Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.
President Bush earned $400,000 for his job as president last year. That's not really that much for being president when you think about it. But President Bush, he doesn't do it for the money, he does it for the eight months of vacation every year.
While I'm on foreign soil, I - I just don't feel that I should be speaking about differences with regards to myself and President Obama on foreign policy, either foreign policy of the past, or for foreign policy prescriptions.
This is the first time a newly inaugurated president has had any impact on a current budget." What that means is that normally when a president's inaugurated in January, the budget for the first calendar year of his term or the first nine months is already done. So from January 21st all the way 'til October when the new budget's done, the president has to deal with the previous Congress' budget and has nothing to say about it. What they're saying is that Donald Trump has had a record-breaking, never-before-seen thing by having an impact on the budget in his first year.
We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and, in many respects, to conduct foreign policy. Whether we are of the same party, we are not the president's subordinates. We are his equal!
Bob Gates has unusual standing in the debate about the Obama administration's foreign policy: He was defense secretary for both a hawkish President George W. Bush and a wary President Obama. He understood Bush's desire to project power and Obama's skepticism.
We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases.
Reagan was president and had Democrats control the House and Senate, and they reformed the tax code. Clinton was president, and he had Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole; they reformed welfare and balanced the budget.
The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney worked at the State Department during the presidency of George W. Bush. While in Congress, Cheney has focused on pushing a Bush-era foreign policy, particularly in support of continuing the Afghanistan and Iraq wars indefinitely.
On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush's federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education.
Every president inherits difficult problems. George W. Bush inherited eight years of a failed foreign policy and did nothing about the growing threat of Islamic terrorism, except a one-time lob of a cruise missile into the desert at a camp that had long been abandoned. George Bush inherited that, and 9-11 was the result of that. Every president inherits problems. Harry Truman inherited a war. Stop blaming the person before you and go forward and take leadership and deal with the problem.
I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.
Taxes are important. President Bush's tax proposals leave no rich person behind. Voters approve of President Bush helping the kind of people they wish they were one of.
President Obama is one of the great political knife-fighters in modern history. He is a failed president - his economy is bleak, his foreign policy bleaker, his vision for American even bleaker still. But he wins.
I can give substantive advice to the administration, the president's campaign, or any campaign that would ask for it. And, of course, when I speak I can talk about my views on policy and I have been supportive of the president's policy on leading foreign-policy issues.
Well, I think the reality is that as you study - when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth. They expanded the economy. They expand tax revenues.
When you tax capital gains income, you don't help the economy, you hurt the economy, which is why President Kennedy, President Reagan, President Clinton and President Bush all believed we should have a lower rate for capital gains.