Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Good morning, University City! Good morning, St. Louis! Good morning, Missouri! Thank you for being here.…”

“Thank you. Good morning, University City! Good morning, St. Louis! Good morning, Missouri! Thank you for being here. Thank you for your good spirits. Thank you for your support. Thank you very much, Mayor Joe Adams, for this wonderful day. I assume the mayor arranges the weather in University City every day. It's a beautiful day. I want to thank Attorney General Jay Nixon and Treasurer Bob Holden and Secretary of State Bekki Cooke, Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson for being here. And I want to thank St. Louis' own Bobby McFerrin for that great, great musical tribute. Thank you. Thank you, Joan Kelly Horn, for running for the Congress and for standing up against the Republican Congress and what they tried to do to cut education and the environment, to weaken Medicare and Medicaid, to allow workers' pension funds to be raided. They say if they keep their majority, they're going to do it one more time. You have to decide, and Joan Kelly Horn is your alternative, folks. Thank you for being here, Joan, and thank you for running. I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to Congressman Bill Clay and Congressman Dick Gephardt, who are not here today but who are working their hearts out for victory in November and who have stood by you and for your future. And I want to thank my good friend Governor Mel Carnahan for his leadership for Missouri, his support for me. He will be a great Governor for the next 4 years. Thank you, Mel Carnahan. I'd also like to acknowledge two people in the audience: Senator Tom Eagleton, thank you for being here, and former Lieutenant Governor Harriet Woods. And the people of Project Vote, thank you for being here. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to be here in University City, a model of racial and religious diversity, a city with more than 24 churches and synagogues, a leader in equal opportunity and racial harmony since the 1960's, a stern rebuke to those who would divide our country today by race or ethnicity or religion. Thank you for the example you have set. Folks, I like the cheering in elections. I even like it when our opponents show up and cheer. I like it when Americans are enthusiastic. It's what America is all about. But I also hope every one of you will take a little time in these last 8 days not only to cheer but to think and to ponder. This is the last election for President in the 20th century and the first election for President in the 21st century. I'm glad so many young people are here today because this is about your future in a new world, a new era, a new time. So as we close this election season, I also want to take some time every day to focus on the big issues before us. Yesterday we talked about welfare reform. Today I want to talk about how we can keep our economy strong by balancing the budget and still investing in the priorities that matter to Americans. You have to decide who can best lead America into the 21st century. You have to decide whether you want to build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past. You have to decide whether you want to build a bridge wide enough and strong enough for all of us to walk across together, or just say, ``There's the future; I hope you make it.'' You have to decide whether we're better off being told we're on our own, or whether you believe it does take a village to raise our children and educate them and protect our country and build a good future. Four years ago I ran for President with a simple vision, and I ask you to think about it tonight. When you go home, just take a little time and ask yourself, what do I want America to look like 4 years from now when we start that new century? What do I want America to look like when my children are my age? My answer is simple: I want an America where the American dream is alive and well for everybody who is responsible enough to work for it. I want an America still the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I want an America relishing, respecting its diversity and coming together across its differences in shared values, not being driven apart as so many places in the world are today. To achieve that America, I have worked hard on a strategy to expand opportunity for all, demand responsibility from all, and build an American community where everybody has a role to play and a place at the table. Four years ago when I came to you and told you this, you in Missouri, even here in the Show Me State, had to take me on faith. But today you don't have to do it anymore. Today there is a record, and we can show you. And that's why they're trying to shout us down, because we can show you. We can show you. So today, Missouri, you don't have to listen to the shouting, you can look at the showing. You can look at the showing. We have more evidence today that our economy is on the right track. When I ran for President 4 years ago, no challenge loomed larger or seemed more difficult to solve than the deficit. The deficit had soared to $290 billion, a record high and growing. In the 12 years before I took office, our national debt had quadrupled over what it had accumulated for the 200 years before. We worked hard to change that. We passed a tough economic plan without a single, solitary vote on the other side. My opponent and others said we could never reduce the deficit. They said we would wreck the economy. They said these tough decisions would bring no good. Well, we knew sooner or later there would be ``show me'' time. And we know now that for 4 years in a row, we have reduced the deficit. That's the first time a President has reduced the deficit in all 4 years of a term in the 20th century. We know now that our budget would be in surplus today if it weren't for the interest we pay on the debt run up in just the 12 years before I took office. I pledged to you when I ran for President that we would restore fiscal discipline to our Government, cut the deficit in half in 4 years. I said it was wrong to leave our children a legacy of debt, and we would never get Missouri and America's economy growing again until we got the deficit down to get interest rates down, so that business loans, home mortgages, car payments, and student loan payments were going down. We had to get those interest rates down. The deficit was a ball and chain holding back our economy. Well, today we've got some new good news about exactly how far the deficit has dropped since I took office. So, since the young people have the biggest stake in it, I want to ask two of your young people, Daraa Seward and Matthew Laudano, to join me, and we are going to officially announce, along with Frank Raines, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the 1996 deficit figure. You can listen to them and look at the figure, and you decide. [At this point, Daraa Seward, Gateway Institute of Technology student, and Matthew Laudano, Hazelwood Central High School student, unveiled the figures.]”