Clinton_term_two.txt

I want to begin by saying again how much I respect Senator Dole and his record of public service, and how hard I will try to make this campaign and this debate one of ideas, not insults.
Four years ago I ran for President at a time of high unemployment and rising frustration. I wanted to turn this country around with a program of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and an American community where everybody has a role to play. I wanted a Government that was smaller and less bureaucratic to help people have the tools to make the most of their own lives. Four years ago you took me on faith. Now there's a record: 10 1/2 million more jobs, rising incomes, falling crime rates and welfare rolls, a strong America at peace. We are better off than we were 4 years ago. Let's keep it going.
We cut the deficit by 60 percent. Now let's balance the budget and protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. We cut taxes for 15 million working Americans. Now let's pass the tax cuts for education and childrearing, help with medical emergencies, and buying a home. We passed family and medical leave. Now let's expand it so more people can succeed as parents and in the work force. We passed the 100,000 police, the assault weapons ban, the Brady bill. Now let's keep going by finishing the work of putting the police on the street and tackling juvenile gangs. We passed welfare reform. Now let's move a million people from welfare to work. And most important, let's make education our highest priority so that every 8-year-old will be able to read, every 12-year-old can log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old can go to college.
We can build that bridge to the 21st century, and I look forward to discussing exactly how we're going to do it.

I believe that the Federal Government should give people the tools and try to establish the conditions in which they can make the most of their own lives. That, to me, is the key. And that leads me to some different conclusions from Senator Dole.
For example, we have reduced the size of the Federal Government to its smallest size in 30 years. We've reduced more regulations, eliminated more programs than my two Republican predecessors. But I have worked hard for things like the family and medical leave law, the Brady bill, the assault weapons ban, the program to put 100,000 police on the street. All of these are programs that Senator Dole opposed, that I supported because I felt they were a legitimate effort to help people make the most of their own lives.
I've worked hard to help families impart values to their own children. I supported the Vchip so that parents would be able to control what their kids watch on television when they're young, along with the ratings system for television and educational television. I supported strong action against the tobacco companies to stop the marketing, advertising, and sale of tobacco to young people. I supported a big increase in the safe and drug-free schools program.
These were areas on which Senator Dole and I differed, but I believed that they were the right areas for America to be acting together as one country to help individuals and families make the most of their own lives and raise their kids with good values and a good future.

I trust the people. We've done a lot to give the people more powers to make their own decisions over their own lives. But I do think we are right when we try to, for example, give mothers and newborns 48 hours before they can be kicked out of the hospital, ending these drive-by deliveries. I think we were right to pass the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill, which states you can't lose your health insurance just because you change jobs or because someone in your family has been sick.
Our Government is smaller and less bureaucratic and has given more authority to the States than its two predecessors under Republican Presidents. But I do believe we have to help our people get ready to succeed in the 21st century.

I agree with that. That's right.

Let me say, first of all, in February, Senator Dole acknowledged that the American economy was in the best shape it's been in in 30 years. We have 10 1/2 million more jobs, a faster job growth rate than under any Republican administration since the 1920's. Wages are going up for the first time in a decade. We have record number of new small businesses. We had the biggest drop in the number of people in poverty in 27 years. All groups of people are growing—we had the biggest drop in income inequality in 27 years in 1995. The average family's income has gone up over $1,600 just since our economic plan passed.
So I think it's clear that we're better off than we were 4 years ago. Now we need to focus on, what do we need to do to be better off still? How can we help people—as we are— to get their retirements when they work for small businesses, to be able to afford health insurance, to be able to educate their children? That's what I want to focus on. But we're clearly better off than we were 4 years ago, as Senator Dole acknowledged this year.

Absolutely not. Let's look at the position. First of all, remember that in this campaign season, since Senator Dole has been a candidate, he has bragged about the fact that he voted against Medicare in the beginning, in 1965, one of only 12 Members. He said he did the right thing then; he knew it wouldn't work at the time. That's what he said.
Then his budget, that he passed along with Speaker Gingrich, cut Medicare $270 billion, more than was necessary to repair the Medicare Trust Fund. It would have charged seniors more for out-of-pocket costs, as well as more in premiums, because doctors could have charged them more. The American Hospital Association, the nurses association, the Catholic Hospital Association all said hundreds of hospitals could close and people would be hurt badly under the Dole-Gingrich Medicare plan that I vetoed. And now, with this risky $550 billion tax scheme of Senator Dole's, even his own friends—his campaign cochair, Senator D'Amato, says that they can't possibly pay for it without cutting Medicare more and cutting Social Security as well, according to him.
Now, my balanced budget plan adds 10 years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund—10 years. And we'll have time to deal with the long-term problems of the baby boomers. But it was simply wrong to finance their last scheme to cut Medicare $270 billion, to run the risk of it withering on the vine. We always have to reform it over the years, but we need someone who believes in it to reform it.

Let me say first of all, I'd be happy to have a commission deal with this, and I appreciate what Senator Dole did on the '83 Social Security commission. But it won't be possible to do if his tax scheme passes, because even his own campaign cochair, Senator D'Amato, says he'll have to cut Medicare even more than was cut in the bill that I vetoed. I vetoed that bill because it cut more Medicare and basically ran the risk of breaking up the system.
My balanced budget plan puts 10 years onto Medicare. We ought to do that; then we can have a commission. But Senator Dole's plans are not good for the country.

Here's the problem with it. It sounds very good, but there's a reason that 500 economists, including 7 Nobel Prize winners, and business periodicals like Business Week and even Senator Dole's friend Senator Warren Rudman, former Republican Senator from New Hampshire, says it is not a practical program. It's a $550 billion tax scheme that will cause a big hole in the deficit, which will raise interest rates and slow down the economy and cause people to pay more for home mortgages, car payments, credit card payments, college loans, and small business loans. It's not good to raise the deficit; we've worked too hard to lower it. It will actually raise taxes on 9 million people. And in addition to that, it will force bigger cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment than the ones that he and Mr. Gingrich passed that I vetoed last year.
So it sounds great. But our targeted tax cut for education, childrearing, health care, and homebuying, which is paid for in my balanced budget plan—something that he has not done— certified by the Congressional Budget Office, that's the right way to go.

I try to articulate my positions as clearly as possible, tell people what I stand for, and let them decide whether they're going to support me or not. The Senator mentioned the trial lawyers. In the case of the product liability bill, which they passed and I vetoed—I think that's what he's talking about— I actually wanted to sign that bill, and I told the people exactly what—the Congress—exactly what kind of bill I would sign. Now, a lot of the trial lawyers didn't want me to sign any bill at all, but I thought we ought to do what we could to cut frivolous lawsuits. But they wouldn't make some of the changes that I thought should be made. And let me just give you an example. I had a person in the Oval Office who lost a child in a schoolbus accident where a drunk driver caused the accident directly, but there were problems with the schoolbus. The drunk driver had no money. Under the new bill, if I had signed it, a person like that could never have had any recovery. I thought that was wrong. So I gave four or five specific examples to the Congress, and I said, "Prove to me that these people could recover, but we're going to eliminate frivolous lawsuits; I'll sign the bill."
But generally, I believe that a President has to be willing to do what he thinks is right. I've done a lot of things that were controversial: my economic plan, my trade position, Bosnia, Haiti, taking on the NRA for the first time, taking on the tobacco companies for the first time. Sometimes you just have to do that because you know it's right for the country over the long run. That's what I've tried to do, and that's what I will continue to do as President.

Let me say, first of all, I signed a tort reform bill that dealt with civilian aviation a couple of years ago. I've proved that I will sign reasonable tort reform.
Secondly, Senator Dole has had some pretty harsh comments about special interest money, but it wasn't me who opposed what we tried to do to save the lives of children who are subject to tobacco and then went to the tobacco growers and bragged about standing up to the Federal Government when we tried to stop the advertising, marketing, and sales of tobacco to children. And it wasn't me that let the polluters actually come into the Halls of Congress, into the rooms, and rewrite the environmental laws. That's what Speaker Gingrich and Senator Dole did, not me.

So I believe that we should take a different approach to this and talk about how we stand on the issues instead of trying to characterize each other's motivations. I think Senator Dole and I just honestly disagree.

I hope we'll have a chance to discuss drugs later in the program, but let me respond to what you said. I agree that too many incumbent politicians in Washington in both parties have consistently opposed campaign finance reform. That was certainly the case from the minute I got there.
So after Speaker Gingrich and Senator Dole took over the Congress, I went to New Hampshire and a man suggested—a gentleman that, unfortunately, just passed away a couple of days ago suggested that we appoint a commission. And I shook hands with him on it, and I appointed my members, and the commission never met.
And then Senator Dole's ardent supporter Senator McCain, who is out there today, along with Senator Feingold, supported—sponsored a campaign finance reform proposal. I strongly supported it, and members of Senator Dole's own party in the Senate killed it. And he was not out there urging them to vote for the McCain-Feingold bill.
So I think the American people, including the Perot supporters, know that I've had a consistent record in favor of campaign finance reform, and I will continue to have. And I hope we can finally get it in the next session of Congress, because we need it badly.

I think every American in any position of responsibility should be concerned about what's happened. I am.
But let's look at the overall record. Overall in America, cocaine use has dropped 30 percent in the last 4 years, casual drug use down 13 percent. The tragedy is that our young people are still increasing their use of drugs, up to about 11 percent total with marijuana. And I regret it. Let me tell you what I've tried to do about it.
I appointed a four-star general, who led our efforts south of the border to keep drugs from coming into the country, as our Nation's drug czar—the most heavily decorated soldier in uniform when he retired. We submitted the biggest drug budget ever. We have dramatically increased control and enforcement at the border. We supported a crime bill that had 60 death penalties, including the death penalty for drug kingpins. And I supported a big expansion in the safe and drug-free schools program to support things like the D.A.R.E. program, because I thought all those things were very important.
Do I think that I bear some responsibility for the fact that too many of our children still don't understand drugs are wrong, drugs can kill you, even though I have consistently opposed the legalization of drugs all my public life and worked hard against them? I think we all do. And I hope we can do better.
I don't think this issue should be politicized, because my record is clear and I don't think Senator Dole supports using drugs. I think we just have to continue to work on this until those who think it isn't dangerous and won't kill them and won't destroy their lives get the message and change.

Let me say again, we did have a drug czar in Arkansas, but he answered to the Governor, just like this one answers to the President. That's what I thought we ought to do.
Secondly, Senator Dole, you voted against the crime bill that had the death penalty for drug kingpins in it, and you voted to cut services to 23 million school children under the safe and drug-free schools act. I don't think that means you're soft on drugs. We just have a different approach. But let me remind you that my family has suffered from drug abuse. I know what it's like to see somebody you love nearly lose their lives, and I hate drugs, Senator. We need to do this together, and we can.

Let me say, first of all, Senator Dole has gone back and forth about whether he'd be for repealing the Brady bill or repealing the assault weapons ban, and I think his present position is that he would not do so. And if that's true, I'm grateful for it. But let's look at the facts here.
The Brady bill has kept at least 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting handguns. Senator Dole led the fight against the Brady bill. He tried to keep it from coming to my desk. He didn't succeed, and I signed it, and I'm glad I did.
Then when we had the assault weapons ban in the Senate, Senator Dole fought it bitterly and opposed the entire crime bill and almost brought the entire crime bill down because the National Rifle Association didn't want the assault weapons ban, just like they didn't want the Brady bill. But 2 years later, nobody has lost their handguns—I mean, their rifles. We've expanded the Brady bill to cover people who beat up their spouses and their kids. And this is a safer country. So I'm glad I took on that fight. And I believe, with all respect, I was right, and he was wrong.
Senator Dole. Well, the President doesn't have it quite right. I mean, it seemed to me at the time that the assault weapon ban was not effective. But that's history. As I told the NRA, that's history: You're not going to worry about it anymore; I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Let's do something better.
Let's stop playing the political game, Mr. President, talking about this and this. You add up all the States who have used the instant check and how many weapons they've kept out of the hands of criminals, it would far surpass the number you mentioned. So in my view, if you want to be protected, you ought to vote for Bob Dole, and we'll get the instant check passed, and we'll keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

If that's what he said, he's not right about that. Look at where we are today. The United States is still the indispensable nation in the aftermath of the cold war and on the brink of the 21st century. I have worked to support our country as the world's strongest force for peace and freedom, prosperity and security.
We have done the following things: Number one, we've managed the aftermath of the cold war, supporting a big drop in nuclear weapons in Russia, the removal of Russian troops from the Baltics, the integration of Central and Eastern European democracies into a new partnership with NATO and, I might add, with a democratic Russia. There are no nuclear missiles pointed at the children of the United States tonight and have not been in our administration for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age.
We have worked hard for peace and freedom. When I took office, Haiti was governed by a dictator that had defied the United States. When I took office, the worst war in Europe was waging in Bosnia. Now there is a democratically elected President in Haiti, peace in Bosnia. We have just had elections there. We have made progress in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. We've also stood up to the new threats of terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, organized crime.
And we have worked hard to expand America's economic presence around the world with the biggest increase in trade, with the largest number of new trade agreements in history. That's one of the reasons America is number one in auto production again.

First of all, I take full responsibility for what happened in Somalia, but the American people must remember that those soldiers were under an American commander when that happened. I believe they did the best they could under the circumstances. And let's not forget that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved there.
Secondly, in Haiti, political violence is much, much smaller than it was.
Thirdly, in Bosnia, it's a virtual miracle that there has been no return to war. And at least there has now been an election, and the institutions are beginning to function.
In Northern Ireland and the Middle East, we are better off than we were 4 years ago. There will always be problems in this old world, but if we're moving in the right direction and America is leading, we're better off.

Our military is the strongest military in the world. It is the strongest, best prepared, best equipped it has ever been. There is very little difference in the budget that I have proposed and the Republican budget over the next 6-year period. We are spending a lot of money to modernize our weapons system. I have proposed a lot of new investments to improve the quality of life for our soldiers, for our men and women in uniform, for their families, for their training. That is my solemn obligation.
You asked, when do you decide to deploy them? The interests of the American people must be at stake; our values must be at stake; we have to be able to make a difference. And frankly, we have to consider what the risks are to our young men and women in uniform.
But I believe the evidence is that our deployments have been successful in Haiti, in Bosnia, when we moved to Kuwait to repel Saddam Hussein's threatened invasion of Kuwait, when I have sent the fleet into the Taiwan Straits, when we've worked hard to end the North Korean nuclear threat. I believe the United States is at peace tonight in part because of the disciplined, careful, effective deployment of our military resources.

For the last 4 years we have worked hard to put more and more pressure on the Castro government to bring about more openness and a move toward democracy. In 1992, before I became President, Congress passed the Cuba Democracy Act, and I enforced it vigorously. We made the embargo tougher, but we increased contacts, people to people, with the Cubans, including direct telephone service, which was largely supported by the Cuban-American community. Then Cuba shot down two of our planes and murdered four people in international airspace. They were completely beyond the pale of the law, and I signed the Helms-Burton legislation.
Senator Dole is correct. I did give about 6 months before the effective date of the act before lawsuits can actually be filed, even though they're effective now and can be legally binding, because I want to change Cuba. And the United States needs help from other countries. Nobody in the world agrees with our policy on Cuba now. But this law can be used as leverage to get other countries to help us to move Cuba to democracy.
Every single country in Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean is a democracy tonight but Cuba. And if we stay firm and strong, we will be able to bring Cuba around as well.

There were several off-the-subject whoppers in that litany. Let me just mention, Senator Dole voted for $900 billion in tax increases. His running mate, Jack Kemp, once said that Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike. And everybody knows, including the Wall Street Journal, hardly a friend of the Democratic Party or this administration, that the '82 tax increase he sponsored, in inflationadjusted dollars, was the biggest tax increase in American history. So we ought to at least get the facts out here on the table so we can know where to go from here.

That sounds very good, but it's very wrong. Senator Dole remembers well that we actually offered not to even put in a health care bill in 1994—'93—but instead to work with the Senate Republicans and write a joint bill. And they said no, because they got a memo from one of their political advisers saying that instead they should characterize whatever we did as big Government and make sure nothing was done to aid health care before the '94 elections so they could make that claim.
Well, maybe we bit off more than we could chew. But we're pursuing a step-by-step reform now. The Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that I signed will make it possible for 25 million people to keep their health insurance when they change jobs or when somebody in their family has been sick. I signed a bill to stop these drive-by deliveries where insurance companies can force people out of the hospital after 24 hours. And I vetoed Senator Dole's Medicare plan that would have forced a lot of seniors into managed care and taken a lot more money out of their pockets and led to Medicare withering on the vine.

Well, I believe that we did the appropriate thing under the circumstances.
Saddam Hussein is under a U.N. resolution not to threaten his neighbors or repress his own citizens. Unfortunately, a lot of people have never been as concerned about the Kurds as the United States has tried to be, and we've been flying an operation to protect them out of Turkey for many years now.
What happened was, one of the Kurdish leaders invited him to go up north. But we felt, since the whole world community had told him not to do it, that once he did it we had to do something. We did not feel that I could commit—I certainly didn't feel I should commit American troops to throw him out of where he had gone, and that was the only way to do that. So the appropriate thing strategically to do was to reduce his ability to threaten his neighbors. We did that by expanding what's called the no-fly zone, by increasing our allies' control of the airspace, now from the Kuwait border to the suburbs of Baghdad.
Was it the right thing to do? I believe it was. Is it fully effective? Did it make him withdraw from the north? Well, he has a little bit, and I hope he will continue. We have learned that if you give him an inch he'll take a mile. We had to do something. And even though not all of our allies supported it at first, I think most of them now believe that what we did was an appropriate thing to do.

Senator Dole has, two or three times before, tonight criticized me for working with the U.N. Now I'm being criticized for not working with the U.N.

Sometimes the United States has to act alone, or at least has to act first. Sometimes we cannot let other countries have a veto on our foreign policy. I could not send soldiers into the north of Iraq; that would have been wrong. I could reduce Saddam Hussein's ability to threaten Kuwait and his other neighbors again. That's what I did. I still believe it was the right thing to do.
 
We have a very consistent policy in the Middle East: It is to support the peace process, to support the security of Israel, and to support those who are prepared to take risks for peace. It is a very difficult environment. The feelings are very strong. There are extremists in all parts of the Middle East who want to kill that peace process. Prime Minister Rabin gave his life because someone in his own country literally hated him for trying to bring peace.
I would liked to have had a big, organized summit, but those people were killing each other rapidly. Innocent Arab children, innocent Israeli people, they were dying. So much trust has broken down in the aftermath of the change of government. I felt that if I could just get the parties together to say, let's stop the violence, start talking, commit to the negotiations, that would be a plus.
Now, today the Secretary of State is in the Middle East, and they've started negotiations. And all of those leaders promised me they would not quit until they resolved the issues between them and got the peace process going forward again.

Well, I'm saying that Senator Dole said in his fine speech in San Diego that he wanted to build a bridge to the past. And I think I know what he meant by that. He is troubled, as I am, by some of the things that go on today. But I believe America is the greatest country in human history because we have maintained freedom and increasing prosperity by relentlessly pushing the barriers of knowledge, the barriers of the present, always moving into the future.
That's why when I became President I was determined to kind of move beyond this old, stale debate that had gone on in Washington for too long, to get this country moving again. And that's why we've got a country with 10 1/2 million more jobs and record numbers of new businesses and rising incomes and falling crime rates and welfare roll rates. That's why we're moving in the right direction.
And I'm trying to emphasize that what I want to do is to continue to do that. That's why my balanced budget plan will still invest and grow this economy. That's why I want a tax cut for education and childrearing, but it's got to be paid for. That's why I want to continue the work we have done, over partisan opposition, to work with communities to bring that crime rate down until our streets are all safe again.
These are my commitments. I am very oriented toward the future. I think this election has to be geared toward the future. I think America's best days are still ahead. But we've got to build the right bridge.

I do not for a moment think I'm entitled to all the credit for the good things that have happened in America. But where I have moved to work with the American people to help them have the tools to make the most of their own lives, I think I should get some credit for that. I also personally took responsibility tonight when Senator Dole asked me about the drug problem.
But you know, I think my ideas are better for the future. Senator Dole voted against student loans, against Head Start, against creating the Department of Education. If he gets elected President, we'll start the new century without anyone in the Cabinet of the President representing education and our children. I personally don't think that's the right kind of future for America, and I think we ought to take a different tack.
 
I'm all for students having more choices. We've worked hard to expand public school choice. In my balanced budget bill there are funds for 3,000 new schools, created by teachers and parents, sometimes by business people, called charter schools, that have no rules. They're free of bureaucracy and can only stay in existence if they perform and teach children. The ones that are out there are doing well.
What I'm against is Senator Dole's plan to take money away from all of the children we now help with limited Federal funds and help far fewer. If we're going to have a private voucher plan, that ought to be done at the local level or the State level.
But Senator Dole has consistently opposed Federal help to education. He voted against student loans, he voted against my improved student loan plan, he voted against the national service bill, against the Head Start bill. He voted against our efforts in safe and drug-free schools. He has voted against these programs. He does not believe it. That's the issue. Ninety percent of our kids are out there in those public schools, and we need to lift their standards and move them forward with the programs like those I've outlined in this campaign.

I support school choice. I support school choice. I have advocated expansions of public school choice alternatives and, I said, the creation of 3,000 new schools that we are going to help the States to finance.
But if you're going to have a private voucher plan, that ought to be determined by States and localities where they're raising and spending most of the money. I simply think it's wrong to take money away from programs that are helping build basic skills for kids—90 percent of them are in the public schools—to take money away from programs that are helping fund the school lunch program, that are helping to fund the other programs, that are helping our schools to improve their standards.
Our schools are getting better. And our schools can be made to be even better still with the right kind of community leadership and partnership at the school level. I have been a strong force for reform. And Senator, I remind you that a few years ago, when I supported a teacher testing law in my home State, I was pretty well lambasted by the teachers association. I just don't believe we ought to be out there running down teachers and attacking them the way you did at the Republican Convention.
I think we ought to be lifting them up and moving our children forward.
And let me just say, that budget you passed that I vetoed would have cut 50,000 kids out of Head Start. It would have eliminated the AmeriCorps plan. And it would have cut back on student loans and scholarships. Now, it would have; that's a fact. That's one of the big reasons I vetoed it. We need to be doing more in education, not less.

First of all, Senator Dole, let's set the record straight. I was able, for 2 years when I was a very young boy, to go to a Catholic school, but I basically went to public schools all my life. And I've worked hard for a long time to make them better. Ninety percent of our kids are there.
It's amazing to me—you are all for having more responsibility at the local level for everything except schools, where we don't have very much money at the Federal level to spend on education. We ought to spend it helping the 90 percent of the kids that we can help. If a local school district in Cleveland or anyplace else wants to have a private school choice plan like Milwaukee did, let them have at it. I might say, the results are highly ambiguous. But I want to get out there and give a better education opportunity to all of our children. And that's why I vetoed the budget that you passed with $30 billion in education cuts. It was wrong, and my plan for the future is better.

When Senator Dole made that remark about all the elitists, young elitists in the administration, one of the young men who works for me who grew up in a house trailer looked at me and said, "Mr. President, I know how you grew up. Who is he talking about?" And you know, this liberal charge, that's what their party always drags out when they get in a tight race. It's sort of their golden oldie, you know, it's a record they think they can play that everybody loves to hear. And I just don't think that dog will hunt this time.
The American people should make up their own mind. Here's the record: We cut the deficit 4 years in a row for the first time since before the Civil War—I mean, before World War II— and maybe before the Civil War, too. We've got 10 1/2 million new jobs. We've got record numbers of new small businesses. We made every one of them eligible for a tax cut. We've got declining crime rates, 2 million fewer people on welfare rolls before welfare reform passed, and a 50 percent increase in child support, and a crime bill with 60 death penalties, 100,000 police, and the assault weapons ban.
The American people can make up their mind about whether that's a liberal record or a record that's good for America. Liberal, conservative, you put whatever label you want on it.

I believe that the purpose of politics is to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives, to reinforce the values of opportunity and responsibility, and to build a sense of community so we're all working together. I don't believe in discrimination. I believe you can protect the environment and grow the economy. I believe that we have to do these things with a Government that's smaller and less bureaucratic, but that we have to do them nonetheless.
It's inconvenient for Senator Dole, but the truth is I've reduced the size of Government more than my Republican predecessors. And I did stop them, I admit that; I sure stopped their budget. Their budget cut enforcement for the Environmental Protection Agency by a third. It cut funds to clean up toxic waste dumps— with 10 million of our kids still living within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump—by a third. It ended the principle of the polluters should pay for those toxic waste dumps unless it was very recent. Their budget weakened our support for education $30 billion, even cut funds for scholarships and college loans. Their budget cut $270 billion in Medicare. And finally, their budget withdrew the national guarantee of health care to poor children, families with children with handicaps, the elderly in nursing homes, poor pregnant women. It was wrong for the country, and calling it conservative won't make it right. It was a bad decision for America and would have been bad for our future if I hadn't stopped it.

The way to get a better America is to balance the budget and protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment; to give a targeted tax cut—and let me talk about the education tax cut—to let people have a $10,000 deduction for the cost of college tuition in any year, any kind of college tuition; to give families a tax credit, a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their taxes for the cost of a typical community college so we can open that to everybody; and then to let people save in an IRA and withdraw from it without a tax penalty for education, homebuying, or medical expenses. That's the right way to go into the 21st century: balance the budget and cut taxes, not balloon with this $550 billion tax scheme.
 
Well, just for the record, when I was a Governor, we had the lowest—second lowest tax burden of any State in the country, the highest job growth rate of any State when I ran for President, and were widely recognized for a lot of other advances.
But the important thing is, what are we going to do now? I think a targeted tax cut is better for our future, targeted to education and childrearing, with the rest of the education plan—hooking up all of our classrooms to the Internet by the year 2000, making sure we've got an army of reading volunteers, trained people to teach with parents and teachers so that our 8-year-olds can learn to read; investing in our environment, cleaning up two-thirds of the worst toxic waste dumps. Those plans are better than this $550 billion tax scheme.
Now, remember, folks, even Senator Dole's campaign cochair, Senator D'Amato, says he's got to cut Medicare to pay for this. Everybody who has looked at it, 500 economists, 7 Nobel Prize winners, say it's bad for the economy. It's going to blow a hole in the deficit, raise taxes on 9 million people, and require bigger cuts than the one I vetoed.
Our plan is better. It will take us into the future with a growing economy and healthier families.

Well, first of all, he made that remark about Senator D'Amato. He's arranged for me to spend a lot more time with Senator D'Amato in the last couple of years, and so I'm more familiar with his comments than I used to be.
Let me say what I've said already about this pardon issue. This is an issue they brought up. There has been no consideration of it, no discussion of it. I'll tell you this: I will not give anyone special treatment, and I will strictly adhere to the law. And that is what every President has done, as far as I know, in the past. But whatever other Presidents have done, this is something I take seriously, and that's my position.

I'd like the American people to know that I have worked very hard to be on their side and to move this country forward, and we're better off than we were 4 years ago. But the most important thing is my plan for the 21st century is a better plan: a targeted tax cut; a real commitment to educational reform; a deep commitment to making welfare reform work, with incentives to the private sector to move people from welfare to work—now we have to create those jobs, now that we're requiring people to go to work; a commitment to step-by-step health care reform, with the next step helping people who are between jobs to access health care and not lose it just because they're out of work for a while; a commitment to grow the economy while protecting the environment.
That's what I'd like them to know about me, that I've gotten up every day and worked for the American people and worked so that their children could have their dreams come true. And I believe we've got the results to show we're on the right track. The most important thing is I believe we've got the right ideas for the future.
And like Senator Dole—I like Senator Dole. You can probably tell we like each other. We just see the world in different ways, and you folks out there are going to have to choose who you think is right.

Let's look at that. When I ran for President, I said we'd cut the deficit in half in 4 years; we've cut it by 60 percent. I said that our economic plan would produce 8 million jobs; we have 10 1/2 million new jobs. We're number one in autos again, record numbers of new small businesses. I said we'd pass a crime bill that would put 100,000 police on the street, ban assault weapons, and deal with the problems that ought to be dealt with with capital punishment, including capital punishment for drug kingpins. And we did that. I said we would change the way welfare works. And even before the bill passed, we had moved nearly 2 million people from welfare to work, working with States and communities. I said we'd get tougher on child support, and child support enforcement is up 50 percent.
I said that I would work for tax relief for middle class Americans. The deficit was bigger than I thought it was going to be, and I think they're better off, all of us are, that we got those interest rates down and the deficit down. The Republicans talk about it, but we're the first administration in anybody's lifetime looking at this program to bring that deficit down 4 years in a row. We still gave tax cuts to 15 million working Americans. And now I've got a plan that has been out there for 2 years— it could have been passed already, but instead the Republicans shut the Government down to try to force their budget and their plan on me, and I couldn't take that. But we'll get the rest of that tax relief.
And so I think when you can look at those results, you know that the plan I have laid out for the future has a very good chance of being enacted if you'll give me a chance to build that bridge to the 21st century.

I think a lot of people deserve credit, and I've tried to give it to them. But I believe that my plan is better than Senator Dole's ill-advised $550 billion scheme, which I will say again will blow a hole in the deficit. Our plan will balance the budget and grow the economy, preserve the environment, and invest in education. We have the right approach for the future. And look at the results: It is not midnight in America, Senator. We are better off than we were 4 years ago.
 
Well, first, Jim, let me thank you, and thank you, Senator Dole, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, all of you listening tonight, for the chance you've given us to appear. I want to say in the beginning that I am profoundly grateful for the chance that you have given me to serve as President for the last 4 years. I never could have dreamed anything like this would come my way in life, and I've done my best to be faithful to the charge you've given me.
I'm proud of the fact that America is stronger and more prosperous and more secure than we were 4 years ago. I'm glad we're going in the right direction. And I've done my best tonight to lay out my plans for going forward to an even better future in the next century.
I'd like to leave you with the thought that the things I do as President are basically driven by the people whose lives I have seen affected by what does or doesn't happen in this country: the autoworker in Toledo who was unemployed when I was elected and now has a great job, because we're number one in auto production again; all the people I've met who used to be on welfare who are now working and raising their children—and I think what others could do for our country and for themselves if we did the welfare reform thing in the proper way. I think of the man who grabbed me by the shoulder once with tears in his eyes and said his daughter was dying of cancer, and he thanked me for giving him a chance to spend some time with her without losing his job, because of the Family and Medical Leave Act. I think of all the people that I grew up with and went to school with whom I stay in touch with and who never let me forget how what we do in Washington affects all of you out there in America.
Folks, we can build that bridge to the 21st century, big enough and strong enough for all of us to walk across. And I hope that you will help me build it.

Well, thank you, Jim, and thanks to the people of San Diego for giving us this opportunity to have another discussion about the decision we all face in front of people who will make the decision. Again I will say, I'll do my best to make this a discussion of ideas and issues, not insults. What really matters is what happens to your future and what happens to our country as we stand on the brink of a new century, a time of extraordinary possibility.
I have a simple philosophy that I've tried to follow for the last 4 years: Do what creates opportunity for all, what reinforces responsibility from all of us, and what will help us build a community where everybody's got a role to play and a place at the table.
Compared to 4 years ago, we're clearly better off. We've got 10 1/2 million more jobs; the deficit's been reduced by 60 percent; incomes are rising for the first time in a decade; the crime rates, the welfare rolls are falling; we're putting 100,000 more police on the street; 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have been denied handguns.
But that progress is only the beginning. What we really should focus on tonight is what we still have to do to help the American people make the most of this future that's out there. I think what really matters is what we can do to help build strong families. Strong families need a strong economy. To me, that means we have to go on and balance this budget while we protect Medicare and Medicaid and education and the environment.
We should give a tax cut targeted to childrearing and education, to buying a first home and paying for health care. We ought to help protect our kids from drugs and guns and gangs and tobacco. We ought to help move a million people from welfare to work. And we ought to create the finest education system in the world, where every 18-year-old can go on to college and all of our younger children have great educational opportunities. If we do those things, we can build that bridge to the 21st century. That's what I hope to get to talk about tonight.
Thank you.

One of the reasons that I ran for President, Sandy, is because not just children, a lot of grownups felt that way. If you remember, 4 years ago we had not only rising unemployment but a lot of rising cynicism. I'd never worked in Washington as an elected official. It seemed to me that most of the arguments were partisan: Republican, Democrat; left, right; liberal, conservative. That's why I said tonight I'm for opportunity, responsibility, and community. And we've gotten some real progress in the last 4 years. I've also done everything I could at every moment of division in this country—after Oklahoma City, when these churches were burned—to bring people together and remind people that we are stronger because of our diversity. We have to respect one another.
You mentioned Washington and Lincoln; they were Presidents at historic times. This is an historic time. It's important that we go beyond those old partisan arguments and focus on people and their future. When we do that, instead of shutting the Government down over a partisan fight on the budget, we're a better country, and that's why we're making progress now.

First of all, let me say what we have done: In the last 4 years, we've worked hard to promote more competition to bring down the rate of inflation in health care costs without eroding health care quality. The Government pays for Medicare and Medicaid, as you know, and that's very important.
Secondly, we've added a million more children to the ranks of the insured through the Medicaid program. We have protected 25 million people through the passage of the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that says you can't lose your health insurance if you change jobs or if someone in your family's been sick. We just recently ended those drive-by deliveries, saying people couldn't be kicked out of the hospital by insurance companies when they'd just had babies. So this is—that's a good start.
In the next 4 years, I want to focus on the following things: Number one, add another million children to the insured ranks through the Medicaid program; number two, keep working with the States, as we are now, to add 2.2 million more people to the insurance system; number three, cover people who are between jobs for up to 6 months—that could protect 3 million families, 700,000 kids; and number four, make sure we protect the integrity of the Medicare program and the Medicaid program and not do anything in cutting costs which would cause hundreds of hospitals to close, as could have been the case if the $270 billion Medicare cut that I vetoed had been enacted into law.

I don't have time in 30 seconds to respond to fix all that. But let me just say, the American Hospital Association said that the budget I vetoed could have closed 700 hospitals, not me. And on a per-person basis, it did cut way below the rate of inflation in medical costs.
But the important thing is, what are we going to do now? We need to help people who are between jobs. We need to cover more kids. We need to provide more preventive care. My balanced budget covers mammograms for ladies on—women on Medicare and also gives respite care to the million-plus families who have someone with Alzheimer's. These things are paid for in the balanced budget plan. It will move us forward.

Good for you. Well, let me say—Senator Dole mentioned this. I just signed a bill that we got through Congress to increase the amount of pay increase we could give for military personnel and to make sure the pay increase this year was above the rate of inflation. I also had presented to the Congress, and they adopted, a large package of quality-of-life improvements which are very important. I've spent a lot of time talking to military families, as well as military members, all over the world and in bases all across the United States. And I became convinced, after talking to the families and the personnel in uniform, that we needed to not only have the pay raise but we needed to invest more in child care, housing, and other things to support families, especially when there are longer deployments because of the downsizing of the military.
So we're going to do better, and we'll do better still. But this is a commitment I think that all Americans share, without regard to party.

Let me just take 2 seconds of my time, because I'm the Commander in Chief, to respond to one thing that was said. I propose to spend $1.6 trillion on defense between now and the year 2002. And there's less than one percent difference between my budget and the Republican budget on defense.
Now, on the Middle East, as you know, I've worked very hard for peace in the Middle East. The agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis was signed at the White House. And the agreement, the peace treaty with Jordan, I went to Jordan to sign that, to be there. But— and I think the United States could do whatever we reasonably can.
I can say this: I do not believe Yasser Arafat wants us to send troops to the West Bank. We have never been asked to send troops to the West Bank.
I saw the agreement that Prime Minister Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed on the West Bank. It had 26 separate maps they had to sign, literally thousands of delineations of who would do what on the West Bank. And I believe if the parties will get together and in a good faith manner make that agreement, that they'll be able to do it. We cannot impose a peace on the Middle East.
My position has always been that the job of the United States was to minimize the risks of peace. You know, if they ask me to be part of some monitoring force—as we are in the Sinai and have been since 1978 to monitor the peace between Egypt and Israel—frankly, I would have to think about it; I would have to see what they wanted to do. But I don't believe that will be the request. I think what Mr. Arafat wants us to do is to make sure that everybody honors the agreements they've already made. That's why I brought the leaders to Washington a few days ago. I think they will, and I think we'll get there. Don't be too discouraged.
The President. When the change of government occurred in Israel, the people of Israel were saying, "We don't want to abandon the peace process. We want more security." Then, a lot of mutual distrust developed. A lot of things happened which maybe shouldn't have happened.
When I asked Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to Washington and got them together and they talked alone for 3 hours, I was convinced that they had to have a chance to make that peace. Again, I'd say if they ask us to play some reasonable role, I don't know how I would respond. It would depend entirely on what they ask us to do. But the real secret there is for them to abide by the agreements they've made and find a way to trust each other. And they're going to have to spend some time and trust each other.
Prime Minister Rabin gave his life believing that that trust could be materialized, and I still think it can be.

Oscar, the question of what the Federal Government should do to limit the access of tobacco to young people is one of the biggest differences between Senator Dole and me.
We did propose a regulation 6 months after I became President under the law he mentioned. It simply says all these States—it made it illegal for kids to smoke—now they have to try harder if they want to keep getting Federal funds. Then we took comments, as we always do, and there were tens of thousands of comments about how we ought to do it. That's what drug it out.
Meanwhile, we started, also in '93, to look into whether cigarettes were addictive enough for the Federal Food and Drug Administration to ban the ability of cigarette companies to advertise, market, and distribute tobacco products to our kids. No President had ever taken on the tobacco lobby before. I did. Senator Dole opposed me. He went down and made a speech to people who were on his side, saying that I did the wrong thing. I think I did the right thing.
On drugs, I have repeatedly said drugs are wrong and illegal and can kill you. We have strengthened enforcement, and everybody in San Diego knows we've strengthened control of the border. We've done a lot more; I hope we get a chance to talk about it.

First of all, they're two different things. Social Security and Medicare are entirely different in terms of the financial stabilities. Let's talk about them separately.
Social Security is stable until, as you pointed out, at least the third decade of the next century. But we'd like to have a Social Security fund that has about 70 years of life instead of about 30 years of life.
What we have to do is simply to make some adjustments that take account of the fact that the baby boomers, people like me, are bigger in number than the people that went just before us and the people that come just after us. And I think what we'll plainly do is what we did in 1983, when Senator Dole served—and this is something I think he did a good job on— when he served on the Social Security Commission and they made some modest changes in Social Security to make sure that it would be alive and well into the 21st century. And we will do that. It's obvious that there are certain things that have to be done, and there are 50 to 60 different options. And a bipartisan commission, to take it out of politics, will make recommendations and build support for the people.
Medicare is different. Medicare needs help now. I have proposed a budget which would put 10 years on the life of the Medicare Trust Fund; that's more than it's had a lot of the time for the last 20 years.
It would save a lot of money through more managed care but giving more options, more preventive care, and lowering the inflation rate in the prices we're paying providers without having the kind of big premium increases and outof-pocket costs that the budget I vetoed would provide. Then that will give us 10 years to do with Medicare what we're going to do with Social Security: have a bipartisan group look at what we have to do to save it when the baby boomers retire. But now we ought to pass this budget now and put 10 years on it right away so no one has to worry about it.

Their idea was to have the poorest seniors in the country pay $270 more a year this year. Their idea was to budget— that the American Hospital Association said could close 700 hospitals. Their idea was to charge everybody more out-of-pocket costs in their budget that I vetoed—not in an election year, sir, I told them in early '95.
Senator Dole said 30 years ago he was one of 12 people that voted against Medicare and he was proud of it. A year ago he said, "I was right then; I knew it wouldn't work." American seniors have the highest life expectancy in the world. We need to reform it, not wreck it.

It's illegal right now and has been for years for illegal immigrants to get welfare benefits.
Let me say that this is one of the most important issues in the world to me. I started working on welfare reform in 1980 because I was sick of seeing people trapped in a system that was increasingly physically isolating them and making their kids more vulnerable to get in trouble. So I'd been working on it when I was a Governor for a long time.
When I became President, I used the authority I had in this law to get out from under certain Federal rules to help States move people to work. We've reduced the welfare rolls by 2 million already. Now I've got a plan with this new welfare reform law to work with the private sector to give employers specific tax incentives to hire people off welfare and to do some other things which will create more jobs in the private sector, at least a million, to move more people from welfare to work. It's very important. And I hope we get a chance to talk about this more. There is not a more important issue.
I still remember a woman that I met 10 years ago who said she wanted to get off welfare so her kids could tell—give an answer when they say, "What does your mother do for a job?" I met that woman again. She's got four kids. One's got a good job; one's studying to be a doctor; one's in technical school; one's an honor student in high school. I want to make more people like that woman, Lillie Harden. So I've got a plan to do it. And it's just beginning.

First of all, we have a big plan to reduce the capital gains tax when people sell their homes. Part of my tax package, which is paid for in my balanced budget plan, would exempt up to half a million dollars in gains for people when they sell their home, which I think is the biggest capital gains benefit we could give to most ordinary Americans.
We also have a capital gains now for people that invest in new small businesses and hold the investment for 5 years. It was part of our other economic plan. And these are things I think that will go a long way toward helping America build a stronger economy and a better tax system.
I think the most important thing to emphasize, though, is that we also have to help people in other ways to build a stronger economy. And we can't have any tax cut that's not paid for. One of the big differences between Senator Dole and myself is that I told you how I'm going to pay for every penny of the tax cuts I recommend. We've worked hard to bring this deficit down, and that's helped people in the real estate business, because the interest rates are lower. We've got homeownership at a 15year high. We've got this country going in the right direction.
So we can have a tax cut, but my priority would be to help the families who need it with childrearing and education and buying a firsttime home and helping for health care costs. So from your business, helping in buying the first-time home, exempting the capital gains on the sale of the home would be the most important things that you asked about. Thank you, Pamela.

Before Senator Dole left the Senate, he and Mr. Gingrich also were recommending that we pass these tax cuts only insofar as we could pay for them. And we all assume that the tax cuts will be permanent, but we have to prove we can pay for them.
After he left the Senate, we abandoned that. That's why most experts say that this tax scheme will blow a huge hole in the deficit, raise interest rates, and weaken the economy. And that will take away all the benefits of the tax cut with a weaker economy. That's why we have to balance the budget. And I'll tell you how I'm going to pay for anything I promise you, line by line. You should expect that from both of us.

I can only tell you that I don't think Senator Dole is too old to be President. It's the age of his ideas that I question.
You're almost not old enough to remember this, but we've tried this before, promising people an election-year tax cut that's not paid for——
Did you hear him say the Congress just voted to increase student loans and scholarships? They did, after he left. The last budget he led cut Pell grants, cut student loans. I vetoed it when they shut the Government down.
My plan would give students a dollar-for-dollar reduction for the cost of the typical community college tuition, a $10,000 deduction a year for the cost of college tuition, would let families save in an IRA and withdraw tax-free to pay for the cost of education. And it's all paid for.
My whole administration is about your future, it's about what the 21st century is going to be like for you. And I hope you'll look at the ideas in it.
Thank you.

No, ma'am, I don't. I am against quotas; I'm against giving anybody any kind of preference for something they're not qualified for, but because I still believe that there is some discrimination and that not everybody has an opportunity to prove they are qualified, I favor the right kind of affirmative action.
I've done more to eliminate programs—affirmative action programs that I didn't think were fair and to tighten others up than my predecessors have since affirmative action has been around, but I have also worked hard to give people a chance to prove that they are qualified.
Let me just give you some examples. We've doubled the number of loans from the Small Business Administration, tripled the number of loans to women business people—no one unqualified. Everybody had to meet the standards. We've opened 260,000 new jobs in the military to women since I've been President, but the Joint Chiefs say we're stronger and more competent and solid than ever.
Let me give you another example of what I mean. To me, affirmative action is making that extra effort. It's sort of like what Senator Dole did when he sponsored the Americans with Disabilities Act that said to certain stores, "Okay, you've got to make it accessible to people with wheelchairs." We weren't guaranteeing anything—anybody anything except the chance to prove they were qualified, the chance to prove that they could do it.
And that's why I must say I agree with General Colin Powell that we're not there yet. We ought to keep making those extra-effort affirmative action programs the law and the policy of the land.

I have never supported quotas. I've always been against them. They don't favor equal results. But I do favor making sure everybody has a chance to prove they're competent. The reason I have opposed that initiative is because I'm afraid it will end those extra-effort programs.
Again I say think of the American with Disabilities Act. Make an effort to put a ramp up there so someone in a wheelchair can get up. You don't guarantee that they get the job; you guarantee they have a chance to prove they're competent.
And as I've said, this is not a partisan thing with me. General Powell, Colin Powell said the same thing. He fears that the initiative would take away the extra-effort programs. No preferences to unqualified people, no quotas, but don't give up on making an extra effort till you're sure everybody has a chance to prove they're qualified.

You know, one of the responsibilities of growing older, it seems to me, is being able to tell people something they may not want to hear just because it's truth. When they had a $250 billion tax scheme—that is half the size of this one, this one is 550—they passed a budget that had $270 billion in Medicare cuts, the first education cuts in history, cut environmental enforcement by 25 percent, took away the guarantee of quality standards in nursing homes, took away the guarantee of health care to folks with disabilities.
Don't take my word for this. The Economist magazine polled lots of economists. Seven Nobel Prize winners have said, if this tax scheme passes, it will require huge cuts—40 percent— in the environment, in law enforcement, in education. It will require bigger cuts in Medicare than I vetoed last time. My targeted tax cut gives tax cuts for education, childrearing, buying a first-time home, paying for health care costs, and it's paid for. And I've told you how I'll pay for it. He won't tell you because he can't.

Well, first let me say that I signed the family leave act. It was my very first bill, and I'm very proud of it because it symbolizes what I think we ought to be doing.
I don't take credit for all the good things that have happened in America, but I take credit for what I've tried to do to work with others to make good things happen.
The most important good things that happen in America happen in families. Just about every family I know, the main concern is how am I going to succeed at work and still do right by my children? Family and medical leave has let 12 million families take a little time off for the birth of a child or a family illness without losing their job. I'd like to see it expanded in two ways: I'd like to say you can also take a little time off without losing your job to go to a regular parent-teacher conference or to go to a regular doctor's appointment with a family member; I'd also like to see the overtime laws change so that we could have some more flextime so that at the discretion of the worker— the worker—if you earn overtime you could decide whether you want that time to be taken in cash or in time with your family if you've got a family problem.
I never go anywhere, it seems like, where I don't meet somebody who's benefited from the family leave law. In Longview, Texas, the other day, I met a woman who was almost in tears because she had been able to keep her job while spending time with her husband who had cancer. One of the people who's here with me today met a woman in the airport saying that her son just was able to be present at the birth of his child because of the family leave law.
So yes, I think it should be expanded. We have to help people succeed at home and at work.

I only have 30 seconds. I can't fix the statistics. It covers the majority of the work force. Employers of under 50 are exempted. The bill originally covered employers of 25 and more, but because of opposition, we went up to 50. Senator Dole led the opposition to it. He filibustered it. He said it was a mistake. He said it would hurt the economy. We've had record numbers of new small businesses and 10 1/2 million jobs. It didn't hurt the economy. He still believes it's a mistake. I believe it was right. You can decide which of us you think are right. It's up to you.

Let's look at the facts. We lost a lot of manufacturing jobs in the 12 years before I became President. We've gained manufacturing jobs since I've been President. We've negotiated over 200 separate trade agreements.
Let's just take California. In California, we made $37 billion worth of telecommunications equipment eligible for exports for the first time. We're selling everything from telephones to CD's to rice in Japan. We're selling American automobiles in Japan now. I visited a Chrysler dealership in Japan. We're number one in automobile manufacturing, production, and sales around the world again for the first time since the 1970's. Why? Because we've had tough, aggressive trade policies, and because we got interest rates down, and we had a good, stable economic policy, because we've reduced the deficit 4 years in a row for the first time in the 20th century that a President's done that in all 4 years.
And that's why I don't want to see us blow a big hole in the deficit with a tax program we can't pay for so your interest rates will go up and you'll have to pay back in higher interest rates what you allegedly will get in a tax cut.
So I say keep working on expanding the markets. More than half of these 10 1/2 million new jobs were in higher wage areas, and we'll have more manufacturing and more sales at home and around the world.

I'm for it. That's my policy. I'm for it. I believe that any law-abiding taxpaying citizen who shows up in the morning and doesn't break the law and doesn't interfere with his or her neighbors ought to have the ability to work in our country and shouldn't be subject to unfair discrimination. I'm for it.
Now, I have a little time left, so let me just say that I get attacked so many times on these questions it's hard to answer all those things. In February—Senator Dole just said we had the worst economy in a century. In February he said we had the best economy in 30 years— just February. And I don't want to respond in kind to all these things. I could; I could answer a lot of these things tit for tat. But I hope we can talk about what we're going to do in the future. No attack ever created a job or educated a child or helped a family make ends meet. No insult ever cleaned up a toxic waste dump or helped an elderly person. Now, for 4 years that's what I've worked on. If you'll give me 4 years more, I'll work on it some more.
And I'll try to answer these charges, but I prefer to emphasize direct answers to the future, and I gave you a direct answer.

If you believe that the California economy was better in 1992 than it is today, you should vote for Bob Dole. I have worked so hard out here to help turn this economy around.
Let me just give you one tiny example. In San Diego, where we had some defense cutbacks, we funded a project with the University of California, San Diego to use airplane composite materials to build lighter, stronger bridges—
a little project, and a program that Senator Dole opposed—and that composite now is going to be built around the bridges on the Santa Monica freeway to help minimize the impact of earthquakes and create more jobs. That's just one tiny example. Maybe we'll talk about some more before it's over.

I'm just curious. How many of you are under managed care plans? Raise your hand if you're in managed care.
How many of you like it? 

One of the things that I tried to do was to make sure that everybody in the country who was under a managed care plan should at least have three choices of plans and would have the right to get out without penalty every year. Now, that's not a Government takeover, that's like the family and medical leave law. It just tries to set the rules of the game.
I'm strongly in favor of a Federal bill to repeal the—any gag rules on providers. In other words, I believe that doctors should not be able to be kicked out of managed care plans just because they tell the patients what they need and what more expensive care options might be.
If we're saving money and managing resources better, that's a good thing. If we're saving money and depriving people of care, that's a bad thing. A good place to start is to say no managed care provider can gag a doctor and kick the doctor out of the managed care plan for the doctor telling the patient, "You need a more expensive test, you need a more expensive procedure. Your health requires it."

First of all, I think it's important to make voting more accessible. That's why I strongly supported the motor voter law. There was a big story, I think, in USA Today about the millions of people who've now registered because of it.
Secondly, I think we need to look at making the elections more accessible. You know, several States now are letting people vote over 3 weeks. A lot of people are busy, and it's hard for them to just get there and vote.
The third thing I think we need is more forums like this, which is one of the reasons I have so strongly supported campaign finance reform, because if you want to cut the cost of campaigns, you have to open the airwaves, because what drives the cost of a campaign are the costs of advertising on television, radio, newspaper, mass mailing. And if you open the airwaves to more things like this—you see, it's not just you that are participating here. For every one of you who stood up here and asked a question tonight, I promise you, there's 100,000 Americans that said, "I wish I could have asked that question."
So I think we have to change the nature of politics. The last thing I think we should do is something I've been trying to do since I've been President, is every time I do something in a public way, I try to have a real American citizen there who is directly affected by it so that people can see the connection of what happens way across the country in Washington with more police on the street in San Diego, clean up the sewage here in San Diego, doubling the border guards here in southern California, that there is a connection between what we do way back there and what we do here.
Those are my best ideas about it.

Let me make one other suggestion. As you're a teacher, you can have an impact on that.
One of the things I think that really frustrates people is that so often, political campaigns seem to be more about the politicians that are running than the people. Now, there is a connection, and I think what we have to do is convince people there's a big difference. If you vote one way, you will have a Department of Education in the 21st century; if you vote the other way, you won't. If you vote one way, you'll have an expansion of family leave; if you vote the other way, you'll be lucky to save it.
But these are important questions, and people have to decide. I think that the American people also need to be a little more responsible and think about whether there's a connection in their lives and what we do in Washington.

This is one where we have some agreement, I think. Only about half the people in this country have pension plans, and Social Security is not enough for a lot of people to live on, or at least it's not enough for them to maintain anything like their previous lifestyle. So we've got to figure out how we're going to have more people with pension plans. And pension coverage has been declining as more and more people work for small businesses and fewer people work for big businesses.
So what is in my plan—and I think it's almost identical to what's in Senator Dole's plan—is we make more people than are now eligible to save in an IRA, and we'd let couples—married couples save more, and then they could withdraw from it tax-free if they needed to for medical emergencies or to buy a home or for an education, but they could also save to supplement their retirement.
In addition to that, we just passed a sweeping small business reform that makes it easier for small-business people to take out 401(k) plans for themselves and their employees and then much easier for employees to carry it from job to job. My best friend from grade school is a computer software salesman, and he told me last time he changed employers it took him 9 months to figure out how to transfer his 401(k) plan. Now, none of that will happen anymore. And so I hope that over the next 10 years you'll see a big increase in the percentage of people that have pension plans plus a secure Social Security System.

Let me tell you what we have done. We have concluded with Japan 21, about to be 22 trade agreements now. And since we did that, in the areas where we concluded trade agreements, our exports to Japan have gone up by 85 percent in the last 4 years, and our trade deficit with Japan has gone down. Until about 5 months ago, the Japanese economy was in a deep recession. It's coming back now, so they can buy even more American products, and I think it'll go down more.
But I'm very—that's one of the real success stories here of the work we've done. We're selling Japanese rice from California for the first time. I visited a Chrysler dealership in Tokyo. I visited a Jeep plant, the oldest auto plant in America, in Toledo, Ohio, where they're going to export 41,000 right-hand-drive Jeeps this year, and they've got 700 new jobs because of it.
There is no easy way to do this. When you're dealing with an economy that's traditionally been more closed and one that's traditionally been more open, you just have to gut it out issue by issue by issue. We agreed in principle on our insurance agreement, and we're working on three or four other areas now. But the way you have to do it is make sure you're competitive—we're the most competitive country in the world now—and then just fight to open those markets and go try to make the sale. And that's what our trade ambassador, our Commerce Secretary, and all the other people in our administration have tried to do.

Let me say again, we've had over 200 separate trade agreements in the last 4 years, by far the largest number in American history, not just the big ones you've read about but a lot of smaller ones. And now what we have to do is to focus on those things we're real good at and make sure we're getting a fair deal.
We just had a pretty serious dispute with China because they were copying our CD's and costing thousands of jobs in places like California. But we said, "You know, if you want to keep doing business and selling your products over here, you're going to have to quit pirating our CD's." And they agreed to do a number of things and to let us verify that they'd done it. But I think they're going to make the problem much better.
But there is not a simple, easy answer. You just have to work on this day-in and day-out, every month, every year, every issue to make sure that we have not only free trade but fair trade. I'm proud that we're better off on that than we were 4 years ago.

This is the most religious great country in history, and yet, interestingly enough, we have the most religious freedom of any country in the world, including the freedom not to believe. And now we have all these people— just up the road in Los Angeles County we've got people from 150 different racial and ethnic groups, and they've got tons of different religions. But the fundamental tenets of virtually every religion are the same. And what I've tried to do is to support policies that would respect religion, and then help parents inculcate those values to their children. Let me very briefly give you some examples.
One of my proudest moments was signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says the Government's got to bend over backwards before we interfere with religious practice. So I changed a Justice Department effort to get a church to pay back a man's tithe because he was bankrupt when he gave it.
I've supported character education programs in our schools, drug-free schools programs. I've supported giving parents a V-chip on their television so if they don't want their young kids to watch things they shouldn't watch, they wouldn't have to. That's the kind of thing we need to do, give people like you and our families the power to give those values to our children.

I want to answer your question, but let me say one other thing. We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray. And what I did was to have the Justice Department and the Education Department, for the first time ever, issue a set of guidelines that we gave to every school in America saying that children could not be interfered with in religious advocacy, when they were praying, when they were doing whatever they could do under the Constitution just because they were on a public school grounds. And I think anyone who has experienced this would tell you that our administration has done more than any in 30 years to clarify the freedom of religion in the public square, including in the public schools.
Now, I think I have to let Senator Dole speak for himself. It wouldn't be fair for me to do that. I would wind up—I mean, it's the last question, and I'd mischaracterize it to try to make you happy.
Let me tell you what I feel. We have a lot of differences in our country, and some of us believe that other people's decisions are wrong, even immoral. But under our Constitution, if you show up tomorrow and obey the law, and you work hard, and you do what you are supposed to do, you're entitled to equal treatment. That's the way the system works.
All over the world, people are being torn apart—Bosnia, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi, you name it—because of all their differences. We still have some of that hatred inside us; you see it in the church burnings. And one of the things I've tried hardest to do is to tell the American people that we have to get beyond that, we have to understand that we're stronger when we unite around shared values instead of being divided by our differences.

One thing I'd like to say is I agree with what Senator Dole said. It's a remarkable thing in a country like ours that a man who grew up in Russell, Kansas, and one who was born to a widowed mother in Hope, Arkansas, could wind up running for President, could have a chance to serve as President. So the first thing I want to say is thank you for giving me the chance to be President.
This election is about two different visions about how we should go into the 21st century. Would we be better off—as I believe—working together to give each other the tools we need to make the most of our God-given potential, or are we better off saying, "You're on your own"? Would we be better off building that bridge to the future together so we can all walk across it, or saying, "You can get across yourself"?
If you don't leave this room with anything else tonight and if the people watching us don't leave with anything else, I hope you'll leave with this: This is a real important election. The world is changing dramatically in how we work and how we live, how we relate to each other— huge changes. And the decisions we make will have enormous practical consequences.
So we've talked about our responsibilities tonight. I want to talk about your responsibility and your responsibility. Your responsibility is to show up on November 5th, because you're going to decide whether we're going to balance the budget now but protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. You'll decide whether we're going to keep fighting crime with the Brady bill, the assault weapons, and finish putting those 100,000 police; whether we're going to move a million people from welfare to work; whether we're going to give our families more protection for their kids against drugs and tobacco and gangs and guns; whether we're going to give our children world-class education where every 8-year-old can read, every 12-yearold can log in on the Internet, every 18-yearold can go to college.
If we do those things, we'll build that bridge to the 21st century, and the greatest country in history will be even greater.
Thank you.