Remarks by the Vice President at a Reception for Congressman Jeff Miller and the...

Remarks by the Vice President at a Reception for Congressman Jeff Miller and the National Republican Congressional Committee

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla.--(Business Wire)--
Northwest Florida Fairgrounds

12:45 P.M. CDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Thank you all very much.
(Applause.) Thank you -- and don't hold back. (Laughter.) Jeff, I
appreciate the kind introduction, and the invitation to come join all
of you today. I'd like to acknowledge Colonel Day and the local
officials that are here with us today -- and thank all of them for
coming as well. It's always a pleasure to visit Northwest Florida, and
to bring Air Force Two into Eglin Air Force Base -- truly one of
America's great military installations. (Applause.) I started the day
at the White House, and I want to bring personal greetings to all of
you from the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
(Applause.)

I'm sorry my wife, Lynne, couldn't be with us today. She had
something she had to do; she had a speech last night in New York, so
I'll meet her when I get back to Washington. She, lots of times, comes
down on these trips with me, and we still enjoy campaigning together
after all these years. But I tell people -- I like to tell people that
we have a Republican marriage; that in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower
ran for Congress, I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska with my folks.
Anybody here from Lincoln? (Laughter.) You're making it up.
(Laughter.)

And we -- Dad worked for the Solar Conservation Service,
Department of Agriculture. And after Eisenhower got elected, he
reorganized the Agriculture Department, Dad got transferred to Casper,
Wyoming, and that's where I met Lynne. We grew up together, went to
high school together, and in August we'll celebrate our 44th wedding
anniversary.

And we explained to a group of people the other night that if it
hadn't been for that victory by Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, I would
never have moved to Wyoming, and Lynne would have married somebody
else. (Laughter.) And she said, right, and now he'd be Vice President
of the United States -- (laughter and applause) -- no doubt in my
mind.

But the President and I are deeply grateful for the support we've
received here in Florida in both our campaigns, obviously, and
throughout these past seven years, as well, too. We did especially
well, of course, right here in the Central Time Zone. (Applause.) But
as close as it was in 2000, we came back four years later and received
more votes in Florida than any other presidential ticket in American
history. (Applause.) But we're proud to hold the record, but we won't
mind it at all if you set a new record in November, when you help
elect John McCain to be the next President of the United States.
(Applause.)

President Bush and I look forward to helping our candidates up and
down the ticket, even though we're not going to be on the ballot
ourselves, because we think it's an extraordinarily important election
year this year. And that's why we're here today. This part of the
country is served by one of the finest members of the House, and we
need to make absolutely certain that Jeff Miller continues on the job
in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)

You know Jeff well here in the First District. You've sent him to
Washington four times, and he's repaid your confidence and trust every
single day he's been there. He's a common-sense conservative, a good
steward of the taxpayer dollar, a hard worker for the people of the
region he represents. And Northwest Florida, of course, is military
country, and Jeff is your voice on the Armed Services Committee and on
the Committee on Veterans' Affairs -- (applause) -- where he's on the
Committee on Veterans' Affairs and serves as the ranking member on the
Subcommittee on Health. I can't think of a stronger advocate for
veterans, or a more reliable supporter of our military in these
challenging times. Your Congressman is the kind of man who belongs in
the House of Representatives. And come November, I know you'll give
Jeff another term on Capitol Hill. (Applause.)

I served in the House of Representatives myself for 10 years, and
I was the Congressman from Wyoming -- and Wyoming only had one
congressman. (Laughter.) It was a small delegation, but it was
quality. (Laughter and applause.) But I like to explain the importance
of these races, each and every one of these seats across the country,
and obviously the work that Jeff is also doing here today for the
NRCC, by reminding everybody about the tax package that we passed in
2003.

You may remember when the President and I got elected to office,
we were on the front edge of a recession, and then we had 9/11 and
that put a real crimp in the economy; we lost a million jobs in the
aftermath of that attack in September of '01. What turned everything
around economically was when we passed the tax package in the Spring
of '03 when we took the rate on capital gains, rate on dividends, the
15 percent, accelerated the other rate reductions in all the brackets
across the board. That tax package passed the Senate by one vote -- my
vote. I got to cast the tie-breaking vote that day as Vice President,
and that's what made it possible. But the reason it was so important
is because you can trace the beginnings of recovery from when that tax
package kicked in. And if we'd had one fewer senator, one less member
of the United States Senate, that day, we wouldn't have had the tax
package.

I don't deserve any special credit for casting that vote. It's not
like I had options when I went up there. (Laughter.) I knew what I was
supposed to do. (Laughter.) The President made it very clear how I was
supposed to vote. But the fact is that if we had one less member of
the Senate on that day -- and we've had other very close votes in the
House of Representatives -- we wouldn't have had that tax cut. And we
wouldn't have had that economic recovery that's gone on now for 52
months -- obviously we're in a bit of rough patch now -- but the
longest period of job creation in the history of our economy, because
of that package that we were able to pass in '03. And so every single
one of these races across the country can have that kind of impact, in
terms of the course of action and the policies we've put in place, in
the years ahead.

I think you can always count on Jeff, obviously, to do the right
things for his constituents, and for the country. Right now, with the
economy going through a rough patch, some in Washington view it as an
excuse for expanding the size of government and the scope of the
federal government. And Jeff believes, as I do, that when Americans
are facing tough times, the first thing we should do is let them keep
more of their own money. (Applause.)

So with Jeff's help we moved promptly, on a bipartisan basis, to
pass an effective stimulus package. It's not a new spending program or
set of regulations, it's just tax relief -- and the checks will be
mailed out within the next couple of weeks. (Applause.)

The stimulus will give the economy a boost. But looking down the
road, there's still more important work to do on the subject of taxes.
Without action by Congress, most of the tax relief we've delivered
over the past seven years will be taken away. If that happens, the
death tax, which is being phased out right now, would suddenly
reappear, at rates up to 55 percent. Taxes would go up on capital
gains and dividends. The tax rate for every single income tax bracket
would be increased. For income taxpayers in the lowest bracket, the
rate would increase by 50 percent. And the child tax credit would drop
from $1,000 to $500 per child. The overall effect would be average
increases of $1,800 a year in the tax bills of some 116 million
Americans.

Aside from the huge risk this tax increase would pose to the
economy, there's the larger question of fundamental fairness to the
American taxpayer. When you hear politicians saying they want to get
rid of the Bush tax cuts, what they're promising is a major tax hike
for everybody, including working families. And they wouldn't have to
move a muscle to do it, because under the law the tax cuts -- those
rates we put in place in '03 -- will simply expire. So without passing
legislation, those rates will kick back in, the old high rates, and
automatically there will be a tax increase across the board. We need
to make sure we elect a Republican Congress to make those tax cuts
permanent. We need legislation to be able to do that, and we need a
Republican President to sign them into law.

Jeff was elected to Congress just five weeks after our country was
attacked on 9/11. His entire career in Washington has been defined by
the unique challenges that we face in the war on terror -- and he's
never forgotten that our number one responsibility is to protect the
people of this nation. In these six and a half years, we have not had
another 9/11. (Applause.) Nobody can guarantee we won't be hit again.
But the danger remains very real -- and we know the terrorists are
still determined to hit us again. I look every day at the intelligence
briefs coming in. They are fanatical in their hatred, they have tried
many times to cause more violence and grief in this country. So the
absence of another 9/11 is not an accident. It's an achievement. And
that achievement is the product of some hard work by Americans in
intelligence, and law enforcement, and the military, and vital new
laws that we put on the books with the help of men like Jeff, and some
wise decisions by the President of the United States.

One great lesson of 9/11 was that we had to stop treating
terrorist attacks merely as law enforcement problems -- where you find
out what happened, arrest the bad guys, put them in jail, and move on.
The world changed when a coordinated attack ended the lives of 3,000
innocent people at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and the
field in Pennsylvania on that day. As President Bush has made clear
many times, we are dealing with a strategic threat to the United
States, and it must be treated as such. And we must act systematically
and decisively, and the only way to win is to destroy the enemy.

To wage this fight we have to marshal our resources to go after
the terrorists, to shut down their training camps, to take down their
networks, to deny them sanctuary, disrupt their sources of funding,
and bring them to justice. We decided, as well, to go after the
sponsors of terror, and to confront those who might provide these
killers with more deadly capabilities. And because some of the early
battlefields of the war have been right here in the United States,
we've taken vital actions to defend the homeland against future
attacks.

One of the ways we've prevented attacks and saved lives is by
monitoring terrorist-related communications. Last year Congress passed
major revisions to the foreign intelligence surveillance law, the
FISA, but those revisions have now expired. And so we've lost an
important means for protecting the American people. For Congress to
let that happen was simply irresponsible, and it makes the nation more
vulnerable to attack. Jeff is on the right side of this issue. The
whole Congress needs to follow his lead and give our intelligence
professionals the tools they need to protect the American people.

As we proceed on many fronts, we also recognize the war on terror
is more than a contest of arms and more than a test of will. It's also
a battle of ideas. To prevail in the long run, we have to remove the
conditions that inspire the hatred that drove those 19 men to climb on
airplanes with box cutters, and come kill us on 9/11. So President
Bush made the decision that we wouldn't just remove the Taliban and
Saddam Hussein from power, and let other dictators rise in their
place. Instead, we would stand with the Iraqi and the Afghan people --
as America did with other young democracies in earlier times -- to
help them chart their own destiny. If we keep our commitments, the
free and democratic nations of Afghanistan and Iraq will be strategic
partners for the United States, helping us to win the war on terror.

The enterprise has not been easy, nor has it been cheap. It has
not been predictable in its course. And some who professed enthusiasm
for sending troops into Iraq have, over time, lost the desire to
support those troops on to victory. But the fact remains that our
soldiers and diplomats are serving fundamental American ideals. They
are doing good things for the right reasons. (Applause.) We admire
them, and we respect their families, and we also make many -- who also
-- families also make many sacrifices during those long and difficult
deployments. We can never thank them enough. (Applause.)

It's been more than a year now since President -- the President
sent General Dave Petraeus out on the new counterinsurgency strategy,
backed up by a surge in American forces, to secure Iraq and to set the
conditions for political reconciliation. The General has done a superb
job in Iraq, and we look forward to his prompt confirmation by the
Senate as the new commander of CENTCOM. And we can be confident that
President Bush's choice to lead our troops in Iraq, General Ray
Odierno, will also do an excellent job as he returns to the theater.
These are superb Army officers who have made tremendous contributions
to this nation, especially over the last year. There is still tough
and dangerous work ahead, and there will be more sacrifices called for
in the cause of freedom. But events in Iraq have taken a new turn. The
surge is succeeding, it is working, and the forces of freedom are
winning. (Applause.)

Our new strategy has succeeded by careful planning, and by close
attention to changing conditions on the battlefield. The same will be
true of any drawdown of troops in the future. On behalf of the
President, I can assure you that the decision will be based on what is
right for our security and best for the troops -- without regard to
polls, elite opinion, or flip-flops by politicians in Washington, D.C.
(Applause.)

Our mission in Iraq is still being debated very intensely on
Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail. And there's nothing wrong with
a vigorous discussion about an issue that's so important to the future
of the country. But from those who demand a hasty exit from Iraq --
whether by a sudden, precipitous withdrawal, or by an arbitrary time
line, or by a date randomly chosen on the calendar -- we've heard very
little concern about what might come afterwards. Those who insist that
we leave Iraq should at least give some thought to what would be left
behind. And thinking the matter through, I hope they'll remember the
case of Afghanistan over the past generation.

Back in the 1980s, we were heavily engaged in Afghanistan, lending
support to the Mujahadeen against the Soviet Union. It was a
successful policy -- but afterwards everybody walked away and forgot
about Afghanistan. What followed was a civil war, and then the
emergence of the Taliban. And then in 1996, Osama bin Laden was
invited to Afghanistan, made his way into the country, set up training
camps, and trained thousands of terrorists -- some of whom came here
on 9/11 and killed 3,000 Americans.

Those who now say we can afford to turn our backs on Iraq are
inviting the same kind of outcome that we saw in Afghanistan: a period
of chaos and recrimination, a violent power struggle won by a brutal
minority, a safe haven for killers. The difference is that now we're
in the midst of a global war on terror -- so failure in Iraq would
have even more serious and far-reaching consequences.

Failure in Iraq would tell America's friends that we cannot be
counted on -- even when people put their lives on the line for freedom
because of our promises to help. Failure in Iraq would embolden al
Qaeda and other like-minded groups by handing them a staging area for
further attacks, with America as the target. And it would validate the
enemy's long-held belief that America does not have the stomach for a
fight -- that if they hit us hard enough, or hold out long enough,
that we'll change our policies. Friends would hear that message, and
so would potential adversaries. The regime in Tehran, for one, would
conclude that we don't have the will to follow through on a matter of
principle -- whether the principle is the defense of democracy today,
or the prevention of nuclear proliferation tomorrow.

And just as failure would have consequences, so would success. A
free, democratic Iraq will be a strategic partner in the heart of the
Middle East, helping us fight and win the war on terror. And that
outcome will send a message to moderates throughout the region. From
Syria to Lebanon to Iran, advocates for democracy and human rights
will take heart, and will be reassured that the free world is not
indifferent to their future. As hopes rise in the Middle East, a vital
and troubled region can move in the direction of peace and stability.
The day will come when terrorists and terror-sponsoring states no
longer pose a danger to the United States or to our friends.
(Applause.)

Our strategy is the right strategy. In fact, the only way we can
lose this fight is if we quit -- and that's not going to happen on our
watch. (Applause.) If there is one indispensable element in this
battle, it's the skill and the character of the men and women fighting
it. Last month I spoke to several thousand of our troops at Balad Air
Base, north of Baghdad. And I remember the strong response they gave
on one point in particular -- when I said we're going to get this job
done right, so that another generation of Americans doesn't have to go
back to Iraq and do it again. (Applause.)

John F. Kennedy once said, "There is no way to maintain the
frontiers of freedom without cost and commitment and risk." We are
learning this lesson once again, in these decisive early years of a
new century. And when the history is written, it'll be said that we
lived in a safer country, and a more hopeful world, because George
Bush was President of these United States. (Applause.)

Today, ladies and gentlemen, with much yet to do at home and
abroad, the President and I remain grateful for the opportunity you've
given us to serve this nation. We're grateful to all of you, and to
people across Northwest Florida, for the outstanding support you've
given to us, and to Congressman Jeff Miller. In the months ahead, with
an economy to strengthen and a war to fight, we'll stay focused on the
business at hand, and we'll come to a strong finish. With your help,
we'll leave our jobs in good hands. And we're confident that in the
First District in Florida, you'll have the fine representation of
Congressman Jeff Miller far into the future.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END 1:06 P.M. CDT

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