Remarks in Cincinnati, Ohio

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 23, 1996

The President. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor Qualls, I am delighted to be back in Cincinnati, and I thank you for making me feel welcome again. And I thank you for doing such a good job as mayor. And Representative Mallory, that's the most unusual welcome I ever had, but I liked it. We may have to have a training session to get that down and use it in some other places.

I wonder if you're all in such a good humor today because the Bengals won yesterday, I think that may be it.

Audience members. We love you, Bill.

The President. Thank you.

I want to say a special word of thanks to Senator John Glenn for flying down here with me and for being an absolutely wonderful United States Senator for Ohio and for all the United States. Thank you, John Glenn.

I thank the leaders of the FOP. Thank you, President Gil Gallegos, for that wonderful statement. Thank you, Pete Ridder. Thank you, Jim Pasco, the executive director of the FOP; Steve Young, the president of the Ohio FOP; and Mike Tenore, the trustee of the Ohio FOP. I am very proud to have the endorsement of an organization representing 270,000 rank and file members of law enforcement who put their lives on the line every single day for the rest of us. I thank you for it.

As Gil said, and as Pete said, for 4 years I've worked hard to stand with the police officers of America, and I am profoundly honored that they decided to stand with me for 4 more years. And I thank them very much.

Folks, I want to talk to you just a moment about what I hope we'll do in those next 4 years to make our streets safer and to make our children's future brighter. Everybody knows now - I hope they do anyway - we've been out talking about where we are now compared to where we were 4 years ago. We pursued a strategy of opportunity for everyone, responsibility from everyone, and an American community that includes every person, without regard to race or gender or income or background, everybody that's willing to work hard and play by the rules should be part of our American community.

This strategy is working. The economy is much stronger. The economy in Ohio - the unemployment rate has dropped from 7 percent to 4.8 percent. It's the lowest in nearly 8 years in the country as a whole. Our auto industry is number one in the world again for the first time since the 1970's. A lot of people in Ohio are part of that ranking, that number one ranking. We have 10 1/2 million more jobs, wages are rising again for the first time in a decade. On October 1st, 10 million American workers will get an increase when the minimum wage goes up. And I'm happy about that.

Yesterday I was in Iowa on a farm in Indianola, and I met, as I often do when I'm out and around, another of the 12 million American working parents who've gotten to take a little time off when a baby was born or a parent was sick without losing their job because of the family and medical leave law. And that's made us a stronger nation.

Twenty-five million Americans - 25 million Americans can be helped because the Congress finally passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that says you can't lose your health insurance just because someone in your family's been sick or because you changed your job. Forty million Americans, because of the pension protection act of 1994, 40 million retired and still working Americans had their pensions protected, and I am very proud of that. I remember well when they weren't protected 10 years ago and how many people lost their retirement.

So it is clear that we are moving this country on the right track. The things - as the Vice President used to say - the things that ought to be up are now up, the things that ought to be down are now down; 1.8 million fewer people on welfare than 4 years ago, child support collections up 40 percent. What should be up is up; what should be down is down. This is good.

These things did not happen by accident. These things happened because we had a different philosophy of how the White House and Washington should work. I had never worked in Washington, except as a college student, until I became President. And I didn't like what I saw. There were too many people spending their time asking, "Who can I blame for this problem," and too few people spending their time asking, "What are we going to do about this problem." So we asked that question: What are we going to do? And then we proceeded to do it.

And I can tell you that I hope that's what this election will be about. I hope we will have 50 days of people putting forth their best ideas about what are we going to do - ideas, not insults. How are we going to build the country? How are we going to build that bridge to the 21st century that we can all walk across?

Mostly, I want to talk to you about law enforcement today, but I want you to think just briefly about how we're going to keep this economy growing until everybody who is willing to work can participate in it. And I'll just mention three things.

Number one, we have to continue the work of balancing the budget, but we have to do it in a way that protects Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, medical research, and other scientific research and technology. That is important.