 Ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats? Ladies and gentlemen, I would like now to call on Senator Jack Danforth from Missouri to come to the platform and to say grace. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we come together after our national holiday and after a successful election to give thanks for this great country and for the responsibility of its leadership. We ask your blessing on our president and vice president as they prepare for four more years. And we pray for the Senate that with dedication and skill, we may do the hard jobs before us. Today, we have chosen new leaders for our party. Give them wisdom and energy, humor and humility as they begin the challenging tasks which will be theirs. To our departing colleagues, Howard, John, Chuck, and Roger, open new opportunities for service to you and to our country and strengthen them with the knowledge of a job well done. In the years to come, give us peace in your world, prosperity in our land, and a renewed vision of America's character. Bless this food to our use and us to your service and make us always mindful of the needs of others. Amen. Senator Danford, thank you very much. Mr. President, Mrs. Reagan, Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Bush, on behalf of my wife and I, we welcome you to this annual event. We ask you now to take your seats and we will proceed with dinner and the program to follow. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you find that once more as stirring as I do. I cannot remember an event that has a more fitting finale than the rendition of the battle him of the Republic with the Army Chorus. I think they deserve another round of applause and I would like to leave it. Appreciate it. And to do so with grace and dignity. There were good men, all of them, who contended for the several offices, but they were all worthy. And the Republican caucus conducted itself today in a worthy manner. And I want you to know I'm fine men, but I would like that privilege and I claim it at this time. First, may I present to you a man who is giving us a return engagement. After a successful previous service as chairman of the Republican Central Campaign Committee, our new chairman, Senator John Hines, of Pennsylvania, can end the leadership of the United States Senate. The man who has now been elected policy committee chairman, the man who I'm about to introduce. But before I do, may I say that on learning of his elevation to this high position, my first question to Bob Dole was, do you think you can get him to vote for the debt limit? May I present Bill Armstrong, the new chairman of the policy committee. The new secretary of the conference, my friend and colleague from Mississippi, Senator Thad Cock, Senator from Rhode Island, and now chairman of the Republican conference, our friend, Senator John Chaffee. He's distinguished himself in a fairly brief period of service in the Senate, but is destined to even greater things in the future. May I present the new assistant majority leader, Alan Simpson of Wyoming, and who will lead this group on the floor of the United States Senate with strength and vitality, with inspiration and courage, and who is destined to be truly a great majority leader of the United States Senate, our friend, the new majority leader of the Senate, the man to whom I now hand the keys of leadership, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. This is the easy part. I mean, thank you very much, Mr. Leader, and I want to thank Jack Danforth for praying for more humor. With me and Simpson around, you may have to pray for less, but we appreciate it. I first, I want to thank the president, Mrs. Reagan, my friend, George Bush, Barbara, and all the others who are here to help us celebrate this annual majority dinner. We hope to continue it for a long, long time. Needless to say, we've had a very, I could stand up and tell you all about Howard Baker, but I think we will wait and let history judge that, and it's gonna say more than I could say this evening about what a great leader we've had. And Howard, because of you, I think all of us have inspiration. We're very proud of you. I'm particularly proud to follow in your footsteps. I know I can't do as well as you did, but we're gonna do the best we can. I want to say to all of our first, may have entered into the voting. I knew long before I ever walked into the conference this morning and I was contending with four of the finest men I knew, any of whom would have made an outstanding majority leader. Winston Churchill once told Franklin Roosevelt, and to tell the truth, seeing your name besides theirs on a candidate's roster is apt goes. We are in a very real sense of family here, and that means we have our internal ascension, and from time to time, I intend to meet the one by utilizing the other, and I would begin with a gesture of recognition. A toast to four of our most talented brethren, to Pete, Dick, Jim, and Ted, who daily raise our standards and elevate our sights. Our states in this country, with extraordinary skill, with extraordinary dedication, and with obvious unity. We have proven that we are indeed a treasure at this time, my friends, to recognize a man whose second job and junior position, nation and admiration, to George Bush, the president of the Senate, and to his wife Barbara, they're a great couple. The first lady of our nation, Nancy Reagan. Nancy, perhaps you know better than the rest of us. Thank you. Thank you, Howard, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Bush, members of the Senate, members of the cabinet, thank you all very much. This is a wonderful evening for all of us. The Grand Old Party became the majority party of the Senate in 1980, and it was re-elected the majority party in 1982 and again in 1984. This is the first back-to-back-to-back Republican majority in the Senate in over 40, in over 50 years. And we're going to stay the majority party. I want to say a few words about Howard Baker. We had a sort of a roast for Howard a while back when he announced that he was leaving, and you can imagine the sort of things that at a roast were said about him. Actually, it didn't go on very long because someone pointed out that if you can't say something nice about someone, you shouldn't say anything at all, so we all put on our hats and went home. But tonight, it should be said formally by the leader of his party who speaks, I know for all of you, that Howard Baker has been one of the men who has kept the wheel of democracy turning. As a leader of the Senate, he has been endlessly patient and full of care and high purpose. He is a hero of the Republic, and I want to thank you, Howard, and let you know you're going to be greatly missed. I want to mention also John Tower of Texas, one of the giants of the modern Senate who has done great work for his nation, so too with Chuck Percy and Roger Jepsen who served our party and our country extremely well. We'll miss them. Our new majority leader in the Senate, Bob Dole, is a man of wit and wisdom, and we look forward to working closely with you, Bob, and with the new leadership slate. Last week out at the ranch, and it's not true by the way that we had to get people to fly over and drop more brush for me to clear, and last week out of the ranch, I was digging some irrigation ditches, and it occurred to me that digging ditches was precisely the kind of hard labor that I ought to be doing to prepare for the next four years, because our great victory now of 1984 is over and to the victor belong the Toils. That is the saying, isn't it? We live in historic times. The great change that we began four years ago has been called the Reagan Revolution. Well, let me correct something. You know as well as I do, it was really the Republican Revolution, and all of you are its leaders. I truly believe that we are now the majority party, not only of the Senate, but of the nation. But if we're to keep our new status and hold it, indeed, if we're to continue to restore it, or deserve it, I should say, we must all of us join together and seize the challenges that history has seen fit to hand us. We have an historic opportunity in the coming session to make our national tax system more just. We can make it fair and clear, and we can make sure that all those who take risks will be able to enjoy the rewards that those risks entail. We have the opportunity to create a tax system that will not punish all those who could and would be the most productive members of our society, and we must. This is, as I said, an historic opportunity, and the time to seize it is now. Some of the most productive work of your political lives will be done over the next few years. And if all of us can do what we should about taxes, then history will recall us with kindness and respect. The same holds true for our obligation to continue to cut federal spending and get the budget monster back in its cage. We have the continued opportunity to make it clear, together, in the wider theater of the world, that we are absolutely committed to democracy and absolutely opposed to totalitarianism of whatever stripe. We have the responsibility to stand for freedom as in a world lit by lightning, and together we must. So many challenges before us, but together we can change the world. Here we are, all of us, together on this bright and brisk November evening, and I hope we remember this time together, remember the good feeling and the shared commitment in this room. It's always a struggle for those of us in political life to take the long view and to brave decisions without regard to personal political cost. There are times when we fail in the struggle and times when we succeed, and I suspect the next few years will test us more than usual, but I know we're up to it, and I know that we Republicans will stick together as united as the union our party long ago fought to preserve. We'll have our battles ahead of us, but they're good battles and they're worth fighting for. My friends in the other party have been saying that our 49 state sweep was not a mandate and that I personally am a lame duck. Well, if I'm so lame, I've decided to get a cast, and that'll be useful when I have to do some kicking. I won't finish that phrase, it's an old athletic saying. I hope the loyal opposition realizes exactly how committed I am and you are to changing the status quo and improving our national life. We won't be resting on our laurels, even if we were so inclined, which we're not, history wouldn't allow it. We've been handed great opportunities and great challenges and we intend to meet them together. You know, I got into the habit during the campaign, understandable little political habit of milking the audience a little. I'd do the stump speech and then near the end, I'd say, I guess I've been going on too long here, hoping that the audience would yell no and of course all fired up in partisan rallies, they usually would. And I found this most gratifying and allowed it to spill over to my private life until one day I said it to Nancy and she said, yes, you are going on too long and now it's time for you to rest your wonderful vocal cords. Now that's what, that last part's my version of what she said, she said it in two words. So that's what I'm going to do. But let me say before I go that I've been very proud to work with you these past four years and I'm very proud of the work that we've done. And now the next four years, let it continue. Thanks so much to all of you, God bless you all. Ladies and gentlemen, let me say two or three final and concluding words. First, Major Shelburne, we're delighted that you provided us once again with the inspirational music that you have tonight, Guards. After that I would be remiss, I think, if I did not, for all of us extend our thanks and appreciation to Dan Borshton, the librarian of Congress who is the custodian of this magnificent place and he and Mrs. Borshton permit us to have this annual party in this great hall. And Dan, we thank you very much for that. The President pro tem of the United States and at Strom Thurman who is our leader and is most diligent in his duties. Thank you, sir, for your remarks tonight. I thank you for your presence at this event. I thank you for your service. I thank all those who are here for coming. We wish you a very happy holiday season and a very successful 99th Congress. Thank you very much. Children and my, make my lucky star stand for free. And they can't take that old and I won't forget the man who went defender still today. Cause there ain't no doubt I love this lawless, the U.S.A. And it's time we stand and say I'm defender still today. I'm defender still today. Cause there ain't no