Old executive Office Building next door to the white house. This video is courtesy of the Ronald Reagan president ial library in valley california. How do you do . I have a brief Opening Statement here before i take your questions yesterday secretary of the treasury donna reagan, sent to the congress of request to raise the debt to 985 billion dollars. This represents a dramatic jump of 50 billion dollars over the previous thats. You administration took this action with great regret because it is clear that the massive deficits that the government runs is one of the root causes of our profound economic problems. For too many years, this process has come to easily for us. We have lived beyond our means and then financed are extravagance on the backs of the American People. A clear message i received in the Election Campaign is that we must gain control of this inflationary monster. Let me briefly review for the American People, what we have already done. Within moments of taking the oat
Meant in my life, and i mean an awareness of the importance of the occasion, and at the same time, a great prayer in my mind that i could meet the responsibilities. They said that your great strength was you had an agenda of the things you wanted to change. What were your goals . The country was in the economic doldrums. Doubledigit inflation, great unemployment. The economy stagnating. People in the country seemed to have lost belief in themselves and in the country. There was the matter of National Security, of on any given day, half of our military planes could not take off for lack of spare parts. Half of our naval vessels could not leave port for that or lack of crew. I determined we had to restore the economy and i had been asked many times campaigning if i went into the deficit problem, because we had been running we had been deficit spending for almost half a century with only a few years scattered here and there where there was not an annual deficit. I would be asked questions
William it is indeed. President captivated our founder for four and a half hours and then had to leave to make a speech. It was a wonderful lunch. Would like to do here, sir, is ask you some questions so that our readers have a better idea of president reagan, the man. I would like to start off by asking what has surprised you the most pleasantly and unpleasantly about being inside the government you have for so long observed from the outside . All. Reagan well, first of , one surprise, pleasant or how little i was surprised. Years ashe eight governor of california, i realize when i came in here, suddenly it wasnt the great shock that becoming governor had been. The routine and all of that. While there was the international situation, the rest was, as i say, not too shocking. There was, however, there was a surprise having to do with being the commanderinchief and things of that kind one part that shocked me a little bit was week after we had been here, we were invited to lunch. The he
Recall your feelings when you took office for the first time . Pres. Reagan i recall that day with great clarity. All of it, the coming to the white house, the being taken thoseappearing before thousands of people stretched wason the mall, there unreality to all of it. Awareness of what it meant in my life, and i mean an awareness of the importance of the occasion, and at the same prayer in my mind that i could meet the responsibilities. Godfrey people have told us one of your great strengths is that you had an agenda with just a few big things that you wants to change you wanted to change. Pres. Reagan the country was in the economic doldrums. Doubledigit inflation, great unemployment. The economy stagnating. People in the country seemed to have lost belief in themselves and in the country. There was the matter of National Security, of on any given day, half of our military planes could not take off for lack of spare parts. Half of our naval vessels cannot leave port for that were lac
Mass graves, the criminalization of dissent, systematic slaughter glorified as self-defense, resisting students making history. Yes, the current nightmare does seem reminiscent of 1968, the year kaleidoscopic change burst forth seemingly everywhere at once. On January 31, the beginning of Tet, eighty-thousand Vietnamese troops issued Washington a formal eviction notice, attacking all the major cities