Buchanan on the Federal Government
Text excerpted from Pat Buchanan's speech at the AARP Conference, Bedford, NH January 26, 1996
Question and Answer: Mike Cuthbert: Do you think the federal employees should be furloughed every time congress has a stalemate over the federal budget if yes, why?[laughter] Pat Buchanan: I do not think look, I look, I grew up in Washington D.C., and I used to got to, school in an inner city high school, and I didn't have a car or any ride so we hitchhiked everyday and everyday I got a ride from a government bureaucrat,[laughter] and let me tell you it's like I used to tell people they're very nice folks, they're not smart enough to run the world, but they're very nice folks, and so listen, they have made commitments to work for the Federal government, and they got contracts, and we ought to honor em, we ought not hold them hostage in my judgement, and if your going to lop off some federal programs and some have to be lopped off, you treat people with decency you give em a time, to tell em this program is going to be cut down and you got time to move to another job. So you don't treat anybody brutily, and you treat em cavalierly in my judgement, but if you get Pat Buchanan as a president I will work with that Congress, we will not have any stalemates, because I will be leading that Congress directing Newt what to do,[applause] and majority leader Bob Dole what to do,[applause] and we will get the job done, I can guide those guys they need guidance back there.[laughter] Mike Cuthbert: Another question from our audience. Balancing the federal budget is very important but more important, is the fact that the Federal Government is out of touch with the American people and is out of control. How would you as president bring the rest of the government into control? Pat Buchanan: You know that's uh, the gentleman or lady who asked that question, is touching on one of the central concerns of Americans. I go out in the country and I'v traveled this country for years. And these folks come up to you and they say, they haven't got a clue back in Washington the impact of what they're do'in. Both judges, and bureaucrats. Shelly and I my wife went up to, a little place called [inaudible], California. Tiny little la logging town in the Trinity Alps they take a few trees out each year and they log em. And they've been do'in it for five generations they love it up there they don't want to come down to the cities, they raise their families up there. So some Federal judge declares nine million acres of California and Oregon, are henceforth off limits to logging, because, there're some spotted owl in there, and each spotted owl gets two thousand acres,[laughter] each pair. I say my wife and I live on a half and acre, why do the two owls need two thousand acres?[laughter] And you know I was chucklin about it until I went up there, and I saw the despair on the faces of those men who could no longer support their families or their wives and their town was twenty-one percent unemployment, and twenty-two percent of them were on welfare and they'd all worked, for generations, and they didn't know what to do. And I went up there in ninety-two, and I didn't know what to do. Before I left that town, these pretty little girls like five of em, thirteen years old or so, they came running up for autographs, and one of em says I wish we were eighteen, Mr. Buchanan so we could vote for you, because all our daddies are losing their jobs. Now that is the indifference, now that is the callousness of a distant federal government, making cavaliar decisions, the impact of which it does not know.[applause] And I'll tell you [inaudible] we've got to get this government downsized and back to the people. We've got to get it downsized we've gut ta, these arogant Federal judges they ought to have term limits on every single one of em.[applause]