to normal. In some ways, it has. In others, it never will. Those of us
who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by
them. We've come to know truths that we will never question: evil is
real, and it must be opposed. (Applause.) Beyond all differences of
race or creed, we are one country, mourning together and facing danger
together. Deep in the American character, there is honor, and it is
stronger than cynicism. And many have discovered again that even in
tragedy--especially in tragedy--God is near. (Applause.)
In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in
the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in
human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or
consequential.
Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and
murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand
for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We
affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life.
(Applause.)
Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's
price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my
fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
Thank you all. May God bless. (Applause.)
***
State of the Union Address
George W. Bush
January 29, 2003
Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished
citizens and fellow citizens: Every year, by law and by custom, we meet
here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this
chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.
You and I serve our country in a time of great consequence. During this
session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital
to our country; we have the opportunity to save millions of lives
abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is
broadly shared, and we will answer every danger and every enemy that
threatens the American people.
In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be
confident. In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, our faith is
sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong.
This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore,
we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other
presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus and
clarity and courage.
During the last two years, we have seen what can be accomplished when
we work together. To lift the standards of our public schools, we
achieved historic education reform -- which must now be carried out in
every school and in every classroom, so that every child in America can
read and learn and succeed in life. To protect our country, we
reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland
Security, which is mobilizing against the threats of a new era. To
bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief
in a generation. To insist on integrity in American business we passed
tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account.
Some might call this a good record; I call it a good start. Tonight I
ask the House and Senate to join me in the next bold steps to serve our
fellow citizens.
Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough
to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. After recession,
terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and stock market declines, our
economy is recovering -- yet it's not growing fast enough, or strongly
enough. With unemployment rising, our nation needs more small
businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers
to put up the sign that says, "Help Wanted."
Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when
Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best and fairest
way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the
first place.
I am proposing that all the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006
be made permanent and effective this year. And under my plan, as soon
as I sign the bill, this extra money will start showing up in workers'
paychecks. Instead of gradually reducing the marriage penalty, we
should do it now. Instead of slowly raising the child credit to $1,000,
we should send the checks to American families now.
The tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes -- and it will
help our economy immediately: 92 million Americans will keep, this
year, an average of almost $1,000 more of their own money. A family of
four with an income of $40,000 would see their federal income taxes
fall from $1,178 to $45 per year. Our plan will improve the bottom line
for more than 23 million small businesses.
You, the Congress, have already passed all these reductions, and
promised them for future years. If this tax relief is good for
Americans three, or five, or seven years from now, it is even better
for Americans today.
We should also strengthen the economy by treating investors equally in
our tax laws. It's fair to tax a company's profits. It is not fair to
again tax the shareholder on the same profits. To boost investor
confidence, and to help the nearly 10 million senior who receive
dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of
dividends.
Lower taxes and greater investment will help this economy expand. More
jobs mean more taxpayers, and higher revenues to our government. The
best way to address the deficit and move toward a balanced budget is to
encourage economic growth, and to show some spending discipline in
Washington, D.C.
We must work together to fund only our most important priorities. I
will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by 4
percent next year -- about as much as the average family's income is
expected to grow. And that is a good benchmark for us. Federal spending
should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families.
A growing economy and a focus on essential priorities will also be
crucial to the future of Social Security. As we continue to work
together to keep Social Security sound and reliable, we must offer
younger workers a chance to invest in retirement accounts that they
will control and they will own.
Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all
Americans. The American system of medicine is a model of skill and
innovation, with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our
lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much -- and many
have no coverage at all. These problems will not be solved with a
nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care.
Instead, we must work toward a system in which all Americans have a
good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and
low-income Americans receive the help they need. Instead of bureaucrats
and trial lawyers and HMOs, we must put doctors and nurses and patients
back in charge of American medicine.
Health care reform must begin with Medicare; Medicare is the binding
commitment of a caring society. We must renew that commitment by giving
seniors access to preventive medicine and new drugs that are
transforming health care in America.
Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep
their coverage just the way it is. And just like you -- the members of
Congress, and your staffs, and other federal employees -- all seniors
should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription
drugs.
My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade
to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties
have talked for years about strengthening Medicare. I urge the members
of this new Congress to act this year.
To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime
causes of higher cost, the constant threat that physicians and
hospitals will be unfairly sued. Because of excessive litigation,
everybody pays more for health care, and many parts of America are
losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous
lawsuit. I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.
Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while
dramatically improving the environment. I have sent you a comprehensive
energy plan to promote energy efficiency and conservation, to develop
cleaner technology, and to produce more energy at home. I have sent you
Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution
from power plants over the next 15 years. I have sent you a Healthy
Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that
devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres
of treasured forest.
I urge you to pass these measures, for the good of both our environment
and our economy. Even more, I ask you to take a crucial step and
protect our environment in ways that generations before us could not
have imagined.
In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about
not through endless lawsuits or command-and-control regulations, but
through technology and innovation. Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion
in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing
clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.
A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates
energy, which can be used to power a car -- producing only water, not
exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and
engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory
to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could
be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.
Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly
cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of
energy.
Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest
problems of America. For so many in our country -- the homeless and the
fatherless, the addicted -- the need is great. Yet there's power,
wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the
American people.
Americans are doing the work of compassion every day -- visiting
prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship
to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise; they deserve
our personal support; and when appropriate, they deserve the assistance
of the federal government.
I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen
Service Act, to encourage acts of compassion that can transform
America, one heart and one soul at a time.
Last year, I called on my fellow citizens to participate in the USA
Freedom Corps, which is enlisting tens of thousands of new volunteers
across America. Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus
the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of
some of our most vulnerable citizens -- boys and girls trying to grow
up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through
a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad.
I propose a $450-million initiative to bring mentors to more than a
million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners.
Government will support the training and recruiting of mentors; yet it
is the men and women of America who will fill the need. One mentor, one
person can change a life forever. And I urge you to be that one person.
Another cause of hopelessness is addiction to drugs. Addiction crowds
out friendship, ambition, moral conviction, and reduces all the
richness of life to a single destructive desire. As a government, we
are fighting illegal drugs by cutting off supplies and reducing demand
through anti-drug education programs. Yet for those already addicted,
the fight against drugs is a fight for their own lives. Too many
Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a
new $600-million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans
receive treatment over the next three years.
Our nation is blessed with recovery programs that do amazing work. One
of them is found at the Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
A man in the program said, "God does miracles in people's lives, and
you never think it could be you." Tonight, let us bring to all
Americans who struggle with drug addiction this message of hope: The
miracle of recovery is possible, and it could be you.
By caring for children who need mentors, and for addicted men and women
who need treatment, we are building a more welcoming society -- a
culture that values every life. And in this work we must not overlook
the weakest among us. I ask you to protect infants at the very hour of
their birth and end the practice of partial-birth abortion. And because
no human life should be started or ended as the object of an
experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity, and pass a
law against all human cloning.
The qualities of courage and compassion that we strive for in America
also determine our conduct abroad. The American flag stands for more
than our power and our interests. Our founders dedicated this country
to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person, and the
possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to
help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of
evil men.
In Afghanistan, we helped liberate an oppressed people. And we will
continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and
educate all their children -- boys and girls. In the Middle East, we
will continue to seek peace between a secure Israel and a democratic
Palestine. Across the Earth, America is feeding the hungry -- more than
60 percent of international food aid comes as a gift from the people of
the United States. As our nation moves troops and builds alliances to
make our world safer, we must also remember our calling as a blessed
country is to make this world better.
Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the
AIDS virus -- including 3 million children under the age 15. There are
whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult
population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate
drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims --
only 50,000 -- are receiving the medicine they need.
Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not
seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away. A doctor in rural
South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines.
Many hospitals tell people, you've got AIDS, we can't help you. Go home
and die." In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to
hear those words.
AIDS can be prevented. Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many
years. And the cost of those drugs has dropped from $12,000 a year to
under $300 a year -- which places a tremendous possibility within our
grasp. Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater
opportunity to do so much for so many.
We have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own
country. And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I
propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief -- a work of mercy beyond
all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This
comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at
least 2 million people with life-extending drugs, and provide humane
care for millions of people suffering from AIDS, and for children
orphaned by AIDS.
I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years,
including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against
AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.
This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague
of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and
defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism.
There are days when our fellow citizens do not hear news about the war
on terror. There's never a day when I do not learn of another threat,
or receive reports of operations in progress, or give an order in this
global war against a scattered network of killers. The war goes on, and
we are winning.
To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of
al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the
September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the
Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa
and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a
former director of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan; a key al
Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told,
more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many
countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way
-- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends
and allies.
We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks.
America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist
conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American
embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of
Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We've broken al Qaeda cells in
Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.
We have the terrorists on the run. We're keeping them on the run. One
by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.
As we fight this war, we will remember where it began -- here, in our
own country. This government is taking unprecedented measures to
protect our people and defend our homeland. We've intensified security
at the borders and ports of entry, posted more than 50,000
newly-trained federal screeners in airports, begun inoculating troops
and first responders against smallpox, and are deploying the nation's
first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack. And
this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to
protect this nation against ballistic missiles.
I thank the Congress for supporting these measures. I ask you tonight
to add to our future security with a major research and production
effort to guard our people against bioterrorism, called Project
Bioshield. The budget I send you will propose almost $6 billion to
quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments against agents
like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague. We must assume that
our enemies would use these diseases as weapons, and we must act before
the dangers are upon us.
Since September the 11th, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies
have worked more closely than ever to track and disrupt the terrorists.
The FBI is improving its ability to analyze intelligence, and is
transforming itself to meet new threats. Tonight, I am instructing the
leaders of the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security, and the Department
of Defense to develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge
and analyze all threat information in a single location. Our government
must have the very best information possible, and we will use it to
make sure the right people are in the right places to protect all our
citizens.
Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is
power. In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon,
on a field in Pennsylvania, this nation made a pledge, and we renew
that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle, and
whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence
in the affairs of men -- free people will set the course of history.
Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger
facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such
weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or
sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the
least hesitation.
This threat is new; America's duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th
century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built
armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate
the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no
limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and
communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of
great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America.
Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared
again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again,
this nation and all our friends are all that stand between a world at
peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again, we are
called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all
mankind. And we accept this responsibility.
America is making a broad and determined effort to confront these
dangers. We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter
and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm. We're strongly supporting the
International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control
nuclear materials around the world. We're working with other
governments to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and
to strengthen global treaties banning the production and shipment of
missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction.
In all these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow
a process -- it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to
the civilized world. All free nations have a stake in preventing sudden
and catastrophic attacks. And we're asking them to join us, and many
are doing so. Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the
decisions of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is
necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American
people.
Different threats require different strategies. In Iran, we continue to
see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass
destruction, and supports terror. We also see Iranian citizens risking
intimidation and death as they speak out for liberty and human rights
and democracy. Iranians, like all people, have a right to choose their
own government and determine their own destiny -- and the United States
supports their aspirations to live in freedom.
On the Korean Peninsula, an oppressive regime rules a people living in
fear and starvation. Throughout the 1990s, the United States relied on
a negotiated framework to keep North Korea from gaining nuclear
weapons. We now know that that regime was deceiving the world, and
developing those weapons all along. And today the North Korean regime
is using its nuclear program to incite fear and seek concessions.
America and the world will not be blackmailed.
America is working with the countries of the region -- South Korea,
Japan, China, and Russia -- to find a peaceful solution, and to show
the North Korean government that nuclear weapons will bring only
isolation, economic stagnation, and continued hardship. The North
Korean regime will find respect in the world and revival for its people
only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions.
Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula
and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal
dictator, with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to
terrorism, with great potential wealth, will not be permitted to
dominate a vital region and threaten the United States.
Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last
casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed
to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he
systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his
country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these
weapons -- not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized
world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.