[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I)]
[February 6, 2007]
[Pages 103-108]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at Micron Technology, Inc., in Manassas, Virginia
February 6, 2007

    The President. Thank you all. Thank you for your warm welcome. It's 
good to be here at Micron Technologies. I'm going to spend a little time 
with you talking about the state of our economy and the budget I 
submitted to the United States Congress. It should interest you; after 
all, it's your money. [Laughter]
    One thing about Micron is that it is clear that the role of 
government is to encourage investment and enhance educational 
opportunities. I mean, when you walk through the halls of this 
innovative company, it's pretty clear to me that you need to know what 
you're doing in order to make this--[laughter]--company survive and 
thrive like it is.
    The other day I was in New York, and I talked about what we need to 
do to keep the economy growing. In other words, things are fine right 
now; what do you do to make it even better in the future? And coming to 
a company like this reminds me about some of the basic things we need to 
do. One, we need to make sure that we educate kids so that they can 
become employees in companies like this--basic, fundamental education--
and encourage additional education for folks so they gain skills to fill 
the jobs of the 21st century.
    Secondly, trade--like, if you're confident in what you make, you 
ought to be for trade, because people are going to want to buy what you 
make. Ninety-five percent of the customers in the world live outside the 
United States. I mean, we're 5 percent of the population; 95 percent is 
elsewhere. This company relies upon trade. So you've got the smart 
people back there making the products that people want, and you want to 
be in a position to sell it if you want your company to continue to 
grow.
    I appreciate very much the fact that companies like Micron actually 
have a budget. It's a concept that the Government needs to get used to 
too. [Laughter] And I'm going to spend a little time talking about the 
budget. I submitted a budget yesterday that says, we can balance the 
budget by 2012 without raising your taxes. I'm going to explain how it 
works.
    It's probably counterintuitive to some, particularly those who tend 
to trust government. But, see, I believe it is not only possible; we 
have proven it through a document, that by keeping taxes low and being 
wise about how we spend your money, we actually achieve balance in the 
budget. That's not to say we won't have other challenges, but this 
budget can work if Congress resists the temptation to raise your taxes.
    Now, I do want to thank Steve and the 
good folks from Idaho for joining us. Virginia is a good part of the 
world, or obviously you wouldn't be here. But you understand that 
there's some really fine folks that live here and work here. I 
appreciate Pat, the site director who gave 
me a tour. He tried to explain all the big machines that were there to a 
history major. [Laughter] I played like I understood. [Laughter] It's a 
really interesting place you work in.
    I appreciate Mike Simpson. He's the 
Congressman from Idaho. This innovative company is headquartered in his 
district, and so he wanted to come by and see this part of Micron's 
operations. I appreciate the mayor. 
Mayor, are you here somewhere?
    Mayor Douglas S. Waldron. Yes, sir.
    The President. Oh, Mayor, good to see 
you. Thank you for serving; appreciate it. Just fill the potholes, 
that's all I can tell you. [Laughter] And I'm sure you are. [Laughter]
    I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to visit with you. 
First thing is for sure: this economy is strong. I hope you feel it. I 
mean, after all, the company

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is investing billions of dollars to make sure that your product is 
competitive in a world economy, and one reason why the company feels 
confident about investing billions of dollars is because the nature of 
this economy is strong, and the statistics bear it out.
    Last quarter, we grew at 3.5 percent growth. Now, in a big economy, 
that is a substantial growth. Last year, we grew by 3.4 percent for the 
year; that's up from 3.1 percent. That's positive news if you're working 
in America. It's positive news if you're looking for a job. In other 
words, it's hard to find good work unless this economy is growing, and 
the economy is strong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an 
alltime high for the 27th time in the past 4 months. In other words, 
people are confident; people feel good about the future.
    Real wages are up. That's positive if you rely upon a wage. It's up 
by 1.7 percent. Real wages is that beyond the cost of living--the 
average family of four making $1,000 more this year than they were last 
year--and that helps a lot.
    Three months ago, we've added--over the last 3 months, we added a 
million jobs. It's all due to the entrepreneurial spirit. See, 
government doesn't create wealth; government creates an environment that 
encourages capital flows and investment. I really believe the most 
important aspect of government is to react to problems and encourage the 
entrepreneurial spirit. I really want it to be said, America is 
entrepreneurial heaven. It's a great place to take risk and to realize 
your dreams, and I believe it is. And the question is, how do we keep it 
that way?
    I want you to remember a little bit of the economic history of the 
recent years. It will help justify why I submitted the budget I 
submitted. You might remember that we were in a recession in 2001. I 
don't know if you were working here then, but that recession was being 
felt all throughout our economy. And then the enemy attacked us, and it 
hurt a lot. You know, a huge attack like that not only shakes the 
psychology of the country, it hurt the economy.
    And so I decided to do something about it and cut taxes--worked with 
Congress to cut taxes. I believe that if you have more money in your 
pocket to save or spend or invest, that is what was required to create a 
condition where people would feel more comfortable about making 
investments. In other words, the entrepreneurial spirit is enhanced when 
you have more money, when consumers have more money to spend or 
businesses have more money to invest.
    And so we cut taxes; we cut taxes on everybody who pays income 
taxes. I believe the best, fairest policy in Washington is not to play 
favorite in the Tax Code, but say: ``If you pay income taxes, you ought 
to get a tax cut.'' And that's what we did.
    We also doubled the child tax credit. We reduced the marriage 
penalty. We cut taxes on dividends and capital gains in 2003. And the 
reason why is, we want to encourage investment. You cannot spend 
billions of dollars inside this plant unless somebody is willing to make 
that investment. And by cutting capital gains taxes and taxes on 
dividends, it encourages capital flow. It makes it easier for Micron to 
attract capital to buy new equipment to expand your business and to 
remain competitive.
    Our economy expanded; so there's a big debate. There's always: Do 
tax cuts work? They work. I understand the politics of cutting taxes. 
Some like it; some don't. I just asked the American people to look at 
the facts. Since we cut taxes a second time in 2003, we've added 7.4 
million new jobs. Tax cuts equaled new jobs. Our economy expanded by 13 
percent since we cut taxes in 2003. In other words, we dealt with the 
recession; we dealt with the attacks; we laid the conditions for 
economic vitality; and the American people took hold and made it work.
    Government didn't grow the economy; the hard-working people of our 
country

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grew the economy. And so coming into this budget session, I felt like 
we're in a good opportunity to balance this budget because of the 
economic vitality. In other words, if you got a weak economy, it's 
really hard to stand up with credibility and say to Congress: ``Join me 
in balancing the budget without raising taxes.'' We got a strong 
economy.
    One of the things that happens when you have a strong economy, when 
you have vitality in the private sector, is it turns out you get more 
tax revenues than you anticipate. See, cutting taxes created the 
incentives for people to save, invest, and consume, which caused the 
economy to grow. And as the economy grows, the pie gets bigger, the tax 
revenues to the Treasury increase. And that's what happened.
    In 2004, I said: ``We can cut the deficit in half in 5 years.'' 
There was a lot of skepticism. Washington occasionally has skepticism. 
[Laughter] They said: ``You can't do that unless you raise taxes.'' 
Well, sure enough, we did do it by not raising taxes. As a matter of 
fact, we did so 3 years ahead of schedule.
    See, low taxes means economic vitality, which means more tax 
revenues. And so the fundamental question is, what do you need to do to 
keep the economy growing, in order to make sure the tax revenues keep 
coming in to the Treasury? Step one is to keep the taxes low. A lot of 
people saying, ``You've got to raise it.'' I don't believe so. I think 
raising taxes hurts the economy. I think raising taxes makes it harder 
to sustain economic growth. I think if we raise taxes, it makes it 
harder for this company to invest billions of dollars in new equipment. 
And if this company decides not to invest billions of dollars in new 
equipment, it makes it harder for your wages to go up; it means somebody 
is not making that equipment, which will have an effect on the economy.
    And so step one for a good budget, step one to balancing the budget, 
is to keep taxes low. As a matter of fact, not only do I think we ought 
not to raise them, I think we ought to make every tax cut we passed 
permanent.
    Now, it also means we're going to have to set priorities with your 
money. See, the temptation in Washington is to spend your money on 
everything that sounds good. That's not how you run your family budget; 
that's not how this company runs its company budget; and that's 
certainly how the Government ought not to run its budget, which means 
you have to do the hard work and set priorities.
    And so the budget I submitted to Congress sets clear priorities. The 
number-one priority, as far as I'm concerned, for the Federal 
Government, is to protect the American people. The number-one priority 
is to spend monies necessary to defeat an enemy that wants to cause us 
harm. One of the lessons of September the 11th is that chaos and safe 
haven overseas could cause an enemy to come and harm us, and I'm never 
going to forget the lesson.
    Secondly, a priority is when we ask an American to wear the uniform, 
volunteers to wear the uniform, to go into harm's way, that person 
deserves the full support of the United States Government. And so the 
priority in this budget is to make sure that those who are on the 
frontlines of protecting you, in a war which I wish wasn't waging, in a 
war that came home to us on September the 11th, is to make sure they 
have the tools necessary to do the job. If Government's job is to 
protect the American people from harm, then we better make sure those 
we've charged with protecting you have what it takes to do so.
    There's something called discretionary spending in the budget. I 
don't want to get to be too much of a budget expert for you, but we've 
got what's called mandatory spending--in other words, it's going to 
happen based upon formula--and discretionary spending, where the 
Government gets to decide on an annual basis how much is spent.

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    And so therefore, if you're trying to balance the budget after 
you've set your priority and funded it, then the Congress has to be wise 
about other aspects of discretionary spending. And so the budget I've 
submitted says that we can meet our obligations but don't have to spend 
up to the rate of inflation. In other words, you have to have some 
fiscal discipline if you want to balance the Federal budget, and that's 
what I'm asking Congress to do.
    One of the things I presume you expect us to do is analyze programs. 
In other words, if they say, ``This is going to do this,'' and the 
results aren't there, I think the American people expect us to eliminate 
those programs or cut the programs back or not fund them, and that's 
exactly what we do. It's a little hard sometimes to say to a person, a 
Member of Congress, ``By the way, the program that you think is a good 
program is not working.'' But we spend a lot of time doing that in 
Washington, DC, and we got a pretty good record about eliminating 
programs that don't work. And we'll continue to work with Congress to 
hold people to account. That's what happens here at Micron. If your 
product line is not meeting expectations, you don't keep funding 
something that's not working. That's what Government ought to do as 
well.
    I want to talk about an interesting topic that tends to dominate 
Washington and one that is necessary to make sure that we spend your 
money wisely and balance the budget, and that's the issue of earmarks. 
I'm sure you've heard about them. Earmarks are special interest items 
that get slipped into spending bills a lot of times at the last minute. 
In other words, they're moving a piece of appropriations out, and then 
somebody shows up and says, ``Well, I need this for my district,'' or 
``I need this for my district.''
    In 2005, we had more than 13,000 earmarks. More than 90 percent of 
the earmarks never make it to the floor of the House or the Senate. 
Isn't that interesting? In other words, they're never voted on. They're 
just dropped into a committee report, and these committee reports are 
not even a part of the bill that arrives on my desk. And here's what 
they look like.
    These things didn't get voted on, and yet they have the force of 
law. And they provide taxpayers' dollars from a lot of things--
researching wool, swimming pools, in here. They didn't vote them into 
law. In other words, Congress didn't vote these things into law, I 
didn't sign them into law, yet they have the force of law.
    And therefore, it's important for Congress to continue--to reform 
the process, and we want to work with them. In other words, as a 
taxpayer, I presume you expect that every single appropriation has been 
looked at and analyzed and debated. In other words, let that sun shine 
in. It's called transparency. And if the Members of Congress think it's 
a good idea, then they ought to vote it up or down and then send it to 
my desk so I know full well that there's been full scrutiny in Congress. 
We can do a better job with your money, and one way to do so is to 
reform the earmark process.
    Another way to do a better job with your money is to give me the 
line-item veto so I can work with Congress. In other words, what happens 
is, is that we have--we debate the size of the pie. In other words, in 
order to balance the budget, we need this much top-line spending. But a 
lot of times, we don't--it makes it different to deal with the slices of 
the pie. And I believe there needs to be a process where the President 
has got the capacity to work with Congress to say, ``Well, maybe this 
slice of the pie doesn't meet a national priority,'' where I'm able to 
red line projects, for example, and send them back to Congress for an 
up-or-down vote.
    In other words, if Congress is genuinely concerned about spending 
your money wisely, and I believe most Members are, then, one, they got 
to do something about earmarks. And secondly, they need to work

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with the executive branch in order to have a tool necessary to let 
spending be given the full light of day. You know most States have line-
item vetoes? I believe it to be a necessary reform for the Federal 
Government to have the same opportunity to work together.
    I want to talk a little bit about entitlement programs. I told you 
there's discretionary spending; there's also mandatory spending, 
nondiscretionary spending. And the biggest programs, of course, are 
Social Security and Medicare. I submitted in my budget some reform for 
Medicare by slowing down the rate of growth from 7.4 percent per year to 
6.7 percent per year, and that saves billions of dollars in doing that.
    In other words, instead of spending--instead of saying these 
mandatory programs will grow at the rate of nearly 7\1/2\ percent, why 
don't we just be reasonable and see if we can slow it down a little bit. 
You'll hear people say, ``Well, he's cutting spending.'' No. That may be 
Washington, DC, definition of ``cut,'' but slowing the rate of spending 
saves you a lot of money.
    Now, mandatory spending requires more than that as far I'm 
concerned. We have a fundamental problem when it comes to, say, a 
program like Social Security. Why? Baby boomers like me are getting 
ready to retire. Like, my retirement date and my Social Security date 
happen to be the same: 2008. It's convenient. [Laughter] Sixty-two years 
old in 2008. And by the way, if you're not 60, it's not as old as it 
sounds. [Laughter] And yet there are fewer people paying into the system 
necessary to support the promises that have been made to me and other 
baby boomers. Our benefits are growing quite dramatically.
    In other words, previous Congresses have said: ``Vote for me; I 
promise you to raise the benefits inherent in Social Security,'' without 
considering the fact that the number of workers paying into the system 
relative to the number of beneficiaries is shrinking. And the 
mathematics isn't going to work. And if we don't do something quite 
rapidly, in my judgment, we're going to saddle a younger generation of 
Americans, a younger generation of workers, with unbelievably difficult 
choices: raising taxes significantly to pay for the promises, slashing 
benefits, or slashing other programs.
    Now is the time for Members of the Congress in both political 
parties to bring their best ideas to the table as to how to solve the 
problems involved with entitlement programs. And yet it's really hard to 
do in Washington--I must confess. There's a lot of politics in the 
Nation's Capital--too much, as far as I'm concerned.
    And one of my jobs, and I believe the jobs of the leadership of the 
Congress, is to say: ``Let us look at this problem in a sober light; let 
us come and address the significant deficiencies inherent in two really 
important programs--Medicare and Social Security--and let us do it for 
the sake of a future generation of workers.'' Every year we wait, the 
problem becomes more acute.
    And so I'm hopeful, generally hopeful, that I can get Democrats and 
Republicans in Congress to come to the table. I'll lay out, like I have 
done over the past years, how I think we all can solve the problem. By 
the way, I've got an idea how to do so without raising your taxes. And I 
expect--would hope other Members would come and say: ``Well, here's how 
we think we can solve it,'' and hopefully, we can find some common 
ground to do our duty.
    See, I like to remind people that the job for those of us in 
Washington is to confront problems now and not pass them on to other 
people, is to do the hard work necessary to say to America, ``Look, we 
know your problems, and we're going to do our best to solve them,'' 
whether it be on the domestic front or on foreign policy.
    I really am upbeat about the future of the country. I feel great 
about it. All you've got to do is come to Micron and feel good about 
life. I didn't see a lot of smiles on people's faces because they had 
those masks on--[laughter]--but I detected a

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bounce in people's step. I detected the fact that I'm here in an 
exciting place for people to work. I appreciated when the plant 
manager and the CEO tells me that there--spends a lot of time educating 
people, adding added value so that people will be able to find those 
jobs that are necessary in the 21st century.
    I'll tell you this, that if government and private sector doesn't 
continue to work together to make sure people have a skill set, the jobs 
will go somewhere else. And therefore, now is the time to educate our 
people. We live in a global economy, and, therefore, lawsuits matter. If 
you get sued all the time in America, it's going to make it harder for 
you to compete with people elsewhere. The amount of taxes you pay 
matters if you're going to be a competitive company and provide good 
jobs for people.
    And the budget I've submitted to the United States Congress reflects 
all this. It says, we can balance the budget without raising your taxes. 
We're just going to have to be smart about how we spend your money. It 
also recognizes that the decisions made in the budget will affect how 
this company does business.
    So you've got two things to pay attention to. One, will Micron 
remain competitive as a result of government policy. And two, will you 
have more money so you get to make the decisions? And my fundamental 
question to the American people is, who do you want making the decisions 
with your money? Do you want to make it yourself, or do you want the 
government making those decisions? The budget I've submitted says we can 
meet our priorities and let you make the decisions with the hard money--
with the money you've earned through your hard work.
    So I'm honored to be here. I appreciate you giving me a chance to 
come and express my views on an important subject. And I ask for God's 
blessings on you all. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:23 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to 
Steven R. Appleton, chairman of the board and chief executive officer 
and president, Patrick T. Otte, site director, and Stephen Silberstein, 
plant manager, Micron Technology, Inc.; and Mayor Douglas S. Waldron of 
Manassas, VA.