Delegates Cheer as Vasquez Urges Republican Congress

In a rousing speech to the Republican National Convention, Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez called Monday for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and urged Americans to throw the Democrats out of Congress.

Introducing the economic program President Bush will champion in the fall campaign, Vasquez had delegates in the Astrodome on their feet and cheering, particularly those from California.

The loudest applause came when Vasquez said voters should “give George Bush a Republican Congress,” called for a cut in the capital gains tax and urged that a 1990 tax increase be repealed, declaring that “you have a right to keep what you earn.”

“We’re tired of business as usual in the Democrats’ tax machine in Washington,” he said. “We call for a simpler tax system that will serve the taxpayer, not lawyers and lobbyists.”

His four-minute address during the afternoon session in the Astrodome was the first of two speeches Vasquez will deliver at the convention. He will get 10 minutes on prime time during tonight’s session.

Dressed in a natty blue suit and red tie, Vasquez was introduced as “one of the bright, rising stars of our party” and then went on to do his best to energize convention delegates for a bruising fall presidential campaign.

Vasquez, who chaired the convention subcommittee that drew up the party’s economic plank, said that “government doesn’t have all the answers, but we know where to find them--in the spirit of the American people.”

He called the economic program “a manifesto” for the nation’s space program and free trade, two issues dear to delegates from Southern California, where the aerospace industry has been sagging and trade with Mexico is touted as an important building block for the future.

“Our platform puts the world on notice,” Vasquez told the delegates. “The American people are going to roll over protectionist barriers to launch a new era in free trade. We’re not afraid of anybody’s competition. We’re the ones who started it all.”

The Orange County supervisor also warmly praised Vice President Dan Quayle and his Competitiveness Council for “heroic defiance of the regulators, both in Congress and the bureaucracy.”

Saying the country’s “future is the family,” Vasquez promised that the Republicans would also immediately work to increase the personal income tax exemption by $500 to $2,650.