Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 005-157
Date: Thursday, June 24, 1971 at 10:45 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Byrnes, John W.
Recording device: White House Telephone
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/005-157

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Hello?
[0:01] Coming for John Burns, Mr. President.
[0:04] Hello?
[0:04] Yes, sir, Mr. President.
[0:06] Hi, Johnny.
[0:06] I'm going to be seeing you Monday, I guess, or Tuesday.
[0:09] Yeah, Monday night, I guess.
[0:11] Yeah, but I wanted you to know that I'm most grateful for the way that you and your sidekick Mills came through on that bill.
[0:18] That was really something.
[0:19] Well,
[0:19] Getting 43 votes majority, that really surprised me.
[0:24] I didn't think you, on the key vote, I just... Well, everything, you know, they got polarized.
[0:28] I was sorry that we didn't have a better, a little better Republican vote than we had.
[0:32] Forget it.
[0:32] What the heck.
[0:33] Nobody's going to remember who voted for what.
[0:35] That's right.
[0:36] But, you know, it would have been nice if more of our boys... Yeah, the only thing, of course, that disturbs me, Johnny, is that...
[0:42] You know, I hear so many of our friends say this is a giveaway and that sort of thing.
[0:45] And when they say that about you and me, good God, it really burns me.
[0:48] Well, it burns me.
[0:49] We're trying our best.
[0:51] Mills said an interesting thing to me.
[0:52] He said, you know...
[0:53] When you talk about this guaranteed annual wages thing, he says, at the present time, we have a guaranteed annual income for people for doing nothing.
[1:01] That's right.
[1:02] But this is a guaranteed income for people that do something.
[1:05] And nothing for anybody that does nothing.
[1:09] That's right.
[1:10] That's a good point, isn't it?
[1:11] Yeah.
[1:11] Oh, absolutely.
[1:12] Well, we've been trying to get that message across, but, boy, it's just hard to do it.
[1:16] Right.
[1:17] They've got this concept of...
[1:19] guaranteed income.
[1:21] Well, I've said over and over that it is not a guaranteed income, and I think we've got to continue to say that.
[1:25] I said it is not a guaranteed income provides that a man gets paid whether he works or not.
[1:30] This provides if a man can work,
[1:33] and refuses to work that he doesn't get paid.
[1:35] So that's not a guaranteed income.
[1:37] Well, I think you can point out that it's a guarantee that we will help somebody who is willing to help himself.
[1:43] That's right.
[1:43] No guarantee for a guy that is unwilling to do so.
[1:46] Nobody wants to sit in his can.
[1:47] Yeah.
[1:48] Well, anyways, a good job.
[1:49] I'm going to work on, of course, our good friend Russell now.
[1:52] Yeah, yeah.
[1:53] He'll come around the end.
[1:55] He may put too much on it, but that's up to you guys to cut it out in conference.
[2:00] Yeah.
[2:00] Okay, Johnny.
[2:01] Talk to you.
[2:02] Okay.
[2:03] Thank you.