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Please, a question on the purchase of the company?

Well, I can't infer.

I don't want to steal the whole thing.

I'm not going to mention whether it needs to worry about moving the chopper.

If you guys go to the right, they have to move the chopper.

They should go on that assumption.

Yes.

Is there a public ceremony for that?

Well, press, if you want to come, you'll bring a house officer or a house husband.

But it's not a public ceremony.

It's a family, what's Roger's name?

Now what I want in here is that you can let the writing press come in.

for a quick photograph.

You don't have to get their asses out of here.

Alston can stay.

I'm not talking to the family alone, but he can stay, and nobody else.

Well, let's get this

We'll set up up for Florida, and if you do want to go to Ventajon, because we'll look at the chopper over in that same area.

I don't want to.

I'm more sure of the weather.

I talked to B.

He says the weather is perfect at Walker's.

It is scattered across it at Key Biscayne, on and off.

There's a lot of sun.

It's hot.

with the occasional thunderstorm showers.

And that's basically what it is.

He said they had some nice thunderstorms.

Well, he says, by all means, you should come.

He says it is clear and sunny.

But he can come up here.

I said, he can come here.

I'm sure he could.

Yeah.

Let me, let me just think about it before I finish this meeting.

Okay.

And, uh, make, make us independent chapter weather.

I just don't want to get there and go through that damn thing for another three days.

Is it about like it was before?

No, not that bad.

No, it's not.

It hasn't been that bad since the day we left.

It's not, there's no continuous rain.

There's no hurricane stuff.

There's a hurricane down south, but it isn't anywhere near that.

Yeah.

Is he over there?

He would go over on the chopper.

When did that believe?

They will be completely with us, because it'll take the whole rest of our hour to get over there.

It takes you two hours to get down.

One thing I didn't make too clear yesterday is 20% Social Security.

There's a lot of public notoriety in your meeting with Richardson today.

If there's any indication given by HEW that you are going to hang tough with H.R.

1 and turn HEW down on a river called Compromise, we will almost surely get a split-off on Social Security as a reaction.

It's the Wednesday group, Saturday night crowd.

Social Security off and running through, say, welfare reform is dead and we're getting into Social Security.

Now, that's not all bad, because we might give you a nice clear shot at Social Security.

And you may want to sign it with three words and get all the credit for it.

You may want to consider a veto.

And that's a set of questions.

Well, all right, then you get a nice clean shot at it.

But I think the

Smart thing to do today is not to tip your hand at all.

So that when Elliot goes out of here, he doesn't know any more about what he's going to do than he does right now.

And let us then put the whole thing together next week.

We may be able to drive some kind of a bargain to get Social Security down at least five points.

Well, there's no chance of getting it to 10.

That's what everybody tells me.

Now, I'm going to get the Republican staff here at the first of the week, probably get some House Ways and Aims to take it early, and see if there's any chance of turning that thing into confidence beyond 15.

But, you know what, putting a tax in on the goddamn

The only way there is is payroll tax.

I know, but it doesn't entirely take care of it.

At 15, we might break even, but if they could get the tax up to balance it all, then it would be a budget problem.

That's a possibility.

That's a strong argument.

Strong argument to get the damn tax up there.

But the point of the decision is that it has to be something.

The KTW guys go out of here and they say to the press, well, we tried and we lost.

We're about to get a runaway Social Security situation.

And if you can, if you keep your poker face today, then that'll give us a chance to try and put a deal together.

You bring him right in.

Sit down over here.

I'll be right here.

He was like, you should arrange yourselves conveniently around the fireplace.

So I'm following him, and then he took that one.

He's got me in the other room, trying to decide what's up.

I'll hold it for like four minutes.

Oh, he did?

Yeah, he did.

Yeah, that's true.

He was saying that he had his hunch, but that he'd ask for an opinion in the Justice Department.

The judge was going to have a hysterical call.

Who's calling?

Before noon.

I've had a debate with him.

He was calling the president.

Before noon.

I could have called him, but I'll mention it today.

doing, of course, was keeping the troops off balance.

The kind of blessing that Mr. Kelly was, he's asked Rob Harrison for an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel.

But when that comes, I think they will say that probably the damn evidence covered the drug case, but at least for now, that's right.

And I said, what do I say?

And I go, what do you say to this, Mr. President?

Well, that's what he told me, too.

He didn't say he would or wouldn't.

He said he was going to think about it over the weekend.

What is the last day we get a sign?

2.30.

What is that?

1.30.

It's a week from today.

Right.

What thought is being given to make some big production out of it?

How can you make it happen?

He can get both more attention to his own original sponsorship of the Basic Health and Higher Education Bureau on the one side and his position on the other.

Oh, he might not invite Bobby Griffin to the signing ceremony and say, Bob, I'm sorry, this doesn't do anything for Detroit.

And now he reiterates that he

the basic essentials of his own code.

He can do it.

He can do it all.

But the thing is that you can include in this meeting, in a signing ceremony, I sent over a list of the representatives of the organizations that are part of my company.

And this is the biggest industry in the United States.

Education.

The President has done very well with the educational groups and organizations.

This is a way to bring them in here, show an interest, remind them that he was the progenitor of these proposals.

You know, you won't get them turning cartwheels for it, but there's a difference between, obviously, the degree to which you can at least neutralize or moderate opposition or even convert it into to qualified support, depending on who the people is and what we do for them.

There are a hell of a lot of people in the United States.

We deal with them constantly in ATWs, and we deal with something like 300 national organizations.

And they are all, by definition, composed of people more interested in their causes than they are interested in any candidate or party.

So they all offer an opportunity to make the most of what you do for them.

Did you, by the way, see the Wednesday Group's letter to the President about the welfare reform?

No, I haven't.

I assure you I had nothing to do with it either.

I would not have thought that the Wednesday Group was necessarily this strong in particular.

Oh, they have to be somewhere else out there.

No.

Surprise.

I had no outside.

I signed everything.

What'd I sign?

Oh, oh.

That's a safe position.

Then they shall not hurt you.

All right, that'd be awesome.

Sit down, sit down.

Well, you're comfortable, Larry.

Well, H.R.

1.

Well, today, everything's been around.

I thought you'd done it.

What's the matter with you, Larry?

Well, Jim, I consider it the most important thing in my career today.

That's why I feel I've arose at this point.

It's such a considerable concern, what we can do.

How would you like us to see you?

Do you like me to?

Well, let me say, what I'd like for you to do is this.

I have to be very honest with you.

I have not read your total thing.

I told them, when I say that, I have skimmed it.

And I have sort of an idea as to where we are in the words.

I'd like for you to say, basically, what you and Paul said is what you

Do you feel this is the legislative situation at the present time?

What deal do you think you would recommend?

And then let's have a moment and spend a little time on the call center.

We're just sort of speaking to a senator, you see what I mean, who is a .

I don't need any arguments about the merits of H.R.

1 and banking system.

What I really need is really the practical problem that I'd like to get.

I'd just like to hear your judgment.

I'd like to hear Jim's, also, who's been working with these clowns.

And maybe Clark, or whoever's even working with them, too.

I wonder who will get this president.

Fine, plenty of you.

So by the way, if you just give me a lawyer's presentation of the damn thing, so that I can think about it.

And where is that book, John?

Sir?

Where is the paper of the book?

I don't think it's in your file.

Life doesn't matter.

I can go to Florida, et cetera.

I always read better on the way.

Go ahead.

Well, Mr. President, I think the place of the canvas is with a very general statement of the overall nature of the decision, which it seems to me can trust you in that.

It is basically, I think, to achieve either

the enactment of your program, or something which fully conforms to its basic principles.

Or, at least to preserve the issue, that enables us to exploit the failure of the Congress to deal with what is a genuine critical situation on which you have had a

constructive instead of the proposal we initiated in August of 1990.

I think, and I wonder now that it's been so long.

Three years?

Four years.

No, three years.

I think it's, I think it's impressive.

Go ahead.

It's impressive that since August 1969, you know, then until the Senate financial news bill, the essential elements of your proposal have stood out.

through examinations from every possible direction, through exhaustive considerations of the Vigor Session Vigilance Committee, and are still intact in H.R.

1.

And even the Senate Finance Committee proposals themselves observe that the basic elements of work incentives, although they go beyond the terms of the word belief,

And they accept the proposition that there can be no real integrity in our incentive system, which doesn't take account of the people who are already working at very low wages.

So the question now is, looking at it from the point of view of how can we either get a bill or protect the issue?

In a memorandum I received some time ago, I wrote in effect from where

from my point of view, I would move up, down, or sideways, and in either direction sideways, in order to get this bill through, so long as we preserve the essential principles that have been at the core of your program from the beginning.

So the rest of the story, as I can see, is not basically a question of principle, and it's not a question of cost.

If it were a question of principle, I would say that we were not acting within the framework that was laid down.

If it were a question of cause, given the present judge's situation, we would have obviously a strong condition.

But the question then is, what kind of rule can we make?

within those parameters that maximizes the opportunities for getting a bill.

Now, the choices basically would be, first of all, to support the Senate Finance Committee bill, to stand on H.R.

1, and to stand on H.R.

1 at least until

The Senate Finance Committee bill has been rejected, and until any more literal version of H.R.

1 has been rejected.

The Finance Committee bill in its present form is not consistent either in terms of cost or in general approach with the administration program.

That was the long provision.

Yes, the long.

Yes, and this is true for a number of reasons, which we don't really know.

We know them.

But there is the possibility that we might move toward it by incorporating into H.R.

1 some proposal that would, in effect, adopt a work relief approach by creating a larger number of public service jobs

or providing money to state and local governments so that they could hire people, and so that we could join along in saying, in effect, that we were guaranteeing a job and not an income.

There's always a lot of obvious appeal in this.

And the question then is... Yeah, that's a good slogan that he's picked up.

It's quite a good one.

It's a clever slogan.

It's what a man used to say, an income without a job.

And he says the job is a ton of income.

Well, the questions here, of course, are practical and administrative, and they have to do with impact on the private labor market and so on.

In any event, Oliver, we could recognize the possibility of moving in that direction and staying within the general parameters of H.R.

1.

The question is whether it would help or not.

We can stand on H.R.

1, or we could move toward the Rivikov amendment.

We have done quite a lot of work in talking to the rooftop staff and various outside organizations which have supported us on the outside in the beginning to identify the possible elements of a compromise.

Just to speak summarily, we could achieve an compromise, I believe, consisting in A,

the restoration of provisions which we have at some point in the past supported and although at some additional cost at a total cost less than we will be facing in the first full year fiscal 1975 if the present law remains in effect

We've been over these figures very carefully with , and I think we're fully in what the projections are.

So we could achieve a compromise with the support of the that did not violate any of our basic principles and would not exceed what would otherwise seem reasonable in cost.

The principal element of cost that would be involved in a compromise would be essentially an update for cost of living increases since our original proposal.

And in fact, not a full updating, because we'd be as unsure of the intake increase in the cost of living today, and we would be assuming no more than a 3% probability increase between now and 2075.

So then the question becomes, from a political point of view, from the point of view of how you are

perceived by the country, and from the point of view of the possible preservation of the issue, if all of this should fail, what kind of a move, in effect, is most credible?

And what puts you in the kind of position that you would feel strongest in, in going to the country, either in terms of what it accomplished,

or in terms of the exploitation of the issue.

Now, I can understand very well that there are considerations which would make it more comfortable to move to the right than to move toward the Rivikov compromise.

This would offer some possibility that the Finance Committee members would go along.

And of course, it's an awkward situation to find ourselves

in a place where they ranked a member, a good friend of yours, in the administration of Wallace Bennett.

It would go in one direction, and we would be going in another.

The only possible finance committee member that I think we could hope to bring with us in a move toward the Riverhouse Amendment, even a limited move, would be Griffin.

And then, primarily, as a member of the leadership,

The likelihood of actually getting a bill by a move to the right is, I think, very remote.

The number of Republican senators who will support H.R.

1, as is, is far less than enough, even with whatever Democrats want to pick up to pass the bill.

We've made a careful vote analysis, which Tom has reviewed with our people, which suggests that the move from H.R.

1 to the right would not pick up more than another 15 votes at best, which would give us roughly 35 votes.

And that would mean, then, that you were in a situation where, in order to

and key greater Republican unity, or at least with Senate Finance Committee Republicans, that there had potentially been the sacrifice of the opportunity to get the bill.

Now, I think that the risk of the potential sacrifice to the opportunity to get the bill would be so apparent to all of the people who have worked on this

so that it would seriously undercut the opportunity to exploit the issue if that move were made, and then, as I feel sure it would, lost.

So then the question...

He has to move to the right.

If he moved to the left, the chances of putting together a coalition that could pass the bill are, I think,

quite substantial.

Again, we've made a careful review of the votes.

We count the Rivikoff Amendment supporters minus half a dozen who are too far to the left and who would probably fall off, given the rather limited elements of the Rivikoff Amendment that would enter into compromise.

We include all the Republicans who are for H.R.

1, and we include

with the administration leadership, this brings us to somewhere between 55 and 64 votes.

And I think this is reasonably conservative.

Now, the remaining possibility, which we've all discussed, is not now moving in either direction, but simply standing on H.R.

1 until

the long approach is shot down until the Rivkoff Amendment, in its present form, is shot down, and in effect then, inviting the protagonists of either of these alternatives on each side of us to join us in the Senate, in the support of H.R.

1 as is.

I fear that by that time,

The situation will be so confused that the risk of the whole thing going down the drain will be very serious indeed.

Senator Roth has offered a test-only amendment.

This is one likely prospect at that point.

Another likely prospect is that the Senate will simply cut loose the welfare provisions entirely from the bill and the interest in getting the whole thing over with.

And that there would have been, meanwhile, the demoralization of the forces of support for reasonable welfare in this Congress.

With the result that it would be very difficult, in the circumstances, to rally these forces around H.R. 1.

I would be concerned.

In fact, I'm concerned that by the time it's already gone by, because with the emergence of the government as the likely Democratic nominee, with the eminence of the Democratic convention, the fact that the bill will not now be debated until after the Democratic convention, we have a situation where even the Democrats who would have gone along with the compromise

may find themselves in situations, depending on their platform, where they can't move further to the right than they already are.

So we may have the opportunity now to close a deal on this, which we won't have later, in which there's a confusion of a situation where the basic approaches to this have broken down.

a very possible outcome is nothing so what i see really is an opportunity that i would regard as one for positive leadership that would be regarded as a presidential act and dealing with a genuinely serious situation in which costs have gone up 55 since your original proposal and in which they will continue to escalate

unless we do something, with the very real risk that Pat Moynihan has decided that if we don't get a bill this year, it may be well on into your second term before Congress can ever put itself together on another approach.

And so it seems to me that a matter of seizing a real opportunity in terms that would be regarded as an act of leadership versus the risks that attach to it.

to waiting, even though there are some appealing aspects of this in terms of the avoidance of what is, in a sense, negotiating with the enemy.

But we work at not just the question of negotiating with the river-crossed supporters on a basis that doesn't bring

On the contrary, I think you would get as many or more Republican votes by moving that direction than by move to the right.

And so it seems to me, in essence, that a question of seeking to achieve a compromise now with the idea that even if it doesn't in the end fail, you will have

then done all you could do to get through a program consistent with your recommendations.

Or, alternatively, to preserve a greater degree of consistency with conservative Republican opinions, but at the risk of losing it all.

What's your, Jim, would you get the same analysis of the legislative situation?

Well, I come out about it where I say it doesn't.

I mean, it's all a little different from the beginning.

When Senator Long came out with his initial murmurings about

some sort of program, a job.

Everybody has to work because they're going to get a relief.

I thought this might be an extraordinary kind of thing.

It might be a lot of demagogic and nothing else at work, and particularly for the business community.

And I knew that there were some tremendous laws in his approach.

The first law starts with, you just can't avoid it.

Guarantee is to guarantee everybody a job.

And if you guarantee everybody a job, you're not guaranteeing anything.

That's right.

We've got a lot of problems in the wage structure and the labor market part.

So I told you, you've got a jackass program already.

Not good enough.

Well, so I don't need your, I meant the one that I signed.

Well, go ahead.

So that's it.

I tried to take this concept of work for the development program that I felt it would take the bad features, the wage features, the labor market features, the guaranteed job features, all of that, but still get the essential principles.

I got something I was pretty satisfied with.

But I had to agree with Elliot after I took a look at that.

And look, this business of where could that pick up enough support?

He couldn't fly.

You can't move to the right and get enough support.

So I said, then, if that's the case, we'll leave it to the right.

It's a loser.

Yeah, it's a loser.

It's a loser.

So that won't work.

Then I said, how about the subject itself?

Well, I think on substance.

I think we have a better country if we have welfare reform.

I think a result-oriented administration will get ten times as much credit for having accomplished a major domestic reform than it will for having proposed it and being in a nice, fine position from that standpoint.

So I think, I'll go along with Elliot's concept, but let's move a little bit over here and see if we can't pick up.

this Ribicoff intention, get the credit for the thing, get the substance in you, because I feel like he does.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised, you may be sacrificing this concept now for one or two years, or maybe for much longer than that, if we can't build up enough of them together.

Let's spend a minute on the cost thing.

I understand the cost is just, I don't want to get into specific numbers, but the cost is not significant for the first year.

But it begins to re-craft on the next, the 74 budget, which I was trying to remember you were supposed to hold on to.

It's a reference to quite different prophetic prophecies.

Mr. President, there is one thing I think, I have a feeling, as I hear all this, that we need some new language.

We're getting there.

We need to do a temporary thing.

The long proposal was a move to the right.

I don't understand conservatives, because the long proposal was a move to set up a federal corporation and give everybody a job.

Well, I think he meant post-revision.

Well, not that thing, I guess, of guaranteeing everybody a job.

Well, but the guarantee of a job seems to also be considered a movement of the right.

It's all the right senators up there voting for it.

Well, I don't think they want to.

There was a meeting, apparently.

It would cost many hours.

Well, the long report would cost somewhere as close as we could

And it's never been detailed, but as closely as we can figure, about $22 billion a year more.

Now, the next proposal is the renaissance proposal.

The offer that we're talking about is to show that it will cost somewhere about $500 billion the first year and about a billion more than that in 16 years.

But I think the important thing to realize, sir, is that that compromise is only something we're talking about.

That is not the Rybakov Proposal.

The Rybakov Proposal, I'd urge you to make me a compromise.

We often tend to be, you'd be a little pregnant.

You'd go out of your way.

I think if you move to the left in this terminology we're using, we get drawn much further and further toward compromising.

You would be looking at a deal.

I mean, could you, my fight is that I'm your compromise.

Could you get me a deal where

they accept that well i did i guess he's right about that but by the time you get to the kind of floor and there was other horses that get out of that at the moment would cost another billion more than we're now spending

11 million?

Yes, sir.

In a year?

Yes, sir.

So you see, it's so far away from what we're talking about that when people talk about compromising, you usually have to go at least close to halfway.

And close to halfway is so far beyond anything that would have been .

That's my .

I'm going to look at this, because I want to analyze that thing, too.

Go ahead.

You think you've got an old son, I should point out.

Well, I think you've got an old son, and I think we're conditioned to know pretty well what we've got to do.

John Griffin and I will have to see Rivkoff.

You remember at the time, he...

have come up with this test-only proposal to get him back on the track in favor of some concrete proposal that would have an effective date.

He was not subject to an intervening test and potentially subject to the right of the Congress by a jury vote either way.

He decided he didn't want to go forward unless it was a test result.

And all of that is part of our present understanding already.

But as a result of that meeting,

it was understood that our staff and his would explore the opportunities for compromise.

Ribicoff knows that his amendment in its present form cannot pass.

And we have worked with them along those lines, and we have also met with the representatives of the group of organizations that have supported us all along.

ranging from the NAN on one side through the FDLCIO on the other, legal blind voters and the other opposition in between.

And I don't even know what kind of a deal we can close.

That doesn't mean there won't be floor amendments going beyond this, but the floor amendments, in my judgment, will not get the majority vote.

And if they do, then nothing.

They're not part of the deal.

At each point you walk about the way, we will be told that this will lose the bill.

And we've come this far, we should go a little farther, we should go a little farther.

The floor has no responsibility, whatever it is.

Well, I'd say that if we...

All I want to be in a position to do is to see if I can close the deal on the terms which we have discussed here before, which would involve a combination, A, of elements that we have already agreed to in previous bills, and, B, updating the cost of living, which is what leads to the $600 million.

By the way, the first figure we're talking about is fiscal 75, because we count

As you know, Dick Nathan is delegating the work to many welfare reform planning staff.

He's going to gear up a program to put it into effect before July 1, 1974.

Well, we can't gear up a program to do that.

That isn't in that 74 budget you submitted me.

Oh, yes, sir.

Don't talk about it.

All right.

You said yes, sir.

That's enough.

That's the next subject.

We can't do any of those things you're talking about in there that are so liable unless we do make some.

Yeah, I know.

But anyway, I'm interested to hear this point.

This is fiscal 75.

That is what the compromise that you're talking about.

My worry is that the Senate of the House will say, we don't care whether you're geared up or not.

We want right now, that's the way we look at it.

Well, my point is, let me say that my point is that I think I want to judge this.

I've got to judge this.

I want to know what the compromise does.

In other words, maybe they'll move, maybe I might not.

You know, there is a... You can't do that.

I don't know.

But I've got to think about that.

To Kat's point, it's disturbing to me.

Elliot, your answer to that is that assuming that you move with your compromise... Let me see if I understand.

So when they came out with something and bumped it up to three or four or something in between, would you then say we stick with what we have or we don't?

That's the problem.

You see, my point is that if you have HR,

I personally, my present view is, and I have not, nothing I've heard yet has changed it.

I think H.R.

1 is good.

I think it's been debated for two and a half years.

There have been arguments on both sides, and I think the case for it is made.

I think the only reason people are going off on it is they don't want to take something that we offer.

I think the only reason others, some don't believe that philosophically, but the Rivercross group think it ought to be more.

Now, my own feeling is that we're better to stick with H.R.

1 than C.

where how we can negotiate from there.

Your argument is that if we do that, that may sink the whole thing.

All right.

Now, my point is, if we move, as you suggest, with this modest compromise, it still might sink the whole thing.

But your point is that you might be in a better issue position.

Or do you seriously think you can get something like what you suggested as a compromise?

I think we have a good chance, though.

I think we have a good chance when we consider that we have satisfactory bill already through the House, and that the

The basis on which we would negotiate would be, A, that Rivkoff would undertake to deliver all or most of the co-sponsors of his amendment, and that the outside organizations would support it.

Now, this is the point on which we've talked, and we have, we've reached the point where, in effect, we could have closed the deal, but for the

obvious necessity of your deciding what you want to do.

And I'm talking about making that kind of a deal.

If we can't make it, there is no deal.

If we do make it, we are not then obligated to move over anymore.

Let me ask, I've got a picture.

Now let me ask, when do you have to start talking about this sort of dealing business?

Well, we could do it tomorrow.

I would prefer to have done it earlier, because I think we could have.

But what about now?

But I'd like to do it now.

The question is then to determine, you know, why not let it wait until after the convention?

Why not let it wait until the Rivercross Amendment?

the original form and all the versions and so on are shopped out and let them come to us.

This is the alternative which I think some of your advisers would prefer.

I say that the risk in this is too great.

A, that we can't put it together at that point.

That the Senate would go off in the direction then of either

chopping out welfare reform entirely, or adding in only test provisions, that there would have been so much confusion that it would be difficult then to know what kind of accommodation he could achieve.

And he might end up then with neither of those on the issue, where now

That's what I think is relatively small cost in terms of the provisions of the compromise.

You can come up with what is, in effect, an act of statesmanship, as well as a means of demonstrating the potential opportunities to achieve a real result.

Okay, Mr. President, can we talk a little bit about the politics of this?

Because I think there's an aspect of this that's important.

River College is going to be one of our explorators at the Democratic issue.

There's a question of what the Democrats can do.

If we were in their shoes, what would we do if we had a far out

Long has said that this bill will not hit the floor of the Senate until, in effect, until after the Democratic convention.

So, really, we're talking about all of these current committees around H.R.

1 and the compromise and the position in the light of a then candidate and a then platform.

and it seems to me we have to think about it i think they are going to be impelled to a more

and put it in the platform and then rip it off as one of McGovern's people.

That'll put us in a position of sticking, though.

We can't go, I mean, we can't outbid them.

Well, we can't even undercut them on this.

So let me make that point.

At this point, we have a fairly clear issue with McGovern, and probably the most dramatic domestic issue we could

if we could go on.

He's covered all the way.

We shouldn't let it.

But if we fuzz it up by moving into the center or toward the left or anything else, then the people will be very confused about the few billions here.

Let me just ask this, though, Cap.

Is this fuzzing?

How much is this fuzzing?

I'll study that, at least just to be sure.

You think it fuzzes?

Yes, I do, sir.

I think it fuzzes it in moving away from any kind of emphasis on a work requirement without regard to moving to the right or national corporation to employ everybody or anything of that kind.

And I think it fuzzes it by getting it into the area where we are talking just a little difference in numbers.

And the public isn't much concerned with that kind of thing.

I think that we have H.R.

1.

We can stand on that.

That's clearly and dramatically different from what the governor's been talking about.

To the extent we defuse that and move towards trying our best to get a bill, then I think we don't have nearly as clear a debating point, an issue, something the public can draft.

Yeah, clearly.

Well, listen, as you talk, Kat, there's something that occurs to me.

Here's Mills and a whole bunch of very respectable Democrats who are on H.R.

1.

Right.

That's right.

Now, when they go to the Democratic platform, what are they going to do?

What are they going to do if we're hanging tough?

On the other hand, if we've moved off H.R.

1, it doesn't have to give them a laugh.

Once you move on one of these things,

You can't get them to the two points you want.

You get drawn inevitably further and further.

But I think that splitting that deal, you see, in their platform of deliberation, you can never go over here and get mills on where we are, right?

I guess it's mills of gold.

You've got to be running for vice president.

Sure.

You've got to.

Well, after the convention, you may not be running for vice president.

Then you want something for vice president.

I have an argument, Mr. President, that the politics of it is...

The point looks the other way now, to be sure.

I begin to navigate on this thing.

I can't work for two years to get it over without feeling strong to get it through.

I'm confident, regardless of the other situation.

But if that's what we're talking about, we have to.

to recognize the higher probability of success through compromise.

But looking at it solely in political terms, the fact that McGovern is the sponsor of the Way Out proposal, in fact, two of them.

He introduced the National Warfare Rights Organization, which he now says he only did as a matter by request, although Humphrey pointed out in one of their debates

He didn't elect to use the phrase by request in catching the bill.

And the record's very clear.

And then he moved over to the even more radical $1,000 per person proposal.

Now, one of the things that seems to me that has an advantage in compromise is that if we can't make a deal now, I think it's harder, perhaps, because of the government than it was a month ago.

If we can, that means that we isolate the government on the left in his own party.

And if the bill then comes to the floor in July, with Rivkoff's and other Democratic co-sponsors' support of a proposal as close to ours as

then it seems to me only to exacerbate the division within democratic ranks.

It'd be pretty hard to, I don't know how far and how fast the government is going to crawl back, but they didn't crawl back as far as Rivkoff himself.

And Rivkoff called money in this week.

Pat told me to urge a movement on this thing

Pat's written to the President.

We have two letters in the file, Mr. President.

He urges this position.

He urges, yes, essentially.

And move to Rybakov.

But then if you win that, you have Rybakov and the Nixon administration and McGovern all saying the same things, because McGovern and Rybakov will presumably go together.

And there will be a few people trying to point out what McGovern used to say, and it will be very difficult to make that distinction in the welfare issue between the two candidates.

Mr. President, I think we're going to gamble, because it isn't clear and final.

We've been talking here as if the floor debate in the Senate in the period between the two confessions was the end of the legislative vote.

But obviously, it isn't.

No, then they had a balance.

If you should cut a deal, and if the deal should prevail at the Senate floor, are we wedded to fight in committee for the deal that's been cut in the Senate?

Or have we made that deal solely to advance

The President's Welfare Reform Bill was not permitted to be submitted.

And are we free in conference to fight for, if you will, a more conservative version of H.R.

1?

Very much.

And the House, I know, should have asked H.R.

1, but I voted 288-132 on the margin of red and 2-1.

But I rolled you all over on Title IV, passed it by a margin of more than 50 votes.

So you have a very strong reason, it seems to me, that we need to stick by those who have stuck by you

Yeah, well, let's get to that.

I'm sorry, but we've got to get a little bit more concrete about what the deal is, because the impression is, Pat especially has created the impression that this thing is going to get very confused.

And we could, of course, reserve the opportunity to

fight for additional children who are referring to something closer to H.R.

1 in the committee.

We have to do that explicitly.

But I have here a summary which is attached to the memorandum to you with the elements of this compromise.

Point one, and the most important point, is that we add to the bill a provision requiring states to maintain present benefit levels.

We require that

in all previous versions of the bill, up until the amendment on the House floor, this time, in 1971, which we went along with.

But we have no reason in principle to object to the restoration of this requirement, especially since our cross-testaments assume

States will maintain their benefit levels, and so there is no cost factor involved.

It disarms a great deal of argument to the effect that the present beneficiaries can be hurt by the enactment of this program.

It's direct the contrary.

There's a lot of things we're trying to do with revenue sharing about the freeing states to make their own decisions.

Sure it is, but we propose to make this a federally-administered program.

in any event, with the very essence of this program from the beginning, that the federal minimum benefit standards and federal standards of eligibility, in place of 1,152 jurisdictions whose inefficiency is a breeder of fraud and error and waste.

So that, by definition, this program is one which we're trying to.

The second item is the cost of living increase.

And the actual figures that are there

And that we started, remember, with $1,600, and then plus food stamps.

In the 1971 version, H.R.

1, we, in effect, cashed out food stamps and added the most of the value to the basic $1,600 benefit, which brought us to $2,400.

Since then, there's been a 15% cost of living increase.

And if you project another 60% from now to July 1, 74, you would have an actual update cost equivalent of $2,400 in August, 69.

That's $2,800 to $2,900.

We believe we can settle for $2,600.

Excuse me.

In the original HR-1, there was no automatic cost of living increase.

And we're not proposing to conclude on that.

But what we're saying is the second element of compromise would be to recognize that the dollar basis of the 2400 is as of August 69.

And to propose to adhere to that as of July 74 is unrealistic.

This is a cost factor.

but on the order of maybe $200 million, $200 million, $300 million.

The reason why it isn't more than that is because wage rates were risen meanwhile, and that takes families out of the range of eligibility so that there are offsets.

The next item is an accounting period issue I won't even describe.

It's a technical one, but important to some of the people concerned.

The third is exemption of income social security taxes to approve the work incentives.

We used to have a 50% tax rate, so-called.

That meant that a family could keep half its benefits as it received earnings.

And the idea was that this gave them incentive to go to work and to earn money.

In H.R.

1, we cut the 50% or increased the 50% tax rate in effect to 67%, which means that the family only keeps a third of the family earnings.

And that has been criticized as not providing a strong enough incentive to work.

The exemption of Social Security and income taxes

for these families would improve the tax revenue and increase the incentive.

We have been for it before.

It was in our bills in 1970.

Then there is minimum wage protection for private job placements.

This is one we've choked on because there are a good many people in private jobs now at less than that minimum wage.

And this is one which we might want to reserve for contracts.

or the mandated hand-to-hand violence program which affects hundreds of thousands of families in 27 states.

So now there's a different cost by instance that would reduce the fiscal relief the states get under the whole violence clause.

And then there are several smaller changes with the magnitude of cost to the government.

The important part of the note, none of these things would reduce the workfare aspect of our government.

And I'm afraid you might get that impression.

They don't change it at all.

Mr. President, Vaughn and Bennett, quoting back to me practically daily, they met with the president together, then they met with the president singularly.

The other thing, they are doing what the president wants for workfare.

And also,

know about this meeting, and they've asked me full time.

So that's... Well, we'll have to get it from him.

We'll have to see.

And they've got to have no bill at all.

They've said, I've got the...

I know there.

I know that.

By law, you never know.

Yeah.

I take it all the time, for sure.

Anyway, the...

I don't know if that's what the president said.

The president said, I don't know.

We'll see.

But...

It's not an easy decision.

It gets down pretty much to political decision now.

That's what we're doing.

Hell, we know what's right.

They did an HR one in 1769.

10 people did a good chase, baby.

But not having done that, why, we're...

I must say, after reading the McGovern report, we're getting pretty good.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was.

It was.