For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 25, 2001
Remarks by the President in New Orleans, Louisiana Welcome
Zephyr Field New Orleans, Louisiana
Listen to the President's
Remarks
3:45 P.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very
much. Thank you all. It's an honor to be
here. This ballpark kind of reminds me of
home. (Applause.) And seeing my friend, Will Clark, who used
to play for the mighty Texas Rangers, it really reminded me of
home. (Applause.) I want to thank you for being
here, Will.
I also want to thank my friend, David Vitter,
the great congressman from this district, for his
introduction. (Applause.) I'm pleased to have
been traveling today as well with the congressman from northern
Louisiana, John Cooksey. I appreciate John being
here. (Applause.)
And you should appreciate him, as well,
because when it came to trying to figure out what to do with the
people's money, they stood strong for tax
relief. (Applause.) At the airport when I arrived
it was good to see my old friend and fellow governor, the governor of
Louisiana, Michael Foster. (Applause.) And with Mike was a
friend of mine, the elections commissioner of the state of Louisiana,
Suzie Haik-Terrell. It's good to see Suzie as
well. (Applause.)
Just to make it clear that tax relief is not
necessarily a Republican idea or a Democrat idea, today I'm proud that
Karen Carter and Lambert Boissierre, both good elected Democrats here
in the state of Louisiana, stand in this crowd in solid support of tax
relief on behalf of the working people. (Applause.)
And, finally, before I get going, there are
two folks here who I'm glad they're here; I wish I would have been here
to hear them sing: Mr. Percy Sledge and Aaron
Neville. (Applause.)
After this, I'm going to Arkansas and then I'm
going to spend a couple of days in my state of
Texas. (Applause.) I'll be spending some quality
time with the First Lady. (Applause.) And she's
going to be envious to know that I got to shake Percy Sledge and Aaron
Neville's hand. (Applause.)
By the way, I'm proud of the job that Laura is
doing. One of the things she is doing is traveling our
country, reminding people of how important it is to be a
teacher. (Applause.) Telling the teachers of this
good land how much we appreciate them. But also telling
those young and old alike that if you're looking for something to do,
if you want to make a contribution to our nation, become a
teacher. Teaching is a noble
profession. (Applause.)
And there is something very fundamental about
making a contribution to our nation. The truth of the matter
is, if you want to start making a great contribution to our nation, if
you happen to be a mom or a dad, remember this: the most
important job you'll ever have is to be a good mom and
dad. (Applause.) If you have the honor of being a
mother or a father, the most important contribution you can make to
this land is to every day tell your child you love them with all you
heart and all your soul. (Applause.)
I wish I knew the law that I could sign that
would say we would love each other, like we like to be loved
ourself. There's no such law. But there are some
laws we can pass to help people with their lives. And that's
exactly the kind of budget I submitted to the United States Congress,
the Congress is focused and principled. It's a budget that
says we could spend more money on the public's education system around
America. It's a budget that prioritizes education.
The biggest increase of any budget, of any
Department in my budget goes to the Department of
Education. (Applause.) It signals a priority.
But I haven't forgotten where I come from, either. I know
that Washington doesn't have all the knowledge necessary to run the
schools. As a matter of fact, I'm against
mandates. I'm for freedom at the local level. I
believe in local control of our schools. (Applause.)
We're making progress. We're making
progress. And I appreciate so very much the cooperative
efforts of both Republicans and Democrats in Washington to craft a bill
that embodies these principles. First, we've got to set high
standards when it comes to educating our children. (Applause.)
Everybody understands that if you set low standards, you get low
results. When you raise the bar, when you expect the best is when you
start getting the kind of results we want in America.
Secondly, embodied in the principle involved
in the bill that I submitted and we're working on, it says we've got to
trust the local people to run the schools in
America. (Applause.) It says we've got to trust
the local people to make the decisions for children. The
people who care more about the children in Louisiana are the citizens
of Louisiana, and we must empower the citizens to make that
choice. (Applause.)
But also a principle in the bill that's
working its way through the Senate says that want to know results in
America. We've got to know. We don't want the
federal government setting up a test, we want local people to devise
accountability systems that let us know whether or not our children are
learning to read and write and add and subtract. It is so
important that we measure. It is important to use
measurement not as a way to punish, but as a way to solve problems
early, before it's too late. (Applause.)
I refuse to accept a system that will not hold
people accountable; a system that will just shuffle through children
through the system, without regard to their knowledge
base. (Applause.)
Now, we can do better in
America. We can do better by asking the question to our
children: what do you know? And if you don't know
what you're supposed to know, we will make sure you do early, before
it's too late. No child should be left behind in the great
land called America. (Applause.)
In the budget I submitted to the United States
Congress, I sent this priority: we better make sure we pay
the people who wear the uniform of the United States a decent
wage. (Applause.) I have the awesome
responsibility of being the Commander in Chief of the United States,
and that means making sure that morale is high amongst our
troops. (Applause.) That means good pay. That
means good housing. That means good training. And that
means having a Commander in Chief who respects the men and women who
wear the uniform and who, in turn, earns the respect of the men and
women who wear the uniform. (Applause.)
Behave yourselves. (Laughter.)
There's always a lot of talk when it comes to
the budget, that if we try to share the people's money with them, that
somebody is not going to get their Social Security
check. Hopefully, these days of that kind of rhetoric are
gone from the political
discourse. (Applause.) Hopefully, the days of
trying to scare people, days of trying to frighten people are behind
us. (Applause.) That kind of politics is divisive
and unnecessary.
The reality is, the budget I submitted, and
the budget most people agree with says that we will spend payroll taxes
-- those taxes aimed for Social Security on one thing and one thing
only, and that is Social Security. (Applause.)
We have made a commitment to our elderly in
America. It is a commitment this administration will
keep. (Applause.) But if you're young in America,
you better be wondering what the Social Security system is going to
look like tomorrow. There's not going to be enough people
paying in by the time you get to be Social Security. We've
got to think differently.
On the one hand, we're going to protect our
seniors. But on the other hand, we better let younger
workers, at their discretion, manage some of your own money in the
private market so you get a better rate of return on
investment. (Applause.)
There's a lot of concern about the health of
our seniors, as there should be. The budget I submitted
doubles the Medicare budget over the next 10 years. It
doubles the amount of folks who will be served at community health
centers over the next five years. It provides tax credits
for the working uninsured. This is a good
budget. It is a sound budget. And it meets the nation's
priorities.
It increases discretionary spending by 4
percent. That ought to seem like a lot for people whose pay
raise hasn't gone up by 4 percent over the last couple of
years. Four percent is greater than the rate of inflation.
Four percent is a hefty increase. But for some in
Washington, 4 percent is not enough.
AUDIENCE: Boooo!
THE PRESIDENT: For some in our
nation's capital, they don't think 4 percent can meet the nation's
needs. And that's where we're having a major
disagreement. The truth of the matter is, the budget last
year grew at -- the discretionary budget last year grew at 8 percent.
The bill that came out of the Senate again
grows the discretionary spending by 8 percent. And if that
were to continue, the discretionary budget of the United States of
America would double in nine years.
AUDIENCE: Boooo!
THE PRESIDENT: There's a
fundamental argument going on in Washington, D.C. And it's,
what do we do with the people's money. That's what the
argument is about. And my point I make to Washington is
after we meet priorities and grow the budget at 4 percent, we ought to
be understanding where that money comes from. The surplus
isn't the government's money. The surplus is the people's
money. (Applause.)
Let me make the case a little
further. We increase discretionary spending by 4
percent. As well, in the budget I submitted to the Congress,
we pay down debt by $2 trillion over 10
years. (Applause.) We've also got another
trillion set aside for contingencies.
Oh, there are contingencies all the time, when
it comes to the federal level. There are
emergencies. Sometimes our farmers need a little extra help
because of emergencies. And we're going to meet those
obligations. This is a sound budget. It leaves money
unspent. That's always dangerous when it comes to
Washington, D.C., leaving money unspent. (Laughter.)
I was campaigning on this very issue in
Iowa. And a lady got up and she said, you know, the budget
debate in Washington reminds me of what it was like when I had my
grandchildren in the house. And I said, well, why was
that? And she said, well, because I always made
cookies. And when I left the cookies on the kitchen table
and the grandchildren came through, they always got
eaten. (Laughter.) They were never left.
Well, that's what happens to U.S. taxpayers'
money. If you leave it sitting around in Washington, it's
going to get spent. And it's going to get spent on bigger
government. What we need to do is set priorities and always
remember whose money we're talking about.
And so I submitted a plan that does just
that. And the two congressmen with me today, they stood
strong on the side of the working people in Louisiana and voted for
that tax relief. (Applause.)
What you hear in Washington is, a lot of times
you hear people saying, well, I'm for tax relief, just so long as only
a certain number of people get it. That's
right. That's what we call targeted tax
relief. That means somebody in Washington gets to pick the
winners and somebody gets to pick who doesn't win. That is
not our view of fair tax relief. Everybody who pays taxes
ought to get tax relief in America. (Applause.)
So ours says, everybody who pays taxes gets
relief; we cut all rates. We cut the bottom rate from 15 percent to 10
percent. That's important, because there are people in
America struggling on the outskirts of poverty. There are people
working hard that aren't getting ahead. And not only did we
cut the bottom rate, we increased the child credit from $500 to $1,000
per child. (Applause.)
One of the things that troubles me most about
our tax code is the example I like to use is a single mother, working
hard to get ahead. By the way, she's working the hardest job
in America. Raising children by herself is the toughest job
in this country. (Applause.)
Under this tax code, if she's barely getting
ahead making $22,00 a year, say, raising two children, for every
additional dollar she earns, she pays a higher marginal rate on that
dollar than someone who is a successful Wall Street stockbroker, for
example. And that's just not right, folks. That's not what
this country is about.
The message in the tax code ought to be, the
harder you work, the better it is chance you've got to get ahead in
life. And so we reduced the bottom rate and we increased the
child credit. (Applause.) This code needs to be
more fair.
But there's a lot of them up there saying,
well, you can't drop the top rate; that's not fair. Well,
first, if you pay taxes, you ought to get relief. And,
secondly, you can help me send this message to Washington: The small
business owner in the state of Louisiana is likely to be a sole
proprietor, is likely to be a Subchapter S, generally is not going to
pay corporate income taxes. Therefore, is going to be paying
personal income tax rates.
By dropping that top rate from 39.6 percent to
33 percent, we're sending this message. The role of
government is not to create wealth, but the role of government is to
create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish, in which
the small business can grow to become a large business, dropping that
top rate sends the clear message: We want more money in the
pockets of the small business owners so they can expand and grow their
businesses. (Applause.)
The tax code we submitted makes the tax code
more fair. It addresses inequities. It makes the
code more responsive to hard work. But it also recognizes
the role of families in society. The marriage penalty is
unfair, and we've got to do something about taxing marriage in
America. (Applause.)
And you know what else is
unfair? Taxing a person's assets twice. In our
country, called America, if you're a farmer or a rancher or a small
business owner, and you pass away, your heirs have to pay taxes twice.
They pay taxes when you get profitable, and they pay taxes when you
die. The death tax is unfair, and for the goodness of America, we need
to get rid of it. (Applause.)
Now, that's the plan I
submitted. Now, when I was campaigning in Louisiana during
the campaign, I came and talked like this and a lot of people heard it
and cheered. But I must confess, a lot of the punditry kind
of had a blank stare on their face. They thought I was, as
they say, whistling into the wind -- (laughter) -- that there was no
chance we would get any tax relief.
But thanks to the hard work and the phone
calls and e-mails of hundreds of Americans from across the country, we
have begun to define the parameters. Out of the House came a
$1.6-trillion plan, and now the Senate, somewhat reluctant, but
nevertheless, they passed a $1.2-trillion plan. Because of
you all, because of the voice of America, tax relief is on the
way. (Applause.)
And there's two important reasons why it must
happen. The first is, we have a little slowdown in our
economy, and tax relief will help. It's a part of how we've
recovered the steam necessary to get our economy chugging
again. And I'm confident with tax relief, we'll send a
message, one, it will encourage long-term investment, but the tax
relief package I look forward to working with the Senate and the House
on will also have a retroactive feature to it, will get money in
people's pockets quickly. It'll help recover this
economy. And it's necessary. It is necessary.
(Applause.)
But there is another reason. It has
to do with the people. You know, sometimes, with public
policy we like to talk about ideology and numbers and
charts. Behind every good public policy is the question, how
do we help people. Today, in the crowd, we've got the
Rogelstads, somewhere behind -- there we go, right
there. And I've asked them to come -- it's Katie and
Dustin. Katie is a receptionist, Dustin is a sales
rep. More importantly, they're a mom and dad of Lawson and
Karli.
They've come for a reason -- because I want to
share with you what happens to this one Louisiana family when we have
tax relief. The Congress passes the plan that the House
passed. And when it's fully implemented, these good folks
who now pay 3,390 in federal income taxes, will save $1,850 a
year. (Applause.)
You know, some will say, well, you know,
$1,850 -- that may not be a lot for -- but it's a lot for
them. It's a lot for them, given the fact that we've had no
energy policy in America and, therefore, energy prices are going up on
the American people. (Applause.) It's a lot for
people who struggle with credit card debt.
Now, this tax relief package, we're talking
about live Americans who will benefit in a real way. You
see, and the question is -- and this is the fundamental question facing
Washington, D.C. -- once we meet fundamental obligations and pay down
debt, once we increase discretionary spending by 4 percent, what do we
do with the money left over?
The other way to look at it is, who do you
trust? Do you want the Congress spending this $1,850, or do
you want these people spending the $1,850? And we stand on
the side of the families in Louisiana. (Applause.) It's who
do you trust. Do you trust the government, or do you trust
the people, and you've got an administration that stands squarely on
the side of the people of America. (Applause.)
And not only do I trust you when it comes to
your own money, I trust you when it comes to asking for your help, and
maybe convincing some of the members of the Louisiana delegation to see
it our way, to see it our way. (Applause.) You're one
e-mail away from letting somebody know how you feel. You're
one stamp away from saying, meet priorities, but trust us with our own
money. Meet priorities, but remember whose money it is
you're spending up there.
You see, we can not only afford tax relief,
but my point to the Congress is, we can't afford not to have tax
relief. (Applause.) It is so important to trust
the people of America, because that's why our nation is so different
and strong, because of our people.
This is a fabulous country, and I'm so honored
-- I'm so honored to be your President. I'm able to stand up
-- (applause) -- I'm the President of the greatest people on the face
of the earth -- hard-working, God-fearing people. People who
walk outside their house on a regular basis and say to a neighbor in
need: What can I do to help? They don't need the
federal government telling them how to love a neighbor, they do it out
of the goodness of their heart. No, this is a land that is
so strong because every single day, there are countless acts of
kindness where neighbor helps neighbor, or church member says to a
child who wonders whether or not there's a future for him or her,
somebody loves you.
My call to America and to the Congress is,
let's free the good hearts of the American people. Let's not
stand in the way of faith-based and community-based programs that are
trying to help people in need. Let's unleash -- (applause)
-- let us unleash not only the creative passions of America through tax
relief, let's unleash the compassion of America through a faith-based
initiative that recognizes the great strength of our countries lies in
the hearts and souls of our loving citizens.
We're making a difference in
Washington. I say "we" because I stand up there with you all
-- that there's a new attitude in our Nation's
Capital. We've still got a lot of work to do. But
it's an attitude of respect. We need to have debates with
the people in mind. Not debates trying to say, my party is
better than your party or debates that say, well, I'm going to tear
this person down so I can do better. That's not what America
should be about.
Slowly but surely, we're ushering in a culture
of respect in the Nation's Capital. It's important to do
so. (Applause.) And as importantly, all of us
must work together to usher in a culture of personal responsibility
into America, a culture that says each of us are responsible for the
decisions we make in life, responsible for loving our children,
responsible for helping a neighbor in need.
And I understand my responsibilities, which is
to uphold the high honor of the great office of President of the United
States. (Applause.)
So I want to thank you all for coming
out. I am honored to have you by my
side. (Applause.) Let's work hard, and we're
going to bring tax relief where it belongs -- to the people of
America. God bless. God bless
America. Thank you all.
END 4:10 P.M.
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