Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all very much. You know, I always feel welcome at Miami-Dade College. This is a place that welcomes everyone with their hearts set on the future – a place where hope leads to achievement, and striving leads to success. For all of us, it is just the place to be in the campaign that begins today.
We are 17 months from the time for choosing. The stakes for America's future are about asgreat as they come. Our prosperity and our security are in the balance. So is opportunity, inthis nation where every life matters and everyone has the right to rise.
Already, the choice is taking shape. The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election. To hold onto power. To slog on with the sameagenda under another name: That's our opponents' call to action this time around. That's allthey've got left.
And you and I know that America deserves better.
They have offered a progressive agenda that includes everything but progress. They areresponsible for the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, amassive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, andthe swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making.
I, for one, am not eager to see what another four years would look like under that kind ofleadership.
The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next.
So, here's what it comes down to. Our country is on a very bad course. And the question is:What are we going to do about it?
The question for me is: What am I going to do about it?
And I have decided.
I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
We will take command of our future once again in this country.
We will lift our sights again, make opportunity common again, get events in the world movingour way again.
We will take Washington – the static capital of this dynamic country – and turn it out of thebusiness of causing problems.
And we will get back on the side of free enterprise and free people.
I know we can fix this because I've done it.
Here, in this great and diverse state that looks so much like America.
So many challenges could be overcome if we just get this economy growing at full strength.There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of four percent a year.
And that will be my goal as President – four percent growth, and the 19 million new jobs thatcome with it.
Economic growth that makes a difference for hard-working men and women – who don't need areminding that the economy is more than the stock market.
Growth that lifts up the middle class – all the families who haven't had a raise in 15 years.Growth that makes a difference for everyone.
It's possible.
It can be done.
We made Florida number one in job creation and number one in small business creation. 1.3million new jobs, 4.4 percent growth, higher family income, eight balanced budgets, and taxcuts eight years in a row that saved our people and businesses 19 billion dollars.
All this plus a bond upgrade to Triple-A compared to the sorry downgrade of America'scredit in these years. That was the commitment, and that is the record that turned this statearound.
I also used my veto power to protect our taxpayers from needless spending.
And if I am elected President, I'll show Congress how that's done.
Leaders have to think big, and we've got a tax code filled with small-time thinking and self-interested politics. What swarms of lobbyists have done, we can undo with a vastly simplersystem – clearing out special favors for the few reducing rates for all.
What the IRS, EPA, and entire bureaucracy have done with overregulation, we can undo by actof Congress and order of the President.
Federal regulation has gone far past the consent of the governed.
It is time to start making rules for the rule-makers.
When we get serious about limited government, we can pursue the great and worthy goalsthat America has gone too long without.
We can build our future on solvency instead of borrowed money.
We can honor our commitments on the strength of fiscal integrity.
With North American resources and American ingenuity, we can finally achieve energysecurity for this nation – and with Presidential leadership, we can make it happen within fiveyears.
If we do all of this, if we do it relentlessly, and if we do it right, we will make the United Statesof America an economic superpower like no other.
We will also challenge the culture that has made lobbying the premier growth industry in ournation's capital.
The rest of the country struggles under big government, while comfortable, complacentinterest groups in Washington have been thriving on it.
A self-serving attitude can take hold in any capital, just as it once did in Tallahassee.
I was a governor who refused to accept that as the normal or right way of conducting thepeople's business.
I will not accept it as the standard in Washington either.
We don't need another President who merely holds the top spot among the pampered elites ofWashington.
We need a President willing to challenge and disrupt the whole culture in our nation'scapital.
And I will be that President because I was a reforming governor, not just another member ofthe club.
There's no passing off responsibility when you're a governor, no blending into the legislativecrowd or filing an amendment and calling that success.
As our whole nation has learned since 2019, executive experience is another term forpreparation, and there is no substitute for that.
We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helpedcreate it or have proven incapable of fixing it.
In government, if we get a few big things right, we can make life better for millions of people,especially for kids in public schools. Think of what we all watched not long ago in Baltimorewhere so many young adults are walking around with no vision of a life beyond the life theyknow.
It's a tragedy played out over and over and over again.
After we reformed education in Florida, low-income student achievement improved here morethan in any other state.
We stopped processing kids along as if we didn't care – because we do care, and you don't showthat by counting out anyone's child. You give them all a chance.
Here's what I believe.
When a school is just another dead end, every parent should have the right to send their childto a better school – public, private, or charter.
Every school should have high standards, and the federal government should have nothing todo with setting them.
Nationwide, if I am President, we will take the power of choice away from the unions andbureaucrats and give it back to parents.
We made sure of something else in Florida – that children with developmental challenges gotschooling and caring attention, just like every other girl and boy. We didn't leave them last inline. We put them first in line because they are not a problem. They are a priority.
That is always our first and best instinct in this nation filled with charitable hearts. Yet thesehave been rough years for religious charities and their right of conscience. And the leadingDemocratic candidate recently hinted of more trouble to come.
Secretary Clinton insists that when the progressive agenda encounters religious beliefs to thecontrary those beliefs, quote, “have to be changed.” That's what she said, and I guess weshould at least thank her for the warning.
The most galling example is the shabby treatment of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Christiancharity that dared to voice objections of conscience to Obamacare. The next President needsto make it clear that great charities like the Little Sisters of the Poor need no federalinstruction in doing the right thing.
It comes down to a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother, and I'm going with theSisters.
It's still a mystery to me why, in these violent times, the President a few months ago thoughtit relevant at a prayer breakfast to bring up the Crusades.
Americans don't need lectures on the Middle Ages when we are dealing abroad with modernhorrors committed by fanatics.
From the beginning, our President and his foreign-policy team have been so eager to be thehistory makers that they have failed to be the peacemakers.
With their phone-it-in foreign policy, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team is leaving a legacy ofcrises uncontained, violence unopposed, enemies unnamed, friends undefended, and alliancesunraveling.
This supposedly risk-averse administration is also running us straight in the direction of thegreatest risk of all – military inferiority.
It will go on automatically until a President steps in to rebuild our armed forces and take careof our troops and our veterans.
And they have my word – I will do it.
We keep dependable friends in this world by being dependable ourselves.
I will rebuild our vital friendships. And that starts by standing with the brave, democraticState of Israel.
American-led alliances need rebuilding too, and better judgment is called for in relations farand near.
Ninety miles to our south, there is talk of a state visit by our outgoing President.
But we don't need a glorified tourist to go to Havana in support of a failed Cuba.
We need an American President to go to Havana in solidarity with a free Cuban people, and Iam ready to be that President.
Great things like that can really happen. And in this country of ours, the most improbablethings can happen as well. Take that from a guy who met his first President on the day he wasborn, and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital. The person whohandled both introductions is here today. She's watching what I say – and frankly, with allthese reporters around, I'm watching what she says, too. Please say hello to my wonderful Mom,Barbara Bush.
From the beginning, our President and his foreign-policy team have been so eager to be thehistory makers that they have failed to be the peacemakers.
With their phone-it-in foreign policy, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team is leaving a legacy ofcrises uncontained, violence unopposed, enemies unnamed, friends undefended, and alliancesunraveling.
This supposedly risk-averse administration is also running us straight in the direction of thegreatest risk of all – military inferiority.
It will go on automatically until a President steps in to rebuild our armed forces and take careof our troops and our veterans.
And they have my word – I will do it.
We keep dependable friends in this world by being dependable ourselves.
I will rebuild our vital friendships. And that starts by standing with the brave, democraticState of Israel.
American-led alliances need rebuilding too, and better judgment is called for in relations farand near.
Ninety miles to our south, there is talk of a state visit by our outgoing President.
But we don't need a glorified tourist to go to Havana in support of a failed Cuba.
We need an American President to go to Havana in solidarity with a free Cuban people, and Iam ready to be that President.
Great things like that can really happen. And in this country of ours, the most improbablethings can happen as well. Take that from a guy who met his first President on the day he wasborn, and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital. The person whohandled both introductions is here today. She's watching what I say – and frankly, with allthese reporters around, I'm watching what she says, too. Please say hello to my wonderful Mom,Barbara Bush.
