On October 17, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, White House operator, Corrine ("Lindy") (Clairborne) Boggs, Stephen B. Bull, Robert J. Brown, Gale E. Sayers, Paul R. Jones, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:26 am to 12:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 801-016 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
That's right.
Well, no.
See, they've had this notice.
So it could go to spring now.
If they went into the side of a mountain in the snow.
Now we've tried, I don't know how successful we've been.
We've tried to put a lock on that information so it comes here first.
Well, we've got a game plan.
We'll just see.
Mrs. Boggs, the wife of the majority leader.
We'll see if we can make some things happen.
Their full right is being mastered on this aid business.
It's easy for him.
Yeah, it comes natural.
And I talked to Fitz yesterday.
Thank you for your help.
Well, it may be that around 7th or 7th
i know this is a very hard time for you and your family but i want you to know that mrs next and i are thinking about you and we're just praying that out in that snow they're gonna uh they're gonna find him we're gonna walk around up there yeah well we we we're as you know doing everything we can on the government side not that we can do it but every search line is out and uh but
You just keep your faith, okay?
And give my best to your girls and wonderful children.
Congratulations.
Okay.
Okay.
Bye.
Bye.
Well, so how are we going to do this?
Well, we're getting geared up so that any time after noon, we'll be in shape to do a number of different things that have to be done.
For instance, if they kill the spending limit, which looks likely in the Senate,
We'll be ready to go out and blast them.
Ziegler is going to say that the eyes of every taxpayer in the nation are on the Senate today, before the vote.
We'll kick them hard.
Well, I agree.
I just think, yeah, right.
Because we know we're going to lose it.
And we don't want to have, I don't know if I was right or not.
Let's not tell them it's time to be assured.
Then I should say, now I will fight this battle alone.
The Congress has deserted in the fight against higher taxes.
They have deserted en masse, this Congress.
And now I will have to fight the battle alone.
with the support of the American people and with the support, I trust, of those courageous members of the House and Senate who will vote to sustain freedom.
I can say that the Congress is deserving.
Is there any other word we could use?
AWOL.
Well, let's see what the absentee record is.
It's an absolute absentee record.
The Congress has gone AWOL and the fight is deserved.
Half the Congress has gone AWOL and the other half is deserved.
Then, about six or seven tonight would be my best guess right now.
I don't know for sure.
We'll send a water veto up.
And if the gang plan goes according to schedule, we'll have the house out of here by then.
Your idea that they're getting the Republicans
Well, no, we may get the whole house out.
The house is mad as hell at the Senate right now.
And we just may be able to get this.
Tim is working on it, his guys, and they may be able to do their work.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Now, on the tax speech, on the, you know, circuit breaker for the owner, I have the same feeling.
Sapphire's put it together.
He called me yesterday and he said, this comes under the heading of overkill.
He said, we're 30 points ahead in the polls.
Revenue or tax reform has disappeared from the W.
Well, Bill's point is that while the poll showed taxes up there, that the issue poll wasn't really the poll to look at right now.
It's the man.
It's the man.
The reason, the only point about the taxes that I wonder is, frankly, since I'm not going to have a press conference,
until the very last meeting of the Chicago press, and that might all say, we're going to have this, and I'll submit it to the next Congress.
Well, you could give it away.
You could say, listen, I had this, but I haven't wanted to make it appear to be a campaign document.
I've indicated that I'm going to be the property tax relief.
I now know how to do it.
It's good.
I'm satisfied with it.
It's constructive.
I want to be sure that it's on the sound ground.
I still haven't said anything, but I will have it ready and present it to the new Congress.
Or you give it away.
You can say, look, I've got this ready, but here, three weeks before the election.
Why not?
My Congress is going to be wondering for me.
All right, but you say, I've had it for the last three weeks.
But obviously, that close to an election, anything that I might do in this direction would be suspect.
Yeah, that's right.
And I want this to be considered on Samaritans and so forth, the way from the promises in the election.
Now, you'll have to handle it, too.
You're the one that's got to get the question down.
But I have to say, we're studying it.
We're considering the progress.
We think we will have a recommendation for the next Congress.
Why don't you have it, people?
Go ahead.
i don't know my whole deal is that you don't raise the issues because they can only lose that's why we're watching this uh negotiation i said of course if you give the only way if this is the best time to settle
And we can settle and make a decision to settle now.
But I said, don't do it because you think you're going to help the election, because there's nothing going to help this election, John.
Well, there's nothing going to help.
You can at these levels.
And also, the people have made up their mind, despite the so-called understatement.
You notice, we're staying in all of these polls at 59%, 60%.
Outside the market, they haven't decided.
Totally outside.
Okay, well then if you have no objection, I'll just put that on ice.
It's a pretty good speech, and we've got it, and we know how to do this plan.
But I'm just going to tell George that you were concerned about it wasn't too political.
That's right.
And so I'll work out a line.
I've got to get some way to re-state it.
And I think, I don't know, maybe even figure out a letter.
Well, let me tell you what we did.
This may give us a peg, I'm not sure.
There's another Lemon case in the state of Pennsylvania on age of private schools generally.
We caused the Solicitor General to intervene in that case this week in the Supreme Court.
Much to his chagrin.
Much to his chagrin.
And I had to blackjack him this weekend pretty hard to get him in there, but he's in.
And maybe what we ought to do is work out some kind of a letter.
Maybe an exchange of letters between you and Rizzo or something of that kind, where he writes and says, we're awfully concerned about this in Pennsylvania, and you write back and say, this week I have directed the solicitor general to intervene in the Lemon 2 case.
And, of course, we can do it.
Oh, I don't...
If I were to be better, I'd have Cardinal Cook write me a letter.
All right.
New York's where we need it.
All right.
I need Cardinal Cook.
All right.
I've got a lead that he can exceed.
There's an 11-page, too.
Okay.
Cook could...
the cook will make it get motor planning all right cook will make it we want his lemon cases coming up that i directed to say but cook could drop me a note expressing his interest i will i want to write him on that you know stating my position and all the things that roll in schools all right all right
If I remember, you don't need to take it up with us.
If I remember, he brought it up in the top Catholic lawyers.
About the lemon case.
I want to let, or if Cook doesn't want to do it as Cardinal, have the civilian, the civilian, in other words, it doesn't have to be Cook, who is the head of the, I'd rather really have it go to him, the civilian, who is the lawyer for the, for the Gropius Carson.
That puts it at a different level, see?
Okay.
That's an end to it.
But I don't mind sending it to COVID for this.
All right, I'll talk to Pete about it.
Let's see where God is.
Okay.
Get that right.
But on the tax thing, I said, sir, now let's go to what?
Then we'll just go with paternalism this week.
Well, see, we'll bump the first stage to Sunday.
All right.
on Saturday.
And just say, well, there was so much going on this week with agreements with the Congress.
He hasn't got it.
No.
That's right.
So we get that on this.
Then, he's not getting either of those ratings.
Oh, yeah.
Those are all in the mail.
They're coming at me in drafts right along.
Which other ones do you see coming up?
Well, we've got... Let's see.
What have we got up there?
That urban affairs thing was in a draft that I sent back last night.
It's too long and too heavy.
We've got another one up there.
Good morning.
I'll bend in on that.
He writes beautiful rhetoric.
A few paragraphs.
Now, let me find out whether he'd be willing to do that.
I think he would.
Yeah, I don't mean that he's hesitant.
There's a man behind him, right?
He might just say a few paragraphs on earth.
Okay.
Okay.
I don't know.
I've got another draft up there or something this morning.
I haven't gotten that yet.
One of those subjects.
But Ray's got these guys all up and visiting.
It's by Huebner.
Ray's got it.
He's doing a lot of the...
He's got to do a lot of the American spirit kind of thing for the last...
Something else.
I'm sorry, I just don't remember.
Let's see if I've got it.
I've got that Social Security thing pinned down to dollars now.
Way over it.
Way, way over it.
$800 million in the first year and $5.4 billion in the first full year of 1974.
Over the budget.
Well, I've got a call in for Fleming, and I'm having the other people canvass.
I'm sending this stuff around.
to, let's don't get a big coast.
Put a paper on it.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'll just, I can tell you what I'm going to ask you.
I'm not going to ask you whether it should be signed or not.
I'm going to ask you what the politics is in the light of the 20% that we've already given.
My suspicion is that
The elderly community doesn't have much right in this right now.
It's been kicked around so much in the process of the conference that I don't think they're very much in the way of expectations.
They're all sitting there looking at their 20% and wondering what effect that's going to have on their welfare and their housing and all that stuff.
I don't think this is going to go much on this one.
It really is.
There's a lot of odds and ends in it.
A lot of junk.
We don't have to veto that.
That will be a pocket veto.
That's going to be a pocket veto.
Yeah, it should be.
Unless they just stick around here for some reason.
The 26th gets to be our critical date for most of these bad pieces of legislation.
They all write here, yes.
Anything else we want to veto?
Oh, we've got quite a handy list of things up there.
You now have something like 110 bills here.
There is one that I've got to ask you about.
Remember the other day I showed you at a distance Wendell Wyatt's letter?
I talked to Wendell a long time this morning about this.
It's that Indian lambs being bought for a national forest.
It's a lousy bill on the merits.
And I argued the merits.
Wendell says, well, look, I've been chairman of the President's Committee out there for a year.
He says, let me take it off the merits and just put it to you the way I see it.
He says, it isn't in my district.
He says, my only concern here is President's fortunes in Oregon.
I said, well, we've got to be fat as mice in Oregon.
I said, there's just no way we can lose Oregon, you know.
Sir, to Bob Reinhardt-Scales, Sarah Sweeney, if you're ever wandering around out there, we'd like to endorse you.
Are you sure of that, sir?
If not, but having had a drink tonight.
He's waiting out.
He's just on the ground.
He's still part of that.
Well, put him out of the meeting.
Yes, sir.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
So anyway, we argued back and forth.
And funny why, I said, look, I'm the president's man in Oregon.
He said, I'm on the line on this thing.
If I don't get it, that says a lot about... 180 million, something like that.
That's my concern.
Does he think I'm helping or anything?
He says he'll help.
It's an editorial-based issue.
He says it's an editorial-based issue, and I've got all the editorials.
They're all for this acquisition because they know that the county commissioners won't prevent the rape of this forest.
And the Indians will sell it to the timber companies, and the timber companies will clear-cut it.
And, uh, there it'll be.
Now, the commissioners will go for it because of the taxes and the revenues on the timber operation.
So there's no hope of getting the thing zoned.
The only way is to...
Okay.
Make something out of it.
Could I suggest that?
If I sign that one, how about having him come in?
He'd be here standing on the chair.
No, he could come in and get a picture.
How about Miss Adelaide?
Why not have a deal with him?
Okay.
Just an idea.
I'll ask him.
At one time, you know what I mean, we don't want this son of a bitch Morris.
If Marcus Ford comes and asks him, if he wants to, maybe half the other one will come in.
But if he wants to, he can bring half the other down.
Be a nice touch.
And Miss Adelaide, the other senator, back with him.
But let him.
He's bad as a goose out there.
But we don't do anything.
We screwed and had Packwood on the labor camp.
So I'd like to have the two senators and him.
But none of the others.
Okay.
Why, you have to have a separate congressman from this secretary to the president also.
Oh, sure.
This is where I know to have him back.
That's down back.
Oh, sure.
Because it's his ticket.
What is the...
But any other vetoes, I'm for.
Okay, we're getting a list together.
And it's pretty mature right now, because we don't have the numbers figured out.
And some of them are fairly complicated, but the OMB guys are getting them together.
So it's a parallel perspective.
Well, frankly, stepping up to the Water bill, stepping up to the DPW appropriation, stepping up to the Social Security makes the spending issue.
Oh, yes.
It does.
It's very helpful to raise a little water bill.
Yeah.
It's just going to chop the shell.
Of course it will be.
That's right.
That's right.
All right.
Does Mr. Earle want to sit ahead of them here?
I do.
It's a great pleasure to be able to sit here tonight.
Right, right, right, sure.
You want to get a picture in here?
Come over here, boys.
He's going to start us off.
The other wing was put on that side many years ago.
And then this wing was put on during .
This office was designed .
The distinguishing feature is the seal there.
And now look at the cartons.
It's the same thing.
Every time they build it, they have a carton made.
They go out and have a .
And we will have to get a .
I don't know if for the next four years,
Well, we had a like of the first variety here, and it just gets dirty.
So we put this in color.
And this, in the end, that tree is from China.
It became 30 years old.
And it explains why those dwarf trees do.
They're not unusual in the sense that you've got them here, but there are not many that we brought that were brought back from China.
So we can see them.
Well, let me say that I do want you to know that
First, the work you're doing with kids and so forth.
Second, the fact that you're working in the television field, which is the name of the game.
I think it's extremely encouraging to young kids in general.
You take a Negro kid, wherever he is, all over this country.
And it seems true that black and white, most of them don't come from affluent families or very affluent families.
Most of them have to have somebody to look up to.
They've got to figure, they've got to make it.
The difficulty here is that, you know, we've got quite a good program for, you know, just minority business.
How many people say it doesn't go far enough?
The rest, we haven't been on fire as long as we've tried.
We're not more than it's ever been done before.
It's important.
It's like technology.
I remember when we came here last year, we were at Mary Rae's house.
We had three big trees.
We had one.
Who was that?
That was Ed Davis out in Detroit.
Right.
Now, we have about 40 now.
Forty.
Forty.
And I just said, I said, how many black people own cars?
And I said, around eight, ten million.
I said, how many do you own?
One.
I said, we'll do something about it.
And we've done it.
As a matter of fact,
Now that you've left, we've already been resigning.
Oh, are we married?
That's good to hear.
This is for your wife.
Are you a golfer?
No.
Don't take it up.
I might give you a golf ball, but don't take it up.
But the thing, Gale, you come from a different background.
in Kansas.
Kansas, home of the president.
Right.
And then the Bears.
I mean, you're an anxious lady, but at this point, I just think you could do an awful lot of good inspiring kids, inspiring the law.
The main thing I want you to know is that
I realize that we don't have the support of the black community.
The main thing I always emphasize to Bob and all of our folks here is that we want to do the right thing.
And this door is always open in terms of doing the right thing.
I think that we want to take care of, as best we can, people that are poor and all the rest.
What you really got to do is raise that ceiling.
Raise that ceiling so those kids can go out.
They've got to be able to go out.
And the main thing is they've got to go where they get the peace of the action.
I want more.
i want more cardigans and somebody has said they're writing me more hot dogs and juice i mean the point is you go up to harlem right today and frankly most of the shops are owned by the uh well outside but i mean now why does that mean the
the Jewish shop owners are bad.
No, they're just good business people.
But it isn't right.
Frankly, you ought to have guys in there.
This is why I like that Leon Sullivan statement.
He works like a director and a promoter.
He's a promoter.
He's done a lot of shopping centers.
So I just wanted you to know that that's what we're for.
He has some things, Gail and I have been talking, and he has some things that he'd like to do.
And I told him that we would be helpful in every way we could to take care of Santa in Michigan.
Where?
In Michigan.
Do you live in Charleston?
He just don't have enough centers for young kids, under school age, and kindergarten.
And that is one reason there's so many people in Milwaukee and Chicago.
Many of those mothers can't have any place to take the kids, so they can't- So they can't work.
That's not true.
Well, of course, we have that in H.R.
1.
We say that the way you can't expect anybody to go to work, they've got to take care of their kids.
So you've got to provide for this.
What about, how can we inspire them?
That's the main thing.
And I see we've got to motivate them, right?
The kids have got to be motivated.
And if they see people going to the top, that'll help them.
The corresponding is, I just thought as I looked at that game last night,
I mean, that's the thing, everybody always agreed with me.
I mean, frankly, I went out to the team four years later, sat on the bench four years.
I've got to say it, it was good for me.
You know, you practice the enemy's plays all week, get your brains knocked out.
It teaches you a little humility.
Of course, you never had to do that, you already did.
I knew the other side, Steve.
What I was going to say, the thing is that I was thinking of what's happening in sports.
I was thinking of the Redskins.
I used the noble jargon of President Marshall.
It was grave or bar.
You realize that, you know, a little for you.
that Marshall didn't have a black player on his team.
He had an all-white team, but he says, well, it's a southern city, that was from Washington.
I talked to Marshall about it one time, and what really opened his eyes was Jimmy Brown.
And I was sitting there with Marshall, and I was quite a fan.
This was just when I started.
I said, I'm George.
George is the son.
I said, George.
I said, you're a damn fool.
Look at the way that calls tearing your team up.
I said, you'd better get with it.
I said, because you're denying yourself and the Washington fans all the talent.
Well, last night I saw this Packard thing.
The Packard, I think.
And it's something that I thought the Lions were going to blow them right out of the place.
But you look at the backs of the students.
All right.
On the Lions side, they had two great runners.
And they had Steve Owens, of course, the Heisman Trophy.
And then they had, of course,
Alty Taylor.
Alty Taylor.
Alty Taylor.
And Mel Farr is in the bench.
Mel Farr, who's one of the greatest artists.
There you go.
So I mentioned black.
Happens that two of those are black, one's white.
Now, Larry, if you look over at the details, I mean the print space, two great facts.
Brockington, Strong, and McCartney.
Now, the point that I make is that any owner, for example, first, it helps those who are in, shall we say, a minority group.
It gives them an opportunity.
But also, you can't have the best team unless you see that everybody in this country gets a chance to build a good house.
You can't have the best team.
Take the baseball World Series, I haven't seen any of those.
But I, you look out there, I don't look out for other black ones, I wonder what that anguish is.
If they can pinch you, the rest.
And that's the attitude that we gotta get.
It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that you're gonna have any, we have to be quite candid, that you're gonna have, you know this as well as anybody else.
that you're not going to have differences.
You have problems of blacks and whites, this and that, just as the Irish used to fight with the Italians and so on and so on.
But the main thing we've got to do
is to be sure that the ceiling is unlimited.
That's the part I wish you'd emphasize to the kids, that I think the ceiling must be unlimited.
We're going to help with the floor, you know, have them care for the floors and all the rest, but the ceiling's got to be unlimited.
So the guy can go up in politics, he can go up in business, he can go up in law, he can go up in athletics, etc.
And that's my theory.
We've got some things on the drawing board now, Mr. President.
that we hopefully can get Gail involved in.
I've spoken to about 50 of the top athletes in the country, and a lot of them are coming here probably next week to endorse you.
I saw you had the Cleveland Browns come forward.
Yes, they're a great guy, but we're trying to get them involved in
and going out to various communities to work with kids.
Well, let me say this.
The election is not a company goal.
The main thing is about after the election.
I mean, whatever side the calls have been on, and I understand that.
I mean, they've got calls on their side.
I mean, people spread out.
What we want to do is to bring these people together, bring this country together.
And one of the best things we can do is to get our athlete, the fellows with that, let him back down.
Would you like some?
Exactly.
Well, I don't even mind if you talk about that.
The kids are returned home.
No, no, no.
Exactly.
One of the parents.
Well, I'm very grateful and we won't let you down.
You'll take a little heat for it.
My brother, Sammy Davis, said, I'll be out there.
I said, now, Sammy Davis, please.
Now he is.
He said, I don't care.
He said, I don't care.
He said, I don't care.
He said, I don't care.
He said, I don't care.
He said, I don't care.
Hope you got that around with you.
Because everybody thought I was going to go to Atlanta to speak to the Suns.
I said, you Southerners, that was great to be a part of America.
I love you.
You might send him a copy of that.
At least there's an extramarine in the speech.
It doesn't read too well, but it sounds good.
How many kids do you have?
I have two.
Three.
Three?
What's his name?
What's your girls?
I have two more kids.
We've got the kids.
These are representative of the boys.
These are just as impressive as the tiny ones.
And we are the boys.
And for the little girl, this is a little charm.
Tommy, what was your injury?
Knee?
Knee.
That's the one thing.
And you just, what's that?
You know, I can sit so long that they don't go anymore.
They find out.
So I don't do anything else.
Well, it's a great loss of the game, but I mean, are you finding your current activities useful?
And of course, sometimes you've got to make the break anyway.
You've got to prepare to make the break.
Are there other people that...
You see, they'll finish their careers and all of a sudden they get a badge and they're going to slow down a step.
And then what do they do?
Too many out there.
Let's get a program, Bob.
I'd like to have that study with the NFL.
They've got a fairly good pension program.
Very good.
Now that, but you see, you can't put a guy at 35 years old on a pension.
He's got to do some of these guys' work.
I wish you could just give us some thought to that.
I'm trying to talk to Commissioner Lozella about going on a talk with these folks.
All right.
Doing things.
I know what's up.
As you were telling me, Frank, seeing if we can maybe get it to work and work up a little bit.
Because we don't want these guys, particularly the great black athletes, just to start feeling after they're finished, useful out there, just to...
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Thank you.