 I'm going to impose on you here this morning for taking your questions that there are a number of major issues being discussed on the Hill today, INF ratification, and a Contra aid bill, but I want to take a couple of minutes if I could to talk to you about the trade bill. America is now in its 64th month of economic expansion. That's the longest peacetime expansion in the history of our country, and we're still going strong. GOSH national product is up, exports are up, and we continue to create new jobs, 15.5 million since the expansion began. There's no time for protectionism. I could argue that there's never a time for it, but now is definitely not the time. It's not the time for mandatory retaliation against our trading partners, and it's not the time to violate our GATT agreements. And it certainly is not the time to close our borders to foreign investment while we're pressing to open other borders to U.S. investors. We can pass a trade bill that will improve our current trade laws, protecting patents and copyrights and streamlining export controls and renewing negotiating authority that makes historic compacts like the Canada Free Trade Agreement possible. We can have that kind of a trade bill, and I won't sign one unless we do. But now that's enough of that, and I'm pleased to see you and have you all here frequently throughout these last several years. We've gone out and invited people like yourselves who are outside the White House press corps or even the Beltway press to come in here, and it's always been a pleasure to take your questions. So, Mr. President, we often hear local officials complain that your budget priorities force them to swallow federal programs they can't afford so they reach their taxing limits and cut basic services. Do you take responsibility for what California counties, for instance, call their unrelenting fiscal crisis? They're unrelenting what? Fiscal crisis. Well, the reverse of all of that is really true. There are some programs that we have, we've cut simply because we've been able to make administrative improvements. I came here with a memory fresh in my mind as governor of California, coming across a government program to help the media in which the administrative overhead was two dollars for every dollar delivered to a needy person and set out to do something about that. Some programs we have thought are not proper for the federal government, but at the same time, one of the things that have been imposed on local and state government by the federal government was the usurpation of authority and autonomy that belonged at the local and state level. And the federal government actually had acquiescence in that over a great many years by simply taking up so much of the taxing potential that not enough was left for local or state government for the things that they might want to do. And this then was the excuse for the federal government to step in with things that, as I say, properly belong to that other level. Well, now, with our very beginning of our recovery program, it was based on tax reductions and the idea of thus reopening sources of taxation that other elements of government or levels of government could call upon. Are they in trouble then just because they haven't been willing to raise taxes? Take advantage of that? I would have to see the specific case as to what that was about. But I'd like to call your attention that the federal or the state and local governments basically have, while we've been running deficits, budget deficits have basically been achieving surpluses. As a matter of fact, if you take the total national deficit and add in local and state governments, the total cost of all government in the United States, you would find that the deficit is not as what it isn't. There are other countries that have greater deficits than we do. If you figure all of that, it's at the federal level that we're still excessively spending. And I could call attention to the fact that way back in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for office. Part of his platform was to restore authority and autonomy to states and local governments that had been unjustly seized by the federal government. And we have a program we call federalism in which we're trying to restore fully that concept that the United States is a federation of sovereign states. Thank you. Mr. President, if you could change one major policy decision that you've made during your administration, what do you think it would be? Well, all of them were made in good faith, changed or not. Just offhand, I can't think, well, I can think of one that turned out so disastrously that we had to withdraw from it. And that is that we and a company of three other countries, four countries, in an effort to try and bring peace in the Middle East and to Lebanon, that when we discovered that the Lebanese military forces, well, Lebanon itself was occupied by military groups that belonged to kind of private warlords, you might almost say, and that the military of Lebanon could not go out and restore government control over the country, unless there was some protection for the people left behind in Beirut. And we and company with three of our allies decided that we would send in, as you know, forces to maintain order. We would not be out there fighting those private armies, but our forces would be there to keep order in the city where there was no order, keep order there while the Lebanese military did what it early, yes, Lebanese military did what it was supposed to do. Well, the funny thing is that was working. I got a letter from a woman there who told me that for the first time in eight years, she was able to allow our daughter to go to school, but it was safe once more. But because it was successful, that's when the terrorist attacks began the sniping of the military, not only of ours, but the others are allies, car bombings and so forth. And finally, that great disaster, that car bomb that brought down the building at the airport airport in Lebanon and killed 241 Americans. It can be questioned as to the wisdom of putting them in there. They had not been bill billeted billeted in that building, but it was steel and concrete construction and out where they were encamped around the airport, which was one of our part of our duties. There were victims of sniping things at that time and the commanding officers having that kind of structure available, moved these men in there as a place for the nights and not thinking about a suicide bombing that simply drove a truck into the building with the explosives that blew them up. And then we had to retreat. And another reason we had to retreat and give up was it began to be more evident also that the Lebanese military was divided in its royalties and were loyal to some of these, what I called warlords to the extent that it was difficult to get them in many instances to take action against the forces they were supposed to be clearing out. Mr. President, last week you said you still think Oliver North is a hero despite his indictment on conspiracy theft and fraud charges. If requested, will you testify on his behalf? And can you tell us why you still consider him to be a hero? Yes, I will tell you that I don't know what the situation will be in regard to testimony or not. But I think I was too short in my remark when I answered the question, it was a specific question, did I still consider him a hero? I should have augmented that and said, why? And that is look at the record and at the honors and the medals that have been awarded him for bravery in combat. And I have to say, those were heroic actions that he is a valid hero. And that was what my answer was, was based on. Although, as I said, I should have augmented it as I did here and reminded them of his war record. Well, do you think the allegations of shredding documents in line to congressional and justice department investigators tarnish that heroism? You have said allegations and now you come down to what is a kind of a sore point with me about a lot of the things that have been going on with regard to people in our administration. And that is that someplace along the line, many of us have forgotten that you are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. And what has happened, I think in the case of this kind is it's just everyone is accepting guilt on the basis of accusation. And I say, they've got a right to be presumed innocent till someone proves them guilty of the charges. Now I see that I'm getting a signal here. He isn't just restless. It means that my time is up and that I'm supposed to leave here, but I'm going to turn this over to Chief of Staff Senator Howard Baker. And if you continue to take your question, I'm sorry that I have to quit. I've been enjoying this. As a matter of fact, I want to tell you just something before I go. I enjoy taking your questions more than I do from the White House press corps.