Conversation 499-018

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Tell me how you're getting along.

He's already been married to business all his life.

Well, I tried.

Yeah, well, I heard about it a few months ago.

I started to pray.

I had a few comments about it.

Well, I didn't know about it.

I haven't cried over the country in quite a few more years.

But there's a theme that comes out of it.

I would like to play it.

I'm not a person to be sure, but I like to talk about it.

It's a great book.

One little ride in one that comes through this is a feeling of a rise in the business.

Well, Sanjay Mori said a story.

Were you in when I was meeting with Mori and you brought in that quadrillion and 150 things?

No, I didn't talk about this thing.

But you were in when you told me after your meeting down in New York.

That's right.

Well, let me see if I can anticipate it.

And express.

Did you hear much of that?

No, that's down in the environment.

Environment.

In other words, to consumers.

What else?

Well, those are the things that we don't buy.

IRS?

No, none of that.

I think the real thing that I see about this here, and I'm talking as your businessman to businessman here, is a feeling of isolation that they have with the administration, which creates this problem.

Also, secondly, the expressions that come out of the administration of the 60 businessmen are distinctly, for the most part, loyal to the administration.

They feel they've been isolated, and the result is these expressions that come out, which I think come out of not really understanding the problems, for example, climate change and all these sort of things, without having some kind of connection.

Now, business itself is not opposed to environmental or the antitrust, but they feel this, that before these kind of expressions come out from people, they should be friendly to them.

They should have some degree of clearance and some understanding of what business goes through.

Now, I think what it's done is created a lot of animosity in enemies.

To some degree, I think it's important to bring the people back.

I think one of the things we've been able to do in some of these meetings is to create an ability to ventilate feelings.

We had this last one in Detroit.

We had the, I don't know, it would have been all the rest of the supplier group on this thing.

And then the one in Toledo, the same sort of thing.

They feel, for example, that, well, let me give you just one illustration.

Chrysler had put in the consumer department, one of Nicholson.

They have 500 letters a day.

Now, what are the kind of responses they get?

20% of them, or 80% of the complaints are not up on environment and all these sort of things, but they're on the fact they can't get their car fixed cheaply or can't get good service.

Now, I feel this, that something has to be done here to create a better feeling and a better report.

and now have them feel that they're being persecuted.

The feeling of many businessmen is that they're looking upon what they're doing as a criminal act to put them in position of this.

And I think with what's happened, now the reason why this is so important, I think if it isn't, it inhibits what needs to be done in business.

Let me just give you just one illustration.

You know, some money has to be spent by business on, I call, the items which will increase productivity.

You know, the other thing that we have that comes out of this thing is the feeling that, of course, many of them feel they'd like to have investment tax credits so that they could spend money to be able to cut down on their man-hour situation.

With the increase in wages, they've got to do something to counterbalance that.

And the only way they can do that is by increasing their productivity, and that costs money.

And this issue is one of the important ones.

But I think if you take this harassment and the

People would, if we could create just a little bit better environment with business, have them not feel the spirit of isolation, and also have the feeling among the administration spokesmen, before they speak, the other leader, to think out what they're saying.

Not to give the impression to business that they're an enemy of business.

The business is a criminal.

They're doing something wrong.

Now, nobody, I'm not defending those people.

Who else?

Senator Percy.

You all spoke with Senator Percy.

John Rumsfeld has been with him.

Yes, sir.

Let me ask you this.

What is that other guy?

No, does that come next?

That's a 1250, isn't it?

I don't know, but this is what is exciting.

This is, I'm into the three young men.

What's that about?

Who's he supposed to be?

What's he supposed to be?

He's been meaning to hang this morning.

Returning from Russia this evening just to shake hands.

Who is this?

Gene Robb is retiring.

Yeah, I know.

key issues on this thing here is is the fact here that housing you're going to need the housing industry to really stimulate this economy yeah and what's got me worried from a whole cross-section of the housing industry that money rates are going to tighten up and let those money rates tighten up you're going to have a deterrent to demand for housing now this is something that i've commented on this morning and that's very uncertain about it i am too i do not believe in this

So take this line, well, because of the international dollar situation and everything.

Remember, it's all over .

I think this housing thing is so necessary.

I've totally found the minute the interest rates have started to stiffen, we're beginning to find some resistance on buyers on this thing here.

And I think this housing industry is one

Let me say that I would like for Max to get over anything and if you would do this, because Connelly has no field systems on him, I'd like for you to get it to Connelly.

Will you do that?

If you talk to Connelly about this.

Connelly, he won't need to be compared, understand?

But go over across the street and take five minutes.

and just say that you and I talked about it, and I mentioned it at breakfast this morning.

He mentioned the problem of the interest rate thing, and if we get the interest rate thing, Paul, if we get too bad, this economic downturn will be hitting the button.

Don't you agree?

Oh, I agree.

And in the face of our announcement, we're going to move up.

No, they're too down.

What's the matter?

Is the Fed tightening up with money?

There was a slight tightening in the last month.

I think it's important, Mr. President, if you could have, meet a group, a couple of groups of businessmen, an instructive group that we've done, groups in a small, medium, and large business,

just to give them some feeling of confidence on these particular issues that can be structured from our whole group of people we have.

We've been doing it, Paul has been doing it, of course, as your representative, and I've been doing it whenever I can.

But I think if we could pick out a couple of them, and you would spend 15 minutes with them, I think this could be very, very helpful, because the ripple effect of this thing would create a sort of confidence

So you've met with the business council, but the business council is really not all businesses.

You know, we have Jim Roach and Don McKenna, but I think the way we structure these meetings of eight or ten people have various industries, have a big company, a small company meeting, I think it would be very, very helpful for a couple of them.

It wouldn't be time-consuming.

We could say we'll have two of them in the next two or three months right at this particular time.

I think this could be very, very helpful.

Because we'll be meeting, Paul and I will be meeting in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, a couple in California, one in Chicago that we've set up.

But here are a couple of them here at the White House where you could just drop in 15 minutes just to hear a few comments on these things.

We'll get around enough.

But know that you're concerned about small business and medium-sized business, not just the problems that come out of the top on this thing.

But the first item on this thing here

I think this is so important.

I wrote you about this last May, about, I call it the harassment of the street.

I just want to say that one thing that you ought to always get across here is that

We're fighting a really offensive action against the Congress.

The Congress has gone crazy on consumerism.

I fight it all the time.

The Congress is crazy on this Soviet environment thing.

Take that airbag.

I had to knock that damn thing out.

We knocked the airbag out, that crazy seatbelt thing, you know, where it went black.

They knocked it out.

I killed that.

They don't know it.

They haven't been told it.

I mean, yeah, he knows.

He knows what's going on.

The airbag.

But you see, all these things, we'll catch hell now from the nuts and safeties and the environment thing.

Of course, it's a delay in action, but we do the best we can to fight it.

But it's hard to take with the Rebels House and people like that.

They figure they've got to carry out the law.

We try to keep them on a tight leash, and we will try to do better, because we are the friends of business.

But you know, another thing you have to remember, we can only be as frank as the damn Congress will let us be, Max.

And if they decide to go over, they'd kill them.

Well, my feeling is this.

That's one of the reasons I feel the meetings we have, I call it ventilation.

I don't know, I'd love it to ventilate their fever out on this thing.

Some of them feel better now.

The meeting we had at my home a week ago, I said, if I responded to where we had Henry Ford and John McArdle and Townsend out of town and the rest of the leaders of the automotive, well, they'd call back.

They felt better.

They said, well, they got off their chest.

I thought it was very constructive.

Of course, Henry Ford told me about his visit.

Yeah, we had a good time at Rochester.

They had the same thing.

So, but I think this, we need to get it down below.

The oil industry, the copper industry, from all of them, the steel industry.

Well, I know them all.

I think this is so important, especially in this next year.

Now, I don't hold any brief for those things that are wrong.

Oh, listen, look, I do.

I'd be perfectly frank with you.

I know that there's these attacks from the environmentalists and the consumers, and some of them are honest, but a lot of them want to destroy this system.

And high-interest, if that's all.

That's all I'll tell you.

I fight them all the time.

We're not for it, Max.

You understand.

We the demagogues think, look at this.

Musky, Humphrey, Teddy Kennedy, they're killing them.

You see, we're fighting all the time, and so, but I don't mind, because we're going to try to do it.

We're going to try to say what we're going to do, and we can't do it.

We can get some consideration in a couple of those meetings.

Oh, I definitely will.

I think it's an excellent idea.

We can do it in a period of time.

That's the new, that's the newest thing.

I always say to people, if you've got too much tape for your desk at that time, you can do one thing like this.

I'll send her something.

I'll be back.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks, sir.

I've got to go take care of your friend first.

You remember that?

That's me.

Yeah.

I'm going to check over on that.

Let's see.

That's the lady in the wrong room.

Okay, thank you.