[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 44 (Monday, November 4, 2002)]
[Pages 1911-1917]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

November 1, 2002

    Thank you, all. Thanks a lot. I'm glad I came. [Laughter] Thank you. 
Thank you for such a warm welcome. Thanks for getting up early, too.
    The American spirit is obviously alive and well here in 
Pennsylvania. It's alive in our country, all across our country. It's a 
spirit that says we love freedom. It's a spirit that

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says that we're willing to serve something greater than ourself in life. 
It's a spirit that says, when you live in America, you have a 
responsibility, and one of the main responsibilities is to participate 
in the political process. You have an obligation in democracy to vote.
    So I'm here to urge the good folks of Pennsylvania to do your duty. 
It doesn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat or could care 
less about political parties. You have an obligation as part of the 
citizenry of America to go to the polls and vote. And when you do, I've 
got a suggestion for you for Congress: George W. Gekas.
    How about putting it this way: Let's win one for George W. 
[Laughter] I'm talking about both George W's on the stage.
    Both George W's married well, by the way. [Laughter] I appreciate 
Vangie Gekas for coming today. I'm proud that she's working hard to see 
to it that the Congressman George W. goes back to the United States 
Congress. And Laura W. sends her best to George W. and Vangie--Laura W. 
being the great First Lady of America.
    I'm proud that your Governor is here with us today. Mark Schweiker 
has done a fine job on behalf of the citizens of Pennsylvania. As you 
may remember, he went from being the Lieutenant Governor to Governor 
when I asked somebody you trained really well to join me in Washington, 
DC, and that's of course, your former Governor, and now my close 
adviser, my friend, a man who's doing a great job for the American 
people, Tom Ridge.
    Ridge came in a long line of fine Republican Governors, and you have 
a chance to make sure that lineage is continued. You have a chance this 
Tuesday to make sure you put the right man in the Governor's office. 
And, of course, that man is your current State attorney general, Mike 
Fisher.
    He'll do a fine job on behalf of all the citizens of Pennsylvania. 
He'll represent not just one section of the State but the entire State. 
He's got a good record. He's got a good record in office, and he's got a 
good record on the trail. I learned firsthand. After all, in the year 
2000, he ran ahead of me by about half a million votes is all. 
[Laughter] This man can appeal to people from all walks of life. And so 
can the next Lieutenant Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, State 
Senator Jane Earll.
    I want to thank Senator Arlen Specter for being here. I want to 
thank him for his service to Pennsylvania. I want to thank him for 
working with me on a lot of big issues--no bigger issue than to make 
sure the Federal judiciary is staffed and full of fine, fine people. The 
record of this Senate is a lousy record when it comes to the approval of 
judges that I name. We have a vacancy problem in America. We can't get 
our judges through the United States Senate because there's too much 
politics in Washington, DC.
    The current Senate distorts the record of good people I put up. I'm 
going to continue to name judges that are honorable and decent and 
honest, judges who recognize their job is to interpret the Constitution, 
not to try to write new law. And I want to thank Senator Specter for 
being one of the leaders in the Senate to work with the administration 
to make sure our good judges get approved on a timely basis. One way to 
make sure our judges get approved on a timely basis is to change the 
leadership in the United States Senate.
    You've got some fine United States Congressmen from Pennsylvania in 
Washington, all of whom I call friends and all of whom I work closely 
with on behalf of the American people. And I want to thank them for 
joining us today: Jim Greenwood, Bill Shuster, Don Sherwood, and Todd 
Platts. I appreciate they're here to support their friend. They know 
both candidates in this race, and there's no question in their mind--
like there's no question in my mind--that the right man for this 
congressional district and the right man for America is George W. Gekas.
    Not only am I here to urge you to vote, I'm here to urge you to get 
out the vote. See, there's a lot of grassroots activists here who have 
made a tremendous difference in campaigns past, and I want to thank you 
for what you have done. But I'm here to thank you for what you're going 
to do today and Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. And that is 
to turn out the vote, to get your friends to vote, to go to your houses

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of worship, your community centers, the coffee shops and tell people 
they have an obligation to vote, and they have the obligation to support 
somebody who's honest and decent, somebody who's represented this 
district since 1982, somebody who stands squarely with the President on 
key issues, and that somebody is George W. Gekas.
    I also want to thank the Middletown High band for coming today. It 
looks like I provided you a convenient excuse to miss class. [Laughter] 
I'll try to keep my remarks short so you can get back to the library. 
[Laughter]
    George and I believe in the value of hard work and personal 
responsibility. We believe in--service to our community is incredibly 
important. We share a passion for education. I want to thank George and 
the other Members of Congress up here for working hard on the education 
reform package we passed out of Washington, DC.
    First, this bill says that we're going to challenge the soft bigotry 
of low expectations, because we believe every child can learn. And we 
must set high, high standards for every child in America.
    The bill says that we trust the people of Pennsylvania to chart the 
path to excellence in the public schools of Pennsylvania. People care 
more about the children who live in Pennsylvania than the bureaucrats in 
Washington, DC. So we strongly believe in local control of schools.
    Thanks to George's hard work, we're passing back $1.7 billion of 
Federal money to Pennsylvania schools to help every child learn. But for 
the first time, we're now asking for accountability for those dollars. 
We want to know whether or not our children are learning to read and 
write and add and subtract. I see some of the seniors here, glazing 
over, saying, ``Oh, no. I hate tests.'' Well, too bad. [Laughter] We 
want to know whether or not the dollars are well spent. In order to make 
sure no child gets left behind in Pennsylvania, we must have strong 
accountability measures.
    I appreciate so very much the fact that George shares with me our 
concern about our economy. Today, it looks like some more Americans are 
looking for work, and that's a problem. Anytime somebody is looking for 
work and can't find work means we've got a problem in America. We want 
our people to be able to put food on the table, to support their 
families.
    The foundation for growth is strong. Interest rates are down. 
Inflation is low. Productivity is up. We've got the best workers in the 
world. We've got the best entrepreneurs in the world. We've got the best 
farmers and ranchers in the world. But we've got a problem when people 
can't find a job. We're kind of bumping along, and that's not good 
enough.
    I need people in Congress who understand the role of Government. And 
that's to create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish, 
in which the small business can grow to be a big business, in which the 
engine for job growth, which is our small businesses, have a chance to 
survive and thrive in slow economic times. The best way to do so is to 
let people keep more of your own money.
    George and I know that if somebody has more money in their own 
pocket, they're likely to demand a good or a service. And when they 
demand a good or a service in our marketplace, somebody is likely to 
produce the good or a service. And somebody produces a good or service, 
it means somebody is more likely to find work.
    Be wary of those who say, ``We must revisit the tax relief plan.'' 
That's Washington code word for, ``We're fixing to get back in your 
pockets.'' [Laughter] During slow economic times, during times when 
we're worried about somebody finding work, the best economic stimulus is 
to let people keep more of their own money on a permanent basis.
    And George understands that. He also knows we need to get a 
terrorism insurance package out of Washington, DC, so the hardhats can 
go back to work. We've got too many construction programs on hold 
because they can't find insurance, because of what the terrorists did to 
us. It's a proper role for the Federal Government to underwrite the 
terrorism insurance. But this bill needs to keep the hardhats in mind. 
We need to make sure our hardhats get back to work and not reward the 
trial lawyers all around America.
    No, we've been through some tough times here in America. We had a 
recession for a while. And then the enemy hit us, and that

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hurt our economy. Then something else came up. There was a lack of 
confidence in the system, because there were some of our fellow 
Americans who decided they were going to fudge the numbers. And we're 
going to have the--reveal the whole truth in the corporate accounting 
practices. They didn't understand that when you're running a 
corporation, you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to 
shareholders. You have a responsibility to employees.
    I want to thank George Gekas and Arlen and the other Members of 
Congress for joining me to pass a law which I proudly signed, which is 
the toughest corporate reform since Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 
President. Our message to those who believe they can fudge the books is: 
There is no easy money in America, only hard time if you don't do your 
responsibilities.
    You need to send George back to Congress. We've got a lot of work to 
do on behalf of the people of Pennsylvania. We've got to make sure our 
health care system works. We want our health care system to be 
accessible and affordable. One of the problems we have is, there's too 
many lawsuits these days, lawsuits which make it hard for people to take 
their true cases into courts, because the courts are clogged, lawsuits 
which are running up the cost of medicine, lawsuits which are driving 
docs out of business. If you're interested in accessible and affordable 
health care, you will join Representative Greenwood, Gekas, and me in 
demanding that Congress pass medical liability reform on behalf of 
America's patients.
    And you'll send somebody to Congress who understands we need to 
reform Medicare. Medicine has changed. Medicine is modern, and Medicare 
is stuck in the past. Medicare is old and tired, and it's not doing its 
job. A modern Medicare system will include prescription drugs for our 
seniors, and George Gekas understands that.
    No, there's a lot of issues we can work on. There's no more 
important issue, though, is to protect you. That's the most important 
issue, protect America, protect innocent life from the attacks of the 
killers. And they're nothing but a bunch of coldblooded killers. That's 
all they are. They hate freedom. They don't value life like we value 
life in America. You see, we think everybody is precious; everybody 
counts; everybody has got worth.
    That's not what the killers think. See, they hijacked a great 
religion and murder in the name of that religion. And so we've got to do 
everything we can to protect the homeland. We've got a man like George 
Gekas, who's the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and 
Border Control and Claims. Seems like to me it makes sense if your 
country is under attack to keep him in that important position. After 
all, one of his jobs is to make sure our border is secure, that we know 
who's coming in and who's going out and what they're bringing and 
whether or not what they're bringing could hurt the American people.
    No, this issue on homeland defense is incredibly important if you're 
a clear-eyed realist. And I'm a clear-eyed realist. I'm not forgetting 
the threats that we face. And therefore, I went to the Congress and 
said, ``Let's work together to come up with a plan to better secure our 
homeland.'' There's a lot of good people working hard right now, a lot 
of people at the Federal level, the State level, and local level, a lot 
of good police officers and FBI agents, a lot of people running down 
every hint, every lead.
    Listen, if we think we've got something going on, we're going to do 
something about it. We're on alert. We understand the enemy. We 
understand their hatreds. We know they hate freedom. We know we love 
freedom, and we know we're not going to change in our love for freedom.
    I want to thank the Members of the House here who joined me in 
supporting a Department of Homeland Security which will work, which will 
make sense and works, so we can do our jobs, so we can enforce our 
borders, like George Gekas wants us to do.
    It got stuck in the Senate. Arlen Specter didn't cause it to get 
stuck, I want you to know. It got stuck because some Senators want me to 
give up a power that every President since John F. Kennedy has had. See, 
every President since Kennedy has had the capacity to suspend collective 
bargaining rules in the name of national security, to suspend rules that 
will inhibit us from doing our job, prevent us from putting the right 
people

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at the right place at the right time to protect the American people.
    I'm not going to accept a lousy bill out of the United States 
Senate. I owe it to the people of this country to put in place a 
Department of Homeland Security which will work and which will prevent 
the enemy from doing harm to the American people. I want to thank George 
Gekas for his support on putting forth a good homeland security bill.
    But the best way to secure our homeland, the best way to make sure 
you're safe, the best way to make sure one of the first high school 
graduating classes ever to have the battleground here at home--to make 
sure that battleground is safe is to hunt these killers down, one person 
at a time, and bring them to justice. That's what we have to do. See, 
therapy isn't going to work. [Laughter] That's not going to convince 
them. The only way to convince them is to keep that large coalition of 
freedom country--freedom-loving countries intact. And by the way, the 
doctrine still stands: Either you're with us, or you're with the enemy.
    And we'll continue to lead these coalitions--this coalition and 
round them up one at a time. See, it's a different kind of war. It's a 
different kind of war we face. In the old days, you could destroy tanks 
or airplanes or boats and know you're making progress. These are the 
kind of people who hide in caves and send youngsters to their suicidal 
deaths. They don't care.
    Look at Bali, Indonesia. See, the world kind of said, ``Well, maybe 
they're not that dangerous.'' And all of a sudden they go to Bali, 
Indonesia, and just over--in a minute's time take innocent life after 
innocent life after innocent life. They don't care, and so we've got to 
get them. And that's exactly what we're doing.
    The other day one old guy popped his head up. He was going to be the 
20th hijacker here in America. Thanks to our friends and allies and 
thanks to a great United States military, this guy is no longer a 
problem for America. And that's the way it is going. We've hauled in 
over a couple of thousand of them; like number weren't as lucky. In 
either case, they're not a problem to the United States or our friends 
or allies. Slowly but surely, we're going hunt them down. It doesn't 
matter how long it takes.
    And that's why I went to the United States Congress--George Gekas 
supported me; the Members of the Congress up here supported me--to ask 
for the largest increase in defense spending since Ronald Reagan was the 
President. There's two messages in that bill. One, anytime this country 
puts our troops into harm's way, they deserve the best pay, the best 
training, and the best possible equipment.
    And secondly, it doesn't matter how long it takes to win this war on 
terror and to secure our freedom; we're staying the course. There's not 
a calendar on my desk that says, by such-and-such a time, Mr. President, 
you've got to haul it in. That's just not the way I think. Our friends 
need to understand that we're in this for the long haul. Our foes must 
understand we're in this for the long haul. We owe it to our future; we 
owe it to our children to defend freedom no matter what the cost. And 
that's exactly what we're going to do.
    We also owe it to our future and our children to see the world the 
way it really is, not the way some would hope it to be. You see, the 
world changed on September the 11th, 2001. Not only is the battlefield 
come home, but two oceans no longer protect us from true threats. It 
used to be you could sit back, kind of relax, and say, ``Well, there's a 
problem overseas, and we can decide to deal with it or be involved with 
it if we want to, but we're okay at home because the oceans protect 
us.''
    I want the youngsters here to understand that change is a profound 
change, and U.S. policy needs to change with it if we're realistic and 
clear-eyed. And that's why I've raised the issue on Iraq. That's why I 
asked the United States Congress to think about this issue. That's why 
I've asked the American people to think about this issue. That's why I 
went to the U.N. to talk about this issue: Because in my judgment and 
the judgment of a lot of people, Saddam Hussein is a serious threat to 
America; he's a threat to our friends; he's a threat to our allies.
    This is a man who has told the world for 11 years he would not have 
weapons of mass destruction. This is a man who is close to

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having a nuclear weapon. This is a man who has deceived the world. This 
is a man who not only has weapons of mass destruction; he has used 
weapons of mass destruction. He has used them on his neighbors, and 
incredibly enough, he has used weapons of mass destruction on his own 
citizens. This is a dangerous man who cannot stand America because of 
what we love.
    And so I went to the United Nations to remind this august body that 
they have a responsibility to help us keep the peace. I reminded them, 
for 11 years and 16 resolutions later, Saddam Hussein has defied every 
decree and every resolution. I went because I want the United Nations to 
be successful, to help us keep the peace. The more people involved with 
peace, the more likely it is we'll achieve peace. I went because I want 
the United Nations to be a strong body, not the League of Nations. I 
went to remind them that if their word is not kept, they will become 
nothing but a debating society, unable to keep the peace.
    And so my message and the message of our United States Congress, 
including George Gekas, that spoke with one voice to the world is this: 
The United States will fulfill its obligations to peace; Saddam Hussein 
will disarm; if not, for the sake of peace, for the sake of securing the 
homeland, for the sake of protecting our friends and allies, the United 
States will lead a mighty coalition of freedom-loving nations and disarm 
Saddam Hussein.
    See, I can't imagine what was going through the mind of this enemy 
when they hit us. They probably thought the national religion was 
materialism, that we were so selfish and so self-absorbed that after 9/
11/2001 this mighty nation would take a couple of steps back and file a 
lawsuit. [Laughter] They don't understand America. They don't understand 
the spirit of America.
    They don't understand that when it comes to the defense of our 
freedoms, it doesn't matter how long it takes; it doesn't matter the 
cost. We will fulfill our obligations. This generation of Americans will 
do our duty to future generations of Americans by making the world a 
more peaceful place.
    Out of the evil done to America is going to come some great good. If 
we stay the course, if we remain plenty tough when we need to be tough, 
if we remember we go into countries never to conquer but only to 
liberate, like we did in Afghanistan--and you've got to remember, many 
young girls go to school for the first time in their lives thanks to the 
United States of America--as we keep in mind the values that are so 
important, that freedom is not an American gift; freedom is God-given 
for everybody in the world--no, if we keep those principles close and 
steadfast in our purpose, we can achieve peace. I believe it.
    And not only can we achieve peace around the world; we can achieve a 
better America here at home. Government can help. I talked about laws 
that we can pass, Medicare reform and education. But you've got to 
remember there are pockets of hopelessness and despair in this country. 
There are people who hurt. They hurt on a daily basis. Many of their 
problems can only be helped when a fellow American puts their arm around 
them and says, ``I love you. What can I do to help? How can I make your 
day a better day?''
    So my call to America, if you want to join in the fight against 
evil, is to do some good, is to love your neighbor just like you'd like 
to be loved yourself. We've got to remember that Government can help, 
and Government can hand out money, but it can't put love in people's 
hearts. It can't put a sense of purpose in people's lives. That's done 
when neighbor loves neighbor and neighbor helps neighbor. My call to the 
high school students here is, help somebody in need. You see, the 
American spirit is more than just being a patriot. It's more than just 
being strong when it comes to the defense of our country. The American 
spirit means serving something greater than yourself in life, is helping 
people in need, is working to save America one heart, one soul, one 
conscience at a time.
    I met Nancy Fierer today. See, all of us can do something and be 
part of this great fabric and mosaic of compassion. Nancy Fierer came 
out to the airport today. She started the Susquehanna Service Dogs 
Program that provides service dogs and hearing dogs to children and 
adults who have physical disabilities. See, she decided upon herself to 
make a difference. It's the Nancy Fierers,

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and I'm confident many of you here, who are changing America for the 
better.
    I want you to remember the story of Flight 93. I particularly want 
the youngsters to remember that story. It's the most profound story of 
recent history about people who served something greater than 
themselves, who captured that American experience--American spirit that 
I'm defining for you today.
    These guys were flying across the airplane, guys and girls flying 
across the airplane--the country in an airplane. They heard the plane 
was going to be used as a weapon. Imagine. They were told on their cell 
phones by their loved ones. They made their determination that they must 
do something about it. They said goodbye, said, ``I love you.'' They 
said a prayer. One guy said, ``Let's roll.'' And they took the airplane 
into the ground to serve something greater than themselves. They 
embodied the greatness of the American spirit, people willing to serve 
something greater than themselves so that lives would be better.
    There's no question in my mind, and I will boldly predict that out 
of the evil done to America will come incredible good, because this is 
the finest nation, full of the most decent, compassionate people on the 
face of the Earth.
    Thank you for coming today. May God bless you, and may God bless 
America.

Note: The President spoke at 9:21 a.m. at Harrisburg International 
Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Evangeline ``Vangie'' Gekas, 
wife of Representative George W. Gekas; Gov. Mark Schweiker of 
Pennsylvania; gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher of Pennsylvania; Ramzi 
bin al-Shibh, an Al Qaida operative suspected of helping to plan the 
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, who was captured in Karachi, 
Pakistan; and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.