For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 6, 2004
VP and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Coffee with Community Leaders in Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville Harley-Davidson & Buell
Gainesville, Florida
3:55 P.M. EDT
MRS. CHENEY: Now, Dick said that I got to start today, and that's
just because I wanted to share some things with you. It was so much
fun, that debate last night. I just -- it was just thrilling to
watch. (Applause.)
And we had a great rally afterwards, and that was just so
energizing, too. And what I've had fun doing today is reading some of
the comments from pundits. And I thought I'd read -- some of those --
not all. But there are some really good ones here.
This is NBC's Tim Russert. He writes -- or he said last night: "I
think Dick Cheney could audition for the lead role in the Apprentice if
Donald Trump ever gets tired. (Laughter.) I'm sorry, Senator, you're
fired. You just don't measure up." (Laughter.)
And here's another one I liked. This is Tom Brokaw: "Dick Cheney
reminded me of George Foreman, kind of a slow gait, but a powerful
right hand when he unleashed it." (Laughter.)
Here's Chris Matthews. He called the debate between Vice President
Cheney and Senator Edwards a debate between "the howitzer and the water
pistol." (Laughter and applause.)
Here's Don Imus -- those of you who listen or watch Don Imus know
that he's gone to the dark side this year, but he says:
"I'm supporting Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry. That's who I
intend to vote for. Edwards got killed." (Laughter.)
And this is my favorite and the last one. This is the Boston
Herald's Mike Barnicle. "I am only surprised that at the end of the
debate, at the end of 90 minutes, Dick Cheney did not turn to John
Edwards and say, by the way, give me the car keys, too." (Laughter.)
So with that, ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President.
(Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we want to thank all of you for being
here today, and thank Gail for hosting this, and allowing us to use
this beautiful Harley-Davidson dealership. It's really a remarkable
success story. And we're delighted to have the opportunity to spend
some time with all of you today.
What we usually do at these events is I make a few remarks, and
then we open it up to questions so you have an opportunity to offer
comments or advice, or ask questions about subjects you want to talk
about, as well, too.
We might just quickly go around the table and you could identify
what you do. I know we've got a lot of small business folks here and
so forth, and then I'll be happy to offer a few comments. I'll try to
keep mine fairly brief so we get a chance to ask some questions.
(Conversation inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we're, I say, delighted to have the
opportunity to spend some time with all of you today.
A couple of subjects that we might talk about today. If we think
about the whole area of small business, obviously, I think at the heart
of the distinction, if you will, between what the President wants to
do, and I think what Senator Kerry believes in is that it's a
philosophical difference in the sense that we believe very strongly
that small businesses are in many respects the key to our economy, that
seven out of 10 new jobs are created by small businesses, that the
success of our recovery to date from the recession and the aftermath of
9/11 in no small part has been due to the great efforts of the
entrepreneurial sector, if you will, and their workers.
There is a great temptation in Washington for people to sit there
and think that nothing happens unless Washington ordains that it
happen. And the President believes very deeply, as I do, that the
greatness of America lies out here around the country, whether it's
Gainesville, or my hometown of Casper, Wyoming, or Denver, Colorado, or
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- wherever it might be, and that it's the
entrepreneurial spirit and really the genius of the American economy.
And we need to think about that in all that we do with respect to
trying to promote economic growth. It's really a matter not so much of
the government creating jobs, as the government creating circumstances
in which it's possible for others to invest and take a certain amount
of risk to create opportunities, and to create great businesses like
this and the ones many of you represent here today.
To do that, we've got to get it right in terms of federal policy in
a number of different areas. There's no one magic silver bullet that
solves all problems, but there are several obviously that help. One is
in the whole area of taxation. We think that it's important to
remember that part of what has occurred with respect to the tax changes
the President made and the tax cuts has been targeted specifically on
making it possible for small businesses to invest and create additional
opportunities -- whether we talk about quadrupling the amount that
could be expensed, or cutting the top rate -- income tax rate, and
remembering that some 900,000 small businesses around the country, in
effect, pay that top individual rate. And the proposal that Senator
Kerry has got to raise taxes on the upper brackets specifically would
do serious damage to small businesses and again, start to strangle, if
you will, the sector that's most important in terms of economic
growth.
We also think that it's very important for us to deal with
litigation reform. I had the experience the other day -- we visited an
airplane manufacturer in northern Minnesota. Twenty years ago they
didn't exist, a start-up company. Today, they're the second largest
producer, manufacturer of single-engine, piston-driven aircraft in the
country -- 900 employees. But because of the liability situation
they're faced with, he thinks he could -- with the funds that would --
that he otherwise has to spend on liability insurance, he could hire an
additional 200 people. And it's not that we're by any means opposed to
our legal system because in many respects it functions very well, and
there needs to be the opportunity for people who are aggrieved to find
a place where they can go and get things set aright.
But we do have a situation where we've got a very significant
litigation cost built into virtually all aspects of our economy -- if
you look at our situation relative to many other countries, and we need
to keep that in mind -- especially when we to keep that in mind,
especially when we think about the future. And tort reform and ending
frivolous lawsuits, moving in the direction of creating a just but
nonetheless, less burdensome, if you will, legal system would go a long
way towards helping and assisting.
Other areas we worry about -- the cost of health care. When you
think about the uninsured in America, 60 percent of the uninsured
either work for or own small businesses. And finding ways to assist
our small business owners in terms of being able to provide or
contribute to things like health benefits for their employees is an
important issue that needs to be addressed, as well, too.
The proposal that the President has there would deal with the
health savings accounts. Right now, of course, as part of the Medicare
reform package, we got health savings accounts approved. People are
able to set aside tax-free funds to pay out-of-pocket medical
expenses. The next step is to allow them, as well, to deduct the
premiums on a catastrophic insurance policy to make that deductible at
the same time so it would be possible, for example, for small business
owners to contribute a portion to help their employees through their
health savings accounts meet some of their basic needs and requirements
by way of purchasing a catastrophic policy to handle those kinds of
illnesses and medical emergencies that can wipe out or destroy a
family.
We want to move also with association health plans that allow small
businesses to come together, pool their demands if you will, and
achieve the same kind of savings that a large corporation can. We
think that would go a long way toward reducing the costs overall of
providing health benefits. So a series of issues like that we'll
continue to address that we think are very important.
Our view of the way the Kerry-Edwards team approaches it is
basically they are talking about raising taxes, and claim it's only
going to be on the very upper crust. But if you look at their overall
package, there isn't any way they can do what they say they want to do,
for example, add about $2.5 trillion in new spending is the estimate,
and simultaneously cut the deficit in half, unless you talk about
significant, across-the-board tax increases. We think that's the wrong
to go. We think that's exactly the wrong medicine at this stage in our
economic recovery and would serve to place an added burden on the
economy. And as I say, unfortunately when they're talking about upper
income levels, you don't strike just the rich, you also do serious
damage to the part of that engine that drives the American economy --
especially successful small businesses.
That will be part of the debate and part of what the American
people wrestle with and will have to decide on November 2nd. We
obviously are going to find, as well, too the debate of national
security policy.
I won't dwell on that today. I'm happy to answer questions on it.
We talked about it a lot last night. The President talked about it a
lot last Thursday I guess it was. I bottom-line think that we're in
one of those turning points in American history where we're setting the
strategy and putting in place institutions that are going to, in
effect, be the keys to our national security for perhaps 30 or 40 years
to come. Just as at the end of World War II, we were faced with the
Cold War and we had to create new institutions such as the Department
of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency. And we had to form new
alliances -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and reorient our
thinking in order to deal with the Soviet threat. And we did it
successfully, supported it under Republican and Democratic
administrations alike. And of course, 40 years later, the Soviet Union
collapsed. The Cold War ended on terms favorable to the United
States.
Now, with the global war on terror, faced with a different kind of
threat, we need a different kind of strategy. And that's the one
President Bush has put in place, and the idea both of working to harden
our defenses here at home, but also recognizing we have to go on
offense. It's not enough simply to stand up strong defenses here at
home because you can't be 100 percent successful in that kind of
effort.
With the threat being the possibility of terrorists ending up in
the middle of one of our own cities with a deadly weapon -- perhaps a
biological agent, or even a nuclear weapon -- and being able to
threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, it's very
important that we also go on offense. We have to go after the
terrorists wherever we find them, and we have to go after those who
support terror, the state sponsors of terror who provide them with safe
harbor or sanctuary, or weapons, or financial support. And that's what
we've done both in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And having succeeded there in terms of capturing and killing large
numbers of al Qaeda and taking down the regime of Saddam Hussein and
the Taliban, we then have to complete the mission by taking the final
step, which is to establish democratically elected governments in those
two nations. And it's democracy that's going to be the ultimate
safeguard to guarantee those nations don't revert back to being
breeding grounds for terror, or for the development of those deadly
technologies that terrorists might try to use against us.
And that's at the heart of the debate, is whether or not the
country is going to embrace and endorse that strategy that the
President has, I think, successfully pursued up until now, or whether
we'll opt for the Kerry approach which, frankly, most people have
trouble figuring out what it would be. He's been all over the lot in
terms of what his views are with respect to the war on terror and
operations, in particular, in Iraq.
They, as I said last night in the debate in Cleveland, there's a
tendency on the part of -- at least John Edwards and I think John
Kerry, as well, too, for a lot of tough talk about how they'll quote
"crush the terrorists" but tough talk in a 90-minute debate doesn't
obscure, or can't be allowed to obscure a 20-year record in the United
States Senate where Senator Kerry has come down virtually on the wrong
side of every major defense issue during his entire career in the
United States Senate -- in terms of weapons systems, in terms of basic,
fundamental approach to national security strategy.
The American people will make a choice on November 2nd. It's now a
little over three weeks away -- but who's counting. (Laughter.) We're
-- I think we're headed on the right course, both domestically and
internationally. I think the President has got exactly the kinds of
qualities we want to see in our Commander-in-Chief. And so we're
obviously hopeful that the American people will ratify that approach
and that he'll have the opportunity to continue to do what he's done so
ably for the next four years.
With that, let me stop and I'll be happy to respond to questions on
those or other subjects.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
Q The President spoke about our IRS system for the taxes -- do
you think in the next four years, we'll see some type of a change?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: He feels very strongly about the need to try
to put together a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the tax
code. One estimate I saw the other day that we spend something -- over
6 billion man-hours of effort, yes, man-hours of effort just trying to
comply with the federal tax code. It's gotten so complicated and so
complex, and that there are significant economic savings to the extent
we can find a way to come up with a simpler, fairer code and generate
the necessary revenue for the country. We don't have a specific answer
in mind at this point -- a number of ideas floating around out there,
but this is something that we think offers significant potential to all
of us. I'm in the same boat as a great many other Americans. I
probably couldn't fill out my own tax return. I don't have the time.
And so you go get somebody else to do it for you, and it's a great
industry -- for my accountant, and everybody else's accountant. But
when you think about the way in which we do it, it does, in fact,
represent a cost added on, layered on, if you will to our economy just
as our tort system does. And there ought to be ways to do it more
efficiently and more effectively and still do what has to be done by
way of collecting sufficient revenues to finance essential government
services.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We think it'll help for a couple of reasons.
One, the -- if you look at several things we've done, one of the most
important things is Medicare reform in this last Congress. For years
we talked about it, and finally the President got it done, so that we
now will cover a portion of prescription drug costs for seniors, 40
million seniors around the country. Why is that important? Well, I'm
walking, living proof, you know, that there are ways to deal with
coronary artery disease these days and go on to live a perfectly normal
life.
The way we've dealt with it for years and the way Medicare has
financed it is bypass surgery. But you cannot get through Medicare
access to the prescription drugs -- the statins, for example -- that
might help you avoid ever having to have major heart surgery. There is
a case of a classic trade-off, where we've said that we can take
advantage of modern technology, that ought to help make the provision
of health care overall more efficient and also make some procedures
unnecessary because there are other, better ways to do it.
We think health savings accounts help because they, in effect, put
the patient directly in relationship where he's got a health savings
account, he's contributed funds to it, maybe his employer has
contributed to it, as well, to pay out of pocket expenses, rather than
through a third-party payer. And we think people will be more
effective consumers when they understand what it is they're
purchasing. So the marketplace will begin to work. And we think that
will be a place.
Getting medical liability reform is a major area, as well, too.
One of the problems we've run into in my home state of Wyoming -- I
think Florida is in the same state, at the last stop in Tallahassee, we
received the endorsement of the Florida Medical Association. And the
problem there is the way -- some states, and this is to some extent a
state, as well as a federal issue -- the way the medical malpractice
system now works, we've driven up malpractice rates so high that the
cost is well, for one thing, driving a lot of docs out of business. I
sat down the other day with a group of OB/GYN practitioners. They were
to the point where one of them said now they were finding it necessary
-- she was finding it necessary to screen patients and not take
high-risk patients. So she was fearful that she would be sued if
somebody got into trouble and that that would, in turn, put her in a
position where her malpractice rates would go up and she'd be out of
business.
What that means for the community is that a certain class of
patients -- those who are high-risk -- aren't going to get the kind of
care that they might otherwise. We also, of course, end up and we have
doctors practicing defensive medicine, oftentimes ordering tests not so
much because it's necessarily indicated that it needs to be done, as to
avoid a situation in which they'd be vulnerable to lawsuit down the
road if something goes wrong.
In my home state of Wyoming, we're to the point now we're a crisis
state, as I mentioned same as Florida, we're holding -- had a special
session of the legislature, we'll have an amendment on the ballot this
fall because of the major malpractice insurance providers pull out, the
cost of malpractice insurance for a general practitioner in my home
town has gone from $40,000 a year to $100,000 a year in about a
three-year period of time. We can't get new doctors to come in. It
adds ultimately to the overall cost of providing health care.
There are ways to deal with it that's fair to everybody involved.
Again, I want to emphasize you want to have a system that allows people
who have legitimate grievances to pursue the redress of those
grievances in court -- that's their right and they ought to have that
opportunity. But we also need a system in which we get settlements
that are fair and don't drive up the cost so much that you adversely
affect the care that's available to others who aren't even directly
involved in that transaction. California has done it fairly
effectively. They've put a cap on non-economic damages and also a
limit, a sliding scale limit on attorneys' fees. As the award goes up,
the percentage that the attorneys take goes down. And there the effect
has been very positive.
So there are ways to address these issues. We support medical
liability reform that's gotten through the House of Representatives,
it's been blocked in the Senate. Senator Kerry has voted no on it 10
times. John Edwards also is opposed to medical malpractice reform or
medical liability reform in any way that we think would be effect. So
those are some of the things that would help.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not prepared today to advocate any one
particular approach. The fact is the way we're organized today we've
got a system that is very progressive, from the standpoint of placing
most of the burden on folks of the upper level -- it doesn't get talked
about very much. That's what we've done over the years; it's been
generally supported.
The tax package that we got through last year, basically under the
Bush administration, takes 5 million people at the lower end of the
income level totally off the income tax rolls altogether, so they don't
have any federal income tax liability.
If you look at the way the situation is set up, people in the
bottom 80 percent have actually had their rate -- the total tax that
they contribute go down as a result of the changes -- the tax changes
we made. And people at the upper 20 percent have seen theirs go up as
a result of the changes. It's partly because a lot of what we did was
we reduced the marriage penalty, we doubled the child tax credit, we
established a new 10 percent bracket for lower income individuals. All
of those have been targeted at middle-income or lower income families.
So it has not been a change just in the upper levels.
But I think that what we need to do, and what the President wants
to do is say, sit down -- you'll have to do it on a bipartisan basis.
It's the kind of thing that you can never do unilaterally, just one
party. It needs to be done on a bipartisan basis and there are a lot
of ideas out there that need to be considered. You've got to pull
together a group of folks and begin the process. It's been a long time
-- I guess 1986 was the last time we had a serious effort at tax
reform, during Reagan's --
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I haven't -- I haven't come across that. I'm
unaware of any proposal; there may be one kicking around in the Ways
and Means Committee -- they've had just about every idea imaginable you
could find up there in Ways and Means. It is an interesting problem.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: On the death tax, we think it's fundamentally
unfair. People work throughout their lives to build a business or to
build a farm or ranch, they pay taxes on that as they go along. And
then when they pass on they get taxed again, the estate gets taxed
again. And we just think that's fundamentally wrong, that's double
taxation that we don't think is right.
We got it repealed in the tax bill we passed in '01. It phases
down over time and goes away, as I recall, in about 2011.
Q (Inaudible.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Right. And the reason for that phase out is
because under the Senate rules, the way we passed it, we had to use --
we didn't have 60 votes, we had to use, it's called reconciliation
under the budget rules. And under reconciliation, everything after 10
years automatically reverts back to what it was when you started,
unless you extend it. And so we need to get it extended. That's part
of making the Bush tax cut permanent. But we're heading in the right
direction. And as I say, we're going to be on the downward path at
least now and for the next seven years.
On energy, we agree it's absolutely crucial, a building block for
our society, our economy. You can't heat and cool your homes, or have
a transportation system or run a business, any of the things that need
to be done, without adequate supplies of affordable energy. And we're
in a situation today where the world demand, especially for oil, has
pretty rapidly outstripped supply. We've gotten to a point where we
consume over 80 million barrels a day now worldwide, about 20 million
barrels of that here in the U.S. And the producers are running pretty
much flat out. So you get a blip in the production -- hurricanes come
through the Gulf, you have to shut down the offshore platforms, the
workers have to come ashore -- but we're now running below normal
levels with respect to Gulf production. And that, in turn, obviously
affects that overall balance. You get unrest in Nigeria, and the Delta
region over there, and that adversely affects the supply.
And so it's an area where we need to do everything we can to reduce
our dependence on foreign sources, but it's a long-term prospect. We
put up an energy plan. It had 106 specific recommendations; a lot of
those we implemented administratively. But we need legislative
approval for a chunk of it, that would emphasize, among other things,
conservation, new technology, investment in things like hydrogen fuel
cells and technology, and so forth -- but there are longer-term
solutions. Natural gas is a big problem. Prices have gone up there
pretty dramatically. We got a lot of natural gas on the north slope of
Alaska that's produced in conjunction with the gas -- or the oil
production up there on the north slope. And we re-inject it right back
into the ground, because we don't have anything we can do with it. We
need a pipeline, a gas pipeline, that runs from Alaska down to the
lower 48, and incentives to build such a pipeline are in that energy
bill.
There are a number of things in there that are valuable. Again, we
got it through the House. It's plugged up in the Senate. It's been
filibustered in the Senate, and that's one of those that came up two
votes short, and Senators Kerry and Edwards weren't there when it came
to a vote. They're opposed to it anyway, I think. But we'll keep
pushing on that so we can get a decent energy bill through.
We will continue to have to deal with the fact that we're dependent
on foreign sources, and that means we're going to be subjected to the
vicissitudes of the international marketplace in terms of the price of
oil, in particular. And we need to do everything we can to be more
efficient and, at the same time, produce more and find alternatives.
On trade, we have moved aggressively on trade because we think it's
important that the United States have access to all those international
markets -- agriculture, in particular. I think every third acre in
production in America is for the export market. So it's important for
us to have access to the foreign markets, and that means we've got to
have trading arrangements. I think China is now the leading export
market, I think, for soybeans and something else. I can't remember
exactly what it is now. We've had a 140 percent increase in one year
in our agricultural exports to China. So trade is crucial to our
economy.
We've got some 12 million Americans whose jobs are directly
dependent on the export market. So negotiating these trade agreements
is crucial. But, of course, you've got to make certain that you do it
on a fair and equitable basis. You can't trade off one sector of the
economy for another. And agriculture has been especially troublesome
for years because it is so complex. It is so crucial, and a central
sector of every economy in the world. The Europeans have got their
approach. It has made them very reluctant to enter into any kind of a
trading agreement that affects their European agricultural policy, as
well, over there.
What we've done -- we've negotiated, I believe, a total of 12
bilateral free-trade agreements over the course of the last three
years. We've got 10 more in the works. That will give us access to a
market -- a combined market of about $2.5 trillion, would make it the
third largest export market in the United States, that combination of
22 countries.
The most recent one -- the one you're probably talking about is
CAFTA, the trade agreement that's up now. It has been negotiated.
It's pending before the Congress. We think it's a good package. It
gives us pretty much wide open access to those markets in Central
America. The big issue has been sugar, in terms of our producers here
at home. But we believe that if you look at the Agriculture Act, the
domestic program doesn't kick in until we get to about 1.4 million tons
imports, and we're at about 1.1 million now -- have been consistently
in the past. And there's about a 300,000-ton cushion there that we
think will more than cover what we'll get from Central America. So we
think we can manage that. The Agriculture Department is watching it
very carefully. They're confident, I say, that we've already got built
into the system slack so that the domestic sugar program won't kick in
with respect to the agreement that we've negotiated with the Central
American countries. But, obviously, it bears watching.
One immigrant workers, the guest worker program has worked in the
past. There have been guest worker programs off and on over the
years. I know out West, California and so forth, we used to have a
fairly successful program there. The President originally started
talking with President Fox of Mexico about trying to improve that
situation. He's obviously eager to have people come to work in the
United States. From our perspective, you're right it was complicated
by 9/11 because all of a sudden the priority has been placed on making
certain that we don't have terrorists coming into the United States,
and so the major emphasis is then on tightening up on the flow of
people back and forth across the border. That's taken priority over
the question of having a guest worker program.
But the President has also talked about that, about the possibility
of setting up a system in which we would have people who have an
identifiable job, a job that an American won't take, regularize the
flow, in effect, come in under some sort of an arrangement where they
would work for a period of time and then go back home. We'd know where
they were when they were here. We'd know what they were doing. We'd
know when they left. They'd fill an important need in terms of
providing important labor and they'd take jobs that Americans don't
want. But the concept at this stage hasn't gone anywhere legislatively
yet.
MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President and Mrs.
Cheney are running on a very tight schedule. And we would like to take
this opportunity again to thank you for being here this afternoon. And
if you wish to make any closing comments. But on the flip side, we
want to also say, thank you very much for the rapid response of FEMA,
and what the President and you have been involved in, in coming down
and helping us getting back up and running -- businesses like this so
that we can continue on producing dollars into the economy. And again,
I say you may have to leave, and again, thank you very much.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Larry. And I also want to say that
the rest of the country has watched with great interest the way
everybody here in Florida has responded to what has to have been an
unbelievable series of events. I know just from my own schedule, we
kept trying to get into Florida -- schedule events in connection with
the campaign this year, and every time, we'd get ready to come, another
hurricane would come through. So it has been an unbelievable series of
crises that Floridians have had to deal with, but you've dealt with it
with great courage and determination. The entire nation watched, of
course. Every time I'd turn on the tube, there would be Governor Bush
in the middle of another hurricane. And so we're glad that you've
stood as well as you have. The President is committed to doing
everything he can to make certain that we get everybody back up on
their feet quickly. We've now asked Congress for a total of $13
billion in supplemental appropriations. A lot of that has come to
Florida. He's put in an additional request just yesterday, and
hopefully we'll get that -- get it out shortly. But we think, in fact,
you folks have done a great job down here. And we want to note that,
and say
that we wish you very well, and know you'll be back on your feet
very quickly.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 3:36 P.M. EDT
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