textfiles-politics/politicalTextFiles/aarp.txt

"Work, Family, Future"      
Address to the American Association of Retired Persons            
Governor Bill Clinton                 
Henry Gonzales Convention Center                        
San Antonio, Texas            
June 4, 1992   

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much President
Burgess, ladies and gentlemen. I am so honored to be invited to be
here with you today. I appreciate the warm welcome on coming in. 
It is an amazing thing to be through this long string of
presidential primaries where I learned a lot about not only how
much we have in common, but how different we are as Americans. I'm
always amazed at each day I learn something about how American
people can look at the same set of facts and draw different
conclusions from it.  And since I am here at the AARP, I thought I
would tell you a story I heard the other day that illustrates this
point so well -- about a couple who'd been married just a little
over fifty years.  They were sitting out on their porch rocking in
their chairs, and the husband looked at his wife and he said,
"Sarah, you know we've been together a long time."   And she said,
"Yes."  And he said, "I'm really a man of few words -- all these
years there are so many things I should have said to you that I
didn't."   She said, "Yeah."  He said, "You know, we got married in
the depression and you believed in me, but it was the depression.
And not long after we got married our little business went down and
I was flat broke, but you hung in there with me."   And she said,
"Yeah, I did."  He said, "Then I went off to World War II and I got
that bad wound, and it took me a year to overcome it, but you hung
in there with me everyday."  She said, "Yeah, I did."  He said,
"Then after the war, we finally moved into our own home for the
first time and six months later a tornado came along and blew it
down. It took us six years to get in our house again, but you hung
in there with me, didn't you."    And she said, "Yes, I did."  And
he said, "Well, Sarah, before it is too late, I just want to tell
you one thing. Honey, you're bad luck."  So, if you want to be
involved in this enterprise on which I have embarked, you have to
be willing to have people see facts in a different way than you do.
In that connection, I want to compliment your president for the
theme of this conference: generations coming together.   As
governor, I have worked hard to serve the retired people of my
state -- one of the states with the highest percentage of people
over 65 in the United States. But, I want to be president to
restore the promise of the American Dream for our children.  When
I was a freshman at Georgetown University 28 years ago, I had a
professor of Western Civilization who said that the very special
thing about our civilization in general, and the United States in
particular, is that we had always believed that the future could be
better than the present, and that each of us has a personal, moral
responsibility to make it so.   That's what I want to talk about
today -- beyond the talk of Democrats and Republicans, beyond
pointing the finger of blame to the assumption of responsibility.
For the plain truth is that millions of our fellow citizens of all
ages do not believe the future will be better than the present, and
millions more do not believe they have a personal, moral
responsibility to make it so.  I learned the American Dream and I
lived the American Dream as a child growing up in Arkansas. Nearly
half a century ago, I was born in a little town called Hope.
Somebody's here from there, probably. We're everywhere now. I have
two delegates from Chicago who were born in Hope -- one from
Queens. We're way over our quota.  My father died in a car wreck
three months before I was born. My mother went back to nursing
school so that she could earn a living to support me. Until I was
four, I was raised by loving grandparents of modest means but great
determination.  They taught me to read and count when I was two and
three. They   taught me in their own way that our country isn't
just another place, it's an idea -- a solid covenant that spans
generations, a commitment to uphold the values we learn in our
families -- to honor our parents and grandparents, to offer a
helping hand to our sisters and brothers, to protect and provide
for our children and our children's children.       I learned from
my grandparents the basic contract of American life that if you
work hard and play by the rules, you will be rewarded. That promise
has come true for me beyond my wildest dreams. But as I have
traveled across this great nation of ours, I've met too many good,
hardworking people for whom that promise has been broken.   Coming
over here today, I couldn't help remembering the encounter I had in
Nashua, New Hampshire with a couple named Mary Annie and Edward
Davis, who broke down crying telling me how every week they had to
chose between their food and the medicine they needed to stay alive
and healthy. People like them have done right by America and now
it's time for America to do right by them.  One of the reasons I
entered this race for president is that I was tired of seeing
people being punished for their devotion to work and family, to
country, and community.  If any Americans have kept faith with the
American promise, it's the generation that worked their way out of
the Great Depression, brought their way to victory over Nazism and
Fascism, led the way through the Cold War and sacrificed to provide
my generation with opportunities our parents never had.  I'm going
to be a president who does right by older Americans because you've
done right by America. And your country owes you that.  Doing right
means understanding that Social Security is a commitment that must
be kept, not just for today's beneficiaries, but to today's working
people who are paying into the system for their tomorrows. It's a
covenant -- Social Security -- a covenant between generations, and
I will honor that.   Doing right means understanding, that in spite
of Medicare, most senior citizens still pay too much for health
care. In fact, a recent study found that the average elderly person
is actually paying a higher percentage of income for health care
today than in 1965 -- just before Medicare was enacted in the first
place.  During the first year of my administration, we'll send a
national health plan to Congress to control the cost of health care
by taking on the insurance and health care and government
bureaucracies that add tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary
costs to our system. My plan will provide a comprehensive package
of benefits and have measures to discourage excessive cost and
especially to hold down the price of prescription drugs.  The plan
will include long term care for the elderly and the disabled --
charging people based on their ability to pay -- and will emphasize
greater choice in care, from home to nursing home service. After
you've worked hard all of your life you shouldn't be  wiped out by
serious illness and you should have as much control over your own
life as possible.  America is the only advanced nation in the world
without a national health plan. We spend 30% more of our income on
health care than any of our major competitors, and we do less with
it. And we lag  behind them as a result on many measures of health
care from infant mortality, to heart disease, to life expectancy. 
We also, I might add, are dramatically underfunding women's health
research and development in areas from breast cancer to ovarian
cancer to osteoporosis and that's why the bill now in the Congress
ought to pass for new health investment.   As you know so well,
Americans pay more for prescription drugs than the citizens of
nations who have national health plans. This is a special burden to
elderly people who aren't poor enough to be on Medicaid but aren't
rich enough to pay their bills themselves. Their numbers are
legion. Mary Annie and Edward Davis are but two of the hundreds of
thousands of them.  As the Senate Special Committee on Aging,
chaired by my good friend and fellow Arkansan, David Pryor found,
prices of prescription drugs during the last decade have risen by
three times the rate of inflation. And to add insult to injury,
some American drug companies charge Americans more for the same
products here than they charge people in other countries. That's
wrong and I want to change it.   That's why I support Senator
Pryor's bill to take away tax breaks for drug companies to raise
their prices more than the rate of inflation. When you go to the
doctor or the drug store or the hospital, your next stop shouldn't
be the poor house.   These issues have long been a concern to me.
Fifteen years ago, as one of America's youngest attorney generals,
I created the Advocates for the Elderly Program to help older
people with their legal problems. As governor of my state I led the
nation's governors in fighting to stop the unfair termination of
Social Security disability benefits.   In Arkansas, we started a
long-term care program called Elder Choices, which let seniors use
money normally reserved for nursing home care for long-term care
services of their own choice -- from personal care to home health
care to adult day care.  The country I want to lead will honor its
obligations to people who've worked hard all their lives. But I
also have to come here today to challenge you and all older
Americans to honor our obligations to our nation's children because
our future depends on their strength, their intelligence, their
skills, their    citizenship.  Thanks to Social Security and
Medicare, our country has made progress in reducing poverty among
older Americans. We can all be proud of the fact that, beginning in
1985, for the first time in the history of America, the elderly
were less poor than the rest of America.   By contrast, poverty has
exploded among our children. Our new poor  in America are young
children and their mothers -- most of whom are working mothers --
and we cannot be proud of that. We can't be proud that 13% of
America's children have no health coverage whatever; that 30% of
all of our pre-schoolers are not immunized against mumps, measles,
and rubella; that every year 40,000 babies born in the United
States die before their first birthday. And many more are born with
very low birth weights, imposing great costs on society and bearing
mental and physical limitations which may dog them throughout their
lives and further undermine their ability to be contributing
citizens.  We can't be proud of the fact that 20% of all children
under eighteen and 25% of all children under six are living under
poverty; that teenage boys are more likely to die from gunshot
wounds than natural causes; that each year a half-a-million
American children do not finish high school, and millions more stop
there with no further education, thus condemned to losing out in
the tough global competition in which what you earn depends on what
you can learn.  It is astonishing to note that families under the
age of 30 are earning more than 25% less than what their
counterparts were seventeen years ago. We cannot be proud of this
because today's children are tomorrow's workers, tomorrow's tax
payers, tomorrow's parents, tomorrow's citizens. If they grow up
malnourished, unhealthy, and unprepared to compete in the 21st
century, then America will be neither safe nor solvent, neither
prosperous nor powerful.   We must not neglect our children and let
their decline be the legacy of our generation. They are the
national security issue of 1992.  As all of you know, we know what
works. We know what works in raising children -- how to help them
grow up healthy and hopeful, loving and learning, and ready to
build their futures and libraries and laboratories instead of
giving their lives away to gangs and guns on our meanest streets. 
Mr. Bush says when it comes to investing in America, we have more
will than wallet. What I say, now that we've won the Cold War,
we've got to find the will to invest in our people, in our jobs, in
 our education, in our health care and reclaim our own legacy.   We
have the wallet to spend over $100 billion on the savings and loan
bailout in this year alone. We have the wallet to let health care
cost go up two and three times the rate of inflation with the money
going straight to insurance and bureaucracy while our competitors
hold them down. We have the wallet to keep protecting Germany from
the Soviet threat, while German factory workers earn  20% more than
Americans for a shorter work week, and the Germans invest in the
former Soviet Republics, while the former Soviet Republics slash
their own defense budgets far more than we have cut ours.   And in
the 1980's, we had the wallet to cut taxes on the wealthiest
Americans and corporations, while raising taxes on the middle
class, slashing our investments in the future, and exploding the
federal deficit.  I know that the generation that won World War II
and the Cold War has the vision and the will and the discipline to
join this crusade to invest in our young people and reinvigorate
our economy. Your  generation has sweated and sacrificed and died
for others. You've never had the attitude, "I've got mine, you get
lost."  At the end of World War II, you led a strong America in
rebuilding Europe and Japan. At the end of the Cold War, you must
lead us in rebuilding America -- in regaining our commitment to the
future. You can teach all Americans lessons in patriotism, and
citizenship, and responsibility.  As president, I must challenge
you, and all Americans, to support a new national commitment to
provide every baby born in the United States with a healthy start
in life from health care and nutrition for expectant mothers and
their infants to immunization for young children.  I will challenge
you and all Americans to provide pre school for every child who
needs it by finally fully funding Head Start so all our children
can start school ready to learn. All this is in your self-interest
and in our national interest. If we don't fully fund Head Start
today, we may not be able to fully fund Social Security twenty
years from now.   As president, I must challenge you and all
Americans to help make every American school a model school because
all our children deserve the best. I will challenge you and all
Americans to support a domestic GI Bill -- a domestic peace corp
that will offer college loans to every American of every age
willing to repay the loan or give a couple of years of service back
to our community here at home -- not a peace corp for abroad, but
a peace corp for America.    Think of it as we are here in San
Antonio. If every young person from San Antonio, or El Paso, or
Laredo, or Houston, or Dallas, or Texarkana, or Lubbock, if every
one of them got a college education from a national service loan
and came home to work as a police officer, a teacher, in a drug
rehabilitation program, with kids in trouble, we could solve the
problems of America at home and educate a whole generation of
Americans. It would be the best money we ever spent.   For those
who do not want to go to college, we should follow our competitors
and give every high school graduate at least two years of further
education and training on the job with a national apprenticeship
program to restore the dignity of blue collar work in America.   In
order to do this, we must have the discipline to control health
care costs -- which is the single most important force in the
exploding federal deficit today -- to reinvest all of our defense
costs in rebuilding the American economy, and to ask upper income
Americans to pay their fair share of taxes. Those who received most
of the benefits of the 1980's should shoulder more of the burden of
the 1990's.  Let me be specific, although it may not be politically
popular. If your income went up and your taxes went down in the
last twelve years, if family income is over $200,000, you should
pay more. We cannot ask the middle class to pay more. Their incomes
went down and their taxes went up in the 1980's.   I support a
higher rate for the richest Americans and a sur-tax on
millionaires, such as that recommended in the recent tax bill
sponsored by Senator Lloyd Bentsen and vetoed by the president. And
if an older American on Medicare has an income in excess of
$125,000 a year, I think there should be a higher price for
Medicare if, in return, you get control of health care costs and a
sensible system of long-term care. No one should be forced to pay
for the same old system and just take money out of private pocket
and send it direct to health care companies or a bureaucracy that
is out of control.  We didn't get into this mess overnight, and we
won't get out of it without some sacrifice from those most able to
make it. The days of something for nothing for a few at the top are
over. To make America work again, we need more incentives for
private investment and new plant and equipment, to start new
businesses, to invest in the most depressed areas of our cities and
rural America. We also need more direct investment in education and
in health care in our future.      Unless those whose incomes went
up while their taxes went down in the 80's pay their fair share, we
simply cannot afford to increase these investments and bring down
our huge deficit. These are problems we must all face.         I
also hope you will support other policies which reinforce the
values of work and family. For all of those working poor families
I talked about, how about a simple tax system that says we will
increase the earned income tax credit so that if you work forty
hours a week and you've got children in the house you will be
lifted above the poverty line.  How about a welfare reform system
that says we'll invest more in your education and training and
child care and medical coverage, but you have to go to work. We
have to end welfare as we know it.  How about providing more
choices for elderly people in long-term care and more choices among
public schools for parents and their children so there will be some
competition but no private vouchers  to deplete the limited
resources of our public education system.  How about the toughest
possible system of child support enforcement so people can't bring
kids into this world, cross the state line, and leave them for the
government to raise. That's the kind of thing we ought to be
supporting.  How about a safe streets initiative that will bring
police back to the blocks everyday, walking the same streets,
working with the same neighbors, enlisting the energies of people
to shut down the crack houses and open up the city parks. These are
the kind of programs we need in America today.  And so I say to the
AARP, I respect the theme of this conference. I ask you to live it.
I ask you to go home and ask your fellow Americans to reach across
generational lines.  As I said at the beginning, I was raised by my
grandparents until I was four. I spent a lot of time with my
great-grandparents who lived out in the country in what would be
called a shack today.  They were poor, but they were loving and
strong people. They made me feel loved and know discipline. They
gave me self-esteem and respect for others.  In the governor's
office in Arkansas, I've got a picture of my grandmother in grade
school in 1916, a picture a my grandfather at the furnace of a
sawmill in 1923, a picture of my great-grandfather holding my hand
in a hospital room in 1952.   It's a long way in America from the
photographs I have on my wall to our meanest streets where children
don't know who their grandparents are, too often have to worry
about their parents' own    behavior and even drug abuse, and where
too many join gangs to find the extended family I knew naturally as
a child.  America's future needs an investment of your time as well
as money. America's children need grandparents, even if they are
not their own. I want to lift the earnings limit on Social Security
but I know our Social Security depends on your time being given
over to more than earnings. The elderly people of this country
could revolutionize the lives of troubled children of America
through volunteer programs in schools and communities all across
this land. For America is a dream every child must cherish, a
promise every generation must keep, a legacy we must leave to our
children and our grandchildren.  And so I challenge you not only to
fight and strive and struggle to save social security, but also to
preserve, protect and defend the security of our children; to fight
not only to keep medicare strong and stable but to make our economy
grow and prosper; to work not only to keep older Americans out of
poverty but to lift our children up as well.  Support programs that
reflect our shared values, putting the future ahead of the present,
moving people from welfare to work,  establishing tough child
support, lifting the working poor, creating a new system of
national service for college education and more. Work, family,
future -- that is what we must honor and reward.  Together we can
end this era of every person for himself and begin the era of we're
all in this together. Together we can do for America, what America
did for Europe and Japan at the end of World War II: build a
prosperous and powerful new economy with millions of new jobs and
dozens of new industries with people who are healthy and strong,
and children who believe the future will be better than the
present.  Most of all, we can leave our children a nation that is
stronger, freer and richer than the one we inherited. That must, in
the end, be the true measure of our legacy as Americans: did we
leave this world better than we found it? Today, the answer would
be no, tomorrow the answer can be yes. It is that question on which
this coming election depends.  Thank you, and God bless you all.