Conversation 551-011

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

George, we always seem to be delineating you a little bit, huh?

I'll say it, but I can't remind you of someone.

As there is a distributed education club, John, Tom, Bill, and Martin Anderson, the better.

I just can't get it.

See what I did as much as I did.

I was saying to some of the judges earlier this morning, you know what, it's good we didn't plan it this way, but I was glad we didn't alter these facts so it isn't the same thing.

Yeah, I'm down with that.

I agree with you on that.

I don't mean to be populist, but we don't like an unfavorable trade balance, and we don't like a 23.2 deficit, and we don't like the leading indicators turning down, although that was a rather mixed bag.

The reason they were down so much, we know it was because the housing permits, which are one of the indicators, went way, way up the month before.

So that had an impact.

And then another leading indicator is industrial materials prices, which came down.

Well, that's one of those things that, on the one hand, this is a sensitive indicator of expansion.

Having it go up, it's a volatile kind of a series.

But in another sense, it isn't so bad.

So the leading indicator thing doesn't bother me at all.

And the deficit was something that everyone expected.

And if it had been...

lower in the sense that we had lowered expenditures drastically in order to get it down there, that wouldn't have been good for the economy at all.

Even the people who are criticizing must have their tongue in their cheek a little bit because on the one hand... Well, I think everybody has to say that the economy has a gap and a lag.

You have to spend more.

I heard from some of those Republicans yesterday that I reminded them that I was in our control, but it's not our deficit from me.

We all thought it was horrible, but it was right.

That was an odd ceremony yesterday, particularly the speaker.

He must be really drinking pretty heavily or something.

I forget if that makes sense.

It was quite apparent that he was being in the audience that he just was a little lost.

He was shaking.

He obviously couldn't hardly see.

I felt sorry for him.

I didn't know what he is.

I didn't think this person knew who he was.

Most people do.

And it is potential alcohol.

I think anybody is.

But what you really find out is when they're under great stress, when they're under great stress, some people just drink too much.

Well, I was good to go down and get a little George Mayhem on the back of the back, but these are fine.

These are 12 guys.

Very fine person.

And easy to work with.

Honest and straight.

Actually, I call on him frequently.

He's the best.

I mean, I talk about candidates here.

I'm just a better man.

I had a whole list of kinds of odds and ends that I wanted to keep you posted on, and I'm just sort of moving along on them, and I hope I started it right.

I'm a steel thing.

There's been a slight break in that, apparently.

The management has put forward an offer that's a little changed.

Abel is evaluating, and he agrees that its motion is forthcoming.

They haven't got to the can level by a long shot, and they haven't got to face-up cost-of-living escalation questions, and those, I think, are critical.

Kurt is having a reading on that and will let me know what that's going to do and how it stands further.

And depending on what I find out, I might call each of the parties and then

If they were real close, they might extend.

I can't imagine that either really wants to strike all that badly.

Management probably would be more strike-prone now than the union.

We don't want to strike.

Well, we'll do that for sure.

Well, so that's where that stands.

What happens when you come up to these strike deadlines is that as they move to that deadline,

getting a settlement.

Once a strike gets called, then everybody's attention moves away from the negotiation onto the question of managing the strike.

And when you put 300,000 people out on the bricks, you have a management job to do and just doing that.

So I think the general pattern is that once a strike starts, there's just nothing to do for a couple of weeks until that kind of settles in and then you can

get the parties back together again more easily.

That's not always the case, but that's a fairly typical pattern.

But at any rate, this is something we will stay very close to and see, do everything we can to see that they don't have a strike.

I think from the standpoint of the management offers, we have enough levers so that if we really wanted to tell them why they would be quite forthcoming in their wage offer,

And then, of course, they would take no backdoor from anybody other than me putting their prices up.

I don't think that's all too bad.

Well, I think it's with us for a while.

And, you know, when you look at it, it's really true, George.

I studied those figures again last night.

It is true that inflation dropped.

You notice through the eyes, 1% would go down with whatever you need.

There were three or four years, and I saw years where inflation went down by three-tenths of, four-tenths of a percent.

The economy was running sluggish, too sluggish.

That's the other point.

Now we have a situation, however,

In 68, it was 4.2.

Then it went up to higher this year, last year, and now 71.

But it's now 4.2.

4.5.

4.2 is the GMPD fighter, and the CPI for the first six months is about 4.

The last two months being high in the first four months, it's up.

But under those circumstances, though, that just has to be designated as stopping the rate of increase and, to a certain extent, bringing the rate of increase down.

I don't know.

Well, last night, Arthur's point in place, he comes in here and rumbles around and says, you aren't making any progress in inflation.

It gives me that damn charge that he's going to give up ten times.

I understand.

But he's going to say that if it isn't true,

I think we are making some headway.

It's disappointing that it isn't more.

The point that I tried to get home to the Republican senators last night wasn't to say that the program isn't working.

It's totally wrong.

You haven't done the things you've done on the budget, and they have the kind of strict monetary policy we have.

Inflation would be at a 10% or 12% level by this time.

If you discontinued those things, it would have been soaring up and feeding off.

Oh, now without a doubt.

How's that?

There was that much coal.

Tremendous.

I'm sure he went out to Cleveland, met with Luna.

He reports that his spirits are lifted a little bit, and he thinks there will be some chance of getting a negotiated settlement, a meeting this afternoon at 2.

And he has raised the question of...

thrust in the negotiations of bringing, of having me meet with him.

I've known and met with him a lot in the early days of the administration.

And either over at the Labor Secretary's office or over here.

And I said, well, all right, if that'll help, bring him over here soon.

And I had in my mind the possibility, depending on the time that it is and so on,

that maybe you'd like to say a word to either bringing them in here or it might be this afternoon or it might be tomorrow sometime.

They have another bunch of roads going out tomorrow.

We could do that or another thing that you could do if we had tipped off is what you and I did on that postal thing.

You remember I called you once from the

room with all of them sort of listed.

That's right.

Or if you wanted to, you could just stroll into my office up there and say something and leave.

And then you wouldn't have the problem of them being in here and having to get them in and out.

But there are all kinds of different things.

So that's what I should do.

You should be quite careful, I agree.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

The message is true, right?

If we don't get anywhere this weekend, then I think we pretty much have to go for legislation.

And I think my own feeling is that what we should do is ask the Congress to put into effect the emergency board recommendations, which include the work rule changes.

And that'll be very tough for the Congress people.

On the other hand, Luna has made a number of statements

says, I've got Congress wired, and they'll give me what we want.

And we're trying to let that get around a little bit that he's said that.

And also, get as visible as we can how much more efficient the railroads actually are, in fact, operating with better work rules so that the Congress is in a position of being a patsy for inefficiency in the system.

we should kind of really position ourselves in this dispute on the side of the railroads because it is a very popular kind of an issue.

I can see a lot to that.

I'm rather reluctant myself to see the administration or you get so identified with management by creating a labor dispute, even though this particular one is very popular and tends to carry over that you've become partisan against labor.

in a dispute.

But anyway, that is something that I agree on.

I don't think there's anything to be gained from that.

I don't want to be lying about the management.

Goddamn management.

They've got to realize they have the best friends.

Obviously, you never have that.

We're willing to do things that nobody else is willing to do.

It's better.

They better just take that on faith.

That's what management's got to do.

The profit statements are coming pretty well.

Railroads are...

have looked better this year.

The airlines are showing a little better performance.

We did get that $58 million for them.

That's, I think, is now through the conference committee.

So some of these problem industries are beginning to show a little bit better picture.

But also your predictions on profits.

I know John and others are showing bad, good profits on GM

I think they've only had one quarter of their history better than the second quarter.

So they've been doing well.

On the Productivity Commission, I'm charging ahead now and saying you're calling a meeting September 21st, which is the date we have on your account.

And putting in the, figuring on putting in the statement that President hopes to participate in the meeting at some appropriate time.

That doesn't

That's not an absolute commitment, but the expectation.

And this would be an occasion where you might want to make a pretty careful speech on all of this business and productivity and cost and so forth, the least you could consider for that.

So I'm moving ahead on that.

I know I mentioned this only because of the comments in the budget meeting about commissions and meetings and so forth.

A lot of things turn out not to be worthwhile.

This could turn out not to be all that worthwhile.

But I think giving visibility to the importance of productivity just by itself is a worthwhile thing.

I noticed even Time magazine gave us a pretty good pat on the back on this line that we've identified a fundamental thing.

It's a problem.

You have to mix administration at least with doing something on it.

There's a fairly good side right up in it.

On the international front, the difficulty with commissions generally, and I separate this one, is that it appears to dodge the law.

And people say, hold on, here's another one.

And second, where it's a controversial issue, all you do is put your faith in the hands of a bunch of mad demagogues.

And then you do this to find out what to do.

I mean, use commissions, but don't announce it.

We now have a budget for this Productivity Commission of $800,000.

So we have the ability to do a little bit more than we had before.

On this international monetary front, as I mentioned to you last night,

proposals emanating out of Treasury are very bold and tremendous in terms of to close the gold window, close the dollar, install a wage price freeze, et cetera, et cetera.

This is a gargantuan thing to do.

And in these little meetings that are going on intensively now, I'm

consciously trying to probe at all the problems and make people come up with something more than their opinion.

And generally, not dragging my feet particularly, but being a little bit on the go slow and think it over side.

I don't see any

prospect that we would be ready to have something tremendous like that this weekend.

They just don't have the answers to perfectly ordinary questions.

When I talked to Colin, he said that he, at least the last time, two or three years ago, he said that he thought that he hadn't thought that we ought to do something in a week.

And of course, Peterson isn't pushing for something for a week.

And I said, well, why don't we, and I said, this will be over.

Peterson will talk to you.

And so I said, why don't we

think about it, and then coming afterwards, he said, he thought it would probably be the best time to do something that is in some manner, that he could, that if they could do something that was all, and I think it's kind of a fallacious argument that all the Europeans will be on vacation, that it's going to be something in the month of August, and Congress is going to be gone.

That isn't a good reason for doing anything at a certain time.

He thought that doing it would just be

more time to decide what they're going to do in the second might have a good impact in terms of that meeting.

I also come to the point that it's very important to do the right thing here.

And we have to do it every day, so I'm going to say that.

And that leads me to another point.

I think that there is a tendency for the interventional monitoring crowd, we encourage every hand in the council and everybody else

everybody that's exposed to this, to cry wolf, more than is justified.

At least three or four times over the past 10 years, they've come in here and said, I've got to call your chest or I've got to call the ambulance.

But I haven't done it.

Within a minute or so, it would have been a very good statement of the way that they had to be in person.

But that shows you how neatly involved they were

So far.

Now, if the crisis is that bad, in other words, if the voters think, well, they're going to come in and do all these things right now, maybe it's best to let it happen.

And that's all.

I don't think that's what I think.

You've got to check first to get to your conclusion.

Is it that bad?

Is it something where we have to have now?

Now, one other point I'd make.

On the wage price freeze part of it, and I can't be confident about this, from a... We should think of a wage price freeze, in my opinion, only as an actor.

We can only say...

At the end of this year, or at a time that we could put on and lift it, as soon as it hasn't worked too well.

In other words, have some effect.

But not now.

If you have a wage price freeze now, I think it would only mean for some flattenation through the policy.

Just to admit that, yeah.

If the wage price freeze comes now, it's through about March or April of next year, let's suppose they even work that long, five or six months, then they say, then what are you going to do?

Even if you try it in, say, December or January, it'll be six months.

So it finishes off at that time, and maybe not too much will happen.

may be part of the package.

And it's a bold move and all that sort of thing.

I think it should be treated separately as something that we do later.

And I think Conway, in a certain way, was on that view at least a few days ago.

Now, as far as the other things are concerned, the export rebates and the import thing that Peterson was talking about,

Not what it was.

As far as the effect of a way of raising tariffs.

I guess so.

As far as that, a gold window.

Those are things we've just got to take a look at to see what can work.

The thing that concerns me about what was Peterson's original

Well, let's let it float.

Let it float.

And let's devalue, basically.

I just think, politically, it would be awfully hard to explain that.

In terms of jobs, let me put the whole thing.

First, you've got a problem with the international financial situation and the dollar and all that crap and so forth and so on.

In terms of the 200 million Americans,

there are perhaps 50,000 that understand the whole thing.

That's not all.

And I would say that with those 20 million Americans, if we say, well, if the story isn't well, your dollars aren't worth as much, or the value is down, that's a dynamic thing.

But the political game that's standing there can't be solved.

If you could, you can't do it.

You could have it, on the other hand, you might have it.

a situation where, say, an explorer rebates court licenses and support, maybe some of that, although it runs contrary to some of the thinking we've been doing around the fields, really could be understood as justified as a major, temporarily adopted for purposes of meeting the crisis, and while coming full circle, I first think,

I don't think we ought to do something.

I don't feel like someone ought to do something.

It's common for us to do something right now.

You said creation would be older.

I'm amazed that you felt like this in your discussion.

Peterson, McCracken, Volker, and I have been eating quite a lot.

Presumably going to then go to Connolly when we're

I think by this time everybody's convinced that he doesn't have the evidence to show that.

And we'll take a little longer to chat.

Broker represents a certain point of view that we have to consider.

He is part of that community, that community.

And they always want to do something.

I mean, it's hard to learn.

He's got to see the kind of five things that people do every weekend instead of the International Monetary Fund.

Well, it's work, in my opinion, in my view, as a worker's son.

Certainly not going to work just if we go away for a weekend and we don't know what we want or what we'll give up for it.

In other words, we aren't prepared for the next day.

That's right.

Next question.

You have to raise the price of gold, Steve, which I would also ask.

Well, that would simply create chaotic situations.

While you're waiting for the damn Congress to act on it, the Congress might not act on it.

You know what I mean?

You'd just be into this hell.

Well, I don't think it's, I don't think it's that bad as to where there's, I don't know, but maybe you have a different view.

We're all so busy that we're looking at things that we don't have the chance to study.

I want you, your judgment, Peterson's, and actually McCracken's comments.

As to what the situation really is, get the facts.

You've got to realize that both Connolly and I, though, are not experts in this field, and we're

We're just busy with a hell of a lot of other things, as you are, too.

So you wondered how you were going to handle those.

Well, I think Roper is a good person.

He knows the deal.

But I must say I don't really have a lot of confidence in his judgment on these things, which is why I'm sort of testing him out all the time.

And I'll continue to sort of take...

Sure, don't do that.

But just be the devil's advocate and remembering that moving in these areas like this is too good.

And so I'm going to ask you, and this is just an unrelated subject, what about the second look at the second clergy

Well, the first figure they have is the 1907.

And I guess next month there'll be another reading on it as they get more figures.

It's Wednesday that they'll announce the retail trade statistics, so I suppose we'll get them probably Tuesday.

Wednesday is the announcement date.

We also have an employment policy.

unemployment figure.

It's already announced Friday of next week, so next week we'll have another batch of those.

I think the wholesale price index is also in there.

Perhaps Thursday or along in there.

One thing I would caution you is really a strong measure on this international thing is

is not to make any casual comments about it to people outside this very, very small circle, because it's so explosive.

And any reference to gold or the gold window or anything like that, right?

That's what I'm agreeing with, probably.

All I'm agreeing with is nobody was saying those papers would be recognized.

But we're waiting to hear.

What's the money, the unemployment thing now?

What are the straws that would indicate on that?

Why don't you tell me?

Are there any exact signs?

Well, no, it's just that...

In that survey, it's a sample survey, and the sample is all taken at one time, and the data is gathered at one time and bundled up.

And when you have the result, you have it, and you don't have any piece of it beforehand.

It's in the nature, whereas in the consumer price index, you do get some bits and pieces.

We get better food as well.

So we don't have any preliminary.

I noticed there was an envelope.

So what presently is the, what is the last, what was the last month unacclimated?

Was it 5.6 or was it 6?

It was 5.6, seasonally adjusted.

The unadjusted figures started out in the first.

I heard the name of the story this morning referred to as 6.1 unacclimated as being the present figure.

Well, he must be using an annual figure then or something.

But I thought, go ahead.

The unadjusted last January was 6.6.

That's a high month seasonally.

So it was seasonally adjusted and announced at high volume 6.2.

Then it declined through the fall, and in May it was 5.3.

It was a steady decline one month after the next unemployment decline.

So it declined by...

1.3 years.

This is this particular year that we are in.

So two months ago, it was 5.3.

Now in unadjusted, unemployment actually declined during the first five months of the year, 6.6 to 5.3.

Seasonally adjusted, you expect unemployment to decline.

So the figures were more or less stable through that period.

From

May to June unemployment went up again and the actual figure was I believe 6.2 but usually it goes up more than that so seasonally adjusted they said it went from 6% or 6.2 to 5.6 whereas it actually went from 5.3 to 6.2 and so it's

It's that kind of a picture.

That's right.

Well, this one doesn't have the same.

Wherever this one falls, there's no holiday around it.

The school leaving date is not involved.

There's nothing special about the August survey week as far as I know so that people will read this.

as being a sort of a verification one way or another of whatever was said about that June figure.

I have a, I don't, the other thing, of course, we have to have in mind is that in terms of the economy, it's a, as we see various comments by, you know, a lot of funds are going to go to 789, something like that.

I just can't believe that is the case unless there is a very profound change taking place in the whole economic system.

Could have been.

You don't feel that, do you?

As a matter of fact, George, some of them were saying that final would be at 7% now,

And they were saying that, Renfray was saying back in 1969, it didn't make any difference what you did.

The plant and equipment spending was just going to go way up so fast.

And there's just no way to turn off the boom.

So he was wrong on that side.

One of the reasons why I suggested to Paul in his presentation to you last Friday that he put down those bars of what the various forecasters

is just to show, if we wind up with a GNP of, say, 10.55 or something like that, that the 10.65 would be closer to the fact than 2 thirds of the forecasters.

Alan Greenspan, who is on our side and the guy we respect here, is 10.31.

So he was just way, way off.

Well, he's too low.

He's way low, yeah.

So you have those extremes.

Two other things on my list have to do with the budget.

First of all, on the defense budget, they are just sort of waiting for Henry and take whatever lead he gives.

And as I envisage the way you want that work,

on that subject.

Now, I think that we have a situation where there are a lot of very knowledgeable and effective resources in the OMB to work on a defense budget.

Absolutely.

So that... No, I don't do that.

What I'm trying to get out of Henry to shake out of a hole that is...

a fundamental change regarding the mix.

But as far as what the budgeteers do for you and making defense take it up like everybody else, go ahead.

In other words, give them sort of a number to work at.

There's nothing I'm not concerned about.

I think we've just got to pick it up and see how the hell we can change the mix.

Give the Flyboys less and the Navy more.

Maybe what happens the other way around

My own instinct on the Defense Department, from having messed around with it now for a year, is that the Navy is being shortchanged, and we need to do more of the air service.

The Air Force is not only out of phase in terms of their weapons system, but that they're way over manned, and they haven't done the job of taking down their structure the way

that the Army is in the most serious need of good management of any of the services that it is.

It has just not been run very well, and that it's in desperate need of a good strong hand.

That there is this big soft spot in the bases, so that represents something

As far as we're concerned, we're regarding it that way.

But that at some point in time, after the election or whatever, that that represents an area where the defense budget can be brought down without inherently affecting the .

Oh, I'm not sure .

The intelligence is another.

You said cuts that 25% out and so on.

And we do have this effort with Henry.

And as I understand it there, we are more or less constrained by our work with Henry as we don't move ahead independently in the intelligence arena.

We do it in conjunction with Henry.

That means that we don't

We can't move.

And I've told Cap, well, Cap, you just can't do that until we get this considered.

The president approves of the general plan.

And there we have this whole problem of how bold to be.

And I think there is a program, a bold program, that I think will produce a better intelligence system and will save us a lot of money.

I'm not so sure anything shares that view.

He knows a lot more about it than I do.

But he's wrong.

I mean, he builds a big staff, too.

He's a staff owner.

That's where it comes to the staff.

That's all there is to it.

The CIA and the IA and the rest of it just are hitting all those people.

At some stage of this, I'd like to...

The defense area is the area where all the money is.

If you put that out of bounds, then there's not a lot you can do.

You can do something with the CIA, but they really don't have to spend all that much money.

On the general budget of business, we are moving ahead on the 250 guidance.

Well, we think we can get it with toughness.

But I think we have to look short.

It just isn't acceptable to just continue to let it go up.

I mean, particularly in 73, let's say, here we are.

Now, we can say it doesn't get to now.

We're trying to pick up the landing.

Therefore, we have to find an unbalanced budget this year and an unbalanced budget next year.

And so you come home the next year and say, well, we're going to unbalance the budget to $30 million, $40 million next year.

Can't do it.

It won't save them.

Well, I, just in terms of my personal outlook and philosophy, would like nothing better than a real effort to get this budget down.

I see how difficult it is to do that.

There are two related things that I would mention.

One, we told you about this problem of the average grade level rising from 7.3 to 7.9.

Basically, in the last four years, it's been a very rapid increase.

We have a program for turning that around.

And it'll be very rough going with the agencies.

but it can be done.

And I understand we have a cabinet meeting possibly next Tuesday.

I could talk about this program in general terms, the problem and the program, and we could launch it then.

It would...

It can't be done unless you sort of pound the table a little bit and say, this has to be done.

I believe that it is just essential because the personnel costs of government are going up so fast.

The Defense Department is clearly with payroll about 60% of the total cost.

It's a very labor-intensive industry.

And they've got to figure out ways over the long run to handle the whole thing differently.

And the same is true of government generally.

We just have to be more efficient.

We have to be more considerate in the way people are put into these higher-priced jobs.

So I'll be prepared if it turns out that's a reasonable agenda item.

But it's something that I think any cabinet officer who's thought about personnel problems

We'll listen to it and know that it's going to cause him a lot of difficulty.

So it'll take a push and we'll give it.

One last thing.

Laurie Sands has a, we've been working with him on the minority business enterprise subject.

And this is an area where I think some good work has been done.

It's very difficult to figure out a reasonable basis for any amount, any particular number for spending under a new program, which he has concocted and which we have gone along with.

So as a result of a lot of discussions back and forth, we have said that a program at roughly the $65 million level is as much as we can see.

Actually, that's more than I think he can really spend effectively, because this is essentially a consulting firm type of operation.

Maury feels that that is not nearly enough.

much more considerate way when he really doesn't, would be that rather than raise him just as an object less than around the cabin, that maybe he ought to give us, Cap and I, a little help for having gone too far already and knock it down a little bit.

And that can be done because we're already late enough in the fiscal year

so that when his program is introduced now, the way Congress is going, he's not going to get anything much going in this fiscal year anyway.

So there's room to knock it down a little bit.

The thing is, we've got to start putting out signals now in terms of supplementals, all these things that are going into fiscal 72 that

You know, I have a .

You may have a bigger income in fiscal 72 than me.

I think we will.

I just don't, I keep it down to where it is and I'm scared of money and the budget and all that sort of thing.

But George, I think this economy is, I don't know, I must be maybe enforced by Donald Friedman, but I watch this, as long as his retail says, I think that people,

just gradually are feeling better.

I think they are.

And I think they're going to reflect it in their purchases and then, God damn it, their student business management will finally begin to get off their negative attitude and begin to move to where their profits are moving up sharply.

That was the big reason for the downward revisions in the fiscal 71 budget.

And I think that bounce back has been a surprise to Treasury, just as the amount was now a surprise to Treasury.

So I think our estimates now are on the low side for actual bread, though.

So we'll just keep it that way for now.

Is there anything more in terms of the, how much did you say the Congress should add into our budget to the 72 budget, or any 670?

Well, it's more like 7 to 8.

And we have some big appropriation bills coming down.

Agriculture in the 80s.

And that case will be made.

It will be made this year so that it's clear or it doesn't take a lot of defense.

They can't do that.

They'll never make another defense.

I think that point should be made every time publicly you can.

If the Congress is adding $8 billion to our budget, I'm just going to run to them.

Is that the case?

Yes, that's the case.

We can talk about the President's budget and then the Congress's added budget.

So threats, we could have talked about that in 72.

Well, in 71, as I've talked about that, it's in terms of we've stayed within the full employment revenues, but that was only because of the discipline imposed by your- Right.

Which is also interesting.

We said we stayed within it, we did it, so that was responsible, and that got through.

And we got away with this defense, moving that defense money.

There was a little flip about it, but nothing much.

I'm sure we got that.

But on the Congress now proceeding our budget, I think that has to be, and everybody in Congress should have this fucking paper.

All the administration people should have it, and talk to everybody about the budget.

they'll stick by it.

But the goddamn Congress is gone.

And it's $730.

Let's put the money right on their backs, George.

The only thing that has made me hesitate a little bit, and maybe this is now not a good reason, given your views, is that if you project that too much, they'll say, well, you've got a good, easy way to solve the problem, and it's drop revenue sharing.

And since that's one of

Yeah, your initiative that we've been pushing on, we haven't wanted to get ourselves into that posture where we have to choose between revenue sharing and responsible budgeting.

But I suppose that's one that we'll be able to see before long whether anything is going to come out on that.

All right.

You can position yourself.

All right.

Okay.

Over here.