Hillary Clinton's Voter Registration Rally in Philadelphia
The event, at West Philadelphia High School, attracted a lot of young
voters ready to sign up their peers to vote int their first
presidential election.
At a voter registration event in West Philadelphia on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton made the latest stop in her campaign’s “Three Million Stronger” Initiative, to register and commit three million Americans to vote this November. Clinton also highlighted her five-part economic plan to
build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top,
and contrasted her agenda for tax fairness and investing in Pennsylvania
with Donald Trump’s plan to give large tax breaks to the wealthy and
people like him – including what could be a $4 billion tax break to his
own family. Clinton said, “I’ve got to tell you I could find a much
better use for that $4 billion; early childhood, helping our veterans,
helping our law enforcement do what they need to do, helping more people
get the jobs training and the skills training. In fact, we could hire
95,000 public school teachers for $4 billion. We could actually double
health care for our veterans for $4 billion. And we could invest in more
infrastructure, affordable housing, and small businesses for $4 billion
right here in Pennsylvania.”
After the event, Hillary for Pennsylvania launched a West Philadelphia canvass led by local hip-hop artist Freeway. Clinton’s remarks, as transcribed, are below:
“Hello,
Philadelphia. Oh, wow. I am – Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so
much. I am so excited to be back in the city that hosted the greatest
convention. I can’t tell you as I’ve been traveling across the country
how many people have said to me how much they loved being in
Philadelphia. And, believe it or not, there are so people who hadn’t
been to Philadelphia before the convention. And they left loving this
city. And I can’t thank all of you enough for all the hospitality.
I
want to thank my longtime friend Congressman Bob Brady. Thanks to
Mayor Jim Kenney; State Senator Vincent Hughes; State Representative
Dwight Evans; Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell; City Council President
Darrell Clarke; a longtime friend of mine, former City Councilwoman
Marian Tasco; and all of those who spoke in the preprogram. And to
everybody gathered here, it is exciting to be back. And, as you heard,
we want you all to register to vote. We have places to register because
we don’t want you on the sidelines come November. This is the most
consequential election. The stakes could not be higher. And we want
everybody in Philadelphia, everybody across Pennsylvania to be part of a
great victory in November and then the future that we’re going to build
together.
Have any of you been watching the Olympics? Well, I’ve
got to tell you I am a big Olympics fan, those athletes, what they give
up, the sacrifice, the work. I understand that Philadelphia’s own Nia
Ali just made the first round heat in the 100 Meter Hurdles today, but
Team USA is showing the world what this country stands for. I am proud
of our team there, and I am proud of the incredible teamwork that they
show. I was thinking the other day when Donald Trump speaks, he speaks
about fear. He speaks about such negativity and such pessimism. And
then I watch the Olympics, and it’s exactly the opposite. You have young
people going out, doing their best every day to get prepared to
compete. And that’s what we’re going to do in America. There is
nothing we can’t do if we put our minds to it.
I was up in
Scranton yesterday with Vice President Joe Biden. And we had a great
day. Both Joe and I have roots in Scranton. So we saw a lot of people
that we’re related to, a lot of people who tell us we’re related to
them. But it just reminded me of how lucky we are to be part of a
country that has provided so much opportunity. It’s not perfect. We
know that. But there is no place that has provided more opportunity to
my grandfather, who came here as a young immigrant, worked in a factory,
created a great life, family; and then my dad, who was a small
businessman in Chicago, worked hard. And I want that story to be true
for every American family. And that is – that is the principal
motivation that I have in this campaign.
People say to me all the
time, I mean, ‘How do you do it?’ They see me on TV. I’m in one
state. Then I’m in another state. Then I’m in another state. And I’m
lucky. I can sleep on planes and in cars. So that helps. But what
it’s really all about is getting up every day and being motivated to
make sure that every person in this crowd and every person in this
commonwealth and every person in this country has the same chance to
live up to your dreams, the same opportunities that previous generations
of Americans enjoyed. And that’s why we’re going to keep talking about
what kind of jobs we’re going to create.
I met the principal of
this beautiful school a little earlier. And I met two of her students,
who are about to graduate, right there. Thank you both. Young man […]
We need you. Young woman wants to be a surgeon. Thank you. We need
you. I met another young woman who told me she wanted to be a surgeon,
and people tell her, oh, she can’t be a surgeon. I don’t remember where
she went, this young woman. But don’t you believe it. Don’t you
believe it. We’re going to lift people up. We’re going to help every
single person in America live up to those dreams. And we’re going to do
it by creating more good jobs, jobs in infrastructure, jobs in advanced
manufacturing, jobs in clean energy. We’re going to do it by investing
in education, from early childhood education all the way into lifelong
learning.
I want to thank the mayor again for his commitment to
early childhood education. I want to thank the superintendent, who I
met earlier, Superintendent Hite, for his commitment to early childhood
education. And I particularly want to thank all the teachers and
educators in the audience, who make dreams come true. So I know what we
can do together, but how are we going to pay for it? Well, I’ll tell
you how we’re going to pay for it. We’re going where the money is.
We’re going after the super wealthy. We’re going after the
corporations. We’re going after Wall Street so they pay their fair
share.
That’s why I was so surprised when Donald Trump came out
and talked about the economy because, actually, he would give trillions
of dollars in more tax breaks to the wealthy. He wants a new tax
loophole that we call the Trump loophole that would actually help him
and everybody else who is really wealthy to cut their tax rate in half
on a lot of their income. He wants to eliminate the estate tax, which
does nothing for 99.8 percent of all Americans, but if Trump is as
wealthy as he claims to be, it would save his family $4 billion. Now,
I’ve got to tell you I could find a much better use for that $4 billion;
early childhood, helping our veterans, helping our law enforcement do
what they need to do, helping more people get the jobs training and the
skills training. In fact, we could hire 95,000 public school teachers
for $4 billion. We could actually double health care for our veterans
for $4 billion. And we could invest in more infrastructure, affordable
housing, and small businesses for $4 billion right here in Pennsylvania.
So
I think we know what we need to do. The question is whether we will do
it, and that all comes down to who shows up and votes. That’s why we
have been registering voters in our campaign. We launched a drive to
register three million voters and get those voters to commit to vote
because it doesn’t do you any good if you register and you don’t show
up. Right? So we’ve got people waving over there. They’ve got their
voter registration forms for you. And we want you to be part of this.
So
here’s what I’m asking. I’m asking you to register yourself, and I’m
asking you to ask everybody you know to register, because when we do
that, we make a commitment that we care about what’s going to happen in
this election. And we also care about winning back the Senate, making
the Senate Democratic again. And trying to pick up some more Democrats
in the House of Representatives. That will help, too. You see, I have
this old-fashioned idea, looking at our last two Democratic Presidents,
President Obama – and a guy named Clinton – that we got a lot done for
America when they were in office. Right?
When I hear folks
criticizing President Obama, I’m thinking, well, what don’t they like?
They don’t like the fact that he helped us save the economy from the
worst financial crash since the 1930s? They don’t like the fact we now
have 20 million more people who have access to affordable health care?
They don’t like the fact that his intervention saved the auto industry
and imposed the toughest new rules on Wall Street? What don’t they
like? And when I hear people criticize Bill, I think, what don’t they
like, the peace or the prosperity? I mean it’s kind of hard to know.
So
don’t be complacent, my friends, because even though we’re doing fine
right now, I’m not taking anybody, anywhere, for granted. We’re going
to work hard these next 85 days. And I can’t do it without your help.
Now, we have packets for you at the door so you can also canvass, meet
your neighbors, canvass across West Philly after this event. This
evening we’re opening our Southwest Philly office on 52nd and Cedar.
Stop by. The deadline for registering is October 11th. So we have work
to do.
But here’s what I promise you. I promise you that we’re
going to go not only as hard as we can to win this election, but then to
go as hard as we can to achieve the results that the country needs.
And that’s why I talk specifically about what I want to do. I know that
some people make fun of me. They say, oh, she has all these plans, and
you can go to my website and read my plans. But I’ll tell you. You
know why I do that? Because I want you to know what I’m going to try to
do so that you can both help me and hold me accountable for doing what I
told you I want to do.
We want to create millions of new good
jobs in infrastructure because our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our
ports, our airports, are falling apart. Our water systems, our sewer
systems, are falling apart. And we also need a new, modern electric
grid to be able to take and distribute all the clean, renewable energy
that we’re going to be producing. And when people say to me, ‘Well, we
can’t bring manufacturing back to the United States,’ I say, ‘But I’ve
seen it.’ I have seen what we can do. I have been in plants in
Pennsylvania, in Ohio, across America, who are doing just that. And
when I meet the people, there’s such pride and dignity.
When I was
in Johnstown Wire Technologies on our bus trip with Tim Kaine and I met
people working there, I met a young Marine veteran. He’s been there
now for a couple years. He is as proud as he can be because he’s making
something that really makes a difference and that is exported around
the world from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. So don’t tell me we can’t make
things. I know we can.
I was in a plant outside of Detroit last
week. It used to be an auto supply plant. And then in 2000 – it was
started in 1955 by the grandfather of the guy who’s the chair of their
board now. In 1955, they started. They were making auto parts. Then
in 2000, their main customer, one of the auto makers, moved a lot of
their production. Now, they could have been really just broken by
that. They could have said, you know what? We got to close up shop.
But that’s not what they did. They were so determined to keep that
business doing. So they said, what skills do we have? What can we do
now? And they got into the aerospace business. So there I saw the nose
cone of an F-35. There I saw the parts they’re making for NASA for the
rocket that will take astronauts on the manned mission to Mars, in
Warren, Michigan, a place that used to make auto parts which is now
literally making rocket parts.
And you know what I thought? I
thought, wait a minute. This could have been one of those sort of ‘poor
me’ stories. We can’t do it. We can’t compete. But instead, people
got up and said, ‘Yes, we can,’ and yes, they did. Right? And I started
looking at the machines that they were using, a lot of precision
machines made in Germany, made in Japan, made in Italy. And I said to
the workers there, ‘Could we make those machines?’ They said, ‘You bet
we could.’ If we have the right partnership between our government and
manufacturing, we can have a renaissance in manufacturing and jobs that
will give people good livings and the pride and dignity of work.
And
here’s something we don’t say often enough. More than half of the jobs
that are predicted for 2020 are not going to require a four-year
college degree. So I want to make college affordable for everybody, and
we’re going to get that done. I want to help you refinance and pay down
your student debt if you already have that. But I also want to make
sure community college is free and we have more technical education back
in our high schools. I want us to have more apprenticeships so that
more young people get the skills that they can use to fill those jobs in
2020.
So I am optimistic. And another big area where I’m
optimistic is clean, renewable energy, where we’re going to be the 21st
century clean energy superpower. Not China, not Germany. The United
States of America. So I know we can do this. We got ourselves out of
the worst financial crash. We’re standing. Now we’re going to start
running again. And we are particularly going to focus on young people
who have been left out of education and the job market, and middle aged
and older people who have lost jobs and need new skills to be able to
compete and win again in the job market.
And while we’re doing
that, we’re going to start at the very beginning with early childhood
education, universal prekindergarten. Because we are stronger together,
and we need all of our people to feel that they’ve got a shot. You
know, even Abraham Lincoln talked about how important it was to give
every American a fair shot in the race of life. That’s what we’ve got
to get back to. It’s just wrong that some people do well and other
people feel like they’re never going to catch up. So I want to be a
president for not only Democrats, but Republicans and Independents too. I
want to be a president for the struggling, the striving, and the
successful. I want to be a president for those who voted for me, and
those who don’t vote for me. Because we are all in this together.
So
there’s a lot we can do on the economy, there’s a lot we can do on
education. There’s a lot we can do on healthcare. We’re going to build
on the Affordable Care Act, and we’re going to get the cost of
premiums, co-pays, and deductibles down. And we’re going to tackle the
high cost of prescription drugs. And we are going to do more to help
people deal with mental health and addiction problems. I probably have
more people talking to me about mental health and addiction than nearly
anything else. You know, folks talk about the economy, they talk about
education. But when it gets really personal – you know, I’m in a coffee
shop, or talking to folks on a line here, and somebody takes my hand
and pulls me closer, what they talk to me about is mental health and
addiction. And shame on us if we don’t do more to help people who are
suffering, and families who are in pain because of that.
And we
are going to have a national security and foreign policy that America
can be proud of. We are going to lead the world in accordance with our
values, in pursuance of our interest, and in furtherance of our
security, along with our friends and allies. It just absolutely
bewilders me when I hear Donald Trump try to talk about national
security. It’s not just – as Joe Biden says, it’s not just that he
doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s bad enough. But what he
often says hurts us. It sends the wrong message to friend and foe alike
in the world.
And we are living in a complex world, one where we
need steadiness, where we’ve got to have a real sense of how we’re going
to get to where we want to go, to help as many people, to keep our
country safe, but to do it with the kind of bigness, the kind of
confidence that really marks America at our best. You know, sometimes
when I hear Trump talking about how we should all be so afraid all the
time, and then I find a few minutes to watch the Olympics, I think, my
goodness, you know, when you go out and compete, not everybody can win,
but you’ve got to do your best. And can you imagine Michael Phelps or
Simone Biles, or all these other great American athletes in the locker
rooms saying, well, I don’t know, I’m too afraid to go out and compete?
No. They get out there. They compete. They do their best. They
demonstrate the kind of spirit that we want from all Americans.
And
then finally, I think we have to defend the advances in rights that we
have made here in America. And I am very proud of our young people.
This is the most tolerant and generous generation that we’ve ever seen
in America. And yes, we are going to defend human rights, and civil
rights, and women’s rights, and gay rights, and voter rights, and worker
rights. Because if we’re going to lift everybody up, we need to do it
in a way that lets those people feel that their dignity is respected as
well.
And, yes, I am going to take on the gun lobby to try to save
lives here in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania. And as I said here
in Philadelphia in my speech, that doesn’t mean I want to abolish the
Second Amendment. That doesn’t mean that I want to round up people’s
guns. What that means is I want to keep you from being shot by somebody
who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place. We can’t let this go on.
We need comprehensive background checks, close the gun show loophole,
the online loophole. We need to pass a law finally that says people who
are on the terrorist watch list can’t buy – can’t buy weapons in
America.
So I’m excited about what we can do, but first we’ve got
to get there. So let me thank you for being out here on a hot August
afternoon at this beautiful high school. And let me ask you to be sure
to register to canvas, to be part of this campaign. Because I’m not
trying to just win an election. I’m trying to build a base of voters
who understand that we’ve got to stand up for these rights, we have to
work for these causes, we have to be committed to these goals, who will
get up with me after the election and work to make sure that we actually
deliver the results that we all know we need. So my friends, let’s go
to work, and let’s build the future that America deserves. Thank you
and God bless you.”
