Conversation 105-010

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Well, we want to welcome Jack Edwards here.

He's our son-in-law.

Already very, very high amount for the administration to recommend it.

If it doesn't see it substantially, it will have to be adjusted.

If it does not, it will not be.

Now, that's why the video signals are out, and why the video access is going to be changed.

Some will come on, some will be on, some will be on.

Thank you.

And no use to talk any way else about it.

So we'll have a lot of our good friends, Republicans and others, who will roll ahead and vote the other way.

They'll be voting for tax increase.

The veto is a veto over tax increase.

I use that.

I've taken a very tough one.

One where most of our domestic counsels were signing it.

Because basically, after all, I was the one who imposed this whole environment.

You know, they say the president said they want the rest of it.

It has a lot of pull, but we're going to talk about whether we're going to have a tax increase.

Out of a tax increase, there's got to be restraint on spending.

The way you restrain spending is either by...

Having the Congress ask appropriations which are within the budget, or not substantially in excess of it, or for the president to veto the expansion of the budget, or that's what we have now, we have a sale.

And not a citizen of the whole of it.

If you have a citizen of the whole of it, then you might as well not go to trouble to build it.

So, with all this in mind, we now come to the question of whether the big big government can see it kicked around hills and more than George Maynard would probably, probably could.

We have a totally irresponsible Congress.

I'm not speaking about people on the Republican side.

We have a totally irresponsible Congress when it comes to spending.

We've got to have this spending soon, or then the ball will be on this side of the net.

The Congress is going to pass a lot of this stuff.

I'm going to have to be the lawyer.

The Congress is going to have to determine whether they're going to stand up and sustain the vetoes.

And it'll be quite an issue.

So that's the way it's going to be.

So that's why the $250 billion in spending in the streets has got to be put properly behind us.

If we get that, it might give us a little different view with regard to some of these bills that exceed the budget.

Particularly when we are for what they do, as we are for what the Water bill does.

We'll start with Charlie Walker.

We'll put it in the context of the death city and all that sort of thing.

You asked one question.

Right.

Didn't you say that George Mahon was for the 250?

Yes.

Oh, yes.

I said those were for Mahon.

Yes.

Right.

As I understand it.

Right.

That's correct.

No, that's correct.

I misunderstood.

Can I sit up here?

Here?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Yeah, people up here.

There was considerable concern when, in June, we were up for the debt ceiling increase for the second time in a year, that we were going to have to come back for a third increase in the debt ceiling.

Before the election, because the committee insisted on setting October 31 as the date for expiration of the temporary ceiling.

At the same time, we felt that if this spending thing continued to learn,

lurching out of control, this might give us a very good opportunity, and a good tactical opportunity, to get the spending sailing through.

Thus far we are with H.R.

16-810, voted out by the Ways and Means Committee by a 21-4 vote.

At least we're a pretty good way down the road.

A number of other problems left.

I'd simply like to re-emphasize what the President said.

If this budget does surge out of control, it is...

We've either got to have a big tax increase, which clearly nobody wants, I don't know why nobody wants to stop going around the campaign in favor of a tax increase, or a hidden tax increase as in the late 1960s as a result of more inflation.

The great pity of this is that we are showing very convincing signs of winning the battle against inflation past in the form of a cost-push legacy of the overspending in the late 1960s.

When you get behind the consumer price index and the wholesale price index of the Mexican National Reserve,

We are doing an excellent job of getting weight increases in line with productivity increases, and it's the corporate sector that horses out these other factors.

Prices have gone up only one and a half percent during the last year.

The pity of this will be if we let inflation future come back on us with the resurgence of demand-pull inflation.

Believe me, financial markets are up very tight about this possibility or probability of within a year to 18 months once again seeing a recurrence of what we had in the late 60s.

We can afford a 25 billion dollar deficit in an economy that's still slack.

We can't afford that big sort of deficit as we head into 68 in an economy that's tall and tight as this economy is moving forward in a very, very simple way.

Well, the answer is that Congress will sooner or later reform its spending processes and set out for the first year and say, here's probable revenues, here's what should we spend, should we have a surplus because the economy is hot, should we have a deficit because it's slack, should we have a balance because the economy is in balance.

Secondly, we need some sort of system so that Congress can establish priorities and not bring those to the floor one by one and enact one on top of each other.

So Congress needs to reform itself, but right now there's not enough time.

It's not midnight, you know, and it's not early evening, it's more than midnight.

The only answer that we see, the President sees,

this particular act, reporting back not lately, February 15, 1973.

We feel that the administration and the sponsors of this bill, Mr. Mills, Mr. Cole, Mr. Burns, we feel them in a very strong position.

We've got the bill out with a very substantial majority in the committee.

At the same time, there is great concern among the Democratic leadership about the legislation.

We feel that

I'm hanging in there pretty strong on this, with an issue which the people are with us.

You can hardly find a person around this country that doesn't believe that Uncle Sam ought to be able to struggle along for a quarter of a trillion dollars a year in running his financial operation.

So, Mr. President, that's my summary of what we are and where we stand.

President, he makes a positive impression.

God rest his soul.

to realize the progress that we had made, that it was really necessary to talk to some supporters.

I remember about a year, a year or so ago, Charlie, as we were all speaking, that the employee rights supporters would not be in their own houses in France, or in Germany.

Why would we do something like that?

Now it's the other way around.

Of all the industrial nations in the world, we have the lowest rate of inflation, the highest rate of growth for the major industrial nations, and the highest increase in real wages of any country in the world.

It's higher than Germany, higher than Japan, higher than France, and a lot higher than Britain, of course, which has its director on the line.

This is very impressive to the people of Europe, and particularly impressive to the British.

The British are now having a

All of Western Europe and major countries are having an enormous inflationary push.

Much of it is due to a wage.

It's a wage price push.

That is a certain reason for the British government.

And you have to come to the hard place with an extra three months.

It will be very, very difficult.

It will be very difficult.

We'll go along with some sort of volunteer experience.

And they bring it down pretty carefully.

But what Charlie's right is that we sometimes tend...

to look at his, and actually to look at the CBI figure every month, and say, oh gee, it went up this month, and said, gee, isn't that terrible, and the W, wholesale price index, will go up, down, and that's great, and the Orwell Street food, which of course is a, is a month, where either very high or very low, and in the last couple of months, it's been on the upsert, and it's now, if you watch the supermarket, it has begun to come down, because of the beef, the beef boxes coming down,

The important part that Charlie makes is the 1,200.

Behind all those figures is the figure 1.5%.

Or, to explain exactly what that figure is, that's really part of the... That's non-financial corporation.

It's basically the U.S. deals and the automobile deals.

It's where you back the factory.

You see, manufacturing.

In other words, you've got a link there.

You've got one and a half percent of the others.

And your CPI is less than 3 now, looking over the last year.

That is the consumer price index.

Right?

It's around 2.9.

Which is bad.

So you could probably say you've got a gap.

But what is really the more impressive...

The blind tape icon talks about all the industrial nations in the world.

We have the lowest rate of inflation, the highest rate of growth, and the highest increase in real income of any one of them in the world.

So why not continue to overdo it?

Because it's not that.

But the danger, as Charlie Peck points out, is that if you go back, when you have an economy now with a very high rate of growth,

That's why I said a moment ago, when I used the term tax increase,

That a responsible administration would have to come in if the Congress rolls the president on this stuff with an increase of $20 to $25 million over the next three years.

But either have to come to the tax increase or accept the fact we're going to have plenty.

Right?

Kathy, you want to...

Thank you very much.

and a half billion dollar increase over the previous fiscal year, so a 250 spending ceiling isn't all that tight, and it doesn't provide anything remotely resembling that.

Starvation is sort of done, or furthermore it does not mean that it will necessarily be cut out.

The rate of growth of a lot of these programs would be slow, because an 18.5 billion increase over this period is a fair-sized allowance for growth.

The other thing is that the spending ceiling is the only way to get full of what the situation is getting out of hand.

As the President remarked, the way the Senate particularly is moving on some of the votes in the last three days, the...

HR1, the record shows the beating going on in the House of Representatives.

The HR1 in the last three days in the Senate, they've added about close to $11 billion in the first three months.

So it's now $20 billion over the present law, if I can just say one word on that.

I know the members of the House.

The House is always supposed to be the closest to the folks.

But anyway, here is probably a very concern because we talked about it last week, Rivikov and others, who support the Rivikov client, and therefore that is something that Welter, well, so they did.

I can see that his wife is something that did.

The Rivikov client,

would have added 35 million people to the welfare goals over what we are planning.

That's why I'm not for it.

I'm not for any plan that will increase the number of people on welfare above what we propose.

So that's it.

That's the way the issue should be presented.

In terms of, you know, something mostly for an under, an underhand anybody, let alone for the government.

Well, on the part of the money part, yes, it's the adding of people to the welfare roles that we oppose, and whether it's the river golf plan, or my better plan one, or my better plan two, or my better plan three, every one of them adds people to the welfare roles.

On the ceiling itself again, that ceiling was still what Charlie said, over at 25 million deficit, with a full-blown deficit around 4, 3.5 to 4 billion, which is right, we think, at the verge of starting some more inflation, and why it's so necessary to do something about getting hold of it in the future.

next year when the economy will reach full steam.

And the problem with all of this is, as everybody knows, you've got to start very early to get in position.

If we want to make some real effect on 1974, we have to start now.

And the spending ceiling is the thing that lets us do it.

I don't want to say anything about this, but the simple fact is that if we just let all these programs alone right now, and funded them all in 74 at the levels and the rates of increase that they've required in the past,

We would have a deficit, a very close to 39 million dollars in a full employment situation.

And it would be a 20 million dollar full employment deficit, probably much more than that, probably going much higher as the economy got better, which is completely intolerable if you're in any way worried about inflation.

The problem that a lot of people don't seem to understand is that if you want to get a grip on this, you have to start a good two years ahead of time.

So it is, I think, tremendously important that we start now to get ourselves in a position not just to hold the 250 and 73, which we have to do, but to get us in any kind of a position to get a result in 74 where the president can accomplish something.

Social services is a prime example.

Congress is just about to put a social services ceiling.

Social services was $190 million in 1963, and we're looking at $5.2 million this year if we didn't have a ceiling.

So ceiling isn't all that revolutionary.

Ceiling has been done in a program like social services.

That's the whole problem.

That's the whole budget issue.

is very much like social services right now.

These spending provisions, these mandatory spending provisions the President spoke about, are getting to be somewhat more fashionable, and while we think they're unconstitutional or they're problematic, those are just long court seats, and as you know, there's a court case on highways, and here are spending provisions that are built in education right now.

The politics of the issue is very real, because the government and the Democrats simply want to cut the measures only, and all of these discussions about it work back to that, that you can't touch this, and you can't touch that, and you can't touch the next.

So they're trying to force us into a position where the only test that we can make is if we want to avoid taxes ordinarily.

And that would destroy, I think, one of the very first issues that we've got.

So the spending ceiling is defeated.

Your only real room for reduction, unchallenged out-of-court reduction, is in the defense field where we have already made very substantial reductions.

Now, a lot of people were talking about the substitutes for the ceiling, and my great-great-great-mister, Mr. Mahon, who has always told me how strongly he supports the ceiling, is now talking about a congressional veto of each cut, and the simplified lay of ducts, and all the ducts that are on the ceiling.

The problem is if you know that he's special interest, if you get enough of his output on a particular time, if you get enough of his output to pass the caballos, and then he comes out to fight, and you lose this overall incineration, and November 15th is the day he's picked.

Another of the big arguments that's made is it's an abdication of congressional responsibility.

And the simple fact is that that's really something you don't have.

That's right.

That's what's happened already.

That's where we are now, and that's one of the real problems.

The ceiling bill simply actually creates a capability, as Charles said, of a new committee that will enable Congress to regain some of the responsibility and capability of preventing decisions

It's almost impossible under existing procedures, and everybody knows a lot better than I do here, to look at the budget as a whole.

And so I don't think the, and if that argument holds any water.

I disagree with Charles a little bit on the unprecedented delegation of power to the president.

I don't think it's that.

This was done in 1968.

It was done very badly.

It was forced on an unwilling president at that time.

He didn't want to make the tough decisions.

And only a courageous president will accept this kind of responsibility.

It's only for the fiscal year, remaining for eight months of the fiscal year.

And there isn't any real way in which it can be done in any other fashion, because the single individual vote on each item is really where we are now.

You can see that with the Senate adding a billion dollars a day, as they did last week, to Social Security on each of these items.

What would it do, for example, with that...

Well, the spending we get would enable us to be put back to a level of funding such as zero that some people might recommend.

But without it, you have mandatory spending.

It would not be a difficult decision.

There's just one other point here.

A lot of people seem to be worried, not very many, because you had a very fine bipartisan vote there, but some seem to be worried that this is an attempt to fix some blame on Congress or something like that.

Credit Congress has a chance to, far from blame, Congress has a chance.

I haven't been particularly, I'm just a housemaker.

You've got a chance to go out and say, I owe them for a ceiling, and that's a vote against the tax.

It's a vote against the price.

This damn government will run away.

And then of course they pick out any individual program.

Well, I'm for that.

They put up the monkey down the back down here.

I'm speaking out.

I don't want your folks to go away that far.

The point is that, actually, is that what you really do, the Congress has got to go away.

You vote for $250 billion ceiling.

Then the President then decides, well, I'm going to apply it here or there.

You say, Congress, well, I voted for the ceiling, but I didn't want to apply it there.

I want to apply it over here.

Right?

It really is, and you can have a nice academic discussion as to whether it is or isn't an unprecedented delegation of power to the president or anything of that kind.

The simple fact is that I think what the people are going to understand is whether it's about war or against toxins, and there is no way with this kind of deficits facing us in the absence of a spending system that you can avoid either inflation, which is the worst form of taxation,

or a higher degree of taxation.

So we really send a signal around the world with all of the international people watching this thing as carefully as they are now.

We are determined, and we can do it, because with a 250c, we can avoid the need for due taxation, and we can avoid inflation, and we can get hold of the 74 budget.

The latter point is terribly important.

It is.

Yes, sir.

We see these numbers escalate.

You just don't realize it.

The next year, the next year.

That's why you take the water point.

But with the debt, with the expenditure ceiling bill, you'd have some lever to control the contract authority.

You'd have it for only one year, though.

That's right, but it doesn't start until next year.

Yes, but I'm wondering, to what extent do you say it will get...

It will be necessary for you to veto not only this, but other...

I didn't understand the... Well, that's what I didn't understand either.

What I'm getting at is this.

There are some bills.

Unfortunately, Waterville is one of them.

There are some bills where the expenditure ceiling bill would justify a signing.

Where you couldn't, if you don't have, in other words, if you have an expenditure ceiling, maybe this doesn't answer it, if you've got an expenditure ceiling, then your bill could be affected by the expenditure ceiling that comes here.

You would not have to be able to say, well, it's an expenditure ceiling, or whatever the case might be.

If it is a bill that would not be affected by the expenditure ceiling, it doesn't make a difference, it has to be affected.

What I was hoping was it was some way in which we could get some leverage for the expenditure ceiling bill by saying that this or that or some other bill will have to be vetoed unless we get the expenditure ceiling bill.

Which one?

I'm interested in the expenditure ceiling bill at this point.

What about that point?

Well, the only point I have about that is the immediate charge that can be made is that you are

We're recommending bills to be signed, and the money provided for them is not going to be spent.

I think you have to put it in pretty general terms.

Well, why is it that we can't even indicate them?

We're not indicating the water bill, but it is here yet.

But we can indicate what's going to happen.

I'm simply telling you that given its present form, there's going to be a choice.

And I use that as an example because it's a very big one.

But there are others where maybe 250, 300, maybe 400, maybe 500.

The second ATW one was pretty good in Hawaii where they cut it back to 800.

Still too much for Hawaii.

Veto, right?

Now, let me say it's much more comfortable on ATW to veto something there where on substance there's a lot of stuff that ought to be vetoed.

The water thing is a lot more comfortable for reasons that I've already mentioned.

But I have to have a question there at this point.

I went around and around with Kip O'Neill, who was spouting the very typical and very demagogic democratic argument that, well, you don't want to give the president this unprecedented power to cut veterans' pensions and to cut vital health services.

I know you don't want to spell out precisely where the cuts...

are going to be made, but is there some way that you can draw off that very specious argument, but still, you know, the general public is listening when they say these things, to emphasize that in fighting by that ceiling, that your cuts are not going to affect these very final areas, the way I'm talking about it.

The only problem that I've found is that, of course, when you identify certain areas why, then it becomes not a vote on the spending system, but a vote on whether you're willing to cut this out of the ones that have been identified.

We have identified only those in which we don't plan to make cuts to Social Security and revenue sharing with the two big areas because

Those were the ones that were being weakened.

We had better expenses.

My point is, it's very hard to go much beyond that.

Well, I have some pretty good ideas.

We are, a lot of us, an HGW company, a lot of us an OEO company.

A lot of what they're trying to do, I think, with that is, first of all, to either get a particular favorite program set aside so that it won't melt.

And the other thing is to force us into defense camps, because after a while you run out of stuff.

And so they say, well, here's this huge defense machine, cut all that, and then pretty soon we're back to a place where it can be very helpful.

And it can be helpful even in some of those areas that you speak about.

We have just through, and it's a cap strength credit, we've had a hell of a time making a 4.5% cut in government employees.

And all the agencies were squealing and saying, oh, we should cut it and so forth.

We can't do that.

Walk around this town, go into any agency, go into any local office, see those goddamn federal employees, including the ones here.

And there are too many.

And we could cut it, it could be cut ten.

In other words, this would give us a very great leverage within the bureaucracy, including some of the old line agencies.

Frank, you could go to Ontario, you could go to agriculture.

You can do a lot of others and say, all right, we want to change the cut in employment in order to help us on the ceiling thing.

Right, yeah.

You know, 7% cut in employment, if we can start very shortly, can give us a billion dollars next year.

All right.

On the cut in employment, they can still do the job.

They really can.

The cut in employment thing, also looking to the future.

Incidentally, there's another area you can talk about defense.

The uniform personnel is one thing.

Lawyers, lawyers, fire lawyers, all right.

I think you know what I'm saying.

On the personnel side, our own cabin officers sit around here.

After anybody's been here just a little while, they say, well, gee, I'm going to fire just for Christmas.

I've got a baby coming.

And down the line, it just all adds up.

When it comes to cutting personnel, but we have cut 4.5% in the last year.

Remember, we announced a 5% cut on August 15th.

We cut four and a half, right?

But that has been an enormous success.

We want to cut another five, don't we?

Another seven.

We can get into that range.

It's a way of increasing the productivity of each employee.

Sure.

And go to the job better.

Go to the job better.

I think that is popular.

I mean, if you put it in a general way, I think that is popular enough to say, oh, are you going to cut nurses?

No.

At the VA, no.

No.

There are various places that you can't cut IRS agents.

I would say, rather than on the customs area, you're going to have to have 20 on the rail, rather than 50.

In other words, you've got to keep the heroin out of the country.

But it wouldn't hurt the State Department.

I mean, you can't cut many, but they can cut many people abroad.

The Defense Department has the CIA.

You can cut a third of the CIA out and not miss a damn thing.

I've never seen anything reported by the CIA generally by their people that I can't read in the papers.

You know this.

Well, the Congress has got a special problem.

Let me say, the White House is not really doing very well, but we're setting a very good example.

Rehiring, we're cutting, and so forth and so on.

We at Gatlin, we agree we do a better job with less people.

Yes, we work better with almost everybody.

This, the personnel thing, is one of the most important things in terms not only of, sure, that's only a billion dollars, but in terms of getting the government to do a better job summing it down, when we start cutting personnel, I find the campaign my own business.

I find when you've got less people,

More responsibility to do a hell of a lot better job.

Just loads of money and people running around.

Everybody getting everybody's money.

The same way it's true of government.

We have to receive loads of money.

Well, that comes now 10 minutes ago.

Mr. President, I think there's another argument that the members might use, that the President recommended the $465 billion limit extension, and linked with the $250 billion ceiling on spending.

If they reject the $250 billion spending, the chances are that we've got to get a higher debt ceiling.

The $265 billion is not sufficient then.

No question about that.

I think that point can be made to the members, conservatives particularly, for that they don't need this debt.

At that level, they've got to go with the 250 spending decisions.

Mike should go over the procedures now.

Yes, so the local mail is in the committee to clear out the bill, and...

I request a closed rule, and the Speaker and Hale Boggs and George Mahon and the Subcommittee Chairman of Appropriations and the Democratic Regional Whips united to pressure the Rules Committee, and it appears now that there will be a rule given probably tomorrow, which will permit one substitute on the floor, probably offered by George Mahon.

which would give the president $250 billion ceiling, but require him to report back on November the 15th a list of cuts, and presumably would give the Congress 30 days to veto the package of cuts.

November 15th being right in the members of the White House.

Veto any of the cuts or the whole thing?

We haven't seen it yet, but we assume it.

It gives the Congress what the president has a high degree of veto.

Which, of course, there it is.

So, it seems to me that we have to give the Mahon substitute and then pass the committee bill.

And that would be very, very difficult, I think, with all the pressure that is mounting against it.

There's some things I believe this group can do.

Mr. Aaron, you might put a vote check out if you can.

Assuming they're being on the floor, it's probably Wednesday.

It's going to be on the floor once.

I think if we were tomorrow, it's probably going to be on the floor.

It's going to be Thursday.

It's right after that.

It's a voting plan.

It's probably Wednesday afternoon.

It's a voting plan.

Well, that's right.

It's the House.

So we're going to put a check and see how many votes we have.

We have to get 160 Republicans and probably 50 Democrats to tarry the day.

We started that.

Jerry Ford and Katie thought he could get that many, and Wilbur Bell feels he could get 50 Democrats.

Wilbur is dating Fred?

Yes.

That's what he understands.

So that would be very helpful, I think.

John, is there any chance of your policy committee acting tomorrow, maybe?

Yes, sir.

And circulate the decision.

That kind of makes it a party loyalty thing, I believe, when the policy committee should be a party loyalty.

Look at us.

People really see it at most terms, rather than spending, it's really, you want to go down the road and take responsibility for raising taxes or higher prices.

That's what they're doing.

We've got 138 co-sponsors as you know right now on this legislation.

Some of these people may have forgotten they sponsored that darn thing.

Do you have a conscience, John, on Lindsay, I believe, or Stein?

Could we maybe double up the cap?

That would be an excellent opportunity.

Stein, why don't we shift?

Stein, the numbers are darn good, and you ought to hear it.

He's terrific.

Say this one to it.

Maybe Captain, what's coming on that?

Where's the sound standing at?

While they're waiting for the house back, of course.

They're not here yet.

Mansfield and Russell Long are close to it.

So we'll have to fight this battle next week.

Let us make a young stand.

I think he knows.

He co-sponsored a lot of people last year.

We just talked here about the Senate.

At the present time, many of you well know

Chances of the Senate taking this action would not be considered to be too good on the other hand.

And also...

If the House should act, then the House should, it would have a very good effect down here in terms of the veto strategy, and as you see, it would have a very good effect down here in terms of withholding.

You know what I mean?

You have to make the tough choices if the House is acting.

And the right cap is good on some of these legal limits.

You say, well, the sense of the Congress or the House has already been expressed.

As far as

I think they can get over there, and then we'll start putting the beat in that.

And let's face it, what we are really doing here is also making a political issue.

There's a lot of talk about who's going to raise taxes, right?

And we're making the political issue by putting the money on their back.

That's another reason why the party loyalty is so important.

Get the republicans en masse to vote for this.

then it isn't the Congress that is exceeding the President's budget, or refusing to put a ceiling on.

It is the Democratic leadership of the Congress.

The Democratic Party.

You've got to separate this Congress out.

That's why the Republicans should go.

I mean, I don't...

If you really come down to it cold turkey, it becomes pretty much a party vote.

We have notified all the surrogates who are out speaking this week, but this is only front burners, the number one issue for this week.

So our people that are moving around the country can understand us.

And also the Congressional Campaign Committee has...

and teletyped out to their congressional candidates.

But I also say one thing.

I think there's many a trace in another point there.

The lesson is very involved in the rest of it.

Why does the House always have to go first on some things in the Senate?

This is one of those places where I think voting for this ceiling is a plus issue for the guys that vote for it.

I don't think it's a negative issue.

It depends on how you present it.

But the fact that you vote for it, the Senate drags its feet.

At least you, everybody that votes for this is voting for you.

Mr. President, it will help us with the vetoes too, because it's emphasizing the fact that we're in trouble fiscally.

You're going to be asking us to support you on some vetoes like this year.

But if we've had a big push on an expenditure ceiling, why has it got people thinking about the fiscal matter?

Mr. President, there are jurisdictional overtones between the Ways and Means and Appropriations Committee kind of permitting this thing.

science, of course.

And George Mahon got on me when I introduced the bill.

I was interested the other day that Lou Deschler came to me.

He said, Frank, are you going to permit the employees from the Institute to invade your station?

The issue with Lou was that there was no other way to get things under control than to let the employees come in.

So we've got everybody working, including Lou.

I thought he was supposed to play in the middle.

The fact that the corporation has never done anything to put any ceiling, any overall ceiling on spending.

George has absolutely denied me the right to even bring up an amendment which would put on a ceiling.

I want to do it on the continuing resolution.

No, I went out to see him about four weeks ago and asked him if there was any desire on his part that this originated appropriations rather than waste meat, because he always told me that he favored the idea.

He said he could get no one on his committee who would pick it up.

Nobody was interested in it on his committee.

I knew you had introduced the bill, so I didn't argue with him.

So I said, again, we're going to get caught in a jurisdictional crossfire here, and he said, no, not as far as I'm concerned, I'll help you with it.

So I've been a little disappointed, I should say.

Go ahead.

Mr. President, we're also trying to stimulate the outside groups that have an interest in this, the savings among the bankers, insurance, chamber of commerce, and hopefully they're working.

I don't know how effective they'll be, but they are interested, and they're trying to send wires and buttonhole numbers, so we have that kind of working in the background of all this.

And, of course, those of us at the White House and the Treasury have the ability to give them speeches or any support material that you need.

We will consider any action from here that we feel would be helpful.

Thank you.

The argument from the liberals continues to be that it's a line item veto, and I know that your position is not that.

It isn't that, really, because, and it isn't even close to that, because none of this vetoes out a program.

It leaves the program on the statute books, and it funds most of them, probably at a level in excess of the previous year, and it only lasts until June 30th of next year.

So that you have all these major differences, and Ida Vito just keeps the program completely off the statute books.

This doesn't interfere with any authorizations or anything of that kind.

It just says we can't grow at the kind of rate we've been growing, or we've been talking about growing, and still avoid taxation.

So that adds to the Ida Vito on appropriation side.

Yes.

One compromise that some of them suggested is that no program be reduced less than 10% or something like that.

Will you address yourself?

No, I think there are two things wrong with that, Barbara.

One is that in the way things have been going, I don't think it's enough.

And the other situation is that it means that you would have to reach 10% of practically every program.

including such things as social security and revenue sharing, which we don't want to do.

We don't...

Some things shouldn't be, frankly, what was the line item?

Some things shouldn't be decreased at all.

And other things could be certainly decreased 25%.

Nothing is going to be knocked out.

I understand that I've never served in the city legislature, right?

Here...

Just reduce things.

It's got to be varied depending upon.

You can't reduce the number of nurses in the veterans hospital, right?

You can't reduce the customs guards.

But there are certainly personnel or agents across the board in order to get to seven and a half.

It isn't really such an unprecedented thing, because, as I say, the Congress made up the price of the Cert Tax in 1968, as you know, and President Johnson didn't want and fought against it.

But that was only, it was done very badly because there were so many basic exceptions to it.

I think it's just a straight academic point, as can be argued, but the basic question is, do you want more taxes?

And a vote for this ceiling is a vote against taxes.

Yeah.

Do you agree, John?

I don't know whether he's politically motivated or whether he has some vague idea of protecting the jurisdiction of the committee.

He may be trying to.

I think he needs to pick it up himself and start an interview in that committee about four weeks ago.

One last thing, Mr. President.

If we could lose the Mayhem substitute, I suppose that John Burns will have another shot at recommittal.

to vote on the 250th committee.

Wait a minute.

I'll do that again.

If you cannot substitute, you carry, then the next shot would be a recommittal motion.

No, because I can't do that.

Well, it was an amendment.

You can't attack it by militia to recommit.

Well, you can have a separate vote on it.

You can have another vote on the amendment.

Substitute.

You can ask a separate vote on the amendment, which is good.

You can ask a separate vote on the amendment.

You can gear your motion to read the amendment, which you also have to do that.

And it's never been able to get rid of it, but it seems to me that the man on the amendment, you might as well have tied into it a hump, fundamentally.

Because that's truly a nice amendment.

Well, it offers a lot of expectation.

It doesn't give the president any authority to operate on the basis of changing situations.

You may decide today that you're going to cut into certain areas that four months from now you decide that maybe you ought to relax that.

That's exactly right.

But you just reason under those circumstances, which it seems to me is a bad part of the mayhem thing in addition to the idea of what the hell Congress is doing.

You know, they're going to disapprove of it.

Go ahead.

It'd be a very tough moment, but I think if we could maximize our republicans, I think it'd be important.

Bill, and you know it's got on this, and I think it's important to touch on this, we're getting into a very important thing.

The election is five weeks from tomorrow, and a lot of guys are back in the hustings.

There ought to be

Let me ask Bob about who's going to be here.

It's not about what Jack's so important.

Yeah, well, if they're not here tomorrow, they're never going to be here, because we'll be here tomorrow.

If everything we have, we're going to catch them again today.

They're not here tomorrow, because we'll never get them here tomorrow.

It's going to be rather hard for us to get any more votes.

I love you.

Mr. President, if we are able to succeed with this, we aren't going to turn around and accept a major expensive social security package, are we?

That kind of worries about what's happening to the Senate.

And there's a feeling that you can't, under any circumstances, stand up against social security, but my lord, we're talking about probably a $10 billion package, what I understand they're doing there.

They've reduced the retirement age.

60 and 55 for widows.

20 billion under the present law as of Saturday night.

Is that what the prognosis is?

What's going to happen?

Well, I don't know what will happen in the conference.

Presumably they'll get the port titles off the floor and into conference.

come up with something lower, but the problem is that the 20% increase earlier in the year has eaten up a great deal, practically all of that now, unless you have gigantic payroll tax increases.

Even that will finance a $20 million tax, so you have to go into general revenue, and that means forcing a tax increase again.

Yes, sir.

That was a beautiful article.

That was a good article in the Post yesterday, that complete full-page thing about Social Security.

Everyone takes time to read it, and then they begin to understand it.

A couple of average taxpayers never read this kind of thing.

It's what the actual facts are.

It's amazing.

Don't you think they're trying to force the President to veto that bill?

Sure.

That was 54 votes in the Senate, yes.

Just barely over one-half of it.

It's not education.

California taught about 25% limitation on our program.

That's what they've taught everybody.

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

So if you don't want a program, you need to have more than 25.

So that's now today.

That's all I can say.

Thank you.

Yes, sir, we thought maybe that John Ehrlichman and Kat Weinberger would go out to the press and kick it off with the moochies, and maybe that the leaders could follow up on the Hill with statements, how important this is, vote for higher taxes, and start filling up some bills.

Let me suggest this to the leaders over here.

Yes.

Well, we appreciate you coming down on Monday morning.

As we said, Monday, I know there's a group of Democratic leadership you never get in here.

Other than the girls here.

Okay.

You guys aren't closing up at home.

Teksting av Nicolai Winther

Well, we wish you well.

We wish you... Social Security, though, is the goddamnest broadest.

I mean, the percent of that, they've got half of the 20%.

They know you can't do it.

20% was pretty bad.

Sorry?

No, and no committee in the Congress had considered it.

This one?

Thank you very much.

Don't you think they're trying to force the president to veto that bill?

Sure.

That was 54 votes in the Senate.

Just barely over one half.

Yes, sir, we thought maybe that John Lickman and Kat Weinberger would go out to the press and kick it off with the Mooshies, and maybe that the leaders could follow up on the Hill with statements how important this is, vote against this, vote for higher taxes, and start filling up some bills.

Let me suggest this to the leadership here.

Yes.

Well, we appreciate you coming down on Monday, Monday, Monday.

As we said, Monday, I know there's a group of Democratic leadership you never get in here, other than for all of us here.

Okay.

You guys aren't closing up at home.

Teksting av Nicolai Winther

We wish you well.

We wish... Social Security, though, is the goddamnedest broadest on earth.

I mean, the percent of that, they've got half of the 20%.

They know you can't do it.

The 20% was pretty bad.

It was hard to sign.

And no committee of the Congress had considered it.

This one.

I'm just reading.

Well, that's creating expectancy, too.

Everybody's short.

Nobody's got to check for the last one yet.

It's coming out today.

A little noted.