Speech to the Clay County Republican Women's Club

Congressman Cliff Stearns - November 03, 2007

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Thank you very much…thank you. Let me first of all thank you for this great honor tonight, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart. Before I go much further I want to thank the love of my life, who has withstood the ups and downs and the stress of this job…my wife Joan Stearns. And I appreciate my son, his wife and her sister also for being here. It’s really quite a special event for our family for you to take all this time. And Ms. Barrow I don’t know what you did and where you got all those pictures, but I assume my wife helped you out a little bit here.

Clay County is very special, and I don’t know if all of you know this. I think the women know it perhaps more than the men…but Mary is with me now in Alachua County and she still misses Clay County. We have a spectacular caseworker in Sherrie. And you folks are very special.

When Jeb Bush ran for governor, every time he ran he got the highest percentage in Clay County out of all the 60 counties in the state of Florida. That says something. There’s something going on here beyond space and time in terms of understanding the Republican issues and Republican policies that very, very few counties understand. So you are involved with something very special and by continuing this process you’re helping not only the state of Florida, but you’re helping the United States of America. So I wanted to congratulate you too as you come here to congratulate me.

Obviously, I am deeply honored by this tribute, and as we drove up from Ocala, we reminisced about all these years I’ve served in Congress and what a special honor it is to serve. It’s a privilege to be a member of Congress. As Stan Jordan knows, it’s a privilege to be a state representative or state senator to serve the people…there’s no higher honor. You could be a billionaire, but you cannot have that distinct feeling of helping people like you can as an elected official. And women are certainly the driving force, as we see in the Republican party here in Central Florida, the heart of Florida.

I think that when you look at some of the things that have to get done in life, most of the time you go to the women. In fact Margaret Thatcher said it very well. She said, " If you want something said, ask a man; but if you want to get something done, ask a woman." So Margaret Thatcher had the right thought there.

When you also think of great women who have been supporters in the Republican Party, I think of Phyllis Schafly. Phyllis Schafly, I’ve met many times, and when I first got elected to Congress I asked her for advice. She wrote a book called, The Positive Woman. I don’t know if many of you have read this book, but you should particularly because she mentions the creativity and the capability of women that has been underestimated throughout history. In fact, she has a sentence in the book where she says, "Women should rejoice that they have the capability of creativity that men never have." Those are her words.

Of course, many of you know of her ability to stop the Equal Rights Amendment and what that would have meant in terms of forcing women into positions that are uniquely not suitable for women and not helping them in terms of their real rights. So you have Margaret Thatcher’s and this wonderful accolade from Phyllis Schafly that I thought I would share with you.

A lot of people ask me how is it in Congress being the minority. My fellow colleague Crenshaw and I talk almost everyday when we are on the House floor. It is very different from when I was in the majority. Having served in the minority and the majority it is quite a shock to be back in the minority. I want to tell you, though, that it is a possibility that we could take the majority again in the very near future, and I will tell you about that very briefly tonight. The American people decided to elect Democrats in the House, and they have a very slim majority in the Senate, so I think the American have to be careful what they ask for. I’m going to tell you some of the problems that have been created by Democrats. I always like to tell the story…Be Careful What You Ask For. It’s a story that I tell at the Town Meetings that the ladies enjoy perhaps more than the men. So it’s probably appropriate tonight to tell you this story.

A man and woman were celebrating their 30 anniversary, and they were both 60 years old. They decided they would go out to dinner and buy little small antique and come back and enjoy a celebration of being a married couple. They bought this small vase made in Malta, a small island off of Sicily. They brought this vase home, had dinner and polished it and out jumped a genie. This genie said I’ve been asleep 2000 years. I’ll give each of you one wish. So they both were very excited and the genie looked at the woman, and she said, "We always thought we could go on a cruise together. We’d like cruise tickets, airline transportation and everything set up so all we have to do is walk out our door." The genie snapped his fingers, and the wife had all the paraphernalia for the trip. She ran out into the living room to call her friends to tell them about this great opportunity that she and her husband had to celebrate their anniversary and 30 years of marriage. The genie then asked the husband what he would like. He thought about it a minute, winked at the genie, and said, "You know, I’d like to go on this cruise, but I’d like to go with somebody that’s 30 years younger than me." The genie winked back and snapped his fingers and the man was made 90 years old.

So, be careful what you ask for ladies and gentlemen.

Well, I think of some of the questions you might ask. What does it mean to have the Democrats control Congress? Well, let me tell you that nothing is happening. Nothing is occurring. We have had 1,000 votes this year. Out of these 1,000 votes, 106 bills were actually signed by the President. Now, let’s look at those 106 bills. Forty-six of those bills were naming post offices, public buildings and bridges. That’s what they were. So that leaves 44 now that we have that were basically non-controversial. One was my House resolution commending the Gators for winning the back-to-back national NCAA basketball championship and winning the football championship. So those are the kinds of resolutions that were part of the 44 that were passed by the Democrats, and 14 were reauthorizing all the bills from the 109th Congress when the Republicans had the majority. So if you take the 46, the 44 and the 14 you come down to two left—two substantive bills. One was the FISA, which was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the other was the Iraq Supplemental. Those two bills passed the House and were signed by the President. But do you know that not one Democrat in leadership voted for those? So, of the only substantive bills in Congress that passed out of the 106 that the President signed not one Democrat in leadership voted for them. So if you look at the record, nothing is happening. They continue to pander to the American people when actually if they would sit down and go through the committee process and work through this I think they would get bi-partisan support for some of these bills, including the SCHIP.

To put in perspective, it has been 20 years since this has occurred — that no appropriations bill has been signed by the President. So it was 20 years ago when we had a situation like this occur when the President had no appropriations bill at this late date. Of course, the fiscal year is over. So now we are into a continuing resolution.

I am bringing this to your attention because it really shows that the Democrats as much as they want to tout their leadership, they really are not capable of getting anything substantive passed except perhaps maybe the Gator resolutions that I brought to the Congress floor.

Let me just talk a little bit bout the war because I think a lot of people are concerned about the war. It has been a very grueling war in the sense that we have been at it some time now, almost five years. We have to say how we are doing. There have been a lot of sacrifices by our troops. But I want to tell you something. We are making progress; the surge is working. Don’t just take my word for it. The Washington Post is not a fan of Republican or conservative causes. This is what The Washington Post said last week. "The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute. There isn’t much room for such debate any more about the latest figures that are coming in." For example, Iraq civilian deaths were down by 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006."

Let’s go to another liberal publication, The Phildelphia Inquirer. They ran this story. This is the headline of their editorial: "The Surge in Iraq is Working. Fatalities from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have also dropped dramatically. These numbers are a growing sign of a tactical victory for the coalition forces." This is good news, and it is light at the end of the tunnel. So we have the feeling as Republicans that we have stood by Gen. Petraeus when he said he thought he could get the surge to work. He went over there and at this point it is working. In fact according to Gen Petraeus, "Iraq security forces in Karbala have been successfully operating independently for the first time, maintaining their own security for the past three months."

That’s good news. And in fact, there’s 18 provinces in Iraq and now we are up to nine that are totally independently controlled by the Iraqi soldiers and government. All this comes about because Republicans had confidence in Gen. Petraeus even at the time when Democrats like Henry Waxman and Mr. Conyers, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, were talking about Gen. "Betray-us" instead of Petraeus, which was really an outstandingly bad form for a Congressman to speak of a general in that way. I would say to you that there is a possibility that they surge will continue to work and that we can see the general stability start to return to Iraq, which would be an unbelievable success in face of the criticism that we have gotten from the Democrats.

Let me just talk to you a little bit about what is going to impact all of us, and that is taxes. Charlie Rangel is the Chairman of the Ways ad Means Committee; he is from Manhattan. He just recently announced his new tax bill, and these are his words, "It is the Mother of all tax bills." Obviously it is going to be the Mother of all tax hikes, and that’s what we are going to see because the new tax reform proposal in the face of almost 4 percent GDP improvement in this country, low unemployment, low interest rates, he is proposing to increase income tax rates from 35 percent up to 44 percent. That’s a 25 percent jump. This is the man that is going to increase capital gains tax from 15 percent up to 28 percent and the dividend tax which is at 15 percent to 25 percent. He is doing all of this under the rubric of "tax the rich," but this is going to come down to people making $100K-$150K and in many cases it is going to be single men and women, who are making in some parts of this country just a working wage. He is going to tax them up to 44 percent.

So we see now in the face of a strong economic surge in the U.S. we see the Mother of all tax hikes coming from Charlie Rangel, and that’s why we must work very hard to re-take Congress and this goes back to the women here of the Clay County Republican Party. Your habits are extremely important. You are at the grass roots level. You are always the harbinger of what will happen with Republican policy and support. So we need you to continue to work hard. Our national economic security is at threat if he increases taxes at the same time disrupt the economy and at the same time continue to say we need to pull out immediately. Remember the Democrats have had three votes on the House floor and two in the Senate to pull out all the troops immediately before Gen. Petraeus even had a chance. So that shows you that they are not willing to stay the course and in the end both the The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post have shown you that there is hope and the surge is working.

Let me conclude by saying this era of prosperity that we have is not talked about, but it is unique. In Marion County unemployment is about 3.5 percent. When in your lifetime did you ever think unemployment, including Jacksonville is under 4 percent, would get that low? We used to talk about full unemployment being 5 percent. We’re down to 3.5-4 percent so we have a very strong economy, and this economy needs to continue. It will only continue with low taxes and trying to keep the government’s spending under control. As Republicans we are dedicated to that. We are dedicated for equal opportunity. Opportunity for individual initiative—a person to make his or her decision with the idea they could fail but they could also succeed spectacularly—and personal responsibility. These are the concepts we believe in with our soul and heart and these are the things we are fighting for.

So I would like to close by quoting from Margaret Thatcher again. I think her quote goes to the heart of what we are talking about here tonight. Here is what she said, "I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil. I believe that in the end good will triumph."

In the end giving opportunity for individuals to have freedom and the opportunity to succeed or fail is what we’re trying to do. That’s the reason we are in politics because we feel that good will triumph ultimately. That’s what makes us run here in Clay County and throughout Florida as Republicans. Margaret Thatcher is like many women in this room today. She is very strong on the causes and wants to help out. I thank all of you sincerely for your efforts here in Clay County. The party cherishes your intellect, your ability, your activities, and your experience. All of us should look forward, I think, in the very near future, to the return of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives.

Thank you again for this special tribute tonight. God bless you and God bless America.

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Speech to the Clay County Republican Women's Club

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