Lost Pres. Reagan Tape found in time for 100th Birthday celebration

Fifteen years before there was a Community website called OurtownFLA.com, there was a Community Cable Channel that was run by Anthony Masella Jr. in Kent, Ohio that covered local events of interest for the community and “cablecasted” them on the cable system. After four years of covering events for the community using a video camera the end had come for this experiment in journalism. The cable company was to be sold at the end of 1984 and Masella decided to relocate to Land O’Lakes but before he did, he had one last assignment, the 1984 Presidential Campaign Ohio Whistle stop tour by President Ronald Wilson Reagan. In his move to Florida the tape of Reagan, only seen once, was lost and presumed taped over and lost forever.... A quarter of a century later, at the end of a very long volleyball tape, the historic footage was found. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was like going back in time” said Masella. It was the last event I covered for fifteen years, till I started OurtownFla.com in Pasco County, since then I had the opportunity to cover President Bush, Governors’ Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin and Senators’ Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio but Reagan was the most impressive” he said. “Things had been bad for a very long time when he took over, it was as if we fell into a hole on November 22, 1963 and never stopped falling. To a generation of young people he represented hope and optimism for the future.” Said Masella. The 25 minute tape will run on the award winning local community website www.OurtownFLA.com following the Super bowl to commemorate President’s Reagan’s 100th birthday and can be viewed there all month

Text of speech from Remarks During a Whistlestop Tour of Ohio

[3.] Lima (3:48 p.m.)

The President. Thank you very much.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. Well, all right. I wasn't going to do it, but if you insist, okay. Four more -- [laughter]. All right. Thank you all. It's great to be back in the Buckeye State and here in Allen County and the great city of Lima.

You know, in this job you get to meet some important people -- heads of state, prime ministers, premiers, kings, and queens. But I've always said that the best part of this job is remembering that George Bush and I are working for you and nobody else. So, I just thought that I'd drop by today so you could hear a report from your two hired hands in Washington.

In 4 years here, the unemployment rate in Lima has fallen 4\1/2\ percentage points. And, you know, if you'll help me send a message to some Washington politicians this November, we'll get that rate down even further.

You've done a great job here in Lima. You've got agriculture; you've got basic industry. You've got some of the new industries that are opening up. You're helping keep our defenses strong by building the M - 1 tank at the General Dynamics plant. You've got a refinery, a chemical company. The list keeps going. You're all the things a growing America is all about.

We're now 3\1/2\ weeks from election day, and the American people are getting the full flavor of the very clear choice that faces them. It's a choice between two fundamentally different ways of governing America and two distinct ways of looking at America. My opponent, Mr. Mondale, offers a future of pessimism, fear, and limits, compared to ours of hope, confidence, and growth.

Now, I don't fault his intentions. I know he sincerely means it and feels that way. He sees government -- as some others do -- as an end in itself. And we see government as something belonging to the people and only a junior partner in our lives. They see people merely as members of groups, special interests to be coddled and catered to. Well, we look at them as individuals to be fulfilled through their own freedom and creativity.

My opponent and his allies live in the past. They're celebrating the old and failed policies of an era that has passed them by, and if history had skipped over -- as if history, I should say, had skipped over these Carter-Mondale years. On the other hand, millions of Americans join us in boldly charting a new course for the future.

From the beginning their campaign has lived on promises. Indeed, Mr. Mondale boasts that America is nothing if it isn't promises. Well, the American people don't want promises, I don't think. They don't want to pay for his promises. They want promise; they want opportunity and workable answers.

And it's fitting that we're campaigning today on Harry Truman's train -- following the same route that he took 36 years and 1 day ago. He happened to be the last Democrat I voted for. [Laughter] And I campaigned for him in 1948. I respected his ability to stand for what he believes, his consistency of principles, and his determination to do the right thing.

Mr. Truman could also make very plain the differences between himself and his opponent. And my friends, that's just what we're going to do today.

Let's start with the record, the record of an administration in which Mr. Mondale carried a full partnership.

Mr. Carter, himself, said that ``. . . there wasn't a single decision I made during 4 years in the White House that Fritz Mondale wasn't involved in.'' Well, in those 4 years, they took the strongest economy in the world and pushed it to the brink of collapse. They created a calamity of such proportions that we're still suffering the consequences of those economic time bombs.

There was no fresh-faced, well-fed baby lying on our doorstep on January 20 of 1981. It was a snarling economic wolf with sharp teeth. The suffering of America -- the deep and painful recession, and the outrageous and frightening inflation -- these things didn't start by accidental ignition or spontaneous combustion. They came about through the complete mismanagement of the administration of which Mr. Mondale was a part, and his liberal friends who controlled the Congress.

They gave us five -- count them -- just in a little more than a year -- as everything was going to pot -- they gave us five different anti-inflation plans and, at the same time with them, managed to give us the worst 4-year record of inflation in nearly 40 years. Now, while it took them five plans to nearly triple inflation, it's only taken us one to cut it by about two-thirds.

Senior citizens were driven into panic by higher rents, exorbitant fuel costs, dramatically increasing food costs, and Federal health care costs which went up a massive 87 percent in those 4 years. And they called that fairness.

They punished the poor and the young who struggled as prices of necessities shot up faster than others. Millions of Americans led a life of daily economic terror fueled by those unrelenting costs.

Let's look at interest rates. My opponent has referred to something that he calls now the real interest rates. Well, people don't pay interest rates on some academic smokescreen or foggy economic theory. What they know is that when Jerry Ford left office, the prime interest rate was 6\1/4\ percent. And when Mr. Mondale left office, it was 21\1/2\ percent. That was the highest interest rate in 120 years.

Average monthly mortgage payments more than doubled. Young people couldn't buy homes; car loans were hard to get and expensive. The automobile and homebuilding industries were brought to their knees. It's little wonder that the American people yearned for leadership in 1980.

And after all this economic punishment, our opponents blamed you, because you lived too well. They told you you had to sacrifice more, that we were in an age of limits now. Well, I found out that it's not so much that our opponents have a poor memory of their ruinous past; it's just that they have an awfully good ``forgetory.'' [Laughter] And one of the things they like most to forget is the misery index.

Now, some of you young people are too young to remember that, but in the 1976 campaign -- 8 years ago -- they figured out a gimmick. They added up the rate of inflation and the rate of unemployment, and the total was the misery index. And at that time, in '76, it was 12.6. And they declared that the incumbent, Jerry Ford, had no right to seek reelection with that kind of a misery index.

Well, 4 years later, along came the 1980 campaign. They never mentioned the misery index. And I don't think my opponent will mention it in this campaign, possibly because it was over 20 when he left the Vice Presidency. And it's only 11.6 now.

My opponent has done a very good job of slipping, sliding, and ducking away from his record. But here in Ohio during the primaries, Senator Gary Hart got his message through by reminding you, the Ohio voters, of the true record. And I quote -- he said, ``Walter Mondale may pledge stable prices, but Carter-Mondale could not cure 12-percent inflation.'' ``Walter Mondale,'' he added, ``has come to Ohio to talk about jobs, but Carter-Mondale watched helpless as 180,000 Ohio jobs disappeared in the period between 1976 and 1980.'' Now, I didn't say that. Those are Gary Hart's words.

Those disastrous consequences didn't come about by accident. They came through the implementation of the very policies of out-of-control spending, unfair taxation, and worship of big government that my opponent still supports.

His philosophy can be summed up in four sentences: If it's income, tax it. If it's revenue, spend it. If it's a budget, break it. And if it's a promise, make it.

All this year -- [applause] -- all -- --

Audience. 4 more years!

The President. Thank you.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. Okay.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. All right.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. Well, all this year, he has lavished his campaign with promises that staggered even his Democratic opponents. Ohio's own Senator Glenn was heard to say in frustration that Mr. Mondale, and I quote, ``has just promised everything to everybody with no thought of how it's going to be paid for.'' And then again, Gary Hart responded and said, ``Fritz, you cannot lead this country if you've promised everybody everything.''

But, of course, there's a predictable answer by one who makes so many promises. That answer is higher taxes. And massive new tax increases are precisely what he proposes. A few weeks back, he called his new plan ``pay as you go.'' But what it is, of course, is nothing but the old plan. You pay, and he goes. [Laughter]

Those tax increases to pay for his promises add up to the equivalent of $1,890 per household. If Harry Truman had to apply a motto to his radical taxing scheme, he would have to say that -- you know that famous line, ``The buck stops here.'' He would say this time, ``Your buck never stops.'' When the centerpiece of his economic program is backbreaking tax hikes, you can see why he spends so much time using outrageous scare tactics.

Now, that's not my opponent's only tax extravaganza. He came up with still another one in our debate. He said, and I quote, ``As soon as we get the economy on a sound ground as well, I would like to see the total repeal of indexing.''

Now, this tax is even worse, because it would be a dagger at the heart of every low- and middle-income taxpayer in America. It would mean bonecrushing new levies against those who can least afford them. Indexing was a reform that we passed to protect you from the cruelest of taxes, the hidden tax when government uses inflation to force you into higher tax brackets just because you've gotten a cost-of-living pay raise.

And under the Mondale plan, here's what would happen to a family struggling on $10,000 a year. By 1989 they would be paying over 73 percent more in income taxes if indexing, which begins on January 1st, is canceled. For families making 30,000 a year, the tax would take over $500 more in '89, nearly $900 a year more if someone was making 40,000. These assume modest inflation. If we had this higher, double-digit tax inflation rate back, the kind that they had, then all those tax collections would more than double what I've just told you.

Now, we're told since Sunday night that he misspoke, that he actually meant to just say the opposite. But on several occasions, on several occasions since 1982, he has expressly proposed the repeal of indexing. And he's done this quite often.

You know, in politics, they call that a flip-flop. In this case, you'll forgive me if I call it a Fritz-flop. [Laughter]

Yesterday, he wanted to give a $200 tax break to every family dependent, and today he wants to raise taxes the equivalent of $1,890 per household. You know, for some time, over the last several days at least, he was talking about a new Reagan and an old Reagan. Now, that had nothing to do with my age. The old Reagan was the first one. The new Reagan is now. And what he said that -- well, he inspired me to do a little of that old and new business.

The old Mondale is on record as saying that the budget and reducing deficits could worsen a recession; the new Mondale thinks higher taxes lead to a healthy economy. The old Mondale publicly supported Jimmy Carter's wrong-headed grain embargo, and the new Mondale claims that he opposed it privately -- very privately. [Laughter] The old Mondale sponsored National Bible Week in the U.S. Senate. I'm for that. The new Mondale says there's too much religion in politics.

The old Mondale called the space shuttle a horrible waste, a space extravaganza, and he personally led the fight in the United States Senate to kill the shuttle program. The new Mondale praises American technological achievement.

I had the privilege just a little while ago from the train of calling those people that are up there going around the Earth right now while I'm riding on the train, those wonderful heroes of ours.

But just when you're beginning to lose faith, however, you find that there is some constancy. The old Mondale increased your taxes, and the new Mondale will do it again.

You know, in our debate, I got a little angry at all those times that he distorted my record. And on one occasion, I was about to say to him very sternly, ``Mr. Mondale, you're taxing my patience.'' [Laughter] And then I caught myself. Why should I give him another idea? [Laughter] That's the only tax he hasn't thought of.

Well, from now until November 6th, we're going to make sure the American people know about this choice on which their future depends. Incidentally, when I was in school, I learned that ``Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.'' Now, I happen to realize that November only has 6 days. [Laughter]

But just when you're beginning to -- well, let me just start again and say we have two roads to tomorrow. We have the road of fear and envy that he proposes. And on this road, you frighten the elderly with false statements. You strive to divide Americans against each other, seeking to promote envy and portray greed. Franklin Roosevelt warned us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, sadly and tragically, the only thing my opponent has to offer is fear itself.

Well, that's the difference between us. We see America's best day ahead. We see ourselves in a springtime of hope, ready to fire up our courage and determination to reach high and achieve all the best. We see a life where our children can enjoy, at last, prosperity without inflation. And we see a life where they can enjoy the highest of creativity and go for the stars; not have their hopes and dreams crushed or taxed away by greedy governmentalists. The American people are walking into tomorrow unashamed and unafraid. They're ready for this great era of opportunity.

And I just have to say two more things here. Looking around -- and when I see these young people in these band uniforms of their respective schools, I have to tell you that all over the country, in gatherings like this, I have been thrilled at seeing so many young people who are present here, because, you know, they're what this campaign and this election is all about.

Those of us -- my generation and a few generations in between them and mine -- all of us have a responsibility. All of us inherited an America that our parents and our grandparents had handed to us, in which the opportunity was unlimited. You knew, when you were growing up, that it was all dependent on you. You could do anything out there, fly as high and far as your own ability would take you, and you wouldn't be penalized for the effort. And our responsibility now, after some years of that having been taken away from us, is to be able to make that same promise to them -- to all of you young people -- that that's the kind of America we're going to turn over to you.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. All right. And because of that, I'll give you a promise of something that'll take place in those 4 more years. Another thing that I think has been shameful in political campaigning -- it was in the 1982 congressional campaigns; it is shameful in this campaign. And that is, for political advantage, to frighten so many of our senior citizens by telling them that we were somehow nursing a secret plan to reduce or take from them their Social Security benefits. Well, there is no one in our administration with such a plan, and if there was one there, he'd be gone.

I just want to set the record straight. We are not going to do anything to reduce or to take from the people now getting Social Security those benefits or to take them from the people that are anticipating them when they come to their nonearning years.

Now, I know this may gall our opponents, but I'll conclude by saying that I think all of you agree with us when we say: You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!

The President. Thank you.

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