2009 Values Voter Summit
Washington, DC
Friday, September 18,
2009
[TRANSCRIPT from FRCAction]
Thank you. Thank you. Washington, thank you very, very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, first of all, let me just say that you have just heard an address
by one of America’s true statesmen, Congressman Mike Pence, one of my
very favorite people. (Applause.) And if we had 434 more just like him,
we wouldn’t be upset about anything. (Laughter.) But I realize I’ve
come here today to speak to this “angry mob.” (Laughter.) Gosh, you
don’t look that difficult.
In a few months I will be making what will be my 12th trip to Israel. I
just got back from there last month. Whenever I go I love to visit many
of the incredible mountains – Mt. Zion, Mt. Moriah, the Mt. of Olives –
but one of my favorites is Mt. Carmel because it was there that Elijah
stood and taunted the 450 prophets of Baal.
He put it all on the line, and he was there by himself, underfunded –
(laughter) – unappreciated, and certainly he was there outnumbered,
laughed at, scoffed at. The 450 prophets of Baal did all sort of
machinations to bring the fire down to consume the offering and nothing
happened.
Elijah poured water on the offering just to even up it a little bit,
and then said a simple prayer.
And as we all know, the fire fell from Heaven and consumed not only the
offering but even the water in the trenches that had built around it.
(Applause.)
And I’m reminded of that story because I think sometimes we may look
around and think that those of us who are conservative and particularly
who are believers may feel outnumbered, outgunned, out-financed, but I
think we need to remember that our power has never been in our
pocketbooks but in our Creator. (Applause, cheers.)
And that’s where we must always believe our strength and power comes
from. Elijah made a choice. He took a stand. And he did not ask the
permission of the ACLU – (laughter) – before he called down the fire
from Heaven to consume the offering.
Well, over the last few months the audacity of hope has become the
audacity of hypocrisy. It is, at times, a country that is almost
difficult to recognize. We have become the land of czars, clunker cars
and Hollywood stars – (laughter) – but unfortunately it’s also become a
place where we have lost any semblance of those promises of
transparency and accountability.
I know Congressman Pence, in his remarks, mentioned the early departure
of Van Jones, not a great loss to the country. (Laughter.) The question
is not why did it take so long for him to resign; the real question,
why on earth was he ever hired in the first place? (Applause.)
Folks, you don’t even have to be a scholar to do a Google search. You
could have read the New Yorker
article and find out where he, by his own words, talked about getting a
$215,000 grant from a foundation to create green jobs in Oakland, and
said that as a result of the expenditure of $215,000 they did not
create one single job.
So you know what they did? Did they scrap the program, look for another
way to do it? No. They went back and got another $215,000 for the same
program. And when it was over they still had not created one single
job. The exact quote in the article was, “It was a complete, utter
failure,” and yet he was supposed to bring millions of green jobs to
the country.
Even Jon Stewart has recognized the scandal related to ACORN and the
fact that it took a 20- year-old college kid to break a story because
all the networks apparently were so busy listening to Nancy Pelosi –
(applause) – that they missed an incredible story of fraud and
law-breaking with taxpayer money, tens of millions of dollars of it.
I know something about ACORN because – you may not know this – ACORN
actually started in my state. Its original name was the Arkansas
Community Organization for Reform Now. I’ve known about it since the
‘70s. Not much of this surprises me.
There is some good news on the Washington front. We finally have a
bipartisan health-care bill, the Baucus bill. Both sides hate it
equally. It is bipartisan in people’s contempt of it. (Laughter,
applause.)
And while I recognize there has been a lot of contempt toward the
discussion of the end-of-life issue as it relates and whether it’s in
the health-care bill. Some have said that the reason this issue is
important is because if we were to include some type of end-of-life
counseling, it puts us on a slippery slope.
My dear friends, we have been on a slippery slope since 1973 when we
decided that it was okay to terminate the life of a perfectly healthy
unborn child. (Applause.) This is not the beginning; this is the
ongoing of the slippery slope. (Applause.)
If the government can tell us who can be born, that same government
will also be able to tell us who has to die. We need to believe and
continue to stand forth that life begins at conception and it ends when
God calls us home, not when Ezekiel Emanuel decides it’s time for us to
go home. (Applause.)
Now, a couple of years ago I took a little ribbing from the press
because I made the comment during the presidential campaign that I had
majored in miracles, not in math. They kind of gave me a hard time
about it. It turns out I’m not the only one that apparently majored in
miracles instead of math.
Barack Obama has been telling us we had 47 million uninsured Americans
until last week, all of a sudden, 17 million of them got insurance
overnight because he just adjusted the figure to 30 million, and I
don’t remember one single major news source asking him what happened to
the other 17 million. (Applause.) That’s a miracle, my friends, a
miracle. (Cheers, applause.)
The truth is, we need to address the health issue in this country, but
notice I didn’t say the health-care issue, because the real crisis in
this country is not health care, it’s health. Eighty percent of our
expenditures in the health care, $2.4 trillion, is spent on dealing
with chronic disease.
We have an incredibly unhealthy population, and until we address that,
simply covering more people only exacerbates the problem by making it
so that more people will be encouraged to continue to live unhealthy
lifestyles.
The reality is this: Somebody has described the health of America as a
lot like an NFL football game on a Sunday afternoon – 22 people down on
the field in desperate need of rest, and 70,000 people up in the stands
in desperate need of exercise. (Laughter.) Therein is America’s basic
health-care problem right there. (Applause.)
If Adam Smith were here today, I’m afraid his invisible hand would be
shaking a fist at us with the things that we’ve done to try to deal
with the economy. In fact, it might not just be a fist shaking; it
might be a single digit saluting us, and maybe it’s best that it’s
invisible. But, of course, if he were to offer up such a digit, someone
on the left would probably bite it off in protest. (Laughter.) So we
better be careful that we don’t even have that to happen.
The president is engaged in a miraculous kind of administration. We’ve
been told that since he’s taken office, he has created or saved a
million jobs – another miracle of math.
I’m not sure where they are; I just know that we were told that if we
spent $867 billion in the “porkulus” bill, that we would be able to
keep unemployment under 8 percent, but we had to do it and we had to do
it now because otherwise unemployment would go well above 8 percent. So
we passed that ridiculous waste of your taxpayers’ money and now
unemployment is at 9.7 percent and expected to go to 10.
This is a lot like the TARP bill, for which I blame Republicans even
more than Democrats, and that was a ridiculous absurdity. And let me
tell you; anybody who calls himself or herself a conservative and
supported TARP is no real friend of conservativism because there is no
way under heaven that it was ever right to do wrong.
And many of the people who defended TARP admitted when they were doing
it that it wasn’t the way we ought to go about fixing the economy, but
they were wringing their hands and they said, we don’t have a choice.
Yes, we do! (Applause.) It is never right to do wrong, never wrong to
do right, and it was wrong to take a bunch of money and bail out
irresponsible, reckless people who had already squandered the
situations and opportunities they had. (Applause.) I said the TARP bill
should have been called something else. It should have been called the
“congressional relief action program.” (Laughter.) I’ll let you figure
that one out.
Just this week a 477-page report on the SEC has revealed that our
problem is not that we didn’t have enough government regulation; we had
incompetent people who were doing the regulating. (Applause.)
If you read even just a little bit of the report you find out that not
only was the agency that was the watchdog not doing its job, but the
companies who were supposedly bailed out and going to get better are
doing the exact same things they were before they had to be bailed out
the first time.
The report reads like the complete collection DVD boxed set of “Police
Academy” – utter incompetence in every possible realm. (Applause.) And
I’ll tell you one of the answers for it. It’s to send a bunch of
congressmen home next year – (cheers, applause) – and eventually enact
term limits and send all the congressmen home after they have been here
a while.
If we really are serious about fixing the economy, it’s high time to
talk about the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, get rid of the income
tax and the IRS – (applause) – enact a fair tax, and tell the IRS that
since you don’t exist anymore, you won’t be able to intimidate pastors
and Christian people across this country by threatening them with some
tax penalty as a result of their speaking out in their constitutional
First Amendment right for freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
(Applause.)
The Bill of Rights was never intended to tell us what we can and can’t
do. It was given so that we would restrict the government and tell it
what it couldn’t do to keep us from being free people. (Applause,
cheers.) Whatever happened to a simple understanding of the First
Amendment? (Applause, cheers.)
But with this administration, miracles continue to happen. (Laughter.)
The president says he’ll be able to squeeze $500 billion out of the
Medicare program, and I wonder, if he could do it now, why hasn’t he
already done it?
And here’s what’s interesting: We’re going to squeeze $500 billion out
of a program that’s about to increase by 30 percent with all the baby
boomers retiring. All I can say is, praise the lord; we’ve seen yet
another miracle. (Laughter.)
If we really are serious about reform, practice it in the states. Let
the states be what they were intended to be by our founders: the
laboratories of good government. And, by the way, you want to see what
government-run health care looks like? A couple of states have tried
it, Tennessee and Massachusetts. It bankrupted both states.
Seventy-five percent of the people in Massachusetts have said they
don’t think it’s a success.
Eighty-seven percent of the people polled there say that health care is
costing more, not less. The latest figures are that the average cost of
insurance for a family of four nationally is $13,000. It’s $20,000 in
Massachusetts. It’s going to bankrupt their entire budget.
You know, the only thing inexpensive about the Massachusetts
health-care bill is that there you can get a $50 abortion. Frankly, if
that’s where we’re headed with the public option and a government-run
health care, thank you but no thank you. Our wallets and our babies
will be better off without it. (Applause.)
There was once a time when our foreign policy was, “Walk softly and
carry a big stick.” As a result of actions, including those yesterday,
one of which was outrageous – on the 70th anniversary of the Russian
invasion of Poland, we announced that we’re pulling out of missile
defense shields from both the Czech Republic and Poland.
I’m sure that really gave a lot of comfort to the people of Eastern
Europe, because they already know that they can certainly trust the
Russians and all that they promise. And if not the Russians, we can
absolutely trust the Iranians. (Laughter.)
So our new policy is, walk softly and carry a great big olive branch,
or maybe even a bag of Stay Puft marshmallows so that when we build
around the campfire we can sing “Kumbaya” and have a lovely time
holding arms – (laughter) – and talking about how well we’re getting on.
We gave up missile sites for what? For nothing. And it’s the same
policy that we’re trying to implement in the Middle East with Israel.
We’re asking them to give up their land, for what?
Historically, when we’ve asked them to give land for peace, they’ve
ended up with neither the land nor peace. And it’s a big mistake.
(Applause.)
And when Iran was killing its own citizens who protested the outcome of
the elections, which seemed to be rigged to everybody but Ahmadinejad,
the president said he did not want to interfere. It was an internal
matter. And yet 20 families in Israel cannot move into the Shepherd
Hotel even though it was bought and all the permits were secured for 20
Jewish families to live in that place because the president believes
that it’s an invasion of the settlement process.
I just wonder, how come it’s okay to stand back and not interfere when
20-year-olds are getting murdered in the streets of Tehran but it is
okay to interfere when the Jewish people want to live in their own
homeland and secure the land that is theirs and they paid for it?
(Applause.) Help me understand how that could be?
The president has equated Palestine terror as the same thing as Israeli
settlement. I guess I’m having a hard time understanding how that the
blowing up of a school is the equivalent of building one for kids to
attend. That is lost on me.
I also believe that it wasn’t so bad that Hugo Chavez gave the
president the book, but in light of some of our foreign policy
maneuvers I’m wondering if the problem is that he read it and enjoyed
it. (Laughter.)
Here we are gutting the integrity of the CIA and calling them liars,
while at the same time treating suspected terrorists like rock stars
and giving them refuge in Bermuda, and at the same time wanting to make
sure that we read Miranda Rights to all the people that might be at
Gitmo, and see if we can get them better facilities, and perhaps maybe
all of us would chip in our tax dollars and provide lawyers for them.
God help us all when we’re more concerned about protecting the
terrorists than we are the people in the CIA who were the ones whose
information and intelligence helped secure us and it kept us safe for
eight years not having another disaster. (Applause, cheers.)
Much of the problem in our nation today is that it’s appearing that
we’ve lost our way and forgotten who we are as a people. When the
president was asked about American exceptionalism during his visit to
France, he said, well, I’m sure that we think our country is
exceptional, but then the Brits think they’re exceptional and the
Greeks think they’re exceptional. So, in other words, when asked what
does he think about American exceptionalism, the answer is, not so much.
Well, I happen to differ. I believe America is an exceptional country
created out of the providence of God because of the prayers of people
who, on their knees, begged for a place where they could be free and
raise their children in the freedom to worship and to speak out and to
protest, and where every person was equal to every other person in
intrinsic value and worth and no person was worth more or worth less
because of how much land they owned, what their last name was, what
their occupation was and what their bloodline was.
I think that’s what’s given us the greatness of America. And it is an
exceptional place. Frankly, it’s exceptional because it’s always been a
place where even the marketplace was allowed to be free enough where
that those who did well were able to succeed and those who did poorly
naturally failed.
That’s why, my friend, we listen to music on an iPod, not a Victrola.
There is a certain sense in which just like there is creative
innovation, they also must be creative destruction. And when businesses
no longer act responsibility and instead act recklessly, instead of the
government bailing them out we ought to let them fail.
And, yes, it would be painful, but the more painful thing is creating a
society of mediocrity rather than a society of meritocracy where people
believe that work is no longer rewarded and foolishness is. That is the
antithesis of what this American dream is truly all about.
And if you think about it, there have been so very many who have told
us that what we need to do as conservatives is to abandon some of these
attitudes toward the sanctity of life and traditional marriage and free
enterprise, just move to the center.
Well, I’m not sure that moving to the center makes a whole lot of
sense, especially when the advice is coming from people who certainly
don’t have ours or the country’s best interest at heart. And here is
what I would suggest to you: Remember the story of King David when he
was just a shepherd boy. We all know about his amazing slaying of the
giant, Goliath, but I think as remarkable as it is that he tool on
Goliath is the other part of the story that we often lose and forget.
Before he ever went to face Goliath, he first was fitted with the
king’s armor and the king’s sword, and he said, no thanks. It was so
heavy he couldn’t move in it. He was more comfortable with his sling
than he was with the sword.
And I want to tell you, it was brave to face Goliath, but it was
equally brave to tell his king no. There are times when we think that
our greatest battles are fighting out there some of these issues, but
sometimes the bravest moments we ever have is when we just stand up and
say, enough already; we’re going to rise to the challenge, which is
exactly what this conference is all about. (Applause.)
Let me remind you of something. There were 12 million people who passed
through the portals of Ellis Island after enduring weeks of suffering
through sea sickness and squalor in the steerage portion of the ship –
men in their shabby suits, women in their long skirts and their
kerchiefs.
As they arrived at Ellis Island, many of the women were pinching the
cheeks of their children so they put a little color in them so they
wouldn’t look sickly and be declared unfit and unable to go through
those portals.
They came here with nothing, not even the language, and yet they helped
build the greatness of this country because they believed that when
they got to America and their feet touched the soil of this precious
earth that we call home, that life for them would have hope and they
would have a future – if not a great one for themselves, for their
kids. And that’s why they made those sacrifices to get here.
It seems to me that maybe some of them understood America far better
than our president does with his Columbia and Yale degrees. (Applause.)
And I hope that we will not forget who we are. Joshua once told his
people, if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for
yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your
forefathers served beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in
whose land you are now dwelling. But as for and my household, we will
serve the Lord. (Applause.)
If there is a rise to the challenge, that’s where it starts. Let others
make their choices. Let others choose who they will serve. But I hope
you will join me in saying, as for me and my household, we will serve
the Lord.
God bless you and thank you very, very much.