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12:52:26Likes: 0 - Shared: 0DNC 2012: Transcript of President Bill
Clinton’s Speech to the Democratic
National Convention
Sep 6th, 2012 @ 07:18 am › Japh
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The 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 every 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.)
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