Rep. Mike Pence
Conservative Leadership Conference
Richmond
Virginia November 8, 2004
A Mandate for Conservative Leadership in Washington
"You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom, and I go to make sure that they have it."
Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart (1995)
My favorite place to sit on the House floor these past two years has been on the 5th row from the well, second seat in, next to Rep Phil Crane, the senior most republican member of the house.
Phil Crane is my friend but Phil Crane is also a hero to me.
During his 35 year career on Capitol Hill and as a candidate for President, Phil Crane was a champion of the American conservative movement and the wake and wash of his career on Capitol Hill even included founding the 96 member House Republican Study Committee during the 1980s.
Phil Crane was defeated for reelection last week and now retires to private life.
As I come before you tonight, in this room full of conservative leaders, I think of the long shadow that Phil Crane and those courageous conservatives who fought with him have cast.
And I think of the men and women with whom I serve in the 96 member House Republican Study Committee.
And I know that the batton has been passed to a new generation of conservative leaders.
On two occasions when leaders in Israel passed authority from one generation to the next, they spoke the same charge…"be strong and courageous and do the work". Moses to Joshua, David to Solomon the words were the same and they ring as challenge even to this day.
Today, a new generation of men and women who will aspire to do as those who went before: to be strong and courageous and do the work the American people elect conservatives to do:
To do freedoms work
And in the wake of last week’s historic election, we have the opportunity to do just that: to advance the agenda of freedom as never before.
And make no mistake about it, when this President won a landslide of more than 3 million votes, self identified conservatives, who made 34% of the electorate, were the margin of victory.
Buoyed by measures defending marriage on the ballot in 11 states, the little platoons of American conservatism overwhelmed the thousands of paid mercenaries of Moveon.org to deliver this president the Whitehouse and larger majorities in the House and the Senate…a first for a wartime president since 1944.
And conservatives were right to support the significant conservative accomplishments of a president and congress that:
Defended freedom at home and abroad/
promoted economic freedom through tax cuts/
and defended their moral freedom in the sanctity of life and marriage.
The campaign became a referendum on conservative principles and the election was a mandate for conservative leadership in Washington.
South of Highway 40 we have a saying, "ya gotta dance with what brung ya" and what brung George W. Bush back to a second term was American conservatism.
In that aftermath of the largest margin of victory in American history,
it is now incumbent on the President and the Congress to deliver on the confident hope of millions of Americans by restoring the luster to our reputation as the party of limited government and on this front there is work to be done.
Earlier this year, in light of two consecutive sessions of Congress that saw a 52% increase in the Department of Education, the first new entitlement in 40 years and record increases in non-defense spending….
I likened the conservative movement to a tall ship plying the open seas of a simpler time with a proud captain, strong and accomplished crew but veering off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government republicanism.
For despite the enormous conservative achievements of the past four years, I
saw troubling signs that the ship of conservative governance was off
course.
While Ronald Reagan said famously, "government is not the
solution to our problem, government is the problem" many Republicans-even many
who call themselves conservatives-see government increasingly as the solution to
every social ill and-let us be clear on this point- this is a historic departure
from the limited government traditions of our party and millions of its most
ardent supporters.
So how do we find our way forward in the uncertain currents of the new governing majority?
How do we launch this new Congress with the priorities that reflect our party’s commitment to limited government?
The answer may well lie in another tale of maritime valor nearly a century ago…
On 19 January 1915, after 5 months at sea, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was beset by an early ice pac in the seas north of Antarctica, ending abruptly their expedition to that frozen continent. After 9 months wedged in the floating ice, the Endurance was crushed and sank in October of 1915, leaving the crew to winter 5 months on the ice flows until escaping to Elephant Island in April of 1916.
With supplies dwindling, Shackleton made the decision to take a single lifeboat in an attempt to cross 800 miles of the inhospitable ocean in the world, under hurricane conditions, in an attempt to reach South Georgia Island and help.
In the course of 16 tumultous days, where celestial navigation was nearly impossible due to storm conditions, Shackleton and his skeleton crew chipped at 15 inches of ice forming on the boat and made the landfall using an ancient form of navigation known as "dead reckoning"
In dead reckoning, the navigator finds his course by measuring the course and distance he has sailed from some fixed position. If the navigator has a fixed starting position, by tracking heading and speed he can calculate the exact location of the ship at any time but navigation depends on knowing the location of the known starting point.
Dead reckoning saved the crew of the Endurance
And
Dead reckoning can save the course of Republican governance in the 21st Century.
Conservatives must dead reckon off the starting point of what we know to be true about the nature of government
Conservatives know that government that governs least governs
best.
Conservatives know as government expands, freedom
contracts.
Conservatives know that government should never do for a man
what he can and should do for himself.
And conservatives know that freedom also means freedom from the unbridled growth of government and its attendant burdens of debt, confiscated taxes and suffocating bureaucracy.
As we navigate off of these fixed historical truths, the way forward is clear:
After 4 years of the largest growth in entitlement and discretionary spending in more than a half-century, we must rediscover the principles of limited government that brought our party to power in 1980 and 1994 and put them into practice.
This requires that House conservatives have their own agenda, built on the principles of freedom….an agenda which comprises what conservatives must do and what conservatives must undo in the course of the 109th Congress.
what conservatives must do
First, House Conservatives must be prepared to rally support in the Congress and throughout the country for the Presidents agenda where it conforms with the ideals of limited government.
The good news is that all of the "big 3" agenda items outlined by the President in the last week are worthy of vigorous conservative support including:
-modernizing social security by introducing the option of personal savings accounts for younger Americans (Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Jeff Flake)
-overhauling the internal revenue code, without a tax increase, to achieve a system that is simpler and fairer for taxpaying Americans (Rep. John Linder, Rep. Mike Burgess)
-reforming the legal system to end the hidden tax that frivolous lawsuits place on our manufacturing and health care economies
These are the priorities of President George W. Bush and they deserve to be the priorities of conservatives in Washington.
In addition to these "Big Three" goals, House conservatives should put on the green eye-shades to put our fiscal house in order:
-pass additional tax cuts (as the Republican Congress has done every year since 1994) to ensure continued economic growth.
-pass a balanced budget amendment to the constitution (Rep. Ernest Istook)
-pass fundamental budget process reform including a line item veto (Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Rep. Chris Chocola)
-uphold any presidential veto on a spending bill that exceeds the budget (Rep. Chris Cox)
-take on wasteful government spending and actually eliminate outdated government programs (Rep. Tom Feeney, Rep. Kevin Brady)
-secure freedom of access to affordable health insurance (Rep. John Shaddegg)
Lastly, House conservatives know that the freedom agenda means more than just actuarial perfection, it means gains in Moral freedom. Congress must take action to free the American people from the cultural consequences of activist federal courts who would impose their view of morality, patriotism and our most cherished institutions on our communities and families. To do this, we must:
- lay the groundwork to support an openly prolife nominee to the Supreme Court
- pass the Federal Marriage Amendment by a growing majority (Rep. Marylin Musgrave)
- pass additional legislative limitations on abortion, including parental notification and strengthening informed consent (Rep. Joe Pitts, Rep. Cliff Stearns, Rep. Todd Aiken)
- pass the Freedom of Speech in Houses of Workship Act. (Rep. Walter Jones)
-pass legislation limiting jurisdiction over our most cherished symbols and free expression of faith in the public square. (Rep. Robert Aderholt, Rep. John Hostettler, Rep. Todd Aiken)
what Conservatives Must Undo
In addition to what we must do, there is legislation that conservatives must undo to advance the freedom agenda.
-First, conservatives must undo the damage to the First Amendment by repealing much of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Like most House Republicans, I fought against BCRA on the House floor and had the honor of being the only House plaintiff in the legal challenge that Senator McConnell took to the Supreme Court. BCRA violated the 1st Amendment directive that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" and the 527 circus of this past summer may create an opportunity to reform our campaign finance laws in a manner that empowers the role of political parties and restores the freedom of speech restrained by BCRA and the Supreme Court in McConnell, Pence et al.
-Second, conservatives must undo the entitlement elements of the Medicare Prescription Drug law. In the Prescription Drug bill, a Republican Congress added an unfunded Medicare liability equal to the entire Social Security obligation plus one half again. Congress must repeal the entitlement elements of the Prescription drug program that threaten to bankrupt our nation in the next century and drive millions of retirees into Medicare for prescription drug coverage. Congress should add the means test that Senator Kennedy threatened to philibuster and leave a modest benefit for the 1 in 4 seniors who currently lack coverage, which is what the President asked for in the first place.
-Third, conservatives must undo the expansion of the federal governments role in our local schools by reforming the No Child Left Behind Act to embrace the principle that education is a state and local function. Congress must return education spending in Washington to the block grant strategy of welfare reform, promoting school choice and innovation through resources not red tape.
This then is a conservative agenda for the 109th Congress and the theme is freedom.
None other than the 40th President of the United States understood the success of our party was grounded in the ideals of the American founding.
In his Farewell address to the nation, President Reagan explained the appeal of his Administration also with a nautical theme:
He told:
"a small story about a big ship, and a refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, "Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man."
President Reagan explained the importance of the story as
"A small moment with a big meaning… Because that's what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again, and in a way, we ourselves - rediscovered it."
In the wake of Tuesdays historic landslide, American conservatives must do what conservatives did in the 1980’s… we must rediscover the freedom agenda of limited government and fiscal discipline.we must be strong and courageous and do the workknowing that this cause will prevail.
For the cause of freedom is not our story but His - the author and finisher of our faith and our freedom.It is written that, "it is for freedom that Christ has set you free."
And I believe, with all my heart, that He who set this miracle of democracy on this these wilderness shores will see the cause of freedom through every tomorrow until, by his grace, the veil of tyranny is lifted from every corner of planet earth.The people have spoken……………Our ideas have prevailedMay our words match our deeds……………..Let freedom ring
Thank you for the honor of addressing you and for all you do to keep the cause of conservative values alive in this shining city on the hill, this last best hope of earth, these United States of America….God bless you and the United States of America
God bless you and God bless the USA.
