Remarks at a rally for Democratic candidates in Seattle, Washington

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 31, 1994

October 23, 1994

The President. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Audience member. Give them hell!

The President. You're going to help, aren't you?

Thank you, Governor Lowry, for your friendship and your support and your leadership here. Thank you for all the things you said. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for making me feel so very welcome today.

I hope all the folks who have joined us here who will tell the rest of the world about what we did, took notice of Larry Brown from Boeing and Sergeant John Manning and Mikelle Mathers. You see, they represent the real Washington and the real America we ought to be concerned about in this country. They're the kind of people that my friend Norm Rice works for every day. They're the kind of people that the members of this congressional delegation support.

I want to say a special word of thanks to the ones who are here, to Norm Dicks, for his friendship to me and his leadership, especially on defense issues; to Jim McDermott, for his courageous and never flagging struggle to get all Americans health care; to Mike Kreidler, who in his first term has worked so hard to combat violence and to cut the deficit while the Republicans just talked about it. I want to thank Maria Cantwell for a lot of things, but especially for working so hard, along with Senator Murray, to make sure Washington continues to be a center of innovation and software and computer technology, to work with government and industry partnerships to make sure that this is part of our 21st century economy and part of your 21st century future. Before he leaves the Congress, I want to thank Al Swift for being a good friend and a good supporter and ask you to replace him with Harriet Spanel.

And I want to say, every time I am around Ron Sims, I like him more and more and more. I was sitting there listening to his speech today, in the place where we were just before we came over here, thinking about, you know, this will be a real dose for the U.S. Senate, I mean, a real person. Instead of somebody that postures about being tough on crime and then votes against the crime bill, you've got a guy who goes out and puts his life on the line to try to fight crime and violence and give kids a better chance at life. Instead of pontificating about family and work, you've got a man who's worked all his life, raised a good family, and then spent a fair amount of his time trying to make sure everybody else could raise their family, too. So I hope you will bring him home in the next 2 weeks, and I want to say more about that. But I can tell you it will not only be good for you, it would do the rest of the United States Senate, especially the crowd on the other side, a world of good to have to deal with somebody who's actually lived about the things they spout off about all the time.

Folks, I think it would not be an overstatement to say that this is kind of an unusual election. [Laughter] And the psychology is sort of strange. And there is a huge gap between what is actually going on and what people have been told for 2 years is going on, a huge gap. Now, this is a very great country and a very good country. And given the information and the facts, the people will nearly always do the right thing.

But I want you to think about this: I went to Washington 21 months ago to restore the American dream, to get our country together, to take up problems too long ignored because my predecessors didn't want to deal with all the heat that would come down, to seize opportunities that we had too long walked away from.

My mission was pretty simple: I wanted to put Government on the side of ordinary Americans. I wanted to do it by supporting work and family with things like family leave and tax cuts for working people who work full time and have kids in the home that are just barely above poverty, and they ought never to be in poverty if you work full time and you got kids in your house. I wanted Government to be on the side of ordinary Americans by empowering people so they could assume responsibility for their own lives. That's what our bill to have school-to-work apprenticeships was about so that young people that don't go to college can at least train for good jobs. That's what the middle class college loan program was all about, to give lower interest rates and longer repayment terms so that nobody--I mean, nobody--ever walks away from a college education because they're afraid they can't afford to go or will never be able to pay their debts back.

With 30 years of accumulated social problems, I wanted a serious attack on crime and violence. That's what the Brady bill and the crime bill and all of its facets was all about. That's what our welfare reform efforts, to liberate people so they can succeed as parents and workers and won't be on the dole for a lifetime--that's what that is all about.

I wanted to get this economy going again. That's what bringing down the deficit and investing more in new technologies and expanding trade for Washington State and all the other States in the country--that's what that was all about, to get the economy going again. And I wanted to change the way the Government works. I wanted us to do more with less. There are more than 70,000 fewer people working for the National Government than there were the day I took office. There will soon be a reduction in the life of this budget of about 270,000, our Government will be the smallest it's been since John Kennedy. And every cent of the savings will go back to you at the grassroots to help you fight crime and build a more just society.