Conversation 886-013

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Well, hey, Preston, how are you?

I will find that you've had a good day, Preston.

Good to have you.

Good to see you, Mr. President.

Hi, John.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

My business friends are quite concerned about the economic situation and I'm very anxious to help them.

You hold the line on this budget, all the scores, 73 and 74, so it wasn't any trouble with getting a good, in fact, we'll get a good many more.

We've been talking about this among ourselves, and I haven't touched the bill here, so it's very helpful.

I think we're going to- Well, you can talk to me about it in context.

We were just running out of it.

I'm glad you took the time.

I know it's tough to be in college and do so many things.

I think this is an important job.

I hope we can do something to help out here.

What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to work with someone from up the hill, do some advertising, see if we can get some good sound cut here.

Thanks.

I think that's a good idea.

It's important what you're trying to do here.

Because, as you know, the employers get cut.

They're the ones that raise the fuss.

And we've got to try to take care of it.

We've got to try to get the people who are really not even Democrats who work and have done a lousy job, but they blame you.

Well, they can use it so that they prefer to come with their back open.

They might know that there's somebody out there supporting them.

For instance, to hold the line, come on, come on.

The big, the big turner, I was wondering, I was just, Johnny, I've got a picture of you.

I love this.

And you all can use it.

How would the congressional people to stand up

Some say they want to mail it, and it affects them.

It's true.

If you check what mail can come in, it affects some, not the people who are killed.

Second, say you get a public opinion on the country editorials, I won't get them depending upon your name.

But in many instances, what can affect a man the most is to have somebody who's a hell of a big

tribute or support from his town or state or district, frankly, ride the hell out of it.

In other words, the guy, don't overlook that.

That's the point.

Because the mail thing, the mail thing, a lot of guys come down to leadership meetings and say, you're not getting so much mail from people who want me to restore REA or REAP or some of that kind of thing.

I'm not getting any mail that want me to kill an incarcerated.

I'm getting the mail that want me to kill anything.

If the issue is do you favor more money for the elderly, more money for farmers, or more money for poor people, or more money for rich people, or whatever the case is, maybe not rich, they'll say yes.

But if you say are you willing to pay more taxes in order to provide more for this or more for that, they will say no.

So the issue must be tax increase.

It must be price increase, of course, rather than what we're cutting.

The other thing, of course, which you're deeply aware of is this is an austere budget.

My God, it's $18 million bigger.

Well, that has to be added to that.

I just think that we hear that a lot.

And also, it is not a balanced budget by traditional terms.

It's a quote-unquote balanced budget.

You would all know it was a hell of a bad thing in our day.

Right.

And it's a big budget.

Take your cities and the rest of it.

Well, it's whatever you want for October, the elderly, the veterans and so forth.

The amounts are above.

The question is, how much of it?

Well, it's up 58% per year, and that's as much as we could possibly afford.

The unkindest thing to do to the poor is to raise their prices.

All this will do, will excite, when you've already got a price movement in this direction.

If we have an expansion, if the country starts breaking the budget by overriding PTOs and that sort of thing, then all of us will be losing the inflation right now.

Well, it's always going to depend on the fact that the international markets have to adjust themselves.

That will affect business, guys, for a lot of reasons.

But the trade, the trade, sure, the competitive position of American goods in the world market will be determined.

It will be affected greatly by whether or not the budget changes.

Yeah.

I think there's a strong case

But also, that we aren't dead and passionate for the poor folks and the rest who have gotten through it.

For the hungry, the hungry.

They were four years ago.

You're the guy who can do it.

And they'll say, well, what about this or that or the other thing?

You get down to specifics, and I'll say, well, what about the number?

If you get down on the health, who's the dean or the, not the dean, but the professor at Stanford, and he spoke very well about it.

Medical school says, oh, we're counting harder than you, but we're not true at all.

With our cancer burden, our heart burden, that's where it's been, and part of our health is there where it's been.

What he's swimming about is that we have cut down these huge grants to the universities.

where they, you know, rather than, you know, see a sidelight on that, they say it's a result of cutting back.

I know I'm going to spend more time teaching what they should have been doing, but you're right, there are researches, which I think is very important.

I don't want you to have another question, because it's true, because we are passionate about it.

let me start again let's take the whole video

And a lot of people work for that.

I think we're working for that.

A lot of the camps.

We're taking many-dollar training, which was a good program, at least coming over to the labor camp, putting more into it than before.

That's part of it.

That was part of the wheel.

And we're taking, for example, the head start program, which was a part of the wheel, and putting an ATW where it belongs, and putting more in it.

Now the Community Action Program, which was also part of the OEO, we are not funded, and it's in recent work.

We spent $200 billion, $400 billion on community action since it was set up.

I mean, what happened to that $2 billion for it?

That's supposed to count for business.

85% of that went to the bureaucrats.

Remember the trickle-down thing we used to talk about in business?

What bureaucrats used to trickle down on the theory of government?

Where the money gurgles out through layer after layer of bureaucracy, so now we'll let the poor folks get just a little bit.

And that's what we want to do.

We want to have programs that will ordinarily help the cities and the counties and the poor and the rest.

And that's why community action is not being run.

It allows more people to progress, but that's the answer.

The press really gives voice only to the OEO title.

It makes them, they limit it.

I don't know if he's helping them.

We're having a summer youth program, which is a big public relationship.

It's a little unnecessary public relationship.

Summer youth program, of course, has a good deal of support.

Something going to be announced today.

We're going to go on a transition basis.

We're not going to fund it at the same amount.

It's last year because it isn't that much in the end.

But they're putting about $400 million into it.

It's a transition.

See, if they got it, if the Congress would get off its tail and pass our energy development or revenue sharing bill, then the cities would have the money if they wanted to put it in that program.

But they haven't.

So pending the passage and action of the Congress on so-called special revenue sharing, I'm sorry, it is being funded.

Let me say a word that you brought up, military, but this is a real-time question.

What many people you run into, Jim, will tell you.

They'll say, now look here, we're for $250,000 ceiling, we want a bus number, number 73, number 268.7 ceiling for 1970.

Well, there's no argument about that.

The argument they will say is about priorities.

And as I'll say, what we've ended is that now that we've had the meeting with the Russians, the meeting with the Chinese, the peace of Vietnam, this is the last of our until the end of the five years to next week.

So we're sorry.

But we've thus covered a military budget of $10 billion and put it into the problem to the poor and the citizens, perhaps.

And I want to say that first, at the present time, the military budget is at a rate that it cannot be covered for any fault in how much work

uh where they said let's have a moratorium on

the development of Triton and some of these other things until we see how the talks with the Russians come out.

We heard that same Jack Essary a year ago.

If you'd ever had a moratorium on what we were doing in other areas, we would have never gotten the Russians to let what they were doing.

Now, we have to realize that in this whole thing, we're in a very precarious position.

We're dealing with the Russians on now impermanent brief.

The last .

These negotiations will be taking place sometime this summer with Russia.

He'll be sitting here.

I'll be sitting here.

Now, if he's sitting here, they're building like crazy because of my agreement.

They want to be damn sure that they are .

Now, yet the United States, before this, the Congress says, we're going to cut our military budget by $10 million.

what in the world do I have to offer him in order to get him to come out?

He isn't interested in equality.

He isn't interested in goodwill.

He's interested in making a deal with you to make it happen.

Now as long, on the other hand, he is interested.

He is interested in not getting into a race nobody can win.

But unless we let him know we'll run, he will not be interested in stopping the race.

If he figures that he's going to continue to run and we're going to drop out, look, forget it.

He can't even find it.

If you take M.E.F.R., that's a date they could date the name of it.

Nothing is more unpopular at the present than troops in Germany.

The Germans want to throw them out, or as we all understand.

And they've been there too damn long, so we should turn down the bill.

But what our intelligence says, let's take 200,000 or 300,000 out of Europe right away, we turn what that does to 100,000.

that out of our way.

Late this fall, we are going to have a negotiation with the whole eastern country.

We are, the, the, the, what's the, the Warsaw Pact in the name.

And we have our mutual balance force in Russia.

Those talks are starting now.

Yet, the United States, before those talks, we had decided, the Congress says, we're going to cut our forces by 200,000.

The Warsaw Pact countries will say, thank you very much.

We are here to talk about anything.

And there you are.

You will have any outcomes.

Now, really, the way this case has got to be made in national security terms is this.

Does the strength, does a strong United States have any peace of the word when the answer is no?

Does it threaten anybody's freedom when the answer is no?

However, does a strong Soviet Union

Is it a guarantee of peace or a guarantee of freedom?

The answer is both.

The moment you have a situation where the United States allows the Soviet Union to be in a dominant position militarily, then peace and freedom are a champion.

The moment that Communist Europe is stronger than freedom.

then the possibility of free Europe, which the president is having a problem with taking out, the possibility of that surviving is down.

Now, the argument for here has got to change to this.

You put it on the peace side.

First, we've made enormous strides in this area.

We've had agreement.

We've had a negotiated agreement.

We've talked to the Chinese.

We've gotten talks from the Soviet Union.

We've got a peace agreement.

Now, we must end up, we've got the depression.

Now, the point is, we must end up doing something right.

How did we get what we did?

We got what we did by being strong.

Strong and, I say, on the other hand, we'll negotiate reduction.

But we'll never do it no matter.

Now, if you've got a game plan that has worked up to this point, don't change it.

So, let us have the talks with the Russians and let us have the talks with the others.

And then, see if we can't negotiate the reduction of troops in Europe, you may be able to.

and negotiate a permanent freeze on offensive weapons.

That's the choice.

Yet, on the other hand, the unilateralist armors, in the name of peace, say, oh, but just to prove the word for peace, we're not for peace.

Let's just cut it.

Let's slice it, if that happens.

They will torpedo the best chance to limit arms that we've had since the end of World War II.

Now, that's where it is at the moment.

And that's, there's talent in that.

I think we're going to have pretty good support in that.

Do you really want to make this a part of the country?

Hey, the country, I, the Congress is very certain to be in the oil.

They want to find a way to, you know, get their head from it, from it.

There was a lay show that we're, we're not the same as the last year and the year before.

But I think there's a great deal of interest in the country that you were in.

And it would never happen unless we live on it.

Well, Mr. President, I can't take no answers, but if you doubt that middle class would seriously consider scouting all the potential opportunities that are yet to be on the way and putting some limitation on them, why stuggle?

That's right.

Yeah, the reason that's what they're talking about is that they can't believe that they seriously

Responsibly, would you consider that?

The other thing to do is this.

If they're digging for peace, you've got to put it in the context of when is the world more peaceful?

When is Russia stronger?

Well, the present time is evil.

And that's the race's end.

But you could be damn sure that the day the Soviet Union is stronger than any other nation in the world, this world is in serious danger.

Not because they're going to blow up the world, but because they want it.

I think there was a lot of motivation found for that story, just as you've told me here, to be presented in some fashion to the great mass of the American people.

I think they supported it.

There's no question if it's explained.

But I don't think they see the point as you do have this pressure.

And I think one of the challenges is that you get into this operation that we're able to try to hold this line.

If you're going to get us all arguing on the proper priorities, we've got to kind of avoid that in the sense that if there are responsible other priorities that are within the still keeping this ground working.

Okay, but you don't have other ideas, any other responses.

You know, we don't have any.

We don't have any.

You don't let me look at that.

Well, you have another thing too.

You have the situation of taking the NATO that we want to look at.

When people say it will be a great, well, they say it will be great.

One, the United States will save money.

And two, it will contribute to peace and lessening of tension in Europe.

We reduce our forces.

The point is reducing our forces.

What is no less attention is that they reduce theirs.

That's the threat.

Ours is not.

And how are we going to do that?

There's a Hill letter, and the letter is ours.

And we are going to use it on these clouds.

I agree with John.

I think somebody has to present this one.

I don't know if anybody from the president could do it.

I'll tell you one area where you can, where you have a great deal of support to.

There's one place where our Jewish friends will use it quite a lot.

But there's one in there terrified of us.

Let me tell you.

And then you've got this budget of $5 million, $10 million.

They forget it's real.

They don't like that.

You've got no money.

And they don't.

That's one thing that's very strong, aren't you?

One thing that's very strong.

I'll try to help all I can at the property trial, make a statement about that.

And you say something, we can talk or something.

to squeeze out this irresponsible talk about, you know, you can make it up, but you've got to get past it.

Yeah, and let us have some way that you pull this in and say, well, we'd love to, and maybe if you can, if you'll go on, I hope that you can get these agreements, but you'll never cut it.

You know, if you just do it, you don't have a point.

Maybe there's some attempt, or I don't know.

Maybe there was a chance, but you don't know.

There's no point in talking about it.

I couldn't move it, but I am basically a true believer in pastors.

And a lot of us aren't.

They're very decent men.

I just have to draw from them.

Draw from them.

There are other things that are a little more sensitive about me.

Those you might get to.

I'm going to dip you in the house.

I did.

Yeah, the house.

But I'm going to tell them that it's a set of those.

Gosh.

Well, anyway, we appreciate your work.

We don't get to thank you for it, except that we're going to do the wraps and so forth.

You don't worry about that.

Yeah, Mr. President, I think we really helped.

As long as they're all here, we're sure you're going to learn.

We're glad to have some good people on our side of the backbone.

So I told them we had a day they wanted.

They said, well, I don't want to do that.

I said, look, I supported the president.

If I support the president, then don't continue to support him.

The big worst thing is to support him in the first place.

And I've got words.

He had another project.

I do.

Yes, and all that.

It's not terrible.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

He's the best tax expert in the country.

Are you going to even do something?

You're going to have to get out of the way.

All right.

I was on the committee the whole when John was up there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Come out of the committee soon.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can go out there.

Good.

All right.

Goodbye.