Governor Don Carcieri was the final speaker at the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition’s Winter Meeting (stream entire speech):

• RISC Chairman Harry Staley’s introduction: stream, download
• Opening remarks — coverage of the budget proposal has been “incomprehensible”; “politics is a contact sport”; “I am mad as hell”: stream, download
• The need for RISC and citizen action — American Revolution began with just a few taxpayers who had had enough: stream, download
• The problem — “We have gotten ourselves into a position over decades”; Look around the country and see all the states that have grown and prospered over the last decade: they are all the low-tax, right-to-work states, where businesses are happy to go there”: stream, download
• On state employees — “I don’t blame them. If you can get it and your employer is dumb enough to give it to you”: stream, download
• Riling up — “I’m tired of just talking around the edges”; “The reason we are where we are with spending and these benefits are out of control is you’ve got special interests — number 1, unions — state employees unions that are controlling this”; “They’ve been masterful, and are getting more masterful every day, and you’re seeing it happen right now at the national level.”: stream, download
• Countervailing force needed — “In playing the game, that means there’s got to be a countervailing force.”; “What I’m talking about is a party system that is essentially a monopoly… They just do what the leadership wants done, and the interest groups that are up there every single day.”: stream, download
• Wall Street Journal editorial about taxation in Illinois — “Everything I say here, think ‘Rhode Island.'”: stream, download
• We are improving — “This doesn’t happen over night.”; after pension change, over 1,200 people left, so state employment is at its lowest point since they’ve been counting: “It isn’t any surprise why your property taxes are constantly under pressure, because most of the money that the towns and cities and states spend is for people.”: stream, download
• On being competitive — “We’ve got to be competitive from a tax standpoint as a state… News bulletin! News bulletin out there: The government does not create jobs.”; “The government’s job is to create the environment where the private sector creates jobs, employs people, makes higher wages, and grows the wealth of the community.”: stream, download
• We need to lower taxes across the board, not just one-off deals — “The beauty about reducing and eliminating our corporate income taxes is that everybody’s in the same boat.”: stream, download
• Must move now — “We are at such an axis point, right now. This is it. This year, either we’re going to do the things that we need to position this state to really prosper and to be able to sustain what it is we’re doing, or we’re not… It’s not a foregone conclusion.”: stream, download
• Need to change our municipal operations, such as consolidating services on Aquidneck Island: stream, download
• On the budget and stimulus — “There’s a lot of confusion about what we’re doing in this budget, what we’re trying to accomplish.”; “From my standpoint, there’s three philosophical issues related to the so-called stimulus. … A chunk of this stimulus money was… to help the states bridge [the revenue fall-off]. … The hard choices are still there; they’re not going away just because of this money.”; “The second principle in this was, there’s a lot of people out of work… so it was trying to help them.”; “Third principle: Create jobs, but the only part of this whole package that’s going to create jobs tangibly is the highway and bridge funding.”; “I’m trying to get tax reform into place now because it’s the only thing that’s going to be our salvation going forward.”: stream, download
• On motivation and legacy — “I want to make sure that I’m leaving this state in a position that it’s going to prosper; that’s all I care about… change decades of bad behavior and bad habits.”; “There’s no other agenda. I’m not running for anything.”: stream, download
• Closing remarks — “You are the only hope. It’s true. Don’t look scared.”; example: killing the Economic Death and Dismemberment Act last year; “We can do this, here. We’re right on the cusp.”: stream, download