 It's wonderful to see so many of you again. Welcome you to the White House, and those of you who were not here last year as well. I brought in a television celebrity with me. I just told her I've just come from a meeting with some of our Republican congressmen, and they decided that she did more for the party in the 15 minutes on the television show the other night than has been done in years. Well, I don't know why I should think of this, but one evening when Winston Churchill was addressing a crowd in America here, a woman cornered him, and she said, doesn't it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing? And he said, it is quite flattering, but whenever I feel this way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I were being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big. I must say, you all look great. And might that be an indication that things are looking up for our Republican party around the country? I just want to say that we wouldn't be where we are today, starting to turn this country around if it hadn't been for your support and the support of your three great leaders, Guy Vanderjack and Rich and Dick DeVos. Last two elections, it was your generosity and commitment that enabled us to direct $4 million to Republican incumbents and challengers, and that's made a tremendous difference in helping us to pass and defend our program in the Congress. And I tell you, I just can't help but point out also that just recently down in Texas, the Republican party and how they rode in to make sure that a very courageous man named Phil Graham would come back to Washington as a Republican congressman. And he had the courage. Hey, he's there. I thought I was talking behind his back. Well, isn't it great to have a great bright Texan as a soldier on our side and not theirs? But when I spoke to you last, I said that our challenge last year was to turn the legacy of years of government of blundering around. And I admitted that the opposition was partially right. We hadn't succeeded. They left us an inflation rate of 12.4%. And at that time, when I was talking, we'd only brought it down to 8.9%. But it's been a year later, and inflation over the last six months has been running at a rate of 1.4%. And that's not quite zero, but we're getting pretty close. You remember when all those people were saying that we'd never get inflation below double digits in this decade without wage and price controls? Well, look around the world. The countries with the wage and price controls have higher inflation than we do in our free market country. Last year, I also admitted that we hadn't entered the interest rate problem our opponents left us. We'd only brought that 21.5% prime rate down to 16. Well, the prime rate now is 10.5%. And I think we're gonna get it lower than that. Two years ago, we accelerated the deregulation of crude oil. You remember the great hue and cry in the media that we were gonna send inflation skyrocketing? And gasoline was gonna go over $2 a gallon. The national average for a gallon then was about $1.27, that was the average. In many places, it was higher. And now you can buy it in most places for less than a dollar. Tax rates have been cut, real wages are improving, personal savings and productivity are growing again. The stock market has hit a record high. And venture capital investments have also reached record levels. Production and housing in autos and steel is gaining strength. This morning, the Department of Commerce told us that growth in the gross national product for the first quarter of 83 was 4%. Katie, bar the door, we're on the way back. You know, I have just one question. Now that our program is doing what we predicted it would, why don't the Democrats wanna call it Reaganomics anymore? It was their word, they coined it when they said it wasn't working. Tiponomics, oh that. Whatever they call it, we're not going to give in on the third year of the tax cut and we're not going to give in on indexing. We're going to keep our program intact and we're going to make America great again like she was always intended to be. The one thing that's standing in our way is that catastrophic democratic budget in the House of Representatives, which they will bring to the floor tomorrow and they've done everything they could in parliamentary procedure to ensure that there's no extended debate and that you just have to take it the way it is. Now I don't know whether you've heard about this, but it's more of that same old snake oil of tax and tax and spend and spend that got us into this mess in the first place. We need your help to fight that budget, to shout it in the house tops. Now he's got over 100 vote majority in that house and I don't know what their plan is because they must know that no one could ever live with the budget that they've brought out of committee on a straight party line vote. But I also think they've made a very great mistake. I think they've handed us an issue and it's unbelievable what they've done. They are suggesting a budget that will over a five-year period reduce defense spending almost $200 billion over the five years. It will increase social domestic spending $181 billion. It will increase taxes $315 billion and will add $8 billion to the deficit for this coming year. Now the other day after passing this out of committee, it must have all been orchestrated. They held a meeting and then they appeared before the press and they said that this was to give to the public an example of this was democratic tradition and it is. And I don't think we let 200 and some million Americans or forget it that it is their tradition and incidentally they repeal most of what we've gained in the last two years, all the cuts we've made and they come up with 10 brand new spending programs that will total over the five years about $52 billion. And this will hit the floor tomorrow. Maybe they can stall the vote until tomorrow or until the next day, I don't know. But there is much time for public opinion to be registered but let's all scream out loud until some people listen and see what they're trying to do. I assure you that any of those tax cuts or those tax increases, not tax cuts, those, I will veto. And that I'm looking forward to. You know, nothing, I'm going to touch on the defense side, nothing in the, would give the men in the Kremlin greater joy than to see us abandon our defense spending efforts after only one year. But that's what they're evidently intending to do. The other day I came across a statement by a pretty good Democrat, Harry Truman, 1945, after he had studied the reports on Pearl Harbor. He said, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing is the result of the policy which our country itself pursued. We were not ready for preparedness. Every time the president made an effort to get a preparedness program through the Congress, it was stifled. Whenever the president made a statement about the necessity of preparedness, he was vilified for doing it. Well, that same mentality exists in America today and it's the most serious threat to our national security. We have a program that's rebuilding America. It'll succeed if we stick with it. So I want to thank you once more for everything that you're doing and I hope to see you May 12th at the Senate House Dinner. And incidentally, in addition to helping our candidates, this year's dinner will pay special tribute to my press secretary, Jim Brady. And we hope that'll convince you to come. I think I've gone on long enough so we're gonna get down off here and have conversation with as many of you as is possible and not just shake your hand but ring your hand and thank you and God bless you all. I get one of you.