Remarks in Macon, Georgia

I'm — those are two four-letter words, you can teach your kids, Dole -Kemp, Dole-Kemp.

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You know, I was over there thinking, if I had a dollar for every time Clinton leveled with the American people, I would keep one and give one to Elizabeth.

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But I want to welcome you all to this retirement party for Bill Clinton this morning. Glad you're here.

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I want to thank Saxby Chambliss. It's an honor to be in his district. I was here when he first ran. He's done an outstanding job as a new member of Congress and will continue working for all of you, all of you, regardless of party; good, conservative member of Congress. That's what we need. We need more of them; get rid of some of the liberals and send us some more conservatives. That's the American way.

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And Tillie Fowler — It was Tillie Kidd when she was in Georgia. Her father was in the legislature. She is so popular, nobody even ran against her in the general election. And somewhere out there her sister is roaming around. Her sister's out there somewhere. In any event, we'll find her later.

Paul Coverdell is my good friend. He's done an outstanding job, will be the senior citi — not citizen...

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... senator, part of our leadership, blazing the way. And, of course, his election — I said this from the start — his special election sort of set the stage for the 1994 revolution when Republicans took over Congress, conservatives took over Congress. And it all started right here in Georgia.

So, let me say, it's only two weeks now till election day. The clock is ticking. Many Americans are just beginning to focus on this election. Their part is still 30 percent of the voters undecided in America. And we're finding that more and more of the undecided are coming our way.

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And when I see the future behind me here, the young children, their mothers — maybe their grandmothers are around too — when I think of the future, there's no doubt in my mind that what America needs is strong, decisive, honest leadership in the White House.

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And I believe the current administration is out of touch with the problems in America. And I believe the federal government is too big and spends too much of your money — it is your money; it's your money.

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In many families today, one parent works full time for the family.

DOLE: And the other works full time just to pay the taxes because the taxes now are the highest in history, nearly 40 percent of what you make, more than food, clothing and shelter combined costs your family, you pay in taxes.

We want to turn that around. We want a tax cut. We haven't had a federal tax cut for ten years. We can do it. President Clinton says he can't do it. We know he can't do it. That's why we want another president. Somebody that'll cut your taxes.

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I mean the president says he — we have these little debates, he doesn't want to have anymore. We have these little debates. He said well, I've created 11 million new jobs. And I said yes, I met a guy the other day that's got three of them. You know.

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The husband works. The wife has to work. If they want to work, that's fine. This is America. But, they shouldn't have to work just to pay the taxes.

Shouldn't have to have three jobs. One eight-hour job, one at night and one on weekends just to pay your bills and just to pay the taxes, Mr. President.

That is not a good economy. That's not good for the family. That's not good for anybody. So, why not have a little tax cut, 15 percent across the board.

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Kappa Sigs are going to get more, of course. I found a fraternity brother out there. All right. You get 25 percent. Yes.

Then we're going to have a $500 credit for every child. I see one here. Somebody holding a child. Bring those three babies up here. Yes. Right up here. Yes. These are young conservatives right here.

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There's $2,000 in credits right there. Five hundred dollars a piece. One child, $500. Two childs a $1,000. Ten you're probably too busy to worry about taxes. Five thousand dollars. Think of it.

This is a working family's tax cut. It's not a Wall Street, it's not for the rich. Even President Clinton has not said this is a tax cut for the rich. He just says the government can't afford it.

Well, did he come down and ask you if you could afford the tax increase in 1993?

AUDIENCE: No!

DOLE: He said he was going to tax the rich. Who did he tax?

AUDIENCE: You!

DOLE: Yes. Everybody out here, if you're a small business man or small business woman, you paid 70 percent of the increase. If you're a senior citizen, I don't see any here today, but if you know of one. Oh, here's one. All right.

He raised your taxes on Social Security while he was trying to scare you on Medicare. He took it out of the other pocket. He raised your taxes on Social Security.

And if you drive a car or a tractor, as you do in this part of the country, $32 billion in gas tax increase. Not to build highways, but to go in these little pet programs that President Clinton likes to talk about, these liberal spending programs.

So, we're going to give you some of your money back. It's your money. It's your money.

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And we're going to cut the capital gains rate in half, 50 percent.

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Give business men and farmers and other a break.

DOLE: We have $7 trillion in assets locked up in America. And you know why? Because they can't afford to sell, because the capital gains rate is too high.

We're going to create more jobs and more activity and more profit in America by cutting the capital gains rate in half than you've ever heard of. And we're going to do it in a Dole-Kemp administration.

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And again, since it's your money, you shouldn't have to apologize for wanting to keep more of it. The government ought to apologize for taking so much of it in the first place. That is the basic difference.

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And I believe instead of these mothers back here pinching pennies, the government ought to pinch pennies for a change. So the average family making $30,000 a year — family of four — it'd be a tax cut of $1,261 per year.

That's an 86 percent tax cut — 86 percent — for working families. Working families, it's your money. Working families keep those things in mind because President Clinton may come to Georgia again, as he did in 1992.

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Well, yes, I mean, everybody's got to go through Atlanta to get to Little Rock or wherever it is, you know.

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And he'll get the tax cut if he leaves his forwarding address. We'll be sure that he gets it next year.

So we are serious. This is serious business. It's about our economy. It's about economic growth. It's about agriculture.

It's about small-businessmen and small-businesswomen. One more thing we're going to do is restore the home office deduction so mothers can stay at home or people with disabilities can stay at home and get the home office deduction.

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We're reaching out to those soccer moms all across America because they're important.

And let me read an excerpt of a letter I received just three days ago from a lady in Minnesota — and I quote — "As a young woman who works full-time and goes to school part-time, the only way that I want your help is by giving me more of my money back. Give me more of my money back, so my husband and I can make decisions based on trying to get ahead.

"My husband and I" — not the government — "my husband and I can make decisions on trying to get ahead.

"You see if we had 15 percent of the money the government takes from us, it could mean that we would have the option of me working part-time and going to school full-time.

"I would be finished with my degree twice as fast as I'm getting it now and could start working in my field as a teacher more quickly.

"It is obvious that it is better for everyone. Or we could put that money towards a savings account. Or maybe even take a vacation."

That's not illegal either. And it won't be in a Dole-Kemp administration. So that's what it's all about.

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Real Americans working hard and doing the best for their families. And they don't want to be told how to run their lives. They just want a chance to do it on their own.

And as I said, this tax cut is important. It's part of a six-point economic plan that Paul helped put together.

First, we want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I'm for it. He's against it.

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We're going to balance the budget by the year 2002. We're going to stop some of these regulations that cost the average family in Georgia $7,000 a year.

DOLE: We'll protect the water. We'll protect your health. We'll protect your food. We'll protect the air. But we can do it with some common sense and save a lot of money in the process. We're going to have litigation reform, stop some of these frivolous lawsuits.

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I'm not certain how many saw but I was out in California a couple of months ago and that railing gave way and dove into the crowd. And on the way down my cell phone rang.

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And this trial lawyer says, "I think we got a case here, Bob."

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You know. We're going to stop some of those frivolous lawsuits that put small businessmen and women out of business. And we're going to put a cap on punitive damages that wipe people out and wipe people out of their business.

We're also going to send all this money $5 billion a year, we have for a work training program — we're going to send it back to the states. More power back to the states and back to the people, closer to the people.

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But we're not going to touch Medicare. Let me say to that senior citizen, who's here today, that a lot of scare ads — we think about $91 million worth of scare ads — run across America this year. Here's a president who raised taxes on your Social Security, trying to frighten you on Medicare.

We're going to save and strengthen and preserve Medicare just as I helped save Social Security with Claude Pepper, a Democrat, and others in 1983. We're going to have a bipartisan, non-partisan commission, take it out of politics, save Medicare, if we don't it's going to be broke in three years.

And under our plan we increase Medicare spending 39 percent. So, don't let President Clinton scare you on that one, either.

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In fact, the executive director of the AARP, which is — represents a lot of people in America, sent a letter last week to the chairman of both parties. And the letter essentially said what we've been telling President Clinton, and what his own advisers have been telling him for a long time.

Medicare, they say is on the path to bankruptcy. We better fix it instead of playing politics with it, or a lot of people are not going to have their bills paid. So, I want to fix it. I want to fix it.

And we will do that on a non-partisan basis when I am president of the United States.

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And nobody's going to be forced out of Medicare. That's another scare tactic they're using in Georgia and Florida and other states across the country. We are going to make the country work. We're going to make the economy grow.

We're also going to take a look at all the young people in the audience and audiences around America and say, "Wait a minute. Why did drug use double when Clinton was president?" Why? Because he didn't do anything.

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He didn't do anything.

I don't know what he said on MTV about inhaling, but he didn't do one thing about drugs when he became president of the United States and the ages 12 to 17 drug use doubled. It doubled.

We're going to cut it in half in the first four years. Just as Ronald Reagan and George Bush cut it in half, we'll cut it in half again.

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We also have in our plan — and then I'll conclude — opportunity scholarships. Think about it. There are plenty of low income parents in Macon who would like to have a choice, maybe a better choice. I'm a product of public schools. I like public schools. Most everybody will continue to go public schools.

But in some cases we have — I was in Ohio yesterday. The governor told me that in state of Ohio, in some of the cities where 100 young people enter kindergarten, 30 graduate from college.

Now, that's a disaster. That's a disaster and it's happening all over America. So we can't stand up and look you in the eye and say the present system is working. One out of four high school graduates are functionally illiterate. The most popular course in college is remedial reading because you can't read when you graduate from high school in many places.

We want to give low-income parents and middle-income parents a choice, the same choice the president, has who sends his daughter to a private school. And I applaud him for it. He wants the best education possible.

But what about somebody who doesn't have the money or the power or the prestige? Why shouldn't their child have the same opportunity to send their child to the best school possible in Macon or anywhere in America? And that's part of our program and we're going to get it done.

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I also believe in a strong defense.

DOLE: We've cut defense too much. President Clinton's cut defense too much. He said he was going to cut $67 billion. He cut $112 billion in defense.

We're going to strengthen our defenses. When I'm president of the United States, we're going to strengthen our defenses.

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I know we've got to be careful. I know we've got to watch the defense budget. But as the commander in chief, if I'm going to make an error, it's going to be on the side of having enough and not having too little when it comes to defense.

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And I'm a product of World War II where some of had to train with broomsticks. We didn't have enough rifles. We didn't have enough rifles.

Then I came to Ft. Benning, Georgia. In 90 days, I got to be a second lieutenant. I knew everything. In 90 days, I was a wonder.

Then I went over to Italy. And Mark Clark was the general. He never called me. I kept waiting by the phone. I thought I was the only second lieutenant in Italy he never called.

But we won. We won because of the American spirit. We won because of American sacrifice. We won because of American know-how. People stayed home and made the machines and produced the food and did all the things they had to do.

We should never be second to none to anybody in this world. This is the United States of America.

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And if we ever make a decision on sending somebody halfway around the world to protect us, I will make that decision and not Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali of the United Nations.

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So I want to conclude by reminding you of two or three, I think, basic things that sometimes I wonder if people are focusing on.

The balanced budget amendment. If we're every going to have any discipline in America, we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We lost by one vote in the Senate because President Clinton used his powers of persuasion to commit six Democrats to vote the other way who said they were for the balance budget amendment.

I want to protect the flag that's being waved out here today with a constitutional amendment. I want to protect the flag.

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And he's against it. I believe we can have voluntary prayer in school, and he's against it. That's a basic difference.

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And I will appoint conservative judges to the bench will interpret the Constitution.

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And if you send me a partial-birth abortion bill, I will sign it. I will not veto it. And I don't care what your view is on abortion — pro-life or pro-choice — if you understood this procedure, you would be against it.

Dr. Koop said — Dr. Koop, who President Clinton loves to quote, says it's never necessary. In fact, it can harm the mother. This is Dr. Edward Everett Koop. So let's pass that bill. I'll sign it. I won't veto it.

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So the decision is up to you. It's all going to be yours.

Georgia is a very important state in this election. We want to carry the South all the way, solid all the way. Maybe not Arkansas, but maybe everything else.

And this is a state that we must win.

DOLE: This is a state that we should win.

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I'm a conservative. He's a liberal, don't let him fool you.

For the first — he's already had two terms — he had one two-year term when he was a liberal. Now, the last two years, he's trying to act like a moderate or something else. But Ted Kennedy is still his chief adviser and Ted will still be around.

As I said in the debate, I was speaking one day on the Senate floor and I said now gentlemen let met tax your memories. And Ted Kennedy jumped up and said, "Why haven't we thought of that before?"

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They want to tax everything, everything, everything.

Now, if you want to end this, think what he tried to do to health care. Don't forget what they tried to do to health care — $1.5 trillion in new spending, 17 new taxes, price controls, 50 new bureaucracies.

This is the real candidate Clinton, not the candidate who is out there now talking like a conservative. Keep this in mind, he's never changed. He's a liberal. He's a liberal. He's a liberal. Don't let him forget it.

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And with your help and God willing, we're going to make it on November 5. Thank you very much, and God bless America.

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