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Speeches - Governor Ronald Reagan, 1972 [06/01/1972-12/31/1972]
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Speeches - Governor Ronald Reagan, 1972 [06/01/1972-12/31/1972]
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Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Digital Library Collections
This is a PDF of a folder from our textual collections.
Collection: Reagan, Ronald: Gubernatorial Papers,
1966-74: Press Unit
Folder Title: Speeches - Governor Ronald Reagan, 1972
[06/01/1972-12/31/1972]
Box: P18
To see more digitized collections visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/digital-library
To see all Ronald Reagan Presidential Library inventories visit:
https://reaganlibrary.gov/document-collection
Contact a reference archivist at: [email protected]
Citation Guidelines: https://reaganlibrary.gov/citing
National Archives Catalogue: https://catalog.archives.gov/
6/22
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: THURSDAY P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
June 22, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
6-21-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
AMERICAN LEGION CONVENTION
San Jose, California
June 22, 1972
It seems every time we get together I have some new reasons to thank
you for your help. Today is no exception. But before I get to that, I
have a few brief items to report which I think will be of interest to you
To begin with, I have signed Assembly Bill 184 which exempts from
property taxation the buildings and facilities, owned and operated by
veterans organizations exclusively for charitable purposes. It extends
to veterans organizations the same non-profit tax status that is provided
to other charitable groups operating similar facilities and will enable
you to continue and perhaps expand your very commendable activities which
mean so much, particularly to our young people.
On June 6, Proposition 1, the $250 million bond issue, passed by the
greatest margin of any veterans bond issue in the past 20 years. This
will allow the state to offer Cal-Vet loan privileges to thousands of
returning Vietnam veterans. Such victories do not just happen. I believe
this massive display of public support for the Cal-Vet program is a
direct result of the hard work of many people associated with the American
Legion and other veterans groups. And I would like to express my personal
gratitude and the appreciation of all Californians for the help the
American Legion gave to the campaign for Proposition 1.
While I cannot mention everyone, I do want to acknowledge the role of
your past national and department commander Al Chamie who served as
chairman of the Citizens Committee supporting the Cal-Vet bond issue.
Laughlin Waters, your own commander Cecil Bandy, and many others also
played an important part and they all deserve our thanks for a job well
done.
And let me thank you for your help in another area. With the phasing
down of the war in Southeast Asia, hundreds of thousands of young men who
served honorably during this conflict face the problem of finding a
productive place in the economy. These returning young men deserve all
the help we can give them in finding a job.
- 1 -
(
American Legion Convention
A year ago at your convention, I announced the appointment of Gordon
Elliott to be the chairman of California's Jobs for Veterans Task Force.
Gordon is the Regional Director of the Veterans Administration in Southern
California and is very much aware of the difficulty many of our veterans
were having in finding work.
He and his committee have worked long hours to make this program -
success.
Many communities have sponsored "Veterans Job Fairs" and newspapers,
radio and television stations have devoted space and time to publicize
this effort to generate job opportunities for servicemen returning to
civilian life. Two giant food chains have advertised the program in
window displays. We had a statewide "Jobs for Veterans" poster contest
and an essay contest in the Los Angeles area high schools.
Our own Department of Human Resources Development launched special
programs to aid and counsel veterans who were seeking work.
In this way finding jobs for returning veterans became a major
priority in both the public and private sector.
At the time we started this program, the national unemployment rate
for Vietnam veterans in the 20 to 29 age group was disappointingly high
around 12 percent. It has dropped to 8.1 percent.
California has found jobs for 54,692 veterans and is leading the
major states in helping servicemen readjust to civilian life. Thousands
more have found the door of opportunity opened wider because of this
campaign. Our goal is to place in a job every veteran who is seeking work
While I am on this subject let me say it is a disgusting commentary
on the times that some who apparently sympathize with the enemy have
worked overtime to malign the service of our Vietnam veterans, to falsely
portray their mission in Southeast Asia and the manner in which they are
carrying it out.
You have heard all the stories and exaggerated claims of widespread
drug addiction in our armed services in Southeast Asia claims that a
many as 40 percent two out of every five servicemen were using
narcotics or had become addicted to some form of drugs.
Obviously this has hurt some of our young veterans in their efforts
to find work.
-2-
American Legion Convention
We in state government were concerned about the problem of drug
addiction among returning servicemen as well as other parts of the
younger generation. A task force on Veterans Drug Abuse, headed by
Charles Bowers, our Deputy Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs
was appointed to find out the facts and to recommend solutions.
This task force discovered that only an estimated one percent of
California's Vietnam veterans are addicted to hard drugs. And this
is lower than the drug addiction in the non-veteran population.
The task force discovered that the overwhelming majority of Vietnam
veterans had never used drugs of any kind and they are far more mature
and responsible adults when they return to civilian life than they were
when they entered military service.
They did not ask to be sent to Vietnam. But once they were there,
they tried to do their duty honorably and courageously just as another
generation did in World War II and Korea. They are as fine a group of
young Americans as we have every / had.
And that brings me to the main topic I want to discuss with you
today.
I realize that the American Legion is a non-partisan organization.
You are concerned with those who have served their country and that
includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Unfortunately in this
season of political campaigning it is necessary to point this out before
bringing up a subject of vital concern to you and to every American.
That subject is the defense of this nation whether or not we have the
determination, the courage and yes, the common sense, to make sure that
America is prepared to defend its freedom from any aggressor.
The defense of America is a vital issue, not a partisan issue. It
concerns every American regardless of political philosophy. President
Kennedy said, "There can be only one possible defense policy for the U.S.
It can be expressed in one word--the word is first; I do not mean first
when, I don't mean first if;---I mean first period."
Armaments do not cause war. Armaments are built and used by
aggressors whose intention from the beginning is war and the threat of
war, Peace loving nations must match their weaponry whether they like it
or not or fall victim to their aggressor.
- 3 -
American Legion Convention
We ended World War II possessed of the greatest military fervor
the world had ever seen. We did not attempt to use it for aggression no
did we even maintain its great strength. We dismantled our forces so
fast that a Communist aggressor was encouraged to try to breach the
defense perimeter of the free world in Korea, only five years after
e
close of World War II. History was repeating itself for only a year
before the Korean war broke out, the main argument in our country was
how few air wings we would have. We committeed no war-like act South
Korea was attacked across the 38th parallel and in the fast moving world
of technology our choice of weapons was "the bomb" or already obsolete
World War II equipment. So in the early days of that war Americans flew
prop-driven aircraft into battle against the threat of sophisticated
Communist jets. Once again, young Americans were called upon to hold the
line while we frantically rebuilt our defenses.
When peace finally came it seemed we had finally learned the folly
of being unprepared. And in the 1950s, we maintained sufficient military
strength to deter aggression. Despite the talk of a missile gap, when
Dwight Eisenhower left the White House in the 1960s, America had a
massive five-to-one missile superiority over the Soviet Union. But now
after stumbling into war, unprepared for war, we hear the same old talk
that dismantling America's defenses is the way to peace.
Some who seek the highest office in the land---an office that carries
with it the responsibility of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces---
would slash defense spending by billions of dollars, as much as one-third
to one-half of the present defense budget. To understand the significance
of what that would mean, you have to consider just how they would achieve
a defense cut of that magnitude.
--Despite the effectiveness of NATO in helping prevent aggression,
this would mean withdrawing all but two American divisions from Europe.
--Suspension of funds for an anti-ballistic missile defense and
elimination of funds for the program to put as many as 14 warheads on each
American missile (This, incidentally, is our counter to the Soviet Union
missiles which can hurl a 25-megaton nuclear warhead at American targets)
--Development of aircraft carriers, new tanks, bombers and supersonic
fighter aircraft would be halted.
--The Soviet Union is expanding its naval forces, but America's navy
would be reduced from roughly 700 ships to 341 and the army would be
reduced by more than 600,000 ment.
American Legion Convention
One newspaper estimates these cuts would reduce some of our on-line
defense forces to a level below what we had before Pearl Harbor. Yet,
these peace through disarmament voices assure us we would have more than
enough defense.
It is true that some who are contesting for the Presidency have
declared that those kind of cuts would reduce America to a second class
power in the world.
And yet even they support a research report that America might
reduce its defense budget by $10 to $12 billion.
They do not add that that same study admitted a $12 billion defense
reduction would wipe out 900,000 jobs and throw that many people into
the ranks of the unemployed.
We would have an army all right---an army of unemployed. But those
who would create that kind of army are undismayed. They claim the saving
in defense spending would provide a dole for these newly unemployed.
One Senator voted against the supersonic transport but suggested
money could be appropriated to help the displaced workers pay the
mortgages on their homes. Somehow this seems to be a strange distortion
of the American Dream. Now we are hearing the same "spend it on social
reform" chorus raised against the space shuttle. Little do they care
that the space shuttle means additional thousands of jobs in California,
but more important, it may also determine whether America remains a
first class entry in the space race or simply forfeits the contest to the
Soviets by default.
Use of the word "radical" causes eyes to roll in horrified shock
these days, But you and I know it is the proper word to describe
cutbacks that could be disastrous to our national defense.
How long would Israel survive if there were no aircraft carriers
with the Sixth Fleet? How long would Western Europe be able to resist
Soviet pressures if we scrapped NATO? These are serious questions but
there is an even more serious question confronting us today a question
having to do with the very soul of America.
Every generation has challenged the customs and values of its
predecessors and there is nothing wrong with that. There is something
wrong, however, with rejecting all the lessons of the past simply because
they are old.
Like children hanging a sign "kick me" on the back of an unsuspecting
playmate, an increasing number of Americans are playing that game in
American Legion Convention
An economic system that has provided the highest standard of living
in all man's history is assailed as an evil consortium of greedy
profiteers, politicians and labor moguls even though our great material
prosperity is distributed more widly among our people than in any society
ever before known to man. In a single lifetime we have seen those living
below the poverty line vastly reduced. We have wiped out scores of
killing and crippling diseases, increased leisure and shortened the work
week from 72 hours to 40 or less.
We are called imperialist and yet in our history we have committed
military forces to action without realizing or attempting territorial
gain. Most of the time, we have gone to aid those we believed were
victims of injustice.
Many of our sons and daughters who have come to voting age only
recently have lived the better part of their lives with the frust
of the seemingly endless war in Vietnam. They are sincerely idealist
in their desire for peace, but unwilling to grant that we share their
desire. At best, they charge us with apathy and at worst, a willing
support of a military industrial complex they say is bent on imperialism
and responsible for all the present day conflict in the world.
To them it all seems to simple: we can have peace simply by asking
for it. Perhaps some of the fault is ours, but much of it is the result
of a distorted picture they have been given of history. Apparently litt
effort has been made to breathe life into the flesh and blood leaders we
knew who spread an evil darkness over the world. One wonders if it has
been made clear to them that non-resistance and love of peace did not sa
Garmen Jows from Dachau and Buchenwald. Or that the people of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were guilty of no imperialist ambitions against the
Soviet Union.
Have we done enough to picture for this "now generation" the world
they would be living in if another generation had not been willing to
bleed its finest young men into the sands of Iwo Jima and the mud of
Normandy? If we are the war mongers and imperialists why at the end of
World War II did we dismantle that great military force when we and we
alone had the ultimate weapon--the bomb?
Why were we not even tempted to set foot on the trail to empire? A
can those who seemingly find so little to criticize or fear in the
communist world honestly say, in face of the record since World War II,
that the world would be free today if the Soviet Union and not the Unite
American Legion Convention
We all share the love of peace, but our sons and daughters must
learn two lessons men everywhere and in every time have had to learn:
that the price of freedom is dear but not nearly so costly as the loss
of freedom and that the advance and continuation of civilization
depends on those values for which men have always been willing to die.
Let those prevail who show their devotion to peace by refusing to
stand when the flag goes by and we may one day find ourselves forced to
kneel before the banner of a conqueror. National defense is not a
threat to peace; it is the guarantee of peace with freedom.
For 25 years, Cato ended every speech to the Roman Senate with the
line, "Carthage must be destroyed." Eventually and inevitably Rome
declared war on Carthage. But the people of Carthage, living in luxury
and affluence, had followed cultural pursuits, developed the arts and
entertainment and desired the comfort of peace above all else. Carthage
was conquered, most of the people slaughtered, the city leveled to the
earth which was then plowed and sown with salt so it couldnot even be
planted.
Some of our young people find little to love or defend in this
country. At one university, they have asked that the National Anthem no
longer be played at athletic contests. In one of the recent graduation
ceremonies, a number of the graduation class sat through the playing of
the anthem, others raised their arms with the clenched fist communist
salute. This is a gesture I have found to be appropriately symbolic of
their philosophy
a clenched fist representing a closed mind.
I know these things I have mentioned are not typical of the great
majority of our young people.
Yet even among the well-behaved who do not
participate in demonstrations, there is an increasing tendency to believe
the system has failed.
One wonders if they ever listen to another view of America possibly
one more objective. A woman who fled from Poland seeking sanctuary in
the U.S. wrote a letter to a national magazine. "Among some of our
American born friends, she wrote, "it is not fashionable to enthuse about
America. There is Vietnam, drugs, urban and racial conflict, poverty and
pollution. Undoubtedly, this country faces urgent and serious problems.
But we newcomers see not only the problems but also solutions being sought
and applied. I love America because people accept me for what I am.
- 7 -
American Legion Convention
"They don't question my ancestry, my faith, my political beliefs. When
I want to move from one place to another I don't have to ask permission.
When I need a needle I go to the nearest store and get one. I don't have
to stand in line for hours to buy a piece of tough, fat meat or pay a
whole day's earnings for a small chicken. I don't have to show an
identity card to buy a pair of shoes. My mail isn't censored, My ph
e
isn't tapped, my conversation with friends isn't reported to the secret
police. I love America because America trustsme."
There are others who do not automatically associate the American
military uniform with the historic symbols of war and oppression.
Writing in the New York Times, a representative of a former enemy nation
said of America: "I am prejudiced when writing about America. America
saved my people from starvation not so very long ago. No German cal
that U.S. imperialism. Thousands of American soldiers are stat
my country and because of this commitment and their loaded guns, we are
still a free people.
"The American commitment to freedom and the price Americans are
paying for that every day saves us from the fate of our neighbors, the
Czechs who are the victims of imperialism."
Then he went on to say that 20 years ago Americans often got on
their nerves because we were so sure of ourselves. "Now, " he says, "we
get nervous because Americans seem to be losing faith in their own destiny
When I mingled in the crowd in the airport in San Francisco, I wished I
had a way to remind these people of what they are
that they have in
their heritage the hope of the world. If America fails, the world fails
and I hope I will not again meet an American who apologizes for the fact
that he is American."
It is time for us to quit being apologetic, especially to our own
children. Even more important, it is time to challenge some of their
most cherished notions by presenting facts about their world as it really
is
facts that will expost the sorry myth that ours is a sick, racis*
materialistic society. Our generation has known war four times. Our love
of peace has been born of sorrow the sorrow of farewell to father,
husband, son and brother and oh, so many friends. But even as we pray
with all our hearts and pledge our help to the President's crusade for a
generation of peace, we know that "war" as John Stewart Mill said of it,
"is an ugly thing. But not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is
worth a war is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares about more
than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of
American Legion Convention
A few days ago a man who would be President offered to end the
Vietnam war in 90 days with total withdrawal of all support to South
Vietnam and return to the U.S. of all our military forces. Then, he said
he would go personally to Hanoi and ask for the return of our prisoners.
I have no doubt we could end American participation in the war in
90 days, but I charge that referring to this as peace can only be done
if we are willing to ignore the fate of 15 million South Vietnamese.
These are 15 million human beings who asked our help under the terms of
a treaty we signed in good faith. A million of them fled the slavery
and the purges in North Vietnam because they wanted what we take for
granted---life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To abandon them
would one day be recorded in history as a monstrous betrayal.
Even if we could accept the guilt of such an act, what assurance
do we have that an American President going to Hanoi hat-in-hand, having
given away the last vestige of bargaining power, could effect the return
of our young men?
The present Commander-in-Chief has pledged he will do whatever has
to be done, but we will not leave those young men in enemy hands. He
deserves the assurance that 200 million Americans will do whatever has
to be done.
If there has been error in this tragic war, it is not because we
fulfilled our legal obligation under the terms of a solemn treaty to
which we were a signatory. Our error was one of morality the immoralit
over the long years of asking our young men to fight and die for a cause
the administration at that time lacked the will to win. This war we
have been told could be ended in 90 days would have ended years and
thousands of lives ago if the harbor at Haiphong had been mined and the
enemy's potential for war-making destroyed as it is being destroyed now.
We pray for an end to war. But let us resolve that if ever war does
come again to our nation, we will not ask young men to die unless this
nation is prepared to put its full resources behind those men to win and
end the war as quickly as possible.
#######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will
stand by the above quotes).
- 9 -
the
6/24
the
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR-RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE
WEDNESDAY, A.Ms.
Sacramento; Califd .ia 95814
June 28, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
6-27-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
STANISLAUS MEMORIAL HOSPITALS
APPRECIATION BANQUET
Modesto, California
June 27, 1972
For many years before I went to Sacramento, I spent a lot of time on
the banquet circuit
usually expressing my firm belief in the ability of
a free people to solve a great many of their problems without government
help and very often in spite of government interference. These several
years in Sacramento have not changed that belief, indeed they have
confirmed it. And being here with you tonight is proof of the correctness
of that belief. You a re commemorating the successful solving of a
community problem by concerned citizens who live in that community.
In many ways, this appreciation dinner, recognizing the campaign to
develop your new Radiation Therapy Center and all the other hospital
facilities you operate, is more typical of America than all the
legislative committee meetings in Sacramento or Washington.
Our state and nation were founded on this philosophy of freedom by a
group of citizens who got together, much as we are meeting here tonight.
They formed a government to shape laws and political structures, but they
knew that the real strength of America, the intangible power that makes
it great, are its people and their willingness to help themselves and
their fellow man.
The government they organized only gave them the freedom they needed
to accomplish great things. It did not build America into the most
prosperous, compassionate and generous society in the history of the
world. The people did that.
Sometimes when I hear the almost automatic line "there ought to be
a law" I wonder if we have forgotten that our forebears crossed the plains
without the aid of a federal department of transportation; built schools
in one-room log cabins long before anyone ever thought of having an Office
of Education. And they provided for their own medical care through the
kind of community participation you have exhibited here in Stanislaus
County, without a Federal agency of Health, Education and Welfare. They
cleared the land and planted crops without a rural economic development
plan and when San Francisco was shattered by an earthquake and destroyed
by fire it was rebuilt without help from Urban Renewal or the Model
Cities Program.
- 1 -
Stanislaus Memorial ospitals
You are more familiar than I am with the long history of your own
projects and those who helped build the Memorial Hospitals of Stanislaus
County. So I will not attempt to review this splendid record. But I do
want to acknowledge the contribution made by someone who may not be with
us tonight, but whose presence is certainly felt: Larry Robinson, Sr.,
the first president of the Memorial Hospital Association of Stanislaus
County.
It was his pioneering vision and creative drive that helped start it
all. Those traits must run in the family. I know, because our
administration has called on his son, Larry Robinson, Jr., to be our
Director of General Services the department that has done such a great
job reducing the cost of government by introducing modern, efficient
purchasing techniques into state operations.
Nor will I try to single out everyone who helped build the Memorial
Hospitals of Stanislaus County. The list would have to include almost
this entire audience and thousands of others who worked so hard and
contributed so much. In fact, I understand some of the biggest financial
contributors would rather be anonymous. And this is typically American,
too. I have a little bronze plaque on my desk and I hope I can live by
the inscription it bears "You can accomplish much if you don't care
who gets the credit."
You have accomplished a great deal, with volunteer help, private
contributions and the dedicated efforts of thousands of citizens who were
determined to meet the medical needs of Stanislaus County and all its
people.
The new $5 million Memorial Hospital in northeast Modesto, the
$650,000 Radiation Therapy Center for treating cancer, the expanded
Nuclear Medicine Section, the artificial kidney, all this has been
completed without a dime's worth of help from government.
And if my information is correct, the cost of your hospital care
here is still less than it is in many other parts of California and the
west. To me, the most inspiring part is the work of your volunteer groups
the community leaders who serve on the board of directors, the women's
auxiliary, the junior volunteers, the Foundation Trustees.
Their efforts support the work of the physicians and the employees.
And certainly there cannot be any finer demonstration of faith in a
project than the fact that the employees of the hospital alone raised
$30,000 toward the cost of the new Radiation Treatment Center.
- 2 -
A few years ago I tried to find a phrase---a descriptive title for
this type of citizen participation. I wanted to see it become once again
a way of life in California, I wound up calling it the "Creative
Society." It is a kind of self help approach that represents the most
creative and humanitarian instincts of man. And it runs deep in the
traditions of America and its people.
We need more of it in government. We need more people in government
who recognize that there is a place for citizen involvement in solving
our problems. And we need more recognition by government that when people
are willing to take on a job whether it is building a hospital, running
their own local schools or developing a park, they can usually do a
better job at less cost than anyone in Washington or Sacramento.
A few years ago, some farmers in the state of Washington wanted a
new channel dug to stop a serious flooding and erosion problem caused by
the nearby river. The Corps of Engineers estimated the project's cost at
$180,000. The farmers borrowed some bulldozers and did the job
themselves for $1,500.
Government cannot possibly do everything for everybody and certainly
cannot do many things as well as they can be done by people helping
themselves. Instead of taking more and more dollars out of a community
in higher taxes, government should encourage self help at the local
level because when you do something within the community, you are far
more likely to get a dollar's worth of value for every dollar you spend.
Yet there is an increasing tendency in government to simply pre-empt
the right of the people to solve their own problems. Of course,
government will send the bill to the people.
Actually, there is more than just taxes and government extravagance
to worry about. There seems to be a pattern by which government creates
the problem and then rides over the hill like the cavalry to the rescue.
In this election year, we have been subjected to a lot of demogogic
talk about tax reform accompanied by glowing tales of government programs
to build housing, care for the troubled and heal the sick and all of this
will be paid for by someone else---some mysterious "they" who are not now
paying their fair share.
There have always been those who pretended someone else could be
made to bear the cost of government. A long time ago in England, someone
decided there was money to be raised by taxing windows, and since the
rich had bigger houses and more windows, they would pay the tax. But it
was the poor who discovered they were the first to have to wall up their
windows and live in darkness.
- 3 -
Stanislaus Memorial Hospitals
In France, the tax was levied on fireplaces the rich had them in
every room. Again it was the poor who suffered cold because they could
no longer afford that one fireplace in their tiny homes.
Today's demogogues are talking about tax reform and they use the
term to denote the closing of what they call loopholes. These loopholes
they say are devices where the mysterious "they" can escape their fair
share of taxes. If the loopholes are closed, the money gained will pay
for all those other utopian gifts from government at no added cost to
the citizens to whom the gifts will be given.
But let us take another look at what are called loopholes to see if
in truth they are not the legitimate deductions without which the whole
income tax structure would have proven unworkable a long time ago. To
encourage home building, the citizen is allowed to deduct the interest on
his mortgage and his property tax when he computes how much income tax
he owes. Without this encouragement, a great many working men and women
would not be able to afford a home. Yet this is one of the loopholes the
tax reformers would close. They tell us it would net the government
almost $6 billion, but they do not tell us it would come from our own
pockets or that we would then probably need that government built housing.
The same is true of another so-called loophole the deductions fo +
charitable contributions. This too, they would close. But then we
could no longer afford to contribute to United Fund, or to Stanislaus
County Memorial Hospitals. We would have to ask government to take over
these chores. Last year 65 percent of all the deductions for charitable
contributions were taken by citizens earning less than $20,000 a year.
Another loophole they would close is the right to deduct medical
expenses. Seventy-six percent of these deductions were taken by those
below the $20,000 mark. By removing this deduction, which was
instituted to make it possible for people to guard their health, they
would, of course, do more than increase government revenues. They would
open the door to a take over of all medical care by government.
Our society has accepted the obligation to meet the health care needs
of the poor, the disadvantaged and the elderly by way of Medi-Cal and
Medicare. An estimated 89 percent of our people meet their basic medical
needs through privately financed health insurance and, of course, the
wealthy can take care of their own needs without insurance.
- 4 -
Hospitals
But, reflecting this philosophy of government doing all things for
all people, a Senator in Sacramento has introduced a program that would
simply eliminate the private health insurance business. He would
finance this "free" government provided medicine with a payroll tax that
could amount to $100 a month for those with $10,000 incomes--- $1,200 a
year. His state plan would cost Californians $7½ billion a year. In
Washington, they are talking of one on a national scale that would carry
a $77 billion price tag.
There is also talk in Washington of building more child care centers.
But they propose to take away a working mother's right to deduct from her
income tax the money she now spends on child care.
With one hand, government helps aggravate a problem, and with the
other, it proposes to solve it---with the money you could have used to
solve it yourself.
If government eliminates the deduction for child care costs, a
working mother would be almost forced to send her child to a government
subsidized child care center. She would still be paying for it---with
her tax money. But she would lose the freedom to decide who would be
caring for her child during working hours, and where that care would be
given.
I am not suggesting government has no legitimate functions. It does,
but those functions serve the people best when they are aimed at helping
the disabled and the disadvantaged become physically and financially
self-sufficient so that they might help themselves.
California has moved forward in many types of programs to do just
that. One of these is our rehabilitation program.
Since 1967, we have more than tripled the number of physically and
mentally handicapped persons who have been rehabilitated each year. We
rank first in the nation in the number of disabled welfare recipients
restored to independence and first among the states in rehabilitating
disabled persons who had been dependent on Social Security disability
benefits. We have moved up from eleventh to third in the nation in
overall rehabilitation services. Not only does this serve the humanitarian
goal of restoring people to a productive place in society, it is good
business.
The more than 14,000 people rehabilitated last year in California
will:
--earn more than $71 million in personal income this year,
- 5 -
Stanislaus Memorial Hospitals
--pay more than $5.9 million in federal income taxes,
--pay more than half a million dollars in state income taxes and
$1 million in sales taxes.
Because they now enjoy the dignity of independence, there will be
an estimated:
--savings of $5.4 million in welfare, medical and institutional
costs,
--and a savings of $1.2 million in federal disability payments.
There is another area where I believe government can do something
the people cannot do for themselves.
The newspapers carried a story a few weeks ago of a family holding
garage sales to try to raise funds to help meet medical costs of $37,000
incurred because of a succession of difficult medical problems suffered
by one of the children in the family. This is the kind of catastrophic
illness that strikes about 10,000 California families a year at an
average cost to each family of $25,000 a year.
Such an illness can turn a middle-income, wage-earning family into
a family dependent upon welfare.
And this threat of a catastrophic illness hangs over every California
family which does not have sufficient resources to pay the thousands 01
dollars yearly costs that such a tragedy can involve. Nor can private
insurance be provided at a premium any of us can afford. For this reason
and to eliminate this threat of financial disaster, we have proposed a
California Health Security program, which will provide the means of
paying for catastrophic illnesses at a cost of $3 per month per working
family, or $36 a year.
This $36 a year premium would protect the entire family from the
point at which their present insurance coverage stops for as long as the
expense goes on. It would not replace private health insurance, indeed
we hope that private insurance would administer it.
We have submitted the plan to the legislature it is up to the
people to decide and inform their representatives if they want such a
government plan.
What you have done here in Stanislaus County to meet the health
needs of your community with your own resources is in keeping with our
philosophy of having people do all that they can for themselves.
- 6 -
Stanislaus Memorial Hospitals
To those who say that it is wrong to encourage self-sufficiency, to
make it possible for an individual to try to do for himself and help
others, too, I would like to point to another story recently printed in
the news media.
It was about a young man from Los Altos who wanted to be a doctor,
but had difficulty getting any school to admit him because he was
suffering from a kidney disorder that required him to be treated for
eight hours on an artificial kidney machine, three times a week.
This young man graduated with honors from high school and finally
found a medical school that would admit him despite his physical
condition. A few weeks ago he graduated with highest honors as his
fellow students and the faculty gave him a standing ovation.
After his internship, he plans to join a kidney transplant team at
a famous hospital in Massachusetts where he will be able to use his
education to help others suffering from kidney diseases.
During the long struggle to develop your medical centers here, I
know many of you must have been discouraged at times and wondered whether
it could be done or whether it was worth all the effort.
Some of us have had that same feeling in Sacramento now and then.
When you hear of the kind of human courage that young Californian
displayed, when you consider the obstacles he had to overcome just to ear
the right to try to help his fellow man, some of our own problems seem
pretty insignificant.
The kidney machine you have recently installed might be part of
just such a story some day. Your efforts may not only save one human
life, it might also make it possible for the person whose life is saved
to devote his career to helping others.
Yes, it most certainly is worth all the time and work and struggle.
And you can be eternally proud that you have been a part of such a
magnificient contribution to the sick and disabled of this community.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will
stand by the above quotes).
- 7 -
9/5
a
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONA'D REAGAN
RELEASE: TUESDAY, P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
Sep mber 5, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
9-1-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS AND AEROSPACE WORKERS
NATIONAL CONVENTION
LOS ANGELES
September 5, 1972
You are concerned, and properly so, with jobs and prosperity for
your members. I am concerned with jobs and a healthy industrial market
because California's well being is closely linked to the products of the
industries in which you work, particularly those having to do with
aerospace and defense.
Several years ago, there was a readjustment in these industries
that led to a reduction in the employment level. No one cried foul.
Certain portions of the crash element in the space program that followed
Sputnik had served their purpose, military requirements were less and even
in commercial aircraft, we had leveled off somewhat.
Now however, the war weariness of our people has been used as an
excuse by some in Congress to attack any and everything military. The
virus has spread to include the space program and taint it with the onus
of "boondoggle." " They sanctify their head-in-the-sand foolishness with
the spurious claim that cutting back on space and defense will give us
more billions of dollars for welfare.
Indeed to dispute them is to lay one's self open to a charge of
lacking compassion. Let us put that fairy tale to rest right now.
There never has been a nation or a people more generous than ours. We
will do whatever has to be done to take care of those who, through no
fault of their own, are unable to provide for themselves. But it is
not a kindness to help people become helpless.
The technical superiority of Anerica's aerospace and defense
industries has kept America strong and free in the years since World
War II.
In fact, the very survival of America and the free world depends
on maintaining the skilled scientific, engineering and production work
ce which enabled us to be first to land a man on the moon.
Right now, a satellite circling the earth is helping us discover
better ways of growing food, protect the environment by warning us of
disease and fire threats to our forests, and locate mineral deposits and
even new fishing grounds in the oceans. It helps us plan the use of our
natural resources so that we can minimize man's destructive impact on the
environment. Because we dared to explore space, we have vastly improved
communications. We even find ourselves eating new and more convenient
foods originally developed for the astronauts.
-1-
Machinists and Aeros :e Workers
Medical advances that have evolved from the space program have
increased our ability to improve the health care of the sick and
disabled. Monitors detect irregular heart beats in intensive care
units. Sensors alert a nurse when a baby stops breathing. An electric
switch enables a paraplegic to turn the pages of a book by blinking
his eyes. All are the result of experiments first conducted for the
space program. To those who deplore the cost of the space program,
perhaps we should ask if they are prepared to place a dollar value on
something that saves a human life or allows a paralyzed patient to
enjoy the pleasure of reading a book.
Then there is the entire myth of billions of dollars wasted on the
moon.
Some of those in Congress who vote consistently against aerospace
developments talk of adding $150 billion in welfare and social spending
as if that much is now being wasted in space instead of the $3 billion
approximately 1.3 percent of our national budget. That is the total
cost of our space program. So while we are debunking fairy tales,
let's have at that one. To hear them talk, you would think we were
carting the money to the moon and leaving it there. Whatever the cost,
the money is spent here on earth providing jobs for people who buy
automobiles, refrigerators, TV sets, contribute to church and charity
and pay taxes to support congressmen who vote to throw hundreds of thou-
sands of people out of work and turn skilled middle-income Americans
into candidates for welfare.
Turning our backs on the future won't cure poverty. It is the
quickest path to national bankruptcy, not only for those of you who
work in sophisticated industries, but for all Americans.
Since the issue that I am concerned about also concerns you, I hope
you will pardon me for not trying to waltz around the fact that this is
an election year, an election year different than any we have ever known.
We are not going to decide just which party and which candidate provides
national leadership for the next four years.
When you cut through all the rhetoric, the major economic issue
in 1972 is whether a job is a better solution for poverty than a welfare
check.
I believe jobs are the best cure for poverty, not welfare. Here in
California we decided to put this belief to work and in little more than
a year we have reduced our welfare rolls by almost a quarter of a million
persons, reduced the annual projected cost of welfare almost three-fourth:
of a billion dollars a year and increased our support payments to those
who really need our help by 30 percent.
-2--
Machinists and Aerospac^ Workers
During these past several years of excessive unemployment in the
aerospace and defense industries, we have sponsored a number of programs
to find new job opportunities for displaced engineers and skilled workers.
Our State Department of Human Resources Development has placed 6,177
persons into new jobs. But unemployment in these fields is still too
high.
And it won't be cured until America starts giving aerospace and
defense programs the priority they deserve. The best cure for aerospace
and defense unemployment is to carry forward the programs which America
needs to protect its freedom. Jobs, not welfare, is the cure for aerospace
unemployment. But those jobs won't exist if America listens to those
who favor cutting defense to expand the dole.
At the moment, we're on the road back to a more productive use of
our skilled space workers. Just a few weeks ago, a California company
was awarded a $2.6 billion contract for the space shuttle. That contract
means at least 25,000 jobs in California and possible as many as 160,000
nationally when the program is in full effect.
Yet a candidate campaigns on a promise of providing a job for
everyone at the same time he opposes such space projects.
He opposes development of the B-1 supersonic bomber, although it
means 43,000 jobs. Of all the planes flying commercially in the world,
85 percent bear an American trademark and were made by American working
men. We captured this market because we were out front with every new
development. When planes became bigger we built them first. When they
became faster we. were first with the fastest---until we reached the
sound barrier. Then little men with little minds voted no on the SST.
In reality, they were voting to give up America's supremacy in the sky.
They revealed their true stature when they proposed to help the men
and women they had voted out of jobs by appropriating money to help them
meet the mortgage payments on their homes.
From the beginning of time, man has deplored the need for weapons.
A sword is not as productive as a plowshare. But over this same span of
years, men have learned to their sorrow you have both sword and plowshare,
or you must one day choose between slavery and death.
We cannot afford leaders who are opposed to the anti-ballistic
missile defense program, the modernizing of our missile forces or our
nuclear submarines, while the Soviet Union is expanding its nuclear fleet
at a rate twice as fast as we are.
-3-
We cannet affor chose who vote to weaken A rica and to reduce
employment in the aerospace and defense industries.
We cannot afford to cut $32 billion from the defense budget. Aside
from the grave threat this cut would pose for our nation's security, the
economists say that every $1 billion spent on defense and aerospace
generates about 60,000 jobs. So when you translate that $32 billion
into human terms, it means eliminating 1.9 million jobs.
That isn't just my opinion. It is an opinion strongly voiced by
major figures in both political parties, by union leaders and management
spokesmen.
Whatever our political philosophy, whatever side of the bargaining
table we sit on, we are all Americans. And whatever threatens America's
security and prosperity threatens us all.
And the plain truth is that the proposals that have been advance
to cut America's defenses would retard all the progress we have made
toward assuring a peaceful world and a prosperous America.
The political philosophy that endorses such cuts represents a graver
threat to America's security and prosperity than any sword rattling by any
would be aggressor.
While we may disagree on other matters, on this crucial issue,
every American should share this concern about those who believe we
can slash billions of dollars from our defense budget and still protect
our freedom and maintain a prosperous economy.
It is an issue that dwarfs all others.
We all want a peaceful America. And we hope that negotiations will
speed the day of peace. Some of you who are older know that I was an
officer of my union for 25 years and for almost 20 of those years I led
our union's negotiations with management. I do not suggest this experience
was on a level with the negotiations aimed at ending this war. But I do
know that to negotiate fairly, you have to negotiate as equals. You can't
settle a strike or end a war on equitable terms if one party to the
negotiations goes to the table hat-in-hand, having given away the last
vestige of bargaining power he has at his command. No one who has ever
sat on one side of a negotiating table can seriously believe that America
cannot retain a major voice in the world by cutting our military troop
strength to a level below what we had before Pearl Harbor.
We cannot negotiate on equal terms with any would be aggressor if
we adopt a calculated policy of weakness.
Disarming America won't bring peace---it will almost surely invite
a threat to peace. And dismantling vast segments of the defense industry
in favor of a national welfare program won't cure poverty. It will guaran-
tee poverty for a lot of productive people who are employed in defense
industries and who are not only supporting themselves, but who are making
a vital contribution to peace and prosperity.
# # # # # #
-4-
9
9/8
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: FRIDAY P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
September 8, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
9-7-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE.
ACTUAL TRANSCRIPT
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
SACRAMENTO HOST BREAKFAST
SACRAMENTO
September 8, 1972
From those first few years when I kept you posted on how much we
were saving on typewriter ribbons, these meetings have come to be an
opportunity for me to report on the state of the state.
It is a pleasure to do so, especially this year because our fiscal
situation is considerably improved and so are a few other things.
For example, last year when we met, the legislature was still in
session. This year, they are still in session, but they have gone home
for a while. The script is like one of those long running soap operas
on daytime TV.
"Will Laura give up Mickey for Bill?"
"Will Bill find happiness with Cynthia?"
Will there be action on tax reform and school finance?
Will they protect the environment without declaring the state off
limits to people?
Will they ever start going home again on June 30?
Tune in next November.
The budget was passed on time, for the first time in several years.
It came down about one quarter of a billion dollars heavy, but responded
to surgery and made the weight before it was signed. That makes the six
year amputation total a little over a billion dollars.
We have the comprehensive solid wastes disposal program we need to
deal with a problem that grows increasingly acute in our urban areas.
Now we are waiting for action on our request for a combined pollution
control board to put it under.
There was favorable action on some of the bills we need to further
strengthen our air pollution control efforts.
A $250 million bond issue was authorized for the 1974 ballot to
enable us to carry on the development of our state's parks and
recreational areas,
- 1 -
Host Breakfast
And we managed to agree on legislation providing temporary forest
practice regulation
a bill we needed because a court ruling nullified
the state's previous authority in this field.
We still must develop a long-term forest practices program that
will permit us to carry forward our efforts in fire and erosion control
and all the other steps we must take to safeguard the environmental
resources of California's forest areas.
We will soon be taking the first steps toward phasing out San
Quentin Prison.
And a few weeks ago I was privileged to sign legislation making the
children of our P.O.Ws and missing servicemen eligible for free tuition
in our institutions of higher learning. It is one positive way, at
least, to show the concern we all feel for our fellow Californians who
are prisoners of the communists in Southeast Asia.
This year's budget includes some $28 million for scholarships and
loans to enable deserving young Californians to attend our colleges and
universities. Six years ago, it was less than $5 million.
We also feel it is time for the state to acknowledge the needs of
thousands of young Californians who will enter the work force
immediately after high school; to develop an effective program to help
finance technical and vocational training beyond high school.
Working on a bipartisan basis, a bill has been passed this year
that will create a competitive occupational education and training grant
program on a pilot basis to be administered by the State Scholarship and
Loan Commission.
This does not mean any lessening of emphasis on higher educational
opportunities for those young people who desire and can profit by furthe
academic training. It does mean a broadening of our educational goals
to include the technical and vocational training that will help our youn
people develop the skill they need to find and keep a permanent job.
The legislature also authorized, and I signed legislation to place
a bond issue on the November ballot to finance additional medical scienc
facilities at the University of California. The original measure called
for $300 million which we figured was not only excessive but could have
adversely affected the whole program for our bond sales. with ipartisan
legislative cooperation this figure was reduced to $156 million. It is
a bond issue we should all support. This is Proposition 2 on your
November ballot.
Host Breakfast
The subject of transportation has come up once or twice this year.
You would be surprised how much information there is on this subject
including a lot of things you don't really want to know.
For example, somebody has proposed an experimental program for
increasing the use of the public bus system in Washington, D.C., by
offering free taxi rides to and from the bus stop. That should not
surprise anyone. Do you remember about 10 years ago when Congress was
talking about subsidizing transit ridert?
A Senate committee set up a distinguished research team, headed by
a prestigious professor, who discovered that if you cut bus fares in
half, more people would ride the bus. They got so excited about their
discovery, they pursued it and learned you can further increase patronage
if you pay people a dime to ride the bus. And even more people will ride
if you pay them 20 cents. But then they had to report failure. They
discovered that even when you pay people you cannot get 100 percent
public use of rapid transit. This is my kind of sneaky way of telling
you that 60 million Americans still drive to work each day and we will
be supporting new highways for some time to come. Eight and a half
million use buses, trollies, subways, trains, and in San Francisco,
boats.
Certainly, because of the smog problems and urban congestion, we
have to be more selective in highway planning and encourage the growth
of other types of mass transportation.
But the plain truth is that freeways and highways are still the
major means our people use to get to and from work, to shopping areas,
and to school. And our long range planning must encompass all the
various transportation systems in a balanced program.
This year, one of our major proposals was to create a State
Department of Transportation. The measure has cleared one committee, and
we are hopeful that when the legislature returns in November we will get
the authority we need to streamline our transportation planning by
coordinating it within a single department.
For the first time, we would have the ability to use systems
analysis techniques to determine the total transportation needs of the
people of California and the capacity to develop, in cooperation with
every other level of government involved, some realistic objectives and
some financial plans for meeting those needs.
The subject of no-fault automobile insurance remains on the
"unfinished business" agenda.
3
Host Breakfast
I am personally disappointed that the legislature did not choose
to respond to a major issue in the area of crime control that developed
this year after the Supreme Court rulings on capital punishment.
The people will be deciding this one themselves in the November
election. I believe capital punishment does deter crime and therefore
it is my hope that the people deliver their decision on this issue loud
and clear when they go into the voting booth.
Economically, therehas been a tremendous improvement in California,
both in government and the private sector, since we met at this time
last year.
The simple facts are these: California employment stands at
all time high of more than 8.3 million 215,000 more Californians
jobs than a year ago and the unemployment rate is dropping twice as fas
as it was at this time last year. The August rate was the lowest for
that month in three years.
Your Chamber of Commerce can take a share of the credit for helping
expand job opportunities in California through your business development
programs.
I want to particularly note the work of the Chambor and its members
on
two projects our manpower task force study and the space shuttle
committee.
I know the many hours of work Tom Hamilton (Thomas M. Hamilton,
chairman), Burnham Enersen, and the other members have devoted to the
Task Force on Manpower Policy study. The Task Force has completed its
work and I have asked Dr. Earl Brian, Secretary of Health and Welfare, to
carefully review the findings and recommendations. We appreciate all
your efforts and we expect to develop positive suggestions that will
provide better coordination among the various manpower programs and more
effective results in terms of expanded job opportunities.
You will be hearing more on this later.
Because it means job opportunities for thousands in the aerospace
industry, I want to take just a moment to express my gratitude to the
State Chamber of Commerce, to Ed Reinecke, and to all the others who worked
so hard to bring the space shuttle project to California. As you know, a
California company (North American Rockwell) recently received this $2.6
billion contract. It was good news, indeed, for those of us concerned with
California's economic future.
Host Breakfast
It will mean at least 25,000 jobs in our state and possibly as
many as 160,000 nationally. Some economists say this contract alone will
generate a total increase of some $4 billion in the California economy
during the years ahead.
When last we met, the battle for welfare reform had just been
concluded, but already the administrative reforms we had implemented
earlier in the year were showing results. There are almost one quarter
of a million fewer people on welfare today and the total cost to this
year's budget for welfare and Medi-Cal is almost three quarters of a
billion dollars less---and that's a lot of typewriter ribbons.
Let me prod your memory. Last year we were being told by any number
of loud voices that a tax increase of three quarters of a billion dollars
was an absolute must to balance the budget. Now some of those same loud
(budget)
voices are demanding to know what we intend to do with the surplus we
had on June 30 and the one already projected for next June 30. And, of
course, the loudest voices are those suggesting ways to spend it.
We have known for some time that our persistent penny-pinching,
capped by the great success of welfare reform had finally brought us to
the point of an on going surplus. In the tax reform that was shot down
two months ago by a small willful band of Senators, we had committed this
surplus to be returned to the people in the form of property tax relief.
We still are not sure of the exact amount of the surplus, but should have
a better idea before the month ends.
Let me just spend a minute on our four-year effort to provide
property tax relief, principally for the homeowner. I think, by any and
every standard, this is the most regressive tax we have in California
and the most in need of adjustment.
Some of those who have obstructed this adjustment complain that we
are only shifting the tax; that the burden actually remains unchanged
for the taxpayer. He pays the same total with the decrease in property
tax transferred to increases in other taxes. To a large extent, this is
true, the only way to reduce the total tax load is to reduce the cost of
government. And incidentally, most of those who have blocked our tax
reform are the same ones who fight every attempt at economy. They are
the last of the big spenders with someone else's money.
- 5 -
Host Breakfast
But here is the real reason why a tax shift should take place.
In the sales tax you have a certain amount of choice. Since it does not
apply to food and shelter, you can do without some non-essential service
and thus avoid the tax. Income tax only applies when you have an income.
But the citizen who is laid off, unemployed or who comes to the end of
his earning years, finds the rent he pays to government for the privilege
of living in his own home goes on and on and on. The property tax is
not based on ability to pay. So it makes sense in transferring this tax
from this sort of thing to forms of taxation that are based on your
willingness and ability to pay
While we are on this subject of taxes, let us expose a few more
fairy tales. For example that favorite of every demagogue "don't
raise the sales tax, that is a consumer tax. Tax business instead."
For a long time they have been getting away with that one. So long, in
fact, there are now 116 taxes concealed in the price of a suit of clothes,
151 in a loaf of bread, and at last count, 100 in an egg. Now, the
chicken did not put them there. Somehow they sneaked in between the
hen and the breakfast table. At least with the sales tax, you know how
much you are paying and can register a complaint when government gets
too expensive.
Fairy tale number two: one of the "anti-tax reform" Senators is
fond of saying that Californians are getting away with murder in the
state income tax. From there he becomes a "Johnny one note" on the idea
that somehow the higher income earners are getting a free ride. The
California income tax nets something between 1½ and 2 billion dollars
for the state. Of that amount, 8.4 percent is paid by 52.6 percent of
our workers whose earnings are $10,000 or less. That leaves 47.4 percent
above $10,000 paying 91.6 percent of the tax. But let us break that
down: 38.3 percent earn between 10 and 20 thousand dollars a year, and
they pay 35.8 percent of the tax. And that leaves 9.1 percent of the
taxpayers earning $20,000 a year or better paying more than half
55.8 percent of the total tax. I might as well button this up all the
way in case the Senator claims he is only talking about those earning
$50,000 a year or better. Only .8 percent fall in that class, but that
.8 percent pays 22.2 percent of the total state income tax.
I think these figures suggest that California's income tax is not
only progressive, it also does not offer much possibility for additional
revenue without seriously disrupting the state's economy.
- 6 -
Host Breakfast
And that brings me back to that surplus, and what we are going to
do with it. I would still like to reduce the homeowners burden, and we
shall continue our efforts to do this, using the available surplus. But
I also assure you that if we continue to be obstructed in this effort
then I shall ask the legislature to return this money in the form of
reduced state taxes. My own preference will be an across the board cut
in the income tax.
Perhaps it is time for you to ask yourselves as citizens and
taxpayers whether you agree with those who would enlarge government
simply because tax income now exceeds outgo; or whether you believe as I
do that additional government services should be adopted only on the
basis of their value to the public and the public should know exactly
what the price will be in new taxes.
I suggest that you ask yourselves this question. May I also
auggest you ask all the candidates for the State Assembly and Senate
whether they would vote for increased spending or for a return of the
surplus to its rightful owners--the taxpayers? Each one of them should
be willing to answer this question before you cast your ballot.
I have been told that our attempts at tax reform are actually poor
politics because they appear as an increase in the state budget. It
is true that if our tax reform had passed, almost a billion dollars in
savings to the homeowners would have appeared in our budget as an increase
simply because we would have collected the money and given it back.
Indeed, this accounts for much of the budget increase of these past six
years. In the homeowners exemption, income tax rebates, and inventory
tax relief, we have given back more than $2 billion with virtually all
of it appearing as cost increases in the budget.
It would be far better if we could find a way to make tax sources
available at the local levels and thus place the responsibility for
raising revenues on those who administer the spending of those revenues.
And we continue to seek ways to do this not because it might be better
politically, but because in the last analysis, government spending will
be checked only when an informed citizenry begins holding their elected
officials accountable.
- 7 -
Host Breakfast
Our present system makes it almost impossible to have an informed
citizenry. This year we tried to divide and present two budgets one
reflecting the actual cost of running state government and the other
(more than twice as big) showing the monies collected by the state, but
administered by other levels of government. Just to give you some idea
of what we have managed to accomplish in state government these last
few years, there are 102,000 fulltime civil service employees in
California state government the biggest in the Union. New York City
has 423,000 employees. In spite of this, it sometimes seems that state
government looms in most people's minds as the biggest cause of their
tax woes. We have a high profile in Sacramento when the cussing starts.
In actuality California state government is the taxpayer's best
bargain. It only takes about seven cents out of the tax dollar to run
this state. The other 93 cents is divided roughly 70 cents federal and
23 cents for services and programs administered at county and community
levels. The cost of those state functions we control administratively
has increased only 1.9 percent in per capita constant dollars.
And yet at the same time, we have doubled our Highway Patrol to meet
the increased needs of additional hundreds of miles of new highway. 1..is
has also make it possible for the California Highway Patrol to take over
patrolling of the freeways in our larger urban areas, freeing local polic
for crime fighting. And we are adding 400 correctional employees in our
penal institutions.
Still we have 1100 fewer state employees than we had six years ago
when I took office.
In all fairness, I must point out that state government has a long
history of imposing tasks on local government without always providing
revenue or revenue sources to fund those tasks. We sought to correct
this in our ill-fated tax reform proposal by requiring that new mandates
be accompanied by necessary funding. That too was rejected by the
Senators.
But even that would have fallen short of facing up to our real need.
And may I say the so-called Watson Amendment Proposition 14 is not
the answer, but in truth will further confuse an already chaotic
hodgepodge and imbed that chaos into the constitution, killing all hope
of creating a system based on fiscal and governmental responsibility. And
there is no way to salvage the welfare reforms I mentioned earlier if thi
program is adopted by the people.
8 -
Host Breakfast
California in these last few years has moved ahead on a score of
fronts most of them, I am sorry to say, better known beyond our borders
than here at home. We have set a pattern for other states and have even
had an influence on national policy. Some of what has been accomplished,
such as the revolutionary reform of welfare, came about only because you,
the people of California, made it absolutely clear this was what you
wanted.
Now, do we have the will and the courage to look at our governmental
structure; to evolve a practical plan whereby tasks and services
performed by government will be assigned to those levels of government
best qualified to handle them regardless of what has been the pattern of
the past; to construct a revenue system to match with sufficient tax
sources for the tasks assigned to each level of government? Are we
willing to look at traditional boundaries and county lines to see if
they meet the present day needs of California?
"I," = too, "have a dream." A dream that perhaps California can
set a standard of government reform that will make possible efficiency
and economy in government at a level never before realized.
In my dream, I am standing before this particular audience at a
Host Breakfast one day to tell you of a plan to put the governments of
California state, county, city and special districts, of which there
are
some 3000 into a kind of plastic geodome, a container where they
are visible to all the citizenry like one of those see-through watches
where you can see the ticking and the wheels going around.
Where the functions and services of each echelon, and the
effectiveness, the cost of the services and the benefits are easily
apparent.
Where the people can constantly appraise the services received and
judge their value in comparison to cost.
Where we will no longer have government by mystery.
Where we no longer have the arrogance of officialdom of people who
sit in the halls and say "Oh well, the public wouldn't understand so
we '11 just keep this to ourselves."
Where the people will know that if a new service is offered, they
will be able to see instantly that it is not going to be another free
gift or free government handout, but that it must either replace an
existing program or have to be funded by a new or increased tax.
I I 9
Host Breakfast
Where the voice of the demagogue will be stilled because the victims
finally will be too well informed for him to get away with it.
We can have an informed citizenry that will understand the
relationship between taxes and law and business climate and, indeed, the
relationship between that business climate and the jobs and their own
prosperity.
This wouldn't be something that the state would present and then
impose on the people, because the state should not have that kind of
power.
It is something that you, the people of California, would review.
And, if you thought that plan was proper and workable then it would be
up to you and every echelon of government to implement it.
I have called it a dream. But, it is not an impossible dream. Many
of you in this room, in your various organizations, are engaged every day
in trying to bring some phase or other of what I have suggested into
being. We seemingly have become reconciled to a belief that "well, it
has gone on so long in politics, and "well I guess that's politics and
politicians," and "well, there isn't really anything I can do about it so
maybe I'll even stay home on election day."
Not on your life!
There is not a single thing that I have proposed that cannot be done.
If there is a need to join city and county and merge services
together to get the job done better and more economically, then it can be
done if the people decide they want it done. If there are areas of our
state where the county boundaries do not make sense any more and they
should be brought together into a single county, that too can be done.
And we can have a governmental structure where every politician who
offers you something or makes a proposal must tell you how many more
pennies are coming out of your earnings in order to pay for that service
so that you can make the choice just as you make the choice when you
purchase any product. Is it worth the price tag that is assigned to it?
This is not an impossible dream and I happen to have the confidence
that one day in the not too distant future I am going to have as my
subject for a Host Breakfast the presentation of such a plan. And, then
it will be yours to carry forward.
If California can do this, then California will once again have lived
up to its promise to all the rest of the Nation. We once again will have
started a prairie fire rolling, and we will be blessed by the people in
our land.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
10
41/6
Y
the
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR ROA D REAGAN
RELEASE:
iday A.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
September 15, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
9-14-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES
ANNUAL CONFERENCE BANQUET
San Francisco
September 14, 1972
It is a pleasure to be with you this evening. And my pleasure
is doubled because of the honor you are doing a great citizen and my
friend Bob Hope. World War I may be remembered because of the patriotism
of George M. Cohan, but show business is proud as I am sure all Americans
are of this man who has been America's secret weapon in three wars.
American troops, no matter where they might be stationed, have
in these three wars never been too far away for Bob to find them and
remind them of folks back home who loved them and missed them. Today
military jets are a lot more comfortable, but when Bob started it was
different. Bob has ridden in so many bucket seats, he used to buy his
pants by the gallon.
He is a great guy and a great American the only place he has
not been is Hanoi.
Teddy Roosevelt said America should walk softly and carry a big
stick. I don't think he had in mind those characters who walk barefoot
and carry a peace symbol on their way to throw rocks at a policeman.
We have seen some who would interpret the desire for peace as an
excuse for downgrading the defense of the United States.
The matter of our country's security and our ability to defend
ourselves against any aggressor has been an accepted fact to all
Americans for most of our his tory. No matter which party controlled
Congress or the White House, there has been strong support for a bi-par-
tisan approach where matters of defense are involved. But today, born
perhaps of war weariness, voices are raised urging a different and
dangerous course. Thank heaven, there are leading figures of both
parties expressing deep concern about some of the proposals we have
been hearing on defense cutbacks.
Even if we believe that those who propose these massive cutbacks
have a legitimate difference of opinion on what constitutes an adequate
level of defense for the United States, we do not have to believe that
what they propose is wise or prudent national policy, based on a realistic
assessment of the international situation. And it would be folly of
the worst sort to follow their leadership.
National Guard
When the barn catches fire, you do not send a fellow for water who
does not know a pump handle from a bull's tail, To be specific, what
would a cut of $32 billion in the defense budget mean to the United
States in terms of manpower, in terms of strategic weapons ships
planes? We don't have to guess at the answer to that one.
The Secretary of Defense has presented to Congress a detailed
outline of the impact of a $32 billion cutback in defense, along with an
analysis of the other proposals to eliminate or cut back specific defense
programs.
A cutback of that magnitude means:
Canceling the program to modernize the Minuteman Missiles.
Canceling the B-1 bomber development, a program essential to
maintain the realistic deterrence that the President feels is
necessary to enable America to negotiate for a generation of peace
from a position of strength.
Canceling the safeguard ABM anti-missile defense program entirely,
limiting the Poseidon submarine force, at a time when Jane's
Fighting Ship, says the Soviet Union, is embarked on a continuir
deployment of nuclear vessels, including nuclear powered missile
firing submarines.
It means:
Cauceling the F-14 and F=15 fighter aircraft programs, the
developement of modern helicopters.
Reducing the number of our active duty military personnel to a
level below what we had six months before Pearl Harbor.
Closing some 500 bases and other military installations, cutting
back on research and development and eliminating more than 2½
million jobs in defense and defense-related industries.
Never mind how much this would jeopardize America's current economic
recovery, It would do even greater damage to the present effort to
negotiate peaceful arms reductions. The proposed cut of 60, percent of
Amercia's-military strength in Europe would be--in effect a unilateral
pullback without any comparable reductions from the other side.
It would be a reckless gamble with the safety and security of the
American people. America would be staking its survival on an unrealistic
overly optimistic assessment of the enemy's good intentions. Our only
hole card in the great international poker game would be a wistful desire
for peace. Our future negotiating would be from a calculated posture of
military weakness that would guarantee a future policy of unconditional
appeasement.
Every lesson of history tells us that appeasement does not lead to
peace. It invites an aggressor to test the will of a nation upprepared
to meet that test. And tragically, those who seemingly want peace the
most. our voung people. pay the heaviest price for failure
National Guard
I take advantage of your invitation and say these things because in
this room are men who have deveted their lives to being part of America's
military reserve force.
It has been proposed that the National Guard be "reconstituted"
and reduced in size. They can talk plainer than that. What they propose
is the total elimination of the National Guard's federal combat reserve
role in America's defense planning. In short, the National Guard would
be a domestic militia.
True that is one of your present tasks, and one you perform well
in times of natural disaster and civil disturbance.
As a governor, as someone who has firsthand knowledge of the vital
necessity of maintaining a combat ready force, I am totally opposed to
this kind of "reconstitution" of the onal Guard. And I hope every
one here tonight will alert those in your own states who should be
equally concerned about the future of the National Guard under the
proposed new policy.
Instead of helping provide realistic deterrence, the elimination
of your military mission would be part of a grand design for minimum
deterrence and this would not strengthen America nor would it increase
our chances for a lasting peace.
These who propose such a change and such massive defense reductions
have a strange set of values.
They propose general amnesty for those who have turned their backs
on America. But they would leave the fate of American prisoners of war
to the hoped for good will of an enemy who has displayed as great a
savagery as has ever been recorded in the annals of war. Unwilling to
make the investment necessary to keep America first in defense and space,
they are willing to finance welfare benefits for the people they would
put out of work.
They tell us we should change our priorities, but where have these
so-called experts been in the past 3½1/2 years when we have been changing our
riorities.
We have made an amazingly efficient transition from a war-inflated
economy to a peaceful economy.
Ten years ago, defense took 48 percent of the federal budget--today
32 percent. For the first time in our history, the budget for the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare is higher than the budget for the
defense department.
-3-
National Guard
But this apparently is not enough for them. Well, I suggest the
priority they would have for national defense is not acceptable to
Americans who have lived through previous times when our country found
itself unprepared and stumbled into war without sufficient manpower or
equipment. Our young men in wars past have died unnecessarily because of
unwise economies and lack of preparedness.
Reducing America to the status of a second rate nation, unable
to make its voice heard in the councils of the world will surely be the
prelude to another generation of Americans dying needlessly because of our
mistakes.
They say they want peace. We all want peace. The President wants
peace and he is not just talking about it--he is doing gomething to
bring it about.
All of us denounce war--all of us consider it man's greatest
stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate
lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set
the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.
In an earlier day, a distinguished American said: "War is an
ugly thing. But not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded
state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war
is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares about more than his
personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free,
unlèss made and kept SO by the exertions of better men than himself."
Let us resolve that no American President will ever have to beg--hat
in hand for : peace because we were unwilling to protect our freedom
and the freedom of Americans as yet unborn.
####
(Note: Since Governor Reagar speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
-4-
TVD
0
9/27
Sacramento, Californi 35814
Sep mber 27, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
9-26-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GCVERNOR RONALD REAGAN,
STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA
ANNUAL MEETING, DEL MONTE HYATT HOUSE
MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA
September 27, 1972
Since justice is everybody's business, I would like to discuss some
f your concerns today, how they relate to some of our other problems,
what is being done, and even what needs to be done.
But before I sum up the reasons why the bench and bar must concern
/themselves
with reforms that will help us realize the cherished ideal of a
speedy trial and speedy justice, let me sort of sugar coat the castor oil
by recognizing some of the constructive things that are going on.
The Select Committee on Trial Court Delay has completed its work and
made a number of recommendations. They are aimed at making courts more
efficient; streamlining legal procedures and speeding up the trial process
to enable the legal system to handle its increased volume of work.
Many of their recommendations, of course, require legislation and
like a number of other things, have yet to be achieved, Others involve
reforms that can and have in some very encouraging instances already
zen implemented by administrative action within the judicial system.
Some judges have been able to reduce their backlog of cases by simply
following the Biblical admonition, they "goeth forth unto their work
and
labor until the evening
crown (them) with glory and honor, and bless
their industrious souls.
In your client security funds, your approach to the concept of no-
fault insurance and other reform efforts, the State Bar of California has
displayed a commendable determination to make our legal system more
effective and thus, better able to dispense justice to everyone.
Many of the court and legal reforms we have sought at the state level
involve calendar management, record keeping, and all the technical matters
that are necessarily required in our civil and criminal legal system. The
alifornia Council on Criminal Justice has a number of promising pilot
programs under way that should provide some answers. Among the projects
the council is funding this year are programs to explore the feasibility of
using electronic recording devices in place of court reporters in criminal
proceedings
(just imagine hearing yourselves on instant replay)
court
information systems to expedite routine cases
a
study designed to
encourage the use of smaller juries in civil matters, and programs aimed
at improving calendar management in both the criminal and civil fields.
There are others that involve more critical problems.
- 1 -
State Bar
Sweeping court rulings on criminal arrest procedures have placed
a heavy new burden on our law enforcement officers. If we are to have
vigorous and effective law enforcement and not jeopardize potential
convictions there is a need for improved training of everyone who play
a mejor role in law enforcement. That is why we now have a Regional
Criminal Justice Training Academy in Modesto and the reason funds have
been earmarked this year for another such center to be located in
Sacramento.
A few weeks ago, we also appointed a Governor's Select Committee on
Law Enforcement Problems. That is the official title, but the purpose
can be summed up a little less formally what we want to know is what we
at the state level can do to provide better protection for the public.
This committee, headed by an attorney, is charged with the task of
identifying those law enforcement problems in California that can be most
effectively remedied by state action.
We know there is a need to analyze existing crime control measures
to establish feasible action programs to meet theproblems law enforcement
officials have had and to pinpoint specific steps we can take to crack
down on crime.
We know that in some areas, such as over-the-border narcotics control
there may be a need for more effective coordination and cooperation
between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
But the purpose of this study, indeed, the result we expect to come
from the committee's findings, is a major legislative program that will
point to the root causes of the difficulties presently encountered by our
police and courts and propose specific means of dealing with those
problems.
This is a major priority of our administration, and every available
resource of the state will be made available to assist the committee in
its work.
On Friday of this week, my legal affairs secretary, Herb Ellingwood,
will be submitting to the Council on Criminal Justice a Master Plan fc
Judicial Process the first such program in the nation. It is designed
to carry forward the work that needs to be done to end trial court delays
that make a mockery of the concept of speedy justice.
- 2 -
DdL
This year, one 01 our major legislative proposals involves the
greatest single social problem of our times, The continuing problem of
drug abuse. Although there were slight declines in both categories,
there still were 42, 745 adult felony arrests involving narcotics in
California last year, and 84,384 juvenile drug violations.
The massive threat that narcotics addiction poses to our society was
underscored recently by a report prepared for Congress by retired marine
General Lewis Walt.
The General pointed out that America's heroin addict population now
is ten times bigger than it was in 1960. He said: " if we fail to
deal with this problem of drug addiction effectively over the measurable
future, let us say over the next five years, or ten years at the outside,
our society may be doomed.
"The estimated 600,000 addicts we have today are reportedly
responsible for from 50-60 percent of our street crimes and petty
burglary. More than any other single factor, it is the rise in (narcotics
addiction that has converted our streets into dangerous jungles and our
cities into places of fear. Each addict requires $50 a day to support
his habit. "
To combat drug abuse on the federal level, General Walt recommended
increased American support for international efforts to control narcotic
smuggling (something the President has been actively trying to do).
Thanks to his leadership, several European countries have vastly increased
their efforts and the number of agents assigned to this task.
General Walt had one other recommendation which, in light of the
current efforts to down-play the menace of certain drugs, should be
brought to your attention. He proposed the death penalty for the heavy
trafficker in heroin and other major drugs.
Now I know that anyone today who suggests tougher criminal penalties
is apt to find himself accused of lacking compassion for the under-
privileged or the disadvantaged. If you are tempted to make such a
judgment of General Walt, consider first his reasoning.
The death penalty is justified for heavy drug pushers, he said,
because the trafficking in narcotics
"at its upper limits
really
represents a form of genocide on a massive scale
a crime so massive, a
crime so heinous, a crime so damaging to so many people and so hurtful
to society that it belongs in a category all by itself." Does the General
exaggerate?
- 3 -
State Bar
Some little while ago, I received a brief but poignant letter from
one of you, a judge here in our state. He wrote, "one of several matters
on my calendar this past hour was a subject who had freaked out following
an LSD trip. I followed the only apparent alternative and buried him in
a state hospital for the mentally ill. Because there is so little to
talk about when they reach this point, such a funeral requires less than
three minutes. But this one was expensive. He leaves a wife, child,
University degree, and a judge who wishes he had the answer to the drug
death.
"
I am sure you understand he was not speaking of a real funeral, that
was his term for storing a living human being away for life in an
institution for the mentally ill. Let me read you a few lines from the
transcript.
"The subject is a poorly developed, poorly nourished, white, married
male. He has long unkempt hair, he stinks. He is unable to communicate,
he babbles, believes he is a Messiah sent down to clean up the jail
he is insane within the meaning of the penal code of California."
The legal age of maturity is now 18 years. Does anyone suggest that
all 18-year-olds have the judgment to resist the dangerous lure of
arcotics? If they are allowed to experiment freely with one drug, can
anyone assure society they will not become enamored of other deadlier
narcotics?
Does society have no obligation to protect its people against
dabbling with a substance that can lead to tragedy and death?
I know of no moral or legal argument that supports such a conclusion.
Yet at this moment, there is a campaign under way to legalize marijuana.
The illogical arguments advanced on behalf of this initiative so far
remind me of an experience the Reverend Billy Graham had while conducting
one of his rallies. He was being picketed by a noisy group of
demonstrators who were demanding instead that marijuana be legalized.
When the Reverend Graham asked one of the demonstrators why he so
violently rejected religion, the demonstrator replied "man, I don't need
that crutch.
Now, this does not mean society should have a harsh, unfeeling
attitude toward young people whose only brush with the law involves drugs,
especially marijuana. Judges in California already have the option of
making marijuana possession a misdemeanor.
- 4 -
State Bar
Justice must be tempered with compassion, and that is the purpose
of the comprehensive drug abuse treatment program we submitted to the
legislature this year.
We believe the best hope of saving other young people from drug
addiction is through education, So the program includes better
preparation of teachers along with stepped up efforts to expand other
anti-drug educational programs at the community level.
For those persons already hooked on drugs, we propose the immediate
development of additional community-based treatment programs. The state
will pay most of the cost.
And from the legal standpoint, we propose to divert the casual
first time user or possessor of drugs away from jails and prisons.
Instead of being processed through the criminal system, they will be
given the opportunity to participate in treatment programs designed to
keep them from becoming addicts.
This program is moving forward in the legislature. We have good
reason to expect that it will be adopted when the session resumes in
November. I hope all of you, particularly those of you on the bench,
will give it your strong support. The major leadership must come from
within the legal profession and the judiciary itself.
I know the problems I have described sound all too familiar. It was
ever thus. Aristotle was complaining about the judicial system 2,000
years ago. And if he were around today, I suspect he would probably be
speaking at a bar meeting now and then.
The phrase "Crisis in the Courts" has become something of a cliche
in recent years. Unfortunately, cliches are born of truth repeated over
and over again.
There is a crisis, not only in the courts, but a crisis of faith in
our entire system, a lack of confidence in what some of our young people
refer to as "The Establishment. 11
A recent poll showed that 39 percent of the American people---almost
two out of every five citizens---have little or no faith or confidence in
government, and by government they mean all three branches; executive,
legislative, and judiciary.
As attorneys and judges, you know that many of the procedures that
are called cumbersome in our legal system are necessary safeguards to
protect the rights of the accused, no matter what his crime. Whatever
changes we make can never sacrifice those basic rights.
- 5 -
State Bar
But the frustration of the people goes far beyond impatience with
the legitimate legal safeguards involved in criminal justice. The
victim of a crime cannot understand why it sometimes takes years for the
courts to deal with an armed robber who only took two minutes to commit
the crime.
Long delays between arrest and conviction, endless appeals of
questionable merit, the resort to legal gimmicks involving technical
rules
all of these things contribute to the lack of confidence in the
legal system. To many of our people, it seems the prime goal of defense
attorneys is not an early hearing on the merits of the case to win
acquittal or a resolution of the case on the facts. Instead, delay
becomes a tactic in itself, a way not to assure justice, but to thwart it.
The legal system itself must lead the effort for reforms, provide
the effective means of dealing with disrespectful and contemptuous
;
conduct toward the court, the regulations to prohibit the antics of
defendants who see their day in court only as an opportunity to publicize
and dramatize a social or political cause.
For more than 180 years, the advocacy system in our courts has been
one of the legal system's major strengths in assuring justice. Today it
seems, the advocacy system has become a means of exploiting the weaknes
S
of our system using the legitimate safeguards built into our legal
system to prevent it from functioning effectively.
This is not confined exclusivly to the criminal courts. Many laymen
also are frustrated by a legal system they feel is being misused to delay
or prevent entirely the carrying out of legislative reforms enacted by a
majority vote of the elected representatives of the people.
I am sure many of you are familiar with some of the legal challenges
to elements of the welfare reform program adopted last year. Now, I do
not suggest that there be no possibility of legal challenges to
legislation. At times, it may even be desirable to clarify the intent
and dimensions of a specific program.
But the court system should not allow itself to be used by proponents
of a political cause. At last count, 13 challenges to the 1971 welfare
reform program have been carried through to a judicial resolution. The
state was upheld on 12 of those 13.
1 I 6
State Bar
Yet, as a result of those delays, some of the reforms to crack down
on welfare fraud and abuse were blocked for months. The major losers in
this situation are the taxpayers and the truly needy. These delays
cost millions of additional dollars in welfare costs
most of which went
to people who
as the result of the appeals demonstrated
had no legal
claim to it.
There is another cost in this kind of situation, too. The legal
system itself loses a little more credibility.
The flurry of initiatives on the November ballot is an example of
the impatience of the public. And their impatience is directed at all
three branches of government. Some of the issues that will be decided in
November have been before us for years.
There is tax reform, an issue debated for years but not yet resolved
by the legislative and executive branches. This was given new impetus
this year by a judicial decision. This will be on the ballot.
Capital Punishment: this issue involves such a major change of
public policy that it can only be decided by the people, through their
elected representatives or by the people themselves.
Until the past decade, we had laws against pornography and they
apparently worked because we certainly did not have the tide of
obscenity that has caused concern today.
Some of the obscenity freely available is so offensive, so far beyond
the moral standards of the society, that laymen have no trouble
recognizing it for what it is simple, hardcore pornography, produced
and sold for profit. And the public cannot understand why it is
impossible for the legal system to develop an effective and workable
definition of pornography, one that avoids censorship of legitimate works
of art or literature, but which will provide some restraints against the
worst obscenity and pornography. So on this issue, too, the people acted
through the initiative, and they will make the decision themselves.
The people have clearly wanted a resolution of all these matters.
But the system, whether through legislative inaction or judicial
interpretation, failed to respond.
Whether rightly or wrongly, there is a feeling by the public that
some court rulings are rendered without considering the consequences.
Prison authorities may no longer examine a prisoner's mail from his
attorney on the grounds that this violates the privileged status of
communications between an attorney and his client.
- 7 -
State Bar
I do not argue here the merits of either side But I would like to
point out that we are not talking about a change in a sorority's
dormitory hours. Under this ruling, an unscrupulous attorney presumably
could pass on a detailed escape plan to a convict client.
Now I realize that only a few years ago, the mere implication that
an attorney might involve himself in lawlessness possibly would shock
some of you. After the recent tragedies in prisons and all the events
and people involved, there exists some reason why authorities believe
they must take every precaution against every potential challenge to
prison discipline.
The violence of revolutionary activity in our prisons is real. It
represents a daily threat to the lives of correctional officers and
inmates. At what point does the attorney-client relationship end and
where might a new relationship- that of accomplice begin?
A new obligation has been imposed on you---the legal profession
and the bar.
You must screen your membership carefully, and you must be prepared
to take vigorous action; discipline and disbarment, if necessary,
against those few who would violate the ethics of your profession. This
responsibility cannot be delegated. The bar itself must be the first
to enforce those standards.
In focusing on your problems, perhaps I have left the impression
that it is all up to you, that we would be a long way toward a perfect
scciety if the legal profession lived up to its responsibilities. That
is not my intent. The responsibility for making our system work, for
recapturing the vitality, the noble ideals inherent in America's form
of government, is not yours alone. It is an obligation we all share.
And it is a responsibility the people share, too.
We will not reduce crime by legalizing a lot of things that have
always been against the law. All the rules and efficient court
procedures will not assure justice unless our people, a massive majority
of them, are willing to accept the rule of law as a necessary alternative
to the rule of the mob.
Respect for the law
for the ideal of justice for all
for
equality
these things must come from within society itself.
- 8 -
State Bar
It has been said that you can have 10,000 regulations and still
not have respect for the law. To have a lawful society involves the
total structure of society
faith in ourselves
faith in our
institutions
our political and economic system and yes, faith and
confidence that the American dream of liberty and justice for all still
burns fiercely within all our hearts. Judge Learned Hand said "Freedom
lives in the hearts of men, when it dies there, no court, no law, no
constitution can save it."
/
Justice Lewis Powell of the Supreme Court, in some recent remarks
before a prayer breakfast of the American Bar Association, said "I was
taught and still believe that a sense of honor is necessary to personal
self-respect; that duty, recognizing an individual subordination to
community welfare, is as important as rights; that loyalty, which is
based on the trustworthiness of honorable men, is still a virtue; and
that work and self discipline are as essential to individual happiness
as they are to a viable society
"Indeed, I still believe in patriotism, not if it is limited to
parades and flag waving, but because worthy national goals and
aspirations can be realized only through love of country and a desire
to be a responsible citizen."
########
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- 9 -
9/30
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RON
REAGAN
RELEASE: SATURDAY P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
September 30, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
9-29-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Anaheim, California
September 30, 1972
It was my firm intention to discuss Senator McGovern's welfare plans
with you today. I use the plural advisedly. Not even the vaunted cotton
tail proliferates as do the "something for nothing" proposals that come
forth like goodies from a fractured Pinata.
Would I tell you of the Welfare Rights plan---the $6500 a year
guaranteed income whether people work or not which he introduced
in
the Senate and which he told the black caugus he stood behind 1000 percent?
or would we discuss his plan to give everyone $1,000 each year? I
mention those two frankly because I have not been able to keep up with
the other more recent plans he has announced all of which have in common
the raising of government spending and increasing the tax burden on those
who work in order to force the redistribution of their earnings to those
who do not work.
A few weeks ago, Sargent Shriver was in Sacramento and stood before
the press with straight face---and denied that Senator McGovern ever
seriously proposed that $1,000 a year giveaway. He said that was a
falsehood fastened on McGovern by his Democrat opponents in the primary.
Was the seventh-choice-Vice-Presidential-candidate so new to the game that
he did not know California was one of the places picked by his leader to
announce the blossoming of the $1,000 money tree? It was May 27 when the
two hour press conference was held here in the Golden State. The brochures
generously distributed bore the title "McGovern Minimum Income Plan."
The text made it plain that 80 million workers were going to provide about
91 million people with $1,000 each.
But Shriver now claims his presidential running mate did not really
mean it. Maybe SO. And then maybe communication with the compound at
annisport is plagued by static. So far, the McGovern campaign
contribution list makes no mention of any financial aid whatsoever from
the "in-laws."
Now it is possible they gave McGovern the "Sarge" in lieu of money
and it is possible also that the only way they could get him to go along
with the deal was to keep him in the dark about McGovern's real plans.
- 1 -
(
GOP
Ironically, the McGovern party campaign plan is to challenge the
credibility of the President. And yet, today's credibility gap is the
one consistency of McGovernism. He said he did not send Pierre Salinger
to Paris to deal with the enemies of our country---but "Unlucky Pierre"
was already holding a press conference announcing the results of his
trip. So 24 hours later the man who would be President held a second
press conference to explain he might not have been completely accurate
the day before.
In Massachusetts, he was for busing. In Florida he did not like it.
He has made the symbol of perfection 1000 per cent---a synonym for
vacillation and bad faith. Willie Mays would take a called strike three
before he would try for a 1000 percent batting average.
The Nixon administration in these 3½¹₂ years has a great record of
progress to present to the people of the nation. And we have a great
record to offer to the people of California.
The President has embarked on a plan for peace more far reaching
than just ending the war he inherited in Vietnam. He seeks a lifetime
of peace for our children. The heads of state I met in Europe told me
his plan offers the best hope for peace we have seen in this century.
And do you know he has not marched in a single picket line or waved a
sign in a street demonstration. Only a strong America, prepared to meet
the threat of any aggressor, can keep the peace and he is pledged to that
We do not have to twist history or invent political myths about
the Republican commitment to peace. We are the party of peace and the
record proves it.
America has been involved in four major wars in my life time. None
were started under a Republican President, but the Presidents who were in
office when they started had all campaigned on a peace platform.
Two of those four wars took place in this last quarter of a century
In neither was there a plan for victory. In Korea and Vietnam, they just
stumbled from one crisis to another. And in each of those wars, it took
the courageous action of a Republican President to end America's
involvement, to restore peace without betraying an ally. In Korea, it
was Dwight Eisenhower. In Vietnam, it is Richard Nixon who is bringing
our troops home
- 2 - -
GOP
It is the Republican party which has campaigned for peace and then
delivered on that promise. It is the Republican party that has been the
historic champion of the individual against big, impersonal government,
against higher taxes and centralized bureaucracy. We look upon the
people of America as individuals.
We must carry this truth to the people of California this year
because our opponents, who left America a legacy of war, are now
cynically posing as the champions of peace.
During the Democratic national convention (I almost said the
happening at Miami last July), we saw an example of political mythmaking.
The former national chairman of the Democratic party said people in
public life should "level" with the American people. He should find
himself a presidential candidate who follows that advice.
It is not leveling with our citizens to say the federal government
can increase spending anywhere from $75 to $150 billion a year to finance
all kinds of welfare giveaway schemes, without increasing the tax burden
of the working citizen.
It is not leveling with the people to suggest that America can
defend Israel or meet our other defense commitments by scrapping most of
our aircraft carriers and reducing our military manpower to a level below
what we had before Pearl Harbor. It is not leveling with the people to
DAY we can cut $32 billion from the defense budget without closing
adreds of bases and defense plants and throwing several million people
into the unemployment lines.
And it is not leveling with the people for our opponents to say they
want to unify America when their whole political approach is based on a
philosophy that divides Americans into voting blocks, setting ethnic
group against ethnic group, class against class, and even encourages the
young to set themselves against their parents.
They talk of the American Dream, but they would deliver a nightmare
of unreality that could turn into a nightmare of crisis for America and
its allies
Words like honesty and integrity flow easily through their campaign
rhetoric. I suppose they are a thousand percent behind their current
campaign promises. But tune in tomorrow. They will be singing a
different tune.
- 3 -
GOP
Let us take an honest look at what they say, what they have done and
what they propose to do. No honest man who has lived in a world of
reality these past 40 years can promise a world without evil, where
there is no need for free men to be vigilant against a threat to their
freedom. No man of integrity could tell the people of America that
freedom comes cheap, that we can make the kind of massive defense
reductions they have suggested.
The defense budget they propose would mean mass unemployment. It
would turn middle income scientists, engineers, and skilled production
workers into candidates for welfare. And it would do something worse to
the America we love. It would turn our country into a second class
power, helpless to defend its own freedom or that of its allies.
The McGovern policy calls for negotiation, not from a position of
strength, but from a deliberate policy of military weakness that could
only lead to appeasement and crises.
America cannot survive in the 1970s if our people have only a
half-hearted commitment to freedom. Our opponents have a vision of a
frightened, militarily weak America that does not resemble the descri ion
of our national anthem: "the land of the free and the home of the brave.
They say America can keep the peace, not by speaking softly and carrying
a big stick as Teddy Roosevelt advised, but by approaching the enemy
hat-in-hand.
No American President and no generation of Americans has ever been
willing to accept that kind of humiliation. And this November, that is
one message the people of America will deliver at the ballot box.
Four years ago, Richard Nixon pledged that he would do everything
possible to end America's participation in Vietnam, not by surrendering
to the demands of Hanoi, but by stepping up the training of the South
Vietnamese so they could defend themselves and allow our troops to come
home.
And he is keeping that promise. More than 500,000 Americans have
come home. By the end of the year, there will be only 27,000 Americans
left in Vietnam and none at all on combat duty.
Combat deaths have declined 95 percent. In fact, we had one recent
week in which not a single American lost his life in Southeast Asia.
That is our goal.
- 4 -
GOP
The draft calls that were running at the rate of 50,000 a month wt
the President took office have been scaled down. The draft itself has
been reformed so that young men can plan their lives, their education,
and their careers. And we will have an all volunteer army by next July
Our opponents offer amnesty to those who have turned their backs
on America. But they would abandon the last bargaining power we have t
secure the release of America's prisoners of war, the men who answered
when they were called to duty. Apparently, they are willing to leave
the fate of these gallant men to the whims of Communists who are holdin
them captive under conditions that violate the most basic tenets of
international law.
The President is not willing to settle for that. He is not willin
to settle for second best for America. He advocates a defense policy
that offers a realistic deterrent.
He wants a prosperity that is built on peace, not war. And that i.
a massive change of direction that has occurred these past 3½ years.
During the eight years of Camelot and the Great Society, the only time .
had full employment was during a build-up for war in Southeast Asia.
The unemployment rate is lower now when we are getting out of
Vietnam than it was in the early 1960s when our opponents were getting
into that long and costly struggle.
On issue after issue, the things our opponents now condemn are
failures of their own making. We have not controlled Congress for
virtually 38 of the last 40 years. We are not the architects of the
welfare programs that have made millions of Americans dependent on the
dole.
We did not write the tax laws they say are riddled with loopholes
designed to favor the affluent, and frankly, they know this is not true
of the tax laws they wrote. The only major tax relief we have had in a
decade was the 1969 Tax Reform under President Nixon. As a result of t1
reform, individuals are now paying $22 billion less in federal taxes and
corporations are paying $5 billion more.
It was not during the 12 years a Republican occupied the White Hous
but during the 28 years of Democratic rule that power became centralized
in Washington, and the bureaucracy grew so unwieldy. When the New Deal
took over, there was one federal employee for every 203 Americans. When
the present Republican administration went to Washington, there was one
federal worker for every 67 Americans.
GOP
We know a little about uncontrolled growth of government in
California. In the last six years of the prior Democratic administration,
the number of full-time state civil service employees grew by almost
25,000. But at the end of the past fiscal year, there were fewer full-
time state employees than there were almost six years ago when a
Republican administration went to Sacramento.
You know the story of the reforms we have tried to make, the
economies, the efforts to streamline state government; to make
government more responsive and less costly.
We did not limit our economies to paper clips. We took on the
single greatest cause of California's fiscal problems the runaway
growth of welfare that threatened to bankrupt the state.
At last count, there were 217,000 fewer people on welfare in
California than when we started. In 13 of the 16 months after we put
this program into effect, the caseload declined.
You probably also remember all the screams of outrage, the charges
that the state was shifting welfare cost to the counties. Well, it
just did not happen.
In fact, this year the county of Los Angeles saved millions of
dollars from what the experts said welfare would cost. And this year
there was a 40-cent reduction in the county's basic property tax rate,
blanks to welfare reform.
To fully appreciate the magnitude of that turnaround, you have to
remember that in the previous six years, there was a property tax
increase in Los Angeles County every year. In one year, the increase
alone amounted to $1.18 per hundred dollars on the basic tax rate.
After welfare reform, this year there was a 10-cent tax cut in
Riverside County. Other counties report similar reductions in their
basic tax rates.
Not all of their officials give credit to welfare reform. But just
look at what the expects were projecting on the cost of welfare before.
Without our reforms, there would have been no talk of property tax
thruction at all; there would have been massive tax increases.
Without welfare reform, there would have been no debate about how
best to use the projected state surplus to relieve the tax burden of our
people. There would have been tax increases at all levels of government.
- 6 -
GOP
(And here I would like to say something about the Watson amendment--
Proposition 14 that will be on the ballot November 7). Some of the
things it proposes are things we are working to accomplish, too things
like the tax ceiling. But this amendment is not the way to achieve
realistic tax relief. If Proposition 14 passes, there will not be any
surplus. The net impact will be a massive tax increase.
The only way to achieve lasting tax relief is to reduce government
costs. And this is where we Republicans are on a real collision course
with our opponents.
They want to spend every nickel of revenue that comes in. Tax
relief is not one of their priorities. I have had to veto more than $1
billion of spending since I have been in Sacramento so we could have a
balanced budget. The only time in which I didn't have to veto a single
penny was the time we had a clear Republican legislative majority that
was just as determined as we are to reduce the tax burden of our citizens.
Vetoing is not necessarily my favorite sport. That is why our main
priority this year, aside from re-electing the President and Vice-
President, is to send the spenders home.
We need more Republicans in Sacramento because we have not finished
the job. We are not going to sit on our oars and give up fighting for
economy in government these next two years. We are not going to abandon
our effort to strengthen law enforcement, to make life harder on the
criminals and a lot safer for the law-abiding citizens.
We are determined to move forward. And we need a Republican
majority to help us. You know the registration odds we face. Well, my
answer to that is: there is still a week before the (October 8)
registration deadline. Every Republican who wants lower taxes, stronger
law enforcement and a realistic school financing program should be out
registering new Republicans. And I hope every member of this committee
and every member of every Republican volunteer organization will give
this their majority priority before we gear up for the election day
victory squads.
I know some of you may be heartened by the polls that show the
President leading. Well, I would like to remind you that he has not had
a Republican Congress during his first term. The legislative and
Congressional races will help determine which direction America and
California will take these next few years.
7
GOP
Millions of Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents
are concerned about the prospect of having the McGovern philosophy
dictating America's fiscal policy. Well, right now we have the McGovern
philosophy in charge of the key fiscal committees in the California
legislature,
They dominate the committee assignments; they set the rules; they
schedule the bills; they bottle up legislation that is favored by an
overwhelming majority of the people because they have a majority.
One example of their power to thwart the will of the people is the
issue of capital punishment. Even after the court rulings this year,
the legislature had an opportunity to clarify California law on this
subject; to restore the death penalty as a deterrent. But the
legislation was blocked because we did not have enough strength to
/the legislature.
it enrough both houses of So the people of California will dec
on
this issue themselves.
But passing this initiative is only half the job. We need more
legislators who believe as we do that the job of law enforcement is to
protect the people. We need legislators who will not ignore the
continuing attacks on police and correctional officers. Almost two
years ago we sponsored legislation to make the killing of a peace
officer mandatory first degree murder, subject to the death penalty.
But the McGovern majority that dominates the legislature has
refused to pass this law.
They have some strange ideas on law enforcement. Some of them want
to boycott lettuce and legalize grass. While we are trying to strengther
law enforcement, they propose laws to weaken it. Their idea of a crime
program is longer suspended sentences.
They not only want to legalize marijuana; they also want to
legalize prostitution, relax probation restrictions.
They have been trying to get some of these things for years.
That is why we need a Republican majority pledged to uphold the law.
Despite the polls, we have got a big job in California, not only
to elect the President, but to regain a majority in the legislature.
Overconfidence and apathy are our greatest enemies.
The only way we will deliver a Republican majority at the polls
is to work as we have never worked before.
- 8 -
GOP
This year we will have the support of hundreds of thousands of
Californians who believe in the historic principles of the Democratic
party. They have been abandoned by their party; left without a
candidate because they cannot accept the McGovern philosophy of
defeatism and despair. Like most of us, they even have trouble keeping
up with the New Politics.
Perhaps they have had trouble because the Senator from South Dakot
keeps back-tracking on what he said before almost every time he makes
a speech.
But Senator McGovern has made enough speeches on enough issues for
most Americans to realize that whatever it is he stands for, it is not
what most Americans want for their country.
#######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- 9 -
5/01
M
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE:
A.Ms. THURSDAY Friday
Sacramento, California 95814
October 5, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
10-4-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS ANNUAL MEETING
FAIRMONT HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO
October 5, 1972
In my previous occupation, we had a well known playwright, Moss Hart,
who was given to requests for cocktail party diagnoses. One evening he
was introduced to a Dr. Jones and immediately went into a description of
a low back pain that was plaguing him. The friend who had introduced
them was embarrassed and said "Moss---Dr. Jones is a Doctor of Economics.
Moss was only stopped for a second. He said: "Doctor, I bought a stock
the other "
Well, doctors, many Americans have a health problem, a feeling that
they are being threatened with a loss of liberty, a growth of
regimentation, and a restriction of their freedom of choice.
This is not some new, unknown ailment. It has spread all over the
world and the reason I mention it here is because in a number of other
countries the virus had its incubus in your profession. But this viral
disorder cannot be localized. Once it settles on the doctors, it settles
on the patients- all of us.
First symptom of the disease is an excess of rhetoric about the need
to provide more and better health care for the poor. This spreads rapidly
because virtually all of us are committed to the belief that no one,
because of inability to pay, should be denied medical care. We have
always felt that way and yet almost forgotten that in an earlier day the
medical profession met that problem on an individual basis with very
little talk from social planners about "health delivery systems."
Now, it is probably true that such a system has been outmoded by the
increase of urbanization and the complexities of modern living and we do
need a more orderly and comprehensive process. The real question is, who
is best equipped to evolve such a process and to supervise its operation?
Simple common sense would indicate a rather obvious answer. But, we
would be overlooking the virus and what its effects have been on rational
thinking. We are already in the advanced stages where we find ourselves
going along with the idea that we are confronted with a "health care
crisis, which will become an instant disaster unless there is immediate
government intervention.
- 1
College of Surgeons
A Harvard Economics professor calls medicine in America a failure,
Others have joined a young Senator in demanding $77 billion worth of
cradle-to-the-grave "Teddicare." Fortune magazine states that "whether
poor or not, most Americans are badly served by the obsolete, over-
strained medical system. The management of medical care has become too
important to leave to doctors." One wonders what size print Fortune
would use to rebut any doctor who suggested that publishing had become
too important to leave to publishers, editors, and writers.
I am not going to belabor you with the voluminous facts and figures
which you already know, about the shortcomings of government medicine
wherever it is practiced in the world, as compared to medicine here in
the last stronghold of private practice.
In recent years, the number of doctors in the United States has
increased three times iaster than the population has grown.
In 1960, there was one physician to every 712 citizens. Last year,
it was one for every 632, and the ratio has improved since then.
We are one of the few countries in the world where the doctor-patient
ratio has been improving. It is true they are not evenly distributed
+hroughout the land, but this raises the question of whether there is any
available standard for determining just how many doctors are enough.
The ratio in South Dakota is less than half the national average, but
there is very little difference in the health of the people of South
Dakota compared to other states.
New medical schools are in the process of planning and building. In
three years, we will be turning out an additional thousand doctors a year.
Ninety-eight percent of all the babies born in America are born in
hospitals. In most of those countries where medicine has been socialized,
the trend is to allow hospitalization aid even doctor attendance only if
trouble is anticipated.
We live in a time and place where 1019 time tradition, dogma and
accepted methods are subjected to research and study and run through
emputers to see if their continued use can be iustified. There is more
factual evidence available today regarding the ative merits of
government versus private medicine than on any maj, issue. Yet we ignore
facts to engage in highly emotional debate. Does anyme suggest that
government's record in its forays into farming, housing, and the solution
to poverty recommend it as successor to the family docto->
College of Surgeons
The plain truth is that medicine in the United States has reached
a level unequaled any place in the world. In a single lifetime, we have
literally wiped out scores of diseases that have plagued man for centuries
past. Medicine in any country where it has been nationalized cannot
begin to compare with medicine in our private system in quality or
quantity.
The socialization of medicine has not only failed to solve health
care problems where it has been tried, but it has been the first step in
socializing the political and economic system of a country. You cannot
socialize the doctor without eventually socializing the patients.
My plea to you is that you must not subscribe to the theory of
inevitability. If you will not lead the resistance how can the rest of
us hold out?
Why haven't you based your first line of defense on the simple and
obvious question so easy to understand by every man, whatever his trade
or profession? The question: By what right can government tell the men
and women of one profession that in order to practice their art they must
become government employees? I know how the artists and craftsmen in
ny previous work would react if government proposed this to them. Try
it on the newscasters, the construction workers, the farmers.
If we do not believe that we should coerce physicians, or plumbers
or economists to live and work where some bureau of government has
decreed they must live and work; if we believe that our health care
problems can best be met by targeting particular troubles rather than
violently transferring the entire system; then let us agree that
something is needed beyond just maintaining the status quo.
We have a pluralistic system at present. It is a logical outcrop
of our American Dream. We have "fee for service" by individuals and
groups in the tradition of free enterprise. We have clinics and pre-
payment and government medicine, all existing in a comfortable
competition.
We are probably unanimous in our agreement that freedom of choice is
one of the most essential components in America's pluralistic medical
system. We have proven over the years that the personal relationship
between patient and doctor is best for the patient; that some of the
ills that affect the system can best be treated by effective peer review.
- 3 -
College of Surgeons
Six years ago, checking the things our new administration had
inherited, we found an infant on our doorstep Medi-Cal. I have had
reason to doubt its legitimacy more than once. It was only six months
old but already a spoiled brat with a tendency toward obesity.
And being a government issue baby it was an alimentary canal with
an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. We
learned in less than three months that it was out of control with
hundreds of millions of dollars already obligated in the pipe line. We
asked for legislation to correct some of its more obvious defects,
stating that unless corrected, it would soon top the $2 billion mark in
cost. Our request was denied, and our prediction scoffed at by the
legislature which had sired it. In short, the plan provided an unlimited
health care credit card, offering almost three times as many services as
the host of insurance plans to all recipients of welfare plus non welfare
recipients who were deemed to be medically indigent.
It went on increasing in cost; $600 million the first year, $100
million more the following year, then $200 million more each year after
that. We took no joy in the fact that our cost projection was proving
correct. It had passed $1.2 billion when we set out to do a drastic
over-haul combined with a complete reform of the welfare system which was
increasing in caseload 40,000 a month. Both attempts were met with a
Fierce vindictive resistance, but we had the overwhelming support of the
people, and the reforms have been in operation for a little more than a
year.
When the wind comes down off the Sierras in the night, you can still
hear the anguished screams of a frustrated bureaucracy.
We have almost a quarter of a million fewer people on welfare than
we had a little over a year ago, and the Medi-Cal budget is not up $200
million it is actually millions less than it was last year. The young
man who had a great deal to do with engineering these reforms is Dr. Earl
Brian, Secretary of Health and Welfare for California. He is the first
physician ever to hold a cabinet post in California's state government.
Dr. Brian has earned that important post. He is responsible for our
health, manpower and prison programs involving 45,000 employees and a
yearly budget of $6.5 billion, larger than that of 46 states. No doctor
in this room is more devoted to the traditional doctor-patient
relationship.
College of Surgeons
No man in this room is more pledged to uphold all the prerogatives
of the private practice of medicine indeed, of private enterprise
itself, than Dr. Brian. Yet, he has had the unhappy task of issuing and
enforcing orders which many of you would feel interfered with your rights
as a physician. These orders, mandated by statute and regulation, are
part and parcel of government involvement in health care. Government's
only tools are force and coercion. What we have now is only a hint of
what you will have if the nationalized health proponents have their way.
You will become medical paper pushers as your British compatriots will
tell you.
Dr. Brian has embarked on an effort to reduce the weight of
government's hand as much as possible in the administration of our
existing programs. His proposal is based on the idea that "pre-payment
in the delivery of health care offers the best solution to the problem
of cost control and quality of care." But he means for this pre-payment
to bring about modern management and organization in the delivery of
care with the physicians retaining "control of their fiscal and
professional destinies."
Our goal is to create workable ways to eliminate financial barriers
to medical care for all our people
through prepaid plans supervised by
the medical profession. We want to create a situation where you can be
free to practice medicine, according to your own judgment and that of
your peers
without having government looking over your shoulder telling
you how to do it.
Incentives have been established based on financial rewards for those
operating pre-paid health plans and relief from controls. Pre- paid
health plans may be (1) a medical society (or medical society health
care foundation), or (2) a medical group practice, or (3) a private
insurance company.
For example, prior authorization for hospitalization is not required.
The Pre-paid Health Plans are free to be innovative in finding the most
fficient and economic methods of service delivery.
A competitive environment is maintained in that no exclusive
territory is granted a Pre-paid Health Plan. The patients have freedom:
of choice in selecting a Pre-paid Health Plan or of retaining their
open fee-for-service Medi-Cal status.
Our intent is to use this massive health program as a change agent.
This contracts with the exploration going on at the federal level focused
on as yet a somewhat formless Health Maintenance Organization.
College of Surgeons
Our Pre-paid Health Plan efforts are not based on theory, but on
several years of experience. Providers will find the plans financially
advantageous, and free of controls that restrict the free practice of
medicine. Finally the advantages are in lower cost of operation, more
rapid payment, and the opportunity for the provider to control his rates
by increasing productivity at the same time he provides quality care.
The only restrictions on free practice are minimums---none of which
control how often or when the physician treats the patient. Contracts
for more than 250,000 Medi-Cal recipients are already signed.
One of our biggest plans was started July 1 by the Sacramento County
Medical Society. Through their Medical Care Foundation, they have agreed
to provide comprehensive health care to 56,000 Medi-Cal recipients in the
Sacramento area. More than six hundred private practicing physicians
collectively taken responsibility for their Pre-paid Health Plan. For
their usual fees, they will provide services to their patients in their
offices and in the area hospitals. If the plan shows a profit, it will
be shared by all. If it runs a deficit, it will be shared by all.
Already the plan has enrolled 20,000 recipients and everyone has
profited. The doctors practice medicine without government intervention
and receive their usual compensation, the recipients are treated like
other private patients, the taxpayers through the government will save
about 10 percent of the usual cost.
We are particularly grateful for the tireless effort shown by Dr. Jim
Schubert, a Sacramento Orthopedic Surgeon who is President of the
Foundation. Without his efforts, the plan would not be a reality.
We view this as having the potential to test and create new vehicles
for health care delivery which, on a volume basis, can be utilized as an
alternative for all socio-economic groups. Providers, once organized in
pre-paid plans whether for government subsidized patients, private
patients, or both, will find savings in overhead and administration; bad
debts are eliminated; income is predictable; cash flow controlled; claims
simplified and intervention by a third party payer is avoided. The
provider is free to practice medicine according to his own judgment and
that of his peers.
We believe California has shown that government can tread the thin
line between what has been and what can be.
It is time for the medical profession to reassert its right through
the Pre-paid Health Plan to practice in that free market place and in so
doing, help all of us remain free.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- S
de
and
No
5
9
wall
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: We "nesday, October 11
Sacramento, California 95814
10 AM
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
10-10-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
CALIFORNIA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATION
San Francisco, California
October 11, 1972
A few weeks ago in Sacramento, I spoke of a long-term goal of making
government less costly and more efficient, not just in our state
operations, but at every level of government. I called it a "not
impossible dream" of restructuring government to make its operations more
visible to the people to assign responsibilities for various services
to specific levels of government and if possible the revenue sources to
finance those services.
Most editorial comment was extremely favorable, but some
misunderstood and thought I was proposing an extra layer of government.
What I was proposing was just the opposite. It was not to increase, but
to reduce and simplify government by searching out ways to eliminate
costly administrative structures, end duplication and streamline the
entire structure of government. This is necessary if we ever are to make
government at all levels accountable to the people=--so that average
citizens can see where their tax dollars are going and what they are
getting in return. Can we, in short, put a visible price tag on
government and government's promises?
I was delighted to learn that your organization has been exploring
this same subject. And that you are well along in your studies.
Welcome to the club.
This is not the first instance where you and I have shared a joint
interest in working toward the same goals. And I am grateful for all
you have done to help streamline state government.
I say this sincerely and with faith in our friendship, even though
I intend to speak of a sensitive issue upon whi ch we are probably divided
In Sacramento, we have been trying to agree on a realistic and
workable tax reform program for four years, but we have still got hay in
the field.
Just two years ago, I proposed a tax reform that would have cut
property taxes between 27-40 percent for the average homeowner. That bill
was supported by 93 of the 119 legislators, but on the fateful night one
of the 93 was in the hospital and we failed by that single vote.
- 1 -
CREA
Last year we tried again across the negotiating table and again we
were frustrated by the same little willful band of senators who have
made it plain they want more money for government, not less. Finally
we managed to agree on a mini-tax reform that reduced the property tax
burden of our senior citizens, instituted withholding and contained a fev
of the other elements of the comprehensive tax reform we have been trying
to achieve. It did not do what needs to be done to reduce the proper
tax burden on the typical homeowner,
This year, we tried again. Since some of the opposition were
telling the folks back home that they too wanted tax reform, we had hopes
they might at last see the urgency of providing broad homeowner tax
relief.
One additional factor should be mentioned. California historicall
has relied on property taxes for a major part of school financing.
is therefore impossible to consider this subject without at the same
time dealing with the problem of school finance.
We have known for years that property taxes are simply too high and
must be cut. And we have known that California's school aid formula
is an outmoded complexity of legislative mandates and regulations.
Over the years, it has become more and more complicated and less and
lers fair
especially to the poorest school districts.
To meet these two problems responsibly, we must consider them as
a package. We made it clear that we were prepared to work with the
legislature to iron out our differences and come up with a concensus
program that would achieve our goals. And again we worked out a
comprehensive program that won the support of a majority of the
legislature. It was supported by business groups
by school groups
by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The Speaker of the
Assembly co-sponsored it, and a majority of the members of the lower house
approved it. But it did not gain the two-thirds majority necessary to
pass. It was blocked in the state Senate this time by four votes. The
legislature recessed without resolving either the problem of property
tax reform or school finance.
As a result of four successive years of failure, many of you have
grown cynical about ever achieving tax reform in the legislature.
Believe me, I can understand the frustration and the anger that many
citizens feel over these shabby examples of some elected officials
continuing to put partisanship ahead of responsibility.
- 2 -
CREA
They cannot justify or excuse their failure to provide homeowner
property tax relief.
I cannot quarrel with the frustration that has prompted you and
other groups to support Proposition 14 on the November 7 ballot. And
after struggling for more than four years for homeowner tax relief, I
can appreciate the goal of this amendment.
Unfortunately, I have a job and a Constitutional responsibility to
weight Proposition 14 against the needs of the state and the need of
homeowners for property tax relief. However much I agree with your goal,
or appreciate your frustration at the legislature's failure to enact tax
reform, I find I cannot support and indeed must oppose Proposition 14
if I am to meet my responsibility to the people.
I think you will agree I have demonstrated my desire for a real tax
reform, as a matter of fact, I kind of started the whole thing. I did
not come quickly or easily to my present position on this ballot issue.
We have examined this proposal thoroughly. It includes some things
like tax ceilings on local government, that we have incorporated into
each of our own tax reform programs. But after the most careful analysis
of the overall impact, we have come to the realization that it just does
not do the job and it would create more problems than it would solve. I
am sure most of this audience is familiar with the overall proposal but
let me give you some particulars that led to our decision.
Proposition 14 would mean freezing into the state Constitution:
--a 40 percent increase in sales taxes
--a 100 percent increase in cigarette taxes
--a 25 percent increase in the tax on distilled spirits
--a 44 percent increase in the current bank and corporation tax
--a 7 percent severance tax on minerals.
These come to a massive $1.8 billion increase in consumer and
business taxes. But still there would be an unfunded state and local
revenue gap of more than $1.2 billion.
And since virtually all of the available revenue sources have been
committed in Proposition 14, the only other principal tax source we have,
the personal income tax would have to be increased at least 50 percent
and possibly even doubled. Efforts we have made to improve the business
climate in California would be nullified and yet we would have done
nothing to help resolve our school financing problem.
- 3 -
CREA
Instead of increasing school support for our poor districts, we
would have drastically reduced the amount of financial support most of
our schools are now receiving. Instead of increasing the amount of
school aid for every child, it would mean cutting back school support by
$770 million, an amount equaling an average $170 per student.
But possibly the most damaging defect of all is the fact that while
Proposition 14 is offered as a means of homeowner tax relief, the fac.
is that 70 percent of its benefit would go to non-homeowner property.
About 70 percent of the burden of the higher taxes it would impose would
fall on homeowners and on renters, who would pay $371 million more in
taxes and get no benefit to offset these higher taxes.
That is why those of us who are firmly committed to the goals you
seek cannot support and instead must vigorously oppose Proposition 14.
The average citizen works almost five months of the year just to pay
his taxes. That is longer than he has to work to provide food, shelter,
and clothing for his entire family. To raise consumer taxes and bu
taxes to shackle him with an unbearable fiscal burden is a solution
I cannot accept.
And certainly it would not be responsible for any elected official
to ignore the state's reponsibility to solve the school financing problem
And yet, like you, I am totally committed to achieving a realistic
program to reduce homeowner property taxes.
Last spring, when I proposed this year's tax reform program to the
legislature, I said that if it were not enacted, I would consider other
ways of reducing the tax burden of the people of California.
Well, the legislature did not act.
We had to wait to determine our next step until after the cabinet
and our financial people could make a thorough review of our present
fiscal situation, the budget outlook for next year and to consider other
developments such as the surplus we anticipate and the impact of federal
revenue sharing.
Yesterday, I announced that we have completed that review. And
a result, I am able to disclose a program that will reduce homeowner
taxes without increasing income taxes, and that will meet the chronic
crisis of school finance.
This is possible because of a number of factors, including the
savings from our continuing tight state budget policy
by the welfare
and Medi-Cal reforms we made last year and by wisely using the state's
share of federal revenue sharing.
- 4 -
CREA
Briefly; here is what I propose:
Next month, when the legislature reconvenes after the election
recess, I will ask the members to put on the ballot a statewide
constitutional amendment incorporating all the major goals we have
sought in all our tax and school finance reform proposals.
Property Tax Relief
To provide homeowner tax relief, we shall propose that the current
($750) homeowner property tax exemption be at least doubled. Another
$200 million of property tax relief will be provided to homeowners by
rolling back school property taxes with the state providing the
replacement revenue.
We also plan to propose a tax ceiling on local governments to
assure that this property tax cut will be a permanent benefit.
School Aid Formula
To achieve the goal of assuring equal educational opportunity to
all our children we will simplify the present outmoded school aid formula
and provide additional state support to meet the special problems of low
wealth school districts.
We propose a total overhaul of the current school aid formula-
provide flat grants of at least $955 per student at the high school level
and $765 per student at the elementary school level.
The referendum will propose an increase of more than $200 million
of state school assistance to low-wealth school districts, a step that
will go a long way toward meeting the inequities cited in the court
rulings I have mentioned.
To help finance this increased state assistance and the school
district property tax rollback, the plan calls for a one cent increase in
the sales tax and a one percent increase in bank and corporation taxes.
And these are the only tax increases in the entire proposal. Meantime,
the adjustments will help us lift a major part of the school tax burden
off the backs of homeowners and shift it to broader based taxes that are
fairer and which grow approximately as fast as the need for additional
school financing.
We intend to offset the impact of the sales tax adjustment by
providing renter tax relief through an income tax credit for every renter
in California, We propose to provide another increase in state support
for the open space program in recognition of the heavy tax burden on
agricultural property.
CREA
And we intend to make it harder for the legislature to raise taxes
in the future. As you know, at the present time, bank and corporation
taxes may be increased only by a two-thirds majority. Other tax
increases require a simple majority, indicating a philosophy difference
between some of us in Sacramento. The Democratic leadership has
advocated eliminating that two-thirds requirement- I think we should gc
the other way. Therefore, we propose that all increases involving jor
tax sources in the future require a two-thirds majority vote of the
legislature. This will be another safeguard to protect. and make
permanent the overall tax reductions possible in this program.
10 percent State Income Tax Cut
I do not think you will be surprised if I say it has been the polic
of this administration to hold spending down to as low a level as
possible. California once had the nation's second largest public budget
exceeded only by the federal budget. This year, we rank four
behi
the federal budget, Now York state, and even New York City.
made our economies work, and now we are determined to share with the
people the benefit of these economies.
When the state's revenues have exceeded outgo, we have returned the
resulting surplus to the people before someone could think of a way
spend it. In 1970, there was a 10 percent state income tax rebate.
This year, as a result of the so-called withholding windfall, every
taxpayer received a one-time tax cut equal to 20 percent of their state
income tax obligation.
Now, the welfare and Medi-Cal economies we instituted last year and
the improved economy of the state have enabled us to foresee another
budget surplus, but this time an ongoing surplus. So as part of the
plan, I am proposing that the referendum measure provide a 10 percent
reduction in state income taxes---not a one-time rebate---but a permanen
ongoing 10 percent cut in the state income tax.
Our plan is realistic and workable. It will not only cut property
taxes, it will hold them down. It will meet the school problem and it
will reduce state income taxes 10 percent, on a permanent, ongoing basis
None of this, however, can he done if Proposition 14 passes. Then
we will be faced not with a surplus but with the need for a tax increase
But I am not unmindful of the times we have been frustrated by
willful men in the legislature. That is why I am proposing this package
as a referendum.
- 6 -
CREA
I shall ask the legislature to act on it no later than January 31
and return it to me for submission to the people.
If they fail to do this, then I shall personally lead an initiative
campaign to gather sufficient signatures of California voters to place
on the ballot property tax relief, a solution to the school problem and
a permanent income tax cut.
And with the power vested in me by the Constitution, I will then
call a special election immediately to guarantee the people of Californi
the opportunity to make this decision at the ballot box.
We have proven that government and government spending can be broug
under control. If you recall this time last year, there were screams of
outrage about our reform efforts. It was said that the welfare reforms
we proposed would saddle counties with higher costs. Others said it
just could not be done.
Well, we did it. And this year, 42 of California's 58 counties
managed to reduce their basic property tax rates. Thanks to welfare
reform, Los Angeles County cut its basic property tax rate by 40 cents--
reversing a six-year trend of higher and higher local property taxes.
At last count, there were almost 221,000 fewer people on welfare
than there were when we started a year ago last spring. We had to
struggle for seven months in the legislature to pass the program and we
have had to battle in the courts to preserve the reforms we instituted
to crack down on welfare fraud and abuse. Besides easing the taxpayer's
burden, we had another goal in those reforms. And we accomplished that,
too. We have been able to finance a 30 percent increase in benefits for
the truly needy; the people who have no outside income and who are not
on the rolls because of loopholes; they have no other place to turn for
help. Along with this 30 percent increase in benefits for the truly
needy, we were able to finance cost of living increases for senior
citizens and the blind. And we have instituted a program that will
require that all able-bodied citizens who are able to work, should work
for their welfare benefits.
Californians are a generous and compassionate people. They are
prepared to pay their share to assure that the needy among us are not
deprived of the essentials of life.
But they are not prepared to support a permanent and growing welfar
population made up of people who are just as capable of working as the
people who pay taxes to support them.
CREA
We do not believe that is fair to either the truly needy or the
working taxpayers who support the whole welfare system and every other
government program.
That is why we fought so hard for welfare reform. And that is why
we are going to continue every effort we can to make further economies in
government. That is why we are now looking into the restructuring of
all levels of government in California.
We must focus the spotlight of public attention on the need for
governmental efficiency- in Sacramento, in the counties, in the cities,
and in the smallest towns and unincorporated areas. Then we can have
further actual tax reductions, not just tax shifts.
Only when the people are made aware of the fact that they C
tax relief will they demand the reforms necessary to achieve further
cuts. The reforms we have made so far prove that it is possible to bri
government under control.
Working together, the responsible citizens of this state can light
a prairie fire of reform and efficiency that will spread through every
level of government in California. We can leave a legacy of financial
responsibility---a blueprint for a government that can live within its
income without dipping deeper into the pockets of our citizens every
year or SO. We can convince elected officials once and for all that we
want less government, not more.
That is what you want. That is what I want. That is what the
people of California want. And that is what we can give them by working
together. It is not an impossible dream.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- 8 -
01/01
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: THURSDAY, P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
October 12, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
10-11-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL
October 12, 1972
Los Angeles
As most of you know, and if you don't know, I have home movies
to prove it, I have been abroad in recent months on an errand for the
President. I do not pretend that having seen the monkey, I can now
run the circus, but I could not make such a trip, meet the heads of
state I was privileged to meet and carry the messages entrusted to me
without realizing that America's role in world affairs, the decisions we
make, the positions we take in international affairs, will largely
determine whether our children live in peace and prosperity.
America's foreign and defense policies in the decade ahead are
vital matters that concern every American.
In the past 30 years, we have fought three wars and helped rebuild
the countries that were devastated by those wars. We have given more
than $150 billion of our national resources to help our friends---and
even some of our former enemies to become economically self-sufficient.
We have opened our own markets to imports because we believe in the
principle of free trade. We have generously shared our technology. We
know that commercial contacts among nations not only help achieve
prosperity for all; it also represents a contibution to peace, because
political stability cannot be maintained without financial stability
among the major nations of the world.
A few days ago, Denmark joined the European Common Market, the
second nation to affiliate with that economic union in the past year.
That event, along with Britain's addition to the Common Market earlier
this year, is another signal to us that the future will be very different
from what we have known in the past quarter century, an era in which
America was largely dominant in the world's commercial affairs.
With Britain's vast trade included, the Common Market Nations now
have a greater domestic market potential than our own. The population
of the Common Market nations is larger than America's, and their
combined exports are twice our total.
The nations we helped to recover following World War II have matured
economically. They are making their own products and selling them not
only in their home markets, but in America and elsewhere.
-1-
World Affairs Council
To meet these new conditions will require more than a one-step
economic game plan. It should be apparent to any thinking person that
the President has a plan that looks far beyond the war in Vietnam that
has so bitterly divided our people for a decade. His actions in the
past year---the initiatives he has taken diplomatically and economically.
the phase-out of the war, and our long-range defense program, all are
intertwined in a grand design to achieve a goal we have not known in our
lifetimes, a generation of peace and a prosperity based on peace.
Our foreign trade, the world monetary system, and our still
necessary defense alliances are part of this carefully charted path.
Each of them is important to achieving the overall objective.
Whether we succeed or not will depend on how America responds to
the challenges of the 1970s.
Demogogic talk by the "let's kick business" fraternity will not
insure jobs for our skilled and semi-skilled workers. Right now, taxes
on business in the United States are proportionately higher than those
paid by our competitors in the common market and Japan.
One of the decisions we must make involves inflation, because
inflation and lagging productivity have been major causes of our trade
deficits.
During the build-up for the war in Southeast Asia, America's
economic position became distorted. Our country drifted into that
conflict without a definite plan for victory or for dealing with the
inflation that inevitably accompanies war. And in the late 1960s,
America paid the price for that short-sighted attitude. The rate of
inflation doubled and tripled. The value of the dollar eroded and America
found more and more of its products priced out of world markets.
America cannot accept a 6 percent rate of inflation year after year
without ultimate economic chaos. Certainly the President knew this, for
he acted decisively on a number of fronts. And we are now beginning to
see the results.
From mid-1971 to mid-1972, the Consumer Price Index in the United
States rose only 2.9 percent. But in a remarkable turnabout, the rate
of inflation has been growing to 6 and 7 percent in Europe.
Because America's leaders had the courage to face up to the threat
of inflation and do something about it, consumer confidence is being
restored; business is expanding; the unemployment rate is dropping.
- 2 -
World Affairs Council
And after a decade in which our output per man hour dropped us to
last among the 14 major industrial nations, our productivity rate is
now moving ahead.
The President is engaged in negotiations to achieve monetary
stability and to lower the high tariffs that discriminate against
American goods. At long last America is insisting that other nations
pay more than lip service to the principle of free trade. The blunt
truth is that while we have given most favored nation status to most of
our trading partners, they have often responded by making us the least
favored nation in selling our goods in their markets.
But this is only a part of the challenge America faces in the
decade ahead.
The most essential ingredient for America's future prosperity has
less to do with productivity and our trade balance than it does with
the larger issue of how America sees itself and its role in the world.
We did not seek the role of leadership that has been thrust upon us.
But whether we like it or not, the events of our time demand America's
participation.
We cannot hide our head in the sands while events swirl about us---
events that can determine whether there shall be war or peace prosperity
or economic chaos.
Make no mistake about it. Despite the lessening of tensions and
the hopeful signs of great power cooperation in the future, it is
America's industrial and economic strength, translated into military
potential, that represents the single greatest guarantee of peace for
the world.
Now I realize that yours is a non-political organization. But the
things that concern you as an organization and as individual citizens
are political decisions. In this year of decision we will choose whether
to continue fighting with every economic tool we have to reduce inflation
or if we want to accept calculated, planned, and programmed inflation
that is part of one candidate's economic game plan. We must decide
whether America should base its economic prosperity on work, the skills
and the productivity of its people; whether we should seek job
opportunities for all in the productive private sector; or whether we
should put almost half of America's population on a dole---or a make-work
/public
payroll raising the taxes of those who work in order to redistribute
the national income among those who do not.
- 3 -
World Affairs Council
Most important of all, we will decide whether America is willing to
do whatever is necessary to maintain America's freedom against all
threats.
We must ask ourselves if we are willing to risk all that we call
the American way on the naive hope that our potential enemies have
mellowed so much that they no longer have any aggressive designs.
Cutting $30 billion from the defense budget, dismantling great parts
of our navy and air force, scaling back the space program and ignoring'
technical developments, such as the super sonic transport, are real
issues, not subjects for a senior thesis. They are political decisions
to be made in the political arena, and they will determine America's
fate and possibly the fate of mankind for years to come.
The President wants to end the cold war era of conflict and to
substitute an era of negotiations, peaceful settlements of disputes
before they flare into war.
I am sure every American shares that goal. But are we also aware
that every nation in history which hs sought peace and freedom solely
through negotiation has been crushed by conquerors bent on conquest and
aggression.
There was a time in the not too distant past when you could have
taken all the non-aggression pacts and disarmament treaties with their
beribboned seals and signatures and papered the walls of the League of
Nations.
If that is too cynical a view, let me "make it perfectly clear" that
along with a willingness to negotiate, America can best protect the peace
by maintaining a realistic and credible ability to defend itself should
the need occur.
On my Presidential errands over the past two years meeting with the
heads of state of Asian and European nations, I was made aware of what
has to be recognized as a great change in attitude toward the United
States. It is my personal opinion that it reflects our departure from
decades of trying to buy the world's affection and our new determination
:o have the world's respect.
I was in Japan during the time of the President's drastic currency
and trade moves, meeting almost daily with the Prime Minister, the
Ministers of Trade, Foreign Affairs, etc. The American press quoted many
Americans who were fearful of deteriorating relations with our great
trading partner. Their opinions were not shared by the Japanese leaders
with whom I met. As one of them put it, "Your country and ours have
been on a honeymoon during which there have been no disagreements. Now
the honeymoon has ripened into a happy marriage, and as in any good
marriage, there will be an occasional quarrel."
- 4 -
World Affairs Council
In Europe this summer, my errand had to do mainly with our NATO
headquarters. I discovered that these men who must look at the face of
a potential enemy, not across an ocean, but across a border, were
convinced that this American President had a realistic understanding of
the world situation. What is more, they were aware that he had a plan
based on this understanding; that he was going forward with intelligence
and calculation; and that his plan offered a real chance for peace based
on the world situation as it is and not on some vague hope that the
enemy will decide to become an overnight "goodie two-shoes."
What would be the attitude of the men I met if the United States
chose to abandon one ally simply for our own convenience?
There is no way for America to turn inward and embrace isolationism
in the world as it is today without jeopardizing all the progress we
have made toward peace in this century. For those genuinely concerned
with peace and willing to pay the price for it, there is only one path
to choose. It is not the easiest; it is the wisest. If we carry the
burden of responsibility destiny has placed on our shoulders, we do not
become a drop-out in world affairs.
#######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quoted. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- 5 -
the
10/29
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: 10 10 A.M. SUNDAY
Sacramento, Californi\ 95814
October 29, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
10-27-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
AMERICAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION
SAN FRANCISCO
October 29, 1972
In recent years, your organizations both at the state and national
level have become more active in working for better government. And
that is good.
Getting involved is the best guarantee that we will get the kind of
government we need in every state and in Washington.
As one of the major health groups in America, I know that you have
had to concern yourself with a lot of topics that are technically
outside the scope of your profession. You have had to keep an eye on all
developments involving health care, especially government's growing role
in the health care field.
Some of the most critical problems affecting the health care
industry in America are not problems relating to medicine or dentistry;
they are financial and social problems.
Yet you cannot afford to ignore them because the way we choose to
solve these problems can drastically affect the way you practice your
profession.
When the people in Washington say open wide, they are usually talking
about your pocketbook.
In the past decade, government has gone into the health care fields
in a big way; first with Medicare for the elderly, then with Medicaid
(we call it Medi-Cal in our state).
As with many other such large scale efforts by government, many of
these programs (especially Medicaid) were launched with more speed than
wisdom.
When government decides to solve something, we have learned to be
wary. The cure may not always be worse than the disease, but it is
usually bigger and it costs more.
Forty years ago, government decided to solve the problems of the
farmers. Now forty years and scores of billions of dollars later, we
only have a third as many farmers as when we started, but we have three
times as many employees in the department of agriculture.
Not quite a decade ago we declared war or poverty poverty won.
- 1 -
Dentists
And you know what happened when government decided there was a
health crisis. No one could quarrel with the humanitarian goal of
meeting the health needs of the poor and the elderly. But the impact
on the health care industry was drastic. Overnight health costs for
everyone else were inflated, especially for the middle income, working
citizens who pay for their own health needs and also the taxes to
finance the government health programs.
When we arrived in Sacramento almost six years ago, we found that
Medi-Cal was an under-funded administrative nightmare only six months
old, but growing in cost and complexity almost daily. As fast as we
straightened out the worst of the administrative kinks, the growing
numbers of people caused the cost to double. We knew the only way to
avoid bankruptcy was a massive overhaul of both welfare and Medi-Cal.
The caseload in California was increasing 40,000 a month.
Medi-Cal costs were increasing at the rate of $100 to $200 million
each year, today it is millions of dollars less than it was last year.
There are 221 thousand fewer people on welfare than when we started the
reforms a little more than a year ago.
We did not reduce either the benefits to the truly needy or
necessary health care benefits. We did root out the welfare fraud and
the abuses that were eating up many of the dollars we had available for
public assistance. We are removing from the rolls those people who are
not eligible for public assistance.
And because of this pruning of the rolls, we have been able to
provide a 30 percent increase to those who are really entitled to
assistance plus cost of living increases for the blind and for our needy
senior citizens.
None of this was accomplished as easily as it has been described.
We had to fight for seven months in the legislature to pass the basic
reforms. And we have had to contend with more than a dozen lawsuits
brought by welfare rights organizations represented by lawyers for the
most part provided at taxpayers' expense.
Those who see in welfare a way of redistributing the earnings of
those who work denounced almost every action we took. One of these
reforms held up by court action for months was a computerized cross
check of earnings by recipients. They claimed we invaded the welfare
recipients' privacy by checking his statement of outside earnings,
routine, of course, for working citizens in checking their tax liability.
Finally we won, and the first cross-matching of records has taken place
covering 8, 788 cases. In 3,709 of those, (about 41 percent) we discovered
a significant discrepancy between what the welfare files said the
recipients earned and what they were actually paid.
- 2 -
Dentists
(
Our reforms have placed welfare and Medi-Cal on a sounder footing.
Yet the question of whether all the people have access to quality and
comprehensive health services is still hotly challenged in Washington
and elsewhere. We are told that one of the serious social problems we
face in America is elimination of financial barriers to comprehensive
health care for all, not just the needy or the aged. Over and over
again we are being told that such comprehensive care can only be
achieved through more government intervention.
Ironically, the inflation that hastily-enacted government health
programs aggravated in the health care industries is now being advanced
as justification for a total government takeover of all the professional
health fields, through some sort of nationalized health insurance program.
Before we go down that road, we should take a long look at the
record of government in health care here and in those countries where it
has been socialized because socialization is what we are really talking
about no matter how they fancy it up by calling it nationalized insurance.
There are ways to modernize it, make it more efficient and available to
all at a price we can afford without turning it all over to government
to run and control. As I said before, government's record in solving
problems not in its proper province is not exactly brilliant.
One of the national plans presently being proposed involves a cost
of 577 billion more than the entire federal budget in the last year of
wight Eisenhower's presidency.
One of our state Senators wants to abolish the private health
insurance industry in California and let the state take over---at a cost
that would more than double the amount we are spending for our entire
state budget, for education, parks, recreation, highways, everything.
Yet, however massive the cost in money, that is only part of the
price we would pay.
The greater price would be something far more precious your freedom
to practice your profession, and the right of your patients to select
their own dentist.
This is as important as the effort to meet the health needs of our
people at a price they can pay. In the business I used to be in, we had
a saying that everyone had two businesses their own and show business,
It seems today almost everyone has added a third health care.
- 3 -
Dentists
It is absolutely essential in developing our public and private
health programs that the doctors and dentists, the health professionals
in all fields, must have more to say about the directions we take, and
a great deal more responsibility for making it work.
Those who build skyscrapers do not ask a bureaucrat to draw up the
plans or tell them how much concrete to pour and where. They hire an
architect and engineers, the skilled people who know something about
the problems they are trying to solve. We believe that is what we must
incorporate into health planning, too.
We have tried to do that in California. In fact, ours is probably
the only state in the country with a health professional as a member of
the governor's cabinet. For those of you not from our state, his name
is Dr. Earl Brian. He is in charge of a great part of state government
activities in a wide number of fields including corrections, manpo
policy, employment programs, in addition to health and welfare. The
agencies under his jurisdiction have 45,000 employees, spend more than
$6 billion of our budget, and their combined activities make that agency
bigger than 46 state governments.
Dental care is one of the basic elements in a comprehensive health
care program. I recently signed legislation to include dental care in
the definition of our state's basic Medi-Cal (Medicaid) program.
Under Dr. Brian's direction, we are looking to all the health
professions for assistance in meeting the needs of the people of
California.
We believe that we must retain the pluralistic system that has
given Americans the highest quality medical care in the world.
One of the developments we feel that shows the most promise of
assuring quality health care is the prepaid plan. Through these prepaid
health plans, there is a built-in incentive to find the most efficient
and economic ways of providing comprehensive health care.
Such plans may be either through a group practice, a private
insurance company or a local foundation, supervised by the health
professionals who provide the health services.
One of the largest of this type of comprehensive health care plans
started last July 1 and is operated through the Sacramento County Medical
Society. More than six hundred private doctors in the Sacramento area
provide services to 20,000 Medi-Cal patients in their offices and in area
hospitals. And if the plan shows a profit, it is shared by all the
participating providers. If there is a deficit, it too is shared by all.
- 4 -
Dentists
The advantages of such plans supervised by the health professionals
who deliver the services to the people include a lower cost of
operation (we expect to save at least 10 percent in operating costs).
And just as important, it helps assure the health professionals will be
practicing their particular field of health care instead of spending
most of their time pushing papers and signing the endless forms that are
so much a part of strictly government operated programs.
We view prepaid health plans as having a great potential for
creating efficient and effective health care delivery systems that can
serve our people on a volume basis, including private and government
subsidized patients.
This kind of efficiency can be best achieved when health providers
are free to practice their professions according to their own judgment
and that of their peers.
As you might have imagined, our welfare and Medi-Cal reforms put us
on a collision course with those who believe that government should just
run everything and hang the cost.
Unfortunately, that kind of reasoning is prevalent throughout our
society. And it represents a threat not only to your professional
freedom, but to your freedom as individual citizens.
The reason is simple. Government's only major tools are coercion
and force. And we have seen this in action too often not to know what
it can mean.
In the private practice of a profession or operating a business, the
penalty for inefficiency, for ignoring the needs and concerns of our
customers or patients is the loss of those customers or patients to
someone who is more concerned and more efficient. And that leads to
bankruptcy. Government has no such restraints to assure a responsiveness
to the people it is intended to serve. When government runs a deficit,
it is the people who must pay the penalty through higher taxes.
That is why we, who are in government, must demand efficiency in all
that we do.
The average citizen must work five months of the year to pay his
total tax obligation. During the peak spending years of World War IT,
he only had to work a little over three months.
- 5 -
Dentists
Every time government gets bigger, the cost is passed on to the
people. But there is no magic correlation between higher spending and
solving problems. Too often, it seems that government comes up with a
plan and then looks for a problem to fit it.
There is a growing mood of resentment against social tinkering,
a feeling of frustration against the whole centralized, computerized
philosophy of big, impersonal government.
Business and the professions must become more involved in public
affairs. You must help lead the battle for better government, for the
preservation of the free economic system we have known in America these
past 200 years.
Now, I realize that you may be weary of hearing the same alarm
signals sounded during every election year. You might think well, we
have heard all this before, but somehow we have muddled through.
that is like the window-washer who fell from the Empire State Building.
When he passed the 20th floor, he said "So far, so good."
Getting involved is part of the price for living in a free society
where "we, the people" can vote and work for what we want in our
government.
Government is too important to be left to those who are not too
busy---the professionals who think government has some sort of divine
right to tell people what is good for them.
Your own self-interest demands your participation. In the final
analysis, if you do not work and vote for the kind of government you
want; if you do not do all that you can to guard against centralized
government, that is what you will have. You will run government, or
government will run you.
#######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
- 6 -
11/2
Sacramento, California 95814
Nover er 3, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
11-2-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
Excerpts of Remarks by Governor Ronald Reagan
California Highway Patrol Graduation
Sacramento
November 2, 1972
You are joining a select group of the most dedicated and best
trained law enforcement officers in America. I make that statement not
alone from observation, but from the unique personal relationship that
is mine by virtue of this job.
In your training, I know that you have been imbued with the
traditions and history of the California Highway Patrol. I am confident
you appreciate the great responsibility you will be assuming when you
report to your duty assignments.
You have done more than just choose a career, With your badge,
you become part of society's shield. You are joining the ranks of those
who devote their lives to protecting their fellow citizens against
lawlessness and yes, against their own folly.
Recently, I had the privilege of appointing the first career
officer ever to be named Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.
Walt Pudinski has only been on the job a few months, but he has already
demonstrated the qualities of leadership we have come to expect from the
officers and men of the CHP.
It is Walt's belief, and one that I share, that protecting the
public is best accomplished through what he calls preventive law
enforcement.
That is why he is stressing his campaign of on-the-road traffic
patrol. The whole idea of traffic law enforcement is to prevent accidents
and in this regard I believe California has become a model for the nation.
Although we have more cars and more drivers on the roads, our
traffic fatality rate last year declined again--thanks in great measure
to the fine work of the California Highway Patrol.
We know that for you to do your job effectively, you need the support
not only of the public in general, but of those of us in Sacramento.
And it has been a priority goal of our administration to give you the
legal tools you need.
Just three years ago, after many years of trying to get such a law,
we managed to secure passage of the so-called "presumptive limits" law
to combat drunk driving.
1 I I
CHP
Between 1969, the year it went on the books, and 1971, the number
of fatal accidents involving a drinking driver in areas of your
jurisdiction declined by 32 percent. During that same period, your
fellow officers increased their number of arrests for drunk driving by
41 percent.
We rely on statistics of this kind to measure our effectiveness in
many ways, but numbers cannot begin to tell the human tragedy, the
senseless waste of life, that this increased traffic enforcement has
helped prevent.
Saving even one life would make the effort worth while. Saving
many lives makes it an accomplishment in which we can all take pride
particularly those of you who have the task of carrying out our traff
safety programs.
It is a curious irony of our time that during an era in which cr.
has become one of our major national concerns, there are those who not
only lack appreciation or even, it often seems, a minimum of sympathy
for the fight our law enforcement officers are waging against crime.
Let me assure you this is not the attitude of the great majority
E
our people or the viewpoint of most of us in Sacramento. We are
determined to do all that we can to give you the legal tools to carry
out your jobs and the protection that society owes those who defend it
against the lawless. Unfortunately, there are those who seem more
concerned with the criminals than the victims. Theirs is a strange
distortion of values.
They would eliminate crime by legalizing things that are now
against the law.
We have an example of this on the November ballot, the initiative
that would legalize marijuana. I do not have to tell you of the tragedy,
the great threat that drug abuse has become in our society.
Drug abuse is responsible for a great part of the crime in our
society today. But one of the greatest crimes of all is that of the
pusher the callous and ruthless criminals who seek to profit from
human misery and tragedy.
I am confident the people of California will have the good sense to
deliver an emphatic "no" on this effort to legitimize something that
has caused so much tragedy for our young people.
- 2
CHP
There is another measure on the ballot involving law enforcement
that I hope will be passed Proposition 17 which would restore the
legislature's right to provide for capital punishment. Within the past
few days, I have heard some of the leading opponents of this measure
challenging with all the old arguments the right of society to take the
life of the deliberate, cold-blooded killer. They say to do so will
brutalize society. Well I think perhaps society was brutalized a little
in these past five years when 17 CHP officers gave their lives in the
line of duty.
Yet rarely have we witnessed any great expressions of protest
directed against these brutal crimes. In the arguments raised against
capital punishment, we have heard it said that restoring the death
penalty will not help the victims of past crimes. Tragically, that is
true, but it misses the essential point---capital punishment can help
deter such crimes in the future.
We believe it is essential that the public provide this ultimate
deterrence to help protect the law enforcement officers who risk their
lives every day maintaining the public's safety.
There may come a day when evil will be banished from the hearts
of men, and we can abolish some of the laws that help protect society
against the violent acts of the law-breaker. We all hope that time
will come. But while there is a threat of death to any citizen from
those who would kill and rob and terrorize, society must have the right
to protect itself.
No one knows this better than your colleagues in all law enforcement
agencies. And yet, with your commitment to a law enforcement career,
I know you also realize, as we do, that justice must always be tempered
with compassion.
We must always be ready to rehabilitate the wayward and misguided
first offender, the youngsters who can be saved. As I recently told a
conven of the legal profession, that is one of the purposes of the
drug abuse control program we have been trying to enact this year.
We hope to greatly expand our educational efforts against drug
abuse, relying on the compassion and constructive programs that can best
be carried out at the local level, through the concern and sympathy of
one concerned human being for another. Our program includes such an
effort.
- 3 -
CHP
It also allows our legal system to provide a way to rehabilitate
the casual drug offenders before they become a hopeless social outcast-
before drug addiction can lead them into greater crimes.
And along with this, we are constantly seeking ways to root out the
pushers and those who supply the drugs that have become such a massive
threat to our young people.
In carrying out your duties, I know there will probably be many
times when you will wonder whether your sacrifice, your efforts are
worth it. You will undoubtedly see many examples not only of man's
potential for cruelty and callousness toward his fellow man, but you
will also see symptoms of man's capacity to harm himself and others
through his own negligence or lack of concern. And you will learn to
say "it is just part of the job, but you will never be able to feel
that way down deep inside.
In man's long struggle to create a society in which there is no
evil, we have had setbacks and disappointments. Despite our yearning
for peace, we have been plagued by war. Crime continues as a major
problem no matter how great the affluence of society or how many social
programs are enacted to combat it.
But through it all, we keep trying. And to me, that is one of the
greatest tributes that can be paid to the profession you have chosen
whatever the problems or handicaps, our law enforcement people never
shrink from their appointed duty.
It is their job to be concerned, and in carrying it out, they
demonstrate every day of their lives that they are truly concerned.
Good luck and best wishes.
#####
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes. )
- 4 -
11/3
as
os.
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RON ,D REAGAN
RELEASE:
I
ediate
Sacramento, California 95814
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
11-3-72
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
REVENUE SHARING SEMINAR
AIRPORT MARINA HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO
November 3, 1972
Welcome to California. This has to be a unique experience for most
of us. It is for me. This is one of the few times I have ever met with
someone from Washington who wanted to give back some tax money without
asking us to match it.
The principal speakers at our meeting today and the other
distinguished representatives of the Treasury Department are giving us
the details on revenue sharing. So I will not try to compete with the
experts. Actually, I am here to learn more about the mechanics of the
program, just as you are.
But I would like to use my few brief moments with you today to
discuss the concept and the philosophy of revenue sharing. Cap Weinberger
who used to be our finance director before he was lured away to become
director of the office of management and budget, made a point about this
a few days ago at a similar meeting in Denver. He said the administration
OES not believe Washington has all the answers, that only Washington has
the wisdom to decide how to use the taxpayers' money wisely and
effectively.
The philosophy behind revenue sharing is that government can be most
responsive when it is closest to the people--that the states and the
counties and cities have a far better grasp of their own problems than
Washington.
Revenue Sharing is intended as a means of helping the states and
local governments meet those problems.
Whatever level of government we represent, we have all had the
problem in recent years of increased demands and rising costs for services.
Not too many years ago and well within the lifetime of almost everyone
in this room, the tax dollar was divided in such a way that local
overnment received the biggest share; the states were second; and the
federal government took the smallest part. And that is the period most
of us refer to as "the good old days."
- 1 -
Revenue Sharing
I believe our experience in California may be somewhat similar to
that of other states. We have known for sometime that the property tax
has grown to an intolerable level. It has become too great a burden on
the homeowner and yet, this is the tax that traditionally has financed
a great part of most local services, including local schools.
The court opinion which declared that there has been too great a
reliance on the property tax to finance schools was not a great revelation
to us. We have been trying to reduce the homeowner's property tax for a
number of years while at the same time providing increased state
financial aid to our schools.
I am sure all of this is familiar to those of you in other states.
But we in California have a situation that is not widespread. About
18 months ago we launched a massive effort to reform welfare and bring
the costs of welfare and medicaid (Medi-Cal) under control. This went
along with a pretty successful program to produce economy and efficiency
in all state operations.
The combination of these welfare reforms, tight budgeting and the
improved economy has produced a unique situation. We expect a budget
surplus.
So along with our share of the revenue sharing funds, we have some
additional resources with which to solve the two most chronic problems
we have been facing additional school aid and providing comprehensive
homeowner property tax relief.
California will receive some $230 million or so in revenue sharing
money the first year and a little over $200 million thereafter.
We are recommending that we use these funds along with other
revenues in a combined package-- to provide greater assistance to low
wealth school districts and to give homeowners a substantial property
tax reduction.
It will be part of a major school finance and homeowner tax relief
program we will be submitting to the legislature and later to the peor
in a statewide referendum. The whole thrust of the program is to provide
more aid for public schools, to simplify our outmoded school aid formula
and to provide major property tax relief for homeowners. We want to lift
some of the burden of financing schools off the backs of the homeowner
and shift a greater part of school financing to other sources. Revenue
sharing is one of these.
Revenue Sharing
It has also been a philosophy of our administration to return to
the people any tax revenue that is not needed. In 1970, we had a
surplus and returned this in a 10 percent rebate for every state income
taxpayer. This year, when we shifted to the withholding method of
collecting state income taxes, there was a so-called "windfall" of one-
time revenue and we returned this to the people as a one-time 20 percent
tax credit or rebate on state income taxes.
As a result of our welfare reforms and the other economies and
efficiencies, we have been able to produce a projected ongoing surplus.
And we propose to give this back, too through a permanent, 10 percent
cut in our state income taxes.
I mentioned this to point out what I believe should be the guiding
philosophy on how best to use the revenue sharing money you will be
getting.
Revenue sharing should not become a relatively painless way to
launch and finance more government programs. Nor should it be an excuse
to avoid or delay the kind of ongoing efficiency and economy that we
must have to hold down the cost of government at all levels.
Our goal could well be to eventually demonstrate to Congress that
we can be trusted with the return of some of the sources of tax revenue.
If we accept the return of a share of the federal tax without making an
difort to take over some of the tasks now being performed by the federal
government, taxes will go up, government will increase in size, and we
will be worse off, not better. There is no way we can get back the full
value of a dollar we first send to Washington. A certain charge for
overhead and travel is deducted before it finds its way back.
This first venture into "no strings" sharing is our chance to prove
our ability. Let us make it a two-way street. Let us use it wisely,
and as time goes by, point out functions of government we are willing to
take off their hands at less cost to the people.
Those tax dollars we are sharing have only one point of origin
the citizen"s pocket he would appreciate a lighter touch from all of us.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes, )
- 3 -
-
51/11
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR BONALD REAGAN
RELEASE:
EDNESDAY P.Ms.
Sacramento, Califor 1 95814
vember 15, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
11-14-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
COUNTY SUPERVISORS ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA 78TH ANNUAL MEETING
PALM SPRINGS, NOVEMBER 15
The first step in any reform is recognizing that it is needed. If
that is true, we have every reason to be optimistic that we can stream-
line the government structure of California because most of us have
already crossed the first hurdle.
The fact that you are devoting almost your entire meeting this year
to the subject of updating county government is especially encouraging.
We have been thinking along the same lines in Sacramento and I would
like to congratulate you for moving forward with the new commission that
will be looking into this subject.
Before I get to the main point of my remarks and how we might work
together to achieve our joint objectives, I would like to briefly review
why the idea of governmental reform is important. I realize that most of
you are thoroughly familiar with this background. But when you are
proposing a solution, there is no better place to start than to outline
the problem.
The kind of local governmental structure we have in California is
rooted deep in America's history. The basic framework began developing
about the same time we first realized the dream of self-government.
The idea of having school districts to provide for the education of
our young people was first sketched by Thomas Jefferson almost 200 years
ago.
Local self-rule has been a basic principle in our philosophy of
government ever since. Indeed, it set the pattern for the governmental
structure we have today.
Americans have been an innovative people, in government as well as
other fields. When there was a problem to be solved, we developed a unit
of government to deal with it when it involved our joint interests.
In California and other states, the pattern of county governments
developed along very logical lines, County boundaries were formed so
that the seat of government was no more than a day's ride by horse from
its outermost limits to the county seat, which usually turned out to be
the nearest and most heavily populated settlement, Today we live in a
time where no citizen of California is more than a day's journey by jet
to almost any spot in the world.
- 1 -
County Supervisors
It has been 65 years since Imperial County was formed out of a
section of San Diego County. But that was the last major county boundary
change in California. In those 3½½ generations, our population has
increased tenfold and our state has been transformed from a largely
agricultural society to a society and an economy dominated by the world's
most sophisticated technology.
Some of our counties are bigger in area than most states and even
some countries. And in population, some are no bigger than a city
block that includes a large apartment complex.
Yet the basic governmental structure of all our 58 counties is
essentially the same. Los Angeles County, with more than seven million
people, has the same number of elected supervisors (5) as Alpine County,
which has fewer than 600 people.
Let me hasten to assure you that I am not suggesting at this point
that there should be more or fewer supervisors for either Los Angeles or
Alpine. But I do say it is not unreasonable for us to take a long look
at county government and find out whether it might be desirable to make
some constructive changes.
When California was admitted to statehood, we started out with 27
counties. But we later found it appropriate to expand that to 58.
In trying to meet the needs of our people, Californians have never
been totally committed to rigid ideas on either numbers or organizational
structures. We have been concerned primarily with getting the job done;
solving the problems that needed to be solved.
When people settled in new areas and needed a steady and sanitary
water supply, they organized special districts to provide this service.
When they needed fire protection in a remote area, people got together
and organized a unit of government to offer this service.
For many years, this pattern of developing government served us
exceedingly well. It allowed the state to accommodate to a tremendous
growth in population, to meet the needs of people for transportation,
education, and all the other public services required in a community or
a specific area.
Each layer of government added in California was established for a
purpose. Yet in solving the special problems for which they were created
the sheer proliferation of school districts, new towns, cities and special
purpose districts created a maze of government that has become almost
incomprehensible to the average citizen. In terms of accountability for
its responsibilities, it is almost an invisible layer of government to
all except those who must try to make the whole structure work
efficiently.
- 2 -
County Supervisors
Today, California has some 5800 units of government below the state
level, including 58 counties, 407 incorporated cities, more than 1100
school districts and almost 4200 special districts performing one or more
services for the people. In the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area alone
there are more than 800 separate taxing jurisdictions, each with a
responsibility for a specific service and each authorized to levy taxes
to support its operations. There are 9 counties, 91 cities, 447 special
purpose districts, 208 school districts and 65 special taxing districts.
Not counting federal and state spending in those areas, these units of
government last year spent almost a billion dollars.
Reciting those numbers does not give you the slightest idea of what
all these layers of government mean to the average citizen, But perhaps
an illustration will. Someone who lives in Concord, for example, and
commutes to San Francisco to get to work travels about 30 miles---just
about the distance our grandfathers had to ride to get to the county seat.
In that daily trip, this commuter passes through 121 governmental units
which levy property taxes, including nine cities, five water districts,
nine school districts, seven fire protection districts, along with
scores of other governmental units involved in providing everything from
hospitals and mosquito abatement to transit service, parks and
recreational services, and even a cemetery district.
The average citizen who makes that journey probably is not even
aware of all these different units of government. The only time he gets
a first hand knowledge of their existence is when he has a complaint
about service or more likely, when he receives his property tax bill.
When they are looking at that long list of governmental units their
tax dollars support, many citizens must wonder whether they are getting
their money's worth, and whether all these different levels of government
are really necessary.
You have obviously had the same thoughts because your association is
looking at your own level of government to see if there is nct a better,
perhaps a more efficient way.
As most of you know by now, streamlining local government is high on
our list of priorities. For several months, Lieutenant Governor Ed
Reinecke has headed a sort of informal group making preliminary plans
for a major program of local government reform and modernization. On
Monday, that informal study group became officially operational. It
received a title and an awesome responsibility. It is called the Local
Government Reform Project.
I I w
County Supervisors
The goal is to produce the most comprehensive examination of all
levels of local government ever undertaken in California; to find out
the strengths and weaknesses of our present structure of government
and to make recommendations that will build on the strengths and
eliminate the weaknesses.
Our objective is to streamline and modernize California's total
structure of local government to make it:
-more responsive and effective in meeting the needs of the people
more efficient in operations, and
--better equipped to provide the services our people need at the
least possible cost.
Five major components are involved in the program.
1)
Lieutenant Governor Reinecke is heading a steering committee
that includes key members of the state administration. This committee
will have the overall responsibility for supervising the activities of
the Local Government Reform Project and coordinating the work of all the
sub-groups associated with it.
/
2) There will be a full-time Task Force of six staff specialists
to provide the necessary technical and administrative skills. These will
include outstanding experts experienced in such fields as public
administration, management and public finance. This task force will be
the operational nucleus of the overall project.
2) So that we may have the benefit of the widest possible range of
knowledge and experience in drafting a workable reform program, there
also will be an advisory group. We have not yet decided on its exact
size but the group will include representatives of all areas of local
government, including county supervisors, city council representatives,
members from special districts, along with members who will represent
the private citizens of California.
4)
Working directly with the task force will be a number of
special task groups made up of both citizens and public officials.
These groups will look into various areas that will be covered in
analyzing the whole structure of local government. Their work will
provide the information we need to make practical recommendations for
organizational improvements and reforms.
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County Supervisors
5) Obviously, in an undertaking of this magnitude, we want to hear
from the people of California, to get their ideas, their suggestions and
their recommendations. And we also want to assure that each level of
government has an opportunity to participate in developing the final
program, in shaping the kind of local government structure that will
best serve the people of California.
The responsibility for coordinating and developing this part of the
project has been assigned to the Council on Intergovernmental Relations,
which has already done some preliminary work in this area.
It will hold a series of public hearings throughout the state to
receive comments and proposals from local officials, citizens groups
and from the public at large. The first of these meetings was held a
/California
month ago with the League of Cities. The second will be held this
afternoon as part of your own program.
This council, composed of representatives from every level of
government in California, will insure that every level of government will
be able to present its viewpoint and suggestions.
Aside from serving as an advisory group to the executive branch,
it administers grants to local governments through contract with the
federal government. And it serves now as a clearinghouse for information
about grants and the relationships between different levels of government.
Because of this, it is uniquely equipped to provide a means of
citizen participation in the decisions to be made---as well as assuring
another effective voice for local government in the reforms that will
be recommended.
The operational Task Force will concern itself with every aspect of
local government in California. It may take up to a year to complete
the entire project, but we hope part of the work can be done sooner than
that.
We are starting with five major subject areas:
Analysis of current governmental structure
1) The first involves a thorough analysis of the current structure
of local government, from the multi-county level to the smallest special
districts. This will include taking a comprehensive look at what local
government is now and what it should be; what problems the different
levels of government now have in trying to meet their responsibilities,
and what problems to expect in the different alternatives that might be
proposed.
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County Supervisors
Assignment of public service responsibilities
2)
The second major subject area will be to determine the proper
assignment of public service responsibilities. What level of government
is best equipped to provide fire protection, public safety and all the
other essential public services.
Allocation of fiscal resources
3) A third, and critically important part of the project will be
a task group survey and analysis of the fiscal operations of local
government how best to allocate all revenues. This will include an
inventory of the main sources of revenue available to local government
and whether alternate sources might better serve both the public and the
financial needs of the districts providing the various services. Some
special districts, for example, derive a large part of their operational
income from fees water service fees, garbage collection fees, an
similar service charges. Other districts rely more heavily on financial
support from the property tax. We want to look at the total revenue
picture and find the fairest and most effective way of providing
essential public services with a minimum of reliance on the already
over-burdened homeowner and property taxpayer.
My own leaning has always been to apply a fee for service to as
great a degree as possible.
of course, we know this is not possible in all cases. Fire and
police protection are services that cannot be pro-rated in the same way
as garbage collection. But we must make an effort to identify those
services that can be geared to financial self-sufficiency.
Right now we are trying at the state level to substantially reduce
homeowner property taxes. But if we are to take part of the financial
load off the homeowner's back, we must find new ways of keeping local
government costs from constantly adding new financial burdens on the
property tax and the homeowners who pay them.
This part of the project will involve assembling information on
which levels of government collect what taxes; how these taxes are spent
and for what
and most important, we hope it will determine whether the
taxpayer is getting his money's worth, and if not, why not? Is there
a possibility of reducing taxes by eliminating duplication and overlapping
services and unnecessary administrative costs? If there is, we want to
know how.
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County Supervisors
County geographic boundaries
4)
The fourth major task group will have the responsibility of
looking at the geographic boundaries of California's 58 counties to see
if constructive changes might provide better government at less cost.
We hope our specialists can work closely with your own commission in
trying to come up with sensible and workable suggestions for reform.
One of the things that should be considered is to determine at what point
population or geographic area affects the quality and the cost of
essential public services. Are some counties too big or too small? Is
there an ideal population level that should become a basic size in
developing new and more effective units of government?
Should we take a look at some of our counties that are larger
geographically than most states and see whether a smaller county might
not be more effective and responsive to the needs of the people?
State-local government relationship
5) The fifth major task group will look into the relationship
between the state and all the local governments with which it must deal.
Each year the legislature considers four to five thousand bills. Many
of them involve local government. Frankly, I sign a h--1 of a lot of
bills that do not improve the quality of life in California one iota,
and no one would miss them if they got lost on the way to the printer.
Is it a proper function of state government to tell a municipal court
how many clerks or court reporters it should have and what their salaries
should be? Right now the legislature has that responsibility.
Should the state be making simple administrative changes in
procedure involving technical matters that concern only one local unit
of government?
I think we might serve the public better if local government is
given both the responsibility and the authority to make decisions that
involve its own operations.
Finally, as part of this study into state and local government
relations, we want to take a good, long look at a matter that I know
is close to your hearts.
Whatever shape this reform takes, we want to quarantee that the
state government does not mandate new or expanded programs and
responsibilities on local government without providing the money to
pay for them.
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County Supervisors
Because of the multi-layer of government that has developed in
most social services, this matter of mandating costs from one level of
government down is a chronic and a serious problem. I know many of you
have felt that the state has done this far too many times in the past.
We have more than a little experience with the federal government
mandating welfare and other costs on the state and ultimately, on the
counties. And we are determined to do something about it.
In our various tax reform proposals, a key provision has been that
the state must pay for any new or expanded services that counties are
required to administer. Ending mandated costs should improve state and
local relations.
Right now, to many of our citizens, the relationship between the
different levels of government often appears to be simply a competitive
exercise in passing the buck. They have a vital stake in changing this,
in making government accountable because the bucks that count come out
of their pockets.
I hope I have been able to impress upon you the guiding philosophy
behind the whole project. We are going into this with absolutely no
pre-conceived ideas of what the final reform proposals will be. No
solution, no suggestion is too drastic or too innovative to ignore. If
anyone comes up with a creative idea, we want to consider it, whether it
files into the way we have always done things or not. Only one thing we
know for sure, we do not intend to add more layers of government.
This will not be a reform that will be dreamed up by anonymous
consultants, thrown into the legislative hopper and imposed from the
state level. We want to involve everyone who can help produce a workable
blueprint for the governmental structure we will have for the rest of
this century and beyond. We may want to implement any major changes in
well-planned phases.
Quite likely, some constitutional amendments may be required. We
do not view that as an obstacle. Our people should have not only a vo
but a vote in determining the kind of government they want.
Our main concern is results. California is a big state the
largest in the nation. You have often heard me say that if we were a
separate nation, we would have the seventh largest economy in the world.
Well, that also applies to some of our local areas, too.
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County Supervisors
The Los Angeles Basin has more people than Sweden or Austria.
Almost as many people live in our five southern counties as on the
entire continent of Australia.
Californians live in a tremendous variety of urban clusters,
sparsely-populated mountain areas and large agricultural areas dotted
with smaller towns and farms.
Our economy is one of the most diversified in the world. It ranges
from family farms to rocketry; from fishing operations similar to what
our ancestors knew to vast satellite communications facilities; from
one-man workshops sharpening garden tools to massive scientific
complexes designed to ferry man into outer space and back again.
A state with so much of America's advanced technical resources and
such a diversified way of life should not be saddled with a horse-and-
buggy system of local government that just might be costing more than it
should.
Our reforms should not be limited to what might be politically
expedient. Our goal should be to build a structure of local government
that meets the needs of our people at a cost they can afford.
A couple of weeks ago, at a seminar on revenue sharing, I reminded
the various state and local officials attending that there was a time
and not too long ago either---when local government received the largest
share of tax revenue. The states got less and the federal government
had the smallest portion of all. You and I know that ratio has long
since been reversed.
Local government received the largest share of the tax revenue
because that level of government provided services directly to the people.
And the people held government accountable because they knew who was
spending their tax money and for what. When they had a complaint, they
went to the courthouse or city hall.
The services people receive from government have not changed---only
the level of government that collects the money has changed drastically.
With every additional dollar that goes to Washington, government becomes
more remote and less and less responsive to the people.
People do not live at the federal level. They live, work, attend
school, and play at the local level; in cities, towns, rural areas. This
is where they should have their most frequent contact with government.
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County Supervisors
To be responsive, local government must have sufficient financial
resources to provide the services people demand and need. That is why,
with every responsibility we assign to a particular level of government,
we must also provide a means of financing to provide that particular
service.
That way, if something is not being done properly or at all, peop
will use their votes and their protests to make government accountable
for its action or lack of action.
But if they do not even know the different layers of government and
what each is supposed to be doing, they cannot protest or vote
intelligently. Maybe some politicans like it that way, but most do not
not if we are worth our salt.
When I first mentioned this idea of reforming government, I called
it a dream, a model of governmental efficiency and economy that would
give every citizen an opportunity to know just what government does fo
him and just how much he must pay to get those benefits. Some may say
this is unrealistic, a goal impossible to achieve.
Well, standing on the moon was once an impossible dream. But it
has been done, not once, but many times, and many of the people who
helped us realize that dream live and work in our state.
I believe Californians can develop a modern, efficient government
a government that is visible, responsive, and efficient in meeting the
changing needs of our people.
That is the purpose of our Local Government Reform Project. With
your help, that dream can come true.
######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
or additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)
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12/11
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: MONDAY P.Ms.
Sacramento, California 95814
December 11, 1972
Ed Gray, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
12-11-72
PLEASE GUARD AGAINST PREMATURE
RELEASE
EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION
Los Angeles
December 11, 1972
We are meeting here today at a time when our country and your
industry are entering an era of great opportunity, a time when sweeping
changes on the international scene are creating a vast new market
potential for the food and fiber America produces.
In California, we are determined to make the most of that opportunity.
Almost one out of every four jobs in California is in agriculture or a
related industry. The combined output of all the various elements of
Agri-Business represents 16 billion dollars a year, almost 12 percent
of our total gross product.
We may not be the bread basket of the nation but we supply about
40 percent of America's fresh fruit and nuts and table vegetables.
I have just returned from speaking to a meeting of industrialists
about the increasing tendency of government to get into things not really
its business. You have had government as a partner for quite a while
now. And while government has many functions which are its proper
province, you know all too well that when government uses its coercive
power to intervene in the free market place, agriculture can discover it
has something worse to contend with than the corn bore or the boll weevil.
Those who believe government has an ordained duty to be a senior
partner in every economic enterprise labor under the false belief that
the only good government is big government; that only through direction
and control from Washington can we realize prosperity and economic
stability. They have no faith in our competitive market system- despite
the undeniable fact that it is this very freedom that has given our people
the highest standard of living in the world.
You deserve a great share of the credit for this higher standard of
living. You have consistently produced a stable food supply that includes
a greater variety of foods at lower cost than any other society in the
world. You have performed something of a technological miracle. No
industry in the world can match your increase in man hour productivity.
- 1 -
(
Farm Bureau
We hear a lot about inflation and the higher cost of food. But
those who try to cast you as the villains are pointing a finger in the
wrong direction.
Instead of being a cause of inflation, the farmer is the biggest
victim of inflation, caught in the worst cost-price squeeze of any
industry in America.
Twenty years ago, the average American family spent about 23 percent
of its income for food and farmers received almost half of the consumer
food dollar. Today, the average family spends only 16 percent of its
income for food and the farmer's share of that food dollar has dropped
to 38 percent.
Sure, there has been an increase in food prices. But agriculture
is holding the line against inflation far more effectively than almost
/
any other segment of the economy. In the last 20 years, food prices
have gone up 44 percent, but housing costs are up 60 percent,
transportation 64 percent, and medical care more than 100 percent.
And your customers' wages have gone up 136 percent.
Those people who cry doom and demand that government do something
should look at how our free agricultural system benefits the consumer,
and then look at what things are like in those other countries where
vigid controls and market coercion plague agriculture.
While the average American family spends only 16 percent of its
income for food, the average family in Britain spends 26 percent. It is
28 percent in West Germany, 40 percent in Japan, and in the Soviet Union,
the average family spends a full 50 percent of its income in food.
Government itself has been the biggest single cause of inflation,
through deficit spending, and because government, year in and year out
has been consuming a bigger and bigger share of the national income
through higher and higher taxes. The typical citizen must work longer
to pay his family's taxes than he does to pay for their food, shelter,
and clothing combined. We work from January until sometime in May
just to pay our taxes.
The President has asked for a limit on federal spending and Congress
acts as if he wants to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Well, you and I
had better make Congress understand that we want that limit, too, and
like yesterday. It is later than we think.
- 2 -
Farm Bureau
When the recent wheat trade with Russia was being reported in the
news media, I read an article which mentioned that America's climate
gives us an advantage over the Soviet Union in producing food. Well,
we do have better growing conditions. But the greatest advantage the
American farmer has over his Soviet counterpart is not the weather; it
is the climáte of freedom in this country. Despite all of government's
intervention into agriculture, ours is still a basically free economic
system and this freedom has enabled our country to out-produce the
world in almost every area of economic endeavor, even though we have
only 6 percent of the world's population and 7 percent of the land area.
In fact, operating within a competitive enterprise system, America
is one of the very few countries in the world producing more food than
it needs.
During World War II and the years just after that, America's
productive capacity in agriculture became the wonder of the world. Our
farmers grew enough food for our own people and a surplus that helped
win a war and feed a hungry world while it was recovering from that war.
This abundance was made possible by your hard work and productive genius.
You were able to grow food with less manpower, at lower cost faster
than government experts could dream up ways to discourage you.
During the post war years when the rest of the world recovered
economically and became vigorous competitors in many industrial products,
our food surpluses suddenly became an embarrassment of riches. But
today, we are approaching an era when our food surpluses will not be a
problem. They are becoming one of our most important national assets in
helping America put its economic house in order following the inflationary
years of the Vietnam War.
In the past decade, America's balance of trade deficits have become
a matter of critical national concern. Last year was the worse such
trade deficit since 1893. Yet even in those countries which can and do
compete vigorously in manufactured goods and industrial products, there
is a growing demand for food which they cannot produce in sufficient
quantity.
While our share of the world's export markets in manufactured goods
has been declining, our agricultural exports are growing tremendously.
One out of every four harvested acres in the United States produces
food for export More than $7.6 billion of our $17 billion farm output
went to the export market last year and it represented 18 percent of
America's total exports. This year, California's exports will total
about $592 million, a 15 percent increase in a single year.
3
Farm Bureau
And the greatest growth is in those areas of agriculture which are
totally free of government controls and subsidies. Like farmers
throughout America, California farm producers have helped generate
overseas markets through their own privately financed promotions.
The almond industry is a good example of creative enterprise at
work to build new markets for agriculture. Ten years ago, the
cooperative that markets 70 percent of California's almond crop exported
less than one-sixth of its total production. This year, it is half.
Those who like to say California is a good place to be if you are an
orange will be delighted, I'm sure, to know that now we have more acres
in almonds (254,000) than we do in oranges (224,000).
Whatever happens in other areas of competition, agricultural
exports offer America a tremendous opportunity to reverse the trade
deficits of recent years. Japan, South Korea and the other major nation:
of the Pacific Basin are unlikely in our lifetime to become totally
self-sufficient in food. And we have an opportunity to capture an even
greater share of the agricultural market in certain products in Western
Europe, without even considering the possibilities of increased
commercial contact with countries outside the Free World.
This can mean greater opportunity for all our citizens. Every
Nitional $100 million dollars worth of grain exported this year, for
aple, means between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs in agriculture and in other
.dustries which are affected by agricultural exports.
That is why we in California and farmers from every state have a
vital stake in the President's current efforts to lower tariff barriers
in world commerce. The productive interchange of goods and products
can mean prosperity for everyone. In the past, America has been a
generous benefactor and an indulgent trading partner. We have opened
our markets to the goods and products of other nations, but too many of
the nations we trade with discriminated against our products, Now we
are asking that they pay more than lip-service to the principle of free
trade. And I think we must be ready to demand equal treatment in world
trade, especially for those American agricultural products that can be
priced out of the marketplace by unreasonable and excessive tariff
barriers.
If these artificial financial barriers are removed, we need have nc
worry about our ability to compete in world markets. No country in the
world can match the variety, the quality and the sheer productive
capacity of America's agricultural industry.
Farm Bureau
But it will take more than an expansion of export markets. There
is the matter of economic stability. And right now that *is a problem
for agriculture.
Farmers and ranchers throughout America are confronted by new
threats to their industry, their ability to compete economically, and
yes, even their survival.
Agriculture is uniquely vulnerable to a strike or the secondary
boycott. A farm is not like a factory. A strike at harvest time or a
secondary boycott (which by the way is illegal) does not just shut down
operations for a few days or even weeks. It can wipe out a whole year's
crop and put the farmer permanently out of business.
When that happens, everybody loses.
The farm workers lose their jobs permanently. And the innocent
bystander the American consumer is hurt by artificial shortages that
can mean higher and higher food prices.
First of all, there is a great immorality in allowing crops to rot
in the fields in this hungry world.
The well-publicized "lettuce boycott" you have heard about is the
kind of situation that emphasizes the need for effective farm labor
relations legislation. It is not a question of labor's right to organize.
More than 80 percent of California's lettuce crop already is produced by
union workers. About 70 percent of them are affiliated with the Teamsters
Union, with pay and working conditions equal or better than almost any
other workers in agriculture. And it is significant that the Teamsters
are not participating in the lettuce boycott.
The other union, the United Farm Workers, representing only about
10 percent of the lettuce workers, demands the right to represent farm
workers, but is unwilling to put its case before the workers in an
election where they are free to make their own choice by secret ballot.
The only way to assure the rights of all parties is to enact a fair
and workable farm labor relations law. We intend to continue seeking such
1
law in California.
But because this also is a problem faced by every other state, I
believe it is a situation that ultimately must be resolved through
federal legislation that is fair to the farmer, fair to the farm workers
and which recognizes agriculture's unique place in America's economy; its
vital role in producing the food and fiber our people need. For one state
alone to do this, there is a problem of making that state's farmers
non-competitive.
Farm Bureau
Agriculture, along with every other area of economic activity, is
vitally affected by government action or lack of action in many other
areas.
Property taxes, for example, are not merely an intolerable burden
for our homeowners. High property taxes are literally driving farmers
off the land.
In California, we are trying to change this, to ease the property
tax burden of both homeowners and farmers by rolling back local property
taxes through a comprehensive program that will provide permanent relief.
We are going to use our revenue sharing funds for this purpose in
an overall reform program that will shift part of the cost of supporting
schools to broader-based taxes.
While this is an immediate and urgent goal, we know that the only
way to permanently get government off the backs of the property owners
is to reduce government spending, to seek economy and efficiency at every
level of government. The President has urged such a course on Congress
and again the response was an override of nine vetoes.
When you are trying to reform an obviously intolerable situation,
it sometimes takes more time than you would like. But it can be done.
We found this out here in California. You have probably heard rumors
some changes we made in California's welfare program. It was
in cost three times as fast as our revenues, and was riddled
abuses that permitted people who did not really qualify to receive
walfare. Our attempts to reform were not well received by either the
fessional welfarists or the legislators. But then the opposing
lagislators heard the voice of the people. They did not exactly see
the light, but they sure felt the heat.
A year and a half ago, welfare in California was growing by 40,000
people a month. Today, there are about 254,000 fewer people on welfare
than when we started a year ago last March. The cost of welfare in our
state is $708 million less in federal, state and local taxes than it
vould have been without the reforms. We were told it could not be done,
that instead of curbing welfare abuses, we should raise taxes to help
yet that $708 million.
With the help of a massive grassroots effort that included the very
valuable assistance of agriculture, we did what they said could not be
done.
6
Farm Bureau
This year, 42 of California's 58 counties managed to reduce their
basic property tax rate. In some counties, it was the first such
reduction in years.
Everybody benefited. We were able to increase welfare grants to
the truly needy by 30 percent, and finance cost of living increases for
the disabled, the blind, and our senior citizens.
Right now, we have a pilot work program that requires every able-
bodied adult welfare recipient to either work for his grant, register
for employment and accept a job when one is available, or be duly
enrolled in a work training project designed to make them self-sufficient.
Those who refuse are dropped. from the rolls.
Government costs can be brought under control. But there is no
magic formula. It requires a constant effort to resist demands for new
and possibly wasteful spending---it takes efficient management that
insists on a dollar's worth of value for every tax dollar spent. And
you sort of have to stand up to the spenders without blinking even
when the stone throwing begins.
Too often, government forgets that its primary responsibility is
to represent the interests of all our people; the people who pay the
taxes as well as those who receive tax-financed benefits. That system
seems to have gotten out of kilter in recent years.
Government does not produce a single dollar. It consumes dollars
earned by the people through the fruit of their labor. It can only create
jobs by redistributing earnings.
When government raises taxes to solve one problem, it often creates
another. In fact, government does not solve problems; it subsidizes
them.
Government must always guard against excessive regulations and
controls, high taxes and all the other restrictions that can inhibit the
growth and expansion ofthe private sector. It is the private sector that
provides most of the jobs for our people and all of the revenue to support
all of government's activities.
There can be no prosperity or even freedom for our people if we ever
abandon the competitive economic system that transformed this country
into the strongest nation in the world.
- 7 -
Farm Bureau
In these past several years, I have been privileged to visit many
other countries in the world on diplomatic missions for the President
and on behalf of California industry. And every time I return home, I
marvel at the fantastic difference that freedom means in terms of
prosperity, individual dignity and opportunity.
It is not an accident. And I recommend a trip abroad to any who
doubt the value of America, this way of life of ours.
It will make you see, possibly for the first time, what Thomas
Jefferson meant in the words he wrote to a friend in 1787. He urged
his friend to travel to other countries so that he might better
appreciate what our pioneer Americans were carving out of the wilderness
in the new world. "It will make you adore your own country, " Jefferson
said "its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people and manners.
My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they
are in possession of and which no other people on earth enjoy."
We have known the blessings of liberty for almost 200 years.
We have survived every crisis and gone on to even greater equality and
prosperity for all our people.
We have built the fairest, most productive society the world has
known because most Americans have never been willing to trade their
dom for a little temporary privilege. They know what Americans have
known: freedom makes it all possible. If we preserve our
tom, we preserve America and all the values we cherish.
#######
(NOTE: Since Governor Reagan speaks from notes, there may be changes in,
3r additions to, the above quotes. However, the governor will stand by
the above quotes.)