Nixon, Ehrlichman & Ziegler on Water bill and H.R. 1

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I want to bring up the date on the water bill.

There's a rumor, and I emphasize it's only that, probably not reliable.

Nevertheless, we've got to be aware of that.

That Mussie will make an effort to try and hold the Congress in past season.

He's written you a very strong letter

against Apotheca, arguing that 1,200 people have to be laid off and there's no chance of a continuing resolution and so on and so forth, and saying in the letter something he has been willing to say on the floor, which is that spending is discretionary, not mandatory.

Now, the legislative record now is very categorical on the House side, with the conferees in a colloquy saying

that spending is discretionary and not mandatory.

Comically, on the Senate side, in which must be, it's very article, it's prepared speech, in which he says that under certain circumstances, you would be in a position to defer outlays or avoid them.

But in his letter, he's flat out in saying it was an intentional account for ease that spending would be discretionary.

Now, that's the significance of the letter.

If there's any question for what you would be badly rolled on a veto, other than a proxy vote, the drawback of having them stay here until Tuesday is obvious.

We'd get H.R.

1, we'd get a whole lot of garbage.

Just a lot of garbage.

That's right.

Timmons says he doesn't think they're going to stay anyway.

I got a hold of him going out.

I was going to talk to you this morning.

And he said virtually everyone in contact had thought Congress could adjourn Saturday night.

But if it slipped over in the next week, it would be because of H.R.

1 and the debt spending bill, these conference reports.

The rumor of saying just override the detail was picked up in conversation with Les Aarons.

He heard it on the House floor last night.

Mansfield today says he feels the Senate will adjourn Saturday if the conference reports on the debt ceiling and H.R.

1 can be completed in time.

He talked to the Speaker about this, and Albert apparently agreed that the House could meet the deadline if there were no inordinate delays in the conference report.

Consensus is that Congress will not stay in session just for the water bill.

My staff feels, however, that Congress will not be able to finish the necessary bills, H.R.

1, debt, continuing resolution, by Saturday night.

My personal view, this is Timmons, is that it's 50-50 on a Saturday adjournment.

So he says, take no action on water quality until Saturday noon.

We'll take another reading at that time.

And I think that's right.

What is the situation with H.R.

1?

H.R.

1 now looks like we will get titles 1, 2, and

increasing outlays by $5.7 billion, offset by $4.9 billion of additional revenues for a net increase of $800 million approximately of deficits.

So on the basis of the payroll tax doubling, you could veto it.

On the basis of the increase over the budget of $800 million, you could veto it.

But you're facing all kinds of very sexy

uh benefits for the ages and uh adult categories and all that kind of thing so it's a it's uh one of those just a recommendation yes sir it will be consistent with our oh i don't want anybody that's got a

Is there some liabilities on it?

It's in the works.

I feel it has to be.

Right.

Well, we've got a pocket detail on HRY.

We're sure.

A question about that.

Yep.

Well, I think you have to take a look.

If Saturday noon it looks probable that there is enough strength in the Congress to hold them in until Tuesday, which bill now discounts, then I think you have to take a serious look at it on the theory that there is no mandatory spending.

At that point, no tax increase.

And if there will be, the Justice Department says it is.

No, the Justice Department is now awful.

the face of the legislative history.

The practical effect, theoretically you can, but politically it's going to be very difficult.

You've got an $18 million head of steam here, and there's

just a question of whether a second-term president is free of the political pressures involved in this.

This is part of the relevance that it's holding.

And I think, John, you can't get away with mandatory.

Why don't we just say that it is mandatory.

As a practical matter, it's mandatory.

But we can tell you that there is

How is there a serious doubt about this?

Let's see, there's not enough to go on there.

And you double-damage it, because if you were to say... Well, for them to say that it's discretionary, of course, is a dishonest goddamn thing, and they're not really for it.

But here's what can happen to you.

Here's what can happen to you.

Supposing you say, I'm concerned about this, it's a practical matter, it's mandatory, or it's muddy, or our legal opinions are mixed.

Then it goes back up.

And they make a legislative history, and they really do.

They know darn well that a practical matter, even though they put it in all the legislative history in the world, the pressures are going to be there.

That's right.

next early Sunday.

Sure.

I'm ready.

I'm ready right now.

What's going on with today?

I'm ready.

You'll have to give it up.

It's something that requires you to get out of it.

The thing right next door is

Well, the water bill thing is a damn dilemma, and I think we ought to just sit tight and play for a break.

There's lots of either way.

As we get farther into this tomorrow morning, we can keep track of it, see where we are, and push on with it.

If you can.

Just let me be quiet.

Sure, go ahead.

We can't take the heat of a veto of the water bill and a veto of the H.R.

1 for the barrel.

Now, at a time that we are living, as long as we are, this country is not going to fall.

That's my feeling.

In other words, so we can come down to what's right.

We'd better be lobbying, in particular because these cities and so forth, they've got a lot of money in there that they want to pick up.

They've already spent it.

Let me make a suggestion on this.

Let's agree to decide tomorrow, finally, how to play it.

Oh, sure, I agree.

As far as pocket veto or veto and roll or whatever.

Now, Rogers and I are going to be on Issue and Answer Sunday for an hour.

give us a chance to break the news and explain it.

If you don't understand, I prefer to sign both.

But you know, and I know, John, that we've got an horrendous problem.

And also, we've got a promise not to raise time

I've got a veto statement in the SOC here.

It's pretty good.

No, and they'll trade boats.

You'll get an ABM or some damn thing up there.

I know.

And they'll say that OMB is holding up my sewer plant.

That's right.

You know.

Well, you might get some thoughts whether you want to break it that way or whether you'd rather break it here or low key it in some way.

But at least we have that idea.

I think doing it your way is better because that is low key.

It is in a sense.

That's right.

Rather than having

I just let them have it.

I just let them play the program.

Well, I will see you there.

I'm serious about it.

That's right.

So you can announce it.

I like that.

I might not get a question about it either.

I might not get a question.

Absolutely right.

One Barbara Burns type thing.

Incidentally, he's helping us with long at the Senate Finance Committee on this.

I've been spending too.

And it's been a little work.

He's going to Japan.

wants to know if there's any dentures going to Taiwan.

So I checked with Henry on that.

No, there's no dentures.

No dentures.

OK. That's a very good idea.

OK. Because we're trying to help them all weekend.

OK. One other propunctory gesture on my part, and that is to tender to you Wendell Wyatt and the

somebody else, Henry Bellman's memos on the subject of H.R.

56, and you've now seen them, and we're going to veto it, and it has to do with the acquisition of a lot more timberland by the federal government, a lot of pure nonsense.

Instead of the state cutting the federal bicycle, we veto less than anybody else has.

Well, they've done a hell of a job.

They've done fine.

There's more stuff like consumer protection that's bottled up up there.

There's a chance.

And it's because of absenteeism.

Maybe not.

It appears now this morning that more and more people think Humphrey's just about to shoot in the line.

Len Jordan packed up and left.

So he's all done.

And so the same eroding, the resistance to it is eroding.

You whacked a car yesterday twice, got a lot of ride, the thing is probably going to get

Those will fight for the pure version.

And I don't know what we'll get out of the conference.

But anyway, you've made a good fight and everybody in the country knows it.

And I mean, maybe that's another good argument.

That's right.

Otherwise you sell out that effort.

That's right.

Now, if you had the spending money, it still wouldn't help the water bill.

Because the first nine months... That's right.

Well, that was a good meeting the other day.

It really helped with some of those guys.

It was a backbone thing.

They went up and fought hard.

They had an eight-day tie in that committee and a long case.

And I'm sure your phone call had something to do with that.

Well, that's all I have this morning, I think.

They're feeling that breeze.

You're running my account away from my government account?

No, I'm sorry.

That's right.

And it's interesting.

The reason Dan Evans is in such trouble in the state of Washington is that this guy Rossellini has gotten between Evans and you.

He's closer to your position.

He's on property taxes, reducing the power of government.

He's running for the fiscal concern.

Sure.

Yeah, that's ridiculous because he ran in Epson every year he was governor.

But he sensed the mood better than Evans.

Evans' progressive views aren't quite as popular.

He's had to be for income tax.

And so all those talks he makes about education.

He's a good man and everything.

But the country's changed.

These changes occur.

And I don't mean it won't change back again.

I don't mean that we want to be negative.

In other words, that's why I always throw in, which is about the return of the gun issues and the strong defense of peace, honor, justice, and so forth and so on, which you've got to throw in.

Yeah, that's why the product is revenue sharing.

I don't think people knew what they thought in 1969 about welfare.

I think you have, by pushing for welfare reform, you have crystallized a lot of thought in the average guy that didn't exist before.

He knew vaguely that there were these people on welfare out there, but it just really hadn't come to perception.

And over the period of the last three years, we have seen not so much a shift as a creation of a national attitude about welfare creation.

And somebody asked me the other day, are we going to reauthor the family assistance plan?

And I said, well, the family assistance plan served its purpose.

It got people thinking about the problem.

Now I think a new Congress will know exactly what the American people think about welfare.

And we're not going to have any trouble getting welfare for them.

Somebody came through the line and had a lot of work that went on and had a terrible poverty program.

We give more priority to that than we have to school.

Well, I wondered what the hell it was, but it wasn't black, it was white.

My point is, though, that on this, we have to remember, I want you to have in mind, as we run toward our next program,

some part of it.

Now, we'll detail some of these things, but where you can do things for kids or, you know, that's a reason, right, that I signed up to the other day.

team proposition on the Youth Conservation Corps.

It's like the old CCC.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I think that's technical action.

That's right.

Yeah, we're going to do it.

There you go, science.

Good.

It makes it permanent.

And it gets better work.

Oh, it's arguable.

Only if he doesn't think it's so hot.

But it's getting a lot of kids up into the forest in the summertime.

That's the beauty of it.

All that stuff.

If it gets 10 kids, it's worth it.

Yeah, 100.

Well, it doesn't cost a lot.

I don't think it's a bad thing.

It's the kind of thing, too, where if those were the parties, we could expand the fellowship for the purpose of getting these kids out of this horrible jail and stuff all over the country.

That would be a good thing to do.

We've got to do a few good things.

We just can't sit here.

That's why I think we just have to be negative.

You've got to remember, too, the

Our constituencies, as a solemn jury of American people, is basically a constituency that is more motivated by the states than it is by the force.

I mean, frankly, the ethnic states, they're black neighbors.

The southerners hate those northern bastions.

And a lot of those may question.

gradually tilt this so that we don't, we aren't simply here sitting on just a group of people in a group.

They always got to be told that they don't need, that isn't the reason, you know.

You've got to deal with their best interest.

Well, that's right.

And over a period of four years, you can find a lot of places where people in these groups can stand together.

National Defense Bank, for instance.

Regardless of how they feel as a part of it, they come together on those.

And I'm glad, sure, I'm darn right.

Those are good.

And also, we're on the moral three sets.

I mean, he's certainly proud of his dedication and moral and spiritual strength.

By God, they believe it.

And, you know, and they are.

That's what they are.

And they think that a lot of these others are heathens, you know, right?

And that's true of the heartland of the Midwest is that way.

Upper New York is that way.

A hell of a lot of California is that way.

Oh, DCS thinks you're that way.

Well, I'll set you a cap and sit there.

away from the, you know, the religious thing was like that.

Graham and others have said that it's picking up.

Certainly his kind of fundamentalism is.

But I think, apart from going to church, there's just a lot of people that have been turned off.

Yes, turned off by the, I don't know, the thumb in the nose, by the obscene gestures, by the

And I think that the reason that George and his wife and people like that are turning their own back there, more than anything else, even more than four of us, is lifestyle.

It really is.

It is belonging.

There are a lot of long-haired people that think like this too.

What it is, my lifestyle, they think this guy runs around with a lot of bomb-throwers and hippies.

I'm sure the thing that you hear about him when you go out around the country from our people is the kind of crowds he attracts.

Oh.

And they ain't respectable.

Sure.

No.

When he has a rally, he gets the campus kids, he gets the long hairs, he gets the, you know, all that.

And that turns off

that marginal voter, who's saying, well, you know, maybe that guy talks pretty good sense, and then they look at the people around him.

You all, sir, look out for those fellas in the trench coats.

That's what they wear.

Okay, thanks, John.

I want to be here all day today, all day tomorrow, any time you

I mean, because I've got to go to the thing.

The thing will be breaking pretty fast.

Nixon, Ehrlichman & Ziegler on Water bill and H.R. 1

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 13, 1972

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