 Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're faced with an unprecedented situation in this country today. There are three issues, any one of which could destroy our nation. One is the economic situation we find ourselves in. The second is the energy crisis. And the third is the extent to which this administration has eroded our margin of safety and allowed our defensive capability to decline in this country to the point that we are in danger and no longer can say, we are second to none. We are second to one, the Soviet Union. It's only a few days now in this campaign. And I'm going to focus each day, as long as these days remain, on the options that will be presented to the American people. And one of the most critical of these will be Jimmy Carter's demonstrated inability to govern our nation. At home and abroad, the lack of leadership, speaking bluntly, brings up the question of whether he is competent to handle the job. Now let me say one thing. I know in this place, and speaking to this audience, I would have to be addressing not just fellow Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. And I hope that's true, because number one, we can't change the course we're on without you. You are welcome. We need your help and support in a crusade to change the direction of this country. All across the country, I've found the people yearning for hope. From the outset of this administration, the nation is watched as the important issues of the day fall into the hands of people whose motives are certainly not in question, but whose fundamental understanding of how to lead America is woefully inadequate. Without question, on the domestic policies confronting us, their record of achievement is thin, but the trail of broken promises and unkept commitments is very wide indeed. There has been no period when the question of America's energy requirements has been of such high importance. We are prisoners of OPEC, reduced to doing their bidding, unable to count on real strategic security, while all the time the disruptions in our economy and to individual citizens have been massive. Mr. Carter, most of his energy program, we've been beset by high prices, periodic shortages, no long-range strategy, and a department of energy that siphons off more than $10 billion a year, and it has yet to produce a single quart of oil. We know that this government has sequestered, taken out of circulation and put aside hundreds of millions of acres of public lands that once were open to multiple use, to grazing, to finding of minerals, to finding of energy sources. We know that the outer continental shelf lies largely unleashed with only about 2% of it now drilled and producing oil and natural gas. The truth of the matter is we're energy rich. The answer to our energy problem, I believe, is to take the authority away from government and put it back in the hands of those who are experts in the field of energy in his economic program, the broken promises there and the results. First of all, there was his promise when he saw that inflation was 4.8% at the end of the Ford administration, that that was disgraceful, and he was going to do something about it. And he did. It is now running at 12.7%. And then there was unemployment. He promised he would bring it down to within 4%. And today, there are 8 million Americans out of work, and 2 million of them lost their jobs within the last few months. Then there was the matter of taxes. And I recall his saying that our tax system was a disgrace, and something had to be done about it. And so he has, in these four years, doubled the taxes paid by the American people. It amounts to an added $5,000 a year burden for the average American family of four. The taxes, he promised that he would never impose taxes on the working, the middle class of America. And he has imposed the biggest single tax increase in our nation's history. And his tax program that has doubled so far will double again in the next five years. And by 1985, if his policies are continued, the tax burden on the American people for the federal government alone will be in excess of $1 trillion. And then he was going to streamline the government. And he was going to make the government smaller. He has increased government spending at the federal level by 58%. He has run up, in these four years, the biggest four-year run of budget deficits of any president in our history. And in the year of 1980, the fiscal year that ended on the first day of this month, he ran up the single biggest deficit in our nation's history. And if you add in the off-budget items, the total debt is near $80 billion for that one year. Not too many years ago, $80 billion was the total cost of the United States government. Now $80 billion is the annual interest that we pay on the debt. I have been touring many areas of this country. And you have escaped some of this so far. But the ripple effect will catch up. I've been touring the areas where there is great unemployment. Detroit, Michigan, where it is 18%, for minorities, it is 56% in that city. Kokomo, Indiana, it's 20%. Flint, Michigan, it's 25%. These are the figures of the Great Depression of the 1930s. I have talked to the unemployed. I stood in the South Bronx. I stood there for the very reason that in 1977 Jimmy Carter had stood on that same spot. You would have to see the South Bronx in the heart of New York to believe it. There are rows and rows of empty buildings, gaunt structures with the windows broken out, standing empty and deserted. On one of them nearby was painted unkept promises. On another was painted despair. And then there are blocks and blocks that have been leveled by the bulldozer just covered with brick and rubble. But they just stretch as empty blocks like a bombed out city. And when I turned to leave, I found myself facing a middle-aged man, black, not antagonistic. But he said, do me, and with such a longing in his voice, he said, can you tell me? Do I have reason to hope? Can I hope that one day I can again provide for my family, take care of my children? How you bled, wanting to give him an instant answer and say, yes, it can be solved immediately. No, it can't be, but it can be solved. Yes, there is reason for hope in this country. This country has everything that it always had before except the leadership in Washington that this country requires. I stood in Youngstown, Ohio in the great empty shell of what had been a steel mill not too long ago. 13,000 men unemployed. The steel mill is closed. This isn't a temporary layoff. In Detroit, I met in a little backyard. A man had invited me to come there to meet some of his neighbors, all of whom were unemployed, steel workers, automobile workers, and some from the construction industry because people don't buy houses when interest rates are at 14% and 15%. This man had invited in a dozen neighbors, as I say. And in that tiny little backyard, we sat and we talked to each other. They brought their families. A young man with his wife, his children. And you hear of the shattered dreams. You hear of the hopes that have gone glimmering and the things that had been planned. And now the end question, what do we do? And moved by that, as I'm sure anyone would be, I went out and referred to that publicly as a depression. And the president couldn't wait. On the same day he called in the press to say this proves his ignorance, this is a recession. Well, now I know that the economists have drawn a kind of a fuzzy line and on one side's recession and on the other side is depression. But anyway, I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the human misery that I had seen. The president was hiding behind a dictionary. Well, if it's a definition he wants, I have one for him. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery will be when Jimmy Carter loses his. And Jimmy became president, or while he was a candidate, if you remember, he coined or invented a new thing called the Misery Index. This you got by adding unemployment, the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation. And in Jerry Ford's case, it came to 12 and a half. And then he said, no president with that kind of a misery index has the right to seek reelection to the presidency. Well, today his misery index is above 20%. And since he hasn't seen fit to follow through with the rest of his statement, maybe we can do that for him on November 4th. He has introduced five new economic programs in these four years. You would think that someone else had been in charge for the last three and a half years or so. But at the same time, he has found it necessary to find a reason for inflation. He blamed OPEC, then he blamed the Federal Reserve System once, not too long ago. Then he blamed the American people, he said that we were suffering from a malaise and we weren't productive enough. And then he took another crack at the American people and said that we had inflation because you and I were living too well. Well, you and I living too well is not the cause of inflation. We have inflation because government is living too well. Well, I too have introduced an economic program. And my economic program, I didn't just spin off the top of my head for it to be a campaign speech. We've worked for long, hard weeks with some of the best and the most noted economists in this country, with men who are not only economists but have had great experience in government, men like Arthur Burns, once the head of the Federal Reserve, George Schultz, former secretary of the treasury, Bill Simon, a former secretary of the treasury, Alan Greenspan and others. Now, my own plan is based in a combination of fiscal responsibility, the first priority, the Federal Reserve system, being to maintain the stability of the dollar. It is based on recognizing that business and industry in the United States are hamstrung by literally tens of thousands of unnecessary regulations that have added $130 billion to the cost of production in America and have not done one thing to improve productivity in America. And many of them should be eliminated. The next step is a planned program of reducing the cost of government. And we have a task force working on where we will find these areas to cut. And the president says this would mean the elimination of $130 billion worth of programs it wouldn't mean anything of the kind. It means cutting out fat and extravagance that are built in to the federal government. There is enough fat in that government today that if you rendered it and made soap you could wash the world. But as hardly, what we're talking about is hardly a Med-Ax approach. We're talking about a 2% cut in 1981. That's two cents out of every one of the $633 billion in the budget. Anyone should be able to do that. And I know it can be done because we did it in California. The next year you add another 2%, now it's four and then one for five and the next year six and the next year seven. Now that is a modest goal and even our economists who have studied this program tell us that we're modest but we prefer to do it that way. Just between you and me I think we can knock off as much as 10% or more. But we also can balance the budget by 1983 if not before and that is the biggest step in eliminating inflation putting government back within its means. Now the other step calls for tax reform. Accelerated depreciation for business and industry to permit business and industry in this country to once again put in modern plant and equipment and technology so we can compete with Japan and West Germany and the other industrial nations. Do you remember when they used to promise us two automobiles in every garage? Well we finally got them. They're both Japanese and they're both out of gas. Then the next step in our tax program is a 10% cut in the income tax across the board for everyone. Wait a minute, I have an encore. That's 10% in 1981, another 10% in 1982 and a third 10% in 1983. Now the president says that's irresponsible. Well I will admit to being irresponsible if he'll admit to being responsible. He says it will be highly inflationary. Why is it inflationary if you keep more of your earnings and spend it the way you want and it isn't inflationary if he takes it from you and spends it the way he wants. Now let me make one confession. I will confess that I have built into my program a spending program also. And it's one that I mentioned earlier. It is absolutely essential that we increase our spending for national defense if we're to preserve the peace. This too has been approved by the economists as well within reach. Remember, my tax cuts are not going to reduce the government to getting less money than it is presently getting. I am just reducing the increase that is built into the tax structure by this administration. The government will continue to expand and grow. The government will continue to have more money to meet the needs of expansion as we go on. But the people of this country will also have more money for the things that they want and that they need. So I believe in the plan, but now with regard to defensive spending, let me make this an absolute fact. The goal is world peace. That must be our prime responsibility. We are the leader of the free world whether we want to be or not. And therefore we are the only ones that can preserve the peace. And to do that, we must have strength. Now the president claims that while we're superior, he has canceled the B-1, he delayed the M-Max, he delayed the cruise missile, the neutron warhead, the Trident submarine and a number of other weapons closed down the Minuteman assembly line. And as I said earlier, we are not number one. We have opened a dangerous window of vulnerability to the Soviet Union. There is their building of arms goes up and ours continues to decline. With great percentage of our aircraft that on any given day can't fly for lack of spare parts or maintenance, with ships that can't sail from our Navy out of port because they don't have the crew to sail them, with 70% of the enlistees in the volunteer army leaving at the end of the first term and a high percentage of them not even completing that term, we're 70,000 short in non-commissioned officers. The president has asked for advanced registration for the draft. He says that he won't call a draft. I'm pleased with that because I don't believe in a peacetime draft. But our volunteer army, we wouldn't have the non-commissioned officers and the men to train a drafty army if we had to call them up in an emergency. I happen also to be opposed to his advanced registration for the draft. He said that that was to send a message to the Soviet Union, but he's sending it by way of the post office. But I'll tell you what I do think is the answer. I think, first of all, the rebuilding of an active reserve which has been allowed to deteriorate to where we have an active reserve that can be called up an emergency. And then I believe also in the volunteer military, if, if we will stop being as foolish as we've been to expect a young man to work a hundred hours a week for months out on duty in the Pacific, on a carrier and the Indian Ocean, a hundred hours a week for a salary that is less than he could get for working 40 hours a week at a menial job back home. What we really need, what we really need is to institute a pay scale and benefits as we would in the private sector that are commensurate with the sacrifice we're asking of the young men and women in uniform and we'll have a volunteer military that works. You know, there's a saying that Chicago is a city with big shoulders. That's a saying about it. Now, let the United States once again be a nation with big shoulders. Shoulders to bear the kind of historic responsibility out of which our destiny was born more than 200 years ago. What is it that we as Americans really want? It isn't power. If we only wanted power, we long ago could have dominated the world. It isn't world leadership as an end in itself. We've had world leadership thrust upon us by events. We've never pursued it. In my view, what we want is so simple, so elementary that it's often overlooked. We want to live in freedom and in peace to see our children. To see our children have at least the opportunities that we had for advancement and preferably even better opportunities than we had. We want to worship God in our own way, to lead our own lives, take care of our families, live in our own style in our own community without hurting anyone or anyone hurting us. And yes, we want to bring the blessings of peace and progress and freedom to others. I'm talking about the very essence of what it is to be an American. We're different. We have always been different. We have created with God's help and our sweat and pain and work. We've created something that never before has existed on the face of the earth. A nation where the vast majority of people are free from material want, free to worship and think in their own way. The immigrants who have come to this country in our own time and those who came earlier and today, we look upon as our parents or our grandparents or great-great-grandparents. They brought us a gift of work and a gift of faith. And what they produced through work was always there to be used for charitable and brotherly works of faith. All we have, all we've ever built, all the hopes and dreams that we want to come to pass, all this is dependent on education in freedom. And so a more basic answer to the question I asked is, what is it that America really wants? It's to grow, to learn, to develop our talents in freedom. Freedom is the only true possession that Americans have. A signer of the Declaration of Independence said it isn't important that we leave wealth to our children. It is important that we leave them liberty. I can think of no greater reward for any president of the United States than that he kept his country at peace and the people of his country at work, that he helped to strengthen the family and preserve the freedoms of his people, that he did his part to replace tension with confidence, despair with hope, anger with love and spiritual resolution or desolation, I should say, with a new faith in ourselves, in our country and in the God who has looked over our fortunes these many years of our glory. I would like to have your help and support, not because I think I personally can bring all these things about, but because I have faith in the people of this country and in the greatness of the people of this country and the leadership that I envision in Washington, if I should have enough of your support, would be to take the lead in getting government off the backs of the people of the United States and turning you loose to do what you can do so well. Thank you very much. Thank you.