Remarks in Concord, New Hampshire

Thank you very much Governor Merrill, Senator Gregg, Congressman Bass, Congressman Zeliff, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and members of the New Hampshire legislature: it is an honor to be here this morning, and I am grateful for your invitation.

This is an auspicious moment to be in New Hampshire The eyes of the nation are trained here, waiting for your judgment on who should lead America To stand before you on this bright morning, in this historic hall, is a high privilege. Thank you very much.

Two hundred and eight years ago, the people of this state rendered another verdict with a profound effect on America's future. On June 21, 1788, a New Hampshire convention ratified the Constitution of the United States, providing the necessary approval of three-quarters of the states.

The vote to ratify the Constitution was important, but so was the list of amendments New Hampshire attached to it. The first was, and I quote: "That it be explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly and particularly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several States to be by them exercised." It became the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Prompted by New Hampshire, our founders intended that we should reserve power for the states because we should place our faith in the people. More than the secret of our success, this philosophy is the secret of freedom. And it is a central purpose of my campaign for the Presidency.

I am running for President because I believe we have reached a defining moment in our national history. For too long we have drifted away from the values and philosophy that shaped America. The choices we make this year will determine tile character of our nation, and the future of our children long into the next century.

Look at the world we live in. Exploding all around us is a great, global revolution. Regime after oppressive regime has fallen as freedom replaces tyranny. People everywhere are rising up to claim their God-given rights to individual liberty, as we did more than 200 years ago. Today the light of hope and freedom is shining in places where we thought despair and darkness would always reign.

Yet there is also a great paradox. This new world of freedom depends on the restraint and inspiration found in time-tested values. Only men and women of character can make freedom work. And only a government controlled by the people can reflect the people s virtues. As we close this century and prepare to enter the next, that is the challenge of America. That is why I have come to New Hampshire, today.

Another truth is that American parents have never been more worried about their children. There once was a time when parents believed there was a community of adults working together to raise the next generation. But no longer. Today parents feel their family and their values are under attack from almost every direction, including our schools.

In New Hampshire students are learning well. But a national study, just a little more than a year ago, revealed that a staggering 40 percent of all fourth graders were reading at below grade level. Twenty-five percent of high school seniors were functionally illiterate. Now those seniors are in college, or in the job market.

These scores are discouraging. And we must ask ourselves, after the billions of dollars we have poured into education, how can this be? We must answer with the truth, which is that a liberal education bureaucracy has hijacked our schools, using them to pass on liberal ideas we either don't share or don't think should get in the way of reading, writing and arithmetic.

One recent education fad is called "outcome-based education," Unfortunately, too often the outcomes that count are not facts learned, but attitudes achieved. "Willingness to cooperate" and "appreciation of diversity" are two such attitudes. According to some, to correct a kid's spelling risks dampening his "self-esteem", so we should let him be "creative", although wrong, instead, But in America, mastery of the language is a key to success.

That's why I believe our educational reforms start with this simple principle: we want our kids to speak English, to read English and to able to spell in proper, American English.

And let's speak the truth for a moment about crime in America. It's true that violent crime is down slightly from historically high levels. But is also true that we could soon be faced with a new wave of violent crime, unleashed by what Professor John DiIulio of Princeton calls "Super Predators" — young criminals who are totally merciless ... capable of committing the most vicious of acts for the most trivial reasons: a pair of sneakers A football jersey. A misplaced glance mistaken for disrespect.

This prediction, which has already begun to come true, is a great source of sadness for us. But our sadness must be matched with resolve, One of the remedies — just one, but an important one — is to shift the focus of the juvenile justice system, as you have done in New Hampshire. Teenage thugs must come to understand that every act of violence will have a consequence. And the consequence is called imprisonment.

Teenagers who commit violent crimes should be prosecuted as adults and should receive sentences commensurate to the danger they represent to society.

Which brings me to the second attribute America needs to find in her leaders: hope.

Hope is at the heart of the American character. We believe it's always possible to make tomorrow better than today, to make our children's lives better than our own. But if there is one question that draws a bright line of principle most sharply in our public life, it is this: where do you find your hope?

Love of God and country and family. Commitment to honesty, decency and personal responsibility. Self-reliance tempered by a sense of community. A willingness to sacrifice born from a boundless confidence in the future. These are the values of the American people, and I believe they are what made us the greatest nation on earth They are the values I grew up with, as did so many of you.

I also believe that America's troubles today are due, in large part, to the erosion of those values by our culture, our government and our institutions. And I believe that the secret to getting our country back on track is to return to them as a matter of national policy.

If America yearns for moral leadership, it is not to correct a fault in the American people, but to stop our government and our culture from creating fault lines in our society. Truth and hope are moral attributes America needs right now in her leaders. And each of us must do all in our power to provide them.

Let me start with truth, because we need some fixed points of fact to help chart our course.

It is true that "the era of big government is over." But it is also true that the structure of big government remains largely in place. It is still so large that it takes an average family 120 days of work each year to support it. It still closes the doors of business with endless regulations and countless mandates. And it still betrays the poor with a welfare system whose failure is evident in the shame of our slums, the violence of our streets and the decline of our families.

In a year of heroic effort, we in the Congress made our first assault on the citadel of big government. As one of our first acts, we followed the New Hampshire model and we passed a bill to end unfunded mandates. We passed tax relief for our families and a Medicare rescue plan for our elderly. Like you in New Hampshire, we passed welfare reform that elevates the values of family and work, and trusts the states to do a better job of taking care of their own people. And, perhaps most importantly, we passed a balanced budget — a historic document that kept our promise to the next generation. It is the most extraordinary series of legislative accomplishments in my memory. And I will always be proud of my part in it.

But we are talking about truth, and the sad truth is this: as the year closed America's government was still sorrily the same. We were defeated time after time by Presidential vetoes.

It is also true, as some have said, that our economy is the strongest it's been in 30 years. The stock market is at an all-time high. And the bond market just finished another spectacular year. But the real average hourly wage is 5 percent lower than it was a decade ago. Two years ago, family earnings were hit with the largest tax increase in history. Corporate profits are setting records, but so are corporate layoffs. And middle class families feel less and less secure about the future. There is a wide and growing gap between what the government's statistics say about our economy and how American families feel about it.

A balanced budget would have lowered the interest rates families pay on homes, cars and student loans. Balancing the budget would also free capital to create more and better paying jobs, That is why we will continue to fight for a balanced budget with real tax relief to help working families in New Hampshire and throughout our nation.

It's clear how too many in power today answer that question. Every good intention is followed by a mandate. The source of every social III is an imperfection in the people. The solution to every national challenge is another federal program. For too many, the focus of hope is found in Washington. More government, bigger government, more meddlesome government.

I have a different philosophy and, I believe, so do you. We believe our problems come not from too little government, but too much. The solution is to put more of our trust in the wisdom and goodness of the American people.

That's why government should support families, not pull them apart with a welfare program that drives fathers away. We should lighten the burden on families, not weigh them down with punishing taxes. We should put parents back in charge of our schools. and we must, each of us, use the bully pulpit of public office, as well as he private moments of a parent — to challenge a culture that undermines the lessons we are trying to teach our children.

And, as New Hampshire knew more than 200 years ago, we must find hope in the genius of the states. We will find in this body, and in others like it across America, our greatest hope for reforming welfare, fixing our schools and protecting our people from crime. In fact, all our hopes are united by one conviction: that we must return power to where it comes from and where it belongs: to families and communities, to states and to citizens.

When I left New Hampshire eight years ago, I did not think I would be back again as a Presidential candidate. But, like many Americans, I became concerned that America was heading, down the wrong path. Taxes were being raised. The wasn't being balanced. And government experts were trying to take control over our health, our economy and our lives. Our national interests were taking a back seat to the whims of the United Nations, and our young men and women in uniform were taking orders from Boutros-Boutros Ghail.

Then, during the 50th anniversary of D-Day, D returned to the hills of Italy I had climbed so many years before as a soldier in the 10th Mountain Division. Standing in those Italian hills I thought about the America of our youth --- the America we risked our lives to protect ... and about our hopes for the generations who would follow.

Then I thought about the America we live in today — an America still great and still the beacon of freedom around the world, but an America whose problems seem to grow deeper and deeper every year. And I thought that perhaps there was one more mission for my generation ... one more call to serve.

I believe my generation might have something the country needs right now: someone who knows what made America great in the first place. Someone who knows what has been sacrificed to keep us free. Someone who would do all in his power to lead America back to her place in the sun. Someone who knows the way.

This great country was built by men and women who sacrificed to build a better future for those of us who came after. Now we have to do our part, in this time, in this generation, to make America a better place for our children. We can draw our strength, as we always have, from the as we always have, from the truth, and from the bottomless reservoir of hope and work and courage that is our heritage. Together we still have the power to make our dreams true — the power to build for our children a future as strong as our hearts ... and as great as our history demands

Thank you very much, and God bless America