DECISION ‘92: SPECIAL VOTER’S GUIDE TO THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION : THEIR PROMISES: Excerpts from the candidate’s basic stump speeches, a look at what they vow to do for the nation : CLINTON:

Ladies and gentlemen, you are here today because you know how much is at stake in this election. We must go beyond the failed policies of the last four years and the last 12 years.

Four years ago George Bush said we would be better off today than we were when he was elected. Average annual income in Colorado is down by over $2,000. The number of families in poverty is up by 200,000. The number of children in poverty has increased by 60%. Hospital costs have increased by 152%. And high school graduates are down. Are you better off than you were four years ago?

This President promised us 15 million new jobs. He is over 14 million short. And get this: This Administration, which hates the government, has actually presided over a period when there has been a decline in employment in the private sector and now for the first time in American history there are more people going to work in government offices every day than in factories throughout the United States.

THE ECONOMY

For more than 10 years most Americans, literally two-thirds of our people, have worked harder for less money. We have gone from first to 13th in the world in wages. We have quadrupled the national deficit. And at the same time, unbelievably, somehow managed to reduce the amount of money we are investing in education and infrastructure and economic growth and high technology and research and development.

No one else could have figured out how to do that, but trickle-down brought it to us. The President says that there are great differences between him and me. And, boy, is he right about that. . . .

After 800 days without an economic plan, as President of the United States, he offered one which was nothing more than a warmed-over version of trickle-down economics.

And in this week’s Time magazine--listen to this, in this week’s Time magazine, an Administration official is quoted anonymously as saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter what’s in our plan because he doesn’t plan to follow through on it anyway.” That’s what they say about their own plan.

My fellow Americans, we are better than that and we can do better than that. And with your help, we will. . . .

I want to have an investment program for this country which, yes, asks the wealthiest 2% of Americans to pay a little more in taxes, but uses that money to say if you want to get it back, you can get it back, but no more across-the-board tax cuts; you can get it back if you’ll invest in American factories and in starting small businesses and in putting the American people back to work. . . .

I want a new partnership between government and business and labor in this country, to develop the best ideas we have and turn them into jobs here in America. . . .

DEFENSE CONVERSION

I don’t want to leave the people who won the Cold War out in the cold. We have seen a decline in manufacturing employment over 1 million in the last 3 1/2 years, as all the people who worked in the defense industries have felt the burden of defense cuts, but there has been no strategy to put them back to work in the domestic economy. . . .

Every dollar by which we reduce defense, we should spend in building an economy for the 21st Century. . . .

Their idea of cutting the $400-billion deficit is to give a $100,000 tax cut to millionaires and $50 to the middle class and make it up by charging older people on Medicare $400 more a year and charging 3 million students $2,000 more for their student loans and kicking a million people off of their disability benefits.

My idea for the deficit is to cut inessential spending, reduce by attrition federal employment by 100,000 and give it to the cities to put 100,000 police officers on the street in the next five years. Bring health care costs in line with inflation by finally becoming the last advanced nation in the world to control health costs and provide basic health care to all Americans. We must do it.

EDUCATION Their idea of education reform is to get off the hook as quick as possible. So they say, well, the only thing we have to do is just to let people take their tax dollars to private schools. . . . But their approach assumes that the public schools can’t be fixed, that the private schools are perfect and that there is nothing wrong with taking limited public dollars and putting them into private schools. . . .

Our schools can be fixed. That’s the first thing; they can be better.

The second thing I want to tell you is we already spend a smaller percentage of our income on kindergarten through 12th grade education than nine or 10 other industrialized countries. We do not need to divert limited resources. . . .

Every young person who does not go on to a four-year college should have access at least to two years of apprenticeship training so they can get good jobs, not dead-end jobs. . . .

We should open the doors of college education to all Americans without regard to their income.

Consider this: What if we had instead of the present student loan program a national service trust and any American could borrow the money for a college education and pay it back either as a percentage of their income after they go to work or, even better, by rebuilding America here at home by working for two years as teachers, police officers, in housing programs, with the elderly, with people with disabilities, with the children. . . .

We could solve the problems of America with the brightest and best of our people and educate a whole new generation of Americans. It would be the best money ever spent. . . .

FAMILY LEAVE And the President vetoed the family leave bill after saying he’d give family leave, and he’s about to veto it again. (Bush did so on Sept. 22.) Now let me tell you what my idea about that is. I believe in personal responsibility, empowerment and family values. . . .

First of all, let’s join the ranks of the 72 countries in the world that give working people a little time off when there’s a baby born or a sick parent. Let’s have the Family Leave Act. . . .

If we value work, empowerment and family values, and personal responsibility, let’s change the welfare system. Let’s make it a second chance, not a way of life. . . .

GOVERNMENT Let’s recognize, in short, my fellow Americans, that we can be pro-growth and pro-environment. We can be pro-business and pro-labor. We can make government work again by making it more aggressive and leaner and more effective at the same time. And we can be pro-family and pro-choice. Let’s bring this country together again. . . .

I ask you to join in this crusade to change this country. We’ve got . . . to wage a battle between hope and fear, between new ideas and things that have failed, between the courage to seize the future and the proven, comfortable, but wrong path we’re on now. . . .

I look out on this crowd, and I see at least half of you are quite a bit younger than I am. . . . You have everything on the line in this election. You cannot permit yourselves to be part of the first generation of Americans to do worse than their parents because we did not have the courage to face the challenges of our lifetime.

Stay with us. Work with us. Lift this country up, and we’ll win a great victory on Nov. 3. Thank you and God bless you. . . .