PRESS RELEASE from Romney for President
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Romney
Press
Office
July 11,
2012
MITT
ROMNEY DELIVERS REMARKS AT THE NAACP CONVENTION
Boston,
MA – Mitt Romney today delivered remarks at the NAACP
Convention in Houston, Texas. The following remarks were prepared for
delivery:
Thank you, Bishop Graves, for your generous introduction. Thanks also
to President Ben Jealous and Chairman Roslyn Brock for the opportunity
to be here this morning, and for your hospitality. It is an honor
to address you.
I appreciate the chance to speak first – even before Vice President
Biden gets his turn tomorrow. I just hope the Obama campaign
won’t think you’re playing favorites.
You all know something of my background, and maybe you’ve wondered how
any Republican ever becomes governor of Massachusetts in the first
place. Well, in a state with 11 percent Republican registration,
you don’t get there by just talking to Republicans. We have to
make our case to every voter. We don’t count anybody out, and we
sure don’t make a habit of presuming anyone’s support. Support is
asked for and earned – and that’s why I’m here today.
With 90 percent of African-Americans voting for Democrats, some of you
may wonder why a Republican would bother to campaign in the African
American community, and to address the NAACP. Of course, one
reason is that I hope to represent all Americans, of every race, creed
or sexual orientation, from the poorest to the richest and everyone in
between.
But there is another reason: I believe that if you understood who I
truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what
I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African American
families, you would vote for me for president. I want you to know
that if I did not believe that my policies and my leadership would help
families of color -- and families of any color -- more than the
policies and leadership of President Obama, I would not be running for
president.
The opposition charges that I and people in my party are running for
office to help the rich. Nonsense. The rich will do just
fine whether I am elected or not. The President wants to make
this a campaign about blaming the rich. I want to make this a
campaign about helping the middle class.
I am running for president because I know that my policies and vision
will help hundreds of millions of middle class Americans of all races,
will lift people from poverty, and will help prevent people from
becoming poor. My campaign is about helping the people who need
help. The course the President has set has not done that – and
will not do that. My course will.
When President Obama called to congratulate me on becoming the
presumptive Republican nominee, he said that he, “looked forward to an
important and healthy debate about America’s future.” To date,
I’m afraid that his campaign has taken a different course than that.
But, in campaigns at their best, voters can expect a clear choice, and
candidates can expect a fair hearing – only more so from a venerable
organization like this one. So, it is that healthy debate about
the course of the nation that I want to discuss with you today.
If someone had told us in the 1950s or 1960s that a black citizen would
serve as the forty-fourth president, we would have been proud and many
would have been surprised. Picturing that day, we might have
assumed that the American presidency would be the very last door of
opportunity to be opened. Before that came to pass, every other
barrier on the path to equal opportunity would surely have come down.
Of course, it hasn’t happened quite that way. Many barriers
remain. Old inequities persist. In some ways, the
challenges are even more complicated than before. And across
America -- and even within your own ranks -- there are serious, honest
debates about the way forward.
If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, then a
chronically bad economy would be equally bad for everyone.
Instead, it’s worse for African Americans in almost every way.
The unemployment rate, the duration of unemployment, average
income, and median family wealth are all worse for the black
community. In June, while the overall unemployment rate remained
stuck at 8.2 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans
actually went up, from 13.6 percent to 14.4 percent.
Americans of every background are asking when this economy will finally
recover – and you, in particular, are entitled to an answer.
If equal opportunity in America were an accomplished fact, black
families could send their sons and daughters to public schools that
truly offer the hope of a better life. Instead, for generations,
the African-American community has been waiting and waiting for that
promise to be kept. Today, black children are 17 percent of
students nationwide – but they are 42 percent of the students in our
worst-performing schools.
Our society sends them into mediocre schools and expects them to
perform with excellence, and that is not fair. Frederick Douglass
observed that, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair
broken men.” Yet, instead of preparing these children for life,
too many schools set them up for failure. Everyone in this room
knows that we owe them better than that.
The path of inequality often leads to lost opportunity. College,
graduate school, and first jobs should be milestones marking the
passage from childhood to adulthood. But for too many
disadvantaged young people, these goals seem unattainable – and their
lives take a tragic turn.
Many live in neighborhoods filled with violence and fear, and empty of
opportunity. Their impatience for real change is
understandable. They are entitled to feel that life in America
should be better than this. They are told even now to wait for
improvements in our economy and in our schools, but it seems to me that
these Americans have waited long enough.
The point is that when decades of the same promises keep producing the
same failures, then it’s reasonable to rethink our approach – and
consider a new plan.
I’m hopeful that together we can set a new direction in federal policy,
starting where many of our problems do – with the family. A study
from the Brookings Institution has shown that for those who graduate
from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until 21 before they
marry and then have their first child, the probability of being poor is
two percent. And if those factors are absent, the probability of
being poor is 76 percent.
Here at the NAACP, you understand the deep and lasting difference the
family makes. Your former executive director, Dr. Benjamin Hooks,
had it exactly right. The family, he said, “remains the bulwark
and the mainstay of the black community. That great truth must
not be overlooked.”
Any policy that lifts up and honors the family is going to be good for
the country, and that must be our goal. As President, I will
promote strong families – and I will defend traditional marriage.
As you may have heard from my opponent, I am also a believer in the
free-enterprise system. I believe it can bring change where so
many well-meaning government programs have failed. I’ve never
heard anyone look around an impoverished neighborhood and say, “You
know, there’s too much free enterprise around here. Too many
shops, too many jobs, too many people putting money in the bank.”
What you hear, of course, is how do we bring in jobs? How do we
make good, honest employers want to move in and stay? And with
the shape this economy is in, we’re asking that more than ever.
Free enterprise is still the greatest force for upward mobility,
economic security, and the expansion of the middle class. We have
seen in recent years what it’s like to have less free enterprise.
As President, I will show the good things that can happen when we have
more – more business activity, more jobs, more opportunity, more
paychecks, more savings accounts.
On Day One, I will begin turning this economy around with a plan for
the middle class. And I don’t mean just those who are middle
class now – I also mean those who have waited so long for their chance
to join the middle class.
I know what it will take to put people back to work, to bring more jobs
and better wages. My jobs plan is based on 25 years of success in
business. It has five key steps.
First, I will take full advantage of our energy resources, and I will
approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada. Low cost, plentiful coal,
natural gas, oil, and renewables will bring over a million
manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
Second, I will open up new markets for American products. We are the
most productive major economy in the world, so trade means good jobs
for Americans. But trade must be free and fair, so I’ll clamp
down on cheaters like China and make sure that they finally play by the
rules.
Third, I will reduce government spending. Our high level of debt slows
GDP growth and that means fewer jobs. If our goal is jobs, we must,
must stop spending over a trillion dollars more than we earn. To do
this, I will eliminate expensive non-essential programs like Obamacare,
and I will work to reform and save Medicare and Social Security, in
part by means-testing their benefits.
Fourth, I will focus on nurturing and developing the skilled workers
our economy so desperately needs and the future demands. This is the
human capital with which tomorrow's bright future will be built. Too
many homes and too many schools are failing to provide our children
with the skills and education that are essential for anything other
than a minimum-wage job.
And finally and perhaps most importantly, I will restore economic
freedom. This nation’s economy runs on freedom, on opportunity, on
entrepreneurs, on dreamers who innovate and build businesses.
These entrepreneurs are being crushed by high taxation, burdensome
regulation, hostile regulators, excessive healthcare costs, and
destructive labor policies. I will work to make America the best place
in the world for innovators and entrepreneurs and businesses small and
large.
Do these five things – open up energy, expand trade, cut the growth of
government, focus on better educating tomorrow’s workers today, and
restore economic freedom – and jobs will come back to America, and
wages will rise again. The President will say he will do those things,
but he will not, he cannot, and his record of the last four years
proves it.
If I am president, job one for me will be creating jobs. I have no
hidden agenda. If you want a president who will make things better in
the African American community, you are looking at him.
Finally, I will address the institutionalized inequality in our
education system. And I know something about this from my time as
governor.
In the years before I took office our state’s leaders had come together
to pass bipartisan measures that were making a difference. In
reading and in math, our students were already among the best in the
nation – and during my term, they took over the top spot.
Those results revealed what good teachers can do if the system will
only let them. The problem was, this success wasn’t shared.
A significant achievement gap between students of different races
remained. So we set out to close it.
I urged faster interventions in failing schools, and the funding
to go along with it. I promoted math and science excellence in
schools, and proposed paying bonuses to our best teachers.
I refused to weaken testing standards, and instead raised them. To
graduate from high school, students had to pass an exam in math and
English – I added a science requirement as well. And I put in
place a merit scholarship for those students who excelled: the top 25
percent of students in each high school were awarded a John and
Abigail Adams Scholarship – which meant four years tuition-free at any
Massachusetts public institution of higher learning.
When I was governor, not only did test scores improve – we also
narrowed the achievement gap.
The teachers unions were not happy with a number of these reforms. They
especially did not like our emphasis on choice through charter schools,
particularly for our inner city kids. Accordingly, the legislature
passed a moratorium on any new charter schools.
As you know, in Boston, in Harlem, in Los Angeles, and all across the
country, charter schools are giving children a chance, children that
otherwise could be locked in failing schools. I was inspired just a few
weeks ago by the students in one of Kenny Gamble’s charter schools in
Philadelphia. Right here in Houston is another success story:
the Knowledge Is Power Program, which has set the standard,
thanks to the groundbreaking work of the late Harriet Ball.
These charter schools are doing a lot more than closing the achievement
gap. They are bringing hope and opportunity to places where for
years there has been none.
Charter schools are so successful that almost every politician can find
something good to say about them. But, as we saw in
Massachusetts, true reform requires more than talk. As Governor,
I vetoed the bill blocking charter schools. But our legislature
was 87 percent Democrat, and my veto could have been easily
over-ridden. So I joined with the Black Legislative Caucus, and
their votes helped preserve my veto, which meant that new charter
schools, including some in urban neighborhoods, would be opened.
When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it both ways
– talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that are
blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged
public-school students, or you can be the protector of special
interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both. I have
made my choice: As president, I will be a champion of real education
reform in America, and I won’t let any special interest get in the way.
I will give the parents of every low-income and special needs student
the chance to choose where their child goes to school. For the
first time in history, federal education funds will be linked to a
student, so that parents can send their child to any public or charter
school, or to a private school, where permitted. And I will make
that a true choice by ensuring there are good options available to
all.
Should I be elected President, I’ll lead as I did when I was
governor. I am pleased today to be joined today by Reverend
Jeffrey Brown, who was a member of my kitchen cabinet in Massachusetts
that helped guide my policy and actions that affected the African
American community. I will look for support wherever there is
good will and shared conviction. I will work with you to help our
children attend better schools and help our economy create good jobs
with better wages.
I can’t promise that you and I will agree on every issue. But I
do promise that your hospitality to me today will be returned. We
will know one another, and work to common purposes. I will seek
your counsel. And if I am elected president, and you invite me to
next year’s convention, I would count it as a privilege, and my answer
will be yes.
The Republican Party’s record, by the measures you rightly apply, is
not perfect. Any party that claims a perfect record doesn’t know
history the way you know it.
Yet always, in both parties, there have been men and women of
integrity, decency, and humility who called injustice by its name.
For every one of us a particular person comes to mind, someone
who set a standard of conduct and made us better by their example.
For me, that man is my father, George Romney.
It wasn’t just that my Dad helped write the civil rights provision for
the Michigan Constitution, though he did. It wasn’t just that he
helped create Michigan’s first civil rights commission, or that as
governor he marched for civil rights in Detroit – though he did those
things, too.
More than these public acts, it was the kind of man he was, and the way
he dealt with every person, black or white. He was a man of the
fairest instincts, and a man of faith who knew that every person was a
child of God.
I’m grateful to him for so many things, and above all for the knowledge
of God, whose ways are not always our ways, but whose justice is
certain and whose mercy endures forever.
Every good cause on this earth relies in the end on a plan bigger than
ours. “Without dependence on God,” as Dr. King said, “our efforts
turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest night. Unless his
spirit pervades our lives, we find only what G. K. Chesterton called
‘cures that don't cure, blessings that don’t bless, and solutions that
don’t solve.’”
Of all that you bring to the work of today’s civil rights cause, no
advantage counts for more than this abiding confidence in the name
above every name. Against cruelty, arrogance, and all the
foolishness of man, this spirit has carried the NAACP to many
victories. More still are up ahead, and with each one we will be
a better nation.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
###
WASHINGTON, June
5,
2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Former Presidential
Candidate Gary Bauer congratulated Governor Scott
Walker for his win in Wisconsin's
recall
election,
calling
it
"another
sign
that
taxpayers
will
award
office
holders
ready
to
do
the hard work of reigning in out-of-control
government spending."
Bauer, the chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, made
the following statement:
"I congratulate Governor Scott Walker
for his hard-fought victory tonight, and most especially for having the
courage of his convictions to fight the good fight. But the victory in Wisconsin is not Scott
Walker's alone. It is a victory for the hard-working
taxpayers of Wisconsin,
who foot the bill year after year. It is a victory for common
sense
over powerful special interests. It is a victory that taxpayers
in
every state can celebrate. It is a victory, yes, even for some
union
members.
"Since
Gov. Walker's reforms were enacted, tens of thousands of state
employees have opted to keep more of the money they earn rather than
let the public employees union siphon off their hard-earned
dollars.
In other words, once given the choice, more than half of the public
employees union's members decided that they didn't need the
union.
These reforms will pay real dividends for the taxpayers of
Wisconsin.
They are the real winners tonight.
"The recall election is a sign of good things to come. The
power of the Big Labor bosses has finally been checked, not just in Wisconsin,
but also in scores of other states across the country. More
governors,
legislators and taxpayers will be inspired to stand up against the
liberal labor unions and do what is truly in the best interests of
their communities. Wisconsin's
10
Electoral College votes are now in play, and the anti-tax, small
government movement that swept the country in 2010 is about to sweep Barack Obama out of office in 154 days!"
Source: PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1drYR)