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“TRIBUTE TO RONALD REAGAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H10315-H10316 on Nov. 4, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO RONALD REAGAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, it was my pleasure to serve in the Congress of the United States for 6 years when Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States. When Ronald Reagan became President, the economy was heading in the wrong direction. Early in his administration, we went into a recession which was caused by his predecessor, and he pushed through the Congress very large tax cuts which led to the economic recovery that started the last part of his administration and went on for well over a decade, 14, 15 years.
Ronald Reagan was a very affable man, is a very affable man, was a very kind and generous man, a very understanding man, one who had a big heart and who really cared about America.
Many people in his administration took issue with him when he decided to take on the Soviet Union. When he was about to make his speech talking about the Soviet Union being an evil empire, many people in the State Department cringed and said, my God, Mr. President, you cannot say that. Nevertheless, he did, because the Soviet Union held so many millions of people under bondage, and the captive nations of Eastern Europe applauded what he said.
When he stood before the Berlin Wall and said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,'' I remember listening to that and thinking that is a great thing to say, Mr. President; but it will not happen in my lifetime. Yet I was in Namibia when they had the special elections over there, and I went into a German beer garden, and everybody was celebrating. They were raising their steins and dancing, and I said what in the world is going on, and they said do you not know, the Berlin Wall is coming down. The hair on my head and the back of my neck started to rise because I knew that Ronald Reagan got that job done. He raised the stakes against the Soviet Union, with the Soviet Union.
They had 50,000 T-55 tanks that started rusting away because he built up the American defenses so high that they could not keep pace, and their economy could not deal with the problem. So their whole economy started to collapse; and as a result, the Soviet Union collapsed. So Ronald Reagan, when he was President, brought this economy back from the ashes of disaster to where it went on for years and years and years in the right direction. He destroyed, I believe personally, the Soviet Union, along with Lech Walesa and the Pope, by putting pressure on the Soviet Union and Mr. Gorbachev and his predecessors until they just fell apart.
So I was very, very disappointed when I saw that CBS was going to do a miniseries denigrating this great President, this great man, especially at a time when he cannot defend himself. He is suffering from Alzheimers; and his beautiful wife, Nancy Reagan, whom I had a chance to get to know a little bit when she was in the White House, has to live with these horrible things that are being said about her husband, and she cannot do anything about it.
Well, we in the Congress that served with President Ronald Reagan know better. He was a great President. He was a great man. He was a humanitarian. He was a visionary, and he was a man who when he said something he meant it and everybody knew he meant it, and for them to try to destroy his memory is something I do not think we should tolerate.
I would like to just say that Peggy Noonan, who worked in the White House with Ronald Reagan, was one of his speech writers. She wrote a book that was called ``When Character Was King,'' and I wish all of the people who criticized Ronald Reagan and participated in this CBS miniseries will read that book because, if they read that book, they are going to see what the man was really like. He was a great man. He is a great man, and his legacy and his memory should not be tarnished by a bunch of trash being put out by CBS.
I understand they have pulled that miniseries, and it is not going to be on the network now; but they said that they are going to sell it, I guess, or use it in one of their other areas like ``Showtime,'' and it will be shown as, I guess, a made-for-television movie. I want all my friends to know that I watch ``Showtime,'' and I pay for ``Showtime,'' but I want to say to my friends, if they put that trash on
``Showtime,'' and they have a right to do it under the first amendment, but if they put that trash on ``Showtime,'' I will tell all of my friends and people across this Nation they ought to drop it because that is not the kind of thing you do to a great man like Ronald Reagan who served his country so well and did so much, not only for America but for the whole world.
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