Ronald Reagan George Bush Debate Footage

Ronald Reagan / George Bush Debate
	Tape Master:	1193
	Catalog #:	525055
	Clip Number:	525055-1
	Orginal Film:
	Timecode:	02:17:46 - 02:20:01
	Location:	Houston, Texas
	Year Shot:	1980 (Actual Year)
	Audio:	Yes
	Color:	Yes
	Headings:	ECONOMICS: Price Control INDUSTRY/POWER & ENERGY: Crisis LOCATIONS/NORTH AMERICA: USA, Texas, Houston PERSONALITIES: Bush, George Sr. PERSONALITIES: Reagan, Ronald POLITICS: Political Debate POLITICS: Political Party, USA, Republican
	Description:	Continuation of debate between Republican Presidential candidates George Bush and Ronald Reagan, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, moderated by Howard K. Smith. They take questions from the audience. Topics include gas prices, price & wage controls. Question: I’m Michael Apel and I hope that both of you gentlemen will address yourselves to this one. Local filling stations are said to be cutting the gasoline prices so as to exhaust their currently abundant supplies on the advise of their parent companies, in order that their next allocations will not be decreased, how do you feel about this practice? Ronald Reagan: Well, here again, this is part of what I think the great energy crisis like inflation, it’s caused by government. And part of it is from the energy agency and that allocation system. Once upon a time the allocation of that product, like any other product, was made by the market place, supply and demand. Today you have a government agency that is dictating where the gasoline, where the heating oil, where the diesel, where it will go and trying to guess how much should go where? For example, recently, while your talking about to much here, down in southern Florida not during the primary there, they were running into a shortage because the agency had decided in the winter time, people drive less then they do in the summer time and they didn’t stop to think that it’s summertime in South Florida all winter. And people were driving just as much and probably even more people coming down there as tourists. California, when we lined up at the gas stations they based our allocation on 1972 figures. We’ve got 4 million more automobiles in California then we had in 1972. Let us turn the energy industry back and let the market place dictate things like that and we won’t have these problems. (Applause) George Bush: The only thing I would add is that example makes a good case against wage and price control. As you given a good example in the energy business. Energy Department saying, put the gasoline where the people aren’t, back when we had a gasoline problem and I opposed wage and price controls, this is a good example of a price control that has distorted supply rather than help it, in my judgment.