 to represent here could best be illustrated for the struggle that lies ahead with the totally irresponsible budget that was passed by the majority in the House of Representatives a short time ago. For two years we've had some bipartisan cooperation. For two years we've been able to get not all the cuts you know when they raise the issue of the deficits the deficits would be about forty billion dollars less than they are right now if we had gotten all that we asked for in the line of cuts. But the deficit the budget I don't know what game they were playing but it certainly could not have been aimed at anyone in which we could compromise and come to a meeting of the minds. It is a budget that is totally in the spirit of what's been going on for the past decades calling for some three hundred and fifteen billion dollars in new taxes, calling for a couple of hundred billion dollars over the next few years in increased social spending, cancelling actually cancelling a number of the savings or programs or the savings that we've achieved in these couple of years that we've been working on that. So there's going to be, we're going to be joined in quite a battle. Now you all know and I suppose you've been told in some of the meetings before this lunch and before I got here about some of the improvements that have taken place that twelve point four percent inflation rate well for the last six months it's been running at four tenths of one percent and we know about the interest rates they haven't come down as far as they should and must but still they have dropped to less than half of what they were. All kinds of good indicators, increased productivity up for several months in a row, a number of other things but I think the most significant indicator that we really have turned the economy around and that we are improving is the fact that they're no longer calling our plan Reaganomics. I don't know what name will be hung on to it as the recovery proceeds but I'm not going to go on talking here any more about many of these things except to emphasize again we have a major job ahead of us no question about distortions that have been made and a number of subjects and things that we're doing but we believe that we've got a pretty good record of achieving most of what or much of what we set out to do as of this point but as we also said at the beginning it was going to take more than even a few years it was going to take time to clean up what we had inherited. I was talking here at the table about our national defenses. The people of this country have virtually been turned around in their thinking by a constant drumbeat of propaganda aided and abetted by much of the press that somehow we're still standing here foolishly throwing money at the problem of national security and without any strategic plan or knowledge of what we're doing. Well don't you believe it? We know what we're doing and what we've accomplished when we came here the volunteer military was considered a failure. Today I don't know of any time ever that we've had a higher esprit de corps and morale than we have in the military the volunteer military. We have the highest percentage of high school graduates we have the highest percentage of people that are average or above in intelligence in the services even including back in the days when it was a draft military and we are progressing with weapons systems that well that's why the Soviet Union has agreed to meet with us on disarmament proposals in Geneva is because for the first time in a long time they've decided that maybe our country does have the will to do it and it was all illustrated in a cartoon that's become my favorite when Brezhnev was still alive. It was a cartoon of Brezhnev saying to a Russian general I like the arms race better when we were the only ones in it but I'm not going to talk anymore here because you've probably got particularly subjects that you've probably said sometimes reading the paper by Goliath like to ask him well go ahead let's have a dialogue here so let me let me answer that then kind of a long way let me say first of all there's a whether the answer is yes or no there's a matter of timing if the answer is one way you become a lame duck automatically if the answer is the other way everything you try to do is viewed as political and part of the campaign so there's a timing matter involved the other part is I've said that I will I think the people tell you whether you should run again and I will remember your reaction to the question making that decision but let me just say one other thing too and I know that many of you and I appreciate this many of you have feelings about maybe starting a committee or this or that after this or that to say something and I have to ask you please leave the timing to me because if something is started of that kind under the laws that have grown out of past misdeeds I would either be forced to repudiate you or declare yes ahead of when I think it's a proper time if that's going to be the answer so please just have confidence that I'll make the decision and and what I honestly believe is the right decision at the right time someone else that sounded like a filibuster didn't it I do feel that way they have gone so far overboard in the spending area that there's no way that we could find a meeting in the minds between them on the basis of that budget now if they if they intended that budget as well they said of it that what they really intended with it was a declaration redeclaration of Democrat philosophy and that's exactly what it is spend and spend and tax and tax and I think we should leave them stuck with it I think if we don't yield to something of that kind we've we've got the biggest campaign issue in the world to just hold these two things up in front of the people and say look this is what if you keep sending them back to Washington they're going to do and as for the much of their tax there's not going to be new tax it was based on canceling the third year of the income tax cut and canceling indexing now for all of these charges that were unfair 78% of the savings to the taxpayers in indexing will go to people below the $50,000 a year mark the people that are above that and up in the upper brackets indexing isn't going to do them any good they're already in the top bracket they can't get shoved into another bracket by inflation but I can only tell you that about the third year of the tax cut and about indexing I sleep with a pen under my pillow so I won't waste any time vetoing any yes yes I understand that several members of Congress who were to see some classified information relating to the outside of the North Central America problem came away supporters and believers in your local I know there are reasons why all of that material is readily available where it would be possible to be classified some of it and take more of it and fail with other members of it we are talking right now and in conference so I can't give you a specific answer about getting the whole matter of Central America before the people of the country because there again this drumbeat of propaganda as a weekend tell from the polls that most people just don't understand the importance and what's going on down there and so I think very shortly we'll have an answer and we will go to the people with it and tell the people what is taking place you know this thing about what are we worried about them down there you'd be surprised how many cities in the United States are closer to Nicaragua than they are to Washington D.C. that's our backyard and we're not going to let Cuba or the Soviet Union by way of Cuba and Nicaragua take over here in this western hemisphere impact is the impact of the events in the last couple of days of Beirut when I happened to be in East I actually I don't think any impact of the other than the sorrow that we all feel for that tragedy and let me just say right now if I have a hate in the world it is for the so-called terrorists this has got to be the most cowardly element of humanity there is in the world to blindly go forth with the destructive device of that kind without any regard as to whether their own relatives might be caught up in the street on it but I have heard, President Jamile of Lebanon called and I know what was on his mind he was worried that maybe we were going to fall back and retreat from our efforts at peace there and I assured him that there was no retreat at all where we're concerned and that's not going to change it our feeling I have heard from others in the area and everyone in our own allies in Europe they're all of us all of them concerned that if this might turn us away no we're going right ahead with what we've been seeking and that is to find a way to for peace in the Middle East and not driven away by this and I haven't seen any evidence of the part of even the people that we should take a second look at this and fall back or retreat and we're just not going to do it well alright and then I've got it then that's alright I forgot I'd said just one he had said just one more yeah I know in my heart I'm most grateful to be with you we hope to be with you in the next six years well I know I'm going to get a chance to say hello individually each one of you because I'm going in the next room and you're going to come by and we'll take some pictures also and I just said when I came here and first haven't thought about that that I was going to get to say hello to each one of you I said here I should have eaten early so that I could table hop but I won't have to do this so I'll see you all in the next room