For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 21, 2001
Remarks by the President
On the Budget Harry S. Truman High School Independence, Missouri
8:58 A.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you
all. Good morning. Thanks for that warm
welcome. Mary Alice, thank you very much for your great
introduction. And I want to thank the residents of the John
Knox Senior Village for inviting me to come to Independence,
Missouri. I'm glad I accepted. (Applause.)
It is exciting to be here. It's
good to get out of the seat of power, Crawford, Texas -- (laughter) --
and come to Missouri. (Applause.) Speaking about Missouri, I
want -- it's important for all presidents to remember what Harry Truman
said. He said, "I try never to forget who I was, and where
I've come from and where I was going back to." That's one
thing that Crawford, Texas, reminds
me. (Laughter.) It reminds me of where I came
from. And after my service for this great country, it's
where I'm going back to.
I want to thank you for giving me the
chance to come and talk about a couple of subjects dear to my
heart. I want to thank my friend, the Senator from the state
of Missouri, Kit Bond, for the invitation and for his great service to
Missouri and the United States. (Applause.)
I want to thank United States Congressman
Sam Graves for being here. Thank you for coming,
Sam. (Applause.) I want to thank the United
States Congresswoman from this district, Karen McCarthy, thank you
Karen for being here. (Applause.) I appreciate
your time. Also here is the former Congressman from
Missouri, Jim Talent is with us today, as well. (Applause.)
I wish my wife were with
me. (Laughter.) Like Harry Truman, I married
well. (Laughter.) She would love to be here at
this school. I want to thank the school administrators, the
principals. I want to thank the students who are fixing to
start school tomorrow for giving us a chance to come to your beautiful
campus.
To the students, let me say as plainly as
I can: your government's important. You've got to
pay attention to your government. I don't care whether
you're Republican or Democrat, you need to be involved in democracy in
America. You need to take your vote
seriously. (Applause.)
And having been in public service for a
while, I can tell you, it's a noble profession. It's an
important way to serve your country and your community. And you can do
so without being the President, by the way. You can be a
Congressperson, you can serve in the state house, you can work hard to
get people elected, or you can serve your community by loving a
neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself. And that's
one of the most important initiatives that we're working
on. (Applause.)
And that's one of the most important
initiatives we're working on in Washington, D.C. It's called
a faith-based and community initiative. It passed the House
of Representatives, for which I'm grateful. We're now trying
to get it out of the United States Senate. It's part of the
unfinished business for this year.
Let me explain to you briefly what we're
trying to do. We're trying to make sure that welfare is
extended in a positive and compassionate way. We recognize
in America, there are some who hurt, some who have needs beyond the
reach of government, some who simply need love and compassion from a
fellow American. There are children in our country who
wonder whether or not the American Dream is meant for them; children
whose mom or dad may be in prison.
What this nation needs is a government
that stands squarely on the side of the solders of the armies of
compassion, those wonderful citizens who put their arm around a
neighbor in need, and say, I love you brother, or I love you
sister. What can I do to help make your life
better? Government should not fear faith in
America. We ought to welcome faith-based programs.
(Applause.)
And we're making big progress on important
issues, like health. For the last couple of legislative
sessions in Washington, the patients' bill of rights got stalled over
in a partisan rangling. I'm pleased to report that a bill
passed out of the House of Representatives that I can live
with. It's a bill that encourages, fosters, nourishes the
relationship between patient and doctor.
But it's also a piece of legislation that
will not encourage or enhance frivolous lawsuits that will drive people
out of medical care. (Applause.) We want more people with
health insurance, not less. We want fewer lawsuits
threatening our providers, rather than more, and we want to make sure
our patients have got direct access to important health
care. There's a good patients' bill of rights, that if
Congress comes together, they can get on my desk, that I look forward
to signing this fall, after Congress comes home. (Applause.)
We're also making progress in changing the
tone in Washington. One of my promises is, I said I'd go up
to Washington and try to focus more on the people and less on
partisanship. We need to focus more on the lives of our
citizens and remember who sent us up there in the first
place. (Applause.)
During the course of the campaign, I told
the American people, if you gave me the great honor of serving as your
President, I would set priorities for our budget. And if we
had money left over after the priorities, we would remember who sent it
to Washington in the first place. The money up in Washington
is not the government's money, it's the people's
money. (Applause.)
And so we came together -- with that
philosophy in mind, we came together and passed the first tax relief in
a generation. It's real, it is meaningful, it is important
tax relief. It wasn't one of these old, Washington style tax
relief programs, where the Congress or the President got to pick and
choose who got tax relief and who didn't. This was fair tax
relief. It said, if you pay taxes, you get
relief. It wasn't targeted tax relief, it was broad tax
relief. (Applause.)
And the Congress wisely agreed to start
sending money back this summer. Driving in to the high school here, I
saw a sign that said, thanks for the $600 rebate check. But
what I meant -- what I should have done was stop and said, you don't
need to thank me, it's your money to begin with. (Applause.)
Some of them in our nation's capital say,
$600 doesn't matter to a family. Well what they ought to do is get out
of the capital, I presume they are, and come out and talk to the
working people of America and find out what $600 means. I was in the
Harley Davidson plant yesterday in Milwaukee. A lot of the
workers came up and said, thanks for my $600. One fellow
said, I built a deck. You need to come over and have a beer with
me. (Laughter.) I said, I quit
drinking. (Laughter and applause.) He said, how
about root beer? (Laughter.)
The other thing we did in the tax code,
which I appreciate a lot, and this is good for farmers and ranchers in
Missouri and Kansas, all across the country, it's good for people who
worry about urban sprawl, it's good for entrepreneurs, it's good for
those folks who had a dream to build their business, make it work, and
pass it on to their children, we're getting rid of the death tax.
That's an important reform for our
code. (Applause.) The tax code will be more
reasonable. It will encourage
entrepreneurship. It will get people more of their own
money. And it was needed. And I'll talk about
that a little later on.
A second area where we're making great
progress is in public education. There is a good, strong reform bill
that passed our House of Representatives, and a good strong reform bill
that passed the United States Senate. And when we come back,
after the so-called vacation -- (laughter) -- people need to get the
education bill to my desk.
And let me talk to you about it, right
quick. First of all, lest you think I forgot where I came
from, one of the key components in the education bill is to trust the
local folks. When it comes to running public education, I
strongly believe in local control of our
schools. (Applause.) I don't believe
Washington has got all the answers on how to run the
schools. I do believe we need to pass power out of
Washington, to give school districts more flexibility, more
authority. And both these bills do that, and that's an
important component of the bill.
But secondly, these bills challenge what I
call the soft bigotry of low expectations. It recognizes
that too often in our public education system, we lower the bar for
students. Some folks believe, I guess, some kids can't
learn. That's the opposite of what I think. I think every
child can learn. I think we ought to have the high
expectations -- (applause) -- we expect high standards, and we expect
people to deliver on those standards. And therefore, one of
the key components of reform is to say to school districts, states all
across our country, that if you receive federal money, you must
measure. You must devise an accountability system to let us
know whether our children are learning to read and write and add and
subtract.
I've heard all the
arguments. As the Governor of Texas I heard the arguments
against accountability, and of course I've heard them as the
President. On the one hand, you'll have people say, that's
too much government. Folks, my attitude is, if we spend money, it is
reasonable to ask, what are the results, particularly when it comes to
our children. (Applause.)
I want to know whether a little child in
the third grade can read, and I want to know early rather than late,
and so should you. Because if we don't find out whether a
child can read, oftentimes what happens is they just get shuffled
through the system. That's not fair, that's not
right. Phyllis Hunter, my friend in the Houston Independent
School District stood up one time, and said, "reading is the new civil
right." How can you realize the American Dream if you can't
read? And if you can't read, you can't
learn. We've got to know. We've got to know
whether or not the school systems and the curriculum are working, to
make sure that no child in America gets left behind. And it
makes sense to ask the question, what are the results all across
America? Your motto in Missouri is Show-me. It's not pass
them through, it's show-me whether or not the children can
read. (Applause.)
And then you'll hear people say it's
racist to test. Folks, it's racist not to test, because
guess who gets shuffled through the system, oftentimes: children whose
parents don't speak English as a first language, inner-city kids. It's
so much easier to quit on somebody than to re-mediate. And
so we've got reform at the heart of this bill. And the
reform is, every child can learn. No child should be left
behind, and we're going to find out whether or not children are
learning or not. And when they are, we need to praise the
teachers. And by the way, for the teachers who are here, thanks for
teaching. It's a noble profession. (Applause.)
That's one thing Laura's going to spend a
lot of time on. She's not only going to spend a lot of time
heralding reading programs at work, or working on libraries --
expanding libraries around America, but she's going to do her job --
the best job she can at recruiting folks to become teachers; the young,
those, for example, who have served in our military. We've
got a troops for teachers program that will encourage those who have
served in the military to get back in the classroom. We've
got to do a better job of recruiting good Americans into the
classrooms.
The education bill is a good
bill. I look forward to signing it. It is a sign
that we're making progress on getting things
done. Washington needs to be a results oriented
world. And one area where we need better results is with our
military. When I campaigned for the Presidency, Dick Cheney
-- and by the way, he's doing
great. (Applause.) He's a wonderful man, and a
great Vice President. I'm really glad he's decided to leave
the private sector to come and join the administration. But
we both said that we need to strengthen the military in order to keep
the peace.
And we made great progress. The
Congress has done great work. We passed pay
raises. I had the honor of signing an additional pay raise
in Kosovo, when I went overseas, $2 billion additional money to pay our
troops more, house them better, better health care for the men and
women who wear the uniform. Listen, high morale begins with treating
the men and women who wear the uniform -- treating them well, and
paying them better. And that's what we're doing.
(Applause.)
We've also got a vision for a stronger
military reflected in the budget. The budget I sent up for 2002, with
amendments, was the largest increase in military spending since the
time of Ronald Reagan. It's important not only to spend
more, but we need to spend more wisely. And that's why
Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a total review of our military force today,
as well as a strategic review of what our forces ought to look like
tomorrow. We're going to spend money on research and
development, to make sure that not only can we keep the peace today,
but that our military is properly equipped, properly trained, to make
the world more peaceful in the out years.
And one area that is so important, and I
know there's been a lot of discussion about it, is to make sure
America's prepared to address the true threats of the 21st
century. I met with President Putin, as you know,
twice. I had the privilege to represent our nation with our
former adversary, and to look him in the eye, and say, Mr. President,
America is not your enemy. The Cold War is
over. We need to discard all the relics of the Cold
War: a treaty, for example, that has codified hatred and
distrust, called the ABM Treaty.
I said, Mr. President, the threats that
face Russia and America and other freedom loving nations are the
threats of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of rouge nations,
or cyber terrorists. It's terrorist threats that face us,
and we must develop necessary defenses to protect ourselves and protect
freedom loving people. We need to get rid of the ABM Treaty,
so we can research and development -- develop weapons systems that will
meet the true threat facing America. The Cold War is
over. The hatred is gone. Let's come together,
for the good of freedom loving people, to protect us
all. Let's protect Israel, and our allies, and
America. (Applause.)
We're making good progress about bringing
morale back to the military. We will be strong militarily, because
this is a peaceful nation. A nation rests upon freedom,
democracy. It's such a wonderful land. We cannot
retreat within our borders. We've got to be an active nation
to promote the peace, and we will.
And finally, we're making good progress
about reforming Medicare. Medicare is -- they usually call it, in the
political lexicon, mediscare. See, when you talk about
Medicare, then somebody takes your words and tries to twist it, and
frighten people who rely upon Medicare. That's an old tactic
-- an old political tactic. That doesn't deter me, however,
from talking about making sure the system works. Medicare is
an incredibly important program. It's a promise the nation
made to our seniors, and we've got to make sure it works.
And one of the things that Medicare
doesn't do, it doesn't provide prescription drugs for our
seniors. And that doesn't make sense in a world -- a health
world that has changed dramatically since Medicare was first signed.
Now, I've asked Congress to -- both Republicans and Democrats to think
about how to do the following things: make sure prescription
drugs is available for seniors, make sure seniors who like their
current Medicare system can stay in it, the way it is, but make sure
seniors have got a variety of options from which to choose.
I said, why don't you all look at your own
health care plan. It's not a bad place to
start. If the Senators and Congressmen have got a variety of
options from which to choose, if their own health care plan trusts them
to design a program that meets their needs, why shouldn't we do the
same thing for our seniors? Why shouldn't we say, let's give
seniors choices? (Applause.)
And then, of course, there's the Social
Security issue, a long-time political issue as well. Now, it
should be becoming clearer to people that if you're on Social Security
today, or near retirement, the promises our government made to you will
absolutely be kept. Those days of demegoging the issue
should be gone out of the political -- out of politics.
But one of the things I learned, and one
of the things I know, as a result of my travels and studying Social
Security, there's a lot of young folks who recognize the
truth. And that is, there are not going to be enough people
paying into the system to make sure that they have got a Social
Security system available for them. There's a lot of young
workers who heard the message that I delivered. And I
believe one of the reasons I'm standing here is because I had the
courage to deliver this message. In order to make sure
there's a Social Security system around tomorrow, to make sure there's
one in the future, we must give younger workers the option to manage
their own money in the private markets, if that's what they choose to
do. (Applause.)
You notice I said, if that's what they
choose to do. Government ought to trust American people to
make decisions in their own life. They ought to trust the
seniors to make the right choices when it comes to their health care,
and they ought to trust younger workers with the choice on how to
manage their own money. Remember the payroll tax, again,
it's not the government's money, it's the workers'
money. And in order to have a Social Security system around
tomorrow, we've got to have a better rate of return on the people's
money, in order to offset the fact there are fewer people paying into
the system.
My point is that we're beginning to
address these difficult issues. Our charge in Washington, D.C., at
least the way I view it, is to not have endless partisan squabbling,
but to talk about the issues that are important for America, to be
willing to address the tough issues, to make sure our country fulfills
its promise, not only today, but in the years to come.
Now one of the interesting battles, and I
hope it's not a battle -- let me just say, one of the interesting
opportunities to show America that we can work together, to be the
positive guy -- (laughter) -- is the budget. We'll be
talking about the budget. This is when we actually spend the
money.
See, the first discussion we had was, we
set the budget, the parameters, about the limits of
spending. And now the members of Congress are coming back,
and they're going to actually commit taxpayer's money. And
it's going to be an interesting discussion. Now, tomorrow,
my Office of Management and Budget will issue what's called a
mid-session budget review, and will show in plain terms, that we have
fully funded and will be able to fully fund our nation's priorities,
that we've got enough money to preserve and protect Social Security,
that we'll pay down over $100 billion of public debt, that Medicare,
all Medicare, every dime that comes into Medicare, will be spent on
Medicare, and we can meet our priorities when it comes to our military
and to education. (Applause.)
Our budget is in strong financial shape
despite an economic slowdown that began last year. The
slowdown is serious folks, make no mistake about it. It's
real. Since last summer, the economy has grown by a little
over 1 percent. That's a slowdown. Inevitably, the slowing
economy has resulted in slowing tax revenues, lower corporate profits,
and in some cases, layoffs.
Yet despite the year-long trend, despite
the fact that this has been on for a year, the federal budget will have
the second largest surplus in history -- (applause) -- in part, because
this administration took immediate action to address the
downturn. We took exactly the right action, at the right
time, by pushing the largest tax cut in a
generation. (Applause.) You will hear people say
that tax relief is going to make it hard to meet the
budget. But reality is, tax relief is important to make sure
our economy grows. I believe there are some who resent tax
relief because they wanted more of your money in Washington,
D.C. It's a fundamental, philosophical difference.
And the fundamental question is, who do
you trust? I trust the people with their own
money. I'd rather you spend your own money, than the federal
government spend your money. I think you can do it more
wisely than we can in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)
No, this tax relief has laid the
foundation for expanding economic growth. And now we must resist the
temptation of a bigger threat to growth, and that's excessive federal
spending. The biggest threat to our recovery is for the
Congress to overspend. We have the funds to meet our
obligations, so long as they resist the temptation to spend.
You know, every new way to spend money can
be made to sound urgent, important. But we've agreed to
budget limits. That's what a budget is. You set budgets at
your house, the Congress set a budget that we all agreed upon. And I
expect the Congress to live within the limits of the budget that we all
agreed on. (Applause.) I am optimistic that we
can avoid the -- this business about shutting down things, and not
getting things done. I am optimistic, because we've made
good progress so far. And both political parties deserve
credit.
Congressman Young of the House and Senator
Byrd of the Senate have done a good job on the appropriations process
this far. We passed two supplemental spending bills, one
focused on agriculture, one focused on defense. These
supplementals in the past were usually nice platforms for people to
load up the spending with additional programs, things that might sound
good, but all of a sudden end up busting the budget. And
both bodies of the Congress stuck to the limits that we agreed
to. It's a good sign. It's a sign that fiscal
responsibility is now an important part of the psyche in Washington,
D.C.
However, even though I'm optimistic, there
are some temptations that will face the Congress when they come
back. I'd like to share some of the with you. The first
temptation, when it comes to budgeting, is what we call the temptation
of the false emergency. Now, our budget system provides for
special consideration for emergency, as it should. We've had
natural disasters, and we need to have money set
aside. That's an emergency, and we need to get money quickly
into the communities when there's a natural disaster. An
economic recession is an emergency. A declaration of war is
an emergency.
But far too often in the past, the normal
has been declared an emergency, in order to increase the
budget. Far too long in the past, well meaning members have
declared that such and such pet project in their district is an
emergency, and therefore we need to spend that money under the
emergency provisions. That's going to end. (Applause.)
A second temptation is to complain that
the budget has been cut, when in fact it is increased. One
of the amazing things about Washington accounting is that when a budget
increase is less than expected, or less than anticipated or less than
someone hopes for, that's called a
cut. (Laughter.) So if budget X goes from point A
to point B, and it's a 6 percent growth, and reasonable folks come
together and say it ought to only grow at 4 percent, that's a cut. And
we're not going to let the so-called Washington cuts cause the budget
to get out of balance. (Applause.) We're going
to blow the whistle.
Then there's what they call the
last-minute-budget-raid. That's when the bills are coming
winding down the process, and in order to get votes, members start
demanding this or that. There were 6,000 last-minute
additions to the budget last year, some of them small, some of them
large, but all of them adding up to one thing, a budget that could be
out of balance. And so as the watchdog of the Treasury, as
the person who's got the opportunity to bring fiscal sanity to
Washington, I'm going to be watching carefully for the last-minute
budget additions. (Applause.)
Seven out of the last eight budgets
submitted by the executive and passed by the Congress have raided the
Social Security or used part of the Social Security to fund the
budgets. One of the temptations is to use Social Security
money for something other than Social Security. Now the good
news is is that both political parties and both parties of Congress
have declared that we're not going to do that. But I'm going
to watch carefully, to make sure that the old temptations of the past
don't come back to haunt us when it comes to budgeting your money in
the year 2001. (Applause.)
And finally, there is a -- not finally,
next to finally. (Laughter and applause.) I was
afraid some of you were going to fall out. (Laughter.) There
is a temptation not to listen to the budget in the first
place. During the last session, the appropriations process
created $35 billion more dollars than the budget called
for. A budget's a budget, folks. We spent a lot
of time working on the budget. People came
together. Both parties said, here's the budget. And I know
the American taxpayers, and I know the President in this case, expects
for Congress to live within the budget we passed. We don't
want the budget to be a hollow noise. We want the budget to
be real, and that's why I've been given the power of the veto, to make
sure that the budget -- make sure the appropriations are within the
guidelines of the budget.
And finally -- (laughter) -- and finally,
one of the temptations, and perhaps the greatest temptation of all is
what we call -- appropriations gamesmanship. And here's the
way it works. We've got a budget of X amount, and you add up
all the potential appropriations bills. The budget amount is
X. And so they'll pass one bill of the 13, and they may add a little
bit here. Then they'll pass another bill, all still within the
budget. And they finally get to the last appropriations
bills, and all of a sudden, if the budget amount becomes the
appropriated amount, we busted the budget, because of all the previous
bill have added a little here or there. And guess what
generally is the last ones out? Defense. The
defense bill.
In other words, they'll put it on the
President's desk, and say, you either get to bust the budget, Mr.
President, or you have to choose between defense, or perhaps
education. That's gamesmanship. And that's not
necessary, folks. That's not good to play with our national security
or our national interests in educating every child.
And so what I expect and hope is that
Congress will, at the very minimum, agree on the funding levels for
defense and education early in the process, not
late. (Applause.) This will be an interesting
test of the priorities of the leaders of Congress. It will
be an interesting test to see whether or not they agree with the
administration that our true priorities begin with educating our
children, and a true priority is the defense of our
nation. I'm confident we can work together, but it's going
to require the people to help us watch the process. The
people need to pay attention. And if you see the
appropriations process dragging on, and it looks like the old games of
the past, we all need to blow the whistle. We all need to
expect better out of Washington, D.C.
And I believe we can do
better. I know this, we're not going to raise the taxes on
the people. I know this, that we're going to make sure
additional spending doesn't cut into essential programs, like Social
Security or Medicare. I know this, we won't short-change the military,
because it's important to rebuild our military. And I know
this, we're making progress in changing the tone in
Washington. And the budget process is the way to show the
American people that we can work together for what's
right. (Applause.)
Harry Truman brought a lot of wisdom to
Washington, in what he said. He said some things, and I think he
called -- he was a plain spoken fellow. Nothing wrong with
that. (Laughter.) Nothing wrong with telling
people exactly what you believe. Washington can use a lot of
that. He said, "Washington is a very easy place to forget
where you came from, and why you got there in the first
place." That's pretty wise.
I think one of the reasons I got there in
the first place is to show the American people that it's possible to
work together. I think one of the reasons I got there in the
first place is to do in office what I said I would do, to try to bring
some faith back into the political
process. (Applause.) I know one of the reasons I
got there in the first place, one of the reasons I got there in the
first place was to watch the budget, and to trust the American people.
But there's a large call as well, and
that's to work with the American folks to help change our culture, from
one that will be more respectful and more
compassionate. From one that used to say, if it feels good
do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else, to one in
which all of us are responsible for the decisions we make in
life. (Applause.)
A responsible culture, a culture of
personal responsibility means that if you're fortunate enough to be a
mom or a dad, that you understand your responsibility is to love your
children with all your heart and all of your
soul. (Applause.) A culture of responsibility
understands that if you live in a community and see a neighbor in need,
that instead of relying upon government, that you ought to walk across
the street and help that neighbor in need. (Applause.) A
culture of responsibility says that if you're a part of corporate
America, you have a responsibility to the workers that work for you. A
culture of responsibility says that if you're fortunate enough to hold
high office, that you have a responsibility to set the highest of high
standards, and to live by those standards. (Applause.)
I am honored to be in such a
position. I'm honored to be in a position to help work with
decent Americans all across our country, to usher in this period. And
I know it can happen, because we're all inhabitants of the greatest
land on the face of the earth.
Thanks for coming today. May
God bless, and may God bless America. (Applause.)
END 9:35 A.M. EDT
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