Remarks and a
Question-and-Answer Session With Members of the City
Club of
Thank
you very much. And thank you, Vice President Akers, officers and members of the
City Club, Mayor Voinovich. I thank you all very much. And a
special hello to Clevelanders Herb and Jody Weinberg, who are the parents of my
Assistant Press Secretary, Mark Weinberg. It's great to be in
But
it's also a great pleasure to have this opportunity to address the City Club of
Cleveland as you celebrate, as you know, the 75th year in which you've
championed the cause of free speech. Seventy-five years -- it was just a little
bit longer ago that I first exercised my freedom of expression -- [laughter] --
to my mother and her midwife in
Looking
over the distinguished speakers who've preceded me, I couldn't help but think
that it is a measure of the high esteem in which your organization is held that
you've been able to convince so many politicians to come before you to talk and
answer questions. But I'm looking forward to the question-and-answer period
later on. After all, I've been assured that Sam Donaldson [ABC News] is not a
member of your club. [Laughter]
But
before then, however, I want to talk to you about an area in which freedom is
just as vital as speech and, as the years go by, will become more and more
important. I'm talking about the developing economy of the future, an economy
of great challenges and even greater opportunities, if only we have the courage
to embrace them, to jettison the prejudices and small-mindedness of the past
and open our arms to economic freedom on a world scale.
Now,
I know a lot of people, when they hear talk about the economy, reach for their
wallets to see if they've suddenly become lighter. It's said that if you ask
three economists a question, you'll get seven different answers. And that's why
with economists, I always have one motto: Trust, but verify. [Laughter]
I
spoke of the economy of the future, but it's forming right now in the minds and
imaginations of entrepreneurs around the globe. It's taking shape in
businesses, large and small; in factories and universities; in research and
development centers. Powered by an explosion of technological invention and
linked by a global network of investment and communications, it is transforming
our lives so fast that the so-called conventional wisdom can barely keep up.
But the dramatic changes we've already witnessed are only the foreshadowing of
things to come.
I
will speak of the practical and immediate effects on our economy in a moment,
but first it's important to understand that this technological revolution is in
a fundamental sense a moral revolution. At its heart is a rejection of the
counsels of despair we heard so often in the seventies. Remember the seventies?
Rampant inflation, hypertaxation,
sky-high interest rates, productivity growth falling through the floor, and the
steady erosion of investment incentives.
But worse than the statistics was a kind of
collapse of faith.
The West, in those years, experienced what can only be described as a crisis of
confidence in its most fundamental values. We increasingly heard talk about the
so-called convergence of the free world and the Communist bloc. Some said our
freedoms were a luxury we could no longer afford. Expert opinion talked of
limited resources in a shrinking world. In this future of scarcity, we were
told, the free nations would have to sacrifice more and more of their economic
and political freedoms and accept increasing government control.
But,
as I said, the American people rejected this counsel of despair. They saw that
the crisis was not in their values, but in the leadership that no longer
believed in them. And they demanded a return to our basic principles -- those principles
of freedom and enterprise that had always made this country great.
Well,
the road back is well-mapped now. We cut taxes, we
quashed inflation and deregulated the economy, unleashing the creative energies
of the American people. The result never would have been imagined by ``expert
opinion'' 8 years ago -- some 14\1/2\ million new jobs -- more jobs than
Right
here in
New
business creations are going strong. Manufacturing productivity, one measure of
the health of an economy, has reversed its decline of the seventies and is now
racking up historic gains averaging an annual growth rate of nearly 5 percent
since 1982 -- more than 1\1/2\ times the average of the postwar period. But
these numbers, impressive as they are, do more to disguise than to reveal the
real nature of our progress. The change is qualitative, not quantitative. We're
not merely accelerating the processes of the Industrial Revolution; we're
fundamentally transforming them.
Let
me give you just one example -- the semiconductor, or computer chip. One
scientist makes this comparison. If automotive technology had progressed as
fast as semiconductor technology in the past 20 years, he says, a Rolls Royce
would now cost less than $3, get 3 million miles to the gallon, deliver enough
power to drive an ocean liner, and 6 of them would fit on the head of a pin.
[Laughter] Now, this is more than a mere productivity explosion. Operating in
the mysterious world of quantum physics, today's quantum leap in the world's
economy -- well, the computers signal that. We're rapidly moving from the
economy of the Industrial Revolution -- an economy feeding on and tied to the
Earth's physical resources -- to, as one economist titled his book, ``The
Economy in Mind,'' in which human imagination and the freedom to create are the
most precious natural resources.
Think
again of that little computer chip. Those chips, the driving force of the
modern economy, are made from the silicon in sand, one of the most common
substances on Earth. Their value doesn't come from the physical material that
makes them up, but from the microscopic architecture designed into them by
ingenious human minds. More and more in this new economy, mind replaces matter,
human invention makes physical resources obsolete. Take a typical telecast via
satellite like Saturday's Browns' game. That satellite -- the product of human
invention -- replaces thousands of tons of copper dug from the Earth and molded
into wire. Rather than being imprisoned in a world of shrinking natural
resources, we're transcending them, moving to a new era of seemingly limitless
horizons.
Now,
this is good news for humanity, but it's bad news for statism. The centrally planned state can dig metal out of
the ground or pump oil. Though less efficiently than a free economy, it can
operate huge factories and run assembly lines. But it cannot fabricate the
spirit of enterprise. It cannot imitate the trial and error of free markets,
the riot of experiment that produces knowledge and progress. No government can
manufacture the entrepreneur or light that spark of invention. All they can do
is let their people go -- give them freedom of mind and spirit. A recent issue
of Fortune Magazine summed it up in an article called ``The Death of
Socialism.'' Even Socialist governments in
Over
a century ago, the English economist and philosopher, John Stuart Mill,
predicted that the competition between Socialist and free market economies
would in the end be decided by which system was ``consistent with the greatest
amount of human liberty and spontaneity.'' One hundred years later, the results
are in: Socialist and Communist systems have given up their freedoms, and all
they've bought with their sacrifice is stagnation and suffering. I'm reminded
of the story Adlai Stevenson used to tell of Mrs. Karl Marx at the end of a
long and bleak life, and how she would remark how good it would have been if
Karl had made some capital instead of writing so much about it. [Laughter]
So,
instead of convergence, we see an increasing divergence between the free and
the unfree. Statist
economies stagnate, while the free-market, low-tax countries vault ahead into a
new era of growth -- into a new world economy. Even more than in the past, this
new world economy is a one-world economy. With Americans in the lead,
entrepreneurs have created a global electronic network, on line 24 hours a day,
sending capital, ideas, goods, and services around the world at near the speed
of light. Research, development, manufacturing, marketing, and investment now
all take place on a global level.
Take
the example of Boeing. Headquartered in
We
hear talk about the trade deficit, but we must beware of single-entry
bookkeeping. The other side of the ledger shows that the growing, dynamic
Now,
some people call this debt. By that way of thinking, every time a company sold
stock it would be a sign of weakness, and it would be much better to be a
company nobody wanted to invest in rather than one everybody wanted to invest
in. Take the case of high-tech, high-growth
Historically,
fast-growing economies often run deficits in the trade of goods and services,
experiencing net capital investment from abroad. This predictable and, up to a
point, desirable process has been accentuated by slow growth in parts of Europe
and the need for debt-ridden Third World nations to generate trade surpluses to
service their debt.
Over
time, however, these imbalances should be reduced, and there are two ways to do
it: We can become more like them, or they can become more like us. We can raise
taxes, reregulate our economy, and adopt
protectionist legislation of the kind now being considered in Congress. That
will effectively slow growth in this nation and stifle international trade. We
won't be able to buy their goods and, certainly, no one will want to invest in
the
The
other solution is for them to become more like us: to adopt low-tax, progrowth policies; to encourage trade, not discourage it
-- to make it freer and fairer and more plentiful; to join with the other
nations in a cooperative, upward cycle of growth in which all participate; to
embrace the possibilities of the new world economy. In fact, we're beginning to
see this happen. Several major industrialized countries have followed the
May
I just interject right here that where some people, complaining about the
deficit -- and no one complains about it louder than I do -- when they complain
about it, they cite our reducing taxes in these last several years. Well, I
think someone should pay attention to the fact that every time we have reduced
the rates, we have increased the total revenue paid in taxes by the people to
the Government because there is an incentive for people to earn more and to go
out and to experiment, and so forth. And so, no, the deficit has not been
caused by the cut in taxes. The deficit would increase if we yielded to those
who want us to increase taxes.
I'm
not saying there aren't problems. The one that sticks out like a sore thumb is
that
But
there's more to be done. If we're not careful, we'll slip once more into the
errors of the past -- broken promises and unchecked spending. It's time to get
at the root of the problem. It's time to fix the busted budget process. Just
before Congress -- or Christmas, I should say -- Congress delivered a large
package to my door. It was the 1,000-page continuing resolution that contained
all of the spending authority for the United States Government. It should have
been called a continuing irresolution. For the second year in a row, the
Congress failed to pass even 1 of the 13 appropriation bills on time; they just
bundled them together in a trillion-dollar bonanza.
How
about a New Year pledge: a budget that is credible and reliable, a spending
plan that is timely and enforceable and does not leave the Government on the
brink of default? Thirteen manageable bills and not one gigantic catchall -- I
will take the pledge, and I hope 535 people who represent you in the Congress
of the
There
are some other changes that will reform this process. The Constitution gives
the President the authority to veto legislation and the Congress the authority
to override that veto. When our forefathers framed that historic document, I'm
sure they did not envision the dilemma a President faces today: Either veto the
legislation needed to run the Government or sign into law a bill that does
little to promote the national welfare. Let me describe a few of its choicer items:
Even in this time of Gramm-Rudman, when the national
defense is being pared to the bone, Congress has decided that we have a
pressing national need for asparagus research. Stone fruit was also provided
for generously, but the really big money went to the usual pork-barrel spending
projects -- roads, highways, and dams -- which puts me in mind of another
story.
It's
about a Congressman, present company excepted -- [laughter] -- who was sitting
in his office one day when a constituent comes by to tell him why he must vote
for a certain bill coming up. The Congressman sat back and listened. And when
he was done, he said, ``You know, you're right. You're
right, you're absolutely right.'' And the fellow left happy. And a few minutes
later, another constituent came by, but this one wanted him to vote against the
bill. The Congressman listened to his reasons, sat back, and said, ``You know, you're right. You're right, you're absolutely
right.'' And the second constituent left happily.
Well,
the Congressman's wife had dropped by and had been waiting outside the office
where she heard these two conversations. And when the second man left, she went
in and said, ``That first man wanted you to vote for
the bill, and you said he was right. And the second one wanted you to vote
against it, and you said he was right, too. You can't run your affairs that
way.'' And the Congressman leaned back and said, ``You
know, you're right. You're right, you're absolutely right.'' [Laughter]
No
President should be faced with the all-or-nothing proposition. The time is here
for giving the President the same thing that 43 Governors have -- a line-item
veto. Until that occurs, it's time for the Congress to take the responsibility
for seeing that unwarranted appendages are not part of necessary legislation
that comes to my desk.
In
these years, our country has come together to celebrate the signing and
ratification of our Constitution. The more I reflect on that noble document,
the more I'm drawn to the same conclusion as George Washington, that it is more
than the product of human invention -- that divine providence, as Washington
believed, must have also lent a hand.
Two
hundred years later, this document will serve as a guide not just for this
nation but for the world as we enter the 21st century. We sometimes forget that
the original purpose of the Constitutional Convention was to find some solution
to the trade disputes that were then tearing the States apart. The Connecticut
Gazette in 1787 warned that trade disputes between
When
the Constitution was written, it took longer to travel from
The
changing economic realities -- in which products are increasingly information
and can be transmitted around the world at the speed of light -- these new
economic realities dictate a world economy. Because of our experience with a
continental economy, we are uniquely situated to lead the world into a new era
of economic cooperation, to make this ``city on a hill'' that is
Thank
you all very much. God bless all of you.
Mr.
Akers. Mr. President, one of the great traditions of the City Club is the
spontaneous, unrehearsed question-and-answer period following each speaker's
formal remarks. We are extremely gratified that you have graciously agreed to
continue that tradition. Therefore, prior to your entering the room, we held a
random lottery and selected eight members of the City Club who'll have the
opportunity to pose questions to you at this time. We'll start with the first
question at the microphone to the right.
Q.
Mr. President, my name may be Sam Donaldson, I'm not sure. [Laughter] Roughly
quoting a famous
The President. I would have to tell
you that first of all, with the special investigators still going forward with
their investigation, it would be too early for me to comment on anything of
that kind or to make a decision in advance. I would have to wait to see what
takes place, whether someone is deemed breaking the law or not. And so, I can't
answer your question that directly.
I
would have to say that in all of the investigation that went on I did not see
any -- what I considered lawbreaking that was taking place on the part of
anyone in the administration. There were some individuals that had not informed
me completely of what was going on in the meetings that were being held with
some representatives from
And
so, yes, we accepted that and met with them, but that was not against the law.
I checked that out beforehand -- that the law did give me the permission to do
that and to withhold information from the Congress if I thought it was
necessary, particularly for the protection of human lives. And we felt that the
people who had asked to meet with us -- their lives would be endangered if it
became known what they were doing.
Aid
to the Contras
Q.
Welcome to Cleveland, Mr. President. My question is: Do you think democracy
will prevail in
The President. If aid is cut off to
the contras, I have to believe that the actions of the Sandinistas, right down
to the present, are such that they are proving that they have no intention of
completely accepting the proposed peace agreement. We have, and we think that
that could be a solution. But we believe that the only thing that can bring the
contras -- or bring the Sandinista government, which is a totalitarian Communist
government -- that can bring it to the negotiating table, is the threat of the
contras -- who are the people of Nicaragua.
And
I was interested to note this morning that 10,000 Nicaraguan citizens in the
capital, in
Sino-Soviet
Relations
Q.
Mr. President, Mayor George Voinovich, members of the City Club, my name is
Arthur Push. Thank you for allowing me to participate in this citadel of free
speech.
My
question pertains to the Soviets reinviting
The President. All right, I'll try to
handle both of these in a single answer. I don't know; I couldn't read Mr.
Gorbachev's mind as to what his motives might be. But I do know this: that
historically, the Soviets -- it's almost been an obsession with them, of the
great size on their border of
On
the other hand, I was visiting
They're
making moderations of the same -- at least it seems the same kind that is being
proposed in glasnost by Gorbachev. But there's no question that if the intent
is peace and not what looked for a time like an arms unit, back before the
Chinese broke out of the arrangement with them, why, this could well be
something that we should not question, but go along with.
But,
again, I would recommend to the Chinese in their dealings that -- even though
he's an affable person and we got along just fine -- a Russian proverb: Dovorey no provorey -- trust but
verify.
Q.
Thank you very much, Mr. President. Welcome to
The
Nation's Economy
Q.
Good afternoon, Mr. President. My question is in keeping with your speech's
theme: the economy. In recent months, we have seen the U.S. dollar decline in
value against foreign currency and the stock market fall drastically. Many
economists predict that we are heading into a recession. I would like for you
to comment, please, on what you see to be the immediate fate of the economy and
what immediate actions you would recommend to avoid a recession.
The President. Well, for one thing,
with regard to the dollar, we have an agreement with the most potent trading
partners of ours, a number of other nations, about together working to maintain
the stability in the ratio of all our currencies. And we are working at that.
And what we want is stability in the value of the dollar.
Now,
to go on with the other parts of your question and whether there's to be a --
you see, I can make jokes about economists, because my degree was in economics.
First of all, I don't believe that the dollar or anything outside of Wall
Street and the markets had anything to do with the great debacle in October.
And that is borne out in the report that has been presented to me by the
commission that I appointed, the Brady commission: that what took place was a
panic as a result of -- well, there were no more than, he says, about 15 firms
that were involved in the great change that was taking place in the market; but
that it was induced within the marketplace and not from some factor outside.
As
to recession, I have to say we have just completed 62 months of expansion. That
is the longest period, I think, in the history of our country, certainly the
longest period since World War II. Every indices is
that we're going to continue to expand; there's going to continue to be an
increase in productivity and all. When I spoke about the jobs
-- just think of this -- with 3 million new jobs this last year, as I said, and
14\1/2\ million in these 62 months. The potential employment pool of
I'll
tell you what does frighten me: When I see sometimes in the media all this
great emphasis in quoting people about pessimism and that -- well, this looks
like there's a recession coming. That could bring on bad times and a recession.
If enough people get frightened and say, well, let's not buy a new car this
year; let's put it off until next year; or let's not put that new carpet down
or buy a refrigerator, let's make the old one do for a while. If enough people
do that, you have a recession. They just go on strike and quit buying.
So,
I think that we should, more and more, look at the economic facts. And all of
the facts about our economy are up and higher than they have been in years and
years. And we're continuing to create about a quarter-of-a-million new jobs
every month. So, I don't anticipate a recession unless some of those doomcriers scare the people into one -- just talk it up.
Q.
Good afternoon, Mr. President. Your Commission on American Outdoors provided
wide-ranging opportunities for the American public to speak to recreation
resource needs and issues, and as you know, their
report was finalized and published in 1987. My question to you is: Now that
this report has become a reality, expressing that today's recreational needs
are more of a necessity than a frill in today's world, what are your thoughts
as to the Federal funding responsibility in seeing that these needs are met?
The President. I think you're talking
about government landowning and so forth, for recreational purposes and so
forth. There has been an increase in that. And I have a map -- I wish everyone
could see it. It's a map of the
We
have been supportive of recreational facilities and so forth, doing that. But
there has been, also, a great private sector move, and don't overlook that.
That is so American, and we should be so proud of it. This last year, we were
asked to send some people to Paris, France, to an international meeting to tell
those countries in Europe and others how we supported things of this kind --
charities, good causes -- privately, because in all those other countries, they
thought that was the Government's task -- the Government should do it. Well,
the Government isn't as good at doing it as the private sector is. Wetlands in
this country that are supported by the very people who hunt ducks -- and doing
it to keep their own sport intact -- all kinds of things.
Where
there is a specific need, I don't think you can generalize. But I know that we
have vastly upgraded our national parks in the last few years, and we're
continuing to do that. If there is a particular need in a particular place,
fine, but at the same time, I think we should think twice about government
ownership and how far it can go in dominating this land of ours. It's something
like -- what is it now -- it's hundreds and hundreds of millions of -- well,
I'm not going to risk this, because I have the figures, and I can't spin them
off the top of my head right now. But I don't know anyplace other than the
Budget
Deficit
Q.
Mr. President, you may not have had time to read this morning's Wall Street
Journal, but I'd like you to react to the lead sentence, which is: ``Calling
budget deficits the unwanted and unpleasant stepchild of Reaganomics. The
President's task force on the October 19th stock market crash pointed to
government red ink as the major cause.''
The President. I have no quarrel with
the fact that government overspending -- deficit spending -- is a drag on our
economy, and it must be eliminated. The first man who ever proposed no deficit
spending was Jefferson, who said it was the great omission of our Constitution
that it did not place a limit on the Government's ability to borrow money.
Now
we're trying, and it's been a goal of mine. But when I hear them call it a
stepchild of mine, I would like to point out something: The President of the
And
then the only place they're willing to cut is defense spending. But when I came
into office, on any given day, 50 percent of our warplanes couldn't fly for
lack of spare parts. And almost as many ships in the Navy could not leave
harbor for the same reasons. Well, we have rebuilt our military, and one result
of that is the INF treaty. The
Now,
the reason I went into this is to tell you this: In 5 years, the Congress has
cut $125 billion from defense spending, but not to reduce the deficit --
because they've added $250 billion to domestic spending that is not defense.
So, each time they have been adding on to the spending. The thing is, the great War on Poverty that started under Lyndon Johnson in
the middle sixties -- from 1965 to 1980, the budget of the
I
was out on the mashed-potato circuit for years as a private citizen making
speeches about deficit spending, because back in -- well, for more than 50
years before 1980, there's only been 4 years in which there was a Republican
Congress. And the other 46 years in that half-century has been a Democratic
Congress. But there have also been only 8 years in which the budget was
balanced out of those. And every time people like myself out on the
mashed-potato circuit complained and said we should start balancing the budget,
their defense was -- and maybe some of you can remember this -- they would say
deficit spending is necessary to our prosperity, and it's no problem, because
we owe it to ourselves. And that was their argument for going on with what they
were doing.
So,
I'm as determined as ever, and that's what Gramm-Rudman-Hollings is all about.
You can't do it in 1 year, but we can set ourselves on a course that will reach
at year-certain. And then if the Lord is smiling on us -- and I hope He'll
smile on us -- the American people will force the Government to have a balanced
budget amendment -- that the Government henceforth cannot deficit spend.
Q.
Mr. President, it's certainly an honor to have you here in
The President. My unbiased opinion is
-- [laughter] -- that the things we've been trying to do, such as balancing a
budget and ending deficit spending and keeping this economy going and so forth,
has got a 1,000 times better chance of taking place if the next Senator from
Ohio is your former mayor, George Voinovich.
Q.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The President. Thank you all, and I'm
sorry I talked so long here. I've got all kinds of stories about speakers who
should not take too long as after dinner or after lunch speakers, and I've
violated all of it with my answers here, but you tempted me beyond my strength.
I don't often face such wonderful, informative questions as you were asking.
Note: The President
spoke at