 For asthma and things like that, I know exactly what you're going to do. I used to be in California before I ever got around to taking shots. I think every May, I used to go riding at the ranch, and I'd end up with three or four handkerchiefs tied to the saddle before I got back. Well, we'll move along real quickly here because I know you're going to have time problems and it's nice to see you again as always. Democratic leaders, particularly Walter Mondale and the other Democratic contenders, have really been slamming you repeatedly and will likely step up those attacks for the huge $200 billion deficit that the government is racking up. And your administration, over its four years, will have increased the national debt by $700 billion, which is from your budget reports, or nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars. Don't share your answer to Mondale and the others. Do you accept any blame for that? No, not a bit. And I think that it's time to point out that they keep calling it the President's Budget. Isn't the President's Budget under the Constitution? There's only one branch of government that is authorized to spend money. That is the Congress of the United States. And if the Congress of the United States had given the President of the United States in these last few years the cuts in spending that the President asked for, the budget would be $40 billion less, or the deficit would be $40 billion less than it is right now. I think it's time, people like yourself, who have a great opportunity to talk to the people, instruct the people of this country a little bit as to just how all of this comes about and who is responsible. First of all, we don't think the deficit is going to be $200 billion. I can't give the figure we're looking at right now. But the recovery has been so much better than it had been anticipated that we think that we're going to nibble away at that. And the most practical way to reduce the deficit is to get economic recovery. To get those people that are out there now as being helped by the government financially because of their unemployment. To get them back working, earning, and paying taxes again is what will make the biggest drop-up. More than a half of the present budget deficit is structural. The other half is cyclical, that is caused by this recession. So you can deal with one half of that deficit through the economic recovery. You deal with the rest in getting the spending of government down. And that means Congress having the courage to do what they haven't done yet and that is to deal with the entitlement programs. And they haven't made one change in those. And they are the principal cause of the other half of that deficit. Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan and I, the Democrats of Congress have sent budgets to Capitol Hill for fiscal 83, fiscal 84, which called for deficits of $91 billion and $189 billion, respectively. If the President submitted spending requests which actually proposed such huge deficits and budgets proposed those deficits, how can you, dear, ask Congress to do any better? Because it's apparent and was apparent from the very beginning after almost 50 years of this kind of economics that you could not, in one jump, pull a rug out from under people who are totally dependent on many government programs. You had to bring this down in a way that would preserve a safety net for the people in need. And as I say now, pull a rug out from under them. And so what we aimed at was to get us on the declining pattern of deficits to where down here we could foresee the day of the balanced budget. And I might also point out that the sincerity of those who want or don't want deficits I think is exposed also in the fact that I have been asking for, pleading for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, and it has been mainly the majority party in the House that has refused to even consider this. And I doubt if any of those candidates for President want such a thing. Nevertheless, if you don't propose those cuts, how do you put the full weight of the Chief Executive behind the Congress to steal them to make those cuts? For example, here's an article that I did some time ago that suggested where we could cut the deficit by at least $100 billion, maybe $175 billion. A lot of proposals that many people might not agree with, but many people would agree with some of them, or a lot of them. If the budget doesn't propose those cuts, I've got a note back from Ed Meese on this saying, fine, can you just tell us how can we bring this about? And I wrote back to Ed, you have to first propose them. No, what do you say about that? What I have to say about that is, you also have to face the reality of whether you can get it or not. Now, even with the reductions that we asked for, we couldn't get all of them. As a matter of fact, the budget that I set up for 1984 in January, Congress wouldn't even consider it. Now, I have to be aware of that. I don't sit here all alone with this. We meet with congressional leadership of both parties. We talk with the committee chair and the leadership on the budgets that we're proposing. We have to face up to what are the realities. And we still ask for more than they're willing to give us in cuts. But it doesn't do any good to just send a budget up there that would not even be considered. We did in 1984, as I say, and even though it was not as drastic as what you were earlier suggesting, as I say, they simply refused to even consider it. Isn't that so tacit giving in to their appetites and their excesses? No, I think there is a recognition of reality since the Constitution says they are the only ones who can authorize and appropriate money to spend. Now, there's nothing I can do about this except one thing that I'm doing now. I have sent word up there on the appropriation bills that now must come down that if they follow the pattern that they have suggested they're going to follow. The budget, for example, that the Democrat majority passed in the House and said that they had done it simply to reaffirm what was traditional Democratic policy. And it called for billions and billions of dollars in additional spending and new programs. And I have sent word up that I will veto any of those kind of bills that they send down. I wonder if you could look back over the past three years, perhaps in a self-critical way, and the deficits, the difficulty, by your own admission in our last interview attaining the bureaucracy of getting more control over still rising federal expenditures. Look back critically and say, is there anything you would do differently? I mean, no one could bat a thousand. There must have been something that you would have done. You would have been tougher on the outset. Have you reflected on that at all? One of the main things that I wouldn't do over again is follow for the line that I did last year and support an additional tax increase after a tax cut. Support the tax increase on the promise that there would be three dollars in cuts in spending for every dollar of increased revenue. And we got the tax increase. We never got the three dollars for one in tax or in expenditure cuts. I wouldn't be that foolish or that out-domestic again. I would be a little more cynical about such a promise. But I honestly believed it was a bipartisan approach, presented me in that way and that I supported it. On taxes, I get the impression when you say that sticking to your position of no taxes increase until 1986, that you have no problem in 1985 agreeing with tax increases for 1986 and beyond. If it meant certain terms, I said that if it would reassure the money market out there to bring interest rates down and make them believe that we were serious about getting rid of the deficits from balancing the budget, that if we were on solid enough recovery that we could be sure that a tax increase then would not set back the recovery or set us back in the path we were on. If the deficit was above a certain percentage figure of gross national product, if I had in the interim obtained the spending cuts, which I had asked for, then that tax increase would be implemented to hasten getting rid of the deficits. But as I said, the program that we introduced once was aimed at reducing those down the line of ways where it could be done without total disruption of many programs, essentially, of people. But are you willing to pledge that you will not propose any tax increases that way we can reduce the three-year tax cuts and the tax rates that you have already enacted? I will not give up indexing. I will not give up the straight income tax cuts and rates that we put into effect. No, because I think those were responsible for the recovery. Incidentally, let me point something else out that has contributed to the deficit. And that we did not foresee. We didn't foresee that we were going to be as successful as we were in reducing inflation. And you know inflation is a form of taxation. The government makes money off inflation. And we did not believe that we could bring inflation from double digits this quickly down the way right now for the last 12 months, 2.6%. So our own estimates of revenues were off. My earlier question, though, was to weaken or reduce. In other words, tax cuts elsewhere could then bite into or weaken those three-year tax cuts and the rates. Are you willing to pledge that you are not going to propose tax increases elsewhere and some other form that would weaken the tax cuts that you've given across the board? No, I think there are some things that should be looked at in simplification of taxation. But also, we should be making a study. Many people I know have talked about this. We should be making a study as to whether we don't have too much emphasis on taxing earnings and not enough evidence on taxing consumption. For one thing, if that should prove to be practical, that would be one way of getting at the secret economy, the tax-free economy that's going on in this country now with people that are operating outside the taxes. They couldn't operate outside of a tax on consumption. How would that work? Who would that affect? Well, it would be taxes that would affect all the same, everybody in the same people. But it would be different in that it would be taxed on where you spent and how you spent it. For example, not that we want to compete with the local and state sales taxes, but there are ways to get it to consumption tax. The value added has been proposed as one. But don't cite me as approving anything. We haven't made this study as yet. It is something to be looked at because if you make such a tax on consumption such that it exempts the absolute necessities, such as in California sales tax, it is not on food, it is not on necessities at that time. Then you are making a provision that is protective of the people of lower earnings, the people of lower earnings gain. In another area, you've made some new proposals so many, you know, the reduction of long-range nuclear weapons reduction, so the build-out proposal. And if a break occurs in the negotiations, there's talk or speculation about a summit next year. I think everyone realizes summits are useless, there's a lot of preparation that goes into them. And perhaps they should not be even because of the KALL. Nevertheless, here's my question. If so, be a president, I'm very up. You were in Dropov work in response to your proposals Tuesday to propose a meeting with you in the White House only with interpreters and negotiate man-to-man, face-to-face, a general agreement of basic principles that would have to be contained in a fair and verifiable nuclear arms reduction agreement. In other words, an agreement to agree. Would you accept such a... If I thought that such a meeting could be held that would really result in a reduction of the strategic nuclear weapons. And in fact, if he wanted to discuss with me the total elimination of them, he'd find me very willing. But if I would have to know that we weren't just having a meeting to get acquainted and to give them a propaganda opportunity, but a meeting that was aimed at restoring civilization to the world, I'd be more than willing. I really mean that about restoring civilization. I told some of the members of Congress the other day that there was a young man in the post-World War I era and bombers were becoming a standard part of military. I remember great discussion raged among young fellows like myself about whether any young American could ever be ordered to drop bombs on civilians. We used to have a world when I was growing up in which the rules of warfare were designed to protect civilians. They were not to be the victims of war. And here today, the greatest weapons systems that the world has are now weapons systems that are designed to wipe out civilians by the millions. And I have to say, I don't think we're as civilized as we were when I was a young man. Would you propose such a meeting yourself if your negotiators told you we're out of the impasse? We think this is something that has to be broken only by the leaders of the two superpowers. Well, you're asking a hypothetical question here. As I say again, if they were convinced and could convince me that there would be, there could be progress in doing that, of course I would cooperate. On 1984, there's going to be a new Reagan-Busch 84 committee going to formation on the 17th of October. One of the rules, the FEC rules, you have 15 days to either not say anything, let it go forward or disavow it. Can you tell me, have you personally, I don't think it's really understood, have you personally given your sanction and approval to the formation of this committee? They told me they were going to form the committee and I made no comment, one or the other. You didn't give your benediction upon it? No, but I recognized the rules. You told Jack and Patrick that you would announce your candidacy before the 1st of the year. Could you give this Struggle Young? I said I thought that in just discussing what could be possibly the last moment that I thought it probably would have to be done before the 1st of the year. I wonder if you could give this Struggle Young columnist a little closer, what it would be before Thanksgiving? It would be before the 1st of the year. Have you talked about running with Mrs. Reagan particularly regarding the attempts in your life? Do you have any second thoughts, any fears about this kind of decision you're going to make? Well, I don't think any more that she has, at present she, there's no question that has been in her mind ever since it happened. I think many ways was harder on her than it was on me and I think that's usually the case. The situation of that kind is much more difficult to be fearing for someone else than it is to fear for yourself. We've talked, we're having talks, we've sold them. Have you talked about this? About the threat you mean? No, no, I'm sorry about running. We've had some talks and waved things back and forth. You know, contrary to what some people less journalistic ethics than you have, I've suggested was that she was an ambitious woman who pushed me into this. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Is she going in the opposite direction? I think, like most wives, that she was reluctant but willing to do it if that was the decision that I had made. And I think that that still pertains and I'm grateful to her for that and for the support that she's been. But any family of any woman for this position has to recognize that they're giving up on great many things and literally forever in privacy and so forth. You wouldn't put off a decision on running until very late in the first of the year and thus, if you were to decide not to run, make it very difficult for Republican contenders to give them the lead time they need to mount a campaign. Would you? Well, let me say that that will be a consideration of mine and when to announce that. How's your health? Just fine, except for what I'm having right now with some hay fever. You're going to be 73 years old next year and if you're reelected to a second term and serving entirely, you'll be 77. The oldest president in history. Considering the rigors of the office, the metal pressures, the fatigue. Do you have any doubts about serving in such a high pressure office, such a pivotal office in the world at that age? I haven't found it, but it is deleterious to my health so far. As a matter of fact, I've gained an inch and three quarters around my chest in the exercise that I'm doing. I've never felt better. I don't think that's a consideration of making a decision. If you ran for a second term, would it be your intention to fill out the entire four-year term? Considering the alternative, yes. Let's see if I can give you a straight line. There's a scenario circulating that perhaps a foolish one that you would serve maybe two or three years and then leave office. But you may not have heard that or have. Certain leaders of the political right, not of an majority by any means, but key political activists on the new right and elsewhere on evangelical groups, Christian groups. So you've portrayed them and that you have been strong on rhetoric with the Soviets but weak and appeasing on key issues such as on the Soviet downing of the airline and the relaxation of trade sanctions and technology transfer. Your administration, the White House Oppose and Nancy Kessenbaum's very modest proposal to reduce the U.N. budget is a sign of our displeasure that you've overlooked the Reagan faithful in selecting moderates and liberals to top appointments at HHS, DOT, EPA. Human Abandons said this week that you're sounding and looking more like Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. They have come to know and support. Why haven't bumped my head once? Pardon me? I said I haven't bumped my head once. Now, I know that those voices, frankly, I think they're louder than they are numerous. Some of those particular ones that you mentioned, I haven't found any probability of the evangelical movement. In fact, they've been most supportive of much of what we're doing. First of all, it isn't true with regard to appointments. I think that we work very hard to make sure that those appointees we name are completely in sympathy with the goals of this administration and what we're trying to do. Now, with regard to the tragic downing of that airliner, I know that I've heard the chorus that was raised, but there's been far more support for what we did react to it. I thought of all the things that they suggested. You looked immediately as, what could you do? And yes, there were some grandstanding things that you could do that might look good and say, aren't I tough with what I'm doing? But they wouldn't really hurt the Soviet Union in any way. They wouldn't in any way retaliate for the enormity of that crime. Then there were some things like trade and favorable interest rates on trade that we were still going for. No, we've been working for more than a year, two years, with our allies to get a correction of this sort of thing, and last year at the economic summit we secured that there. There is no subsidized interest rates for trade with the Soviet Union. We worked for a long time and have an agreement with our allies with regard to high tech, and that was also mentioned somewhere, and the restrictions on that to the Soviet Union. That was agreed to last spring. Now, if you could get the rest of the world, because this isn't the Soviet versus the United States, this is the Soviet versus the world in this crime they've committed, if you could get them to join in blanket sanctions, that would be one thing. But to boo as some of those suggested and say, cancel the grain agreement, you wouldn't hurt them. It didn't hurt them when it was canceled because of Afghanistan. It didn't do anything for Afghanistan, and it hurt a number of Americans. So, all the things that we've done are those things that we believe had a direct bearing on the crime that had been committed. Didn't you, in a very fiver of your being, hope that more substantive, stronger actions couldn't have been taken? Of course. It was very frustrating to say, you know, why wasn't there something, but almost anything that you think of in that line would be hurting people who have no share of guilt in that tragedy. Now, just to hurt some other people to be striking back would be somewhat the same guilt that the Soviets have to bear. And so we've done what we could and we're going to continue. I said it would be a measured response. We continue that we're trying to worldwide get an agreement that they would have to join with regard to tightening air safety requirements so that such a thing can never happen again. Instead, they're standing up boasting the weather. This we're trying to do, the arms agreement has canceled the arms reduction talks. Why? The Soviet Union would like nothing better than to be able to continue on their solo arms race and their great supremacy in the world with regard to weaponry. It's only been the world public opinion that has brought them into these negotiations. They don't dare sit in the sidelines and to continue them. I think with added leverage now because of this crime is, I think, of great benefit to us. Send their advance at our home. They send ours home. Is this a time in the world today to be without eyes and ears in Moscow? I don't think so. One last question. The legislation to create a national holiday in memory of Martin Luther King was proposed to now send signals that it is for. Why the change? The only thing that could be construed as opposition was the same thing that many people felt, that couldn't this be a day such as picking a Sunday or something so that you could recognize this day the symbolism of it and yet without the expense that it's going to be of having an additional national holiday with all that that means, the shutting down of everything, of government and everything else. This would express an opinion on that. But no, the Congress passes that and sends it up here on silent. You were for it all along. Were you for it all along? I can recognize their desire, our black community's desire for this symbol, this recognition of the games that have been made and the progress that's been made not just by them, but by all of us. Because when we got rid of the bigotry and the discriminatory practices that were so prevalent in this land, we were all better off. It freed us to... But this is a proposal from a member of the member. Just one question. Martin Luther King. Is he worthy? Is he a man who believes is worthy of such commemoration? I... I'm not going to make a judgment on that. I'm going to... I'm basing my judgment on what he means symbolically to a large percentage of our citizens who, because of him, finally changed this country in a way that it should have been changed a long time before that. Thank you, Mr. President.