Remarks at a Get Out the Vote Rally in New York City - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

In education, they promise to repeal our commitment to putting 100,000 teachers in the classroom. They don't support what we want to do on school construction or universal preschool or after-school or tax deductibility for college tuition. On the environment, they think the only answer is to drill more oil. They don't believe in what we're trying to do with alternative energy and energy conservation. And in health care, they do not support the Patients' Bill of Rights or the Medicare drug program for all of our seniors or the plans we have to expand coverage to children and their parents. You couldn't have a bigger choice.

Now, you can either build on the progress of the last 8 years or reverse a lot of it. But if you want to build on it, you've only got one choice: Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, Major, and Greg.

Here's the third question. We're going to do this at the end one more time, because I want you to do this to people. You look at this crowd. The people in this room could reach another hundred thousand voters between now and election day with no sweat. Most of the people you know have never come to a rally like this. Isn't that right? Most of you have friends who have never come to a rally like this.

This is Saturday night. Most of the kids here probably have friends who wonder what you're doing at a rally like this on Saturday night. Is that right? [Laughter] Okay, so this is your job. When you leave here, you've got to he able to do this.

The third point is, maybe the most important of all, is that in the last 8 years, we have not only made economic and social progress; we have grown together as one America. The thing that's most important about this economic expansion is that it helped everybody. We have the lowest Latino and African-American unemployment ever recorded; average incomes are up over $5,000 after inflation; senior poverty is down below 10 percent for the first time ever; child poverty down 30 percent; overall poverty at a 20-year low; welfare rolls at a 32-year low, cut in half.

We're going forward together. It wasn't just that rich people made more money, middle class people and lower income working people did, too. And we need to keep going forward together. And it wasn't just about money.

When the Republicans urged us to end affirmative action, we said, don't end it, mend it, and we kept it. We continue to enforce the civil rights laws and involve people in the work of the Government, all kinds of people. And to try to break down barriers of discrimination.

Now, if you want to keep building one America, you've got a huge choice here. And I'll just give you a few of the issues.

Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Hillary, and our crowd, here's what they're for--just listen to this: hate crimes legislation, employment nondiscrimination legislation, legislation to guarantee equal pay for women in the work force, legislation to guarantee fair treatment for legal immigrants, no matter where they're from, and Supreme Court and Federal court appointments that will protect civil rights, human rights, and a woman's right to choose.