 the President of the United States. Thank you very much. Please. I'm not only late, but we're going to have problems. I know that I'm going to have a chance to say hello to you individually. When we get out of here and go out the door and have some pictures taken, I see so many familiar faces out here, and I just want to en masse say thank you to you for what you're doing. Jack Hume had an idea, and now Lou Lerman is a part of that idea, and now you're all part of the idea, and it's one that is very much needed. There's no question but that we have great difficulty getting our story of things that we're doing widespread and out to the people. I have come to view myself when I'm making speeches, and they're covered by the national TV press, for example. I see myself standing up there. I hear myself say about four words that are innocuous and contain no message at all, and then while I'm still silently speaking, I hear the commentator's voice over telling the people what he thinks I said. And we've got a message, and I'm just going to take a little while, so a few minutes here. We have a lot of things in which there is just total misperception on the part of the people of what it is that we're doing, and we're having great difficulty as they hear the drum beat the other way, getting it out. One that I could name is the matter of civil rights, and we're supposed to have a terrible negative record in that field. Well, if you look at what we've actually done, and before that what it did in California and the administration there, you find out that not very many, if any, administrations prior to this one have done as much, or accomplished as much as we have done. And you women, and I'm glad to see you here, the same thing holds true with regard to what we're doing in that area. And again, we have a story to tell, and it is completely opposite of the misperception that exists. And not only is it a matter of the appointments that we've made and all, the fact that we have gotten as faith as in charge of this, of an operation where in every one of the 50 states, we persuaded the governors to appoint someone to do what we did in California, and that is to comb through the statutes and the regulations and find out where there are evidences of discrimination in those and then get them changed. We had 14 laws changed in California. Well, we're now doing this at the national level, and we have a big stack of computer readouts that have come back to us from the Justice Department. The only assignment we gave them was comb the laws, comb the regulations, and find any evidences in any of them where there is discrimination on the basis of sex. And now we're going to, we're now studying to find where can we solve those by administrative efforts or where will it require legislation for the Congress, and we will present the legislation as we find out all of these areas to correct it. The same is true of the economy. I heard a Democratic congressman in the air the other night, and he stood there and said that Paul Volcker had reduced inflation and I had raised the deficit. I've told someone, maybe some of you already, that I know and I'm confident that our economic program is working because the Democrats aren't calling it Reaganomics anymore. But the incidentally, if someone hasn't told you for the last 12 months, the inflation rate has been running at 2.6%. What we need, and we need it in a bipartisan way, we need people like yourselves, and Jack's idea was in every congressional district, people who can be involved in speaking under and in demand of service clubs, people who can get attention and so forth, who can call attention to what we are actually achieving and what we've done so far and what we are doing here in this administration. Now I'm not going to go on talking about that any more solo because as I have often said, you must have sometimes put the paper down and said if I had a chance I'd ask him and go ahead. Let's have some question and answer. If you've got some questions, fire away. I'll have to watch the clock so that we allow enough time for the picture taking at the door. President, with the inflation rate at 2.6%, that's an admirable record and interest rates elevating in today's market. The true rate of interest is the highest it's ever been in this country. It's probably now 9%, 10%. You hear people like Alan Greenspan say, nobody in the government, Congress or administration will tackle this problem until after the 1984 election. You're absolutely right in what you're trying to accomplish and the Congress will not take any steps, make any moves to resolve this issue. It would seem to me that if you took this to the American public as you have done before and say we've got this deficit, we've got to get rid of it, the only way we can do it is to cut these social welfare programs. I believe that you'd get the support. Well, this, let me just tell you, and what we've done with all of our economic program, we never have gotten all that we asked for. If we had, the deficit right now would be $40 billion less than it is. That's how much of the spending cuts we asked we didn't get. Now, we're going to continue on that line and now it is left to me, I think, with a veto pin. And you might be interested to know that from the House of Representatives, I have a letter on my desk signed by 146 Democrat and Republican representatives. And in the letter are listed 11 spending areas in which they have pledged to me that if the appropriation bills come down with sizable increases over and above what we asked for for the 84 budget in those 11 areas and I veto, they will uphold, sustain my veto. And 146 is the number required to do that. Now, but you're right, again, people don't understand what has been going on and this is more of where we need the straight talk. I don't happen to be in complete agreement with Alan on some of the remarks he's made. There's a little volatility in the interest rates now that's made him fluctuate. I expect, and I know Don Regan does, that in the next few months they're going to begin to come down. I think what is keeping them up there is perception. Out there in the money market, they have seen that great surge of money and then the string pulled back in 1980 and they are not quite convinced yet that we're not going to go back to the recovery based on inflation which has been the pattern in seven previous recessions since World War II. So it is a perception they have kind of protecting themselves until they know that for sure inflation is down because now the interest rate has no justification on the basis of inflation to be where it is and I think that maybe a few of those vetoes might be the convincer that will help begin to bring those down. Say on a scale of 1 to 10, where is the likelihood of your candidacy? Where is the likelihood of your candidacy on a scale of 1 to 10? This is a question I can't answer or speculate on and let me just tell you why. If you look at it, there is no way to win. If I should say no too early I'm a dead duck and lame duck and dead duck and can't get anything done but if I should say yes, immediately everything becomes a part of a political campaign with the eyes of our opponents and all and again you can't get anything done. I was just thinking I went down to Atlanta the other day to address the National Bar, the American Bar Association. Well everyone assumes that's a logical thing for a president to do but if I had indicated that I might be a candidate then the whole furor would be well shouldn't someone else other than the taxpayers pay for that trip was that a presidential task or was that a candidate's task? I'm going to wait till the last possible minute before I say anything. Do you think that we can see a flat tax in your agenda? Could we see a flat tax in the agenda? Let me answer that in a general sense and say I wouldn't rule that out or anything else out. I am convinced and we all are here but we also know that 1984 is not a year. That the legislature is going to look kindly on this. I think all of us are agreed. We've got to simplify the income tax. It's gotten to the point there's something immoral about telling people that they can be fined and they can go to jail and so forth for not making out their tax correctly but the government says that even it doesn't understand the rules well enough to advise them on how to make it out. It's the only thing in your life and mine which it is left to you to tell somebody how much you owe them and they can punish you if you don't guess right. So I think... Mr. President, do you see us coming to fixed exchange rates anytime in the near future and or a gold standard? We've had a commission studying on the gold idea. Their findings weren't very favorable to that. I know what you mean and I know my myself. I've lived long enough to remember when it was all just kind of guaranteed and laid out there for you. It was X amount of gold or X amount of silver that you could get for that piece of paper and I have wondered myself history shows that very few civilizations have ever been able to survive fiat money but I can't give you an answer on that on the fixed exchange rate. I know that President Mitterrand he wanted us to have another Bretton Woods conference. None of us at the Williamsburg Summit believed that that was the answer but we have agreed that we are going to and the ministerial level proceed with a joint study of what is the best way to meet this problem. Now I know that our allies and friends look at us because of the value of our dollar and yet I remember a few years ago in the previous administration when our dollar wasn't worth anything and compared to the other currencies and everyone was saying we must get the dollar back where it is. On the other hand when we get the dollar back where it is it hurts us with regard to the export market because we make everything of ours too high priced but all I can tell you is we are seriously writing herd on this subject we can't have these wide fluctuations that we have and maintain prosperity for all of us. Mr. President are you able to forecast what you see as a relationship to the United States to Cuba? A relationship with the United States to Cuba. I don't know whether Castro had ever agreed on my idea or not. But I believe this I know that they are in dire straits I know that they well they are literally panhandling on the Soviet Union and it's not in too good a shape itself economically but and they are totally at the command of the Soviet Union. We try to open negotiations very early in my administration or not negotiations try to open communications with him and got no place but I don't mean that doesn't mean we've forgotten this entirely about if we could make him see how much better life could be for all of the people in Cuba if he would sever his relations with the East and rejoin the family of American nations and once again become a western hemisphere nation like the rest and we are prepared to sit down with him at any time and point out these things. We've been a little encouraged by what just sailing a few ships south did with his public utterances but this is my goal and ambition and I know I'll be talking to Dela Madrid about this in the next several days when I meet with him and I've talked to others in the organization of American states and I don't think that it is impossible to bring this about because I think there's a limit to the Soviet Union's patience and I think there's a limit also to the Cubans living when Cuba, whose greatest asset was sugar and this last year has had to import sugar where it can't even provide for itself in the one thing that used to be its great export crop they have to be taking some second looks at what's going on there. One more question. Mr. President, if we fail to stop the Sandinistas and the Cubans in Central America, what do you feel will be the Soviets next move in this hemisphere? I believe that we have to believe what the Sandinista leaders themselves have said. First of all, their pledge in that revolution that this would be a democracy with all that goes with a democracy if they ousted the Somoza government was made in writing to the organization of American states in return for which the OAS persuaded Somoza to step down and let them take over. They have not kept that arrangement at all. They are a totalitarian government, as we know and I am convinced that we must continue the help that we are giving because their leaders have openly stated to our visiting congressmen who have gone down there are many who have gone down not agreeing with our policies but they have heard and come back here and come to me personally to tell me that they've changed their position because they've heard these leaders of the Sandinista government tell them that this isn't a revolution in one country that this is a revolution for all of Central America and would you believe it if I tell you that one of them is not a bottom of the line functionary? One of them said to them, don't be surprised if within the next 18 months you see us at the Arizona-Mexican border. Now, if they're willing and arrogant enough to make statements of that kind, I'm going to be arrogant enough to say we're not going to sit here and let the Soviet Union and Cuba create any more communist countries in the Americas. You may have answered my question just now but as representatives of Citizens for America if we were to return to our local news medias what would be the one point you would like us to reiterate again and again with respect to Central America? First of all, and the very reason for the appointment of the commission that we just appointed is that after decades, well, a century more our government, we're the big colossus of the north and I know the previous presidents have gone and said, well, here's a good neighbor policy or here's another policy and we've been very insensitive about our neighbors to the south with our background of gunboat diplomacy down there in a certain period of our history. It's been the United States, the big colossus coming in and saying here to all of you, here is a plan but, you know, it's a take it. It's sort of like Lyndon Johnson when he used to say come let us reason together. It's a passage from the Bible and he never added the second sentence in the verse which was and if thou refuse thou shalt be destroyed by the sword. So when I made my trip down there to every leader down there from Brazil where we started on and into Central America I told him one thing. I pointed out to them, I said look we're unique in all the world this hemisphere. I said we have this common heritage European heritage in which we came here into these wilderness continents and as pioneers and developed them and I said also from pole to pole from southern to the Arctic to the Arctic these two we worship the same God and this was the one I was surprised to realize there must be a resentment that we call ourselves Americans, understandably we don't go around saying I'm a United States but they have thought evidently that we kind of had seized that for ourselves and you should have seen the reaction when I said to them look again the unique thing when we cross the borders in north or south or central America into another country we're still among Americans we're all Americans here and the reaction was so amazing so I said to them look I don't come here with any plan I said what I'm coming here is to find out from you what are your thoughts and ideas and how can we as American countries here in this hemisphere as equal partners how can we come together so as to speed economic development to develop the resources that still are here in these great continents and be united in our determination to preserve a democratic free way of life and the response was very heartening and this is what I think that we should be telling we're not down there to make a war here is a country that has turned democratic that has held its election that got more than 80% of its people to vote and they voted under the threat from the gorillas of vote today and die tonight but they walked for miles the buses and the trucks had been destroyed and bombed and burned to keep them from getting to the polls we've had eye witnesses from our country our congress who saw a woman standing in the lines waiting hours to vote had been shot by the gorillas and would not leave the line to get medical treatment until she had voted so our message is we want not to be the big boss of the north we want to bring all of these countries into a kind of partnership we're retaining our own sovereignty and our own culture and all we can be allies in the sense that here from pole to pole we want democracy we want individual freedom and the human rights that we have come to expect in our own country and the only reason that we're trying to help militarily down there is this country's El Salvador which is now trying to become a democracy which is redistributed land but the farmers they've given the land to can't go out and farm it because it's a battleground they'll get shot if they go out there the people that have to be cared for by the government because their jobs are gone because of power plants that have been destroyed industries the infrastructure that has been wiped out by the gorillas so all we're saying is we want to help them provide a shield while they go forward with these economic and social reforms that they're not getting their head shot off while they're doing it and if they understand that that this isn't us we're not going into another Vietnam let me tell you one thing there isn't a country in Latin America that would hold still or ask for our actual military forces they very frankly tell us they must have our help they need our training they need our weapons and all of that but they proudly say our men we can do the job ourselves we need your help in providing the tools and if the people of America only understand it if they'll also only understand that we hear so much there's such a bias in the news that we hear every little violation of a human right that occurs on the part of the government in El Salvador we see our TV crews go up into the jungles and settle down with the gorillas and portray them as nice innocent people living out there under the sky and they just want their human rights and so forth but we don't hear anything or very much about the recent episode where they captured 45 El Salvadoran soldiers and they executed 34 of them the bodies have all been returned with the single bullet in the head and if Americans understand that it's that type of thing we're trying to stop and that what is going on down there is by way of Cuba, Soviet inspired there is no question about it they have boasted when they inaugurated the government of Nicaragua the Sandinista government they boasted that this was not only the beginning of a revolution but the first was that Nicaragua now was the first foothold of communism on the mainland of the Americas and the one other thing and I've talked too long here oh boy I say I have, I'm doing the dining room right now with another group let me just say here that the other thing that I think the people need to know is that the gorillas in Nicaragua whom we are trying to help, no question about it are actually were part of the revolution they were part of the Sandinista revolution but that element that was communist ousted them, some were exiled, some were imprisoned many of them they were just thrown out of the government and these gorillas are not there fighting only to restore what they thought they were fighting a revolution for and we're helping them thank you for what you're going to do and spread the word ladies and gentlemen I understand from the photographer's standpoint it's better to have the president on the stage and if you will come on to the stage this way come across shake hands with the president and then move