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Informal Exchange With Reporters
May 11th, 1987
Reporter. Mr. President, have you heard any of McFarlane's testimony today?
The President. No, and I'm not going to make any comments, Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International]—
Q. Well, we want to be sure that you're denying that there was any solicitation that you knew of by the White House of countries or individuals.
The President. Helen, as I say, I can't get into taking questions on that. We're here on a matter of the debt ceiling. It's all important. And I have made answers to those particular questions over and over again and I still stick with them.
Q. Sir, do you think that Mr. Meese should stay on the job while an independent counsel investigates him?
The President. I've issued a statement on that matter with regard to my trust and confidence in him.
Q. How did you like the Vice President's speech on ethics and morality?
The President. I like anything he does. [Laughter]
The Vice President. Get that down, Helen. [Laughter]
Q. It's all down here. It will enhance my story. [Laughter]
Note: The exchange began at 1:35 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White House, prior to a meeting with Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee. In his remarks, the President referred to Robert C. McFarlane, former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and Attorney General Edwin Meese III.
Because George H.W. Bush knows he is going to need some kind of cover story in the future when it is revealed that he is a long-time national traitor and that George H.W. Bush has been an active participant in the criminal conspiracy to pirate my identity.
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Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Southeast Regional Editors and Broadcasters
May 15th, 1987
The President. Thank you all, and welcome to the White House. I'm delighted we could have a few moments together today, and I'm anxious to get to your questions. But first I thought I'd begin by giving you a little report on two stories that have been coming over the wires. They're what those of you in the newsroom would call developing stories that will be, I hope, a source of increasing focus and interest.
The first issue has to do with the yearly battle of the budget. Now, I know that's not the sort of story that readers turn to first or that always make the evening news. But I mention it because I believe the budget battle will eventually emerge not as a parochial argument but as a larger issue, and it will be: "Will we return to the days of unrestricted Federal spending? Will the specter of high taxes and inflation and even higher trade deficit haunt us once again?" As all of you know, the Congress decided a year-and-a-half ago to get uncharacteristically serious about deficit spending, and they adopted the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings resolution, which would gradually shrink the Federal deficit and, by 1991, give us—and brace yourselves for this—a balanced budget.
When Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was first enacted, there were all sorts of pious declarations from Congress about living up to its yearly deficit targets. However, I have to tell you that that commitment to Gramm-Rudman-Hollings is rapidly disintegrating. The House continues to pass spending bills like the highway authorizations bill that I had to veto recently. As I said at the time, I hadn't seen so much lard since I handed out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair. Over in the Senate, a legislative procedure was recently adopted that makes it far easier to override the budget deficit and spending limits. Congress is back to doing what comes natural: playing to the special interests and failing to meet its budget responsibilities. If the Congress continues on this course, we'll go to the American people and make our case. And as this battle heats up, I think it's going to be increasingly understood that the congressional budget process itself, with its missed deadlines and its gigantic catchall spending bills, is fatally flawed.
The executive branch must be given new powers to reach into those pork-barrel spending bills and cut out the waste, and that means giving the President what the Governors of 43 States have: the line-item veto—or better yet, enhanced rescission authority. I've noticed that everywhere I go, to any audience, I've mentioned that lineitem veto, and it gets a strong reaction. Whoever would have thought a few years ago that line-item veto would be an applause line? I think the public is increasingly aware of the problem in the Congress and the need to do something about it. And that's why I think you're also going to see increasing support for the balanced budget amendment. Unlike Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, it would make a balanced budget in the 1990's a matter of the Constitution, and not just a law. We need that amendment.
But there's another twist to the budget problem that you should know about. Well, it's called: Let's cut defense. As I said in my radio address on Saturday, defense spending is always the first thing to be sacrificed, canceled, or delayed, even while the boondoggles sail through untouched. Despite all the progress that we've made in rebuilding our nation's defenses, the Congress now wants to reverse course. For 2 years in a row, it has cut defense appropriations below previous levels in real terms. The current fiscal year 1987 defense budget is actually 6 percent less than the one Congress itself approved for 1985. And even now we hear voices saying that the fiscal year 1988 defense budget should be taken even lower. Now, this isn't only irresponsible from the standpoint of our national security, it also goes to the heart of our bargaining credibility with the Soviets.
At the very moment when vitally important arms reduction treaties are on the table in Geneva, some in the Congress want to take on responsibilities that are not theirs, and I refer here to the business of conducting arms negotiations. And this is the second point that I wanted to make. Several amendments have been offered in the Congress such as those dealing with nuclear testing and SDI that would undermine our negotiating positions in Geneva and tie my hands in the conduct of a vital part of our foreign policy, not to mention the fact it would give the Soviets negotiating victories that they can't win at the bargaining table. These trends are dangerous and if they continue will become the focus of a major national debate. I bring all this to you for a simple reason: The Congress is a large, amorphous institution; it can't be held as accountable as an individual can. But those in the Congress have a duty to report to the folks back home on where they stand on these issues, and I think you would agree that no one plays a more vital role than you in asking them about these issues and their stand on them.
And with that said, let's make it a dialog instead of a monolog. All right?
Iran Arms and Contra Aid Controversy
Q. Mr. President, Bill Sharp from WCSC in Charleston, South Carolina. Mr. President, to those people who might say your Presidency and you have been mortally wounded by the Iran-contra affair, how would you answer those people?
The President. Well, sometimes before I've used a line from an old Scottish ballad to the effect that, yes, I'd been wounded-"I'll lie me down and rest a bit, and then I'll fight again."
Q. Liz White, WSM Radio in Nashville. My general manager says I can't go home unless you read this aloud. [Laughter]
The President. Oh, boy! [Laughter]
Q. Please. [Laughter]
The President. "I'm Ronald Reagan. Whenever I'm in Nashville, I listen to Radio 650, WSM— [laughter] —the 50,000-watt blowtorch of the South." [Laughter]
Q. Could you do it one more time—
The President. All right. What's that?
Q. Could you do it one more time? And everybody be quiet. [Laughter]
The President. Oh, I thought they were all quiet. Well, the last part was the only place where you started to laugh. "I listen to Radio 650 WSM, the 50,000-watt blowtorch of the South."
Q. Thank you.
The President. Well, it's just like being back at WHO. [Laughter]
Incidentally, on that short answer that I gave you on mortally wounded—I have to say that I get around quite a bit in the country, and the audiences range from blue-collar workers in a factory, as they did just a few days ago, to students and their families at a graduation ceremony. And I haven't seen any evidences that I've been mortally wounded, nor do the people seem to be unhappy about what we've been doing here.
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Remarks at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences Commencement Ceremony
May 16th, 1987
Thank you all very much. And Secretary Weinberger, Chairman Olch, Dean Sanford, members of the graduating class, and ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you before I start how relieved I was when Dean Sanford told me that I was going to walk on after the procession. I thought that I was going to come in with the dean, and with his reputation, I'd been afraid that the good news was that we might perch on the backstage rafters and rappel in— [laughter] —and the bad news, that we'd jump from 10,000 feet. [Laughter] But it's a pleasure to be here to welcome you the graduates of this the West Point and Annapolis and Colorado Springs for physicians into your new profession as military and Public Health Service doctors.
You know, I hope you won't mind if I pause for a minute, but that reminds me of something. At my age, everything reminds you of something. [Laughter] People will be calling you doctor. And there are all kinds of doctors. I'm even one kind of doctor. Last week down at Tuskegee University, at the commencement there, I was awarded an honorary degree. I am a doctor of laws now. And I told them at that time that they had compounded a sense of guilt I had nursed for some 55 years, because I always was suspicious that the first degree I got, when I graduated from college, was honorary. [Laughter] You know, I was devoted to some other activities, such as football and swimming and campus dramatics. And I've often wondered, since, if I'd spent more time and worked harder as a student how far I might have gone. [Laughter]
But seriously, there's no doubt about what you, with your hard work, have accomplished. The British poet Robert Louis Stevenson, once said: "There are men and classes of men that stand out; the soldier and the sailor, not unfrequently, and the physician almost as a rule." Well, today you become both: soldier, sailor, or airman and physician. Today you enter one of the oldest and most honored ranks in the service of America's freedom. Today you take up the flag once carried by men like Army Major Walter Reed, Rear Admiral Edward Stitt, Air Force Major General Harry Armstrong, and Public Health Service Surgeon Joseph Goldberger.
Yes, ever since the Continental Congress established the Army and Navy medical services in 1775, patriots like these men and women, and like you, have carried their powers of healing onto the battlefields and to swamps and deserts, mountains and plains, all around the world. Their accomplishments reach into almost every area of medicine. For almost a century, for example, America's uniformed services have been the world's leader in the battle against tropical diseases. They entered the fight in the jungles of Panama after Walter Reed and his team took less than a year to determine the cause of yellow fever. Today, after decades of progress, your faculty at USUHS is helping military medicine to continue leading the charge. It is testing new vaccines for malaria as well as for adult dysentery, a major tropical killer.
In field after field, America's doctors in uniform have pushed forward the battle lines of medical treatment, even while under fire. Military physicians developed the use of massive blood transfusions in treating shock and trauma. They pioneered burn research and treatment. They found how man could live at higher and higher altitudes and finally in outer space itself. And again, of course, your faculty continues the tradition, leading in such areas as research on vascular surgery and reconstruction, the development of treatments for lacerated eyes, and in developing computer graphic tools for medical teaching and research.
When I hear about the can-do spirit of America's doctors in uniform, it reminds me of a story about a group of marines. I hope those of you in the other services will forgive me for telling this, but the get-it-done spirit applies to all of America's physicians in uniform. These marines had been sent to the Army airborne school for training. And came the day for the first jump, the training officer told them that the planes would come in at 1,500 feet, they would jump from the plane, hit the ground, and move south. The marines seemed a little disturbed by this, and they went into a huddle. Then one of them as a spokesman for the group went to the officer and asked couldn't the plane come in at 500 feet instead of 1,500? And the officer explained that if they took the plane in too low, it wouldn't give them time for the parachutes to open. And he said, "Oh, you mean we're wearing parachutes?" [Laughter]
America's physicians in uniform have always been leaders, and in the 10 years since its first class, USUHS itself has found a place as a leader in American medicine, a leader in teaching as well as in research. As students, you went through one of the most rigorous programs in the country. You took 640 hours of training in military medicine on top of your standard curriculum. You prepared yourselves to treat patients anywhere in the world, under any circumstance, because yours is the only medical school in America that trains physicians to be ready for duty on the bottom of the ocean or on the surface of the Moon and anyplace in between. Recently, the noted Houston surgeon, Dr. Ken Mattox, echoed the medical community's growing esteem when he said, in picking interns and residents: "Give me a USUHS student any day." Yes, today USUHS is the kind of school that Congressman F. Edward Hebert had in mind during his 25-year crusade to establish a military university for medicine. It's helping our military become, in medicine as in so many areas, the best it's ever been.
You know, among the most gratifying parts of my job is visiting our Army, Navy, and Air Force bases around the world. Time and again, I've been told that our young recruits are the best we've ever had—the best educated, the most dedicated—and I've seen it for myself. For a long time, some people said that the weak economy was the reason. But then we began on what is now 54 months of economic expansion, along the way creating over 13,600 million jobs and still counting. Today a greater proportion of Americans is at work than ever before in our history, and yet we're continuing to get the best recruits.
A new burst of quality—that's what I've heard about USUHS applicants, too. USUHS has always selected outstanding classes, from that first class of 32 over a decade ago to this year's entering class of 163. But I understand that the quality of the total pool of applicants from which the classes are chosen shot up 6 years ago, just as the quality of all those who wanted to enter the military did. And again and again, when you ask why, the answer has come back more or less the same: It has something to do with patriotism, service. It's again a proud thing to wear the uniforms of the United States. It's again a noble thing to serve in the cause of freedom and the defense of liberty around the world.
There are some who say we've been in a period of "me, me, me" the last 6 years. Well, I say they should go to any American military base in the world or they should come here today. They should meet you, America's young patriots. You're the best we've ever had. You carry on a more than 200-year-old tradition of service, and you carry it as proudly today as it has ever been carried. And that goes for your faculty as well. USUHS has more than 1,500 faculty members, most of them affiliated with other schools or institutions, but who donate their time to USUHS, donate it because that's a way to serve our country.
A quarter century ago, Douglas MacArthur gave his farewell address to the Long Gray Line, the cadets of West Point. He stood in the vast hall of the academy, below the balcony they call the poop deck, and spoke about the soul, not just of the Army but of all the services that you now enter. "The Long Gray Line," he said, "has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words: duty, honor, country."
Duty, honor, country—the motto of West Point. And like the men and women of West Point and all of our military institutions, our physicians in uniform have never failed us. They've been ready when called; ready for hardship and sacrifice, for adventure and exploration; ready to extend the hand of compassion and healing care; ready, if called, to give the last full measure of their devotion. And you now join that company. You now enter the service of your country in one of the world's most honored professions: that of physician.
And so, as your Commander in Chief, I say to you today, on behalf of a grateful country, good luck, congratulations, Godspeed. Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 11:05 a.m. in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In his opening remarks, he referred to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger; David I. Olch, Chairman of the University's Board of Regents; and Jay P. Sanford, president of the University and dean of the School of Medicine.
From 6/24/1939 to 5/1/1967 is: 1 week, 334 months
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Nomination of H. Lawrence Garrett III To Be Under Secretary of the Navy
May 18th, 1987
The President today announced his intention to nominate H. Lawrence Garrett III to be Under Secretary of the Navy. He would succeed James F. Goodrich.
Mr. Garrett is currently the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. Prior to this, he served as Associate Counsel to the President, The White House (1983-1986); Regional Director, Merit Systems Protection Board (1982-1983); and executive assistant to the president and chief operating officer, U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corp. (1981-1982).
Mr. Garrett graduated from the University of West Florida (B.S., 1969) and the University of San Diego School of Law (J.D., 1972). He served in the United States Navy from 1961 to 1981. Mr. Garrett was born June 24, 1939, in Washington, DC. He is married, has two children, and resides in Oakton, VA.
