Remarks As Delivered by Rep. Mike Pence
American’s for Prosperity Foundation
“Defending the American Dream Summit 2009”
October 2, 2009
I stand before you today at an historic moment for the conservative movement and for this great country. The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation and beyond. How we as conservatives respond could well determine whether America retains her place as a beacon of hope in the world, or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of Socialism.
While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and conservative values, I believe we are on the verge of a great American awakening, and it begins here and it begins now and it begins with you.
I can see it. I can feel it. Everywhere I go in my rural Indiana district, everywhere I’ve traveled around this great nation, I’ve sensed the enthusiasm of the American people for our ideals as never before. In a word, I’m encouraged, as at no time since we first arrived in Washington D.C. some 9 years ago. It kind of reminds me of a time that I got involved in a big firefight on Capitol Hill, and when I got invited to go over to the White House to meet with President Bush in the Oval Office. You know, when a president wants to give some attention to a proposal of a member of Congress, they invite them over and do the photo-op thing and sit down. And I’ll be honest with you it was kind of a big deal. A small town guy from southern Indiana. I mean, I’d been on a tour but I mean I hadn’t actually, you know.
But, we went over there and I met the president and I’m standing next to the two secretaries, just like the movies. And the president waves me in and we do the photo op thing and I know what happened, here’s what happened. Tim Phillips knows how this works. Some staffer had said to the president, “You know Pence is taking a lot of heat out there on this thing so you might, in addition to talking about the bill, you might want to encourage him.”
So I came walking into the Oval Office and we sat down. The president looked at me and said, “Now, Mike, I asked you over here because I’m interested in your bill.” But he said, “I also wanted you to be encouraged.” And I said, “Ok.” And he goes, “I’d like you to see me as an encourager. I’d like you to feel some encouragement before you leave.”
And seriously, as God as my witness, after about the fifth time he’d said it in five minutes, I said, “Mr. President, you know sitting here in the Oval Office with the leader of the free world, I’m encouraged.”
And so I am tonight, to see all of you and Americans for Prosperity here in Washington D.C., I’m encouraged.
In his 1989 farewell address, President Ronald Regan reminded us that “all great change begins at the dinner table.” So here we are at the dinner table. Each of us brought together from cities and towns across America with ideas brought from our own dinner tables and our own homes. Unified by a love of this nation and an unshakeable belief in the ideals of economic and personal freedom, and increasingly unified by a growing awareness of how deeply imperiled these freedoms are at this moment.
Washington D.C. is overrun with politicians who consider the ideals of our Founding Fathers as quaint artifacts, as out of style as powdered wigs. Well, consider me quaint and out of style. I hold fast to the principles that minted this Republic: limited government, individual liberty, fiscal and personal responsibility. I took an oath to protect and defend these ideals. I vowed to bear obligation with true faith and allegiance. And if that’s not quaint enough for you, I’ve even got a little of that powdered wig thing going.
History is consistent and clear. There is no lasting prosperity without freedom. It’s the reason the Americans for Prosperity movement was born. It’s defending that ideal that brings you here. You’ve seen our freedoms being eroded. You’ve watched our prosperity decline. You’ve battled against runaway federal spending under both political parties. You’ve battled against job killing policies here in Washington and across this nation, and I commend it.
The American people know we can’t borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. The American people don’t want a national energy tax passed in the name of global warming, and the American people don’t want a government takeover of health care paid for with $800 billion in higher taxes.
Truth is, Democrat policies in Washington D.C. are taking our economy from bad to worse, and it’s becoming more obvious every day. I say with a heavy heart, that today the Department of Labor announced the unemployment rate in this country reached a 26 year high, 9.8 percent, the worst since 1983. Two hundred sixty-three thousand Americans lost their jobs in the last month – moms and dads, sons and daughters.
And where was President Obama today? In Copenhagen. You know, after those first round results in Copenhagen, it looks like the president has had about as much luck pitching Chicago to the Olympics, as he had pitching health care reform to the American people.
But seriously, the image is striking: a President of the United States flying on one more foreign junket, to one more glamorous capitol, as our nation continues to struggle in the city and on the farm and unemployment rises to record levels. Men and women, we are witnessing an absence of leadership and the American people are paying the price. The American people know what works and what doesn’t. You know the time-honored path to recovery is fiscal discipline in Washington D.C. and fast-acting tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.
And to borrow a line from our honoree tonight: you know that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when Nancy Pelosi loses her job.
You know, I’m continually asked, “Mike, what’s the Republican party doing to turn things around in Washington?” The short answer is we’re fighting hard. But the reality is we just don’t have the numbers. But I often remind my colleagues that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals a majority.
You, Americans for Prosperity, know there is one force in America great enough to redeem our national government and it is the iron will of the American people.
Abraham Lincoln described it far better than I can 148 years ago. Passing through my home state of Indiana he stopped at the Clay Pool Hotel on 11 February 1861. Headed to Washington to assume the presidency and in what I can only imagine was the same kind of question to him – what it was that he would do – he said these words that are now chiseled in a modest bronze plaque, and I quote:
“I appeal to you, to constantly bear in mind that it is not with politicians, it is not with presidents, it is not with office seekers, but with you is the question: Shall the union and shall the liberties of the country be preserved?”
Lincoln went on to say it is your business if the union of these states and the liberties of this people shall be lost, and it is your business to rise up. And you, Americans for Prosperity, are rising up, along with millions of Americans across this country.
You know the politicians aren’t leading this. They shouldn’t be leading this – they’re the ones that created this mess. It’s a grassroots movement all across America. Many of you have never been involved in active politics before. You’ve pushed away from that dinner table. You’ve taken the conversation to the streets, to the airwaves and now to the corridors of power.
You know I really believe with my heart that the American people are fed up with runaway federal spending under both political parties, with crushing taxes, with micromanaging every aspect of our lives.
Clearly we’ve had it. But we see here tonight with AFP and town hall meetings, tea party rallies across this country, and in the march on Washington in Washington, D.C., it is not the orchestrated theater of liberal special interest groups. It’s authentic and it’s powerful and it’s real and it’s American.
Now, you know, the media and some politicians can pretend not to notice. But trust me, that’s an act. I’ll never forget that feeling I had on that day a couple of weeks ago, on September the 12th, it was the march on Washington rally. Karen and I took our three kids down to the Capitol building, we went through the Capitol structure, we came through the West Front of the Capitol. And I was amazed at what I saw.
The New York Times said there were thousands of Americans gathered. Fox News Channel said there were a billion. But to be honest with you, there were over one million people in Washington D.C., taking a stand for freedom.
As I walked out of the West Front of the Capitol, you know, what I saw really shook me to the core to be honest. Karen could tell, the look on my face, she reached over and did one of those wifely touch-the-arms-it’s-gonna-be-okay things. Americans stretching as far as the eye could see. My knees almost buckled – not in fear, not in stage fright – but in awe. This was America the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it. Lincoln’s America. Rising up and taking their case to the corridors of power.
You know, I can only imagine how some of my liberal colleagues felt peeking out those windows and what went through their minds. I confess I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. And I suspect the really smart ones had four words on their minds: “November two thousand ten.”
Jack Kemp, the late Jack Kemp, my hero who became my friend, said words in 1996 at the Republican National Convention that speak to our time today and about the frustration we feel about the politicians and the political elites here in Washington. He said: “They don’t have faith in people. They’re elitists. They have faith in government. They think they know better than the people, but the truth is, there is a wisdom and intelligence in ordinary men and women far superior to the greatest so-called ‘experts.’”
Somebody else believed that, too. It’s the man we remember tonight.
I had the great privilege of meeting President Reagan. On one occasion, we had a chance to sit and talk for a minute in the Blue Room. I was a candidate in 1988, he was a president in his final term in office; a term that changed America.
Well, I walked in, and it was one of those candidate moments, if you know what I mean. Your handlers are telling you to talk to him about some bridge or some river or something. But even though I was twenty-nine years old, I still had the sense that this might be a moment that I would tell my grandchildren about.
So, as I sat down next to President Reagan there in the Blue Room, he looked at me and he said, “Mike, how’s the campaign going?” And I said, “Mr. President, I’d rather not talk about the campaign. I have something I’d like to say to you.” He said, “Well, go ahead.” And I said, “I just want to thank you Mr. President, for what you’ve done to inspire my generation of Americans to believe in this country again.”
For as long as I live, I’ll believe in that moment that the 40th President of the United States of America blushed. And he said, “Well, Mike, that’s a very nice thing of you to say.” A few moments later, he breezed into the East Room where Karen was waiting with a few other families and spouses, and he said words that I’ll never forget.
He stood up in front of that small gathering, and he said, “Several of you came here today and thanked me for what I did for this country.” But he said, “I don’t believe I did anything for this country.” He said, “I think the American people decided to right the ship and I was just the captain they put on the bridge when they did it.”
Profound humility, yes. But more importantly, President Reagan understood the strength of this nation is not in her military arsenals, it’s not in her treasury, but it is in the heart and soul of every freedom-loving American.
In 1964, President Reagan spoke words that could be equally true in the moment in which we live today. He said, “The choice, then,” and I would offer the choice now, “is about whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives better for us than we can plan them for ourselves.” Well, my money is on the American people and my money is on freedom.
That became very clear to me about one year ago this weekend. It was in the aftermath of that Wall Street bailout vote. A lot of us conservatives in the House had dug in against an avalanche of panic on Capitol Hill and around the country. I just thought it was wrong to take $700 billion from Main Street and transfer it to Wall Street to pay for the bad decisions that had been made there.
Well, you might remember we stopped that bill once. But they sent it over to the Senate, and they brought it over and they rolled us. You can probably tell I’m a pretty upbeat guy, but that Saturday morning, I’ll never forget, I flew back to Indiana, and I was a little bit down. Really, I was heartsick about what I’d seen our country do.
But I showed up in Henry County, Indiana – it was a Boy Scout jamboree. You know the scene. It was a cold October Saturday morning, a line of Boy Scouts, ties pulled to the side, one shirttail out, standing up straight. I gave them my best speech about American history and then a few adults waited to talk to me afterwards. A lot of them talked about the bailout vote, about where the country was.
But there was one man standing off to the side, modestly dressed. And when the other adults dispersed, he walked up to me and he said these words, he said, “Congressman, I’d seen in the newspaper that you were going to be out here. I lost my job yesterday, but I came out here to thank you for voting against that Wall Street bailout.” I looked at him and I said, “Well, I’m sorry for your trouble, but I have to tell you, I admire your stand.” And that American looked me in the eye that cold October morning and said words that are now chiseled on my heart. He said, “Congressman, I came by to thank you because I can get another job, but I can’t get another country.”
For that brave American, for his right to live and work in freedom, conservatives must oppose the march of big government with everything we’ve got in every day we have.
You know, I’ve often said over the last few years that Republicans didn’t just lose a few elections, we lost our way. We’ve walked away from the principles that “minted” our national governing majority and the American people walked away from us. But I believe we’re finding our way back home.
We’re in a crisis, but I believe we’re also in a turning point. That’s the point where you turn to recognize how we got here and how we get back. And as we take this action to get our economy back on track, put Americans back to work and restore the principles of limited government to the practice of our federal government, there’s one thing more we must do, and with this I close.
We must recognize that our present crisis is not merely economic and political in nature, but moral in nature. At the root of these times should be a realization that we are struggling as a nation because so many in authority have walked away from the timeless truths of integrity, personal responsibility, an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, and the notion that each one of us should live and work in a way that treats others as we would like to be treated. The truth is we got to get back to basics.
You know, the Old Book says, “If the foundations crumble, how can the righteous stand?” Well, I would ask if the foundations of integrity and personal responsibility crumble how can a free society endure?
You know, recently US News and World Report called my office to say they’d heard a rumor that I open my staff meetings at the House Republican Conference in prayer. Guilty. Only in Washington D.C. is being caught in private prayer a newsworthy event. You know, we actually told them--they printed this in US News – you can look it up, we actually told them – we said, “Yes, the Congressman does open meetings in prayer. We pray for the president, we pray for colleagues in both political parties and sometimes we even pray for the press.”
You know, truth is, times like these are good times to remember what your knees are for. Our founders believed in prayer, as did that president I quoted out of Indianapolis. At the height of the Civil War and the eve of that bloody battle in eastern Pennsylvania, history records that President Lincoln fell to his knees in the White House and prayed.
He later recalled the experience to a Union general with these words, and I quote:
“I don’t know how it was, I cannot explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul, the feeling that God had taken the whole business into His hands and that things would go right again.”
You know, like millions of Americans, I have been spending some time on my knees lately. I got the same feeling, that in the midst of these dark days, by His grace, things are going to go right again. And they are going to go right again real soon.
You know, Winston Churchill said before Congress in 1941, “He must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honor to be faithful servants.”
Well, you are the faithful servants.
You’ve come to this great national Capitol to take your stand for what makes this country great. A Capitol filled with memorials to America’s heroes, men and women whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, whose remains lie quietly as testament to their heroism for our freedom. In their time they did their part. Now it’s our turn.
Let us do as generations of Americans have done before. Let us stand for what has always been the source of American greatness, our faith in God and our freedom. And if we hold that banner of freedom high, I believe with all my heart, the good and great people of this land will rally to our cause.
We will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this country back in 2012, so help us God.
Thank you Americans for Prosperity, it’s an honor to be here with you tonight.
