 President of the United States and the Vice President. Red and butter. Well, ladies and gentlemen, not knowing whether the press is friendly or unfriendly, before I say anything else, I'm going to introduce my good friend here. A few words to you Vice President George Bush. Thank you very much. What I wanted to do is just make a very brief comment on the recent trip that I took to Europe and so many people being interested in that. The mission was twofold, one to consult and to report back to the President the innermost feelings of the leaders of Europe on the whole question of negotiations and reductions of intermediate nuclear forces. We disproved the adage that nothing can be done without leakage because the trip did work out so that I could respectfully knock on the door of the Oval Office and walk in there and tell the President the innermost feelings of seven European leaders and never having read anything about it before I had a chance to report to him in the press. So I hope we didn't make your work too difficult, but it really brought home to me that consultation like that can be important and it gave the President an opportunity to shape his remarks, his important remarks before the German elections with careful not to intervene therein but needless to say the victory of Chancellor Cole with his support for the Alliance was a significant thing for the West and I think for our objective of arms reductions because I think strongly feel that the President is on this proper path in order to achieve them. The second part of the trip in addition to the consultation was the advocacy of a highly moral arms position banning an entire generation of weapons from the face of the earth and the only argument that was used against that incidentally on this trip was well the Soviets don't like it, they won't agree to it but what we found was that the President's original zero option speech elevated the hopes of Europe and then time went by and Soviet propaganda started and the support diffused so it was interesting how a trip could seem to rally support for a fundamentally sound position and we made clear it wasn't a take it or leave it position but I do think it had the good point of emphasizing that our Alliance was together and we have a sound position a morally sound one that every kid that's out there with a sign really should be supporting and it was wonderful to be advocating that there were a few demonstrators but the last thing I want to say is that on the right-hand fender you know of the car when you take an official trip like this the American flag is flying on that fender and I've been around crowds of fair amount and you can tell but there was strong enthusiasm everywhere we went there were some demonstrators but they weren't even as hostile as we encounter right here at home sometimes you know so I just wanted you to know that because it was a thrill of my life to be in Berlin or in Rome or someplace see an Alliance that's pretty strongly well very strongly together an Alliance that is absolutely essential incidentally to the freedom that we treasure and also to being together to to for arms reduction and then just the thrill of seeing the the American flag and the respect that it still has abroad so I wanted to give you that insight into what was a I hope for this country a productive trip thank you all very very much and I will say to you what he wouldn't say about the trip believe me when George came back from Europe the Alliance was much more solid and on a sound basis he did a magnificent job over there now it's good to have you all here today you know that political consultants are always telling us us in politics to get our message out to the weeklies and dailies across the country because they're the publications that everybody pays the most attention to the ones that are read from cover to cover so I didn't want to let the opportunity go by without mentioning to you a few developments that haven't always gotten as much ink as they deserve my way certainly of the metropolitan papers we read here in Washington last week I suggested that the medium should talk more about the good news and since then a lot of people have asked me well what good news is there and I'm going to be very happy to tell you maybe some of you might even find it worthy of a sentence or two after only a year and a half of our economic recovery program it is starting to pay off for every American all the hostels to it named it Reaganomics if it works I wonder what they're going to call it but the leading indicators economic indicators are up now for eight of the last ten months and the last month's increase was the largest single increase in 33 years we've licked inflation by bringing it down from double digits to an annualized rate for the last six months of 1.4% interest rates have come down a whole 11 points from the 21.5% before we got here and down to the 10.5% today the auto and steel industry beginning to expand housing is skyrocketing economist after economist is saying that the recovery is now upon us and I just read an item today that steel has called back 20,000 laid off workers the stock market is setting new record highs in seven months it's gained 350 points and most of all real wages were up in 1982 for the first time in three years we got the economy back on track by reversing the whole momentum I think of the last four or five decades of government and for the first time in nearly 20 years the people have received a substantial tax cut the third installment is due on July 1st and then comes indexing and I would say to you that those who are talking about cancelling those over my dead body but I know they'd take me up on that we've actually slowed the upward spiral of growth in federal spending by 40% and our reforms of big spending items in the budget like entitlement programs are just beginning to have some impact and you may know that our cutbacks in federal regulations have reduced new regulations by a full one-third and the chairman of the task force who has been doing that is standing right here to my right I think you correct me if I'm wrong but I think paperwork on all the people of this country that was required because of those regulations has been reduced by about 300 million man hours of work a year so besides tax cuts and spending cuts and the deregulation efforts the change in perspective that has been brought to the federal bureaucracy is just as important for a long time the idea was that federal dollars were the property of the bureaucrats not the taxpayers and that idea went unchallenged around this town those who pointed to the misuse of those dollars were looked upon as malcontents or troublemakers and we decided to change this and we decided to change this if we could at the general services administration for example once racked by stories of scandal and waste we've put the whistleblowers back in charge and even though GSA has sustained budget cuts of 20% and an attrition of 7,000 employees its work in progress time has been cut from 30 days to 7 maybe before they got rid of the other people they were just getting in each other's way and at the general printing office we turned a three-year loss of 20 million dollars in publications into a profit over 4 million dollars last year and at the Pentagon we've located more than a billion dollars in savings and waste and over the next 7 years we'll save almost 30 billion dollars from multi-year procurement and other acquisition initiatives and this goes on our inspector generals have saved or improved the use of nearly 17 billion dollars in 18 months and I can tell you we have inspector generals that are as mean as junkyard dogs and we're going to keep them that way and the reform 88 as we call it is streamlining and modernizing the maze of federal financial and accounting systems and our private sector project has brought hundreds of experts from outside government to look at the federal departments and agencies with an eye toward efficiency and cost cutting telling us how modern business practices could be put to work in government and I was just wondering how many of you know that I'm in a publishing business also I'm in fact I stand atop a publishing empire that's bigger than Gannett's the federal the federal government spends millions of dollars a year and publications of every conceivable kind and size the federal register alone has doubled in a decade and cutting back on the unnecessary publications is one of the things that we focused on from the beginning of our administration and over 2300 publications are almost 20% of all government publications have been eliminated now these publications represent 70 million copies of unneeded or wasteful federal publications that won't be printed and I think you can imagine the kind of savings that that will mean to the taxpayer and in the area of foreign affairs we've moved a long ways George was telling you from the time of invasion of Afghanistan of hostages in Iran and retreat in the face of threats from small time dictators and totalitarian powers I believe this new note of realism in our foreign policy has made the path toward peace an easier one in fact for the first time now as George told you we're negotiating not limitations on the increase in weapons but on the actual reduction in nuclear arms and we're going to stay in those negotiations until we get a result I think all of this means that Americans today feel better about their country they believe that we have a plan and a strategy for policies both home and abroad and we do but it's important to keep in mind that our whole effort was not geared just to hire gross national product or stronger stock market but the expansion of personal freedom and opportunity lifting the stifling hand of government is leading to economic prosperity but it's also encouraging personal freedom in every sphere and it stimulates the initiative ingenuity and the striving for excellence that have always been trademarks of the American people I hope that those of you with a vested interest in the rights of free speech will keep in mind that freedom really is indivisible there isn't any S in that word any government that tries to restrict economic freedom freedom of the individual can be just as casual about other personal freedom some of them very important to people like yourselves like the right to a free press and that's been our goal the expansion of freedom coupled with the hope of making life a little more rewarding for people like yourselves and those who read your publications I mean the hard workers, the entrepreneurs and millions of Americans who take quiet pride in a daily job well done if I'm not being too boastful it indicates that we've tried to keep a promise that brought us into office a promise to make government work for the people to restore their faith in our political institutions by making sure that government acts as the servant and not the master of a people I want to close with a very pleasant duty I have to perform here Dean Lesher, where are you? Dean... Dean Hi How are you? You stand right here I know Dean Lesher is known to all of you, I know he's the most distinguished member of the newspaper and media fraternity as chairman of Lesher Communications he's shown that he is not only a first-rate businessman but a man who too, who cares about the quality of his editorial product and the people who produce it but Dean is known to me in another way because as governor of California I called upon him three times to serve the people of the state including a term as a trustee of the California State University system so it gives me a great deal of pleasure to present this award to a man who has been a success in both the private and public sectors and now I shall... the citation reads this award is presented to Dean S. Lesher with the sincere appreciation of the officers, directors and members of the National Newspaper Association in recognition of the long and distinguished leadership that he has provided to the newspaper industry through steadfastly upholding the highest principles of journalism faithfully serving the readers of his newspapers and unswervingly seeking excellence in all of his endeavors Dean S. Lesher has consistently and conscientiously proven his distinguished leadership role in the newspaper industry Congratulations I've looked around here and I know that it's going to be absolutely impossible to mingle and mix and have a dialogue with all of you and since some of your employees get to now and then throw questions at George and me you didn't know I was going to include you in that, did you? I just thought that maybe at least for a few minutes here if you weren't tired of hearing from us you might like to ask a question or two yourself I can tell you I was going to be very angry if it had gotten better but I had the worst experience a Californian could have I left that whole full week of rain and wind and cyclone that tore roofs off in Los Angeles came back here for three more days of rain back here and then went down to Florida and had to admit I was seeing the first sunshine I had seen in ten days Yes I'm not supposed to tell the boss I'm going to the Kentucky Derby Yes No, I wish him well I was there as a governor and I'm to prove to you I'm a real conservative when we'd all sit around up there and try to guess in each race who was going to come in first and so forth I waited till they got it down to two and then I'd bet on both of them to place Well, we will of course be appointing a director and I'm glad you asked because I have to tell you frankly I think that this has been disgraceful and I think when Ann Burford came to me I would never have asked her to resign although I bled for her in what she was taking but she resigned simply because she said I believe it will be impossible for the agency to continue working unless I do and we had made available virtually everything that was required or requested of us to the Congress and all we were hearing was were accusations and allegations and innuendos and she herself was the one who wanted above all to give them anything that they wanted because she felt confident enough she's done a darn good job and we've done a darn good job environmentally since we've been here and we're not going to let her leave the administration she'll have another job No, you're not going to see another Vietnam and there is no resemblance between these two and what the situation is I just made a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers this noon on this entire subject The El Salvador what we're seeing down there if you look at that map of Central America and see Nicaragua now on the mainland here in Central America as the same kind of a puppet that Cuba is and they are exporting this revolution to Nicaragua those aren't peasants that are not sending advisors that will be up there with them in any combat we have been helping them train we've only been able to help them train about one out of ten of their men and the battalions that we have trained are doing a fine job we have to call attention to the fact that this government of El Salvador yes, they have a long way to go they've got a 50-year history of military dictatorships but this is a government that was elected last March in an election by the people and this government has moved up and advanced the election of a president from next year to this year they have appointed a peace commission to see if they cannot persuade some of these people to lay down their arms and come in with full amnesty and participate in the democratic process in this election but I think the proof of their country came last March in the election we had a team of observers down there from the Congress some of them who were opposed to our aid to El Salvador and the gorillas and you know that there had been a worldwide propaganda attack that the gorillas really represented the people of El Salvador and that somehow it was the government that was the enemy but it was the gorillas who said to the people of El Salvador we'll kill you if you vote and one grandmother stood in that line and told our congressman that she had been told that she and her family would be killed and she said to the gorillas you can kill me you can kill the family you can't kill us all we'll vote and they went they destroyed over 200 buses and trucks to try and keep people from the polls but they walked to the polls they stood for as long as 8 and 10 hours in line waiting to vote one woman was shot by the gorillas and refused to leave the line for treatment until she had voted more than 80% of them went to the polls we haven't had in more than half a century 80% of our electorate go to the polls when there's no one threatening them and it's only around the corner to vote but they did that and their land reform program has been extended now for another five years 25,000 farm workers have become farm owners under this plan we think they deserve help and mainly we think we're helping ourselves because to the south of them is the Panama Canal to the north of them is Mexico with an 1,800 mile border on our country that doesn't have a single armed guard of any kind because of the long years of peace between us this will expand to Honduras to Guatemala to Costa Rica and they are the ones who told me on my trip down there that they knew it would that this was a regional thing to get that sector in the middle there and bring the Soviet type of rule into the western hemisphere and what I said in Central and South America when I was there was I know that the colossus to the north us we've presented ideas before but I was First Paper Man in Honduras recently Embassy, American Embassy people there pointed out that 90,000 plus tons of sugar is their allotment in Nicaragua to sell to the United States that the Nicaraguan Marxist government is taking that American money and buying weapons from Cuba and the Soviet Union to use against El Salvador and to use against Honduras Mr. President, is that the right way for us to buy sugar in Central America? No and we're going to do something about it Gene Kirkpatrick came back with the same message and something will be done about it I know that I put so many hands but I haven't taken anyone from this side I just take this one and then this has to be the last then someday someday George we're going to find that wherever it is that they give is that piece of paper every day that tells us what we're doing every 15 minutes of the day Well like any compromise no one is completely happy with it no one's really happy with it but what we have done is remove the fiscal threat that was hanging over it we can guarantee that the checks are going to go out and I think that all in all I think it was worth voting and the amendment that was put on yesterday extending after the year 2000 the age, the minimum age limit from 65 to 67 to be phased in over a several year period I think it's a good sound idea also and I was delighted to see it passed because that was one political football that we needed to get kicked out of the stadium so we could get on with the business of government and it's gone Well now I... I'll answer that Well it's going to be 50-50 No I'll tell you I think there's a time and place for that decision to be made and to be announced if you do it too early you're a lame duck if you go one way and if you do it the other way then everything you try to do you're accused of doing it for political purposes and besides I've always believed that if you wait a while the people tell you whether you should run again or not