Thank you, thank you, thank you all, thank you, thanks everybody. Thank you all very much. It’s kind of hard for me to stand here and have a bunch of people stand up and applaud me, just a regular guy with a big job. [Laughter]
Peter, thank you for the introduction, and thanks for the great job [that you did with this] dinner. I’m honored to have the chance to speak with all of you tonight at this great event, held in honor of a great man and a great Ohioan, John Ashbrook.
As most of you know, "tonight" was originally supposed to happen a couple of months ago. But we had to reschedule because I had to be in Washington for the final negotiations on the bill to keep the government running and finish last year’s budget.
I was supposed to be with all of you that Friday night, but instead I spent the day on the phone with President Obama, trying to squeeze another billion dollars out of the most powerful man in the world… and a very reluctant one, I might add.
But, I’m fairly confident that this evening will be more pleasant, and, in fact, it already has been. So let me thank you for your patience with my schedule, and for sticking with me as your speaker tonight.
You know, as important as that process was this spring, it was important in part because we needed to cut spending and we needed to move on to the next debate—the really vital debate. That’s the debate we’re in right now: the debate over this year’s budget, and the President’s request that we raise the national debt limit.
Ultimately, this debate is not about numbers. It’s a debate about jobs. And it’s a debate about the very future of our country. And that’s what I want to talk to you about tonight.
As everyone in this room knows all too well, our nation is confronting a very serious debt crisis. Our national debt has exploded to the point where its no longer just threatening our children’s future, decades down the road; it’s threatening our economy right now in a very tangible way with very real consequences.
My message to you tonight is that we will not emerge from this crisis until we adopt policies that allow our economy to create jobs and to grow. All of the meddling and short-term gimmicks from Washington have to stop.
What we have to do is seize this moment. We need to use it to stop the madness going on inside the Beltway… to open the door again to long-term American economic growth.
I bring this message to you tonight as a fellow Buckeye and as a fellow son of Ohio.
You know, my generation grew up in a land of opportunity, courtesy of the generations that grew up before us. You know, my family didn’t have a lot; I had 11 brothers and sisters, my dad ran a bar. But each of us had the opportunity to choose our own path, and to set our own goals, and to choose our own destiny. That was the gift bestowed on us by our parents and our grandparents.
Those opportunities are what allowed me to get a college degree; to run a small business; to raise a family in a great community; and, ultimately, to serve my state and my country in the United States Congress and now as Speaker of the House in the United States Congress.
Those opportunities were also what drove our nation’s economy for decades, and made America an economic powerhouse. You might even say they powered the American Dream.
Today, because of the massive debt burden our nation is accumulating, those opportunities are vanishing before our eyes. Not just for our children and grandchildren, but for current generations as well. The evidence is all around us. The jobs report issued by the U.S. Department of Labor last week was a punch in the gut… a sobering reality check. Unemployment is 9.1 percent—creeping upward again, with only 54,000 jobs created last month.
The ’stimulus’ spending bill enacted in 2009 was supposed to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent, and was going to create millions of new private sector jobs immediately. It didn’t happen.
I would submit to you tonight that the reason we are continuing to struggle economically is because we’ve been placing too much trust in government programs, and not enough trust in our people who’ve always been [Applause]… It’s the American people who’ve always been the real driving force behind our economy.
The reality is that the bigger the government gets, the smaller the American people get. More government means less freedom. Less freedom means less growth. Less growth means fewer jobs.
The first keynote speaker at this Annual John M. Ashbrook Memorial Dinner was a man who understood this well—Ronald Reagan. Nobody understood this better, or communicated it more effectively to our nation. The American people understand it as well. It’s engrained in our national character; it’s part of the American DNA. And what’s been missing are national policies that reflect what the American people know.
Across the nation we’re seeing a renewed interest in sound Constitutional principles that have been the foundation of our country for centuries.
Here at the Ashbrook Center, weekly letters from an Ohio Farmer are going out to Members of Congress reminding us of ways we can remain true to the principles of a government of, by, and for the people.
Still, a majority of those in Washington refuse to listen. And most of the federal government is out of sync with the American people, pursuing policies that take us in the opposite direction, and the result has been a jobless recovery—and I might say "recovery" is probably too strong a word.
Balancing the budget requires us to cut spending—but it also requires us to commit ourselves as a nation to policies that allow our economy to create jobs. There’s much, much more challenging proposition than you might think. Let me give an example of I think what we’re up against.
Imagine that you could solve poverty by simply having the government print more money. You know, more for everyone means everybody wins. Right? Well, of course its ridiculous; it doesn’t work that way. But sometimes I believe that’s the way people in Washington approach our jobs issue. If our economy isn’t producing enough of them, the thinking goes, the government can just create more jobs. It means that we need a new government spending program of some sort.
Well, you know it doesn’t work that way. Jobs are a product of our economy; a product of the hard work and ingenuity of the American people. The government doesn’t create jobs; the private-sector creates jobs. [Applause]
The responsibility of the government is to ensure that there’s an environment that’s healthy for job creation in our country. And it starts with staying out of the way. Excessive spending by government doesn’t create jobs and instill certainty; it spreads uncertainty, which destroys jobs.John Ashbrook was a man who understood this. Here are a couple of things that he said. And I’ll quote:
"Unions [and their liberal allies]… want more welfare, which would push up the deficit. They also want a national health program, which would push up [the] deficit borrowing. This waste of investment hurts all Americans, but it hurts workers most of all…"
He also said, "Liberal economic theorists argue that a large budget deficit will stimulate the economy and produce jobs. In reality, however, large deficits destroy jobs."
Now, these are arguments that are regularly articulated by conservatives today, but they were uttered nearly 40 years ago by John Ashbrook. He was aiming those comments not just at his ideological adversaries, but also at some in his own party who had begun to drift away from their principles.
John Ashbrook never ascended to the presidency, but his party unquestionably heard his call, and the result was the presidency of Ronald Reagan… and a new approach to governing… and the largest economic expansion in our peacetime history.
And, I believe the American people themselves provided a similar rallying cry at the polls last November. And in their wise words, you can hear echoes of John Ashbrook’s wisdom.
The current economic situation is grim, and the policies coming out of Washington are making it worse. But despair is not an option. There are steps we can take to get our economy back to creating jobs.
My colleagues and I put forward some of these steps in our Pledge to America last fall, and we recently reinforced them with an expanded jobs agenda that we released last month. You can check it all out at Jobs.GOP.gov.
But, our agenda calls for: reducing the regulatory burden on small businesses, reforming the tax code to help job creators, passing free-trade agreements to open new markets for American products, expanding the production of American-made energy. These are the things we need to do to encourage growth. They’re united by a common theme: removing government barriers that are creating uncertainty and slowing our economy down.
There’s one other thing we have to do if we’re serious about job creation, and that’s to ensure that there’s no increase in the national debt limit unless its accompanied by major reductions in spending and real reforms. [Applause] And these reductions in spending need to be larger than the increase in the debt limit itself. And let me underline, larger. They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions into the future.
If we don’t do these things… we simply raise the debt limit without changing the status quo… it’s going to do exactly what President Obama says is going to happen if we DON’T raise the debt limit according to his terms: it’s going to hurt our economy and destroy jobs.
Some of these so-called ’elites’ don’t get it. They don’t see the connection to jobs. But I think it’s very clear to me.
If we raise the debt limit without cuts that are larger than the increase, we’re saying to the world: that our government still doesn’t get it. We’re saying that Washington is still not serious about addressing the spending addiction that is sucking the life out of our economy. And that means fewer jobs. And, you don’t have to take my word for it. Take it from any one of the more than 150 economists who signed a statement echoing this position last week.
The opportunity to do something big for our country and our economy is looking us right in the eye. This is the moment. This is the time.
If we really want to provide a jolt to job creation in this country, we need to do something that defies expectations. Right now the expectation is that the politicians will kick the can down the road one more time.
The same thing is true on Medicare. Right now the program is spiraling into bankruptcy. The expectation is that Washington, despite Paul Ryan’s courageous budget, expectation is we’ll do nothing. And I believe we can defy those expectations.
Consider this: a few years ago, nobody thought it was possible that Congress would clean up the earmark process. When I and a few others called for earmark ban to crack down on wasteful Washington pork-barrel projects, a lot of people laughed and said, "Well, it’ll never happen."
Well, today, the House of Representatives and the Senate is operating under a total earmark ban. [Applause] We just didn’t reform the earmark process; we brought it to a halt. And this is going to be the first Congress in modern history that passes appropriations bills without earmarks. And it’s going to be the first Congress in modern history to produce spending bills that cut spending—dramatically—instead of increasing spending—started a couple of weeks ago.
We can make the same dramatic changes when it comes to the rest of the federal budget. I truly believe that. But doing it will require leadership… leadership of sort of the presidential type.
I’ve reached out to the President and made it clear: Mr. President, c’mon, you and I. We’ll lock arms and we’ll jump out of the boat together. You know, we know what the problems are, and for the sake of our jobs and for the sake of our economy, I said, let’s get it done.
Listen, I know a thing or two about creating jobs. I may be the Speaker of the House, but I came to be Speaker by way of the private sector; you know, I ran a small business.
As I said earlier tonight, opportunity is what’s gotten me here tonight. And I want our children to have those same opportunities that I had. And we have a responsibility to ensure that. This is the moment. Not later. Now. Are there political risk[s]? Sure there is. But, that’s why we’re in the mess that we’re in.
I’ve always operated under a very simple standard, one that I got from my mom and dad and I taught to my kids: if you do the right things for the right reasons, good things will usually happen. Things will usually take care of themselves.
Edmund Burke accredited this saying, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Our nation’s elected leaders have been pretty good over the past few decades at doing nothing.
John Ashbrook was not the type to sit idly by and do nothing. And I believe that we’re entering an era where the American people will no longer tolerate those who believe that doing nothing is the right thing.
The people I talk to know that our nation is dealing with a crisis. They know that the future of our country is on the line, and they want leaders who are serious about taking on those challenges. They want leaders who aren’t afraid to speak the truth.
We honor the legacy of John Ashbrook by serving our country and taking a stand. This is the moment. This is the time. Let’s not pass it by. Thank you all very much for allowing me the opportunity to be here. God Bless all of you, and God Bless our great country.
[Applause]
Thank you all. Thank you, thank you all. Thank you.
