[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 16 (Thursday, February 3, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S509-S527]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMEMBERING PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, there are many of us who will come to
the floor this afternoon to pay tribute to one of the great Presidents
in American history. Many of us will recollect times and experiences
and contacts we had with President Reagan and the way he inspired us
personally as well as a nation.
When I was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, the Vietnamese went to
great lengths to restrict the news from home to the statements and
activities of prominent opponents of the war in Vietnam. They wanted us
to believe America had forgotten us. They never mentioned Ronald Reagan
to us or played his speeches over the camp loud speakers. No matter. We
knew about him. New additions to our ranks told us how the Governor and
Mrs. Reagan were committed to our liberation and our cause.
When we came home, all of us were eager to meet the Reagans, to thank
them for their concern. But more than gratitude drew us to them. We
were drawn to them because they were among the few prominent Americans
who did not subscribe to the then-fashionable notion that America had
entered her inevitable decline.
We prisoners of war came home to a country that had lost a war and
the best sense of itself, a country beset by social and economic
problems. Assassinations, riots, scandals, contempt for political,
religious, and educational institutions gave the appearance that we had
become a dysfunctional society. Patriotism was sneered at, the military
scorned. The world anticipated the collapse of our global influence.
The great, robust, confident Republic that had given its name to the
last century seemed exhausted.
Ronald Reagan believed differently. He possessed an unshakable faith
in America's greatness, past and future, that proved more durable than
the prevailing political sentiments of the time. His confidence was a
tonic to men who had come home eager to put the war behind us and for
the country to do likewise.
Our country has a long and honorable history. A lost war or any other
calamity should not destroy our confidence or weaken our purpose. We
were a good nation before Vietnam, and we are a good nation after
Vietnam. In all of history, you cannot find a better one. Of that,
Ronald Reagan was supremely confident, and he became President to prove
it.
His was a faith that shouted at tyrants to ``tear down this wall.''
Such faith, such patriotism requires a great deal of love to profess,
and I will always revere him for it. When walls were all I had for a
world, I learned about a man whose love of freedom gave me hope in a
desolate place. His faith honored us, as it honored all Americans, as
it honored all freedom-loving people.
Let us honor his memory especially today by holding his faith as our
own, and let us too tear down walls to freedom. That is what Americans
do when they believe in themselves.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I was honored to hear Senator McCain's
comments on Ronald Reagan. This Sunday is indeed the 100th anniversary
of his birth. It is an opportunity for the whole Nation to honor the
memory of a man who honored us with his leadership.
In the 1980s, we were a weakened country. Inflation and unemployment
were in double digits. The hostage crisis in Iran dragged on, with no
end in sight. Our standing abroad was waning
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and so too was our military strength. Challenges at home were answered
with one failed Washington program after another. We had lost
confidence in our future and really in the principles that made us
exceptional.
Ronald Reagan changed that. Part of that change began with 12 simple,
crucial words:
Government is not the solution to our problem; government
is the problem.
It is a big part of our problem.
He stirred the passions of our country, revitalizing not only our
economy but our identity and confidence as free people. What some have
called the Reagan revolution he called the great rediscovery. He
instilled us with a new confidence in our future and in America's role
as the last best hope of mankind.
His achievements are well known, but they bear repeating.
Working with Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he tamed
the inflation which was robbing Americans of their life's work and
savings. It was a tough course, a tough road, but he saw it through. He
stayed on the course, and we were stronger as a result. We need to get
on a tough road and stay the course today.
He lowered taxes dramatically, including a reduction in the top rate
from nearly 70 percent, and he reined in a runaway bureaucracy that had
trapped innovation and productivity in a labyrinth of regulation and
redtape.
His faith in the free market was not misplaced. It rewarded us. He
created 20 million new jobs, grew our gross national product by 26
percent, and began the longest peacetime boom in our history.
Conditions improved for Americans in every walk of life. The net worth
of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 rose by 27 percent.
Reagan's stunning success debunked every myth of those who believe a
bigger government is more compassionate and can do more for more
people. The growth and potential productivity of the private sector is
what has made America the most prosperous Nation.
This success at home was matched by his success abroad. He defended
our principles and our way of life with clarity, confidence, and vigor.
His policies brought down the Soviet Empire. ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this wall'' still resonates in our minds, and it liberated untold
millions.
Today, more than 20 years after President Reagan left office, we find
ourselves facing many of the same challenges: a sagging economy, a
growing government, and a diminished standing in the world. We would be
wise to remember the lessons of that era: peace through strength,
prosperity through freedom. He understood that our future greatness
lies in the same place it always has--through our pioneering, restless,
enterprising spirit that is filled with ambition and excitement, and a
deep sense of honor and decency that defines who we are as a people and
who we will be tomorrow.
In President Reagan's farewell address, he issued a word of caution:
If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I am
warning of an eradication of that--of the American memory
that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American
spirit.
As we face daunting, defining challenges of our time, I hope we look
back to the leadership he provided.
On a personal note, I was tremendously honored to have been appointed
a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Alabama by President Reagan
in 1981. It was an office in which I had served as an assistant a
number of years before. To be able to come back and lead that office
was such a personal thrill.
The President did not give me any directions as to what we were to
do, but I absolutely knew--and I have often said it is a great example
of true leadership--I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. I gathered
the staff, many of whom I had worked with years before, and used these
words: President Reagan sent me here to prosecute criminals and protect
the U.S. Treasury. I believe that is what he did. I believe that was
implicit in his campaign, his consistent leadership, that he believed
in law and order and efficiency, and he wanted us to fight corruption
and try to help produce a more efficient government.
I remember in those days we went to a U.S. attorneys conference. I
attended with my good friend, recently the Deputy Attorney General of
the United States, Larry Thompson. We would share rooms on the trips to
save money because we knew and believed President Reagan wanted us to
save money. Our spending was out of control, and we had a serious
financial problem. Our budgets were frozen. But we worked harder and we
produced more.
That can be done today. This whining that we cannot reduce spending--
and many times, they define ``reducing spending'' as a reduction of the
projected rate of growth. It is not even a reduction of current level
spending.
These kinds of things happened throughout the government. It
increased productivity of our government. It reduced the take of the
Federal Government of the private economy. The private economy grew,
and the government sector became more efficient and more productive.
That is what we need to return to.
It was such a fabulous honor to have the opportunity to serve in that
position. I hope I was faithful to the values of the President who
appointed me. I have to say, I think I knew what they were, and I know
I gave my best effort to be worthy of the trust he placed in me. That
was true of many more people throughout the Federal Government.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise for a moment to join my colleagues
in paying tribute to the late Ronald Reagan, President of the United
States--a great conservative leader of our country and an inspiration
to many, many Americans.
I want to dedicate my remarks to a lady named Kathie Miller. Kathie
works for me here in Washington. She has loved Ronald Reagan since the
day he came on the scene and can probably quote him verbatim much
better than I can. He had a meaningful impact on her life, and so I
dedicate these remarks to her today.
My speech will be about two events I happened to attend where Ronald
Reagan was speaking and the impact of those events not only on me but
on everybody else who was there, and actually on the future of our
country. One took place in 1975, when he was beginning his pursuit of
the nomination for the Presidency of the United States. Gerald Ford was
still President at that time and Ronald Reagan was running for the
nomination for a full term.
Ronald Reagan came to Cobb County, GA. Cobb County, GA, is where I
live. It is a very Republican county right now, but in 1975 it was not
a very Republican county. In fact, there was only one elected official
in the entire county who was a Republican, out of literally 100 or more
who were Democratic officials.
Ronald Reagan came to the civic center in Cobb County, and an
unanticipated thing happened, not by plan, certainly, not by the
generation of politicians, but a crowd so large came to hear him that
the fire marshals shut the building down. This is a very good-sized,
4,000-seat auditorium. People came to hear a positive message about
America.
I was fortunate enough, because I had been in politics a little bit,
to be able to get in that room and listen to his speech. In 1975, for
America, it was not the most prosperous of times. In fact, a lot of the
things we have been suffering through these last couple of years we
went through in 1974 and 1975. We had a difficult housing market,
higher interest rates, higher unemployment, and things of that nature.
So this former actor came to Cobb County and he lit a fire under
everybody, and not necessarily about him but about ourselves. He
uplifted people who needed uplifting and he did it with a message of a
belief in ourselves, a belief in our country, pride in America, and
defense through strength. Those messages were so clearly Ronald Reagan.
It inspired me. And it inspired me so much that I hoped he would get
that nomination and be elected President of the United States. But he
failed. He did not get the nomination. Ultimately, Gerald Ford got it,
not
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Ronald Reagan. But Ronald Reagan didn't go home and pout. He did not
stop participating. He didn't drop out. He set his sights on the 1980
Republican nomination for President of the United States, and history
reflects that he achieved it. He won it, and it was 8 great years for
our country, 8 great years with a man who could inspire and who could
lead.
I have oftentimes said that two of the truly great Presidents we have
had--John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan--had something in common. They were
from different parties, but they could stand before a group of people
and make a speech about a subject they didn't agree with and, by the
time they finished, they got a standing ovation. So, first, they were
great communicators. Second, they were committed to a safe and
prosperous America. They were hawks on defense. They confronted our
enemies straight up, as Kennedy did with Khrushchev and President
Reagan did. Third, and most important, they reduced taxes and brought
prosperity to the economy of the United States.
The second occasion I met Ronald Reagan was an interesting one. It
was in the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, where professional basketball was
played at the time. The coliseum seats 16,000 people. I was then the
minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and was elected
to be the MC of a program that featured Senator Mack Mattingly, running
for reelection from Georgia, but the keynote speaker was Ronald Reagan.
In fact, he flew from Washington to Atlanta to make that speech and
then went to Reykjavik, Iceland where he confronted Gorbachev and
Brezhnev and the Russians and he stood for peace through strength, and
a strong buildup of forces in America so we could be a strong country
that could defend ourselves, not a weak country subservient to anybody
else.
In that auditorium of 16,000 people, he stood up before them and did
the same thing he did in the auditorium in 1975. He inspired them to
believe in their country, inspired them to believe in what was right,
and inspired them to believe in peace through strength. And when he
left, everybody was uplifted.
I think when Ronald Reagan left the Presidency in 1988, we would all
agree our country was uplifted. It was a period of prosperity and a
period of strength, and it was a renaissance of the American spirit.
That is the test of true leadership. So I am honored and privileged to
join many of my colleagues on the floor today to pay tribute to the
memory and the commitment of Ronald Reagan, President of the United
States.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I wish to join my other colleagues who have
come to the floor at this time to speak in honor of our late President,
Ronald Reagan, on the occasion of his 100th birthday. I wish to begin
by giving my best wishes to Mrs. Reagan and wish her all the best for
her continued health. Also, as someone who had three different
positions in the Reagan administration, I am thinking of a lot of very
fine people with whom I had the opportunity to serve, especially Cap
Weinberger whom I met and worked with every day for about 4 years, who
is one of the finest people I ever worked with, and also John
Herrington, who was the Director of White House Personnel, who first
brought me into the Reagan administration and later served our country
as Secretary of Energy.
As I mentioned, I had three different positions in the Reagan
administration, first as a member of the National Advisory Committee,
and then I spent 4 years to the day in the Pentagon as Assistant
Secretary of Defense, and then as Secretary of the Navy. It was truly
an inspiring time in my life, to have worked for an individual who had
the leadership qualities Ronald Reagan demonstrated. He knew how to
inspire our country. He knew how to bring strong personalities together
to work toward the good of the country and for its future. He knew how
to make decisions, he knew how to make hard decisions, and one of the
great qualities he had was he was never afraid to take responsibility
for the consequences of any of those decisions. That is something which
I think motivated everyone who served in his administration.
If we go back to that time period, those of us who were of age, 1980
was a bad time in this country. Our country was in tremendous turmoil.
We were demoralized in the wake of the fall of South Vietnam and the
bitterness that had affected so many of us along class lines,
particularly between those who opposed the Vietnam war and those who
had fought it, and what we were going to do in terms of resolving those
issues here in this country and then our reputation internationally.
Inflation was rampant, sometimes in the high teens. People were saying
that the Presidency was too big a job for any one person. Our military
was overworked, underpaid, and dramatically underappreciated.
I had friends with whom I had served or I had gone to the Naval
Academy with, who had gone into the Navy, who were saying during this
time period if you make commander you may as well get your divorce
because you are going to go to sea for 4 years. The Navy had gone from
930 combatant ships during the Vietnam war down to 479, precipitously,
at the same time our country had assumed the obligations in the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf, obligations it didn't have before.
The Soviet Union, it is hard to remember right now, was in a state of
high activity, diplomatically and militarily. It had invaded
Afghanistan, threatening instability in that part of the world. It had
a massive naval buildup in the Pacific following our withdrawal from
Vietnam. Our diplomatic and military personnel in Tehran had been taken
hostage by the Iranian regime and were being taunted daily on TV. Our
national self-image was in a crisis state. Who were we as a country?
Did we really have a future?
Ronald Reagan campaigned based on our national greatness and on the
intrinsic good of our society and on restoring our place at the top of
the world community. I can vividly remember in the summer of 1980 when
Ronald Reagan made a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention
and mentioned, as he was so wont to do, with symbolic phrases that
Vietnam had been a noble cause. He had the media following him around
the country mocking the comment at this point, only 5 years after the
fall of South Vietnam, but for those of us who had stepped forward and
served in order to attempt to bring democracy to South Vietnam, that
was a great moment of inspiration.
Once he was elected, Ronald Reagan governed with the same sense of
certainty about the greatness of our system and the goodness of our
people. He convinced strong, talented people to join his
administration. With George Shultz as Secretary of State and Cap
Weinberger as Secretary of Defense, he brought two lions into his
Cabinet who did not always agree--which was rather famous in Washington
at the time--but who were able to combine fierce competitive intellects
with decades of valuable experience.
When Ronald Reagan left the White House, our military had been
rebuilt, our people had regained their pride in our country and their
optimism for its future. The United States was again recognized as the
leading nation in the world community and the failed governmental
concept that had produced the Soviet Union was on the verge of
imploding, not because of external attack but soon to disappear at the
hands of its own citizens, who could look to the West and see a better
way of life. To paraphrase an old saying, ``You never know when you are
making history. You only know when you did.''
Ronald Reagan did make history and I was proud to be a small part of
it.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, as the junior Senator representing the State
of Illinois, and one who will lead a celebration of President Reagan's
life in Chicago Saturday night, for Sunday, the 100th birthday of our
native Illinoisan, our 40th President, Ronald Reagan, I want to talk
for a moment about his life and what he has meant to the United States,
now on the 100th anniversary of President Reagan's birth.
On February 6, 1911, in Tampico, IL, with a population of 820, John
and Nelle Reagan welcomed a child who would one day change the
direction not just of our country but the world. According to the
Reagan family lore, when he first gazed upon his son, John Reagan
prophetically quipped: ``He looks like a fat little Dutchman. But who
knows, he might grow up to be President someday.''
His father was a strong believer in the American dream and Nelle
Reagan passed on to her son her penchant to always look for the good in
people, regardless of their current position.
It was those early lessons in perseverance and faith that would
inspire Ronald Reagan to pursue his dream of becoming a Hollywood
actor. He signed his first professional acting contract in 1935 and
went on to enjoy a successful career on the silver screen. But by 1946,
after serving 3 years in the Army Air Force Intelligence Corps during
the height of World War II, he began to have ambitions beyond
Hollywood. A 5-year stint as the president of the Screen Actors Guild
laid the foundation for Ronald Reagan's political career. During the
turmoil of the Hollywood communism craze, Reagan proved himself to be a
skilled dealmaker and an influential leader as he successfully
navigated the upheaval in the Hollywood community.
In 1964, Ronald Reagan was thrust into the national spotlight as he
gave his televised speech entitled, ``A Time for Choosing,'' in support
of the Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.
Following his speech, a group of influential citizens became
convinced that Ronald Reagan should become the next Governor of
California. After winning in the primary and enduring a very hard-
fought campaign, Ronald Reagan unseated the two-time Governor of
California, Pat Brown, to become the 33rd Governor in California's
history.
During his 2 terms as Governor, Californians enjoyed a smaller, less
costly, and more efficient State government. Governor Reagan returned
$5 billion to the taxpayers and used his line-item veto authority 943
times to ensure that the State's budget matched its priorities.
Ronald Reagan had once again proved himself a determined and capable
leader in difficult times, but soon the American people would learn
that his best days were very much ahead of him. After an unsuccessful
Republican Presidential attempt in 1976, he knew that he wanted to be
President but would only enter the race if the people of the United
States actually wanted him to run. In the years following the 1976
primary, Ronald Reagan became increasingly concerned about the
direction the country was headed, especially in the areas of national
security, unemployment, and the economy. More than anything, Reagan
sensed that Americans had lost their sense of confidence, not just in
themselves but also in the country.
Interestingly, the concerns Mr. Reagan felt as he weighed the
decision to run for President are not unlike many of the challenges we
face today.
Ronald Reagan was confident that he was the man who could lead the
country out of a dark recession and into the light of a new prosperity
and national pride. After winning a landslide election in November,
Ronald Reagan was sworn in as our 40th President on January 20, 1981.
He immediately went to work on repairing a broken economy by enacting
the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, with his solid belief being that
if people had more money in their pockets and confidence to invest, the
country would get back on a sound financial footing. During his first
months in office, Reagan was as much to thank for the new found
economic stability as he was for a heightened sense of optimism that
was returning to the United States after very hard times.
He thoughtfully guided the country through a series of national
tragedies and terrorist attacks on our military forces abroad. Yet
through it all, President Reagan's resolve never wavered, his
confidence that the American people would meet the myriad challenges
they faced never faltered. This was a man who, after surviving an
assassination attempt, continued to meet with congressional leaders in
his hospital room as he recovered because he believed it in the best
interest of the American people that he continue working to the extent
his body would allow. It was that type of steadfast determination that
allowed the negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to move
forward and eventually led to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the
signing of the I.N.F. Treaty and eventually the end of Soviet
oppression in Eastern Europe. The issue that got him into politics,
ending the spread of communism, became the crowning achievement of his
Presidency.
His constant refrain throughout his time in the White House was that
government was becoming too big, too inefficient, too unresponsive and
too wasteful. As Governor, Reagan demonstrated the ability to exercise
fiscal restraint and he urged leaders in Congress to do the same thing.
I think it appropriate that we are celebrating Reagan's 100th birthday
at a time when national debt and the deficit are at an all-time high.
While we know that Reagan possessed the willingness to tackle such
issues, I believe the lesson we can learn most from his Presidency is
the endlessly optimistic attitude he had that the United States and its
people would meet challenges of the day and emerge stronger because of
the struggle to overcome.
His assertion that America was ``the shining city on a hill'' guided
him, as it should us. A hard-nosed, gritty politician, Reagan would
have jumped at the chance to take on the responsibility of leading this
country out of this recession, just as he did in 1981. So as we
celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, let us take a moment to
reflect upon the life of a man who, as President, always did what was
necessary to move the country forward in the way he felt was most
beneficial to those who mattered most, the people.
I know his legacy is most associated with the people of California,
but as the junior Senator for Illinois, we will claim our right to note
his birth in Tampico, his childhood in Dixon, and his college years at
Eureka College. We will be very happy to mark the 100th birthday on
Saturday in Chicagoland and through celebrations in other parts of the
State, one of our great Presidents who very much changed the course and
direction of this country and this world for the better.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in 3 days' time, across our country,
from the North Country of New Hampshire to his final resting place in
Simi Valley, CA, Americans will celebrate the legacy of President
Ronald Reagan. It will be the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his
birth. I am very honored to rise today to join other colleagues of both
parties and others throughout the United States and, I am sure, the
world in paying tribute to America's 40th President.
I cannot speak as personally about President Reagan as some in this
Chamber can. I met him only a few times when, as a visiting State
attorney general during the eighties, I was at the White House. He was
always gracious, always responsive to us. But I did have one meeting
that I might call a virtual meeting with President Reagan that reminds
me of his enduring importance for our country today.
Twenty-two years ago, on January 4, 1989, as President Reagan was
departing the White House, having completed his second term, I had just
arrived in Washington as a freshman Senator from Connecticut. President
Reagan was set to give his final weekly radio address on that brisk
Saturday morning, and then-Senate majority leader George Mitchell had
honored me by
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asking me if I would give the Democratic response. It was a real honor,
although a daunting one, for me to be asked to do that on that
occasion.
Looking back, I believe President Reagan's 331st and final radio
address on that January morning was among the most masterful and moving
of his career. In it, he captured the very essence of the American
spirit. He said:
Whether we seek it or not, whether we like it or not, we
Americans are keepers of the miracles. We are asked to be
guardians of a place to come to, a place to start again, a
place to live in the dignity God meant for his children. May
it ever be so.
President Reagan concluded that morning. Needless to say, President
Reagan's final radio address was quite literally a tough act to follow.
In my remarks, I praised him for his love of country, for his fervent
devotion to freedom, and for his commitment to the values of faith,
flag, and family. I was, as I put it then, inspired and encouraged by
his patriotism, and I urged all Americans to ``work on our unfinished
business and the challenges ahead with the spirit of purpose and
confidence that is the legacy of the Reagan years.''
Today, 22 years later, I continue to feel deeply honored that I was
able to deliver those remarks and evermore confident of the importance
of Ronald Reagan's legacy to us and the generations of Americans to
come. The optimism, moral clarity, and confidence President Reagan
radiated inspired a generation, and they are precisely the ideals we
need today to rekindle and reinspire the current generation of
Americans and others, frankly, living without freedom around the world.
I didn't always agree with President Reagan. That is a matter of
public record. But I always understood the enduring value and strength
and sincerity of his faith in America's values and America's destiny.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to make America great again. And he
did. He expressed with total confidence that those who would challenge
our hard-won freedoms would collapse. And they did.
He led our country and the free world to victory in the Cold War
against Soviet communism, and he never doubted for a moment that
America and our cause could and would prevail. When in 1977 Ronald
Reagan was asked about his vision for the end of the Cold War--
remember, he was not yet President--he responded with characteristic
and refreshing directness. He said:
My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is
simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and
they lose.
Well, President Reagan's understanding of world affairs was far from
simplistic. He was an optimist without illusions, who guided by and,
frankly, expressed moral judgments about what was right and what was
wrong. We do not see that enough today. There is a kind of relativism
afoot. But some things are just plain wrong, and some things, thank
God, are just plain right.
President Reagan had the moral clarity to make distinctions between
good and evil and the moral courage to speak the truth of those
distinctions unambiguously and to support them unwaveringly.
When he addressed an audience of veterans and world leaders
commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-day, standing as he spoke on
the windswept coast of northern France, the very clifftop in Normandy
where courageous allied soldiers fought to liberate Europe from the
yoke of Nazi tyranny, President Reagan magnificently, masterfully,
compellingly revealed again his moral clarity, and I am honored to
quote these words today on this floor.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was
right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a
just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the
next. It was the deep knowledge--and pray God we have not
lost it--that there is a profound moral difference between
the use of force for liberation and the use of force for
conquest. You were here--
He said to the veterans--
to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did
not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. You
all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country
is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because
it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever
devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were
willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your
countries were behind you.
It is thrilling just to read those words again. Yet President Reagan
never spoke about America's enemies belligerently; rather, he spoke
firmly and frankly about the deep divide between our morality and that
of the Soviet Union. In doing so, I think he reawakened in all of us
the belief that every human being has the potential to change history
because history, as Reagan knew, was not by abstract inexorable forces,
but by real live men and women.
It was President Ronald Reagan who came to the defense of the
dissidents in their fight against the Soviet Union and reminded the
world that a single courageous human face, a single courageous voice
can tear down the faceless inhumanity of a massive repressive system
such as the Soviet Union.
The great Soviet dissident and later Israeli leader and human rights
activist Natan Sharansky once shared with me his memory of the moment
he first learned of President Reagan's 1982 speech before the British
Parliament, the speech in which Reagan described the Soviet Union as an
evil empire.
There were some in this country who thought that was much too stark
and disrespectful. But Sharansky, who was a prisoner for nearly a
decade in the Soviet gulag, described to me how word of Reagan's speech
spread through that heartless prison and he and his fellow dissidents
tapped on walls and talked through pipes and even toilets to
communicate the extraordinary news that the leader of the free world
had spoken the truth, a truth, as Sharansky put it, ``that burned
inside the heart of each and every one of us.''
Indeed, President Reagan was willing to expose an inconvenient truth
about the Soviet Union that unsettled and unnerved some of his
contemporaries who feared his undiplomatic words were a threat to
stability. The truth is, they were. President Reagan refused to accept
the stability of an authoritarian status quo that consigned millions of
people to live under perpetual tyranny. So he did challenge the
stability of the Berlin Wall and the gulag as the Stasi. In doing so,
his moral courage helped inspire the men and women who brought down the
Iron Curtain and expanded the frontiers of freedom.
In his approach to foreign policy, President Reagan embodied that
quintessentially American combination of idealism and pragmatism. He
understood what America was about, which is freedom and opportunity. He
fought to extend those great values here at home and throughout the
world.
In his final words to the Nation as our President, in a radio address
on that January morning 22 years ago, President Reagan shared a story
about a meeting Winston Churchill had with a group of American
journalists in 1952. It was a time when many doubted whether the West
could meet the challenges of the Cold War and prevail.
Churchill asked the reporters:
What other nation in history, when it became supremely
powerful, has had no thought of territorial aggrandizement,
no ambition but to use its resources for the good of the
world? I marvel at America's altruism, her sublime
disinterestedness.
Churchill's friend and physician, Lord Moran, described the Prime
Minister's demeanor as he spoke:
All at once I realized Winston was in tears. His eyes were
red. His voice faltered. He was deeply moved.
President Reagan was drawn to that story in his final radio address
to the Nation 22 years ago because he understood that in that moment
Churchill understood and acknowledged the greatness of the American
spirit. Imperfect though we are as human beings, it is the spirit that
explains who we are and expresses all we aspire to be. He saw America's
devotion to a cause that has defined us for over two centuries, a cause
greater than our own individual self-interest or even national self-
interest very often and that has given an enduring purpose to our
national destiny. That is the cause of human dignity and human freedom.
At a time when we face many challenges both at home and abroad and
when it has, unfortunately, become fashionable to suggest that our best
days as a nation are behind us, President Reagan's optimism and his
abiding faith in America are more important to remember than ever
before. They are as wise as they are true. Our shared national destiny
has always inspired us as Americans and propelled
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us forward together. It is the spirit that Ronald Reagan reinspired in
America at a time of great peril. It is spirit, at this time of peril
here at home and around the world, that can carry us forward and
continue to make us the greatest Nation on Earth and the last best hope
of mankind.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders). The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator
from Connecticut. I am glad I had the opportunity to hear them.
I, too, am here to celebrate Ronald Reagan's life, born 100 years
ago, but also his nearly 50 years of influence on American public
policy. I begin in this way. A few years ago when he was President,
President Reagan attended one of the many Washington press dinners held
here. I think it was the Gridiron dinner. It was well known to 90
percent of the people in the audience that members of the press had a
different point of view on politics than he did, but they liked him
anyway, and they respected him, just as he respected them. I remember
that evening that he strode into the Gridiron dinner smiling and
looking like a million bucks. The press rose and smiled back and
applauded him. President Reagan stood in front of the media until the
applause subsided and then he said:
Thank you very much. I know how hard it is to clap with
your fingers crossed.
The media laughed. They had a wonderful time with President Reagan.
The first thing we think about, those of us who had a chance to know
him--and that was a great many of us--is that Ronald Reagan was a very
friendly, congenial man, an easy person to know, the kind of person one
would enjoy spending time with. He was very comfortable, as we say, in
his own skin. What we saw in private was what everybody else saw in
public.
Ronald Reagan was about more than being friendly and congenial. Each
of us has a personal story of his or her connection to President
Reagan. I have mine, and I wish this as an example.
Sixteen years ago this month I stood, as a great many Members of this
body have, on the front porch of my hometown courthouse. In my case, it
was in Maryville, TN. There I announced my candidacy for President of
the United States. It was an offer the people of the United States did
not accept. My preacher brother-in-law said I should consider that
defeat as a reverse calling. I have, and I have gone on to other
things.
As an example of the influence President Reagan had on my generation
and others, let me read an example of what I said in 1995, 16 years
ago:
Thirty years ago Ronald Reagan, before he was elected to
any public office, made an address called ``A Time For
Choosing.'' He said that in America freedom is our greatest
value, and that then there were two great threats: communism
abroad and big government at home.
Looking back over those last 30 years, I suppose we could
say, one down and one to go. Communism, the evil empire, has
virtually disappeared. But big government at home has become
an arrogant empire, obnoxious and increasingly irrelevant in
a telecommunications age. In every neighborhood in America,
the government in Washington is stepping on the promise of
American Life. The New American Revolution is about lifting
that yoke from the backs of American teachers, farmers,
business men and women, college presidents, and homeless
shelter directors and giving us the freedom to make decisions
for ourselves.
Ronald Reagan put it this way in 1964: ``This is the issue
of the election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self
government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and
confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant
capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan
ourselves.''
That was also the issue of the election in 1994. It will be
the issue of 1996, and for years to come. It took 30 years of
unfashionable principled leadership by the last Republican
Washington outsider who became President to help collapse the
evil empire. Now is a good time to give another Republican
Washington outsider the opportunity to help put some humility
into the arrogant empire in Washington, D.C.
So we see that the issues of 1964, the issues of 1994, the issues of
2010, and most likely the issues of 2012 and 2016 and beyond have a lot
of similarities.
Over that half century, Ronald Reagan was the finest spokesman for
that point of view, the finest and the most persuasive.
We Americans say anything is possible. Nothing symbolizes that more
than the American Presidency. We see it in President Obama today, we
saw it in President Lincoln, we saw it in President Truman, we saw it
in President Eisenhower, and we saw it in Ronald Reagan. No President
symbolized that more in the last half century than President Reagan
did, though. He reminded us of what it means to be an American. He
lifted our spirits, he made us proud, he strengthened our character,
and he taught us a great many lessons. We celebrate the centennial of
his birth and the half century of his influence in public life.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Ronald Reagan's
speech ``A Time for Choosing,'' given on October 27, 1964, which
launched him into public debate in the United States.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Ronald Reagan--``A Time for Choosing''
(October 27, 1964)
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening.
The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television
programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script.
As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own
words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we
face in the next few weeks.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have
seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues
confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this
campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election
are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has
been used, ``We've never had it so good.''
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity
isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the
future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden
that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents
out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax
collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend
17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in.
We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years.
We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve
months, and now our national debt is one and a half times
bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the
world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we
don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion
dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939
will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among
us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or
son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this
is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they
mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace?
There can be no real peace while one American is dying some
place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the
most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long
climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we
lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of
ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that
those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its
happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we
still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the
Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a
Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and
in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the
other and said, ``We don't know how lucky we are.'' And the
Cuban stopped and said, ``How lucky you are? I had someplace
to escape to.'' And in that sentence he told us the entire
story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape
to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people,
that it has no other source of power except the sovereign
people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all
the long history of man's relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in
our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the
American revolution and confess that a little intellectual
elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us
better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a
left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such
thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down--[up]
man's old--old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom
consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of
totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their
humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for
security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the
``Great Society,'' or as we were told a few days ago by the
President, we must accept a greater government activity in
the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more
explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the
things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not
Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that
say, ``The cold war
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will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic
socialism.'' Another voice says, ``The profit motive has
become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the
welfare state.'' Or, ``Our traditional system of individual
freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the
20th century.'' Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford
University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to
the President as ``our moral teacher and our leader,'' and he
says he is ``hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power
imposed on him by this antiquated document.'' He must ``be
freed,'' so that he ``can do for us'' what he knows ``is
best.'' And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate
spokesman, defines liberalism as ``meeting the material needs
of the masses through the full power of centralized
government.''
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the
people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this
country, as ``the masses.'' This is a term we haven't applied
to ourselves in America. But beyond that, ``the full power of
centralized government''--this was the very thing the
Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that
governments don't control things. A government can't control
the economy without controlling people. And they know when a
government sets out to do that, it must use force and
coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those
Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions,
government does nothing as well or as economically as the
private sector of the economy.
Now, we have no better example of this than government's
involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since
1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth
of farming in America is responsible for 85 percent of the
farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free
market and has known a 21 percent increase in the per capita
consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of
farming--that's regulated and controlled by the federal
government. In the last three years we've spent 43 dollars in
the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we
don't grow.
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as
President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his
homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've
had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these
government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic
administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension
of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now
free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to
imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the
federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for
the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them
to other individuals. And contained in that same program was
a provision that would have allowed the federal government to
remove 2 million farmers from the soil.
At the same time, there's been an increase in the
Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for
every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't
tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria
disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left
shore.
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has
repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but
how--who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat
farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed
it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat
to the farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the
assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are]
so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few
government planners decide it should be. In a program that
takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such
spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar
building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to
make way for what government officials call a ``more
compatible use of the land.'' The President tells us he's now
going to start building public housing units in the
thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the
hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the
Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing
units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For
three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of
unemployment through government planning, and the more the
plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the
Area Redevelopment Agency.
They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed
area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the
14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit
in personal savings in their banks. And when the government
tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing
beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat
man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So
they're going to solve all the problems of human misery
through government and government planning. Well, now, if
government planning and welfare had the answer--and they've
had almost 30 years of it--shouldn't we expect government to
read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be
telling us about the decline each year in the number of
people needing help? The reduction in the need for public
housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater;
the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that
17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that
was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're
told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-
stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a
year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark
depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars
on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that
if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9
million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600
dollars a year. And this added to their present income should
eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only
running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that
someplace there must be some overhead.
Now--so now we declare ``war on poverty,'' or ``You, too,
can be a Bobby Baker.'' Now do they honestly expect us to
believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion
we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have--and
remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just
duplicates existing programs--do they believe that poverty is
suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I
should explain there is one part of the new program that
isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now going
to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by
reinstituting something like the old CCC camps (Civilian
Conservation Corps), and we're going to put our young people
in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find
that we're going to spend each year just on room and board
for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can
send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don't get me wrong.
I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile
delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help?
Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He
told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce.
She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under
his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer
earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an
80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in
the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from
two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very
thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-
gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian
goals. They say we're always ``against'' things--we're never
``for'' anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that
they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't
so.
Now--we're for a provision that destitution should not
follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end
we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the
problem.
But we're against those entrusted with this program when
they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings,
when they charge that any criticism of the program means that
we want to end payments to those people who depend on them
for a livelihood. They've called it ``insurance'' to us in a
hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared
before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare
program. They only use the term ``insurance'' to sell it to
the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for
the general use of the government, and the government has
used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the
actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and
admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298
billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no
cause for worry because as long as they have the power to
tax, they could always take away from the people whatever
they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing
just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average
salary--his Social Security contribution would, in the open
market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220
dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He
could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy
that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so
lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a
sound basis, so that people who do require those payments
will find they can get them when they're due--that the
cupboard isn't bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features
that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to
be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made
provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a
widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits
supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you
and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be
under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for
telling our senior citizens that no one in this country
should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But
I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of
need, into a compulsory government program, especially when
we have such examples, as was announced last week, when
France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt.
They've come to the end of the road.
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he
suggested that our government give up its program of
deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get
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your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's
worth, and not 45 cents worth?
I think we're for an international organization, where the
nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're
against subordinating American interests to an organization
that has become so structurally unsound that today you can
muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly
among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the
world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of
assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a
colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never
open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the
Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our
material blessings with those nations which share in our
fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money
government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not
socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19
countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion
dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht
for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek
undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials.
We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no
electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7
billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving
foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So
governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to
eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.
Federal employees--federal employees number two and a half
million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the
nation's work force employed by government. These
proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations
have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many
of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's
property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a
formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize
and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of
that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted
his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar
judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at
auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to
others to make the system work.
Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman
Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist
Party ticket, said, ``If Barry Goldwater became President, he
would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.'' I
think that's exactly what he will do.
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas
isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism
with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr.
Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before
the American people and charged that the leadership of his
Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and
Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and
Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never
returned til the day he died--because to this day, the
leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that
honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor
Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of
private property or business to impose socialism on a people.
What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the--or the
title to your business or property if the government holds
the power of life and death over that business or property?
And such machinery already exists. The government can find
some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to
prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment.
Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural,
unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of
government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close
to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these
issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a
contest between two men--that we're to choose just between
two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy--and in
destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the
ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow
and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been
privileged to know him ``when.'' I knew him long before he
ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you
personally I've never known a man in my life I believed so
incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered
politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had
ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance
for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits
before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan
for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an
employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provides nursing
care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When
Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he
climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down
there.
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before
Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los
Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona
for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of
servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And
then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, ``Any men
in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-
and-such,'' and they went down there, and there was a
fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every
day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he'd
load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their
homes, fly back over to get another load.
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this
is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who
was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were
understandably impatient, but he said, ``There aren't many
left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I
care.'' This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son,
``There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and
fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock,
with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you
have a real start.'' This is not a man who could carelessly
send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of
this campaign that makes all the other problems I've
discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that
must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of
the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution
of peace without victory. They call their policy
``accommodation.'' And they say if we'll only avoid any
direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil
ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted
as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex
problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy
answer--but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our
elected officials that we want our national policy based on
what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of
the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a
billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain,
``Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own
skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave
masters.'' Alexander Hamilton said, ``A nation which can
prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and
deserves one.'' Now let's set the record straight. There's no
argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's
only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have
it in the next second--surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other
than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the
greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our
well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their
policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no
choice between peace and war, only between fight or
surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back
and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the
ultimatum. And what then--when Nikita Khrushchev has told his
people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them
that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and
someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum,
our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will
have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and
economically. He believes this because from our side he's
heard voices pleading for ``peace at any price'' or ``better
Red than dead,'' or as one commentator put it, he'd rather
``live on his knees than die on his feet.'' And therein lies
the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the
rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and
peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this
begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have
told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the
pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the
patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and
refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs
of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave
their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in
vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple
answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, ``There
is a price we will not pay.'' ``There is a point beyond which
they must not advance.'' And this--this is the meaning in the
phrase of Barry Goldwater's ``peace through strength.''
Winston Churchill said, ``The destiny of man is not measured
by material computations. When great forces are on the move
in the world, we learn we're spirits--not animals.'' And he
said, ``There's something going on in time and space, and
beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not,
spells duty.''
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of
man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step
into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has
faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and
the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and
determine our own destiny.
Thank you very much.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record as well
remarks I made in Orange County, CA,
[[Page S517]]
on October 28, 1994, on the 30th anniversary of the speech ``A Time for
Choosing.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
30th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan Revolution
(By Lamar Alexander, Oct. 28, 1994)
I don't think Ronald Reagan would mind if before we get
down to business, I told you one Minnie Pearl story. They are
pretty good friends. Most people who have run for governor of
Tennessee in the past 30-40 years have done so in order to
live next door to Minnie Pearl. Her house is next door to the
governor's mansion. And, you learn very quickly living next
door to Minnie that you don't try to tell a better story than
she can; because, she'll one up you.
I was telling her after I left office about how people
would look at me, but they could not remember why they knew
they had seen me before. One man up in the mountains walked
up and stared me in the face and said, ``Ain't you
Alexander?'' I said, ``Yes, sir.'' He stared a while longer
and said, ``Well, you sure don't favor yourself.''
Minnie said, ``Well, let me tell you what happened to me. .
. . I was in the elevator in Opryland Hotel, minding my own
business, and this tourist from California gets on and looks
me up and down and says, `I'll bet a lot of people tell you
that you look like Minnie Pearl.' '' She said, ``and I said
very sweetly, `Yes, sir, they do,' and, he looked me down a
while longer and said, `And, I'll bet it makes you mad, don't
it?' ''
It was reported that several Goldwater aides warned against
letting Ronald Reagan make a speech this summer. He'll be
inflammatory, they said. Sen. Goldwater intervened and made
sure he didn't. And, Ronald Reagan didn't disappoint those
aides. He began in this way, ``I am going to speak of
controversial things and I make no apologies for this.'' The
speech that we saw has made a landmark. It defines the things
we Americans value most, our freedom. And, what most menaced
that freedom, communists abroad and big government at home.
It became a call to arms for conservatives, a rallying point,
a promise of hope for the future.
We are here tonight less than two weeks before another
election, one that has taken on all the characteristics of a
presidential election. It's become a referendum on the
direction of our country. I would like to talk tonight for a
few minutes about what the speech, ``A Time for Choosing,''
has meant to America during the last thirty years and what
lessons we might learn for the next thirty.
If I had to put it in one sentence, what we have learned
from the last thirty, that the principle threat to freedom
abroad has been defeated and the principle of threat at home
has gotten more menacing. The evil empire in the Kremlin has
collapsed but the government in Washington has become an
arrogant empire; spreading its tentacles into our everyday
lives.
I was a student at New York University on October 27, 1964.
And, to tell you the truth, I wasn't paying much attention to
politics. So, I was struck when I read what we just saw, what
Ronald Reagan said about the 1964 campaign. He said, ``This
is the issue of the election whether we believe in our
capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the
American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual
elite in a far distant Capitol can plan our lives better than
we can plan our lives ourselves.''
Replace the words ``little intellectual elite'' with an
arrogant empire and you have the issue of this election, the
one in 10 days, as well. In 1964, Ronald Reagan's talk of
peace overseas could have just as easily applied to the
dangers of the approaching encroachments of Washington, DC,
into our everyday lives at home. He said it. ``Every lesson
of history teaches us that the greater risk lies in people.
There is a price we will not pay. There is a point beyond
which our enemies must not advance. You and I have a
rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children
this, the last best hope of man on earth that we will
sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of
darkness.''
Those were dramatic words, but these are dramatic events
with dramatic consequences. Sometimes we forget just how
unproven Ronald Reagan's thinking generally was. Even after
he was president. At Westminster, he predicted that the
Soviet Union would wind up in the ash heap of history. No
other world leader would say anything like that.
I remember one Sunday in 1984, when I was sitting in a
church in Amsterdam, our family had just left Anne Frank's
house and were remembering the stories how on another Sunday
morning the German tanks had unexpectedly arrived in 1940.
I was listening to the minister in that church in
Amsterdam denounce the cold war policies, as he said, of
Reagan and Begin and Hitler.
In 1987, when Pres. Reagan was preparing for his speech at
the Brandenburg gate, some nervous aides wanted to eliminate
the phrase, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' They were
afraid it was so unlikely that it would seem un-presidential.
Pres. Reagan told Martin Anderson, not long ago, that, ``When
I called them the evil empire I did it on purpose. I wanted
them to know that we saw them for what they were.''
The evil empires collapsed; the Berlin Wall has come down.
And we should never forget that Germany would not be united,
that we and the Russians would not be dismantling weapons of
mass destruction, that Arafat and Rapine would not have
shaken hands, if the Cold War hadn't ended, and the Cold War
would not have ended unless President Reagan had persisted in
that bold and unfashionable thinking that he outlined in his
speech in 1964.
Unfortunately, the second great menace that Ronald Reagan
pointed to in 1964 is if anything more menacing. He said in
'64, ``Our government continues to spend $17 million a day
more than our government takes in.'' 30 years later our
government spends $643 million a day more than our government
takes in. Ronald Reagan said in 1964, we haven't balanced our
budget for 28 out of the last 34 years. Well, that is still
true today, except it is 57 out of the last 64.
But we don't need statistics to prove that, we see that in
our everyday lives. I saw it this summer. Between the 4th of
July and Labor Day when I did something many Americans do, I
drove across the country. I came to Orange County on that
drive. I spent many of the nights on that drive with families
I had never met before; eating supper; staying up late
talking.
Driving across America, there are several ways to take the
temperature of the country. Bumper stickers, for example. One
of them on Interstate 10 in Louisiana said, ``Make welfare as
hard to get as a building permit.'' Another one, in Florida
said, ``I love my country but I fear my government!' But, as
I drove along, I found a better way to take the temperature
of the country. And that was by asking a question of the
families with whom I stayed, and tonight I would like to ask
you to ask yourselves that question, and it is this:
``Looking ahead 30 years, do you believe your children and
your grandchildren will have more opportunities growing up in
this country than you have had?''
When I asked that question this summer, I got a lot of long
pauses and most people were afraid to say yes. This
ambivalence about our future, if it is allowed to persist,
will destroy what is special about this country. Namely, our
almost irrational belief in the unlimited future of America
and that every one of us, no matter where we come from, no
matter what our station in life is, has a chance to have a
piece of that future. On my drive, I was reminded that we
Americans know exactly what is causing that loss of optimism.
It is, first, the government in Washington, and it is,
second, our drift away from standards and principles and
values that have made this such a remarkable country in the
first place.
This is not something that I just heard at Republicans
dinners. Father Jerry Hill, for example, runs a homeless
shelter in Dallas, Texas. He won't take a federal grant
anymore because he has grown tired of filling out forms all
day Friday to justify what he has done Monday through
Thursday. He says federal grants have made a nation of liars
of us; applying for money that we don't need to spend for
things we do need. And he is absolutely outraged that the
government in Washington is paying $446 a month in Social
Security disability benefits to drug addicts. He says, ``I
can't help it when they have that kind of support for their
addiction.''
Whether it is a school board member, whether it is a small
business man or woman, a teacher, a hospital director, a
housing project director, a former Cherokee Indian Chief--I
have visited them all and they have had it up to here. They
have had it up to here, and they can hardly say in civil
terms how much they resent, not just the meddling, but the
arrogance of the government in Washington, DC.
Let me give you an example close to home. Many of you are
candidates for the school boards of Orange County. I salute
you. I cannot think of anything more important, but, let me
ask you this in very blunt terms: Do you really believe that
you are too stupid to set the weapons policy for the schools
of Orange County? Well, your United States Senator does and
most of the Congress agrees with her.
In fact, the entire Congress passed a thousand-page
education bill that takes a great many decisions from you, if
you should be elected: The decision about what to say in a
parent/teacher conference. The decision about how much
school choice could be granted to parents. A definition of
what a family is. The decision about whether text books
should be replaced with new textbooks that focus on gender
equity as defined by the new Assistant Secretary of
Education. That all passed in the last week of this
session of this Congress. Congress decided all of it and
established in addition a sort of national school board,
and they are not even embarrassed about it.
President Clinton and Senator Feinstein held a press
conference here in California to say, in effect, that they
were proud of the fact that they had taken away the freedom
of a thousand California school boards to assign a weapons
policy for 7,100 schools and more than 5 million children.
Senator Kennedy and President Clinton held a press conference
of their own in Massachusetts. And for what? To pat
themselves on the back for taking away your freedoms to make
decisions in your own neighborhoods in your own schools about
how to educate your own children.
Here is the most powerful lesson of ``A Time for Choosing''
in the last 30 years. With the evil empire, President Reagan
did exactly what a president ought to do. He solved
[[Page S518]]
the menace to freedom. He put aside less important issues. He
developed a strategy. He persuaded at least half the people
he was right. He persisted. He threw himself unfashionably
into it until he wore everyone else out, and then he
succeeded.
Now we must do the same at home. We should train our sights
on the arrogant empire in Washington, DC. That is the issue
of this election, and it will be issue of 1996 as well.
In 1992, Bill Clinton had a wonderful opportunity. This
country was ready for a new generation of leadership; it
wanted to look outside Washington for its answers. President
Clinton gave us five minutes of hope and then proceeded to
lead us in exactly the wrong direction. Washington taxes,
Washington healthcare, a national school board, reinventing
everything in Washington, DC. He has help in 2 years to
create an even more arrogant empire. Which is why in
California, and why in this country, we will be having a
Republican sweep in 10 days.
Whether that dream comes, something else will have been
created which is an opportunity a mile wide for the
Republican Party. Because the voters will then turn around to
us and say, ``Well, what are you guys for?'' And we should
not kid ourselves. The voters are not going to be expecting
too much from us because our Republican agenda has either
been non-existent, or too tempered, so much so that it sounds
like usually that about all we can do is be against what the
Democrats are for.
So let us remember Ronald Reagan's example and his boldness
and train our sights on the menace of freedom at home in the
same way he trained his sights on the mask of freedom abroad.
For example, instead of congressional reform at the margins,
I say we should cut their pay and send them home. I mean by
that that the United States Congress should spend six months
in Washington; six months at home and have half as much pay.
Let them take a real job, live alongside the rest of us. If
you want a Congress of citizens who's more responsive to you
than to the lobbyist in Washington, this is the way to do it.
The eleven states with the lowest taxes have a legislature
that is limited to meeting for 90 days. That would be one
thing.
Instead of reforming welfare in Washington, DC; let's end
welfare in Washington, DC. Send them home and send the tax
base with them back to the states. Send most of elementary
and secondary education and jobs-related there as well. Send
some of the departments and agencies, too. No more
entitlements, period. Not one more law that imposes an
unfunded mandate on a state government or a federal
government. Term limits; balanced budget; line-item veto; a
wholesale review of the federal rule making authority and an
education bill that would free local schools from Washington
control; privatize all public housing. All of this will
increase our freedoms at home by preventing someone in
Washington, DC, from making those decisions for us.
An agenda like this will catch plenty of flak. Remember
Reagan and Begin and Hitler. Already the Washington
establishment has said it can't imagine a dumber idea than a
citizen Congress. I cannot count the number of nights that I
have been in editorial board meetings and been accused of
trying to destroy public schools because I suggested that at
least poor children ought to have more of the same choices of
the best schools--the ones that the members of the editorial
board send their children to.
Approved thinking is not always right thinking. We'll be
accused of turning and taking America back to the dark ages.
We have already been accused by the Democrats in this
election of going as far back as the days of Ronald Reagan.
If that is an issue on Election Day, I think I know how the
referendum will come out. But, eventually, we will be seen
for what we are. Painters of a picture of America's future
based on freedom and opportunity.
I have this prediction to make. The arrogant empire at home
will also be consigned to the ash heap. It will for a while
be unfashionable to say this and it will seem overly dramatic
to suggest that calling a halt to this ``too big for its
britches'' government in Washington, DC, is a rendezvous with
destiny for this generation but I believe that it is so. And,
just as the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't solve all of
our problems abroad--in fact it created a much more uncertain
and unstable world that we have yet to learn how to grapple
with--the devolution of responsibility from Washington, DC,
to families, to churches, neighborhoods and schools will put
plenty of problems in your hands; the problems that trouble
us the most every day. But that is where the responsibility
ought to be.
I was reminded every day, on that drive across America,
that we know exactly what to do in this country to put our
nation back on track. We will have to do it community by
community; family by family; school board by school board. In
Murfreesboro, TN, families now have choices of schools 12
hours a day; all day, every year at no extra cost to the
taxpayer. Reuben Greenberg, the police chief of Charleston,
SC, has made even the housing projects as safe as any part of
Charleston now that the government lets him kick criminals
out of the housing projects. Reverend Henry Delaney has
cleaned up the crack houses on 32nd street in Savannah and he
knows what to do about welfare if someone in Washington will
stop reinventing it long enough to ask him. And, Dan
Biederman is taking whole blocks of New York City and with a
private company making those blocks safe and clean and free
from homeless. My own answer to the question, ``Looking ahead
30 years, do you believe your children and grandchildren will
have more opportunity growing up in this country than you
have had?'' is absolutely yes, because I am going to do
everything in my power to see that they do, because that was
done for me.
When I was appointed Secretary of Education, the New York
Times felt obligated to write that, Mr. Alexander grew up in
a lower-middle class family in the mountains of Eastern
Tennessee. That was alright with me, but not, I discovered,
when I called home the next week, alright with my mother, who
was literally reading Thessalonians to gain strength for how
to deal with this slur on the family. ``We never thought of
ourselves that way,'' she said. ``You had a library card from
the day you were three and music lessons from the day you
were four; you had everything you needed that was
important.''
And, I also had a grandfather who ran away from home when
he was eight; somehow got to Oklahoma and became a railroad
engineer and finally retired back to the mountains just in
time to instruct us growing up in Maryville, ``Aim for the
top there's more room there.'' So we grew up thinking we
could be the railroad engineer, or the English teacher, or
the school board member, or the principal or the governor or
even the President of the United States.
If some president had come on the radio offering me and my
friends growing up a government credit card with benefits for
the rest of my life, my grandfather would have thrown his
boot through the radio because that was not his idea of
America's future. When I was 5 years old, I visited my
grandfather who was then a switch engineer in Newton, Kansas,
a division point of the Santa Fe Railway. His job was to push
and pull those huge belching steam engines into the round
house put them on the turntable, turn them around and head
them in the right direction.
Our country today is like one of those steam engines. It is
headed in exactly the wrong direction, and in the election 10
days from now, we have to slow it down and get it on the
turntable and turn it around and, at least by 1996, get it
headed in the right direction. That is the challenge for our
party and for our country.
I couldn't conclude this evening without acknowledging the
magic of Ronald Reagan. The storyteller in this case was at
least as important as the story. The speech would have just
been a speech in anyone else's hands. He made sure he had his
feet planted firmly on the ground before he entered public
life and he kept them there. He knew and we knew where he
stood. He assumed no false importance.
He seemed to know his job was not to change everyone's mind
but to speak the mind of the voters, of the citizens, and not
be swayed by elites who told ordinary people they were too
stupid to know what to do. He was firm and civil and eloquent
and optimistic in his presidency. He appealed to the best of
us. He knew and knows the value of a good story. And he knew,
as President, that with the right purpose in that office, if
he threw everything he had into it, he could wear everybody
else out. That is how he helped to defeat the evil empire
that threatened freedom in his generation and that is how in
this generation that we, standing on Ronald Reagan's
shoulders, can finish his work and expand our freedoms by
dismantling the arrogant empire at home.
Thank you.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print in the
Record remarks I made in tribute to President Reagan in June of 2004.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Senate Floor Remarks of Sen. Lamar Alexander--Tribute to Former
President Ronald Reagan
(June 7, 2004)
Mr. President, a few years ago when Ronald Reagan was
President of the United States, he attended one of the many
press dinners which are held. I think it was the Gridiron
Dinner. I think it is well known that maybe 90 percent of the
press corps in Washington had a different point of view on
issues than Pres. Reagan did, but they liked him anyway, and
they respected him and he had fun with them, just as they did
with him.
I remember on that evening he strode into the Gridiron
Dinner looking like a million dollars, smiling big. The press
rose, smiling back, applauding. Pres. Reagan stood in front
of them until it subsided, and then he said to his
adversaries in the media, ``Thank you very much--I know how
hard it is to clap with your fingers crossed.'' And they
laughed, and they had a wonderful time with Pres. Reagan.
The first thing we think about, those of us who had any
opportunity to get to know him--a great many of us--was that
Ronald Reagan was a very friendly man. He was a congenial
person, an easy person to know, the kind of person you want
to spend a lot of time with, if you had the opportunity, and
that what you saw in private was what everyone else saw in
public.
Howard Baker, the former majority leader of the Senate when
Ronald Reagan was president, got to know him especially well.
And
[[Page S519]]
then in 1987, Pres. Reagan invited former Sen. Baker to come
to be his chief of staff, which he was for nearly two years.
I remember Sen. Baker telling me that, to his surprise,
when his 9 a.m. meetings came every morning with Pres.
Reagan, he discovered that Mr. Reagan had a funny little
story to tell to Sen. Baker, his chief of staff. What
surprised Sen. Baker even more was Pres. Reagan expected Sen.
Baker to have a funny little story to tell back. So for that
two years, virtually every morning at 9 a.m., when the
president of the United States and the chief of staff of the
White House met, they swapped funny little stories. It is
very reassuring to me that two men who have maybe the two
biggest jobs in the world were comfortable enough with
themselves, each other, and their responsibilities to begin
the day in that sort of easy way. That is the part of Ronald
Reagan we think more about.
Another part of Ronald Reagan which I think is often
overlooked is that he was a man of big ideas. I would say
intellectual, although I guess there is a little difference
between being devoted to ideals and being intellectual but
not much difference.
Unlike most people who are candidates for president of the
United States, Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches.
When he had a few minutes, he would sit in the back of a
campaign airplane and make notes on cards in the shorthand
that he had. His former aide, Marty Anderson, has written a
book about that and told that, to a great extent, Ronald
Reagan's words were his own words, ideas he expressed or
ideas he gathered himself and ideas he had thought through
and wanted to promulgate.
Maybe that is partly why he seemed so comfortable with
himself when he finally entered public life. He came to it
late in life. He was age 55 when he became governor of
California, so by then he knew what he thought, and he had a
sense of purpose, and he knew what he wanted to do.
I got an idea of that kind of big thinking when I went to
see Pres. Reagan in my third year as governor, his first year
as president in 1981. I talked to him about a big swap which
I thought would help our country.
I suggested, the Federal Government take over all of
Medicaid and let the State and local governments take over
all responsibility for kindergarten through 12th grade. That
would make it clear, I said, where the responsibility lies.
You cannot fix schools from Washington, and it would make
more efficient our health care system if we did things that
way. He liked the idea. It fit his unconventional brand of
thinking. He advocated it. It was a little too revolutionary
for most people in Washington in the early 1980s.
He had the same sort of unconventional attitude toward
national defense policy. Many people overlooked the fact that
Ronald Reagan did not just want us to have as many nuclear
weapons as the Soviet empire did; he wanted to get rid of
nuclear weapons. He saw them as wrong, as bad, and he wanted
a world without nuclear weapons. Instead of mutual assured
destruction, which was the doctrine at the time, he built up
our strength so we could begin to reduce nuclear weapons and
then unilaterally begin to do it before the Soviets did,
hoping they would then follow. We can see the results.
At the time, some people said Ronald Reagan was naive to
think we could transfer power from Washington, from an
arrogant empire at home or naive to think we could face down
an evil empire abroad. And especially naive to think our
policy should be based upon getting rid of nuclear weapons.
It turned out Ronald Reagan saw further than most of those
critics did.
Perhaps his most famous speech, not my favorite speech--my
favorite speech is the one we heard a lot about this weekend,
20 years ago at Normandy, which moved the whole world to
tears and reminded Americans why we are Americans and what we
fought for--but his most famous speech may be the one in 1987
at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin where he said, ``Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''
Earlier this year, I visited Berlin with John Kornblum who
at the time was U.S. minister and deputy commandant in the
American sector of West Berlin where tanks challenged tanks
and white crosses marked grave sites of those who were killed
trying to escape over the wall from East Berlin. Mr. Kornblum
talked about the development of that speech that Ronald
Reagan gave that day. Those words, or the thought, ``tear
down this wall,'' went into the speech at an early stage.
Some fought to keep it in. Many fought to take it out. Those
who had thought Ronald Reagan was wrong to say the Soviet
Union was an evil empire were not anxious for him to say,
``tear down this wall.''
Some suggested that Pres. Reagan try his hand at German as
Pres. Kennedy had in a memorable speech at the Berlin Wall in
the early 1960s. Some suggested that the speech should not be
made at the Brandenburg Gate. That was too provocative, Mr.
Kornblum remembers. But the speech was made at the
Brandenburg Gate, and Mr. Reagan did keep his words in that
speech. He did make his point, and his point was clear, ``Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''
For those of us who had a chance to see the new countries
of Eastern Europe and their enthusiasm for freedom and for a
free market system, we can see the legacy of Ronald Reagan
and his unconventional thinking.
I think it is important for us to remember that this genial
president was a man of ideas, of all the presidents I have
worked with, as much a man of ideas as any one of those
presidents.
Ronald Reagan also taught us something about leadership. I
recall in 1980 when he and Mrs. Reagan visited the Tennessee
governor's mansion during the presidential campaign. I had
not known him very well. He had served as governor. He was
several years older. He was from the west. It was really my
first chance to meet him. After one hour or an hour-and-a-
half of breakfast with him the next morning, I remember going
away thinking this man has a better concept of the presidency
than anyone I have ever been privileged to meet.
Ronald Reagan understood what George Reedy said in his
book, ``The Twilight of the Presidency,'' is the definition
of presidential leadership: First, see an urgent need;
second, develop a strategy to meet the need; and, third,
persuade at least half the people that you are right. Ronald
Reagan was as good as anyone at persuading at least half the
people that he was right. He taught that and he also taught
us the importance of proceeding from principles.
Sometimes we are described in Washington these days as
being too ideological, too uncompromising, too partisan.
Pres. Reagan was a principled man. He operated from
principles in all of his decisions, insofar as I knew. He
advocated his principles as far as he could take them, but he
recognized that the great decisions that we make here are
often conflicts between principles on which all of us agree.
It might be equal opportunity versus the rule of law. And
once we have argued our principle and the solution, and
strategy has been taken as far as it could go, if we get, as
he said 75, 80, or 85 percent of what we advocated, well,
then that is a pretty good job.
So, he was very successful because he argued from
principles. He argued strenuously. He was good at persuading
at least half the people he was right. Then he was willing to
accept a conclusion because most of our politics is about the
conflict of principles.
There is another lesson that he taught us, and that was to
respect the military. Now, that seems unnecessary to say in
the year 2004 where we have a volunteer military that is
better than any military we have ever had in our history;
when we have witnessed the thousands of acts of courage,
charity, kindness, and ingenuity in Iraq and Afghanistan
recently; when the men and women of our National Guard and
reserves are also being called up. We have a lot of respect
for our military.
In 1980, we were showing a lot less respect for the men and
women of our military. I remember riding with Pres. Reagan in
a car in Knoxville during the 1980 campaign. As we pulled out
of the airport by the National Guard unit, there were a
number of the soldiers waving at him, understanding and
sensing that he respected them. He turned to me and said
something like this: I wish we could think of some way to
honor these men and women more. He said we used to do that in
the movies in the 1930s and 1940s. We would make movies
honoring men and women in the military and that is how we
showed our respect for them.
Well, he did find a way to honor them during his presidency
in the 1980s, and by the time he left at the end of that
decade, there was no question that the American people
remembered to honor the men and women in the military.
There is one other aspect of Pres. Reagan's leadership that
I would like to mention, which is probably the most important
aspect of the American character, and that is the belief that
anything is possible. The idea that we uniquely believe in
this country, and people all around the world think we are a
little odd for believing it, is that no matter where you come
from, no matter what race you are, no matter what color your
skin, if you come here and work hard, anything is possible.
That is why we subscribe to ideals such as all men are
created equal, even though we know achieving that goal will
always be a work in progress, and we may never reach it. That
is why we say we will ``pay any price, bear any burden,'' as
Pres. Kennedy said, to defend peace, even though we know that
is a work in progress, and we may never reach it.
That is why we say more recently we want to leave no child
behind when it comes to learning to read. We know that is a
work in progress, and we may not reach it, but that is our
goal.
We Americans say that anything is possible, and nothing
symbolizes that more than the American presidency. And no
president has symbolized that more in the last century than
Ronald Reagan. He has reminded us of what it means to be an
American. He lifted our spirits, he made us proud, he
strengthened our character, and he taught us a great many
lessons.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I rise to join with my colleagues. I
appreciate what the Senator from Tennessee had to say about our former
President, as we look upon his 100th birthday coming up this weekend
and all of us pay tribute to the legacy he gave this country and the
tremendous contributions he made during his time in office.
We all have different remembrances of his Presidency. I was a
sophomore in college when he was elected to his first term as
President. It was the first election in which I had the opportunity to
[[Page S520]]
vote. I guess I could say I was sort of coming of age at the time he
was coming on the national political stage. He had run for President 4
years earlier.
I remember, as a young person, beginning to pay a little bit of
attention to politics, at the time being so impressed with the
attributes that characterized him personally and were primarily
responsible for his tremendous success as President and for the great
legacy he left behind.
I was someone who grew up in a small town in South Dakota, and my
father and mother had both come through the Great Depression. They were
similar in terms of their remembrances of that period and could
identify in many respects with some of the things President Reagan
talked about.
But he was a person of strong convictions. I think he had a strength
of conviction that was really appealing to a lot of Americans. He was
someone who believed in American exceptionalism. He understood that the
greatness of this country was not in its government institutions but in
its peoples and its ideals.
He was someone who was willing to confront the threats we faced
around the world. The way he took on the threat of communism and
promoted freedom and democracy around the globe is something for which
he will always be remembered, not only here at home but by other
countries around the world.
I think he possessed, in many respects, a lot of the qualities we
value in the Midwest. He was a very humble person. I think his humility
is something that really stood out. He was always referred to as
``Dutch Reagan'' in his growing up, his formative years. I think the
impact he had on this country was because he saw himself as just an
ordinary American like every other American, and he was able to connect
and identify with the challenges and the opportunities that were facing
Americans across this country at the time.
I think he also possessed, although he was the Governor of
California, a midwestern sensibility that never left. He had, in many
respects, values that, as I said before, many of us in the Midwest find
really important--his belief that you ought to live within your means.
His sort of midwestern bedrock values of individual responsibility were
things he always touched upon, themes he referenced in his remarks. I
think those were the types of qualities that really differentiated him
on the national stage.
I remember, too, as a young person being impressed with his sense of
humor. Often today there are serious matters we deal with, matters of
great gravity and great weight, and they need to be taken with the
right level of seriousness. But he also was able to see the best in
people and to use his sense of humor to connect with people about what
was really distinctive and really unique about America.
I remember the story that was told while we were fighting the Cold
War about the guy in the Soviet Union who went in to buy a car, and he
said: I want to buy a car.
The guy at the transportation bureau said: Well, you can have your
black sedan and you can pick it up 10 years from today.
The guy thought about it for a minute, and he said: Will that be in
the morning or in the afternoon?
The guy at the transportation bureau said: What difference does it
make? It is 10 years from now.
And the guy said: Well, because I have the plumber coming in the
morning.
Ronald Reagan had a way of putting into very simple and
understandable and sometimes humorous terms what was so distinctive and
unique about the American experience. I think that is something that
also really set him apart.
When it came to the big issues of the day, he had a statement he made
that I quote. He said: There are no easy answers, but there are simple
answers. I think oftentimes we face these complex problems, and we
overanalyze a little bit. And the truth is, in a lot of the challenges
we face today, not unlike the times when he was President, there are
not easy answers, but I believe there are simple answers. Those very
basic, core principles and those values that helped shape his
Presidency and the things he never lost sight of are what made him an
effective President. I believe that is a lesson we can apply today.
There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.
When we believe in the greatness of America, when we look at the
foundation of this country--personal freedom, personal liberty, coupled
with individual responsibility--he believed profoundly that you achieve
peace through strength. He was willing to confront communism at a point
in this Nation's history when it posed a great threat to freedom-loving
countries around the world. I think those are the types of qualities
for which President Reagan will be remembered.
As, again, someone who was very impressionable at that time, he was a
great inspiration to public service. I think he represented the very
best of public service. He got into it for all the right reasons. He
understood the importance of what he was doing, the issues with which
he was dealing, but always had an eye toward making a difference and
providing a better future for the next generation. That is a lesson
that I think all of us need to remember: that sometimes we have a
tendency to believe it is about us, it is about today. We always have
to keep an eye on tomorrow, on the future, and what we are doing to
build a better and brighter and more prosperous and stronger nation for
future generations.
When I think about and remember President Reagan as we come upon his
100th birthday, those are the types of things that strike me as really
standing out--his humility, his sense of humor, his belief in American
exceptionalism. Those are what history has already written about him,
but they certainly are permanently impressed upon my mind, my
experience, in my time in public life--just the types of qualities I
want to apply and bring to the work we do in the U.S. Senate.
So I rise along with many of my colleagues today to pay tribute to
our 40th President and to his family. Of course, we thank them for
their great service and sacrifice too, because anybody who has been in
this arena knows the sacrifice that comes with public service. But we
are indeed grateful for his great service to our country, for the way
he impacted so many, both here at home and around the world, and for
the way he continues through his legacy to impact generations of
Americans today.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to speak for a few minutes today
about Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan inspired freedom and changed the world. Maybe nobody
said that better than former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
in a prerecorded eulogy that was played at President Reagan's funeral
at the National Cathedral. I would like to read just a little of that
eulogy. It starts:
We have lost a great president, a great American and a
great man. And--
Mrs. Thatcher said--
I have lost a dear friend.
In his lifetime, Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and
invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what
daunting historic tasks he set for himself. He sought to mend
America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free
world and to free the slaves of communism. These were causes
hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.
Mrs. Thatcher went on:
Yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit.
For Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause--what
Arnold Bennett once called ``the great cause of cheering us
all up.'' His politics had a freshness and optimism that won
converts from every class and every nation--and ultimately
from the very heart of the evil empire.
Yet his humor often had a purpose beyond humor. In the
terrible hours after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes
gave reassurance to an anxious world. They were evidence
that in the aftermath of terror and in the midst of
hysteria, one great heart at least remained sane and
jocular. They were truly grace under pressure.
And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind.
Mrs. Thatcher said:
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Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given
back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his
recovery, ``Whatever time I've got left now belongs to the
Big Fella Upstairs.''
And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan's life was
providential, when we look at what he achieved in the eight
years that followed.
Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired
America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of
freedom.
Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant
economy into an engine of opportunity.
Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the
Soviet Union; he won the Cold War--not only without firing a
shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and
turning them into friends.
Mrs. Thatcher goes on to say:
I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could
improve on his words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva
summit--
Quoting President Reagan--
``Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.''
Mrs. Thatcher said:
Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been
easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new
beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in
trust.
Ronald Reagan's truly ``only in America'' life story began 100 years
ago this weekend.
During his lifetime, he was a Democrat and later a Republican, he was
a liberal and then a conservative, he was a labor union president and
then President of the United States. During his lifetime, he developed
a philosophy of faith, life, and government that Americans understood.
During his Presidency, the people of this country had an
extraordinary understanding of what their President would think and how
their President would react to events and circumstances. The strength
of the certain trumpet, the strength of the clarion call is, I believe,
impossible to overestimate. Knowing how your President, how your leader
views the world and views the circumstances that may meet us in the
world is an incredibly comforting feeling.
In fact, there is an epic Greek fable, more often applied to
President Lincoln, about the fox and the hedgehog. In the epic Greek
fable of the fox and the hedgehog, the fox is wily, the fox is clever,
the fox knows lots of little things, but the hedgehog knows one really
big thing. In that fable and in reality, the fox can never defeat the
hedgehog.
Now, neither Lincoln--I am really not comfortable referring to either
Lincoln or Reagan and characterizing them as a hedgehog, but I am
comfortable characterizing them as men of big ideas, men who understood
the big things, leaders who understood the big things. With President
Lincoln, it was the Union. With President Reagan, it was a focus on the
big things, with an understanding that you measured the circumstances
and events that came up by your view of the big things that guide the
country, that guide us individually, that guide lives and, in fact,
guide the lives of a nation.
President Reagan understood big things. He could quickly evaluate any
issue or challenge through that prism and the prism of those core
values.
Ronald Reagan inspired freedom and changed the world. The centennial
celebration of his birth that begins this week and officially begins
this weekend gives us an opportunity to think about what it was that
made this President great; what it was that puts this President on the
cover of news magazines, in the decade before the centennial, in one
recent cover arm in arm with the current President of the United
States; and what it was that made this extraordinary man so
extraordinary.
I will just say again, Ronald Reagan inspired freedom and changed the
world.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to one of
California's own, President Ronald Reagan.
It has been nearly 7 years since President Reagan passed away, but he
is still fondly remembered by so many in California, across this
country and across the globe.
The first time I met President Reagan was right after I was elected
to Congress in 1982. I was invited to the White House as part of a
large Democratic freshman class, and I wondered how President Reagan
would greet us. After all, he had campaigned hard for a Republican
Congress. When we arrived at the White House, he and First Lady Nancy
Reagan could not have been more warm and gracious to us. I still have
the photo from that evening hanging in my home office.
Ronald Reagan showed all of us that you can disagree without being
disagreeable, and that even if you have sharply different views on some
issues, you can still work to find common ground.
President Reagan once said: ``I've always believed that a lot of the
troubles of the world would disappear if we were talking to each other
instead of about each other.''
He believed if we were all respectful to each other, we could find
those areas of agreement. We could get things done. That was an
important lesson for me and for all of us that evening because, in the
Senate, with the rules of the Senate, the only way to get things done
for our constituents and for our country is by working together.
I believe he had learned this lesson in California, where as a
Republican Governor, he worked with a Democratic State legislature. He
brought that same approach from Sacramento to the Nation's Capital.
As Governor, in keeping with the values and wishes of most
Californians, he helped to establish the Redwood National Park. He
regulated auto emissions to reduce pollution. He opposed the State
proposition that discriminated against teachers based on sexual
orientation. He was willing to reach across party lines and find
consensus.
He continued these efforts to work across the aisle when he became
President. Although there were serious disagreements on important
issues, President Reagan worked closely with a Democratic House to
ratify and sign important arms control agreements, increase investments
in math and science education, and reauthorize the Superfund hazardous
waste cleanup program.
President Reagan was a conservative, but he was not an ideologue. He
fulfilled his campaign promise to appoint the first woman to the
Supreme Court, choosing Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, even though she was considered too moderate
by many conservatives.
Of course, there were many areas of disagreement--from offshore oil
drilling to the role of the national government, to the fight against
AIDS, to policies in Central America. Those disagreements were deep,
but they were never taken personally by President Reagan. He and House
Speaker Tip O'Neill were genuinely fond of each other. They often
shared a drink after work, and they laughed after a day of locking
horns. Their good nature was infectious. It raised the level of comity
throughout the Nation's Capital.
I believe that President Reagan will be remembered for his focus on
freedom for the people behind the Iron Curtain. He saw in Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev a leader he could successfully challenge to
step to the plate. And when President Reagan said, tear down this wall,
he said it directly to Mr. Gorbachev. He touched Mr. Gorbachev, he
touched America, and he touched people all around the world.
After President Reagan passed away, Mr. Gorbachev wrote in the New
York Times: ``Reagan was a man of the right. But, while adhering to his
convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not
dogmatic; he was looking for cooperation. And this was the most
important thing to me: he had the trust of the American people.''
As we honor President Reagan today, I believe the greatest tribute we
can pay is to find a cure for the disease that took his life, took him
away from his loved ones and from the world.
Ten years before his death, Ronald Reagan knew he was battling
Alzheimer's. He knew he was losing the battle. In an act of enormous
courage
[[Page S522]]
and in a handwritten open letter, he told the American people he was
suffering from the illness. He wrote: ``I now begin the journey that
will lead me into the sunset of my life.''
And he movingly wrote: ``I know that for America there will always be
a bright dawn ahead.'' Even in his darkest hour, President Reagan's
eternal optimism shone through.
Nancy Reagan stood by her husband throughout his long ordeal and
protected him in his most vulnerable time. She has become a leading
champion for increased funding for medical research to fight
Alzheimer's and other diseases. She has been brave and courageous in
her advocacy.
In memory of Ronald Reagan, in honor of Nancy Reagan and all of the
families who have lost loved ones to Alzheimer's, we must continue to
seek a brighter dawn for Alzheimer's victims and their families.
As a California Senator, certainly Ronald Reagan is one of our most
famous residents as Governor and then as President. I was in the House
of Representatives while he was the President. Clearly, there were a
lot of disagreements between President Reagan and many of those in
Congress such as myself who didn't believe government was the problem,
which was his definite belief at that time. We certainly had a loyal
opposition, and we certainly worked together when we could.
One of the things that was so interesting to me compared to working
with other Presidents--because I have had the honor of serving for so
long that actually President Obama is the fifth President I have had
the honor of serving with. I went to every State of the Union Address,
all of which were very impressive.
I think the thing about Ronald Reagan that I grew to admire was, as
hard as one might debate with him on his vision of what the priorities
should be--what should we invest in, what was important--when those
debates were over and a decision was made, regardless of who won the
day, we just moved on to the next issue. We tried to find common
ground, and if we didn't we had the respectful debate. It was never
taken personally.
Again, there were many things I disagreed with him about. I remember
being a young Member of Congress at the time when the AIDS epidemic
came out, and I remember I was so frustrated because President Reagan
was very compassionate, but he didn't want to discuss the issue of
AIDS. We had to work very hard with the Surgeon General at the time,
and we finally made a little bit of progress.
So, yes, there were many tough debates. Of course, his presence, his
very sunny presence, his optimism about the country's future was very
important to a Nation that had been torn asunder because of many tough
issues that separated the generations.
I add my voice on this day when we remember former President Ronald
Reagan, someone whom California is very proud of and someone who has
obviously gone down in history for the many things he accomplished,
particularly his rapprochement with the Soviet Union at that time. It
was a big contribution to the world.
Thank you very much.
I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, just over 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan was
inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States. It is hard to
believe that three decades have passed since he stood in front of this
Capitol, just yards away, and announced to this Nation and the world
that America's moment had not passed. It is hard to think that we have
been without him now for over 6 years. I think of him and his
wonderful, lovely wife Nancy quite often. I knew them both very well. I
know Nancy very well to this day. She is a terrific human being, as was
he.
One of my first campaign trips for Ronald Reagan was with Nancy, and
I can tell my colleagues there never was a stronger advocate for her
husband.
As a man, he had the rare combination of good humor and a commitment
to principle. As the leader of his party and as President, he reminded
us of the need for constant recommitment to our constitutional ideas,
and as a couple Ron and Nancy were a pair for the ages. If there was
any doubt, my colleagues have confirmed today in their tributes to
President Reagan on the centennial of his birth that Ronald Reagan
might have passed on, but he is most certainly not forgotten--not by a
long shot.
When Reagan was President, he inspired great reactions from both
parties. I can attest, particularly with respect to my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle, that not all of those reactions were
positive. Yet today's bipartisan celebration of President Reagan's
legacy shows that he has become as much a part of the American story as
his greatest predecessors in office.
Like other great men before him, Ronald Reagan seemed to embody the
times during which he lived. The man himself, his personal story, in
many ways personified America's 20th century.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in the Midwest and became a westerner,
moving to California like so many other of his fellow Americans. The
country he grew up in looked very different from our own today. As
Michael Barone recently reminded us in an article in the Claremont
Review of Books, when America entered the Second World War, one-quarter
of Americans still lived on farms, and half of those were either
without electricity or only recently acquired electricity.
America's population was at the same time both more diffuse and more
concentrated than it is today. America's nonrural population was
clustered in a few great cities. Again, as Barone explained, at the
outbreak of the Second World War, 2 percent of all Americans lived in
Brooklyn, NY. America in the 20th century became a less rural, less
agricultural nation. Yet instead of concentrating in existing urban
centers, new communities grew and suburbs expanded.
That was the story of Ronald Reagan, who was born in tiny Tampico,
IL, population 772 as of the 2000 census, and came to the world's
attention in California, home of suburban life and the American
highway. He became a Californian through and through. He loved his
ranch, and he loved being on the back of a horse. The large landscapes
of California and of the entire West suggested the boundless
opportunity that is afforded those who work hard in this country. It
was there that Ronald Reagan found his professional and political
success. It was where he met Nancy and raised his family, and it is
where he was finally laid to rest.
Ronald Reagan did not have it easy. As he put it, he did not grow up
on the wrong side of the tracks. But he could hear the train. He lived
through the Great Depression. Yet like countless Americans before and
after him, with dogged determination and a good deal of pluck, he
succeeded.
At a time when college was a luxury, Ronald Reagan graduated from
Eureka College. He went on to have a successful career in radio as a
sportscaster. But that was not enough, so he moved to Hollywood where
he became an actor. Of all the roles Ronald Reagan would play, we
eventually identified him most closely with the character of George
Gipp in ``Knute Rockne: All American.'' It should come as little
surprise that we would associate a good Irishman such as Ronald Reagan
with a movie about Notre Dame and the Fighting Irish.
When George Gipp first appears on screen, Knute Rockne, the head
coach of the Irish, is at his wit's end with his team. Seeing Gipp--who
was not a member of the team--lying around, Rockne asked him if he
could go in and run the ball against the varsity. Reagan's Gipp
responded, with an Irish twinkle in his eye: How far? Naturally, he ran
down the field, scored a touchdown, and took his place in Notre Dame
lore.
For Ronald Reagan, like George Gipp, there was no challenge too big.
It is a good thing he thought that way because he faced plenty of
obstacles. With the outbreak of World War II, his promising acting
career was put on hold. Yet he would go on to serve as President of the
Screen Actors Guild,
[[Page S523]]
and later he worked in television as the host of ``General Electric
Theater.'' It was that association with General Electric that sent
Reagan on his path toward the Presidency.
Going on what he called the ``mashed potato circuit,'' he spoke
across the country to the thousands of GE employees, giving what would
later be called ``The Speech.'' Giving these after dinner remarks,
Reagan honed his thoughts about freedom, the size of government, and
the Soviet menace.
In 1964, on the eve of the Presidential election, he would deliver
that speech to the Nation. Senator Barry Goldwater went on to lose that
election in an epic landslide.
Today we know that conservatives might have lost that battle, but
they would ultimately win the war.
A week before the election, Ronald Reagan delivered a taped address--
``A Time for Choosing''--on Goldwater's behalf. He spoke as a partisan
for liberty, and he urged his fellow Americans to join him in that
struggle. He concluded his remarks telling a national television
audience:
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve
for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth.
This speech resonated with the American people. It raised $8 million
for Goldwater, an astronomical sum at the time. More importantly, it
made Ronald Reagan a formidable presence on the political scene.
I knew Barry Goldwater. I knew him well. When I ran for the Senate,
he was one of two people I came to visit in Washington just to get some
advice. I admired him so much, and it was a privilege to serve with
him. The other one was Chuck Grassley who was then in the House, and I
count him as one of my dearest friends on Earth.
Against the odds and conventional wisdom, Ronald Reagan ran for
Governor of California in 1966. The California establishment made the
mistake of underestimating this actor from the Midwest, and he went on
to beat his more liberal primary opponent and the popular incumbent
Governor.
Underestimating Reagan was a mistake that the Washington
establishment would make time and again when he arrived there 14 years
later. They never seemed to understand what was so obvious to President
Reagan.
For all of the superficial differences, Americans of his age were not
so different than the generation that founded this Nation, fought the
Civil War, worked through the Great Depression, and struggled for civil
rights. In the end, Americans of today are committed to the same
principles of liberty and equality that animated the authors of our
Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
This shared commitment to our founding principles served him well,
because he took office at a time of great uncertainty, a time not
unlike our own. A combination of factors seemed to be putting the
aspirations of Americans out of reach.
To be blunt, America was on its heels. The prime interest rate was 15
percent. Inflation was 12\1/2\ percent. And civilian unemployment was
at 7 percent. Government regulations and tax rates were smothering
American innovation, and with it the American dream. And abroad the
picture was just as grim. An imperialist Soviet Union had invaded
Afghanistan, and was supporting revolutionary movements across the
globe. The American hostages had not yet been freed from Iran.
Yet when Ronald Reagan left office 8 years later, he had left his
mark. According to his biographer, Lou Cannon, when he came into
office, there were 4,414 individual tax returns with an adjusted gross
income of more than $1 million. By 1987, fueled by tax cuts, the
breaking of inflation, and explosive economic growth, there were 34,944
such returns. When he entered the White House, only 1 in 6 Americans
owned a microwave, and VCRs were a luxury for the wealthy. By the time
he left office, these were common household goods. He helped to restore
our understanding of a limited judiciary that respects the traditions
of the American people and their elected representatives. And he
restored faith in our men and women in uniform.
Just before he left office, President Reagan reviewed the troops at
Andrews Air Force Base one last time. During that visit, he said that
serving as commander-in-chief was ``the most sacred, most important
task of the presidency.''
Barely five years after America left South Vietnam, Reagan spoke at
the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention and reminded America that
Vietnam had been a ``noble cause.'' The rush to ``blame America first''
in our conflict with totalitarian regimes, and the days of holding our
military men and women in low esteem, came to an end with the Reagan
Presidency. And though his greatest achievement--the collapse of the
Soviet Empire--would occur on his successor's watch--the writing was on
the wall by the time Ronald Reagan left office. His recommitment to
freedom during our twilight struggle with what was truly an evil empire
quite literally saved the world and liberated millions.
It is no surprise that he will be honored in Prague, Budapest, and
Krakow--the home of his great partner Pope John Paul II--later this
summer for his role in exposing the great lie that was the Soviet
Union.
Ronald Reagan succeeded as president because he knew what he was
about. In his farewell address from the Oval Office, he said, ``I went
into politics in part to put up my hand and say, Stop. I was a citizen
politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do. I think
we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once
again reminded the people that man is not free unless government is
limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and
predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty
contracts.''
I could not agree more.
And that Reagan Revolution--the aspiration of citizens for greater
freedom and greater futures for the generations that follow--continues.
I am proud to be a part of that revolution.
President Reagan took a flyer on me when I first ran for the Senate,
supporting me in my primary. I have tried to do him proud. I remember
well the blistering hot day in the Rose Garden when he signed the
Hatch-Waxman legislation into law in 1984. In his signing statement, he
joked that with this law ``[e]veryone wins, particularly our elderly
Americans. Senior citizens require more medication than any other
segment of our society. I speak with some authority on that.''
In my opinion, that law typified the commitments of President Reagan.
Since its passage it has saved the Federal Government and consumers
hundreds of billions of dollars--some say trillions--and it essentially
created the generic drug industry and incentives for the creation of
the next generation of life saving drugs.
I worked with him when he was in office. And as I work today for the
citizens of Utah, his principled example is always on my mind. We still
have work to do. Reagan understood the danger of what is today called
progressivism, but was then called liberalism. It knows no bounds.
As he put it, ``No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in
size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a
government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see
on this Earth.''
In some respects, Ronald Reagan belonged to a different age. He was
governor during the student protests of the 1960s. He entered the
national political consciousness during a presidential campaign where
the possibility of global nuclear conflict was an imminent threat. When
he became President, he was only a few years removed from widespread
urban riots and the end of the Vietnam war. When he spoke at Pointe-du-
Hoc on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, he spoke to the men who actually
scaled those cliffs and liberated a continent. Today, most of those
veterans have passed on. But ultimately, Reagan remains one of us. I
think that his advisor, David Gergen, got it wrong when he mused that
Reagan's legacy was how much he changed our minds.
In my view, Ronald Reagan was a success because he understood that
the American people did not need to change their minds. Americans, in
1980, had the same beliefs and hopes that we have always had. Ronald
Reagan's genius was in giving voice to those hopes.
Ronald Reagan was a big man, made for a big screen, and eventually
the biggest stage. He played his part well. To borrow from Hollywood,
he knew
[[Page S524]]
that even as time goes by . . . the fundamental things apply.
Before leaving office, President Reagan addressed the Nation one last
time. Speaking to the citizens of this shining city upon a hill, he
told us, ``[w]e did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a
difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we
left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.''
Indeed.
It has been said that Ronald Reagan had a love affair with the
American people. He did. But it took two to tango. Ronald Reagan loved
his country. But I think his country loved him more. That includes
people on both sides of the aisle.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, in early 1983, the Soviet dissident Natan
Sharansky was in an 8-by-10 foot cell in a Siberian prison when jailers
permitted him to read the latest issue of the official Communist Party
newspaper.
The front page was filled with global condemnations of American
President Ronald Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an ``evil
empire.'' Tapping on the walls and whispering through plumbing pipes,
political prisoners spread the word. Rather than being demoralized by
the criticisms, they were ecstatic. The leader of the free world had
spoken the truth. There was hope.
By the end of the decade, hope became freedom, freedom for the
hundreds of thousands imprisoned in the Soviet gulag and for the
hundreds of millions trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Countless men and
women of courage and determination, their names lost to history, stood
up to tyranny and won a great victory with a leader whose name will
forever be remembered by history. Lech Walesa, the founder of the
valiant Solidarity movement, said this of President Reagan: ``We in
Poland . . . owe him our liberty.''
In this centennial year, we are experiencing something rare. While
many great figures of their time diminish over time, our regard for
Ronald Reagan only grows. This cannot be explained by merely citing the
qualities for which he was so well known: his confidence in America,
his wit, and his optimism. It goes beyond his courage when attacked by
an assassin's bullet or, at the end, a devastating disease or even his
skills as the ``Great Communicator.'' Ronald Reagan looms ever larger
because of his ideas and the enduring convictions that gave those ideas
their power. ``History comes and goes,'' he said, ``but principles
endure and inspire future generations to defend liberty, not as a gift
from government, but a blessing from our Creator.''
Ronald Reagan knew that liberty was not a blessing merely to enjoy
but one that must always be defended. He expressed his faith in our
ability to rise to its defense with these words: ``No weapon in the
arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of
free men and women.'' His optimism sprang from his belief in the
nobility of the human spirit.
The very ideas that are the foundation of this great Nation were the
foundation of Ronald Reagan's character. He became President at a time
when America had begun to question its place in the world and the
values upon which this Nation was built. He tore down the wall of doubt
and reminded us that our many blessings carried with them great
obligations. Ronald Reagan was a great communicator because he had
something great to communicate: the exceptionalism of the United States
of America.
The birthday of one who has passed from this life is always a
bittersweet occasion as we remember what we had and reflect on what we
have lost. I would like to extend my best wishes to President Reagan's
beloved First Lady, Nancy, and to the entire Reagan family.
Ronald Reagan was the right man for his time. He now belongs to the
ages. He is missed, but his ideals will always be with us.
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, we will soon mark the 100th anniversary of
the birth of Ronald Reagan, one of our greatest Presidents. In the days
and months to come, in cities and towns all across this great Nation of
ours, people will pause for a moment to reflect on the past and
remember him, each in their own way, for the greatness in him that
inspired a nation. I know he would be humbled by and greatly
appreciative of our remembrance of his legacy of service and touched by
the great admiration and affection with which we will always remember
him.
I don't think anyone is a better example of the American dream than
Ronald Reagan. He was born in Illinois, the son of a shoe salesman. His
mother loved to read and she encouraged him to do the same by reading
to him. In books Reagan was able to tap into the wisdom of our Founding
Fathers and many other great leaders of our past. What he learned from
his reading would help to shape his character and ultimately mold his
destiny.
It wasn't long before Reagan's natural confidence and his
determination to do something with his life began to show itself, first
during his school years and later when he pursued a career as an actor.
He proved to be a born leader and he took a leadership role at every
stage of his life. While in college, he served as student body
President. In his acting days he served as the president of the Screen
Actors Guild. In between he worked hard and built a career as a
successful actor in film and television as he became a familiar face in
Hollywood.
If that had been all he had done, he would be remembered for his
talents and abilities as an actor. He would have earned his reputation
for being unafraid of hard work and his life would have inspired others
to follow his path just by his success in Hollywood. All of the fame
and notoriety that came from his acting days would have been enough for
most people, but not for Ronald Reagan. He was just getting warmed up.
The best was yet to come.
With his beloved wife Nancy by his side, Ronald Reagan began to
pursue a bigger dream. He wanted to make an impact on the world that
would put him on a bigger stage. He wanted to get more involved in
politics and put his principles and values into action in the work that
had to be done to solve the problems facing the Nation.
His first effort was a run for Governor of California. People thought
that was an impossible dream of his and he would never make it. Ronald
Reagan proved them wrong--not for the first or the last time. He took
his case to the people, put together a coalition of both Republicans
and Democrats and when the votes were counted, he had won.
I still remember meeting him when I was the president of the Wyoming
Jaycees. We held our national convention in California and Ronald
Reagan spoke to us. I had a chance to meet him and I was quickly
impressed by his personality and his style. He clearly had a way not
only with words, but to connect to people one on one. Still, I don't
think any of us could have guessed what would happen next in his life.
Reagan had his sights set on the Presidency of the United States. He
knew it wasn't going to be easy, but for Ronald Reagan the only failure
would be to fail to try. He wasn't successful at first, but he never
gave up. He kept traveling around the country, speaking to groups, and
sharing his message of hope and opportunity with the people who came to
hear him speak. This seemed to be another impossible dream, but once
again Reagan made it happen. He won the Republican nomination for
President, facing an incumbent who spoke often about the terrible
problems facing the Nation. Ronald Reagan didn't speak with doubt and
uncertainty about the future; he spoke with strong and passionate
certainty that things would get better if we all worked together.
Unfortunately, optimism will only get you so far--so when the time
came for him to take the oath of office, he knew he had a lot of work
to do. He often referred to our economic problems as the ``misery
index.'' We were in the middle of a time of high unemployment, high
interest rates and high inflation. The Nation seemed to have lost its
self-confidence and no longer believed that it could dare to do great
things--and succeed. The experts all seemed to say that there was
little if anything that one person could do to change things and
reenergize the Nation.
Once again, Ronald Reagan proved the experts wrong. It seemed almost
overnight things changed. There was a renewed sense of confidence in
our shared destiny as a nation, a new feeling of hope and opportunity
about the
[[Page S525]]
future, and a return to the spirit of America that had been lost. In
just a short time, with his words and his actions, he inspired a
generation to look to the future with the kind of confidence that comes
from our belief in and commitment to the principles upon which our
Nation was founded.
I remember those days very well. I was the mayor of Gillette, WY, and
when the National League of Cities held its national meeting the
President flew to California to speak to our group. I had a chance to
meet with him again and enjoyed having an opportunity to speak to him.
He was the greatest ambassador for the West and our Western way of life
that we have ever had. He understood rural life and because of it he
understood the problems of our rural communities. He also understood
public service for what it is--service--and he continued to see himself
as a public servant throughout his career and his life.
I always thought the years he spent living on his ranch in California
were responsible for his passion for speaking the truth, regardless of
whether or not it was politically expedient to do so. It is a trait
that people in Wyoming appreciate and expect from their leaders. It
quickly led to some of his best moments.
I believe we all have strong memories of Ronald Reagan speaking by
the Berlin Wall, taking advantage of the occasion to challenge Mikhail
Gorbachev to ``tear down this wall.'' He then went counter to the
advice of his staff and referred to the Soviet Union as the ``evil
empire.'' For Ronald Reagan, life was that simple. If it was the truth,
it must be said for there are two kinds of people in the world--the
good guys and the bad guys. If the good guys worked hard and were
willing to sacrifice and do whatever it took to succeed, they won. In
Ronald Reagan's world, we were the good guys and, during his
Presidency, more often than not, we won.
Still, no matter how harsh the rhetoric may have seemed, his
political opponents always knew that it wasn't personal--it was
principle based. That is why, after all that he said, he was still able
to form a friendship with Mr. Gorbachev. Our two countries were two of
the biggest superpowers in the world and he knew he would have to find
a way to keep the lines of communication, trust and understanding open
between them, a necessity that gave way to another of his trademark
lines, ``Trust but verify.''
Over the years he turned many a phrase that reflected the strength of
his character, his sense of humor and more. He had a unique way of
expressing complex truths in simple sentences that held great meaning
by virtue of their simplicity.
Because of his trademark one liners and other famous remarks, he has
often been called the Great Communicator, a title that caused Reagan to
remark ``I never thought it was my style that made a difference--it was
the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great
things.''
Ronald Reagan did communicate great things and he communicated them
in a number of ways--most importantly by the way he lived his life.
There is an old saying that reminds us that we can play it safe and
take the well worn path or we can dare to go where few have gone before
and blaze our own trail in life, leaving a path for others to follow.
Such was Ronald Reagan's philosophy and by so doing he helped to give
us an example of what was possible for us as individuals and for our
Nation.
In the end, Ronald Reagan will be remembered for many things. He
found a cure for an ailing economy. He helped to bring an end to the
Cold War. He did all of that and so much more but he also did something
else that was to prove to be far more important. He helped us to regain
our spirit as Americans. He helped us to regain that great pride we had
always had for our heritage. He helped us to believe in ourselves again
and in our ability to serve as the leaders of the free world, a title
we were always meant to carry. Thanks to Ronald Reagan, it is a title
we have carried proudly and with purpose ever since. Through his words
and his enthusiasm for life and living, the Great Communicator was able
to infuse our country with optimism, patriotism and an unashamed hope
for a better tomorrow. Thanks to him, the United States of America
became a brighter, better place for us all to live as the impact he had
on the world around us continues to be felt to this day.
Ronald Reagan's burial site is inscribed with the words he delivered
at the opening of his Presidential Library. ``I know in my heart that
man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and that
there is purpose and worth to each and every life.''
As in so many things in life, just like the old show business adage
reminds us, he left us wanting more. And that is why he will never be
forgotten by those who knew him and those who remember how he touched a
generation for the better just by the great strength of his character
and the warm gentleness of his soul.
Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I am proud to honor Ronald Reagan on the
100th anniversary of his birth. President Reagan was a man who inspired
millions of Americans to serve their country and fulfill its promise as
the shining city on a hill. His genial demeanor, resilience, no-
nonsense approach to governing and rock solid principles attracted
flocks of young Americans to the Republican Party, and I am proud to
include myself in that number.
I was fortunate to have grown up and come of age politically just as
President Reagan was in office. His words and deeds inspired our entire
country to take pride in our patriotic values and the free market
principles that have made America exceptional. He also comforted us
during moments of national tragedy. And his willingness to speak out
against communism--as both a bankrupt economic system and an immoral
violation of human dignity--was a ray of sunlight to those living in
its darkness.
I will never forget my parents' reaction the day the Berlin Wall fell
in 1989. Having lost their country to Fidel Castro's communism, they
had spent 30 years divided from their homeland, friends, and
relatives--just as the Wall had done to millions in Europe.
Especially for my parents' generation of Cuban exiles, whose hopes
and dreams were shattered by communism, the Wall's fall was a historic
event they questioned would ever come. It was a day of celebration and
rekindled hope that all lands within communism's grip would soon be
free as well. Ronald Reagan helped bring about the change that made
communism's fall possible. By joining with other world leaders like
Pope John Paul II, he seized the opportunity to highlight communism's
failures. In doing so, he helped make millions of oppressed people more
self-aware of their intrinsic dignity, more confident that their
pursuit of freedom was justified, and more hopeful that they were not
alone in their struggles.
In commemorating Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, we also remember the
work that remains to be done to tear down other oppressive walls that
still stand. America's responsibilities in this effort cannot be
underestimated.
Economically, we cannot allow Washington's borrow-and-spend binges to
diminish our free enterprise system, nor can we allow our debt to make
our commitment to freedom and human rights subservient to our debt
holders.
Militarily, as Ronald Reagan said, ``Of the four wars in my lifetime,
none came about because the U.S. was too strong.'' A free and secure
world requires a strong America led by our brave men and women in
uniform. America's commitment to the defense of our allies should never
waver. Diplomatically, we must not confuse a desire for security and
the promotion of democratic values as mutually exclusive goals.
The United States and the world owe a great debt to Ronald Reagan for
his decisive leadership, adherence to conservative principles and
inspiring example during a tumultuous period. And we owe a special debt
of gratitude to his wife Nancy for her efforts to keep his memory and
legacy alive.
Now the question before us is whether we are going to do as Ronald
Reagan did and ensure that future generations can inherit the single
greatest society in all of human history. I, for one, am fully
committed to honoring Ronald Reagan's legacy by standing up for the
principles that defined him and have made America exceptional for more
than two centuries.
[[Page S526]]
Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, today, when our country faces enormous
challenges--both domestic and international--we have an opportunity to
recognize President Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his
birth.
Today--when we need big doses of optimism and a renewed faith in
America--the memory of Ronald Reagan tells us that our challenges can
be met and our obstacles can be overcome.
I remember the Reagan era well. The late seventies and early eighties
were tough times. I had just finished college and returned to North
Dakota, and America was clearly hurting.
It was the era of stagflation--stagnant economic growth and
inflation, all at the same time.
It was an era of fuel shortages, long lines at the gas station, and
sticker shock when you got to the pump.
A few years later, America was emerging from that recession and the
country was on the mend. We could see light on the horizon. President
Reagan told us: ``It's morning again in America.'' And it was.
It was also the era of the Cold War. For more than a generation, the
Soviet Union had kept Eastern Europe and its own people under its heel,
and threatened the West with belligerent rhetoric and an arsenal of
nuclear weapons.
In 1987, at a time when much of the world was resigned to a tense
doctrine of coexistence, with a literal and figurative wall between us,
President Ronald Reagan would have none of it. He stood at the Berlin
Wall, and challenged: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'' And made
it happen.
In some of our Nation's darkest hours, President Ronald Wilson Reagan
was there to remind us that we are a great nation and a great people--a
nation kind and generous beyond measure, when deserved, but tough and
enduring when circumstances warranted.
He knew that believing in ourselves was vital, and then working
together to get the job done. That is a lesson worth remembering,
today, 100 years after the birth of one of America's greatest
presidents.
We can--and we will--build a brighter future for ourselves and for
future generations. We will continue to truly be that shining city on a
hill--a beam of light and liberty for the world.
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I have had numerous opportunities to
comment on the amazing life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan. He had
bold ideas and the courage to see them through. He was the true
embodiment of the American success story. I have often referred to the
fact that he was charismatic, determined and consistent, and he enjoyed
a remarkable batting average of being right. It has always been a point
of great pride to me that my voting record was supportive of President
Reagan's positions more than any other Member of the Senate.
As the Senate commemorates the 100th anniversary of President
Reagan's birth, I want to share with my colleagues and the public a
speech I wrote when President Reagan was given the Hudson Institute
James Doolittle Award.
It was November 22, 1991, and it was a tumultuous time for Washington
and the world. Yet you could still see the sparkle in the President's
eyes and his warmth and good humor. What we did not know was that
President Reagan's effort to end the Cold War was quickly coming to
fruition. Within days, on December 1, Ukraine would vote to break away
from the Soviet Union, and on Christmas Day, Mikhail Gorbachev
announced the end of the USSR.
During his Presidency, when President Reagan decided to renew arms
control negotiations with the Soviets, he had the wisdom and political
strength to ask the Senate to form an official observer group so that
there would be understanding and support for any treaty coming out of
the negotiations. As cochair of the Arms Control Observer Group, I
worked closely with Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and began a partnership
with him that continued for many years.
Subsequently, after the failed coup against Gorbachev in the summer
of 1991, we heard from Soviet officials we had met that they were
worried about the control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal as political
events unfolded. By that November when President Reagan was being
honored, Senator Nunn and I succeeded in passage of the Nunn-Lugar
Cooperative Threat Reduction Act.
Thanks to his leadership and vision, President Reagan helped build
the foundation for the Nunn-Lugar Program. Now thousands of missiles
and warheads, any one of which could have destroyed my city of
Indianapolis, have been eliminated. The success of the Nunn-Lugar
Program is a clear derivative of President Reagan's legacy. Thank you,
President Reagan.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the speech I wrote in honor of President Reagan when he received the
Hudson Institute James Doolittle Award.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Address by Senator Richard G. Lugar in Honor of President Ronald Reagan
(November 22, 1991)
President and Mrs. Reagan, Governor Du Pont, trustees,
scholars and friends of the Hudson Institute--We are
assembled at the Hudson Institute's James H. Doolittle Award
luncheon to Celebrate the Patriotism, personal courage, and
strategic wisdom which has made the United States of America
historically unique.
I am grateful to Governor Du Pont for the extraordinary
public service he gave to the Congress of the United States
and to the State of Delaware and for the remarkable years of
public witness he has given as a champion of market economics
and vital federalism. I admire the strength of his ideas, the
skill of his advocacy, and i am grateful for the constancy of
his loyal friendship.
I thank the Hudson Institute for giving me this opportunity
to visit with President and Mrs. Reagan. It was my privilege
to sit beside Mrs. Reagan during several White House and
Republican Party events and to understand the strength of her
ideals and her hopes for our country as she worked
thoughtfully with the President, day by day, to make those
dreams come true.
I begin with mention of dreams, hopes, visions because the
service of President Reagan to our country can only be
approached by understanding how wide he cast the net of
potential achievement.
President Reagan actually believed and articulated that our
country had a special destiny, that no barriers were
insurmountable because we are Americans. He actually believed
and said that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire, that its
political and economic institutions were disintegrating, and
that if its leadership and people knew the alternatives which
our country presented, they would choose democracy and market
economics.
President Reagan was prepared to invest an increasing
portion of our national treasure in military defense with the
certainty that we would negotiate successfully with our
adversaries from a position of strength. He shocked foreign
policy and defense specialists by proposing that all
intermediate nuclear missiles be destroyed, a negotiating
position labelled universally as a bizarre arms-control non-
starter.
He affirmed the staying power of NATO by deploying Pershing
missiles to Germany and cruise missiles to Italy even after
the Soviets declared that such deployment would end all arms
control negotiations and stimulate Soviet nuclear buildup.
Add to this President Reagan's startling proposal that the
United States should develop a Strategic Defense Initiative
to protect our country against incoming missiles fired upon
us. He contended that we should and could try to defend
ourselves against the so-called balance of terror.
He proposed to President Gorbachev that the United States
and the Soviet Union ban all nuclear weapons. In fact, he was
confident that if he could take Gorbachev on an extended tour
of America that Gorbachev would want to shape the Soviet
Union into many of our successful traditions.
Meanwhile, President Reagan knew that substantial new
growth must occur in our domestic economy to pay for the
special leadership role he had envisioned in foreign policy.
He was confident that substantial cuts in individual marginal
tax rates and a host of investment incentives would establish
and sustain the longest peacetime prosperity we have ever
enjoyed. Our prosperity underwrote the magnificent gains in
free and fair trade which he championed and world wide wealth
grew abundantly.
When Ronald Reagan stood on a balcony of the Reichstag in
Berlin and challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall,
he could see white crosses just below where courageous
persons seeking freedom had lost their lives in that pursuit.
Everything still appeared to be so locked up and grim, and
sophisticated observers were barely patronizing in comment on
his Berlin Wall challenge.
When Germans hacked the Wall down in November of 1989 and
Eastern Europeans drove authoritarian communists from
positions of power, many scholars and journalists applauded
President Gorbachev as Man of the Decade. These awards
revealed virtual ignorance of the actual history of Europe in
the 1980s and a deliberate attempt to ignore the very public
words and leadership of Ronald Reagan for eight years.
The Evil Empire crumbled, the Berlin Wall and other walls
fell, all of the intermediate nuclear force weapons were
destroyed exactly in three years as the INF Treaty provided,
and the United States became the
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only superpower with the strongest economy and the ability,
uniquely, to extend military authority around the world.
All of this occurred because President Reagan persuaded the
Congress and his countrymen to build our armed forces, to
build our economy through the growth incentives termed
``Reaganomics,'' to maintain the successful strategies of our
NATO alliance, to utilize military force to support foreign
policy as required, and to commence Strategic Defense
Initiative research.
We now know that the Soviets were much weaker than experts
estimated. We now know that they could not keep up the pace
and that desperate attempts to do so led to the collapse of
the Soviet Empire and then to the collapse of the Union,
itself.
President Reagan advocated two more things which were
inspiring and critically important in world history.
First, he rejected the Brezhnev Doctrine--the idea that
territory which socialism has occupied can never be
reclaimed. When he advocated this roll back of the Iron
Curtain, he created deep anxiety and alarm among most
international foreign policy advisers who loved liberty a
lot, but loved stability even more.
U.S. Stinger missiles shipped to the expert ministrations
of the Mujadahin in Afghanistan were a major instrument of
the Soviet roll back, and the world watched in awe as the
Soviet troops withdrew to a smaller socialist world.
Second, President Reagan enunciated a new policy in a
statement sent to Congress after the Philippine election and
revolution. He stated that henceforth, we would oppose
tyranny of the left and tyranny of the right, that we were
for democracy developed by the people who sought to know and
enjoy democracy and human rights. This statement was severely
criticized by experts who suggested that in the ``real
world'' a good number of dictators were friendly to the U.S.
and certainly useful in waging the Cold War against
communism.
In articulating his vision on the roll back of the Iron
Curtain; in identifying with nations all over the world who
applauded our passion for building democratic institutions;
in celebrating human rights and free market principles; in
all of these areas, Ronald Reagan was far ahead of the
prevailing wisdom. Yet he ultimately brought other leaders in
America and around the world to his point of view in a
relatively short interval.
Surely the spirit of the Doolittle Award strongly commends
not only being courageous, and being on the right side of
history, but performing these deeds in a very public way
which instructs and inspires others. Some of us have learned
much from President Reagan as we have watched him speak and
act. He is charismatic, he is determined and consistent, and
he enjoys a remarkable batting average of being right.
We now have an important responsibility to make certain
that our children comprehend the greatness of his presidency,
his optimism about the particular uniqueness of our future
opportunities in this country, and the foundations for world
peace which his leadership established and which we are
charged to build upon.
We now also have the opportunity today to correct the
historical mistake made a few years ago in designating
Mikhail Gorbachev ``Man of the Decade.'' It has to be a high
moment in each of our lives to be able to present to
President and to Mrs. Reagan even a small fraction of all of
the tributes which well up in our minds and hearts today.
On behalf of all of your friends assembled to celebrate
your life and service, President Reagan, it is my honor to
announce that you are the recipient of the James H. Doolittle
Award and to express the unbounded gratitude which we have
come here to demonstrate today.
Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my colleagues in
this august Chamber, especially Senators Feinstein, Hatch, and Webb,
members of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission, as we pause to pay
tribute to the indelible legacy of one of America's truly great
Presidents, Ronald Reagan, who would have turned 100 years old on
February 6, 2011. It is indeed fitting that as this month of February
is filled with historic birthdays of transformational Presidents like
George Washington, who founded our Nation, and Abraham Lincoln, who
preserved it, that we honor the President who reignited its spirit,
Ronald Reagan.
A friend of freedom, a foe of tyranny, and always--always an advocate
for America, President Reagan inspired our Nation eloquently and
powerfully to recapture and reaffirm our founding ideals of individual
freedom, common sense, and limited government. He reminded us with
unshakable optimism that America, as the great experiment in self-
government, had planted an eternal stake along the timeline of human
history as, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, ``the last best hope of
Earth.''
Many of my colleagues will be sharing their own personal remembrances
of this threshold figure whom we rank as among the most rarefied of
American Presidents. What I recall is a President who brought his
passionate belief in the ideals of America to bear in advancing our
Nation and projecting the hope of freedom as a force for good in the
world and a leader who was, contrary perhaps to conventional wisdom,
not averse to consensus-building in implementing his vision for this
country.
Like those rising to speak in this venerable Chamber today, I
remember well the arduous challenges facing our Nation in 1980. At the
time, I had just completed my freshman term as a Member of the U.S.
House of Representatives. Internationally, our country was precariously
mired in the Cold War, and reeling from the Iran hostage crisis. On the
domestic front, our economic vitality had been sapped by double-digit
inflation, hampered by interest rates that would soar to 21 percent,
stifled by massive tax burdens including a top tax rate of 70 percent,
and idled by an energy crisis, exemplified by half mile long lines at
the gas pump.
Against that backdrop, President Reagan arrived in Washington with an
unflagging conviction that the greatest untapped potential lies in the
American people themselves. And by embracing hope, not resignation, he
charted a course for America that led to greater prosperity and
security.
As Commander-in-Chief, President Reagan was steadfast in his
uncompromising foresight and ultimate success in building up our
military, and displayed unequivocal mettle in confronting the world's
only other superpower, laying the foundation for victory in the Cold
War. With peace through strength, Ronald Reagan called America to a
purpose he described in his own hand in 1980. He wrote: ``I believe it
is our pre-ordained destiny to show all mankind that they too can be
free without having to leave their native shore.'' And nothing evoked
that immutable faith in humanity and belief in the possibilities for a
better future more than his demand at the Brandenburg Gate forever
etched in our memory: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'' Two years
later, that wall did crumble, and not long after, so too did the Soviet
Empire.
President Reagan battled to reduce the size of the Federal
bureaucracy--to return tax dollars to the families who had earned them
and disseminate power out of Washington and back to local governments.
And I well recall meeting with President Reagan numerous times to
discuss issues as far ranging as the MX missile, the budget, women's
issues, or the impact of proposed trade policies on traditional Maine
industries such as potatoes or lumber.
And I can attest to the fact that, as a problem solver on every
front, President Reagan understood that in order to bring to fruition
his core principles and also ensure he could be resolute in
implementing his vision for the country, he had to make it happen with
persuasion and openness. After all, it was President Reagan who
believed ``if I can get 70 or 80 percent of what it is I'm trying to
get . . . I'll take that and then continue to try to get the rest in
the future.''
In the end, President Reagan's deeds and words summoned America's
resolve and essential goodness, and his steady hand guided this great
land in working to foster liberty and kindle the fires of freedom that
have always made America as President Reagan said better than anyone--
``a shining city on a hill.'' On the occasion of his 100th birthday, we
express our eternal gratitude to President Reagan for his timeless
leadership of our Nation which he aptly described in his first
inaugural address as ``the breed called Americans.''
Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. McCaskill). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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