LEWISTOWN -- Families are making substantially less money today than they were 10 years ago, former President Bill Clinton told a crowd of about 1,500 people at Lewistown Area High School gymnasium Thursday.
In the 1990s, the average median family income rose $7,500, Clinton said.
"In this decade, the median family income is $1,000 less than it was the day I left office," he added.
"That's why people think they're in a recession."
Lewistown was Mr. Clinton's fourth stop of the day as he made his way through the region, stumping for his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He touched on several issues during his speech, including health care, the Iraq War and the flagging economy.
"You need an economic plan that addresses the fact that people already believe we're in a recession," he said.
He said Mrs. Clinton's plan to rescue the economy involved a "serious commitment" to energy independence and efficiency.
"We can create the most jobs through energy efficiency. We can make every school building, every college building, every government building, every hospital, eventually every house in this country more energy-efficient, and when we do it, we will create jobs that cannot be outsourced," he said.
Battery-powered cars that get 100 miles per gallon already exist, he said.
But the means to produce them are still too expensive for the cars to be cheap enough for the average family to afford.
"Any electrical product goes down as you produce more of it," he said. "This is what you hire the federal government to do. If we can beat the world to the moon, surely we can beat the world to a car battery."
It was the first time a president had stopped in Lewistown since Richard Nixon made a brief visit while passing through town on a train, members of the Mifflin County Democratic Party said.
The crowd, most of them supporters of the former president and his wife, waited anxiously for Mr. Clinton, who is notoriously late for events, according to a campaign staffer.
But in spite of being an hour late, the 42nd president was greeted like a rock star, with a tidal wave of applause and cheers from the crowd.
Addressing Iraq, Mr. Clinton said his wife would leave a small group of special forces in the country to combat al-Qaida.
"We've got to bring our soldiers home. We've got to heal them, we've got to repair them, we've got to bring them up again," he said. "The only decisions left to make are decisions the Iraqis have to make."
He stressed how vital it is for the United States to take care of veterans of the Iraq War.
While the number of people touched by this isn't enough to make it a substantial issue in this election, he said, "it will define the character of our country whether we care for these people."
Mr. Clinton said health care was the issue on which his wife most differed from Barack Obama, who Mr. Clinton referred to only as "her opponent."
He asked members of the audience how many of them knew someone who had no health care and almost every hand shot up.
"There is not another rich country in this world where this question would even be asked," he said. "Everybody else has found a way to provide affordable health care to all its people, and Hillary says it's time for us to quit making excuses and get on with the business of doing it."
He went on to outline his wife's plan: "If you like what you got, you can keep it. But if you don't, or you can't afford it anymore, or you don't have it in the first place, you get to buy into the same exact plan that insures members of Congress and their families."
Many of the people lined up outside the school had the same things to say about Mrs. Clinton: she's the best candidate because she's intelligent, she stands for the right things, she's a strong woman.
Diane Lujan, of Lewistown, held a sign that read: "It took a Bush to bring us to our knees ... It will take a Clinton to get us back on our feet."
"I want her to stay in (the race) till all the primaries are done," said Paula Rosenstengel, of Mechanicsburg. "That's the rule in our party and we have to live with it."
Rosenstengel and others didn't feel the drawn-out primary season was fracturing the Democratic party and said they would support whatever candidate ended up winning.
"They've been rather tame," Pat Owens, of Selinsgrove, said of the campaign battles between Mrs. Clinton and Obama. "Compared to a lot of other elections."
Obama supporter Aaron Burns said the Illinois senator is "a brilliant politician, a brilliant man. He's sort of a once-in-a-lifetime figure."
But he added, "I will enthusiastically support whoever the (Democratic) candidate is."
Anthony Sinonetti, 17, of Yeagertown, turned up at the Clinton campaign rally with a "Huckabee Supporter" sign, three weeks after the former Arkansas governor dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination.
"I know he's out of the race, but he's the candidate that matched my views most," Sinonetti said. "I've tried to look into each and every one of the other candidate's views."
If he had to, who would he choose between the two remaining Democratic candidates?
"Hillary Clinton," he said. "She would be the most qualified for the job."
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