In the comment box extend today's discussion with a response of 300 words or more. (If Blogger tells you your response is too long, split your response in two. Don't forget to compose your response in a word processing program before pasting it into the comment box. Refer to yourself by your first name and last initial.)
There are various ways you could extend the discussion: you could go deeper into something we have already talked about; you could make new connections between things we've talked about; you could delve deeply into a page, panel, or passage we have yet to discuss; you could respond thoughtfully to something someone said during the discussion.
Whatever you discuss make sure you explore, on the one hand, theme (or purpose or message) and, on the other hand, the artist's use of rhetorical and literary techniques.
For themes we talked about the relationship between appearances and reality, between surfaces and hidden depths. We talked about the relationship between parents and children (particularly fathers and daughters) in terms of influence and resistance to (and defiance of) influence, in terms of gender roles and expectations, and in terms of affection and emotional distance.
Some rhetorical and literary features and techniques we talked about were comparisons and juxtapositions that highlight meaningful similarities and differences; suggestive visual imagery, both written and drawn; other forms of indirect and direct characterization; nonlinear narrative structure; narrative reflection on events; historical and mythological allusions; narrative voice including diction, syntax, punctuation, and tone.
Go beyond our discussion. Explore. Develop.
I look forward to your responses.
Pages
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Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Analysis of Something Else...
Tonight (9/26) your task is to annotate (or take double entry notes) on the rhetorical or artistic creation that your class voted for earlier today. You will bring these notes to class tomorrow (9/27); the notes are your ticket into a Socratic Seminar.
A-block.
You stopped by 2207 before heading home (or, at least, you were supposed to) to pick up an excerpt from Ten Days in a Mad-House. When taking notes pay particular attention to how the speaker establishes credibility (ethos).
F-block.
You voted for "Gangnam Style" a music video by Korean musical artist, Psy. (Some context: Gangnam is one of the most affluent areas of Seoul, and one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of South Korea. ) When taking notes consider the question, why is this an international YouTube hit? Consider elements of the video, the music, and the lyrics. Also, consider the possibility that there is some irony or satire involved in the video's popularity. (Satire of what? Irony where? In the video? The lyrics?)
Here is an English translation of the lyrics (quoted from the Business Insider website):
Oppa* is Gangnam style
Gangnam style
A girl who is warm and humanly during the day
A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee
A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes
A girl with that kind of twist
I’m a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
A girl who looks quiet but plays when she plays
A girl who puts her hair down when the right time comes
A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all
A sensable girl like that
I’m a guy
A guy who seems calm but plays when he plays
A guy who goes completely crazy when the right time comes
A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two
On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two
You know what I’m saying
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
A-block.
You stopped by 2207 before heading home (or, at least, you were supposed to) to pick up an excerpt from Ten Days in a Mad-House. When taking notes pay particular attention to how the speaker establishes credibility (ethos).
F-block.
You voted for "Gangnam Style" a music video by Korean musical artist, Psy. (Some context: Gangnam is one of the most affluent areas of Seoul, and one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of South Korea. ) When taking notes consider the question, why is this an international YouTube hit? Consider elements of the video, the music, and the lyrics. Also, consider the possibility that there is some irony or satire involved in the video's popularity. (Satire of what? Irony where? In the video? The lyrics?)
Here is an English translation of the lyrics (quoted from the Business Insider website):
Oppa* is Gangnam style
Gangnam style
A girl who is warm and humanly during the day
A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee
A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes
A girl with that kind of twist
I’m a guy
A guy who is as warm as you during the day
A guy who one-shots his coffee before it even cools down
A guy whose heart bursts when night comes
That kind of guy
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
A girl who looks quiet but plays when she plays
A girl who puts her hair down when the right time comes
A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all
A sensable girl like that
I’m a guy
A guy who seems calm but plays when he plays
A guy who goes completely crazy when the right time comes
A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Beautiful, loveable
Yes you, hey, yes you, hey
Now let’s go until the end
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style, Gangnam style
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two
On top of the running man is the flying man, baby baby
I’m a man who knows a thing or two
You know what I’m saying
Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady, Oppa is Gangnam style
Eh- Sexy Lady oh oh oh oh
*Older brother
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Six-Word Memoirs
Tonight you're going to write six six-word memoirs (or memoir vignettes).
(Type or hand write neatly. Bring to class tomorrow.)
Let's start with some definitions.
A memoir is an account of one's life, including personal experiences and observations of one's surroundings. Memoirs differ from autobiographies in that they tend to focus (1) on memories from a particular section of one's life and/or (2) on personal development, whereas autobiographies tend to focus (1) on one's life as a whole and/or (2) on one's life as history.
A memoir vignette is a scene from one's life that leaves the reader with a particular impression of one's self, one's development, one's environment.
So each of your six-word memoirs could sum up a particular section of your life, or show personal development, or focus on a particular scene from your life that leaves the reader with a strong impression of yourself and/or your environment.
How to get started?
You might begin by brainstorming particular moments in your life that have stayed with you. These moments could be big and personal. Running away from home for four hours on a Sunday. Going to Boston on the train with friends for the first time. They could be big in your environment. The birth of a sibling. The remarriage of a parent. They could be small but memorable. The sight of tall ships in the harbor when you were six. The feeling of cold water on your back when your tent started leaking on a camping trip. Etc. You could weave in some general statements about your childhood too. I was too scared to talk to adults when I was young. I thought a lot about how to stay out of hell.
Then choose some parts of your brainstorm to shape into six-word memoirs. Think seriously about word choice, punctuation, and syntax. Consider connotation (the association words have beyond their literal meaning) and tone (ironic? contemplative? dour? witty? objective? emotive?).
Here are some examples from my reflections on this class:
My Southie memories are not MacDonald's.
Spent summer thinking about food, ecosystems.
Spontaneous revision. Ironic cannibalism. End slavery.
Follow these links for more examples of six-word memoirs.
Six-word memoirs at Smith magazine.
Six-word teen memoirs at Smith magazine.
Six-word memoirs from Not Quite What I Was Planning.
(The above link has an audio story about six-word memoirs too.)
Six-word memoirs at National Public Radio (with accompanying art).
(If you'd like you could create a sketch or sketches to go with your six-word memoirs.)
(Type or hand write neatly. Bring to class tomorrow.)
Let's start with some definitions.
A memoir is an account of one's life, including personal experiences and observations of one's surroundings. Memoirs differ from autobiographies in that they tend to focus (1) on memories from a particular section of one's life and/or (2) on personal development, whereas autobiographies tend to focus (1) on one's life as a whole and/or (2) on one's life as history.
A memoir vignette is a scene from one's life that leaves the reader with a particular impression of one's self, one's development, one's environment.
So each of your six-word memoirs could sum up a particular section of your life, or show personal development, or focus on a particular scene from your life that leaves the reader with a strong impression of yourself and/or your environment.
How to get started?
You might begin by brainstorming particular moments in your life that have stayed with you. These moments could be big and personal. Running away from home for four hours on a Sunday. Going to Boston on the train with friends for the first time. They could be big in your environment. The birth of a sibling. The remarriage of a parent. They could be small but memorable. The sight of tall ships in the harbor when you were six. The feeling of cold water on your back when your tent started leaking on a camping trip. Etc. You could weave in some general statements about your childhood too. I was too scared to talk to adults when I was young. I thought a lot about how to stay out of hell.
Then choose some parts of your brainstorm to shape into six-word memoirs. Think seriously about word choice, punctuation, and syntax. Consider connotation (the association words have beyond their literal meaning) and tone (ironic? contemplative? dour? witty? objective? emotive?).
Here are some examples from my reflections on this class:
My Southie memories are not MacDonald's.
Spent summer thinking about food, ecosystems.
Spontaneous revision. Ironic cannibalism. End slavery.
Follow these links for more examples of six-word memoirs.
Six-word memoirs at Smith magazine.
Six-word teen memoirs at Smith magazine.
Six-word memoirs from Not Quite What I Was Planning.
(The above link has an audio story about six-word memoirs too.)
Six-word memoirs at National Public Radio (with accompanying art).
(If you'd like you could create a sketch or sketches to go with your six-word memoirs.)
Friday, September 21, 2012
Rhetorical Analysis Reflection
1. Post your strongest work that I have not yet collected in the comment box. (Post only one!)
I know a lot of you worked hard on these to prepare for class. Our discussions were rich and productive. I want to honor that work here on the blog too.
Options: Clinton speech SOAPSTone (identify and discuss the significance of each part of the SOAPSTone); or "A Modest Proposal" paragraph analysis (What is Swift satirizing? How does the section you were assigned contribute to Swift's rhetorical effectiveness?); or you could type up your notes on the Banneker letter rubric, rhetorical analysis essays, and teacher comments.
Please use your first name and last initial when posting.
2. Answer the poll questions in the right margin ---------------------->
Post a comment below declaring that you answered the poll questions.
Complete this work by class time on Monday (9/24).
I know a lot of you worked hard on these to prepare for class. Our discussions were rich and productive. I want to honor that work here on the blog too.
Options: Clinton speech SOAPSTone (identify and discuss the significance of each part of the SOAPSTone); or "A Modest Proposal" paragraph analysis (What is Swift satirizing? How does the section you were assigned contribute to Swift's rhetorical effectiveness?); or you could type up your notes on the Banneker letter rubric, rhetorical analysis essays, and teacher comments.
Please use your first name and last initial when posting.
2. Answer the poll questions in the right margin ---------------------->
Post a comment below declaring that you answered the poll questions.
Complete this work by class time on Monday (9/24).
Friday, September 14, 2012
Analyzing rhetorical strategies: comparing versions of the same speech
Analyzing rhetorical
strategies: comparing versions of the same speech
Read the
speeches below. On Wednesday, September 5 former President of the United States
Bill Clinton gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North
Carolina. The first version presented below is the
speech as it was originally written. The second version is the speech as delivered with the audience's response included. The third version (like the second) presents what Clinton
actually said at the convention, but also shows Clinton’s
additions to the written text in italics and his deletions from the written text struck out with a single line. Then at the very end of this post I've added a digital recording (posted by C-SPAN) of Clinton delivering the speech.
First,
take notes on the versions of the speech with rhetorical strategies and features in mind.
Pay
particular attention to the rhetorical significance of the changes Clinton made while delivering the speech. (The third version will help a lot because it makes the changes explicit.)
Then, on
the blog answer the following question by class time on Monday: Which version is more rhetorically effective: the speech as written or the speech as delivered? Convince your peers and me by analyzing specific differences in the two speeches. (If your response is too long to fit in the comment box split it into two or more posts. Use your first name and last initial at the beginning of your response.)
***
***
VERSION #1
Written text of former President Bill Clinton's remarks Wednesday night [9/5/12] at the Democratic National Convention, as provided by the Democratic Party:
Written text of former President Bill Clinton's remarks Wednesday night [9/5/12] 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.
© 2012 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy
and Terms of
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***
VERSION #2
Transcript of Bill Clinton's Speech to the Democratic National Convention as delivered with audience reaction included (September 5, 2012)
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. (Sustained
cheers, applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Now, Mr. Mayor, fellow Democrats, we are here to nominate a president. (Cheers, applause.) And I've got one in mind. (Cheers, applause.)
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 that no matter how many jobs that he saved or created, there'd 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 - (cheers, applause) - but who burns for America on the inside. (Cheers, applause.)
I want - I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American Dream economy, driven by innovation and creativity, but education and - yes - by cooperation. (Cheers.)
And by the way, after last night, I want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama. (Cheers, applause.)
You know - (cheers, applause). I - (cheers, applause).
I want - I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.) 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 - (laughter) - all about how the president and the Democrats don't really believe in free enterprise 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 - (laughter, applause) - says that every one of us in this room who amounts to anything, we're all completely self-made. One of the greatest chairmen the Democratic Party ever had, Bob Strauss - (cheers, applause) - used to say that ever politician wants every voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself. (Laughter, applause.) But, as Strauss then admitted, it ain't so. (Laughter.)
We Democrats - we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor folks to work their way into it - (cheers, applause) - with a relentless focus on the future, with business and government actually working together to promote growth and broadly share prosperity. You see, we believe that "we're all in this together" is a far better philosophy than "you're on your own." (Cheers, applause.) It is.
So who's right? (Cheers.) Well, since 1961, for 52 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 (million). (Cheers, applause.)
Now, there's - (cheers, applause) - there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. (Cheers, applause.) Why? Because poverty, discrimination and ignorance restrict growth. (Cheers, applause.) 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. (Cheers, applause.) We know that investments in education and infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all the rest of us. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, there's something I've noticed lately. You probably have too. And it's this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but 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. I - (cheers, applause) - that would be impossible for me because President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High School. (Cheers, applause.) President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system.
When I was a governor, I worked with President Reagan and his White House on the first round of welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals.
(Cheers, applause.) I'm actually very grateful to - 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 PEPFAR. It saved the lives of millions of people in poor countries. (Cheers, applause.)
And I have been honored to work with both Presidents Bush on natural disasters in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the horrible earthquake in Haiti. Through my foundation, both in America and around the world, I'm working all the time with Democrats, Republicans and independents. Sometimes I couldn't tell you for the life who I'm working with because we focus on solving problems and seizing opportunities and not fighting all the time. (Cheers, applause.)
And so here's what I want to say to you, and here's what I want the people at home to think about. When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and 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. (Cheers, applause.) What works in the real world is cooperation, business and government, foundations and universities.
Ask the mayors who are here. (Cheers, applause.) Los Angeles is getting green and Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because Republicans and Democrats are working together to get it. (Cheers, applause.) 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's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. (Cheers, applause.)
And every one of us - every one of us and every one of them, we're compelled to spend our fleeting lives between those two extremes, knowing we're never going to be right all the time and hoping we're right more than twice a day. (Laughter.)
Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is always the enemy, they're always right, and compromise is weakness. (Boos.) Just in the last couple of elections, they defeated two distinguished Republican senators because they dared to cooperate with Democrats on issues important to the future of the country, even national security. (Applause.)
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 a nonstarter, and they threw him out. (Laughter, applause.)
One of the main reasons we ought to re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation. (Cheers, applause.) Look at his record. Look at his record. (Cheers, applause.) Look at his record. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the Army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in 2008. (Laughter, applause.) And he trusted that vice president to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. (Cheers, applause.)
And Joe Biden - Joe Biden did a great job with both. (Sustained cheers, applause.)
He - (sustained cheers, applause) - President Obama - President Obama appointed several members of his Cabinet even though they supported Hillary in the primary. (Applause.) Heck, he even appointed Hillary. (Cheers, applause.)
Wait a minute. I am - (sustained cheers, applause) - I am very proud of her. I am proud of the job she and the national security team have done for America. (Cheers, applause.) 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'm 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 a blood - have to be a blood sport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest. (Cheers, applause.)
Now - (sustained cheers, applause) - besides the national security team, I am very grateful to the men and women who've served our country in uniform through these perilous times. (Cheers, applause.) And I am especially grateful to Michelle Obama and to Joe Biden for supporting those military families while their loved ones were overseas - (cheers, applause) - and for supporting our veterans when they came home, when they came home bearing the wounds of war or needing help to find education or jobs or housing.
President Obama's whole record on national security is a tribute to his strength, to his judgment and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship. We need more if it in Washington, D.C. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, we all know that he also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction and new jobs. And that didn't work out so well. (Laughter.) But it could have been because, as the Senate Republican leader said in a remarkable moment of candor two full years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America back to work; it was to put the president out of work. (Mixed cheers and boos, applause.) (Chuckles.) Well, wait a minute. Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, are you ready for that? (Cheers, applause.) Are you willing to work for it. Oh, wait a minute.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa - in Tampa - did y'all watch their convention?
I did. (Laughter.) In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was actually pretty simple - pretty snappy. 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. (Laughter, applause.)
Now - (cheers, applause) - but they did it well. They looked good; the sounded good. They convinced me that - (laughter) - they all love their families and their children and were grateful they'd been born in America and all that - (laughter, applause) - really, I'm not being - they did. (Laughter, applause.)
And this is important, they convinced me they were honorable people who believed what they said and they're going to keep every commitment they've made. We just got to make sure the American people know what those commitments are - (cheers, applause) - because in order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn't say very much about the ideas they've offered over the last two years.
They couldn't because they want to the same old policies that got us in 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 want to actually increase defense spending over a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor children.
As another president once said, there they go again.
(Laughter, cheers, applause.)
Now, I like - I like - I like the argument for President Obama's re-election 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 modern, more well- balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses and lots of new wealth for innovators. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, are we where we want to be today? No.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Is the president satisfied? Of course not.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: But are we better off than we were when he took office? (Cheers, applause.)
And listen to this. Listen to this. Everybody - (inaudible) - when President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free fall. It had just shrunk 9 full percent of GDP. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month.
Are we doing better than that today?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes! (Applause.)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The answer is yes.
Now, look. Here's the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face. I get it. I know it. I've 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 are even beginning to pick up.
But too many people do not feel it yet.
I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early '95. We could see that 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 peacetime expansion in the history of the United States. But - (cheers, applause) - 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. (Cheers, applause.)
Now - but - (cheers, applause) - he has - he has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity. And if you will renew the president's contract, you will feel it. You will feel it. (Cheers, applause.)
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. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, why do I believe it?
I'm fixing to tell you why. I believe it because President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.
So let's get 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 or created millions of jobs and cut taxes - let me say this again - cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. (Cheers, applause.) And, in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4 1/2 million private sector jobs. (Cheers, applause.)
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's another job score. President Obama: plus 4 1/2 million. Congressional Republicans: zero. (Cheers, applause.)
During this period - (cheers, applause) - during this period, more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama. That's the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s. (Cheers, applause.) And I'll tell you something else. The auto industry restructuring worked. (Cheers, applause.) It saved - 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 the automakers who weren't part of the deal supported it. They needed to save those parts suppliers too. Like I said, we're all in this together. (Applause.)
So what's happened? There are now 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than on the day the companies were restructured. (Cheers, applause.)
So - now, we all know that Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. (Boos.) So here's another job score. (Laughter.) Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the country? (Cheers.) Here - (cheers, applause) - here's another job score: Obama, 250,000; Romney, zero.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (With speaker.) Zero. (Cheers, applause.)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, the agreement the administration made with the management, labor and environmental groups to double 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 will be half what it would have been. It will make us more energy independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions. And according to several analyses, over the next 20 years, it'll bring us another half a million good new jobs into the American economy. (Cheers, applause.)
The president's energy strategy, which 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-20- year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. And renewable energy production has doubled.
(Cheers, applause.)
Of course, we need a lot more new jobs. But there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled 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've got to build a new one and educate people to do those jobs. (Cheers, applause.)
The president - the president and his education secretary have supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities - and even more important after a decade in which exploding college costs have 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 16th in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees.
So the president's student loan is more important than ever. Here's what it does - (cheers, applause) - here's 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 give students the right to repay those loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their income for up to 20 years. (Cheers, applause.)
Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It means no one will ever have to drop out of college again for fear they can't repay their debt.
And it means - (cheers, applause) - it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in a little rural area, they won't have to turn those jobs down because they don't pay enough to repay they debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This will change the future for young America. (Cheers, applause.)
I don't know about you - (cheers, applause) - but on all these issues, I know we're better off because President Obama made the decisions he did.
Now, that brings me to health care. (Cheers, applause.) And the Republicans call it, derisively, "Obamacare." They say it's a government takeover, a disaster, and that if we'll just elect them, they'll repeal it. Well, are they right?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let's take a look at what's actually happened so far.
First, individuals and businesses have already gotten more than a billion dollars in refunds from insurance companies because the new law requires 80 (percent) to 85 percent of your premium to go to your health care, not profits or promotion. (Cheers, applause.) 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.
Second, more than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents' policies can cover them.
(Cheers, applause.)
Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care, all the way from breast cancer screenings to tests for heart problems and scores of other things. And younger people are getting them, too.
Fourth, soon the insurance companies - not the government, the insurance companies - will have millions of new customers, many of them middle-class people with pre-existing conditions who never could get insurance before. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, finally, listen to this. For the last two years - after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade, for the last two years health care costs have been under 4 percent in both years for the first time in 50 years. (Cheers, applause.)
So let me ask you something. Are we better off because President Obama fought for health care reform? (Cheers, applause.) You bet we are.
Now, there were two other attacks on the president in Tampa I think deserve an answer. First, both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion. That's the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and they got a lot of votes on it. But it's not true. (Applause.)
Look, here's what really happened. You be the judge. Here's 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 raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the doughnut hole in the Medicare drug program - (cheers, applause) - 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 till 2024. (Cheers, applause.)
So - (chuckles) - so President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare; they strengthened Medicare. Now, when Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama's Medicare savings as, quote, the biggest, coldest power play, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - (laughter) - because that $716 billion is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget. (Cheers, applause.) You got to get one thing - it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did. (Laughter, cheers, applause.)
So - (inaudible) - (sustained cheers, applause) - now, you're having a good time, but this is getting serious, and I want you to listen.
(Laughter.) It's important, because a lot of people believe this stuff.
Now, at least on this issue, on this one issue, Governor Romney has been consistent. (Laughter.) He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the insurance company. (Laughter, boos.)
He wants to go back to the old system, which means we'll reopen the doughnut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we'll reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years. (Boos.)
So if he's elected, and if he does what he promised to do, Medicare will now grow (sic/go) broke in 2016. (Boos.) Think about that. That means, after all, we won't have to wait until their voucher program kicks in 2023 - (laughter) - to see the end of Medicare as we know it. (Applause.) They're going to do it to us sooner than we thought. (Applause.)
Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. (Laughter.) 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 10 years.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Of course, that's going to really hurt a lot of poor kids. But that's not all. Lot of folks don't know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors - (applause) - who are eligible for Medicaid.
(Cheers, applause.) 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 - (cheers, applause) - a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down's syndrome or autism or other severe conditions. (Applause.) 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'm going to do. I'm going to do everything I can to see that it doesn't happen. We can't let it happen. (Cheers, applause.) We can't. (Cheers, applause.) Now - wait a minute. (Cheers, applause.) Let's look -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let's look at the other big charge the Republicans made. It's a real doozy. (Laughter.) They actually have charged and run ads saying 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. (Jeers.) Wait, you need to know, here's what happened. (Laughter.) Nobody ever tells you what really happened - here's 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 even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge.
And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. Now, did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less. (Cheers, applause.)
So this is personal to me. We moved 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 happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. (Cheers, applause.) It's a big deal. But I am telling you the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. (Applause.)
But they keep on running the ads claiming it. You want to know why? Their campaign pollster said, we are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers. (Jeers, applause.) Now, finally I can say, that is true. (Laughter, cheers, applause.) I - (chuckles) - I couldn't have said it better myself. (Laughter.)
And I hope you and every American within the sound of my voice remembers it every time they see one of those ads, and it turns into an ad to re-elect Barack Obama and keep the fundamental principles of personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job into work as soon as we can. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, let's talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them.
But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise. We've got to deal with this big long- term debt problem or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger and bigger percentage of the federal budget we'd rather spend on education and health care and science and technology. It - we've got to deal with it.
Now, what has the president done? He has offered a reasonable plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with 2 1/2 trillion (dollars) coming from - for every $2 1/2 trillion in spending cuts, he raises a dollar in new revenues - 2 1/2-to-1. And he has tight controls on future spending. That's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan commission.
Now, I think this plan is way better than Governor Romney's plan. First, the Romney plan failed the first test of fiscal responsibility. The numbers just don't add up. (Laughter, applause.)
I mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem? Somebody says, oh, we've got a big debt problem. We've got to reduce the debt. So what's the first thing you say we're going to do? Well, to reduce the debt, we're going to have another $5 trillion in tax cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. So we'll 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 $5 trillion you just added on? They say, oh, we'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code.
So then you ask, well, which loopholes, and how much?
You know what they say? See me about that after the election. (Laughter.)
I'm not making it up. That's their position. See me about that after the election.
Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic. (Sustained cheers, applause.)
If - arithmetic! If - (applause) - if they stay with their $5 trillion 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. One, assuming they try to do what they say they'll do, get rid of - pay - cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, 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 bills go up an average of $2,000 while anybody who makes $3 million or more will see their tax bill go down $250,000. (Boos.)
Or, two, they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for the national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel. They'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education, child nutrition programs, all the programs that help to empower middle-class families and help poor kids. Oh, they'll cut back on investments in roads and bridges and science and technology and biomedical research.
That's what they'll do. They'll hurt the middle class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper-income people who've been getting it all along.
Or three, in spite of all the rhetoric, they'll just do what they've been doing for more than 30 years. They'll go in and cut the taxes way more than they cut spending, especially with that big defense increase, and they'll just explode the debt and weaken the economy. And they'll 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 that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office - (applause) - and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic. (Laughter, applause.) It was a highly inconvenient thing for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas, and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was four. (Laughter, applause.) It's arithmetic.
We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle down. (Cheers, applause.) Really. Think about this: President Obama - President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, brightens the future of our children, our families and our nation. It's a heck of a lot better.
It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test. (Cheers, applause.)
My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we'll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take- all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we're-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. (Cheers, applause.) If you - if you want -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: If you want America - if you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures - (jeers) - just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters - (jeers) - you should support Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.)
And if you think - if you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought here when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to college, you must vote for Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.) 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 for peace and justice and prosperity in this highly competitive world, you have to vote for Barack Obama.
(Cheers, applause.)
Look, I love our country so much. And I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come back. (Cheers.) People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false teeth. (Laughter.) And so far, every single person that's bet against America has lost money because we always come back. (Cheers, applause.) We come through ever 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 pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor - the cause of forming a more perfect union. (Cheers, applause.) My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.) God bless you and God bless America. (Cheers, applause.)
END
***
Now, Mr. Mayor, fellow Democrats, we are here to nominate a president. (Cheers, applause.) And I've got one in mind. (Cheers, applause.)
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 that no matter how many jobs that he saved or created, there'd 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 - (cheers, applause) - but who burns for America on the inside. (Cheers, applause.)
I want - I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American Dream economy, driven by innovation and creativity, but education and - yes - by cooperation. (Cheers.)
And by the way, after last night, I want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama. (Cheers, applause.)
You know - (cheers, applause). I - (cheers, applause).
I want - I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.) 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 - (laughter) - all about how the president and the Democrats don't really believe in free enterprise 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 - (laughter, applause) - says that every one of us in this room who amounts to anything, we're all completely self-made. One of the greatest chairmen the Democratic Party ever had, Bob Strauss - (cheers, applause) - used to say that ever politician wants every voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself. (Laughter, applause.) But, as Strauss then admitted, it ain't so. (Laughter.)
We Democrats - we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor folks to work their way into it - (cheers, applause) - with a relentless focus on the future, with business and government actually working together to promote growth and broadly share prosperity. You see, we believe that "we're all in this together" is a far better philosophy than "you're on your own." (Cheers, applause.) It is.
So who's right? (Cheers.) Well, since 1961, for 52 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 (million). (Cheers, applause.)
Now, there's - (cheers, applause) - there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. (Cheers, applause.) Why? Because poverty, discrimination and ignorance restrict growth. (Cheers, applause.) 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. (Cheers, applause.) We know that investments in education and infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all the rest of us. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, there's something I've noticed lately. You probably have too. And it's this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but 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. I - (cheers, applause) - that would be impossible for me because President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock Central High School. (Cheers, applause.) President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system.
When I was a governor, I worked with President Reagan and his White House on the first round of welfare reform and with President George H.W. Bush on national education goals.
(Cheers, applause.) I'm actually very grateful to - 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 PEPFAR. It saved the lives of millions of people in poor countries. (Cheers, applause.)
And I have been honored to work with both Presidents Bush on natural disasters in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the horrible earthquake in Haiti. Through my foundation, both in America and around the world, I'm working all the time with Democrats, Republicans and independents. Sometimes I couldn't tell you for the life who I'm working with because we focus on solving problems and seizing opportunities and not fighting all the time. (Cheers, applause.)
And so here's what I want to say to you, and here's what I want the people at home to think about. When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and 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. (Cheers, applause.) What works in the real world is cooperation, business and government, foundations and universities.
Ask the mayors who are here. (Cheers, applause.) Los Angeles is getting green and Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because Republicans and Democrats are working together to get it. (Cheers, applause.) 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's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day. (Cheers, applause.)
And every one of us - every one of us and every one of them, we're compelled to spend our fleeting lives between those two extremes, knowing we're never going to be right all the time and hoping we're right more than twice a day. (Laughter.)
Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is always the enemy, they're always right, and compromise is weakness. (Boos.) Just in the last couple of elections, they defeated two distinguished Republican senators because they dared to cooperate with Democrats on issues important to the future of the country, even national security. (Applause.)
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 a nonstarter, and they threw him out. (Laughter, applause.)
One of the main reasons we ought to re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation. (Cheers, applause.) Look at his record. Look at his record. (Cheers, applause.) Look at his record. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the Army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in 2008. (Laughter, applause.) And he trusted that vice president to oversee the successful end of the war in Iraq and the implementation of the recovery act. (Cheers, applause.)
And Joe Biden - Joe Biden did a great job with both. (Sustained cheers, applause.)
He - (sustained cheers, applause) - President Obama - President Obama appointed several members of his Cabinet even though they supported Hillary in the primary. (Applause.) Heck, he even appointed Hillary. (Cheers, applause.)
Wait a minute. I am - (sustained cheers, applause) - I am very proud of her. I am proud of the job she and the national security team have done for America. (Cheers, applause.) 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'm 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 a blood - have to be a blood sport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest. (Cheers, applause.)
Now - (sustained cheers, applause) - besides the national security team, I am very grateful to the men and women who've served our country in uniform through these perilous times. (Cheers, applause.) And I am especially grateful to Michelle Obama and to Joe Biden for supporting those military families while their loved ones were overseas - (cheers, applause) - and for supporting our veterans when they came home, when they came home bearing the wounds of war or needing help to find education or jobs or housing.
President Obama's whole record on national security is a tribute to his strength, to his judgment and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship. We need more if it in Washington, D.C. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, we all know that he also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction and new jobs. And that didn't work out so well. (Laughter.) But it could have been because, as the Senate Republican leader said in a remarkable moment of candor two full years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America back to work; it was to put the president out of work. (Mixed cheers and boos, applause.) (Chuckles.) Well, wait a minute. Senator, I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, are you ready for that? (Cheers, applause.) Are you willing to work for it. Oh, wait a minute.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: In Tampa - in Tampa - did y'all watch their convention?
I did. (Laughter.) In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was actually pretty simple - pretty snappy. 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. (Laughter, applause.)
Now - (cheers, applause) - but they did it well. They looked good; the sounded good. They convinced me that - (laughter) - they all love their families and their children and were grateful they'd been born in America and all that - (laughter, applause) - really, I'm not being - they did. (Laughter, applause.)
And this is important, they convinced me they were honorable people who believed what they said and they're going to keep every commitment they've made. We just got to make sure the American people know what those commitments are - (cheers, applause) - because in order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn't say very much about the ideas they've offered over the last two years.
They couldn't because they want to the same old policies that got us in 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 want to actually increase defense spending over a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor children.
As another president once said, there they go again.
(Laughter, cheers, applause.)
Now, I like - I like - I like the argument for President Obama's re-election 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 modern, more well- balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses and lots of new wealth for innovators. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, are we where we want to be today? No.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Is the president satisfied? Of course not.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: But are we better off than we were when he took office? (Cheers, applause.)
And listen to this. Listen to this. Everybody - (inaudible) - when President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free fall. It had just shrunk 9 full percent of GDP. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month.
Are we doing better than that today?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes! (Applause.)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The answer is yes.
Now, look. Here's the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face. I get it. I know it. I've 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 are even beginning to pick up.
But too many people do not feel it yet.
I had the same thing happen in 1994 and early '95. We could see that 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 peacetime expansion in the history of the United States. But - (cheers, applause) - 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. (Cheers, applause.)
Now - but - (cheers, applause) - he has - he has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity. And if you will renew the president's contract, you will feel it. You will feel it. (Cheers, applause.)
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. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, why do I believe it?
I'm fixing to tell you why. I believe it because President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.
So let's get 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 or created millions of jobs and cut taxes - let me say this again - cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. (Cheers, applause.) And, in the last 29 months, our economy has produced about 4 1/2 million private sector jobs. (Cheers, applause.)
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's another job score. President Obama: plus 4 1/2 million. Congressional Republicans: zero. (Cheers, applause.)
During this period - (cheers, applause) - during this period, more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama. That's the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s. (Cheers, applause.) And I'll tell you something else. The auto industry restructuring worked. (Cheers, applause.) It saved - 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 the automakers who weren't part of the deal supported it. They needed to save those parts suppliers too. Like I said, we're all in this together. (Applause.)
So what's happened? There are now 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than on the day the companies were restructured. (Cheers, applause.)
So - now, we all know that Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. (Boos.) So here's another job score. (Laughter.) Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the country? (Cheers.) Here - (cheers, applause) - here's another job score: Obama, 250,000; Romney, zero.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (With speaker.) Zero. (Cheers, applause.)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Now, the agreement the administration made with the management, labor and environmental groups to double 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 will be half what it would have been. It will make us more energy independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions. And according to several analyses, over the next 20 years, it'll bring us another half a million good new jobs into the American economy. (Cheers, applause.)
The president's energy strategy, which 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-20- year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. And renewable energy production has doubled.
(Cheers, applause.)
Of course, we need a lot more new jobs. But there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled 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've got to build a new one and educate people to do those jobs. (Cheers, applause.)
The president - the president and his education secretary have supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities - and even more important after a decade in which exploding college costs have 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 16th in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees.
So the president's student loan is more important than ever. Here's what it does - (cheers, applause) - here's 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 give students the right to repay those loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their income for up to 20 years. (Cheers, applause.)
Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It means no one will ever have to drop out of college again for fear they can't repay their debt.
And it means - (cheers, applause) - it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in a little rural area, they won't have to turn those jobs down because they don't pay enough to repay they debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This will change the future for young America. (Cheers, applause.)
I don't know about you - (cheers, applause) - but on all these issues, I know we're better off because President Obama made the decisions he did.
Now, that brings me to health care. (Cheers, applause.) And the Republicans call it, derisively, "Obamacare." They say it's a government takeover, a disaster, and that if we'll just elect them, they'll repeal it. Well, are they right?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let's take a look at what's actually happened so far.
First, individuals and businesses have already gotten more than a billion dollars in refunds from insurance companies because the new law requires 80 (percent) to 85 percent of your premium to go to your health care, not profits or promotion. (Cheers, applause.) 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.
Second, more than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents' policies can cover them.
(Cheers, applause.)
Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care, all the way from breast cancer screenings to tests for heart problems and scores of other things. And younger people are getting them, too.
Fourth, soon the insurance companies - not the government, the insurance companies - will have millions of new customers, many of them middle-class people with pre-existing conditions who never could get insurance before. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, finally, listen to this. For the last two years - after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade, for the last two years health care costs have been under 4 percent in both years for the first time in 50 years. (Cheers, applause.)
So let me ask you something. Are we better off because President Obama fought for health care reform? (Cheers, applause.) You bet we are.
Now, there were two other attacks on the president in Tampa I think deserve an answer. First, both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion. That's the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and they got a lot of votes on it. But it's not true. (Applause.)
Look, here's what really happened. You be the judge. Here's 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 raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the doughnut hole in the Medicare drug program - (cheers, applause) - 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 till 2024. (Cheers, applause.)
So - (chuckles) - so President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare; they strengthened Medicare. Now, when Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama's Medicare savings as, quote, the biggest, coldest power play, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry - (laughter) - because that $716 billion is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget. (Cheers, applause.) You got to get one thing - it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did. (Laughter, cheers, applause.)
So - (inaudible) - (sustained cheers, applause) - now, you're having a good time, but this is getting serious, and I want you to listen.
(Laughter.) It's important, because a lot of people believe this stuff.
Now, at least on this issue, on this one issue, Governor Romney has been consistent. (Laughter.) He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the insurance company. (Laughter, boos.)
He wants to go back to the old system, which means we'll reopen the doughnut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we'll reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years. (Boos.)
So if he's elected, and if he does what he promised to do, Medicare will now grow (sic/go) broke in 2016. (Boos.) Think about that. That means, after all, we won't have to wait until their voucher program kicks in 2023 - (laughter) - to see the end of Medicare as we know it. (Applause.) They're going to do it to us sooner than we thought. (Applause.)
Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. (Laughter.) 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 10 years.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Of course, that's going to really hurt a lot of poor kids. But that's not all. Lot of folks don't know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors - (applause) - who are eligible for Medicaid.
(Cheers, applause.) 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 - (cheers, applause) - a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down's syndrome or autism or other severe conditions. (Applause.) 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'm going to do. I'm going to do everything I can to see that it doesn't happen. We can't let it happen. (Cheers, applause.) We can't. (Cheers, applause.) Now - wait a minute. (Cheers, applause.) Let's look -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Let's look at the other big charge the Republicans made. It's a real doozy. (Laughter.) They actually have charged and run ads saying 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. (Jeers.) Wait, you need to know, here's what happened. (Laughter.) Nobody ever tells you what really happened - here's 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 even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge.
And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. Now, did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less. (Cheers, applause.)
So this is personal to me. We moved 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 happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. (Cheers, applause.) It's a big deal. But I am telling you the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. (Applause.)
But they keep on running the ads claiming it. You want to know why? Their campaign pollster said, we are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers. (Jeers, applause.) Now, finally I can say, that is true. (Laughter, cheers, applause.) I - (chuckles) - I couldn't have said it better myself. (Laughter.)
And I hope you and every American within the sound of my voice remembers it every time they see one of those ads, and it turns into an ad to re-elect Barack Obama and keep the fundamental principles of personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job into work as soon as we can. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, let's talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them.
But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise. We've got to deal with this big long- term debt problem or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger and bigger percentage of the federal budget we'd rather spend on education and health care and science and technology. It - we've got to deal with it.
Now, what has the president done? He has offered a reasonable plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with 2 1/2 trillion (dollars) coming from - for every $2 1/2 trillion in spending cuts, he raises a dollar in new revenues - 2 1/2-to-1. And he has tight controls on future spending. That's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan commission.
Now, I think this plan is way better than Governor Romney's plan. First, the Romney plan failed the first test of fiscal responsibility. The numbers just don't add up. (Laughter, applause.)
I mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem? Somebody says, oh, we've got a big debt problem. We've got to reduce the debt. So what's the first thing you say we're going to do? Well, to reduce the debt, we're going to have another $5 trillion in tax cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. So we'll 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 $5 trillion you just added on? They say, oh, we'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code.
So then you ask, well, which loopholes, and how much?
You know what they say? See me about that after the election. (Laughter.)
I'm not making it up. That's their position. See me about that after the election.
Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic. (Sustained cheers, applause.)
If - arithmetic! If - (applause) - if they stay with their $5 trillion 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. One, assuming they try to do what they say they'll do, get rid of - pay - cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, 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 bills go up an average of $2,000 while anybody who makes $3 million or more will see their tax bill go down $250,000. (Boos.)
Or, two, they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for the national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel. They'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education, child nutrition programs, all the programs that help to empower middle-class families and help poor kids. Oh, they'll cut back on investments in roads and bridges and science and technology and biomedical research.
That's what they'll do. They'll hurt the middle class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper-income people who've been getting it all along.
Or three, in spite of all the rhetoric, they'll just do what they've been doing for more than 30 years. They'll go in and cut the taxes way more than they cut spending, especially with that big defense increase, and they'll just explode the debt and weaken the economy. And they'll 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 that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office - (applause) - and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic. (Laughter, applause.) It was a highly inconvenient thing for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas, and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was four. (Laughter, applause.) It's arithmetic.
We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle down. (Cheers, applause.) Really. Think about this: President Obama - President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, brightens the future of our children, our families and our nation. It's a heck of a lot better.
It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test. (Cheers, applause.)
My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we'll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take- all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we're-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. (Cheers, applause.) If you - if you want -
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: (Chanting.) Four more years! Four more years!
PRESIDENT CLINTON: If you want America - if you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures - (jeers) - just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters - (jeers) - you should support Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.)
And if you think - if you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought here when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to college, you must vote for Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.) 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 for peace and justice and prosperity in this highly competitive world, you have to vote for Barack Obama.
(Cheers, applause.)
Look, I love our country so much. And I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come back. (Cheers.) People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false teeth. (Laughter.) And so far, every single person that's bet against America has lost money because we always come back. (Cheers, applause.) We come through ever 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 pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor - the cause of forming a more perfect union. (Cheers, applause.) My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama. (Cheers, applause.) God bless you and God bless America. (Cheers, applause.)
END
***
VERSION #3
a version showing Clinton’s additions to the written text in italics and his deletions from the written text struck out with a single line
Now,
Mr. Mayor, fellow Democrats, 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. 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 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 jobswere created and saved he
saved or created, there were still millions more waiting, trying
to feed their children and worried
about feeding their own kids, trying to keep their hopes
alive.
I want to nominate a man cool on the outside butburning 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, but [sic] education and - yes - by cooperation.
And by the way, after last night, I want 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.
Now, folks, In Tampa a few days ago, we heard a lot of talk all about how the president and the Democrats don't really 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 - this alternative universe -is says
that all of us every one of us in
this room who amounts
to anything, are we're all completely
self-made. One of our greatest Democratic chairmen the greatest chairmen the Democratic Party
ever had, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you
every voter to believe he
was born in a log cabin he built himself, but, as Strauss then admitted, it ain't so.
We Democrats, we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poorpeople folks to work their way into it and
with a relentless focus on
the future, with business and government actually
working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think
You see, we believe that "we're
all in this together" is a far better
philosophy than "you're on your own." It is.
So Who's right? Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. So What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42million.
Now, there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, Why? becausediscrimination, poverty 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 while investments in
education, and infrastructure
and scientific and technological research increase it growth, creating more They increase good jobs and they create new wealth for all the rest of us.
Now, there's something I've noticed lately. You probably have too. And it's this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but 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 PresidentObama and the a lot
of other Democrats. After all, that would be impossible for me because President
Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to integrate Little Rock
Central High and President
Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. And as
governor When I was a governor,
I worked with President Reagan and
his White House on the
first round of welfare reform and with President George H.W.
Bush on national education goals. I am actually grateful
to - 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 for supported PEPFAR,
which is saving It saved
the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to And I have been honored to work with both
Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after on natural disasters in the aftermath of the
South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake. horrible earthquake in Haiti.
Through my foundation, both in America and around the world, I'mwork working all the time with
Democrats, Republicans and Independents, Sometimes
I couldn't tell you for the life who I'm working with because who
are focused we focus on
solving problems and seizing opportunities, not fighting each other. all
the time.
And so here's what I want to say to you, and here's what I want the people at home to think about. When times are tough, and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be goodpolitics but in the real world, cooperation works
better. 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 universities. 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 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. And every one of us - every one of us and every
one of them, we're compelled to spend our fleeting lives between those two
extremes, knowing we're never going to be right all the time and hoping we're
right more than twice a day.
Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is always the enemy, they're 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 to 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 a nonstarter, and they threw him out.
One of the main reasonsAmerica
should we ought to re-elect
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 Republican secretaries of defense,
the army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him
in 2008, and he trusted him that vice president 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 - President Obama - President Obama appointed several members of his Cabinetmembers
who even though they supported
Hillary in the primaryies. Heck, he even appointed Hillary. Wait a minute. I am - I am very proud of
her. I'm so proud of her and grateful to our entire I am proud of the job she and the national
security team have done for America. for
all they've done I am grateful
that they have worked together to make us safer and stronger
and to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies. I'm 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 a blood - have to be a blood
sport, it can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public
interest.
Now besides the national security team, I'malso very grateful
to the young men and women who serve our country in the military who've served our country in uniform through these
perilous times and I
am especially grateful to Michelle Obama and Jill Joe Biden for supporting those military families when while their loved ones are were overseas and for helping supporting our veterans, when
they come home bearing the wounds of war, or needing help with education, housing,
and jobs. or jobs or housing.
President Obama's whole record on national security is a tribute to his strength,and to his judgment, and to his
preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship. We need more if it in Washington, D.C.
Now, we all know that He also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and jobs,but And
that didn't work out so well. Probably But it could have been because, as the Senate
Republican leader said, in a
remarkable moment of candor, said two full years before the election, their No. 1 priority
was not to put America back to work, but it was to put the President Obama out of
work. Well, wait a minute Senator,
I hate to break it to you, but we're going to keep President Obama on the job.
Now, are you ready for that? Are you willing to work for it. Oh, wait a minute. In Tampa - in Tampa - did y'all watch their convention? I did. In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was actually pretty simple pretty snappy: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.
Now - (cheers, applause) - but they did it well. They looked good; the sounded good. They convinced me that they all love their families and their children and were grateful they'd been born in America and all that - really, I'm not being - they did. And this is important, they convinced me they were honorable people who believed what they said and they're going to keep every commitment they've made. We just got to make sure the American people know what those commitments are.
Because In order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn'tcouldn't
say very much
about the ideas they have offered over the last two years. You see 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 want to
actually to increase defense spending over a decade $2 trillion
more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend the
money it on; And they want to make enormous
cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class
and poor kids children As
another president once said- there they go again.
Now I like the argument for President Obama's re-election 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 modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth forthe innovators.
Now Are we where we want to be today? No. Is the president satisfied?No Of course not. But Are we better off than we
were when he took office, with an And listen to this. Listen to this. Everybody - (inaudible) - when
President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free fall, It had just shrunk 9 full percent of GDP. We
were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Are we doing better than that today? The
answer is yes.
I understand the challenge we face. Now, look. Here's the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you
who support him face. I get it. I know it. I've been there. I
know many A lot of Americans
are still angry and frustrated with the about this economy. Though If you look at the numbers, you know employment
is growing, banks are beginning to lend again.
And in a lot of places, and even housing prices are picking
up a bit even beginning to pick
up, too many people don't feel it. But too many people do not feel it yet.
Iexperienced had the
same thing happen in
1994 and early 1995. We
could see that the Our policies were working, that and 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 peacetime
expansion in American history 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 or not any of my
predecessors, no one could
have repaired all the damage that
he found in just four years.
Now - but - he has - he has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity.But
conditions are improving and if you'll renew the President's contract you
will feel it. I
believe that with all my heart. 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. I believe it because President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction Americamust has to take to build a 21st century version of the
American Dream in: a nation of shared opportunities, shared
prosperity and shared responsibilities. shared
responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.
So let's get 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 - let me say this again - cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. And, In the last 29 monthsthe our economy
has produced about 4.5 and
one-half million private sector jobs. We could have done better, 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 and
one-half million, congressional Republicans zero.
Over that same period, During
this period - during this period, more than 500,000
manufacturing jobs have been created under President Obama- That's the first time
manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s. And I'll 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 the auto-makers
that who weren't
part of the deal supported it. They needed to save the those parts suppliers too. Like I
said, we're all in this together.
So what's happened?Now
there are 250,000 more people working in the auto industry than on the day the companies
were restructured. So - now, we all
know that Gov. Romney opposed the plan to save GM and
Chrysler. So here's another jobs score: Are
you listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the
country? Here's another job score: Obama 250,000, Romney,
zero.
Now, The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileageover the next few years is another good deal that was a good deal too: it
will cut your gas prices in
half, your gas bill in half. No matter what the price is, if you double the
mileage of your car, your bill will be half what it would have been. It
will make us more energy independent, It will cut greenhouse gas
emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs according to several
analyses, over the next 20 years, it'll bring us another half a million good
new jobs into the American economy.
President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan The president's energy strategy, which 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 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, Of course, we need a lot more new jobs. but there
are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly
because the applicants the
people who apply for them don't yet have the required skills to do them. We have to prepare
more Americans for the new jobs that are being actually going to be created in
a world fueled by new technology. The
old economy is not coming back. We've got to build a new one and educate people
to do those jobs. That's why investments in our people are
more important than ever.
The president and his education secretaryhas have supported
community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open
jobs that are actually open in
their communities. And, even more
important after a decade in which exploding college costs have
increased the drop-out rate so much that we've fallen to the percentage of our young people with four-year
college degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to 16th
in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees. So the president's student loan is more important
than ever. Here's what it does - (cheers, applause) - here's what it does. You
need to tell every voter where you live about this. It his
student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more
important, it gives students
the right to repay the those
loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their incomes for up
to 20 years.
Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. ItThat means no one will ever 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. And it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest
income, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in
a little rural area, they won't have to turn those jobs down because they
don't pay enough to repay they 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 on all these issues, I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions he did.
Now, That brings me to health care.
The Republicans call it derisively Obamacare and They say it's a government takeoverof
health care that they'll repeal a
disaster, and that if we'll just elect them they'll repeal it. Well, Are they
right? Let's take a look
at what's actually happened
so far. First, Individuals and businesses have secured already gotten more than a
billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new
law requires 80 percent to 85 percent of your premiums to be
spent on go to your health
care, not profits or promotion.
And the gains are even greater than that because a bunch ofOther insurance companies have lowered applied to lower their rates to meet comply with the
requirement. Second, More
than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time
because their parents' policies can
cover them can now carry them on family policies.
Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including all the way from breast cancer
screenings and to tests
for heart problems and scores of
other things. And
younger people are getting them, too. Fourth, Soon the
insurance companies, not the government, the insurance companies, will have millions of new
customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions who never could get insurance before.
Now, finally, listen to this.And For the last two years - after going up at three
times the rate of inflation for a decade,for the last two years,
health care spending has grown costs
have been under 4 percent, in both years for the first time in 50 years.
So let me ask you something. Are weall better off because President Obama fought for health care reform it
and passed it? You bet we are.
Now, There were two other attacks on the president in Tampathat I think deserve
an answer. First, Both
Gov. Romney and congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing
Medicare of $716 billion. That's
the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and they got a lot
of votes on it. But it's not true. Look, here's
what really happened. You be the judge. Here's 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 cutting unwarranted subsidies to
providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier and were not necessary to get the providers
to provide the service.. And
instead of raiding 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 till 2024. It's
now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken
Medicare, they strengthened it Medicare.
Now, When congressman Ryan looked intothe that TV
camera and attacked President Obama's Medicare
savings as, quote "the
biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. You see, because that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of
Medicare savings congressman Ryan had he has in his own budget. You got to get 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, and I want you to listen. It's important, because a lot
of people believe this stuff.
Now, At least on this issue, on this one issue, Gov. Romney's been consistent. He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repealthe those savings and give the
money back to the insurance companies, He
wants to go back to the old system, which means we'll re-open
the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we'll reduce the life of the
Medicare Trust Fund by eight full years.
So now if he's elected and does what he promised to do Medicare will now go grow [sic] broke by 2016. Think about that. If that
happens, you That means, after
all, we won't have to wait until their voucher program to
begins kicks in in
2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it. They're going to do it to us sooner than we thought.
Now, folks, this is serious, But 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 decade 10
years. Of course, that will hurt that's going to really hurt a lot of poor
kids, but that's not all. Lot
of folks don't know it, but nearly Almost 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 helpand on
people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with
special needs like, Down syndrome or autism a lot of middle-class families whose kids have
Down's syndrome or autism or other severe conditions. I
don't know how those families are going to deal with it. 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'm going to do. I'm going to do everything I can to see that it doesn't
happen. We can't let it happen. We
can't.
Now - wait a minute - let's look at theRepublican charge other
big charge 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 that moved
millions of people from welfare to work. Wait,
you need to know, here's what happened. Nobody ever tells you what really
happened - Here's 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 even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others onlysaid they would only do it if they had a credible
plan to increase employment by 20 percent and
they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. You
hear that? More work. Now, did
I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less. So this
is personal to me. We moved 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 happened under the
previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. It's a big deal. So But I am telling you the claim
that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not
true.
But they keep on running the ads claiming itrunning ads on it. You want to know why? As
their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be
dictated by fact checkers." Now finally I can say, that is true.
I couldn't have said it better myself- I just hope you remember that every
time you see the ad. And I hope
you and every American within the sound of my voice remembers it every time
they see one of those ads and it turns into an ad to re-elect Barack Obama
and keep the fundamental principles of personal empowerment and moving
everybody who can get a job into work as soon as we can.
Now, Let's talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them. But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise.We have to deal
with it We've got to deal with
this big long- term debt problem or it will deal with
us. It will gobble up a bigger and
bigger percentage of the federal budget we'd rather spend on education and
health care and science and technology. It - we've got to deal with
it. Now, what has the president done? President Obama He has offered a reasonable plan with $4 trillion
in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for every $1
of revenue increases, with 2
1/2 trillion (dollars) coming from - for every $2 1/2 trillion in spending
cuts, he raises a dollar in new revenues - 2 1/2-to-1 and
tight controls on future spending. It's That's the kind of
balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles
commission, a bipartisan
commission.
Now, I thinkthe
president's this plan
is better than the Governor Romney's plan, because First, the
Romney plan failsed the first test of fiscal responsibility: The
numbers just 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. I
mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem? Somebody says,
oh, we've got a big debt problem. We've got to reduce the debt. So what's the
first thing you say we're going to do? Well, to reduce the debt, we're going to
have another $5 trillion in tax cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. That
makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. So we'll 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 $5 trillion you just added on? They saythey'll oh, we'll make
it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When So then you ask "well, which loopholes and how
much?" You know what they
say? "See me about that after
the election on that." I'm
not making it up. That's their position. See me about that after the election.
Now, People ask me all the time how wedelivered got 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 a $5 trillion tax
cut plan - in a debt
reduction plan? - the arithmetic tells us no matter what they say that one of three
things will is about
to happen:
1) assuming they try to do what they say they'll do, get rid of - pay - cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, 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 an average of $2,000year while people making over anybody who makes $3
million or more a
year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut see their tax bill go down $250,000;
or
2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget forour the 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, child nutrition
programs, all the and other programs that help to empower middle class families
and poor children help poor
kids, not to mention cutting Oh, they'll cut back on investments
in roads and bridges and science and technology and biomedical research. That's what they'll do. They'll hurt the middle
class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper-income
people who've been getting it all along.
Or 3) in spite of all the rhetoric, they'll just do what they've been doing for more than thirtyplus years now- They'll go
in and cut taxes way more
than they cut spending, especially
with that big defense increase, and they'll just explode
the debt and weaken the economy. And
they'll destroy the federal government's ability to help you by letting
interest gobble up all your tax payments. Remember, Don't you ever forget when you hear them talking
about this that Republican economic policies quadrupled
the national debt
before I took office, in the 12
years before I took office, and doubled it after I
leftthe debt in the eight years
after I left, because it defied arithmetic. It was a highly inconvenient thing
for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas, and I came from a place where
people still thought two and two was four. It's arithmetic. We
simply can't afford to give the
reins of government to someone who will double-down on
trickle-down.
Really. Think about this: President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values,and brightens the future for
of our children, our
families and our nation. It's a
heck of a lot better. It passes the arithmetic test, and far more
important, it passes the values test.
My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election,you have to decidewe'll be deciding what kind of country you we want to live in. If you want a you're
on your own, winner take all winner-take-
all, you're-on-your-own society you should support the
Republican ticket. But If
you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities- a
"we're all in it this
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. And If you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought hereas children when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to
college who want to go to college or serve in the military,
you should must 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 really alive and well again, and where the United
States remains the leading maintains
its leadership as a force for peace and prosperity
in this a
highly competitive world, you should have to vote for Barack Obama.
Look, I love our country so much.- and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come backwe've
always come out stronger than we went in. People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was
criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false
teeth. And so far, every single person that's 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 will again as long as
we do it together. We And
we do it because in the end we decide to champion the cause
for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor-
to form the cause of forming a more perfect union.
If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect
President Barack Obama. My fellow
Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote
and you must re-elect President Barack Obama.
God bless you - God bless America.
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 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
I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but
And by the way, after last night, I want 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.
Now, folks, In Tampa a few days ago, we heard a lot of talk all about how the president and the Democrats don't really 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 - this alternative universe -
We Democrats, we think the country works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor
So Who's right? Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. So What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42
Now, there's a reason for this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, Why? because
Now, there's something I've noticed lately. You probably have too. And it's this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but 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
Through my foundation, both in America and around the world, I'm
And so here's what I want to say to you, and here's what I want the people at home to think about. When times are tough, and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be good
Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is always the enemy, they're 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 to 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 a nonstarter, and they threw him out.
One of the main reasons
He - President Obama - President Obama appointed several members of his Cabinet
Now besides the national security team, I'm
President Obama's whole record on national security is a tribute to his strength,
Now, we all know that He also tried to work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and jobs,
Now, are you ready for that? Are you willing to work for it. Oh, wait a minute. In Tampa - in Tampa - did y'all watch their convention? I did. In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president's re-election was actually pretty simple pretty snappy: we left him a total mess, he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.
Now - (cheers, applause) - but they did it well. They looked good; the sounded good. They convinced me that they all love their families and their children and were grateful they'd been born in America and all that - really, I'm not being - they did. And this is important, they convinced me they were honorable people who believed what they said and they're going to keep every commitment they've made. We just got to make sure the American people know what those commitments are.
Because In order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn't
Now I like the argument for President Obama's re-election 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 modern, more well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good new jobs, vibrant new businesses, and lots of new wealth for
Now Are we where we want to be today? No. Is the president satisfied?
I
Now - but - he has - he has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity.
I'm fixing to tell you why. I believe it because President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas, and the direction America
So let's get 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 - let me say this again - cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. And, In the last 29 months
So what's happened?
Now, The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage
The president and his education secretary
Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It
I don't know about you, but on all these issues, I know we're better off because President Obama made the
Now, That brings me to health care.
The Republicans call it derisively Obamacare and They say it's a government takeover
And the gains are even greater than that because a bunch of
Now, finally, listen to this.
So let me ask you something. Are we
Now, There were two other attacks on the president in Tampa
Now, When congressman Ryan looked into
Now, At least on this issue, on this one issue, Gov. Romney's been consistent. He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repeal
Now, folks, this is serious,
It's going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help
Now - wait a minute - let's look at the
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 even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only
But they keep on running the ads claiming it
Now, Let's talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them. But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise.
Now, I think
Now, when you say, what are you going to do about this $5 trillion you just added on? They say
Now, People ask me all the time how we
1) assuming they try to do what they say they'll do, get rid of - pay - cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, 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 an average of $2,000
2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for
Or 3) in spite of all the rhetoric, they'll just do what they've been doing for more than thirty
Really. Think about this: President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values,
My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election,
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. And If you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought here
Look, I love our country so much.- and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we've always come back
God bless you - God bless America.
VERSION #4
C-SPAN's Digital recording of Bill Clinton delivering the speech on September 5, 2012 at the Democratic National Convention