 Well, I thank you and a special thank you to your new National Chairman, Don Devine, and to your founder, Jack Hume. Jack couldn't be with us today, and I know all of you joined me in sending Jack our best wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery. I can't help remembering when in August of 1983, Jack told me of his plans to create a grassroots organization that would champion our ideals. Since that day, Citizens for America has grown and become stronger and shown again and again that when it comes to dealing with Congress, there is enduring truth in that old maxim that you may have heard me use once or twice. If you want to see, make them see the light, make them feel the heat. We've made a revolution these past few years, you and I. A revolution of hope and opportunity. A revolution for the old traditional values of family, faith, community, and work. A revolution that's restored America's pride and what it stands for. An America's moral authority around the world. You know, all we've done, how we brought interest rates down from historic highs, how we've tamed inflation, how we've created more than 17 million jobs, reduced unemployment at the lowest it's been in 14 years, and put more Americans to work than ever before in the history of our nation. You know how we've saved the typical American middle-class family, which in the four years before we took office saw it's real income drop, and since the expansion began, has seen it soar 10%. That's not all. We put judges and justices on the federal bench who care about the victims of crime. They've handed out sentences to criminals convicted of federal crimes that are 18% longer than they were in 1980 at the end of the last administration. We've stood for freedom in Afghanistan and go on Central America, and we've given the world the hope that someday a specter of nuclear war will cease to haunt mankind and that all peoples will be protected from ballistic missiles by our strategic defense initiative. And we mean that. I've said over and over again, once developed and deployed, I'll be the first one to say, let's give it to all the other nations of the world. So only in dealing with the Soviets, those who truly want peace must also support American strength. But a record like that, it's hard to believe what we've been hearing from our opponents recently. But then it's been hard to believe what we've been hearing from them for the past eight years. We as liberal Democrats remind me of a story Frank and Roosevelt used to tell about Republicans during the 1940 campaign. That, of course, was when he ran for his third term. Many of Roosevelt's oldest friends were Republicans. And he said he'd seen one of them and asked him how he intended to vote. And a friend said, Republican. Well, Roosevelt's how come? Well, he says, is it the third term that's bothering you and man said, no, that's not it at all. It's just that I voted Republican the first time you ran. And I voted Republican the second time you ran. And I'm going to vote Republican again because I seem to have never had it so good. That's what's going on about it. Consider, for example, the area of defense. Just before I came to join you this afternoon, I vetoed the defense authorization bill that Congress has sent me. Well, I said that. For eight years, the liberal opposition in Congress fought our efforts to rebuild America's defenses. You remember the changes over the years? The liberals said that those who favored strong defense were, in essence, against peace. When we spoke forthrightly about the nature of the Soviet challenge, they said, Soviet-American relations had been struck a crippling blow. Were they against defense systems? Oh, no, they said. But try to pin them down on a precise or specific system that they actually support. And they always seem to be for one place down the line, not for the one they had to vote on today. But we went forward despite their resistance and their prophecies of doom. And today, Soviet-American relations are the best they've been in decades, perhaps since the end of the Second World War. We've just ratified the first treaty in history to eliminate an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles. And the Soviets are pulling out of Afghanistan. You'd think the liberal leaders would have learned something from our successes and their failures, but apparently not. Now they come along with this bill. Congress Defense Authorization Bill would tie my hands and those of future presidents in negotiating with the Soviets. It would cut out much of the muscle that we'll need both for those negotiations and for keeping America safe. And it cripples our strategic defense against ballistic missiles. This bill is a return to all of the discredited policies of the years past. Policies the American people have rejected overwhelmingly time and again presidential voting. Anyone who's ever signed a contract, for example, to have a washing machine serviced, knows that you don't give away your right to get out of the contract if the other side doesn't keep its head to the deal. You don't have to keep paying the monthly fee if the service mechanic never shows up. Common sense. But under this bill, Congress in effect would require that we continue to keep our end of the SALT II agreement while the Soviets have no such obligation. Now let me remind you, if you need a reminder, SALT II was the treaty that the Senate under Carter refused to ratify. It never became a ratified treaty. And if it had been, it would have been over by now because it had a time span that would have ended before now. Well, think of what this bill says to the Soviet negotiators that we're talking with in Geneva right now. Those talks have the goal of finding a way to cut in half the number of long-range ballistic missiles each side has. You've heard how complicated negotiations are. You've heard how they're fraught with pitfalls. Well, when, and if we get an agreement, these precise details will be of enormous importance as will the scrupulous observance of every sentence and every clause. I have to interject something here. I know that some people have gotten worried that maybe I've owned soft on the communists and so forth and overlooking some of their faults. I learned one phrase in Russian, which I've used so many times that it makes Gorbachev sick when he hears it. Dovayyanopovyan. It means trust, but verify. And now these guys are sick of hearing and I've decided to just use a good old American term. Trust everybody, but cut the cards. Kristy Fence Authorization Bill says no to the Soviet negotiators. Don't worry about what you agree to. Once the paper is signed, Congress won't hold you to it. It'll only hold the U.S. government to it. But the bill doesn't just take our nation from the most successful negotiating strategy we've ever had with the Soviets and return it to the least successful one, the one we had in the late 70s. It does something more, something that betrays our obligation to our children and grandchildren. It cripples our strategic defense against ballistic missiles. The liberals say that SDI is expensive and impractical, that it won't work. You know there was a government in the United States that said that about the submarine once. Or to put it another way, that is quote, a very complicated thing which will get out of order in many ways, unquote. By the way, in the interest of accuracy, I must tell you that quote is not actually about SDI, although it is exactly what the critics have said about SDI. But the quote itself is from a report on why not to adopt another web system. It was written in 1591 in concern of the musket. The history of military technology like the history of oil technology is filled with people saying it can't be done. Or it can't be done at a reasonable cost. There's the court, this is the court marshal of Billy Mitchell all over again. And what the critics are saying makes no more sense today than it did back in Billy Mitchell's time. Think of just one area of recent technological progress, the silicon chip. That little tiny thing, less than a fingernail. Today, the silicon chip has the incredible computing power of a million transistors, that is of the biggest computer in the 1960s. Yet one of our nation's most prominent research directors predicts that in less than 15 years, the power of a billion transistors will be back in a silicon chip. That's the power of 20 of today's most advanced supercomputers which will fit in the tiny corner of the circuitry of an SDI inter-center. SDI is not going to be practical, it's inevitable. Whether or not we develop it, we know the solution that's with. They've already poured millions of dollars into research before we ever started. But that doesn't mean this name. But that doesn't faze congressional developers. I can't think of another action I can't listen to. In the last two years, it's shown so clearly why President Bush must have a Congress that supports him. It's just this simple. Nothing we've accomplished in these last eight years would have happened without our control of the Senate for those first six years. Having that one house is what made all the difference. Now we're back again to them controlling both houses. If we control the Senate just these last two years, we could have done even more. So let me just ask you while you're out there helping to give America a great President. President Bush, don't forget the President Bush will also need a friendly Congress, a Republican Congress. Lee, I know that I have to get back to work and I know that any other things you have things to move on for. But the story is so much on our side that we have to take the lead and get out to the people so they know what's going on. For example, when I heard from Channing at the Democratic Convention about where is George? Where was George? Well, you know, we have reduced the number of federal regulations since we've been here to the point that required paperwork, required of people like yourselves, small government communities, community governments, states. We have reduced so many regulations that it is estimated that we've reduced the amount of paperwork required of you by 600 million man hours a year. Where was George? He was in charge of the tax force that eliminated those federal regulations. He's been a part of everything that we've been doing as an administration. He deserves to carry on and would carry on all that we've accomplished so far. There are so many endings. Who would say that Napoleon was not one of the great, great all-time military geniuses, great generals? Do you know that when the inventor of the steamboat tried to sell it to Napoleon? Napoleon threw him out of the place and said, what foolishness is this? You tried to tell me that with no regard to the way the wind is blowing that a ship can be made to sail where you wanted to sail by building a bonfire under the deck. That was Napoleon's analysis of the steamboat. And we decided all kinds of exams. SDIs. Progressive as it has. And against the opposition of the Liberals and Congress who time after time have cut its budget to the place that's set it back time-wise, SDI, once the science got going, have made so many breakthroughs that more than one option is open to us now for a defense system that will knock out those missiles when they come out of the silence and before they get over their target, which would be the United States. And they say that it's something we should do away with. Why do they think the Soviet Union every time we debate something wants to trade whatever we want from them for us giving up the SDI? I think that's a recommendation enough for everyone. Well, listen, I know I have to run and I just want to tell you how pleasant it's been here to be with all of you today. We should stick around longer, but this little 11-year-old girl wrote me a letter when I first became president. She cited all the major and she had them down, the major problems, what they were, and told me that I should get after all of them and then wound up saying, now get back to the old laws and go to work. But thank you for all you're doing. Believe me in reading counts. God bless you.