Remarks in Battle Creek, Michigan

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 2, 1996

The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank the people over across the street - we know you're there; we're glad you're here. Thank you. I would like to thank Kathy Bloch for her introduction and for the work she's done to support our efforts to stop the marketing, the advertising, and the distribution and the sales of tobacco to young people. That's not legal, and it ought to stop. Three thousand of our young people a day start to smoke, and 1,000 of them will die sooner because of it. It's the biggest public health problem in the country, and I think it's a good thing that Americans have taken action on it again, thanks largely to people like Kathy Block and young people themselves who have asked us to help them protect a healthy future for them, and I thank her for it. Thank you, Mark Schauer, for your work and your candidacy. Thank you, Kim Tunnicliff, I thought you gave a good, rousing speech.

I thought to myself when I heard Kim talking, now, if he'd been in Congress, that would have been one more vote against that budget that slashed Medicare by $270 billion and took away the guarantee of health care to the elderly in nursing homes, to poor children, to pregnant mothers, and to families with members with disabilities. He would have stopped that.

He would not have voted to cut education and the environment or to raise taxes on the lowest income working people or to let $15 billion be taken out of worker pension funds. All that was in that budget in 1995 that I vetoed. And I never did hear our friends in San Diego talking about that when they were bragging about how moderate and nice and broadminded they were. So I was glad to hear Kim remind you that there was a budget battle last year. I did veto it, and thanks to Carl Levin and others, we sustained that veto. It would be a good thing to have somebody in the Congress that wanted to balance the budget and protect our values. I thank you for doing that, sir.

I would like to introduce another Michigan Congressman who's here with me. He represents the Upper Peninsula, and I think he is one of the most dedicated, upright, hardworking people in the Congress: Congressman Bart Stupak and his wife are both here. Congressman Stupak, come out here and wave to the folks, Governor Jim Blanchard is here, who was the very distinguished Ambassador to Canada. I thank you, Governor Blanchard. Attorney General Frank Kelley is here. I thank you, Frank, for coming and for your work. Frank Garrison, the head of the Michigan AFL-CIO is here with us. And I want to say a very special word of thanks to another son of Michigan who is here, who just completed his term as the president of the National Education Association, Keith Geiger, who was a fearless and wonderful advocate for America's teachers. Thank you, Keith Geiger, for being here.

Finally, I'd like to thank Senator Carl Levin for his leadership for Michigan and America, for his fight for America's jobs and his fight for ethics in Government, for his fight to give America the kind of direction that it needs and deserves. He deserves your reelection for his service, and I hope you'll give it to him.

I'd like to thank the Battle Creek High Band. Thank you very much for being here. And I thank the saxophone selection for raising your horns. You look good over there. Well, the rest of you can raise your horns; you don't have to be a saxophone player.

I thank Mayor Deering, from Battle Creek, and the principal of Battle Creek High School, Bruce Barney; the head of the local community action agency, Sherry Keys-Hebron; the president of the AFL-CIO for South Central Michigan, Richard France; Reverend Albert Thomas; and all the others who had anything to do with this event today, including the Washington Heights Gospel Ministry who'll give us music at the end of this event. Thank you all very much.

Folks, I'm glad to be the first President in Battle Creek since President Johnson was here in 1965. I'm glad to be the first President to come into Battle Creek on a train since President Taft was here in 1911.

This train started in West Virginia and went into Kentucky, Then we went all over Ohio. Yesterday morning, we started in Toledo and then worked our way into Michigan to Wyandotte to Royal Oak to Pontiac and last night to a rally at Michigan State University where there were over 20,000 people. It was an amazing event.

I took this train to Chicago, the 21st Century Express, for two reasons. First of all, I wanted to get a chance, as I go to Chicago to accept the nomination of my party for President and begin the last and perhaps the most important campaign of my life, to look into the faces, into the eyes, into the hearts of the people of America in the heartland for whom I have worked and fought these last 4 years. I wanted to see you to remember why we're doing all this.

And secondly, I wanted to make the point that our train is not only on the right track to Chicago, it's on the right track to the 21st century. And we need to stay on that track. But as one of these wonderful signs said, there is more to do. I was very proud of my wife last night at the Democratic Convention because she talked about the work she's done for the last 25 years, what we learned about it from raising our own daughter, and the fact that there is more to do.