Conversation 642-029

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I would hope you keep in mind this as long as you can.

He can help you.

As Attorney General, he can now do tremendous things.

And people say, well, they'll criticize him for loaning.

Bobby Kennedy spent 75% of his time or more doing things other than running the Department of Justice.

Well, I think that if he can...

Well, thank you, Mr. President.

I would say this.

You'd say being a cabinet officer is a pain in the ass.

I'd say being a cabinet officer in the Nixon administration is a great honor to be here.

People realize that the capitals get detention and so forth, and they have some courage to drive on that.

Well, I think he does do.

No question about that.

He's with Scott.

Yeah, he's with Scott.

As good as the other incident.

Finally, the reaction of the president.

The reason is, we're talking to you, we're talking to you, and eating with friends.

Excellent.

Just excellent.

Well, good.

Well, he needs to be getting something to write about.

Now, again, it doesn't speak to you as an effective president.

I don't see a question.

Do you know it?

The door is checked.

It's sitting over there in the back.

The only way I'll check is if the sport coat is in the yoke.

But the yoke is not there.

I'm going to go check the yoke.

What did you check?

It might be in the sport coat.

I wore the sport coat yesterday.

Yeah, it might be there.

you might check it there but you heard it checked over here in the office

Well, I think 6.3 is at least in a technical sense a better figure in the sense that

that outlays at 6% unemployment are higher than outlays at 4% because you pay around $3 billion of unemployment compensation that you wouldn't pay otherwise.

So I've customarily people compute what you might call full employment outlays, which tend to be a little less for that reason.

And one can argue whether or not we should use that gimmick, but it helps us quite a lot in making this thing come out right, and it is professionally, technically right, and it's sort of a clearly sensible thing.

I mean, it appeals to people.

Well, we would round that to 35, if you take an even number.

Now that, we could, here is sort of the dimension of choice that you have.

That figure represents two things.

One, this outlay management we've gone in for, that you and I, we've discussed, that puts into 72 and keeps away from 73 so that we have our 73 picture looking better.

And second, our desire to keep, push spending hard in fiscal 72

six months of this year and at a rate that can be sustained through the balance of the year.

And we have been on the back very hard of the Defense Department to get their rate of spending up and the other departments.

And so those two things represent that figure, if you were to instruct us.

We could very easily turn that $234,000 into $229,000 by making everybody hold down their spending and by reversing these outlay management things, although it would show up in 73.

$229,000 was your figure at this time last year that you set up.

There's a lot of stipulated expenses in there, and there should be some of those.

Well, I think from an economic standpoint, you can argue that now is the time to push.

I mean, leaving the politics out of it, now is the time to push to get the economy up.

And then when it gets up, to start growing back.

I think it's better to have a better-looking budget in 73 than in 72.

Yeah.

That's why we moved it all into 72.

Because the Johnson gas in 1968 was like 24.6 million.

Anyway, this is clearly the largest status event we've ever had, although in percentage terms, I'm not so sure that's right.

It's the largest economy we've ever had, and everything is bigger.

Well, those budget messages for you over the weekend, and we're bearing down pretty heavily on that, that you took over the legacy of inflation and a set of programs, 75% of which were uncontrollable.

And that advantage, right, and also some indication of the downward pressures that have been exerted, and that this is a deliberate choice to avoid unemployment when we have to control inflation and that kind of thing.

So we're trying to correct as much of the file language as we can.

We're going to buy it.

This is the task report system.

primarily because of defense.

And inquired as to whether you want to pursue it.

And it would require an additional 50,000 reduction in defense on the civilian employment side.

We've achieved about 2.6%

And 66,000 people were .

We wanted to pursue it by requiring, we would secure the 5%, full 5% reduction if we took an additional 40,000 out of the mess, 40,000 civilian employees out of the mess, which would require risks and could not be done through .

And that would be the amount necessary.

Well, we've taken close to it, yes, sir.

Some we've gone a bit above, but we've had trouble with AGW and with Treasury, where we had a position back for the economic stabilization program.

We didn't achieve it.

And with AGW, they had 36,000, 3,000.

Why did they add it?

Well, they thought they needed to reduce backlogs in Social Security, and some were added because of supplementals that were passed by Congress.

But we gave them a $98,000 goal, and they're at $102,500 now.

That's a reduction, however, from the reduction that there would have been, which was 110,000.

They're in the, they're in the, they did, we did achieve it by a percent.

What about the, what do you think?

Well, I think we could get this kind of reduction.

I think we could, we will undoubtedly have some, some sharp reductions.

closing any bases until after November.

We could achieve this by getting some reductions in employment on some of those bases.

I don't think we would interfere with the domestic – with the domestic strength of the country at all by doing it.

But we could get this between now and next year, but it would be a wrench, and it would involve 40,000 positions.

That's the difference practically that we are missing the 5 percent point.

And the only importance of it, this is my impression, is that we have to print in the budget the civilian employment of the government.

And it will show that we have met this goal that you've set for us.

What kind of reaction to that?

Violent?

Yes, sir.

Quite strong.

I guess not violent, but I should say quite strong.

Mr. Packard, Dave asked me to hold the figure confidential between him and Moot and others until he got to the very selection.

He was afraid if we showed how much reduction we wanted, they would get cut even further by time, and I agreed with that.

And as a result, they didn't start on the reductions necessary.

And now they're at the point where they tell us that if we want to achieve the 5%, we have to get 40,000 drunk and more.

And these are all civilian employees, and we are looking for employment, not unemployment.

But I know, I know.

I think that this one here at Gold, that's my problem.

All right.

How about 20,000 out of the Pentagon?

How many do you have in the Pentagon right now?

I do not have the time to check it.

I would guess they've got... Well, I don't know.

Physically in the Pentagon?

I just don't know.

I guess that they have over half an area.

How many in the Pentagon?

Not in the Pentagon.

No.

Physically in the Pentagon, I don't...

In Washington, D.C.

In the Washington, D.C. area, what do you got?

The total defense base against which we were working was 1,062,000.

That's the total defense base, and we got to 28,000 if they refuse, and we need 40 more.

Those are the total magnitudes.

Within Washington, D.C., I don't know.

I want Washington, D.C. squeezed like hell.

We've just got to do that.

Stop that question.

We're running over the people of the Pentagon.

We're running over the people.

And tell those goddamn people that if you get rid of a few of them, you can all sue kids' characters and stenographers and any...

Christmas is over, and that's one place they can squeeze.

All right.

We'll see what we can get right here within the Washington area.

In the Washington area.

In the Washington area, I want mostly out of here, and insist that that be the case.

All right.

Tell you what, we'll set up a figure.

Well, rather than 40.

And, uh, and, uh, I don't have to read it fully.

I'll cut it in half.

So the figure of 20, no, of 25, of which 10, no, of which half, uh, what's that half figure?

All right, well, let's make it 22,000.

Let's make it 22,000 of which have, you know, part of the Commonwealth of Washington, D.C. now.

Let's just set that as a goal.

And let's start getting this damn city into shape.

The last zero to one in Washington, D.C.

last sentence uh makes the point which i don't think he's making that this will require the full cooperation of the secretary and he will personally have to direct the cutback uh should i advise you just about the conversation this morning so they're cutting back and so basically by

It's a good thing to do, Mr. President.

He makes his case, not so much on whether or not he can find those people and get rid of them without hurting the armed forces, but on the basis of the economy.

Our $11,000 in the Pentagon, he marketed to Arthur Burns and others.

Our $11,000 in the Pentagon, I know he's put it out, he's put it out, $800,000, $300,000.

$11,000 in the Pentagon and $11,000 in the rest of the country.

the rest of the concrete words.

It is to be spread on a general basis.

Everybody is to take equally around the country.

one 80, one briefcase carrier.

You said you have one briefcase carrier for every dog and chicken that come around the country.

Fair enough?

Sounds very reasonable.

I mean, it's probably like every briefcase carrier as well as every chicken.

We have two nannies put around here.

There's a second thing to me.

There's always 80 running around.

Unless you show me a man with a deputy, I'll show you somebody who can do much of a job.

Unless the deputy is doing something in his own right.

Probably they could find places where the area had very high employment, likewise in DC.

And you could say it is the first in the place that high employment areas are those

I don't want to see any except in Washington, D.C.

I don't want to see any one area where there's more.

Well, this is a lot of .

Even that, I mean, it wouldn't even be the full thousand, because some of this can be accomplished by attrition.

Not all of it can, but some of it can.

So I think this is quite a reasonable .

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.

Tell them to go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

I know, I know, I know.

They don't count on it.

The, uh...

I don't know.

Here we go.

The statistical world, there's a feeling that you have many numbers about the population.

You don't analyze it.

by age and by sex.

Just for openers, you don't begin to understand what the meaning of the statistic is.

So there's a famous table on WPA workers titled, WPA Workers Broken Down by Age and Sex.

and he couldn't comfort him at all.

Finally, he quieted down and said, that's what happened.

He said, my Indian died.

One of the boys he heard of.

The rapper's name was very good last night.

I particularly enjoyed that portion where you were talking to him about how inconceivable it would have been if the Russians and the Chinese were cooperating with the political advantage.

It was a very important thing to have in mind.

Well, of course, it's a great thing.

It's something to question about.

Yeah.

You're laying in the water now.