For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
March 16, 2004
Remarks by the Vice President at a Luncheon for Congressman Bob Beauprez
Coors Field
Denver, Colorado
12:30 P.M. MST
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Lynne. We're
delighted to be back in Denver and to see so many old friends.
Colorado is close to home. We wish more of you would fish in Colorado
than Wyoming. (Laughter.) But we've adapted to that over the years.
And we always look forward to coming back to Colorado, as well too.
I like to tell people when Lynne tells a story that if it hadn't
been for a great Republican victory in 1952, we would never have
married. Because in 1952 when Dwight Eisenhower ran for President, my
Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service, and we were at Lincoln,
Nebraska. I was just a youngster. Eisenhower won. He reorganized the
Agriculture Department. Dad got transferred to Casper, Wyoming, where
I met Lynne. And we grew up together, went to high school together,
and August, we'll celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.)
I explained that to a group of folks the other day, and that if it
hadn't been for that Republican victory in 1952, she would have married
somebody else. And she said, "Right, and now he'd be Vice President of
the United States." (Laughter.) So there's no doubt in my mind.
I'm delighted to see Governor Bill Owens here today. Bill has done
a superb job for Colorado. He's a great friend, and we've been on
hunting trips together. And I got into the newspapers, he didn't.
(Laughter.) But it's a pleasure always to spend some time with Bill.
And I want to thank my friend Bob Beauprez, for the tremendous work
that he does every day on behalf of his congressional district, the
state of Colorado, and the people of the entire United States.
Bob has been a superb representative for the seventh district in
his first two years in Congress. This November, I know you're going to
send him back for a second term. And I might add I'm strongly in favor
of second terms. (Laughter and applause.)
Now, the President and I know a little bit about close elections.
Beauprez isn't the only one who had a long recount after his last
election. (Laughter.) And we're both going to do much better this
time around. I'm sure the seventh district, the decision will be
resolved as soon as the polls close on Election Day.
And I want to thank all of the state and local officials today. As
President of the Senate, I can say that Colorado has one of the
Senate's finest delegations in Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Wayne
Allard. Ben is retiring this year, and we're going to miss him in
Washington. But we're all going to work hard to elect a great
successor to Ben. And next January I look forward to swearing in
another Colorado Republican to serve alongside Wayne Allard in the
United States Senate. (Applause.)
Lynne and I were proud to campaign with Bob in November of 2002,
just a few days before that election. We knew it was going to be a
tight race on Election Day. All the hard work of all you volunteers
and supporters paid off. The voters of the seventh district sent Bob
to Congress, and he has repaid their confidence with an exceptional
first term.
On issues from transportation, to small businesses, to education,
Bob has been a tireless advocate for the people of Colorado. He stands
strongly for veterans, and for the military, and firmly believes in tax
relief because he believes Colorado families need to keep more of what
they earn.
Bob has been a leader in Colorado for decades, and been a dairy
farmer, a community banker, and he understands the priorities of his
constituents. He's a perfect fit for the seventh district, a great
representative in Washington, D.C., and he has earned another term in
the United States Congress. (Applause.)
President Bush and I have now begun the fourth year of our
administration, a period defined by serious challenges, hard choices,
and the need for decisive action. In this time of testing, the
President and I have been grateful to have strong leaders like Bob
Beauprez by our side.
There are many tasks that those of us in public service must take
on, but none is more important than working to ensure that the citizens
of this great country are safe and secure. The attacks of September
11, 2001, signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We
suffered massive civilian casualties on our own soil. We awakened to
dangers even more lethal -- the possibility that terrorists could gain
chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons from outlaw regimes and
turn those weapons against the United States.
Remembering what we saw on the morning of 9/11, and knowing the
nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as could
ever fall to government, we must do everything in our power to protect
our people from terrorist attack, and to keep terrorists from ever
acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
This great and urgent responsibility has required a shift in
national security policy. For many years prior to 9/11, we treated
terror attacks against Americans as isolated incidents and answered, if
at all, on an ad hoc basis -- and never in a systematic way. Even
after an attack inside our own country, the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center, there was a tendency to treat terrorist acts as
individual criminal acts to be handled primarily through law
enforcement.
The man who perpetrated that attack in 1993, in New York, was
tracked down, arrested, convicted, and sent off to serve a 240-year
sentence. Yet behind that one man was a growing network with
operatives inside and outside the United States waging war against our
country.
For us, that war started on 9/11, for them it started years
earlier. In 1996, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11,
first proposed to Osama bin Laden that they use hijacked airliners to
attack targets in the United States. During this period in the late
'90s, thousands of terrorists were trained at al Qaeda camps throughout
Afghanistan. And we've seen the work of terrorists in many attacks
since 9/11, in Riyadh, Casablanca, Mombasa, Bali, Jakarta, Najaf,
Baghdad, and most recently, Madrid.
The attacks in Spain once again reveal the brutality of our enemy,
and once again show that the fight against terrorism is the
responsibility of all free nations. The terrorists are testing the
unity and the resolve of the civilized world, and we must rise to that
test.
Against this kind of determined, organized, ruthless enemy, America
requires a new strategy, not merely to prosecute a series of crimes,
but to conduct a global campaign against the terrorist network.
Our strategy has several key elements. We have strengthened our
defenses here at home, organizing the government to protect the
homeland. But a good defense is not enough. The terrorist enemy holds
no territory, defends no population, is unconstrained by rules of
warfare, and respects no law of morality. Such an enemy cannot be
deterred, contained, appeased, or negotiated with -- it can only be
destroyed. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the business at hand.
(Applause.)
In Afghanistan, we have removed the brutal Taliban regime from
power and destroyed the al Qaeda training camps. In Iraq, America and
her allies rid the Iraqi people of a murderous dictator, and rid the
world of a menace to our peace and security. A year ago, Saddam
Hussein controlled the lives and the future of almost 25 million
people, today he's in jail -- never again to brutalize the Iraqi
people, never again to support dangerous terrorists, or pursue weapons
of mass destruction, and never again to threaten the United States of
America. (Applause.)
From the beginning, America has sought and received international
support for our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the war on
terror, we will always seek cooperation from our allies around the
world. But as the President has made very clear, there is a difference
between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the
objections of a few. The United States will never seek a permission
slip to defend the security of our country. (Applause.)
I noticed recently that Senator Kerry has been making some
observations about foreign policy. He's been telling people that his
ideas have gained strong support, at least among unnamed foreigners
he's been spending time with. (Laughter.) Senator Kerry said that he
has met with foreign leaders, and I quote, "who can't go out and say
this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, you've got to win
this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like
that." End quote.
A few days ago, in Pennsylvania, a voter asked Senator Kerry
directly who these foreign leaders are. Senator Kerry said, "That's
none of your business."
But it is our business when a candidate for President claims the
political endorsement of foreign leaders. At the very least, we have a
right to know what he is saying to foreign leaders that makes them so
supportive of his candidacy. We are the ones who get to determine the
outcome of this election, not unnamed foreign leaders. (Applause.)
Our country is enormously fortunate during these times of testing
to have George W. Bush as our Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.) He has
been strong, he's been steady, he's been consistent.
In January, I visited one of our military bases at Vicenza, Italy,
where I had a chance to talk with some of the fine men and women of our
armed forces -- recently returned from Iraq. One young soldier, part
of the 173rd Airborne that jumped into Iraq at the beginning of the
war, wanted me to know how much he appreciated the President's decisive
leadership. "Indecision kills, sir," this young soldier said to me,
"indecision kills."
These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds,
saying one thing one day and another, the next. We need a
Commander-in-Chief of clear vision and steady determination. And
that's just what we have in President George W. Bush. (Applause.)
We've been enormously fortunate during these times of testing for
our nation to have the dedicated service of the men and women who wear
America's uniform. Many of them have seen hard duty, long deployments,
and fierce fighting. They've endured the loss of friends and
comrades. They've done all of these things with great courage, and we
are enormously proud of each and every one of them. (Applause.)
The long-term security of our nation has been a principal concern
of President Bush, and so has the economic well-being of our citizens.
By the time we took office, the economy was sliding into recession.
Then, just as we were beginning to recover, terrorists struck our
nation and shook our economy once again. Working with Bob Beauprez and
others in Congress, President Bush has taken strong, confident steps to
get the economy growing again. The President has signed into law three
separate tax relief measures, resulting in significant tax relief for
millions of American families and businesses. (Applause.)
We doubled the child tax credit, decreased the marriage penalty,
cut tax rates across the board. We raised the expensing deduction for
small businesses to give them strong incentives to invest, and we put
the death tax on the way to extinction. (Applause.)
Now we're beginning to see the results of the President's
policies. In the second half of last year, our economy grew at an
annual rate of better than 6 percent -- its fastest pace in nearly two
decades, and the highest rate of any major industrialized nation in the
world. New home construction last year was the highest in 25 years.
Home ownership is the highest ever. Interest rates are low. Inflation
is low. Manufacturing activity is increasing. Productivity is high.
Business investment is growing. And unemployment is at 5.6 percent,
almost exactly where it was when Senator Kerry was campaigning for Bill
Clinton in 1996. Real disposable personal income is growing strongly,
meaning that American workers have more money to spend, to save and to
invest. America's economy is moving in the right direction. Don't let
anyone tell you otherwise. (Applause.)
The American people are using their money better than the
government would have, and Congress was right to let them keep it. As
you know, there are voices in the land who want to roll back the Bush
tax cuts. Sometimes we hear these voices on the evening news. Senator
Kerry has said that he would repeal the Bush tax cuts within the first
100 days in office. This isn't surprising when you consider that he
has voted 350 times in the United States Senate for higher taxes. But
for the sake of long-term growth and job-creation, we ought to do
exactly the opposite of what Senator Kerry proposes: We should make
the Bush tax cuts permanent. (Applause.)
Tax cuts started the economic recovery. To strengthen it even
more, we need to protect small business owners and employees from
frivolous lawsuits and needless regulation. We need to control the
cost of health care by passing medical liability reform. Here in
Colorado, and across the nation, good doctors should be able to spend
their time healing patients, not fighting off frivolous lawsuits.
We need to pass sound energy legislation, modernize our electricity
system, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
We should limit the burden of government on this economy by acting as
good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars. The President has proposed a
budget that limits the growth in discretionary spending. With spending
discipline and pro-growth economic policies, we can cut the deficit in
half in the next five years.
It is also time for the United States Senate to get about the
business of confirming President Bush's judicial nominees. (Applause.)
The President has put forward talented, experienced men and women who
represent the mainstream of American law and American values. Yet
Senate Democrats have taken to waging filibusters, denying up-or-down
votes for months, or even years. That's unfair to the judicial
nominees, and it is an abuse of the constitutional process. This small
group of senators needs to stop playing politics with American
justice. Every nominee deserves a prompt up-or-down vote on the Senate
floor. And that's another reason we need more Republicans like Ben
Campbell and Wayne Allard in the United States Senate. (Applause.)
On issue after issue, from national security, to economic growth,
to improving our public schools, President Bush has led the way in
making progress for the American people. Bob has stood with us on all
of these vital issues, and he shares our optimism about the next four
years.
President Bush has a clear vision for the future of this country:
Abroad, we will use America's great power to serve great purposes, to
turn back the forces of terror, and to spread hope and freedom
throughout the world.
Here at home, we will continue building prosperity that reaches
every corner of the land so that every child who grows up in the United
States of America will have a chance to learn, and to succeed, and to
rise in the world.
Once again, thank you all for your commitment to the cause we all
share. It's an honor to stand with you in supporting Bob Beauprez.
You are united behind a strong leader and a dedicated representative.
Bob has the right priorities for Colorado, and he's going to keep
working hard for the people of the seventh district. Next year, he's
coming back to Washington for another term in the United States
Congress, and we look forward to working with him for a good many years
to come.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 12:42 P.M. MST
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