 Thank you very much. Good to be here. President of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you. I heard you, Howard. That's always a thank you. Well, thank you, Bo, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. For a minute there, Mr. Callaway, I almost called it BOPAC. Let me just add we owe a special thanks to Congressman Newt Gingrich. He couldn't be here today but the new General Chairman of GOPAC. You're here today because you've chosen to become actively involved in the political life of our nation. Well, I guess you wouldn't be surprised if I said that reminds me of a story. I hope I haven't told it to you before. It has to do with a fellow that had some creek bottom land. The old boy went to work and it was covered with rocks and brush, and he cleared away the brush and he hauled away the rocks, built the most beautiful garden spot you've ever seen. And one day at church, one Sunday, asked the preacher if he wouldn't come out and see what he'd been doing. That afternoon, when the preacher dropped by, he was astounded. He said, look at that corn. I've never seen corn. So look at those melons, the biggest melons. The Lord has blessed this land. And he went on with that way. Oh, bless the Lord. Look at all of this. And the old boy was getting pretty fidgety and finally he said, Reverend, I wish you could have seen it when the Lord was doing it by himself. That's the way it is with our nation. God has blessed us with an industrious people and a vast and beautiful land. But in this democracy, it's up to each of us to help keep America great. Think back just six years ago. Big taxing and spending had led to soaring interest rates and inflation. Our defenses had grown weak. All over the world, America's reputation was no longer one of strength and resolve, but of vacillation and self-doubt. Many in Washington seem to forget that the bedrock values of faith and freedom and family were what made us a great and good people. It seemed for a season as though any sense of justice, self-discipline, and duty was ebbing out of our national life, and that our nation was in an inevitable decline. The American people decided it was time to put a stop to that decline, time to give our country a rebirth of faith and freedom. We Republicans took office determined to make a new beginning. Today, we've knocked inflation down to about a third of what it was. We're in the midst of what may prove the longest economic expansion since the war, if not international history. The stock market is up, way up, and more Americans have jobs than at any other time in our history. And just as we've moved ahead in the economy, this Republican administration has taken vigorous action against waste and fraud in the federal government. We've taken aim at crime. We've nearly doubled the number of federal cases against drug offenders, more than doubling the conviction of organized crime leaders, and setting up drug task forces. And we've moved education to the very top of the national agenda. When we took office, only a handful of states had task forces on education. Now virtually all states have organized reform commissions. In foreign policy all over the world, or all the world knows that America is strong again and determined to stand up for freedom. Now we need to make these Republican accomplishments secure, extending our support to state and local levels. Consider this, there are 88 congressional districts where in 1984 George Bush and I received more than 60% of the vote, but where the congressional seat is today held by a Democrat. It's time for us to start fighting back and time for us to set priorities, concentrate on just how and where those congressional district lines are drawn. I used to say the redistricting that took place when I was governor of California, the only Republican district they left us in the state was south of the border. If Republicans have a greater state house strength, then we can play a major role in ensuring a fair redistricting process. And remember that process takes place again in 1990. I'm sure you'll agree that future presidents should not have to work with a Congress that doesn't represent the people. GOPAC is determined to correct this political anomaly. You know what political anomaly means, that's a fancy phrase that says the Democrats have been gerrymandering us for years. What we Republicans need is, well baseball season's here so let me put it this way, we need farm teams, training grounds where Republicans can get experience in state and local politics, preparing themselves for the House of Representatives and still higher office. And yes, where Republicans can learn to work together to gain the strength to prevent still more Democratic gerrymandering in the future. If the need is great, the opportunity is greater still. Listen to this, a gain of just 67 legislative seats nationwide would give us Republicans control of 49 state legislative chambers. Now to think of it, that's a fact we might want to learn by heart. Under the leadership of Bo Calloway and Newt Gingrich, you've been making GOPAC a force in Republican political campaigns across the country. Please keep up the good work. Get involved in your state legislative campaign committees and support local GOP candidates. And yes, help our party fight the fight for fair redistricting as we approach the next census. For all that you've done for our party, and even more for all that you're going to do, I thank you. God bless you all and now I understand there's time for a few questions, which I've been hurrying to get to, yes. As Senator Baker said, anyone that's been involved in business negotiations has seen how brilliantly you've negotiated with the Soviets. My question is, how likely is it that in the very near future we'll get the major arms control agreement that we all want? How much of the last part? What? How likely is it in the very near future that we'll get the major arms control agreement that we all want? Well, I've always been a little superstitious about getting optimistic and predicting a no-hitter or something. Dates back to my sports announcing days. But I do have to say that we all are encouraged here. When you stop to think that this is the first time any Russian leader has ever really proposed eliminating weapons they already have. That's never happened before. And I think that what's on our side is not a change of heart so much as just sheer necessity. He is faced with, as I was six years ago, with a great economic disastrous problem in his country and has been augmented by their great arms buildup. Already they've been building four-to-one in tanks over us in the NATO countries, six-to-one in aircraft, things of that kind. And I think he has a need that if he's going to get this class no-st as he calls it and these changes, he's going to have to make some changes about the military. So we are encouraged. Actually the proposal that he made about the long-range intermediate-range weapons in Europe, that's the proposal I made four years ago. And I'm just very happy to let him take credit for it just as long as we can get it. I got a thing on my desk that says you can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit. Someone else? I heard from Senator Baker's remarks that the expectation of some kind of cooperation from Japan and Germany to stimulate their respective economies was slim, perhaps slimmer than we in the financial community had hoped for. What is your feeling about that and what you hope to achieve? It's a long, hard fight. For three years, I'd been begging for a whole review of the GATT process and the treaties and so forth that have to do with trade. And finally, last year in Japan, our six economic summit allies agreed and we started. In Japan, we also made a decision that we've got to look at something worldwide about the problem of agriculture. For example, the simple truth is that we are all subsidizing agriculture in such a way that we are responsible for overproduction worldwide of the product and thus the lowering of the prices and so forth. We've got to get the marketplace back into dictating what's done, not governments. But yes, some of them are. We'll have a harder problem in dealing with it. Prime Minister Nakasone, you couldn't ask for someone that has tried to be of more help. He's endangered himself politically in his own country for what he's tried to accomplish. And something of the same exists with Germany. But we're after them. At least we have one thing that again makes me hopeful. And that is that when they saw our economic recovery and realized how it had come about, I was amazed that next economic summit I went to, following our beginning recovery, this was all they could talk about, was the American miracle, as they called it. And we told them that we'd done it by reducing government regulations, by reducing taxes, by providing incentive for people. And many of them spoke up and said they realized that they were burdened by too many regulations and restrictions on hiring of labor and this sort of thing, and taxes, you realize that under our new tax reform, that highest bracket, 28% on the biggest of earnings, that is lower than the lowest rate of income tax among most of our trading partners. So what we're trying to do is use ourselves as an example and encourage them. And some countries have done more than others in this and have found out that there is a stimulant to the economy when you let people keep a little more of what they earn. We're getting more revenue from lower tax rates. Mr. President, I think you were right in supporting the countries. Will they continue to be able to get support from our government? If I have to storm Capitol Hill like Teddy Roosevelt went up San Juan Hill, this is really shameful of what's going on in Congress and the attitude in Congress. We have a totalitarian communist government running Nicaragua. It was the only organization in the Revolution against Samosa, the only organized group. The Sandinistas have been a kind of a communist organization there in that country for a number of years. The Revolution was successful. They were in a position with an organization to kind of move in. And what they did was get rid of in a number of ways from exile to execution leaders of other groups in the Revolution. Now what you see is what they call the Contras. That's their name for them and it's disgraceful because that means counter-revolutionaries. They're not. They're still revolutionaries that want what they fought for in the first place and that's democracy. How many people know that in the midst of the Revolution against Samosa the revolutionaries ask the organization of American states to take their side and be helpful. And the organization said we want to know what are the goals of your revolution. Well in writing, they're for democracy, for a pluralistic society, for press, free labor unions, free speech, until they got in power and all of those promises have gone out the window. So I don't see us having any other choice but to be of help to the freedom fighters because if you want to look at it in a really selfish and practical way suppose that we don't succeed. And pretty soon, Hala Cuba, we have on the mainland of the American continents a Soviet satellite state. Now the Sandinistas have repeatedly said that their revolution knows no boundaries meaning that once they're there, they're going to try to expand and spread this through other countries. Well there could come a day when it wouldn't be a case of just providing arms for freedom fighters. It would be a case of where we might be forced to provide not only the arms but American military personnel to use them. And all we want is an opportunity for democracy there. And it's up to the American people to make this a case of misunderstanding because the Sandinistas have a very sophisticated disinformation network and it makes use of our own media many times to tell their story but to not tell the other story. A bishop from this country down there was leading some refugees across the Honduran border. The American press reported that they were attacked by the Contras but that he managed to get them across the border. And then the note said that he had come home to his bishop's position here. I phoned him and told him of what I had read. And he said, well, that's not true at all. He said, yes, I was leading the refugees but we were attacked by the Sandinistas and the Contras came to our aid. That story has never appeared in any of the media in this country but that's the kind of distortion that has the people so fooled that a great majority of them in the polls say they're opposed to me and wanting to help the Contras. But another question in the polls, do you think it would be right for us to oppose the establishment of a Soviet satellite on the mainland of America and it's about 80% of the people say, you bet we ought to stop them from doing that. Well, that's what we're doing. We just have to convince people that the two are one and the same thing. I won't. Thank you. The gains we're making on the tax structure, is there any other work being done like the taxpayers' bill of rights gains to protect the First Amendment rights of citizens, the civil rights of citizens from the IRS themselves? My golly, I don't know. I don't know but I can tell you that I have long felt that everybody has to be on their guard against the IRS agents. But we do want and we will and have checked into every time we find that we can find that there is an unfairness of any kind going on there. We want to give the country back to the people. Mr. Volcker's term comes up in August. Do you have any comments? I can't make one right now. We're in the midst of that entire situation. So I just can't comment. Part of the whole situation is what does he want to do? Last question. Tell me it's the last question. Mr. President, I'm a sports enthusiast from New York. And last year we had two championship teams and the Mets and the Giants. And a lot of it has to do with a good head coach. And I'd like to say and I'm sure everybody here agrees to be a great head coach for this country. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. That was a good question. Thank you all very much. Mr. President, good to see you. Thank you.