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THE TRUE STATE OF THE UNION
(long version) January 2003
by Dr. Robert M. Bowman

I wrote my first State of the Union Address in 1992 as an alternative to the one given by the first President Bush. Having just reread it, I am amazed at how little has changed. Nonetheless, some things have changed, and I find myself once again writing an alternative to a Bush speech with which I profoundly disagree. This time it is Dubya's 2003 State of the Union. At the time of my first State of the Union in 1992, I was not a candidate for President, and had no intention of ever being one. However, in 2000 I responded to a draft by progressives in the Reform Party and became a candidate. Having learned from this failed campaign just how rotten our political system has become, and just how stacked it is against third parties, I have decided that 2004 will be different. I much prefer not to run again. And if a true progressive such as Dennis Kucinich or Marcy Kaptur runs, I will enthusiastically give my support. If they do not, and if the Democratic candidates are once again warmed-over Republicans like Joe Lieberman, then I may run again -- but this time in the Democratic primaries. I will have no delusions of winning. After all, I have no money behind me and am too outspoken to ever be elected to anything. But maybe I'll make some waves in Iowa and New Hampshire. In any event, this 2003 State of the Union Address has nothing to do with my possible candidacy for President of the United States. It is just the truth as I see it, and it contains proposals which I sure wish some president, some day would present to the American people and the Congress. In the off chance that these words give somebody an idea, I am sending copies of this to all the presidential candidates of both major parties. They are welcome to use these ideas as their own. 

I now ask you to suspend reality and pretend (just pretend, remember) that I am speaking to you as President of the United States and giving my State of the Union Address.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mister Speaker, Madam President, distinguished Members of the Congress, honored guests, and my fellow Americans: Not since Gerald Ford rose from obscurity to become president following the resignations of Agnew and Nixon has something like this happened. Gerald Ford rose to the occasion, raised this nation from the depths of confusion and despair, and became one of our better presidents. I hope to do likewise.

I've been told that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to be president. Nevertheless, I am one. I'm also a career military officer, the father of seven children, and the grandfather of twenty-one. I've been a corporate engineer and executive, a song-and-dance man, a stuffy college professor, an itinerant preacher, a fighter pilot, a radio talk show host, and a husband to the same wonderful woman for 47 years. One thing I have never ever been is a politician -- and I don't intend to start now. Heck, I'm not even a lawyer. I came to Washington to restore power to the people. Once that's done, I'll go back to being a part-time rocket scientist, a part-time bishop, and a full-time troublemaker.

I have been your president for but a short time, and I still have much to learn. I hesitate to act in haste, and yet the times cry out for change. We can never know for how long we are privileged to play our role in life's drama, and this thought gives me a sense of urgency. I believe, for example, that John Kennedy had decided to end our involvement in Vietnam, but was convinced to go slowly and methodically. I am therefore not inclined to prudence, being content to let others supply that for me. Lord knows the ponderous machinery of this government has a momentum of staggering proportions. To change its direction is not an easy task. Yet change, I believe, it must, and I will therefore speak plainly and with candor.

My talk tonight will have three main parts. In the first I will attempt to describe the current state of our Union and how we got to where we are today. In the second, I will propose concrete steps toward resurrecting the American dream. And in the third, I will discuss our new relationship to a changing world.

CURRENT STATE OF THE UNION

Our Resources:

We in America are blessed with a beautiful, varied, and bounteous land. It lies mostly within the temperate zone and stretches from sea to shining sea, with our most recent states extending well into the Arctic and halfway to Asia. The land is fertile, productive, and rich in minerals. Much of it is covered with forests and woodlands teeming with wildlife. An abundant supply of lakes, rivers, and aquifers provide water to a quarter of a billion thirsty people. Our coastlines have some of the world's best ports and harbors. We are rich, indeed, in natural resources.

Unfortunately, these natural resources are endangered by the same environmental hazards threatening the rest of the planet, particularly the greenhouse effect and global warming. We also have some homegrown threats. Among them are the dumping of toxic chemicals from industry into our air, land, and water; intense concentrations of toxic smog from automobile exhausts; and the loss of virgin rainforest to logging. We must and we will protect our natural resources.

We are rich in material resources. We have modern cities designed for the automotive age. We have the world's first and most extensive interstate highway system. We have a network of railroads reaching into all parts of the country. We have dams, factories, theme parks, Levis, television sets, and more cars per capita than any other nation. We are rich, indeed, in material resources.

Unfortunately, these resources are threatened by obsolescence and decay. Our cities weren't built to last for hundreds of years, like those in Europe. Neither was anything else, it seems. The American way was to build it fast and cheap, and throw it away when it wears out. Built-in obsolescence meant profit. It kept people buying new cars every two years -- at least until the Volkswagen showed up.

But then came the Cold War, and we spent that ten trillion dollars on the arms race, instead of on other things. You know what that ten trillion dollars would have bought? Every car, every piece of clothing, every work of art, every piece of jewelry, every house, every factory, every dam, every machine tool, every hospital, every schoolbook, every piece of furniture, ... everything in the country except the land. That means that on the average, all of our material resources are one generation older than they should be. Things that should have been replaced, weren't. Our cities, water supplies, sewers, bridges, and roads are decaying. Our factories and machine tools are obsolete. Our schools and hospitals are antiquated and in disrepair.

If we are to remain a rich nation, we must find a way to renew our material resources.

In purely monetary terms, we in the United States, until about 1980, were clearly the richest nation on earth. Our standard of living was the highest in the world. Our workers were the highest-paid in the world. We were the world's largest creditor nation. Everybody owed us money. Our corporations owned huge pieces of other countries. Our tourists traveled the world, buying up bargains wherever they went.

Then came Reaganomics. During one presidency, we went from the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor. The deficits run up by Reagan were double the total of all the deficits run up by all our presidents from Washington to Carter.

To finance these deficits, our government borrowed from overseas and sold off pieces of America to foreigners. The Japanese soon owned Rockefeller Center, Pebble Beach, Columbia Pictures, most of the banks in California, and much of Hawaii. We still are a productive nation. But if we want to remain a rich nation, we must get our financial house in order and distribute our wealth more equitably.

Our greatest source of riches has always been our people. Americans have been the best educated, hardest working, most creative, most innovative, most productive people in the world. That's what made us number one.

Unfortunately, even these precious human resources of ours are endangered. They are threatened by dying cities, terrible schools, unaffordable health care, and joblessness. They are threatened by drugs, drug-related crime, and desperation. The life expectancy of an American male born in Harlem is less than that of a boy born in Bangladesh!

If we want to remain a rich nation, we must protect, care for, nurture, and develop our human resources.

America has been a land of happy, fun-loving people, quietly religious and generous of spirit. Courage, compassion, virtue, loyalty, patience, and optimism have exemplified the American character. You can see it in the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. He didn't create it out of nothing. It was there. He merely captured it.

But then came Vietnam. It seemed to sap the spirit from the nation. The dread trio of assassinations -- John, Martin, and Bobby -- drained it even more. Joblessness, homelessness, and despair strain the spirit of some. Hate, greed, fear, selfishness, and mean-spiritedness poison others.

In the wake of World War II, when we showed magnanimity and generosity in victory, we received God's blessing on our land. But when, as a nation, we became selfish, greedy, arrogant, and brutal, things changed. Psalm 37 says, "Trust in the Lord and do good, that you may dwell in the land and have security."

If we want to remain a rich nation, we must husband our spiritual resources.

How then are we to protect and nurture our resources? For one thing, we must put them in the right order. In Biblical language, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all else will be added unto you." Or put another way, "Cure the disease and the symptoms will take care of themselves." Or yet again, "You'll never go wrong by doing right."

The proper order for these resources is as follows: spiritual resources first, human resources second, natural resources third, material resources fourth, and financial resources last. The problem of the recent past is that they were put upside down.

We're Number One:

I'm here tonight to declare to you that the United States is number one in the industrialized world: number one in our use of the world's resources, number one in the production of pollution, number one in the gap between the rich and the poor, number one in deaths by gunfire, number one in teen pregnancy, number one in poverty among the elderly, number one in citizens without health coverage, number one in child poverty, number one in homeless veterans, and number one in citizens behind bars. And all that was true before "W" came in and made things even worse. In the two years of his failed presidency, George II turned a $236 billion per year surplus into a $157 billion dollar deficit -- and the 2003 budget I inherited is over $300 billion in the red. In these two years he did away with 1.7 million American jobs, saw 1.4 million added to the uninsured, and had more than a million more Americans falling into poverty each year, reversing three decade-long trends. He saw bankruptcies soar 23% to the highest level in history and stocks (including all our private retirement funds) lose over $6 trillion in value. His policies resulted in the first rise in serious crime in a decade. He slashed education funding by $90 million, while giving huge tax cuts to the corporations and wealthiest 1% of us. His most recent tax proposal would have given this same elite a tax cut averaging over $30,000, while the average working family would have gotten $289. As a result, we are again (as we were under his father) the world's #1 debtor nation, #1 in the creation of new billionaires, #1 in school dropouts, #1 in poverty, homelessness, hunger, divorce, suicide, and (oh yes) #1 in military force, nuclear weapons, and military spending -- almost as much as all the other nations in the world combined. This also makes us the number one object of fear and hatred and therefore the number one target of terrorists (along with our friends in Israel). We also lead the world in the number of hours worked per family, since it now takes two wage-earners and three jobs to provide the income earned with one 40 hour per week job in the 1950s -- this despite soaring productivity. If it wasn't for corporate control of our government and the resulting trickle-down economics, ordinary workers could support their families with one job & working two days a week! If worker pay had kept pace with executive pay, the average worker would now be making a million dollars a year!! and the minimum wage would be $143 an hour!

What do you call a country whose principal exports are wood pulp and scrap metal, whose principal imports are manufactured goods, and whose fastest-growing industry is building and operating private prisons? A third world country. That is the US today. We just happen to be an extremely rich third world country. (Only one fourth of our preschoolers live in poverty.) That is the state of the union we have inherited.

We are without doubt number one in military power. But what about the other measures of a nation? In our drive to protect the far-flung financial interests of our multinational corporations, we have abandoned our principles and fought wars of aggression against small countries. We have overthrown popularly-elected leaders and installed puppet dictators who sell out their own people to our global robber barons. We have squandered the good will purchased by the blood of our youth in the defense of democracy in World Wars I and II. In our unilateralist arrogance, we have abandoned the ideals championed by our forebears who founded the United Nations. We have violated the legal framework established by our greatest generation at Nuremberg. In our phony war against the terrorists our policies have created, we have overturned the Constitutional protections given us by our founding fathers in the Bill of Rights. In our drive toward a corporate New World Order, we have sold out our workers, our families, our environment, our children's futures, and the American dream. This too is the state of the union we have inherited.

What Has Led Us To This State?

We are also probably the most blessed nation on earth. We have a bounteous and beautiful land, a skillful and creative work force, and an inspired Constitution. With the wealth and power we had at the end of the second World War, and the productivity gains made since then, we have had the opportunity to create a land without want. What went wrong? Why are our workers paid such a tiny percentage of their true worth? Why are we the only major nation without a national health program? Why are our high school graduates two years behind their counterparts in other countries? Why are we hated by so many around the world? Why do we have hundreds of thousands of troops patrolling foreign lands and supporting foreign dictators? What is going on here?

The answer is that we have lost our republic. Legislators no longer represent the people who elect them, but the corporations who finance them. They answer not to their constituents, but to the lobbyists who line their pockets and fill their campaign coffers. In return, government officials have undone decades of hard-fought victories against the robber barons of the nineteenth century. The courageous efforts of the Roosevelts -- one Republican and one Democrat -- to control the corporations and monied interests have been undone by Reagan and his successors.

For years now, through both major political parties, the world's billionaires have directed U.S. policy for their own personal profit. This has included agreements (NAFTA and the WTO) falsely portrayed as supporting free trade, but in reality promoting free investment, overturning U.S. laws, and putting American workers in competition with those in the Third World. It has also resulted in a series of wars, from Iraq to Bosnia to Kosovo to Afghanistan to Iraq again -- wars which are never in the interest of those fighting them, or of the families left behind & wars which only serve the insatiable greed of the global investor class.

This struggle was not unforeseen. Listen to the following quotes:

 "I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Abraham Lincoln, Nov 21, 1864

"If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of government. I do not expect monopoly to restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." President Woodrow Wilson

"I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-fed. Repeated attempts at solution without the aid of government have left us baffled and bewildered, & we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men. We have begun to bring private, autocratic powers (corporations) into their proper subordination to the public's government."  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, Jan 1937

Corporate power over our political system, over the media, and over most aspects of our lives is the greatest danger we face today. Curtailing this power and restoring it to We the People is our greatest challenge. Until this is done, nothing else of great value is possible, especially real reform. Those of us who dedicate our lives to peace, economic justice, and environmental preservation can make little progress in our struggles so long as ultimate power is in the hands of those who profit from war, poverty, and pollution. We must reassert the sovereignty of We the People over the billionaires and their hireling bureaucrats in the Corporate New World Order.

Well, I didn't get here tonight by taking corporate millions. I didn't get here by selling myself to the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and all the other global robber barons. To be quite honest, I'm not sure how I got here! But here I am, and as long as I am president, this government will serve the needs of the people, not the greeds of the wealthy elite.

RESURRECTING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Turning things around won't be easy. What our Constitution empowers me to change, I shall. But for much of what needs doing, I will need the cooperation of Congress, and I ask for it tonight.

Media Reform:

The first thing we need to do is to sever the connection between money and political power. This means electoral reform and media reform. The latter can be done now. I am ordering the Federal Communications Commission to reinstate equal time rules for both radio and television and to reimplement the ban on multiple ownership. Monopolistic media corporations will be given reasonable time to divest themselves of excess holdings. Democracy only works with an informed electorate, which in turn depends on a variety of news sources. A free press is incompatible with corporate domination of the media.

Electoral Reform:

Electoral reform requires the participation of Congress and the States. The most important reform is the adoption of Instant Runoff Voting at all levels. I ask the States to adopt IRV for all statewide elections, including that for President of the United States. The second is Proportional Representation. I ask the States to consider PR for electing their Congressional delegations. I also ask them to follow the lead of Florida and eliminate burdensome petition requirements for qualifying third party and independent candidates for the ballot. Finally, I ask Congress to enact true campaign finance reform, banning the use of corporate, union, or other organizational funds completely, and funding campaigns with public money. Granny D is right. Corporations are not people, and money is not speech. The first amendment right of free speech was not intended to give corporations the right to control electoral politics with their money. If the Supreme Court disagrees, then I will introduce a Constitutional Amendment which states that corporations and other fictitious entities are not people and have no rights and privileges under the Constitution. I also ask Congress to declare Election Day a national holiday with the polls opening and closing simultaneously in every state from Maine to Hawaii. Whatever it takes, we must once and for all sever the connection between big money and political power.

This is not a partisan issue. It is a people's issue. It is necessary to save our republic. I ask the members of Congress to cooperate and pass the necessary legislation. If you don't, I am going to ask the American people to vote you out, regardless of your party affiliation. We must, and we will, have a Congress that serves the people and not the corporations.

American Rights:

Once that is done, everything becomes possible. In this richest of nations, we can and we will guarantee every American a good education, a decent job at a living wage, health care, and the undiluted protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

In accordance with respect for the rights of Americans, I am ordering a review of all cases identified by Amnesty International of U.S. citizens being imprisoned for political offenses.  I envision granting pardons to many, as I did at my inauguration for Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal.  I am ordering that U.S. citizens detained after 9/11 be either charged in accordance with law or released.  Immigrants who have been indefinitely detained will be either charged, legally deported, or released.  Those captured in Afghanistan and detained at Guantanamo Bay will be accorded the rights of prisoners of war.  Fear of terrorism is not going to make this country a police state!

Education:

Access to a good, high quality education must be recognized as a right, not just for the affluent in the suburbs, but for all Americans. We cannot tolerate a literacy rate which is lower than that of Iraq. Probably the two greatest problems are lack of money and lack of discipline -- not necessarily in that order. Many of the ills of our educational system can be traced to the need to support them from local property taxes. Local school boards ought to run schools, but they shouldn't have to raise the money for them. That should be the job of the IRS. Money alone can't solve the problems of our schools, but they can't be solved without it. Teachers should be paid in accordance with their great value to society, and they must be given the authority to maintain discipline. Access to education may be a right, but it is also a privilege. Students who disrupt the decorum and discipline of the classroom deny other students the opportunity to learn in a proper environment. They should be removed until the problem is corrected.

Living Wage:

Perhaps the most important right we can give American families is the right to a decent job at a living wage. Not three jobs, but one job; not a minimum wage, but a Living Wage. If both husband and wife choose to pursue careers, they should have that right. At the same time, they shouldn't be forced into the workplace. Every family with children should have the option of one parent staying home and just being a parent. One wage earner with one job should be able to comfortably support a family. To help make this possible, I'm asking that NAFTA and the WTO be renegotiated to provide protections for workers and the environment, not just here in the United States, but in all nations involved. Should this not succeed, we will withdraw. American workers should not be forced to compete with Chinese slave labor.

One of the ways we will achieve a Living Wage in the United States is a simple change to the tax code. We will tell corporations, "This is a free country. You can pay your executives anything you want. But we don't have to give you a tax deduction for it. From now on, the tax deduction for executive compensation is limited to twenty times the salary of your lowest paid worker, including contractors and subcontractors." You'll be amazed how fast workers' wages will go up.

The second small change we'll make to the tax code is to say that any wages paid to a worker making less than a Living Wage are not deductible to the corporation.

If that doesn't work, we'll change the minimum wage to equal the Living Wage of $14.42 per hour (indexed for inflation), with exceptions forteenagers and seniors receiving Social Security, who can be paid as little as two-thirds of the living wage or $9.61 per hour (also indexed for inflation).

One big effect of better wages will be that fewer families will feel they need two or three jobs. So there will be fewer job-seekers and less competition for jobs. This will be a step toward full employment.

Health Care:

A major disincentive to hiring is the soaring cost of employee health insurance. We intend to eliminate that cost altogether, completely severing the connection between health care and employment. Every American deserves good basic health care, with decisions made not by HMOs or insurance companies or government bureaucrats or hospital accountants, but by their doctor. It's time to end the patchwork of band-aid programs like Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and private insurance which leave out forty million Americans. Instead of adding yet another band-aid to cover prescription drugs, we need to perform radical surgery on the system. About half of every healthcare dollar, instead of paying doctors and nurses, goes to insurance companies for overhead and profit. Its time to kick the bloodsuckers out of the health care business, break the stranglehold of the for-profit hospital conglomerates and HMOs, and finally join the rest of the civilized world. It's time for a doctor-run single-payer national health system.

Full Employment:

Our main export under NAFTA has been jobs. No more. Those companies that moved to Mexico can start giving their Mexican workers the same protections for their health, their safety, their environment, and their right to organize as we demand for American workers; or they can move back to the United States; or they can continue saving money by exploiting poor Mexicans, but they will not be allowed to import their junk into this country. Under my fair trade plan, the standards for Mexican workers will gradually be raised to those we enjoy here. Under NAFTA, American standards were being dragged down to match those of Mexico. No more.

Another step toward full employment will be taken by doing away with taxes that penalize companies for providing jobs -- payroll taxes. This will relieve employers of a financial burden, make hiring workers cheaper and easier, and eliminate a mountain of paperwork. By only taxing businesses on their profits instead of on their payroll, we make it easier for entrepreneurs and startups to succeed.

For years, the corporate elite have made workers compete with a permanent pool of unemployed in this country, a constant source of scabs and replacement workers. This is unacceptable. What jobs the private sector can't -- or won't -- supply, the government must & and will, either directly or through contracts. But we won't give them nonproductive or meaningless jobs. This is not a Communist bureaucracy. People don't want to scrub sidewalks with toothbrushes. Neither do they want to build useless MXs and B-2s, which amounts to the same thing. People want jobs that create real wealth in which they can share. Building an MX doesn't do that. You can't ride it to work. You can't eat it for breakfast. You can't wear it to a party. You can't even put it on your mantle and admire it. It does not contribute to the standard of living. It does not create wealth. It does not enlarge the pie in which we all must share. All it does is transfer money from the taxpayers to the fat cat CEOs of the weapons manufacturers. Not good enough!

Neither can we all flip Big Macs for each other. The so-called "service economy" is a fraud. Of course, we've always had nonproductive segments of society, earning money but not producing anything. But we can't all be politicians, investors, and lawyers. Somebody has to build something! That's the kind of job people want. People want to build a better, richer America for their children. They want to build for the future. And that's the kind of jobs we're going to give them. Fortunately, there are lots of such jobs just waiting to be done. Here are just a few examples:

(1) We need to build a new energy system for our country. Our dependence on fossil fuels is causing us to have to sell off pieces of America to pay for foreign oil. It is causing us to maintain huge military forces and a militaristic foreign policy in order to guarantee access to oil that doesn't belong to us. It is causing us to pollute our air with toxic smog and kill our forests and lakes with acid rain. And it is causing us to hasten global warming and the inundation of coastal cities, including our own. It is slow suicide. Nuclear is no better. We still don't know how to get rid of the radioactive waste, much of which will remain deadly for thousands of years.

We know how to get energy from the sun, the wind, and the tides. We know how to use these renewable sources to produce electricity and hydrogen from seawater. We know how to use electricity and hydrogen to run cars, trucks, tractors, combines, and boats. New non-polluting power plants and distribution systems are needed. We know how to build them. In the past, our tax and regulatory policies have prevented utilities from changing over. Not any more. I'm asking Congress to work with the Secretary of Energy to develop new policies which will hasten the changeover from the energy of death (oil). Our workers have the know-how. They have the skills. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work building a clean, green energy future for America.

(2) We need to build a non-polluting transportation system for our country. Using the renewable energy I've already described, we need electric cars and trucks, non-polluting mass transit in our cities, magnetically levitated (MagLev) trains, and automated intercity highways. In general, we know how to do it. But it's going to take more than just bending tin and laying concrete. It's going to take research and development ... and the scientists and engineers no longer needed for MXs and such. The workers in our defense plants don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to pay their employers to retrain them, and then we're going to put them to work building a new transportation system for America.

(3) We need to build a reinvigorated civilian space program for our country. Why waste all our space scientists on useless "Star Wars" weapons. We need a Rescue Mission for Planet Earth, with satellites monitoring global change, tracking sources of air pollution, water pollution, acid rain, and deforestation. We need to better measure and understand the hole in our ozone layer, the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet, and the greenhouse effect. We need a replacement for the Space Shuttle system with its 1960s technology. It has been a marvel of creativity. Even with its two spectacular failures, it has served us well. But there are now better, cheaper, safer ways of doing the job. It's time to move on. We also need to continue exploring our neighbors in the Solar System, perhaps finding the key that will enable us to escape their lifeless fate. The workers at NASA don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work building a new space program for America and for the global environment we must share with the rest of the world. This is not a Buck Rogers boondoggle. It's an investment in our most precious and irreplaceable natural resource, the planet itself.

(4) We need to build new green versions of old industries. For too long, we have raped the land, clearcut our forests, and polluted our waters to line the pockets of tycoons. For too long the taxpayers have had to pay to clean up the messes made by chemical companies and other industries. In a true free-market capitalist society, industries wouldn't get such subsidies. Companies would have to either pay for their own cleanup or learn to do things differently in the first place. This might mean hiring people to figure it out for them and build them new, safe, non-polluting plants. Good! There are millions of Americans ready, willing, and able. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. But we are going to quit subsidizing the polluters and rapers of the land, so they will have to put our people to work building new, clean, non-polluting industries for America.

(5) We need to build a new infrastructure for our country. Our roads, bridges, water supplies, and sewer systems are decaying. Schools, hospitals, and libraries are in need of renovation. These are all public facilities; only government can pay to get them fixed. Local governments don't have the money and can't raise it. If they try, people and corporations just move away, leaving them worse off than they were before. Only the federal government can do it, and we should, and we will. Many millions of able-bodied Americans are frustrated and idle. Millions more are underemployed. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work rebuilding America.

For years, the working people of America were told that the people in the peace movement were their enemy, because they wanted to eliminate their jobs. They were told that the environmentalists were their enemy, because they wanted to do away with their jobs. They were told that the people in the civil rights movement were their enemy, because they wanted to take their jobs away and give them to someone else. None of these things were true. The politics of division are over. All of us want the same thing, to be good stewards of the
riches God has bestowed upon us, to live in peace with our neighbors, and to feel good about ourselves, knowing that we are doing good work and creating real wealth and a better life for ourselves, our families, and our fellow Americans.

Tax Reform:

My domestic proposals are extensive, and they will cost money. At the same time, we intend to end the Bush deficits and return to budget surpluses which will allow us to pay off the seven trillion dollar debt run up primarily by Reagan and the two Bushes. How are we going to do this? (1) by administrative savings gained by the elimination of hundreds of patchwork programs and taxes, (2) by collecting income taxes from multinational corporations and rich investors who currently escape taxation completely, and (3) by utilizing a peace dividend achieved by eliminating military spending made unnecessary by the adoption of a constitutional foreign policy.

(1) administrative savings from restructuring tax systems:

During the last two decades, federal income tax rates were slashed, particularly the rates for those with the highest incomes. But because of cuts in federal domestic spending, state and local spending was forced to fill the gap. So state and local taxes went up. The end result of all this was that the total tax burden on the rich decreased dramatically, while that on the poor and middle class went up, even as their income went down.

I have called for this patchwork of overlapping federal, state, and local taxes to be completely eliminated and replaced with a single progressive federal income tax. Much of the receipts will be returned to the states and localities for local needs such as education. I have asked leaders of Congress to meet with members of my staff and with interested governors and mayors from around the country. They will develop the details. The important thing to remember is that financial resources exist to serve people, not the other way around.

Federal income taxes will indeed go up for all but those earning less than forty thousand dollars per year. (They will have their taxes go down or be eliminated completely.) For the middle class and small businesses, the increase in federal income taxes will be more than compensated for by reductions in state and local taxes and the complete elimination of property taxes for education, payroll taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), and the cost of health insurance. Only the very wealthy individuals and most profitable corporations will see their total tax burden increase.

(2) closing loopholes on the untaxed:

Over the last several decades, the portion of federal revenues received from corporate taxes has fallen from over 30% to about 5%. Part of this is due to generous tax breaks. From 1982 to 1985, AT&T made profits of about $25 billion, paid NO taxes, and got a tax rebate of $635 million. In 1989, Citizens for Tax Justice researched 44 major corporations with collective profits of $53.6 billion. Not one paid a penny in federal taxes. Did this result in expanding their work force and investing in their business? No. Every one had laid off workers and reduced capital spending. Their profits all went to stock dividends, CEO pay increases averaging 54%, and funding for corporate mergers and takeovers. Trickle-down economics simply doesn't work. They always siphon it off before it trickles down. Here are some concrete examples:

General Motors       Profits: $6.795 billion           Federal Income Tax: MINUS $82 million

El Paso Energy       Profits: $819.4 million           Federal Income Tax: MINUS $218 million

Enron                      Profits: $969 million              Federal Income Tax: MINUS $383 million

Enron wound up with an effective tax rate of NEGATIVE 39.5%! Did this government largess trickle down to workers and customers? We all know the answer to that one.

The Fortune 500 companies control 25% of the world's produce and 70% of the world's trade. But they provide wages to only one twentieth of one percent of the world's people, and pay almost no taxes.

We are going to say to these giants: "You can use offshore suppliers, offshore labor, offshore bank accounts, and paper headquarters in Switzerland to escape US laws, but if you want to sell your widgets at Wal-Mart, you're going to pay your fair share of taxes." Small businesses who use American suppliers, American workers, and American local banks are tired of shouldering all the load. From now on, there'll be no more corporate welfare, and no free ride for the giant multinationals.

(3) the peace dividend:

The Secretary of Defense, The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I have defined four missions for our armed forces: (1) deterring anyone from attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction, (2) defending our shores and borders from foreign invasion, (3) assisting the UN Military Committee in defeating aggression, maintaining freedom of the seas and airlanes, and performing peacekeeping functions, and (4) engaging in humanitarian and relief efforts at home and abroad.

We have determined that, for the foreseeable future, these four missions can be accomplished with about a third of our current forces and for about a fourth of the cost. This will, after a few years of transition, result in a peace dividend of over $200 Billion per year. Now we can't get all that the first year or so, because to try to do so would result in massive unemployment. Instead, we're determined to do it in such a way that no one becomes jobless just because peace has broken out.

This is my number one domestic priority -- the transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy without a single person joining the ranks of the jobless. Here's how we propose to do it.

First, I'm asking Congress to approve a new and expanded GI Bill, so that the young men and women leaving military service can get a college education. This does two things: (1) it spreads their return to the work force over a period of years, instead of dumping them into it all at once, and (2) it gives them the opportunity to prepare for the new jobs of the third millennium. Even today, in the midst of recession, there are many thousands of jobs available, but they require specialized skills the unemployed lack. The new GI Bill will enable returning soldiers to acquire those skills and successfully compete in the job market.

Second, we're going to offer career military personnel an opportunity to transfer to other federal agencies without losing their rank, their pay grade, their benefits, or their retirement. In the past, senior military officers have successfully gone back and forth between the military, NASA, and the Department of Energy. There's no reason this cannot apply to all ranks and all parts of government. The leadership and management skills learned in the military can be applied in the Department of Commerce or Agriculture or Transportation. In addition, those who are offered jobs in the private sector can take early retirement at a reduced pension. In a similar way, career civil service employees will be given the opportunity to transfer within the government or to leave early for the private sector. They will not be dumped on the street.

Most of the peace dividend will come from lower operations and maintenance costs and from the cancellation of weapons programs. We intend to cancel the space weapon portion of National Missile Defense and return the remainder to laboratory research, a savings of about six billion dollars the first year. We will cancel about 30 other programs, for an annual savings of 40 billion dollars.

Now before anybody in the aerospace industry starts jumping out the window, just sit down and hear me out. When previous presidents cancelled programs like the B-2 and Seawolf, it sent shockwaves through the defense industry, and resulted in an immediate jump in unemployment. I don't intend for that to happen. We in the federal government are responsible for the dependence of whole industries and, in some cases, entire communities on the defense budget, and we have a responsibility to the people involved. I have told the management of each of the major contractors involved that other contracts, for civilian systems, will be coming. During the transition, we will pay them to retrain their work force, provided there are no layoffs. One more time: we don't want anybody becoming jobless because peace has broken out. If we can pay farmers not to grow crops, we can pay engineers and machinists not to build weapons.

I am, effective immediately, cancelling the stockpile stewardship program of subcritical and computerized nuclear testing. We have also ordered a halt to the production of weapons-grade fissionable materials and the permanent closing of facilities involved in the production of nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy, which has been spending 80% of its budget on nuclear weapons, will now have only two jobs: (1) clean up the radioactive and toxic mess created by half a century of weapons production, so that at least a portion of the land involved can be returned to productive use, and (2) what their name implies: energy. Their primary mission will be to develop clean, renewable, safe, non-polluting sources of energy for this country and to improve energy efficiency.

OUR NEW ROLE IN A CHANGING WORLD

In half a century, the United States has gone from savior of the civilized world to the most feared and hated nation on earth. This in turn has made our citizens, at home and abroad, the prime target of thousands of desperate, fanatical terrorists. With our belligerence, our arrogance, our name-calling, our overwhelming military superiority, our unilateralism, and our troops stationed in 150 different countries, we have driven other nations to develop nuclear weapons to deter us from attacking them. We have then used their weapons developments to justify our further belligerence in a never-ending cycle toward disaster. The end result of all this is that despite spending more than a billion dollars a day on military power, the American people are less secure than at any time since the end of the Civil War. Tens of billions of dollars for "Star Wars" weapons, thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of thousands of troops, and the expenditure of ten trillion dollars since World War II have brought our people only more insecurity, massive debt, and the loss of many of the cherished rights enshrined in our Constitution.

It's time for the cycle to end. It's time to end the belligerence, bring home our troops, and rejoin the family of nations. And that's exactly what we're going to do. Now let's get to some specifics.

Nuclear Weapons and Materials:

My predecessor rejected a Russian offer to destroy nuclear warheads removed from use in arms control agreements. I have contacted the Russians. Their offer is on the table and I am accepting it.

We have two related problems. (1) The world is awash in plutonium and highly enriched uranium from surplus and obsolete nuclear weapons. Safeguarding this material and keeping it from falling into the hands of nuclear wannabes and terrorists is a continuing problem, especially in Russia since my predecessor slashed the Nunn-Lugar funds authorized for safely carrying out and monitoring disarmament in the former Soviet Union. This most important piece of the defense budget was cut in half. I am immediately reprogramming funds from cancelled weapons programs to restore and then double again Nunn-Lugar. (2) We have a mountain of Depleted Uranium (DU). Much of it has been made into munitions. Tons of it was used in the first Gulf War and again in Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan. Scientists and physicians say that the radiation from these munitions is extremely hazardous, both to the soldiers using it and to civilians coming into contact with it, even decades later. DU has been implicated in the cancer deaths and deformity of thousands of Iraqi children in the last twelve years. It may also be responsible for the disabling Gulf War Syndrome inflicting tens of thousands of our own Gulf War veterans.

The solution to these two problems is fairly simple. Fissionable plutonium and uranium will be mixed with DU making it useless for nuclear warheads, similar to natural uranium as it comes out of the ground. The mixture will be glassified and disposed of as safely as is humanly possible. All DU munitions in our possession will be destroyed. Never again will America endanger its own troops and despoil a target nation by the use of radioactive munitions. We propose a worldwide ban on the production of DU munitions and fissionable materials, and we begin by unilaterally implementing such a ban on ourselves.

Land Mines:

Reflecting our new cooperative relationship with the rest of the nations of the world, I will sign the anti-personnel land-mine treaty and submit it to the Senate for ratification. All U.S. stocks of land mines will be destroyed, and we will cooperate with and assist other nations in the cleaning up of land mines we have deployed, including those in the Korean DMZ. Hopefully, we can reduce the number of innocent civilians maimed and killed by these terrible weapons.

ABM and other Treaties:

We will also sign a series of other treaties which have languished all too long without U.S. support. Among them will be the Kyoto Accords, The Law of the Sea Treaty, The International Criminal Court, and the Treaty on the Rights of the Child. During the last administration, one of our most valuable treaties was lost -- the ABM Treaty. Since the U.S. withdrawal from that treaty was a unilateral presidential action taken without the advice and consent of the Senate, I am disavowing that action. I hereby declare to our Russian treaty partners and to the rest of the world that I am ordering the cancellation of all programs in violation of the letter and spirit of the ABM Treaty. This administration will spend no money and take no action which would be in violation of the ABM Treaty were it still in force. I call on President Putin to do likewise.

Weapons in Space:

I commend Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio for his Space Preservation Act and accompanying treaty. This new treaty builds on the successful 1967 Outer Space Treaty which prohibited the stationing of weapons of mass destruction in space. The Space Preservation Treaty bans all weapons in space, including directed energy weapons like lasers and particle beams and kinetic energy weapons such as High Frontier, Brilliant Pebbles, and the like. This treaty will forestall a new arms race beyond the earth's atmosphere and preserve space for peaceful uses on behalf of all humankind.

Kosovo:

I have presented to the Congress a separate document which outlines the history of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo and documents U.S. responsibility for the breakup of Yugoslavia. The American people have been told many lies about the causes and conduct of this affair. I am appointing a blue-ribbon panel to take the report which I have prepared and do a full investigation. If indeed, as I suspect, American troops were sent into harm's way to secure an oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, and not to protect the human rights of Kosovars, then the American people deserve the truth. It is only by exposing the truth behind such events that we can prevent them from happening in the future. The truth shall make us free.

Korea:

"A nation in Northeast Asia has developed the ability to threaten U.S. allies and perhaps even the United States itself with nuclear weapons. This developing nation's communist government continues to repress its people politically, though it is trying to improve their economic well-being through forays into the capitalist system.

"It has pursued exports of controversial weapons. Its aging leadership continues to follow hard-line policies in spite of the collapse of communism elsewhere. It fought the bloody 1950-1953 Korean War against the United States and its allies.

"As a Cold War battleground, the country was divided into communist and capitalist states after World War II. The communist state remains in a hostile military confrontation with the capitalist state, to which the United States sells arms. Japan, invader and brutal occupier of the country before and during World War II, is wary of its nuclear force.

"What country is this? North Korea, right? Wrong! North Korea has not yet developed an effective military nuclear force. China is the country."

(The preceding paragraphs are from an article by Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., a member of the ISSS advisory board.) In light of the above, why do we give China our most beneficial trade status and call North Korea part of an "axis of evil"?? Why the double standard?

As a military officer and fighter pilot, I was stationed in Korea twice. I developed a fond love of the Korean people, especially the children. What we must remember is that the Korean people, North and South, are the same. The artificial division of their country divided families down the middle. Yes, their governments are very different, but the people are the same.

In an article published in June, 1994, I said, "Without North Korea as the designated bad guy, how would the American oligarchy justify continuing to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars a year on 'defense'? After all, we have already trounced Iraq, whose defense budget is three times that of North Korea. In return for a verifiable end to their nuclear program, we should offer North Korea a peace treaty, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea, support for reunification talks with the South, open trade and tourism, diplomatic recognition, and normalization of relations."

The issue at the time was North Korea's nuclear reactors, almost their only source of electricity. These relatively primitive reactors produce fissionable plutonium as a byproduct. The U.S. was concerned about North Korea separating the plutonium out of the spent fuel rods, and using it to make nuclear warheads. I thought at the time that if we gave North Korea another way to generate electricity, and if we tossed in a bunch of diplomatic goodies, we could get them to stop operating their reactors.

It turns out that President Carter was able to obtain such a deal much more cheaply. All he had to give the North Koreans was some light-water nuclear power plants (which do not yield fissionable material as a byproduct), and (until they were built) some oil to satisfy their meager need for electricity.

That deal held throughout the Clinton years, although the Americans and Japanese got further and further behind in building the promised power plants. Then when George W. Bush became president, our government quit talking to North Korea. Still without a peace treaty to end the Korean War, and faced with an intransigent superpower, the North Koreans began to doubt that they would ever get those reactors. Then, in his first State of the Union Address, my predecessor named North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." That did it. Now they were faced with a superpower that was more than intransigent; it was downright belligerent. They started hedging their bets and preparing to restart their own nuclear power program. In response, the U.S. halted oil shipments to North Korea -- their only means of generating electrical power. In continuation of this deadly tit for tat, the North Koreans kicked out the monitors from the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA). The North Koreans now want a promise that we won't attack them without provocation. I'm willing to make that promise. I'm asking President Carter to once again go to North Korea to defuse the situation. We must try to bring North Korea back into the family of nations. As soon as this crisis is resolved, I will order our 40,000 troops home. We will do all we can to help the Korean people find a path to reunification, but it is something for them to decide, not for us to impose.

Iran:

In our dealings with Iran, some are tempted to criticize them for not being democratic. Let us remember that it was the United States who deposed their last democratically elected leader (Mohammed Mossadegh) and replaced him with the brutal Shah & for oil profits. After the Shah was finally deposed, we helped Saddam Hussein kill millions of Iranians in his war of aggression against Iran. If some Iranians hate us as the Great Satan, it is not without reason. If we want an improved relationship, if we want to eliminate Iran as a source of terrorists, we must earn the respect of the Iranian people. This will not be done by "axis of evil" talk, but by respectful diplomacy.

Iraq:

Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. I don't know anyone who disagrees with that. He's a bad guy now. He was a bad guy in 1990 when April Glaspie of the State Department gave him the green light to invade Kuwait. He was a bad guy in the 1980s when Donald Rumsfeld sat down with him for a chat while he was gassing the Kurds. He was a bad guy in 1977 when Zbigniew Brzezinski met with him and proposed the invasion of Iran. And he was a bad guy in the 1960s when the CIA hired him to assassinate Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim and then helped him take over Iraq. But he was always our bad guy. Right up to 1990, official DoD documents praised Saddam for vastly improving the education, medical care, and standard of living of his people. His regime was called one of the most enlightened, progressive governments in the region.

But there was a problem. The Berlin wall had come down and the Soviet Union had collapsed. The first Bush White House had to find another bad guy -- fast. In May 1990, a National Security Council white paper stated that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were (and I quote) "the optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw pact as the rationale for major military expenditures." Two months later, on July 20, 1990, General Norman Schwarzkopf conducted training exercises simulating exactly the contingency of an Iraqi attack on Kuwait. Five days later, Glaspie gave the green light, and a week after that Saddam fell into our trap. He marched his troops across the undefended border into Kuwait. Almost immediately, the U.S. deployed as many troops and twice as much materiel as was moved for the Normandy invasion. (Could they have done that without a lot of advance planning?) Then President Bush gave Saddam an ultimatum and wouldn't take "yes" for an answer. The first Gulf War was on. We dropped over 300 million pounds of high explosives on Iraq, devastating the country and killing a quarter of a million people -- most of them civilians.

This was the war the first Bush administration wanted, the war they planned for, the war they instigated, the war they salivated over, the war that Saddam's unconditional withdrawal wasn't going to deny them, the war that would show off our smart bombs better than a hundred trade shows, the war that would prove George wasn't a wimp, the war that would make billions for the future president George W. Bush, who had exclusive rights to offshore oil in the Gulf, the war that would kill the "loser" image from Vietnam once and for all.

Why all this ancient history? Because it is so eerily familiar. The second President Bush wanted his Gulf War too. Planning for it started long before 9/11, even before he was elected president. The outline is contained in a September 2000 document ["Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For A New Century" authored by Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Lewis Libby for Project for the New American Century (PNAC). You can read it on the PNAC web site.]. The document sets "regime change" in Iraq as a primary objective of US foreign policy should Bush be elected. It makes clear that the purpose of moving against Saddam is to set the stage for occupying the entire Middle East (and therefore controlling its oil, no matter who's in power, especially in Saudi Arabia). The document says "even should Saddam pass from the scene, bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently." As long as he was president, George W. Bush wasn't going to be dissuaded from having his war.

The problems with starting a preemptive war against Iraq are several: (1) It's immoral and would probably be judged illegal by the World Court. (We are already responsible for many hundreds of thousands of deaths from the first Gulf War, from the Depleted Uranium we left there, and from our sanctions. Do we really want to kill thousands more innocent Iraqis?) (2) It's costly, in terms of American lives and in dollars. (The number of lives could be anywhere from a few dozen to many thousands, depending on whether we have to fight our way through the streets of Baghdad. The dollar cost will be on the order of $200 billion for a short war -- much more for a long one.) (3) It would require us to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, until an acceptable democratic government was installed and in control. (Since Iraq has no history of democracy, this could take a very long time indeed. The occupation would also cost money.) (4) An unprovoked invasion of Iraq will incense the Arab world, probably causing the downfall of friendly governments who cooperate with us (like Saudi Arabia and Turkey). It will also cause an enormous increase in the terrorist threat to Americans at home and abroad, providing Osama bin Laden with thousands of new recruits ready to die in a Holy War against the evil Americans. It might even cause World War III between the Muslim countries of the world and their allies against the Western powers. Win or lose, such a conflict would be an unthinkable tragedy. One of the great ironies is that if such a conflict had happened before 1990, Saddam Hussein and his secular Baath government of Iraq would have been on our side.

These four considerations are enough for me. There will be no preemptive attack on Iraq on my watch.

Yes, like most of the CIA hirelings that we have installed to run countries for us and for our oil companies, Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. We need those inspectors there, if only to keep him from using what he's hiding. But preemptive war in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg principles, and our own Constitution isn't the answer. I am cancelling all deployment orders and directing the Secretary of Defense to start bringing our troops home, starting with those in Saudi Arabia. When I ran for president in 2000, I promised to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia. If that had been done, there likely would not have been a 9/11 tragedy. The presence of our troops in the Muslim Holy Land was the excuse Osama bin Laden used to get 15 young Saudis to commit suicide in our hijacked airliners. We're having enough problems protecting the American people from those who already hate us. It is senseless to keep doing the things that we know create terrorists. And we won't.

Terrorism:

Terrorism is both a short-term problem and a long-term problem. In the short term we must protect the American people from the terrorists we have already created. This means enhancing port security, beefing up cockpit doors, strengthening the border patrol, introducing computerized tracking of aliens, funding local communities for first response activities, shoring up the Coast Guard, and improving communications between intelligence agencies. These we will do. It also means developing new ways of detecting and neutralizing weapons of mass destruction. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is doing important work in these areas and will be given my full support. At the moment, this is probably the most important part of the Department of Defense.

In the long term, we must stop making more terrorists. That means stopping policies and actions which make people fear and hate us. It means listening to the legitimate grievances of peoples we have wronged, and then changing our ways. Only one thing has ever ended a campaign of terror -- separating the terrorists from the larger community which supports them. This is done by ending the feelings of desperation, hopelessness, and powerlessness afflicting the people. It is done by listening to them and then actually making their lives better. It is not done by revenge and retaliation, which may feel good, but only create more terrorists. If retaliation worked, the Israelis would be the world's most secure people. In the end, we can have revenge or we can have security. We cannot have both.

The way I read the Constitution, my job is not to make the American people feel good. (That's a job for a queen, not a president.) My job is to make the American people secure. To do that, we must change our government's ways so that we are no longer feared and hated. So that's exactly what we will do. (Besides, it's the right thing to do!)

We have at times had a government with bad policies. But we are a good people. What we need is a government which reflects the values and goodness of the American people.

School of the Americas:

Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which uses your money to train death squads in the techniques of torture, intimidation, and assassination. The School of the Americas (by whatever name they choose to call it) has been responsible for unspeakable atrocities wherever its graduates have gone. It must and will be closed. As Commander-in-Chief, I am ordering that the students presently attending the School be shown the movies "Romero" and "Panama Deception" and then sent home. It's the right thing to do.

Cuba:

Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which gives Most Favored Nation status to the butchers of Tienanmen Square and places an illegal secondary embargo on the impoverished people of Cuba. I ask Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton law. We are ending the embargo of Cuba and entering discussions toward the normalization of relations.

It's the right thing to do.

Central Intelligence Agency:

We desperately need good advance information on the activities of Al Qaeda and those who wish to do us harm. But our values and goodness are not reflected by, and our security is not enhanced by, an organization which promotes instability, insurrection, tyranny, torture, terrorism, murder, and war around the world in our name and with our money. If the CIA won't stick to gathering intelligence, I will abolish it. It's the right thing to do.

Arms Sales:

According to Oscar Arias, every jet fighter sold by an industrialized nation to a developing country costs the schooling of three million children. The cost of a submarine denies safe drinking water to 60 million people. In the 1997 fiscal year, the United States exported $8.3 billion in weapons to non-democratic countries. Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which promotes and subsidizes arms sales around the world to dictators who use our weapons to control their own impoverished people. Archbishop Oscar Romero pleaded with us to stop sending weapons to the right-wing government of El Salvador. His pleas went unheeded. The arms trade is wrong. It must stop. And it just did. It's the right thing to do.

The Role of Our Military Forces:

Earlier I outlined four missions for the Department of Defense. These missions are notable for what they do not include. They do not include protecting the worldwide financial interests of multinational corporations. And we won't. If the global robber barons insist on using force to subjugate third-world peoples, at least they can use their own ill-gotten money and hire their own mercenaries. Why should American taxpayers provide their own sons and daughters and then get stuck with the bill?

Our values and goodness are not reflected by a government which sends its youth around the world to kill the sons and daughters of working people in other countries. Our values and goodness are not reflected by sending our children to the Middle East to kill Arabs so the oil companies can profit from selling the oil under their sand, making us the target of terrorists.

Ask my wife about war. Her father fought in World War II. He commanded the engineering battalion that built the first bridge across the Rhine. He was gone for almost 3 years. Her two brothers were Marines. The oldest was at the Chosin reservoir in Korea when the Chinese flooded across the border into the war. And of course she had to take care of our seven children by herself while I flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. She wasn't aware of the specific times that I came very close to not coming back. But she lived with the possibility every day. One of our sons was in the Army, and one of our grandsons in the Marines. I'd say she's given enough. We have another twenty grandchildren. If you ask her, she'll say, "Enough is enough. You're not getting them too."

And I agree. This country owes a huge debt of gratitude to our combat veterans. We also owe them medical care for life, and I intend to see that they get it. We owe it to them not to squander the liberties they purchased with their blood. We owe it to them to resurrect the American dream. But the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. No more Iraqs. No more Kosovos. No more El Salvadors. These are not isolated incidents of stupidity. They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial interests of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism. It endangers our national security. It must stop & and it just did.

As president, I will use the men and women in our Armed Forces to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon.   With nearly sixty years having passed since World War II, and with the Cold War long since over, there is no reason why we should still be occupying Germany and Japan.   I have ordered the Secretary of Defense to look at all our overseas deployments and identify any which must continue.  With the exception of these special cases, I will begin the process of bringing our troops home.  We will continue to provide peacekeepers when requested by the United Nations.  The rest of our global military presence will end within two years.  This is not isolationism. It is common sense. It is in the interest of our people. And it is obeying our Constitution for a change. Every president in recent memory has violated our founding documents with foreign military ventures. At my inauguration, I swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Lip service isn't enough. We must treat the Constitution as if it mattered. I intend to do just that.

Instead of a worldwide military presence, we are going to have a humanitarian presence.   Along with the other wealthy nations of the world, we shall initiate a new Marshall Plan, providing funds to rebuild the Middle East as we rebuilt Europe after World War II.   We will also take the lead in complete debt forgiveness for the poorest countries, starting with those in Africa.  If we are once again to be a great nation, we must first be a good nation.

We must build an America at peace with the world and with its own people & an America that seeks not to be king of the hill nor subservient to the World Trade Organization, but to be a responsible sovereign member of the family of nations & an America that is free of the threat of terrorism because it is no longer feared and hated & an America that leads the world -- not just with military might, but with its vision, its compassion, its democracy, its productivity, its freedom, its standard of living, its treatment of its own people, and its goodness. That's the kind of America our people deserve. And -- working together and with God's help --that's the kind of America we will become.

It is customary at the end of these talks to say, "God bless America." He already has. Now we must do our part. Thank you, and good night.

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