 It is my pleasure to present to you the President of St. John's University, Father Joseph T. Cahill. St. John's University Board of Trustees, administrators, faculties of all the schools of the university, staff, and the finest young people in the United States. Will you kindly join me in extending a hearty and cordial St. John's welcome to Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States. Conferral of the degree of Doctor of Laws on President Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is a leader president. He knows what he believes, believes it fervently, and fights for it. His entire career bears this out. In Hollywood, he not only made 50 feature films, but was a six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild and a two-term president of the Motion Picture Industry Council. He was not only elected governor of California by a million-volt margin, but earned a second term, served as chairman of the Republican Governor's Association in 1969, had a nationally syndicated radio commentary program, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and filled an extensive speaking schedule to civic, business, and political groups. His failure, his failure to obtain his party's nomination for the presidency in 1976, did not deter him from campaigning vigorously for the ticket and scores of local candidates, at the same time renewing his national radio, newspaper, and speaking commitments, joining the Board of Directors of the Committee on Present Danger, and founding the Citizens for the Republic. In the interim campaign of 1978, he campaigned for no less than 86 candidates. In 1980, Mr. Reagan was elected 40th President of the United States, by an electoral vote of 489 to 49, and was re-elected in 1984 by an electoral vote of 525 to 13. Numerous awards, including the National Humanitarian Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the City of Hope Award for Humanitarian Service, Freedom Foundation Awards and American Patriots Hall of Fame, the American Newspaper Guild Award, the National Football Foundation Hall of Fames Distinguished American Award, and the Medal of Valor of the State of Israel, as well as a host of honorary degrees. Born in Tampico, Illinois, Mr. Reagan was educated in Illinois public schools and holds a baccalaureate in economics and sociology from Eureka College. His first lady is the former Nancy Davis. St. John's University is honored to confer on the President of the United States, Dr. Ronald Wilson Reagan, who honors Calza the degree of Doctor of Laws. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege and high honor to introduce the President of the United States. Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. All of you members of the administration, the faculty, the students of St. John's, my frotters, all of you, I can't tell you how deeply honored I am, and I bring the very sincere regrets of Nancy who was invited. But I have to tell you, I found out that I'm the only one in the family that gets paid, but the government gets another employee free. Nancy, they've got her working too. But I think I should tell you why I've come here today and why I'm so honored by this degree. Now, it's true that I've heard about a rare and exotic flower that grows only in Queens. I think you call it the mulberry. I wanted to see it, and it's true that I'm ever in search for candidates for our diplomatic staff, and so I wanted to meet a gentleman named Louis Karnaseka. I know he's elsewhere on a very important engagement right now, and it's also true that I wanted to see the school that some people are saying is just a number one top of the heap, King of the Hills. I know that right now that's being said in connection with college basketball, but from what I've learned of your university, the honor extends to a great many other areas as well. There is more. For some time, I've been hearing about a university in New York that boasts among its alumni the governors of our two biggest states, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York and Governor George Duke Magin of California. I've heard that this in university has the highest bar exam pass ratio in the nation, that it attracts more than a thousand students a year from 88 countries on six continents of the earth, and that among its alumni are a third of one state legislature and more than 250 judges. So naturally, I wanted to see the new Harvard and thank St. John's for inviting me. I've come here today to talk about where our country has been for the past few years and where it's going. And I want to talk to you about our vision of the future and the kind of America that we now have a dazzling opportunity to create. When I took office four years ago, many of you were in high school, but in spite of your youth, I know you were aware that America at that time was in a crisis. Inflation was over 12 percent. The prime interest rate was over 21 percent. Unemployment was growing and recent graduates were having trouble finding jobs. Government was weighing all of our people down with excessive personal taxes, with business taxes and meddlesome regulations. In 1981, we rolled up our sleeves and applied new thinking to these by now old problems. We cut tax rates for all individuals and businesses. We passed tax indexing so that inflation wouldn't force your parents into ever higher brackets as their income increased. We drove inflation down to below 4 percent. We got the economy moving again, and in truth, we can't take complete credit for the ideas that reignited our current economic growth. After all, John Kennedy had done what we had done and great growth followed, and Japan had done what we had done and become the economic dynamo of the East. By 1984, last year, our economy was growing stronger and faster than it had in over 30 years, while inflation stayed lower than at any time since 1967. Civilian employment has grown by seven and a half million new jobs over the past two years, and the number of unemployed has fallen by more than three million in the past five months alone. And that is more than a million and a half Americans, what is more, I should say, have found jobs. We have made great progress the past four years, but it's what we do in the next four years that will determine whether the American economy really lasts. Now is the time, now is the key moment to make dramatic change. I'm speaking of a change so fundamental that I could really call it radical, radical as in reaching down to the roots. The revolution that I'm talking about involves three things. One is taxes, the amount you and your parents and friends pay to the government that demands your money. Another is spending, what the government spends your money on and what effect that has on your life, but taxes and spending are like the foundation of a big house called growth. If our tax and spending policies are sound and balanced, the foundation will be rock solid and the house of growth will stand and endure. Our administration has reduced tax rates as I've noted, but that's only the beginning. We have to do better. I believe we have to tear down our present tax structure and build a new one. We will propose a tax simplification plan. Tax simplification will make the rate structure simpler and more fair. That will limit deductions and that will lower tax rates further. With a simplified tax system, we would have a top rate far lower than the current top personal tax rate of 50%. A side benefit of this is that it will move us away from the whole strange world of unproductive tax shelters. For once, all Americans will know that their neighbors as well as they are paying their fair share and not hiding behind loopholes and stuff. We want to make the tax system simpler and more fair and we want to push tax rates down still further. This is economic justice. It is economic sense. And the key to America's economic future. I want to talk a little here about how tax rates impinge directly on you. If you are a senior majoring in business, you'll get out of school and go into the job market in June. Let's say you have the good fortune to be hired as a salesperson for a firm with a starting salary of $20,000 a year. That's enough to live on with some comfort, but not luxurious by any means in these days. Now, you're young and single. You share a small apartment in Manhattan. And your share of the... I mean that share in a certainly different way than you reacted. And your share of the rent is, say, $500 a month. When you make out your taxes, you claim one exemption for yourself. And you find that once you've worked for a year that between federal taxes, state taxes, city taxes, social security and sales taxes, you are giving over 30% of your entire $20,000 salary to taxes, more than $6,000. Now, I could argue the morality of this. If you're paying so much and involuntarily finding yourself in a condition of something approaching servitude. And I will. But I wish right now to speak of broader practical purposes. If you were allowed to keep more of your money, you would likely do one of three things with it. You could spend it on a portable computer, say, or clothing or entertainment, and thereby stimulate the economy to hire more computer clothing and entertainment makers, thus creating jobs. Or you could save it and add to the pool of capital from which banks lend money, thereby stimulating the economy by making capital available for businesses to grow. Or you could be very creative and invest your money in a private enterprise. Now, some of you are only a generation or two removed from the immigrant experience. Some of you are the grandsons and granddaughters of sharecroppers who came north for jobs. Many of you are the first in your family to go to college. I was the first in mine, and I too am a grandson of immigrants. All of you come from hardy risk-taking stock, and you're very much the sort of people who would in a few years take the few thousand you'd gain from a tax cut and pool it with friends and acquaintances in order to invest it. Twenty of you might put up as much as $5,000 each and start a business, a local newspaper, a small record company, a service industry, a small computer firm, whatever. And that expands the economy, creating new businesses, new jobs, and new wealth. This is the magic that is and always has been at the heart of America's economic strength. We have lived through the age of big industry and the age of the giant corporation, but I believe that this is the age of the entrepreneur, the age of the individual. That's where American prosperity is coming from now, and that's where it's going to come from in the future. But I just pause here for a second and tell you about a couple of fellas came to see me the other day. Young men, 1981, just four years ago, they started a business with only $1,000 between them and everyone told them they were crazy. Last year, their business did a million and a half dollars, and they expect to do two and a half million this year, and part of it was because they had the wit to use their names productively. Their business is, using their names, the cane and able electric business. The technological revolution has seen to some of the things that I'm talking about. We have to recognize it and encourage the brave men and women who are taking risks and investing in the future. They ought to be honored. But to invest your time and money in concern is a leap of faith, a profoundly hopeful act that says, yes, I have faith in the future. I am the future. The future is what I make of it. Economic growth and economic freedom are the economic answer, but we cannot stop at reforming our tax structure. We must also reform our spending policies. You may remember what I said last summer, that we could compare the big spenders in Congress with a drunken sailor out on a spree, but that would really be unfair to the sailor because at least he's spending his own money. We have to be frank about the federal budget and deficit spending. Our problem is simple. Your federal government is now and long has been spending too much of your money. In the past 10 years, tax revenues have grown by more than $400 billion, but spending by government has grown by almost $600 billion. That's about a 50% more than the revenues. Government spending has grown more than one-third faster than the growth of our economy. Even our economy, the strongest in the world, hasn't been able to keep up with government's incessant demands. I've recommended a freeze on overall domestic spending for the recently submitted federal budget, and I need your help in supporting these efforts. There's all sorts of ways for waste to be cut. There are many entitlements to be reexamined. We can and must do this because if we don't get the size and weight of government down, then it will simply flatten the economy like a steamroller and make economic vitality an impossible dream. I've asked for the support of Congress in getting spending down, and we're making some headway, but it takes a lot of courage for some senators and congressmen and women to support us because there's always more of a constituency for spending than for cutting. They'll have to make some brave decisions, and when they make them, they will deserve the support and the thanks of our country. I want to mention, by the way, that I know that some of you are concerned about our proposed limits on financial aid for students. Well, we're trying to ensure an aid system that helps all those who need it. You know that spending on higher education is still more than $7 billion, as much as it was in 1982 and 1983, and more than double what it was 10 years ago. As Education Secretary Bill Bennett has pointed out, our student aid program is big, and our commitment to it will continue, and its primary purpose will be to provide the vital assistance to those who couldn't get an education without it. Now, there are some members of Congress who make a great show of concern about the problem of deficit spending. But they know that it's in the nature of a peaceful democracy not to want to spend money on weapons for defense, but to prefer spending that money on social programs. If you really want to control spending, they say if you really want to control spending, then cut defense. Well, I see you're divided in that, and I can understand. Because you've been treated to a drumbeat of demagogic propaganda with regard to that one. Let's look at the facts. Defense spending accounts for less than 7% of our gross national product that's far less than it was in the 1950s and 60s when the threat facing us was not nearly so great. Since we first took office, we have cut $150 billion out of our own proposals for defense spending. In fact, right now, we're running almost $16 billion less than the Carter administration had projected would be their 1985 budget if they were still in office. Now, at this point, it's a simple necessity to continue to bring our armed forces up to date. I've told the Senate leadership that I'm willing to consider more defense savings in non-critical areas, but I cannot compromise on the defense programs that are vital to our security. The first responsibility of an American president is to see that this country is securely defended in a world in which trouble is unfortunately not the exception, but the rule. All the great leaders of our time, from Winston Churchill to John Kennedy, have understood that to maintain the peace, we must maintain our strength. If we don't, our adversaries will be inspired to wild action by our weakness. We can maintain the peace, and we will. We can maintain economic growth, and we must. Our economy is in good shape now, but we've got to make sure this isn't just a passing phase, a temporary pause in cycles of recession. We've got to see to it that economic growth becomes an unbreaking cycle of its own, and we can do that through getting tax rates down and spending down. Now, back to that moral thing that will fill the void of the spiritual values that some of us rejected, is the state. That's their idea. The state with a capital S. Well, the political edifice that man has built to govern himself. Some have said that this is the thing from which all blessings come. But if we've discovered anything these past few decades, it is that our salvation is not in the state. Our salvation is in ourselves, and what we do with our lives, and the choices that we make. It is in the things that we choose to worship. If we've learned anything, it is that government that is big enough to give you everything you want is more likely to simply take everything you've got. And that's not freedom, that's servitude. That isn't the way Americans were meant to live. We will always take care of the poor and the helpless among us, because that's the kind of people we are and have always been. But we're a people who've discovered and knew what a deep fountain freedom is and how we cannot live without drinking deep from it. I'm no longer young. You might have suspected that. The house we hope to build is one that is not for my generation, but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you're my age you'll be able to say, as I have been able to say, we lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology. And so if you can help us, we welcome your support. And either way, we welcome your interest in how our country is governed and how together we can secure justice for our people. When I ask for your help, it's very simple. You are the citizens. Government works for you. And it doesn't hurt if sometimes you decide to be the boss and tell them, I have said very many times that those elected in office who sit there in our Capitol Hill building and the halls of Congress, it isn't necessary that you make them see the light. Sometimes you have to make them feel the heat. I've enjoyed being here very much. You've greatly honored me. And I thank you and I love you too. I know you have an exciting weekend coming up. And knowing your faith, you may have considered how far you would go in trying for victory. Well, can I just tell you something? When I was playing college football, and I did, I found out one night in a chalk talk that was going on with the coach up in front and I don't know how the conversation got around to prayer. But it did. Well, I had never gone into a game in all those four years that I hadn't said a prayer. And I was surprised and amazed to learn, I never told anyone that, that everybody else on the team did too. But now the subject was, what do you pray and what do you ask for? And believe it or not, all of us had figured out for ourselves, you can't ask God to help you win. How can he favor you over others of his children or on the other team? And what we'd figured out for ourselves was that there be no injuries, that everyone, everyone do their best, that the best team win, and that thus we have no regrets when the game is over. If you don't mind, I can say that prayer for the red men. Mr. President, on behalf of the entire St. John's community, allow me to thank you officially for visiting our campus. I have for you several mementos which I now wish to present to you. This is our famous sweater, a replica. It brought us to the final four and I'm sure it will help the President in his battles with Congress. Finally, Mr. President, allow me at this time to present you with the highest award that St. John's University can bestow, the University Gold Medal. This is the first time we've ever given us at the same time any function and the last. Thank you very much. I can't tell you how deeply honored I am. I'd like to tell you also that during World War II, playing on a post-basketball team, one of my teammates was an alumni of St. John's and a great basketball player. Just so that I can even make it feel a little closer, in that school where I was playing football, we were called the Red Devils. Thank you very much.