Last Message from the Senator

A fresh start for America
By John F. Kerry November 1, 2004

SHORTLY after Christopher Reeve passed away, his wife, Dana, stood with me on a stage in Columbus, Ohio. She wanted to talk to America about her gutsy, heroic husband and his dreams for the future. She told us, "He imagined living in a world where politics would never get in the way of hope."

Also with me that day was John Glenn, whose daring journey to explore the heavens made us hopeful again.

In the closing days of this campaign, I ask Americans to choose the vision John Glenn embodies and Christopher Reeve never abandoned.

On Tuesday, Americans face a fundamental choice: We can choose to continue the failed policies of the past four years -- or we can vote for a fresh start for America. For the past four years, George W. Bush has made the wrong choices for America. Nowhere is this more clear than in his catastrophic misjudgments in Iraq.

He took his eye off the ball -- diverting resources from destroying the terrorists who attacked us on Sept. 11 to rush to war against Saddam Hussein, who had no collaborative links to Al Qaeda and no links to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Bush administration now calls Iraq "a remarkable success story." Americans know better. Iraq is a mess: We see kidnappings and hostage-takings, cities too dangerous for our soldiers to enter, more than 1,100 brave American troops killed, and now the incredible failure to secure weapons and explosives -- at the Al Qaqaa complex alone, 760,000 pounds of explosives have disappeared. It took just one pound of these explosives to blow up Pan Am Flight 103.
And we see another set of Bush failures here at home. Bush has spent four years fighting for the powerful and well-connected, but his policies have squeezed our middle class and those struggling to join it.

He's let companies outsource jobs to Asia and given them tax breaks for doing so -- and he's the first president to lose jobs in 70 years. Four million more Americans have fallen into poverty on his watch -- 1.3 million of them children. He's ignored the runaway cost of college, let healthcare costs soar out of control, and driven gas prices up to $2 a gallon with an energy policy that punishes American families -- and rewards the Saudi royal family. And after raiding the Social Security trust fund, he's now vowed to privatize Social Security with a plan that will cut benefits up to 45 percent.

If the president thinks we're doing just fine, then he must believe that we shouldn't hope for something better.

It doesn't have to be this way. John Edwards and I will take this country in a new direction.
First, we'll get healthcare costs under control. That means covering all of our children and giving families access to the same private health insurance that members of Congress give themselves. It means allowing our seniors to import safe, FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada. And it means lifting the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.

Second, we'll fight to raise middle-class incomes by keeping and creating good-paying jobs in America. We'll roll back tax breaks for those who make more than $200,000 a year and give middle-class families tax credits to help pay for college, healthcare, and child care.
Third, we'll work to save Social Security. I will not privatize Social Security; I will not cut benefits; and I will not raise the retirement age.

Fourth, we'll make America independent of Mideast oil within 10 years. We'll do it by investing in technology and alternative energy sources and in cars and SUVs you only have to fill up once a month, not every week.

Finally, I will fight a smarter, tougher, and more effective war on terror. I will stop at nothing to hunt down, capture, and kill the terrorists. I will never give any nation or organization a veto over our national security. And I will always build and lead strong alliances so that America never has to go it alone.

If you join with me on Tuesday, we will both defend our country and fight for America's families. We will unite Democrats and Republicans to succeed in Iraq and restore America's leadership in the world. We will once again stand up for the middle class and all those struggling to join it. We will never again allow the politics of fear to obscure our hope for the future. And together, we will lift up this nation with the confidence that our best days are still ahead.