For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
October 19, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Q & A in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Frank J. Pasquerilla Conference Center
Johnstown, Pennsylvania
October 18, 2004
1:35 P.M. EDT
MRS. CHENEY: Thank you so much. Well, what a great welcome, what
a great day to be here in Johnstown. The leaves, could they be more
beautiful? Moreover, we are just 15 days away from electing George
Bush to his second term as President of the United States.
(Applause.) And I am so proud to be here with a man who will serve at
his side. I just introduce Dick all across the country. And it's a
great thing to do.
I've been chosen for this because I've known him for so long.
(Laughter.) I have known him since he was 14 years old, and that first
summer I knew him he was sweeping out the Ben Franklin store in Casper,
Wyoming. That was his job. (Laughter.) And I've known him through a
lot of jobs since. I have known him since he was digging ditches at
the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Grounds outside our home town, and
I've known him since he was loading bentonite, 100-pound sacks of
bentonite onto railroad cars. And I've known him since he was building
power line all across the West, to help pay his way through school.
And I like to tell about all those jobs because I think when you grow
up working hard, you learn some really important lessons. And one of
them is that the hardworking men and women of this country ought to get
to keep as much of their paychecks as possible. (Applause.)
And, of course, that's one of the issues this campaign is about.
And there are so many issues that I know are important to you and are
important to me. But I got to tell you, if I were going to say what it
is that compels me most, it is the safety and security of our country.
(Applause.) I've got children, I've got grandchildren, and I got to
tell you, when I think about this election, I think to myself, you
know, the terrorists will try to come and get us again -- we all know
they're going to try that. And I ask myself, who do I want to have
standing in the doorway. And I'll tell you, it's not John Kerry and
it's not John Edwards. It is George Bush and Dick Cheney. (Applause.)
And I just want to read you something. I was so moved when I saw
this. The President is giving a big speech today, a really
hard-hitting, forward-looking speech on how we're going to deal with
the terrorist threats. And another thing that's happening today is
that 222 9/11 family members are sending a letter out to the American
people. And it is long and eloquent. I just want to read you a little
part of it. I was so touched -- I just got this on my Blackberry. And
they say in this letter:
"We speak to you from the heart as citizens from all across the
country and every political stripe. We are Republicans and Democrats,
liberals and conservatives, young and old, mothers and fathers,
husbands and sisters, wives, brothers, sons, daughters, friends. We
speak from a profound sense of obligation to those we have lost, and to
the country that we love, guided by core principles. President Bush
has steadfastly told us who he is, what he believes, and what he will
fight for.
As Americans who have keenly felt the scourge of terrorism, we are
inspired and energized to follow the President's lead, to rise to the
occasion and get the job done. Three years ago, George Bush stood with
us and vowed that he would never forget. We stand with him now."
(Applause.)
So if I were going to make a list of all the things that make me
proud to be an American, right at the top of it I'd put our President,
George W. Bush. (Applause.) He's been a magnificent leader these last
four years. And if you'll permit me to say so, the Vice President is
no slouch either. (Applause.)
And so it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you, my husband,
Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Well, thank you all very much. A
great welcome. We're delighted to be back in Pennsylvania. And I want
to thank Lynne for that outstanding introduction. I didn't know she
was going to read from that letter. It was a very potent letter.
She has known me since I was 14. She wouldn't go out with me until
I was 17. (Laughter.) And I often explain to people that the reason
we got married is because Dwight Eisenhower got elected President of
the United States. It was in 1952. I was a youngster living in
Lincoln, Nebraska, with my folks. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation
Service. Eisenhower got elected, reorganized the government. Dad got
transferred to Casper, Wyoming. And that's where I met Lynne, grew up
together and went to high school together, and recently celebrated our
40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.)
I explained to a group of folks the other night that if it hadn't
been for Eisenhower's election victory, Lynne would have married
somebody else. (Laughter.) And she said, right, and now he'd be Vice
President of the United States. (Laughter.)
Well, these town halls have gotten to be an important part of the
campaign, and of course, we are coming down now -- we've got two weeks
to go. It's been a remarkable campaign. Lynne and I have been in 48
states in this election cycle, and seen just some fantastic things all
across the country. It's a great privilege to have the opportunity to
participate in a national campaign, and we get to travel the breadth
and width of the country and meet some fantastic people. And so we're
blessed to have been given that opportunity, and we've got two more
weeks to go now. I just met with the President this morning before we
took off, and it looks to me like November 2nd is going to be a good
day for the Bush-Cheney ticket. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right! That is good. But what we usually
do at these town halls is I make some opening remarks and talk about a
subject or two. Then we throw it open to questions, and you'll have an
opportunity, if you want to ask a question, make a comment, to do
that. I try not to take up too much time with my opening remarks.
But I do want to spend a little bit of time on the subject Lynne raised
at the outset.
There are obviously a lot of issues that are being debated during
the course of the campaign and that we're making decisions on as we
pick a President for the next four years. But I think foremost, at
least in terms of our concern, my concern, while we're concerned about
the economy and focused on that, and education and health care and
Social Security and so many other issues, and we can talk about those,
as I say, in the Q&A; session, what I really want to focus on with that
decision we're going to make in two weeks, about who is going to be
Commander-in-Chief for the next four years.
And I think it's important to try to put it in some kind of
perspective, to recognize that every once in a while in our history, we
come to a breakpoint, a watershed, if you will, where we're faced with
a new set of threats, where we have to devise a new strategy, sometimes
new institutions in order to meet that threat, and put in place a set
of policies that oftentimes then will govern and determine the safety
and security of the nation for the next 30 or 40 years.
We had one of those periods right after World War II -- after we'd
won those great victories in Europe and the Pacific, and within a few
years we suddenly were faced with the Cold War that had taken half of
Europe, that had acquired nuclear weapons. And we were forced to
devise a whole new strategy to cope with the threat that the Soviet
Union represented for the rest of the 20th century. And we created a
Department of Defense, the CIA we created, North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, reconfigured our military forces -- did all those things
we had to do to put in place a strategy that was then supported by
Republican and Democrat administrations alike for the next 40 years,
until we won the Cold War.
I think we're now at another one of those points in history, where
we're faced with a new threat -- in this case, the threat of
terrorism. The events of 9/11 forced us to think a new way about how
we defend the country, about what the threat is out there, and about
how we best secure the safety of our children and grandchildren for a
good many years to come. And I think we're going to make a decision on
the 2nd of November, on election day, that will have a direct bearing
on where we go as a nation on those issues for the next, perhaps --
certainly the next four years, but perhaps far beyond that in terms of
putting in place policies that several administrations will follow and
support.
What 9/11 represented for us, obviously, was a dramatic break with
the past in terms of being the worst attack ever on American soil -- we
lost more people that morning than we lost at Pearl Harbor; a sudden
recognition that 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s men armed with
boarding passes and knives could do enormous damage to New York,
Washington, and of course, right here in Pennsylvania, where United 93
went in. And it forced the nation, I think, to come to grips with the
fact that we were at war, that it was, in fact, the kind of conflict we
had not had to deal with before; that it required us to come up with
new ways to defend the nation.
We did several things. First of all, of course, was we toughened
our defenses here at home. It's been a major thrust. You want to do
everything you can to make the United States a tougher target than it
was when the terrorists struck us. And of course, we created the
Department of Homeland Security, got a great Pennsylvanian in Tom Ridge
who's been intimately involved in running that effort, and now runs the
department. We passed the Patriot Act to give law enforcement better
tools to be able to prosecute terror. We passed Project BioShield
which gives new authority to the National Institutes of Health and the
FDA to prepare us to defend against an attack with biological weapons.
We toughened up all our travel regulations, improved our border
security, and so forth.
But having done all that, put all those policies in place, it also
was abundantly clear that a good defense isn't enough. And given the
nature of the threat -- and the threat, now, remember, is the
possibility of terrorists coming into one of our own cities, possibly
with weapons more deadly than anything we've ever seen -- not just with
knives and boarding passes, but because we know they're doing
everything they can to get their hands on deadlier weapons -- on
chemical weapons or biological agents, or even a nuclear weapon -- that
the ultimate threat is the possibility of their succeeding and getting,
say, a biological agent or a nuclear weapon, smuggling it into the
United States, into one of our own cities, and raising the specter of
being able to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans in very short
order. That's the ultimate threat we have to deal with today. And we
have to think about that and get our heads around that if we're going
to put in place that's adequate to the task of defending against that
threat, and defeating it.
So the notion that you can have a perfect defense, that you can
erect barriers, we can sit here safe behind our oceans and not have to
worry, I think was pretty well put to rest on 9/11. I don't think
anybody believes -- or shouldn't -- no should believe that there's such
a thing as a perfect defense.
The President made the decision, I think absolutely the correct
one, that we had to also go on offense. And that's what we've done.
We've taken the full might of the United States and gone after the
terrorists wherever we could find them, wherever they train and plan
and organize. We've also used the full might of the United States to
go after those who sponsor terror. And this was a major departure from
the past. In the past, we sort of turned the other cheek with respect
to those states that had sponsored terror. But the President said
we're never going to do that again, and that, in fact, governments or
organizations that provide sanctuary or safe harbor or finances or
training or weapons to terrorists and terrorist organizations will be
held to account, will be deemed just as guilty of the acts of the
terrorists as the terrorists themselves.
That's a big, new departure, a major part of the strategy, and I
think the one place where there's been some debate about how committed
people are to pursuing that. I don't think our opponents are quite as
committed as we are. But I'll come back to that in a minute. So with
that proposition -- strong defenses here at home, and aggressively go
after the terrorists and after those who sponsor terror overseas, we
launched into Afghanistan, took down the old Taliban regime, closed the
training camps for some 20,000 terrorists who trained in the late '90s,
including some of those who hit us on 9/11, captured or killed hundreds
of al Qaeda. And having done all of that, we're now in the midst of
standing up a government to replace the one that we took down when we
took down the regime of the Taliban.
And this is the fourth step. And the final, vital step in the
process, is to establish democratically elected government in
Afghanistan, because we think that's the best antidote to terror -- if
you can't simply go in and take down the old regime and close the
training camps and kill some terrorists and then leave, because what
you leave behind is a failed state and they'll simply revert back to
the problems they had in the past and breed more terror.
So you've got to stand up a representative, democratically elected
government behind what was there previously, and that's what we're
doing. And it's been a remarkable experience. We've got a lot of
people wringing their hands, saying, oh, it's tough to do, you can't do
it, the Afghans don't understand, they'll never be able to have a
democracy there.
But you know what happened, was the Afghans worked hard, they
created an interim government under Hamid Karzai, wrote a constitution,
registered 10 million people to vote -- nearly half of them women --
for the first time ever -- and a week ago Saturday held the first
election in that country in the five thousand year history of
Afghanistan. (Applause.)
Now, there's a lot of hard work left to do; nobody should assume
it's clear sailing from here on in Afghanistan. We've got to stand up
an Afghan national army, and we're doing that. We're spending time and
money training and equipping their own security forces, so they can
take over responsibilities for their own security in that country. And
some days it'll be three yards and a cloud of dust, there's no
touchdown pass here that solves all the problems at one time. But
they're off to a great start and it's in our interest that they
succeed, because that's the best way to guarantee that Afghanistan
never again becomes a threat to the United States or a place where
people like those who hit us on 9/11 can train and plan and plot
against the United States.
In Iraq, somewhat different set of circumstances, obviously. But
we went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein had a track record as a
sponsor of terror; he had been on the State Department
terror-sponsoring list for over 15 years; he provided home to Abu
Nidal, to Palestinian Islamic jihad, making $25,000 payments to the
families of suicide bombers; had a relationship with al Qaeda. He also
previously had started two wars; he had produced and used weapons of
mass destruction in the past; he had used chemical weapons on the Kurds
and on the Iranians, back in the late '80s; and a long history as the
potential spot that concerned us that Iraq had become the nexus, if you
will, between the terrorists, on the one hand, and those deadly
technologies, on the other.
Remember, again, what the major threat is we've got to deal with --
that possibility of terrorists smuggling deadly weapons into the United
States to use against us. So we went in and we got rid of Saddam
Hussein's regime and to everybody's great benefit he is in jail today,
which is where he belongs. (Applause.)
And we're working there, as well, now. We've had Iraqis in charge
of their own government since late June, a little over 90 days now, but
all the ministries are now staffed by Iraqis. We've got a Prime
Minister in place on an interim basis, they'll hold elections in
January for a constitutional assembly that will write a constitution
for Iraq, and by the end of next year should have in place a
democratically elected government. We're also working very hard to
stand up, train and equip Iraqi security forces so they can take over
more responsibility and, ultimately, the total responsibility for
guaranteeing the safety and security in Iraq and we'll be able to bring
our guys home.
But we don't want to leave too soon; we don't want any artificial
deadline there. We don't want to stay any longer than necessary, but
we want to stay long enough to make sure we get the job done.
So that's the process we're involved in, in Iraq now. Our
adversaries -- the terrorists and the remnants of the old regime
obviously will do everything they can to disrupt that timetable as we
move toward elections. And they know that if we're ever successful at
getting a democratically-elected government in place, with control over
the sovereign territory of Iraq, they're toast, they're history,
they're finished. They've said as much in communications that we've
intercepted between the Zarqawi organization in Iraq and the al Qaeda
organization in Afghanistan.
Again, we're making significant process there. But everybody needs
to understand these are difficult, hard, challenging tasks. You'll
find a lot of people who will tell you that it can't be done. But,
again, it's our absolute conviction that the best antidote to terror
out there are democratically-elected governments and changing the
circumstances on the ground in that part of the world is the best
possible guarantee we've got that, long-term, they will -- those areas
-- Afghanistan and Iraq -- won't once again become breeding grounds for
terror or for the development of weapons of mass destruction.
So that's the chore we've assigned ourselves, that's the strategy
we're pursuing. That's the President's strategy; he's absolutely
committed to it and I think things are generally going very well, given
the difficulty of the task and the length of time we've been at it.
The question, of course, arises, is John Kerry committed to that
same course of action? And, of course, it's been awful hard to find
out what he is committed to -- (laughter) -- because he's been all over
the lot. But the concern I have is, when I look at Senator Kerry --
and I am not challenging his patriotism, I don't question his
patriotism for a minute -- I do challenge his judgment. And like all
of us who've been in public life for a long time, you can go back and
look at how you've acted under previous circumstances, what kind of
votes have you cast as a member of Congress, member of the Senate,
where have you been on the issues of the day when we had major national
security issues in front of the country -- how did he come down, how
did he vote?
And if you look at that record over the years, you'll find that
John Kerry does not convey any indication -- at least, there's no
indication in his record that I can find -- that he would pursue the
kind of aggressive course, with respect to the global war on terror,
that I think is required. And why do I say that? Well, if you go back
and look at the record. When he ran for Congress the first time, back
in the '70s, he ran on the basis that the U.S. should never commit
troops without U.N. authorization. In 1984, when he ran for the Senate
the first time, he ran on the basis, a platform of cutting or
eliminating a great many of our major weapons systems that were vital
to winning the Cold War and subsequently then vital to our safety and
security of the nation ever since.
In 1993, after the World Trade Center was hit the first time, he
was then serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and, as best I
can tell, didn't attend a meeting, a single meeting of the Senate
Intelligence Committee for a year after the bombing -- but then offered
up an amendment to cut billions of dollars out of our intelligence
budget, an amendment that was so far out that even Ted Kennedy wouldn't
support it. That's the record, that's the track record you can find
out there if you look at it.
The thing that in some ways is disturbing -- a couple points, I
guess I'd mention. You know, he's talked -- in the first debate he
talked he talked about a global test, some kind of global test before
he'd commit U.S. forces. Well, given the benefit of the doubt for a
minute, let's assume there -- I, personally, don't think there ought to
be a global test; I think only the President of the United States can
make that decision and he should never delegate it to anybody else --
but with respect to this so-called global test, there was a time when
we had a situation that sort of seemed to meet all the criteria. And
this was the first Gulf crisis, back in 1990 and '91, when I was
Secretary of Defense.
And Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And the President went to
Congress for authorization to use force to kick him out of Kuwait and
send him back to Iraq. The United Nations Security Council had
specifically voted to authorize the use of force; 34 countries signed
up in a coalition to send troops to work alongside us. And we went
before the Congress and asked for their approval for the use of force
and John Kerry voted "no." It would seem to me every conceivable
criteria you could possibly want for the use of U.S. force, and that
wasn't good enough for John Kerry.
We have now seen, most recently in the last week -- I guess it was
a week ago yesterday -- a piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine
that Senator Kerry had given an interview to a New York Times reporter,
so these were direct quotes from him -- that is, it wasn't through some
anonymous source. And in there, Senator Kerry was asked what his, sort
of his objectives were with respect to the global war on terror. And
basically what he said was he'd like to get terror back to the point
where it was just viewed as a nuisance once again. That's the word he
used. And he compared it to the kind of problem you can sort of
manage, as we do in our cities, like illegal gambling and
prostitution. That was the analogy he used.
And I asked myself after I read that, I said, well, when was
terrorism ever a nuisance? When can you go back prior to 9/11 and
start to look at some of the major terrorist events in that period, and
you go back four years ago to the attack on the USSS Cole, off Yemen,
where we lost 17 sailors and nearly lost the ship -- or six years ago,
when there was a simultaneous attack on two of our embassies in East
Africa and hundreds of people were killed that day, including a number
of Americans. Or 1993, when the first attack on the World Trade Center
took place. Were those nuisances? Didn't strike me that they were.
In 1988, December, when Pan Am 103 was blown out of the skies over
Lockerbie, Scotland; or maybe 1983, in Beirut where the spring -- first
they set off a truck bomb outside our embassy and killed a lot of
people, and then later that fall, a suicide bomber in a truck loaded
with explosives drove into the barracks we'd had a lot of our people
put up, and killed 241 Marines in 1983 -- over 20 years ago. Not a
nuisance.
The whole concept that it could be deemed as a nuisance, or that
there's some acceptable level of terror out there we want to manage
towards is, in my opinion, the wrong mind-set. That's not the mind-set
of somebody who wants to go win the war on terror, who understands this
is a global conflict, that not only have they hit us here in the United
States, but they've hit in Madrid and Casablanca and Mombassa and
Riyadh and Jakarta and Bali and Istanbul and Beslan in Russia. It's a
global conflict and that the only way to wrap it up here is victory,
you have to defeat the terrorists. (Applause.)
There's no treaty at the end of the day here. There's not going to
be any peace negotiations in Paris, or arms control agreement. Those
concepts are irrelevant when you try to apply them to al Qaeda. A
handful of the people, motivated by an intense desire to commit jihad,
to kill the infidel -- and we're the infidel. And motivated by a
fundamentalist, extremist view of their Islamic faith -- it's an
extreme of Islam, it's not representative Islam at all. But there
isn't any way the concept of deterrence or some kind of a negotiation
or containment works with these folks. The only way you can deal with
them, basically, is to destroy them and make certain that nobody again
is ever tempted to support them or lend them territory for training or
sanctuary or anything else.
Now, if we have a good, tough, aggressive policy in this area, it
pays dividends, and we saw it two years ago, when -- you may remember
when we launched into Iraq, Moammar Ghadafi in Libya, who had been
spending millions trying to develop nuclear weapons -- and he had
outside help to do it -- called us shortly after we started into,
launched into Iraq. He didn't call the United Nations, he contacted
George Bush and Tony Blair. And we began negotiations that went for
nine months, and then five days after we dug Saddam out of his hole in
Northern Iraq, Colonel Ghadafi went public and announced he was going
to give up all of his nuclear materials, the uranium, the enrichment
capabilities, the weapons design, all that he'd acquired. (Applause.)
And we also, as a result of that, were able to put out of business
illegal suppliers network that had provided this nuclear weapons
technology not only to Libya, but also to Iran and North Korea. And so
that operation has been closed down. All of that a direct byproduct of
what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The determination of the
President of the United States put these issues front and center and
make it clear to nations around the world that the United States was
not going to sit back and let one of these attacks be mounted against
us, we were going to go out -- actively and aggressively -- and defeat
our adversaries before they could launch more strikes against us.
I think that's what has to happen for us to win the war on terror.
(Applause.)
Now, there's a cost associated with all of this, obviously. It's
one of the hardest things that a President ever has to do, and I've
seen -- I've seen three of them do it now -- is commit U.S. forces,
send them in harm's way. None of what we've done over these last three
years would have been possible without the magnificent performance of
the men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. (Applause.) They're the
ones doing the heavy lifting, and it's tough for them and it's tough on
their families, but we all owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. And
it's important for us to recognize when we pick a Commander-in-Chief,
you've got to have somebody who's consistent, knows what he thinks and
says what he means, who's steadfast in the pursuit of an ideal, who
isn't blown off course here by the political pressures of the moment.
And I think that's what we've got in George W. Bush as President of the
United States. (Applause.)
And difficult as this challenge is now, it's going to be easier for
us in the long-term to deal with it now than it is to wait. Because
over time we saw what happened in the '80s and '90s. We didn't do
anything to deserve the attack of 9/11. But what happened over time
was the terrorists grew bolder, they got better organized, they got
more sophisticated, in terms of their techniques and their approach
and, all of a sudden, bingo, it's 9/11 and we lose 3,000 people in a
couple of hours one morning. Waiting, delaying, not acting now,
turning the other cheek, going back to the pre-9/11 mind-set, where we
treat criminal attacks as some kind of criminal enterprise instead of a
war isn't going to help, it's only going to make things worse. And
it'll raise the ultimate cost we have to pay to deal with this
problem. Far better we deal with it now, while it still is a
manageable problem and while we've got a lot of allies out there and
while we go deal with it overseas, rather than have to face them here
in the streets of our own cities. (Applause.)
So I'm convinced, obviously, that that's the right way to go. I'm
convinced that with the superb leadership of the President, the great
efforts of the American people and a lot of good folks around the world
who are on the side with us, helping us in this battle that we can, in
fact, surmount this challenge, just like we have so many others in our
history. No reason in the world while we can't do it. But we've got
to pick the right man on November 2nd, to make certain that we've got
the kind of Commander-in-Chief in the years ahead we can have
confidence in, we can have faith in, that our troops can follow
willingly, and that our adversaries know they better hang it up because
if they don't, defeat is their only other option.
So let me stop at this point. I'm rambled on long enough. We can
go to questions now and talk about this subject some more if you want,
or move off into any other area. I would urge you to think about
questions for Lynne. (Laughter.) She's good at it. But we've got
some folks running around here in these attractive orange jerseys --
(laughter) -- they've got microphones, and if you've got a comment you
want to make or a question you want to ask, just try to grab them and
I'll call on them as they -- as somebody has got something they want to
say. So number six.
Q Thank you for coming, Vice President Cheney. The Republican
Party has a proud history of fighting injustice. A hundred and four
years ago, in its infancy, it faced one of the worst cultural war
issues this country has ever faced, which was slavery. And the
Republican leaders at the time were saying in no uncertain terms that
Dred Scott was a bad established case law decision of the U.S. Supreme
Court.
During the recent debates, President Bush was asked if he would
unequivocally state that he was against Roe versus Wade, that he would
have it overturned. Is your administration willing to say that, yes,
it's time to overturn this bad case law, just like it was time to
overturn Dred Scott? And what legislative efforts is the GOP going to
put forward during the next four years to limit these judicial
activists who are taking over our culture and overturning our morals?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the President has made it clear, and I
think my record speaks for itself, we both believe very deeply in the
pro-life cause. That's been our consistent view and I think you'll
find, if you look back on our actions, that that's always been the
position we've taken.
We've also said -- the President has also said that what we need to
do, since the country is deeply divided on the abortion question, that
assuming for now, anyway, you're not going to resolve that basic
fundamental issue, that we ought to look for ways where reasonable
people on both sides can come together in order to reduce the incidents
of abortion. And there, specifically, we believe we've made
significant
progress in things like the ban on partial birth abortion, which
had been passed twice in the Congress in the '90s, vetoed both times by
Bill Clinton. We got it passed again and signed into law by the
President, and it's overwhelmingly supported by the American people.
(Applause.)
There's the Laci Peterson law which we've also got signed on the
books. That's protection for the fetus in the event of the murder of
the mother, while she's expecting, would be, in effect, a double
crime. And that's on the books as well, too. I might add, John Kerry
opposed both those measures, voted against the -- didn't show up for
the vote. The situation with respect to the ban on partial birth
abortion is now in court, it's being challenged and will now be fought
out through the court system.
The best approach, I believe, in terms of judges who want to
legislate from the bench -- and I think that is a problem that doesn't
relate just to the life question, the issue of abortion -- founded, for
example, in this whole issue of whether or not we should be allowed to
say "under God" when we pledge allegiance to the flag. Most Americans
believe deeply that we ought to be able to do that. The 9th circuit
out in California, legislating from the bench, decided we shouldn't be
able to do that. And, fortunately, the Supreme Court has now thrown
out that basic decision. But we need good, solid judges, judges who
will interpret the Constitution; judges who will not take it upon
themselves to "legislate from the bench." The President has, in fact,
appointed judges exactly like that. We've gotten a good number
confirmed; we've also run into a block in the Senate, in that the
Democrats set up a filibuster, especially against our appointments to
the appellate courts and blocked many good judges from being confirmed
-- judges that have 55, 56, 57 votes on the floor, but they need 60 in
order to get confirmation. And a number of them have been blocked by
that filibuster route. The best way I know to deal with that problem
is to elect more Republicans to the United States Senate. (Applause.)
Yes, number two.
Q Yes, thank you for -- so much for coming to Johnstown. It
gives us yet one more reason to make sure that you're reelected for
four more years in November. (Applause.)
On behalf of all of us in health care, we applaud your efforts on
health care tort reform. I wonder if you could tell us the difference
between your position on tort reform and that of your opportunity?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We're for it and they aren't. (Laughter and
applause.)
In fairness before they jump all over me, it comes up in several
ways, obviously. I've seen it just during the course of this
campaign. I recently was in Minnesota, visiting a company there. It
didn't even exist 20 years ago, and now is the second largest producer
of piston-driven aircraft in the country; 900 employees, great success
story. The cost of their product liability insurance is so high that
if he could take the funds that he's using to buy insurance, he could
hire 200 more employees -- just one example of the litigation cost
that's built into our society.
It's a special problem these days in the medical area. And because
of our failure to reform our medical liability system, we are having, I
think, devastating consequences in many states. I know Pennsylvania is
one. My home state of Wyoming is one. We've got about 20 states now
across the country that are at a crisis level. We've lost, I believe,
a fourth of our OB/GYN specialists in my home state of Wyoming. We've
got people now who have to -- literally have to go out of state to find
a specialist, an OB/GYN specialist. The malpractice rates have gone up
so much that doctors are either dropping that specialty altogether, or
in some cases -- I talked to one OB/GYN the other day who explained
that she was no longer taking high-risk patients. She just can't. She
has to screen them. That's the place where a lawsuit might be filed if
there's some kind of a problem or complication, and if, in fact, she
gets hit with a lawsuit, her malpractice rates go up, she's through.
She's out of business. So there's now a category of people, high-risk
people in that community that won't get OB/GYN services, and they're
probably the ones that need it most. But the failure to reform the
medical liability system has generated costs maybe as much as a hundred
billion dollars in added cost to medicine and health care in the U.S.
It forces doctors to practice defensive medicine, to order up costs
that you have to pay for, order up tests you have to pay for because
they want to protect against a potential lawsuit. So it has rippled
throughout the system. And the way to deal with it is to cap
non-economic damages. In other words, people would be compensated, and
you ought to have access to the courts when there's a problem here.
You don't want to deny that. But you would be fully compensated for
any economic damages, but there would be a cap of some kind -- maybe a
quarter of a million dollars on non-economic damages. Such a cap has
been enacted in California, and it has worked. Their rates there
haven't gone up nearly as fast as elsewhere in the country. Another
proposal that I think makes sense is to cap the size of the legal fee
going to the lawyers. They collect about 50 percent of the total
award, and again, in California, they've established a sliding scale.
So the larger the award, the smaller the percentage that goes for the
trial lawyers. (Applause.)
And those two steps will have -- the Rand Corporation just got
through doing an extensive study of the California system, looking at
it compared to the rest of the country. And in fact, it has produced
some decidedly positive results. My state of Wyoming now has had a
special session of the legislature. They've got a constitutional
amendment on the ballot for November. They're trying to address the
issue, too.
And the federal level, this has come up in legislation that has
gotten through the House -- the part capping on economic damages and
then blocked in the Senate. We've not been able to get it through the
Senate. Senator Kerry has consistently voted against it. Senator
Edwards is opposed to it. And what he has suggested -- they've
suggested an ap of trying to reform the system by setting up a special
panel of trial lawyers to oversee the process. That's what they did,
recommended. It's like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
I don't think it will work. I don't think it will produce the
desired result. And the President and I believe very deeply in the
importance of addressing tort reform, especially in the medical area.
And I say, we've gotten great success on the House, and we'll keep
working it in the Senate. And all we need is a couple more senators
and we can get it through there, too. So we're working on all those
issues, but it's a big issue, and it affects not just the health care
question in this country, but when you think about how much we build
the cost of litigation into everything we manufacture and produce, that
adds to the cost of doing business and makes our products less
competitive. It's a problem for us. So tort reform, I think is
definitely in order.
Somebody over here. Yes, number one.
Q Mr. Vice President, thank you for serving our nation. I'd
also like to thank you and your lovely wife for visiting our safe,
clean and friendly community. (Applause.)
The fact that I'm one of many numerous physically exceptional
people in America who got excited when we learned about stem cell
research, what direction is our country going in stem cell research?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we think it has great promise. The
President spent a lot of time on this, focusing on it. This is the
first administration that has authorized funding for stem cell --
embryonic stem cell research. It had never before been done. The
President sat down and decided to do it, but he thinks it also raises
ethical questions in terms of how we do it. And what he specifically
after he consulted with a whole range of experts and put together a
panel to look at both the medical side of it, and the science side of
it, as well as the ethical questions that were raised, was the policy
he came up with, which is to provide funding for already established
stem cell lines, but not to support with federal funds the destruction
of any embryos to produce additional stem cells. (Applause.)
Now, some people have suggested that what we've done is ban
embryonic stem cell research. No, absolutely not. We've just said
that there are limits to kinds of activities you'll support with
federal funds, because we do think there's an ethical question there.
But there's no bar on what the private sector wants to do, or what
people want to do with respect to private funds in this area. I think
it's a sound decision. I understand, and I think many Americans have
great hopes for what stem cells may be able to generate in the future
by way of solutions for major health problems. My own mother had
Parkinson's for 10 years. Stem cell is viewed as one way that we might
be able ultimately to get on top of that deadly disease. So I think
there is great potential there.
And there's a lot of work being done, as well, with adult stem
cells. Right now the limit isn't on the availability of stem cells.
It's more on the number of ideas and concepts at this point that are
ripe to actually be developed. So we're, I think, in good shape on
it. I thought, frankly, the other day what John Edwards suggested when
he made his comments about Christopher Reeve, that somehow if John
Kerry were President, Christopher Reeve could get up out of his
wheelchair and there all of his problems would be solved, I really
thought was an inappropriate remark -- especially given -- well, given
the false hope it engendered. I thought it was not -- not a careful,
statesmanlike statement that you would expect out of a prospective vice
presidential candidate. I thought he went overboard. (Applause.)
Somebody back here.
Q Mr. Vice President, welcome. For starters, I am a World War
II, Korean, and Vietnam conflict veteran. (Applause.) Thank you very
much, I didn't do it for the accolades. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: You don't look that old.
Q Only to say that a veteran of these three conflicts, I'm
proud what I did. I'm proud of what Mr. Kerry did. But I think it is
totally irrelevant and does not qualify me to become President of these
great United States. (Laughter.)
Now, my question, are we gaining headway in causing or persuading
North Korea to follow Moammar Ghadafi in stopping his nuclear weapons
pursuit?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The North Korean problem is one that's right
of the President's list. We spend a lot of time on it. The approach
we've taken -- North Korea, of course, had developed the ability to
reprocess spent fuel and produce plutonium. And they had enough spent
fuel so that there was a realistic concern that they might develop
nuclear weapons. So in the early '90s, back in '94, the Clinton
administration entered into a bilateral framework agreement with North
Korea where North Korea supposedly gave up all their nuclear
aspirations, and in return for that, the outside world was going to
provide them with power and other means of support so they could take
care of their requirements. It turned out that they -- the North
Koreans almost from the outset violated the agreement. And we
discovered after we took over that in fact, Mr. A.Q. Khan, the man who
had been supplying the materials to Libya had also supplied uranium
enrichment technology to North Korea, and that was a direct violation
of the agreement they'd entered into with the Clinton administration.
So we're now at a stage where what we've done is gone out and
organized the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese, and the
Russians to work with us in six-party talks with North Koreans to
basically persuade the North Koreans that their only real option is to
give up their aspirations to have nuclear weapons, and that if they
want to have normal relationships with the rest of the world, if they
want to enter into the normal kind of commercial and trading
relationships that they badly need because their economy is an absolute
disaster, then they need to make it clear that they are not going to go
down this road.
Those conversations are continuing. We don't have a date yet set
for the next round of talks, but my guess is there will be talks in the
near future, and we'll continue to push hard on it. China is important
to this, and Japan, as well -- especially China because they've got
that huge border with North Korea, and because they, more than anybody
else, have been involved in supporting and sustaining the regime in
Pyongyang, keeping them in business, basically.
But we think we're on the right course. We're trying to resolve
this diplomatically. We think that's the way to go about it. But it
is something that we've spent a lot of time on and it will be a top
priority for us going forward. And thank you for your service, sir.
(Applause.)
Somebody over here.
Q I'd like to thank you both for visiting Johnstown again. As
a local police officer and a member of the Fraternal Order of Police, I
am glad to say that the FOP is endorsing you and President Bush.
(Applause.)
Knowing that Senator Kerry misrepresents President Bush's
successful hiring of 118,000 new law enforcement officers through the
COPS grant, how will you and President Bush continue to build on the
local law enforcement?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, if you think about the whole homeland
security problem, and dealing with the threat, the nation's defenses,
if you will, against further terrorist attacks, the front line is --
really our local first responders, our police, fire and medical
personnel. If you go back and think about what happened on 9/11, the
guys who were in the trenches that day and on the front lines and most
intimately involved, and frankly, suffered the most casualties as a
result of it were the New York City police and fire departments. And I
think as we think now about how we defend the country against this new
threat, and the steps we've taken with respect to homeland security,
there has been a major effort underway to beef and provide resources
from a financial standpoint to make certain that the kind of training
that's needed is available, but also to do a much better job than we've
ever done before with respect to sharing intelligence. There's always
been a bit of a tendency at the federal level when we got intelligence
on a threat, there's a natural tendency to want to protect it.
Now, we've established -- Tom Ridge has done this -- a much more
effective process by which we actually share information and
intelligence from the federal level down to the state and local level
so that the people that are out there on the firing line know exactly
what we're dealing with and, I think, we've got it all knitted together
much better than we ever have in the past.
But we'll continue to make a major resource commitment in this
area. We've tripled the amount of money we're spending on homeland
security from 2001 to this year, 2004, over $30 billion now directly on
homeland security. And a lot of that will end up in the hands of our
first responders and local law enforcement personnel. (Applause.)
MRS. CHENEY: In response to your question, too, that as we get
down to these closing days of the campaign, and I see the President
really having momentum, and the Kerry folks not, I see a whole lot of
this going on -- complete misrepresentation of the President's record.
And two instances I wanted to just mention because they kind of make me
angry. One is trying to scare people, trying to, first of all, scare
young people by saying that if President Bush is elected, there's
somehow going to be a draft. President Bush stood 10 feet from Senator
Kerry and said that absolutely was not the case. And Senator Kerry
knows that the only people who have supported the idea of a draft are
in his party, that the Republican Party and -- (applause) -- and this
President know that the all-volunteer army is working just as well as
we could possibly hope. It has been great, and I've heard Dick talk
about this many times, a great sea change from the days when we had a
draft. It's the way our country should be defending itself. So you
see him trying to scare young people. And then you see him trying to
scare seniors. Doesn't this happen every time? It gets down to the
end, the Democrats think they're losing, and sure enough, you hear
about, well, Social Security is going to go away. Again, the President
has said time and again, and is absolutely committed to the idea that
we made a promise to people who are on Social Security, we're going to
keep that promise. Social Security will be there for them and for
those close to retirement age. (Applause.) And just one more
sentence, and the President is also going to work to see that maybe it
will be there for our kids by establishing personal savings accounts
that will part of their lives. So my point -- thank you, Dick.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, all right. (Applause.)
MODERATOR: Excuse me, Mr. Vice President. We only have time for
one more question, so the next one will be the final question.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, thanks, Bill. Number one.
Q John Kerry claims to have a plan to add programs and to
reform Medicare and health care. But he also says that he's only going
to tax the wealthy and not small businesses, and not the people of
America. But to me it seems like there's a tax gap, and that you can't
get all that money just from the wealthy no matter how much you tax
them. Is that plan feasible? Or is it just the wishful thinking of
the most liberal senator in Congress? (Laughter and applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: How would you like to travel with me for the
next two weeks? (Laughter and applause.)
No, I think you're absolutely right. I think if you add up the
proposals and try to assess -- take him at his own word, in terms of
wanting to do a couple of things -- one, he wants to tax only the rich,
only those over 200,000. And secondly, he wants to cut the deficit in
half. Third, he wants -- he's got about $2.25 trillion worth of new
spending in terms of the proposals he's making with respect, especially
for example, in the health care area. It just doesn't add up. His
budget is about a page or two pages long. The President has got a
budget up there that he's had to submit to the Congress. It's a
thousand pages long. We lay it all out in great detail, what we'll do
program by program. We're doing this now -- it's because we're the
incumbents. We submitted that budget back in January, February to the
Congress. It's now being debated in the Congress. Some of the
appropriations bills have passed; others will be acted upon right after
the election. There's a clear difference there in terms of both what
we would recommend, but also the fact that the numbers are there, the
proposals are there, the work has been done, it's all there for anybody
who wants to look at it from the standpoint of the administration. And
John Kerry has got another plan. Somebody said the other day -- I
guess, it was the President in the debate said, a plan is not a litany
of complaints. I thought that was a pretty good argument. (Applause.)
We don't think it will add up. And again, if you look at the
Senator's record in the United States for 20 years, he had an
opportunity to vote on all these things, he voted 277 times to bust the
caps on spending that he now claims he's for, and that he would put in
place in order to reduce the overall size of the deficit. So,
obviously, I don't think that much of his plan. Some people would say
I'm -- yes, whatever it is -- some people would say I'm maybe not an
objective source. I think I am. But I think, again, it's the basic
fundamental question here of the Senator having tried very hard, both
on the domestic side, but also especially on the national security
side, to obscure a 20-year record. There is a reason why the National
Journal, which is a nonpartisan, independent publication in Washington,
does the most thorough research on people's congressional records of
just about any publication in the nation. They print these ratings
every Congress. They used to rate me when I was there. You can go
back and look at my ratings. And in fact, they concluded that John
Kerry was the most liberal member of the United States Senate. And
another way to look at it is, it took a John Kerry to make Ted Kennedy
the most conservative senator from Massachusetts. (Laughter and
applause.) But that's the record.
And I think we've got in George Bush, as I say, this is a man I've
gotten to know very well. I've been proud to serve alongside him.
When he first asked me to take this job, I was in the private sector
and had not great desire to return to government. And then I worked
with him and watched him, and he finally persuaded me that I was the
guy he wanted for the job. And, boy, I don't regret it for a minute.
It has been the experience of my life. (Applause.)
But he's done a superb job under extraordinarily difficult
circumstances. I think that it's not just a question of earning four
more years. It's not -- you don't get voted into office because the
voters owe us something. I think what you do is you look at the record
that George Bush has established in the last four years, and you look
at the record that John Kerry has established, and it's not a close
call in terms of who you want as Commander-in-Chief and addressing the
biggest issues of the day.
This is the President who went to Washington and said he'd work to
reform Medicare, and he has. And 15 months from now, 40 million
American seniors will have access for the first time through Medicare
to prescription drugs.
He went to Washington and said he was deeply concerned about our
public schools, and our education system. And his first legislation he
introduced was HR 1 No Child Left Behind, and he has. He's done. He's
put it on the books. He got the piece of work done.
He's done more with respect to tax policy than any President in at
least 20 years, and the American people today are better able to keep
more of what they earn, rather than send it off to Washington. And
they do a better job. They make better decisions with it. And we've
seen significant economic recovery as the result. And of course,
obviously, he's been, I think, exactly the leader we needed to meet
this challenge of the global war on terror that is going to be a
dominate feature of our lives for some considerable period of time to
come.
So we appreciate your support, thank you very much for being here.
(Applause.)
END 2:33 P.M. EDT
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