Conversation 618-019

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Well, the question I have is, uh, it seems to me that all this... Bad.

Yeah.

That, uh...

I don't know what the options are, so that I've got to do the hard decisions, right?

Well, because there's so much work to be done.

I know.

And, uh, I'll figure out what I think we ought to do when it finally gets down to it.

They're just getting down to very, very few, and so forth.

Maybe a few, and at this point I would be... One of them is going to be totally aboard his convoy, right?

And the others will have to do with what is what we say.

Now, he's been away, and he's back.

And I wondered, would I buy him, rather than us sitting in full session, just to see which ones he gets?

All right.

I'll mark mine.

I don't like it.

Now, the real question that I'd like to know is, well, what if it is rather than options, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, if we're going to get that, we're going to find all the trouble with none of the good.

Well, it's not going to take the heat out yet.

Would that be going for a federal law, tax credits, or something of that kind?

No, it says provide a federal allocation for private and public schools.

It's just based on the public schools.

Right.

Public schools in the state.

At least if the state is objective, it ought to be.

I think that is the way.

The other alternative to all of this, and you don't find it in the context of this paper, is for us to go to the Congress and ask for a federal tax credit for parochial school tuition.

Now, that's a much higher visibility ticket than this.

And it costs about the same, right?

So this, in effect, is a sort of middle ground.

This one would not be as acceptable to the bishops as just going to the Congress for a tax credit would be.

Well, what you would do then would be not to have anything in this form.

Right.

And then go for a tax credit.

That's my decision.

You'd rather go to the Congress.

That's mine.

All right.

That's mine.

And I'm looking to see if you think I can do a goddamn thing right on the other.

No.

The big question is the option five, which I want to discuss with Conner.

I read over it.

I don't know if I'm going to figure it out.

And one thing I'd like to have done is to have polled it with the cabinet figures.

And you know that that's $30,000 to $1,000.

I wonder if you want to poll to see would you favor it.

Maybe some increase in taxes or maybe put it in terms of maybe sales tax for the purpose of education.

That's a good one.

Would you favor if it was for the purpose of maintaining our active defenses?

That's a good one.

Would you favor it to work for the purpose of property taxes or something like that?

And of course, would you favor the purpose to balance the money?

I'd like to, I don't think that we would do it for any of these reasons, but I think it would be interesting to know what our, could be our problem is.

How, how, how very selective it is.

My inclination is to, uh, to open the door for yourself, not for the purpose of a new stranger, not the new nations.

I'm afraid not.

I think a little bit.

And we've got to get at this pretty soon, the budget side.

What do we do to get the budget closer to balance?

Now maybe, what does that mean, the balance of budget?

Well, that would be money.

George and Kath and I are going to spend time this week on that.

Well, I've got a new balance.

I think you...

I want to keep out a lot of people.

I don't want Harper and all these other people.

Quite frankly, I understand them.

I think you, Kat, George, Connolly and I have got to sit down and decide the right thing.

I don't want the likes of all the others.

They're very good.

I want to crack them.

And frankly, any part of the people need a hot deal there.

I think this is the...

It's a very fundamental political decision that we have to make.

It also has to do a hell of a lot with the economy.

George?

Is that all I can do?

That's fine.

Sure.

Is that legal?

Yes.

I think so.

Do you want to add anything?

Do you want to subtract anything?

No.

We've got an economy award, that's for sure.

You've got an economics award.

You might.

That's a foolish thing.

No, I was going to drop out with Cap, but I don't think so.

I think he's really...

The hell of having Cap in there is that he's a damn hard line.

I know.

And he doesn't think politically about some of these things in a...

In a real sense.

I'm not implying that Hamtack, because he may raise subjects, raise questions, John, that are, well, I know what you mean.

He raises questions that become totally irrelevant.

He says, well, I think what we ought to do is balance the budget.

Well, I think so, too, but maybe we shouldn't.

And to get there.

And then he says, I think we should cut out the school bell for it.

Now, I don't know.

We can't cut out the school bell for it.

Well, George understands that and is really more political than Cap.

He's more political than Cap, I'm sorry to say.

Let's keep Cap out and also keep him smaller.

Let's make that a debate of war on this one.

Fair enough.

You, and I don't want anybody else in the room, you, Connelly, George, and I, it's an effort to save my time, son.

We don't want to take Connelly too much away from the other things.

I'm going to carry what you've been referring to right now.

I think it's important that you have a chance to whack around, maybe you and George, with the combat that you do.

Maybe you can beat it around the bush.

We'll do that.

There's a battle to think about.

You see, we bring John in, like we bring me into things.

We bring him in, and I know he's crazy, but he's busy as hell talking all the time.

You throw this down and he gives a good horse back.

And half the time it's wrong.

Half the time mine's wrong.

Let us do this.

Let us try to refine out this thing so we get it down to some key questions.

And we can do that today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

Now when you get back from Florida, if you go, we'll be ready to go.

It's something that I would not have any, I would not have any objection at all to talking about in Florida, too.

It's a kind of thing that might be good for everybody to do.

Or at Camp Dave, if I stay here, it's a good thing to talk about there.

You could take one of the smaller cabins.

Or at, in California, over Thanksgiving.

You know, I mean, I'm, I think that we're going to have to do that.

You see, John, we've got a hell of a problem coming up here in terms of lifetime.

Right.

We've got the problem is, it isn't known yet, and we can't read this, but it is possible that I may have to have three people before I go to the China thing.

One with the Russians, I mean, one with the French, one with the British, and the others.

Okay.

Now that's going to take a hell of a while.

Preparation.

Two days.

Three days is probably the travel time.

Second point.

I have to prepare.

From the 1st of February on, I am Doug.

That's absolutely it.

And I should have started even before that because I got a little too much concentration, interested in this and a very interesting side of it.

And I, Bill, and I mentioned this to Bill, and Bill said, well, reading will take you this long because you usually don't do this.

Boy, it'll take me that long.

I think that's the difference between Bill's approach and mine.

He's very quick.

He's as fast as he can be.

But God damn, I don't think he sits down and

and drills was the last one.

All right, I'm leaving now.

Equipment superficial.

Well, he's not that superficial.

He knows a lot.

He tends to be more tactical.

That's the problem.

But boy, on this train in Russia, I've been through around the track with these sons of bitches, and you've got to know them better than you know yourselves.

That's the way I compare to people.

But you know, you haven't really been very successful in the practice of the law.

Maybe being that well prepared is not that much there for you.

I think at that level, in the practice of the law, it just isn't all that much preparation.

A guy like Garland, I think, has a lot more preparation to do for the kind of stuff he was doing than the sort of thing that Bill was doing.

It would be my suspicion.

Bill would use his prestige a lot.

Well, you can see that now.

If we have him coming up, of course, all the misery of the...

of the State of the Union craft.

Now, the State of the Union plan, of course, is to do it at night, but it's still going to be a men-do-it-from-the-off-the-out night.

Now that it's still a hell of a preparation, it's the ideal way to do it this year to fix those bastards.

Well, the background work for the messages, the substantive messages,

need not necessarily be key to that State of the Union.

I think the State of the Union is going to be sort of high level and, uh, and, uh... Well, leave that in there, Hanson.

Well, you're back, uh, whatever Grutter comes up with.

Yeah, but we don't have to have the, we don't have to have crossed every T and dotted every I by the time you go on.

Well, but that's no duty, because what you're talking, you're talking about the President's address to the nation, which is right, and the President's State of the Union message.

Oh, you know, he's been talking about a State of the Union message.

My address to the country will be 20 minutes, 25 at the most, 20, I hope, 20 minutes.

And it'll be a highlight, well-chosen words where I chart the course.

Then you send down to Congress, I hope, a bundle the next day.

of 200,000, 300,000 well-chosen words and all that kind of stuff.

Well, we have the budget message, we have the economic report, and some documents.

Oh, the national growth policy?

Yeah, if that comes home, I don't know whether we've seen it or not.

Oh, we don't.

We won't do it unless we can.

Well, uh, we've asked him.

I read Nathan Glaser's article in Commentary 7.

I keep after Mike Hanna all the time.

I wrote him.

I said, I just want the answer to all this.

You know, he had a very fascinating critique of family.

He says, yep, that it's what's been happening in the Arkansfield area since the point you're driving in.

Have you heard back from Pat?

No, I didn't hear from him.

I'm going to get Pat down for a day.

He'll give us a day.

The letter will go off today.

Wait until he gets the letter.

All right.

We've got to find out where the hell he's staying.

All right.

Well, I wasn't going to have him so much on welfare as some other things.

Good.

That broke.

I mean, that broke by more than anything else.

But it is not too soon to...

begin making final decisions on the content of the State of the Union message, the 100,000 well-chosen words that go on paper.

And so what I have in mind is that we've got to decide what's going to be the center of these things.

Now the R&D work goes on and I would say we'll not be with any sort of a firm recommendation before California.

But it's got some intriguing possibilities.

Very intriguing.

Now the other thing that is coming out of this R&D study that may be possible, if it isn't too much special interest,

is the whole separate problem of the airline and airframe aerospace industry.

That's right.

And that's right under California.

That's California in the west.

Yep.

Correct.

And a little bit of Texas.

Well, I'm all for that.

Okay.

If it'll help save that industry their damn lives.

Okay.

Well, that's the direction we discussed the S&P with some people.

Oh, did he?

On the budget, and I've got this marked down, here is the economy.

Glenn Olsen, you were going to talk about it this week.

And let's keep it in that context.

And let's get right down to the net budget and what kind of a budget we need to present to the country.

All right, we'll let you answer today.

Does that tell you, talking to me about this, do you have anything to say to Reagan?

No, but that will come up incidentally.

This is about five items that I want to run through.

You're going to see Reagan later this week, apparently, and he's having a negotiation with Reagan and wanted you to be able to get a feel of what that is.

I told him that...

I asked Reagan, despite the fact that Reagan is forced to ask for it.

My suggestion to you is that you tell Richardson that you want the thing settled before Reagan comes in to see you on, what, Thursday is it?

Wednesday.

Richardson can settle this with Reagan, but he has to be told to do it before he goes back.

Well, he's, of course, representing his constituency over there.

And they're trying to get as good a deal as they can.

Reagan's trying to get as good a deal as he can.

And the settlement lies someplace in the middle.

And so if Richardson is given marching orders by you and you say, look, I don't want Reagan coming in here bargaining with me on this, you get this settled with him before he comes in, I think Kelly can do it and he will do it.

On the child development thing, he, as a good politician, sees himself caught in the fight of the line.

He's been arguing for child care under H.R.

1.

And he has been talked into a more liberal position than that.

I may add in, I may add in,

See, this is a, this is a... Sure, sure.

Get them out of their home environment.

Mm-hmm.

We have given Alex an absolute categorical signal on this.

And he's going to come in and appeal it is about what it amounts to.

And I think you can listen to him and just say, Elliot, I know your problem, but this is a deep philosophical thing with me and I just can't buy it.

That's it.

Okay.

Now,

The other thing to remember is that Elliott still does not know the game we're playing with Long on H.R.

1.

So he'll give you a big report about how wonderful H.R.

1 is coming and about all the great things we're doing and so on and so forth.

Time will take care of that.

But I think those are the principal subjects that he'll raise.

He may raise Ogilvy's double cross, but I think I'll have that settled by

by the time he gets up today.

He called me the other day and he said, you know, he said, a lot of people think I'm some kind of a professor or a banker or something.

He says, you know, really, I'm a politician.

He says, I know his game.

And he's doing a damn good job.

I know what he's got to cope with.

or he could hold on to those things.

I don't know where, you know... Stay loose on it for the moment, and we'll come at you with some final proposals.

We've got a few.

Our general feeling right now is that we ought to have one or two big things that are sort of centerpieces and not just a whole shotgun scatter of... What about the... Are we going to brush off revenue sharing again?

Well, that's the budget question.

See, that's the budget question.

It's a mixed question of how you frame the budget and how you run against the Congress if you do.

And that really is an anti-Congress maneuver, basically.

And it's also a function of this decision on 4%, because if you get 4% on value-added, then you can keep going on revenue share under one version of the budget.

If we get away with the rock bar, for example, and we stack revenue share...

I think with some preparation you could, by explaining to them that it dramatizes our congressional problem.

But this other thing helps them start a new song.

That's correct.

It helps them a lot.

I agree with you on that.

I feel that I would recommend sharing that you say, here it is, and then we will come back to the Congress again, but we can't at this point.

Again, you see, all of these are interrelated, and I think what we ought to do is come at it as a whole, as a total, and not really prejudge it.

I've got a couple of other odds and ends I'd like to hit you on, if I could, while I'm here.

One is this business of the FBI and Bill Sullivan, just a progress report, that Sullivan is now under control, as near as maybe...

So, we're going around this, uh, midnight.

This must be what we're doing tonight.

Yeah.

And, uh, everybody, now, the cleanup comes out to the end of it, we'll be able to see.

We don't have to go out and we don't have to take them off.

Because this is different than the ones in the past.

Not that, how different?

In that, for instance, the only one we can place on is Postal.

Yeah.

They promised Alan Durden said to us, or whoever it was, and they all know their name on it, whoever it is that says it to you, says to us, we guarantee you, we promise you, we'll make you legal retroactively.

So go ahead and spend your money.

They would say the same thing to us now.

Alan Durden has already done the same thing this time.

But how do you pay back your payroll?

Well, Dick Morse has established a relationship with him and has made some of the, yes, made some of the insurances he authorized to be made.

Well, and he's very interested in the intelligence community.

And if there's any chance that he's working into that, why, he'll sit tight.

There is.

Well, he's, as I say, adequately under control for the time being.

We are going ahead in the distance.

on a New York-type tightening up of welfare.

It's going to break some time, but we're taking the necessary steps to do that, and OMB and Krogh are moving that along.

You'll be hearing squeals of anguish on that very shortly.

You'll also be hearing something about LEAA, I imagine.

Well, no, we've got very, very serious management problems in LEAA.

No, Jerry, I think he's doing a lot of the right things.

We've had him over here three times now, and we've had Carlucci camping out over there at LEAA, and we're going to be making some progress.

The damn thing was badly run.

I think John and Dick just didn't pay much attention to it for a long time.

And there's just all kinds of potential problems.

Well, a lot of them are gone.

A lot of them are gone.

And Leonard has replaced three of them.

So he knows now that you are giving this your personal attention and that he is very much on him.

And yet, you're going to catch a lot of hell, probably in the press, but also from guys like Lynn Holt, who surfaced the other day attacking LAAJ.

And I just want you to be aware of that.

He attacked it for the wrong reason, if he wanted to help us.

Now, there were ways that he could have done it that would not have hurt us as badly as what he did say, but he attacked the whole Department of Justice approach to helping the states with a crime problem.

And he made a very good case for a lot of the LEAA mistakes that had been made in the past.

And the only reason I raise it with you is just to tell you that we are on top of it.

You are undoubtedly going to be reading or hearing from governors or other people about it.

Yes.

As a matter of fact, we're going to ask Agnew to call a conference of governors of maybe the 20 or 25 most troublesome states, because we're in trouble in about half the states on this.

What is the problem here?

The problem here is that we have been shoveling money out without supervising it.

Is it our fault?

Is it wasted or theirs?

It's both.

It's both in the eyes of a congressman.

And under the law as it was written, we have not done what we should have to ensure the proper application of the money.

I don't think there's any question about that.

The states on there have abused the program in about 20 instances.

Surveys of public attitudes about policemen and all that kind of stuff.

And that's a good one.

Some of it's pretty awful.

Redesigned policemen's uniforms.

It's really scandalous.

What we're going to ask Agnew to do is call in the governors of the states where there's been trouble, say there's a new broom here, we're going to correct this, some of you are going to have to give back money, it's going to be tough, we're going to do this thing right, and we're going to get results, and so on and so forth, and have a kind of a woodshed session.

I think that's the only way to pull ourselves out of this.

If we try to cover it up or pretend that everything is dandy, they're going to kill us.

The earlier we do this, the better.

So that's a principal story.

And that's about all I have.

Crime statistics?

I don't know.

If I knew the answer to that, I'd be smarter than that.

Some of them are just not very dang good.

And Life magazine today has a big crime feature and they're taking a poll.

And I ask all the life subscribers to send in a questionnaire.

Are you afraid of crime?

Does it affect your family?

And all this kind of thing.

So that's what I ask the life.

What is the situation?

Here we have, we find good judges.

We find good U.S. attorneys.

Of course, we help them find the contacts.

That's the one really good result.

And otherwise, it's all simple as.

Otherwise, it is... Well, maybe it's just the fact that crime is inevitably going to go up.

I think it is.

And part of it is that we have an inordinate number of kids coming into that 15 to 21 age range where the high crime is.

Big numbers.

And I think inevitably the crime statistics are just going to go up around the country.

Now we have...

It's coming, and we're going to surface some additional stuff on that.

Of course, we're bogged down with Congress on the Jaffee office.

We haven't been able to get action here.

Oh, he's here and working on faith.

Well, we have certainly made money.

We have certainly made money.

You know, I'm just going to go through it.

The Army, the football, baseball, and the

Those are good.

We're getting good play on the drug statistics, on knocking over drug laws and that kind of thing.

And actually, I think one of the things you should talk about in your State of the Union, or at least in the message that goes up, is narcotics.

And you should focus on what we've done and what we've proposed to do, and we're going to come at you with a new form of federal law enforcement on narcotics.

On the plus side of the crime, yeah.

At least, what is the visible sign that we should be doing a little better with the riots?

Riots, right.

You can brag on that.

There's my colleagues there.

It's quite bad, right?

Yes.

It's very bad.

In terms of crime, crime itself.

And riots.

Oh, riots, none.

That's right.

But crime, interestingly enough, is a serious problem on campus.

Robberies and rapes, primarily.

And very serious.

Robberies and rapes, that's right.

Yep.

Well, rapes, I understand, and robberies.

Yep, very high.

But I think our strong points are the climate of lawlessness in the country.

has been markedly improved, and everybody will agree with that.

You can say, do you remember how things were in 67?

Do you remember how things were in 68?

And people were breaking windows and stealing stuff out of stores.

There were riots.

There were civil disorders.

Lawlessness and respect for law and order was just gone.

And that's changed.

We've changed that.

It's true that muggings and armed robberies and things like that, which are police problems, are still a problem in major communities.

We think we know how to solve that and we've solved it in a major community where we have responsibility.

We put the billion dollars out so that other communities can attempt to solve it too.

And then I would just get the hell away from that issue after you said that.

I don't think that that is a...

I think we're on the defensive on this issue now.

On the levels.

And the fact that we're waiting on a lot of work and strokes.

That's a strong point, and I think we can take some credit there.

And we can also...

I got the cabinet office button getting their reports ready.

Yes.

I waited until the status was over.

Heidi, did they get a talk for Julie before she went to Cleveland today?

No, she called John Andrews and said she didn't want him.

I had him working on it with the idea of being in today.

Why didn't she talk to him?

She called John.

She said, turn him off.

I didn't know.

I didn't know what happened.

She called him.

He was working in another field.

No, he was... What happened?

She didn't...

Or you get it to work on it until after it's submitted to me.

That's what I need and then I'll look it over and examine the situation.

Is your hand back?

Yes.

Look at the question of this continuing resolution thing.

Yes, going around on that.

Yeah, of course.

Is it really, you have two options after midnight.

The first option is to

get an agreement from Maynard and Allender, as we did in the postal situation, that they will ensure that you can go ahead and send the money and all, and that they will retroactively make it legal when they get the bill passed.

They'll cover you for this interoperability.

Well, there won't be a continuing resolution unless they decide to vote, which, as of now, they will not do.

Or, actually, they won't get it tomorrow either, but what they'll do is they'll go ahead with the appropriations.

And in those bills, they put a clause that covers that it was legal for you to have spent the money, but in the meantime, you're spending it illegally.

The other option is to come on strong on the, today, on the fact that there are illegalities and problems involved and that we therefore have got to stop the spending as of midnight tonight because legally you're not, there's no way you can spend after midnight tonight.

And that you'll do what you can to keep things going but you'll not take any illegal acts.

That would take on the Senate.

You'd then hit them for the,

The problem with the first option is that this is a totally different kind of situation than the postal one was where there was only one bill held up and where you knew you were going to sign that.

In this case, you're dealing with defense, military procurement, OEO, which you probably would want to veto.

All of those have things on them that are being tacked on.

And as soon as you go the Mahon Islander, we promise you, then you are their captain because then you have to sign any bill that they come up with.

And the...

The thing now comes down to the recommendation that you take them on.

I talked to Tommy, as you asked, and on the merits of it, he says there's no question in my mind that we've taken a hard line.

First of all, you're in an indefensible position if you violate the law, and you box yourself in.

The fact that that's been done before doesn't make any difference.

You're still in an indefensible position this time.

And you'll have to make decisions that you should not make, then, yourselves.

Secondly, you have a breakdown of government operations due to the fact that the Senate is acting irresponsibly.

You're going to have to run against Congress sometime anyway.

You've got the best opportunity now probably that you'll ever get for a clear-cut issue on it.

You can make the point that there are a few obstructions that you will win by venting their anger on particular things in a totally irresponsible way.

And he said, the tangible ingredient in this is taking that action once again puts the position of the president in the position of the strong, decisive leader.

And I said, but the real problem here is if the government collapses, the president runs the government, and so is he to blame for it collapsing?

And he said, no, he has to draw the distinction.

He's got to praise the House of Representatives for having gotten these bills through, gotten their business done.

and slamming the Senate for holding it up for no reason.

And he said, we're not tough enough on Congress anyway.

We lie down.

He said, it was a terrible thing for Bill Rogers to go up there and plead for foreign aid on the basis of foreign aid.

We should never do that.

We should have never been in that position.

Bill Rogers should have been up there slamming the Senate for disrupting the nation's foreign policy, not asking for foreign aid.

We already need to do that.

And he said, we need to, the administration needs to nail the Congress.

We will plead versus the Congress now.

Bill Rogers

is very concerned, as a former Attorney General, with assuming any obligations and expenditures that are not legally done, especially to foreign nations, which the paid continuing aid programs do.

So it's called out.

He said we're headed here for a very serious situation.

Mr. Chairman, what are we going to do?

Callender has a very hard strategy, Shultz is satisfied, which is that he has an interest in us.

He's interested, first of all, he's curious because the House is taking a 10-day recess next week.

And he's trying to hold the House's feet to the fire, but he's also trying to hold your feet to the fire on these bills.

He wants to force you into this trap that we have seen.

He is purposely developing that.

He'll give you all kinds of commitments about making it legal and everything, but that puts you in a box.

In this conversation, he volunteered a five-day continuing resolution.

which we've given the rest of this week to him.

That's a further trap because what that does is carry you only until the House goes out and then you're back in the same place you were but with no House to help you on a further continuing resolution.

Right now you have a House passed continuing resolution.

All that's required now is for the Electoral Committee to meet for five minutes, report out to the Senate and for the Senate to pass it, which they'll do by a voice vote in 30 seconds.

What's, what's about the Mayhawks?

They have not talked to Mayhawks.

Uh, they're a company, isn't it?

It's part of them.

Okay.

Charlotte's part of it.

Now, another problem in taking this thing on, to take the battle on, is that you, in effect, put these people on furlough.

You can't pay them anyone legally.

is to put all employees on furlough without pay.

And in effect, close down on those parts of the government.

Closing down OEO is bad.

Closing down 80 may not be bad.

Because there's pipeline stuff that will take care of it.

Closing down the Defense Department, which is a real problem, means that they can't buy gas to run an airplane in Vietnam for the next bombing runs.

They don't have the gas already bought.

much less the spread of 76.

I'm sure they have some.

We don't really know.

The other twist there is that you could say, in doing this, that you will, however, on your own confidence, take those acts that are necessary to protect American lives or something like that.

view comes down to that you really don't have any option and you've got to take the hard line.

I was the hard line too.

By calling in at least Hellinger and probably Hellinger and Mansfield and Scott and Ford and Mahon and Bowe, the House and Senate Appropriations and Leadership people, Mahon, Hogue, Bowe,

And saying to them that you are going to, unfortunately, have to order this done.

We want it understood by them that they have until midnight to pass a continuing resolution signing down.

And if they don't, you're going to be in trouble.

And you're not going to be in trouble.

It doesn't really matter if you put out some story on that radio station.

I think it's a good subject for the cabinet meeting if you have it.

I don't know.

Don't get into this detail.

It would make a good subject to be on.

People trying to, you know, express their views about the intention to make the Rockets work.

One interesting thing, Terry, is that Dr. Ellinger didn't know that OVO was involved in this continuing resolution.

It's thereby an unusual parliamentary situation that Hellinger wasn't aware of.

And when Schultz told him about the problem from OEO, he said, no, no, that's not included.

Their conversation ended with Hellinger still thinking OEO is not in, but it is.

Which he will now learn.

He will have learned by hand.

Now we need to go out.

Well, there's a real possibility that if, assuming you took the call-in route to David Crumlin's, to Dellinger's, it's just, I don't know, really.

Probably not.

Well, it's Manfield.

Well, it's Dellinger.

That's true.

He's behind Dellinger.

That's true.

Yeah, oh, sure.

That's true.

It was right this time.

Of the presidential leadership thing, if Ziegler could say, the president,

brought to the cabinet's attention this sort of constitutional crisis.

It helps this distinction.

Sure.

Hold on.

No, but thinking about ways of delineating between the presidency on the one hand and the irresponsible Senate on the other, which is really the contest.

Yeah.

but mainly to get a particular platform.

That's what I mean.

That's very interesting.

You're absolutely right.

Okay.

Well, this would be very enlightening to me anyway, because I've got this whole beyond.

Yeah.

I'm kind of seeing that bugging me, but the report on the structure of Indian Pearl, and I said, I'm just told that I'm kind of seeing it as expensive.

You know, my time is so valuable.

And he said, he's wasted.

He said, two hours of my time.

He said, what a waste of your time.

What a hell of a lot of wasted cabinets.

So what did she do?

I mean, let them listen to this dog.

I mean, what does it show and tell?

Show and tell.

He really is something.

You know, he just discovered all the remains of the area.

He's got great, fantastic things.

I had to tell you.

But, you know, you're nice.

If that's what you want to take, we've got to work out a basic position as to what you want to do.

I don't want to answer it for you, you know.

I don't have all the committee chairmen and so forth and so on.

The idea was the two houses, two senate appropriations, and then the two leaders.

That's where the game is.

After that, the idea of the government breaks down and so forth.

So it breaks down.

It's a temporary problem.

And that hurts just a little bit.

On the other hand, you've got to take it on.

I don't know what you think, sir.

Yes, sir.

I don't know if you could just stay here and let these people be happy.

Because they are being irresponsible.

And they've got them all hanging off their asses past this time.

Well, plus which, subsurface, they're putting you in an intolerable box.

The track is very real.

You don't have any choice.

You mean the box is having to sign their service?

That's right.

There are over 100 amendments now on the tax bill that's out.

They're starting on the foreign aid bill and the appropriations.

The tax bill is not one of these.

The tax bill isn't in this.

They're planning to gain the time on the amendments and everything that comes across the board.

For example, the defense bill.

And very well, it's not unlikely that it'll come through with them as you'll have ended up with a date certain.

Now you're going to sign that, aren't you?

If you made this deal, you'll have to sign it now.

They put you in a box and lock you up and then they can pack everything they want on these goddamn bills that you're illegally sending the money on.

They've got you right where they want you.

Yep.

What do you do with the resolution that's only until when?

Until Congress is here.

Until...

You don't let them adjourn.

If you get this stuff passed, they can get this done by then.

Yeah, but my point is they can't get it done in five days, which is what he's offered to do.

Military, they probably can't.

They'll probably get it done this week, the defense preparation.

In other words, this goes far beyond foreign aid.

The Senate's just behind, isn't that what it is?

They would have to pass the continuing resolution anyway, wouldn't they?

We thought before anything.

My point is, they still have to pass the principle.

That's a resolution for that.

And, you know, they still have to pass.

That's right.

I'm sorry.

Any military opinion?

Well, all of those are there anyway.

They've got the name centered on the box.

And they're all covered by the continuing resolution.

With the House going out,

The probability is that the OEO conference will wait until the House comes back.

Oh, that's what Ellinger's trying to do.

Oh, I know.

By not putting the continuing resolution in place.

Why?

What's he for in the OEO?

I haven't any idea.

He's probably for a very liberal person, although I don't know where he voted on the Senate person.

The trouble's point is that what Ellinger's trying to do is show that he's in complete sympathy with us.

They could, but they put the feet to the fire.

But the fact that you need to do it also screws you, therefore you can't be a part of it.

You can't let them do it.

But to your point, they're far away from disposing of this work.

And the house is over here.

Because they're behind, too.

It isn't just the Senate.

The house is behind.

I'm sure.

Wilbur Nels wrote to you, you know, and told you he couldn't take up revenue sharing because they were going to be so busy with all this work they had hidden.

Now here they go on a 10-day recess.

All right, maybe now's the time to start fighting the Congress.

Okay.

But it's at this moment probably to fight the Senate.

Oh, yes, I know.

Always pick and choose.

And in effect...

A lot of them can't raise a house.

I'm just like, it doesn't make any difference to the country.

They don't separate the two.

Then the next, if you follow those people in and tell them you're going to do it, then two things happen.

Either they vote or they don't.

The vote doesn't care.

If they don't vote, then the next step's going to be taken, which is presumably to run one burger out,

Say he's been ordered by the president to notify departments, which he has done.

I don't think so.

that believe that probably I should go out and announce that we're going to do all these things.

I think that escalates the thing too goddamn much.

You agree now, Eric?

Sure, because I don't want to have that come to my desk right now.

Ellen has suggested that.

I would suspect that's what Connelly had in mind, although he didn't specifically say, well, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that at this point.

It seems to me you're taking adverse action, and your budget director ought to take it.

But let's think a minute about whether you have even a photo op.

and leadership, if you have one.

It seems to me you don't.

I wouldn't even announce it until after it's done.

Can we cut this thing off, this cost of living council, and then, I mean, what do you think, unless meetings have to occur, how do we, how do we work the time off?

What do you think?

Well, it's not too good to be true.

Well that's four o'clock.

Two o'clock.

and then at 4 o'clock, or how does that appear?

Or throw the cat, push the cat in the back.

You can always roll down and push them back in the house.

You can put off the rack.

That is probably about it.

Is that it?

Oh, you're ready.

That's all right.

That's it.

You can put off.

Steve, let's see if we can get you ready for Congressional.

Well, the Congressional, if you listen to the phone, you don't have to pay away the dog here.

I don't know, Steve, the way anything is, the Congressional thing, as soon as possible so that they can't say we call them at 4 o'clock or something at 12, get them immediately.

They can come in at a half hour.

Let's get the Congressional people in.

and lay the wood to them.

I've got a little time to prepare it.

But that, that's that.

If I want to beat Michelle or anybody who knows anything about this, or if you want to take this route without me, no, I know what the situation is.

I mean, it's a, it's not a technical matter anymore.

I think I've covered the,

Well, I don't think you know what I want you to hear, John.

It's not anything.

It's not that much of a question.

We're in a box, and we've got to know what the hell to do about it.

Isn't that right?

Some of the legalities of it are turkey and wine burger.

They're probably the talk of the... Oh, before the meeting.

Yes, I want to meet with somebody.

I'll let you know.

I've got to talk to them.

Before the meeting, of course, we've got to sit in and have a...

It can be great.

Oh, absolutely.

But I know we have to take this around.

I can't see the rest of it.

And then I frankly would ask John, would you agree that we could put ourselves in the hands of Congress?

Yes, I would, I would.

Oh, you got it right.

I mean, it's a great year.

All the Senators, Rodgers agrees with it.

He starts it here.

Rodgers agrees.

Mark, I have a really good question for Rodgers.

And it's totally Rodgers.

He says you can't get all the money.

You can't get the money.

You must not stand up very firmly on that.

Well, I have to do what the meeting would be to have the air agencies represented.

Larry can say what it's going to be, and then Roger can say what it is at the meeting.

Poor old guy can say what it means to him.

Huh?

I don't think they know what it means to them.

Or it seems to me, just call them and say, you know what, this is what I'm going to do, and I want you to understand that this is what the House of the Posse wants to do.

That's right.

You don't have to maintain your resolution.

I'm going to do this.

And do it in very short order.

Now I get them down, but I think what you better do, Bob, is how about putting the cost of living council over to tomorrow?

How would that be?

I can't do it.

I don't know.

Well, it can certainly be put over credit.

Thank you.

That's the one you're trying to bring out, see?

See what I've got?

I didn't have any of that.

Push it all back with Richardson.

You can put... You can put Richardson in the mark.

You can put him in the draft.

You know how that's from the city center.

You've got Richardson right in the mark.

His fans are in the game.

He doesn't have any time.

He can't sit.

He can talk to the pitcher.

So you've got two hours left.

I'm glad you put Richardson in the draft.

Okay.