 Go ahead, please. Hubert? Yes, Mr. President. How are you feeling? Well, I'm just fine. And how are you? Pretty good. Happy Thanksgiving. Well, a happy Thanksgiving to you and the Lady Bird. My goodness. Everything sounds good from down there. Fine. We got a little confusion. It says McNamara says that if you want to go to Pittsburgh, Jake says that his last word was that you'd pick up our Senator Sparce. Now, here's our situation. I thought it would be, we're going to talk over some reviews of the next session on money and generally speaking, withholdings and things of that kind. And I thought it would be desirable to do it with some of the leadership. McCormick will not fly, so Halbert and Boggs are going to be here from the house in four days. We've got airplanes bringing them in. Mansfield is at Sarasota. And Dirksen is at Sanford. They're going to need to be picked up at 10 o'clock in the morning. I thought it would, it's not anything you need to do at all. And if you think that you ought to be somewhere else while I want you to, but they're going to bring their wives. We didn't arrange it that way. But Mansfield just said, well, his wife's with him. And I guess he's afraid to leave her in Florida, afraid somebody to pick her up and run off with her. And I guess he heard you down there too, probably. I'm a little scared about my wife. But anyway, I thought it would be a good thing if you didn't have plans to mess up, to give you a chance to kind of lead them in and feel with them and talk to them by picking Mansfield up at 10 o'clock and Dirksen at 1030 and coming over here about the middle of the day. Now they're going to stay all night. I'd love for you and Muriel to do the same if you want to. It's not important. It's not a critical thing. It's not a crisis. There's not any reason for it. We haven't even announced it. We didn't want to until we could be firm on it. But I'm going to have a bunch of folks coming in. I'm going to bring in George Mayhon from one direction. I don't want something that'll call Jerry Ford to criticize. But I thought it would give you a good chance to talk to them and get both of them stealing and exploring without lobbying with them, but it would give you a chance to do it if you wanted to. Now Cross says that he wants to dispatch one of the jet stars to pick you up to go to Pittsburgh. Jake wants to pick these other folks. So we need to know and they seem to think there's some confusion between what you told Jake and what Cross told McNamara. Let me just tell you what the situation was. I had planned to go up to Pittsburgh and I thought that one of us elected souls ought to be up there for that gathering of Scranton and Schaper and all these people coming in and old Dave Lawrence was a good old Democrat for many years. And then I've got to go to Minneapolis for the wedding of my Freddie Gates, my friend's daughter, on Saturday morning. And I thought that was what my original plan was. But I didn't quite understand the meaning of this meeting in Texas. So what do you say when that's where I belong? Well, I don't want to get you in trouble and I don't want to be responsible for anything that you've arranged that gets you out and gets you in trouble there. But what we're going to do roughly is take about five, six billion out of programs for this year and reduce them. And we're going to explain to them where we think it ought to be reduced. For instance, this morning we're taking about 20% out of your road program. Well, let me ask you this, Mr. President. What I had hoped that I might be able to do if it wasn't in convenience everybody was to go to Pittsburgh and fly right down after that ceremony down to Texas and getting there about 150. But Jake said he thought that it'd be too late. Well, I think if you're going to come, the value of your coming has come with the two senators not to come from Pittsburgh because you can't talk anybody into anything coming over from Pittsburgh to Johnson City. That's just a long dash. I'd go on to Pittsburgh and arrange it and we'll just roughly tell you all we're going to tell them it's not anything of any great moment. I thought that you might try to bring about a little unity by being the boss of Mansfield and Dirksen. So here's what you all think about next year. What do you think we're going to do? What do you think we ought to do? Try to get them to talk a little bit privately and get the group because it's just fortuitously we were all in Florida. That was my thinking. Yes, sir. Mr. President, that's what I will do. And if you want to, I'll ask, I know Marvin's going to the General, but if you think we ought to get some other people, I will get some other people. No, I'll do it this way and I'll come down. I'll be in Texas. All right. Will Muriel be with you? Yes, Muriel will. Would you want a plane to go to Minneapolis that night? We'll have to go to Minneapolis really that night. All right. Okay, then we'll work it out that way. You can leave here at 6, 7 o'clock in the evening and go to Minneapolis. We're going up for our friend's wedding up there. I'm just telling you had another date and you had to go to it and not get it in details where you're going. You bring them over and then we'll have a plane, my plane here or something. We'll take you to Minneapolis. All right. Now, will you get a hold of Man's Steel and Dirksen? Do you know where they are? Yes. Well, they people do here at the city service. All right. Now, it's 9.15. You'll have to leave. You're a place. Where are you? Miami or Keywood? Miami. 9.15. You have to leave there to pick them up at, not later than 10. It's Sarasota and the other one at 10.30. Yep. We'll have that all worked out. Now, what I want to do, the main part of this, I thought is that it's going to give me a little chance to spend the night with George Mahon and try to get the house thing and I thought you might work on the Senate thing a little with them and I would lead them instead of direct them. I'd just make them say to me what they want to do. All right. And I think you'll find they don't want to do much. And Scotty Reston, you see his columns? Yes, I sure. I saw it the other day. He says, well, it's in Texas papers this morning, but he says that Gardner says that we just, our administration of all of our programs is something terrible. I thought Gardner had done an awful good job. I'm surprised that Gardner would say that. He just takes a quarter, two out of context, but survivor is really unloading on us. Yes. He called the press conference and told them how terrible they all were and if they didn't start agitating and putting the heat on us and the pressure, that it would be terrible. I think we've got to have a real feel. What's your feel about poverty next year? What do you think we ought to do? Roughly, our budget, the first two years we were in office, was under 100 because of defense expenditures. This year, our budget will run 127 billion. So we're up from 99. What we were going to do was 90. We're up from 99 to 127. Next year, it'll run 140. At the moment, we have requests for 90-some-odd billion from the services. We think that the minimum we can get it down to is probably 75. But we either going to have to have, I think it's going to shock the people when we tell them we've got to have 140 billion on the budget. Now, if we hold things as they are, except defense, that's what it'll be in that neighborhood, 135 to 140. I don't know how much they talk about this defense spending. I don't know how much. I think that one of our problems is the criticism they've made of our programs. My own inclination would be to go along with poverty, something along the line we did this year. Exactly. But they haven't spent it very well even more. They ought to cut out some. Well, we'll get to talking about that. But they're spread too thin. They ought to concentrate. Now, here's the people we talked to. If you've got a minute. Yes, sir. We talked to Hayden. He would not give any specific reaction to over the phone. We talked to Russell. He said that he would give us support for an intensive cost reduction program if the cuts were made across the board in the entire budget. The grumbling over specific cuts but balanced cutback would be supported in the present climate. He says that when we say that we're going to have no new starts in the Corps of Engineers that's going to cause grumbling. He says the highway trust fund will cause grumbling. But that's all the positive. That's the summary of his conversation. You see how constructed they all are. Magnuson says I'm taking these leaders now on the chairman of the committee. Take 300 million out of economic opportunity. Take a few whacks out of NIH, five percent. Cut a little from impacted areas. Take a whack out of NASA. Stretch out SST but go on select bone as a contractor. Refer new starts. Go ahead with the ongoing program. Don't cut any power. Stennis, he's certain some cutting has to be done. Divide cuts between the administration and Congress. He wouldn't have no comment on health. Very difficult to cut impacted areas. Reluctant sport of deferral of new starts. It would make sense. That's Stennis. Holland, no reason to spend congressional add-ons on DOD. Cut off at National Institute of Health. Cut impacted areas. Keep Apollo but cut post Apollo. SST, slow down. Delay new starts. Cut navigation, irrigation, head of flood control. REA, cut to budget request. FHA, cut operating loans, substantial cuts and about holding back any NIH. In back today, REA must not be cut. Might as well slow down. Governor Wallace gets accredited anyway. Senator Russell Long delay 130 million add-ons but not if it affects Louisiana. NIH, aid to airports. So he does no good. Slow down the entire construction process. We've got all these governors and highways pretty popular and contractors and labor and everything. But I believe that that's the most wholesome area that we can make the cuts. Although, I notice the risk is against the cutting and months against cutting. Republicans are really against cutting where we can cut the trust for them. They want to make money. Yeah. They want to cut the office of economic opportunity and health and so forth. One of the things Senator Allen says the opportunity can't stand the whale of a slash and a complete reworking. McCormick said, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. McCormick said, hold back and the impacted area is. The Albert says, do some trimming in poverty. Forge that can cut five hundred million out of them and startoon the office of education. It's very popular. But, well, you weren't doing a job? I swear I can't understand that. You can say that God that she ought tohang on. That's what we get to try to get them to keep them into other outfits.. Yeah. Not being asked though, I don't know. This is the most effective.