Remarks in Miami, Florida

Good to see all these...

[applause]

It really is about their future over here. And that's why it's so important that we're here today. And I want to thank them for [off-mike].

[applause]

Commissioner, I want to thank you for your endorsement today. I appreciate it very much. And I heard you saying what the polls were saying in your race. I know what they were saying in Connie's race. And I kept calling, Connie, what's happening, what's happening, what's happening.

The thing that happened, he won. And that's the important thing.

[applause]

And he's done a great job.

[applause]

It's good to be back in Miami. As you know, today is Halloween. And all the kids are dressing up and doing scary things. It's sort of like it is in the White House every day.

[laughter]

audio gap]

... And tomorrow noon [off-mike] on election day, please be there.

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And I will take my message to Republicans — I will take my message to Republicans and Democrats and independents, members of the Reform party. This is a fight again for America, to elect a president you can trust and an economy that gives us hope.

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And I will give...

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I will give it all I've got; ninety-six hours. From the factories of Ohio and Michigan to the bluegrass of Kentucky, in the towns and neighborhoods of the Midwest, across the Rocky Mountains and through the city streets of California. And I will not rest until I've made my case to every worker, every family and every voter.

And I am determined to make every hour of this decisive election count. The stakes are high. The stakes are high.

And I know many people in this audience understand what you mean when you say, the stakes are high and freedom is worth fighting for. Freedom is worth fighting for.

[applause]

So, we're going to be busy. And probably sleepy.

[laughter]

But that's not the important thing. I want to send a message across America that [audio gap] totally committed [audio gap] this race the last few days.

The polls are starting to close. I want the American people to focus on the alternative.

We've been unable to engage the president. He's just floating around out there. We had a couple of debates. But all he did was show up. Didn't have any real debate.

But we will alert the American people.

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And I believe I speak for people all across America who believe it's time to restore strong principled trustworthy leadership in the White House.

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And I don't believe, regardless of your party — regardless of your party — that we can afford four more years of [off-mike] empty promises and a new ethical scandal almost every week.

I believe it's time for a change. And my campaign will be about telling the truth. I know you haven't heard a lot of it from the White House. But I will tell you the truth.

[applause]

CROWD: DOLE-KEMP! DOLE-KEMP! DOLE-KEMP!

DOLE: Thank you.

Dole-Kemp, I might add, are two four-letter words you can teach your kids.

[applause]

DOLE: Dole/Kemp. And so as I stand here with my good supporters in the honor of Lincoln behind me and Al and my good friend Connie Mack and my new found friend Mr. Regilato.

I want to say this, I am excited. The only polls are right out here. You're the polls. You're the polls right here. You're the voters.

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The voters are going to decide this election. And you know that the truth is that government is too big and it spends too much of your money. Your money.

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Now in the days before the election — there are only five left — the White House will tell you how better off everyone is. But, you can't square that with the cold economic facts. No doubt about it, the economy is slow and it's getting slower and slower by the day.

Economic growth has been cut in half the last three months. It's down now to 2.2 percent. When he came in the White House it was 5.8 percent. 2.2 percent is a disastrous news to the workers. People that have to work every day and small businessmen...

[audio gap]

... America. The president or candidate Clinton promised so much. Promised you a tax cut. Gave you the biggest tax increase in history. Promised you a lot of things and gave you nothing.

[boos]

DOLE: So, the news for businessmen and women is even more discouraging. Consumer spending is at its weakest in five years. People aren't spending any money. Sales have barely grown at all the last three months.

Inventories are piling up. And you know what happens when your inventories pile up. Pretty soon there are going to be layoffs. There's no demand. When sales don't go, jobs do go. And I'll just say that probably layoffs are around the corner.

What about exports? In the 3rd quarter, the last three months, they only grew by.6 percent. When he came into office they were going by 6 percent, 10 times as much. So, that was the strong economy that Bill Clinton inherited and the bad news keeps coming.

The other day we learned that consumer confidence has dropped for the second month in a row. We also learned from the Labor Department that workers pay is stagnant.

If you're out there working for wages — particularly if you're women — your wages have gone down. You're not keeping up with inflation. And the new wage statistics are the worst we've seen in 20 years.

This economy is driving down wages at a time when families need to be keeping and saving more. So, now we can end all the false and all the empty talk about the so-called Clinton recovery because there hasn't been a Clinton recovery.

If this is a recovery, I don't ever want to see a Clinton recession. And we probably won't see a Clinton recession.

[applause]

But, now it's time for President Clinton to admit his policy of higher taxes and bigger government has been a drag on the economy. We're not creating real jobs. He takes credit for 11 million new jobs. Well, I met a guy the other day said he had three of them.

[laughter]

You've got to have three of them to pay your bills. You're paying now more than taxes than any time in history, almost 40 percent. More than you pay for food, clothing and shelter combined, you're paying in taxes.

In many cases it means that the second member of the household, the wife in most cases, has to go back to work. If she wants to work, that's fine. What about the kids? If she wants to stay home, that ought to be an option, too.

DOLE: But now they have to go back to work. One parent working full time to take care of the family, the other parent working full time just to pay the taxes. And that should not happen in the United States of America. And that's why we have an economic program.

[applause]

So we're going to go in the opposite direction. We're going to stimulate the economy. We're going have a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut. As Connie said, I want to thank Connie for all of his input into this plan. It's really sort of the Mack plan that he loaned to Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.

It was his — to get the economy going, as Ronald Reagan did and as Jack Kennedy did back in the early '60s, you got to cut taxes, cut the capital gains rate in half, stimulate some growth, create some opportunities all across America.

And this is a family-oriented tax cut. It's a $500-per-child under 18 tax credit. One child $500; three children $1,500; 10 children, and you're probably too busy to worry about taxes. But that would be $5,000.

[laughter]

[applause]

And then to all of you who work hard and work hard and work hard, five, six, seven days a week and save your money and create a little estate, we say it's time for some estate tax relief so that when somebody dies, you don't have to sell off half the property to pay the estate taxes. And we think it's time for a change in that area.

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And this is just the beginning. It's just the beginning. The second phase of our program is to have a flatter, fairer, simpler tax and to end the IRS as we know it. End the IRS as we know it.

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Now the president said, well, we can't afford this tax cut. I don't think he came down and asked you if you could afford the tax increase that happened in 1993 without a single Republican vote in Congress. He raised taxes $265 billion.

[boos]

He said, well, we only did that for the rich. Seventy percent of that tax increase was paid for by small businessmen and small businesswomen in Miami and across the country.

Senior citizens coughed up 24 to 28 billion, because he raised taxes on your Social Security benefits. And he's out here trying to scare you on Medicare. He's the president who raised taxes on Social Security.

And then they raised gasoline taxes $34 billion, not for highways, but for all these pet spending programs that the liberals have in the Congress.

[boos]

So they've called our plan a risky scheme. He said it's a very risky scheme. Those are their words.

Now let me tell you what's really risky. Re-electing Bill Clinton, that's really risky. That's really risky.

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CROWD: Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!...

DOLE: That's what we call — and I'll tell you another risk. He's taking a risk on the future of Medicare. And I want to talk about that seriously, because I know we've been hit by millions and millions of dollars of ads in Florida.

There are a lot of senior citizens in Florida. And I know hundreds of senior citizens in Florida. And I don't see any here, but if any show up...

UNKNOWN: Yes, my dad's here.

DOLE: Oh, yes, OK. There's...

[laughter]

... there's one senior citizen here.

DOLE: Two, three. All right.

I know if you've watched television, you've been bombarded with these ads that say we're going to knock you off the Medicare rolls, Bob Dole's going to do this, Bob Dole's opposed to Medicare. Let me set the record straight.

In 1965, we had a vote on elder care which provided drugs and other things for seniors, and I voted for that, I didn't vote for Medicare. But I've been committed to Medicare ever since. I've helped expand it. I've helped protect it. I've helped save it.

And for the president of the United States to go back 30-some years, if I went back 30 years and checked out what he was doing in the '60s, you know...

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And I think you get the message. I wasn't traveling abroad, I'll say that. I was here, I was home where they could find me.

But anyway, just the other day we learned that the Medicare trust fund lost 4.2 billion last year, more than ever before.

Now, it's losing money. And I would say to senior citizens, you just can't keep doing that. If it keeps losing money, it's going to go broke between four and five years from now. So, we need to face up to the problems, and it ought to be done on a nonpartisan, bipartisan basis.

I remember in 1983, when Social Security was about to go bankrupt, Ronald Reagan a Republican, and Speaker O'Neil a Democrat, and Howard Baker, Republican leader of the Senate, put together a nonpartisan, bipartisan commission.

And I was proud to serve on that commission with Congressman Claude Pepper from Florida, a Democrat and a Republican. He was the champion of senior citizens.

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We stopped pointing fingers, we stopped trying to blame anybody. We said, we've got to fix this, 37 million seniors depend on it. Now it's up to 42 or 43 million.

We saved Social Security by taking it out of politics, and we didn't try to scare everybody in the process. We didn't try to scare everybody in the process, Mr. President. You've spent millions and millions and millions of dollars.

I'll give you a true story. I went and visited a nursing home in Florida, and on the way out this lady, was obviously quite ill, was being pushed in a wheelchair. And she said, "Now, Senator..." — and it was a halting voice — "... don't, don't, don't take my Medicare."

And the lady pushing the wheelchair said, "That's all she sees all day long on television, Bob Dole's going to take your Medicare, Bob Dole doesn't care for Medicare."

Listen, that's all my mother had, was Social Security and Medicare. I'm not going to betray the memory of my mother. I'm not going to betray senior citizens of Florida or anywhere in America. My word is good. You can't say that about Bill Clinton.

[applause]

So we will save Medicare.

AUDIENCE: Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

DOLE: Thank you. And let me tell you what others are saying about this efforts. Let me tell you what others are saying about this ad campaign, not just Bob Dole, because I'm running against Bill Clinton.

The Washington Post, not known as a Republican newsletter...

[laughter]

... said, the campaign is based on distortion and fear, distortion and fear. They called it Mediscare. The USA Today calls it false and misleading.

So let me say to the seniors in this audience and the senior who may pick this up some way, we understand they're spending millions and millions.

DOLE: You know, Bill Clinton said, well, Bob Dole's a decent man. I kind of like Bob Dole. Then he goes out and spends a million dollars telling you what a bad guy I am on television.

Why doesn't he say on television in one of his ads, Bob Dole's a decent guy and he ought to be the next president of the United States? That's what he ought to say.

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So we're going to increase Medicare spending by 7 percent a year, almost double the rate of inflation. That's more than Clinton proposed in his own health care plan.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton went before millions and said there ought to be zero growth. We're talking about 7 percent a year.

And over the next six years, Medicare benefits will rise on average from $5,200 to $7,000 dollars, an increase of $1,900 per senior.

So these are facts. I know when you watch the Clinton ads you don't get many facts. But these are facts. Don't be fooled. Do be frightened. Halloween will be over. And tomorrow's another day.

But every day is Halloween for this outfit. Every day is Halloween. They scare somebody.

And now who knows who's paying for those ads. Maybe money they got from Indonesia, maybe money they got from India, maybe money they got from Taiwan.

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And I knew — I knew if I lived long enough, America would finally get foreign aid. And it's coming in now. It's coming in all over the world.

This John Huang went to the White House 81 times. He's supposed to be, you know, not an important functionary. I haven't been to the White House 81 times, and I've lived there I don't know how long.

And I used to go there a lot to see President Reagan and President Bush and other presidents. Been down there a couple of times to see President Clinton.

This Huang must have a revolving door in and out of there. And I think they've got a laundromat down there, too, somewhere where they launder all this money.

I'll tell you what happened. This one fellow named Gandhi — he's supposed to be related to the late Gandhi in India — gave President Clinton a plaque. And then by just saving and scrimping every day he was able to give him $300,000, too.

But then it turned out that he owed $10,000 in back taxes. Now where do you think he got that money? Where do you think that money came from?

Or you go out to the Buddhist temple in Los Angeles where they take a vow of poverty. Vice President Gore apparently didn't take that vow. He went in there and came out with $122,000.

I expect sometime before the campaign ends they'll be holding fund raisers in homeless shelters all across America.

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That's what we're up against with this administration.

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So this is serious business. Medicare is serious business.

And I'm going to put together a bipartisan commission modeled after the 1983 Social Security Commission. And I'm going to announce in my first two appointments and recommendations to that commission are going to be Senator Connie Mack, a Republican from the state of Florida.

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And Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, who helped me save Social Security in 1983. It's going to be a bipartisan commission — bipartisan commission.

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We're going to get the job done. I also will be the president who stands up to Fidel's Castro's regime and fights for...

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And fights for freedom in Cuba. Fights for freedom in Cuba.

Bill Clinton is a bigger friend of the Castro regime than of the Cuban-American community. Don't let him fool you with all this rhetoric right before the election.

He's just hoping that Cuban Americans will listen to his rhetoric and forget his record.

DOLE: You know what his record is.

It was only Americans were brutally shot down by Castro's air force that Bill Clinton was pressured into signing the Helms-Burton Libertad Act, only after that.

But almost as soon as he signed it, as Lincoln and Ileana and Connie know, he undermined it. He made it impossible for Americans to use the U.S. courts to defend their confiscated property in Cuba.

So this president places a higher premium on his relationship with Castro than on his responsibility to the Cuban-American community. And that will not happen in a Dole administration.

[applause]

CROWD: Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

DOLE: And the Clinton record on Radio Marti — on Radio and TV Marti is also an insult to everyone who wants to see the return of freedom to Cuba.

His own hand picked chairman of international broadcasting publicly stated that TV Marti should, quote, "go away."

He complained that the Cuban-American community has undue influence on Radio Marti.

Well, on November 5, the proud, patriotic Cuban-American community is going to use its influence to send a message to Bill Clinton. The only thing that's going to go away is Bill Clinton and his soft-on-Castro team of advisers.

[applause]

Under George Bush we saw the collapse of communism in Europe and then in Russia itself. And in a Dole administration, we will see the collapse of communism in Cuba. The collapse of communism in Cuba.

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And finally, I want you to be proud of the vote you cast in just five days. I remember when I first voted in an election. I voted for Eisenhower. He was my hero. He was my commander. He was also from Kansas.

But that wasn't the real point.

[laughter]

I respected him. I honored him. He believed in honor, duty, and country. And he was my hero. He believed in decency and integrity.

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So I want you to be proud of the vote you cast on November 5. And I want you reach out to your friends and your neighbors all across America, all across Florida, all across Miami. This is an important election.

This is an important election. It's all about freedom. It's all about the future. It's all about the next century. It's all about a better America. It's all about being respected by your friends around the world and feared by your enemies.

Nobody fears America anymore, not with the leadership we have in the present White House.

We need someone who will stand up to the likes of Castro and other, make it tougher, not make it easier for Fidel Castro.

[applause]

So let's get the economy going again. Let's save Medicare and Social Security for senior citizens. But above all let's tell the American people the truth.

I think character does count. Maybe nobody cares anymore. Maybe nobody cares. I believe the American people care.

And when Election Day comes, after our 96-hour campaign-a-thon, or call it what you will, we are going to demonstrate our commitment. We're going to send a powerful signal all across America.

And let me say to those who might be looking at the Perot candidacy in Florida. He can't win. I can beat one candidate. I can't beat two. So don't vote for Perot. Vote for Bob Dole. If you want to beat Bill Clinton, you've got to vote for Bob Dole.

[applause]

DOLE: That's the only way it's going to work.

[applause]

This is the election — Because the votes Perot gets mostly come from us. So, a vote for Ross Perot — and I'm not here quarreling, Ross — I'm just saying a vote for him is a vote for Bill Clinton. And I don't think any of those people want to vote for Bill Clinton.

We're going to make it work. You're going to help us.

Thank you very much. And God bless America.

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