First we talked about the bridge that collapsed. I was here earlier, saw the collapse first hand. I was impressed by the magnitude of the problem. It was — my heart was touched by the fact that people lost their lives.

The job of the federal government is to get help moving as quickly as possible. I just talked to the Governor, who has processed the final and the necessary paperwork so that a flood of help can come down, Tim, to get these people realizing somebody cares about them.

It's a — it's, we have an amazing country, where people's instinct, first instinct, is to help save life, and there's a lot of peoples' first instincts here in the Twin Cities was to save the lives of somebody who was hurtin', and I know the people of this community thank those, their fellow citizens who did that.

God bless the people of this part of the world.

If you're worried about the environment, which I am, it seems like to make sense that we use nukyular power. It's renewable and it's clean.

One of the reasons why I've come to this center is to encourage care givers and sons and daughters and community and faith-based groups to help seniors understand, one, what's available in the new program, and, two, to encourage seniors to fill out the simple, four-page form so that they can take advantage of this good deal. And it's a good deal. This isn't political talk. This is true.

I really want to thank the folks here at Maple Grove for letting us come by. It's not easy to host the President. It turns out his entourage is quite big these days. But I really want to — thank you for letting us do this.

Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he hated America. He was a threat because he was shooting missiles at American airplanes. He was a threat because he harbored terrorists. He was a threat because he invaded his neighbors. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction. He was a threat. Now, we didn't find the stockpiles we all thought were there. That includes me and my opponent.

DUANE ALBERTS OF PINE SHELTER FARMS: Well, Mr. President, it's time to kill the death tax. I just want to start out that way.
DUBYA: Well, he's got — the man's got an opinion. We've got it — it's on its way to extinction. Unfortunately, it pops back up. It's going to be an odd year in 2010. You can imagine people — I mean, it goes away in 2010, it pops back up in 2011. So people are going to have some weird choices in 2010 when it comes to the death tax. But never mind. It's a little morbid.

I appreciate the good folks from Minnesota and Iron Ridge and Northern Wisconsin who are with us today. Thanks for coming. And by the look of things, I'm in Bush-Cheney country.

First, Jess, thanks for leading this august group. He's Tejano. Nothing better to be in the presence of a Tejano.

For years, when we grew up — at least us baby boomers grew up — we thought that oceans would protect us from harm's way.

Doctors use paper files to keep tracks of their patients.

One sure way to hold things up is that the federal lands say, you can't build on us.

I'm working with Congress to pass the Striving Reader and Math Initiative Program, and that's a fancy word for saying we're going to intervene quickly with struggling middle-class — middle grade and high school students.

I shared a story the other day during a press conference where I talked about a dinner I had with Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. And we're eating Kobe beef. I don't know whether it's grown here in Minnesota or not, but it's real good.

If you're from a state where there's a lot of rural people, there's nothing better than to be able to transfer information quickly from a rural doc to a hospital for analysis in order to save lives.

By the way, we rank 10th amongst the industrialized world in broadband technology and its availability. That's not good enough for America. Tenth is 10 spots too low as far as I'm concerned.

Broadband technology must be affordable. In order to make sure it gets spread to all corners of the country, it must be affordable. We must not tax broadband access. If you want broadband access throughout the society, Congress must ban taxes on access.

We sent a clear message to Saddam Hussein. 'Disarm, the world has asked you to disarm for 12 solid years and now is the time. For the security of America and our friends, and for peace in the world, for you to disarm.' And we gave him plenty chance to do so.

There's been a lot made about the military might of the United States of America. And we're plenty tough. And we're plenty tough and plenty strong because we have a job to do.

When you hear about war all the time on your TV screens, the speculation of war and the discussion of war, it's not conducive to a confident tomorrow.

We need a energy policy.

We said loud and clear [to corporate scoundrels], if you cheat the shareholder and your employees, you will be held responsible for those decisions. The world is now more peaceful because we acted.

We have faced challenge in this nation.

The other issue regarding health care is whether or not health care is affordable and available. And one reason it's not in certain communities is because there is too many lawsuits.

And if you're interested in serving, just go to USA Freedom Corps on the computer, throw it up on the Internet and there's all kinds of ways for you to serve our nation. No, this country is militarily strong, but our true strength is the heart of our fellow citizens.

The true strength of America is the fact that we've got millions of fellow citizens who are willing to love a neighbor just like they would like to be loved themselves. That's the real strength of this country, because we're a deep and compassionate nation.

I don't know what was going through the mind of the enemy. They must have thought the national religion of America was materialism, therefore we're selfish and self-absorbed, we'd take a couple of steps back after September the 11th, 2000. They probably said, oh, they'd file a lawsuit or two.

One of the worst taxes — one of the worst taxes in America is what they call the death tax. It's a tax that taxes people's assets more than once. It's a tax that hurts farmers and ranchers. It says you cannot leave your business —if you're a small business owner — to your relative.

I believe people have taken a step back and asked, "What's important in life?" You know, the bottom line and this corporate America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself?

And I'm here to campaign for John Kline for the United States House of Representatives. If the good folks in his district are wise, they'll send him to Washington.

When we grew up, the baby boomers and everybody else, we never really thought we'd be attacked. I mean, the last thing that I entered my mind when I was getting out of high school in 1964 is that an enemy would attack America. And, yet, here you are graduating from high school, the first high school class to ever have seen the 48 contiguous states attacked by an enemy.