For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
September 28, 2004
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A; at a Town Hall Meeting in Dubuque, Iowa
Grand River Center
Dubuque, Iowa
12:50 P.M. CDT
MRS. CHENEY: Well, hey, that's pretty nice. Thank you for that
warm welcome. Could it be a more beautiful day in Dubuque? We are so
pleased to be here. Thank you for your warmth and your enthusiasm.
(Applause.)
As I travel across the country, I always like to think of -- what
an important part different states have played in my life. And as we
were driving over here today, Dick and I were talking about two of my
great, great grandmothers who spent some time in Iowa, and in whose
lives Council Bluffs played a very important role. Council Bluffs was
a jumping off place for people who were going to take the Mormon Trail
west. So one summer, in the 1850s, I had two great grandmothers in
Council Bluffs getting ready to go west. One had had a sad story.
She'd come here all the way from Wales and lost her husband on the way,
and her baby. But she was a woman of determined spirit, and she stayed
in Council Bluffs a while, and got on a wagon train and went west.
The other story is one I love so much, I put it in the last
children's book I wrote. It's about a little girl named Fannie Peck,
who was only seven years old. But she was in Council Bluffs that same
summer, getting ready to go with her folks out west. And when they
started, she took off her shoes and decided that she would go barefoot
because the wagon train stopped on Sunday to worship, and Fannie wanted
to have her shoes so that she could look her very best on Sunday.
However, the first time they stopped, she figured out that having
walked barefoot so far, she couldn't get her shoes on. So it didn't
work out too well. But I love stories like that. And I love thinking
that Iowa has played an important part in my life.
My family ended up in the West, which is where I met Dick. And
I've known him for quite a long time. That's how come I get to
introduce him. He was 14 years old when I first met him -- a pretty
good looking 14-year-old. I can share that with you. (Laughter.) And
he had a summer job that year, a summer job and after school job, which
was sweeping out the Ben Franklin store in Casper, Wyoming, which is
our hometown. And I've known him through many jobs since. I've known
him since he was at the Ben Franklin store. I've known him since he
was digging ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Grounds, just
outside our hometown. I've known him since he was loading bentonite
--hundred-pound sacks of bentonite onto railroad cars. I've known him
since he was building power line all across the West to help pay his
way through school. And I like to talk about those stories because I
think when you grow up working hard, you learn some pretty important
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.)
So it's lovely to be here on this -- this beautiful day. As we
travel across the country, I think how much we have to be proud of as
Americans. And if I were to make a list of all the things we have to
be proud of, right at the top of it, I would put our
Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush. (Applause.) He has really been a
magnificent leader over these past four years. And if you'll permit me
to say so, the Vice President is no slouch either. (Applause.) So it
gives me great pride to introduce to you my husband, Dick Cheney, the
Vice President of the United States. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, very much. And thank you, Lynne.
MRS. CHENEY: You're welcome.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: She wouldn't go out with me until I was 17.
(Laughter.) I like to tell people that we got married because Dwight
Eisenhower got elected President of the United States. In 1952, I was
a youngster living in Lincoln, Nebraska with my folks. Dad worked for
the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower got elected, reorganized the
government, Dad got transferred to Casper, Wyoming, and that's where I
met Lynn. And we grew up together, went to high school together, and a
couple of weeks ago celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.
(Applause.) I explained to a group the other night that if it hadn't
been for Eisenhower's election victory, Lynne would have married
somebody else. (Laughter.) And she said, right, and now he'd be Vice
President of the United States. (Laughter and applause.) And there's
no doubt in my mind. (Laughter.)
But we are delighted to be here today. Iowa is an extraordinarily
important state, as you can tell by all the attention you're getting
this year. I think I counted up coming in this morning, just in the
last couple of months we've been here, I think, eight times, now,
different places around the state. (Applause.) And it was a close
election in Iowa last time. We didn't quite pull it off, but come
November 2nd, Iowa is going to be part of a winning coalition of the
Bush-Cheney ticket. (Applause.)
What we do at these town meetings -- we've done a few of them now,
and enjoy them very much. It's an opportunity to hear from you, as
well as for me to make a speech or pontificate a bit. I've got some
thoughts I'd like to share with you this morning. And then we'll open
it up to questions and give you an opportunity to offer comments or ask
questions and have a chance for a good exchange back and forth. And I
encourage, also, to fire some shots at Lynne. There's no reason why
she should sit up here without having to answer some of the questions,
as well, too. (Laughter.)
I wanted, this morning, to take a little bit of time and talk about
what I think is the most important decision we're going to make on
November 2nd, why it's so important. There are times in our history
where we come to, sort of, a watershed, where a series of events or
circumstances or such that we have to fundamentally rethink our
national security strategy, for example, how we're organized to defend
ourselves.
Certainly, that happened right after World War II, when we were
suddenly faced, after victory in World War II over the Nazis and the
Japanese, all of a sudden faced with the prospect of the Cold War, the
threat the Soviets represented, and had to completely build a new
national security strategy that then was in place for the next 40
years, supported by Republican and Democratic administration alike, and
ultimately successful in terms of deterring the Soviet attack against
the United States, created North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created
the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, et cetera.
And I think we're at a similar point now, a break point, if you
will, where as a result of the threats that we've had to deal with that
we now face a similar set of circumstances where we're having debates
and a major national dialogue and deciding what kind of a national
security strategy we're going to follow in the years ahead. And I
really believe, as I've often said, that this election could not come
at a more crucial time in our history. The enemy we face now is ever
bit as intent on destroying us, as were the Axis powers in World War
II.
In the words of the 9/11 Commission report of a few weeks ago, "The
enemy is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal." "What the
enemy wants," as the 9/11 Commission reported, "is to do away with
democracy, to end all rights for women, and to impose their way of life
on the rest of us." As we saw on the morning of 9/11, this enemy is
perfectly prepared to slaughter anyone -- man, woman, or child -- who
stands in their way.
This is not an enemy we can negotiate with or appease or reason
with. This is, to put it quite simply, an enemy that we must destroy.
And with George W. Bush as our Commander-in-Chief, that is exactly what
we're about. (Applause.)
It's important for us to remember, this is a global conflict. This
isn't just about what happened here on 9/11 in Washington, or New York,
or Pennsylvania. Since 9/11, terrorists have struck in Madrid,
Casablanca, Riyadh, Mombassa, Istanbul, Bali, Jakarta, Baghdad, most
recently in Beslan, in Russia, where they killed some 350 people,
mostly school kids.
To meet the danger we face, the President has developed a clear,
steady, and I believe, appropriate strategy. He's transformed our
government to focus on protecting the American people. Under his
leadership, we've also gone on offense in this war, seeking out the
terrorists wherever they train or hide, and making clear to governments
who harbor or sponsor terror, that they will be held as guilty as the
terrorists themselves of the actions that are committed, and will be
treated accordingly. In other words, we're taking the fight to
America's enemies, confronting them with our military so that we do not
have to fight them with the armies of policemen, firemen, and medical
personnel on the streets of our own cities.
Our strategy is working. In Afghanistan, we've ended the Taliban
regime. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, of course, is in jail. We've broken
up terror cells around the world and captured or killed thousands of
terrorists. We're helping the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq now to
build democratic governments because we know that free nations will not
be breeding grounds for terror. These are not easy tasks, but despite
the worst predictions of the pessimists, we are succeeding.
Afghanistan's first democratic election will be held October 9th, and
Iraq will have elections next January. (Applause.)
Now, wars always carry a cost, and the highest cost of all is born
by our servicemen and women and by their families. Many of our service
members have been far from home for a long time. Some have returned
with severe injuries. Nearly 1,200 men and women on duty in
Afghanistan and Iraq have made the ultimate sacrifice. We grieve at
the loss of every single life, and we will never forget these brave men
and women. We will honor them, and honor their memory by completing
the mission. (Applause.)
If we revert back to the pre-9/11 mind set where we treated
terrorist attacks simply as a law enforcement problem, that is simply
not an option. If we fail to aggressively prosecute the war on terror,
confronting terrorists where we find them and confronting governments
that sponsor terror, the danger will only increase. The terrorists
will escalate their attacks, both here at home and overseas, and the
likelihood will increase that they will eventually acquire weapons of
mass destruction to use against us.
If we think back to that period before 9/11, the terrorists had
learned two lessons, unfortunately. First of all, they came to believe
they could strike us with impunity, because they had repeatedly -- in
the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993; Khobar Towers, in 1996; the
simultaneous bombing of two -- two of our embassies in East Africa, in
1998; the attack on the USS Cole, in 2000. If you think back to those
events, there never was a very effective response from the United
States against those who launched the attack. We fired off a few
cruise missiles once, but they came to believe they could strike us
with impunity.
Secondly, during that same period of time, the training camps were
operating in Afghanistan where some 20,000 people were turned out --
terrorist trained, including those who struck us on 9/11. And of
course, the terrorists also came to believe that if they struck us hard
enough, they could change our policy, because they had. It happened in
1983 after we lost 241 Marines in Beirut -- within a matter of months,
we were out of Lebanon. In 1993, of course, we had the situation in
Mogadishu. We lost 19 soldiers during a battle in Mogadishu, and
within weeks, we pulled all of our troops out of Somalia. So those two
lessons, they could strike us with impunity and they could strike us to
change our policy, is what they came to believe.
Now, it's my view that those attacks were not occasioned by the
exercise of U.S. military strength. They were encouraged by the
perception of weakness. (Applause.)
As high as the cost of the war is now, it will be much higher if we
do not confront this danger now. And as high as the cost of this war
is, it is the price we must pay if we want a safer and a more secure
world for our children and grandchildren. (Applause.)
And this brings us to what I believe is the most important decision
in the election of 2004. I believe it is absolutely essential that we
have a Commander-in-Chief who is steadfast, who has clear conviction,
and who meets his obligations without regard to his own political
fortune. (Applause.) That's the kind of leadership that George W.
Bush has provided in this war, and that is the kind of leadership that
will bring victory in the war on terror. (Applause.)
In his 20 years in the Senate and two years on the presidential
campaign trail, Senator Kerry has given every indication that he lacks
the conviction necessary to prevail in the war on terror. (Applause.)
During the 1980s, Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan's major defense
initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War. In 1991, when Saddam
Hussein occupied Kuwait and stood poised to dominate the Persian Gulf,
Senator Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm. After the first
bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Senator Kerry proposed to
cut the intelligence budget by $6 billion, a move so radical that even
Ted Kennedy wouldn't support it. (Laughter.)
In the present conflict, he has shown endless vacillation and
indecision. He makes repeated changes in direction, which seem to be
in response to his own standing in the polls or his most recent
campaign advisors. His endless back and forth on Iraq sends a message
of confusion and shows that he is not ready for the responsibilities of
Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)
Let me be specific. Two years ago, Senator Kerry voted to use
force against Saddam Hussein. Since then, he's taken at least 10
different and distinct positions on the war. The low point came during
one of his anti-war phases, when he stood on the Senate floor and voted
to deny funding to the troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, with 35 days left in the campaign, and just in time for the
debates, Senator Kerry says he has a plan for Iraq. Yet, the plan he
announced is not a plan; it's an echo of the strategy that President
Bush laid out many months ago. (Applause.)
And it's a strategy that Senator Kerry has alternately supported
and opposed, depending on his assessment of the political advantage.
Senator Kerry claims he'll be better at building alliances around the
world, yet he has repeatedly insulted fellow democracies and allies of
the United States. Last week, the Prime Minister of Iraq visited the
United States and appeared before a joint session of Congress. Ayad
Allawi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, is a very brave man. Saddam Hussein
sent assassins after him with axes. They tried to hack him to death in
his bed, late at night. But he survived; now he's leading his country,
and he came to the Congress to report on progress in Iraq. He thanked
America for ending Saddam Hussein's regime, and reported that Iraqi
security forces are being trained and the country is moving steadily
toward free elections. (Applause.)
I was in the chamber last Thursday when Prime Minister Allawi
spoke. Most senators and congressmen were there -- not Senator Kerry.
He did, however, manage to rush before the television cameras to speak
with disrespect and condescension about the Prime Minister. I
understand the Prime Minister's message is not what Senator Kerry
wanted to hear, but I was nonetheless amazed that he would insult this
courageous man, who is one of our most important allies in the war on
terror. (Applause.)
President Bush has said now is the time and Iraq is the place in
which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the
civilized world; we must not waver. Senator Kerry's continued wavering
in this campaign -- opposing the war, but claiming the President's plan
as his own, calling himself an alliance-builder, then belittling
America's closest friends -- shows an agenda, not of conviction, but of
political opportunism. And his record establishes that he is not
prepared to lead America in the war on terror. (Applause.)
How we respond to the danger we face, and whether that response is
effective depends very much on who is Commander-in-Chief. In his years
in Washington, John Kerry has been one of a hundred votes in the United
States Senate. And fortunately on matters of national security, his
views rarely prevailed. But the presidency is an entirely different
proposition. A senator can be wrong, a senator can be confused, a
senator can be indecisive for 20 years without consequence to the
nation. But a President always casts the deciding vote, and in this
time of challenge, America needs, and America has a President we can
count on to get it right. (Applause.)
George W. Bush is a leader with firm convictions who speaks his
mind and keeps his word. He acts with patience and calm and moral
seriousness. He's made our world better and our nation safer, and he
will lead this nation to victory in the war on terror. (Applause.)
And with that, I'll stop and we'd be happy to open it up to
questions, and I don't want to by any means, by focusing on this
particular issue, to limit the discussion. I'm just have, really, my
own deep, personal conviction that that is at the heart of what this
campaign is all about. There are other important issues, as well, too
-- certainly, the economy and health care and education, and we're
addressing all those issues as well, too. But in the final analysis,
we're picking a Commander-in-Chief for the next four years and I think
setting the course for this nation's national security strategy for
maybe 30 or 40 years, and it's very important we get it right.
(Applause.)
Now, if you'll look around the room, you'll see these folks in
these attractive orange T-shirts with microphones. And if you want to
make a comment or ask a question, just get their attention and they'll
come around, and grab a mike and show you. Number one.
Q Thank you for coming today. My name is Charlie and my sister
is an undecided voter. She lives in Janesville, Wisconsin. I recently
went to the Department of Labor website and got the Bureau of Labor
Statistics that shows that you and President Bush, a partnership that
has created over 5 million jobs since 2001, but we don't hear you talk
about that. According to the statistics, there were 135 million people
working in 2001, and there are over 140 million now. Does that mean
we've had a net increase in jobs?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. I think probably what you were looking
at was the household survey. There are two surveys by which we measure
employment. The one that you see reported monthly is the so-called
"establishment survey," this is where the Bureau of Labor Statistics
goes out and interviews, asks questions, does a survey of companies and
asks "how many people do you have employed?" and that gives you one
number. But it doesn't -- that particular survey doesn't cover all
employment. If you're self-employed, for example, you're not likely to
get picked up in that particular survey.
The other survey that is collected is the so-called "household
survey," and that's where they go to individual households and say "how
many people in this house are employed, have jobs?" And that gives you
the higher number. Usually, the first one tracks over time the
household survey. But the household survey does show there's been a
significant increase in employment over that period of time. We, of
course, had a recession to begin with. Then we were struck by the
terrorists on 9/11; that cost us over a million jobs within a matter of
weeks after 9/11. So without question, we've been through a recession
and we've been gaining now, by anybody's standards. We've had over 12
months of consecutive real growth. We've added 1.7 million new jobs in
the last year, according to the establishment survey. And I believe
it's about 2.4 million according to the household survey over the
course of the last 12 or 13 months.
So the economy is headed in the right direction. Without question,
we're making progress. But we won't be happy until everybody who wants
to work can find a job. And going forward we need to do everything we
can to make certain that the United States is the best place in the
world to do business. So we encourage new jobs, we encourage companies
to expand and people to take risks and support the entrepreneurial
spirit. And as Lynne said in her opening remarks, make certain we keep
the tax burden as low as possible, because the American people will
spend that money far more wisely than would the federal government.
(Applause.)
Number five.
Q Vice President Cheney and Mrs. Cheney, thank you so much for
coming to Dubuque. We're so glad to see you. And my question is, I
understand from a number of sources that I read that approximately
70,000 troops are going to be moved from old Europe and Korea. And I'd
like to know if any of those troops will be guarding our borders in
this country?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think there are two separate issues there.
First of all, I think what you're referring to, with respect to the
redeployment of troops -- if you look back at the way we deployed our
forces during the Cold War, we had -- when I became Secretary of
Defense, 1989, we had about 330,000 troops in Europe, because at that
point we still had the Soviet threat. As the Soviet threat ended, we
drew down that force to about 100,000, but we still have two heavy
divisions, basically, in Germany. And, of course, we've maintained
since the end of the Korean War another division on the ground in South
Korea. We've got a lot of bases out around the world that were
deployed and built and used at the time of the Cold War.
All of that's changed now, the world circumstances have changed. I
mentioned in my opening remarks we need a different strategy, and that
includes forces, where they're deployed, how mobile they are now that
we've moved into having to confront the war on terror. So Secretary
Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs have been working for the last couple of
years on plans for the redeployment of forces worldwide.
A lot of that will end up on bringing some of them home and having
them here in the United States, on the theory that we can deploy
overseas more rapidly if we need to. A place like Germany, for
example, you'll end up not with two heavy divisions there now, but with
maybe a brigade, and those kinds of changes are being made on a global
basis so that we're configured in a better way and have the forces we
need to deal with those problems in the future.
None of those forces will be deployed specifically to the border
question, in terms of the immigration problem. I would argue, as a
former Secretary of Defense, that's an extremely important problem, but
we need to handle that through the Border Patrol, through the
Department of Homeland Security that now has control over the Border
Patrol and Customs and so forth. And that ought to be handled
primarily by civilians, on the civilian side, rather than troops that
we have to deploy someplace overseas to undertake a military mission.
I think they're two different missions. I think they're both very
important. I think it's very important that we do everything we can to
secure our borders -- and we have significantly improved our
capabilities in that regard, but we haven't solved all those problems.
We still have -- still have porous borders, simply because of the sheer
size of them, and also because the United States is a huge magnet,
economic magnet. We've got a lot folks overseas that would love to
come live and work in the United States. And we need to make certain
that that flow is regularized, that legal immigration is allowed, but
that illegal immigration isn't. And, as I say, I think we're making
progress there. They beefed-up the Border Patrol, added people, added
a lot of new technologies, but there's still more work to be done.
(Applause.)
Number two.
Q Senator Kerry has said that you and President Bush have a
secret plan to reinstitute the draft. Is that true? (Laughter.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: As far as I know, he's the only one with
secret plans. (Laughter and applause.)
I don't know anybody in a position of responsibility who would
advocate going back to the draft. We keep it there, it's on the books,
the statute is there in the eventuality of some totally unforeseen set
of circumstances that nobody can contemplate today. But those of us
who have been involved, as I was as Secretary of Defense, for example,
back from '89 to '93, I'm sure our military -- if we have any retired
military here today, our officers, Joint Chiefs, people who study the
subject -- are enormously pleased with our all-volunteer force.
One of the things that came out of Vietnam and that experience was
that back in the '70s we moved to an all-volunteer force, so that
everybody today wearing the uniform voluntarily signed up for that
mission. And we -- obviously, we owe them an enormous debt of
gratitude for their willingness to take on that responsibility. But
the all-volunteer force works extraordinarily well. I think the
quality and caliber of people serving today, and the professionalism,
is as good as we've ever had in the history of the republic.
One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of the all-volunteer force is
because it forces the military to make major changes in terms of the
way we operate. As long as the services could count on a drafted
force, people who were required and compelled to serve, they didn't
have to spend as much time and energy worrying about their ability to
be able to really attract people who wanted to serve. The manpower
sort of became a free good, if you will, and we didn't spend nearly as
much on salaries, on housing for families and so forth. Today we've
got much more stability in the force, a much larger percentage of the
force is married. That means we've got to provide housing for the
families and adequate medical care for dependents and so forth. But
it's made the services, I think, higher-quality institutions than they
were when they didn't have to worry about attracting people to come
serve.
And I say, I just think, when you think about what we've been able
to do with the all-volunteer force, the successes we've had, going back
to Desert Storm, I think, and our current assignments, what we did in
Afghanistan earlier this year, with a handful -- not earlier this year,
but two years ago, three years ago now, almost -- with a relative
handful of troops, to be able to go in and perform that mission as
effectively as we did, in Afghanistan in particular, but also later on
in Iraq, is a measure of the quality of the force that we deploy
today. And that's directly attributable to the fact that we have an
all-volunteer force and that the people who are serving are --
volunteered to serve, that they are -- their service is respected and
honored. And I'm just a huge believer.
And the suggestion that somehow there's a plan out there for a
secret draft is -- I'd call it -- you could call it either an urban
legend or a nasty political rumor, but it's not true. (Applause.)
Over here.
Q My question is for Lynne Cheney.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good. (Laughter.)
Q The No Child Left Behind program seems to be a common sense
program to improve the education of our children. But there are
complaints about enforced testing. Do you think there is too much
reliance on the testing to measure the progress?
MRS. CHENEY: Well, I've been a great fan of accountability for as
long as I can remember. Now, here in Iowa, you all have the advantage
of great schools. I mean, I've looked at the data long enough to know
that when they ranked the states, there's Iowa, right up there at the
top. So you have good reason to be confident in your schools. What
happened though -- and I think one of the reasons that our schools all
around the country haven't always been as good as they should, is
parents sometimes had that confidence they had a good school, but it
wasn't the fact.
There was this wonderful doctor in West Virginia who used to talk
about patients coming in to him -- he was a pediatrician and the little
kids would come in, and their parents would always say, my child is
above average. Well, he started thinking about it after a while, and
he realized not everybody can be above average, despite what -- what is
it -- Garrison Keillor says, where all the men are strong, all the
women are handsome, and all the kids are above average. It can't be.
The problem is people didn't know how their schools were
performing. And that's what testing does, is it gives parents and
policymakers a real way to know. And what too often happens -- not
here in Iowa, because you do have great schools. I think I read 93
percent of your schools are making annual -- yearly progress. It's
quite astonishing. But we were shuffling kids through. So you would
end up with 6th, 7th, 8th graders, sometimes high school graduates who
couldn't read. And that is just something that we can't have happen in
this country. We can't do that to kids.
The President is so committed to the idea that no child will be
left behind, that we'll know how kids are doing so that we can meet
their needs early. One of the advantages of testing, of course, is
diagnostics. If you've got a little kid who can't read, you got a
little kid who can't do math, you find out so you can fix the problem.
So I got to tell you that I -- I've heard the complaints about
testing, and I'm sure you could test too much. But, boy, is it
important for letting parents know what's going on, and for being sure
that no little kid does get left behind. (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: In the back.
Q Mr. Vice President, as consumers, I think almost everyone in
this room has likely had the experience of going into some store, any
store, looking for some merchandise and discovering that about 90
percent of it or better was of foreign manufacturing. In addition to
the current tax cuts, what can be done to ensure our independence from
foreign imports, and also you referred to our financial competitiveness
in the manufacturing sectors of the world markets?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think -- I don't think there's any one
silver bullet. I think what it takes is a series of policies that need
to be pursued. I say, you come back -- and at heart of it, the guiding
principle ought to be to make America the best place in the world to do
business. What do we mean by that? Well, you mentioned tax policy.
We put in place a series of changes over the course of the last three
years, for example, allowing small businesses to quadruple the amount
they could expend in terms of purchasing new equipment. Small
businesses create 7 out of 10 new jobs in this country. It's very
important we be sensitive to what their needs and requirements are.
We need to deal not only with the taxation problems, for example,
when we cut the top rates on income taxes, when we reduced all the
rates across the board, but even the top rate, our opponents will say,
well, that's just to help the wealthy. No, an awful lot of your small
businesses, especially a lot of your more successful ones, pay taxes
based on that top rate. And when you cut it, it makes them more
competitive and lets them keep more of what they earn so they can save
and invest and create more jobs.
We also need to address, I think, the litigation question. One of
the real problems we have -- I think it's a disadvantage relative to
some of our competitors overseas -- is just the number of lawsuits,
what I would call lawsuit abuse, which I think has gotten to be a real
problem in this country and we need to do something about it. And we
can do that through tort reform and reform of the legal system.
We've gotten a lot of that legislation through the House of
Representatives. We haven't been able to get it through the Senate
yet. Senators Kerry and Edwards have opposed it, I might mention.
We also need to be careful with respect to regulations. We've so
burdened down private companies with red tape and bureaucratic forms
they've got to fill out and send into Washington, nobody ever reads,
but that, too, is an added cost. If you look at the tax system itself,
one estimate is that its complexities today require about six billion
man-hours of effort to just comply with the tax code every year. So
one of the things the President talked about the other night in his
acceptance speech in New York was that in his second term he wants to
put together a bipartisan group to simplify and reform the tax code.
It's long overdue, badly needs to be done. (Applause.)
The whole area of health care is one that badly needs to be
addressed, too. When we talk about the uninsured, people who lack
health insurance in the U.S., it turns about 60 percent of them work
for small businesses, or are small business owners themselves. So one
of the things we've spent a lot of time on is looking for ways that we
can reduce the cost of health care, or make it more affordable, so
we've done things. For example, when we passed the Medicare reform
package last fall that Chuck Grassley was an architect of, your Senator
here. Chuck, as chairman of the finance committee, did a superb job.
(Applause.) Not only did we provide prescription drug benefits for
seniors, and the Medicare drug discount card, but we also set up health
savings accounts that allow people to save tax-free in order to finance
health costs.
And part of the -- one of the proposals that's kicking around out
there now is to allow small business owners to get a tax credit for
contributions they make to their employees' health savings accounts to
make it possible for them to be able to afford health care. Providing
those kinds of basic benefits to employees is an important part of the
cost of doing business.
We think medical liability reform is very important in that regard,
too. We estimate -- one estimate is that there's over a hundred
billion dollars a year added in cost because of our medical liability
system in terms of the way it functions in this country. It's a crisis
in a lot of parts of the nation. I know in my home state of Wyoming,
where we've driven up malpractice insurance costs so high, that doctors
are going out of business. We can't attract new doctors coming into
the state. The company that provided the insurance is gone from the
business. That's another area that adds cost to everything we do that
needs to be addressed at the same time, too.
And finally, education. With respect to our ability to be able to
field a work force that can out-compete anybody else on the planet,
we've got to have people who've got the skills necessary to be able to
take those jobs when we create them. And we've always had in this
country a great public school system. Lynne and I are the products of
public schools. I would guess most of the people in this room are.
And it's very, very important the schools -- that when people come out
of that process, when they finish with 12 years of high school and go
on for advanced degrees, if they do, or go on to college, that they've
got the necessary skills to take on the ever more sophisticated jobs
that are involved in our economy, especially in the manufacturing
area.
So I think we have to do all those things to be able to ensure that
we maintain a good strong manufacturing base in this country. Partly
what has happened, manufacturing as a percentage of our economy has
continued to be very strong, and grown steadily over the years. But as
the productivity has increased, the actual employment in manufacturing
has been in a long-term decline. And we need to reverse that. And one
way to do that is to make certain that we've got the kind of work force
and opportunity, and do as much as we can to reduce the cost of
business so that it pays companies to locate here, to stay here, to
expand here, and to create more jobs and opportunities here.
(Applause.)
MRS. NUSSLE: Mr. Vice President, I have the dubious honor of
trying to keep you on schedule today. So I'm told that we only have
time for one more question. Let me, on behalf of Jim and myself, and
the folks here in Dubuque and northeast Iowa, thank you again for
coming today. We very much appreciate it. (Applause.)
MRS. CHENEY: Did we have a chance to say what a great congressman
Jim Nussle is? (Applause.)
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I spent some time last week with Jim because I
attend periodically the House Republican Leadership meetings. Of
course, he's a part of the House Republican Leadership and does a
superb job for all of us. And he would be here today, except he's back
there doing important work. So, Karen, thank you for hosting all of us
today.
We'll do one more question back here. Number one.
Q Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, it's indeed an honor for
me to speak with you today. Thank you. And I know after you and the
President are reelected, I know that you're a duck hunter, please feel
free to come back. We will have -- (Laughter.)
MRS. CHENEY: Can he bring Nino Scalia?
Q Absolutely. (Applause.) I would be more than happy to host
you. We would just have the time of our lives, I'm sure.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Be sure and get that man's name, will you?
(Laughter.)
Q You hear an awful lot from the other party about the doom and
gloom and woe is the United States, and it just gets a little tiring.
I'm glad I'm the last question. Could you leave us with your positive
message?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think -- of course, there are a lot of
ways to look at what we're doing now. Lynne and I have had just an
enormous privilege to be able to do what we do over the course of the
last nearly 40 years now. We literally grew up in a small town in
Wyoming, went to public schools, come from modest circumstances. My
grandfather was a cook in the Union Pacific Railroad, never went to
high school.
And I mentioned the other night in New York, in my acceptance
speech, that the day I was born he sent a letter to my parents saying,
since I was born the same day as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, that it
was the President's birthday, and of course, he was then the President
in 1941, that my folks should send him a letter and announce my arrival
to the President of the United States. (Laughter.) And the intriguing
thing about that was that he didn't think that there was any reason why
-- even though he was somebody with less than a high school education
who had come from very modest circumstances -- any reason in the world
why his grandson couldn't do anything he wanted to do, couldn't rise to
whatever fate might have in store for him, and hard work and obviously,
the help and assistance of others might take you.
And it's that sense of possibility that anything is possible in the
United States, that sense of -- that feeling of hope and optimism and
opportunity. And, yes, we have tough times. And, yes, lots of times
we've got major challenges that we have to meet, but we do it
consistently. And we have all these years. And I hear our opponents
talking about two Americas in this campaign. And I don't think of it
in those terms. There's no question but what there are barriers and
problems and challenges out there to overcome, and we have not achieved
our ideal in terms of everybody having exactly the same opportunity in
this country, but the history of the United States of America is the
history of overcoming those obstacles and getting rid of artificial
barriers to advancement, and setting aside the past bigotries with
respect to race or ethnicity or religious conviction or country of
origin.
And when you travel the country as Lynne and I have this last
election cycle -- gee, we've been in 48 states -- we've had the
opportunity to meet with and talk with people from every walk of life.
We meet grandmothers, and school teachers, and veterans returned from
Iraq, and farmers, and business people, and doctors, and people that
are -- just represent that enormous broad sweep of our society, and you
just have to feel awful good about the United States of America. We're
very privileged to live here, very privileged to have the opportunity
to participate in this process which unfortunately too many people take
for granted. But if you think about how rare it is in the history of
the world for people to live as we do, with the freedom we do, and with
the opportunity that we have, and with the responsibility to elect our
leadership and then hold them accountable, it's very, very rare and
very special. So you can't -- a lot of grief connected with these
campaigns. A lot stuff lying around all the time out there. But you
set that aside because what is really important at the bottom is, we're
Americans and enormously privileged to carry that title.
Thank you. (Applause.)
END 1:40 P.M. CDT
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