***** Reformatted.   Please distribute.



GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON
ECONOMIC CLUB OF DETROIT

DETROIT, MI
AUGUST 21, 1992

  Thank you very much.  Governor Blanchard and distinguished
members and guests of the Economic Club of Detroit.  I really
appreciate that introduction Jim gave me. After the going over I got
last night, I need it. But I'm always a little skeptical of those
introductions where people talk  about being born in a log cabin
they built themselves.  Most of that stuff was way overrated, and
those of us who experienced it were glad to escape it.

  I am delighted to be here today.  I had looked forward to coming
here for a long time.  And I wanted to talk with you about my
economic plans for the future.  But of course now I also have to talk
a little bit about what was  said last night by my opponent in this
election.

  I want to talk to you about what's really at stake in this election:
our nation's economic future, and whether we can chart a new
course in the world economy with an economic strategy that will
create jobs and raise incomes.

  We have to make a choice to create a high-growth, smart-work,
high-wage economy, or whether to continue to drift into a
low-growth, hard-work, low-wage future.

  That is the real issue.  As the rabbi said, the test of presidential
character is whether we use the power of this office to help the
American people realize their potential.

  The test of family values is not whether Al Gore and I love our
wives and our children as much as George Bush and Dan Quayle do,
but whether we get up every day worrying about your children and
your future.

   Today as we gather here in the city which was once the
manufacturing capital of the world, our economy is struggling and
the American dream is in trouble.  I come here to tell you
forthrightly that I believe that manufacturing is an important part of
America's future, that the auto and truck and high tech industries of
Michigan are an important part of a national manufacturing and
economic strategy that we must have, and that I'm here to commit
to work, to strengthen our ability to grow and prosper.

  Ten years ago, our nation had the highest wages in the world. Now
we're 13th and falling.  Last year Germany and Japan had
productivity growth rates that were three and four times ours because
they educate their people better, they invest more in their future,
and they organize their economies for global competition while we
don't.

  Here at home, people who have jobs are working harder for lower
pay.  The United States census report documents that two-thirds of
the American working people are making lower wages today for
longer work weeks than they had ten years ago.

  People who don't have jobs are looking harder and harder to find
fewer jobs.  Middle class people are paying more for health care,
housing, education, and in taxes, and at the same time, poverty is
exploding.

  There has been a stunning 50 percent increase in the percentage of
our work force, people who get up and go to work every day, who
are in poverty. 10 percent of our country is on food stamps, welfare
and Medicaid rolls are growing at record rates.  Just last week we had
the highest application increase for unemployment benefits in over a
decade.  And in spite of low interest rates, housing starts have
dropped off.

  Our leaders and their old ideas have failed us.  In the last 12 years
they have quadrupled the national debt and reduced our public
investment in the future.  For too long, the politicians in
Washington have forgotten the people who elected them, and
nobody seems to be looking out for the country and for the people
who've made it great.

  We desperately need a president who will take responsibility for
getting this country moving again, provide the leadership to pull us
all together, and challenge this nation to compete in the world and
win again.  A president who will leave behind the failed Republican
experiment and trickle down economics on the one hand, but will
not embrace the old Democratic theory of tax and spend and
regulate on the other.

  We have to move in a radically different direction. The old
economic ideas of the last two decades did not produce growth, did
not create upward mobility, and most important, didn't prepare
millions and millions and millions of our people to compete and win
in this global economy.

  And yet time and again in recent years what have our leaders told
us in the most critical moments of need.  Twelve years ago here in
this city we heard a Republican candidate for president promise us he
would cut taxes, raise defense spending, and balance the budget all at
the same time.  He won and brought us a decade where our country
was left mired in debt, our economy declined, and inequality
decreased.

     The ten largest deficits in the history of the United States
occurred during the last two presidents.  Four years ago, we heard a
candidate for president promise us in these four years 15 million
jobs, a balanced budget, never to raise taxes, no matter what.  He
promised an environmental presidency, an education presidency and
a kinder, gentler country.  He won--and since then, we've have the
slowest years of growth in 50 years--the slowest income growth, the
slowest job growth in 50 years; the largest budget deficits in history;
the highest middle-class tax burden; and the first decline in industrial
production in the history of the United States.

  Now we can see that those promises were hollow and betrayed us.

  Last night, we heard that same candidate, desperate for re-election,
promise another short-term capital gains cut for the wealthy--the
fool's goal of an across-the-board tax cut in the face of a $400 billion
deficit, and a balanced budget amendment with no serious specific
proposals to a balanced the budget. These promises, too, are false;
and they, too, will betray us if we follow them.  In the words of the
man who started all this, ``There they go again.''

  We've heard it all before, seen it all before, tried it all before.  It's
``read my lips'' all over again, except this time, we can read the
record.

  Mr. Bush said not long ago that he would do whatever it takes to
get re-elected.  In his USA Today interview, he was asked why he
wanted to be president, and he said, ``Because I want it.''  Well, last
night he proved that he wanted it, and that he will keep his promise
to do whatever it takes to get elected.

  No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out,
they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because
they don't even mean them--campaign fantasies that win elections
but don't get nations moving again.

  Last night proved something else:  George Bush is a lot more
interested in beating me than helping you.

  He couldn't say anything about his economic record, so he just
says anything to say in power.  Three years and seven months into
the presidency, he still has no agenda, no vision, no
strategy--nothing to say about creating jobs in America.  And in the
last four years since he gave an acceptance speech without a plan, but
full of promises and gimmicks, we've lost a million manufacturing
jobs, wages have fallen further behind our major competitors, and
just this week, as I said, a record number of Americans filed for
unemployment.

  Three times as many Americans have filed for bankruptcy as have
gotten new jobs since the Bush administration began.

  Again, last night there was no plan to create jobs or raise
incomes--just cynical read-my-lips promises.

  For the time in American history, more people are working in
government than in manufacturing, since this administration took
place.  Now we have more government bureaucrats the president
deplores than the factory workers he ignores.

  Across the country people are eager for real answers about how we
can create new jobs and save existing jobs, but the promises Mr.
Bush made last night are intended to save one job: his.

  In fact, the only new idea in his speech last night was to let people
check a box on their IRS form to contribute a portion of their taxes
to pay for the last 12 years of deficit, or for someone else's capital
gains cut.

  The president said last night this election is about trust.  You bet it
is.  Four years ago, he said ``read my lips.'' And then signed the
second biggest tax increase in history.

  Last night he said some things about my record that he knew when
he said them were not true.  Read the Wall Street Journal.  Mr.
Bush says I proposed the largest tax increase in history.  The Journal
told the truth, it's one-third the size of the one he already signed.

  Mr. Bush says I want to tax everybody with a job.  The Journal
told the truth.  The richest 2 percent of Americans would be asked
to pay their fair share because their tax burdens went down in the
1980s.  And there would be some modest tax relief to middle class
Americans who are overburdened, especially those raising their
children.

  Mr. Bush says I raised taxes in Arkansas 128 times in 12 years and
he just raised them once.  The Journal told the truth when it said
that attack is inaccurate.  By Mr. Bush's own standard, he's raised
taxes 78 times in three years, and Arkansas still has the second lowest
state and local tax burden in the United States of America.

  How can you trust someone who's a Republican and won't even
honor what the Wall Street Journal says is the truth.

  He says my program is bad for the economy, but in Arkansas, we
have created manufacturing jobs at ten times the national average.
And the average income has increase at twice the national rate since
1984.

  In the last year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have
led the nation in job growth.  He talks about deficit reduction, but
his own budget proposals in the last four budgets would actually
have increased the deficit by $1 billion over its present level,
according to a study by the House Appropriations Committee.

  Well, I balanced 11 budgets in a row, and still kept the second
lowest tax burden in America.  I know you have to make tough
decisions.  I've had to cut spending twice since I've been running for
president.

  He talks about education.  But in Arkansas, we raised graduation
rates from 35th to 18th in the country, the highest in the South.
Raised the college graduation rate from dead last to the national
average, and ranked fifth in the nation now in the percentage of our
children with access to computers in schools.

  I am a Democrat who believes in entrepreneurship and encouraging
investment, who understands and believes in market economics, who
believes in individual choice and hates bureaucracy.  We have a
growth rate in manufacturing jobs that we're proud of. We have a
tax burden that we're proud of. We also rank third in the nation in
the percentage of our tax that we devote to education. We moved
17,000 people from welfare to work, we've given citizens more
choices, in the public schools their children attend, and in the
long-term care facilities their parents have available to them.

  We started the state government's first, state government-wide
quality management program to reduce bureaucracy and improve
services. On the question of trust, I ask you to remember that
notwithstanding what was said last night, and what has been clearly
contradicted by the truth, one candidate for president was governor
of one of the poorest states in the country and helped to move it
forward.

  The other candidate stayed with trickle-down economics while
American problems worsened. This election is about trust, and I
hope you will look and see who can be trusted.

  Last night the president took credit for every victory which has
occurred around the world since he's been president and refused
to take responsibility for any problem which has developed here at
home since he became president.

  I agree with him about one thing, the choice in this election is
clear. For 20 years, going across administrations we have been losing
ground in the productivity race in the world economy, but for the
last 12 we have been in the grip of a failed economic theory.

  This election is about whether we'll do what it takes to compete
and win in the global economy, whether we will rebuild America
and invest in our people, whether we'll build a high-skilled,
high-wage, high-growth economy that offers opportunity and hope
to all of our people. We know what works, investing in people,
challenging the private sector to organize in new ways to increase
productivity, by putting business and labor, education and
government on the same side, and making an intense commitment
to be competitive in the global economy.

  I have issued a plan based on these fundamental principles. It's
called putting people first. And it's been endorsed by six Nobel prize
winning economists. It will create millions of jobs and cut the deficit
by more than 50 percent in four years.

  In degree and scope I believe it goes beyond what any presidential
candidate has ever offered during an election season. It goes far
beyond the little this president has done and far beyond the little he
offered last night.

  Not everyone in this room and certainly not everyone in our
country could agree with everything that I say.

  But my philosophy starts with the values that built America for all
of us, providing opportunity, taking responsibility, rewarding work,
encouraging entrepreneurship, investing in people and products, not
paper and perks.

  I reject brain-dead politics in both parties in Washington. The
wrongheaded Republican notion that prosperity will trickle down if
we just make the rich even richer, and get the government out of the
way, and the old Democratic orthodoxy that there is a program for
every problem and that we can tax and spend our way to prosperity.

  Instead I offer a new choice based on old values, opportunity,
individual responsibility, faith in family and hard work. I don't
believe in big government, but I do believe in an effective
government that promotes jobs and growth, and gives people more
choices and better services, and inspires more personal responsibility.

  I believe people on welfare ought to go to work and I've been
doing something about it in our state where we've moved 17,000
people from welfare to work, and I have a plan to do even better, to
end welfare as we know it and make it a second chance, not a way of
life.

  Mr. Bush didn't mention this in his acceptance speech last night,
even though caseloads on welfare nationwide have grown five times
faster in the last three and a half years than they did under Jimmy
Carter or Ronald Reagan.

  I believe in the toughest possible child support enforcement.

  I want a national system of national child support enforcement
because governments don't raise children; people do. And I think--
I do believe that individuals should take responsibility for their own
actions and that includes the president of the United States.

  Of all the whoppers I heard last night, the biggest one wasn't even
about me. It came at the end when Mr. Bush compared himself to
Harry Truman. Harry Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval
Office that said, ``The buck stops here.''  If Mr. Bush had a similar
sign on his desk, it would say, ``Don't blame me, I'm just the
president; the buck stops somewhere else.''

  The funny thing is, I've gone further than Mr. Bush in spelling out
what I would do to change Congress, even though he's spent almost
all his time blaming Congress. Some time ago I called for a 25
percent cut in aggregate congressional and White House staffs, an
end to perks and privileges and pay raises while the pay of American
workers is going down. A line item veto of the sort that's helped me
to balance 12 budgets in a row.

  A limiting of the influence of PACs, cutting spending in
congressional campaigns, opening the airwaves to honest debate so
incumbents don't have an automatic ticket to reelection.

  But it will not matter who is sent to Congress if we don't put in a
leader in the White House who will take responsibility for fashioning
the direction this country must take.

  More than any other Democrat in this election cycle, I have tried
to be honest in my criticisms of Congress as an institution, even
when it affected members of my party. But let's be honest about the
present logjam.  Congress passed an economic growth package,
fashioned largely by a pro-business Democrat, Senator Lloyd Bentsen
from Texas, that included strong incentives for new investment in
plant and equipment, and revitalizing the commercial real estate
industry, getting small businesses off the ground, and Mr. Bush
vetoed the package even though it contained a lot of things he had
asked for, for one simple reason.

  It asked the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share, raising
maximum rates in the upper 2 percent to 35 percent, while giving
modest relief to the middle class. And that was the ground on which
it was vetoed, not because it didn't have incentives to get this
economy going again.

  We have got to have a president who will take responsibility for
moving the economy, for putting Americans back to work. That's
why I've offered a national economic strategy to put people to work
so that we can have an expanding economy of high wage jobs here in
our country.

  At the core of my plan there are four principles. First, we don't
need more trickle-down economics, instead we need more incentives
for productive, job creating investment. Mr. Bush's economic
priority, the top one, is just what it's always been: an
across-the-board cut in short term capital gains, a tax cut that gives a
better benefit to millionaires, about $100,000, but gives folks earning
$50,000 a year less an average of $30.

  More importantly, it's a tax cut not targeted to long term
investment and activities that actually create jobs and emphasize new
technologies. It doesn't distinguish between building a business and
buying a race horse. It's just like the past 12 years of windfall
without economic growth for most Americans.

  Please understand me, I want to create more millionaires.  But I
want to do it the old fashioned way: by investing in America, and by
having people reap a reward in return for their investment in
American jobs and American goods and American services.

  That's why I recommended that we go beyond what the Congress
did last time and pass not a temporary, but a permanent investment
tax credit to encourage continuous reinvestment in new plant and
productive equipment here at home so that we can always be
competitive in the global economy.

  I also propose a 50 percent tax break for those who take risks in
making five-year long-term investments in new business enterprises.
A permanent research and development tax credit to reward
companies which invest in ground-breaking technologies, from high
definition TV to high speed computing.  I don't think we should
subsidize the export of American jobs with tax breaks.  And I favor
getting rid of tax breaks for companies that shut down their plants
here and move them overseas.

  Again, I am not opposed to investment by American companies in
other countries.  I have sought the investment of foreign companies
in my state.  But I have also examined the tax codes of our
competitors.  And they don't subsidize foreign investment, they
subsidize domestic investment. We do the reverse, and we should
change policies and meet the competition.

    I also favor closing the tax loop hole that makes lobbying
expenses deductible.  And I do not believe that all executive
compensation should be deductible without regard to the
productivity of the enterprise.

  For the last several years too many executives have failed to follow
the example of the president of Delta who recently rescinded his 21
percent pay increase because his company was losing money. I don't
care how much anybody makes, as long as it's related to the growth
of jobs and incomes.  But we shouldn't have another decade where
executive compensation goes up at four times the rate of worker
compensation and three times the rate of corporate profits.  We
ought to join hands and all go up or down together.  If we do
it, productivity and morale will increase in the workplace.

    The second thing we need to do is to invest in our own people,
in their education, their training and their health, to put our people
first.  Our economic future depends on our people's strengths and
skills, their health and their hopes.  If we're going to make America
number one in the world economically as well as politically, we've
got to put our people first for a change.  I have a plan to invest in
lifetime learning for every American, from pre-school to college to
job training and retraining.  We should fully fund the Head Start
program and provide a pre-school opportunity for every child who
needs it.

   As a father and a student of education, I know that a life's work is
done on children by the time they start school, and we have too
many who are starting in unequal positions.  For people who don't
go on to college, we should provide--as our competitors all do--a
two-year partnership between education, government, employers and
employees, an apprenticeship training so people can get good jobs,
not dead-end jobs, even if they don't have a college education.

  We should open the doors to college education again, to all the
people of this country.  The cost of a college education is about the
only essential that's gone up more rapidly than health care costs in
the '80s.  Under my plan, we would scrap the existing student loan
program and substitute for it National Service Trust Fund out of
which any American could borrow the money to go to college; but
they would have to pay it back, either as a small percentage of their
income at tax time so they couldn't beat the bill, as so many do
today; or even better, by giving two years of service to our
nation here at home, rebuilding America.

  Just think of it:  if every person from Michigan who got a college
degree borrowed the money from the National Service Trust to get it
and then worked for two years at a reduced rate as a police officer, as
a teacher, as a nurse, in a housing program, working to keep kids
out of trouble  and off drugs, we could solve half the problems of
this country and educate a whole generation of Americans.  It would
be the best money we ever spent.

  I have a plan with a modest amount of money to establish a
partnership with the states to teach everybody with a job to read,
and give everybody with a job a chance to get a high school diploma
or a GED in the next five years.

  That normally doesn't get thunderous applause, but it might be
the cheapest, quickest thing we could do to raise per capita income
and productivity in this country.

  My state only has 2.4 million people, but we spend as much
money on adult education as our neighbors in Texas do next door.
And we do it because we believe it will help us to increase
productivity and earnings.

  And I do have a plan to get tax incentives or impose payments on
businesses above a certain size--excluding small businesses--to retrain
their workers.  In the United States, as in all our competing nations,
the average company spends 1 to 1- 1/2 percent of payroll on
retraining.  The difference between the United States and Germany
and Japan, where wages are growing more rapidly and productivity's
growing more rapidly, is that in our country 70% of the expenditures
are spent on the 10% of the employees at the top of the corporate
ladder.  Our competitors spread those expenditures up and down
and constantly retrain the work force.  At a time when you can
never guarantee anyone a lifetime job, and people will change work
eight times in a lifetime, even if they stay with the same company, it
is imperative that we have incentives to retrain the entire work force
on a regular basis to guarantee productivity and worker mobility.

  Lastly on this issue, I have a plan to tackle the single greatest
problem  facing America's families, our businesses and our
government--rising health care costs. Entitlements now consume 43%
of the federal budget, and the overwhelming culprit is exploding
medical costs, now budgeted for the future at 11-12% as year, with
an assumption that inflation will be under five percent.  Unless we
find a way to control medical bills and provide a basic system of
affordable health care to all Americans, we are never going to
restore the full health to the manufacturing economy, remove the
biggest burden on small business, or get this government's deficit
under control. Health care costs are responsible for 80% off the
strikes in America today, not wages--health care disputes.

  Health care costs are adding well over $1,000 to automobiles.
Health care costs have now gone for the average American family
from $1,000 to $3,000 a year.  In 1980 we were spending $250
billion, this year we're spending $809 billion. If we don't do
something about health care costs they'll be over 17% of our GNP
by the end of the decade; today they're over 13%, 30% higher
than our nearest competitor.

  And I tell you, my fellow Americans, that's one reason the average
German factory worker can make 20% more than the average
American for a shorter work week, because they kept health costs
under inflation for the last six years.

  Contrary to the assertion that Mr. Bush made last night, I want to
preserve what's best in the present system-- your family's right to
choose the doctors and hospitals and medical providers or your own
choice.

  But if we're going to nurse this system back to health we are going
to have to make some tough decisions.  In America only 84 cents of
the insurance dollar goes to health care, 16 cents to administration
and profit and paperwork.  In Europe it's 95 cents.  One reason is,
there is a system to mandate broad based community rating so
insurance companies make money like grocery stores--a little bit of
money on a lot of people.

  Another reason is, there is a simple, basic package of comprehensive
benefits which must be offered, either by private insurers or by the
government so that you simplify paperwork and administrative
burdens dramatically.

  The third thing we've got to do is to give people incentives to
engage in managed care network so that managed competition can
work to reduce the cost of health care.

  Fourthly, we need to extend the availability of primary and
preventive care and health education in the inner cities and the rural
areas of this country.  We are wasting a fortune because we don't do
it.

  Paperwork and bureaucracy and regulation alone add 80 to 100
billion dollars in unnecessary costs to this system. The average doctor
spends over 30% of income on paperwork, the average hospital is
hiring clerical workers at four times the rate of nurses.  We can do
better.  Lest you think we can't, I cite not only the German
example, but the state of Hawaii, which has community rating,
primary health clinics, broad-based groups of health care providers,
and which charges 50 percent less for health insurance than the
American average. We can do it if we have the will to do it.

  The third principle is that we have to invest today in the
foundations of tomorrow. I was criticized last night for wanting to
invest 220 billion new dollars over the next four years.  My
opponent didn't point out that I also called for $140 billion of
spending cuts over the next four years.

  We need to increase real investment of your tax dollars by $50
billion a year because all our competitors are doing more.  Nine
nations now spend a higher percentage of their income on
kindergarten through 12th grade education than we do.

  Virtually every country in the world with an advanced economy
spends a much higher percentage of their income on infrastructure,
on transportation and communications than we do. And we have
got to compete.  We've got to rebuild our railroads, our highways,
our bridges, invest in a national information network to link every
library and every laboratory.  And every classroom and every
company, and every home by the year 2015.

  Wouldn't it be nice when our kids come home, if they could have
computers that link them up to the Library of Congress, not just a
video game?

    We need to take every last dollar by which we reduce defense and
reinvest it in an American economy for the 21st century, creating
high speed rail networks, creating new environmental technologies,
investing in new technologies that will permit us to retrain workers
who do lose their jobs for even better jobs in the future, not leave
them out in the cold just because they won the Cold War.

   Every dollar by which we reduce research and development in the
military should be reinvested in civilian research and development,
and we should have similar partnerships in new high technology
opportunities in the private sector, in the commercial sector, that we
have had for years in the military sector.

  We've had a national economic strategy for high tech growth in
military weaponry, because we didn't want it produced overseas, and
we have led the  world.  WE need to do the same thing in the new
technologies of the 21st century.

  Fourth and finally, I propose a national economic strategy based on
building America's team.  Bringing together business and labor,
government and education to compete and win. Mr. Bush sits at the
head of a government that is the only advanced industrial nation in
the world, the only one, which doesn't stand up for its businesses
and workers and jobs with a national economic strategy.

  I don't believe in government picking winners and losers.  But our
government should do what it takes to help American businesses and
workers become winners in the world economic competition.

  It isn't any accident that 28 percent of the Japanese work force and
32 percent of the German work force are in manufacturing, and we
are all the way down to 16 now in the United States.

  I want to promote American industry again.  And I don't think
there is a real choice to be made between trade and jobs if we have
the right kind of trade policy.  We need both. I am not a
protectionist.  But I don't want to be a pushover.

  I want us to be able to expand trade.  I want us to expand our
trade and investment with Mexico.  I want a big market.  We may
need it for defensive purposes as Europe gives signals of becoming
more protectionist.  But I know that we have to be fair to our
workers, to our environment, and to our future.  We can do both if
we are committed to growth through expanded trade and fair trade,
and if we realize that no nation on earth has free trade.

  When rules are fair and markets are open, American companies can
compete and win.

  I want to use the powers of the presidency to make those rules fair.
I think we should pass a stronger and sharper so-called Super 301
trade bill so that if other countries refuse to play by our rules, we can
play by theirs.

    I think our foreign policy should be focused much more on
international economic policy, and I think we need an economic
security council similar to the National Security Council, with
responsibility for coordinating our economic policy.  Maybe if we
had had such a focus in the recent example, the Treasury secretary
Mr. Brady would not have given the Japanese a $300 million
windfall by reclassifying multipurpose vehicles as cars instead of
trucks.

  As much as I believe in expanded trade, I can't, and I shouldn't
protect companies which won't organize to compete and win.  But
we shouldn't sit back and let companies that are increasing
productivity at astonishing rates get clobbered in the world markets
because of unfair practices and a president who won't stand up.

  With a national economic strategy, we won't have to choose
between clean air and clean water, and good jobs.  Mr. Bush's
friends in Houston said that clean air and clean water are
incompatible with a growing economy.  I disagree with that.
Reminded me of something a fellow from around here, Walter
Reuther, used to say--that they may be looking at the future through
their rearview mirrors.

  The fact is, there is a growing market here in America and all across
the world for equipment and services that can serve energy and clean
air and water, and preserve the planet. The market for environmental
technology and services is already over $200 billion a year.
Developing nations will likely install--listen to this--a trillion dollars
worth of this type of gear--just in the developing nations--in the next
15 years. That's why the Germans and the Japanese came to the
earth summit at Rio, hawking their wares, doing their best to sell
environmental technology all over the world, while the United States
said we couldn't meet any of the targets that they can meet.

  That may be why foreign companies now have 70 percent of the
American market for environmental technology.  All those defense
workers should have put to work doing that starting back in the
mid-'80s when we began to make these defense cuts; and we'd be in
better shape today, if that had happened.

  Let me say, finally, I don't have all the answers. I'm not a
dogmatic person, but I am passionate about seeing this country fulfill
its God-given capacities.  Every day I wake up and worry about the
people that can't educate their children or pay their medical bills, or
the businesses that are doing fine but they're being crushed by the
crazy elements in our system or by manufacturers that are increasing
productivity at 4 percent a year and still can't make a go of that.  I
worry about that.

  And I remember that the genius and greatness of America is that at
crucial times in our history, we have always been able to reinvent
ourselves. Sixty  years ago, in the midst of a greater crisis, Franklin
Roosevelt said this.

  ``This country needs--and unless I mistake its temper--this country
demands bold, persistent experimentation.  It is common sense to
take a method and try it, and, if it fails, admit it frankly and try
another.  But above all, try something.''

  President Roosevelt defined the ultimate test of economic
leadership in an exciting and dynamic time:  the willingness to take
bold action to improve the lives of the people you serve.  Six decades
later, this administration's worst failure is not the devastating
recession that has occurred on Mr. Bush's watch.  It is that we have
had this recession and he has done nothing but watch.

   He has failed to meet the standard he himself set the day he took
office to use the power of the presidency to help people.  As Roger
Johnson, the chairman of Western Digital Corporation and a
Republican supporter of mine said on national television ten days
ago, I think we've got some problems in our country.  We've had
them for some time.  President Bush has had over 3+ years to
address them, and just hasn't shown the leadership to take us out
of them.  He spent a good bit of that 3+ years telling us there
wasn't a recession, as recently as a few weeks ago.  Then we found
out there was a recession.

  I offer a vision of millions of jobs and thousands of new companies
in dozens of new industries--a vision of economic growth that starts
by investing in our people, their health, their education and their
skills; and a vision of presidential leadership that challenges every
student and every worker and every business person to do their best
so that we can compete and win again in the world marketplace of
the 21st century.

  Today if we put our people first, we can fulfill the historic
obligation of Americans to always be prepared to recreate the
strength of the American community and to reaffirm our belief that
tomorrow can be better than today.  We do not have a person to
waste.

  And as my wife never tires of saying, Life is not a dress rehearsal.
We are letting too many opportunities and too many lives and too
many futures go. We must have the courage in this election to
change course.   Thank you very much.