 Welcome, everyone. It's a tremendous honor to welcome the President of the United States, President Reagan, back to our state of New Jersey. Mr. President, I know that some people in Washington sometimes, not yourself, but some people get pretty isolated, and folks in Washington sometimes can lose touch with what's happening in the rest of America. So we've invited you to New Jersey today, and especially here, to Somerset Technologies. So you can learn firsthand what 59 months of consecutive growth means to American business and to American workers. New Jersey, I can tell you very well, was an economic basket case when you took office seven years ago. Unemployment was skyrocketing upward. It was in double digits. Plants and businesses were slamming shut their doors. Our young people were sometimes packing into their cars and taking off for more hospitable climate. And today, things are so very different. Today, New Jersey is on a roll. Unemployment is two points below the national average. We've created almost half a million new jobs in the state. In fact, we'd have to build five more giant stadiums just to hold the people who found jobs here since you've been president. We're opening new businesses at twice the rate of the rest of the country. Mr. President, you created this climate for our economic renaissance. By cutting taxes, you unleash the creative potential of our entrepreneurs. And we've invited some of the very best entrepreneurs here to be with us today to explain what the Reagan years have meant for them and what challenges they see ahead. Mike Lepore is the president of Four Star Products, a new company which supplies chicken products to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and schools. With Mike's company hard at work, Frank Perdue is getting a few sleepless nights these days. Next to Michael is a good family friend of mine, Joseph Unaway. He's president of Goya Foods, vice president of Goya Foods. In 50 years, Goya Foods has grown from a two man family operation to the largest privately owned corporation in the continental United States. Next to Joseph Unaway, you'll probably recognize Jim Burke, the chairman of the board of Johnson & Johnson, whose corporate headquarters we have here in the state of New Jersey. Beside Jim Burke is Doria Finn. Doria owns a construction company called Finishing Touch. To my right is our greatest, gracious host, Frank Nancellata, the chairman of Somerset Technologies. To your immediate left, Mr. President, is Gordon Putnam, my commissioner of commerce and economic development. Next to him is Jim Morford, the executive director of our state chamber of commerce. And the other end of the table is Oliver Brown. Oliver was the son of a Virginia sharecropper and today he runs the largest minority owned firm in the trucking industry with gross annual sales of over three million dollars a year. And finally, we are happy to have with us Robert Clancy, chairman of Clancy Paul, Incorporated of Cranberry, one of the fastest growing computer companies in the entire country. Mr. President, behind the success of each of these companies is an inspiring story of human determination. Catherine Nicholas, I'm sorry, from Mother's Kitchen. I don't know why. I know about you and for some reason they left me out of my remarks. Welcome to you and I apologize. I hope you will all enjoy learning what the Reagan years have meant for American entrepreneurs and for American workers. Mr. President. Well, it's great to be here at Somerset Technologies and I appreciate you taking the time from what I know is important work. I want to especially thank Frank Lancelotta and Fran Drury for allowing us to visit your fine facility. I'll have a few words to say at the end of this discussion, but right now I'm anxious to hear what you've got to say. You know, there's an old Chinese proverb that says since a man has two ears and only one mouth, he should listen twice as much as he talks. I wish more people in Washington felt that way. Governor Cain and all my friends here, I'm all ears. Again, I apologize to Catherine Nicolosi, the owner of Mother's Kitchen, a good gourmet food company. Welcome and I apologize. Mr. President, just as your historic tax reform probably wouldn't have passed without Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, New Jersey's business climate couldn't have been transformed without my commerce secretary. Saving our businesses and taxpayers over a billion and a half dollars in just the past three years. One of those tax cuts ought especially to interest you. We set up one of the first urban enterprise zones in the country. A business like Mike LaPour's four star products located in the middle of the city of Bridgeston in the southern part of the state gets a reduction on sales and other taxes. In the next two years, we expect to attract and retain 18,000 private sector jobs in our most depressed inner cities through the workings of these urban enterprise zones. Neighborhoods such as in Newark that were destroyed by the riots in the 1960s about new federalism. We knew that when Washington pulled back, the states would have to step in and invest in job creating industries. Right now, we are working with private industry to build five high technology centers, including one in industrial computer technology, which companies like Bob Purism and even the motion picture industry. We are not shy in New Jersey and we intend to create nothing less than a sort of mini Hollywood here in New Jersey. We want to continue to work with your administration to give our entrepreneurs the tools and incentives they need to compete in world markets and to create more good jobs for everyone in New Jersey. Mr. President, thank you for coming to visit the new New Jersey. Thank you, Board and Mr. President. In a session, but to an unprecedented period of economic growth, the Cain administration was begun here in New Jersey and New Jersey has been among the states leading the nation in recovery and prosperity. Governor Cain has done much to tell that story and to bring our state a new spirit and renewed sense of pride. The New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce is tremendously proud of this and the relationship of that decline to the trade imbalance. However, we do have much we can do within the state to make our good business climate a continuing reality. Unregulatory efficiency has just gotten underway and we expect it will produce recommendations to reform the process by which rules are developed and put some constraints on the regulatory bureaucracy. Law Galloway and Richard Vetter reveals that for the past 40 years, every $1 in increased taxes has coincided with $1.58 in new spending. As you well know, sir, tax increases do not serve to reduce deficits. In fact, they appear to be a direct cause of higher deficits. By holding spending growth to about 3% annually, the deficit should automatically come. It's called New Brunswick Tomorrow and it concerns the revitalization of our and making business in New Jersey a growing place for a lady. Mr. President, before I turn the microphone over to you, you may know I used to be a history teacher, so let me just share a brief story about Teddy Roosevelt, my favorite president back in 1912. He was deciding whether to run for president again at that point, but the really important issue with the hour was what role business should play in American society. So, Roosevelt traveled to Cleveland to give a speech on that subject and in the speech he said, it is our duty to see that the wage worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer shall get their fair share of the benefits of business prosperity. But it ought to be evident to everyone that business must prosper before anyone can get any benefit from it. Mr. President, I think before your administration, we at times forgot that simple advice and New Jersey suffered as much as any other state in the process. If the Reagan years have proved anything, it is to remind us that private industry is the sturdy horse that pulls the wagon in this country and that we in government must do everything possible to create the climate to allow businessmen and women to succeed. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce a man who has made respect for private industry and the creation of wealth, not just a political philosophy, but practically a religion, President Ronald Reagan. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you very much. You know, Governor, I have to tell you that in regard to your favorite president, I learned a little anecdote about him when I moved into the White House. You know, the Oval Office is not a part of the actual White House or the beginning. There is now a thing called the West Wing that is connected to the White House and has all the offices and places for the staff of the president and so forth. But at once upon a time and back in Roosevelt's time, Teddy Roosevelt, the White House was it. That's where the cabinet met. That's where the offices were as well as the dwelling. Until one day, Mrs. Roosevelt said to her husband, if I'm going to raise six kids in this house, you're going to get your people out of here. And it was a fine change that he brought about. I don't suppose I should tell this a little out of school. You know our armed services now. If you have a last speaker here, I would like to point out have now you do not just stay gentlemen to them. You say men and women because they're there. And this summer on a day that was in excess of 100 degrees and about 100% moisture in the air. There was a great military ceremony for a certain occasion down there. The military, the Marines in this case were all in full dress uniform parading. Seven collapsed from the heat. All male. Well, it's a pleasure to be in the district of Congressman Jim quarter and in the state of Governor Tom Cain. From the first Tom Cain has been, as you all know, a pro growth governor. And Tom looking around here today, I get the feeling you must be doing something right. I'm especially happy to be back here because I know the roots of this company go back to the 1860s. And I'm always glad to be addressing something that's older than I am. But now after listening to all of you, I appreciate it, but I'd like to respond with a few words of my own. And if I may, I'd like to speak as well to the audience that is here today. Don't worry, I'll keep it short. The last thing in the world I want to do is to hold up a whole workday at companies as remarkable as this one, and those that you panelists represent. And by the way, Jim Burke and your chairman of Johnson and Johnson, Daria Fin, your president of Finishing Touches, with the two of you here today, who's minding the store? But you know, back before I got my present job, I worked on a television program called GE Theater, General Electric Theater. And I would spend between 12 and 16 weeks every year traveling the country, visiting the workers in GE plants. And I have to confess that when I took that job, I had the view of business that was fashionable in some circles in those days, an unflattering view. But when I visited the plants and met the employees face to face, I learned something. I learned that I was seeing then, as I've seen here today, the real source of this nation's economic growth and productivity, not government or bureaucracy. America's workers and entrepreneurs were making it happen back then, and people like you were making it happen today. And is it happening? In October, the American economic expansion is in its 59th straight month. 59 months that will make this the longest peacetime economic expansion on record. Inflation and interest rates are down, productivity is up, America's manufacturing productivity is shooting ahead at the fastest rate in 20 years. Investment in capital equipment like that made by Somerset Technologies is up more than 50 percent. Net business formations have increased by about 20 percent. All around us, we see a proliferation of new technology, but most heartening of all is what this means in human terms. The poverty and unemployment races you've been told are down. Coupled with our tax cuts, this solid economic growth means rising take-home pay, as has been mentioned here today for America's families. And during these 59 months, we've seen the creation of nearly 14 million new jobs. That's an average of about 240,000 jobs a month, including some 500,000 new jobs right here in New Jersey. Indeed, the Europeans talk of what they call the American miracle. Well, if anybody wants to see miracles, they should be here today. You of Somerset Technologies have worked together as a team to increase your sales by more than $10 million since 1948. And while too many people see nothing but trade barriers when they look at Japan, you see opportunities. I understand that over the next year or so, your Japanese affiliate is expected to do some $12 million worth of business, and that's selling American goods to the Japanese, not the other way around. Throughout New Jersey is throughout the nation. We're seeing what can truly be called an economic renaissance. Well, the reason is simple. If you ask why, really, America has become a better place to work, invest, and do business. Our administration cut regulations supported a sound monetary policy, held back the growth of government spending, and perhaps most important of all, and it's been mentioned here today, cut taxes. As we did so, the value of your paycheck went up. The return on investment went up, and the American marketplace became freer, more energetic, more open to innovation into the future itself. But it's my duty to tell you that this miracle, all you've worked so hard to accomplish, all that America itself has worked so hard to accomplish, all of this is now in danger. You see, some down in Washington seem determined to destroy our economic expansion and send us right back into the malaise and stagflation of the 70s. I'll be saying more about this later today, but for now, let me tell you about a serious threat that is facing our country. It's the constant threat of protectionist anti-trade legislation. We're working with Congress now to fix the proposed trade bill so that it won't be anti-jobs, anti-growth, and anti-consumer, so that it won't be a bill that closes us off from foreign markets, and so that it won't be a bill that would hinder your affiliate in Japan. I will not sign any bill that will hurt the American worker. With your support, I will insist that Congress the positive route, opening markets, not shutting them down, but your support and the support of all working Americans will be crucial. So to the panelists and those in the audience, I hope I can count on all of you. We've also got to keep federal spending down and stop those who would raise your taxes to pay for federal extravagance. Congress has to hold to the spending limits under the Graham-Rudman Hollings bill. It's important to put permanent reforms in place, reforms that will ensure economic growth even after our administration leaves office. With the line item veto and the balanced budget amendment, we can give the American people an economic bill of rights so that congressional taxing and spending can never again endanger our livelihoods. So together, let's make sure that miracles, economic miracles, never cease. Let's ensure the nation's right to a free economy, an economy of growth and opportunity for you, your children, and your children's children. You know, I can't stop without telling you about a little habit I've picked up now. I've got a new hobby. I have been collecting stories that can be told or are being told by the people in that other great power that depends totally on government and has nothing to do with free enterprise, the Soviet Union. It seems there that there is a 10-year waiting period for buying an automobile. You have to go through departments and sign up papers and so forth, and then you have to put up your money. And then they tell you to come back in 10 years and get your car. And this one young fellow had finally reached the point he could do that and finally did it. And the man said to him, taking the money, all right, come back in 10 years and get your automobile. And he said, morning or afternoon. And the fellow said, well, we're talking 10 years from now. What difference does it make? Well, he said, the plumber's coming in the morning. But that's enough for me. And I tell you honestly, that is a story being told by the Soviets among themselves. So shows they've got a sense of humor, but they've also got a pretty good idea of what their system is all about. But I do thank all of you. God bless all of you. And it's been a real treat to be here with you.