 Now, how do we work this with the questioners that aren't here? They'll go on the home. They'll go on the monitor. They're going to be on there? Yeah. Yep. And then you respond to that. You can respond to that. All right. And a busy day? Well, as Lord I'll say, Monday, somebody ought to outlaw Mondays. Oh, thanks. Thank you. I'll do that. There must be a lot of people that stay working on the weekend because Monday and Kathy will come in. Well, first of all, they have their day filled with meetings and then Kathy will come in with them. Do you want some water? No, I'm fine. I think it'll just come out. Just fine. Mr. President, my reporters have crisscrossed the country. They've been talking to the deprived and the depressed, and many of these people are disaffected. Many of them feel alienated. Many of them feel that you're not listening to them. And I told them that they were going to get a chance that you would listen to them. We've got some of them on tape. I'd like you to listen, first of all, to a man named Keith Lisey from Austin, Texas. All right. Mr. President, I've traveled for the past five months from state to state, including Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and back to Texas, looking for work. I'm on my way back to California right now looking for a job. And I'm hoping I'll get one when I get there. We've run into various other people, lots of other people on the road who are in the same situation, if not worse. Mr. President, my question to you is, what can you do for the poor people? I've seen what you've done for the rich. Well, Keith, first of all, let me say that I wish you well, and there's no question about your sincerity and your desire for work. Having grown up myself and going into the job market at the time of the Great Depression, I know what a tragedy this is to want work, to not be able to find it. I think that what we're doing is the best and surest way to make it possible for you and the others that you've talked about and the others that like you, divine work. And that is to restore this economy of ours, to get the wheels of industry turning again. But your question didn't tie in so much to your own unemployment as it did the idea that maybe I have done something beneficial to those who don't need help at the expense of those who do. This image, I don't know how it got started or where it was created, but it isn't true. Our program, our economic recovery program, is aimed at helping, as I say, the economy get going again. People get back to work. But our tax cuts were across the board, even from top to bottom. The recent tax measure that was passed actually struck at corporations and people in the higher income brackets than it did at people who were in the middle class and the lower middle class and trying to get along. What we have done for the poor is take an inflation rate that for two years back to back was double digit and that was 12.4% inflation rate when we started and bring that inflation rate down to 5.4% since the beginning of this year. Now, that might not sound like direct help, but it is, particularly to the people of lower incomes and what you would call the poor. Obviously people with a lot of money and people with high incomes don't have to spend as big a percentage of their earnings or their money for the necessities of life. But the people at the lower bracket have to spend virtually everything they make just for those necessities, for themselves and their families, for food and clothing and shelter. Today, a family at the poverty level may not realize it, but they have $400 more in purchasing power because of the decline in inflation than they would have today if inflation had stayed at 12.4%. Now, we're going to continue. 5.4%, that isn't even good enough. We want inflation all the way down to zero. And I dream of a day when we'll see prices not only remaining the same but maybe going down some. But that is definite help for people in the lower brackets. In the meantime, by bringing down interest rates from 21.5%, which we found when we started, bringing them down to now 13.5%, and I hope lower in the next few months, I think we can help stimulate the economy and end the drag on the automobile industry, the housing industry, construction, and the related industries of appliances and steel and rubber and so forth so that once again the layoffs will end and people will go back to work. And I just ask you to hang in there. You're very obviously trying, and I know there are many others like you. It is, we have reached the turning point. It's going to be slow. It always is coming out of a recession, but we're on the way out of this one. What he wants is a job, and the number of unemployed has gone up from a little under 8 million to 11 million. You say you've reached the turning point. What is your projection? We've reached the turning point as far as the recession is concerned. But Jack, the truth, the tragic truth is, if you look back at every recession, the slowest to recover is the unemployment figure. There were almost 8 million unemployed when I started. Unemployment isn't just a factor of this recession. As a matter of fact, we have been gradually increasing the basic unemployment in America for 15 years. And it increased as dramatically in the last six months of 1980 as it has in this recession. So hard to say and ask someone to have patience, but we have, he mentioned it not as unemployment, but as poor, we have done things there. We have passed a bill to extend the unemployment insurance in the very hard-hit areas. And as for the poor, we are aid to the poor, the federal aid will be one-third higher by 1985 than it was in 1980. We haven't been cutting back on that. We've been increasing it as we can. I'd like you to listen to George Saunders from Washington, D.C. He's a fired government worker, and he's a little angry. I'd like you to hear what he has to say. Mr. Reagan, you make it sound as if working for the federal government is an un-American thing to do. You've totally demoralized the federal employees. I was brought up in a family dedicated to public service. I trained myself well on the graduate level to do work for the public service if that's what I choose to do. I'm very angry. Well, I hope maybe you can get over being angry because the truth of the matter is I have stated publicly on a number of occasions. Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten the circulation in the media that it should, but I have stated that I have great faith in and a belief in the public employees, the federal employees, the employees at other levels of government, that in the federal government here the people are dedicated, have pride in their work, and are doing good jobs. Our question and our trouble is not with the employees, it is with government policies. You know, for example, that one long-time, old-fashioned policy in the federal government is to rate people in government and their salary and their level of income and stature on the basis if they are supervisory of the people that are employed under them on the number of the people employed, which has created a tendency at certain levels of government to empire build, to see if they cannot employ more people in order to further their own personal standing. And I think it's a system that should be changed. Someone should, their ability and their pay, their pay should be based on their ability and not on how many people they supervise. It isn't the individual employee's fault that there's feather-bedding going on at the government level. I have to tell you that having made some sizable reforms when I was a governor in California and now trying to here at the federal level, I have found that you, the public employees, are the first to come forward when we start trying to find areas of legitimate economies and improvements in efficiency. Come forward and point out and identify areas where things could be better, that you do have a pride in your work and you resent more than anyone else, the feather-bedding, the areas of extravagance in government. So you may not have heard at all what I've said before about you until now, but you've heard wrong if you think that I am in any way denigrating public employees, I'm not. About two million federal employees are about 18% behind the private sector in wages and benefits. Doesn't this cause you problems in getting people, top-level people to come into government? Well, maybe this is at a top level. We maybe have a little conflict here and what we've heard about this, I have been told that generally government employment, which is supposed to be paid comparable wages and benefits for the comparable kind of work out in the private sector, that the federal government is ahead of the private sector. Now, this may not go all the way on up. I think at executive levels, no, there is no comparison. We ask cabinet offices, for example, to handle multi-billion-dollar operations at an income that is one-tenth of what an executive in a comparable position out in the private sector is getting. There's a question on peace. This is an important one. I'd like you to listen to it. My name is Sam Steinberg and I own a small grocery store in Northwest Washington. I've been reading some new developments in the Middle East, especially regarding the change, what seems to be a change in the American policy toward the Middle East and Israel in particular. Does this mean that America is changing its traditional policy of support toward Israel? Will America insist that Syria leave Lebanon, withdraw from Lebanon? And finally, Mr. President, what does this mean in terms of a lasting peace in the Middle East? I'm glad you asked that. This country has had a moral obligation and felt a moral responsibility to the State of Israel for 34 years since it was created in 1948. I have felt a personal sense of obligation myself for those 34 years. No, we have not changed our position. We are dedicated to the preservation of Israel that it must continue to exist as a nation. The matter of forces, foreign forces in Lebanon, yes, we want to see them out of there. That's part of the process that Phil Habib was working at. We want to see Lebanon end the several years of factionalism and strife between warlords with their own militias and so forth and get back to being a unified nation. We think it will be an important step in bringing peace to the Middle East. Now, what is our process and what are we looking forward to? I stated on the air just recently that Israel cannot go on forever existing as an armed camp. Economically, it is impossible for them to continue. The answer to their problem must be peace in the Middle East. And so what we're trying to do is speak to and work with as well as Israel the moderate Arab nations particularly to get them to, you might say, become Egypt's. Just as Egypt signed a peace treaty that has held and that has kept those two nations in friendship together to the place that there's no problem on their border. There are other Arab nations and I believe they're ready to come together and negotiate agreements so that we can find the Arab nations and Israel in the Middle East sure of their borders, sure of their neighbors convinced that they can live in peace with each other. And this is what we're doing, everything we can to work toward. And I am very optimistic that we can have success in that. One of the things that must be resolved in that is a settlement once and for all of the problem of the Palestinian refugees. And I think the recent meeting of the Arab nations has moved us a step closer to what I've been talking about. The peaceful bilateral treaties between Israel and her neighbors. But no, United States must never fall back from her dedication to the continued existence of Israel. Are you ever going to be able to persuade Menachem Begin of this? If you were sitting here where I am, what would you say to him? I'd say pretty much the same thing. I have to think this, Jack, about some of the things that are being said on both sides since my speech the other night. Both sides have found things in that they can approve and both sides have found things they can disapprove. But all through the speech I kept saying these things must be settled by negotiation. Now, what I think we're seeing is the reiteration by both sides of positions that they feel deeply about and so that they can come to the negotiating table not sounding as if by approving what I said or saying that it was a good thing that I said it, that they have in any way weakened their own position. They're going to start from square one as to what their beliefs are and then some place in fair and open negotiations they should come together where both are going to give a little and they're going to find a compromise settlement that will resolve in peace. We have a woman here who... Oh, is that her? I'm sorry. Can I just take a moment? My name is girl Shalu. I live in San Luis, Missouri. I work part-time. I'm on AFDC and I need Medicaid because I have 11 months old. He's a very sickly baby and I need Medicaid to take him back and forward to the doctor. But you can get Medicaid and work too. But I really need Medicaid. Mr. President, why are you making all these budget cuts? Why can't you let some of us mothers that would like to work and get the Medicaid too? Well, Mrs. Flowers, we haven't been making budget cuts to speak of. We've been cutting the rate of increase in the budget, but we're spending more on the programs such as you were talking about there than we were spending last year and last year more than the year before I know there's a misunderstanding about this, but as to your particular problem, Mrs. Flowers, if you are on aid for dependent children, AFDC and working part-time, well, I know you take pride in that and I know you'd like it better if you could be working full-time and entirely free of any government welfare program. And we'd like to see that happen also. But the states, not the federal government, sets the standards for Medicaid and in your state, Missouri, that's one of the states in which if you are eligible for aid for dependent children, you are eligible for Medicaid and even if you're working part-time. So you should be able to take care of that child for yours and provide the medical care, but it is, as I say, the standard is set by the state. Now, California, my own state, had a different approach to Medicaid. You could be eligible for Medicaid on the basis of your level of earnings even if you were not getting any government welfare program at all because you would be deemed as medically indigent. In other words, it would be a hardship for you to pay doctor bills and maintain living for yourself and your child. But each state makes that decision for itself. Now, if there's some reason, and Jack, if there's some reason why she is not getting that and in addition, while she's eligible for aid for dependent children, I'd like to know about it and look into it because that is the standard of that state and maybe somebody's making a mistake if she isn't getting it. We'll find out. All right. But I think she's speaking for a lot of women and a lot of men who want to work but can't get jobs that pay enough. They have to depend upon some welfare and without that welfare, if they take the welfare, if they take the jobs, they're no longer eligible for the welfare. Can anything be done to get these people off welfare? Well, the problem is that welfare, when you stop to think of Medicaid, the welfare grant itself, things like food stamps and the go with it, is that the level of income, what with taxes to pay, the level of income that you have to receive to equal what you're getting on welfare is many times more than a person can get in just starting into a new position and so its government itself, which in a way is making it impossible for them. On the other hand, in that program that Mrs. Flowers is on, Aid for Depend to Children, there are inducements in there. In other words, you can take a job and as you are permitted certain deductions from your income, from that job to offer an incentive for you to take the job and that determines the level of welfare that you continue to get. For example, it's been 30 into third and this was $30 plus a third of your earnings did not have to be counted in considering whether you were eligible for welfare and then there were other additional deductions for clothing allowance, needing more clothes to go to work than to stay home and transportation to work and so forth. And then all of those are deducted and then they compute on the basis of what income is left from earnings how much of your welfare grants you're entitled to have. So there is an effort being made to let people work at the same time they get the other but if she isn't getting Medicaid there's something wrong. Good. I would like you to hear from Gary Darland he's a South Dakota farmer. He's got a problem that's all too typical. As a young farmer I'm not one to farm the government programs as some farmers have probably done in the past I haven't been raised that way and I don't look for a free handout from anybody I try to carry my own load but with a high interest a high cost operation farm prices it has not only put the farmers but the rural communities a real cost price squeeze situation where it's a feeling of desperation and I wonder what if anything you and your staff are planning to do about it. Well I think we have been doing something about it and first let me say I think that you speak for probably a greater majority of farmers than you realize when you say that you don't want to farm the federal programs for help government aid you want to be independent I think most farmers do and the farmer today in America has been caught worse in the cost price squeeze than almost any other sector of our society you say what can we do well let me tell you just a few of the things that I think we are doing that can be of help and try to help you hit the key when you said interest rates traditionally we know that the farmer borrows to buy fertilizer and seed to plant and then pays back in harvest time when he sells the crop but with the high interest rates that we've had you don't break even on that this has been one of the greatest hardships for the farmer along with inflation and as I say the cost price squeeze well we have brought interest rates down from 21.5% down to 13.5% of the prime rate we hope they're going to continue coming down we're going to keep on doing the things that we've been doing that we think help bring them down that will be a help on the cost price squeeze we have brought inflation down from 13.4% to 5.4% which certainly should help with some of your expenses maybe at the same time it's contributed a little bit to the drop in price we have eliminated the embargo the grain embargo so that once again we can sell grain to the Soviet Union I know that in the Department of Agriculture they've made trips in these 20 months we've been here to 23 different countries for two reasons first of all to stimulate more overseas markets for export because you the American farmer today you're a miracle in all the world of productivity where just not too many years ago you pretty much just provided for your own family you raise enough food now for each individual among you for 77 other people you have to have export markets we're not only trying to develop those markets help in that regard we also are meeting with our friends and allies in Europe and in Japan where there have been practices that have made for unfair competition in the export market quotas against American produce sold abroad subsidies for their own farmers produce when sold on the world market as against you selling it on your own and we've made considerable progress in talking them out of some of those things because they are unfair we believe in a free market but we want a fair market at the same time now we're going to continue with those things because there are real hardship cases among farmers we have at the same time gone back to an increase in the ability of the Department of Agriculture for commodity loans and other things to help farmers it's about two and a half times as much as it was last year the available funds for that because we don't want to see farmers have to lose their farms or give up their profession but again as I say I think the interest rates and the inflation coming down are two of the best things that we can do for you in addition to the work that we're doing to stimulate export markets about 200,000 farm loans are delinquent I understand and with farm surpluses and sagging prices it's an emergency situation do you have an emergency program to help these people? well as we say the Department of Agriculture is like $11 billion that's two and a half times more than it was last year so we think that for the real emergency cases we can but again I have to say here the American farmer has taken a lot of abuse including that grain embargo from which many of them haven't fully recovered as yet so just hang with it because things aren't going to get better we have just one more question Mr. President I'm Clint Butler from Austin, Texas I'm the director of Caritas of Austin which is a church charity sponsored agency during the past few months we've noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people seeking our help I've heard said that you have made the statement that we can private our agency such as ours to pick up the slack from the federal cutbacks and believe me sir it is impossible for us to do this particular thing my question is what programs can be reinstituted to help agencies such as ours because we cannot do all the things to pick up the slack for the federal cutbacks now first of all let me commend you for what you are doing but it isn't true that we think the private sector can dollar for dollar take over all the things that the federal government has been doing it is true that we have a task force operating nationwide now to see how we can stimulate private sector answers to as many problems as possible things that can be better done at the private sector than government can do them this task force has accumulated you might say a library of projects that are being carried on at a local level in communities like your own and then we're seeing that the word is spread to other communities where they haven't tried something of that kind to show what they can do there has been a great stimulant to that type of operation I'm not surprised that you're getting more people coming in now we have reached a crucial point in unemployment the 9.8% rate there are probably people who are coming to the end of their unemployment benefits but it is not the result again of budget cuts because on the various social programs in total we're spending more than we were as I said earlier in the program than the previous year and we'll be spending more next year than we are this year we're spending more health and human services agency than the total defense budget in fact 53% of our total budget is being spent in this way now some programs have been folded into what are called block grants this means that the money is going from the federal government but not under the previous title of the program but going as a block grant to a local or state government and giving them the freedom to operate that program as they see best in their particular area because we found that by enforcing federal regulations and rules on the spending of federal funds forcing this on local and state governments