Conversation 113-001

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as a meaning of thanking you and your administration, are now going to turn on the home front.

I think we should be ready to meet them.

And we should be ready by saying to the working people who supported you, and I think this is very important for so many of them from the Democratic Party, that they must continue that conference in your administration.

And we have to talk in a much plainer language than we may with these kind of reports.

And I don't say this insultingly, but I think one of the standards of our time is, first of all, everyone has to have the comfort of heart to be a good American.

That's the end of the thought.

And the gentleman today, Tom, is very impressed, and he's going to hopefully ensure that that's not all right.

But I think, Mr. President, we do all of these people, and we're very strong to them, and we want to keep them on our side.

We want to put it as simple as we can as to what your administration is going to do in the next 40 years.

And because the enemies are already starting, and as you probably know, we have pretty good sources of information very fast.

And I understand I'm not going to be a new one.

I'm going to continue with the number one target on the HIPAA parade with the communists and other people who are saying, well, now it's time for what I want to do with you and this administration.

We're running the other side.

So they're going to try to attack the programs they're labeled by, the cutbacks.

I think, you know, I feel against holy programs, programs that are just keeping people on a string.

They don't make human beings out of them.

They keep them in limbo.

And I think we can get a lot of the workers to buy into this, express them, and be told in a very plain language.

So I'm very much concerned with the 74 and the next 40 years.

And I hope we don't decide to have a lot of high-class rhetoric.

Because these people won't buy that, they won't understand that, and the enemy will talk their language, and I think we could be in trouble.

But if we look at this in a real practical way, we could head it off and head it off fast.

And that's what I'd like to do with the troops in the field.

And the troops are now going to be on the home front.

I'm very happy.

I want to say I'm very proud to serve in the U.S.

The last night, I think you proved that whatever we did, we were on the right side.

I think you'll wind up in front of Mr. Johnson, you know, making people more proud of you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I think that the way of dealing with this, which has to be, the Congress has to be shunted in the direction that forces the Congress as an institution

to look at how much money there is and what there is to spend it on.

They have attitudes that you can appeal to that group on the basis that it promises to do all the things they want.

And when they're talking to that group, whether it's through the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, through the Education Bill, or through Social Security Increase, they don't have to talk to anybody else.

The question comes, where are you going to get the money for agricultural price reports?

And the Agricultural Committee can say, we'll get it out of the fence.

If the question is where he's going to get the money for welfare benefit increases, he'll get it right out to agriculture.

The only way they can be forced to the kind of accounting the President and his budget has is to force the Congress, through the pressure of public opinion, to move in a direction that

requires them to deal with all the money there is and all the claims against that money and to kind of leave it or else increase taxes.

Unfortunately, there is that pressure.

The President's demand for a spending ceiling last fall moved things in that direction.

They now have to set it under way to do this.

McClellan, Mattia Curtis called me the other day after my nomination to DOD.

said that he believes, as chairman of Senate Appropriations, that Congress has got to find some way of doing this.

So that if we can further that effort, I think we can expose what I refer to also as essentially a shall mean.

And that, I think, you know, brings us back to the point that was made at the beginning, which is that we can enforce at that point a recognition of the fact that if they really want to do all these things, then they have to increase taxes to do it.

We have to do a job on the home front.

He can't just be totally conscious.

Of course, I don't have to tell you, some of them are pretty good at talking out of both sides of their mouth.

And if we don't deal with the people that we want to keep with us, they will go home and very acutely say how they're for them.

They want these...

programs, but the president is the one who is saying it.

And we can do it without raising your taxes.

This is what they'll tell the people.

If it gets down to where they have to move, that's a different story.

But in the meantime, they can be...

I'm just a practical politician.

I deal with the rank and file every day.

I know how they can react.

And the gentleman went to talk about the voters we need.

We can do a lot of speech up there on the hill.

But every one of those men are worried about his voters.

Mr. President, although the hard to think of today, I was with a John McFaul, and he made, I think, a really telling point, and I passed it to John earlier.

When you go on the air, Sunday night, whenever you go on the air on this thing, you should stress to the people that if you believe in what I'm saying, in terms of anti-tax entries, unless you're a confidential senator, you know that you're going to stand behind him and he takes action.

Right?

Exactly.

Mr. President, it seems to me that you...

You started off, Elliot, emphasizing the importance of talking about taxes.

That's one simple word that everybody understands.

The other one, that they understand is jobs.

And those are the two keystones.

And I have the feeling that if you go to a union meeting and talk about tax reform,

or something like that.

What people think you must mean is how you reduce the welfare payments that people are getting, which are causing my taxes to go up, so that my taxes can be kept under control.

I see that kind of juxtaposition very quickly.

So it has seemed to me that the two touchdown words for us here are jobs and taxes.

And that can stand for a lot of programmatic rearrangement that is fundamentally in the interest of the fellow who doesn't want to pay those taxes and who does have a job.

We have two and a half million more jobs this year.

And I think that helps a great deal with these critics.

Jobs is the name of the game, George.

The fellow that has a job would be happy with the fellow who hasn't is.

He can be dangerous, too.

We have to keep him, I think.

What is the situation?

Are you suggesting that we talk about compromises with the agriculture program to make them a good one?

Well, as a matter of fact, I was the first patient on the road because for about ten days, I was taking all the shots.

And Congress got riled up on this, people, because two or three areas of the department was lousy, was weak, are we truly trying to stop this?

Eisenhower did, Kennedy did, Johnson did, you did, but it's Congress, like, poured more on.

It's a cost share.

And now we've cut it off here.

They've got a field organization by the law.

Every county has to have a county committee.

They were set up in the Roosevelt administration.

They're still basically democratic.

The line in 12 that Bob Cook has here in town, he has a nice wide sense of humor.

Very effective lobbyist.

He can put 20,000 letters on the Hill in two days.

That many telegrams.

And he can bring 10,000 people to town, or 2,000, whatever he wants, tomorrow.

And he does it.

I think this is a case where the Congress is going to restore this.

Yesterday, Gail McGee had a press conference out there, and Gail said, I'm not going to accept the agricultural budget.

I'm not going to have any witness before my committee.

I'm not going to have any agricultural appropriation.

I'm not going to have any continuing resolution until June 3rd.

Until I restore it fully, that's the better thing.

He went pretty far out when he sat down.

Great temptation.

It's a great temptation.

All right.

Pretty far out.

Mind I spoke to the nice warblers down here at the hotel yesterday.

Bob Quote spoke to me on the 10th of May.

He said, there's going to be no anti-register until they restore this thing.

He's got his blood on a wreath now, which the man would come here and make.

I think we ought to take a hard look at that and single out some of it.

We can give our Republican friends something to stand on.

It can't be something that's not.

Disaster loans are a case in point, Mr. President.

The Congress last year, after I passed this disaster loan plan, it was $5,000.

Forty-year-old and one percent of the $5,000 would be up to $5,000 to be given.

No requirement that you can't get credit elsewhere.

You don't have to show me Mrs. Whitman could have lost her racehorse and the barn had slipped away and she got a $5,000 forgiveness.

You see, this was attractive.

We had to, we had to, and now we had this other traffic city, South Dakota, and then somebody in Minnesota had too much money.

Uh, and you got credit, that's a recreation area.

My head secretary, we have 830 counties in this thing.

The rest of mine have not been built.

Early last December, I took a study on this thing.

If we had continued to wait, it's going to, we're going to drop $800 million dollars down a raffle by June 30th, just in the $5,000 we had.

If something had to go on this thing, I'd clean the cap.

I said, look, I'm going to stop this, but I can't stop it on the countryside.

They said, well, the same as you do with small business and HUD here.

And after a little while, we worked out a new deal.

Well, there's some inequities here.

And I think if we can find someone to go through with the moral commitments we got on this, which might cost another $50 or $100 million, $500 million, it might save the rest of the cuts and we don't have to destroy the homeless business.

I read another case that pointed to this, it's real electrification.

They're going to get 2% in the market, it's ridiculous.

When the Congress set this thing up years ago, the average cost of electricity was 1.96.

Now it's what, 5.5% or something like that.

So we looked around and saw authority under the rule about that.

Last year, we could sell money in the money market and hold up to 5%.

We should have re-announced that.

It looks like the rest of them are going to fall in on it, because these guys are political powerful.

We've got 7 million meters in the United States on real electric systems.

20% of those meters are not farmed.

80% are not farmed.

I don't know if this case does, but it does.

We're now financing electricity for retired corporate executives that have a nice home out in the country out here, all through South Carolina, North Carolina, and over around the country.

Again, we stand on the bridge being lifted on this thing, because they do over-trump up here in appropriations for next year.

I think if we look for a place that we can make a little compromise here, he's got some political palatability there, a reasonable degree of some, we might not lose the whole thing.

Mr. West Coast, we came back and killed the same deal.

How many?

Oh, I don't know, a couple hundred million dollars.

I mean to say spending a billion.

This thing is $5,000, Mr. President.

It made me cry.

Okay, you have $200 million.

Somebody else has got $100 million.

Agreed.

There you go.

You have to describe the program in such a way that we can't hold the line on the program to make 2% loans to companies like this.

I think the problems we're cutting out should be cut out.

But we're up against a Congress that really doesn't feel that way.

They never do.

You must have no illusions about the Congress.

The Congress belated others, the Democrats, basically, in terms of thinking this through.

They're spenders.

And frankly, by a little of that, I feel like we just left the captain walking.

It's not rich, it's low budget.

You've got to make your place pretty tough to begin with.

You can always compromise.

At each committee is going to do exactly the same thing.

You do it here, you've got it in water and sewers, and you've got it in other places.

The one thing, Mr. President, that I see is

We built a constituency for this election on really two fronts.

One, some responsibility, but also we did direct attention to each one of these interest groups, whatever it was.

So we built this majority on two factors, one of responsibility, but the other one was doing things for ag, doing things for maritime, doing things for these people.

Now we're doing a turnaround, a sudden turnaround, to develop a constituency of the whole.

It isn't one, it's one based on we want to raise your taxes.

Now that's a real sudden wrench to those people where we filled up these individual constituencies for this election.

Now you either go with that or you don't.

It does seem to me that the one problem is you give a little here and I got it in HUD, other people have got it in EDA and so on.

And you can do that down the pipe sometimes.

It does seem to me we need some rounding out, though, of the tax aid.

The things like, it's a matter of who spends the money.

Whose choice is it?

Is it your money to spend, or do you give it to your congressman to spend for you, or to the President of the United States to spend for you?

There's a freedom element here.

Secondly, the real wage element point, the point you've made, that it's cruel to people.

They have wages going up, and they haven't got anything more they can buy with it, and that's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to make it possible for you to have a better life, and the only way to do that is to have the responsibility here of not higher taxes.

The third thing is I'd like to see a few studies that we put on what the impact is on the poor and the lower income people of inflation because that fits into this.

We have three or four strong statements that could be made as to how it hurts the elderly, how it hurts the moderate people too.

so that we can back up what we're saying on the fiscal responsibility would be very useful.

But fundamentally, what we're trying to do is go to a constituency in the whole, from a constituency that was filled up with various pieces.

And that's a difficult thing to do, achievable.

But we've got to be very careful on whether or not we give in too quickly in the various areas.

I think, Mr. President, you're opposed to something you talk about that is a very

fine beginning and the kind of thing that we ought to do.

We have to, I agree with Peter Brennan, we've got to be on the offensive right straight through on this.

The no taxes and the too powerful a government and all of that, those are good arguments and they can't be sold.

And I just think that we're going to take a lot of heat the other way.

And it is well to realize that this is going to be a program, a budget, a series of divesting programs that are going to require a lot of support.

And that individual income tax cut is a very good point.

We hardly ever hear about it.

It's a very real thing.

Payroll taxes have gone up, but still there's a net reduction in taxes.

I think this is a saleable program, but we are going to have to be on the offensive because the people we're going to hear from are going to be small groups of angry people.

A lot of their lobbyists, this man that Earl mentioned, is very typical of the kind of complaints we're going to hear.

We aren't going to hear much from the majority of people who are really going to be pretty uninterested in all of this back and forth here in Washington, but they're going to be very interested if they think that what's happening is going to cause them to pay more to the federal government.

We can make a lot out of revenue sharing as to how it's going to reduce, in many cases, state taxes.

And I just think we have to be on the offensive with it and keep selling it.

It's essentially considered an offensive

uh sort of thing and and as you said a dull and tiresome subject but the simple fact of the matter is if it can leave more money in the hands of people to spend as they wish that's not the best kind of simulation but it means a less powerful less intrusive government and that's a pretty important thing to learn

that we needed from the standpoint of the economy.

We were spending more and spreading around the dough.

And this year, you can't get in there and spread and turn it just the other way and say, no, we're gonna have to cut back so we don't have any increase in taxes.

So the issue this year is to put the monkey on the back of the spenders for raising taxes.

On the back of the Congress.

Because what you very well can face is congressional action.

And I don't think, unfortunately, you're not going to handle it.

Let me see here.

Republicans will be the most difficult to satisfy.

And that's understandable.

Put yourself in the position.

basically a partisan Democrat, and by that I mean, I think of George Mahon to be a very responsible, well, more responsible for the Republicans.

But the Republicans were blind, bitch, and so forth, because they represent

They're all for economy, except where their nest is involved.

I know I'm on the back of my hands.

And so, when we have a meeting tonight, some of the private students, the Republican members of the House and Senate, the Republican leaders,

It'll be probably more gory than the bipartisan.

The bipartisan will have greater meaning because the more partisan the Democratic leaders will be very in touch with trying to close the spot.

But the Republicans who should be with us will be trying to find ways to get as far away from us as they can.

And I'm not saying it's being critical of them.

I'm just saying it's a fact of their life.

president yeah so don't be surprised and i don't think you can buy along i don't think so now understand sure you're trying to compromise here and there the other one is going to do it you do it later you get down to the you get down to the point

You also get out a point, too, as to how big that constituency really are on some of these things.

How many votes are here in it?

They seem to think there's a great deal, particularly from some of the anti-social groups.

Certainly the tax issue is an issue for the constituency as a whole, but this budget

Turn it back to people that we have a deal to.

It is very strong in spending for older people.

The maritime area, for example, has been held very carefully.

There's no complaint.

I think on the farm side...

Remember that, the maritime area.

All has to be hot and strong.

I'm very careful about that.

On the farm side, zero has to happen.

Because of what you've done with Russia, because of what you've done with China, because of this worldwide war on food,

there is a chance to kind of have a breakthrough in the agriculture area.

And as far as the farmers are concerned, to have their income stay high or continue rising based on more production instead of less production.

And that's the breakthrough that we have a chance to achieve here.

And that's not turning our backs on that constituency at all.

So I don't think that we have in the budget, and as far as the latest people are concerned,

We have jobs, is what they're interested in, and some kind of stability of prices overall, and seeing that the food prices are having some attention to that.

So all these things have been attended to in various ways, despite the fact that when it comes to public housing, some of those things, they're held.

Well, that's not our constituency in the program, sir.

I think that what Pete said, and what Jim said, makes a lot of sense in where we're here.

We may be able to figure out all those kinds.

Demonstrating just where these programs are bad.

In other words, to turn the whole constituency that rebels against the kind of waste that Earl was talking about, rallying that to the cause by pointing out what's happening in some of these other programs where there is waste in either the housing or the farm area or anything else.

But they never hear about that.

If they hear farm disaster loans, all they think about is some poor guy that got a life

And there's a great sympathy among the working tribes for this.

They don't hear about the disaster of forests and all that stuff.

You've got to tell them about that.

Mr. President, I understood him to say that 30 million acres are coming back into production.

And I think we should stress the income the farmers are going to get from this.

We're going to replace federal programs with marketplace income, which is going to be generating taxes as well to the benefit of the farmers.

Well, let me say, knowing the farm constituency, which is a rural constituency, and knowing the farm senators at the time, they are the most difficult, the most miserable bunch of people that we've possibly met.

Now, having said that, they're our friends.

And so consequently, that is why we, but I'll tell you, that is why, in believing they're our friends,

on national security and our friends politically on that.

Democrat and Republican.

I mean, you take Herman Tomlin.

He's gonna like this any more than Charlton Hurst.

Except for peanuts, Tom.

I'm dropping $100 million.

I'm dropping $100 million this year on that peanut from us.

Nobody's gonna like it.

It's the most expensive single thing I do, really good size.

Yeah, but Herman's gonna like that, and Carl, that would look like...

I don't know.

Well, no, no, no.

My point is... My point is that when you look at your...

If you look at your farm constituents, the farm constituency in terms of the kind of things you do to them, I mean, let's face it,

They don't want to fire them.

They're great.

The foreign congressmen and senators, Democrats and Republicans, generally speaking, are for what we're trying to do with national security and other areas.

They just go up the wall on lime and peanuts and all the rest, right?

That's the problem we've got.

And they are difficult.

But back up, Mr. President.

I bet our farmers are basically happy.

The farmers, they have money.

But you see, the congressmen and the senators, they represent the unhappy farmers.

That's what you do.

I don't do that.

I think it's a lot to the president if we spend our money that can encourage some investments.

We spend our money to encourage some investment that produces jobs.

Let's get our power plants that are all being held back now because of environmental stipulations on court cases.

We've got the pipeline, for example, that's laying over here in the Court of Appeals.

And get some of our refineries replaced with modern refineries instead of building them over in the Middle East.

We're going to get some jobs, but we're going to have to be sure that we're going to encourage industry to invest in this country.

That's where jobs are produced.

And I think when you produce a job, you overcome a lot of these sour grape type problems of agriculture.

Let me say, I will have to conclude this at this point tonight.

And this, of course, will have another round and another point.

And you'll have several rounds.

The thing I think we have to have in mind is that the budget plan is always difficult.

We must be convincing on it.

We are going to be, we cannot question it.

there might not be something down the road but you might do something they want to give me way around now but

We went through all these, looking at the total picture, not just looking at the firemen, not just looking at the housing, and so forth.

Not looking at the gas lines, etc.

We went through the total picture, and we found that in order to achieve these goals, we had to make these cuts, partially setting the restraints, increases.

They're $1850 for 1973 and $1950 more for 1974, which is quite a bit of money.

Under those circumstances, therefore, it's going to do, we have the responsibility.

Unless we want to just simply throw up our hands and say, all right, let's have a tax return.

But the way I would play that, I would rather it pay very well companies.

Let it be bought.

Let it be bought out.

And some of our Republicans are going to be on that side too.

And they'll probably roll us on a veto or something of that sort.

But then it's the Congressional tax increase and not ours.

We don't want it at all.

And we can avoid both.

But at the present time, we have no hold over who we are.

But we'll look at these individual cases and go along with the course.

And in the meantime,

You can see why I said at the beginning, there's no subject that is more distressing than this one, although I must say today there's been more.