Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 452 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 33) Bob Dole Delivers the 1985 Landon Lecture

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Episode 452 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 33) Bob Dole Delivers the 1985 Landon Lecture · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:26
  Kansas State University is home to the Landon Lecture Series, one of the nation's most prestigious and well-known lectures.
• 0:33
  Several times a year, global leaders share insight on the Landon Lecture Stage.
• 0:38
  Inaugurated in 1966 by former K State President James A.
• 0:42
  McCain, the lecture series is a tribute to the late Al Alfred M.
• 0:46
  Landon, a former Kansas governor, distinguished political leader, former presidential candidate, and the speakers have included current and former U.S.
• 0:54
  presidents, world leaders, Supreme Court justices, CEOs, and other prominent figures.
• 1:02
  One of whom is we're going to do a two-part series.
• 1:06
  One of whom is Bob Dole, former U.S.
• 1:09
  Senate Majority Leader, and the other, Elizabeth Dole.
• 1:12
  Bob Dole did his in 1985, so it is right in our timeline when he was the Senate majority leader.
• 1:20
  And Elizabeth Dole uh did her lecture in 1990, five years later.
• 1:26
  So we hope you'll enjoy this uh two-part special edition, though one is an episode in our timeline, the other a special edition.
• 1:35
  Here is Bob Dole and the Landon Lecture Series.
• 2:11
  Senator Dole earned his baccalaure degree from the University of Kansas and his law degree from Washburn University, the latter in 1952.
• 2:21
  By then, he was already winning a reputation for personal courage.
• 2:25
  Gravely wounded and twice decorated for heroic achievement during World War II, he spent 39 months recovering in hospitals.
• 2:33
  In 1951, while still enrolled in law school, he was elected to the Kansas legislature.
• 2:41
  Later, he became Russell County's prosecuting attorney.
• 2:45
  All these experiences being prelude to four terms in the United States House and then election to the Senate in 1968.
• 2:55
  National Republic Part Republic Republican Party Chairman, running mate with President Ford, contender for the presidential nomination, and re-election to the Senate in 1980, and in doing so carried all 105 counties in Kansas.
• 3:12
  I rather like what his wife Elizabeth, also a good friend of Kansas and only the seventh woman ever to serve in a president's cabinet, said of him.
• 3:22
  I see in him concern and sensitivity for people who have suffered adversity, no matter what the sources of their problems.
• 3:30
  I present to you with the topic, The Dream of America.
• 3:34
  Please join me in saying welcome, Senator Bob Dole.
• 3:37
  Senator Dole.
• 4:19
  But I am very proud to be here.
• 4:21
  I've been to many Landon lectures where its presidents have spoken and governors, and I think even one Arab sheik, and uh uh I know it's a very prestigious uh platform.
• 4:31
  I'm particularly honored to be here since I understand that not since uh Governor Landon inaugurated this program 19 years ago is the Canson been asked to speak.
• 4:41
  And so I appreciate uh that very much, and for that I'm I'm I'm very honored.
• 4:47
  I'm also pleased that Governor Carlin uh is here, and I want to dispel uh, you know, a lot of people think because one may be Republican and one may be a Democrat that there's no communication.
• 5:00
  Let me suggest that if the Soviets and the Americans could communicate as well as I do with Governor Carlin, we'd have had an arms agreement a long time ago.
• 5:09
  And I I say that because uh Governor Carlin also has a prestigious uh position in this country today as chairman of the National Governors Association.
• 5:20
  And he has the same commitment, the same sincere hope as I do, and as I think most everyone in this audience has, that we finally will come to grips with this massive federal deficit that's going to have an adverse impact on everyone in this audience if we don't deal with it.
• 5:39
  So I want to publicly thank uh Governor Carlin for his support, for his willingness to listen, for his many trips to uh Washington to talk to all of us, Republicans and Democrats, and what we consider to be public enemy number one, the federal deficit.
• 5:57
  So, Governor, I very much appreciate your being here.
• 6:00
  As I said, if anybody starts throwing anything, maybe you can catch some of it for me.
• 6:04
  So you think about a lot of things when you stand before a group where I see many of my friends and uh some people I don't know.
• 6:19
  I think about Russell, Kansas, or somewhere else in Kansas.
• 6:27
  But I also take inspiration from another man.
• 6:30
  That man is Governor Landon, a man who held my party's banner aloft in those bleak days and bleak years when many questioned its future.
• 6:41
  I think he and I have more in common than our Kansas underpinnings.
• 6:46
  We've both run for high national office with rather conspicuous lack of success.
• 6:52
  And back in 1936, when Alf opposed Franklin D.
• 6:57
  Roosevelt, Republican strategists decided to make the Kansas sunflower the emblem of their campaign.
• 7:04
  Of course, the Democrats promptly issued bumper stickers proclaiming that, and I quote, sunflowers die in November.
• 7:13
  That may be so, but that may have been so, but there are principles which outlast any growing season.
• 7:22
  And Al Flandon's principles are tireless.
• 7:25
  They are the Kansas virtues of self-reliance and a tender conscience.
• 7:31
  They combine common sense and uncommon sensitivity.
• 7:36
  He was a man of courage to denounced the Ku Klux Klan when other politicians were willing to tolerate its present.
• 7:43
  A man of vision who proposed recognition of the People's Republic of China a generation before an American president set foot in Peking.
• 7:52
  And all his life, Governor Landman was willing to do the unpopular thing if he judged it to be the right thing.
• 7:59
  And someone other than the governor once labeled his race against FDR as a contest between Harvard, Roosevelt's alma mater, and the rest of the United States.
• 8:19
  His name was James Bryant Conant, and on the wall of his office he kept a cartoon with the caption, Behold the Turtle.
• 8:28
  He only makes progress by sticking his neck out.
• 8:32
  And universities are built by and for long-necked people.
• 8:37
  They exist not merely to fill our minds, but more importantly to stoke our imaginations, and above all, they nurture our dreams.
• 8:47
  The public is a dream, proclaimed Prairie Poet Carl Sandberg.
• 8:51
  Nothing happens unless first a dream.
• 8:54
  And a nation's dreams are the rich harvest of individual ones by the millions.
• 8:59
  They're implanted early in most of us, in the family living room or public classroom, in church pews or in athletic fields.
• 9:08
  Now my generation grew up believing in a future that promised everything hard work and strong faith could achieve.
• 9:16
  From Main Street in Russell, Kansas, I look forward to a world that would yield up its secrets and mine in sometimes murderous ways.
• 9:25
  In many ways, my dreams have come true, thanks in no small measure to the men and women on campuses like this.
• 9:34
  Contrast the world of Al Flandon's boyhood or my own with this era of instant communication and awesome technology.
• 9:42
  Today we can reach into the heavens for perspective on this small shimmering planet.
• 9:47
  We can take food from the ocean depths.
• 9:49
  We can grow crops resistant to insects and indifferent to rain.
• 9:54
  And since I was a boy, we have virtually wiped out the crippling scourge of perlio, polio.
• 9:59
  We have revolution life itself through human or mechanical organ transplants.
• 10:04
  We have diminished distances between peoples.
• 10:08
  No longer are national boundaries equated with natural barriers to commerce and culture.
• 10:13
  And problems of hunger and poverty, though they still exist, and disease, problems as old as the human race, seem a bit closer to solution than at any time in the long struggle of man to fulfill his potential.
• 10:27
  In the same period, I have seen one roadblock after another cleared from the past of women and minorities.
• 10:35
  When Alf Landon ran for president back in 1936, only a handful of women exercised influence in the political life of the nation.
• 10:45
  By 1998, another landed, my distinguished Senate colleague Nancy, may find herself on a national ticket.
• 10:54
  Come to think of it.
• 10:56
  You better not quote me on that one.
• 10:58
  Elizabeth might find out, and a man can survive just so long on frozen dinners, so better be a little careful with that.
• 11:07
  But by any measure, the 20th century has witnessed a remarkable flowering of human achievement.
• 11:13
  Yet some things will elude us.
• 11:17
  The dreams of a world at peace with itself, a world where no one drags a chain and no one wields a sword.
• 11:25
  Well, this world seems as remote as sunlight from shadow.
• 11:31
  Nor have we lived up to Carl Sandberg's dream of a republic without walls in which economic plenty extends to every hope in the land.
• 11:41
  Instead, such visions are held hostage to an unbridled nuclear arms race and our own seemingly uncontrollable urge toward national bankruptcy.
• 11:52
  If my generation can address these dangers now, then your generation will know a world whose dreams are no longer haunted by the mushroom cloud of Armageddon, and a country where no one is condemned to live on the outskirts of economic hope.
• 12:11
  Barely 10 days ago, I returned from a trip to Geneva.
• 12:16
  There were ten senators, five Republicans, and five Democrats.
• 12:21
  I designated five.
• 12:22
  The minority leader, the Democratic leader, Senator Bird had designated five.
• 12:28
  We went to Geneva to observe the opening round of the U.S.
• 12:32
  Soviet arms control or arms reduction talks.
• 12:36
  We made the journey amidst the advent of a new leadership in Moscow.
• 12:42
  It was a time of anticipation and for some expectation.
• 12:48
  But let me correct what some early immediate profiles of the new Soviet boss are correct, at least as I see it.
• 12:57
  The new Soviet leader is a young man, 54 years of age.
• 13:01
  He's going to be around a while.
• 13:04
  In the first four years of Ronald Reagan, we saw a change of four leaders, four and a half years of Ronald Reagan.
• 13:11
  But I would point out that notwithstanding his age and his charisma, whatever that is, that he's no choir boy.
• 13:19
  He is a communist hardliner who will demand tough bargaining at the negotiating session.
• 13:25
  The faces may change behind the imposing walls of the Kremlin, but the philosophies remain the same.
• 13:32
  Now, peace is priceless, but not peace at any price.
• 13:37
  It was our own resolve that brought the Soviets back to Geneva, and it will be future resolve that leads to viable, verifiable arms control.
• 13:47
  In my view, when two nations as profoundly different as the United States and the Soviet Union set across from one another, the only way to narrow the potential for misunderstanding is to speak candidly of our differences and our own determination.
• 14:03
  Until the last few years, this country spoke with an uncertain voice.
• 14:07
  We permitted our defenses to go stiff in the joints, and our foreign policies to confuse the world that was with the one we wished for.
• 14:17
  Yet in the modern world, the appearance of the weakness invites exploitation of weakness.
• 14:22
  And the 1970s were remembered as a dismal age where the Soviets ventured almost at will into Afghanistan and Angola, Cambodia, and Ethiopia.
• 14:34
  Then came 1980, and a new administration pledged to rebuild our defenses and restore a coherent sense of direction to U.S.
• 14:42
  foreign policy.
• 14:44
  And promptly we set out to modernize both our conventional and strategic forces, a process that continues the last week's Senate vote to authorize 21 MX missiles, and far more than a simple bargaining chip.
• 14:59
  I must say, in our conversations with Max Campelman, who happens to be protege of Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, the chief negotiator, and with John Tower, a former colleague, a conservative Republican senator, and with Ambassador Mike Glittman, who'd worked for Paul Nitza and probably the scholar of the three as far as arms control and knowings all the weapon systems were concerned.
• 15:22
  I believe the reason the Senate approved the MX missile by a 55 to 45 vote.
• 15:29
  I'm not certain what will happen in the House on tomorrow, but I believe the underlying reason was that it would seem to many of us that if the Congress shot down the MX missile at the same time we were in our first two weeks of negotiating with the Soviet Union, it took away not just a bargaining chip, but a lot of the leverage.
• 15:50
  And I think we made the right decision.
• 15:53
  I think also we find today the Western Alliance is more united than ever before.
• 15:58
  It is that unity which has helped the Soviets help get them back to the negotiations.
• 16:03
  When they walked out a year ago said they weren't going to come back unless we did not deploy Pershing missiles.
• 16:10
  But they are back at the table.
• 16:12
  I had the opportunity just this past weekend on Friday night and Saturday night in Miami, Florida, to sit down with 15 members of the Soviet delegation headed by Vladimir Sushkov, the Deputy Trade Minister, talk about some of our problems.
• 16:31
  Because as I've indicated earlier, we can't solve our problems if we don't have a dialogue.
• 16:37
  We talked about agriculture, we talked about the Soviet Union, we talked about the problems in our country.
• 16:43
  We talked about the fact they're not buying as much grain as many of us believe they should.
• 16:55
  We may recognize each other if I should visit Moscow or if Minister Sushkov could visit Washington.
• 17:03
  He also has very close ties to Mr.
• 17:05
  Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader.
• 17:08
  And I have a very strong feeling, as I've always hoped I've always had in public life, that you have to discuss the problem if you seek to find an answer.
• 17:17
  But we have the unity.
• 17:19
  NATO is united.
• 17:22
  And now we're talking again.
• 17:24
  And I think it's important that the Congress prepare itself to advise and consent on a possible arms control treaty.
• 17:31
  And I can't think of anything that I'd rather do while I'm the majority leader of the United States Senate than to bring before the United States Senate for ratification a verifiable, a sound, a good, not arms control treaty, but an arms reduction treaty that would mean a great deal to this generation, future generations, not only in security, safety, but also in less uh spending of American dollars, and the same for the Russians.
• 18:02
  But I think one thing we must caution, and that's uh patience.
• 18:08
  We Americans are very impatient people.
• 18:12
  We have the best technology in the world, but he may have been.
• 18:14
  We don't like to wait to solve a problem.
• 18:17
  We want it done yesterday.
• 18:18
  That's personal style.
• 18:19
  The Russians uh they have a different system.
• 18:22
  They don't have to check with Congress, Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, whoever the president might has to negotiate first with the Congress and then with the Soviets.
• 18:31
  The Soviets come to the table without any of those problems.
• 18:35
  They live in a closed society.
• 18:37
  There's nobody commenting on the evening news.
• 18:40
  They make the best deal they can.
• 18:42
  And whatever deal it is, it's accepted.
• 18:45
  And they get their instructions from someone up here.
• 18:47
  Ours is a better system, ours is an open system, ours is a democratic system.
• 18:54
  But I say above all, the thing the negotiators tried to tell senators like myself and Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd and Senator Nichols and others who were uh in Geneva, be patient.
• 19:08
  The first SALT treaty required nearly a decade to negotiate, the second one close to seven years.
• 19:15
  So if we're looking for a quick fix, it's probably not going to happen.
• 19:19
  And sooner or later, maybe sometime this year, when Mr.
• 19:22
  Gorbachev comes to address the United Nations, there'll be an opportunity for the president, President Reagan, and Mr.
• 19:31
  Gorbachev to sit down and talk about some of these things.
• 19:33
  To me, I think that would be very helpful.
• 19:35
  But at any rate, my point is the ice has been broken, and perhaps one day before too much longer, both countries can come in from the cold.
• 19:47
  So we must wait for lasting peace, but we cannot afford to wait for lasting prosperity.
• 19:54
  Winston Churchill liked to say that the inherent vice of capitalism was an unequal sharing of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism was an equal apportionment of misery.
• 20:06
  And thanks to the economic policies pursued by the Reagan administration, in my view, the blessings are more plentiful indeed.
• 20:15
  More people are working than ever before, taxes have been reduced, and I might say may yet be significantly reformed as well, if not this year, next year.
• 20:26
  Again, as a young man in Russell, I hope I learned that most anyone could climb the economic ladder.
• 20:35
  And I certainly learned that everyone should be given the chance to try.
• 20:39
  And what's more, I learned that once you scramble up from the bottom, you reached down to lend a hand to others making the ascent on their own.
• 20:48
  So for a long time in this country, we behaved as if only government had the compassion or the competence to extend such a helping hand.
• 20:58
  In the process, we siphoned off hundreds of billions of dollars from Washington to Washington, which might have been more properly invested in new ideas, basic and applied research at state, local, and community levels.
• 21:14
  The breakthroughs which carry a society from one age to the next, and this has changed, and we're all the better for it.
• 21:22
  But the process is far from complete because what we're trying to do now is shift back some of these responsibilities to states and local governments.
• 21:31
  And one of the advantages that I've detected over the years of living on the Great Plains is that you can see a long way in all directions.
• 21:42
  And sometimes you can even see into the future.
• 21:46
  You don't have to look far these days to see a black cloud called the federal deficit.
• 21:52
  A cloud that even now some of my colleagues in Congress would like to cede with more federal programs and higher federal taxes, and a cloud that others would ignore altogether.
• 22:03
  Unfortunately, whoever takes credit for the sunshine must be prepared to shoulder blame when it rains.
• 22:25
  Some positive ideas for change that would save money because they're concerned about the deficit.
• 22:31
  It's one thing to have a student loan, but if you can't get a job and you get out of college because of inflation or the federal deficit or high unemployment, that may be a factor.
• 22:41
  I was also highly pleased and encouraged to meet with a number of my friends who say they're senior citizens.
• 22:47
  I'm uh it's about they're about my age group, so I'm very pleased to meet with them.
• 22:52
  And to have them tell me that uh their biggest problem is not the COLAs, it was Medicare.
• 22:59
  And maybe I ought to check into some of the Medicare problems.
• 23:02
  But the point is that wherever you go, whether it's the American farmer, the American worker, the senior citizen, the student, and in many cases the federal employee, I find a almost a unanimous view that we have to do something.
• 23:19
  And let's make it clear at the outset.
• 23:22
  It's always easy for someone to advocate doing something to you if it doesn't touch me.
• 23:29
  And a lot of people send you a lot of programs to cut, and then they'll say, P.S.
• 23:34
  You know, I got I get a little help in this program, but we can justify ours.
• 23:39
  And I and I don't quarrel with that.
• 23:41
  That's the way it should be.
• 23:42
  You have a right to state your case.
• 23:45
  But when you look at uh the federal debt, when I was chairman of the finance committee, we had to pass out bills every so often just so the government could pay its bills.
• 23:56
  Right now, the federal debt is$1.8 trillion.
• 24:01
  It's a lot of money, I'm told.
• 24:04
  It's money we owe.
• 24:07
  And if that figure is just too mind-boggling, the interest on that debt on an annual basis now is about$145 billion in interest payments.
• 24:19
  It's headed for$200 billion a year in interest payments by the end of this decade, which is more than the entire federal budget for the entire government as recently as 1970.
• 24:32
  Now, paying the interest doesn't help anyone.
• 24:35
  It doesn't help agriculture, it doesn't help a university, it doesn't help anyone who might be handicapped or out of work or receiving food stamps or WIC program or Medicaid.
• 24:46
  It's interest on the debt.
• 24:49
  Now we're told by experts, and I'm not an expert, we had four economists come before the Senate Finance Committee about three months ago.
• 24:58
  A Democrat, a Republican, a Liberal, and a Conservative.
• 25:02
  Now they all had different ideas on how to make it happen, but they all agreed in the questioning period that followed, that if in fact the Congress and the President would make meaningful reduction cuts of somewhere between 200 and 275 billion dollars over the next three years in spending cuts, that real interest rates could drop as much as two or three points.
• 25:28
  And that we would see a moderation of the strength of the dollar.
• 25:32
  That might mean that some of the things we raise on Kansas farms could be exported.
• 25:37
  So I just suggest I don't know of any higher priority, any higher priority that we have than reducing the federal deficit.
• 25:45
  That's gonna touch a lot of nerves, and a lot of people are gonna be unhappy.
• 25:49
  It's gonna maybe mean losing revenue sharing in a couple of years.
• 25:53
  It's gonna mean losing Amtrak.
• 25:55
  I hear about that at home.
• 25:58
  I mean, Elizabeth's public view is that she wants to eliminate it, but at night I she wakes up at night yelling Amtrak, Amtrak.
• 26:04
  So I think her private view is save it.
• 26:08
  But all these programs the federal government ventured into, small business administration, 5,000 employees last year made 14,000 loans.
• 26:19
  And there are millions of loans made in this country in the private sector.
• 26:24
  And it's not because anybody is hostile to any of these groups.
• 26:28
  I think if you were trying to sell one of those programs today in Washington, whether it be Amtrak or small business or mass transit or whatever it might be, you wouldn't even bring it up because we're faced with this big deficit.
• 26:41
  And don't let me overlook the Pentagon.
• 26:45
  I think as has been said many, many times by the president, you have to treat defense spending a bit differently than any other any other program.
• 26:54
  After all, we are dealing with another superpower, and we do have some responsibilities, particularly to the student body at Kansas State University and others across the country who don't want us to do anything that might indicate weakness.
• 27:08
  But that doesn't mean with a budget of the size of the Pentagon that they can't uh uh show some restraint, and they've shown some restraint.
• 27:17
  And in luncheon meeting with the president on Friday, I got an indication that they may be willing to show some more restraint.
• 27:25
  So there are things we can do on defense spending that will help.
• 27:30
  I must say, from the defense secretary's standpoint, about every time he thinks he's got it going, somebody comes up with another horror story.
• 27:39
  Yesterday it was a$700 pliers from Boeing, little Kansas company.
• 27:45
  Two weeks ago it was a$600 toilet seat.
• 27:49
  I hasten to say I didn't take a position on that one, but in any event, you've got all these horror stories uh coming out of the woodwork.
• 28:00
  And about the time you think you got the lid on one, something else crops up.
• 28:06
  I didn't mean it quite that way, but I must say I I enjoy my job as a majority leader.
• 28:17
  The last majority leader in Kansas is Carl Curtis 60 years ago.
• 28:21
  In fact, I was elected 60 years to the day that he was elected majority leader, that he became Herbert Hoover's vice president.
• 28:30
  I ran with Jerry Ford and and uh I'm still working.
• 28:35
  So but I must say it's uh it's sort of like the Truman uh thing if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
• 28:44
  And I've got to believe that many of our problems are going to be solved if there's a total understanding of what the problem is.
• 28:53
  And I must add that even though we do all this deficit reduction, don't get any ideas that we're gonna balance the budget.
• 29:02
  We hope by 1988 we can get the deficit down to$100 billion a year.
• 29:07
  Right now it's running$200 and$215 billion, maybe$220 billion a year.
• 29:12
  And you gotta pay interest on that uh that new debt you create every year.
• 29:17
  And you just figure out the rate and multiply it by how much new debt you're adding, you got new interest payments.
• 29:24
  And so I believe the time has come for the Congress to have some help.
• 29:33
  I'm reminded of what uh Alf Landon said again in his acceptance speech in 1936, and this is a quote.
• 29:42
  He said, crushing debts and taxes are usually incurred, as they are being incurred today, under the guise of helping people, the same people who finally must pay them.
• 29:53
  They invariably retard prosperity and they sometimes lead to situations in which the rights of people are destroyed.
• 30:00
  This is the lesson of history.
• 30:01
  Now, this was Alf Landon nearly 50 years ago.
• 30:06
  I'm reading a book by Stephen Ambrose about Eisenhower's second term, and the thing that's striking in the book, it's a very good book about Eisenhower.
• 30:16
  But the striking part of it, as far as I'm concerned, because we're now wrestling with the same problem, the two biggest frustration that Eisenhower had in his second term, he had a two billion dollar deficit.
• 30:27
  Two billion.
• 30:29
  And he couldn't get the generals at the Pentagon to stop spending money.
• 30:32
  Well, nothing's changed.
• 30:34
  Except they got more generals and we got more debt.
• 30:38
  So it's been going on and on and on.
• 30:41
  I hope we're making some progress.
• 30:43
  But I think it's a painful lesson that we've learned, and I don't want to see it repeated.
• 30:50
  And that's why I believe it's time we amend the federal constitution to limit our ability to incur debt year after year.
• 30:57
  And I'm talking about a balanced budget amendment.
• 31:00
  And again, under John Carlin, with John Carlin's help, the National Governors Association went on record in support of a balanced budget amendment at the federal level.
• 31:10
  We can't go in debt in Kansas, we can't go in debt in many states, but we can sure go in debt in the federal government.
• 31:17
  As I said, it's about$1.8 trillion.
• 31:21
  We need it.
• 31:22
  We need the discipline.
• 31:24
  I think most members of Congress, Democrats, Republicans, men or women, are well-intentioned people.
• 31:30
  And they're all compassionate and sensitive.
• 31:33
  And sometimes it's hard to say no.
• 31:37
  And sometimes you shouldn't say no.
• 31:40
  But we've gotten the point now where I think we've we need a little help.
• 31:44
  A lot of people think it's an extreme idea that we shouldn't amend the U.S.
• 31:48
  Constitution.
• 31:50
  But I remind you of Dr.
• 31:51
  Conant's turtle, who only makes progress by sticking its neck out.
• 31:57
  The tools we have now are plainly inadequate to the task.
• 32:01
  Certainly, Congress has to be responsive to the demands of constituents.
• 32:04
  That's what we're there for.
• 32:05
  That's how the representative system works.
• 32:09
  But this response to outside pressures makes it all the more essential that we build in some kind of an internal restraint to be built into the system.
• 32:18
  We passed a constitutional amendment in 1982 in the Senate.
• 32:21
  It didn't pass the House.
• 32:23
  We're going to try again this year.
• 32:27
  There's an old saying that when you're through changing, you're through.
• 32:32
  And I would say that throughout our history, we have not hesitated to reform the Constitution when the existing document fell short of our needs.
• 32:41
  The Civil War amendments that barred slavery and mandated equal protection of the laws.
• 32:46
  The 16th Amendment, which authorized a federal income tax.
• 32:51
  The 25th Amendment, providing an orderly succession to the presidency in times of presidential disability or death.
• 32:58
  Each of these amendments arose out of a time of necessity, fiscal or structural problems that had to be dealt with.
• 33:07
  Each was demanded to correct abuses unchecked by the legislative process alone.
• 33:12
  So I just suggest that I hope that we can do that.
• 33:16
  I would like to see the President of the United States, as 43 governors have, have what we call a line item veto.
• 33:23
  Where the President of the United States, if somebody sends him down a great big appropriation bill, a lot of pork barrel stuff in it, he doesn't veto the entire bill, he just line items.
• 33:32
  He vetoes this item and that item and that item.
• 33:35
  It gives a president, whether he's a Democrat or Republican, more leverage with the Congress.
• 33:42
  And let's face it, it's not always the president who wants to spend more money.
• 33:45
  Sometimes it's the Congress.
• 33:47
  Sometimes they're Republicans, and sometimes they're Democrats.
• 33:51
  And sometimes they all get together.
• 33:54
  So we need that discipline.
• 33:56
  And I would just conclude by saying that uh back where I started from, I wish we had the balanced budget amendment today.
• 34:05
  Then if some group came to us and said, we've got a real problem, or we've got a great idea, all we need is a hundred million dollars or five hundred million dollars or a billion dollars, we simply say, Well, we can't do it.
• 34:19
  We've taken in so much money, we've spent so much money, we've reached a limit.
• 34:25
  Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't reorder priorities in government, go back and look at old programs and kick out some of the programs that aren't very efficient from a tax standpoint, for a tax tayer's taxpayers' standpoint.
• 34:38
  So I'm just suggest that uh I hope we can put together this so-called budget package that we've been working on with the president.
• 34:46
  I hope it can be bipartisan.
• 34:49
  I have a friend, uh Senator Bourne, a Democrat, Mok Loma, who feels just as strongly about the deficit as I do.
• 34:55
  He's working with Democratic senators, I'm working with Republican senators, I'm working with the president to see if we can't find some agreement.
• 35:04
  Because I believe the president has a reservoir of strength in this country.
• 35:07
  When you carry 49 states to one, you got a lot of strength.
• 35:12
  You lose the one by 3,000 votes.
• 35:15
  It means you got a pretty good mandate.
• 35:17
  Got to be something out there.
• 35:19
  The president carried all those states.
• 35:21
  And if we can get together on a deficit reduction package and the president gets on television two or three times, I've got to believe that members of Congress will respond and make the hard decisions.
• 35:33
  So I say shrink the size of government, but only so individual dreams can grow and prosper, especially the American dream, which flashes across the face of a prairie farmer or a ghetto mother, and which economic growth alone can accommodate.
• 35:51
  Who can doubt our capacity to realize such a dream?
• 35:54
  Certainly no one in my generation who witnessed our parents cope with crippling hardships, went off to do combat with the scourge of Hitler and Tojo, who launched the nuclear age, and have maintained ever since our precarious hold on the window ledge of coexistence.
• 36:10
  Whatever we may have accomplished, I want something better for young people today.
• 36:17
  I want to make certain we hand your generation, your generation a torch instead of a hot poker.
• 36:23
  I want your dreams to exceed my own.
• 36:26
  And I want this dream of a republic, in Carl Sandberg's words, to live up to the promises on which it was founded.
• 36:34
  For we have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the continent, across the seas and balance frontiers of space, because we were limited in our ambitions.
• 36:44
  To the stars through difficulties, we Kansans like to proclaim, but always to the stars.
• 36:51
  Thank you very much.
• 37:33
  Because the Senator's time will be limited following the lecture, it's my privilege to make a presentation to him before the question and answer session.
• 37:44
  I know his wall is well covered, but there just may be space for this memento for the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University.
• 37:53
  Senator?
• 37:54
  Thank you very much.
• 37:55
  You gotta hold that.
• 38:17
  And now we have about uh twelve to fourteen minutes for questions.
• 38:22
  There are microphones on the right, on your right, and the left, and uh from perhaps in the in the balcony.
• 38:40
  I'm not certain we've considered that it's been called to our attention on the past uh two or three months by different farm groups.
• 38:46
  Uh it'll probably come, uh you know, they have this big tax simplification program that's supposed to be announced on May 15th.
• 38:54
  But again, I could certainly call it to their attention.
• 38:58
  Maybe Steve uh Cohen on my staff could get a name and address.
• 39:07
  Yes, sir.
• 39:11
  I'd like to ask a question of South Africa.
• 39:15
  How do you feel about this problem talking about?
• 39:19
  And also if the president can say uh well, I watched with interest uh the David Brinkley show yesterday, which focused on South Africa.
• 39:36
  I've introduced a bill that uh and I've had a number of co-sponsors, liberals, conservatives, whatever, to to mint our own uh gold coins that we won't be buying Krugerands in this country.
• 39:47
  So we're making some little steps to indicate our displeasure with the South African regime.
• 39:53
  Uh obviously we we uh cannot condone uh the bloodshed and the violence, we don't have the facts on how it started, but at first blush it would appear that uh the government has been less than uh careful in all these uh negotiations.
• 40:10
  Uh constructive negotiation.
• 40:12
  I've listened to Mr.
• 40:13
  Crocker, I've listened to the President, uh, I've listened to others.
• 40:16
  Uh I really believe that unless there can be some, you know, some clear explanation of the latest uh killings in South Africa, that there may be a move by the Congress to move into disinvestment in that area.
• 40:32
  But I would keep in mind that if that comes, and the American companies uh are the one area where people have equal rights, at least while on the workplace, when they leave, they're right back where they were.
• 40:43
  But if they if if this should happen, then of course the very people we seek to help will be the ones who who lose their jobs.
• 40:51
  Obviously, uh we cannot uh be involved in uh the affairs of other countries unless that country poses a threat to us.
• 41:02
  I think that's the question with Nicaragua, the so-called Contra aid and other aid programs in that part of the world.
• 41:10
  But I can indicate to you that it's uh a matter of the highest concern to many members of Congress and both parties, whether they be Liberals or Conservatives.
• 41:20
  Question on the right.
• 41:23
  Other than reducing the deficit and lowering interest rates, what would you propose to do for the farmers in trouble in Kansas in the green belt?
• 41:33
  Let's say given a$4 billion or$5 billion budget, how would you allocate that?
• 41:39
  Well, if we only had a four or five billion dollar budget, it'd be very difficult.
• 41:42
  But we're looking at uh in the Carter years, we spent between two and four billion dollars for agriculture.
• 41:49
  Now it's up to around twelve to fourteen billion per year.
• 41:51
  These are outlays, many have paid back, and uh so the farmers sometimes get a bad rap because they say, Oh, you spent all this money.
• 41:58
  Many are loans, and they're paid back.
• 42:01
  Uh we're looking, in fact, last uh week I met with uh farm representatives in my office, in the leader's office, with the wheat growers, with the Farm Bureau of Federation, with the corn growers, with the soybean council, with the cotton council, and a couple of others to talk about you know, if we can put together a coalition of farm groups to support a bill.
• 42:29
  And I must say, what happens in agriculture, it happens in many other businesses, every different farm group has their own idea on what ought what the farm bill ought to be like.
• 42:39
  And if you're not for it, you're against them.
• 42:42
  What we have to find is a program that will reduce the cost, help the price, and have the votes to pass.
• 42:49
  And it's not easy, but we're going to be spending more than four or five billion dollars a year, probably closer to seven, eight, or nine billion dollars a year for agriculture, which is almost double the amount.
• 43:01
  In the last four years, and under conservative Ronald Reagan, outlays for agriculture sixty-three billion dollars.
• 43:09
  That counts the PIC program.
• 43:11
  In the 20 years prior to that time, total outlays were only$57 billion.
• 43:16
  So we've spent more in four years, and we spent the 20 years ahead of that time.
• 43:20
  We've had problems with embargoes, we've got problems with access, with trade barriers, with export subsidies.
• 43:28
  Uh some of us are looking at what we call an operating loan program developed by the National Council of Farm Cooperatives, where the farmer would get a loan, but it would be a recourse loan, not a non-recourse loan, we could just forfeit the crop to the government.
• 43:43
  But he would get a recourse loan.
• 43:45
  The theory is it would be more competitive in world markets, and the farmer could dispose of this at any time.
• 43:51
  And if the market price were below the loan price, he wouldn't have to make up the difference.
• 43:56
  So we're looking at this, we're looking for new ideas.
• 43:59
  The frustrating thing for someone who's been on the Ag Committee for a long time, for people come back and say, Well, they're not doing anything, there isn't anything happening.
• 44:10
  It isn't we haven't spent a lot of money.
• 44:13
  What we really are looking for are some new ideas.
• 44:16
  And I'm not crazy about the administration's farm program, but I do believe it forces us to focus on some new.
• 44:25
  Ideas.
• 44:25
  So you know, we're we're working for the farmer.
• 44:29
  Never going to satisfy everyone.
• 44:31
  Not many people I can recall ever had that happen.
• 44:39
  Senator, uh, you've been excellent in talking with student leaders about uh the proposals for education and the president's proposed cuts in education, but I don't think that the uh general body of students has any idea of what your views on uh the educational proposals are.
• 44:56
  Perhaps you could talk about that.
• 44:59
  Well, since I only had the uh document delivered about uh nine o'clock this morning, I probably can't uh I I think student loans are like every other loan, every other federal program.
• 45:10
  There's got to be some way to reduce the cost.
• 45:13
  I said I was in Miami, I read a piece in the Fort Lauderdale paper that many of the students receiving government loans have been down there for a couple of weeks in Fort Lauderdale.
• 45:22
  Now, maybe that wasn't done with loan money, but it's the same kind of thing they say about the PIC program.
• 45:28
  Somebody got a million-dollar PIC payment, or somebody spent a$700 for a pair of pliers.
• 45:33
  So, what we're trying to do is figure out some way to address the cost of that program, and I must say, with the help of the students, because they know in many cases how we can do it, without impacting adversely on the students who really need the program.
• 45:48
  Talking about credits, talking about uh payments to students uh twice a year instead of once a year.
• 45:54
  Just that one little change says about$115 million.
• 45:57
  So, you know, we're gonna try to work out a program with our student leaders in Kansas to submit it to the budget committee.
• 46:05
  Because again, I it's not done with any hostility, it's just done with the I maybe we're maybe we're frustrated.
• 46:13
  And I'm certain many people are frustrated with us.
• 46:16
  But we're told on the one hand to reduce spending, and we're told on the other hand, but don't take it out of Manhattan or Russell or out of the Department of Transportation.
• 46:26
  I get that a little bit too.
• 46:30
  One more question.
• 46:31
  I can take two or three more.
• 46:33
  Okay.
• 46:37
  Congress are uh genuinely concerned about the budget deficit.
• 46:42
  When is it that you're going to take on the fraud, waste, and abuse at the Pentagon?
• 46:48
  I think we're in the process of uh taking on the fraud, waste, and abuse in the Pentagon.
• 46:53
  In fact, uh the president reminds us every time there's some horror story.
• 46:57
  Well, it was it was his administration that dug it out.
• 47:01
  Frankly, I get a little frustrated uh when I see some of the big defense contractors making billions of dollars who haven't paid taxes.
• 47:09
  I said maybe there ought to be some kind of a defense tax.
• 47:12
  So everybody gets to contribute in this country.
• 47:15
  Uh so we're looking for fraud, waste, and abuse not only in that program, but in other programs.
• 47:21
  And and and I don't say it in a defensive way, but you get any big program or any big business, doesn't have to be a federal program, where you're affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the workforce, you're gonna have some who don't do it right.
• 47:35
  One thing we've done is go back to the Grace Commission report.
• 47:39
  Mr.
• 47:40
  Peter Grace, who happens to be a Democrat, put together this commission and he recommended, I don't know how we could save$300 and some billion dollars over the next three or four years.
• 47:50
  The one thing Mr.
• 47:51
  Grace didn't address was taxes because this company hadn't paid any taxes for three or four years.
• 47:56
  So we think he left out a chapter.
• 47:59
  But in any event, he had a lot of good ideas, and I'll give you an I'll give you one of them.
• 48:03
  I'm I'm here on a campus, I think it might as well, I think the students know what it is.
• 48:08
  But in the Grace Commission recommendations, we were told that if if you owe the government money on a student loan or any other loan, and they've tried everything under the sun to get you to make a payment and you won't do it, and they find out you've got a tax refund coming, they take the tax refund and apply it on the bill.
• 48:27
  Now, some say that's hostile.
• 48:30
  A lot of people have changed the way they pay their taxes so there won't be any refund.
• 48:35
  But the time everybody does that, we'll have picked up$800 million for the Federal Treasury.
• 48:40
  That's the estimate from uh somebody else had a question.
• 48:52
  What's happening on the five cent federal tax?
• 48:55
  Well, we see a lot of highway work, and uh just the last two weeks ago, uh, you might ask Tip O'Neill when he comes here on the 22nd.
• 49:03
  Uh we we held up a lot of money, about seven billion dollars for several months, because Tip was trying to trying to persuade certain people in government that they ought to spend a big chunk of that in Boston.
• 49:17
  He has some reason to be concerned about Boston.
• 49:21
  And uh most people didn't think that was fair.
• 49:25
  So they finally worked it out.
• 49:27
  That held up about seven billion dollars, which has now been released.
• 49:30
  Uh, we think uh that's been a good program.
• 49:34
  Part of that money now goes to mass transit, but we think it's been a good program.
• 49:41
  Anyway, if we do that help by reducing some of our foreign aid country or uh, well, let's mention, I think uh question about reducing foreign aid from countries that don't like us, we could get almost down to zero.
• 50:03
  Uh but again, I don't, you know, foreign aid doesn't have any constituency because uh unless we have an interest in some one country, uh there's not many votes for it.
• 50:23
  But but I would suggest that we that's an area we're looking at.
• 50:26
  We've told the State Department, and there's a lot of demands from the Mid East, from the Arab countries, from Israel, to increase spending for Israel, increase spending for the Arab countries, and we don't think there's any way we can do that.
• 50:39
  If we're trying to reduce everyone else in the country, we can't understand how you can justify increases in other areas.
• 50:46
  Now, if there's some international problem that must be addressed, just as we're addressing famine in Ethiopia, Sudan, and other countries, and I I think it's you know, we we're all sometimes uh we wonder if America's doing enough.
• 51:02
  America's the taxpayers.
• 51:04
  In all those famine-stricken areas, we've agreed to put up half, half the total need to come from America.
• 51:13
  So I just think the taxpayers and the government uh through the taxpayer has been very generous.
• 51:18
  That that kind of aid, I don't think, uh, is questioned.
• 51:22
  We have another thing called food aid, food for peace, which uh some city boys call farmers' foreign aid.
• 51:30
  Where we send all these surpluses overseas.
• 51:33
  And some of the city guys come to me and say, Well, Bob, if you want to get rid of this foreign aid program called Food for Peace, I'll vote to cut the other foreign aid program called Economic Assistance.
• 51:44
  So again, I think we have to get it all out on the table to see precisely what we're talking about.
• 51:49
  I think Food for Peace is a great program.
• 51:52
  It was started by the late Senator Andrew Scheppel and the late Senator Hubert Humphrey, and probably saved uh hundreds of thousands of lives over the years, and meant even a little bit higher prices for American farmers.
• 52:07
  Let me just address some in the audience I know are unhappy with me.
• 52:12
  And I assume that's when you run for office, there's always somebody unhappy with you.
• 52:17
  Uh, or if you're not running for office, maybe even people who live out who aren't running for anything.
• 52:21
  You might be some people who don't like what you do.
• 52:25
  But I I just want to say to those uh farmers and others that uh I'm not gonna be defensive about my role in agriculture.
• 52:35
  I was on the House Committee for eight years, and I've been on the Senate committee for 16 years.
• 52:41
  I think I'm probably the only majority leader that's been around for some time who understands, or at least have learned by listening to experts, a little about agriculture and programs and how they affect the economy.
• 52:54
  And I would just say to this audience, we should never equate with somebody voting against something as being somehow against the farmers or against students or against this.
• 53:05
  It gets right back to where I started today.
• 53:10
  If in fact we fail to respond and there's a need and there's a remedy, okay, we should be criticized roundly.
• 53:19
  And we don't and criticism, uh, if you ever get used to it, you're finished.
• 53:23
  But if in fact there's no justification, or you really can't see that the program being advanced is going to help anyone, then I think you have an equal obligation to try to defeat it and not hold out false hopes.
• 53:38
  In my view, having been around the government a long time, one mistake we make is that somehow the federal government has the answer to everything.
• 53:47
  You'll find the answer more often than not in John Carlin's office or the state legislator offices rather than the federal government.
• 53:57
  Land prices have dropped, but I don't know if the federal government didn't have any program to come in and make up the difference.
• 54:02
  And farmers have suffered.
• 54:05
  And the man with a hardware store, the Western Auto store, the gas station in that area suffered.
• 54:12
  But there are no subsidies for that person.
• 54:16
  And I feel very strong that we in a state like Kansas, without a strong farm economy, you know, we're we're in deep, deep trouble.
• 54:26
  And I've said to farmers in this state, and I've said to farmers in Washington, the best way to get back on track is to make certain we reduce the federal deficit, lower the interest rates for farmers, moderate the strength of the dollar so we can export some of the wheat and some of the corn, some of the soybeans, and some of the other commodities, and have a position of no more embargoes.
• 54:49
  And I think that's essentially where we're headed.
• 54:51
  And then, in addition to that, we've got to have a program in 1985 that doesn't just pull the rug out from under the American farmer.
• 55:01
  But different groups have different programs.
• 55:04
  And as a legislator, we're supposed to reconcile all these different programs.
• 55:08
  The wheat program wheat growers have one, the farmers union have one, the AAM has one, the Farm Bureau has one, the corn growers have one.
• 55:17
  And you know, they've got to have their own program to get members.
• 55:21
  If you're for my program, it's pretty hard to get any members for your organization.
• 55:25
  And they're sincere and they're dedicated.
• 55:28
  But they've got to understand that we just can't adopt every program.
• 55:32
  We've got to figure out one.
• 55:33
  So I would just say to this audience that I understand where I'm from, and I understand how I got where I am, and I understand how you can be returned.
• 55:46
  But I don't think you can be returned if you're working in what I consider to the best interest of the economy.
• 55:53
  I was in New York on Thursday night.
• 55:56
  They don't want to give up anything on mass transit, they don't want to give up anything on UDAG, they don't want to give up anything on Amtrak, even though we're told by the experts every time somebody steps on Amtrak, it costs the taxpayers$36.
• 56:11
  And on some runs, it's cheaper to buy you an airline ticket to go from on some Amtrak and let you fly first class to the destination and give you one free night's lodging.
• 56:22
  Now that doesn't make much sense as a federal program.
• 56:26
  And it doesn't make much sense for us to know that there are 5,000 employees in the SBA making 14,000 loans.
• 56:33
  Maybe we ought to be happy they're not making more loans than 14,000.
• 56:37
  And these are the areas that we're looking at.
• 56:41
  And once we say we're gonna make an exception for A, B, or C, then it's all over.
• 56:46
  And we're looking at Congress.
• 56:47
  We're trying to cut legislative uh staff salaries and other expenses 10%.
• 56:54
  Social Security colas.
• 56:56
  A lot of people shudder when you mention Social Security.
• 57:01
  But what we're discussing now, it hasn't been adopted, was freezing, not your not cutting your benefits, but freezing that cola for one year, which means you pick up twenty billion dollars over three years, which goes into the Social Security Trust Fund.
• 57:14
  It's not spent for anything else.
• 57:16
  It makes that system that much more sound for your children and your grandchildren, and it also helps the federal deficit.
• 57:24
  And I don't find many senior citizens who object to that as long as we go after the Pentagon and all these other programs that sort of gobble up the money.
• 57:33
  So I would just say as I leave that uh this is uh you know it's a great opportunity, and I'm gonna tell Nancy all about it when I get back tomorrow.
• 57:42
  Thank you very much.
• 57:57
  Our thanks to Senator Dole.
• 57:59
  He did mention the next land and lecture is scheduled for April 22 in this auditorium.
• 58:04
  The Speaker of the House, Congressman Tip O'Neill.
• 58:07
  We are adjourned.