Remarks at a luncheon for Representative Charles W. "Chip" Pickering in Jackson, Mississippi

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 12, 2002

I worry about health care systems, not only where the costs are high but where people have trouble finding health care they need. We heard from stories today about ob-gy--or pediatricians in the Delta. One fellow came, named Kooyer, Dr. Kooyer. He came down to Mississippi because, as he said, his Christian calling asked him to come down, told him to come down to help people in need. There's a pediatrician in some of the poorest counties in America wanting to provide health care for people in need, and he's leaving your State because the lawsuits are driving him out of the State. You need to do something about it here in Mississippi, and we need to do something about it in Washington, DC. And Chip Pickering understands that.

No, I appreciate Chip. I appreciate his attitude. I hope Mississippi rejects the politics of puffing people in one class or another and pitting them against each other. That's not how you get ahead in a society. We've got too much of that in Washington. And one of the reasons, one of the objectives I've got is to get rid of that kind of politics, of saying, you know, "If you're in this group or that group, you're either no good, or we're going to make you fight in order to get ahead." That is not good for the country. Chip is a unifier; he's not a divider. He sets the right tone, as far as I'm concerned. And that's the kind of tone that will make you proud when you send him back to Washington, DC.

I look forward to working with Congress when we get back, particularly the Senate, to make sure this Department of Homeland Security. that I proposed is set up right. I say that because our number one priority now is to make sure that the enemy doesn't hit us again. And they're out there, by the way. These are people that hate America because we love freedom. They hate what we stand for. They hate the fact that we worship freely, that all religions are welcome here in America, They hate that. They hate the fact that we speak our mind. They hate the fact that we have good political discourse. They hate everything we stand for, and so therefore, they're going to keep coming.

And my job and the job of the Congress is to work together to do everything we can to protect our homeland. It's to make sure that we do everything we can to get our agencies cooperating, make sure that the agencies involved with homeland security, of which there's over 100, have as their number one priority the protection of the American people. And so I said, "Why don't we put them all under a single Department of Homeland Security?" Look, I recognize I wasn't the guy that ran for office and said, "Vote for me. I'm for bigger Government." I did say I want to make Government work better. And I think this will make Government work better.

And the House of Representatives passed a good piece of legislation which will allow our administration, or the next administration or the next administration after that, to put the right people in the right place at the right time in order to protect the homeland. And I will not accept a bill that hamstrings the capacity of an administration to do that. And the Senate just needs to know--and I appreciate Senator Lott and Senator Cochran's support on this issue--that we will continue to argue for what's best for the American people, not what's best for either political turf or special interest groups in Washington, DC. The protection of the people is more important than setting up so many bureaucratic rules that we won't be able to protect the people. And so I look forward to getting a good bill out of the Senate and a bill on my desk.