 Well, I appreciate very much your being here this morning, and my message is going to be short and to the point, we're moving toward a critical and hopeful moment at Geneva. And the discussions you've been having with John and Kafe and George are key to that movement. What happens in Geneva can have a significance that extends beyond our lifetime. That's why your actions in the next several days of debate and voting on the fiscal year 87 defense authorization bill are so important. Reductions in SDI funding, restrictions on our strategic modernization program, legislative limits on our strategic forces, while the Soviets continue unhappard, are all actions that run the risk of reducing prospects for securing an arms control agreement. It also lessens the chance of a successful summit. SDI and strategic modernization are indispensable elements of our defense effort. To cut them further or to tie our hands while the Soviets are free is simply an unacceptable situation. And that's why I need your support. Well, I have you as a captive audience. I want to raise one other issue which you'll have to deal with next week, and that is the vote to override my veto of the textile bill. I know some of you in the room come from districts which have experienced textile job losses. Others here, Bob Michael, Bill Frenzel, Rod Chandler, Nancy Johnson are in the forefront of efforts to sustain the veto. Some are still undecided. And I've sought to address the concerns of the textile industry about rising import levels by instructing our trade representative to negotiate new agreements to limit imports. And they're doing that. They have repudiated agreements with Taiwan and Hong Kong, or renegotiated agreements with Taiwan and Hong Kong and will actually reduce imports in 1987 and limit future annual growth to one half of 1 percent for Taiwan and approximately 1 percent for Hong Kong. These are the toughest textile agreements that the United States has ever negotiated. And we expect to successfully conclude negotiations on a new multi-fiber agreement. An override of the veto at this point would shatter those agreements and our hopes for broad participation in the new GAT round where we hope to significantly broaden access to foreign markets for U.S. goods and services. This protectionist legislation would impose tremendous costs on consumers, farmers, and U.S. business. It must not become law. And that's enough for me of a monologue right now. I understand that we've got a few moments left and that if you have some questions, you don't have any questions. You mean that you fellas answered all of them? Yes. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. We do know that India, well, we all know that India tested and has been in the nuclear weapon field for quite some time, and we also know that there is a tension there between India and Pakistan. So far, they have assured us that they do not have a weapon, and we've been keeping an eye on that. At the same time, we have to recognize how really unselfish they have been with regard to the Afghan refugees and their channeling of help to Afghanistan. The biggest refugee body in the world is the body of Afghanistan refugees, and Pakistan is supporting practically all of them there and taking care of them in their country. Someone feel urged to ask anything else? If not, I may expand for just a moment on what I was talking about first about our arms trade with the Soviet Union or our arms relationship with them, our trade-off thing. One of the reasons why it's important that we don't appear to be unilaterally following a course that some years ago we were following and reducing is because we're not going down that path of long ago where you think, well, if we talk nice and smile enough why the Soviets will have a change of heart. They're only going to do something if it's to their practical benefit, and right now their economic situation is such that this is why we're optimistic that we can get an arms agreement because this has been the principal cause of their economic problems, and the new man in there now really wants to resolve some of their problems. Therefore, they've got a pressure self-induced to avoid a real runaway arms race, and one of the things that has them concerned and why this is the first time ever that the Soviet Union has had a leader who has actually proposed reducing, eliminating some of their weapons, and we know that they have expressed concern that we may be trying to force them into an arms race in order to bankrupt their economy. Well, if they've got that kind of concern about it, the last thing in the world we want to show them is that right now on our own that we're going to back away, which would take a little of the heat off them with regard to proceeding with the arms negotiations. But I think all of us are confident that there is a possibility here. Understand the irrational created significance from some sense of structure. Well, let me, if I couldn't speak to that and say that I understand, and I can understand why there's some confusion out there, because I think our friends in the media have lent their help to that confusion. Because the simple situation is, first of all, we're talking about a treaty which in reality, even if it had been signed and ratified, would no longer exist. It would have to be renewed or let go. But it also is a treaty that was so fatally flawed that the Senate before we got here refused to ratify it. Now the truth is, we are still within the restraints of the Salt II Treaty. This is the thing that I think people are very clear about. But what I have said is, and said this for the benefit of the Soviet Union, that because of their violations, we are going to have to look down the road and make our restraints under that verbal agreement that was reached about observing the constraints even though the treaty was not in place, that we were going to have to look down the road and say, well, we will observe those restraints in the same context of the Soviet Union. In other words, this has given us a chance to put some heat on them with regard to a new superseding and legitimate treaty, because we're saying to them, we're not going to sit here and let you continue to achieve a greater superiority over us by violating the treaty while we're observing it. And we've got some time to go before we will face a decision as to whether we want to make a move that will take us over the edge of those voluntary restraints. But in the meantime, I think this is again one of the things that's helping in bringing them to the table to really talk legitimate arms reductions. And the answer is a new verifiable treaty, and one of which we can insist they comply with over that. But again, I think the people, we just don't, we can't seem to get our message across when the press takes off on some particular subject, and I imagine if you took a poll today, you'd find that about 80% of the American people think we're in violation of the SALT treaty now, and we're not. I think your decision on this, and I'm sorry that there wasn't more support for it. What I'd like, you mentioned that Mikhail Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader that is negotiating or has created a policy position of a reduction in the number of re-entry vehicles of warhead. That's good. But I think we know that if the Soviet Union gives up, let's say, 20 or 30% of their warhead, that that really doesn't increase our security. They've got redundancy. That's right. It's an important thing to keep in mind. I mentioned that in the context of a letter that you sent to Mikhail Gorbachev, which received a great deal of press attention, particularly by some of us on Camp O'Hill, where we're particularly interested in, indicating or implying that the strategic defense, or that the M-Treaty might be able to be kept with and continued with for a period of years, five or some odd years, in exchange for those reductions. I know that the purpose of the letter was to get the Soviet Union to talk about deploying SDI. My concern is that people on Camp O'Hill, those supporters of strategic defense in your initiative, think that your initiative is going to be placed in a negotiating table, and that we may have to live within the strict interpretation, or indeed any interpretation of the ABN Treaty for another five to seven years beyond your presidency. It is simply going to destroy the fragile coalition on Camp O'Hill that is in favor of some rigorous research development, testing and eventual deployment. I guess the bottom line is, if SDI is locked in the negotiating Geneva arms control process, we feel it's going to be locked there well beyond your presidency, and that the initiative will simply die in a way and not have the type of support on Camp O'Hill that they need. Well now, please recognize that I'm a little handicapped in getting too explicit with answering here, because in this exchange of letters between the two of us, for once they were not out on the front page of the paper before they got to us, or even now. So I have let him know that this is my answer to him, and we won't be negotiating out in public on this, but I can tell you this much, that no, with regard to ABM, which again is a treaty there violating, we, and they wanted a long time, yes they had proposed a long time agreement that we would say, well ABM goes on ad infinitum, no, we have simply stated that we are proceeding with the research and development of this SDI system and it is being done actually within the constraints of the ABM treaty, because we know how long this research is going to go before we're faced with the problem of deployment. And just the farthest that I can go is to tell you that what we are seeking is in advance about the time when we really could see some practical results of the research, and we don't have to violate ABM, I mean this can all be done in those constraints, then our proposal is that we sit down with them and a whole new agreement that supersedes the other with regard to testing and deployment and so forth. And it's pretty generous in what we're talking about doing, but I can't go beyond that because all that the press has been talking about with their talk of the letter and so forth, they ain't seen the letter. I really would like to talk about interim policy and national security, but I won't think it's in approach here. Let me ask you about the upcoming summit. We are pushing hard and we think that they really want it also. Remember that was a straight invitation from me and he accepted when we were in Geneva. And we think we can also understand their system of government. He isn't really an absolute monarch. He's got a hard-nosed bunch of old timers in the Politburo there that are riding herd. I think he actually does want to have some assurance that he won't go home and say well nothing happened. We just met and talked and had a nice time and it's over now. And he also had extended an invitation for a further summit in 87, which I think he wants that one would be held in their country, which I'm not looking forward to. But yes, I am convinced from things that have happened and conversations with other leaders and so forth that they really do want this meeting. And I think we were at fault in proposing June. I don't think we had estimated properly the... I had my breakfast, I thought I got it all down. We didn't estimate how long it was taking him to settle himself in that position and make the changes that he needed to make so that June would have found him unable to really spend some time that is necessary and come to such a meeting. But I think later in the year we're going to have the meeting. I'm not going to have the question. Right. Well I do too and we'll try to do everything we can to help. Remember one thing. We're engaged in a modernization program. Not the addition of additional weapons. When the first peacekeeper goes in there will be something else that's eliminated that we can eliminate. But we're way behind the Soviets on that modernization. They have been at this for quite some time and this is one of the reasons why they keep pressing on testing because they've done it. They know what it is that they're now going to put in their modernization. And we're still in the process of playing catch up on that. But again the people are going to have to understand. They're also going to have to understand that with the cuts that have been imposed so far I think I'm safe in saying this that actually our defense budgets since we got here have been less than those that were projected by the previous administration. Because in about the last year here the previous president had recognized how far down we were in military strength and he had started a buildup. And we're not up to what he had projected was going to be needed. Now I'll do this but that's got to be the last because I got you here ten minutes now over time. I'd like to make some suggestions. Do you know what really and then then I have to let you go. I know way over time and we all got work to do. There's one thing if we had gotten night back in nineteen eighty one what we were proposing for the nineteen nineteen eighty two and on in the budget in the domestic side of spending cuts today the cumulative deficit from eighty two through eighty six would be two hundred and seven billion dollars lower than it presently is now it just seems as if it's almost as if everybody looks at defense as being now they're switching over to Georgia's department there and adding that in and it seems as if everybody thinks the only place that you can find money are in those budgets. Well the percentage of the defense spending is a percentage of the budget is less than it has historically been in this country and I still claim we have got a lot of domestic programs out there that may look good on paper and they say oh isn't that nice but they're not fulfilling a need and they are bankrupting us and all you have to do is look at one set of figures and then I'll go between nineteen sixty five and nineteen eighty we weren't here then the budget increased to run up just about five times in nineteen eighty what it was in nineteen sixty five this was when the great war on poverty came into being the deficit increased thirty eight times what it had been in nineteen sixty five and these deficits we're facing today are a runaway that was built into the system and we've got to have the guts to stand up and reverse that and take that that real flaw out of the out of the system so now thank you all for being here and I've kept you over time and