Clinton: Send Kerry!

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to the nation on Monday night, on he first night of the Democratic National Convention, asking Americans if they were satisfied of four years of Bush in the White House. President Clinton showed that there is a divisive different between the Republican and Democratic parties, saying:

In this year's budget -- in this year's budget, the White House this year wants to cut off all the federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police officers under the COPS program we've had for 10 years. Among those 88,000 police are more than 700 members of the New York Police Department who put their lives on the line on 9/11. With gang violence rising and with all of us looking for terrorists in our midst and hoping they're not too well armed or too well dangerous -- too dangerous, the president and the Congress are about to allow the 10-year-old ban on deadly assault weapons to lapse.

Now they believe it's the right thing to do, but our policy was to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons off the street - and it gave you eight years of declining crime and eight years of declining violence. Their policy is the reverse. They're taking police off the streets while they put assault weapons back on the street. Now if you agree with that choice, by all means vote to keep them in office. But if you don't, join John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter and stronger again.

On homeland security -- on homeland security, Democrats tried to double the number of containers at ports and airports checked for weapons of mass destruction. It cost a billion dollars. It would have been paid for under our bill by asking the 200,000 millionaires in America to cut their tax cut by $5,000. Almost all 200,000 of us would like to have done that, to spend $5,000 to make all 300 million Americans feel safer. The measure failed. Why? Because the White House and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives opposed it. They thought our $5,000 was more important than doubling the container checks at our ports and airports. If you agree with that, by all means reelect them. If not, John Kerry and John Edwards are your team for the future.

These policies have turned a projected $5.8 trillion surplus that we left -- enough to pay for the baby-boomer retirement -- into a projected debt of almost $5 trillion, with over $400 billion in deficit this year and for years to come. Now, how do they pay for that deficit? First, by taking the Social Security surplus that comes in every month and endorsing the checks of working people over to me to pay for the tax cut. But it's not enough, so then they have to go borrow money. Most of it they borrow from the Chinese and the Japanese government. Sure these countries are competing with us for good jobs, but how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers? I mean, come on!

Bill Clinton's entire remarks will be available from the NPI Elections Center.