Conversation 551-010

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We're going to catch you in a little while.

Well, you had a pretty good start, you know, say, after, you know, San Diego's a beautiful area, and, uh, it has all, uh, all possibilities of being married.

It's better to be turned into a soul.

That's the problem, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Well, what would you say to that, to that, to the mayor of San Diego, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a,

It's quite a bit surprising, so...

It's been a really great time.

A lot of great missions.

We've done a lot of great stuff over there.

There you go.

Thank you for taking care of us.

Thank you.

We're going to have an event in there.

I'm going to play that.

I have worked on it this morning again from the standpoint of getting balance into the staff.

on the moderate conservative side, describing the importance of it.

And I'm thinking what you could do is simply tell him face-to-face that you consider that important and tell him that you hope he can find his way here to rejoin us.

Now, whether he turns us down or not after that,

is not as important as the fact that you have paid the commission.

But why don't you sit here and let it go?

Sure.

All right, sir.

Oh boy, that's John Martin.

We've been sitting there watching your traffic.

Traffic, sir.

Hello, Martin.

All right, sir.

Great message, Eddie.

You've got a party to be done.

Who was it?

Those geeks.

Oh, those geeks?

Yeah.

We were here.

So what happened?

Apparently, they had a date.

Which you quite properly so as

a device for serving American foreign policy.

No, the situation is reversed.

Foreign trade must be used to serve American domestic policy.

And so that's the way the other governments of the world, not just the Soviets, but the totalitarian governments, particularly Europeans, the Japanese, we've got to get in the game.

So that's an entirely different view.

And these are going to have one hell of a time to respond to the state in some respects because

being market-oriented as I am, and you are, I think that's rather important, but I look back even to what we were saying a year ago in this trade area, and it's no longer relevant.

In other words, we want to go, you know, it wasn't, when it came in, got this thing up that we have to have a new round of reducing barriers and so forth, the trouble is we reduce, and they find very effective ways to do it to us.

Without appearing to have any tax, they've got all sorts of and so forth.

There's a sort of airplane that I found out that Douglas, they do Douglas flight.

I find that it's assembled only in California.

The wings were made in Canada because the damn Canadians wouldn't buy the plane unless we made the wings there.

And something else was made in Italy because of the fuselage, because they didn't buy it unless they made something there.

So they bought a few planes.

Something else, the Indians made someplace else, and they bought the planes.

And so what we ended up doing, not a damn thing.

Just putting it together.

It's quite a good plane, the damn thing.

Even the most ardent free enterprises admit that it's a two-way street.

Well, it's a two-way street, right?

But I'm not going to cheat.

That's not true.

They do not have free economies.

They do not work that way.

They don't take that whole leader-denial attitude to them.

It's called attorney, but we'll help you if you help us.

Now, that's not free enterprise, right?

That's not free trade.

So, yeah, I'm fine, but if they want to play the game, we've got to play the game, too.

That's all.

That's the way to get the barriers where you do this to them.

That's right.

Then they'll say, well, if they can finally learn that there's nothing in it for them.

See, if everybody plays this game,

and having not what we call NDPs, then they become irrelevant.

But if only a few do it and get away with it, then it means that those that don't play it get screwed.

I know that it's another subject that John's talked to you about, but let me say what I had in mind, and it may not be your personal plans, but I told John that I feel that

Our domestic staff, particularly since economics now is becoming, to particularly the economic side, could very well be the major issue for the 1972, that it needs balance.

Now, it needs, I don't mean by that, and you well know the idea that Erland is a flaming liberal and that all of his staff are and so forth is ridiculous.

The point is that the point of view, which is represented by what I would call the conservative thinkers, the responsible conservatives in the economic community, at least from public appearances, is not going to be represented.

And privately, in my view, as I've seen some of these presentations, I'm not sure that it is.

I think it is.

I think John tries to bring a balance in.

I heard it, of course, as I read it that way myself.

But even taking this whole field of reprivatization and frankly welfare, which we were chanting on with a hard look.

And again, in all of these areas, we have intended and intended to deal with the problems,

had a very, very substantial input from those who, well, they aren't really just witted at what we're presently doing, but on the other hand, their attitudes with regard to what we're presently doing are different marks.

Well, I'll give you a specific example.

A major issue that we have now is OBO's extension.

When I took the budget presentation two or three days ago, I said, well, they said, what we do is that the Senate's loaded it down

and so forth that you can't afford to be that expensive.

And I said, oh, no, we're not gonna do that.

I said, we're not gonna do that.

I've got to take a hard look at it.

I said, I think that the time has come.

We've got to get some time.

The time has come.

Stop the damn things.

Of course, you know, all the OEO programs, these are virtually all of them are now in special revenue.

Anyway, those are, we're in the dam.

The others should go out.

But it's simple what we want.

Then when we, so I said, all right, let's,

Let's just decide now that we will let the Congress load the bill and screw it up as bad as it can and then I'll veto it.

And it will be suspended and we'll have a clear-cut issue on OEO.

But then comes in some of the people who said, oh, we can't do this because that'll put 300,000 people on the list.

And you see what I mean?

I'm not going to have a fallacious argument put up on this.

I am not for illegal.

I mean, certainly.

What I'm getting at is that we now are in a position, as we prepare the 73 budget, you see, a budget which will never be enacted.

But as we prepare that, we're now in a position to take a look at everything we inherited in British society and make that an issue rather than simply going along as we did in the beginning.

you know, trying to clean them up here and there.

We started with the special revenue sheriff, which is, uh, which is, uh, does quite a job on these programs.

For example, uh, the, did you stop what you did in model cities?

No, no, no.

You really screwed that up.

Mark was in on the plot on that.

Well, the community action that, if you remember, when that came up, I remember my name was here, so we actually looked at the hill, why don't you keep them?

They said, oh, you can't go up because the cities will blow.

Well, so they'll blow.

I don't know.

I don't think it will.

I think it can be done personally.

And this is this.

And still have the issue.

Yeah.

I guess what I want to be sure we do, though, I want to get rid of the wheel.

I mean, it is a symbol of what we inherited, the poverty programs and so forth.

And an approach that I think is, we can't actually be as sustained.

Yeah, the argument can truly be made to threaten thousands of people.

Oh, it shall work.

It happens.

I said that.

That's right.

That's true.

And I don't want to beat you up.

And what are Republicans in the spot where they all can't do it?

Because they'll stand up on this thing.

Right.

Because if they owe $300,000, they're going to be out of work.

They'll inherit.

They'll override.

Just like that.

And also, it's a bad issue because we don't care about the unemployed.

Right.

This is the kind of thing that we're trolling with right now.

We're doing this one.

Well, it didn't vary a certain number.

Now, this education study that I wrote, I'm not satisfied with that, John.

It shows $6 billion is being spent.

For Christ's sakes, the trouble is it's all being spent in higher education subsidizing a bunch of goddamn socialists.

and others, you know, and MIT, for Christ's sakes, what are they doing?

They shouldn't even have a defense contract.

They don't believe in it.

They get more federal money than any other person I know.

They don't believe in it.

You want to trust them with a defense contract?

Why do we subsidize MIT?

I don't know why.

You have to open them up.

Maybe they're not as bright, but they can learn to be bright.

And maybe it's right, too.

I think they are.

Because brains without characters sometimes produces .

And the other thing, you've got that.

You've got education.

Health is one of the rooms.

That is one that we're doing well.

Thank God, at least we .

But where do the private enterprise stand?

We may make it work.

I don't know about transportation.

That's a pain in the ass.

It's a management problem.

It's bad management.

Just in the clubs, right?

Volpe is a great political asset.

And they're full of us.

But he can't run a government department.

And we're spending billions of dollars over there.

How is it?

I don't know.

I just talked to Roxanne here a little while ago.

and how the key to housing is integrated right now.

I would say that we are making some progress.

Mark, I've been talking about certain integration for a while this morning, the problems we had.

And the reason we need balance in the staff and the whole thing is to start a case study on suburban integration.

And he said that down the line about the SAGD, we're not asking, he gave me a paper, the Republican staff member of his committee, he's on the housing committee,

And he said that many times, and he, of course, handles this, he said, Republican staff, and he said, there are people who, despite what I have said, despite what Ron has said publicly, are still trying to use the federal government.

I'm against it.

Well, I will fire those people.

Let me tell you what I'm going to do.

Let me tell you what I'm going to try to do on that.

Believe it or not.

We've been told to get to people like Tower, and we've heard this from other people, and said, bring us a specific case.

Did he get a lot of pay?

Well, this fall did.

He gave me a memo.

If he's got a specific case, we can move right in.

We can get those guys out of there.

But let us just be sure all over this country that we don't get into the business that we have of supporting the integrated economy.

if it wasn't another time.

He talked about that Austin case.

I don't know what the hell we could do.

So we gotta appeal that thing.

He isn't gonna like it.

We're on the wrong side of it.

The hell with this.

The judge told me already not.

He said there are two legs to that case.

You gotta appeal one and take the other one.

And I think it could be done.

We still haven't talked about it.

I think there's a way we can do it.

But we have to make, I think we have to go the other way than talking about it.

I mean, it's going to get worse for it to get better.

Because there are a lot of people who just believe in it.

They believe in it.

It's going to get worse.

It's going to be a very tough place.

Well, anyway, there's a number of these now where, you know, our whole budget and goals study, which John Ray told you about,

that we actually want to see every program.

We've got everything, every program.

I don't care.

And it's obvious this just means new agencies.

There are a lot of the old ones in our group.

We've got to look at all of them to see how we can improve.

Well, we often say this, that if we only had the first three years, we'd have a minority in Congress.

And it would appear to be

a beautiful fact to recommend this or that or the other thing and present a budget based on this or that or the other thing.

At this point, we don't give a damn about that because it can't be proved through this view before the election.

You see, we present a 73 budget and it can be, in this case, we present a thing and say this is what the Congress ought to do and if the Congress doesn't do it, yes, it will not.

The Democratic Congress will never do it.

We can say, well, this is what they believe and this is what we believe.

And of course, implicit in all this is the tax.

And that's the whole, and to have a tax reform, it is a reform rather than simply a patching up.

And the one that does in our funds, we have done pretty good, I think.

So I'd just like you to consider that.

And if you could do it on any, of course, any basis, it would be helpful.

But we need this.

this kind of input we hear from you particularly, and it would be extremely helpful.

I realize that it's a discussion that you've been around this track here, where you may wonder whether what you're reading is made in Congress, whether it's for real, but that is the question, whether you just have a little encouragement to be listening.

I can assure you that that's what I want to hear.

As other people tell you, I sent out a memo after memo on this one.

I've explained, Mark, how terrifically tough it is to get balance.

in the work that comes to you.

I'm going to ask people to come.

And so it is with the other cabinet officers.

You know, they all say, well, this is my agency.

This is my program.

I don't see how people could be so confident to go over it.

There's a chemistry that works there.

What is it?

When they go there, those big offices get set up, big offices, people come in, and of course they see the people, and, oh, we can't let this all out.

I mean, we know his wife's going to have a baby, or it's near Christmas, or they're 14 under here that we want to go, but on the other hand, it's tough.

It's tough when it comes to people.

But that's not it.

Programming is something else again, and approaching.

And here we are making some progress.

We're...

We were kind of a lot of things that are interesting at the moment.

I think we'll show progress.

It's got to be free.

Even at this point, it's a surprise.

It will be a surprise.

Even at this point.

We've gotten out of the federal government.

Particularly, we've got the tax thing wrapped around.

I tell Mark Little about those tax things.

We're finally going to get some of the tax proposals that have been dear to my heart in terms of it.

they want to change the system.

Secondly, they want to use the tax system for social purposes.

And what the hell is the tax system for social purposes?

The whole system.

But you know exactly what I mean.

But not the daycare centers.

Not that bad.

It's difficult.

Anybody's for the principle of letting people have a chance to work and so forth.

The difficulty with daycare centers, John, if you get us in the position of just hiring a hell of a lot of social workers who will beat on themselves, that's the problem.

Well, reprioritization comes in right there.

Well, that wouldn't bother me.

But I don't want great government state reprioritization.

I can see that.

But this is the battle we're having with ATW.

ATW wants a federal system of daycare centers.

And we want a system of contract authorization for private operations and care centers.

For example, you could even encourage factories and plants to set them up on the premises so a person can go to work and leave a kid in one part and go to work and pick up the kid when they go home.

I was in Mexico visiting a planter.

I remember he was far back in 1953.

I went out to see a planter.

It was a most marvelous little playground.

They had a little concert in there, being fed and having their lunches and all that sort of thing.

And the mob was working in there with the needles.

It was a big private event.

That's right.

Well, I think the devil's against us.

Oh, absolutely.

We've been fighting this battle for four months.

your decision will assist us so that we'll not prevent our ATW branch from getting in the fight.

Well, and it goes all the way across the hill on this kind of stuff.

And this is what this problem is.

So that's what we've got.

So that, uh, and this is really, I think it's better to make them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But let's be quite candid.

I think before that you probably felt, with me, some justification.

And I just want you to describe what you may have felt.

That you were sort of a voice of the voter and it's not being heard and it doesn't use.

Perhaps it's always exaggerated.

I can only say that at this point, that as John and Tessa and I have asked, I said, God damn it, get me the other side.

I sent back paper after paper and said, I don't want to see this one side anymore.

I've been positive that I really do, but you're the best qualified man to present the other side when I say the other side.

uh, don't think that you're going to be in an R.A.

Uh, I mean, uh, I've got to have, I've got to have some obviously running on simply always in front of the same safety program for a little bit.

And it's a, it's a, frankly, if I do that, it's not well presented.

Also, the 73 budget could be the most exciting budget in the history of the center.

It really can be because of the cash program.

And we'll grow to take rid of some of these things and, uh, uh, to be, uh, to be extremely important.

But we've all asked you to support the Amherst citizens.

Well, not the Amherst citizens.

The important thing is that it had to be done.

It had to be done.

But they don't understand.

Maybe they have to help.

I don't buy it.

But basically, they don't understand because they're so drunk they don't see the sun.

In other words, first of all, the guy with the coat over there, he was my man, so he was a Russian citizen.

So the guy was standing past me, he said to me just a moment ago,

So, anybody?

I wish you would consider it, and I think I should buy it too, though.

I'm going to take both.

I saw that, and they gave a lot of money.

No.

No, I didn't.

I didn't know.

On this case, I was like, I think he's going to have to do the job.

I don't know.

Thank you.