Clinton_town_hall_pre.txt

I'd like to answer the question, because I've actually been a Governor for 12 years, so I've known a lot of people who have lost their jobs because of jobs moving overseas, and I know a lot of people whose plants have been strengthened by increasing exports.
The trick is to expand our export base and to expand trade on terms that are fair to us.
 It is true that our exports to Mexico, for example, have gone up, and our trade deficit's gone down.
 It's also true that just today a record-high trade deficit was announced with Japan.
So what is the answer? Let me just mention three things very quickly.
 Number one, make sure that other countries are as open to our markets as our markets are to them.
 If they're not, have measures on the books that don't take forever and a day to implement.
Number two, change the Tax Code.
 There are more deductions in the Tax Code for shutting plants down and moving overseas than there are for modernizing plants and equipment here.
 Our competitors don't do that.
 Emphasize and subsidize modernizing plants and equipment here, not moving plants overseas.
Number three, stop the Federal Government's program that now gives low interest loans and job training funds to companies that will actually shut down and move to other countries, but we won't do the same thing for plants that stay here.
 So more trade, but on fair terms, and favor investment in America.
No, and here's why; I'll tell you exactly why, because the deficit now has been building up for 12 years.
 I'll tell you exactly what I think can be done.
 I think we can bring it down by 50 percent in 4 years and grow the economy.
Now, I could get rid of it in 4 years in theory on the books now, but to do it you'd have to raise taxes too much and cut benefits too much to people who need them, and it would even make the economy worse.
Let me say first of all to you that I believe so strongly in the question you asked that I suggested this format tonight.
 I started doing these formats a year ago in New Hampshire, and I found that we had huge crowds because all I did was let people ask questions, and I tried to give very specific answers.
 I also had a program starting last year.
I've been disturbed by the tone and the tenor of this campaign.
 Thank goodness the networks have a fact check so I don't have to just go blue in the face anymore.
 Mr.
 Bush said once again tonight I was going to have a $150 billion tax increase.
 When Mr.
 Quayle said that, all the networks said: that's not true; he's got over $100 billion in tax cuts and incentives.
So I'm not going to take up your time tonight, but let me just say this.
 We'll have a debate in 4 days, and we can talk about this character thing again, but the Washington Post ran a long editorial today saying they couldn't believe Mr.
 Bush was making character an issue, and they said he was the greatest political chameleon, for changing his positions, of all time.
Now, I don't want to get into that -- --
President Bush.
 Please don't say anything by the Washington Post.
Wait a minute.
 Let's don't -- you don't have to believe that.
 Here's my point.
 I'm not interested in his character.
 I want to change the character of the Presidency.
 And I'm interested in what we can trust him to do and what you can trust me to do and what you can trust Mr.
 Perot to do for the next 4 years.
 So I think you're right, and I hope the rest of the night belongs to you.
Wait a minute.
 I want to say just one thing now, Ross, in fairness.
 The ideas I express are mine.
 I've worked on these things for 12 years, and I'm the only person up here who hasn't been part of Washington in any way for the last 20 years.
 So I don't want the implication to be that somehow everything we say is just cooked up and put in our head by somebody else.
 I worked 12 years very hard as a Governor on the real problems of real people.
 I'm just as sick as you are by having to wake up and figure out how to defend myself every day.
 I never thought I'd ever be involved in anything like this.
That bill pays for these urban enterprise zones by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more, and that's why he wants to veto it, just like he vetoed an earlier bill this year.
 This is not mud slinging.
 This is fact slinging.
President Bush.
 There you go.
A bill earlier this year -- this is fact -- that would have given investment tax credits and other incentives to reinvest in our cities and our country.
 But it asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more.
 Mr.
 Perot wants to do the same thing.
 I agree with him.
 I mean, we agree with that.
Let me tell you specifically what my plan does: My plan would dedicate $20 billion a year in each of the next 4 years for investments in new transportation, communications, environmental cleanup, and new technologies for the 21st century.
 We would target it especially in areas that have been either depressed or which have lost a lot of defense-related jobs.
There are 200,000 people in California, for example, who have lost their defense-related jobs.
 They ought to be engaged in making high-speed rail.
 They ought to be engaged in breaking ground in other technologies, doing waste recycling, clean water technology, and things of that kind.
 We can create millions of jobs in these new technologies, more than we're going to lose in defense if we target it.
 But we're investing a much smaller percentage of our income in the things you just asked about than all of our major competitors.
 Our wealth growth is going down as a result of it.
 It's making the country poorer, which is why I answered the gentleman the way I did before.
We have to both bring down the deficit and get our economy going through these kinds of investments in order to get the kind of wealth and jobs and incomes we need in America.
I support the right to keep and bear arms.
 I live in a State where over half the adults have hunting or fishing licenses or both.
 But I believe we have to have some way of checking handguns before they're sold, to check the criminal history, the mental health history, and the age of people who are buying them.
 Therefore, I support the Brady bill, which would impose a national waiting period, unless and until a State did what only Virginia has done now, which is to automate its records.
 Once you automate your records, then you don't have to have a waiting period, but at least you can check.
I also think we should have, frankly, restrictions on assault weapons, whose only purpose is to kill.
 We need to give the police a fighting chance in our urban areas where the gangs are building up.
The third thing I would say doesn't bear directly on gun control, but it's very important.
 We need more police on the street.
 There is a crime bill which would put more police on the street, which was killed for this session by a filibuster in the Senate, mostly by Republican Senators.
 I think it's a shame it didn't pass.
 I think it should be made the law, but it had the Brady bill in it, the waiting period.
I also believe that we should offer college scholarships to people who will agree to work them off as police officers.
 I think as we reduce our military forces, we should let people earn military retirement by coming out and working as police officers.
Thirty years ago there were three police officers on the street for every crime.
 Today, there are three crimes for every police officer.
 In the communities which have had real success putting police officers near schools where kids carry weapons, to get the weapons out of the schools, or on the same blocks, you've seen crime go down.
 In Houston there's been a 15-percent drop in the crime rate in the last year because of the work the Mayor did there in increasing the police force.
 So I know it can work.
 I've seen it happen.
I know they're popular, but I'm against them.
 I'll tell you why.
 I believe, number one, it would pose a real problem for a lot of smaller States in the Congress who would have enough trouble now making sure their interests are heard.
 Number two, I think it would increase the influence of unelected staff members in the Congress who have too much influence already.
 I want to cut the size of the congressional staffs, but I think you're going to have too much influence there with people who were never elected who have lots of expertise.
Number three, if the people really have a mind to change, they can.
 You're going to have 120 to 150 new Members of Congress.
 Now, let me tell you what I favor instead.
 I favor strict controls on how much you can spend running for Congress, strict limits on political action committees, requirements that people running for Congress appear in open public debates like we're doing now.
 If you did that, you could take away the incumbent's advantage, because challengers like me would have a chance to run against incumbents like him for the House races and Senate races, and then the voters could make up their own mind without being subject to an unfair fight.
 So that's how I feel about it, and I think if we had the right kind of campaign reform, we'd get the changes you want.

I've had more people talk to me about their health care problems, I guess, than anything else.
 All across America, people who have lost their jobs, lost their businesses, had to give up their jobs because of sick children -- so let me try to answer you in this way.
Let's start with the premise.
 We spend 30 percent more of our income than any nation on Earth on health care.
 And yet, we insure fewer people.
 We have 35 million people without any insurance at all, and I see them all the time.
 One hundred thousand Americans a month have lost their health insurance just in the last 4 years.
So if you analyze where we're out of line with other countries you come up with the following conclusions: Number one, we spend at least $60 billion a year on insurance, administrative costs, bureaucracy, and Government regulation that wouldn't be spent in any other nation.
 So we have to have, in my judgment, a drastic simplification of the basic health insurance policies of this country, be very comprehensive for everybody.
 Employers would cover their employees.
 Government would cover the unemployed.
Number two, I think you have to take on specifically the insurance companies and require them to make some significant change in the way they rate people in the big community pools.
 I think you have to tell the pharmaceutical companies they can't keep raising drug prices at 3 times the rate of inflation.
 I think you have to take on medical fraud.
 I think you have to help doctors stop practicing defensive medicine.
 I've recommended that our doctors be given a set of national practice guidelines and that if they follow those guidelines, that raises the presumption that they didn't do anything wrong.
 I think you have to have a system of primary preventive clinics in our inner cities and our rural areas so people can have access to health care.
But the key is to control the costs and maintain the quality.
 To do that, you need a system of managed competition where all of us are covered in big groups, and we can choose our doctors and our hospitals from a wide range, but there is an incentive to control costs.
 And I think there has to be -- I think Mr.
 Perot and I agree on this -- there has to be a national commission of health care providers and health care consumers that set ceilings to keep health costs in line with inflation plus population growth.
Now, let me say, some people say we can't do this, but Hawaii does it.
 They cover 98 percent of their people, and their insurance premiums are much cheaper than the rest of America.
 So does Rochester, New York.
 They now have a plan to cover everybody, and their premiums are two-thirds the rest of the country.
 This is very important.
 It's a big human problem and a devastating economic problem for America.
 I'm going to send a plan to do this within the first 100 days of my Presidency.
 It's terribly important.

One brief point.
 We have elections so people can make decisions about this.
 The point I want to make to you is, a bipartisan commission reviewed my plan and the Bush plan and concluded -- there were as many Republicans as Democratic health care experts on it -- they concluded that my plan would cover everybody, and his would leave 27 million behind by the year 2000, and that my plan in the next 12 years would save $2.
2 trillion in public and private money to reinvest in this economy.
 The average family would save $1,200 a year under the plan that I offered, without any erosion in the quality of health care.
 So I ask you to look at that.
You have to vote for somebody with a plan.
 That's what you have elections for.
 If people say, "Well, he got elected to do this," and then the Congress says, "Okay, I'm going to do it.
" That's what the election was about.
Well, I've been Governor of a small State for 12 years.
 I'll tell you how it's affected me.
 Every year, Congress and the President sign laws that make us do more things; it gives us less money to do it with.
 I see people in my State, middle class people, their taxes have gone up from Washington and their services have gone down, while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts.
I have seen what's happened in this last 4 years when, in my State, when people lose their jobs there's a good chance I'll know them by their names.
 When a factory closes, I know the people who ran it.
 When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them.
 And I've been out here for 13 months, meeting in meetings just like this ever since October with people like you all over America, people that have lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their health insurance.
What I want you to understand is, the national debt is not the only cause of that.
 It is because America has not invested in its people.
 It is because we have not grown.
 It is because we've had 12 years of trickle-down economics.
 We've gone from 1st to 12th in the world in wages.
 We've had 4 years where we've produced no private sector jobs.
 Most people are working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago.
 It is because we are in the grip of a failed economic theory.
 And this decision you're about to make better be about what kind of economic theory you want, not just people saying, "I want to go fix it," but what are we going to do.
What I think we have to do is invest in American jobs, in American education, control American health care costs, and bring the American people together again.
I think I remember the question.
  Let me say first of all, I want to answer your specific question, but first of all, we all agree that there should be a growing economy.
 What you have to decide is who's got the best economic plan.
 We all have ideas out there, and Mr.
 Bush has a record.
 I don't want you to read my lips, and I sure don't want you to read his.
  I do hope you will read our plans.
Now, specifically -- --
-- -- one, on Medicare, it is not true that everyone knows how to fix it; there are different ideas.
 The Bush plan, the Perot plan, the Clinton -- we have different ideas.
 I am convinced, having studied health care for a year, hard, and talking to hundreds and hundreds of people all across America, that you cannot control the costs of Medicare until you control the cost of private health care and public health care with managed competition, ceiling on cost, and radical reorganization of the insurance markets.
 You've got to do that.
 We've got to get those costs down.
Number two, with regard to Social Security, that program, a lot of you may not know this: It produces a $70 billion surplus a year.
 Social Security is in surplus $70 billion.
 Six increases in the payroll tax -- that means people with incomes of $51,000 a year or less pay a disproportionately high share of the Federal tax burden, which is why I want some middle class tax relief.
What do we have to do? By the time the century turns, we have got to have our deficit under control, we have to work out of so that surplus is building up, so when the baby boomers like me retire, we're okay.
Number three, on the pension funds, I don't know as much about it, but I will say this: What I will do is to bring in the pension experts of the country, take a look at it, and strengthen the pension requirements further, because it's not just enough to have the guarantee.
 We had a guarantee on the S&L's, right? We had a guarantee, and what happened? You picked up a $500 billion bill because of the dumb way the Federal Government deregulated it.
 So I think we are going to have to change and strengthen the pension requirements on private retirement plans.
I'd rather answer her question first, and then I'll be glad to, because the question you ask is important.
 The end of the cold war brings an incredible opportunity for change, the winds of freedom blowing around the world, Russia demilitarizing.
 It also requires us to maintain some continuity, some bipartisan American commitment to certain principles.
I would just say there are three things that I would like to say.
 Number one, we do have to maintain the world's strongest defense.
 We may differ about what the elements of that are.
 I think the defense needs to be with fewer people and permanent armed services, but with greater mobility on the land, in the air, and on the sea, with a real dedication to continuing development of high-technology weaponry and well-trained people.
 I think we're going to have to work to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
 We've got to keep going until all those nuclear weapons in Russia are gone and the other Republics.
Number two, if you don't rebuild the economic strength of this country at home, we won't be a superpower.
 We can't have any more instances like what happened when Mr.
 Bush went to Japan and the Japanese Prime Minister said he felt sympathy for our country.
 We have to be the strongest economic power in the world.
 That's what got me into this race, so we could rebuild the American economy.
Number three, we need to be a force for freedom and democracy.
 We need to use our unique position to support freedom, whether it's in Haiti or in China or in any other place, wherever the seeds of freedom are sprouting.
 We can't impose it, but we need to nourish it.
 That's the kind of thing that I would do as President, follow those three commitments into the future.
First of all, let me say that I've spent more of my time in life on this in the last 12 years than any other issue.
 Seventy percent of my State's money goes to public schools.
 I was really honored when Time magazine said that our schools have shown more improvement than any other State in the country except one other.
 They named two States showing real strides forward in the eighties.
 So I care a lot about this, and I've spent countless hours in schools.
But let me start with what you've said.
 I agree with some of what Mr.
 Bush said, but it's nowhere near enough.
 We live in a world where what you earn depends on what you can learn, where the average 18-year-old will change jobs eight times in a lifetime, and where none of us can promise any of you that what you now do for a living is absolutely safe from now on.
 Nobody running can promise that.
 There's too much change in the world.
So what should we do? Let me reel some things off real quick, because you said you wanted specifics.
 Number one, under my program we would provide matching funds to States to teach everybody with a job to read in the next 5 years and give everybody with a job a chance to get a high school diploma, in big places, on the job.
Number two, we would provide 2-year apprenticeship programs to high school graduates who don't go to college, in community colleges or on the job.
Number three, we'd open the doors to college education to high school graduates without regard to income.
 They could borrow the money and pay it back as a percentage of their income over the couple of years of service to our Nation here home.
Number four, we would fully fund the Head Start program to get little kids off to a good start.
Five, I would have an aggressive program of school reform.
 More choices in the -- I favor public schools or these new charter schools.
 We can talk about that if you want.
 I don't think we should spend tax money on private schools, but I favor public school choice.
 I favor radical decentralization in giving more power to better trained principals and teachers with parent councils to control their schools.
 Those things would revolutionize American education and take us to the top economically.

In 6 years -- I budget all this in my budget.
 In 6 years, the college program would cost $8 billion over and above what -- the present student loan program costs 4.
 You pay $3 billion for busted loans, because we don't have an automatic recovery system, and a billion dollars in bank fees.
 So the net cost will be $8 billion 6 years from now, in a trillion-plus budget: not very much.
The other stuff, all the other stuff I mentioned costs much less than that.
 The Head Start program, full funding, would cost about $5 billion more.
 It's all covered in my budget from the plans that I've laid out, from raising taxes on families with incomes above $200,000, and asking foreign corporations to pay the same tax that American corporations do on the same income; from $140 billion in budget cuts, including what I think are very prudent cuts in the defense budget.
 It's all covered in the plan.

Very briefly.
 Involving the parents in the preschool education of their kids, even if they're poor and uneducated, can make a huge difference.
 We have a big program in my State that teaches mothers or fathers to teach their kids to get ready for school.
 It's the most successful thing we've ever done.
Just a fact clarification real quickly.
 We do not spend a higher percentage of our income on public education than every other country.
 There are nine countries that spend more than we do on public education.
 We spend more on education because we spend so much more on colleges.
 But if you look at public education alone, and you take into account that we have more racial diversity and more poverty, it makes a big difference.
 There are great public schools where there are public school choice, accountability, and brilliant principals.
 I'll just mention one, the Beasley Academic Center in Chicago.
 I commend it to anybody.
 It's as good as any private school in the country.
I believe that this country is electing more and more African-Americans and Latinos and Asian-Americans who are representing districts that are themselves not necessarily of a majority of their race.
 The American people are beginning to vote across racial lines, and I hope it will happen more and more.
More and more women are being elected.
 Look at all these women Senate candidates we have here.
 You know, according to my mother and my wife and my daughter, this world would be a lot better place if women were running it most of the time.
I do think there are special experiences and judgments and backgrounds and understandings that women bring to this process, by the way.
 This lady said here, how have you been affected by the economy? I mean, women know what it's like to be paid an unequal amount for equal work; they know what's it like not to have flexible working hours; they know what it's like not to have family leave or child care.
 So I think it would be a good thing for America if it happened, and I think it will happen in my lifetime.
Thank you, Carole, and thank you, ladies and gentleman.
 Since I suggested this format, I hope it's been good for all of you.
 I've really tried to be faithful to your request that we answer the questions specifically and pointedly.
 I thought I owed that to you.
 And I respect you for being here, and for the impact you've had on making this a more positive experience.
These problems are not easy.
 They're not going to be solved overnight.
 But I want you to think about just two or three things.
 First of all, the people of my State have let me be their Governor for 12 years because I made commitments to two things, more jobs and better schools.
Our schools are now better.
 Our children get off to a better start, from preschool programs and smaller classes in the early grades.
 We have one of the most aggressive adult education programs in the country.
 We talked about that.
This year, my State ranks first in the country in job growth, fourth in manufacturing job growth, fourth in income growth, fourth in the decline of poverty.
 I'm proud of that.
 It happened because I could work with people, Republicans and Democrats.
 That's why we've had 24 retired generals and admirals, hundreds of business people, many of them Republican, support this campaign.
You have to decide whether you want to change or not.
 We do not need 4 more years of an economic theory that doesn't work.
 We've had 12 years of trickle-down economics.
 It's time to put the American people first, to invest and grow this economy.
 I'm the only person here who's ever balanced a government budget, and I've presented 12 of them and cut spending repeatedly.
 But you cannot just get there by balancing the budget.
 We've got to grow the economy by putting people first, real people like you.
I got into this race because I did not want my child to grow up to be part of the first generation of Americans to do worse than their parents.
 We're better than that.
 We can do better than that.
 I want to make America as great as it can be, and I ask for your help in doing it.