Welcome to Washington D.C., the epicenter of care and compassion.
It is a very unique city, as you know. You have to show a photo ID in order to have a White House tour, and then they turn around and demand you put away your ID before you vote for the man sitting in the White House.
It's a city of care and compassion.
I want to ask you a very important question this morning, who is it in your life that you can think of that really does care about you? Who is that? [audience responds]
Okay. Pretty safe bet. Mom and Dad. Pretty safe bet. Your dog. Always. You can always count on your dog. You can never count on your cat. Okay. That's a given.
But I want you to know with absolute confidence who it is that does care about you. It is this movement that representative in this room all across the country. It's a movement that fundamentally cares so deeply and so personally about protecting innocent human life, about great institutions like the family, about a growing economy, about insuring that we have a strong national defense. We care about these things so much because fundamentally we are the people who truly care about people. We love people in this country. And we want everyone to succeed in this country.
Because you see we want everyone to have the best possible life that they could have. White, black, Hispanic, young immigrants, old immigrants, male, female, you name it, everyone. We want everyone to succeed because we need everyone to succeed in this country. That's our community. Because when you get lifted up in our community then we get lifted up, too. That's how it works, and that's why we care about you.
And that's why we want to make sure that gasoline costs $2.00 a gallon rather than $4.00 a gallon. And we can make that a reality if we try.
And that's why we care that your sister and your mother has her second amendment rights, so that she has the ability to protect herself against a harmful assailant. It's because we care about her.
We're a growing movement of people who care about all Americans.
Now this is a story that I want to tell you and it's painful for me to have to tell you because it's a story about not caring. And it happened last September 11, when one of the most shameful incidents in the history of the American Presidency took place.
Our diplomatic corps in Benghazi, Libya was fatally attacked by terrorists. The shooting started at 3:42 in the afternoon D.C. time and for the next seven-and-a-half hours Americans trapped in Benghazi were begging our government for help, but help never came. Two former Navy Seals ran like the American heroes that they were, not from the sound of gunfire, but toward the sound of gunfire.
Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty were not at the compound when the shooting began, but because they cared, they defied orders, and they choose to go to the aid of their brothers. For seven hours these men fought with incredible skill and courage. They saved many American lives that night. They fought for their friends. They fought for their colleagues. They fought for our country, and throughout that awful night they continued to radio their government begging for help, but their government never sent them that help, and that help never came.
And the President, you see, was informed of the attack within the very first hour of the attack, and after that call the President then conversed with his advisors for approximately 30 minutes we learned in testimony in the Senate hearing, and then inexplicably the President apparently disappeared. A war was raging in Benghazi for hours and all we know is that our President went AWOL. While cries from American diplomats and soldiers went unanswered, no one knows yet today, where the President was.
It gives me no pleasure to tell you that the next morning, after our ambassador was dead, after three other Americans were killed our President flew to Vegas, a great city, but he flew there for the purpose of meeting with Beyoncé and Jay-Z to campaign for his reelection. And with all due respect to our President, how could anyone do something like that and claim they care.
Two weeks later, the President went New York City where he stood behind a podium at United Nations, and he told the delegates and I quote, "The future must not belong to those who insult the prophet of Islam."
What the President should have done at the U.N. is slam his fist on the U.N. podium and say in no uncertain terms to the delegates, "The future does not belong to the low-life murders who kill innocent Americans."
The future belongs to Americans who are willing to lay their lives down on the line to protect our right of free speech, and we will never give up that right. Just like we will never give up our second amendment rights either.
That would have been from our President, a message of caring.
Meanwhile, here at home our nation is facing what will likely be the biggest nonmilitary crisis in our history. You see the President has presided over a war. It's a war on the young. By putting us $6 trillion more in debt, that is a war on the young. That isn't caring about you. That isn't caring about your future. That isn't caring about America. Because we have enemies who are conducting deadly cyber-attacks against us, and yet our President continues to borrow billions of dollars from them. That, too, is conducting a war against the young. That isn't caring about us.
You see this is a generational injustice of epic proportions. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in human history from the young starting to begin their lives to whomever it is that the President wishes to give our money, and how does that help the poor? How does that help the poor when federal bureaucrats are earning hire salaries and bigger pensions than the average person who doesn't have a government job? Because here's the truth that the President won't tell you: of every dollar that you hold in your hand, 70 cents of that dollar that supposed to go to the poor doesn't. It actually goes to benefit the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. Seventy cents on the dollar. That's how the President's caring works in practice. So $3 in food stamps for the needy; $7 in salaries and pensions for the bureaucrats who are supposed to be taking care of the poor.
So with all due respect I ask you, how does this show that our President cares about the poor?
Now we all believe that the President and the First Family, with all seriousness, do deserve the best security and the very best protection that we get them. They deserve to live in the White House. They deserve to fly on a private plane, but there's a problem. There is a problem. A new book is out talking about the perks and the excess of the 1.4 billion a year Presidency that we're paying for, and this is a lifestyle that is one of excess. Now we find out that there are five chefs on Air Force One. There are two projectionists, who operate the White House movie theater. They regularly sleep at the White House in order to be readily available in case the First Family wants a really, really late show. And I don't mean to petty here, but can't they just push the play button?
We are also the ones who are paying for someone to walk the President's dog. Paying for someone to walk the President's dog? Now why are we doing that when we can't even get a disabled veteran into the White House for a White House tour? That isn't caring.
I want to show what is an example of caring. This is a good news story. You see we cared in the 1950s when we had an absolute epidemic of polio that was sweeping over our nation. At that time, economists told us the annual cost to deal with polio would be something like $100 billion a year. If you translate that into today's dollars you're talking more like a trillion dollars and yet those huge costs didn't happen to us. Why? Because someone cared. Because Dr. Jonas Salk teamed up with a private charity. They developed his famous vaccine. They gave that vaccine to President Eisenhower. President Eisenhower in turn cared, and he widely distributed that drug all across the United States. Not only did that stop polio, it saved our American budget, and today we spend virtually nothing on polio. This is a caring story.
We have another disease though that's hurting us today. It's called Alzheimer's. Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's, and we're learning that that number's expected to triple in the next 40 years. The cost to deal with Alzheimer's today is about $172 billion. The cost in 40 years cumulatively to take care of Alzheimer's is projected to be $20 trillion. That's a figure that greater than our entire national debt today. And by the way there is no known treatment for Alzheimer's on the horizon. So all of that 20 trillion will be spent on care because it's a humanitarian necessity. We must take care of people. But a much smarter strategy would be to develop a cure. That's caring. Scientists tell us that we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer's if we'd only put our mind to it. So why aren't we seeking to cure diseases like Alzheimer's or diabetes, juvenile diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Parkinson's disease? How did we possibly get to this point of political malpractice? Because our government, proclaiming to care so much, has created a cadre of overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators. That's not caring. It's time we care.
Because you see we don't need a big government to develop these cures. What we need is big innovation, big growth, big ideas. That's America. We have smartphones today. Reach into your pocket; you've got it right there. That smartphone can double as your personal medical buddy. You could have app on your phone and have your physician and your pharmacist as close as your phone. We have super computers, so they have quantum computing. They could data crunch their way to new cures. That's progress. Can anyone tell me why it is that the people who call themselves progressives are the last people who want to have progress? They're the people who fear progress.
You see we are the movement that embraces change. We are the people who care about people because we care about people. We love people.
This debate has to be about more than just cutting budgets versus raising taxes. When we adopt a strategy of caring about people, then we'll legalize American energy production. Then we'll get gas to $2.00 a gallon. Then we'll make sure that your sister has her second amendment rights to keep herself safe from an assailant. And then we'll make sure that we're innovating and growing our way into the new cures because we have the uniquely American life blood as our signature, and what that is, is doing right by the next generation. We all benefited by these medical and innovative technology breakthroughs. They were gifts to us, to our generation.
And I say to you now that it's our duty to pay it forward for the next generation. It's our duty to grow the scientific progress and the innovation that we desperately need. It is our gift and our legacy to the next generation. We do it because we love. We do it because we care. This is who we are. This is our movement. The movement of love. The movement of care. We do this because we love each other and because we love our nation.
God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
Neither the Catt Center nor Iowa State University is affiliated with any individual in the Archives or any political party. Inclusion in the Archives is not an endorsement by the center or the university.