For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 14, 2002
President Visits Aurora, Missouri
Remarks by the President in Working for America Event
MFA Feed Mill
Aurora, Missouri
2:30 P.M. CST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. So
there I was, sitting in the residency at the White House -- (laughter)
-- watching a football game, eating a
pretzel. (Laughter.) And the next thing I know is
Barney, the Scottish Terrier, is wondering what the heck
happened. (Laughter.)
I want you all to know that I learned a good lesson, and that
is: I should have listened to my
mother. (Laughter.) She said, never try to
swallow your pretzel until you chewed it. (Laughter.)
Thank you all for coming. And thank you for letting me
come. (Applause.) If you see some of the folks who lined
the road coming in, tell them thanks. Really, I wish we had
a bigger hall, so I could thank everybody in person, but there's a lot
of people from your communities that are out there to wave and I'm
really grateful. Thank the high school kids and the teachers
for being out there, as well.
I'm working my way through the midwest, through the heartland,
because I want to send a couple of messages to the American
people. One message is, food is really important for the
economy of this country. (Applause.) That in the year 2000,
$1.3 trillion of the GDP came from food and fiber; 24 million Americans
were employed as a result of work and food and fiber.
That if we're talking about the economic health of the country,
we've got to always understand it begins with a healthy farm
economy. And if we're worried about creating jobs -- which I
am -- then we've got to think, we use some common sense principles in
order to expand the job base, so people can find work.
I'm also glad to be in the heartland because it's a place that
understands values: the values of family and faith, of
personal responsibility and hard work. (Applause.)
I started my day in Moline, Illinois, at the John Deere plant,
where they're making Harvesters. And then here, of course,
in Aurora, and Springfield, Missouri. And then I'm on my way
to New Orleans, where they sell the product. It's a good
message for America, to understand how the farmer works, in
relationship to the equipment manufacture, in relationship to the
exporter.
I'm so happy that people in my administration understand the
importance of the farmer to our country, starting with our Secretary of
Agriculture, Ann Veneman. (Applause.) And the
Secretary of Commerce, Don
Evans. (Applause.) Thank you both for being
here.
I want to thank Senator Kit Bond for traveling with me today.
(Applause.) He was giving me a good lesson on Missouri
politics, as was Jim Talent, when we drived over. Thank you
for coming, Jim. (Applause.) And I'm traveling with two
members from the Missouri congressional delegation, Kenny Hulshof and
Todd Akin. Thank you all for coming. (Applause.)
Now, my friend, Roy Blunt, isn't here. He's evidently on
a mission somewhere else. But he sent his better
half. And I want to thank very much -- I want to thank sweet
Roseann Blunt for coming as well. Thank you for
coming. (Applause.) I want to thank the Missouri
Farmers Association. I want to thank the people who run this
outfit. And I want to thank my fellow citizens for coming
today.
One of the things I strongly believe is that the role of government
is not to create wealth. The role of government is to create
an environment in which people are willing to take risk, an environment
in which people are willing to risk capital, an environment that
heralds the entrepreneur and the small business
person. That's the role of government.
If the role of government is to create an environment in which
people are willing to take risk, one of the things government must do
is to work hard to create confidence in the people. And at
this moment in history, the best thing I can do, along with my
administration, in order to build the confidence of the American
people, is to prevent the evil ones from hitting us
again. (Applause.)
The best way to make sure this economy recovers, and people can
find work is to have a homeland security system that runs down every
hint that somebody might harm us; runs down every lead that we
find. I want to assure you all that I spend a lot of time,
as did my administration, on this top priority; that we're working with
intelligence-gathering services from around the world to sniff out, to
listen to, to find out who might be trying to harm us again.
That we've got our law enforcement officers around our country --
at the federal, state and local level -- now understand that they must
remain on alert, that there's still an enemy and we've got to stop
them. The FBI's primary mission is homeland security, and
we're working closely with folks in your communities to make sure that
if there's any hint that somebody might try to harm America, that we're
going to act, and act now, and bring them to justice.
I'm proud of the efforts of many all around our country who are
working endless hours to make America safe. But the best way
to make America safe is to hunt the enemy down where he tries to hide
and bring them to justice. And that's exactly what we're
going to do. (Applause.)
I gave our military a mighty task, and they have
responded. I want to thank those of you who have got
relatives in the military -- a brother or a sister, or a son or a
daughter, or a mom or a dad -- they have made me proud. And
I hope they made you proud, as well. (Applause.)
We sent the military on a clear mission, and that is to bring the
evil ones to justice. It's a mission, however, that I
expanded to include this: that if you hide a terrorist, if you feed a
terrorist, if you provide aid and comfort for a terrorist, you're just
as guilty as the terrorist. (Applause.) That's why the
Taliban is no longer ruling Afghanistan.
I think that one of the most joyous things for me is to see the
faces of the Afghan women as they have been liberated from the
oppression of the Taliban rule. Not only is our military
destroying those who would harbor evil, destroying whatever military
they had, destroying their defenses, but we're
liberators. We're freeing women and children from incredible
oppression. (Applause.)
The humanitarian aid workers are home -- as part of the conditions
I laid down for the Taliban. The Taliban is in total
rout. But we haven't completed our mission
yet. And we're now at a very dangerous phase of the war in
the first theater, and that is sending our boys and troops into the
caves. You see, we're fighting an enemy that's willing to
send others to death, suicide missions in the name of religion, and
they, themselves, want to hide in caves.
But you know something? We're not going to
tire. We're not going to be impatient. We're
going to do whatever it takes to find them and bring them to
justice. They think they can hide, but they're not going to
hide from the mighty reach of the United States and the coalition we
have put together. (Applause.)
I see members of the FFA here. I want you to know that
the cause that our military now wages is a just cause, it's an
important cause; that I long for peace, but I also understand that this
nation must lead the war against terror if you and your children and
your grandchildren are going to grow up and understand the freedoms
that we so enjoy in America. That if you and your children
and grandchildren can grow up in a peaceful and hopeful world, now is
the time for this country to lead. And lead we will.
(Applause.)
I'm worried that the attacks on 9/11 have affected the ability for
people to find work, and we're going to do something about
it. Not only are we going to make the homeland secure, but
we've done some things in Washington that actually make
sense. (Laughter.) And one of them is to pass a
good education bill, that makes public education a priority, that sets
high standards -- (applause) -- that calls people into account if
there's failure, and that trusts the local people to run their own
schools. (Applause.)
I had the privilege of traveling the country last week with two
Republicans and two Democrats -- the sponsors of the
bills. One of the Democrats happened to be Senator Edward
Kennedy of Massachusetts. Never did I dream -- (laughter) --
that I would say good things about him. (Laughter.) Never
did he dream that I would say good things about him.
(Laughter.) But I can, because he joined together with an
administration to come out with a bill that's a good bill.
It goes to show -- this bill shows what can happen in Washington
when we're willing to put our political parties behind and focus on
what's best for the United States of America. (Applause.)
I'm going down to New Orleans tomorrow -- I like to go there; it's
a nice place to eat and I'm going to be -- (laughter.) I've
got a lot of friends in Louisiana; it's right next to the state where I
used to be governor. But I'm also going to remind people of
the importance of trade -- trade not only for the agricultural sector
of our country, but trade in general. And let me tell you my
view.
If you're good at something, you ought to try to encourage it, to
become a bigger part of your world. And if you're good at
growing crop, we ought not to diminish the ability to grow crops in
America, we ought to encourage. And the way to do that is to
find other places to sell crops. If you're the best in the world at
what you do -- which we are in farming -- then it seems like to me we
ought to encourage that product to be sold not only here in America,
but level the playing field so it can be sold all across the
world. (Applause.)
I know there's a lot of farmers around who say, you know, we've
heard that before. Every trade agreement trades out the
farmer. Here comes old Bush from Texas and he says he's for
the farmer, yet, you watch -- they'll worry more about other products,
and when it comes time to argue for the agricultural sector, they'll
just leave us out.
But that's not the way it's going to be, folks, because I
understand how important agriculture is, not only for America, but how
important it is for international trade for our country. Not
only domestically, but internationally agriculture is important.
And I'd just ask you to look at the record. In China, I
argued that China ought to be in the WTO, because it's good for the
American agriculture. Look at the
agreement. We've opened up the Chinese markets to U.S.
farmers. It's good for China and, more importantly, it's
good for the U.S. farmers to have that market
available. (Applause.) We've got to
trade. It's in our nation's interest to
trade. And it's a sure way to help create jobs.
We've also got to have an energy policy, if we're going to grow for
the long-term. One of the great things about America is, is
that we're self-sufficient in food. It's a national security
interest to be self-sufficient in food. It's a luxury that
you've always taken for granted here in this country. But
imagine if we have to rely upon somebody else to provide us food -- it
would be a problem. The good news is, we can not only grow
food for ourselves, we can grow food for others.
That's not the way it is in energy. We're too reliant
upon foreign sources of energy. We're too reliant upon parts
of the world that may like us, may not like us, for our sources of
energy. It seems like to me that we ought to work hard to
become more self-sufficient, less reliant, by having an energy plan
that encourages conservation, encourages the use of ethanol, for
example, value added processing -- (applause) -- and also explores for
energy in our own hemisphere and in our own states, in an
environmentally friendly way. (Applause.)
Finally an administration has come along and said, let's have a
national energy plan. And that's exactly what passed out of
the House, and hopefully we can get it out of the
Senate. Just like the trade bill that came out of the
House. Hopefully, we can get it out of the Senate.
Hopefully, when they come back, they listen to the American people and
put plans in place that will help our economy grow so that people can
find work.
Finally, I want to talk to you about economic policy out of
Washington. It seems like to me that the question we ought
to be asking in Washington is, what does it take to help people create
jobs? What's it take? I started with this
part. I said that if you give people their own money back,
if you let them keep more of their hard-earned dollars, that's good for
the economy. If a consumer has got more money, he or she
spends it on a product, causing the person who manufactures the product
to keep jobs in place and/or increase jobs.
And so we worked together and passed meaningful, real tax relief.
(Applause.) It came at exactly the right
time. The economy started to show signs of slowing down in
March of 2001. A way to stimulate growth during recession is
to give people, let them keep their own money. That's
Economics 101 -- except, it sounds like some of them hadn't taken the
course in Washington. (Laughter.)
There's now some talk that maybe we should raise taxes in a
recession. That would be a disaster for the American economy, and
we're not going to let it happen. (Applause.) And
one of the best parts of that bill, that tax bill, was phasing out the
death tax so the American farmer can pass his assets from one
generation to the next. (Applause.)
And there are some things we ought to do in Washington to
help. We ought to help people who lost their job on 9/11,
whose industries were affected as the result of that
attack. That means extending unemployment
benefits. That means helping people with health
care. But here's the way I think about it: people
really don't want an unemployment check, they want a permanent
paycheck. And, therefore, we ought to figure out ways to
expand the job base of America.
Every question ought to be, how do we grow our economy in a smart
way. (Applause.) Therefore, I'm more than willing to work
with the Democrats and Republicans to help the unemployed, but I ask
them to think long-term for America. Accelerating
depreciation makes sense for people who buy equipment. It
makes sense to speed up the tax relief. It makes sense to
help low-income taxpayers with money in their pocket to enhance
demand.
Oh, there's some smart things we can do to stimulate this economy.
And there's some smart things we will do to make sure that we've got a
good farm bill. I look forward to working with both
political parties to come up with a farm bill that meets the following
principles.
One, it will be generous and affordable. There will be
ample money in there to meet the needs, and it's money that will fit
into our budget. Secondly, a farm bill must provide a safety net for
the American farmer, without encouraging over-production and
thereby depressing prices. Thirdly, the farm bill must
support our strong commitment to trade. Fifthly, it must offer
incentives for good conservation practices on working
lands. And, finally, establish farm savings accounts, to
help farmers manage risks.
These are sound principles, which will enable the American farmer
to plan, to think ahead, to be able to survive in a down time, and
thrive when the markets get good. I look forward to working
to get a good farm bill, and I look forward to working with you to get
a good farm bill. (Applause.)
Here are some practical steps to make sure that our economy
recovers: good education, that will help in the long run, for certain;
good tax policy; a good stimulus package; a good farm bill;, good trade
policy; and, most importantly, homeland security that keeps Americans
safe.
You know, when the enemy hit us, I was amazed to read that they
really thought we were soft. They kind of didn't understand
America very well. They might have been watching too much TV or
something, I don't know what it was. But they thought, well,
we'll hit them, and then America will fold their tent. We
may launch a Cruise Missile or two, but that will be it. Man, did they
make a big mistake. (Applause.)
They don't understand how much we love freedom, and that we're
willing to fight for it. They didn't understand people --
they must not have understood people being on a commercial airline,
figuring -- realizing what was happening, then saying a prayer, and
bringing the plane down to save others lives. They didn't
understand sacrifice. (Applause.)
But what they really don't understand is the character of the
American people. They don't realize that this nation is a
nation full of people who are determined and strong, but compassionate
and loving. A lot of times people ask me, what can I do, in
the war against terror? Well, obviously, if you see
something unusual, report it. Treat people with
respect. Value all religious -- religions.
But there are some other things you can do. Fight evil
with good. We can fight terror using our military, and we're
going to, of course. But we can fight terror and evil with
acts of kindness, with millions of acts of kindness, all across the
country. The best thing about America is the fact that that
happens on a daily basis. There are people who walk across
the street to a neighbor in need, and say, can I help
you? What can I do to help? They find somebody
who is shut-in, and say, I'd like to just love you for a
second. It happens when Sunday Schools or synagogues or
mosques empty out, and they look for somebody to help. It
happens when people raise money for a local charity. It
happens when somebody says, I want to be a Boy Scout leader, to teach a
child good values. It happens when somebody mentors a child,
and teaches them how to read.
The war on terror is a war we will fight on many
fronts. It is a war we're going to win on many
fronts. It's a war we'll win at home. Because
this is a compassionate nation, full of decent and loving and caring
people. And it is such an honor to be the President of the
greatest nation on the face of the earth.
Thank you for having me. God bless. Thank you
all. (Applause.)
END 2:54
P.M. CST
|