Conversation 791-011

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I appreciate very much the spread of this opportunity.

I'll keep with you for a few minutes.

It may take very long, but I'm just saying to John, you have some obligations to give you a sort of direct feel for how things look from my vantage point.

It seems that so far as HR1 in general and the...

welfare reform title of particular concern.

We are in a situation now where our concern should be simply with how to salvage some credibility for what has been now a three-year effort.

And I'm considerably concerned lest we handle the situation in a way that will be hard to defend in terms of the kinds of situations in which

We will be challenged between now and November.

I've had a fair amount of exposure to this, answering questions on TV programs and in various meetings around the country since I've been traveling as a surrogate.

And while the situation isn't really too bad now, I think it can get worse if we are really caught with a knife in our hands on this bill.

Stevenson has hit upon a rather clever device to try to put it in our hands by offering an amendment so close to H.R.

1 that we can never explain the differences or, more precisely, get across the significance of these differences.

I don't know if it's certain that he will offer this amendment.

We tried to find out just by way of approaching his staff earlier today on the basis that we would try to see through our way through the sequence of events on this bill and so on, and is the senator planning an amendment, and if so, what will be in it and so on.

But the best indications are that he probably will.

He will offer it as soon as the Rivikov amendment has been tabled.

The vote to table the Rivikov amendment is due at 4 o'clock.

Yes, I'm sure it will.

Now, what Stevenson has done in the first and most important thing is to reduce the benefit level to the benefit level of the House Pass Bill so that

It has now been reduced from $2,600 in the latest Rivikov version to $2,400.

His staff said that he might also eliminate the only other cost item in his amendment, which is an increase in the authorization for daycare services from an additional $400 in our bill to $700.

Of course, it's an authorization item anyway.

It doesn't necessarily control

But he may even eliminate that.

That would leave, then, a series of differences which I think would be impossible to explain as being sufficient to justify a no vote on the amendment.

Now, taking it a step further, if Scott gets up and says, I'm glad to welcome Stevenson aboard,

He has now offered what is, for all practical purposes, the Scott Amendment, and I'm going to join in supporting it.

I urge myself, Republicans, to join with me.

This will at least achieve a respectable vote.

It will add to the dozen or so we might have expected to support the Scott Amendment itself.

At least another dozen, maybe not many more, because...

Some of the liberals who were moderate liberals, most liberals, have fallen off already.

But some of the remainder who have stuck with Rybakov will probably fall off on this.

I don't think it would have the votes to pass.

But it would mean, in effect, that we were calling Stevenson's bluff.

We were saying, now that you have gone this far, so that the remaining differences are so small,

We, in the interest of welfare reform, are joining in it.

That, I think, would effectively checkmate from here on out the effort to make out that we had consciously and deliberately let Fidel die.

If the Stevens Amendment, as I believe, fails, then we'll revert to efforts to put on some sort of test amendment along the lines of the Roth-Bird Amendment, but

seem to be gathering momentum and probably has enough votes to pass.

It isn't really a testament, but it includes, ironically, a lot of money for wage supplementation.

I say ironically because the strongest opposition on the conservative side, of course, has been to the coverage of the working poor, and here the committee would be ending up, and the Senate would be ending up with the coverage of the working poor without

any reform of the ASTC provisions.

But that would then mean that if the bill went into conference and came out with bloated 1, 2, 3 titles and this raw test plus wage supplement title, it would be easy to veto.

Conversely, if the

If, contrary to my guess, Stevenson were approved, then the result would be, in effect, that there would be kicked off a filibuster on the conservative side until the debt ceiling bill got over.

And at that point, 1, 2, and 3 would be detached, put on the debt ceiling bill, and go into conference where Mills has said that he would not take 1, 2, and 3.

And you might then be spared

the need to reach these overblown Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and adult assistance titles altogether.

So either way, it seems to me, the monkey is left on their back.

If they reject Stevenson, or the Stevenson-Scott Amendment, that has then been done not because we didn't try, but because

there had been defections on the part of the liberals who would not go along with a bill that had been stripped of so many features of the river continent.

If it does succeed, if that amendment is adopted, and the bill as a whole then goes down the drain, then this is because of the long bird filibuster.

And we're still in a situation where we try.

Whereas if we vote no on Steve, we have a hard time explaining why we were against it.

And we then are then in a situation where when it goes down, we of course have been directly responsible for lining up votes.

This, at any rate, is the reason why it seemed to me that the best

course we could follow in these circumstances is to cross up the Stevenson effort to embarrass us by saying in effect okay now that you have for all practical purposes proposed the amendment Senator Scott was going to propose we will support it and that leaves us in a position of having

I see no way in which there's any realistic possibility whatsoever that you could actually get on your desk a deal with

The first three titles in unacceptable form and title four in acceptable form.

Verse three.

Well, that's the reason, essentially, why it seemed to me that this was a new twist in the situation.

Yeah, I got that.

I'm just going to read you all that.

What's the, uh, uh, do you think the, uh, uh, that's it, uh, did you say for, do you think for all practical purposes it's like H.R.

1?

But again, for the, uh, the child care, that goes for four or seven hundred.

Four hundred million new money.

theory was that if we were going to require mothers and school-aged children to go to work and take a job, that we ought to provide day care for those children.

These are school-aged children.

He may well drop that.

In any event, it's a conferenceable item.

But the illustration, somebody asked me why did we vote against it.

The

The differences remaining would be that the Stevenson Amendment required states to maintain benefit levels.

This was in our bill in 69-70 and until H.R.

1 came out of the House in 71.

He dropped the so-called tax rate to retain share of earnings expenses.

67% to 60%.

We have been earlier in the law with 50%.

The bill was first submitted to the Congress.

It was 50%.

You can't make an issue of principle out of that.

There is a cost of living adjustment geared to increases like the one we proposed and has been adopted for.

So it's security.

He requires that they do their job.

that a person on welfare be required to take has a full minimum wage.

This is such the worst feature of it, but again, pretty hard to say that where we have three-quarters of the minimum, this has full minimum.

It's a conference of the light in any way that this was a reason for killing Bill.

And the only other difference is that the Stevenson Bill would

disregard the amount of income taxes paid in determining income levels for purposes of supplementation.

And that's it.

And as I say, you may eliminate one issue by reducing child care back to the highest level in any event.

You could seek to get it back.

And in the final analysis, it would be a question of appropriation levels in any event.

I think we would have a very good chance of getting back if we ever reached conference.

We're not really talking about conference here in any event, as far as I can see.

We're really talking about Scott, whom I talked to earlier today, wanted me to say to you that this is not really an issue of getting a bill.

It's an issue of how do we look at

coming out of the rubble of the loss, destruction of the bill.

And that really is it.

It's a matter of, as I see it, salvaging the credibility of our government.

We all know what it is.

It's a bomb.

Not now.

The thing is,

My chance, therefore, are weak.

I would put it, Mr. President, that it won't be perceived as a significantly liberal move.

What it will be seen as is a refusal, in effect, to support our own bill, because the moves involved are so insignificant in terms of basic elements of your initial proposals.

Several of the changes are reversions to earlier forms of our own bill.

This is true of the move back toward 50%.

level from 67 partway to 60.

The maintenance of benefit levels was in our own original bill, and I testified for it in 70.

And so that out of the whole list, you get two that move back to earlier versions for constant living adjustments.

It's pretty hard to argue with, especially since

The principal was one that we put forward as applied to social security.

It goes back to 2,400.

By the time the bill goes into operation, you're up to, what, 2,650 or 2,700?

Depends if they're taking days of the year.

Then the date when they wait begins to operate.

With that in mind, 2,400 is really a loser.

You never really get 2,400.

I'm not sure what the effective date is.

My assumption is that the adjustments become operative after the date at which 2400 goes into effect.

This is part of our problem.

Nobody seems to see this effect, right?

No.

But he has intended to eliminate any argument of cost on benefit levels.

So is staff.

Well, even then, it would be an eventual increase, keeping pace from the effective date forward, I assume.

What else do you see?

Well, I think one is better over the other area.

That's anybody's guess right now.

on a whole bill that includes all...

direction and the illusion of whether in fact there's any difference in substance.

Let me add to that concern.

I've heard from conservative senators, conservative Republicans.

That's what I've heard.

They allege, and this will give you some feel for what the press is going to be fed, that ATW has in fact drafted the Stevenson Amendment.

It will be seen, by some of the press who want to echo that, as the president being tricked out of Europe.

Well, I haven't heard that.

I know of no contact with Stevenson.

I'm tired of my people.

Well, I'm listening.

It's not an accusation, but it's the kind of thing that is going to get pleasure from.

who long says neither the Stevenson Amendment or the House Pass of H.R.

1 will pass, quote, over his dead body.

He will go better until New Year's if he has to.

That's wrong.

I believe that's so, and I don't believe that you could ever get enough votes for cloture because too many people will have fallen off this.

The other side, maybe we're going to be whipsawed.

It's conceivable that this version would come out if we did do this.

But the version that would be pushed if we don't is, is that we killed our own bill.

And, in fact, the differences are so great.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, this is, this is, I don't like running for nothing.

Well, this is a little game.

It's a tough one.

It's a weird question of whether we're going to do something.

Yeah.

You're dealing in perception.

It's a different world.

And I put, say, this is perhaps a bias in the matter.

It's a bias both political and in terms of maybe the vantage point that I occupy.

I get a lot of the question of do we mean, you know.

That's a bad thing.

And that's a bad thing.

But there were a lot of moves along the way, though.

It says that a figure of the moves involved here is between how much went to the states and the bypass of the cities and the Fort Lewis and so on.

A lot moved around underneath the overall objective of revenue sharing.

And the kinds of moves that are involved here are literally dinky by comparison.

I agree.

is this, I see it.

We have, we have submitted you a, a, what we think is a very responsible welfare report.

We were first at it, we did it three years ago.

We fought for it.

We got it through the House.

Now, the other side, we have been looking at our, our oppositions.

because they've been looking at our opposition.

They've been all over the bottom of it.

Versus $1,000 and $6,500 for a family board and $4,000 for a family board.

That's what it is.

But you've got a number of moves, all of which are in the direction of putting more people on the ground.

The gut issue here, the gut issue in terms of public reaction, we have found,

We have a pretty good record.

The other side is not.

That one, however, would be for inconsistency.

I think on the other hand, that's why I asked the question, anything that's interpreted as moving toward, even an iota toward more for people on welfare is not a good force politically at this point.

I would say each one would be a good force at this point due to the fact that there's a

there is a very strong feeling about the world where he was.

I should note even that at the time, a piece I made a couple, three days ago, where Lindsay was making a claim quite possibly about the fire case.

And I didn't let the Apology of Welfare sink in by being so unreasonable.

And so we really had three different things.

One, whether shifting our position

you catch the hell on that one particularly and third the other side of that crime is the fact that any move any move how it's going to be interpreted you know if it's going to be it's going to be interpreted then coming to us that would be one thing it's interpreted it's our moving in the direction of our liberal welfare in other words in the direction of river cross and open arms that's something else again

Well, he's probably down there holding.

He's supposed to be here now.

But I think it's a tough situation.

Why do you, what do you have to, they're waiting to hear from you, Elliot, and stuff.

Scott is basically... Well, I think Scott can hang on for a little while.

I think we, I would, it would be inconsistent with the calling the bluff tactic to have the word passed that we were going to.

done at all.

It ought to be done on a basis which clothes the rug on the seats, and then by and by it starts getting up without any forewarning, and saying, in effect, that... ... ... ...

Well, we certainly wouldn't want to signal in advance.

On the other hand, I would not want us to signal in advance because it has to work the other way.

And we wouldn't want to signal in advance.

But if we were in fact going to do it,

I don't think we ought to be passing the word to the contrary either.

We just wouldn't be doing anything between now and it's actually being offered.

We also leave open the question whether Scott would be offered.

And then if he is offered, Scott would get up and say, congratulations, old buddy, on joining the... Yeah, joining the club.

Yeah.

You've now proposed an amendment...

That's the way they report everything.

See, what I'm concerned about, I know what I'm concerned about, Elliot, is not the fact that we do too good.

What do you think?

How do you think they report it, John?

They've been taking a battery from these bastards out here in the press room.

It's the major news, in my opinion.

What I would like to, what I would like to, frankly, is to get out.

Should we win the election?

If I have to say.

This is going to happen in the state legislature.

It's hard to realize that the national legislature, particularly the Senate, should be so goddamn irresponsible.

Isn't it something?

The need for some good senators now that really, frankly, are on our side, too.

They're on our side.

We hope we get as far as I have.

I don't know who the hell's running.

I suppose there are a bunch of charities that I haven't seen that look like much.

Well, I don't think we're going to have to start over again anyway.

This really is...

I told her then, take for example your health program.

I told her, I said, well, God, that's for next year.

You can't get it this year, right?

It'll go wrong, kind of thing.

Matter of fact, health may very well be in the way of getting the welfare reform, but the way it means to me is I'm taking up health early.

No, I don't think so.

I think we can stay— We may well have.

trouble with a responsible administration, we could do 900 good things.

And they'll say, well, they don't really mean it, right?

We just have a hell of a problem.

And I suppose that that's the thing that concerns you about this one, because you don't want us to be in a position where they can say, well, I saw the window that I'm in trouble, of course.

And I saw it, of course, because

there's some cross-currents here on the political side, on the school subject of welfare, which give me a great deal of pause.

It's an attitude that, the attitude in the country toward the whole thing is a lot different than it was in August of 1969.

I'm not sure we're doing the right thing.

I'm just talking between us, understand?

If we got HR when I signed, just like that, no question.

And if we could get it clean and the rest we'd be fucking for and trying to get a vote because it's our initiative.

must say that if I were to do it right now, I just don't know.

I'm not sure that the direction is right.

I'm not sure the direction would be right even now.

Politically, it is entirely right.

Some of it is.

And a lot of people, even now... George Shultz is a very good believer in it.

Well, I was in Rhode Island on Friday and painting with J.P. and... DeSimone.

DeSimone.

They say that welfare has become the issue in Rhode Island, that it is certain to govern more than a single thing.

And they are campaigning on H.R.

1 and on the work-related provisions.

This goes over very well.

The way that I put it is very naked.

This is what we're going to study the working for, right?

The activity of our HR line.

I think it can be offset by the degree which we point out.

The other side of the coin is that if we don't do it, then the lack of differences gets at the top.

He was snookered by his bureaucracy.

I'm scared to death of that.

It's a false story and all the rest of it.

It may be that it won't happen, but they took the trouble to call him.

But they did sing.

They are singing.

And they were famous.

A hell of a lot more so.

You know, what's the difference?

The difference is that they're already singing.

If they really wrote this story, it would be the amazing gravitational pull.

That has been demonstrated here by the president just holding firm on it.

That's the real story.

But it'll never be written.

Well...

Well, I want to get it correctly.

I appreciate that.

No, no, it's your job.

It's your job.

I don't, I don't, I don't.

It's not that I don't have.

No, no, no, no, nothing on it.

I can't do it.

But on the other hand, this is a close one.

Tell me this.

Is there anybody?

You couldn't get the conservatives to go on.

I was glad to check around, but I was just, no, no, this is a big one.

Just stay right where you are.

All right.

Yeah.

That's what I hear.

How do you feel about it?

Good luck.

The head of ATW and a responsible administrator.

The head of OEO.

That's all right.

Why don't you have a little chance?

Why don't you have something for us?

Yes, you can feel it.

What do you think about all this?

So I bet that he'd be crying like, wow.

Siren.

Detroit.

Detroit, you know.

And of course, this guy I had asked for this, but he got banned bussing me into it.

Son of a bitch, it burns me up.

It was so crooked.

So basically, he's for it.

He's for it.

This candidate is for it.

I mean, he's an American man, to me.

Yeah.

Yesterday, when I went and spoke, I got a chance to speak to Detroit News.

That's good.

And I said, well, I thought that it indicated

There are spiels in these, probably other things.

I would stick right with you.

You wouldn't vote.

Even though this is, Kelly, it's just hard to explain how this Stevenson thing is very different from all that.

I don't want to put the people out there.

They don't understand.

They don't want to.

They don't want to vote.

I don't.

Or Dan.

They don't want each other.

No.

Get off that.

Nobody expects you to be involved there.

Just get out.

Now we're going to walk outside.

Spread the incendiary.