Thirty Minutes With…; Hubert H. Humprey

. . . . . I didn't notice it till today, because I was looking at your northern schedule, because I'm going to pick you up up there. Oh, I know why I had it originally. In Los Angeles, 30 minutes with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, can date for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Elizabeth Drew.

Senator Humphrey, I'd like to spend this entire half hour on your positions on the issues and things that you would do if you were elected president. First, throughout the campaign, you've made a number of pledges about things that you would like to do in the areas of housing and jobs and health and age to the elderly and all sorts of things. How would you pay for these programs? Well, could we just take one program at a time? Let's take the Social Security program for the pension. I've recommended a 25 percent increase. That is feasible. The Senate Finance Committee is right now authorizing a 20 percent increase. That will come out of current Social Security funds, plus some lift in the taxable income. I forgot the exact amount of that, but you lift the taxable income. So people pay higher tax, so they pay not a higher rate, but on a larger bite. But I also recommend a third of the total Social Security benefits to come out of general

revenue. I think that's what we have to lead ourselves to, that has to be the way that we cut back on what I consider to be regressive employer and employee taxes, because those taxes are getting to be almost prohibitively high. I've also laid out a program for what we would call the the welfare recipient. That is to provide for those on old age assistance a minimum of $165 a month and $250 for a couple. We've added up all the costs of the Humphrey welfare program, all costs including training, increasing in the Social Security benefits, increases in the old age assistance, the federalization of welfare for the blind, for the death, and the family assistance program in its first year. And I think that some total that we came up with is something like $16 billion.

Now, that- I added it up too, and maybe it's that first year that you've thrown in there that makes such a difference, because you're talking about a $3,000 minimum income for a family per person, and that comes to- I checked too with a Senate Finance Committee, I guess, that we're all checking now, and that came to $24 billion itself, and so I added yours up, it came to, you know, about $30 billion when you get it going. Well, if you went after you put all the family assistance sign over the four-year period which we project, but also there's a $7 billion saving immediately that you would have on the present welfare program, so that you start to cut it back. I think that the $16 billion, I think we figured $16 billion 9 is an accurate figure for the first year of the program. First year, but that's not the full- No, by the time it's thoroughly federalized, it will be more than that, that's true. Well, let's go on, but on the general broad picture of the social programs that you have-

Then I have a job program, and it's a specific one, a million jobs in public service employment at the prevailing wages for those jobs in the respective communities, local and county state jobs, there are public service jobs to provide immediate employment, particularly for those that are needy and low income, and the Vietnam veteran, along with 250,000 jobs in the neighborhood youth core for young people. That program prices out at approximately $6 billion, about $6 billion under that is the estimate that we have from the Department of Labor on that particular program. Now first of all, all of these programs generate revenue. You see, particularly the job program, that will generate tax revenue. It is estimated that that job program alone will return to the federal treasury through the multiplier effect, about $2 billion in revenue, so that you really don't come up with a $6 billion program. I think the point that you have to keep in mind is that when you're on old age assistance and when you're on welfare, the most that you can get out of that for revenue is what

happens when you spend the money in the stream of commerce. There is a multiplier effect, it does promote some activity, it does increase jobs, particularly if the money is all expended and it is spent. The job program, however, puts people immediately on the tax rolls and they start to pay back a percentage of that which they receive in their income. And I have an answer to the problem of how we pay for these things. What is that answer? The answer that I've used in my private life, that as my family increased and my obligations increased, I earned more money. And that's what this country has to do. Today our plants are operating at 76 percent of capacity, 24 percent below what they ought to. Today we are saddling ourself with the burden of almost 6 million unemployed that are non-productive people today, with about a million or a million and a quarter what we call hidden unemployed and many under employed. Now when those people go back to work, they will generate billions of dollars in revenues. The first two years of the Nixon administration cost the federal treasury $40 billion in

lost revenue because the country just isn't producing like it ought to. Senator, you've been citing the Brookings Institution and Washington Research Institution in some of your statements and another part of their book, they deal with this question and they say that even with full employment by the year 1975 is the year that they use. With full employment all we will have is a balanced budget because there are so many obligations already. We've spent the peace dividend as they say yes. Well we have so many obligations so there won't be any extra money for new programs even with full employment. So can you really do these things without raising taxes? Well first of all we could and we should try to close and hopefully can the tax loopholes. Now I've given all those qualifiers because I've been in Congress and I know how difficult it is to close those loopholes. Nevertheless I do believe there's a public opinion now that's been created primarily out of this primary campaign because we've talked so much about it to get support for the closing of tax loopholes.

Now I disagree with my associate and the Senate Senator McGovern. He talks about $28 billion with the tax loopholes. I don't think there are that many. How many would you think would you think would you think? About 16 billion. That would be the maximum. And I've checked that out with competent tax experts. I think the $28 billion is a sort of a figment of imagination. I don't think we ought to deceive ourselves and you surely ought not to deceive the public. So you could say that you could close between 10 to 16 billions of those tax loopholes. That's one thing you could do. Secondly I have some other taxes that I would like to change and I have quite a list of them. As a matter of fact I have specifics. I would take the 20% oil depletion and change it down to 15. That would give us about a half a billion dollars. That wouldn't be bad. I also think that we ought to knock out that special tax deduction for the people in the form of asset depreciation. That's the accelerated depreciation. That's worth about four and a half million dollars. This is in addition to your tax you already have for us. Foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations would be taxed just like U.S. subsidiaries.

Capital gains. That's something I want to talk about. The capital gains tax today is really a spectatory tax. I mean you hold your assets what is it six months to a year and you pay 30%. I'd like what they're doing in the state of Israel where they start out at 40% capital gains and you reduce it each month that you hold it after the early after the preliminary period so that you place a premium up on long term or longer term investment and if you hold your investments over a period of say of two or three years then you get your capital gains tax down to 25%. I think that would help. It may be necessary to increase corporate taxes. I think we ought to face up to that. You want an honest realistic answer and I think that may be necessary. What about personal income taxes? If you want to do all of these things that you've talked about and you talk about quite a bit of money for education and for housing and for jobs beyond the job program you described.

We really do those things since we're talking about honest answers without raising taxes on all of us. Well I'm not opposed to deficit financing where it's needed. I think we ought to recognize that. I think the federal budget is as obsolete as an ox cart and I'll tell you why because it is not a capital budget. We ought to have prorated the capital assets that we develop in this country like a business firm does. If AT&T had to pay for all of its telephone services at one time we'd still be communicating with smoke signals. They spread out these costs, these capital costs over a period of 10, 12, 15 or 20 years. I think it's time that we developed in the United States a capital budget where we put in investments into capital assets. We amateurize those just as we do in private business as we do in our own home over a period of time. But this federal government of ours wants to play cash and carry. You'd still be living in TPs if we had cash and carry for home building we have 30-year

mortgages, 20-year mortgages. We have 10-year debentures, 20-year bonds and debentures for the capital assets of large corporations. Don't you think we ought to start to do that in the federal structure? I really believe so. I'd like to ask you about another kind of change in addition to changing the way we think about the budget. That is whether you have any thoughts about how we think about federal programs. We tried a lot of these things in the 1960s of passing programs, setting up new government agencies and issuing guidelines and spending money. Do you want to go on that way or do you have some new thoughts as to ways to get things done in this country? I think the time is long overdue to take a total re-evaluation of many of these programs. I believe there can be much, much better coordination of the programs. I spoke of this when I sought the presidency in 1968. First of all, I would have, if I were the president of the United States, my vice president be in charge of the coordination of all of the domestic programs of the government as

sort of super-capnid official. I'm not really talking about coordination. Well, I want to, well, first of all, let's take a look at what we can do to make the machinery work a little better because there is duplication, there is delay. That's one of the things it's costly. I think we ought to take a great video, a real hard look at the categorical grant programs we have. I think some of them may very well have outlived their usefulness. My general feeling about most of the programs is that they are really underfunded. That goes back again to costs. But we have so many programs that are spread around duplicated programs. Programs that are, well, you take many of our poverty programs as they compare to our office of education programs, the Department of Labor programs, or seems to be overlap. I think that we ought to take a good hard look at that and see if we can bring them together. I'm not an expert on all of this, but I think I know a little bit about running programs I have done so.

Senator, here in California, you have been talking also about the joblessness that might be caused by defense cuts and space cuts, which you're opposed to. But I've been wondering, is the logical extension of that that we can't ever change these industries from wartime to peacetime activities? On the contrary, in fact, I am a co-author of a reconversion program in the Senate of the United States, which ought to have been acted upon, which would have had training for those persons that come out of the aerospace industry and hopefully location in the new industry. I think that can be done. But what do you think we ought to start? We ought to start. And we ought to have started in 1969, and that's when Senator Humphrey as president would have started. We had, by the way, in the previous administration at Task Force, on conversion or reconversion. And we had set up the mechanism, for example, to take R&D funds, research and development funds that were, let's say, in the aerospace industry that were not all needed there because of changes in that aerospace program, to put them on over into mass transit, to put them

into systems analysis for our cities. Let me give you an example. There's been no real new research done on water and sewage treatment for 50 years. Well, what about you? And why not put some money into it? Why not take these scientists that are over there in the aerospace industry and put them on environmental projects? Many of them are only right today on research and development for aerospace. They're not really actually producing great things. They're on research and development. Let's put those people on over there and make the transfer rather than throwing them out and having a Ph.D. that has 10 years of service in the aerospace industry driving a cab. That's why I was wondering. Your statements in California seem to suggest that these changes don't have to be made. Oh, no. That's not what they've been. What I have said is that as you cut back on defense, at the same time you're making those cuts, don't satisfy yourself with the year of unemployment compensation, do some advance planning in the process of closing down bases, closing down production of weapon

systems, closing down if you have to. I mean, if you have to do this, closing down ship your- Do you have to do it? Some we do, but some not. I don't believe that you approach a budget with what I have said quite candidly a meat axe approach. I do not think that is sensible. And by the way, the overwhelming majority of the members of Congress, and there's some rather wise people there, they're really quite well informed, and they're interested in this country. They have to face the electorate every two years, many of them. And all the senators every six years, they're not anxious to waste money, but they know that the meat axe approach of a percentage across the board cut just is not the way that you do a job in cutting defense. And they also know that cuts into the muscle of defense may very well play you somewhere along the line. I am a defense cutter. I voted to cut defense, but I want to put everything in relationship to somebody else. Everything is relative.

The only reason that we have 11 to 1200 ICBMs is because we think we need it because the Russians have a certain number. And the way we should cut them back is when we can both cut them back. That's the way we cut back the ABM. We stopped nuclear testing. That's the way we did that. We both stopped nuclear testing. We both signed a non-proliferation agreement on nuclear weapons, technology, nothing that is basic into the fiber of our defense. We have enough to destroy Russia several times over, and you wouldn't cut back on any of that. That is a slogan and a phrase that I've used now that you're using. I thought the Brookings people say too. That's true. It's a deterrent. Yes. It's a deterrent. And thank God that it is. The advantage of the nuclear weaponry is that it's so horrible that sane people hopefully would never want to use it. But it is a deterrent in nuclear weaponry. It is not necessarily a deterrent in terms of other kinds of political pressures or other kinds of activities which the Soviet Union could engage in. Let me give you a good example of this.

Let's assume that our six fleet is cut in half. Do you assume that that? Let's assume that six fleet is cut in half and that the Soviet Union decides that it's going to move on Israel. Now it might very well do it if our six fleet is cut in half. And then what would we do? We have one or two one of two responses either to tuck tail and get out or to start using nuclear weapons. Thank you. Would the Soviet fleet do to Israel? Well, let's say that they decided to make an amphibious landing in behalf of their loyal ally, the United Arab Republic. That could happen. Soviet sailors going out. Yes. That could happen after all American sailors went into Lebanon. You know, they may have our habits. They're saying they're seeming to get along with us pretty well these days. They're a super power. And I think the reason that they don't do some of these things is they see that balance of power there. And they do not. The Russians are not mad men. They're not going to do something that they don't think that they can get by with. They respect power.

Now, I happen to believe that the purpose of our military is not to use it. But the purpose of our military is to protect the peace, not to engage in the war. And I want to see mutual disarmament. I am a strong arms control disarmament man, a record of over 15 years in this field. And may I say with a record of performance accomplishment, not just speeches. May I move on to a couple of other questions that I also did put the Senator. The government last week about things that I think a lot of people would like to know about anyone who might become president. And one is, who are some of the people that you would bring into government with you, either as advisors or an important cabinet positions? Individuals? Yes. Well, at this stage of the game, I think that would be rather foolish to talk about, I might say, to be honest with you or rather unnecessary unfortunate, because after all, you start mentioning names here and somebody else says, well, how come I got left out? So you'll have plenty of positions to appoint a lot of people, too.

But these are important and powerful jobs, and I think that people are concerned about who might take them and think that maybe they'd like to know more about this when they choose someone to be president. I would be more concerned than those that would be watching me because the presidency depends upon the quality of people in a sense here around him. And I want to weigh every one of those options and those appointments with meticulous care. I don't believe that the man who seeks to be president of the United States had said on this program or anyone else, any other program, and pick his vice president as some people do before he ever gets through the convention. And then have to say later on, if it didn't work, well, I didn't really mean it, or humiliate the person that you're talking about, or to pick his secretary of state, I can tell you that had I been elected in 1968, that some of the people that I would have been keenly interested in would have been a man, for example, of that time as like Cyrus Vance in a post as possibly the Secretary of Defense because of his unique abilities both in diplomacy

and defense. I happen to think that there ought to be some interrelationship there. I had a great respect for Clifford and still do. And George Ball, these are people of an older school now. But I want to be able to- They were figures in the Johnson administration. In the Kennedy administration, but I would want very much to take a look at the talent of this country. And to see in business, let me tell you where we would draw from. We would draw from different ethnic groups in America. I've been not playing games with it. I think it is an outrage in this country that we think we're doing somebody a favor when we reach out and touch a black and say, would you serve in the government? Or a Chicano, Mexican American, would you serve? There are qualified people by the hundreds and thousands amongst these that can serve in many positions of government. The most important appointment the President makes are not in his cabinet to the court because the court makes law that you can't repeal.

And I said in 1968, that's what you were voting on. You were voting on justices to the Supreme Court. Well now we're talking about 1972 and we are talking about important jobs. Are there any- You mentioned some? Are there any other people that you've thought about that you might want to have around you or you'd want to listen to? Yes, I have and I'm going to keep them to myself. The another thing people do want to know about, aside from that, even though you want to keep it to yourself, is who you would choose, who anyone would have as their vice president. I think we've come to realize this is a very important position. What do you think of the view that people ought to know more ahead of time, who this person might be, and have a voice either through the convention, through the delegates, in who this person might be? I think that the convention will have a voice. I believe this is a different convention. And that's why when reporters say, who would you pick for vice president, I think they forget the times in which we live, that's old politics, very old politics. And people that go around picking vice presidents are guilty of old politics.

You might make a recommendation to a convention. But recognizing that Adelaide Stevenson recognized in 1956 that the convention is going to have something to say about it. This will be an on-bossed convention. It may even be somewhat unmanaged because there are many, many new delegates. If they reform, delegate selection reform goes through as it is going through. We're going to have young people, people of different racial groups. We're going to have 50% approximately women. This isn't going to be like it used to be. And I think the convention is going to have a great deal to say about who will be vice president. I think that's a good idea. Well, you say you would just put one name to the convention that would be fairly persuasive. Well, not necessarily. I would surely, in 1968, I didn't hastily move on the vice presidency. And I didn't pick somebody that was well known. And I didn't recommend somebody that had great political power or that came from a state that could give me if umpteen electoral votes.

All those stories that you were considering Senator Harris also towards the end, were not true? No, that's not true. Would not true? No, that is not true. When had you settled on Senator Muskie? About me. That may. Well, this is June. Have you any thoughts about who it might be? No, because I hadn't mentioned then in me who it would be either. Why shouldn't people know? Because first of all, I am not the presidential candidate, Liz. That's number one. But you might be. Yes, I might be. And that will be in July, and we'll have plenty of time to think about whom we'll want to put in the cabinet if and when the good fortune of victory comes our way. And I think you'll also have time to make your selections on vice president, your recommendations. Oh, I could think of a mighty good list of people that would make your good vice president. But you don't want to share it with us now? The reason I don't want to share it with you now is that it seems to me just a little presumptuous in my part to think that I will be making the final choice on the one hand. And secondly, I think it's cheap politics.

Because I've gone through these primaries and each state I find somebody that's running for office. Well, I think it should be governor asked you when you're in Florida. When it's in, when it's in Ohio, it's Gilligan. And when it's in Pennsylvania, it's Shap. Well, now what kind of nonsense is that? This degrades the office and I think degrades the people. I prefer that you get your nomination and have hopefully in mind of what you consider to be the qualities that you would want in a vice president and then be prepared to ask that person if he or she would be willing to serve and then if to consult with people at the convention to see whether it would be received well. I'd like to ask you a couple of other questions about things you've talked about in the campaign. You used to be quite a champion of foreign aid and now you're critical of it. What's happened? I'm critical of bilateral aid, primarily because the world has changed a great deal. We're not the only country with money. In fact, our dollar has been devalued. Our balance of trade is unfavorable.

Our balance of payments deficit, which used to be a matter of grave concern, is now at the highest peak it's ever been. It's over 30 billions of dollars. You should have a bilateral as opposed to multilateral. I do. I do. I do think that multilateral, first of all, multilateral incorporates others into the mix. We don't take on the whole load of it. That's number one. Secondly, it is less political because it is operated on a banking principle rather than political preference. Are you still for foreign aid? I do believe that there ought to be a degree of foreign aid. I also believe that others must share in it and share in it very generously. For example, I want to see the Japanese share in the in the Eastern, in the Far East, much more than they're doing. I think our German and French allies, for example, in the Western Europe can do an even better job. They do a pretty good job. The French do bilaterally with their former colonies. Another area I wanted to ask you about was civil rights. You know, quite a champion of civil rights bills in the Senate. And aside from busing, which I'm not asking you about, I haven't heard the subject very

much in this campaign. Is that because you think the problems largely solved opportunities for months? The law aspect, I think, is somewhat solved, I believe that we have good body of law today on civil rights. What do you think remains to be done? The practices in the academic community, in corporate life, in radio and broadcasting, and the upgrading of people who are in minorities and jobs in government. As president, what are the things you would specifically push for? First of all, in the civil service, I would push for a much better upgrading system of people and a larger number, may I say, of people of different ethnic groups, not just blacks. I mean blacks, people that are the Mexican-American, people of other ethnic groups. I found as I've traveled at a number of people from Eastern Europe, for example, in Southern Europe, feel that they're quite excluded from the higher consuls and the important positions of government. I would also do something else. I would call in the corporate managers to the White House in a kind of a special civil rights conference and say, listen gentlemen, get with it.

It isn't satisfying the policy of this government for you to just have a large number, a substantial number of people working in the steel mills, a common labor. We want to see the power structure a little bit better. We are not only a little bit appreciably better, and we would like to see upgrading supervisors and so forth. And I'd like to see that for women. I think that there's been far too little discussion in this campaign about equal opportunity for women, for women's rights. I have been an author of the Equal Rights Constitutional Amendment, and I haven't heard people really talking very much about it. I think the time is at hand, for example, to break the bias of the academic community on women. That's where it ought to start. There are very few deans that are women, very fall to few full professors, all to few presidents of colleges and universities and vice presidents. Let's get them up there where they belong. They're very good teachers and good administrators. And if you set the practice at the academic level, it may very well infiltrate into the social

and political economic structure. And anything else for blacks that you would feel needed to be implemented if you were president? Well, positions, as I said, in government, in the power structure, surely a much better program in what we call the Small Business Administration, Minority Enterprise, not just for blacks, but for Chicanos and Mexican Americans. That's a pittance what they have today. What about jobs? What about the unions? Oh, yes. I think that as a president, I would insist upon a greater number of people of all different groups in unions in the building. Senator, we're out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're going out and doing well here. 30 minutes with Democratic Senator Hubbard H. Humphrey of Minnesota, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, an unedited, unrehearsed interview with Elizabeth Drew. This has been a production of N-PACT, the National Public Affairs Center for Television.

75 minutes.