 Well, thank you very much, all of you, for being here. And I know how grateful all of us are to Guy Vanderjack and Rich DeVos for all that they're doing. It's wonderful, finally, to welcome all of you here. I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. One thing I was always taught is never be late for a meeting, especially a meeting with your creditors. Now we're together, and as that saying goes, if you're willing, we'd sure like to renew the contract for one more year. The contributions that you're making, both financial and for the principles that unite us, have been key to the resurgence of our party. And believe me, the support our administration has received from Rich and Guy and the rest of our great team in the Congress has made all the difference. Many political experts are pointing to history with regard to an off-year election and saying there is no way we can do well in the November elections. But with all due respect, maybe they're forgetting something. We didn't get this far by repeating history. We got here by making it. The challenge we accepted in 1981 was to turn around the legacy of years of government blending, blending, blundering. We did the blending after we got here. How have we done? Some of these people from the last administration say we haven't succeeded. And they have a point. We haven't succeeded yet in eliminating the inflation problem they left us. In four years they more than doubled the inflation rate from 4.8 that the Ford administration had left them to 12.4 percent. Now we've cut it back to 8.9 percent, and since October 1st it's been running at about 4.5 percent. But we haven't completely eliminated it yet, so they're right. And we haven't entered the interest rate problem we found when we got here. If you'll remember those rates soared from 6.75 percent, 1977 to a high of 21.5 percent in 1980. That was the highest in more than a century. We've gotten them back to around 16 percent, and with cooperation from the Congress on spending, we'll bring them down some more. We haven't undone all the damage their tax increases did to the earnings and savings of our people. During those four years we had the worst plunge in the savings rate since 1950. Our tax cut is just beginning. More incentives are coming, but already savings are up, which means more investment capital for jobs and growth. This recession is a terrible tragedy for the unemployed, but it was not caused by a recovery program which only began after the recession was already underway. It was caused by years of runaway spending, taxes, and money growth which pushed inflation and interest rates to record levels. Recovery will come when those inflation, interest, and tax rates drop. And this is not only what our program is designed to do, this is what our program has begun to do. So have we repaired in one year all the damage of the last four? No. Have we made a solid beginning? Yes. Are we on the right track? You bet. Last year, you know, I've been telling some audiences in three states in the last two days that the fun thing about saying inflation is coming down, it's kind of hard. People haven't quite realized it. You go to the store and things still cost more than they did when you were there before. You just, and it's hard to figure it, they don't cost as much more as they used to. So we really won't convince everyone until there is no inflation, and the prices are the same, and we're going to do that. Last year's drop in inflation, though, to show you what it could mean, take an average American family of four people with the median income of $24,000, they had $754 more in purchasing power in 1981 because of the drop in inflation than they had in 1981, the inflation was higher. Now, you know, I had the pleasure once of testifying before a Senate committee while I was still governor of California. It was a little like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, the wrong way, upstream. Republican president was in his first several months in the White House when I testified, and I was asked after some give and take back and forth, I had a Democratic member of the committee, he said, well, why a few Republicans are right in all these things you're saying, you've now been here in office for a while in the administration, why haven't you corrected everything that had gone wrong? Well, now I answered him with, if you will forgive me, an anecdote. I told him about a ranch that Nancy and I had acquired, not the one we have now but much earlier, and it had a barn on it, a nice barn with six stalls. The fellow that had owned it before had kept cows in those stalls. We wanted to put horses in. They weren't high enough by that time. So I was in there day after day with a pickaxe and a shovel lowering the level of the floor in there, which had been raised by the accumulation over the years. And I recall that incident to the questioning senator and told him that you couldn't undo in a few months what it had piled, been piling up for a number of years, but now, lest I've sounded too partisan, nearly two decades ago, President John F. Kennedy said, the most urgent task facing our nation at home today is to end the tragic waste of unemployment and unused resources. It has become increasingly clear that the largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources, and to a higher rate of economic growth, is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative, and incentive. Reducing taxes, he said, is the best way open to us to increase revenues. Well, like today, many insisted at that time that his argument was wrong, that reducing tax rates would increase the deficit. History proves that he was right. And the only sound economic policy for America is an expression of faith in her people. It's sad that many of our opponents have turned their backs on this common-sense policy of JFKs, which succeeded so brilliantly. I hope we'll never make that same mistake. We must save, we must invest, and we must grow, and we'll do that if we trust the people and stand by our economic program that was tailor made to help them. Now, this doesn't mean that we insist on dotting every eye and having our way on every comma. We believe in the fundamentals of the program that we've submitted, but we'll listen to anyone who can offer any suggestions for improvement on that program. You know, one other issue that's a media favorite is the fairness of our program. Well, I welcome a fairness debate. It's time we challenge the great myth that all compassion begins and ends at Washington's wailing wall for big government. Sure, we must always provide essential services for needy Americans who can't help themselves. But what about all those forgotten Americans who are struggling to get ahead only to be hit with higher taxes and inflation year after year? I think they deserve a little compassion, too. Fairness is going to the map for a 25 percent tax rate reduction, the indexing of tax rates and strong new incentives for retirement savings, the best darn program for working and middle income Americans since John Kennedy's tax cut nearly 20 years ago. Fairness is saying you don't raise taxes on American workers who took cuts in their paychecks in order to keep their jobs. Fairness is insisting that when business gets its tax cut, you don't turn around and take the people's tax cut away. But the other side talk about trickle down economics. We know what that really means. Trickle down economics is when Main Street America sends a flood of tax dollars to Washington then has to cross its fingers and hope that a little rebate might trickle back in an election year. From now on, more of what the people earn stays with them. We're going to start creating wealth in America again. So yes, we'll be more than glad to talk about fairness this year. Really about that charge about my partiality to the rich. They just have it a little incorrect. I'm not really, in fact, I don't think they need it. I'm not interested in protecting the rich. I just want to keep the country so that anyone else that wants to can get rich. We have one other message for the people. We're not willing to entrust America's security to a bargain basement military. It was long ago that we had fighter planes and helicopters that couldn't fly because of a lack of spare parts, Navy ships that couldn't leave port, and a rapid deployment force that was neither rapid nor deployable nor much of a force. For the sake of our children and their children, I've considered my duty as president and all of our duties as citizens to make sure America is strong enough to remain free and at peace. And I make no apologies for what we're doing to restore our security. There's only one way to legitimately reduce defense spending. Reduce the need for more arms by negotiating a legitimate arms reduction plan. And you can only do that if you go to the negotiating table as well armed as the guy on the other side of the table. I'm going to wind up so we can come on down there and visit. We're trying to do for the American people what they've wanted and needed for a long time and I think they'll support us if we hang tough. We've come this far together. Let's not stop now. Thank you all again and God bless you.