 The very distinguished Mayor from our city of Tampa, Mayor Bob Martinez, met him a few minutes ago. He is the son of the Vice President of the United States, Jeb Bush. Mr. Chair in the stage with President Reagan today is a member of the Catholic Golden Age Representative Charles Fortenbaum. He's a great man and his lovely family for making America's agenda in the proper order. Faith, family, the President and the leader of the free world, President Ronald Reagan. For federal assistance, those parts of your state which suffered so much at the hands of Hurricane Elena. Because they're going to have a helping hand to begin rebuilding their homes, their businesses and their lives. Now, it's great to be back and for it here to say the sunshine, Senator Paula Hawkins, your congressman Sam Gibbons. I have felt it because I'm not going any place. My friends in this regard, you and I have a lot in common. We've lived out the great part of our lives. We looked at the past. Our hearts are filled with gratitude for all that we've actually formed. And now we'll plan and re-plow ground that's already been plowed here today. But today, our administration, as you know, has before the Congress a plan for a dramatic tax reform. It's a reform that would make it easier for us to live back in Washington than here. My friends, don't you believe that our taxes are too high, too complicated, and other becomes fair? Yes! The tax code we're established with today is the result of the post that signed a postcard to be sent to Washington. We'd like to present you with a replica of that postcard for your ballot on the Hill for this tax reform and to put us in a better position to even make more contributions to our great country. Let's say, as Clark says, as a senior citizen, I encourage you to support the president's tax reform plan. The plan is pro-growth, pro-family, and fair. Please pass the tax reform plan this year. I didn't get around to it until 1962. But I know you've heard about our proposal about changing the tax code. I want you to know that as I traveled across the country, I found that the enthusiasm for this fair share of tax plan is overwhelming because it seemed that way to me. And yet I get back up in Washington and I hear senators and congressmen telling me that no one seems to bring it up to it. So that's what I'm trying to stir up, is that someone will bring up the matter. We think our proposal makes the system fair. It makes tax rates lower. We intend to cut the top tax rate on personal income to 35 percent. The corporations from 46 have been down to 33 percent. And on the top capital gains rate all the way down to 17 and a half percent. And our objective is to create a small business branch in America and make this the age of the entrepreneur. All of these eight million are some new jobs in the last 33 months that have been created. We all know the great bulk of them have been created by small and independent business. With regard to the family, our plan will produce long overdue relief by increasing the standard deduction and practically doubling the personal exemption from the $1,040 to $2,000. We think it's about time the government stopped punishing families and started helping them. I'm excited about all the good things that the plan will do for America. And if you're excited too, I'd like to ask you to let the folks back in the state legislatures and know how you feel. In addition to tax reform, there'll be a number of other crucial issues, of course, this fall. And I'll need your help on a lot of those, too. We'll have to fight hard to pull down federal spending. We'll need to promote further economic growth while staving off short-sighted protections measures. And we need to pass a farm here that enables our farmers to recapture their right for share of the world market. I appreciate your help in our effort to exempt state and local governments from the Fair Labor Standards Act, saving you $3 billion a year and protecting local decision making. And believe me, we're with you on that. So on all these vital topics, continue to speak up. And never underestimate the good that you as thoughtful and articulate public service can do for our entire nation. And I thank you all. Now you've had enough of the model all of the meeting. Mr. President, let me ask you. We've been at the forefront of speaking out for this deductibility and local state taxes going away with that and supporting your program. But there's a lot of feeling, I think, of people wondering how serious is the effort really. I mean, is it really going to be a full push for tax reform this year? Yes. And as a matter of fact, I'm pleased to be able to say a little joking side that of all the things that I've faced since I've been up there, this is the one with the most opportunity for a bipartisan, no Democratic-Republican thing. My partisan push, Rostrakowski, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is determined that he's going to get this out of the committee and that we're going to have this this fall. And so, no, it's a push. There are some in the election next year. There are some who think maybe it should wait, but the time is now. There's one big thing if anyone gives you that argument about, well, why not next year or something? The best argument for that is what happens to the business industry in this country if people can't plan because they don't know that the tax program is going to be a year from now. Mr. President, I think we're all behind that plan. I certainly am. I know the people in Mexico are. A couple of years ago, you put your full force behind the balance budget constitutional amendment and spending of the amendment. You got a pass to the Senate. The district petition was at least passed in the House. Do you plan, through the remainder of your term, to go ahead and have another push toward that balance budget constitutional amendment? Oh, yes. And the thing we have to recognize is everyone has to realize there's no way that you can balance the budget in one year with the way the deficit. And remember that deficit spending is structurally built in and we've been having it for 50 years or more. And then in 1974, when the Congress passed what they called the Budget and the Planning Act of all that, since that time, instead of it cleaning things up, it's just made it ridiculous. I've only had one budget since it didn't. The rest of the time, we've been operating on continuing resolutions. And so what we have to do is look down the line. If the program right now, the conference reporter, wasn't as good, I think, as what we first asked for, it doesn't have as much savings. But even that brings our deficit down. We shouldn't be looking at the number of dollars anymore. Things have changed. Look at the percentage of gross national product. Now, under this plan, our estimates are that next year it will be 4% per listenation plan. The next year it will be 3% and by 1988 it will be 2%. And that path would lead to where you could say in 1990, we can have a balanced budget. We at the same time then should be working for a constitutional amendment that when you can estimate and see this recovery path that way, say down here, it becomes, that's when the balanced budget comes in. And then, Lord, if any of you have got any sense, we will figure some plan, no matter how modest it is, starting to pay its toll on us on the national debt. We have a society that shows that we're reducing that continuing to expand it as we are now. Thank you also for your great stand on the life of the farmers that you have stood for so courageously the last four or five years. Do you really see light at the end of the tunnel for the nation as farmers? If we can get the kind of legislation that we want, and I know that Jack Blocker's secretary is working for this, the government has been the cause of the farmers' problems. If you only look at that part of agriculture that has never been in government programs or subsidy or limitations or anything else, they're not having any economic problems. So what we want, you can't pull a rug out from under and pulling out a system that the farmers have gotten used to these government programs over these years. But it is our obligation to try and make things right. So we want legislation that will try to help them in the present crisis, but that phasing in will get down to where they're governed by the free market and out of the marketplace. You know, the other day, here's a great problem, we have made it, the government has made it advantageous for the farmer to overproduce. And if there's any other industry that the government says, well, if you have more product, you may have a factor of more product that you can sell, that it won't take care of you. And the other day, as I fall down when entertaining the prime minister of Denmark, he started telling me about their troubles. That little Denmark is producing more than they can eat or more than they can extra work to sell abroad over production and food. And I asked him, I said, what ever happened to that fellow Malthus that told us about the Malthusian theory that we were all going to starve to death someday? But yes, we want legislation that will be aimed that the farmer can see ahead and say, down here, this is the way it's going to be the next number of years. Mr. President, the State of Michigan is going to be critical of the balanced budget play. That's the one legislature where we really have a hope of getting something to happen this year. Do you intend to campaign in Michigan or to use your influence to try to get the Michigan legislature to issue the call? I don't know what the schedule calls for now. I know that there are a lot of people planning the schedule, the things we can do. But what it means is you would be making just one state away from a constitutional convention. And I think you could all well understand that the one named Congress would rather not do is have a constitutional convention in which all kinds of items could be brought up. And we're hopeful that if Michigan does this, that'll be enough for Congress then to say, well, wait a minute, we'll pass the amendment and submit it so that we can avoid having that kind of convention. I hope that I can. Mr. President, you do so many things at the right of which we thank you and praise God. But no way is perfect. That's nice. We appreciate very much your strong stand against communism and the hope for women. But somehow that situation, and the government and the children and the sort of those leftist sort of observed, well, what do you think? I agree because you know we've had problems with the Congress and our government. But then there are those situations. Not too many people understand that this isn't trying to overthrow the children and government. There was a revolution against Somoza. The revolutionaries made up of several groups. The Sandinistas were probably the oldest and may have been a pro-communist organization since long before that revolution. And at one point the revolutionaries went to the organization of American states, all the other states here in the hemisphere, and asked that organization to appeal to Somoza to step down and end the killing. What's going on? And the organization said, well, what are your revolutionary goals? They gave what we could all support. Pluralistic society, free democracy down there, free labor unions, freedom of speech and press, all of the things that they all want. And then and Somoza stepped down. That ended the revolution. But when the government was formed, all of a sudden just as it's always happened, it happened over in the Middle East when we interfered there before the Vietnam conflict with Laos, when you've got the communists in kind of a consensus group. Pretty soon they take over. Well, this is what the Sandinistas do. Very short. They got rid of revolutionary leaders from the other parties, some of them exiles, some fled the country, some of them weren't imprisoned. And the Sandinistas are a totalitarian communist group. And the now of the Contras are growing every day in numbers there for around 20,000 now from just a few thousand a few years ago. And many of those are deserters from the Nicaragua military. They are mainly controlled by the former participants in the revolution. And all they want is a restoration of their revolutionary roles. Now, this is why we're supporting them the way we are. And it's been a real fight all the way to make sure they give me more support from the state of Washington and their projects. Mr. President, I think it's a little clue as to what you might be hoping to gain with your summit meeting. What? What meeting? Off the record. Just between the two of them that looking at that time interview and looking at their own press I have decided that on press has concluded that Gorbachev is the hero and I'm the bad guy. I told some people yesterday, all of this about how good he looks at his pinstripe suit. I've got a pinstripe suit I've been wearing for five years. Mr. President, you're coming up to the answer next Wednesday. I've got to ask you a question having run three of your campaigns up there for you. I want to loop on the Constitution so you can run again. I want to go back up and help. No, I'm afraid that's the answer. I'll tell you this. I once listened to some of the people that talk about a one-term or something of that kind. Having been in a job, and not for me now, that wouldn't work. I have to tell you that I think it was a great mistake. If we've got a democracy where the people can choose their representatives if they've chosen you as often as they feel that they want to support you. What in the world makes us think that it was democracy to take that away from the people with regard to a president? The people chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt four times, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Unless if you want to have the kind of a government where everybody in the government's got to quit at a certain time. But the, what was, what was I, I can talk to the guys around my, on the feet, that means that he, I'm supposed to get on my feet too. Let me tell you, I think that we better understand when thinking about the revolution. He was raised in that system. He has come up in that system. Yes, he knows that they've got, they're economically a bastard case. And I'm quite sure he wants to do some things without being able to do better. But I don't think there's any idea that he is not true to the kind of philosophy or principle. So what I would hope is that we can come out with an understanding that, okay, we're not going to like each other's systems. They're not going to like ours, and we're not going to like theirs. But I can convince him and based on facts that we have that would help prove it, that any of us talk about us being a threat to them. We've got no designs on who would want to live in this country and go to a war. On the other hand, we've got a whole background of history of their leaders all the way back to Lenin, declaring that we are the enemy. We must be destroyed. They refer to us as the last bastion of capitalism. They have made it plain, I'm not calling names when I say that they reserve the right to ride. They have claimed that themselves. They say anything that will further be the national socialism is moral. Well, my hope is that if I can convince him that we're the only two countries in the world that can start a world war. We're the only two that can maintain world peace. And if he can see that the things that he wants to do, their economics and so forth, that practically they will be better off if they don't have to keep this gigantic military build up. And if we can convince each other that there's a place for us together in the world, in the same world. And without interfering with each other's systems of government. But where they'll be better off practically in reducing the arms and ending the arms race which they started and which they're way ahead and still we haven't caught up and I don't think we ever would catch up I think we can maintain enough to be a deterrent to them. But it's expensive to both of us. So if we could get that and to me the proof would be not in their words because they made that point and their words don't count. But make him understand that we would have to have some visible proof in some deans. For example, getting out of a gap in Palestine. Being willing to reduce their military strength at the same time as we would in a comfortable way reduce ours. Then we could proceed on individual things like trade agreements and things of that kind cultural exchanges and so forth. And I think it's worth a try. I've noticed one thing he's done that no other Russian leader has ever done. We had guest over for dinner one night in the United Nations that protected through our country. And he's written a book in Moscow and things there. It's the first time I've ever really read not one of our scholars looking from the outside here's a guy from the inside telling you what it was like. And had him over there for dinner it was very interesting and he made an observation at that time it wasn't about Gorbachev who hadn't come along yet but he said there isn't a Russian leader there in the other guy that knows one thing about what the Russian people are thinking. He said they only see him through the bulletproof window for their limousines as they're driving by them on the streets on their way out to their country home. And this man is the first one but as you've seen he's out there as if he were running for office he's going into factories, he's calling the guy on the street. And it could be that he's trying to build up a kind of a support out there because he knows that maybe some of the things he's going to do are not going to meet the approval of the polar bureau. And of course the polar bureau goes to the screen, he's no longer head man. So, uh, he's strong. They still want to capture the world. Yes, yes. They've never retreated from that position the world domination. And I think if I've been convincing that this is why we are acting the way we are and it won't be enough to just say oh we don't mean that, no words if they do some deeds with one of their earlier leaders I don't mind telling you that I had an opportunity one to say my way for an ambassador of America to say something of this kind to it. And I said for example I mean something that was sticking in our throat that had to do with some people still being held in the Soviet Union and I said look I won't detail it any further than this because I promised I said we won't go out and boast about this we won't say that you did this on our demand or something like that but if you did that then I could afford to do something that would be of interest to you and I wouldn't say anything about it to this day this is the first and most public I've ever talked about but the people I was talking about are living in America now and that was when I I really did it when I went to the Greening Park I never said a word about it now if I can you wondered what it was you know they kept dying on me I've been collecting Russian stories that I find that cheap people of Russia I can get through people like this are telling among themselves what shows their cynicism about their own government and the last one I heard was two Russians walking along and one of them said the other because this now real communism is this all of it and we finally achieved full communism and you know what I'm saying I know things are going to get a lot worse thank you