[Vision2020] Transcript of President Clinton's Speech at the Democratic National Convention

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of National Public Radio (NPR) at:

 

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/160643183/transcript-bill-clintons-convention-
speech

 

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Clinton.jpg

 

"We're here to nominate a President, and I've got one in mind.

 

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

 

I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the
inside. A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven
by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the
good sense to marry Michelle Obama.

 

I want Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States and I
proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

 

In Tampa, we heard a lot of talk about how the President and the Democrats
don't believe in free enterprise and individual initiative, how we want
everyone to be dependent on the government, how bad we are for the economy.

 

The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are
completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic Chairmen, Bob Strauss,
used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log
cabin he built himself, but it ain't so.

 

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real
opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless
focus on the future, with business and government working together to
promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this
together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

 

Who's right? Well since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28
years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million
private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million,
Democrats 42 million!

 

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is
both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and
ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure
and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good
jobs and new wealth for all of us.

 

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the
way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President
Obama and the Democrats. After all, President Eisenhower sent federal troops
to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High and built the
interstate highway system. And as governor, I worked with President Reagan
on welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education
goals. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving
the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents
Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami,
Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

 

Through my foundation, in America and around the world, I work with
Democrats, Republicans and Independents who are focused on solving problems
and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other.

 

When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real
world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and
a broken clock is right twice a day. All of us are destined to live our
lives between those two extremes. Unfortunately, the faction that now
dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think
government is the enemy, and compromise is weakness.

 

One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he
is still committed to cooperation. He appointed Republican Secretaries of
Defense, the Army and Transportation. He appointed a Vice President who ran
against him in 2008, and trusted him to oversee the successful end of the
war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden did a
great job with both. He appointed Cabinet members who supported Hillary in
the primaries. Heck, he even appointed Hillary! I'm so proud of her and
grateful to our entire national security team for all they've done to make
us safer and stronger and to build a world with more partners and fewer
enemies. I'm also grateful to the young men and women who serve our country
in the military and to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden for supporting military
families when their loved ones are overseas and for helping our veterans,
when they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with
education, housing, and jobs.

 

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength,
and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over
partisanship.

 

He also tried to work with Congressional Republicans on Health Care, debt
reduction, and jobs, but that didn't work out so well. Probably because, as
the Senate Republican leader, in a remarkable moment of candor, said two
years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America
back to work, but to put President Obama out of work.

 

Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama
on the job!

 

In Tampa, the Republican argument against the President's re-election was
pretty simple: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast
enough, so fire him and put us back in.

 

In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they
couldn't say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years.
You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into
trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high income Americans even more
than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations
designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase
defense spending two trillion dollars more than the Pentagon has requested
without saying what they'll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the
rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor
kids. As another President once said - there they go again.

 

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

 

Are we where we want to be? No. Is the President satisfied? No. Are we
better off than we were when he took office, with an economy in free fall,
losing 750,000 jobs a month. The answer is YES.

 

I understand the challenge we face. I know many Americans are still angry
and frustrated with the economy. Though employment is growing, banks are
beginning to lend and even housing prices are picking up a bit, too many
people don't feel it.

 

I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were
working and the economy was growing but most people didn't feel it yet. By
1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime
expansion in American history.

 

President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No President
- not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in
just four years. But conditions are improving and if you'll renew the
President's contract you will feel it.

 

I believe that with all my heart.

 

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction
America must take to build a 21st century version of the American Dream in a
nation of shared opportunities, shared prosperity and shared
responsibilities.

 

So back to the story. In 2010, as the President's recovery program kicked
in, the job losses stopped and things began to turn around.

 

The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95% of
the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about
4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the
President's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So
here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, Congressional
Republicans zero.

 

Over that same period, more than more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have
been created under President Obama - the first time manufacturing jobs have
increased since the 1990s.

 

The auto industry restructuring worked. It saved more than a million jobs,
not just at GM, Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts
manufacturing all over the country. That's why even auto-makers that weren't
part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the suppliers too. Like I
said, we're all in this together.

 

Now there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than the day
the companies were restructured. Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM
and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama two hundred and fifty
thousand, Romney, zero.

 

The agreement the administration made with management, labor and
environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is
another good deal: it will cut your gas bill in half, make us more energy
independent, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good
jobs.

 

President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan is helping too - the boom
in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven
oil imports to a near 20 year low and natural gas production to an all time
high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.

 

We do need more new jobs, lots of them, but there are already more than
three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the
applicants don't have the required skills. We have to prepare more Americans
for the new jobs that are being created in a world fueled by new technology.
That's why investments in our people are more important than ever. The
President has supported community colleges and employers in working together
to train people for open jobs in their communities. And, after a decade in
which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that
we've fallen to 16th in the world in the percentage of our young adults with
college degrees, his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student
loans and even more important, gives students the right to repay the loans
as a fixed percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years. That means no one
will have to drop-out of college for fear they can't repay their debt, and
no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a
small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments.
This will change the future for young Americans.

 

I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions.

 

That brings me to health care.

 

The Republicans call it Obamacare and say it's a government takeover of
health care that they'll repeal. Are they right? Let's look at what's
happened so far. Individuals and businesses have secured more than a billion
dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law
requires 80% to 85% of your premiums to be spent on health care, not profits
or promotion. Other insurance companies have lowered their rates to meet the
requirement. More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured
for the first time because their parents can now carry them on family
policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including breast
cancer screenings and tests for heart problems. Soon the insurance
companies, not the government, will have millions of new customers many of
them middle class people with pre-existing conditions. And for the last two
years, health care spending has grown under 4%, for the first time in 50
years.

 

So are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed
it? You bet we are.

 

There were two other attacks on the President in Tampa that deserve an
answer. Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for
allegedly robbing Medicare of 716 billion dollars. Here's what really
happened. There were no cuts to benefits. None. What the President did was
save money by cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance
companies that weren't making people any healthier. He used the saving to
close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and to add eight years to
the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. It's now solvent until 2024. So
President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened
it.

 

When Congressman Ryan looked into the TV camera and attacked President
Obama's "biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. You see, that 716 billion dollars is exactly the
same amount of Medicare savings Congressman Ryan had in his own budget.

 

At least on this one, Governor Romney's been consistent. He wants to repeal
the savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, re-open the
donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and reduce the life of
the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. So now if he's elected and does what
he promised Medicare will go broke by 2016. If that happens, you won't have
to wait until their voucher program to begins in 2023 to see the end
Medicare as we know it.

 

But it gets worse. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a
third over the coming decade. Of course, that will hurt poor kids, but
that's not all. Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care
for seniors and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle
class families, with special needs like, Downs syndrome or Autism. I don't
know how those families are going to deal with it. We can't let it happen

 

Now let's look at the Republican charge that President Obama wants to weaken
the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved
millions of people from welfare to work.

 

Here's what happened. When some Republican governors asked to try new ways
to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration said they
would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20%.
You hear that? More work. So the claim that President Obama weakened welfare
reform's work requirement is just not true. But they keep running ads on it.
As their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be
dictated by fact checkers." Now that is true. I couldn't have said it better
myself - I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.

 

Let's talk about the debt. We have to deal with it or it will deal with us.
President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction
over a decade, with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every
one dollar of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's
the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles
commission.

 

I think the President's plan is better than the Romney plan, because the
Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don't
add up.

 

It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with five trillion
dollars in tax cuts over a ten-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger
before they even start to dig out. They say they'll make it up by
eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When you ask "which loopholes and how
much?," they say "See me after the election on that."

 

People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets. What new
ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they
stay with a 5 trillion dollar tax cut in a debt reduction plan - the -
arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen: 1) they'll have to
eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable
giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up two thousand
dollars year while people making over 3 million dollars a year get will
still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut; or 2) they'll have to cut so much
spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for
ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they'll cut
way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other
programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention
cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical
research; or 3) they'll do what they've been doing for thirty plus years now
- cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the
economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I
took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can't afford to
double-down on trickle-down.

 

President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the
future for our children, our families and our nation.

 

My fellow Americans, you have to decide what kind of country you want to
live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all society you
should support the Republican ticket. If you want a country of shared
opportunities and shared responsibilities - a "we're all in it together"
society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every
American to vote and you think its wrong to change voting procedures just to
reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you
should support Barack Obama. If you think the President was right to open
the doors of American opportunity to young immigrants brought here as
children who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should vote
for Barack Obama. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the
middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream
is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for
peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for
Barack Obama.

 

I love our country - and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years,
through every crisis, we've always come out stronger than we went in. And we
will again as long as we do it together. We champion the cause for which our
founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor - to form a
more perfect union.

 

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect
President Barack Obama.

 

God Bless You - God Bless America.

 

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

 

 

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