Full text of Bush news conference

But, absolutely, it’s a good piece of legislation. I will do everything I can to prevent people from unwinding it, by the way.

Q What about the lawsuit? Which—

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t know about the lawsuit; I’m not a lawyer. But, you know, I’ll ask my lawyers about the lawsuit. But I know some people are trying to unwind No Child Left Behind. I’ve heard some states say, well, we don’t like it. Well, you know, my attitude about not liking it is this: If you teach a child to read and write, it shouldn’t bother you whether you measure. That’s all we’re asking.

The system for too long had just shuffled children through and just hoped for the best. And guess what happened? We had people graduating from high school who were illiterate—and that’s just not right in America. It wasn’t working. And so I came to Washington and worked with both Republicans and Democrats—this is a case where bipartisanship was really working well. And we said, look, we’re going to spend more money at the federal level. But the federal government, what, spends about 7 percent of the total education budgets around the country.

But we said, let’s change the attitude. We ought to start with the presumption every child can learn, not just some; and, therefore, if you believe every child can learn, then you ought to expect every classroom to teach. I hear feedback from No Child Left Behind, by the way—and, admittedly, I get the cook’s tour, sometimes—but I hear teachers talk to me about how thrilled they are with No Child Left Behind; they appreciate the fact that the system now shows deficiencies early so they can correct those problems. And it is working.

Okay. Mr. Knox.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I want to make sure I understand your answer to Mike about North Korea. He asked you how long you were prepared to let the multiparty talks proceed, in the face of what might be a gathering threat from North Korea, and you said, how long—I’m paraphrasing—how long we let it go on is dependent on our consensus among ourselves—

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Did you mean to say that you will neither refer North Korea to the U.N. for sanctions, nor take military action unless you have the agreement of all the other partners abroad?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I didn’t speak about military—I’m speaking about diplomatically. And secondly, yes, we’ve got partners. This is a six-party talk; five of us on the side of convincing Kim Jong-il to get rid of his nuclear weapons, and obviously, Kim Jong-il believes he ought to have some. And my point was that it is best—if you have a group of people trying to achieve the same objective, it’s best to work with those people, it’s best to consult.

His question was, are you going to—when are you going to—when will there be consequences. And what we want to do is to work with our allies on this issue and develop a consensus, a common approach to the consequences of Kim Jong-il. I mean, it seems counterproductive to have five of us working together, and all of a sudden, one of us say, well, we’re not going to work together.

Again, I repeat to you, our aim is to solve this problem diplomatically. And like I’ve said before, all options, of course, are on the table, but the best way to solve this problem diplomatically is to work with four other nations who have all agreed in achieving the same goal, and that is a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

Final question. Hutch. I don’t want to cut into some of these TV shows that are getting ready to air. (Laughter.) For the sake of the economy. (Laughter.)

Q I wanted to ask you about your ideas—

THE PRESIDENT: Is that all right? Go ahead, Hutch. Sorry.

Q I wanted to ask you about your ideas on dealing with Social Security solvency problems. As I understand it—I know you’ll tell me if I’m wrong—the benefits would be equal to what—at least equal to what they are today, and then any increase in benefits would be indexed according to income, with lower-income people getting bigger increases. Two things on that: Today’s benefits probably won’t mean much somewhere down the road; and how far are you going to go with this means-based program? Are you talking about—

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I appreciate that.

Q—where a rich person, say, Dick Cheney, wouldn’t get much out of it?

THE PRESIDENT: Now, wait a minute, don’t get personal here, Hutch. You’re on national TV; that’s a cheap shot. First of all, in terms of the definition of who would get—whose benefits would rise faster and whose wouldn’t, that’s going to be a part of the negotiation process with the United States Congress. There’s a—a Democrat economist had a very—he put forth this idea and he had a level of—I think 30 percent of the people would be considered to be in a lower-income scale.

But this is to be negotiated. This is a part of the negotiation process. My job is to lay out an idea that I think will make the system more fair.

And the second question—or the first question—

Q It’s a means-based program where the real wealthy people might not get very much out of it.

THE PRESIDENT: It is—that’s right. I mean, obviously, it is means base when you’re talking about lower-income versus wealthier income. The lower-income people’s benefits would rise faster. And the whole goal would be to see to it that nobody retired in poverty. Somebody who has worked all their life and paid in the Social Security system would not retire into poverty.

One other point on Social Security that people have got to understand is that it’s—the system of today is not fair for a person whose spouse has died early. In other words, if you’re a two-working family like families are here in America, and—two people working in your family, and the spouse dies early—before 62, for example—all of the money that the spouse has put into the system is held there, and then when the other spouse retires, he or she gets to choose the benefits from his or her own work, or the other spouse’s benefits, which is ever higher but not both. See what I’m saying? Somebody has worked all their life, the money they put into the system just goes away. It seems unfair to me. I’ve talked to too many people whose lives were turned upside down when the spouse died early and all they got was a burial benefit.

If you have a personal savings account, a voluntary personal savings account, and your—and you die early, that’s an asset you can leave to your spouse or to your children. That’s an important thing for our fellow citizens to understand. The system today is not fair, particularly if the spouse has died early, and this will help remedy that.

Listen, thank you all for your interest. God bless our country.

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