Transcript of Bill Clinton's remarks at the
2012 Democratic National Convention
September 5, 2012
By The Associated Press
A transcript of former President Bill
Clinton's remarks Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, as
provided by the Democratic Party:
___
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 No. 1 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 $2 trillion 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 percent 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. Gov. Romney
opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Obama
250,000, 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 percent to 85 pecent 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 pecent, 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 Gov. Romney and congressman
Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion.
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 is exactly the same amount of Medicare savings congressman Ryan had in
his own budget.
At least on this one, Gov. 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, Down 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 percent. 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 in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for
every $1 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 $5 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-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 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 $2,000 year while people making
over $3 million 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 it's 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.
