 Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Mayor, for those kind words and Del Lada for being here. And thank all of you. I must tell you, I've had a wonderful time visiting with the people of Ohio today, and I can't think of any finer way of ending my trip on the Heartland Special than visiting with you good people at Perrysburg. I've got a great deal to be grateful to all of you for. You've sent to Washington a representative who has been a tremendous force for responsible government, a congressman I just mentioned, Del Lada. It's no coincidence that his name is on the bill that finally got control of federal spending after decades of tax and tax and spend and spend. He is a true friend of the taxpayers and a great friend to those who depend on economic progress to give them a chance at a better life. Well now, we're three and a half weeks from election day, and the American people are getting the full flavor of the very clear choice that is facing them. It's a choice between two fundamentally different ways of governing and two distinct ways of looking at America. My opponent, Mr. Mondale, offers a future of pessimism, fear and limits compared to ours of hope, confidence and growth. I know that his intentions are good and I know that he's sincere in what he believes, but he sees government as an end in itself, and we see government as belonging to you, the people, and only a junior partner in your lives. My opponent and his allies live in the past. They're celebrating the old and failed policies of an era that has passed them by, as if history had skipped over the four Carter Mondale years. On the other hand, millions of Americans join us in boldly charting a new course for the future. Now it's fitting that we're campaigning today on Harry Truman's train, following the same route that he took 36 years and one day ago. He was the last Democrat I voted for. I campaigned for him in 1948. Mr. Truman could make very plain the differences between himself and his opponent, and my friends, that's just what I'm going to do this evening. Let us start with the record, the record of the administration in which Mr. Mondale carried a full partnership. In those four years, they took the strongest economy in the world and pushed it to the brink of collapse. They created a calamity of such proportions that we're still suffering the consequences of those economic time bombs. You know, on that January 20th of 1981, that was no fresh-faced, well-fed baby that was left in our doorstep. It was a snarling economic wolf with sharp teeth, the suffering of America, the deep and painful recession, the outrageous and frightening inflation. These things didn't start by accidental ignition or spontaneous combustion. They came about through the concerted mismanagement of the administration of which he was a part, and his liberal friends who controlled the Congress. They gave us five, you can count them, in a little more than a year, five different anti-inflation plans, and then ended up giving us the worst four-year record of inflation in nearly 40 years. While it took them five plans to nearly triple inflation, it was only taken us one to cut it by nearly two-thirds. Senior citizens were driven into panic by higher rents, exorbitant fuel costs, dramatically increasing food prices, and federal health care costs, which went up a massive 87 percent. Some fairness. They punished the poor and the young who struggled as prices of necessity shot up faster than the other prices. Millions of Americans led a life of daily economic terror fueled by those unrelenting costs. Let's look at interest rates. Now, my opponent has referred to something that he calls real interest rates. Well, people who don't pay interest rates on some academic smokescreen or foggy economic theory. What they know is that when Jerry Ford left office, the end of 1976, the prime interest rate was six and a quarter percent. When Mr. Mondale left the vice presidency, it was 21 and a half percent, the highest in 120 years. The average monthly mortgage payments more than doubled. Car loans were hard to get and expensive. The automobile and the home-building industries were brought to their knees. And after all this economic punishment, guess what? Our opponents blamed you as being the cause because you lived too well. You remember they told you you were going to have to sacrifice more? But I found out that it's not so much that our opponents have a poor memory for their ruinous past. They've just got a darn good forgettory. And you know, one of the things they like to forget the most is the misery index. If you'll remember back in 1976 in that campaign, they put the inflation rate and the unemployment rate, added them together, and then called it the misery index. It came to 12.6 percent and they said that Jerry Ford had no right to seek re-election with such a huge misery index. Well, 1980 came along and they didn't mention the misery index. And I don't think my opponent will mention it in this campaign, possibly because when he left office, the misery index was more than 20 percent and now it's down to 11.6. My opponent has done a very good job of slipping, sliding, and ducking away from this record. But here in Ohio, during the primaries, a Democratic candidate for the nomination, Senator Gary Hart, got his message through by reminding the Ohio voters of the true record. And let me quote Senator Hart. Walter Mondale may pledge stable prices, but Carter Mondale could not cure 12 percent inflation. Walter Mondale, he added, has come to Ohio to talk about jobs, but Carter Mondale watched helpless as 180,000 Ohio jobs disappeared in the period 1976 to 1980. Well, those were Gary Hart's words. Those disastrous consequences did not come about by accident. They came through the implementation of the very policies of out-of-control spending, unfair taxation, and worship of big government that my opponent still supports. His philosophy can be summed up in four sentences. If it's income, tax it. If it's revenue, spend it. If it's budget, break it. And if it's a promise, make it. All this year, he's lavished his campaign with promises that staggered even his Democratic opponents. But of course, there is a predictable answer by one who makes so many promises. The answer is higher taxes, and massive new tax increases are precisely what he proposes. A few weeks back, he called for his new plan. He said it was pay as you go. Well, what it is, of course, is nothing but the old plan. You pay and he goes. Those tax increases to pay for his promises add up to the equivalent of $1,890 per household, for every household in the United States. Now, if Harry Truman had to apply a motto to his radical taxing scheme, I think recalling, and for the younger people here might not recall, that it was Harry Truman who sat in the Oval Office and said, the buck stops here. Well, I think with regard to my opponent's scheme, he would say, your buck never stops. When the centerpiece of his economic program is backbreaking tax hikes, you can see why my opponent spends so much time using outrageous scare tactics. Now, that's not my opponent's only tax extravaganza. He came up with still another one in our debate. He said, and I quote, as soon as we get the economy on a sound ground as well, I would like to see the total repeal of indexing. Well, this tax is even worse because it would be a dagger aimed at the heart of every low and middle income earner in America. It would mean new crushing tax levies against those who can least afford them. Indexing was a reform that we passed. It goes into effect on January 1st, and it's to protect you from the cruel, hidden tax when government uses inflation to force you into higher tax brackets. You get a cost of living pay raise that's only meant to keep pace with inflation, but it pushes you into another higher tax bracket and you end up paying a higher percentage of tax. Well, under his plan, what would happen to a family struggling on $10,000 per year? By 1989, they would be paying over 73% more in income taxes. Now, we're told, and he has said in these last few days since the debate that he misspoke, that he actually meant to say the opposite. But on several occasions since 1982, he's expressly proposed the repeal of indexing. He's done it quite often. In politics, they call that a flip-flop. You'll forgive me, I'm going to call it a fritz-flop. Indexing is one example, but there are many others. Yesterday, he wanted to give a $200 tax break to every family dependent, and today, he wants to raise taxes the equivalent of $1,890 per household. Now, for the last couple of weeks in his campaign, he's been talking about two Reagan's. He says there's a new one and an old one, and he isn't with that last term referring to my age, because the old Reagan was younger. That was back there. The new Reagan now is mean at the present. Well, he's been doing that so much that I decided to do some new and old mandailing myself. The old Mondale said tightening the budget and reducing deficits could worsen a recession, increase unemployment. The new Mondale thinks higher taxes lead to a healthy economy. The old Mondale publicly supported Jimmy Carter's wrong-headed grain embargo. The new Mondale claims that he opposed it privately, very privately. The old Mondale sponsored National Bible Week in the U.S. Senate, and that's fine. But the new Walter Mondale says there's too much religion in politics. The old Mondale called the space shuttle a horrible waste, a space extravaganza, and in the United States Senate, he personally led the fight to kill the space shuttle program. Now the new Mondale praises American technological achievement, and well he should, because while I've been going across Ohio on this train, those brave young men and women, those heroes have been up there, going around the world several times in the Challenger, and God bless them for what they're doing. But with all of those switches, with all of those switches in the very much, if you could take it, I can. He has in and out old and new style there, and just when you could begin losing faith, still you find there is some constancy. The old Mondale increased your taxes, and you can count on them. The new Mondale will too. You know, in our debate, I got a little angry at all those times he distorted my record, and on one occasion I was just about to say to him very sternly, Mr. Mondale, you're taxing my patience. And I caught myself. Why should I give him another idea? That's the only tax he hasn't thought of. But from now until November 6th, we're going to make sure the American people know about this choice on which their future depends. We have two roads to tomorrow. We have the road of fear and envy that he proposes. On his road you frighten the elderly with false statements, and let me interrupt my thought right here to say something about that. Political demagoguery is unpleasant at best. But in the 1982 congressional elections, and now in this present election, there has been some cheap demagoguery, political expediency, when he has deliberately frightened, brought fear to elderly citizens who are dependent on Social Security for their livelihood, when he says that somehow we've got some secret plan that we're going to take those benefits away from you or at least reduce them sizeably. Well, if there's anyone in my administration that has such an idea, he's gone tomorrow morning. Isn't anyone on our team that believes that? I tell you now, no, we will not tamper with the benefits of the people dependent on Social Security or those that you are expecting when you come to your non-earning years. You know, to divide us with envy and greed, Franklin Roosevelt warned that the only thing Americans have to fear is fear itself. And sadly and tragically, the only thing my opponent has to offer is fear itself. Now, that's the difference between us. We see America's best days as still ahead. We see ourselves in a springtime of hope ready to fire up our courage and determination to reach high and achieve all the best. We see a life where our children can enjoy at last prosperity without inflation. We see a life where they can enjoy the highest of creativity and go for the stars, not have their hopes and dreams crushed away by greedy politicians. The American people are walking into America unashamed and unafraid. They're ready for this great new era of opportunity. And you know, I have to witter up myself again. I know it's almost time for the whistle to go and for me to leave, but yes it is. But one of the things that has just thrilled me more than anything in this campaign all over the country in gatherings such as this is to see the predominance of so many young people. I'm so glad that you're all here because this is what I want to say to you young people. My generation and the several generations between mine and yours, this is for us an election in which you, you're the real meaning of this election. There's been a period in recent years in our life here in America when we were told that opportunity wasn't the same as it used to be, that we couldn't have the dreams that we once had. Well I'm here to tell you the meaning of this election is that the people of my generation and those several other generations I mentioned are determined that you're going to have the same America when we turn it over to you that we have when our parents go to jail. I know for this great new era of opportunity and I know this may gall our opponents I'm going to say it anyway with regard to the future you ain't seen nothing yet. Our opponents every day is April 15, tax day. Every day is the 4th of July.