Remarks at a town meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 21, 1994

March 15, 1994

The President. Thank you so much. I want to thank the principal of this school for calling the assembly to order, Mayor Wagner, for welcoming me here, and Senator Barbara Baldizar, of whom I am so proud, who served with such distinction in our campaign in 1992 and Congressman Dick Swett for that fine introduction and for the work he does in your behalf in Washington. There are many others here today, legislators, other officials, school officials, and personal friends. I'm glad to see all of you here.

I announced my candidacy for President in New Hampshire here in Nashua in October of 1991. I told you I'd keep coming back. I know I'm a week late for your traditional town meeting, but I'm not 4 years late. I did show up.

I have so many vivid memories of this community. I remember I was so nervous the first day I came here in October of '91. I said, "Nobody knows who I am, nobody knows where I'm from, nobody knows anything." And we were on our way to a restaurant where some people had probably been dragged kicking and screaming to come and meet me for the first time. And on the way, there was one other cafe, and I just decided I would go in and shake hands there and start, just cold. And so my wife and I walked in, and there was one guy sitting at the counter drinking a cup of coffee. And he turned around and he said, "I know who you are. I'm a construction worker from Leachville, Arkansas, and you're the best Governor we ever had." So I said to myself, these people are so shrewd up here, they will never believe I did not place this man on this stool--|laughter~--and that I never saw him before or since.

I remember going to the Moe Arel Center and talking to the people who live there about their health care concerns. I remember in the hotel where I stayed last night, an early morning meeting I had with Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia, before we had a big health care forum where people came from all over New Hampshire and all over New England. I remember so many things that I have done in this community, and I'm very grateful to be back.

I've just come from Detroit, where I was meeting with finance and other economic officials from the, G-7 nations, the world's largest industrial nations, Canada and France, Great Britain and Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, talking about the problems that every wealthy nation in the world is now having, even in times of economic growth, in creating new jobs and raising incomes, talking about how we are in an entirely different global economy that is changing very rapidly, opening up new opportunities but also imposing new obstacles to the fulfillment of human potential everywhere, and what we can do together to deal with the problems we face.

I learned a lot about those problems right here in New Hampshire. I think it is no secret to anybody who knows me the depth of affection and commitment I developed to the people of this State, even those who didn't vote for me, because of the experiences I had here in 1991 and 1992, because of the laboratory you provided for all of us who sought the Presidency to learn about the continuing problems and the enduring promise of this great country.

Ever since I started this campaign here, and in every day I have been President, I have been focused on what it will take for us to do what we need to do to move into the 21st century as the greatest country on Earth, giving our children a better future and getting our people to live up to their potential. I always believed that the purpose of public life was to get people together and to get things done and to lift human dignity and human potential.

When I first took office, my first line of business was to get our economic house in order. We had seen in only 12 years a quadrupling of our national debt. We had seen America with such a huge deficit that all of our trading partners, every year for 10 years got together in these great G-7 summits and passed delicate resolutions pointing their finger at the United States saying, "If you don't bring your Government deficit down, you're going to wreck the world economy."

And so we went to work on that. Last year, Congress passed an economic plan that will reduce the deficit by $500 billion. If they pass the budget I presented this year, which passed the House in record time, we will have 3 years of reduction in the Federal Government's deficit in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was the President of the United States.

Now, that has led to lower interest rates, low inflation, increased investments, increased activity in any number of sectors of the economy, and a real economic comeback for the country in 13 months--2.1 million new jobs, 90 percent of them in the private sector. In the 1980's, a far higher percentage of new jobs coming into our economy were in State and local government, not in the private sector. So I believe we have made a good beginning. The unemployment rate in New Hampshire is about a point and a half lower than it was when I was elected President, and I'm proud of that.