For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
September 7, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting
Embassy Suites Hotel
Des Moines, Iowa
Final Transcript -- As Delivered
10:36 A.M. CDT
MRS. CHENEY: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
MRS. CHENEY: Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Welcome to Iowa.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's good to be back. (Laughter.) And we
accept. (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: We couldn't have picked a more beautiful day. I got
to tell you this is a day that makes you appreciate being an Iowan, and
a day that makes you appreciate being an American. (Applause.)
Well, I got to introduce Dick at that convention. And I've been
assigned this job, this task because I have known him for so long. I
have known him since he was 14 years old. Uh-huh, a mighty good,
14-year-old-looking boy. I'll tell you that, too. And his summer job
that -- don't be embarrassed now. (Laughter.) His summer job when I
first met him was sweeping out the local Ben Franklin store. And I've
known him through many jobs. I've known him since he was digging
ditches at our local fair and rodeo grounds, the Central Wyoming Fair
and Rodeo, just outside Casper. And I've known him since he was
loading hundred-pound bags of bentonite onto railroad cars. And I've
known him since he was a union member. This is true. We want union
members, Democrats, everybody. Dick had a ticket in the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and he was building power line all
across the West for six years while he was -- it took him a long time
to get through college, but while he was getting through college.
(Laughter.) Well, I like to tell -- I like to tell those stories
because I think when you grow up working hard, you learn some really
important lessons. And one of those lessons is how important it is for
hard working men and women in this country to keep as much of their
paychecks as possible. (Applause.)
And another lesson you learn is how competent and strong this
country is. And how what the people of this country need is not a
government to run their lives, but a government that provides them
opportunities so they can make the most of their lives. And I think
that's a basic philosophy. And I love the way Arnold Schwarzenegger
talked about that at our convention, didn't you? He was terrific.
(Applause.)
Well, with no further ado, please meet my husband, Dick Cheney, the
Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. (Applause.) Thank you very
much. And let me thank Stan Thompson this morning for taking care of
us and getting us introduced. And I know he's going to be the new
congressman from this part of Iowa. (Applause.)
It's great to see my old friends Bob Ray and Terry Branstad here,
this morning -- great governors from the state of Iowa. (Applause.)
And Lynne has known me since I was 14, but she wouldn't go out with me
until I was 17 years old. (Laughter.)
But I often tell people that we have a marriage that was the direct
result of Dwight Eisenhower's election victory in 1952. In 1952, I
living in Lincoln, Nebraska with my folks -- just a youngster. Dad
worked for the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower got elected, he
came in and reorganized the Agriculture Department, Dad got transferred
to Casper, Wyoming. And that's where I met Lynne, and we grew up
together, and went to high school together, and just last Sunday -- a
week ago Sunday, celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.)
I explained to a group the other night that if it hadn't been for
Dwight Eisenhower's tremendous victory in 1952, Lynne would have
married somebody else. She said, right, and now he'd be Vice President
of the United States. (Laughter and applause.) They always laugh.
(Laughter.) They know it's true.
But we're delighted to be here this morning, to be back in Iowa.
We were out in Clear Lake yesterday. Before that, we were up in
Minnesota yesterday morning at the Minnesota State Fair. Later on
today, we'll be in New Hampshire. We've now got about eight weeks -- I
guess, eight weeks from today will be the election where we're going to
make a very, very important decision for the nation, for the future of
our country, and, indeed, for the kind of world that our children and
grandchildren are going to inherit.
And as long as I've been involved in politics, and this was my
eighth Republican Convention I attended this year. But I don't think
-- I can't recall a time when I ever felt that the decisions we're
going are as momentous as they are this time around, that there are
periods in our history when things go along swimmingly. Our basic
policies are in place, and elections basically are sort of an
affirmation of continuity in a sense. And there are other times when
circumstances have changed enough in the world that we really need to
sit down and make some fundamental decisions about the direction the
country is headed in, where we're faced with fundamental choices. And
I think this is one of those latter kinds of periods.
What I'd like to do this morning is talk about a couple of basic
areas, policy areas that I think are important. And they're reflected
by the changes that we've all seen over the last few years, and then
throw it open to questions so we have an opportunity to respond to your
concerns and hear from you what you'd like to talk about, try to answer
as many of your questions as we can during the time allotted.
It's hard -- when I think back to last four years, I signed on with
the President just about four years ago at our Republican Convention in
Philadelphia. He asked me to be his running mate about 10 days before
the convention. And then we announced it then, so that was I guess,
mid August of last year.
There wasn't any way then we could have anticipated what was about
to happen, of course, on 9/11. And 9/11, in effect, has changed a lot
of what we do as a nation, both in terms of how we think about
defending ourselves, what the threat is, and how we deal with national
security issues, but it has had a big impact here domestically, as
well, too, because I think it has been at the heart of what we've had
to deal with economically.
When the President and I took the oath of office, we were sliding
into recession. The stock market had peaked in March of 2000, before
we got there. And by the beginning of January of 2001, we were into a
recession. And of course, a few months later then we got hit with
9/11, and that was a major additional blow to the economy. We lost a
million jobs within a few weeks after the 9/11 attack because of the
damage that that did to our tourism and travel industry, and airline
industry and so forth.
So we've have to deal with that set of domestic circumstances at
the same time that we've been forced to respond from a national
security standpoint to the military requirements. There are operations
in Afghanistan and Iraq, what we've had to do to harden the target here
at home, money we've had to spend on homeland security. It's been an
interesting period of problems that we did not anticipate -- nobody
could have anticipated -- when we were sworn in.
But on the economic front, I think what has been absolutely crucial
was the fundamental decision that the President made, and that was the
call that Lynne touched upon that he made with respect that the key to
our economic recovery was allowing the American taxpayers to keep more
of their own money, rather than siphoning it off to Washington.
(Applause.)
The tax cuts that were implemented in 2001, 2002, 2003 have been
absolutely vital in terms of what we did with respect to income taxes,
in particular. Everybody in America who pays income taxes got some
relief on the income tax front. We cut rates across the board. We
created the new 10 percent brackets that helped folks at the lower end
of the spectrum. We doubled the child credit which had a huge impact
on families. We reduced the marriage penalty. We quadrupled the
amount that a small business could expense in terms of investing in new
equipment, or trucks to be able to expand their business, a whole
series of steps that were embodied in those tax changes that we put on
the books that have been vital, we believe, in terms of getting the
economy up and running again.
We've added over the course of the last year now about 1.7 million
new jobs. We've still got a long way to go out there, but our
unemployment rate now is down to 5.4 percent nationally. It's about
4.4 percent here in Iowa. We've still got areas of softness out there
in the economy. We recognize that. We're committed to the proposition
that we want to make certain that everybody in America who wants to
work can find a job, and that's at the heart of the overall thrust of
our policies.
But having taken those steps that we believe got the economy back
on the right track and have seen us through the recession, we've begun
to see the resumption now of economic growth in fairly significant
ways. And it's beginning to help reduce the deficit. But the keys to
reducing the deficit really is twofold -- on the one hand, spending
restraint, which we need to pursue with respect to the federal budget;
but also stimulating enough economic growth so that we generate enough
revenue so we begin to close the deficit. Some may have noticed just
within the last day here, the Congressional Budget Office has now
announced new estimates for the federal deficit going forward. And
they have reduced their estimate for the deficit by -- I believe about
$56 billion for the year we're now in. That's a direct result of
economic growth that came about as a result of the tax changes that the
President put through, and the Congress supported.
I might add Chuck Grassley had a great deal to do with that in his
capacity as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He's been our
key ally on Capitol Hill in terms of getting those positions, those
policies in place. And he deserves a lot of credit for what we did in
the Congress. (Applause.)
Going forward now, if we're going to achieve the full potential of
the American economy, we've got to make certain that the United States
is the best place in the world to do business, because after all,
that's what it is all about --whether you're in agriculture, or
manufacturing, or business. (Applause) And there shouldn't be a
divide here between business and labor. This is not a zero-sum game.
We all benefit. The entrepreneur, as well as the worker; the small
businessman and the people he hires all benefit when our economy
prospers, and when the system works the way it's supposed to work, to
its maximum potential.
And the agenda for the future very much involves a series of
policies that we need to aggressively address if we're going to be
successful, and that the President talked about the other night at the
convention in New York. It includes taking those tax changes that we
made and making them permanent. Because they aren't permanent now.
The way the law works, we need to go back and do that. (Applause.)
We also need to address some other issues. We need to make
absolutely certain the regulatory burden is minimal so that we don't
load unnecessary regulations -- whether it's on small business or
farmers and ranchers, it's a lot easier if people have the opportunity
to focus on doing what they set out to do economically, rather than
having to spend time filling out useless paperwork that goes back to
Washington, gets filed in a bureaucracy, and nobody ever reads.
We also need to deal with some other issues like health care, for
example, and a key cost of doing business in this country and one of
the major problems that everybody is faced with is the rising cost of
health care. The President has put forward a series of proposals, and
we'll be pursuing those, as well, in our second term to deal with
that. Some of it, we've already done. We've established health
savings accounts, for example, that allow people to set aside money
tax-exempt for their own health costs. He's got a proposal now for a
refundable tax credit that will allow folks at the lower of the scale
to be able to use that system in order to pay for catastrophic
insurance premiums. We've got a package of proposals with respect to
Medicare that were enacted. Again, Senator Grassley had a major role
to play in all of that, as we reformed the Medicare system, the most
significant reforms that will provide prescription drug benefits in the
years ahead for senior citizens, a series of those steps that have been
taken that are crucial.
And one of the areas that badly needs work is this whole question
of medical liability. And what has happened in so many places around
the country -- I know it's true in my home state of Wyoming, it has
been true in a great many other states, as well, too, is the medical
liability system is broken. And it has resulted in rapid increases in
the cost of malpractice insurance to the point now where many
physicians simply cannot afford the malpractice insurance to be able to
stay in business. It has been especially true in the OB/GYN
specialties. My home state of Wyoming, our hometown of Casper, the
cost of premiums for a GP -- a general practitioner has more than
doubled in the last three years. They now pay $100,000 a year for an
insurance policy just to be able to do business. A new doc fresh out
of medical school has to come up with about $80,000 up front to be able
to go into practice in my home state of Wyoming.
Now, that's true -- this is problem that's hit, I know, in Ohio.
It's hit in Pennsylvania. It has been a problem across the country,
and we have to find ways to deal with that. And there are ways to do
it. Some states have done it successfully -- been able to cap
non-economic damages in the medical liability area. You need a system
that will, in fact, respond to legitimate concerns, where people need
to be able to go to court and redress those grievances, and get
compensation when there have been serious problems and malpractice.
But there has to be limits. Or if we don't have limits, we end up in
the kind of situation where we drive up the cost of health care, and we
find ourselves with a significant number of people unable to acquire
health care.
And it turns out that about 60 percent of all the uninsured in
America are either owners of, or employees of small businesses. So
part of what we have to do here is find ways to make it possible for
small businesses to acquire health insurance at reasonable cost. And
one of the President's proposals that we'll pursue again in the future
is this notion of association health plans, of allowing small
businesses to come together and pool their interest, and be able to
negotiate the same kind of discounts that a big corporation can. We
think that's a major idea that needs to be adopted, that would help
significantly in this area. (Applause.)
But there are a lot of areas we can talk about -- the whole
education field. I know Iowa has been one of the leaders in education
nationally. That's a vital area of interest. The President, I think,
deserves a lot of credit for what he did when he first came to office.
His first priority was the No Child Left Behind Act. And we can talk
about that some more if you would like, as well.
But let me take just a few minutes, before we open it up to
questions, and talk a little bit about the national security situation
-- what has come to be called the war on terror, and the set of
circumstances that we're faced with today and what we've tried to do
over the course of the last three-and-a-half years now.
Again, 9/11 changed everything in the sense that it forced us to
deal with, and face the brand new threat of the terrorists -- in this
case the al Qaeda organization -- that had struck the United States
several times before, going back probably to the first attack on the
World Trade Center in 1993; but certainly, when they hit our embassies
in East Africa in '98; or the USS Cole, in Yemen in 1990 -- excuse me,
in 2000.
And the attack that they launched on us on 9/11 was one that had
been in the works for about five years. They first started talking
about it in 1996. And of course, that morning we lost 3,000 Americans
-- more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And subsequent to that, it
became necessary for us to figure out how we could best respond to this
dramatic new threat that had never before faced the United States, at
least not in that form.
Added to that was that we learned shortly after 9/11, as a result
of people that we captured and interrogated, or documents we found when
we went into Afghanistan, that the organization, the terrorists were
trying to acquire deadlier weapons than anything they had ever had
before, that they were trying to get their hands on chemical,
biological or even nuclear weapons to use against us.
And they know no restraint. There's no reason in the world why
they would hold back and not use something like that if they could get
their hands on it. So the biggest threat we face today is the
possibility of a terrorist cell setting up shop inside one of our own
cities, with one of those truly deadly weapons -- a biological agent of
some kind, say, or even a nuclear weapon that cost perhaps hundreds of
thousands of lives, not just 3,000, if they were to launch such an
attack.
It's a whole different scale of threat, a different kind of problem
than we've had to deal with in the past. The President did a number of
things by way of starting us on the course that I think has been
absolutely essential in safeguarding the nation. We've been successful
now for about three years at avoiding any attacks, but they're still
out there. They're doing everything they can to try to find another
way to launch further attacks against the United States. And we must
not let our guard down.
What the President did, among other things, obviously, we moved
aggressively here at home to strengthen our defenses. We've created
the Department of Homeland Security, the biggest reorganization of the
federal government in 50 years. We passed the Patriot Act, that gives
law enforcement the tools they need to be able to prosecute and put
terrorists in jail. We passed a thing called Project BioShield that
spends a lot of money investing in new technologies to be able to
defend ourselves against attack with biological weapons in the future.
We've strengthened our intelligence capabilities. We're in the
business now of reorganizing the intelligence community to improve our
capabilities there -- a whole series of things that are defensive, that
are sound policies that need to be done.
But a good defense is not enough. And the lesson the President has
driven home to all of us is to remind us that it's absolutely that if
we, in fact, are going to succeed in this conflict with these
terrorists, we have to go on offense, as well. (Applause.)
If you think about it, if we're successful 99.9 percent of the time
on defense, if they get through one-tenth of 1 percent of the time,
that's enough to do enormous damage -- given the scale of the threat
that we're forced to deal with here. So going on offense has meant
using U.S. military force to go after the terrorists wherever they
plan and train and organize. It also has meant going after those who
support terror. This is a new departure. For a long time, the
civilized world had sort of ignored those who were sponsoring terror
out there. We'd go after terrorists, but states that sponsored terror
were able to get away with sort of turning the other cheek and acting
like they hadn't had any involvement in these enterprises. The
President said no more. He said, henceforth, what we're going to have
a key component of our policy is that we will go after those who
sponsor terror or support terror or provide sanctuary and safe harbor
for terrorists.
And the first place we went, of course, was Afghanistan. And we
told the Taliban, either give up the al Qaeda or else. They said, no,
they wouldn't give up the al Qaeda. So the Taliban is out of
business. The al Qaeda is shut down. (Applause.) The al Qaeda camps
that they had operated in the last half of the '90s have been closed.
We've got a new government stood up in Afghanistan. President Karzai
in charge now. They'll hold free elections next month in October --
the first elections in Afghanistan, I guess, probably in history. And
they're on their way to getting a new Afghan national army stood up so
they can take over responsibility for their own national security,
which is a key part of the strategy. And we're moving forward in
Afghanistan.
In Iraq, we were faced with a situation where we had in Saddam
Hussein a man who had started two wars, a man who had previously
produced and used weapons of mass destruction. He used chemical
weapons on his own people, and on the Iranians -- a man who had been a
sponsor of terror. He was paying $25,000 a pop to the families of
suicide bombers. He had previously provided sanctuary in Iraq for the
Abu Nidal organization, other terrorists organizations, had a
relationship with al Qaeda. And we went into Iraq, obviously, and
Saddam Hussein today is in jail, which is in fact where he belongs.
(Applause.)
We've got a new government stood up in Iraq, an interim government
with Mr. Allawi in charge as the Prime Minister. The Iraqis now
control all of their ministries. They're involved in making a lot of
the key decisions with respect to their government. We're working very
aggressively, as well, to train Iraqi forces, and to stand up their own
security forces so they can take on the responsibility that our guys
are having to bear now. And that's going to be vital in the future.
We can only take the process like this so far, and then ultimately
they've got to be willing to take on responsibility for their own
governance, their own political system, and for their own security
system. And that's the direction we're headed in there, as well, too.
I don't want to underestimate for anybody how difficult these tasks
are. These are tough, challenging places to operate. We're up against
some very tough and murderous types, if you will, when we see what is
happening in various places in terms of the conflict that's going
there. But it is absolutely essential we get it right -- because what
we have to do here, the ultimate solution isn't just to kill
terrorists. You can do that all day long. The ultimate solution here
is to make certain that we change the circumstances on the ground in
places like Iraq and Afghanistan so they never again become breeding
grounds for the terrorists that launched those deadly attacks not only
against the United States, but obviously, for the kinds of terrorist
attacks that we've seen around the world.
This is not just a U.S. problem. There was a bit of a tendency, I
think there, perhaps, at the outset to think, well, they hit the United
States, the United States is the bogie man here, and they're going to
come after us. Well, they'll probably come after us more than anybody
else just because of who we are and what we believe, but just look at
what has transpired around the world since 9/11 with the attacks in
Madrid, in Casablanca, in Mombassa, in Istanbul, in Riyadh, in Bali, in
Jakarta, and most recently, of course, in Baslan, in Russia, this week
where they slaughtered hundreds of school children. We don't yet know
exactly what the relationship is between the groups that launched that
attack and whether or not al Qaeda is involved. That jury is still out
on all of that. The Russians seem to think there may be some
connections there. But obviously, it's another example of the kind of
problem we've got with those who resort to terror to try achieve their
political objectives as happened in that case.
It's vitally important that the decision we make going forward this
year -- get it right. Because there are fundamental differences
between the way the President wants to proceed and the way we've
operated now for the last three years, and the way Senator Kerry would
approach these problems. I think the record is pretty clear.
I have previously said, and I will say again today, all of us want
to thank Senator Kerry for his service in Vietnam. He talked about it
a lot at his convention. And it deserves praise. And we want to honor
his service. We do that for all of our veterans, regardless of what
their political views might be. And certainly, Senator Kerry is
entitled to same treatment, judgment. The problem I have with Senator
Kerry's record is what happened after he got to the United States
Senate, and what he did for 20 years in the Senate.
If I want a judgment made about how an individual who is seeking
the post of Commander-in-Chief, who wants to be President of the United
States, how he'll conduct himself on the basic fundamental issues that
I'm concerned about, and I think most Americans are concerned about
these days, I look back at how he has voted when he's been given the
opportunity on these kinds of issues about national security, about our
military forces, about our intelligence capabilities, about when to use
force and under what circumstances as guides for trying to assess how
he would function as President of the United States -- and what has he
said about Iraq, and how he operated in terms of the war on terror.
And when I look at that record, it's pretty clear that Senator Kerry
has frequently been at odds with what I think -- and what I think most
Americans believe -- has been the proper approach. We can go back to
the period of the 1980s when he arrived in the Senate, when he opposed
virtually every major weapons system that Ronald Reagan put forward
that turned out to be crucial in terms of our success, both in the Cold
War, but also in terms of the kinds of capabilities that we have today
to deal with the current set of circumstances that we're required to
deal with.
Senator Kerry and others have said, well, when he voted against
those systems back in the '80s, those were just the systems that Cheney
cancelled when he was Secretary of Defense. Huge difference here.
It's important to look at the distinction. Because in fact, when he
was voting against those systems back in the '80s, I was voting for
them. I was a member of the House of Representatives. And by the time
I became Secretary of Defense, the Cold War had ended. The Soviet
threat had gone away, and we needed new forces and new kinds of
capabilities. So don't let anybody tell you that what he did in the
1980s when he -- at one point put out a press release that opposed -- I
think this was in connection with his '84 campaign, opposed some 65
separate weapons systems, that that in any way is a parallel to the
action that I undertook when I was Secretary of Defense, back in 1989
to 1993 -- very different proposition.
It's also important if you look at the other kinds of issues that
he's had to deal with. When we had the first Gulf crisis -- 1990 and
'91 -- and we put together the coalition, and we went and liberated
Kuwait and sent the Iraqis back into Iraq, John Kerry voted against
that. He stood up and argued that we should not have done what we did
in Operation Desert Storm, which is one I followed fairly closely since
I was Secretary of Defense then. He was on the wrong side of that
issue.
When we get down to the situation with respect to Iraq, what we've
seen is that initially he voted for the resolution to authorize the
President to use force against Saddam Hussein. But then a few months
later, when it came time to vote for the funds the President requested
to equip the troops with what they needed once they had been committed
to combat, he voted no. Now, there were only four members of the
United States Senate that voted on one hand to commit the troops, and
then came back around later on and voted against giving them the
resources they needed to do what we'd asked them to do for us -- only
four senators -- one was Senator Kerry and the other was Senator
Edwards, two out of the four.
The bottom line in my estimation is, based on the way he's operated
as a senator, his view of the world, I don't believe he has
demonstrated the kind of commitment and capability and philosophy and
world view, frankly, that I think is essential if we're going to have
the kind of very tough policy that we need going forward if we're going
to successfully defend the United States against the kind of threat
we're faced with today. (Applause.)
Now, he's said that he would use military force. He'd like to do
it in the fairly traditional way, when the U.S. is attacked. My
argument would be, we've already been attacked. We suffered 3,000
casualties. (Applause.) And the success of our efforts, and something
that I think every American cares about, our ability to be able to
ensure that our children and grandchildren are going to be able to live
in a safe and secure world depends upon the basic fundamental decisions
we're making now.
We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of
the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA,
and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a
bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40
years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were
supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight
Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and
Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties,
supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at
that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or
40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on
November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong
choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit
in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United
States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you
will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and
that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake
for us.
We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything
we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to
destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world.
They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no
concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women
ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view
of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11
-- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right.
We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is
at stake in this election. (Applause.)
Now, I at this point would be happy to stop. And we can get into
questions. You ought to throw some questions at Lynne, too. She's
brighter than I am.
MRS. CHENEY: Yes. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. (Laughter.)
Q I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. And first of all, I just want to
thank you for your leadership -- both you and Lynne, and the Bushes for
your leadership and integrity that we see demonstrated in Washington,
D.C.,
that we need so much in our country.
My question is, last week, the U.S. Department of Labor announced
that a 144,000 new jobs were created, which to me is a step in the
right direction. But at the same time, Senator Kerry has put these ads
out saying that we have the worst economy since the Great Depression,
basically. And I just wanted to know how you respond to that, and why
he is basically trying to come out and mislead the United States on
this issue?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I obviously, disagree with him. I think
to say this is the worst economy since the Great Depression -- I'm
trying to think of how I can appropriately -- (Laughter.) Lynne says
he's been too busy windsurfing. (Laughter and applause.)
The fact is the unemployment rate today, 5.4 percent nationally, is
exactly what it was when Bill Clinton ran for reelection in 1996 -- 5.4
percent. (Applause.) The unemployment has come down fairly
significantly now over the course of the last year. We've had 12
months of steady growth. We've added 1.7 million new jobs since last
August. I think they've got a vested interest in trying to portray
things in a very bleak fashion, and that they've got to be able to
demonstrate that there's something wrong, or that there's some
fundamental problem here I supposed if they're trying to build support
for the proposition that he ought to be elected President. But I just
don't think the rhetoric fits with the reality. There's no question we
got work to do on the economy. We always do. There's always more that
we can do to improve the quality of life, to improve opportunities for
people, to improve our educational system so that our kids can take
advantage of our economy when they finally do get out of school, so we
can train people to be able to fill those jobs that are being created.
But to suggest that this is the worst economy since the Great
Depression, I didn't live through the Depression. I was born in 1941.
But my parents did. And I've got to tell you, I just -- I think that's
rhetoric that's over the top. I don't buy it. I don't think most
people do. (Applause.)
Q I'm from West Des Moines, appreciate you being here in Iowa
and showing us that Iowa is important. Mrs. Cheney, I've got a
question for you. No Child Left Behind certainly is something that
helps improve the education of our students, and shows us that the
President values education. But there's been a lot of complaints about
endorsed testing. Do you think there's an over-reliance on testing to
measure kids' progress?
MRS. CHENEY: One of my favorite anecdotes that I think helps make
the point about why testing is important is about a doctor. His name
is John Canal (ph). He lives in West Virginia, and -- oh, it was 15
years ago, he started noticing that when parents brought their kids in,
and he said, well, how are you kids doing in school, the answer he
always got was, well, they're above average.
Well, think about that. Pretty soon you figure out that something
is not quite right. Everybody has an elevated opinion of how his child
or her child is learning. There were also many surveys done that
showed that if you ask people how schools were doing, they said, well,
they could do better. He said, how is your kids' school doing? People
said, great. Now, again, it can't quite be right. What we had was a
situation where parents, where teachers didn't really have the kind of
information they needed to understand if kids were learning as much as
they should -- as much as they need to be able to compete in a global
economy.
And what testing does, I think, and what the President has shown in
Texas, and we're getting some results here already, too, what testing
does is show us how kids are doing. You know now how they're doing,
instead of having to just have an impression of how they're doing.
You've got have them with high standards. And you in Iowa have set
a mighty goal for the whole nation with your schools. You have very
fine schools here in Iowa. And your kids always do very well at the
top in national comparisons. Those high standards are important.
Testing to see if kids have met them worked in Texas to bring
everybody, every child up, but also to close the achievement gap
between Africa America kids and Anglo kids, and Hispanic kids and Anglo
kids -- closed those achievement gaps, began to close them. They're
not closed yet. And early results show that that's beginning to happen
nationwide, too. So testing is a central part of it. I know -- I
didn't always like to have to spend time when I was in school taking
tests. It was more fun to do an arts project. But it is really
important for us to understand how well our schools are doing so that
we can encourage to do ever better for our children. (Applause.)
Q Illegal immigration, border safety and the President's
amnesty policy, if the government doesn't come down hard on the people
who are employing the illegal immigrants, and what is to prevent them,
or what is the disincentive for them coming here?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we've tightened up significantly on the
borders since 9/11. We've had to. We've significantly beefed up our
border security and so forth. But it continues to be a problem. Part
of the difficulty that we're faced with, and one of the things that the
President talked about with respect to the immigration policy is that
we've got so many people coming across illegally -- primarily for
economic reasons, that want to come to work in the United States. But
we have no idea who is here. We have no idea what they do once they
get here. We have no idea how long they're going to stay, and that
there was a need to try to regularize this process. And what he has
suggested is that we ought to consider the possibility of having what,
in effect, would be a guest worker program so we'd know who was coming
in, and that once here, then, they'd stay for a specific period of
time. And they they'd have to go back home once their period of time
was ended. They could not become citizens. But we would have track of
who, in fact, was in the country. That's been proposed. Now, it's
just an idea, a concept.
It hasn't gone anyplace legislatively at this point. And the
problem we're faced with is that we need to find ways going forward to
make sure we do, in fact, have knowledge of who is in the country and
whether or not they've stayed, and how long they've stayed and what
they're doing while they're here. And at present that's a very hard
thing to do because of the enormous flow of people we've got back and
forth. We've improved our system with respect to those that come in
legally by visas and so forth. But we still don't have as good a grip
as we need on all of those who come into the United States illegally,
stay for a period of time, and then go back home.
And we need to do a better job than we are to make certain we
screen out terrorists to the maximum extent possible. So it's an
attempt to try to address that problem. It's not clear yet exactly how
it ultimately gets sorted out or gets resolved. But that's at the
heart of what is being talked about here.
Q I live in Altoona, Iowa. And I got my first paycheck for
about $250. And the government took out about $50 from that.
According to my math, that's about one-fifth. That means I work two
days for the government. What can I do to change that? (Laughter and
applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: How would you like to be Secretary of the
Treasury? (Laughter.) No, we're -- that's a lesson we all learn when
we first go to work. And I think most Americans don't mind paying
taxes if they think that the money is well spent, and if they think
that it's not excessive -- that is to say that you don't mind working
for a certain amount, if you will, to go for the common purpose --
those things we need like schools, and defense and so forth. But you
lose confidence, or you become aggravated -- I know I went through the
same process starting out -- I had a paper route. It was my first
job. That was before Lynne knew me even -- and you get that check and
not only were income taxes taken out, but you also -- the payroll tax
to pay for Social Security. And now Medicare comes out of it, as well,
too. And I think the thing is to support the kind of sound, sane
policy and philosophy when you look at public officials to see whether
or not they agree with your general view of what right balance is. And
I think George Bush is the man.
I believe seriously if you look at tax policy over the years. You
look at what the President has done. You look at what his opponents
have suggested and recommended. Again, look at Senator Kerry's record
in the Senate. He voted -- 20 years in the Senate, he voted 98 times
for higher taxes, and about 130 times against various proposals to
reduce taxes. He's said -- now, he's campaigning on the basis that
he's going to raise taxes for at least a portion of the population.
And if you add up all of the numbers, he's recommended two $2 trillion
in new spending, and he's going to cut the deficit in half at the same
time, the only way he can do that is to raise taxes pretty much across
the board on everybody because the folks at the top don't pay enough to
be able to make up that huge difference. You're going to have to go
out and tax the vast majority of Americans. So I think there's a clear
choice there with respect to tax policy. I think you've got in George
Bush a man who will do everything he can to make certain that we don't
overburden the American taxpayer with taxes because we believe very
deeply that the genius of our society resides not inside the Beltway in
Washington, D.C., or what government does with your money, it resides
primarily with what the American people do for themselves, and the
opportunities that we create for ourselves, and businesses that are
created. The best anti-poverty program I know is a job. And jobs
aren't created by Uncle Sam and the federal government, jobs are
created out there in the private sector. And so I think that's the key
-- (Applause.)
Q Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, welcome to Iowa. And as a former
Democrat, I would first like to honor your 40 years of marriage.
Congratulations. (Applause.) I did vote for Bush, and I am now
Republican. My question is, I am a volunteer voter registration
coordinator at my church. And I would like to know what I can do to
ensure, encourage more Christians to get out to vote to -- I think
which will win Iowa. I would like to know what I could do, or we could
do to ensure that.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you've done a lot already by signing up
the voter registration effort. What I like to remind people -- I still
run into a lot of people. And of course, I've been involved in public
life and politics and ran for Congress six times in Wyoming. And I've
spent most of my career in it, and I suppose I've got a special
affection for the political process and the political system. I just
think it's important to remind people that it is a unique privilege.
Very, very few civilizations in the history of the world have ever had
the privilege we have of deciding who our leaders are going to be, and
then hold them accountable for their performance. To live in the
finest democracy the world has ever known is such a privilege. And for
so many people to take that for granted, always offends me a bit. I
like to remind people that what each individual does in fact matter.
And all you have to do is look at the last election. It got decided by
537 votes in Florida. And when somebody comes to me and says, well,
it's a big country, there are millions of Americans out there. It
doesn't really matter what I do. I say, wait a minute, all you got to
do is look at the election of 2000 and think about how close that
election was; think about how momentous the events have been since
then; and how important it is to have the right leadership, make the
right decisions, and then tell everybody, look every vote matters.
Every phone call matters. Every hour of volunteer time, every dollar
that's contributed -- all of that goes to the success of this process,
and that as Americans we ought to want a strong, vigorous election. We
ought to want the candidates out there competing as aggressively as
possible with respect to what they believe in, and what they stand for
and what their platforms are. That's how we can educate ourselves, and
also how we can ultimately hold them accountable.
If you can get a few minutes with a small group of people to try to
convey that to them. And all we're asking them to do is to register to
vote and then show up at the polls on Election Day, or in those states
that have early voting, participate through that process. And it's
such a privilege for us to be able to do that. You travel the world,
and if you know anything about history, of you've spent any time
looking at how people live in so many parts of the world, under
dictatorships, oppressive regimes, no rights, no protections against
the sovereign power of the state, to get to function and live your life
as an American and participate in that process is just such a special
privilege that nobody should take it for granted. (Applause.)
Q Yes, as a proud uncle of a niece and nephew who graduated
from Annapolis; they're serving right now, I'd like to ask the
question: the advent of the Cold War and the end of SALT II, will we
continue with weapons systems by leading the world -- as the Switch
Blade and the F-22 Raptor -- the Raptor, itself, to be able to offer
three versions of it to our allies, rather than have them shop around?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Do I think we will do that?
Q Yes.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, I think the Raptor is the next generation
aircraft for the Air Force. I supported it strongly when I was
Secretary of Defense. It is now, I guess, getting into production
now. And it has been in development for a long time. And it will be
the state of the art aircraft for the United States Air Force, probably
for the next 30, 40 years anyway. The F-15 has been the backbone of
the Air Force. I saw it first rolled out about 1974-75 down at Luke
Air Force Base in Arizona, when I worked for President Ford. And it
has been in the Force now for 30 some years. It will continue to be
part of the Force. But the Raptor is the next generation, if you will,
after that. And we have in this administration protected it. It has
been an important part of the defense budget each year. I have no
reason to believe that's going to change.
Q I have more of a comment than I do a question. My son is a
lance corporal in the Marine Corps. He's being deployed today. And I
just want thank you and President Bush for everything that you've done
for our troops. And I pray to God that you will be in there the next
four years to finish.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. (Applause.) I
hope you'll thank him on behalf of all of us for what he's doing for
the nation. (Applause.)
And again, I want to thank all of you for being here today, for
giving us some of your time. This last comment is, I think, a reminder
to all of us that -- how important this election is this year. And we
appreciate you being here this morning.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END 11:20 A.M. CDT
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