Subject: Hillary Clinton's Remarks at an Organizing Event in Bridgeport, Connecticut
From: Hillary for America Press <[email-masked]>
To: Hillary for America Press <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 15:20:47 -0400
List-Id: <nationalpress2016.hillaryclinton.com>

**

*Hillary Clinto**n's Remarks at an Organizing Event  in Bridgeport,
Connecticut *

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Sunday, April 24, Hillary Clinton discussed
her belief that what unites us as Americans is far more powerful than what
divides us and that if we stand together and work together, we can bring
about change together.

*The transcript of Clinton’s remarks, as delivered, is below:*

Hello, Bridgeport!  Hey.  Thank you all so much.  Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today, and I am grateful to Reverend
Stallworth for his introduction.  I want to thank your two senators,
Senator Blumenthal and Senator Murphy, for their support and endorsement.
I want to thank the mayor and all the elected officials from here in
Bridgeport.  And I want to thank all of you for coming out and being with
me today. I am so proud to be here at the University of Bridgeport, to be
in the largest city in Connecticut.  And to be talking about what we’re
going to do together if I am so fortunate as to be your president, how
we’re going to work to give Bridgeport the best possible future.

And I know how important it is, especially for the young people here, the
students here at the university, that we are able to tell every single
young person from the children who are here to the students to the people
who are starting their lives and careers, that we’re going to work to make
sure that you have every opportunity to fulfill your own potential – to get
ahead and to stay ahead, to be part of the promise of America.  That is
what so many of us believed as part of the American dream, and I’m going to
do everything I can to make sure that America’s best years are still ahead
of us.

So I want you to imagine with me some of what we can accomplish together.
Let’s imagine that we have an economy that works for everybody, not just
those at the top, with enough good jobs and rising incomes.

Now, it won’t surprise you to hear me say – and it is actually true – our
economy does better when we have a Democrat in the White House. It’s not
ancient history that we had, in the 1990s when we did have a Democrat in
the White House, we had 23 million new jobs and incomes rose for everybody,
not just people at the top – middle-class families, working families, poor
families.  In fact, those were some really positive years in our country.
The median family income went up 17 percent for everyone, and it went up 33
percent for African American families. I want us to get back into creating
opportunities for all of our people, and I am convinced we can do that.  We
can get new jobs in infrastructure – our roads, our bridges, our tunnels,
our ports, our airports, our water systems.  These are good jobs.  They
can’t be exported.  And they’re also good union jobs where people can make
a good, middle-class income.

And let’s do more to bring back advanced manufacturing to cities like
Bridgeport that helped to build America in the first place.  And we’re
going to combat climate change with clean, renewable energy jobs.
  Connecticut is leading the way.  You have something called a Green Bank –
a Green Bank that helps to fund energy efficiency and clean, renewable
energy jobs.  When I’m president, I want to have a national infrastructure
bank that will fund these kinds of projects that will make us richer and
cleaner and combat climate change and have good, solid jobs for Americans.

And let’s do more to help small businesses.  They’re the backbone of our
economy.  They will create two-thirds of the jobs in America.  And so we’ve
got to support people who have the guts and determination to start small
businesses.  My dad was a small businessman.  His father was a factory
worker.  And I know that whether you’re working hard in a factory or you’re
working to make a small business successful, you should feel that your
country has your back.  And when I am president, small businesspeople,
especially minority- and women-owned small businesses, will have that.

And for goodness sakes, let’s raise the minimum wage.  It’s not right that
people are mired in poverty.  $7.25 is the national minimum wage.  I
support the fight for 15.  I support raising the minimum wage at the
federal level because I want people who are working hard full-time to feel
like they’ve got a pathway out of poverty, not that they’ve worked
full-time and are still stuck in poverty.  We need to make work pay.
That’s what it’s supposed to do in our country.

And one of the ways we can raise incomes faster than I can think of
anything is to make sure women get equal pay for the work that we do. And I
got to tell you, this is not just a women’s issue.  This is a family
issue.  If you have a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter who’s working
and not being treated fairly in the workplace, that shortchanges you.  I
was with Lilly Ledbetter in Philadelphia the day before yesterday.  She’s
the woman who worked years at a factory in Alabama.  She was the only woman
supervisor.  She didn’t find out for about 20 years that she was paid 40
percent less.  Because you can still be fired for asking what somebody else
makes for doing exactly the same job.  So when she found that out, she was,
like, dumbfounded because her performance evaluations, everything had been
great.  And you know what else it means?  When she retired, her Social
Security is 40 percent less than it should have been.  Her 401(k) is 40
percent less than it should have been.  So we’ve just got to be committed
to being fair when it comes to making sure everybody – men and women alike
– are paid fairly for the jobs that we all do.

I had a little girl in a town hall in Nevada that I called on.  She said,
“If you’re the girl president will you get paid the same as the boy
president?” I said, “Well, I think so.  I think that’s one of those jobs
where they tell you what you have to make for it.”  But I want to make sure
everybody is treated fairly as well.

I also want to work to make sure that our education system is –

(inaudible)

I said, well, I think so.  I think that’s one of those jobs where they tell
you what you have to make for it.  But I want to make sure everybody is
treated fairly as well.  I also want to work to make sure that our
education system is preparing our young people for the jobs of tomorrow.
And that starts with early childhood education, which is a passion of
mine.  Because I want every child prepared to learn when that little boy or
girl gets to school.  And I want to work with our teachers to make sure
that elementary and secondary schools are doing exactly the best job they
can do to help as many of our kids as possible to get ahead.  I am tired of
teachers being scapegoated for all the ills of society.  It’s time that we
support teachers and give them the tools they need to do the job we ask
them.

And then let’s make college affordable for everybody again.  I have a plan
so that you will not have to borrow money.  It will be debt free tuition.
But I want to also take care of the people who already have debt.  40
million Americans have student debt.  Let’s let everybody refinance their
student debt the way you can refinance your home mortgage or your car
payment.  Let’s get those costs down and let’s have a limited period of
time so that you will be paid off, and let’s stop the federal government
from making money on lending money to young people to get their educations
in the first place.  And I’m going to defend the Affordable Care Act.
Because I know what a great historic achievement this is.  One of President
Obama’s great accomplishments.  20 million people now have health
insurance.  We are at 90% of covering every American, and we’re going to
get to 100.

But we’re going to make the Affordable Care Act work better.  We’re going
to get the costs down.  The co-pays and the deductibles – we want more
choices for people.  And we’re going to tackle high prescription drug
costs.  Because they’re really beginning to eat into people’s budgets, and
we’re going to fight and get the authority for Medicare to be able to
negotiate for lower prices, which will make a big difference for everybody.
You know, before there was something called Obamacare, there was something
called Hillarycare.  And my husband and I worked very hard to try to get to
universal health care coverage.  We were not successful.  And so after it
was clear we weren’t going to be able to beat back the opposition, I said,
well, what can we do?  And we created the Children’s Health Insurance
Program, which insures 8 million kids.

And the reason I mention that is because it gave me such insight into how
hard this is, but how necessary it must be that we get up and try to
achieve this every day.  That’s why I was thrilled when President Obama
signed the bill, and why I will do everything to prevent the Republicans
from repealing it, because that’s what they voted to do more than 60
times.  But there are two health-related issues that we are still way
behind on:  mental health and addiction.  I have to say, it’s heartbreaking
– when you run for president – at least maybe just speaking for myself – I
can shake hands with somebody, literally, for, like, 10, 15, 20 seconds,
and they will share their heart.  They will say to me, please do something
about mental health.  My brother is schizophrenic.  My mother is
depressed.  I’m having problems.  And we can’t get the help we need,
because it’s too expensive or it’s not available.

Or they will say to me, please do something about the opioid and heroin
epidemic.  My brother was just overdosing, and I have to ask you to help.
Now, you’re not going to see that in headlines.  When people do the
political coverage, it’s like, who said what nasty thing about somebody
else?  Honestly, that is not going to make us be a better country.  That is
not going to give us the kind of agenda that we need.  So I’m going to keep
talking about things that Americans talk to me about, and we are going to
treat mental health the same as we treat every other kind of health
problem, and there should be no stigma, and there should be enough
treatment, and the same with addiction.  It’s time when somebody needs
help, that they can get it without having to wait months.  And I’m just
hoping that communities will open their hearts to doing this.  First of
all, we have to save lives.  That’s number one.  But number two, we’ve got
to get beyond this terrible epidemic of addiction that is taking the lives
of so many Americans.  So I need your help in this.  I’ll do what I can
with programs and using the bully pulpit, but this has to be done community
by community.

And the same is true when it comes to criminal justice reform.  We need to
make good on the promise of equal justice under the law. And again, I am
committed to an agenda that will address a lot of the issues that we know
are unfortunately making it unequal.  And we have to do that.  Because
everybody in this country should feel, whatever your race, your ethnicity,
your religion, where you live, that you’re going to be treated equally.
That is one of the core values and principles of our country.  And so we
need more programs from the very earliest.  Instead of a school to prison
pipeline, we need a cradle to college pipeline.  We need to reach into
communities and families and provide support so that kids get off to a
good, healthy start.  Get the education and the opportunities they need.
And we need more second chance programs so people who have paid their debt
to society can get jobs, can get housing, can get education, and have a
better future.

We also have to take on the gun lobby, and take on the epidemic of gun
violence in America.  On average, 90 people a day die from guns in our
country.  33,000 people a year.  We cannot go on like this.  And there is
absolutely no conflict between protecting the Second Amendment rights of
gun owners and protecting our children, our teenagers, and other of our
neighbors, family, and friends.  So I’m fighting for comprehensive
background checks.  Let’s close the gun show loophole, the online loophole,
let’s close the Charleston loophole.  Let’s end the special protection that
gun makers and sellers get.  And I really want to commend your two
senators.  Both of your senators have been on the front lines of this
battle against the gun lobby.

But we need to turn this into a voting issue.  People need to really pay
attention to how their elected officials vote.  And there needs to be an
enormous outcry that we can do this consistent with the Second Amendment.
So please work with us, don’t be intimidated by the gun lobby.  And if you
have someone you know who has been killed, or maybe used a gun to take his
or her own life, or maybe died in a tragic, avoidable accident, then you
know exactly why we have to make this a high priority for our country.  But
this gun violence knows no boundaries, no borders.  I have held the hands
and looked into the eyes of so many families, from Columbine, and Aurora in
Colorado, to Sandy Hook in Connecticut, and everyplace in between.  I have
been working with the Mothers of the Movement, women who have lost their
children.  And so many other mothers who demand action.  So I’m going to
make this a centerpiece of what I do as president, and together we’re going
to save lives, and we’re going to make it clear we cannot stand idly by and
see 33,000 people a year die.

Now, I hope that you have paid attention to what the Republicans who are
running for president have been saying, because everything I have just
said, they disagree with.  I mean, really, they don’t believe in equal pay,
they don’t believe in raising the minimum wage.  Donald Trump actually
says, wages are too high in America. Yeah.  And they all want to repeal the
Affordable Care Act.  Of course, they all have insurance, by the way.  And
they sure don’t want to take on the gun lobby, and they’re not interested
in criminal justice reform, and every time Donald Trump says one of the
things he says, a lot of people are surprised or shocked.  But after a
while, with so many of those comments, those insults, the kind of
demagoguery that we are seeing from him, you have to ask yourself, what
really is at stake in this election?  And one of the things that is at
stake are our rights. Because the Republicans want to undermine and set
back our rights, so I will let you know where I stand.

I will defend a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions. And I
will defend Planned Parenthood from the partisan attacks it is under.  And
I will defend marriage equality, and work to end discrimination against the
LGBT community. I will defend voting rights, and I will work to end Citizens
United and its pernicious effect on our politics.  I will work to hold Wall
Street and anybody else accountable who is undermining our economic growth
and the fair treatment that people in our country deserve.  I will defend
Social Security against these crazy plans to privatize it.  I will defend
the benefits and services that our veterans have earned, and we will not
let the Republicans undermine those. I will defend the right of Puerto Rico
to restructure their debts and have a chance to get out from under that
pressure.  I will defend and fight for comprehensive immigration reform,
with a path to citizenship.

I will end the immigration raids and roundups, and breaking up families.
That is not the American way.  So there is a lot for us to work on
together.  And you have to ask yourself, when you go to vote on Tuesday,
the three big questions, the tests that anybody running for president
should have to meet.  Number one, can this person produce positive results
in your life and the life of your family, your community?  I want to work
with you to do just that.  That’s what I’ve done my entire career.
Fighting to help even the odds for people who have the odds stacked against
them.  And fighting for women’s rights, and children’s rights, and workers’
rights, and all of the real building blocks of our economy.  So I need your
help to do that.  I also need your help – let me get a drink of water.  I
have been talking nonstop for weeks now.  So forgive me while I stick a
lozenge in my mouth here.

But the second big test – because, remember when you vote on Tuesday, you
are voting not only for president, you’re voting for commander-in-chief.
And the question is, who can protect our country and keep us safe, and lead
the world?  And I have to tell you, when you hear what Trump and Cruz say,
it’s not only offensive, it’s dangerous.  I mean, just think, we here in
this part of the country – I was a senator on 9/11.  We know how serious
this is.  How we do have to defeat terrorism, how we have to work with our
police and our other law enforcement and intelligence agencies to keep us
safe.  So when Trump says things like, bar all Muslims from coming into the
country, that is heard – that is heard not only in the arenas in which he’s
speaking, that is heard around the world.

We have to build a coalition to defeat ISIS.  And we have to build that
coalition with a lot of Muslim majority nations.  And I know how hard it is
to build a coalition, because I built the one that imposed sanctions on
Iran, and drove them finally to the negotiating table so we could put a lid
on their nuclear weapons program. So when he says that, I’m just thinking
in my head, well, he’s just made the job of the president a lot harder.  To
go to countries and say, okay, yes, someone running for president has
insulted your religion, but you need to be in a coalition with us.

And when Ted Cruz says, hey, let’s round up all of the Muslim Americans by
making sure that we have police watching all of them – the best answer to
that came from the NYPD, probably the most effective and experienced
counterterrorism police department, because of what they’ve been up
against.  And the chief of the department, when asked about what Cruz said,
responded, well, that’s interesting.  So what am I supposed to do with the
1,000 Muslim American NYPD police officers that we have? And Bill Bratton,
the Commissioner of the NYPD really summed it up when he was asked.  He
said, Ted Cruz doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

So, we live in a dangerous, complex world.  But we have to continue to lead
that world.  And we have to be smart.  Lead with our values in furtherance
of our interests, and protection of our security.  That’s exactly what I
will focus on if I am fortunate enough to be your president.  Working with
other nations, bringing them into partnerships with us, so we will be more
effective in protecting the United States, our friends, and our allies
around the world.  And finally, the final question you should ask yourself
is, who will unify our country?  And here, I think we have a very important
obligation to do everything we can to bridge the divides between and among
Americans today.  I did that as First Lady, as Senator, as Secretary of
State, trying to find common ground.  And actually, whenever I have a job,
Republicans actually say nice things about me.  When I’m doing the work.
It’s just when I’m running for or trying to get the job that they are
really jumping up and down about me.

But as we go forward, if I’m the Democratic nominee, you’ll see a lot of
quotations from Republicans talking about what a good colleague I am, and
how I do try to find common ground.  I will go anywhere to meet with anyone
anytime to find common ground.  Because that is the only way our democracy
can work. Now, I will stand my ground on matters of principle and values,
and what I think is right for the country.  But I did that with the
children’s health insurance program, reforming the adoption and foster care
program, what we had to do after 9/11, getting healthcare for the National
Guard, looking for ways to keep medicines for children safer, getting a
nuclear arms treaty with Russia passed.  We have a lot of evidence that it
will work, but you can’t ever, ever ignore how important it is to find that
common ground.

Our founders understood that none of us has all the answers in a
democracy.  If you want to go someplace where leaders act and like to have
all the answers, go to a dictatorship.  Go to an authoritarian regime.  Go
to a theocracy.  That’s not who we are as Americans.  And when people run
for office on the Tea Party or whatever else, and they say they will never
compromise, they are basically denying the fundamental tenets of democracy,
where we get together, we make progress together.  And so I’m asking for
your help on Tuesday.  I would be so honored and humbled to have your vote
on Tuesday. And I want you to know, if you will vote for me on Tuesday, I
will stand up and fight for you all the way through this campaign, all the
way into the White House.  Thank you, Bridgeport and Connecticut.

###

For Immediate Release, April 25, 2016
Contact: [email-masked]

PAID FOR BY HILLARY FOR AMERICA
Contributions or gifts to Hillary for America are not tax deductible.
Hillary for America, PO Box 5256, New York

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