STATEMENT BY GERALDINE FERRARO
GrannyVoter Kick-off Event
Washington, DC - Ellipse
September 12, 2004

Over the past two months, as the Democrats and Republicans put on their conventions,
C- Span -- while covering each of the party's proceedings live from gavel to gavel on one of its channels -- ran convention speeches from previous campaigns on their other channel. I watched both Fritz Mondale's and my acceptance speeches. It was fascinating hearing the promises of 84 against the background of the political reality of 2004. But what I found particularly disconcerting at the end of my speech was my comment to my children and the children of America that my mother had not broken faith with me and my promise that I would not break faith them. Why I found that remark so disconcerting 20 years later, is because I failed to deliver on that promise.

But I'm not the only one. My generation of public leaders promised to be caretakers of the environment and at least return it to our children in the same condition that we received it. That has not happened.

We promised to provide an education system that would make us truly competitive in the world economy. We failed to deliver.

We promised to create a health care system that would make affordable health care available to all, here we are today in 2004 with 45 million people uninsured. We failed to deliver.

And adding to these failures of ours is the failure of our government. Budget deficits are spiraling out of control, and our standing in the world community, economically, morally and socially has deteriorated.

We Grannys - both women and men -- no longer are worrying about the children we made those promises to. They are old enough to worry about themselves. They are old enough to make their views known to the political leaders. They are savvy enough to inform those same leaders that they will bring their views into the voting booth on Election Day.

But we do worry about their children, our grandchildren and what the future holds for them. And we look back on the unfulfilled promises of 1984 with a greater sense of urgency.

There is no doubt that what is lacking in government is long term planning. That's because most elected officials think in two, four or six year terms, depending on when they're running for reelection. We want that to change.

And from my experience, I know that our government is capable of making long term, sometimes costly decisions.

In the early '80's, when I was in the Congress and a member of the Select Committee on Aging, our country was faced with the probability that the social security system would run out of money before the end of the century. At that time, Congressman Claude Pepper of Florida. And the Commission on Social Security, worked on legislation that would preserve the system to the year 2040. The legislation passed partly because it was the right thing to do, partly because no legislator wanted seniors angry at him or her on Election Day. We understood that seniors vote proportionately in greater numbers that any other segment of the population and that seniors vote their interests.

And that may be precisely why many public officials seem to ignore the long term needs of children - because children can't vote. At least until now.

This year we are changing that. On Election Day, we are giving our votes to our grandchildren and we ask every grandparent in America to do the same thing. We want grandparents to talk about the future with their grandchildren, to talk about the responsibility of voting and to demand answers from people running for office to a series of very pointed questions.

• What programs will you champion to increase access to education, employment and affordable, dependable healthcare over the next twenty years?
• How do you plan to protect the earth from pollution, depletion and climate chaos?
• What will you do to lift the burdens of public debt resist promoting programs that have to be paid for in the future?
• What are you doing to guarantee personal freedoms and strengthen civil liberties?
• What will you do to promote international cooperation among nations so America's children will not inherit a world of resentment, rage and violence?

Social Security and Medicare are still important issues to our generation. But we really don't believe there is a politician running for election that will play with the benefits of either and not risk defeat on Election Day. That's because Social Security and Medicare are known as the 3RD rail of politics.

Today on Grandparents Day, we are widening that third rail of politics and putting our grandchildren's issues on it as well. On Election Day, we will hold the candidates responsible for their actions and for their failure to act to secure a better future for America's children. That's what GrannyVote is all about.

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