Corzine Delivers Remarks at Clinton Event

GOV. JON CORZINE, D-N.J. : Well, good morning, everybody, or good afternoon. I don't know about you, but I am smiling today.

You know what happened yesterday?

Rutgers is going to the finals. They won their...

... so we're all beaming here.

We're also a little happy we signed this primary bill yesterday. And -- guess what -- the winner of the next presidential election of the United States of America is standing right here in Elizabeth today, right?

It's funny how those things work out.

I am -- I like all those reasons that Joe gave, but I'll try to put a little spin on it, my own way. I am truly proud to stand beside Hillary Rodham Clinton and to endorse her for the presidency of the United States.

This very good person, this very good woman is a friend, a colleague. And I will tell you, she is someone who I know as a leader.

And I hope it is from all of those various perspectives that, I hope, the American people also will recognize, that she is the most qualified person to be the president of the United States, most qualified.

CORZINE: And I'll try to give you a few reasons. But it is absolutely clear, in my view.

Like all of you -- like all of you, you've watched her career unfold. It goes -- dates all the way back to Watergate hearings and all of her work for the Children's Defense Fund and a practicing lawyer who developed great skills in her private life.

And then as the first lady, I think all of us were proud of her strength and her grace as she represented our nation. And I think when people looked at the polls as the most popular individual -- because of how she carried herself people looked at her with great respect.

And I did that from afar. In 2001, we were graced to be sworn in as United States senators together. I think you were number 97, and I was number 98. That was a long food chain along the line there in the United States Senate.

We sat next to or close to each other on the floor of the United States Senate. We sat next to each other in the Environment and Public Works Committee and Budget Committee, and other places where we had a chance to both prepare for how we would work together on tough issues, complicated issues. We had a chance to debate those side by side, on the floor, in committees and across the board. We had a chance to actually vote.

Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes we didn't.

But I will tell you there is not a single person that I've ever worked with, in my private-sector life or in public life, who ever gives more thoughtfulness, more care, more balance to what she does and how comes to her decision than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She is not that racehorse or showhorse that people talked about. This is a workhorse that does the job to make sure she gets to the right answer. I think she is remarkable on all those scores.

And, you know, I have to say that all we have to do here in New Jersey is look at the results. We worked together in the aftermath of 9/11 on unbelievably tragic issues families and the reconstruction of a community, a broader community -- not just New York, but also of our greater metropolitan area.

CORZINE: No one spoke more earnestly, more heartfelt and more with the ability to get things done than Hillary Rodham Clinton. I'm proud of that work that we did together. We tirelessly worked in other areas. New Jersey and New York -- I guess I have to say New York, New Jersey...

... whatever we want to say here, on homeland security, making sure that risk is the basis on how we allocate funds -- whether it's at our port, New York-New Jersey port, which is so vital to here and Elizabeth whether it's rail security and mass transit that we work on consistently, chemical security -- you go through the list.

This is a person who has spoken up for the interests of New Jersey, not just New York. She's spoken up for the country.

And I think we all know how strongly Hillary Rodham Clinton has been as a spokesperson for children and for health care. There's no one that's been more eloquent.

This is the go-to senator, the United States senator that everybody turns to for leadership on these issues; experience, quality, excellence in everything she did.

And I could go on in transportation, mass transit, AMTRAK -- whole host of things -- environmental issues, veterans' issues. We worked together on racial profiling, banning it. This is a person who cares about the people that she serves.

She's a respected leader on both sides of the aisle in Washington. Her Republican colleagues turn to her to try to leverage her excellence in how she brings to issues as do her Democratic colleagues.

And probably most important in this world today, she's respected outside of New Jersey and New York and Washington, but around the globe. She has relationships with people that will actually work together to bring peace around the globe. She has the ability and the experience and the knowledge to work on the issues that are most important to the national security of this country, of this great country.

And I'll tell you: She is true to her own thoughts.

And I am proud of the fact that she believes how she comes to her conclusions are the right way. And she is willing to change. And I am proud that she is willing to say that when she's elected president, if George Bush hasn't brought us out of Iraq, she will in the first 90 days.

CORZINE: And guess what? I like her.

She's loyal. She supports other people's success, not just her own. And I am very, very thrilled to stand here and say that I am endorsing, and I will do everything within my power, as long as I can continue to be a good governor while we're doing that...

... we will do everything in our power to make sure that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the next president of the United States of America.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.: Whoa, thank you all -- my goodness. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This is a totally wonderful moment in time for me because, as all the people who are behind me and many of you in front of me know, I am thrilled to have the endorsement and the support of so many elected officials and leaders from New Jersey.

I have spent a lot of time here. I look forward to spending more. And it gives me, just, such a great sense of momentum and energy to have this support from New Jersey and South Jersey, from the legislature, from members of Congress, from the clergy, so many others who are here today.

I want to thank the state party chair, Joe Cryan. Joe, you're doing a great job, and you're leading the New Jersey Democrats to a new level.

Mayor, I'm delighted to be here in your city. Elizabeth is a historic city, and you're making it not only a city of historic past but a great future.

I want to thank my good friend, Bonnie Watson Coleman. She knows a little bit about breaking barriers for women, because she's been doing it all of her life.

And, Bonnie, I'm so proud to have your friendship and your support.

And to the speaker, Joe Roberts: Joe, you'll not only be on the Christmas card list; you can come and visit from time to time.

I love those reasons.

You know, I am going to also recognize a few other people who are here because I want to just mention them before I get back to my friend and your great governor.

I want to thank Representative Rob Andrews and Representative Frank Pallone, who are here.

CLINTON: I work with both Rob and Frank. Frank has a very important position in the Congress now, where he's actually chairing one of the committees that is going to work with me when I'm president to make sure we get quality, affordable health care for every single person in New Jersey, New York and America.

And Rob Andrews and I have worked together on important issues, particularly as they affect working people. It is time that we, once again, put our priorities straight in America and make it clear that we're going to provide good jobs with rising incomes to the vast majority of Americans. It is the middle class and working families that built this country and Rob understands that and is fighting with me for that.

And to State Senator Lesniak, I think we're in your district, and I so appreciate your support and your enthusiasm with this endorsement. And to Joe DeVincenzo, thank you so much for your leadership.

To Senator Buono, thank you, Barbara, being here.

Reverend Jackson, Reverend Simmons and everybody behind me -- let's give all of these leaders of New Jersey a great round of applause.

You know, I am thrilled to have anybody's endorsement, obviously. This is a long race, and we're putting together a great campaign. But I am especially honored and thrilled to have Jon Corzine's, because Jon and I have worked together.

You know, it is one thing to look at somebody from afar and follow that person in the news and maybe, you know, read about what he or she does. But when you work with somebody as closely as Jon and I work together in the Senate, you know you really do build a bond and a friendship.

Now, we would be friends because of that shared service, but we really became close because of what we went through after 9/11.

CLINTON: You know, Jon and I did sit near each other. I was slightly ahead of him in seniority, which I never let him forget.

We sat together in the back row of the Senate, where they put all the new people who come. It doesn't matter if you were the chairman of Goldman Sachs or the first lady of the country. You're back there, you know, just in line behind everybody else.

But we did have a good seat. We were near the candy drawer.

And so, when times got tough, we could, kind of, go and, you know, pull a little treat out of that drawer.

But we, seriously, went through a lot together. You know, when 9/11 hit, the whole country was, of course, sympathetic and rallied to our cause.

But Jon and I lived it every single day. You know, we were there for the people who lost their loved ones, you know, the family members who had said goodbye to their husband or their wife that morning or had just talked to their son or their daughter, and never got a chance to say goodbye and never really understood how this could have happened in America.

We were there for the people who lost their jobs and their livelihoods, you know. And we had to work on getting an agenda passed that would, number one, try to find out what happened.

You know, the 9/11 Commission did not easily pass the Congress because the White House was against it. They didn't want to explore what went wrong.

But Jon and I wouldn't give up. And thanks to that effort, we did get a commission, a bipartisan commission that was really straightforward in saying, here's what you did wrong and here's what you need to do, going forward.

And then Jon and I worked together to try to get those recommendations passed. You know, we sat together on one of the committees where I was proud to support Jon's legislation to make our chemical industry more secure. And boy, does New Jersey and New York have a big stake in whether we get that right.

And Jon pushed that legislation. He was the spokesman in the Congress. And we kept running into brick walls.

Well, finally, all these years later, we've got something passed and we finally got an agreement from the administration to do what Jon Corzine has been saying all along: Let's do it right, but let's give states like New Jersey the power to do even more.

CLINTON: And that never would have happened without Governor Corzine's leadership, and I am so grateful to him.

You know, Jon was there every step of the way after Enron. He put his expertise to work in trying to prevent this from happening to other people, where companies just basically pull the rug out from employees and stockholders and everybody else because they lie, they cheat, they steal.

And Jon Corzine was one of the major players in getting legislation passed to try to protect us going forward. Everybody who works for any company, anybody who has stock in any company, you owe Jon Corzine a big thanks because he was there to make sure that we're going to try to have a better system going forward.

You know, just a few weeks ago, Jon appeared before the committee we used to serve on together. It's called the Environment and Public Works Committee. And Jon was there to talk about how important it is for a coastal state like New Jersey, or New York, to start dealing with global climate change.

You know, it is happening. It is not some abstract problem or only affecting, you know, polar bears on ice floes. It is happening. We are seeing stronger and more frequent storms. We're seeing all kinds of changes in climate and vegetation and diseases are moving north. And so your governor was there to tell the Congress to do the right thing. And he talked about what he's doing, along with the legislature and country executives and municipal leaders like the mayor, to begin to deal with this threat.

Well today, Jon, we had a big victory because the United States Supreme Court said, "Guess what? Carbon dioxide should be regulated. It should be regulated because it's a pollutant, and we should start dealing with global climate change."

So Jon has been on the forefront of so many of the big issues that affect New Jersey and affect this region and affect the country. And I'm running for president because I want to get back to setting goals for our country.

And I'm old enough to remember when we had presidents who set goals. You know, I can remember President Kennedy saying we were going to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely in a decade. I didn't know how that was going to happen. I never doubted we'd do it, because that's what we did. We were Americans. We solved problems. We rolled up our sleeves. We took on the toughest challenges.

Well, what are our goals today? You know, if your grandchild or your child asks you, "Well, what is America trying to do today," what's our answer? We need to get back to the America that we all grew up in, that we were so proud of. We need to set the goal of universal health care coverage. Let's make health care affordable and available to every single American.

CLINTON: We need to set the goal of energy independence. We can do this. Don't listen to the naysayers in Washington. Listen to your governor. Listen to me. Listen to those who say, "Not only do we have to move toward energy independence, we have no choice. We cannot be dependent on unstable areas of the world, and they take our money which we use to buy their oil and then they use it against us."

You know, this is for our security. We cannot wait.

We also need to do it because it's going to be good for the environment. And, equally important, we will create millions of new, good-paying jobs for people here in Jersey and New York, across the country. Because when we put people to work with new, green, renewable alternative energy, with cleaning up the environment, those will be good-paying jobs.

So we need to set these goals and then we need to reach them. When it comes to education, let's set a goal of universal pre-K. Let's prepare every single boy and girl to go into school ready to learn and able to compete.

And let's start making college affordable again.

You know, it is now so expensive a lot of middle-class and working families can't even afford. And if they do afford it, they go into debt and their kids go into debt.

I'm old enough to remember when we got low, low-interest loans that we could go through college with. Because my father, you know, he's a small-businessman. He said, "OK, I've saved enough money for you to go to college, but I can only pay tuition and board. You want to buy a book? It's up to you."

So, you know, I'd worked since I was 13 -- I said, "Fine. That's a fair deal." And then when I wanted to go to law school he said, "You're on your own. I didn't plan for that."

So, you know, I had to go borrow money. But in those days you could borrow money at really low interest rates, and the lenders weren't playing kind of a bait-and-switch game on you where they raised the interest rates on you, where they gave you fine print and where you ended up having to pay more than you thought.

We need to set a goal of getting back the respect of the rest of the world, because we've got to lead and we need other countries to work with us.

Every single problem we face requires us to have alliances, coalitions. We need to start making more friends and allies instead of enemies and adversaries. Because if we're going to deal with terrorism, we've got to have people on our side, don't we? If we're going to deal with global climate change, or HIV/AIDS or any of the other issues that we face around the world, we've got to have people rooting for America again.

I will, as your president, make it my mission to rebuild those relationships. And I'll have some help from, you know, the previous president Clinton...

... because we'll get out there and we'll tell the world that America is back.

This is a great campaign, because it's time for a great debate in America. This is a defining moment. We know the last six years have not been good for our country, here at home or around the world. And we need to pull together, work across party lines, bring people into the political process so that we all together can not only look to our leadership as to what needs to be done, but ask ourselves, what can each of us do?

When it comes to health care, we all have to take better care of ourselves. We need to be strong and healthy for the lives that we lead. When it comes to energy, let's conserve more in our homes and our businesses. When it comes to education, let's make sure that we encourage those young people to do the best they can in school, because it's not only good for them. We need their brains, because we are in a competition for the future.

I Want to get back to the point where we can say to any child in America, "Here's what your president wants. Your president wants you to be part of building our nation again."

So I am grateful for this endorsement. It means the world to me. Together, we're not only going to win an election, we're going to take America back and put it on the right track.

Thank you all, and God bless you.

END