Thank you. Thank you so much. I am so happy to be back here and to be with all of you right here at the home of IBEW Local 357. And with so many longtime friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let me, in addition to thanking IBEW, let me thank all of the union members here. The Nevada State AFL-CIO. Everyone who knows what it is to work hard and deserves a chance to get ahead and stay ahead. Thank you. And particularly I want to thank Al Davis, manager and financial secretary of IBEW. And I want to thank United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 525 who assisted with parking for this event too, so thanks.
Now you just heard from your longtime senator and someone who has lead the Senate in the majority and the minority with such tenacity, such focus, getting things done for the people of this state and America. There's a lot that I really love and admire about Harry Reid. Let me just mention three of them. Number one: his wife Landra and the beautiful family that they have created together.
Number two: He always tells it as he sees it. He's not a man of many words, but when he uses them he's very clear about what he's trying to accomplish and why he thinks it will help people. He's been a champion of working people and every one of the interests that stands for the kind of America that Harry and I believe in. We both feel very fortunate, and we want to make sure everybody has the same opportunities.
And number three: in the Senate he was a master of getting things done from the other side, whether they wanted to do it or not. And I know how hard that was. I was in the Senate for eight years with Harry. And before that I was First Lady and watching what he did as a senator and then of course I was Secretary of State.
He worked tirelessly every day, but he also had a vision about what needed to happen. I'll just mention one thing that he mentioned. Harry Reid is one of the leaders in America for clean renewable energy.
At a time some years ago when a lot of folks didn't really know what that meant. Harry was holding a conference every year, bringing people together to talk about how we can get more solar and wind and geothermal, how we create more jobs because of that. And I will have more to say about it, but I think the progress that you've made here in Nevada and the progress we're making across America owes a great deal to the leadership of Senator Harry Reid.
I also want to thank Congresswoman Dina Titus, she has been a great voice for progress in the Congress, I can't wait to work with her. And I am thrilled at the prospect. It's up to you my friends, but I know you're going to do the right thing to send Catherine Cortez-Masto to the United States Senate.
…Okay, we'll keep talking, and we'll, and apparently these people are here to protest Trump, because Trump and his kids have killed a lot of animals, so thank you for making that point. So let me keep going, because I want to say another word about Catherine. She will be the first Latina ever elected to the United States Senate. So here is what I hope I can do with Catherine and Dina, with Jacky and Ruben, with other members of the House and the Senate. We are going to create more good jobs with rising incomes, we are going to have the biggest investment in new jobs that we've had since World War II.
Now how are we going to do that? Well number one, we are going to do exactly what Harry said. We are going to have an investment in infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports. But it's not only what you can see, it's also under the ground. The water systems, the sewer systems, and yes, we need a new, modern, electric grid to be able to take and distribute all the clean renewable energy.
So I'm excited about this because, as Harry just said, for every billion dollars we get 47,500 jobs, and they are mostly good union jobs with a good middle class income.
We are also going to do everything we can to assist unions and everything they represent to be able to organize and bargain collectively. I am sick and tired of leaders in this country trying to bust unions like Donald Trump did here in Las Vegas.
I just came from an excellent business. A business, Mojave. That's right, Mojave Electric, right. That's a company that understands they could do well by doing good. It's an IBEW union shop. It has a lot of apprentices. It has benefits that are going to keep families together and keep them growing. That's what we need more of in America, and I'm on the side of businesses and labor that work together. The other thing I saw at Mojave is that we need more skills training for more Americans, and that includes apprenticeships programs. Mojave working with the IBEW working with electrical contractors takes the time to actually train people, and I met some of those apprentices and those journeymen and women, and they are so proud of what they do. And I want more people in America to have that kind of opportunity. I'll tell you something folks don't know. More than half of all jobs in 2020, and that's not long from now, will not require a four year education.
So here's how I'm fitting all the pieces together. I want to make college affordable, in fact, I want to make it debt-free. I want to help people who already have debts and the families that are burdened by those debts to be able to pay them back at a lower interest rate and have them forgiven after a certain period of time. It makes no sense to me that Donald Trump can take bankruptcy six times, get out from under his debts, and we don't let families and students refinance their college debts. But I think it's really important that we do more like what I saw at Mojave today. I want to give every business a $1,500 tax credit if they will train apprentices, and not for free, pay these apprentices while they're getting trained so more people can take advantage of that opportunity.
We need more technical education back into our high schools. I want us to train 50,000 high school teachers and junior high teachers in computer science so everyone single student in America has access to that kind of opportunity.
And we're going to—we're going to, with our infrastructure program, finish the job of providing high-speed broadband Internet access to every single home and business in America. I was talking to some teachers the other day, and I love teachers, I love teachers. And I was talking to them, and they were telling me they had just done a national survey and they found that 70 percent of teachers assigned homework that required students to go use the Internet. Now I think that's good. We want our young people to learn how to use the Internet and understand the opportunities that they could have, but here's the rub: 5 million students in America do not have access at home to the Internet.
So, the homework gets assigned and these 5 million kids, unless they're close enough to a library they can get to, or somebody's business, or somebody else's home is connected somehow, they're left out. We do not have a single person to waste in the 21st century. I want to unleash the talent and ambition of every young American. So we're going to give more high-school kids the chance to do real work, to get credit toward graduation. We're going to make community college free, so that high-school students and everybody else can get two-year degrees and credentials. Because already today we have a big gap—we have about a million jobs that are not being filled around America. There are jobs for machinists, and tool and dye makers, and coders and lots of other skills.
We have a lot of unions that I've been talking to over the past year and a half who are seeing their workforce get older. Well, we can't afford that. We need to invest in our young people and give them different paths beside four-year college to get ahead in America. That should be the basic bargain. Now—
In addition to jobs from infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, I've seen a couple of examples of that over the last week in Ohio, Pennsylvania. I saw a small business in Denver yesterday where they're making homemade ties and scarves. And I was real interested in that because Donald Trump said that he can't make his suits, or his ties, or his shirts, or his furniture in the United States. Well, we just put up a website, hillaryclinton.com/makeithere, and we're telling him about 100 places where he can actually make all of those things right here in America.
And then—then I have to tell you, he talks a lot about how he's going to grow the economy. Yet, he doesn't make things in America and just this past couple of weeks he asked for more visas to bring in foreign workers for his golf courses and his resorts. And when asked, "Why would you do that?" He said, "Well, we can't find workers here." He really thinks he's going to get away with this. And then there's the way that he's treated small business. I want to be a small business president. I want to help more small businesses get started, and grow, and create jobs here in Nevada and across America.
But I have now been hearing stories from so many people who did work for Donald Trump and one of his buildings, and then they wouldn't pay him. I went to Atlantic City, and I met a number of small businesses, as well as workers, plumbers and painters, glass installers, marble installers. At one of his resorts, they finished the work, the man who sold him the pianos and installed the pianos, they finished the work, and they submitted their bill. And the Trump people said, "No, we're not going to pay you." Not because he couldn't, but because he wouldn't.
And then he comes back and he says, "Well, maybe I'll give you 50 cents or 30 cents on the dollar." Now, I've got to tell you, I take this really personally. My father was a small businessman, and he printed fabric for drapes. That's what he did. He had a print plant. It was a low-ceiling, dark place with two long tables and you'd roll the fabric out on it, then you would take a silk screen and you'd put it down, you'd pour the paint in, you'd take the squeegee, you'd go from left to right, then you'd lift it up and you would do it again, all the way down that table, the next table, until you finished doing it. And then my dad would load the fabric up in his car and he would drive it to whoever had ordered it. I can't image if he had shown up at some place that Trump owned and they said, "Well, thanks a lot but we are not paying you." Actually, that happened here in Las Vegas.
He refused to pay nearly $400,000 to a local Nevada drapery company which had to close its factory. Four hundred thousand dollar order for a small business is huge. And so I do, I take it personally. Small business is the backbone of our economy. That's where most of the jobs come from. We should be honoring people who take the risk and put in the hard work and the sweat to build their small businesses.
I also was disturbed when we learned some months ago that during the terrible housing crisis—and no place was affected more than right here in Clark County, was it? Nobody. And I remember because in '08 I walked some of those streets and some of those neighborhoods and I met with people who were on the brink of or having been foreclosed. And it was heartbreaking. And we still have work to do.
But what did Donald Trump say when all of this began to happen? Well he basically said, "Hey this is good for me. I can go buy. I can make money." Didn't matter the heartbreak. Five million homes were lost. $13 trillion in family wealth was lost, mostly homes. And what was Donald Trump doing? He was thinking about himself. So you have got to ask yourself in this campaign, do you want a president who stands for "You're fired" or one who stands for "You're hired?"
So the bottom line, which I think is becoming clearer every day, is that Donald Trump is not qualified to be President, and he is temperamentally unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. I said it Thursday night at the Democratic Convention, anyone you can provoke with a tweet should not be anywhere near nuclear weapons.
But I have to agree, as I usually do, with Harry. We cannot take anything, anybody, or anyplace for granted. We have work to do. And I need your help, I need you to be part of this campaign. We are going to be registering voters, if you know—that's right, we have a young woman right there, if you're not registered and you're eligible as an American citizen, please go sign up. And back there as well.
We are trying, across the country, to register 3 million more voters and turn them out in November. We are also going to do everything we can to reach out to our friends and our neighbors across this state and across America, answer their questions. Somebody wants to be for Trump because they're anxious, they're fearful, maybe they're angry because there's a lot to be concerned about. We need to talk. We need to talk because we don't want you being sold the same bill of goods that the students who signed up to go to Trump University were sold.
We don't want you to be left in the same position as the retirees in Florida were that put their money up for Trump condos, and there was never any built, and they didn't get their money back. We don't want you to think any businessperson can get away with your doing the work and then not getting paid for it. We don't want you to support somebody who doesn't support American workers and American businesses, and doesn't seem to understand we are stronger together in America.
Now, I will do everything I can in this campaign to tell you what I will try to do as your President. And here's why. You know, I've been talking about my plans for jobs and education and healthcare and all the rest of the agenda for some months now. And I admit, some people have made fun of that, they go "Oh my gosh, there she goes with another plan."
But here's what I believe. If I'm asking you to vote for me, for president, then I want you to know what I'm going to try to do as your president starting next January 20th. And I want you to hold me accountable. I'll be back here. And I'm going to be talking, I want to have a dialogue with the American people. Not just during the election, but afterwards and for those four years because I think there are a lot of good ideas that Americans have. That I want to hear about. And I'll tell you something else, I want to be the president of all Americans. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, young, old, everybody in between.
Because I think this election comes down to economic opportunity, national security, and American unity. And I'm going to work to make sure we pull together, we get the economy working for everybody, not just those at the top. We keep our country safe, we work with our friends and allies, we don't insult them, we join together to get rid of the threats that we face, and that we're going to pull America together again. That doesn't mean we all have to agree. No two Americans agree a hundred percent, on anything, that's part of our DNA, right? But we've got to work together.
That's why I applaud and salute Harry's years of service. He got up every day working for you, making a difference for you. And I'm going to miss not working with him directly as he gets to leave and come home to the state that he loves. But Harry, you better pick up the phone when I call, because I need your advice about how we're going to do everything we need to. So my friends, let's join together for these next 96 days. Let's make sure we win Nevada and America and build the future that we all deserve. Thank you and God bless you.