Bill Clinton: “Give him a hand; he made it up. [Applause] I appreciate his support for the urgency of health care reform, and we're…”

“Give him a hand; he made it up. [Applause] I appreciate his support for the urgency of health care reform, and we're glad to see him up and around. [Laughter] Let me ask you something. I want you to know this, too. Keep in mind, I came to Washington not as a creature of Washington. I came to Washington with the fondest hope that we would be able to work together across party lines where we had honest agreements, that we would have to give a little and work a little and we'd work things out. Once in a while we did that. We had the--the debate over NAFTA was an honest debate where most people just voted their conscience for and against. But it's about the only example I can give you. You look at the economic program. I was not there a week in Washington as your President before I was informed by one of the leaders of the other party that there would be no votes for our economic plan, no matter what changes we made. So, look what they did. When we gave the middle class a fair break on taxes and cut the taxes for those low-income working families and asked the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share, every Republican in the Congress said no. When we reformed the loans to benefit middle class college students, not just poor kids, middle class kids, every Republican in the Congress said no. When we gave 90 percent of the small businesses in this country an eligibility for a tax cut, all the Republicans said no. When we banned assault weapons, when we put 100,000 police on the street, when we reduced the size of the Federal Government by 270,000 to pay for that crime bill, when we protected victims in that crime bill, when we had a great section on violence against women and children, most of the Republicans voted no. And all the leaders did, and those who didn't were told they were being traitors to the Republican Party. And when they got up and said that our prevention programs were pork, I just want to remind you that a crime bill with the prevention programs in it passed the Senate about a year ago with the votes of the Republicans 42 to 2 for. When we got close to the election and they saw that their obstructionist tactics and their negative tactics were having a positive impact on them in the poll, the 42 to 2 for changed to 6 to 34 against in the United States Senate. A friend of mine George Mitchell, the Senate Democratic leader, said, ``If you took the word `no' out of their vocabulary, they would be mute.'' [Laughter] Let me tell you something, friends, we do have problems. And we must face them. But the issue is this administration has got a good record. We have kept our commitments. We are going in the right direction. We must see the glass is half full, not half empty. Yes, we still have to change more of the way Government works. But after years with the Republicans badmouthing Government, we are the ones who have reduced the size of Government, we are the ones who've changed regulations of bureaucracy and slashed it and given more power back to State and local governments; we're the ones that gave the small business people the opportunity to walk into the SBA today and apply for a loan on a one-page form and get an answer in 3 days. Those are the kinds of things that we are doing. And I just want to say this: If we're going to have the energy to keep solving our problems, we have to have our heads on straight and we have to stay with the policies that work. And when we're making progress, we have to know it and we have to get with it. This election is an opportunity for you to reassert what is best about our country, people pulling together and working together and moving forward. It's an opportunity for you to say, by the people you vote for, people like Ann Wynia, to send a signal to America that look, when the Congress gets together again, we don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, roll up your sleeves and go to work. Don't say no to the other party, say yes to America. It's time to say yes to America. This is the greatest country in human history. Every time I leave the borders of America and represent you in another land, I just swell with pride. People would give anything to have the diversity of our economic strength. They would give anything to find the diversity we have in our society. There are counties in America with people from 150 different racial and ethnic groups living in peace, even as people from just 2 or 3 different groups continue to kill each other with abandon in other parts of the world. And I want you to think about that when you walk out of here. You think about what you can do for a person like Ann and how you want to feel when you see your United States Senator on television coming back from Washington. Do you want one more slogan, one more hot-air rhetoric, one more divisive statement, or do you want to look at somebody you think is imagining what your life is like, imagining how you feel when you put your kids to bed at night, imagining how you feel when you go out to work in the field or at your office the next day? That's really what this is about. I'm telling you, other people sometimes may have a better fix on us than we do on ourselves. But it is no accident that the South Africans wanted us to spend $35 million and help them conduct their successful elections. It is no accident that the Israelis and the Arabs want us to help them work out a lasting peace in the Middle East. It is no accident that after hundreds of years of fighting, the turbulence in Northern Ireland may be coming to a close, and they want us to be involved. And let me say this. Even at the most difficult moment of our encounter last week in Haiti, the military leaders looked at the delegation that I sent down there and said, ``Well, if the President is determined to do this, and if the United Nations is determined to go forward, then at least we want the Americans in here; we know we can trust them.'' That is what we are to the rest of the world. So let us be that to ourselves by voting for people who can bring out the best in us and say yes to America, people like Ann Wynia. Thank you very much, and God bless you.”