 Remember that in that great program of cutting or spending cuts and tax cuts that we put through in 1981, there were two authors' names on that bill. One was a congressman from Texas, Phil Graham, and the other one was your Del Lada. But I thank all of you two for a heartwarming reception. It is great to be in Ottawa. And when President Harry Truman spoke to the people of Ottawa during his whistle-stop tour in 1948 in this same car, he spoke these words. We are in a campaign which will go down as one of the most important in the history of our country, and it's your campaign, it's your welfare that's at stake. Well, today we once again face an historic election, and once again it's your welfare that's at stake. We're now 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 hours of hope, confidence, and growth. Now I know that his intentions are good, I know that he's sincere in that and in what he believes, but he sees government as an end in itself, and we see government as something belonging to the people and only a junior partner in our lives. My opponents and his allies live in the past, celebrating the old and failed policies of an era that has passed them by, and if history had skipped over, it's as if history had skipped over those 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. Taking the same route that he took 36 years and one day ago, he was the last Democrat I voted for. Indeed, indeed in 1948 I campaigned for him. Mr. Truman could make very plain the differences between himself and his opponent, and my friends, that's just what I'm here to do today. 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. That was no fresh-faced, well-fed baby that they left on our doorstep in January of 1981. It was a snarling economic wolf with sharp teeth. The suffering of America, the deep and painful recession, and 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 Mr. Mondale was a part and his liberal friends who controlled the Congress. They gave us five in little more than a year. They gave us five different anti-inflation programs and then managed with them to give us the worst four-year record of inflation in nearly 40 years. While it took them five plans to nearly triple in inflation, it's only taken us one to cut it by two-thirds. Senior citizens were driven into panic by higher rents, exorbitant fuel costs, dramatically increasing food prices, and a federal health care cost which went up a massive 87 percent in just those four years. And they called that fairness. They punished the poor and the young who struggled as prices of necessity shot up faster than the others. Prices of Americans led a life of daily economic terror fueled by these unrelenting costs. Let's look at interest rates. My opponent has referred to something now that he calls the real interest rate and it concerns him greatly. Well, I don't think people pay interest rates on some abstract smokescreen or academic or foggy economic theory. What they know is that when Jerry Ford left office in 1976, the prime rate was six and a quarter percent. When Mr. Mondale left office, it was twenty-one and a half percent. The highest in 120 years, average monthly mortgage payments more than doubled, car loans were hard to get and expensive, the automobile and home-building industries were brought to their knees. And after all this economic punishment, our opponents blamed you because you lived too well. They told you you'd have to learn to sacrifice more and live with less and within economic limits. Well, I found that it's not so much that our opponents have a poor memory of this ruinous past. They've just got a darn good forgettory. And one of the things they like most to forget is the Misry Index, where they added the unemployment rate and the inflation rates together. And then they did this in 1976 in that election campaign. And the Misry Index then was 12.6. And they said that Jerry Ford, as the incumbent president, had no right to seek re-election with that kind of a Misry Index. Well, then came the 1980 election, and they never mentioned the Misry Index. And I don't think my opponent will mention it in this campaign, possibly because it was over 20 when he left the vice presidency and is now down to 11.6. You know, he's done a pretty good job of slipping, sliding, and ducking away from this record. But here in Ohio, during the primaries, Senator Gary Hart got his message through by reminding the Ohio voters of the true record. And I quote, Walter Mondale said Senator Hart may pledge stable prices, but Carter Mondale could not cure 12 percent inflation. And then he added, Walter Mondale has come to Ohio to talk about jobs, but Carter Mondale watched helpless as 180,000 jobs disappeared in the period between 1976 and 1980. Now, those are Gary Hart's words. And those disastrous consequences didn't come about by accident. They came through the implementation of the very policies of out-of-control spending, the very unfair taxation and the 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 a budget, break it. And if it's a promise, make it. All this year, he has 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. And the answer to his promises is higher taxes. And massive new tax increases are precisely what he proposes. A few weeks back, he called his new plan, pay as you go. But 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 in this country. If Harry Truman had to apply a motto to this radical taxing scheme, he would have to say that 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. Now this tax is even worse, because this would be a dagger at the heart of every low and middle income taxpayer in America. It would mean bone-crushing new levies against those who can least afford them. Indexing was a reform that we passed to protect you from the cruel hidden tax when government uses inflation to force you into higher tax brackets when you get a cost of living pay raise. Under the Mondale plan, here's what would happen to a family struggling on $10,000 per year. By 1989, they would be paying over 73 percent more income taxes. Now we're told, since he said that on Sunday night, that he misspoke and that he actually meant to say just the opposite. But on several occasions since 1982, he has expressly proposed the repeal of indexing, and he's done this quite often. And politics, you call this a flip-flop. But forgive me, I've decided 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. Several tight days now, out on the campaign trail, he's talked about me as a new Reagan and an old Reagan. Now that has nothing to do with my age, because the old Reagan was when I was much younger, and the new Reagan is now. But I decided to do some old and new mandaling. The old Mondale said that tightening the budget, reducing government spending, and reducing deficits could worsen a recession and cause unemployment. The new Mondale thinks higher taxes lead to a healthy economy. The old Mondale publicly supported Jimmy Carter's wrong-headed grain embargo, and the new Mondale claims that he opposed it privately, very privately. The old Mondale sponsored National Bible Week in the U.S. Senate, I can go along with that. And the new Walter Mondale, though, says there's too much religion in politics. The old Mondale called the space shuttle a horrible waste, a space extravaganza, and he personally led the fight in the United States Senate to try and kill the entire shuttle program before it even started. The new Mondale praises American technological achievement. Well, I just thought that was appropriate today when probably right now, or possibly right now, I should say I don't know where they are. But while we're riding across Ohio on this train, those young heroes of ours, male and female, are circling this earth several times in that shuttle which will land tomorrow. And God bless them for what they did. With all this old and new Mondale, just when you're beginning to lose faith, finally you do find there is some constancy. The old Mondale increased your taxes, and the new Mondale will do it again. You know, in our debate, I got a little angry all those times that he distorted my record, and on one occasion I was about to say to him very sternly, Mr. Mondale, you're taxing my patience. Then I caught myself. Why should I give him another idea? That's the only tax he hasn't thought of. From now until November 6th, we're going to make sure that 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 Mr. Mondale proposes. On his roads, you frighten the elderly with false statements. And speaking of that, let me interrupt myself for a moment and say, one of the things that I think is most shameful in the line of political demagoguery. We saw it in the congressional campaigns of 1982, and we're seeing it in this campaign. And that is when, for purely political advantage, falsely, their candidates go around telling our senior citizens who are dependent on social security that we somehow have a secret plot in which we're either going to reduce their payments or take them away from them entirely. Well, I want you to know that if there was anyone in my administration that even had secretly such an idea, he'd be long gone. We are not going to do anything to double-cross the people dependent on social security or those anticipating social security when they come to their non-earning years. Their benefits are going to remain with them. He strives to divide Americans against each other seeking to promote envy and portray greed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned that the only thing we have to fear in this country is fear itself. Sadly, and tragically, the only thing my opponent has to offer is fear itself. Well, that's the difference between us. We see America's best days 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 and not have their hopes and dreams crushed or taxed away by greedy governmentalists. The American people are walking into tomorrow unashamed and unafraid. And you know, I have to say all over the country in meetings of this kind, I have been so thrilled and excited to see the turnout of young people at meetings of this kind, because let me just say for all of you, or to all of you, you're what this campaign and what this election is all about. All of my generation, and of several generations between mine and yours, we grew up in America where for the most part. We just grew up automatically knowing that there was no limit to what we could accomplish. There was no ceiling beyond which we couldn't go. That the hope, the opportunity, the golden dreams were there for all of us and depended on us and we could fly as high and far as our energy and our talent and ability would take us. Then we've come to a period in recent years in which limits were placed and that hope we were told was kind of shut off, that we were to expect something less. Well, I'm glad you're here, all you young people, because I want to tell you the responsibility that the rest of us have and we're going to meet is to see that we turn over to you the same kind of America that our parents turned over to us, where there is hope and hope that you, the American people, young and old, are ready for this great new era of opportunity and I know this may gall our opponents, but I think the people, all of you agree with us when we tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet. Thank you very much. Now they tell me the train's going to whistle and I'm going to have to leave and move on to the next stop. On behalf of not only Ottawa and Glendorf, but everyone present, the Ottawa-Glendorf High School Titan is presenting a gift to the president. It's a shirt that says Reagan number one.