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Speeches - Miscellaneous (including scripts), 1964-1974 [September 1973-1974]
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118564494
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Speeches - Miscellaneous (including scripts), 1964-1974 [September 1973-1974]
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Ronald Reagan's Governor's Papers of the Press Unit
Governor Ronald Reagan's Speeches
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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 - Miscellaneous (including scripts),
1964-1974 [September 1973-1974]
Box: P20
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/
a/a/7
ADDRESS
BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
BEFORE THE REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF CALIFORNIA
TOWN AND COUNTRY HOTEL CONVENTION CENTER
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 9, 1973
FIVECOAT, WITH and DUNN
TIONAL NSRA SHORTHAND REPORTERS
CERTIFIED SHORTHAND REPORTERS
SUITE 816 CHARTER OIL BUILDING
110 WEST "C" STREET
THERECORD
SAN DIEGO. CALIFORNIA 92101
NEVER
PHONE 714/239-4191
2
I
VICE-CHAIRMAN HAERLE: AND NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT'S
2
WITH GREAT PLEASURE I PRESENT TO YOU A GREAT CALIFORNIAN, A
3
GREAT ATTORNEY GENERAL, AND A GREAT REPUBLICAN, THE HONORABLE
4
EVELLE J. YOUNGER.
5
6
INTRODUCTION OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
7
BY EVELLE J. YOUNGER
8
9
THANK YOU, PAUL.
10
DISTINGUISHED LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AT THE HEAD TABLE AND
11
IN THIS GREAT CONVENTION. I'M EXTREMELY GRATIFIED AND A LITTLE
12
SURPRISED TO FIND so MANY PEOPLE HERE AT THIS LATE DATE. YOU
13
KNOW, AFTER THE POLL WAS RELEASED TWO DAYS AGO SHOWING THAT
14
JERRY BROWN WAS WAY OUT IN FRONT FOR THE GOVERNOR'S RACE NEXT
15
YEAR, I WAS AFRAID YOU MIGHT ALL GIVE UP AND GO HOME.
16
(LAUGHTER)
17
ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW, THAT WOULDN'T BE A BAD IDEA, ELECTING
18
JERRY BROWN GOVERNOR. SAVE A LOT OF MONEY. WE WOULDN'T NEED
19
AN ATTORNEY GENERAL OR A LEGISLATURE OR A FINANCE DEPARTMENT.
20
(LAUGHTER)
21
HE COULD RUN THE WHOLE STATE GOVERNMENT FROM A HOTEL ROOM.
22
AS LONG AS HE HAD SPACE ENOUGH FOR HIS PUBLIC RELATIONS MAN AND
23
A MIMEOGRAPH MACHINE.
24
(LAUGHTER)
25
BUT I'M NOT KNOCKING IT. AT THE MOMENT HE SERVES AS A
26
GREAT UNIFYING FORCE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
27
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
28
ACTUALLY, WE GET ALONG VERY WELL. WE HAVE NO TROUBLE
3
1
COMMUNICATING. WHEN I WANT TO TALK TO SECRETARY BROWN, I EITHER
2
PHONE HIM OR WRITE HIM. AND WHEN HE HAS A MESSAGE FOR ME, HE
3
HOLDS A PRESS CONFERENCE.
4
(LAUGHTER)
5
INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, YOU KNOW, HE VERY OFTEN PHONES RIGHT
6
AFTER HE SAID SOMETHING VERY NASTY AND APOLOGIZES FOR IT
7
IMMEDIATELY AFTER HE HOLDS HIS PRESS CONFERENCE. I SUGGEST
8
THAT MANNERS HELP WHEN YOU'RE BURDENED WITH NEITHER EXPERIENCE
9
OR KNOWLEDGE.
10
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
11
AND NOW, OF COURSE, I'M GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO
12
INTRODUCE OUR GOVERNOR. YOU KNOW, I'M A LITTLE CONFUSED,
13
THOUGH. IT'S BEEN RUMORED THE GOVERNOR IS THINKING ABOUT
14
RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.
15
(APPLAUSE)
16
NOW, BE CALM, BE CALM. THERE MAY BE SOME PROBLEMS THERE.
17
WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO THE GOVERNOR, HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY
18
ASPIRE TO THAT POSITION WHEN HE'S NEVER HAD ONE GOOD SCANDAL
19
TO HIS NAME, THE SKIPPER HASN'T WRITTEN AN EXPOSE, THERE HAS
20
BEEN NO CHEATING, NO LYING, NO VENDING MACHINES, NO BOOZING,
21
NO BUGGING OF TELEPHONES, NO RUNNING AROUND WITH WILD WOMEN.
22
TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, HE'S A GOOD DRIVER AND A MEDIOCRE
23
SWIMMER.
24
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
25
NOW, WHO'S GOING TO TRUST A POLITICIAN LIKE THAT?
26
(LAUGHTER)
27
SERIOUSLY, THE WORD "TRUST" IS VERY APPROPRIATE IN
28
DESCRIBING OUR GREAT GOVERNOR. YOU KNOW, BIG BANDS ARE COMING
4
1
BACK, CHEEK-TO-CHEEK DANCING IS AGAIN BECOMING POPULAR, COLLEGE
2
STUDENTS WHO ASSAULT TEACHERS ARE BEING EXPELLED THESE DAYS.
3
I EVEN READ YESTERDAY MORNING WHERE SOME YOUNG MEN ARE GETTING
4
TIRED OF TAKING A HALF AN HOUR EACH MORNING WITH BALSAM AND A
5
HAIR DRYER IN ORDER TO GET THE SNAGS OUT OF THEIR LOCKS, AND
6
THEY'RE GETTING CREW CUTS AGAIN.
7
HONESTY, INTEGRITY, AND THRIFT, THESE OLD-FASHIONED
8
VIRTUES, ARE BECOMING POPULAR AGAIN ALONG WITH THE BIG BANDS.
9
AND HONESTY AND INTEGRITY ARE SYNONYMOUS WITH RONALD REAGAN.
10
(APPLAUSE)
11
ONE OF THE MEMBERS OF THE OPPOSITION PARTY IN A LEADERSHIP
12
POSITION A FEW MONTHS AGO WAS COMPLAINING TO ME ABOUT SOMETHING
13
THE GOVERNOR HAD DONE OR FAILED TO DO, AND REFERRED TO HIM AS
14
"STRAIGHT ARROW." WELL, YOU KNOW, HE DIDN'T INTEND THAT AS A
15
COMPLIMENT. HE WAS GRUMBLING BECAUSE THE GOVERNOR REFUSED TO
16
APPOINT AN INDIVIDUAL THAT HE DIDN'T CONSIDER QUALIFIED TO THE
17
BENCH IN RETURN FOR SOME DESPERATELY NEEDED VOTES. I DOUBT IF
18
THE GOVERNOR CONSIDERED THE PHRASE "STRAIGHT ARROW" AS AN
19
INSULT. I CERTAINLY DON'T.
20
SECRETARY BROWN'S PHILOSOPHY NOTWITHSTANDING, ONE MAN CAN'T
21
RUN THE STATE GOVERNMENT. THE STATE CONSTITUTION QUITE
22
PROPERLY ASSIGNS TO THE VARIOUS STATE OFFICERS DIFFERENT
23
BURDENS AND RESPONSIBILITIES. ON THOSE RARE OCCASIONS WHEN THE
24
RESPONSIBILITIES OF OUR OFFICES HAVE LED US TO DIFFERENT
25
CONCLUSIONS, THE MUTUAL RESPECT THAT EXISTS BETWEEN YOUR
26
GOVERNOR AND YOUR ATTORNEY GENERAL HAVE MADE COMMUNICATION
27
EASY AND RESOLUTIONS POSSIBLE. THE GOVERNOR UNDERSTANDS THE
28
SYSTEM, AND HE KNOWS HE DOESN'T NEED OR DOESN'T WANT A RUBBER
5
1
STAMP ATTORNEY GENERAL, AND I WANT TO TELL YOU ALL THAT IN THE
2
TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS THAT IT'S BEEN MY PLEASURE TO SERVE YOU IN
3
SACRAMENTO, THE GOVERNOR HAS NOT ONCE TRIED TO GET THE ATTORNEY
4
GENERAL DEPARTMENT TO CHANGE OR COMPROMISE A LEGAL POSITION FOR
5
REASONS OF POLITICS OR EXPEDIENCY.
6
I HAVE NEVER HAD THE PLEASURE, GOVERNOR--AND I HOPE YOU'RE
7
LISTENING TO INTRODUCE YOU BEFORE, SO THIS IS THE FIRST CHANCE
8
I'VE HAD TO TELL YOU AND, FORTUNATELY, I CAN TELL YOU IN FRONT
9
OF A GREAT MANY WITNESSES, HOW PLEASED AND PROUD I HAVE BEEN TO
10
SERVE WITH YOU IN SACRAMENTO. FOR AS LONG AS YOU WERE RIDING
11
OFF INTO THE SUNSET, GOVERNOR, WITH THE WORDS "THE END" PRINTED
12
ON YOUR BACK (LAUGHTER), I'VE BEEN IN PUBLIC SERVICE. IN ALL
13
THOSE YEARS I HAVE NEVER MET A MORE HONORABLE MAN.
14
(APPLAUSE)
15
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU THE MAN WHO CLEANED UP
16
"CHARISMA" (LAUGHTER), THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA.
17
(PROLONGED STANDING OVATION)
18
19
ADDRESS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
20
GOVERNOR, STATE OF CALIFORNIA
21
22
THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THAT'S VERY HEARTWARMING. IF YOU
23
THINK THAT I'M DRESSED A LITTLE STRANGE FOR SAN DIEGO: THE
24
SUN IS SHINING BRIGHTLY AND IT'S HOTTER THAN HELL IN SACRAMENTO.
25
EV, MEDIOCRE? I WAS A LIFEGUARD FOR SEVEN YEARS.
26
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
27
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR REINECKE, IVY, HUGH, OFFICIALS OF OUR
28
PARTY, AND MEMBERS OF MY ADMINISTRATION THAT ARE HERE AT THE
6
1
HEAD TABLE, AND YOU, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I REALIZE THERE HAS
2
BEEN A CHANGE OF SCHEDULE AND THE LIST OF TOPICS THAT ARE NOW
3
AVAILABLE TO ME ARE ALMOST UNLIMITED BECAUSE YOU DID NOT GET TH
4
FULL CABINET BRIEFING YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET FROM ED MEESE,
5
FRANK WALTON, AND EARL BRIAN, AND I'M A LITTLE SORRY ABOUT THAT
6
BECAUSE ALL THREE OF THEM CAN DO IT BETTER, AND I THINK THEY
7
HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO TALK ABOUT, BUT THEY WILL SAVE THE MATERIAL
8
WE MEET HERE ONCE AGAIN, AND I'M HAPPY TO SAY IT LOOKS LIKE
9
EVEN A BIGGER GATHERING THAN IN THE PAST. AND THAT'S
10
STRANGE FOR SOME WHO HAVE BEEN SUGGESTING THAT ONLY THE LAST
11
FEW OF THE FAITHFUL GUARD WOULD REMAIN IN THESE TRYING TIMES.
12
IT'S ALWAYS A GREAT PLEASURE FOR ME. I'M NEVER SURE THAT IT IS
13
FOR YOU.
14
I HAD MY CONFIDENCE SHAKEN NOT TOO LONG AGO. I MADE A
15
TRIP TO MEXICO IN BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT FOR THE PRESIDENT,
16
AND I ADDRESSED A LARGE DISTINGUISHED AUDIENCE IN MEXICO CITY,
17
AND THEN HAD THAT EXPERIENCE THAT HAPPENS TO ALL SPEAKERS AT
18
SOMETIME OR ANOTHER: I SAT DOWN TO VERY SCATTERED AND
19
UNENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE. THE NEXT SPEAKER WAS A REPRESENTATIVE
20
OF THE GOVERNMENT THERE, AND HE SPOKE, WAS WARMLY RECEIVED.
21
HE WAS FREQUENTLY INTERRUPTED WITH ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE. I
22
DIDN'T WANT TO REVEAL MY EMBARRASSMENT OR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS,
23
SO EVERY TIME THEY DID--HE WAS SPEAKING IN SPANISH; I DIDN'T
24
KNOW WHAT HE WAS SAYING--BUT I JOINED IN AND APPLAUDED LOUDER
25
THAN ANYONE ELSE UNTIL OUR AMBASSADOR LEANED OVER AND SAID,
26
"I WOULDN'T DO. THAT IF I WERE YOU. HE'S INTERPRETING YOUR
27
SPEECH. "
28
(LAUGHTER)
7
1
PROBABLY MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEATEN ME HERE WITH THIS STORY,
2
BUT I'M GOING TO TELL IT ANYWAY BECAUSE IT SO APTLY ILLUSTRATES
3
THE FACT THAT THERE IS NOTHING REALLY NEW, THAT YOU CAN LOOK
4
BACK IN HISTORY AND FIND SOMETHING THAT PERTAINS TO ANYTHING
5
THAT'S GOING ON TODAY. YOU CAN GO BACK SO MANY THOUSANDS OF
6
YEARS TO WHEN MOSES, LEADING THE ISRAELITES, APPROACHED THE
7
RED SEA AND THERE HE WAS STOPPED IN HIS FLIGHT BY THE RED SEA.
8
THE LORD SPOKE AND SAID, "I HAVE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS.'
9
AND MOSES ASKED FOR THE GOOD NEWS, AND HE SAID, "I'M GOING
10
TO PART THE RED SEA, I'M GOING TO SEPARATE THE WATERS, AND YOU
11
CAN LEAD THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL THROUGH TO THE PROMISED LAND. "
12
AND HE SAID, "WHAT'S THE BAD NEWS?"
13
AND THE LORD SAID, "THERE WILL BE A CONSIDERABLE DELAY
14
WHILE WE GET AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT."
15
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
16
ACTUALLY, IT IS A WORLD OF CHANGE. JUST RECENTLY--AS A
17
MATTER OF FACT, OVER THE 4TH OF JULY--A YOUNG SENATOR FROM
18
MASSACHUSETTS JOURNEYED ALL THE WAY TO ALABAMA TO MAKE A 4TH OF
19
JULY SPEECH. HIS TRIP WAS NONPOLITICAL.
20
(LAUGHTER)
21
AND IF YOU BELIEVE THAT, I GOT SOME FLORIDA REAL ESTATE I
22
WANT TO SELL YOU AS SOON AS THE TIDE GOES OUT.
23
HIS WORDS WERE WELL-CHOSEN. THEY WERE SUITED TO THE
24
OCCASION AND THAT PARTICULAR AUDIENCE, AND THEY WERE WELL-
25
RECEIVED. HELL, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN WELL-RECEIVED AT THE
26
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION. IT WAS PURE VINTAGE GOLDWATER,
27
GOLDWATER SR. GEORGE WALLACE SAT THERE. HE WONDERED WHETHER
28
THEY HADN'T SENT THE WRONG SOUND TRACK. PERHAPS YOU THINK I'M
8
1
EXAGGERATING, BUT WHO IN MASSACHUSETTS EVER HEARD SENATOR
2
KENNEDY PROCLAIM THAT NO MAN SHOULD BE STRIPPED OF THE FRUITS
3
OF HIS LABOR TO BENEFIT ANOTHER. AND THEN HE WENT ON TO SAY
4
THIS GREAT PRINCIPLE WAS NOW UNDER ATTACK BECAUSE OF HIGH
5
TAXES UNDER THIS REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION.
6
(LAUGHTER)
7
IT'S INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT RESEARCH HAS BEEN DONE AND
8
IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF THE 93RD CONGRESS, 11 SENATORS OUT
9
OF THE 100 SET SOMETHING OF A NATIONAL RECORD. IN THOSE FIRST
10
SIX MONTHS, THOSE 11 SENATORS BETWEEN THEM INTRODUCED ALMOST
11
ONE TRILLION DOLLARS IN SPENDING PROPOSALS. ALL OF THE 11 WERE
12
DEMOCRATS, ONE OF THE 11 WAS TEDDY KENNEDY, AND AMONG THE OTHER
13
10 WERE HUBERT HUMPHREY, SENATOR MUSKIE, AND, INTERESTINGLY
14
ENOUGH, TWO SENATORS FROM CALIFORNIA. SOMETHING OUGHT TO BE
15
DONE ABOUT THAT.
16
(APPLAUSE)
17
I SAID THESE HAVE BEEN TRYING TIMES, AND I KNOW THAT MANY
18
REPUBLICANS HAVE BEEN OVER THESE SUMMER MONTHS DESPONDENT AND
19
DISTURBED, BUT I THINK IT'S A LITTLE EARLY TO BE ADMINISTERING
20
THE LAST RITES. THERE WAS A SPECIAL ELECTION RECENTLY IN THE
21
EAST, AND A REPUBLICAN WON A SEAT IN CONGRESS. IN THE MIDWEST,
22
WHERE LOCAL ELECTIONS ARE PARTISAN, TWO REPUBLICAN MAYORS HAVE
23
JUST RECENTLY BEEN ELECTED. AND HERE IN CALIFORNIA TO THE
24
BACKGROUND OF THE MUSIC--THE COUNTRY MUSIC, THAT IS--OF
25
WATERGATE WE HAVE WON FIVE OUT OF SEVEN SPECIAL ELECTIONS FOR
26
SEATS IN THE ASSEMBLY AND THE STATE SENATE.
27
(APPLAUSE)
28
I THINK IT'S TIME FOR A LITTLE STOCKTAKING AND COUNTING Oi
9
1
OUR BLESSINGS. MILLIONS OF PATRIOTIC AND COMMON SENSE
2
DEMOCRATS REFUSE TO FOLLOW THEIR PARTY LEADERSHIP DOWN THE
3
ROAD OF MORE SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS AND REDISTRIBUTION OF THEIR
4
EARNINGS, AND THEY HAVEN'T CHANGED THEIR MINDS ABOUT THE
5
PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES THEY HAVE WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF
6
THEIR PARTY. THEY STILL KNOW THAT FOR SOMEONE TO GET SOMETHING
7
HE HASN'T EARNED, SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO EARN SOMETHING HE DOESN'T
8
GET.
9
(APPLAUSE)
10
THEY BELIEVE THAT WHEN THEY VOTE TO RESTORE CAPITAL
11
PUNISHMENT IT IS ARROGANT AND INSULTING OF THEIR ELECTED
12
REPRESENTATIVES TO TELL THEM THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING
13
AND THEIR VOTES ARE MEANINGLESS.
14
(APPLAUSE)
15
THE 11 SENATORS WHO WOULD HAVE US SPEND ANOTHER TRILLION
16
DOLLARS ARE OUT OF STEP WITH THE RANK AND FILE PARTY MEMBERSHIP.
17
AND SO WERE THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS WHO BROKE WITH TRADITION
18
A FEW MONTHS AGO AND WHO TRIED TO RAILROAD A PACKAGE OF
19
POLITICAL PARTISAN RESOLUTIONS THROUGH THE NATIONAL GOVERNORS
20
CONFERENCE. THE "WHEREAS'S" WERE ALL ALIKE IN THEIR DOOM-
21
CRYING: WHEREAS THE NATION IS UNDERGOING THE WORST ECONOMIC
22
CRISIS IN A GENERATION, WHEREAS INFLATION, WHEREAS ECONOMIC
23
DISTRESS OF THE PEOPLE, WHEREAS UNEMPLOYMENT, AND OF COURSE ALL
24
OF THE THINGS THAT THEY DEPLORE HAD JUST BEEN INVENTED AND
25
PRODUCED BY THE REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION.
26
AND THEN THEY CAME TO THE "BE IT RESOLVED'S", AND THERE
27
TOO THEY WERE PEAS IN A POD: BE IT RESOLVED TO RESTORE THE
28
HEALTH AND VIGOR OF THE COUNTRY, TO SUFFER THE DOWNTRODDEN WE
10
1
MUST SPEND MORE MONEY, RESTORE THE BUDGET CUTS THE PRESIDENT
2
HAS TRIED TO INSTITUTE, CREATE NEW PROGRAMS IN THE IMAGE OF THE
3
SAME OLD PROGRAMS THAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
4
WELL, THEIR RESOLUTIONS DIDN'T PASS BECAUSE REPUBLICAN
5
GOVERNORS REFUSED TO BREAK WITH THE NONPARTISAN TRADITION AND
6
SUSPEND THE RULES so THEY COULD PASS THEM, BUT THE RESOLUTIONS
7
MADE NEWS, WHICH IS ALL DEMAGOGUERY IS EVER DESIGNED TO DO.
8
JAMES BURNHAM SAID, "WHEN OPERATING ON A DEMOCRATIC
9
POLITICIAN, EVEN THE KEENEST ANALYTIC SURGEON CANNOT SEPARATE
10
DEMOGOGIC FROM SOLID TISSUE WITHOUT KILLING THE PATIENT."
11
(LAUGHTER)
12
NO ONE IN OUR PARTY CONDONES OR EXCUSES THE MISDEEDS OF
13
THOSE WHO BELIEVED STUPIDLY, OR BEHAVED STUPIDLY, AND COMMITTED
14
ILLEGALITIES IN THE LAST CAMPAIGN. AS A PARTY WE HAVE BEEN AND
15
ARE STILL COMMITTED TO A SYSTEM OF ORDER, JUSTICE, INDIVIDUAL
16
RESPONSIBILITY, AND OBEDIENCE TO BOTH THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER
17
OF THE LAW. IT WAS NOT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THAT SUPPORTED A
18
PHILOSOPHY THAT DISSENTERS COULD CHOOSE THE LAWS THEY WOULD
19
OBEY OR DISOBEY OR THAT SOCIETY, NOT THE LAWBREAKER, SHOULD BE
20
HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR MISDEEDS.
21
(APPLAUSE)
22
WE AS REPUBLICANS HAVE NO QUARREL WITH THOSE WHO WERE
23
INCENSED BY THE ILLEGALITIES AND IMMORALITIES OF WATERGATE. WE
24
JOIN THEIR DEMAND THE LAW TAKE ITS COURSE AND JUSTICE BE DONE,
25
BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THIS DEPLORABLE EPISODE CANCELS THE
26
MANDATE OF THE VOTERS WHO CHOSE LAST NOVEMBER BETWEEN FISCAL
27
RESPONSIBILITY AND THE PROFITACY OF THE NEW LEFT.
28
THE EFFORT TO WIPE OUT THAT MANDATE, TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE
11
1
FOR THE PRESIDENT TO REDUCE COSTS AND DECENTRALIZE THE
2
BUREAUCRATIC BEHEMOTH ON THE POTOMAC IS GOING FORWARD RIGHT NOW
3
WITH NEAR IRRESISTABLE FORCE. INDEED, SOME OF US CAN BE
4
EXCUSED IF WE SUSPECT THAT SOME OF THE TIME THIS STOPPING OF THE
5
MANDATE, NOT JUSTICE, IS THE REAL GOAL.
6
M. STANTON EVANS, WRITING RECENTLY, SAID:
7
"THE SENATE COMMITTEE, AWASH WITH CONTRADICTORY
8
STORIES, AND THEN CAME THE REVELATION THAT
9
THE EXECUTIVE HAD BEEN MONITORING CRUCIAL
10
PHONE CALLS REFLECTING ON THE POINTS AT
11
ISSUE. IT SEEMED TO PROMISE NECESSARY ANSWERS
12
TO THE CONFLICTING TESTIMONY. AND THEN THE
13
PRESIDENT SLAMMED THE DOOR SHUT, INVOKING
14
EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE.
15
"THE REACTION," SAID EVANS, "WAS SWIFT AND
16
VEHEMENT IN FAVOR OF THE PRESIDENT. THE
17
LIBERAL MEDIA AND LIBERAL POLITICAL
18
SPOKESMEN LOUDLY APPROVED HIM, UPOHOLDING
19
THE MOST SACRED PRECEPTS OF HIS OFFICE.
20
THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID 'THE PRESIDENT HAS
21
BEEN LATE BUT NOT TOO LATE IN RECOGNIZING
22
THE DEEP SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS ISSUE AND
23
STANDING UP TO IT. THE WASHINGTON POST
24
SAID 'THE PRESIDENT'S AUTHORITY UNDER THE
25
CONSTITUTION TO WITHHOLD FROM CONGRESS
26
CONFIDENCES, PRESIDENTIAL INFORMATION,
27
WHICH IN HIS JUDGMENT WOULD BE INCOMPAT-
28
IBLE WITH PUBLIC INTEREST, IS ALTOGETHER
12
1
BEYOND QUESTION. HIS OBLIGATION TO DO IT
2
IN VINDICATION OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITU-
3
TIONAL SYSTEM IS CLEAR'. "
4
NOW, AT THIS POINT YOU'RE BEWILDERED, AND I WAS
5
BEWILDERED READING MR. EVANS' ARTICLE, BUT EVANS MADE EVERYTHING
6
PERFECTLY CLEAR: HE WASN'T WRITING ABOUT THE WORLD WE HAVE
7
BEEN LIVING IN IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS; HE EXPLAINED HE WAS
8
WRITING OF WHAT THE REACTION HAD BEEN WHEN PRESIDENT
9
EISENHOWER REFUSED TO GIVE THE TAPES OF HIS CONVERSATIONS TO
10
THE MC CARTHY HEARINGS.
11
(APPLAUSE)
12
IT WOULD SEEM THERE'S A DOUBLE STANDARD. IF SENATOR
13
KENNEDY IS GOING TO KEEP ON ENUNCIATING REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES,
14
I THINK WE COULD HELP HIM WITH A FEW FACTS AND A LITTLE
15
INFORMATION THAT HE MIGHT INCORPORATE INTO HIS FUTURE TALKS,
16
THAT GOVERNMENT GROWTH AND INCREASED SPENDING, CENTRALIZATION OF
17
POWER IN WASHINGTON, DELIBERATE, PLANNED INFLATION AS AN
18
ECONOMIC POLICY, THE REDISTRIBUTION OF EARNINGS THROUGH
19
TAXATION, ALL OF THIS IS PART AND PARCEL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF
20
HIS PARTY'S LEADERSHIP THAT THEY HAVE ESPOUSED DURING THE LAST
21
40 YEARS, AND WHICH THEY STILL ESPOUSE.
22
SINCE THE INCOME TAX WAS ADOPTED IN 1914, IT HAS BEEN
23
INCREASED 13 TIMES BY DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATIONS; IT HAS BEEN
24
LOWERED 8 TIMES BY REPUBLICANS.
25
(APPLAUSE)
26
BEFORE THE SENATOR BLAMES THE PRESENT TAX BURDEN ON THIS
27
REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION, HE SHOULD KNOW THAT THE SO-CALLED
28
NIXON TAX REFORM OF 1969 TOOK 9 MILLION LOW-INCOME EARNERS OFF
13
1
THE INCOME TAX ROLLS COMPLETELY, REDUCED TAXES 70 PERCENT FOR
2
THE NEXT SEVERAL BRACKETS ABOVE THAT LEVEL, AND RAISED TAXES
3
ABOUT SEVEN-AND-A-HALF PERCENT FOR ALL THOSE PEOPLE EARNING
4
$50,000, ALL OF WHOM ARE SUPPOSED TO BE REPUBLICANS, AND
5
CORPORATIONS FOUND THEMSELVES PAYING AN ADDITIONAL FOUR-AND-A-
6
HALF BILLION COLLARS.
7
THE ONLY TIME IN THE LAST 40 YEARS THAT THE DOLLAR LOST
8
NOT ONE PENNY OF ITS PURCHASING POWER WAS THE ONLY TIME THERE
9
HAS BEEN A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT AND A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS IN
10
WASHINGTON AT THE SAME TIME. IN THE YEARS OF CAMELOT AND THE
11
GREAT SOCIETY THAT FOLLOWED THE EISENHOWER YEARS, DEBT, PUBLIC
12
AND PRIVATE, IN THIS COUNTRY HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED. LIQUID
13
CAPITAL IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR HAS BEEN DRAINED OFF BY TAXATION,
14
AND WE HAVE TODAY'S PRESENT RECORD BREAKING HIGH INTEREST RATES.
15
MILTON FREIDMAN SAID THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WAS UNTIL 40
16
YEARS AGO VIEWED PRIMARILY AS A KEEPER OF THE PEACE, AN UMPIRE.
17
TODAY WE VIEW IT AS CAPABLE OF TREATING EVERY SOCIAL AND
18
PERSONAL ILL AS THE SOURCE FROM WHICH ALL BLESSINGS FLOW.
19
IN THESE 40 YEARS, THE SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES
20
BETWEEN THE THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT HAVE BEEN DISTORTED.
21
ALSO, THE BALANCE SO CAREFULLY ENGINEERED BY THE FOUNDING
22
FATHERS BETWEEN THE LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT: FEDERAL, STATE, AND
23
LOCAL. BUT MOST IMPORTANT, THERE HAS BEEN A DISTORTION OF THE
24
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE. TOO MANY PEOPLE
25
HAVE LOST FAITH IN THEMSELVES AND IN THIS FREE ECONOMIC SYSTEM.
26
IT IS TIME FOR THE PEOPLE TO LEARN THAT TAXES ARE AN
27
EXPENSE GREATER THAN THE AMOUNT THEY MUST SPEND IN THEIR FAMILY
28
FOR FOOD, SHELTER, AND CLOTHING, AND THAT TAXES CAN ONLY BE
14
1
REDUCED BY LIMITING GOVERNMENT SPENDING; THAT PRIVATE
2
ENTERPRISE, NOT GOVERNMENT, IS THE GREAT PROVIDER; AND THAT WE
3
CAN HAVE A BIGGER SLICE OF THE PIE ONLY BY INCREASING THE SIZE
4
OF THE PIE, NOT BY REDUCING SOMEONE ELSE'S SLICE.
5
FOR SIX YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS IN SACRAMENTO WE HAVE BEEN
6
TRYING TO LIMIT THE SIZE AND COST OF CALIFORNIA'S GOVERNMENT,
7
AND EACH YEAR AS WE MET UNDER THESE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES I HAVE
8
REPORTED TO YOU IN THESE PARTY GATHERINGS ON OUR PROGRESS. SIX
9
YEARS AGO I HAD TO STAND BEFORE YOU AND TELL YOU AFTER ONLY A
10
SHORT TIME IN OFFICE THAT WE WERE GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE AN
11
$800 MILLION TAX INCREASE IF WE WERE TO RESTORE SOLVENCY TO THE
12
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, THAT THE STATE WAS SPENDING A MILLION
13
DOLLARS A DAY MORE THAN IT WAS TAKING IN, THAT THE STATE HAD
14
BEEN BURDENED WITH PROGRAMS, MANY UNNECESSARY, THAT WE WERE
15
GOING TO TRY TO REDUCE AND MAKE MORE EFFICIENT THOSE THAT
16
SHOULD BE RETAINED, BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE HAD NO OTHER WAY
17
OUT.
18
WELL, I THINK SOMETHING THAT EXPLAINS THE DIFFERENCE IN
19
PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS IS THE FACT THAT
20
NOW IN THIS SEVENTH YEAR THAT I FACE YOU, OUR BATTLE OVER THE
21
LAST SEVERAL MONTHS HAS NOT BEEN ONE OF TRYING TO INCREASE THE
22
TAX BURDEN ON THE PEOPLE; WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO PERSUADE OUR
23
DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS IN THE MAJORITY OF THE LEGISLATURE TO
24
HELP US GIVE BACK SOME 800 MILLION DOLLARS IN A SINGLE WINDFALL
25
TO THE TAXPAYERS.
26
(APPLAUSE)
27
NOW IN THIS SEVENTH YEAR WE ARE ASKING THAT THERE BE AN
28
ONGOING TAX CUT IN THE INCOME TAX THAT WOULD PROVIDE ANOTHER
15
1
200 MILLION DOLLARS IN THE FIRST YEAR AND INCREASING THERE-
2
AFTER AND A PROGRAM, A LONG-RANGE PROGRAM, TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL
3
TAX CUTS IN THE YEARS AHEAD. NO MORE TAX SUBSTITUTIONS, NOT
4
THINGS LIKE THE PROPERTY TAX REFORM WHERE WE'RE RAISING ONE
5
BUT LOWERING ANOTHER, BUT OUTRIGHT TAX CUTS AND A REDUCTION IN
6
THE TAX BURDEN OF THE PEOPLE.
7
(APPLAUSE)
8
AND ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IN THESE FEW YEARS
9
WITHOUT REDUCING OR DESTROYING THE LEGITIMATE SERVICES AND
10
RESPONSIBILITIES OF STATE GOVERNMENT. THE STATE SCHOLARSHIP
11
FUND FOR OUR COLLEGE STUDENTS HAS GROWN FROM LESS THAN FIVE
12
MILLION DOLLARS TO MORE THAN 39 MILLION DOLLARS; MORE THAN 600
13
MILLION DOLLARS OF PROPERTY TAX RELIEF FOR HOMEOWNERS IS BEING
14
UNDERWRITTEN BY THE STATE; STATE-SUPPORTED PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAS
15
INCREASED 92 PERCENT WHILE ENROLLMENT ONLY WENT UP LESS THAN
16
SIX PERCENT. WE HAVE DOUBLED THE HIGHWAY PATROL WHILE WE MAIN-
17
TAINED THE SAME OVERALL LEVEL IN THE NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES IN
18
STATE GOVERNMENT. OUR BUDGET WHEN WE STARTED WAS SPLIT 50-50,
19
HALF OF THE BUDGET GOING TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT AND
20
HALF OF IT FOR STATE OPERATIONS. TODAY IT'S TWO-THIRDS FOR
21
LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT AND ONE-THIRD FOR THE STATE.
22
WE HAVE ELIMINATED PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX, WE HAVE REDUCED
23
INVENTORY TAX, WE HAVE EVEN CUT THE BRIDGE TOLLS 11 TIMES. THE
24
LAST TIME WE MET, I HAD REPORTED THAT WELFARE REFORMS HAD
25
REDUCED THE CASELOAD BY SOMEWHERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF
26
200,000. I CAN NOW TELL YOU AS OF THIS MOMENT, UNLESS EARL
27
BRIAN, WHO HAD A GREAT DEAL TO DO WITH THE SAVINGS, CORRECTS
28
ME, I'LL BE ABLE TO TELL YOU RIGHT NOW IT IS AT 368,000 FEWER
16
1
PEOPLE THAN WHEN WE STARTED THE WELFARE REFORMS.
2
(APPLAUSE)
3
HE HAS JUST OKAYED IT. EV YOUNGER HAS ALREADY TOLD YOU
4
OF THE AMOUNT OF THE SAVINGS, AND THAT'S CONFIRMED BY EARL
5
BRIAN. ALSO, THAT WE ARE SPENDING SOME TWO BILLION DOLLARS
6
LESS ON WELFARE THAN WE WOULD HAVE BEEN SPENDING OTHERWISE.
7
(APPLAUSE)
8
WE HAVE PROVEN THAT GOVERNMENT CAN RUN ON A COMMON SENSE
9
BUSINESS PRINCIPLE, BUT WE HAVE ALSO DISCOVERED AND PROVEN TO
10
OUR OWN SATISFACTION OR DISSATISFACTION THAT EVEN SUCCESSFUL
11
ECONOMIES AND INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS OF THIS KIND WILL NOT STOP
12
THE INEXORABLE GROWTH IN THE PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE'S EARNINGS
13
THAT GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO TAKE. OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS,
14
CALIFORNIANS' EARNINGS HAVE INCREASED AT A RATE OF SEVEN-AND-
15
A-HALF PERCENT A YEAR. GOVERNMENT'S REVENUES HAVE BEEN
16
INCREASING AT A RATE OF TEN PERCENT A YEAR. WE HAVE COME TO
17
REALIZE THE ONLY THING WE CAN DO IS PLAN AND BUDGET FOR TAX
18
DECREASES JUST THE SAME AS WE DO FOR ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT
19
PROGRAM.
20
NOW, I HAVE SAID BEFORE, YOU CAN LECTURE YOUR SON ALL YOU
21
WANT TO ABOUT EXTRAVAGENCE OR YOU CAN SAVE YOUR BREATH AND CUT
22
HIS ALLOWANCE AND ACHIEVE THE SAME END.
23
(APPLAUSE)
24
A FEW YEARS AGO WE HAD OUR FIRST SURPLUS. WE HAD FINALLY
25
THROUGH ECONOMIES, THROUGH THE TAX PROGRAM RAISED OUR HEADS.
26
CAP WEINBERGER, WHO WAS THEN FINANCE DIRECTOR, CAME IN ONE DAY
27
AND SAID, "I HAVEN'T ANNOUNCED IT YET, BUT IT WILL BE OUT VERY
28
SHORTLY" THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN THE CAPITOL "WE GOT A 90
17
I
MILLION DOLLAR SURPLUS. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH IT?"
2
I SAID, "LET'S GIVE IT BACK." I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT I
3
HAD SAID SOMETHING THAT ROCKED THE WALLS BECAUSE IN THE HISTORY
4
OF GOVERNMENT THAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE.
5
AND WE DEBATED LONG AND HARD WITH OUR OPPONENTS, AND
6
FINALLY WE HAD TO COMPROMISE. IT BECAME DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO
7
STAND UP TO THE PUBLIC AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE
8
BACK 90 MILLION DOLLARS THAT WE HAD AND DIDN'T NEED. THEY GAVE
9
IN ON THE BASIS WE PUT A LIMIT AND GIVE EVERYBODY A TEN PERCENT
10
REDUCTION IN THEIR INCOME TAX, BUT A CEILING OF A HUNDRED
11
DOLLARS, AND THAT WAS THE MOST THAT ANYONE COULD GET. WELL,
12
WE DID IT.
13
OUR SECOND CHANCE CAME WHEN I BROKE THE CONCRETE AROUND
14
MY FEET AND GAVE IN TO WITHHOLDING. THE ONLY SATISFACTION, AS
15
I SAID BEFORE, I HAD OUT OF THAT: I PROVED ONE POINT, THAT
16
WITHHOLDING IS NOT DONE FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF THE TAXPAYER;
17
IT'S DONE FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF GOVERNMENT. WE HAD TO HAVE
18
IT TO MEET CASH FLOW. so, WE HAD IT TO MEET OUR CASH FLOW
19
PROBLEM. FOR TEN YEARS OUR OPPONENTS HAD BEEN DEMANDING
20
WITHOLDING. NOW I HAD COME TO MEET THEM AND SAID, "ALL RIGHT,
21
WE'LL HAVE WITHHOLDING." AND IT TOOK ME A YEAR TO GET IT.
22
(LAUGHTER) BECAUSE THE MINUTE I WANTED IT, I DISCOVERED THERE
23
WAS A PRICE, AND I DISCOVERED THEIR REASON FOR WANTING IT.
24
WHEN YOU SWITCH TO WITHHOLDING, THERE IS AN OVERLAP. WHEN YOU
25
ARE COLLECTING LAST YEAR'S AND THIS YEAR'S TAXES, THE
26
GOVERNMENT AGAIN GETS A SURPLUS, A ONE-TIME WINDFALL, AND I
27
DECIDED THE FIRST TIME IT HAD WORKED PRETTY GOOD, WE WOULD TRY
28
IT THE SECOND TIME.
18
1
I MET WITH A DELEGATION OF COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN AND THE
2
LEADERSHIP OF OUR DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS IN THE LEGISLATURE, AND
3
THEY MADE IT PERFECTLY CLEAR TO ME WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND. ONE
4
OF THEM SAID, "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, GOVERNOR. NOW THAT YOU
5
WANT IT, IT HAS A PRICE ON IT." AND THE PRICE WAS THEY WANTED
6
TO SPEND THE WINDFALL. THEY WANTED TO PUT IN THEIR PET
7
PROGRAMS AND USE THAT TO GET THEM STARTED. WE WON THAT ONE.
8
WE WON IT, AND YOU TOOK A 20 PERCENT ACROSS-THE-BOARD
9
REDUCTION WITH NO LIMITATIONS THIS TIME ON YOUR INCOME TAX FOR
10
ONE YEAR.
11
(APPLAUSE)
12
SOME OF YOU WILL REMEMBER A FEW YEARS AGO BEFORE WE
13
SUCCEEDED IN PASSING THE PROPERTY TAX REFORM WE NOW HAVE WE
14
TRIED AND EACH YEAR WE WERE DEFEATED IN THE LEGISLATURE IN
15
TRYING TO GET PROPERTY TAX REFORM. I THINK IT'S ONLY PROPER
16
YOU KNOW SOME OF THE THINGS THAT GO ON UP THERE BENEATH THE
17
GOLDEN DOME. THIS TIME I MET WITH THE SAME GROUP, THE SAME
18
OPPOSITION LEADERSHIP OF THE LEGISLATURE. YES, THERE WAS A
19
PRICE. WE COULD HAVE TAX REFORM, WE COULD RAISE THE SALES
20
TAX IN ORDER TO LOWER THE HOMEOWNER'S TAX AND PROVIDE RENTER
21
RELIEF PROVIDED WE ONLY LOWERED IT ON A BASIS OF RAISING THE
22
TAX A DOLLAR FOR EVERY 50 CENTS WE GAVE BACK, AND THEY WANTED
23
THE OTHER 50 CENTS TO SPEND, AND WE REFUSED, AND WE LOST BY
24
ONE VOTE IN GETTING THAT PROPERTY TAX REFORM.
25
A FEW YEARS BACK WHEN THEY WERE OPPOSING THE WELFARE
26
REFORMS WE HAVE JUST MENTIONED, THEY SAID THAT OUR BUDGET WAS
27
OUT OF BALANCE BY 750 MILLION DOLLARS, AND THEY WERE DEMANDING
28
I PROPOSE TAX INCREASES TO MAKE UP THAT DEFICIT. WE SAID THAT
19
1
WELFARE REFORMS WOULD MAKE IT A BALANCED BUDGET. AT THE SAME
2
TIME THEY WERE DEMANDING A TAX INCREASE, THEY ADDED 503 MILLION
3
DOLLARS TO THE BUDGET THEY SAID WAS 700 MILLION DOLLARS OUT OF
4
BALANCE. WE VETOED THE 503 MILLION DOLLARS OUT OF THAT BUDGET.
5
AS A MATTER OF FACT, I HAVE BLUE-PENCILED OVER A BILLION
6
DOLLARS FROM THE SIX BUDGETS SO FAR, AND I HAVE VETOED PROBABLY
7
ANOTHER BILLION DOLLARS IN THE LEGISLATIVE BILLS THAT WERE SENT
8
TO MY DESK. THEY TELL US THEY FORESEE NO IMMEDIATE NEED FOR A
9
TAX INCREASE, AND THAT'S WHY OUR TAX LIMITATION PROPOSAL IS
10
UNNECESSARY. WELL, CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THE PRESENT COST OF
11
STATE GOVERNMENT WOULD BE HAD SOMEONE OF THEIR PERSUASION
12
OCCUPIED THE CORNER OFFICE? TWO BILLION DOLLARS IN VETOED AND
13
BLUE-PENCILED LEGISLATION AND BUDGET INTRODUCTIONS, AND NONE OF
14
THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE ROCK-LIKE SUPPORT OF
15
OUR REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS WHO, EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE A
16
MINORITY, KEPT THE DAM FROM BURSTING.
17
(APPLAUSE)
18
ASSEMBLYMAN BURTON IS ONE OF THOSE WHO CLAIMS IF THE
19
INITIATIVE ON NOVEMBER 6TH PASSES BABIES WILL STARVE, OLD
20
PEOPLE WILL DIE IN THE STREETS, AND TAXES WILL SKYROCKET
21
INSTEAD OF GOING DOWN. NOW, HE KNOWS, OF COURSE, HE ISN'T
22
TELLING THE TRUTH. AT THE SAME TIME THAT HE IS COMPLAINING
23
THAT THERE IS NO NEED FOR SUCH AN INIATIVE, ASSEMBLYMAN BURTON
24
HAS A BILL BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE WHICH WOULD INCREASE THE
25
COST OF GOVERNMENT BY 400 MILLION DOLLARS BEGINNING JANUARY
26
1ST, AND THAT COST INCREASE WOULD AMOUNT TO ABOUT A BILLION
27
DOLLARS A YEAR WITHIN FOUR YEARS. NOW, ASSEMBLYMAN BURTON IS
28
NOT PROPOSING ANY REVENUE MEASURE TO GO ALONG WITH THAT. HE IS
20
1
LEAVING THAT FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO FIND BECAUSE IT WOULD
2
AUTOMATICALLY REQUIRE A 400 MILLION DOLLAR TAX INCREASE IF HIS
3
BILL SHOULD PASS.
4
THE SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY, SPEAKER MORETTI, SAYS THAT
5
TO PASS THIS INITIATIVE ON NOVEMBER 6TH WOULD BE TO RAISE
6
PROPERTY TAXES ON NOVEMBER 7TH, AND HE KNOWS THAT ISN'T TRUE.
7
HE KNOWS ALSO IT ISN'T TRUE WHEN HE SAYS THIS WILL WIPE OUT THE
8
MINIMUM INCOME TAX AND A MAN CAN EARN 10 MILLION DOLLARS A
9
YEAR IN CALIFORNIA AND NOT PAY ANY TAXES. THERE IS NOT ONE
10
IOTA, NOT ONE WORD, NOT ONE PROVISION IN THIS INITIATIVE THAT
11
HAS ANY BEARING WHATSOEVER ON THE PRESENT MINIMUM INCOME TAX.
12
IT WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT.
13
TO ANSWER THIS THING ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES GOING UP: THE
14
LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, WHO HAVE NEVER HAD A BRIEFING, WHO HAVE
15
DECLINED OUR EVERY OFFER TO HAVE A BRIEFING, ARE AGAINST THIS
16
PROPOSITION BECAUSE THEY SAY THAT PROPERTY TAXES WILL
17
IMMEDIATELY GO UP. BUT THE LEAGUE OF CITIES AND THE
18
ASSOCIATION OF COUNTY SUPERVISORS IS AGAINST THE PROPOSAL
19
BECAUSE THEY HAVE READ IT AND THEY SAY IT WILL PREVENT THEM FROM
20
RAISING PROPERTY TAXES.
21
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
22
I SPOKE TO A MAYOR THE OTHER DAY. HE SAID, "OH, I KNOW
23
YOUR INITIATIVE IS NECESSARY. I KNOW SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE
24
TO STOP THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT, BUT I CAN'T BE FOR IT; I
25
HAVE TO BE AGAINST IT BECAUSE WE THINK WE NEED AN INCOME TAX IN
26
OUR CITY, AND YOUR PROPOSAL MAKES IT HARDER TO HAVE ONE. " AND
27
YET THE LEGISLATIVE ANALYST IN HIS NEUTRAL ANALYSIS OF OUR BILL
28
HAD A LINE IN WHICH HE SAID BY A TWO-THIRDS VOTE OF THE LEGISL TURE
21
1
LOCAL GOVERNMENTS CAN HAVE AN INCOME TAX, AND I'M SURE THAT
2
MOST OF YOU READING WITHOUT INFORMATION OF WHAT THE INTIATIVE
3
STANDS FOR WOULD SAY, "GOOD HEAVENS, THE PRESENT STATE
4
GRADUATED TAX, THE FEDERAL GRADUATED TAX, NOW THE CITY IS GOING
5
TO HAVE ONE TOO?"
6
THE LINE THAT THE ANALYST, MR. POST, LEFT OUT WAS, "YES,
7
YOU CAN BY A TWO-THIRDS OF THE LEGISLATURE HAVE PERMISSION TO
8
HAVE AN INCOME TAX AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IF THE INITIATIVE PASSES.
9
IF IT DOESN'T PASS, YOU CAN HAVE THAT BY A SINGLE MAJORITY VOTE
10
OF THE LEGISLATURE," BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY THE SITUATION IS
11
NOW, AND WE'RE TIGHTENING IT UP WITH THIS INITIATIVE.
12
(APPLAUSE)
13
THE ONLY EFFECT WE HAVE ON PROPERTY TAXES IS THAT THE
14
INITIATIVE TAKES SENATE BILL 90, THE PROPERTY TAX REFORM BILL,
15
WHICH IS A STATUTE, WHICH CAN BE WHITTLED AWAY BY SUCCESSIVE
16
LEGISLATURES, AND SIMPLY INCORPORATES IT INTO THE CONSTITUTION.
17
AND UNDER THE TERMS OF THAT IT SAID LOCAL GOVERNMENTS CAN RAISE
18
PROPERTY TAXES TO MEET THE INCREASED COST OF INFLATION OR
19
POPULATION GROWTH, SUCH AS MORE STUDENTS IN THE SCHOOLS, AND
20
FOR ANY OTHER RAISE THEY MUST GET THE PERMISSION OF THE PEOPLE,
21
THE VOTERS IN THAT DISTRICT. THIS IS UNCHANGED BY OUR
22
PROPOSAL.
23
ONE SENATOR, SENATOR MOSCONE, SAID IF HE WERE RICH HE
24
WOULD VOTE FOR THIS IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE THIS IS A WINDFALL FOR
25
THE RICH. HOW CAN IT BE? IT REDUCES INCOME TAXES IN THE ONE-
26
TIME REBATE FROM A HUNDRED PERCENT AT THE LOWER END OF THE
27
EARNINGS SCALE ON A DECREASING PERCENTAGE ON UP TO 20 PERCENT
28
AT THE TOP OF THE SCALE. THE SEVEN-AND-A-HALF PERCENT CUT THAT
22
I
WE HAVE PROPOSED ONGOING FOR THE INCOME TAX ALSO INCLUDES THE
2
HUNDRED PERCENT FORGIVENESS FOR FAMILIES BELOW $8,000 OF
3
INCOME OR INDIVIDUALS WITH $4,000 OR LESS.
4
NOW, THAT PART, THAT FORGIVENESS, HAS BEEN PASSED IN THE
5
LEGISLATION THAT HAS GIVEN YOU THE ONE-TIME REBATE, BUT I
6
THINK YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT YOU WOULDN'T BE HAVING THE ONE-TIME
7
REBATE, THE SUSPENSION OF ONE PENNY OF THE SALES TAX FOR SIX
8
MONTHS, OR THE REBATE YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE NEXT APRIL ON YOUR
9
INCOME TAX. THEY HAD REFUSED ANY IDEA OF PASSING THAT UNTIL
10
WE QUALIFIED THE INITIATIVE FOR THE BALLOT, AND THEN THEY
11
THOUGHT OF IT IN TERMS OF HOW COULD THEY TAKE SOME OF THE LURE
12
AWAY FROM THE BALLOT INITIATIVE, AND SO THEY PASSED THE VERY
13
THING WE HAD BEEN ASKING FOR FROM THE LEGISLATURE FOR SEVERAL
14
MONTHS, THE ONE-TIME REBATE.
15
(APPLAUSE)
16
THEIR PURPOSE, OF COURSE, IS TO CONFUSE THE PEOPLE ON THE
17
BELIEF THAT CALIFORNIANS, IF THEY'RE CONFUSED, WILL VOTE NO.
18
VERY SIMPLY, WHAT DOES THE PLAN DO? WELL, AS I HAVE SAID,
19
PART OF IT HAS ALREADY BEEN PASSED, THANKS TO PUTTING IT ON THE
20
BALLOT: THE ONE-TIME REBATE. BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW IF YOU
21
VOTE YES ON NOVEMBER 6TH IS THAT YOU VERY SIMPLY ARE VOTING FOR
22
YOURSELF, IN ADDITION TO THE 100 PERCENT FORGIVENESS AT THE
23
LOWER END OF THE SCALE; A SEVEN-AND-A-HALF PERCENT REDUCTION IN
24
THE STATE INCOME TAX ACROSS THE BOARD AND A LONG-RANGE PLAN
25
OVER 15 YEARS TO PROVIDE FUTURE TAX INCREASES.
26
THEY HAVE TRIED TO MAKE IT SOUND COMPLICATED. IN
27
LANGUAGE IT IS COMPLICATED BECAUSE WE WANTED TO HAVE A
28
CONSTITUTIONAL INTITIATIVE THAT IF IT WAS VOTED ON BY THE
23
1
PEOPLE WOULD GO INTO EFFECT WITHOUT HAVING TO WAIT FOR THEM
2
TO DO TO IT WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN DOING TO THE DEATH PENALTY
3
INITIATIVE THAT YOU VOTED ON IN 1970.
4
(APPLAUSE)
5
BUT IT IS SIMPLE. IT SIMPLY MEANS THAT WHEN THE ECONOMIC
6
ESTIMATE COMMISSION MEETS IN OCTOBER, WHEN IT GIVES US ITS
7
ESTIMATE OF WHAT YOUR TOTAL EARNINGS ARE GOING TO BE FOR THE
8
COMING YEAR, IT THEN TELLS US WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THOSE EARNINGS
9
THE PRESENT TAX STRUCTURE OF CALIFORNIA WILL TAKE. PRESENTLY
10
IT'S SOMEWHERE UP ABOVE EIGHT-AND-A-HALF CENTS, EIGHT-AND-
11
A-HALF PERCENT OF YOUR TOTAL EARNINGS. WE THEN IN THE FIRST
12
BUDGET, IF THIS IS PASSED IN NOVEMBER, IN THE BUDGET BEGINNING
13
NEXT JULY, TAKE ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT LESS THAN THAT
14
PERCENTAGE IS OF YOUR EARNINGS, AND THE FOLLOWING YEAR WE WILL
15
TAKE ANOTHER ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT LESS. THAT FIRST YEAR
16
THAT ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT LESS WILL MEAN ABOUT $200 MILLION
17
IN TAXES YOU WON'T HAVE TO PAY, AND THE INITIATIVE SPECIFIES
18
THOSE SURPLUSES CREATED BY THAT REDUCTION IN THE PERCENTAGE
19
CAN ONLY BE SPENT IN ONE WAY: THE LEGISLATURE MUST GIVE THEM
20
BACK TO THE PEOPLE.
21
NOW, THIS PLAN WAS EVOLVED BY A TASK FORCE OF SOME OF YOU,
22
PRIVATE CITIZENS, MEMBERS OF OUR OWN STAFF AND CABINET, AND
23
SOME OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED ECONOMISTS IN THE UNITED STATES
24
WHO CAME TO US FROM ALL OVER THE NATION. THEY CAME TO US
25
VOLUNTARILY BECAUSE THEY ARE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT THEY THINK
26
IS RUNAWAY SPENDING BY GOVERNMENT. THEY SAY THERE HAS NEVER
27
BEEN ANYTHING IN HISTORY QUITE LIKE IT. SOME PEOPLE HAVE SAID,
28
"WHY NOW? WHY ALL OF A SUDDEN AFTER THESE SEVERAL YEARS DO
24
1
YOU COME UP WITH AN IDEA OF THIS KIND?" WELL, BECAUSE NEVER
2
BEFORE HAS THIS NATION BEEN IN THIS SITUATION.
3
GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS OUT OF CONTROL. IN 1930 IT WAS
4
VERY EASY FOR US TO PAY OUR TAXES BECAUSE FOR FEDERAL, STATE,
5
AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IT ONLY TOOK 15 CENTS OUT OF THE DOLLAR
6
THAT WAS EARNED BY EACH CITIZEN. WE FOUGHT WORLD WAR II, THE
7
GREATEST MILITARY EFFORT, GREATEST MOBILIZATION OF FORCE AND
8
POWER THAT HAS EVER TAKEN PLACE IN THE WORLD, AND IT ONLY TOOK
9
28 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE'S EARNINGS FOR THE TOTAL COST OF
10
GOVERNMENT. BUT WHEN THIS WAR WAS ENDED, IT DIDN'T GO DOWN.
11
THE SOCIAL REFORMERS WERE IN FULL SWING. IT WENT UP IN JUST A
12
FEW YEARS TO 32 PERCENT, AND NOW IT'S ALMOST 45 PERCENT.
13
THIS HAS BEEN CHALLENGED. THEY HAVE SAID WE EXAGGERATE
14
THIS IN AN ATTEMPT TO FRIGHTEN THE PEOPLE. WELL, THIS IS
15
BASED ON FIGURES THAT ARE A MATTER OF PUBLIC RECORD. IT IS
16
VERY SIMPLE MATHEMATICS. LAST YEAR THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA,
17
ALL OF YOU TOGETHER, EARNED 102.2 BILLION DOLLARS, AND LAST
18
YEAR ALL OF YOU TOGETHER TOOK 45.7 BILLION DOLLARS OF THAT TO
19
PAY FOR THE COSTS OF GOVERNMENT. THAT IS 44.7 PERCENT OF THE
20
TOTAL EARNINGS OF THE PEOPLE. AND WE ARE GOING TO TRY AND
21
REDUCE THAT PERCENTAGE IN OUR MODEST WAY AT THE STATE LEVEL.
22
(APPLAUSE)
23
WE HAVE RECEIVED INFORMATION FROM THE ECONOMIC COUNCIL IN
24
WASHINGTON THAT GOES BEYOND EVEN OUR MOST DIRE PREDICTIONS.
25
WE HAVE SAID THAT IN 15 YEARS IF WE DON'T REVERSE THIS TREND
26
GOVERNMENT WILL BE TAKING ALMOST 55 CENTS. WELL, THE ECONOMIC
27
COUNCIL SAYS THAT WITHIN FIVE YEARS GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO BE
28
SPLITTING WITH THE PEOPLE 50-50 AND IN TEN YEARS THEY'RE GOING
25
I
TO BE TAKING 60 PERCENT AND IN 15 YEARS THEY WILL BE TAKING
2
67 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE'S EARNINGS, IF YOU CAN STILL HAVE A
3
FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM WITH THE GOVERNMENT TAKING MORE THAN
4
TWO-THIRDS OF THE PEOPLE'S EARNINGS.
5
OUR OPPONENTS ARE THE SAME ONES WHO SAID THE WELFARE
6
REFORMS WOULDN'T WORK, AND THEY WERE WRONG, AS THE FIGURES
7
INDICATE. THEY SAID THAT PROPERTY TAXES WOULD GO UP, AND THEY
8
HAVE GONE DOWN IN 42 OF THE 58 COUNTIES. THEY SAID WE HAVE TO
9
HAVE THE TAX INCREASE I MENTIONED TWO YEARS AGO OR A THREE-
10
QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT, AND WE HAD A 265 MILLION
11
DOLLAR SURPLUS. THEY SAID PROPERTY TAX REFORM WOULDN'T WORK,
12
BUT WHEN YOUR TAX BILLS ARRIVE NEXT MONTH, THE PEOPLE ARE GOING
13
TO DISCOVER THAT THE BURDEN OF THE TAXES ON THEIR HOMES HAS
14
BEEN SIZEABLY REDUCED.
15
THEY SAY THAT TO LIMIT GOVERNMENT'S POWER TO TAX DENIES
16
GOVERNMENT THE FLEXIBILITY IT MUST HAVE. WE BELIEVE THE POWER
17
TO TAX WITHOUT LIMIT IS TOO DAMN MUCH FLEXIBILITY.
18
(APPLAUSE)
19
RIGHT NOW GOVERNMENTS AT ALL LEVELS HAVE UNLIMITED
20
AUTHORITY TO BALANCE THE BUDGET BY UNBALANCING YOURS. WE HAVE
21
REACHED A UNIQUE MILESTONE IN THIS STATE'S HISTORY. THIS IS A
22
ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE THE PEOPLE CONTROL OVER
23
THE DISPOSITION OF THE FRUITS OF THEIR TOIL, TO RESTORE THE
24
CONCEPT OF GOVERNMENT ENVISIONED BY THOMAS JEFFERSON WHEN HE
25
SAID, "WISE AND FRUGAL GOVERNMENT THAT DOES NOT TAKE FROM THE
26
MOUTH OF LABOR THE BREAD IT HAS EARNED."
27
THE ISSUE IS BETWEEN THOSE WHO LIVE IN A GOVERNMENT FEED
28
LOT COMPELLING THE CITIZENRY TO KEEP THE TROUGH FULL TO OVER-
26
I
FLOWING AND THOSE WHO ASK ONLY OF GOVERNMENT THAT IT KEEP US
2
FREE. OURS IS GOING TO BE AN UPHILL FIGHT. WE'RE ASKING ONLY
3
THAT THE PEOPLE VOTE TO REDUCE THEIR OWN TAX BURDEN. NO
4
GIMMICKS, NO HIDDEN DEVICES.
5
THE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW: WILL GOVERNMENT BE ABLE
6
TO FULFILL ITS RESPONSIBILITIES? YES. UNDER THIS LIMITATION,
7
GOVERNMENT WILL BE ABLE TO DOUBLE THE BUDGET IN TEN YEARS AND
8
TRIPLE IT IN 15. THE GOVERNMENT WILL HAVE ALL THE MONEY IT NEEDS
9
TO MEET THE PRESENT LEVEL OF SERVICES PLUS INFLATION AND
10
GROWTH, BUT AN ADDITIONAL 41 BILLION DOLLARS FOR NEW IDEAS
11
THAT GOVERNMENT MIGHT COME UP WITH OR THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES
12
MIGHT COME UP WITH, BUT GOVERNMENT UNDER THIS LIMITATION WILL
13
HAVE TO GET ALONG WITHOUT 118 BILLTON DOLLARS THAT THE PEOPLE
14
WILL BE ABLE TO PUT BACK IN THEIR POCKETS.
15
THE AVERAGE FAMILY OF FOUR WITH AN INCOME OF 10,000 A
16
YEAR 15 YEARS FROM NOW WILL HAVE SAVED $17,500 IN ITS OWN TAX
17
BURDEN.
18
WHY THE CONSTITUTION? WHY PUT IT IN THE CONSTITUTION? WHERE
19
ELSE? HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT A DOCUMENT
20
FORGED BY GOVERNMENT TO TELL US WHAT GOVERNMENT WILL ALLOW US
21
TO DO; THE CONSTITUTION IS OUR DOCUMENT, OUR CONTRACT IN WHICH
22
WE TELL GOVERNMENT THAT WHICH WE WILL ALLOW THEM TO DO.
23
(APPLAUSE)
24
WE NEED YOU, WE NEED EVERY ONE OF YOU, AND WE NEED A LOT
25
MORE PEOPLE. YOU SEE, US SIMPLE TAXPAYERS, WE AREN'T
26
ORGANIZED. GROUPS AGAINST US ARE. ALL OF THE VARIOUS GROUPS.
27
THE STATE EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION HAS CONTRIBUTED $50,000 TO THE
28
CAMPAIGN AGAINST THIS INITIATIVE. FRIDAY MORNING ON RADIO A
27
1
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
2
ANNOUNCED THEY'RE MOBILIZING 175,000 VOLUNTEERS TO WALK THE
3
PRECINCTS, AND I ASSUME OUR CHILDREN WILL BEGIN TO BRING HOME
4
NOTES OF VARIOUS KINDS TO THEIR PARENTS.
5
OTHER GROUPS OF THE SAME KIND, THE PRESSURE GROUPS THAT
6
HAVE REASONS FOR WANTING GOVERNMENT TO HAVE UNLIMITED FUNDS.
7
WE WILL HAVE TO MATCH THAT. WE HAVE TO GET OUT VICTORY SQUADS.
8
YOU MIGHT LOOK AT IT THIS WAY: IT WILL BE GREAT PRACTICE FOR
9
A YEAR FROM NOVEMBER.
10
(APPLAUSE)
11
I'VE HAD SOME PEOPLE SAY TO ME WHEN THIS WAS ANNOUNCED,
12
"WELL, YOU'RE A CINCH. THIS CAN'T LOSE. YOU'RE OFFERING THE
13
PEOPLE A CHANCE TO VOTE FOR A TAX REDUCTION." THERE IS
14
SOMETHING UNUSUAL ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR ELECTION. NOT ONLY
15
THE ORGANIZED OPPOSITION, BUT ON EVERY OTHER INTIATIVE THAT HAS
16
EVER BEEN VOTED ON BY THE PEOPLE, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS ARGUE
17
THE MERITS OF THE INITIATIVE. YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO GET OUT THE
18
VOTE. CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR, FOR SENATE, FOR PRESIDENCY,
19
FOR THE ASSEMBLY AND THE CONGRESS WERE GETTING OUT THE VOTE.
20
YOUR INITIATIVES JUST RODE IN THAT BALLOT. THIS IS AN ELECTION
21
FOR ONE PURPOSE AND ONE PURPOSE ONLY: DO YOU OR DON'T YOU
22
WANT A CHANCE TO LIMIT THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO TAX.
23
so, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO NOT ONLY SELL THE PEOPLE ON
24
THE INITIATIVE; WE HAVE TO GET THEM OUT, GET THEM TO THE POLLS,
25
AND GET THEM TO VOTE. AND THAT'S WHERE YOU COME IN. BEFORE
26
YOU LEAVE YOU WILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY, I KNOW, TO SIGN PLEDGE
27
CARDS THAT YOU WILL JOIN IN VICTORY SQUADS TO GET THIS DONE.
28
IF YOU THINK I'M AN ALARMIST, I JUST HAPPEN TO FEEL LIKE
28
1
THE OLD FOOTBALL COACH, DUFFY DAUGHERTY. SOMEBODY ASKED HIM
2
IF HE HAD ANY SUPERSTITUTIONS, AND HE SAID YES, HE HAD ONE.
3
HE SAID, "I THINK IT BAD LUCK TO BE BEHIND AT THE END OF THE
4
GAME."
5
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
6
WELL, THAT'S OUR TASK. OUR TASK TO TELL THE TRUTH. WE
7
WOULD MAKE AVAILABLE TO ANYONE OF YOU WHO ARE INTERESTED ALL
8
THE INFORMATION YOU NEED TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT THE
9
PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO ASK NOW AS THEY HEAR THE DISTORTIONS
10
AND THE DIRE PREDICTIONS OF THE PEOPLE ON THE OTHER SIDE. I
11
WOULD JUST CALL TO YOUR ATTENTION THAT IN NONE OF THE ARGUMENTS
12
AGAINST THIS PROPOSITION, PROPOSITION 1 ON THE BALLOT, HAVE
13
YOU HEARD ANY REFERENCE TO ANY PARTICULAR PART OF THE
14
INITIATIVE AS BEING SOMETHING THAT THEY DON'T LIKE OR DO LIKE
15
OR THAT COULD BE CHANGED OR SHOULD BE CHANGED OR SHOULD BE
16
ELIMINATED. THEY HAVE NEVER OFFERED AN ARGUMENT THAT IS BASED
17
ON THE ACTUAL TERMS OF THE INITIATIVE. THEY HAVE DISTORTED,
18
THEY HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF FALSEHOODS AND HALF-TRUTHS; THEY HAVE
19
REFERRED TO THINGS THEY SAY WILL HAPPEN IN SPITE OF THE FACT
20
THAT THE VERY THINGS THEY'RE PREDICTING ARE ACTUALLY COVERED.
21
THIS INITIATIVE GIVES GOVERNMENT THE FLEXIBILITY TO RAISE
22
TAXES ABOVE THE LIMIT WITHOUT THE PEOPLE'S PERMISSION IN THE
23
EVENT OF EMERGENCIES, EITHER ECONOMIC OR NATURAL. AT THE NEXT
24
GENERAL ELECTION, THEN, THE PEOPLE'S SAFEGUARD IS THEY WOULD
25
HAVE TO VOTE TO RATIFY THAT. IT MEETS EVERY EMERGENCY; IT
26
MEETS ALL THE NEEDS OF GOVERNMENT FOR THE MONEY TO PERFORM ITS
27
SERVICES, THE FUNCTIONS FOR WHICH IT IS RESPONSIBLE. IT JUST
28
GIVES PEOPLE THE SIMPLE RIGHT WITHIN THE CONSTITUTION TO SAY
29
1
"UP TO SEVEN PERCENT OF OUR TOTAL EARNINGS , YES. BEYOND THAT POINT
2
YOU HAVE TO GET OUR PERMISSION. 11 AND WE DO NOT SEE THAT THAT
3
IS ANYTHING RESTRICTING THE FLEXIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT.
4
IT'S GOING TO BE A HARD FIGHT. I KNOW WE CAN COUNT ON
5
YOU. I HOPE WE CAN. AND BE OUT THERE ON NOVEMBER 6TH BECAUSE
6
ON NOVEMBER 7TH YOU WILL START SAVING 400 MILLION DOLLARS A
7
YEAR IN THE VERY FIRST YEAR. THANK YOU.
8
(PROLONGED STANDING OVATION)
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11/26/73
GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN:
"The people will
run government-
or government will
run the people"
In his address to the Institute in Sydney, California's ex-film star Governor pleaded for all to fight
for freedom in the market place and resist bureaucratic interference.
It is a great pleasure for my wife and myself to be in
Many of you may recall the outstanding speech the
what I will have to call the queen city of Australia
Honourable Ronald Reagan made to the annual con-
because you are the sister city of our queen city in
ference of the Institute of Directors in London in
California, San Francisco.
1969 when he received a standing ovation.
Your warm welcome, and the great bond that exists
Governor Reagan, whose face and name are well
between our two peoples makes it doubly important
known to most of us. began his career as a radio
to me that what 1 say should be the right thing and
sports announcer before moving into films in 1937.
should be said in the right way.
His film career was partly disrupted by World War II
when he served in the US Army Air Force. rising to
Every speaker lives with the fear his remarks may
the rank of captain. After the War. he continued in
not be well-received. A little over a year ago. Nancy
films but became progressively preoccupied with
and I were in Mexico City where I spoke to a large
television.
and distinguished audience and had that thing happen
that always you dread.
In all, he appeared in some 50 feature films and two
I sat down to very scattered and unenthusiastic
television series. In 1965, he directed his energies to
politics, in which he had always taken a keen interest,
applause. I was not helped any in my discomfort by
and in the following year, as Republican candidate,
the fact that the next man, a representative of the
won election as Governor of California by a wide
Mexican Government, speaking in Spanish, was
margin.
receiving applause at virtually every line. I did not
understand what he was saying but I wasn't going to
He took office in January 1967 for a four year term,
show my embarrassment; so when they started to clap.
had the happy experience of finding that he was even
I clapped-and I clapped louder and longer than any-
more popular in office and was elected for a second
one till our Ambassador leaned over and said to me.
term.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you-he is interpreting
Governor Reagan is in Australia as part of a tour
your speech".
to several countries in South-East Asia as a Special
I'm grateful to your Red Cross because it was
Presidential Representative for the promotion of US
through your Red Cross, and the opening of their
Exports.
drive here, that we were invited to make this first visit
to your great country. I have a great admiration for
-From Sir Robert Crichton-Brown's introduction of
all of those people-whether for the Red Cross or for
Governor Reagan.
any good cause or charity-who work to support
philanthropical efforts.
One of them at a fund-raising drive in Los Angeles
This is the substance of an
address given by Governor
went to an old gentleman who had never given any-
Ronald Reagan to the Institute
luncheon on November 26 1973
thing to the cause and he said, "Our records show
12
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
that you earn $90,000 a year and we feel that you
should be able to contribute". And the old gentleman
GOVERNOR REAGAN QUOTES
said, "Do your records also show that I have a
widowed sister with four children who was left desti-
It is not every day that someone who has been riding
tute; that my mother has no means of support and that
off into the sunset for 25 years with "The End" super-
my brother was disabled in the War and is unable to
imposed on his back appears before such a disting
provide for himself?" Embarrassed. my friend said,
shed audience under exactly these same circumstances.
"No, our records don't show that." "Well," the old
gentleman said, "I don't give anything to them, so why
Everyone who was in motion pictures in my time
should I give something to you?"
knows that not all they made were worthy of mention.
Seriously, I am happy to be here and to be able to
Some were pictures which the studio didn't want
participate, even if in a small way, in helping this
"good"-it wanted them "Thursday".
successful drive for such a cause as the Red Cross.
"Charity" is still a noble word and our way of life has
Someone asked me what it was like when some of them
been founded on the idea of good causes maintained
showed up on the Late-Late Show on television. Can
by free gifts freely given by free men. The necessity to
/ say it is like looking at a son you never knew you
preserve that idea has never been more important than
had?
at this moment of history.
There is a force abroad in the world that would
Somebody has said, "We used to think that nothing
replace compassion with the coercion of taxation, sub-
could replace the dollar-and it practically has".
stituting for human kindliness the impersonality of
government bureaucracy. No matter how good the
One agency in my country ordered a businessman to
intent of those who do this, they will, if given their
provide separate men's and women's washrooms. even
way, produce in the end a dependent people and a
though his only employee was his wife
and. at
dependent people can be manoeuvred, manipulated
home, they shared the same bed and bath.
and controlled.
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
13
Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient
which frequently make many of you take to a tranquil-
become independent of it. George Bernard Shaw, the
liser.
great playwright. a Fabian. professed to believe in and
For the second time in a century on almost a world-
support a social order which he said would provide
wide scale, this idea called 'free enterprise' is under
equality of income or nothing. Now whether he had
attack. You, as businessmen, are being blamed on a
his tongue in cheek or not I don't know. but in writing
daily basis for many things you haven't done and given
of that social order he envisioned. he said you would
very little credit for things you have done very well.
not be allowed to be poor. you would be forcibly fed,
clothed, lodged, taught and employed whether you
A political and economic mythology-widely be-
liked it or not. If it were found you had not the
lieved-is combined with a lack of real understanding
character or industry enough to be worth all this
of how to make something which the people need and
trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly
want and getting it to them at a reasonable price. You
manner. But while you were entitled to live, you would
fill out voluminous forms required by government. In
have to live well.
my country it takes an estimated 130 million man-
hours each year and it adds tens of billions of dollars
It is amazing how many people, including our own
to the cost of production, all of which must be added
sons and daughters. are unable to grasp what Mr Shaw
to the price of the product.
so smilingly offered as a new idea in human relation-
Business is accused of- having great power which it
ships was indeed nothing more than slavery. They see
uses to influence government in its favour at the
and they accept the promise of being fed, clothed,
expense of the people. But you don't feel very power-
lodged, taught and employed with no thought of asking
ful and, if you are typical of businessmen elsewhere,
who will decide what they are allowed to eat and when;
you feel a little bewildered by it all.
who would issue their clothing and whether possibly
the clothing will be a uniform: or who will tell them
In Washington no one today knows how many
where they are going to live or what they will be
boards or commissions or bureaus there actually are
allowed to learn and what work will they be forced
out the Federal Register listing the regulations spawned
to do.
by all these boards and commissions numbers 25,000
pages, almost as many as in the entire Encyclopaedia
For a great many years-I suppose this began my
Britannica. Armed with these regulations, bureaucratic
interest in politics but never the thought that 1 would
Lilliputians attack Gulliver, telling him that if the
ever be in this capacity serving in public office-I
same price is charged for all his products. he is guilty
spoke out warning against the silent encroachment of
of price-fixing; and, if he doesn't charge the same
government as one by one it usurped the rights
price, he is guilty of unfair trade practice.
traditionally held to be the inherent possession of the
individual. Now for seven years I have been a part
Government, we find, can be the most menacing
of government-a funny thing happened to me on the
when its purposes are beneficent. Public servants with
way to the theatre!
noble intent, seeking sincerely to serve the citizenry,
say, "Oh, how much more we could do for the people
My concern has grown even greater as I have
if only we had a little bigger budget and a little more
learned at first hand how savagely and vindictively
authority." They are not evil. They are sincerely moti-
government will resist any effort to lessen or limit its
vated and really want to help. But they just do not
power.
realise that sometimes an ounce of government-issue
I am talking about government as an institution—
blessing costs in liberty a pound.
all government. That great permanent structure that
Government has legitimate functions which it per-
has the organic ability to grow on its own and which
forms very well but outside of those legitimate func-
has never been known in all history to voluntarily
tions government does nothing as well or as efficiently
reduce itself in size.
as the private sector.
Government exists to protect us from each other
"Government is nearest
but the trouble is it continues to try and protect us
to Eternal Life"
from ourselves. Government is a referee and it should
A government program is the nearest thing to
not try to be a player in the game.
eternal life you will ever see on this earth. In some
Has business stayed
dim beginning, man created government for its own
aloof from politics?
convenience and it has been doing its best to become
It is time to ask if we don't get the government we
an inconvenience ever since.
deserve. Has business, as well as too many of the rest
As government reaches out for more and more
of us, stayed aloof from politics, thinking naively that
things to do, restrictions on individual freedom become
if it does, politics will stay away from it? Well, it won't.
an entangling web. If you were a born worrier you
There can be no vacuum in public life. The people
were born at the right time.
will run government or government will run the people.
But an assortment of activists in one cause or
It is no wonder that business has become a whipping-
another-protection of the consumer. of the environ-
boy for every demagogue who needs a cause to pro-
ment or just the old bromide big business and big
mote his own interests.
labour require big government'-would have govern-
Why doesn't business on some fine day, with the
ment take from business the prerogatives of manage-
communications media available to business, say to
ment without, of course, assuming the responsibilities
the taxpayer, who is also an employee and who is also
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
15
Governor Reagan, Mrs Reagan and the Chief Justice
of New South Wales, Sir John Kerr.
about as short-sighted as a man going into the poultry
business without a rooster-he is placing a great deal
a customer of that business, "Those taxes that business
of confidence in the stork.
pays don't reduce the burden on the individual. They
There is a struggle going on in the world today for
become a part of the price structure of the products
the hearts and minds of men and there can be no
that business sells."
political freedom if there is not economic freedom—
the right to private ownership, the freedom of choice,
Why don't we say to them that business collects
the right for a man to choose his profession or his
taxes for government and it does so very efficiently.
occupation. In this struggle there are those who would
Only people pay taxes. And then perhaps we could
have us believe that we can help the weak by weaken-
say that business doesn't mind collecting taxes so long
ing the strong.
as the people are not deceived by politicians and so
long as the people know that they are paying those
It is time we recognised that Karl Marx did not take
taxes when they buy the product, whatever the product
women out of the coal-mines in England a century
may be.
ago-it was the steam engine and labour-saving
machinery.
We had better start exposing this political and
economic mythology-and start exposing it soon. In
This system of free enterprise is spark-plugged by
my country recently a poll was taken of tens of thou-
the hope of economic reward and it has lifted more
sands of college and university students. From two-
burdens from the backs of more people than any other
thirds to three-fourth of the students answered a series
system the world has ever known.
of questions revealing that they put their entire faith
Right now, government needs your participation in
in government. They believed that only government
public affairs. This means sharing your expertise and
could resolve the problem of social inequity, that busi-
your management skill with government, lending your
ness was responsible for most of today's problems and
best manpower and not your cast-offs to government;
that government should be given more power to regu-
for government by second rate men will be second rate
late and control every facet of business. And then 80
government-and that's a very expensive kind of
per cent of them answered a question that yes, they
government.
wanted less interference in their lives by government.
And none of them saw any inconsistency in this.
For almost a decade prior to 1967, my State of
California had been guided by a philosophy
The simple fact is that polities is too important to
looked upon government as the provider of all got...
be left to politicians. We sit back hoping that some day
things. If it wasn't the ultimate in the Welfare State,
someone else will make things right; that if we just
it was well on its way. Social reforms had been adopted
wait somehow it will turn out all right. To do this is
without regard to fiscal responsibility. So, in 1967, as
16
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
our administration took over, we found an almost in-
ment had been increasing in size two and a half times
solvent government which was spending a million and
as fast as our increase in population. We were adding
a half dollars a day more than it was taking in. And
more than 5000 employees to the payroll every year.
since our State Constitution forbids a deficit, gimmicks
and book-keeping tricks had been employed to forestall
Tax rebates followed
a tax increase as long as possible, particularly until
ents in expenditure
after the 1966 election.
Today, after seven years, we have virtually the same
It seemed in those dark days when we first started
number of employees as we had when we started; they
our administration every passing day brought a new
are handling from 30 to 40 per cent workload increase
and we have eliminated more than 29 boards and com-
problem. I tried "Dial-a-Prayer" but they hung up on
me. But I had a belief that people would like to help,
missions. When one-time budget surpluses resulted
if given a chance and if someone would only tell them
from our economies, we returned them to the people
in the form of rebates in their income tax. And this
how.
year we have hit the jackpot: we are returning some
So we turned to the business and industrial leaders
$800 million in a rebate that totally forgives the in-
of our State. We asked them for the kind of men and
come tax at the lower end of the earning scale and
women who would be willing to take a government
graduates it down to a minimum discount at the top
position even though it cost them to do so.
of the earnings scale of 20 per cent.
Outside help saved
One senator said to me that he considered giving the
millions of dollars
money back to the people an unnecessary expenditure
of public funds.
We twisted employers' arms to lend us the kind of
young men they hoped would some day be the presi-
Charity and the possible replacement of that by
dent of their corporation-not the cast-off. We tapped
government welfarism, is the area where those who
the prematurely retired. We staffed our departments
favour the planned economy and compulsory redistri-
and our agencies and our secretariats with directors
bution of the people's earnings make their greatest
who were dedicated first of all to finding out if their
gains. Any criticism of welfare is met with the charge
own job was necessary and we found a few who
that the critic lacks compassion for the less fortunate.
found it wasn't. And they were the first to tell us and
And so social reforms have been the biggest cost item
returned to their own careers.
in almost every government and every social structure
we have today.
We had quite a turnover over the years as indivi-
duals had to return to those careers but they have been
In California, our welfare costs were mounting four
replaced by others like themselves, because business
times as fast as our increase in revenue. In good times
learned that people who returned to them after a stint
and bad, we were adding 40,000 new people a month
in government came back broadened and much more
to the welfare rolls. Sixteen percent of all the people
in the United States on welfare were on welfare in
valuable.
California. We found we were sending cheques to
We went a step further. One day we gathered in a
welfare recipients all over the world, even to one living
room what amounted to the professional and industrial
in Russia.
leadership of our entire State. We informed them that
what we were after was blood-their blood.
Abuses of
We outlined a plan calling for the greatest experts
Welfare payouts
they could produce in a variety of fields to form task
A multitude of regulations-Federal and State—
forces based on their expertise. They volunteered to
made moral fraud technically legal. Regulations to
a man and more than 250 of these very successful
protect the sensitivity of the recipient had forced us
people gave an average of 117 days to government free
to accept his declaration of need without checking his
of charge, going into every area to determine how
truthfulness. One newspaper reporter managed to get
modern business practices could be put to work to
on welfare four times under four different names on
make government more efficient and more economical.
one day in the same office. We had welfare recipients
who were the second and third generations of their
For example, hotel men went into our prisons and
families to be on welfare. It was a system destroying
hospitals to check on the kitchens, the food buying, the
the very moral fibre of the people. We were spread
laundry and the housekeeping chores. They returned
so thin caring for the greedy as well as the needy, that
to us at the end of this period with more than 1800
we could not properly provide for those who truly had
specific recommendations. More than 1600 of these
no source of livelihood other than welfare.
recommendations have been adopted and implemented
and the savings are hundreds of millions of dollars a
Once again we turned to the citizenry. A task force
year.
evolved the most comprehensive proposals for welfare
And lest my criticism of government sound like too
reforms ever attempted in our nation. When the pro-
posals met with legislative resistance, we turned once
much of a blanket indictment, let me say that, some
civil servants who had thought no-one cared joined
again to the people and the business community took
them enthusiastically in helping bring about improve-
the lead in mobilising a State-wide drive to have public
opinion register itself on the legislature. They didn't
ments they themselves had long thought of.
exactly make the legislators see the light but they
In the decade previous to 1967, our State Govern-
certainly made them feel the heat.
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
19
"Freedom always
rests in the individual"
Today, there are 387,000 fewer people on welfare;
the deserving needy have been given a 30 percent in-
crease in their grants and in this last year alone, we
have found more than 20,000 jobs for long-time wel-
Photo by courtesy of Commonwealth Steel Company Limited
fare recipients who are heads of families.
Unless government is peopled by those who believe
in freedom in the market-place, we risk being governed
by those who would substitute coercion for persuasion.
There are many places in the world today where every-
thing that is not compulsory is prohibited.
Sometimes I wonder if you realise how strong and
how powerful you are if you would only take the
interest to be that powerful. In California every year
our legislature handles about 5000 bills and they pass
about 1200 of them. If in any one of these seven years
they had all been lost on the way to the printer, it
would not have affected the life-style of an average
Californian one bit. As a matter of fact, I have often
thought that if we closed up shop and all of us went
home, it would be weeks before anyone would miss us.
But if you stop what you are doing for 24 hours,
world grinds to a halt.
It has been said that if we lose this way of ours-
this thing we call "freedom'-history will record with
the greatest astonishment that those who had the most
to lose did the least to prevent its happening. That must
not be said of us. Freedom is such a fragile thing and
mankind has known so little of it. The truth is that
you and I have probably known more of it than most.
risky
It was once said of us that we-our generation—
had a rendezvous with destiny and it is time we asked
what that rendezvous might be. Will we spend out
sunset years telling our children and our children's
children what it was like when men were free? And
Dangling from a wire over city streets or tapping the heart
what will our answer be if some day we are asked by
of a 3,000 degree furnace, Australia's men of steel live
those children, "Where were you when freedom was
within a footstep of danger-but they recognise it, respect
lost? What was it that you found that seemed more
it and feel safer at work than on a Sunday drive. Their
employers deal with the danger via safety measures,
precious to you than freedom?"
employee education and the provision of adequate Workers'
Compensation insurance. What does "adequate" mean?
I do not think that will be our destiny. I do not
It's an important question if you are an employer in a
"high-risk" industry, because yesterday's meaning could
think it is our destiny to preside over the great night-
spell tomorrow's misfortune. The United hopes your definition
fall for mankind. I think if we will remember that
is up-to-date. Why not ask them?
freedom rests, and always will, on the individual-on
individual integrity, on individual effort, on individual
THE UNITED
courage and on individual faith in God-then we will
have met the challenge of our rendezvous with destiny.
INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED
HEAD OFFICE AND SYDNEY BRANCH: CNR. GEORGE AND HUNTER STS.
MEMBERSHIP CERTIFICATES
INCORPORATED IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Members of the Institute are reminded that finely
BRANCHES THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA AND OVERSEAS
produced Certificates of Membership are available
free of cost for all members who request them.
The Membership Certificates reproduce the
Heraldic Arms of the Institute in colour and the
official seal of the Institute.
Members who have not already done so are
invited to apply for their Certificates.
20
THE AUSTRALIAN DIRECTOR, February 1974
DL
"/8/21
-
the
Excerpts of Remarks by Governor Ronald Reagan
Southern GOP
Atlanta, Georgia
December 8, 1973
final - Atlanta
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Thank you very much. John, I thank you. I remember back when
I was an actor when I found myself in Texas, the First time we met,
and I joined you in the campaign trail. As a matter of fact you fellows
gave me a pair of Texas boots that I'm still wearing.
I can't tell you how delighted and pleased I am to be here. I
realize in the climate of today, when anyone holding public office
makes a statement of that kind, it's assumed that this is the political
thing to say. But I suppose in some way we deserve that. There was
a fellow running for Congress and he went out soliciting votes, sat
down by an old timer on the court house bench in a little town, and
solicited his vote. He told him what he was there for and when he
finished his pitch the old man said: "What do you intend to do about
the geese?" The candidate looked and the courthouse lawn was covered
with geese. He said: "Well, now that's a lovely sight, isn't it?"
He said: "I think they should be protected." And the old man said:
"You just lost my vote. They mess up the lawn, they chase the kids,
they peck at their legs. They ought to be destroyed." So the candidate
moved over to another bench, sat down beside another old timer, made
the same pitch and when he finished, he got the same question: "What
are you going to do about the geese?" "Well," he said, "look at them
out there messing up the lawns. I think they ought to be destroyed.
The fellow said: "you just lost my vote. I raise geese," he said.
They're an important part of this community." He got to the third
bench, made the same pitch and believe it or not, he got the same
question about the geese. This time, he put his arm around the fellow's
shoulders and said: "Brother, on that question, I'm with you.'
There was a time earlier this afternoon though, when I thought in
this age of cynicism that maybe we could look back to a President of
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ours, Cal Coolidge, on how to handle some situations. He was having
a press conference once and a reporter asked him: "Do you have anything
to say about prohibition?" And Cal said: "No". He said: "Do you have
any comments on the World Court?" Cal said: "No". "What about the
farm situation?" the reporter asked. Cal said "No". "Well", the report.
said, "you don't seem to have any comments about anything, do you?"
And Cal said: "No comment and don't quote me".
Tonight, there are those in this land who have already hung the
picture of our party's mascot, the elephant, alongside the dinosaur in
the gallery of extinct species. I think they're living in a dreamworld.
Not too many years ago, you could have run a full grown elephant right
through this room and you never would have stepped on a Republican toe.
Indeed, there are very few of you who would have been here not
too many years ago and I include myself. It seems so long ago. But
it was only about a decade past that Barry Goldwater made his long and
lonely journey across this land, speaking a truth that needed telling.
Men and women who recognize and respect the truth listened and were
moved. And they realized that the leadership of the party of their
fathers had taken the party of Jefferson and Jackson down a strange road,
where they couldn't follow without betraying their most fundamental
beliefs. Now those who had counted on the Solid South, in election
after election, and taken for granted that Southerners would vote for
the party name, even though that party leadership now was taking the
party against their conscience. Those people look upon a gathering such
as this and speak sneeringly of something called the "Southern strategy"
Well, there is a Southern strategy and this country is better for it.
Today, almost one-fourth of the Republicans in Congress represent
southern and border states. John Tower, Jesse Helms of North Carolina,
Howard Baker and Bill Brock of Tennessee, Bill Scott of Virginia.
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We've elected governors. Our toastmaster here tonight, Governor
Holshouser, Win Dunn of Tennessee and Mills Godwin of Virginia, who
just recently followed the lead of men like Senator Strom Thurmond O.
South Carolina, and John Connally of Texas. And I will suggest there are
other statesmen who still bear the other party's label, who one of
these days will follow the course of men like Strom Thurmond and realize
their destiny too, lies with this party. They' 11 recognize the truth
that was spoken by Winston Churchill when he changed parties in his own
country. Winston, in that inimitable way of his, said: "Some men change
principle for party and some change party for principle."
Sure you are still outnumbered. We're outnumbered in California,
3 to 2. But you know sometimes that makes life a little more simple.
When you're outnumbered and surrounded and someone yells "charge", you
don't have to ask which direction. Any way you're facing, you'll find
a target. And that kind of turnout would be true in the last election
(1972) We just went out in any direction and found millions of
patriotic Democrats and Independents who saw very clearly the difference
in philosophy that was offered for their choosing. And they made their
choice on their belief and not on their party label.
Now, a pall has been cast over the mandate that was so clearly
given just a year ago. A cloud of doubt, mistrust and cynicism has
been generated by something called Watergate. We're told that the
illegal and immoral acts of a few individuals must be the burden, a
political hair shirt worn by the entire Republican Party. Watergate
and its aftermath have been before the courts and the Congress for
almost a year now. Those allegations of illegal and immoral acts which
have been proven are condemned by us. No one's indignation is greater
than ours. Such campaign excesses are contrary to all our beliefs a
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principles. Over too many years, we've been on the receiving end of
stuffed ballot boxes in cities like Chicago and St. Louis. Now the
time has come to put Watergate in its proper perspective. It has beer
debated in the court of public opinion. And it is now before the bar
of justice. Let the facts be known. Let those who are quilty of
wrongdoing accept the consequences of their actions. Let justice take
its course in the courts-the only place where a final judgement can
be fairly rendered. But, for America's sake, let's get on with the
business of government: There is the energy crisis, making America
self-sufficient in fuel and power and no longer subject to blackmail
from foreign lands; slowing down inflation, reducing the tax burden
that is bleeding away the vitality of our free enterprise system, pro-
tecting the law abiding on our streets and in their homes. And above
all continuing the great start this administration has made toward
achieving a lasting peace in the world. And that includes maintaining
a defense second to none.
These are the vital issues that will shape our lives, and lives o
our people and our destiny as a nation for the next generation. Publi
cynicism about political affairs didn't start with Bobby Baker or Bill
Sol Estes or Watergate. And it will not end there. The time has come
to say to some politicians: "It is time to become statesmen, for the
leaders of both houses to sit down with the administration. Let them
put Watergate on one side of the scale and weigh it against the free
world leadership that is ours whether we like it or not.
It was the United States that brought a cease-fire in the Middle
East a few days ago. It was an American President who stopped the
Soviet Union from moving armed forces into that troubled area. And an
American President has brought an easing of tensions worldwide such as
we haven't known since before World War II. A few days ago, I was in
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Australia, Indonesia and Singapore, talking to the leaders of those
countries on behalf of this administration. They looked at me and
they asked if Americans were totally unaware of the part that we pl
in maintaining the stability in the whole of Southeast Asia. The Domine
theory. They believe it. They 11 tell you what would happen if America
position is weakened in the world; if our forces were withdrawn from
those areas of Southeast Asia, how the dominos would begin to fall.
There are some who would destroy a man in order to destroy a
mandate of all the people. In the Democratic Convention of 1972, we
watched long-time party stalwarts of that party as they were denied
participation in the deliberations of that convention; some were even
denied admittance. But the first who were thrown out of that convention
were Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.
The battle we won in 1972 must be won again. Millions of Democrats
must be made to see that philisophically, they have more in common with
us than with those who would erode our defenses, pawning our weapons
to pay for some new experiment in social reform. And make no mistake
about it, there's been no change in the Democratic leadership since
that convention of 1972. They are the same people who rediscover
poverty every election and promise to cure it. They've cured it SO
often, they ve now made a profession of it. They thrive on failures,
on righting wrongs, aiding victims and so forth. It must be understood
that success in those tasks would put them out of business. No matter
how many programs are set up and operating, their proponents never clain
success for them. To do so would be to say the problems have been
solved, meaning the programs are no longer needed. And the programs,
not the problems, are their very reason for being.
They're against violence and lawlessness, but they blame the
victims of crime, not the criminals, because the
victim is a member of society, and it's society that they blame for
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crime.
Less than a year ago, America was fighting a bloody war in
Southeast Asia that had dragged on for almost a decade. It has been
spawned in indecision, and it had been directed for years by leaders
who refused to win it and didn't know how in hell to end it. Well,
it has been ended; our troops are home. And hundreds of the bravest
men any nation has ever produced have been released from years of
torture and captivity. But it wasn't ended by some street demonstration;
it wasn't ended by a congressional resolution, nor was peace obtained
because of a speech by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. It was brought to an honorable end by forceful policies
and the effective negotiations of a Republican administration in
Washington--: in the same way that a Republican administration ended
another war that wasn't of our doing 20 years ago in 1953.
We've heard SO much of demagoguery going on. I wonder how many
of us remember some of the things in the last campaign. One candidate
had some television spots filmed. He appeared in a market, buying a
basketful of groceries. Then he brought them up in front of the camera,
and he compared the price that he had to pay for these groceries with
the price before this administration took office. The idea was to lay
the blame for inflation on Republican policies. But the inflation we
are struggling with today was a deliberate, planned policy under the
New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society.
We were told that planned deficits, federal spending and a little
annual inflation was good for US. Do you know that the only time we've
ever had fiscal stability in these last 40 years was when we had a
Republican Congress and a Republican President in Washington at the
same time, a single two year period under the administration of Dwight
-7-
final - Atlanta
Eisenhower.
We all know that inflation is the direct result of government
spending; we all know it's a cruel tax falling on those least able
to pay. But there's another facet that is not so well known. Except
for those who are on fixed incomes, it is true that in all these years
of inflation, wages have gone up faster than the rate of inflation.
For example: A $10,000 a year income, the average individual's earning
in 1966, has by today gone up
to $13,500. Inflation
has only gone up a little over $3,000 in that period. So the individua
has not only kept pace with inflation; he's a little better off than he
was . except for the other part, the part that has made some of our
so-called economic experts favor a planned inflation. That man, as he
went up $3,500 in his earnings, keeping ahead of inflation, moved up
through our progressive tax brackets $950 worth, so that today he has
$466 less in purchasing power than he had in 1966. It was taxes, n
inflation alone, that did this. And confiscatory taxes bear a Democrat
trademark.
Since the inception of the federal income tax in 1914, it has been
increased 13 times under Democratic administrations. It has been
reduced eight times under Republican administrations.
In 1969, this administration reduced the taxes for the working men
and women, who our opponents claim are their special concern. Nine
million of the lowest earners were relieved of paying any income tax
at all.
The next brackets above them received a 70 percent reduction. It
was only when you got to those above $50,000, who according to our
opponents are all Republicans, that you found, them paying a higher tax
under a Republican administration. It would seem that our opponents
are guilty of a little political demagoguery at times.
James Buchanan has written that even the keenest, most analytical
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surgeon, when operating on a Democratic politician, can't separate
demagogic from solid tissue without causing the death of the patient.
Over four decades of almost uninterrupted Democratic philosophy
a gigantic bureaucracy has grown virtually beyond the consent of the
governed. And now it is almost beyond the control of elected officials.
When those four decades began, there were 203 Americans for every
federal employee. When Richard Nixon took office, there was one for
every 67. Add in state and local employees, and one out of six of the
nation's work force is a government employee. Not even the Office of
Management and Budget in Washington knows how many boards, commissions,
agencies, bureaus there are in the federal government. The Federal
Register, listing all their regulations, has almost as many pages as
the Enclopedia Britannica.
Forms and questionaires pour out to businessmen from Washington
by the billions. They number about 10 every year for each man, woman,
and baby in the United States. Small businessmen alone spend an
estimated 130 million man-hours in this required government paperwork.
It adds billions in cost to the things we buy. And yet, a young
Senator from Massachusetts journeyed to Alabama on the Fourth of July,
and there, in the presence of Governor Wallace, he made a speech com-
plaining about big, centralized government. To hear him tell it,
he was against it. George Wallace sat there listening; he must have
thought they sent the wrong sound track.
Working men and women in America have been told over and over
again by some of their own union leaders, by the Democratic leadership,
that their leadership offers them the best chance for prosperity.
Our sons and daughters, in too many social science courses, are taught
the same fairy tale. Invoking memories of the Great Depression, history
final. - Atlanta
-9-
is being rewritten in classrooms all over America. The truth is:
the only full employment that we have ever known under our opponent
leadership has been the result of, and during a war.
They would like to lay the food shortage at our door. But who
was it who spawned programs and spent billions of dollars to reduce
the number of farmers and to keep those who remained on the farm from
producing food for a hungry world?
Forty years ago, the loyal opposition, our party, pointed out
the threat to freedom inherent in the continued enlargement of certral-
ization of power in Washington. We argued for limited government, and
lower taxes, most of all, for the preservation of our federal system
of sovereign states, operating under their own governments in the best
interest of the people.
If you will permit me just a personal experience, I'd like to
cite some of the adventures that we've had in California for the
last several years which I think could demonstrate the difference in
philosophy between the two parties. In 1967, our administration took
over a government that had been a little Sir Echo to the great social
experiments in Washington for the previous eight years. The state was
spending one million dollars a day more than it was taking in. Gimmicks
had been employed to put off the inevitable tax increase. The last
of such devices was a change in bookkeeping which got them through the
1966 election without a tax increase by funding 12 months spending with
15 months revenue. For eight years, price had been no object. They'd
added an average of .5,000 new employees a year to state government.
Welfare costs alone were going up almost four times as fast as revenues.
Now, I've always believed that government could and should be run with
the same common sense rules that apply to business or even budgeting
final - Atlanta
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a household. But when you start talking about common sense in
connection with government, you cause some traumatic shocks.
I found myself nose to nose in a confrontation with the Democratic
majority in control of both houses of our Legislature, those who had
helped bring about the fiscal insolvency of our state. We announced
a program of cut, squeeze and trim and this brought thunder down upon
our heads, from the entrenched bureaucracy as well as the Legislature.
It was charged that education would degenerate and progress in our
state would come to halt. When we proposed reforming welfare, the
Legislature, with the help of the Welfare Rights Organization, said
that our program would increase the caseload, not decrease it, that
local county taxes would go up, and that the state would run a $700
million deficit and that the poor would be starving in the streets.
Other than that, they didn't find much wrong with the program.
It's seven years later, seven years of Republican philosophy,
and an uphill fight with the Democratic Legislature. We haven't been
adding 5,000 employees a year; we have virtually the same number we
started with seven years ago, and they're handling a 30 to 40 percent
workload increase. We increased state support for education 93 percent,
while enrollment has gone up less than six percent. We've built a thou-
sand highway projects with money that formerly was spent on administrative
overhead. Our support for local mental health care clinics is eight
times what it was seven years ago. Two and a half years ago, we finally
achieved our welfare reform. The caseload isn't going up 40,000 a
month; there are now 387,000 fewer people on welfare than when we
started. The truly needy aren't starving in the streets; they've had
a 30 percent increase in their grants. County property taxes have gone
down in 45 of our 58 counties. In addition, the state is subsidizing
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local government to finance almost a billion dollar reduction in the
homeowners' taxes. The $700 million deficit they predicted became an
$800 million surplus which we're returning to the people in the for.
of a one time tax rebate.
Giving back that $800 million wasn't as easy as I make it sound.
When you suggest to a Democratic Legislature that they give that kind
of money back to the people, it's a little like getting between the
hog and the bucket. One legislator indignantly proclaimed that this
was an unnecessary expenditure of public funds. But another, a senator
really expressed their political philosophy. He said: "reducing taxes
and giving this money back will interfere with our ability to redis-
tribute the earnings of the people." What would have happened if the
Democratic philosophy had prevailed during those seven years?
As this country of ours prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary
we suddenly realize how great a heritage was left us by our Founding
Fathers. The old world still looks upon US as a young, upstart nation.
But the Constitutional system created by that little band of men, whose
like has seldom been seen in the world, has proven to have great
durability. Today, our young, upstart country, is the oldest continuing
Republic in the world.
The next election campaign is important. But it is not nearly as
important as the next generation or the next century. Will we pass
on the heritage that. was entrusted to us and that has been guarded so
well for almost these 200 years? I believe that the Republican party
offers the best guarantee that we will. And you who have chosen this
party in the South have an opportunity to ensure a dynamic resurgence
of the philosophy of limited, responsible government. You don't have
to sell your Democratic neighbors and friends on the Republican phil
pl
final - Atlanta
-12-
Most of them already subscribe to it. What really is needed is to
show them that what they believe is what we officially as a party
stand for. Let us shine the light of truth on Democratic political
demagoguery. It has been said, for example, that we're the party of
the rich. Then why is it that eight out of five Wall Street bankers
are Democrats?
In two and three and four and five or ten dollar contributions,
in election after election, including the last one, we outnumbered the
Democrats in that kind of small contributor five to one.
We are the minority party in registration only. If your friends
still retain membership in the Democratic party and need some con-
vincing, may I suggest you ask a question of them. Ask them how they
feel about this statement: "We advocate the immediate and drastic
reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions
and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, eliminating
extravagance, to accomplish savings not less than 25 percent in the
cost of the federal government." Well, that statement was made in
1932 as a candidate by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That was once the
philosophy that characterized the Democratic party. Which party endorse
that philosophy today? Certainly not those who highjacked the conventio
a year ago June in Miami. On the basis of our philosophy, we are in
step with the yearnings and the dreams of the overwhelming majority of
Americans. Let us shatter the present stereotype. Let us tell our
friends that private enterprise, not government, is the great provider;
that the way to get a bigger slice of the pie is not by reducing someone
else's slice, but by producing a bigger pie; that we have compassion
for those who need our help, but we will no longer sentence a segment
of our society to a life of hopelessness on the dole; that we are
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mindful of the fact that for someone to get something he hasn't earned,
someone else must earn something he doesn't get.
We've come to a moment in our history when party labels are un-
important. Philosophy is all important. Little men with loud voice.
cry doom, seeing little that is good in America. They create fear and
uncertainty among us. Millions of Americans, especially our own sons
and daughters, are seeking a cause they can believe in. There is a
hunger in this country today--a hunger for spiritual guidance. People
yearn once again to be proud of their country and proud of themselves,
and to have confidence in themselves. And there's every reason why
they should be proud. Some may have failed America, but America has
never failed us, and there is so much to be proud of in this land.
In the days after World War II, when our economic strength and
military power were all that stood between the world and a return to
the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said: "The American people have a genuis
for splendid and unselfish action, and into their hands, the hands
of America, God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind."
We do have a rendezvous with destiny. Either we will preside over
the great nightfall for all mankind, or we will accept the leadership
that has been thrust upon us. I believe that is the obligation and
responsibility of the Republican Party today.
If I could just tell you something that I said to some people in
Mississippi a few weeks ago. It's not been too many months, not quite
a year, that we sat up until the late hours and watched on television
when that first plane came into Clark Field. We saw those men when the
plane door opened. We didn't know what we were going to see. Would
they be zombies, would they be robots, as the result of seven, eight,
nine years of torture and confinement? And then that first American
final - Atlanta
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came down the ramp, saluted the flag, and said: "God Bless America."
Nancy and I have had an experience. About 150 of those returning
prisoners of war were from California. We had them, and some who
weren't from California, as guests in our home, just after their return.
It was an unforgettable experience. We saw men come into our home, who
for nine years, had been the most intimate of buddies in prison camps.
And suddenly they looked at each other, and we heard them acknowledge
this was the first time they had ever seen each other face to face.
Their intimate. friendship had been built up through bamboo walls, tapping
on the walls, with the code and the signals that they had invented.
They told us of the things they did to harrass the enemy with their code.
There were other stories. They told us of men that had been
tortured, lying on the other side of the wall in the next cell near
death. And all they could do was lie on their side of the cell, hour
after hour, taking turns all night tapping on the wall, just to
tell them they were not alone, to keep in there, to hang on.
Some said: "You know, we thought you'd throw rocks at us when we
came home. " They didn't feel they could serve any longer; they were
imprisoned. So they resisted torture as long as they could, but they
said eventually the enemy got what he wanted. Someone, one night in
our home said to them: "Well, if you knew you were going to have to
talk and give in, why didn't you do that first; why did you take that
torture?" And they looked with astonishment and said: "Holding out was
the only thing left for us to do; the only thing we could still do for
our country." Later, I asked Nancy, where do we find men like this?
And almost as quickly as I asked the question, I knew the answer. We
find them on the farms, in small towns, in the city streets of America--
just ordinary guys named Joe, produced by this society of ours.
There is truly nothing for us to fear but fear itself.
PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBC RADIO AND
TELEVISION PROGRAM TO NBC'S NEET THE PRESS
NEET THE PLESS
Produced by Lawrence E. Spivak
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 1974
GUEST:
GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN (R. Cal.) )
MODERATOR:
Lawrence E, Spivok
PANEL:
James J. Kilpatrick 400 Washington Star Syndicate
Tom Braden - Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Robert Novak - Date: Chicago Sun-Times
Catherine Mackin - NBC News
This is a rush transcript pro-
vided for the information and
convenience of the press Accu-
racy is not guaranteed In case
of doubt, please check with
NEXT THE PRESS
2
MR. SPIVAK:
Our guest today on NEET THE PRESS is
Governer Ronald Reagan of California. Governor Reagan
is completing his eighth year as Governor and has said he
will not seek a third term. He is frequently mentioned for
the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.
we will have the first questions now from Catherine
Mackin of NBC News.
@
Ms. Mackin: Governor, what is your feeling as of today
8
as to whether President Nixon should continue in office?
to
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I believe that the case and all
of the allegations that have been made are now before the
:
courts, before the Congress, has been for some time, before the
12
Grand Jury, and I think the determination of that should rest
13
1.1
with the courts and with the Congress.
MS. MACKIN: You don't I think the President himself should
15
15
make any determination as to the mood of the country and the
17
leadership of the country? You think he should wait for the
judgment of the courts?
10
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Yes, I think that is our system and tha
19
is our process and the system seems to be working.
20
MS. MACKIN: Vice President Ford said this week that he
21
blieves there is a small band of activists, he mertioned ADA
22
Americans for Democratic Action, and the AFL-CIO, who are out
33
to get the President. Do you find any substance at all in
24
that allegatic?
3
SOVERNGE NOIL, I don't Insure the facts; I have had
no opportunity to discuss it with his at to wist he based that
on: I think to have to acognize that any time there 18
controwersy in our country, with our partisen system, our two-
$ 47
party system, you are going to find some people, some forces
#
that are going to seize upon this for the furthering of their
7
own partisanship.
B
(Announcements)
&
10
MR. KILPATRICK: Governor, one of the allegations brought
against the President has to do with his failure to pay income
11
taxes in California. Now, you are Governor of California. In
12
13
your judgment is the President a resident of California for
M
paying purposes and, if 40, would you go after him for
taxas?
15
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Jim, it isn't the decision for
18
the Governor to make. The tax laws of California for many
17
years have prescribed that if an individual rotains a
10
residence in the State of California for voting purposes,
10
but his work takes him permanently away from the state and he
20
derives no income within the State of California, he is not
18
subject to taxes.
22
Now, in the case of the President, at determination in
being made now by the California tax franchise board.
MR. KILPATRICK: At one time you yourself you into sons
political hot water, in 1970, I think, for failure to pay
California state income taxes. In retrospect, Governor, do
au
now wish you had not taken those deductions and had paid some
state taxes?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: As a matter of fact, Jim, I wouldn't
have had very much to do with it. Like most people who go into
7
public life, I placed all my affairs in the hands of trustees
3
and in this particular instance, that is the only year of my
life I have no state income tax obligation. What evidently
has happened, there was a decline in revenues, in income,
but other taxes, property taxes in large amounts, for example,
12
and a number of other legitimate deductions that are taken by
all citizens, simply didn't meet the reduction in rever
that year so there was no tax obligation, but I have always
IS
paid every tax obligation that I have ever had.
16
MR. KILFATRICK: Is there any special duty though, sir, on
17
a Governor, or on a President, to pay a little something extra
18.
perhaps?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I am sure that if we tried to do
ED
that the experts over in the Tax Department who audit your
21
accounts will send you one of those refund checks if you have
22
overpaid. I will say that after the unpleasantness about that
23
one particular year, in my case, I said to those trustees
24
handling my affairs, I said, "I don't care how it ever turn
out in the future, send them something, even if they send it
back.
5
frunt
HR. BRADEN: Governor, to get back to an opening
question about what you thought of the Nixon Administration,
you were vary forthright in 1968 - I believe the date was
June 17 --- about the Johnson Administration, You said the
Johnson Administration has a morality gap. Now I wonder if
you could be as forthright about what you think of morality
14,
in the Nixon Administration?
R
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, the morality gap I think
$
was determined in the courts and action was taken in the
TO
present - and I made such a statement. In the present
11
situation it is before the courts. Some individuals have
12
been found guilty of wrong-doing and have been convicted.
13
Other cases are yet to be resolved. I believe where there
14
has been illegality and immorality it should be determined
in the courts and I would have to say today, that this is a
16
pending decision.
17
MR. BRADEN: You don't find any great morality gap
in the Nixon Administration, then?
18
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, now, I didn't say that. I said
18
that in this case obvicously, the incidents of Watergate.
20
those were illegal and immoral acts. The President has
21
22
so characterized them. The legal process is going forward.
23
Now, I also believe in the idea that you are innocent until
proven guilty. In the other instances there was some -
muilt was proven.
6
Mr. braden; One more question about the taxas, Governor.
I think on January 9, 1968, you said "My goal is to see that
each citizen in California pays the same percentage of his
income in state and local taxes.' In view of that and in view
of other things that Mr. Kilpatrick asked you about, were
you surprised when you discovered that President Hixon paid
so little tax in two years?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I had never given it any thought
as to what his tax situation was. When it was revealed
40
with regard to the deduction that he took for papers,
10
this is the same deduction that had been taken by the former
Vice President, now Senator Humphrey. It is the same
N
deduction that was taken by former Governor Brown in
California for his own state papers. I have been questioned
14
as to whether, when my term is up, that I will take such a
13
deduction for my state papers if I turn them over to the
18
traditional place, the Bancroft Library, and very frankly I
17
have no intention of taking any deduction for turning those
papers over. I happen to believe they are the property of
the state. But I just haven't given it any thought. I
21
recognize the deduction that was taken, and recognize
that it has, also been customery by others in government.'
7
MR. NOVAK:
Governor, the reaction by the President's
(tape)
2
lawyers to the report by technical experts that the erasure of
at
eighteen and a quarter minutes from the presidential conversati
with 11. R. Haldeman could not have been accidental, the reactic
by the President's lawyers is that "Go ahead and prove it."
6
Do you think that the President should have been more
7
forthcoming in trying to get to the bottom of this?
(Watergate
B
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, once again you are talking about
$
something that is before the courts and the determination will
10
be made there. It is now before the Grand Jury with regard to
11
that.
12
MR. NOVAK: No, that wasn't my question, sir, My question
13
was, do you think they should take a legalistic approach,
14
go ahead and prove something, or do you think the White House
15
should have taken a position that the erasure was something
16
that was shocking and that they wanted to get to the bottom of?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I think there have been evidences that
17
18
they have said that and that there have been explanations that
they cannot determine themselves. Rosemary Woods herself has
is
said that this must have been accidental, that she has no
20
understanding of the machinery and how it came about.
12
MR. NOVAK: Let me get at it a different way, The
22
23
President's lawyers are not being very forthcoming with the
24
court in making available the presidential logs. Now, they
19
have refused to do that. The word from the White House is
they will not present all of the material that is being
N
demanded of the House Judiciary Committee. There is a hare
line. DO you approve of that?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Bob, I don't have access to the
information upon which lawyers, either prosecutors or defense,
are going to make such decisions and I certainly don't think
I am qualified to sit here and from 3,000 miles away try to tel
lawyers in a case now before a judge how they should conduct
that case.
MR. NOVAK: Let me follow up Miss Mackin's opening
question about removal. If the House totes a bill of impeach-
ment, which is certainly a possibility, the minority leader of
12
the House, Representative Rhodes of Arizona, has said the
President should put a high priority on resigning. Do you
agree with that?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I think with regard to resignation
of a President, any President, that that would be if the
17
President - and I am sure if any President in his own mind
TO
believed it would be for the good of the country that he would
0
do so, but the process of impeachment, the process of removing
a President from office before the end of his term is prescrib-
21
ed in our constitution. If the Congress goes forward with this
22
legal process and starts impeachment action, perhaps that is
323
the road to get this settled once and for will and find out the
answer.
9
asing
NR. SPIVAK: Governor, I'd like to ask you one question
2
on this whole issue before going to politics.
In a recent Christian Science Monitor interview you were
3
reported au saying you do not think President Nixon would be
4
impeached. Do you mind telling us why you think he won't be
on
impeached?
0
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, when that interview was given, and
7
at that time, that was purely based on the evidence and the
8
statements of Congressmen and the count of the vote and
S
so forth, and it seemed to be a general consensus that such
10
proceedings were not going forth. I would have to say this
11
about impeachment; let me just add this one thing:
12
If the Democratic leadership of the Congress and of the
13
conmittee, the Judiciary Committee that had been discussing
14
this feels that they have grounds for impeachment, then I
15
would hope that they would bring this to a head and ask for a
16
vote instead of dragging it on, even as far as through next
17
November.
10
MR. SPIVAK: Well, are you saying now that what you said
19
the other day to the Christian Science Monitor doesn't hold
20
now in view of changed circumstances?
22
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No.
22
MR. SPIVAK: Do you still think he won't be impeached?
23
GOVERNOR REAGAN: No, we are talking about two different
24
things. I was talking then of an opinion, that it didn't seem
10
to me there was the ill or the determination on the part of
Congress to go forward with this. That was an estimate on
tenor of Congress.
I am talking now about if this committee now, as time has
gone on, believes it has reason to bring this proceeding to
Congress, then they should proceed. They should go ahead and
07
not just drag this out by discussing it for the next year and
a half, but I don't know whether there has been a change in
Congress to the point that they believe they have what they
need to go forward.
MR. SPIVAK: You also said at the same time, and this was
just the other day, the 17th ***** at least you are quoted as
12
saing you didn't think he should resign. Now, does that st
1
hold? Do you still believe that?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: That is right.
MR. SPIVAK: And, if so, why do you think he shouldn't
resign?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I think we have seen the experienc
18
almost similar in the case of the preceding President, Lyndon
Johnson, and now once again, and as I said before, allegations
have been made, charges have been made. This is before the
courts, before a legal process that is going forward, and I
don't believe that on the basis of unproven allegations we
should set the precedent, under two presidents in a row, but
that any time a group of people believe a President is doing
11
something wrong or that they disapprove of his conduct, that
he could be pressured into resigning until there has been a
determination through our legal processes as to whether the
charges are founded or not.
MR. SPIVAK: Now, may I switch to politics now for at least
a minute?
7
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Please do.
HR. SPIVAK: There are many political observers who are
a
convinced no conservative can be elected President of the United
10
States. Now, obviously you don't think so. Do you mind telling
us why you think a conservative can be elected President?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, we get into those definitions again
15
of what is a conservative and what is a liberal. Some people,
16
when you say the word "conservative, a atomatically think you are
19
talking about a monster who eats his young.
18
MR. SPIVAK: Let's talk about your kind of conservatism.
17
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, all right. I think the reverse
18
is true. Now, if we get away from the labels and we get away
19
from the definitions, I think the American people proved in
20
1972 in an election in which the issues were probably more
clearly defined than they have ever been in history, I cannot
2)
recall an election where there was so little emphasis on
23
individual personalities and so much emphasis on philosophies,
two divergent philosophies, and the American people made it
IF
plain that they wanted limited government, less government;
12
that they want an extension of their freedom; they want more
local control and they want less social tinkering than we have
had over the last for decades. From that standpoint, I don't
believe the American people have changed in that.
MS. MACKIN: Governor, I'd like to go back a little bit.
It seems to me you were saying two conflicting things. One,
you are saying let the legal process on the matter of the
President's involvement in Watergate proceed and, of course,
on the other hand, you are telling the House Judiciary Com-
10
mittee to hurry up and get on in making up its mind about
15
impeachment.
12
Isn't that also a legal process?
13
GOVERNOR REAGAN: It is a legal process and I said if
:
they believed they had sufficient cause to start those proceed-
US
ings, I have to say, all right, start them and let's get a
143
decision, but let's not make this the kind of a partisan hassle
17
in which it is going to be discussed and discussed and kept
alive as an issue over a great many months with no one attempt-
18
ing to arrive at a determination as to guilt or innocence.
19
MS. MACKIN: In the meantime, the President's popularity
20
is now at 27 per cent. Now, you run a big state. What is the
**
22
effect on this country of Watergate and of a President leading
the country who has a popularity of 27 per cent?
24
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I think there is a great confusi
on the part of the people. I think the people are depressed;
13
I think the people wish this thing and chis, I think, is the
key to what I have been saying previously in BY answers: I
think the people have really if you analyze it, and what
most Congressmen, when they went home are finding out, is that
$
people are saying, resolve this. We want to know one way or
45
the other.
7
But, quit talking about it; quit hassling. Get this to
B
the point of making a decision.
9
MR. KILPATRICK: Governor, looking ahead and following up
10
on Mr. Spivak's question as to your own possible prospects
=
in 1976, you will be 63 years old on February 6th and during a
12
campaign period, of course, would be 65% Does the age
21
seen to you realistically to be a factor that would operate
14
against your candidacy for President?
15
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I think that has got to be a
16
deermination the people are going to make. Certainly, Jim,
12
by the time of 1976, if it should be my decision that I am
13
going to be involved in that race - and I think it is
12
certainly too early to make that decision by a long way - the
No
people will know my age and they will make that determination.
We have had Presidents that have pretty much spanned
1503
32
adulthood as to their age and it has not seemed to affect the
&
people.
RN
I think in terms of President Disenhower and his great
23
popularity and hold on the people.
14
MR. KILPATRICK: Covernor, the other criticism that is
heard most frequently against your possible candidacy in
AS
your relatively limited experience in foreign affairs. How
would you respond to that avenue of criticism?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Jim, in 1966 when I was running
for Governor there was certainly a great deal said about
7
my limited experience in governmental affairs of any kind
$
because I had never held public office and came from a pro-
fession that is not normally considered as a hunting ground for
10
public officials. I think the same situation would prevail.
=
MR. BRADEN: Governor, on that question of foreign
12
affairs, the famous speech that did so mch for you on the year
13
when you were elected Governor of California the first time
14
you said this: "We are sclling our fellow human beings into
15
permanent slavery behind the Iron Curtain and telling them
16
to give up their hope of freedom because we are ready
17
to make a deal with their slave masters."
18
Now, in view of that and in view of possibly running
19
again, what do you think of Hr. Nixon's policy of detente?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I don't think that the two
20
21
periods are comparable. I think back in 1964, when I made
23
that statement there was a very evident policy in this
29
country and had been for some time that we did not want to
24
rock the boal as far as eastern Europe was concerned. We
were not too many years removed from the violation of treaties
15
and agreements by the Soviet Union, which they had broken in
some more than fifty incidents, and we were signatories to
those treaties and we made no effort whatsoever to insist on
our side of the treaty being carried out.
I think that detente, the idea of opening up relationships
to the point where we can talk to each other has borne fruit
7
already. As a result of that, we find China, the great Com-
e
munist colossus there, is no longer in the Russian orbit and we
find that a President of the United States a few weeks ago was
10
able to pick up a telephone and, with one telephone call,
11
stop the Soviet Union from moving armed forces into the Middle
12
East.
18
1.8
16
16
12
1B
18
20
21
22
28
24
16
1
MR. SPIVAK: We have less than four minutes.
MR. NOVAK: Governor, since President Nixon has called
3
on all Americans to show some self sacrifice in conserving
fuel during the energy crisis, do you think it was
consistent with that plea for you to solicit your recent trade
mission to the Far East, which cost the government 130,000
N
gallons of aviation fuel?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, Bob, I think there are some
things in government that have to be weig h ed in priorities
on whether they are done or not. Yes, we all of us
to
have been asked, and not just the public. I think people
11
in public life also, are doing their best to join that
12
conservation movement.
18
Now, the situation of a trip to the Far East, those
14
trips are not planned on the spur of the moment. There
13
was no energy crisis. I, and I am sure many other Governors,
16
receive invitations abroad for some particular purpose, and
17
we have been asked - I know I have been - by the
38
ever
State Department that if we/have such an
18
invitation and are considering accepting, to notify the
20
State Department, in the event that there are services
21
we can perform beyond the original invitation.
22
Now my original invitation, accepted some several months
23
before there was an energy crisis, had CO do with the national
$4
drive, the opening of the Red Cross in Australia. It is an
17
2
invitation that has been repeated for three years
now, Finally my timing was such that I could make
this trip. Re notified Washington, as we have in the past,
and Washington did have some chores and they were very
important chores and some of them were in relation to
energy, by the time the energy crisis had come upon us.
of
We did brief the trip down, we eliminated some
8
of the lesser priority parts of the visit. We made
$
it over there and we made it back without stopovers, which
TO
is customary because of the time gap. We Flew back 21 hours
in an airplane to get back, to minimize this use of
IS
Fuel. But evidently it was believed there, and I have
23
19
to think that there was some accomplishments from the trip,
14
it was a priority item in which, weighing it, it was
worthwhile. I was in Indonesia, I met with Suharto, I
15
net with other leaders in Indonesia and that
If
17
is a country where we get four percent of our fuel supply.
MR. NOVAK: But Administration sources tell me, sir,
12
that you did not merely inform them but you lobbied them
10
to give you some mission, which meant that it cost the
20
government fuel and money, is that correct?
21
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Bob, if there is someone in Washington
22
saying that, ha is blowing hot air because the truth of the
23
matter was I had our people say to them repeatedly that
$25
unless they actually had chores of some e value that were
13
worthwhile in this, I wanted no part of it. I would go
the
and do my - keep the bargain that I had made in Australia
it
with regard to their Red Cross, but that don't just
send me on something that could be described as a junket.
5
I wanted to know that there were really things that they
considered were worth that effort.
6
7
W
$
10
It
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
12
20
22
22
23
24
25
19
MR. SPIVAK: Governor, Senator Barry Goldwater was
recently quoted as saying that he didn't think that you wanted
to be President of the United States. Now, can you tell us
whether you would like to be President?
GOVERNOR REAGAN: I don't know whether there is an answer
6.
to that question as to whether you would like or not. I have
7
always said that I think whether you find yourself involved in
that race starts with the people themselves and whether they
2
would like to have you seeking that office. I suppose every
10
man has many moments in which he says, "If I had the position
and the authority to do certain things, this is what I would
=
do."
12
On the other hand, I don't think there is anyone par-
13
THE
ticularly - someone who has been in public life -
MR. SPIVAK: Does that mean that you would like to be
15
President?
16
GOVERNOR REAGAN: That means that you are asking me about
=
a decision that, if you have me on this show say about a year
18
from now maybe we will be closer to getting an answer.
19
TR. SPIVAK: Well, you have an invitation for that shw.
30
I am sorry to interrupt, but our time is up. Thank you,
21
Governor Reagan, for being with US today on NEET THE PRESS.
22
(Next week: The President of the American Petroleum
23
Institute, Frank Ikard.)
24
A
Sacramento, Californi/ 95814
Clyde Walthall, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
3-19-74
REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE
Washington, D. C.
January 25, 1974
There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce.
It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits
(
lifted as they have never been lifted in many many years. This happened
when planes began landing on American soil and in the Phillipines,
bringing back men who had lived with honor for many miserable years in
North Vietnam prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain,
Bill Lawrence and Ed Martin.
It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you asked me
and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished
company.
There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight
and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of
our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past
when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up force-
fully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has
assed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land
reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever
borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another
generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and
reduce the standard OF living. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle
in our country all of the great ideals and principles which set this
nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and more
strident voices utter easily-sold cliches.
Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of
our heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are
trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to
the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of
history, is termed by them as taking the country back to McKinley. of
Jurse I never found that was so bad---under McKinley we freed Cuba.
On the span of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country
celebrating soon, only our seond century as a nation, and yet we are
the oldest continuing republic in the world.
--1-
I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you
are discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be
appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.
You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always
believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent
between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an
abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.
This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the
beginning of this country, as it also is true of those later immigrants
who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land
where even the language was unknown to them. call it chauvinistic, but
our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who happened
to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that day in the
little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed by a King
who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey, debated whether
they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from
that King. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the
writings of Jefferson. I CO. I never researched or made an effort
to verify it. Perhaps it is y legend. But story, or legend, he
described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as men for
the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable- act, the
walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price--the gallows
and the headman's axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in the balance,
and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He
was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the energy be
could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this
moment he said, "sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a
gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can
never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of
hope, to the slave in the mines---freedom." And he added, "if my hands
were freezing in death, 'I would sign that parchment with my last ounce
of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your
neck, sign even if this hall is ringing with the sound of the headman's
axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of
the rights of man forever." And then it is said he fell back exhausted.
But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of
Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man
can be. And according to the story when they turned to thank him for
his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew
who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and
Well, as I sa whether story or legend 1 signing of the
document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty six
men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since
pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen
gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved
their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they
were not an unwashed, revolutionary rebel, nor were they adventurers in
a heroic mood. Twenty four were lawyers and jurists, eleven were
merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would
achieve security but valued freedom more. And what price did they pay?
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After
more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves,
he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished.
He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a
broken
heart but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played
that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his
ships they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was
with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston,
and Middleton. Nelson, learnin that Cornwallis was using his home for
a headquarters, personally begg i Washington to fire on him and destroy
his home he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of
hese men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not
worth the price. Fifty six rank and file ordinary citizens had founded
a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet
villages, cities that never sleep---all done without an area redevelop-
ment plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.
Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that
includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed
that American-melting-pot-blood in every corner of the world, usually in
defense of someone's freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable
band we call our Founding Fathers, tied up some of the loose ends about
a dozen years after the revolution. It had been the first revolution
in all man's history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for
another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of
men's dreams for six thousand years were formalized with the Constitution,
~obably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of
man's rélation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new
ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them,
even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees
as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference
is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is SO great that it tells
the whole story. Those other constitutions say "Government grants you
these rights" and our's says "you are born with these rights, they are
yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them
from you."
-3-
Lord Acton of I ;land who once said "power brrupts, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely," would say of that document "they had solved
with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had
heretofore. baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They
had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased
national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities and,
they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering
the securities of property or freedom." Never in any society has the
preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such
a priority.
In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given
rights of the American sailors, as defined in the constitution, were
being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the World
that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights
of even the least among us. But still, in an older cynical world, they
were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that
one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they
would come over and divide us 52.
In the meantime men who yearned to breathe free were making their
way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary
from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he had fled to escape
execution. In America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became
importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day
business took him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian
warship under the command of an Admiral in the harbor. He had a man
servant with him. He had described to this man servant what the flag
of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship
that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and
taken aboard that large ship. This man's servant, desperate, walking up
and down the harbor suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description
he had heard. It was on a small American war sloop. He went aboard and
told Captain Ingraham, of that American war sloop his story. Captain
Ingraham went to the American Consul. When the American Consul learned
that Koscha had only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul
washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said "I am the
senior officer in this port and I believe, under my oath of office,
that I owe this man the protection of our flag.
-4-
He went aboard ( a Austrian warship and den ded to see their
prisoner, our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the
man on deck. He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain
Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains," and the
chains were removed. He walked over and said to Koscha, "I will ask
you one question, consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the
protection of the American flag?" Koscha nodded dumbly "yes", and
the Captain said, "you shall have it." He went back and told the
frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day three more Austrian
ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though the four were getting
ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the
Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any attempt to leave that
harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force.
He said that he would expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock that
afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at each other through the
glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the cannons into the ports
and had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons-
--one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout tower called out and said
"they are lowering a boat," and they rowed Koscha over to the little
American ship.
Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resigna-
tion to the United States Navy. In it he said, "I did what I thought
my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any
way, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States
Senate with these words: "This battle that was never fought may turn
out to be the most important battle in our Nation's history."
Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be,
a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.
I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly
chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example
of government meeting its' highest responsibility.
In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding
phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don't hold up under close
analysis. Take for instance the slogan SO frequently uttered by the
young senator from Massachusetts, "the greatest good for the greatest
number." Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham
would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen.
Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his
people on the theory of what was good for the majority.
-5-
We are not a wai_ike people. Nor is our history filled with
tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism which might come as
a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations.
The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will
young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless
that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full
resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.
I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly
be laying one open to the charge of warmongering but that would be
ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder
for freedom than any generation that ever lived. We have known four
wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, and all could have been
avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we
subscribed to the words of John Stewart Mill when he said that "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. The man who has
nothing which he cares about than his personal safety is a
miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept
so by the exertions of better men than himself.
The widespread disaffection with things military is only a part
of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you
who have recently, or presently are still receiving an education, I
am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the
attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to
persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second
time in this century, capitalism and the free enterprise are under
assault. Privately-owned business is blamed for spoiling the environment,
exploiting the worker and seducing, if not outright raping, the customer.
Those who make the charge have the solution of government
regulation and control. We may never get around to explaining how
citizens who are SQ gullible that they can be suckered into buying
cereal or soap that they don't need and would not be good for them,
can at the same time be astute enough to choose representatives in
government to which they would entrust the running of their lives.
-6-
Not too long ago. a poll was taken on 2,500 college campuses in
this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained.
Overwhelmingly, 65, 70 and 75 percent of the students found business
responsible, as I have said before, for the things that were wrong in
this country. That same number said that government was the solution
and should take over the management and the control of private business.
Eighty percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep
its paws out of their private lives.
We are told every day that the assembly-line worker is becoming
a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization.
Well there isn't a socialist country in the world that would not give
its copy of Karl Marx for our standardization.
Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly
line means more leisure for the worker freedom from backbreaking and
mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx
did not abolish child labor OH free the women from working in the coal
mines in England the steam orgine and modern machinery did that.
Unfortunately, the disciples of the new order have had a hand in
determining too much policy in recent decades. Government has grown
in size and power and cost through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the
New Frontier and the Great Society. It costs more for government today
than a family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. Not even
the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions,
bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government, but the federal
registry, listing their regulations, is just a few pages short of being
as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this
government, there were 8 cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies
to administer the federal health program. There were 35 housing programs
and 20 transportation projects. Public Utilities had to cope with 27
different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations
and 9 departments with 1,000 projects having to do with the field of
pollution.
One Congressman found the federal government was spending $4
billion on research in its own laboratories but did not know where they
were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing.
One of the research projects was "the demography of happiness", and
for $249,000 we found that "people who make more money are happier than
people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and
people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick." For
15¢ they could have bought an Almanac and read the old bromide, "it's
better to be rich, young and healthy, than poor, old and sick."
The course th you have chosen is far me : in tune with the hopes
and aspirations of our people, than are those who would sacrifice
freedom for some fancied security.
Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the
Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said "we will be as a city upon a
hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, SO that if we deal falsely
with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw
His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through-
out the world. = Well we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if
He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.
When I was born my life expectancy was 10 years less than I have
already lived that's a cause of regret for some people in California,
I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what
is considered the poverty line today, 3/4 lived in what is considered
substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than 10 percent.
We have increased our life stancy by wiping out, almost totally,
diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. I doubt
if the young people here tonich know the names of some of the diseases
that were commonplace when we ware growing up. We have more doctors per
thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals
than any nation in the world.
When I was your age, believe it or not, none of us knew that we
even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became
a radio sports announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn't
have a Hank Aarons or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spaulding Guide
said baseball was a game for Caucasion gentlemen. Some of us then
began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we
campaigned against all those other areas where the constitutional rights
of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We have not
finished the job. We still have a long way to go, but we have. made more
progress in a few years than we have made in more than a century.
One third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher
education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our
young Negro community that is going to college is greater than the
percentage of whites in any other country in the world.
-8-
Conservative Action Conterence
One half of all the economic activity in th entire history of
man has taken place in this Republic. We have distributed our
wealth more widely among our people than any society known to man.
Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any
other people. Ninety five percent of all our families have an adequate
daily intake of nutrients and a part of the five percent that don't
are trying to lose weight: Ninety nine percent have gas. or electric
refrigeration, 92 percent have televisions, and an equal number have
telephones, there are 120 million cars on our streets and highways
and all of them are on the street at once when you are trying to get
home at night. But isn't this just proof of our materialism the very
thing that we are charged with? Well, we also have more churches, more
libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras, and opera
companies, non-profit theatres, and publish more books than all the
other nations of the world put together.
Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched
anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a
Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could
not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling
the earth above us in the skylab. A sick society bereft of morality
and courage did not produce the men who went through those years of
torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They
are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We
found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working
places of our country and on the farms.
We cannot escape our destiny nor should we try to do SO. The leadership
of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little
hall in Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the
economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the
world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said "the American
people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into
the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted
mankind. "
We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on
earth.
# # #
-9-
2/11/74
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
RELEASE: Immediate
Sacramento, California 95814
Clyde Walthall, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
3-5-74
REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
OKLAHOMA GOP FUNDRAISER DINNER, OKLAHOMA CITY
February 11, 1974
I flew here from Dallas and I thought I was in line for a security
check. It went on for quite a ways and then I found out they were
measuring people down there and any young fellow too big or big enough
to play football was not going to be allowed across the state line.
I mentioned that I had known your two Senators as Governors, and I must
say that it is very nice to leave California and come to a state where
you have two Republican Senators. As a matter of fact, I have been
talking to Holmes Tuttle to see if I couldn't contract out and get you
to represent us in Washington.
Knowing them when they were governors, of course, I don't know what
the governor of North Carolina said to the governor of South Carolina,
but I do know what governors talk about when they have any time at all
at get-togethers even with ex-governors. The first time I met an
Oklahoma governor, Governor Bellmon, I was not in politics. I was
running around the country making speeches for other people. I was
smuggled into the State House to meet him---he was the only Republican
in the Oklahoma State House. I came to know Dewey Bartlett as a fellow
governor at many governors' conferences and came to think of him as a
very close friend.
When we talk to each other we talk about our troubles, and when I
said that I was happy now and then to get away from Sacramento, believe
me I meant it! Some days are worse than others, particularly when you
are a governor with a majority of the other party in both houses of the
legislature. Sometimes when Nancy has to push me out of the house to get
me over to the office, I am reminded of the mother trying to get her son
to go to school. He says, "I don't want to go. Nobody over there likes
me." The mother says, "but you have to go. You have a great deal to
learn and you have much to offer. You have qualities of leadership.
Besides, you are 49 years old and you are the principal."
We have a member of the House here, too and I don't mean to pick
on the Senate particularly, but have you ever heard about the time
Mrs. Camp nudged Happy in the night and tried to wake him? She whispered
"there's a burglar in the house, dear" and he said, "No. In the Senate
maybe, but not in the House."
Oklahoma City
Well, my fellow Republicans, and Democrats who aspire to a better
life, I know without Henry telling me that I could not be in this place
at this time without talking to many who are, or who were, members of
the Democratic Party. I was one myself. When I was a child, I spake
as a child, I thought as a child, and did childish things.
A few weeks ago I was speaking to a group of Republicans up in New
England, New Hampshire and Vermont. While I was there I heard a story
about a little old lady who had been a Republican all her life. She went
to the doctor one day, hurried out of the doctor's office right down
the street to the registrar's office and said, "I want to re-register
Democrat.' The clerk said, "What? Your grandparents were Republicans.
your parents were Republicans, and you have been a Republican all your
life." She said, "The doctor told me that I haven't too much longer to
go and if one of them has got to go, I would rather it be one of them
than one of us."
Looking at this gathering here tonight, I must say to those people
throughout the country who have been deciding to inter the Republican
Party as now dead---we sure are having some wake. Seriously, the
Republican Party is a minority party in registration only. Not on the
basis of philosophy. In 1972 millions of patriotic Democrats crossed
party lines to vote for fiscal responsibility and against the spendthrift
policies of those who high-jacked the Democrat Convention and who still
hold the reins of leadership in the Democratic Party. In our lifetime
never have the issues in a national election been so clearly defined.
And today I think that the choice is not in the election to come
between party labels. It is between the two widely divergent philosophies
that divide our country.
A desperate effort is being made to reverse the mandate of 1972.
And certainly those who would do this have cast a pall on our victory.
We are being told every, day that as a party we must wear, as a political
hair shirt, the illegal and immoral acts of a few individuals in the
'72 campaign. For a year now the alleged misdeeds have been held up to
public view and we are supposed to be responsible. They are condemned
by responsible men and women and yet no one's disapproval of what took
place in Watergate, no one's indignation can be greater than ours. I
know of no Republicans who approve of such campaign excesses, nor have
they in the past been Republican practices. The truth is, we in our
party have too often been the victims of big city political machines,
voting tombstones, warehouses, and empty lots against us in every
Oklahoma City
In my own days as a Democrat I had an Uncle in Chicago who won a
trophy for never having missed an election for 15 elections. He had been
dead for 14 of them. No, we do not condone such behavior. But,
Watergate is now before the bar of justice and I doubt if this would be
true in many other countries in the world. Only in America do we have
the courage to face up to problems like this, submit them to our system
and say, "our system can deal with them." And, in keeping with this
system of justice, let justice be done. Let the facts be laid before a
judge and jury; let the guilty accept the consequence; and, let the
innocent be cleared. But let us get on with the business of
government.
Cynicism about political affairs did not begin with Bobby Baker, or
Billie Sol Estes, or Watergate and I doubt it will end there. But the
time has come to say that we have had enough of partisan demagoguery and
curbstone verdicts. There are serious problems crying out in this land
for statesmanship. Put Watergate on the scale. But, as Americans, I
think we should balance this against the vital issues which are shaping
this world, perhaps for generations to come. Politicians must choose
between some fancy political advantage of Watergate and finding an answer
to inflation
an answer to a tax burden that is bleeding away the very
vitality of our free enterprise system. We must meet the immediate
problem of finding energy to run our economy and the long range problem
of making America self-sufficient in power and energy no longer
dependent on foreign sources.
It is political demagoguery of the worst sort for men in high places
to look for a scapegoat and to capitalize on the people's discomfort with
wild charges that they know are untrue. When they shed crocodile tears
and moan, "why weren't we warned by the oil companies?" and "the oil
companies conspire to reap an illicit profit, we should tell them to get
on with the business of' meeting the problems. They say they were not
warned, but, in 1947 a Congressional Committee on the Interior did a study
on energy requirements in this country. They told us in 1947 that by
1972 this country would be facing the shortage we are facing now
and
eight of those men are still in the U.S. Senate.
In 1954 a man not unknown to many of you in this room, nick-named
"Molly Senator "Molly" Malone told the people of this country and
told his colleagues over and over again what was in store for us. He was
literally laughed out of the Chamber because no one would take it
seriously. Today his report and his study looks as if it could have been
Oklahoma City
In 1960 the American Association of Petroleum Geologists met in
Los Angeles, California. That year they said that by 1975 this country
will be facing a serious shortage if certain measures are not taken.
They added these words "and when it happens, the people will say you
are to blame and why didn't you warn us?" And then added, "we are
warning them now. "
We are hearing so much about that evil percentage of profit increa
over 1972 profits. Isn't it funny that that percentage of increase is
less than it was in the same period for the steel, iron, paper and paper
products industries. Strangely enough the New York Times, the Washington
Post, Newsweek, ABC and CBS, that are making so much news about this,
reported a higher rate of increase in profits last year than the entire
oil industry. I think it is time for the people to recognize, when
comparing 1973 to 1972 and using '72 as a base year, that 1972 was the
worst profit year in the last 15 for the oil industry.
Let those who are proposing everything from confiscatory taxation to
an outright takeover of a whole sector of our free enterprise by
government turn instead to a proper goal. That goal should be to develop
a means to increase the supply. And then legislation should be adopted
to achieve that purpose. Where on the balance scales does Watergate
stand with regard to the necessity for maintaining a military defense
second to none? Today the Soviet Union is out-building us in nuclear
submarines three to one. They recently test-fired a rocket capable of
releasing multiple nuclear warheads each aimed at different targets in
our country and other places in the world. No American President should
ever have to negotiate except from a position of strength and history
tells us that no nation that ever relied on treaties alone has lived to
write many more pages in history.
The free world leadership is ours whether we want it or not. It was
this nation that brought a cease-fire in the Middle East and has now
brought a military withdrawal and is now seeking a way to bring about a
permanent solution to that problem. It was an American President,
negotiating from strength, who was able to pick up a telephone and with
one single call stop the Soviet Union from sending armed forces into the
troubled areas of the Middle East. The same American President brought
an easing of the tensions worldwide such as we have not known in 40 years.
Today the great Chinese colossus has been removed from the Russian orbit a
and that, too, was an American achievement.
Oklahoma City
A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to meet in Southeast Asia with
leaders of several countries there. They could not hide their dismay at
what is going on in America. They asked me, "do the American people,
with their obsession with Watergate, realize that the stability of the
entire area of Southeast Asia is dependent on the United States' presence
there?" A presence they call the Nixon Doctrine.
Well, it is time for some of us to weigh all of these things and
see which way the scale tilt. Unfortunately, it would seem that there
are those who would destroy a man when their real goal is the reversal
of the decision by the American people when they rejected the social
tinkering and economic irresponsibility of the last four decades in the
election of 1972. It was that election that millions of Democrats for the
first time discovered their basic beliefs were more in tune with
Republican philosophy than with the shop-worn welfarism of the Democratic
leadership. Those rank and file Democrats must be reminded of this and
they must be reminded today and made to see that the present leadership
of their party is exactly the same leadership that high-jacked that
convention. There has been no change. They are still promising solutions
for all the problems of human misery programs that will right all the
wrongs, aid victims, and defeat poverty. They will never succeed, of
course, because success would put them out of business. They thrive on
failure. To claim success for their programs would mean their programs
were no longer needed and the programs, not the problems, are their
reason for being.
Watergate has been used to wipe out the memory of how veteran
Democratic Party stalwarts, with long records of honorable service in
their party, were denied participation and sometimes even admission, to
the 1972 convention. And the first Democrat to be thrown out of that hall
in Miami was Thomas Jefferson. They still invoke his name, but when have
you heard a Democratic leader quote his words? If a Democratic leader
today said "we place economy among the most important virtues and public
debt as one of the greatest dangers to be feared. We must make our
election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude,' the
words would stick in their throats, and they would certainly choose
profusion and servitude and call it a planned economy. There would be no
cheers at a Democratic Convention for a speaker who would say, "if we can
prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people on the
pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
- 5 -
Oklahoma City
Less than a year ago Americans were fighting a bloody war in
Southeast Asia that had dragged on for almost a decade. It has been
spawned with indecision and directed by leaders who would not win it and
could not end it. Today young Americans are not dying in rice paddies
and jungles. Hundreds of the bravest men that any nation has ever
produced have been freed from years of torture and captivity. No one
crawled to Hanoi to get their release, nor was this brought about by a
street demonstration or a speech by the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Senator Fullbright. It was brought about by the
forceful policies and effective negotiations of an effective Republican
President in 1973, just as another Republican President ended another war,
that was not of our doing, in 1953.
Now we are attempting to deal with inflation and somehow we are being
told that this, too, must be laid at our door. But this inflation is the
result of a deliberate economic policy that was planned as a stimulant
to prosperity and sold to us in the years of the New Deal, the Fair Deal,
the New Frontier and the Great Society. We were told that deficit
spending and an annual rate of inflation would maintain prosperity for us
and not to worry about it, a little inflation would not hurt us.
There has been one brief two-year period when a Republican Presiden
had a Republican Congress. That was the only time it took place in the
last 40 years, and that two-year period happened to be the only time in
40 years the dollar did not lose a penny of its purchasing power.
Inflation is the direct result of government spending. I know it is a
cliche to call it a cruel tax falling on those least able to pay it. But
you know cliches are born of truth. We used to kid about them in lines in
pictures on the set. There is that old line "we're safe until the drums
stop, "---well it really was based on truth. When the drums stopped, it
meant that somebody was on the way to beat your brains out. It was true.
Not so well known, however, in the cliche about inflation, is the
fact that wages do keep pace with the rate of inflation. For example, in
1966 a $10,000 income has on the average become a $13,500 income. In that
period inflation has only taken $3,016 of that $3,500 increase. But
before you rush out and spend your $484 net gain, you had better take a
look at what inflation's partner has done. The tax system is based on
the number of dollars you earn, not on their value. So while you were
increasing your earnings by $3500 to keep pace with inflation, you moved
up through the progressive tax brackets $950 worth and you now are a net
loser by $466. That much poorer than you were in 1966.
Oklahoma City
Whose trademark does this nearly confiscatory tax system bear?
Certainly it is not Republican. As late as three years ago, May of 1971,
the Democratic Party Counsel found nothing wrong with the amount of taxes
people were paying. They called for a shift of financial resources from
the private to government channels to meet the growing needs of health,
welfare, employment, and other domestic programs. They said, "there is
no easy, cheap way to meet our public sector needs. We believe that the
realization of these priorities requires. a commitment to a vigorous tax
program."
Translated, that means they do not worry about the fact that you are
already paying 45 cents out of every $1 you earn to pay for the cost of
government. Since its inception in 1914 the income tax has been increased
13 times under Democratic administrations. It has been reduced eight
times under Republican administrations. The 1969 tax reform under this
administration freed 9,000,000 of the lowest earners from owing any income
tax at all, gave a 70 percent reduction to the next bracket above them,
and only raised taxes when you got above $50,000 where everyone is
supposed to be a Republican.
The young Senator from Massachusetts journeyed to Alabama last
fourth of July. He spoke out there against big centralized government-
even protested the high taxes people were paying under this Republican
administration. George Wallace sat there listening thinking they had
sent the wrong sound track.
James Buchanan has written, "even the keenest most analytic surgeon
when operating on a Democratic politician can't separate demagogic from
solid tissue without causing the death of the patient." In this election
year Republicans must run against the bureaucracy. We have to run against
the permanent structure of government and make the people of this country
understand the nature of that structure and what it means to them. It has
been built up over the last 40 years and it is an instrument today of
Democratic leadership.
Our mission, if we accept it, is to make it plain that just occupying
the White House cannot change the fact that we are still the out-party
and we are running against an incumbent bureaucracy which actually and in
truth goes farther toward determining policy in government today even
than the U.S. Congress can. If we fail in our mission, we may verywell
self-destruct in five seconds.
- 7 -
Oklahoma City
Not even the Office of Management and Budget in Washington knows
how many boards, commissions, agencies, and bureaus there are. But all
of them have the power to make regulations which have the force of law.
The federal registry, listing those regulations that they have spawned,
has almost as many pages as the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is a new
agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In their
first year they put out 15,000 regulations. Today their regulations,
stacked on top of each other, would make a pile of paper 17 feet high.
They are not indexed and classified as to the separate kinds of
business, if you are in business you are supposed to know what is in all
17 feet of that stack of paper and you cannot call them and ask them to
come in and help you and see if you are doing things right, because
they will tell you they cannot do that if they find you are doing
something wrong they will have to fine you.
We had a fellow in California, a small businessman, and they came
in and told him he had to install separate men's and women's toilets and
washrooms for employees. He only has one employee and he is married to
her and at home they sleep in the same bed. Small businessmen alone
spend an estimated 130,000,000 manhours filling out forms and
questionnaires called for by these regulations. This adds $50 billion
a year to the cost of doing business and that means to the cost of things
that people buy.
The working men and women of America have been indoctrinated into
the belief that only the Democratic leadership can assure them of jobs
and prosperity and too many of our own sons and daughters in too many
classrooms and too many lecture halls have been taught this same
political and economic mythology.
Memories of the great depression are invoked, but there has been a
little rewriting of history. Certainly very few are taught today that
after six years and billions of dollars of New Deal experimenting the
unemployment level in the United States remained at 25 percent of the
work force. Full employment only came with our entry into World War II
Indeed the Democratic Party for more than 40 years, that party which
claims to be the party of the working man, has not presided over full
employment in peace time---only in time of war. Three of them to be
exact, and none of them started under a Republican administration. Today,
even in the face of the unemployment resulting from the energey crisis, I
think it is significant that we have the lowest rate of unemployment we
have known in peace time in almost a half-century.
Oklahoma City
Now over these four decades of Democratic rule we have argued for
smaller government, for lower taxes, and above all for preservation of
our system of sovereign states operating their own governments under
which the citizen can vote with his feet, moving across a state line if
government should become too oppressive in the state where he lives.
Our opponents are the ones who have led the centralizing of government
in Washington and would have the states reduced to merely administrative
districts,
Now, if you will permit me to talk about a personal experience in
California, in 1967 these two contrary philosophies that I mentioned came
into a nose-to-nose confrontation. For eight years California had been
a dutiful little brother to big brother in Washington. In 1967 a
Republican administration took office but we still had a Democratic
majority in both houses. We discovered the state was on the verge of
insolvency it was spending a million and a half dollars a day more than
it was taking in. For several years spending had gone up with price no
object for social reforms and thinking. They had been adding more than
5,000 new employees to state government every year for eight years, and
the welfare caseload was increasing by 40,000 new people a month. To pay
for this without the inevitable tax increase, they had resorted each year
to gimmicks and devices. Finally, faced with the 1966 election they came
to the final gimmick---it was a change in bookkeeping. It allowed them
to use 15 months revenue for 12 months spending and our administration
came into office in the middle of the fiscal year. There were some days
that were really very dark indeed.
We instituted reforms that were based on common sense rules that you
employ in running your business, and even in running your own homes. And
I might say, when you use the term common sense in connection with
government that, in itself, is a traumatic experience. As Henry said, we
celebrate Lincoln's birthday. Now Lincoln was a fellow with common sense.
He once was engaged in a military exercise near my hometown of Dixon,
Illinois. He was a captain of Militia in the Blackhawk War and didn't
know too much. He had read the manual, I guess, because he was a lawyer,
and when he was leading his troops they came to a fence. He had not read
anything about how you march troops over a fence so he resorted to common
sense when he said, "fall out and fall in on the other side."
6 I I
Oklahoma City
The Democratic leadership in Sacramento who shared in the
responsibility for the state's insolvency were indignant with some of
the things we proposed, if not hysterical. The entrenched bureaucracy
elbowed them for a chance to get in their blows. Thunder and lightning
burst around our heads and continues to this day. But strangely enough
never about any money we wanted to spend---only about what we tried to
save. They charged that our program of cut, squeeze, and trim would
bring progress to a halt, the universities would close, the public
schools would deteriorate before our eyes, and when we offered the most
comprehensive welfare reforms ever attempted anywhere, the welfare
rights organization with the aid of OEO-paid lawyers took us to court.
The legislature said the program would fail, the caseload would increase
instead of go down, the local property taxes would have to go up, and we
would end the year with a $700 million deficit. Other than that, they
did not find much wrong with what we were proposing.
On one of those days, one of those times when I was on my way to
work, I fell in love with a disc jockey. I don't know who he was, but
I tuned in just in time to hear him say, "every man should take unto
himself a wife because sooner or later something is bound to happen
that you can't blame on the governor."
But we took our case to the people and the people reacted. They
did not exactly make the legislature see the light, they made them feel
the heat. Government by the people does work when the people will work
at it. Seven years have gone by now. We have not increased the number
of employees by 5,000 a year, we have virtually the same number of
employees as we started with seven years ago, and they have increased
their productivity enough to handle a 40 percent workload increase. The
University budgets have increased more than the combined rate of
inflation and enrollment. We have doubled state support for the public
schools while enrollment was going up only 6 percent. We have built
1,000 highway projects with money that formerly went for department
overhead. We did not get the welfare reforms we wanted until just about
two years ago and today there are almost 400,000 fewer people on welfare
than when we started those reforms two years ago. The taxpayers are
$2 billion better off and the truly deserving poor on welfare who must
have our help have had a 30 percent increase in their grants.
Those property taxes that were going to go up have gone down in 45
of the 58 counties for two years in a row, and we are subsidizing a
reduction in the homeowners' property tax at the local level up to $1
billion with state funds. That $700 million deficit, wound up as an
$800 million surplus which we are giving back to the people in the form
Now, I made that sound a little easier than it really was. When you
suggest to a Democratic legislature that you should return $800 million
to the taxpayer, that is a little like getting between the hog and the
bucket you get buffeted about a bit. One legislator said he considered
giving back that money an unnecessary expenditure of public funds, and
another one said that this would interfere with their ability to
redistribute the earnings of the people, and he was speaking what he
really believed. You bet your bippy that is what it interfered with!
That is what Republicans intended it to interfere with.
But during all this time if our opponents in the legislature had
had their way, if it had not been for a total of 789 vetoes what would
have happened? Well, under their philosophy, spending over these last
seven years would have been
$15.5 billion more than it was and
the present budget would be $3.5 billion bigger than it is.
The next election is important, but not as important as the next
generation,
Whether we will pass on to that generation the heritage
of individual freedom and limited government that was left us by that
little band of men, the founding fathers, remains to be seen.
I believe that the Republican Party offers the best guarantee that
we can pass on that heritage. We have to understand our task. We do
not have to sell our philosophy to our Democratic friends they already
believe in that philosophy. Our task between now and election, is to
cut through the confusion and mythology born of all that demagoguery over
the years and make them understand that what we, as a party, are striving
for, is in tune with their deepest hopes and aspirations. You have to
cut through years of false imagery.
These people, for example our Democratic neighbors, have been told
in a thousand ways that Republicans don't care about them for we are a
party of the rich. We have heard it so much that a lot of us have a
guilty feeling that it must be true. And yet, when you start looking,
we are outnumbered in the front offices of advertising agencies, we are
outnumbered 8-5 among Wall Street bankers, in the publishing houses of
this country, and the funny thing is I have never understood why a rich
Republican is called a "fat cat" and a rich Democrat is called a
"philanthropist." "
I wonder if some of you would be surprised if I gave you some
ammunition and told you some facts about our party. We have heard so
much from the other side that, as I say, we are not quite sure ourselves
whether the accusations and the charges are true. Now we know about the
vast sums that were contributed to the Republican Party.
- 11 -
Oklahoma City
Now the Federal Communications Commission has reported what was
spent on radio and television alone and so we are not surprised when they
tell us that from coast to coast and border to border Republicans spent,
on radio and TV alone in the last campaign, $20 million. But I will bet
some of you are surprised to find that in that same report the Democrats
spent $34 million.
If it is front page news, as it is, that the dairy industry,
supposedly seeking an increase in the price of milk, contributed $577,000
to Republican candidates, does it surprise you to learn that those same
organizations in the dairy industry contributed $613,000 to Democratic
candidates? The majority of the major support in our party has come not
this year alone, nor last year alone, but go back 25 years, it has come
from hundreds and thousands of working men and women across this country.
For the last 25 years the Republicans --- small contributors -- have
out-numbered the Democrats 5 to 1. That 75 percent of our total spending
on campaigns over the past 25 years has been contributed by donations of
less than $100.
When we present our case to the Democrats and to the Independents,
let them ask themselves if they can honestly believe that those who have
taken over their party, who now lead that party, would make the following
pledge to them: we advocate the immediate and drastic reduction of
governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices,
consolidating departments and bureaus, eliminating extravagance to
accomplish a savings of not less than 25 percent in the cost of the
federal government.
Parties change. You know that today there is only one party that
would be at home with that statement the Republican Party. But that,
in 1932, was the pledge of the Democratic Party, uttered by Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. We have come to one of those moments in history when
Americans must look beyond party labels, make decisions based on their
belief in what they think America should be, and whether they believe
that government is the great provider or whether they believe in our tim
tested free marketplace. Is it better to promise someone a bigger slice
of pie because you are going to reduce someone else's slice or do we
increase everyone's slice by making a bigger pie? Is it true compassion
to sentence an ever increasing segment of our society to a life of
hopelessness on the dole, or do we truly fulfill our responsibility of
brotherhood by helping them become self-sustaining and independent?
- 12
Oklahoma City
I can tell you that our philosophy works. Last year 20 percent of
all welfare recipients in the United States who found jobs in the private
sector with the help of government, were California welfare recipients.
Our people should not be a dependent people who can be manipulated like
a flock of human animals with government being the benevolent shepherd.
All of these things we must do, but as Republicans we must have
faith in the rightness of our cause. We must not be divided by petty
bickering or discontent within our own ranks. Today on every hand we are
hearing the strident voices of the doomcriers, so there is fear and
uncertainty and, yes, despair, in a great many hearts.
Last night in Dallas a businessman came up to me who had 3,000
retail outlets across the United States, They sell luxury items. Not
a single thing in one of his stores is something that a citizen must have.
He said these people who are trying to talk us into believing we are
back in another recession or depression are doomcriers. My business, as
of the end of January, was up 20 percent over the year before.
We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men
who set foot on the moon or those who have been circling for 84 days
around us and who landedjust the other day in the Pacific. A sick
society lacking moral stamina and courage did not produce the men who
went through the torture of years of imprisonment in Viet Nam. It is
time for us to take a look around and realize that we are a great people,
a people capable of fantastic deeds. Our sons and daughters, I think,
have a great hunger, whether they can express it or not, for a cause to
believe in and we fail them miserably if we do not cast out the "chicken
littles" in our midst and show them how much there is to love in this
land and this way of life that we call America.
Now if I was smart I would sit down right now, I cannot top that.
But I do just want to tell you these last closing words. Back in the
Revolutionary War there was a preacher, Rev. Muchlenberg. He was
preaching to his congregation on Sunday morning and in the midst of his
sermon a man walked up and handed him a note. He opened it, read it, and
silently took off his ministerial robe. His congregation was surprised to
see him wearing the uniform of Washington's Army and he said "there is a
time to preach and a time to fight. We have a rendezvous with destiny.
Either we will accept the leadership that has been thrust upon us or we
will whiningly preside over the great nightfall for all mankind."
In those days immediately following World War II when America's
economic strength and military power was all that stood between the
world and the return of the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, "the American
people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the
hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.
Thomas Jefferson said, "the last hope of the human liberty in the world
rests with us."
My fellow Republicans, this is a time to fight and fight back,
starting now. Thank you.
#####
3/22/74
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
Sacramento, California 95814
Clyde Walthall, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
2-22-74
TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
Mzuri Safari Foundation Lunch
February 22, 1974
We are all here today because we share a deep and abiding love for
the outdoors and the simple pleasures. For a great many of you here,
this is your avocation, not your business. Your avocation is hunting,
and I would like to address you first on that part of your lives.
For the new found interest in ecology, you are being assailed by
many who lump you among those they call the despoilers of the environment.
You find yourselves on the defensive as hunters, portrayed as cruel and
bloodthirsty, imbued with a lust for killing. The charge is made that
unless you give up your sport, wildlife will disappear. Will Rogers,
many years ago pointed out that people were ecology, too. He said,
"We're the only fleas weighing over a hundred pounds; we don't know what
we want, but we're ready to bite someone to get it."
When I was a boy, I lived in a small town in northern Illinois
90 miles west of Chicago. There was no one in that town old enough to
ever remember seeing a deer in that area. Every year, a few of the more
affluent citizens would drive to northern Wisconsin, Minnesota or even
into Canada for a deer hunt. Occasionally, they would come back with a
carcass strapped to the front fender of their car. Everyone would turn
out to see it because Illinois was a very common place---an urbanized
place. A deer was actually something so exotic in the field of game
that it was only to be read about or it belonged in far away places.
No one ever suggested that someday the deer might return to the
rolling woodlands of northern Illinois. A deer was as long gone as the
frontier. Today, that little town has doubled in size. And the housewives
in Dixon, Illinois complain because the deer come right into town and eat
their rose bushes. And hunters o-called despoilers brought that about.
Conservation is not strange to sportsmen or to people in rural
life the farmers. Sportsmen are among those dedicated to conservation,
and you are the proof of that. Your own activities in the field of wildlife
preservation and game management is just an example.
-1-
Scientific game management was practiced and advocated by the true
sportsman for many years, long before the environment and ecology became
household words. Yet, somehow, there is a misconception that the
sportsman and the hunter are more interested in destroying wildlife than
preserving it. It is safe to say that today there are more deer in the
United States than there ever were in the beginning of this country.
There is no question that past practices--poaching--and in some parts
of the world just plain hunger have and do threaten the existence. of a
number of species. But the best chance we have of saving those animals
from extinction is through scientific game and wildlife management. They
will not be saved by well-intentioned do-gooders who over-protect to the
point of interfering with nature's plan for keeping the herds in balance.
We have learned a lot since the railroads opened up the West and led
to the decimation of the buffalo herds. As a matter of fact, today the
buffalo is coming back and the trains are almost extinct! And yet, the
controlled hunt--the effort to maintain wild game at a level where the
species can thrive--is all too often described as slaughter.
I remember a few years ago one of the television networks showed a
film containing a scene on this very subject of assailing hunting, fishing,
and the taking of wildlife. As we watched, there began a little nagging
suspicion in our minds. One scene photographed on the ice floes of the
Arctic made the point that hunters were hunting polar bears from a
helicopter in violation of the law.
My young son, a small boy at the time, was watching with me. This
particular scene shocked and horrified him to the point of tears. The
hunters apparently killed a mother polar bear and the film showed
graphically what was apparently her death throes, while the two little
desolate cubs wandered off to an uncertain fate. By this time I told
him I had suspicions. First of all, I couldn't believe that someone who
was doing such an unlawful thing would take the time and trouble to
record it on color film. But I promised him I would find out the truth
about this film and this particular scene (sometimes being Governor has
its advantages).
-2-
The next day I called Ray Arnett and our people at Fish and Game.
I told them about the scene; they hadn't seen it. I said I would like
to have you find out, if you can, the truth of this particular scene.
It turned out that this film had been shot by the Fish and Game Commission
of Alaska. A sequence of the stock film was incorporated into the movie,
directed against the sportsman and hunting. What was actually being shown
was a mother bear tranquilized with a dart gun in order to be tagged as
part of the preservation program being waged by the sportsmen of Alaska
to
to preserve the polar bear. They found out by telephone/Alaska that some
of the men engaged in taking that film indicated the two little bear cubs
were disconsolate because the men had to shove them aside with their feet
in order to get on with their job; the bears wanted to play with them.
There is more to conservation and protection of wildlife than just
loving nature in a kind of Hiawatha euphoria. Nature has a built-in
system of game management. When the advance of civilization upsets that
balance, intelligent wildlife management is the answer. This, of course,
means a reasonable harvesting of game.
It is reasonable to say that hunters and fishermen have led in the
saving of wildlife for the simple reason you wanted to preserve your
favorite sport. By the same token, this made you environmentalists
before the word was even being used, because in order to have game, you
had to preserve the habitat.
We also have had to recognize that people are ecology, too. Predators-
those that can endanger man--do present a problem in a nation such as ours,
as in other countries, too. Obviously, they have to live at some distance
from man's habitat.
I read a piece not too long ago describing a wonderful, bucolic scene
of how not too many years ago, within a few miles of California's capital,
Sacramento, you could, on a normal morning, pass a half dozen Grizzly
bears within a half mile after you left your home. It sounded wonderful,
until you stop to think that man is ecology, too. You can't have that
with relation to urban centers, because if your kids have to pass a half
dozen, Grizzly bears in the first half mile on their way to school, you
had better be prepared to count noses at night and make sure they all
get home!
-3-
The growing awareness of the environment in recent years has been a
healthy development. I believe with your patient understanding many of
those who have only recently discovered our natural heritage can be
persuaded to join in a reasonable and balanced plan to preserve that
heritage.
There is another facet of the attack upon you as hunters. It is
born of fear and danger engendered by the increase in crime. There
many who would deny the criminal his access to weapons by taking from
you the firearms that are essential to your avocation. Proposals range
from a variety of restrictions to an outright denial. But they all add
up to it being more difficult for the law abiding to have firearms with
no assurance in any of the proposals that those firearms will be denied
to the lawbreakers we are trying to curb. Those who use weapons illegall
will get weapons illegally. (I'm sure you've seen the bumper sticker
"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.")
Indeed, most crimes involving the use of guns are committed by peopl
who are ineligible now to possess a gun under the laws we presently have.
I am afraid the problem is more complex than just removing a weapon.
New York has the most stringent gun laws, but this didn't prevent the
killing of three men with a machinegun not too long ago, or a sniper from
wounding a number of people and harassing them in Central Park. And yet,
in the same city, a young woman who defended herself against a rapist with
a paring knife was booked for carrying a concealed weapon.
Probably the greatest example of fuzzy thinking in the world of law
enforcement occurred a few years ago. A man was convicted of having a
sawed-off shotgun in violation of the federal law regarding registration.
The Supreme Court heard his case and ruled that the law was unconstitu-
tional because it would require a suspected criminal to register his gun,
and this would violate his constitutional right against self
incrimination.
A few years ago concern for the increase in violence in California
convinced us that just trying to take guns out of the hands of the wro
people was no answer. We tried another approach. We passed a law that
automatically added five to 15 years to the sentence of any criminal
who carried a gun in the commission of the crime, whether he used the
weapon or not.
-4-
In the first year, after we had passed that law, armed robbery in
California dropped by 31 percent. We thought we had found the answer.
But then gradually things went back to normal. So a year or more ago,
we had a task force go into the whole matter of criminal justice to study
what could be done. It didn't take them long to find out what had
happened to the particular kind of gun control we thought was going to
be so successful. The law contained a minor clause which gave judges
some flexibility in the courtroom. The clause added that the sentence
could be dropped if there were exceptional circumstances. Before the
end of the first year, everyone had found that loophole and exceptional
circumstances became the rule in every case. We are now asking, in
addition to that law, for legislation to make a prison sentence mandatory.
If a gun is carried in the commission of a crime, there will be no suspended
sentence,
no
probation the criminal, upon conviction, will be sent to
prison. I think this makes more sense than trying to fight crime by making
it difficult for sportsmen and other good citizens to own a gun.
I am sure I haven't told you anything too surprising about the attacks
levied against you because you are hunters. But sometimes I wonder if
you are aware of another part of your lives the part you devote to
business and your professions. In that area, you are the hunted, and
as members of something called The Establishment, you may very well be
one of the endangered species. Business-- the system of free enterprise
or capitalism, if you will, is under assault for the second time in this
century. The remedy proposed is more government, more laws, more
regimentation and greater restriction in your individual liberty. This
is the day of the demagogue. He will be found in politics, in the
classroom, the lecture hall and even in the communications media. Profit
has become a six-letter, dirty word. A phrase heard throughout the land
and the world all too often lately is "There ought to be a law." Some-
times I think there ought to be a law against saying there ought to be a
law.
Some of our finest universities in recent years have graduated
economic illiterates who are drawn to teaching, to the communications
media and to government where they spread the misinformation they have
learned about business; or as a part of government, they take part in
finding new ways to limit and restrict the magic of the marketplace.
-5-
A recent nationwide poll was taken of some 35,000 college students.
Seventy percent found everything bothering us today--from the energy
crisis to inflation-- is to be laid at the door of business. Seventy per-
cent or better replied the answer is more government. Government must
take over the management and control of free enterprise in this country.
Then they were asked a trick question they didn't recognize was a trick
Eighty percent of the young people said they wanted government to get out
of their private lives. None of them recognized the inconsistency.
Business has been accused of doing many things it hasn't done, and
received little credit for things it has done extremely well. For some
unexplained reason, business is charged with exploiting the poor, pre-
serving poverty, causing wars and exerting a venal influence on
government. Obviously, business would have more and better customers
if there were no poor. Like all of us, business is far better off in
peacetime than in time of war. I can tell you right now from my present
position in government that no one has less influence in government today
than the businessman. He has become the whipping boy for every political
demagogue and office holder that wants to get his name on the front page.
On the other hand, capitalism--the free marketplace- is allowed to
operate here in this land with less interference than in most places. In
our history, it has produced something of a miracle. One half of all the
economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in the
brief history of the United States in this country. Today, 95 percent of
our people have at least a daily intake of nutrients that are necessary
to maintain health and vigor. Ninety-eight percent of the homes in America
have electric or gas ranges, refrigerators and similar appliances. Ninety-
five percent have television, 80 percent have automobiles and 53 million
American families own their own homes. But in the last few decades, the
cult of statism, of collectivism, has led to increasing participation by
government in things that are not the proper province of government.
One out of six of the nation's work force is employed by government.
And government federal, state and local--costs 45 cents out of every
dollar earned in this country. It is the biggest single family expense
item in any family---greater than the total cost of food, clothing, and
shelter. Not even the Office of Management and Budget in Washington are knows
how many bureaus, agencies, commissions and departments there/in government.
The regulations they have spawned in the Federal Registry take almost as
many pages as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
-6-
And what is government's record of accomplishment with all of this
effort? Well, a few years ago you could send a gallon of oil from Texas
to New York for one penny. You could also send a postcard from Texas
to New York for one penny. You can still send a gallon of oil to New
York for one penny, but it costs six cents to deliver a postcard to the
wrong address.
Urban Renewal set out to refurbish our cities; they were going to
provide low-cost housing for the poor. In the history of the program,
they have built 201,000 units, after destroying 538,000. Half of those
built were so expensive that even the middle class who are moderately
well off cannot afford to live in them. The minimum wage was adopted,
and increases come on a regular and frequent basis. No one can fault
the intent, but perhaps we should remind ourselves there is a well-known
road that is paved with good intentions. Some of those supposedly
benefiting from the minimum wage--young blacks, for example, seeking a
better opportunity economically--have seen their unemployment rate go
from eight percent when the first minimum wage was installed to 35 percent
at the present. The Interstate Commerce Commission, since its inception,
has compiled 43 trillion rate regulations in the field of transportation
ith no index. Government has taken over passenger traffic with something
called Amtrak and boasts that it is doing very well---which isn't hard to
understand, because the first thing government did when it took over the
running of the railroads was to exempt itself from regulations the
railroads had been trying to get out from under for the last 50 years.
Sometimes I think the only thing we can be happy for in the growth of
government is extravagant and wasteful spending. Can you imagine how
miserable we would be if we were getting all the government we were paying
for?
Bureaucrats claim the credit for whatever success business has. But
government's interference in business has proven that the vitality of the
free enterprise system is to endure the nit-picking and harassment and still
stay alive.
I remember the outcry of the Federal Drug Administration a few years
ago. Suddenly everyone on a diet discovered that their soft drinks were
going to be taken away from them because they were made from non-fattening
cyclamates. Tests had shown there was a threat of cancer. So there was a
disruption as men faced the loss of taking off their shelves these things
they couldn't sell, and companies discovered they could no longer make
them. Now comes a very quiet, almost whispered admission that maybe they
acted too soon. It turns out the test they made that led to this great
-7-
disruption of the retail and wholesale business was made on 20 rats who
were fed cyclamates as a part of their diet. The amount of cyclamates
they were fed would be the equivalent of each human being drinking 875
bottles of soft drinks a day. Three of the 20 rate got bladder tumors
that were suspected of being malignant.
You are banded together in the interest of sport, and because of
your efforts, our children have a chance of living in a world where there
will be jungles and forests and deserts abounding in wildlife. But you
had better do something with regard to that other facet of your life
government and its interference.
I think today the business community has let the other fellow fight
back when government reached his particular doorstep. To let that
continue is a little like going into the poultry business without a
rooster; you're placing a hell of a lot of confidence in the stork.
We had better do something about this continued growth of government or
our children will live in a "keep off the grass" world where anything
that isn't prohibited will turn out to be compulsory.
# # #
-8-
Sacramento, Califor \ 95814
Clyde Walthall, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
3-30-74
EXCERPTS FROM REMARKS BY
Chicago
CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
PHILOSOPHIES
In 1972 millions of patriotic Democrats crossed party lines to vote
for fiscal responsibility and against the spendthrift policies of those
who high-jacked the Democratic Convention and who still hold the reins of
leadership in the Democratic Party. In our lifetime never have the issues
in a national election been so clearly defined. And today I think that
the choice is not
in the election to come
between party labels. It
is between the two widely divergent philosophies that divide our country.
We are being told every day that as a party we must wear, as a
political hair shirt, the illegal and immoral acts of a few individuals i
in the '72 campaign. For a year now the alleged misdeeds have been held
up to public view and we are supposed to be responsible. They are
condemned by responsible men and women and yet no one's disapproval of
what took place in Watergate, no one's indignation can be greater than
ours. I know of no Republicans who approve of such campaign excesses,
nor have they in the past been Republican practices. The truth is, we
in our party have too often been the victims of big city political
machines, voting tombstones, warehouses, and empty lots against us in
every election.
But recent experience shows we Republicans have been beating
ourselves. In Pennsylvania we lost an election not long ago by 122 votes
but the fact that we lost by that slim margin was not the issue. The
fact is that while there was a 1 percent falloff in Democrats going to
the polls in that Pennsylvania election, there was a 32 percent
Republican absenteeism. In Michigan, where the Democrats took over a
Congressional seat which Gerald Ford had occupied for 25 years, there
was a 7 percent Democratic falloff and the Republican figure of those
not going to the polls was 55 percent. As you can tell, we have a big
job to do in tending to our own flock.
Watergate is now before the bar of justice and I doubt if this would
be true in many other countries in the world. Only in America do we have
the courage to face up to problems like this, submit them to our system
and say, "our system can deal with them." And, in keeping with this
system of justice, let justice be done. Let the facts be laid before a
judge and jury; let the guilty accept the consequence; and, let the
innocent be cleared. But let us get on with the business of government.
THE ISSUES
Let Congress get on with the business of government which it has
shamefully neglected for most of the last 40 years. Let's make sure
that Democratic candidates explain their position on all the real issues
that affect the lives of our people. Perhaps they prefer Watergate as
an issue because they don't want to reveal even to their own rank and
file members that the Democratic party policy at the leadership level
is still the same as it was in 1972, when it was so overwhelmingly
repudiated by Democrats and Independents, as well as by Republicans.
Never in the lifetime of any of us have the issues of a campaign been
more clearly defined than they were in that 1972 election. Millions
of patriotic Democrats discovered their own dreams and aspirations were
actually in tune with Republican doctrine. Demagoguery about Watergate
must not be allowed to hide the fact that the philosophical gulf dividing
the two parties is just as wide now as it was then. The leadership of
the Democratic Party is just as committed to the radical swing to the
left as it was when it hijacked that party's convention in Miami in
1972. Now they would like to wipe out the memory of those disgraceful
scenes that we watched on television when longtime Democratic stalwarts
who believed in the principles of Thomas Jefferson were denied the righ
to participate in the convention, and even sometimes denied entrance
into the hall. In fact, the first Democrat thrown out of that convention
was Thomas Jefferson. They might invoke his name when it is expedient
to do so, but never any more do they quote his words. Only a Republican
would quote such a thing as "We must make our election between economy
and liberty or profusion and servitude." The Democratic leaders chose
profusion and servitude a long time ago and called it a planned economy.
They are still conjuring up programs that they claim will solve
all the problems of human misery. Of course the programs they dream up
never succeed. But that does not bother them; they thrive on failure.
If the programs ever did eliminate the problems, that would put them out
of business. The programs are what they exist for, not the problems.
Those who seek our vote today should willingly tell what they would do
about inflation or the tax burden that is sapping the vitality of the
free enterprise system. What would they do to ease the oil shortage and
what long-range plan would they suggest to make us independent of foreign
sources to meet our energy needs? So far the Democratic leadership has
devoted its energies to finding a whipping boy instead of an answer.
-2-
They talk of punitiv taxes when they should be lking about incentives
that might lead to the discovery and production of more oil. In keeping
with their philosophy they suggest that government take over, such as by
nationalizing the oil industry, which might turn out to be as efficient
and profitable as the Post Office. The administration in Washington
asked the Congress for sixteen measures to meet the energy shortage in
April of last year, long before there was any hint of an Arab embargo.
None of them has been passed. Then the matter comes up of national
security. The Soviet Union has just fired a series of new advanced
missiles down the Pacific Range. They are building a nuclear submarine
more advanced than anything afloat today. Democratic leaders in Congress
have responded to this threat with their usual statesmanship cut the
defense budget and spend the money on welfare. If we want to continue
living in a free world, we must have a military capability second to
none.
INFLATION AND TAXES
Inflation is caused by government spending more than it is taking
in. This Democratic Congress could change that any time it pleases.
Senator Harry Byrd recently introduced a bill that would require the
government at the federal level to have a balanced budget except in
time of declared war. It was killed in the Democratic-dominated Senate.
Working men and women continue to get increased wages to keep pace with
inflation, but find they are unable to live as well in spite of their
greater income than before. They blame the higher prices. The real
villain is higher taxes. Our tax structure is based on the number of
dollars we earn, not their value. Each cost of living increase in wages
moves the citizen up into a higher tax bracket and he has less to spend
on himself and on his family. And that tax structure does not bear a
Republican trademark. That tax structure bears a Democratic trademark.
Their leaders and candidates talk at election times, as they are now,
about a tax system that is unfair to the common man. They talk of the
loopholes that benefit the rich. Well, why don't they do something
about it? For the last 20 unbroken years they have had a majority in
both houses of Congress. They could have then, and now, changed the
tax laws any time they want. Why don't they, for example, adopt a very
simple law that I am sure all Republicans would support: that any
Congressman who introduces a spending measure must introduce a tax
measure with it to pay for it. They seem to prefer talking about taxes
than doing something about it. Maybe that's just as well because
their thing
Not too long ago the Democratic Party called for a shift of
financial resources from the private to government channels. That is a
euphemistic way of saying "We want to shift the resources from your
pocket to ours." They said to meet the growing needs of health and
welfare and other domestic programs, there is no cheap, easy way to
meet our public sector needs. We believe that the realization of these
priorities requires commitment to a vigorous tax program. I don't know
how much more vigor the taxpayers can stand. The only thing we can be
grateful for is how much wasted extravagance there is, because can you
imagine how miserable we would be if we were getting all the government
we are paying for? Income taxes, since their inception in 1913, have
been raised 13 times by Democratic administrations; they have been
lowered 8 times under Republican administrations. The most recent
adjustment came in 1969 and it was spawned by the Republican
administration, not by the Congress. It released nine million of the
lowest earners from paying any federal income tax at all. The next
bracket above them received a 70 percent cut. And it wasn't until you
got up to that $50,000 a year level, where we are told everyone is
Republican, that there is a 2½ percent increase.
BUREAUCRACY
What we, as Republicans, must learn is that just occupying the White
House or just occupying the State House does not make us the party in
power. The truth is, a Democratic Congress for 40 years aided by a giant
bureaucracy which they themselves created, and which is their instrument,
imbued with their philosophy, has determined this nation's policy. The'
time has come to get Washington out of places and activities where it has
no business being, to return authority and power to duly elected officials
at state and local levels so that the people can have a greater
participation in decisions affecting their lives.
"It is time for a change by every standard" is a proper Republican
campaign slogan. Our mission, if we accept it, must be to run against an
incumbent Democratic Congress and its entrenched bureaucracy. If we fail
in that mission we may very well self-destruct in five seconds. Not even
the office of Management and Budget in Washington knows how many boards,
commissions, agencies and bureaus there are. Yet all of them have the
power to adopt regulations which have the power of law. The federal
registry that lists those regulations has almost as many pages as the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
######
(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).
Chicago, Illinois
March 30, 1974
- 4 -
4/11/74
-
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR RO D REAGAN
Sacramento, California 95814
Clyde Walthall, Press Secretary
916-445-4571
4-24-74
REMARKS BY GOVERNOR RONALD REAGAN
TRUNK 'N TUSK CLUB OF ARIZONA
April 11, 1974
Chairman Harry Rosenzweig, Congressman John Conlan, all the
constitutional officers, the officers of your state party, and the
officers of Trunk 'N Tusk, you, my fellow Republicans, and I hope some
Democrats who aspire to a better life, this is an occasion. We have met
here before under these same circumstances a number of times, and Easter
Week in Arizona and Nancy and I all come together at this particular time.
In spite of the familiarity of the surroundings and the fact that I
have been here before, no one ever rises to speak without having concern
that he has chosen remarks that will be acceptable to the audience and be
well received. Not too long ago, Nancy and I were representing the
government down in Mexico, and I was speaking to a large audience there ir
Mexico City, and I had that thing happen that speakers fear. I sat
down to unenthusiastic and scattered applause. I was embarrassed, and
even more so, when the next man in his speech representing the Mexican
government, speaking in Spanish, which I don't understand, was getting
interrupted with applause in every other sentence, and to hide my
embarrassment, when they started clapping, I started clapping. And I
clapped longer and louder than anybody, until our ambassador leaned over
and said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you; he's interpreting your
speech."
You and Harry were both so kind here in your remarks that I almost
feel like the fellow at the testimonial dinner. It was a small town, and
after all the accolades and everything, he was introduced. As he got up
to respond, he said, "Forty-seven years ago I walked into this town, down
a muddy road, wearing the only shoes and clothing I had on my back,
carrying on a stick over my shoulder a bandana handkerchief containing
everything I owned in the world. But this town in these 47 years has been
good to me." He said, "I now own the building that the bank is in, I'm
on the board of directors of the bank, I own two apartment buildings, I
own interest in businesses in 39 other towns in this state," and when the
dinner was over, a little boy tugged at his coat and said, "Sir, what was
in that bandana handkerchief you carried?" He said, "As nearly as I can
recollect, nearly $300,000 in cash and $750,000 in negotiable securities."
Trunk 'N Tusk
But I have to tell you, Nancy and I have been getting around a
little bit trying to help our fellow Republicans where we think we can,
and not too long ago in the Fall, we were down in Mississippi. It
happened that we were guests at a football game, and it happened to be
that day when 'ol Miss, which hadn't had a good season, rose up against
mighty Tennessee and did what some time or another a beaten team will
always do. They were knocking off Tennessee. Late in the third quarter
when it was apparent that there was going to be no turning point, and
'ol Miss was having her day, we heard a fellow in the stands back of us
say, "Man, if they play like that for him, what would they have done if
John Wayne was here?"
But as an example to all you Republicans, I have to tell you, we
were up in New England and they told us about a little old lady in that
town who went to her doctor, and hurried right out of the doctor's office,
down the street to the registrar of voters and reregistered Democrat.
The registrar said, "Millie, how can you do this?" He said, "You've been
a Republican all your life, your family before you, your grandparents were
Republicans in this town, and she says, "I know; I just came from the
doctor's office and he tells me that my time is near; and I figure if
somebody's gotta go, better it's one of them than one of us."
We are troubled by many things inflation, for example. Right now,
dollars to doughnuts is not very good odds. We cannot even afford the
wages of sin. And if somebody offered us the world on a silver platter,
if we are smart, we would take the platter. But you have to look on the
bright side of things. Stop and think that with inflation, a kid can't
get sick on a nickel's worth of candy any more. And you can still use a
dime as a screwdriver.
But, in all seriousness, we cannot deny these are troubled times. We
as Republicans are told we must all wear and be chafed by a political hair
shirt called Watergate. Indeed, many pundits have already relegated the
symbol of party the elephant to the list of extinct species. And
yet in the year of these few months, that Watergate has been tried in the
media, on the street corners, and in scores of politically inspired
kangaroo courts, Republicans in California, where we are outnumbered 3 to :
won 6 out of 9 special elections. In congressional races, nationwide,
we have won 2 out of 5. Put these together, this is not a bad average.
But, still, I want to caution you. Remember the fellow who drowned
trying to wade across a river whose average depth was two and one half
feet.
Trunk 'N Tusk
There is a warning that we should heed in the three most recent
congressional elections, because there is evidence there that the death
wish that occasionally plagues our party has returned to haunt us, In
the Ohio primary race, it was bitter and divisive. The defeated
Republicans stayed home in the General Election, and they urged actively
other Republicans not to vote. And now a liberal Democrat will represent
them in Congress. In Pennsylvania, all but one percent of those who had
voted Democrat in the previous election, turned out for the election.
This time Republicans, 32 percent of them, stayed home; and we only lost
by 122 votes. In Michigan, the Democratic fall-off was 7 percent; for
the Republicans, 55 percent. The winner of that race will be speaking
here in Phoenix next month to a Democratic fundraiser. Is it any wonder
that the Democrats gleefully announced their strategy for the coming
election will not be based on their philosophical differences, or the
candidates, but will be to make a poll, registering approval or
disapproval of Watergate. Now they can get away with this only if we
let them. This does not mean we defend the illegality, the immorality
and certainly not the stupidity of Watergate. Quite to the contrary.
We have been outvoted in too many elections in the past by tombstones,
warehouses and empty lots for us to condone such campaign shenanigans
even when they are done in our own behalf.
It is time to put Watergate in its proper perspective. We do not
need politically motivated partisans or self-appointed vigilantes to do
that. Watergate is now before the Bar of Justice in accordance with our
constitutional system. Under that system the guilt will be determined,
the guilty will be punished and the innocent will be cleared. But if you
and I believe in that system, until such a determination is made, all
will be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond the
shadow of a doubt.
But while this is taking place, there is no reason why the Democratic
leadership of the Congress should not get on with the business of
government which they have so shamefully neglected for too long a time.
As for. the election, the people have a right to expect all the candidates
to explain fully their positions on the vital issues that will affect
our lives. If our opponents are reluctant to do this, is it possible
their obsession with Watergate conveniently hides the fact that the
Democratic Party leadership is just as committed to a radical swing to
the left as it was when it hijacked the Democratic convention in Miami
in June of 1972?
Trunk 'N Tusk
They remember, Oil course, that all they stand for was overwhelmingly
repudiated by the people of this country in 1972. Never in the lifetime
of any one of us have the issues of a national campaign been more clearly
defined. And millions of patriotic Democrats discovered for the first
time that their own dreams and aspirations were actually in tune with
Republican doctrine. The people must be reminded of this in this election.
Political demagoguery must not become a smoke screen blurring the
philosophical gulf which separates the two parties. Oh, I am sure they
would like nothing better than to wipe out the memory of those disgracefu.
scenes we watched on television when long-time Democratic stalwarts,
dedicated to the principles of Thomas Jefferson, were denied the right to
participate in the convention, and even sometimes denied entrance into
the hall. In fact, the first Democrat thrown out of that convention was
Thomas Jefferson. They might invoke his name when it is expedient to do
so, but never any more do they quote his words. Only a Republican would
quote such a thing as "we must make our election between economy and
liberty or profusion and servitude." The Democratic leaders chose
profusion and servitude a long time ago and called it a planned economy.
They are still conjuring up programs that they claim will solve all
the problems of human misery. Of course, the programs they dream up ne
succeed. But that does not bother them; they thrive on failure. If the
programs ever did eliminate the problems, that would put them out of
business. The programs are what they exist for, not the problems. Those
who seek our vote today should willingly tell what they would do about
inflation or the tax burden that is sapping the vitality of the free
enterprise system. What would they do to ease the oil shortage and what
long-range plan would they suggest to make us independent of foreign
sources to meet our energy needs? So far, the Democratic leadership has
devoted its energies to finding a whipping boy instead of an answer. They
talk of punitive taxes when they should be talking about incentives that
might lead to the discovery and production of more oil. But most revealing
of their philosophy is their eagerness to solve the problem by having the
government go into the oil business. Well, who knows? A government with
a government-run oil company might turn out to be almost as efficient and
economical as the Post Office.
Then the matter comes up of national security. The Soviet Union has
just fired a series of new, advanced missiles down the Pacific Range.
They are building a nuclear submarine more advanced than anything afloat
today. But with the typical statesmanship of our opponents, how do they
meet this threat? They have demanded a decrease in defense spending and
an increase in welfare.
4
Now no one will any that political campaigns must be based on past
performances as well as proposals for the future. And, in that context,
Watergate is a part of that record, politically speaking. But it is not
all the record. Last year, a war erupted in the Middle East, with the
world closer to an Armageddon than any of us realized. The President of
the United States brought about a cease-fire. He persuaded both sides to
gove up territories that they had fought for and won, and in 40 years,
neither side has given up so much as one inch. During the critical
negotiations, there was a moment when Soviet planes were poised ready to
transport three Russian divisions Russian troops deep into the war
zone. The President of the United States picked up the telephone, and
said, "I wouldn't do it if I were you. And the Russians stayed home.
A little more than a year ago, Americans were dying in a war that
any
had dragged on longer than war in our history. Abandoning the Eisenhower
policy that had maintained peace for eight years, a Democratic
administration started that war, and a second Democratic administration,
which would not win it and could not end it, escalated it and carried it
on. Today, no young Americans are dying in the rice paddies of Vietnam,
and hundreds of the bravest men ever produced by any nation are safely
home after years in savage captivity. And an American president did not
have to crawl to Hanoi to bring this about. And the war was not ended by
a street demonstration or the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Senator Fulbright and you can bet that Ramsey Clark did
not have anything to do with it. No, a Republican president ended the
war not of his making in 1973, just as another Republican President ended
- war not his making in 1953. And yet we have let our opponents create
a myth that theirs is the party of peace and prosperity. Poll after poll
reveals that they are better able in the people's minds to handle the
great problems that confront our country; that if thereis trouble, they
should be the party to call. Our own sons and daughters in a thousand
classrooms and lecture halls have been indoctrinated with the same
political mythology. Well, there have been four wars in my lifetime; not
one of them started under a Republican administration. And the only full,
employment that we have known since the 1929 crash has been during one of
those wars.
- 5 -
Trunk 'N Tusk
Right now, in spite of the energy crisis and the dislocation
resulting from them, we have the lowest rate of unemployment we have had
in peacetime in more than 40 years. Let the record also show that blaming
the present administration for inflation is a blatant rewriting of
history. Have we forgotten so quickly that inflation was sold to us as
essential to maintain prosperity? It was sold to us under the New Deal,
continued under the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society.
We were told that we had to have it if we were to keep full employment
and maintain prosperity. Are we supposed to forget that during all those
years that Republicans, as the loyal opposition, warned against that
policy? We pointed out that inflation, like radioactivity, was
accumulative, that someday it would get out of hand and run wild just
as it has. Our warnings were ignored and termed Republican obstructionisn.
We just did not understand the New Economics. Well, there is no mystery
about inflation; it comes when a government spends more than it takes in.
The only time in the last 42 years that the dollar lost not one penny of
its purchasing power was during the only two-year period that a Republicar
president had a Republican majority in both houses of Congress. For the
last 20 years the Democrats have been in power. We are not in power just
by controlling the White House, or even by controlling a state house.
For the last 20 years, they have had the power to stop inflation simply
by practicing the thrift that Republicans have been preacing for these
20 years.
Now, in an election year, they talk about cutting taxes, but not
about cutting spending. As a matter of fact, the same Democratic senators
who talk about cutting the taxes are the ones who killed Senator Harry
Byrd's bill a few weeks ago that would have required a balanced budget.
They orate about an unfair tax system they claim is riddled with loopholes
to benefit the rich. And, of course, the rich are all Republicans.
Well, if that is true, why haven't they changed it? There has never been
a moment when the Republicans could stop them. For 20 years, any time t
they found that that tax structure was what they say it is they could
have changed it. As a matter of fact, we could offer them some ideas
right' now that would be in keeping with Republican philosophy. For
example, we might start by making the income tax simple enough so that the
ordinary working men and women would not have to employ legal counsel to
find out how much they owe. Right now, it takes more brains to figure out
your income tax than it takes to earn the income. The truth is, this tax
system bears a Democratic trademark. Since it was adopted in 1913 it has
been raised 13 times by Democrats. It has been reduced eight times by
Republicans.
- 6 -
Trunk 'N Tusk
Last Fourth of July, the young Senator from Massachusetts journeyed
down to Alabama. It was a non-political trip (if you believe that, I've
got some Florida real estate to sell you just as soon as the tide goes
out). Well he made quite a speech. It was not the kind they were used
to hearing up in Massachusetts. But he stood there preaching against big
government that was imposing on the freedoms of people, preaching against
high taxes, George Wallace sat there and he thought they had sent the
wrong sound track.
And then there is the bureaucracy that they have built up. Not even
the Office of Management and Budget knows how many bureaus, agencies
and departments there are in the government. But the regulations they
have spawned, in the Federal Registry, take almost as many pages as the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and all of those regulations have the power,
the force, the authority of law. Now, Senator Nelson of Wisconsin has
approached us with a problem. He says that the government has become so
complicated with so many bureaus and agencies, that the citizens no
longer have any contact they are confused and cannot find their way
around. Well, we have been saying that for a long time. We have
suggested getting rid of some of the bureaus. Senator Nelson has a
different idea. He wants to create an additional bureaucracy that the
citizens could go to that would help them find their way through the
maze. James Buchanan has written that even the keenest, most analytical
surgeon, when operating on a Democratic politician, cannot separate
demagogic from solid tissue without causing the death of the patient.
Time for a change by every standard is an appropriate Republican
campaign slogan in 1974. This morning we read the Gallup Poll and
learned that on our campuses our party is the last choice of the young
people there. In view of our image, it is no wonder. But how many of us
realize that we who are Republicans see how far from the truth is our
image. Would it surprise many of you as Republicans to learn that for
the last 25 years the Democrats have consistently outspent Republicans in
campaigns that 75 percent or Republican campaign funding comes from
contributions of $100 or less? And that makes us outnumber the Democrats
in small contributions five to one. I have never been able to figure why
it is that a rich Republican is a fat cat and a rich Democrat is a
public-spirited philanthropist.
- 7 -
Trunk 'N Tusk
Do you have a fee.ing of guilt about the fact that the dairy
industry contributed $577,000 to Republican candidates in 1972? But are
you aware, as Republicans, that they gave $613,000 to the Democrats?
We know that people in general are becoming more conservative. They want
less regimentation of their lives by government. This has been determine
in all the polls. They resent the fact that government is taking almost
half of their earnings. Surely with the facts that are all on our side
we can make the people understand that to continue the Democratic
leadership in power is to perpetuate the very things the people are
against.
I know for more than seven years now, in our own state of California
(If you don't mind my using it as an example; I've used it here before
sometimes), our Republican administration has fought uphill against a
Democratic majority in the legislature. But we found that if we took our
case over their heads to the people we were able to effect economies that
resulted in surpluses. Then again, by mobilizing public opinion, we
have, in these just short of eight years, been able to return to the
people in the form of one-time tax rebates and tax cuts $51/2 billion in
these seven years. By contrast, though, Republican veto power prevented
in these seven years our Democratic opponents from adding $151/2 billion
the spending over this same period of time. Our budget today would be
$3½ billion bigger than it is. In just a few days we will complete the
return of $800 million surplus we had last year to the people in the
form of a one-time tax rebate. I want to tell you, in doing that, when
you propose that to a Democratic legislator it is a little like getting
between the hog and the bucket. You get buffeted about a bit. One
Democratic senator told me he considered that an unnecessary expenditure
of public funds.
But with the people's help, we reformed welfare. We had a caseload
that three years ago was increasing by 4,000 recipients a month. Today,
it is not increasing at all. As a matter of fact, we have 400,000 fewer
people on welfare than we had just three years ago.
And what has happened at the national level, as long as we are
looking at the record? Well, the President has taken to Washington some
of the men that were on the task force in California that evolved this
welfare reform. They are now traveling through the country, instructing
other states on how to implement the reforms. And over the last nine-
months period, welfare recipients at the national level have been going
down for the first time in the 36-year history of national welfare.
Trunk 'N Tusk
But ours is a omunications problem, and the answer lies with
every one of us becoming, first of all, informed informed enough to
dispute the false imagery that has been built up about us. And then we
must become missionaries, spreading the truth by word of mouth, which is
still the best advertising there is in politics. First, we should start
with our neighbors and our fellow Republicans until we know that we have
enlisted them also, then with our sons and daughters. And then with our
fellow workers, with the people around us, and the fellows at the club.
We must do this until we understand once again what is at issue and that
the people must know
what must be done if we are to preserve this
freedom of ours. As Harry told you, I have come here often and stood
up and made a speech at you and gone home and you have never had a chance
to talk back and I understood after I arrived here (well, I had more
speech) but I got here and found out that somebody thought it would be a
good idea if it was a dialogue instead of a monologue, and that you might
like to ask some questions. And, therefore, I have got a few things off
my chest, to whet your appetites a little bit and if you have a question,
just don't be bashful, sing out and I'll repeat it so everyone can hear
it and then I'll try to answer it.
or
How's Reinecke doing?
A
I don't know whether I have the straight scoop or not here, but I
have been told (I haven't had a chance to confirm it since I came here
tonight) he is trying to get a change of venue and that the trial will be
set before the primary. He will have a chance to clear the air, and
after two years of dribbling along the way it has, I think it is about
time. He is a fine young man.
O
We have here before our state legislature a Proposition that was
based on your proposition which lost last year in California the idea
of placing a limit on taxes.
A
I happen to believe that it is a good policy for every level of
government. There is nothing wrong in a free enterprise system with us
figuring out and having the ability to determine that there is a
percentage of our earnings above which government must not go if this
free enterprise system is to continue to function. We tried it in
California and we lost. And I have to tell you that we lost simply
because we just didn't have the muscle to correct publicly the
distortions and the lies that were told about it.
Trunk 'N TUSK
Everybody who had a place at the trough was lined up to fight against
Proposition One. The school system printed at taxpayers' expense
millions of brochures and leaflets and sent them home with the children,
a state employees' association, groups of this kind, mobilized against
it; they outnumbered us in radio and TV ads four and five to one on every
station. And they were successful in convincing the people that,
somehow, if this proposition passed, it would raise their property
taxes, which we had just reduced the year before. And it was not true,
of course. Since the election, we have taken a survey and found that
69 percent of those who voted 'No' believed they were voting against a
tax increase. This was how successful our opponents were in distorting
the issue. As I understand it, your people have talked to some of our
people who helped frame our Proposition One, and you have eliminated
some of the things that gave the opposition the chance to confuse the
issue. Yours is simply easier to understand and I think it is an idea
whose time has come. I think several other states are going to have it
very shortly because it is on the agenda in several states for state
constitutional conventions. We are not trying with Proposition One again
on the ballot; we don't have time. But we have just introduced to our
Democratic legislators, who have said they can handle this problem
themselves+-that they did not need a constitutional amendment--we have
just handed them a chance. Our Constitution requires that the governor
submit a balanced budget. We have just asked the legislature to pass a
change that the legislature has to return to the governor a balanced
budget. We have another one that really has them climbing up the wall,
too. We've got another one where we've said that any legislator who
introduces a spending measure costing $1 million or more must introduce
a tax bill with it to pay for it. Now, we may not get those things, but
they're going to have a hard time trying to figure up arguments against
them. But, just go after it; don't let anyone confuse the issue and keep
plugging, and get behind this with a wave of public opinion because you
will set. a tone and I think the other states will follow.
2
Regarding reducing the 55 mile per hour speed limit and the threat
of not getting highway funds if you don't do that.
A. If you remember, Republicans a few years ago, when these great
spending programs started, complained that the federal government would
use this as a club over the heads of local government and the states.
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Trunk 'N Tusk
And we were told that No, sir, never would the federal government do
this." The federal government has been in the blackmail business for
years now, and it is not alone in this issue. I must say, however, on
the 55 mile an hour ghing, we have it in California. I don't mean to
start any quarrels here, but somebody proposed the other day that now
that the situation was a little better now we ought to lift it, and we
got the biggest storm of protest you have ever seen. The people have
learned to lik it. I don't think you should be blackmailed, either, but
they found out that 55 m.p.h. brought back conversation. Incidentally,
our fatality rate on our highways is down 29 percent.
Q
Why isn't the Republican Party buying time on national TV to present
these facts and support the President? We don't seem to receive much
encouragement for the people who are listening to TV all the time.
A
You are right. Republicans for many years have not been very good
at carrying off their wounded and first of all, though, on the money
thing, thank heavens for all of you who are here tonight. We are just
now beginning to roll. It has been pretty hard sledding out there.
That is why Proposition 1 in California didn't have enough money to buy
those ads. This hasn't been the best time to raise money for our side.
It is a shame that we have to think about buying time to carry our story.
I was just telling the good Congressman's wife here tonight, to show you
how sometimes stories get lost even in the press, if it wasn't for
William Randolph Hearst and the Hearst papers none of us would have ever
known that good old singing Sam Ervin, speaking a few weeks ago in
Cleveland, Ohio, made a public statement that in all of the months of
the Watergate investigation no evidence had been presented to suggest
that the President committed an impeachable offense. And it wasn't
carried in a single newspaper that I know of. I think it is kind of
headline news myself.
I
Why hasn't the Republican Party bought one, two or three networks?
A
Then the Democrats would ask for free equal time. I think this:
I suggested for a long time that some of our more affluent citizens in
the business community could well think about the purchase of some of the
media, whether papers, magazines or that kind of media, to see that
things were balanced up a little better.
Q
What are the two top officials of the State of California trying to
tell the nation when they can leave the state and leave a Democrat in
charge
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Trunk 'N Tusk
A
Under our Constitution, when the governor is gone and the
lieutenant governor steps across the state line also, the president
pro tem of the Senate, who is a Democrat at this time, becomes the
governor. But we have a sort of little "gentlemen's agreement." I am
not far from the border and our full staff, governor's staff, is there.
I assure you that if anything, other than a Mother's Day Resolution,
comes up, the governor will be back in California post haste.
Q
Inaudible
A
I think the President himself has recognized the reality that
right at the moment it could very well be that he might not be able to
be of help to someone. He himself has expressed that and says every
candidate has to make the decision for himself. You have to remember it
isn't just Republican. It is fine if all the Republicans go to the polls
and vote in every election, but if we don't get some Democrats and
Independents with us we lose, because we are a minority party. And it
is true that the drums have been beating so long and so persistently on
this one subject that people are not informed. I think what I said
earlier in my remarks that our position has to be that first of all, no,
we cannot endorse and support Watergate. It was a breaking and entering;
it was illegal, it was immoral. No one condones it, but, by the same
token, I think we can say everyone who is accused must be considered
innocent until proven guilty and until they are proven guilty we go on
with the business of government and what we should be attacking is this
constant trying of the case outside the bar of justice, outside the
courtroom. This is lynch law and we should stand up very firmly against
it. And while it is being determined in the courts we can point to the
Republican record, that in the energy crisis the President introduced
sixteen pieces of legislation to the Congress to deal with the energy
crisis and Congress has passed one of them. Fifteen are still sitting
there while they are running around forming committees on the other side,
present company excepted. This is why the Congressional election is the
most important thing in the world. We haven't been in power, and I think
as Republicans we've got to run against the incumbent party because,
for 40 out of the 42 years the Democrats have been responsible for
National policy. This is what we should run against. If the people
don't like what is going on we should be able to point to the people
responsible.
2
Do you feel that the elimination of capital punishment, the death
penalty, has caused an increase of crime in our country?
Trunk 'N Tusk
A
We have now restored the death penalty in California. But again,
to those friends of ours on the other side of the dial that would pretend
to be such supporters of the people, the people of California voted in a
public referendum, 67 percent of them, voted to restore the death penalty
to the Constitution. Yet for five months the Democratic majority in the
legislature kept the legislation that would specify the crimes subject
to capital punishment bottled up in committee and the Speaker of the
Assembly even went so far as to say "when the people make a mistake, it
is my job to correct them." Finally, however, public opinion rose to the
place that whereas they didn't see the light, they felt the heat, and
we now have several specific crimes that call for the death penalty.
I do believe that the moratorium well the figures indicate several
years ago when the moratorium went into effect on the death penalty
nationwide we had had 8,000 murders and by the next year we had 18,000.
I have on my desk, which bolsters my own feeling on this, a list of 12
California murderers. All of them served a term in prison, all of them
had been released or paroled and are out on the streets again and their
total list of victims now is 34. Twenty-two additional people are dead
because capital punishment was not employed where those dozen men were
concerned. Capital punishment, some people say, is not a deterrent. It
sure is a deterrent to the fellow who committed a crime. He isn't
going to do it again.
Q
In the area of national defense I read recently, our sovereignty
is being taken away from us in the Panama Canal.
A
I'll tell you that our first reaction is you don't want that to
happen and you don't see any point in it, particularly with the dictator
type of government leaning to the left as they have down there. On the
other hand, though, I always hesitate a little to take a position on
something of this kind for this one reason. I have been privileged to
make several trips abroad and meet with foreign heads of state in behalf
of the President and the State Department and in connection with them I
have had briefings. I don't mean I have had an in-depth briefing on
everything that is going on, but enough to carry out those missions and
it was enough also to make me understand that, in the intricate worldwide
game that is going on, it is awfully hard to make a decision on something
of this kind unless you have the facts that they have. Ever since then
I have been a little hesitant.
13 I I
Trunk 'N Tusk
There may be some facts in which there is something overweighing our
concern about the Canal itself something to do probably with all of the
Americas and all of Latin America in a world where, pretty soon, if
these two continents are not tied together, you will remember Lenin said
that after they have taken Eastern Europe and mobilized the hoards of
China he said, "We will take South America and we won't have to take
the United States. It will fall into our outstretched hands like over
ripe fruit." So, not knowing all that is there, I would just like to beg
the question and say I am not going to make an opinion until I know more
about what is behind all of this.
0
The Republican Party is a party of money. The Republican Party is
doing the biggest portion of advertising on the news media and a little
thinking down that line I think you could change their mind.
A
Let me give you a figure I didn't give in the speech that might
surprise you a little bit. The Federal Communications Commission has just
released the spending on radio and SVV in the 1972 campaign and the
Republicans spent $20 million on radio and TV alone, the Democrats spent
$34 million. We are not all that much richer than they are. As a matter
of fact, we are not quite as rich.
I would just like to say one more thing, about the media, and I hav
been blunt here about some of the things and it is true that we find
problems in this. I think one of the things that the Republicans should
stop doing is jumping on the media. You don't win friends and influence
people that way and the media is not just one fellow writing something or
determining a policy, it is hundreds and hundreds and dozens and dozens
of people in every paper and TV station and radio station and so forth.
Many of those people want to be fair and I think it is time for the
Republicans to recognize that, yes, in recent years the people out of
journalism schools who have been attracted to the media have a different
philosophy than ours. In recent years the young people coming out of
the colleges have a different philosophy from ours, in a majority, no
matter what line they are going into. So our line is to start getting
back there and seeing if we can't get a better balance among our young
people but also recognizing that they have that, giving them the benefit
of the doubt and going out of our way to say, "Look, all we ask is a fair
shake. What do you want from us? We'll give you the stories, we've got
the stories, we 'll talk to you, we'll grant you the interviews, we do
our best to meet you halfway." And I think Republicans better start doing
that and I know, from personal experience with several writers right now,
that I have no complaint about them any more.
I get a fair shake out of them and it only took a couple of hours
of sitting with them and letting them probe as deep as they wanted to
probe and answering their questions as honestly as I could.
Right now our problem is going to be raising money in the coming
campaign to give our candidates a fighting chance because how many of you
know that, in the 1968 campaign, COPE, the committee on political
e Ducation of the AFL-CIO, spent $68 million in the Humphrey campaign
more than either the Democrats or Republican Party spent themselves as
parties on their campaigns of their candidates. They had $74 million
budgeted for the 1972 campaign and then, when they refused to endorse
McGovern, that money flooded into the legislative and congressional races
and the state governors' campaigns and this is why they had their
victories because the bulk of that money did not have to be recorded, it
was adjudged as being a part of their committee on political education's
normal functions. I think one of the funniest things in the budget was
the millions of dollars for volunteers.
But we can't sit this one out---we can't shut our eyes and pretend
it will go away.
Well, that's the last question, but just let me close with a couple
of minutes and say we have come to one of those moments in history when
realignment is taking place. I think our opponents know it and they are
trying to stop it. They know that Americans are looking beyond party
labels and they are making their decisions now on their beliefs in what
America should be. We have seen some of the leaders on the other side
change over to our party, men have followed the course of Strom Thurmond,
Mills Godwin, a fine gentleman who was the Democratic governor of
Virginia and is now the new Republican governor of Virginia. The other
night at a fundraising dinner in Virginia, Nancy and I had the thrill of
seeing at the head table sitting beside us, with Mills Godwin, Senator
Harry Byrd, appearing for the first time at an official Republican
function.
Now, for too long, our opponents have divided us into voting blocks,
they appeal to the worst in us, our selfishness. You've seen them down
through the years, they tell each of us that we can have a bigger slice
of the pie but all we have to do is take it away from someone else and
they 'll help us do that. I think Republicans should be telling them that
in a truly free economy we can all have a bigger slice of the pie, if we
just get together and make a bigger pie. They proclaim their compassion
by creating a welfare state and they perpetuate the hopelessness of the
dole. Well, I think the Republicans should offer a "welfare society" in
which we'll help our neighbors become self-sufficient.
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Last year in Cali rnia, as a part of our reforms, we put 59,000
able-bodied welfare recipients into private enterprise jobs and this year
we will put 85,000. Our own sons and daughters, we know they are
idealistic, we know they are yearning for a cause to believe in, but they
have been told over and over again that ours is a sick society. They
have grown cynical about American institutions. I think we have failed
them miserably if we don't make them understand how much there is to love
in this land of ours. A sick society couldn't produce the men who sec
foot on the moon, who circled the earth in Skylab and certainly a society
lacking in courage and moral stamina didn't bring forth the men who went
through those years of captivity and torture in Vietnam.
The time has come for a lot of us to realize our capacity for
greatness. These are the things I think Republicans have to talk about
in the coming months. Every candidate must take a stand. This country
of ours has had a rendezvous with destiny from the time the first pilgrims
set foot on these shores. In the days right after World War II, when our
economic strength and military might was all that stood between us and a
return to the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said, "the American people have a
great genius for splendid, unselfish action. Into the hands of America
God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind."
We'll keep our rendezvous with destiny and as a nation accept the
leadership that has been thrust upon us or it could very well be that our
rendezvous would be to preside over a great nightfall for all mankind.
The last hope for human liberty rests with us and I believe today our
party strives for those things that will preserve that hope and that
liberty.
In the Revolutionary War on a bright Sunday morning, Rev. Muhlenberg
was preaching to his congregation. Someone stepped up on to the platform
and handed him a note. He opened the note, read it, then to the surprise
of his congregation removed his ministerial robes and he was wearing the
uniform of Washington's army. He said to his congregation, "there is a
time to preach and a time to fight." Republicans, if I could leave one
word with you tonight, this is a time to fight and start fighting right
now. Let's carry off our wounded and stand up and fight back.
(Applause)
Governor: If they really mean that, let them give us (California) their
two Senators.
(Laughter)
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