[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 56 (Thursday, April 22, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E748-E751]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             SALUTE TO NEWT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JENNIFER DUNN

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 22, 1999

  Ms. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, at the ``Salute to Newt'' last Wednesday, our 
former Speaker of the House again proved that, in the words of TIME 
Magazine, he ``belongs in the category of the exceptional.'' Newt 
Gingrich is a man who thinks both with a vision for our country and 
with compassion in his heart, and I bring his remarks from that special 
evening to your attention.
  Joined by the Gingrich family and friends, the event was a wonderful 
tribute to Newt. Mary Tyler Moore, International Chair of the Juvenile 
Diabetes Foundation, said it best in her introduction of Speaker 
Gingrich. Moore said, ``Newt Gingrich may be many things to many 
people, but to us he is a champion and a hero--and his leadership in 
Congress will be sorely missed.'' A portion of the proceeds from this 
event were donated to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.
  As the man who led us in capturing and holding a Republican majority 
in Congress for the first time since 1928, his comments continue to 
offer each of us insight for the future.

       In a very real way, I hope tonight does symbolize what 
     America is all about. Jonathan as a person, not just a symbol 
     for a cause. Mary Tyler Moore as a person, not just a symbol 
     of a cause. But the fact that America is about 260 million 
     real people of remarkable diversity, each of them with 
     extraordinary God given talents, and each of them needing the 
     help of their fellow American to use all those talents.
       We were able, for a five-year period, to do a great job 
     because of each of you. Because of those of you who are 
     members, those of you who are on my staff, those of you who 
     were supporters, donors, volunteers, friends; it was team 
     effort.
       Time magazine named me ``Man of the Year'' in 1995, but in 
     fact, it should have been the ``Team of the Year,'' because 
     it was a very remarkable, collective effort, by an 
     extraordinary range of people.
       My daughters talked about me as a father, but the truth is, 
     they're pretty good daughters. And they spent a lot of time 
     on the phone with me, and now we're all into email so it's 
     gotten even more chaotic, {laughter} and they and Marianne 
     track me as much as I track them because I think life, in 
     that sense, is a team effort.
       Marianne recognized, and I was so grateful that she did so, 
     and we talked about it earlier, but she recognized the 
     Capitol Police. I think all of you, particularly those of you 
     who go to the Capitol fairly often, who, as I often do, take 
     them for granted, all of us were brought up short when 
     Officer J.J. Chestnut and Detective John Gibson were killed. 
     I think it was a reminder, a wake up call if you will, that 
     these men and women literally risk their lives for their 
     country, and in that case, two of them paid to protect the 
     Capitol with their lives, and I want to repeat what Marianne 
     said and just say to all of you who are here tonight, thank 
     you for four years of wonderful service and protection and I 
     am very grateful to each and every one of you, and I regard 
     you as my friends, and I know from the fact that you 
     participated in so many trips with me and on occasion laughed 
     at various and sundry dumb things I was saying, that you are 
     my friends.
       You see different pictures, we talk about, one of the 
     pictures was about mental health parity, and my mother has 
     had challenges for over twenty years involving bi-polar 
     disease. I walk every year in the breast cancer effort, and 
     my sister Robbie, who is here, is a survivor of breast cancer 
     and we know first hand how serious and how real it is.
       I think at every level, my brother and my sisters are here 
     tonight, my daughters, Marianne, all of us felt it 
     personally, but I think for many of you, those in office and 
     those out of office, those in Washington and those around the 
     country, I think you know that you were as much a part of our 
     extended family, and that it was very, very real, and that 
     together, we accomplished a lot.
       I think it's a very important thing that this city doesn't 
     do a very good job of giving us credit for it, because it 
     would make the establishment of this city very uncomfortable, 
     but I think we ought to recognize that together, we ended, as 
     that one video shows so lovingly, 40 years of Democrat 
     control.
       Together, for the first time in 68 years, we re-elected a 
     Republican majority. Together, for the first time since 1926 
     we ended up keeping that majority for the third time. And it 
     is with enormous pride that we have here tonight, my dear 
     friend Speaker Denny Hastert.
       As I told the House Republican Conference in a rather 
     exciting meeting one afternoon just before we went on home 
     for Christmas, I thought that in the context we were in that 
     Denny was absolutely the only person who could hold the party 
     together, and I called him today to congratulate him as the 
     budget passed, something which I had not been able to 
     accomplish for all of last year.
       And to get it through, on time, and to pass it, even with a 
     couple of Democratic votes helping add the margin, was a 
     great achievement. I think this is part of what the human 
     experience is about.
       It's important to understand that I left the Capitol with 
     an extraordinary sense of happiness because for 20 years I 
     had been allowed to serve the people of Georgia, because for 
     5 years I was allowed to lead the House Republican party, one 
     of those years in all honesty, with Bob Michel's total 
     support because he was still the leader, but in every way he 
     supported my effort for us to be a majority.
       For four years, with your help, I was allowed to serve as 
     the Speaker of the House, and I felt that as a visionary and 
     a strategist and a teacher that I had carried us as far as I 
     could, and that frankly we needed a legislative leader who 
     would focus on leading the House Republican party as a 
     legislative body, and I am extremely proud of Denny, and I 
     think he is going to end

[[Page E749]]

     up being a very effective Speaker, and I think when he is 
     reelected two or three more times he will be a very, very 
     powerful Speaker, and I will be back at that point to visit 
     you occasionally and chat with you about ideas that I'm 
     developing, that I hope you will schedule.
       It's important to remember that not only did we achieve a 
     lot in power, because it was a decisive transition in power 
     in this city, but we achieved a lot in policy.
       We passed welfare reform. We passed it three times--twice 
     it was vetoed, the third time the president announced he had 
     invented it and signed it with great glee.
       But frankly that's less important than the fact that today 
     there are 43% fewer people on welfare and 43% more Americans 
     out there earning a living, having a chance to pursue 
     happiness, showing their children that the work ethic 
     matters, and that's good for America, and it's good for 
     individual Americans.
       The pictures that Charlton Heston talked about, that he 
     narrated, that showed John Kasich and Pete Domenici signing 
     the budget deal which was in fact an extraordinary 
     achievement.
       People tend to forget, we were projected, when I became 
     Speaker, we were projected to have over the next decade a 
     three trillion, one hundred billion dollar deficit. I believe 
     it was announced yesterday that the surplus for this year is 
     one hundred and eleven billion on a unified basis and even if 
     you discount all the Social Security revenue, we have reduced 
     the deficit for the operating budget to 16 billion. Numbers 
     which I would venture to say in the summer of 1994, you could 
     have gotten a 50 million to one bet against that particular 
     possibility.
       We have now created, by balancing the budget, the lower 
     interest rates that are fueling the economy. We also have a 
     chance to save Social Security, and we are in a position 
     where we can cut taxes and return to the American people the 
     money that belongs to them.
       And let me remind you that when we balanced the budget, we 
     did so in a bill which cut taxes for the first time in 
     seventeen years, and part of this prosperity is the fact that 
     we cut the capital gains tax and, once again, lowering the 
     cost of job creation paid off, as more and more people got in 
     the business of creating jobs.
       We also saved Medicare for what now looks like it will be a 
     15 or 20 year period, without having raised the FICA tax, and 
     we began strengthening defense and intelligence, and I am 
     particularly proud that Porter Goss, who is here tonight, is 
     continuing to lead as the Chair of the Intelligence Committee 
     and to give us a chance to really reshape our intelligence.
       Now, I spent the last four months with Marianne studying, 
     thinking, trying to learn a few things and get a chance to be 
     outside the daily business of this city. And for just a few 
     minutes, I'd like to share with you sort of my initial 
     reflections. This has been my first chance to come back and 
     to have a chance to share with you.
       And let me say, I want to pick up on what Connie Mack said. 
     I believe that we are the party of freedom, and we only make 
     sense as the party of freedom. I believe that we represent 
     the cause of freedom, which is even bigger than our party.
       And I believe that America is the country of freedom. I 
     believe that as you go around this town, from the Washington 
     Monument built to a man who led the Continental Army, 
     presided over the Constitutional Convention, and literally 
     served as father of his country for eight years, a man 
     without whom we could not be the country we are.
       To the Jefferson Memorial, a man who wrote the Declaration 
     of Independence, who was Governor of Virginia during the 
     Revolutionary War, who helped us create the Bill of Rights, 
     who founded the Democratic party to have legitimate dissent 
     without treason, a new concept in the late eighteenth 
     century, and then presided as president.
       To the Lincoln Memorial, a man who by sheer will insisted 
     that we would be a union, and a memorial which can never be 
     visited without profit by any who would understand both what 
     has made America, and how deeply God is a part of our 
     experience
       To the opposite end of the mall, where General Grant's 
     statute stands below the Capitol that he defended, and we are 
     reminded that this nation was, in the end, created in blood 
     at Valley Forge and elsewhere, and stained in blood at 
     Antietam and Gettysburg.
       To the FDR monument. To the greatest president of the 
     twentieth century, a man who presided over the defeat, and 
     led in the effort to defeat, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and 
     Imperial Japan.
       Again and again, from monuments to the First and Second 
     World Wars, to monuments to the Koran War, to the Vietnam 
     Memorial, we are reminded that freedom is expensive, that it 
     requires constant effort, and that we have a duty in our 
     generation to take the freedom our parents gave Us and to 
     strengthen it, improve it, and give our children, and 
     grandchildren as my daughter pointed out, even more freedom. 
     These are monuments to the sacrifices that lay at the very 
     heart of freedom.
       I believe that in the next two decades, we have an 
     opportunity to decisively extend freedom. And I believe there 
     are five key steps to greater freedom in the next decade or 
     two.
       Some of them are domestic, some of them international. Many 
     of them will be controversial. Let me tell you what the five 
     key steps to freedom are in the next few years.
       The first is here at home. It is the freedom to save for 
     your own retirement, without politicians controlling your 
     money.
       It will be controversial. There will be a fight. People 
     will flinch from it at times. But it is an objective fact 
     that the Social Security actuaries will report that being 
     allowed to have a Social Security Plus account that you 
     invest will save Social Security permanently, without a tax 
     increase or a benefit cut, will do so with such enormous 
     economic repercussions, that the Social Security actuaries 
     believe that our children will have to cut the FICA tax, 
     because the surpluses in the trust fund will simply grow too 
     large to be managed.
       Now, that is a future which the surplus of the budget gives 
     us a window now to take advantage of, and I think we should 
     have the moral courage to say to the American people, `the 
     president was half right.'
       He was right in saying let's invest it, he was wrong in 
     saying let the politicians invest it, and we believe enough 
     in the American people to find a way to get them some kind of 
     tax credit out of that surplus so that every American, when 
     they go to work and they start to pay a FICA tax, they have 
     the right, and the duty, to save for their own retirement, 
     with them, not the politicians, in control of that saving.
       And that will end class warfare in America in a half 
     generation as every worker in America comes to own part of 
     the American dream, and every worker in America sees their 
     account, and their savings. And, in the process, the economy 
     will grow faster, Social Security will be saved, and we will 
     have moved power out of Washington, and back to the American 
     people.
       Second: We ought to have the freedom to work for ourselves, 
     for our families, for our communities, for our religious 
     institutions. And I believe, in peace time, that means that 
     we should establish a cap on all taxation, state, federal and 
     local combined, at 25% of income, and no American should pay 
     more than 25%.
       One of the purposes of this political action committee will 
     be to write every Republican county, and district, and state 
     organization as they have their conventions next year, and 
     urge them to adopt a platform plank that calls for a 25% cap.
       We're not going to get there overnight. We're not going to 
     get there in three or four years. But as someone who did 
     preside, after all, over reforming welfare, balancing the 
     budget, cutting taxes and saving Medicare, I think I can say 
     that I have some sense of what's doable.
       And the fact is, in 1970, Governor Ronald Reagan went to 
     the Governor's Association and proposed welfare reform. He 
     was defeated forty-nine to one. Twenty-six years later, 
     standing on his shoulders, we passed that welfare reform.
       Government grew big because of the Depression and the 
     Second World War. It has no justification for being this big 
     except our lack of cleverness at applying privatization, 
     setting priorities,

[[Page E750]]

     and modernizing the system to make it smaller.
       And I think as a party, we should adopt the principle that 
     over the next 15 years we will shrink government until we get 
     it down to no more than 25% of your income. Because, after 
     all, if there was a big war, you would have to raise taxes, 
     and if you are already at 45 or 50%, you have no margin to 
     raise taxes without threatening freedom.
       And if you believe in the Tocqueville vision of 
     volunteerism, and Marvin Olasky's great book The Tragedy of 
     Human Compassion, which I think was the key explanation--and 
     I thank Bill Bennett, who is here tonight, for having 
     originally asked me to read it--it was the key explanation 
     that volunteerism, charities, and a willingness to go out and 
     be involved in your community is vastly more effective at 
     changing the human condition than is larger government.
       And in that process, I believe, we can eliminate the death 
     tax, cut the capital gains tax to 10%, and put ourselves in a 
     position as a country to teach the rest of the world that we 
     want big active citizens, not big active bureaucracies, 
     because that's what makes freedom truly strong.
       Third, and I'm going to step on virtually every interest 
     group in the country with this next one. It comes directly 
     out of Adam Smith's point about the modernization of the 
     Middle Ages. We should have the freedom to use all the 
     aspects of the information age to improve our lives.
       We, as patients, ought to have all the knowledge about our 
     health records. We should have all the knowledge about our 
     own disease. We should have all the knowledge about all the 
     different possible cures.
       We, as citizens, should have access to every expert system 
     we can to apply the law to ourselves, with minimum payments 
     to attorneys rather than maximum payments.
       We should have a common-sense approach to the environment. 
     We should have a 24-hour a day, seven-day-a-week, year-round 
     learning system where teachers get paid based on results 
     rather than on tenure, and where, in fact, students have a 
     chance to be learners all their lives, not just from 9 until 
     3 when it is convenient.
       But that requires the courage, every morning, to get up and 
     look at the technology and say, ``how can I strengthen the 
     consumer-slash-citizen's rights,'' rather than ``how can I 
     protect the guild the interest group, or whoever it is that 
     is currently protecting their rice bowl.''
       Fourth, and this is particularly important for Republicans, 
     but it is crucial to all Americans. We need freedom for all 
     Americans to pursue happiness.
       It really struck me about 2 weeks after the election. The 
     democrats had run racist ads, and they were terrible, and it 
     was a despicable campaign, and it was deliberate. But it was 
     tragically our failure over the preceding four years to so 
     behave that in every black and Hispanic community local 
     people didn't automatically say, ``That ad is baloney.''
       We have to decide that we truly mean that every American is 
     endowed by their creator.
       Every American with disabilities, and Jonathan is here 
     tonight. Every American who has a long-term disease. The 
     young people who were up here tonight who will spend a 
     lifetime without hour help having to inject, having to 
     monitor carefully, having to experience everything Mary 
     shared with us.
       Young Americans who are black, or Hispanic, or Native 
     American. And we have to decide that we, as a party, and we 
     as individuals mean it enough that we are going to break 
     through the baloney, break through the bureaucracy, insist on 
     results, and we're going to reach out in every neighborhood.
       Some work has been done in this direction, but frankly it 
     is far too little, we are far too timid, we don't challenge 
     ourselves enough, and we should recognize that if God has 
     truly endowed, as I believe he has, every single child in 
     this country, in every single neighborhood, then we have an 
     obligation to make that endowment real.
       And if we are seen as being truly serious, and we are truly 
     serious, I believe that for more than a generation, the vast 
     overwhelming majority of Americans will give us the chance to 
     implement that seriousness in creating a better future for 
     all of us.
       An example I though about, these are U.S. Representative 
     Jim Rogan's twins that are in this picture right up here. 
     They are wonderful young girls. Jim loves them deeply. And 
     all I would say to each of you is, we ought to be able to put 
     the face of every child their age, of every single 
     background, in every single neighborhood, in that picture. 
     And they should have just as great a change to be happy, to 
     be healthy, and to know that they are going to have a good 
     future. And we should just force ourselves to do the hard 
     work of freedom until that happens.
       And finally, and this is going to sound a little daring, 
     and I don't quite know how to say it, I lack U.S. Senate 
     Chaplain, Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie's brilliance with interpreting 
     God's will and language that the Senate will actually listen 
     to. Not always obey, but at least listen, and that's a major 
     achievement.
       I think, and I want to say this as clearly as I can because 
     it's so important. I think we ought to stand for freedom for 
     the entire human race.
       For fifty years, we led an anti-Communist coalition. And we 
     won. We are now the preeminent power on the planet, and the 
     time has come to ask of ourselves, ``for what purpose has God 
     given us this level of pre-eminence?''
       And I believe the answer is exactly what Jefferson, 
     Washington and Lincoln would have said: That we owe to every 
     citizen.
       Remember that the Declaration of Independence begins by 
     saying, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all 
     men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their 
     Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are 
     life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''
       Notice that phrase, that entire phrase, is universal. It 
     doesn't say they are American truths. It doesn't say they 
     apply to white males. It doesn't say they are Western 
     European. All are created equal. Endowed by their Creator.
       I think the United States has to lead. I think we need a 
     great debate, that's very straightforward. If you think the 
     world will be safer if the United States hides, join that 
     side. If you think the world will be safer if we lead, join 
     this side. Let's divide up. Let's have a fight over it. I 
     think overwhelmingly the country will choose that we have to 
     lead.
       When we start to lead, I think the goal of our leadership 
     should be simple: We want every single citizen on the planet 
     to be free, safe and prosperous.
       And we are prepared to provide moral leadership, we are 
     prepared to encourage missionary activities, both religious 
     and secular, we are prepared to support commercial activity, 
     we are prepared when necessary to support diplomatic, police 
     and, if necessary, military activity. But we truly believe 
     the time has come for the planet to be free, because our 
     children will never be free if there are large pockets of 
     dictatorship, tyranny and terrorism on this planet.
       That requires us, and this is not a comment on the Clinton 
     administration, it requires us as Americans to rethink our 
     strategies and to rethink our systems.
       We can't just bully the planet into following us. We could 
     when it was the Soviet Union, because the alternative was so 
     horrible that, in fact, people would follow us even when mad 
     at us.
       We're going to have to learn to listen a lot. We're going 
     to have to learn to learn a lot. We're going to have to learn 
     that leadership doesn't mean that you've got to fix breakfast 
     for everybody every morning. And leadership doesn't mean that 
     the `cleanup campaign' is you cleaning out the garage of 
     every one of your neighbors. But it does mean building teams, 
     being patient, being persistent.
       It does mean telling the truth. You can't have prosperity 
     in Russia without the rule of law, and free enterprise, and 
     private property. You can't have honesty and prosperity in 
     Indonesia if you have corruption. You can't tolerate, in the 
     long run, a government like North Korea because it is 
     literally killing the people of North Korea. And you can't 
     ignore Rwanda just because it is too difficult for CNN to get 
     a reporter to cover the butchery.
       We have an obligation to systematically, calmly and 
     methodically lead across this planet everywhere, and we can't 
     avoid it.

[[Page E751]]

       Now, I think that does mean we're going to have to learn to 
     build institutions, better systems.
       I think it means we've got to have a defense budget and a 
     `policing' budget. They are not the same thing. And for the 
     last seven years, the `policing' budget has eaten up the 
     defense budget.
       I think it means a larger total expenditure on national 
     security, a total overhaul of the State Department, a total 
     overhaul of the intelligence capabilities. If you knew the 
     numbers, and I don't know if they are declassified or not, 
     but if you knew the numbers of people we have in our security 
     apparatus who can speak fluent Chinese, or can speak fluent 
     Serbia, you would be humiliated at the inability of the 
     richest, most powerful nation in the world to get its act 
     together.
       This is not a commentary just on this administration. This 
     is going to take serious thought, serious work, and whoever 
     the next president is, they're going to need leadership from 
     the Congress based on a lot of hearings, and a lot of hard 
     work.
       Having said that, those are five large long-term goals. Let 
     me very briefly talk about three immediate challenges.
       One: I believe the Republican party should adamantly, at 
     every level, adopt the 11th Commandment that Ronald Reagan 
     used. And I think we ought to say, `let's have a great 
     presidential nominating process, with no negative ads. Let's 
     get together and find who is the best person with the best 
     ideas.'
       But the idea that we should have eight, or nine, or ten of 
     our candidates destroy each other, I think is absolutely 
     ludicrous. And I think every serious leader of this party 
     ought to say to every single candidate, `go out there and 
     tell everybody your best ideas in a positive way,' and let's 
     have the person with the best ideas win the nomination, and 
     then let's all get together behind them.
       But I do think if we don't do that, you're going to have a 
     bloodbath for three or four months next year, and out of that 
     bloodbath you're going to have an incumbent administration 
     with an incumbent president, with the media bias, prepared to 
     spend six months taking our nominee apart. And I think we owe 
     it to America to have a positive, unified Republican party 
     offering a candidate with good ideas.
       Second: Because it is so currently topical, let me just say 
     briefly; I strongly urge that we end the Independent Counsel 
     process, dead. Not modified, not improved, not partial. Kill 
     it. Get rid of it. Go back to the system we had before 1972. 
     It has been a monstrosity. It has served no one well, and it 
     criminalizes and undermines the process of American 
     government in a way which is tragic.
       And I would also urge all of you to thorough reexamine the 
     process by which the Executive Branch now gets appointees, 
     because we stop many of the best people in this country from 
     even thinking about applying, and there ought to be some way 
     to appoint some kind of commission of honorable people on a 
     bipartisan basis, so that the next administration will not 
     find that two-thirds or half of the people it wants can't 
     even consider trying to meet the ludicrous standards we now 
     set, and trying to fill out the materials we now provide.
       Lastly, I could hardly come back in lieu of Kosovo, and not 
     comment for a minute. Kosovo is very, very serious. Much more 
     serious than the evening news understands.
       The President of the United States has compared Milosevic 
     to Hitler. Has suggested that this is the worst process since 
     Nazi Germany. Has announced that the United States and all 
     the power of NATO is being brought to bear on a tiny, limited 
     country, called Serbia.
       The Germans yesterday floated an idea which would be a 
     disaster. A papered-over, negotiated settlement, with a 
     dictator who would have won.
       Let me be very clear at two levels here. First, Serbia is 
     important because the world is watching.
       If the Chinese decide that we are an irresolute, finicky, 
     confused, timid nation, they will try to take Taiwan. And we 
     could stumble into a war of extraordinary proportions, 
     because they are serious people.
       If the Iranians decide that they could take out Tel Aviv, 
     and we would do nothing--I don't want to bet that the 
     Iranians wouldn't try it.
       If the Iraqis decide that after all of our eight years of 
     bluffing, they could use bacteriological or chemical weapons 
     against their neighbors and we would do nothing.
       Remember, the danger may not be that we would actually do 
     nothing, the danger is that their confusion would lead to a 
     war.
       1914, the First World War was an accident. Nobody thought 
     they'd fight. 1939, Hitler promised his generals that 
     Chamberlain would never fight, and Britain would stay out of 
     the war. 1950, the American Secretary of State publicly 
     announced, ``Korea is outside our defense zone,'' and the 
     North Koreans believed him.
       Wars occur more often because democracies are confused, 
     than because people are deliberately risk-taking. And this 
     president has now set a very high standard for the United 
     States.
       And I believe there is a simple responsibility. First, the 
     president should go to the nation and outline unequivocally, 
     in clear, simple language what are our goals. If Milosevic is 
     this evil, how can he stay in power? If his government has 
     been this horrible, how can it be tolerated? If the Albanians 
     are to go back home, how can they do so while being disarmed, 
     as the Germans suggested?
       So what are our goals? Against what should we measure 
     America two years from now? What should have happened? How 
     will we know we were successful? And then the president and 
     the Congress should debate those goals.
       If they are the right goals, if that requires declaring war 
     on Serbia, then we should declare was on Serbia. If it 
     requires sending a military force of enormous proportions, we 
     should send such a force.
       But that should not be a politician's decision. Nor a 
     presidential candidate's decision. The reason we call General 
     Shelton ``Chairman of the Joint Chiefs'' is because he is 
     assigned the duty of designing the campaign plan to execute 
     the will of the American people.
       And his assignment should be simple. With minimum American 
     casualties, in the shortest possible time, deliver victory, 
     as defined by the president.
       Having finished with Serbia, we should return briefly to 
     Iraq, and the world will be safe for at least twenty years, 
     because the world will have learned that when the American 
     nation is serious, it is un-opposable.
       But if we are irresolute in Serbia, if we accept a papered-
     over, phony victory, not all the press conferences and all 
     the spinning in the world will convince the North Koreans, 
     the Chinese, the Indians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the 
     Russians and others, that we are a nation to be dealt with 
     seriously.
       This president has put his stamp in the middle of the 
     table. He has said the American nation is now committed, and 
     NATO, which is essentially the American nation and its 
     European allies, is now engaged, and we have to insist, for 
     our children's safety, that we succeed.
       Let me close, by first of all thanking all of you. As was 
     mentioned several times, part of this resource is going to go 
     to Juvenile Diabetes research. The rest is going to go to 
     help launch our political efforts, to continue with vision 
     and strategies and education.
       Let me also close at a very personal level. In 1958, as 
     many of you have heard me say, my step-father took me to the 
     battlefield at Verdun. He was serving in the United States 
     Army, as he did for 27 years. And he convinced me, at the end 
     of my freshman year of high school, that civilizations die, 
     that wars are real, that freedom is precious.
       It has been for 40 years, 41 years this coming August, my 
     privilege, as a citizen, to be a part of this extraordinary 
     process by which the ethnically most diverse nation in the 
     world governs itself, and seeks to provide opportunity for 
     all of its citizens.
       In that time, I've watched Barry Goldwater launch a 
     movement that was considered a little nutty, and went down in 
     glorious defeat in 1964, and created modern conservatism.
       I watched Ronald Reagan give wonderful speeches, retire as 
     Governor, emerge briefly to be defeated for the nomination, 
     do a radio show from the ranch, and then emerge, in a magic 
     moment, as America lost its way, as malaise took over, as the 
     economy decayed, as the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and 
     with Margaret Thatcher gave us a dual performance of the 
     power of human leadership that changed the future. And in 
     eight brief years he defeated the Soviet Empire, 
     reestablished the American economy, reestablished American 
     morale, and reminded us of the difference between evil 
     empires and bastions of freedom.
       I was privileged to serve with President Bush at a decisive 
     moment, which is often forgotten by our friends, when every 
     member of the Democratic elected leadership in the Congress 
     voted against Desert Storm. We tend to forget after victory 
     how rapidly they are forgotten. And yet President Bush had 
     the courage, from day one, to insist that Kuwait would be 
     taken, that Saddam's army would be destroyed, and that we 
     would do what was necessary.
       With your help, with your hard work, with your 
     contributions and your tireless effort, we broke a 40 year 
     monopoly, transferred power in the legislative branch, and 
     truly changed the lives for millions of Americans.
       As Mary said earlier so generously, all of us working 
     together saved people with diabetes, we saved people with 
     breast cancer, we put massively more money into medical 
     research, we began a process of preventive disease approaches 
     that I think are going to lead to wellness and major changes.
       We saved hundreds of thousands of Americans from poverty by 
     moving then into work and education, we taught their children 
     that there is a better future than waiting on the check and 
     sitting in public housing.
       We created opportunities for our parents to have better 
     choices in Medicare, and we began the slow, laborious process 
     of rebuilding and rethinking our defense and our intelligence 
     capabilities.
       From that tiny country, on the fringe of the Atlantic 
     Ocean, to a nation which stands astride the world, it has 
     been an amazing process of two hundred and twenty-three years 
     this July 4th. Our generation has a chance to extend that 
     freedom, that prosperity, and that safety to every person in 
     America, and to every person in the world.
       It is, in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's words, our 
     generation's rendezvous with destiny.
       To each of you in public office I wish you God-speed. As 
     Marianne pointed out the night we announced we would step 
     down, we will be around in public life, and we will work with 
     you in every way we can to give our children, and now my 
     grandchildren, a better future. Thank you, good luck, and God 
     Bless you.

     

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