On April 26, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Russell B. Long, Wallace F. Bennett, James D. Hodgson, Elliot L. Richardson, John G. Veneman, John D. Ehrlichman, Clark MacGregor, Eugene S. Cowen, White House photographer, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 5:28 pm to 6:36 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 489-021 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
All right, good to see you.
Good of you to come down.
Where are you going?
Hi.
Good of you to come.
I know you folks are so busy.
Hi.
How are you, President?
Come on over.
We've been dodging the demonstrators.
Oh, well, no problem.
Thanks.
Russell, thanks for looking good.
Excuse me.
You all right?
Yes, sir.
Working hard.
Well, Mr. President, I want to agree and give you my confidence to demonstrate in this job.
Well, I think that we'll explain it in a bunch of different ways, but a little bit closer to the point of view they have.
Yes, sir, but the guys have not been able to let that contact on the other line finish.
Well, just so they don't destroy it, I see what I'm talking about.
They're not doing anything, but...
We're not doing the right thing here.
That's what we've got to, you know?
You know, I have a very interesting point.
Oh, I want to just do the picture here.
I want to just take it around a little, sort of.
Get in there so that it's not as far as you get.
Back way up.
Just start looking out there.
If you get one or...
Wait a minute.
Thank you very much, sir.
I have a little wine from Maine.
It's not a little self-serving, but I want knowledge.
I was very much part of it.
I was probably one of the greatest of all of our policies, even though he wasn't our secretary.
So I'm going to get a coffee or tea, coke or whatever you want to drink.
I'm going to get a tea.
T sounds great.
T is a communist virus.
I don't have anything to add on this, I'm sorry.
Go, go, go.
Oh, I had one about an hour ago.
There's a lemon.
And I thought I had a long drink.
Thank you.
You know, Russell and Walter, you know, you see those young people now, and you've got to be with them.
Yeah, right.
Tell them to come now.
Get them to come.
But maybe that's just a child.
And I think the really good context, what they are trying to tell us, and by that, me, is that they're against this war.
My answer to them is, I'm against this war.
Let's see where I am.
I have a debate because of my background, which is Quaker, against all wars.
And that's why I am trying to end this war in a way that we will have a reasonable chance to avoid other wars.
That's what the issue is.
The issue is not me against this war.
God knows this country hasn't won any war.
World War I, World War II, Korea, and this is where it started.
We only went there after the others came in, right?
In any instance, the United States has come to the aid of other nations whose freedoms strapped.
Now, we may have done it wrong.
We may have botched it.
We may have done things that are wrong.
But our motives were right.
So at the present time, let's not have any debate about who's against this war.
The question is, who is going to have the perspective and, frankly, let me say, the guts to speak the truth so that we end this war in a way that may avoid some other wars.
Because it would be so easy.
So easy.
Well, on January 21st,
Russell, 1969.
I could have walked into this office, Kelly was here, and I could say, we're heading to work.
The anonymous Johnson and Kennedy got us in, and we're getting us out.
Everybody would have been here.
And the communists would have marched in the sidewalk for about six months, and they would have slaughtered about a million and a half, too many Catholics and others.
And then the American leader said, why?
He said, why?
Well, everything that wouldn't happen.
So we're going to have to do it the right way.
And we are.
That's the other point.
We're going to be down 184,000 by December.
You realize that our cash was at 150%.
It wouldn't happen.
This week, there'll be less again.
And the point is that what we're really trying to do
God knows you, your heart goes out to these kids, particularly the families and others who the war is a horrible experience, particularly for those who are in it.
This country too often has ended wars and lost pieces.
By God, we're going to end this war with a peace.
That's what we're going to do.
So we're trying.
Let me say it.
We didn't have the support of what we have.
All of you will hear what I say.
My God, if we didn't have the support of Southern Democrats, we'd be down too right now, because we lose about 12 or 14 Republicans.
But Russell and his colleagues, and I know it's hard for you, because, you know, you should take the key card.
It's like all the rest, you know, some of your people.
Well, I can call the alpha fat who's in this.
You know, one time when we had this McAuliffe investigation, I can't make that check, because I'm...
I can't make that check.
And they wanted to put that McAuliffe here on television.
Now, they had McAuliffe alerted the president and said, I...
Well, I would not want to have my vote to put this thing on television because some of the
So, yeah, I voted out.
I think that is a straight vote.
And I know about the time Johnson told me, this is serious.
He said, you know, Russell, sometimes you have to vote to save this country even if it's not popular.
Mr. President, you didn't make this mess.
You didn't know you'd been a man of state.
I don't keep talking about the same people.
You can't appreciate that.
They don't have to.
They don't.
That's too bad.
You've got to do the right thing.
But who could possibly live, who could possibly make a decision that he consciously knew, after 45,000 armed and dead,
was going to turn the country over to the aggressors.
You can't do it in a contest.
You can't do it.
And also, who could make that decision with an old POW thing wrapped up?
So, well, tell me, how are you, how are we doing on our legislation?
You have a deal that we have the fate of adult killers over there, and we have the fate of the...
Well, let me say this.
Before you start, Elliot and I have some very good talk on this whole thing, but he has a question.
He should just come up and shoot us.
So say what you want.
Well, of course.
We can't very well, at least I can't pay attention on a bill that I haven't seen and one I haven't had a chance to study.
We have a chance to look at it, at least look at it, but we haven't studied it.
We haven't had a chance to look at it, not a chance to look at it.
Of course, I can speak for myself, I mean, I'm one of the
take a look at it and try to look at it with an open mind.
I'm going to vote for something to touch the people that's going to be selling the $7 billion, which is Kennedy's health plan.
And I think that'll be true of
enough of us on that finance committee where on the committee there's not going to be enough votes to report out of that candidate version.
Now, I don't think that you're going to have your public members on the committee vote.
Part of the committee is concerned.
The committee is not going to report candidates somehow now.
And I think what we'll wind up with, we voted 13 to 2, some type of catastrophic type thing last year.
I think that we'll wind up with something that
I think I should just have it like this thing.
I think we'll find out that it was something to try to, somewhere within the catastrophic thing, this thing is existing, it can be made workable.
Now, I haven't seen how you're going to make the mechanics of the plant and the site where it's at the value of eight fit together.
So would you guess what I did?
You did a fine job, didn't you?
That's all of it.
It's a fact.
It's just to see what the facts are.
That's the only part of it.
These people don't know all that stuff.
They don't know all that.
But you see the facts.
The way you know it.
How can you be for such a thing?
How can you be for such a thing?
You know, I mean, we can all be for various proposals, but everybody knows that if you slap that kind of a bill on this country, it is not going to cost us anything.
You know what it would do to medical care in this country.
They're not around the world where they've got that kind of decision.
I mean, I don't think, I mean, I don't think the doctors, I mean, I don't think, well, I'm sick.
I just don't want the bill paid.
I want to go to the doctor.
And that's what these cops want realized, right?
Well, the doctors all over the place, they still get the public thinking somebody's going to get something for nothing.
I'm not even sure what it's going to cost a working man to get the benefit of all this.
Of course, if I can tell you that, the one thing that nobody doesn't come up with, even the report that says about $77 billion,
There's a cost to that on the low side, because I don't think there's any way you can crank in a computer what experience you've demonstrated.
And that is that when you get to, for example, take the Medicare cost, they have to make a plan for the cost.
And that can put on 20% take care of intentions.
Will not.
In 1975, that's just a few years from now, that thing is going to be costing what is probably going to cost five, probably going to cost five, it's going to be costing seven billion more, that's how I call it, it's going to cost almost 160 or 170 percent more than that, than that time.
And you pretend to have a few more years and it shows, about 1990, it showed up costing four times as much.
So they didn't put in the fact that when you get enormously increased demand through the government, for free, people are going to demand a lot more than they would if they had to pay for it.
And so they got psychiatrists in.
But they do have mental health care.
How about contact lenses?
I don't think so.
I think that's another interesting thing is the fact that plastic surgeons are not
But I think it's going to be added, though.
Contact lenses, you'll have all that work.
All of those are great things.
I mean, really.
You can take a little work and you can say, look, honey, you know, if you could only have contact lenses and be with a lot of strangers and if you have to wear glasses, and then if you could only, you know, get your teeth straight, you know, with a lot of pretty people.
And most of us have gone through that.
That's okay.
So is it right for the people of your country to have that with people before?
I don't know.
That's where he goes to.
I don't know.
We've got a company that's vouching long.
You know, the New York Stock Exchange went up 15% points last Friday.
I'm sure it's because contact lenses are in the candy doll.
I'll pay it later on.
I'm kidding.
Or they think it's going to be it.
They have a big guy in contact with.
But it's a long road.
I tried to text you this morning.
in his opening remarks, the history of underestimation of Medicare, which was sort of a curtain breather for every interest candidate.
I hadn't realized that.
It was back then, too, wasn't it?
That was also a long time ago.
Yes, sir.
In the National Health Program, Mr. President, did you remind me of the way the engineers go about it?
Maybe I was down by it, but if they blow something down, they do all these computations, the slide rule.
Tell me this, what's the attitude of your committee, if you give me a little rundown, on the Kennedy bill?
Well, I haven't even asked Irving Townsend, because Irving Townsend, I think I can guess.
I say that because some of you at the computer study on Big Sound, I guess they said, I think I was, how other senators voted relative to you.
And McCulloch voted more like that than Irving Townsend.
He and I voted the same.
More often, he did his own quality.
He didn't take a card from George and used the vote of a man from George in his life.
And I thought it was what he did more often, uh, that little melons.
I thought he got at least a little taller than the principal.
Well, I think that's because he pulled the same attitude as I did, but...
I said it about, yes, yes, yes.
I thought he was very, very smart.
But he, he's very, but I'll slice it right in there.
I, I, I think he had a very, he's really had common sense with what a pretty, pretty man.
Now,
So, I want to make it a slight comment before we get to that, and to not slide it down to the president before we get to that.
Now that, now... Is he on the plan, sir?
Yes, I'm here for it.
So, all right, now, you really don't need to go beyond that and say, well, all right, we'll take that vote, plus Senator Cody, and that's 10 votes.
And so it cannot...
The only man on our side that's going to give me trouble is a fellow named Jack Miller.
He'll amend it.
He'll amend it.
I don't think Jack will go all the way.
He'll want to put a few things in the middle.
Write him an amendment.
That's a legend.
He's going to say it as well.
He's a judge.
He loves to amend.
He's a lawyer.
We used to have one, George McKinnon, a wonderful guy.
We have a lot of things going on for us in this, and one of them is I think that the house, I'm just guessing, the house,
I don't think it's a surprise.
I'd be amazed at how it's not to send us a candidate-type bill.
What's your reading on that?
Well, did you know?
Did you?
Jack, you're good to go.
No, that's not a candidate-type bill, neither.
The bill.
Yeah.
This is a very solid.
Yeah, this is a ruler bill, and you asked why candidates don't.
Oh.
It's a labor authority.
And, uh...
I don't think the marketer has a chance to get out of that committee.
No chance.
Well, Kenny spelled out his presentation today.
I think about eight cases.
That would be the defense would be covered.
At least eight cases of defense of crime in each of them.
Now, one of them is just a general case.
Another one is a veterans type thing.
Veterans pay $5 a month.
Well, that's the
better if they didn't take care of it.
I find that all the interviews are better than most of the things.
Did you take all the rest out of them?
And it worked out to be plenty that fall within this catastrophic yielding process.
At least I put it into the majority one.
Why don't you ask the question?
Did the department price all the county bills?
Yes.
$77 billion.
$77 billion.
Not only that, but I mean it.
First of all, here.
First of all, it is $74 billion.
I also thought in the record today that the effect of this would be to triple
the federal tax price for health on the average household, and the further fact that although Kennedy's program increases taxes by an amount corresponding to 9% of payroll, it is still underfinanced by about $18 billion in the first year.
It's not a convention.
There's not a point to be made there.
I really wasn't clear about it until I heard it.
But that's the fact there wasn't a convention.
Well, I heard it's old and it's complicated.
Do you have a good committee attendance?
That's important.
We're heading for a strike.
Well, I didn't tell you how many we had.
Well, it was only two matters.
I'm thinking, number one, you were putting that to Mrs. President.
You were there.
I did.
If I were you, I'd be looking for about four holes in the different sides of the hour.
You had two of them there.
And you were talking about the first person.
I'm not sure what it is.
I don't know what account it's in.
I don't know what account it's in.
I think Jack will come down on the right side.
After all, Jack Miller's from Iowa.
And also, he's a sound man.
He's a sound man.
He'll come down.
There is another problem.
I don't think it's serious, but before this bill was introduced,
Senators Hanson, Jordan, and Curtis, I think, which got tied up with the American Medical Association's MediCredit bill.
And we've got to find some kind of a way to show that the two are approximately equal.
The same general approach, and we may have to do a little chittering back and forth,
That's the AMA's bill.
When I decided, or when I told Senator Hanson that I was going to introduce your building,
He said, well, sure, I'll go on it.
Will you go on Medicare, Bill?
So I did, and he did.
So he's the sponsor of your bill.
But this indicates to me that behind the scenes, there probably has got to be a little bit of finagling so that the AMA can indicate that it may have had some influence.
Well, in fact, one of the suggestions for the Senate concern
I don't think so.
I don't either.
All right.
If you're in a position, and I think that you ought to be, to be somewhat flexible about this thing, where you can consider somebody's suggestions about the matter.
I think it would be very worthwhile to have Rivercroft down here if they want to talk to him about the health thing.
And the idea is, though you're not down here to sell a mule, you want to get it.
And I think it's entirely possible that, as you said, Microsoft might support your program provided that you receive any point of view on some aspects that he thinks are important.
They are not going to get all of them together if they've got that man speaking the other side.
So it's very important.
And it really, in other words, get his ideas and maybe get his support or something of a good portion of what he's trying to do.
Well, but I would like to suggest, I admire what he's doing, but I think you might go back.
Well, he's been a former secretary.
I talked to him, Mr. President, and he gave me a message.
Yeah.
He was not unreceptive.
He was...
You talked about it considerably.
I think the fact that you're keeping the private insurance industry in here, and the fact that you represent Hartford, I mean, of course, of course.
So I think you like the idea of the private insurance involved, but I don't write at all.
I have a question today that I just want to bring to the point.
Your question to me today was designed to bring up the fact that there were
discrepancies in the benefits under the family health insurance plan on one side and the mandated coverage on the other.
These come about, in fact, because of cost considerations.
And further from that, it might be possible to get support for a approach that involved some of the family health insurance coverage.
which is a dollar concern primarily.
I think on the merits of this good, you would be set for it.
But that is the kind of thing that we'd be interested in.
Well, now, the thing that has occurred to me, if we're going to have private insurance people do this thing,
And that may be a good way to do it.
That may be a good way.
We want to keep it to the minimal cost, of course.
And to do that, you want to keep your overhead low income.
And you want to avoid building up.
a large amount of reserves that would not have to be built up if you were handling it directly under your own social security program because the reserves that have to carry for this ordinary private person would also have to be large enough that you could just raise the tax to take care of the situation.
And so, to get the maximum amount, it would seem to me that
at some point, that these carriers would
would be, well, if I hadn't, perhaps a lawsuit would farm to carry, to put all this thing on one central computer, or to have one, one company, or one, well, let them have a consortium if they've got an owner company that would put down what a person's entitled to nationwide, not an owner, owner of a fraction of it, rather than have one company carry it down to the island until the other company carries something.
We have to keep it up with all the records.
Now, that's just one thought that occurred to me that might help to improve the administration of that program.
That really helps keep one of them on it.
For example, if there's a time market down in Indiana on 3% or 2% of the stock,
and a copy which in terms of sounding the overall thing, it might very well help to read the book, you know, and to make it much easier to remember on a nationwide basis.
In fact, one thought occurred to me that he was going to keep the records in the park, but I didn't remember, so I decided to be followed by him.
But that seems to be enough.
But he had dreaded me.
But in fact, the records aren't being on this place.
This is a dangerous city.
May I make a comment, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. President, you still have the... You want him to tell the truth?
He had a blue cross, a blue shield in the picture.
which is not a private insurance.
They're theoretically non-profit.
I guess it's actually non-profit, but to cover their costs, so they have to have a little more.
And then, I would like to make another suggestion, since Senator Long isn't here and can't hear what I'm about to say.
I hope when we get down to the nitty-gritty of the thing we'll find some way to work some of his ideas about catastrophic coverage into your pack so that we've had the advantage of his thought on that and he becomes interested in the catastrophic
He has had a real input into the cash profit side of this thing.
I think that would make you very happy too.
Unless I have no input.
Possibly the PSRO then, which is carried over also from the other business.
The PSRO comes up.
Part of this is the peer review, Mr. President.
Doctor, what's going on with the doctors?
Make sure they don't leave the program.
I just had the courage and the courage to write to all these doctors and they're all boring and easy to read and
And they have to finally line up the committee, and he's right about that.
For a long time, they just haven't been on it.
So they're going to go to Walton League, for example, and put out a whole banner now.
But that's something that had to be done.
The defendant calls this thing back.
We've got most of the way around.
We were able to work it out last year.
We're saving ourselves.
The other thing, too, is this.
with the doctors, the medical professionals.
I had attended them for 10 years.
And I said, oh, I'm a good doctor.
I'm just somebody who paid the bill.
They have been so blind for so many years, that's why they are now reaching the world.
Now, by God, they have got to come in and support a reasonable bill.
They've got to.
Or they're going to get it.
Right?
They'll have to come in and hear something worse.
This is what's going to happen.
That's right.
They're going to have to do it.
That's what they have to realize.
I was trying to say, the devil that has abandoned the church to the world, though,
which Hanson has put in, and on which he testified this morning between Kennedy and me, is the ANA bill.
But you couldn't finance health insurance through tax credits.
And for people who don't pay a tax, it would pay the proportion between whom they can't pay.
And if they had no tax at all, the government would pick up the tab.
The part of the problem is, as Wallace said, is to figure out how to mesh that in.
It's a different approach, really.
And in federal funds and tax funds, it's considerably more expensive.
It costs, according to testimony of Senator Hanson this morning, a certain figure that we've seen before, $14.5 billion.
We, I don't see, looking at it from where I sit, and looking at other competing claims, in the health field itself for that matter, without reference to education or the, we're all reformed, actually, there's actually too much.
And I think we have arrived at a,
a combination which, in effect, leaves the responsibilities for insurance for most people where it is, the private sector.
And beyond that, deals with the problem of poor people and the tax cases.
I think we can put aside, then the problem comes, the problem of how to.
to accommodate the best features of these various approaches.
They both contain the use of the private insurance sector, which is the common ground from which I think you can build.
But I strongly urge you, Russell, that you use your hearings.
And I feel it's so important to use them for the purpose of education.
The country needs to get educated on these subjects now.
Now let's face it, if you take a vote right now, if you were to poll people, they'd give you the candidate bill.
The reason is that people went, the doctor's cost is too high.
Everybody says, oh gee whiz, why shouldn't I have it?
Wouldn't it be great to have free medicine?
That didn't used to be the case 20 years ago.
But you know, there's been a great erosion of self-reliance and all that sort of thing.
Now, there is nothing like a good, extended Senate committee chair over a period of time to get some of that education across.
That doesn't mean a lot to all of us, but there needs to be an educational process going through here.
because he just said, gee, just throw up our hands, it's gonna cost 76 billion dollars.
That may, to the average person, 76 million is no different from 76 billion.
He can't comprehend either one.
He can't even comprehend maybe even 76.
Six dollars.
But the point is that this Kennedy event is an atrocious bill, not only because of its cost, which of course is not political, but because it completely destroyed the private insurance system.
I would have to destroy the medical profession.
Well, Mr. President, the reason I said I told you I was gonna do that thing today, you called and invited me in to come testify with Bill today, and invited the television cameras to make themselves available, I think they probably waited a few more than him, I'm happy to say, but the reason I scheduled that thing for the day was because this is the day the team for Congress arrives in town.
I think that would be a good time for us to have something to talk about.
They won't get it the first time.
I think it's so important.
The country needs to hear it.
You know, this is really for the benefit of the country.
We can't talk about
Gee whiz, you know, whether you're going to have a welfare program with or without working for it and so forth.
And so that'll make a difference one way or another.
This is a new God.
We start down this road.
We'll never turn back.
And I didn't know he could.
One thing, Mr. President, the committee's questions brought out today that I had tried to analyze in the case of the Kennedy program, and one thing the hearing brought out more sharply than I had ever heard before in repeated statements by Kennedy was that he proposes to use the device of establishing
through a national budget for health and appropriation ceiling, a lid on, as he put it, he used the word lid several times, on health expenditures and to force efficiency in the economy through the appropriation process will now, if you say it fast, it sounds all right, but the minute you begin to think about what is involved in the determination nationally and centrally
of a dollar amount like that, which then forces you down into the budget of every single hospital in the United States.
Well, every single doctor's office.
What do they do?
What do they do?
You can't have a list.
You tell these guys, it's like, well, it's like weight, price, control, and the economy, right?
Well, if you divide it by three parts, and then when everybody, when they run out of money, they...
Think about what kind of centralized mechanics you would need to arrive at that kind of a dollar figure from year to year.
And not only would you have to be able to determine the dollar figure, but you would also have to determine centrally how much you were going to turn the screws.
In effect, how much you would like to underfund what you had centrally determined to be the aggregate cost.
And this would mean, therefore, that you would involve federal government centrally
in a process of action over costs and charges, and the part of every health provider in the United States.
And no system has, you know, I mean, it's one thing to undertake, as Medicare does, to reimburse costs or charges, allowing the market to determine what those are.
It's quite another thing to use a federal mechanism
to, in effect, to hold down the processes by which costs and charges are otherwise determined.
And, of course, if you don't screw the lid down very hard, then the costs rise at an expanding rate because of the increased demand
which itself derives from this proposed system.
If you do, then how do you do squeezing the lid down?
And the more the pressures in turn are focused on a central authority.
And this is an alien to our way of allocating resources.
You know, there's another point, too.
Look what it does.
to look what it does to any new breakthroughs.
Now, for example, it's much cheaper to treat pneumonia without penicillin.
They die, of course.
But on the other hand, penicillin costs a little money, right?
Now, so is everything.
So doctors tell us, take tuberculosis, probably the cheapest way to do it is like they used to do it, where the patient just takes bed rest and then dies.
And now you give them some sort of a deal and they get over it.
And so all of these things.
Let's suppose you find a new cure to cancer.
It's terribly expensive.
Probably going to be, who knows?
Maybe it's going to be very cheap for the poison.
All of the new things involve new costs.
One of the reasons medical care has increased is that, look at all the things we do, x-rays, the kinds of treatments that we provide these days.
I was just kidding a moment ago about what we do with regard to plastic surgery, face lifting, contact lens, and so forth.
But on the other hand, well, that will be at this program.
The point is that there are breakthroughs in medical science
that would be completely, completely suppressed by any kind of absolute sin.
You're simply, you're simply putting yourself in the straitjacket of the present system and the present level of medical care.
What do you mean?
I think that's right.
Or the other thing I think could happen, Mr. Christensen, is that you can go to two levels of care.
Oh, yeah.
The person who needs it, that has the money, will have to go out and pay the doctor a little extra to give to you.
And that's exactly what happens in the private sector.
Oh, that's right.
This doesn't take care of everybody.
It's the private sector.
to tell all these, what is that?
Well, people resent the fact that they have this, they get $5 worth of pay, $7 worth of service, and so they take a $5-type doctor, they go out and get a $7-type doctor, and pay the other $2 themselves, and then they go back to their union and say, the next time I'm going to be getting a $7 worth of care, and so it just bolts it up right out of the way.
So this is how many people, Jim, are in unions.
Well, 85% of the unions are so much behind is that we'll give them an automatic 5% to 10% increase in wages because the government's going to start paying the salt cost and then on top of that, they're going to waste that.
So that's what you mean, Mr. Foreman?
Well, we understand that they can be for it.
My gosh, that's totally wrong.
You can't let this sort of thing come.
The best thing, no you can't do it with nothing.
It seems to me that we've got a good bill.
I don't ask you to say that.
But there are many parts of ours that are good.
It's the right approach.
It builds on the private system.
It builds on the private insurance.
If you like, if you have some questions on the catastrophic side, I understand.
I think the idea of river quality in this next one.
But do it after.
We'll find out what, you know, what he wants to talk about.
But I think if you like, we'll bring an operator in.
In the meantime, we would like to go back to work with Russell and you and your office member here.
Leaving both of you, of course, with the independence that you have to do as the chair and the member.
But we strongly believe we've done a great work.
We really do.
And I think the other one is a disaster.
And yet, with enormous political appeal.
I don't underestimate the political appeal of the White House.
You know, the all-union guys from here get an 80% wage increase just like that.
And I remember a guy told me last year that he was very reluctant to vote for the Kevin Trump.
And I just know that it's a fact.
That really doesn't pay for it.
He said it.
And he just wanted to go.
He said he wanted to go for...
a much larger program.
And he figured that, in fact, he really honestly thought that if you voted this catastrophic thing, it would kill the prospect of having the larger program.
Frankly, I have felt that if you take out the best cases, the cases of crying deed and New Lemon down, where they're talking about paying them out $200 or $300 or $400 medical bill, which
I would say the budget would save money, but then again,
that 3%, many times, more than most people pay off medical expenses during the year.
And so that if you put them on a basis where your best case is taken care of, I mean, the crime need cases, one of those is the territory situations, that they wouldn't have too much to go on with their bill now.
But I don't think that he has tied himself to that belt.
And if he wants to find out, I believe that we can muster it up both to defeat that Chinese thing and pass on something else.
Even if River's off, it's not good.
But I think that
that it would be about 10 volts stronger if it's all on the floor or on the ceiling wall.
And he's a very respected guy and would make it respectable for the liberals to draw him.
That's the point.
Now, I think you ought to keep one thing in mind also, Mr. President.
It's
I'm sending these southern lawyers down, the fellows who've stayed with you and helped you when you need them, that you've been treated in appropriations, that they've been working with us, I think ought to tell you this, because they're very much concerned, frankly.
I am physically moved that the fellows who have been with us, when you sign one of these things into law, you ought to feel something of a moral commitment to go ahead and do it.
So once again, it's a fair compromise today, because I'll tell you what, with John Dennis, what's the opinion on that?
And with Southern College, he said, well,
Well, I think it's very compromised.
If we pass a law over the president's veto, and he still doesn't think he ought to spend it, then he ought to be privileged to refuse to spend the money.
But if he signs the law, he ought to feel the commitment to go ahead and spend it.
If we send it down here to him, and the law wasn't it, and we think he ought to sign the law, this is a problem.
Let me say we're hearing from a lot of our Republicans, too.
And John, I've asked you to help Dr. Schultz examine these cases on a case-by-case basis and so forth.
It's a tough one.
And let me say, I tell John Stannis and the rest, I couldn't, I completely, I would sit down and have you raise an analogy.
And we, I mean, it's kind of my way to do it.
Well, Mr. President, I'm going to tell you that for three reasons.
The way Lyndon Johnson used to advise his crowd, he told his own, yes, I do, I'm out here.
If you pass a law and you press more to that side, a lot of people won't do anything about it.
The only thing I ought to do is just to vote against anything that you can defend, vote against.
If you say you're going to vote for something, you've got to vote for it.
But then vote against anything that you're privileged to vote against.
until he realizes that that's something that he's just not doing right.
Or until he sees it to a way.
Now, if that's how Johnson used to advise his Democrats and his friends, so when I say that, he finds himself saying,
And so I think what you ought to do, once we can agree on this,
come together on something.
Water can support and ice can support.
We can support out there.
We ought to be getting the two Louisiana Lopes, McClellan, East, Stennis, Spalmer,
the two Georgia votes, so two North Carolina votes, and at least one of those two Virginia votes, and at least one of those two votes, let's say Bob heard out of West Virginia, and some out of Texas.
And the other arguments should be over with us.
And so we ought to be standing in there with a lot of...
Oh, 15, I said, 15 and 16 Southern Volts.
And, uh, it's in the water to take goats, and that plus a couple of conservatism outside, uh, uh, fellas who live on the water, and a couple of fellas who tend to decide that.
And we all have 18 goats or so, uh, maybe 20 on our side of the island.
But, uh, then that's fine.
We're about to go and get a big bunch of confections on your side of the island we're running into on occasion, but...
I will undertake, if it's all right with you, I'll undertake on a personal basis to talk to the normal defectors and see whether they are involved and see how far they are involved in these things.
Some of them ought to be with us on this.
Just say once.
Just set your hand and go to the other.
Well, I would think that the insurance for Kennedy, as well as the medical,
The medical association should have learned by now what happened in that Medicare fund.
If they just mess around here and miss this opportunity, what are you going to do?
And that decision could go unresolved.
They ought to have their heads examined.
They'll be very, very foolish.
Now, I told that group of luncheon jobs we were going to run against Barry Goldwater that we could make a compromise of that Medicare-issued top between Mills and myself and his group and I.
We could bring back out of a conference between the, that's the old Anderson, King Anderson, Bell and Lee,
with nothing, the House had really come back with something that those people could live with.
Paradex of government insurance programs.
And every action was not no, but hell no.
They weren't gonna have any.
I said, you people must be crazy.
I said, why haven't you got a chance to win that election?
All the polls have shown it.
Nowhere.
You'll carry my statement and make up just a few more.
He ain't got a prayer to win this election.
There's no way he can win it.
And after this thing's over with, then you come back and Harry Johnson will have a mandate to pass that fool thing.
And, uh, when I said at that time, your friend Scott, for example, said, well, you were, you were right.
What you said was about, I said, right, Dr. Angus, so they didn't have to admit that it was true.
That's all part of it.
They, they had a fair compromise at that point.
At that point in time, they were just completely out of business.
And those people passed up that chance.
Well, I didn't give them the chance to get, to get something written into the statute books about helping you and what you were president.
They don't get their response.
So they don't have the capacity to be true, to be very true.
The difficulty is, of course, that they all say, oh, well, this is so level.
But actually, by God, they better take a look.
We've had pretty good, we've talked to them a lot.
They've come a long way.
I think they would be, I think if we could
I think they're prepared to support a reasonable bill.
Let me ask about one other thing briefly, or just not ask, just state something.
I hope you would have noticed.
We have modified our welfare very, very substantially along the lines of the points that were raised in your Committee of Securities.
And we think, in other words, on the work requirement and all that sort of thing.
And I hope you'll probably hold that chance to look at it, but I think it's a much
It's a bill now that, let me say, answers a lot of the questions that John Williams raised, and Frank, you raised, and a lot of others, and some on our side, too.
Well, they're very strong, and they visited John.
But we feel we've done real work in my job.
I've asked all the employees over there to really take care of you.
We took your hearings, actually.
Every argument they raised was to close those loopholes.
And we think we are pretty well equipped, to be frank, Jeff.
I think we did it.
Practically every one of us.
I told the Chamber of Commerce that today, at least.
I don't know whether they can hear you.
Well, it's an accurate statement.
Well, it's my point of view.
All the hearings in the Senate, Lance, both of them were public hearings, and one was raised on the floor.
Look at each issue.
We have some, of course, the housing thing is still a little problem.
We'll get that in the housing act.
My wife read what you said to the governor, and she said, well, why don't you two get together with the mayor or the president and say exactly the same thing you just said?
And I reacted well so far.
I understand you're going to get those people to work.
Now, if we can get together on something where we're paying people to work rather than paying them not to work, I'll be enthusiastic for it.
I know you're concerned.
Well, to tell you the truth, I've been concerned about this, too.
It was all you can tell you and all this.
Finally, you're developing this problem of, frankly, what you're really trying to do is to find a way that that guy on welfare hasn't been saying, get off of welfare, get his tail and do a job.
And as I say, any job.
This crap about the fact that I don't do meaningful work.
I've done every people job there is, believe me.
I think, probably you've done a few over your time, right?
I mean, have you ever worked in a service station or getting beans or any of that sort of thing?
You've done a few things, I love it.
So people have to, and we've got to lay down the same total.
We've got to have some incentives in there, and that's really what this whole thing is about.
I think you're going to find that we've got some pretty good requirements in there.
One big thing you're going to have to do if we're ever going to have a successful program is to identify the father of these children and the use of that process that can be adopted.
to make that fellow work and then to take out his check, some reasonable amount, to contribute to the support of that county.
And, uh, now, I've been well informed, quite a while from here to Adobe City, it might help to solve the problem if you treat these people a little worse, whether or not they die.
and you treat people who are not .
And so that you, for those that you might go ahead and provide the nicest kind of living, but a lot of people, whether they're a man or a father or children somewhere, my thought is that
We ought to find that man who ought to make it to the mother's bank to adopt by him.
And then, even if you don't make five cents out of it, if the expenses of the lawyers and what you give the mother out of it, they eat up everything you make, if you're still going and seeing his check and thinking about it,
Well, let's say it turned out over the support of the mother of those children and the children.
You're making those people contribute something to support their own children.
Among the working people, there's a key problem here.
I was right all the time, Kennedy, and spoke against his medical plans, the American Federation of Labor meeting in Louisiana.
And, of course, he had to go to lock in that convention for the medical plan, but I spoke on his welfare anyway, so I had to.
And there was old Nate Gold in that audience there, and I said, it's not fair to let one man put his children off on the tax payer to support while the other comes out there working for them, and that's to support his children plus the other man's children's tax money.
You know, Nate Gold's appalled at that.
But they don't know what we're trying to do with the bills.
I said the day that I was in the chamber, and I was trying to list their support, but they don't realize it's a modification.
I made the point that you just can't have any kind of a system which makes it more profitable for a man not to work for the work.
You just can't do it.
Keep in mind something that you've been pointing out yourself.
The injustice of one man pushing his woman and children off on society to support those children, while the other fellow has to pay the taxes to support that family, plus work to support his own family.
It's just not fair.
If we can devise a way to make that final event, make them pay us to put their own children, that would be an awesome topic with 90% of the people, 95%, it's only that small percent that are robbers and that won't like it.
Let me come in and see if we need some changes in here.
Would you mind looking over the changes?
These are changes that I asked for.
That's what it does.
That's what it does.
It makes the tax collector take out a gas check.
And I said to him again, why don't you just whittle it down and change it, whittle it down to the floor right along with it.
Well, that's what I said I'll do, and Wally was both thinking, well, I appreciate it, because Wally Marks puts responsibility back.
He's got some guys on our side, like Carl Kurtz and others, that are deeply concerned.
They were against him.
Remember when we had a man here, we couldn't get the vote, and he was trying to get in the ice truck.
And what do you report?
I said so.
The point is that now, that was last year, but now we've got a different situation here and we really want to work something out here.
We have the same sentence.
It's a question of how you get at it.
You don't have to tell these people what you refer to.
Finding that, you know, father's watching children and runs off, finding and putting responsibility on it.
This ought to be done, too.
But if you take the guy to care, he's black, white, yellow, whatever he is, he is cute.
He sits at home and he works his butt off and has to take care of four or five kids.
And then his nephew, the one that has the withholding from his tax, and he's taking care of the other guy and welfare next door, the food stamps.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
They're working.
They're working.
I'm not taking 50 big lawyers and see how they go over.
Call some of them that are working each other up and cheer each other up.
When you take the approach that the president was to say something, to help some fellow who's working hard but not making enough to work, he can live in his time of decency, but if he is not going to pay for these people who
refuse to get elected on their own behalf, or call them to tax payers to carry out a case.
This woman who works with me, she says she had a bad back, and she does housework every day, and she just hopes I don't let them take her tax money and spit it out.
Those people she sees around her neighborhood, visit and visit, sit around and have multiple beggars refuse to work.
You've always had, you have now, very good communications and good support in the neighborhood.
What really counts is jobs.
What really counts is understanding the Civil Rights Act.
Basically, what we really come down to is if you talk to
It's jobs, it's schools, it's all the other things that everybody else wants.
What does it mean when an individual, when he has the right to live in a nice, beautiful, suburban community, he doesn't have a job that will allow him the ability to buy the damn house, right?
So the job is important, and this is where we come in.
The jobs, you really come right down to it, from what I have seen.
except for the liberal activists, that the average Negro is like the average Chinese.
He thinks in terms of, I want a job, I want a good school, I want an opportunity.
Sure, as far as the housing and the rest of it, everything is consented.
He wants to have a chance to go any place he wants, but he may not want to live in the white camp.
but he's got to have a chance to do what he wants.
That's really important.
Or don't force him.
He's tired of sociology and law.
He wants to be an economist.
As an economist, as a grandfather, let me just tell you how I find this issue on this welfare bill as far as it goes.
I find it picking people's audiences.
So I figured that when you talk against this welfare business, you might be against them, which makes it wild to just go right to the Negroes in the audience, right to the Negroes.
And to try to get the American Federation to believe that I was a part of the Negro citizens in this audience.
I'd like you to pardon me to address myself explicitly, but to our fine Negro citizens who are so well represented here.
Now, you people have had...
have worked harder and had less to show more down through the years than anybody.
And you're entitled to a better rate than you've been getting.
Now, any good Negro leader here, or a big boy, any welfare program, if it's a good welfare program, because good is no, on the average, the average Negro citizen needs it worse than the average white citizen does, even though you have more whites on the whole, because you have more numbers.
But if I essentially told them,
that is as good reason why that it is not a good welfare bill, every good Negro leader here would be against it just as much as every good white leader would be.
Now let me be clear why I don't think this is the how it ought to be.
And it's not yet what I think it ought to be.
Now, if you put it to them that way, that you're speaking expressly to them, that you don't think this is a good bill, from the Negro point of view,
take the issue right directly to them.
That you're not ducking it.
That you're not looking at the point of view of a Negro leader.
The people who are leading the Negro race in the future, the people who are changing for rights for their people after all these years, should they be for it?
And so if you put it directly to them on that basis, then they won't be allowed to disarray the issue.
But you've got to direct yourself directly to the Negro audience with that issue.
And if you did it, the whole world would go to them or against the concept that these people get that money is not working.
Does that matter?
And all over the place, I'll tell you, those...
I had a speech at a whiskey store in this country that said, Jim, and old Johnny down there, you know, I dropped down and walked up, and he said, starting to fight that thing, he said, he said, don't let us put these people on the welfare of that work.
You see?
Negro work.
Yes, sir.
They used to have sweets there.
They're still there.
They had one Negro.
Yeah.
The kind of old folks.
The kind of people before that.
Yeah.
He was a good boy, though.
He was a good boy.
He was a good boy.
But Mr. President, if you could lay down here.
to where you use, may not want to use the concept of off.
Opportunity for families.
As you get the people off welfare and get them to work, I think you're gonna have the off program, you oughta accommodate that by the up program.
You had to move it up to improve their condition.
But it's off and up.
But if you just say off, you better come along because it'll be off.
There was his,
But if you move this thing on the basis that everybody can make himself a useful citizen, and that when he does, he can prove his connection, and he's also provided his children with that opportunity because he set them the kind of example that children want to follow.
So that, really,
If we resolve this thing to, if need be, provide some jobs in unification and pick up the trade, then once we have made that decision, we put it to an assessment.
That's one of the things we did clear.
Non-carbonate jobs, I understand.
Jobs that are transitional, right?
But jobs.
Well, the defining way to do it is to
to relieve the welfare burden is, of course, to have something where you are helping independent creditors create new jobs.
And I really think it's a more efficient way to do it with the EPA approach, but it's on providing jobs rather than with the tax credit people where the jobs are incidental.
A guy comes in and tells me, he's done a monitoring, he's got a fine construction program, a modernization program, but on $150 million, I say, well, how many new jobs are we going to get?
Oh, by the time we do, you'll have less because it'll be more efficient plants, but you'll produce more efficient.
But they use it as an ETA type of efficiency, but the jobs where they need it, in fact, even a fellow...
payable loan or loan guarantee or in some cases a grant which needs to get the thing started.
That type of thing actually makes the government money.
If you look at the fact, which is not on that book, but if you just look at it for a second, how much are you making by withholding on that grant worker's salary check?
Well, why didn't you be drawing your money down rather than putting money out?
If you take that into account, you make a fortune on the economic development type of program.
So that if you turn on one key, it puts people to work with a job deleted.
So that a fella can get a decent job and then the trick is to take the thing off and then you provide a lot of marginal jobs.
so that if you still have people looking for jobs, you can put them to the side.
And that's when the length of the bike is tight, the body's the marginal job, so that you can solve them something else.
So like the old seat, seat, seat thing, it served a purpose at the time, but it wasn't needed.
The body's huge, you can fake it out.
That, I think, would provide an opportunity to work.
People I know in this country, everybody has a car.
I want to provide an opportunity to work for them, but I really didn't think we'd ever get a hell of a start with this thing.
Well, these folks can be assured of a little of that work, and it's going to grow.
And you've got the National Welfare Rights crowd demanding $6,500 for five years.
And they tell me that the last time I looked at it,
I don't see how to speak to that convention.
I don't see how to do it.
Let me just say this.
I appreciate you coming down tonight.
We really want to work with you.
Whenever you feel the need, usually for a hundred meetings, you tell me.
Our people are here to cooperate.
And because in the end, Russell, I think he couldn't be more right.
This is the year to get that help, though, because these fellows better not play with the danger of having something else.
And also, this is the year to get the right kind of welfare, though, because otherwise, I'm just going to have the thing escalated.
Everybody's just going on the damn welfare.
It goes up and up and up.
So, uh, 45% increase in 19...
Right.
The only thing I can say after hearing, every time I see Russell, is you don't have to fight a focus on one side.
Let me say, I know all these other things are very important.
But the way you and your colleagues have stood up on this terrible before thing, I appreciate it.
But you don't have to do it.
Well, you deserve it.
We're all out there running around with these stuff like some of my Republican friends.
I understand it.
Well, you deserve it for a thousand and one reasons.
One of them is you deserve it.
Well, I doubt yourself better than anybody else.
Now I'm going to give you a gift.
Let's see what we're given.
I don't want that.
Thank you.
This is my attention thing right here.
You get cufflinks.
You got cufflinks.
All right, you get that too.
That's a keychain.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
That's just an audio game.
You worked an extra half hour.
You get cufflinks and a keychain.
I wonder if we've got something new.
No, these are for the girls.
You've got one for the wife or secretary.
And wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is a paperweight.
You see it as a seal.
It's the first President Trump ever made.
Now, I got a little news for you.
Whatever paper on your desk, it's a small paperweight.
But whatever paper, there's so much of it, that paperweight won't move.
Get rid of the damn paper.
That's good.
I never have a single piece of paper on my desk that I'm going to take to weight hanging.
You know, this was no obligation.
I'm going to be sure to let this, okay?
I understand.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.