Week of July 8, 1987
President Reagan, taking his tax and spend battle wit Congress on the road,
asserts that his administration has not run out of steam and that “all that lame
duck talk is for the birds.” His speech emphasized the “economic bill of rights” he
has been promoting to make it tougher for Congress to raise taxes and spend
money.’ “Anyone who tells you that w can’t reduce the deficit without raising
taxes and cutting defense is not telling you the truth,” said the President in
Connecticut.
Oliver North
said he had
been fully prepared to be a
scapegoat for President
Reagan over the Iran-contra
scandal and described how he
and other Administration
officials worked to shield
Regan from political damage
as the affair unraveled last fall.
He also admitted spending
traveler’s checks form the
Iran-contra operation on
personal expenses but said he
was only paying himself back
after using his own money for the operation and insisted, “I never took a penny
that didn’t belong to me.”
The congressional Iran-contra committees, hoping to quickly finish their
questioning of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, instead spent about 1-½ hours arguing
over whether he should give a 15-minute slide show on the contras.
President Reagan says he will “stand on the rood and yell’ for aid to Nicaraguan
rebels, while a Republican congressional leader said he believes that Lt. Col.
Oliver L. North has improved chances that further assistance will be approved.
Lt. Col. Oliver North came to the end of his six-day war with the Iran-contra
committees, dismissed with an excoriation from Sen. Daniel Inouye, chairman of
the senate Iran-contra committee, for is activities in selling arms to Iran secretly,
then turning over some of the profits for use by the Nicaraguan rebels. “It was
painful to all of us to sit here and listen to your testimony. It was equally painful
that you lied and misled for what you believed to be a good cause,” said Inouye.
