Remarks at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 4, 1996

The President. Thank you very much, Jennie Nelson. Your fellow student did a good job, didn't she, up here in front of this big crowd? Give her a hand. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you, Senator John Glenn. Thank you, Senator Ben Espy. Thank you, Ted Strickland, for having the courage to run for the Congress again. Your courage should be rewarded, and I hope it will be, by the people of Ohio.

We have a number of other people here with me today, including our National Treasurer and your former State treasurer from Ohio, Mary Ellen Withrow. Thank you, Mary Ellen. And we have another candidate for Congress here today who is opposing the architect of the Gingrich-Dole budget that shut the Government down and would have divided the country. Thank you, Cynthia Ruccia, for having the courage to take on that race for Congress.

I thank Representative Charlita Tavares for being here; our State Democratic chair, David Leland; State senate candidate Mary Jo Kilroy; Bill Burga, the president of the AFL-CIO; Mike Bilirakis, the president of the Ohio Education Association; Tom Mooney of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. Tony Celebreeze, thank you for being here. And thank you, Ohio State. Thank you, band and cheerleaders, for being here. Thank you all up there. Thank you.

On the way in today, your student leaders gave me an Ohio State pin, your fine basketball coach gave me a jogging suit for the winter that I can run in, and I needed no reminding that your football team is having another wonderful season. Congratulations.

Ladies and gentlemen, it seems almost amazing to me that it was 4 years ago that I came here to Ohio State, and we had a great rally outside, thousands of people, a lot of enthusiasm. I think I stood around for more than an hour to shake hands, talking to you about my hopes for the future.

Now, 4 years later, you are about to go to the polls, just a week from today, to elect the last President of the 20th century and the first President of the 21st century. Four years ago when I came here, I came because I was worried about how you would go into the 21st century and because I had a vision for what America ought to be like at the dawn of that new era: a country with the American dream alive and well for everyone willing to work for it; a country still leading the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity; a country where we are coming together in the midst of all of our diversity, not being driven apart and divided as so many other countries in the world are. I believe we are closer to that vision today than we were 4 years ago, and I ask you to stay on the right track to build our bridge to the 21st century.

Our strategy of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, an American community in which everyone has a place at the table and a role to play, is paying off. You heard Senator Glenn say we have 10 1/2 million new jobs; unemployment in Ohio has dropped a third to 4.6 percent. We've cut the deficit by 63 percent. We got the lowest combined rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 28 years. We have the biggest drop in child poverty in 20 years. We have the highest rate of homeownership in 15 years. Household income is up $1,600. We have now dropping crime rates and dropping welfare rolls for 4 years in a row. We are moving in the right direction toward the 21st century, and I ask you to stay on that track.

We are also breaking the barriers that will unleash a future that we can only imagine and sometimes not even imagine. Many of you students in this audience will soon be doing jobs that have not been invented yet. Some of you will soon be doing jobs that have not been imagined yet.

Here at Ohio State and Ohio Tech and biotech centers and firms all across America, new discoveries are being made at breathtaking speed. The United States Government just signed a contract with IBM to produce a supercomputer-----

Audience members. Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

Audience members. Boo-o-o!

The President. Wait. Hey, wait a minute. Just listen to it. Wait, wait. Wait a minute; wait a minute. Just listen to them. Wait a minute. Why are they screaming like that? We heard you. Now, how about the first amendment? We heard your message; now you listen to ours. This is a university. This is a university, and we have respected their free speech. They won't respect ours because they hate the truth. We're better off, and we had to run over them to do it.

Now - they must not have any student loans; Senator Dole voted against creating the student loan program. Ohio State adopted our direct loan program. They must not be in the direct loan program, which gives you the right to pay your loan back as a percentage of your income, because Senator Dole led the fight against the direct loan program. And they must believe we should start the 21st century as the only great nation in the world with no one in the President's Cabinet to represent education, because that is part of the Dole-Kemp program for the 21st century: Get rid of the Department of Education.