Ronald Wilson Reagan
    1911-2004

On June 5, 2004, the fortieth President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, passed away at the age of 93. The Abilene Chamber of Commerce and the community as a whole were honored with his presence as guest speaker at the Chamber’s 51st Annual Membership Banquet back in 1959. At the time, Reagan was a featured motion picture and television personality and he spoke in front of a crowd of 1,163 with representatives from communities across West Texas in attendance.

	File Photo: Pictured standing left-right: W.L. (Bill) Blakney, R.J. Hawk and Cal Young. Seated in the foreground is Ronald Reagan.
	Photo Courtesy of Steve Butman Photography

The following is Ronald Reagan's speech, in it's entirety, from the Abilene Chamber of Commerce's 51st Annual Membership Banquet in 1959.

Ronald Regan - Keynote Speaker - 51st Annual Membership Banquet - 1959
"I think some of you must have thought it presumptuous of someone of my profession and my industry in Hollywood, to attempt to stand here and speak to you on a serious subject of Business of the State of the World, the problem that faces us today. It is true that our business in Hollywood is made up of tinsel and spangle and colored lights, make-believe and illusion; but at the same time it is a business. Matter of fact, it is a first-generation business. The men who run our studios are for the most part the men who started that business, and in their lifetime, these men built a business that today represents the capital investment of America, better than 3 billion dollars. It gives employment throughout this country to more than one-half million of our fellow citizens exclusive of the editorial staff of Confidential Magazine, and in their lifetime, they have captured for the Hollywood products, 70 % of the playing time of all the screen’s of the world and they have done this in spite of the fact that here is the only country in the world where the pictures of all the world are free to play with no restrictions on playing time, no limitations on the number of films imported, no extra taxes not levied against our own product, no frozen funds hurdled. Our pictures all over the world play under those restrictions and limitations and in the negotiations leading to those arrangements in each of those countries on our side of the table have sat private American businessmen and on the other side of the table have sat representatives of the foreign government, and never once have we in Hollywood asked for the weight of government on our side of the table. We have a sneaking suspicion out there that when you ask the government for help you wind up with a partner. Now we have some basis in fact for that suspicion.

Our industry, through World War I and 30 years that followed, our studio controlled the product from raw material to consuming. This vertical structure gave the industry a stability that carried it through two World Wars and a great depression. It is a stability we no longer enjoy. There has been a great deal said in print, from the speaking platform in recent years about the economic problems of the motion picture industry, but very little heed has been paid to the part our own government plays in striking at the very life blood of vitality of an entire industry.

In 1948, the Supreme Court handed down a final decision in the anti-trust action that had been brought against the motion picture industry and forced the divorcement of the ownership of the motion picture studios and theatres and destroyed our commercial sales system known as Block Booking. This act was called by one anti-trust authority in Washington, the greatest experiment by government in the vertical disintegration of an industry in the history of the Sherman Act, and we have had some 10 years to see the result of that government experiment.

Today in Hollywood, 26,000 people, the sum total engaged in the production of pictures, no longer have permanent employment. They have temporary employment working from one picture to the next and in between time if they are eligible, lining up in front of the unemployment insurance offices. There are no contract lists. Employment in Hollywood is 43 % today of what it was in 1948. Our wage scale, once one of the highest, is today one of the lowest and as a lack of attraction to new personnel in the very life blood of any new industry, we can point to the fact that less than 6 % of our manpower is under age 30 and more than 50 % is over age 50. We, of course, fought back but we weren't very well versed in fighting. We had to accept a responsibility for what had happened to us.

For almost a half a century, the motion picture industry has had publicity and not public relations. We have subscribed to a Barnum philosophy of "never mind what they say so long as they spell our name right and tell the people where to buy the tickets." We even added to the misconceptions about us. We never repudiated them. We never fought back at the accusations, false though they might be, that were made against us. In short, we paid no heed to the business climate in our community, our state and our nation in which we had to exist, live and operate. We allowed ourselves to become a village idiot on the industrial scene and when you do this you become a target for all those well-meaning people who believe that the answer to all problems is imposing their way of thinking through rule and regulations. You become a target for government interference and harassment and its twin evil of discriminatory taxation.

Hardly a year goes by that some form of anti-trust action isn't taken against some segment of the motion picture industry. Certainly no election year goes by that we are not investigated, for something or other because Hollywood, in connection with any other group of words, is enough to get your name on the front page of the paper.

In this great land of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, the motion picture industry is subjected to censorship by law-legal censorship, not our voluntary code, not the censorship of well-meaning citizens in organizations and groups-but lawful legal censorship in more than one-fourth of our states and over 200 cities. And today in a half dozen more states, more bills are pending and now these bills include television and radio. Sometimes they approach our best comedy efforts. A few years ago a western Senator introduced a bill in Congress, which would establish a permanent Congressional Committee to license actors on the basis of their morals and if they couldn't pass this test of the Congressional Committee they couldn't get a license and they couldn't act in pictures. We thought this was pretty funny at the time because there were two United States Senators in prison and no actors.

But, on the serious side, a few months ago the motion picture industry issued a statement publicly to you, our fellow citizens, It was a statement that we have fought under cover for almost a year against the pressure of our own State Department and now against our better judgment, we were yielding to the State Department pressure and making available for showing behind the Iron Curtain, American-made motion pictures in exchange for the showing in this country of Russian-made pictures. Ours. , , the industry that a few years ago was being investigated because they suspected that we were putting Russian or Soviet propaganda on our screens. We do not care about the Russian pictures that play in this country because we have more faith in you, the people, than that. We know you will know the difference between propaganda and entertainment. But what we are concerned with is our American movies once behind the Iron Curtain being re-edited, re-dubbed, cut and changed in order to become anti-American propaganda. Well, all of these remarks are not the subject I came to talk to you about. They are by way of introduction. Because since Hollywood became aware of these things, we have found that all of you share in varying degrees, problems of a common source, problems common to this.

There has been a revolution in our times and if I had to choose a word to describe the most salient characteristic of that revolution, I would choose the word collectivism. The tendency on the part of so many of us these days is to center all the forces of initiative in a central government. To turn to that central government to the answers for all our problems and the weapon of that revolution has been the tax machine. In this great democracy of ours we have had many theories of taxation. We have subscribed to a belief that luxuries should be taxed, that it was more proper that these should be taxed than necessities. Because then, the citizen could choose voluntarily whether to pay the tax or not. And so today in indirect and hidden and direct taxes, 31 % of a bottle of beer is tax and 46 % of a package of cigarettes and 68 % of a bottle of liquor. Well, certainly these are luxuries and they are probably, in many instances, luxuries we would be better off without. But, when government once starts, it doesn't stop there, like in the field of censorship, as it begins to spread.

Today, 34 % of your phone bill and 27 % of the gas and oil that you buy and more than one-fourth of the cost of your new automobile and if you put up at a hotel and complain about the high bill-well stop and think for a moment that the hotel taxes in this country pro rate out at $1.93 a room per day whether that room is occupied or not.

We have seen the income tax in our life-time grow from a law of 31 words to more than 440,000 words-a law so complex, a hodge - podge of contradictory levies and emergency measures, one levied on top of the other-until it has become a loophole for one and a penalty for another. Of course, in all fairness I should point out, that a few years ago the government did adopt a simplified form 1040 particularly for the man of modest income so that he could figure out his obligation to the government without employing a lawyer or an accountant.

Recently, the government has found it necessary to put out a book of instructions telling you how to fill out the simplified form. I found a sentence on page 8 of that book of instructions for the simplified form. This sentence is entitled "Additional Charge for Under Payment of Estimated Tax." I would like to read it to you:

It says, "The charge with respect to any under-payment of any installment is mandatory and will be made unless the total amount of all payments of estimated tax made on or before the last date prescribed for the payment of such installment equals or exceeds whichever of the following is the lesser-(A) The amount which would have been required to be paid on or before such date of the estimated tax or whichever of the following is the least-(l) The tax shown on your return for the previous year (if your return for such year showed a liability for tax and covered a taxable year of 12 months), or (2) A tax computed by using the previous year's income with the current year's rates and exemptions, or (3) 70 per cent-(66 2/3 % per cent in the case of farmers) of a tax computed by projecting to the end of the year the income received from the beginning of the year up to the beginning of the month of the installment payment: Or (B) An amount equal to 90 % of the tax computed at the rates applicable to the taxable year on the basis of the actual taxable income for the month and the taxable year ending before the month in which the installment is required to be paid," Don't ask me to interpret it, I had a tough time reading It.

And this entire system of progressive in-come tax represents a discrimination against individual ability and effort, such as has never before existed for any long period of time in any large scale civilized community. Year after year, it pushes us closer and closer to property-less uniformity and toward collectivism, It is indefensible except on an avowedly confiscatory theory. Indeed you can not defend the principle of this tax policy without defending the very basic principles of the socialism that we are all pledged to oppose, This one did not come from our democracy, this type of taxation was formed more than 100 years ago by Karl Marx and Karl Marx gave it as the prime essential of Socialist State. Indeed he went beyond that, Karl Marx said in imposing Socialism on a people, it will be necessary to use the progressive system of income tax to tax the middle class out of existence. This is an answer to those who refer to it as a "soak the rich" tax and today in. our own tax, we find the steepest rate of increase in the surtax rate occurs through the middle income bracket, where are to be found the bulk of our small businessmen, our professional people, our executive and supervisory personnel, skilled workers and many of our farmers.

It reaches 34% at $8,000, 43% at $12,000, and posses the 50 % mark at $16,000 of income, and there is no ratio between the penalty imposed on the individuals in these higher brackets and the government's real need for revenue, because all of the surtax from the first 2 % on up through the 91 % bracket grosses the government around 5 1/2 billion dollars; and above the 50 % bracket, the government gets less than 2 1/2 billion dollars and from 65 to 91 %, the government gets less than 1/4 billion dollars, and this again I mention is gross; and does it relieve the small men or must we face the reality that in the long run, people pay taxes,

The average family income in America today is $6,000 per year. When a man with a wife and two children and a gross income of $3,500 a year, when he has finished paying his local, his state and his federal taxes and finished paying all the hidden and direct taxes, he will find that out of the gross income of $3,500, at the end of the year, $1,045 is the tax collector's share. We have been told by economists that any time the tax burden of a country such as ours, passes 25 % of the total revenue, free economy is in danger. Today, 31 cents out of every dollar earned is paid in taxes. And of that 31 cents, 23 cents goes to the Federal Government, leaving 8 cents for the county, the local community and the State; to pay the teachers, firemen, policemen, build the sewers, streets, and do the daily services we require in our every day lives.

In 1957, Colin Stam, head of the Professional Tax Advisors to the Joint House and Senate Committee on Taxation, told that group that if this country faced an emergency tomorrow and had to raise a single additional billion dollars through taxation, he did not know where they could do it in any segment of the economy, without endangering our free enterprise system.

Now a few moments ago, I referred to the tax machine as a weapon. Some time ago in the beginning of the public ownership of power in this land of ours, the premise upon which the government stepped into the power field was that in those areas where it was not practical and economic for private enterprise to do the job, it was only proper and fitting that government should step in and fill that gap. No one, certainly very few, disagreed with that premise, but today can anyone hide the fact that the advocates of public ownership of power taking advantage of the tax-free status have long ago abandoned that premise and are openly seeking to compete privately owned utilities out of existence and when a few years ago the privately owned utility companies banded together in a program of institutional advertising, to put out ads pointing out that the difference in rates between government power and private power, was the difference in one paying tax and the other being tax-free.

Within the last year, the Bureau of Internal Revenue stepped into the picture with a policing power of taxation and said "such advertising can not be deducted as a legitimate business expense for tax purposes." But, unless the utility people feel lonely tonight, doctors in this land of ours who banded together and contributed money in a program of education to combat the rising tide of socialized medicine, have received a ruling from the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which reads in part: "Opposing socialization of the medical or other segment of the economy or supporting the principles of individual liberty and freedom of individuals in the medical profession or elsewhere, are not in our opinion per se educational functions or objectives; and you are not entitled to exemption of federal income tax." Could any intent be spelled out any more clearly than that?

A year ago we were faced with our first 70 billion dollar plus budget, 74 billion dollars, and for the first time in many years with the war being in the past, the people of this country began to murmur and protest and demand government economy and tax reform. It approached the proportions of a ground swell and if those who suck at the public trough have always flourished best in a psychology of crisis and emergency they were not to be denied this time.

Just about this time, the Russian Sputnik went into orbit and so, of course, we were told this ended all possibility of tax reform or tax cut. If anything, more money was needed as if money alone could defend our shores. Most of us with admirable patriotism sat back and said, "for defense, of course," and the protest died. But about that time, our own satellite went into orbit. The emergency loomed as not quite so eminent but the big spenders were saved once again. All they had to do was change the lyrics and keep the same tune because by this time, we were in a recession and so now, we needed multi-billion dollar spending projects because of the emergency of a recession.

In spite of this, during the last session of Congress, there were individuals on both sides of the aisle-Republicans and Democrats-who stood up and advocated cuts in that 74 billion dollar budget, that
Totaled 5 1/2 billion dollars. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee said that all of those cuts were in the area of useless fat; that they had not scratched a single muscle fiber of the government program. A deficit spending was more attractive politically to Congress than the obvious stimulant that would have resulted from tax reform to a private economy. And so Congress met in what one of its own members has called the most profligate spending orgy in the history of our nation. They spent 13 billion dollars over and above the original budget. Deficit spending in that amount all in the name of the twin emergencies of defense and of recession, but not according to the director of the budget-the one man who should know, Maurice Stans-who recently with brutal frankness said that of the 13 billion dollar deficit spending, none
of it was for defense, none of it was for an emergency measure for the recession.

Indeed at the end of the session, less than 1/2 billion dollars over and above the original budget estimate for defense had been appropriated and in spite of this, in spite of none of the multi-billion dollar projects that were suggested as anti -recession measures being put into effect, even the most optimistic were surprised at the rate of recovery that our country enjoys, and you have to face that perhaps the reason for this was something-and this will be my last plug of the evening for the sponsor-something like General Electric's "operation up-turn” and this was followed by other business concerns, by "buy-a-car" programs in various cities, by all sorts of stimulants to private trade. In short, American business men within the framework of a free economy, doing a "do it yourself" project.

What a contrast with the early 50's; we had a recession then, too, and in 1954, in spite of that recession, Congress met and cut taxes by 6 billion dollars. The stimulant was so immediate to the economy that before the end of the year, the government's loss of revenue was not 6 billion but only 4 billion; and by the next year, the government got 8 billion dollars more in taxes from the lower rates than they had received the previous year at the higher rate. Lately it has been a great deal of talk that a little inflation is good for us and it doesn't hurt us a bit, and the most vocal spokesman has been a professor from Harvard University who has been saying that in an expanding economy such as ours, we need a few percentage points of inflation each year. Otherwise, we won't stay healthy. Well, it is only a few percent-age points but even in a gradual climb anyone should have an opportunity to turn and look back down the hill and see how far we have climbed. So, we take a 20-year look back-that seems at be the most popular today-to 1939 and we face the fact and even the inflationist admit, that yet at a few percentage points a year, we have climbed to the point at which today, 20 years later, it takes $2 roughly to buy what $1 would buy 20 years ago. But they say, what is the harm because the average income has gone up twice as much? You are earning $2 for each one that you earned in 1939; but either through stupidity or intent, and I prefer to believe the latter, the big spenders and the inflationist leave one factor out of the inflationary spiral. They fail to point out to you the part that is played by a progressive system of income tax in an inflation because income tax in the surtax bracket is not based on the value of a dollar, it is based on the number of dollars you earn. And so today, as you earn $2 for the $1 you earned 20 years ago so that you can break even in purchasing power, you find you have moved up into another surtax bracket and you have to earn additional dollars to pay the government for the privilege of breaking even. And so, if you were a $5,000 a year man in 1939, today you must earn $14,000; and if you were a $1 0,000 a year man, today you must earn $31,000 and $12,000 of that will represent the government's increased share in personal income tax; and if you had reached that lofty plateau of earning $50,000 a year then, today you must earn $335,000 and of that amount, $240,000 will represent the government's share in increased surtax.

Now, does anyone here care to project these figures at this same gradual harmless rate of inflation a few years into the future and with the same tax rate, even pretend that free enterprise can exist? We will project
it to 1975. That should be within reach of most of us and if you earned $5,000 in 1939, by 1975 you will have to earn $33,000 and if you earned $50,000, you will have to earn $835,000 to maintain your same purchasing power.

About a year ago, I had the experience of going to Washington. I was sent there representing the motion picture industry to appear before the House Ways and Means Committee to advocate the adoption of a tax reform measure known as Sadlak-Herlong Bill. This experience was comparable to going over Niagara in a barrel, the hard way-up stream. Before we appeared before the committee, we met with some of our Congressmen in a little informal off-the-record session and it was very enlightening. One Congressman told us this bill would not get out of committee because he said "It makes too much sense." He said, "it cuts across so many lines and benefits so many people generally that we are not feeling any pressure here from any particular group." But then the Congressman told us some things of greater interest to us. He told us that permanent structure of our government has grown so big and so complex that Congressmen can no longer really police it. He said we have to take the word of the bureau head, the department head, as to the functions of his bureau or department, what his needs are, what he is doing, what his budgetary requirements are and suddenly many things become clear to you when you hear that.

You understand why Congress can appropriate 700 million dollars in a reclamation project to reclaim desert land and put it into fruitful farm production and then a few hours later, the same Congress can appropriate 1 1/2 billion dollars in soil bank payments to take farmland out of production. You understand why they can suggest 15 billion dollars in emergency projects to put the unemployed to work and at this moment, our Labor Department is getting ready to process almost 1/2 million foreign laborers who will be brought into the country immediately on temporary permits to take necessary farm jobs. You understand why in this great land of freedom and the state of Ohio, the people of the Amish religion, good God - fearing people, who have as a tenet of their religion they can not and never have accepted one
penny from our government in relief or aid or pension. And, so, as a result, finding it against their religion, do not participate in the Social Security Program and within the last few months, their property has been seized and their cattle sold at auctions to enforce their Social Security payment, even though they can not collect that money when it comes due.

You find in Michigan, the picture for the first time, of an American citizen packing up and leaving this country in a search for personal liberty and freedom. A man by the name of Yankus who committed the grievous sin of planting more than 14 acres of wheat on his own property to feed his chickens, never went into the market place with a single bushel of wheat, and now he will pay $5,000 fine to our government and he threatens to leave the country and in your own State of Texas, you have a man named Evetts Haley, who has fought this same type of thing because he raised grain on his land to feed his own cattle and within the last two weeks, the Supreme Court has issued a final ruling in his case. The Supreme Court has ruled in effect that a bureau of the United States Government, has the right to tell an American farmer what he can grow on his own land for his own use. And by contrast, we turn to the Congressional Record and we see the names of 2200 individual farmers each of whom in this program of subsidized scarcity, will receive payments this year ranging from a minimum of $10,000 to $320,000.

We saw the Hoover Commission appointed under both the Democratic and Republican Administration. A committee that was supposed to find some order out of this chaos, A committee that was to reorganize and avoid or get rid of senseless and useless and expensive duplications. They described their work at the end of their session as a fantastic nightmare of working in regimented chaos.

They found a government that owns 2 ½ typewriters for every employee that uses one. They found a government in which one branch of the service is buying sun glasses at $5.00 a pair and another branch of the service is selling the same sun glasses as surplus at $1.25 a pair. They found a government that owns 12 office spaces, the equivalent of 1250 Empire State Buildings and at the same time the government appropriates $100,000,000 for another House Office Building and one member of Congress in opposing this, pointed out that not only was it unnecessary, but he said it represents a cost pro rated of $375,000 for each Congressman who will occupy that building. They found the government in thousands of businesses in direct competition with private enterprise. The Defense Department alone in 2500 businesses, covering 47 lines of activities including the operation and ownership of 150 ice cream factories.

Mr. C. E. Wilson, a few years ago, after he had been War Production Administrator, went to the government with a very simple plan and he went seriously. He suggested that these government owned corporations which cost our government 30 billion dollars a year, almost the total amount of money collected in all the personal income tax; he suggested that the government form stock companies and let American citizens trade in their bonds for shares of stock in these corporations. He pointed out that they were assessed at a 28 billion dollar value so this move would cut the national debt by 10%. It would knock almost one billion dollars of interest payment out of the budget each year and it would knock off that 30 billion dollars we were spending and that it would add 28 billion dollars worth of private property to the tax rolls to help the rest of us share the burden of government, and the only comment he received from Washington was, "It doesn't appear smart politically." There is an axiom in Washington that a Congressman does not get reelected by saving money, he gets reelected by going back to his constituents and telling them how much federal spending he was able to secure for his district and of course for this we are responsible.

In the recent years, we have asked for services and benefits from government. Each one of these governments have cost not only in money, but for each service we have asked, we have paid in the loss of a personal freedom. We have done this in the name of Social Progress. I am sure that there are many of these programs we would not buy back at any cost. Certainly, no thinking American would dispute the wisdom in this great land of plenty of having an economic floor beneath which no citizen should be required to live; but isn't it about time we took a closer look at the welfare architects who designed that floor, to see if they aren't very busy at this moment erecting an economic ceiling above which no citizen shall be allowed to rise.

Security is a dream in each one of our hearts but can we buy it on a mass blanket basis without running the risk of putting wishbones where backbones should be?

A few years ago, Norman Thomas who had run many times for President of the United States on a Socialist Party ticket; Norman Thomas said the American people he was convinced would never knowingly vote for Socialism but he said the American people under the name of Liberalism will one by one adopt each program of the Socialist party until one day they awaken and find they are indeed Socialist and they don't know how it happened. How many of us as veterans today can oppose socialized medicine and yet remain silent at the things being lobbied by many of our organizations in our behalf? How many of us can deny that what is actually being advocated in our behalf and we are now one-third of the nation's workhorse? Some 25 million of us, but the things being advocated amount to medical benefits, hospital care for ourselves and our dependents and today, in the some 200,000 beds of the veterans hospitals, 3 out of 4 of them are occupied by non-service-connected disabilities. Indeed there are only 40,000 service-connected disabilities in the whole United States; and couple this with the program being advocated in Washington today to put all people on Social Security with complete medical and hospital care, a bill which would cost 6 billion dollars the first year and by 1975, that same fateful year, would cost 25 billion dollars a year; and never once would the term socialized medicine be used, but socialized medicine we would indeed have.

Those members of the National Education Association who put their 900 million dollar foot into the door of federal aid to education last year, today have a bill before Congress that calls for 4 1/2 billion dollars in federal aid to education. All in the name of emergency. But, have they recognized the fact that in the last four years the shortage of classrooms facing this country has been cut in half at the secondary level. How serious is the emergency when 500 colleges in this country can as of this moment take 200,000 additional students without buying a single chair? Those people who advocate more compulsory health insurance, more retirement programs, more pension programs, from government, all again in the name of a real need. Have they shown any recognition of the extent in years to which union and industrial program, group insurance and private insurance have covered this very problem and obviated this need?

Today more than 100 million Americans are covered by some form of medical or hospital insurance or are we to believe that these advocates of government programs really are not speaking out of a feeling of emergency, but speaking out because what they really mean is they believe it is only proper if it is done by government; and they won't stop until government indeed is the big brother to us all.  Tonight there are some 40 million American citizens who receive some form of cash payment from the Federal Government and this has resulted in the growth of a collection of internal powers and bureaucratic institutions against which the average citizen is absolutely helpless and this power under whatever name and whatever ideology you want to call it, is the very essence of totalitarianism.

The birth of our country, a cynical Frenchman some 200 years ago said, that our democracy would last only until those in power found they could perpetuate themselves through taxation. Well, we didn't pay much attention to that because it has certainly been true that neither one of our major parties has been able to keep itself indefinitely in power, but perhaps we have been looking in the wrong direction. Certainly of recent years the choice that has been given us between the two political parties has been a choice of tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Maybe we should have a closer look at that permanent staff; those people who man that permanent structure of government because the bulwark of our democracy, the two party system will be meaningless if policy, government policy, is going to be determined by bureaus rather than those chosen by ballots, bureaus frozen into permanency by civil service regulations, bureaus that are beyond the reach of any election.

A subcommittee of the Congress reported back to this session on their findings of federal employees. There are some 2 1/2 million and they reported that in 1942, there was 1 top salaried executive in civil service for every 89 employees. Today there is one for Avery 17. They further reported that they had found no evidence that any agency, bureau or department created as the answer to an emergency ever went out of existence after the emergency disappeared.

Well, there are a couple of things up before Congress that could give us an idea how this comes about. Today there is a labor bill proposed by Senator Kennedy. I won't argue the pros and cons of this bill, but I would like to point out how these things can happen in this growth of this permanent structure.

In section 111 of Senator Kennedy's bill, it says if his bill is passed, there will then be appointed a $17,500-a-year director with the power to appoint such personnel including lawyers, as he finds necessary. In Senator Johnson, of your State, measure his moderate measure to bring some peace, some order out of the bitter dispute concerning civil rights; I won't argue again the pros and cons of that measure but in Section 104A, if it is passed, it calls for a $20,000-a-year director; five $17.500-a-year assistants and the right to appoint personnel not to exceed 100. Note, this, is not personnel to be appointed in place of, this will be people in addition to already existing personnel in both of those fields. And now we come to what to do.

Well, somebody once said that for evil to triumph, it is only necessary that good men do nothing. First of all, we must support those individuals on both sides of the aisles regardless of party labels. Those individuals who still bespeak the old fashioned philosophy that the. best form of government is the least government. These people-we should write to them not only as individuals, but as organizations. We should strengthen their spines when they say what we believe in. We should write to those we are opposed to and if you think that writing to your Congressman doesn't mean something, then let me call to your attention that the American Communist Party boasts that they can put 50,000 letters in Washington in 48 hours on any measure they choose. Next, we must have the unselfish wisdom not to always ask for economy in the other fellow's district. Instead of being the first to rush to Washington to protest the closing of a useless government installation in our area, we should be the first to Washington to urge the abolition of anything the government is doing that is unnecessary; because there is one thing we must get rid of and that is the use of the word "free," when it is connected as with the government program. Government can give nothing to the people that it has not first taken away from the people, and more specifically in addition to these generalities, there are four issues before Congress today. Four battle fields upon which we can take a stand and should take a stand on all of them.

One, a bill introduced by Cannon of Missouri, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. His bill calls for a 20 % cut in federal employees without firing a" single employee. The annual turnover in civil service is 375',000 a year and his bill is a simple bill. It simply says, put a freeze on rehiring of replacements until there has been a 20 % over-all cut in the number of employees.

The second provision up before Congress has been introduced by Senator Byrd of Virginia. A man so respected by both parties that few argue against him when he talks fiscal and monetary policies and Senator Byrd would put an end once and for all to the back door financing as practiced by Congress. Now, what this simply means is, and I have found in getting around the country, that most Americans are unaware of the fact that Congress can pass any piece of legislation they choose, that they believe is for the public
good, and they are not forced to balance it against the government's revenue. They do not have to add up the total cost and see whether it comes within the income the government will receive. They can hand the bureau or department a spending chip and send them over to the Treasury Department and the Treasury Department is forced to borrow the money in the open market to give them the money that has been appropriated by Congress. He would put an end to that.

The third measure is the Herlong-Baker Bill. It is an improvement of the Sadlak-Herlong Bill of last year. This is bi-partisan. Herlong is a Democrat and Baker a Republican. It is a tax reform measure that calls for a cut over a 5 -year period, a gradual cut in corporate and personal income taxes; which in 5 years would bring the 20 % base tax down to 15 % and" the top series for corporations and individuals instead of 91 and 52 %', down to 47 % and it is done gradually over each year, and it has also provisions covering estate and inheritance tax. This is probably one of the best worked out and most carefully planned tax reform measures that has ever appeared in our government in the last 50 years. Now the opponents of this, the spenders, tell us that you can’t cut taxes until you cut government spending. This I challenge as dishonest. Because, no government in history has ever voluntarily reduced-itself in size. Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government will always find a need for the money it gets.

We must, if we are to preserve this free economy, we must reduce the fodder upon which our government has fed and grown beyond the consent of the governed and the fourth and the major battlefield of course, has to do with the President's budget that has been submitted to this Congress-77 billion dollars-but called by the spenders, "penny pinching," "unwise," "should be much larger," "several billion dollars too small in the face of the world emergency." Actually, it is several billion dollars too big. But, at least, it is a rallying ground. We can at least hold the line there. Actually, it is this size because it represents a compromise, an attempt to placate the spenders so that they would lessen their opposition to this budget.

Senator Byrd, once again to quote him, has said that of this year, in the face of the emergency, our country could go back to the 1955 budget of 64 billion dollars, a 13 billion dollar cut, without impairing a single essential, government service or without harming our defense whatsoever. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, in the last 4 years defense spending in this country has only increased 11 % and non-defense spending in the 4 years has increased 78 %; and yet all of the spending is thrown at us in the name of the emergency of defense and the Cold War. Either we win this battle today and either we heed the word of Senator Byrd, a Democrat, who has said of the Republican President, that the people of America should rise up in a grass roots movement and support him in the budget fight; a man who has pledged his support to the Republican Administration in uphold1ng as far as he can in the Senate, any veto of any spending power or spending program that might be advocated over and above the present budget. How long are we going to ignore the warnings that have been spelled out for us?

Some years ago, we reviled ourselves; we said if we had only heeded the words of Mein Kampf how much we could have saved ourselves; but we read it too late. That here was spelled out the threat against us that we finally had to meet and today we repeat history, because the warning has been spelled out even more clearly by the men in the Kremlin. In 1923, Lenin said we shall conquer Eastern Europe, and they have; and he said we will organize the masses of Asia, and they are doing it. And, then he said the United States, the last bastion of Capitalism, will be surrounded and we won't have to take it-it will fall into our outstretched hand like over-ripe fruit. And, more recently they have said we wil1 force you through inflation to lose your world market. As you spend and your prices go up and you lose your world market, then you will curtail production, then you will face unemployment and then we will settle our debt with America. And, a few months ago, Mr. Khrushchev in answer to a direct question by American
newspapermen, who asked him, "What do you think will happen in the Cold War in the next 15 years?" Mr. Khrushchev smiled blandly and confidently, and said, "In 15 years, there won't be a Cold War; because in 15 years your country is so rapidly becoming Socialist that there won't be any cause for conflict between our two countries." This he could say of his own country as comparing it to ours. His country which represents today the most diabolical threat against mankind, that has ever existed since we first climbed from the swamp.

Tonight, we sleep easier in our beds because of the dedicated patriotism, the devotion to duty of the men in uniform who guard the ramparts of freedom throughout the world. But, we have a sacred obligation to-night to those men, because I don't believe that the ramparts of freedom can be conquered from without as long as men of their stature and caliber stand guard. But, our obligation to them and our obligation to our children and our children's children, is to see that those ramparts are not under-cut from within, they are not eroded and lost by default.

A hundred years ago, lord Macauley, who looked with disfavor on our democracy, said in the 20th century "your democracy will come to an end, because," he said, "in the 20th century either a Caesar or a Napoleon will seize the reins of government in its strong hands or you will be overrun by the vandals and huns as was ancient Rome in the 5th century. But, with this difference," lord Macauley said, "the vandals and huns of
Rome came from without and yours will have been engendered within your own institutions."

Tonight, as those men stand guard, our guard duty is to make plain that we understand that the sources of their strength and ours is our personal freedom, our democracy and our free enterprise system. There can be no security any place in the free world, if there is not in this country economic stability and fiscal stability. Mankind has only known but a few moments of freedom in all its history and most of those moments have been ours. All of those moments have come within an economic framework of capitalism. Indeed, you can not have individual freedom., -the sanctity of the individual-without capitalism, private ownership, and the sacred right of a man to the fruit of his toil of his own private property. Now, we have been very spendthrift with our yesterdays and today, I believe we are very late in the afternoon of the day of decision. It could well be that the lights may be going out over all the world, never to be lighted again in our time or in any foreseeable time; and if any among us are so foolish, so optimistic, as to believe that the enemies within and without will give us another chance, give us a tomorrow in which to wage this fight, then we are about as short-sighted as the fellow going into the poultry business without a rooster; we are putting a great deal of confidence in the stork. Thank you!

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