That is a nice crowd on a nice, cool day. We are here today to celebrate and expand our historic campaign to rescue American workers from job-killing regulations. Before I came into office, American workers were smothered by a merciless avalanche of wasteful and expensive and intrusive Federal regulation. These oppressive, burdensome mandates were a stealth tax on our people slashing take-home pay, suppressing innovation, surging the cost of goods, and shipping millions of American jobs overseas millions and millions and millions. Nearly 4 years ago, we ended this regulatory assault on the American worker, and we launched the most dramatic regulatory relief campaign in American history by far. For every one new regulation issued, we pledged that two Federal regulations would be permanently removed. We not only met that ambitious goal which, at the time, people said was impossible we vastly exceeded it. For every one new regulation added, nearly eight Federal regulations have been terminated. As you can see behind me, we have removed the gigantic, regulatory burden Americans have been forced to carry for decades, freeing our citizens to reach their highest potential. Our historic regulatory relief is providing the average American household an extra $3,100 every single year. And we are going up from that number. We are going up from that number. Joining us today is Vice President Mike Pence. We had a great day in Georgia yesterday, cutting regulations like nobody has ever seen before. And Small Business Administrator I love her name Jovita Carranza. They do an incredible job. I also want to thank the many State and local, tribal leaders who join us in this great cause. We appreciate it. What we have achieved together is truly without precedent never happened before. The previous administration added over 16,000 pages of heavy-handed regulations to the Federal Register. Under my administration, we have removed nearly 25,000 pages of job-destroying regulations more than any other President by far in the history of our country, whether it was 4 years, 8 years, or, in one case, more than 8 years. The prior administration piled up more than 600 major new regulations a cruel and punishing regulatory burden that cost the average American an additional $2,300 per year. These regulations also inflicted a steep economic toll on African American communities. By contrast, our reforms are putting more money into the pockets of hardworking Americans.

Remarks on Deregulation


In addition to saving every family more than $3,000 per year, my administration has just issued another reform that my Council of Economic Advisers estimates will lower the price of new vehicles by more than $2,200 per vehicle. And I think we are going to get that up to $3,500 per vehicle. And, by the way, the vehicles will be better, they will be stronger, and they will be safer. Our regulation cuts are also delivering massive savings on broadband Internet services, and some home energy bills will be really historically cut it is actually amazing as well as historically low gasoline prices. At the same time, we saved our oil companies we are now the largest since we have been here the largest energy source in the world. But we saved them. They had a hard time a number of months ago and, frankly, for a long time but we have saved them. But $1.99, they were telling me and, in some cases, lower than that . We are bringing back consumer choice in home appliances so that you can buy washers and dryers, showerheads and faucets. So showerheads you take a shower, the water does not come out. You want to wash your hands, the water does not come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair I do not know about you, but it has to be perfect. Dishwashers you did not have any water, so you the people that do the dishes you press it, and it goes again, and you do it again and again. So you might as well give them the water because you will end up using less water. So we made it so dishwashers now have a lot more water. And in many places in most places of the country, water is not a problem. They do not know what to do with it. They do not have a problem. And old-fashioned incandescent lightbulbs I brought them back. I brought them back. They are cheaper and they are better. That is important to all of us. And we brought them back, and they are selling like hotcakes. We stopped the egregious abuse of the Clean Water Act, which extreme activists have used to shut down construction projects all across our country. When I signed that legislation, I had many farmers and construction people standing behind me people that have not cried since they were a baby.

Remarks on Deregulation


Some of them never even when they were a baby, and they were crying. Many people were cry we gave them back their life. They took away their land. They took away their rights. They took away their life. By reining in EPA overreach, my administration has returned the agency to its core mission of ensuring clean air, clean water, and a truly pristine natural environment. Our air now and our water is as clean as it is been in the last four decades. Yesterday, our country achieved yet another groundbreaking milestone by completing a sweeping overhaul of America's badly broken infrastructure approval process. It was totally out of control. Instead of taking up to 20 years to approve a major project, we are cutting the Federal permitting timeline it is already been done to a maximum of 2 years or less; in some cases, even less than one year. It is possible that it will not be good environmentally or safety-wise, in which case, at least in a period of a year or 2, we will raise the hand and you will not make it. But most projects will make it, but you will not go for 10, 15, 18 or 20 years. There are many horror stories that we could relay. We are reclaiming America's proud heritage as a nation of builders. My administration has also eliminated massive regulatory barriers in our battle against the China virus. These actions save countless lives, speeding up the production of equipment. That means ventilators like nobody has ever seen before. We are now making ventilators for countries all over the world. And medicine accelerating the delivery of lifesaving treatments and ensuring that we will have a vaccine in a record time. We are doing fantastically well on that. That'll be for another time, another meeting. But we are doing, on therapeutics and vaccines, incredibly well. No administration in history has removed more red tape more quickly to rescue the economy and to protect the health of our people. When you think of it, we are all set up; that as we get the vaccine or therapeutic and we are set up, militarily we are going to be delivering it in record time. We put an investment upfront. And we have logistical people generals, great people they are going to be delivering this all over the country as soon as we have it. And we have made tremendous progress. You have been reading about it. In total, we have taken more than 740 actions to suspend regulations that would have slowed our response to the China virus.

Remarks on Deregulation


This includes lifting restrictions on manufacturers so that our great autoworkers could produce more than 100,000 ventilators. So we have done over 100,000 in 100 days. And we did not have ventilators. We were not set up for ventilators. We became a country that is making a lot of them, helping so many others countries that are never going to be in a position to make them. And we have saved a lot of lives. And there is never been a person in our country even though we started with almost nothing; I say the cupboard was bare when we took over. We started with nothing. There is never been a person in our country even though we had just absolutely no we were we were going on empty never been one person that needed a ventilator that did not get it. Take a long time to get them done. Not one person has ever needed a ventilator that did not get it. We made telemedicine thank you. The people here, they get no credit for it. I do not want any credit. They should get the credit, but they get no credit. But we have done a great job helping so many other countries now. We made telemedicine available to all American patients and allowed doctors to work across State lines. I will tell you, the telemedicine is something that is really gone up by thousands and thousands of percentage points of percent. Because what happened is people that would not even think of using telemedicine, all of a sudden, started using it, and it is really turned out to be good. Really, really turned out to be good, and it solved a lot of problems. Furthermore, I have ordered Federal agencies to look for ways to make these health care reforms totally permanent. Vice President Pence is also working closely with State, local, and tribal leaders to streamline occupational licensing. Over 30 States have taken steps to reduce these barriers to unemployment and to employment, and including a State that I love very much I have a little history in that State the great State of Alaska. In Idaho, Governor Brad Little, who is here today with us as well, set a new record for regulatory relief. The American people know best how to run their own lives. They do not need Washington bureaucrats controlling their every move and micromanaging their every decision.

Remarks on Deregulation


With each regulation we cut, we are not only returning the money and the power to our citizens, we are draining the Washington swamp, and they are not happy about it I can tell you that. I think you know that. I want to just, as ENTITY, say that I will always fight to defend your rights and your freedoms. We will fight very hard for your rights and your freedoms. The hard left wants to reverse these extraordinary gains and re-impose these disastrous regulations. They want to take what we have taken off, Jim, and they want to they want to put them back on. And I guess they can do that. You will fight them for a little while, but eventually you will lose. And they want to bury our economy under suffocating, relentless landslides of Washington redtape like we had before I got here. We must never return to the days of soul-crushing regulation that ravaged our cities, devastated our workers, drained our vitality and right out of our people and thoroughly crippled our Nation's prized competitive edge. We have great, great people. Our entire economy and our very way of life are threatened by Biden's plans to transform our Nation and subjugate our communities through the blunt-force instrument of Federal regulation at a level that you have not even seen yet. You have not even seen it yet. They want to go many times what they put you under in the past. Under the unity platform Joe Biden published with socialist Bernie Sanders, they are proposing and this is all in writing; it is done; they agreed they are proposing to reenter the job-killing, unfair Paris Climate Accord, which will cost our country trillions of dollars trillions and trillions of dollars and put us in a very, very bad competitive position relative to the world. Not surprising to you, China will be greatly advanced under this ridiculous agreement, and so will Russia, so will many other countries. They propose to mandate net-zero emissions from all new homes and buildings, skyrocketing the cost of construction and putting the goal of homeownership out of reach for millions destroying the look of the home, the beauty of the home. I am somebody that is built many homes, many buildings. If you take a look at this, it does not look good. But they have put it out of reach, from a cost standpoint.

Remarks on Deregulation


They want to eliminate carbon from the U.S. energy industry, which means abolishing all American oil, clean coal, and natural gas. The result of this Federally mandated shutdown would be the wholesale destruction of the entire energy industry and many other industries, the economic evisceration of entire communities, and the unfettered offshoring of millions of our best jobs to foreign countries and foreign polluters. Millions and millions of jobs would go. Thousands and thousands of countries would be at a level that you have never seen. Companies would be disappearing left and right, just like they did with NAFTA, which we terminated for the USMCA, which was another beauty that we have done not for now, but another great beauty. But thousands of companies, plants, factories would be closed. Under this dismal future, energy would be unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, and the American Dream would be sniffed out so quickly and replaced with a socialist disaster. The Democrats in DC have been and want to, at a much higher level, abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions. They are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations that you read about today. Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise. Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what they are doing now. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it. So they wanted to defund and abolish your police and law enforcement while at the same time destroying our great suburbs. The suburb destruction will end with us. Next week, I will be discussing the AFFH rule AFFH rule, a disaster and our plans to protect the suburbs from being obliterated by Washington Democrats, by people on the far left that want to see the suburbs destroyed, that do not care. People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they are going to watch it go to hell. The Biden-Bernie plan would also use the weapon of Federal regulation to tie the hands of our police departments by abolishing cash bail think of that. They killed somebody? Crime in New York City up 368 percent from just a short while ago.

Remarks on Deregulation


They got rid of a lot of police, and they are in the process of doing it a billion dollars. When I first heard about it, when you first heard about it, you did not think it was real. But they are actually trying to put it into play. It will mean the end of this country. So by getting rid of bail, they are incentivizing jail and prison closures they want to get rid of prisons; they do not think anybody should go to prison setting loose violent criminals; appointing left-wing social justice prosecutors, like you have in Philadelphia, where people creating and doing the most criminal of acts are let go, in many cases immediately, and making our wonderful cops our great, great police, cops subordinate to distant bureaucrats who have never spent a day in their lives fighting crime. Unlike the Socialists, we believe in the rule of the people, not the rule of the unelected bureaucrats that do not know what they are doing. We believe in the dignity of the individual, not the iron grip of the State. Our regulatory reforms are vital not only to the success of our economy, but the strength of our democracy and the survival of liberty itself. My administration will continue pressing forward until we have made every last vestige of Washington fully, completely, and totally accountable to the citizens of the United States. the doctors who care for our country, the truckers who sustain our country, and the farmers and ranchers who preserve our country in all of its majestic beauty. God bless you and God bless America. We must have said something right. I guess we said it absolutely right. It is about our country. It is about our country. We want to be strong, we want to respect everybody, but we have to have strong law enforcement. And that is taking place in the areas that we are responsible for. We want others to call us for help. We were going into Seattle, all set to go, and then they did it themselves. Minneapolis we said, Get the guard in there. They have done a fantastic job. As soon as they showed up, it was like a knife cutting through butter. You saw that, right? It was not the police's fault in in any of these places. The police are, generally speaking, they do a great job. That is not what they wanted to do. But the National Guard came in, and we did a great job. No problem after that, do you notice?

Remarks on Deregulation


We just passed a statues and monument Executive order. They see that beautiful look at it right there. It is so beautiful the Washington Monument. If they had the choice, they'd take it down. And I guarantee you they'd rename it. They want to rename it. They do not know what they want. They just want to destroy our country. So we have many exciting things that we will be announcing over the next 8 weeks, I would say. Things that nobody has even contemplated, thought about, thought possible, and things that we are going to get done and we have gotten done and we have started in most cases. But it is going to be a very exciting 8 weeks, a 8 weeks, like I think, Mike, we can honestly say nobody has ever going to see 8 weeks like we are going to have. Because we really have we have we are taking on immigration, taking on education, we are taking on so many aspects of things that people were hopelessly tied up in knots in Congress. They cannot they have been working on some of these things for 25, 30 years. But you will see levels of detail, and you will see levels of thought that a lot of people believed very strongly we did not have in this country. We are going to get things done that they have wanted to see done for a long, long time. So I think we will start sometime on Tuesday. We will be discussing our one plan on suburbia, but that is one of many, many different plans. Then we are going into the immigration the world of immigration, the world of education. We are going into the world of health care very complete health care. And we have a lot of very exciting things to discuss. But cutting of regulation has been really something that I felt we could do, and we could do fairly easily. Nothing is easy in this country. We had statutory requirements where we'd do phase one, and then we'd have to wait 90 days. We'd do phase two, and we'd have to wait 60 days. You'd do phase three, and we are set Let us do phase four, sir. But we were able to do things that nobody has ever been able to do, or even close, on deregulation. I do not know who thought of this idea, but it is actually quite, quite simple and quite good. I do not love having that big sucker hanging over my head. But I do want to thank you all.

Remarks on Deregulation


You know, this is really not a rally, you know this, this has to do with workers, programs, all the things we love, but this is really, we call it a friendly protest. And you know what we are protesting? We are protesting stupidity. But hello, I will tell you what Ohio, how good have you been? What did we win by? And your governor's here, and he just said you are winning by a lot more this time than last time. I am thrilled to be here in Dayton, the home of the Wright Brothers, wow. I wonder what they would think when they see some of these F-35s and these crazy planes that we make nowadays that go thousands of miles an hour, right? But I want to just thank the very hard working patriots who are the backbone of America. You are the backbone of America. This is an amazing group of people. You know, I am going to another very nice spot in Ohio where we do have a rally, but I cannot imagine you have many more people than we have here, but they will, about 10 times more. No, this is for us and our friends and workers. We want workers. 43 days from now, We are going to win this state. We are going to win four more years in the White House. You had your best year in the history of your state and the history of our country last year. And we had it until the plague came in, and now we are building it up again rapidly, but you had the best year, and we are going to have next year will be the best year we have ever had. I believe that. You will see that in the third quarter. But we are here today to talk about jobs. We are talking about jobs, a very favorite subject of mine to know and to understand that the choice in November is going to be very simple. They keep saying socialism. They have got over that one, that one's passed already. Joe Biden spent the last 47 years shipping your jobs to China, and foreign countries. You know that. And I have spent the last four years bringing the jobs back to our country, and back to Ohio.

Donald Trump Campaign Speech Transcript Vandalia, Ohio September 21


On November 3rd, Americans will decide whether we lift our nation to soaring new heights of prosperity, or whether we will allow a Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe, to shut down our economy, impose a four trillion, that is with a T, by the way, $4 trillion tax hike, abolish Ohio clean coal, oil, natural gas, and ship your jobs and factories and dreams overseas to China and countries that you have never even heard of. If we win, Ohio wins, and most importantly, in all fairness, America wins. Because you finally have a president who puts America first. And I do put America first. I guess that is why almost four years ago, that is why I did this, right? It is because of this, probably more than any other reason. I never saw anything so stupid in my life. I watched the worst trade deals, and we have reversed many of them, almost all of them now, but we have reversed them. And again, we were having the greatest year we have ever had, and it is going to be back very soon. You take a look at what is happening. We are joined today by a real good friend of mine. Somebody that is been with me from the beginning. And I have been with him from the beginning, Ohio Governor, Mike DeWine. I will tell you another one, Mike Turner. Thanks for all the help too, both of you, really appreciate it. And a man, I do not know if you know him. He should become legendary, because when we did not have a lot of support, I had a guy named Bob Paduchik, do you know Bob? He kept saying, every time I said, You know, we are not getting the kind of support from the top people. We won this state by a lot. It is a lot of it back there too, a lot of fake news. But they were going around Mike, hey Mike, they were going around saying, Well, Trump may not be able to, in order to when you have to win Ohio, right? And then for a year, I heard, You cannot win unless you win the great state of Ohio. But they did not say the great state, I say the great state. And I heard it. I heard it for so long. And then we won that night by what? We won by a lot. In fact, it was the first indication that that was going to be a tough night for the Democrats.


They said, Ladies and gentlemen, not only did Trump win Ohio, he won by a hell of a lot more than we anticipated. And then we won, look at these guys. That is why I love these guys. Nobody's messing with these guys. You know, they are great workers, but we use them also for security. If everyone gets a little bit rough, you will take care, right fellas? But we won it big, and that was the beginning of one of the most exciting nights in history, because we did something in 2016 that was amazing. And I will tell you, honestly, there is more enthusiasm now, and this is fact. In fact, they have a new thing. First of all, you know, we are working very hard on getting a third Supreme Court Justice. The only thing I will say, for the women, it will be a woman. Does anybody here, please raise your hand if you have the courage, is there anybody here that insists that it will be and should be a man? Supreme Court Justice, most powerful, most important, just the most important, you know, when you become president, they say, This is the single most important thing a president does, is pick Supreme Court And by the way, by the end of the first term, we will have 300 federal judges, a record. So let us give me a free poll. We do this, I have such fun with it. We do it. If they go out, they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars. They interview like 19 people, which mean nothing. Here we got a lot of people. So give me a free poll, who would like to see a woman Justice of the Supreme Court. Who would like to see a male Justice of the Supreme Court. What is that all about? It will be, I have five that we are vetting right now. And we are looking forward to it. And it will probably announce it on Saturday, maybe Friday, but Saturday. And it is a big day for our country. It is a big day for you. It is a big day for Ohio. I always love, why'd you say that? Like big day for Ohio, and I do it somewhat routinely. Do you ever notice when Biden goes out, and he always picks the wrong location. Like if he is in Ohio, it is great to be in the state of Florida. And he looks around, and he does not see too many palm trees.


He says, Are we in Florida? He did that seven times. How do you do that? When you do that, you just walk off the stage. You can make the greatest remainder of the speech, there is nothing you can do to save it. But the people of Dayton know better than anyone, the terrible damage that Biden has inflicted over his nearly 50 years, 47 years to be exact. Can you believe it? For 47 years, Joe Biden shook the hands of American workers, and then stabbed them in the back. I mean, think of it, all over, and they raked in cash. They raked in big money. I will tell you. What did I say, Where is, Where is he? You know, we did that for fun. We did a t-shirt. That thing sold, we come up with these little gems. He is in the basement with his father. He had no job, he was thrown out of the military, he was thrown out. He had no job. And then he goes to Ukraine, and he gets $183,000 a month. Although he had no experience whatsoever, knew nothing about the subject of the company, which you know, was energy. energy. I think they got an upfront payment of three million just to be able to get them. I'd take that one myself. Then they go to China, he walks out with one point five billion to manage, which is millions of dollars a year. The whole thing is crazy and the fake news does not want to cover it. They do not want to cover it. Did you see the interview the other day with Anderson Cooper, the other night? We have a debate coming up and who knows, look he is been doing this You know what, he is been doing it for 47 years. I have been doing it for three and a half years, so he should be able to beat me I would think, he is much more experienced. But he betrayed you, he lied to you, he abused you, which is why it is time to retire Joe Biden, this is serious stuff. Do we have any Teamsters here? All right, well, I did a big favor for the Teamsters, they had trucking company. They saved 30,000 jobs, but then every year they always endorse the Democrat, does not matter, good or bad. And James Hoffa, I am so disappointed in that guy.


So I called, I said, I'd love to get their support. They have already endorsed sleepy Joe Biden. It is like automatic, but you know who does not endorse him, all the workers underneath and they will either throw him out or he will retire. You get tired of it, it is like automatic. They endorse the Democrat because the Democrats do whatever the hell they want. But the workers, the people underneath, the real people, they are with us all the way. I have hired thousands and thousands of Teamsters, all the concrete work on buildings in Manhattan. It is almost like a habit. But I saved this company, a big company, good company, great people. We saved it. And then you say unrelated, totally unrelated, Hey, we'd love to have you. You always have to remember things. On November 3rd, we must turn the page forever on the failed corrupt political class. They get so much things that are so unfair to the rest of our country and that is why they are always with that top level of Democrat but the workers are with us. Globalists are out, you know that right? Globalist destroyed, they helped destroy this country. I will tell you if I did not come along, I really mean it. This country was, it was going down and we stopped it. If you look at your Second Amendment, if you look at so many different things, no matter what it is. You look at our jobs, our jobs prior to the plague and now coming back. You take a look at car sales are record setting. It is amazing because we had such a good foundation. We closed it up, we saved millions of lives. We had no choice, we had to do that. And then we opened it and now we are rocking and it is going good. But the Democrats really waged war on the American workers for half a century. Look what they have done. Biden's policies destroyed 60,000 factories and killed four point, think of it, four point five million manufacturing jobs. We brought back 700,000 when they said, right, they said the magic wand, you cannot do it, manufacturing jobs are gone. Biden championed the NAFTA disaster and China's entry into the World Trade Organization, which was a total catastrophe. That is when China started going up like a rocket. They are considered in the world trade, they are considered a developing nation.


By being a developing nation they get all sorts of advantages over us. So we have been protesting it and we do things that you would not believe. You do not even want to hear about it because it is disgraceful. And therefore for years and years, they had big advantages over the United States but no more. What followed was the nothing short, and think of it, nothing short of a blue collar carnage and it was in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan. You know how many car plants we are bringing back to Michigan. Nobody's ever seen it. For 40 years, they did not build a plant. And now they are building them all over. And I tell countries, I told a great gentleman, he just retired, Prime Minister Abe of Japan. I said, Shinzo, you got to build plants here, you cannot do this. You are building your cars in Japan and sending them. He said, Well, that is not up to me, that is up to the company. That is all right, Shinzo, I know you can do it. The next day they announced five plants, I mean, what can I tell you? I know my people, it is up to Shinzo, it was not up to anybody else, but he is great. The workers of America will never forget Biden's economic treachery. They will remember in November after Biden betrayed and think of it, all the betrayals on NAFTA and China, 40% of all of the manufacturing jobs were shipped out of Dayton. And now the good thing is your roads, you did not have a lot of traffic. By 2016, the per capita income in Dayton had fallen 12% below the national average of $50,000. Remember this, this all happened I mean, these numbers are incredible what is happened in three years. Ohio lost one in three manufacturing jobs, two out of three iron and steel mill jobs. And now of course his ideology has changed. He is so far left that he is just so you understand, he has no choice. You see where Kamala, Kamala, she another great one that one. You see her poll numbers, her poll numbers were going down and I cannot nobody treated him worse than Kamala, right? And she said the Harris administration and working with Joe Biden, did you see that? And I heard that, I actually heard that live, although it is not real live, I will tell you.


I mean, if he makes it, it is going to be I am going to come back to Dayton and I am going to say what the hell happened? I will have lost to the worst presidential candidate in the history of politics. I really believe that. The guy cannot speak without the teleprompter, although I am telling you, I am telling you, I think she says. I hope you are Thank you. I tell you the country cannot afford it. One thing I have learned is that President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, every one of these leaders, they are not shot. And we cannot have somebody that is sleepy. Oh, would they like to see him though? Did you see, would they like to see Joe? It is their dream to see Joe. How about Iran, you think around might like to see Joe Biden? They'd go back, they say give me another $150 billion. We gave them 150 billion. We gave them one point eight billion in cash. You know what that looks like, one point eight billion in cash? And I will tell you what, if and when we win, we will get a call within about nine seconds after the victory and it'll be Iran, it is going to want to make a deal. We want them to make a deal. They just cannot have a nuclear weapon. You cannot have a nuclear weapon. But I told people, I said, Do not talk to them now, look, they want to wait. If they could do that, if China could do it, I mean, think of it. If Russia could do it, by the way, nobody's been tougher on Russia than me with the sanctions. No, you never heard of Nord Stream until I came along. I said to Germany, let me get this straight. We defend Germany, right? We defend Germany and that is it. They do not pay what they are supposed to pay, they are delinquent, they are delinquent. So I said to Angela and I like Angela, but I said, but she is smart, why should she pay if she does not have to. So I said, Angela, so we defend you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia. Explain to me what is that all about? But you never heard about that stuff. We'd give tank busters to Ukraine.


We sell them in theory, I do not know if we will ever get the money. We sell them. But he gave pillows, maybe he got them from Mike Lindell, the pillow man. You think when Obama sent pillows over to Ukraine, I send tank busters, they sent pillows. Let me tell you, we have been very rough but at the same time we get along. I like Putin, he likes me. I get along or I got along with President Xi, but I do not know, after what happened here I am having a hard time with China, I really am. They are buying a lot, the trade deal has been incredible. They have been living up to it in all fairness. But it means less now, you understand. If we would not have been hit with this pandemic, which they could've stopped, it would have meant a lot. But it just means a lot less to me right now. So now after selling you out and bleeding you dry, Biden is back asking for your vote. The guy, when he was in prime time, which for him was about halftime. Long time ago, I had a friend, a senator, a Democrat, believe it or not. I used to get along with Democrats very well, actually better than the Republicans, but I will not say that. But I asked him, Who is your smartest senator? And he gave me a name. Well, now he is a lot dumber than it used to be, I can tell you. And you can take the gloves up because they do all this disinformation, they make up phony stuff. Like the military with what he said, I think it is a disgrace and he should apologize. I have 27 people that said, no way, it did not happen. So when they do that, you take the gloves off, that is all. And nobody's done for the military what I have done. We have totally rebuilt our military. We have the greatest weapons in the world. We have gotten raises for our great warriors. Our vet just got a 91% approval rating, the highest in the history of the V.A., our vets. They gave it a 91, the V.A., gave it a 91% approval rating. Nobody's done more, nobody. We have weapons, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before. Hope to God we do not have to use them but nobody has them.


Not China, not Russia, nobody has the weaponry that we have. We have the greatest weapons in the world and hopefully do not have to use them. Just remember that, we have the I call it the super-duper missiles, like at a level that nobody's ever seen before. You do not see them either. I hear a noise over there. I call it super-duper, because super-duper is easier for people to understand then hydrosonic. But we have the greatest two point five trillion dollars we spent. The greatest weapons that this world has ever seen without a question, I do not have to say what they are. In fact, the fake news said, He just gave away classified information. I said, No, I just said we have the greatest weapons. I did not tell you what they are. I could, because as president I am allowed to do it. I mean, Hillary Clinton is the one that gives her white classified information. I mean, he comes in and all he wants to do is go to war with everybody. If I listened to that idiot, we'd be right now in World War Five. Sir, we saw some movement in China. I think we should go to war with them. And I think Russia, let us do them both at the same time. Let us also go in right now to North Korea. Hey, do you remember North Korea? We were supposed to be at war with North Korea. You know what the press said? First they said it was amazing and those people lost their job, probably. It is amazing what I have done, they said. No, we are supposed to be at war. They have a lot of nuclear stuff, it would not be easy. Although, I tell you what I took over our military was totally depleted. We had a depleted mil-, we had old planes, we had old everything. And now it is a beautiful brand new we have F-35s that you cannot see. We have all new rockets, all new missiles, brand new planes, the bombers, the tankers, the jet fighters. What we have done is incredible. And we had to do it, somebody had to do it. Somebody said, well, we are sort of doing some damage to our budget. I said, Look, I want to have a strong military.


If I see some people, some soldiers from foreign lands, right, walking up or running up the White House lawn, the beautiful south lawn of the White House. I am not going to be saying, We did not do too well with the military, but we kept it under control in the budget, right? No, the military supersedes everything. I do not know, to me, I have always heard the Supreme Court. But to me, the most important thing has always been the military, our defense and our offense if needed. Joe Biden should not be asking for your support. He should be begging for your forgiveness and he should be. Biden supported the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership. This building would not be here if you ever did that one. Which would have been a death sentence for the U.S. auto industry and other industries. He supported the horrendous Korea deal, okay. Although I guess he had he was vice, Hey, you know what is interesting with Biden? So he always says, Why did not the president do this. And why did not the president do that? That is been there for 47 years, but he just left like three and a half years ago. You know what I mean, he was there. And I keep saying, Why did not you do it? Why did not you do it? Why did not you do it sleepy Joe? But the Korea deal and I say it all the time. She said, This will create 250,000 jobs. The problem was the jobs were all produced in South Korea, so that did not work out to well. Anyway, I renegotiated the deal in its entirety, now it is a good deal. That was a rip, I will tell you. And the pro-China Paris Climate Accord, it is pro-everything, it is pro-everybody but us. That would have cost us trillions of dollars, and we would have had the privilege of closing down Dayton's probably 25% of your companies. You could have never, you could have never done it. And you know when I did it, I thought I'd be scorned. They understood it. With every decision, Joe Biden twisted a knife into the hands and heart of the American worker. But these brutal betrayals ended the day I took the oath of office, that is true. I mean, I saw so much stupidity, the endless wars and we are almost out of Afghanistan as you know.


Not easy to get out because we have people in this country, the military industrial complex. Eisenhower called it the military industrial complex, and it does exist. It is not easy to get out, but we are very close to getting out and getting out of the Middle East. We are down to very little in Iraq. We are down to almost nothing in Syria, but I will be honest with you, we kept the oil. Somebody said, You still have some soldiers in Syria? I said, That is why they kept the oil. We kept the oil. We should have done that in Iraq. Remember I used to say a long time ago before I was, Do not go into the Middle East, but if you are going to go in and keep the oil. Well, we went in and we did not keep anything and all the death, the blood in the sand, I call it the blood in the sand, that worthless sand. All of that death that has been caused for no reason. It was the worst decision in the history of our country going into the Middle East. 8 trillion and nothing but death and millions of lives if you look at both sides, I will look at both sides. Somebody would say, Oh, I should not be looking at the other side. I look at both sides/ a lot of innocent people were killed. We lost incredible soldiers. I see the coffins, the caskets come in in Dover and I see it. Why did they do this? My first week, I withdrew from the transpacific partnership and saved that whole business of so much and what I had to do is I extended for a short time and then totally ended NAFTA. And we did the USMCA, Mexico, Canada. We have a great deal. You always liked to have an unhappy person at the other sides. But they had a free rip at us for years and years and years, NAFTA. How many buildings, how many factories did you lose right here? Where they moved over to Mexico, moved up to Canada, moved all over the place, but that is not going to happen anymore. The new deal makes it very prohibitive to do that. In 2017, I signed a historic executive order making it really something. You got to do a couple of little expressions it is called buy American and hire American. You know life is crazy in politics. Biden runs for president like two or three times, right? And I used to call him 1% Joe.


And that was primetime for him, right? Now that primetime is long over, he ends up winning the nomination. But had if Elizabeth Warren left and been loyal to her communist ideology, dare say socialist, but it is communist. It was pretty close. But had she left before Super Tuesday, Biden would've lost every state, but she took the votes away from Bernie. When they talk about sportsmanship, he got screwed by Hillary Clinton badly, but not as badly as this time, this was worse. Because all Pocahontas had to do is leave a day early. She did not even have to endorse him. And the votes that she got, which were not many, but far more than he needed, because he lost a couple of states by literally a small amount of votes. He would've gotten most of those votes. Sleepy Joe, who says Sleepy Joe? Who says Bernie? Bernie had more spirit. Joe's got no spirit, it is dead as a rock. The only spirit he is got is spirit to beat me. And historically that does not do that well. If you look at old races when somebody's getting votes because they do not like somebody, you know there is an ideology that let us face it does not like me too much. Somebody said, We do not like his personality. I said, I always thought I had a good personality. They do not like my personality. Who the hell cares about my personality, right? I do not like their personality either, but they get the job done. Who cares about their personality? But when Sleepy Joe was vice president and other countries flooded our market Thank you very much. Have you ever tried opera? But other countries flooded our market with subsidized washing machines. You remember that disaster? Does anybody know about the Whirlpool plant in Clyde, Ohio? And the head of Whirlpool came to see me. I was president-elect and he called and I do not know, for some reason I have heard of Whirlpool and I have heard of it all my life, I guess. I did not know much about it. They made washing machines and I never knew, I knew they were dumping steel on us and dumping certain things. But I did not know they were dumping washing machines. And he was a good guy, came up to my office and he said, They are putting us out of business, South Korea, China, they are dumping washing machines.


They make washing machines. They dump them into our market. They put everybody out of business. Then they charge you a lot of money when everyone's gone. Just like other people do right now, unfortunately, but we are trying to track them down. Somehow it hit me. So we put a 50% tariff on all washing machines coming into our country. And I visited with Jim Jordan. You know Jim Jordan? That he works with our guys here, your guys. And we went up and saw the plant and then making thousands a day. I mean, they gave me a number, it cannot be positive. I think they said like 20,000 a day. I said, How the hell can you make that many washing machines? But you know what I am talking about Congressmen, right? They are making thousands of washing machines a day and it is a vibrant company again, it was dead, it was going to close. But I evened up the score, I put the tariffs and now what they are doing is LG and Samsung, and these companies that made the washing machine they are now coming into the United States. And in order to avoid the tariff, they are building plants in the United States and that is okay and that is what we should be doing. We are going to be doing it a lot more too. We are going to be doing it a lot more. Biden allowed other countries to target our steel industries and it was like a disaster for our steel industry, but we took historic action to end these practices and place strong tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel. And it brought back our steel. Now steel plants are opening or being upgraded in Toledo, Marion, Cuyahoga Heights, Mingo Junction, and all across the Midwest. For defense, you need it. You do not want to talk war. You do not want to talk about that, but if we had a problem, what are you going to do? Well, we do not have any steel mills. Let us see if we can get some steel from China. But sir, you are fighting them. No, we had to save our steel. We had to save our aluminum industry and we have done it. We have done a great job, but you have a lot of steel mills going up right here in Ohio. And a lot of them being expanded. As vice president, Biden did nothing as China stole our intellectual property, flooded our markets with dumped goods. They are the greatest in the world at that.


I go to my guys, they said, What about doing a little movement on the dollar? Sir, we cannot do that. Well, China does it. China, you talk about a manipulation. Man, it is like a yo-yo. Let us see, let us raise it. Let us lower it, lets do this and that. But we actually called them on it, did not we Congressman? Turner, by the way, you did such a good job. You are a hell of a lawyer. You could represent me any day. He actually did represent me. And then you had Jordan into it. They liked him though, do not they huh? They like Jim. And they poisoned our communities with fentanyl. You know that? Instead, Biden allowed China to ravage our towns, raid our factories and rip apart our communities. That is what they did. And then he goes in and he brings his son. Hey, see if you can give him some money. I went to Steve Schwarzman. Steve Schwarzman is like one of the biggest guys on Wall Street, Blackstone. He does a lot of business with China said, Steve, what are the chances of somebody walking into an office in China and in 10 minutes, walking out with 1.5 billion to manage? He said, Zero. He said, I could not do it and I have this great company. Then he says, You are not getting your billion dollars unless you get rid of that damn prosecutor. And then they says, They got rid of the prosecutor. I am so angry at Republicans. I am so angry, but a lot of things are happening. You are seeing, you are reading the papers also. A lot of things are happening. You know they spied on my campaign and we caught them. And by the way, that is Biden, that is Obama. They spied on my campaign. Comey and all the sleazebags, they spied on my campaign and we caught them. I stay out of it. I just say, I am trying like hell to stay out of it. Barry is shaking his head sort of like that is the weakest yes, but it is true. But it is true, I am trying to stay out of it. I tell you what, these people are bad people. They have done things. What they have done to General Flynn and to other people is a disgrace.


And many others, but Joe Biden's agenda is made in China. My agenda is made in the USA. And I took the toughest ever action to stand up to China and their decades of pillaging, plundering, looting, including these massive tariffs. Do not forget, I charged tariffs. They targeted our great farmers. Do we have any farmers here? We gave the farmers $28 billion. Because they were targeted for 28 over a two-year period, 12 and 16. Did you get your check? And you might not be in business if I did not do that. She gave me the right answer. It is always dangerous to do that. No, I never got the money. She got the money. But once again, Joe Biden has sided with China over America. Look, you think this guy's going to be tough in China? And then he takes ads. He is going to be tough on China. This guy, they looted him and Obama. And in all fairness, not just the eight years, this has gone on for 25, 30 years. Probably the biggest reason I decided to run and give up one of the greatest lives anyone's ever had for this, for this. But you know why I like it? Because we have done more in the first three and a half years than any administration in the history of the country. And I say that and these fake news people do not even question it. There is nobody done what we have done. All of the things, we could go on forever. But Biden vowed to remove those tariffs. He wants to remove the tariffs. You know when I made the deal with China, I said I have to leave the tariffs on. They wanted one thing, the removal of the tariffs, and I would not do it. We would not do it. But Biden said the other day, he wants to take the He does not know what a tariff is first of all. Sleepy Joe would like to remove the tariffs off China. They are paying billions of dollars a year. Could we take them off? The radical left, which likes China, the radical left would walk into his office. I have not exactly used it too much today. And they will say, Here President, sign this. Do you have a pen? That is the deal with China. But he gave China free rein to continue ransacking the American Heartland. And you know, look, they were targeting you.


The reason nobody took on China was China said, We are going to go after your heartland. And they said that to the presidents. And I said, Go ahead, do it. They all said, We have got to do it sometime. They told me that. I mean, they told me that loud and clear. We did not lose anything with the farmers. They said, Somebody's got to do it. And I said, Here is what we are going to do. We are going to let them target you. We are going to charge them tariffs and going to give you back the money that you lost, that you were targeted for. And we are going to have tens of billions leftover for the treasury. Nobody else ever told him that. He is too scared to stand up to the radical left of his own party. And he is terrified of standing up to China, but I believe he is much more scared of the radical left than he is of China. You see the reports and news reports. They want him to win at any cost. If Biden is elected, China will own America. And if Biden is elected, you will have a depression the likes of which this country has never seen before. That is what they are going to have. Does anybody mind paying more tax? I like politics. I just always liked it. It is lucky I liked it because I never did it before. He is got no experience. And now that I look around yesterday, I was in the Oval Office, I said, Oh, excuse me. No, but a lot of it is common sense. That is why we call it protest. We are studying some of the things. I will tell you one quick story. So we are building an aircraft carrier long before my term, the Gerald Ford. And they decide on the catapults. You know the catapult? That throws the plane into the air. For years, it is been 50 years, whatever longer, it is been steam, simple, beautiful steam throws her off You ever see those airplanes? I came in and they said, Oh, it is got tremendous cost overruns. That is strange because they have been building them for years. You know about this. So anyway, I am supposed to go over and take a tour. I went to take a tour of the ship, find out why it is so late. I will not tell you how many billions of dollars it is over budget.


Other than that, it is wonderful. The elevators that bring the planes up, they do not work. So if you have a problem, you can get your plans up. They are down stuck in a garage, down at the bottom. So I go over and they want me to meet the admiral, but I said, No, no, no. I do not want to meet the admiral yet. I meet with the admirals a lot. I got a lot of admirals. I like the admirals. I want to meet with the catapultors. Sir, why would you want to meet with the catapultors for? So I went there and you know they did a new system. So instead of steam, which is simple and great and powerful and good. And they know how it works for years and years, they decided to go all electric. Now if you take a little glass of water, take this glass of water, you throw it and that is the end of that. You bring somebody in from MIT, how the hell do you fix it? And we are dealing with the ocean and rockets being shot at the ship and the rough stuff. So I said, No, I want to meet with a catapultor. One's been doing it for over 20 years I think he said. I said, What do you think of our new system of electric catapults? That is actually it is what I expected it to be on. I said, What do you think of steam? That if it breaks down, I can fix it with a blowtorch or this hammer, I can fix it. And if the waves hit it, sir, all it does is cool it down a little bit, sir. It is actually good for it, good for the surrounding steel. I said, Why did they do the electric? Then I wanted to see the architect and I saw a representative, the architect of ship. Now this is a ship that costs $15 billion. And I looked at the architect. I said, Have you designed a ship before? I said, You know, they have a $900 million cost overrun for electric catapults, and they are no good even if they were. I said to the guy, Why is it that they did away? Sir, we could do it much faster. I said, All right, well, that makes sense.


But the catapulter said, But sir, it does not matter because it takes one minute and 52 seconds, if you are Mario Andretti's team, to get a plane hooked in. So the steam generates during that minute and a half and it is all set to go. I said, That makes sense. That makes sense. So it is $900 million in cost overruns and here is the story. They spent much more money and it is no good. Then they have the elevators. Now, tractors use hydraulic, right? You know, they could do anything. Lightning hits the damn thing and nothing happens. So they have these big elevators that lift the planes up. They are lifted by magnets. I know about that. So instead of using powerful hydraulic that never breaks, they have magnetized elevators. I tell you this because you are workers and you guys understand this. It is what we do is so stupid. So they have hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overrun for stuff that is no good. And two years ago I told them it is no good. You might as well rip it out because it is never going to work. You put hydraulic in the elevators and you go back to steam and it is such a shame to see the kind of money that was squandered by people that have no idea what the hell they are doing. And you would understand that. I'd only tell that story to really sort of a group like this because you guys understand it. It is mechanical engineering at a very easy level. Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted for something not as good. Our politicians spent trillions and trillions of dollars rebuilding foreign nations, fighting foreign Wars, and defending foreign borders. But now we are finally protecting our nation, rebuilding our cities. We are bringing our jobs, our factories, and our troops back home to the USA where they belong. When the terrible plague arrived from China, we mobilized American industry like never before. We rapidly developed lifesaving therapies reducing the fatality rate by 85%. We have done such a good job, except in terms of public relations because the press just will not accept that. Think of what we have done with the ventilators. Europe is almost 30% greater excess mortality than the United States. They do not want to say it. And now, as you know, you heard today, Europe had a tremendous outbreak. You know, they say, Well, Europe, Europe, Europe.


Sadly, very sadly, I hate it, but they had a big outbreak that caused a stir in the market today. We launched the most ambitious vaccine program ever created. And we will deliver a vaccine before the end of the year, but it could be a lot sooner than that, a lot sooner. The Democrats, they are all saying, We want a vaccine. That is when they thought we could not get it, right? Because if we relied on them, this vaccine would have taken two or three years more because of the FDA, and I have mobilized the FDA, and it is incredible. But it would have taken two or three years more. So when they heard that we were getting the vaccine, they started knocking it. So they put politics over life and death. By the way, we are rounding the corner in any event, but we are going to have a vaccine very soon, is a great vaccine, great, great vaccine. And it is pretty sad when the Democrats try and make that into a political issue. We will end this pandemic in the next year. The third quarter will end just before November 3rd. You will see numbers, the likes of which no country has ever seen. I guess you are going to have to remember that. And if they are good, I hope you are going to remember it too, but they are going to be great. Somebody predicted 25% and then somebody said 35% GDP increase. Nobody's ever heard of a number like that. But that is the kind of thing we are doing. Under my leadership, we built the strongest economy in the history of the world, and now we are doing it again. In the past four months, we have added a record smashing 10.6 million jobs, never been close to that. And you know, as good as the stock market's doing, it is a headwind knowing you have an election. Things happen in elections, some bad things, some stupid things. If we win and when we win the election, you are going to see things roar because that is what people want. That is what the market wants. And that is what the workers want. Biden keeps talking about a nationwide shutdown. My plan is to crush the virus. Biden plan and Biden's really plan is to, and it is not that he wants to crush America, but he will just out of gross incompetence. Biden will surrender to the virus, just like he surrendered to China.


And just like he surrendered to the radical left, including his own running mate who is running the show. Well, I will tell you something. Elizabeth Warren did do a great number on Bloomberg. I tell you. One question and that was the end of him. How you enjoying politics, Mike? 1.8 billion wiped out in one question. That was the most expensive question in history. To protect our workers during the pandemic, I suspended the entry of new foreign workers who threatened American jobs. You do not mind that, do you folks? As the economy reopens, I want to ensure American workers that we are putting America first and our jobs are put first. Everything is now put first for the USA. And by the way, we are up to mile 330 on the wall. We are setting records on not allowing all of these. When you look at the traffickers. They traffic in women and drugs and other things, but they traffic in women, the drug dealers always. Setting records now on the wall because we have 330 miles. We are averaging 10 miles a week and we will be finished with the wall very soon. And it is had a huge impact. So one of the most radical things that will happen, and there is no way he can get away with this because he was banning fracking for a year. He is running, running, he is banning fracking. And then all of a sudden, now all of sudden he said, Well, I did not really say that. Remember, it is always the first thing they say with a politician. He wants to ban fracking and outlaw Ohio energy production. And you are a big energy producer, whether you know it or not. So he is going to ban fracking. And even if he did not want to, the whole radical left, their plan is to ban fracking. They want to ban fracking. They do not want any fossil fuels. Just a few days ago, Biden reiterated his plan to require net zero carbon emissions. So you do that. This requirement would end all investment in fracking and it would just shut down everything. Our country, do you see the rolling blackouts they have in California? I do not think we want too many of them in Ohio. Would anybody like a few rolling blackouts? Like we'd like to watch president Trump tonight. I am sorry, darling, but we have no energy. We have no energy. We are going to get it from the wind.


The wind, the wind has got a wonderful, wonderful energy. The wind, when it is blowing it is just fine for about 20% of the time. By ending fracking, Biden would destroy 700,000 to a million Ohio jobs and your energy prices would go through the roof. When Biden was Vice President, they deliberately killed 40% of all coal mining jobs and the rest were coming fast. I saved it. I put our miners back to work, clean coal. I call it clean coal. And while I am President, America will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world and Ohio workers will continue leading the way. And that is what we are doing. And just in concluding, over the next four years, we will build America into the manufacturing, super power of the world. And we will end our reliance on China and all other faraway lands that nobody in this beautiful facility, whatever the hell you make here, I do not know, but it looks good to me. But nobody ever heard of it. You have lands that would go to that nobody ever even heard of. Where are you sending this money? We are sending it to such and such a country. I never heard of it. We will make our medical supplies right here in the United States. We will cut your taxes and taxes for middle class families at a level never seen before. You know, we gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. We gave you the biggest regulation cut in the history of our country. And we are going to give you additional regulation cuts. That is one of the reasons you had the jobs. You know, in many ways, the regulation cutting was perhaps as important or more important. And we are going to expand opportunity zones to ensure that no community is left behind. And they have been a tremendous success, especially for the African American, Hispanic community. We worked hard on it. We will enforce immigration rules that defend American families, raise American wages, and always put the interests of American workers first. We will enact fair trade deals that ensure more products are proudly stamped with that beautiful phrase Made in the USA, right? In God We trust. And they took the word God out of the Pledge of Allegiance. You saw that. I was listening to this Pledge of Allegiance and I said, That is strange. They must've made a mistake.


And then it was getting ready to happen a third time, and somebody heard that the public was enraged, including me by the way. And by the way, we want the NFL to stand and put their hand on their heart. I thought we taught them that lesson about two years ago. The commissioner tried it again. People are angry about it. People love our country. You love our country. You love our flag. You love our anthem. This November, if you want jobs, if you want opportunity, if you want safety, and if you want a President who defends the dreams of workers in Dayton and Akron and all across Ohio in America, then you need to get out and vote for Trump, Mike Pence. And I love Mike, but it is not Pence Trump, okay? You know, when he said that the other day. He said the Harris Biden administration. And Mike called me up. He said, You never have to do that. Mike Pence has done a great job. I will tell you. This was a group of people, workers, and this is what it was told to me as, and we had a lot of fun and we have a lot of fun, but it is very serious business. November 3rd and before, depending on whether or not you have those fake ballots or whatever. I mean, that thing is going to be one of the great catastrophes. When they have small races, they cannot account. People steal the ballots. People do not get the ballots. They do not send them to a Republican area or maybe a Democrat area, whatever, it is still wrong. But they do not send them out. Then they harvest them, which they are not allowed to do. They have in Nevada, the Governor said he signed an order that they do not have to sign. We need no signature verification. Because they could not get people to sign, so they said, We will just send them in. This is a real affront to our democracy. And the Democrats know it and they say, Well, he is not for our great heritage. He is fighting our vote. No I am not fighting our vote. You have ballots that you go out and you can get, you could request as you know, you can request them and that is fine. But if you are not requesting them, when you get millions of ballots, 80 million they say all over the United States, where the hell are they going? Who is sending them?


My arm still hurts from the last time or one of the last times I came to St. Louis. I tried to fire a 90-mile-an-hour fastball on opening day got up there about 60, maybe. But I love coming to your town. Those of you who have traveled I want to thank those of you who traveled from outside this great city of St. Louis to come to support Talent. The Show Me State my attitude is, show me a good Senator, and I am going to back him. And we have got a great Senator in Jim Talent. I appreciate his spirit. I appreciate his working with the White House. He is an independent enough guy to tell us if we are not doing right. Tough, principled, unwilling to yield when he stands for when he believes he is correct. Every time I am with him, he is always talking about the citizens of Missouri. I say, What about Texas? So I am proud to stand here with him. And I think the people of Missouri will be wise to send this good man back to the United States Senate. It is good to meet your mother-in-law. It is a smart thing to bring the mother-in-law through the photo op line. I was also thrilled to meet Michael and Kate and Chrissy, Jim and Brenda's children. See, what is important to the Talents is putting their family first. That is what I like about Jim Talent. He is got his priorities absolutely straigh faith, family, and the United States of America. And Laura sends her love to all our friends here in Missouri. I was proud of her trip recently to the Middle East. She is sending a strong message as part of the freedom movement, and that is, you cannot be free unless women have a free role in society. But more importantly, she is a wonderful mother, wonderful wife, and a great First Lady for the United States. And I want to thank the senior Senator. That is appropriate to call you senior, but you are a little older than Talent, at least. Kit Bond has served this State with great distinction for a long time. And I am proud of your Governor. It still amazes me that you are old enough to meet the age requirement. He is the youngest looking Governor in America. And I appreciate your leadership in the statehouse, Matt. And the Lieutenant Governor is with us, Pete Kinder.

Remarks at a Dinner for Senator James M. Talent in St. Louis, Missouri


I have known Pete a long time, and I appreciate your serving, Pete, and joining Matt and making this State be all that it can be. I want to thank Congressman Kenny Hulshof as well, and his wife, Renee. Kenny is a bright star in the House of Representatives from the great State of Missouri. I love talking to Kenny. Every time I see him he says soybeans. I thank Mike Gibbons and his wife, Liz. I want to thank Rod Jetton, the speaker of the statehouse, and his wife, Cassie. I want to thank all of you all who serve. Somebody told me they thought Ambassador Danforth would be here tonight. I do want to say that he represented our country so well. I asked Jack Danforth from the State of Missouri to help resolve the Sudan civil war, the conflict between north and south. And unfortunately, Darfur has obscured the great progress that Ambassador Danforth made on behalf of peace. And when it is all said and done, Jack, your contribution to helping solve that problem will go down in history as one of the great humanitarian gestures by our country, led ably by you. I want to thank all the folks who helped put on this fundraiser. It is an incredibly successful evening and which speaks not only to your hard work but also to the admiration that your Senator has earned by the people of Missouri. We have got a lot to do in Washington. One of the things I like about Talent is he understands that our job in Washington is to confront problems, not pass them on to future Congresses. That is what the American people expect from those of us who have been elected. And we have got some problems we got to solve. Now, we dealt with one of our problems, and that is our economy. We had some tough times for a while because of the enemy attack and the down cycle of our economy. I do not know if you know this or not, but in the last 2 years, we have added over 3.5 million new jobs. More Americans are working today in our country than in the Nation's history. And I appreciate the fact that Jim understands we cannot rest, that the job of Government is not to create the wealth but an environment in which people are willing to risk capital, an environment in which there is a reasonable chance for America to stay competitive in the world. And one way to do that is to make sure we finally get an energy policy out of the United States Congress.


When I first got to Washington, I recognized that our country was too dependent on foreign sources of energy. And so I went to the Congress and said, Here is a strategy that will encourage more conservation, a strategy that will use research and development dollars to make it more likely we will have more renewable sources of energy, a strategy that says we can explore for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways in America, a strategy that recognizes we need to use nuclear power, a strategy we need clean coal technology, a strategy that says we can use soybeans to refine biodiesel They got it out of the House, and thanks to Jim Talent's leadership and Kit Bond's leadership, they are going to get a good bill off the Senate floor. I am going to sign a bill. For the sake of national security and for the sake of economic security, Congress needs to get me a good energy bill by the recess, by the summer recess break this year. Smart policy will enable us to grow out of our hydrocarbon society, which we are going to have to do. I went to a refinery in Virginia the other day it is an unusual kind of refinery; it is a refinery that refines biodiesel and saw a new C.A.T. engine that can burn 100 percent biodiesel with no exhaust. See, technology is going to enable us to diversify away from our old habits, which will be good for our country, good for our economy. And the United States Congress can help that diversification process through wise policy. Jim Talent understands that, and I am going to keep pushing hard to make sure the rest of the United States Senators understand that. I appreciate the fact that we passed a good, tough budget out of the United States Senate. I hope you appreciate that as well. We have got to show the people of this country that we can be wise about how we spend your money. Notice I did not say the Government's money how we spend your taxpayers' money. And so I said to them, Here is a way to cut our deficit in half, meet our priorities, but it requires fiscal discipline. And I want to thank Jim Talent for his understanding that you cannot be all things to all people when it comes time to spending the taxpayers' money. You have to set priorities. You have to have goals, and you must show fiscal discipline. We passed a good budget.


I am looking forward to working with this good Senator to make sure the appropriation process stays stuck to the budget. I am also working on Social Security for a reason. The reason is, is that there is a huge problem looming for a younger set of Americans. I just came from Hopkinsville, Kentucky Hopkington, Kentucky, and I told the people there what I have been telling folks all across the country, that if you get your check, you have nothing to worry about. I mean, the Social Security system is just fine for people receiving their check. But because baby boomers like me are getting ready to retire see, my retirement age shows up at 2008 which is a convenient year. But the problem for younger workers is there is more than just me retiring. As a matter of fact, about 73 million of us are set to retire. And I do not know about the rest of you baby boomers here, but I plan on living longer than the previous generation. As a matter of fact, I am trying to exercise on a daily basis so that I do live longer. And not only that, but we have been promised greater benefits than the previous generation. So you have got a lot of baby boomers living longer, getting greater benefits, with fewer people paying into the system. In 1950 I do not know if you know this or not but 16 workers paid for every retiree. So we have got a problem, folks. It is not a problem for people who receive their check. It is a problem for people coming up. It is a problem not for the grandparents but the grandchildren. And so I think now it is time to do something about it, and so does Jim Talent. And I have laid out some proposals. One of them is, why do not we just slow down the growth rate of benefits for some of the wealthier citizens. Their benefits will grow but not as quite as fast as Congress of the past thought they ought to grow. It is called progressive indexing, which, by the way, will get most of the problem solved. I also think younger workers ought to be allowed to take some of their own payroll tax and set up in a voluntary personal savings account. Right now the Government gets a whopping 1.8 percent on your money when we hold it in the payroll tax. With a conservative mix of bonds and stocks, you can get at least 4 1/2 percent.


You compound that difference over time, somebody is going to have a pretty sizable nest egg they can call their own. The reason I like Jim Talent is because he wants to promote an ownership society in America. He and I reject this business about the investor class only pertains to a certain group of people. We believe everybody in this country ought to own assets. We believe everybody ought to have the ability to pass on their assets to whomever they choose. We know that when you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of the United States of America. Now is the time to not only fix Social Security for generations to come but to make Social Security a better deal for all Americans. And when we get that done, we are going to reform the Tax Code. I put together a group of Democrats and Republicans to make some recommendations. I know I will have a strong ally in Jim Talent in making sure the Tax Code is more fair, is less large, and accomplishes the mission, and that is to collect revenues for our Government in a fair, honest way. Do you realize that I read a report the other day where some person estimated from the IRS that there is about $325 billion a year in people avoiding taxes. And part of it has to do with the complexities of the Tax Code. For the sake of an economy that grows and for the sake of a better America, we have got to reform the Tax Code of the United States, and we will. I have got a good ally in Jim Talent when it comes to legal reform. One sure way to make sure this country is not competitive is to allow these frivolous and junk lawsuits to continue to plague people who are trying to run businesses. We got too many lawsuits in America, plain and simple. I want to congratulate Matt for getting good legal reform out of the legislature. We ought to do the same thing in Washington. We got a good class-action reform bill out, and I want to thank Jim for his work on that. I think we are going to get an asbestos bill out here pretty quick, which would be good news. We need one other bill that is really important. You know, when I went to Washington, I said, Well, most of these legal matters can be solved at the State level, until I began to look at the effect on the Federal budget of these junk and frivolous lawsuits against docs.


Because of these lawsuits, doctors either get run out of business, or the premiums go up which cost you or the taxpayers more money or they practice defensive medicine in order to stay out of the courts. It is estimated that these lawsuits cost the Federal Government about $28 billion a year. Even for all the money we spend, that is a lot. We want people to have their day in court if they get injured by a lousy doc, but we got to do something about these frivolous lawsuits. I proposed a good piece of legislation that is now stuck in the United States Senate. Jim Talent is a strong backer for medical liability reform at the Federal level, and I want to thank him for his support. I remember when Jim ran for the Senate, he said he would be Missouri's health care Senator, and he has kept that promise. We worked together to strengthen Medicare by giving seniors more choices and by modernizing the system to include a prescription drug benefit. Talent understood what I know what kind of system is it where we pay for surgery from a heart attack but not the medicine to prevent the surgery from being needed in the first place? It was an antiquated, outdated system that needed market incentives in the program and needed to be brought up to date for the sake of our seniors. The Medicare bill that Jim helped pass out of the United States Senate is a good piece of legislation that will mean better quality of life for our seniors in America. And finally, an issue I know is dear to his heart is association health plans. You know, too many small businesses cannot afford health insurance for their employees. And there is a practical way to deal with the problem, and that is to allow small businesses to pool risk across jurisdictional boundaries so they can buy insurance at the same discounts that big companies get to do. It is a sensible approach to helping deal with health care costs. It makes a lot of sense. Talent is the author of that idea on the Senate floor, and I look forward to working with him to get association health care plans past. And I want to thank you for your leadership on that issue. There is a lot of issues that we could be talking about here, and he said, when I got up here, he said, Make sure you keep it relatively short. These people paid a lot of money. I do want to talk about a couple of other things, though.


Because of Jim Talent's leadership and steadfast support, our party will continue to support faith-based and community groups as a way to help heal hurt in America. You know, I gave a speech the other day at Calvin College, and I talked about Alexis de Tocqueville. He had interesting observations about America in 1832. He talked about the strength of America being in the souls of our citizens and that people were able to find great comfort and solace and strength through civic organizations, voluntary organizations where people come together to help heal the hurts of society. That was true in 1832, and it is darn sure true today in 2005. The strength of this country lies in the hearts and souls of our citizens. And the Federal Government should not fear should not fear the presence of faith to help deal with social problems, as a matter of fact, ought to welcome faith programs and to help deal with social problems. I appreciate Jim's willingness to join me in promoting a culture of life in America. I want to thank Jim for helping defend the institution of marriage from being redefined by activist judges. And speaking about judges I want to thank both Senators from Missouri for understanding that every nominee a President sends up must have a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee, an expeditious hearing in the Judiciary Committee and then an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate. I nominated a fantastic woman named Priscilla Owen over 4 years ago to the bench, Fifth Court. She is a fantastic lady, tops in her law school class. In our State, you got to run for Supreme Court, and she ran for Supreme Court, got endorsed by Republicans and Democrats, won something like 80 percent of the State because she is a great judge. For 4 long years her nomination was held up for pure partisan reasons 4 years and finally, as a result of never giving up and being steadfast and strong, she got her vote. I want to thank Senators Talent and Bond for supporting this great woman. We got another confirmation that needs to get done too. It is time for the United States Senate to stop playing pure politics, stall politics, and give John Bolton an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. People look at the Government and say, What is going on with all this filibustering? Why cannot people come together and do what is right for the country? Listen, the United Nations needs reform, and I have got a man who can go up there and reform it.


And John Bolton needs a vote. People are tired of this. Focus on the people's business; stop playing politics; get something done for the good of the country. And that is the attitude Jim Talent brings to the Senate floor, and I appreciate that a lot. Jim Talent also understands the war on terror goes on. He is a strong, strong supporter of our military, and I want to thank you for that. You know, we have a duty to make sure these troops get the best possible equipment and the best possible training. And we are fulfilling that obligation. You know, our strategy is clear on the war on terror. We are going to find them overseas so we do not have to find them face them here at home. We will defeat them there in order to protect the homeland. The only way to defend America is to stay on the offense against these people, and that is exactly what the United States of America will continue to do. One is through good intelligence and good movement of troops and good work with the allies. And there is another way to stay on the offense against the terrorists, and that is to spread freedom. There is nothing that frightens these ideological killers more than democracy. It scares them a lot. They cannot survive in a democracy. They can survive in places where tyrants have discouraged hope, suppressed people. They cannot survive in an open society. See, they cannot stand the light of freedom. One, we will be tough as heck and stay on the offense, but we will also have great faith in the capacity of freedom to transform hateful societies to hopeful societies, to transform the conditions that create hate to the conditions that create hope. And that is what you are seeing around the world. It is a fantastic period in American history. If you have got young children, I hope you explain to them what they are seeing. It was not all that long ago that those poor people lived under the barbaric clutches of the Taliban. These people were so barbaric that young girls were not even allowed to go to school, and if their mothers dared speak out, they were taken to the public square and whipped. We liberated Afghanistan for our own sake. Remember, Afghanistan was the home of Al Qaida and its training camps. I laid out a doctrine that said, If you harbor a terrorist, you are as guilty as the terrorists.


And we told the Taliban to get rid of Al Qaida, and they would not do it, and so it is important that when you say something, you mean it. It is important that when you say you are going to do it that you go ahead and do it, for the sake of peace. But as importantly, 25 million people were liberated in Afghanistan. It is fantastic to think about that. I have had a lot of friends go over to Afghanistan, and Karen Hughes was there early on after the liberation, and she went again. I will tell you a great American story. My barber was raised in Afghanistan. And she came over here to there was a revolution or civil war or whatever you want to call it, and she decided to stay in America, raised her three kids here, and used her great talents and enthusiasm for her country to raise money to build two schools. What kind of a country is it where you got a barber to the President working hard, using her influence and her contacts and her friends to raise money quite a bit of money, by the way to build schools in a faraway country, spectacular country that encourages compassion not only at home but abroad. Afghanistan is changing for the better, and as it does, the world will be more peaceful. Listen, we got rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a threat to peace. I am sure you were amazed, as was much of the world, at the 8 1/2 million people who defied the car bombers and the killers and the suiciders to say as loud as they possibly can, You will not prevent us from voting and exercising our rights as free citizens. And now we are standing with the Government as they struggle against these suiciders. And our mission is clear there as well, and that is to train the Iraqis so they can do the fighting, make sure they can stand up to defend their freedoms, which they want to do. And then our troops are coming home with the honor they earned. And the world will be better off with a free Iraq and a free Afghanistan in the broader Middle East. Ukraine had a freedom revolution. Lebanon is now having a freedom revolution. Listen, freedom is on the march. And the role of the United States of America is to stand with freedom lovers and reformers and believers in the power of democracy. And when we do so and as we do so, we will leave a foundation of peace behind for our children and grandchildren.


We congratulate you all. We are delighted that the Chair of the District of Columbia Control Board, Andrew Brimmer, and Councilwoman Charlene Drew Jarvis are here. And I want to thank Secretary Daley in spite of the fact that he was making fun of my penchant for animal stories of all kinds. I mean, I do not come from Chicago--I come from the country. But my wife comes from Chicago. I want to thank Earnie Deavenport, too. Several years ago the Eastman Company loaned me an executive when I was Governor of Arkansas, and we established the first statewide total quality management program in the country. It was what gave me the idea to start what eventually became the reinventing Government project headed by the Vice President, which among other things has now given us the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy was here. And I will give $5 to anyone in the audience who can honestly say you have missed it. I say that because the Federal employees have done a very good job of increasing their output and the quality of their service while downsizing their numbers so that we can take advantage of technology, get the deficit down, get the economy going again. So we have learned from you. And I have talked with Earnie many times about the importance of trying to apply these lessons to other areas of human endeavor. I also think there are applications-if you look at the success in many law enforcement departments around the country, there are law enforcement applications here because the thing that a belief in continuous progress through not only doing the right things but doing the right things right gives you is the conviction that you can repeat whatever you are doing right in one place somewhere else. So I really am delighted to see you here. But I think, for me, because I have seen this work over and over and over again in the private as well as the public sector, that is what cries out for application to our public institutions, whether it is in education or health care or in law enforcement. If the city of Boston could go virtually 2 1/2 years without a single child being killed by a handgun, until-unfortunately, they had an incident last week, but they went 2 1/2 years. No city in the United States that big has been able to do that.

Remarks on Presenting the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards


It must therefore follow that if other people did the same thing in the same way and then you started the kind of contest you have here in the market system so everybody tried to keep continuously improving their process, that we would become a safer country. In health care, we have all these-you know, managed care, on balance, has been a good thing for America, because we have managed some inefficiency out of the system. But now people are genuinely worried about who is making the decisions about their health care and whether quality will continue to be the most important value in the health care system. I think all of us want it to be; even those of you who may have responsibility in your organization for holding down health care costs, the last thing in the world you want is for your employees not to have access to the health care that they need. And goodness knows, in education-I have said this so many times, the poor people in the press who have to cover me get tired of hearing it, but the most frustrating thing about American education today is that every problem in education has been solved by somebody somewhere, and nobody's figured out how to have everybody else follow suit so that you launch the kind of competitive process that you come here to celebrate today. So, for all these reasons, I love coming here. And I always feel that by the time I get up to speak, there is no point in my saying anything. I told Mrs. Baldrige I kind of hated to walk out here. You all were so enthusiastic, you should have been outside listening to all this energy being emanated from this room. It is wonderful to be in a place where people do not think it is too corny or too embarrassing to be exuberant about what they do. Can you imagine what would happen in this country if everybody wanted to wave a flag for the place they work every day? Can you imagine that? I am sure somewhere in this room there is some cynic saying, This is too hokey. I cannot believe they are doing this. Where do you spend more time than at work? Why should not you want to wave a flag? We want to cheer about our families, cheer about the places we work, cheer about the clubs we associate with. This country would work a lot better if everybody felt like they could cheer about the place they work.


That is why I always try to make these awards, and why I think it was a stroke of genius to establish them, although I bet even when they were established, the founders could never have imagined what the far-reaching impact would be, that most States would follow suit, that countries would follow suit. There is this idea now embodied in our four winners today, in 3M Dental Products, in Merrill Lynch Credit, in Solectron, and XBS, that you can always get better and that you can organize not only to do the right things but to do the right things right in a way that elevates the people who work for the enterprise, serves the general public better, and obviously supports the bottom line. It is nice to think that. If you get a multiple-choice question like that, it is not too easy to make an A. None of us do all the time. But we come here to celebrate what we can do at our best. I'd also like to thank the Department of Commerce, Secretary Daley, the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the support that they give to this endeavor. But most of all, I just want to say, just think about where this idea was 10 years ago and where it is today. Think about how many of the groundbreaking reforms that have been recognized in Baldrige Award winners in the past that are now just standard industry practice. Think about what it would be like if everybody would so shamelessly try to learn what their competitors are doing and do it at least that well and then figure out how to do it better, if in every area of human endeavor you did that. What do we celebrate? The stake the employees have in the company, the flexibility, the innovation, the creativity, the spirit of enterprise. It has brought America back. When I became President, and even when I was running for President, I saw that the 1980's, while they had been very tough on American business, had also produced a remarkable understanding that was widely shared throughout the country about what had to be done to be internationally competitive. And I always saw a big part of my duty here as just to have Government policies that would reinforce what is right and get out of the way of what is right, so that we could create the conditions and give people the tools so that everybody could do what you are doing. And we have tried to do that.


I appreciate what Secretary Daley said about the turtle on the fencepost; that is one of the things I always say in the Cabinet meeting. It took us 3 months, and we did not have to translate all my aphorisms to people who never had the privilege of living in rural areas. We have tried to do three simple things to help you. One, get the deficit down and balance the budget so that we could keep interest rates down, improve interest rates not only for businesses but for individuals and on home mortgages, and two consequences of that are that we have an all-time high rate of homeownership-it is above two-thirds for the first time in the history of America-and we have record levels of business investment, which is becoming very important now because we are able to sustain a little higher rate of internal growth as you see a little turmoil around the world. I want to say a little more about that in a minute. When the Congress adopted the balanced budget amendment-I mean act-in 1997, back in August, and I signed it, the deficit had already dropped by 92 percent below its high in 1992. It went from $292 billion a year down to $23 billion a year. And I want to make a point about that, because I am sure you found this in your company. When you get this award, you can come here and celebrate, and you do not even have to think about how hard and often controversial some of the changes you had to make were to get to this point. Well, when we decided we were going to bring the deficit down, it was like pulling fingernails out around this place. And the bill in 1993 passed by one vote in both Houses. Now all of us think we are geniuses. If it had gone wrong, half the people that live in town could have said, I told you they were fools. And now we are going to balance this budget, and we are going to have a healthier economy. And that is very important because it frees you to do what you do best. The second thing we have tried to do is to change the conditions in which you operate by opening more of the global economy to American companies. We have had over 200 trade agreements in the last 5 years, by far the largest number ever. And the Uruguay round, finished back in 1993, amounts to the largest tax cut on American goods in history. And now we are the number one exporter in the world again.


I think it is very important that we continue to press ahead in that. I believe very strongly that it was a mistake when we were unable to get enough votes in the House of Representatives to renew the President's fast-track trade authority to negotiate comprehensive bills. Not because nobody ever loses in trade in America. But most of the job loss in America comes from technological change and old-fashioned business failure. Some of it does come from change in the trading rules. What is the answer to that? You can either say, Well, we are just not going to change any more rules and try to pretend that we will not be subject to these global forces, or you could say, We are going to change the rules, create more jobs, raise more incomes, and do a heck of a lot better job than we have been doing in the past with the people who are dislocated through no fault of their own. We have 4 percent of the world's people and 20 percent of the world's income. And the developing economies are growing at roughly 3 times the rate of the advanced economies like the United States, Japan, and Europe. Now again, you do not have to be a mathematical genius to figure out if you have 4 percent of the people and you have got 20 percent of the income and you would like to stay roughly as well off as you are and maybe, if you are very clever, get a little better off, you have to sell something to the other 96 percent of the people in the world, especially if their growth rates are faster than yours. Now, that does not mean that we should forget about the people who are dislocated from trade or from technology or even from old-fashioned business failures-people who have to start again. That brings me to the third thing that I want to say, which is that in addition to balancing the budget and having sensible economic policies, having an aggressive trade policy, we must have a policy that invests in our people and recognizes that in every company here rewarded, you were rewarded in part because you recognized that by far the most important resources you had were the people who were working for the company. With all respect, nobody was up here waving a flag for the Xerox machine back home- -you know, or the whatever. Whatever the widget is, nobody was doing that.