I wrote notes and a summary (not a full transcript, but pretty well tracked the whole address) below:
Thanks Gov. Bredesen for “sterling leadership”. TN in a lot better shape than a lot of states.
Getting to speak “under normal circumstances” – reminded audience that he got to speak b/c Jay Rockefeller choked on a chicken bone in 1991 – this helped launch Clinton’s career on the national stage.
Gratitude to Sen. Harlan Matthews, Nashville mayor Karl Dean, TNDP chair Chip Forrester, former TN Governor Ned Ray McWherter, others.
Remembered Johnny Hayes.
“Most important of all, I want to thank Al Gore. He’s the best VP this country has ever had. And if you think about the difference between Al Gore and Dick Cheney you can’t ever say that it doesn’t matter who the vice-President is.”
“I also want the home folks in TN to know one other thing… Gov. Bredesen said that if he was ever lost in a foreign country he’d want me to come and get him. But I want to be serious. I have not and will not … I haven’t made any public comments and I don’t intend to tonight about what went on when I had the honor to go, but you all should know one thing. Those two women work for Al Gore with Current TV. And he managed an enormously complicated, and there was a set of discussions that went on for much longer than anybody knows. He handled it with discretion.”
Clinton gave Gore a lot of credit for handling the situation effectively and without allowing it to become an international crisis.
Thanked the crowd for supporting him in 1992 and 1996, and said, “I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you for Hillary too.”
Mentioned being present at Kennedy’s funeral earlier that day. Obama “magnificent”. Mentioned excellent statements from Kennedy’s sons as well – “Hoping that their children have such wonderful things to say”.
Segue to difficult decisions faced by Congress.
“I’d like to say just a few words about how we came to be here.” Recounted history from 1992 – trying to break a nearly 40-year unbroken string (since 1968/Nixon) of Republicans in the White House. Remembered 1968, being 22 years old and seeing country divided over race, civil rights, Vietnam War. Saw history as unbroken from 1968 through 1992, with exception of post-Watergate victory for Carter in 1976.
“They had a bigger base.” Clinton noted that the shift that is taking place has to do with increased diversity in the country, which has given the Democratic Party a larger base.
Clinton boiled down the political landscape at any given time to three issues – the culture of the country, the issues of the time, and the quality of the candidates.
In 1992, “They had a base of about 45%. We had a base of about 40%. That meant we had to be twice as good as they were – we had to win two times as many undecided voters as they did.” Said shift is beginning to take place. Pointed to northwest Arkansas, where “Catholic churches have to have Mass in Spanish.”
Noted that, were it not for “horrible” SC decision in Bush v. Gore, Al Gore would probably have become president. But saw silver lining in the cloud of Bush presidency. America got to see what it looks like when Republicans ”actually got to do what they made sound so good all those years.”
In 2008, the demographics had shifted, the conditions were horrible for the Republicans, and we had a great candidate. Clinton said he felt that if we “didn’t have a convicted felon running,” Democrats were going to win. (This got a laugh from the Tennessee Democratic audience.)
Shift to #2
“When we win … people vote for us because they expect us to stand and deliver.” Noted that the GOP is making a ruckus at town hall meetings because they are resting their hopes on the failure of President Obama.
Then Clinton made an interesting point: “In March, April and May of last year I had the honor to travel around to 300 separate American communities.” Noted that in all those meetings, “I never had one person come to me and complain that they didn’t want the government messing with their Medicare.” No one complained in 2008 about “rationing care” in the government. In other words, as we know, this is all a manufactured political distraction.
Clinton went on to tell a few stories of people he’d met on the campaign trail – he did this in typical Clinton fashion, showing a unique ability to tell a story and a deep compassion for the welfare of average small-town Americans. Told stories of families trying to decide which child would receive needed medical procedures. Talked about families with small businesses who couldn’t afford to pay insurance premiums and pay fair wages. Repeated question: “What are we supposed to do?”
Those were the issues that families were bringing up during the campaign in 2008.
Brought up 4 key points about healthcare in the U.S. “First, we spend 16.5% of our income on healthcare, and no other country spends more than 10%.” $900 billion a year that we pay above and beyond what we’d need to pay if we had a system like other developed countries. Noted that Germany and Switzerland don’t have public socialized medicine programs. Clinton said “we’re paying more – $900 billion a year that could be going into education, that could be going into jobs, that could be going into clean energy, or covering the uninsured.”
Second point: “We only cover 84% of our people. And everybody else covers a hundred percent.” Noted that without basic primary care, people end up waiting until too late to get care and then they end up in emergency room situations. Noted that those emergency costs are then passed along via higher hospital rates which end up being passed along to consumers.
Third point: In the last evaluation, we ranked something like 35th in the world in terms of the quality of healthcare in the U.S.
“To pretend that we are getting something for this $800 or $900 billion that we need to hold onto with all our might, and that the Congress is somehow in some kind of maniacal grab is just nuts. It’s not true.”
Final point:
“I know this from my personal experience. I don’t blame the Congressional Budget Office or the Office of Management and Budget for talking about how much this is gonna cost, and scare everybody. But let me remind you of this: When I was president, with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, I got the Republicans to agree to some changes to Medicare and Medicaid that would not undermine the quality of care. And the savings in 1998 were 50% greater than what the Congressional Budget Office gave me. And in 1999 they were 132% greater than they said they would be. Don’t let anybody tell you that we can’t save money without reducing the quality of healthcare. We can save a lot of money.”
Now, why is this so hard? Four reasons:
- It’s complicated. They gave Hillary a hard time for a 1350 page bill. The House bill now is longer. This is a big issue, even though a lot of the bill in Congress is removing old language from the law currently on the books.
- It’s personal. It’s personal for all of us. Anything personal can be used to inspire fear.
- The difference in 16% of income and 10% of income is going somewhere. And the somewhere doesn’t want to give it up.
- Machiavelli – “There is nothing so difficult in all of human affairs as to change the established order of things, for those who will lose are certain of their loss, while those who will gain are uncertain of their gain.”
What does this mean?
The worst thing we can do is nothing.
If we continue to spot everyone $800 billion and come out sicker, we cannot do it!
30% of our funding on healthcare goes to paperwork. Didn’t blame providers or insurance companies. We’re spending $200 billion pushing paper around.
$66 billion more spent on prescription drug costs. President Obama got to work with drug companies to give some of that back. This is good for us. Honestly, it's a good deal for the drug companies too.
$400 billion is wasted in the way medicine is packaged. We pay for procedures rather than for performance. We have too few primary care physicians and we have so many people uninsured we have people show up late when it’s too expensive.
Finally, we spend a couple hundred billion dollars on lifestyle. Our rates of obesity among children threaten the biggest epidemic of diabetes. Diabetes is already costing, directly or indirectly, 45% of the Medicaid budget. And it’s gonna get worse. I work on this all over America all the time. And we also spend a lot of money on so-called “end of life treatment”. I have been appalled at all the people at these meetings accusing the President of trying to turn off the life support systems for seniors. Let me tell you something: That provision in that bill? That they’re all raising hell about? That was originally sponsored in the United States Senate by Senator Johnny Isakson – a Republican from Georgia. And all he did … all he did was try to provide ordinary people the kind of services that Hillary and I can afford.
"After my father-in-law, God rest his soul, had a stroke, he hung on for a long time. And we finally could see that he couldn’t recover. So some of the life supports were taken away, and he hung on some more! He was a tough old dude from Welsh coal mining stock. He was tough. The first thing that Hillary and I did after the funeral was to make out living wills, so our daughter would never have to deal with those issues. That is all this is trying to do. Nobody has to do it."
The same thing is true on so-called “Defensive medicine”. The President wants us to find the best practices and follow them. And reward people for doing it. Medicine is part science and part art.
Pointed to example in Eastern PA of medical group called Geisinger Group. Noted that hundreds of doctors have joined this. If you go in for an appendectomy they’re going to do the same 10 things. And if you have some unique issue that comes up, they will address it – that’s where the art comes in. Guess what? They give you a guarantee that if you have to go back into the hospital for any reason after that, related to the surgery, they pay 100% of the cost – no copays, no deductible, no increase in your premiums. Nothing. And the error rate has gone to zero, practically, and the premiums are not going up the way they are other places in the United States.
Let me tell you what I know from 1994. The single worst thing we can do is nothing. Because if you do nothing, then you let the people who are putting all this stuff on the airwaves rewrite history. Noted that this is what happened after 1994. The “victors got to rewrite history.” Pointed to the mid-term elections in 1994, when voter turnout was depressed among Democrats because of the disappointment about failing to pass healthcare reform. Voter turnout went from 54% to 39%.
“I’m just telling you. We need to pass a bill. It needs to be the best bill we can pass through Congress. But doing nothing is not only the worst thing we can do for the economy and the worst thing we can do for healthcare … it’s the worst thing we can do for the Democrats. And don’t you think the Republicans don’t know it.”
“When you read people the statistics instead of what they’ve heard, they like the Obama plan.”
People are acting like the world’s gonna come to an end if we try to reduce greenhouse gases.
Pointed to the potential for creating green jobs. The growth under Bush was all housing, finance, etc. You can’t run an economy if you don’t have a source of new jobs every 5 to 8 years.
Green jobs are the best place to create new jobs in this economy.
“If you liked the Cash for Clunkers program, we ought to have a cash for electric cars program! And pretty soon, America would not need anything from the Middle East except peace! And honor! And decency! And the absence of terrorism!”
Talked about the benefits of charter schools and the investment of families in creating education systems that work for their communities. Touted Arne Duncan’s plan in education. Noted that in 1992, there was only one charter school in the nation in Minnesota.
Student loans need to be fixed as well. We’ve got to do some things to make college more affordable for all Americans and accessible to all Americans.
“The last thing I want to say something about is the debt.” Noted that annual deficit figures should be ignored. The Republicans are just harping on it. It almost makes you want to gag! Let me just remind you of something. In the 12 years before the Al and I made it to the White House, Republicans drove up the national debt with deficits. We had 4 balanced budgets in 8 years.
Obama hates running deficits. But that’s the right thing right now to get the economy going again. You can hardly go around raising taxes in the middle of a severe recession. But these latest numbers are nothing more than a reflection of how severe the recession was. The unemployment rate is understated. People who are discouraged are not even looking for work. Others are underemployed. But when that turns around, we’ll see deficits drop to what we might call its “natural level”. Then, but not until then, you should expect the President and the Congress to take you back to a
First we’ve gotta get the economy going, then we can get the budget back in balance. That’s the right thing to do.
I’m not a very good politician anymore, I just say what I think.
I’ve been waiting for 40 years for this. We now have a national majority. Their whole program is to make us afraid. They don’t have a positive program. We have a program to succeed. We have to be the “how” party. Here’s how we’ll make it work. Here’s how to make the American dream available to more people.
Don’t get defensive. Play offense.
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