THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thanks
for that warm welcome. It's great to be back in
Pittsburgh. Never did I think I'd come back and say, America
is under attack. Never did I dream I'd come back to this
beautiful city and say, we've got to be on alert. But here I
am and that's what I'm saying.
I walk into the Oval Office every morning. And, by the
way, walking into the Oval Office is a fabulous
experience. (Laughter.) It's -- I can't tell you
what an honor it is. It is -- it's great. It is a
beautiful office. I get there early in the
morning. Spot, the dog, goes with
me. (Laughter.) I don't let Barney
go. Got a brand new rug, so he doesn't get to
go. (Laughter.)
But I sit at this magnificent desk. It's a desk that was
used by President Roosevelt and President Kennedy and President
Reagan. And I read threats to the United States of
America. Every morning, I'm reminded that my most important
job is to make our country secure; is to protect the homeland of the
United States of America. And that's what I want to talk to
you all about today -- how best to protect the homeland.
The best way to start to do so is to pick a good general, somebody
who knows how to organize, somebody who's tough, somebody who's smart,
and somebody who can articulate the issues we face. And I
found a good one right here in Pennsylvania in your former
governor. (Applause.)
I've also got a great team, a wonderful team of Americans who are
there to serve something greater than their own
self-interests. Not only do I have a great foreign policy
team, I've got a wonderful domestic policy team. And one of
the key members of that team is a former governor, friend of mine, who
is doing a fabulous job, and that's Tommy Thompson of Health and Human
Services. (Applause.)
I'm sorry your current governor couldn't be here, but he's giving
his budget address. I completely understand why he's not
here. But I also want to thank him publicly for his work in
coordinating the anti-terrorist activities of the state of Pennsylvania
-- the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania -- with the federal
government. He's doing a fine job, and you need to be proud
of his efforts and his desire to make Pennsylvania as safe a place as
possible. (Applause.)
I also want to thank two members of the United States Congress who
are here, one Democrat, Mike Doyle; one Republican, Melissa
Hart. The reason I bring them up with their party
affiliations is there is no difference, as far as I can tell, in
Washington, D.C. about love for country. You don't have to
be a Republican to love the country, or a Democrat to love the country;
we all love our country. And one of the healthy things that
I think is beginning to happen in Washington, D.C. is we're beginning
to recognize that it's time to put aside partisan differences and focus
on what's best for America and do what's right for our
citizens. (Applause.) So I want to welcome you
both here. Thank you.
I also want to thank those who have briefed us on some of the
innovative work that is going on here at the University of Pittsburgh,
as well as with Carnegie Mellon -- Mike Wagner and Andrew
Moore. They gave us a fascinating program I'm going to
explain briefly in a second. I appreciate D.A. Henderson,
the Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness, who has
traveled from Washington with us. D.A., where are
you? Thank you for coming, D.A.
D.A.'s got a big job. His job is to take some of the
interesting things that have been developed in places such as
Pittsburgh and make sure they're duplicated around the country, make
sure others go to school on what you've done at this school, so that
America is safe as it can possibly be.
I also want to welcome Tony Fauci here of the NIH. Tony,
thank you for coming. Tony does a fabulous job at the
NIH. He represents a very important part of the research and
develop arm of the United States. We've significantly
boosted the NIH budget, not only to help fight the war against terror,
but also to help fight the war against disease. And I'm
proud of the efforts of our NIH folks. And thanks for
coming, Tony. (Applause.)
I want to thank Mark Nordenberg for letting us come. It
kind of strains the resources when the President shows up. I
fully understand. But thanks, Mark, for letting us use your
beautiful campus, and Jared Cohon, as well, from Carnegie
Mellon. Thank you for greeting us and briefing us
today. And Arthur Levine, I want to thank you, as
well. You did a fine job of explaining what's going
on. And I look forward to kind of sharing some of that with
the American people.
Homeland defense takes many forms. One, of course, is to
secure our borders, to make sure we understand who's coming in and out
of our country. Part of making sure America's safe is to
have as good information as possible about what takes place in our
ports of entry. That's why I spent a little time in Maine
the other day, talking about how we're going to boost the presence of
the Coast Guard, for example, to make sure our border and our homeland
is as secure as possible.
Part of having a secure homeland is to have a good airport system,
that's safe for people to travel; an airport system that is inspecting
bags by inspectors who are qualified to inspect bags. Part
of a homeland defense is to have good intelligence sharing between the
federal, the state and the local level. Part of homeland
security is to have a first responders mechanism that's modern and
current. And part of homeland security is to be prepared to
fight any kind of war against bio-terror.
And that's what I want to spend some time talking about
today. Some of us remember that back in the '50s we had what
was called the DEW line on the Arctic Circle, to warn us if enemy
bombers were coming over the North Pole to attack
America. Well, here in Pittsburgh, I had the honor of seeing
a demonstration of the modern DEW line, a Real-time Outbreak and
Disease Surveillance system, developed right here, which is one of the
country's leading centers on monitoring biological threats.
What we saw was how to take real -- data on a real-time basis to
determine if there was an outbreak of any kind, including a terrorist
attack. The best way to protect the homeland is to
understand what's taking place on the homeland so we can
respond. And so the modern-day DEW line to me was
fascinating. And I appreciate those who have worked so hard
to come up with an incredibly useful tool for America, a useful tool to
protect ourselves.
I also appreciate the fact that the University of Pittsburgh and
Carnegie Mellon Institute launched what's called a biomedical security
institute to help protect the nation in all ways from the insidious
biological attack.
You know, I've come to realize -- having spent some time in
Pittsburgh and particularly hearing the briefings today, that while
Pittsburgh used to be called "Steel Town," you need to call it
"Knowledge Town." (Applause.) There's a lot of
smart people in this town. And I'm proud to report to my
fellow citizens, they're working in a way to make America
safe. A lot of money, obviously, comes from the state
government for that. We are grateful. But the
federal government has a role to play, as well.
I'm proud to say the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services all
provide financial support to the Biomedical Security
Institute. But, as you can tell from reading the papers and
tell from my -- hopefully, if you listened to my State of the Union
address, I have made the homeland security a top budget priority and I
asked Congress to respond in a positive way to this request.
For example, we're asking for $1.6 billion. This is
additional money for state and local governments to help hospitals and
others improve their ability to cope with any bio-terror
attack. One, it's important to be able to recognize what's
happening; and, secondly, we've got to respond, respond in a modern
way, a way that will help the American people survive any attack if it
were to come.
I want to make sure that each region around the country has the
proper equipment and the right amount of medicine for the victims of
any attack, should it occur. We've got to upgrade our
communications, not only between the federal government and the state
government, but between state governments and local communities, and
between counties and local jurisdictions. We've got to be
able to talk to each other better, so that there's real time
communications, so that we can share information in a
crisis. Information-sharing will help save
lives. And so part of the money is to bring our systems up
to speed, to make them more modern and more responsive.
The budget also adds $2.4 billion to develop new test protocols and
new treatments for bio-terror weapons. We were able to save
lives during the anthrax outbreak, but some infections were identified
too late, and some people were too badly infected to
save. We must do everything in our power, everything to
protect our fellow Americans. We need better testing, better
vaccines, and better drugs if America is going to be as safe as it can
possibly be.
And there's some hopeful news. Scientists tell us that
research we do to fight bioterrorism is likely to deliver great new
advances in the treatment of many other diseases, such as tuberculosis,
pneumonia, malaria and HIV/AIDS. The monies we spend to
protect America today are likely to yield long-term benefits, are
likely to provide some incredible cures to diseases that many years ago
never thought would be cured. It's an investment that will
pay off not only for better security, but for better
health. And I ask Congress to support me on spending this
money.
We're also going to expand our nation's stockpile of antibiotics
and vaccines. We're going to have more of these important
antibiotics and vaccines readily available. By the end of
the current fiscal year, we'll have enough antibiotics on hand to treat
up to 20 million people for anthrax, plague and other bio-terrorist
diseases. We're preparing for the worst.
We'll provide funds to states to make sure they can distribute
medicines swiftly. And we're also going to expand our
bio-terror intelligence service. During the Korean War, we
created what was called an Epidemic Intelligence Service to help defend
America if any of our Cold War enemies tried to use bio-weapons against
us. Now we need to adapt the EIS to a new era and to a new
mission. We'll make the commitment to expand and modernize
the service, and to work with scientists in this country and friendly
nations around the world.
All in all, my budget will commit almost $6 billion to defend
ourselves against bioterrorism -- as Tom mentioned, an increase of over
300 percent. It's money that we've got to
spend. It's money that will have good impact on the
country. It's money that will enable me to say that we're
doing everything we can to protect America at home.
But I want to remind you all, the surest way to protect America at
home is to find the enemy where it hides and bring them to
justice. The surest way to protect America is to unleash the
mighty arm of our United States military, and find the killers,
wherever they hide, and rout them out, and bring them to
justice. (Applause.)
History has called us into action, here at home and
internationally. We've been given a chance to lead, and
we're going to seize the moment in this country. As we've
mentioned more than once, what we do here at home is going to have
lasting impact for a long time. And I want to tell you what
we're doing abroad is going to have lasting impact, as well.
I view this as an opportunity to secure the peace for a long time
coming. I view this as a struggle of tyranny versus freedom,
of evil versus good. And there's no in between, as far as
I'm concerned. Either you're with us, or you're against
us. Either you stand for a peaceful world for our children
and our grandchildren, either you're willing to defend freedom to its
core, or you're going to be against the mighty United States of
America.
I truly believe that by leading the world, by rallying a vast
coalition, by holding people accountable for murderous deeds, the world
will be a more peaceful place for our children and our
grandchildren. (Applause.)
And I'm proud to report this country understands what I just
said. We are patient; we're deliberate. Oh, I
know the news media likes to say, where's Osama bin
Laden? He's not the issue. The issue is
international terror. I like our chances against bin Laden,
however. (Laughter.) There's no cave deep enough
for him to hide. He can run, and he thinks he can hide, but
we're not going to give up until he and every other potential killer,
and every other body who hates freedom will be brought to justice.
You know, the enemy hit us, and they said, oh, this great country
is going to wilt. They're not great, they're
weak. I like to needle them by saying, they must have been
watching too much daytime TV. (Laughter.) They
got the wrong impression of America, because quite the opposite is
happening. We're unified; we're focused; we are deliberate;
we're patient. We're certain of our values, and sure of the
need to defend freedom. And for that, the enemy is going to
pay a serious price.
You know, I'm asked all the time here at home, what can I do to
help. Well, when I look out and see the docs, every day you
show up for work, you're helping, by helping develop some antibiotic,
or perhaps helping some poor person who can't afford health care.
The reason I bring that up is because I think the way to fight off
evil is to do some acts of goodness. See, the great strength
of the country is the hearts and souls of our fellow
Americans. And the best way to declare our position, the
best way to make our position known to the world, is through what I
like to call the gathering momentum of millions of acts of kindness and
compassion and decency; acts of compassion and decency which take place
on a daily basis, in all kinds of ways.
People say, how can I help? Well, just walk across the
street and tell a shut-in you love her, and what can you do to visit to
make her day complete? Or how about mentoring a child in a
school, and teaching that child how to read? Maybe if you're
interested in helping fight the war on terror you should become a
mentor to a child whose mother or dad may be in prison, so that child
can have somebody put their arm around them, and say, I love
you. In America, it belongs just as much to you, as it does
to me.
Now, there's all kinds of ways to join this war against
terror. And it starts by Americans leading with their
heart. There's no doubt in my mind we'll make the right
decisions here at home. There is no doubt in my mind that
the United States will prevail in the war of terror. And
there's no doubt in my mind that out of the incredible evil that was
done, great goodness will come, and America will be better off for it.