 oh I'm doing pretty good got lots of lots problems and a lot of decisions and but I'm feeling pretty good that's important well that's the important thing yes how you've been getting along pretty good thank you thank you sir you you had a nice holiday I take it well I enjoyed I enjoyed my Christmas very much had my two daughters there and rather quiet good weather and things like that we were we were very pleased that your gift of your papers it was was a source of great satisfaction to us and pleasure on the part of our very close friends who saw the gifts and even some one man read it read part of the book well yes they'll they'll do better with the years because there were so few of them and they they represented least best we could do in two years and I think they there will be some very interesting ones down through the years the remarkable papers there I still talk about that speech at the University of Michigan I think it was a very very very fine speech the one on I just been working on this budget I'm real worried about it I'm down now to the strategy question of the get more by asking for more of asking for moderate or as for less just to exactly how I go about it I'm gonna shock them a good deal I expect to the preliminary one this morning about 13 and a half billion well it's gonna be the defense that was pretty well predicted last year they say it wasn't but it was Russell got on CBS tennis got on NBC and the various committee chairman Jerry Ford got on they all said it'd be around 12 billion that's what it's gonna be that's that's what it is it's about four billion money and about eight nine billion obligations are contracting for ships and for planes that won't be delivered but you have to under the budget system you have to list them a year your quorum that doesn't bother me and that's that'll be voted unanimous practically won't be any problem what does bother me is my budget last year was 99 and plus and this year it's going to be but close to 115 yeah which is a whopping increase of six 15 16 billion now good deal of that is that is Vietnam the good deal of its great society too and I've got all these new programs to fund here's a sample of what I'm up against we have a school bill for impacted areas not spend mostly southern areas where you have Richmond Virginia or something where they are Norfolk Virginia where they have a naval base and you build up your troops so the families in there and with the mother and the two children there while her husband's off at sea and that we give them between three and four hundred million the impacted area it's a very popular program with Congress well that's fine but I've got to get a billion for the elementary school bill so I'm going to cut impacted area and still give the schools the Norfolk schools on the basis of eight and nine hundred million more a day this year but it's going to raise hell by cutting impacted area and I just came good conscious give them both because I don't have it I'd get 120 billion for that that's right but the schools are actually going to get to say four times as much as they got last year schools per say but the name impacted areas kind of like a school lunch program you might buy them steaks and better dinners and banquets and everything but if you cut out that school lunch yeah but another thing in order to get my poverty around like I want it I have to cut something one thing I'm cutting is milk school lunch program to children whose parents can afford to pay well this is also another one of those touchy areas where a name means something that's right they don't but we're not going to put a sign on them and say my daddy doesn't have enough to pay we're going to pick school districts where they upper echelon and unless they in the rich areas the Long Island areas they know use of just having a free lunch program giving them milk to all the people there they can pay for the milk and we don't want a means test but that'll save us good even money and they won't really be opposed by anybody except the milk producer but I get all them bad on poverty I've got lots of static building up there Dirksen and Ford and McClellan some of them a little combination of many we've been getting some bad publicity bad breaks on it around the country I'm going to give it some increase over last year but I'm not going to give them anything like what they like to use but I've drafted 500,000 of their boys and I've spent a billion four hundred million in Appalachia in contracts and words is training a hundred thousand of them and the employment dropped again today unemployment 4.1 and we estimate it'll be three next year so you can't go on if you if we if we've getting that kind of jobs you see that's right but I'm going to give them more and I give them last year I noticed Dirksen and Ford built up a little flak there for you and McClellan they then Russell yesterday they all going after great society as soon as they hit town and they gonna say that we got to fight a war so we can't do any of these other things my general position is gonna be that we are rich enough and powerful enough that we can do both I'm glad here you say that I thought that would be your position we're not going to reduce really anything domestically this year except something like that as I told you the impact at school there but when we came in Kennedy Johnson we had about three billion that was health education welfare this year I moved it up to seven something next year I'm moving it up to close to 11 on the overall picture you aren't retreating an inch I'm going I'm going I'm going I'm going up way to hell up that's why our budgets going up to 114 1314 15 somewhere there but what they say they say I cut well I got requests of 125 billion and you get requests from every state but you their quest kind of do it the question is what I'm doing this year compared to last year and I'm fighting the war and doing a hell of a lot more on all the products the difference in the base where you it's whether you count what they ask for and that you were cut from or whether what you count what you did last year is against what you're doing this year now we got another problem that's our HUD and Mr. Weaver and what we do over there I've got a task force report and it's a rather exceptional report I recommend one thing it recommends is we take community action put it in HUD and I think it normally that would be reasonably good they were task force was all of them for doing that except Kermit Gordon wasn't and Whitney Young wasn't but this fellow Robert Woods of Harvard MIT he headed it up do you know him I know obviously he's exceptionally able I understand he's very able he's exceptionally able he doesn't have standing up they all do it on the ferry the city is where our problem is and we've got to have some muscle in the city cabinet agency and that's where the community action is that's where it ought to be run my theory I think he makes a very convincing argument but I can't quite buy it now purely on the basis the politics I think if we spread it out among different cabinet offices where we don't have one salesman at the top of it that we a don't get the image and be we knock it off and see they can defeat it easier and can kill it easier I think in due time we might do that but I'm a little afraid to do it now I'm going to be a little bit different do you have any reaction on that my reaction has never been very strong on that on the transfer of community action that is from poverty program over to HUD that's right what they do is really reorganize poverty out of existence you give words that neighborhood youth core and and the job core and you give a gardener the head start and the educational angles that head start thing with the president is ten strike oh it's one of you thought about it's the best thing we've got absolutely wonderful it's a no I'm not tired of credit for it although I supported me Johnson that supported it and we have very strong part and with crazy about this is Johnson's identification with it makes it a chance and project and it's just wonderful I won't try the best I can to start that this year abroad in the African countries and Latin American countries Asian countries I'm gonna hit them with three things minor amount of money but the principle kind of like Roosevelt got REA started he had to do it by executive order he couldn't get a bill through it didn't see start off $25 million I've got over 300 million my budget part now but he got it started so I'm gonna try to take some aid money and start head start programs in these countries where the kids come in get examined physically we have a health program and they all are inoculated for cholera and malaria and things that kind and I'm gonna try to drive a cholera out of 10 or 15 countries in malaria and things that kind and I'm gonna have read and write and stood all these PhDs coming to exchange and the Fulbright program 50 60 million I'm gonna let about 30 go for them I'm gonna try to take 30 40 and put in teaching kids read and write and test the answer to your specific answer to your question I haven't given it much thought it does seem to me that that it there's a good deal to be set for it being over there community action city problems urban problems and muscle that you need there I just just haven't gone into all the in-outs and butts about it I'm sorry that that I don't and not able to offer you anything more definite than that but I can't see really any evil in transferring it and I don't know that I see any take your evil and it's staying where it is I think we'll just try to write it out for a while and so I let's driver let's driver try to get it appropriations anyway and then maybe we'll be strong enough and maybe clean up but we create a little difficult now we get on the weaver saying I you know about me I you know about let me say the right at the outset you have the right to select your own family and you have the right to select the man that in your estimation you feel will do the best job he's got to carry out your policies in your program that's be close to you let me ask you this question don't don't don't you have a feeling or do you you don't need to say anything if you don't don't you have a feeling that this man would be loyal to me if I named him wouldn't he be to his dying day grateful that I made him the I've had it on what I think he would be very grateful I I think he I'm pretty sure he would I have no doubt about that I do feel this that there's a lot to be said for what you the reason you advanced before the business of driving and the difficulties of creating this thing and I remember especially your long-range prediction that what a little look a year from now that's what I'm worried about but I'll tell you how I'm trying to give some thought to that I've watched him very carefully and I've given him every chance in the world stump his toe and he had he just functioned as perfectly as you would have and I'm trying to think about I had the best man I know in this department that's completely objective that doesn't give a ticker down about we ever are the Negro question to go out and write me a summary of his views and I just got him that's why I called it's written at full 15 January 5th and I read you this memorandum I asked him today at launch when I was talking about HUD and various problems in it who he thought I ought to make administrator and I gave I told him that I felt that we were not a very sensational fellow and not a very intellectual fellow and not a very driving fellow and not a fellow that was much I didn't be an innovator in