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Skriven 2006-02-17 23:41:18 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0602173) for Fri, 2006 Feb 17
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Vice President's Remarks at the 2006 Wyoming Legislature Budget Session
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
February 17, 2006

Vice President's Remarks at the 2006 Wyoming Legislature Budget Session
Wyoming State Capitol Building
Cheyenne, Wyoming



11:15 A.M. MST

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. I want to
thank you for the kind words. Governor Freudenthal, members of the House
and Senate, constitutional officers, distinguished guests, ladies and
gentlemen: I want to thank you for that welcome home. It's a wonderful
experience to be greeted with such warmth by the leaders of our great
state. That's especially true when you've had a very long week. Thankfully
Harry Whittington is on the mend and doing very well. (Applause.)

I see many friends in the chamber this morning, along with some newer
members of the House and Senate that I haven't yet had the chance to meet.
It's a pleasure to be in your company today, and to all the Wyoming
Legislature I bring good wishes from our President, George W. Bush.
(Applause.)

And Lynne and I are pleased to have the university as the recipient of a
gift from the trust we set up in 2001, just before I became Vice President.
The University of Wyoming has played a very important role in our lives. It
provided me with a first class education at a price I could afford, thanks
to the generous support of the university by the people of Wyoming and the
Wyoming State Legislature.

The first years of our marriage were spent at Laramie in student housing,
while Lynne taught in the English Department and I was a graduate student.
And this was our way of saying thank you, and of making certain that future
generations have the same opportunities that we've enjoyed.

It's always a pleasure to visit Cheyenne, to be in the historic capitol
building. The Capitol is, of course, the city's prime landmark. But there's
another very prominent building downtown -- the old Union Pacific Railroad
Depot -- and it has been part of the skyline since the 19th Century, and
we're delighted that the Secretary of the Interior this week designated the
Depot as a National Historic Landmark.

It's been four years since I last visited the State Capitol -- and more
than four decades since the first time I stepped foot into this chamber,
back in 1965. Walter Phelan was in the speaker's chair. Now Randall Luthi
is in the speaker's chair. He was my intern in 1982. (Laughter and
applause.) Andy McMaster was president of the Senate, Cliff Hansen was our
governor; and I was getting my first taste of politics as a legislative
intern. I remember it as an important and a demanding job. You had to know
every legislator, be there when they needed you, and remember how they
wanted their coffee. (Laughter.)

It was a very different time. In those days there was no legislative staff
to speak of, one attorney, as I recall, who served both chambers, and a few
secretaries; and two interns, one for each chamber. I was the Senate intern
and also a first-year graduate student at the University of Wyoming. In
addition, I was a newlywed -- so you can bet I drove home to Laramie every
night. (Laughter.)

Those 40 days in 1965 constituted the entire session of the Wyoming 38th
Legislature, and for me the experience was one of life's turning points.
Not only did it teach me a great deal about the legislative process, but it
also sparked a fascination with the business of government that stayed with
me for a lifetime. And while you can learn a lot in any legislative
setting, I'm glad to have worked right here. Because we're a state with a
small population, and because we're a Western state, we've held close to
the ideal of the citizen legislator. And so I witnessed the common sense,
the public-mindedness, and the spirit of good will that come when you bring
together a group of men and women who have careers of their own, spend
virtually all their time among their constituents, and live close to the
land.

As a citizen I've always appreciated all the advantages of our state -- our
tremendous resource base; the independence and decency of our people; and
the duty we feel to be good stewards of the land and the life around us.
And thanks to many far-sighted decisions over the years -- from water
development, to good schools, to a climate that favors free enterprise, to
the mineral trust fund, our state has been governed very well. And Wyoming
is on course to a very bright future.

Another quality I observed in this legislature and still appreciate is the
spirit of bipartisanship. That's not to say that I didn't see any
disagreements. This is a political business we're in, and that means people
take sides and argue. But you get things done by making the best case you
can for your point of view, by keeping personalities out of it, and trying
to persuade others to come around. Party politics has its place, but it's
severely overdone in Washington, D.C. these days. Out there we could learn
a thing or two from the tone and spirit of the Wyoming State Legislature.
(Applause.)

I'm also proud of how we campaign here. This is a two-party state. The
voters put a high value on authenticity, plain speaking, and civility.
Party label in Wyoming brings no guarantees -- as evidenced by the fact
that only two Republicans have been elected governor in the last four
decades. Not that we didn't try. (Laughter.) Al Simpson and I were always
laboring to elect Republican governors, and over the years we recruited
some fine people to run -- among them Pete Simpson, John Ostlund, and
Warren Morton. Somehow it just never panned out.

In fact, when I worked here Democrats had the House majority -- and I'll
never forget the day they brought in the sitting Vice President of the
United States, Hubert H. Humphrey, who came and spoke to us from this very
rostrum. It's been my privilege to work with a number of Democratic
Governors over the years on Wyoming issues, including Ed Herschler, Mike
Sullivan, and Dave Freudenthal. Another leading Democrat I remember and
respected is Gale McGee, who came from his academic background and won
three elections to the United States Senate. And, of course, my predecessor
in the House, also a Democrat, Teno Roncalio -- a fine guy and tremendously
popular across Wyoming. During my first term in the House, Teno showed up
at one of my public events, where he stood up and declared for all to hear
that I was doing a terrific job in Congress. It made me feel so good I took
the rest of the day off. (Laughter.)

On the Republican side, every time I visit this capitol my thoughts turn to
Stan Hathaway, and the man who actually arranged for me to work here. Stan
was the state party chair at the time, and he took care of the financial
end -- setting me up with a stipend of $300 for 40 days work. That worked
out to less than a dollar an hour, which may seem like a bargain, but it's
probably all I was worth. (Laughter.)

But I've always been grateful to Stan Hathaway for his early confidence in
me, because it led directly to my next several jobs in politics. And within
a few years of working under this capitol dome I had the privilege of
working in the White House. Stan and I kept in touch over the decades,
until he passed away last October. He was a great man. And to the end of
his days I counted on his continued friendship and wise counsel.

I remember one conversation with Stan that I had after I came back to
Wyoming in the late '70s, after I'd been working in Washington for a while.
We sat down one day here in Cheyenne to talk serious politics. He asked me
what I was thinking about doing. I told him I was thinking about running
for office. He said which office. I said, well, Senator Cliff Hansen is
retiring, and I thought I might try for the Senate. Stan listened, nodded,
and then, in that direct way of his, he said, there's only one problem. He
said, Dick, if you run for the Senate, Al Simpson is going to kick your
fanny. (Laughter.) And he didn't say fanny. (Laughter.)

Stan wasn't known for idle words, so I took his advice to heart and ran
instead for the U.S. House of Representatives. Sure enough, Al Simpson did
run for the Senate, sure enough, somebody else got their fanny kicked.
(Laughter.) So Al and I both arrived in Washington as freshman legislators
after the 1978 election. We served together for 10 years, and have shared
many fine experiences -- whether at home, or in D.C., or campaigning all
across the country. Because we represented a state with a small population
and knew so many of our constituents personally, both Al and I liked to
occasionally answer the telephones in our offices. One day Senator Simpson
picked up the phone and the voice on the other end said, "Where is that
skinny so-and-so?" And Al replied, "Speaking." (Laughter.)

In all his years as a U.S. senator, Al was the same person -- taking his
job seriously, but always keeping his humility. As Al himself has observed,
"Those who travel the high road of humility in Washington are not bothered
by heavy traffic." (Laughter.) Al and his brother Pete come from one of the
great Wyoming families -- and we all remember their dad and mom, Governor
Milward Simpson and Lorna. Al is a statesman, one of the truly great sons
of Wyoming, and I'm proud to count him as a colleague and a friend.

I'm also proud to have served with our longtime senior senator, Malcolm
Wallop, a rancher and a patriot who served in the legislature before going
to Washington. And now, with Congresswoman Barbara Cubin and Senators Craig
Thomas and Mike Enzi, we continue to have a delegation we can be very proud
of. (Applause.)

Another legendary representative of our state in the nation's capital was,
of course, Cliff Hansen. Out in Washington, power is usually measured in
terms of title and seniority. But every so often, somebody comes along who
immediately commands a certain kind of authority and respect. It isn't
accorded on the basis of tenure, or notoriety, or the size of their state.
It's accorded on the basis of good judgment, integrity, reliability, and
character. And from the day he arrived in Washington until the day he left
12 years later, Cliff Hansen had that kind of authority, had that kind of
respect.

Cliff retired from politics some years ago, but he's still going strong up
in Jackson, and later this year he'll mark his 94th birthday. He's well
remembered still in the nation's capital for his integrity and his
independence, his good humor, and his complete devotion to the causes of
those people who elected him.

Cliff showed that devotion in every situation, and I recall one in
particular from the time I was serving as White House Chief of Staff for
Jerry Ford. The President and I were upstairs in the family quarters in the
White House one night, going over legislation. The President reviewed a
number of bills that were pending before him that had passed the Congress.
He paused over one in particular that involved a number of amendments to
the Mineral Leasing Act. For various reasons, he didn't like this
particular bill, although it had an amendment on it that had been added by
Cliff Hansen -- that Cliff cared very much about. The President decided he
was going to have to veto the bill anyway, so he asked me to get Cliff on
the phone so that he could tell him personally that he was about to veto
this bill that had an important Hansen amendment on it.

So I contacted the Senator on the phone, passed the phone to the President.
The President explained he was going to have to veto the bill, and then he
listened for a minute, and then he laughed and hung up. And I asked him
what the Senator had said. He said, well, I told him I was going to have to
veto his bill. And he said, that's okay. I understand, Mr. President. He
said, I'm going to have to override your veto. (Laughter.)

Well, as President Ford knew, the Senator from Wyoming was not given to
exaggeration. As promised, the President delivered the veto. As promised,
Cliff delivered the override. (Laughter and applause.)

In those days with President Ford I was still pretty young -- at 34, I
believe the youngest person to be chief of staff. In Gerald Ford I had yet
another fine role model, and I still look up to the man for his steadiness,
for his kindness, and complete lack of pretense, for the way he conducted
himself during one of the most serious constitutional crises in the
nation's history. It was too brief an experience, since we ended up losing
the 1976 election -- and I thereby became the youngest former chief of
staff. (Applause.)

In all the time since then, I've been fortunate to see the greatness of
America from many vantage points. As Wyoming's congressman, I saw it in the
debates of our democracy, and in the sense of fairness and respect that
makes those debates possible. As Secretary of Defense, I saw the greatness
of America in the character of the men and women in uniform who protect our
nation. And in my current office, I see the strength of the American people
in a time of testing, and the resolve of the President who leads us today.

Working with President Bush is an experience I've appreciated, but that I
had not anticipated. As most of you know, when I left the Pentagon in 1993
I believed it was the end of my career in public service. Things began to
change when then-Governor Bush asked me to help him find him a running
mate. I ended up joining the ticket for the first election in the 21st
Century, which turned out to be one of the truly historic contests. During
the campaign the President said he had not picked me because he was worried
about carrying Wyoming. (Laughter.) I've often had the chance since to
remind him those three electoral votes came in mighty handy. (Applause.)

These five years have turned out to be a period of extraordinary
consequence in the life of this nation. Challenges have come to us in
legion, and we have seen the land we love come under direct attack. We've
taken up the work of delivering justice to freedom's enemies, and
liberating brutalized people, and serving the cause of liberty and peace in
a troubled region of the world. There is still hard work ahead in the war
on terror, because we're dealing with enemies who are intent on bringing
great harm to any nation that opposes their aims. Their prime targets are
the United States and the American people -- so we have a continuing
responsibility to lead in this fight. And as the President said in the
State of the Union, "We are in this fight to win -- and we are winning."
(Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a privilege to serve America as Vice President.
But I can tell you that of the many privileges I've had as an elected
official, that first one will always carry special significance. When you
serve in the House of Representatives, you are recognized from the chair
not by your name but according to your state. And for better than a decade,
I proudly answered to the title of "the gentleman from Wyoming." And for
that, I have a debt that I owe to the people of this state that is hard to
square.

Another man who served as Vice President, Harry Truman, used to say, "I
tried never to forget who I was and where I'd come from and where I would
go back to." For my part, I've always found it easy to stick to my roots. I
would not be where I am today were it not for the friendship and the
confidence of people all across this state. It's always good to be home.
And this morning, as an officeholder -- and, more than that, as a citizen
of Wyoming -- I count it a high honor to be in such distinguished company,
and I'm grateful for your very kind hospitality.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

END 11:34 A.M. MST

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