Washington, DC - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks today at the National Tea Party "March on Washington:"

*As prepared for delivery*

"I am Mike Pence.  I am from Indiana, and it is an honor to welcome the largest gathering of conservatives in American history to your nation's capitol.

"There are some politicians who think of you people as astroturf.  Un-American.  I've got to be honest with you, after nine years of fighting runaway spending here on this hill, you people look like the cavalry to me.

"We stand together at a historic moment in the life of the conservative movement and in the life of this great country.  The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation.  How we as conservatives respond to these challenges, could determine whether America retains her place in the world as a beacon of freedom or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of socialism.

"While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and the conservative movement, I believe we are on the verge of a great American awakening.  And it will begin here and begin now and begin with you.   

"This Administration and this Congress are getting a badly needed history lesson, starting with just what our founders meant by ‘consent of the governed.'  If silence is consent, it is now revoked.

"We the people, do not consent to runaway federal spending.  We the people, do not consent to the notion that we can borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing America.  And we the people, do not consent to government-run insurance that will cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have, and that will lead us to a government takeover of health care in this nation.

"This week, the president came to this hill and he gave one more speech about the same bad plan.   Mr. President, America doesn't want another speech, we want another health care plan that is built on freedom.

"And we the people, do not consent to Members of Congress passing thousand-page bills without anybody ever reading them.  Members of Congress should be required to read every major bill that Congress adopts.  I've got to be honest with you, I think Members of Congress should read major bills, but I'd be just as happy if some of them read this just a little more often - the Constitution of the United States.

"You know, there is a lot of good stuff in there and it reminds us that we are a nation led by the people, and not the elites and the bureaucrats and the politicians.  It reminds us that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people.

"And nowhere in our Constitution can you find the word ‘czar.'  It is time Washington, D.C. became a No Czar Zone.

"The American people are not happy. But it is not just about dollars and cents.  It is about who we are as a nation.

"As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it's about whether ‘we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.'  My money is on the American people.  My money is on freedom.  My money is on the future.

"This great national Capitol is filled with memorials to freedom's heroes.  Americans whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, lie the remains of Americans who paid freedom's price so we could gather here today.  In their time, they did freedom's work as citizens and patriots. Now it's our turn. 

"Let us do as those great Americans we remember in this city have done before: let us stand and fight for freedom.  And if we hold the banner of freedom high, I believe with all my heart that the good and great people of this country will rally to our cause, we will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this country back in 2012, so help us God." 

NOTE:  To view the remarks online, click here.