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This afternoon, Republican nominee Bob Dole spoke this morning at a rally in Baker, Louisiana, a suburb of Baton Rouge.
SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Nominee: This is a very important election. It is about, as I look at it, about two visions for the future of our country. As I look at our opponents--and they are our opponents, they're not our enemies--I don't dislike them but they're our opponents. They have different philosophy. They have different ideas. They have different agendas that we don't believe most Americans agree with because they offer the old style liberal vision that puts government first. Now, Jack Kemp and I have a different idea. We offer an optimistic future-oriented vision that puts the American people first. That's--you come before the government in our plan. (applause) I remember when the President took the train ride to Chicago, every time he would stop, he would announce a little $2 billion program or another program. Somebody figured up it cost the taxpayers $12 million a mile for that train ride because every time he stopped or slowed down, he made a big announcement, and somebody has to pay the bill. And you're the taxpayers. And you will pay the bill.
That's that bridge he was talking about, that toll bridge, where you pay for every inch of the way, every inch of the way. (applause) And as Gov. Foster said, don't believe it, don't believe the pundits, don't believe the commentators when they say, oh, they can't cut taxes and balance the budget. They can't but we can because we know how to do it. We'll cut federal spending. We'll give you back more of your money. We'll put more money in your paycheck. We will cut taxes and balance the budget at the same time in a Dole-Kemp administration. (applause) We need to lift up this economy more. As we were told by the Congressional Joint Economic reports of last year, that 66 countries, 66 countries have had economic growth rates that surpassed ours. Now Bill Clinton may think that when it comes to economic growth, 67th place is good enough, but I don't think so, and the American people don't think so. So let me tell you about our plan. Our pro-growth plan has a tax cut 15 percent across-the-board for every American taxpayer, 15 percent across-the-board. (applause) And if you have children under 18, a $500 tax credit because we believe in families and we believe in children, we believe in opportunities. Remember, in 1992, Clinton came to Louisiana like he did every other state and said, oh, boy, I got something for you--the centerpiece of my first administration, first term, is going to be a big middle class tax cut. And everybody who got that tax cut ought to vote for Clinton in ‘96, but nobody got that tax cut because you got the biggest tax increase in the history of America, $265 billion tax increase, including increasing taxes on senior citizens, Social Security, and we're going to repeal that tax increase for senior citizens. (applause)
Now, the skeptics say, how are you going to balance the budget? Well, over the next six years and I'm going to say this slowly because it'll make your eyes glaze over, we're going to spend about 10. trillion--that's with a “t”--trillion dollars. And under our plan where we have this $540 billion tax cut, we're still going to spend about $10.2 trillion. That's a lot of money over the next six years. This plan would allow a 34 percent increase in Social Security spending and a 39 percent increase in Medicare, so don't believe all the scare ads. That's all they've got. They haven't had an idea for four or five years that I know of, but they've got a way to scare people--fear. That's all they have is fear, fear, fear. All we have to do is to save five to six cents on the dollar on other federal programs, and we can save about $576 billion over the next six years, which more than pays for the tax cut. Now, do you think we ought to be able to pinch enough pennies to save five or six pennies on federal spending? And I think the answer is yes, you do it every day, you do it every week, you do it every month. (applause) Now, President Clinton, he went to Chicago--you know, they had a convention there, he had to go because he was the nominee. Somebody had to show up. And he showed up. And he said people don't need this--some people don't need this tax cut. He said, I want to target my tax cut--remember what he said in ‘92--the trouble is nobody got his--nobody got the tax cut--nobody was the target. You got a tax increase. You got a tax increase. And we're going to change that around. It is--we have a basic philosophical difference. We believe it's your money and President Clinton believes it's their money. We believe it's your money, your money, and you ought to be able to determine how it's spent and not the federal government. (applause) He also says his little tax cut's paid for line by line and dime by dime.
Well, we understand he's only about $112 billion short according to the latest estimates. It's gone up since--82 billion since Saturday--82 billion. And given his past record, Americans can only assume that he'll make up for this shortfall with still more taxes. I was on the Senate floor before I left in June, and I said one day now, gentlemen, let me tax your memories, and Ted Kennedy jumped up and said, why haven't we thought of that before--they're going to tax everything, everything, everything. (applause) They've got hundreds of ideas that you haven't even heard about on how to get more of your property, more of your money, more authority, and I say it's time to stop. Let's build a bridge to Little Rock, Arkansas, and send Bill Clinton back on January next year. Thank you. God bless America.
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