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  • that-- C: Pardon me? G: I said could it be because his role at the White House was one dealing with electoral politics rather than-- C: That's what I'm saying. The Democrat--yes, it may have been the Democratic National Committee thing, but I'm
  • : Normally we took the whole committee. We would invite the whole committee and I think we invited both Democrats and Republicans. I just can't remember whether we limited it to Democrats or not. In this case, the following morning--the message technically
  • [NAID 24617781] More on LBJ Library oral histories: http://discoverlbj.org/exhibits/show/loh/oh Califano -- XLIII -- 18 truth-in-packaging [bill], we'd go count the Democrats on the Commerce Committee and take them through the bill and see if we had
  • of Bundy--he was after all the national security advisor--than it had of Goodwin in terms of tone. But by the time this particular message went to Congress it was Lyndon Johnson. Most legislative messages I'd send him, he'd make a few changes and send back
  • , and me, which I had read to Abe Fortas and Clifford. The next day--or that day, since it was two a.m. in the morning--we had a Democratic leadership breakfast, a bipartisan leadership at 10:15, a meeting of the House Commerce Committee and the Senate
  • to twelve noon. And somehow or another from 12:30 to 12:40 he met just with the Democratic members--he met with the Senate committee people alone. And here Kennedy said to him--Teddy Kennedy--picking up on the [question of whether the] President should ask
  • either national security, or health and welfare, or severe damage to the economy and that he doubted whether a case could be made here. And we talked about the people that ride the airlines, that it really didn't have LBJ Presidential Library http
  • legislation, we had proposed it in 1966. We could not get it out of committee in the Senate because of the fact that Robertson essentially--Senator [A. Willis] Robertson--wanted a gutted bill, and Paul Douglas on the other side wanted a bill that was much
  • from working on legislation. But [in] any case, they thought they'd have a rest, and they get this monumental legislative program. G: Do you think it was largely a desire to mollify the pressure from the civil rights groups and committees that led
  • on the Selective Service Advisory Committee [National Advisory Commission on Selective Service] when we get to that and their report on the problems. I mean I know we got a letter from a bunch of university presidents complaining about--I think [Director
  • of the Defense Department, which the President said he was willing to do if Bob could deliver in advance the majority of votes on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which McNamara was unable to deliver. G: He tried to do that? C: He tried to do that. Yes. He
  • on that because of the President. G: Let's talk a minute about the national defense needs. Did this impair the movement of troops? C: By and large [Robert] McNamara took the position that he could go either way. If we wanted the emergency board, he could
  • formed the basis for publications of political organizations. We used to review almost anything in the domestic area that came out of the Democratic [National] Committee, or anywhere else. For a brief period of time Jim Gaither went off the payroll
  • , but to commit fifty billion dollars of the nation's resources, not necessarily all government money, but fifty billion dollars, to the project, before he made that decision, he looked to the guy that was on the other side of it, McNamara, to chair the committee
  • in the House. And that made it necessary to keep the moderate Republicans aboard because the southern Democrats still voted very much as a bloc and very much against most of our programs. So we had to have the Dirksens and [Jacob] Javits of the world with us
  • meetings with Fowler and Ribicoff. G: LBJ met with the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee that day, or evening, 6:00 p.m. C: This is a long . . . but this is the first--I mean I'm sure there are internal. B: And you had gotten
  • , financial supporter, of the Democratic Party, or at least the Lyndon Johnson Democratic Party. LBJ Presidential Library http://www.lbjlibrary.org ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT Lyndon B. Johnson Library Oral Histories [NAID 24617781] More on LBJ Library oral
  • to New York to practice law with Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer & Wood, a large Wall Street law firm. F: Did it matter that you were a Democrat by persuasion? C: No. As a matter of fact, I wasn't really either a Democrat or a Republican
  • problem because there were five governors and two or three mayors involved. And we had things like--at that time [Nelson] Rockefeller was governor of New York and [Robert] Wagner was the Democratic mayor of New York [City]. In Pennsylvania, [William
  • , without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest." Something as I recall, nobody really wanted him to stick in. LBJ Presidential Library http
  • the Joint Economic Committee. I mean all of that was--it didn't take much to inspire anger on the Hill because both houses were in Democratic control and both houses did not like the Fed, or Martin's Fed. But there is some point very soon and maybe
  • , as a moral issue. I think he knew, if not exactly, he had a good sense of what it would do to the Democratic Party over time. But he thought these rights were more important than the Democratic Party basically. Crudely put. He never said that, but I always
  • , they wanted a system and put in place a system in which the departments would, at the announcement level, let Democratic senators or congressmen know that a big contract was going to be awarded in their state or district and make the announcement. The Kennedy
  • the agencies were. The lead, in terms of the task force in the government to the extent we had a committee or a group, was in the Commerce Department and was taken by Alan Boyd, who was the undersecretary of commerce for transportation. I got a lot of help
  • was first offered a job over there six months before the one that I took, it was to spend half my time working on the National Security Council staff with Bundy on Latin America. So he knew that and he also knew that I had--in 1964, the Panamanian riots were
  • , and that we were now going to see unemployment below 4 per cent, which had been a dream of Democrats for half a century. But Ackley was worried about the inflationary impact of that. We were also worried about the high cost of wages in construction. If both
  • always do that. In the Democratic [National] Convention in 1968, we could not get Daley to move with the force with which we wanted him to move--not force, but with the presence--or get him to agree to let us bring in the kinds of presence we wanted
  • maintenance organizations and prepaid care in the sixties. You know at that point in time HMOs were regarded as socialists. They were the most aggressive proponents for a national health insurance. LBJ Presidential Library http://www.lbjlibrary.org ORAL
  • the opportunity to speak to him directly about the Pentagon budget. There was language in the National Security Act that indicated they had the right to go directly to the commander-in-chief and he always honored that. I'm not sure every president has. G
  • . Develop them," and what have you. "I'll have a State of the Union [Message], and if there's a Democratic administration after me, we'll be that far ahead." So we went forward and some of the elements of programs involved reorganizations, of which
  • : No, I didn't. I had had very good training from [Robert] McNamara in connection with the supersonic transport in which we had cabinet members on that committee and in which he dealt very toughly with them. And I felt that I was doing what the President
  • -- XXVII -- 2 we were faced with was liberals and liberal editorial writers saying, "Not enough," the Congress saying, "Too much, 2.3 billion is too much," and the southern Democrats also saying, "We're not going to give another tool to desegregate
  • in a place where it would get passed year after year. John Gardner and the people that wanted it in HEW said that the HEW committees--I don't know what they were called then. G: Education and Labor in the House. C: Education and Labor, and Labor and Human
  • that--and those agreements, with the exception of criminal penalties, which we lost in the Senate Commerce Committee, is the bill that passed both houses of Congress. It's the kind of thing-(Interruption) And after that meeting I went over the agreements we'd
  • leadership, collecting statistics, issuing executive orders, revamping all the advisory committees. I have [also included] a large vehicle inspection programs, upgrade the quality of driver education, develop modern police and traffic control techniques, have
  • ,..~. __pLGP.v~r.~~~nt.transportation ·functions. List the pros and cons·crleach. (For example,. should there be a new Department of Transportation, an Inter agency Committee on Regulatory Policies,_ . •• a Transportation Cour·t a_ Transportation Investment
  • .] was chairman, I guess, of the President's Committee on Traffic Safety, and the Hearst papers had made a big issue of traffic safety over the years. G: Did it favor a more voluntary approach? C: Well, they favored a more voluntary approach, but nobody had
  • I probably talked to everybody on the executive committee of the National Alliance for Businessmen to get them to call senators. Fortas was actually quite acceptable to the business community, at least that progressive part of it, Henry Ford and Paul
  • regard to race, color, religion, or national origin, but desegregation, and I quote now, "shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance." The guidelines issued for the 1966-1967 school year, which
  • know he did other things. He said, "Suggested reorganization. The President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity Committee would be terminated and its functions transferred by executive order." I guess we did most of those things. "Equal