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REMARKS: Ed Markey Praises President Clinton At Today’s Rally
REMARKS OF REPRESENTATIVE ED MARKEY (D-MA)
RALLY WITH PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
JUNE 15, 2013
As Prepared For Delivery
Thank you all for being here tonight.
Thank you, Elizabeth Warren. You are the #1 protector of Main Street against the abuses of Wall Street.
I want to go to the United States Senate to partner with you to be a strong, powerful voice for Massachusetts families.
Jim McGovern – you are the Conscience of the Congress down in Washington. You are Worcester’s Warrior for working families. Thank you.
I thank my beautiful and brilliant wife, Susan, for all her support.
***
In a few minutes, you will hear from the man who, as president, rescued our country from 12 years of wrong-headed Republican policies coming out of the White House.
Then he started the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005, criss-crossing the globe doing God’s work, underscoring the interdepedence and interconnectedness of people across our country and our world.
Mr. President, you went from leader of the free world to healer of the entire planet – fighting disease, promoting health, and tackling climate change.
That’s an amazing “second career”, Mr. President. Thank you.
***
There is a lot at stake in this election.
It’s about the kind of Commonwealth and the kind of country we want for ourselves and our children.
It’s about your hopes, your dreams, and our future, here in Massachusetts and across America.
My opponent says he’s a new kind of Republican, but he backs the oldest, stalest Republican ideas from the past.
I want to build a brighter, better future with new ideas that create jobs and fuel an economy that works for everyone.
***
I support a ban on assault weapons. I support a ban on high-capacity magazines that attach to those assault weapons, turning them into weapons of war.
My opponent supports the National Rifle Association’s position. He opposes a ban on assault weapons. He opposes a ban on high-capacity magazine clips.
I was proud to work with President Clinton to ban millions of military-style Chinese assault weapons that were flooding our neighborhoods.
Together, we got those guns off our streets.
I intend to win this election so that I can go to the Senate Floor to make sure that NRA stands for “Not Relevant Anymore” in American politics.
My opponent thinks the wealthy are already paying their fair share.
Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot propose to cut social programs for the poor and the sick and the elderly and then say that the wealthy have already paid enough.
That we shouldn’t take back tax breaks for the oil industry.
That we don’t take back the tax breaks for those multinational companies that offshore jobs or use tax havens down in the Caribbean to escape paying their fair share, ladies and gentlemen.
We need tax fairness. We need to follow the Buffet Rule where everyone in America is paying their fair share.
My opponent says he would consider eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction that millions of families rely on to afford their homes.
I would never support eliminating this important deduction for families – it should be absolutely off the table, ladies and gentlemen.
My opponent says that the Wall Street reforms that were put on the books are too tough.
But we know that a casino was set up on Wall Street, and with stock options and derivatives and credit default swaps it led to a collapse of our economy – the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
I believe that we should keep those Wall Street reforms on the books – I wrote the law that banned insider trading. We should fight any efforts to reduce the protections for ordinary families that were signed into law by President Obama.
My opponent says that he could vote for a Supreme Court justice who could overturn Roe v. Wade.
I will NEVER vote for a Supreme Court justice who overturns a women’s right to choose.
I will fight for women’s rights, women’s health, and equal pay for women.
***
When my mother was a junior in high school, she was the class president. She had dreams of college.
My grandmother and grandfather had gotten off the boat in Ireland.
They had 5 daughters.
But then her mother – my grandmother – passed away, and she had to drop out of school to take care of her younger sisters.
That was the social safety net before FDR and the New Deal – one of the daughters had to stay home.
She had to abandon her college dreams.
***
My father graduated from the vocational program at Lawrence Vocational High School.
He grew up on the first floor of a triple decker – one of 5 children, the 4th of 5.
My father drove a truck for the Hood Milk company.
When my mother got Alzheimer’s in her later years, my father cared for her, at home, in our living room.
He was a hero to my brothers and me.
I grew up in Malden, and my mother always said to me that you are going to be able to realize your dreams in a way that your mother and father did not, and that your grandparents did not.
And she was right. I was the first in my family to go to college. I worked my way through Boston College driving an ice cream truck.
[I never met a lawyer until I went to law school and had never been to Washington until I was elected to Congress.]
I was able to accomplish this because there had been a democratization of access to opportunity through healthcare, through education, through breaking down the discriminatory barriers that made it possible for my brothers and me to have those extra opportunities.
And my mother always told me that there was one word that explained why we would have a better future – and that word was “DEMOCRAT.”
***
But this election is not about MY family. It’s about YOUR family and EVERY family across Massachusetts.
I want to move Massachusetts and our country forward to a bright, better future for all of us.
This election is about creating a world of opportunity and new possibilities for all of our people, from Worcester to Weymouth, from Pittsfield to Provincetown, from Newburyport to New Bedford.
***
I am running for the United States Senate to fight for the best jobs to be right here in Massachusetts.
The 21st century infrastructure jobs, the jobs for roads, railways, and bridges, should be built in Massachusetts and across the country.
I am running to fight for policies that promote our biotech, clean tech, high-tech economy here in Massachusetts.
I wrote the laws that spurred an information revolution that President Clinton signed into law.
Now we need a Green Energy Revolution in our country that unleashes wind, solar, biomass, and plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.
That creates a million new jobs here in the United States, led by the state of Massachusetts.
We can save the planet and create new jobs at the same time.
We can back out all the imported oil from the Middle East and make our country energy independent.
The planet is running a fever. There are no emergency rooms for sick planets. We need to take action now for generations to come.
We need to fuel the biotech revolution. We are the capital of the world’s biotech industry.
We should not be cutting the NIH budget in Washington. We should be doubling the NIH budget. That is who we are in Massachusetts.
NIH is really the “National Institutes of Hope”.
Research is medicine’s field of dreams from which we harvest the cures that improve the lives of millions of American families that we can find the cures for Alzheimer’s, for cancer, for diabetes, for heart disease.
And the world-class UMASS Medical Center right here in Worcester with its cutting edge science and patient care is helping to lead the way!
We must put a college education within reach for all our students, with affordable loan rates that do not create a mountain of debt.
An education is the passport to a better future including a good job.
***
Now Republicans in Washington and their special interest allies have very different priorities.
They want to roll back the progress we have made under President Obama’s leadership.
They want to slash investments in the programs that spur growth and create jobs.
They want to keep shoveling $40 billion in tax breaks to the big oil companies.
They want to balance the budget on the back of the Middle Class and working families all across our country.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want to serve as the next Senator from Massachusetts, to team up with Elizabeth Warren to give President Obama the support he needs to keep his agenda on track for the future of our state and of our country.
Republicans want to cancel out Elizabeth Warren’s vote in the United States Senate.
But we did not elect Elizabeth Warren in November to cancel her vote in June!
When it counts, we Democrats don’t AGONIZE, we ORGANIZE!
***
And that is what we are going to for the next 10 days.
I am going to criss-cross this state.
I am going to be working around the clock to get out the vote to ensure that every single person knows that this is an historic election.
There is so much at stake for Massachusetts and our country.
We need everyone to show their support on June 25th so that together we can
build a 21st century that is more educated, more healthy, more prosperous, and more fair for all of us.
***
And that’s why I am so proud that President Clinton is here.
He is such an extraordinary leader for our nation.
As President, he created the longest period of peacetime economic prosperity in American history.
When President Clinton was in the White House, we actually had a budget SURPLUS from 1998 to 2000.
And he also made sure that all children had health care by creating the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
President Clinton’s Global Initiative is now creating and implementing innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
I could go on and on.
President Clinton is an incredible force for good all around the world – a legendary, beloved, iconic global leader of our times.
I give you the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton!
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