Conversation 726-005

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Let us know if we can do anything for you down here.

I'll see you.

that would be a very bad tactic.

What would happen is that

they will in the proper time.

But if we separate them, what they want to do is just separate the two in order to have client issues and issues.

Yeah.

And if they don't separate them, I mean, I mean, if they don't go forward, you just go with them.

You just be the acting secretary of the treasury and stuff like that.

Well, I think they will have a hearing fairly soon.

I mean, should they have recorded a nomination?

I don't know if they'll have a second.

You've got to go forward in the hearing, and of course, which you will come out and treat an analyst with.

And it's right there, and then your floor will be almost automatic.

But if you separate the two and put you ahead of the client each time, they've got to do it.

They've been totally irresponsible.

And the client each time, we're not asking them.

it will work.

I think it will work with the next maybe two weeks.

But yours is so simple, I mean, and I mean, I'm having to check to see if you can be active.

I haven't checked that out.

I have to.

Well, I think it's important for you to do that.

If you are not confirmed by the time I return on the 1st of June, I will send a copy on a trail to me.

I'd like for him to leave about then.

I think that's a good thing from two standpoints.

First, I want him to take the trip.

But second, I think it's very important for you to be there in the saddle.

It is good to have another guy hanging around because they've got to know who's boss.

And I think what you ought to do, what we ought to do is to do better.

but you will be

Which would be a nice thing.

Okay.

And that's about the right amount of time, isn't it?

Because he should say 10 days.

I'm sort of intermixing briefings on the treasury, calls on senators and so forth, and disentangling from OFD.

That also gives a good reason for it.

on these things that i said on the personnel things george you just just you just come and decide whatever you think is right now sign the papers you know i think the the but i would only say

You've got to get, I just said, you've got to get a top-lying group of people that you have total confidence in to come up with a tax reform thing.

And you've got to get that in.

Don't let that be done with, well, Sherry Cohen and the rest of the work, and then they'll come up with the same damn thing they have previously.

The other thing is that I think that you've got to examine the people over there and just

Tracery.

Tracery is, it's got, it's muscled on in the head now.

I know there are a lot of good men, but, you know, it's still muscled on.

I agree with that.

It really is.

And I think, you know, I'd like to do it by a strong urge to get to the people from out in the Midwest.

I mean, take for Chicago or a load of men there.

Well, he doesn't know that the economic policy stuff too well.

On the other hand, he weighed in very well with us on the freeze and all of that.

And in terms of the operations over there, there's a huge...

uh, management job in the Internal Resident Service, Customs and so on.

Internal Resident Service, you understand, we've got to get a hold of that thing and run it better than the spec law.

And, uh, it's, in Treasury, see, the economy is not a great job in terms of big plays and the rest, but he'd be the first to admit he hasn't gotten a hold of running the organization.

You can run the organization.

And you should just be, just, I want you to look them all over.

Because I would rather brutally all go home on that.

I will.

And get your names ready.

Pick the very best people you can.

And be ready to move in with a new team, and particularly a young team.

Young team, you know.

Bye, young.

I will have that right there.

I didn't want to mislead you yesterday.

I think to let go of these top people right now would have been very disruptive.

And they're very supportive of you.

Well, they're good men.

And they're good men.

We will find places for a couple of dogs like Walker and Booker and Chris.

You need your team.

Connery never got his team.

You need your team.

You need people that you have confidence in, that you can work with, or otherwise they're going to cut you off.

Well, I will do that, and I think I did manage to run the Department of Labor, and I have got that.

small thing, I think you ought to get, and I don't think he's going to do, I don't think he's going to be there, but I think you ought to give George Meany a call.

I said to the president, you know, you go over there, and you have a customer, you can also sort it out.

I'm afraid you're going to touch him when you get back to him.

Just go over and have him chat with me.

Find an excuse to talk to him.

See what I mean?

All right.

I've got to say that we, if we go down this road, which maybe, you know, they're going to start having a better job now.

I called and told him about this change, and good.

And I have a perfect little thing that I've been working with him on, because I felt good to stay in contact with him.

He's very interested in getting the golf professionalship for Lee Elder.

who's a Negro golfer here in Washington, at one of the National Park Service golf courses here in town.

It's a golf course that's right in the black area in the kitchen, and he thinks that it would be nice for Elder to have a home course and so forth, and I do too, so we're working with Roger Morton.

That's the first thing you can do on a hard-on one.

Now, that shirt hurts all over here, I see, so...

And then when it's done, you call George and you say, Mr. President, you might tell him, you say to the generation that I was enthusiastic, and I said, for you to break whatever challenge was necessary to get it done, and the elder's going to be a...

The thing is, if you will read, there isn't any price.

You should know what the hell it's all about.

Also, if you look on the economic policy, you'll find there is money supply.

Now, first, the main thing, the thing is, if you will leave, there's going to be a fight.

You should know what the hell it's all about.

Also, on the economic policy, you're fighting burns on money supply, and you're also fighting on convertibility, which is good.

And the main thing I think we really want to do, though, is to create a thing in the tax system.

That in the tax system is an abomination.

It is abomination.

You know what I mean?

It's too complicated and so forth.

I just think we've got to grapple with the problem.

I don't know how, man, I'm sorry, but if somebody can do a little thing.

I think, really, that what's happened here is we've probably hit a stage

and using the tax system as a hodgepodge for purposes of social aims.

I think really social aims should be accomplished through legislation and appropriation rather than through the tax system.

Now, understand we're far down that road already.

We have charitable deduction, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

What I'm getting at is that a simple tax system, I think, is desperately needed.

It'll put a hell of a lot of tax lawyers out of business.

That's just too bad.

That's good.

That's one of the reasons why I've always favored it.

Just call it value added, call it manufacturer's excellence, call it anything else.

I favor that kind of an approach rather than the other, because basically it's simple.

It's dang simple.

And they talk about loopholes.

They're asking, are there no loopholes in it?

I've asked Milton Friedman to come down.

He's coming down next Monday.

He said, oh, wait.

I know this is probably not meant.

Everybody would say you were bringing a damn rat in the right.

But I think if you could get Milton to come down in, frankly, the span of a few months, I mean,

He's so bright.

Now, it's so interesting to start there.

It's so interesting he can't do it.

Well, I'll sign him up, and I'll get a good bit of his time.

He worships you.

Well, you can.

It's the way the person goes, but he can't do it.

Why do I have to do it?

Because you know what I think?

He'll come and work for you.

I think the goddamn wage and price controls are no good.

Oh, but they've worked pretty well so far.

Tell Milton Friedman that I really think we now need you.

And that he ought to come down and help you.

You tell him that.

Okay.

And if Frank and I get back from Russia, if I have to arm him, I'll do it.

But he's got to do it.

Maybe he can get his teaching loaded.

He doesn't have any teaching.

Summershot is a free man.

But then the other men...

You can say, I don't know, maybe three, four days of your time in an apartment.

You know, there are some ways that you can work out an extra inch, probably an extra year or, you know, over a temporary, about $30,000 or something.

Damn it, you know, you need a couple of other very bright people.

Look around, look through your mind, charge the brightest people you know in this field who are not radical leftists.

There must be three or four.

Now, for you, that's too far to the right, for me and for you.

And there's guys that are not just animals.

too much capital over there now.

Friedman is creative.

And also, if you come up with something, Friedman will show you the holes, and if there are holes, faster than anybody.

His mind works like a radiator.

And he tells you right after he'll tell you, or me or anybody.

Well, I will definitely get on that, and I will be bringing in bright people as I go along, and I will have a plan for

for our group once the election is over.

And we'll have work going on that.

You just totally are right.

Shave up the trade because it hasn't been shaved.

Georgia hasn't been shaved up since World War II.

The same dead people were over there.

The same kinds of people were there when Eisenhower was there.

They were never worth a damn.

I really mean that.

I don't mean they were crooked, except .

But they are not creative.

They are not creative.

So let's go.

Okay.

I have always, of course, go out and sit down with a load of animals and law.

You've got to do both.

Tell the president that you would, and he'd ask you specifically to go out and hear the specific requests and the last things that he wants.

Senator, the President admires you greatly and respects you for your time, your creativity, everything, that's irrelevant.

But we want your advice.

We want this to be a partnership working together.

And we're not going to have the House dominating the Senate.

Now, with Mills, you play exactly the opposite.

You just play the lie and go, now, we know we can't get any tax legislation through without you.

I mean, the President told me about his breakfast with you.

It was very, I mean, very encouraging.

It made me very, very constructive concerning that we want to, we have, we have the ability to get the right kind of tax money, that you have no right of authorship in this thing.

You know, a little of that.

The outcome of the breakfast, I think, was that there shouldn't be a tax bill this year.

Yeah, yeah, except that he's trying to wiggle his way around saying, well, maybe they should have some sort of a system whereby he has an idea of putting in a legislation that could be effective every five years, every exemption is reexamined.

That would create, unbelievably, great chaos in business planning and the like.

We can't do that.

You can't say that automatic exemption ends.

Five years of conversation, all hell breaks loose.

You can go around and say there are loopholes.

Well, I should think that another month or so when the Democratic Convention is over, we might just come back down to earth a little bit.

We might have a talk with him into both of those

The Republicans are interested, but they don't really matter.

I mean, yeah, but he quite can.

Those, I want you to see them separately.

I want you to see them for lunch and dinner and all, and just say, who the hell used the facility here?

And you say, I'm doing this on a specific request and everything.

When he gets back from this trip and so forth, then you, he, and me, we'll want to meet again.

See what I mean?

What I'd like to do is for you to handle some items.

I don't have a very good opinion of you.

What I mean is I know it's not at this point where you're not there to discuss anything.

You just don't make any comments.

But be that as it may, you develop a personal relationship with these guys so that you can work closely with them.

You just said the president is a realist.

He knows he can't win any of the tax cuts without your help.

He wants to work with you.

He said that you want to work with him.

Fair enough.

I'm glad to do that.

I know them both fairly well.

I didn't have a chance to collect my thoughts the other day when you asked me to do this.

However, you kind of talked about it, and I thought I might just review my understanding of some of the things that I take it you want me to do in the positions that we're on.

And this reflects, to some extent, discussions with Connolly and others.

Right, right.

But I would take it you want me to continue to maintain an overall relationship with CAAT on the budget and the budget strategy.

Exactly.

And CAAT will do the .

So I will take steps to do that.

On the matter of the trade and monetary front,

We want to pursue our line that has developed that we're damn well going to see that America gets bargained for, right?

At the same time, we also have a line we're not withdrawing from the world.

We're not putting a circle around the United States.

We want to trade on fair terms.

But between now and the election, leave more to the protectionists and less to the undercutters.

I know my own purest thinking is to move in the other direction.

But between now and the election, George, we need to take, basically, the economy.

I don't want the story written with the effect that it shows back away from the economy's composition.

And a few of these orders to write nasty things about you, that's good.

I notice there's been a little of that already, because at the beginning of the international monetary crisis, I sounded off once or twice that we weren't going to sacrifice the domestic economy to any international monetary objectives.

So I'll continue to push that.

I take it also that

that you would like me to work closely with Peter and Peter Flanagan on the coordination of the international economic business.