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How are you?

How are you doing?

You guys are so busy getting my scale up.

You said you've got a lot to do.

This is the 73.

One thing I like to think you've found is that there's always had to be something.

George Shultz.

I've asked around 11.

And so we get up to .

But in addition to other things you and I want to talk about, I wanted to say something.

And if you've got my letter, I'll have to .

Yes, I appreciate that.

I was just trying to see the odds, Dennis.

I think he may make it.

Well, I admire him.

I know that hand-shaking is his life.

It's like Terry Bird.

He's like, I've got my eye on this.

And all of us, you know, his brother's such a leader and all that.

I guess he's got a loser.

But all of us, his spirit is good.

And I told him he just had to end that up there and so forth.

But I can say this about the support of Russell.

We could never have, we could never have been in this war.

We would have had to cop out.

And may I say, you see, your calls and your calls were indispensable, because we were always those who called the 15 and our nano-hubbards.

So your calls filled the gap.

But I just want you to know it would have been done without you.

And we can have disagreements on other things, and it would probably mean one thing.

That's part of the political life.

But so many of our friends, some Republicans, some Democrats, forget that in this foreign policy deal, the country now

Well, you know, Mr. President, there's some people down that way who are racist, Democrat, and strong for you anyway.

I told a friend of mine, coming up here, when he was sitting by, I told him about that.

They were fighting against him.

Now, I said to him, I said to the other president, if that racist McGovern gets close, I'm going to vote for him.

I've got to think.

If McGovern's going to lose by 50, I don't think we're going to do it.

That's it.

My wife would tell me this book he made.

He said, you know, that family sister's playing certainly good.

But she doesn't help me like what you think.

She doesn't teach what we're doing.

Because it goes to, it goes to, it goes way out there.

$7,000.

Yeah, way out there.

What did he even have to get the $6,500 thing? $1,000.

If I don't get out of what you say, he was trying to get out beyond the president all the time.

Yeah, that's right.

Let me tell you an interesting thing before we get up, before we leave Stennis, a very interesting point.

You know, this pollster senator, who does, he's not a scientific pollster, but he takes the telephone calls.

He gets 600 calls a night.

He calls me.

Therefore, he's very up to date.

He was in a couple days ago.

And so he finds other people who are thinking of him at the moment.

And so I said, well, he said, my bad.

He said, I actually can't guess.

He says, for the last four days, our polls are overwhelming, but it's not a Vermont issue.

So I don't think he was impressed in fighting the Congress and telling them and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, and, uh

He said, Peter, you've got to take a look out there.

That average person we call, he thinks of his own neighbor.

He thinks of this nice man.

He says, there's no sense.

He's a good man, and they all do.

In fact, he was a Christian man who would go to prayer practice or something like that the next morning.

And then I thought, that's what we call it.

For the last three or four days, it was all about tennis.

And let's do something about this rhyme, something about this drug.

Now, of course, that changed.

We don't know sometimes here in Washington.

We get all involved in our own stuff.

What the hell do people ever do?

You know, I saw Dave Russell just about two days before he died.

He had been to see him up there.

And I recall he told us that time, he said, I'm a great Nixon man.

And he says, I still like what he uses.

He just thought that you did the best you could as a president.

I thought you and I had an important understanding.

It's not a deal, but it's an important understanding that all things being equal would get the other guy raped, if that's what you're concerned.

I don't think that's something done my way.

I mean, no, that's something that you can't do.

That's all right.

But, of course, something...

We can go to the museum to go again.

It'll give me a break.

I'll try to get out of that.

I bet you the same thing.

Good concentration.

Only the same white thing.

You just need to go on, which is not a...

I think we've got to give you chances to do what people ask you to do.

Well, you know, basically, this is the question I want to invite the Congress.

If I made a pledge for no taxes, I mean, if I don't try to keep it, then I've got to do it.

The Congress wants to go the other way.

But I've got to fight.

So we've got to try to find ways to hold it down within that figure.

And if we can, I think that that would resolve much of this.

If you put a ceiling on that thing, or I don't know whether the ceiling will work, or somebody has said that you should put a ceiling in the depth of it or something.

I don't know how to go technically.

But Russell, if we could hold it with that, then you don't have to have a tax increase.

But if you don't go over that, if you go four or five billion or above, it will be potentially explosive, potentially inflationary.

And that's really why we have to do it.

And that's not a cheap budget.

I mean, that's $18 billion more than this year.

A lot of that goes into the increase in Social Security.

But a hell of a lot of it is going for the poor folks, for the old folks, for all the people we care about.

Now, you'd like to get everything you could.

I mean, as you know, I'd like to say yes to all this, but I'm just about to say no.

something that you can go along with, something I don't know what it's for.

On welfare, you know, before George gets here, I want you to talk to us about it.

I don't want a man, a person, a whiner to get concerned.

I want you to talk very frankly to him.

He's a reasonable man.

He's tough and strong and basically wild.

when she mentioned on the birch candidate, the president and the former congressman, repeated when he heard the Biden named Weinberger to the ATW office that he was under attack in the Senate.

On the ground, he was too conservative.

And she then said, my God.

He said, that shows you what the country's got to do.

Whenever Weinberger is attacked, he's being conservative.

He's being conservative.

He's making a liberal backer.

Weinberger's got a lot of sense.

But I know we can just don't just go on and on and on.

If I could just show you just two little things I'd say about life.

And we ought to be able to recommend this.

One of them is that we ought to stand right now.

We don't give a mother any incentive to sue a father or even seek help to make him contribute something to his children.

Well, she's getting a $100,000 welfare check.

Usually you can't get a judgment as much as $100,000.

You've got all the difficulty trying to collect it.

You've got a formal reliable source of income from the federal government.

And then the guy comes back around town to town and says, well, at least you might get a few bucks out of a man.

Well, otherwise, you're not going to get anything.

That's not going to get anything.

Yeah, that's not going to get anything.

What do you want?

But that is so.

I'm not saying that.

You can go down there and ask something about it.

Well, we ought to apply the same concept to .

We ought to apply the same concept to support a model that would reach across state boundaries.

Let's make that employer withhold it neatly in order to put that in place.

The governor of Houston has saved money for the program, and I don't want to make any money for the governor at all.

He's an administrator.

He has saved all this money for the program, and he's an administrator, and he can save.

You can plow that back in, raise the benefit level for deserving cases.

He can make all the public contribute something.

Now, we have this other thing.

The normal message said, for you, what can the nation do for you, what can you do for us?

All right, fantastic.

So I thought, well, all right, how am I?

And here's something that we've got a 90% vote for, even without the help from the HHW, your administration, because our cause is to be overrun.

We've got a 90% vote for it, without the help from up there.

And he said, look, why don't we in fact get people back to Social Security when it looks like the other end comes to the working poor?

It costs about a billion dollars a year.

And that is all the people with families who have children to support.

Now, if you do it that way, you can benefit about 20 million people benefit from that.

Well, we've got it.

Mr. President, and this is why I think it would be good for your administration to help us do this.

Frankly, all we need is your cooperation.

You don't have to ask us.

We can get that done from the House, or we can have a seat with the kids.

The President may just be all right.

And it's yours when you sign the law.

But now, you see, to have something to reach 20, the same, that would reach more people.

Then your family assistance plan, which is all work, but they got the work to do to get this.

It's just a matter of... What's your call point?

Well, here's how it went.

We would say that up to $4,000, you get the maximum benefit.

That's the poverty level.

Well, that's what the landlord gave you, and that's the poverty level.

At that point, you get $400,000 of your family's money.

Then from that point forward, for every dollar you increase your

25 cents, you might say.

So if you get $400, that's going all right.

It figures out at $5,600.

So every time you make another dollar, you're losing two bits back, you might say.

So it works out like a 25% tax.

I thought it was probably my idea.

I can't describe my idea.

But Riverside thought that was a good idea too.

He wanted to be a co-sponsor.

It looked like that was an emergency.

So that's it.

that he fastened it as a substitute for it.

At that point, they began to back off from it.

But in the Senate, we had a vote on that.

I think it was about 90% of all the Senators voted for it.

But Ted Kinsman was accused of voting against it.

He voted against it because he didn't like that concept.

Well, basically, he didn't want to be in the position of voting a Ferrari work car concept.

He didn't respect it.

And that whole work related.

And the beauty of that is I actually didn't .

Take a look at that .

Let me ask you something else, though, that really is concerning me.

And let me say, I'm not, as you know, I'm .

I'm not going to push it .

But I'm trying to think of something.

I was thinking of this .

You know, what you're doing with housing in the present times, when the federal government goes in and builds these housing projects, and, you know, when you let out the housing projects to the so-called, you know, the poor folks, what you do basically is to create a ghetto.

You know, and you've seen them, and it's horrible.

Now, if you look at them, let's face it.

in miami what i'm getting at is have you ever thought of the possible reason i asked you this is that i want it's not like i won't i won't live in the hud to go over and discuss this with russell because it may relate to what you do here's the point uh

The British have established what I understand is a housing allowance instead of going out and the government building housing for poor folks and others.

And then, of course, a lot of people that can afford it also find ways to stay.

Or they have no incentive to get out and say, well, if I go out, why should I take a job?

I'll stay here because I'll lose my house.

What you do if you provide a housing allowance, then it makes it a seller's market.

or firetruck rather than solar.

What I meant is you get a situation where the individual, then the housing is constructed, say, private, enterprise, and they have to go compete to get an included used house.

For example, it doesn't make any sense.

When I grew up, when I was a kid, my father would do the same thing.

The first car I bought, I remember,

It was a Model A Ford Corolla C. It cost me $235.

1929.

A wonderful car.

But it was a huge car.

Hell, I would have bought a new car.

I couldn't afford it.

It cost $12 a ton.

have even gone in and looked at, you know, used clothes, used cars, et cetera, et cetera.

And in terms of housing, I would have thought in the old days of buying a new house, a new person area, a lot of used houses.

Now, let's take the poor people.

What you're doing is an effect setting for the day going to a new house that will subsidize it.

But they have to have a dishwasher, and they've got to have a recreation center, and they've got to have a color television and all the rest.

And I'm going to have to get through with the damn stuff.

on the food stamps, and on this other thing.

We have all these programs that are designed to help the poor.

If there were some way that Social Security didn't deal with it, because what it does, John, is put the money in the hands of the people, and then they do what they do.

And the housing thing, is there something to this idea of having a housing allowance for people that are lower-certain income?

I don't know.

Think about it.

Well, I don't know.

It's a basis of something that could be very good, I think.

Some way, too.

Some way that we don't.

So the word disincentive is what concerns me.

I think there's a hell of an incentive.

There's a bonus for people today to be on welfare.

So if you look over there, McGovern could have had a baby bonus.

That's what he would have had to do.

All right.

We've got to have a bonus for people who are going to work.

People are going to get off their asses and go to work.

I understand.

Now, work better is one thing.

I mean, you can tell these people, if you don't go to work, we're going to fine you and put you in jail or something.

These fathers, all right.

also.

Everybody wants a little more.

And until, let's face it, until that black person, or that Chicago, or the us, who's on that boat, until he sees that it's more than for him to get the hell off, than for him to stay home, he's going to send his ass.

You know me.

He said, I told you, you heard your dad.

I said, come on.

He wants you and your wife to come down.

You're going to have a lot of new stuff to do down there.

You can

the point is he says he tries

The FEDC, the Russell Workforce of Hearts, and all the rest here, they work two days.

They pay $5 an hour.

And then they take off for the rest of the month.

Now, we've got to find a way to make people want to work.

Now, that doesn't mean all Negroes are that way.

You and I both know there are hard-working, wonderful people like all those bunnies from Ohio.

a way to have incentives to get people to work in addition to the incentive of the jail centers, right?

There must be a monetary incentive.

So if you could do some thinking on that, keep your mind open and listen to what we have.

And perhaps we can...

going along with the Rybakov proposal.

I mean, even though it was based on that, it's just because, my God, they blew the lid off.

I mean, 2,600 probably is now an unrealistic figure.

We're due to the fact that since that figure was put out, food stamps have gone out, housing, all those things have gone out.

I mean, all the buildings have gone out, right, John?

You know, the Brook Amendment has given us a fence in this housing that's

He said you cannot charge rent in a public housing project over 25% of a family's income.

Well, the housing projects can't be run.

And so you get a deterioration of maintenance and you just guarantee you're gonna have a slum.

They say we should get out of that trap, Mr. President.

I mean, I'm not involved in the company.

I know it's a good thing.

I'm about to pop the news in under your eyes.

My wife voted for you.

We went out there.

Not only that, but her father was a state senator in North Carolina.

He voted for Democrats.

We need to put this in his mind.

Here's what we're trying to encourage.

We don't want to spend money in places that encourage men to walk off and leave the stand.

We want to encourage men in places that encourage them to accept the responsibility to support the children and make a contribution.

So as long as you can keep it in a workplace context that we're not trying to deter, we want to encourage men to have more time.

Before you ask, ask them what you can do to help yourself.

See, now that's, I told my wife that day, I said, that makes just 500 pounds, by the way.

Because I'm getting told all those things, by the way.

Ask about what you can do to help yourself, what you can do to help yourself.

Before you ask somebody, you take a look and see what you can do to help yourself.

And that's probably all.

Everybody except the guys and the dogs sitting around living on the other man is for that.

It's just overwhelming.

You know, I think the thing that appeals to me about that is that the point that you made, that I think if you could sort of emphasize that philosophy goes all the way around.

In addition to, I don't want to be talking about cheaters.

I don't want to be talking about these lazy bastards who go out and leave their kids at home and the rest of them.

And therefore, you've got to have good penalties for those that buy them.

But I think the most effective way to get people off of welfare is to give them a positive incentive.

When you're talking, you can say you talk to the president.

We both agree that's given a positive incentive.

The question is, though, it must be a positive incentive.

We can afford it.

It can't be one like Kennedy's and Ricker, obviously, which goes too far.

And we are actually exploring.

I'm positive .

I think, John, if you don't mind, I'm going to pull you out of bed.

Let me tell you the purpose of this meeting.

I don't know if you know.

Where's this meeting?

It's this.

I think all this crap, you know, I told Allison, she said, you know, I said, you remember, we had to go flat because who's going to get the credit on the jets?

You were mad because you thought you got it.

What we want to do is to work with you folks and ensure a good home administration program.

But we know that we can send an administration program down there, and unless, for example, you on the Senate side, as the leading Democrat, and Mills on the House side, if you're not for it, it ain't going to be true.

So in other words, what we want to do is to work out a deal, and it doesn't mean you and Mills will always agree either.

We want to work on a situation where we can cooperate with the congressional leadership, Democrat, Republican,

and getting progress that we can get through.

Let me put it another way.

I could send out a whole lot of tax reform measures, wealth reform measures, and then beat the Congress over the head for a visit to Madison.

I'm not going to do that.

I want some action.

I'm not just going to make politics go to the hoover.

That's my deal.

We're against it.

We're not going to send it.

We can't do that.

But we're going to at least convince ourselves that this doesn't just run totally against what the Congress will lose.

So that's the deal we're going to have.

And incidentally, if we get a tax bill at the end of all this, the two main areas that I mentioned, it is going to be one where it will be joint printing.

But the rest of you want to do it together.

What I really think you ought to be against, and I know I'm just

some little nameless guy over there, or a little clifton people over in the department.

You don't know who they are.

I don't know who these characters are.

They were there before you came in.

For all I know, they were there before I came to Washington 24 years ago.

And when these damn fellas get together, they got some of their gang that migrated over here to the Washington newspaper.

And they just flatter and scurry around and shout about what you want to do and what I want to do.

We don't even know who the damn people are.

That's not your position.

And when those people succeed in doing that, they usually succeed in preventing anything from happening.

Which is the story of, you know what it is, it's the invisible government.

Yeah.

And it goes on and on, regardless of who's president.

I frankly think, and I, as you know, I was not, as you were not, an anti-Johnson man.

I thought Johnson, that's why I mentioned him in my speech.

What was it?

You know, we started the band.

And Kennedy did.

Kennedy sent the first people out there.

I don't know what he said, but he did.

And all these people, you know, that loved Kennedy and hated Johnson said, Johnson's more bullshit.

Kennedy sent the first one.

Johnson kept trying to get the nap thing over with.

He did one hundred, or five hundred thousand naps by the time he left.

And so forth.

So we finally got it done.

But it took us four years to get it done, to get it done in an honorable way.

And we have avoided the imposition of a communist government in South Vietnam, which is what the communists wanted.

They failed in their goal.

We succeeded in ours.

Now, it's tough.

It's a fragile threat.

But that's worth fighting for, because that means that the chance of a non-communist Asia or the red line of communist China surviving is greatly increased.

And this is the key thing on that.

I was talking to Alice Longworth last night, and I said to you, you know, I've been reading new columns and editorials, and I think I saw it this way, and one of them made the point that the president and his very tough decision to bomb in December after they were snowballed for 10 days at the conference table, which meant we weren't going to get the prisoners by

And the war was going to go on for four or five more months.

The president made that decision.

And then as a result, it pricked the oil.

And at least, we can't say why they did it, but at least they came back to the conference table.

Within one day, a breakthrough occurred in the negotiations.

We got negotiations.

The first few of those came back, cease fires, and it worked for a while.

Now, the point of this, that he makes is this, that the president, as a result of his actions,

gained a lot.

His actions cost him greatly in world popularity, but it gained him greatly in world respect.

Now, here's the point.

If the President of the United States, believe me, or the President of the United States of America, the President of the United States of America sits in his chair, if by a timid policy, or let down an ally,

or run it away because of the demonstrators around here, or because of the colonists who immediately give a jail.

He fails to do the right thing.

Everybody says, it's not great.

He's for peace and all the rest.

You see what it does?

Your allies lose their trust in you.

But even more important, your potential enemies, the Russians and the Chinese, lose respect for you.

We've got to think of the fact that years down the line, probably just about 10 years from now, the leader of China, the leader of Russia is not looking for the smallest.

And what I had to go through in these past four years, particularly these past four months, means that whoever's the head of China and Russia is going to respect this office because they feel that, well, the President of the United States has a lot of power and he might use it.

You see that?

That's what it's all about.

So it's respect that we're talking about here.

It's respect all the way through.

Well, I digress, but the point that I make is that in terms of this

We can work out ways that this will go in visible government.

Who, of course, don't give a damn about respect.

They don't say.

And we don't care how you do it.

The president is wrong.

Johnson, too, has done this and done that.

And he doesn't follow our advice.

Johnston's not right.

We're all right.

I was right.

You were right.

And I followed your advice.

But as far as the visible government is concerned, they weren't allowed to do anything.

That's what they forgot.

The bureaucrats weren't allowed to.

The Chancellor was elected.

Forty-nine.

At least the 50 of us, at least 170, said we were elected by people of 50 states.

But you were elected by all the people of the entire United States.

So when you ate, you didn't want to eat.

Now I was elected by all the people to do this job.

On these people out there, we've got to just talk to each other all the time.

Otherwise they're going to surround us.

What I'd like to do,

I want you to establish a direct educational job.

And not only on these things, but on other matters that may involve .

And we will talk to you .

And what we would like to do is to work together before we send out a tax.

We're not just going to call you in.

We will, by far, but we'd like to talk to you in advance to enlist you in the cooperation we want.

Letting you, for example, take the lead in some areas where we may not feel that we can.

But we could work out that kind of a deal without compromising the right of either going in or out of the room.

There are times that you're going to take one that I won't be able to take, that I may take one that you won't.

But I think if we could work that out, that would be a good arrangement.

But it takes some time.

That's a good decision.

All right.

Senator Gehrig, you just here really lobbying for family assistance.

Do you ever talk about that?

is in favor of the inaugural address.

And I suggest, Mr. John, if you will set up, if Senator Russell has the time, I want you to set up this, as soon as Weinberger comes to our meeting, for you and Weinberger and Russell to sit down and have a little talk, in other words, in all these events, and get Lenny, because he was involved on this housing allowance thing, which might, if we get a housing allowance, it's going to serve us financially.

Do we want to let that gel a little bit?

We're not ready.

We've got some checking to do.

The thing we've heard is that it puts great pressure on rents.

Rents and housing prices tend to go up and sort of meet some kind of controls to avoid that.

And the British have worked this out.

We're going to go take a look and see how they do it.

Well, I don't want to mention that.

The point is that we're not limiting our constitution with you on the bills that you're telling us.

Right, right.

If that's all right with you.

But you see, if you get into welfare, you cannot really discuss welfare unless you've got a council.

You can't discuss welfare without discussing food stamps.

You can't discuss welfare without discussing housing.

You can't even discuss it without discussing transportation, how now they pay for their jobs.

Right.

So really, we want your views on all these things.

And even though they may be in some other committees, so that one.

Medical.

Medical also.

Medical.

Yeah, that's in there.

That's in there, right?

That's in there.

So using these common calls and the United Ordinances, they all represent the same scheme, but they wanted to expand the finance committee.

So they could stack it.

I think, Joe, because of your side of the avenue, there's nothing that they had in mind.

So your people came asking to maintain it by the size of the organization.

I, myself, saw them using those statements and made the motion that we expanded the Democratic Steering Committee.

That was so that they could watch and stack that finance committee.

He had to vote before they would show up so that those people didn't get on the committee.

That wasn't part of the plan.

It seems to me that the committee is in pretty good shape.

Out of 17 people, let's see, you've got seven of them on the other side of the aisle.

It doesn't take for a couple of us to put you in the majority.

For example, if I take a flight in some direction, it can't be predicted, but it doesn't hold with you.

The chances are pretty good that you'd pick up a third bullet.

You know, if you take my line of duty with myself, Talmadge, Burry, Benson, the chances are pretty good that you'd pick up a fourth bullet on our side.

You've got more responsibility.

So if you've got five on your side, yeah, or five on your side, that would do about it.

It would seem to be the right thing if you could change it.

So I really think that's the real point of view that the visual office holds.

That's good.

Let me turn, if I can, to the tax field and tell you first, just to tell you what I'm committed to.

And, uh, second, uh, the, uh, you know, the mayoral department, the mayoral is holding hearings on that now.

It will be, it has to start with the administration.

As far as the taxes, you know, I resisted all efforts to talk about all, all the, uh, arguments and beavers and all the tax reform and the campaign, because I thought it was demagoguery a lot.

And, uh, and, uh,

The tax credit for private schools is a tax rate for the property taxes and the other, you know, for that.

We can't do it for all property taxes, but there's a whole course of

We'll try to get some plan down.

I am excited about one.

We'd appreciate your consideration of that.

Both, both, both.

Let me say this, it cuts across a lot of areas.

And I don't want to, and I want you to know, and I mentioned other things I'm talking about.

One of them, Russell's energy.

I talked to George Schultz the other day about a job.

We're going to have a big energy program.

But you can't have an energy program without getting to the tax thing.

Another is in the field of training.

That is tax implications.

Of course, you've got to trade it in.

That's right.

As long as... Well, it's not going to take four hours.

Well, I could... You can lose two ways of trading.

You want to go that way of trading...

to be ratified in the Senate.

You've got to have two thirds of the majority in the Senate.

You've got to go to the one place that you think.

If you want to go by the way of an act of Congress, which is your alternative, you can do it either way.

You want to go by the way of an act of Congress, and either to implement it to be able to authorize to make it, or authorize you to do it because they're in law.

That takes up a majority vote, and it's too tight, I think.

I can't keep

These trade bills to them, if the administration grasps them so they go to finance, because at least on that plan, they might be able to do well.

Go ahead and load yourself here and take a position on it.

But if you want to, if you do any, I can't keep you under that.

That's not the president's work thing, I can say.

This is a reflection on all members of the board of presidents.

But on the trade bill, I want that track so that it does go to finance.

And also, another reason for that is that you've got, it basically is that they are more responsible people.

And if you get over it in a foreign place, you'll have a lot of jackassery.

So we can't draft it that way.

Hell, that's true.

You'd be foolish not to, because that can't go there, although the idea is there.

That'd be trying to hold...

Now, on the tax reform.

let me uh let me get your feelings on that person to say that we'll be talking to uh

Well, let's start with this bedrock proposition.

I've got to be for those two things.

Beyond that, my mind is open.

Certification on foreign course.

And, of course, I've got to be for any tax measure that will help us in the energy net.

So if it's the right kind of tax, excellent.

Beyond that, the mind is open.

I'd like for you to just give us the feeling.

How do you think you're going to move it?

Well, that's the idea, whatever.

I mean, he's still just kind of, he's got, he's got, he's got something to do with something about the summer reform, the inheritance tax structure right now.

You reduce the rate, which you cut down, and you also reduce what they can give away to charities, but cut that in half, so they can't give a half to us.

They have to take the charity, which means private foundation, but it's something that probably

Frankly, I think I can go along with that.

One reason that people pile so much into these foundations is that the tax rate is prohibitive if they translate it to their average.

And so we just don't get anything out of it.

The only way we could separate out the deaf foundations so that the charities were churches and colleges and so forth.

I prefer private colleges, frankly, than public colleges, you know?

So I don't like to see anything that, frankly, will hurt the contributions to the private institutions.

Foundations are, I frankly think, this is just what I'm going to share, but I think Russell's on the line.

He's got to look into the tax data, so he's got to have foundations.

I don't know if he's going to be a hero when he does.

Some of them are good.

Some of these foundations, I mean, some of the big ones are engaged in activities that are shocking.

No, no.

I agree.

I'm going to appoint a special subcommittee on that.

I'm coming to constitute it, so that's a validation.

I'm not going to control that subcommittee, so I'm supposed to.

But that would be what's your credit, right?

To Vetson to be the chairman.

Well, Vetson won't be on there.

I'm going to try to get part of that line.

I think Vetson's the chairman of that committee.

So I can't avoid it.

I'm trying to plead with the subcommittee.

And if you think he'd be a good man for it, I'll cut him.

I'll cut him down to something.

The hell he is.

In terms of security, he's right down at the bottom of all this.

But I like him.

He's a good man, I think.

Good fellow.

Now, what else will the tax team attack you for?

Well, do you see pain out there?

Well, I think that, well, we're generally speaking, Mr. President, I think that we ought to try to stop this.

This is a sumptuous enablement.

to get without any of the income tax.

Now, we've had some of our friends, and it all kind of leads to some of a conclusive joke.

For example, the one thing that makes it look bad is that these guys will have some deductions of a claim on these corporate returns.

For example, well, they know they haven't got their last one changed, and by the way, they stand up.

But even so, they're going to claim it.

And that's a standard application procedure for their accounts and tax reports.

Claim every device you can, even though the odds are that it's going to be turned down.

I think we ought to try to tighten up on the minimum tax, the concept of tax.

We ought to try to keep this thing or something so it doesn't get paid or anything.

That's why it looks so bad.

I heard a guy just before the, for example, before he left, he had a big sign up there for taxes and all that.

that he had to talk about oil companies.

You know, this big oil company made all this money.

How much taxes did you pay?

Not one red copper cent.

The government owed them money.

Well, of course, it sounds great.

Well, now, of course, they did pay a lot of taxes to the state governments and all that.

But really, the federal income tax returns said, yeah, we got it.

And we're going to have to fix it up, I think.

So it's that nobody gets by scot-free.

And they did this thing.

They didn't pay nothing.

This was made for all of us that night.

You know, in the corporation business, there is a bank hold that I hadn't appreciated before studying this in the treasury, by which it would seem to favor us to take the oil industry and drill in the broth that we're drilling at home.

They said the oil industry is that flow of earnings.

Right.

And they are buying it.

You know what?

I know.

And then once they start, they hit and they start making money abroad, of course, that country raises its tax rates the same rate as ours.

And so they deduct that tax of the foreign country off their tax here, and as a result, the U.S. Treasury gets nothing out of it, and also sustains that loss, so that we have skewed this second vapor of drilling and other forms of exploration abroad.

I think they're trying so hard to get energy sources in this country developed.

And I just like the crazy thing they're doing.

That's one of the ways these low-tax deals in the other countries come about.

It seems to me as though you're right.

You have a proposition.

You say, all right, now, when you go abroad, we're not going to tax on your income there, but we're not going to let you touch the U.S. income here either.

I think if you didn't find any, it would make the Treasury money more.

I don't think so.

Yeah.

You're doing expenses overseas, but if you do, if you do, even if it might be just an illusory tax, then I think you ought to give some sort of thing about saying, all right, now we won't tax you until you bring the money back in here or some of those things.

So it's only if you have some kind of trade-off in this.

I mean, even though the trade-off, what they're getting might be pricey enough at the same time.

That is, again, where you go and you deduct all the expenses, and then you find something for a tax credit.

All sets of the income tax bill .

It's the only place I know of in the interim regular code where you can deduct your gambling losses, but you don't have to declare your winnings.

That's very good.

Oh, yeah, that's exactly what it does.

It's very well done.

Is that right?

Well, that'll be dealt with.

Now you get back to the fundamental thing.

It doesn't come up until you get into the older ones.

let me ask you just to digress a little, what do you think about the, and we're going to be talking to you about energy at a later time, so don't really remix yourselves, but what do you think about the proposition, the proposition on the gas, removing the price, the price

Well, I think, well, I raised, I raised hell about how you can get gas on the ground.

Well, I'm part of this, Mr. President, that as far as you take it off new gas, you're not going to have any problem, because you're saying, all right, now, for all new gas, just come here after we have the reason that you can't, there's several reasons why you can't get out of that gas, but several reasons why

If you've got a superior fuel, it's a superior product.

If you hold that money and produce it, sell it for what it's worth, you will let it charge the same price that the guy is charging for the anterior product.

So you're hurting the guy with the anterior product.

And the guy with the superior product does not have the incentive to go produce it because you will let him sell it for what it's worth.

In fact, anybody will tell you that.

And if you've got something that's a good part, it's the best.

Then if they won't let you set it quite right, just keep it up.

Just hold on to it until those people wake up.

So now you can't get it out of the gas.

Let's close the school room.

I can't even tell the generator.

My way to call the gas is so cheap, they're all generating gas.

and all that.

Well now people say, why didn't somebody do something?

What's the problem?

What's the problem with it?

As you're told, these people knew the dam was worth as much as 700 BTUs produced with coal and oil.

It's just a period product, and they can't even get what the end period part is selling for.

So they actually told producers, just keep it right where it is, in so far as you possibly can.

Now, if you want to produce it, you ought to give the incentive to go out there and sell it for what, just sell it in competition with other fuels.

It's a superior fuel.

Some sell it for what it brings to market, which is what coal would bring or what oil would bring on BT, basically.

If you do that, I don't think anybody can really argue about that very much, especially not if you have the Washington Post over here to say that that's correct.

Now...

Now, when you do that, I think it's similar.

You're going to have to let the price of the existing gas come into line.

And the reason you're going to have to do that is because you don't do it.

Those wells are just not going to cooperate.

I said, Dan, those wells are not going to rework their wells.

You've got one well over here on this side, on this east side.

an old contract, and we, at least over on this side, under a new contract registration for twice the price, you'd say, well, that's well sanded on up until we'll produce a damn thing.

Hopefully, we work it on that one.

Producing out of the hole over here, well, it's the same gas, but you get twice as much coming out of hole number two as it does out of hole number one.

So I think it's just that you'll have to either let them have it on the old gas, or you'll have to give them a basis.

Well, there's an X number of years that you can actually bring them into line.

I don't see how that you can let people who've got gas under contract, who've said that they can get to go and walk across, be denied in doubt the right to have what the contract calls for.

So I think the process works.

I think you can phase in to cushion the impact.

But I don't see how that, in the long run, you can deny somebody the right to sell their part of what it's worth in a free economy.

Now, as far as all things concerned, as I tell you, I thought about that.

It seems to me that, one, that if you buy the concept, which I think is correct, that the security of this station, not only security, but its commitment to the free world, means that not only will we be able to produce our requirements of fuel, in the event that we can't buy it from somebody, or that it can keep it from being delivered here,

but that we could even take fuel to friendly nations that don't have their own, to see them through, as we did at the time of the Suez Crisis, and we had to divert our stuff over to Europe to help them to try to look local to walk through fuel.

We didn't look to provide you with some fuel.

We just walked way toward Egypt.

Well, that's so that they had no excuse to go to war against Egypt.

Well, now we have to do those kind of things.

It seems to me that

You're going to have to maintain domestic fuel.

And all of a sudden, by keeping the oil in the ground, it's just so much longer.

It'll take you five years to have to get the wells drilled to produce the oil.

That's all he's talking about.

If I don't take this on, I've got to build a plant, and you've got to make it out of shale or out of coal.

If you're going to be ready for an emergency, you can't predict when it will happen.

And that being the case, you've got to have an industry that's ready, able, and actually operating in order to do it to meet your emergency.

you can't wait five years in the emergency to get this fuel.

You've got to have it banned.

And so you've got to have an industry that's capable of producing it.

My thought would be that I say, what percentage of the energy requirements do we propose to produce here in this country?

Pick a figure.

Any figure you want.

I'll say 75%.

But you can say 70%.

Pick any figure you want.

What percent of the fuel is produced here?

Now, when you take that figure,

I think that when things settle down, you're going to have to let the market determine both the price and the supply.

In other words, the price and the supply come to it.

You take all these people without a shale, and that's to keep us going for 500 years out there, or maybe longer than that.

But they're not producing any oil from it because our people keep saying, well, keep the price of oil going, so these people don't have the incentive to run the shale in.

Well, if you're going to be making the oil from the shale, you're going to have the price go up and come up to where the shale will be produced.

Now, solar energy right now is not economically feasible.

It's practically marijuana.

In most of the country, you can't justify atomic power.

You can produce it cheaper with your standard fuels, with fossil fuels.

But if you've got the price,

You can use that.

You can charge a price on the days that will support a stockpile if you want to have a stockpile.

That's the only way to pay for it.

Say, all right, now, you've got to carry a stockpile.

I'll add it.

to carry us through an unforeseen uh especially bad weather or in a nasty emergency where we have to go to help a foreign country and so you stockpile some and then you gotta proceed to the emergency and you uh make the ticket for the cost of carrying the stockpile i think you also want to you'll also keep those small reminders i believe if somebody's interested in the italian one

with all these big, magnificent, efficient coastal refineries that they've got on the first day of the fighting and all the problems.

It's not a big office in a way.

You can't defend them.

The two, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

But you can't count on those Louisiana refineries.

They're efficient.

They may not have built the efficient refineries.

They don't seem to be good for a limited war.

And hopefully that's the only kind of love I have to fight, but we won't have to fight any.

But the best way to avoid having to fight one is to be able to fight one in both sides.

The kind of people that live in this world don't seem to give as much support for the fight that we're not going to fight, and they're not able to.

So I just think that whether you like it or not, you're going to have to let the price of energy go up in this country until the price will bring enough stuff in.

Now, people in my part of the country, when they're talking about 50 cent gas or 90 cent gas, which is all of which is below what you pay to run from gas and from foreign lands and land in New York, man, they get so excited.

All these poor fellows that have gone out of the office, they just want to go back into it.

They say, Mike, we've got to go for that price of gas.

I think I know where I can find some.

But obviously, if you think you can't still get here for $0.17, they can't make any money with that.

That's what George's economist calls elasticity of supply.

Let me suggest two things here on the energy of a job.

You know, on the ways that you would be sure that there's policy and certain pieces of these ideas.

on the tax thing what i would like to do

Well, there's other specifics he may have.

I don't plan to be the expert for tax people.

But let me say it on a total realist.

I don't want them to have, I mean, first I mentioned the two things we've got to have secondary convictions on them.

Third, if there's a gross inequity and people aren't getting any tax, that simply gives the radicals something to beat us over the head with, so we remove that.

On the other hand, and this is the important thing I want to emphasize, I will not support any tax reform measure.

which is demagoguery the other way, which basically makes a few cheap points by taking business around, producing any tax reform that has the effect of, in any way, punishing unfairly producers in this country, the well producers for people who live in the part of Iowa that's poor.

I'm glad you say that.

Because I just don't believe in it.

And frankly, I'll take the heat on it, I know.

There's going to be a tendency down there in the Congress for everybody to say, well, we've got to get the rich folks around.

The rich folks, except when it's business and pay, you know, and unfair advantage and so forth, or any kind of a place where you can get wealthy people to get their money and all productive uses, that's a different thing.

But just to get the rich folks around because Woodcock thinks we ought to not.

Well, that's my law plan, Mr. President.

My temptation is to play a little bit of politics with this.

They send us something to my house that's totally irresponsible and all that kind of thing.

My temptation is to put something in on our side, something that's equally irresponsible.

I apologize as much as I can.

I'm going to go to Congress and say, okay, I'll drop mine if you'll drop yours.

They put themselves in a position to kick the hell out of somebody and raise $500 billion.

I'd just like to put something in to raise about $500 billion and kick the hell out of somebody else so that I would probably, well, I'll drop mine.

And oftentimes, that's one way to resolve some of those things.

Sometimes you've got to answer the food according to his following.

Otherwise, they kind of put you in a position.

We bought the finance committee.

They're in here trying to look at the vested interests.

You can follow some of the cartoons that everybody has signed on the house.

And that's what we call the tax reform.

We put it up within the way on the tax reform.

They put it up like a pencil that long.

They put it in the way where you put a little double up to say, well, it's

Sometimes we have to start thinking about the politics of this thing on our side.

Now, frankly, the area tax reform, aside from this thing that is saying tax double the minimum income tax, in fact, 9% of that is what it's going to be.

I would think it'd be the right thing to play that game to some extent.

So, uh, if you, if you think it puts out any response, then I don't think it puts out anything irresponsible enough so that to go to cops and drop the bolt out.

But the one thing I wanted to try to lower, if I could head it off, be it your Secretary of Security or, or even you, uh, if that little fella packs you into the corner like he did with that 1969 bill and makes you agree to go along with a bunch of junk that you didn't really believe in.

Uh, well,

I thought we were 100% right about that.

But that was a major .

And what we took away, half of the remaining reform, they were changing the way you take your depreciation lines.

And the county had to give that back to them at the same time.

And then, of course, they shot it and gave it back.

We didn't see people doing that.

But a bunch of them did.

They changed the depreciation guidelines to give it back, both what we took away from it.

Uh, so most of the rest of the stuff was just conversation.

It was just one address.

We didn't raise much money.

At the time, Albert Will got delayed in his amendment on that.

We lost a lot of wool that we brought in.

It didn't help the government's fiscal.

So there's really nothing that didn't help out.

And at some point, that's what I'm getting at.

One way or another.

about this thing is that nobody, they can talk all they want to, but nobody really gets very far with it by raising somebody's taxes.

I mean, isn't this the most popular tax thing that you can think of?

And nobody really gets very far.

Sometimes you go to a defense and you've got to go along with something like that.

But now, I don't think of anything that to me ought to be a popular tax increase if it's a minimum income tax.

They say, all right, now you've got five of all these other things.

We're going to take a five-day relief

When we had that committee, I've been suggesting that for .

It looked like Jack Miller wanted to grab that ball .

He said, well, that's just great, Jack.

You go right on ahead.

That's just fine.

You can have it.

So Jack made that his thing.

But he wasn't back here.

So Daniel A. Dunn was such a great performer.

Uh, Paul Douglas, uh, uh, uh, Albert Gore, uh, Fred Harris, well, every time you listen, well, Fred is too, his feet, he was too smart to run.

So I, I don't think it lacks anybody.

I think Charlie and I raised somebody else's taxes.

The advantage, I think, is this, uh, is to be the fellow who, uh, one day you want to get somebody's tax cut, or else didn't want to raise it.

unless it is something that just passes through, something that must be done.

You could go over it.

I'm going to go out and I'm going to study this thing.

I'd like you to get into the topic of total consciousness with George Holmes.

That's the chairman's idea.

That was a step different from what we did.

Tell it one little thing to see that I want to be sure that I understand.

That's a dry old thing.

I don't see what we can do about it.

The truth being, the only incorporation I was, as a young lawyer, instead of a professor, I was going to the, we'll say, one of the few problems I was referring to, which was the military confidence.

And it worked, it struck me.

or rewarding exploration.

That's distinct from drilling, where you know there's oil or gas.

You try to reward the exploration for a new thing.

Now, I don't know that paying off for dry holes is quite the right psychology, because it seems to pay off for failure.

On the other hand, how you define new exploration is a hard thing to do.

The dry holes are the sort of evidence that you were trying where you didn't.

I still do.

I thought it was so incorrect.

The reason I did not use an RQ is that for the purpose of this is not to make a few oils that rich.

It's to make the country rich.

That's why it's for us.

Because I looked upon it as an incentive for the oil operator to go out there and drill that for that damn oil, because he's got the good catch rate once he gets it.

But that would be carrying the dry wool balls.

I think of the wild cattle.

I think of the others that there are.

I'm not just thinking of the great big companies.

They don't need them.

You know, they .

They haven't reached ground level.

But it seems to me the drywall thing has a lot of appeal.

Are you far being considerate?

Well, it worked.

I hadn't thought about it before.

And I hadn't thought it was a mechanic.

But it's just a good idea.

I think.

Give us a thought.

You start talking about the minimum tax.

What would you do with the minimum tax?

And they're all very expensive things.

But it has to be.

you wind up without going directly to any of these preferences, you are cutting into the preferences.

That's what you're doing.

Now you're in the middle of tax, you're in effect reducing the power that they have.

So what we were trying to think of was a way to go ahead with some sort of minimum tax.

We recognize that does have a little indirect impact, but we'd offset it.

But whatever we do in terms of anything else.

Of course, it must be carefully justified as not being a tax increase.

It's a tax increase for some and a deduction for others.

So that overall, it's the same.

Do you see my point?

equity type package that's a wash in terms of that impact.

And I have some higher takes away there.

If you check it, I saw some figures that I just ran across today.

I'm told that there have been 300,000 bridles drilled in this country.

And as you can see, you've got about 35,000 wells sold, only two to four barrels a day.

But it's all very marginal.

Most of them are marginal.

But to get 35,000 wells, which are more than 5,000, which are really good wells, you've got 300,000.

If that's correct, if you've got 300,000 dry holes, you can just see that these are going to take that off.

Of course, people want to, but that's not the problem.

Some damn guy goes up there to...

uh supplies are wrapped from somewhere i go to some really nice place and he's looking for some guys some man to buy a lease right and some hot money you might say to cut down income taxes by october and uh he's talking about the money that i'm saying this is a big tax given and those are the kind of people that give us a bad name or better education if you take the poor devil

that are growing very fast.

It's an industry now.

It's an industry that the accountants and lawyers are the ones who are getting their jobs.

But I think we can get that.

And that thing can be drafted, I think, in such a way.

Well, I think you can draft it in such a way, too, that it's the same.

that the advantage goes to the general operator.

It does not go to the fellow just to get a tax advantage.

Now, why you have to go, George, you better keep in mind, too, that you do want people to put money in.

Right.

You'll go ahead.

I'd like to excuse myself.

Thank you very much.

Well, that's right.

No, that's all right.

You're all set.

Let me tell you, let's talk a little now about, let's take a look at our concerns about trade.

If you would, if you'd like to take a little time to trade things so you can get a feel of where we're looking.

Well, first of all, we think we have a real problem in the fields of trade.

Our trade balance has not improved.

We have a big subheadway in getting other countries to recognize it, but not too much.

The Japanese are very difficult to bring around, and it's quite noticeable that they respond most quickly.

So we have thought that we need to have a strong trade package that gives the President, on the one hand, a chance to negotiate for

trade policies and all that.

But if he has authority to reduce, he should have authority to increase.

It should be a two-way deal here.

Rather than the Kennedy Brown business, which is all reduction, what we're really talking about here is the opportunity for the president.

This is a hell of a negotiating stick to study the Japanese out here, because we're going

If we have a slag surtax on it, I've got the right to do it.

So we would, in terms of putting the president in a position to negotiate, people say, well, all right, we're going to have a two-way negotiating authority, go up and down.

You can go bilateral or unilateral.

And he's got something to wield in there.

Second, it seems to us we should, as the president said,

really clarify our ability to, let's say, declare that the balance payment situation is in an emergency state.

As thereby, we are imposing a surtax, or we're doing some other action that's going to help cure this immediate balance payment problem.

It is a very instructive imposition of the surtax on August 15th.

was probably the thing that got us most of the attention.

It was the best bargaining group that John Costner had in all of his negotiations with the president.

That's how we got the real-life encouragement.

And we need to be able to do that.

And no doubt at the same time to have, you know, add some of our inflation problems so that we don't have to

We don't have to penalize ourselves for tariffs on things where we don't want them for the sake of bringing in a commodity that is very scarce, which we need to keep our own prices down.

But two-way negotiating authority, the ability to impose

a surtax in the event of a balance of payments emergency or something of that kind would be a part of this package.

Now, we also have felt that we just must deal with this problem of the Japanese or somebody taking aim on some market here and then innovating and wiping out the jobs, wiping out the businesses with a rush in a period of two or three years, the way they've done in a lot of our

They flood our markets.

They just about wrecked the automobile market in California.

They came in there very, very hard.

They just took any amount.

They didn't track the whole U.S. market.

They just took a piece, another piece, another piece.

And we have to protect ourselves against that.

I think that's just what it comes down to.

Our counter-revolutionary activity has not been lost.

are not servicing for this kind of purpose.

So we think we need to have some kind of safeguard system that seems to be called around the world, under which we can certainly let the volume of imports rise in some area, but not at an overwhelming pace, and to cushion against that.

So when we talk with our labor friends,

or businesses, we find that they're not interested in adjustment assistance.

They're not interested in saying, when I'm out of business or when I've lost a job, help me find another one.

They're interested in keeping the job they've got.

So they want a safe job.

They don't like it.

They just want to keep the job.

That's why they're protectionists.

We think that's a very reasonable thing to say.

All right, I'm for expanding trade.

So what we're suggesting is that in our trade thing, rather than moving in the area of a new country around, where it's all, oh, we're going to reduce tariffs around the world and so forth on a certain basis, which we think is a good idea in many ways.

What we're saying is we, of course, will negotiate with New York, back with Japan, and so forth.

But we have got to be in a position where we can go up as well as down.

And we don't have that position now.

Well, Mr. President, I don't think you're going to have enough weapons to forgive you this.

Now, if I could just tell you, sir, that the experience I had back when I was a majority within the Johnson and Preston House of Representatives today, Henry Ballard picked me up at the press request and flew me down to the ranch.

And he told me at the time, and it looked to him, that he kind of never said that we were running.

was something that you could not negotiate away.

He said that, in many respects, our deficit was the other gas price.

And that, uh...

Speaking of trade deficit.

Yeah.

Not a national.

But, uh, we had, at that time, DOA, we had a trade service.

But now that you put, uh, the freight on the end boards that took off, that took the Florida aid off your export, you know,

So, so he said that you couldn't get out of that trap.

That you couldn't get out of that body.

And so those people weren't going to give you that much advantage.

It seemed to him that they were only going to get out of it by taking some acts of unilaterality and saying, okay, what are we going to do?

And after he knew that, then he'd go shoot from there.

But it's going to make some people mad, have some people howl at you.

But you're going to have to take some forceful type of jump on it to get some of what you're talking about.

But I think that you're going to have more tools than that.

Now, here's the approach that appeals to me.

You had Peterson down here saying that you are invited in every country to agree that what that justice should be would be to have imbalances.

Well, you can't get them to agree to that.

Japan is insisting that that plan would take it to a $12 billion surplus.

At least have a gun out of us.

Now, how do you get those people, if they won't do it, how can you make them do it?

That's how I think you can make them do it.

You can do it from this end, if I say it.

Now, here.

And you can vary this.

How do you want to vary it?

Here's a tool that you can use.

Our balance of patrons.

will not stand.

This responsibility will not stand.

So we're going to give people, you might say, a trading coupon for stuff they buy here.

And everyone will trade coupons to be used to put something into this country.

So if some country has a deficit like Spain, they might be tickled pink with it.

not that that ain't paid down for a second.

They can even, if they can find something to be shipped, they can ship with more.

Or they can even sell to somebody, do some business with somebody that's got a deficit trading with them.

Somebody's got a surplus trading with them.

Trade it out and put something in the hedge market.

Earn some dollars from France, let's say, and put those dollars back in here if they want to, through Spain, through their purchases.

And if you do it that way, you can be said, if you're paying down here,

If you did that to them at all, they'd be short by $5 billion this year on the tickets that you can put on their imports in the United States.

Well, if you can save some of them, all right.

Now, we're not going to make you have one ticket for $1,000 and $7,000.

And we'll give you two, but one advantage.

If you've got $1,000 tickets, you can send $2,000 worth into it.

But over a period of time, this may have to come into balance so you can stay on your end.

that we're going to make our exports and our imports come into balance.

And you need to get a ticket system to do it.

That's just a country border.

We're going to make it true to mind.

But that's one way you can do it.

And of course, they can trade with third-party countries.

We have a deficit trading with any Latin country.

A lot of them have a deficit.

They can buy something from those countries and then try and get up

We had something along that line just the other way around on our oil import system when you buy the petrochemicals.

You know, we say that you bring a ton.

If you ship a ton of petrochemical products to our side of the country, we'll give you oil import tickets for a ton of imports.

so that it gives you the effect of the world market price that you're producing to sell on the world market for your oil.

That is the key to using the other thing, the other way around, you might say, to make those people buy from us, and even if they want to sell us more.

Now, I just think you're going to need some kind of a tool like that to have enough leverage.

And they come around and say, well, why are you going to do this to us?

It stands right now.

We're running a deficit that costs the United States anyway.

We're not your problem.

If everybody's like us, we'd have a big surplus.

I think that you need more flexibility, and you need more power.

What about the surcharge?

You see, he's got it to the point where the Latins, in particular, basically went with that long-term surplus thing, that surcharge thing.

And they were not the problem.

It was the Japanese, and to a certain extent, some Europeans, and the Canadians.

Now, can we agree that we, of course, we applied it.

We applied the pension surcharge.

We felt that we were in a tough legal position.

Now, if you've got to have a selection or an emergency,

This is a different topic.

We thought it should be so instructive that the President would not have to put it on all, but first, from every country.

But if we feel, as is obvious and true, that the biggest problem is with Japan, we can just put it right on that.

And so we wouldn't be able to pick out and point out particular countries' goods with this tool.

I think we are taking this

That's sort of the objective, all right.

And in fact, I think we need to have a circle.

It's not just about us, because the other kinds of flows that are involved in our country.

Because, as a matter of fact, we're getting some of us, providing so much aid, and also, let's face it, the United States provides the reign for Japan.

He provides the reign of defense for all of Western Europe and for the damn Canadians who are so miserable in the old

It's good in some areas, Mr. President.

In other areas, it's not.

Now, for example, you talk about France.

They don't give a damn what our defense policy is.

And so if you go there, you have enough people

We want to talk about that deficit, the term that I like to talk about.

When you put that, when you put it on the CIF basis, we want to keep that.

That's actually a $3 billion deficit, so it's about a $6 billion deficit.

You talk about a $9 billion deficit.

Take out the soft currency and say, oh, so they can adjust it to see how much dough they brought in.

That puts you at about $10 billion, about $11 billion.

That's what we need and that's what we're looking for.

And I think it's what we are trying to start.

And that's the version of your coupon system where the coupon is a dollar bill.

And that's what gets passed around, and that's what you have to exchange.

And it isn't satisfactory just to have those dollar bills pile up and pile up and pile up.

They are a symbol of the imbalance that is there.

And we're seeing the result of that now with the speculation that's going on.

And we'll continue to see speculation of that kind until we get a rearrangement of the system.

What we're talking about altogether is a trade bill that would put the president in a very strong bargaining position, able to go to Japan and say, no, this situation has got to be straightened out.

And if we can't do it together, I'm going to do it by myself.

And here are the tools that I've got to do it.

Last Monday, I was very involved with the president.

the president seeking power and all that sort of thing.

So if you like, I don't have an answer to that, because some will question how we're giving the president too much power.

Believe me, it isn't that I'm seeking any more power here.

But I'm telling you, we can't negotiate by you go to the Japanese and say, look here, I should do this or that.

I'll ask the Congress to do something.

They'll say, well, isn't that nice?

And they'll want you in Congress, too.

So you see, we've got to have the power.

You'll have to send in a consultating

machinery probably is in charge where we would inform the Senate and the House.

Don't you think so?

So that it doesn't look as if it's just an arbitrary search for power.

After consultations, we can say it's appropriate.

How does that sound to you, Mike?

So that you've got an argument against the Rockstar House.

Well, Mr. President, I will help you pass a bill.

I'll provide I reserve the justice to offer my own suggestion.

Oh, sure.

Well, it's the kind of thing that you've done.

The part I have is to make a suggestion to you.

It will help with this if they'll move all that oil in here into American ships.

Now, as it stands right now, all companies are moving to the golf mobile.

And I was thinking very much about trying to work out an agreement with all of these seafarers that they will use American land.

What do you mean by that?

What do you mean American ships?

And it wouldn't take much of a touch for you to bring those guys together.

Now, right now, the management board are in a very good position to make themselves a people on that.

Where they could have a little strike pledge in there that some version of it, I mean, they might call it something else, but that's the way it would amount to.

And where they could have what they think they would need.

I know that both those two major companies are thinking about that.

And the cost of the equipment is so enormous.

We don't like to deal with that.

Not only that it's made it to the point that I think George and I mentioned it the other day when Tom was here, I want to consider, he feels very strongly, he and looking at our dealers before, he says that

that first, the United States is the big market.

Everybody needs the United States.

Second, so that's one of the attitudes.

On the other hand, the other two factors

Now he says if the producers of the oil, if one individual government or authority controls both the productions and the carriers with the tanker, that's supposed to produce the consumer in a hell of a bad position.

So Conway's point is that the United States can deal with our people abroad, whether it's the Saudis or our friends, the Iranians, or let alone the Gulf states, perhaps, countries.

He says we ought to have both the concern.

at the end of our meeting, and he said that was not in that program, any kind of a tanker's name.

Maybe it's a budget cross, but I think that makes some sense.

I said, it's like most of these deals, like the capital proposal, these Russian deals, the Algerian deals, and so on, are a kind of tanker thing, you know, and I think just in terms of sort of bargaining power, but if the oil and gas is somebody else's grant, well, we're

We have a hard time controlling that.

But the more of the movement of that to the market, we can control that position very well.

Is it possible, George, is it just too much for us?

I know you're talking about deep water ports.

You've got large ports.

However, is it possible that we ought to figure on that?

Maybe we can't build it here.

certain that the United States, uh, private enterprise, maybe it can't be done.

Uh, but, uh, sure.

Maybe we consider your significant as large as the American government helps, of course, by such women just by Satan.

That's the oil.

And that's easy enough to do.

And, you know, we don't vote for Mayo for that position, even without the support of your administration, if you know what I mean.

But the fellows in the oil industry had a good point.

These major companies had a good point on their side.

They said, well, look, you can't tell the white people, boy, am I going to pull a strike or something.

I said, it might interrupt our supply.

I said, in fact, we could be more sure that we could land the fuel here.

Well, Paul Hall, at the present time, our relations with him are so good.

He's a member of his labor management advisory committee.

So he's been very concerned.

Well, he claims it.

At least he claims it.

But they, you know, haven't had a major strike.

And that is the chance, I think, right there to get his tail down.

All right, now, we're not going to have a strike.

This thing don't start getting good wages now.

Damn good wages for the full jobs.

So your problem with that industry is that you've got, I don't know how many units, seven or eight units,

You only take one and they fight with each other.

That's what's created.

But now all that's totally, all that's totally is all companies.

They'll get in that contract.

He will sign up.

He'll provide all the labor on the ship.

He'll give them contracts and provide everything.

So the thing was that...

Now from the international point of view, you see that if you don't use American shipping, then these OPEC countries are organized and putting pressure on the oil companies to make them.

fire these ships.

Now, the way most oil companies try to do it, they try to make their money on everything.

They try to make about one-third of the money that you can take producing, selling, and moving the oil.

They try to make each part make a profit if they can.

If they've got a 10% profit, they try to make a 10% profit in producing area, 10% profit in refining area, 10% profit in transportation area, 10% profit in selling area.

Now, if they can't make it, they try to make it back somewhere.

Now, if you look at these OPEC times, if you don't know what I'm talking about, the OPEC times, there's all sorts of things going on.

If you look at that game, while they're trying to do this right now, we're going to do everything we can for this, but let's do this correctly.

You can't blame them for making all the money they can because they've got to sell.

But if we don't control that chip or something, they're going to control it.

And the big end of the job is making the steel and fabricating that into ships, not even moving the ships around.

So it's a thing I don't know how to think about.

It's a big piece of business.

But I don't want to do it in every possible way.

If you can't bring it back, I think it's the same for the country.

the lesson about was there was an effort, in fact, to use the amount of money represented by quota tickets under the oil export program and say, all right, the difference between the world price and the U.S. price is so much, and you've got such and such a body there, and that's the amount of money.

Now, instead of giving that away to the oil companies, you can still take a piece of it for it,

And everybody's kind of gotten on to that.

And they're all trying to grab a piece out of it.

And that's a very unhealthy thing to have happen from the standpoint of the cost of our energy.

And if we're going to do this, our fueling was, well, we should face up to it and do it at a direct proposition and unload it into the price of the energy and that.

But you see this stuff that you're buying from offshore.

Don't say that we discussed any problems.

We did.

on the trade thing now we we may

You know, the way this thing is moving around the world, we may have to, we may lose our doctor, or we may not.

Is that right?

Yes, that's right.

We're working on this problem.

We have had it very hard with the Japanese and others.

What I would like to do is

work with the chairman on a basic trade deal problem.

It's looking toward being able to come up with something in a matter of a couple weeks, a couple weeks or so.

And in the meantime, if we have any results, doing that, that is what I was calling you to do.

I think you said a moment before we announced it.

Yeah, for example, you had this problem, for example, with us because of the development.

We might have to do something, and we don't disagree, we're not suggesting we disagree, but if we, if any comes up that, you know, it's recess period, I just have to call, if we have to do something, so you'll know, but let us understand that we have been sold at that time.

because you know what I mean.

I don't want anything until I've infected my whole trade area.

Until we have a meeting with the bipartisan leaders, that won't be, that can't be for about two weeks because the different colleagues are going to be on until the 19th.

I'll be on the 19th.

But I just, for consultation purposes, he will call you and that's it.

If I were to be called over, I would be on the 19th.

Well, he'll also call you.

Well, I appreciate your courtesy, but it's nice to see you.

Well, just so that they don't run out of time, if you're asked, you can say you want to consult.

Yes, yes.

Because I don't want to take any of this.

We are, we do want to consult.

The only reason is that sometimes you have a little bit of questions.

Well, and frankly, Mr. President,

You ought to take the responsibility of taking these emergency moves that have to be done.

And I just feel that you shouldn't have to consult a bunch of people to do that.

I mean, it might be kind of a little late, but I would actually consult him to take out

tonight

Well, not immediately, but I'll take it on during the fall.

I'll take it on.

Yeah.

wonderful for the country, that you had the courage to do what you thought was good for this country.

Uh, I, I just, uh, I, I told you I didn't bless you, so, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

All that those people gave you to deal with what your conscience told you was this country.

I thought you were right about it.

And I tell you, it took a lot of courage to stand against all that.

And I'm happy that I know that in the last four years, if you want to do what's in the national interest, we ought to help you do it.

And finally, I am very esteemed to see how it goes up there on that hill.

Charging around here, we've got to go to the wall with you before you

It's horrible politics.

My guess is the Democrats can't beat him again in four years.

I mean, just because of that kind of damn foolishness.

Man, just remember that is a big majority in terms of numbers.

It is the country.

They can't let the man take no office.

That's the point I want to talk about.

They invite him up to defend himself because he was

I think the president used a commander-in-chief, for example, and that kind of thing.

It's irritating to me.

I don't do that at all.

But I know that you wanted what the Senate called to help you do that.

Well, I don't doubt it.

We still have a Democrat around.

Well, I'll tell you that I was very impressed with one guy called Nunn.

Nunn is the nephew of Carl Benson.

He's the nephew of Carl Benson.

And he's a strong fellow in Georgia.

So it feels good.

I don't care about it.

He's a good supporter of Portland.

I'd be in the Democratic side.

The city that I've met, Donald from Kentucky seems like a very strong voice.

But I mean, I've stayed in the Southern group.

It's all in Louisiana.

I like him.

I had him in conviction with his wife.

And he'll be around a while.

He's talking to you already.

Your point of duty, if you would give me a quick sense, the one thing I've ever wondered about, Mr. President, your point in other words, depending on if this comment involves saying, hell, that's not something, somebody's thinking about the openness of the outcome.

I'm actually going to say that it would be better if my committee's held more open meetings and all that.

I think it's all that in mind.

In fact, some guys would still be involved in this if they told me about it.

Well, what they've got in mind is this year they've tried to decide to move as far as they can in that direction.

And next year they want to start electing, I just made the suggestion that they want to start electing chairmen in the Democratic Chairmen's Committee who will take their orders from that Democratic caucus.

And they want to instruct the Democrats on those committees what they're going to do.

Now, I know what that would mean right now.

You've got 59 Democrats.

Uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

Committee chairman, I hear what you must do.

You should do this.

You must do that.

You must do the other thing.

You must consider this bill.

You must recognize it.

Now, look at these resolutions that they're holding out there.

They're trying to tell us as committee chair what we're going to do already.

And conferences, these public offices, yes, sir.

They had one of them this other day about districts.

You're not there anymore.

Well, they started the same kind of little thing on that tax reform thing in 1969 that they want to get that Democrats policy committee together inside that room.

Stan Sherry talks to them about how he's a very persuasive sort of guy.

He's a very persuasive guy.

So they think they know everything that ought to be known about tax reform.

And they're ready to wrestle it right in there because they've got all these other people to meet.

So they have another meeting, and Stan's playing a little ball about it.

So then they're ready to wrestle it.

Got it.

Well, then, then, when they, they ask for party caucus and say, well, now, we, the policy committee recommended this, we've been in the caucus order, or recommended this now.

At that time, they were claiming that I was obligated and I was under the ability to recommend what they thought was tax reform, which in effect meant the Stansery Program, which is the Jordan Governor's program, by the way.

So he was Jordan Governor's tax dispatcher who put that little program together.

But this UAW crowd, they didn't mind it.

They wanted to control the mid-Chamber because those guys could make a few more bucks a year.

And they want to, uh, to instruct and to make the, to take, let's say, 32 votes.

And make that into a majority by forcing the rest of these guys to go along by instructing these committee chairmen and making them to the bidding of the majority that called us.

You see, that formulated about 32 votes into, into 62.

Now, that's what these fellows are working at.

And, uh, they're at,

Frankly, they took a lot of interest in taking this Congress.

And we all know that's a different place right now.

And there are a lot of these problems, Mr. President.

And I may want to be one of them eventually when they say, well, I guess that rapists and everyone might go relax and enjoy or get with it.

You can't let them join.

But that's the kind of thing those people have got going on.

It's going to happen.

But your people are going to have to realize that they're just implicit in that.

Right.

Now what it meant, I've been seeing that, even because of Jordan Romney, he said he thought he might try to organize something, try to offset something like that.

But this thing they're talking about, about this attack on CBRD, they've got a lot more in mind than just putting out some more maintenance.

You notice that they're interested in the ideas.

Tom called me a nationwide president.

He said, here's what I say.

It is sufficiently possible that the editorial right here in my hometown, my guy, is for you, not for them.

And he's for me.

The editorial doesn't support that.

They don't take out the right patent to be kicked out.

I don't want to be kicked out.

Mel doesn't want to be kicked out.

Jimmy doesn't want to be kicked out.

But it's the fellas who have been doing an effective job, but not just acting for the point leadership of that point.

I think that's bad government and bad policy to do business otherwise than that.

But that's not what that game is, man.

You know, people better keep it in mind, because you might be able to help us get that off, right?

I don't want to be answering a public or a president who doesn't even want to fight the Democratic Party, because that's not even necessary.

Oh, don't worry.

I know what they're after.

They're not after the age.

They're not after the seniority.

They're after the ideas.

That's right.

And like that, you're there for Pat.

Hell, that's...

They'll be for... You didn't hear him attack Manny Seller, did you?

No.

I'm not worried about the dollar, but spend mine.

Well, you can tell me what it is, George.

Mr. President, I appreciate you telling him, but he told me that you want him to work

A couple of things I'd like to talk to you about, but maybe I should check on this monetary thing.

Oh, sure.

Right.

Simon, if I could come back in on this.