Opening Remarks at a Meeting With the Cabinet

We might as well start. We have an agenda before us, but we won't start on that for obvious reasons for a moment or two.

But in case no one has given you an update, President Carter and Mondale, Muskie, and the others he took with him are due to land in Germany within the hour to greet our returning POWs. All last night I got out of the habit of calling them hostages. I called them prisoners of war.

To get down to things without getting into the agenda here—incidentally, George [Bush] is going to have to leave us before we get too far into the agenda, because he's got an important assignment. He will take the gavel and preside over the Senate for the first time. So, he'll be leaving us in a few minutes here.

But yesterday, just as a reminder—I know we've talked of this before—but yesterday after the oath, I went in and signed the directive regarding the freeze on the hiring of Federal employees. And while there will be, I know, rare and exceptional circumstances where some particular individual will have to be replaced, I urge all of you to stick with that, because—I think Don Regan would second this—we've got to get control of the budget. It's increased virtually a hundred billion dollars in the last year, and it is out of control. And this, I think, is an important step. Through attrition we can reduce the size of government very drastically.

So, we may not run this like a quarter mile, but we're going to run it, the race, and we're going to make some changes for no other reason than they have to be made. But people are waiting for us to do it, and we'll do it.

Now, they keep right on clicking there. [Laughter] The next thing in mind is the agenda, but I'm going to be stubborn. [Laughter]