    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2002, Book I)]
    [March 27, 2002]
    [Pages 508-512]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Fundraiser for Senatorial Candidate Lindsey Graham in Greenville
    March 27, 2002

         Thank you all very much. Thank you all. It is nice to be back in
    South Carolina. Please be seated. Thank you.
        My only regret is I didn't bring Laura with
    me. I can't tell you how proud I am of her. She is--she is a fabulous
    wife and a great lady. She's flying Barney and Spot and the cat down to
    Crawford, Texas, as I speak. America is getting to see why I married
    her. A lot of people are wondering why she said yes. [Laughter] But
    Lindsey, thanks for mentioning Laura. She is--I love her dearly, and
    she's a great First Lady for the country.
        And you're going to be a great Senator for South Carolina. I'm here
    with one message: I want Lindsey Graham elected to the United States
    Senate. It is in South Carolina's interest that he get elected to the
    United States Senate, and it's in our Nation's interest that he get
    elected to the United States Senate. And frankly, it's in my interest
    that he get elected to the United States Senate, because I've got a lot
    I want to do. And I look forward to working with him to get it done. So
    I'm proud to be here on Lindsey's behalf, and I want to thank you all--
    the organizers of the event and you all for coming to support this good
    man for this important cause.
        I also want to thank Jim DeMint. It's
    important that he win as well. Jim is the kind of fellow that I like to
    work with in Washington. First of all, he understands his district well.
    And he loves the people of his district. We've got the kind of
    relationship where I welcome him into the Oval Office to sit down and
    discuss important issues. And we can have frank discussions and come to
    agreement.
        Now, I know there are some of them here picking on him because of
    textiles. Because of Jim DeMint's leadership, my
    administration has got a plan to strengthen the textile industry. And I
    want to thank him for his leadership on this issue, and so should the
    people of this district.
        And I want to thank Congressman Henry Brown for coming all the way up from the coast. It's nice of
    you all to let him in. [Laughter] And he's doing a fine job as well.
        As you know, I'm fortunate enough to make a lot of friends in your
    great State, and I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to be
    your President. But I also want to thank some of those that I spent a
    lot of time with in South Carolina for coming over today: Carroll
    Campbell and Iris, thank you all for being here. They tell me
    Beasley is around here somewhere. Beasley,
    how are you? Good to see you. I appreciate your coming. And the speaker--I've got no better friend than the speaker.
    Election day, he took me to the Ham House. [Laughter] I'm still running
    off the pancakes. [Laughter] And Lieutenant Governor Peeler and Attorney General Condon,
    two fine friends of mine, and I was proud to call them friends back in
    2000, and I'm still proud to call them friends. And it's great to see
    you guys, and thank you all for being here as well. And I want to thank
    my friend Barry Wynn as well. Barry and I have
    been friends for awhile, and he helped me get to where I am, and so did
    many of you all.
        I've got a lot to do in Washington. And we need somebody who can
    help get that done in the United States Senate from South Carolina.
    Listen, you've had a fine, fine man in Strom Thurmond representing you all, and what you need is a young
    visionary leader to take his place. He understands how Washington works.
    I want the voters of South Carolina to remember, he was for a strong
    military prior to September the 11th. He understood we need a strong

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    military to defend our freedoms. He doesn't need to be educated, once he
    gets to Washington, on this issue. He's a member of the Armed Services
    Committee and has served proudly. And I look forward to working with
    Lindsey as we fight this war on terror.
        He also has been a leader on education reform. For too long, our
    party was identified as being antischool, that we weren't for educating
    children. That's changed. I had the honor of signing a piece of
    legislation which recognizes the importance of education in our society;
    refuses to allow for mediocrity; challenges the status quo when children
    are simply shuffled through the system, regardless of whether they can
    read or not; insists that every child--I mean every child--can read in
    America.
        And Lindsey Graham stood by my side on this important piece of
    education reform. And not only that, he's sponsoring a piece of
    legislation, which I strongly support, that will forgive loans to
    teachers who teach in the neediest areas in America. He's a reformer
    when it comes to education, and the South Carolinians ought to be proud
    of his record.
        Now, we've got a lot to do--we've got a lot to do. There's a lot to
    do at home. As you know--let me put it to you this way. I was
    campaigning in Chicago one time, and a fellow said, ``Would you ever
    allow for deficit spending; would that ever enter your vocabulary?'' I
    said, ``Well, under certain circumstances: Only if we're at war, or
    there was a national emergency, or there was a recession.'' Little did I
    realize we'd draw the trifecta. [Laughter] But I want to make it clear
    about how we dealt with the latter, and then I'm going to talk about the
    first two.
        The slowdown in our economy--the best way to make sure an economy
    recovers is to trust the people with their own money. You see, when
    people have more money in their pocket, when they've got more money to
    spend, that increases demand for goods and services. And when there's an
    increase in demand for goods and services, somebody is going to produce
    goods and services. And as they produce goods and services, it firms up
    the job base. We cut the taxes on the American people at exactly the
    right time, and our economy is improving because of it.
        Lindsey understood that, and he was a strong proponent of the tax
    relief for the American people. He was describing the other fellow's
    position. He said he wouldn't have supported the tax increase. Yet
    another reason why Lindsey Graham ought to be in the U.S. Senate--it's
    because we trust people with their own money. The tax money is not the
    Government's money; it is the people's money. And when we can give it
    back and afford to give it back, we ought to do so.
        Now, there are some of them up there that believe in times of a
    recession, you increase the taxes on the people. But that's not the
    textbook that Lindsey and I have been reading. Our textbook starts with,
    you trust the American people, particularly when it comes to their own
    money. So I need to have an ally in the United States Senate who
    understands how our economy works and who trusts the private sector and
    trusts the people with their own money.
        We're going to have some issues coming up, and I'll tell you one. We
    got rid of the death tax, but because of the law, it can conceivably
    come back into life 9 years from now. We need to make the repeal of the
    death tax permanent. That's an important issue for small-business
    owners. It's a particularly important issue for South Carolina farmers,
    South Carolina ranchers. And we needed somebody in the U.S. Senate who
    will vote to make that tax relief permanent.
        Listen, we don't need a tax system that encourages somebody to work
    all their life to build up an asset base and have it taxed again, have
    it taxed twice. What we need is a system that encourages hard work, the
    entrepreneurial spirit, and allows people to

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    pass on their assets to whoever they want to pass on their assets to.
        We need an energy plan in America. We need a plan that not only
    encourages conservation and the development of exciting new
    technologies, but we also need a plan that reduces our dependency on
    foreign sources of crude oil. We need a plan that encourages biomass,
    ethanol--interesting alternatives.
        But I want you all to understand something Lindsey understands and I
    darn sure know, is that we now import over 50 percent of our energy from
    overseas. Sometimes we get it from nations that aren't really pleased
    with U.S. foreign policy. For the good of national security, we need to
    explore, in environmentally friendly ways, for energy in our own country
    so we can reduce dependency. It's in our national security interests
    that we do so.
        We need to get a faith-based initiative out of the United States
    Senate. We need to rally the great compassion of our country in order to
    stand up in the face of evil. We need to understand that the best
    welfare programs sometimes are those that come out of our churches and
    synagogues and mosques. Our Federal Government must not fear faith in
    our society. We must welcome faith, faith programs that heal hearts,
    that provide hope to the hopeless, that give people the opportunity to
    realize the American Dream.
        And that's incredibly important at this stage of our Nation's
    history. Because in order to win the war on terror, we must not let
    terror affect the hearts and souls of the American people--quite the
    opposite. It's important for me and all of us in positions of
    responsibility to rally the great compassion of America so that we can
    stand squarely in the face of evil, so that we can say, out of evil acts
    of September the 11th have come incredible goodness. And that's what's
    going to happen in America. I firmly believe it. I believe that out of
    this evil will come great goodness because of the compassion of the
    American people.
        I just had the honor of speaking to a lot of folks who wear the
    uniform in Greenville, South Carolina, and surrounding neighborhoods--
    the police and the fire and the EMS folks--to talk about a homeland
    strategy that Tom Ridge in my administration is
    developing, a strategy that provides a significant amount of money in
    the new budget to provide first-responders not only with a strategy but
    with ample money to be able to be prepared for any emergency that might
    arise. We've got money in our budget for bioterrorist attack--a possible
    bioterrorist attack. We've got money in the budget to make sure that the
    INS, the folks who are supposed to know who is coming in and out of our
    country, do a better job of understanding who is coming in and out of
    our country. We're buttoning up the homeland.
        And I want to tell you that my biggest job is to make sure that we
    do everything in our power to make sure that innocent lives are not lost
    in America again. I want the moms and dads to know that my priority is
    to make sure your children can grow up in a peaceful country. And we're
    making progress.
        The law enforcement--law enforcement at the Federal level and the
    State level and the local level are communicating a lot better than they
    have ever before. Every morning, like this morning, I ask the FBI
    Director Mueller, ``What are you
    doing in running down leads? Are you hunting them down here on the
    homeland, if we get a hint that somebody might do something against
    us?'' And we are. We're chasing down every single lead.
        But I want to tell you all, the best way to secure the homeland is
    to hunt the enemy down wherever they hide and bring them to justice, and
    that's exactly what we're going to do. The budget I submitted to the
    United States Congress not only makes our homeland security a priority,
    it makes the defense of the United States a

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    priority. It's the largest increase in defense spending in 20 years. And
    the reason why is twofold.
        One, whenever we commit people who wear our uniform into battle,
    they must have the best equipment, the best training, the best pay
    possible. The price of freedom is high, no question about it. But it is
    not too high, as far as I'm concerned.
        And the other reason why I've submitted a significant increase in
    the defense spending is because we're in this thing for the long haul.
    We defend freedom. We're fighting murderers, coldblooded killers who
    hate what America stands for. They hate our religious tolerance. They
    hate the fact that we speak freely. They can't stand our democracy. And
    they want to hit us again. And we're going to chase them down one by
    one, until we rid the world of the global reach of terror. We have no
    other choice, my fellow Americans. We fight for our children's freedom.
        They must have not understood who they were dealing with on
    September the 11th. I guess they thought we were so materialistic and so
    self-absorbed that all we would do is file a lawsuit. They found out we
    think differently here in America. They found out when it comes to
    defending our freedom, we will take whatever means are necessary. They
    found out what I meant when I said, ``Either you are with us, or you're
    against us.'' And they found out, in the first theater on the war
    against terror, what I meant when I said, ``If you harbor a terrorist,
    if you hide a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty
    as the murderers who attacked New York City and Washington, DC, on
    September the 11th.''
        Thanks to our mighty United States military and a vast coalition of
    freedom-loving countries, we upheld that latter doctrine. The Taliban
    found out exactly what I meant. They are no longer in power, thank
    goodness, for the people of Afghanistan.
        I want to assure you that we did not go into that theater, or any
    theater, to seek revenge. We seek justice. And when we went into
    Afghanistan, we didn't enter as conquerors; we entered as liberators.
    This past weekend, young girls, many young girls, for the first time in
    their life, went to school. And I am proud of a nation that is not only
    tough and strong but a nation that is compassionate and cares deeply
    about the lives of all citizens around the world.
        Thankfully, our Nation is united and determined, because we've got a
    lot more work to do. There are still a lot of them out there that would
    like to harm our country. And the best way to deal with them is to treat
    them like international criminals--precisely who they are--and keep them
    on the run and deny sanctuary and be patient and deliberate and tough
    and determined. The world watches the United States of America. If we
    were to blink, I think they might go to sleep. But I can assure you,
    we're not going to blink. We're determined. No matter how long it takes,
    this administration will lead this Nation in chasing down the killers.
        And not only that, we must not allow and will not allow the world's
    worst leaders to develop the world's worst weapons that could
    conceivably hold the United States and our allies and friends hostage.
    There is an axis of evil in the world, and the United States of America
    will deal with it in a firm way.
        We are patient; we are deliberate; we will consult with our allies.
    But the world must understand, we love freedom; we hold freedom dear to
    our hearts. And we will not let our freedoms be threatened or our
    freedoms taken away from us.
        You know, one of the most interesting--not interesting, one of the
    most compelling and moving moments during this--from September the 11th
    on, was Flight 93. It was a time when America got to see that there are
    people in our society who are willing to serve something greater than
    themselves. This was an airplane flying toward who knows--the White
    House or the Capitol. Americans on that plane on their

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    cell phones told their loved ones goodbye. They said a prayer. They told
    them they loved them and said, ``Let's roll,'' and drove the plane in
    the ground so somebody else could live.
        I believe out of this evil will come incredible good. On the one
    hand, if we're tough and strong and firm, the world will be more
    peaceful. I believe that when the United States leads with firm resolve,
    we have a much better chance to solve the world's most intractable
    problems.
        But I also know that by unleashing the compassion and goodness of
    America, by following the example of others who are willing to sacrifice
    for something greater, that we can rally the great compassion of the
    country so that the American Dream extends its hope into every
    neighborhood in every corner of this great country. Out of evil will
    come great good, because the great strength of the Nation is in the
    hearts and souls of an incredible country.
        Thank you all for being here. May God bless you all. Send Lindsey
    Graham to the United States Senate.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. at the Palmetto Expo Center. In
    his remarks, he referred to former South Carolina Governors Carroll A.
    Campbell, Jr., and David M. Beasley; Iris Campbell, wife of Governor
    Campbell; David H. Wilkins, speaker, South Carolina House of
    Representatives; Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler and Attorney General Charlie Condon
    of South Carolina; and Barry D. Wynn, former chairman, South Carolina
    Republican Party.