[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[June 29, 1992]
[Pages 1029-1032]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1029]]

Remarks at a Fundraising Luncheon for Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato in New 
York City

June 29, 1992
    Thank you all so much. And Charlie, thank you, Ambassador, for that 
very, very generous introduction. And let me just thank all responsible 
for this highly successful lunch. I want to salute our two Members of 
Congress here today, Senator Pressler and Norm Lent; I'll get to the 
third in a minute. Chairman Rich Bond--if you want to get a guy to do a 
big national job, get someone from New York; and Rich is doing just that 
as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
    I want to salute our new committeeman, Joe Mandello; glad Joe's 
family could make it out there. Bill Powers, our wonderful State 
chairman who's taking them on up there and winning more than his share, 
for all of us, I might add. And David Brewer, Doug Barclay, Jack 
Hennessy, heading up our campaign efforts and doing such a superb job in 
this fundraising. Another salute to Roy Goodman, an old friend down 
here, the State senator. And Michael Long, let me just say, Mike, how 
grateful I am to you and the others in the Conservative Party. What that 
means is that with your help and now with the help of everybody across 
this State, New York is not only in play as a key targeted State for the 
Republicans, it is a State we will win. And this is a very important 
endorsement.
    May I thank Yung Soo Yoo and Rabbi Milton Balkany for their 
introduction as well and their saluting us at the beginning of this 
program.
    And now I'm here today to salute a great leader, a force for good, a 
titan of politics, Mama D'Amato. I think Al's learned a thing or two 
from Mama, things like getting it done, making waves, taking them on, 
and winning. And that's exactly what he's going to do this fall. But 
I've seen it in Washington, and when Al takes them on, the rest of them 
take cover.
    Voters are frustrated, and they're tired of the status quo, and 
they're calling for change. But they also know that there's a flip side 
to change, and it is called trust, trust to make the right decisions and 
to block the wrong ones. I believe that we have the values, I believe we 
have the record that entitles us to take our case to the American people 
and win 4 more years in the White House and 6 more for Al in the Senate.
    Our values are right. When we talk about family values, I'm thinking 
of what those mayors came to tell me. Liberals and conservative, 
Democrats and Republicans from the mayors came to see me, and they said 
the biggest problem in the cities is the decline of the American family. 
And we are the party that's trying to strengthen the American family 
through choice and opportunity.
    I appreciated what Al said about changing the world. And I do 
believe that thanks to my predecessor, thanks to our administration, 
there have been fundamental changes in the world. Eastern Europe is 
free; Germany is united; the international communism as we know it is 
dead. Ancient enemies are sitting talking to each other in the Middle 
East. Democracy is on the move south of our borders. And we have a 
fantastic record of standing up against aggression. And don't let the 
revisionists try to tell you that Desert Storm was bad; it was a 
tremendous success, and we are not going to let them alter the record.
    I notice these signs, and let me simply say that, look, the Israeli 
elections underscore the dynamism of the Mideast's solitary democracy. 
They point out the dynamism of the process. And we are confident that we 
can work with that new Israeli government to deepen our partnership, to 
promote our common objective of peace with security for Israel. And I am 
dedicating myself to that.
    There's another thing that we'll take to the American people, and 
you don't hear it from either of the opponents at this Presidential 
level, and I don't expect Al's going to hear much about it. But it was 
under our leadership that we can now turn to the

[[Page 1030]]

American people, particularly the children, and say, you can go to bed 
at night without that awful, deadly fear of nuclear war because of what 
we did in getting rid of these ICBM weapons. You listen to those pundits 
out there and listen to the opponents, you wouldn't think there was any 
responsibilities to the United States. We are the undisputed leader of 
the free world, and I don't care what the critics say. I am going to 
keep on leading for peace and democracy around the world.
    And yes, yes, we're going to have some savings in defense, but I am 
not going to cut into the muscle of the defense. There are still many 
uncertainties out there, and the United States, in order to lead, must 
remain strong. Al has known that; Al has stood up against criticism on 
behalf of that principle. And I am convinced that we can keep our 
security strong so we can guarantee for the generations that come 
futures of peace and opportunity.
    Some people say to me, ``Hey, how come you can't bring the same kind 
of purpose and success to the domestic scene as you did in Desert Storm 
and Desert Shield?'' And the fair answer to that is, we can. But when it 
came to going into Desert Storm, I didn't have to call one of the 
Senators entrenched on the Democratic side, one of the liberals, and get 
his permission. I did not have to stand up and watch everything I'm 
trying to do get blocked by the Senate. We moved, and then they came 
along. That is what we need in the Congress, and the way to get that is 
to give us more people like Al D'Amato and Terrence Pressler and Norman 
Lent and to get control of the Congress.
    For 35 years, one party has controlled the House of Representatives. 
For 29 of the last 35, one party has controlled the United States 
Senate. We tried it with a Democratic President and a Democratic 
Congress, and we got the worst interest rates, the worst ``misery 
index'' in the history of this country. What hasn't been tried and what 
we're going to take to the people in the fall is this: Give us a 
Republican President, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House, and 
we can give you the values that you want.
    We've gotten some things done early in the Presidency: A child care 
bill that says, isn't it better for the parents to choose how to have 
child care rather than have some Government bureaucracy. We've passed 
the foremost, far-looking, far forward-looking piece of civil rights 
legislation in the Americans for Disabilities Act that said, let's give 
these people a chance, let them fit in, give them an opportunity, not 
have some Government program out here to keep the people with 
disabilities isolated. We passed a Clean Air Act that used market 
forces, harnesses market forces for a cleaner environment.
    But so much that we're trying to do, whether it's school choice or 
whether it's incentives for this economy, are being blocked by the 
United States Congress. And they control it; the Democrats control it. 
And I believe that the American people, in their quest for change, are 
going to say: Let's try something that hasn't been done in 35 years: 
Let's get a Republican Congress to back up this Republican President.
    Sometimes the only time you can get something to happen down there 
is standing up against bad legislation. And I want to take this 
opportunity to thank our distinguished honoree, Al D'Amato, today for 
helping me with this veto record. The score is: Bush 30, Congress 0, on 
the veto. And we're going to keep on beating back bad legislation until 
we get good legislation.
    Let me just click off a couple of our major initiatives. One of them 
is health care reform. It is not right that families go to bed wondering 
whether they're going to have any protection against illness. We have 
put forward on the Capitol Hill now, it's before the Congress, a new 
health care reform program that says we will make insurance available to 
everybody, the poorest of the poor, through a voucher system. We will 
revise and get rid of these awful malpractice suits by changing and 
getting some legal reform for this country. We're suing each other too 
much and caring for each other too little. So we've got a good, strong, 
health care proposal, and it doesn't do like some of these foreign 
countries or what some of the liberal Democrats want to do. It does not 
socialize medicine. It does not break every small business. It offers 
insur-

[[Page 1031]]

ance to others, everybody. And it says we will maintain the quality of 
U.S. health care. It is the best in the world, and we are not going to 
diminish it by putting the Government in charge of our health care.
    Another one is free trade. We stand proudly for free trade. And 
we're taking a hammering in some quarters. Election year is coming up; 
everybody is out pledging to this special interest, this protection or 
that protection. But let me tell you something: I am going to keep on 
fighting until we get a successful conclusion to the Uruguay round of 
GATT, and I am going to keep on fighting until we get a North American 
free trade agreement because that means jobs for the American worker. I 
am for free trade, not for protection, and we've got to keep fighting 
for those principles.
    Another one is education reform. Mike talked about it, and Al 
D'Amato mentioned it. We've got a good program; it's not just another 
Government program. It's called America 2000. It literally 
revolutionizes the way we educate the kids from K to 12. We have the 
best university system in the world; we have the best quality education 
at that level. But what we don't have is the proper quality at those 
lower areas of education. And so our program says: Keep it close to the 
family, keep it close to the locality and the community, but literally 
revolutionize it. We've got a good, strong program to take, and Al is 
right. Our ``GI bill'' says this: Give the parents a choice. Give the 
family the same opportunity to choose those schools, religious, private, 
or public that we all got, the old guys here got when we got the GI bill 
right after World War II. It worked for the universities; it can work at 
the local level. What's wrong with letting the parents choose and giving 
them that opportunity?
    We've got a great disagreement with the liberal Democrats on another 
one. I am fighting at every turn to do better on the deficit. The other 
day we had a vote in the Congress on a means to discipline the executive 
branch and discipline the United States Congress. Not a cure-all, but it 
was something that 80 percent of the American people want. It was 
victimized and brutalized and beaten back by that entrenched liberal 
Democrat leadership that wouldn't stand up against the special 
interests. I will continue to fight for a balanced budget amendment to 
discipline us all in Washington, DC.
    And while we're at it--and I heard a nice endorsement of this by the 
Democratic nominee, potential Democratic nominee for President--I think 
it's about time to give the President what 43 Governors have. If they 
can't do it up there with the liberals that control these committees, 
give the President a chance. Give me that line-item veto, and let's see 
if we can't do better on the spending side.
    In conclusion, let me say this: This has been a weird political 
year--I'm talking strange. I've been in politics half my adult life, 
half of it in private business. It has been the strangest year I have 
ever seen. I think most people would agree with that. But in the final 
analysis, the American people are going to say this: Who has the 
temperament to lead this country? Who has the steadiness when the going 
gets really tough to make the proper decision? Who has the beliefs when 
it comes to the innate strength of American society, the family, the 
family values? Who has the will to fight for those values? Who has the 
demonstrated leadership to keep the peace and enhance it by helping 
democracy and freedom around the world? And who has the best program to 
stimulate the economy by getting jobs and opportunity moving by 
encouraging less regulation and by stimulating the investment tax credit 
and cutting the capital gains and changing the IRA's and doing all the 
things we should have done months ago to give the working man and woman 
an opportunity?
    I believe we have not only the program, but I hope I have the 
integrity and that sense of honor about the United States to ask the 
American people: Give me 4 more years. Give Al D'Amato 6 more years. 
Give us more company on the House and in the Senate, and watch us get 
that job done. I cannot wait until the middle of August--right now I'm 
in a nonpolitical mode. [Laughter] But I cannot wait until the middle of 
August when I get unfettered and say, all right, now the time has come 
to take this case to the American people. Not

[[Page 1032]]

just to go after the other guys--although I'm a little bit tired of 
hearing my name get criticized by five Democrats all spring long, and 
now some independent comes charging out with nothing but criticism. I'm 
ready to take them on when we get to August. And what happens here is 
this kind of arrangement will make us have a much better chance of 
taking them on, on our terms. Let them see if they can take the heat 
because I am going to dish it out and take the Republican record to the 
American people, and we are going to win in November.
    Thank you very, very much.

                    Note: The President spoke at 1:15 p.m. in the Grand 
                        Ballroom at the New York Hilton Hotel. In his 
                        remarks, he referred to Charles Gargano, former 
                        Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago; Joe Mandello, 
                        chairman, Nassau County Republican Party; David 
                        Brewer, luncheon vice chairman; Douglas Barclay, 
                        New York State chairman, Bush-Quayle '92; Jack 
                        Hennessy, New York State finance chairman, Bush-
                        Quayle '92; Michael Long, chairman, New York 
                        State Conservative Party; Yung Soo Yoo, luncheon 
                        general chairman; and Rabbi Yehoshua Balkany, 
                        dean of Yeshiva Bais Yaakov of Brooklyn, who 
                        gave the invocation.