For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
August 12, 2004
Vice President's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting with Mrs. Cheney
John Q. Hammons Convention Center
Joplin, Missouri
August 11, 2004
12:30 P.M. CDT
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Well, thank you very
much, Lynne. We're delighted to be here this morning, and have an
opportunity to spend some time with all of you in southwestern
Missouri. Roy Blunt is a great friend of mine. We work very closely
together. He does a superb job, I know, for all of you as your
congressman, and a great job as Majority Leader in the House.
(Applause.) Might I add that Kit Bond is no slouch either as United
States senator. (Applause.)
The fact is that was a very impressive red dress. (Laughter.) But
I often explain to people that Lynne and I got married because Dwight
Eisenhower got elected President of the United States in 1952. It's a
stretch to think that presidential elections have those kinds of
consequences. But in 1952, I lived with my folks in Lincoln,
Nebraska. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower
got elected, reorganized the Agriculture Department, and Dad got
transferred to Casper, Wyoming -- which is where I met Lynne, and
that's the famous red dress. And we grew up together and went to high
school together, and we'll mark our 40th wedding anniversary in about
two weeks. (Applause.) But I explained to a group the other night if
it hadn't been for Dwight 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.)
But I don't know how many of you watched program out of Boston here
a couple weeks ago. They had a political do up there that some of us
watched. And it's official now -- I have an opponent. (Laughter.) I
really do have an opponent. I heard my daughter's smart remark as she
introduced me. And people keep telling me, they say, John Edwards got
selected to be Vice President because he's sexy, charming, has great
hair. And I said, "How do you think I got the job?" (Laughter and
applause.)
What we'd like to do this morning -- I've got a few remarks I'd
like to share with all of you. And then we'd like to open it up to
questions, have a chance to respond to your concerns. Lynne is here
with me to respond to questions, as well, too. As I say, this is a
somewhat experimental format. We've done several town hall meetings,
but this is the first time that we've tried to do one together. So we
are experimenting, so we think it might be interesting.
MS. CHENEY: It's a test of our marriage. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It is a test. (Laughter.) But what I'd like
to do is just take a minute and talk about the enormous stakes in terms
of the decision we're going to make on November 2nd. Because the --
I've been involved in politics, I guess, off and on now for over 30
years. And I can't think of a more important election during my
lifetime in terms of the decision we're going to make about where we go
as a nation, especially with respect to our national security policy.
We're in a situation now where if you think about it -- and I find
it useful to go back and reflect on where we were on January 20th, of
2001, the day the President and I were sworn in, and what the world was
like then, and what has transpired since. It helps put in perspective,
and I think poses for us some of the issues that we will be deciding
when we go to the polls and decide who is going to be President for the
next four years -- and even bigger than that, I think who is going to
set the course for the nation maybe for the next half century -- very,
very important decision we're about to make.
If you reflect back on January 20th, of 2001, when we were sworn in
that day, the planning for the attack of 9/11 was already well
underway. Most of the terrorists had already been recruited. Many of
them had been through the training camps in Afghanistan, where they
trained to kill Americans. Some of them were already in the United
States. They'd raised the money. They'd been planning that attack
since 1996, five years before. It took them that long to get all the
pieces put together. But they're very patient. They're absolutely
lethal, and once they put their mind on a target like that, they
operated according to their timetable, not ours or anybody else's. But
all the planning for 9/11 was well underway.
We also had a situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban had taken
over, and had turned Afghanistan into a training camp for terrorists,
into a safe haven for terrorists -- specifically for the al Qaeda
organization. So there were thousands of them there, including Osama
bin Laden, the leader. And they had turned out sometime in the late
'90s, between 1997 and about 2000, they'd trained -- 20,000 terrorists
had gone through those camps, and then spread back out around the world
to some 60 different countries, including here in the United States,
where they set up terror cells.
In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was in power. He'd started two wars. He
had provided safe haven and sanctuary for terrorists for many, many
years. He was paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. He
provided a home for al Qaeda, and for Abu Nidal. He had generally been
-- he'd also obviously developed and used weapons of mass destruction
in the past, both against the Iraqis and the Iranians.
And we had a couple of other developments in that part of the world
that were not public at the time that were very important. The A.Q.
Khan network was in business. Mr. Khan was a Pakistani, a man who had
acquired and then developed the technology to develop nuclear weapons.
He knew how to acquire the uranium feedstock, to design the centrifuges
to enrich the uranium, and he had a weapons design. And he had, in
fact, been the father of the Pakistan nuclear program. And once he
completed that task, he had diverted this whole network to his own
purposes. And he was selling nuclear weapons technology to North
Korea, to Iran, and to Libya.
Moammar Ghadafi in Libya was spending millions of dollars to
acquire this capability and was well on his way. Once that whole
process had been completed, he would have been in possession then of
nuclear weapons. He wasn't there yet, but he was working on it.
We also had a situation in the fact that the terrorists had learned
two unfortunate lessons, if you will, at our expense in the prior
period of time before we were sworn in. They'd learned, first of all,
that they could strike at the United States with relative impunity --
because they had, repeatedly. And the best response we usually came up
with was to treat each attack as some kind of criminal enterprise.
We'd go after the individuals who'd launched the attack. Sometimes
we'd catch them, put them in prison. But we never really reached
behind the individuals to look at the networks that had undertaken
these attacks.
Of course, we'd been hit in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, when we lost
241 Marines, when they blew up the barracks; 1993, first attack on the
World Trade Center; 1996, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; 1998, the East
Africa Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; 2000, the USS Cole -- a
whole sequence of attacks, most of which had gone unanswered, or the
answer had been a law enforcement response. Once we fired off a few
cruise missiles at a training camp in Afghanistan. But from the
standpoint of the terrorists, they could strike us, and there was no
real penalty to be paid.
And the second lesson they'd learned was that if they hit us hard
enough, they could change or policy -- because they had. After we got
hit in Lebanon in 1983, in relatively short order we pulled out of
Lebanon completely. In 1993, in Mogadishu -- there, they killed 19 of
our soldiers, and within a matter of weeks, we'd withdrawn all of our
forces from Somalia. And so those two lessons -- if you hit the U.S.,
and you won't be struck in return; and if you hit the U.S., and you can
change U.S. policy if you do it -- and that was sort of the set of
circumstances that were out there when we were sworn in.
And then the attack of 9/11 came, and, of course, it changed
everything. I think everybody came to realize at that moment that we
were, in fact, at war -- that we'd been at war for some time. Our
enemies knew it; we didn't. We hadn't really as a nation come to grips
with that basic fundamental proposition.
But 9/11 changed everything in the sense that it forced us to think
anew about our enemies, about who our enemies were, about the kind of
threat we faced as a nation, about what kind of strategy we needed to
pursue to be able to safeguard our nation from those attacks. The
President made a very basic, fundamental decision that very first night
after the attacks. And that was that henceforth, we would hold
accountable those -- not only the terrorists, but also those who
supported terror. If a state or a government provided safe harbor or
sanctuary, or financing, or training or weapons to a terrorist
organization, they would be deemed just as guilty of the terrorist act
as the terrorists themselves.
And the first place we put that principle to test was in
Afghanistan. We went into Afghanistan, and in a matter of weeks, we
took down the Taliban government, captured or killed hundreds of al
Qaeda, put Osama bin Laden on the run. We haven't captured him yet,
but we haven't given up. And we will get him eventually, I'm
convinced. We closed all the training camps where they've trained, as
I say, some 20,000 terrorists to kill Americans and others.
And subsequent to that, we, of course, now -- they've stood up an
interim government. They have a President in place. They've got a
constitution. They'll hold free elections later this fall. Schools
are open. And the economy is beginning to thrive. Young girls can go
to school now -- something they weren't able to do before -- a pretty
significant transition, a lot of work to be done yet.
In Iraq, we went into Iraq obviously very aggressively, took down
the government. Saddam Hussein today is in jail, exactly where he
belongs. (Applause.) But his sons are dead. His government is out of
business. He's no longer in a position to be able to threaten
anybody. And we've still got an awful lot of work to do in Iraq. I
don't want to underestimate the difficulty of the task. Nobody
should. We're going to be involved there for some considerable period
of time.
But we've got a good man in Prime Minister Allawi, who's taken
over. The Iraqis now are running all of the government ministries.
We're standing up Iraqi security forces and training and equipping them
so that they'll soon be able to move in, take over more and more
responsibility to provide for their own security. They also have a
constitutional process now set up. They'll hold elections next
January. They're on their way, as well, to establishing a
self-governing administration, if you will, in Iraq that will never
again be a threat to its neighbors or to the United States -- a very,
very important piece of business.
As we went through this process, Moammar Ghadafi in Libya watched
what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then five days after we
captured Saddam Hussein, he went public and announced he was going to
give up all of his aspirations to have weapons of mass destruction.
And he did. (Applause.) And all of that material today, the weapons
designs, the uranium feedstock, the enrichment machinery and so forth
is all now under lock and key over at Oak Ridge, in Tennessee, where it
ought to be -- safe and never again be put to that use.
Mr. Khan, the man who ran the suppliers' network is under house
arrest in Pakistan. His suppliers' network is closed down. The worse
source of proliferation of nuclear weapons technology that we've ever
seen is now out of business. He's not going to sell anything to
anybody. (Applause.)
All of that is what we've been able to accomplish over the last
three-and-a-half years. But it's very important for people to
understand that this is perhaps the end of the beginning, but we have a
very long way to go. This is a threat that we're going to have to deal
with probably for our lifetime. It's not like any war we've ever been
engaged with before. When you think about World War II, and the length
of time we were actually engaged from Pearl Harbor in December of 1941,
till Germany surrendered in May of '45, or Japan in September of '45,
those were relatively brief conflicts. The worst conflicts in our
history, but relatively there was a beginning, there was a middle, and
there was an end, and then the war was over with. This is a situation
in which it's a very different enemy -- when you think about their
motives, what they're trying to do. They're obviously trying to impose
their very radical extremist ideology on everybody else. They have no
tolerance for democracy. They have no tolerance for other views with
respect to people who want to pursue a different religious faith, for
example. They are perfectly prepared to kill anybody who stands in
their way.
They are also prepared to use weapons of mass destruction if they
can ever get their hands on them. And the worst proposition we face
today by way of a threat is the possibility of an al Qaeda cell in the
middle of one of our own cities with a biological agent, like smallpox,
maybe, or a nuclear weapon of some kind that they would be prepared to
detonate. And there's nothing to restrain them. There's no reason why
they wouldn't use that kind of capability once they get their hands on
it.
Our old strategies from the Cold War worked great against the
Soviets, but the whole concept of deterrence means nothing when you're
talking about an al Qaeda terrorist who is prepared to die for Allah,
and whose purpose here is to take as many people with him as he
possibly can -- primarily Americans. That's the kind of adversary
we're faced with here for the foreseeable future. It doesn't take
large numbers of them. Nineteen hijackers, we saw what they could do
on 9/11 when they killed 3,000 of our people in a couple of hours on a
beautiful September morning without any provocation whatsoever.
Part of the debate that we'll be dealing with this years is over
this question of when is it appropriate to use U.S. military force,
when are we justified in moving aggressively against a sponsor of
terror, or a group of terrorists, or of taking military action, if
that's what is called for, in order to defend the United States.
There are those who believe we should never be preemptive, that we
should never take that first step. But when you consider the threat,
when you consider the consequences of failing to deal with the threat
might, in fact, be the destruction of one of our own cities, then I
think it begins to put things in perspective -- that it's absolutely
essential to do exactly what the President has done, which is to say
that United States will not wait for the next attack. We're not going
to stand by and let somebody take a shot at us before we respond.
We've put them on notice now that if you have aspirations to hit the
U.S., you will be struck. (Applause.)
Another element of the debate is that John Kerry spends a lot of
time running around saying, well -- well, he's said several different
things. (Laughter.) But most recently that -- he now decides that the
vote that he cast to go to war probably was the right vote after all,
but he would have done it differently, that we should have done more to
seek allies, to get the approval of the United Nations and so forth.
Well, remember what we did do -- we had 30 nations fighting alongside
us in Iraq. It's not as though we didn't go with our allies, we did.
We also went to the United Nations and said, look, Saddam Hussein has
been jerking the U.N. around for 12 years, consistently violating U.N.
Security Council resolutions, we need to hold him accountable -- got a
unanimous resolution out of the Security Council. But we refused to be
blocked when push came to shove and we had to make a decision.
In other words, this President made a basic fundamental decision
that he's not going to seek a permission slip from anybody when the
question is whether or not you defend the nation. (Applause.) Now,
George Bush believes that with every fiber of his being. You do
everything you can to organize allies, and we've done that -- and to be
actively and aggressively involved, using all the international
mechanisms that are out there. But in the final analysis, the
President of the United States is the one who has to make those tough
calls, who has to make those life-and-death decisions for all the rest
of us. That's why he gets paid the big bucks and lives in that fancy
house in Washington. (Laughter.) Very, very, very important
responsibility -- and we don't want to turn that responsibility over to
somebody who doesn't have deeply held convictions about right and
wrong. (Applause.)
And I must say I look at the record of our opponents, we can talk
about that more if anybody is interested, but there's a lot of
hesitation and uncertainty. John Kerry is a man who voted against the
resolution to use force back in 1991, when the issue was whether or not
we'd kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait. He voted no on that. This time
around, of course, he voted for committing the troops, and using the
force, and then a few months later, when the question was the $87
billion that they needed once they were in the field, in order to buy a
lot of the equipment and ammunition, spare parts and so forth, he voted
no. And there were only four members of the United States Senate who
voted to commit the force and then voted against supporting the force
once they were there -- two of those four members were John Kerry and
John Edwards. I don't think that's an acceptable pattern of behavior,
in my view, for someone who would be President of the United States. I
think that it's fundamentally wrong to vote to commit the force and
then not give them the resources they need once they're in combat.
(Applause.)
Finally, what we need is somebody who's got absolute steady
character, who understands the big picture and is willing to make those
tough decisions when they have to be made. We need somebody who will
support the troops 100 percent, and that's exactly what we've got in
George Bush. (Applause.)
So with that, why don't I stop and say we'd be happy to entertain
some questions. We got some people in the audience with microphones.
And if you raise your hand, they'll come by and give you a mike so we
can respond to your concerns or comments, or advice. I can take it
right to the top. (Laughter.) So we have somebody over here?
Q Can you hear me?
MRS. CHENEY: Yes.
Q Welcome back to Joplin. Hope you come back again before
November and bring W with you. (Applause.)
Everyone is concerned about the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, et
cetera, so I'm going to kind of ask you a different question concerning
education, which is also an issue with the President and you. About
the voucher program, why are so many people apparently against this
idea?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm going to throw this to Lynne in a
second here because she's the education expert in our family. She's
spent a lot of time on the subject. I think a lot of people are
concerned about it because it does represent fundamental change. And
with respect to how we proceed in terms of trying to reform our
educational system, the President believed very deeply when he arrived
in Washington that he wanted to push education as his number one
priority. And he did. That was the first legislation that we
introduced. It became the No Child Left Behind Act. The idea that we
would establish standards and measure results and accountability in our
school systems so that we could hold, in effect, our public school
systems accountable for their performance, and the people in them.
The debate over vouchers has been going on for a long time. I can
remember being involved back in the Nixon administration with
experimental programs that were set up in Kansas City, I believe, and
some other place in the Midwest where we actually tested that. What I
find is the people that object to that, oftentimes are concerned about
the degree of change that that might, in fact, entail for the powers
that be, if you will, in our school systems. And, frankly, I think
change is needed.
Now, we haven't taken a position on the voucher issue, per se,
yet. What we've done is push very hard on this whole nation of
establishing a basis upon which we can measure results.
Let me ask Lynne to respond further.
MRS. CHENEY: No, I think your analysis is exactly right. The
argument I would pose to those people, though, who are threatened by
the idea of change -- the question I would pose is, should any child be
forced to stay in a failing school? And the answer is no. No child
should have to stay in a failing school.
And one of the things that No Child Left Behind does is if a school
doesn't improve, the school can't improve, then kids have an
opportunity -- parents have an opportunity to send their children to a
higher achieving public school.
Dick and I supported private choice for a long time. Because we
haven't been able to make public policy out of it, a number of people
support programs that do provide kids who don't have a lot of resources
the opportunity to attend a private school. I also -- just one other
idea, the people you talk to who are opposing the idea of choice, I
would suggest this scenario, really, that it doesn't threaten the
public schools when a child leaves to go to another school, it provides
that school an impetus to improve, a reason to improve. What we know
about life is that businesses get better when there's competition. We
know about life that all sorts of projects get better if there's some
competition -- and that when there's only the status quo, there's not
that little engine of improvement. So I would argue that choice really
gives our public schools the kind of motive to improve that's really
valuable. So it's a terrific idea. The President has gone some way
forward in No Child Left Behind by making public school choice
possible.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Somebody -- where are the proctors? Here, you
got somebody right down here with a mike?
Q Mr. Vice President, to change the subject a bit, my husband
and I are farmers. And we are not rich farmers, but we own an old
family farm that's been around since 1919. We'd like to pass it on to
our grandchildren, but we don't want them to have to sell part of that
farm in order to pay the estate taxes. What's going to be around to
help us when the current law sunsets in 2010?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we made progress in the first tax bill.
We've changed the tax code, or made changes in the tax code three
different times, in '01, '02, and '03, while the President has been
there. And one of the big things we went after was the death tax. We
just think it's fundamentally unfair, somebody works all their lives,
pays tax on what they earn all their lives, puts it into a farm, or a
small business, or a ranch, and then at death, the whole thing gets
taxed all over again before somebody passes it on to the next
generation. We just think that's wrong, fundamentally unfair.
(Applause.)
So what we did in that first tax bill, we made a number of changes
-- this was one of them -- was to phase out the so-called, we call it
the death tax. Technically, it's inheritance tax. I think of it as
the death tax -- to phase it out over time. But the way the Senate
rules are written, when you do that, the provisions are sunset. That
is the provisions you adopt as part of an annual budget resolution and
tax that goes with that, 10 years down the road then you revert to
whatever law was there. So there's a problem, with respect, for
example, to the increase in the child tax credit, which we doubled;
with relief, marriage penalty relief; with the 10 percent bracket that
we set up this time around. A lot of the changes we made in the tax
code are scheduled to phase out and revert to those earlier levels over
the course of the next few years. And the Death Tax is one of those
that's affected like that. The key to solving that problem is to make
the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's the right answer. (Applause.)
And we can do that, but our opponents won't. In effect, what
they've said is they want to repeal immediately some of those tax cuts
that we've already put through. John Kerry said he wants to change a
lot of that within the first hundred days he's in office. And as I
say, we think that's wrong. I've got great sympathy for you in terms
of what happens to a family farm or a small business as a result of
getting to that point where the heirs end up having to sell it off in
order to pay the taxes on it. It's a lousy deal, and we've got a fix
in. But we've got to drive through now to the finish line and make it
permanent, not just temporary. Thank you. (Applause.)
Somebody over here.
Q Mr. Vice President, could you please comment on what the
administration might do in the next term to reduce our dependence on
foreign oil?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would be happy to talk about energy policy.
(Laughter.) It's a source of great frustration for us. The fact is
the United States is a growing economy. We've got steadily increasing
demand for more energy in order to fuel our economy. We're more
efficient about how we use it now than we were 20 years ago. We're
about -- we produce twice as much output for, say, a gallon of gas as
we did previously. But the fact of the matter is, we're still subject
to the international marketplace because we import over half of the oil
that we use in this country. And we badly need, as well, to develop
more resources. We need to invest in new technologies. We need to
look for ways to take advantage of the research, a lot of the research
that's been done, more that can be done to take advantage of our basic
sources that we've got here at home.
We've got an energy bill that we did, in fact -- we passed through
the House about three times now. We got it through the Senate in the
last session of Congress, then we went to conference, we got a
conference report approved -- that is the compromise between the
versions that went through the House and the Senate, took it back,
passed the conference report through the House. We took it to the
Senate and we failed by two votes because the Democrats filibustered
it. So instead of needing 51 votes to get it through, we needed 60
votes, and we only had 58. We needed two more votes -- John Kerry and
John Edwards, guess where they were? They weren't even there.
(Laughter.) And they were opposed to it. So we've got to find a way
-- if we had two more votes, we could do it.
Among other things, for example, it provides significant
opportunity for us to get heavily involved in ethanol and biodiesel,
use some of our renewable fuels. We've got fantastic ability to
produce that stuff in the United States. It's another way to reduce
our dependence on foreign sources of energy. And so there are a lot of
good ideas out there, but we need to keep pushing hard to get energy
legislation approved. And it will be one of our top priorities in the
next session.
Yes, back here.
Q Senator Kerry seems to like to talk about his war record and
his things that he would change, although he won't tell what he will
change. But I would like to know when and how we will hear more detail
about his Senate record so we can get to better know the real Kerry.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you've come to the right place.
(Laughter and applause.)
If you look at the convention that they ran in Boston -- I think
somebody the other day called it the "Re-invention Convention," there
was a heavy focus on Kerry's early years. And anybody who served --
any Vietnam vet deserves our respect. Anybody who has ever been a
veteran and served in the military, we have the highest regard for that
service. I don't want anybody to think to the contrary. But they left
out the next 20 years during his time in the United States Senate.
And I'll give you one example. He has taken to spending a lot of
time talking about, and pushing very aggressively on reform of the
intelligence community. Now, if he's President, by golly, he's going
to fix the intelligence community. He's going to aggressively get
after it. He went out and grabbed the recommendations of the 9/11
Commission, and full speed ahead, this is what I'm going to as
President.
But if you look at his record, when he served on the intelligence
committee, back in the '90s, a couple of things stand out. First of
all, he missed 39 out of 48 of the meetings -- had 48 major public
hearings during that period of time of with the Senate intel committee,
he didn't even show up for 39. He did introduce legislation that in
1993 would have dramatically cut the intelligence budget by over $7
billion -- this is after the first attack on the World Trade Center.
It was so far out that even Ted Kennedy voted against it. (Laughter.)
So the fact of the matter is, if you look at John Kerry's record in the
Senate -- he's certainly entitled to his view. He can vote any way he
wanted. But he's trying very hard now to make sure nobody looks very
close at how he spent those 20 years because there were 350 occasions
when voted either against tax reduction, or for tax increases. I think
he voted for the upper option always, when it came time on the question
of taxation. Three hundred and fifty times -- that's one vote for
higher taxes every three weeks for 20 years. That's the record. And
as somebody said the other day, at least the folks back home knew he
was on the job. (Laughter.)
That might have been a perfectly legitimate way to represent his
constituents in Massachusetts. They reelected him a couple of times.
But now you cannot expect -- I don't think -- that having laid out that
kind of record, having opposed, for example, most of the measures that
Ronald Reagan recommended and put in place that led us to the military
build-up that made it possible for us to win the Cold War -- a guy who
supported the nuclear freeze, a guy who voted against most of the major
weapons systems back in the 1980s -- cannot now portray himself as some
sort of tough, aggressive, pro-defense, strong on intelligence, this is
the guy we want to have lead us in the war on terror. It just doesn't
add up.
And what the convention, I thought, in Boston was all about was
trying to take his service in Vietnam, together with his comments, his
public comments since he became a candidate and use all of that to
portray himself as somebody who is capable of being Commander-in-Chief
at a very difficult time, when we're engaged with a very shrewd and a
very deadly enemy, and ignore those 20 years he spent in the Senate
when nearly every time an issue came up that might have some bearing on
that capability, he went the wrong way.
Yes, wherever the mikes are around here. You got somebody with a
microphone here?
MRS. CHENEY: The front row has --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We got people down in the front row with
questions.
Q Thank you. During your second administration as Vice
President, what are we going to do about judicial appointments on the
federal bench? I know we've got a number that are open now, and how
can we close that gap and get some people back to work as federal
judges?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that's been one of the more frustrating
developments. This is the first time in our history where we've had an
aggressive posture by one of the parties in the Senate of filibustering
judicial nominations. That hasn't been done before. They come up on a
different calendar. They have an up-or-down -- sooner or later you get
a up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate. And a majority vote was
always enough to confirm somebody. The Democrats have taken a very
different tack these last two years, since we took back the Senate, and
it has created major problems for us. We've got some very able,
talented judges -- people who would make great judges -- who have not
been allowed to even have a vote. Filibuster, in effect, blocks it.
One comes immediately to mind, we had four nominees just in the
last couple of weeks come up. One of them is a good friend of mine, a
guy named Bill Myers, from Idaho. But he used to work for a member of
the Wyoming delegation. He actually married a woman who used to work
on my congressional staff, so I know him well. He's got great
support. He's got bipartisan support. He's got probably 55, 56 votes
in the Senate for him, great experience, solicitor various places and
so forth. He was nominated for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
That's the Western circuit. That's got all those Western states on
it. It is the most frequently reversed circuit in the entire United
States. It's the one, by the way, that decided here last year that we
shouldn't be allowed to say "under God" when we say the Pledge of
Allegiance, okay? That's how far out the court is. They have
filibustered Bill to the point so that they won't even allow a vote on
him on the floor. And it sounds to me like that circuit could use some
new judges. (Applause.) That's one of the best arguments I can think
about why it's so important to reelect a guy like Kit Bond who is in
there fighting every day for the right -- (Applause.)
Q Yes, I have a question for Mrs. Cheney.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good. (Laughter.)
Q Senator Kerry has made the statement that he would like to
fight a more sensitive war on terror. What in the world he be thinking
about there? What's your thoughts?
MRS. CHENEY: I just kind of shook my head when I heard that. With
all due respect to the Senator, it just sounded so foolish. I can't
imagine that al Qaeda is going to be impressed by sensitivity.
(Laughter.)
But it did remind me of kind of this -- we've heard for a long time
from the extreme left in this country, whenever it comes to a matter of
our national interest, that somehow the problem is not with the people
who are attacking us, the problem is with us. You've heard that. And
it struck me as a kind of expression of that idea -- somehow the
problem is not with the people who are attacking us, the problem is
with us. If we'll just adjust our attitude seems to be the idea. We
just do a little mental adjustment here, things will go well. Well, I
think it just fits with what Dick is saying. This is kind of left-wing
foolishness that certainly isn't appropriate for someone who would seek
to be Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)
Q Welcome to Missouri. I'm curious what legislation and role
you feel the government will play as the gap between church and state
continues to expand, specifically when it comes to implementing moral
and ethical responsibility, specifically in business? How do you feel
the government should react?
MRS. CHENEY: I think there has to be always in our country a great
separation between church and state. One of the gifts of the founders,
Jefferson and Madison, in particular, was that separation. But
separation of church and state doesn't mean driving the churches out of
the public square. (Applause.) And I think that's one of the reasons
it's so important that the President has taken the initiative to be
sure that faith-based organizations aren't discriminated against. They
ought to have resources made available to them to help with their good
works.
As someone who is interested in education, it has always seemed
really important to me, too, that we keep the history of religion in
our schools. That's not the same as teaching kids what they should
believe. But it is the same as teaching kids that the founders of this
country really believed that Providence was watching over us, that
Providence helped guide us through the Revolutionary War, that
Providence brought us to these shores. And our kids should understand
that. They should understand the central place that God held in this
country in the beginning, and holds in the lives of so many Americans
now. (Applause.)
Q Mr. Vice President, I have a 2000 Bush-Cheney sticker. I've
recycled it today. I want to see our President and Vice President
recycled.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you -- I don't want to be
recycled. (Laughter.) I want to be reelected. (Laughter.)
Q But my question is, in view of the corruption in the United
Nations, in general, in the Oil for Food, in particularly, when are we
going to tell the United Nations to clean their house up before they
look into ours? (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The investigations that are now under way on
the Oil for Food program, I think, are going to turn up some pretty
remarkable results. What it looks like is the program that was set up
supposedly to provide relief, medical help and basic food stuff for the
Iraqi people, was, in fact, converted to a corrupt system that
generated enormous profits for Saddam Hussein himself, as well as for
some people outside who were participating in that program.
A man named Paul Volcker, who some of you may remember used to be
chairman of the Federal Reserve, at one point. I can remember him when
he was, I believe, deputy Treasury secretary -- a very able and
talented man is now in charge of the investigation to dig into the
bottom of that. And I know him well enough to have great confidence
that I think he will, in fact, do exactly that. It's something we need
to watch very carefully and make certain that there is a full and
complete airing there because it was -- I think it has been a shameful
episode in the history of the United Nations. And it's important to
clean it up if they're going to continue to want to play a central with
respect to the United States, or any other nation that it plays in the
world. So it's one to watch, and to continue to push very aggressively
on.
Back here. I feel like we've short-changed the folks on this
side.
Q Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your service to our
country. The economic recovery has generally been very strong. We
seem to have hit a little bit of a soft patch with the last jobs
report, gas prices remain kind of high. I kind of like to know what
you all's impression is for the economy, not just between now and the
election, but what you're looking to do in your second term to keep
things going.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in terms of looking at the economy and
where we are with respect to the overall performance, we feel pretty
good about things. When we were sworn in, we were already headed
towards the recession, then of course the attack of 9/11 really shook
the economy once again. And a couple of things happened, the President
pushed very aggressively on the tax program, aimed specifically at
changing that. We concluded that the best way that we could respond to
the recession was to leave more money in the hands of the people that
earned it, that American people could spend it better and more wisely
than government will. (Applause.)
And I think that's worked. I think we've seen in terms of real
growth now, we've been growing at about 4.5 percent, a little less than
5 percent over the last year in terms of real GDP, real gross domestic
product. That's one of the best rates of growth in the last 20 years.
We've added about 1.5 million new jobs on the payroll survey since last
August.
One of the things to watch here -- it has been a technical
complexity that's added to it. There are really two ways to measure
unemployment. And we collect two sets of data. The number you
referred to, the so-called payroll system, we go out to companies, and
we ask them how many people they've got employed. And they tell us,
and then we add that up, and that gives you your monthly unemployment.
That's what usually gets pegged. And that's the one that in the last
month was 32,000 in July.
There's another survey where we don't go to the businesses, we go
to households. And we ask in households how many people are employed.
It's a different approach. And the latter survey captures a lot more
than does the former, and always leads it. And for example, that month
of July when the payroll surveys showed 32,000 jobs added, the
household survey showed over 600,000 because it picks up the extent to
which people are self-employed. Lynne, for example, does very well in
terms of her own professional career and line of work, but she doesn't
work for anybody. And there's no way out there to measure her
employment, except through the household survey. If you're in business
for yourself, if you've got your own small business and so forth, you
don't get picked up by those other numbers. And there's a lag there.
And right now, there's a big gap between the household survey, which
shows very significant improvements, and the payroll survey which has
slowed down a big.
But all of the forecasts we see show that we can plan on sustained
growth going forward, that we've made major progress over the course of
the last year or so, and that there's every reason to believe it will
continue, that the rate of growth will be on the order of 3 to 4
percent next year, and that we'll continue to do everything we can,
especially focusing on tax policy. We think the heart of what we've
been able to do is tax policy. We want to make those tax cuts
permanent. That will be right at the top of our agenda going forward,
as well as deal with a number of other issues out there. Medical
liability reform is a big issue. We can find ways to make more health
care available to more people at lower cost, and to deal with lawsuit
abuse. We think there are significant problems in the litigation
area. We need a good energy policy in place because energy is a very
important component part of our economy, and we cannot have economic
success if we can't have adequate supplies of energy at reasonable
prices that people can afford to pay. (Applause.)
Q Mr. Vice President, I had a question back on terrorism. How
can America be expected to defeat terrorism when we have to fight based
on a set of rules and the terrorists don't?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, a set of rules -- maybe you can clarify
that.
Q From hiding in mosques -- we can't really attacks mosques, to
even from door-to-door, things we do over here with the ACLU and that
kind of thing on civil rights?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, that's an interesting question because
we do want to take whatever steps are necessary to be able to defeat
the terrorists. We've done such things, for example, as enact the
Patriot Act, which allows us to do a more effective job of going after,
investigating, and prosecuting terrorists. But basically, what we did
there wasn't to invent new legal tools, so much as take ones that were
already being used, for example, against drug traffickers, and apply
those over in the terrorism field. And we need to take extraordinary
steps to do everything we can to defend the country. I think we've
done that to a large extent in creating the Department of Homeland
Security. So we've done a lot of that.
The cautionary note is there's a line out there someplace that it's
hard to define, but it is a line you don't want to cross over that
would, in effect, where the government would become so onerous, so
heavy handed, would intrude so deeply in the lives of all of us, that
the terrorists would win without ever firing a shot. You don't want
that to happen either. So it calls for real judgment and balance. I
think it's important for us as we fight terror also to do as the oath
of office the President and I took when we were sworn in, support and
defend the Constitution of the United States. So you got to find your
way forward here to marshal the resources and defend the nation to take
those steps necessary to defeat the terrorists, but at the same time
not sort of lock down the country so tight that we fundamentally change
our way of life, which is, after all, one of the objectives of the
terrorists. We don't want that to happen either. And I think we can
do it. I'm an optimist about it. That doesn't mean that there won't
be tough days ahead. I think there will be. That doesn't mean there
won't be more attacks on the United States. We know they're out there
trying to get at us. It doesn't mean we won't have to be committed
with troops overseas, or that we won't take casualties.
But when I think about the obstacles and the challenges we've
overcome through our history, I think back to World War II, and what we
did as a nation. There's some people in the audience here today who
probably served, and certainly remember it, when we could marshal the
resources as a nation, and motivate the country and take on the
challenges of defeating the Nazis and the Japanese, and do it as
effectively as we did, there's every reason to be optimistic here, as
well, too. I think the fundamental strength of this nation, our basic
values, the principles we live by, the strength of our institutions,
the tremendous capabilities of the United States military, the fact
that we've got so many folks out there who are willing to step up and
take on major responsibilities both here at home and overseas, all of
those things give me cause for hope and optimism that this is a battle
we can win. (Applause.)
Q Welcome to Missouri. And I thank you for your time. My
question is, come November 3rd, and I'm going to be an optimist right
along with you, come November 3rd and for the next four years, what is
your plan on stem cell research and for the sanctity of life?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we will continue -- I think the
President has got a policy on stem cell research that he devoted an
enormous amount of time to. This is a subject he really grappled with,
consulted with experts on all sides of the issue to arrive at the
policy that's now in place. We think it is a sound one, both from the
standpoint of medical science, as well as from the standpoint of moral
values. The President believes very deeply that we stand for a culture
of life. He was very proud to sign, for example, the ban on partial
birth abortion -- thought that was a very important piece of
legislation. (Applause.) So I don't think there should be any doubt
in anybody's mind about where he's headed with respect to those kinds
of issues. He's been rock solid on it.
Okay, we got somebody. Go ahead.
Q Mr. Vice President, I just want to let you know that fellow
Missourians are praying for the election. And we know who is in
control. And just let Brother Ashcroft know that his fellow
Missourians are praying with you guys.
And my question is, we're owner-operators. And this is a heavily
trucking industry area, and the fuel obviously is going to be -- is a
stretch for us. Is there any hope? What can we look forward to as far
as the prices coming down on that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the things we need to try to do -- in
addition to try to produce more here at home. We've got problems with
our refinery capacity. We're running flat out on our refineries. One
of the things we recommended when the President got me involved early
on in terms of putting together an energy policy was to modify our new
source review regulations over at the Environmental Protection Agency
so that it would be easier to expand existing refineries.
We're in a situation today where you look at basic fuels, we've got
some 51 different blends that are required various places around the
country because of our local air quality requirements. So what you do
for St. Louis is different than what you do for Kansas City, is
different than Chicago, different than Denver. And as I say, we got
some 51 different blends that have to be manufactured. We haven't
built a new refinery in this country in many, many a year because it's
so hard to get it permitted. And so again, we're right up against the
limits there in terms of the amount of refined product that's available
especially for our transportation sector.
We will continue to push on the new source review idea. We got the
change made in the regulations now. It's tied up in court. Some
groups who didn't want us to make the change we wanted to make have
taken it to court. And that should get resolved within the next --
hopefully within the next few months. And that may help some. But
it's going to be a continuing problem for us until we find ways to get
more product into the U.S. economy to meet those requirements at a
reasonable price. And I know when you start to pay -- I can't imagine
what it is to fill up one of those big rigs, but it's got to be a lot.
And it's affecting everybody.
MRS. CHENEY: Dick, I just got a signal, we can only have one more
question.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, you get to answer it. (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: I like this lady in the cute, colored sweater.
(Laughter.)
Q (Inaudible).
MRS. CHENEY: Do I still have the red dress? (Laughter.) Oh, my,
no, but do I wish I did. (Laughter and applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We want to thank all of you for being here
this morning. We really appreciate your turning out and taking the
time to come spend a few moments with us. Again, as I say, this is an
extraordinarily important election. We're going to make some decisions
here that our kids and grandkids are going to live with, and very
important that we get it right. I think it takes on the kind of
significance, if you will, the kinds of decisions we had to make after
World War II, as we got into the Cold War, and we had to create a
Defense Department, and NATO, and when we first created the CIA -- a
whole series of fundamental decisions that were made and then were
pursued by successive administrations because it was a vital part of
our security, and it worked. In the final analysis, we prevailed in
the Cold War, and the Soviet Union is no more. As I say, and I'm an
optimist, there's no reason in the world why with the right kind of
leadership and the right kind of commitment and dedication from the
American people we cannot, indeed, prevail in this conflict just as we
have in every other.
So thank you very much for being here. (Applause.)
END 1:25 P.M. CDT
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