons. One is, Christopher Reeve made an impassioned plea for research. In my budget we have consistently invested more in research, both in health care areas like spinal cord disease, breast cancer, HIV, and AIDS, and also in science and technology. We're now building with IBM a computer, a supercomputer that will do more calculations in a second than a person with a hand-held calculator could do in 30,000 years--30,000 years. It's unbelievable. And I believe that it's very important to vote for a President who believes in the future and who is really committed to science and technology and research. The second reason is, as Christopher Reeve so eloquently told me when we were visiting in the Oval Office, not everyone who gets a serious injury and becomes disabled is wealthy; most people aren't, and even wealthy people can quickly be bankrupted by the cost of care. The Medicaid program which the Federal Government has maintained for 30 years contains a guarantee of aid to families with disabilities who are middle class or below, to enable them to maintain a middle class life, to keep their jobs, and still give their disabled family member some help. In the budget--which I vetoed--of the Republican Congress, which Senator Dole and Mr. Gingrich led through Congress, they would have removed that guarantee, just sent some money to the States, put a lid on it, and then let the States decide what to do. And I think it's highly likely that the first people to be sacrificed would have been people with disabilities. So those are the two reasons that his being there embodied the human connection to the President and his actions, the Congress, and what happens to people's lives. And every other person that was there on Monday night, the same thing. The Brady bill, it was obvious because they talked about it. Mike Robbins, the Chicago police officer, was riddled with bullets by an assault weapon. The young AmeriCorps girl was important because the Republicans have tried to abolish AmeriCorps twice. The educator is important because they wanted to cut back on educational aid; I wanted to invest more money in education. So everybody there--the Toledo autoworker was important because we've opened new markets to Japan and other parts in the world and America is number one in auto production again. So we started our convention in a very different way. We had a whole series of citizens speaking to establish the connection between their vote and their lives. 1996 Election Ms. Soren. Speaking of Senator Dole and the Republicans, the Republicans are accusing you of theft of their values agenda, stealing their ideas and making them your own. How do you plead?”