(00:00:00) The 1982 fiscal year began Thursday, October 1st, President Reagan Mark the occasion by holding a news conference telling reporters that in time the package of federal budget cuts and tax reductions that took effect that day will bring their intended result lower interest rates more jobs and general economic Prosperity are on the horizon. The policies enacted at the president's urging represent. We are told the most sweeping economic changes since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal the Reagan plan reverses nearly 50 years of ever increasing Federal involvement in virtually every facet of American life. And if the Reagan plan brings the prosperity its Advocates promise, it could in trench the political conservatives just as the Roosevelt plan and trenched the Liberals a generation ago. Whatever the long-term scenario it is clear for the moment that liberalism is out of fashion. The liberals who used to control Congress are now a tiny minority politicians who thundered liberal Doctrine 10 and 20 years ago have toned down their language if they haven't changed their views. It is in this context that Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser spoke at Macalester College several campus organizations led by the dfl chapter sponsored a rally to protest the start of the president's new beginning for America. Don Fraser represented Minnesota's 5th District in the House of Representatives between 1963 and 1979 during that period he earned a reputation as one of the most consistently liberal members of that body. He was a strong advocate of federal anti-poverty programs and an early opponent of the Vietnam War in 1978 Fraser lost a bitter intra-party fight for dfl nomination as a US Senate candidate Fraser's liberal record made him a controversial figure in rural Minnesota is position on the Boundary Waters canoe area was especially unpopular in the northeastern corner, but Fraser remained popular with his Minneapolis constituents winning election as mayor in 1979 and considered the FrontRunner for re-election next month. Here now are down freezers comments on the Reagan Administration delivered October 1st at Macalester College in st. Paul. (00:02:15) I begin by noting the things are not going well. If there is any one thing that President Reagan has done beyond that that anyone else might have done it is that he's now making President Richard Nixon look good. But in the policies which he's pursuing there is perhaps a bright side to the Dark Cloud for those of us who are administering cities and perhaps for those who are administering States President. Reagan is forcing upon us new challenges by reason of the defaults and deficits in his policy. That's not all bad were being forced to turn to self-help to volunteerism to finding resources at the local level and out of that may come and increased degree of of not only self-reliance but capacity to deal with our own problems. But what I'd like to talk about today are four aspects of the Reagan policy first his Economic Policy second is domestic policy third his foreign policy and finally his defense and nuclear policy and I can study at the outset that I don't find much to be said on behalf of any of the policies that I've outlined. For example with respect to the economic policy this Administration if you step back and remove the labels and simply look at what is taking place. You will find that in fiscal 1982, which begins today. We're embarked on a course, which is virtually identical to the course pursued by the Democrats over the past half dozen years. I don't think that's saying much good about the policy. But I want to make the point that it does not represent any Improvement upon the policy. Let's look at the facts. The first is that we're going into fiscal 82 with a significant deficit. Well, that's practice. The Democrats had become quite Adept at and well-practiced in second. We're cutting taxes. Well, the Democrats used to do that because they saw slow economic growth and they said cutting taxes will stimulate and spur productivity and investment and consumption. Third we're leaving as the sole defense against inflation the Federal Reserve board and the use of monetary policy and that's exactly what's happened in the 70s. And that's what's happening with the Federal Reserve board today with Paul volcker insisting on restraining the growth of the money. Supply. Nothing's changed sluggish economic growth High inflation High interest rates and high unemployment. And so for the ninety percent of the American people who thought that by voting for President Reagan they were going to get in a change and Improvement in basic economic policy. I can say to those people that their expectations have been totally unfulfilled. We're not making progress. We're not doing the things that need to be done to put this country back on sound economic order. We're not balancing the budget. We're not relying on fiscal management instead of monetary management. And in the meantime We're introducing enormous distress onto the American scene. Well second on domestic policy. President Reagan has turned his back on a continuing commitment. We've seen reflected in administration's and recent years to House people adequately to educate our children to provide for the health of our young people to train our unemployed to protect our environment and to help the poor when they can't help themselves in each. One of these Endeavors President. Reagan is turned his back is administration's reflecting an insensitivity a meanness of spirit. If you will a meanness of spirit, which says that we no longer care about the poor and the dispossessed. We only want to have it better for ourselves. And when he says we he's talking for the wealthy people of the United States today, I'm getting a tax cut iron about $40,000 as mayor of the City of Minneapolis. Just think how good I feel I get a 5% tax cut and I see people on welfare being cut back food stamps reduced child daycare being reduced isn't it? A wonderful feeling that I'm going to get a few more dollars and watch the poor of this nation on the downward slide. I think there's a cruelness to this Administration which can hardly be overstated. Well the field of foreign policy the abandonment of human rights as a major reference point in the establishing our policies towards other countries, I think is the largest disaster of all this was reflected in part by his nomination of mr. Lefever to be the assistant to the Secretary of State for human rights. A man whose has indicated by past actions that countries like South Africa are to be embraced and worked with and young struggling regimes which are seeking to do better are to be rejected. I'm distressed as an American to have our government Embrace dictators who are engaged in serious and cruel human rights practices people who deny their people fundamental freedoms such as freedom of speech freedom of the press the right to a free ballot and on top of that are engaged in serious and sustained violations of the Integrity of the person such as torture and disappearances, and that's exactly what's happened in this Administration. We find in President Reagan and his approach to world problems and indifference to the plight of the third world. The people who man the foreign policy ramparts seem to be those who are uneducated and unreformed by our experience in vet Vietnam so far as I can tell the principal actors in the foreign policy establishment are those who thought that Vietnam was a wonderful adventure and that our only mistake was to leave and I think you can draw from that some understanding of the mentality which governs this nation's actions in the foreign policy field in our relations with the Soviet Union. We've embarked on a deliberate effort to increase tensions to generate confrontation. And then at the same time to turn around and end the Embargo and sell them all the food that they want. It's a callousness and and that I think is distressing. But let me reserve my final remarks to the defense policy. The United States President Reagan is embarked on the most rapid buildup of the military establishment that we've ever seen in peacetime. It's a more rapid escalation of expenditures for military hardware than we had even during the Vietnam war. He's proposing to double the amount of money being spent for defense in the next three or four years the world today is spending roughly 2 billion dollars a day on the means by which to kill into injured maim people on this planet. It is a useless wasteful expenditure. And the last thing the United States needs to do is to be driving that arms race pushing it upward forcing more expenditures by countries around the world, but that's exactly what he's doing. President Reagan has set out deliberately to fuel the nuclear arms race by his decisions is impending decision, which we've already understand will be announced tomorrow to go ahead with the MX missile is decision in favor of the neutron bomb its deployment is decision to go ahead with the binary nerve gas program is decision to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe his determination to go ahead with new bombers all of this promises billions and billions and billions of dollars in weapons that are not only useless but weapons which actually increase the likelihood that this planet will be exposed to a major nuclear Devastation it because it's abundantly clear that as we go from about ten to twelve thousand nuclear warheads, which we have today Warheads, by the way with larger than those dropped in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. As we go from ten to twelve thousand nuclear warheads to a new threshold of 18 to 20,000 Warheads the likelihood of a nuclear accident increases proportionately more over to the extent that we begin to see The Limited use of nuclear war as a viable option through the use of the neutron bomb. We make it more likely that we will break the threat the nuclear threshold and move us on to the downward slope which may lead to a nuclear total confrontation the rejection of salt to which had been worked on by presidents of both parties was an unmitigated disaster salt to was more advantageous to the United States than it was to the Soviet Union. The Miss representations that this Administration has made about salt to our shameful. They speak of a window of vulnerability which has no meaning whatsoever. They speak of the vulnerability of our land-based missiles as though this somehow level rendered us defenseless in the event of a first strike attack by the Soviet Union. The reality is that in contrast to the Soviet Union the bulk of our forces are under the surface of the oceans. The bulk of our nuclear forces are under Polaris and Poseidon submarines their undetectable. They cannot be destroyed in the first strike and that remains as absolute insurance that the Soviets would be mindless to attack our ground-based missiles. There is no window of vulnerability and yet using the so-called vulnerability of our land base forces. They are proposing to build all of these new weapons and particularly the MX. I think we should go with George Kennan one of the great Statesman of the 20th century who's been a realist about Soviet intentions and Soviet power who's called on the United States and the Soviet Union to negotiate a reduction by at least one half in the nuclear armaments held by both countries. Let me finally say that as a practicing Democrat. I want to give advice to other practicing Democrats. Sometimes I hear that what the Democratic party has to do is to go out and look for some issues. We don't have to go look for issues. What the Democratic party has to do is simply look at reality. Look at where people are and how they're hurting and what this country needs and begin to speak for those concerns. And if we do that, I think we will justify once again the confidence of the American people and that's the way the Democratic party needs to go and it is needed not just because we want a strong viable two-party system. It is needed because the welfare the safety and the health of this country is being put at risk today and it is the responsibility of the other political party to present the alternatives to challenge the current Administration to show where they're wrong and to point the rate the road towards progress and peace and Improvement of the lives of all of our people. So I hope that you will join with us in that endeavor. We it is an urgent need more urgent today than ever before. We've not always done right in the past. I think there's good reason why the Democrats were rejected in 1980, but we can no longer afford. The untried economic theories the Reagan supply-side voodoo economics that are driving this country into disaster. We can no longer afford the human suffering and misery the indifference which is reflected in this Administration and above all else. We can no longer afford to have ideologically motivated amateurs running a foreign policy that could threaten the very existence of the human race.