Conversation 113-005

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The only reason that I would suggest, I would say that somebody raised his left after the meeting the other day and I said to him, sorry.

If you cannot get the resolution passed,

If I find that they're true to some part of every state, if the leaders could tell me now that you would like to write a proclamation and I could do it on the basis that at the request of the bipartisan leaders, if the resolution is passed, I'll say it's not even called a congressional resolution.

Could we leave it that way?

What do you think?

We can do it.

There's no question about it.

We can do it.

We've been asked this question, how much is it going to bring down?

the budget for the next fiscal year by the total withdrawal from Vietnam and military operations, and how much would it add by way of economic rehabilitation in the two countries that you might not be able to retain?

Do you have that in mind?

The economic rehabilitation plan?

It's basically an area line as far as the budget is concerned.

was prepared and i guess the budget years had more confidence perhaps the budget was prepared having in mind this is right captain that you would have the uh inspections for vietnam uh out of the 74 but the 74 budget does not contemplate uh vietnam activity at all how much does that reduce well what it does is enables us to keep loving

Now, the next budget, $75.9 million in 1971, is just under $75 million in 1973.

Now, he revisions the President's proposal, $74.8 million.

That will jump in 1974 to $79 million because of just the pay and price increases associated with this budget.

This level of activity.

If we were still engaged in Vietnam, we would be about 93 million.

And that's the level of the reduction that we can make.

It doesn't show in actual dollars.

It shows in the numbers about 14 billion.

Yes, sir.

We are actually, it's very hard to compute it because you've got the first Calvary Division either at home or abroad.

You've got overhead costs and all that.

But as nearly as we can compute it, we were running at about $8.5 billion through 1970, about half of 1973 as the

Now that would be washed out, but on the other hand, you put back in a pay and price increase associated with the all-volunteer armed forces, so that you're able to hold even.

If you had the war, you'd be way done.

The peace dividend has been pretty well worked out, just as the reduced manpower in the Army has been absorbed into the economy with the new job streams.

Does that maintain the existing level of forces also?

That maintains just about $200,000 less, but right under that ring.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Weinberger, if I may ask a question.

Yes, sir.

If I could just interrupt you.

What you're really talking about here, a lot of this is the payment of volunteer work only.

That's right.

See, we had to goose all that up.

So what?

So much of it is the payment of volunteer work, even though we've been using a number of forces, and it has cost a lot.

The only way you can really answer is the way the cap hit, Carlos.

If Vietnam were still going on, it would probably be $14 billion more.

You can see it here on the page.

In 1968, we had 3.5 million men in uniform, with an average paying allowance of $5,500.

This year, in 74, we'll have 2.2 million in uniform, with an average paying allowance of $10,000.

And another house, 10,000 feet.

Yes, sir.

When I was in the infantry, it was $21 a month.

Another way of looking at it is how much will a billion dollars get through the fence?

In 1964, a billion dollars would get you 219,000 men.

In 1974, a billion dollars gets you 100,000 men.

What year?

1964, sir.

And in 1971, you get $100,000.

Everybody here will get this book, which is the highlights of the budget.

I believe it's supposed to come out this afternoon or tomorrow.

And it has all of these charts and more, a great many more, because we'd be here quite a while and we'd use them all on this thing.

But it also has a...

very detailed figures that back up the material that is charted.

So these, I didn't give you the office, and of course we'll get the budget book, but I think it's not as much of a great thing.

When we make comparisons, for example, between our forces and those of the Soviet Union, comparing in terms of converting theirs to dollars and ours to dollars, their forces totally change.

Because when we figured out our total defense budget, whatever it is, 58% goes for personnel.

When you look at their total defense budget, even though they have more personnel, they don't pay $10,000 a year.

So basically, the amount of money they put into their defense is compared to the amount that we put in ours.

You have an even amount.

You can assume that they're getting a lot more hardware than we are, and more personnel than we are, because of our costs.

So it's, I don't mean to suggest that I'm making a picture for the fact that we therefore have to double the defense.

I'm simply pointing out that any kind of parity

It's totally misleading to name the terms.

Well, they're only spending this much, $20.

We're spending this $20.

Because we do not get as much, frankly, for our money as they get for theirs because our personnel costs are infinitely higher.

Does that be a ?

Yes, it's at least twice as probable.

I was in a market old platoon down on Saturday afternoon, standing in line while each man takes his turn taking a job at a reformed charity.

Well, time is waiting, Mr. Weinberger, and it seems to me you ought to tell us whether or not this projected budget is based upon the continued withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars that were provided for expenditure by Congress for fiscal 73.

Yes, sir.

That is a major issue.

between the legislature and the legislature.

I don't know how it can be resolved.

I think Congress went far beyond what it should have done in many instances.

But nevertheless, the legislative branch of the government has spoken.

Does this budget propose that the mandate of Congress will be ignored?

Well, sir, the mandate of Congress is with respect to the authorization or...

Voting, which would give the president the authority to spend $261 billion to have a $36 billion deficit in 1973, or, as every president has done since President Jefferson, to exercise the executive leadership that the Constitution vests in him.

to withhold some of those expenditures, some for future years, some entirely.

And this budget is based on the exercise of the authority, as every budget has been, I guess, for the last 200 years.

But nothing at all within the ballpark of the figures involved here.

The Patients Act gives a circular discretionary account, but the tremendous

sums of money which are not going to be spent as per the mandate of Congress in bills signed by the executive.

It just seems rather unrealistic.

I'm sorry that Congress made these appropriations, made these funds available in all cases, but they were made available.

Mr. Chairman, if I might say, we will have up, I hope before February 10th, the detailed list of

withheld funds.

You can get a very good idea of them from the list of program terminations and reductions that's contained in the budget document that will also come up to you today.

Let me just say that the amount of funds that are presently withheld from appropriate is well under the average that has been the case for at least the last 30 years.

We have had normally somewhere between six and seven

of appropriated funds not spent for one reason or another, sometimes because the building site isn't owned, sometimes because the building isn't designed, sometimes because the nuclear carrier isn't completed, for any one of a number of reasons.

But all of those funds lumped together, those that are withheld because there's nobody to spend them, nobody to give them to, or because the president feels, previous presidents, this president feels that it would be inflationary and tax-producing to expend them.

All of those together have normally run between 6% and 7%.

We will be at least one percentage point, probably close to two, below that when these impounded fund lists come up.

But we are doing it.

We are setting forth a list of programmatic reductions.

Some of them will require a congressional action, and we've listed those separately.

Some are done by the authority of the president acting under this same power that has been exercised ever since Jefferson.

And those are all set forth in the budget.

The programmatic reductions, Senator McClellan's point a moment ago, in order to get back the $250 billion, we had only $40 billion in which we could look to find

those reductions to get back from 261 to 250.

Within that $40 billion, we are making programmatic reductions of 6 billion.

The other, the rest, 6.5 billion.

The balance comes from sales of assets, sales of stockpiles,

uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh...

and budget balances and so forth, looking towards a balanced budget, as I understand it, by the end of 1975.

All right, so that's not how you all ended up.

Did I not take into account any action of economists in making further authorizations and appropriations to satisfy any legislation that may be enacted?

All of that, in other words, anything that Congress authorizes and appropriates the law, hereafter it will add to the MNQ.

Yes, unless Congress, of course, has to decide that it does not want to approve things to the administration, it's actually going to leave those out and put it in other programs.

Well, I don't think so.

But it needs to go up your rate.

Your equipment, if the Congress, for example, approves the programs that we sent down, and if it adds to that, it will have to go on top of all that stuff.

Yes, sir.

These figures here, this is

This 1975 figure at $312 billion that would result if we didn't make these cuts doesn't contemplate anything new at all.

It just contemplates a continuation of the programs that would be in place if we spent the $261 billion in 1973.

No, President, may I ask another question?

We have had, for the last two or three years, an increase in military and civilian pay increase in the federal government.

Do these figures

Build in all the requirements that are presently in place.

Now here is a, we showed a moment ago the military statement.

This is the next set of charts are programs that increase

This budget, after all, does have an increase of $19 million from 73 to 74, and $18 million from 72 to 73.

And so these are some of the elements of that increase.

Military was low.

Aid to the elderly goes up from $57 to $63 million.

Outbreaks for food assistance continue to increase.

And you can see the enormous increase that's come in the last two years in both food stamps

school lunch program, 200% increase in the number of children getting free or reduced school lunches, just from 69 to 74.

Here is the Veterans Hospital medical care, both the patients treated and the outpatient visits show an increase from 72 to 73, 73 to 74.

This is school disadvantaged education of children in the public school system.

And that shows an increase from 2.6 to 3.2 million.

And here is the expenditures for the reduction of crime.

The age of state and local governments is just about half, but that's 2.6 million now.

And that is up from 2.4 billion last year and from 1.8 the year before.

All of these show steady increases.

And here is the Environmental Quality Program.

Well under a billion dollars in 1969, now at 3.2 billion.

I'd like to call this is to the gentleman who goes without saying to show this is not an austerity budget.

This kind of grows, for example, environment, crime, education.

You showed the blue stamp.

Yes, sir, just a moment ago.

I was out.

Anyway, it just goes up and up and up.

I think we should make the point in response to Jeremy's question just a moment ago, this enormous increase here

is the result of the spending for pollution control uh as recommended uh and as a result of the action taken by the president if the bill has finally passed it will be way up off the chart right roughly about the top of the door uh and so uh there are indeed

This one is the increase in farmers' income, showing a tremendously sharp increase here, very steady growth, but a big jump this year, and the resulting decline in the amount of price support outlays and the amount of storage costs that we can achieve thereby getting back much more to a freer market situation here in the farm.

Here are the resources for the outlays for urbanization, mass transit highways,

And again, highways show an increase.

The mass transit is level, a very high rate, holding at 2.1 billion as opposed to 1.9 last year and only 1.4 the year before.

This one shows why it seems appropriate at this time to stop doing some of the federally subsidized housing programs and take a look and see if we can't devise a somewhat better program.

The number of units of standard housing gone very steadily from 1950, 60, and 70 up to 62 million now.

And the substandard housing going down very steadily.

And the amount of subsidized housing units, federally subsidized housing units, showing steady increases.

So that we have achieved, to a very considerable extent, the removal of a lot of people from substandard housing and into standard housing.

We also have, and I don't think this has been really fully understood, an enormous amount of socially subsidized housing that will be continued to be paid for in 1973 and 1974, even though there is a temporary suspension of new commitments.

We'll be well over $3 billion in that field and take the whole housing and urban development expenditures together.

We will increase a billion this year over last year, even though there will be a suspension of programs until we get a better idea of what kind of things to recommend.

That's because the federal pipeline is so long and so full.

These are programs, as you know, that you can get somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 to $8 billion each year for 20 years.

If you keep going on, then you press the brake.

This is a chart to show the grants to state and local governments are still very sizable.

General revenue sharing is laid on top of all the others.

And it now brings us up to about $46 billion, with about $40 billion in non-revenue sharing grants going out in previous years.

And revenue sharing is, of course, proposed.

Special revenue sharing is proposed in addition to a continuation.

of general revenue sharing in the 74 budget.

I want to say just again on a technical point that all these chart books, the budget itself, the regular budgeted brief, all of these will be up, I believe, this afternoon.

And the formal transmission and the formal releasing for all of this information is a Monday at noon.

So perhaps they have to leave or they have some hard time.

Do I have a whole question, Mr. Chairman?

Well, I'm sure that it can be turned out by a close examination of what you'll submit on that.

But could the budget provide us, the Congress, with concise identification of the areas of the funds, the items,

Make up the $64 billion where the Congress has the opportunity to operate and also identify the others where there's so many cows that are under the law now.

We do that, sir.

We have a table of controllables and a table of uncontrollables.

And that's what you're submitting to.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

That's what we do.

Thank you very much.

I mean, just very briefly, this is the first time in my life I've said to somebody, this is just the end of my battle, the battle and the fight we have every year.

I know that in this room we have basically what we call the responsibles.

I mean, you're the leaders.

I know also that

we will all take and you will take from the irresponsible.

By the irresponsible, I don't say that in a condemning way.

When you take an individual congressman or senator who is the chairman of a committee who doesn't have to make interments with the whole country and just make an interment with his own constituency, then he's going to be for that particular interest and he doesn't have to worry about whether

And he says, well, I want this thing in the budget.

And if it's not a budget, he says, we'll take it out of something else.

He says, what are you going to take it out of?

Well, that's for you to figure out.

Well, of course, that's for us to figure out.

That's for me to figure out.

Let me just say it in a word where we stand here.

If we had not cut, and that's rather than pound, I could use that word, if we had not cut the budget back from the 261 that it would have been if we followed George's mandate of the Congress to 250, I could not have kept the pledge that I made that there'd be no tax increase.

And I would say that I don't know of any member of the House or Senate that ran in 1972 that ran on the platform of being for a tax increase.

Now what I'm saying here in cold turkey is that anybody who wants to increase this budget above 250 for this year or above 268 for next year, anybody who wants to must take upon himself the responsibility of being for a tax increase or for spending

which is like being a prisoner.

That's hard to consider in judgment.

And that is the way we have to present the case.

Now I've been on the other side of this sometimes too, on this what we call this commune.

You all remember back when they had the great fight, you remember George being the text of the great fight about whether we were going to have the 70-wing Air Force or the 48.

Do you remember the Congress we voted for the 17th?

Uh, and, uh, do you remember the, uh, I mean, Mr. Truman said, uh, it'd be the 48th, and we passed it over to the lead Joe and the rest, and he spent it on the 48th.

Uh, so there it was, and I, I must say, I'll admit, as a congressman, I gave hell.

Of course, he gave us hell, too.

But, he was, but nevertheless...

We came out because we said, after all, the Congress had mandated us to spend the money for the 70, and he spent it for the 40.

Now, whether it was right or wrong, with Korea's coming and so forth, only history will say that.

The point that I make is this.

It's not a partisan matter, and it's not new.

The point that I make is that someone in this government, in this case the president, and in the case of the leaders here around the state, someone in this government has got to look at the whole picture.

Now, maybe the country wants a tax increase.

Maybe they're willing to pay more taxes in order to have more water pollution plants or whatever it is we're going to have.

But if so, then we really ought to be honest about it.

We ought to face up to it.

My responsibility, of course, is to look at all the hundreds, come down with what we think is the maximum we can spend, and that's what I've done.

And that's why we've cut back on some of the funds that Congress has told us to spend.

We've cut it back in order to avoid a tax increase.

If Congress wants to roll us on that, then Congress should ask for a tax increase.

It's just as simple as that.

Because due to that, Congress has taken the blame for inflation that's going to be created by it.

That's the way I would see it.

Now, I think for us to get into the position where Mr. Congress puts Mr. President, it could happen.

I know it will not be partisan.

We've got, look, you can be sure we've got lines from Republicans down here on this that talk at about this budget.

And the Democrats know this is not partisan at all.

It's a question of really responsibility.

And as I see the responsibility, I see it just as Harry Truman saw it in those days.

It's my responsibility to see to it that we have a budget that will continue to fuel this economy in a way that we can continue our prosperity in Ohio, that we have a budget that is not inflationary, and because I made a pledge that we have a budget that does not lead to a tax increase.

By cutting back to 250, there will be no tax increase this year.

By submitting a budget for 268 for 1974, unless the Congress succeeds it, there will be no tax increase for 1974.

And I'll go further.

There will be none for 1975.

But, given the Congress goes above those numbers, then,

it will there will be a tax increase and it will be a congressional tax increase because i'm not going to be for it that's the way we have to look at it now uh i know there are constitutional arguments and all the other things and i must say that i would much rather be able to say well we give here we'll give that or give everybody else but we've just done the very best we can

I would not, of course, expect every person here to disagree with this decision or that one or the other.

But if you can add something on, you've got to take something out, or you've got to meet for a tax increase.

That's the way I see it at the present time.

That's why we have to lay it out the way we have it, and that's the position I'm going to have to take.

Mr. President, is there any real question of constituting the question of whether the President has the right

The way the whole work went down is, Dick Klein gave me an opinion on that, and I'll have that, do you have that circulated at Klein Institute?

Yeah, I think we, everybody here, there is no constitutional question on that.

Otherwise, you have no doubt about the constitutional dark.

I have no doubt about it.

And as a matter of fact, the money has never been raised to make it 100 years ago.

I have no doubt about it.

It very well might be tested somehow.

What I'm saying is the things we don't constitute or others don't constitute 100 years ago...

Yeah, of course, there's been a change of judgment on that.

Yeah, this is something.

I'm not arguing that either it's a lack of merit of the position you have taken.

Sure, sure.

But I do think, possibly, it's going to require that the federalists

We don't.

We don't all have our barracks.

How circulated the Kleinsch detention?

It was basically not Kleinsch's.

It was the Attorney General's office.

They could all agree that the President can't spend money unless it is appropriated for Congress.

There's no question.

We agree on that.

That's for sure.

There's no way now.

Also, he can't exceed the deadline.

But he can't exceed the deadline.

That's right.

Also, but the question is whether he can impound the promise that emphatically must be expanded and legislated that way this money must be expended.

Well, you see, you've got a lot of... You also have the... You have the part that the President has a responsibility for his record for employment and all that sort of thing.

Well, so I'd like to balance that against him.

I understand.

I just raised your question, and I think it won't hurt.

Mr. President, you're the one who encouraged me, and I understand your argument, Mr. President.

Mr. Wilbur and I have been about cooperating with you this process.

Mr. President, we'll fight you, but those of you who've got to bring those debt limit bills in, if you've got to vote for debt limit, to raise that, and ask them to vote for tax,

That's a discipline that I was late learning, but to a time you have to do that, you know, you really learn to set more possibilities than you had before.

And the point that concerns me is now, recognizing your problem, is how do you come to terms on some of these things?

For example,

Time before going in and hoping for a tax to pay for something, we would like to feel that we're going to do that, that the money will be spent on this airport construction thing.

We went out there.

I can't recall what it did to you.

We went out there and asked for an 8% tax.

I'd rather have had the tax so it wouldn't be so obvious.

But everybody raised their hand about that, so we got laid out there and claimed 8%.

And so we...

put the tax on, and as we did, that's what I believe, and as we put the tax on for that purpose, some of us feel, well, I'm being a kid, because I just benefit from it.

We feel like we're feeling the tax, or cutting it.

Now, can we work out an understanding here that if we'll put a tax on for some purpose, that we can get you to benefit from it?

That's part of our problem.

Doesn't this get right back to the controllable versus non-controllable?

Yes, indeed.

That's right back where you are because the president is so limited.

Let's take your highway situation.

where I'm interested in and we're all interested in.

We do have a specific tax on the trust and a small trust fund.

But when you go to the unified budget, they love it all together.

You take it off the top and you've got, what, $60 billion in all the ways to work.

We wouldn't even have this argument about empowerment.

There's no place for us to go but those areas.

And the reason we've got that empowerment problem today, and it's a larger problem, is because the problem is larger.

And I'm just going to be interested, I mean, just within this room.

to see the activities of this Joint Budget Committee, of which you, and you, and I, and, well, Wilbur was wise enough to not put himself on it.

And Tom McClellan's on it.

It's going to be an interesting experience to see what the Congress, the Congress is talking about, man.

I've been a member of it for a little while.

About standing up to his prerogative.

Well, we probably haven't done it.

That's right, exactly right.

Well, let me say, I will.

I am asking the message for you to, and I know you are not too keen on this, but I'd like for that, if you could have that sealed, 268.

Perhaps that helps all along.

Mr. President.

to go merrily on appropriating more and more money through various legislative processes.

And then have a ceiling is utterly ridiculous.

If Congress hasn't got the gumption and the self-respect to resume these programs, then we ought to close up shop and go home.

What this Congress is going to do is going to go merrily on its way this year, as it has in previous years, appropriating money we haven't got.

Now, if you could get, if we could get the leaders of the House

and I mean from a broad spectrum, to come to grips with this thing and agree to discipline ourselves and fight for these religious levels, and if we get the Senate to do the same thing, and if we can get Senate together, the House and the Senate leaders together, and if we can get together with you, and then we can just come down.

But unless we do that, it's going to be the same old thing, and everybody wants to vote an economy vote, and you vote for the ceiling.

Well, we've talked so much about the ceasings and you've talked about this.

There's only one thing we lack.

We've got all the tools we need.

We don't need joint committees or anything else.

All we need is the will.

Absolutely.

By God, we haven't gotten to have a seat at Ohio.

I'm going to say, Mr. President, we couldn't do it.

I think we could try again and have an overall seating in the state.

I do think, if I could ever get George to mess up, that the corporations could make him do the same thing that you envision with respect to the world series.

one little phrase in connection with the appropriation process.

What's that?

All this amount of obligation that's already been made available, no more than this many dollars can be spent in business employees.

Well, that's expected every item.

Well, that's ridiculous for this reason.

That's ridiculous.

You and the Ways and Means Committee are appropriating so much money, and other committees are mandating an expenditure of so much money that we can't do it.

We fix an expenditure.

We don't.

But if we appropriate the money, why, they all get the same.

You give the president...

Any president, the obligation already has far, and you keep 500 or more billion dollars in the pipeline all the time.

Now you tell me that Congress is not in control of the spending, it has to go the way it can have, is to say that so many dollars are going to be spent in this list of years.

And do it for the respect of the title of the program.

So, Wilbur, we don't even... We don't even look at contract authority or backdoor spending.

We don't even... We can only get involved with 60% of the time.

I'm talking about backdoor spending.

But that's spending.

I'm sure of that.

We walked out of here last year and the Congress ended and we all went out to our campaigns and we're all great heroes.

I am on the Appropriations Committee, and I make some press releases, and so do everybody else.

We cut the President's budget $4 billion.

That's a fraud.

It's about time we become honest.

Because we didn't cut spending one red dime.

We increased.

We increased spending at the same time we cut the budget.

So why don't we go around doing this?

Let me just say this one thing.

When I, uh, as I say, we, uh, see the action up there, and so forth, but...

Let's face it, and you see this and this rebelling against bonds and everything else.

The country is very tax conscious at the moment.

The country doesn't want to pay any more taxes.

Now, I think all of us got to realize that.

And I would like to see, I'm a man of the Congress.

This is nothing Johnson does.

And I've never taken the Congress on, so I'm going to try not to.

But my point is that I think that the Congress, when you talk about responsibility, you are responsible.

The Congress ought to get on the side of no tax increase rather than, because inevitably, it's going to force me to have to say, I'm vetoing this because the Congress has passed legislation or appropriations that requires a tax increase.

That's not good for the Congress.

If you vote, I know what you do.

You vote to sustain vetoes.

The rest of you get rolled.

But I think, look, the Congress, I like this idea that Congress is having responsibility and so forth.

And also, with responsibility, you get the credit.

But believe me, unless the Congress assumes a responsibility over George Morris and others, hell, you know what's going to happen?

We're going to get in a situation here where we'll see that budget climb up to $2.75 or $2.80, and then we'll have to have a surtax.

Now whose taxes are going to be?

Well, it's not going to come from here.

It's going to have to come from the Congress.

But it's great that we that work in field taxes are like the tail of the dog.

There's no way in the world we can do what they say we ought to do.

Because I know a number of people who've been...

It's great to die when you live, which ain't good.

If I could say one thing, I think some of these could be made a little less painful.

If your people talk with us, I think you'll find, I can't remember the Senate Act, but I think the House would be willing to do away with us by selling our grants.

and continue a loan that, guaranteed loan, that had a reasonable rate, had a reasonable rate, yeah, but I think you'd find Congress a perfect way to get rid of that fight on our brand.

And that was discussed in our committee last week, and every one of them, even those that sponsored before, knew it should be reduced.

Senator, I introduced the bill, and that's exactly how that was presented.

It does away with the $5,000 grant and provides for an interest rate, I believe, of 6%.

Okay.

Isn't that what the administration is doing for the backcountry?

Yes, I believe it is.

Well, Wilbur, would you agree with this bill?

Yes.

I don't think you ever get any done except sometimes through shock treatment.

And I think this is it.

I picked REA.

I got lots of REA.

The REA people just passed a resolution the other day.

It's on your desk.

Indicating their willingness to work out something on this 2% loan only for those REAs which have a legitimate problem.

And there are a few where there's only one or two.

customers per line.

But up in my area, they're hooking on all the resort people and so forth.

My people understand that.

But you can't get a compromise unless

if you're going to compromise better start from here and start from here and then you'll get here that's right but if the president starts here what the hell he's going to wind up here i mean let's get frank about it so they use that in metal cases shock treatment and sometimes we have to do that here

Mr. President, the session is starting to pause.

I want to say thank you very much.

I swear to God to try to have a bipartisan answer.

Which is probably the way to do it.

I'm sure you can understand my position.

I'm sure you can put me into exactly the same thing.

I can't exceed that 250.

I can't exceed that 268.

And there it is.

As a matter of fact, take a defense.

I'll leave it right there.

The defense budget at the present time is as low as it can be.

But for me, you see 58% of that budget going to the First Amendment.

It doesn't mean a hell of a lot for hardware.

And I don't see the Soviet Union getting ahead of us in hardware, because that's going to kill our chances to negotiate a Senate.

You see, that's what we're getting at here.

And so I live upon defenses almost uncontrollable.

Congress will cut it some, you know, maybe.

But my point is, cutting engaged makes your problem worse, John.

But what I mean to say here is that to the extent you can, let's cooperate.

The White House staff will do as cooperative as we can on these things.

Roy Ash is a very reasonable man.

He'll listen and sometimes he'll do what you want, sometimes not.

That's the way a budget man has to be.

As far as I'm concerned, I want to hear your views on it.

But in the meantime, you can be sure

It isn't because of any attempt to arrogate power in the presidency.

It isn't because of any attempt to make the Congress look like a bunch of impotent thugs.

But it's because we've got no choice that I had to cut this back to 350.

That's all.

It's done now, and we're going to go on and fight it out on that.

That's the pressure you get.

It's not done with belligerence.

It's not done with arrogance.

It's done with great respect for the Congress.

And if the Congress has got a better way to handle it, I'd like to hear it from you, to have a good go with you.

But we've got to stay in the 250, 268.

So anyway, I'll be going to church tomorrow in Florida.

There's a little Presbyterian church right there.

I have a hope.

Thank you.