The Trentonburg Address

Less than two score and seven months ago, our electorate brought forth in this State, a new administration, conceived in socialism and dedicated to the proposition that government exists to responsibly share our economic bounty.

Now we are immersed in a great economic collapse, demonstrating that that Administration, or any administration so conceived and so dedicated, cannot deliver prosperity. Here in the Assembly Chambers, we are met on the site of the genesis of that collapse. We have come to confiscate a portion of your property as a stipend for those who here gave their votes that that Administration might prevail. It was altogether predictable that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not confiscate -- we can not appropriate -- we can not hollow -- your wallets. Previous Administrations, elected or ordained, who prevaricated here, have confiscated it, far above our poor power to reach it now that many of you live in Pennsylvania.

The electorate will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but the public employee unions will never forget what we did here. It is for us the elected, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished collectivization which they who sat here have thus far so substantially advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these economic illiterates we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full campaign contribution -- that we here highly resolve to spend every last nickel our taxpayers possess -- that this state, under indictment, shall have a new birth of redistribution -- and that government of the unions, by the bureaucrats, for the envious, shall not be voted out of office.