 I'm feeling fine at the end. As you can see, I spent the weekend here, well I've just sent one to Bill Beckham, the Secretary of Education. He, there's one in here, it's a story of a family of a four-year-old boy and the problems they had when he started school, kindergarten, with him being shuffled in one of these special education classes, are we fine. And this went school after school, and then we're having these problems, and what they now have to do, the kids is normal as anything in the world, but how quickly, just the slightest thing, change schools, and change schools, same thing would happen. And what comes out of it is that we're funding a program, in which everything, a lot of teachers at the lower grades have just found what they have, whether the kid presents any kind of a problem to them at all, they can shuffle them off in these. I'm not there for Israel. Oh, but yeah, but the last night, the usual trick, they were having this meeting, they had to sit through 25 speeches, and all of these were speeches by non-voting representatives, and this was all pressing again on these same things that we're against, about trying to get a vote on a consensus on some things, you know, like Palestine and everything else. And I guess, I remember when everyone was in the press, they didn't well as this had been done. They said, everyone that's talking is a non-voter. We have won. That's why I guess they can say this as far as they can. You look like you're doing very well. Thank you. Nurses are looking down at them, and the nurse is saying, oh, is that crazy clown down there chomping? Oh, and he'll disturb the president. He says, well, it doesn't say this to the president. But the nurse they had was a big, you know, thing like that, real caricature, and of course all these young, maybe nurses, they objected. So before I left the hospital, I told them I would make it my first task, change the image among the cartoonists. They're very good, those nurses are. We're blessed in that regard. Well, listen, I'm so pleased to welcome you and so grateful for what you're doing, and I appreciate very much your very kind, fine letter. And I know I don't have to say you said it in the letter. Yes, we're following a man who said, oh, Michael, I understand you. I think I'm getting even more admiration for him. I'm surprised I don't mean more familiar with what he does. I'm quite intimidated by the whole process. Well, I know we've got some problems that we've had and have continued them. For example, I think we still have a task of... Centennial Commission. That's an impressive group. I haven't heard of the reverberation. The house will be for you. It's the senate where the quivers will be. Well, I called, we decided on a thing yesterday, because it's been a whole week that everybody, including so many people, were saying, I've got to get into it. It's up to me now. Well, so up to me, I called them off. There was no way I could get to the next increase, not after the campaign. I opened it and said, and it was my impression after reading the patio here that everybody had agreed that, then by tip, they were starting to say social security was off the table. So I said to Bob, I'm going to go with no tax increase and no freezing of social security codes. And if anything suggests that the social star won't give me, that's all I have to say tomorrow. I know her came home last night, but it was a price of exciting times in that room. But I guess we won. What a terrific job. There's a message in also from our ambassador in Somalia. She went by and saw President Siad. And Siad's comment about Marine was that if he had his way like the hijacker for about another 10 days, but the embassy said this is probably the most effective high-level visit we've had by any of our official 10 years. She, there's a, is it the foreign minister? There's some of them from Egypt though, and I guess she really had a run in. There's some from Egypt who are just fine, but this guy, he's there and he gets loaded along about lunchtime. And it was the same performance of the last meeting I had. And then there came a time when she had met with him for an hour and explained, told her something was going on. Then one took the action. He was out there and was raising him about it and denied that he knew anything about it. And then he shouldn't have said that to her. She says, I sat in this same chair and talked to you for an hour about this. And she said, and I don't like being called a liar by you or anyone else. And I guess they really went at it, nose to nose. I don't think it'd be their foreign minister. I hope not. But that doesn't sound right. I know this is going to be a busy week, so we better get right at it. And let me just say, first of all, we all recognize that we need to concentrate more on the supplemental appropriation and the defense authorization bill, just as soon as possible, knowing what is coming over your heads with regard to departure. And of course, I know we all are sure that we need the responsible budget resolution. And I want to compliment Pete and I would add Bob in there, he was here, he's having a press conference on the way. It's a face up to the deficit problem. And with that, I think, in explanations due here, I was tempted to throw my hand in the door before I came. But along with this whole situation, and why I made the call yesterday that I made about a bill, when this first proposal came out with the tax increase including the proposal on social security, and when I was told about it, I was also asked about holding fire and not saying anything about it. And I did, and then at the weekend, all the talk shows and everything began to be increasingly the cornerstone that I needed to be heard from. And it seemed to me that they had made it clear, and in our patio meeting out here, made it very clear that social security in any form was off the table. And therefore, we had to go to some place else. And several of us on the meeting was breaking up, voiced aloud, I believed that, well, okay, if that had sold then certainly there is some compensation due to make up for that. And when we met the other day out of the old tree, and the same thing, that they were still in that position. And it seemed to me that it was time that the conference was going to get going forward. But here was a major issue up here, but that while we ought to get settled on, there's a difference between the 2000 Senate proposals on extending cuts. And if we could get the other out of the way and say here's where the problem lies, so I called them up and told them. If there just was no way, and I was terrified, and thought perhaps having to wait and then believe, it's not going to fit me if something came out of the conference, but we've already been doing something. The tax increases. And I'd just like to remind you of the campaign in 84. One of the debates was almost entirely on that. Mondale was calling me a liar and saying that I, too, would have to increase tax along the others, not on the ability to act on the campaigns or the elections or whatever. And there's just no way that I could make that be worse. And now accept the tax increase, besides which I believe more than just personally, I believe that the tax increase, again, is a threat to the continued recovery that we have had. And would risk putting this into recession number 10 since World War II. Now, as I say, I included the Social Security thing on account of giving my reason for doing it. Some years ago, Lyndon Johnson put Social Security into the budget. It was an independent program. It still is an independent program. For us to be insane, he did it to make the deficit look smaller. Because while the outgo would have to be added, the income from the Social Security tax would have to be added. And that was bigger than the outgo. So on paper, it made the deficit look smaller. But not one dime of that surplus can be used to reduce the deficit. That money goes into the Social Security trust. And first of all, I think that what we were doing was giving the Democrats what Tip Moneer wanted about everything else, which was a campaign issue. And he really used it in 1986 against us, as they had in 1982 and in 1984. Now, the truth of the matter is, since the commission that finally bailed Social Security out of it on a solid basis, included in that agreement was that in 1992, Social Security will be given out of the budget and put back where it was in the program. I think that maybe not as a part of this, now, but I think before long, we ought to advance that and take it out. Because it is, and we were in a position of deceiving the public for us to go forward and say there are vexed billions of dollars in savings over three years if we change the coal situation in Social Security. Not only are we handing over an issue that is used against us, but we're deceiving the people as Lyndon Johnson did. Because we're not going to cut that deficit by that amount, except on paper. Not a penny of it could be used to really reduce the overspending that is going on. So my own idea was, okay, let's take these two off. Let's call attention to the fact that we have come a long way to meet them on the other major issue, which is against them. Now, we in turn have a right to ask them for some more sensible approach to the spending matters. And the funny thing is, they're not too far apart. Dave has given me a three-year total of the savings from the baseline over the three years. In the major hard savings, non-powerful, things like rural housing, export input, and postal subsidies, mass transit, and all of these things, in that list of about 60... I'll say you're really so good about how you feel. If you don't want to overdo it now, this is where we're at. Thank you very much. I mean, I should have sent the other one in there. No, you've got the buttons there. Which ones? Which buttons, sir? I was just... Oh, thank you. I always said, is your wife who's all right? Yeah, she's fine, she's sure. I just had a letter of encouragement here, and the woman sent a lovely snapshot herself. And the title is, it wanted me to send this woman a picture of California on her 100th birthday. And I did. And the snapshot is her 100th news-holder dressed in lovely yellow on her way out to a party. They enclosed a note to them from her, just as, you know, a wonderful note and so forth. A hundred years ago, 30 years ago, she had the same impression. That's kind of encouraging. I guess you have a great team of surgeons, didn't you? They were wonderful. They really were. And I must say all of them, the authorities and the nurses and all the wizards. You know, the NIH man, I think I told Don, I know I told Bob Dole, my neighbor, immediate neighbor, that I've been friends with for eight years, is an NIH researcher in the PhD. About eight months ago, he had a little operation. I said, who did that? He said, the best surgeon in the United States. I said, what do you know about this? He personally really has sent me major cancer operations today. Research. You know, the surgeon, the head of surgery, I have to test everybody. He was just there, I was in the surgery. He was the one? Yeah. I don't think they'll work here. But Suzanne started working, we have several high school and college interns, and we wanted to see what we could do because they need school books, and we love looking at the work. So we've got a mission to everything. Where's the waves? Breaking on the shore. Lots of questions now. I want to use that for hearing about the success of the... Have a good day. All right. Who's clocking you on? Mine. Work on my clock. The farm bill and the other is agricultural credit policy, and the Act is going to start out by giving us an overview. Mr. President, to start with, we'll review the situation in agriculture today. And I think that the environment, if we're trying to write the farm bill, then the problem will be very impressive. The exports are down 25%. The interest rates for many, if not most farmers, are going up instead of coming down. Prices are variable, almost across the variable.