 Thank you. Press out. You're kidding me. Hi, how are you? He's fine, thank you. I know you're too. Mary Ellen Joyce, how are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine. This is President Jim Mason, Dick Ischer. This is President Jim Mason, Dick Ischer. This is President Jim Mason, Dick Ischer. You're working for me, at the Wendy. Mr. President, how are you? You, whoops. I want to get you away. You're with the Governor. Thank you, Mr. President. Hi. It's a real old family. Judy Black, I was not on my staff, but I'd like to have her. Bye. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Would you get this? I hope the size of those books doesn't scare you. Well, it's good to see you both tonight. It's really appreciated receiving the National Governor's recommendations to modify troublesome administrative and regulatory requirements that the federal government imposes on states. Very soon I'll be talking to the American people about an economic bill of rights, and one of those rights will be the right to pursue your business free of excessive federal regulation or taxation. My administration has been committed to reducing that burden over the past six years, first through our paperwork and regulatory reduction, and then by tax reform and adoption of our federalism principles and very shortly with our economic bill of rights. We've demonstrated our commitment and so have you, and I hope we'll continue to hear from you whenever you see that we at the federal level are standing in the way of your ability to govern. One of my favorite stories about Runaway bureaucracy and it was a true story. It was a fellow here in Washington when Bob was sitting there and papers came to him and he had to figure where they were to be passed on to him. He'd initial him and send them on, and he did. One paper came one day that was Mark's secret but it came to him so he figured out where it should go and initialed it and sent it on. 24 hours later it came back to him with a memo attached that said you weren't supposed to see this. You raise your initials and initial the erasure. So seriously as you know I asked the Office of Management and Budget and my Intergovernmental Affairs Office to coordinate and review your recommendations but we've made progress and I want to present to you the results of that review in these books and their descriptions of our implementation of about 45 of your recommendations including documents demonstrating that changes have been or will soon be made. For example, Governor Ashcroft raised the concern that teenage girls in foster care who became mothers were unable to get medical assistance for their infants. This was because foster care payments were counted as income and so the newborns who were medically at risk and urgently in need of medical attention were getting it. Now under our tax reform past last year the mother's foster care payments will not keep the child from medical assistance. In another example Governor Sinner and others told us that they wanted their states to administer federal airport development grants because you felt you could do a better job than Washington. Well we agree and so we've proposed legislation for a new block grant program to give states the administrative responsibility for much of the airport funding. If passed by Congress states would have more authority to make their own decisions about how to allocate their funds so if you want to lean on some of your congressman about getting this done we'll be grateful. The vice president shares our task force on regulatory relief and believe me he's always looking for new candidates for regulatory relief and I encourage you to work with him as his task force goes about its important work. They've been tremendously successful in wiping out thousands of regulations that were on the books. But again let me thank you for your help and helping identify these troublesome items. I was glad to hear that federalism will be a major focus of the NGA activities for the coming year. Federalism has always been near and dear to my heart and that's enough out of me. Mr. President I want to thank you and the vice president for the push that you have given this. It has meant a great deal to the Governor to know that there was a receptive ear that could help us do something about it. It is important for us to be able to serve our citizens to have some flexibility in areas and remember the relief activities that included this report deal with that and it also allows us to target funds as intended by the law but sometimes constrained by the details of the law in particular the example that you gave from Governor Ascroft's recommendation falls under that domain. If we look at this as a beginning it seems like it is a large enough task that it may now run but at least we can keep whittling the way I didn't make a difference to the people. I want to thank you very much and I assure you we will continue to hear from us without a music group to get rid of. Being an alumnus I'm highly supportive of that. I've always believed deeply that the secret of this country's greatest among other things is the fact that we are a federation of sovereign states from the very beginning and that was implanted here and I think there there has been over some recent years and temporarily but there has been a belief and the part of many of the federal level that the state should be reduced to administrative districts of the federal government and I think that's throwing away the very thing that made us great there is an inventiveness at the state level an ability to experiment that can then be passed on to improve life for everybody in other states also and we want to encourage that. Let me also thank you I want to take a little different tack but it's basically derived from the same thrust that you cast on this project and on the meeting. I'm very caught up in a problem with electrical energy because we are big producers in this state of North Dakota and we did a study of what it costs to get coal out of the ground and what portion of that cost is societally imposed costs work and com unemployment insurance social security withholding environmental protection agency OSHA retirement benefits health benefits probably the highest liability costs in the history of the world state bonding for reclamation and anyway we discovered that almost 40% of the cost of the coal societally imposed costs and it becomes a very sharp issue when we are getting Canadian competition and some of you are aware of that issue that Canadians have been reading on us for environmental and we discovered that of the 140 coal-fired generators in Canada not a single one is a scrubber on and I really we have begun internally in the state to try to reduce as far as we can the societally imposed costs on our industries for the very reasons that you have mentioned and so it's imperative that we work at our level we work together and I think this communication between the Governors and many administrations is really a significant effort that we want to perpetuate as much as we can. I've always said you fellas have a job that's the closest comparison to this present job that I have anybody in the country and it is we just I'm on for it I could match your story with a few that I treasured back in my days that I found I discovered for example a golf course that owned some land that wasn't using adjacent to one of the freeways and so they leased it in nearby farmer and he raised corn on it and then they decided to enlarge the course and they took back that land from the lease and made that into fairway and the government gave them a payment for taking corn land out of Britain I didn't realize that the Canadians didn't have a single scrub run they have 139 co-affirmed generations in Canada not a single one of the scrub run then how did they they give us all this garbage you know what I was going to say they didn't give more indication than most anybody has come from the smelter in Ontario was 5% of all the sulfur oxide emissions in North America let me answer that they're meeting a total they claim they're meeting a total limit but doing it all this way we see they do it on a smelter because that's an export product in addition we can hardly build a hydro generator in America anymore because of environmental demands and I'm not quarrel that's another issue what part of those demands are valid it's a separate issue entirely but many of them are valid Boris just a month and a half ago was asked how long it would take to get the environmental study done for that plant they're talking about he said well what are you talking about we're kind of doing an environmental study and so this whole thing has gotten so irritating to the states that are dependent on electrical generation on energy generation of all kinds by this influx of energy from either from the Saudis or in this case electricity John's plant over there or the nuclear plant they're absolutely being blown away with a very fraudulent case and we all reached a new level of anger when they hired Michael Lieber to commit a lobby for them and we did some research and there is no there's not even a scrubber ordered for those plants they can get mighty enigmatic about acid rain future conversations too one more fact then to keep in mind the Canadians produce one tenth as much emissions as the United States with one twentieth of the population and therefore on a per capita basis they have twice as much emissions as we do and we do it on a basis per industrial output it's sweet last question where does their downwind plume go? who does it affect? themselves and the wind the prevailing wind they argue that that's another fact to remember with your good friend Maureen that plume affects our northeastern states Canadians don't like to talk acid rain or be there's one other issue in this particular that's so fundamental with the Canadian negotiations and I know you're deep into them and I talked to Peter and played for a lot but all of the electricity in Canada is owned by the provinces they borrow all the money to build all their plants whether they be coal fired they back up their borrowings with the full faith and credit of the province and they're buying their money all which is borrowed for about 3% less than our private investor owned companies can buy it in addition to that they are marketing into our market at 80% of this place costs regardless of what it is and that is documented they have routinely stole our buyers will give you the power you don't have to pay for it in a domestic and it's just blowing our people out of this blowing inside the water and the long-term implications are very serious and we're hurting bad enough I don't want to belabor but I think what Governor Sinner was saying it wasn't really the intention of this meeting but with all due respect this country does not have an energy policy we thought we had a oil and gas policy and we don't know now whether we want high oil prices or low oil prices in no industry with an answer somewhere in between we still don't have a way with all the debate and it applies to the hydro problem to the coal problem to the nuclear problem and if there's any long-range problem that has in my opinion been left unanswered for a decade or so it is the energy issue Mr. President Jim Coombs says it's time to go and I've heard that I just saw on television this morning though speaking of some of the futuristic things and this was somebody boasting about solar power for general power and all and he was using an example in California and I couldn't believe my eyes here was 40 acres of desert totally covered just rank on rank of the reflectors 40 acres of desert that you couldn't even walk across it anymore because of these 40 acres now I don't know that's just for one generation generating plant there I don't know how much power it gives but can you imagine trying to hit the state of California with solar power most of that is tax derived the same with the wind generators over Palm Springs or acres and acres and acres of wind generators all motivated by the new tax law took care of it thank you Mr. President thank you Mr. President this is good to see you thank you to see you and as I say it's good to meet you sir we will see you thank you Mr. President I'll call the way okay thank you Mr. President thank you thank you Mr. President