[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 13 (Monday, April 1, 2002)]
[Pages 521-525]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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.

[[Page 522]]

    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 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 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

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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 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

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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 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, cold-blooded 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.

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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 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.