 Thank you very much, thank you, well thanks, thank you, thank you, thank you all very much and welcome to the White House. It's great to see so many old friends and supporters and I have to make a special mention of Jim Roberts and Dan Lundgren. As the President and Honorary Chairman of Radio America, you've allowed me to keep a hand in my old profession and my real true love, radio announcing. I was even broadcasting a game one day when it wasn't a game going on. I really was. I set a record for a man standing up at the plate and hitting successive foul balls. It was the ninth inning of a game between the Cubs and the Cards. It was tied up. Jurgus was at bat and I was doing a telegraphic report and all of a sudden I saw the fellow on the other side of the window type so I thought there was a play coming and he handed me the slip of paper, said the wire's gone dead. I thought ninth inning, I can't just tell him we'll play some music or something. So I thought well what doesn't get in the scorecard so I had Jurgus foul one off and I had him foul another one off and then he fouled one that was just missed being a home run by a foot. Then I described the two kids that got in a fight over the ball that went back a third base. I was just about beginning to run out of gas and thinking this can't go on and now they'll know I've been snowing them when he sat up and started typing again and I started another ball on the way to the plate and he handed me the slip and then I started to giggle. Jurgus popped out on the first ball pitched. Well, well anyway, I thank them and Tom Witter and Alan Risken and well how can I thank any of you enough? In the pages of human events one gets a picture of the world as it really is and of course you know I'm a faithful reader because I'm always quoting that paper. The risk of offending the secular humanists I might even say I read your paper religiously. All of you at Radio America and human events represent what I would call a truly independent press. You give a fresh perspective, a vital alternative to monolithic media interpretations and the need for a fresh perspective reminds me of a story. It's about two Muscovites who were walking down the street in Moscow and one of them said to the other, so how are things going? And the other one says, oh wonderful, wonderful things couldn't be better. Wonderful the first one exclaimed, have you read Pravda today? Well he said of course I have, how else would I know that things are wonderful? Well I'm as usual they've over-scheduled me and I don't want to talk too long but I know also that there's not going to be any possibility of greeting each one of you individually. I know that the theme of your leadership conference is the bicentennial of our constitution and I thought I might give you a sort of sneak preview of what I'm going to be saying tomorrow at the Jefferson Memorial. Later in life when Jefferson examined our constitution he found only one major flaw really an omission and it wasn't in the area of political liberties, the freedoms of speech and worship and assembly and all. Those he could be confident he'd secured for all posterity with the Bill of Rights. In Jefferson's eyes the glaring omission was not in the political but in the economic realm a failure to include an article in the Constitution that would prohibit government borrowing what we've come to call deficit financing. His concern ran deeper than his well-founded fears of profligate government from history and experience. He knew that it was in the economic realm that the oppression of government was often most keenly felt. He knew that a government with no limit on borrowing was a government with no limit on its power over the individual. That this power to borrow was like a wedge that could and we know would be driven between the individual and his God-given rights of freedom and property. When I signed the tax reform bill I said that these last decades had seen an expansion and strengthening of our civil liberties but that our economic rights had been too often neglected and even abused. Well it's time that abuse stopped and that's why tomorrow I've chosen to stand at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial and call for an economic bill of rights that will complement and strengthen Jefferson's political bill of rights. So in the coming months we'll be needing the voice of independent journalism all the more. We'll be needing the support of all of you as we make our case for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness the Jefferson Ideal, the American Ideal of limited government and a free, proud and independent people and I will be suggesting tomorrow specifics of legislation that the Congress needs to find out the people of this country want. Now as I said I know that I'm very short on time here and I know that there would be a chance of meeting each one of you independently and I just happen to think myself since you're the only press in the room. Maybe we could have just a little dialogue. I know I haven't much time left here but a few minutes of dialogue that some of you might have said to yourself at one time or the other, boy if I had a chance I'd like to ask him. And now's your chance we could have a little dialogue and actually I'm sticking pretty much with Jefferson and then getting right into our economic program. 9.45 I'm due there and I guess I go right on. It would seem from what I heard up on the hill yesterday after I made that announcement that there are a few people who think the primary qualification for a Supreme Court justice is adherence to the democratic dogma and I don't think that's so yet. I've never put it away. Thanks to C-SPAN I now and then when I get home a little early I can see some of what's going on up on the hill and there are some things that there's only one answer to them. That's veto. Oh wait one second. The commercialization has faced, well this we're very interested in. We talked to NASA about this and we've had conversations about that. The SDI thing is a completely different operation and I believe is the one answer to the ultimate total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world. Yes. Yes. Yes. We should commercialize just as we should privatize a lot of things that the government's doing today like Amtrak. This is sheer coincidence. We had a full cabinet meeting this morning and the whole meeting was on the subject of how in this next year and a half it's left. Do we pin down and make permanent the things that we've accomplished so that they will be continued into the future? That's what we're going to devote ourselves to doing. Well spread the word first of all and then again and the word to the people that Congress and I think he will agree with this that Congress do respond when they hear from the folks back home. The trouble is in so much of the press today there is such a drumbeat the other way. For example I just I can't believe it when I hear some of our opponents up on the hill stand right up there and on television and so forth say why I'm the cause of the deficit and they say he hasn't submitted a balanced budget since he's been here. Well of course not. There's no one that ever thought with the deficit the size it is that in one year you could balance the budget without doing a great deal of harm pulling the rug out from under a number of people. But Graham Rudman Hollings met what was my goal and what my plan was and that was to set a target down here where year by year you could reduce it down and you could point to that date and say there we will have reached a balanced budget ending the deficit. And in the meantime that we pass a balanced budget amendment set at such a date so that never again can we get ourselves in this situation. You have got to be the voices to counter this drumbeat of propaganda and it's on every facet the whole thing about I pick up the polls and see how the people think it's all right to whittle away at the defense spending. We wouldn't have the Soviet Union sitting at a table with us talking about arms reduction if we hadn't rebuilt our military. But they've heard that drumbeat about four hundred dollar hammers and six hundred and forty dollar toilet seats and so forth. They failed to see we're the ones that discovered those things. That's what had been going on and we've we've corrected it. It ain't going on anymore. Well yes and let me say that I'm not going down that road that has been traveled too often where just to get an agreement will sign anything as a matter of fact in my last meeting with him I managed to learn a little Russian and I launched it at him Doviye no Proviye it's a Russian proverb it means trust but verify he smiled. I am afraid to talk about it because sometimes if you if you act that way then they figure that they've got you over a barrel or something but he has the invitation it was he had promised that it would be in this country and we're still having our fingers crossed but I'm afraid to predict for fear that it may change their minds that's why. We haven't given up on that ever since we've we've been here we've had setbacks in it but still the difficulty is that outside of Egypt and now King Hussein and Jordan who are trying very sincerely to bring this about we still have not gotten the the other Arab states to agree to come along and now we're all looking at this subject of possibly an international meeting to try and bring the forces together but that has to be a goal because we know that that's where the final one can finally take place. Yes and as a matter of fact there is one thing that I that we are doing and that has not stopped and we're increasing and that is the exchange of youth. I have a feeling that if the kids of the world the young people could all get to know each other there never would be another war. And so we've got a whole big detachment of the finest looking young people Mara high schools that are on their way over there going to be in five European countries and including behind the Iron Curtain we're having some of them here and we're going to keep up as much of that as as we can. Thank you. Well I am in favor of a free press but I also want a responsible press and I think that too often that we we're not seeing that for example when I read a story about Catholic Bishop in this country down in Nicaragua and they managed to get over a thousand refugees across the border into Honduras that were fleeing Nicaragua but that on the way they were attacked by the Contras and yet he managed to get them free you know and then the story wound up saying that he was back in America at his post here and I couldn't resist. I called him and told him what I had read and asked him about it and he said well the story about me getting the thousand refugees across the Honduran border is true but we were attacked by the Sandinistas we were rescued by the Contras. I've never seen that story corrected. I went over to the State Department one day and over 750 of the Washington press were in that room with all the TV cameras grinding and they were there for three people from Nicaragua two former Sandinistas who had walked away from it and a third minister a clergyman black minister from a church down there and they all three spoke and told all of these people their experiences and why they were taking the course they were taking the minister didn't have any ears left they had arrested him just for preaching and then in jail cut both his ears off among other things and then that night I watched on the news because my only words were just a few words about thanking them and so forth for being there that's all I saw in the news was me saying a few words and not one word about these three people and they weren't on any talk shows and they weren't interviewed or anything of that kind and I just I think it yes everybody's entitled their opinion they also should know what they're talking about oh yes yes yes the Sandinistas I know I'm running out of time I'll get right there the Sandinistas have one of the most effective disinformation networks I've ever seen including a slick paper magazine published in Berkeley California that is a Sandinista propaganda piece and the thing that they can do with groups that go down their well intention like a recent church group and then came back totally on the Sandinista side well they'd been given the planned tour they hadn't been able to get out and see what's really going on it's the places of Potemkin Village and so no the Contras there's no way that we can bring about a change unless we stay with them keep going there and then I'll come here you left out another one we're very definitely we're very definitely helping the people in Afghanistan and the to a sizable extent in Mozambique there I can only tell you that we have a belief and have reason to believe very good reason we and our allies that that government is seeking to turn and to have a contact with the West and so this is what we're playing on we've had the previous president who was killed and then we've had this second president here in Washington and as I say I think that they are trying to loosen the ties they once had in the other direction and tie themselves to us and so don't ask me too many questions about what we're doing about that I will because I'm gonna have to go right out there and I am going to take one more second one second to tell you one more experience I had with Mr. Gorbachev I am collecting stories that I can establish are absolutely told by the Russian people among themselves about their country and it shows they've got a sense of humor and also they're a little cynical about things and I couldn't resist telling one of them to Gorbachev and because I was getting acquainted with him there and this was a story that they tell it's about a Russian and American and they're having an argument about freedom and the Americans that look I can walk into the Oval Office and I can pound the president's desk and I can say Mr. President I don't like the way you're running our country and a Russian said well I can do that the Americans said you can he said yes I can walk into the Kremlin pound on the general secretary's desk and say Mr. General Secretary I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country