Thank you very, very much.  We hope we've made you feel at home here in Washington, DC.  I think it's cold enough and windy enough that maybe you feel like you're at a ski resort in Colorado today.  Thank you for letting me be here.  I know so many of you for so many years [inaud.]  I want to commend my mayor, Francis Slay, who has been a friend for many, many hears and I want to commend Tom Menino who has also been a friend and I want to remind the two of them that about a year ago we had the St. Louis Rams and the New England Patriots locked in a great game at the Super Bowl.  It was about a year ago this week, as I remember Francis, and of course in St. Louis we were all excited about winning this game, and probably thought we-- too much about winning the game.

But I just want to refresh all your memory when they announced the players of the two teams, they announced all of our great players, Marshall Faulk and everybody and we were all cheering, and then they said here are the New England Patriots and by request we've decided not to introduce them by name, but we introduce them as a team: here are the New England Patriots.  I turned to my wife who I was sitting with and I said, Jane, were going to lose this game.  [laughter].  Guess what?  We did.  But it's great to see him and my mayor and to see all of you and to have this chance to be with you.

I have a great appreciation for what all of you do on a daily basis.  My first job in politics, in 1965, was to be the co-precinct captain of the 14th ward in St. Louis, City of St. Louis, and my entry into politics was at the very local government level.  I ran for committeeman of my ward and a few years after that entry in 1965 and in 1971 I was elected to the Board of Aldermen in the City of St. Louis and served there for five years.  My mentor in the Board of Aldermen was a man by the name of Red [inaud.].  Been there a long, long time before I got there and on my first day he took me over to the side and he said, Dick, just remember that whatever job you have in politics, your average constituent cares a lot more about the hole in the street in the front of their house or the tree that's not trimmed or the sidewalk that's uneven than they do about the city budget, than any state or national issue.  That was good advice and I've never forgotten it.    And I had that advice refreshed to me by Tip O'Neill when I got here in the House of Representatives.

So you are at the crux of the matter for all of our constituents, and I know how hard you work and I know how serious you are and how successful you are in dealing with those day to day [inaud.] concerns that your people have.  And I always want in whatever capacity I serve to help you tangibly in trying to solve the problems that you face.

Now let me if I can spend my minute trying to bring you up to date on where we've been over the last two years in dealing with all of the problems that we face in this great country.  The heart of the matter for all of you in your cities is that if the national economy and the local economy is not working, you're going to have trouble doing everything that you need to do.

I remember so clearly in 1993 when President Clinton had-- was first elected and George Mitchell, Tom Foley and I were invited to Little Rock.  In fact it was in November of 1992 right after the election, and we were invited there to talk to the President-elect about what we should be bringing up as the legislative priority in the Congress and the first thing we should be concerned about.  When I got my chance to talk, I said Mr. President, reality is that we have run federal deficits the last 20 years that I think has caused lots of economic problems out in the country and if there's one thing that we need to do to get this economy back together again it is to straighten out that deficit problem.  The president said, I understand.  That's what we'll do.  So we went to work and put together an effort to balance the federal budget.

Now you all deal with this every day and you know there's no fun in balancing budgets.  Hard work.  Great to talk about in theory.  When you get down to the brass tacks its a real problem.  But we did it.  We cut programs, many programs that you care about, we raised taxes on the wealthy--that wasn't popular--but we got the votes.  We didn't get one Republican vote in the House, we didn't get one Republican vote in the Senate.  We had to beg people to vote for it.  We all knew that we had to pass it, but nobody wanted to vote for it.  You know how that goes.  But we got it done.  And I was prouder of the Democratic party on that day than probably any time in my history in the House of Representatives because I knew people had put their careers on the line to pass this budget.  

We lost the election in 1994, lost the House for the first time [inaud.] years in large part in my view because of that vote.  I can name to you the members who lost the election because they voted for that budget and got seriously attacked in their next election because they did it.  But it was the right thing for the country.  And ironically even though we asked the wealthiest to pay a little more and their fair share of supporting this country, in the next eight years everybody in the country did better.  Cities did better.  States did better.  The whole country did better.  Business people did better and the wealthiest got wealthier than they ever imagined because we did the right thing for all of the people of this great country in getting our house in order and getting this economy to move in the right direction.

I am proud of what we accomplished as Democrats in that very important time, and I believe in a different time with different needs, we need to restore Democratic leadership to the top post in this country to move this country back [applause] to where it belongs.  [applause continues].

We have an administration that is ignoring reality in this country today.  They are turning their back on the basic facts of life.  In this economy and this country, this tax bill that this administration has brought up is nonsense.  It is not in touch with any of the local, state or national needs that we have in this country.  And I hope and pray in the days ahead that it will be defeated and in its [applause] place we will give aid to the state and local governments.  [applause continues].

There isn't a state in this great United States today that has a surplus that I'm aware of.  My state, we've got billions of dollars of deficit.  California has a deficit of $35 billion, and yet this administration, rather than trying to address these needs at the state and local level, is turning its back on reality.

Let's talk for a moment about the airline and airway system.  I don't know where the president's been but maybe he hasn't noticed that since 9/11 this great, important industry is on its knees in this country.  St. Louis, where I'm from, our mayor will tell you that our big airlines out in St. Louis are losing money every day.  We may be on our way to having all of our airlines in bankruptcy.  And if our airlines are in bankruptcy, how in the world is anybody going to move around this country to do business and how are you going to keep your airport even hope for business.  And you've got all these new costs that you face in running your airport facilities.

Rather than tapping some crazy scheme for double tax on dividends that nobody understands, shouldn't we be getting the airline executives together and the airport executives together and working out a way that we can have a new business plan for our airlines and we can preserve this industry to have decent transportation around this country so we can have a good economy in the future.  [applause, inaud.]

And finally, we've got a thing out there called terrorism and terrorists.  This is a new threat.  The new front in this war is in your communities.  You are the commanders of the front-line troops that are going to have to fight this thing and respond to any terrorist activity.  We would not dream of sending soldiers to Afghanistan or some other far off place without proper equipment and training.  This administration continues to refuse to give you the aid and support that you need to get your people trained to take care of bioterrorism or nuclear terrorism or chemical terrorism that we face all over this country.  Rather than double tax on dividends, we ought to be trying to deal with keeping our people safe and- [applause, inaud.]

Lastly let me say that I think all of us are taking on this challenge to run for president because we fell so deeply that the leadership in this country needs to be changed.  Our values, our plans, our ideas need to be changed and that's why we're out here trying to do this.  We've got good candidates.  I am proud of all of them.  We're going to bring bold ideas.  I don't think you can win this election by nibbling around the edges and trimming suggestions that have been made by this administration.

One idea that I will be bringing forward in the coming weeks is a big transaction.  You see I think the tax bill that the administration passed last year, and the tax bill that they're trying to pass this year are both ill-founded, ill-advised, and ill-thought out.  [applause].  They are not helping the country.  And I will bring forward an idea that we rescind any and all tax cuts and tax bills and economic plans that this administration has passed by the time we get to 2004 and take those revenues and use them to see that every American family is covered by quality health insurance [applause] once and for all in this country.

It would stimulate our economy, it would make our workforce healthier, it would get rid of the crazy cost-shifting that goes on in this industry today, it would help our people be able to respond and deal with the biggest industry in our country, it would create jobs, it would give people confidence that they have the [inaud.] behind that.

So it's these kinds of ideas that I think we have to bring forward.  Let me just finally in conclusion say if we're going to win this election we've got to strike a spark of idealism and belief in this country.  We've got to get people to believe again that we're tied together, that were interdependent, that we can solve these problems, that we're not stuck in our cynicism, that we have the ability to break through some of these tough problems and make this country everything that you and I and our families want it to be.

We can do this, but we've got to get people up on their feet and excited and participating in this great democracy, we've got to get Democrats out to vote, and we will make America an even better place.  Thank you very- [applause, inaud.].
 

Transcript Copyright © 2003  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.