Thank you, Jerry. Thank you very much for those kind, kind comments. I want to thank Matt, Juanita, Linda and everyone involved in the Bryce Harlow Foundation for this distinct honor and award. To see so many friends that I’ve had the chance to work as a business guy, governor and now senator with. From across town and representing so many interests that make up our country. Special congratulations for all the Bryce Harlow Fellows. I did acknowledge, as I think someone mentioned earlier, Michelle Maiwurm who is on my staff, told me tonight she was a Bryce Harlow Fellow. She is doing a great job for me. If you like what we’re going to do, I’m partnering with Bob Corker on GSE reform. Michelle, a Bryce Harlow Fellow, was one of the authors of that. Let me also…where did Jerry go? He didn’t slip by. Jerry and I have become really good friends over the last couple years. We have been actively involved in this effort to think about hi-tech immigration capital formation in terms of early-stage companies. Matter of fact, you guys missed something that was really cool. Jerry Moran and I went together to South by Southwest, which is this hi-tech conference. Moran and Warner looking like tech hipsters in Austin, was a sight to behold. Talking about crowd-funding and all the things we’re going to do. Jerry, you know my background. You know I was involved in cell phones. I’m the only politician who says, “Even when I’m speaking leave your cell phones on. It doesn’t bother me at all when they go off.” I would have thought as a great national republican leader, you would have known better than speak good things about a democrat with a cell phone around.
Jerry Moran is one of the reasons why I have hope for what we all need to do to get our country back on the right track. I know John McCain was going to mention what Jerry had as well, “What is this in Washington?” About the idea that a Democrat and a Republican working together; you’re immediately called a “gang member.” Let me echo what Jerry said as well about John McCain. He has been part of more efforts to try to get to a solution on issue after issue than almost any member of the Senate. It’s an honor for me to work with him and I know he’s going to be part of not just immigration, but a whole host of issues as we try to get to the finish line. Let me also acknowledge a former colleague, who I think in many ways represents as well all that Bryce Harlow was in his life in terms of integrity and service and being willing to get things done. I can say, as somebody who only had a chance to serve with her for a few years, but the Senate is a poorer place with the loss of Olympia Snowe. But Olympia, it is wonderful, wonderful to see you tonight.
Let me also thank Maya MacGuiness, who I’ve spent an enormous amount of time with in the last couple years. And Bobbi Kilberg. I am proud to be Bobbi’s token Democrat in any group. To think about that video you saw earlier; Saxby Chambliss and Dick Durbin agreeing on something on video. They have both been great partners and friends as well. Let me also acknowledge the Bryce Harlow Foundation for recognizing Charlie Black. For about 15 years, Charlie’s office–Charlie and Scott and Peter Kelly and I can absolutely attest to the [bona fides] of Charlie Black in terms of bipartisanship. If you can deal with Scott Pastrick and Peter Kelly for umpteen years, you’re a pretty darn good bipartisan. But Charlie’s office was next door to mine when I was in the business world and I would echo what John and others have said. I knew him through other folks, our paths crossed occasionally, but he’s somebody who brought the idea of a principled advocate for causes that he believed in. No one represents that [more] than Charlie Black. Bryce Harlow does an honor by honoring you and Judy tonight. Congratulations.
Matt promised the absolute guarantee, since this is lobbyist prom, is it everybody gets done before 9:00. I’m going to make sure that we even exceed that a little bit. But let me just make a couple of quick comments about an issue that I am absolutely passionate about. As a former business guy I always thought it was strange, as I went into politics, to think that people in politics would suddenly decide that they divide the room into red and blue and say, “I’m only going to take ideas from this side of the room and not from that side of the room.” And while I love politics and the clash of ideas, in many ways the one thing I have always had some frustration with, particularly now that I’m a legislator–I’ve been a business guy and a governor–now as a legislator, is the fact that some people in politics can make a career of doing nothing but running down the other side and have that be viewed as a successful outcome. For me as [a] business guy, I thought if you never put out a good product and all you talked about was how bad your competition was then you wouldn’t be in business very long.
I think the issue that in the three and a half or four years that I’ve been here that has grabbed me in my gut is this issue of debt and deficit. You know, we’re $16.5 trillion in debt and it goes up $3 billion a night. It’s even a lot of money for Charlie Black. The frustrating thing is that this shouldn’t be this hard to solve. We’re blessed to live in the world’s most prosperous, as Jerry said most entrepreneurial, most innovative country. We don’t have to solve this all overnight. We just have to find a way to find the common cause to knock about $4 trillion off of that $16 trillion number over the next ten years. The remarkable thing is that through budget crisis and fiscal cliff and debt-ceiling debates and the ugliness and the inappropriateness and the some plain old bad policy that we’ve enacted over the last couple of years we’re actually more than half the way there. The fact [is] whether we’re at $2.5 trillion or $2.2 trillion, we’ve got basically $2 trillion of debt reduction to do over the next decade. In a country as great as ours, with all of you who are helping to educate us, who are elected officials, we all need to be in this boat together. Because regardless of the business interests you represent, there is no issue that will do more to set back America and there will be no issue that will do more for economic growth and job growth–nothing the president or Congress is talking about–that will do more than getting our nation’s balance sheet right.
The remarkable thing is in the last decade we cut taxes by $4.5 trillion over ten years, we doubled defense spending on the defense side, created Homeland Security, went to war twice on the credit card, created new entitlements, and the biggest problem about our debt–I can say this to a group like this–it’s not the politicians fault–it’s the doctor’s fault. Because we’re blessed to live in a country where we’re living a lot longer. Charlie, I’m going to give you the one quiz question tonight: Who set 65 as the retirement age? It wasn’t Roosevelt–that’s the answer a Republican would give. It wasn’t Hoover. It was Bismarck! When he was head of Germany…think about this…When he was head of Germany, he promised a government check when you hit 65 because average life expectancy was 56; perfect politician promise. We now live in a country where we’re blessed to live at 80 and if you’re a healthy woman at 20 you’re going to live to 100. So what we need is the John McCain’s and the Mark Warner’s and the Jerry Moran’s to realize that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have got all the answers. But the answer of trying to put a little more revenue back in the revenue stream, to do a little bit smarter cuts than the stupidity of sequestration, to recognize that Medicare and Social Security are the best social programs ever, but the math just doesn’t work anymore. It shouldn’t be that big a reach.
So the appeal I would make to you, in my couple minutes in front of you, you who in this room there is more experience about working issues across a host of areas than I ever hope to have in this town. But anybody who thinks there is a Republican only or a Democrat only answer to this isn’t connected to reality. Anybody who thinks we’re going to get this by just taxing the rich or just hitting entitlement programs isn’t connected to reality. The appeal I’d make to you is that those of you who are Republicans in the room, go find a Democrat who is willing to do entitlement reform and support them. Those of you who Democrats in the room, go find a Republican who is willing to do revenues and support them. Until we, and unless we get out of own our personal/political fox holes, not which sacrifice in principle, but be willing to get out of our own political fox holes and find that common cause, then this issue which, to my mind, with the tragedy of yesterday, the issue of this national debt is a greater threat to our nation and to our future than any terrorist action. We will not be destroyed from outside, we can only be destroyed if we are unwilling to step up and take responsibility of paying our bills and making sure our country’s fiscal path and balance sheet is set on the right path. We’ve got a window over the next four months. Maya MacGuiness and her organization engaged the business community in the last year and a half and we’ve raised closed to $45 million. Which frankly scares the heck out of some in this town because we’re finally putting together something that would institutionally support people of both parties that would occasionally check the Democrat and Republican hats and put our country first. But I think Bryce Harlow, who everything I read about him was somebody who said, “It’s great to be an advocate but at the end of the day it’s all about putting our country first”, he would respect this kind of effort. The expertise that’s in this room could be extraordinarily helpful getting there.
I’ll close with this. There are moments. My good friend Jerry Moran said that I’m an optimist and most days I am, but this job, and this wasn’t my first rodeo, but I didn’t appreciate, Charlie, how tough it was sometimes in this town to get things done. There have been times, along this path as we’ve lurched from crisis to crisis and gangs have come together and fallen apart, that I will share that I will get disappointed. At moments when I got the bleakest, I would always fall back on that great Churchill quote. Churchill, early in WW2, the Nazis had conquered all of Europe, there was a question of what America was going to do, it was in the midst of the Battle of Britain. London was being bombed on a constant basis and it was a real question: Could England survive? Churchill got up and gave a memorable speech where he stood up and said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing…after they’ve tried everything else.” I think we’re at that moment in time, at least in our politics, where on this issue of getting our country’s balance sheet right, is that we’ve tried everything else. It’s time for us to do the right thing. Let’s honor the memory of Bryce Harlow. Get this debt and deficit fixed, put our country’s fiscal path on the right level, and make sure that all of us look forward to a country where, yes it is about red and blue, but more importantly it’s about making America move forward. Thank you all very much.