What Bill Clinton Said And What Was Written

Really. Think about this: President Obama's plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for of our children, our families and our nation. It’s a heck of a lot better. It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test. 

My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, you have to decidewe’ll be deciding what kind of country you we want to live in. If you want a you're on your own, winner take all winner-take- all, you’re-on-your-own society you should support the Republican ticket. But If you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities- a "we're all in it this together" society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

If you want every American to vote and you think it's wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. And If you think the president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought here as children when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to college who want to go to college or serve in the military, you should must vote for Barack Obama.

If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is really alive and well again, and where the United States remains the leading maintains its leadership as a force for peace and prosperity in this a highly competitive world, you should have to vote for Barack Obama.

Look, I love our country so much.- and I know we're coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we’ve always come back we've always come out stronger than we went in. People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false teeth. And so far, every single person that’s bet against America has lost money because we always come back. We come through every fire a little stronger and a little better. And we will again as long as we do it together. We And we do it because in the end we decide to champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor- to form the cause of forming a more perfect union.

If that's what you believe, if that's what you want, we have to re-elect President Barack Obama. My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama.

God bless you - God bless America.

Now, when you say, what are you going to do about this $5 trillion you just added on? They say they'll oh, we’ll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code. When So then you ask "well, which loopholes and how much?" You know what they say? "See me about that after the election on that." I’m not making it up. That’s their position. See me about that after the election.

Now, People ask me all the time how we delivered got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If — arithmetic! If they stay with a $5 trillion tax cut plan — in a debt reduction plan? — the arithmetic tells us no matter what they say that one of three things will is about to happen:

1) assuming they try to do what they say they’ll do, get rid of — pay — cover it by deductions, cutting those deductions, one, they'll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle class families will see their tax bill go up an average of $2,000 year while people making over anybody who makes $3 million or more  a year get will still get a 250,000 dollar tax cut see their tax bill go down $250,000; or

2) they'll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our the national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they'll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education, child nutrition programs, all the and other programs that help to empower middle class families and poor children help poor kids, not to mention cutting Oh, they’ll cut back on investments in roads and bridges and science and technology and biomedical research. That’s what they’ll do. They’ll hurt the middle class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to upper-income people who’ve been getting it all along.

Or 3) in spite of all the rhetoric, they'll just do what they've been doing for more than thirty plus years now- They’ll go in and cut taxes way more than they cut spending, especially with that big defense increase, and they’ll just explode the debt and weaken the economy. And they’ll destroy the federal government’s ability to help you by letting interest gobble up all your tax payments. Remember, Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office, and doubled it after I leftthe debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic. It was a highly inconvenient thing for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas, and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was four. It’s arithmetic. We simply can't afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double-down on trickle-down.

Now — wait a minute — let's look at the Republican charge other big charge the Republicans made. It’s a real doozy. They actually have charged and run ads saying that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to work. Wait, you need to know, here’s what happened. Nobody ever tells you what really happened — Here's what happened.

When some Republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama administration listened because we all know it’s hard for even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only said they would only do it if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. You hear that? More work. Now, did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less. So this is personal to me. We moved millions of people off welfare. It was one of the reasons that in the eight years I was president, we had a hundred times as many people move out of poverty into the middle class than happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. It’s a big deal. So But I am telling you the claim that President Obama weakened welfare reform's work requirement is just not true. 

But they keep on running the ads claiming it running ads on it. You want to know why? As their campaign pollster said "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Now finally I can say, that is true. I couldn't have said it better myself- I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad. And I hope you and every American within the sound of my voice remembers it every time they see one of those ads and it turns into an ad to re-elect Barack Obama and keep the fundamental principles of personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job into work as soon as we can.

Now, Let's talk about the debt. Today, interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them. But it will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to rise. We have to deal with it We’ve got to deal with this big long- term debt problem or it will deal with us. It will gobble up a bigger and bigger percentage of the federal budget we’d rather spend on education and health care and science and technology. It — we’ve got to deal with it. Now, what has the president done? President Obama He has offered a reasonable plan with $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade, with $2 of spending reductions for every $1 of revenue increases, with 2 1/2 trillion (dollars) coming from — for every $2 1/2 trillion in spending cuts, he raises a dollar in new revenues — 2 1/2-to-1 and tight controls on future spending. It's That’s the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, a bipartisan commission.

Now, I think the president's this plan is better than the Governor Romney's plan, because First, the Romney plan failsed the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers just don't add up.

It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan but it begins with $5 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-year period. I mean, consider this. What would you do if you had this problem? Somebody says, oh, we’ve got a big debt problem. We’ve got to reduce the debt. So what’s the first thing you say we’re going to do? Well, to reduce the debt, we’re going to have another $5 trillion in tax cuts heavily weighted to upper-income people. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. So we’ll make the debt hole bigger before we start to get out of it. 

And the gains are even greater than that because a bunch of Other insurance companies have lowered applied to lower their rates to meet comply with the requirement. Second, More than 3 million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents' policies can cover them can now carry them on family policies. Millions of seniors are receiving preventive care including all the way from breast cancer screenings and to tests for heart problems and scores of other things. And younger people are getting them, too. Fourth, Soon the insurance companies, not the government, the insurance companies, will have millions of new customers many of them middle class people with pre-existing conditions who never could get insurance before. 

Now, finally, listen to this. And For the last two years — after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade,for the last two years, health care spending has grown costs have been under 4 percent, in both years for the first time in 50 years.

So let me ask you something. Are we all better off because President Obama fought for health care reform it and passed it? You bet we are.

Now, There were two other attacks on the president in Tampa that I think deserve an answer. First, Both Gov. Romney and congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly robbing Medicare of $716 billion. That’s the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010, and they got a lot of votes on it. But it’s not true. Look, here’s what really happened. You be the judge. Here's what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits at all. None. What the president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut cutting unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that weren't making people any healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service.. And instead of raiding Medicare He used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program, and — you all got to listen carefully to this; this is really important —and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare Trust Fund so it is solvent till 2024. It's now solvent until 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn't weaken Medicare, they strengthened it Medicare.

Now, When congressman Ryan looked into the that TV camera and attacked President Obama's Medicare savings as, quote "the biggest coldest power play" in raiding Medicare, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. You see, because that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of Medicare savings congressman Ryan had he has in his own budget. You got to get one thing — it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did. So ... now, you’re having a good time, but this is getting serious, and I want you to listen. It’s important, because a lot of people believe this stuff.

Now, At least on this issue, on this one issue, Gov. Romney's been consistent. He attacked President Obama too, but he actually wants to repeal the those savings and give the money back to the insurance companies, He wants to go back to the old system, which means we’ll re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more for drugs, and we’ll reduce the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight full years. So now if he's elected and does what he promised to do Medicare will now go grow [sic] broke by 2016. Think about that. If that happens, you That means, after all, we won't have to wait until their voucher program to begins kicks in in 2023 to see the end Medicare as we know it. They’re going to do it to us sooner than we thought.

Now, folks, this is serious, But because it gets worse. And you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming decade 10 years. Of course, that will hurt that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids, but that's not all. Lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly Almost two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid. 

It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help and on people with disabilities, including kids from middle class families, with special needs like, Down syndrome or autism a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions. I don't know how those families are going to deal with it. And honestly, let’s think about it, if that happens, I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.

Now, The agreement the administration made with management, labor and environmental groups to double car mileage over the next few years is another good deal that was a good deal too: it will cut your gas prices in half, your gas bill in half. No matter what the price is, if you double the mileage of your car, your bill will be half what it would have been. It will make us more energy independent, It will cut greenhouse gas emissions, and add another 500,000 good jobs according to several analyses, over the next 20 years, it’ll bring us another half a million good new jobs into the American economy.

President Obama's "all of the above" energy plan The president’s energy strategy, which he calls “all of the above,” is helping too- the boom in oil and gas production combined with greater energy efficiency has driven oil imports to a near 20-year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. Renewable energy production has also doubled.

We do need more new jobs, lots of them, Of course, we need a lot more new jobs. but there are already more than three million jobs open and unfilled in America today, mostly because the applicants the people who apply for them don't yet have the required skills to do them. We have to prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are being actually going to be created in a world fueled by new technology. The old economy is not coming back. We’ve got to build a new one and educate people to do those jobs. That's why investments in our people are more important than ever.

The president and his education secretary has have supported community colleges and employers in working together to train people for open jobs that are actually open in their communities. And, even more important after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased the drop-out rate so much that we've fallen to the percentage of our young people with four-year college degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to 16th in the world in the percentage of young people with college degrees. So the president’s student loan is more important than ever. Here’s what it does — (cheers, applause) — here’s what it does. You need to tell every voter where you live about this. It his student loan reform lowers the cost of federal student loans and even more important, it gives students the right to repay the those loans as a clear, fixed, low percentage of their incomes for up to 20 years.

Now what does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. It That means no one will ever have to drop-out of college for fear they can't repay their debt, and no one will have to turn down a job, as a teacher, a police officer or a small town doctor because it doesn't pay enough to make the debt payments. And it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in a little rural area, they won’t have to turn those jobs down because they don’t pay enough to repay they debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their salary. This will change the future for young Americans.

I don’t know about you, but on all these issues, I know we're better off because President Obama made these decisions he did.

Now, That brings me to health care.

The Republicans call it derisively Obamacare and They say it's a government takeover of health care that they'll repeal a disaster, and that if we’ll just elect them they’ll repeal it. Well, Are they right? Let's take a look at what's actually happened so far. First, Individuals and businesses have secured already gotten more than a billion dollars in refunds from their insurance premiums because the new law requires 80 percent to 85 percent of your premiums to be spent on go to your health care, not profits or promotion.