Phil Gramm for President 1996 Campaign Brochure

‘Restoring the American Dream’

The Gramm Record: The Power of Principle

There is little doubt that Phil Gramm can change the course of America to ensure a brighter future for our children. As a young economics professor at Texas A&M University in the 1970's, Gramm was concerned about the direction of our country. Government had become increasingly dominant -- rewarding us when we fail, taxing us when we succeed. In 1978, Gramm won a U.S. House seat in central Texas as a conservative Democrat, and wasted little time in starting to change Washington.

1981, Phil Gramm co-authored President Reagan's economic program that cut government spending, rebuilt defense, cut taxes, ignited the longest peacetime expansion in American history, and created 20 million new jobs. That budget was the cornerstone of the Reagan Revolution, which won the Cold War, brought down the Berlin Wall and liberated Eastern Europe.

Angry that Gramm had enlisted in the Reagan Revolution, the Democratic leadership kicked him off the Budget Committee in January of 1983. Believing his constituents were being disenfranchised, and without having to do so, he courageously resigned his House seat, went home and ran for reelection as a Republican. No Republican had ever received more than a third of the vote in his district, but Phil Gramm acted on principle and won. Gramm told voters "I had to decide between Tip O'Neill and y'all, and I chose y'all." In a special election, Gramm defeated nine Democrats, establishing his place in Texas history.

In 1984, the people of Texas promoted Phil to the U.S. Senate. As a Republican Senator, Gramm's first order of business was to write legislation that would become a household name, as well as the only real deficit reduction effort in the last twenty years: Gramm-Rudman cut the deficit by nearly 40% and reduced the size of government relative to the size of the economy.

Today, Phil Gramm continues to fight a federal government that can't keep its hands out of our pockets. In 1994, risking "political suicide," Gramm stood up alone against President Clinton's Healthcare Plan. As twenty Republican Senators signed on to legislation that raised taxes, Gramm stood firm and refused to compromise. Soon other Republicans followed his lead and the President's nationalized healthcare plan was beaten. Time and Time again, Gramm's record illustrates his essential qualities: Common sense and uncommon courage.

THE GRAMM PRESIDENCY: A POWERFUL AGENDA.

Some claim it will be impossible for the next President to balance the budget. Phil Gramm is not among them. It is his number-one Priority. It is also proof of Gramm's fearless nature and his ability to make the tough choices required to change America:

Phil Gramm would cut government spending and cut taxes to ensure long-term economic growth and to let families keep more of their own money to invest in their own children, their own businesses, and their own futures. "I know the government, I know the family, and I know the difference."

Phil Gramm would reform the welfare system by asking able-bodied men and women "riding in the wagon" to help the rest of us pull, and he would have the political courage to stop giving people more and more money to have more and more children on welfare.

Phil Gramm would replace the Clinton Crime bill and its misguided social programs with policies that grab violent criminals by the throat. A Gramm administration will stop building prisons like Holiday Inns and make prisoners work. "We don't have to live in a country where we open up the newspaper every morning and read that a robber, or a rapist, or a murderer who has been convicted five or six times is back on the street having killed another child. I know how to fix that. And if I have to string barbed wire on every closed military base in America, I'm going to put those people in jail and keep them there."

Phil Gramm will put families first in America again. He has led the Senate fight for family tax relief to allow families, not government, to make their own decisions on how best to spend their own money.

Phil Gramm will fight to bring back the America where you can do better than your parents did, and your children will have the opportunity to do better than you have done. "I want an, America where families are limited only by the size of their dreams."

"LIMITED GOVERNMENT AND UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITY NOT ONLY BRING UNPARALLELED PROSPERITY, THEY ALSO REINFORCE THE BEST VALUES OF OUR PEOPLE: SELF-RELIANCE, INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, AUTHENTIC COMPASSION AND COMMITMENT TO FAITH AND FAMILY."

TWO LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Phil Gramm knows the American Dream, because he and his wife, Wendy, have lived it.

In 1942, Phil Gramm was born to Army Sergeant Kenneth Gramm and his wife Florence at Fort Benning, Georgia. When Phil was two years old, his father suffered a massive stroke that left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Times were tough. And when Phil's father died, times became tougher. Florence gathered her children around the kitchen table and told them that they would have to live on less. She began working double shifts as a practical nurse to help make ends meet. Phil's brother, Don bought the groceries, cooked the meals and wrote the checks. Phil washed the dishes, mowed the lawn and took care of the other chores. The family grew closer and stronger.

Although Phil failed the third, seventh, and ninth grades, his mother had a dream that he would graduate from college, and a mother's dreams do not die easily in America. With Kenneth's G.I. insurance, she sent Phil to the Georgia Military Academy, where he graduated with honors. Phil went on to the University of Georgia, where he received a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in economics. From small-town son to courageous Senate leader, Phil Gramm is a testament to the opportunities America offers.

The story of Wendy Lee Gramm is even more remarkable. Her grandfather came from Korea to work as a laborer in the sugar cane fields of Hawaii. He did not come looking for government help, he came looking for freedom and opportunity. And he found it, many times over. In fact, Wendy's father became the state's first Asian-American ever to become an office of a sugar cane company in Hawaii. And Wendy went on to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Bush. There, she monitored the trading of all commodity futures in America, including the sugar cane that her grandfather came to America to harvest.

Extraordinary families? No. Just ordinary families in an extraordinary country. Phil Gramm says, "With America's opportunity and freedom, ordinary people have been able to do extraordinary things."