Presidential praise for economic expansion - Ronald Reagan praises American entrepreneurship

Nation's Business, Jan, 1988

Presidential Praise For Economic Expension

For over five years--through tax relief and tax increases; spending restraint and spending binges; tight money and loose money; bull markets and bear markets--the Great American Job Machine has kept humming along.

During this growth era of unprecedented length, dating back to Oct. 1, 1982, the machine has churned out an average of nearly 2.8 million new jobs a year. The Department of Labor says nearly 47 percent of all new jobs are "managerial or professional," while only 7 percent are of the low-skill, low-pay variety.

Entrepreneurs and the President celebrated the record recovery at a recent event sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its Washington headquarters.

"In 1981, Ronald Reagan sensed correctly that [America's economic] problems of stagnation and high inflation did not stem from any failure of will or imagination but rather from excessive government," said Oliver H. Delchamps, Jr., chairman of the U.S. Chamber. "We applaud him for putting the 'free' back in free enterprise by persuading Congress to cut taxes, which freed more capital for private investment and enabled ordinary citizens to spend their money the way they chose."

Delchamps presented the President with a plaque that reads: "American business salutes Ronald Wilson Reagan for the economic recovery program that created the longest peacetime expansion in the nation's history."

The President acknowledged that the "growth-oriented tax, spending and regulatory policies which have brought our fellow citizens five years of uninterrupted, inflation-free economic growth couldn't have happened" without the support of business people and their representatives in Washington. Reagan said Chamber President Richard L. Lesher is "the man who is to federal tax rates what Conan the Barbarian was to anyone who got in his way."

Reagan pledged to veto any protectionist trade legislation sent to him in 1988, and he noted that the final rate cuts under the 1986 tax-reform law will take effect January 1, providing the economy with a "forceful and energetic shot in the arm."

The event also featured the premiere of a film profiling eight small-business people. All had been spotlighted in the "Making It" series in Nation's Business magazine or on the "Making It" feature of "Nation's Business Today," the weekday morning news program on the ESPN cable television network. The production of the film was underwritten by American Telephone & Telegrah Company.

The eight entrepreneurs, a cadre of small-business owners who are "making it" through their energy, perseverance and willingness to work long hours, typify those creating the vast majority of new American jobs. Seven of those honored were on the stage as the President spoke. The eighth, a teenager, was in school.

Ucho Lee appeared in the March, 1987, issue of Nation's Business magazine. Lee came to the United States in 1974 as a South Korean immigrant with dreams of owning his own company. He worked at old jobs as a carpenter in Arlington, Va., until he saved enough money to buy a business.

In 1980, he moved his family to Boston and purchased a neighborhood convenience store. He worked 16 hours a day for four years. Since then he has formed Lee Enterprises, Inc., an umbrella organization for laundries, dry cleaners, supermarkets and five commercial properties in the Boston area.

John Shorb says he recommends no particular business-management philosophy --just hard work. Since Shorb was featured on a November, 1985, segment of "Nation's Business Today," his company, Landscape Projects, Inc., has quardrupled its revenues. Shorb started the lawn-mowing and landscaping enterprise out of his parents' home in Rockville, Md., when he was just 13; he will do $400,000 in business this year.

As a high-school student he worked before and after classes. Today he works out of his own warehouse and employs 10 people.

Chris Rusk, of Crawfordsville, Ind., who was featured in the May, 1987, issue of Nation's Business, didn't know he would be starting a business by helping his 6-year-old son learn to hold a pencil correctly. As he watched his son struggle with his grip on the pencil, Rusk took a glob of cookie dough from his wife's mixing bowl and wrapped it around the pencil's base. He made indentations where his son's fingers should be properly positioned, and the Stetro--named after his daughter Stephanie and son Troy--was born.

In 1985, four years after inventing the cookie-dough prototype, Rusk founded Rusko Writing Company, Inc., and started making Stetros out of plastic. He took his little grippers to a National Educational Distributors and Suppliers convention and walked away with orders for 30,000 of the devices. Last year, Rusk's company sold 10 million Stetros and grossed $500,000.

Jim and Jackie McLean founded a Baltimore-based corporate travel business 11 years ago that now is Maryland's largest independently owned travel service. The McLeans employ more than 100 people in 14 locations in four states. They were featured in an April 3, 1987, segment of "Nation's Business Today."