Remarks on beginning a whistlestop tour in Huntington, West Virginia

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 2, 1996

The President. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen - thank you - [applause]. Ladies and gentlemen, 36 years ago, when President Kennedy came here, he said, "The sun doesn't always shine in West Virginia, but the people do." Today we have the sun and the people. [Applause] Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you for making Hillary and Chelsea and me feel so welcome. Thank you, Governor Caperton, for being my friend and supporter and for the fine job you have done. Governor Caperton did a lot to put West Virginia on the national map by putting computers in the schools of your children. If you reelect Al Gore and Bill Clinton, in the next 4 years we'll hook every one of those classrooms in America and in West Virginia up to the information superhighway, so that all of our children will have world-class education.

Thank you, Charlotte Pritt, for flying down with me and for running for Governor of West Virginia. Thank you for sharing your plans to develop the economy on the way down here. They are consistent with my own, and they depend upon initiatives like the one that Marilyn just talked about. I want you in the governorship, and we'll work together to get West Virginia's unemployment rate down to and below the national average. And we shouldn't be satisfied until we get there.

Thank you, Congressman Wise, for all that you do in Congress and for heading the Democratic Policy Group and putting our party in Congress squarely on the side of raising the minimum wage, increasing educational opportunity, increasing access to health care, and growing the economy for 4 more years. And thank you, Nick Rahall, your Congressman, for all the work he has done to build the infrastructure of our country and this State. You know, if you put the Democrats in the majority in Congress again, Nick Rahall will be chairman of that committee again and can do more good for you.

Thank you, Jay Rockefeller, for standing up for children and for health care and for the ordinary citizens of the United States and your beloved West Virginia. I thank you and Sharon for being such good friends to Hillary and to me. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that when we signed that Kennedy-Kassebaum bill this week, which said to 25 million Americans you can't be cut off your health insurance if somebody in your family gets sick, and you can't lose it if you change jobs - in addition to the sponsors of that bill, the people who were most responsible for bringing it up and hammering it home to the public consciousness were Jay Rockefeller and the First Lady of the United States, because they fought for health care before it was popular.

And I want to thank both your Congressman and your Senator, and two of our guests who are out here, Senator Wendell Ford and Congressman Mike Ward from Kentucky, who are here with the Governor of Kentucky, Paul Patton, and the former first lady, Phyllis George Brown. We thank you all for coming. Because when our friends in the opposition tried to pass a budget that would have given us a two-tiered system of Medicare, one for the wealthy and one for the poor, that would have turned away from our historic commitment to health care for families with disabilities, for the elderly in nursing homes, for the poorest children in our country, that would have cut our investment in education when we need to spend more and cut our investment in protecting the environment when we need to invest more, and I vetoed it, they upheld my veto. If it hadn't been for them, none of this would have happened. They stood up. They were counted and they said, no.

Let me thank all the other officials who are here. Thank you, Mayor Jean Dean. I thank all the State officials who are here, your treasurer, your secretary of State, your attorney general, your agriculture commissioner, your auditor, the president of the senate, Senator Tomlin, your party chair, Chuck Chambers, and former Governor Smith. I thank all of you for coming here. I thank President Cecil Roberts of the UMW for being here.

I thank President Wade Gilley of Marshall University. And thank you, Marshall Thundering Herd Band. You were great today. And thanks for being so good to Hillary.

If you would, I'd like you to indulge me one personal moment, too. I want to say a special word of thanks to the State of West Virginia for the Chief of staff to the Secretary of the Treasury, Sylvia Matthews, from Hinton, West Virginia, who is here with me today, one of the brightest and best people in our administration.

And I would like to say a special word of gratitude to one woman who is here, Emma Williams. She is the mother of Bill Morton, who was a special assistant to Secretary Ron Brown. And Bill was killed on that plane with Ron, serving our country, helping to grow our economy, standing up for America. And I'll always remember and love him for it. Thank you, Emma Williams, for being here today.

And finally, thank you, Marilyn Milne. Your story, your spirit - that is what we have been fighting for for the last 4 years, more stories like this, people who are down but not out, people who give other people a chance to make something of their lives. And that's what our enterprise community initiative did, working with your mayor here, working with your city council, working with the local business people when you lost that factory. That is the kind of initiative we need to move this country forward.