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A. There is no question about maintaining the level of support for those people truly in need. But there can be a tightening up of regulations that make it legitimately possible for people of rather fair income to continue getting certain social welfare grants.
Q. Do you have any plans to back away at all from your intention to cut personal income taxes 10% a year for three years?
A. No.
Q. Or the attack on regulations?
A. No.
Q. You have said that you were opposed only to environmental "extremism." What precisely do you mean by that?
A. When I use that term extremism, I mean a kind of literal translation of some of the regulations. For instance, you may find a demand for 100% purity of water. Now the streams you are turning that water into are not 100% pure, and in many instances the cost of getting up to 100% may be several times greater than the cost of getting to 95%. I think you have to have some realism about looking at something of that kind and saying wait a minute here.
Q. It is your desire to make the margins of these regulations more rational?
A. That's right. I prize clean air and clean water as much as anyone else. And certainly from the standpoint of preserving beauty, I am an environmentalist.
Q. But you are also an advocate of the so-called sagebrush rebellion that would turn federal lands in the West back to the states.
A. Yes. Because there I think the Federal Government has gone against the very principles of the Constitution. You must remember that the Federal Government was created by the states, not the other way around. And now [laughing] this monster the states have created is acting as the master over the states.
Q. But doesn't your experience as a Governor tell you that if a lot of acreage were turned back to the states, it would be much more vulnerable to rapid development because state governments are less able than Washington to withstand all of the pressure from business interests?
A. But are they? Just look at your own area. Look at California. Look at how easily even neighborhoods can stop a development. What makes us think Americans are more environmentally minded at the national level than they are at the state level? I just don't believe that. Now I also believe, however, that the Federal Government [has a role to play] with national parks and certain wilderness areas that are unique. They're not part of the sagebrush rebellion. I think there is a happy medium in which you preserve beauty, but to have a state in which 80% of the land belongs to the Federal Government does not make much sense.
Q. Are you worried that the Thatcher government in Britain has adopted measures similar to your proposals to try to curb inflation and revive a stagnant economy, and yet has had to modify some of its policies?
A. No. England is about 15 years ahead of us in going down that road of intervention and outright nationalization of industries. I think Prime Minister Thatcher has a monumental task.
Q. Moving on to foreign affairs, what do you think a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland would do to East/West relations?