Whooo Whoo Who,
Thank you, thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, now Mr. Mayor fellow democrats we are 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. I want to nominate a man who ran for president to change the course of an already weak economy and then just six weeks before his election saw it suffer the biggest collapse since the great depression a man who stopped the slide into depression, and put us on the long road to recovery knowing all the while no matter how many jobs that he saved or created there would still be millions more waiting worried about feeding their own kids trying to keep their hopes alive.
I want to nominate a man who’s cool on the outside but who burns for America on the inside. I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American dream economy driven by innovation and creativity by education and yes by cooperation, and by the way after last night I want a man who had enough sense to marry Michelle Obama. Now I want Barak Obama to be the next President of the United States and I proudly nominate him to be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. Now Folks in Tampa a few days ago we heard a lot of talk, oh about how the President and the Democratic Party really don’t believe in free enterprises and individual initiative. How we want everybody to be dependent on the Government. How bad we are for the economy. This republican narrative this alternative universe says that every one of us who amounts to anything we are completely self-made. One of the greatest chairman the Democratic Party ever had Bob Strauss used to say that every politician wants every voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself.
But as Strauss did admit it, it aint so, we Democrats we think the country works better with a strong middle class with real opportunities for poor folks who work their way into it. With a relentless focus on the future with business and government actually working together to promote Growth and broadly shared prosperity, you see we believe that were all in this together is a far better philosophy than you are on your own. Now so who’s right? Well since nineteen sixty one fifty two years now the Republicans have held the white house 28 years, the democrats 24. In those 52 years our private economy has produced 66 Million private sector jobs. So what’s the Job Score? Republicans 24 million democrats 42.
Now there’s a reason for this it turns out to advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty discrimination and ignorance restrict growth, when you stifle human potential when you don’t invest in new ideas, it doesn’t just cut off the people who are affected it hurts us all. We know that investments in Education and infrastructure scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs and they create new wealth for all the rest of us. Now there is something I have noticed lately you probably have too, and it’s this, maybe just cause I grew up in a different time, though I often disagree with republicans I actually never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our President and a lot of other democrats. That would be impossible for me because President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate little rock central high school. President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. When I was the Governor I worked with President Reagan in his white house on the first round of welfare reform and with President George H. W. Bush on national education Goals. I’m actually very grateful, if you saw from the film what I do today, I have to be grateful and you should be too. That President George W. Bush supported it saved lives of millions of people in poor countries. And I have been honored to work with both Presidents Bush on national disasters and the aftermath of the South Eastern Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the horrible earthquake in Haiti. Grew my foundation both in America and around the world I’m working all the time with republicans democrats and independents sometimes I couldn’t tell you for the life who I am working with because we focus on solving problems and ceasing opportunities and not fighting all the time.
So here is what I want to say to you, and here is what I want the people at home to think about when times are tough and people are angry hurting and uncertain the politics of constant conflict may be good but what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation. What works in the real world is cooperation. Business and government foundations and university, ask the mayors who are here. Los Angeles is getting green and Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because republicans and democrats are working together to get it. They didn’t check their brains at the door they didn’t stop disagreeing, but their purpose was to get something done. Now why is this true, why does cooperation work better than constant conflict, because nobody is right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.
And every one of us, and every one of them were compelled to spend our fleeting lives between those two extremes knowing were never going to be right all the time and hoping were right more than twice a day. Unfortunately the fraction it now dominates. The Republican Party doesn’t see it that way. They think Government is always the enemy they are always right and compromise is weakness. Just in the last couple of elections they defeated two distinguished republican senators because they dared to cooperate with democrats on issues important for the future of the country even national security they beat a republican congressman with almost a hundred percent voting record on every conservative score because he said he realized he did not have to hate the President to disagree with him boy that was an iron starter and they threw him out.
One of the main reasons we ought to reelect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation. Look at his record. Look at his record. Look at his record. He appointed republicans secretaries of defense, army and transportation. He appointed a Vice president that ran against him in 2008 and he trusted the Vice President to oversee the end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. And Joe Biden, Joe Biden did a great job with both. Now he President Obama appointed several members of his cabinet even though they supported Hillary in the primary, heck he even appointed Hillary. Now wait a minute, I am, I am very proud of her. I am proud of the job her and the national security team have done for America. I am grateful that they have worked together to make us safer and stronger to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies, I am grateful for the relationship of respect and partnership she and the president have enjoyed and the signal that sends to the rest of the world that democracy does not have to be a blood sport it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest. Now but besides the national security team I am very grateful to the men and women who serve our country in uniform through these paralysis times. I am especially grateful to Michelle Obama and to Joe Biden for supporting those military families while they’re loved ones were oversees, and for supporting our veterans when they came home when they come home bearing the wounds of war are needing help to find education or jobs or housing President Obama’s whole record on National Security is to tribute to his strength to his judgment and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship we need more of it in Washington DC. Now we all know that he also tried to work with congressional republicans on healthcare debt reduction and new jobs and that didn’t work out so well. But it could have been because as the senate republican leaders have said in a remarkable moment of candor two full years before the election there number one priority was not to put America back to work, it was to put the President out of work.
Well wait a minute, Senator I hate to break it to you, but were going to keep the President on the Job. Now are you ready for that? Now wait a minute, in Tampa did you all watch their convention I did, in Tampa the Republican argument against the president reelection was actually pretty simple, pretty snaffy, it went something like this. We left him a total mess, he hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough so fire him and put us back in. Now, but they did it well they looked good, they sounded good, they convinced me that they all love their families and their children and were grateful they have been born in America. Really I am not being they did.
This is important they convinced me they were honorable people who believe what they said and they are going to keep every commitment they have made we just got to make sure we the American People know what those commitments are. Because in order to look like acceptable reasonable modern alternative to President Obama, they just didn’t say very much about the ideas they have offered the last two years, they couldn’t. Because they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place. They want to cut taxes for high income Americans even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts.
They actually want to increase defense spending over the next decade two trillion dollars more than the pentagon has requested. Without saying what they will spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the budget especially in the programs that help the middle class and the poor children. As another President once said, there they go again. Now I like, I like the argument for President Obamas reelection a lot better, here it is, he inherited a deeply damaged economy, he put a floor under the crash, he began the long hard road to recovery and laid the foundation for a more modern well balanced economy that will produce millions of new good jobs vibrant new businesses and lots of new wealth for innovators.
Now, are we ware we want to be today? No, is the President satisfied, of course not, but are we better off now than when he took office? When listen to this, everybody has forgotten when President Barak Obama took office the economy was in free fall it had just shrunk nine full percent GDP we were losing 750 thousand jobs a month. Are we doing better than that today? The answer is yes. Now look here is the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face, I get it, I know it, I have been there. A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy if you look at the numbers you know employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend again, and in a lot of places housing prices even began to pick up. But too many people do not feel it yet, I had this same thing happen, in 1994 and early 95 we could see the policies were working, that the economy was growing, but most people didn’t feel it yet. Thankfully by 1996 the economy was roaring everybody felt it and we were halfway through the longest peace time expansion in the history of the United States. But wait, wait, the difference this time is purely in the circumstances. President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. Listen to me now, no President, no President, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.
Now, but he has, he has laid the foundations for a new modern successful economy of shared prosperity, and if you will renew the Presidents contract you will feel it, you will feel it. Folks whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know that I believe it with all my heart I believe it. Now why do I believe it? I’m fixing to tell you why, President Obamas approach embodies the values the ideas and the direction America has to take to build a twenty first century version of the American dream. A nation of shared opportunities shared, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community, so let’s get back to the story, in 2010 as the presidents recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped, and things began to turn around. The recovery act was created and saved millions of jobs and cut taxes; let me say this again, cut taxes for 95% of the American people.
And in the last 29 months our economy has produced about four and a half million private sector jobs, we could have done better but last year the republicans blocked the president’s job plan. Costing the economy more than a million new jobs, so here is another job score, President Obama plus four and a half million, congressional republicans zero. During this period more than 500 thousand manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama and that is the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the nineteen nineties. I will tell you something else the auto industry restructuring worked it saved more than a million jobs, and not just at GM Chrysler and their dealerships, but in auto parts manufacturing all over the country, that’s why even auto makers who weren’t part of the deal supported it. They needed to save those parts suppliers too. Like I said were all in this together. So what’s happened there are now two hundred and fifty thousand more people working in the auto industry than the day the companies were restructured, so now we all know that Governor Romney opposed to save GM and Chrysler, so here is another Job score, are you listening in Michigan Ohio and across the country? Here is another Job Score, Obama 250 Thousand Romney 0.
Now the agreement the administration made with the management labor and environmental groups have doubled car mileage that was a good deal too. It will cut your gas prices in half. Your gas bill no matter what the price is if you double the mileage of your car your bill would be half of what it would have been. It will make us more energy independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions and according to several analysis over the next twenty years it will bring us another half million good new jobs into the American economy, the Presidents energy strategy what he calls all of the above is helping too. The boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near twenty year low, and natural gas production to an all-time high and renewable energy production has doubled, of course we need a lot more new jobs.
But there are already more than three million open and unfilled jobs in America, mostly because the people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do them. So even as we get Americans more jobs we have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are actually going to be created. The old economy is not coming back we have got to build a new one and educate people to do those jobs. The President and his education secretaries have supported community colleges and employers working together to train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities and even more important after a decade of exploding college costs has increased the dropout rate so much that the percentage of our young people with four year college degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to sixteenth in the world.
In the percentage of young people with college degrees, so the Presidents student loan reform is more important than ever here is what it does you need to tell every voter where you live about this, it lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important it gives students the right to repay those loans as a clear fixed low percentage of their income for up to twenty years. Now what does this mean? What does this mean, think about it? It means no one will ever have to drop out of college again for fear they can’t repay their debts. And it means, it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income a teacher or a police officer, if they want to be a small town doctor of a little rural area, they won’t have to turn down those jobs because they don’t pay well enough to repay the debt, their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This will change the future for young Americans. I don’t know about you, but all these issues I know were better off because President Barak Obama made the decisions he did. Now that brings me to healthcare, now the Republicans call it derisively Obama care. They say it is a government takeover a disaster and that if we will just elect them they will repeal it.
Well are they right? (CROWD NO!) Let’s take a look at what has actually happened so far, first individuals and businesses have already gotten more than a billion dollars in refunds from insurance companies because the luau law requires 80 to 85 % of your premium to go to your health care now the profits are promotion. And the gains are even greater than that because a bunch of insurance companies have applied to lower their rates to comply with the requirement. Check it more than three million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parent’s policies can cover them. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care all the way from breast cancer screenings to test for heart problems and scores of other things and younger people are getting them too. Forth soon the insurance companies, not the government, the insurance companies, will have millions of new customers, many of them middle class people with preexisting conditions who never could get insurance before.
Now finally listen to this, for the last two years after going up at three times the rate of inflation after a decade for the last two years healthcare costs have been under four percent in both years for the first time in fifty years. So let me ask you something are we better off because president Obama fought for healthcare reform? You bet we are.Now there were two other attacks on our President in Tampa I think deserve an answer, first both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the President for allegedly robbing Medicare of seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars. That’s the same attack that leveled against congress in 2010, and they got a lot of votes on it, but it’s not true. Look here is what really happened you be the judge, here is what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits at all none. What the president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service. And instead of rating Medicare, he used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program. And you all got to listen carefully to this, this is really important. And to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent to the year 2024. So, so the President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare, they strengthened Medicare. Now when Congressmen Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obamas Medicare savings as quote “The biggest coldest power play” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because that seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars is exactly to the dollar the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget.
You ought give one thing it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did. So now you’re having a good time but this is getting serious I want you to listen, this is important cause a lot of people believe this stuff, now it least on this issue, in this one issue, Governor Romney has been consistent. He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give that money back to the insurance companies. He wants to go back to the old system which means we will reopen the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs. And we will reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years. So if he is elected and if he does what he promised to do Medicare will now go broke in 2016, think about that, that means after all we won’t have to wait until our vouture program kicks in in 2023 to see the end of Medicare as we know it.
They’re going to do it to us sooner than we thought, now folks this is serious because it gets worse and you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this, they also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming ten years. Of course that is really going to hurt a lot of poor kids, but that is not all, a lot of folks don’t know it but every two thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid. It’s going to end Medicare as we know it, and a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities. Including a lot of middle class families who have kids with Down syndrome or autism or other severe conditions, and honestly let’s think about it, if that happens I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I am going to do I am going to do everything that I can do to see that it doesn’t happen, we can’t let it happen. We can’t. Now, wait a minute let’s look, let’s look at the other big charged the republicans made it’s a real doozy.
They actually have charged and run ads saying that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed and moved millions of people from welfare to work. But wait, you need to know, here is what happened, nobody ever tells you what really happened, here is what happened, when some republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama Administration listened, because we all know it’s hard for people even with good work histories to get job’s today, so moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those Governors in honors only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20% and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. Did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work not less. So this is personal to me, we move millions of people off welfare, it was one of the reasons that in the eight years I was president we had a hundred times as many people move out of poverty into the middle class than half under the previous twelve years. A hundred times as many it’s a big deal. But I am telling you the claim the claim President Obama weakened welfare reform works requirement is just not true. But they keep running adds claiming it, you want to know why? Their campaign poster said, “We are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” Now finally I can say that is true, I couldn’t say it better myself, and I hope you and every American within the sound of my voice remembers it every time they see one of those adds, and it turns into an add to reelect Barak Obama and keep the fundamental principles of personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job in the work as soon as we can. Now, let’s talk about the debt.
Today interest rates are low lower than the rates of inflation people are actually practically paying us to borrow money. And hold their money for them, but it will become a big problem when the economy grows and the interest rates start to rise, we got to deal with this big long term debt problem, or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger bigger percentage of the federal budget we would rather spend on education and healthcare and science and technology we go to deal with it. Now what has the president done? He has offered a reasonable plan if four Trillian dollars in debt reduction in over a decade, with two and a half Trillian coming from, for every two and a half trillion in spending cuts, he raises a dollar in new revenue, two and a half to one, and he has tight controls on future spending.
That’s the kind of balanced approach proposed by the simpson bowles commission, a by partisan commission, now I think this plan is way better than Governor Romnies plan, first Governor Romnies plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility, the numbers just don’t add up, I mean consider this what would you do if you had this problem? Somebody said oh we have a big debt problem, we got to reduce the debt, so what is the first thing you say you’re going to do? Well to reduce the debt were going to have another five trillion dollars in tax cuts, heavily waited to upper income people, so we will make the debt hole bigger before we start to get out of it. Now when you say, “What are you going to do about this five trillion dollars you just added on?” They say we will make it up, by eliminating loop holes in the tax code, so then you ask what loop holes and ask how much? You know what they say? Sing about that after the election. I am not making it up that is there position; see me about that after the election. Now people ask me all the time how do we get four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington?
I always give a one word answer arithmetic. If arithmetic, if they stay with this five trillion dollar tax cut plan, in a debt reduction plan, the arithmetic tells us, no matter what they say, one of three things is about to happen, 1.) Assuming they will try to do what they will say they will do pay coverage by deductions one they will have to eliminate so many deductions like the one for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bills go up an average of two thousand dollars while anyone who makes three million dollars or more will see their tax bill go down two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or 2.) They will have to cut so much spending, that they will obliterate the budget for the national parks for ensuring clean air clean water, safe food, safe air travel, they will cut way back on PELL GRANTS college loans early childhood education, child nutrition programs, all the programs to help to empower middle class families and help poor kids. Oh they will cut back on investments on roads and bridges and science and technology and biomedical research, that is what they will do.
They will hurt the middle class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper income people who have been getting it all along. Or 3.) In spite of all the rederick they will do what they have been doing for thirty years they will cut the taxes way more than they cut spending, especially with that big defense spending increase, and they will just explode the debt, and weaken the economy and they will destroy the federal government’s ability to help you by letting interest gobble up all your tax payments. Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this. Those republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office in the twelve years before I took office. And double the debt in the eight years after I left.
Because it defied arithmetic. It was a highly inconvenient in thing in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas, came from a place where people thought two and two was four. It is Arithmetic, we simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle down, now think about this, President Obama’s plan cuts the debt honors our values, brightens the future of our children’s our family and our nation, it’s a heck of a lot better, it passes the arithmetic test and far more important it passes the value test. My fellow Americans, all of us in this GRAND hall, and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election we will be deciding what kind of country we want to live in, if you want the winner take all the winner take all society, you should support the republican ticket, but if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities where we are all in this together society you should vote for Barak Obama and Joe Biden.
If you, If you want, if you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce to turn out younger poor minority and disabled voters you should support Barak Obama. And if you think, if you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those who were brought here when they were young so they could serve in the military and go to college then you must vote for Barak Obama if you want a future of shared prosperity where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining where the American dream is really alive and well again and where the United States maintains its leadership as a force of peace and justice and prosperity in this highly competitive world you have to Vote for Barak Obama.
Look I love our country so much, and I know were coming back for more than two hundred years through every crisis we have always come back people have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticized for being a mediocre sure layer with a bad set of wooden false teeth and so far every single person that has bet against America has lost money, because we always come back, we come through every fire a little stronger and a little better, and we do it, because in the end we decide to champion the cause for which our founders pledge their lives their fortunes there sacred honor the cause of forming a more perfect Union my fellow Americans if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must reelect President Barak Obama.
God Bless You and God Bless America.
Bill Clinton-
Are You Ready IV. Our Boulder Dam Reply?
– G A M B E R T
