please using py.test to check theCompleteness.3/5/2020 1/6 “The Markovian Candidate”: Speaker...

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please using py.test to check theCompleteness.

3/5/2020 1/6 “The Markovian Candidate”: Speaker Attribution Using Markov Models Due: Wednesday, March 11th at 6pm The goal of this assignment is to give you practice with building a hash table from scratch and to exercise the skills you learned this quarter. There are two important notes about this assignment: 1. You can work alone or in pairs for this assignment. Please follow the same procedures as prior PAs when registering as a pair or alone. 2. The teaching staff will NOT help debug your assignment and they won’t look at your code before the submission. For helpful debugging tips, see the section “Debugging suggestions” below. Introduction In lecture, we saw how Markov models capture the statistical relationships present in a language like Eng- lish. These models allow us to go beyond simplistic observations, like the frequency with which specific let- ters or words appear in a language, and instead to capture the relationships between words or letters in se- quences. As a result, we can not only appreciate that the letter “q” appears in text at a certain rate, but also that it is virtually always followed by a “u.” Similarly, “to be” is a much more likely word sequence than “to is.” In class, we discussed how to generate realistic-looking, if nonsensical, text, by randomly choosing words while keeping in mind the influence of the preceding words. Another application of Markov models is in analyzing actual text and assessing the likelihood that a particular person uttered it. That is one objective of this assignment. In lecture, we also talked about hash tables: data structures that store associations between keys and val- ues (exactly like dictionaries in Python) and provide an efficient means of looking up the value associated with a given key. Hash tables find a desired entry rapidly by limiting the set of places where it can be. They avoid “hot spots,” even with data that might otherwise all seem to belong in the same place, by dispersing the data through hashing. These benefits are why Python, in fact, uses hash tables behind the scenes in its implementation of dictio- naries. The concept of hashing is so fundamental and useful in so many ways, however, that now is the time to peel back the curtain and see how dictionaries work by building your own. That is the other objec- tive of this assignment. Apart from developing an appreciation of how hashing and hash tables work, you will also be better pre- pared if ever you need to write your own hash table in the future. For instance, you may use a language (like C) that does not feature a built-in hash table. Or, the hash table that is used by a language, like Python, may interact poorly with your particular data, obligating you to design a custom-tailored one. Af- ter completing this assignment, you should consider hash tables to be in your programming repertoire. Getting started We have seeded your repository with a directory for this assignment. To pick it up, change to your capp30122-win-20-username directory (where the string username should be replaced with your user- name), run git pull to make sure that your local copy of the repository is in sync with the server, and then run git pull upstream master to pick up the distribution. Hash tables and Linear Probing In the interest of building and testing code one component at a time, you will start by building a hash ta- ble. Once you have gotten this module up and running, you will use it in your construction of a Markov Note: the deadline for this PA is on Wednesday. 3/5/2020 2/6 model for speaker attribution. There are different types of hash tables; for this assignment, we will use the type that is implemented with linear probing. We described how these work in lecture; here is a reference on the topic. Please look at hash_table.py. You will modify this file to implement a hash table using the linear probing algorithm. The class HashTable must have: A hash function that takes in a string and returns a hash value. Use the standard string hashing func- tion discussed in class. This function should be “private” to the class. A constructor that takes in the initial number of cells to use and a default value to return when looking up a key that has not been inserted. It must create a list of empty cells with the specified length. You can assume the value passed in for the initial number of cells will be greater than 0. lookup, which takes in a key and returns its associated value: either the one stored in the hash table, if present, or the default value, if not. update, which takes in a key and value, and updates the existing value for that key with the new value or inserts the key-value pair into the hash table, as appropriate. A hash table built on linear probing does not have unlimited capacity, since each cell can only contain a single value and there are a fixed number of cells. But, we do not want to have to anticipate how many cells might be used for a given hash table in advance and hard-code that number in for the capacity of the hash table. Therefore, we will take the following approach: the cell capacity passed into the constructor will rep- resent the initial size of the table. If the fraction of occupied cells grows beyond the constant TOO_FULL af- ter an update, then we will perform an operation called rehashing: We will expand the size of our hash ta- ble, and migrate all the data into their proper locations in the newly-expanded hash table (i.e., each key- value pair is hashed again, with the hash function now considering the new size of the table). We will grow the size of the table by GROWTH_RATIO; for instance, if this is 2, the size of the hash table will double each time it becomes too full. You can use the hash function presented in these slides, and use 37 as a constant in that function. The ord() function in Python is an option to compute the numerical value of a character. Let be a function that maps a character in a string to a number, a constant, and as the size of the hash table, then a possible hash function , which we ask you to use in this assignment, can be defined as (see slide #6): and Testing We have provided test code for your hash table class in test_hash_table.py. Markov model for sequences of letters Next, we will use this hash table to track the number of times letter sequences appear in a text. A k-th order Markov model tracks the last letters as the context for the present letter. We will build a class called Markov that will work for any positive value of provided. This class, naturally, resides in markov.py. While we use the term “letter,” we will actually work with all characters, whether they be letters, digits, spaces, or punctuation, and will distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters. We will discuss how we will use this class to help identify the speaker of a particular text. Then, we will cir- cle back and explain how it learns the characteristics of a given speaker in the first place. Determining the likelihood of unidentified text f () ci S = . . .c1c2 cj k = 37 M h() h(S) = g( )cj g( ) = {ci (g( ) ∗ k + f ( )) mod Mci−1 cif ( ) mod Mci , i ∈ {2, 3, . . . , j} , i = 1 k k http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr03/cs226/lectures/hashing.4up.pdf http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr03/cs226/lectures/hashing.4up.pdf http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr03/cs226/lectures/hashing.4up.pdf 3/5/2020 3/6 Given a string of text from an unidentified speaker, we will use a Markov model for a known speaker to as- sess the likelihood that the text was uttered by that speaker. If we have built models for different speakers, then we will have likelihood values for each, and will choose the speaker with the highest likelihood as the probable source. As we saw in lecture, these probabilities can be very small, since they take into account every possible phrase of a certain length that a speaker could have uttered. Therefore, we expect that all likelihoods are low in an absolute sense, but will still find their relative comparisons to be meaningful. Very small num- bers are problematic, however, because they tax the precision available for floating-point values. The solu- tion we will adopt for this problem is to use log probabilities instead of the probabilities themselves. This way, even a very small number is represented by a negative value in the range between zero and, for in- stance, -20. If our log probabilities are negative and we want to determine which probability is more likely, will the greater number (the one closer to zero) represent the higher or lower likelihood, based on how log- arithms work? Note that when we use Python’s math.log function, we will calculate natural logarithms. Your code should use this base for its logarithms. While any base would suffice to ameliorate our real number precision problem, we will be comparing your results to the results from our implementation, which itself uses nat- ural logs. As we scan down the string of text from the unidentified speaker, at every character, we will consider it and the characters that preceded it in our -th order Markov model. We will use the model to calculate the probability that the current character would have been uttered by the modeled speaker, given the con- text of the previous characters. This represents a likelihood for that particular letter. Were we calculating a probability for the entire phrase, we would multiply together all the per-letter probabilities to yield the value for the entire phrase. But, since we are working with log probabilities, we add them. What is the probability of a given character in the context of the last ? One reasonable way to calculate this is to look at how many times we have seen the modeled speaker utter the preceding characters fol- lowed by the current character (a + 1 length sequence), divided by the number of times we have observed the speaker to have uttered the preceding characters (a -letter sequence). In the count we use for the de- nominator, we only look at the preceding characters in a row, but each time they appeared, they were fol- lowed by some other character. Thus, we are taking the ratio of all the times they were followed by the cur- rent character over all the times they were followed by some character, to yield the likelihood that the cur- rent character was

pa5-3d5lpc4f.zip the-markovian-candidate-speaker-attribution-using-markov-models-p2v34qa0.pdf

Abr Writing · Accepted Answer

pa5/__pycache__/hash_table.cpython-38.pyc
pa5/ci.yml
compile_and_lint:
    stage: build
    script:
        - python3 -m py_compile pa5/*.py
        - pylint -E pa5/*.py
run_tests:
    stage: test
    script:
        - cd pa5/ && py.test -v
    after_script:
        - cd pa5/ && ../common/grader.py
pa5/hash_table.py
'''
CAPP 30122 W'20: Markov models and hash tables
YOUR NAME HERE
'''
TOO_FULL = 0.5
GROWTH_RATIO = 2
class HashTable:
    def __init__(self, cells, defval):
        '''
        Construct a new hash table with a fixed number of cells equal to the
        parameter "cells", and which yields the value defval upon a lookup to a
        key that has not previously been inserted
        '''
        ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
        pass
    def lookup(self, key):
        '''
        Retrieve the value associated with the specified key in the hash table,
        or return the default value if it has not previously been inserted.
        '''
        ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
        pass
    def update(self, key, val):
        '''
        Change the value associated with key "key" to value "val".
        If "key" is not currently present in the hash table,  insert it with
        value "val".
        '''
        ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
        pass
pa5/markov.py
'''
CAPP 30122 W'20: Markov models and hash tables
YOUR NAME HERE
'''
import sys
import math
import hash_table
HASH_CELLS = 57
class Markov:
    def __init__(self, k, s):
        '''
        Construct a new k-order Markov model using the statistics of string "s"
        '''
        ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
        self.k = k
        self.text = s
        self.rawFrequencies = self.generateFrequencies()
        self.alphabetSize = len(set(self.text))
    def log_probability(self, s):
        '''
        Get the log probability of string "s", given the statistics of
        character sequences modeled by this particular Markov model
        This probability is *not* normalized by the length of the string.
        '''
        ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
        totalLogLikelihood = 0
        for i in range(0, len(s)):
            temp = self.getKGram(self.k+1,i,s)
            lap = math.log(self.laplace(temp))
            totalLogLikelihood += lap
        return totalLogLikelihood
        # return totalLogLikelihood/len(s)
    def generateFrequencies(self):
    	rawFrequencies = {}
    	for i in range(len(self.text)):
    		kGram = self.getKGram(self.k,i,self.text)
    		if(kGram in rawFrequencies):
    			temp = rawFrequencies[kGram]
    			rawFrequencies[kGram] = ++temp
    		else:
    			rawFrequencies[kGram] = 1
    	for i in range(len(self.text)):
    		kPlusOneGram = self.getKGram(self.k+1,i,self.text)
    		if(kPlusOneGram in rawFrequencies):
    			temp = rawFrequencies[kPlusOneGram]
    			rawFrequencies[kPlusOneGram] = ++temp
    		else:
    			rawFrequencies[kPlusOneGram] = 1
    	return rawFrequencies
    def getKGram(self, k, number, s):
    	temp = ""
    	if number + k > len(s):
    		temp = s[number:len(s)-1]
    		temp += s[0:k-len(temp)-1]
    	else:
    		temp = s[number:number+k-1]
    	return temp
    def laplace(self, s):
        temp = 1;
        temp2 = self.alphabetSize;
        substring = s[0:len(s)-2]
        
        if s in self.rawFrequencies:
            temp += self.rawFrequencies[s]
        
        if substring in self.rawFrequencies:
            temp2 += self.rawFrequencies.get(substring)
        return temp/temp2
def identify_speaker(speaker_a, speaker_b, unknown_speech, k):
    '''
    Given sample text from two speakers, and text from an unidentified speaker,
    return a tuple with the *normalized* log probabilities of each of the
    speakers uttering that text under a "k" order character-based Markov model,
    and a conclusion of which speaker uttered the unidentified text
    based on the two probabilities.
    '''
    ### YOUR CODE HERE ###
    markov1 = Markov(k, speaker_a)
    likelihood1 = markov1.log_probability(unknown_speech)
    markov2 = Markov(k, speaker_b)
    likelihood2 = markov2.log_probability(unknown_speech)
    if likelihood1  " +
              "
   " +
              "")
        sys.exit(0)
    with open(sys.argv[1], "r") as file1:
        speech1 = file1.read()
    with open(sys.argv[2], "r") as file2:
        speech2 = file2.read()
    with open(sys.argv[3], "r") as file3:
        speech3 = file3.read()
    res_tuple = identify_speaker(speech1, speech2, speech3, int(sys.argv[4]))
    print_results(res_tuple)
if __name__ == "__main__":
	go()
pa5/pytest.ini
[pytest]
json_report = tests.json
timeout = 120
[test-points]
Hash Table simple lookup/update tests = simple,30
Hash Table rehash tests = rehash,15
markov tests = markov,25
pa5/README.txt
CAPP 30122: "The Markovian Candidate": Speaker Attribution Using Markov Models
hash_table.py: you will modify this file to implement a hash table
markov.py: you will modify this file to implement a Markov model and to perform
           speaker attribution
speeches: contains sample text to use for testing
pa5/speeches/bush1+2.txt
I, too, thank the University of Miami, and say our prayers are with the good people of this state, 
who've suffered a lot.
September the 11th changed how America must look at the world. And since that day, our nation has been on a 
multi-pronged strategy to keep our country safer.
We pursued Al Qaida wherever Al Qaida tries to hide. Seventy-five percent of known Al Qaida leaders have 
been brought to justice. The rest of them know we're after them.
We've upheld the doctrine that said if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist.
And the Taliban are no longer in power. Ten million people have registered to vote in Afghanistan in the 
upcoming presidential election.
In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th, we must take threats seriously, 
before they fully materialize. Saddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell. America and the world are safer for 
it. We continue to pursue our policy of disrupting those who proliferate weapons of mass destruction.
Libya has disarmed. The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice.
And, as well, we're pursuing a strategy of freedom around the world, because I understand free nations will 
reject terror. Free nations will answer the hopes and aspirations of their people. Free nations will help us 
achieve the peace we all want.
No, I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know 
I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead.
I have -- I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some 
tough decisions. But people know where I stand.
People out there listening know what I believe. And that's how best it is to keep the peace.
This nation of ours has got a solemn duty to defeat this ideology of hate. And that's what they are. This is 
a group of killers who will not only kill here, but kill children in Russia, that'll attack unmercifully in 
Iraq, hoping to shake our will.
We have a duty to defeat this enemy. We have a duty to protect our children and grandchildren.
The best way to defeat them is to never waver, to be strong, to use every asset at our disposal, is to 
constantly stay on the offensive and, at the same time, spread liberty.
And that's what people are seeing now is happening in Afghanistan.
Ten million citizens have registered to vote. It's a phenomenal statistic. They're given a chance to be 
free, and they will show up at the polls. Forty-one percent of those 10 million are women.
In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. You know why? Because an enemy 
realizes the stakes. The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. 
That's why they're fighting so vociferously.
They showed up in Afghanistan when they were there, because they tried to beat us and they didn't. And 
they're showing up in Iraq for the same reason. They're trying to defeat us.
And if we lose our will, we lose. But if we remain strong and resolute, we will defeat this enemy.
My opponent looked at the same intelligence I looked at and declared in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a 
grave threat.
He also said in December of 2003 that anyone who doubts that the world is safer without Saddam Hussein does 
not have the judgment to be president.
I agree with him. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
I was hoping diplomacy would work. I understand the serious consequences of committing our troops into 
harm's way.
It's the hardest decision a president makes. So I went to the United Nations. I didn't need anybody to tell 
me to go to the United Nations. I decided to go there myself.
And I went there hoping that, once and for all, the free world would act in concert to get Saddam Hussein to 
listen to our demands. They passed the resolution that said, "Disclose, disarm, or face serious 
consequences." I believe, when an international body speaks, it must mean what it says.
Saddam Hussein had no intention of disarming. Why should he? He had 16 other resolutions and nothing took 
place. As a matter of fact, my opponent talks about inspectors. The facts are that he was systematically 
deceiving the inspectors.
That wasn't going to work. That's kind of a pre-September 10th mentality, the hope that somehow resolutions 
and failed inspections would make this world a more peaceful place. He was hoping we'd turn away. But there 
was fortunately others beside himself who believed that we ought to take action.
We did. The world is safer without Saddam Hussein.
Jim, we've got the capability of doing both.
As a matter of fact, this is a global effort.
We're facing a group of folks who have such hatred in their heart, they'll strike anywhere, with any means.
And that's why it's essential that we have strong alliances, and we do.
That's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of 
people like Al Qaida, which we are.
But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war 
on terror.
Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden. He's isolated. Seventy-five percent of his people 
have been brought to justice. The killer -- the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheik 
Mohammed, is in prison.
We're making progress.
But the front on this war is more than just one place. The Philippines -- we've got help -- we're helping 
them there to bring -- to bring Al Qaida affiliates to justice there.
And, of course, Iraq is a central part in the war on terror. That's why Zarqawi and his people are trying to 
fight us. Their hope is that we grow weary and we leave.
The biggest disaster that could happen is that we not succeed in Iraq. We will succeed. We've got a plan to 
do so. And the main reason we'll succeed is because the Iraqis want to be free.
I had the honor of visiting with Prime Minister Allawi. He's a strong, courageous leader. He believes in the 
freedom of the Iraqi people.
He doesn't want U.S. leadership, however, to send mixed signals, to not stand with the Iraqi people.
He believes, like I believe, that the Iraqis are ready to fight for their own freedom. They just need the 
help to be trained. There will be elections in January. We're spending reconstruction money. And our 
alliance is strong.
That's the plan for victory.
And when Iraq if free, America will be more secure.
Can I respond to that?
Thank you, sir. First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the 
use of force and now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place.
I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. 
What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that 
send the Iraqis?
No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I've just 
outlined.
I don't think we want to get to how he's going to pay for all these promises. It's like a huge tax 
gap. Anyway, that's for another debate.
My administration has tripled the amount of money we're spending on homeland security to $30 billion a year.
My administration worked with the Congress to create the Department of Homeland Security so we could better 
coordinate our borders and ports. We've got 1,000 extra border patrol on the southern border; want 1,000 on 
the northern border. We're modernizing our borders.
We spent $3.1 billion for fire and police, $3.1 billion.
We're doing our duty to provide the funding.
But the best way to protect this homeland is to stay on the offense.
You know, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. And the enemy only has to be right once to hurt us.
There's a lot of good people working hard.
And by the way, we've also changed the culture of the FBI to have counterterrorism as its number one 
priority. We're communicating better. We're going to reform our intelligence services to make sure that we 
get the best intelligence possible.
The Patriot Act is vital -- is vital that the Congress renew the Patriot Act which enables our law 
enforcement to disrupt terror cells.
But again, I repeat to my fellow citizens, the best way to protection is to stay on the offense.
Of course we're doing everything we can to protect America. I wake up every day thinking about how 
best to protect America. That's my job.
I work with Director Mueller of the FBI; comes in my office when I'm in Washington every morning, talking 
about how to protect us. There's a lot of really good people working hard to do so.
It's hard work. But, again, I want to tell the American people, we're doing everything we can at home, but 
you better have a president who chases these terrorists down and bring them to justice before they hurt us 
again.
Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be 
trained to do the job.
And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the 
end of next year. That is the best way. We'll never succeed in Iraq if the Iraqi citizens do not want to 
take matters into their own hands to protect themselves. I believe they want to. Prime Minister Allawi 
believes they want to.
And so the best indication about when we can bring our troops home -- which I really want to do, but I don't 
want to do so for the sake of bringing them home; I want to do so because we've achieved an objective -- is 
to see the Iraqis perform and to see the Iraqis step up and take responsibility.
And so, the answer to your question is: When our general is on the ground and Ambassador Negroponte tells me 
that Iraq is ready to defend herself from these terrorists, that elections will have been held by then, that 
their stability and that they're on their way to, you know, a nation that's free; that's when.
And I hope it's as soon as possible. But I know putting artificial deadlines won't work. My opponent at one 
time said, "Well, get me elected, I'll have them out of there in six months." You can't do that and expect 
to win the war on terror. My message to our troops is, "Thank you for what you're doing. We're standing with 
you strong. We'll give you all the equipment you need. And we'll get you home as soon as the mission's done, 
because this is a vital mission."
A free Iraq will be an ally in the war on terror, and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful 
example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free 
Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential 
for the security of this country.
I think it's worthy for a follow-up.
My opponent says help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our troops in harm's way, 
"wrong war, wrong place, wrong time"? Not a message a commander in chief gives, or this is a "great diversion."
As well, help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87-billion 
supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted 
against it.
Not what a commander in chief does when you're trying to lead troops.
That's totally absurd. Of course, the U.N. was invited in. And we support the U.N. efforts there. They 
pulled out after Sergio de Mello got killed. But they're now back in helping with elections.
My opponent says we didn't have any allies in this war. What's he say to Tony Blair? What's he say to 
Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland? You can't expect to build an alliance when you denigrate the contributions 
of those who are serving side by side with American troops in Iraq.
Plus, he says the cornerstone of his plan to succeed in Iraq is to call upon nations to serve. So what's the 
message going to be: "Please join us in Iraq. We're a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong 
war at the wrong place at the wrong time?"
I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently 
and talk to them on the phone frequently. They're not going to follow somebody who says, "This is the wrong 
war at the wrong place at the wrong time."
I know how these people think. I deal with them all the time. I sit down with the world leaders frequently 
and talk to them on the phone frequently.
They're not going to follow somebody who says this is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. 
They're not going to follow somebody whose core convictions keep changing because of politics in America.
And finally, he says we ought to have a summit. Well, there are summits being held. Japan is going to have a 
summit for the donors; $14 billion pledged. And Prime Minister Koizumi is going to call countries to 
account, to get them to contribute.
And there's going to be an Arab summit, of the neighborhood countries. And Colin Powell helped set up that 
summit.
Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our 
American troops.
And I honor their sacrifices. And I don't appreciate it when candidate for president denigrates the 
contributions of these brave soldiers.
You cannot lead the world if you do not honor the contributions of those who are with us. He called them 
coerced and the bribed. That's not how you bring people together.
Our coalition is strong. It will remain strong, so long as I'm the president.
No, what I said was that, because we achieved such a rapid victory, more of the Saddam loyalists were 
around. I mean, we thought we'd whip more of them going in.
But because Tommy Franks did such a great job in planning the operation, we moved rapidly, and a lot of the 
Baathists and Saddam loyalists laid down their arms and disappeared. I thought they would stay and fight, 
but they didn't.
And now we're fighting them now. And it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports 
every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work.
And I'm optimistic. See, I think you can be realistic and optimistic at the same time. I'm optimistic we'll 
achieve -- I know we won't achieve if we send mixed signals. I know we're not going to achieve our objective 
if we send mixed signals to our troops, our friends, the Iraqi citizens.
We've got a plan in place. The plan says there will be elections in January, and there will be. The plan 
says we'll train Iraqi soldiers so they can do the hard work, and we are.
And it's not only just America, but NATO is now helping, Jordan's helping train police, UAE is helping train 
police.
We've allocated $7 billion over the next months for reconstruction efforts. And we're making progress there.
And our alliance is strong. And as I just told you, there's going to be a summit of the Arab nations. Japan 
will be hosting a summit. We're making progress.
It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. It's hard work to go from a place 
where people get their hands cut off, or executed, to a place where people are free.
But it's necessary work. And a free Iraq is going to make this world a more peaceful place.
My opponent just said something amazing. He said Osama bin Laden uses the invasion of Iraq as an 
excuse to spread hatred for America. Osama bin Laden isn't going to determine how we defend ourselves.
Osama bin Laden doesn't get to decide. The American people decide.
I decided the right action was in Iraq. My opponent calls it a mistake. It wasn't a mistake.
He said I misled on Iraq. I don't think he was misleading when he called Iraq a grave threat in the fall of 
2002.
I don't think he was misleading when he said that it was right to disarm Iraq in the spring of 2003.
I don't think he misled you when he said that, you know, anyone who doubted whether the world was better off 
without Saddam Hussein in power didn't have the judgment to be president. I don't think he was misleading.
I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on 
this war. And he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief 
acts.
Let me finish.
The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at, the very same intelligence. 
And when I stood up there and spoke to the Congress, I was speaking off the same intelligence he looked at 
to make his decisions to support the authorization of force.
The only consistent about my opponent's position is that he's been inconsistent. He changes positions. 
And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win.
And I expect to win. It's necessary we win.
We're being challenged like never before. And we have a duty to our country and to future generations of 
America to achieve a free Iraq, a free Afghanistan, and to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.
You know, every life is precious. Every life matters. You know, my hardest -- the hardest part of the 
job is to know that I committed the troops in harm's way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for 
the loved ones who lost a son or a daughter or a husband or wife.
You know, I think about Missy Johnson. She's a fantastic lady I met in Charlotte, North Carolina. She and 
her son Bryan, they came to see me. Her husband PJ got killed. He'd been in Afghanistan, went to Iraq.
You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can, knowing full well that the decision I made 
caused her loved one to be in harm's way.
I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband's sacrifice was noble 
and worthy. Because I understand the stakes of this war on terror. I understand that we must find Al Qaida 
wherever they hide.
We must deal with threats before they fully materialize. And Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that we must 
spread liberty because in the long run, the way to defeat hatred and tyranny and oppression is to spread 
freedom.
Missy understood that. That's what she told me her husband understood. So you say, "Was it worth it?" Every 
life is precious. That's what distinguishes us from the enemy. Everybody matters. But I think it's worth it, 
Jim.
I think it's worth it, because I think -- I know in the long term a free Iraq, a free Afghanistan, will set 
such a powerful in a part of the world that's desperate for freedom. It will help change the world; that we 
can look back and say we did our duty.
Yes, I understand what it means to the commander in chief. And if I were to ever say, "This is the 
wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place," the troops would wonder, how can I follow this guy?
You cannot lead the war on terror if you keep changing positions on the war on terror and say things like, 
"Well, this is just a grand diversion." It's not a grand diversion. This is an essential that we get it right.
And so, the plan he talks about simply won't work.
There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 
125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done. It's hard work. Everybody knows 
it's hard work, because there's a determined enemy that's trying to defeat us.
Now, my opponent says he's going to try to change the dynamics on the ground. Well, Prime Minister Allawi 
was here. He is the leader of that country. He's a brave, brave man. When he came, after giving a speech to 
the Congress, my opponent questioned his credibility.
You can't change the dynamics on the ground if you've criticized the brave leader of Iraq.
One of his campaign people alleged that Prime Minister Allawi was like a puppet. That's no way to treat 
somebody who's courageous and brave, that is trying to lead his country forward.
The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people that when we 
give our word, we will keep our word, that we stand with you, that we believe you want to be free. And I do.
I believe that 25 million people, the vast majority, long to have elections.
I reject this notion -- and I'm suggesting my opponent isn't -- I reject the notion that some say that if 
you're Muslim you can't free, you don't desire freedom. I disagree, strongly disagree with that.
Yes, let me...
The reason why Prime Minister Allawi said they're coming across the border is because he recognizes 
that this is a central part of the war on terror. They're fighting us because they're fighting freedom.
They understand that a free Afghanistan or a free Iraq will be a major defeat for them. And those are the 
stakes.
And that's why it is essential we not leave. That's why it's essential we hold the line. That's why it's 
essential we win. And we will. Under my leadership we're going to win this war in Iraq.
I would hope I never have to. I understand how hard it is to commit troops. Never wanted to commit 
troops. When I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.
But the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I 
can to protect us.
I think that by speaking clearly and doing what we say and not sending mixed messages, it is less likely 
we'll ever have to use troops.
But a president must always be willing to use troops. It must -- as a last resort.
I was hopeful diplomacy would work in Iraq. It was falling apart. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam 
Hussein was hoping that the world would turn a blind eye.
And if he had been in power, in other words, if we would have said, "Let the inspectors work, or let's, you 
know, hope to talk him out. Maybe an 18th resolution would work," he would have been stronger and tougher, 
and the world would have been a lot worse off. There's just no doubt in my mind we would rue the day, had 
Saddam Hussein been in power.
So we use diplomacy every chance we get, believe me. And I would hope to never have to use force.
But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we've affected the world in a 
positive way.
Look at Libya. Libya was a threat. Libya is now peacefully dismantling its weapons programs.
Libya understood that America and others will enforce doctrine and that the world is better for it.
So to answer your question, I would hope we never have to. I think by acting firmly and decisively, it will 
mean it is less likely we have to use force.
First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that.
And secondly, to think that another round of resolutions would have caused Saddam Hussein to disarm, 
disclose, is ludicrous, in my judgment. It just shows a significant difference of opinion.
We tried diplomacy. We did our best. He was hoping to turn a blind eye. And, yes, he would have been 
stronger had we not dealt with him. He had the capability of making weapons, and he would have made weapons.
Let me -- I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take preemptive action if 
you pass a global test.
My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to 
make this country secure.
My opponent talks about me not signing certain treaties. Let me tell you one thing I didn't sign, and I 
think it shows the difference of our opinion -- the difference of opinions. And that is, I wouldn't join the 
International Criminal Court. It's a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can 
pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.
And I wouldn't join it. And I understand that in certain capitals around the world that that wasn't a 
popular move. But it's the right move not to join a foreign court that could -- where our people could be 
prosecuted.
My opponent is for joining the International Criminal Court. I just think trying to be popular, kind of, in 
the global sense, if it's not in our best interest makes no sense. I'm interested in working with our 
nations and do a lot of it. But I'm not going to make decisions that I think are wrong for America.
North Korea, first, I do. Let me say -- I certainly hope so. Before I was sworn in, the policy of this 
government was to have bilateral negotiations with North Korea.
And we signed an agreement with North Korea that my administration found out that was not being honored by 
the North Koreans.
And so I decided that a better way to approach the issue was to get other nations involved, just besides us. 
And in Crawford, Texas, Jiang Zemin and I agreed that the nuclear-weapons-free peninsula, Korean Peninsula, 
was in his interest and our interest and the world's interest.
And so we began a new dialogue with North Korea, one that included not only the United States, but now 
China. And China's a got a lot of influence over North Korea, some ways more than we do.
As well, we included South Korea, Japan and Russia. So now there are five voices speaking to Kim Jong Il, 
not just one.
And so if Kim Jong Il decides again to not honor an agreement, he's not only doing injustice to America, 
he'd be doing injustice to China, as well.
And I think this will work. It's not going to work if we open up a dialogue with Kim Jong Il. He wants to 
unravel the six- party talks, or the five-nation coalition that's sending him a clear message.
On Iran, I hope we can do the same thing, continue to work with the world to convince the Iranian mullahs to 
abandon their nuclear ambitions.
We worked very closely with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain, who have been the 
folks delivering the message to the mullahs that if you expect to be part of the world of nations, get rid 
of your nuclear programs.
The IAEA is involved. There's a special protocol recently been passed that allows for inspections.
I hope we can do it. And we've got a good strategy.
Right.
The minute we have bilateral talks, the six-party talks will unwind. That's exactly what Kim Jong Il 
wants. And by the way, the breach on the agreement was not through plutonium. The breach on the agreement is 
highly enriched uranium. That's what we caught him doing. That's where he was breaking the agreement.
Secondly, he said -- my opponent said where he worked to put sanctions on Iran -- we've already sanctioned 
Iran. We can't sanction them any more. There are sanctions in place on Iran.
And finally, we were a party to the convention -- to working with Germany, France and Great Britain to send 
their foreign ministers into Iran.
Back to Iran, just for a second.
It was not my administration that put the sanctions on Iran. That happened long before I arrived in 
Washington, D.C.
In terms of Darfur, I agree it's genocide. And Colin Powell so stated.
We have committed $200 million worth of aid. We're the leading donor in the world to help the suffering 
people there. We will commit more over time to help.
We were very much involved at the U.N. on the sanction policy of the Bashir government in the Sudan. Prior 
to Darfur, Ambassador Jack Danforth had been negotiating a north-south agreement that we would have hoped 
would have brought peace to the Sudan.
I agree with my opponent that we shouldn't be committing troops. We ought to be working with the African 
Union to do so -- precisely what we did in Liberia. We helped stabilize the situation with some troops, and 
when the African Union came, we moved them out.
My hope is that the African Union moves rapidly to help save lives. And fortunately the rainy season will be 
ending shortly, which will make it easier to get aid there and help the long-suffering people there.
That's a loaded question. Well, first of all, I admire Senator Kerry's service to our country. I 
admire the fact that he is a great dad. I appreciate the fact that his daughters have been so kind to my 
daughters in what has been a pretty hard experience for, I guess, young girls, seeing their dads out there 
campaigning.
I admirer the fact that he served for 20 years in the Senate. Although I'm not so sure I admire the record.
I won't hold it against him that he went to Yale. There's nothing wrong with that.
My concerns about the senator is that, in the course of this campaign, I've been listening very carefully to 
what he says, and he changes positions on the war in Iraq. He changes positions on something as fundamental 
as what you believe in your core, in your heart of hearts, is right in Iraq.
You cannot lead if you send mixed messages. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to our troops. Mixed 
messages send the wrong signals to our allies. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to the Iraqi citizens.
And that's my biggest concern about my opponent. I admire his service. But I just know how this world works, 
and that in the councils of government, there must be certainty from the U.S. president.
Of course, we change tactics when need to, but we never change our beliefs, the strategic beliefs that are 
necessary to protect this country in the world.
I'm trying to put a leash on them.
Thank you.
Well, I think -- listen, I fully agree that one should shift tactics, and we will, in Iraq. Our 
commanders have got all the flexibility to do what is necessary to succeed.
But what I won't do is change my core values because of politics or because of pressure.
And it is one of the things I've learned in the White House, is that there's enormous pressure on the 
president, and he cannot wilt under that pressure. Otherwise, the world won't be better off.
Actually, we've increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation about 35 percent since I've 
been the president. Secondly, we've set up what's called the -- well, first of all, I agree with my opponent 
that the biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist 
network. And that's why proliferation is one of the centerpieces of a multi-prong strategy to make the 
country safer.
My administration started what's called the Proliferation Security Initiative. Over 60 nations involved with 
disrupting the trans-shipment of information and/or weapons of mass destruction materials.
And we've been effective. We busted the A.Q. Khan network. This was a proliferator out of Pakistan that was 
selling secrets to places like North Korea and Libya. We convinced Libya to disarm. It's a central part of 
dealing with weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.
I'll tell you another way to help protect America in the long run is to continue with missile defenses. And 
we've got a robust research and development program that has been ongoing during my administration. We'll be 
implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly.
And that is another way to help deal with the threats that we face in the 21st century.
My opponent opposed the missile defenses.
In the hands of a terrorist enemy.
Again, I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. 
It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that 
China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a 
big mistake to do that.
We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves.
And if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the table. I don't think that'll work.
No, I don't think it's OK, and said so publicly. I think that there needs to be checks and balances in 
a democracy, and made that very clear that by consolidating power in the central government, he's sending a 
signal to the Western world and United States that perhaps he doesn't believe in checks and balances, and I 
told him that.
I mean, he's also a strong ally in the war on terror. He is -- listen, they went through a horrible 
situation in Beslan, where these terrorists gunned down young school kids. That's the nature of the enemy, 
by the way. That's why we need to be firm and resolve in bringing them to justice.
That's precisely what Vladimir Putin understands, as well.
I've got a good relation with Vladimir. And it's important that we do have a good relation, because that 
enables me to better comment to him, and to better to discuss with him, some of the decisions he makes. I 
found that, in this world, that it's important to establish good personal relationships with people so that 
when you have disagreements, you're able to disagree in a way that is effective.
And so I've told him my opinion.
I look forward to discussing it more with him, as time goes on. Russia is a country in transition. Vladimir 
is going to have to make some hard choices. And I think it's very important for the American president, as 
well as other Western leaders, to remind him of the great benefits of democracy, that democracy will best 
help the people realize their hopes and aspirations and dreams. And I will continue working with him over 
the next four years.
You know my opinion on North Korea. I can't say it any more plainly.
Pardon me?
Oh, I'm a pretty calm guy. I don't take it personally.
You know, we looked at the same intelligence and came to the same conclusion: that Saddam Hussein was 
a grave threat.
And I don't hold it against him that he said grave threat. I'm not going to go around the country saying he 
didn't tell the truth, when he looked at the same intelligence I did.
Thank you very much tonight, Jim. Senator.
If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. That's not 
going to happen, so long as I'm your president.
The next four years we will continue to strengthen our homeland defenses. We will strengthen our 
intelligence-gathering services. We will reform our military. The military will be an all-volunteer army.
We will continue to stay on the offense. We will fight the terrorists around the world so we do not have to 
face them here at home.
We'll continue to build our alliances. I'll never turn over America's national security needs to leaders of 
other countries, as we continue to build those alliances. And we'll continue to spread freedom. I believe in 
the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation's interests. I believe 
a free Afghanistan is in this nation's interest.
And I believe both a free Afghanistan and a free Iraq will serve as a powerful example for millions who 
plead in silence for liberty in the broader Middle East.
We've done a lot of hard work together over the last three and a half years. We've been challenged, and 
we've risen to those challenges. We've climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it's a 
valley of peace.
By being steadfast and resolute and strong, by keeping our word, by supporting our troops, we can achieve 
the peace we all want.
I appreciate your listening tonight. I ask for your vote. And may God continue to bless our great land.
Charlie, thank you, and thank our panelists. 
And, Senator, thank you. 
I can -- and thanks, Washington U. as well. 
I can see why people at your workplace think he changes positions a lot, because he does. He said he voted 
for the $87 billion, and voted against it right before he voted for it. And that sends a confusing signal 
to people. 
He said he thought Saddam Hussein was a grave threat, and now he said it was a mistake to remove Saddam 
Hussein from power. 
No, I can see why people think that he changes position quite often, because he does. 
You know, for a while he was a strong supporter of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He saw the wisdom -- 
until the Democrat primary came along and Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate, began to gain on him, and he 
changed positions.
I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your 
mind because of politics. 
He just brought up the tax cut. You remember we increased that child credit by $1,000, reduced the marriage 
penalty, created a 10 percent tax bracket for the lower-income Americans. That's right at the middle class. 
He voted against it. And yet he tells you he's for a middle- class tax cut. It's -- you've got to be 
consistent when you're the president. There's a lot of pressures. And you've got to be firm and consistent. 
Each situation is different, Robin.
And obviously we hope that diplomacy works before you ever use force. The hardest decision a president 
makes is ever to use force.
After 9/11, we had to look at the world differently. After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a 
threat, we must take it seriously before it comes to hurt us.
In the old days we'd see a threat, and we could deal with it if we felt like it or not. But 9/11 changed it 
all.
I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people. That's why 
we're bringing Al Qaida to justice. Seventy five percent of them have been brought to justice. 
That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. And 
the Taliban is no longer in power, and Al Qaida no longer has a place to plan.
And I saw a unique threat in Saddam Hussein, as did my opponent, because we thought he had weapons of mass 
destruction. 
And the unique threat was that he could give weapons of mass destruction to an organization like Al Qaida, 
and the harm they inflicted on us with airplanes would be multiplied greatly by weapons of mass 
destruction. And that was the serious, serious threat. 
So I tried diplomacy, went to the United Nations. But as we learned in the same report I quoted, Saddam 
Hussein was gaming the oil-for-food program to get rid of sanctions. He was trying to get rid of sanctions 
for a reason: He wanted to restart his weapons programs.
We all thought there was weapons there, Robin. My opponent thought there was weapons there. That's why he 
called him a grave threat. 
I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons, and we've got an intelligence group together to 
figure out why.
But Saddam Hussein was a unique threat. And the world is better off without him in power. 
And my opponent's plans lead me to conclude that Saddam Hussein would still be in power, and the world would 
be more dangerous.
Thank you, sir.
(OFF-MIKE)
You remember the last debate? 
My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves. That's the 
kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, "Let's keep it at 
the United Nations and hope things go well." 
Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist 
enemies. Sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein. 
Two days ago in the Oval Office, I met with the finance minister from Iraq. He came to see me. And 
he talked about how optimistic he was and the country was about heading toward elections. 
Think about it: They're going from tyranny to elections.
He talked about the reconstruction efforts that are beginning to take hold. He talked about the fact that 
Iraqis love to be free. 
He said he was optimistic when he came here, then he turned on the TV and listened to the political rhetoric 
and all of a sudden he was pessimistic.
Now, this is guy a who, along with others, has taken great risk for great freedom. And we need to stand 
with him. 
My opponent says he has a plan; it sounds familiar, because it's called the Bush plan. We're going to train 
troops, and we are. We'll have 125,000 trained by the end of December. We're spending about $7 billion. 
He talks about a grand idea: Let's have a summit; we're going to solve the problem in Iraq by holding a 
summit. 
And what is he going to say to those people that show up at the summit? Join me in the wrong war at the 
wrong time at the wrong place. Risk your troops in a war you've called a mistake. 
Nobody is going to follow somebody who doesn't believe we can succeed and with somebody who says that war 
where we are is a mistake. 
I know how these people think. I meet with them all the time. I talk to Tony Blair all the time. I talk 
to Silvio Berlusconi. They're not going to follow an American president who says follow me into a 
mistake. Our plan is working. We're going to make elections. And Iraq is going to be free, and America 
will be better off for it.
First of all, we didn't find out he didn't have weapons until we got there, and my opponent thought 
he had weapons and told everybody he thought he had weapons. 
And secondly, it's a fundamental misunderstanding to say that the war on terror is only Osama bin 
Laden. The war on terror is to make sure that these terrorist organizations do not end up with weapons of 
mass destruction. That's what the war on terror is about. 
Of course, we're going to find Osama bin Laden. We've already 75 percent of his people. And we're on the 
hunt for him.
But this is a global conflict that requires firm resolve.
No, I appreciate that. I -- listen, I -- we've got a great country. I love our values. And I 
recognize I've made some decisions that have caused people to not understand the great values of our country.
I remember when Ronald Reagan was the president; he stood on principle. Somebody called that stubborn. He 
stood on principle standing up to the Soviet Union, and we won that conflict. Yet at the same time, he was 
very -- we were very unpopular in Europe because of the decisions he made.
I recognize that taking Saddam Hussein out was unpopular. But I made the decision because I thought it was 
in the right interests of our security.
You know, I've made some decisions on Israel that's unpopular. I wouldn't deal with Arafat, because I felt 
like he had let the former president down, and I don't think he's the kind of person that can lead toward a 
Palestinian state. 
And people in Europe didn't like that decision. And that was unpopular, but it was the right thing to do.
I believe Palestinians ought to have a state, but I know they need leadership that's committed to a 
democracy and freedom, leadership that would be willing to reject terrorism. 
I made a decision not to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is where our troops could 
be brought to -- brought in front of a judge, an unaccounted judge.
I don't think we ought to join that. That was unpopular. 
And so, what I'm telling you is, is that sometimes in this world you make unpopular decisions because you 
think they're right.
We'll continue to reach out.
Listen, there is 30 nations involved in Iraq, some 40 nations involved in Afghanistan. 
People love America. Sometimes they don't like the decisions made by America, but I don't think you want a 
president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing. 
You don't want to join the International Criminal Court just because it's popular in certain capitals in Europe.
I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need 
in this war? Do you have what it takes?" 
I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, 
looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the 
right troop level?" 
And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our 
generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people 
to execute that strategy.
That answer almost made me want to scowl. 
He keeps talking about, "Let the inspectors do their job." It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's 
what the Duelfer report showed. He was deceiving the inspectors. 
Secondly, of course we've been involved with Iran. 
I fully understand the threat. And that's why we're doing what he suggested we do: Get the Brits, the 
Germans and the French to go make it very clear to the Iranians that if they expect to be a party to the 
world to give up their nuclear ambitions. We've been doing that.
Let me talk about North Korea.
It is naive and dangerous to take a policy that he suggested the other day, which is to have bilateral 
relations with North Korea. Remember, he's the person who's accusing me of not acting multilaterally. He 
now wants to take the six-party talks we have -- China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the 
United States -- and undermine them by having bilateral talks.
That's what President Clinton did. He had bilateral talks with the North Koreans. And guess what happened? 
He didn't honor the agreement. He was enriching uranium. That is a bad policy.
Of course, we're paying attention to these. It's a great question about Iran. That's why in my speech to 
the Congress I said: There's an "Axis of Evil," Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and we're paying attention to 
it. And we're making progress.
Yes, that's a great question. Thanks.
I hear there's rumors on the Internets (sic) that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a 
draft, period. The all- volunteer army works. It works particularly when we pay our troops well. It works 
when we make sure they've got housing, like we have done in the last military budgets.
An all-volunteer army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century, which is to be specialized 
and to find these people as they hide around the world.
We don't need mass armies anymore. One of the things we've done is we've taken the -- we're beginning to 
transform our military. 
And by that I mean we're moving troops out of Korea and replacing them with more effective weapons. We 
don't need as much manpower on the Korean Peninsula to keep a deterrent.
In Europe, we have massed troops as if the Soviet Union existed and was going to invade into Europe, but 
those days are over with. And so we're moving troops out of Europe and replacing it with more effective 
equipment.
So to answer your question is, we're withdrawing, not from the world, we're withdrawing manpower so they can 
be stationed here in America, so there's less rotation, so life is easier on their families and therefore 
more likely to be -- we'll be more likely to be able to keep people in the all-volunteer army.
One of the more important things we're doing in this administration is transformation. There are some 
really interesting technologies. 
For instance, we're flying unmanned vehicles that can send real- time messages back to stations in the 
United States. That saves manpower, and it saves equipment.
It also means that we can target things easier and move more quickly, which means we need to be lighter and 
quicker and more facile and highly trained.
Now, forget all this talk about a draft. We're not going to have a draft so long as I am the president.
Let me just -- I've got to answer this. 
Let me answer what he just said, about around the world.
You tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Tony Blair we're going alone. Tell Silvio Berlusconi 
we're going alone. Tell Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland we're going alone.
There are 30 countries there. It denigrates an alliance to say we're going alone, to discount their 
sacrifices. You cannot lead an alliance if you say, you know, you're going alone. And people listen. 
They're sacrificing with us. 
That's an odd thing to say, since we've tripled the homeland security budget from $10 billion to $30 
billion. 
Listen, we'll do everything we can to protect the homeland. 
My opponent's right, we need good intelligence. It's also a curious thing for him to say since right after 
1993 he voted to cut the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion.
The best way to defend America in this world we live in is to stay on the offense. We got to be right 100 
percent of the time here at home, and they got to be right once. And that's the reality. 
And there's a lot of good people working hard. We're doing the best we possibly can to share 
information. That's why the Patriot Act was important. 
The Patriot Act is vital, by the way. It's a tool that law enforcement now uses to be able to talk between 
each other. My opponent says he hadn't changed his position on it. No, but he's for weakening it.
I don't think my opponent has got the right view about the world to make us safe; I really don't. 
First of all, I don't think he can succeed in Iraq. And if Iraq were to fail, it'd be a haven for 
terrorists, and there would be money and the world would be much more dangerous. 
I don't see how you can win in Iraq if you don't believe we should be there in the first place. I don't see 
how you can lead troops if you say it's the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I don't see how the Iraqis are going to have confidence in the American president if all they hear is that 
it was a mistake to be there in the first place. 
This war is a long, long war, and it requires steadfast determination and it requires a complete 
understanding that we not only chase down Al Qaida but we disrupt terrorist safe havens as well as people 
who could provide the terrorists with support.
Well, we'll talk about the tax cut for middle class here in a minute. But yes, I'm worried. I'm 
worried. I'm worried about our country. And all I can tell you is every day I know that there's people 
working overtime, doing the very best they can. And the reason I'm worried is because there's a vicious 
enemy that has an ideology of hate. 
And the way to defeat them long-term, by the way, is to spread freedom. 
Liberty can change habits. And that's what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to 
make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you.
And that's why the FDA and that's why the surgeon general are looking very carefully to make sure it can be 
done in a safe way. I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you.
And what my worry is is that, you know, it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world. 
And we've just got to make sure, before somebody thinks they're buying a product, that it works. And that's 
why we're doing what we're doing.
Now, it may very well be here in December you'll hear me say, I think there's a safe way to do it.
There are other ways to make sure drugs are cheaper. One is to speed up generic drugs to the marketplace, 
quicker. Pharmaceuticals were using loopholes to keep brand -- brand drugs in place, and generics are much 
less expensive than brand drugs. And we're doing just that.
Another is to pass -- to get our seniors to sign up to these drug discount cards, and they're working. 
Wanda Blackmore I met here from Missouri, the first time she bought drugs with her drug discount card, she 
paid $1.14, I think it was, for about $10 worth of drugs.
These cards make sense.
And, you know, in 2006 seniors are going to get prescription drug coverage for the first time in 
Medicare. Because I went to Washington to fix problems. 
Medicare -- the issue of Medicare used to be called "Mediscare." People didn't want to touch it for fear of 
getting hurt politically.
I wanted to get something done. I think our seniors deserve a modern medical system. And in 2006, our 
seniors will get prescription drug coverage.
Thank you for asking.
If they're safe, they're coming. I want to remind you that it wasn't just my administration that 
made the decision on safety. President Clinton did the same thing, because we have an obligation to protect 
you.
Now, he talks about Medicare. He's been in the United States Senate 20 years. Show me one accomplishment 
toward Medicare that he accomplished.
I've been in Washington, D.C., three and a half years and led the Congress to reform Medicare so our seniors 
have got a modern health care system. That's what leadership is all about.
Let me see where to start here.
First, the National Journal named Senator Kennedy the most liberal senator of all. And that's saying 
something in that bunch. You might say that took a lot of hard work.
The reason I bring that up is because he's proposed $2.2 trillion in new spending, and he says he going to 
tax the rich to close the tax gap. 
He can't. He's going to tax everybody here to fund his programs. That's just reality.
And what are his health programs? First, he says he's for medical liability reform, particularly for 
OB/GYNs. There's a bill on the floor of the United States Senate that he could have showed up and voted for 
if he's so much for it.
Secondly, he says that medical liability costs only cause a 1 percent increase. That shows a lack of 
understanding. Doctors practice defensive medicine because of all the frivolous lawsuits that cost our 
government $28 billion a year. 
And finally, he said he's going to have a novel health care plan. You know what it is? The federal 
government is going to run it. 
It's the largest increase in federal government health care ever. And it fits with his philosophy. That's 
why I told you about the award he won from the National Journal. 
That's what liberals do. They create government-sponsored health care. Maybe you think that makes 
sense. I don't. 
Government-sponsored health care would lead to rationing. It would ruin the quality of health care in America.
You're right, what does matter is a plan. He said he's for -- you're now for capping punitive damages? 
That's odd. You should have shown up on the floor in the Senate and voted for it then.
Medical liability issues are a problem, a significant problem. He's been in the United States Senate for 20 
years and he hasn't addressed it. 
We passed it out of the House of Representatives. Guess where it's stuck? It's stuck in the Senate, 
because the trial lawyers won't act on it. And he put a trial lawyer on the ticket.
Right, thank you for that.
We have a deficit. We have a deficit because this country went into a recession. You might remember the 
stock market started to decline dramatically six months before I came to office, and then the bubble of the 
1990s popped. And that cost us revenue. That cost us revenue.
Secondly, we're at war. And I'm going to spend what it takes to win the war, more than just $120 billion 
for Iraq and Afghanistan. We've got to pay our troops more. We have. We've increased money for ammunition 
and weapons and pay and homeland security.
I just told this lady over here we spent -- went from $10 billion to $30 billion to protect the homeland. I 
think we have an obligation to spend that kind of money.
And plus, we cut taxes for everybody. Everybody got tax relief, so that they get out of the recession.
I think if you raise taxes during a recession, you head to depression. I come from the school of thought 
that says when people have more money in their pocket during economic times, it increases demand or 
investment. Small businesses begin to grow, and jobs are added.
We found out today that over the past 13 months, we've added 1.9 million new jobs in the last 13 months. 
I proposed a plan, detailed budget, that shows us cutting the deficit in half by five years. 
And you're right, I haven't vetoed any spending bills, because we work together. 
Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into 
office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit 
under control. 
Like you, I'm concerned about the deficit. But I am not going to shortchange our troops in harm's way. And 
I'm not going to run up taxes, which will cost this economy jobs.
Thank you for your question.
Well, look at the budget. One is make sure Congress doesn't overspend.
But let me talk back about where we've been. The stock market was declining six months prior to my arrival. 
It was the largest stock market correction -- one of the largest in history, which foretold a recession. 
Because we cut taxes on everybody -- remember, we ran up the child credit by $1,000, we reduced the marriage 
penalty, we created a 10 percent bracket, everybody who pays taxes got relief -- the recession was one of 
the shortest in our nation's history.
He's just not credible when he talks about being fiscally conservative. He's just not credible. If 
you look at his record in the Senate, he voted to break the caps -- the spending caps -- over 200 times. 
And here he says he's going to be a fiscal conservative, all of a sudden. It's just not credible. You 
cannot believe it.
And of course he's going to raise your taxes. You see, he's proposed $2.2 trillion of new spending. And 
you say: Well, how are you going to pay for it? He says, well, he's going to raise the taxes on the rich 
-- that's what he said -- the top two brackets. That raises, he says $800 billion; we say $600 billion. 
We've got battling green eye shades.
Somewhere in between those numbers -- and so there's a difference, what he's promised and what he can raise. 
Now, either he's going to break all these wonderful promises he's told you about or he's going to raise 
taxes. And I suspect, given his record, he's going to raise taxes.
Is my time up yet?
Good. You looked at me like my clock was up.
I think that the way to grow this economy is to keep taxes low, is have an energy plan, is to have 
litigation reform. As I told you, we've just got a report that said over the past 13 months, we've created 
1.9 million new jobs.
And so the fundamental question of this campaign is: Who's going to keep the economy growing so people can 
work? That's the fundamental question.
Yes, I mean, he's got a record. It's been there for 20 years. You can run, but you can't hide. He 
voted 98 times to raise taxes. I mean, these aren't make-up figures. 
And so people are going to have to look at the record. Look at the record of the man running for the 
president. 
They don't name him the most liberal in the United States Senate because he hasn't shown up to many 
meetings. They named him because of his votes. And it's reality.
It's just not credible to say he's going to keep taxes down and balance budgets.
Off-road diesel engines -- we have reached an agreement to reduce pollution from off-road diesel 
engines by 90 percent.
I've got a plan to increase the wetlands by 3 million. We've got an aggressive brown field program to 
refurbish inner-city sore spots to useful pieces of property.
I proposed to the United States Congress a Clear Skies Initiative to reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide 
and mercury by 70 percent.
I have -- was fought for a very strong title in the farm bill for the conservation reserve program to set 
aside millions of acres of land to help improve wildlife and the habitat.
We proposed and passed a healthy forest bill which was essential to working with -- particularly in Western 
states -- to make sure that our forests were protected. 
What happens in those forests, because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be -- they are not -- 
they're not harvested. They're not taken care of. And as a result, they're like tinderboxes. 
And over the last summers I've flown over there. And so, this is a reasonable policy to protect old stands 
of trees and at the same time make sure our forests aren't vulnerable to the forest fires that have 
destroyed acres after acres in the West. 
We've got a good, common-sense policy. 
Now, I'm going to tell you what I really think is going to happen over time is technology is going to change 
the way we live for the good for the environment. 
That's why I proposed a hydrogen automobile -- hydrogen-generated automobile. We're spending $1 billion to 
come up with the technologies to do that.
That's why I'm a big proponent of clean coal technology, to make sure we can use coal but in a clean way. 
I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land. 
The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been the president. Fewer water complaints since I've been the 
president. More land being restored since I've been the president.
Thank you for your question.
Well, had we joined the Kyoto treaty, which I guess he's referring to, it would have cost America a 
lot of jobs.
It's one of these deals where, in order to be popular in the halls of Europe, you sign a treaty. But I 
thought it would cost a lot -- I think there's a better way to do it.
And I just told you the facts, sir. The quality of the air is cleaner since I've been the president of the 
United States. And we'll continue to spend money on research and development, because I truly believe that's 
the way to get from how we live today to being able to live a standard of living that we're accustomed to 
and being able to protect our environment better, the use of technologies.
Let me start with how to control the cost of health care: medical liability reform, for starters, 
which he's opposed.
Secondly, allow small businesses to pool together so they can share risk and buy insurance at the same 
discounts big businesses get to do.
Thirdly, spread what's called health savings accounts. It's good for small businesses, good for 
owners. You own your own account. You can save tax-free. You get a catastrophic plan to help you on it. 
This is different from saying, "OK, let me incent you to go on the government."
He's talking about his plan to keep jobs here. You know he calls it an outsourcing to keep -- stop 
outsourcing. Robert Rubin looked at his plan and said it won't work.
The best way to keep jobs here in America is, one, have an energy plan. I proposed one to the Congress two 
years ago, encourages conservation, encourages technology to explore for environmentally friendly ways for 
coal -- to use coal and gas. It encourages the use of renewables like ethanol and biodiesel. 
It's stuck in the Senate. He and his running-mate didn't show up to vote when they could have got it going 
in the Senate.
Less regulations if we want jobs here; legal reform if we want jobs here; and we've got to keep taxes low.
Now, he says he's only going to tax the rich. Do you realize, 900,000 small businesses will be taxed under 
his plan because most small businesses are Subchapter S corps or limited partnerships, and they pay tax at 
the individual income tax level.
And so when you're running up the taxes like that, you're taxing job creators, and that's not how you keep 
jobs here.
I own a timber company? 
That's news to me.
Need some wood?
Most small businesses are Subchapter S corps. They just are. 
I met Grant Milliron, Mansfield, Ohio. He's creating jobs. Most small businesses -- 70 percent of the new 
jobs in America are created by small businesses. 
Taxes are going up when you run up the top two brackets. It's a fact.
I appreciate that. 
I really don't think your rights are being watered down. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I 
thought that.
Every action being taken against terrorists requires court order, requires scrutiny.
As a matter of fact, the tools now given to the terrorist fighters are the same tools that we've been using 
against drug dealers and white-collar criminals.
So I really don't think so. I hope you don't think that. I mean, I -- because I think whoever is the 
president must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.
The Patriot Act is necessary, for example, because parts of the FBI couldn't talk to each other. The 
intelligence-gathering and the law-enforcement arms of the FBI just couldn't share intelligence under the 
old law. And that didn't make any sense.
Our law enforcement must have every tool necessary to find and disrupt terrorists at home and abroad before 
they hurt us again. That's the task of the 21st century.
And so, I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.
And I know it's necessary. I can remember being in upstate New York talking to FBI agents that helped bust 
a Lackawanna cell up there. And they told me they could not have performed their duty, the duty we all 
expect of them, if they did not have the ability to communicate with each other under the Patriot Act. 
Embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. I'm the first 
president ever to allow funding -- federal funding -- for embryonic stem-cell research. I did to because I 
too hope that we'll discover cures from the stem cells and from the research derived. 
But I think we've got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science. 
And so I made the decision we wouldn't spend any more money beyond the 70 lines, 22 of which are now in 
action, because science is important, but so is ethics, so is balancing life. To destroy life to save life 
is -- it's one of the real ethical dilemmas that we face.
There is going to be hundreds of experiments off the 22 lines that now exist that are active, and hopefully 
we find a cure. But as well, we need to continue to pursue adult stem-cell research.
I helped double the NIH budget to $28 billion a year to find cures. And the approach I took is one that I 
think is a balanced and necessary approach, to balance science and the concerns for life.
Let me make sure you understand my decision. Those stem- cells lines already existed. The embryo 
had already been destroyed prior to my decision.
I had to make the decision to destroy more life, so we continue to destroy life -- I made the decision to 
balance science and ethics. 
I'm not telling.
I really don't have -- haven't picked anybody yet. Plus, I want them all voting for me.
I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick 
somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.
Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick. 
I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had 
the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into 
the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution 
allowed slavery because of personal property rights. 
That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States 
says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America. 
And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've got plenty of lawmakers in 
Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution. 
And I suspect one of us will have a pick at the end of next year -- the next four years. And that's the 
kind of judge I'm going to put on there. No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution. 
Thank you. 
I'm trying to decipher that. 
My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion. 
This is an issue that divides America, but certainly reasonable people can agree on how to reduce abortions 
in America.
I signed the partial-birth -- the ban on partial-birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. It's one way to 
help reduce abortions. My opponent voted against the ban.
I think there ought to be parental notification laws. He's against them. 
I signed a bill called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. 
In other words, if you're a mom and you're pregnant and you get killed, the murderer gets tried for two 
cases, not just one. My opponent was against that. 
These are reasonable ways to help promote a culture of life in America. I think it is a worthy goal in 
America to have every child protected by law and welcomed in life. 
I also think we ought to continue to have good adoption law as an alternative to abortion. 
And we need to promote maternity group homes, which my administration has done. 
Culture of life is really important for a country to have if it's going to be a hospitable society. 
Thank you.
Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no? 
And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that's just the way it is. That's a vote. It came 
right up. It's clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can't hide the reality.
Put a head fake on us.
Hi, Linda.
I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard 
of, and some of them big.
And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and 
But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my 
administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.
He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 
billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political 
Either way.
Charlie, thanks.
Thank you all very much. It's been enjoyable.
The great contest for the presidency is about the future, who can lead, who can get things done.
We've been through a lot together as a country -- been through a recession, corporate scandals, war. 
And yet think about where we are: Added 1.9 million new jobs over the past 13 months. The farm income in 
America is high. Small businesses are flourishing. Homeownership rate is at an all-time high in America. 
We're on the move.
Tonight I had a chance to discuss with you what to do to keep this economy going: keep the taxes low, don't 
increase the scope of the federal government, keep regulations down, legal reform, a health- care policy 
that does not empower the federal government but empowers individuals, and an energy plan that will help us 
become less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
And abroad, we're at war. And it requires a president who is steadfast and strong and determined. I vowed 
to the American people after that fateful day of September the 11th that we would not rest nor tire until 
we're safe.
The 9/11 Commission put out a report that said America is safer but not yet safe. There is more work to be 
done. 
We'll stay on the hunt on Al Qaida. We'll deny sanctuary to these terrorists. We'll make sure they do not 
end up with weapons of mass destruction. It's the great nexus. The great threat to our country is that 
these haters end up with weapons of mass destruction.
But our long-term security depends on our deep faith in liberty. And we'll continue to promote freedom 
around the world.
Freedom is on the march. Tomorrow, Afghanistan will be voting for a president. In Iraq, we'll be having 
free elections, and a free society will make this world more peaceful.
God bless.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH.txt
Thank you very much.
I want to thank Arizona State as well.
Yes, we can be safe and secure, if we stay on the offense against the terrorists and if we 
spread freedom and liberty around the world.
I have got a comprehensive strategy to not only chase down the Al Qaida, wherever it exists -- 
and we're making progress; three-quarters of Al Qaida leaders have been brought to justice -- 
but to make sure that countries that harbor terrorists are held to account.
As a result of securing ourselves and ridding the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the Afghan people 
had elections this weekend. And the first voter was a 19-year-old woman. Think about that. 
Freedom is on the march.
We held to account a terrorist regime in Saddam Hussein.
In other words, in order to make sure we're secure, there must be a comprehensive plan. My 
opponent just this weekend talked about how terrorism could be reduced to a nuisance, comparing 
it to prostitution, illegal gambling. I think that attitude and that point of view is dangerous. 
I don't think you can secure America for the long run if you don't have a comprehensive view as 
to how to defeat these people.
At home, we'll do everything we can to protect the homeland. I signed the homeland security bill 
to better align our assets and resources. My opponent voted against it.
We're doing everything we can to protect our borders and ports.
But absolutely we can be secure in the long run. It just takes good, strong leadership.
Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of 
one of those exaggerations.
Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're 
using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.
My opponent said this war is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement. No, this war is a 
matter of using every asset at our disposal to keep the American people protected.
Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for 
the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was 
contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our 
country. We're working with Canada to hopefully -- that they'll produce a -- help us realize the 
vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.
My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot 
this year. Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young.
The CDC, responsible for health in the United States, is setting those priorities and is 
allocating the flu vaccine accordingly.
I haven't gotten a flu shot, and I don't intend to because I want to make sure those who are 
most vulnerable get treated.
We have a problem with litigation in the United States of America. Vaccine manufacturers are 
worried about getting sued, and therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine.
One of the reasons I'm such a strong believer in legal reform is so that people aren't afraid of 
producing a product that is necessary for the health of our citizens and then end up getting 
sued in a court of law.
But the best thing we can do now, Bob, given the circumstances with the company in England is 
for those of us who are younger and healthy, don't get a flu shot.
I would. Thank you.
I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints, and a plan 
is not to lay out programs that you can't pay for.
He just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same plan that senators and 
congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed 
up, like the senator suggested, if would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years.
It's an empty promise. It's called bait and switch.
Thank you.
Well, his rhetoric doesn't match his record.
He been a senator for 20 years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce 
taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally 
sound, but he voted over -- he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost 
the taxpayers $4. 2 trillion.
He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, 
when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.
He's proposed $2. 2 trillion of new spending, and yet the so-called tax on the rich, which is 
also a tax on many small-business owners in America, raises $600 million by our account -- 
billion, $800 billion by his account.
There is a tax gap. And guess who usually ends up filling the tax gap? The middle class.
I propose a detailed budget, Bob. I sent up my budget man to the Congress, and he says, here's 
how we're going to reduce the deficit in half by five years. It requires pro-growth policies 
that grow our economy and fiscal sanity in the halls of Congress.
I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 
21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to 
go to a community college.
We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills 
necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.
You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal 
matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing 
is to make sure our education system works.
I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in 
America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after 
grade, without learning the basics.
And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the 
standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.
No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've 
got a workforce that's productive and competitive.
Got four more years, I've got more to do to continue to raise standards, to continue to reward 
teachers and school districts that are working, to emphasize math and science in the classrooms, 
to continue to expand Pell Grants to make sure that people have an opportunity to start their 
career with a college diploma.
And so the person you talked to, I say, here's some help, here's some trade adjustment 
assistance money for you to go a community college in your neighborhood, a community college 
which is providing the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century. And that's what I 
would say to that person.
Whew!
Let me start with the Pell Grants. In his last litany of misstatements. He said we cut Pell 
Grants. We've increased Pell Grants by a million students. That's a fact.
You know, he talks to the workers. Let me talk to the workers.
You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief we passed and he opposed.
If you have a child, you got a $1,000 child credit. That's money in your pocket.
If you're married, we reduced the marriage penalty. The code ought to encourage marriage, not 
discourage marriage.
We created a 10 percent bracket to help lower-income Americans. A family of four making $40,000 
received about $1,700 in tax relief.
It's your money. The way my opponent talks, he said, "We're going to spend the government's 
money. "No, we're spending your money. And when you have more money in your pocket, you're able 
to better afford things you want.
I believe the role of government is to stand side by side with our citizens to help them realize 
their dreams, not tell citizens how to live their lives.
My opponent talks about fiscal sanity. His record in the United States Senate does not match his 
rhetoric.
He voted to increase taxes 98 times and to bust the budget 277 times.
Senator, no one's playing with your votes. You voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they 
voted -- when they proposed reducing taxes, you voted against it 126 times.
He voted to violate the budget cap 277 times. You know, there's a main stream in American 
politics and you sit right on the far left bank. As a matter of fact, your record is such that 
Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts.
You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in 
America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that 
we do that.
And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live.
And that's to be honored.
But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change -- or have 
to change -- our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. 
I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution, between a man and a woman.
I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that 
activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage, and the surest way to protect 
marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution.
It has also the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you 
amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.
I'm deeply concerned that judges are making those decisions and not the citizenry of the United 
States. You know, Congress passed a law called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
My opponent was against it. It basically protected states from the action of one state to 
another. It also defined marriage as between a man and woman.
But I'm concerned that that will get overturned. And if it gets overturned, then we'll end up 
with marriage being defined by courts, and I don't think that's in our nation's interests.
I think it's important to promote a culture of life. I think a hospitable society is a 
society where every being counts and every person matters. I believe the ideal world is one in 
which every child is protected in law and welcomed to life. I understand there's great 
differences on this issue of abortion, but I believe reasonable people can come together and put 
good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions.
Take, for example, the ban on partial birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. People from both 
political parties came together in the halls of Congress and voted overwhelmingly to ban that 
practice. It made a lot of sense. My opponent, in that he's out of the mainstream, voted against 
that law.
What I'm saying is, is that as we promote life and promote a culture of life, surely there are 
ways we can work together to reduce the number of abortions: continue to promote adoption laws 
-- it's a great alternative to abortion -- continue to fund and promote maternity group homes; I 
will continue to promote abstinence programs.
The last debate, my opponent said his wife was involved with those programs. That's great. I 
appreciate that very much. All of us ought to be involved with programs that provide a viable 
alternative to abortion.
Gosh, I sure hope it's not the administration.
There's a -- no, look, there's a systemic problem. Health-care costs are on the rise because the 
consumers are not involved in the decision-making process. Most health-care costs are covered by 
third parties. And therefore, the actual user of health care is not the purchaser of health 
care. And there's no market forces involved with health care.
It's one of the reasons I'm a strong believer in what they call health savings accounts. These 
are accounts that allow somebody to buy a low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic plan and 
couple it with tax-free savings. Businesses can contribute, employees can contribute on a 
contractual basis. But this is a way to make sure people are actually involved with the 
decision-making process on health care.
Secondly, I do believe the lawsuits -- I don't believe, I know -- that the lawsuits are causing 
health-care costs to rise in America. That's why I'm such a strong believer in medical liability 
reform.
In the last debate, my opponent said those lawsuits only caused the cost to go up by 1 percent. 
Well, he didn't include the defensive practice of medicine that costs the federal government 
some $28 billion a year and costs our society between $60 billion and $100 billion a year.
Thirdly, one of the reasons why there's still high cost in medicine is because this is -- they 
don't use any information technology. It's like if you looked at the -- it's the equivalent of 
the buggy and horse days, compared to other industries here in America.
And so, we've got to introduce high technology into health care. We're beginning to do it. We're 
changing the language. We want there to be electronic medical records to cut down on error, as 
well as reduce cost.
People tell me that when the health-care field is fully integrated with information technology, 
it'll wring some 20 percent of the cost out of the system.
And finally, moving generic drugs to the market quicker.
And so, those are four ways to help control the costs in health care.
I think it's important, since he talked about the Medicare plan, has he been in the United 
States Senate for 20 years? He has no record on reforming of health care. No record at all.
He introduced some 300 bills and he's passed five.
No record of leadership.
I came to Washington to solve problems. I was deeply concerned about seniors having to choose 
between prescription drugs and food. And so I led. And in 2006, our seniors will get a 
prescription drug coverage in Medicare.
In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations 
about -- oh, never mind. Anyway, let me quote the Lewin report. The Lewin report is a group of 
folks who are not politically affiliated. They analyzed the senator's plan. It cost $1.2 trillion.
The Lewin report accurately noted that there are going to be 20 million people, over 20 million 
people added to government-controlled health care. It would be the largest increase in 
government health care ever.
If you raise the Medicaid to 300 percent, it provides an incentive for small businesses not to 
provide private insurance to their employees. Why should they insure somebody when the 
government's going to insure it for them?
It's estimated that 8 million people will go from private insurance to government insurance.
We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government- run health will lead to 
poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.
Once a health-care program ends up in a line item in the federal government budget, it leads to 
more controls.
And just look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They 
have poor-quality health care.
Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the 
decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.
Talk about the VA: We've increased VA funding by $22 billion in the four years since I've 
been president. That's twice the amount that my predecessor increased VA funding.
Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that.
We're expanding veterans' health care throughout the country. We're aligning facilities where 
the veterans live now. Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration, and 
they will continue to do so during the next four years.
First, let me make sure that every senior listening today understands that when we're 
talking about reforming Social Security, that they'll still get their checks.
I remember the 2000 campaign, people said if George W. gets elected, your check will be taken 
away. Well, people got their checks, and they'll continue to get their checks.
There is a problem for our youngsters, a real problem. And if we don't act today, the problem 
will be valued in the trillions. And so I think we need to think differently. We'll honor our 
commitment to our seniors. But for our children and our grandchildren, we need to have a 
different strategy.
And recognizing that, I called together a group of our fellow citizens to study the issue. It 
was a committee chaired by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat. And 
they came up with a variety of ideas for people to look at.
I believe that younger workers ought to be allowed to take some of their own money and put it in 
a personal savings account, because I understand that they need to get better rates of return 
than the rates of return being given in the current Social Security trust.
And the compounding rate of interest effect will make it more likely that the Social Security 
system is solvent for our children and our grandchildren. I will work with Republicans and 
Democrats. It'll be a vital issue in my second term. It is an issue that I am willing to take 
on, and so I'll bring Republicans and Democrats together.
And we're of course going to have to consider the costs. But I want to warn my fellow citizens: 
The cost of doing nothing, the cost of saying the current system is OK, far exceeds the costs of 
trying to make sure we save the system for our children.
He forgot to tell you he voted to tax Social Security benefits more than one time. I 
didn't hear any plan to fix Social Security. I heard more of the same.
He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax 
cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent 
of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we 
structured the tax cuts. People listening out there know the benefits of the tax cuts we passed. 
If you have a child, you got tax relief. If you're married, you got tax relief. If you pay any 
tax at all, you got tax relief. All of which was opposed by my opponent.
And the tax relief was important to spur consumption and investment to get us out of this recession.
People need to remember: Six months prior to my arrival, the stock market started to go down. 
And it was one of the largest declines in our history. And then we had a recession and we got 
attacked, which cost us 1 million jobs.
But we acted. I led the Congress. We passed tax relief. And now this economy is growing. We 
added 1. 9 million new jobs over the last 13 months.
Sure, there's more work to do. But the way to make sure our economy grows is not to raise taxes 
on small-business owners. It's not to increase the scope of the federal government. It's to make 
sure we have fiscal sanity and keep taxes low.
I see it as a serious problem. I see it as a security issue, I see it as an economic 
issue, and I see it as a human-rights issue.
We're increasing the border security of the United States. We've got 1,000 more Border Patrol 
agents on the southern border.
We're using new equipment. We're using unmanned vehicles to spot people coming across.
And we'll continue to do so over the next four years. It's a subject I'm very familiar with. 
After all, I was a border governor for a while.
Many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you 
can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5. 15, 
you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for 
your families. And that's what's happening.
And so in order to take pressure off the borders, in order to make the borders more secure, I 
believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing 
employer to mate up, so long as there's not an American willing to do that job, to join up in 
order to be able to fulfill the employers' needs.
That has the benefit of making sure our employers aren't breaking the law as they try to fill 
their workforce needs. It makes sure that the people coming across the border are humanely 
treated, that they're not kept in the shadows of our society, that they're able to go back and 
forth to see their families. See, the card, it'll have a period of time attached to it.
It also means it takes pressure off the border. If somebody is coming here to work with a card, 
it means they're not going to have to sneak across the border. It means our border patrol will 
be more likely to be able to focus on doing their job.
Now, it's very important for our citizens to also know that I don't believe we ought to have 
amnesty. I don't think we ought to reward illegal behavior. There are plenty of people standing 
in line to become a citizen. And we ought not to crowd these people ahead of them in line.
If they want to become a citizen, they can stand in line, too.
And here is where my opponent and I differ. In September 2003, he supported amnesty for illegal 
aliens.
Well, to say that the borders are not as protected as they were prior to September the 
11th shows he doesn't know the borders. They're much better protected today than they were when 
I was the governor of Texas.
We have much more manpower and much more equipment there.
He just doesn't understand how the borders work, evidently, to say that. That is an outrageous 
claim.
And we'll continue to protect our borders. We're continuing to increase manpower and equipment.
Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have 
increased the minimum wage.
But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to 
make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.
Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. The No Child 
Left Behind Act says, "We'll raise standards. We'll increase federal spending. But in return for 
extra spending, we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to 
show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract. "
You cannot solve a problem unless you diagnose the problem. And we weren't diagnosing problems. 
And therefore just kids were being shuffled through the school.
And guess who would get shuffled through? Children whose parents wouldn't speak English as a 
first language just move through.
Many inner-city kids just move through. We've stopped that practice now by measuring early. And 
when we find a problem, we spend extra money to correct it.
I remember a lady in Houston, Texas, told me, "Reading is the new civil right," and she's right. 
In order to make sure people have jobs for the 21st century, we've got to get it right in the 
education system, and we're beginning to close a minority achievement gap now.
You see, we'll never be able to compete in the 21st century unless we have an education system 
that doesn't quit on children, an education system that raises standards, an education that 
makes sure there's excellence in every classroom.
What he's asking me is, will I have a litmus test for my judges? And the answer is, no, I 
will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll 
have no litmus test.
Two things. One, he clearly has a litmus test for his judges, which I disagree with.
And secondly, only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in 
funding for education was not enough.
We've increased funds. But more importantly, we've reformed the system to make sure that we 
solve problems early, before they're too late.
He talked about the unemployed. Absolutely we've got to make sure they get educated.
He talked about children whose parents don't speak English as a first language? Absolutely we've 
got to make sure they get educated.
And that's what the No Child Left Behind Act does.
The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq, is to train Iraqis 
so they can do the hard work of democracy, is to give them a chance to defend their country, 
which is precisely what we're doing. We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.
I remember going on an airplane in Bangor, Maine, to say thanks to the reservists and Guard that 
were headed overseas from Tennessee and North Carolina, Georgia. Some of them had been there before.
The people I talked to their spirits were high. They didn't view their service as a back-door 
draft. They viewed their service as an opportunity to serve their country.
My opponent, the senator, talks about foreign policy.
In our first debate he proposed America pass a global test. In order to defend ourselves, we'd 
have to get international approval. That's one of the major differences we have about defending 
our country.
I'll work with allies. I'll work with friends. We'll continue to build strong coalitions. But I 
will never turn over our national- security decisions to leaders of other countries.
We'll be resolute, we'll be strong, and we'll wage a comprehensive war against the terrorists.
In 1990, there was a vast coalition put together to run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The 
international community, the international world said this is the right thing to do, but when it 
came time to authorize the use of force on the Senate floor, my opponent voted against the use 
of force.
Apparently you can't pass any test under his vision of the world.
Actually, I made my intentions -- made my views clear. I did think we ought to extend the 
assault weapons ban, and was told the fact that the bill was never going to move, because 
Republicans and Democrats were against the assault weapon ban, people of both parties. I believe 
law-abiding citizens ought to be able to own a gun. I believe in background checks at gun shows 
or anywhere to make sure that guns don't get in the hands of people that shouldn't have them.
But the best way to protect our citizens from guns is to prosecute those who commit crimes with 
guns. And that's why early in my administration I called the attorney general and the U. S. 
attorneys and said: Put together a task force all around the country to prosecute those who 
commit crimes with guns. And the prosecutions are up by about 68 percent -- I believe -- is the 
number.
Neighborhoods are safer when we crack down on people who commit crimes with guns.
To me, that's the best way to secure America.
Well, first of all, it is just not true that I haven't met with the Black Congressional 
Caucus. I met with the Black Congressional Caucus at the White House.
And secondly, like my opponent, I don't agree we ought to have quotas. I agree, we shouldn't 
have quotas.
But we ought to have an aggressive effort to make sure people are educated, to make sure when 
they get out of high school there's Pell Grants available for them, which is what we've done. 
We've expanded Pell Grants by a million students.
Do you realize today in America, we spend $73 billion to help 10 million low- and middle-income 
families better afford college?
That's the access I believe is necessary, is to make sure every child learns to read, write, add 
and subtract early, to be able to build on that education by going to college so they can start 
their careers with a college diploma.
I believe the best way to help our small businesses is not only through small-business loans, 
which we have increased since I've been the president of the United States, but to unbundle 
government contracts so people have a chance to be able to bid and receive a contract to help 
get their business going.
Minority ownership of businesses are up, because we created an environment for the 
entrepreneurial spirit to be strong.
I believe part of a hopeful society is one in which somebody owns something. Today in America 
more minorities own a home than ever before. And that's hopeful, and that's positive.
My biggest disappointment in Washington is how partisan the town is. I had a record of 
working with Republicans and Democrats as the governor of Texas, and I was hopeful I'd be able 
to do the same thing.
And we made good progress early on. The No Child Left Behind Act, incredibly enough, was good 
work between me and my administration and people like Senator Ted Kennedy.
And we worked together with Democrats to relieve the tax burden on the middle class and all who 
pay taxes in order to make sure this economy continues to grow.
But Washington is a tough town. And the way I view it is there's a lot of entrenched special 
interests there, people who are, you know, on one side of the issue or another and they spend 
enormous sums of money and they convince different senators to taut their way or different 
congressmen to talk about their issue, and they dig in.
I'll continue, in the four years, to continue to try to work to do so.
My opponent said this is a bitterly divided time. Pretty divided in the 2000 election. So in 
other words, it's pretty divided during the 1990s as well.
We're just in a period -- we've got to work to bring it -- my opponent keeps mentioning John 
McCain, and I'm glad he did. John McCain is for me for president because he understands I have 
the right view in winning the war on terror and that my plan will succeed in Iraq. And my 
opponent has got a plan of retreat and defeat in Iraq.
To listen to them.
To stand up straight and not scowl.
I love the strong women around me. I can't tell you how much I love my wife and our daughters.
I am -- you know it's really interesting. I tell the people on the campaign trail, when I asked 
Laura to marry me, she said, "Fine, just so long as I never have to give a speech. "I said, "OK, 
you've got a deal. "Fortunately, she didn't hold me to that deal. And she's out campaigning 
along with our girls. And she speaks English a lot better than I do. I think people understand 
what she's saying.
But they see a compassionate, strong, great first lady in Laura Bush. I can't tell you how lucky 
I am. When I met her in the backyard at Joe and Jan O'Neill's in Midland, Texas, it was the 
classic backyard barbecue. O'Neill said, "Come on over. I think you'll find somebody who might 
interest you. "So I said all right. Bopped over there. There was only four of us there. And not 
only did she interest me, I guess you would say it was love at first sight.
In the Oval Office, there's a painting by a friend of Laura and mine named -- by Tom Lee. 
And it's a West Texas painting, a painting of a mountain scene.
And he said this about it.
He said, "Sarah and I live on the east side of the mountain. It's the sunrise side, not the 
sunset side. It's the side to see the day that is coming, not to see the day that is gone. "
I love the optimism in that painting, because that's how I feel about America. And we've been 
through a lot together during the last 3 3/4 years. We've come through a recession, a stock 
market decline, an attack on our country.
And yet, because of the hard work of the American people and good policies, this economy is 
growing. Over the next four years, we'll make sure the economy continues to grow.
We reformed our school system, and now there's an achievement gap in America that's beginning to 
close. Over the next four years, we'll continue to insist on excellence in every classroom in 
America so that our children have a chance to realize the great promise of America.
Over the next four years, we'll continue to work to make sure health care is available and 
affordable.
Over the next four years, we'll continue to rally the armies of compassion, to help heal the 
hurt that exists in some of our country's neighborhoods.
I'm optimistic that we'll win the war on terror, but I understand it requires firm resolve and 
clear purpose. We must never waver in the face of this enemy that -- these ideologues of hate.
And as we pursue the enemy wherever it exists, we'll also spread freedom and liberty. We got 
great faith in the ability of liberty to transform societies, to convert a hostile world to a 
peaceful world.
My hope for America is a prosperous America, a hopeful America and a safer world.
I want to thank you for listening tonight.
I'm asking for your vote.
God bless you.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-0.txt
Thank you very much.
I want to thank Arizona State as well.
Yes, we can be safe and secure, if we stay on the offense against the terrorists and if we 
spread freedom and liberty around the world.
I have got a comprehensive strategy to not only chase down the Al Qaida, wherever it exists -- 
and we're making progress; three-quarters of Al Qaida leaders have been brought to justice -- 
but to make sure that countries that harbor terrorists are held to account.
As a result of securing ourselves and ridding the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the Afghan people 
had elections this weekend. And the first voter was a 19-year-old woman. Think about that. 
Freedom is on the march.
We held to account a terrorist regime in Saddam Hussein.
In other words, in order to make sure we're secure, there must be a comprehensive plan. My 
opponent just this weekend talked about how terrorism could be reduced to a nuisance, comparing 
it to prostitution, illegal gambling. I think that attitude and that point of view is dangerous. 
I don't think you can secure America for the long run if you don't have a comprehensive view as 
to how to defeat these people.
At home, we'll do everything we can to protect the homeland. I signed the homeland security bill 
to better align our assets and resources. My opponent voted against it.
We're doing everything we can to protect our borders and ports.
But absolutely we can be secure in the long run. It just takes good, strong leadership.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-1.txt
Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of 
one of those exaggerations.
Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're 
using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.
My opponent said this war is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement. No, this war is a 
matter of using every asset at our disposal to keep the American people protected.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-10.txt
I think it's important to promote a culture of life. I think a hospitable society is a 
society where every being counts and every person matters. I believe the ideal world is one in 
which every child is protected in law and welcomed to life. I understand there's great 
differences on this issue of abortion, but I believe reasonable people can come together and put 
good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions.
Take, for example, the ban on partial birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. People from both 
political parties came together in the halls of Congress and voted overwhelmingly to ban that 
practice. It made a lot of sense. My opponent, in that he's out of the mainstream, voted against 
that law.
What I'm saying is, is that as we promote life and promote a culture of life, surely there are 
ways we can work together to reduce the number of abortions: continue to promote adoption laws 
-- it's a great alternative to abortion -- continue to fund and promote maternity group homes; I 
will continue to promote abstinence programs.
The last debate, my opponent said his wife was involved with those programs. That's great. I 
appreciate that very much. All of us ought to be involved with programs that provide a viable 
alternative to abortion.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-11.txt
Gosh, I sure hope it's not the administration.
There's a -- no, look, there's a systemic problem. Health-care costs are on the rise because the 
consumers are not involved in the decision-making process. Most health-care costs are covered by 
third parties. And therefore, the actual user of health care is not the purchaser of health 
care. And there's no market forces involved with health care.
It's one of the reasons I'm a strong believer in what they call health savings accounts. These 
are accounts that allow somebody to buy a low-premium, high-deductible catastrophic plan and 
couple it with tax-free savings. Businesses can contribute, employees can contribute on a 
contractual basis. But this is a way to make sure people are actually involved with the 
decision-making process on health care.
Secondly, I do believe the lawsuits -- I don't believe, I know -- that the lawsuits are causing 
health-care costs to rise in America. That's why I'm such a strong believer in medical liability 
reform.
In the last debate, my opponent said those lawsuits only caused the cost to go up by 1 percent. 
Well, he didn't include the defensive practice of medicine that costs the federal government 
some $28 billion a year and costs our society between $60 billion and $100 billion a year.
Thirdly, one of the reasons why there's still high cost in medicine is because this is -- they 
don't use any information technology. It's like if you looked at the -- it's the equivalent of 
the buggy and horse days, compared to other industries here in America.
And so, we've got to introduce high technology into health care. We're beginning to do it. We're 
changing the language. We want there to be electronic medical records to cut down on error, as 
well as reduce cost.
People tell me that when the health-care field is fully integrated with information technology, 
it'll wring some 20 percent of the cost out of the system.
And finally, moving generic drugs to the market quicker.
And so, those are four ways to help control the costs in health care.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-12.txt
I think it's important, since he talked about the Medicare plan, has he been in the United 
States Senate for 20 years? He has no record on reforming of health care. No record at all.
He introduced some 300 bills and he's passed five.
No record of leadership.
I came to Washington to solve problems. I was deeply concerned about seniors having to choose 
between prescription drugs and food. And so I led. And in 2006, our seniors will get a 
prescription drug coverage in Medicare.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-13.txt
In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations 
about -- oh, never mind. Anyway, let me quote the Lewin report. The Lewin report is a group of 
folks who are not politically affiliated. They analyzed the senator's plan. It cost $1.2 trillion.
The Lewin report accurately noted that there are going to be 20 million people, over 20 million 
people added to government-controlled health care. It would be the largest increase in 
government health care ever.
If you raise the Medicaid to 300 percent, it provides an incentive for small businesses not to 
provide private insurance to their employees. Why should they insure somebody when the 
government's going to insure it for them?
It's estimated that 8 million people will go from private insurance to government insurance.
We have a fundamental difference of opinion. I think government- run health will lead to 
poor-quality health, will lead to rationing, will lead to less choice.
Once a health-care program ends up in a line item in the federal government budget, it leads to 
more controls.
And just look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They 
have poor-quality health care.
Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the 
decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-14.txt
Talk about the VA: We've increased VA funding by $22 billion in the four years since I've 
been president. That's twice the amount that my predecessor increased VA funding.
Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that.
We're expanding veterans' health care throughout the country. We're aligning facilities where 
the veterans live now. Veterans are getting very good health care under my administration, and 
they will continue to do so during the next four years.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-15.txt
First, let me make sure that every senior listening today understands that when we're 
talking about reforming Social Security, that they'll still get their checks.
I remember the 2000 campaign, people said if George W. gets elected, your check will be taken 
away. Well, people got their checks, and they'll continue to get their checks.
There is a problem for our youngsters, a real problem. And if we don't act today, the problem 
will be valued in the trillions. And so I think we need to think differently. We'll honor our 
commitment to our seniors. But for our children and our grandchildren, we need to have a 
different strategy.
And recognizing that, I called together a group of our fellow citizens to study the issue. It 
was a committee chaired by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat. And 
they came up with a variety of ideas for people to look at.
I believe that younger workers ought to be allowed to take some of their own money and put it in 
a personal savings account, because I understand that they need to get better rates of return 
than the rates of return being given in the current Social Security trust.
And the compounding rate of interest effect will make it more likely that the Social Security 
system is solvent for our children and our grandchildren. I will work with Republicans and 
Democrats. It'll be a vital issue in my second term. It is an issue that I am willing to take 
on, and so I'll bring Republicans and Democrats together.
And we're of course going to have to consider the costs. But I want to warn my fellow citizens: 
The cost of doing nothing, the cost of saying the current system is OK, far exceeds the costs of 
trying to make sure we save the system for our children.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-16.txt
He forgot to tell you he voted to tax Social Security benefits more than one time. I 
didn't hear any plan to fix Social Security. I heard more of the same.
He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax 
cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent 
of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we 
structured the tax cuts. People listening out there know the benefits of the tax cuts we passed. 
If you have a child, you got tax relief. If you're married, you got tax relief. If you pay any 
tax at all, you got tax relief. All of which was opposed by my opponent.
And the tax relief was important to spur consumption and investment to get us out of this recession.
People need to remember: Six months prior to my arrival, the stock market started to go down. 
And it was one of the largest declines in our history. And then we had a recession and we got 
attacked, which cost us 1 million jobs.
But we acted. I led the Congress. We passed tax relief. And now this economy is growing. We 
added 1. 9 million new jobs over the last 13 months.
Sure, there's more work to do. But the way to make sure our economy grows is not to raise taxes 
on small-business owners. It's not to increase the scope of the federal government. It's to make 
sure we have fiscal sanity and keep taxes low.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-17.txt
I see it as a serious problem. I see it as a security issue, I see it as an economic 
issue, and I see it as a human-rights issue.
We're increasing the border security of the United States. We've got 1,000 more Border Patrol 
agents on the southern border.
We're using new equipment. We're using unmanned vehicles to spot people coming across.
And we'll continue to do so over the next four years. It's a subject I'm very familiar with. 
After all, I was a border governor for a while.
Many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you 
can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5. 15, 
you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for 
your families. And that's what's happening.
And so in order to take pressure off the borders, in order to make the borders more secure, I 
believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing 
employer to mate up, so long as there's not an American willing to do that job, to join up in 
order to be able to fulfill the employers' needs.
That has the benefit of making sure our employers aren't breaking the law as they try to fill 
their workforce needs. It makes sure that the people coming across the border are humanely 
treated, that they're not kept in the shadows of our society, that they're able to go back and 
forth to see their families. See, the card, it'll have a period of time attached to it.
It also means it takes pressure off the border. If somebody is coming here to work with a card, 
it means they're not going to have to sneak across the border. It means our border patrol will 
be more likely to be able to focus on doing their job.
Now, it's very important for our citizens to also know that I don't believe we ought to have 
amnesty. I don't think we ought to reward illegal behavior. There are plenty of people standing 
in line to become a citizen. And we ought not to crowd these people ahead of them in line.
If they want to become a citizen, they can stand in line, too.
And here is where my opponent and I differ. In September 2003, he supported amnesty for illegal 
aliens.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-18.txt
Well, to say that the borders are not as protected as they were prior to September the 
11th shows he doesn't know the borders. They're much better protected today than they were when 
I was the governor of Texas.
We have much more manpower and much more equipment there.
He just doesn't understand how the borders work, evidently, to say that. That is an outrageous 
claim.
And we'll continue to protect our borders. We're continuing to increase manpower and equipment.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-19.txt
Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have 
increased the minimum wage.
But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to 
make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.
Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. The No Child 
Left Behind Act says, "We'll raise standards. We'll increase federal spending. But in return for 
extra spending, we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to 
show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract. "
You cannot solve a problem unless you diagnose the problem. And we weren't diagnosing problems. 
And therefore just kids were being shuffled through the school.
And guess who would get shuffled through? Children whose parents wouldn't speak English as a 
first language just move through.
Many inner-city kids just move through. We've stopped that practice now by measuring early. And 
when we find a problem, we spend extra money to correct it.
I remember a lady in Houston, Texas, told me, "Reading is the new civil right," and she's right. 
In order to make sure people have jobs for the 21st century, we've got to get it right in the 
education system, and we're beginning to close a minority achievement gap now.
You see, we'll never be able to compete in the 21st century unless we have an education system 
that doesn't quit on children, an education system that raises standards, an education that 
makes sure there's excellence in every classroom.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-2.txt
Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for 
the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was 
contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our 
country. We're working with Canada to hopefully -- that they'll produce a -- help us realize the 
vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.
My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot 
this year. Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young.
The CDC, responsible for health in the United States, is setting those priorities and is 
allocating the flu vaccine accordingly.
I haven't gotten a flu shot, and I don't intend to because I want to make sure those who are 
most vulnerable get treated.
We have a problem with litigation in the United States of America. Vaccine manufacturers are 
worried about getting sued, and therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine.
One of the reasons I'm such a strong believer in legal reform is so that people aren't afraid of 
producing a product that is necessary for the health of our citizens and then end up getting 
sued in a court of law.
But the best thing we can do now, Bob, given the circumstances with the company in England is 
for those of us who are younger and healthy, don't get a flu shot.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-20.txt
What he's asking me is, will I have a litmus test for my judges? And the answer is, no, I 
will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll 
have no litmus test.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-21.txt
Two things. One, he clearly has a litmus test for his judges, which I disagree with.
And secondly, only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in 
funding for education was not enough.
We've increased funds. But more importantly, we've reformed the system to make sure that we 
solve problems early, before they're too late.
He talked about the unemployed. Absolutely we've got to make sure they get educated.
He talked about children whose parents don't speak English as a first language? Absolutely we've 
got to make sure they get educated.
And that's what the No Child Left Behind Act does.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-22.txt
The best way to take the pressure off our troops is to succeed in Iraq, is to train Iraqis 
so they can do the hard work of democracy, is to give them a chance to defend their country, 
which is precisely what we're doing. We'll have 125,000 troops trained by the end of this year.
I remember going on an airplane in Bangor, Maine, to say thanks to the reservists and Guard that 
were headed overseas from Tennessee and North Carolina, Georgia. Some of them had been there before.
The people I talked to their spirits were high. They didn't view their service as a back-door 
draft. They viewed their service as an opportunity to serve their country.
My opponent, the senator, talks about foreign policy.
In our first debate he proposed America pass a global test. In order to defend ourselves, we'd 
have to get international approval. That's one of the major differences we have about defending 
our country.
I'll work with allies. I'll work with friends. We'll continue to build strong coalitions. But I 
will never turn over our national- security decisions to leaders of other countries.
We'll be resolute, we'll be strong, and we'll wage a comprehensive war against the terrorists.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-23.txt
In 1990, there was a vast coalition put together to run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The 
international community, the international world said this is the right thing to do, but when it 
came time to authorize the use of force on the Senate floor, my opponent voted against the use 
of force.
Apparently you can't pass any test under his vision of the world.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-24.txt
Actually, I made my intentions -- made my views clear. I did think we ought to extend the 
assault weapons ban, and was told the fact that the bill was never going to move, because 
Republicans and Democrats were against the assault weapon ban, people of both parties. I believe 
law-abiding citizens ought to be able to own a gun. I believe in background checks at gun shows 
or anywhere to make sure that guns don't get in the hands of people that shouldn't have them.
But the best way to protect our citizens from guns is to prosecute those who commit crimes with 
guns. And that's why early in my administration I called the attorney general and the U. S. 
attorneys and said: Put together a task force all around the country to prosecute those who 
commit crimes with guns. And the prosecutions are up by about 68 percent -- I believe -- is the 
number.
Neighborhoods are safer when we crack down on people who commit crimes with guns.
To me, that's the best way to secure America.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-25.txt
Well, first of all, it is just not true that I haven't met with the Black Congressional 
Caucus. I met with the Black Congressional Caucus at the White House.
And secondly, like my opponent, I don't agree we ought to have quotas. I agree, we shouldn't 
have quotas.
But we ought to have an aggressive effort to make sure people are educated, to make sure when 
they get out of high school there's Pell Grants available for them, which is what we've done. 
We've expanded Pell Grants by a million students.
Do you realize today in America, we spend $73 billion to help 10 million low- and middle-income 
families better afford college?
That's the access I believe is necessary, is to make sure every child learns to read, write, add 
and subtract early, to be able to build on that education by going to college so they can start 
their careers with a college diploma.
I believe the best way to help our small businesses is not only through small-business loans, 
which we have increased since I've been the president of the United States, but to unbundle 
government contracts so people have a chance to be able to bid and receive a contract to help 
get their business going.
Minority ownership of businesses are up, because we created an environment for the 
entrepreneurial spirit to be strong.
I believe part of a hopeful society is one in which somebody owns something. Today in America 
more minorities own a home than ever before. And that's hopeful, and that's positive.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-26.txt
My biggest disappointment in Washington is how partisan the town is. I had a record of 
working with Republicans and Democrats as the governor of Texas, and I was hopeful I'd be able 
to do the same thing.
And we made good progress early on. The No Child Left Behind Act, incredibly enough, was good 
work between me and my administration and people like Senator Ted Kennedy.
And we worked together with Democrats to relieve the tax burden on the middle class and all who 
pay taxes in order to make sure this economy continues to grow.
But Washington is a tough town. And the way I view it is there's a lot of entrenched special 
interests there, people who are, you know, on one side of the issue or another and they spend 
enormous sums of money and they convince different senators to taut their way or different 
congressmen to talk about their issue, and they dig in.
I'll continue, in the four years, to continue to try to work to do so.
My opponent said this is a bitterly divided time. Pretty divided in the 2000 election. So in 
other words, it's pretty divided during the 1990s as well.
We're just in a period -- we've got to work to bring it -- my opponent keeps mentioning John 
McCain, and I'm glad he did. John McCain is for me for president because he understands I have 
the right view in winning the war on terror and that my plan will succeed in Iraq. And my 
opponent has got a plan of retreat and defeat in Iraq.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-27.txt
To listen to them.
To stand up straight and not scowl.
I love the strong women around me. I can't tell you how much I love my wife and our daughters.
I am -- you know it's really interesting. I tell the people on the campaign trail, when I asked 
Laura to marry me, she said, "Fine, just so long as I never have to give a speech. "I said, "OK, 
you've got a deal. "Fortunately, she didn't hold me to that deal. And she's out campaigning 
along with our girls. And she speaks English a lot better than I do. I think people understand 
what she's saying.
But they see a compassionate, strong, great first lady in Laura Bush. I can't tell you how lucky 
I am. When I met her in the backyard at Joe and Jan O'Neill's in Midland, Texas, it was the 
classic backyard barbecue. O'Neill said, "Come on over. I think you'll find somebody who might 
interest you. "So I said all right. Bopped over there. There was only four of us there. And not 
only did she interest me, I guess you would say it was love at first sight.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-28.txt
BUSH: In the Oval Office, there's a painting by a friend of Laura and mine named -- by Tom Lee. 
And it's a West Texas painting, a painting of a mountain scene.
And he said this about it.
He said, "Sarah and I live on the east side of the mountain. It's the sunrise side, not the 
sunset side. It's the side to see the day that is coming, not to see the day that is gone. "
I love the optimism in that painting, because that's how I feel about America. And we've been 
through a lot together during the last 3 3/4 years. We've come through a recession, a stock 
market decline, an attack on our country.
And yet, because of the hard work of the American people and good policies, this economy is 
growing. Over the next four years, we'll make sure the economy continues to grow.
We reformed our school system, and now there's an achievement gap in America that's beginning to 
close. Over the next four years, we'll continue to insist on excellence in every classroom in 
America so that our children have a chance to realize the great promise of America.
Over the next four years, we'll continue to work to make sure health care is available and 
affordable.
Over the next four years, we'll continue to rally the armies of compassion, to help heal the 
hurt that exists in some of our country's neighborhoods.
I'm optimistic that we'll win the war on terror, but I understand it requires firm resolve and 
clear purpose. We must never waver in the face of this enemy that -- these ideologues of hate.
And as we pursue the enemy wherever it exists, we'll also spread freedom and liberty. We got 
great faith in the ability of liberty to transform societies, to convert a hostile world to a 
peaceful world.
My hope for America is a prosperous America, a hopeful America and a safer world.
I want to thank you for listening tonight.
I'm asking for your vote.
God bless you.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-3.txt
I would. Thank you.
I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints, and a plan 
is not to lay out programs that you can't pay for.
He just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same plan that senators and 
congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed 
up, like the senator suggested, if would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years.
It's an empty promise. It's called bait and switch.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-4.txt
Thank you.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-5.txt
Well, his rhetoric doesn't match his record.
He been a senator for 20 years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce 
taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally 
sound, but he voted over -- he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost 
the taxpayers $4. 2 trillion.
He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, 
when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.
He's proposed $2. 2 trillion of new spending, and yet the so-called tax on the rich, which is 
also a tax on many small-business owners in America, raises $600 million by our account -- 
billion, $800 billion by his account.
There is a tax gap. And guess who usually ends up filling the tax gap? The middle class.
I propose a detailed budget, Bob. I sent up my budget man to the Congress, and he says, here's 
how we're going to reduce the deficit in half by five years. It requires pro-growth policies 
that grow our economy and fiscal sanity in the halls of Congress.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-6.txt
I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 
21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to 
go to a community college.
We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills 
necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.
You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal 
matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing 
is to make sure our education system works.
I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in 
America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after 
grade, without learning the basics.
And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the 
standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.
No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've 
got a workforce that's productive and competitive.
Got four more years, I've got more to do to continue to raise standards, to continue to reward 
teachers and school districts that are working, to emphasize math and science in the classrooms, 
to continue to expand Pell Grants to make sure that people have an opportunity to start their 
career with a college diploma.
And so the person you talked to, I say, here's some help, here's some trade adjustment 
assistance money for you to go a community college in your neighborhood, a community college 
which is providing the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century. And that's what I 
would say to that person.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-7.txt
Whew!
Let me start with the Pell Grants. In his last litany of misstatements. He said we cut Pell 
Grants. We've increased Pell Grants by a million students. That's a fact.
You know, he talks to the workers. Let me talk to the workers.
You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief we passed and he opposed.
If you have a child, you got a $1,000 child credit. That's money in your pocket.
If you're married, we reduced the marriage penalty. The code ought to encourage marriage, not 
discourage marriage.
We created a 10 percent bracket to help lower-income Americans. A family of four making $40,000 
received about $1,700 in tax relief.
It's your money. The way my opponent talks, he said, "We're going to spend the government's 
money. "No, we're spending your money. And when you have more money in your pocket, you're able 
to better afford things you want.
I believe the role of government is to stand side by side with our citizens to help them realize 
their dreams, not tell citizens how to live their lives.
My opponent talks about fiscal sanity. His record in the United States Senate does not match his 
rhetoric.
He voted to increase taxes 98 times and to bust the budget 277 times.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-8.txt
Senator, no one's playing with your votes. You voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they 
voted -- when they proposed reducing taxes, you voted against it 126 times.
He voted to violate the budget cap 277 times. You know, there's a main stream in American 
politics and you sit right on the far left bank. As a matter of fact, your record is such that 
Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/BUSH-9.txt
You know, Bob, I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that we have a choice to make in 
America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that 
we do that.
And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live.
And that's to be honored.
But as we respect someone's rights, and as we profess tolerance, we shouldn't change -- or have 
to change -- our basic views on the sanctity of marriage. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. 
I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution, between a man and a woman.
I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that 
activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage, and the surest way to protect 
marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution.
It has also the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you 
amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.
I'm deeply concerned that judges are making those decisions and not the citizenry of the United 
States. You know, Congress passed a law called DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
My opponent was against it. It basically protected states from the action of one state to 
another. It also defined marriage as between a man and woman.
But I'm concerned that that will get overturned. And if it gets overturned, then we'll end up 
with marriage being defined by courts, and I don't think that's in our nation's interests.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY.txt
Well, first of all, Bob, thank you for moderating tonight.
Thank you, Arizona State, for welcoming us.
And thank you to the Presidential Commission for undertaking this enormous task. We're proud to 
be here.
Mr. President, I'm glad to be here with you again to share similarities and differences with the 
American people.
Will we ever be safe and secure again? Yes. We absolutely must be. That's the goal.
Now, how do we achieve it is the most critical component of it.
I believe that this president, regrettably, rushed us into a war, made decisions about foreign 
policy, pushed alliances away. And, as a result, America is now bearing this extraordinary 
burden where we are not as safe as we ought to be.
The measurement is not: Are we safer? The measurement is: Are we as safe as we ought to be? And 
there are a host of options that this president had available to him, like making sure that at 
all our ports in America containers are inspected. Only 95 percent of them -- 95 percent come in 
today uninspected. That's not good enough.
People who fly on airplanes today, the cargo hold is not X-rayed, but the baggage is. That's not 
good enough. Firehouses don't have enough firefighters in them. Police officers are being cut 
from the streets of America because the president decided to cut the COPS program.
So we can do a better job of homeland security. I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more 
effective war on terror and guarantee that we will go after the terrorists.
I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary 
to be safe.
But I pledge this to you, America: I will do it in the way that Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald 
Reagan and John Kennedy and others did, where we build the strongest alliances, where the world 
joins together, where we have the best intelligence and where we are able, ultimately, to be 
more safe and secure.
Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took 
his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.
Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, 
"Where is Osama bin Laden? " He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. 
I'm not that concerned. "
We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
This really underscores the problem with the American health-care system. It's not 
working for the American family. And it's gotten worse under President Bush over the course of 
the last years.
Five million Americans have lost their health insurance in this country. You've got about a 
million right here in Arizona, just shy, 950,000, who have no health insurance at all. 82,000 
Arizonians lost their health insurance under President Bush's watch. 223,000 kids in Arizona 
have no health insurance at all.
All across our country -- go to Ohio, 1. 4 million Ohioans have no health insurance, 114,000 of 
them lost it under President Bush; Wisconsin, 82,000 Wisconsinites lost it under President Bush.
This president has turned his back on the wellness of America. And there is no system. In fact, 
it's starting to fall apart not because of lawsuits -- though they are a problem, and John 
Edwards and I are committed to fixing them -- but because of the larger issue that we don't 
cover Americans.
Children across our country don't have health care. We're the richest country on the face of the 
planet, the only industrialized nation in the world not to do it.
I have a plan to cover all Americans. We're going to make it affordable and accessible. We're 
going to let everybody buy into the same health-care plan senators and congressmen give themselves.
Actually, it's not an empty promise.
It's really interesting, because the president used that very plan as a reason for seniors to 
accept his prescription drug plan. He said, if it's good enough for the congressmen and senators 
to have choice, seniors ought to have choice.
What we do is we have choice. I choose Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Other senators, other congressmen 
choose other programs.
But the fact is, we're going to help Americans be able to buy into it. Those that can afford it 
are going to buy in themselves. We're not giving this away for nothing.
I'll tell you exactly how I can do it: by reinstating what President Bush took away, 
which is called pay as you go.
During the 1990s, we had pay-as-you-go rules. If you were going to pass something in the 
Congress, you had to show where you are going to pay for it and how.
President Bush has taken -- he's the only president in history to do this. He's also the only 
president in 72 years to lose jobs -- 1. 6 million jobs lost. He's the only president to have 
incomes of families go down for the last three years; the only president to see exports go down; 
the only president to see the lowest level of business investment in our country as it is today.
Now, I'm going to reverse that. I'm going to change that. We're going to restore the fiscal 
discipline we had in the 1990s.
Every plan that I have laid out -- my health-care plan, my plan for education, my plan for kids 
to be able to get better college loans -- I've shown exactly how I'm going to pay for those.
And we start -- we don't do it exclusively -- but we start by rolling back George Bush's 
unaffordable tax cut for the wealthiest people, people earning more than $200,000 a year, and we 
pass, hopefully, the McCain-Kerry Commission which identified some $60 billion that we can get.
We shut the loophole which has American workers actually subsidizing the loss of their own job. 
They just passed an expansion of that loophole in the last few days: $43 billion of giveaways, 
including favors to the oil and gas industry and the people importing ceiling fans from China.
I'm going to stand up and fight for the American worker. And I am going to do it in a way that's 
fiscally sound. I show how I pay for the health care, how we pay for the education.
I have a manufacturing jobs credit. We pay for it by shutting that loophole overseas. We raise 
the student loans. I pay for it by changing the relationship with the banks.
This president has never once vetoed one bill; the first president in a hundred years not to do 
that.
I want you to notice how the president switched away from jobs and started talking about 
education principally.
Let me come back in one moment to that, but I want to speak for a second, if I can, to what the 
president said about fiscal responsibility.
Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano 
talking to me about law and order in this country.
This president has taken a $5. 6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye 
can see. Health-care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent; tuitions have gone 
up 35 percent; gasoline prices up 30 percent; Medicare premiums went up 17 percent a few days 
ago; prescription drugs are up 12 percent a year.
But guess what, America? The wages of Americans have gone down. The jobs that are being created 
in Arizona right now are paying about $13,700 less than the jobs that we're losing.
And the president just walks on by this problem. The fact is that he's cut job-training money. 
$1 billion was cut. They only added a little bit back this year because it's an election year.
They've cut the Pell Grants and the Perkins loans to help kids be able to go to college.
They've cut the training money. They've wound up not even extending unemployment benefits and 
not even extending health care to those people who are unemployed.
I'm going to do those things, because that's what's right in America: Help workers to transition 
in every respect.
I don't blame them entirely for it. I blame the president for the things the president 
could do that has an impact on it.
Outsourcing is going to happen. I've acknowledged that in union halls across the country. I've 
had shop stewards stand up and say, "Will you promise me you're going to stop all this 
outsourcing? "And I've looked them in the eye and I've said, "No, I can't do that. "
What I can promise you is that I will make the playing field as fair as possible, that I will, 
for instance, make certain that with respect to the tax system that you as a worker in America 
are not subsidizing the loss of your job.
Today, if you're an American business, you actually get a benefit for going overseas. You get to 
defer your taxes.
So if you're looking at a competitive world, you say to yourself, "Hey, I do better overseas 
than I do here in America. "
That's not smart. I don't want American workers subsidizing the loss of their own job. And when 
I'm president, we're going to shut that loophole in a nanosecond and we're going to use that 
money to lower corporate tax rates in America for all corporations, 5 percent. And we're going 
to have a manufacturing jobs credit and a job hiring credit so we actually help people be able 
to hire here.
The second thing that we can do is provide a fair trade playing field. This president didn't 
stand up for Boeing when Airbus was violating international rules and subsidies. He discovered 
Boeing during the course of this campaign after I'd been talking about it for months.
The fact is that the president had an opportunity to stand up and take on China for currency 
manipulation. There are companies that wanted to petition the administration. They were told: 
Don't even bother; we're not going to listen to it.
The fact is that there have been markets shut to us that we haven't stood up and fought for. I'm 
going to fight for a fair trade playing field for the American worker. And I will fight for the 
American worker just as hard as I fight for my own job. That's what the American worker wants. 
And if we do that, we can have an impact.
Plus, we need fiscal discipline. Restore fiscal discipline, we'll do a lot better.
Bob, anybody can play with these votes. Everybody knows that.
I have supported or voted for tax cuts over 600 times. I broke with my party in order to balance 
the budget, and Ronald Reagan signed into law the tax cut that we voted for. I voted for IRA tax 
cuts. I voted for small-business tax cuts.
But you know why the Pell Grants have gone up in their numbers? Because more people qualify for 
them because they don't have money.
But they're not getting the $5,100 the president promised them. They're getting less money.
We have more people who qualify. That's not what we want.
We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, 
who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for 
years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they 
struggled with it.
And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of 
broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.
I think we have to respect that.
The president and I share the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. I believe that. 
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
But I also believe that because we are the United States of America, we're a country with a 
great, unbelievable Constitution, with rights that we afford people, that you can't discriminate 
in the workplace. You can't discriminate in the rights that you afford people.
You can't disallow someone the right to visit their partner in a hospital. You have to allow 
people to transfer property, which is why I'm for partnership rights and so forth.
Now, with respect to DOMA and the marriage laws, the states have always been able to manage 
those laws. And they're proving today, every state, that they can manage them adequately.
I respect their views. I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up 
learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many.
I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. 
What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't 
share that article of faith.
I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God and her doctor. And that's 
why I support that.
Now, I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.
The president has never said whether or not he would do that. But we know from the people he's 
tried to appoint to the court he wants to.
I will not. I will defend the right of Roe v. Wade.
Now, with respect to religion, you know, as I said, I grew up a Catholic. I was an altar boy. I 
know that throughout my life this has made a difference to me.
And as President Kennedy said when he ran for president, he said, "I'm not running to be a 
Catholic president. I'm running to be a president who happens to be Catholic. "
My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, 
"What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works 
is dead. "
And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by 
your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people.
That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect 
this earth.
That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental 
teaching and belief of faith.
But I know this, that President Kennedy in his inaugural address told all of us that here on 
Earth, God's work must truly be our own. And that's what we have to -- I think that's the test 
of public service.
The reason health-care costs are getting higher, one of the principal reasons is that 
this administration has stood in the way of common-sense efforts that would have reduced the 
costs. Let me give you a prime example.
In the Senate we passed the right of Americans to import drugs from Canada. But the president 
and his friends took it out in the House, and now you don't have that right. The president 
blocked you from the right to have less expensive drugs from Canada.
We also wanted Medicare to be able to negotiate bulk purchasing. The VA does that. The VA 
provides lower-cost drugs to our veterans. We could have done that in Medicare.
Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, 
who many of them are on fixed income, to lift them out of poverty.
But rather than help you, the taxpayer, have lower cost, rather than help seniors have less 
expensive drugs, the president made it illegal -- illegal -- for Medicare to actually go out and 
bargain for lower prices.
Once again, the president is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills 
that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is 
amendments on certain bills.
But more importantly, with respect to the question of no record, I helped write -- I did write, 
I was one of the original authors of the early childhood health care and the expansion of health 
care that we did in the middle of the 1990s. And I'm very proud of that.
So the president's wrong.
Well, two leading national news networks have both said the president's characterization 
of my health-care plan is incorrect. One called it fiction. The other called it untrue.
The fact is that my health-care plan, America, is very simple. It gives you the choice. I don't 
force you to do anything. It's not a government plan. The government doesn't require you to do 
anything. You choose your doctor. You choose your plan.
If you don't want to take the offer of the plan that I want to put forward, you don't have do. 
You can keep what you have today, keep a high deductible, keep high premiums, keep a high 
co-pay, keep low benefits.
But I got a better plan. And I don't think a lot of people are going to want to keep what they 
have today.
Here's what I do: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America 
is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to -- they're not forced to, they can choose to 
-- they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.
I think they'll choose it, because it's a net plus of $5 billion to them.
We allow you -- if you choose to, you don't have to -- but we give you broader competition to 
allow you to buy into the same health care plan that senators and congressmen give themselves. 
If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for every American. I believe that your health care 
is just as important as any politician in Washington, D. C.
You want to buy into it, you can. We give you broader competition. That helps lower prices.
In addition to that, we're going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early. And most 
importantly, we give small business a 50 percent tax credit so that after we lower the costs of 
health care, they also get, whether they're self-employed or a small business, a lower cost to 
be able to cover their employees.
Now, what happens is when you begin to get people covered like that -- for instance in diabetes, 
if you diagnose diabetes early, you could save $50 billion in the health care system of America 
by avoiding surgery and dialysis. It works. And I'm going to offer it to America.
The president just said that government-run health care results in poor quality.
Now, maybe that explains why he hasn't fully funded the VA and the VA hospital is having trouble 
and veterans are complaining. Maybe that explains why Medicare patients are complaining about 
being pushed off of Medicare. He doesn't adequately fund it.
But let me just say to America: I am not proposing a government-run program. That's not what I 
have. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Senators and congressmen have a wide choice. Americans 
ought to have it too.
You just heard the president say that young people ought to be able to take money out of 
Social Security and put it in their own accounts.
Now, my fellow Americans, that's an invitation to disaster.
The CBO said very clearly that if you were to adopt the president's plan, there would be a $2 
trillion hole in Social Security, because today's workers pay in to the system for today's 
retirees. And the CBO said -- that's the Congressional Budget Office; it's bipartisan -- they 
said that there would have to be a cut in benefits of 25 percent to 40 percent.
Now, the president has never explained to America, ever, hasn't done it tonight, where does the 
transitional money, that $2 trillion, come from?
He's already got $3 trillion, according to The Washington Post, of expenses that he's put on the 
line from his convention and the promises of this campaign, none of which are paid for. Not one 
of them are paid for.
The fact is that the president is driving the largest deficits in American history. He's broken 
the pay-as-you-go rules.
I have a record of fighting for fiscal responsibility. In 1985, I was one of the first Democrats 
-- broke with my party. We balanced the budget in the '90s. We paid down the debt for two years.
And that's what we're going to do. We're going to protect Social Security. I will not privatize 
it. I will not cut the benefits. And we're going to be fiscally responsible. And we will take 
care of Social Security.
Not at all. Absolutely not, Bob. This is the same thing we heard -- remember, I appeared 
on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert in 1990-something. We heard the same thing. We fixed it.
In fact, we put together a $5. 6 trillion surplus in the '90s that was for the purpose of saving 
Social Security. If you take the tax cut that the president of the United States has given -- 
President Bush gave to Americans in the top 1 percent of America -- just that tax cut that went 
to the top 1 percent of America would have saved Social Security until the year 2075.
The president decided to give it to the wealthiest Americans in a tax cut. Now, Alan Greenspan, 
who I think has done a terrific job in monetary policy, supports the president's tax cut. I 
don't. I support it for the middle class, not that part of it that goes to people earning more 
than $200,000 a year.
And when I roll it back and we invest in the things that I have talked about to move our 
economy, we're going to grow sufficiently, it would begin to cut the deficit in half, and we get 
back to where we were at the end of the 1990s when we balanced the budget and paid down the debt 
of this country.
Now, we can do that.
Now, if later on after a period of time we find that Social Security is in trouble, we'll pull 
together the top experts of the country. We'll do exactly what we did in the 1990s. And we'll 
make whatever adjustment is necessary.
But the first and most important thing is to start creating jobs in America. The jobs the 
president is creating pay $9,000 less than the jobs that we're losing. And this is the first 
president in 72 years to preside over an economy in America that has lost jobs, 1. 6 million jobs.
Eleven other presidents -- six Democrats and five Republicans -- had wars, had recessions, had 
great difficulties; none of them lost jobs the way this president has.
I have a plan to put America back to work. And if we're fiscally responsible and put America 
back to work, we're going to fix Social Security.
Let me just answer one part of the last question quickly, and then I'll come to immigration.
The American middle-class family isn't making it right now, Bob. And what the president said 
about the tax cuts has been wiped out by the increase in health care, the increase in gasoline, 
the increase in tuitions, the increase in prescription drugs.
The fact is, the take-home pay of a typical American family as a share of national income is 
lower than it's been since 1929. And the take-home pay of the richest . 1 percent of Americans 
is the highest it's been since 1928.
Under President Bush, the middle class has seen their tax burden go up and the wealthiest's tax 
burden has gone down. Now that's wrong.
Now, with respect to immigration reform, the president broke his promise on immigration reform. 
He said he would reform it. Four years later he is now promising another plan.
Here's what I'll do: Number one, the borders are more leaking today than they were before 9/11. 
The fact is, we haven't done what we need to do to toughen up our borders, and I will.
Secondly, we need a guest-worker program, but if it's all we have, it's not going to solve the 
problem.
The second thing we need is to crack down on illegal hiring. It's against the law in the United 
States to hire people illegally, and we ought to be enforcing that law properly.
And thirdly, we need an earned-legalization program for people who have been here for a long 
time, stayed out of trouble, got a job, paid their taxes, and their kids are American. We got to 
start moving them toward full citizenship, out of the shadows. SCHIEFFER: Do you want to 
respond, Mr. President?
Four thousand people a day are coming across the border.
The fact is that we now have people from the Middle East, allegedly, coming across the border.
And we're not doing what we ought to do in terms of the technology. We have iris-identification 
technology. We have thumbprint, fingerprint technology today. We can know who the people are, 
that they're really the people they say they are when they cross the border.
We could speed it up. There are huge delays.
The fact is our borders are not as secure as they ought to be, and I'll make them secure.
Well, I'm glad you raised that question.
It's long overdue time to raise the minimum wage.
And, America, this is one of those issues that separates the president and myself.
We have fought to try to raise the minimum wage in the last years. But the Republican leadership 
of the House and Senate won't even let us have a vote on it. We're not allowed to vote on it. 
They don't want to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage is the lowest minimum wage value it 
has been in our nation in 50 years.
If we raise the minimum wage, which I will do over several years to $7 an hour, 9. 2 million 
women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year.
The president has denied 9. 2 million women $3,800 a year, but he doesn't hesitate to fight for 
$136,000 to a millionaire.
One percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut, but people working hard, playing 
by the rules, trying to take care of their kids, family values, that we're supposed to value so 
much in America -- I'm tired of politicians who talk about family values and don't value families.
What we need to do is raise the minimum wage. We also need to hold on to equal pay. Women work 
for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America.
And we had an initiative that we were working on to raise women's pay. They've cut it off. 
They've stopped it. They don't enforce these kinds of things.
Now, I think that it's a matter of fundamental right that if we raise the minimum wage, 15 
million Americans would be positively affected. We'd put money into the hands of people who work 
hard, who obey the rules, who play for the American dream.
And if we did that, we'd have more consumption ability in America, which is what we need right 
now in order to kick our economy into gear. I will fight tooth and nail to pass the minimum wage.
Is that a new question or a 30-second question?
Which time limit. . .
Thank you very much.
Well, again, the president didn't answer the question.
I'll answer it straight to America. I'm not going to appoint a judge to the Court who's going to 
undo a constitutional right, whether it's the First Amendment, or the Fifth Amendment, or some 
other right that's given under our courts today -- under the Constitution. And I believe that 
the right of choice is a constitutional right.
So I don't intend to see it undone.
Clearly, the president wants to leave in ambivalence or intends to undo it.
But let me go a step further. We have a long distance yet to travel in terms of fairness in 
America. I don't know how you can govern in this country when you look at New York City and you 
see that 50 percent of the black males there are unemployed, when you see 40 percent of Hispanic 
children -- of black children in some cities -- dropping out of high school.
And yet the president who talks about No Child Left Behind refused to fully fund -- by $28 
billion -- that particular program so you can make a difference in the lives of those young people.
Now right here in Arizona, that difference would have been $131 million to the state of Arizona 
to help its kids be able to have better education and to lift the property tax burden from its 
citizens. The president reneged on his promise to fund No Child Left Behind.
He'll tell you he's raised the money, and he has. But he didn't put in what he promised, and 
that makes a difference in the lives of our children.
You don't measure it by a percentage increase. Mr. President, you measure it by whether 
you're getting the job done.
Five hundred thousand kids lost after-school programs because of your budget.
Now, that's not in my gut. That's not in my value system, and certainly not so that the 
wealthiest people in America can walk away with another tax cut.
$89 billion last year to the top 1 percent of Americans, but kids lost their after-school 
programs. You be the judge.
Well, I think the fact that they're facing these repeated call-ups, some of them two and 
three deployments, and there's a stop- loss policy that prevents people from being able to get 
out when their time was up, is a reflection of the bad judgment this president exercised in how 
he has engaged in the world and deployed our forces.
Our military is overextended. Nine out of 10 active-duty Army divisions are either in Iraq, 
going to Iraq or have come back from Iraq. One way or the other, they're wrapped up in it.
Now, I've proposed adding two active-duty divisions to the armed forces of the United States -- 
one combat, one support.
In addition, I'm going to double the number of Special Forces so that we can fight a more 
effective war on terror, with less pressure on the National Guard and Reserve. And what I would 
like to do is see the National Guard and Reserve be deployed differently here in our own 
country. There's much we can do with them with respect to homeland security. We ought to be 
doing that. And that would relieve an enormous amount of pressure.
But the most important thing to relieve the pressure on all of the armed forces is frankly to 
run a foreign policy that recognizes that America is strongest when we are working with real 
alliances, when we are sharing the burdens of the world by working through our statesmanship at 
the highest levels and our diplomacy to bring other nations to our side.
I've said it before, I say it again: I believe the president broke faith to the American people 
in the way that he took this nation to war. He said he would work through a real alliance. He 
said in Cincinnati we would plan carefully, we would take every precaution. Well, we didn't. And 
the result is our forces today are overextended.
The fact is that he did not choose to go to war as a last result. And America now is paying, 
already $120 billion, up to $200 billion before we're finished and much more probably. And that 
is the result of this president taking his eye off of Osama bin Laden.
I have never suggested a test where we turn over our security to any nation. In fact, 
I've said the opposite: I will never turn the security of the United States over to any nation. 
No nation will ever have a veto over us.
But I think it makes sense, I think most Americans in their guts know, that we ought to pass a 
sort of truth standard. That's how you gain legitimacy with your own countrypeople, and that's 
how you gain legitimacy in the world.
But I'll never fail to protect the United States of America.
I believe it was a failure of presidential leadership not to reauthorize the assault 
weapons ban.
I am a hunter. I'm a gun owner. I've been a hunter since I was a kid, 12, 13 years old. And I 
respect the Second Amendment and I will not tamper with the Second Amendment.
But I'll tell you this. I'm also a former law enforcement officer. I ran one of the largest 
district attorney's offices in America, one of the ten largest. I put people behind bars for the 
rest of their life. I've broken up organized crime. I know something about prosecuting.
And most of the law enforcement agencies in America wanted that assault weapons ban. They don't 
want to go into a drug bust and be facing an AK-47.
I was hunting in Iowa last year with a sheriff from one of the counties there, and he pointed to 
a house in back of us, and said, "See the house over? We just did a drug bust a week earlier, 
and the guy we arrested had an AK-47 lying on the bed right beside him. "
Because of the president's decision today, law enforcement officers will walk into a place that 
will be more dangerous. Terrorists can now come into America and go to a gun show and, without 
even a background check, buy an assault weapon today.
And that's what Osama bin Laden's handbook said, because we captured it in Afghanistan. It 
encouraged them to do it.
So I believe America's less safe.
If Tom DeLay or someone in the House said to me, "Sorry, we don't have the votes," I'd have 
said, "Then we're going to have a fight. "
And I'd have taken it out to the country and I'd have had every law enforcement officer in the 
country visit those congressmen. We'd have won what Bill Clinton won.
No, Bob, regrettably, we have not moved far enough along.
And I regret to say that this administration has even blocked steps that could help us move 
further along. I'll give you an example.
I served on the Small Business Committee for a long time. I was chairman of it once. Now I'm the 
senior Democrat on it. We used to -- you know, we have a goal there for minority set-aside 
programs, to try to encourage ownership in the country. They don't reach those goals. They don't 
even fight to reach those goals. They've tried to undo them.
The fact is that in too many parts of our country, we still have discrimination. And affirmative 
action is not just something that applies to people of color. Some people have a mistaken view 
of it in America. It also is with respect to women, it's with respect to other efforts to try to 
reach out and be inclusive in our country.
I think that we have a long way to go, regrettably. If you look at what's happened -- we've made 
progress, I want to say that at the same time.
During the Clinton years, as you may recall, there was a fight over affirmative action. And 
there were many people, like myself, who opposed quotas, who felt there were places where it was 
overreaching. So we had a policy called "Mend it, don't end it. "We fixed it.
And we fixed it for a reason: because there are too many people still in this country who feel 
the stark resistance of racism, and so we have a distance to travel. As president, I will make 
certain we travel it.
Now, let me just share something. This president is the first president ever, I think, not to 
meet with the NAACP. This is a president who hasn't met with the Black Congressional Caucus. 
This is a president who has not met with the civil rights leadership of our country.
If a president doesn't reach out and bring people in and be inclusive, then how are we going to 
get over those barriers? I see that as part of my job as president, and I'll make my best effort 
to do it.
Well, I respect everything that the president has said and certainly respect his faith. I 
think it's important and I share it. I think that he just said that freedom is a gift from the 
Almighty.
Everything is a gift from the Almighty. And as I measure the words of the Bible -- and we all 
do; different people measure different things -- the Koran, the Torah, or, you know, Native 
Americans who gave me a blessing the other day had their own special sense of connectedness to a 
higher being. And people all find their ways to express it.
I was taught -- I went to a church school and I was taught that the two greatest commandments 
Very much so.
Let me pay a compliment to the president, if I may. I think in those days after 9/11, I thought 
the president did a terrific job. And I really was moved, as well as impressed, by the speech 
that he gave to the Congress.
And I think the hug Tom Daschle gave him at that moment was about as genuine a sense of there 
being no Democrats, no Republicans, we were all just Americans. That's where we were.
That's not where we are today. I regret to say that the president who called himself a uniter, 
not a divider, is now presiding over the most divided America in the recent memory of our 
country. I've never seen such ideological squabbles in the Congress of the United States. I've 
never seen members of a party locked out of meetings the way they're locked out today.
We have to change that. And as president, I am committed to changing that. I don't care if the 
idea comes from the other side or this side. I think we have to come together and work to change it.
And I've done that. Over 20 years in the United States Senate, I've worked with John McCain, 
who's sitting here, I've worked with other colleagues. I've reached across the aisle. I've tried 
to find the common ground, because that's what makes us strong as Americans.
And if Americans trust me with the presidency, I can pledge to you, we will have the most 
significant effort, openly -- not secret meetings in the White House with special interests, not 
ideologically driven efforts to push people aside -- but a genuine effort to try to restore 
America's hope and possibilities by bringing people together.
And one of the ways we're going to do it is, I'm going to work with my friend, John McCain, to 
further campaign finance reform so we get these incredible amounts of money out of the system 
and open it up to average people, so America is really represented by the people who make up 
America.
Well, I guess the president and you and I are three examples of lucky people who married up.
And some would say maybe me more so than others.
But I can take it.
Can I say, if I could just say a word about a woman that you didn't ask about, but my mom passed 
away a couple years ago, just before I was deciding to run. And she was in the hospital, and I 
went in to talk to her and tell her what I was thinking of doing.
And she looked at me from her hospital bed and she just looked at me and she said, "Remember: 
integrity, integrity, integrity. "Those are the three words that she left me with.
And my daughters and my wife are people who just are filled with that sense of what's right, 
what's wrong.
They also kick me around. They keep me honest. They don't let me get away with anything. I can 
sometimes take myself too seriously. They surely don't let me do that.
And I'm blessed, as I think the president is blessed, as I said last time. I've watched him with 
the first lady, who I admire a great deal, and his daughters. He's a great father. And I think 
we're both very lucky.
My fellow Americans, as you heard from Bob Schieffer a moment ago, America is being 
tested by division. More than ever, we need to be united as a country.
And, like Franklin Roosevelt, I don't care whether an idea is a Republican idea or a Democrat 
idea. I just care whether it works for America and whether it's going to make us stronger.
These are dangerous times. I believe I offer tested, strong leadership that can calm the waters 
of the troubled world. And I believe that we can together do things that are within the grasp of 
Americans.
We can lift our schools up. We can create jobs that pay more than the jobs we're losing 
overseas. We can have health care for all Americans. We can further the cause of equality in our 
nation.
Let me just make it clear: I will never allow any country to have a veto over our security. Just 
as I fought for our country as a young man, with the same passion I will fight to defend this 
nation that I love.
And, with faith in God and with conviction in the mission of America, I believe that we can 
reach higher. I believe we can do better.
I think the greatest possibilities of our country, our dreams and our hopes, are out there just 
waiting for us to grab onto them. And I ask you to embark on that journey with me.
I ask you for your trust. I ask you for your help. I ask you to allow me the privilege of 
leading this great nation of ours, of helping us to be stronger here at home and to be respected 
again in the world and, most of all, to be safer forever.
Thank you. Goodnight. And God bless the United States of America.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY-0.txt
Well, first of all, Bob, thank you for moderating tonight.
Thank you, Arizona State, for welcoming us.
And thank you to the Presidential Commission for undertaking this enormous task. We're proud to 
be here.
Mr. President, I'm glad to be here with you again to share similarities and differences with the 
American people.
Will we ever be safe and secure again? Yes. We absolutely must be. That's the goal.
Now, how do we achieve it is the most critical component of it.
I believe that this president, regrettably, rushed us into a war, made decisions about foreign 
policy, pushed alliances away. And, as a result, America is now bearing this extraordinary 
burden where we are not as safe as we ought to be.
The measurement is not: Are we safer? The measurement is: Are we as safe as we ought to be? And 
there are a host of options that this president had available to him, like making sure that at 
all our ports in America containers are inspected. Only 95 percent of them -- 95 percent come in 
today uninspected. That's not good enough.
People who fly on airplanes today, the cargo hold is not X-rayed, but the baggage is. That's not 
good enough. Firehouses don't have enough firefighters in them. Police officers are being cut 
from the streets of America because the president decided to cut the COPS program.
So we can do a better job of homeland security. I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more 
effective war on terror and guarantee that we will go after the terrorists.
I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary 
to be safe.
But I pledge this to you, America: I will do it in the way that Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald 
Reagan and John Kennedy and others did, where we build the strongest alliances, where the world 
joins together, where we have the best intelligence and where we are able, ultimately, to be 
more safe and secure.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY-1.txt
Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took 
his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.
Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, 
"Where is Osama bin Laden? " He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. 
I'm not that concerned. "
We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY-10.txt
The reason health-care costs are getting higher, one of the principal reasons is that 
this administration has stood in the way of common-sense efforts that would have reduced the 
costs. Let me give you a prime example.
In the Senate we passed the right of Americans to import drugs from Canada. But the president 
and his friends took it out in the House, and now you don't have that right. The president 
blocked you from the right to have less expensive drugs from Canada.
We also wanted Medicare to be able to negotiate bulk purchasing. The VA does that. The VA 
provides lower-cost drugs to our veterans. We could have done that in Medicare.
Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, 
who many of them are on fixed income, to lift them out of poverty.
But rather than help you, the taxpayer, have lower cost, rather than help seniors have less 
expensive drugs, the president made it illegal -- illegal -- for Medicare to actually go out and 
bargain for lower prices.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY-11.txt
Once again, the president is misleading America. I've actually passed 56 individual bills 
that I've personally written and, in addition to that, and not always under my name, there is 
amendments on certain bills.
But more importantly, with respect to the question of no record, I helped write -- I did write, 
I was one of the original authors of the early childhood health care and the expansion of health 
care that we did in the middle of the 1990s. And I'm very proud of that.
So the president's wrong.
pa5/speeches/bush-kerry3/KERRY-12.txt
Well, two leading national news networks have both said the president's characterization 
of my health-care plan is incorrect. One called it fiction. The other called it untrue.
The fact is that my health-care plan, America, is very simple. It gives you the choice. I don't 
force you to do anything. It's not a government plan. The government doesn't require you to do 
anything. You choose your doctor. You choose your plan.
If you don't want to take the offer of the plan that I want to put forward, you don't have do. 
You can keep what you have today, keep a high deductible, keep high premiums, keep a high 
co-pay, keep low benefits.
But I got a better plan. And I don't think a lot of people are going to want to keep what they 
have today.
Here's what I do: We take over Medicaid children from the states so that every child in America 
is covered. And in exchange, if the states want to -- they're not forced to, they can choose to 
-- they cover individuals up to 300 percent of poverty. It's their choice.
I think they'll choose it, because it's a net plus of $5 billion to them.
We allow you -- if you choose to, you don't have to -- but we give you broader competition to 
allow you to buy into the same health care plan that senators and congressmen give themselves. 
If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for every American. I believe that your health care 
is just as important as any politician in Washington, D. C.
You want to buy into it, you can. We give you broader competition. That helps lower prices.
In addition to that, we're going to allow people 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare early. And most 
importantly, we give small business a 50 percent tax credit so that after we lower the costs of 
health care, they also get, whether they're self-employed or a small business,

3/5/2020 1/6 “The Markovian Candidate”: Speaker Attribution Using Markov Models Due: Wednesday, March 11th at 6pm The goal of this assignment is to give you practice with building a hash table from...

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