For The Herald Bulletin
March 21, 2008 06:34 pm
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The following is a transcript of remarks by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made March 20, 2008 in Anderson, Ind. The transcript was provided by Clinton’s campaign office. Her appearance was titled, “Solutions for America Town Hall.”
SEN. CLINTON: Let’s hear it for Evan Bayh. Oh, hello Anderson. It is so great to be here and thank you Mayor for being with me. I know how hard the Mayor is working and I really appreciate his support. It means a lot to me. I’ll try to help him. You know, I’ve been hearing about the Wigwam for days. I am so proud that I can say I was here.
I look out at this great crowd and I know how resilient and energized the people of Anderson are and what you need now is a president who cares about you and will work for you and make a difference for you. It is great being here and I want to just recognize a few other people in addition to your good Mayor. We have the newly elected congressman, Congressman André Carson. We have State Representative Terri Austin. And former Mayor of East Chicago Bob Pastrick. I am so pleased to be here with all of you. We started this morning in Terre Haute which happens to be where Evan was born. I figured one of the best roads to success in Indiana is to follow the road that Evan Bayh tried and he ended up in the United States Senate.
Even though this crowd is so large, I want to be real serious for a few minutes because as Evan said we’ve got some big challenges ahead, don’t we. I don’t think it matters whether you are a Republican or a Democrat or any kind of ideology. We’re first and foremost Americans. We in our country, in our greatness and in our goodness. But we know we’ve got to take a different direction, we cannot continue on the path that has been laid out by George W. Bush – it’s not working.
We know what will work. We know what kind of leadership is required and that’s what this election is about. Because we have a really momentous choice ahead of us. We have to elect a president who, starting on Jan. 20, 2009, will bring our nation together, set some big goals again and call upon Americans to work toward meeting those goals. I know that no one can do it alone. There isn’t anything a president can make happen by waving a magic wand. But there isn't anything America can’t do once we make up our minds to get it done.
I am confident and optimistic that we can turn this economy around. We can get back to creating millions of new good jobs. During the 1990s, as Evan said, more than 22 million new jobs were created in America. Family incomes were rising. More people were lifted out of poverty than at any time in our recent history. Look what has happened since. President Bush inherited a balanced budget and surplus and squandered it, decided it would be disposable, drove our country deeper into debt so every day we have to borrow money – not just from the Chinese. We owe money to everybody; we owe money to Mexico if you can believe it. We have allowed ourselves to become dependent on foreign oil and foreign money. That is a recipe for decline and it is going to be up to the next president to stand up and say loudly and clearly no more. We are going to turn this around; we are not going to be dependent on anybody else. So here’s what I would do.
No. 1, we’re going to get back to fiscal responsibility. We’re going to start living within the means of the Federal government again. Because I don’t believe we should be going deeper and deeper into debt and putting that burden on the backs of our children. They had nothing to do with it. Think about this, every child born in America today comes into the world with $30,000 of debt on his or her tiny shoulders. That’s not a legacy we can be proud of. We need to begin once again to exercise what we preach — to be responsible. That will begin to reverse this tide, this ocean of red ink that we have been submerged under because of George W. Bush’s failures and reckless policies. Then we are going to go through the tax code of the United States and we’re going to remove every single advantage that goes to any business that exports a job out of Indiana to a foreign country.
Here’s something else we're going to do. We’re going to end the tax breaks that enable a Wall Street money manager to pay a lower percentage of his income in taxes than a teacher, a nurse or a truck driver right here in Anderson.
Then we’re going to take all the trade agreements and we’re going to call a time out. We’re going to examine every single one of them and we’re going to change them so that they are pro-American. We are not going to be involved in trade agreements that put our workers and our businesses and our country at a disadvantage any longer.
I am the only candidate running who has said we will renegotiate NAFTA. It is not working the way it should for people in Anderson, Indiana and across America.
And we will also start once again investing in manufacturing. Evan Bayh and I are members of the Manufacturing Caucus in the Senate because I represent New York. Upstate New York has a lot in common with Indiana. We have lost a lot of jobs. We have seen a lot of factories move, even profitable factories. I will never forget getting an emergency call one afternoon in my office in the Capitol about a company that had just pushed its workforce to make all kinds of changes. And they did. They made themselves more productive. They changed work rules and work hours. And they were so proud of themselves because they turned that company around and that company was making money.
And all of a sudden the parent company decided they weren’t making quite enough money. Making a profit wasn’t the answer. They wanted to make even a bigger profit. So they told those thousands of workers, “Well, thanks very much for turning yourselves inside out and doing what we asked you to do. We’re still picking up, and we’re moving to Asia.” I called that CEO, and I asked him. I said, “I want you to explain to me how as an American you can make a decision that undermines the livelihood of thousands of people, turns your back on a community where this company started, because you can make a little more profit somewhere else.” Well, he didn’t have a good answer. Well, we’re going to come up with some answers, and we’re going to say to the people who run American businesses isn’t it time you put America first again and put American workers first again?
And you know we’re going to create more good new jobs. I believe we can create millions of new jobs with clean, renewable energy. Indiana can be right in the forefront. Indiana can have not only more homegrown energy from the agricultural products you produce, but I believe with the industrial base and the skilled workforce you have here in Indiana, you can be part of the next generation of higher gas mileage cars, of wind energy and solar energy, and geothermal, and hydrogen, and so much else.
You see, I believe that we cannot afford to lose our auto companies. There are some people who seem to think “Well, we can’t make autos in America any more.” I don’t know what they’re thinking. One out of every eight jobs is connected to autos.
You know very well the impact of what has happened right there in Anderson. And I believe if the government were a real partner for the auto companies and for the UAW, we could turn around American auto manufacturing. We could be the leaders again. We could be exporting around the world.
Imagine: Right here in Indiana, we could have flex-fuel cars being made, coming off the assembly line, going to a gas station, being filled up part with gas and part with ethanol from Indiana products. That should be the future we are trying to achieve. I am confident we can. We’re not going to do it if we continue to just listen to the same voices and get upset and frustrated, but nothing ever changes. If we don’t take back the White House, I will guarantee you in four years and eight years and 12 years we’ll still be complaining about the same things.
If we take back the White House, if I’m fortunate enough to be your president, one thing anybody who knows me will tell you, I will get up everyday and work my heart out until we make these changes and increase this economy and put new jobs on the future agenda of America.
It’s important that the public and the press far beyond Anderson understand this. I want to ask two of your fellow citizens to come here and join the Mayor and the Senator and me. Because I want you to hear first hand, many of you know this, but some of the folks traveling with us from the national and the international press may not really understand what it means to have worked hard and have the rug pulled out from under you.
You’ve done everything you were supposed to do and all of a sudden the future looks kind of dark. People in Indiana, just like most Americans, they don’t ask for much, but they sure would like to have a president who paid attention to them and understood what the problems were. So I want to ask Steven and Robin to join me up here and I want them to tell their stories because I think the best way to illustrate what we’re going to have to do is to get specific and put a human face on it. It’s not some abstraction — I could probably get a story from every one of you if we had time. But I want first to hear from Steven. Steven, will you introduce yourself and explain what’s going on?
STEVE LEWIS: Well, my name is Steve Lewis. I’m the President of UAW Local 663 here in Anderson Guide workers. It is wonderful to see so many union brothers and sisters here today. Thank you everybody for coming. As most of you know, Guide Corporation went from approximately 5-6,000 workers in the ’70s and ’80s down to a whopping zero workers today.
We’ve seen it happen all over the country. We’ve seen it happen time and time again. I cannot tell you unless you’ve lived through it how devastating of an experience this is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re single or have a family, and I have my family here with me here today — my beautiful wife and boys and sister and dad and the whole nine yards. It’s amazing how many people you know when you’re going to get to come upstage, isn’t it?
But honestly, this is a very serious issue and we are so thankful to Hillary for coming here and telling us that she is going to make a change for Anderson, Indiana and for workers like myself and for workers like Robin. Thank you so much Hillary.
CLINTON: Robin, I’m going to hand you that microphone.
ROBIN DEREXSON: First of all, I want to say thank you for being here, Hillary, and I hope you get elected. I just want to say that I’ve lived in my house for almost 30 years. I’ve never been late on a payment — never been late on a payment on my house — never late on any of my bills. When I lost my job at Guide, there’s everybody on option five might struggle, like everybody else that’s, you know, their houses are in foreclosure, well, I’m taking a chance that that might happen to me as well. So you know I got two kids and hopefully I want to set an example for them as well as everybody else. So hopefully we’ll get picked up and everybody will be OK. Unless somebody like you gets elected I don’t know what’s going to happen.
CLINTON: Thank you, Robin. I know that Steve has been fighting hard to help people get placed elsewhere, get a job somewhere. That’s got to be a real burden on you.
STEVE: Well, I go back to something that you said in one of your debates that it’s not really about me — it’s about them. I see it every day. People coming into the union hall, their houses are getting foreclosed on, they’re losing their cars, the stress that’s related with losing a job. Unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of divorces, a lot of things like that. Daily struggle, day in and day out. I can’t tell you — not knowing what the future will bring is a horrendous feeling. Not knowing whether you will have the money to pay your house payment next month or your car payment or whether the stress is going to tear your family apart is extremely stressful to those, what ended up being, 1,400 people who lost their jobs in April. And it wasn’t just Guide. We had Delphi workers — go Delphi workers – you know, Hillary, we went from approximately 30,000 manufacturing jobs just in Anderson alone, to zero jobs. None of those jobs are left. We really hope and pray from the bottom of our hearts that you will be our next president and you will do something to bring those jobs back.
CLINTON: When you listen to Steve and Robin, I bet every one of you knows somebody who could tell a similar story because the ripple effects from these job losses are so extensive. You have all the pressures on a family. Earlier today in Terre Haute, Evan and I were talking to a couple, they both have good jobs but you can tell the wife is worried because the company she works for is laying off people and she’s not sure how far those layoffs are going to come, whether it’s going to include her. The stress on the family is really intense. Then you’ve got problems like what Robin’s talking about. If no money’s coming in, it’s pretty hard to keep up those payments on your house. We know that Indiana has been hard hit by the mortgage crisis. A lot of people losing their homes because they lose their jobs or because they were pulled into these subprime mortgages and frankly were kind of taken advantage of. They were given a mortgage they either couldn’t afford or it had all these hidden problems to it and it’s all coming back to haunt them so they’re at risk of losing their homes.
When somebody in a neighborhood gets foreclosed on, that affects everybody in the neighborhood. You could have a totally paid off mortgage but if the house down the block is vacant that’s going to affect your home value. Pretty soon it’s going to attract crime and then the property taxes go down and then you’ve got to lay off police officers. So you see, all of this is interconnected. That’s what’s been missing in Washington under George Bush. It’s that he doesn’t see how we are all in this together and we’ve got to work to help each other and support each other to make the best possible future.
One of the other big problems is that when you lose your job, you’re likely to lose your health care, aren’t you? We’ve got more and more people who are uninsured. And we’ve got many people who just can’t afford what they do have when it comes to insurance because they can’t afford the deductible, they can’t afford the co-pay. I don’t believe we’ll bring back our economy until we finally figure a way to provide qualify, affordable health care for everybody, whether or not they lose their job so their health care can continue.
And I am convinced that we could do this in a way that if you’re happy with your insurance, you keep it. If you’ve got good insurance, there’s no need to change. But if you’re underinsured, you lost you jobs, you’ve got insurance but it doesn’t cover what you need — we’re going to open up the plan that members of Congress and federal employees have. They have a good plan for us.
And we’re going to help people pay for it. And everything I have proposed in this campaign as a program that I think would be good for America to get us moving again and solve our problems, I tell you how I would pay for it. Because I think it’s important that we do what we have to do but in a way that’s fiscally responsible so that we don’t get ourselves further into debt. But I am convinced that we could have a health care system that lowers costs for everybody and improves quality for everybody, because when somebody without insurance goes to the emergency room, which is where they have to go because they’ve got nowhere else to go, they’ll get taken care of eventually. The doctors and the nurses and the hospital costs don’t just evaporate. They get passed on to all the rest of us.
So we all pay a hidden tax. On average, its $900 a year that each of us pays to take care of the people who don’t have insurance. So we can get costs down for everyone and I believe that we can do this in a relatively short period of time without disrupting the existing system we have. All we have to do is get doctors and nurses and hospitals, business and labor and leaders to line up against the insurance companies and I think we can take them on. Because under our Constitution it is illegal to discriminate on the basis race or gender or religion or ethnic origin, right? But insurance companies can discriminate against sick people. I think that’s unconstitutional and we’re going to prevent them from doing that in the future.
And then of course we’ve got to continue to make education the passport to opportunity for people. I believe we’ve got to start earlier helping families to prepare their own children so that those children can be successful in school. I think we need pre-kindergarten available particularly to disadvantaged four year olds so that they go into school ready to learn. I will end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind.
I want to be a president who is a good partner for our teachers and our families and our students. I don’t think the best way to improve education is to turn our children in to little test-takers and our teachers into big test-givers. I don’t think that’s the right way.
We’re going to do something nationally that your senator did for Indiana when he was governor when he created the 21st Century Scholars Program.
We were sitting in the restaurant in Terre Haute and a woman raised her hand and she talked about education and then she said, “I want to thank you senator for that program.” And it has changed people’s lives. But you see how important it is to hold out that promise of making college affordable for everyone who wants to go? Now we’ve got to do that for everybody across America. We’ve got to have more help with tax credits, more help with the Pell grants so that they have more money available for students who need them. I will take on the student loan companies that have engaged in predatory lending practices. I also want to provide two years of national service so that if you’re willing to do it, you will earn up to $10,000 a year that will go into paying for college.
But let me ask you, how many of you currently have college debt? Well, everywhere I go the answer is the same and there are so many people who are paying their college debt for years, even decades. In fact the interest rates, I don’t know that the highest interest rate is but I hear interest rates of 20 percent, 22 percent, 25 percent. Anybody have anything higher than that? 29 percent? Wow. Can you imagine? 29 percent? Here’s my offer to you and everybody who comes out of college with debt – if you’re willing to do a public service job like teaching or nursing or law enforcement, we will forgive your debt over time.
And, of course, while we’re doing all this work at home to get our country on the right track, we have to restore our leadership around the world. That starts with ending the war in Iraq and bringing our troops home.
Now, you know, Evan and I serve together on the Senate Armed Services Committee. We actually sit next to each other. He gives me good ideas for questions and I sometimes try to give him some.
We went to Iraq and Afghanistan together a year ago. We met with our commanders and with our soldiers; we met with members of the Iraqi government. I think both of us concluded that we were so proud of our young men and women in uniform. They have done everything they were asked to do. They have fulfilled every one of the missions they were given. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqi people free and fair elections and they gave the Iraqi government the space and time the decisions that only the Iraqis can make for themselves.
But when you look at what is happening, it is clear that our sons and daughters cannot win the Iraqi’s civil war. Only the Iraqis can decide their own future and I believe that with proper planning, we can begin to bring our troops home, starting within 60 days of becoming president. We have to do it carefully and it requires a lot of management, but I think it’s the only way to convince the Iraqis that they have to take responsibility and that they no longer have a blank check from the United States Government and the American military.
As we bring them home, let’s take care of our veterans. Let’s give them the health care and the services that they deserve. I am proud to have so much support from veterans. I’ve got more than 30 retired admirals and generals, including two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one Vice-Chair, Wesley Clark, others who have represented our Country with such distinction and honor — all of whom believe that I am ready to be a Commander-in-Chief who respects and protects our troops and their families.
And I promise you that I will do whatever it takes to make sure that all of those who are wounded, whether the wounds are visible or invisible, get the help they need. Evan and I have worked to try to raise awareness about traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, the disgraceful conditions that we discovered at Walter Reed because it, I think, hurts every American when we see those who served us being neglected and left behind. We will not let that happen once we are back in the White House.
Now, I am excited to be campaigning across Indiana and I am thrilled to have the support of leaders like Senator Bayh and the Mayor and others who know that we can do this together. But I can’t do it without your help. I need you to be part of Hoosiers for Hillary and to be part of this campaign.
And I also want a chance to hear from you because I can’t possibly know every concern on your minds. I can’t know every problem that you and your family face and I can’t even imagine all the good ideas you have. I have found that most of the good ideas come from people who are thinking hard about what to do to improve their communities, or jobs, or schools or country.
So I’d like to take just a few minutes and maybe hear from some of you if you have question or comments. It helps me understand more about what we’ll be working on together.
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