 being here a few months ago when when all of this started I asked if I could bring a few friends home to lunch. I'm glad it was you today. There is somebody with us today that you won't have a chance to meet at any other time and so I do want you to have that opportunity to meet my mother the first lady who makes all this possible Nancy Reagan. Now Mama and I took a little poll upstairs and we decided that we were not who you wanted to hear from so we're not going to take any more time away from letting you speak with your host for lunch today the president of the United States. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. We run out of time. Good afternoon and welcome to all of you. I'm delighted to see you and before I get into my remarks I have to share some news with you. You probably got this news in the briefings that have taken place already but it just in case you didn't and if you did it's worth repeating. Our goal for the American people is a strong growth economy with stable prices and this morning it looks like we hit the jackpot made a triple play. Industrial production in June was up retail sales in June were up and producer prices were unchanged for the third month in a row zero point zero. Now I can go on that it's good to see so many old friends and also to meet some new ones and to be joined by two of the favorite women in my life Nancy and Maureen I want to begin by giving each of you my heartfelt thanks for all that you've done for the Republican cause. Politics is often fun and sometimes glamorous but in the end it's the hard work of people like you that makes it possible for us to put our beliefs into practice. Your role is especially important because you demonstrate the Republican commitment to American women and that's a commitment that runs deep. It's kind of appropriate today I should be saying this because you know some people have tried to keep this very fact I've just mentioned a secret. Well first it was the grand old party that gave its backing to women's suffrage and then it became the first to elect a woman to the United States Congress and the first to elect women to the United States Senate who are not just filling out unexpired terms. And today the two women in the Senate my friends Nancy Cassabarm and Paula Hawkins are Republicans. The only two women in the Senate and we have nine outstanding Republican women in the House of Representatives and I really bring this up because I think it's time that they have more company there. Now all of us are aware of the events that transpired yesterday among the Democrats. They have their ticket and I'm looking forward to campaigning against it on the issues. As I said yesterday their choice of a vice presidential nominee is historic but so was appointing Sandra Day O'Connor to the United States Supreme Court. And I have to tell you that the day I appointed her was one of the happier days of my life. But what about that foolishness that is the other major party that represents the interest of women. The truth is the Republican Party represents those interests best and in a serious and a long-term manner. We Republicans think women should change America and that's why we have Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick as an eloquent and courageous voice at the United Nations and she is changing America. As are Elizabeth Dole of Transportation and Margaret Heckler at the Department of Health and Human Services and as are Catherine Ortega the treasurer of the United States and Martha Seeger at the Federal Reserve Board. And there's Carol Dinkins at the Justice Department and Ann Dormick Laughlin at the Department of Interior who briefed me for my trip to Chesapeake Bay on Tuesday. Patricia Goldman at the National Transportation Safety Board, Faith Ryan Whittlesey and Margaret Tutweiler here at the White House and so many others like Lenora Cole-Alexander at the Department of Labor, Mary Jarrett at Agriculture, Donna Tuttle at the Commerce Department, Barbara McConnell at the CAB and Nancy Harvey Stortz at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and I could go on but we'd run out of time. All are changing America and they're changing it for the better. Now I know that he who lives by the crystal ball sometimes winds up eating glass but I've said this before and I'll say it again. There is going to be a woman president of the United States one of these days soon and she's going to be a Republican because we have the great talent. The women who have advanced in our party and who are coming up through the ranks today are doing it by merit and the American people recognizing this will support such a woman when she runs. The Conservative Party of Great Britain chose Margaret Thatcher as their leader not because she was a woman but because she was the best person for the job. There was no tokenism or cynical symbolism in what they did. She became leader of her party and Prime Minister of Great Britain because she was judged by her peers to be a superior leader and that's how the first Republican woman president will do it. Now I have to tell this I probably shouldn't but there was a little argument and someone I thought got out a line at the summit meeting in England and I was because it was a male I sought her out afterwards and she was presiding and said Margaret I think that was out of line and shouldn't said this and Margaret very quietly said we women understand when men are being childish but look around you at the great talent that is in this room. The advancement of women in this party is more evidence of the growing fact that increasingly the Republican Party is the party of ideas. We're the new thing in politics these days. We are taking creative steps to free up the economy. We have the new and vital economic ideas. We're taking a new look at the family and its pivotal place in society and we're the ones with fresh new insights on tax structure and we're the ones with the courage conviction and the compassion to increase personal incentives for every working American. Our party fairly crackles with ideas and dynamism with the bustle of pioneers looking into the future and trying to make it better than the present or the past. The past three and a half years have you noticed we have all of us together changed our country. We've led the way in helping the public understand that the great contention between the free world and the totalitarians is the preeminent struggle of our times. We've led the way in helping our country appreciate anew the fact that economic justice comes from economic freedom and that big government does not liberate men and women it holds them down. What we've accomplished is the most exciting domestic political development since the new deal and all of you in this room are an integral part of that new revolution. You're the incredible talent that's lighting our party with tremendous energy. The Republican party is the party of the future and it is up to all of us to reach out to all of the people in this country to go to the union halls and the fire stations and the street corners and get the word out and let people know that the party with a vision wants their support needs their support and deserves their support. It all comes down to you. Scores of gifted Republican women like you are serving in public office outside Washington. In the 23 state primaries that have been held this year to select candidates for state and federal offices in addition to incumbents our party fielded over 200 women and more than 150 of you came out of your primaries victorious. I know you're having briefings all day but if you'd allow me I'd like to take a moment to give you an overview of some of the other things we've been trying to do and I'll be brief because maybe you've already heard them. I may be plowing some ground that's already been plowed but there are some specific proposals that we're making working on that directly affect women in America. On the legislative front we've made proposals to really toughen child support enforcement to improve state collection of child support payments and require the adoption of proven and effective enforcement techniques. Bill's containing these measures of path both the House and the Senate and we hope they'll emerge from a conference committee ironing out the differences between them within the next few weeks. In pension reform we have proposed legislation to increase protection for widowed and divorced spouses and to help women earn their own pension credits. That bill is also well on its way to enactment. Tax equity for women is another vital field. Many of our tax equity proposals are contained in the Deficit Reduction Act the thing we call a down payment which I expect to sign very soon. The Congress for example adopted our proposal to permit contributions to non-profit dependent care organizations such as daycare centers to be treated as tax exempt. We are more than disappointed that the Congress dropped our proposal to raise the spousal IRA limit from twenty two fifty to four thousand dollars but we're going to keep on pushing for that one and we'll get it. These as well as other measures that have been passed represent a significant advance for American women but there's one achievement that's done more to give American women opportunity and independence than all the others combined and it's called economic expansion. When I took the oath of office inflation was in double digits. The prime interest rate had hit its highest peak since the Civil War and economic growth had just about disappeared. The economic crisis struck women especially hard. Most elderly Americans living on fixed incomes are women and their purchasing power was eaten up by inflation. Women saw jobs become more and more scarce and a twelve point four percent inflation rate made buying groceries and paying bills a nightmare. The thousands of women who wanted to start their own businesses saw a twenty one and a half percent prime interest rate slam the doors of opportunity. Well last year there were some six hundred thousand new businesses that started up and the greater proportion of them were started by women but the interest rates weren't twenty one and a half percent anymore. Now we made the economy priority number one. We reduced the growth of federal spending. We eliminated needless regulation reduced personal income tax rates and we passed an historic reform called tax indexing that means the government can never again use inflation as a tax increase to profit at the people's expense. We reduced the marriage tax penalty almost doubled the maximum child care credit increased the limits for IRA and Keo contributions and eliminated estate taxes on family farms and businesses for surviving spouses and our greatest triumph is in the area of employment. Right now more people are employed in the United States than at any other time in our history and we've beaten back unemployment to seven percent but if you just take women's unemployment it's less than seven percent. Today from Maine to California there's a powerful economic expansion that is taking place. As a matter of fact I had an angry scholarly economist write me to tell me to stop calling it economic recovery. He said we're past that. It is now economic expansion and I believed him but inflation is plummeted by more than two thirds since we took office. It had been running at three point six percent for the last three month period and as I mentioned the producer price index in June was announced this morning is unchanged. That's the third month in a row and if we want to take it for 12 months that's the one that precedes and predicts what the inflation rate is going to be. The producer price index it's been 2.2 percent for the last 12 months. Retail sales as I said are up. The American workers real wage is rising. Investment by U.S. business and new plants and equipment has risen at its fastest rate for any recovery in the last 30 years. We Republicans have more than a good record. Together we've changed and will continue to change our country. For the last 30 odd years or more the political debate in Washington was all having to do with how much they were going to spend and the new spending proposals and nobody stopped to notice that for the last few years the debate in Washington has been all entirely on how much are we going to cut and we've never cut as much as I think we should but we're going to keep on doing that too. We know that our nation's best days are still ahead of us. We can build a country where all women and men have the chance to go forward just as far as their dreams and talents will take them. An open society led by new ideas. It's all very exciting and we're doing it all of us together and if we succeed in getting the word out about who we are and what we're accomplishing then I feel sure the nation will follow us. So let's you and let's have dessert. I'm going to go straight to our Democrat and Chris had my life this year and I asked him why and he said because the Republicans are regulating us too much. I almost fell off the table. But his reaction was to the 21-year-old drinking and highway funding and to the childhood screams and to the 55-year-old or 55-months-old which are very visible and symbolic and really have enough or very little to do with the overall thrust of a gear of the administration of the principals that we support too. But they are very visible and to the public they're very important and I think that I would urge you not to sign the bill and let states settle these issues. Let me respond. We've had a little discussion about that right here at our own table up here. There's no one that is more concerned about states rights and the fact that this government of ours or this country of ours is a federation of sovereign states and having been a governor for eight years. I believe that deeply and we have tried. That's why we had a program called federalism that we were trying to give back to the states and the local communities autonomy that we believe has unjustly been seized by the federal government. We have been opposed every foot of the way in what we wanted by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Incidentally, that promise to restore state and local autonomy was originally made by the Democrat Party in its platform in 1932. They also promised to reduce the cost of government by 25 percent and do all these other things. And I have suggested at times why don't we stop all this unnecessary work with the platform and just use the 1932 Democratic platform because it's never been used. So I just want you to know that there was a reluctance in my part with regard to this in the 21-year-old drinking age. I have been as governor opposed to some efforts when then it was just common practice to threaten you with taking federal grants away if you didn't do what they said. In this instance, I think there is one element that does get into the field of interstate, of crossing borders. The other thing about the age limit is there are 23 states that have adopted the 21-year drinking age, 27 haven't. In the 23, the record is just unmistakable. When Michigan passed it, there was a 43 percent drop in alcohol-related automobile deaths of young people. When Illinois passed it, 23 percent drop. New Jersey in its first year, 39 percent drop. Well, this you can't ignore, but then the interstate thing I mentioned that maybe suggests that you're not setting a dangerous precedent in any way. And that is that the 23 and the 27, and they're all mixed up. And on the borders around those states, you have the problem of the teenager crossing the border and when he crosses back again, he's drunk. And the accidents that follow. So because there's no way to control that other than by either all of them doing it or by a federal law, and I thought that there was less of a precedent if we could get the states to do it than to have the federal government enter that field and pass a law dictating that. You had one other point in there, too, that there's another point other than the, the what? No, Mr. President, you have answered it and I think I understand that position. Oh, it's still, we have the money one. We did raise the, I'm afraid to be able to raise it to 19 this year because of the interstate problem. And we are aware of this problem. I think the state's been doing it. Well, so to your friend there, tell him that we're still determined and have given back more autonomy and authority than has ever been given back in the years since it was taken away from the, from the states. There was no question that there was a policy that began with the new deal as it progressed that really wanted to reduce the states to administrative districts of the federal government. And I believe that the great secret of our freedom is that ability to vote with your feet and to have states' rights. So we're in favor of that. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm Sylvie Hammer from Oregon. And the district that I have been representing is very much timber oriented as far as the major industry. And our concern is that the administration is taking a stand against the timber relief system. And I'm here to say that I'm concerned that we need a very realistic approach to this timber relief situation for those people that I intend to represent. It's a real major problem. I missed on what the... I'm talking about the timber relief and region sex. The... From the federal contracts. Timber. Timber relief. Oh! Wait a minute. I don't think that thing was turned up enough. I've been having trouble hearing it. This is better. The timber contracts. We had made one measure that we thought would be helpful to them and that was to extend the time and no interest charged against them for that. I don't know what the outcome is now. I know that there is a further request now because this is a case of timber industry that had leases from the government on government-owned timber and land. And signed them at a time when inflation was skyrocketing as it was. And the deals were made then without a knowledge that the inflation was going to change. And then they found that they weren't able to use the lumber as fast as they had thought they were going to use it in those days. And we were... And it's whether to let them off the... Out of that problem. We are... I know we don't have an answer on it yet, but we are dealing with that. The consensus I met with several of the larger industry people before I left. The consensus was that it needed to come from the administration. Yes. I'm the senator half of what's been working out. And with the end of the week, the consensus was that this direction needed to come from the administration. Yes. Mr. President, I'm going to door from West Virginia. And as a Republican, I would like to say that we'd like to have the administration do everything they can to defeat J. Rockefeller. We're a state of burn. Coming in state rather than democratic state in this country. Well, believe me, we will do all we can. There's one thing I have to tell you. We must not lose that majority we have in the Senate. Because we couldn't have done anything we've done if we didn't have that. And then at the same time, let's start whittling at that house a representative. I think Bob Michael, speaker of the house, has a wonderful ring to it. I think she has to do that or we can't take those pictures with my schedule here. So I'll see you in the other room. I'll get over there and get in place and then see you all. Thank you for being here.