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And our America the Beautiful initiative has gotten off to a good start with several million new trees all across this great country. We ensured that America's seas would still be shining, ending ocean dumping and sewage sludge, proposing and signing a tough oil pollution bill, and imposing a 10-year moratorium on oil and gas leasing over vast areas of the really sensitive, the ecologically sensitive coasts. We have launched a new generation of clean energy technologies, not only by increasing funding for research and development but also by increasing incentives for their use. And we have pushed through comprehensive national energy legislation a salute to Jim again that will guide our country into the next century. In terms of Federal leadership, we have tripled funding for Federal facility cleanups, secured over 100 enforceable cleanup agreements for Federal facilities, and signed Executive orders spurring the Federal Government to take the lead in increasing energy efficiency, recycling, waste reduction, and converting the Federal fleet to alternative fuels. Finally, we have insisted that a new world order include a cleaner world environment, and we reached over 20 new international environmental agreements. Just by way of example, we reduced Poland's debt in order to help them fund a new environmental foundation. We also launched the center, the Environmental Center in Budapest, to help countries in Central and Eastern Europe. We made America the world leader in the phaseout of ozone depletion, the ozone-depleting CFC's, and we led the way to global bans on driftnet fishing. We built environmental cooperation into trade negotiations with Mexico. We have expanded the debt-for-nature swaps to protect the rain forests in Latin America and created networks for cooperation with Asia. And our comprehensive, action-oriented approach to global climate change was ratified by the Senate and adopted by the world community. At the same time that we renewed our national commitment to the environment, we redoubled our efforts to support and encourage people like you. Everyone in this room, everyone here today, has demonstrated the principles of a new environmentalism. This national environmental awards program was established to honor those who honored the environment. Some here have forged innovative partnerships, environmental alliances that are protecting our wetlands, preserving our resources, and preparing a new generation of environmental leadership. Others have taken the lead in combining sound business with a safer environment, a smart new merger between profitability and preservation.

monologic

First, let me say to all of you that when we came in here tonight, I think it is fair to say that Hillary and Al and Tipper and I were literally overwhelmed by this reception. I knew there was a lot of enthusiasm, but it did not all quite add up until I realized that we had caused your exams to be delayed. And I want you to know that we are having such a good time, we'd be delighted to come back about this time next term if you want. I want to thank Dr. Williams for his magnificent invocation. I thank Dr. Woodall for the remarks he made, for making us welcome here, and for the example that he and Mr. Spencer, the principal here, all the teachers here, and all the students and teachers from this school and the other schools here represented. I thank you for what you are doing and for the example you are setting for America. I'd like to thank all of our musicians and the choir for playing and singing for us. And I want to thank Melissa for speaking so well. Were not you proud of her? Did she do a great job, or what? I am glad I never had to run against her for anything. I also want to thank all these wonderful people from Pennsylvania who have come here, all the officials and citizens from this area and from Philadelphia and nearby areas. Let me say, there was a lot of talk tonight keying off Reverend Williams' invocation about vision. I'd like to say something else, if I might, out of respect to others. It is a good thing to have a vision, because otherwise you never know where you are going. So you have to have one. I ran for ENTITY, beginning in 1991, because I thought our country was drifting and because I believed that if you look at these young people here one elementary school in this area has kids from 50 countries speaking 13 languages and if you look at all these young people and their parents and everybody in this room, and you imagine what the world is going to be like, and you know it is going to get smaller and smaller, and we are going to have more and more relationships, and the borders will become more and more open, it is hard to imagine any country in the world that is remotely as well positioned as America to give people the chance to make the most of their own lives. But we had to have a vision. My vision for the 21st century was pretty simple.

monologic

I wanted us to have a country for the children of the Gores and the Clintons and all the other kids in our country where every person who was a responsible citizen would have a genuine opportunity to live out their dreams. I wanted us to have a country where over all the differences between us we would relish those differences, our racial, our religious, our cultural differences; our serious differences we would debate seriously. But we would honor our common humanity and our shared values as Americans enough to say, what unites us is so much more important than what divides us; we will build one America in the 21st century. And I wanted us to continue to be the country, as we grew more diverse and, therefore, had deeper and deeper ties with more and more other people around the world. I wanted America to recognize that because of our wealth and position, we have not only the opportunity but a responsibility to continue to be the world's leading force for peace and freedom and prosperity for others. It is good for ourselves to do the right thing in trying to build the rest of the world and build closer ties. Now, it is a good thing to have a vision; you cannot get started without it. The Vice President talked about Tommy Lasorda and Mike Piazza. My favorite baseball player of all time, because he was such a wonderful speaker, was Yogi Berra. You know, Yogi Berra said, We do not know where we are going, but we are making good time. So you have to have a vision. But you have to have something else, too. You have to have people who are willing to act on it. I hope you could see with the four of us up here, we like being together. We see ourselves as a family, and we see our allies as a family. When I came to Washington, I wanted to do something about homelessness, but Tipper Gore helped me do it. I wanted to raise the consciousness of America about all kinds of things that we sort of kept hidden under the rug but were hurting people. Mental health was one of the most important. Tipper Gore helped me do it. I wanted to prove that we could have a smaller Government we now have the smallest Federal Government since 1962 but I wanted to do it in a way that would not just throw good Federal employees in the street and that would enable us to do more. The Vice President made it possible for us to do that; he led that effort.

monologic

I wanted to prove that we could grow the economy and improve the environment by doing things like building new cars that would triple gas mileage. The Vice President has led our efforts there, and in dealing with all the promise of new technology in trying to hook up all our schools and libraries to the Internet, and in managing a big portion of our relations with Russia, South Africa, and other countries. I can say without qualification that no Vice President in history has had so much responsibility or done so much good. So the vision requires an action. And if it had not been for Hillary, for all the good intentions in the world, we would not have done nearly as much to advance the cause of health care or child care or education or to observe the millennium. We would not have been able to do it. When I see Joe Hoeffel standing up here talking and I know he is going to be a strong force on the committees that he is gotten; I see another new Congressman out there, my longtime friend Bob Brady from Philadelphia. I know that they will be implementers of a vision. Or Chaka Fattah, who got you all worked up, up there, when he stood up; do you know what he did? He passed a bill in the Congress last year that I was for, but I could not have passed it. I could not have done it. But he went around to Republicans and Democrats alike and said, You know, I come from Philadelphia. There are a lot of poor kids there that have never had a real chance. They come from poor families. They live in tough neighborhoods, but they have got good minds. Will you help me pass a bill that will provide the necessary financial support for college students to come in and mentor these kids in middle schools so they will go on to college? And we did it because of that. Now, I will give you one other example. Last time I came here as ENTITY was in 1993, to a conference on entitlement reform. Entitlement reform is a fancy way of saying with everybody living longer and the baby boomers about to retire, all the rest of you are not going to be able to afford to pay our medical and retirement bills unless we do something. That is what entitlement reform means. And I said, You know, I have got this economic plan, and it is not going to be very popular with a lot of people because it has a lot of tough decisions.

monologic

We are asking people who are the wealthiest people in America to pay a little more in income taxes, sometimes a lot more if they were really well off. We are asking people who are used to getting Government programs to do without a few hundred of them until we get this budget in balance. But if we do it, we will lower interest rates, cutting home mortgages and the interest rates on car payments and credit cards, and we will get investment back in the country. We will have jobs coming back in the country. And the money you will save on the stock market going up and the interest rates going down will be far greater than the money those of us who are well off had to pay in a little more taxes. It was very controversial, and people said, Oh, it will bring an end to the economy. It will end the American economy as we know it. It will drive us into recession. Well, you heard what the Vice President said about the country with the longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest peacetime unemployment since 1957, and all of that. What you should know is that this county, this county has had, since that economic program passed and the interest rates started going down, 1,800 new businesses and 44,000 new jobs, the highest growth in the State of Pennsylvania. The decisive vote that made all that possible was cast in Congress by Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky. We won by one vote in the House, and it was tied in the Senate. The decisive vote in the Senate was cast by Al Gore. Now, the point I am trying to make is we had a good vision, but somebody has got to carry the water; somebody has to make the decisions; somebody has to push the rocks up the hill; somebody has to take that step and jump off the diving board; someone has to move. People have to act on their vision. That is why I said last night and that is why that sign says, Let us get to work. We have a good vision, but we must act. And for all of you, I thank you. I wanted to come here to this school because this school district represents what I think America ought to do. I know not every school district has the resources. So if we want everybody to end social promotion but have summer school and afterschool programs, we have to provide the funds from Washington to help the school districts do it.

monologic

If we want to turn around schools that are not working, we have to provide help from Washington. And we are doing that. But I want people to see this school district all over America, on the news tonight, in the articles tomorrow. I want people to know we came here to a place that has done important things, to give kids who need it extra help, to have high standards, to do things that will create a vision that people will want to act on. I think to have a motto like learn and live to serve is a stunning thing, and I hope you will live by it all your lives. Every high school graduate in this school district gets a license, a driver's license-sized copy of the diploma, and on the back it has the computer skills the graduate has mastered. That is a driver's license to the future. I would like to see that modeled in other places all across America, as well. So you have already heard what we have to say, but it is plain that America is working again. But every one of you knows if we had time to do it, I'd give everybody a piece of paper, and I'd ask you to write down you might do this when you go home tonight. I'd ask you to write down somewhere between three and six things no more than six that you believe are the long-term challenges that will face you young people in the 21st century and what is it that we could do now that would pave the way to a better future for you. I can tell you that I did my best in the State of the Union last night to say, Okay, we have got America working again, but what are the long-term challenges? And you have heard them talked about tonight, and I will not belabor them. But let me say, we have to build strong communities in the 21st century that gives everyone a chance at opportunity. That means we have to do more to have the kind of economic opportunity in places where unemployment is high and people make low wages that you have here. That means putting more money in there. It means teaching adults better skills. It means teaching those who are first-generation Americans to read better, if that is what it takes. It means continuing to drive the crime rate down.

monologic

It means making all communities livable communities, to set aside the land that we need to set aside, to have the green space, to manage the traffic, to do the things that will make people free and happy if they live anywhere in America. These are the kinds of things we have to do. It means reconciling work and family. One of the best things that the Gores have done is, for the last 7 years, they have had a conference in Tennessee every year on the challenges modern families face. And most all of them relate somehow or other to the need to balance work and family, a challenge that faces Americans in all income groups. I will bet there is not a family here that has not at some point in the last couple of years faced some sort of challenge of balancing your responsibilities to your children to your responsibilities to your work. That is why we want a child care plan that includes help for stay-at-home parents when the children are very young, but real help for working people that cannot afford quality child care on their own. Because in America, when I look at all of you, I want you to be free and confident, when you start your families, that you can do what you want in your work life, but you know that your first responsibility is to raise your children, and you are going to be able to succeed at that responsibility. The Vice President told you that rather gripping story about the HMO's. The truth is we have to manage the health care system; it is like any other system. We have to keep the costs as low as possible. But the quality of our people's health counts most. That is why we say you ought to be able to see a specialist if you need one. You ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room. You ought to be able to have your medical records private and all of the other things in our Patients' Bill of Rights, because we have got to balance the need to save money with the fundamental necessity of providing quality health care to all Americans. And I'd just like to say one other thing. We have said a lot about education tonight, but I would like to say something about the very first subject I talked about last night in the State of the Union, and that is the aging of America.

monologic

And again I want to say, this is an issue that should be of primary importance not to today's retirees but to tomorrow's retirees, their children, and their grandchildren yet unborn. Because when the baby boomers retire and that includes the parents of just about all of the students here; people between the ages of 34 and 52 were the people born in the generation after World War II, the largest group of people in history in America, young people, until the present class of students which numbers over 53 million. Now, when we retire, we are going to double the number of seniors by the year 2030. And what we have got and the average life expectancy is already 76 years old plus; for the young people here, it is probably about 83 years. But we do not want to get into a position where our retirement is a financial burden to our children and undermines our children's ability to raise our grandchildren. So when I tell you that we ought to set aside roughly 75 percent of this surplus we have got for the next 15 years to save Social Security and to save Medicare, and in the process, since we will be saving the money, we will be paying down the national debt, giving us the lowest level of debt we have had as a nation since before World War I in 1917, keeping interest rates down, investment high, jobs creation going, and incomes rising I say that not just for those of us who will be older but for our kids and our grandkids. And I hope you will see it that way. This is a big test for us. We have not had this kind of situation in a long, long time. And very rarely do societies have the luxury of being financially strong enough, militarily secure enough, and having enough information about the future to make the kind of decisions that I asked the American people to make last night. Yes, we ought to give some tax cuts, but they ought to be the right kind. They ought to be for child care. They ought to be for helping us to deal with our environmental challenges. They ought to be for people saving for their own retirement, because Social Security will never be enough for that. They ought to be for raising children. But we can save this money now and lift a burden from the young people here.

monologic

Do you really want to run the risk of squandering this surplus that we have worked so hard for until we know for sure that our retirement will not compromise the integrity of their lives and their ability to raise their children as we have tried to raise them? Now, the young people here are going to have a fascinating time. The Internet is already growing by, you know, millions and millions of new pages every week. It is the fastest growing communication mechanism in human history. People are able to move around as never before, and even if you cannot leave town now, you have got people from all over the world right next door. We are learning things that we have never imagined before. We are on the verge of not only unlocking the mysteries of the human gene but actually finding medical treatments to cure or even prevent things from Alzheimer's to arthritis to all kinds of cancers. I went to the auto show in Detroit the other day, and one thing I am looking forward to I love this job, and I am not looking forward to 2 years from now being barred from being ENTITY by the Constitution's two-term limit. But one thing I am looking forward to, now that I have been to the Detroit auto show, is getting back in those cars, because the cars of the future are going to be environmentally sound and hilariously fun to drive and safer. But we have to do our best in this time to, first of all, make it safe, dealing with the challenges of nuclear and chemical and biological weapons, to give you the strongest communities possible, to build one America across our lines of diversity, and to think about the future. When I ran for ENTITY in 1992, before I ever made the decision to run, a young man who is now not quite so young, he is a graduate student, named Sean Landris was driving me around Los Angeles. I was an anonymous, virtually anonymous Governor of Arkansas. But Sean Landris knew something about me and the speeches I had made and the things I was interested in, and he said, Are you going to run for ENTITY? And he had a little tape deck in his car, and he put this tape deck in and this old Fleetwood Mac song, Do not Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, which was made before he was born. And I believe that those of us in positions of responsibility have no higher responsibility than to think about your tomorrows.

monologic

It is a pleasure to be here with my friend and partner, President Medvedev, and I want to thank him again for his leadership, especially his vision for an innovative Russia that is modernizing its economy, including deeper economic ties between our two countries. my Commerce Secretary, Gary Locke, and Minister Nabiullina. I always have a little trouble with that one. They say the same thing about Obama. We are joined by our United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Ron Kirk, and our great Ambassadors, John Beyrle and Sergey Kislyak. And I want to also thank the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-Russia Business Council, the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, and all the organizations who helped bring our countries together not just today but every day. Now, many of you joined us at the business summit during my visit to Moscow 1 year ago, and it is good to see you again. I noted then that you are part of a long tradition of commerce and trade between our peoples. Long before Russia and the United States even exchanged Ambassadors, we exchanged goods. In fact, before coming to Washington, President Medvedev visited California and Silicon Valley to explore new partnerships in science and technology and in venture capital. And while there, he pledged Russia's support to preserve the historic Fort Ross in Sonoma County, an enduring reminder of the early Russian settlements and trade that brought Russian goods to our young nation. Some have even wondered whether our Declaration of Independence may have been signed with goose quills from Russia. More than 200 years later, it is a sign of the times that during his visit to Silicon Valley, President Medvedev opened his own Twitter account. I have one as well. And I said during our press conference today that we may be able to finally get rid of those old red phones. As we all know, despite the surge in trade in recent years, the economic relationship between the United States and Russia is still largely one of untapped potential. And I pointed out last year that our trade with Russia is only about the same as our trade with Thailand, a country with less than half the population of Russia. And that is why part of the reset of the U.S.-Russia relationship required us creating the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Partnership Commission--Presidential Commission to explore a whole range of new opportunities, including economic partnerships that create jobs and opportunities for both our peoples.

monologic

And under Secretary Locke and Minister Nabiullina's leadership, that is what we have done. Companies represented here today are moving forward with a series of major trade and investment deals that will create jobs for both Americans and Russians across many sectors, from aerospace to automotive engineering to the financial sector and high technology. I am especially pleased that Boeing and Russian Technologies are moving forward with a $4 billion deal on 50 Boeing 737s. This is a win for Russia, creating a long-term market for its raw materials and resulting in modern airplanes for Russia's travelers. It is obviously a win for the United States, because this partnership could add up to 44,000 new jobs in the American aerospace industry. This reflects my administration's National Export Initiative, and it is a perfect example of the shared prosperity and the high-tech jobs that we can create together. So today President Medvedev and I agreed to expand trade and commerce even further. We agreed to deepen our collaboration on energy efficiency and clean energy technologies. We reached an agreement that will allow the United States to begin exporting our poultry products to Russia once again. I want to again thank President Medvedev and his team for resolving this issue, which is an important signal about Russia's seriousness about achieving membership in the World Trade Organization. And that is why I told President Medvedev that our teams should accelerate their efforts to work together to complete this process in the very near future. I believe that Russia belongs in the WTO. That is good for Russia, it is good for America, and it is good for the world economy. I pledged to President Medvedev that the United States wants to be Russia's partner as he pursues his vision of modernization and innovation in Russia, including his initiative to create a Russian silicon valley outside of Moscow. American companies and universities were among the first to invest in this effort. And I am pleased that a number of you here today are going to be working with it as well. Now, there is still a lot more that we can do to encourage trade and investment. And obviously in Russia--and Medvedev and I discussed this--issues of transparency and accountability and rule of law remain absolutely critical. This is the foundation on which investments and economic growth depends. And I very much appreciate and applaud President Medvedev's efforts in this area. Today we took another step forward.

monologic

I always feel self-conscious when I say that, and I say that every time I am in here, but somehow, technically and that just kind of explains some of the problems of government that this Old Executive Office Building is part of the White House. I have not put my clothes in a single closet over here. Well, I am glad to welcome members of the clergy and lay leaders to Washington. I have always' assumed that men of the cloth can visit this town and really see how it works without returning home feeling the need to pray fervently, and let me tell you, we need all the help we can get. I also feel a certain kinship with those of you who are members of the clergy. Now, this is a comparison that is not always made, but politicians and clergy do have a lot in common. We both have to make speeches and keep our audiences interested, and I know I am running a risk in telling members of the clergy a story about their own profession, but maybe it will be new to some of you. It has to do with a young minister who was very disturbed because sometime, particularly on those hot Sunday or summer mornings Sunday mornings, he'd see his group nodding off while he was preaching his sermon. And he told about his distress to a more experienced and older clergyman who said that he'd had that same problem, but he'd found an answer to it. He said, When you see them and their eyes beginning to close, he said, you just insert a line in your sermon and say, 'Last night, I held another man's wife in my arms.' Last night, I held in my arms a woman who was not my wife. Well, the first minister had told him that after he got them awake, he was to then say, That woman was my dear mother. And this young fellow said the line and then said, I cannot remember who she was. Well, I hope I have better luck today. I have come to talk to you about our efforts to overhaul our nation's tax code, but I first want to stress our commitment to solving the school dropout problem and youth unemployment. The two subjects are not unrelated because a vital, growing economy, liberated from high tax rates and an unfair and restrictive tax code, is the best way to provide opportunity for all. For the special problem of our unemployed young people, a youth employment opportunity wage is also vital.

monologic

Now, if you have not heard that term expressed, it is something we have asked of the Congress and asked that they do. The figures reveal that every time the minimum wage has increased, the number of jobs available for teenagers, young people, has gone down those afterschool jobs, those weekend, and those summer jobs. The jobs are simply priced out of existence. The school dropout problem is more complex, but I think that we can all agree that it is at least attributable in part to the increase in family breakdown. But one of the common causes of dropout from school also is a need or desire to be earning some money. In this modern age, families are subject to intense pressures from all sides. And sad to say, the Federal Government, instead of helping, has been adding to the burden of families. Throughout the great tax explosion of the sixties and seventies, everybody with a paycheck got hit and hit hard by taxes, but those trying to raise families really got clobbered. Not only did their taxes skyrocket, their personal exemption, the real value of the deduction that they were allowed to take for themselves and each one of their dependents, was steadily knocked down by inflation. If the personal exemption, which was $600 in 1948, had kept pace with inflation, that exemption today would be $2,700. Now, this is where the profamily initiatives of America's fair share tax plan come in. We are not going to go to the $2,700 or have not asked to do that but in our tax plan we have asked to almost double it, to raise it to $2,000 in order to make up for some of what the family has lost over those years. We are also increasing the standard deduction to $4,000 for joint returns. Our proposal will mean that families, as well as the elderly, the blind, and the disabled, living at or below the poverty line will be completely scratched from the Federal income tax rolls. The U.S. Government will no longer tax families into poverty. And under our proposal, a family of four would not have to pay one single cent of Federal income taxes on the first $12,000 of income. And because saving is so essential to families, but so very difficult with all those expenses, we are expanding the taxfree savings accounts of IRA's, the individual retirement accounts, so that they are fully available to nonwage-earning spouses.

monologic

America's fair share tax plan has received commendations from some unexpected quarters. The Democratically controlled House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families rated our plan more profamily than any other tax proposal around and light years ahead of the present system. He said that our profamily provisions will do more for the poor than Lyndon Johnson ever did during the years of the Great Society. Are we going to give up and stick with a tax system loved only by the special interests and their high-priced tax attorneys, or are we going to stop making excuses and give the poor the break from unfair taxation they so very urgently need? You know, the Lord has told us that his share is a tenth of what we earn, and He has told us that if we prosper 10 times as much, we will give 10 times as much. But when we start computing Caesar's share under our present tax policy, you can prosper 10 times as much and find you are paying 50 times as much tax. So, I think what is fair for the Lord ought to be more reasonably fair for Caesar, also. Opportunity also means economic growth, and the best way to achieve that is by cutting tax rates still further. One of the great economic lessons of the last few years is the beneficial effect of tax rate reductions. We have seen that as tax rates go down, all the negative economic indicators, like poverty and inflation, go down, too; and all the positive economic indicators, like productivity, disposable income, and employment, go up. Something else also goes up when marginal tax rates are cut believe it or not at the lower rates, government revenue increases; it does not go down with the cut in the rates. Tax rates in this country, long ago, passed the point where they became counterproductive, stunting economic growth and actually bringing in less revenue than tax rate cuts that spur growth and draw investment out of wasteful loopholes and back into the productive economy. Just a few years ago, before our present tax cut the one that we launched in 1981 before that, there was only $39 million in America available for what is called venture capital to be invested into new ventures and new business and so forth. Well, last year, after our tax cuts were in effect, there was $4 billion available for such investment. Our first tax cut you can see the across-the-board thing it was 25 percent.

monologic

And since 1984 that was the first year that all of the three installments of our tax cut were in place we found that the tax revenues have been increasing at a rapid pace. And in fiscal year 1985, which ended October 1st, Federal revenues continued to grow at the remarkable rate of 10 percent. Now, let me suggest that over the long haul, the Federal Government simply cannot raise revenue any faster than by cutting tax rates and, then, cutting them again. So, it does not make much sense to blame the deficit on tax cuts, and even less to ask for economy-busting tax hikes as a cure. The deficit is quite clearly caused by overspending. The government Gargantua has been eating up those extra revenues from our tax cut and pounding on the table demanding more. Well, we are going to put Gargantua on a diet, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings diet. It would pare $36 billion a year off its overeating, resulting in a balanced budget by 1990. All we are asking is that Congress take a little over one-half the extra $60-odd billion in revenue generated by our tax cuts and economic growth and use it to reduce the deficit. And the way some people in government spend the public's money also reminds me of a story. And again, it is about a clergyman who had gone to a small hamlet about a hundred miles from his own parish to preach at a revival meeting. And driving into the village, he noticed a man from his own community. The fellow was known, a little bit, for his drinking. And he was sitting on the front steps of the general store, and he had a bottle of beer in his hands. And the preacher stopped his car, and he asked the drinker why he was so far from home. And the man told him that beer was 5 cents a bottle cheaper where they were then. Well, the minister pointed out the cost of travel back and forth, the price for a hotel room. And the beer drinker retorted, I am not stupid, Reverend, I just sit here and drink till I show a profit. cuts in the deficit and cuts in the tax rates. Both are in the Congress now, and we need your support to keep their noses to the grindstone. As for America's fair share tax plan, we are shooting for Christmastime.

monologic

I am happy to have this opportunity to talk to you once more before I leave the White House. Next Tuesday, General Eisenhower will be inaugurated as ENTITY . A short time after the new President takes his oath of office, I will be on the train going back home to Independence, Missouri. I will once again be a plain, private citizen of this great Republic. Inauguration Day will be a great demonstration of our democratic process. I am glad to be a part of it-glad to wish General Eisenhower all possible success, as he begins his term--glad the whole world will have a chance to see how simply and how peacefully our American system transfers the vast power of the Presidency from my hands to his. It is a good object lesson in democracy. I am very proud of it. During the last 2 months I have done my best to make this transfer an orderly one. I have talked with my successor on the affairs of the country, both foreign and domestic, and my Cabinet officers have talked with their successors. I want to say that General Eisenhower and his associates have cooperated fully in this effort. Such an orderly transfer from one party to another has never taken place before in our history. In speaking to you tonight, I have no new revelations to make--no political statements-no policy announcements. There are simply a few things in my heart that I want to say to you. I want to say goodby and thanks for your help. and I want to talk to you a little while about what has happened since I became your ENTITY. I am speaking to you from the room where I have worked since April 12, 1945. This is the ENTITY's office in the West Wing of the White House. This is the desk where I have signed most of the papers that embodied the decisions I have made as ENTITY. It has been the desk of many Presidents, and will be the desk of many more. Since I became ENTITY, I have been to Europe, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands--Wake Island and Hawaii. I have visited almost every State in the Union. I have traveled 135,000 miles by air, 77,000 by rail, and 17,000 by ship. But the mail always followed me, and wherever I happened to be, that is where the office of the ENTITY was. The greatest part of the ENTITY's job is to make decisions--big ones and small ones, dozens of them almost every day.

monologic

The papers may circulate around the Government for a while but they finally reach this desk. He cannot pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That is what I have been doing here in this room, for almost 8 years. And over in the main part of the White House, there is a study on the second floor--a room much like this one--where I have worked at night and early in the morning on the papers I could not get to at the office. Of course, for more than 3 years Mrs. Truman and I were not living in the White House. We were across the street in the Blair House. That was when the White House almost fell down on us and had to be rebuilt. I had a study over at the Blair House, too, but living in the Blair House was not as convenient as living in the White House. The Secret Service would not let me walk across the street, so I had to get in a car every morning to cross the street to the White House office, again at noon to go to the Blair House for lunch, again to go back to the office after lunch, and finally take an automobile at night to return to the Blair House. But necessary, so my guards thought--and they are the bosses on such matters as that. Now, of course, we are back in the White House. It is in very good condition, and General Eisenhower will be able to take up his residence in the house and work right here. That will be much more convenient for him, and I am very glad the renovation job was all completed before his term began. Your new ENTITY is taking office in quite different circumstances than when I became ENTITY 8 years ago. On April 1945, I had been presiding over the Senate in my capacity as Vice President. When the Senate recessed about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, I walked over to the office of the Speaker of the House, Mr. Rayburn, to discuss pending legislation. As soon as I arrived, I was told that Mr. Early, one of President Roosevelt's secretaries, wanted me to call. I reached Mr. Early, and he told me to come to the White House as quickly as possible, to enter by way of the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance, and to come to Mrs. Roosevelt's study.

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When I arrived, Mrs. Roosevelt told me the tragic news, and I felt the shock that all of you felt a little later--when the word came over the radio and appeared in the newspapers. I offered to do anything I could for Mrs. Roosevelt, and then I asked the Secretary of State to call the Cabinet together. 09 p.m. I was sworn in as ENTITY by Chief Justice Stone in the Cabinet Room. Things were happening fast in those days. The San Francisco conference to organize the United Nations had been called for April 25th. After attending President Roosevelt's funeral, I went to the Hall of the House of Representatives and told a joint session of the Congress that I would carry on President Roosevelt's policies. On May 7th, Germany surrendered. The announcement was made on May 8th, my 61st birthday. Churchill called me shortly after that and wanted a meeting with me and Prime Minister Stalin of Russia. Later on, a meeting was agreed upon, and Churchill, Stalin, and I met at Potsdam in Germany. Meanwhile, the first atomic explosion took place out in the New Mexico desert. The war against Japan was still going on. I made the decision that the atomic bomb had to be used to end it. I made that decision in the conviction it would save hundreds of thousands of lives--Japanese as well as American. Japan surrendered, and we were faced with the huge problems of bringing the troops home and reconverting the economy from war to peace. All these things happened within just a little over 4 months--from April to August 1945. I tell you this to illustrate the tremendous scope of the work your ENTITY has to do. And all these emergencies and all the developments to meet them have required the ENTITY to put in long hours--usually 17 hours a day, with no payment for overtime. I sign my name, on the average, 600 times a day, see and talk to hundreds of people every month, shake hands with thousands every year, and still carry on the business of the largest going concern in the whole world. There is no job like it on the face of the earth--in the power which is concentrated here at this desk, and in the responsibility and difficulty of the decisions. I want all of you to realize how big a job, how hard a job, it is--not for my sake, because I am stepping out of it--but for the sake of my successor. He needs the understanding and the help of every citizen.

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It is not enough for you to come out once every 4 years and vote for a candidate, and then go back home and say, Well, I have done my part, now let the new President do the worrying. He cannot do the job alone. Regardless of your politics, whether you are Republican or Democrat, your fate is tied up with what is done here in this room. The ENTITY is ENTITY of the whole country. We must give him our support as citizens of the United States. He will have mine, and I want you to give him yours. I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the cold war began to overshadow our lives. I have had hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle-this conflict between those who love freedom and those who would lead the world back into slavery and darkness. But when history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the cold war, it will also say that in those 8 years we have set the course that can win it. We have succeeded in carving out a new set of policies to attain peace--positive policies, policies of world leadership, policies that express faith in other free people. We have averted world war III up to now, and we may already have succeeded in establishing conditions which can keep that war from happening as far ahead as man can see. These are great and historic achievements that we can all be proud of. After the First World War we withdrew from world affairs--we failed to act in concert with other peoples against aggression--we helped to kill the League of Nations--and we built up tariff barriers that strangled world trade. This time, we avoided those mistakes. We helped to found and sustain the United Nations. We have welded alliances that include the greater part of the free world. And we have gone ahead with other free countries to help build their economies and link us all together in a healthy world trade. Think back for a moment to the 1930's and you will see the difference. The Japanese moved into Manchuria, and free men did not act. The Fascists moved into Ethiopia, and we did not act. The Nazis marched into the Rhineland, into Austria, into Czechoslovakia, and free men were paralyzed for lack of strength and unity and will. Think about those years of weakness and indecision, and the World War II which was their evil result.

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Then think about the speed and courage and decisiveness with which we have moved against the Communist threat since World War II. The first crisis came in 1945 and 1946, when the Soviet Union refused to honor its agreement to remove its troops from Iran. Members of my Cabinet came to me and asked if we were ready to take the risk that a firm stand involved. So we took our stand--we made it clear to the Soviet Union that we expected them to honor their agreement--and the Soviet troops were withdrawn from Iran. Then, in early 1947, the Soviet Union threatened Greece and Turkey. The British sent me a message saying they could no longer keep their forces in that area. Something had to be done at once, or the eastern Mediterranean would be taken over by the Communists. On March 12th, I went before the Congress and stated our determination to help the people of Greece and Turkey maintain their independence. Today, Greece is still free and independent; and Turkey is a bulwark of strength at a strategic corner of the world. Then came the Marshall plan which saved Europe, the heroic Berlin airlift, and our military aid programs. We inaugurated the North Atlantic Pact, the Rio Pact binding the Western Hemisphere together, and the defense pacts with countries of the Far Pacific. Most important of all, we acted in Korea. I was in Independence, Missouri, in June 1950, when Secretary Acheson telephoned me and gave me the news about the invasion of Korea. I told the Secretary to lay the matter at once before the United Nations, and I came on back to Washington. Flying back over the flatlands of the Middle West and over the Appalachians that summer afternoon, I had a lot of time to think. I turned the problem over in my mind in many ways, but my thoughts kept coming back to the 1930's--to Manchuria, to Ethiopia, the Rhineland, Austria, and finally to Munich. Here was history repeating itself. If we let the Republic of Korea go under, some other country would be next, and then another. And all the time, the courage and confidence of the free world would be ebbing away, just as it did in the 1930's. And the United Nations would go the way of the League of Nations. When I reached Washington, I met immediately with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and General Bradley, and the other civilian and military officials who had information and advice to help me decide on what to do.

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We talked about the problems long and hard. We considered those problems very carefully. It was not easy to make the decision to send American boys again into battle. I was a soldier in the First World War, and I know what a soldier goes through. I know well the anguish that mothers and fathers and families go through. So I knew what was ahead if we acted in Korea. But after all this was said, we realized that the issue was whether there would be fighting in a limited area now or on a much larger scale later on--whether there would be some casualties now or many more casualties later. So a decision was reached--the decision I believe was the most important in my time as ENTITY. In the days that followed, the most heartening fact was that the American people clearly agreed with the decision. And in Korea, our men are fighting as valiantly as Americans have ever fought-because they know they are fighting in the same cause of freedom in which Americans have stood ever since the beginning of the Republic. Where free men had failed the test before, this time we met the test. We met it firmly. We met it successfully. The Communists have seen their hopes of easy conquest go down the drain. The determination of free people to defend themselves has been made clear to the Kremlin. As I have thought about our worldwide struggle with the Communists these past 8 years--day in and day out--I have never once doubted that you, the people of our country, have the will to do what is necessary to win this terrible fight against communism. I know the people of this country have that will and determination, and I have always depended on it. Because I have been sure of that, I have been able to make necessary decisions even though they called for sacrifices by all of us. And I have not been wrong in my judgment of the American people. That same assurance of our people's determination will be General Eisenhower's greatest source of strength in carrying on this struggle. Now, once in a while, I get a letter from some impatient person asking, why do not we get it over with? Why do not we issue an ultimatum, make all-out war, drop the atomic bomb? We are not made that way. Peace is our goal, with justice and freedom. We cannot, of our own free will, violate the very principles that we are striving to defend. The whole purpose of what we are doing is to prevent world war III.

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We are living in the 8th year of the atomic age. We are not the only nation that is learning to unleash the power of the atom. A third world war might dig the grave not only of our Communist opponents but also of our own society, our world as well as theirs. Then, some of you may ask, when and how will the cold war end? I think I can answer that simply. The Communist world has great resources, and it looks strong. Theirs is a godless system, a system of slavery; there is no freedom in it, no consent. The Iron Curtain, the secret police, the constant purges, all these are symptoms of a great basic weakness--the rulers' fear of their own people. In the long run the strength of our free society, and our ideals, will prevail over a system that has respect for neither God nor man. Last week, in my State of the Union Message to the Congress--and I hope you will all take the time to read it--I explained how I think we will finally win through. As the free world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both sides of the Iron Curtain--and as the Soviet hopes for easy expansion are blocked--then there will have to come a time of change in the Soviet world. Nobody can say for sure when that is going to be, or exactly how it will come about, whether by revolution, or trouble in the satellite states, or by a change inside the Kremlin. Whether the Communist rulers shift their policies of their own free will--or whether the change comes about in some other way-I have not a doubt in the world that a change will occur. I have a deep and abiding faith in the destiny of free men. With patience and courage, we shall some day move on into a new era--a wonderful golden age--an age when we can use the peaceful tools that science has forged for us to do away with poverty and human misery everywhere on earth. Think what can be done, once our capital, our skills, our science--most of all atomic energy--can be released from the tasks of defense and turned wholly to peaceful purposes all around the world. The Tigris and Euphrates Valley can be made to bloom as it did in the times of Babylon and Nineveh. Israel can be made the country of milk and honey as it was in the time of Joshua.

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There is a plateau in Ethiopia some 6,000 to 8,000 feet high, that has 65,000 square miles of land just exactly like the corn belt in northern Illinois. Enough food can be raised there to feed a hundred million people. There are places in South America--places in Colombia and Venezuela and Brazil-just like that plateau in Ethiopia--places where food could be raised for millions of people. If we can get peace and safety in the world under the United Nations, the developments will come so fast we will not recognize the world in which we now live. This is our dream of the future--our picture of the world we hope to have when the Communist threat is overcome. I have talked a lot tonight about the menace of communism--and our fight against it-because that is the overriding issue of our time. But there are some other things we have done that history will record. One of them is that we in America have learned how to attain real prosperity for our people. We have 62 1/2 million people at work. Businessmen, farmers, laborers, white-collar people, all have better incomes and more of the good things of life than ever before in the history of the world. No depositor has lost a cent in that period. And the income of our people has been fairly distributed, perhaps more so than at any other time in recent history. We have made progress in spreading the blessings of American life to all of our people. There has been a tremendous awakening of the American conscience on the great issues of civil rights--equal economic opportunities, equal rights of citizenship, and equal educational opportunities for all our people, whatever their race or religion or status of birth. So, as I empty the drawers of this desk, and as Mrs. Truman and I leave the White House, we have no regret. We feel we have done our best in the public service. I hope and believe we have contributed to the welfare of this Nation and to the peace of the world. When Franklin Roosevelt died, I felt there must be a million men better qualified than I, to take up the Presidential task. But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it. And I have tried to give it everything that was in me. Through all of it, through all the years that I have worked here in this room, I have been well aware I did not really work alone-that you were working with me.

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You know, Paul, if you really have all morning been talking about all those things you said, then I have not got anything left to say. That is what I was going to talk about. No, I want to thank you. It is a privilege to be with so many hard-working and dedicated Republicans. And with regard to the interruptions last night, afterwards I said to George, I said, I thought there for awhile I was going to have to do the speech one word at a time. But it is a special honor to greet the women and men who've just become the new Republican National Committee. And incidentally, if we are the reason for all of this, we would not have been in a position to be responsible for all of this if it had not been for people like you putting us here, and we are most grateful. Each of you has dedicated years of effort to the cause that unites us. And today, you take up positions of the highest responsibility in one of the oldest, proudest political parties on Eartha party that is always stood for human freedom, a party that is given the world leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight David Eisenhower and Abraham Lincoln. Your positions give you an opportunity to serve our country in an historical manner. And on behalf of all Republicans, I give you a heartfelt congratulations. During your time in office you will face many challenges, but none will be greater than the challenge you face in the next 74 days. And I just know that with the people by our side, we willand by we I mean Republicanswe'll lead not only our party but our country. And we will fight this campaign with every ounce of strength we have, and the people will win. We will go to the peopleto all the peoplewe'll speak of our beliefs; we will stand on the record; we will deal in the facts. The opposition has already begun to try to pit one group of Americans against another. But the election of '84 will be a battle not of groups, but of ideas. And we will wage it with joy and vigor. We know that our constituency is everyone in this country. And our intent is to keep promoting policies that will help all of the people and help the people of this country to help themselves. that we are the party of new ideas; we are the party of the future; and we are the party whose philosophy is vigorous and dynamic.

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The old stereotype of a kind of pudgy, stolid, unimaginative Republicanthere may be a few cartoonists around that still want to portray us as that, but they are lying in their teeth if they do. I know that all of you know that. And it is no time to sit on our laurels. 1984 is the year when we can get out there in the union halls and the VFW, the church meetings, and get out the word. As a matter of fact, we will be walking away from here in a few minutes, because Nancy and I are due in Chicago to speak to the VFW this afternoon at their national convention. But we want to get out the word on how, through cutting tax rates, we are making the GOP stand for Great Opportunity Party, and get out the word on how our policies have enhanced America's strength and this has made the peace that we enjoy more solid and durable; get out the word on how inflation has plummeted and unemployment has fallen and the value of the dollar is higher and the economy is expanding. And we did not do this to help some of the people; we did it to help all of the people. Things are going so well that the opposition has had to reverse the meaning of a few words and concepts. Indeed, at their meeting in San Francisco, one of their speakers called the economic expansion-and I quotean illusion. Well, it is pretty hard to cash an illusion. People are cashing bigger checks. But according to the opposition, prosperity is an illusion. And if you read the record of the last administration backward, it has a happy ending. Well, this expansion has already lasted 20 months without fueling inflation. It is given nearly 6 1/2 million more Americans, as I said last night, jobs. There is nothing dangerous about an expansion that is based on hard work and innovation, and the American people know it. Looking to the future, it is clear that the opposition has only one innovation to offerstrange for them, tooa huge tax increase. But let us get the word out on that one, too. To bring the budget under control, we need more Republicans elected who will support the line-item veto and the balanced budget amendment.

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You have heard me say that before, but we are going to keep on saying it, because every poll indicates that the American people support those measures overwhelmingly, once again showing that the leadership of the other party totally is ignoring what their own people are telling them they want. And to spur new investment, to enable the people to keep a greater share of their earnings, we need that historic simplification of the tax code. And if we can broaden that base, if we can begin to get the unpaid tax that is now out there from those who are freeloading on their neighbors, we can reduce the rates for everyone. Our vision is and must be an America of greater incentives, more growth, and new opportunities. Holding this office has allowed me to see as never before how richly our nation has been blessed. Around the world, totalitarians tread ideals underfoot and oppress millions. But in America, it is still our privilege to stand for liberty. This election is for more than our party and more than the White House; it is for the future of our beloved country, the place Mr. Lincoln called the last, best hope of man. For the sake of our children and the millions on Earth who look to America for hope, I know that we will fight the good fight, we will keep the faith. There was one thingI know that many of the things I have said here were repeated many times in the convention, because they had to do with the actual record of 'what we have been doing in the management of the Government, but I think you might be pleased to knowyou'll remember back a couple of years ago when we were talking about a private sector initiative, encouraging that. And thousands of volunteers came forth with every kind of idea, and we had a commission, temporarily put together, that collected, and then in the White House we had computerized the literally thousands of programs throughout the country that citizens and community groups have themselves put in place to solve some problems that heretofore our opponents always would think was only for government to do. Well, we still maintain a headquarters in that private initiatives, and there is hardly a week goes by that we do not have something that we pick up the phone to them and say, Hey... And sometimes it is a problem only involving one individual that we have heard about, or that we have read in the press about, with a situation that government is not equipped to solve, and we call them. All taken care of.

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I want to say a deep thank you from the bottom of my heart for your warm welcome to this wonderful State of sunshine here in Arizona. This is not a day for politics. This is a day for God, and since this is God's day I will leave very shortly and go with my old and longtime friend, Roy Elson, down to hear his preacher. He recommends him pretty highly, and I want to see if he is as good as the preacher I would have heard at Johnson City had I gone to church at home this morning. The reason I did not go to church at home this morning was because that beloved and venerable and wonderful man, than whom there is no other like him in all the world, Carl Hayden, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said to me, I think if you are going from your ranch in Texas to the sidewalks of San Francisco, you better not do it without stopping in Arizona. And when the Chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee makes a slight suggestion to the President, I hope the President is smart enough, and I know he loves Carl Hayden enough, that his suggestion is my command. I want to thank Governor Fannin and Governor McFarland, my old boss that taught me so much and I love so much, and Edna, for coming out here to meet me. I want to tell you how grateful I am that Arizona furnishes one of our Cabinet members, Stewart Udall, and his lovely wife, and I am very proud of him. He is doing a wonderful job. We have done the best work on water and on power and on conservation that has been done any years since I have been in Washington. I want to thank Congressman Udall and Congressman Senner for coming here and welcoming me this morning. I am going to leave with Roy now in just a moment and I will not be seeing you any more, but I am coming back to these wonderful, happy, smiling faces, and this dry air and this fine sunshine because it is good and it invigorates you. It makes you count all your blessings and think about really how fortunate we are to be Americans. Now, all of you people out here have faith and have hope and have vision or you would not be in this Promised Land of Arizona.

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If you were afraid, and if you were doubters, and if you did not have vision, you would be in some ghost town somewhere instead of a State like Arizona and a city like Phoenix that is a Go-Go State and a Go-Go City. Do you know that by the year 2000--and we are really closer to the year 2000 now than we are to the year 1918 when we had our last war, even when I was born, 1908, we are pretty close to the year 2000--in the year 2000 Arizona's growth will be twice what it is in the rest of the Nation, the Nation's average. I do not want that to be repeated out where it gets back and drifts back over into Texas because some of my opponents over there will be saying I said Arizona is twice as good as Texas, and I do not want to say that. But I do say that your resources, your people, your management, your faith, your vision, your 20th century methods, your modern ideas, your great electronic industry and other industries that are coming to Arizona--that you will be growing twice as fast as the rest of the Nation in the year 2000. You have one problem, and it is a mighty big problem. I told you this was not going to be a political day and it is not. You get the wrong impression. You have one big problem, and that problem is--water. I never go down a corridor of the Capitol that Roy Elson does not catch me by my coattail and say, Cannot you help us with the problem of water in Arizona? I never went into the Appropriations Committee but what Carl Hayden did not catch me by the lapels of my coat. I am not that intimate with your other Senator, and I did not come out here to advertise him. He has talked to me a good many times about your water problem, and he wants to help on it. And he has wired me, urging me to take certain action in connection with water for Arizona. So it is not a partisan thing between Democrats and Republicans and Independents. We all have to find an answer to this water problem because that is going to be the answer to the 20th century. I will tell you what I am going to do about it. We are going to continue under the program that Stewart Udall has working now, and we are making progress on it every day.

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I wonder if you would mind if I would communicate to you an odd thought that occurred to me, as I sat here. There was brought to me in emphatic form once, by an old soldier of mine, who reminded me that you could never tell what was around the corner in the world. When I first came back from Europe 2 years ago, and before my friends found that it was utterly futile and useless to try to make me appear better on the TV by the use of paints and stains, they had me in a little room one night, and the man was working very seriously on my face in an effort to do something about it. Finally, in this very preoccupied sort of job and atmosphere that was prevailing, he suddenly began to laugh. And he said to me, General, we have got ourselves in a funny fix. Do you know what I was in the war? He said, I was one of your paratroopers. What made me think of that this morning was the fact that when I first met Sam Sturgis, I was detailed as a young officer to coach a football team and I made him an end, and he worked pretty hard under me for some weeks and months. Today, I think that all of you would like for me to speak for you in commending him as a brilliant head of a great organization which not only here but throughout our land has built up these great works in flood control, in drainage, in water conservation, and power development-an organization of which not only the United States ENTITY but which America is proud. I am delighted to be here with you on this historic spot. Our Nation was only 16 years old when, from a point near here, two Americans of great courage--Lewis and Clark--pushed off and floated to the mouth of this great river. A little over a century ago, a man named McKay struggled over primitive paths in this area. A hundred and nine years ago., a frontiersman named McNary, with his family, reached this almost virgin land to establish his home. Both of these men had famous descendants--men who have contributed much to the extraordinary growth of the Northwest. From the McKay family came an able Governor and a dedicated Secretary of the Interior--Douglas McKay. From the McNarys came the great American whose name forevermore will distinguish this monumental work. Senator McNary believed deeply in the future of this country. He had the grit and determination to help build that future.

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In this endeavor he worked side by side with those men of vision of this region who, before the turn of the century, sought to open to navigation the upper reaches of the Columbia River. With that drive for an open river for water traffic came the natural development of hydro-electric power. Ten years ago, death denied Senator McNary the privilege of seeing his dream come true. But the will to build this dam lived after him. And may I pause to pay my personal tribute to Mrs. McNary, here with us today on the platform. That the will to build this dam survived-and that today this dam is built--are due to the spirit of distinguished citizens of this region. Especially are they due to an Oregonian who carried on Senator McNary's work and for the past 10 years has labored tirelessly to complete this project--my good friend, Senator Guy Cordon. I am mindful as well of the sustained effort of many Congressmen from this region, including particularly Congressman Hal Holmes, who have worked in behalf of this and other great projects here in the Northwest. Now, this massive dam, my friends, means much more than the steel and concrete, more than the genius and the effort that went into its building. It means more than the benefits and the progress--however great--that it will bring to this fortunate region. This structure symbolizes the purpose of using, for the benefit of all our people, the tremendous natural legacy with which the Almighty so abundantly endowed our land. Wisely and providently we must use and develop these resources, so that each succeeding generation of Americans may share in their benefits. It is for us to see that they shall not be wasted or neglected or denied to generations yet to come. Now, among these treasures of our land is water fast becoming our most valuable, most prized, most critical resource. A blessing when properly used--it can bring devastation and ruin when left uncontrolled. It is essential that every drop of water, from the moment that it falls upon our land, be turned to the service of our people. thus we will develop power, prevent floods, improve navigation, and supply our tremendous and growing domestic and industrial needs for water. So crucial to our future has water become, that I have assigned appropriate surveys and plans concerning it to a special committee of the Cabinet, and to the Hoover Commission as well.

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These studies, when subjected to Congressional action, will undoubtedly result in the comprehensive water policy that this country has needed since its very beginning. The wise control of our water resources obviously requires the most skillful and comprehensive planning. This dam, for example, is designed to operate in coordination with similar structures, upstream and down. It is part of a plan to assure the full use of the water resources of this entire river system. McNary Dam is, therefore, representative of the coordination that must mark the development of all of our river systems. It is, moreover, an example of national responsibility properly assumed by the Federal Government. Just a mile and a half down river is another structure--the bridge at Umatilla. I am sure that you who live here are just as proud of that bridge as you are of this tremendous dam. You have every right to be. That bridge at Umatilla is an example of local responsibility properly assumed. A major difference between the two undertakings is in size. All of you know that when construction was started on McNary Dam, no local enterprise--public or private--could have financed it, so, realizing that the dam was necessary, the Federal Government gave its support. The bridge at Umatilla was a much smaller effort. Local enterprise-in this case the county government--was able to shoulder the $5 million loan that made that construction possible. And so, local enterprise did that job. These two structures illustrate an idea we have been applying in Washington for some 19 months. A century ago Abraham Lincoln put it better than anyone else has done. He said, The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves--in their separate and individual capacities. Now, in keeping with Lincoln's standard, the Federal Government has certain vital responsibilities in such fields relating to the control and use of water as flood control, improvement of navigation, and reclamation and development of land. When in the course of assuming these responsibilities, dams are built, then hydro-electric power is often developed, of great value to the surrounding regions and to the Nation. I hope that we shall soon have another example of Federal responsibility in the generation of power. I refer to the Libby Dam, which-like this great McNary Dam--is a project requiring the resources of the Federal Government.

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From its location on the Canadian border, on a tributary of this mighty Columbia River, it will powerfully aid the control of floods, and produce a new means of generating power, all the way to the sea. I have recently acted to remove obstacles to the construction of that dam. A distinguished northwesterner, Governor Jordan of Idaho, has been named Chairman of the International Joint Commission. His intimate knowledge of this area and sound judgment will surely go far to speed fulfillment of our aims, and those of our Canadian neighbors. This project will be brought into existence. I shall continue to recommend Federal construction of such beneficial projects. Such activities as these, my friends, are obviously, as Lincoln said, the legitimate object of government. In all that the people can individually do for themselves, government ought not to interfere. It is not properly a Federal responsibility to try to supply all the power needs of our people. The Federal Government should no more attempt to do so than it should assume responsibility for supplying all their drinking water, their food, their housing, and their transportation. Parenthetically, may I remark that a region which lets itself become completely dependent upon national funds provided by a Congress-which Congress represents not that region alone but the whole Nation-would frequently find that the funds fail to keep pace with local needs. But the important thing is that as Federal power expands in a region-and I mean Federal authority and responsibility--local enterprise comes increasingly intimidated and discouraged, even though the needs for energy continue to grow. Such a conversion of local regions into Federal satellites poses a threat deadly to our liberties. The Administration in Washington--and the present leadership in Congress--are unalterably opposed to such malignant growth of bureaucracy. In our devotion to conservation, let us not forget that there are spiritual as well as physical values to protect. Above all else, we must protect the freedom and the spirit of independence of our people in our States and counties, in our cities and towns. Determination to have this kind of freedom gave us this Nation. It brought your ancestors to this Western country. That determination is not only the surest protector of our liberties, it is the principal ingredient in our national prosperity. Yet, there are some who contend that the development and distribution of hydro-electric power is exclusively the responsibility of the Federal Government. They argue that to permit any State or local government or any private company under governmental regulation to develop such power capacity is to give to a special group an asset belonging to all the Nation.

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Indeed, in some instances, these disciples of centralized responsibility and authority insist that since the Federal Government should provide all hydro-electric power, it should likewise eliminate competition by providing steam-electric power as well. Only thus, these zealots would have us believe, can we poor citizens be protected against exploitation against what they call the predatory exponents of capitalism--that is, free enterprise. Now, let us have a quick look at this matter. In the first place it is, of course, not difficult to be generous with someone else's money. So the individual who wants to build power dams only with Federal money is not directly or particularly concerned with the economic necessity of the project or with the suitability of its location. Secondly, these advocates of centralized government shut their eyes to the remarkable development of this Nation during past decades. They must wonder how such prosperity came about when communities and citizens were free to look after themselves--including their own protection against the so-called local interests. These believers in centralization fail to warn us that monopoly is always potentially dangerous to freedom--even when monopoly is exercised by the Government. Curiously enough, they proclaim their fear of a private power monopoly in a county, city or State, but they urge upon us all a gigantic, overwhelming, nationwide power monopoly. But, of course, they also see themselves as the all-wise directors of that monopoly-so all would be well. monopoly, nor do they want a system leading toward it. They know The American people do not want and do not need to have any such they can have all the power capacity of our streams developed, as needed, without forfeiting the advantages of local responsibility and participation. Throughout our country are many public enterprises--organized years ago by States, municipalities, and other public agencies--which have long been in successful operation. In hundreds of other instances, power has been and is being provided by private enterprise under the regulatory processes in the particular governmental agency involved. In each instance the people directly concerned by such operations have themselves decided whether they are best served by public or by private agencies. The issue is not, therefore, public power versus unregulated private power. The issue posed to us is Federal monopoly of power, as against public or regulated power, freely chosen in each instance by the citizens of each area, with the Federal Government coming in as a cooperating partner where this seems necessary or desirable.

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Last year, for example, State and local governments were invited to cooperate in power generation without the threat of Federal power control. During this brief period numerous local public agencies and private investors have applied for licenses to build hydro-electric plants. These applications in this Northwest region amount to nearly six million kilowatts. This represents a prospective investment of not less than one and one-half billion dollars. Well over half of this would be invested by public power--not private power--interests. But the seekers after Federal control of energy are not silenced even by this array of facts. They say that construction of power projects by local enterprise will impede the comprehensive development of this or other river basins. Now again--let us take a look at the facts. What they say just is not true. All power projects must be licensed by the Federal Power Commission. Before the Commission grants a license, it must see evidence that the project makes maximum use of the developed resources. It makes no difference who builds the projects-Federal, State, municipal, or private agencies. when a project is licensed before a non-Federal authority, it is not removed from public control. Rates and services remain under regulation. And when the licensing period ends, the site can be assumed by the Federal Government. that, here in the Northwest, your own public agencies and your own private companies--operating under both Federal regulation and your own eagle eyes out here--can work in the public interest at least as well as some far-off Federal agency. Through the Governors' Power Policy Committee, Governors Langlie, Patterson, Jordan, and Aronson are doing great work in assuring this area of adequate supplies of water. More benefits will flow from efforts to further inter-State cooperation on problems that cross the borders of the Northwestern States. I am especially happy that the power produced by this great new dam will contribute to the finest type of cooperative effort--your own Northwest Power Pool. This arrangement is an admirable modal of voluntary pooling of public and private generating and transmission facilities. Because of it, you citizens of the Northwest have hundreds of thousands of kilowatts of additional prime power that would not exist through independent operation of your various utilities. And in addition--and very important--you have it under your own control--not under the permission of a far-off Washington office holder. This is a splendid partnership--the kind that the Administration will continue to encourage.

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I might add that this partnership concept has been most ably advanced by your Republican delegation in the Congress, led by Senator Cordon. to assure each citizen of enough kilowatts, when he wants them, where he wants them, at the lowest competitive cost--with the least likelihood of bureaucratic domination from Washington, D.C. In this effort, we shall avoid extremes. We shall neither withdraw from the power field nor will we federalize all electric power generators in the United States. Instead, we shall continue to advance in a spirit of helpfulness to localities, and in a spirit of cooperation with local citizens. Where local enterprise can shoulder the burden, it will be encouraged and supported in doing so. And where local action cannot or should not fully meet the need, we shall have Federal action. In this way, our people, in their communities and homes throughout America, shall reserve to themselves as many of the basic decisions affecting their lives as possible. In this way, our people will remain free to carve out their destinies as their predecessors did. It was in this spirit that those who preceded you in the great Northwest, in only a century and a half, turned an unsettled wilderness into an inland empire--an empire vastly enriched by this gigantic structure which today we so proudly name the McNary Dam. Now, my friends, I know that the policy I have outlined for you will satisfy neither group that exists at the extreme ends of this argument. It is not intended to please them. This program, as all other programs in which your Government engages, is designed to benefit the United States of America--160 million people. It is guided and formulated on the advice, the commonsense counsel of the vast majority of Americans. Extremes do not interest me, or the Administration, in the slightest. Fellow citizens, we have talked today especially of power and water and this great new dam. But it is well that we remind ourselves that these are but part of a commonly-held objective which transcends all partisan and sectional considerations. The objective is that this Republic shall in every way grow ever stronger and more secure--that it may remain at peace in a world freed of the threat of atomic war. We want our America to have an ever growing, vigorous economy. We want every citizen to prosper and advance--with freedoms which daily shine brighter in each community of our land.

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For several reasons, I shall want to take some of the time available to us today, actually to read to you a statement. Now, Mr. Hagerty tells me that a mimeograph of it is being made and is going to be over here before the conference is ended. If that is true, I suggest there is no need for your making notes during the time I am dealing with this paper. The paper deals with an approach to the security problem, and there are three reasons that I should like to take it up today. First, I have sent down today to the Congress a reorganizational plan for the Defense Department. It is not radical in most ways, certainly, but it does attempt to point up that organization so as to secure a greater effectiveness, economy, speed in action, and more rapid production of materiel that has been appropriated for. the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, and the Director of Mutual Security. They have all returned, or at least all have returned except Secretary Wilson; and we have been having conferences on this same global problem. And finally, I met this morning with some of the legislative leaders, and we had this problem up for a long and exhaustive discussion. So I want to give you really the approach that we are now making toward this problem. I would like to present to you in a general way, and with fairly broad strokes, what I consider the sensible framework within which the United States and its allies can present in hard military fact an ever more effective posture of defense. A true posture of defense is composed of three factors--spiritual, military, and economic. Today I shall talk only about the last two. We Americans have frequently called for unity of basic purpose among our allies. I feel quite strongly that the least we can do is to display a similar continuity and unity in American purpose. This policy of ours, therefore, will not be tied to any magic, critical year which then has to be stretched out because of economic or production problems, but will be based on the sounder theory that a very real danger not only exists this year, but may continue to exist for years to come; that our strength, which is already very real, must now be made stronger, not by inefficient and expensive starts and stops, but by steady continuous improvements. I have always firmly believed that there is a great logic in the conduct of military affairs.

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If these two logical disciplines can be wedded, it is then possible to create a situation of maximum military strength within economic capacities. If, on the other hand, these two are allowed to proceed in disregard one for the other, you then create a situation either of doubtful military strength, or of such precarious economic strength that your military position is in constant jeopardy. It has been the purpose of this administration ever since it took office, finding itself confronted with a crazy quilt of promises, commitments, and contracts, to bring American military logic and American economic logic into joint strong harness. No more glaring illustration of the lack of balance between the military logic and the economic logic could possibly be found than the situation that existed when we took office. On the one hand, we found our allies deploring our unfulfilled defense promises. On the other hand, we found there was a total carryover of $81 billion in appropriated funds, largely committed, for which cash must be provided from revenues in future fiscal years, over and above the normal annual cost of government. It is just as if the late administration had gone to the store and ordered 81 billion dollars worth of goods, which we have got to pay for as they are delivered, in addition to paying the regular household running expenses. The fiscal situation represented by these two extremes absolutely has to be brought into some kind of realistic focus, and the only way to do it is to have a completely new, fresh look without any misleading labels. As you know, over the past years I have been involved in the European end of defense, and therefore I think I know all about paper divisions and cardboard wings. For the last 3 months, I have been heavily involved in the American end of defense, and day after day have had to struggle with the basic equation that links the military safety of this country and of the free world with the ability of the world to pay its bills and earn a living. This morning I told the legislative leaders that already we can see our way clear to ask the Congress to appropriate at least 8 billion less in new money for the fiscal year 1954 than had been asked for by the previous administration. This is a preliminary figure based on 3 months' hard work. The great bulk of it, of course, relates to security programs. More definite figures will become available as appropriation requests are presented to the Congress during the next few weeks. You will note that I have been talking about the new appropriations for fiscal 1954.

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Actual cash savings for 1954 will be determined only as Congress acts on the appropriation requests. These savings will not reduce the effective military strength we will deliver to ourselves and our allies during fiscal 1954. They are already on the books and in contracts. Deliveries actually will be speeded up through the reduction of lead time, and concentration on producing those items which make the most military sense for the immediate future. Practically everyone concerned with the problem can with some justification be a special pleader. But I am sure that what the overwhelming majority of Americans want to believe is that their Government is working with diligence and intelligence to bring about as rapidly as possible a condition of true military strength. I also believe that the overwhelming majority of the people of the free world appreciate the fact that a healthy American economy and a functioning economy in their own home country are inseparable from true defense. Furthermore, I have a deep conviction that all these people possess a fundamental common sense Which permits them to grasp the difference between a quiet, steady, long-term improvement in their defense position and the tempests stirred up by public arguments over the artificial arithmetic which is so easy to produce in the defense field. The program we are presenting is a long-term program, calling for a steady and adequate flow of men and materials to present a position of genuine strength to any would-be aggressor. The basic elements of our strategic problem have not materially changed in recent years, and certainly not in recent days. The areas and peoples vital to our Nation's welfare are the same as they have been for a long time. What we are doing is to adopt a new policy for the solution of the problem. This change in policy is radical and cannot be effected overnight. There exists what is, in effect, a straitjacket, comprising prior authorizations, appropriations, and contracts. The essence of the change is this. We reject the idea that we must build up to a maximum attainable strength for some specific date theoretically fixed for a specified time in the future. Defense is not a matter of maximum strength for a single date. It is a matter of adequate protection to be projected as far into the future as the actions and apparent purposes of others may compel us. It is a policy that can, if necessary, be lived with over a period of years. Finally, I would like to remind you of what I have said many times before, and will probably say many times again.

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Most of all, we must champion the American worker and the American small business. We will, if we fight fearlessly and faithfully in Congress for what President Trump started, the America First Agenda. Now, everywhere I go in Northwest Georgia, I am humbled and honored by the overwhelming support I receive from many of you here in this room. You would not know that, though, if you only read the New York Times and the Washington Post, which unfortunately is what a lot of people in DC read. So they might be a little surprised at our numbers tonight, but we are not. Now I want to tell you this, I am blessed and I am constantly overwhelmed by the thousands of letters, cards, voicemails, and emails we receive, not only from right here at home, but from every state in America. It is just my home state, and I love Georgia so much. My enemies on both the left and the right will never admit it out loud, but I have become one of the most effective members in Congress for the Republican Party, simply by one thing, you guys, demanding that our party fight for our values of our voters, not the interest of corporate donors or Washington insiders. Now, my critics like to produce headlines full of fake outrage, because I keep daring to say things the globalist elites do not want you to hear. They write lies about me and team up with Democrats to have me sidelined and censored because they know I am the voice of the people, and that scares them the most. I am honored to represent the values of Northwest Georgia. I honor you by leading with my Christian faith, and by focusing on traditional family values, I believe in putting American workers and American small businesses first. I received a record number of votes from Northwest Georgians on November 3rd in 2020. And I took that sign from you all seriously. I got to work, and even before being sworn in, by leading the congressional objection to Joe Biden's fraudulent electoral votes on the House floor, that was important. Now, since then, I have kept my campaign promises to all of you. I fight every day in every way I can to stop the Democrats communist agenda. One way I have done that is by calling for roll call votes, putting Congress on record. By demanding transparency and forcing Congress to vote on record, I have defeated radical bills like squad member, Cori Bush's bill to allow felons to vote in jail; that should never happen.

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But we stopped it. That is more than any top ranking Republican accomplished on any House committee. Not only that, I have filed America First legislation, I have offered legislation to preserve and protect our second amendment, I have offered bills to impeach Joe Biden four times, bills to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, bills to expel insurrectionist Maxine Waters, bills to eliminate the ATF, bills to ban vaccine mandates, and bills to secure our Southern border and finish President Trump's wall. I even released my own congressional oversight report on my visit to the Washington DC jail, which currently houses January 6th pretrial defendants, still to this day. My report revealed the horrific conditions they face. I called for an end to the abuse of pretrial defendants and for the termination of the person overseeing their care, Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin. I have hit a few roadblocks on the way, perhaps because the Washington elites realize that I would always put you the voters first. Just after I was sworn in Democrats recognized me as the biggest threat to their communist agenda in Congress and made me their number one target. We can remember all those news stories. Well, they kicked me off committees, not just Democrats, but unfortunately 11 Republicans, because they knew I was not going to go along with their America last establishment agenda. They kicked me off because they realize, you know what, I am just like you; I am a proud American and I am tired of the business as usual in the swamp. Now to tell you the truth, in the current 117th Congress committees are useless for Republicans. Republicans are in the minority and Nancy Pelosi rules Congress with an iron fist. GOP bills and amendments are rejected and hardly see the light of day. When Republicans take back the majority in 2022, it is going to be a different story. I will be back on committees, you can count on that. Our party will have the power to make those committees useful and hold Democrats in the deep state who have put our country through hell accountable. I ran for Congress in 2020 because I was sick and tired of Republicans doing absolutely nothing even when they are put in charge, holding hands with Democrats, got us here. Over 30 trillion in debt now; it is a shame. I am running for reelection because my work to put people over politicians is just beginning.

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Failed leaders like Mitch McConnell and neocons like Dan Crenshaw, who by the way, I think is in Ukraine and probably visiting Davos with Klaus Schwab, are eager to work with Democrats to pass Joe Biden's America last agenda. They reject the priorities of grassroots conservatives, but so long as I am in Congress, you will always have a voice. You will always have a champion working for each and every single one of you. I have been in Washington DC on your behalf for almost a year-and-a-half, seems like maybe 10 or 20 years. So I have had the chance to learn a few things. And tonight I'd like to let you in on a little secret, the people you see on TV, in press conferences, or walking the halls of Congress, you know, the diabolical evil masterminds who always seen two steps ahead, the ones who have caused us all so much misery, they are actually idiots. Surprise, but you already knew that. The only reason they get away with the things they get away with is because Republicans have not stood up to them. When the elites wield the power of the state against patriots, they can be terrifying. I am shocked at the cruel and illegal treatment of many nonviolent January 6th protestors, while over 95% of Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists had their charges dropped. That is a two-tier justice system, and that should not exist in our country. But our enemies in Washington are not as smart as they think they are, and they are not unbeatable. They are good at one thing, though, they watch who and what gets popular, and they decide whether to take it out and strangle it, or take it over and claim the credit. Whether it is Democrats following AOC off a cliff into communism, or Republicans rushing to embrace the populous wing of our own party, the elites scramble to copy what we say, and then pretend it was their idea all along. They do these things because they simply do not care about you. In fact, they look down on us and they hate us. They know that if enough of us said, Stop, their influence would disappear. And that is what they fear the most. Sending me back to Washington will send a message to the blood sucking establishment, it is we who will set the political agenda for the next decade and not them.

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You see, it is the elites that do not have any true affinity for the country they govern. They prefer Davos to Dalton, Georgia. So we are going to start speaking the truth more loudly and fearlessly than ever before; we are going to work together, and we are going to take our country back. Now, the globalist are going to see that we are the majority in this country, and we have both the right and the power to determine our own destiny. That is what being an American's all about, right? We are the majority who want an end to trans-terrorism, socialist monetary policy, endless wars and nation building across the world, and the slow drain of our sovereignty into unaccountable foreign institutions run by sinister unelected fanatics. We are the majority who after Roe v. Wade is overturned, will protect the lives of the innocent children in the womb from the moment of conception. We are the majority who, when we put our minds to it, can wreck the Democrats plans for their terrifying Ministry of Truth, and send Nina Jenkowinz scuttling back to the karaoke bar where she belongs. We are the majority who even now still wants to see Hillary Clinton in jail. When conservatives work together to fight for Christian ideals, we can win. We have proven it. We can join hands to defy Democrat horrors, whether it is evil social engineering in our daughter's locker rooms, communism in the halls of Congress, or the DOJ harassing and intimidating parents at our school boards, the Republican Party has no choice but to fall in line, and they will, and they want to. I can already see changes happening in Washington; think tanks and political consultants and academics are starting to admit that the neocon project was a mistake, and that globalism has gone too far, and gone on too long. They are rebranding themselves populist and nationalist, and America First. I do not have faith in the character or integrity of a lot of these slimy people, but I do believe in their sense of self preservation; believe me, they know how to survive. So when we take back the House, I believe the Republican Party will come to its senses and once again begin to reflect the priorities of ordinary working American families who have for so long been ridiculed, ignored and taken for granted, we will never forget being called a basket full of deplorables, right?

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Because I believe that we are on the verge of a great American revival, a revival so enormous and so profound that no one will be able to stand in its way. I believe that this revival of faith, family, and freedom, a revival of Christian morals and constitutional values is ours to welcome in if we want it. I am convinced that the establishment in Washington knows this too. They know that America's patience for tyranny, communism, child abuse, the murder of the unborn, corporations and teachers grooming our kids, and politically weaponized law enforcement agencies is that an end. The era of mandates, and lockdowns, and jabs, and censorship, and lies is ending because the American people will no longer tolerate their government declaring war on its own citizens and our own values. Every politician says that an upcoming election is the most important one ever, most of the time that is not true, they are just trying to get people out to vote. Hail and thunder are coming for the elites who despise us and who want us to eat the bugs, drink the poop water, and live in the pods, and own nothing, yet somehow be happy. I am sorry, do any of you want that future? Y'all do not want his fake Petri dish meat? In 2016, this nation came together to show the Hollywood elites and university professors and line news reporters that we hold the power of self-governance. We reminded them that they are not in charge, we are. We elected Donald J. Trump, and we will make an American revival possible just when it is seemed as though our nation might be lost to faceless bureaucrats, European commissions, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum. Tonight I am calling on you to help me continue the America First movement, and commit to rebuilding a happier, healthier, more law-abiding, more caring, and more morally accountable America in which we respect God and his plans for us, and in which we protect the future of our children and our grandchildren. We are at the start of something here in 2022. Some people are describing it as a return of some 2016 energy here in Georgia's 14th district. You have power to affect change nationally in a way, many other Americans do not , you are sending me back to Washington to put our country and our people first to make America great. Again, you and me working together can succeed in a place that fails you every single day.

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And we know that this is possible because we are already on that journey. I will continue to speak the truth and fight back against the uni-party in Washington, DC. Together, we will hold their feet to the fire, together we can inspire the rest of America to be just like Northwest Georgia, and elect people who will fight for you in Washington, DC. Now, in the 118th Congress with Republicans in power, we will launch real investigations with teeth to hold accountable and to jail bad actors in the deep state who work every day to strip away your freedoms. We will finish President Trump's border wall and secure our Southern border. And we will reign in big tech companies and stop those woke corporations from shutting down and silencing conservatives and destroying our freedom of speech. We will stop the evil influence of the Chinese Communist Party in our economy and our institutions. We will achieve American energy independence again. And we will investigate and fire Dr. Anthony Fauci; nobody voted for him in the first place. We will kick Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off committees so they can no longer pervert our constitution. And yes, if we work hard and if we want it badly enough, we will impeach Joe Biden. As many of you know, I have a great relationship with President Trump. I am going to work with him to deliver the America First policies that America needs and America desperately wants. We miss him, do not we? I think the whole world misses President Trump right now. I pray that you will show the same faith in me this coming November that you have tonight, Georgia, and I thank you for that, the same faith that you did two years ago. Meanwhile, I look forward to a Republican majority in 2022. I also look confidently ahead at the presidential election in 2024. We can, and we will win that race too. And we have to, if we truly want to save America and stop communism, we are going to lead the way. May God bless every single one of you, every single one of you; and may God bless the great State of Georgia, and let us save America and stop communism.

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This week we celebrated the creation of 4 million new jobs in America since I became President on a platform to renew the American dream by restoring our economy, empowering individual Americans to compete and win in it, making Government work for ordinary citizens, and rebuilding our communities. Since we started our national economic strategy, our private sector is creating jobs nearly 8 times faster than it was 4 years ago. It has not been easy to make these changes. We had to make some tough decisions to put our economic house in order. We had to break the bad habits that led to mismanagement of our economy and the explosion of our deficit for more than a decade. And we had to break through all of the partisan barriers and political rhetoric that too often keeps us from doing the right thing for the American people here in Washington, DC. Today I want to talk with you about two other historic decisions that call on us to break through partisan barriers and political rhetoric again. For very soon, Congress will vote on both health care reform and the crime bill, two issues crucial to our mission of renewing the American dream. I want to talk to you about two young Americans whose stories are the best arguments I have heard for why we have to fix what is wrong with our health care system and make our country safer again for all Americans. One of those young people is Amanda Stewart from Keyes, Oklahoma. This week, I gave awards to four young people who have done heroic deeds or performed remarkable public service. Amanda was one of them. She was injured in a car wreck in 1990 and paralyzed from the chest down. This wonderful young lady could have given up on life. Instead of becoming bitter or defeated, she is devoted herself to educating other young people not to drink and drive, not to ride with people who do, and to always use seat belts. She is helping others to avoid what happened to her. I met Amanda's family. Her father is a hardworking farmer in western Oklahoma. She has a lovely mother and a wonderful younger sister. She has not had any significant medical costs since just after her accident 4 years ago. The Stewarts have been paying $3,400 a year for a limited health insurance policy with a high deductible. But recently they were told that this month their insurance premiums were going to be raised to $9,600 a year. He is in a different party from me, and he made it clear to me that he does not want the National Government to give him anything.

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But he is got a family to raise, and he has no idea how he is going to keep paying for their health insurance. He said to me that if he could not take care of his family, as hard as he was working, something was wrong in this country. People like Amanda and her family are the reason we have to guarantee private, not Government, health insurance for every American, insurance that is always there. It is time to do what is right by those people. We are going in the wrong direction now. There are 5 million Americans just like Amanda's family who had insurance 5 years ago who do not have it today. Almost every one of them are working people and their children. It is also time we do what is right for young people like James Darby, the 9-year-old boy from New Orleans who wrote me last April. He asked me to do something about the crime rate. He asked me to stop the killing, because he was afraid that someone might kill him. And just 9 days later, walking home from a Mother's Day picnic, little James Darby was shot in the head and killed. Well, 9 days ago, after 6 years of delay, a bipartisan committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives reconciled their differences on the smartest, toughest crime bill in the history of this country and sent the bill back to be voted on for final passage in both Houses of Congress. It took a lot of work. It is a bipartisan effort and has been every step of the way. three strikes and you are out and tougher punishments for other tough criminals; 100,000 new police officers on our streets that is a 20 percent increase all across America; a ban on deadly assault weapons; a law that makes it illegal for minors to own and possess handguns; new prisons to keep hardened criminals in; and billions for new, effective prevention programs to give our young people something to say yes to, not just something to say no to. Nine days ago when the bill was sent to both Houses for final passage, I thought it would pass quickly and be sent to my desk for signing. You see, before the House of Representatives can vote on a bill, it must agree on the rules for debate about the bill. There are 435 Members of the House, and they have to have some rules to limit debate. In shorthand, this is called the rule.

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Second only to Georgia in the primary, does anybody here know which State gave me the biggest margin of victory when I ran for President? And I have come to thank you for that. Not too long ago, the Congress and I restored full citizenship to President Jefferson Davis. And since Camp David, the Congress and the people of the country have done the same to me, and I want to thank you for that, too. For any Democrat coming to Tennessee, and particularly coming to Nashville, is a homecoming, because Andrew Jackson, one of the greatest Presidents who ever lived, the father of our party, has made Tennessee a homecoming place for all Democrats. He was a man of great courage. He was a man who loved his home State. He was a man who founded the principles of our party, that said that those who hold public office have to put our faith, our confidence, our responsibility to the average, common, good American citizens who put us in office. That is the commitment of the Democratic Party today, and we are going to keep it that way. There has been a time in the last few years when Tennessee strayed temporarily from the Democratic Party and from the principles of Andrew Jackson. And in the last few years, we have seen a major shift back toward Democrats by Tennessee, and that is going to keep on the next 2 weeks. Georgia, my own State, has always been close to Tennessee. We share a lot with you. When it snows in the north Georgia mountains and the northwestern part of our State, our State legislators have to come through Tennessee to get home to Atlanta to act as legislators. We have always kept those borders open, except one time when General Sherman crossed them on the way from Tennessee through Atlanta. But with that one exception, we bind ourselves to you. We will keep those lines open. And I am proud to say that as Tennesseans, I consider you my brother, and I am glad to be here as that, too. James K. Polk, President of the United States; Cordell Hull, one of the greatest Secretaries of State our country has ever seen; Estes Kefauver, who ought to have been President of the United States. Kefauver was a man who went throughout the country, standing on street corners, standing in factory shift lines early in the morning, shaking hands with the American citizens and saying, What can I do for you if I am the nominee of the Democratic Party? I believe he entered 13 primaries.

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He won 11 of them. He was not elected President, but he set a standard of campaigning that I followed very closely when in 1976 I entered 30 primaries and won a fairly good number of those which gave me an avenue to the White House. I want to recognize, too, a great United States Senator who served at the same time, Senator Albert Gore, who is been an inspiration to a lot of southerners. As you well know, when the South was going through those difficult days of changing from a segregated society to one where we gave all American citizens equal rights, regardless of color, Albert Gore, Estes Kefauver set a standard for the rest of us to follow. Their courage has made the southland a better place to live for blacks and whites. And I want to thank them for what they meant to me and to my own people. I will always remember the Democratic convention when Frank Clement made an inspiring address, and his son, Bob,2 has brought the same kind of approach to Democratic politics in this State. And he supported the Democratic nominees as a loyal Democrat should, in this same status with the same tradition as his father, Frank. I cannot come to Tennessee, especially Nashville, without mentioning Dick Fulton, a man who was in the Congress, who could have stayed there as long as he wanted to, who was doing a great job, but felt that he could do a better job and be closer to you if he came home as mayor of Nashville. And I hate to miss him in Washington, but I am glad you have got him. And I am very thankful that he is doing such a great job here as your mayor, and I want to make sure that everybody knows about that. Some people said he came to Nashville to be closer to country music. But that is not true any more, because you cannot get any closer to country music that originates in Nashville than you do in the White House when I turn my record player on or my radio on-that is the kind of music I really love. And we have had a lot of great music performers from your city come to entertain us and many others in the White House since I have been President. The night before last, my wife and I were on the telephone talking to June Carter and also to her husband, as you know, about the unfortunate loss of Maybelle Carter.

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She set not only a standard in country music that is inspired Johnny Cash and many others as well as her own family, but she also set a standard of common, ordinary people who love one another, expressing their views, their hopes, their dreams, their fears to the world through music. And I want to thank you for her. As June knows, I always claim kinship with her, particularly after I started running for office. And that family means a lot to me and to the rest of the country. I just want to mention two other people. Al Bissell, a great mayor of Oakridge, has provided us with a standard of leadership at the municipal level, and I predict that his son, Keith, will do an equally good job as public service commissioner next year. Jay Solomon, a Tennessean, came to Washington at my request. He did not much want to come, but he is a great businessman from Chattanooga, and he took over as Administrator of the General Services Administration, the GSA. And he is done as much to let us know about waste and corruption in Government as anyone. He is fighting the battles for you to make the Federal Government be better, cleaner, more decent, more honest. He is the kind of fellow who issues the contracts now after he opens the bids. And I want to thank Tennessee for giving me Jay Solomon. I have really come here today to get you to work hard for the nominees for Governor, United States Senate, State offices, and the U.S. Congress, whom you have already chosen in an open, tough, difficult, closely contested Democratic primary. You have chosen a man to come to Washington with me 2 years ago, who is done an outstanding job already. And I want to express my deep thanks to you for sending Jim Sasser to Washington, who has already carved out for himself a position of leadership. One of the most important responsibilities of any Senator is to pass the appropriations bills, deciding where money goes for every possible service the National Government provides. Jim Sasser just happens to be on the Appropriations Committee. Another important job, of course, is preparing the budget to cut down on deficits and to make sure the Congress toes the line when they spend your money. It just happens that Jim Sasser is on the Senate Budget Committee. Another important job is to give government reorganization a chance to let us have a better government. We have passed now a very fine civil service reform law to put our good civil servants to work a little harder for you.

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It just happens that Jim Sasser is chairman of the Civil Service Reform Committee, and I want to thank Tennessee for giving me this strong ally and friend and supporter in Washington. I have only got one complaint to make about Jim Sasser. When it comes down to deciding what I want him to do, compared to what Tennessee wants him to do, he always does what you want him to do. Now I want to comment on one man who is had maybe a more difficult youth than I had. When I was 14 years old, because of the TVA and because of the REA, we got electricity and running water in the house I lived in. Jake Butcher did not get it until he was 16 years old. He is a man who comes from humble beginnings. He is a man who exemplifies in my mind the true spirit of Tennessee. He has cast his lot with the people of this State. When I was Governor of Georgia, I spent about 25 percent of my time trying to bring industry into my State. I spent that time trying to revive the possibility of jobs for Georgians, to make sure we were a dynamic, growing State, to make sure the State government was run economically and efficiently as a business ought to be. And you have a true treasure coming up next year in Jake Butcher as your Governor. And I hope every one of you will help him. I have particularly admired his. He has not run a negative campaign. He is pointed out to you how Tennessee could be a better State with good leadership. And he has got a particularly soft spot in his heart for senior citizens. If he is elected Governor-and I am sure he will be-he is promised all those over 65 years old that you will not have to pay sales tax on food. That shows one of the things that he will do. And now I want to mention a woman who, next January, is going to make Jim Sasser senior Senator from Tennessee-Jane Eskind. In the Tennessee primary-and there is no other like it in the whole United States-you had nine candidates for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator. Nobody thought Jane Eskind had a chance. Jane Eskind thought she had a chance. She put her political future in your hands. And she came through on top. The reason is that she is tough, competent, she knows government. She will come with a clear eye and a clean-sweeping broom.

monologic

She is cast her lot with the little people, the common, ordinary, good working people of Tennessee. And she will bring to Washington the true spirit of Andrew Jackson. And I hope all of you will help her when November 7 comes. I will have to express my thanks as a peanut farmer to Ed Jones, the dean of the Tennessee congressional delegation and one of the leading members of the Congress in passing agricultural legislation for our country. Albert Gore, Jr., fits in well with Tennessee. He is on the committee responsible for science and technology. And Tennessee, with a dynamic economy and a clear vision of the future, is certainly benefiting from his incumbency, and I am sure he will go back into office. And you have got here in Nashville a man to fill some big shoes, your next Congressman, Bill Boner. We have got the most wonderful Democratic slate you have ever had, and I hope you will help me get all of them elected in 2 weeks, November 7, Tuesday after next. Will you do that for us? Now I'd like to say just a word about our Nation. You got that title and that reputation because you have always been willing and eager to defend our Nation when it was in trouble. And as your Governor pointed out, since I have been in office, we have not called on a single Tennessean nor a single American to lose a life or to shed blood in conflict in another country. And I want to keep that record as long as I am in the White House. Our Nation has taken the leadership in trying to preserve peace for our own people, in trying to bring peace to others. We are negotiating now to conclude a SALT treaty, to make sure that we lessen the threat of nuclear weapons for people in our own country and throughout the world. We are trying to negotiate, with some success already, peace in the Middle East, between Israel and Egypt. This is a difficult undertaking, and we need your help, your prayers, and your support. We are trying to strengthen our ties with our own allies, to let NATO be stronger. We have got a strong defense, ever improving. We are the strongest nation on Earth militarily, and as long as I am in the White House, we are going to stay number one in defense. Tennesseans believe in hard work. When I was elected President, we had 10 million Americans, 10 million Americans who could not get a full-time job.

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We had 7 million Americans or more who could not get a job at all. But we put America back to work. We have had, since I have been in office, an increase of 6 million net new jobs for America, and we are going to keep on giving our people a chance to work for themselves and for our country. We are trying to provide better education, better housing, better highways, a good agricultural program. With your Congressmen's help, we passed a farm bill about a year ago that is already improved farm income 25 percent. We have got the highest level of agricultural exports in the history of our country last year. We are trying also to make sure that we have a good energy program, and for the first time in the history of our Nation, we now have a good, sound energy policy that is going to be better in the future with your help. 3 yesterday, I signed a bill to deregulate the airline industry. We are trying to get Government's nose out of the business of the people of this country, and we have made good progress already. We have had a decrease in airline fares, a tremendous increase in the number of people who can now afford to fly in airplanes, and the profits of the airline industry have gone up. And by 1985, we will have eliminated a major Federal regulatory agency, the CAB, the Civil Aeronautics Board, because we have proven that the American free enterprise system can work if competition is put in and the consumers are protected. That is the kind of government we are trying to give you. The Democratic Party has always been a party with a heart. We believe in people and giving our people a better chance to live. But we are also a party that knows how to manage government. When I was running for President in 1976 and you helped me so much, we had a Federal budget deficit of $66 billion. In 1 year, we cut it down to the fifties. We have now cut it down to the forties. By the end of next year, we will have cut it in half, and we are going to keep on working until we have a balanced budget for the Federal Government and responsible to you. At the same time, we have cut taxes. Better services, lower taxes, lower budget deficits, better management, zero-base budgeting-these are the kind of things that we believe are important. We are cutting out corruption.

monologic

It is a great pleasure to have so many present and future scientific pioneers in the Rose Garden with us today. Along with Members of Congress and the administration, we have no fewer than four Nobel laureates in the audience as well as many of the top science students from the Department of Energy's Science Honors Program. I am tempted to paraphrase an earlier President who once said there is never before been so much talent assembled in one place in the White House since-well, since I hosted the Washington Redskins on the South Lawn last month. But the reason we are here, of course, is to talk about the superconducting supercollider, as you have probably guessed already. I have to confess that when I first heard about this place where things go round and round at great speeds and then crash into each other I thought they were talking about a Presidential campaign. At first I was a little nervous addressing so many distinguished scientists on a subject of such complexity, but then I realized these are people who spend their days talking about things called quarks, which some claim exist in two places at the same time. The fact is, I envy the students here today because they exist in a world that seems to put no limits on the imagination. Outer space used to be called the final frontier, but today we have begun to tap another frontier-inner space-whose infinitesimal constellations hold out infinite possibilities. It may be a cliche, but it is nevertheless true that the pace of progress is constantly accelerating. I think one of the reasons I have always had so little patience with those who talk about the limits to growth is that in my lifetime I have seen those limits shattered again and again by questing minds. When I was very young, horsepower was still the kind you fed with hay. And before the turn of the century, we plan to have men living and working in stations in space and a new hypersonic plane that can fly from here to Tokyo in less than 3 hours. I know that some people may question the practical applications of the superconducting supercollider. The strange world of subatomic particles they may think will never be more than an arcane interest to a few highly specialized scientists. But the truth is, the practical applications of this knowledge are already changing the way we live. One of my favorite examples is from the computer industry.

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If automotive technology had progressed as fast and as far as superconductor technology has in the last 20 years, he says, a Rolls Royce today would cost less than $3, get 3 million miles to the gallon, and six of them would fit on the head of a pin. Well, the technological revolution he is describing is transforming our world, and it was only made possible by the knowledge scientists have brought back from their explorations of inner space. Every time someone turns on his desk computer, makes a phone call, or plays a video game, he is plugging into that mysterious world of quantum physics. The superconducting supercollider is the doorway to that new world of quantum change, of quantum progress for science and for our economy. In the face of ever-increasing global competition, the United States must maintain the leading edge in science and technology, and building the world's largest particle accelerator is a visible symbol of our nation's determination to stay out front. Benjamin Franklin once said that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. I want to commend you all on your cause, your vision, and the message of progress and competitiveness you carry with you today. And it is my hope that Congress will show equal vision by approving funding to initiate construction of the supercollider. I think all they'd need to do is meet with some of these students here today to see that it is our responsibility to the next generation to keep America a place where we can dream big dreams and then make them real. I have to interject something here before I conclude. In my lifetime-and only the recent part of my lifetime-after about 25 years in movies and so forth, I was representing the General Electric Theatre on television. And I visited one of their plants in Schenectady early on, and they proudly took me in and showed me what turns out to be the first computer. They called it an electric brain. It would have-well, it would have fit in the Rose Garden here, but it was about as long as from the edge of the platform to the bushes over there and almost as thick. And that is what-I just thought of that when I mentioned here someone sitting down to his desk computer-that, in just those years, from there up to here, is what has happened. So, maybe that fellow about the Rolls Royce was right-six of them on the head of a pin.

monologic

I love you back! A couple of acknowledgments that I want to make. First of all, Mike is a pretty humble guy, but this is the Iowa Firefighter of the Year. We are proud of him and every single firefighter that puts their lives at risk for us. We are grateful to them. You have got your own attorney general, Tom Miller, in the house; Congressman Bruce Braley is here; and Mayor Buck Clark is here. And all of you are here. Now, listen, if you have got a seat, feel free to sit down, because I have got some things to say. I have got some things to say. First of all, it is good to be back. Some of you may remember that one of my first stops after I announced for ENTITY was right here in Waterloo back, way back when, in 2007. I had no gray hair. I mean, maybe I had a little bit, but you could not see it. Now you can see it. But the reason that is important, it is worth reminding people, is because it was on your front porches, it was in your backyards, where our movement for change began. We spent a lot of time on bus tours like the one I am taking right now, although the bus was not as nice as it is now. And we went to school gyms and family farms and small businesses across the State. Yesterday I went to the State Fair, and I had a pork chop and a beer. Today I just had a beer. I did not get the pork chop. But-you say, you will fry me a pork chop, huh? Somebody just said-it is true, at the State Fair, instead of saying 4 more years, they were saying, four more beers. So I bought him four more beers. Told him he had to register to vote, though, to get one of the beers. It is-the reason I am back, other than I just love being in Iowa, the reason I am back is because that journey we started in 2008, we are not finished yet. So just like we did in 2007, we started over in Council Bluffs, and we are driving all the way to the Quads. And we want to make sure that everybody understands the choice that you face in November. And this choice could not be bigger, because it is not just a choice between two candidates; it is not just a choice between two parties.

monologic

More than any recent election, more than 2008, this is a choice between two fundamentally different visions of where we need to go as a country. And the direction that you choose when you walk into that voting booth in November, that is going to have an impact not just on your lives, it will have an impact on your children and your grandchildren for decades to come. Now, remember why we came together in 2008. It was because we saw that the basic bargain that built this country, that created the most prosperous economy the world has ever known, that basic bargain was not being met. And let me tell you what that bargain is. It says that if you act responsibly and you put in enough effort, you can find a job that pays the bills. You can have a home that you call your own. You will not go broke just because somebody in your family gets sick. You can retire with dignity and respect. And most importantly, you can give your kids a great education so they can dream even bigger and do even better than you did. But the problem was for a decade we had seen that bargain was not being met. So we had seen a decade in which jobs were being shipped overseas and wages and incomes for working people were going down, even though folks at the very top were doing very well, and the costs of everything from health care to college were going up. We ran two wars on a credit card. We went from surplus to deficit. So when I walked into office we already had a $1 trillion deficit. And it all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That is the track record of the other party the last time they were in charge. And we knew that restoring the bargain that made this country great would not be easy. It was going to take more than one year or one term or even more than one ENTITY, but we knew we had to get started. And obviously, it became that much harder when the middle class was hammered by this crisis because a lot of folks lost jobs, lost homes, lost savings, and that American Dream seemed even further out of reach. But I told you there would not be any quick fixes, there would not be any easy solutions, but what I also promised you, and I absolutely believe this, is we have got everything we need to meet our challenges. Waterloo, we have still got the best workers in the world and the best entrepreneurs in the world. We have got the best scientists and the best researchers in the world.

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We have got the best farmers in the world. We have got the best colleges and universities in the world. We are still a young nation, full of promise, and we have got the greatest diversity of talent and ingenuity from every corner of the globe. So no matter what the naysayers say, no matter how dark they try to paint things when they are running against me in an election, there is not another country on Earth that would not trade places with the United States of America. Because people around the world still believe that America is the place where, if you work hard, no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, you can still make it. That is what my Presidency is about. That is why I am running for a second term as ENTITY of the United States. Now, Waterloo, what stands-there is one thing standing in our way, though-is some strange politics in Washington. You have got a party that says compromise is a dirty word. Folks who want to go back to the same top-down economics that got us into this mess in the first place. You may have heard, my opponent chose as his running mate Congressman Ryan this weekend and-- No, no, no, listen, I know Congressman Ryan. He is the ideological leader of the Republicans in Congress. And he is an articulate spokesperson for Governor Romney's vision. See, my opponent, Governor Romney, and his friends in Congress, they believe-this is their whole platform, this is their basic plan, as much detail as you get, this is what you get. Their plan to grow the economy is to eliminate regulations, including on big banks and insurance companies, some of the regulations we put in place to make sure, for example, that we do not have another taxpayer-funded bailout. So he wants to get rid of regulations, and then what he wants to do is give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. And the idea, then, is that jobs and prosperity will trickle down on everybody. That is the centerpiece of his plan. You can go on his website. His economic plan is a new $5 trillion tax cut, a lot of it going to the wealthiest Americans. Now, keep in mind, these are the same folks who say the deficit is our biggest problem, but they want to pass a new $5 trillion tax cut-$5 trillion, that is with a t.

monologic

So just to give you some perspective, our annual defense budget, everything we spend on national security, is just a little over $500 billion. So this would be, every year for 10 years, a tax cut as big as our defense spending. He says he is going to pay for it. Well, how are you going to pay for it? It turns out that he expects you to pay for it. He expects middle class families to pick up the tab. Governor Romney's plan, according to independent analysts, would actually raise taxes on middle class families with children by an average of $2,000. Now, keep in mind, this is not $2,000 to reduce the deficit or create jobs or build new schools or help kids go to college or send a man to the moon. This is $2,000 each that you'd have to pay to give another $250,000 tax cut to folks who are making $3 million a year or more. Now, I am not making this stuff up. You can look; look on their website. We have tried this before. We tried this trickle-down fairy dust before. It is not a plan to create jobs. It is not a plan to lower the deficit. It is not a plan to move our economy forward. It is not a plan to revive the middle class. We do not need more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. We need to give tax relief to working families who are trying to raise their kids, keep them healthy, send them to college, keep a roof over their heads. That is the choice in this election. That is one of the reasons I am running for a second term as ENTITY. So, Waterloo, I have got a different idea. Four years ago, I came into office. I promised to cut taxes for middle class families. That is exactly what I have done, by a total of about $3,600 for the typical family. So if you talk to somebody who is still not convinced and undecided in the election, you tell them your taxes are lower-your Federal taxes are lower now than when I came into office. Now, what I want to do is I want to keep everybody's taxes right there where they are for the first $250,000 of everybody's income.

monologic

So if your family makes under $250,000-like 98 percent of families do and 97 percent of small businesses do-then you will not see your income taxes go up by a single dime next year. But if you are fortunate enough to be in the other 2 percent, like I am, you will still get a tax break on your first $250,000. But for the amount that you make over that, we are asking you to contribute a little bit more so we can pay down our deficit without gutting education, without getting rid of transportation projects, without gutting all the things that help make America grow. Now, Government-I will make sure Government still does its part to reduce our debt and our deficits. We have cut out already a trillion dollars' worth of spending we do not need. And we can do more. But we cannot bring down our deficit and our debt just by asking us to get rid of the things that help open up opportunity to Americans. So instead, we are asking folks like me to go back to the rates we paid under Bill Clinton, which, by the way, was a time when we created 23 million new jobs, went from deficit to surplus, and we created a whole lot of millionaires to boot. See, Waterloo, this comes down to your basic philosophy. But also, when you look at the evidence of our economic history, when teachers and nurses and firefighters and receptionists and construction workers-when you have got a little more money in your pocket, what do you do? You spend it because times are tight, right? So if you have got a little extra money, now maybe you finally trade in that 10-year-old car you have been driving. Maybe you buy a computer for your kid who is about to go to college. So suddenly, businesses have more customers, which means they are making more profits, which means they are hiring more workers, who then spend more money, and suddenly, the economy gets better for everybody, including folks at the top. I do not believe in top-down economics. I believe in middle-class-out economics. I believe in bottom-up economics. I believe in making sure everybody has got a fair shot. That is why I am running for a second term as president of the United States of America. That is not the only difference between me and Mr. Romney.

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When the auto industry was on the brink of collapse-you remember that?-more than a million jobs at stake, Governor Romney said, let us let Detroit go bankrupt. I said, let us bet on American workers. And management and workers got together in a great, iconic American industry. I want to see high-tech advanced manufacturing come back all across America in other industries. I do not want those jobs in China or Germany. I want them here in Iowa. Governor Romney says, well, no, look, I understand the economy because I have been in the private sector. Well, a lot of that experience was investing in companies, including those that were called pioneers in the business of outsourcing. He wants to keep giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas. I want to end those tax breaks once and for all and start rewarding companies that are investing right here in the United States of America, hiring American workers, making American products. That is the choice in this election. Right now we are seeing homegrown energy, new sources of energy, creating jobs right here in Iowa. So what does Governor Romney want to do? He wants to end the tax credit for wind energy producers. He said these new sources of energy are imaginary. Congressman Ryan, his running mate, calls them a fad. During a speech a few months ago, Governor Romney even explained his energy policy. This is what he said. He said, You cannot drive a car with a windmill on it. That is what he said about wind power, you cannot drive a car with a windmill on it. I mean, maybe he is tried it; he is put other things on the roof. But if he really wants to learn something about wind energy, he should come to Iowa. Then he'd know that 7,000 Iowa jobs depend on the wind industry, more than any other State in America. He'd know that the parts for making these high-tech wind turbines, they are now made in Iowa. They are made in America. I have been to the places in Newton, Iowa, where some of this stuff is being made. I understand he may not have figured out how to drive a car with a windmill on it, but if he came to Iowa, he'd know that 20 percent of Iowa's electricity now comes from wind energy. America has doubled the amount of electricity we get from wind over the last 4 years, enough power for nearly 13 million homes-clean, renewable energy.

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That is something you leave behind for the next generation. We should support it; I support it. And instead of giving $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies that are making plenty of money every time you go to the pump, we should be investing in homegrown energy that is never been more promising. That is the choice in this election. That is why I am running for a second term. In 2008, I promised to end the war in Iraq; I ended it. Governor Romney said the way I ended it was tragic. I said I'd go after Al Qaida and bin Laden; I went after them. We are now beginning a transition out of Afghanistan. And so all of this is possible only because of the extraordinary service of our men and women in uniform. And that is why I have made sure to make historic investments in the VA. Because somebody who has fought for us should not have to fight for a job when they come home. But if we are serious about them coming home to a strong economy, then we have got to do some building here at home, some nation-building. Take half of the money that we have been spending over a decade of war, and let us start doing some rebuilding here in America. Let us put Americans back to work rebuilding roads and bridges and ports and airports, laying broadband lines in rural communities. Let us create a veterans jobs corps so returning heroes can get jobs as firefighters and cops in communities that need them. There is a lot of work to be done right here in America, and I am running to rebuild America. That is a choice in this election. And I am running to make sure America once again has the best education system in the world and the best training system for workers in the world. I want to help our schools hire and reward the best teachers, especially in math and science. I want to give 2 million more Americans the chance to go to community colleges to train for the jobs that businesses are hiring for right now. I want to get colleges and universities to bring down the cost of tuition so that every young person can get the kind of education that they need to succeed in the 21st century. I want to help homeowners refinance their homes, save 3,000 bucks at these historically low rates. That is a difference in this election. I believe that you should have some health care security. That is why I passed Obamacare. And I like Obamacare. I like the phrase Obamacare, because you know what?

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I care about the-I care about all those folks with preexisting conditions who now are going to be able to get coverage. I care about folks who already have insurance, making sure insurance companies do not jerk them around right when they need that insurance the most. I care about the 6 1/2 million young people who are now able to stay on their parent's plan and do not have to go without insurance. I care about the seniors who now have more discounts on their prescriptions drugs, and we are closing the doughnut hole. So, Waterloo, we do not need another 2 years of arguing about health care. We are implementing this law. All these things-health care security, American manufacturing, rebuilding America, putting construction workers back to work, making sure our kids are getting a great education and can afford college-all these things that make up a middle class life, they all tie together. It goes back to that central idea of America, that here in this country everybody gets a fair shot, everybody does their fair share, everybody plays by the same set of rules. It is the same promise our parents and grandparents passed on to us, and now, our job is to pass it on to our kids. Now, over the next 3 months, the other side will spend more money than we have ever seen. Now, you notice their ads generally do not tell you what it is that they are going to do because they know their plans will not sell. You have not forgotten; you did not get amnesia. You did not forget the last time they tried what they are selling. So basically, the argument that they are going to make over and over again is just the same one, which is, the economy is still not where it needs to be and it is Obama's fault. We have still got too many folks out of work and too many homes under water. And we have not brought back all the jobs that need to be brought back. What they are offering, it is not a plan to create jobs. It is not a plan to reduce the deficit. They do not have a plan to grow the economy. They do not have a plan to revive the middle class. The plan I have put forward can do that. But I need your help. I need your help. I need your help. You can get a voter registration form online. But here is what I know.

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I thank the Speaker for the invitation to come here to celebrate the shared history and heritage that unite Ireland and America. And I promise that my remarks today will be briefer than the last time I spoke on Capitol Hill. Some of you may be aware that I do not attend a lot of formal lunches like this. But I had a change of heart when I saw that the Speaker's menu included Tex-Mex food. I just could not pass up the chance to try a green burrito. On Saint Patrick's Day, we all get to be Irish for a day. There has been a lot of speculation about whether I am part Irish. Today I will speak plainly about an extremely important topic, peace in Northern Ireland. The United States will remain unwavering in our support of peace. We will remain unwavering in our support for all parties who show courage and leadership on behalf of peace. And we will remain unalterably opposed to anyone who would destroy peace by preaching or practicing violence. Much of the progress toward peace in the past several years has been aided by the engagement of the United States. As I told Prime Minister Blair-and as I will tell Prime Minister Ahern tomorrow-the United States stands ready to continue that engagement. Peace in Northern Ireland is in America's strong national interest. The peace that holds today has many authors, from President Clinton to leaders from Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland to American political leaders, such as Senator Mitchell. The Good Friday agreement remains the best hope for lasting peace for the people of Northern Ireland. The goal of the United States is to see that agreement fully implemented. First, this is what the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland voted for back on May 22, 1998. And they did so by a very large margin. Second, the Good Friday agreement embodies principles of fundamental fairness without which peace will never breathe. First, as stated in the agreement itself, it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts...to exercise their right to self-determination on the basis of consent. The second principle is that of territorial integrity, that borders should never be changed through violence. The progress the parties have made in putting these principles into practice has made a difference-a big difference. And no one knows this better than the people of Northern Ireland themselves. Violence is down from previous levels. More people are moving into Northern Ireland than are moving out.

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We are very glad to see you, and we want to pay you a very special warm welcome to the White House. I was glad to hear that 20 of the brightest young students from three countries were visiting the White House today. Your visit comes at a very critical time. Therefore, I am especially glad that you have a chance to have an experience here at this time. I want to take advantage of every opportunity I can to meet with young people, and to let them observe what this country stands for, and what it believes in, and what it is doing, and also hear from you on your views of the world that we are living in. To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. That really is what you are about to do. You are beginning a great voyage, a voyage to explore a new and an extremely exciting field of knowledge, man in inner and outer space. I do not think there is anything I need to tell you about how important this journey is. I think that you know today that almost nothing is more important in all this world than trained intelligence. There is one thing that matters more though, and there is one thing that is more important than all of man's knowledge and all of man's skill. At a time when nations are quarreling, when divisions of race and class and religion trouble 'people everywhere, when there is a general restlessness among the youth of all lands, when there is an insecure feeling among many, many peoples, when mighty armies can cross borders and people are not sure of what tomorrow holds for them-then your journey is an important one because the trip that you are beginning, in my judgment, offers great promise to increase and to enrich and to promote better understanding between men and between nations. For that I am very grateful--to you and to Dr. Messel and to the Science Foundation and Sydney University and to the wonderful people of Australia. That is a great and that is a friendly land and I treasure my associations with that country and with those people. I hope all of you have a good trip. I wish I could go with you. I know your experiences will be of great profit to you and, I believe, your country. It would be wonderful to be your age again on a mission like yours.

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Let me ask you a question. Half are saying yes; half are saying no. Let me say to all of you, I will give you a brief version of what I said there. First, I want to thank Chicago and the State of Illinois for being so good to me. I thank Mayor Daley for his leadership and partnership and for making it possible to prove that our crime policies and our welfare policies and our economic policies would all work, because they worked here in Chicago. I thank Bobby Rush for helping me in '92. I thank Bobby and Dick Durbin and the entire crowd in your congressional delegation who have been so good to me. But Senator Durbin, I especially thank you for all the things you have done. I thank Bill Daley for being a superb Secretary of Commerce and a brilliant campaign manager. What I told them upstairs was, Bill Daley ran the first Presidential campaign in history that was so clearly winning, a court had to stop the vote in order to change the outcome. Now, I want to say two other things. Upstairs, I said that this hotel was very important in my life. I spoke to the Democratic chairs here in December of '91. I had my party here on Saint Patrick's Day in 1992 when we won the primary. Some of you were there. And I still have a picture in my little office off the Oval Office of Hillary and me standing here in this lobby with the confetti coming down on Saint Patrick's Day. I have had it there every single day for 8 years to remind me that Chicago and Illinois made me ENTITY. I thank you for voting for us overwhelmingly in '92, in '96. I thank you for a fabulous convention in 1996, which was a joy. And I thank you for sticking with us in the year 2000, which you did. I thank you for that. I thought it was really important to me to come here before I leave office to say thank you. And I also want to bring you greetings from the new Senator from the State of New York. Hillary said to tell you hello. And I told Senator Durbin that you should just sort of consider that Illinois also has two Democratic Senators again. I am honored to have been ENTITY at a time when a lot of changes were going on in America and in the world. And you had a lot to do with that.

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Hillary and I are honored to be here today to join in praising, remembering, and cherishing the life of a man who was our friend and whose love for his family, his Nation, and his Navy were as deep as the oceans he sailed. Listening to Phil Lader talk about how Bud and Mouza first met brought back so many old memories to me and to those of us who had the privilege to listen to Bud Zumwalt tell that story. I became convinced that it was the reverse of the fish story, that every time he is told it, she said yes in a shorter and shorter amount of time. The last time I was in this magnificent chapel was to say goodbye to another great admiral of the 20th century, Arleigh Burke. When our historians look back on the century we have just left, they may well record that Arleigh Burke was the spirit of the United States Navy; they will certainly recall that Bud Zumwalt was its conscience. As much as any other leader in our entire history, Americans could always count on Bud Zumwalt to do the right thing. The midshipmen here learn a lot about honor, commitment, and courage. All his life, he exemplified those virtues. His bravery in World War II, in Korea, what he did in Vietnam, his physical courage and leadership led him to become the youngest Chief of Naval Operations in our history. But beyond his physical courage, Bud Zumwalt stood out for his moral courage and for saying what he thought was right, regardless of the consequences. He sailed through rough waters more than once. We heard Dick Schifter so eloquently chronicle his work in the 1970's to bring back the Navy's strength. When he issued his famous Z-grams, he knew that he was taking on more than 200 years of Navy tradition. But because he took the heat, thousands of naval leaders like former Secretary John Lehman have said they actually made the decision to stay in the Navy because Bud Zumwalt made the Navy exciting again. When we struggled through the racial tensions of the sixties and seventies, he worked in the face of wilting criticism and a highly resistant institutional culture to make the Navy do the right thing and make the Navy one of the most colorblind institutions in our entire Nation. I know it was a special point of pride for him that the very first African-American admiral earned his star on Bud Zumwalt's watch.

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At a time when morale and enthusiasm were at an all-time low, he had the vision to see a great future for the Navy. And even though he lived just to see 2 days of this new century, the changes he brought about three decades ago will continue to shape the character and culture of our Navy for a long time in the 21st century. Many people have commented on this today, but I want to give you a personal example. Of all the things he inspired, perhaps the greatest impact he had was on the ordinary men and women who served under him. We all know he originally intended to go to West Point, and then a whaling captain set his sails straight. The men and women of the Navy always knew that Bud Zumwalt had their backs, and that loyalty went both ways. This week we have seen an astonishing outpouring of love and affection from those who served with Admiral Zumwalt. Many of them are here today. This morning, when I was putting on my necktie and getting ready to go out for the day, my naval steward, who has been a Navy enlisted man for more than 30 years, said, ENTITY, today you are going to Admiral Zumwalt's service, are not you? He looked at me and smiled, and he said, He is the best we ever had. He was for us. He also never forgot to live by the consequences of his commitments. I know there was a family from South Vietnam that was sent after the end of the war to America as refugees, as so many were, and they were sent to my home State of Arkansas. To stay, they were told they had to know someone from our country. When Bud was contacted, to their surprise, the family was actually put on a plane, not to the admiral's home in Maryland but to his son's home in North Carolina, because the admiral already had other refugee families living in his house and he did not have any more room. When Bud Zumwalt made a commitment, he stuck with it. And when it did not work out exactly as planned, he honored the consequences and lived by them. Perhaps the most famous consequence of his leadership during the Vietnam era was the painful loss of his son, Elmo, from the use of Agent Orange, which clearly he ordered because he believed it would save the lives of our people in uniform. So he lived with the consequences of life's greatest loss.

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It is great to be back in the State of New Jersey. Oh, I know it might surprise some to see a Republican Presidential candidate in New Jersey in late October. The reason why I am here, with your help, we will carry the State of New Jersey in November. We are now 15 days away from a critical election. Many important domestic issues are at stake. I have a positive, hopeful agenda for job creation, broader health coverage, and better public education. Yet all the progress we hope to make depends on the security of our Nation. America is in the middle of a global war on terror, a struggle unlike any we have ever known before. We face an enemy that is determined to kill the innocent and make our country into a battlefield. For the sake of our future and our freedom, we will fight this war with every asset of our national power, and we will prevail. Laura sends her best. So I asked her to marry me; she said, Fine, just so long as I never have to give a political speech. I said, Okay, you got a deal. Fortunately, she did not hold me to that deal. The American people-a lot of Americans have seen her give a speech, and when they do, they see a compassionate, strong, warm woman. I am proud to have been standing on the stage with Bernie Kerik. He knows something about security. He is lived security all his life, and I want to thank him for his dedication and his service to the people of this country. I want to thank Congressman Jim Saxton for being here today. I want to thank Congressman Scott Garrett for joining us today. I want to thank Congressman Chris Smith and Marie for joining us. The chairman of the Republican Party was born and raised in this county. He is doing a fabulous job. I want to thank all the State senators and statehouse members who are here. I want to thank the grassroots activists. I want to thank you for what you are going to do during the next 15 days. We are going to win the State of New Jersey and win a great victory in November. During the decade of the 1990s, our times often seemed peaceful on the surface. Yet, beneath that surface were currents of danger. Terrorists were training and planning in distant camps. In 1993, terrorists made their first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1998, terrorists bombed American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

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And then came the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, which cost the lives of 17 American sailors. In this period, America's response to terrorism was generally piecemeal and symbolic. The terrorists concluded this was a sign of weakness, and their plans became more ambitious, * and their attacks became more deadly. Most Americans still felt that terrorism was something distant and something that would not strike on a large scale in America. That is the time that my opponent wants to go back to a time when danger was real and growing, but we did not know it, a time when some thought terrorism was only a nuisance. But that very attitude is what blinded America to the war being waged against us. And by not seeing the war, our Government had no comprehensive strategy to fight it. September the 11th, 2001, changed all that. We realized that the apparent security of the 1990s was an illusion. The people of New Jersey were among the first to understand how the world changed. On September the 11th, from places like Hoboken and Jersey City, you could look across the Hudson River and see the Twin Towers burning. We will never forget that day, and we will never forget our duty to defend America. Out of the horror of that day, we also saw good emerge. America has seen a new generation of heroes, police, firefighters, members of the military. Americans have felt a new sense of community in neighborhoods and across our country. We have been reminded that all of us are a part of a great American story that is larger than our individual lives, and we have been reminded of our solemn responsibility to defend freedom. September the 11th also changed the way we should look at national security, but not everyone realizes it. The choice we face in this election, the first Presidential election since September the 11th, is how our Nation will defeat this threat. Will we stay on the offensive against those who want to attack us or will we take action only after we are attacked? Will we make decisions in the light of September the 11th or continue to live in the mirage of safety that was actually a time of gathering threats? And in this time of choosing, I want all Americans to know you can count on me to fight our enemies and defend our freedom. America needs clear moral purpose and leaders who will not waver, especially in the tough times. Unlike my opponent, I understand the struggle America faces, and I have a strategy to win.

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Our first duty in the war on terror is to protect the homeland. This morning at the White House, I signed a strong law that will make our Nation more secure. With the 2005 Homeland Security Appropriations Act, we are providing essential funding for Coast Guard patrols and port security, for the Federal air marshal program, and for technology that will defend aircraft against missiles. We are adding new resources to patrol our borders and to verify the identity of foreign visitors to America. We need to know who is coming in and out of our country. The new law includes vital money for first-responders and for better security of chemical facilities and nuclear plants and water treatment plants and bridges and subways and tunnels. All these measures show the unwavering commitment of our Government. We will do everything in our power to protect the American people. The law I signed today is part of a broad effort to defend America against new dangers. After September the 11th, we created the Department of Homeland Security to make sure our Government agencies are working together. We are transforming the FBI into an agency whose primary focus is stopping terrorism. Through Project Bio-Shield, we are developing new vaccines and treatments against biological attacks. We have trained more than a half million first-responders across America. To protect America, we passed the PATRIOT Act, giving law enforcement many of the same tools to fight terrorists that they already had to fight drug cartels and organized crime. Since September the 11th, law enforcement professionals have stopped terrorist activities in Columbus, Ohio; San Diego, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Buffalo, New York; and other places, including New Jersey, where we apprehended an arms dealer who was allegedly trying to sell shoulder-fired missiles to terrorists. My opponent voted for the PATRIOT Act, but now he wants to weaken it. There are plenty of safeguards in this law, making sure that civil liberties are protected and searches are authorized by court order. By seeking to dilute the PATRIOT Act, my opponent is taking the eye off the ball. The danger to America is not the PATRIOT Act or the good people who use it; the danger to America is the terrorists. And we will not let up in this fight. To protect America, our country needs the best possible intelligence. Chairman Tom Kean and other members of the September the 11th Commission made thoughtful and valuable recommendations on intelligence reform. We are already implementing the vast majority of those recommendations that can be enacted without a vote of Congress.

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We are expanding and strengthening the capabilities of the CIA. We have established the Terrorist Threat Integration Center so we can bring together all the available intelligence on terrorist threats to one place. But other changes require new laws. Congress needs to create the position of the National Intelligence Director and take other measures to make our intelligence community more effective. These reforms are necessary to stay ahead of the threats. I urge Congress to act quickly so I can sign them into law. My opponent has taken a different approach, and it shows in his record. Just one year after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Senator Kerry proposed a $6 billion cut in the Nation's intelligence budget. But the majority of his colleagues ignored his irresponsible proposal. In 1995, he tried to cut intelligence funding again, and this time he could not get a single Member of the United States Senate to support his bill. And that is an important difference between us. Senator Kerry has a record of trying to weaken American intelligence. I am working every day to strengthen American intelligence. In a free and open society, it is impossible to protect against every threat. So second, we must pursue a comprehensive strategy against terror. The best way to prevent attacks is to stay on the offense against the enemy overseas. We are waging a global campaign from the mountains of central Asia to the deserts of the Middle East and from the Horn of Africa to the Philippines. Since September the 11th, 2001, more than three-quarters of Al Qaida's key members and associates have been brought to justice. The rest of them know we are coming after them. If you support or harbor terrorists, you are equally guilty of terrorist murder. We destroyed the terror camps that trained thousands of killers in Afghanistan. We removed the Taliban from power. We have persuaded Governments in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to recognize the enemy and join the fight. We ended the regime of Saddam Hussein, which sponsored terror. Iraq's new Government under Prime Minister Allawi is hunting down terrorists in Iraq. We sent a message to Libya, which has now given up weapons of mass destruction programs and handed nuclear materials and equipment over to the United States. We have acted, through diplomacy and force, to shrink the area where the terrorists can operate freely, and that strategy has the terrorists on the run. My opponent has a fundamental misunderstanding on the war on terror. A reporter recently asked Senator Kerry how September the 11th changed him. He replied, It did not change me much at all.

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His unchanged worldview is obvious from the policies he still advocates. He has declared, we should not respond to threats until they are, quote, imminent. He has complained that my administration, quote, relies unwisely on the threat of military preemption against terrorist organizations. Let me repeat that. He says that preemptive action is unwise, not only against regimes but even against terrorist organizations. This kind of September the 10th attitude is no way to protect our country. The war on terror is a real war with deadly enemies, not simply a police operation. In an era of weapons of mass destruction, waiting for threats to arrive at our doorsteps is to invite disaster. Tyrants and terrorists will not give us polite notice before they attack our country. As long as I am the Commander in Chief, I will confront dangers abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. The case of one terrorist shows what is at stake. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for beheading American hostages, the one responsible for many of the car bombings and attacks against Iraqis, is a man named Zarqawi. Before September the 11th, Zarqawi ran a camp in Afghanistan that trained terrorists in the use of explosives and poisons- until coalition forces destroyed that camp. He fled to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, where he received medical care and set up operations with some two dozen terrorist associates. He operated in Baghdad and worked with associates in northern Iraq who ran camps to train terrorists and conducted chemical and biological experiments-until coalition forces arrived and ended those operations. With nowhere to operate openly, Zarqawi has gone underground and is making a stand in Iraq. Here, the difference between my opponent and me is very clear. Senator Kerry believes that fighting Zarqawi and other terrorists in Iraq is a diversion from the war on terror. I believe that fighting and defeating these killers in Iraq is a central commitment in the war on terror. If Zarqawi and his associates were not busy fighting American forces in Iraq, does Senator Kerry think they would be leading productive and peaceful lives? Clearly, these killers would be plotting and acting to murder innocent civilians in free nations, including our own. By facing these terrorists far away, our military is making the United States of America more secure. Third, to win the war on terror, America must work with allies and lead the world with clarity. And that is exactly what we are doing.

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The flags of 64 nations fly at U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Tampa, Florida, representing coalition countries that are working openly with us in the war on terror. Dozens more are helping quietly in important ways. Today, all 26 NATO nations have personnel either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. America's allies are standing with us in the war on terror, and we are grateful. My opponent promises that he would do better with our allies, yet he is decided that the way to build alliances is to insult our friends. As a candidate for President, Senator Kerry has managed to offend or alienate almost every one of America's fighting allies in the war on terror. He has called the countries serving alongside us in Iraq, quote, a trumped-up coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted. He has dismissed the sacrifice of 14 nations that have lost forces in Iraq, calling those nations window dressing. Great Britain, Australia, and the United States. He left out Poland, one of the first countries to see combat on the first days of hostilities in Iraq. He never shows respect for some of the 30 nations that are serving courageously in Iraq today. Senator Kerry even has disregarded the contributions of Iraqis who are fighting for their freedom. When he speaks of coalition casualties in Iraq, he does not count the hundreds of Iraqis who have given their lives fighting the terrorists and the insurgents. When Iraq's Prime Minister came to Washington to address Congress last month, Senator Kerry did not show up. Instead, he called a press conference and questioned the Prime Minister's credibility. The Prime Minister of Iraq is a brave man who survived the assassins of Saddam. The Prime Minister of Iraq deserves the respect of the world, not the scorn of a politician. As part of his foreign policy, Senator Kerry has talked about applying a global test. Before we act to defend ourselves, he thinks we need permission from foreign capitals. Yet, even the gulf war coalition in 1991 did not pass Senator Kerry's global test. Even with the United Nations approval, he voted against removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. If that vast, U.N.-supported operation did not pass his test, nothing ever could. Senator Kerry's global test is nothing more than an excuse to constrain the actions of our own country in a dangerous world. I believe in strong alliances. I believe in respecting other countries and working with them and seeking their advice.

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But I will never submit our national security decisions to a veto of a foreign government. Fourth, we will win the war on terror and make America safer by advancing the cause of freedom and democracy. Free societies are hopeful societies which do not nurture bitterness or the ideologies of terror and murder. Free governments in the broader Middle East will fight the terrorists instead of harboring them. And this is why a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan are vital to peace in that region and vital to the security interests of our country. After decades of tyranny in the broader Middle East, progress toward freedom will not come easily. Across a troubled region, we are seeing a movement toward elections, greater rights for women, and open discussion of peaceful reform. The election in Afghanistan less than 2 weeks ago was a landmark event in the history of liberty. That election was a tremendous defeat for the terrorists. My opponent has complained that we are trying to, quote, impose democracy on people in that region. Is that what he sees in Afghanistan, unwilling people having democracy forced upon them? We removed the Taliban by force, but democracy is rising in that country because the Afghan people, like everywhere, want to live in freedom. No one forced them to register by the millions or stand in long lines at polling places. On the day of that historic election, an Afghan widow brought all four of her daughters to vote alongside her. She said this, she said, When you see women here lined up to vote, this is something profound. But that woman's dream finally arrived, as it will one day across the greater Middle East. The dream of freedom is moving forward in Iraq. The terrorists know it, and they hate it, and they fight it. And we can expect more violence as Iraq moves toward free elections. Yet, every day in Iraq, our coalition is defeating the enemy's strategic objectives. The enemy seeks to disrupt the march toward democracy. But an Iraqi independent electoral commission is up and running, political parties are planning campaigns, voter registration will begin next month, and free and fair Iraqi elections will be held on schedule this coming January. The enemy seeks to establish sanctuaries in Iraq from which to commit acts of terror. But Iraqi and coalition forces are on the offensive in Fallujah and North Babil and have restored Government control in Samarra, Tall 'Afar, and Najaf. The enemy wants to make Iraqis afraid to join security forces.

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But every week, more and more Iraqis answer the call to arms. More than 100,000 soldiers, police, and border guards are already trained, equipped, and bravely serving their country. And well over 200,000 will be in place by the end of 2005. The enemy seeks to break the will of the Iraqi people. But as Prime Minister Allawi told the Congress, Iraqis are hopeful, optimistic, and determined to prevail in their struggle for liberty. After the enemy has failed in so many goals, what can these killers do now? They can fill up our TV screens with horrible images of suicide bombings and beheadings. These scenes are chaotic and horrific, but they are not a complete picture of what is happening in Iraq. A recent poll found that more than 75 percent of Iraqis want to vote, and they have confidence in the electoral progress. And more than 75 percent are hopeful about the future of their country. The violent acts of a few will not divert Iraqis and our coalition from the mission we have accepted. My opponent has a different outlook. While America does the hard work of fighting terror and spreading freedom, he has chosen the easy path of protest and defeatism. He refuses to acknowledge progress or praise the growing democratic spirit in Iraq. He has not made democracy a priority of his foreign policy. Is he content to watch and wait as anger and resentment grow for more decades in the Middle East, feeding more terrorism until radicals without conscience gain the weapons to kill without limit? Giving up the fight might seem easier in the short run, but we learned on September the 11th that if violence and fanaticism are not opposed at their source, they will find us where we live. America is safer today because Afghanistan and Iraq are fighting terrorists instead of harboring them. And I believe future generations of Americans will be spared violence and fear as democracy and hope and governments that oppose terror multiply across the Middle East. Victory in the war on terror requires victory in Iraq. If a terror regime were allowed to reemerge in Iraq, the terrorists would find a home, a source of funding, and vital support. They would correctly conclude that free nations do not have the will to defend themselves. When Iraq becomes a free society at the heart of the Middle East, an ally in the war on terror, and a model for hopeful reform in a region that needs hopeful reform, the terrorists will suffer a crushing defeat and every free nation will be more secure.

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Unfortunately, Senator Kerry does not share our commitment to victory in Iraq. For 3 years, depending on the headlines, the poll numbers, and political calculation, he has taken almost every conceivable position on Iraq. First, he said Saddam Hussein was a threat, and he voted for the war. Then he voted against funds for bullets and body armor for the troops he had voted to send into battle. Months later, he said that knowing everything we know now, he would have still voted for the war. Having gone back and forth so many times, the Senator from Massachusetts has now flip-flopped his way to a dangerous position. My opponent finally has settled on a strategy, a strategy of retreat. He has talked about artificial timetables to pull our troops out of Iraq. He has sent the signal that America's overriding goal in Iraq would be to leave, even if the job is not done. And that approach would lead to a major defeat in the war on terror. So long as I am the Commander in Chief, America will never retreat in the face of the terrorists. We will keep our word to the Iraqi people. We will make sure Iraqi forces can defend their country, and then American troops will return home with the honor they have earned. My opponent wants to weaken the PATRIOT Act and has a history of trying to undermine our intelligence services. I will take every necessary measure to protect the homeland. The Senator wants to wage the war on terror on the defensive. I will take the fight to the enemy. The Senator insults our friends in the world and wants to please a few critics. I am working with our friends for the sake of freedom and security. The Senator is skeptical and pessimistic about democracy in Iraq and critical of our efforts in the broader Middle East. I know that the advance of freedom is the path to security and peace. In all these areas, my opponent's views would make America less secure and the world more dangerous. And none of these positions should come as a surprise. Over a 20-year career in the United States Senate, Senator Kerry has been consistently wrong on the major national security issues facing our country. The Senator who voted against the $87 billion for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq is the same Senator who has voted against vital weapons systems during his entire career. He tried to cancel the Patriot missile, which shot down Scud missiles in Operation Desert Storm. He opposed the B-1 bomber, which was critical to victory in the Afghan campaign.

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He opposed the B-2 stealth bomber, which delivered devastating air strikes on Taliban positions. He opposed the modernized F-14D, which we used against terrorists in Tora Bora. He opposed the Apache helicopter, which destroyed enemy tanks and anti-aircraft missile launchers in Iraq. The Senator who is skeptical of democracy in Iraq also spoke with sympathy for a communist dictator in Nicaragua in the 1980s and criticized the democracy movement as terrorism. His misguided policies would have impeded the spread of freedom in Central America. The Senator who claims the world is more dangerous since America started fighting the war on terror is the same Senator who said that Ronald Reagan's policies of peace through strength actually made America less safe the same Senator who said the Reagan Presidency was 8 years of moral darkness. In this campaign, Senator Kerry can run from his record, but he cannot hide. The Senator's long record shows a clear pattern on national security. He has consistently opposed a stronger military. He has consistently looked for excuses to constrain American power. He has consistently shown poor judgment on the great issues of war and peace. When one Senator among a hundred holds a policy of weakness, it does not make a lot of difference. But the Presidency is an office of great responsibility and consequence. I have a record in office as well, and all Americans have seen that record. September the 14th, * 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. Bernie might remember the workers in hardhats that were yelling at me and yelling at us, Whatever it takes. A man grabbed me by the arm, just coming out of the rubble, and he said, Do not let me down. I have a responsibility that goes on. I acted again and again to protect the American people. I will never relent in defending our country, whatever it takes. In a new term as your President, we will finish the work we have started. We will stand up for terror-we will stand up for freedom. And on November the 2d, my fellow Americans, I ask that you stand with me.

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I have had a wonderful time in Philadelphia today, and I am deeply indebted to you for being here tonight, for supporting our party, our candidates, and what we stand for. I, too, want to thank Congressman Chaka Fattah for the High Hopes program. He and the mayor met me today at the airport with a number of young children from Philadelphia who are in your school system, in your middle school system. And then later, we sat down and drank a soft drink together, and I visited with them. And Chaka asked how many of them wanted to go to college, and they all wanted to go. the High Hopes scholarship program. And we thank him. America is in your debt, Congressman. And I believe we have one of our candidates for Congress here, too, tonight, Roy Afflerbach. Let us give him a hand. I want to thank Steve Grossman for doing a superb job as the chairman of the Democratic Party. And we will not tell his mayor that he bragged on Rendell shamelessly tonight. I also want to thank Len Barrack of Philadelphia for being our finance chair. He is doing a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful job. And finally, let me say that the mayor was uncommonly generous tonight, but his administration is basically the embodiment of my philosophy of government. When we came before the American people, Al Gore and I, in 1992, we said we had a different idea, that we wanted everyone in America who was a responsible citizen to have opportunity. We wanted to come together as one community across all of our differences of race, religion, politics, income. We wanted to prove that you could be in favor of economic growth and still improve the environment. We wanted to end all these sort of false choices that had been imposed on us by the hot rhetoric of Washington for too many years. And we had a different theory of government, that we thought that the main role of government was to create the conditions and to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives. And all the initiatives that the mayor mentioned, that he so generously gave me credit for, most all of them were available to a lot of other places, too. But Philadelphia made the most of its opportunities because, in no small measure, of the gifts, the dedication, and the downright aggression of its mayor. And I cannot tell you how much I admire him for that.

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You know, I am sure all of you have had an experience like this in your life in some context or another-by the time somebody calls you 15 times and asks you for something, you say yes just to stop them, you know. When Ed Rendell gets all over you like a wet blanket about something--you know you might as well just cry uncle and go on to something else. I say that because the achievements of this city have been truly phenomenal. You know, the people of Philadelphia have been quite wonderful to me and Hillary and to Al and Tipper, voting for us in record numbers and by record margins in both elections and I am very, very grateful. Let me just take a few minutes to be a little serious with you tonight. I was so moved today by all the things that were said to me on the street-did not even mind the protesters. But you like it even more when they are not in the majority-- and that seemed to be the case today. But I want you to know that, on behalf of the First Lady and on my part, I am very grateful for those personal expressions. But I do not believe that adversity is the enemy of the Democratic Party in this election. Indeed, adversity can be our friend, because it is not only good for personal reformation; it is good for people to sort of dig down deep inside and ask yourself what is really important and what is really fair. What do you really care about? What will you act for? What will you move for? The real enemy the Democrats have in this election is complacency, because we are doing pretty well as a country. We have got the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years and the lowest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years and the first balanced budget and surplus in 29 years, and it is the biggest in history. We have got the best wage growth in way over 20 years. We have got, as Steve Grossman said, the biggest drop in Hispanic poverty in 30 years and the lowest unemployment rates and poverty rates among African-Americans since statistics have been kept, the highest homeownership in history. I am grateful for that. But the real question is, what will we do with this moment? Our friends in the other party know that in spite of your presence and generosity here tonight, they always have tons more money than we do. I will tell you a little more about that in a minute.

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But they also know that oftentimes at these midterm elections, the people who always vote in presidential elections, a lot of them do not vote in midterm elections. Well, they are young parents on modest incomes; they have to worry about how to juggle child care and work, and voting on a work day is another hassle. A lot of them live in cities and do not own cars and have transportation problems. And how are they going to get to work and to the polling place? I tell you, my friends, our enemy is complacency. Adversity is forcing us to focus on what is important and what we believe in and what we are prepared to fight for. And while I think it is a wonderful thing that all these good things are happening in our country, you know there are still some people in Philadelphia who have not felt the benefits of the things that have been done, and you know there is more to do. I want you to know that a long way away from here, in the high plains of America, people that work hard to feed you on the farm do not know there is been a recovery because they have to export a lot of their products, and they have been flooded out or burned out or had diseases. They have had all kinds of problems. And now the Asian markets, where they sell their food, are closed to them because the folks do not have any money over there. We could lose 10,000 family farmers in America this year, at a time of greatest prosperity for the country as a whole in a generation. So we have challenges at home. You have to see that as an obligation to look at the real challenges facing the country and take them on. That is what we have tried to do. So we, the Democrats, have gone before the American people and we said, Look, we have a program for this election, and we think it is worth your voting for. We know that the other side has tried to offer you-for most of you- a modest tax cut. Right here, before the election, they want to spend the surplus. And we have given you a harder message. We have said, Look, we have waited for this for 29 years. We worked for it for 6 years. Should not we let the red ink turn to black, and let us let it dry for a day or two before we squander it?

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At a time when there is so much financial turmoil throughout the world, should not we set a good example to stabilize the global economy? And even more important, knowing as we all do-every person in this room knows that while Social Security is absolutely stable for the people who are now on it and the people who are about to go on it, when all the baby boomers get in, it is not sustainable under the present circumstances because there will only be two people working for every one person drawing Social Security. Everybody in this room between the ages of 52 and 34 is a baby boomer. Either we will have to put a whopping tax increase on our kids to maintain the system as it is, undermining their ability to raise our grandchildren, which none of us want to do; or we will have to take a whopping cut in Social Security benefits, which today keeps one-half of the senior citizens in America out of poverty. So I say, tempting though it is before an election to shovel up a little tax cut, let us show a little restraint and a little knowledge of the last 29 years and say, No, no, we are going to save Social Security first before we spend it. And believe me, the elections will send a message to the Congress about which path you wish to take. I talked about it all day today, and I never thought I'd come to Philadelphia or go anyplace in America in a political election and say, The big issue is, are we going to fund the IMF? Sounds like those people that make bowling equipment. The International Monetary Fund is a fund to which we and others contribute that helps countries that are poorer and developing, who have good policies, to try to grow their economy; or when they get in trouble, it tries to help them work out of trouble without just being absolutely destroyed. For 8 months I have been trying to get America to make its fair share of contribution. Because we cannot lead the world-and you know the troubles that Asia has; you know the troubles in Russia; you see the impact, how it echoes in Latin America, our fastest growing market for American products. You see people say, when the stock market changes here, that that has something to do with this financial trouble overseas. We have an obligation not only to others throughout the world but to our own economy. Thirty percent of this growth we have enjoyed has come from selling things to people overseas who had enough money to buy them.

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And when they get in trouble, eventually we will suffer from that. And already, I have told you, our farmers are. And so I say to you, if you want to keep the American economic recovery going, if you like the way it is gone the last 6 years, and you'd like to have a few more years of it, then America has to lead the world away from the brink of the worst financial crisis in decades. And that means we have to pay our fair share to the fund that will do it. For 8 months I have had before the Congress an education program. We have succeeded in getting bipartisan agreement in the balanced budget for tax credits for all students to go to college, for the deductibility of interest on student loans, for more Pell grants. Our Democrats put that before the Republicans, and we were able to get bipartisan agreement-and now for Congressman Fattah's High Hopes program. But you all know that we do not yet have a world-class elementary and secondary education system that will guarantee to every child, without regard to race or neighborhood or income, a chance to be able to take advantage of those college opportunities. And so I came before the Congress and I said, Okay, we have listened to the educators. I, personally, and Hillary and I have been going into the schools for 20 years now listing and watching and learning, and here is our program. Number one, in the balanced budget-paid for-put up enough money for school districts across America to hire 100,000 teachers to take average class size down to 18 in the early grades. It will make a difference. Number two, provide-provide a tax incentive that will help to build or repair 5,000 school buildings. I went to Jupiter, Florida, and saw a dozen housetrailers outside a school because the population is growing so fast. The mayor took me to a school building in Philadelphia that was over 65 years old. It was one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, but it was not in good shape because there is not enough money to repair all those buildings. And all over America in the cities, I see people say, Oh, our children are the most important things in the world to us. What does it say to them if they walk up the steps every day to a school where the windows are broken or a whole floor is closed down?

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Very often, people cannot even look out the window in some of these places, because they cannot afford to heat and cool them, so they just board them up. The third thing it does is to give funds to cities for after-school and summer school programs to help kids who are in trouble. I do not believe kids should be promoted endlessly if they do not learn what they are supposed to learn. But I do not think the children should be branded failures because the system fails them. So give them those after-school programs and the summer school programs and the mentors they need to learn what they need to learn. That is a part of our program as well. The fourth thing it does is provide funds to hook every classroom in the country up to the Internet by the year 2000. If you walk out of this room tonight and-God forbid-you get hit by a car, and you are covered by an HMO plan, a managed care plan, you ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room, not one clear across town because that is the one that happens to be covered by your plan. It says if your doctors tells you that he or she cannot help you and you need to see a specialist, you ought to be able to see one. It says if your employer changes HMO providers while you are going through a certain medical treatment, you ought to be able to finish with it. Now, let me just tell you what that means. How would you feel if you were 7 months pregnant and somebody came to you and said, I am sorry, your employer changed providers; you have got to give up your obstetrician, and here is Dr. Jones ? How would you feel if someone in your family was undergoing chemotherapy-I have been through this, a lot of you have, and you know it is a pretty traumatic thing for families. I remember when my mother went through it, we sat around and tried to make jokes about whether she'd lose her hair and what kind of wig she'd buy. How would you feel if you were two-thirds of the way through a chemotherapy protocol and somebody said, I am sorry, you have got to change your doctor ? The Congress-the House passed a bill that did not guarantee any of those things and what little it did guarantee left out 100 million Americans. Then it went to the Senate, and our crowd had a right to bring our bill up in the Senate, and they could not keep it away.

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So you know what the leader of the Senate did? He shut the Senate down for 4 hours-I mean, turned out the lights; everybody got under the desks. Because they did not want to be recorded as voting against this, but they did not want to make angry the insurance companies who oppose it. This is the symbol of the difference between the two parties today, make no mistake about it. Now, what have they done with their year in the majority? Except for this higher education bill, I cannot think of much. They killed the minimum wage. They killed campaign finance reform. They killed tobacco legislation reform that would have protected our children from the dangers of tobacco. They killed the Patients' Bill of Rights. They have continued their assault on the environment. They have gone backwards on paying for the International Monetary Fund; they have taken no action on it. And they have taken no action on the education bill, and they went backwards on saving Social Security first when the House passed their tax plan. It is over in the Senate now. And what I want you to do-I thank you for coming here tonight. I thank you for these contributions. We need the money, and we will spend it well. But you have to go out and tell people, there is this cynical idea that you will not vote and that good times makes you less likely to vote. And I know it is more trouble for a lot of people you know to vote. But if you believe that America ought to be about not what goes on in Washington, DC, but what goes on in the neighborhoods of Philadelphia, in Boston, and in rural North Dakota and in rural Nebraska-if that is what you believe-if you believe in saving Social Security first, if you believe in the Patients' Bill of Rights, if you believe in education as our top investment priority, if you believe in keeping our economic recovery going, then you should support our party-not just tonight but on election day. And I want every one of you to go out every day between now and then and stir it up among your friends, and make sure that we surprise the cynics on election day. Thank you, and God bless you.

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It is fitting that in the capital of the Nation a statue should stand through the ages, to remind future generations of the services to that Nation of a patriot who served his country well. It is fitting that the Government, through its representatives, should take part in the dedication of this monument. It is fitting that I should appear here in my official capacity; but it is also fitting that I should be here in my personal capacity, as one who has always been proud of the personal friendship which he held for many years with Samuel Gompers. I knew him first when as a very young man I came to New York City and received his fine support in the establishment of pure milk stations for the feeding of undernourished babies. From then on, we had many mutual tasks. It is, I think, a commentary on the progress toward social justice which we have accomplished in a short space of time, when I tell you that in the year 1911 only twenty-two years ago Samuel Gompers, Robert F. Wagner, Alfred E. Smith and I were labeled as radicals when we fought for and finally succeeded in passing a bill through the New York State Legislature, limiting the work of women in industry to fifty-four hours a week. These early struggles for social betterment struggles which in large part were initiated by him have met with growing success with every passing year. I like to think that Samuel Gompers is today, and at this moment, aware of the fact that through the quick and practical action of the National Recovery Act, child labor in the United States has at last come to n end. During the years of the Wilson Administration, the friendship between us grew and strengthened. I need not speak of his great service to organized labor in their relations with private employers; but I can speak rightfully of the splendid cooperation which at all times he gave to the sympathetic adjustment of problems relating to workers for the Government itself. He understood well the fact that those who serve the Government serve the people as a whole. It was in the fulfillment of this principle that he approached the whole subject of the relationship of labor to the Government at the outbreak of the World War. As a member of the advisory committee of the Council of National Defense, he was a part of the great organization which met the crisis Of war. But more than that, it was his patriotic leadership for the unanimous mobilization of the workers in every part of the Union which supplemented the mobilization of the men who went to the front.

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If I may be permitted to do so I want to express my admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in a corral. In those few words President Wilson summed up the splendid national services of Samuel Gompers, and at the same time preached a sermon that applied to capital and labor alike. That sermon is just as good today as it was in 1917. We are engaged in another war, and I believe from the bottom of my heart that organized labor is doing its share to win this war. The whole of the country has a common enemy; industry, agriculture, capital, labor are all engaged in fighting it. Just as in 1917 we are seeking to pull in harness; just as in 1917, horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in a corral. Gompers understood and went along with that thought during the years of the War, and we have many evidences of his acceptance of the fact that the horses pulling in harness were the horses of the employees and of the employers as well. In those years a few, happily a very few, horses had to be lassoed both kinds of horses; and today the conditions are very similar. In the field of organized labor there are problems just as there were in the spring of 1917 questions of jurisdiction which have to be settled quickly and effectively in order to prevent the slowing-up of the general program. There are the perfectly natural problems of selfish individuals who seek personal gain by running counter to the calm judgment of sound leadership. There are hot-heads who think that results can be obtained by noise or violence; there are insidious voices seeking to instill methods or principles which are wholly foreign to the American form of democratic government. On the part of employers there are some who shudder at anything new. There are some who think in terms of dollars and cents instead of in terms of human lives; there are some who themselves would prefer government by a privileged class instead of by majority rule. But it is clear that the sum of the recalcitrants on both sides cuts a very small figure in the total of employers and employees alike, who are going along wholeheartedly in the war against depression.

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And to my fellow Americans, our newest citizens, I am so excited. You are men and women from more than 25 countries, from Brazil to Uganda, from Iraq to the Philippines. You may come from teeming cities or rural villages. But here, surrounded by the very documents whose values bind us together as one people, you have raised your hand and sworn a sacred oath. I am proud to be among the first to greet you as my fellow Americans. What a remarkable journey all of you have made. And as of today, your story is forever woven into the larger story of this Nation. In the brief time that we have together, I want to share that story with you. Because even as you have put in the work required to become a citizen, you still have a demanding and rewarding task ahead of you, and that is the hard work of active citizenship. You have rights and you have responsibilities. And now you have to help us write the next great chapter in America's story. Just about every nation in the world, to some extent, admits immigrants. We do not simply welcome new immigrants, we do not simply welcome new arrivals, we are born of immigrants. And for more than two centuries, it is remained at the core of our national character. After all, unless your family is Native American, one of the First Americans, our families-all of our families-come from someplace else. The first refugees were the Pilgrims themselves, fleeing religious persecution, crossing the stormy Atlantic to reach a new world where they might live and pray freely. Eight signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants. And in those first decades after independence, English, German, and Scottish immigrants came over, huddled on creaky ships, seeking what Thomas Paine called asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty. Down through the decades, Irish Catholics fleeing hunger, Italians fleeing poverty filled up our cities, rolled up their sleeves, built America. Chinese laborers jammed in steerage under the decks of steamships, making their way to California to build the Central Pacific Railroad that would transform the West and our Nation. Wave after wave of men, women, and children-from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, from Asia and Africa-poured into Ellis Island or Angel Island, their trunks bursting with their most cherished possessions-maybe a photograph of the family they left behind; a family Bible or a Torah or a Koran; a bag in one hand, maybe a child in the other-standing for hours in long lines.

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New York and cities across America were transformed into a sort of global fashion show. You had Dutch lace caps and the North African fezzes, stodgy tweed suits, colorful Caribbean dresses. And perhaps, like some of you, these new arrivals might have had some moments of doubt, wondering if they had made a mistake in leaving everything and everyone they ever knew behind. So life in America was not always easy. It was not always easy for new immigrants. Certainly, it was not easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more. survivors of the Holocaust; Soviet refuseniks; refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia; Iraqis and Afghans fleeing war; Mexicans, Cubans, Iranians leaving behind deadly revolutions; Central American teenagers running from gang violence; the Lost Boys of Sudan escaping civil war. They are people like Fulbert Florent Akoula from the Republic of Congo, who was granted asylum when his family was threatened by political violence. Immigrants and refugees revitalize and renew America. Immigrants like you are more likely to start your own business. Many of the Fortune 500 companies in this country were founded by immigrants or their children. Many of the tech startups in Silicon Valley have at least one immigrant founder. Immigrants are the teachers who inspire our children, and they are the doctors who keep us healthy. They are the engineers who design our skylines and the artists and the entertainers who touch our hearts. Immigrants are soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coastguardsmen who protect us, often risking their lives for an America that is not even their own yet. As an Iraqi, Muhanned Ibrahim Al Naib was the target of death threats for working with American forces. He stood by his American comrades and came to the U.S. as a refugee. And today we stand by him. And we are proud to welcome Muhanned as a citizen of the country that he already helped to defend. We celebrate this history, this heritage, as an immigrant nation. And we should be strong enough to acknowledge, as painful as it may be, that we have not always lived up to our own ideals. We have not always lived up to these documents.

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From the start, Africans were brought here in chains against their will and then toiled under the whip. They also built America. A century ago, New York City shops displayed those signs, No Irish Need Apply. Catholics were targeted, their loyalty questioned, so much so that as recently as the 1950s and sixties, when JFK had to run, he had to convince people that his allegiance was not primarily to the Pope. Chinese immigrants faced persecution and vicious stereotypes and were, for a time, even banned from entering America. During World War II, German and Italian residents were detained, and in one of the darkest chapters in our history, Japanese immigrants and even Japanese American citizens were forced from their homes and imprisoned in camps. We succumbed to fear. We betrayed not only our fellow Americans, but our deepest values. We betrayed these documents. And the biggest irony of course was, is that those who betrayed these values were themselves the children of immigrants. One generation passes, two generation passes, and suddenly, we do not remember where we came from. On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes like that again. We must resolve to always speak out against hatred and bigotry in all of its forms, whether taunts against the child of an immigrant farmworker or threats against a Muslim shopkeeper. Standing up for each other is what the values enshrined in the documents in this room compels us to do, especially when it is hard, especially when it is not convenient. All of us are called to live up to our expectations for ourselves, not just when it is convenient, but when it is inconvenient, when it is tough, when we are afraid. The tension throughout our history between welcoming or rejecting the stranger, it is about more than just immigration. It is about the meaning of America, what kind of country do we want to be. E pluribus unum-that out of many, we are one. Scripture tells us, For we are strangers before you, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. We are strangers before you. In the Mexican immigrant today, we see the Catholic immigrant of a century ago. In the Syrian seeking refuge today, we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II. our parents, our grandparents, our aunts, our uncles, our cousins who packed up what they could and scraped together what they had. And their paperwork was not always in order.

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And they set out for a place that was more than just a piece of land, but an idea. a place where we can be a part of something bigger. A place where we can contribute our talents and fulfill our ambitions and secure new opportunity for ourselves and for others. A place where we can retain pride in our heritage, but where we recognize that we have a common creed, a loyalty to these documents, a loyalty to our democracy; where we can criticize our government, but understand that we love it; where we agree to live together even when we do not agree with each other; where we work through the democratic process, and not through violence or sectarianism, to resolve disputes; where we live side by side as neighbors; and where our children know themselves to be a part of this Nation, no longer strangers, but the bedrock of this Nation, the essence of this Nation. And that is why today is not the final step in your journey. More than 60 years ago, at a ceremony like this one, Senator John F. Kennedy said, No form of government requires more of its citizens than does the American democracy. of being informed; of understanding that the Government is not some distant thing, but is you; of speaking out when something is not right; of helping fellow citizens when they need a hand; of coming together to shape our country's course. And that work gives purpose to every generation. It belongs to me. It belongs to the judge. It belongs to you. to follow our laws, yes, but also to engage with your communities and to speak up for what you believe in and to vote; to not only exercise the rights that are now yours, but to stand up for the rights of others. Birtukan Gudeya is here from Ethiopia. The joy of being an American is the joy of freedom and opportunity. We have been handed a work in progress, one that can evolve for the good of all Americans. I could not have said it better. That is what makes America great, not just the words on these founding documents, as precious and valuable as they are, but the progress that they have inspired. If you ever wonder whether America is big enough to hold multitudes, strong enough to withstand the forces of change, brave enough to live up to our ideals even in times of trial, then look to the generations of ordinary citizens who have proven again and again that we are worthy of that.

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Today it is my pleasure to welcome Alan Greenspan back to official service to his country. Chairman of President Ford's Council of Economic Advisors; member of three Presidential commissions, including the Greenspan commission; frequent witness before congressional committees; guest lecturer at New York University; member of the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution-and the list goes on and on. Now, in becoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan is making perhaps the most dramatic personal sacrifice of his career, taking his name down from the door of Townsend-Greenspan, the firm he guided as president and chairman for nearly 30 years. Alan, I suppose it would have been only natural for you to have had some second thoughts as you packed up your boxes last week. But knowing you, I do not think you did. No, knowing you, I have a feeling that your thoughts had already turned to the great role in American life that you take up today. Since its creation in 1913, the Federal Reserve System, with its Board of Governors, has become one of the central institutions of our government. Charged with maintaining the soundness of the banking system, the Fed helps to make possible the many millions of financial transactions that take place in America every day, from the purchase of stocks and bonds on Wall Street to the purchase of groceries on Main Street. But perhaps the Fed is best known for its conduct of monetary policy-managing the rate of growth in the supply of money. inflation, interest rates, the overall rate of economic expansion itself. Under the chairmanship of Paul Volcker, the Fed has used its monetary policy to overcome the rampant inflation that had grown up during the late 1970's. What we are aiming for, Chairman Volcker once said, is a situation in which people can proceed about their business without worrying about what prices are going to do. And once this situation had been achieved, Chairman Volcker argued, confidence in the economy would return and economic growth would once again begin to take place. With budgetary and monetary discipline, Chairman Volcker added, the process could be sustained for years. Well, as we all know, economic growth has taken place, and it has been sustained. The economic expansion is now just 2 months short of becoming the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history. For some 5 years now, inflation has stayed well below the rates of the late 1970's, with interest rates coming down sharply as well.

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We have seen a burst of new business formations, a virtual riot of new technologies, and the creation of over 13 1/2 million new jobs. And I know that Governor Martha Seger, who has done some briefings for us here at the White House, reported after consultations with foreign bankers and businessmen during her recent European trip that today confidence in the American economy is firmly established abroad, and this represents a source of stability for the entire world economy. I want to express my gratitude to Paul Volcker for the part he played in these accomplishments. And I want to restate my confidence in Alan Greenspan to carry these accomplishments still further, all the while maintaining the Fed's traditional independence. Here in our own country, Chairman Greenspan will bring all his skill to bear upon the task of promoting our continued economic growth while keeping inflation low. Today, keeping down inflation and sustaining economic growth is not an either-or proposition. Today, low inflation and economic growth can and must go hand in hand. Abroad, Chairman Greenspan will have to work closely with the heads of foreign central banks. With the entire globe becoming a single and highly competitive marketplace, Chairman Greenspan will play an important role in seeking solutions to the problems of developing countries and the massive debt some of them have accumulated. He will work to ensure an open and fair trading system among all nations. And he will be deeply involved in the restructuring and modernization of the American banking system to keep our own capital markets competitive with others around the world. These past 6 1/2 years-6 1/2 years of sound policies in the public sector and technological breakthroughs in the private-have produced such a dramatic change in America, perhaps most remarkably among our young people. The future looks more open and promising to young Americans than it did before, for the simple reason that it is more open and promising. There is been a convergence of policy and technology that has changed the spirit of America. Well, Alan, I guess that is the fundamental reason why I am so happy that when I asked you to become Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, you said yes. You are an economist's economist, one of the most widely respected men in your field. But you know that economics is more than numbers, that there are crucial intangibles, as well intangibles like hope, a willingness to work, and, yes, faith in the future of this great and good land.

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First, may I greet the distinguished Members of Congress here in the front rows, thank them for coming, thank them for their interest in the passage of this important legislation we are here to celebrate today, but also in their interest in following up on it. May I greet, also, the Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, and our Secretary of HHS Lou Sullivan and the Vice President, of course. He and I welcome you to the Rose Garden. And may I salute the other guests that are with us. American corporations, you see, are a vital part of this team, and your support of the ADA is critical to its success. One year ago, I stood over there -- many of you present -- on the South Lawn. And I will never -- literally, never -- forget that sight or certainly the emotional feeling I felt on that day. Thousands of people from across the country had come to celebrate the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, one of the most comprehensive civil rights bills in the history of this country. And while people felt a justifiable sense of triumph last year, you also could see a feeling of eager impatience. After all, the signing of the ADA did not mark the end of a long struggle; it marked, really, a beginning. Some of you here today joined me on the South Lawn, as I mentioned, a year ago, and we have made tremendous advances since that ceremony. We have introduced changes that will transform people's worlds. The ADA has also helped us -- all of us -- to understand a little bit more about ourselves. to recognize and defend the rights of every American. This bill does more than make the American dream of equality a reality for 43 million Americans with disabilities. It offers, in a sense, fresh testimony to our Nation's greatness. It demonstrates how we can advance the cause of civil rights. It shows what can happen when we work together, drawing upon the fundamental decency of the American people. The quest for civil rights is not a zero-sum game. It should not mean advancing some at the expense of others. The quest for civil rights is a quest for individual rights and equal opportunity and it is a crusade to throw open the doors of opportunity and tear down the walls of bigotry. The ADA works because it calls upon the best in the American people, and then Americans respond. the spirit of inclusiveness, the devotion to individual rights and equal opportunity. That devotion runs deep in our Nation.

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Our Constitution and our courts pledge equal protection under the law. But equally important, our people believe in legal equality -- and many try to broaden opportunity in little ways, by reaching out to capable people and giving them a chance -- giving them a fair chance. America must be a country where the sons and daughters of poverty have the same grasp on the American dream as the children of privilege. And it must be a land where a child can overcome any obstacle and fulfill his or her own potential. We see this promise fulfilled by a man I presented to this Nation 4 weeks ago. tolerance, industry, and decency. And I am speaking, of course, of my nominee to the Court, Clarence Thomas. While Judge Thomas was at the EEOC, he compiled an excellent record on disability issues, with which I hope all of you are familiar. the principle that we must throw open the doors of opportunity to everyone. And this spirit should guide us as we pursue all civil rights legislation, for our greatest strength lies in our ability to work together and honor the shared values we treasure. And in so doing, we have understood more fully just how much people with disabilities have to offer. We have demonstrated that social progress includes economic growth and that both play essential roles in the American dream. Businesses support the ADA because it gives everyone a chance to be productive in the workplace. It broadens our economic mainstream. It enables society to benefit from the wisdom, energy, and industry of people who want just one thing, a fair chance. And while we have made a strong start, we have much to do. As long as the doors of opportunity are closed to even one American we must keep working at it. The passage of the ADA, the world's first declaration of equality for people with disabilities, made this country the international leader on this human rights issue. And now the world is watching to see how we use this act, how we remove the physical barriers we have created and the social barriers that we have accepted. Our success or failure in keeping the promise of the ADA will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people with disabilities, not just here in the United States but throughout the world. In America -- the most generous, optimistic Nation on the face of the Earth -- we will not rest until every man and woman and child with a dream has a fair chance to realize it. Most of this work will be done by individual Americans acting day by day to increase tolerance and understanding.

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It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe, but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of what this Government has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of its obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to American citizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by the distressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border. Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they lie at our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantly conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest and sympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one element in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes and rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the Mexican people that we know how to serve them without first thinking how we shall serve ourselves. But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires her peace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before. Central America is about to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade and intercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The future has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States of Central America; but the best gifts can come to her only if she be ready and free to receive them and to enjoy them honorably. America in particularAmerica north and south and upon both continentswaits upon the development of Mexico; and that development can be sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered government founded upon law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace.

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Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she choose and attain the paths of honest constitutional government. The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say, do not seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. We have waited many months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions there to improve, and they have not improved. The territory in some sort controlled by the provisional authorities at Mexico City has grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of the pacification of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more and more remote; and its pacification by the authorities at the capital is evidently impossible by any other means than force. Difficulties more and more entangle those who claim to constitute the legitimate government of the Republic. They have not made good their claim in fact. Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. War and disorder, devastation and confusion, seem to threaten to become the settled fortune of the distracted country. As friends we could wait no longer for a solution which every week seemed further away. It was our duty at least to volunteer our good officesto offer to assist, if we might, in effecting some arrangement which would bring relief and peace and set up a universally acknowledged political authority there. Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are now exercising authority or wielding influence in Mexico the following considerations and advice: The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty any longer to stand inactively by while it becomes daily more and more evident that no real progress is being made towards the establishment of a government at the City of Mexico which the country will obey and respect. The Government of the United States does not stand in the same case with the other great Governments of the world in respect of what is happening or what is likely to happen in Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we are expected by the powers of the world to act as Mexico's nearest friend. We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and disinterested friendship.

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It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the sovereignty and independence of Mexicothat we take as a matter of course to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honorbut also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the interest of any person or body of persons who may have personal or property claims in Mexico which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are seeking to counsel Mexico for her own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for any other purpose whatever. The Government of the United States would deem itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved. It is acting as its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates. The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the fulfillment of international obligations on the part of Mexico, with the civilized development of Mexico herself, and with the maintenance of tolerable political and economic conditions in Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, that the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All America cries out for a settlement. A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned only An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, a definite armistice solemnly entered into and scrupulously observed; Security given for an early and free election in which all will agree to take part; The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a candidate for election as President of the Republic at this election; and The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of the election and coperate in the most loyal way in organizing and supporting the new administration. The Government of the United States will be glad to play any part in this settlement or in its carrying out which it can play honorably and consistently with international right. It pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the way and on the conditions suggested. Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the Government of the United States can conceive of no reasons sufficient to justify those who are now attempting to shape the policy or exercise the authority of Mexico in declining the offices of friendship thus offered. Can Mexico give the civilized world a satisfactory reason for rejecting our good offices?

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If Mexico can suggest any better way in which to show our friendship, serve the people of Mexico, and meet our international obligations, we are more than willing to consider the suggestion. Lind executed his delicate and difficult mission with singular tact, firmness, and good judgment, and made clear to the authorities at the City of Mexico not only the purpose of his visit but also the spirit in which it had been undertaken. But the proposals he submitted were rejected, in a note the full text of which I take the liberty of laying before you. I am led to believe that they were rejected partly because the authorities at Mexico City had been grossly misinformed and misled upon two points. They did not realize the spirit of the American people in this matter, their earnest friendliness and yet sober determination that some just solution be found for the Mexican difficulties; and they did not believe that the present administration spoke, through Mr. Lind, for the people of the United States. The effect of this unfortunate misunderstanding on their part is to leave them singularly isolated and without friends who can effectually aid them. So long as the misunderstanding continues we can only await the time of their awakening to a realization of the actual facts. We cannot thrust our good offices upon them. The situation must be given a little more time to work itself out in the new circumstances; and I believe that only a little while will be necessary. The rejection of our friendship makes them new and will inevitably bring its own alterations in the whole aspect of affairs. The actual situation of the authorities at Mexico City will presently be revealed. Clearly, everything that we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested deliberation. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty to offer our active assistance. It is now our duty to show what true neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order again and wait for a further opportunity to offer our friendly counsels. The door is not closed against the resumption, either upon the initiative of Mexico or upon our own, of the effort to bring order out of the confusion by friendly coperative action, should fortunate occasion offer.

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While we wait the contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that an end must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly; and with the increased activity of the contending factions will come, it is to be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants in Mexico as well as to those actually in the field of battle. The position of outsiders is always particularly trying and full of hazard where there is civil strife and a whole country is upset. We should earnestly urge all Americans to leave Mexico at once, and should assist them to get away in every way possiblenot because we would mean to slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives and their interests, but because it is imperative that they should take no unnecessary risks when it is physically possible for them to leave the country. We should let every one who assumes to exercise authority in any part of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes of those Americans who cannot get away, and shall hold those responsible for their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning. That can be and will be made plain beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding. For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from this side the border. I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or munitions of war of any kind from the United States to any part of the Republic of Mexicoa policy suggested by several interesting precedents and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them. I am happy to say that several of the great Governments of the world have given this Government their generous moral support in urging upon the provisional authorities at the City of Mexico the acceptance of our proffered good offices in the spirit in which they were made. We have not acted in this matter under the ordinary principles of international obligation. All the world expects us in such circumstances to act as Mexico's nearest friend and intimate adviser. This is our immemorial relation towards her.

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My fellow Americans, four years ago we launched a great national effort to rebuild our country, to renew its spirit, and to restore the allegiance of this government to its citizens. In short, we embarked on a mission to make America great again for all Americans. As I conclude my term as the 45th President of the United States, I stand before you truly proud of what we have achieved together. We did what we came here to do, and so much more. This week we inaugurate a new administration and pray for its success in keeping America safe and prosperous. We extend our best wishes, and we also want them to have luck, a very important word. I'd like to begin by thanking just a few of the amazing people who made our remarkable journey possible. First, let me express my overwhelming gratitude for the love and support of our spectacular First Lady Melania. Let me also share my deepest appreciation to my daughter, Ivanka, my son-in-law Jared, and to Baron, Don, Eric, Tiffany, and Lara. You fill my world with light and with joy. I also want to thank Vice President Mike Pence, his wonderful wife, Karen, and the entire Pence family. Thank you as well to my chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the dedicated members of the White House staff, and the cabinet, and all of the incredible people across our administration who poured out their heart and soul to fight for America. I also want to take a moment to thank a truly exceptional group of people, the United States Secret Service. My family and I will forever be in your debt. Most of all, I want to thank the American people. We must never forget that while Americans will always have our disagreements, we are a nation of incredible, decent, faithful, and peace-loving citizens who all want our country to thrive and flourish and be very, very successful and good. All Americans were horrified by the assault on our capital. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. Now more than ever, we must unify around our shared values and rise above the partisan rancor and forge our common destiny. Four years ago, I came to Washington as the only true outsider ever to win the presidency. I had not spent my career as a politician, but as a builder looking at open skylines and imagining infinite possibilities. I ran for president because I knew there were towering new summits for America just waiting to be scaled.

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