Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
323152117
label
Dutch Twins Plant - Wyoming, Michigan 7/27/92 [OA 5810]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
323152117
contentType
document
title
Dutch Twins Plant - Wyoming, Michigan 7/27/92 [OA 5810]
citationUrl
identifierLocal
13633-002
collections
Records of the White House Office of Speechwriting (George H. W. Bush Administration)
Speech Draft Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
323152117
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
4c1dfa3fdd2f66f8
ocrText
Originally Processed With FOIA(s):
FOIA Number:
S
S
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
Library Staff.
Record Group/Collection:
George H.W. Bush Presidential Records
Collection/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Speech File Draft Files
Subseries:
Chron File, 1989-1993
OA/ID Number:
13633
Folder ID Number:
13633-002
Folder Title:
Dutch Twins Plant-Wyoming, Michigan, 7/27/92 [OA 5811]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
G
26
18
3
6
DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
THANK YOU AND GOOD AFTERNOON EVERYONE. THANK YOU
FOR THAT KIND INTRODUCTION GOV. ENGLER. LET ME ALSO
THANK MY HOSTS: JOHN AND STUART VANDER HEIDE.
AMERICANS MAY NOT REALIZE IT WHEN THEY REACH FOR
CEREAL ON THE SHELVES, BUT OUR FOOD INDUSTRY PROVIDES
MORE FOOD FOR LESS, THAN ANY OTHER NATION.
THIS COMPANY IS ONE REASON WE ARE THE WORLD'S
LEADER. SO I'M PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT STU AND JOHN
[VANDER HEIDE] HAVE RECRUITED ME FOR A NATIONAL
CRUSADE. STARTING TODAY ... I WILL NOT ONLY ARGUE
PASSIONATELY THAT BROCCOLI'S BENEFITS ARE OVERBLOWN
...
BUT THAT SUGAR WAFERS SHOULD BE ONE OF THE FOUR
ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS IN A HEALTHY DIET. //
I'M TOLD THAT THIS COMPANY WAS THE ORIGINATOR OF
SOMETHING CALLED: "THE SURVIVAL BISCUIT." IT WAS ONE
OF THE TOKENS OF THE COLD WAR -- A BIT OF NOURISHMENT
TO FILL YOUR STOMACH AS YOU HUDDLED SOMEWHERE IN A BOMB
SHELTER, IN CASE THE UNTHINKABLE BECAME TRAGICALLY
REAL.
- 2 -
WHILE IT MAY NOT BE GREAT FOR SURVIVAL BISCUIT
SALES, THE COLD WAR IS, THANKFULLY, OVER. SURVIVAL
BISCUITS HAVE GONE THE WAY OF THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK,
"FAILSAFE" MOVIES, AND "DUCK AND COVER DRILLS." TODAY,
AMERICA IS SAFER THAN BEFORE. SAFER THAN WE WERE A
DECADE AGO. SAFER THAN WE WERE A YEAR AGO. SAFER THAN
WE WERE JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO, WHEN I SAT DOWN WITH
BORIS YELTSIN AND AGREED TO ELIMINATE SOME OF THE
WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
NOW THAT WE HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD ... IT IS HIGH
TIME TO CHANGE AMERICA. TIME TO TURN OUR ATTENTION TO
PRESSING CHALLENGES LIKE HOW TO GIVE A PINK SLIP TO OUR
SLOW-GROWTH ECONOMY. HOW TO MAKE OUR FAMILIES MORE
LIKE THE WALTONS, AND A LITTLE BIT LESS LIKE THE
SIMPSONS. AND HOW TO TAKE BACK OUR STREETS FROM THE
CRACK DEALERS AND THE CRIMINALS.
- 3 -
THIS ELECTION YEAR, WE ARE TOLD, IS ABOUT HOW WE
CAN CHANGE TO MEET THESE CHALLENGES. BUT THIS ELECTION
IS NOT JUST ABOUT CHANGE, BECAUSE CHANGE HAS A FLIP
SIDE. IT'S CALLED TRUST. WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO IT,
THIS ELECTION WILL BE LIKE EVERY OTHER. WHEN YOU GO
INTO THAT VOTING BOOTH AND PULL THE CURTAIN BEHIND YOU:
"TRUST" MATTERS.
AND THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. MANY TIMES, IN
THE WHITE HOUSE LATE AT NIGHT, THE PHONE RINGS.
USUALLY IT'S A YOUNG AIDE DOUBLE-CHECKING THE NEXT
DAY'S SCHEDULE. BUT OCCASIONALLY, IT'S ANOTHER VOICE -
- MORE SERIOUS, SOLEMN -- CARRYING NEWS OF A COUP IN A
POWERFUL COUNTRY, OR ASKING HOW WE SHOULD STAND UP TO A
BULLY HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
NEED TO KNOW THAT THE MAN WHO ANSWERS THAT PHONE HAS
THE EXPERIENCE, THE SEASONING, TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
- 4 -
THAT'S TRUST IN THE TRADITIONAL SENSE. BUT PEOPLE
WHO'VE SPENT THEIR LIVES IN GOVERNMENT FORGET THAT
TRUST IS MORE EVEN THAN THAT. I'M A TEXAN -- RAISED MY
CHILDREN THERE, BUILT MY BUSINESS THERE. I BELIEVE OUR
HEARTBEAT CAN BE FELT IN PLACES LIKE WYOMING, MICHIGAN
... NOT WASHINGTON, D.C. AND SO I STATE MY CLAIM IN A
SIMPLE PHILOSOPHY: TO LEAD A GREAT NATION YOU MUST
FIRST TRUST THE PEOPLE YOU LEAD.
IF YOU LOOK AT ALMOST EVERY IMPORTANT ISSUE WE FACE
YOU SEE A CLEAR CHOICE -- A CHOICE BETWEEN THOSE
WHO PUT THEIR FAITH IN AVERAGE AMERICANS --- AND THOSE
WHO PUT THEIR FAITH IN GOVERNMENT.
LET ME EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN. STARTING WITH THE
BASICS -- HOME AND FAMILY.
- 5 -
THE MOST DIFFICULT QUESTION MANY PARENTS FACE IS -
- "WHO WILL CARE FOR THE KIDS WHILE WE'RE WORKING?" A
FEW YEARS AGO, WASHINGTON WANTED TO HELP, BUT THEIR
IDEA WAS TO ROCK THE CRADLE WITH THE HEAVY HAND OF
BUREAUCRACY. ALL THE PLANS BOILED DOWN TO CREATING
SOME NEW KIND OF GOVERNMENT APPARATUS, LIKE A PENTAGON
FOR CHILD CARE.
I FOUGHT FOR A DIFFERENT APPROACH ... AND WON. OUR
LANDMARK LEGISLATION ALLOWS PARENTS -- NOT THE
GOVERNMENT - -- TO DECIDE WHETHER YOUR CHILDREN ARE CARED
FOR IN SCHOOL, A RELATIVE'S HOME, OR CHURCH.
WHEN IT COMES TO RAISING CHILDREN, I SAY: WHY NOT
TRUST THE PEOPLE?
- 6 -
WHAT ABOUT OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM? TO RENEW AMERICA
WE MUST RENEW OUR SCHOOLS, WE ALL KNOW THIS, BUT MONEY
ALONE WON'T DO IT. WE ALREADY SPEND MORE MONEY PER
STUDENT THAN ALMOST ANY OTHER COUNTRY; AND OUR KIDS
STILL RANK NEAR THE BOTTOM IN CRUCIAL SUBJECTS LIKE
MATH AND SCIENCE. AGAIN: A LOT OF IDEAS FLOATING
AROUND, MOST OF THEM TO PUMP MORE TAX MONEY INTO THE
SAME SYSTEM.
I SAY TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. OPEN
UP SCHOOLS TO COMPETITION, AND TRUST YOU TO DECIDE
WHETHER YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TO LEARN IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL,
A PRIVATE SCHOOL OR RELIGIOUS SCHOOL.
WHEN IT COMES TO EDUCATION, AGAIN I SAY: "WHY NOT
TRUST THE PEOPLE?"
WHAT ABOUT GOVERNMENT REGULATION? SURE, SOME OF IT
IS NECESSARY, EVEN ESSENTIAL. BUT IF YOU BELIEVE THAT
THERE IS A GOVERNMENT SOLUTION TO EVERY PROBLEM, AN
ALPHABET AGENCY FOR EVERY ISSUE, THAN YOU LOOK AT
REGULATION NOT AS A NECESSARY EVIL, BUT AS A NECESSARY
WAY TO REIGN IN PEOPLE'S EVIL TENDENCIES. THE RESULTS
CAN BE CRAZY, AS THIS STORY PROVES.
- 7 -
THE TIME HAD COME RECENTLY FOR A GOVERNMENT
AGENCY TO UPDATE IT'S RULES ON HARD HATS. THAT'S
RIGHT: HARD HATS. AND SOMEONE IN THAT AGENCY STUMBLED
UPON A POTENTIAL NATIONAL CRISIS --- WORKERS BEING
INFECTED FROM PUTTING SOMEONE ELSE'S HARD HAT ON THEIR
HEAD. THE ALARMS WENT OFF. THE BUREAUCRATIC BLOOD
BOILED. ONE SMALL FACT WAS OVERLOOKED. THERE WASN'T A
SINGLE DOCUMENTED CASE, ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES,
OF ANYONE GETTING INFECTED FROM WEARING SOMEONE ELSE'S
HARD HAT.
THAT DIDN'T DETER THE BUREAUCRAT. SO WITH THE BEST
OF INTENTIONS, THE RULE WAS WRITTEN: EVERY HARD HAT
MUST BE DISINFECTED BEFORE ONE WORKER PASSED IT TO
ANOTHER. ESTIMATED COST TO BUSINESS: $13 MILLION A
YEAR. MEASURABLE BENEFIT: SLIGHTLY LESS THAN ZERO.
LUCKILY, THIS STORY HAS A HAPPY ENDING, BUT ONLY
BECAUSE WE WERE THERE TO GIVE IT ONE. WE FOUND THE
REGULATION BEFORE IT HIT THE BOOKS, AND SAID: WE THINK
AMERICA CAN SURVIVE, WITHOUT HARD HAT REGULATION.
- 8 -
BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED, IF
THESE ENTERPRISING REGULATORS HAD MADE THEIR WAY INTO
THE VAST, UNREGULATED TERRITORY OF LUNCH PAILS AND
THERMOS BOTTLES?//
SOME BELIEVE THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEMS IS MORE
GOVERNMENT REGULATION. I TAKE A DIFFERENT VIEW. I'VE
PUT A MORATORIUM ON NEW FEDERAL REGULATION, TO GIVE
BUSINESSES LIKE THIS ONE ROOM TO BREATHE, AND GROW AND
CREATE JOBS. IT'S A MATTER OF TRUST
...
OF PUTTING
PEOPLE AHEAD OF GOVERNMENT.
AND WHEN IT COMES TO THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE OF
THIS ELECTION YEAR -- REVVING UP OUR ECONOMY --
FORGETTING THIS IDEA IS NOT JUST A NUISANCE; IT CAN BE
DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS.
THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE PAST FEW YEARS HERALD A NEW
ERA OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC COMPETITION, WITH FREE MARKETS
FROM SIBERIA TO SANTIAGO.
- 9 -
CAN THE U.S. COMPETE ... NOW THAT EVERYONE IS
PLAYING OUR GAME? DESPITE ALL THE CRITICISM YOU'VE
HEARD LATELY, KEEP IN MIND A FEW FACTS. WE ARE THE
LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD. INFLATION -- THE JESSE
JAMES WHO ROBS THE MIDDLE CLASS OF DREAMS -- HAS BEEN
PUT SAFELY BEHIND BARS. THE LAST TIME INTEREST RATES
STAYED THIS LOW, THE BRADY BUNCH WEREN'T EVEN ON
TELEVISION. DESPITE ALL THE STORIES ABOUT OUR
PROBLEMS, OUR WORKERS ARE STILL THE MOST PRODUCTIVE IN
THE WORLD -- MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN THE ENGLISH, THE
GERMANS, THE JAPANESE.
BUT WHILE OUR ECONOMY IS GROWING, IT MUST GROW
FASTER. THE QUESTION IS: HOW? THE OTHER SIDE
SUGGESTS A SIMPLE TWO-PART SOLUTION. FIRST, RAISE
GOVERNMENT SPENDING! AND THEN: RAISE TAXES!
NOW AS YOU EVALUATE THEIR IDEA, KEEP THIS IN MIND.
HERE IN MICHIGAN, YOU ALREADY WORK 128 DAYS JUST TO PAY
YOUR TAXES -- BEFORE YOU EARN A SINGLE DIME TO SPEND ON
YOUR FAMILY. DOES ANYONE WANT TO GO FOR 129?//
- 10 -
ALL THIS TALK OF SPENDING AND TAXES CAUSES ME TO
WONDER
...
IF THE OTHER SIDE IS A LITTLE HARD OF
HEARING. ABRAHAM LINCOLN SPOKE OF GOVERNMENT "OF THE
PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE." BUT THEY SEEM
TO KEEP SAYING
...
OF THE GOVERNMENT, BY THE
GOVERNMENT AND FOR THE GOVERNMENT.
THEY'RE HARD TO DISSUADE. I'LL GIVE YOU A GREAT
EXAMPLE. IN JANUARY I PROPOSED A COMMON-SENSE,
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TO GET THIS ECONOMY MOVING FASTER,
RIGHT NOW. THE PLAN INCLUDES TAX INITIATIVES TO
ENCOURAGE BUSINESSES TO HIRE NEW WORKERS AND BREAKS FOR
YOUNG FAMILIES WHO WANT TO BUY A FIRST HOME. HALF A
MILLION JOBS WOULD HAVE BEEN CREATED, IF CONGRESS HAD
ACTED RIGHT AWAY.
BUT THEY DIDN'T. INSTEAD, CONGRESS SENT BACK WHAT
YOU MIGHT CALL AN "ANT-TRUST" PROGRAM. NEW GOVERNMENT
SPENDING, AND NEW TAXES.
- 11 -
SO I SENT THEIR PLAN BACK. I'M STILL WAITING
...
ALMOST 200 DAYS LATER. THIS ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN IS
BEING HELD HOSTAGE AND THE RANSOM NOTE READS -- "WAIT
TILL AFTER THE ELECTION." TODAY I SAY TO THE CONGRESS
AND THE SENATE ESPECIALLY, RELEASE THE ECONOMY, APPROVE
THIS JOBS PROGRAM, AND PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK
...
NOW. //
YOU SEE ... IT ALL COMES DOWN TO A QUESTION OF
TRUST. I TRUST YOU TO SPEND AND SAVE YOUR MONEY MORE
WISELY THAN ANY BUDGET PLANNER IN WASHINGTON.
YOU' SAY, THIS IS COMMON SENSE, AND I AGREE. BUT
THERE'S A CERTAIN TYPE OF PERSON ATTRACTED TO
GOVERNMENT FOR WHOM THE WORD "TRUST" HAS A STRANGE
MEANING. MOST OF THEM HAVE SPENT THEIR LIVES IN
GOVERNMENT, AND DON'T HAVE MUCH EXPERIENCE IN THE REAL
WORLD.
- 12 -
THEY SAY THEY WANT TO
...
"PUT PEOPLE FIRST. " BUT
IF YOU LOOK REAL CLOSE AT WHAT THEY'RE PROPOSING
THE PEOPLE THEY PUT FIRST ARE ALL ON A GOVERNMENT
PAYROLL. //
A LEADER OF A FREE PEOPLE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT
GOVERNMENT CAN NOT ONLY HELP, IT CAN HINDER. HE MUST
HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO SAY: "I TRUST YOU. I TRUST THE
PEOPLE. //
AND ULTIMATELY, YOU MUST DECIDE WHO YOU TRUST --
WHO HAS THE EXPERIENCE -- THE IDEALS AND IDEAS -- TO
FIND THAT DELICATE BALANCE.
YES, AMERICA WILL CHANGE, JUST AS WE HAVE CHANGED
THE WORLD. THE QUESTION NOW IS: WHO WILL CHANGE
AMERICA FOR THE BETTER? TRUST ME WHEN I TELL YOU THIS:
IT WON'T BE PEOPLE WHOSE ONLY ENTHUSIASM IS FOR
GOVERNMENT -- WHO MEASURE PROGRESS BY PROGRAMS ENACTED
AND SPECIAL INTERESTS SATISFIED.
- 13 -
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO'S GOING TO CHANGE AMERICA -
- LOOK AROUND YOU. IT'S GOING TO BE THE GUY WHO WORKS
AN EXTRA SHIFT EVERY WEEK SO HIS SON CAN GO TO THE
SCHOOL OF HIS CHOICE. IT'S GOING TO BE THE SMALL
BUSINESSWOMAN WHO TAKES A RISK ON A NEW PRODUCT. THE
COMPUTER HACKER WORKING IN A LONELY GARAGE, THE MERIT
SCHOLAR FROM SOUTH CENTRAL L.A., THE ENTREPRENEUR WITH
A FUTURE AS BIG AS HIS DREAMS.
THERE'S YOUR ANSWER: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING
TO CHANGE AMERICA.
BUT ONLY IF THEY HAVE A GOVERNMENT WITH THE WISDOM
TO KNOW ITS OWN LIMITS, WITH A LEADERSHIP WHO KNOWS
WHERE THE TRUE AMERICAN IMAGINATION LIES. COUNTRIES
AROUND THE WORLD HAVE AT LONG LAST UNDERSTOOD THE POWER
OF TRUSTING THE PEOPLE. AMERICA WILL CHANGE BY
REAFFIRMING THE LESSON IT HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD -- BY
TRUSTING A LEADER WHO TRUSTS YOU.
THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU, AND GOD BLESS THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
# # #
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
X
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER J/C
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
X
PROVOST
N/C
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
-
BOSKIN To DMG
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no
[See this hafe) later
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
called at 9AM, 10:45 AM
FAX NO LATER
THAM2 PM
PHILLIP D. BRADY
(
-Dmly
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
2 JUL 23 P8: 49
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
...
but our food industry
...
provides
more food for less
...
than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader. So I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
...
I will not only argue
passionately that broccoli's benefits are overblown
...
but that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet. //
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
...
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens of the Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your
stomach as you huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales
the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today
America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few months ago
when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from the crack
dealers and the criminals.
This election year
we are told
is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But: people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
put their faith in average Americans
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
like a Pentagon for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents
not the government
to decide
whether your children are cared for in a school
a relative's
home
or in church.
4
When it comes to raising children
I say: trust the
parents.
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
we all know this
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
again I say: "trust the
parents. "
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-seven million Americans
a population larger than the
state of California
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it
and tax incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
5
people. // When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust -- trusting Americans
to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy -
- forgetting this idea is not just a nuisance; it can be
downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
the middle class of dreams
has been put safely behind bars.
The last time interest rates were this low
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster.
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending!
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
6
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people. " But they keep wanting to say
government of the
people, by the people, on the people.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I
wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
make 2 sentences
tax cuts; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
Bostin
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to
we could have
created 500,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and --
you guessed it -- new taxes.
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
Send me a new Congress that will work with me
and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations -- to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis ---
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $60 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive
...
without
hard hat regulation.
8
But can you imagine what might have happened
if these
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's a certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to
"put people first. " But if you
look closely
the people they put first are all on a
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you. " I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
American prosperity -- no government ever created a single job
(although it did keep Johnny Carson around for 30 years.)
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#
#
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no later
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE: SEE COMMENTS P.2 & P.6- THE REFRAIN
I'M FOR GOVERNMENT "ef THE people, By Ith prople, FOR Tita people
& my OPPONENT It FOR ONE OF THE government, By THE
government, FOR THE government IS
PHILLIP D. BRADY
ONE THAT fiture BE HIGHLIGHTEA of REPCATED.
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
IT NEEDS TO LUMP MT of THE SPEECH so THAT
Ext. 2702
EVERY PRODUCER/EATTR HAS TO USE IT. BUT IT MUST BE FORCES TOD LUBTIG ON than
2 JUL 23 P8: 49
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
but our food industry
provides
more food for less
than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader. So I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
...
I will not only argue
passionately that broccoli's benefits are overblown
...
but that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet.//
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
...
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens of the Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your
stomach as you huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales
the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills.' Today
America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few months ago
when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
ILRA THAT'S Something I'VE BEEN SATING FOR MONDAS-
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from the crack
dealers and the criminals.
This election year
we are told
is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities.
Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
put their faith in average Americans
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
like a Pentagon for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents
not the government
to decide
whether your children are cared for in a school
a relative's
home
or in church.
4
When it comes to raising children
I say: trust the
parents.
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
we all know this
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
again I say: "trust the
parents. "
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-seven million Americans
a population larger than the
state of California
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it
and tax incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
5
people. / / When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust -- trusting Americans
to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy -
- forgetting this idea is not just a nuisance; it can be
downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
the middle class of dreams
has been put safely behind bars.
The last time interest rates were this low
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster.
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending!
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
6
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
is
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
This south the
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people. " But they keep wanting SAYING to say
government of the
people, OF THE by AGVERNMENT, the people, By on THE the people. government, FOR THE governm ENT.
it
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
tax cuts; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to
we could have
created 500,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and --
you guessed it -- new taxes.
THAT'S MORE FOR THE government
Lass FOR THE people -
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
Send me a new Congress that will work with me
and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations -- to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis
----
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $60 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive
without
hard hat regulation.
8
But can you imagine what might have happened
if these
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's a certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to
"put people first. "
But
if
you
look closely
the people they put first are all on a
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you. " I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
American prosperity -- no government ever created a single job
(although it did keep Johnny Carson around for 30 years.)
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#
#
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 24, 1992
MEMORANDUM FOR DAN McGROARTY
FROM:
ROGER B. PORTER
RBP
SUBJECT:
Presidential Remarks: Dutch Twin Plant
We have reviewed the attached presidential remarks and have
noted a few suggested changes on the draft.
If you have any questions or we can be of further
assistance, please let us know.
CC: Phillip D. Brady
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
SUBJECT:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no later
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
2 002 23 P 8 : 42
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
...
but our food industry
...
provides
AT A LOWER COST
more food for less ... than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader. So I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
...
I will not only argue
passionately that broccoli's benefits are overblown
...
but that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet. //
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
...
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens of the Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your
stomach as you huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales
the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today
America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few months ago when
I
sat
down
with
REACHED AN ALREEMENT ON VAST REDUCTIONS IN
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from the crack
dealers and the criminals.
This election year
we are told
is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
NATION'S
families and communities. Our'heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
...
put their faith in average Americans
...
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is
...
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
SOME EVEN AEFENDED REBULATING ERANDMA.
like a Pentagon for child care!
I fought for a different approach
...
and won. Our landmark
BUREAUERATS
legislation allows parents
...
not the government!
...
to decide
WHO LET GOVERNMENT HELP
whether your childrenýare cared for in a school
...
a relative's
home
...
or in church.
4
When it comes to raising children
I say: trust the
parents.
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
we all know this
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
PARENTS
THEY
THEIR
competition
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
again I say: "trust the
parents. "
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
FOUR
Thirty-seven million Americans
a population larger than the
state of California
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
NATIONALIZED
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
AND INSURER.
doctor%
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it
and tax incentives so that I small
MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR
businesses can TO pool their resources and cover more of their
5
HEALTH
PLAN
people. // When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust -- trusting Americans
to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy -
- forgetting this idea is not just a nuisance; it can be
downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
you BET
game? know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
the middle class of dreams has been put safely behind bars.
The last time interest rates were this low
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster.
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending!
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
6
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people." But they keep wanting to say
government of the
people, by the people, on the people.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
tax cuts; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to
we could have
created 500,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and --
you guessed it -- new taxes. -
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
Send me a new Congress that will work with me
and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations -- to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis ---
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $60 million a year. Measurable benefit:
?
slightly less.
only
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
SCIEHTLY?
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive
without
A
DISINFECTION
1
hard hat!regulation.
MANDATORY
8
But can you imagine what might have happened
if these
S
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's a certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to
...
"put people first. " But if you
look closely
...
the people they put first are all on a
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you. " I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
American prosperity -- no I government CANNOT ever created a single 2 jobs
(although it did keep Johnny Carson around for 30 years.)
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
EFFICIENTLY
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#- #
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
DATE:
7/24/92
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: AMERICAN WAFER COMPANY
SUBJECT:
WYOMING, MICHIGAN 7/27/92
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
P
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
MCGROARTY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
The attached has been forwarded to the President.
RESPONSE:
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
2:57 5
July 24, 1992
INFORMATION
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
THROUGH:
STEVEN PROVOST DMerfor SP
FROM:
ANDY FERGUSON et
SUBJECT:
HOLLAND AMERICAN WAFER COMPANY
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
I. SUMMARY
On Monday, July 27, at noon, you will deliver remarks (17
minutes, on prompter) to approximately 600 employees and
community business leaders at the Holland American Wafer Company.
You will be introduced by Governor John Engler.
II. DISCUSSION
The theme of this speech is that your programs are based on
the principle that the American people, not the government,
should make the important decisions in their lives.
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft Two
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: HOLLAND AMERICAN WAFER CO.
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the shelves, but our food industry provides more food for less
than any other nation.
This company is one reason we are the world's leader. So
I'm pleased to announce that Stu and John Vander Heide have
recruited me for a national crusade. Starting today
...
I will
not only argue passionately that broccoli's benefits are
overblown
but that sugar wafers should be one of the four
essential ingredients in a healthy diet. //
This factory is a symbol of change
...
changes that have
occurred around the world.
I'm told that your company was the originator of something
called: "The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the tokens of the
Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your stomach as you
huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the unthinkable
became tragically real.
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales, the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today, America is safer than before.
2
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few weeks ago, when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and agreed to eliminate some of the world's most
dangerous nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons, and
less like the Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from
the crack dealers and the criminals.
This election year, we are told, is about how we can change
to meet these challenges. But this election is not just about
change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust. When
you get down to it, this election will be like every other. When
you go into that voting booth and pull the curtain behind you:
"trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
answers that phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
3
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business there. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming, Michigan
not Washington, D.C. And so I believe
in a simple philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first
trust the people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
...
you
see a clear choice -- a choice between those who put their faith
in average Americans --- and those who put their faith in
government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is ---
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago,
Washington wanted to help, but their idea was to rock the cradle
with the heavy hand of bureaucracy. All the plans boiled down to
creating some new kind of government apparatus, like a Pentagon
for child care.
I fought for if different approach and won. Dur landmark
legislation allows parents -- not the government -- to decide
whether your children are cared for in school, a relative's home,
or church.
Then it comes to raising children, = say: why not trust the
people?
What about our education system? Do renew America we must
renew our schools. we all know this, but money alone won't do it.
4
We already spend more money per student than almost any other
country; and our kids still rank near the bottom in crucial
subjects like math and science. Again: a lot of ideas floating
around, most of them to pump more tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition, and trust you to decide whether you want your kids
to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education, again I say: "why not trust the
people?"
One other example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-four million Americans, a population larger than the state
of California, are without coverage today, and millions more are
worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine -- letting the federal government play
ioctor.
= say, take it different way, and I've put forth a plan to
bring health costs down. It will give tax credits SO people
vithout coverage can buy 1t. and incentives so that small
cusinesses can pool their resources and cover more CI their
employees. /
When it comes to deciding, What doctor? That hospital?
I
:av: my not trust the people?
5
What about government regulation? Sure, some of it is
necessary, even essential. But if you believe that there is a
government solution to every problem, an alphabet agency for
every issue, than you look at regulation not as a necessary evil,
but as a necessary way to reign in people's evil tendencies. The
results can be crazy, as this story proves.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
its rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone in
that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis ---
workers
being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected wearing someone else's hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $13 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less than zero.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books. and said: ve think America can survive, without hard
hat regulation.
But can you imagine what might have happened, : these
enterprising regulators had made their way into the ast.
inregulated perritory of lunch pails and thermos cottles?//
6
Some believe the solution to our problems is more government
regulation. I take a different view. I've put a moratorium on
new federal regulations, to give businesses like this one room to
breathe, and grow and create jobs.
In child care, education, health care and regulation, it's a
matter of trust --- trusting Americans to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most pressing issue of this
election year -- revving up our economy -- forgetting this idea
is not just a nuisance; it can be downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete ... now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Despite all the criticism you've heard
lately, keep in mind a few facts. We are the largest economy in
the world. Inflation, the Willie Sutton who robs the middle
class of dreams, has been put safely behind bars. The last time
interest rates staved this Low, the Brady Bunch vasn't even on
television. Despite all the stories about cur problems, our
workers are still the most productive in the world -- more
productive than the English. the Germans. the Japanese.
But while our economy is growing, it must grow faster. The
question is: now do we do it? The other side suggests = simple
wo-part solution. First. jack up government spending! And
then: raise taxes:
7
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?//
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
...
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. Abraham Lincoln
spoke of government "of the people, by the people, for the
people. = But they seem to keep saying ... of the government, by
the government, and for the government.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense, comprehensive plan to get
this economy moving faster, now
The first sound of a strong economy is usually the sound of
hammers pounding away at new homesites. So I proposed tax
incentives to build new homes, and a $5,000 break for families
who want to buy their first one. Here in Michigan, that would
ave equalled nine months of mortcage payments on the average
house.
I understand that private enterprise is the horse that pulls
cur vagon -- no government program ever created a real job,
(although government did keep Johnny Carson in business for 30
years). So = proposed incentives for businesses to grow and
ire. It's estimated the incentives yould have spurred the
reation of at least half million pops of they :ad been
approved when : proposed them.
8
But they weren't approved. Instead, Congress sent back
what you might call an "anti-trust" program. New government
spending, and new taxes. 1
So I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And
I'm still waiting. But I need your help. Write Congress, tell
them you want to get this economy moving again. Tell them you
don't want to get the impression, that the only way to get rid of
the deadlock in Washington, is by cleaning out a little deadwood
in Congress. //
You see
it all comes down to a question of trust. I
trust you to spend and save your money more wisely than any
budget planner in Washington.
This is common sense, and I agree. But there's a certain
type of person attracted to government for whom the word "trust"
has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent their lives in
government, and don't have much experience in the real world.
They say they want to
...
"out people first. 11
But
if
you
bok closely at what they're advocating
...
the ceople they put
first are all in : government payroll.
A leader of a free people must understand that government
can not only help, it can hinder. He must have the confidence to
say: I trust ou. trust the people. / /
And ultimately, ou must decide vno you trust -- no has
the experience -- the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
alance.
9
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
vill change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you, and God bless the United States
CI ..merica.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503
7-24-92
92 JUL 24 P I : 49
NOTICE:
Enclosed are comments from staff members of the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB). Such comments do not necessarily
represent the official position of the Director of OMB or of the
Office of Management and Budget. If you wish to have the
Director's personal comments, please let me know -- and contact
me if you have any questions.
James C. Murr
Associate Director for
Legislative Reference
and Administration
Document No.
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
SUBJECT: PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no later 122 /
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
X2930
(called in comments
on 9/24 @ 12:00
RESPONSE:
See comments
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Assistant to the President
(R. Brady may respond
and Staff Secretary
at a later time)
Ext. 2702
JUL 23 P8:49
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
but our food industry
provides
more food for less
than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader. So I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
I will not only argue
passionately that broccoli's benefits are overblown
...
but that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet. / /
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens of the Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your
stomach as you huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales
the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today
America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few months ago
when I sat down with
reduced (Howard 4657)
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from the crack
dealers and the criminals.
This election year
we are told
is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
put their faith in average Americans
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is
...
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
...
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
like a Pentagon for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents
not the government
...
to decide
their (Morin 3804)
whether your children are cared for in a school
a relative's
home
or in church.
4
When it comes to raising children
I say: trust the
parents.
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
we all know this
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
again I say: "trust the
parents. "
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-seven million Americans
a population larger than the
state of California
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it
and tax incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
5
people. // When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust -- trusting Americans
to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy -
- forgetting this idea is not just a nuisance; it can be
downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
the middle class of dreams
has been put safely behind bars.
The last time interest rates were this low
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster.
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending!
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
6
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people.' But they keep wanting to say
government of the
people, by the people, on the people.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
tax cuts; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to
we could have
created 500,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and --
you guessed it -- new taxes.
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
Send me a new Congress that will work with me
and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations -- to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis ---
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $60 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive
...
without
hard hat regulation.
8
But can you imagine what might have happened
if these
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's a certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to
"put people first. If
But
if
you
look closely
the people they put first are all on a
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you. " I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
American prosperity -- no government ever created a single job
(although it did keep Johnny Carson around for 30 years.)
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#
#
Pg2- OMB
1st Para Bous yeltsin and
reduced or cut not eliminated
P93 2nd to last line : whether
their children
Document No. 5806
WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
92 JUL 24 All: 42
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
SUBJECT:
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no later
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
RESPONSE:
July 24, 1992
TO:
DAN MCGROARTY
The NSC staff concurs with the draft presidential remarks as amended.
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Brent Scowcroft
Assistant to the President
and Staff Secretary
CC: Phillip D. Brady
Ext. 2702
2 JUL 23 45
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
but our food industry
...
provides
Delik
more food for less
...
than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader.
So I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
I will not only argue
passionately that broccoli's benefits are overblown
...
but that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet. / /
jikes
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens
of
the
Cold
War
--
a bit of nourishment to fill your
stomach as you huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales
the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills.' Today
America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few months ago
when I sat down with
I reached agreement an subtantial, deep reductions
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons in milear weapons,
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
It is the to in plement Policies / have long parvicated
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
+
to huprove our educational system,
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons And how to take back our streets from the crack crooks.
dealers and the criminals
This election year
we are told
is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
put their faith in average Americans
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
like a Pentagon for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents
not the government
to decide
whether your children are cared for in a school
a relative's
home
or in church.
4
When it comes to raising children
I say: trust the
parents.
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
we all know this
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
again I say: "trust the
parents. "
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-seven million Americans
a population larger than the
state of California
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it
and tax incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
5
people. / / When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust -- trusting Americans
to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy -
- forgetting this idea is not just a nuisance; it can be
downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
the middle class of dreams
has been put safely behind bars.
The last time interest rates were this low
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
6
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people. " But they keep wanting to say
government of the
people, by the people, on the people.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
tax cuts; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to
we could have
created 500,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and --
you guessed it -- new taxes.
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
Send me a new Congress that will work with me
and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations -- to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis
---
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $60 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive
...
without
hard hat regulation.
8
But can you imagine what might have happened
if these
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's a certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to
"put people first. =
But
if
you
look closely
the people they put first are all on a
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you. " I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
American prosperity -- no government ever created a single job
2
(although it did keep Johnny Carson around for 30 years.)
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#
#
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 :11:20AM ;
OPD-
2024566218:# 1
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 : 8:12 ;
The White House-
UPU.# I
one question
Document No.
92 JUL WHITE HOUSE STAFFING MEMORANDUM
07/24
07/23/92
DATE:
ACTION/CONCURRENCE/COMMENT DUE BY: 9:30a.m. Friday
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT, WYOMING, MI/07/27
SUBJECT:
ACTION FYI
ACTION FYI
VICE PRESIDENT
HORNER
SKINNER
MCBRIDE
SCOWCROFT
MOORE
DARMAN
PETERSMEYER
BRADY
PORTER
BROMLEY
PROVOST
CALIO
SMITH
DEMAREST
YEUTTER
FITZWATER
FINDLAY
GRAY
MCGROARTY
KAUFMAN
HOLIDAY
BOSKIN
REMARKS:
Please provide any comments directly to Dan McGroarty no later
than 9:30 a.m. on Friday, 07/24, with a copy to this office.
Thanks.
10pgs
RESPONSE:
See PK B comments. Thanks Paul Koefonta
PHILLIP D. BRADY
Acelatant to the President
and Staff Secretary
Ext. 2702
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 11:20AM ;
OPD-
2024566218:# 2
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 : 7-24-92 ; 8:12 :
The White House+
OPD:# 2
23 P8: 49
(Provost/Ferquson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft One: 7:00 AM
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: DUTCH TWINS PLANT
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the supermarket shelves
but our food industry
...
provides
more food for less
than any other nation.
Dutch Twins is one reason we are a world leader. so I'm
pleased to announce that John Vander Heide has recruited me for a
national crusade. Starting today
I will not only argue
passionately that broocoli's benefits are overblown ... but
that
(sugar wafers) should be one of the four essential ingredients in
a healthy diet.//
This factory is a symbol of the dramatic changes that have
occurred around the world.
John tells me that this company was the originator of
something called
"The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the
tokens of the cold War dev mith a bit of nourishment to fill your
stemach am you huddled somewhere in at bomb shelter, in case the
unthinkable became tragically real.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 7-24-92 11:21AM
OPD-
2024566218:# 3
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 7-24-82 8:13
The White House-
OPD:# 3
2
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales ... the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the docmsday clock, "Failsafe" novies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today America is safer than before.
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than wa were just a few months ago
...
when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and eliminated nuclear weapons.
New that We have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons than the
Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from the crack
dealers and the criminals.
This election year we are told is about how we can
change to meet these challenges. But this election is not just
about change, because change has 8 flip side. It's called trust.
When you get down to it, this election will be like every other
in history. When you go into that voting booth and pull the
curtain behind you: "trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be, Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But cocasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, selemn carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 :11:21AM
OPD->
2024566218;# 4
SENT BY:Xerox Telacopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 ; 8:13
The White House+
OPD:# 4
3
answers the phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
than that. I'm a Texan - raised my children there, built my
business. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming
not Washington. And so I believe in a simple
philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first trust the
people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice in philosophy
a choice between those who
put their faith in average Americans
and those who put their
faith in government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The mest difficult question many parents face is
"who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago
Washington wanted to help
but the idea was to rock the
cradle with the heavy hand of the bureaucracy. All the plans
boiled down to creating some new kind of government apparatus
like a Pentagon for child care.
I fought for & different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents
not the government
to decide
whether your children are cared for in a school
a relative's
home
or in church.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 11:22AM
OPD->
2024566218;# 5
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 8:14
The White House-
OPD:# 5
4
When it comes to raising children ... I say! trust the
parents.
what about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools
...
-
we all know this
...
but money alone won't
do it. Over the past twenty-five years, education spending has
increased xx; while achievement scores have dropped by ---,
Again: a lot of ideas floating around, most of them to pump more
tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition
...
and trust you to decide whether you want your
kids to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education
...
again I say: "trust the
parents."
One more example: health care. We have the finest quality
(Trougury)
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
(HH>)
four
MAY
Thirty-saven million Americans
...
a population larger than the
state of California
...
are without coverage today, and millions
more are worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine
letting the federal government play
doctor.
+
(Treatnoy)
I say
take a different way. Give tax credits so people
health insurance
without can buy it
...
and
incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 11:22AM
OPD->
2024566218:# 6
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 8:14
The White House-
OPD:# 6
5
people.// When it comes to deciding what doctor? What hospital?
I say
...
trust the people to choose.
In every case, it's a matter of trust - trusting Americans
to make their own choices. And when it comes to the most
pressing issue of this election year -- revving up our economy
- (Treasum)
- Lergetting this idea is not Tues a nuissance, 1t can BE
Bownr ight dangertus
the same make commitment KO mistake and energy devoting to the
-
-
we
are
domestic battle to revive our eco namey devoted that
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new ore of we
to 3 luring
global economic competition, with free markets from siberia to
the cold
Santiage.
we will
this
one too
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Keep in mind
we are the largest
who (UHS)X is
economy in the world. Inflation
the Willie Sutton who robs
this ?
the middle class of dreams
has been put safely behind bare.
The last time interest rates were this low
...
the Brady Bunch
wasn't even on television. Despite all the stories about our
problems
our workers are still the most productive in the
world -- more productive than the English, the Germans, the
Japanese.
But while our economy is growing
it must grow faster.
The question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a
simple two-part solution. First, jack up government spending!
And then: raise taxes!
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes ... before you earn a single dime to spend
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 7-24-92 11:23AM
OPD-
2024566218:# 7
SENI BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 7-24-92 8:15
The White House->
OPD:# 7
5
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. The Constitution
says we want government "of the people, by the people, for the
people.' But they keep wanting to say
...
government of the
people, by the people, an the people.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense plan to jumpstart the
economy, help us over the bumps in the road.
I wanted to free up the energies of our entrepreneurs with
tax outs; to give a $5,000 break to young couples trying to buy
their first home. Here in Michigan, that $5,000 would have been
equal to XX months of mortgage payments.
If they had passed it when I asked them to ...
we could have
created 300,000 jobs.
So I sent my plan up to Capitol Hill. And I probably don't
have to tell you what I got back: a raft of new spending and -
you quessed it -- new taxes.
I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And I'm
still waiting. And I'm beginning to get the distinct impression
that the only way to get rid of the deadlock in Washington
is to clean a little deadwood in Congress.
send me a new Congress that will work with no ... and I'll
get this economy moving faster than Desmond Howard.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 :11:23AM ;
OPD->
2024566218:# 8
VENI VA relecopier 7020 I 7-24-02 i 8:15 ;
The White House**
OPD:# 8
0
7
It all comes down to a question of trust. I trust you to
spend and save your money more wisely than any budget planner in
Washington.
Fortunately, I've been able to do some things on my own to
try and jump start the economy. Earlier this year, I announced a
moratorium on federal regulations 40 ml to untangle the red tape
that ties so many businesses in knots.
Is it necessary? Listen to this story.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
it's rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone,
in that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis
workers being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
buraaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlocked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected from a hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: 560 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less.
Luckily, this story has & happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive ... without
hard hat regulation.
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 :11:24AM
OPD->
2024566218:# 9
JENI incompter 7020 1-84-92 0:10
ine white House->
OPD:# 9
But can you imagine what might have happened ... if these
enterprising regulator guys had made their way into the vast,
territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?
You'll say this is all common sense, and I agree. But
there's at certain type of person attracted to government for whom
the word "trust" has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent
their lives in government, and don't have much experience in the
real world.
They say they want to ... "put people first. " But if you
look closely
the people they put first are all on &
government payroll.
A trustworthy leader of a free people must have the
confidence to say: "I trust you." I trust the people.
The point is not to let people fend for themselves.
Americans are a generous people; and we will never shirk our
responsibilities. But help must be offered with an eye to
government's power not only to help but to hinder.
And you must decide who you trust -- who has the
(Tocasury)
experience, the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
about
-
civi How liau Can-
balance.
servation
It must be someone who understands the essential fact of
after the
Corps
defression
American prosperity -- no government ever created a single job
reason reake No on
joknny
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
SENT BY:Xerox Telecopier 7020 ; 7-24-92 11:24AM ;
OPD->
20245662181#10
want WITHING TUGU , 1-24-02 , 0.10 ;
ine white House->
OPD:#10
is
9
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you.
#
This Draft forwarded to President.
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft Two
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: HOLLAND AMERICAN WAFER CO.
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the shelves, but our food industry provides more food for less
than any other nation.
This company is one reason we are the world's leader. So
I'm pleased to announce that Stu and John Vander Heide have
recruited me for a national crusade. Starting today
...
I will
not only argue passionately that broccoli's benefits are
overblown
...
but that sugar wafers should be one of the four
essential ingredients in a healthy diet. //
This factory is a symbol of change
...
changes that have
occurred around the world.
I'm told that your company was the originator of something
called: "The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the tokens of the
Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your stomach as you
huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the unthinkable
became tragically real.
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales, the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today, America is safer than before.
2
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few weeks ago, when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and agreed to eliminate some of the world's most
dangerous nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons, and
less like the Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from
the crack dealers and the criminals.
This election year, we are told, is about how we can change
to meet these challenges. But this election is not just about
change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust. When
you get down to it, this election will be like every other. When
you go into that voting booth and pull the curtain behind you:
"trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
answers that phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
3
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business there. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming, Michigan
not Washington, D.C. And so I believe
in a simple philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first
trust the people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
...
you
see a clear choice -- a choice between those who put their faith
in average Americans --- and those who put their faith in
government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is --- "who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago,
Washington wanted to help, but their idea was to rock the cradle
with the heavy hand of bureaucracy. All the plans boiled down to
creating some new kind of government apparatus, like a Pentagon
for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents -- not the government -- to decide
whether your children are cared for in school, a relative's home,
or church.
When it comes to raising children, I say: why not trust the
people?
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools, we all know this, but money alone won't do it.
4
We already spend more money per student than almost any other
country; and our kids still rank near the bottom in crucial
subjects like math and science. Again: a lot of ideas floating
around, most of them to pump more tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition, and trust you to decide whether you want your kids
to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education, again I say: "why not trust the
people?"
One other example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-four million Americans, a population larger than the state
of California, are without coverage today, and millions more are
worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine -- letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say, take a different way, and I've put forth a plan to
bring health costs down. It will give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it, and incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
employees. //
When it comes to deciding, What doctor? What hospital?
I
say: why not trust the people?
5
What about government regulation? Sure, some of it is
necessary, even essential. But if you believe that there is a
government solution to every problem, an alphabet agency for
every issue, than you look at regulation not as a necessary evil,
but as a necessary way to reign in people's evil tendencies. The
results can be crazy, as this story proves.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
its rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone in
that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis
workers
being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected wearing someone else's hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $13 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less than zero.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive, without hard
hat regulation.
But can you imagine what might have happened, if these
enterprising regulators had made their way into the vast,
unregulated territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?//
6
Some believe the solution to our problems is more government
regulation. I take a different view. I've put a moratorium on
new federal regulations, to give businesses like this one room to
breathe, and grow and create jobs.
In child care, education, health care and regulation, it's a
matter of trust --- trusting Americans to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most pressing issue of this
election year -- revving up our economy -- forgetting this idea
is not just a nuisance; it can be downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Despite all the criticism you've heard
lately, keep in mind a few facts. We are the largest economy in
the world. Inflation, the Willie Sutton who robs the middle
class of dreams, has been put safely behind bars. The last time
interest rates stayed this low, the Brady Bunch hadn't even
started re-runs yet. Despite all the stories about our problems,
our workers are still the most productive in the world -- more
productive than the English, the Germans, the Japanese.
But while our economy is growing, it must grow faster. The
question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a simple
two-part solution. First, jack up government spending! And
then: raise taxes!
7
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?//
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. Abraham Lincoln
spoke of government "of the people, by the people, for the
people." But they seem to keep saying
of the government, by
the government, and for the government.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense, comprehensive plan to get
this economy moving faster, now
The first sound of a strong economy is usually the sound of
hammers pounding away at new homesites. So I proposed tax
incentives to build new homes, and a $5,000 break for families
who want to buy their first one. Here in Michigan, that would
have equalled nine months of mortgage payments on the average
house.
I understand that private enterprise is the horse that pulls
our wagon --- no government program ever created a real job,
((although government did keep Johnny Carson in business for 30
years) ) So I proposed incentives for businesses to grow and
hire. It's estimated the incentives would have spurred the
creation of at least half a million jobs
if they had been
approved when I proposed them.
8
But they weren't approved. Instead, Congress sent back
what you might call an "anti-trust" program. New government
spending, and new taxes.
So I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And
I'm still waiting. But I need your help. Write Congress, tell
them you want to get this economy moving again. Tell them you
don't want to get the impression, that the only way to get rid of
the deadlock in Washington, is by cleaning out a little deadwood
in Congress. //
You see
it all comes down to a question of trust. I
trust you to spend and save your money more wisely than any
budget planner in Washington.
This is common sense, and I agree. But there's a certain
type of person attracted to government for whom the word "trust"
has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent their lives in
government, and don't have much experience in the real world.
They say they want to "put people first. H But if you
look closely at what they're advocating
the people they put
first are all on a government payroll.
A leader of a free people must understand that government
can not only help, it can hinder. He must have the confidence to
say: "I trust you. II I trust the people. //
And ultimately, you must decide who you trust -- who has
the experience -- the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
9
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you, and God bless the United States
of America.
#
#
This draft forwarded to President
(Provost/Ferguson/Grossman)
July 23, 1992
MICHIGAN
Draft Two
PRESIDENTIAL REMARKS: HOLLAND AMERICAN WAFER CO.
WYOMING, MICHIGAN
JULY 27, 1992
12:00 PM
Thank you and good afternoon everyone.
(Acknowledgments)
Americans may not realize it when they reach for cereal on
the shelves, but our food industry provides more food for less
than any other nation.
This company is one reason we are the world's leader. So
I'm pleased to announce that Stu and John Vander Heide have
recruited me for a national crusade. Starting today
I will
not only argue passionately that broccoli's benefits are
overblown
but that sugar wafers should be one of the four
essential ingredients in a healthy diet.//
This factory is a symbol of change
changes that have
occurred around the world.
I'm told that your company was the originator of something
called: "The Survival Biscuit." It was one of the tokens of the
Cold War -- a bit of nourishment to fill your stomach as you
huddled somewhere in a bomb shelter, in case the unthinkable
became tragically real.
While it may not be great for survival biscuit sales, the
Cold War is, thankfully, over. Survival biscuits have gone the
way of the doomsday clock, "Failsafe" movies, bomb shelters, and
"duck and cover drills." Today, America is safer than before.
2
Safer than we were a decade ago. Safer than we were a year ago.
Safer than we were just a few weeks ago, when I sat down with
Boris Yeltsin and agreed to eliminate some of the world's most
dangerous nuclear weapons.
Now that we have changed the world
it is high time to
change America. Time to turn our attention to pressing
challenges like how to give a pink slip to our slow-growth
economy. How to make our families more like the Waltons, and
less like the Simpsons. And how to take back our streets from
the crack dealers and the criminals.
This election year, we are told, is about how we can change
to meet these challenges. But this election is not just about
change, because change has a flip side. It's called trust. When
you get down to it, this election will be like every other. When
you go into that voting booth and pull the curtain behind you:
"trust" matters.
And that's the way it should be. Many times, in the White
House late at night, the phone rings. Usually it's a young aide
double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally, it's
another voice -- more serious, solemn -- carrying news of a coup
in a powerful country, or the invasion of an ally halfway around
the world. The American people need to know that the man who
answers that phone has the experience, the seasoning, to do the
right thing.
That's trust in the traditional sense. But people who've
spent their lives in government forget that trust is more even
3
than that. I'm a Texan -- raised my children there, built my
business there. I see America as an endless tapestry of people,
families and communities. Our heartbeat can be felt in places
like Wyoming, Michigan
not Washington, D.C. And so I believe
in a simple philosophy: to lead a great nation you must first
trust the people you lead.
If you look at almost every important issue we face
you
see a clear choice -- a choice between those who put their faith
in average Americans --- and those who put their faith in
government.
Let me explain what I mean. Starting with the basics --
home and family.
The most difficult question many parents face is --- "who
will care for the kids while we're working?" A few years ago,
Washington wanted to help, but their idea was to rock the cradle
with the heavy hand of bureaucracy. All the plans boiled down to
creating some new kind of government apparatus, like a Pentagon
for child care.
I fought for a different approach
and won. Our landmark
legislation allows parents -- not the government -- to decide
whether your children are cared for in school, a relative's home,
or church.
When it comes to raising children, I say: why not trust the
people?
What about our education system? To renew America we must
renew our schools, we all know this, but money alone won't do it.
4
We already spend more money per student than almost any other
country; and our kids still rank near the bottom in crucial
subjects like math and science. Again: a lot of ideas floating
around, most of them to pump more tax money into the same system.
I say try something different. Open up schools to
competition, and trust you to decide whether you want your kids
to learn in a public school, a private school or religious
school.
When it comes to education, again I say: "why not trust the
people?"
One other example: health care. We have the finest quality
health care in the world -- but costs are through the roof.
Thirty-four million Americans, a population larger than the state
of California, are without coverage today, and millions more are
worried about losing the coverage they have.
We have to change the system. Some propose versions of
socialized medicine -- letting the federal government play
doctor.
I say, take a different way, and I've put forth a plan to
bring health costs down. It will give tax credits so people
without coverage can buy it, and incentives so that small
businesses can pool their resources and cover more of their
employees. //
When it comes to deciding, What doctor? What hospital? I
say: why not trust the people?
5
What about government regulation? Sure, some of it is
necessary, even essential. But if you believe that there is a
government solution to every problem, an alphabet agency for
every issue, than you look at regulation not as a necessary evil,
but as a necessary way to reign in people's evil tendencies. The
results can be crazy, as this story proves.
The time had come recently for a government agency to update
its rules on hard hats. That's right: hard hats. And someone in
that agency stumbled upon a potential national crisis
workers
being infected from hard hats. The alarms went off. The
bureaucratic blood boiled. One small fact was overlooked. There
wasn't a single documented case, anywhere in the United States,
of anyone getting infected wearing someone else's hard hat.
That didn't deter the bureaucrat. So with the best of
intentions, the rule was written: every hard hat must be
disinfected before one worker passed it to another. Estimated
cost to business: $13 million a year. Measurable benefit:
slightly less than zero.
Luckily, this story has a happy ending, but only because we
were there to give it one. We found the regulation before it hit
the books, and said: we think America can survive, without hard
hat regulation.
But can you imagine what might have happened, if these
enterprising regulators had made their way into the vast,
unregulated territory of lunch pails and thermos bottles?//
6
Some believe the solution to our problems is more government
regulation. I take a different view. I've put a moratorium on
new federal regulations, to give businesses like this one room to
breathe, and grow and create jobs.
In child care, education, health care and regulation, it's a
matter of trust --- trusting Americans to make their own choices.
And when it comes to the most pressing issue of this
election year -- revving up our economy -- forgetting this idea
is not just a nuisance; it can be downright dangerous.
The revolutions of the past few years herald a new era of
global economic competition, with free markets from Siberia to
Santiago.
Can the U.S. compete
...
now that everyone is playing our
game? I know we can. Despite all the criticism you've heard
lately, keep in mind a few facts. We are the largest economy in
the world. Inflation, the Willie Sutton who robs the middle
class of dreams, has been put safely behind bars. The last time
interest rates stayed this low, the Brady Bunch hadn't even
started re-runs yet. Despite all the stories about our problems,
our workers are still the most productive in the world -- more
productive than the English, the Germans, the Japanese.
)
But while our economy is growing, it must grow faster. The
question is: how do we do it? The other side suggests a simple
two-part solution. First, jack up government spending! And
then: raise taxes!
7
Now as you evaluate their idea, keep this in mind. Here in
Michigan, whether you like it or not, you already work 128 days
just to pay your taxes -- before you earn a single dime to spend
on your family. I don't think I have to ask -- does anyone want
to go for 129?//
All this talk of spending and taxes causes me to wonder
if the other side is a little hard of hearing. Abraham Lincoln
spoke of government "of the people, by the people, for the
people. But they seem to keep saying
of the government, by
the government, and for the government.
They're hard to dissuade. I'll give you a great example.
In January I proposed a common-sense, comprehensive plan to get
this economy moving faster, now
The first sound of a strong economy is usually the sound of
hammers pounding away at new homesites. So I proposed tax
incentives to build new homes, and a $5,000 break for families
who want to buy their first one. Here in Michigan, that would
have equalled nine months of mortgage payments on the average
house.
I understand that private enterprise is the horse that pulls
our wagon -- no government program ever created a real job,
((although government did keep Johnny Carson in business for 30
years)) So I proposed incentives for businesses to grow and
hire. It's estimated the incentives would have spurred the
creation of at least half a million jobs
if they had been
approved when I proposed them.
8
But they weren't approved. Instead, Congress sent back
what you might call an "anti-trust" program. New government
spending, and new taxes.
So I sent their plan back. I told them to try again. And
I'm still waiting. But I need your help. Write Congress, tell
them you want to get this economy moving again. Tell them you
don't want to get the impression, that the only way to get rid of
the deadlock in Washington, is by cleaning out a little deadwood
in Congress. //
You see
it all comes down to a question of trust. I
trust you to spend and save your money more wisely than any
budget planner in Washington.
This is common sense, and I agree. But there's a certain
type of person attracted to government for whom the word "trust"
has a strange meaning. Most of them have spent their lives in
government, and don't have much experience in the real world.
They say they want to
"put people first.' " But if you
look closely at what they're advocating
the people they put
first are all on a government payroll.
A leader of a free people must understand that government
can not only help, it can hinder. He must have the confidence to
say: "I trust you. If I trust the people. 11
And ultimately, you must decide who you trust -- who has
the experience -- the ideals and ideas -- to find that delicate
balance.
9
Yes, America will change, just as we have changed the world.
The question now is: Who will change America for the better?
Trust me when I tell you this: it won't be a team of economists
from Harvard, or a gaggle of social scientists from a Washington
think tank.
If you want to know who's going to change America -- look
around you. It's going to be the guy who works an extra shift
every week so his son can go to the school of his choice. It's
going to be the small businesswoman who takes a risk on a new
product. The computer hacker working in a lonely garage, the
merit scholar from South Central L.A., the entrepreneur with a
future as big as his dreams.
There's your answer: The American people are going to change
America.
But only if they have a government with the wisdom to know
its own limits, with a leadership who knows where the true
American imagination lies. Countries around the world have at
long last understood the power of trusting the people. America
will change by reaffirming the lesson it has taught the world --
by trusting a leader who trusts you.
Thank you and God bless you, and God bless the United States
of America.
#
#