Remarks in a discussion in Hudson, Wisconsin

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 23, 2004

And then we went through a terrorist attack. They estimated it cost us, after that attack, about a million jobs. It hurt when the enemy hit us. We also went through corporate scandals, which affected us. I mean, look, we're a country that depends upon honesty. I mean, when people--when you're an investor or when you're looking at balance sheets, you expect there to be good, honest numbers. And when we started to uncover the fact that some didn't tell the truth, it began to affect our confidence. It just did. We acted. I mean, it's real clear right now that if you are dishonest in the boardrooms of America, there's going to be a consequence. But we've overcome these obstacles.

And one of the reasons why I believe we overcame the obstacles is because of tax relief. I believe by cutting the taxes, it helped. And I want to thank the Congressman for his work on that. We did it, I think, the fair way. We said, "If you pay taxes, you get relief." We raised the child credit to help people with children. We've mitigated the consequences of the marriage penalty. We believe that the Tax Code ought to encourage marriage, not discourage marriage.

We helped our small businesses--we're going to talk to two entrepreneurs today about what the tax relief meant for their business. They can explain it better than I can. After all, they're the ones--they're the risktakers; they're the people who are on the frontline of when it comes to hiring people.

Before we talk to them and talk to some others who are benefiting from the tax relief and have got some interesting things to talk about, I do want to talk about what else needs to be done. You know, there's concern about jobs going overseas. I share the concern. We want people working here. We want our jobs here. And the best way to do so is to make sure this is the best place to do business in the world. The best way to make sure jobs are here is, this is a place for risktakers, feel comfortable taking risk, and you're able to do so without getting sued right and left. So we need tort reform.

And you know, I got to tell you, the plaintiff's attorneys are tough politically. But I believe it's the right thing to have a justice system that's fair, that you're not--that the legal system doesn't look like a lottery, but in fact, if somebody gets hurt, they've got their day in court. But if we keep having frivolous and junk lawsuits that threaten our employers, it's going to be hard to keep the job base active and alive here. So we need tort reform. We need less regulation.

In order to make sure that our economy continues to grow and jobs stay here, we've got to have free and fair trade. Let me tell you about the trade issue and my point of view on that. Most Presidents believe that it's important to have our markets open for foreign goods. Why? Because if you're a consumer, the more goods you have to choose from, the more likely it is you're going to get better quality at a better price. That's how the market works. And so administrations from both parties said, "Let's open up our markets for the good of consumers." My attitude is, is that if we treat a country by opening our markets, they ought to treat us the same way. That's good trade policy. We open up our markets; you open up yours.