Former President Bill Clinton Speaks, at the Democratic Convention

[Abel Malcolm]

It makes me proud to be an American, to see us Democrats, holding such
a convention, where the good of all Americans, and the good of the
country is what we are talking about. In marked contrast, the
Republican Convention was an absolute disgrace, full of non stop
lies...lies upon lies upon lies, trying to push an extremist agenda
that has already harmed our nation beyond comprehension. We are
trying to fix the mess they created, and one more thing, the TRUTH is
OUR weapon. It's the only weapon we need.

Abel Malcolm
http://www.barackobama.com


For the video, go to this link:

http://front.moveon.org/bill-clinton-rips-apart-every-gop-talking-point-in-a-speech-thatll-get-you-fired-up/

For a printed transcript of the speech, go to this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/us/politics/transcript-of-bill-clintons-speech-to-the-democratic-national-convention.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

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September 5, 2012

Transcript of Bill Clinton’s Speech to the Democratic National
ConventionThe following is the full text of former President Bill
Clinton’s speech on Wednesday from the Democratic National
Convention.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
(Sustained cheers, applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you.

Now, Mr. Mayor, fellow Democrats, we are here to nominate a president.
(Cheers, applause.) And I’ve got one in mind. (Cheers, applause.)

I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of
adversity and uncertainty. I want to nominate a man who ran for
president to change the course of an already weak economy and then
just six weeks before his election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse
since the Great Depression; a man who stopped the slide into
depression and put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the
while that no matter how many jobs that he saved or created, there’d
still be millions more waiting, worried about feeding their own kids,
trying to keep their hopes alive.

I want to nominate a man who’s cool on the outside -- (cheers,
applause) -- but who burns for America on the inside. (Cheers,
applause.)

I want -- I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a
new American Dream economy, driven by innovation and creativity, but
education and - yes - by cooperation. (Cheers.)

And by the way, after last night, I want a man who had the good sense
to marry Michelle Obama. (Cheers, applause.)

You know -- (cheers, applause). I -- (cheers, applause).

I want - I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United
States. (Cheers, applause.) And I proudly nominate him to be the
standard-bearer of the Democratic Party.

Now, folks, in Tampa a few days ago, we heard a lot of talk --
(laughter) -- all about how the president and the Democrats don’t
really believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we
want everybody to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for
the economy.

This Republican narrative -- this alternative universe -- (laughter,
applause) -- says that every one of us in this room who amounts to
anything, we’re all completely self-made. One of the greatest chairmen
the Democratic Party ever had, Bob Strauss -- (cheers, applause) --
used to say that ever politician wants every voter to believe he was
born in a log cabin he built himself. (Laughter, applause.) But, as
Strauss then admitted, it ain’t so. (Laughter.)

We Democrats -- we think the country works better with a strong middle
class, with real opportunities for poor folks to work their way into
it -- (cheers, applause) -- with a relentless focus on the future,
with business and government actually working together to promote
growth and broadly share prosperity. You see, we believe that “we’re
all in this together” is a far better philosophy than “you’re on your
own.” (Cheers, applause.) It is.

So who’s right? (Cheers.) Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the
Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In
those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private
sector jobs.

So what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million; Democrats, 42
(million). (Cheers, applause.)

Now, there’s -- (cheers, applause) -- there’s a reason for this. It
turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is
both morally right and good economics. (Cheers, applause.) Why?
Because poverty, discrimination and ignorance restrict growth.
(Cheers, applause.) When you stifle human potential, when you don’t
invest in new ideas, it doesn’t just cut off the people who are
affected; it hurts us all. (Cheers, applause.) We know that
investments in education and infrastructure and scientific and
technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and
they create new wealth for all the rest of us. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, there’s something I’ve noticed lately. You probably have too. And
it’s this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but
though I often disagree with Republicans, I actually never learned to
hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to
hate our president and a lot of other Democrats. I -- (cheers,
applause) -- that would be impossible for me because President
Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little
Rock Central High School. (Cheers, applause.) President Eisenhower
built the interstate highway system.

When I was a governor, I worked with President Reagan and his White
House on the first round of welfare reform and with President George
H.W. Bush on national education goals.

(Cheers, applause.) I’m actually very grateful to -- if you saw from
the film what I do today, I have to be grateful, and you should be,
too -- that President George W. Bush supported PEPFAR. It saved the
lives of millions of people in poor countries. (Cheers, applause.)

And I have been honored to work with both Presidents Bush on natural
disasters in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane
Katrina, the horrible earthquake in Haiti. Through my foundation, both
in America and around the world, I’m working all the time with
Democrats, Republicans and independents. Sometimes I couldn’t tell you
for the life who I’m working with because we focus on solving problems
and seizing opportunities and not fighting all the time. (Cheers,
applause.)

And so here’s what I want to say to you, and here’s what I want the
people at home to think about. When times are tough and people are
frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of
constant conflict may be good. But what is good politics does not
necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is
cooperation. (Cheers, applause.) What works in the real world is
cooperation, business and government, foundations and universities.

Ask the mayors who are here. (Cheers, applause.) Los Angeles is
getting green and Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because
Republicans and Democrats are working together to get it. (Cheers,
applause.) They didn’t check their brains at the door. They didn’t
stop disagreeing, but their purpose was to get something done.

Now, why is this true? Why does cooperation work better than constant
conflict?

Because nobody’s right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice
a day. (Cheers, applause.)

And every one of us - every one of us and every one of them, we’re
compelled to spend our fleeting lives between those two extremes,
knowing we’re never going to be right all the time and hoping we’re
right more than twice a day. (Laughter.)

Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party
doesn’t see it that way. They think government is always the enemy,
they’re always right, and compromise is weakness. (Boos.) Just in the
last couple of elections, they defeated two distinguished Republican
senators because they dared to cooperate with Democrats on issues
important to the future of the country, even national security.
(Applause.)

They beat a Republican congressman with almost a hundred percent
voting record on every conservative score, because he said he realized
he did not have to hate the president to disagree with him. Boy, that
was a nonstarter, and they threw him out. (Laughter, applause.)

One of the main reasons we ought to re-elect President Obama is that
he is still committed to constructive cooperation. (Cheers, applause.)
Look at his record. Look at his record. (Cheers, applause.) Look at
his record. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the Army
and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him
in 2008. (Laughter, applause.) And he trusted that vice president to
oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation
of the recovery act. (Cheers, applause.)

And Joe Biden - Joe Biden did a great job with both. (Sustained
cheers, applause.)

He -- (sustained cheers, applause) - President Obama - President Obama
appointed several members of his Cabinet even though they supported
Hillary in the primary. (Applause.) Heck, he even appointed Hillary.
(Cheers, applause.)

Wait a minute. I am - (sustained cheers, applause) - I am very proud
of her. I am proud of the job she and the national security team have
done for America. (Cheers, applause.) I am grateful that they have
worked together to make us safer and stronger, to build a world with
more partners and fewer enemies. I’m grateful for the relationship of
respect and partnership she and the president have enjoyed and the
signal that sends to the rest of the world, that democracy does not
have a blood - have to be a blood sport, it can be an honorable
enterprise that advances the public interest. (Cheers, applause.)

Now -- (sustained cheers, applause) -- besides the national security
team, I am very grateful to the men and women who’ve served our
country in uniform through these perilous times. (Cheers, applause.)
And I am especially grateful to Michelle Obama and to Joe Biden for
supporting those military families while their loved ones were
overseas -- (cheers, applause) -- and for supporting our veterans when
they came home, when they came home bearing the wounds of war or
needing help to find education or jobs or housing.

President Obama’s whole record on national security is a tribute to
his strength, to his judgment and to his preference for inclusion and
partnership over partisanship. We need more if it in Washington, D.C.
(Cheers, applause.)

Now, we all know that he also tried to work with congressional
Republicans on health care, debt reduction and new jobs. And that
didn’t work out so well. (Laughter.) But it could have been because,
as the Senate Republican leader said in a remarkable moment of candor
two full years before the election, their number one priority was not
to put America back to work; it was to put the president out of work.
(Mixed cheers and boos, applause.) (Chuckles.) Well, wait a minute.
Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we’re going to keep President
Obama on the job. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, are you ready for that? (Cheers, applause.) Are you willing to
work for it. Oh, wait a minute.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years! Four
more years! Four more years!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa - in Tampa - did y’all watch their
convention?

I did. (Laughter.) In Tampa, the Republican argument against the
president’s re-election was actually pretty simple - pretty snappy. It
went something like this: We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned
it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in. (Laughter,
applause.)

Now -- (cheers, applause) -- but they did it well. They looked good;
the sounded good. They convinced me that - (laughter) - they all love
their families and their children and were grateful they’d been born
in America and all that - (laughter, applause) - really, I’m not being
-- they did. (Laughter, applause.)

And this is important, they convinced me they were honorable people
who believed what they said and they’re going to keep every commitment
they’ve made. We just got to make sure the American people know what
those commitments are -- (cheers, applause) -- because in order to
look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President
Obama, they just didn’t say very much about the ideas they’ve offered
over the last two years.

They couldn’t because they want to the same old policies that got us
in trouble in the first place. They want to cut taxes for high- income
Americans, even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid of
those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash
and prohibit future bailouts. They want to actually increase defense
spending over a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has
requested without saying what they’ll spend it on. And they want to
make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that
help the middle class and poor children.

As another president once said, there they go again.

(Laughter, cheers, applause.)

Now, I like - I like - I like the argument for President Obama’s re-
election a lot better. Here it is. He inherited a deeply damaged
economy. He put a floor under the crash. He began the long, hard road
to recovery and laid the foundation for a modern, more well- balanced
economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new
businesses and lots of new wealth for innovators. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, are we where we want to be today? No.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Is the president satisfied? Of course not.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: But are we better off than we were when he took
office? (Cheers, applause.)

And listen to this. Listen to this. Everybody - (inaudible) - when
President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free fall. It
had just shrunk 9 full percent of GDP. We were losing 750,000 jobs a
month.

Are we doing better than that today?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes! (Applause.)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The answer is yes.

Now, look. Here’s the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you
who support him face. I get it. I know it. I’ve been there. A lot of
Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy. If you
look at the numbers, you know employment is growing, banks are
beginning to lend again. And in a lot of places, housing prices are
even beginning to pick up.

But too many people do not feel it yet.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early ‘95. We could see that
the policies were working, that the economy was growing. But most
people didn’t feel it yet. Thankfully, by 1996 the economy was
roaring, everybody felt it, and we were halfway through the longest
peacetime expansion in the history of the United States. But -
(cheers, applause) - wait, wait. The difference this time is purely in
the circumstances. President Obama started with a much weaker economy
than I did. Listen to me, now. No president - no president, not me,
not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the
damage that he found in just four years. (Cheers, applause.)

Now - but - (cheers, applause) - he has - he has laid the foundation
for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity. And if you
will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel
it. (Cheers, applause.)

Folks, whether the American people believe what I just said or not may
be the whole election. I just want you to know that I believe it. With
all my heart, I believe it. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, why do I believe it?

I’m fixing to tell you why. I believe it because President Obama’s
approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has
to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a
nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared
prosperity, a shared sense of community.

So let’s get back to the story. In 2010, as the president’s recovery
program kicked in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn
around. The recovery act saved or created millions of jobs and cut
taxes - let me say this again - cut taxes for 95 percent of the
American people. (Cheers, applause.) And, in the last 29 months, our
economy has produced about 4 1/2 million private sector jobs. (Cheers,
applause.)

We could have done better, but last year the Republicans blocked the
president’s job plan, costing the economy more than a million new
jobs.

So here’s another job score. President Obama: plus 4 1/2 million.
Congressional Republicans: zero. (Cheers, applause.)

During this period - (cheers, applause) - during this period, more
than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President
Obama. That’s the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since
the 1990s. (Cheers, applause.) And I’ll tell you something else. The
auto industry restructuring worked. (Cheers, applause.) It saved - it
saved more than a million jobs, and not just at GM, Chrysler and their
dealerships but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country.

That’s why even the automakers who weren’t part of the deal supported
it. They needed to save those parts suppliers too. Like I said, we’re
all in this together. (Applause.)

So what’s happened? There are now 250,000 more people working in the
auto industry than on the day the companies were restructured.
(Cheers, applause.)

So — now, we all know that Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM
and Chrysler. (Boos.) So here’s another job score. (Laughter.) Are you
listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the country? (Cheers.) Here
- (cheers, applause) - here’s another job score: Obama, 250,000;
Romney, zero.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (With speaker.) Zero. (Cheers, applause.)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, the agreement the administration made with the
management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage, that
was a good deal too. It will cut your gas prices in half, your gas
bill. No matter what the price is, if you double the mileage of your
car, your bill will be half what it would have been. It will make us
more energy independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions. And
according to several analyses, over the next 20 years, it’ll bring us
another half a million good new jobs into the American economy.
(Cheers, applause.)

The president’s energy strategy, which he calls “all of the above,” is
helping too. The boom in oil and gas production, combined with greater
energy efficiency, has driven oil imports to a near-20- year low and
natural gas production to an all-time high. And renewable energy
production has doubled.

(Cheers, applause.)

Of course, we need a lot more new jobs. But there are already more
than 3 million jobs open and unfilled in America, mostly because the
people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do
them. So even as we get Americans more jobs, we have to prepare more
Americans for the new jobs that are actually going to be created. The
old economy is not coming back. We’ve got to build a new one and
educate people to do those jobs. (Cheers, applause.)

The president - the president and his education secretary have
supported community colleges and employers in working together to
train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities -
and even more important after a decade in which exploding college
costs have increased the dropout rate so much that the percentage of
our young people with four-year college degrees has gone down so much
that we have dropped to 16th in the world in the percentage of young
people with college degrees.

So the president’s student loan is more important than ever. Here’s
what it does - (cheers, applause) - here’s what it does. You need to
tell every voter where you live about this. It lowers the cost of
federal student loans. And even more important, it give students the
right to repay those loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their
income for up to 20 years. (Cheers, applause.)

Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It means no
one will ever have to drop out of college again for fear they can’t
repay their debt.

And it means - (cheers, applause) - it means that if someone wants to
take a job with a modest income, a teacher, a police officer, if they
want to be a small-town doctor in a little rural area, they won’t have
to turn those jobs down because they don’t pay enough to repay they
debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This
will change the future for young America. (Cheers, applause.)

I don’t know about you - (cheers, applause) - but on all these issues,
I know we’re better off because President Obama made the decisions he
did.

Now, that brings me to health care. (Cheers, applause.) And the
Republicans call it, derisively, “Obamacare.” They say it’s a
government takeover, a disaster, and that if we’ll just elect them,
they’ll repeal it. Well, are they right?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let’s take a look at what’s actually happened so
far.

First, individuals and businesses have already gotten more than a
billion dollars in refunds from insurance companies because the new
law requires 80 (percent) to 85 percent of your premium to go to your
health care, not profits or promotion. (Cheers, applause.) And the
gains are even greater than that because a bunch of insurance
companies have applied to lower their rates to comply with the
requirement.

Second, more than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured
for the first time because their parents’ policies can cover them.

(Cheers, applause.)

Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care, all the way from
breast cancer screenings to tests for heart problems and scores of
other things. And younger people are getting them, too.

Fourth, soon the insurance companies - not the government, the
insurance companies - will have millions of new customers, many of
them middle-class people with pre-existing conditions who never could
get insurance before. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, finally, listen to this. For the last two years - after going up
at three times the rate of inflation for a decade, for the last two
years health care costs have been under 4 percent in both years for
the first time in 50 years. (Cheers, applause.)

So let me ask you something. Are we better off because President Obama
fought for health care reform? (Cheers, applause.) You bet we are.

Now, there were two other attacks on the president in Tampa I think
deserve an answer. First, both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan
attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion.
That’s the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and
they got a lot of votes on it. But it’s not true. (Applause.)

Look, here’s what really happened. You be the judge. Here’s what
really happened. There were no cuts to benefits at all. None. What the
president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a
commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers
and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were
not necessary to get the providers to provide the service.

And instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the
doughnut hole in the Medicare drug program - (cheers, applause) - and
- you all got to listen carefully to this; this is really important -
and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is
solvent till 2024. (Cheers, applause.)

So - (chuckles) - so President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken
Medicare; they strengthened Medicare. Now, when Congressman Ryan
looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare
savings as, quote, the biggest, coldest power play, I didn’t know
whether to laugh or cry - (laughter) - because that $716 billion is
exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that he
has in his own budget. (Cheers, applause.) You got to get one thing -
it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did. (Laughter,
cheers, applause.)

So - (inaudible) - (sustained cheers, applause) - now, you’re having a
good time, but this is getting serious, and I want you to listen.

(Laughter.) It’s important, because a lot of people believe this
stuff.

Now, at least on this issue, on this one issue, Governor Romney has
been consistent. (Laughter.) He attacked President Obama too, but he
actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the
insurance company. (Laughter, boos.)

He wants to go back to the old system, which means we’ll reopen the
doughnut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we’ll
reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years.
(Boos.)

So if he’s elected, and if he does what he promised to do, Medicare
will now grow (sic/go) broke in 2016. (Boos.) Think about that. That
means, after all, we won’t have to wait until their voucher program
kicks in 2023 - (laughter) - to see the end of Medicare as we know it.
(Applause.) They’re going to do it to us sooner than we thought.
(Applause.)

Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. (Laughter.) And
you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They also want
to block-grant Medicaid, and cut it by a third over the coming 10
years.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of
poor kids. But that’s not all. Lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly
two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare
seniors - (applause) - who are eligible for Medicaid.

(Cheers, applause.) It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a
lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities,
including - (cheers, applause) - a lot of middle-class families whose
kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions.
(Applause.) And honestly, let’s think about it, if that happens, I
don’t know what those families are going to do.

So I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do everything I can to
see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. (Cheers,
applause.) We can’t. (Cheers, applause.) Now - wait a minute. (Cheers,
applause.) Let’s look -

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let’s look at the other big charge the Republicans
made. It’s a real doozy. (Laughter.) They actually have charged and
run ads saying that President Obama wants to weaken the work
requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions
of people from welfare to work. (Jeers.) Wait, you need to know,
here’s what happened. (Laughter.) Nobody ever tells you what really
happened - here’s what happened.

When some Republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try
new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama
administration listened because we all know it’s hard for even people
with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from
welfare to work is a real challenge.

And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and
others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20
percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase
employment. Now, did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more
work, not less. (Cheers, applause.)

So this is personal to me. We moved millions of people off welfare. It
was one of the reasons that in the eight years I was president, we had
a hundred times as many people move out of poverty into the middle
class than happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as
many. (Cheers, applause.) It’s a big deal. But I am telling you the
claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform’s work requirement
is just not true. (Applause.)

But they keep on running the ads claiming it. You want to know why?
Their campaign pollster said, we are not going to let our campaign be
dictated by fact-checkers. (Jeers, applause.) Now, finally I can say,
that is true. (Laughter, cheers, applause.) I - (chuckles) - I
couldn’t have said it better myself. (Laughter.)

And I hope you and every American within the sound of my voice
remembers it every time they see one of those ads, and it turns into
an ad to re-elect Barack Obama and keep the fundamental principles of
personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job into work
as soon as we can. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, let’s talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower
than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow
money, to hold their money for them.

But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest
rates start to rise. We’ve got to deal with this big long- term debt
problem or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger and bigger
percentage of the federal budget we’d rather spend on education and
health care and science and technology. It - we’ve got to deal with
it.

Now, what has the president done? He has offered a reasonable plan of
$4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with 2 1/2 trillion
(dollars) coming from - for every $2 1/2 trillion in spending cuts, he
raises a dollar in new revenues - 2 1/2-to-1. And he has tight
controls on future spending. That’s the kind of balanced approach
proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan commission.

Now, I think this plan is way better than Governor Romney’s plan.
First, the Romney plan failed the first test of fiscal responsibility.
The numbers just don’t add up. (Laughter, applause.)

I mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem?
Somebody says, oh, we’ve got a big debt problem. We’ve got to reduce
the debt. So what’s the first thing you say we’re going to do? Well,
to reduce the debt, we’re going to have another $5 trillion in tax
cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. So we’ll make the debt
hole bigger before we start to get out of it.

Now, when you say, what are you going to do about this $5 trillion you
just added on? They say, oh, we’ll make it up by eliminating loopholes
in the tax code.

So then you ask, well, which loopholes, and how much?

You know what they say? See me about that after the election.
(Laughter.)

I’m not making it up. That’s their position. See me about that after
the election.

Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a
row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-
word answer: Arithmetic. (Sustained cheers, applause.)

If - arithmetic! If - (applause) - if they stay with their $5 trillion
tax cut plan - in a debt reduction plan? - the arithmetic tells us, no
matter what they say, one of three things is about to happen. One,
assuming they try to do what they say they’ll do, get rid of - pay -
cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, they’ll have to
eliminate so many deductions, like the ones for home mortgages and
charitable giving, that middle-class families will see their tax bills
go up an average of $2,000 while anybody who makes $3 million or more
will see their tax bill go down $250,000. (Boos.)

Or, two, they’ll have to cut so much spending that they’ll obliterate
the budget for the national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean
water, safe food, safe air travel. They’ll cut way back on Pell
Grants, college loans, early childhood education, child nutrition
programs, all the programs that help to empower middle-class families
and help poor kids. Oh, they’ll cut back on investments in roads and
bridges and science and technology and biomedical research.

That’s what they’ll do. They’ll hurt the middle class and the poor and
put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper-income people who’ve
been getting it all along.

Or three, in spite of all the rhetoric, they’ll just do what they’ve
been doing for more than 30 years. They’ll go in and cut the taxes way
more than they cut spending, especially with that big defense
increase, and they’ll just explode the debt and weaken the economy.
And they’ll destroy the federal government’s ability to help you by
letting interest gobble up all your tax payments.

Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that
Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I
took office, in the 12 years before I took office - (applause) - and
doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied
arithmetic. (Laughter, applause.) It was a highly inconvenient thing
for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas,
and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was
four. (Laughter, applause.) It’s arithmetic.

We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who
will double down on trickle down. (Cheers, applause.) Really. Think
about this: President Obama - President Obama’s plan cuts the debt,
honors our values, brightens the future of our children, our families
and our nation. It’s a heck of a lot better.

It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the
values test. (Cheers, applause.)

My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody
watching at home, when we vote in this election, we’ll be deciding
what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take-
all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican
ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared
responsibility, a we’re-all-in-this-together society, you should vote
for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. (Cheers, applause.) If you - if you
want -

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!

PRESIDENT CLINTON: If you want America - if you want every American to
vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures - (jeers) -
just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled
voters - (jeers) - you should support Barack Obama. (Cheers,
applause.)

And if you think - if you think the president was right to open the
doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought
here when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to
college, you must vote for Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.) If you
want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing
and poverty is declining, where the American dream is really alive and
well again and where the United States maintains its leadership as a
force for peace and justice and prosperity in this highly competitive
world, you have to vote for Barack Obama.

(Cheers, applause.)

Look, I love our country so much. And I know we’re coming back. For
more than 200 years, through every crisis, we’ve always come back.
(Cheers.) People have predicted our demise ever since George
Washington was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set
of wooden false teeth. (Laughter.) And so far, every single person
that’s bet against America has lost money because we always come back.
(Cheers, applause.) We come through ever fire a little stronger and a
little better.

And we do it because in the end we decide to champion the cause for
which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred
honor - the cause of forming a more perfect union. (Cheers, applause.)
My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you
believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama.
(Cheers, applause.) God bless you and God bless America. (Cheers,
applause.)

END

[Enraged Apostate, World Citizen]

Abel Malcolm <AbelM...@hotmail.com> wrote on Fri 07 Sep 2012 05:29:37a

>
> It makes me proud to be an American, to see us Democrats, holding such
> a convention, where the good of all Americans, and the good of the
> country is what we are talking about. In marked contrast, the
> Republican Convention was an absolute disgrace, full of non stop
> lies...lies upon lies upon lies, trying to push an extremist agenda
> that has already harmed our nation beyond comprehension. We are
> trying to fix the mess they created, and one more thing, the TRUTH is
> OUR weapon. It's the only weapon we need.
>
> Abel Malcolm
> http://www.barackobama.com
>
>
> For the video, go to this link:
>
> http://front.moveon.org/bill-clinton-rips-apart-every-gop-talking-point-i
> n-a-speech-thatll-get-you-fired-up/
>
> For a printed transcript of the speech, go to this link:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/us/politics/transcript-of-bill-clintons
> -speech-to-the-democratic-national-convention.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&pa
> gewanted=print

Might as well not bother reading the text that appeared on the teleprompter,
since 40% of the speech as apparently ad-libbed.

--
The Enraged Apostate
Formerly Winston Smith, American Patriot. (reset your killfiles)
Made possible by Slackjaw

Right-wing talking points show a popular appeal in
the same way that trainwrecks are morbidly fascinating.
But soon after the desire to be horrified at the spectacle passes,
the realization soon follows that it is all an ugly, bloody mess,
and it will only be cleaned up with leftist methods and a liberal in charge.