and now let us begin the debate with the first question from james wieghart. mr. wieghart. >> mr.980 you promised the american people -- in your campaign -- a balanced budget by 1983. we've now had more and bigger deficits in the 4 years you've been in office. mr. president, do you have a secret plan to balance the budget sometime in a second term, and if so, would you lay out that plan for us tonight? >> i have a plan -- not a secret plan. as a matter of fact, it is the economic recovery program that we presented when i took office in 1981. it is true that earlier, working with some very prominent economists, i had come up, during the campaign, with an economic program that i thought could rectify the great problems confronting us -- the double-digit inflation, the high tax rates that i think were hurting the economy, the stagflation that we were undergoing. before even the election day, something that none of those economists had even predicted had happened, that the economy was so worsened that i was openly saying that what we had thought on the basis of our plan could have bro