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.