 rolling, Mike? Mr. President, you've had a busy day, haven't you? Yes, and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but it kept one tradition intact. Every time I have earlier in the day a meeting with a congressman, I'm behind the schedule the rest of the day. You're going to be right in the rest of the day. Well, I sure appreciate the opportunity to chat with you for a few minutes on behalf of our audience and focus on the family. Our people care deeply about the family, and I know that you do too. That's been an integral part of your administration. We've appreciated that. And in fact, I really would like to ask you some questions about that relative to government and the family. Would you express your views on the degree to which healthy individual families are related to a strong and healthy nation? Is there a connection between those things? Yes, I don't believe you can have one without the other, a strong healthy nation. Without that, the family unit is the very base. And I just finished saying a little while ago to another group that as the family goes, so goes the nation. And I do think that there has been a tendency on government. I don't think it was with malice or anything. I think we're well-intentioned, but bureaucracy once created keeps seeing areas where it feels it could do good and could be helpful. And the result has been we've had many tendencies over recent years of government that would in effect supplant the family. I may give one example, the programs with regard to family planning. And suddenly you find an organization or an agency that is directly making contact with, let us say, underage youth with regard to something that is very vital and certainly is the very heart of our moral standards, birth control information devices and so forth. And at the same time is saying that the family has no right to know that they're doing this. They've invaded parental rights in that regard. What should be the role of government in the family in building and forging strong families? Well, I think that everything that government can do, first of all, it starts with its prime responsibility, of course, of securing our freedoms and our security, both against outside assailants and against the criminal elements within our own country. But it does not interfere and it does everything it can to strengthen the family economically. I think the greatest social program there is in the world is a job. Speaking of the financial side of it, in your address to the nation in May where you presented your tax proposal, you mentioned that you felt the tax structure had been unfair to families. In what way? Well, back in 1948, $600 income tax deduction for a dependent member in the family. And until we raised that with our tax program to $1,040, it had stayed $600 even though inflation had brought it to the point where properly it should be $2,700. Well, now we're only trying in our tax reform to bring it to $2,000. That's a lot closer to the $2,700. But in other words, by not indexing things of that kind, the government was actually annually increasing the tax without doing a thing, letting inflation do it for them, but not recognizing that if the $600 exemption was supposed to be based on having some relationship to the cost of raising a child and to not adjust that to the increase in cost. And of course, government played a part in creating the inflation. That $2,000 deduction is a centerpiece of your tax proposal for those of us in the pro-family movement. Yet we hear in town that Congress is not terribly excited about it and there's a lot of pressure to reduce or even eliminate that increase. How committed is your administration to that? Very committed. And I can't believe that they could get much of a following for deleting something of that kind. As a matter of fact, the House Committee on Children, Youth and Family, the select committee dominated by the opposition party, the Democrats being a House Committee, that has just ruled that our proposal is more fair to the family than any of the other tax proposals before Congress. I saw that article in the Washington Post. Did that surprise you that they endorsed it in that way? The committee? No, because I've seen signs that this may be one of those that we're not going to be Republicans and Democrats. We're going to be Americans. It's going to have a bipartisan. Are there other pro-family ingredients in that tax proposal that you feel strongly about? Well, the very fact of reducing the rates, of course. The very fact that while we claim three brackets, 15, 25 and 35, instead of the present 14, there really is a fourth rate, zero, because families down battling there at the poverty level edge are going to exempt from taxes entirely. Talk about the increase in the IRA limit for homemakers to, or those that stay home, to $2,000 as a way to redress the inequity that we've seen there. That is another one here. The wage earners, of course, have been entitled to that. But more and more, I think we've come to understand that with the prevalence of women in the marketplace, in the workforce and all, there was a tendency to, a while back, to see the homemaker as not being considered employed. Well, I think they're employed very definitely in a very arduous job. And it's a recognition that they too deserve some of these things, that if they are doing that, and therefore not out in the marketplace, they should not be deprived of the right to provide for their own retirement years. We went to the Census Bureau recently to do some checking on statistics and found that 63% of American women over 16 years of age are in the home at least part-time, if not full-time or part-time. And only 37% are in the workforce full-time. And many of those are students and single women. So it is important to address those that have chosen to stay home and take care of their children. And there are other things in every other area and department of government. There's been a tendency in the part of the professionals in education to rule the family out of having any voice in how their children are educated, that somebody else will tell them what they're going to learn and how and why. And I think that's why the great strength that we've always had in this country, the educational field, is keeping the running of education as much as possible at the local community level where the parents can participate with the teachers and the administrators of the school. Mr. President, I hear that congressmen and senators say they are not hearing from their constituency on tax reform and that maybe the country isn't ready for it or doesn't want it. Do you believe that? It could be because if you look at what is out in the public or what the public is hearing mostly are from the lobbyists for special interests who are bringing up that the tax is at fault or the plan is at fault because of this particular thing it should be removed or that should be removed. This is why I've been trying to get around the country and talk about the tax bill in its entirety and this is the strangest thing yes, a senator on the plane going down to North Carolina the other day was saying not hearing of it when he's been back home in this August vacation and yet he's present when I stand up in front of 15,000 people who've been in the hall for two hours before I get there sweltering in a building that has no air conditioning and in which it's even hot outside and hotter in the building and I think they counted I was interrupted in my presentation of the tax reform program I was interrupted by applause 24 times and the speech was only about a 15 minute speech and it was mainly on as I pointed out changes items what this would do and what that would do in the tax program now Sunday on television I heard Sam Donaldson on one of the network talk shows say that tax reform was a kind of a one week story that they covered it by my covering me out there making one of these speeches and so forth but now it is news anymore because having covered it and me saying pretty much the same thing wherever I go why they're not going to touch it anymore and yet any time that someone wants to raise another objection some one with a title of some kind and say we oppose this or that in the tax program that's coverage that'll get covered because it'll be the first time they've heard that you have called this tax proposal the strongest pro family initiative in post war America and he would call it a second American revolution those who feel strongly about that and especially the $2,000 exemption and the other things that that have families in mind and we're talking to a lot of them right now what can they do to support that legislation this is one in which congress again the very fact that some congressmen have been hearing congressmen have got to hear from them they've got to take pen and hand and write their congressmen or call him wire him whatever it does make a difference and when they're congressmen of home they've got to make them hear from them that that they want this but it is a kind of revolution you stop to think that the income tax passed in 1913 which then only applied to about three percent of our population you didn't pay any tax unless you were up there in a quite high bracket but it has come on down now to where subtly the government has the internal revenue service has portrayed the taxes in a way as if all your money belongs to the government except that which they allow you to keep take the term the recent years tax deduction has become tax expenditure meaning when the government lets you deduct something it is an expenditure of their money and I back when we were doing some things in California when I was governor I had had to raise taxes against everything I believed in because there we did have a constitution requiring a balanced budget you come into office in the middle of the fiscal year so I came into office with six months to go for the end of the fiscal year and a multi-million dollar debt at the federal level would have been billions here I say millions but that had been run up in the first six months and by the constitution and my first six months I've got to do something I cannot come to the end of the fiscal year with that deficit I had no choice to you know to implement savings plans would not take effect that quickly so I had to pass a tax and I told the people that how I felt about taxes and I said as quickly as we can and this is straightened out we'll give this back to you so the first time is when my director of finance who happened to be a fellow named cap Weinberg came in to see me and cap told me that we now had gotten out of the woods and that we were going to have a hundred million dollar surplus and he said since you haven't been able to do anything that you might have wanted to do in some program that you had in mind because of the financial situation I thought I'd tell you before the legislature finds out about it and comes up with some spending programs and I said I do have one idea and he said what is it and I said let's give it back that's unheard of cap says it's never been done I said they never had an actor up there before so we figured out that a hundred million at that time was about 10 percent of the state income tax so we simply told the people to figure out their income tax and send us a check for 90 percent of what they owed and we already had the rest the hundred million dollars well several times this went on till the final one before I left office that we gave back was eight hundred and fifty million dollars we gave back to the people in a tax rebate and I will never forget a senator storming into my office and he spoke so eloquently of what it was government philosophy he said giving this money back is an unnecessary expenditure of public funds I was a Californian at that time and still am and I got some of that money and I've never had a chance to tell you I appreciated it well Mr. President in January of 1984 you invited nine specialists on the family including myself here as you recall and you ask us the question what can government do to help the family and the press was not here it was not publicized it was off the record you made that clear and your purpose as you said on that day was genuine to find out what we thought you could do to help the family that tells me that you really do care about the family yes and I appreciate that and on behalf of several million of our listeners and friends all across the country I appreciate your continued support well we shall continue because we've seen some other countries in the world where they have virtually eliminated the family and the raising of children and so forth state has taken them over I like our system best you have a heavy responsibility Mr. President we will continue to pray for you thank you very much thank you appreciate so much you're taking the time on a busy day no please do we will do a wrap-on with that instructing people to write