Bill Clinton: “Well, here are the facts: We have 10\1/2\ million more jobs; record exports; record numbers of new small businesses…”

“Well, here are the facts: We have 10\1/2\ million more jobs; record exports; record numbers of new small businesses; 4\1/ 2\ million new homeowners; a 15-year high in homeownership; a 7\1/2\- year low in unemployment--in Texas, a 15-year low in unemployment; the lowest combined rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 27 years. We're moving in the right direction. Here are the facts. Yesterday we learned in the annual report put out by our Census Bureau that median incomes in America rose about $900 last year after inflation--the biggest rise in the incomes of average Americans in a decade--and $1,600 since that plan went into effect. Listen to this: Yesterday we learned from the Census Bureau that in 1995, childhood poverty reached its lowest level, had the biggest drop in 20 years--in 20 years. We learned that the number of poor people in America went down by the largest number in 20 years. We learned that all Americans, for a change, are beginning to benefit in the economic recovery. Wages are rising for the first time in a decade, and we had the biggest decline in inequality among working people in 27 years. We're going forward together. We are going forward together. And let's look at some other scorecards. In the area of health care, we made 25 million Americans eligible to keep their health insurance by passing a bill which says you can't lose your health insurance anymore just because you changed jobs or somebody in your family has been sick. Yesterday I signed a bill to stop drive-through deliveries, to stop insurance companies from throwing women and their little babies out of the hospital 24 hours after the babies are born. The bill also begins to provide some protection for health care coverage for families with mental illness, a very important thing in our country. And the bill says to Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange--many of their children have gotten spina bifida--finally, after all this long time we're going to give disability support and other help to those people who served our country. It's a good thing for America. Look at the family scorecard: 12 million American families have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law that says you can take a little time off--if you've got a baby born or a sick parent you can take a little time off without losing your job. Now, our opponents didn't think much of that bill, either. They said it was bad for business. But 3\1/2\ years later, we've got 12 million families that are stronger and 10\1/2\ million new jobs. I think we were right and they were wrong. The crime rate has come down for 4 years in a row. There were one million fewer victims of crime last year than there were when I took office. The welfare rolls have come down by nearly 2 million. Child support collections are up by nearly 50 percent, $3.8 billion a year, lifting families out of welfare. On October 1st, in just a few days, 10 million hard-working Americans will get an increase in their minimum wage. In that same bill we offer a $5,000 tax credit to families who will adopt children. There's a lot of kids out there that need homes. This is pro-family legislation at its best. We have made the air cleaner, our drinking water and food safer. We've cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than were cleaned up in the 12 years before I became President. We are moving in the right direction, building our bridge to the 21st century. Our national security is stronger. There are no Russian missiles pointed at the children of America for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age. We are tackling terrorism all over the world. We are promoting peace. We have 200 separate trade agreements of all kinds, from NAFTA and the GATT world trade agreement to 21 agreements with Japan. If you doubt whether it works, in those 21 areas with Japan our American exports have increased by 85 percent. And we're number one in producing cars in the world again for the first time since the 1970's. And Fort Worth has made its contribution to our national security, for it is here that the V-22 Osprey is made, a very important part of America's defense future. And I thank you for that. And our friends in the other party, they always say Government is the problem, Government is the enemy, Government is bad. But you know what? We've done more to reduce the size of Government than they ever did. It's the smallest it's been since John Kennedy was President. We got rid of more regulations, ended more unnecessary programs, gave back more authority to States and local governments to run their own affairs than our Republican predecessors did. But what we did not do is to give you a Government so weak it could not build a strong economy, invest in education, protect the environment, and take care of the people who have earned the right to a little help from the rest of us. We are going to go forward together. That is the right thing to do. So I say to you, my friends, in the next 39 days, I hope those of you who are here at this rally will go visit with those who aren't here at this rally and say, ``You know, we might ought to vote for this President. We might ought to vote for these candidates back here, because this country is on the right track, and we don't want to take a U-turn. We need to go right ahead, straight into the 21st century.'' I want to ask you to help me to continue this work to build that bridge to tomorrow. The future of this country represents our best days if we do the right things. The kids in this audience, they'll be doing jobs that haven't been invented yet. A lot of the children in this audience will be doing jobs that have not been imagined yet if we do the right things. We've got to keep this economy going. That means we have to balance the budget, but we've got to do it in the right way. We can balance the budget and still protect our investments in education, in the environment, in Medicare and Medicaid. We shouldn't let them raid workers' pension funds under the guise of balancing the budget. We can have a tax cut, but it ought to be the right kind of tax cut, targeted to families that need it for childrearing, for education, for buying that first-time home, for medical care. And when you sell your home, if you got a gain on it you shouldn't have to pay taxes on it, because it's where most people's savings are. We can afford that. And that's what we ought to do. But we ought not to have a tax cut we can't afford, even though it's popular at election time. And here's why. I tell this everywhere I go. Every time I leave town in Washington, some expert says, ``Now, don't go down there again into the heartland and talk about the deficit. People are bored by the deficit. Nobody cares about balancing the budget when the economy is good.'' Here's why you ought to care about it. One big reason this economy has taken off in the last 4 years is that we brought the deficit down. What does that mean? We had to borrow less money. When we borrowed less, that left more for you. That meant the interest rates went down. Our friends in the Republican Party put out a study last year that I have to tell you I agree with. I wish they still agreed with it. But they agreed with it last year. What that study said was if we're not on a plan to balancing the budget, it will add 2 percent to the interest rates that American people are charged. Now, you just figure it out for yourselves. What would it mean to you to have to pay 2 percent more on your credit card debt, on your college loan, on your car payment, on your home payment? What would it mean to the economy of Fort Worth and Tarrant County and Texas if every businessperson had to pay 2 percent more every time they went to the bank to borrow money? It would mean fewer jobs, a weaker economy, not as many pay raises. It's not a good deal. Let's only have the tax cut we can afford. Let's pay for it, and let's target it to education, childrearing, and build a stronger America. Let's do that. I want to build a bridge to the 21st century that says to every child in this country and every adult, education is now a lifetime endeavor and we're going to have the best education opportunities in the entire world. Forty percent of our 8-year-olds still cannot read on their own. That is bad. They can't learn the rest of the things they need to learn. I want to mobilize an army of volunteers to work with parents and teachers to make sure that by the year 2000 every third grader in America can pick up a book and say, ``I can read this all by myself.'' I want to make sure that every--every single classroom in America and every library in every school has not only computers and educational materials and teachers trained on the computers but is hooked up to this worldwide information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World Wide Web. What does that mean? It means the kids in the poorest schools in America and the kids in the most remote rural schools for the first time in the history of this country can get the same information in the same time in the same way as the children in the wealthiest schools in America. And that will revolutionize educational opportunity. And we can do that. Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause] And most important of all, I want to open the doors of a college education to every single American who is willing to go and work for it. I want to let more families save for an IRA, for their own retirement, and then withdraw from it tax-free, if they want to, to pay for education. I want to say that we can make 2 years of college as universal in 4 years as a high school diploma is today, by giving families a tax credit, a dollar-for-dollar reduction on their tax bill for the cost of a typical community college tuition in this country. And then everybody can go. Everybody can go. And I believe that we ought to give a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year to families for the cost of any college tuition, undergraduate or graduate, medical school, veterinarian school, you name it. We can lift America if we do that. Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause] I want you to help me build a bridge that keeps the crime rate coming down. The crime rate in Fort Worth has dropped 50 percent in the last 4 years, 50 percent in this community. If we lower it for 4 more years, it might be low enough for us to all feel safe again on our streets, in our homes, in our schools. That's very important. We've got to keep putting 100,000 police on the street. We've got to continue that fight. And let me say one thing about that. We had a pretty rough time, our side did, in the elections of 1994, and one reason was a lot of good, God-fearing people in Texas and Arkansas and other places who loved to hunt, loved to go out in the woods and engage in sports shooting as well as hunting, were absolutely convinced when our opponents said that we were trying to take their guns away because we banned 19 kinds of assault weapons and passed the Brady bill. That's what they said, and a lot of people believed them. They were scared, and they voted against some good people in Congress. Well, it's been 2 years, and it's kind of like the economic plan: Now we know. Now we know. Not a single Texas hunter has lost a rifle. Everybody is still hunting with the same weapon they had 2 years ago if they want to, every single soul in the country. But you know what? Sixty thousand fugitives, felons, and stalkers cannot get a handgun because of the Brady bill, and we're safer because of it. We are safer because of it. And I don't think they ought to be able to buy guns, people who beat up their spouses and their kids, either. I don't think they should. And I think we ought to extend it. And we ought to keep going until we put 100,000 police on the street so we can prevent more crime. We ought to test people on parole for drug use, because 60 percent of the serious drugs in this country are used by people that are already in the criminal justice system. And parole is a privilege; people shouldn't be able to get out and abuse it and go back on drugs and become criminals again. Our children deserve better than that, and I hope you'll help us. And one other thing, we can't entirely jail our way out of this problem. We've got to keep our kids out of trouble in the first place. We've got to do more to keep them off drugs in the first place. One of the things that I have fought hardest for is the safe and drug-free schools act, which gives schools all across our country the resources they need to make sure that they've got those D.A.R.E. officers coming into the classroom, they've got other people coming in to talk to these kids and be good role models and tell them that drugs can kill them and destroy their lives. And you know, that's another thing that Mr. Morales' opponent and mine tried to cut. Now, why in the world they wanted to cut the safe and drug-free schools act and stop us from putting 100,000 police on the street is beyond me. But I think we know now we were right and they weren't. And I think we need to keep building that bridge to the 21st century. I want to ask you all to think about that. There's more we need to do for families, more we need to do to clean up our environment. There's still 10 million American children living within 4 miles of toxic waste dumps. But if you'll give us 4 more years, we'll clean up the 500 worst dumps so we can say our kids are growing up next to parks and not poison. Every child in America deserves that. And I hope you'll help us build that bridge to the 21st century. Ladies and gentlemen, this election is about your future and about the future of your children and your children's children. We are living in a time of phenomenal change in the way we work and live and relate to each other and the rest of the world. If we make the right decisions, if we build the right kind of bridge, if it's big and broad enough for all of us to walk across and for our children and our children's children to walk across, the best days of this country are still ahead. So I ask you again in the next 39 days to help us build that bridge by going out and talking to other people and saying, ``What do you want our country to be like in 4 years? What do you want our country to be like as we start that new century? What do you want our country to be like when our children are our age?'' If we ask the right questions, we'll give the right answers in Texas and all across America. Help us build that bridge to the 21st century. Thank you, and God bless you all.”