Government is too big. He wants to grow it. Congress spends too much money. He promises more. Taxes are too high. He wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan. And let me be specific. The democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.
My sister Heather and her husband. They just built a service station that's now open for business like millions of others that run small businesses. How are they going to be better off if taxes go up. Or maybe you are trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or in Ohio. Or you're trying to create jobs from clean coal, from Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Or you're trying to keep a small farm in the family, right here in Minnesota. How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? [up to 1:39]
Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. They are the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners or on self-designed presidential seals. Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speech-making in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things and then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk. The ones that we've always been able to count on to serve and to defend America.
Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests and lobbyists and comfortable committee chairman in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency from the Primary election of 2000 to this very day. Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd. He's a man who's there to serve his country and not just his party, a leader who's not looking for a fight but sure isn't afraid of one either.
Harry Reid, the Majority of the current "Do nothing" Senate, he not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee. He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentleman, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly, what the Majority leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain and that is only...that's only one more reason to take the maverick out of the Senate, put him in the White House.
My fellow citizens, the American Presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery". This world of threats and dangers, it's not just a community and it doesn't just need an organizer and though, both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they're always, quote, fighting for you, let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death and that man is John McCain.
You know, in our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world, the nightmare world in which this man and others, equally brave, served and suffered for their country. And it's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six by four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office. But if Senator McCain is elected President, that is the journey he will have made. It's the journey of an upright and honorable man. The kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this great country, only, he was among those who came home. To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless, the wisdom that comes even to the captives by the grace of God, the special confidence of those who have seen evil and have seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio...Tom Moe recalls looking through a pinhole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway by the guards, day after day, and the story is told, when McCain shuffled back from tortuous interrogations, he would turn towards Moe's door and he'd flash a grin and a thumbs up, as if to say, "We're going to pull through this!" My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through the next four years!
For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words, but for a lifetime John McCain has inspired with his deeds. If character is the measure in this election and hope the theme and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause! Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next President of the United States! Thank you and God bless America!
