Remarks at a reception for Senate candidate Ann Wynia in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 3, 1994

September 24, 1994

The President. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Ann Wynia, for that wonderful introduction and for your fine speech and for what you represent for the State of Minnesota and for the prospects for our country. Thank you, Senator Wellstone, and thank you, Congressman Sabo and Congressman Vento, for helping me to keep my commitments to the American people to move this country forward and for your outstanding leadership. And thank you especially, Senator Graham, for your brilliant leadership of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and for being such a good and wise and trusted adviser to me on so many issues. I wish Bill Luther luck. And Bruce Vento reached over and whispered in my ear and said, "Now, even though he's running for Graham's seat, he's really going to win, Bill." [Laughter] Thank you, David Wilhelm, for that rousing speech, for reminding us what we are against as well as what we are for.

Ladies and gentlemen, I came here to ask you to help Ann Wynia get to the United States Senate, not because, as she said, she would agree with me on every issue but because she would bring common sense and common decency to the United States Senate, something we need more of.

You know, half the time when you see what's going on in Washington, you must wonder what is really going on. A lot of us who come from the States and then go to Washington are amazed by the level of political rhetoric and how abstract and almost artificial it seems. We need more people in the United States Congress like Ann Wynia who actually served the folks at the grassroots level, who actually did things to help real people take responsibility for their own lives like the children's health care plan here in Minnesota, which provided health care to 35,000 Minnesota children. That's a lot of families that have been helped to do something in their own lives.

I have been interested in and working on the whole subject of welfare reform for nearly 15 years, and I know that the further you go away from the welfare recipients, the more likely you are to hear hot air and see no results. Ann Wynia I would like to have in the Senate when we pass welfare reform next year because, as commissioner of human services, she didn't just talk about it, she actually moved people from welfare to work, not talking about it but doing it.

I want to talk with you today about what this election is all about, especially from my point of view as your President, someone who has tried hard to be President of all people, without regard to their party or their region or their race or their economic standing.

Two years ago, I ran for President because I wanted to lead this country into the 21st century with the American dream still alive for my daughter and for all the children here, because I thought the Republican leadership in the White House was taking our country in the wrong direction. Their economic policy was not working; it was increasing inequality in our country. And their social policy seemed to be to divide us by race, by religion, and other ways, to preach at us instead of to practice and to move forward.

I thought, frankly, we needed a new direction in Washington that came from the grass-roots, that we needed to go beyond these partisan fights that had dominated both parties too much. I didn't think that the Government could be the savior of the American people the way we Democrats believed during the New Deal when it was very nearly so then. But neither did I think that Government could just sit on the sidelines when all of our competitors all around the world were taking a different approach. And I didn't think our Government could come off of the sidelines only when the special interests needed help, as opposed to ordinary, middle class Americans.

I thought that we ought to run this country the way most of us try to run our families, our lives, our businesses, our grassroots efforts, that there ought to be a partnership, that the Government, after all, was no more than us. You all pay the bill. Everybody that works up there is your hired hand. Every now and then you have elections and get a chance to not renew contracts or vote for new people if you want. The Government ought to be our partner and ought to do its best to provide economic opportunity, to challenge citizens to assume personal responsibility to make the most of their own lives, and to try to rebuild the frayed bonds of our American communities.

For the last 12 years before I showed up, the leadership in Washington talked about a balanced budget amendment and quadrupled the national debt; talked about helping the middle class, but taxes went up on the middle class and down on the wealthiest Americans; talked about making us competitive but reduced investment in the things which make us competitive, including the education and training of our people; talked a lot about our social problems but didn't do very much about them.

I wanted to bring more jobs to America and help people to begin to raise their incomes again. I wanted to bring more educational opportunities and health care opportunities for people who didn't have them and to do something to control the spiraling costs of health care. I wanted to rebuild our families and our communities. I wanted to see this country have a Government that worked for ordinary people again. And I desperately wanted it to occur without the kind of partisan rancor that I had seen for the past several years.