the very moment this speech was being Made Iran set Free "ALL" the American hostages it held

One thing you can say for sure about Reagan......he knew evil when he saw it. Unlike Obambi and most of the dumbed down inhabitants of the western world these days.

Nope the Spech had nothing to do with it ..iran knew Carter was a Puss and also knew Reagan was going to cause Iran real pain

...so OBVIOUSLY the speech CAUSED the freeing of the hostages...because they occurred at the SAME TIME. There could be no other explanation. Did you know that I caused the last solar eclipse? Yup. It happened right when I looked up...so it MUST have been me...

Thank you for another of your eminently useless posts, Bird Brained Bob...

If it weren't for Bush the Lesser, Reagan would easily have surpassed Nixon as the worst President in our nation's history. But by all means glorify the bum and the criminal cabal he called his "Administration."

carter had the Worst Economy since the Great deppression period

It's because they had a deal. The Iranians delayed the release to give Reagan a PR boost. Remember that Iran-Contra affair. Yeah, not a coincidence.

that will still be $43 billion above the likely totals for the current fiscal year. The ax will fall on a wide variety of Government activities, including, said Carter, "good, worthwhile programs—programs which I support very strongly." Exact proposals will not be submitted to Congress until the end of the month, but the activities known to be due for a slash include revenue sharing for states and cities, job-training programs, airport and highway construction, federal aid to education, health research. There will be a freeze on federal hiring, and the number of federal employees will drop 20,000 by next October. Saturday mail deliveries may well be stopped. Carter, who had pledged in his January State of the Union message to resist any Soviet move into the Persian Gulf by military force if necessary, seemed to draw back even on his plans to raise defense spending. "The Defense Department will not be immune from budget austerity," he declared, but he said that the nation will meet its financial commitment to its NATO allies. That implies an increase in spending, adjusted for inflation, of 3%—not significantly different from the official January budget figure, but well below the increase of up to 5% that Administration officials and some Congressmen had been advocating. The hope is that the difference can be made up by cutting "fat" from the Pentagon budget, rather than by hacking spending for military hardware or personnel.

Even so, the spending cuts apparently do not touch the fastest-growing portion of the budget, the major "entitlement" programs—Social Security, veterans' benefits, unemployment compensation —which are considered politically sacrosanct. Nor will the spending reductions by themselves balance the budget. If Congress and the Administration proceeded on the January plan, the $15.8 billion deficit originally estimated would swell to $25 billion or even $30 billion, according to estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. Main reason: inflation is raising the bills that the Government pays.

Revenues. They will be raised in two ways. Carter will ask Congress to institute a new withholding tax on interest and dividends. "It is intolerable for some to evade prompt payment of taxes," he said. That move alone would increase revenues by $3 billion in fiscal 1981, but much of the increase would not really be new money, merely cash that the Government would collect more speedily than now planned. Far more important, the President will slap a $4.62 per bbl. fee on imported oil, a move that he can take without any new legislative authority. Motorists will pay an extra 100 per gal. for gasoline at the pump, probably beginning in May. The President presented this mostly as a conservation measure to prompt Americans to reduce their "extravagant" use of gas. But another motive is to raise an extra $10 billion a year, to "be held in reserve" either to reduce the national debt or, if necessary, balance the budget. Translation: the extra money is needed to make sure that revenues exceed spending in the next fiscal year and produce a surplus now estimated at up to $3 billion.

Credit controls. They will be imposed, in a mild way. Said Carter: "Inflation is fed by credit-financed spending. Consumers have gone into debt too heavily. Businesses and other borrowers are tempted

More from Time mag. "The Federal Government must stop spending money we do not have and borrowing to make up the difference."

Only four hours later, Carter returned to the theme at a press conference in the East Room. "The Federal Government simply must accept discipline on itself as an example for others to follow," he said.

He acknowledged that his program would be "difficult politically" and, by implication, "onerous and burdensome" to some needy people, though less so than continued inflation would be. He warned that price increases would remain "very high" for several more months before his policies took effect. But his new plan would succeed, though three previous ones failed, he asserted, because "the nation is aroused now as it has never been before, at least in my lifetime, about the horrors of existing inflation and the threat of future inflation."

In follow-up press conferences Saturday morning, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker proclaimed that "the greatest risk beyond doubt" facing the economy is accelerating inflation. Not only do rapid price rises bring "direct pain and distortions," he said, they also prepare the way for a serious recession. Said he: "There is no way we can deal with the problems ... other than by placing restraint on people who individually would like more credit." Treasury Secretary G. William Miller similarly asserted that the Administration's first priority "is to demonstrate the political will to bring our budget under control, demonstrate to the American people and the world that we can do this."

As this barrage of resolute rhetoric might indicate, inflation is not only a frightening economic problem but is rapidly becoming Carter's most dangerous political liability as well. Campaign audiences for the President's numerous rivals are showing at least as much interest in the economy lately as in Iran or Afghanistan. In Carter's own party, Ted Kennedy has made a demand for wage and price controls his major issue, and is apt to answer any question on any other subject with an attack on inflation. On the Republican side, Front Runner Ronald Reagan has been hammering increasingly harder on economic issues. Said he, campaigning in Illinois Friday night: "It's Government that causes inflation, and Government can make it go away by cutting out deficits and stopping the printing of money." George Bush assails "Jimmy Carter's raging inflation" during almost every appearance.

For all the urgency of the issue and the careful orchestration of the Administration's response, Carter's actual program followed an all too familiar pattern of hesitant and belated steps toward a worthy goal. And a great deal of it had been too extensively leaked in advance to have much psychological effect. Its main elements:

¶ "Discipline by reductions in the Federal Government"; spending will be reduced slightly.

¶ "Discipline by greater conservation of energy"; a new gasoline tax will be levied.

¶ "Discipline by restraints on credit"; consumer borrowing will be curbed.

Government spending. In fiscal 1981 it will be sliced, Congress willing, by $13 billion* below the amounts planned in January—though

Bull shit! Reagan and George Bush were working behind the scenes during the election.

With out speaking a word Reagan did. That's such bull.

more from time mag. describing how Bad it actually was under Carter...He promises budget cuts and credit curbs, but more is needed

As Jimmy Carter stepped before the television cameras in the East Room of the White House last Friday, his task was not just to proclaim another new anti-inflation program but to calm a national alarm that had begun to border on panic. Inflation and interest rates, both topping 18%, are so far beyond anything that Americans have experienced in peacetime—and so far beyond anything that U.S. financial markets are set up to handle—as to inspire a contagion of fear. Usually confident businessmen and bankers have begun talking of Latin American-style hyperinflation, financial collapse, major bankruptcies, a drastic drop in the American standard of living.

For three weeks the White House struggled to develop a plan that would restore the public's confidence that the Government could bring the economy under control. It summoned business leaders and representatives of civic groups from all over the country, consulted daily with ever widening circles of influential Congressmen. There was talk of a televised presidential address to a joint session of Congress. But the dramatized search for an anti-inflation program proved slow and frustrating. Within the Administration, economists fretted endlessly over the pros and cons of various budget-balancing proposals. The President's aides finally canceled all plans for Carter to address Congress, which was reluctant to play host to what was bound to be an unpleasant message.

But the runaway prices and the increasing national anxiety demanded that the President say something, and make it substantive, and do it quickly. So on Friday afternoon, Jimmy Carter strode into the East Room, having carefully waited until half an hour after the major financial markets had closed in the East, to outline his plans to an invited group of 175 Government officials, congressional leaders and businessmen. His program had many details to be filled in, and his speech had been written hastily in the previous 24 hours. In fact, it was clapped together so hurriedly that one page of the final draft was left out of the copy that Carter took before the cameras, and he had to skip over three missing paragraphs of the official text.

But at least Carter had some specific measures to announce. His major goal: to balance the $612 billion budget for fiscal 1981, which begins Oct. 1. That would make it the first balanced budget since 1969, and only the second in the past 21 years.* His keynote: discipline—a word he repeated nine times.

Speaking earnestly and somberly, Carter opened by stating that "persistent high inflation threatens the economic security of our country," and that "this dangerous situation calls for urgent measures." He admitted in effect that the budget he submitted in January, which called for a deficit of $15.8 billion and which he termed at the tune "prudent and responsible," had become obsolete in only seven weeks. But the troubles had been building up for more than a decade, said Carter, and they could be traced largely to "our failure in Government, as individuals and as a society to live within our means." Glossing over his own record of rapidly rising spending and huge deficits, both of which contradicted his firm campaign pledges of 1976, he proclaimed his

From the Moment Regan started to speek america was being Healed from all the Bad jimmy Carter did! Carter did not know how to get Iran to do what Carter wanted. With out speeking a Word Regan did!