For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
September 8, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting
Radisson Hotel
Manchester, New Hampshire
September 7, 2004
5:01 P.M. EDT
MRS. CHENEY: Well, thank you very much. Great crowd, Dick. It's
a real pleasure to be here this afternoon in New Hampshire. And I have
the job of introducing my husband. And I've had this job for four
years now. I was assigned it in the beginning because I have known him
for so long.
I have known him since we were 14 years old, and we were growing up
together in Casper, Wyoming. And when I first knew Dick, he had a
summer job -- or an after school job, and it was sweeping out the Ben
Franklin store in Casper, Wyoming. And I've known him through many
jobs since. I've known him since he was digging ditches at the Central
Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Grounds, which is right outside our hometown in
Casper. And I've known him since he was loading sacks -- 100-pound
sacks of bentonite onto railroad cars. And I've known him since he was
building power line all across the West to pay his way through school.
And I like to mention all those jobs because I think when you grow up
working hard, you learn some very significant lessons. And one of
those lessons is how important it is for the hard working men and women
of this country to get to keep as much of their paychecks as possible.
(Applause.)
And I think you also learn when you grow up working hard, you learn
how competent and strong the American people are. And you learn that
what we need is not a government that runs our lives, but a government
that provides us opportunities to make our lives better. And that has
become I know a central guiding philosophy of Dick's life. And I was
so pleased to hear so many people talking about it at our convention.
And I thought Arnold Schwarzenegger did an especially terrific job.
(Applause.)
I left that convention thinking how proud -- how much pride we can
all take in what we saw over those two days. And if I were to make a
list of things I would be proud of, right at the top would be our
President, George W. Bush. (Applause.) And let me just say that the
Vice President is no slouch either. (Applause.)
And so, ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Dick Cheney, the Vice
President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. And Governor, and Susan
(ph). We appreciate very much your letting us come today and spend
some time with all of you, and appreciate all your being here today, as
well, too.
This is, of course, getting down to the final run on the campaign.
I think the election is eight weeks from today. Who is counting,
though, right? (Laughter.)
But I'm delighted always to have the chance to have Lynne come out
and campaign with me on the campaign trail. She knows a lot about me.
I'm never sure what she's going to say in the introduction. Sometimes
I'm surprised.
But I like to tell people that we got married because Dwight
Eisenhower got elected President of the United States. And I explain
that in 1952, I was just a youngster living in Lincoln, Nebraska with
my folks. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower
got elected, and Dad got transferred to Casper, Wyoming after they
reorganized the Agriculture Department. And in Casper, I met Lynne,
and we grew up together, went to high school together, and a week ago
Sunday, celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) Of
course, I pointed out the other night that if it hadn't been for Dwight
Eisenhower's election victory and Dad's transfer, Lynne would have
married somebody else. She said, right, and now he'd be Vice President
of the United States. (Laughter and applause.) There's no doubt in my
mind.
But we're delighted to have the opportunity to spend some time with
you this afternoon. What we wanted to do, maybe I'd have a few opening
remarks, talk about the choice we're going to make this year, and why I
believe it's so important, and then throw it open to questions, have an
opportunity to respond to your concerns and comments, as well.
And I did think the convention last week was really a great event.
I've been to eight Republican conventions now. I thought that was top
drawer. (Applause.) I must admit I was a little skeptical about going
to New York City before the convention. I'm a Wyoming boy. But the
folks in New York did a superb job. The NYPD was fantastic. The mayor
was great, the governor welcoming us, and everybody had a great time,
and we got the job done that needed to be done.
I thought it was important, too, because I thought the convention
managed to convey on the one hand a fairly clear understanding for
people on what the choices are in terms of the different approaches
between what the President represents and what his opponent John Kerry
represents. And that's what elections are to be all about.
But it also let us talk about the future, and about what our
priorities will be going forward, and why we think this election is as
important as it is. Now, I have, obviously, over the years
participated in a lot of campaigns. But I really do believe that this
is the most important I'll ever participate in. I say that not just
because my own name is on the ballot, but because I think we're at one
of those periods in our history where we do, in fact, make decisions
that we then live with and set the stage for how we're going to
function as a nation for the next 25, or 30, or 40 years.
We had one of those right after the end of World War II. You may
remember as the Cold War began, we had to reorganize our national
security. We created the Department of Defense, established the CIA,
completely redesigned our military, created the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, did a series of things that became fundamental strategy
for the United States in terms of our national security policy, and
then implemented on those policies -- Republican and Democrat, alike --
for about the next seven or eight administrations. I think we're again
at one of those points when you think about national security and about
the issues we've got to deal with there. And I want to talk about that
in a minute.
But I also want to talk about -- to begin with, the economic
situation, and spend a few minutes on that because that's the other
major piece of the debate. And in terms of the kind of decision we
have to make, it goes to the heart of what I think is a philosophical
difference between what Senator Kerry represents and what his record
would indicate and what his campaign promises would indicate, and what
I think George Bush represents and what he has done over the course of
the last four years, and what we expect will be the priorities going
forward into the future.
9/11 was a very significant event, obviously, for our
administration -- something nobody anticipated when we were sworn in.
And all of a sudden it hit, and it changed everything -- I think both
domestically and internationally.
Domestically, of course, it came on the heels of the recession that
we'd inherited when we arrived. And that shock to the economy on
September 11th cost at least a million jobs within a few weeks after
9/11 because of what it did to the travel and tourism industry. It
made the recession much tougher for us to recover from than would have
otherwise been the case.
The President adopted, I think, based on a fundamental guidance,
and fundamental belief that we would be better off if we left more
resources in the hands of the American people to make fundamental
decisions going forward than if we appropriated those to the government
in the form of taxes. So he made that basic decision with respect to
tax policy. And over the course of the next three years, we cut taxes
three times in ways that were designed specifically to promote the
growth of the economy and to allow the American people to keep more of
what they earn. We did everything from cut rates across the board,
including the top rates that many small businesses have to pay, created
a 10 percent bracket. We doubled the child credit, reduced the
marriage penalty, provided for a quadrupling of expensing for small
businesses so they could write off more of basic equipment you needed
for businesses up front to create more jobs, and more incentive, and
more investment -- a series of steps, including, for example, phasing
out the death tax so that people who own small businesses or farms and
ranches can pass on to the next generation what they've already been
taxed on once when they earn, the basic businesses or enterprises that
they've created with their hard work over the years -- a series of
fundamental decisions that represented basic reform, but also were
designed to help bring us out of that economic slow-down that occurred
in 2001.
We think we've made very significant results -- progress out of
that. You can look at the fact we've added 1.7 million new jobs over
the course of the last year. (Applause.) We've got growth for the
last four quarters of about 4.8 percent in GDP; 144,000 jobs last month
alone. We think we're on the right track and we're headed in the right
direction. And the key for us with respect to tax policy in the future
is to make those tax changes permanent because they're not permanent
now.
The way we had to put them in under the Senate act means that we
phase out. (Applause.) They will phase out over time because of the
way the bill was structured when we sent them up. And it will require
legislation to be passed by the Congress to make those tax changes
permanent. And that will be a top priority for us going forward.
The President has also talked about -- mentioned the other night in
his acceptance speech at the convention that he wants to begin to
address this problem of simplifying the tax code. Anybody who tries to
pay their own taxes, or looks at the complexity of the tax code today,
contemplates the enormous complexity that goes with it, the huge
amounts of money that are spent every year simply in compliance,
simplification, obviously, is something we really need to consider.
And that will be a top priority for us going forward in the second
term, as well, too.
In addition to that, other priorities the President wanted to focus
on is to do everything we can to make America the best place in the
world to do business, that the perspective that we have to have --
especially in terms of our ability to compete with other countries, and
with companies based in other counties is that you ought to be able to
start a business here. You ought to be able to have a fair trading
field, in terms of international competition, that you ought to have a
tax system and a regulatory system that encourages savings and
investment and innovation, rewards entrepreneurship, but you're not
penalized for operating in the United States of America relative to our
competitors around the world -- because it is a global economy. And we
benefit from that global economy. That means we've got to work to make
absolutely certain that the rules are fair for everybody, and that we
take the necessary steps here at home to make certain that we've
cleared away as much underbrush as we can so that there is a level
playing field.
One of the things we think we need to address is the whole question
of lawsuit abuse, and especially medical liability -- the medical
liability problem, and the way it relates to health costs. (Applause.)
One estimate that I've seen is that the medical liability system --
the way it functions today -- loads an annual cost on the American
individual who has got to pay for health insurance and so forth, a cost
of about $108 billion a year, by one estimate.
We've got a situation now in many states -- including our home
state of Wyoming -- where malpractice insurance rates have risen so
high that we're driving doctors out of the state. They simply can't
afford to continue to operate there. We've had -- the premium on a
malpractice insurance package now for a doctor in my hometown of Casper
has more than doubled over the course of the last three years. We
can't attract new docs to the state because after they come out of
medical school, they need about an $80,000 nugget up front just to get
into business in order to be able to cover their insurance costs. We
need to address that. We can fix it. We need to reform our medical
liability system.
You want to make certain that people who have legitimate grievances
can go to the courts and address those grievances, but we need to make
absolutely certain that the system doesn't function the way it is now
where it is clearly driving up health cost to virtually everybody in
the society. And that's a problem that can be addressed. We've passed
legislation through the House of Representatives. We haven't been able
to get it through the Senate. Senators Kerry and Edwards have opposed
it consistently. That's another fundamental difference between our
ticket and their ticket.
With respect, to tax policy, as well, I think it's clear where
Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are. Senator Kerry talks about
wanting to cut the deficit in half over five years. But he's got $2
trillion in new spending proposals. We're going to cut the deficit in
half over the next five years, and we can get there. We're on the path
to do that. The only way he can get there -- given his $2 trillion in
spending proposals -- is to raise everybody's taxes pretty much across
the board. He's talking about only taxing the rich, but the bottom
line is they don't generate enough to be able to cover costs of the
magnitude that he's talking about -- so another basic, fundamental
difference with respect to tax policy.
So there's that fundamental, philosophical approach in terms of
whether or not we're going to have government do it, or whether we're
going to do everything we can to encourage private citizens, private
individuals, businesses, the private sector to make basic choices about
how we allocated resources and create jobs in this society is at the
heart of this campaign. And obviously, I have a strong bias in terms
of how we ought to proceed. But I think also that's a view that is
reflective of the majority of the people who live in New Hampshire,
frankly, as well, too. (Applause.)
On the national security front, we've also got some major
challenges, clearly. And once again, let me emphasize 9/11 forced us
to think new thoughts about how we defend the nation, and about what
the threat is that we have to deal with. Now, most of us grew up with
and spent our adult lives during the period of the Cold War. And we
were forced to contemplate the possibility of all-out global war with
the Soviet Union. We put in place a set of strategies that worked to
deter an attack by the Soviets, a system of alliances. We deployed
forces and so forth around the world. And it worked. And ultimately,
we prevailed in the Cold War. But those concepts that worked when we
were talking about the Soviets and the Cold War have no meaning
whatsoever when you try to apply them to al Qaeda.
What does deterrence mean to the terrorist who has no piece of real
estate he wants to defend, whose prime motive is jihad, who wants to
kill infidels, and he's prepared to die in the process? Deterrence is
not a meaningful concept with that kind of an adversary.
We also know based on what we've learned after 9/11 that we're
faced with the potential threat here of terrorists acquiring weapons of
mass destruction -- chemical and biological agents, or nuclear weapons
and trying to use that against us. We know that because we found
evidence that they had been trying to acquire that kind of capability
in the caves and training camps in Afghanistan. We know that from
interrogating the people that we've captured out of the al Qaeda along
the way. That's the ultimate threat today, is a terror cell in the
middle of one of our own cities with that very deadly capability that
could conceivably threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Americans in one day.
And that's a pretty awesome threat to contemplate. And it requires
us to do everything we can, obviously, to defend ourselves against it,
to guarantee that that never happens to the United States.
To do that, we recognize up front that the strategies that we had
used with respect to terror attacks before 9/11 didn't work. We
thought about those problems as law enforcement problems, as individual
criminal acts. You go out and find the individual who set off the bomb
and put them in jail. We did that. We got Ramzi Yousef who led the
way on the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. But we never went
beyond that. We never recognized that we were at war against an
organization that had a global reach, and that in fact had declared war
on us in about 1996, and began in 1996 to plan the attack of 2001 on
the World Trade Center in New York, the attack on the Pentagon.
A new strategy was required in addition to aggressively improving
our defenses here at home, creating a Department of Homeland Security,
beefing up our intelligence capabilities, reorganizing the federal
government to be able to defend ourselves better had to be matched by a
new strategy that recognized you also have to go on offense.
Bottom line is, if we're successful on defense 99 percent of the
time, that's not good enough. That 1 percent that gets through can
still kill you. And the only way to guarantee that the United States
is safe and secure from the al Qaeda organization or other terrorists
with similar desires against the United States is to aggressively go
after the terrorists, as well, and those who support them. And that's
a new departure. (Applause.)
Not everybody has made the transition from pre-9/11 to post-9/11.
That's partly what the debate is all about this year. And you have to
sit down. It is a significant step forward to do what the President
has done, for example, and say, look we're not only going to go after
the terrorists, we're going to go after those who support terror.
We're going to go after those who provide a sanctuary or a safe harbor
for terrorists. And of course, that's exactly what we've done in
Afghanistan, where we took down the Taliban, routed the al Qaeda --
captured or killed hundreds of al Qaeda, closed down the training camps
where some 20,000 terrorists trained in the latter part of the '90s,
including those who launched strikes against the United States on
9/11. And we've now stood up an interim government. And they're off
and running. We'll have elections next month before we do -- and so
significant progress there.
With respect to Iraq, obviously, we went in and did the same thing
there. Saddam Hussein was a man who had defied the United Nations and
the international community for 12 years. He'd started two wars. He
had previously produced and used weapons of mass destruction -- used
chemical weapons on his own people and on the Iranians, who had
harbored terrorists, and provided a sanctuary for terrorists, and
provided funding for terrorists in the past -- for example, payments to
suicide bombers, families of suicide bombers -- by any standards a
major and emerging threat to the United States, as well, too. And we
did exactly the right thing. And today, of course, Saddam Hussein is
in jail. (Applause.)
I was intrigued this afternoon because I had noticed yesterday that
John Kerry, who voted for using military force in Iraq and then, of
course, he voted against funding the effort once we got there -- but
who just a few days ago had said that if he had to make the decision
knowing what he knows now with respect to approving the President's use
of force in Iraq, he would have then again voted to authorize him to do
that. Yesterday, he was out saying, no Iraq was the wrong war, and the
wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, that struck a note because I thought I'd heard somebody else
say that. And of course, you go back and look, and you'll find out,
well, that's exactly what Howard Dean said last December 15th. And the
fascinating thing is that when Howard Dean said that in December of
last year, the wrong war et cetera, John Kerry is the one who
challenged Howard Dean immediately. And here's what he said.
At Drake University in Iowa, Kerry asserted that, "Those who
doubted whether Iraq or would be better off with Saddam Hussein and
those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't
have the judgment to be President or the credibility to be elected
President." (Applause.)
Senator Kerry gets upset when we talk about his record. Let me say
at the outset, as I've said repeatedly, and I said the other night in
my speech to the Republican Convention, we honor him for his service in
Vietnam. He's a veteran who served the nation, and we honor all our
veterans, including John Kerry. (Applause.) I don't question his
patriotism, I question his judgment.
For 20 years he served in the United States Senate and he cast
votes on a whole series of issues that were, in fact, the issues of the
day that related to national security strategy -- to weapons systems,
military appropriation, to whether or not we should or shouldn't use
force under various circumstances. But there's a record there where he
voted during the Reagan administration on whether we'd buy the systems
that President Reagan recommended with respect to equipping U.S.
forces; on the first Gulf War, on Desert Storm, when I was Secretary of
Defense, he voted on that -- or of course -- well, I was going to
explain that in a statement after that. But the fact of the matter is
he got it wrong most of the time.
In 1984, when he ran for the Senate for the first time, he had a
list of 65 weapons systems that he wanted to get rid of or eliminate.
And many of them are the backbone of our military capabilities today --
things like the B2 Bomber, Tomahawk Cruise Missile. At the time of the
Gulf War when it was time to authorize force to kick the Iraqis out of
Kuwait in Desert Storm, he opposed it -- got up on the floor and spoke
against it, and was one of the senators who voted against it. He has,
I think, on national security issues pretty consistently gotten it
wrong over the course of that 20-year period that he's been in the
Senate. That's not a personal attack to disagree with the positions he
took on issues. He probably disagrees with positions I took on
issues. My positions were a little different than his.
But the bottom line is that a senator can vote wrong for 20 years,
as John Kerry did, without consequence to the nation. But a President
always -- always -- casts the decisive vote. (Applause.) So if
someone wants to move from the Senate to the executive branch, wants to
go from being the Junior Senator from Massachusetts to being the
Commander-in-Chief of America's Armed Forces, the individual we trust
to make those basic, fundamental, life-and-death decisions for all of
us -- and especially for our men and women who go in harm's way, that's
a big step. And we have every right to evaluate the public record, to
make judgments about it, to ask questions about it, and debate it as
the work-up and the run-up to the decision that we'll all make here on
November 2nd. And that's what we're doing.
It's important that we have that debate and that discussion. And
as I say, I feel very strongly that it's important that we adhere for
the long haul, for the future to the kinds of policies George Bush has
put in place in the post-9/11, and that we not fall back to the trap of
looking at the world through those lenses of pre-9/11, when we tended
to treat each one of these terrorist acts as an individual criminal
enterprise, sort of a turn the other cheek, don't go after the states
that sponsor, don't take action against those who provide support to
terrorists. That way was tried. We did it for years. It didn't
work. All the terrorists took away from that was the conviction that
they could strike us with impunity because they did repeatedly.
And secondly, if they hit us hard enough, they could change our
policy -- because they did, for example, in Somalia in 1994, when they
killed 19 of our guys, and within weeks, we had pulled everybody out of
Somalia. So the choice we're going to make is absolutely essential,
and I feel especially strongly about it. I think everybody does. When
you start to think about the kind of decision we're going to make now,
if you put it back into that late 1940s, early 1950s time frame and
think about how long those policies were place, and how vital they were
to our success in the Cold War, and to our emerging from that period of
time without all the potential, the negative effects that could have
emerged from it. And remember, the decisions we're going to make this
year will probably set the terms and conditions for our kids and
grandkids in terms of what kind of world they're going to inherit,
whether or not we'll be safe and secure here in the United States -- or
whether or not we're going to be faced once again with a series of
terrorist attacks the kind that we've seen around the world since
9/11.
And remember we're not the only ones who have been hit. We've seen
attacks in Madrid, in Casablanca, in Riyadh, in Mombassa, in Istanbul,
in Jakarta, in Bali -- most recently in Russia, in Beslan, where they
this week killed hundreds school kids.
And we don't know yet exactly who was behind that attack, but we do
know this resort to terror and that kind of assault, bloody assault on
civilians -- innocent men, women and children -- to achieve political
aims has become all to prevalent around the world. And we have to deal
with it. We have to deal with it where we find it. We have to be on
offense, as well as defense, and we have to reelect George Bush
President of the United States on November 2nd. (Applause.)
Now, I think we've got people in the audience with microphones.
The folks in the orange blouses or T-shirts have got there mikes. And
we'll be happy to try to answer questions. I don't mean to ignore the
folks behind us here. We'll try to get to yours, too. So why don't we
go ahead. If somebody has got a question they're ready to offer up.
We got somebody here.
Q Mr. Vice President and Lynne, it's wonderful to be with you
here today. I'm out of North Hampton, New Hampshire, that's along the
sea coast, in case you guys don't get over there because you missed her
twice this year -- the President and yourself. But I can donate a
couple of steaks to you if you like. (Laughter.) And you want to swing
by. I'm in the meat business. My wife and I have been in the meat
business for 36 years. Twenty years in New Hampshire. We just turned
our 20th year. My question is the FBI, which is -- I believe is the
number one deterrence going to be for the al Qaeda terrorists. Two
weeks ago, on CNN and also on Fox, there's been two ladies let go from
the FBI. You have internal problems with the FBI. I want to know if
the President and yourself have been aware of this. They're whistle
blowers, all right? And now the FBI has squashed their complaints.
Now, if they have a legitimate gripe, and it sure sounds like they do,
just like in my business, or every other person here, if we have a
problem internally, the guy at the top has to take care of that, all
right? I don't care if it's a bad employee or an employee that's
stealing, all right? Something has to be dealt with the matter. Now,
I believe in our FBI. I'm a big supporter of George Bush and
yourself. I'm a Vietnam veteran, U.S. Navy, '65 to '67. And I want to
know if you knew about this, and instead of squashing it, both these
ladies that seem to have a legitimate complaint -- and I know, Lynne,
you respect them for bringing it forward. But I just don't want it
squashed because I like to see the guy at the bottom of the FBI ranks
have his voice heard all the way to the top and not have to take so
long to get there, all right? Because there's a legitimate complaint
with a terrorist, or with somebody internally, the only way we're going
to straighten out this country, or the terrorists, we're going to have
to make sure the FBI is straight forward like they should be. Thank
you.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not familiar with the specific cases
you're talking about. I'd be happy to take a look at it if you want to
give me your card or something afterwards. Are these people in
Washington? Or locally?
Q There's one case in particular, the woman I was watching,
she's one of your translator. Her number one complaint -- she had two
complaints, her number one is the translator you have down in
Guantanamo -- Gitmo Bay, she claims that translator cannot speak
Arabic. He flunked the test down there, and we got him as our number
one translator for two years down in Guantanamo Bay. I don't know if
there's any truth to that or not.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay, that's the kind of thing we can check
out. And I'll be happy to take a look at it.
Let me say a word on behalf of Bob Mueller, and the folks at the
FBI. One of the things that has happened since 9/11 is every morning
at about 8:30 a.m. in the Oval Office, the President and I sit down
with the Director of the CIA and the Director of the FBI -- the two of
them together. Because, frankly, one of the problems we encountered in
the run-up to 9/11 -- and the 9/11 Commission I thought covered this
fairly well -- was we had inadequate communications between our foreign
intelligence apparatus and our domestic operation. That's no longer
the case. They have to sit together in the front of the President on a
regular basis and talk about these problems and the existing threats.
Let me also say that I think Bob Mueller has done a good job of
reorganizing the FBI, redirecting its focus. The Bureau for year -- it
was designed this way -- was the top law enforcement agency. So they
could go to Oklahoma City after the truck bomb went off, find the axle
of the truck, find the serial number on it, get back to the U-Haul
rental agency in Kansas or wherever it was, and eventually find the
guilty party and prosecute Tim McVeigh, as they did.
But this proposition we got now is very different. We don't want
to go get the truck axle after the bomb has gone off, we want to stop
the bomb from going off in the first place. It requires a whole
different approach -- analytical approach and intelligence collection
approach and so forth. And Bob Mueller has done a superb job of moving
us in that direction.
There may be individual problems. There are in every agency from
time to time. And we'll be happy to take a look at them.
We got a mike over here?
Q Thank you for coming to the Live Free or Die State. At age
55, I am not worried about Social Security for myself. But I am
worried about Social Security for the next generation. If we do reform
Social Security, what will be the effect on people currently retired or
near retirement? If we do not reform Social Security, what will be the
effect on younger people?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the key on Social Security in terms of
the reform efforts that are clearly going to be needed is to focus on
the future generation. That is to say, to the extent we've had
conversations about this, the President talked about it some in the
last campaign. He
mentioned it more recently, as well, too, we're talking about a
system that would allow the younger workers who have got several years
left in the work force before they reach retirement age to put a
portion of their Social Security into their own personal retirement
account, that would theirs, controlled by them. They'd be able to
invest it in approve plans, and they would be able to earn a higher
rate of return than they could get just by putting it straight into the
Social Security system.
That would not apply to those who are already retired. The program
would be unchanged for them, and those nearing retirement age. You
need to have several years to be able to build up the kind of equity in
that kind of program to make it worthwhile. But I expect in the next
term we'll have a big debate -- should have. And we need to be able to
build a bipartisan solution to improve on the Social Security system.
And the focus really does need to be on those younger generations. The
system is going to be fine for those now retired and those soon to
retire. But younger workers, folks in their 20s and 30s now have
legitimate concerns about what is going to be there for them 30 years
from now when it is their turn to retire.
Secondly, let me say with respect to the Live Free or Die State, my
great grandfather was born in New Hampshire. (Applause.) And we were
tracing the family history the other day. It was Boscowen -- Boscowen,
in about 1831; then emigrated to Ohio, served with an Ohio regiment in
the Civil War, and then after the Civil War, took the family on west to
Nebraska, which is how we got migrated on across the country. But we
had New Hampshire roots back -- I'm sure there's some Live Free or Die
blood someplace in the chain. (Laughter.)
Yes, got somebody in the back here.
Q Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Cheney, welcome -- a very warm
welcome to New Hampshire. I have a second part question to that
question on Social Security. We know that there are a lot of families
in this country that live paycheck to paycheck. And the odds of them
saving their money properly or handling it to get to the point of
retirement and being able to survive on that are probably a long shot
for some families. And my question is this, if, in fact, that does
happen and we do have a change in the Social Security system what will
happen to those families that kind fall through the cracks? Does that
mean that in the end we're going to have to have another program
designed to pick up the slack and provide those families? Is there
going to be another Social Security system designed for that so that
we're really leaving one and going into another?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's usually been discussions --
again, it depends on when you would start it. Who you would authorize
to participate in it. The discussions generally have turned, in terms
of persevering -- especially for those folks at the upper end of the
age bracket now, giving them the opportunity to stay with the existing
system -- which is what I would expect they would want to do.
When you go to the younger generation, then those debates -- you'd
have to have a debate and decide and discuss exactly how it would work
and where the cut-off would be. Do you start, for example, at age 45
or age 40? What kind of plans are they allowed to invest in? Do you
have, say, two or three approve plans that are relatively safe that
will provide a higher rate of return, but aren't high risk in terms of
the potential for them losing part of their savings, those kinds of
issues would have to be debated.
Part of the concept here -- and I think it's a good one -- is this
notion of private ownership of your own retirement assets. And partly
what we believe in -- I think and feel very strongly about -- is to the
maximum extent possible we want the American people to have as much
freedom to make basic fundamental decisions for themselves.
Right now today, for example, the way the current system works, you
may have invested in Social Security your whole life, but if you die at
age 65 that's it. You're obviously never going to see any of it, and
you can't give it to anybody else. Your spouse will get whatever their
entitled to by way of spousal benefits. This would be a system where
you'd have -- a portion of your retirement would be yours. And if
there was some left, when you passed on, you would be able to transfer
it to your kids. It would be owned by our personally.
Q (Inaudible) families who are not successful in doing that.
We know it's not a matter of a question of if, it's a matter of when --
because there will be lots of families that are not successful in doing
that. And at the end of the line for them, where does that leave
them? And there will be people like that. So how are we going to
provide for those families?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, again, there's no detailed proposal out
there on the table. There are just ideas and thoughts and discussions
and principles involved. But nobody has really suggested, for example,
that somebody would have the choice of setting aside, say, just half of
their Social Security payment and spending the rest of it. They would
have other -- whatever the total tax amount is, say it were 6 percent,
6.5 percent, 7 percent of your paycheck that currently goes into Social
Security, that portion of that you would be able to put into a
different kind of fund. But it would have to be set aside. You
wouldn't have the option of put it in your pocket, or making your car
payment with it. That wouldn't be an option. You would have -- you
would be committed for that basic minimal amount that everybody has to
contribute to the Social Security system -- probably.
Now, again, nobody has made a final proposal or a decision here.
These are just ideas that are being kicked around. But the idea that,
frankly, you can if you're now in your 20s or 30s think about the
return you can earn if you were to set aside a portion of your Social
Security in another kind of account. You'll get a higher rate of
return than you'll get by giving it to Uncle Sam and putting it into
the Social Security trust fund. And it will be yours.
Yes. Need a microphone. I'm sorry. I'm supposed to look at the
shirts.
Q Good afternoon, Mr. Cheney, and, Lynne. Thank you for
coming. My question is related to President Bush's proposal to
overhaul the tax system. Do you have any details on what he has in
mind for that and how he's going to simplify the current IRS code?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, there are no proposals yet. There's the
desire. Treasury is looking into various and sundry alternatives. But
nobody has come up with a final package yet that anybody wants to
recommend. The general sense that the tax code is extraordinarily
complex, that we've got a system in which we spend vast resources just
in compliance so we can collect taxes, that's basically money that we
could apply to some other purpose if we had a simpler code, so it was
easier for people to, in fact, pay.
We've gone through similar situations before. I think the one I
recall was back in the 1980s, in the Reagan administration, when we
moved toward simplification. And we reduced the number of brackets and
so forth, and made it easier for people to comply with the code. But
then gradually over time, the complexity gets added back in for various
and sundry reasons. So there's a desire there -- a belief that we can
do much better than we have. You'd have to put together, again, a
bipartisan group to work on it. You'd want to get the technical
experts in to take a look at it because when you start to tamper with
the tax code, obviously, you can have an impact on virtually everybody
-- depending upon how you go about it. And so it would be a difficult,
complex task. And you'd want to get some real experts working it, and
you'd want bipartisan support, otherwise it will never pass anyway.
But we don't have a specific proposal currently in mind.
Yes, we got a microphone someplace. Here we go right here.
Q Thank you. Vice President Cheney, Mrs. Cheney. I'd like to
express an agreement I had with you last Wednesday night. I also agree
that the terrorists would not be impressed with our softer side.
(Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay.
Q Fighting and winning the war on terrorism and strengthening
our economy are two equally important issues facing the country. Could
you explain to the naysayers how your administration is actually --
yours and the President's administration has actually done that without
slighting the other?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: You want to repeat that question again, the
trade-off -- the economy and fighting the war on terror?
Q How you've done both of them successfully without slighting
either one.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, those are the kinds of choices the
President has to make. It's why we pay him the big bucks and he gets
to live in the White House. The way it actually works I think is in
terms of establishing priorities, in terms of what is the most
important thing that we've got to do at any particular time as you put
together the budget. And right at the top of our list ever since 9/11
has been prosecute the war on terror. We've sent people in harm's
way. We've got troops committed various places around the world,
especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they come first. Whatever
they need, they get in terms of carrying out their mission and doing
what it is we're asking them to do for all of us. That's crucial.
(Applause.)
Second, and right up there on a par I would say with respect to
what we provide for our military forces, and especially those folks
that are committed and deployed is the whole area of homeland security,
and doing those things that we need to do in order to be able to
toughen the target here at home. We're an open society. That's an
important part of who we are, the free movement of goods and ideas,
services back and forth across international borders, the right to go
wherever we want to go and do whatever we want to do, that's part of
being an American. It also makes us a relatively soft target for a
group of dedicated terrorists who can come into the United States,
enroll in our flight schools, learn how to fly airplanes, go get a
boarding pass and a box cutter and they're in business. And so we've
had to do a lot to improve our security here at home, and that has been
a top priority for us, as well, too.
All of this obviously has an impact on spending, on what your
budget priorities are. But we've also believed -- and this has been a
tougher sell in terms of getting Congress to understand it, but I think
many of them do now -- that as you do that, and as that adds to the
deficit, the key to reducing the deficit long-term is also economic
growth here at home. You got to be restrained in some spending areas,
and we have. We've been restrained with respect to the non-defense
portion of the budget that doesn't relate to homeland security. We've
reduced the rate of increase there every year for the last four years.
But it is also vital to have a strong, growing economy because in the
final analysis, it's our ability to generate growth, and generate
revenues that reduces the deficit long-term, as well, too. And we've
seen the results of that just in the last couple of days because the
Congressional Budget Office is out now with their -- what is called the
Mid Session Review. They've re-estimated the deficit for this year.
And we've saved over $50 billion -- that is we've reduced the deficit
by over $50 billion from where we were last January just by virtue of
the increase flow of revenue into the Treasury because the economy is
growing, doing better. People are making more money, and therefore,
paying more tax at the same time.
But in the relative order of priority, we -- in wartime with a
national emergency, those become our first priorities. And we have to
make other adjustments accordingly.
MODERATOR: I know you and Mrs. Cheney have many miles to go before
you sleep tonight, so we have time for one more question.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, we got a lot of wannabees out
here? Where's the mike? You got a mike here.
MRS. CHENEY: I choose the little girl.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right, good idea.
Q I love to read. What's your favorite book? (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: There you go.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm just trying to think whether or not
-- I probably should mention your book. (Applause.)
Well, I like to read, too. That's one of the most important things
my parents taught me when I was young was to read a lot. So it's to be
commended. One of my favorite books, and one I recommend to a lot of
people is a book called "Across the Wide Missouri," written by
historian Bernard DeVoto back in the late '40s. It deals with the
early Rocky Mountain fur trade. It just happens to be a love of mine,
and it deals with the West, where I grew up and so forth. But I would
recommend for you my wife's books. (Laughter.) And let me give you a
plug -- there's "A is for Abigail," which is the book about amazing
American women throughout our history. And the other one is called
"America," which is a history of the United States written for somebody
about your age. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Lynne, and
let you talk about history.
MRS. CHENEY: Well, let me just -- since we brought up the book "A
is for Abigail," and it's a book about amazing American women, let me
just tell you there are wonderful heroines in it like Abigail Adams,
and Sojourner Truth. But there also in this book people you've never
heard of, people like a woman named Marjorie Dickie. And she is on the
Z page. Z is Babe Didrikson Zaharias. And probably not many of you
remember Babe Didriksen Zaharias, the finest athlete of the first half
of the 20th century. But there's a page full of other athletes.
Marjorie Dickie is on this page because she was a softball star in the
1930s. And she has this wonderful story. She lived in a little town
in Nebraska -- Syracuse, Nebraska. And if you've seen the movie
Hoosiers, you know it's about the little town in Indiana where they win
the state championship, and that is so huge in basketball. Well,
Marjorie Dickie's team, the Syracuse Bluebirds won the state
championship in Nebraska. They went to nationals. This was a huge
deal. So she was a star, maybe one you haven't heard of before. But I
love this story because Marjorie Dickie later married, and she had
three children -- and the oldest is the Vice President of the United
States now. Isn't that a nice story. (Laughter.) So Dick has had
strong women in his life for a long time. (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: No doubt about that. (Laughter.) Well, we
again want to thank you for being here this afternoon. We're delighted
to have the privilege of participating in this process. There's no
more remarkable thing we do as a civilization than to select our
leadership and hold them accountable for their performance. It's a
privilege that unfortunately all too many of us take for granted. And
this election, quite possibly, like the last one, may be very, very
close. And when people say, well, it doesn't matter what I do, I
remind them of those 537 votes in Florida that decided who was going to
be President of the United States for the last four years. This is a
crucial election. We're all privileged to be Americans. And we ought
to take advantage of the right we're given to participate in that.
We're delighted you're here today, and look forward to having the
opportunity to see you again in the future.
So thank you very much for being here. (Applause.)
END 5:50 P.M. EDT
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