On September 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Raymond K. Price, Jr., and John D. Ehrlichman met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 12:56 pm to 2:10 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 275-009 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I went through the other draft, the first draft .
I'll give it to you.
I had a couple of little changes.
I'll give it to you.
I'll give it to Mike.
I'm not sure of the line, but it's good.
I wonder if we can cut some, at least I know we cut the last sentence of it.
It's on the job development credits.
where justification, I know that I suggested that idea was not original.
We can strike that sentence that this credit is not original.
Some of the credit has been acted on.
Some of the credit is not original.
Thank you.
Where are you?
I'm sorry.
I got the credit.
But recognizing that this is the first, this point has been made by .
Stop.
Right after the word.
You can leave out the whole .
What is it?
And what effect?
I'm not sure, but I'm not making the motion.
I mean, I did as well to point out that it's not a mistake.
This is not a mistake.
I have argumentation on other things.
It makes for a better balance, just to put them right off their hands.
It's very important.
It's an incentive for the business to hire more workers, to make workers, wage earners, to work more productively.
And that will make American products more competitive with world markets.
What do you think?
It's like when I wrote the August 15th one, I wrote that down and cut half of it out.
But it was stronger by just leaving it then.
I don't need to make those arguments.
All right, why don't you cut that one out?
You made that quite strong.
Oh, no, no, no.
What was the problem with that figure?
What's that?
What's the problem with that figure?
I was worried about the figure.
There still are problems with that figure.
Yeah, I know.
What we've used is that.
Correct.
We need to take care of this.
We need to take care of this.
We need to take care of this.
We need to take care of this.
We need to take care of this.
I urge the Congress to take these three actions, which it's estimated will be able to do very well, but the purpose is very difficult.
Well, I don't think that's going to be possible.
On page six of the first draft, I'm going to read you from that as well, where you urge the Congress to respond, I would use where I ask the cooperation of the Congress.
On page three, on the home front, I ordered a nine-day freeze on price of cleaners.
I ordered a $5, $6, $10 billion cut in for whatever it was, .
In April, for jobs, for jobs .
That I would make it.
In other words, first, I strike on the home front.
I order an idea for a reason .
Second, I order .
Third, on the international front, I do a few actions.
Let's see.
Let me talk a little about that a little bit.
in order to help check the rise in the cost of government.
I'm not sure if that's the reason we did it.
I'll get back to you.
We put in that, since we put in that initiative, first the area, I asked the cooperation of Congress to finance any restraining budget expenditures.
Tax cuts in any area of employment must be accomplished by spending cuts to restrain inflation.
That's good.
Now,
And the .
So rather than help check the rise in the cost of government .
I would take out, Ray, at this point, I recommend that action on the two, Reverend and Sheriff, be swiftly.
I think it should come, but come later.
In other words, I put it in here in the context of coming, because the Congress is not at action.
I put in a full section about coming later on.
I want to pick up Reverend and Sheriff.
I strongly urge the committee to, you know, that the Congress moves once it has moved on this.
So ending at the outset here, where we talk about the first release of taxes here, I call upon the Congress to
I would use the term that I used when I was written in speech.
I asked the Congress to put this, put its first priority, put above, its first priority above all other, all of those, the enactment of
that we've got to put in later on, the line that I urge Congress to act on welfare reform a little bit more precisely than we have and that we do have it later on.
So we'll take it down here.
Maybe you already have this.
I'm still reading from the original copy you have.
I think that we probably can boil down, or we talk about fighting for this postmortem to justify
If I exercise myself as the discipline, as well as the time.
So let's take that section now, because then it gets covered in the next paragraph.
In this session, the national companies spent more than before.
I want to try to resist these conditions.
Restraint.
And then I would say, I just put very simply, this postponement will adjust the budget to two realities.
It will adjust regardless to the fact that, you know,
These later dates are now the by which we can .
So you can just let it drop there.
And we don't have to spell that out .
And prosperity without inflation is made
to make it run very well in the second draft.
I ask that we put in the, I know you've got it in the second draft, the business development we are aiming for on this board.
Oh, that's way too long.
We're making progress in our other relations for a generation.
The poker analogy is a very effective one for panicking.
It's a good analogy.
Some people who would think that a poker game doesn't have the poker
It would be inappropriate to carry equipment in, but it's not for me.
Most people don't think I play football.
I start out hanging it on the left.
Yes, it's L.A.
I wonder if we could take out left in our airspace.
I'll tell you why.
The problem at World Station.
I'll leave it at World Station.
It's not World Station, but it's the problem at World Station.
And later on, it goes to New Hampshire.
See, Latin America is something that doesn't, that we still have to pass up to the children.
Now, suggested on page seven of your, let's take out the paragraph, we no longer have the luxury, because I don't want to say anything about Japan.
In this speech, it's Japanese, and you don't have to listen to the caption of it.
You must play the game, because that's the way it is.
That we must play the best we know how, period, and then have that sentence come in.
greatness once again.
If you rather charge for me to go into one hand and back, I think it's better if the other brings it up instead of going in the poker game.
That gets the theme of play to win.
I'm already stuck with it anyway, so if you think so, I see the problem.
Well, I suggested this, but I...
Don't feel too good about it.
I'm not sure.
Don't let me argue out of this.
I know it's a little bit of a thing, but people remember.
It's a lot of things.
I don't want to make it too difficult.
It's something I...
You do?
Maybe we'll put it in.
Uh, I had a plan, you know, I thought that, uh, you know, I could just, just think back on it.
One of the things that I wrote up, I don't know, I don't know if she's preaching, but I think that her, I forget the subject, but she painted it, uh, because, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
What?
And there's a great challenge if I'm ever going to respond to them.
That's really the deal that I want to do.
And this is more the part that, yeah.
I mean, I like it if we're really saying, look, fellows, this is blood, sweat, and tears.
Frankly, there's going to be no blood.
There'll be a damn few tears and, unfortunately, very little sweat.
You know, our people don't want to change.
I think it's a good line, but I don't think it's what we're really saying.
Now, could I suggest that in terms of the
Let's go over to what comes after the freeze.
I don't think that it fits the mood to have what comes after the freeze come in after we start talking about the spirit of the American people.
And I wonder if it shouldn't be moved in.
And in another area, there are two other areas that I would like to have cooperation on.
And then maybe a little rhetoric to the effect that
You might corral what you have with, but the thing, too, is that we are saying nothing more.
More deceptions are more detrimental to the long range.
And just, you know, we must put the great, great enterprise down.
How did you?
whether he's got the curtain, if he's an arrow.
I've heard of him pointing out that he's actually in charge of the research initiative.
He doesn't really pass them, and I've seen a lot of indications in his book that he's got a really good goal, and he's got a really good job, and he's going to have to make it.
He's going to be on a great amount of discussion.
He's a great learner.
Going back to what I said earlier, I think that the idea of the way Christ's stabilization should come in is very important.
Would you agree or not?
So I'm trying to find a place for it.
It's a hell of a hard place to find.
But it comes in.
It's hard to put it there.
It's also hard to put it here.
Because basically, they're not asking that to do anything except to cooperate.
But I think it's rather good.
Then I put in a good line of rhetoric about we believe that Ireland is the road to the future.
It's the road to a great future.
It's not the road to government, permanent government, impulsory government.
We've got to have a strong commitment to that.
Just as we have in here a strong commitment to repeating the world, we've got to have a strong commitment to we are the 300th Red and Silver.
We've got some lines, and we can pull that into this one here.
But what about the idea of putting in a little
something like 100 million jobs.
And the job is where some of the government is going to be moving on.
I think it's a real life reality where you have 100 million jobs.
America has 100 million jobs planning to reach that goal.
So a couple later, we're going to have a speech in one of his interviews.
What America's going to make in the years to come.
What are we going to be in?
What are we going to get out of it?
What are we going to get in to?
And I'm just going to go back to that, too.
I've been in this business, most of the research, government research in the United States today,
a much greater portion of their GNP into applied research in the United States.
And the United States has done this only when we have had a great project.
We did it with NASA.
We did it with .
We did it with our group.
We did it with our group.
We did it with NASA.
We did it with our group.
We did it with our group.
was to have a hell of a lot more of the national product go into applied research.
Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to do a lot more research.
It gets to do a hell of a lot more research in various fields.
Other countries, the totalitarians, for example, the Japanese, for example,
really sit down and consciously plan what the hell they're going to get out of the search engine, and then they plan what the raw material they're going to do, what they're going to research, what they're going to be able to do, and then they have to do what they saw.
Now that's important for us.
We say the free market will come along, but people make their decisions in the end, and it's done god damn well for them.
It's definitely using the record.
You say this great free system has brought us over 195 years from a small factory to one of the poorest factories, one of the poorest factories in the world economically, the most productive, the most efficient nation in the world.
And that's why this is not the time to get up on it now.
This is the time to take these temporary actions to get the machine back in shape.
I think it's more likely to come out with it in the state of the union.
We haven't crossed the bridge on either.
We have, this nation is rich in scientists, engineers, people, and so forth and so on.
And it's a great waste not to have that enormous talent, the talent that took us to the moon.
After all, totally used, totally used to solve the great problems on Earth.
I think is here in the Congress to say we ask for cooperation on the wage-price stabilization.
We are going to have to ask for cooperation.
There are suggestions and recommendations on these issues for the future.
That's very nice of you.
For the long term, I have been speaking about what government means.
For the long term, what government means is that we want people to hear up with and rhetoric, briefly, which I think is very important, so that we don't, you know, put into speech more language.
But once is enough.
I'd like to pull it back to
That paragraph in page 14, we know as well America's war is the only one that we're only going to have as freedom for the time necessary to get out of our country.
Reconciliation has never become a way of life.
That paragraph would very well come back out of there.
Coming to the end, if I may.
What is the American people know for the good life?
Strike that, just say, the good life is not the lazy life and the empty life.
The good life is the act of productive life.
State it, declaratively, that the American people know a certain job and a thought.
The time really puts, in this way,
Historically, we get rid of the outrage that is the situation in this country, where a man can get more on welfare than he can earn from a job.
Maybe on welfare.
That's not helpful.
Coming to the end there, what is your feeling about the
It actually is not too long in the present time that the life of a Parchment or one Parchment has a lesson to draw from the actions.
You see, we have about three different ideas.
And it may be that we have the idea of the record of this accomplishment.
We have the idea of
That's one.
Let's leave that in.
All right, now, what else?
But I'm not sure if you've done some thinking about this.
The DeGold line I have used, it's a hell of a good line.
And it's also, in closing the speech, it's always very good to have some sort of a way to change the movement of the Senate.
I agree with you on the rest.
You really need pretty much all of it.
Let's go back if we can.
I skipped over a little something.
Rather than going, we need a healthy production time.
that much maligned, the much maligned Americans in a certain system has produced more .
There is one way you can use this trilogy in terms of a healthy economy and a healthy government.
The sentence there, on page 10, I have postponed the congressional
once we get back to normal.
As the Congress acted this session on these two historical forms.
I think we can probably draw back and have a stage-built current law
Let me try to get it out of the way.
I think the idea of building a wall around ourselves and letting the rest of the world go by is a good one.
That is, that he very strongly and well here about that the world is too small and the rest is too important part of that world.
It's a barrier for its future.
But the other point, which is not made, of course, is that we have to do it not just for the world, but we must do it for ourselves.
I could name that maybe whenever a nation ceases to compete in the competition in the world.
We need to get them to look at the history, leave out the war, and look at the exploration that we were in.
The nations that did not explore in the world, or that failed, did not retain
Whenever a nation drops out of our race,
What do you think?
We cannot go beyond the walls.
We cannot turn in, but we can still be a great nation.
Of course, there you're getting at the thought of the idea.
There are two different thoughts.
Maybe the world is too small for you to follow right on.
It's too broad.
The U.S. is too important.
We would have a great power if we didn't have a great power.
We cease to be a great power in the world.
We fear for its future.
That's the end of the story.
That's it.
And we cannot turn inward and still be a great nation.
Whenever the United States, whenever it ceases to compete, we try to do what's best.
I support that.
I don't think it would say help a lot of money.
I made these suggestions.
I don't want to suggest anything.
I think this is working along very well.
How do you feel about that?
Let me tell you all about it.
I think some of this will .
I kind of like the idea of a new
Should I just tell her what you want to talk about?
And this guy, in fact, Schultz is so concerned that I'm getting locked in.
I have to do it.
Ray Price and I are doing a little work on this talk.
And I was thinking that we're trying to get a little something to do with it.
But I was thinking that just lifting that curtain in a few words, thoughts about the future.
In other words, we need $100 million.
And I can never expect $100 million to do that.
And here we ask for cooperation on the holdings of our reforms and our actions.
We need also, you know, hard work about the field research.
And here, America has demonstrated, as you can see, that the spacemen are going to be there after the Saturn, and three great men of the space will be here.
This is an amazing achievement.
But it's also an amazing achievement in technology that shows what America can do
and so forth, that we must find areas where we must actively explore those areas, where the incomparable technocratization and the incomparable courage, humility, democracy, whatever it is that took America to the moon is used to develop peace on a production on a population.
Let me suggest this.
If you're free, or are you?
Ray is working, and maybe you can chat with him.
I think it's sort of a good theme to throw in.
In other words, let's lift the curtain on the new NASA.
Now, it's your thought, incidentally, that that should be part of the state of the universe.
And so we're going to hold to that.
Yeah?
Oh, sure.
And incidentally, I want something.
We'll preempt them, you know.
Now the other thing, on the tax thing, I understand George doesn't want us to get him in on that.
He's a syndicator, obviously.
I wonder if we can get him taxed.
Certainly, after appreciation, I would think, I don't know if we...
Let me say that, you see, time is of the essence, John.
When are you meeting with Tom?
3.30.
Bob, at the conclusion of that meeting, you talked about how you can say, you can give Ray a call, and Joe and I thought as to what paragraph to go in now.
So I want to say...
I've already opened up the door, but then if I can't be with Joe Connolly, then the paragraph will be submitted to him.
Because I only want a very brief paragraph, and I want him to look at it.
Here on the other one, let's see, one would be a good time for Ray to talk to you.
He's sitting here right now.
Do you want him to drop over to your office?
Do now.
I think that's a good thing to put in there.
What do you think?
Something about the... And you put it in in terms of the...
You see, right at the section where we leave, before we leave the Congress, we say, all right, we want the Congress to pass the tax, and we want the Congress to cooperate with us, and we want to follow along, and we want to be a follow-on program.
And all of a sudden, we talk about a follow-on program all over the state of Indiana, but we are not again, we must not again, we must not again,
allow these forces, these virulent forces of inflation out of control, which we saw now, but we shall not allow, again, allow these virulent forces of inflation out of control.
We also need to do something about, see what I'm trying to do, Ray, is to separate program from ideals.
I want you to deliver something that way.
And then you go to the next program.
We also need to have some looking to the future.
We need the tax measures.
I asked you to deal with a temporary problem.
And now, we've got to look further down the road.
We need to get jobs.
So this is tax reform.
A, it may be gone, it may be that those two thoughts, those two thoughts captured by, uh, the Donasso.
Yeah, a couple later, they did my honor.
It's better to get it back there, that, uh,
I think it's best to put the idealism at the end.
I have an idea that's familiar with me.
i was what i'm thinking about is to try to pick up your business about the about the wage price the follow-on at that point so much length of that
No, I think it could come there all the way.
I think you could mention both of those there.
Because then you're a paragraph at the top of your system.
If we consider these .
What we're talking about in terms of the and in terms of the tax reforms and so forth is basically still US-oriented.
I mean, in court, I mean, the competition .
I'd like you to try it that way, with the outline.
Would you do that?
I think it's a full view.
I was thinking of a paragraph in the past, and I studied the paragraph on the
Well, I, uh...
We'll have to think of it a little later.