From: barrett@cc.gatech.edu (James Barrett)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: KEMP: Convention speech text
Date: 25 Aug 92 19:49:53 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing


               Text of HUD Secretary Jack Kemp

    Here is the text of the address Tuesday by HUD Secretary Jack Kemp
to the Republican Natl Convention:

    KEMP:  Thank you, Roger Staubach.  It's an honor to be introduced by
a fellow quarterback and an NFL hall-of-famer, and hopefully soon we can
call you Governor Staubach or Senator Staubach in the great state of
Texas.

    Fellow Republicans, fellow Americans, tonight America stands at the
doorway of breathtaking opportunity, on the eve of a new century and a
new millennium.  As Ronald Reagan reminded us last night, history is on
the side of freedom.  It's on the side of those liberal democratic
ideals which gave birth to our nation and inspired the most
revolutionary words the world has ever heard--listen:  we hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by
our creator with inalienable rights, among which are life and liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.

    Tonight these ideas of liberal democracy and individual freedom,
entrepreneurial capitalism are on the margin winning throughout the
whole world.  Just think:  1 year ago reactionary forces in Moscow tried
to roll back this democratic revolution, and they failed.  Since then,
Boris Yeltsin has become Russia's first democratically elected president
in over 1000 years.

    The statues of Marx and Lenin were toppled by the people in Red
Square.  The hammer and sickle came down from atop the Kremlin,
providentially, on Christmas Day of last year.

    Today Mikhail Gorbachev is a syndicated columnist for the NY Times.
And believe it or not, we find the mayors of St Petersburg and Moscow to
the right of the mayors of New York City and Boston.

    Several months ago, I had lunch with the former mayor of Moscow.  I
asked him how he got elected.  He said Mr Kemp, I told all the people in
state-owned housing that they should have the right to own their own
home.  I told them they should have the right to sell them for a profit
and leave their property to their children.  And then the mayor of
Moscow said I pledged to make downtown Moscow a free enterprise zone.  I
said Mr Mayor, where did you get these radical ideas?  He said Mr Kemp,
I got them from the 1980 Republican platform of Ronald Reagan and George
Bush.

    Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn't fall.  It was pushed.  It was
our ideas that did the pushing and our Republican presidents Ronald
Reagan and George Bush that helped change the world.  Now we must change
America.  Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double
the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and
equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our
nation's pockets of poverty.

    Think of what that growth would mean:  more jobs, a higher living
standard for the people, extraordinary opportunities for all Americans,
and the resources to meet our most ambitious goals, public and private.

    But make no mistake.  If we are to change America, we must change
the US Congress.

    We must give President Bush--

    (Chant of "Clean the House!")

    You bet.  Clean it out.  We need a Republican Congress.  We need to
give President Bush and Vice President Quayle a Republican Congress to
help get America moving again and finally wage a winning war against
poverty and despair.

    My friends, the purpose of a great party is not to defeat its
opponents.  The purpose of a great party is to provide superior
leadership and greater cause.  It's not to denounce the past.  It's to
inspire our nation to a better future.

    This great cause is the same today as it was when our party was
founded.  Listen to the words of our founder, Abraham Lincoln.

    He said the progress by which the poor, honest, industrious, and
resolute man raises himself is that he may work on his own account and
hire someone else.  This, he said, is the great principle for which this
government was really formed.  You see, Lincoln believed that in this
country capitalism must grow from the bottom up, not the top down.  It
must begin on Main Street and extend to Wall Street, not the other way
around.

    This has a special meaning to me.  As a young boy growing up in Los
Angeles, this was my experience.  You see, my father was a truck driver.
He earned enough to buy the truck.  Eventually he and his brother built
a small business that put 6 children through college.  This is the kind
of capitalism we envision for America, the freedom not just to drive a
truck, but the chance to own the truck, and one day to own a trucking
company, own a home, and see your children go to college.  This is
America.  This is the dream, and this is the cause our party just
champion in the 1990s.

    My friends--my friends, we don't believe--we don't believe in an
America that pursues equality by trying to make rich people poor, but in
an equality that allows poor people, indeed all people, to become rich,
not just rich in creature comforts, but rich in terms of opportunity to
achieve your God-given potential.

    The party of Lincoln does not believe people are a drain on
resources.  We believe people are our resources.

    We don't believe that children--we don't believe that children are
just mouths to feed.  They are hearts and minds and souls for our
future, and they deserve our protection after their birth, as they do
before their birth.

    We don't believe that compassion should be measured by the size of
the safety net.  Compassion in America must be measured by the number of
rungs on the ladder of opportunity upon which all people can climb.

    This is what distinguishes our party from the Democrats.  The
Democrats' new covenant is not new.  It's not change.  It doesn't put
people first.  It puts the government first.  It doesn't empower people.
It empowers bureaucracy.  It doesn't encourage investment and growth.
It just spends and spends and spends.

    Mario Cuomo gave away the Democrats' game plan.

    Now, wait a minute.  He gave away the Democrats' game plan just
before their convention when he told us that Governor Clinton has the
courage to raise our taxes.  The Democrats call that courage?  I call it
crazy.

    In this economy, can you imagine anything more depressing and more
disruptive than raising income tax rates and imposing a surtax on the
American people?  The Democrats' plan won't soak the rich; it'll just
soak the poor, the middle class, and it'll drown our economy.

    We all know what the problem is in America--the economy is starved
for capital.  When capital is taxed heavily, as it is now, it becomes
scarce, available only to the privileged few.  The spirit of enterprise
and the engine of growth and new jobs is being smothered.  George Bush
and our party understood this back in 1988 when we ran on a pledge to
cut the capital gains tax, index it to stop taxing gains that are due
only to inflation, and eliminate the capital gains tax in our inner city
pockets of poverty.

    In 1989 President Bush asked the Congress to carry out his mandate,
and the Democratic Congress said no.  In 1990 and '91, as the economy
moved into recession, he asked repeatedly for action.  Congress said no.
This year in the president's State of the Union Address, once again he
pleaded with Congress.  Again, Congress said no.

    Then just last week, in a strict party line vote, the US Senate said
no again.  And tragically, even after, even after the problems of Los
Angeles, when we begged and asked the Democratic leadership to pass
enterprise zone legislation that our party has championed for 12 years,
Congress adjourned.

    Ladies and gentlemen, isn't it time we said no to the Democratic
Congress?

    What nerve they have.  These Democrats, the unemployment lines
lengthened to 11 million and they stonewalled the president's pleas for
action.  And then they blame the president, blame our party for the
economic decline.  What nerve they have to now step forward and offer
more taxation, more government, more welfare dependency.  And then they
proclaim--get this--a new Democratic covenant.

    Well, let me tell you.  As President Bush's HUD secretary, I've
traveled throughout this country.  I've found capital and credit are
virtually nonexistent in our nation's inner cities, and I've seen the
results and they're devastating.

    For 50 years, the Democratic Party has dictated most of the policies
that govern our cities:  higher taxes, redistribution of wealth and a
welfare system that penalizes people for working, discourages marriage,
punishes the family, and literally, believe it or not, prohibits poor
people to save.

    Ladies and gentlemen, it's not the values of the poor that are
flawed.  It's the values of the welfare system that are bankrupt.

    These policies have robbed our cities of vibrancy, shattered the
link between effort and reward, and now--and now--the Democrats want to
impose the same failed policies on the rest of America.  What nerve!

    Our party offers a better way.

    Last year, I had the opportunity to tour the home of a wonderful
black woman named Evelyn Lindsay (phonetic).  After years in public
housing and on welfare, thanks to this administration's public/private
partnerships, she finally became a home owner.

    After the tour was over, 1 skeptical reporter asked her, Evelyn
Lindsay, how can you guarantee that this house will look as good 10
years from today as it does this day?

    Evelyn Lindsay looked that reporter in the eye and said to him,
it'll look better, because for the first time in my life, I own
something of value that I can pass on to my children.

    Well, ladies and gentlemen, she spoke not only for her family, but
for all families.  Tonight let us speak for her and for all those
Americans who aspire to ownership and entrepreneurship, to jobs and
upward mobility, to safety and security, and to the right to send their
children to the school of their choice, be it public or private.

    President Bush--President Bush was speaking for her when he told the
public housing residents at Cochran Gardens in St Louis last year that
some day they, too, could own their own homes.  He was speaking for them
when he told a cheering crowd that the capital gains tax is not a tax on
the rich, it's a tax on the American dream.  He pledged if the system's
not helping to build a better life, then we must change the system, and
we will, and we must.

    I loved--I loved hearing Ronald Reagan last night.

    I really did.

    I loved hearing President Reagan remind us last night that it's not
enough to be equal in the eyes of God.  We want an America in which we
are equal in the eyes of each other.

    Our party offers a more powerful vision of America, an America
committed to prosperity and equality of opportunity, to jobs for all our
people.  We must be the party that unleashes the talents of every single
American boy and girl, and every child of God.  That's why I'm so proud
of our president's platform.  It puts our party on the side of lower tax
rates on working families, lower tax rates on the formation of capital,
lower tax rates on the first time home buyer, and lower tax rates on
poor Americans who want their shot at the American dream.  We must give
it to them.

    My fellow Americans, the liberal Democrats just don't get it.  They
don't understand that you can't create more employees without first
creating more employers, that you can't have capitalism without capital,
and we can't expect people to defend property rights when they're denied
access to property.  But when people have a stake in the system, they'll
not only defend their own property, they'll help their neighbor defend
his property as well.

    You see, you see, this is the message of Los Angeles.  This is the
message of every other pocket of poverty in America.  We must be the
party that gives all people a stake in the system, and a stake in each
other.  That's what the re-election of George Bush means to America.  We
have the ideas, we're on the side of history, and we must bring alive
the promise of the Declaration of Independence to all people,
everywhere.

    Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great cause.  We've got a great
team.  And let me say as an old football player who played in this very
stadium:  we've got a great quarterback in George Bush.

    And, Mr President--

    (Cries of "4 More Years!")

    And, Mr President, give them hell Thursday night.  God bless you.
God bless America.

------------------OS/2 v2.0 -- Why settle for anything less?--------------------
James C. Barrett (barrett@cc.gatech.edu)| "If your so damned smart, why are
Georgia Tech College of Computing       |   you doing what your doing, and I'm
                                        |   president of the U.S.?" - G.Bush
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,misc.headlines