Bill Clinton Speech Text: Read The Former President's Democratic
Convention Remarks
Posted: 09/05/2012
10:50 pm Updated: 09/05/2012 11:08 pm
Bill Clinton delivered his speech
at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night.
Below, the former president's
remarks as prepared for delivery.
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.
