 this time. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. I'm sorry about a young man who saved a nursing student from a robber. Now that wasn't any routine item from the police beat. That was a story from the autumn of 1933. According to the register, this young nurse, Melba Lohman, was accosted by a robber on a sidewalk. The robber grabbed her purse and her suitcase and was about to flee. But at that instant, a young man who worked as a sportcaster at WHO Radio saw the commotion from his second floor apartment. The young man grabbed an automatic pistol, pointed it at the robber. We're just getting to the good part here. The young man grabbed an automatic pistol and pointed at the robber and said, drop it and get going. And according to Melba, that's just what the robber did. Now the young hero dressed in his pajamas and a robe escorted Melba back to the nursing school. Mr. President, we know you're tough on crime, and I guess action speaks louder than words. Now, we don't know where that robber is tonight, but we do know where Melba Lohman is. She is now Melba King of Des Moines, and she's right here on the stage with us. Melba, would you please come up and greet the young man that saved you, Melba Lohman, for our Iowa Republican Caucus kickoff on this President's Day, the President of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And Governor Terry Branstad, what a surprise. This is the first time that Melba and I have seen Melba since that night. So it's the first time I've had a chance to tell you the gun was empty. I didn't have any cartridges. If he hadn't run what I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him. Well, I tell you, Senator Jepson and Mrs. Jepson, Congressman Talkie and former Congressman Gross, Mrs. Gross, my good friend Senator Paul Laxalt, coming here from Washington, D.C., is a little like landing in the real world after an extended visit to the Twilight Zone. On the way from the airport to here, I stopped and was on the air on W.H.O. radio. And if I don't get going on the remarks I'd intended to make, you're going to have a warm, nostalgic bath because I am being carried away by nostalgia. I know and appreciate the people of Iowa. I know and respect your values, your love of God and family, your belief in the dignity of work, and your honest patriotism. I learned about this when I lived and worked here many years ago. And during that time I came to know and worked with an Iowan who was destined to be one day be called the conscience of the United States Congress. His name was H.R. Gross. Long before either of us had any thought of a political career, H.R. and I worked at W.H.O. radio and that was where I had among other things some lessons in the words or in the economy of words. One day Ed Reimers, you'll remember Ed Reimers, you're in good hands. Ed was an announcer in the staff there and he and I were in the studio and Ed had just done the station break. It takes about 20 seconds before you went back to the network program and not having a commercial or anything to fill the time. He said, this is radio station W.H.O. Des Moines, Iowa. And in a few minutes the studio door opened and our boss came in, B.J. Palmer. And he said, I heard the station break Ed. Ed said yes, B.J. He said, you know advertisers pay a lot to get their messages on the air. We should eliminate as much unnecessary conversation as we can. And then he said, you don't need to say if this is. If they're listening, they know this is. He said, yes, B.J. He says, Ed, you don't need radio station. That's all their sets can get. And again, Ed said, yes, B.J. Now he's down to W.H.O. Des Moines, Iowa. And B.J. started to leave, got halfway through the door and then turned back and over his shoulders, said Ed, there's only one Des Moines and it's in Iowa. And then on we knew the station break would be W.H.O. Des Moines. Well in the coming election the political rhetoric is going to be pretty thick. You've had about a year of it already. Our biggest challenge as Republicans is to focus public attention on what is behind the words and promises and not get lost in the excess words. The candidates in the other party have already laid out a strategy of promising everything to everybody. You've had a gang of them swimming all over the state in the past few weeks. They've got so many candidates vying for votes in today's caucuses that there haven't been enough promises to go around. Yes, we Republicans make promises, but not to special interest groups to be paid from the public treasury and not promises that cancel each other out because if you keep one promise to one group you'll have to break the promise you made to another group. Four years ago the inflation monster was loose in this land, mangling the middle class, destroying the value of the lifelong savings of older Americans and hitting the poor and minorities hard. A family on a fixed income of $10,000 at the beginning of 1979. By the end of 1980 he had lost $2,000 in purchasing power just because of that inflation. The experts were telling us it would take a decade to ring inflation out of the economy. We promised to put that monster back in a cage and we've and that's just what we've done. We took runaway double digit inflation and brought it down to less than 4% last year and has been that way for two years now. Government spending was growing at a rate of 17% per year when we got to Washington. We have cut that more than half. To pay for that federal growth the tax system we inherited was siphoning off an ever-increasing share of the people's money. The federal tax take doubled just between 1976 and 1981. We promised an across the board tax rate reduction and that's exactly what we provided. We're also indexing tax rates beginning in 1985 so that government will no longer be able to make a profit from inflation at the people's expense. And there's one tax reform of which I'm particularly proud. The inheritance tax had gotten to the point where it was destroying the right of hardworking people to pass on to their family farm or family business to their children or their widows. We were restoring that right by increasing the inheritance tax exemption for the children and eliminating it altogether for surviving spouses. As far as I'm concerned we should never have been taxing widows like that in the first place. We inherited a prime interest rate that was going through the roof at 21 and a half percent when we got to Washington. We promised to bring the prime rate down. Don't don't tell me one of the eight is here. Cut that prime rate down almost in half and we can and must make more progress in reducing interest rates. Now we also inherited economic stagnation. Productivity was actually falling. Major industries were just hanging on with little hope in sight. We promised to turn this situation around to reinvigorate the economy and get America moving again. It's taken time to put our program in place and forward to take hold. My aren't we happy we stuck to our guns. This year no Republican should hesitate asking people if they're better off than they were four years ago. We're in the first phase of a recovery that is astounded the experts. The gross national product was up a healthy 6.2 percent last year. Unemployment is dropping sharply. Retail sales are soaring. Housing starts and auto sales are up. Last month new housing starts were at the highest level since 1978. Productivity after falling in the two years before we took office rose three and a half percent last year. Venture capital which was under a billion dollars in 1980 was four billion dollars last year. Because of progress in controlling inflation and our tax cuts real take home pay has been rising during the past two years after having dropped significantly in the four previous years. This recovery is going to benefit everyone. Benefit everyone especially the less fortunate by creating is there an echo in here by creating more jobs and providing all Americans with more opportunity. We're going to benefit everyone and those who suggest that somehow our policies are unfair are the same ones who gave this country economic stagnation and ruinous inflation. The only thing the only thing fair about their program was that they didn't discriminate. They made everybody miserable. Listen carefully when you hear screeching accusations about fairness just below the surface you'll hear an appeal to greed and envy totally inconsistent with the American spirit. I predict I predict when given the chance the American people will choose opportunity and economic growth over greed and envy any day of the week. The opposition will try to sell the American people the same old idea of federal control and regulations. Only this time it'll be packaged in a bright new box. One regulation being promoted is a domestic content law which would be interpreted by our trading partners in Japan and Europe as another restriction on international commerce. This is just the kind of tinkering that can backfire on the American farmer. We should be trying to open up markets and stimulate trade between nations not protect special interest by throwing monkey wrenches into the works. If history suggests anything it is that government even when directed by well-meaning individuals usually causes more problems than it solves. How many of you can remember the howls of anguish from the liberals when one of my first acts as president was to decontrol the price of oil? They rented and raved that the consumer would be taken to the cleaners. Well instead by freeing the market we unleashed a stampede of exploration production went up contributing to a developing world glut of oil and today the price of oil and gas at the pump is lower than it was three years ago. Now one more thing if the inflation we inherited had continued the price of gasoline would be one dollar a gallon more than it is today just by virtue of inflation. The cost of doing business and the price of energy are now substantially less. That's what I call Republican fairness. Over these last three years we've proven that we can be trusted to keep our word. Now we must let it be known that we're not expecting people to vote for us because of what we've done but for what we will do. We as Republicans have a bold vision for the future and unlike our opposition it's not based on increasing government taxing, spending, regulating or inflating. Real progress comes not from expanding the power of government but instead an increasing freedom and opportunity. Nowhere is this more clear than in one of America's biggest industries agriculture. I don't have to tell you how the inflationary spiral and economic uncertainty the last decade devastated the American farmer. The interest rates the incredible rise in the cost of doing business and the high taxes were bad enough. Then to add insult to injury your own government cut your legs out from under you by making you bear the full burden of a grain embargo against the Soviet Union. Well during the 1980 campaign we promised to end that ill-conceived embargo and that's another promise we kept. We went one step further. We negotiated a new long-term grain agreement with the Soviet Union that requires the Soviets to buy 50% more U.S. grain than they did under the old agreement. These last three years we've been trying to keep American farmers going till they, like our economy, recover from the destructive liberal policies of the past. It's a long and arduous process. Sometimes progress comes by step by step but we've been doing our best to open new markets for our farmers and make certain they aren't undercut by unfair competition. Given open and free markets along with stable economic conditions at home I have faith that our farmers can produce more sell more and do it more efficiently than anyone else in the world. You know there are other parts of the world where farming is done on a different basis than here. And I happen to have a new hobby. I've taken to collecting jokes that I can confirm from defectors and refugees that are actually told by the Russian people among themselves and that sort of display a lack of respect or some cynicism for their own government. And one of the latest that I heard had to do with the Commissar and the Soviet Union, who went out to one of those state collective farms, grabbed the first worker he came to, said, Comrade, are there any complaints? And he said, oh no, Comrade Commissar, no complaints. I've never heard anyone complain. And he said, good, how are the crops? Oh, he said the crops never had been better, just wonderful. He said, how about potatoes? Oh, he said, Comrade Commissar, if we could put the potatoes in one pile, they would reach the foot of God. And the Commissar said this is the Soviet Union, there is no God. He said, that's all right, there are no potatoes. Creating stable economic conditions has been the reason that we fought so hard to get spending and taxes under control these last few years. It's been one of the pivotal economic battles of our time. And I just want you to know how proud I've been to have Congressman Evans talky and leech at my side. All I have to ask is, send me more like them. And on election day, don't just go out and vote for them. Tell your friends and neighbors to get out and vote for them too. And then there is Senator Jepsen, who works side by side with your other fine Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. I don't have to tell you how important Republican control of the Senate has been to the progress we've made. We couldn't have done any of it without controlling that one house. Senator Jepsen has been a mighty force for responsible government and the farmer's best friend in Washington. We couldn't have accomplished what we did without him. Senator Jepsen and his lovely wife, D, reflect all the good qualities for which the people of Iowa are so admired. And you should all be proud of the job he's doing as your United States Senator. He deserves all our support for reelection. When you leave here, those of you who are going to your Republican caucuses, keep in mind that in a free country like ours, the future will be determined not only by what we believe, but by what we do. Iowans have much of which to be proud. Together we can keep America the decent land of freedom and opportunity that God intended it to be. I thank you, all of you, for what you've done and what you will be. God bless you. Thank you very much.