Nixon & Ziegler on Economic Policy and Television Broadcast

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Oh, my goodness.

All right.

Just a second.

We should be able to close it down.

Uh, no, we haven't.

I'm sure it's all right.

Where is he?

What does it take to burn?

Is he in the bathroom somewhere near here?

No, he's not.

You know, I don't think I'd like to fly.

I don't think I'd fly.

Yeah.

Not fantastic like that.

Not fantastic.

That's right, that's right.

I want to check this stuff.

Yeah, I love it.

Where's your needle?

Right here.

That's what I was going to check.

Right now.

Andy?

Hello?

Andy, this is Richardson.

Can you hear me?

You're Richardson?

Well, can you hear me now, Edison?

Can you hear me now?

Now you hear me, now you hear me.

Andy?

Yeah?

Tom, we're on the phone camera.

Go ahead.

We're still running in this town.

It is running.

Okay, then I want to run through this.

Okay!

Colonel, I'm sorry.

It's all right with us.

If you don't, you don't have to mind me.

This is why, you know, it's a nice quiet.

Thank you.

And it's so good to work with you.

It's all right.

If something happens during your time, thank you.

And you're so good.

Thank you.

Oh, this door is one thing that looks good.

This back door is one thing that looks good.

Thank you.

.

You're going to find us here when the air .

.

All right, Don, put your headset on.

I'll talk to you here.

We'll get you in five minutes, all right?

I'll be out here.

Al Farghini, you're going to stay on headset as well.

Oh, yeah, thank you.

Because you're my link with Pat, you know?

Okay.

This is very close.

Then I'll hear some tell-tale.

That's close.

I'll give it five minutes here, for instance, through air.

That still gives us 45 seconds after that, correct?

Yes, sir.

Hold on.

10 minutes to air.

As we leave outside, we can only see around the corner.

The fog light is out there, and it's...

It's...

5 minutes to air.

Now then we go, we'll go 45 after that by 2.

5, 5.45 to air.

2 months.

Do you want to bring it in, uh, Mark?

Do you want to see where it's at exactly?

I'm all set.

All right.

Four minutes.

Here.

Yeah, I think so.

I don't know.

I want you to focus on him, too.

Hey, did you see this?

Yes, sir.

We did more.

That's our fate.

We interrupt.

Well, that's one, too, sir.

Uh, Mr. President, there's a part there, the part we've come in under test, and we've got to get through to the Senate, if you'll center yourself on that.

It's helpful to us, and to be seated behind a focus.

All right, here.

One minute to 1.45.

1.45.

All right, thank you.

Stand up right across the drain, please.

Come down one more time.

We have a hard right here.

I mean, this is a super-bottom right.

This is my third right spot.

That's the one in Hollywood Studios.

And I have a turn here.

Did you take that down any more?

No, I didn't.

On an acre.

All right, let's go back to your seat.

All right.

Forty-five seconds here, sir.

Forty-five seconds if you'd like to.

Right here, like that.

Fifteen seconds, sir.

Some weeks ago, I announced a new economic policy to stop the rise in prices, to create new jobs, and protect the American dollar.

Tonight, I want to report to you about how that new policy has been working and to describe how that policy will be continued.

On the international front, I am glad to report substantial progress in our campaign to create a new monetary stability and to bring a new fairness to world trade.

This nation welcomes foreign competition, but we have a right to expect that our trading partners abroad will welcome American competition.

It is a healthy development that the world has come to understand that America believes in free trade as long as it is fair trade.

This will mean more sales of American goods abroad and more jobs for American workers at home.

Further in the job front, the House of Representatives just yesterday passed a tax program based on my recommendations that will create an additional half million jobs in the coming year.

I call upon the United States Senate, which has begun hearings on this bill today, to act as promptly as the House so that we can move forward to our goal of full employment in peacetime.

Secretary Connolly and I will be meeting tomorrow morning at breakfast with Chairman Long of Louisiana and the Senate Finance Committee to work toward this goal.

On the inflation front, I can report to you tonight that the wage-price freeze has been remarkably successful.

As you heard on your evening news, the figures bear out that statement.

Wholesale prices in September

posted the biggest decline in five years.

And the price of industrial commodities has gone down for the first time in seven years.

The primary credit for the success of this first step in the fight against rising prices belongs to you.

It belongs to the American people.

It is you who are shown the willingness to cooperate in the campaign against inflation.

It is you who have answered the call to put the public interest ahead of the specialists.

Thousands of letters have come to this desk since I made the announcement of the late price freeze seven weeks ago.

Listens to what people all across America, from all walks of life, have written to me, the President, about this program.

Here's a letter from a school teacher in New Jersey.

I'm a widow raising two sons on my teacher's cellar.

I will lose about $300 because of that freeze.

Yet I sincerely feel that we must all support their efforts for burning the economy into balance.

And here's a letter from a wage earner in Guantanamo, New York.

As one who is expecting an increase in income this December, let me say that I will gladly go without it if that will curtail inflation.

The lack of a government employee in common Texas rights, we are willing as a family to forego our pay raises in order to see stability in prices.

Let us all hope that Americans will once again realize that we must be willing to sacrifice for a long-term goal and once again have pride in our country.

And then from a man in Klamath Falls, Oregon, your administration's recent freeze on wages and prices means that I will not receive the 4% raise that was written into my contract this year.

Nevertheless, I support your efforts to halt inflation, including the wage freeze.

The fighting against inflation is every body's fight.

I want to express my appreciation to the thousands of others of you who have written me letters like this.

And I want you to know how much it has meant to me to hear that most Americans will put their country's interests above their personal interests in fighting this battle.

Now let's look at the future.

Because of our strong beginning, because of the determination Americans have shown to pull together during the freeze, I am confident that our further action in stopping inflation will succeed as well.

Over the past seven weeks, I have consulted with scores of representatives of labor, business, and farms, and consumers of the Congress and state and local government.

They have been virtually unanimous in their belief that the battle against inflation must be fought here and now.

They are together in their determination to win that battle.

And consequently, I am announcing tonight that when the 90-day freeze is over on November 13th, we shall continue our program of wage and price restraint

We began this battle against inflation for the purpose of winning, and we're going to stay in it till we do with it.

I am appointing a price commission to hold on to prices.

It will be made up of persons outside of government, all public members, not beholden to any special interest group.

The price commission will develop yardsticks and will be empowered to restrain price and rent increases to the necessary minimum and to prevent windfall profits.

Its goal will be to continue to drive down the rate of the plague.

This goal, however, can only be achieved with the active cooperation of working men and businessmen, farmers and consumers, members of the Congress, of our state and local government.

That means all of us.

I'm also applying a pay award to stop the plight in our wage and salary increases, the kind of increases that don't really benefit the working man.

For example, in the past six years, workers have received big wage increases.

But every wife of a worker who has to do the family shopping will tell you that those increases have practically all been eaten up by rises in the cost of living.

The pay part will be made up of representatives of the labor management department.

Both the Christ Commission and the pay board will seek voluntary cooperation from businesses later, but they will be backed by the authority of law to make their decisions safe.

Their staffs will be small.

Stabilization must be made to work not by an army of bureaucrats, but by an all-volunteer army of patriotic citizens in every walk of life.

The Cost of Living Council, which is headed by the Secretary of the Treasury, will have the power to back up the pay board and the price chain with government sanctions where necessary.

I have today named Councilor Rumsfeld as a member of that council, and he will spend full time as the director of operations for the council.

Secretary Connolly, the chairman of the council, will be on television tomorrow noon to answer technical questions with regard to the continuing program.

Our experience over the past seven weeks proves conclusively that the vast majority of Americans will cooperate wholeheartedly with a system of voluntary restraint.

But if there are some who try to take advantage of the patriotic cooperation of their fellow Americans, I can assure you that the government must be and will be prepared to act against them.

For that reason, in a meeting with the bipartisan legislative leaders today in the Capitol, I have asked the Congress to extend for one year the Economic Stabilization Act, which gives the President the power he needs to stop inflation.

Holding the line against inflation means holding all that power.

Consequently, I now find the Government Committee on Interest and Dividends to apply a yardstick to both of those areas.

That committee will be headed by Dr. Arthur Burns, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

The nation needs interest rates as low as they can be to meet the credit requirements of American families on equitable terms and to stimulate noninflationary economic expansion.

I am confident that this can be accomplished on a voluntary basis.

As a safeguard, however, as I inform the bipartisan leaders today, I will ask the Congress for standby controls over interest rates and dividends.

Let me turn now to the subject of profits.

Many of my good friends in the field of politics have advised me that the only politically popular position to take is to be against profits.

But let us recognize an unsaleable fact of economic life.

All Americans will benefit from more profits.

More profits fuel the expansion that carries more jobs.

More profits means more investments.

which will make our goods more competitive in America than the world.

And more profits means there will be more tax revenues to pay for the programs that help people in need.

That's why higher profits in the American economy would be good for every person in America.

Wind ball profits, however, as I always strike them, are quite another thing.

When wages and other costs are held down for the government, even though prices are also held down, circumstances could arise in some cases that might generate exorbitant profits.

In other words, someone will profit from the wage price stabilization program.

In the few cases where this happens,

Rather than tax such excess profits, the Price Commission's bold policy will be that business should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer by cutting prices.

We've lived too long in this country with an inflation psychology.

Everybody just assumes that the only direction of prices is to go up.

The time has come for some price reduction psychology.

Let's see some prices go down.

This is not only in the public interest, it makes good competitive business sense.

Sign up these actions to stop the rise in the cost of living.

Here is what we will do and what we will not do.

We will permit some adjustments in prices and wages.

Adjustments that fairness and equity demand.

But we will not permit inflation to flare up again.

We will concentrate on those major portions of the economy that are the primary causes of inflation.

But we will not hesitate to take action against any part of the economy that fails to comply.

We will continue wage and price restraints until inflationary pressures are brought under control.

But we are not going to make controls a permanent feature of our economy.

When controls are no longer needed, we will get rid of them.

We will rely primarily on the good faith and voluntary cooperation of the American people to make this program work.

But we will not let any selfish interest escape the fair enforcement of the law.

I call upon all of you tonight to look at this program not as Democrats or Republicans, workers or businessmen, farmers or consumers, but as Americans.

Let us recognize this profound truth.

What is best for all of us is best for each one of us.

We cannot afford efficiency through the latitude anywhere because fighting inflation is everybody's business.

Let us look for a moment into the future.

Some of you have heard me say that 1972 will be a very good year for the American economy.

Let me broaden that estimate tonight.

The coming year can be more than a very good year for the American economy.

It can be a great year for America and the world.

It can be a year for the first time in 15 years in which we can achieve our goal of prosperity in a time of peace.

It can be a year in which great progress can be made for our goal of full employment without the inflation that robs working people of the full value of the dollars they earn.

It can be a year in which the American competitive spirit is reborn as we open up new markets for our goods abroad and new careers and job opportunities for our working men at home.

It can be a year in which we and our international trading partners build upon the most significant initiative in monetary affairs in 25 years.

A year in which we replace the crisis-prone system of the past with a new system to live in the future.

It can be a year in which historic events

will take place on the international scene.

Events that could affect the peace of the world in the next generation, even in the next century.

We often hear people say, these are troubled times.

I say, these are great and exciting times.

We are at the threshold of a great new year.

and Asian movement can challenge and change.

We have an unparalleled opportunity to create a better world for ourselves and for our children.

Let us dedicate ourselves tonight to make the most of that opportunity, to join in a great common effort to stop inflation and to create a new prosperity and a world of peace.

Thank you.

Good night.

Hold on, Ron.

You ready?

Camera switch.

Stay.

Ron, you're gonna take those four letters and you're gonna have to get them out if you want.

You have them.

Thank you.

Thank you guys, we've got more than one.

Okay, ten minutes to break time.

Ten minutes to break time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'm going to get straight into that one.

Okay, what works for you now, sir?

I've been getting those 40-meter shots, and you guys are pointing at me.

I'm sorry, sir.

I don't know at all.

Nixon & Ziegler on Economic Policy and Television Broadcast

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on October 7, 1971

Cite this conversation

Nixon & Ziegler on Economic Policy and Television Broadcast

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on October 7, 1971

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Cite this conversation