On March 13, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Republican Congresional leaders, including James T. Lynn, Joseph T. Sneed, Hugh Scott, Robert P. Griffin, John G. Tower, Norris Cotton, Wallace F. Bennett, William E. Brock, III, Gerald R. Ford, Leslie C. Arends, John B. Anderson, William J. ("Jack") Edwards, John J. Rhodes, Barber B. Conable, Jr., Robert C. ("Bob") Wilson, David T. Martin, Samuel L. Devine, George H. W. Bush, Roy L. Ash, John D. Ehrlichman, William E. Timmons, Kenneth R. Cole, Jr., Richard K. Cook, Thomas C. Korologos, Ronald L. Ziegler, Donald E. Santarelli, Henry E. Petersen, and the White House photographer, met in the Cabinet Room of the White House at an unknown time between 8:39 am and 11:00 am. The Cabinet Room taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 118-001 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
We, after talking to the leaders, you know me, I try to meet with them about every third week before the leaders come to the board.
We had a discussion last week, and they recommended it, and that's very good.
It's important that at our leaders' meetings, our formal leaders' meetings, we should include several messages.
We've had what we call wild cards before.
We've never been to a leadership meeting, but this will give a chance for people who have problems usually hiring.
We have to know that we're leaving recommendations to you, and the chair is going to work it out.
Sometimes we put down the line.
at the lower ranks, but probably they will be at the committee chair level where they will have a chance to.
This is in no sense a derogation of the leaders.
In fact, Hugh and Jerry enthusiastically supported this as a way to get everybody on the stage.
And we're also presenting our bipartisan meetings, and the bipartisan meeting with Hans Jackson.
We have, in fact, a change of discussion afterwards.
The Democrats were here, not as leaders, but more calling them the leaders.
And then they put them in prison.
Before our agenda this morning, which it is too cold, and then I have, I'd like to hold about ten minutes at the end for the remarks I would like to make.
We're out of time.
We'll be going these next few weeks.
I thought it would be useful to have a discussion, two areas where I think we should be on the offensive, where we should take a very positive line.
I'm quite aware of the fact that we have within Congress, on our side as well as the other, a lot of law there, of course, because that's just partisan.
And there is concerns expressed about budget numbers and so forth, but that's inevitable.
We always know that.
On the other hand...
There is a profound change in the relationship of the federal government and the states that we are recommending in this country.
It goes far beyond the question about should the number for this or that be higher or lower.
It goes to the fundamental fact of the relation of the states and the federal government and of course the local government.
I will stop there.
Perhaps more political terms than the experts here who are now more responsible than I am.
Much more responsible than I am.
But anyway, he's going to talk about a temper of 2,300,000 dollars.
Now that number, once you look at it, overhaul will provide for most cities and towns and government agencies and state government units
more funds overall for the general purposes of the budget than are provided for the present budget.
If you then get into an argument about why don't we get a special categorical grant for this, that, or the other, you turn it to this $2.3 billion.
Now, why do it that way?
Here you take a fundamental fund, and one of the reasons that most of the bureaucracy
...until we kept them under control.
And most of them, we did not appoint them here long before we got here.
Most of the bureaucracy in government, most of those in Washington who have grown up with the idea that Washington knows best...
are fighting this proposal, not because they are concerned about cuts.
They know there's more money in this budget, a million dollars more in this budget than the year before, overall.
They're fighting it because they know that what is happening is that their theory of government, where the decisions with regard to the makeup of America, of its cities, of its towns,
of its seats, that they should be made by an elite view here in Washington.
And we're reversing that.
Let me put it another way, and this will surprise you.
I've noted the necrosis of some of the arguments which have been done by you and others who have been praying for the answer.
This is the greatest divestiture of power that's ever occurred under any president in history.
Because what we are saying is that in the field of housing, in the field of natural resources, and the other things,
That what the President is recommending to the Congress, and the Congress takes the divesting card too, is that rather than the Congress and the President, and usually of course it's the President, the Bureau of the Budget, all the rest that fixes these numbers, but then the Congress plays around with it.
Rather than our making the decisions...
about what local people should have, whether they should have a police station or a gymnasium, or more men on the beat, or more men teaching school.
Rather than honoring that decision, it's made for the folks back home.
Now, let me say it fundamentally.
Arguments can be made against that, quite honestly.
Arguments can be made against it.
I admit this.
on a philosophical basis.
In other words, the social scientists, when he looks at that figure, will say local government is inherently more corrupt, less efficient, than is federal government.
And they say state legislatures are inherently more subject to special interest groups than is the federal congress.
The point is,
To an extent, I think we would have to say they're right.
Obviously, the more able people, government leaders, do gravitate to Washington.
Part of the reason is the Washington people.
Part of the reason is that the power is here.
Here's where the action is.
Who wants to be out there and minister?
Look, I sat around here, and you were here, when we had the mayors in here.
And two or three of them knocked on them and run.
Make sure guys can win.
They're just trying to run.
Excellent, Mayor.
I know why they're not going to run.
First, they're just fed up with the idea of having to come back.
Second, they realize they're errand boys.
I mean, oh yes, they make a few decisions about this and that, and they give them a firecracker.
But as far as the real decisions about the future of their cities...
And they made them only after going hand in hand to Washington and seeing how much they could get for this or that or the other program.
What this does, and what this will do, is affect this legislature of power, of decision-making, from the President, the White House, the Executive, and the Congress, to the cities, and the county governments, and to the states, means that
It will, that more people get an opportunity to make these decisions.
It means it will attract better people we trust to government in those areas.
It also means, and this is an important point, that when a mistake is made, that, and even the more superior people, assuming we are superior in Washington, when a mistake is made, it will not have a catastrophic effect,
So, we spread that around.
So, what I'm just getting at here is that the philosophical base for this is...
I think it's pretty sound.
It's got to go into the numbers.
What we're planning to do is hope that we understand that you're listening to it in terms of
of this approach, rather than listening to it.
What happened to my special project for this or that or the other thing?
The fact that it isn't easy does not mean that out of that two billion trees, they can do it.
Yes, they want to.
But, they'll determine the priorities.
They've got to determine whether or not they want some.
For example, if they want to go back, they can even go back and put in that community action program.
But if you're taking both banks under the motor, the mayor could say, oh no, look at that, I'm going to put in more costs.
I should.
President Chappell, I'm here to do the same.
And I don't have my back to people.
It's great, isn't it?
Not at all.
It's a matter of respect, and I want to show it.
As you know, last week, my president sent to the Congress that portion of the State of the Union essence dealing with community health.
That's what I'm going to talk about very briefly this morning, and I'd like to reserve the maximum amount of time for questions, because I think that would be the most helpful thing to do.
The main theme in the community development message is the one the president just mentioned, which was one of restoring the decision-making authority to those officials that are closest to the people that are impacted by those decisions, the city and local governments.
And the basis of that, among other things, is the great diversity that we have in communities.
If you take big cities and small cities and urban and rural areas in the United States,
Although there are themes to the same problems that run throughout many of them, every one is different.
Every one is custom-made.
The people, frankly, in many of those cities are quite different from the people in other cities, so therefore their sense of priorities in many of the cities can be somewhat different from those in other cities.
So the main theme, the thrust of this message, is one of returning that decision-making authority back home.
The message really dealt with about seven factors, seven main things that we're doing.
One, the Better Communities Act.
That's our new name for Community Development Revenue Sharing, the Better Communities Act.
The Responsive Governments Act.
This is something that goes hand in hand with the Federal Communities Act.
If you're going to have special revenue sharing, and I'm going to go into a little more detail about that in a minute, then it seems to us a legitimate federal role is to assist those state and local governments in getting the wherewithal by way of planning capability and equally important management capability to be able to handle the money when they get it.
This is always one of the arguments the other way around.
The argument is, you can't give it to those people.
They have bank staffs, or they are a bunch of local politicians.
They're not going to have any judgment at all on spending that money.
We say really two things to that.
One is, we're going to help them get that capability.
Incidentally, one of the interesting things is,
Looking at the 20-year history of comprehensive planning assistance by the U.S. government today, the proportion of total planning money being spent as represented by the money coming from the local people themselves has been going up consistently every year.
In other words, the federal effort in this regard has resulted in catching the eye of state and local officials, and they themselves are spending more and more money every year on developing their own capability to manage.
And in today's world, in the day of the computer, in the day of the complications of local government and state government, it's essential they do so.
But we're proposing the Responsive Governance Act, which will build on comprehensive measures today.
That's going to be $150,000.
That's $110,000.
One place we're spending more.
That's right, than we had last year.
On housing policy recommendations, the president's message goes into what we're doing there, and I'll come back to it.
The Department of Community Development Act, dealing with the Real Development Act of 72, highly in mass transit legislation, and the Disaster Assistance Act of 1973.
Let me start to spend most of my time on a couple of things.
One, the better community setting.
As the President has said, what we're proposing is that in July 1, 1974, which is fiscal year 1975, we will substitute for seven categorical grant programs.
Urban renewal, model cities, basic water and sewer facilities, neighborhood facilities, public facilities, open spaces, and rehabilitation loans.
For all of those, we will substitute 2.3 billion dollars in special revenue sharing, which will have very few strings on it at all as long as it relates to community development in where it goes.
Now this money will also contain, or these proposals will contain a whole harmless feature for cities.
In other words, if cities have had an ongoing program where under these seven categorical grants they've been receiving money in the past,
The formula will recognize that ongoing activity and assure them that in the initial periods of the new legislation they will not receive less than they received before.
The money is not going to go however just to cities and urban counties.
Some of it will go to the states as well so that there will be some portion of it that can be used
in the smaller communities and rural areas of the United States.
We're about, I hope, a week, two weeks at the most, away from finalizing that bill and having it ready for the President to look at, and then from there to the Hill.
Let me mention something the duty plan or hit with all the time, and that's this problem of transition.
The thing we heard when the mayors were in here, the thing we heard when the governors were in here, they said, look, we're not against your 2.3 billion dollars, we like the idea of the 2.3 billion dollars, but the problem is transition.
What are we going to do in the interim period?
It appears to us, and where we sit, that as a national matter, at least, there does not appear to be a tremendous problem in the transition period.
Let me explain what I mean.
The usual funding patterns for HUD, and I've become pretty well acquainted with these in the last couple of months, is that they do not spend their money, only that over 80% of their money is reserved to the last three months of the year to commit in model cities and urban renewal.
This means that we're sitting in now with a million, four hundred million dollars of urban renewal money, new money, from this current fiscal year, and about five hundred million, half a billion dollars in model cities money, and we also have other money from these other programs, to spend between now and June 30th.
Now that's a kicker in there that we believe can be spread out over the period ahead that will help ease the transition.
But more than that, including that money, there's $7.4 billion of committed and unexpended money as of June 30 of this year that just hasn't been spent by the communities that have signed up for it.
In other words, they've gone through that long process which runs for 15 months
that sometimes ten years between the time of putting their application in and getting the commitment but they have not as yet spent the money.
And if you look at the level of activities that that is going to produce over the course of the next year it provides at least the same level of expenditure in those communities.
That's been suspended in the last 2-3 years, which is a rate of roughly 1.8 billion per year.
Now that doesn't mean that in some communities they may not have some real problems.
And what we've asked the mayors and the governors to do is, look, if you've got complaints with what we've been up with, we can't even consider those complaints.
Unless we see the specifics of them.
We're not making any promises at this point at all, but on the other hand, we genuinely want to see whether or not what we have proposed does create terrible problems.
We know some bumps and lumps have taken, but how they are going.
So a process has been going on since last week of the mayors going back to their own people.
trying to get a quick reading on where they have problems during this transition period to get back to us.
Now, part of the transitional problems that may be presented can be taken care of by what Floyd Hyde and the other people do at the department with that money I was talking about to spend during the period ahead.
But we want to take a look at those.
It's very interesting, Mr. President, that some of them went back and asked for the specifics.
They found themselves that it wasn't as bad as they thought it was.
So that we're very hopeful that what we have will prove to do the trick.
But the thing about the Better Communities Act that is the main feature, the main thrust is, instead of red tape,
Instead of waiting between 15 months and 12 years to get authorization to go, you have the money if you're a mayor or a county executive or the governor ready to go within 90 days after this act passes according to your priorities, the priorities of your people.
And then when people talk to me, they say during the transition period, well, what about new ventures during this period?
What about new ventures that we're going to have?
I say, what about them?
If you got your application in tomorrow, it'll be two and a half years down the pipe before you even got a commitment.
What we're talking about is that by July of 74, or August, or September at the most, you'll have that money in hand to spend, and that's far better than you're putting in an application.
Of course, and as I said in my press briefing, I'm greatly optimistic about that.
They asked me, did I have a fail-safe?
He said, he said, one of the reporters said, what's your fail-safe point?
What's your background?
I said, I refuse even to think about this.
This is so right, I'm convinced that Congress will care.
And I have to say, Mr. Gardner, as all you gentlemen know, last year, any part of a comprehensive housing bill
Both the House and the Senate did have bills that were fairly close to what we're talking about here, not the same as what we're proposing, but the principle was reflected in large measure in the Congress of both houses.
One little anecdote I'd like to tell, I appeared before Senator Montoya last year in favor of what was then called urban community revenue sharing, and he leaned down to me and said,
He pointed his finger and he said, now Mr. Lange, he says, those governors and mayors really don't have any real sense of priorities.
He said, now vocational education, for example, the state of New Mexico, he said, that governor in our state never really believed in vocational education.
And if it wasn't, if it weren't for my efforts, we never would have had vocational education.
So I whispered to the fellow sitting next to me, and I said, what happened to the governor?
And he said, he got defeated.
So I asked the chairman, I said, Mr. Chairman, what happened to the governor?
Montoya hesitated a moment, he said, well, he got defeated.
And I said, that's my point.
This is kind of kicking an egg, or chasing your tail.
How will we ever get responsiveness at state and local governments?
How will we throw out the ones that are no good and get able people in, unless the power and the authority is returned to those people?
And that to me was pretty much the epitome of where we are and what we're trying to do in this case.
Now as I said, the Responsive Governance Act that we'll be proposing will be simply an expansion of the Comprehensive Planning Act, HUD 701, that we have now.
But what it's going to emphasize is the management side.
Up to now, government expenditures have been too much for plans.
Lovely plans that are done by somebody, they usually run three quarters of an age state, and they're then submitted in a nice ceremony, and then they're given to a secretary, and the secretary takes them and puts them in the filing cabinet.
What we're going to try to do as a thrust of expenditures and plans from here on out is get them to put the planning in with the management.
Get them to get the right kinds of people supporting them in their community.
Get the right kind of budget analysts, the right kind of informational databases that they need to deal with these priorities.
Ways of seeing their productivity.
One thing I learned when I was working in the Commerce Department, there's a tremendous need for greater productivity in city communities, whether it's garbage collection or the rest.
We want to put that money to work as management money now, not just planning money.
On housing, let me just make two points.
One is that the more I look at this pipeline as to the subsidized housing that we have at the present time on the books and the starts, I am convinced that the subsidized housing starts for this calendar year at the very least are going to be in excess of the subsidized starts that we've had in the period immediately behind us.
Second point.
I think we've taken some action that's taken a good deal of the heat off of you and us as we've made some adjustments in that suspension to recognize ways of doing business out there that we didn't even know about.
So far over the counter that you've heard about and the Veterans Administration certificate procedures and the rest.
Within the next week or two, we'll be announcing what we're doing pursuant to the language in the budget that says we will also honor all specific program commitments.
Now this gets you into things like the disaster area, Mr. President, the Indians, and others.
And we've said, even though commitments had not been made for specific projects, we wanted to do an inventory of specific program commitments, and see what we had, budget on the one side, and what those commitments are on the other, and start honoring those.
And I think as we do that in the weeks immediately ahead, that's going to help us a good deal in your position on the Hill.
The third thing I want to say is when people start yelling about these programs and saying, why did the president suspend?
He could have done this study, he could have done this evaluation without cutting off these programs.
I will say to you as a fellow who's been doing it pretty deeply now for two months, I am absolutely delighted he did.
With the housing we've produced so far, which is an incredible record of production incidentally, we've built more subsidized housing in the last four years than anybody had in the 34 years that went before that.
And in non-subsidized housing, we've built non-subsidized regular convention housing at a rate double the average of the last 20 years.
But when you look at what we've built into the budget, 67 billion to 95 billion, depending on how you want to calculate it, over the next 40 years, and when you see the problems of how few people really have been helped in this regard, guess what we've spent?
When you see the inequities of people that are making a little bit too much money to qualify, living in used housing, but somebody making a little less money moving into new housing,
When you look at our public housing programs, where these buildings are going downhill, with frankly the amendments that were passed in 68, making them take everybody that wants to come in alone and creating an instability among the people and the projects and the rest, I'm delighted we're holding up for a period of time.
Now the thing that goes with holding up is prompt action in our part in coming forward with proposals.
And as the president said in the message that went to the Hill last week, we expect to have our policy recommendations on all of our housing programs to the Hill within six months.
Now with that kind of background, and without going over into mass transit and disaster and the rural development act, I'll stand open for questions.
Mr. Secretary, can you discuss a little bit the apportionment formula that will be used in connection with this 2.3 billion dollar community development fund?
A little bit, frankly, John.
With the press last week, what I said to them at that point in time was, look, we're in our final throes of going back for a final round of consultation with the mayors and the governors and the county officials, and I don't want to make that pro forma.
I can tell you the kinds of things that we've been wrestling with,
as options without saying where we're coming out of on this point.
One of the questions is whether or not to phase in the formula for cities that have not already been receiving urban renewal model cities and so forth, rather than having them get it all at once.
Another problem is whether to phase out
over a period of time to hold harmless, for example.
Another period is in the formula we presented two years ago, we allowed a pot on a formula to a whole urban area, not just the central city in that area, but a larger amount reflecting the population of that urban area, maybe 30 cities around it.
That became very vague, frankly, in the proposal, because who is to spend that?
It wasn't clear as to how that was to be allocated among the cities in the outer rim, around the central city.
So we're wrestling with that part of it.
Another part is how much should go to the state, and if it goes to the state, with what kind of strings on it.
But frankly, we're not at the point, and I would be trying to steal the president's thunder, frankly, if I told you precisely where we are now.
I want to get an option paper to him, and have him tell us which of these makes the most sense to him.
We all hope that the Congress will pass this by June 30th.
What happens if the Congress doesn't take that action by June 30th?
Well, as I said to the press people, I'm such an optimist, I hope that isn't the case.
On the other hand, looking at these laws and looking at the experience we've already had with them, I would suppose that what the Congress would do then is be talking about some extinction of one or more of the programs we have.
But frankly, when I look at those programs, sure, there are some cities, as the President says in his message, that have used the money wisely.
There are some model cities activities that you say, if they all work that way, what's wrong with having a federal government running?
But when you look across the board at the bang for the buck to the federal taxpayer, and the bang for the buck to the people in the communities we've tried to help, by the time you get through this whole maze of paperwork, and you look at all of the red tape, and the money's spent,
What comes out the other pipe, into the pipe, just isn't worth it.
There's got to be, in my view, some kind of a new program one way or another.
And as I say, the reason, Jerry, why I love the mystic is, that although the democratic side keeps calling these block grants, which is like saying Appalachia or Appalachia, with regard to it, we've gotten away from the word special revenue sharing.
Now, in the Better Communities Act,
We don't call it urban community development revenue anymore.
If you look at what they passed, they weren't that far away from what we're talking about right now.
So I must admit, I find it very difficult to see that at some point along the future, they're not going to go with it.
Part of the transition problem, though, is while the legislative committees are working in the basic legislation, you've got the appropriation committee or subcommittees
Do they stand by and wait until we get the legislative action completed and have the appropriation committee just standing by or standing still until we find out one way or another?
This is part of the transition to the transitional money.
Of course, we're really asking for very little money to make the transitional period work.
When I talk about that $7.4 billion in backlog, that's already been appropriated.
is there to be spent, and it's only spent at the rate of about a billion, two billion a year.
So even if they didn't pass another dollar's worth, except for the management capability side of it, through model cities to keep their people going by way of the salary side, and even there, Hyde said he would entertain some suggestion of moving around with funds already committed.
It seems to me it doesn't become on the beach.
You follow me?
It's already there.
We don't need more appropriations.
The only thing we need, if I remember right, Roy, is $174 million we're asking for in fiscal year 74 to round out some close-out costs on certain urban renewal projects.
I think that's accurate, isn't it?
No, it doesn't include that.
That's 5 plus...
5 something plus the 1.2 of urban renewal plus the 500 million of policy.
So the 1.2 isn't good for the 7.4?
Yes, in other words it will be 7.4 as of June 30, 73.
So all you have ready available for obligation from now until July 1, 74 is the 1.2 good?
No, 1.2 of urban renewal plus half a billion of model cities plus I think there's about another 200 million or so of the other categorical grant programs.
How does that compare with the amount that was available in fiscal 1734?
You mean 72?
Yes.
Because this is 73 money I'm talking about.
As I understand it, about the same.
But as I found in these programs, looking at appropriation is very misleading, because you have carryover contractual commitments and carryover monies.
So what you really have to look at is what's the level of expenditure avoiding, and in this case we're talking about expenditures in fiscal year 74 that will be at least equal what they were in fiscal year 73 and 72, about a billion eight, a billion nine a year.
Your whole harmless situation.
It has some funny quirks to it.
I have one sitting that's just about through with its retirement or renewal program.
But it will get more money next year under the mobile carless feature.
I have another city which is just starting, it's a program, and is afraid that this is going to be in the middle of development.
I know.
And they're so close together, you know, it's going to be a real problem for this.
And very frankly, what you get into, speaking among friends, is a wrestling match here, too, between perfect equity and what you think it's going to take to get a vote for the Congress.
You don't want to lose the support of the big cities.
You don't want to lose the support of the greater numbered smaller cities.
You want something in it for state participation to keep the governors on board.
And you're dealing with a finite amount of money, and you want to do justice at the same time.
And that's kind of like... Secretary, over the last year or so, no one...
Yes, even what we're talking about in my department at the present time is a reduction of 600 from where we were a month ago to the end of this fiscal year, and an additional 2,000 by the end of fiscal year 74.
Now as to levels of employment in my own department, I would think a lot would depend on where we come up with our evaluation of the housing programs, as to what technique we recommend for satisfying that need.
Now the president made it very clear in the message, we're not turning our back on this problem.
What we're saying is, what we're trying to do is come up with fairer ways of addressing the problem, of helping the needy people getting housing, but being fair to the taxpayer at the same time.
Now, depending on what our approach was to this, it would require levels of personnel like what we have now, or substantially reduced personnel.
But in any event, irrespective of that, we're talking about a reduction of 2,640 over the next 16 months.
Mr. Secretary, I'm pleased that you dropped this title, Better Communities Act, because I think there's a great deal of confusion in the term special revenue sharing, and a lot of talk about just
some of these programs that we were not funding, that they would take care of our revenue sharing.
Now, many people, many senators came and said that's a violation of the pledge that we had made, because I had made the pledge, and all of us did, you as members of the House of Senators voted for it, that general revenue sharing was new money, which it is.
You can all say that general revenue sharing is new money.
It is not there for the purpose of their using that
Godestag.
The president made it very clear in the message, we're not turning our back on this problem.
What we're saying is, what we're trying to do is come up with fairer ways of addressing the problem, of helping the needy people getting housing, but being fair to the taxpayer at the same time.
Now, depending on what our approach was to this, it would require...
levels of personnel at what we have now, or substantially reduced personnel.
But in any event, irrespective of that, we're talking about a reduction of 2,640 over the next 16 months.
Mr. Secretary, I'm pleased that you got this title, Better Communities Act, because I think there's a great deal of confusion in the term special revenue sharing.
A lot of talk about just
At the moment we have this difficulty, as some of you may recall, in the budget, as I heard members of Congress, and some members of Congress as well, there was language in the budget that indicated that it meant that if people did not want some of these programs that we were not funding, that they would take care of our rent and share.
They have to be cut out on their merits.
On their merits.
We're not suggesting that we cut them out.
If you want general revenue sharing, that's the way to put it back.
On our end, we decided that they were the ones.
Now, what that phrase in the budget meant was special revenue sharing.
So if people are confused about general and special, that's what you would refer to as special revenue sharing.
Well, we'll have other titles for the other parts that used to be covered by special revenue sharing.
Similar to the recommendation, just titles.
Lenny's got some pretty good ones.
I've always felt there was an overlap, a duplication to some extent, between model cities programs and TAC.
They competed, they overlapped.
We're adding TAC as such, but under the Better Communities Act, if a city wants to take some of that money that they have therefore used for model cities,
To carry on the better parts of it, and mostly they can't.
Right, right, right.
So I have a fast carriage here that can take the money of 2.3, which is very far from any money they've got to wrap the shirt, and use it for any jackass in there.
Wow.
You begin to see some awareness on their part of the responsibility that goes with it.
Up to now, the buck has stopped here.
It stopped with gentlemen of the kind in this room, and you and me and others, when something went wrong with urban renewal.
If it got people mad, including something, someplace where a lot of the citizens didn't like it, it was very easy to pass the buck back here.
If they didn't particularly want to have something funded politically, they could always blame it on Washington and say, well, I couldn't get the funds for that from Washington.
So now you can see them very anxious to build this capacity to deal with it.
That responsibility is a pretty heavy one when you get it.
You also mentioned, sir, the matter of if one state makes a mistake, or a local government, that that's only one mistake.
It isn't the billy we pull if we pull one on a national basis.
The other side of that coin is that I think one of the things we'll be doing with the federal money
over a period of time, is looking very carefully at what the various cities and states are doing, and acting as the disseminator of the novel approaches that really work, so the mayor or county executive or the governor knows what the... That's why that $110 million in planning money, we think it's very important.
It's, you know, you have to pretend it doesn't sound like much in the city, but nevertheless, that's a very good thing, because these people...
responsibility.
He happens to have in Grand Rapids one of the two model studies programs that seems to have been very useful.
John Earlyman, who is now taking on this program, has one in Seattle, which is pretty good.
Well, the point that I make is that you've got one that's a disaster, of course, in Philadelphia, which I will, there's an article, you can't, no, that article is in Irish magazine Philadelphia, you know, when I'm speaking about it.
Grand Rapids or Seattle, Washington.
I suppose they've also got a terrible problem with regard to garbage collection.
I suppose they've got a problem with regard to more police in the beat.
I suppose they've got, want to do something about putting in a jacket type thing because they have a hell of a drug problem.
I suppose they want to do something else.
Under these circumstances...
They can do something.
They can make moves of that sort, rather than putting it here.
In other words, the priorities of the city would determine it, rather than our priority here, what we think the city needs.
That's what it really gets down to.
And the cities do have different needs.
That's one of the reasons I feel so strongly about the education.
It's another field thing that we've talked about.
I'm glad that our Republicans are in Sweden today.
I feel very strongly, I'm very against the idea of continuing the program where the federal government subsidizes educational institutions, although most of the people in our government and so forth have attended those in one place or another on time and under breaks that are hard to keep.
The fact of the matter is that you put that money directly to them.
And they are determining, they are determining the price of it.
What we're doing now is moving that money over to the students, the students every place.
Now it's trying to have quite an effect.
It may change the whole make-up over a period of time of our education system in this country.
It will mean, frankly, that institutions, smaller kinds of colleges, including and extending some small black colleges, they're having one hell of a time to be held in time.
and smaller companies throughout the country, state companies, out through the Midwest and so forth and so on, will have a better chance, because the prospective student will make the choice, rather than pouring in money into institutions all day,
have raided the whole country of the better faculty people and brought them in there.
And that's why the squiggles are now coming.
I know that there are squiggles, outrage on these institutions.
They say we are cutting money for higher education, cut money for higher education.
We're changing into a different direction, and it's the right direction.
And that's the way it's going to be.
We may lose, but the question is, if the vote comes, do you want to vote for money for students, or do you want to vote for money for associate professors?
All right, Mr. President, does that touch...
and I think it's not a question of principle of academics and ministers.
They were paying under the Roosevelt administration.
They're still being paid, and we can get it back.
We would work with you, and we want to be in a position where there are lots of very decent people in these faculties, and they're very high class.
But basically, it is true that the federal government, this federal government, during the Eisenhower administration, in our first four years, was subsidizing.
Enormous numbers of faculty members, associate professors, researchers, assistants, and the like.
And directly, they were out in public again, and they knew it.
for whatever it's worth, this would not be the control factor.
But it is interesting to note that despite that, as far as the subsidy is concerned, to prove that it was purely nonpartisan, while we broke even in the last election among students and in colleges, with the fact that it was 80% for Barrett and 12% for Nixon, right?
So now what does that prove?
It doesn't prove in that substance we therefore punish the factors.
That isn't what we're talking about.
What we are talking about is a fundamental, not Republican, but American tradition.
And I think the people have the right to determine that.
They're the kind of school they want to go to.
Now, they make a bad structure.
There are a lot of lousy schools, and they'll go to them.
Remember at the G.I.
Bill of Rights, that we all voted for, and a lot of jackass institutions were set up.
Some survived.
Some survived.
But it was a tremendous move to a lot of smaller colleges around the country, because the guys got the dough.
They were getting the school that they want.
And now, at the present time, what has happened is that
It's an unholy alliance.
I can remember in the early years of the Eisenhower administration, the president of a major Ivy League school came in here and strongly opposed federal subsidy.
And he said, well, it's going to be good for me, but at the end there will be an unholy alliance, which has more...
It shows the possibility, however, of the government corrupted people.
Because a man who teaches at MIT or Caltech has the right to be against national defense.
But if he has his international defense, let's not have the federal government go in and try to corrupt him away from him by jacking up his salary.
This is what this is about.
This subsidy of the higher institutions does...
Frankly, remember when Bob Taft bought higher education?
Wouldn't we love that today?
Anyway, but he bought it, and lots of us opposed it in the early years, 47, 48, because he said, I don't want federal control of education.
Let me tell you, through the first range, the federal government
We don't exercise it because we don't have any people to be able to buy.
Let's put another administration here.
Let's put an administration here with a president who cares to lose.
So that's why I think we need a new approach, which gets away from this thing, so there's no danger of that, so that, well, in the future.
Coming back to this, can I say one other thing that's important about my race?
I knew this before we built each other for the wild birds here.
I don't know whether it'll wash enough, but it always used to irritate me, being a 300 pressure and the rest of it.
During the period of the New Deal and the Fair Deal, when they would attack those of us who had support in business, they would say that we were for the trickle down, because we were for, in other words, the money should go to Javier and go by the big folks and so forth, and eventually it would trickle down to the workers, and they wouldn't get very much.
And so, the argument was that we ought to have governmental programs that would turn that around and provide the money, the income and so forth, the people at the lower levels rather than at the higher levels.
Now basically, what we're talking about in all of these programs, forget special records sharing, community action, the education program, is to get away from what is now, the trickle down there
of federal aid to education, federal aid to housing, federal aid to any kind of a program that you want to mention.
Because with our programs, let's face it, what happens is you in the Congress can appropriate billions of dollars for this or that other cause.
And it's supposed to help some folks down here.
Maybe in secret, you'll never meet.
A lot of them are your constituents.
Some of them are poisoning you.
But nevertheless, they're folks.
They're the ones you want to help.
But, taking the court, for example.
Taking the OEOs.
Pride, for example.
The people down there is a very government.
We have government put the money into the top layer of bureaucracy.
And then trickles down through layer after layer after layer of federal bureaucrats.
So when it gets to the floor, there ain't much.
So 80% of it maybe goes to people who don't find out.
What we are doing, and since narcotics is less than the line to do all this, we're mainlining.
What we want to do is that when we see cities or counties or states who need housing and so forth and so forth, instead of having it come down through a bunch of bureaucrats and planners here, we're mainlining it right to them.
All right, you've got to do what you want.
Thank you.
We're all going, we all become obsessed with the fact that, are we compassionate?
Are we for the poor?
Of course it's, God, I would hope so.
God must have loved us, he made so many of us.
But my point is, my point is that we're for the poor, we're the working man, all the rest is over.
But the question is how, how to be effective?
How to use his money?
His money, most effective, to help him and those who are less advantaged.
And I believe that that's why the whole approach of the administration, even though we didn't get family assistance, I'm not going to argue that right at this point, but we're going to have a new approach, and it's got to happen.
Mainly because the present welfare system is based on that trickle-down theory.
It trickles down through those damn social workers.
Now, the income strategy is better.
That's what it's all about.
This is an income strategy for the cities, an income strategy for the counties, an income strategy for the states, an income strategy to deal with education for the others.
If we could put it in those philosophical terms sometimes, I don't know whether it would be quick in a speech or not, but I wish someone of you would try.
From what I've seen in a couple of thoughts that I've given, it really does click.
Rather than people laughing, let's talk people directly, and it does click.
And they say, what about, they say, what are you going to do to the government?
Here's the problem with O.E.O.
For this sake.
First of all, if you know where we're staying, all the good roads are absent.
This start is being increased and put over at ATW.
There's some of the others over there that frankly have been tested in town line.
This isn't a reflection on Johnson.
It's a reflection on those of you who voted for OVT.
But it means that in our system of government, when we try something new, and we touch it and find it wanting, we like it.
Like it.
Like it.
And none of us were here during the Roosevelt years, but when you stop to think of the alphabetical agencies that began, the ones that survived, very few survived, and very few students survived.
The Supreme Court changed a lot of them, and others just went for the wayside.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
What I'm getting at is, I don't mean to suggest that you're here to go out in a defensive way and say, look, we're not doing all this for that, we're just trying to do it better for you.
What we're saying is, we are making a profound change in government.
But that change is not one that shortchanges the cities.
The cities and the counties and the states are going to get as much or more than previously.
You can say that in channels.
In individual cities or so forth, it's about the channeling that is the truth.
As far as all these other areas, there's going to be more for the poor, there's going to be more for the minorities, more for the residents.
But the point is, we are finally going to cut away this huge layer of bureaucracy.
That stops it up as it grows down.
Now, let's come to Olio.
The real thing about Olio, that they're sweet about, is that it was being used, and the Community Action Agency for being used for this purpose, and model cities for being used, not for the purpose of helping the poor, but to provide jobs
For the bureaucrats.
Now the question, what are you going to do with those people?
They're fine.
These are not basically very poor people.
Some are, yes.
But they will find jobs in the present job market.
Despite what you see about the 5% unemployment left to say this.
Look at those numbers.
Look beyond.
You'll find that as far as the whole time waiters, the breadwinners, are concerned,
He is an enormous demand at the present time.
Unemployment is extremely low.
The problem is teenagers, et cetera, who are in the labor market in a much larger number.
So I would not take the lie down the idea that as a result of our programs that we are cutting back on being heartless and corrupting.
What we're doing is to show not only heart and compassion for those in need, but we're also showing responsibility and concern for the millions of people who have paid the taxes to help them.
The one other point, Mr. President, that I find when people push me, they say, well, your 2.3 billion isn't until 75, and what you've done is you've done some spreading out in 74.
And I say, that's right, we have.
And there are the budgetary restraints.
But one of the interesting things is when I meet with mayors and governors and ask them, what did inflation cost you last year in your state budget or your city budget?
It turns out to be a figure that makes what they could possibly get over a period of three, four years, and any of these federal programs look like peanuts.
And they sit back a little bit at that point and say, you're right, inflation is costing me indirectly, these are governors, mayors, and so on, and garbage collection activities and the rest,
A heck of a lot more than the programs that are getting on the other side.
So that's the thing that brings it full circle.
Incidentally, I brought a little literature with me.
I have the message in the back in case your staff said that you haven't had it yet.
So if you want some copies, you can have it on the way out.
All right.
Thank you.
We said something which helps to answer a question that we're getting from some Republicans today.
Why do you want to give all this money to democratic governments?
You know, you look around the colleges and you've all seen a lot of history.
There are more young people in political science classes and so many of them want to get a job in social.
Yes, but you want to get a job in Washington.
It may not happen in our time.
It could.
But believe me, the action really ought to be at the state level, at the local level.
So providers can be approved there.
But the point is, they ought to have the right to make decisions.
In other words, a city council meeting would be damned exciting if the city council would come out and be saying, are we going to afford the guy to go to Washington and lobby Scott to get more dough?
And they would say, well, now look, we've got this money here, and what are we going to do?
Are we going to build a new high school gymnasium?
Or are we going to build an art gallery?
Or are we going to clean out these streets?
Pretty good decision, and it will be exciting, and that's where it ought to be done.
And Democratic may or not, I promise you that as far as mayors are concerned, they become more and more nonpartisan as time goes on, except for certain elections.
Well, if we have any indication of, if we have any measures of how important city and municipal governments are, we have it in the next session.
I may prime the administration, prime the general secretary-general, and if we are sending, we have a policy offensive on it.
We have watched him.
He respectfully asked for the support of the leadership.
I have already received a number of communications from Democrats that are indicating very strong support for legislation in this field.
They want to add to it.
There's a considerable number of letters of support from governments, from Iraq for example.
But, I digress.
There's one area where you want to see where the action is.
It's in crime.
Only 15% of the crime is settled.
But we have to leave.
We've lost out on the bill for it.
Down there in those cities, in those counties, in those states, is that right?
I don't know, maybe it's 20% is federal.
So what we're talking about here now is the federal government taking the lead on some very fundamental issues.
One has to do with the restoration of Denmark.
I mean, the Supreme Court's...
The other has to do with additional penalties for drugs.
The second, but both will be controversial.
The first, because many people want them.
I mean, before I was introduced on the death penalty, before I laid the decision, this was a compliment for me in personal sense.
That many of us who have certain religious backgrounds are directly incidental.
I'm sure that my mother and my grandmother were drag-drag-draggers and fascists and so forth.
It would be horrified if they thought I was sitting here advocating a death penalty.
I have to advocate a court, and I have to advocate a sufficient relationship because I invite no other deterrent for certain crimes that they're not describing.
The second point is that
I remember our last conversation, and this is the time before the court did not get much silence,
So we have the arguments between us people, the unrecognized and the lost people who disagree with us.
The same is true on dangerous drugs.
There are those who say that the problem in our drug business at the present time is that the penalties are too extreme.
They need to go the very extreme.
Some would legalize marijuana.
Others would have less pension penalties so that they would more often be enforced by the courts and so forth and so on.
But I have an example of that too.
Just like today, I had a pretty good example of it.
If you were in the office, you would sometimes have to go through some rather, I would say, moving moments.
And then came a man in a wheelchair, and then came a mother and father of another kind.
They were...
There were men, narcotics agents, coming in, the man who had been killed, he presented an ordination, I had a man in New York, just after he was killed, it was about five months ago, and the other man tripled the line.
How did it happen?
We talk about, well, these are drug addicts and society's supply, and they're this and that and the other thing, and we mustn't be too rough on them, and we, our girl officers have got a lot of faith, we've got to send them to the charity office to get them rehabilitated and all that, but I'm for rehabilitation.
I'm for compassion for all the people who are on the needle or whatever they do and so forth and so on.
I'm for palatating the taste of marijuana that will be reasonable so that we don't make total harm.
throw people like that into jail and hurt them.
But on the other hand, when you think of the big-time, professional drug-pushers, first, they killed one brother, crippled the other one for life, and you see this little Italian gentleman, a man named Camillo, standing there, you know, and he says, speaking of their pride of their son,
They felt that he is just like a man that had bought Vietnam or any place else.
And they said that he would be sacrificed again for this purpose.
But in any event, you see that.
And when you think of that merciless traffic, the billions it's made out of, the crime that it creates, and mind you, there is no pattern that is too hard for the big professional drug pusher.
And I believe that we have to move in that direction.
Rockefeller is moving, as you know, via the state level.
And we're moving in the federal realm.
There's, I watch you, it must be very interesting, there's great argument within our professionals as to whether we ought to do it.
They say, well, maybe it's enough now, maybe we're doing enough, maybe we ought to put more on the side of rehabilitation.
Like I said, we're spending money on rehabilitation when it runs out of our ears.
And we'll continue to spend a lot of money.
But on the other hand, as far as the pusher who is not having, and as far as the big time organized drug laws concerned, we're going to be very tough.
He will give you the highlights of the thing.
But that's one of the reasons that the message is prepared.
I added one to that.
That is, that for a second offense, for a major drug pushing, a second offense, you're going to have life in prison without parole.
That's not a good purpose, but at least that's the least I can do.
But the purpose here, let me say it in conclusion, the purpose here is to recognize the great feeling of justice.
for a need for more stringent penalties in these circumstances.
The purpose here is to do what is right as well.
It will be the vision of the Judiciary Committee back and forth.
The criminologists will come in, the soft heads and the hard heads and the nut heads and all the rest.
You'll have to make a decision.
But I would like to see our people...
I think Democrats will be nice.
We go inside of a strong, in fact, legislative program against crime.
And I can assure you that if you go out of the country and say, what the audience is, Democrat, Republican, rich or poor, there are going to be poor, including black audiences.
They will be poor, because they are the worst sufferers of this kind of thing.
I can just say one final thing on the death penalty, in case you didn't know.
What really convinced me, and I think it really convinced me,
Bill Rogers went out after they had killed our ambassador and his DCM in Sudan, and called upon the government of Sudan to execute him.
Now, how can we say that the government of Sudan, or any other government, execute a man who killed our ambassador?
Why, if one of theirs is grabbed here, you would say, if you didn't like imprisonment and parole, you couldn't be here for years.
You can't do it.
So, it might be you.
You've got to take the hard line.
That's what we've done.
Central, you want to cross over.
Here we go.
Now we'll see.
Oh, no, the dean is here.
Okay.
This is going to take the town.
So you see, incidentally, as most of you have come to perhaps the bank, we're very proud to have you.
Mr. President, my role here is very limited to the right, and I'm pointing to Tom Sandley, because he will be part of our reforming.
Briefly, what I would like to do is just touch the highlights of these four bills that are on the floor as part of the President's crime page.
And I will just speak very briefly of the major characteristics of those bills.
I would like to also, at the outset, associate myself with the President's response to the industry from which I have just come, namely education.
These four bills are, first, the law enforcement, as we phrase it, special revenue sharing program.
Perhaps we'll go back to the Law Enforcement Administration Act.
What do you think they can do when you go back to the Justice Department, if you could sit around some of your revisions?
What is a better name?
Well, we'll work on it.
I don't think you've got a good name for it.
We're not, we aren't a good name.
You know, the other side has a better name.
We'll certainly work on it, and I'm sure we can come up with something that at least will be worth a discussion.
680 million dollars involved in this act, and the main thrust of it, of course, in keeping with the spirit of this discussion this morning, is to put more choice in the hands of the states and the...
and to make them more accountable to their own constituency for the actions they take.
And the measure is drafted keeping those provisions.
The block grant technique that was previously used in LEAA has been modified very substantially to make these increased choices and greater accountability possible.
Now the second part of the president's message and package of bills relating to criminal law consists of a massive reform of the federal criminal code.
I would like to point out
First, in this bill is a very careful limitation of federal jurisdiction so as to protect the integrity of the state jurisdictions over criminal law.
This is not an effort as perhaps the Brown Commission reports was to improve the federal criminal jurisdiction into areas beautiful traditionally reserved to the states.
Secondly, the code consists of a
simplification and a consolidation of a lot of the substantive definitions of crimes that were frankly in disarray in our statute books at the present time.
And then thirdly, it contains a reform of the sanctions, the penalties that are to be imposed for the various crimes as we define them and reform.
The reform of these sanctions actually
has as its thrust to make the sanction more appropriate to the crime and less capriciously imposed.
That's the spirit of all of the changes.
And then thirdly, the death penalty at which the President has spoken.
The only feature of it that I would like to mention in passing that he has not touched upon is that we did make a very serious effort, and indeed I think successful effort, to make the death penalty conform to the
Restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court in the decision firm against Georgia.
If there is any death penalty statute that is constitutional in this one, sir, it is.
It would just take a minute to explain to...
all of us who have been lawyers who couldn't pass a bar exam today, or somebody wrote a paper for us, but to the moment about why the death penalty decision, and why it was made, and why there were, when the province, I mean the legislature, didn't like it, and that perhaps run down again,
The imposition of death penalty in those cases was stricken because it was applied to preachers, as the evidence before the court indicated.
And the Supreme Court, though it had a number of different ideas, seemed to choose that particular ground as its basis for rejection of the death penalty.
Now, there are three members of the Court who are clearly opposed to a death penalty in any form.
I think we just have to recognize that and deal with the remaining six.
With them, capriciousness was the flaw.
And we have attempted in this particular act to provide a procedure whereby we do not impose a death penalty inflexibly for certain crimes, but we have a procedure devised for the purpose of imposing a death penalty which centers judicial attentions on those features which require, in our judgment, the imposition of a death penalty.
And by centering the judicial attention on these, we hope to eliminate and reduce to its slowest possible power any possible appreciations in the imposition of the death penalty.
Essentially, the procedure consists of two things.
First, the determination of guilt, and secondly, the determination of the suitability of the death penalty.
And then finally, the Heroin Trafficking Act, of which the President spoke.
The only thing that I would add to that, to what he has said, is that we do also limit the pre-trial and pre-sentencing possibilities of release of a convicted or charged heroin trafficker to those instances in which a judicial officer
Determines that his release will not be a danger to persons nor property.
That represents a very marked and desired improvement of the law because at the present time, heroin traffickers, particularly during the pre-trial period, are simply usually turned loose and to go about implying their trade as usual.
I know Don, I will just turn the rest of it over to you.
Maybe can I ask one question?
I know that three judges were opposed to a jury, and I understand that it's opposed to tomorrow, but it's an important decision.
Thank you.
But the term, when you pick up the papers, the papers the day after I am called for an inquisition, they set the Supreme Court and ruled out the death penalty as they quote Crowe and Newman.
Is it not more precise to say that as far as the six are concerned, that they were not ruling out the death penalty per se, but it was the comprehensiveness of its application that made it cruel and inhumane and precise?
That's the question.
Because if we're on the way, for example, of saying that the Supreme Court of the United States, the Congress is voting for cruel and inhumane punishment in violation of the Constitution, then you'd have to have a constitutional amendment, as I understand it.
If I'm wrong, correct me, but is that correct?
No, you're absolutely right.
It was the capriciousness, the fact that they, well, always stood around and didn't know what they were going to do, and they could apply it here and there, so they wanted it more precisely defined and all that sort of thing.
You see, there is a dilemma between the Supreme Court decision to come and court the leftist, that is, if you have too much discretion in your position to that point, it becomes capricious.
On the other hand, if it is applied woodenly and inflexibly and invariably, it can very well in its own terms become cruel and unusual punishment.
So you have to steer a kind of middle course, and none of us, quite frankly, know how wide that middle course is, but we think we're in it.
Mr. Dodd?
Incidentally, Assistant Attorney General Peterson is here to also assist in answering questions if anyone has questions.
That's right.
Henry is our Chief Prosecutor and would be best able to answer the detailed or specific questions that we might have.
I don't think I need to go through any further the philosophical underpinnings of the presidential trust in this crime message as well, to comment here this morning.
But we can't lose sight of an important consideration while we're talking about this.
Watershed time in our history when we were reorganizing the federal government vis-a-vis its relationship to the states, and really it was a watershed time, but we can't forget the federal responsibilities at the same time we were talking about bolstering and increasing the states' capacities to discharge those same responsibilities.
We really are, as lawyers, talking about an old and well-embodied and perhaps genius concept of the American system, and that is dual federalism, or federalism, where we're citizens both of the federal government and of our state government.
But in this code reorganization and in the application of capital punishment to crime, we are now clearly in the area of federal responsibility.
We can never lose sight of the fact that interstate crimes and matters that affect the national interest and national security remain our responsibility, and this is where the President's trust is on the capital punishment.
We have very carefully tried to tailor the statute.
To what the Supreme Court told us is a permissible area of application.
By that we looked at the Department of Justice to the overriding national interests that needed to be protected.
Therefore the limitations of the statute will be to war crimes, crimes like treason, sabotage, messianism.
that were or are in fact occur during a time of armed hostilities, then we thereunder establish a rational criteria of, a number of these criteria, of application by the jury, which is the usual prior effect in these cases,
Did, in fact, acts allegedly committed not only happen in wartime, not only constitute the elements of defense of treason, espionage, or sabotage, but did they, in fact, subject the United States to a grave national threat of nature?
Or did they, in fact, endanger individual members of the government for the life and safety of a person or persons?
These are the kind of rational standards that we had to conceive and hopefully the Congress will implement to steer us down this middle course that the Supreme Court in its nine opinions in firms is suggesting to us we need to travel.
Similarly, there are other federal crimes, such as federal murder, where it occurs on a federal enclave or a federal installation, or, of course, the murder or assassination of a protected federal official, and they are enumerated.
These crimes may also include hijacking where a death or a substantial danger of death occurs.
We have enumerated them specifically.
They will be narrowly to be able to stay within the confines.
You won't have to talk philosophically, but if you like to talk philosophically, you can simply say they are crimes that seriously endanger the security of the United States.
or seriously threaten the life or serious bodily injury of an individual.
May I ask a question here?
In the case of hijacking, kidnapping, assaulting a law enforcement official, assaulting a prison guard, is the requirement that death must occur before you can apply the death penalty?
That's right.
So it isn't just a question where I'm highly likely to have a full experience as an actor.
I'm trying to get the point.
Yes, it may be.
In other words, in other words, you can cross that, you can get that constitutional where, say, in kids, they hijack you, where the murder is serious and dangerous in the life of the individual, even though
The light was not lost.
The language here, Mr. President, for example, is that the defendant sees a treason, sabotage, or espionage, and in the commission of that event, the defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to another person.
In that case, death does not have to occur.
In a hijacking situation, the death must occur.
Alright, that's fine.
And then, so in the case of hijacking, you hijack a death must occur, right?
That's right.
A death must occur.
That's correct.
You already worry that that time it doesn't apply.
That's correct.
How about assault on a law enforcement?
A death must occur.
Like for example, the guys that killed this fellow, Carmelo.
The narcotics agency is dead, right?
That's right.
They're probably already...
The error we have seen not occurs in the war crimes.
In the war crimes, yeah.
I just wanted to make sure we got that, because I think that's what I had said.
We have another protection statute, too, and that is the application of rational standards.
The court must find, or the jury must find, after they've found the guilt of the individual, the investment of courage, they must find addition to that, that the individual falls within the standards of the Congress enacted that he be subjected to death penalty, and the standards have to do with the nature of the act of all his mental capacity at the time, etc.
And the court must find one or more of those standards applicable, and make a specific finding to that effect,
And in addition to that, you must find that no one of congressionally enumerated mitigating circumstances exists to mitigate that fine.
So there's a double protection.
You must find affirmatively that certain standards of protection are maxed, and also none of the mitigating circumstances that you will have to ask another question.
Let us suppose that, for example, in hijacking and so forth, we all know that it wrongs more than one person.
It's a conspiracy.
The law is how you call it.
It's wrong.
Where you have a clear movement of conspiracy, there's no legal guidance against the act.
Would this apply under those circumstances?
You must be a principal actor in order to be subject to the death penalty.
Typically, you're right.
The president uses crime circumstances and spiritual accessories are equally guilty.
I want you to know how thoroughly and narrowly defined this law is.
We're trying to define it narrowly in order to get it.
Because of a hijackers guy, he knows that, well, at least if he turns himself in, and no death results, that he's not going to lose his life.
But, he knows also that if no death does result, and the kidnappers will have an enormous incentive, or disincentive, as far as violent harm or death, or any leading to death.
That's the criminal...
That's what the law enforcement guys think it will have, don't they?
You know, the problem is that criminal law, if the penalty is too tough, or too rigid and so forth, then it gets to the constitutional thing, so the name is matching.
But in that sense, do you think that it might be an effective law enforcement tool?
Let me ask you a question about that.
I mean, you're an expert in these things, and I know this is a law enforcement tool right now, but with these narrow definitions, do you feel this is worth a trial in Congress?
Indeed so.
For two considerations, Mr. President.
First of all, one you just mentioned,
And I think recent experience of the District of Columbia has indicated that the juries are most reluctant to impose a death penalty, even when we authorize it.
For example, the killing of two FBI agents that are not born in the District of Columbia.
They just refuse.
So we're trying to draw it very narrowly to...
present facts of the jury in terms of these mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances that will aid them in making the decision.
Up to this point, they've just been left.
But the ball decision is no stand.
Very difficult.
The second thing is a very practical matter, and I think it's best illustrated by that aircraft hijacking situation.
We're looking for a basis for negotiation.
When a fellow is on a plane, as in a southern airways thing,
and he has all those people as men.
At that time, he's already committed an offense with subjects standing irrevocably to a life imprisonment, or, excuse me, to a death penalty, in the negotiated house.
So he can't very well talk him down.
And of course, only if death results.
There's a pile of opportunity for those who are in communication with him on the grounds, an opportunity to bring him down without the loss of life, and subject him to a lesser penalty than if he disagrees on the last question.
Why wouldn't the jury protect him from killing these FBI agents?
I wish I could answer, Mr. President.
I don't know.
We authorized it.
For those of you who don't recall, the FBI agents were searching out bank robbery suspects who had recently committed robbery, and they were knocked on the door, and the person came out and just shot.
Opened the door and shot.
They were killed.
They didn't have a chance.
But...
We've just been speculating.
Sir?
Well, there was a factor in it, but just one of the more emotional factors in that area.
Very honest people in this field have a disagreement about what this country will be like, and when it gets into the mandatory settlements, and the mandatory kind of things, on dangerous drugs, heroin, and so forth.
There is something like that in Israel, for example, an issue in Hollywood, for example, in the Department of Defense, and that disagreement about the Iraq war is very much further away from the talks.
You can see that it's going to work.
On the other hand,
I'm sure they're not allowed.
I have one question.
I think I'll start.
Your statement that only the principal actors may make an objection.
Does that mean that Jesse Elway, being a big drug pusher, has reason to believe that a federal officer against a Muslim needs to go higher and kill it?
The killer is federal officer, and only the killer can be punished by the man who signed him in.
That's right.
That's why it worries me.
Well, it worries me.
You know, all of us watching, it's a tough job.
And the people that probably shot this for us on video and killed him were not the real guys responsible.
But if you got the guy that was responsible, he could not be given the death penalty for very long, right?
Henry Peterson disagrees with my answer to the question we were just asking.
Maybe we better get it.
I take it...
But if the language could be drawn in a way that you could get a clear kind of conspiracy, I just don't see how you could rule it out in this case.
First, with respect to the principle, Don's actually right, in one area, even though the individual involved in the conspiracy, which is going to occur, it may be in all other respects,
The court can find that factor, the jury can find that factor to conclude him from undergoing a death penalty.
All the other things, provisions being made, certainly the code version, and whether it's special bill or not certain, but if not it will be included, that killings for hire are one of the factors that require the imposition of the death penalty.
So we're trying to get it both ways.
So the jury would make a case.
Yes, because he was indigestion to his attorney general and to the members of the Judiciary Committee present here in the L.A.
This is a matter that I would like for you fellows to bring the Democrats to these women and these children.
I think the committee should take a hard look at that, because I feel strongly it ought to go that far, at least.
And if you say somebody killed or hired, that's pretty hard to prove.
But at least it ought to go that far.
How much thought and attention has been given to expediting the final result of the murder trial?
I think that one of the greatest problems really with the public
And also in the administration of justice is the fact that you can have endless appeals in the United States, and you can stagger these things for months and years and years and years, to the point where the public lets down and says, oh, the hell with Bill.
I have talked to the chief justice recently, and I'd rather hear him abuse his business every day.
But, you know, he has later adventures, not only in the United States.
But for the reforms in criminal justice, not just at the federal level, we're in the lead, but the state and local level, because most of the cases that you talk about have these determined delays, I think.
are because of the overcrowded situation, courts and so forth and so on.
I know New Yorkers, it's not Morocco or Celtics, it's not the legal today, and part of the reason the drug case is in New York, the judges let them off with just a pat on the wrist of anything, or why they don't come back again unless you really want them to regret it.
It is that they just want to clear the counters.
And they just want to, they don't want to go through the trial.
So they say, what they do then is to cop a plea.
They go down.
They narrow everything down.
It's kind of a plea.
Eric, I had to come in, for example, for pushing here, and I had a long talk with the top people in New York.
To me, it was a shocking thing.
People would come in.
They were obviously big-time drug pushers in the rest.
And the judge told me,
He said very tentatively, he said, I'll tell you what I did.
He said, I did this, and then he just, and when his lawyer came in and said, look, we'll plead you a misdemeanor, he's glad we'll have a misdemeanor.
And they let him off on that.
Now, you see, that's because they're too damn crowded.
But it's a not true, or it isn't, that, that, that, what are we doing?
We're getting hellagated and all that.
But the queen's justice is raising hell about it all over the country, isn't it?
We are, uh,
First of all, we support speed trial issues, but that goes on in post-federal legislation, which we call the speed trial rule and the radius corpus reform, which is designed to do two things.
One, to cut down the backlog by eliminating collateral tax.
It becomes a very emotional issue if you talk about it in terms of radius corpus.
We are not trying to destroy the Great Ring.
What we are trying to amend is the statutory implementation of the Great Ring.
Sections 2254 and 2255 of Title 28 of the United States Code, one of which applies to the states and the other to the federal government,
which permit prisoners to file collateral tax on convictions long after the convictions have become final.
And there are thousands of fondant documents in the court of gentlemen.
If you can do anything to get that through the Congress, you ought to do it.
Those are so-called per se.
Yes, sir.
The jailhouse lawyer, the old freeholder, and I heard some testimony on that the other day.
The Hagen's harvest problem is just as Henry says, and we've got to do something about that.
I didn't praise the poor bill that was written this morning, but we've got to make a project.
This fund project, I think, is going to come out of a submission to the community structure of the service and the additional procedures.
will be underway about mid-year June this year.
Well, this is a federal level.
It has to do with the availability of the district court for hearing.
It may change.
It would give a lot of thought to changing that particular procedure.
But at the state court level, I think it will...
I forget the exact title of it, but the institute for the administration of state courts that the chief justices and others have called into being, I think, will be a step forward and move to the administration of justice courts.
It was created as a result of a count from the judiciary that he conveniently turned it right.
You see, you've got a terrific group of people.
Tom Carter is taking the lead in that.
Oh, that's right.
Foreign Attorney General, Foreign Attorney, Justice, and I went down to Associate Justices.
And it went too far.
You remember what Henry Carroll said over to the people, the law is the enemy.
And he said that the law is the enemy, and I expect people to respect it or obey it.
I know that people say that, well, we in 1968 talked about law and order, and that was no good for racism.
But why not?
You talk to responsible people, blacks who work, who pay taxes, who live in rural houses and so forth, or pay house for that matter.
They're just as concerned about law and order and justice as anybody else.
Because I said that when I say crime, it's hard law.
And that's totally true.
The victims of crime are the people that live in central cities.
And they are Mexicans, and they're blacks, and they're poor white folks, and a lot of other people.
And so we're concerned about it.
And of course, we want them all to have some sort of reversal.
We started the reversal in the last four years.
Why do you think the point that people say that we do this?
We come to crime in a different way.
That's where we're responsible.
That shows what can be done.
And over half the cities in this country, crime, no longer is going up.
It is being reduced.
That is a major problem.
It's a difference in attitude.
We need concern and compassion for the people.
But we need a hell of a lot more concern and compassion for the innocent people.
We're victims of the crime.
That's what we're talking about here.
And that is why you need that balance.
The lawyer always has to think about the balance between the rights of the criminal, or the one charged with the crime, who might be innocent, and the rights of the individual, totally innocent, who is the victim of the crime.
And we've got to do that, and I hope we can always keep that proper balance, and not hold reports one way or the other.
Now in this case, I would also suggest this.
Let's talk about the leg.
And I have a great respect for the judiciary committees, and I know why judiciary committees take a long time to get anything done.
Because basically employers like to talk, and employers also make the points that need to be made.
And it's better to have those points made now than to have to go to the Supreme Court.
But if I could strongly encourage wrong, bothering, hiring the rest of the people in the judiciary, my God, wait.
I just tell them here, let's let this be done with the judiciary.
Let's get this bill out.
Let's hang on it.
Because two or three years from now, nobody's going to care.
Now if you want to speak just for a moment in political terms before our non-political parties just become non-political, so they don't have to speak.
I would say that acting on these particular bills, talking about them, could be as effective a political deed for those running particularly urban areas and small cities as any that I can think of.
I'm sorry, this is a formal medication.
Crime.
35% crime.
Nobody's talking about crime down in the Congress.
None of our friends in the opposition, the partisan ones, are talking about crime.
No.
This is an issue that has always been ours.
Not in the partisan sense, because there are a lot of good Democrats running, but it has been ours.
We ought to hit it.
We ought to be ashamed of it.
And we ought to be hard on it.
You cannot compromise it.
In my view, this is a good program, and believe me, he falls afloat about this thing.
I'll tell you, go out and meet somebody, a widower, like I did in Kansas City, my boy's name was Kettle.
He had my car, it's a fire, after he's been killed.
Look at some of the letters you get, you get the two of people, kids, five-year-old kid, get an LSD, die.
14-year-old child to get him dragged by an 18-year-old and so forth and so on.
Look at the country that's covered with it.
On the plus side, it's pretty good numbers.
Not only in the cities, but as Nick Lange said here the other day, he said that crime in this last year was virtually leprosized.
It was the lowest rate of increase in 25 years.
Now that's something to be damn proud of.
And we ought to say something.
Isn't that true, Mr. Chairman?
Yes, sir.
I think we're doing a marvelous job.
We're doing a good job.
We're doing a good job.
We're doing a good job.
Mr. President, you said it.
You said it here.
There's one word I'll take out of here.
It's responsibility.
That's what we're trying to build in.
Responsibility for people's conduct.
We're trying to build it into the criminal system.
That's the reason we're thinking of modifying the insanity attacks.
And could I suggest something to the biggest city, to the new country, to the world, and I'm proud of that.
But can you, for example, if I may suggest this, why in the devil can't you get the deeds of the law schools, and perhaps there are professors who learn more of these digital deeds from the law schools?
But why?
Now, my son, I didn't like his name, and I was very surprised.
I thought, sure, he could have been hired, but he's in a death penalty for these various things.
Because I tell you where everything came out in the last six years.
But my point is, I don't think the loss, instead of just like overbarking a hole for missing kids, it went too far.
Now we're trying to bring it back to the center.
But not in terms of every time we try to do that thing.
Oh, we're against the black folks, we're against the poor folks, we're against the maggots, and we're against the barter radios.
I think that's it.
We want them to live.
We want them to have a free career.
And that's what we're trying to do.
I've got that real compassion for them.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
There have been many science people in the United States who are really in some way trying to turn the law.
There have been many others who have turned the law, but these are the forces that stand for and defend the government.
The greatest injustice, in my view, is that that moves like molasses.
If you've got a guilty man, you know what to do.
On the other hand, isn't that a cruel thing?
Oh, absolutely.
Justice is the right thing to do for people outside.
No question.
When you get this, can I ask for it?
Yeah.
I'm going to write on this.
We were having some hearings the other day at Roman, conducting.
And it seems to me that the judicial council, in evaluating the work of the district judges, is putting very heavy emphasis on the amount of cases to be settled.
Remember, I'm a civil, I know, but that claim, it seems to me, is operating to cause the federal judges to bring the participants up to the bar and force settlements, perhaps, where maybe they can just take a misdemeanor, please.
I have another point I'd like to make, Mr. President.
It has to do with the revision of Title 18.
That's one in the text.
We have held a long series of hearings last summer.
It's number one priority with Senator McClellan and with myself.
Yesterday I learned from him and his staff, and it was confirmed by his staff that we expect to have that bill ready for the Senate right after the summer recess.
S-1 will be married together in some fashion, so that we will meet up with that.
That permission on the restructuring of the federal fellowship system, which will tie into the atheist corpus system,
very difficult one, has a time limit of six months in which to come forward with a revision of the circuit court boundaries, and 15 months thereafter to come forward with a revision of the federal appellate system.
So progress is being made, but we're grateful for the message you gave us
Thank you for watching!
and the number of institutions that run the constructions and new techniques that are being developed.
And I just think that, for example, the development of this facility down in Buckner, North Carolina, which is the most advanced center to study the psychological aspects of crime that has ever been put together, is something about which you can speak very forcefully.
There is a story that hasn't been tackled.
It has not been tackled in the way I think you're looking for it to be.
I don't think there's been a story that's come out strongly on the subject.
Can I just say that I, for, where for a prisoner to come, I think you have to realize, Jack, that I looked into this, because I have a really good interest in it.
I even asked, just to, I didn't support it, but I'd like to visit a prison sometime before it ever ends.
But, when you're talking about prison reform, at the federal level, you're doing pretty good.
The point is, you've got to stay focused.
You're talking about money.
The money involved in this, Jack, is not like this.
If you talk about prison reform, it's about five, six billion dollars in prison reform.
and not put it at bay into something else.
It is not going to wash at this moment.
I agree with you, we've got to go to the center of it, but we've got to look at the tab.
I'd like to have a study paper to get back to you on it, but the money is not truly being used.
It's a terrific tab.
I thought it was just so big that I wanted to include it in the message this year.
It costs more to build a prison facility in Burbank than it does to build a mansion motel in Burbank.
And we really only have 23,000 federal prisoners in the federal system, which is rather a model system in which we have a 10-year program proposed by the president three years ago that's really moving forward.
The vast problem is at the state level, and this is where the LAA reforms become so important.
One of our bills, of course, is to remove the block grant nature of that program and turn it into a special resident sharing, if we can use the word, no one likes it.
The priorities there will depend upon the governor and the state officials or the local jurisdictions to devote that kind of money to improving what part of the federal justice system they see as most necessary.
We want to make that trust.
For the federal government, you will have to move away and expect a revenue sharing and go into categorical allocation of funds exclusively for prison reform.
We did that in 1969 and began in 1970, and now we are dissatisfied with that from the federal end and are making it open-ended for states to use for themselves.
If I just had a thought, though, I couldn't agree more with what Jack said.
I could not agree more with Jack.
This is something...
I would remind you about the budget facilitator, which here is really the most advanced effort to get a rehabilitation that we've ever had.
We've done better jobs at the federal level, but I don't recommend at all.
Is that in existence now?
It's coming into existence now.
Remember that this bill will be specifically targeted only at heroin and morphine, and will not deal with the softer or more fashionable drugs.
So that when you're talking about the trackness of this bill, you can relate it exclusively to the single most important problem in our country, and that is heroin and morphine addiction.
Basically, hard drugs.
Correct.
Hello, sir.
In the case of trafficking in less than 4 ounces, we're talking about a minimum expendiatory sentence of 5 to 15 years for the first offender trafficking in less than 4 ounces.
And for the second offender trafficking in less than 4 ounces, it's 10 to life.
Interpreting seriously.
In the case of a major trafficker, however, that is four ounces or more of heroin or morphine, we're talking about 10 to life for the first offense, and life without parole for a second or subsequent offense.
That is literally without parole.
That means you serve the rest of your natural life in jail.
The other menomandatory sentences are less than menomandatory in that the dependent sentence 2, 5, 10, or 10 to life means parole.
The law has a parole authority, but the court has no discretion.
The court, in other words, cannot avoid the imposition of a sentence against a government probation or giving less of a sentence than the law requires, but the fact is the parole authority and the defendant's authority, after he has begun to serve some time, may look at him and release him at less than five or ten years.
Well, it's a situation that plenty of people are concerned about getting rid of.
It's not granted.
And I suppose, you know, we had a statement that said that we were going to define the insanity that that's the original.
I just want to pause you about another one of the so-called...
What do you do with that?
How do you handle that?
Probably not too much of a constitutional problem, Mr. President.
What has happened, of course, is that we have chosen to ask the question, is the defendant irresponsible as part of the criminal trial, which is probably a mistake, which is involved in consuming a substantial court time, jury time, lawyer time, psychiatrist time,
We will reserve those questions for a second part of the proceeding before the court and with the psychiatrist, but without the lawyers to move the evidence and consenting the jury.
As to what disposition to make of the defendant, not whether in fact he is guilty or responsible for the act, but what in fact to be done with it.
Not as part of the criminal trial.
What happened here?
After the trial, after the adjudication of the guilt or innocence, the incentive defense would be protected.
Yes, at a later time.
At a later time.
After they have gotten out of the way, whether or not the accident happened.
Why are we separating them?
It's all mixed up.
Here he gets confused by questions of what was his method of dating, what was his background, and what was his tendencies with the issues of dating and fact-making and crime.
So that we may, as Mr. Peterson said, our criminal justice system is somewhat irresponsible.
By not thinking responsibly over the act of the individual, and then taking it passionately because of the reason why he might have carried that out of his mind.
Insentity with respect to men's rights.
Now, we don't like to use men's rights because we can't understand what it means.
This will be germane only on the issue of intent.
If he lacks the requisite intent, lacks any element of the offense, then obviously it's going to affect the finding of the jury.
Thank you considerations of intent.
One, he's convicted.
Then it will be a procedure to determine how he is treated as an incest person, even though the factors involved in his mental capacity were not sufficient to result in him quitting.
On the other hand, if he's acquitted, then we're going to ingratiate what we do not have in federal law at this time as a federal commitment procedure.
They're being reasonable grounds that banks during the course of the trial question the man's sanity, and he's acquitted.
Then we propose that a sanity hearing will be held in which the federal government will have authority to commit that person for treatment.
Now that responsibility exists only with the states, and this is what we encounter.
Well, two instances.
The president mentioned the Bremer case.
We really didn't say that we dare try Bremer in the Justice Department, recognizing that we had a 75% chance of convicting him in the federal system.
Because if we lost on the insanity defense, we had no power to commit it.
And we will have to go again to the state for another trial, raising questions, perhaps, of double jeopardy, because that's not now the law, making, in any event, the second trial more difficult for the state prosecutor.
The state prosecutor, you know, feels like, we're relative now, the federal governance laws, they're going to get it to me.
So the first question we do is if we dare try that man, even though the federal interest was paramount, we had to advocate to take that instance, and fortunately the man was convicted.
Now the jury didn't buy the insanity defense doing the provocation, but if they had, only the states that had been committed to convicting
So that situation arises quite frequently in high-density cases, where we have to sail around recognizing the possible insanity defense to find a local prosecutor who is willing and able and confident to try a case.
So this is what we're striking at, and it is...
It's innovative, it's certainly true.
It's strange to know that there's not a lot of support on hold by our consultant experts in the psychiatric community.
We think we should try to do process elements because we permit the insanity defenses as far as it bears on us.
Thank you very much.
I think that it's important for all of us
to realize what a profound period times the decisions that we have made in the world that we happen to be living in.
And in a sense, living in such periods is quite a burden.
We often say the fact that we have a high demand for the Congress, the White House, and the fact that there are people who don't know what to do about much defense, or how to do it, etc.
And what should be your role in the federal government, the states, and so forth and so on.
But what I would emphasize is that
What we are trying to do after the last election, and the easy way would just be to continue funding the same old programs that we knew were working.
Probably for the government for the most to feel after the end of the war and the initiative of China and the life of the Soviets.
It's just to go along and say, well, we've done mighty well and that's enough for any administration perhaps to... What we are trying to do here is to...
to go beyond that, to seize the opportunity, the small or the little time, and we're here in this one scene, and it's a very small time, but it is one very, very special, to, to, to,
I would always feel the greatest respect for the members of the Congress, those who vote against us and those who vote for us.
As far as this battle is concerned, as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to ask the questions that Luke Harris, for example, previously did not ask.
He said, and some of my good friends in the House of Representatives brought this to my attention, he said, well, the other way they said, Harris said 65% of the people want to spend more money for a new day, more money for the cities, more money for housing, more money for this, you know, and low, 60-75%.
I said, you weren't surprised, were you?
I had never taken a poll.
I started with a poll in 1947.
I had never even taken a poll asking people, do you think they're spending money for a domestic purpose where it wasn't on the board before it was sent?
That's the wrong question.
The question is, are you willing to pay more taxes in order to pay more money for education, more money for the housing, more money for the city, more money for this project, more money for that.
And then, it turns totally around.
It runs in the other direction.
I know that in the current situation, you will have to provide leadership.
As far as we are concerned...
We're going to do this.
First, we are trying to be responsible on a spending front so that we will not have to raise taxes.
So not a bill, not a spending bill, it's a veto of higher taxes.
It's a veto of higher prices.
It's a veto of...
A responsible fiscal policy.
It's an absolute deception.
We have to abort it.
And it's not.
We've made these decisions not on the basis of trying to cut the heart of a humanitarian firm, but on the basis of...
Showing concern for, and compassion for, that poor family, or that middle-aged couple, that's trying to make both ends meet.
And somebody, somebody has got to start thinking of that person, worried about his own life.
Because it's not my money or your money.
We're spending a little bit, but it's there.
And not one dollar is going to be spent if it isn't for the purpose.
And certainly we're not going to spend more and raise the tax rate.
But even more profound is what we are making.
Instead of this being a great project for Congress, what we're asking the Congress to do is...
After 190 years of power being grabbed by the federal government, brought into Washington more and more and more, the federal government getting bigger and bigger, more and more powerful, we're saying it's time to turn around and divest ourselves of some of this power.
That's what all of our... That's what it's all about.
We're willing to do it.
And believe me, it's going to put more power in the hands of democratic mayors and democrats.
It's a very good point to make.
So that destroys the partisanship, but that's where it belongs.
It will be better, a better government.
I think that's my position.
On the long course of the issue, I would like to say, I think we've missed the boat.
I was checking a few polls today, and it was a lot of my attention.
And they are talking about this administration.
And only about 35% thought that we cared about the issue.
We do a bunch about it.
You know we've done more than any administration.
Part of the problem is that we have not...
I know the reason.
I know that when any of you get out and make speeches about law questions, about what we've done in the primary, then you're running into the risk of being called a reactionary or racist individual that doesn't care about the minister and so forth and so on.
But don't be afraid of it.
Remember, having that kind of controversy makes your issue.
So let's make that issue.
Let's make it hard.
It's our issue.
It's the right issue.
We've turned it around.
And let these other people be for the questions.
The questions was wrong today as well, and was wrong before.
Final thing I would say is this.
Now, ten days after all of our troops went to Vietnam, and after all the people got their back, they said they were probably trying to force them out of the situation, not part of the world, but have them forced out of their lives.
But, in response to the fact that we have China and Russia at the end of the war, there will be another meeting of the Russians later, which is a very important meeting.
There are continuing contacts with the Chinese, and there will be very important future contacts with the Chinese.
If we had a problem with it, it was difficult.
Maybe we can solve it.
We're working on it.
We can solve other things on it.
We have a problem to deal with.
The point is, we can simply rest on our own.
But if we did, it would be such a great loss.
I was talking to Dan yesterday.
I have a question.
And he made a very interesting point.
He said that he hoped, as he came back to this country, had he been away from it for seven and a half years, that this country still had the moral and spiritual fire to do what was right in the world.
Now you're going to hear all the arguments.
The arguments of the New Life Solutions.
Get out of the room.
Don't play with yourself.
Get out of here.
Let these burners take care of you all the way down.
All I have to suggest is this.
The United States, as a result of the preeminent position we hold in the world, we are not only the strongest nation still, but we are also, as a result of how we ended Vietnam, still respected by our allies and, even more important, by our adversaries.
And at this time, in the history of this country, the United States must act responsibly.
responsibly in attempting to build a structure of peace in the Pacific.
That means giving to the Chinese, the Japanese, and all the other countries in here.
To build a structure of peace in Europe, let alone the countries in the South.
Of course, to continue this very tough dialogue with the Russians.
I'll simply close this by saying that it's always important
For us to be able to continue these great initiatives is that we must represent a country that is strong militarily.
And that means you cannot savage your country much.
We can't be able to do that.
We're weak.
We've got to have something to give.
But even more important, I suppose it's hard to say this, can't respond to us, the Russians.
I'll simply close this by saying that most important for us to be able to continue these great initiatives is that we must represent a country that is strong militarily.
And that means you cannot sabotage your country budgets.
We're going to cancel the summit.
We can't be able to do it.
We're weak.
We've got to help the kids.
Thank you very much.
Never saw a lighter man.
They saw only their guys.
For four and a half years, they were charging on us, and yet come back saying, we are concerned about the future of our country, about its moral and spiritual strength.
It's really responsible.
This, I think, gives us a charge that we should never hide.
I forgot to have said this too well.
What I'm really trying to tell you is that sometimes when you're in the house and suddenly I know you get burdened off and there's a lot of little bags in the door and you're constipated and you're writing silly letters and songs and people are coming in to see you and the telephone's ringing and you've got to go this night to the other party and the next night to the other women and this and that and the other so forth and so on.
You start wondering where it is.
If her isn't worth it, give her hands up.
She's simply talking about how much is money sitting on her head.
It isn't worth it when they have something they say, but it's not going to be here, there, or the other.
It's going to be worth it provided all of us recognize that we are fortunate to live in one of those watershed periods of history where the United States and the United States alone, its military and economic strength, and its moral and spiritual strength, will determine the future of the world.
What we do in the next four years will determine what's going to happen to the next kids and our kids for the next 25.
And I would hope that we would all sometimes sit back and get the birds down with these other decisions.
We should sit back and remember that the responsibility that we have is one that couldn't be greater and couldn't be one that was more welcome.
Because
You have to remember this.
People say, wouldn't it be great if we didn't have all this damage?
It just wouldn't be great.
We have to worry about those little Japanese and what happens to them.
What happens to them and all the rest.
If we could just be concerned about the problems here at home, it wouldn't be great at all.
Because only if we act greatly in meeting our responsibilities abroad, will we act greatly in meeting our responsibilities at home.
Look at the nations that have all the workforce there.
And they are tearing themselves apart.
Hardly, only about bitter little frustrations, which are in the public.
So, I'm just saying that as leaders, we go into a tough year.
I mean, we're in it already, but now the goals are starting to come.
I mean, I was going to be hard for some of you, but I know that you want to be with us all the time.
But it needs distance, really.
When there was a vote, when there was a speech and arrest, we could constantly see behind us that we were working truly for a great goal.
A goal of America being responsible at home, so that we can lead responsibly abroad.
It was not included in this, and that's why it's so important to know.
There was a time, even when he left America,
He left Vietnam in 1965, when he, for four years, never saw another single human being except his champion.
He continues today, always.
He said he loved America.
He said there had already been some of the commitments, and perhaps you can get a sense of it, and there had already been, like he said on the other hand, America was still in a pretty good position as far as I know.
Now he knows that it's gone.
But now he tells us,
He said, without the U.S., there is nobody else.
We can't lay back and say, let the British do it, let the French do it, let Europe do it, let the Germans do it.
There's nobody else except the Stokians now, and the Chinese 20 years from now.
So that's what we can't allow to happen.
And the kind of a world we live in, and the kind of a government we live in, are facing up to these responsibilities, not being satisfied with just staying in the long-term data plans, not being satisfied with wasting money or time on bad programs,
We're trying to make them better.
We're trying to reorder them.
That's going to make the difference.
Whether America is able to create a responsibility.
It amazes me that sometimes our jobs are mundane.
Our little pieces of that great big picture are pretty sorry to look at.