COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, in a broad attack on the economic policies of President Bush, said Tuesday the administration is thinking only of the wealthy and not about working Americans.
'Their only idea is to provide lower taxes to the wealthy, get out of the way and hope the results trickle down,' Clinton told students at Ohio State University. 'Well, they haven't trickled down.
During a 20-minute speech, a number of Bush-Quayle supporters in the back of the crowd booed and shouted at Clinton -- but he came back at them.
'They don't even want me to talk,' Clinton said. 'They know the truth hurts.'
The hecklers carried signs reading 'No Draft Dodgers for President,' and 'Bill: Are You Yellow or Are You Red?'
Clinton criticized the president for vetoing the family leave bill, for his programs on health care and education and for 'embarrassing' the United States at the Earth Summit last summer.
He said 100,000 Americans a month have lost their health insurance since the administration took office.
'We can do better,' he told the students. 'We cannot allow you to be the first generation of Americans to do worse than your parents. But you must lead the drumbeat of change. I want the support of the people of Ohio, starting with the students at Ohio State.'
Speaking earlier in Louisville, Ky., Clinton said the
administration encourages the export of American jobs overseas.
Expanding what had been a minor point in prior speeches into a full- blown campaign theme, Clinton cited a story on Sunday night's episode of the CBS program '60 Minutes.'
'At a time when companies are having a hard time getting loans to expand factories in middle America, Mr. Bush's administration is offering loans at low cost in Central America,' he said.
'One manufacturer who stayed in America told '60 Minutes' that the government would do nothing to help him keep his workers working in America, but would loan him money to move out of the United States at such low interest rates that it was like getting the money for free,' he said.
'George Bush promised us 30 million jobs in eight years. He just didn't tell us where the jobs were going to be. We thought he was going to create jobs in San Antonio and San Francisco and San Bernardino, not in San Salvador. He has actually overseen the creation of more private sector jobs in Central America than in the United States of America in the last four years. If that's not enough to send him packing, I don't know what is.'
The Arkansas governor also criticized the Bush administration for selling American companies on the benefits of a non-unionized foreign workforce, although industrial recruitment officials within Arkansas have also long emphasized that state's non-union, 'Right to Work' job climate.
'We've tripled the number of companies with foreign investment since I've been governor, and I'm proud of the progress that has come from my foreign trade missions in that regard,' Clinton said. 'I think Mr. Bush is selling America short when he says foreign companies will abandon us if we ask them to live within our laws and pay their fair share of taxes.'
