Bush offers U.S. veterans 'new mission' at home

By Patricia Wilson
Reuters

July 13, 2000
Web posted at: 3:10 p.m. EDT (1910 GMT)

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) -- Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush unveiled a $75 million program Thursday offering U.S. military veterans "a new mission" as mentors and role models for the nation's youth.

Pushing his "compassionate conservative" message ahead of the Republican National Convention beginning July 31 in Philadelphia, the Texas governor's five-year proposal would provide matching grants to organizations that connect veterans and retired military personnel with young people through mentoring, tutoring, after-school and other programs.

Campaign aides said it would be administered through the Defense Department's DANTES (Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support) division, which runs the Troops-to-Teachers program that facilitates the placement of former military personnel in classrooms across the country.

"I can't think of a better group of citizens to rally than those who have served the country, those who know what it's like to serve something greater than self," Bush told the Pennsylvania Veterans of Foreign Wars convention.

"America's veterans have undertaken missions abroad to protect our nation's freedom," he said. "Now, we must engage these courageous men and women in a new mission at home -- to pass on the qualities of discipline, character, hard work, and civic responsibility to the next generation of Americans."

"Different kind of Republican"

Bush casts himself as "a different kind of Republican," a fiscal conservative who also recognizes the need to help the less fortunate. However, Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic rival in the Nov. 7 election, has suggested voters look beyond the Texan's rhetoric to his record.

"Talk is cheap," Gore said Wednesday. "It is deeds that matter." On Thursday, the vice president slammed Bush for making his top priority "a massive tax cut," resulting in a budget shortfall in Texas and "deficits in its health care and criminal justice systems."

Bush hit back, telling reporters at a news conference that

Gore had attacked him for passing a supplemental appropriations bill on the very same day that President Clinton signed a $15 billion federal supplemental appropriations bill.

"That's why Vice President Al Gore has got no credibility on issues like this," Bush said. "On the one hand he wants to launch an attack and, on the other, President Clinton is doing the same thing."

Bush called Texas "a balanced budget state" that had had a surplus since he became governor and would continue to do so.

Opinion polls show Bush has had success since the primaries in setting the agenda for the Nov. 7 election by sticking relentlessly to his message of "compassionate conservatism" and proposing initiatives touching on traditionally Democratic issues like education and the environment.

Tribute to Veterans

He has been leading the vice president narrowly in most polls since late spring. In Pennsylvania, a key swing state, Bush was four percentage points ahead in a new survey released Wednesday.

The Keystone Poll had Bush at 44 percent and Gore at 40.

Clinton and Gore carried Pennsylvania by nine points in 1992 and 1996.

In Pittsburgh, Bush paid tribute to 25 million veterans for serving their country honorably by exhibiting "the ideals of discipline, order, courage, and civic responsibility" and pointed out the importance of passing those ideals on to the next generation.

Aides cited a recent survey of U.S. youth, the "New Millennium Project," which showed that students chose as their three lowest ranking priorities in life: being a good citizen who cares about the good of the country; being involved in democracy and voting, and being involved in helping make one's community a better place.

At the same time, students felt they lacked positive role models, the aides said. A recent survey by the Horatio Alger Society found that 21 percent of them had no heroes at all.

Reuters news material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium.