Remarks in Westerville, Ohio

Thank you very much. Thank you. Boy, I'm excited. I'm excited.

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Well, keep in mind one thing. Dole-Kemp are two four-letter words you can teach your kids. Don't forget it. Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

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Well, I'm very excited to be here with all these people, and all the people in the audience. And I know there are a thousand or two outside who could not get in. I understand we have sound outside. We appreciate the fact that they're here, all the people up here on the platform.

I'm particularly pleased that seven members of the Green Bay Packers would fly down and be with us today.

[applause]

I hope I win six out of the first seven states on November 5. And I'll be happy if that happens.

Let me just take a few moments, because I know that you probably have other things to do. But I want to talk to you about America. And I want to talk to you about election day. And I want to welcome you to this retirement party for Bill Clinton.

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Because this really is a fight for America's future. And I have fought for America before. And I'm ready to fight for America again and again and again because it's important.

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And I have news for our liberal friends. Jack Kemp and I going to win this election whether they like it or not.

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And I've been referred to as the most optimistic man in America. On the morning of November 6, Bill Clinton will be the most surprised man in America.

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And our message is really quite simple. It's not rocket science. It's quite simple. The message is the government's too big, and it spends too much of your money. Your money. It's your money.

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And in many families today, one parent works full time for the family while the other parent works full time just to pay the taxes.

And that should not happen in America. But it's a reality in the Clinton administration. Now John Kasich's the expert on the budget. And John Kasich understands...

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John Kasich understands, as does Mike DeWine, that when you pay 40 percent of what you earn in taxes, you're paying too much.

DOLE: And we want to give some back.

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And Bill Clinton brags about all these new jobs that he created in America. Well, I met a guy the other day who had three of them.

[laughter]

That's the problem. You can't make enough money. You have to work at one or two or three jobs. The husband works, the wife works, just to pay the bills, just to pay the taxes. That's why we're going to give you a 15-percent across-the-board tax cut...

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... with no strings attached.

It's your money. You ought to get it back. You should not have to apologize to the government because they don't take it all. They ought to apologize to you for taking so much of it in the first place.

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And we're going to change it.

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Now one of the...

HECKLER: What's the future of the NEA, Mr. Dole?

DOLE: Oh, I'm gonna get to that. They don't have much of a future. All right...

[laughter]

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We're going to give a $500-tax credit for every child under 18 so if you've got one child that's $500; three children, $1,500; 10 children, you're probably too busy to worry about taxes, but that would be $5,000.

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And in order to create more jobs and more opportunities, we're going to cut the capital gains rate in half, from 28 percent to 14 percent.

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Now, Bill Clinton can walk right through the facts and look you in the eye. He tells you there's 100,000 police on the street, that he created 11 million jobs, that he took 2 million people off welfare, that he's for school choice. He goes on and on and on and on. And somebody ought to have a meter out there to check the accuracy of all these statements.

Somebody needs a Clinton meter out there to say, is this true or not true or half true. What is it?

AUDIENCE: Not true.

DOLE: But what he says now, the president says, well, even though I came to Ohio, even though I pleaded with the people in '92 as a candidate, even though I promised, I looked you in the eye — and he's good at that — I looked you in the eye and I promised you a big middle-class tax cut. But, by the way, I didn't keep my word.

Instead, I gave you the biggest tax increase in the history of America. That's what I gave you.

[boos]

DOLE: And who paid it?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We did!

DOLE: Did he come — You paid it, that's right. Did he come out here before the tax increase and say, can you afford a tax increase?

AUDIENCE: NO!

DOLE: No. But now he says, the government can't afford a tax cut.

DOLE: It would blow a hole in the deficit. What's going to happen is — it's going to blow a hole in all those spending programs, he's already got $400 billion of new spending programs lined up.

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And the bottom line, in fact there are two bottom lines, first of all, it is your money. It's your money.

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It's your money.

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It's not money, it's not President Clinton's money. But he wants your family to keep on pinching pennies and I want the government to start pinching pennies for a change.

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So, with our tax cut, let's take the average family out here, making $30,000 a year, with two children. And you will save $1,261.00 in taxes. Is that about an 86 percent tax cut, that's enough for four months child care, a few payments on the mortgage, a personal computer, or maybe even a little vacation with your family, which is legal in America.

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Now, let me tell you about a letter I read on the way here, received just on, I think the 16th of October from a lady in Eagan, Minnesota and she writes, and let me quote, it's not my statement it's hers.

It says, "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."

And here's what else she says. She continued to say. "You see if we had a 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 can start working in my field, as a teacher more quickly."

Now, that's the bottom line. It is your money, we ought to give you back some of it. We haven't had a federal tax cut in 10 years, and you're going to have on in a Dole-Kemp administration.

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And even former presidents will be eligible for tax cuts.

If he leaves his change of address card in January, we'll get it to him. I said, in the first debate, in fact, I asked him. He says, well he needs a tax cut. Well, he's making about $200,000 grand a year, so if he needs it, you ought to need it.

If you're making $25, $30 or $35 grand a year. And you're going to get it.

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This is a main street tax cut. It's not a Wall Street tax cut. Nobody said it's a tax cut for the rich. It's a tax cut for working families, families with children, 40 million children. Forty-million tax credits out there, that's what it's going to amount to. All that money going back to families to do what I said they could do.

DOLE: And I'm going to be on your side, of those who want to spend less and cut taxes and give more power back to the states and back to the people, every day that I'm in the White House, starting next January.

And that's just Phase I.

In Phase II, as John Kasich knows and Mike DeWine, we're going to have a fairer, flatter, simpler tax system and we're going to end the IRS as we know it. We're going to end the IRS as we know it.

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We will also eliminate unnecessary regulations. Now, keep in mind, regulations cost the average family between $6,000 and $7,000 a year. It's like a tax. We're going to protect the air and the water and the food and all these things that they scare you about. But there ought to be a little common sense from time to time.

It's — Again, it's your money. We ought to stop some of the regulation. We ought to review some of the regulation. We ought to save you some of the money, while at the same time we're protecting all the things we need to protect in America. And we will do it in a Dole-Kemp administration.

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And we're going to reform this broken-down legal system. I don't dislike lawyers, but there are too many lawsuits, too many frivolous lawsuits, putting too many people out of business.

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In fact, I said — I may have said it to some in this crowd, about eight weeks ago, we were out in Chico, California and the railing gave way and I dove into the crowd. And on the way down, my cell phone rang. It was a trial lawyer saying, Bob, I think we got a case here.

[laughter]

You know, we've got to stop some of the frivolous law suits. They're putting people out of business. We pass legislation. The president vetoes it. Of course, he gets millions and millions and millions of dollars from trial lawyers.

In addition, we're going to fight a real war on drugs. We're going to cut drug use in half in our first four years.

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And I know all these great athletes standing behind me can tell every young person here, if you're worried about your body, or worried about your future, worried about your parents, don't use drugs.

Don't ever start. Don't use alcohol. Don't use tobacco. Don't ever start.

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And if you have started, stop! Stop! It's your future. One day one of you will be standing up here. John Kasich will retire probably in 30 or 40 years. And one day one of you are going to be up here.

Maybe not.

[laughter]

It may be somewhere else. But I want to tell you one final thing on drugs. I know Bill Clinton says, well, this ought to be bipartisan. It's all right for — He'll say, it's all right for me to go out and scare everybody in America on Medicare and on Medicaid and on veterans benefits and on education, even though John Kasich will tell you we're spending more than ever because of a Republican Congress, on grants, and on Pell Grants and on student loans in a Republican administration — Republican Congress.

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DOLE: A Republican Congress did that, not Bill Clinton.

So he said, well, drugs ought to be off the table. They have spent $91 million on negative ads. The president gets up in the debates and, well, I want to have ideas and not insults, and Bob Dole's — Bob Dole's a nice guy. And he's done a lot for his country.

And then they go out and spend $91 beating me up all day long telling me that I'm opposed to Medicare, I don't want to help senior citizens or veterans or students or anybody else. There's nobody left that I'm for. I'm against everybody. I'm against everybody, except you, and you, and you, and everybody in this audience. You're the taxpayers.

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And I would say about the NEA, since somebody asked me that, I want to go unanswered. I believe in public education. I'm a product, my daughter's a product, my wife's a product of public education. Most everyone here is. So I'm a strong supporter of public education.

But I also believe a little competition and a little school choice might help a lot, too.

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And what I want to make certain of is one thing. We have a program, also in Cleveland because of the governor's leadership, called Opportunity Scholarships. We say to low-income parents and to low-middle-income parents, we're going to give you X dollars, the state's going to give you X dollars.

We give that money to the parents. They go find a school, they find the best school they can find for their child or their children. That's called choice. They have...

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They will have the same choice, low-income Americans, as the president and vice president have now. They send their children to private school, that's fine. That's their choice. But why shouldn't everybody else in America have that choice?

Why? Because of the NEA. They've got a hammer lock on this president. He can't do anything without their consent because they put a lot of money in his campaign.

And I like teachers, and I want to turn education back to the parents and back to the teachers and take it away from the union bosses.

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So let me conclude with just a few things that I think are important. I'm for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. President Clinton's against it.

I'm for an amendment to protect the flag of the United States. A lot of people fought, gave their lives. And he's against it.

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I believe in voluntary prayer, and support a constitutional amendment. The president's against it.

I'm for a balanced budget without the amendment. The president's for 10 years, nine years, seven years, six years, five years. Whatever you want, he's for it. We're going to get it done.

I believed a long time ago we had a foreign policy, but not since this administration came into office. Today, the president in Detroit does what he always does, has it both ways.

He's talking about enlarging NATO, expanding NATO.

DOLE: We've been saying specifically for months you ought to add Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. And it ought to be done by 1998.

So today, the president, in his usual form, two weeks before the election, he said well, now I've been thinking about this a lot. And maybe our goal should be — should be, not will be — should be. It's always a goal, it's always flexible, it's always a moving target.

So again, today, he demonstrated we have no foreign policy. We have no leadership. In fact Secretary Christopher, the secretary of state, said well, it took us a long time to understand that American leadership was important in the world.

I understand the importance of American leadership. And we will continue to understand the importance of leadership.

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But there's one basic fundamental difference. One basic fundamental difference.

I do trust the American people. I do trust people in this audience, whether you're for me or against, I trust you.

I trust you to make the right decision. I want you to be proud of your vote on November 5. I was proud of the vote I cast for Dwight Eisenhower a long time ago, and I'm still proud of that vote. I want you to be proud of the vote on November 5, and a year from November 5, and two years and 10 years and 20 years from November 5.

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And I want you to understand, as Mike DeWine will tell you or John Kasich or anybody else I've worked with, Democrat or Republican, in Congress, I do keep my word. May not agree with it all the time, but I keep my word.

And I give you my word that I will work hard as I've always worked. That I will fight for America, as I've always fought for America, because it's your future. The future of all these young people I see all over this audience, all over this audience.

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We want a better America as we go into the next century. How are we going to have a better America unless we make changes? The president knows it's the best economy we've had ever. We've got 1.2 million bankruptcies, a new record. Credit card debt's never been higher.

We've got the slowest recovery we've had in this century. We have stagnant wages. In fact, wages for women have actually gone down in this administration. It's time we take care of the soccer moms and all the other moms and all the grandmothers and all the parents and all the grandparents in America. Give you some of your money back.

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So let me ask you if your vote and ask for your support. Ohio...

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Ohio's a very critical state.

You know, about a month ago, I went up to Montpelier, Ohio, and visited the grave of my great, great grandfather, Michael Dole. That's up in Williams County, up in northwest Ohio.

So I — this is one of my home states. I don't want you to let somebody from your home state down on November 5. I want you to go out and go to work. Go to work, because I want you to be proud of your vote. I want to provide leadership.

I want America to stand tall again. I want America to be respected around the world. We've lost respect all around the world.

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And I want to do it for you. I want to do it for you. I'm not trying to fill out any resume. I'm not looking for work. I want to do it for America. I want to do this for everybody. And we're going to get it done because the American people are beginning to focus.

And when they focus they look at my record, they look at his record, they're going to vote for me on November 5. Thank you very much.

And God bless America.