Remarks at a Dinner
Honoring Representative Jack F. Kemp of
Thank you all very much, George, Barbara, Bill
Bennett.
Thank you, Jack, for that wonderful introduction. I especially want to thank
four very special and talented friends -- Bill Buckley, Cap Weinberger, Jim
Baker, and Lew Lehrman, who
will be heard later -- for those kind remarks.
So
far, tonight has been a lot of fun. I feel like I've walked into my own episode
of ``This Is Your Life.'' [Laughter] But that's just the way it feels being
among dear friends. Tonight I see a lot of people -- and we have all seen them.
We've fought alongside each other for many years. And I'm just glad you were
able to stop fighting long enough for us to have this dinner. [Laughter]
But
really, our strength has come from our remarkable unity. Whether the issue has
been cutting tax rates, expanding world trade, defending the West, supporting
freedom fighters around the world, or building a defense against nuclear
weapons, we have stood tall, and we have stood together for
I
feel confident that the work we've begun will be carried even further, to new
heights, by a man I know well: George Bush, the next President of the
One
of the sponsors of tonight's dinner, the Heritage Foundation, with its
president, Ed Feulner, has been a vital force in what
we've accomplished. The Heritage Foundation 8 years ago set out what it termed
a ``Mandate for Leadership,'' which came as a warning shot, telling the liberal
establishment that a new sheriff and new deputies had ridden into town and they
could not expect to carry on business as usual. Well, tonight I think the
liberal pundits can read our lips: That mandate has been renewed.
One
of the deputies -- a man who, when the clock struck high noon, was always at my
side -- is leaving office this year. He helped to settle a tough frontier, the
Congress, loading his six-gun with solid gold bullets. But above all, Jack Kemp
is a man of ideas. And I think, really, it's those ideas that brought most of
you here tonight, and it's on that basis that we should praise him. Certainly
he's held high office; and, yes, from the gridiron to the political field of
battle, Jack is a man of action and a man of courage. But the largeness of this
quarterback is his sweeping vision of human freedom, profound in its depth,
majestic in its reach.
Yes,
I will speak tonight particularly of supply-side economics. However, let me say
first that our vision does not begin or end with tax rates, for we conservatives are not materialists or economic
determinists. Our vision is grounded in the most fundamental truth of all: that
the God that created man and woman in His own image created us to be free. And
this is true, as Jack often says, not for one people but for all people, and
not for one time but for all time.
Now,
when we think of those things that could be described as God-given, I don't
think anyone -- at least not anyone here tonight -- would suggest that we
include something the Keynesians called aggregate demand management. I believe
we really can, however, say that God did give mankind virtually unlimited gifts
to invent, produce, and create. And for that reason alone, it would be wrong
for governments to devise a tax structure or economic system that suppresses
and denies those gifts.
Incentive
economics works because it places the individual at the center of the economy
and unleashes the full human power of invention, production and, yes, compassion
and generosity. It recognizes the creativity that is lodged in each person, the
power of will and the act of faith that launches even great enterprises. As
George Gilder wrote in ``Wealth and Poverty'': ``Our
greatest and only resource is the miracle of human creativity in a relation of
openness to the divine.'' Well, isn't that really the context in which to
discuss economics?
You
know, I've often quoted a philosopher and historian, ibn-Khaldun,
who observed that at the beginning of the empire the tax rates are low and the
revenues high, but at the end of an empire the rates are high and the revenues
low. Now, he had a bit of a jump on me. He wrote in the 14th century -- which
doesn't make us contemporaries. [Laughter] But in a speech I gave 27 years ago,
I pointed out that the top Federal income tax brackets, which at that time ran
from 50 percent up to more than 90 percent, brought the Government very little
revenue. I said that ``the Government can only justify these brackets on a
punitive basis.'' In the early 1960's and before, when I called for cutting
taxes, for replacing progressive marginal rates with a flat tax, it couldn't be
called supply-side economics because that name had not been coined yet. But our
critics were not at a loss for words. They had all sorts of names for ideas,
most of which I'd better not repeat.
Back
in the 1970's in
So,
while the beltway crowd despaired of ever reforming the Tax Code, even as my
predecessor in the White House called it a ``disgrace to the human race,''
there were, nonetheless, a visionary few who were undaunted. In 1977 Jack put
forward the Kemp-Roth bill to cut personal income tax rates 30 percent across
the board. Still the reigning orthodoxy held firm to its prescription of high
taxes and easy money, even as the stagflation soared. But other thinkers
replied that the solution was just the opposite: low taxes and stable money.
And after our administration took office and we implemented those policies, the
result was just as promised: high rates of economic growth and low inflation.
And
these ideas were just as politically powerful as they were economically
effective. We saw that the future of our party depended on it being the party
of working people, of opportunity, of prosperity and freedom. We couldn't hope
to succeed so long as we acted as the liberals' tax collector, putting the
squeeze on workers to fund our opposition's big government plans and
redistributionist schemes. Nor should we try to ``me, too''
our opponents' efforts to buy constituencies with Federal programs. We
knew that the future of the Republican Party at the national level did not lie
in running a light beer campaign, offering people everything our opponents did,
but less. [Laughter]
No,
it lay in offering the American people more -- more jobs, more income, more
opportunity, and more freedom. It was much more than our opponents could
conceive of and far more than they could hope to match, because our opponents
could only offer the people things that they had taken from them while we could
offer the American people far more than they ever had: the full fruits of their
own abundant creativity.
And
that, as I said, is a promise that we've kept. Today
A
recent article in the Public Interest by Paul Craig Roberts compares this
expansion with the longest previous one, and the contrast is striking. Not only
is our expansion over a year longer, but just looking at the same length of
time, the first 58 months, we held inflation down to a third of what it was in
the previous expansion while we reduced the unemployment rate by almost twice
as much.
And
since our expansion began, we've seen manufacturing productivity grow at its
highest level in the postwar period, double the rate of the 1970's. The truth
is that for 6 years now the economy has been so good that occasionally they
even had to announce it on the evening news. [Laughter] The story would be
something like: ``With the economy booming, can
depression be far behind?'' [Laughter]
Well,
we've helped prove that economic truth is a lever that can move governments,
move history, and truly change the world. But I'm still waiting to see if it
can make the nightly news. [Laughter] But whether it does or not, it's made
history -- and not just in our own country but around the globe.
What
we've done here in
In
places like the
And
we must continue to pursue our Strategic Defense Initiative that would free the
people of the world from nuclear terror, as Jack just told you. We believe that
I
can say to you that on every important issue Jack has been a leader. And he has
stayed loyal to principle and party. And this year, when Jack saw that this was
meant to be George Bush's time, from that point on, no one worked harder or
with greater enthusiasm to help assure that George Bush became the next
President of the
When
you talk about Jack Kemp one word comes to mind: the cause. Wherever he is,
he'll fight for that cause; he'll work for that cause. And what unites every
single soul in this room is our shared commitment to that cause. Jack Kemp has
already fought and won more battles than most men dream of. But I also remember
that on the last Saturday before the election Jack and I were out campaigning
for George Bush, and we met up in
Jack
is fond of saying that this administration gave
And
come January, when I saddle up and ride off into the sunset -- [laughter] -- it
will be with the knowledge that we've done great things. We kept faith with a
promise as old as this land we love and as big as the sky, a brilliant vision
of
Thank
you all, and God bless you all.
Note: The President
spoke at