For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 23, 2001
Remarks by the President to the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce Meeting
Merrill Auditorium Portland, Maine
12:18 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Man, Governor, you
fired them up. (Laughter.) I appreciate so very
much, Governor, your being here. I know the good people of
this state appreciate how you conduct yourself in
office. (Applause.)
Like your
predecessor, my friend Jock McKernan, you brought a lot of class to
your State House. I love your style and I really appreciate
your focus, because you care about the people of this
state. You care deeply about the citizens of
Maine. And it's clear the citizens of Maine appreciate your
care for them. So thank you so much for being here.
(Applause.)
Rick, thanks for inviting
me. (Laughter.) Where's the wild man?
(Laughter.) Wild lady. Thank you all for coming
today. It's an honor to be here, and it's an honor to be
your President. (Applause.) It's an honor to be
traveling with members of the congressional delegation. I
had the privilege of flying from Washington to Portland with your
Congressman, Tom Allen. I don't know Congressman Allen
well. I know he's a smart man -- maybe a little smarter if
he comes around my way more often. (Laughter and applause.)
But I respect Tom's intellect and I respect
his service to the people of Maine. Thank you very much,
Congressman, for being here. (Applause.)
And you've got two fantastic United States
Senators. (Applause.) Olympia and Susan are smart, capable
women who aren't afraid to speak their mind, even to the people of the
United States. (Laughter.) As a matter of fact,
I'm beginning to believe they're not afraid to speak their mind
especially to the President of the United
States. (Laughter.) But they care about their
state, they care about their country. I view them as strong
allies and good friends. Thank you very much, both, for
being here. (Applause.)
And then of course,
there's your Mayor. Madame Mayor, I don't know why it is
every time I see you I feel like smiling. But I appreciate
your friendship. Thanks so much for being
here. (Applause.)
Most of the time
when I come to this beautiful state, you don't have to cross-country
ski to get into the auditorium. (Laughter.) But
I've got, obviously, fond memories of this beautiful
state. I'm hoping my mother invites me back this
summer. I'd better make sure I behave. (Laughter and
applause.)
I'm reminded of the time when I
first became the Governor of Texas. I went to a dedication
for those who served in the Pacific theater in World War
II. It was Central Texas, a little town called
Fredericksburg. My mom and dad were there, and Laura, the
great First Lady of the United States was there.
And I was really looking forward to welcoming
all the World War II vets. It was a chance to say thanks on
behalf of the sons and daughters of the Great
Generation. And I said, Mr. President -- that was for my dad
who was the head of the parade -- I said, welcome. And
everybody cheered. And I said, mother. Before I
could get out another word, the place went wild. And I said, well,
mother, it's clear the people of Texas love you and so do I, but you
are still telling me what to do after 50 years.
And a guy in a big cowboy hat moved out in the
middle of Main Street, Fredericksburg, and cupped his hands and
screamed at the top of his lungs in front of 30,000 constituents, you
better listen to her too, boy. (Laughter.) I can assure you
that the President of the United States is listening to his
mother. Remember that. (Laughter.)
The reason I thought of Mother is I thought of
the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital here at the Maine Medical
Center. It is a proud moment in her life that the good folks
at the Maine Medical Center dedicated the hospital for
her. (Applause.) It is a privilege, it is a
privilege for her to have her name on an institution based on love and
healing and care. It also reminds me of how deep our ties are to the
state of Maine.
My folks love coming to
Maine, and they love it a lot. And they can't wait for the
snow to melt -- (laughter) -- so they can get back up here. But,
anyway, thanks for your hospitality.
I want
to talk a little bit about budgeting and the importance of good, sound,
common-sense budgeting in Washington, D.C. I found it's more
effective for me to kind of get out of the nation's capital and explain
my budget face-to-face with folks, than to rely upon the filter to do
so. Sometimes the facts get kind of distorted. Sometimes
it's hard to get reality to fight through the folks.
So let me explain my budget, if you don't
mind, and what we intend to do with money if we're able to bring fiscal
sanity to the Nation's Capital. Step one on a common-sense budget is
to set priorities. It's really important for the governor or
the President to use the executive branch to set priorities so that
those who spend money stay focused. Without priorities, the
tendency is to try to be all things to all people.
So the priorities in the budget I submitted
are these. One, educating our children is a
priority. The biggest increase of any Department in my
budget goes to the Department of Education. I want you to
also understand, though, I remember where I came from. I
came from a state, I was a governor, I firmly trust local folks to run
the schools. The people who care most about the children in
the state of Maine are the citizens of Maine. And the
federal government, while it increases spending, must trust the
governors and local authorities. (Applause.)
One size does not fit all when it comes to
educating children. So we increased spending. But
I look forward to working with the senators and the congressmen of the
past power out of Washington, to provide a maximum flexibility so that
the governors and school board folks can take money and meet and match
them to the needs that exist.
So step one is
an accountability -- step one of a education reform program is local
control of schools. It is a red line for me when it comes to
federal legislation.
But I also know -- and I
know there is some consternation here in the state of Maine about the
call to hold people accountable for results. My attitude is,
if you receive federal money, you ought to measure to determine whether
or not the money is being spent properly. I strongly
believed in Texas, if you received state money you ought to measure.
The good news in the state of Maine is, the
governor agrees. (Applause.) You've got strong
accountability in the state of Maine, and the federal government should
in no way tell the folks in Maine how to devise an accountability
system, and we don't intend to do so. We trust the local
people. All we're saying is, you develop a system so that no
child is left behind. How do you know if you don't
measure? (Applause.) How do you know if you don't hold
people accountability? And how do you know how to correct
problems unless you do measure?
And guess
what happens in a system and states without accountability? Children
whose parents may not speak English as a first language just get moved
through the system. It's so much easier to quit on an
inner-city child. And one of the reasons we've got to insist
upon accountability and work with states to develop accountability
systems is so that we're able to detect problems early and solve them
before the system quits on children.
Too long
we've gone without saying, each child matters. For too long
we've asked a question in our society, how old are you. Oh,
if you're 10, we'll put you here. And if you're 14, we'll
put you there. Instead, we've got to start asking the
question what do you know. And if you don't know what you're
supposed to know, we'll make sure you do early, before it's too
late. (Applause.)
Another priority
of your President is to keep the peace. In order to do so,
we must boost morale in our military, and it starts with making sure
our soldiers and sailors are paid
better. (Applause.) So the budget I submitted to
the Congress increases the pay and improves the housing. But
morale will also be improved by having a clear mission for our
military. (Applause.) And the mission of our United States
military must be prepare our troops to fight and win war and,
therefore, prevent war from happening in the first
place. (Applause.)
I believe
strongly that as the head of the executive branch we owe it to the
people and to the Congress to develop a strategic plan as to how best
to spend the people's money when it comes to bolstering our defenses.
That as it's chief executive of government, our responsibility is to
develop a plan about what the military ought to not only look like
today, but what the military ought to look like 20 to 30 years from
now, so that we can focus taxpayers' money in a responsible, planned
way.
It is irresponsible to spend your money
in a haphazard fashion. We must not have our defense budgets
driven by politics. We must have them driven by vision and
need in order to not only effectively spend your money, but in order to
make sure we keep the peace 20 to 30 years from now. Military
preparedness is a priority of our administration, and so is making sure
we shepherd the taxpayer's money in a wise way.
Another priority is health
care. The budget I submitted to the Congress doubles the
Medicare budget -- actually, more than doubles the Medicare
budget. (Applause.) It says that Medicare is an
important responsibility for our government. But we also
must be bold enough to reform Medicare. The Medicare system
is ancient. It's meeting some needs, but not all
needs. And everybody, particularly those in the state of
Maine, know loud and clear that Medicare does not provide prescription
drugs for our seniors.
It is time to seize
the moment. It is time to provide our seniors a variety of
options from which to choose, all of which will include prescription
drugs. (Applause.) I've heard all the talk about
Social Security. You can imagine, particularly all those ads
on TV that said, if George bush becomes the President, you're not going
to get your Social Security check.
Well, let
me tell you, the budget I submitted to the Congress sets aside all the
money that's supposed to go to Social Security for only one
thing: Social Security. (Applause.)
We're going to have a debate on Social Security, as
well. The debate about where payroll taxes goes is
over. Now, some may decide to try to hyperventilate on the
issue. But it's over. This Congress and this
President are not going to allow payroll taxes to be spent on anything
other than Social Security, that's for certain. And anybody
who relies upon Social Security in your state need not worry.
The people who need to worry are the younger
workers. Those are the folks who need to
worry. The folks that are coming up that are going to have
to pay for the baby boomers like me, when we retire. And so
this debate may take a while, until the Congress finishes a lot of
other business. But we need to have the debate about how to
make sure the Social Security system is not only solvent today, but is
solvent when the baby boomers begin to retire. And I'm going
to strongly suggest that one way to do so is to allow younger workers,
at their choice, to take some of their own money and put it in the
private markets. (Applause.)
So
we've set priorities. We double the number of folks covered
at community health centers. This is incredibly important
programs. I hope you've got -- I'm sure you've got some in
Maine. They make an enormous difference for the indigent and
the poor. So in my budget, we double the number of people
served over the next five year period. We work with the
Congress to make sure the NIH budget gets doubled by the year 2003, a
commitment the Senators made so we could have adequate research to help
cure disease in America. We set priorities and we fund
them.
There's a lot of debate in Washington
about debt. And I'm concerned about debt, too. In
the budget I submitted to the Congress, we pay down $2 trillion of
debt. That's the biggest debt repayment in the history of
the world. It's $2 trillion over 10
years. (Applause.) We pay down all the debt in a
10 year period that comes due.
And if you
hear anybody in Washington talking about, well, let's pay down all the
debt, it means they want the taxpayers to pay a premium on debt
repayment. It doesn't make any sense to pay down debt until
it becomes due. Otherwise, taxpayers are going to have to
pay a premium to do so. That doesn't make any common sense
to me. It's not wise to try to accelerate debt
repayment. It costs you too much money to do
so. Let's pay down debt when it becomes available to be paid
down. And that's what we do in this budget. So we
set priorities and pay down debt.
Part of the
hollering you're hearing out of Washington is the fact that my
discretionary spending increases at 4 percent. And that's a
lot, particularly since 4 percent is greater than the rate of inflation
and 4 percent is greater than the pay raise most working people have
gotten in America. That's a big, healthy increase,
particularly when you're talking in terms of billions.
But the reason why it's created some tension
and friction in Washington is because it -- last time around, they
increased discretionary spending by 8 percent. All of a
sudden, we've gotten a new chief executive in town that says, let's be
fiscally responsible. Instead of increasing the size and
scope of the federal government, instead of having a spending contest
before we got out of town, let's be responsible with the people's
money. Listen , 4 percent is plenty of growth with
discretionary spending. (Applause.)
We also
set aside $1 trillion for contingencies over a 10-year period. It
could be money to help the farmer, it could be money to -- who knows
what it will be used for, but it's there.
Now, I know these numbers sound like a lot, but this is reality I'm
talking about. We've increased discretionary spending by 4
percent, we pay down $2 trillion worth of debt, we set aside $1
trillion in the budget over a 10-year period for contingencies, and
guess what? There's still money left over. And
that's the debate. The fundamental question is, what to do
with it.
And I start with this
premise: the surplus, that leftover money is not the
government's money, it's the people's money. (Applause.)
And I'll give you another
premise. The best way I heard it the other day was in
Council Bluffs, Iowa. A lady got up and she said, you know,
Mr. President, I've been a mother and a grandmother, and I love to
bake cookies. And every time I baked a plate of cookies and
put them on the table when my children and grandchildren went through
the house, they always ate the cookies.
And
that's how I kind of view tax money in Washington. If it's
left on the plate -- (laughter and applause) -- if we leave it on the
platter, it's going to be spent. And so the fundamental
debate is, once priorities are met, once we pay down debt, once we set
aside money for contingencies, what do we do with it? Do we
increase the size and scope of the federal government, or do we trust
the people with their own money.
The last
four months of -- the first four months of the fiscal year, the cash
coming into the treasury was $40 billion, anticipated. This,
in spite of the fact that the economy was beginning to slow down a
little bit -- $40 billion more than projected. It sounds
like, to me, that somebody is being overcharged. (Applause.)
And so I submitted a plan to the United States
Congress that remembers where the money came from, that helps with
fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C. -- a plan that will serve as a second
wind to an ailing economy. A plan that says that everybody
who pays taxes ought to get tax relief. It says to the
Congress, trying to target tax relief is not fair. The role
of the Congress and the role of the President is not to try to pick and
choose who wins or loses when it comes to tax
policy. (Applause.)
It you pay
taxes, you ought to get relief. And so we've submitted a
plan that does just that. It reduces all rates on everybody
who pays taxes and shrinks the number of rates from 5 percent to 4
percent. It increases the child credit from $500 to
$1,000. And I want to talk about two aspects of the tax
relief plan.
First, the code we have now is
incredibly unfair to people who are struggling to get
ahead. And the example I've used over and over again is one
I'm going to keep using until Congress solves the
problem. And it's the single mother working hard as she can
to raise two children. She's making $22,000 a year.
First of all, she's working the hardest job in
America. Secondly, for every additional dollar she earns
under this code, she pays a higher marginal rate than somebody who is
successful in America. She begins to lose her earned income
tax credit, she gets put in the 15 percent bracket, she's paying
payroll taxes.
Under this tax code, the
people working on the fringes of the middle class struggling hard to
get ahead pay a higher marginal rate than somebody who is
successful. And that's not right. That's not what
America is all about, as far as I am concerned.
America says, the harder you work, the more
money you put in your pocket, and the easier it is to access the middle
class. And we've got to change that, and so we dropped the
bottom rate from 15 percent to 10 percent and increased the child
credit from $500 to $1,000. (Applause.)
But I also believe strongly that we need to
drop the top rate, as well. And I know there's a lot of talk
about it in Washington, D.C., and there's a lot of -- by dropping the
top rate, it creates all kinds of finger-pointing and
name-calling. But I want members of Congress to remember
this fact about our tax code and about our economy and about the
American Dream. There are thousands of small business
owners, thousands of entrepreneurs who are unincorporated in America,
who are sole proprietors, who are subchapter S's, that pay the highest
marginal rate in the tax code. And when you drop the top rate from
39.6 percent to 33 percent, we're sending a clear signal that the role
of government is not to create wealth; but the role of government is to
create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish, in which
the small business can grow to become a big
business. (Applause.)
Our
government must understand: tax relief will provide capital
for the small business owner to be able to expand. Our
government must hear loud and clear that by far, the vast majority of
job creation comes from small businesses and entrepreneurs, and we
always must remember the great hope of America, the great dream of our
country is for people to own their own business and own their own home,
to be an owner in our country.
One of the
things I'm going to do is fight for the entrepreneurial spirit in
America. And one way to do so is to drop that top rate, to
encourage capital formation in the private sector and in the hands of
our small business owners all across the
country. (Applause.)
There are two
other aspects of tax reform I want to talk about. First, our tax code
sends the wrong signal about family. We penalize
marriage. It makes no sense to do so. I look
forward to working with the Congress to change the marriage penalty in
the tax code. And we also do something else that's
incredibly unfair. We tax people's assets twice: once when
they're living and once when they die. And that's not
right. It's not right for small business owners, it's not right for
Maine farmers, Texas ranchers. It's not right to have a
death tax and it's time to get rid of it. (Applause.)
I know these numbers sometimes sound just like
they're a bunch of numbers and a lot of talk and balance sheets, and
throwing around zeros like its common day practice. And I
understand that.
So what I like to do is, I
like to put a face on what I'm trying to talk about. I like
to invite people who will be affected positively by my plans to -- and
I would like to introduce to you the Hanington family
today. They're from way up east. You're way up
there, right on the Canadian border. Willard is a small
business owner. It's a family-owned logging
business. He brought his three children with him
today. I want to talk about his circumstances right quick.
This good family, they're raising Kayla, who's
14 and Logan who's 10, and Laci's two and a half years
old. They work hard to get ahead. They pay $2,850
of federal income taxes. And when Congress enacts the plan
that I've submitted, this good family will save
$2,150. (Applause.)
That's after
we've grown the discretionary spending by 4 percent, after we've
committed ourselves to saving Social Security and strengthening it,
after we've doubled the Medicare budget, after we've provided for the
military, there's money left over.
And the fundamental question,
folks, is who do you want spending that $2,150? That's what
the debate is all about. And I submit to you, it's better
for our country, to trust this good man and his wife to spend their
$2,150 than the members of the United States
Congress. (Applause.) I appreciate that.
And that's my budget, and that's my
vision. It's based upon, who do you trust? I
trust the people of this country. If you were in my
position, you'd trust them, too. I travel -- everywhere I
go, the people of this country are fine and decent and honorable
people.
The governor and I and senators and
congressmen just came from the Salvation Army. It's a place
based on something government can't create, which is love and concern
and deep compassion. No government can help. We
can spend money, but we cannot put hope in the hearts of
people. The great strength of this country comes as a result
of people loving their neighbor, and asking the fundamental question,
what can I do to help? What can I do to make my community a
better place?
Oh, this is a fabulous
nation. That's why it's such an honor to be your
President. I think we're making progress, not only on
issues, but the culture is beginning to change some, in Washington, for
the better. (Applause.) It's a culture of accomplishment, a
culture of achievement.
Recently the Senate
and the House moved a piece of legislation which I
supported. I understand good folks may not
agree. But there was excessive regulation getting ready to
be placed on large and small business through what's called
ergonomics. And the Congress and the Senate took a look at
it and said the cost benefits just doesn't make sense. Let's
change it and come up with more realistic policy.
The reason I bering that up is it was a good,
sound debate. Both Republicans and Democrats supported the
measure. It made it to my desk. I signed
it. But there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of what
we can do together for the good of the country that's beginning to
become a part of the culture in Washington. There's a
culture of respect developing in Washington.
I hope in my comments you understand that the congressman may not agree
with what I'm trying to do, and I may not necessarily agree with every
vote. But I respect the man. And we need more of
that in our nation's capital. We need to send the signal
that good folks can disagree, that there is time for politics and
there's time for doing what's right for the American
people. (Applause.)
And, finally, I
hope that we're beginning to develop a culture of responsibility in the
country. Those of us who hold high office, like your
governor, myself and others, have a responsibility to the people, a
responsibility to uphold the honor of the
office. (Applause.)
But that's just
the beginning. That if we're blessed, we have the
responsibility to help a neighbor in need. That we must send
the signal to our children, make the right choices, be responsible for
the decisions you make in life.
No, I think
we're making good progress. There's a lot of work to do.
But it starts with trusting the people. And we're always
remembering, the great strength of this land lies in the hard working,
good hearts of the American people.
Thank you
for coming. God Bless. (Applause.)
END
12:49 P.M. EST
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