Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be back at Michigan State. Thank you. I want to thank first Letha Miller…”

“Thank you. Thank you very much. It's great to be back at Michigan State. Thank you. I want to thank first Letha Miller for that wonderful introduction and for her example. Weren't you proud of her? I thought she did a great job. I thank President McPherson and your board chairman, Bob Weiss, for welcoming me. I know the mayors of Lansing and East Lansing are here. And somewhere Senator Levin has a Lansing Lugnuts baseball cap for me. I don't know where it is, but I'm prepared to wear it. There it is. What do you think? I like it. I would like to thank the Olympians who are here from Michigan: Paul McMullen, Eric Namesnik, and Mike Castle. I'd like to thank the Paralympian, Ed McGinnis. I'd like to thank especially my good friend Carl Levin for being here, and I hope you'll send him back to the Senate from Michigan. He's a good man who does a good job for you. And I want to say a special word about Debbie Stabenow, who is running for Congress. I'm very proud of the fact that we put in the direct loan program to lower the cost and improve the repayment terms of college loans so no one would ever have to decline to go to college because of the loan burden. Everyone can pay it back as a percentage of their income. I'm very proud that we increased Head Start. I'm very proud that we did things for education. And I'm proud that I vetoed the budget of the Republican Congress when they tried to undo it all. And I believe a great university like Michigan State is entitled to be represented in the United States Congress by someone who believes in student loans, not someone who tries to abolish them. And I think you should make a change. Folks, I've had a wonderful couple of days. Hillary and Chelsea and I started out on this train in West Virginia, and then Hillary went home to Chicago to start our convention, and Chelsea and I went through West Virginia, Kentucky, into Ohio. Then this morning in Toledo, Chelsea went to hear her mom speak tonight. And thank goodness, since we're a little late--I'm sorry we are, but I got to hear her mom speak tonight, too, on the train, and she was terrific. I was so proud of her. And today we have been in Michigan. This train I'm taking across America is going across this heartland of our country for two reasons. For one thing, I really wanted to go to this convention to accept the nomination of my party for President for the second time, to begin the last campaign I'll ever make, by looking into the eyes, the faces, the hearts of the people of this country for whom I have worked and fought these last 4 years. And you have made me happy and pleased beyond my wildest dreams. I am proud to be an American when I look out at you and I see you. But I also wanted you to see this train, and I wanted you to see that it is on the right track, not just to Chicago, we're on the right track to the 21st century, and we intend to stay right on it. Four years ago when I came to Michigan and I asked the people here to support me in the quest for the Presidency, I did it because it was a fight for the future, a future that most of you young people will have a lot more of than those of us who now have our AARP cards. [Laughter] I did it because I wanted to us to go into the next century with every American able to live up to the fullest of his or her God-given capacity, every American who's willing to work for it to have a chance to live his or her dreams. That, after all, is the great promise of this country. And I didn't like the fact that our country had high unemployment and stagnant wages and increasing division and unmet challenges and rising cynicism, especially among the young, about our political system. Well, 4 years later I can come back to you and I can say, I wanted to bring hope back to America. There is more hope, more progress, because we are better off than we were 4 years ago and we're going on the right track into the 21st century. I have a simple formula, folks, for what I've been trying to do: more opportunity for people, more responsibility from our citizens, and a strong sense of American community. The special thing about this country is that we are bound together not by race or religion but by our shared values. In the last 4 years, I have spent so much time as your President trying to make peace in other parts of the world. And we've made a lot of progress, but we've also got a lot of challenges out there, because it is so maddening to see from the Middle East to Bosnia, to Northern Ireland, to Rwanda and Burundi and other parts of the world how many places in the world are people determined to fight and kill each other because of their different races, their different religions, their different ethnicity, their different tribal roots. Why do people have to look down on each other who are different from them? In my America, if you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and you're willing to show up and be counted every day and be good law-abiding citizens, nothing else matters. We're going into the future together. So I say to you, you look where we are on the question of opportunity, you look where we are on the question of people taking more responsibility, you look where we are on the question of coming together, and I say to you we're on the right track. In the last 4 years--let me just mention a few things: We have 10 million more jobs. We have 4\1/2\ million new homeowners. We have 10 million homeowners who have refinanced their mortgages at lower rates. We have 50 million Americans breathing cleaner air. We have cleaned up more toxic waste sites in 3 years than the previous administrations did in 12. We have 1\1/2\ million fewer people on welfare. We have a 40 percent increase in child support payments. We have 2 million people now eligible for these direct student loans that you just heard about. Just in the last week, look what happened. We raised the minimum wage for 10 million people. We gave the small-business people of this country a tax cut if they invest more in their business. And we made it easier for people to take out pensions for their employees. We made it easier for parents to adopt by giving a $5,000 tax credit for people who adopt a child, and even more if the child has a disability. There are so many kids out there who need a home. What we did in the minimum wage bill was pro-work, pro-family, and pro-business. It was a great day for America when we signed it. And then we signed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which said to 25 million Americans, you can't lose your health insurance anymore if you lose your job, if you change jobs, or if somebody in your family has been sick. That's what health insurance is for. It was a great day for America. Audience member. We love you!”