[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
[October 10, 2006]
[Pages 1807-1814]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Reception for Congressional Candidate Michael A. ``Mac'' 
Collins in Macon, Georgia
October 10, 2006

    Thanks for coming. It's good to be in Macon. Thanks for coming out. 
One thing about old Mac is, you know where he stands. That's the kind of 
Congressman you need from this part of the world, and that's the kind of 
Congressman we need in Washington, DC, straightforward thinker, bringing 
common sense to the Nation's Capital.
    I'm proud to stand here with Mac Collins. I know him well. I've 
worked with him; I've listened carefully to his ideas. No doubt in my 
mind he's the best person to represent the Eighth Congressional District 
from the State of Georgia.
    I'm also for him because he married well. Of course, that's why he 
invited me, because I married well. [Laughter] And I want you to know, 
Julie and Mac, that Laura sends her very best to you both. I know she was your 
first choice for this fundraiser. [Laughter] She's got to be the most 
patient woman in America. I know we've got some Texans here, and they 
went to the same college as Laura did. And when she went there, she, 
frankly, wasn't interested in politics and, I think, didn't care for 
politicians. [Laughter] Now here she is as the Nation's First Lady, and 
I firmly believe this country is better off with Laura as the First 
Lady.

[[Page 1808]]

    I'm not only proud to be here with Mac Collins--and I want to thank 
you for supporting him, by the way. I cannot thank you enough for 
helping this good man. He not only needs to fill the hat in order to run 
a good campaign, he's going to need your work coming down the stretch. 
He's going to need you to help make the phone calls and put up the signs 
and turn out the vote. He's going to need the grassroots activists to 
step up and say to their fellow citizens, you've got a good man in Mac 
Collins. He knows what happens in Washington, DC. He's not a novice up 
there. When he gets back up there, he knows what he needs to do. And 
he's going to represent the will of the people of this district, see. 
That's the thing I like about Mac. And so I want to thank you for giving 
of your money, and thank you for giving of your time when we come down 
the stretch.
    I also want to thank you for supporting one of the Nation's fine 
Governors, Governor Sonny Perdue. You know 
what--all Sonny is doing is--in office is what he said he's going to do. 
He said he's going to do this, he's going to do it, and he does. And I'm 
proud to be with Sonny, and I want to thank you for helping him.
    I'm also proud to be able to work with a really fine United States 
Senator in Senator Saxby Chambliss, and I 
see sweet Julianne is with you. Thanks 
for coming, Julianne. Now, let me say this about Saxby: If you're 
interested in agriculture, you don't have to worry about your interests 
being represented in the United States Senate. The man has got some 
stroke up there in Washington--[laughter]--and he knows what he's 
talking about. And those of us in the White House listen to him. 
Senator, we're proud you're here.
    Georgia has got a fine congressional delegation, and one of the 
Congressmen is with us today, Lynn Westmoreland. Congressman, thanks for coming. Good to see you. 
Appreciate your time. We've spent some quality time together, and I know 
he's a good one, and I know he's looking forward to getting Mac up there 
to work with him to do what's right for the country.
    I want to thank Alec Poitevint--with us; 
he's the chairman of--the national committeeman. It seems like I've been 
saying his name for two decades, or three decades. [Laughter] Thanks for 
coming, Alec. Perry McGuire--Perry McGuire is 
with us; he's the candidate for the attorney general for the State of 
Georgia. Perry, thanks for coming. Good luck to you, Perry.
    I want to thank all the local officials and State officials who are 
here. Appreciate you serving.
    There are a lot of issues that I'll be talking about. I know Mac 
will be talking about them. We've got issues such as making sure we 
become less dependent on foreign oil. It's going to be helpful to have 
these Georgia farmers growing oil--growing the feedstock for oil--
[laughter]--like soy diesel or ethanol. It's coming. I look forward to 
working with Mac to spend some money to help new technologies evolve. We 
can't be complacent just because the price of gasoline is going down. 
Being dependent on oil from overseas is still a national security 
concern. And I intend to push hard for technologies that will enable us 
to diversify.
    I'm going to work with Mac to make sure health care costs are 
reasonable so people can have affordable insurance. There's a lot of 
issues we can talk about, but one of the most important issues is taxes. 
It's a big national issue. I want to spend a little time talking about 
it today because there's a fundamental difference between the Republican 
and Democrat Parties on this important issue. And I'm going to discuss 
this issue and these differences between now and election day. And I'm 
going to spend some time right here in Macon, Georgia, talking about it.
    Mac and I share a philosophy about taxes. We believe that the people 
who best know how to spend your money are the people who earn the money 
in the first place. And that's you. So we worked to

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ensure that working families are able to keep more of their paycheck. 
And that--those weren't just empty campaign words. Those are actually 
deliverables; that's what we did. Mac stood squarely for cutting the 
taxes. My administration and the Congress have enacted the largest tax 
relief since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. We cut the taxes for 
every American who pays taxes.
    If you paid income taxes, we cut your taxes, see. We doubled the 
child tax credit; we reduced the marriage penalty; we cut taxes on small 
businesses; we cut taxes on capital gains and dividends to promote 
investment and jobs. And to reward family businesses and farmers for a 
lifetime of hard work and savings, we put the death tax on the road to 
extinction.
    The Republican record on taxes is clear, and the Democrats in 
Washington have a clear record of their own. The trouble is, they don't 
want you to know about it. Recently the top Democrat leader in the 
House made an interesting declaration. She 
said, ``We love tax cuts.'' Given her record, she must be a secret 
admirer. [Laughter] It's not just the so-called tax cuts for the rich 
she opposes. When we cut taxes for everybody who pays income taxes, she 
voted against it. When we reduced the marriage penalty, she voted 
against it. When we cut taxes on small businesses, she voted against it. 
When we lowered the taxes for families with children, she voted against 
it. When we put the death tax on the road to extinction, she voted 
against it. Time and time again, she had an opportunity to show her love 
for tax cuts--[laughter]--and she voted no. [Laughter] If this is a 
Democrat's idea of love--[laughter]--I wouldn't want to see what hate 
looks like.
    Now she and other Democrats are trotting 
out their old line about how they're only going to raise taxes on the 
rich. We've heard that before. Sounds like a nice idea until you start 
doing the math. Let me just give you one example. Earlier this year, the 
Democrats put forward a budget alternative that called for $177 billion 
in additional spending authority over the next 5 years, a number that 
does not include all the other spending they proposed. The problem is, 
even if they raise taxes on everyone making over $200,000, they would 
bring in only $108 billion of new revenues. And that means the Democrats 
would have to come up with $69 billion for additional spending they 
proposed. And guess who's going to have to pay?
    When the Democrats find themselves short of money to pay for all 
their spending promises, it's the middle class Americans who get stuck 
with the bill. Recently, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means 
Committee--that's the committee that writes taxes--said he can't think 
of one of our tax cuts that should be extended. Think of that, not one--
not the tax cuts for families with children, not the reduction in the 
marriage penalty, not the tax cuts on small businesses, not the tax cuts 
on dividend and capital gains, not the cut in the death tax. Even when 
asked to explain his remarks, he refused to commit to extending a single 
tax cut we passed. If he's not going to commit to extending these tax 
cuts now, think of what he would do if the Democrats gained control over 
the United States Congress and he became chairman of this important 
committee.
    The difference between our parties could not be clearer, and so is 
your choice on election day. If you want to keep the tax cuts we passed, 
vote Republican on November the 7th.
    What they don't seem to understand, what the national Democrats 
don't seem to understand, is that the economy grows when you control 
more of your own money. The tax cuts we passed put more than a trillion 
dollars in the hands of American workers and families and small 
businesses. And you've used that money to help fuel our strong and 
growing economy. The national unemployment rate is now 4.6 percent. 
People are working in the United

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States of America. Since August of 2003, our economy has added more than 
6.6 million new jobs. Our progrowth economic policies work. They're 
making a difference for the people of America.
    And this strong and growing economy has helped us reduce the Federal 
deficit. When I set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, 
Democrats said we couldn't get it done. Last year the ranking Democrat 
on the House Budget Committee said 
that my budget brought us nowhere near the goal of cutting the deficit 
in half. Here's what actually happened: A growing economy has helped 
produce record tax revenues, and in July, I announced that we were a 
year ahead of schedule in our plans to cut the deficit in half.
    The Democrats' approach to cutting the deficit is taking more of 
your money to pay for their spending. The Republican approach is to 
restrain spending and let you keep more of your own money so this 
economy grows. And there's a fundamental difference, and it's clear as 
night and day.
    Next month, our Nation has got this choice to make: Do we keep taxes 
low so we can keep this economy growing, or do we let the Democrats in 
Washington raise taxes and hurt the economic vitality of this country? 
The decision is yours to make in the voting booth. This decision will 
have a huge impact on the working people all across the United States of 
America. Whether you're a worker worried about the size of your paycheck 
or a business owner who's thinking about hiring more workers or a family 
worried about gas prices or health care costs, the last thing you need 
is higher taxes. To keep this economy growing and delivering prosperity 
to more Americans, we need to make the tax relief we passed permanent. 
And the best man for the Eighth Congressional District from Georgia to 
do that is Mac Collins.
    Now, there are a lot of issues we got to discuss on the campaign 
trail, lot of domestic issues. But there is no bigger issue facing the 
voters than who best to protect the United States of America. You know, 
when I was campaigning in Georgia in 2000, I didn't believe I'd be 
saying such a statement. I didn't want to be a war President. I don't 
remember a lot of discussion about war in the 2000 campaign. But war 
came to our shores, a war we didn't ask for and a war we must win for 
the sake of future generations.
    People ask me, what's it like to be the President. I said, it's a 
decisionmaking experience. [Laughter] And I make a lot. And a lot of 
decisions I make are based upon the knowledge I learned from that attack 
on September the 11th, 2001. I learned we face an enemy that is 
ruthless, that will kill the innocent in order to achieve objectives. I 
learned we face an enemy that has got an ideology, an ideology that is 
hard for a lot of Americans to understand, an ideology that does not 
believe in the same freedoms we believe.
    Let's talk about religion for a second. One of the great, great 
beliefs of America and the fundamental cornerstone of our liberty is the 
fact that in America, you can worship any way you so choose. If you're a 
Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, you're equally 
American, equally American. That's a sacred right for all of our 
citizens. It's a right that we must never abandon in America. And it 
stands in stark contrast to what the enemies of freedom believe. They 
say if you don't worship the way they tell you to worship, you'll be 
held to account. They say that if you don't view religion the way they 
view religion, you'll be punished.
    We're in the ideological struggle of the 21st century. It's a 
struggle between rational, reasonable people who believe in basic 
freedoms versus extremists and radicals who murder the innocent in order 
to achieve their objectives. Right after 9/11, I made it clear that if 
one were to harvest--harbor one of these extremists or radicals, they 
will be judged as equally as guilty as those who commit murder.

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    And that's why we went into Afghanistan. I said, ``You've been 
harboring Al Qaida''--remember, they were providing safe haven for Al 
Qaida to train. I gave them time to turn over Al Qaida to us; they chose 
otherwise. And as a result of defending ourselves, which is the most 
important job of government, we liberated 25 million people from the 
clutches of that ideology.
    This Nation cannot wait for threats to fully materialize. If we're 
to do our most important job, which is to protect the American people, 
we must make sure we deal with threats before they hurt us. That's one 
of the fundamental changes of September the 11th. And it's important to 
have people in Congress who understand that. It's important to have a 
person like Mac Collins who knows that we must deal with the threat 
overseas so we do not have to face that threat here at home. I saw a 
threat, the Congress saw a threat, the United Nations saw a threat in 
Saddam Hussein, and the world is better off 
without him in power.
    And now the challenge is to do the hard work of helping the Iraqis 
defend their freedom, the hard work of helping this young democracy 
survive the onslaught of murder from those who would prevent democracy 
from taking root. It's in our interests that we do so because, you see, 
we must defeat the enemy overseas so we don't have to face them here at 
home. And if we were to retreat before the job is done, they would 
follow us straight to America.
    And I understand it's hard on the American people, because the enemy 
is able to take innocent lives, and it gets on our TV screens. And it's 
hard. I know it's hard, because Americans are compassionate people. We 
care about innocent life. We care about the human condition. But it's 
necessary work. We'll continue to make sure our commanders have that 
which they need to do the job. We will be flexible in our tactics in 
order to help this young democracy survive. We will deploy the assets 
necessary to bring people to justice overseas so we don't have to face 
them here at home.
    And I need people by my side in the United States Congress like Mac 
Collins, who will make sure our brave men and women who wear the uniform 
have all that's necessary to defend the United States of America. We 
will stay; we will fight; and we will win, for the security of the 
United States.
    But we must do more than just stay on the offense against these 
killers. We pressure them every day. It's harder to plot and plan when 
you're on the run or you're hiding in a cave. But I recognized after 9/
11, we must also deploy all assets to protect you. I think about my job 
of protecting you every day. It's the most fundamental of all 
requirements of government. And so after 9/11, I called upon Congress, 
and sometimes--and a week later called upon Congress to give our folks 
on the frontline of fighting terror the tools necessary to protect you.
    There were walls set up between intelligence and criminal 
investigators that made it impossible for folks to share intelligence 
with those who are hired to protect you. It's hard for me to explain why 
that was the case--just take my word for it. [Laughter] It was there. 
You had somebody get some intelligence; they couldn't share it with the 
person charged with criminal justice matters. And it made us vulnerable 
to attack.
    And so I asked Congress to pass the PATRIOT Act. Congressman Mac 
Collins didn't hesitate. He said it's the right thing to do, to give 
those on the frontline of fighting terror the tools necessary to protect 
you. As a matter of fact, right after 9/11, it wasn't hard to get the 
bill passed. Five years later, however--or 4 years later, I came back 
and said, ``We need to renew the bill,'' and on the floor of the United 
States Senate, Democrats filibustered the bill. See, that's Democrat-
talk--I mean, Washington-talk for killing it, trying to kill it. They 
must think differently about this

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war on terror. It's a fundamental issue in this campaign, the difference 
about how to defend America.
    The Senate minority leader openly bragged 
about--``We killed the bill,'' he said, killed the PATRIOT Act. To me, 
it speaks volumes in this campaign about which party clearly sees the 
enemy as it is and which party is willing to do the hard work necessary 
to protect the American people. I do not question the patriotism of 
anybody. I just know there's a different mindset, when they fought the 
PATRIOT Act's renewal.
    As you know, I put in place a plan that said if Al Qaida is calling 
into the United States, we want to know why. We want to know why. In 
this war on terror, we're capturing people. And sometimes, for example, 
we might find something in somebody's pocket, and, say, it had a phone 
number of--an American phone number, and that phone number gets called 
from overseas--not with a call within the United States but from outside 
in. We need to know. If the most important job is to protect the 
American people, we need to know why that person, that Al Qaida and/or 
Al Qaida affiliate, is making a phone call.
    So the United States Congress had a vote on this recently; out of 
the House of Representatives, 166 Democrats voted against the bill, 
voted against giving our people the tools necessary to protect you. 
These are fine people; I know a lot of them. They're decent citizens of 
our country. They just have a different view about the world in which we 
live. Perhaps one way to summarize it is, okay, we'll get tough; we'll 
respond after we're attacked. My attitude is, we better give our folks 
the tools necessary to protect you before we get attacked, to protect 
the American people.
    As you, I'm sure, read, we have been capturing people on the 
battlefield--I call it a battlefield because this is a war--and we have 
interrogated those people in order to find out whether or not they know 
about attacks on the United States. In my discussion to the American 
people about this issue, I talked about some of the examples. For 
example, we have captured and interrogated a fellow named Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed, who our intelligence people 
believe was the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks.
    This country is under threat. The enemy still wants to hurt us. And 
therefore, it seemed like it made sense to me that when we found the 
mastermind, or the presumed mastermind of the September the 11th 
attacks, that our professionals should find out what this fellow knows. 
If the most important job is to protect the American people, we must 
give our professionals the tools necessary to protect you.
    This bill came up for a vote recently in the House and the Senate. 
The overwhelming majority of Democrats voted against giving our 
professionals the tools necessary to protect you. There's a fundamental 
difference in this campaign, and it's a clear difference. And the 
American people need to understand there's a difference in this 
campaign. Our most important job is to protect you from attack, and the 
Republican Party will make sure our professionals have the tools 
necessary to defend you.
    And the people of this congressional district don't need to worry 
about where Mac Collins stands. I look forward to working with this good 
man to help protect you from the threats we face.
    We're in an ideological struggle. It's the challenge of our time. 
It's the call of our generation. We've got a great military. We've got 
wonderful professionals working hard to protect you. We've got one other 
fantastic way to defend America, a great asset, and that's freedom. I 
believe in the universality of freedom. I believe there's an Almighty. I 
believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire for people 
to be free. And I believe that the United States of America, it's in our 
interest that we promote liberty. Oh, not every democracy is going to 
look like ours. Each

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democracy ought to represent their own history and traditions. But it's 
in our interest that liberty flourish because that's how you ultimately 
win the ideological struggle that pits reasonable people against 
extremists. That's how you win a struggle with those who want their 
children to grow up in a reasonable society, a hopeful society, against 
those who will create chaos so that they can't do so.
    You know, I recently--you might remember, I just had an interesting 
experience recently when the Prime Minister of Japan and I went down to Elvis's place. [Laughter] 
Laura and I had never been there, and so--
[laughter]--I thought that would be fun. [Laughter] Prime Minister 
Koizumi really wanted to go there--[laughter]--because he is a--he's an 
Elvis fan. He loves Elvis. But I also wanted to tell a story. I'm going 
to tell it right quick and then head back up and have dinner with Laura. 
Here it is: I find it is a really interesting kind of twist of history, 
I guess you could put it, that I'm going to Elvis's place with the Prime 
Minister of Japan, and my dad fought the 
Japanese. Eighteen-year-old George H.W. Bush--I'm sure you've got 
relatives, the same thing happened to them--responded to the violent 
attack on the United States and said, ``I want to volunteer,'' like 
thousands of other kids.
    And we fought the Japanese with all we had. And it was a bloody 
war--really bloody war. And yet 60 years later, I'm on Air Force One 
flying to Memphis--[laughter]--talking about the peace, working with 
Prime Minister Koizumi on issues like 
North Korea. And I will tell you, we're more likely to solve this issue 
peacefully when we've got people like Japan and China and South Korea 
and Russia saying the exact same thing as the United States is to the 
man in North Korea.
    It helps to be able to sit down and talk ally to ally about the 
peace. We talked about the fact that the Japanese had 1,000 troops in 
Iraq helping this young democracy fight off the extremists that can't 
stand the thought of a free society in their midst. We talked about the 
strategic implications of abandoning those who long for liberty in the 
Middle East. He knows what I know, that 
there could be a world in which moderate governments get toppled, which 
is precisely what the enemy said they want to do, so that these 
extremists control energy resources in which they'd be able to blackmail 
the free world.
    And combine that with a nuclear weapon in the hands of an Iran, and 
Koizumi and I understand that the world 
would look back and say, ``What happened to them? How come they couldn't 
see the threat?'' We're all flying on Air Force One with the former 
Prime Minister of Japan--he recently left office--talking about the 
peace. And I found that to be amazing. Something happened between when 
George H.W. Bush became a Navy pilot, and 
his son is talking about the peace. And what happened was, Japan adopted 
a Japanese-style democracy. Liberty has got the capacity to change an 
enemy into an ally. Liberty has got the capacity to bring hope where 
hope is needed and light where there's darkness.
    I believe if this generation does its duty to protect future 
generations of Americans, someday an American President will be sitting 
down talking with the duly elected leaders of the Middle East and 
talking about the peace, and a generation of Americans will be better 
off.
    Those are the stakes of the elections of 2006, the stakes of the 
world in which we live. And I'll be proud to work with Mac Collins to 
bring the peace we all want. God bless.

Note: The President spoke at 5:35 p.m. at the Macon Centreplex. In his 
remarks, he referred to former President Saddam Hussein of Iraq; former 
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan; and Chairman Kim Jong Il of 
North Korea.

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