[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27069-27070]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO RONALD REAGAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, it was my pleasure to serve in 
the Congress of the United States for 6 years when Ronald Reagan was 
the President of the United States. When Ronald Reagan became 
President, the economy was heading in the wrong direction. Early in his 
administration, we went into a recession which was caused by his 
predecessor, and he pushed through the Congress very large tax cuts 
which led to the economic recovery that started the last part of his 
administration and went on for well over a decade, 14, 15 years.
  Ronald Reagan was a very affable man, is a very affable man, was a 
very kind and generous man, a very understanding man, one who had a big 
heart and who really cared about America.
  Many people in his administration took issue with him when he decided 
to take on the Soviet Union. When he was about to make his speech 
talking about the Soviet Union being an evil empire, many people in the 
State Department cringed and said, my God, Mr. President, you cannot 
say that. Nevertheless, he did, because the Soviet Union held so many 
millions of people under bondage, and the captive nations of

[[Page 27070]]

Eastern Europe applauded what he said.
  When he stood before the Berlin Wall and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear 
down this wall,'' I remember listening to that and thinking that is a 
great thing to say, Mr. President; but it will not happen in my 
lifetime. Yet I was in Namibia when they had the special elections over 
there, and I went into a German beer garden, and everybody was 
celebrating. They were raising their steins and dancing, and I said 
what in the world is going on, and they said do you not know, the 
Berlin Wall is coming down. The hair on my head and the back of my neck 
started to rise because I knew that Ronald Reagan got that job done. He 
raised the stakes against the Soviet Union, with the Soviet Union.
  They had 50,000 T-55 tanks that started rusting away because he built 
up the American defenses so high that they could not keep pace, and 
their economy could not deal with the problem. So their whole economy 
started to collapse; and as a result, the Soviet Union collapsed. So 
Ronald Reagan, when he was President, brought this economy back from 
the ashes of disaster to where it went on for years and years and years 
in the right direction. He destroyed, I believe personally, the Soviet 
Union, along with Lech Walesa and the Pope, by putting pressure on the 
Soviet Union and Mr. Gorbachev and his predecessors until they just 
fell apart.
  So I was very, very disappointed when I saw that CBS was going to do 
a miniseries denigrating this great President, this great man, 
especially at a time when he cannot defend himself. He is suffering 
from Alzheimers; and his beautiful wife, Nancy Reagan, whom I had a 
chance to get to know a little bit when she was in the White House, has 
to live with these horrible things that are being said about her 
husband, and she cannot do anything about it.
  Well, we in the Congress that served with President Ronald Reagan 
know better. He was a great President. He was a great man. He was a 
humanitarian. He was a visionary, and he was a man who when he said 
something he meant it and everybody knew he meant it, and for them to 
try to destroy his memory is something I do not think we should 
tolerate.
  I would like to just say that Peggy Noonan, who worked in the White 
House with Ronald Reagan, was one of his speech writers. She wrote a 
book that was called ``When Character Was King,'' and I wish all of the 
people who criticized Ronald Reagan and participated in this CBS 
miniseries will read that book because, if they read that book, they 
are going to see what the man was really like. He was a great man. He 
is a great man, and his legacy and his memory should not be tarnished 
by a bunch of trash being put out by CBS.
  I understand they have pulled that miniseries, and it is not going to 
be on the network now; but they said that they are going to sell it, I 
guess, or use it in one of their other areas like ``Showtime,'' and it 
will be shown as, I guess, a made-for-television movie. I want all my 
friends to know that I watch ``Showtime,'' and I pay for ``Showtime,'' 
but I want to say to my friends, if they put that trash on 
``Showtime,'' and they have a right to do it under the first amendment, 
but if they put that trash on ``Showtime,'' I will tell all of my 
friends and people across this Nation they ought to drop it because 
that is not the kind of thing you do to a great man like Ronald Reagan 
who served his country so well and did so much, not only for America 
but for the whole world.

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