Conversation 472-011

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Yeah, it is.

George will be right along.

I've got a couple of us.

I noticed that you amassed our election reform situation.

We've had .

I said we'd report it.

I think it was fine.

What you said was fine.

I can't get into it, but I wish I could have said more, but I don't know.

There's more to say.

Really?

We're waiting until Scott's ready.

Ready?

He's not up yet.

We're also using my old brother to try and separate.

He's what?

How does he do it?

Well, I demand more hearings.

More hearings.

What do they have about the administration's position?

Well, we continue to stay aloof until the Senate gets all of these done.

And it should not be an incumbent's frustration.

And we've been saying, beyond that, justice would like to be heard at additional hearings.

on some constitutional issues.

There's some constitutional orders that want to come down on this business of limiting what a man can give to a practical campaign and so on.

Good.

And we continue to study it.

So, all right, all right.

A lot of the work that is now applying to the jettison is less.

And George is dying very hard on this.

I talked to Mark this morning.

I thought we all decided that it would be best.

That's right.

Mark wasn't here today.

He was with me today.

But he feels, you know, that on a personal scale.

Raj says he can get a car from a farmhouse.

Or he said he could take an army team from Nebraska.

I told him I thought Oreste would have objection to take over.

He better get straightened out.

He said, well, he didn't want to approach Oreste until he thought of you as an objection to take over.

Yeah, so I said we'd be talking and then I'd try to find out what's your long-term reaction to the 15-year-old fire secretary.

He's not a heavyweight, you know.

If he wants somebody to agree to him, after all, he's like the governor of any state.

The governor of Alaska doesn't have much to do with him.

I have a lot.

He's a small-town band.

He's a very pleasant, nice-looking tall, but he's not a heavyweight.

I think Morgan needs somebody to run the goddamn department because he's just helping me out.

So I would say I'd go with a career-bombing Carter rather than Jeevan.

You see, here's the thing.

If you just get two politicians in there, nobody's going to run the thing again.

Right?

Right.

Well, that is basically what he's talking about.

Um, you want to go and see what he picks up from the other one?

No.

You should go see Al and tell him.

And, uh, you need the president to get Al and tell him.

Oh, boy.

Do you want to talk about Hudson's deal?

Oh, yeah.

Well, Hudson has a meeting Thursday of his commission.

They are expecting the public members to come back with a proposal of some sort.

The proposal that Hudson wants to come back with is more or less along these lines.

You set up a wage board including implementing structures within the branches of the industry such as the electrical branch and so forth.

And as soon as you have that machinery set up, and it'll have some criteria that will tend to bend the weight increase curve downwards from some set of 18% increases, and then 14% increases, or maybe 12% increases.

And in return for that, we will rescind the order that suspended the Davis-Bacon Act.

Now, after that, well, couldn't we say, you set up the machinery, and then let's see some evidence that it really is working, and then we'll change the thing?

Jim says that they just won't.

He doesn't think they'll go for that, that you have to be willing to take the data stake and act.

So at this point he is looking for a signal of whether to proceed with it or not and I think he feels

that if he gets a green light and he gets them to go along, uh, then he'll be the hardest to make the hardest bargaining, George.

You know, of course, with the hard, you know, you're really trying to say, you know, uh, but the point is that, uh, in terms of David's statement, they got damn little credit for doing something like that, so...

We're about to move in the other direction now.

We can get anything out of it.

I'm sure everybody gets down.

So let's do it.

Okay.

We've seen some scattered bits and pieces of a result all over here.

I'm sure the weight increases are going to be high.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's do this.

Let's go ahead.

It's the way we want to operate.

It might be a way to get the hardheads doing better.

Okay.

We have this Corps of Engineers question.

It all came up this morning.

And we, that I didn't know was one of the ones we, we just don't seem to be able to settle, if you feel so.

I've got a reading from you.

Yeah.

We thought we had some.

A practice came in when we had a meeting.

It appeared that...

Defense was going to go for a split where we bring the planning and the money control over into the Department of Natural Resources so that all the water projects could be done in one place and just leave the function over in defense.

Packard was favorable in finding that.

So you go back and talk to them now.

We were back and said, no, you want us to hold things back in defense.

I think your staff basically is planning to reverse slip.

Reverse slip function.

I think interior might get the whole thing covered up in yours.

That whole bush.

Now you couldn't get that by the Congress.

This whole way away.

The split has some chance.

Unless Larry Gillis sabotages the pipeline practice committee behind everybody's back, we'll stay in the split.

The option is yours.

I think the split has a great advantage to it in that it does keep the planning

You see, there is something to be said to keep the engineers in defense for another reason.

I mean, what the hell is the peacetime army going to do?

I mean, they've got to do something to keep themselves busy.

I mean, I know, I know, I know.

I think there's something to be said for the crowd outfit.

Frankly, in many cases, they've done a hell of a lot better jobs than the Bureau of Reclamation.

I'm not a great enthusiast for the Bureau of Reclamation, frankly.

I think they're a bunch of money wasters, bad planners.

And, of course, there's a lot of bad planners in the other two.

You can get arguments on either side of this.

I don't know which side of this.

Well, you'd regenerate both of them in this department.

I want your recommendation to be that it has to be given, frankly, domination.

We've had a chance of putting all of this in 1.5 and avoiding a lot of this competition, so try it.

I have another malware attack problem.

He has an assistant secretary for health named Bruce Lowe.

He's kind of a character for a neighbor.

At a press conference, he had a question about six months ago.

On why the Department of Defense has different abortion regulations.

the cities in which the bases were located.

And he said that this was a new policy of the Department of Defense to have uniform abortion regulations throughout the system of military hospitals regardless of what the local states provided.

There wasn't any such policy at the time, even if it went along with the press conference, but the department wheeled in behind it and adopted the uniform policy, which had the Roman Catholics just up on the ceiling.

Because in some states they have control of the state legislature and they've been able to enact abortions illegally.

Now, we have, at the staff level, we have vetted this out with Laird's people.

And finally, Laird called me and said, well, we instructed his staff, but from a political standpoint, we thought this was bad.

I said, you know, we better get in line with the local state laws.

Larry finally called me and said, well, I've had this all off with Cartman Cook and the other colonels, and they had no objection to our policy.

Well, it isn't true.

And we, with Colson Tech, the Cardinal Cook, the Cardinal Cook fight with the closest to the Department of Defense.

And so I asked him, well, I don't care what the Cardinal thinks.

I have sent a directive to the Secretary saying, change your policy.

And he is now in the process of ignoring us into the third week.

And I discreetly pass over a blood act as opposed to send it in to me and I'll write a letter.

I have strong personal convictions on this.

It's a matter of personal conviction that the directive is to be changed.

I know this is a difficult problem for his department.

I know there are very great opinions in this country, but I have strong personal convictions.

I have expressed those convictions for years.

publicly and privately, and that this would go, this policy goes directly contrary to my own convictions, under certain circumstances, the policy will have to be changed.

I don't think so.

Okay.

That's right.

It's really cosmetic in a large sense, but anyway.

Okay.

That sounds like a problem.

Well, kind of looking through his paper now, just a quick view on three quick things on the welfare reform bill.

The committee now is postured to move the

to $2,400 with food stamps cashed out and to not have any compulsory programs for the states and not to have any federal supplementation for the states.

In other words, it's a $2,400 program with a two-thirds tax rate.

And that's it.

From a budget standpoint, this tends to almost, not quite, but almost work out.

and it seems to be a reasonable and I think expected direction to move.

But it is up from the $2,200 that we were going in at on the food stamps.

But it is in the direction of a conservative stance on welfare reform because of the elimination of the state minimum and the federal sovereign.

Yeah, it's a strong, I think it's a good move.

We are also in the process

of lining up with the Labor Department, handling being administratively responsible for the people who are employable, uh, rather than AGW doing it.

And I think that will help on the work requirements side, although it's going to, it's going to reshuffle the, the responsibilities between the departments quite considerably.

That's true.

Uh, in the new departments, while it'll be sensible to leave it, that's also the, it's like,

We haven't got all of it here from the bar.

We have the GW and what we're requiring.

On the adult categories, the federal administration and funding at a minimum level seems to be going forward.

That's something that we've been working with the committee on.

And we put out the four-year transition.

period and I think down to about a three year transition period and well I think that's about what we figured would happen.

We went before he came back from a little trip.

But I think if all of this does gel, it'll probably gel by the end of the week.

We'll have a welfare reform bill that we think is pretty good.

I think there's a possibility

that you might want to write a letter on the work incentive and work requirement side so that you're a position here in favor of this movement of the bureaucracy.

And we can grab something up for you around if you'd all sign it.

On the manpower business, we have this public service employment bill that's moving in both houses.

And we see a possibility

if we're willing to wheel and deal a little bit, and I don't know how much is necessary, but a possibility anyway, of trying to transform a push for that into special revenue sharing for manpower.

That is to try to capture that.

I think it's an outside chance.

But it's a possibility that if it could be done, and if it suddenly achieved a spectral manpower or a spectral revenue share of the deal, that would be quite a piece to put into place.

Now, I don't know whether it's possible or not, but I wonder...

Uh, if, uh, you feel that we should sort of have some running room to negotiate.

Yes.

And we probably will have to give away some things we don't spec for life on a public service appointment, at least for a while.

But it might be that we could break through in this area, unless everyone's surprised.

You are... You're, you're, you're...

I hope the application can work out and show you, you know, what I feel, what I do, and so forth.

The main thing is get one through.

I don't think the compromise is necessary because I'm sitting right here in the budget chair.

You also know how much you spend.

You also know how bad the public service thing is.

It's a permanent thing.

You know our philosophy.

So just make the best of it and it'll be great and you don't have to ask me about it.

Just do it.

I'll speak to you.

If I keep those bars, what I can do is I...

Well, it may be that we're on exactly the same wavelength.

We need to break one.

That would be great.

That's why we are going to see, I have a feeling, that the natural resources are going to be first.

I think it can, I think it can, we could ask the committee to get one of those through.

That would be good.

I think I'm wrong about that.

You notice that piece this morning.

I was trying to put her up there, how ideas and names are nice and valid, but it's just so difficult.

But how dominating those people, you know.

But that ought to be done.

That's what you said, next one door.

Then we'll start to go in with another, the other one.

Let's see.

We have a second one.

We did a very good job.

Yeah.

Very good job.

Now he is a sensational platform speaker.

Just terrific.

I don't know the difference.

There he is.

Yeah.

The other thing I could imagine, he is so intelligent.

So intelligent.

He's got a quick little sense of humor.

The thing that I do that is impressive is the enormous amount of work that he does.

All of them are different.

It's just a call to job.

When that message goes up, I think if you could have a working group in, I will arrange the next group.

Arrange them.

And when the last of the special revenue things is up this week, and I'm going to be back, I'm going to say, when the last special revenue comes in, then let's get the key people who worked on special revenue all of them into the cabin room.

I said, you know, we're going to, I'm going to do that little TV for that one.

He said, no, son, I'm going to give it another little kickoff.

Let's get all the people in the cabin room and give them a little thank you voice.

That was a hell of a job, you know.

That was a chance to give them a cap and his people, whoever worked on it,

Everybody worked on it.

They worked very hard.

You're right.

Well, they did.

Well, you can.

As a matter of fact, if you want, you can make it even bigger.

You can have a... Well, we can talk about that in the department of people.

But the thing to do, though, is sometimes it is bad.

I'm talking hardly, but sometimes, of course, it complements a few to have them in.

I guess because sometimes there are guys down at Woodward, you know, that work their butts off and they're going to go out and start in their eyes.

So this is very much a team effort that George is always in mind.

Well, if you're a team, if you're a team, it's a fairly large size team.

I was thinking about the mining team.

You can put 40 people in here easy enough.

That has to just make me all spanked up and sick, rather than sitting around in the cabin.

The other thing you can do if you have 100, is it that big?

No.

Oh, oh, oh, right in here.

Captain, they come in and I take them all and do a little roll pitch.

Okay, those guys work their butts off and the same with the other ones, all right?

But you fellas always just do that on your own, you know?

You just go off and we always have fun.

God, we see all the other people, every damn clown on the tunnel.

You lost that line.

Yes, the mayor's.

No, the lawyers are now getting these pamphlets out on each one of the special revenue sharing and also some of the other parts of your State of the Union.

It occurred to me that we might get a bunch of these to Steve Bull, and if you have people in here that you want to lay something on,

Instead of trying to get into the substance of it, you could just hand them a bunch of these for revenue sharing and reorganization and health and so on.

And they could take them out.

So we'll send out sometimes.

Sometimes there are people who have...

Congressmen have come in and they've already eaten everything.

When he comes in here, for instance.

Yeah, you don't really have Saturdays on hand.

Yeah, they go along with everything.

Yeah, yeah.

I would like to set up a meeting tomorrow with a bird of reference to this mountain.

We also are now facing, it appears to me,

It's a fact rather than a theory that is the fact that we're going to get rolling on it.

And now there's a chance probably that we'll be able to sustain it for 150 times from now on.

And I'd like to get the company, Hardin, and actually yourself, John, and from our side, who's working at Whittaker.

Yes, at Whittaker.

Right.

The fellow from the West League is working on it.

Who?

John Goss.

All right.

Okay.

Let's have a hand.

I think tomorrow is going to be a test of each side of the first.

Okay.

Well, it's more, I think, a question of their season, but certainly the sooner we get it done before we get pressured into it.

Mr.

Senator Bob, I implore you to convene.

And I got out of there in an hour.

Jeff, you can get off the beat.

Because I was a little pressed personally, so I kind of couldn't believe it.

It's long enough.

Not too great.

We have a limit at the end of the agenda, so you have to leave before he says anything.

That's just the way it goes.

I'll stop then and spend an hour and 15 minutes.

It seems like that boat made it for 15.

I've got to see him.

Uh...

Maybe we could have a meeting at, uh, I could do it at 4.30 today.

The Melbourne thing.

That's right.

You've got a half hour then.

That's on the right.

Now, that would have to be a much harder conversation.

So, I'm going to check the Melbourne.

I can't do it.

If not, then tomorrow, you know, anytime.

Tomorrow.

We'll read it.

We'll do it tomorrow.

Good.

Let's get in.

Let's have a good session for that.

That's enough.

It's not all that complicated for now.

Are you going to go 85 or not?

We are hanging tough on this.

You would be sure to follow up with Connelly notes.

I was on the phone with him about it.

He called me, and I talked to Hart, and I talked to him, and I said, all right, I'll be back to you in a second.

You're hanging tough.

On accelerator public works, this thing I called you about down in Florida.

Yeah.

The whole Public Works Committee, House Public Works Committee wanted to come down and see you just before your broadcast and tell you how important this was yesterday.

And so some of our people talked to them.

They don't like anything.

and we've said, in effect, no, we're sorry, this is a bad idea, and the person's going to veto it if it comes down here.

That's where we are.

Now, there's an interesting environmental angle on which you may be able to rely and veto it.

Because the bill probably will abolish the requirement of pre-reporting this 102 statement thing, so-called, in order to get these projects going quickly without regarding the effect on the environment.

So we may be able to use that as a total thing, but we've never mentioned the environment issue to us any good at all.

Well, we've never mentioned it, except to Barton.

I went to that rump session over at Romney's yesterday.

We're going to have a meeting at the end of this week.

They were just not fussed.

It's totally non-plus, I would say, to think that they're going to have to translate their disgruntlement into action proposals.

Good.

And that's what we want, that they've got an idea of how this should happen.

They really have to.

They don't know what the hell to do.

Well, they're talking about a lot of crazy stuff like guys do in the Chamber of Commerce.

Unions are bad, so what we ought to do is make them make less money.

And that will, you know, break up the business.

Break up the business.

That's wrong.

They want to freeze and they want to raise.

They want an executive order or proclamation that will say that you can't have more than 6% raise this year, 5% next year, 4% the year after that.

And, uh, who did Miller suggest?

Parker?

Executive order?

And I said, well, what if they strike?

Well, I'm sure they wouldn't.

So that can be ordered.

What does he say about enforcement?

Well, they feel that this can be done very expeditiously.

Either the Department of Labor or the Department of Commerce can administer this.

And that there should be very little problem in setting up a supervising board.

This is the way to promote all of our free prices.

How do you do that?

You've got a little bay.

And actually, they're very low profit in this construction business.

So really that isn't too much of a problem.

What you do is you just take those tax returns.

I thought you were talking about increasing everything.

Construction industry.

Construction.

Oh, I thought they were talking about everything.

Then, of course, we asked about everything.

We said, well, now we've got the steel belongs to our economy.

What if they come in and do more than 654?

Well, that would be necessary to expand into other industries.

And this all has to be done by the 1st of April, because that's when most construction contracts terminate, according to John Wolpe.

And I said, I think we can prepare to move quite that fast, because we hear all this at the Academy.

So they're to come up with firm concrete proposals, including how you do this, and what the second, third, and fourth steps are.

And this is what this Academy is to Wolpe, Romney.

Wolpe, Romney, Sands, Hardin,

Blunt, Mertens, Crack.

Did you go to a discussion before?

Yeah, he was fine.

Yeah, unfortunately, he had to leave before the game was over.

He understands the issue.

Yeah.

He's all right with it.

He understands.

He's embarrassed to be in this thing.

In fact, the thing about the others, the rest of them, they just don't know what the hell to score.

You know that?

Ronnie Colby, do you guys know?

Arthur is playing a very cute game here.

He's selling away his price stabilization for it.

Yeah.

He's selling it.

Every chance he gets, all he's going to do is leave.

Then afterward, he called him to say that he was greatly anguished by the Evans and Novak comments, that he was conspiring and hurting a tax coach, and that he wouldn't do that, and he didn't do it, and that his verdict was false.

I knew, he knew I knew, that if it came down to a matter of choice between principal or your well-being, that in every case he would opt for your well-being.

That's what he told me.

And I went out to talk to him about this issue.

I've gotten him to agree that on the tax money he won't say no more until May 15th.

So we'll see what he says.

I'm on my way over today to have lunch with him.

Good.

Do you have any?

Oh, I think the main thing is this.

All right.

We're trying to butter this one.

And also, he's hardly smart enough to know that Conley is breathing down his neck and that I am too.

And so he's responding somewhat.

So he says he's not going to...

He says he realizes he can't change the game plan in 60 seconds.

He says it's too early to make any judgments at this time regarding the...

whether or not there should be investment tax or anything of that sort.

And he says that he only suggested that in his testimony as to things that might need to be done in the event that they became necessary.

And I said, no, I know that.

Why is it that the way I've never heard anything you've said is that I'm going to be interpreting the pressure you've given us over the head?

And I said, no, I'm assuming we should have a moratorium on the way to that.

And his point about it is,

I also said he promised 5%, you know, and I said I was going to count him in for that.

So he pledged, you know, he's going to work with us, he's going to arrange his disagreements here.

Now, we did not discuss this at all.

I did not discuss the wage price for it at all.

The difficulty of it is that

So you get covered off of it on the ground, but they just aren't, just be a second interview.

I know, I get it.

I'll pay people.

Yeah, I'll pay people.

Go back to your office, yeah.

I had a plane, and I played very, very coolly, and I told Arthur, I said, now, Arthur, you had that meeting, and he says, I'm going to defend my staff, I'm going to defend my people, and that's why I said, I've got to do it.

And he says, I understand.

And I said, there, he said, you can't, as I said, you're going to crack him, you've got Schultz, I mean, Schultz is cracking away at you.

And I said, you, this is just the way it's going to be.

And, oh, we had a good, good talk, even in Berlin.

And I think, honestly, at the moment, he really feels that he wants to help.

But I think the problem we have here is that he's on this damn kick of this wage price stabilization board.

And the thing that I wanted to find, George, is that

I'm sure that he, as smart as he is, knows that it won't work.

Do you agree or not?

You see what I'm getting at?

That's what I mean.

If the goddamn thing would work, we'd all be working in church.

I mean, I think we'd be working, but

I think as you start down that trail, you're looking straight at the, straight at mandatorily price controls and enforcement, or otherwise it isn't gonna work.

Or an impotent guideline thing that breaks down, and all that.

Well, here's one of the ironies here, and I'm not gonna put, but at least on the price side,

We, I think we can feel that we are really making some headway.

We don't get a bad bounce.

Sure.

But nevertheless, over a period of a year and a half, you see this thing decelerating.

Yeah.

So...

In a sense, why change strategy just when you seem to be on the right side?

It's one month waiting for nothing.

Two months doesn't mean everything, but two months means something.

So, next month it goes up again.

Nevertheless, what the hell?

I mean, we'd have already talked about 2%.

Back in the fall, we'd have thought that was great, wouldn't we?

Well, I think if you look over a year and a half period-wise, things have been getting better.

A little.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

And it all, of course, is part of a...

But the point is, or at least, what is how we're going to react to our rescinding Davis-Macon?

Well, I don't know.

Shall I try that out on you today?

I'll have an answer.

This is a state that has not had the impact that we've been told.

I can just simply say, I think we better say that we're working on a deal, and we're going to get some, this is the main thing, our first events in progress.

And we've made that progress voluntarily, and we can.

And also, I think you ought to put the, you ought to say that the, this has been a damn painful thing for the president.

He's got no damn support from the business community on this state of the state thing, and only he got that case later.

He knows that too.

He gives us support.

And now, that,

But I really wish there were a way that we could get him off of this price thing.

Incidentally, the other thing, I think you've got to have a talk with Conley about it to be sure he understands.

He'll devote what he knows our policy is.

But Arthur, you know, working in there, I guess, well, when I say working, he believes it, apparently.

He is really for this thing.

Somebody's sold him down the window.

The red blood asking why he was bored, he didn't have a very good explanation.

The red forced him to say that he really believes in a free market.

And he had to agree that he did, but he had a lot of problems and that he thought that this would be a good thing to do, but he was not convinced.

Is this for instruction only?

The wage price board goes across the board.

I don't know if it's freeze that he talks about or construction.

Construction only.

Yeah, but the wage price stabilization board would be across the board.

Okay, fair enough.

I'll cut to the majority.

There's something in the board.

Should we reconsider the wage price?

Well, I'm not in favor of any of that.

You haven't been shaking at all.

I don't know.

I don't know what you're arguing about.

I haven't heard anybody say it'll work.

Do you think we ought to do this group?

Huh?

Do you think we ought to do this group?

What I'd like to do, frankly, is tell them, don't try something that's going to fail now.

We're going to try something that's going to fail.

Try it so that people don't know that it's going to happen.

Well, I think the strong possibility would be that if it were put in, say, two weeks from now, that it would seem to work.

And I think the reason is that the basic policies you've been following are taking hold.

Now, it won't work with the steelworkers.

Why don't we put it this way?

Let's go through the first half of this year and see what the hell is happening on that place.

See what we can work out on the other end, right?

I don't know what we can do with the steel workers.

I think we're heading for a strike in that industry.

But I don't think you'll have nearly a damaging impact on the economy that the others are going to have.

Oh, I see.

McCracken said an interesting thing yesterday that I never heard him say before.

He says, a wage price board without clout won't solve problems in the construction or any other industry.

And the history of wage price cruises is not encouraging.

Typically, they don't look so good about a year later.

And a year later for us is 1972.

You know, let me ask one other thing.

About the economy, don't you think I'd see a way, you know?

This is something I'd probably comment about, and I want you to know what my views are, too.

I don't give a damn if we make 1065 or not.

I'm just as happy if we're 1050.

$10.45.

The main point is to be moving in the right direction.

Now, sure, a lot of people are going to be unhappy we overestimated and all that sort of thing.

So out of a trillion-dollar economy, you made a 1% mistake or a 1.5% mistake, right?

The budget, $5.5 million more on the balance of rents.

The main thing is that we want to build on a basis that is solid and .

We love these figures on May 15th for the 34 months.

I hope at that time, March, April, that things will begin to be moving up some.

Uh, American February figures are wrong.

A lot of time, most of them are missing.

You get humidity in some areas of Carson.

I'll be wondering if Joe says he's going to be looking for a cut in March.

But the point I'm getting at is this.

Would that be that as long as the thing moves in the right direction, we'll be too damn worried about whether or not we happen to just hit it on the nose or on the arm?

Now, the second race, I think we're probably going to make it.

My guess is the second half is going to be a good second half.

That's just my gut reaction because I think at that time, it's going to be a natural thing.

I think a lot of things want some positive feelings from developing the country.

That's on the inspiration side.

I think the other thing that is very important is that you don't want this thing to be done so fast.

I'm not concerned about it hanging in five-inch scales, whatever the case may be.

Let it hang.

But again, people are walking the streets.

They're not selling apples.

As long as that's a seller's market, that's going to have a very salutary effect on the inflationary.

Now, in the last quarter of this year,

Let's start moving down.

But you see, my feelings are, my own attitudes are not as, not just as...

Yes, you know, we're terribly worried.

I know that they're all the economists who, by now, are going to be talking about when and how they're at each other.

What are you doing?

You're wrong.

So they always do.

Well, we don't understand about that argument.

In the end, nobody's going to know that the economists are going to be made in 65 or not.

And part of the thing is the direction is up.

It's up.

And we're on the solid basis that next year we can have...

a series of announcements that have proved to be generally in the right direction.

Now, getting back to Harley's name, it doesn't mean for one minute our department, the idea that he's going to keep that money supply up there, because it ought to be up there.

Five percent, whatever the figure is, but what I simply say to you is here,

I agree with that.

I think that our best approach is to put a strong bucket in place, which you did, and then keep it that way, huh?

get scared and cut this and that and the other thing, and put a reasonable monetary policy in place in the five to six percent range, and then try to hold it there.

And that will produce the kind of economy that we want.

And maybe it'll produce it in the time that we'd like to.

Maybe it'll be a little slower, but it'll be there, certainly.

in another year, just as the reverse was true when people said the economy wouldn't slow down.

Well, it did.

And it'll pick up again.

And to get Stampede and a few other things that we have, we have Otto Eckstein, who's one of the big critics of our policies and has been telling us, I love everything it's going to be.

He came out with a BNP first quarter forecast of

A trillion and twelve billion.

Well, he's going to be low by about seven billion at least.

When the figures come out tonight, we'll come back.

But on that, as typical of people who are selling the economy, sure.

Let me say something else.

This young call gathering, you know, who's going to be the head of RAC, young, straight forward, 37 countries.

All right, sure.

Anyway, he paid everything.

He made an admission, but you know, he used to be head of the American Stock Exchange.

He said he has long had a theory, and he still strongly believes that the stock markets

can pull the economy up.

He says he does not believe, he says he doesn't believe we've ever, ever estimated the real effect of the stock market's movement upward as a supporter on the economy.

And it's a little bit down, but the two of us are supposed to be down.

Now, you look at that part of the dollar, I intend it's going to go up around here and down, maybe drop to, you know, maybe, you know, to regroup.

But it isn't just Dow, it's a hell of a lot of other people.

A lot of new billionaires have been, you know, they had a lot of those characters smart enough, gotten in with the 630s or whatever they got.

They made 40% of their money, and that's 30% to eat money.

See what I mean, Tom?

Now that founds start getting back into this economy somehow.

Don't you think so, Jim?

This little kid laughter that's been taking such a beating,

He has figured out, he has built this into his model.

I have one other, just on this subject, institutional investors where they are, Peter, when I spoke to him, I talked to one after that meeting, and it was very interesting.

I said, how do those people in that group, 1500 of them, account for this market price?

And he said, well, they all think they understand Richard Nixon and understand what he is going to cause to happen between now and November of 1972.

He said, they're investing not for 1971, they're investing for 1972.

Do you believe me when I say that 1971 will be a good year and 72 will be a very good year?

That's right.

Because they think we're going to do something great.

And we damn well are.

There's a category of confidence

You have a Secretary of Transportation who's in a wild state of mind right now over the reorganization.

He's having a serious case of postpartum flu and the Department of Transportation

goes into the organization, he wants it to all go in some place all together.

Where he can find it.

It's going in two different places.

And he looks on the chart and says, where is some line that says Secretary of Transportation?

And it isn't there.

And he raises a number of questions of that kind, the FAA administrator.

who's now a level two is going to wind up being a level three in that stretch, and so on.

And so he's declaring that he must see you and so forth, and I'm trying to turn him off, and John is, and everybody is, but he's probably at this point more...

thrashing around than anybody else.

The SST going over to NASA, he's concerned about that.

Although that makes perfect sense as a thing to do with it.

But I just want you to know that as well.

Continue to partner on the extension services.

These are... Extension services are something that I feel that there's what you're probably going to have to compromise.

And you've got to face it.

We're going to cower in the lobby line.

Compromise.

I admit the deal.

With Volpe, it just may be that he's too rich for our blood.

I don't know.

What do you think?

He'll come around.

God, don't call me to do it.

I'll just turn it off.

No, I just wanted you to know.

Out of this moment, we're receiving properly about SST.

Yep.

Yeah, right.

And we're a three-boat shark.

I don't know.

I'd be talking to a two-boat shark, I guess.

To T. Wilford of Boeing.

over the weekend, and he expressed great delight in the way the administration was working on this.

We've gotten through to him, and we call back and fight like hell.

And I believe him.

Now, you see that picture of a hundred leaders?

Well, he was all right on this one, but...

But you think the five out of the nine House leaders were so small...

I'll tell you what a sad bunch.

It's kind of interesting.

The loose feeling this morning is that labor is stocking up on SST.

He said they're not working as hard as they should.

But who the hell can you talk to via email?

I mean, it's the guy that has the spots.

Can you call me or somebody?

Yeah, well, if necessary, we'll let you know.

Jesus Christ, no.

I have a big deal.

Why doesn't George call me?

Do you mind?

No, no.

You call me and tell him that he's not a resident.

But my all-out word today is that it means in his opinion 150,000 jobs.

That's what it means.

I mean...

$50,000 directly, $100,000 indirectly.

We've got to do it.

In America's position in the world, and a hell of a lot of other things, perhaps too, you know.

Being on our business show yesterday, had us have an important strategy meeting.

And I believe it was having trouble finding any trace of it on the Hill.

All right.

Just don't believe in all of that.

Okay.

Good luck.

but with our tender loving care for today all right let's go back for me and not tomorrow but to try to say say how about this this week this week's price but don't put me down because i can't six months after don't change the game right now