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it's b no problem the petition a record one hundred and eighty six billion dollars budget submitted to congress this month washington for everything wardens point of view of the beale reports on the truth and finance companies or some top of old musicals because the video review upstairs of the posters in newport for the final four be visible right that's a philosophy of a presidential cabinet officers
he's been this week president johnson submitted his nineteen sixty nine budget to congress it was the largest budget ever requested by a president in the nation's long history a comment from upstairs downstairs bc states president
johnson succeeded in pleasing just about nobody this week when he gave his budget message to the congress the grand total of a hundred eighty six billion dollars hardline conservatives and the increasing invisibility of the old great society alienating liberals you felt that the president was free will in the right places and congressman quickly began yelling for budget cuts and somebody else's that program the administration all but admitted that the budget was written to make wilbur mills happy is locked up lbj is cherished tax increase proposal in the house ways and means committee for six months now but while wanting time for more study mills told tv al he was still dubious about the need for more taxes even the president seem that happy as he observed we cannot do everything we would wish to lbj later hinted he might need more than the seventy nine point one billion dollars he had asked for difference that was a figure by the y which one pentagon official admitted was probably the largest single some of money ever asked of any body why anybody in the history of the world
seemingly huge increase in the grand total of the budget from last year was mostly number magic budgets have usually been added up in three different ways and the smallest figure the administrative budget was a once served to the public this year unified budget which is basically the old administrative budget made on us by the addition of a huge government trust funds like social security was this play for the public ironically while the total is larger the budget deficit which now represents the actual amount of money the government plans to borrow a three point eight billion dollars smaller under the new unified system but whatever the addition the budget is still largely a collection of choices on how to spend money and you can learn a lot from we usually perusal for instance the supreme court needs an automatic elevator and the administration expects more counterfeiters more strikes unless hurricanes next year the administration also seems to think that the nation needs a supersonic transporter point
more the new college buildings president said such parties but the budget you're director is a man who transformed the rhetoric into numbers for the congress to chew on to begin our review of the nineteen sixty nine budget bart roland financial editor of the washington post asked outgoing budget chief charles schulz how this budget was made mr shortz how i'm going to say it wasn't you first got a fix on what the overall global number in this budget would be what and whether there's anyone date night and you for that but i would suspect that some time perhaps last july in that period just what is the process to the agency's company you with a number and then do you inevitably analyst cut it not really our last that's part of it actually we start on a budget as soon as we finished the prior
the budget for the fiscal year nineteen sixty nine the year beginning july one forthcoming july one sixty eight that would've went to the congress on monday january twenty nine immediately the budget bureau begins planning for the fiscal nineteen seventy budget the budget beginning july one nineteen sixty nine was eighteen months away ironically part one we send out to each agency almost a major issue for him not all the details but the big things that we think will be important in the budget or nineteen seventy has gone up they in turn them have between now and mid summer to concentrate on evaluating those major issue then ah on the basis of discussion back and forth with the agency we give them some time in august or september planning figure for the next
budget a rough pretty rough complaining think then that detailed process of examining their budgets of mission start financing that starts or early october would you say that this is really an austerity budget as was suggested the president's message that the first point out that anybody who has to work on farms this particular budget the fiscal nineteen sixty nine but who was tougher than most because the room for maneuver was smaller first we have a fairly large amount of expenditure increases due to defense or the various mandatory payments we must make at the same time with all the total increase in expenditures to the minimum possible that those two constraints meant that it was a very difficult logic to put together the parties were very rugged that would appear from a close reading of the budget that many programs
that we used to call the great society have been trimmed for example education as nitro that one of the reasons that health education and welfare secretary carter resign was because of his disappointment with the education budget it's obvious implicit in all agencies ever fully satisfied with his body if he were that either here i should have been fired but a very job of the budget director to cut an agency had to obviously a dreaded offenders over us secretary carter himself has indicated publicly on a number occasions that this was not because of his resume with respect to a great society or major social programs of the federal government is true and fiscal nineteen sixty nine they will increase look my lesson than the prior year's only anonymously this in perspective let's take for example the budget of the department of health education and welfare leaving out the trust funds a social security and medicare trust fund that has gone from something like four million
dollars in nineteen sixty one the six billion dollars in nineteen sixty four to fifteen million dollars in nineteen sixty nine and now the jig the job from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty nine was indeed a massive increase in our social programs although from sixty eight to sixty nine or increased load they're saying is true for example with the federal government's polar dictation budget it went from about three billion dollars in nineteen sixty one for five billion dollars and sixty four were between sixty four and sixty nine it's going to open so that the large increases the rate of increase has slowed down necessarily because of our fiscal problems this year schultz is predecessor as budget director kermit gordon is now president of the brookings institution we asked him to look closely at the new budget and find out what we're getting for our money last monday the president sent to congress his new budget calling for government
outlays of a hundred and eighty six billion dollars in the next fiscal year that is a hundred and eighty six with nine zeroes after it was people listing a number like that become glassy eyed and quickly turn to the sports pages understanding the budget is not easy but i'm going to say what i can do in the next few minutes to make a little more comprehensible first what is the budget of the united states one answer is that it's a book of some five hundred and fifty pages about the size of a solid historical novel with considerably less gripping there's also an appendix the size of a manhattan telephone directory which i earnestly are just a way from a fairly simple suddenly today's digest called the budget and brief which the government printing office would be happy to sell you for thirty five cents mr foreman answers to say that the budget is the president's detailed plan for the conduct of the us government for the fiscal year starting next july first or perhaps more accurately with a combination of a plan the forecast some kind of government expenditures can very well be
planted because they'll be determined by events the government really can't control very well at least in the short run for example social security benefits the right to beneficiaries are set by laws already on the books now the next year will have to pay them what they're entitled to under the law so the government expects to spend next year on social security is really more a forecast of a plant but there are other kinds of expenditures on which the government can exercise discretion as to about like the school lunch program or support of medical research remember our training programs the new plan even for the ear immediately ahead looking at the budget this way you get the following breakdown of every five dollars the government spends it spends a little more than two dollars on national defense a little less than two dollars on relatively uncontrollable civilian programs and one dollar on relatively controllable civilian programs when congressmen get down to work on the budget it is this last dollar a controllable civilian expenditures that will engage their closest
attention and i were to look at the budget is to say a better plan and forecast on two different levels the first lady called the aggregate level we understand now that government spending and taxing decisions influence the amount of goods and services with the economy produces a rate of economic growth the level of employment unemployment rate of price inflation about the payments the second level has to do with the size and composition the federal budget quite apart from the effect of the budget on the stability of the economy is very important to know how much the federal government is taking of the nation's total output and what the people of the united states are getting for the money the federal government spends these are the questions let's look first at the federal budget and brothers dimensions how much money as a hundred and eighty six billion dollars people sometimes try to answer the question by calculating how far a hundred and eighty six billion that would stretch in the form of one dollar bills placed end to end this is fine if you enjoy are at the tip of the examples not
very illuminating most meaningful way to answer the question is to relate hundred and eighty six billion dollars to the size of our economy mr special product measures the dollar value of the goods and services which the nation produces each year the next fiscal year are gnp will be somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred and seventy billion dollars therefore federal spending next year will be about twenty one percent of gnp of those twenty one percent about three percent represents the cost of the war in vietnam and eighteen percent represents everything else the federal government does mama's side of this eighteen percent figure has been fairly stable over the last decade it will actually be a trifle lower next year than it was a decade ago but adding back the cost of vietnam with twenty one percent figure is a little higher than we were accustomed to people sometimes miss understand this calculation and conclude that the federal government is observing twenty one percent of the goods and services which the nation producers this is not so far the government expenditures
represent goods and services like aircraft in the pay of government employees apart represent simply a transfer of purchasing power to particular groups in the population like a veterans' pensions or grants for state local government the actual amount of current production used up by the federal government namely an actual defense is about one hundred billion dollars or about eleven percent of gnp there's also been a fairly stable figure over the years even including vietnam is just about the same now as it was a decade ago so that relationship of spending to gnp has been so stable when we all know that federal expenditures been rising rapidly in recent years the answer of course is that our economy has also been growing very rapidly there's a striking illustration after the united states and soviet union the economy or west germany is the third largest in the world between nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty seven the growth in the american economy exceeded the total size of the
economy west germany the productivity of the american economy in nineteen sixty seven was equal to the productivity of the american economy in nineteen sixty one plus the productivity west germany to sustain growth in the nineteen sixties in an astonishing and unprecedented the fellas all the many critical problems which they set the nation at home and abroad that will have to be because we lacked the will or the intelligence to solve certainly do not like the money or the resources yuan will be getting for the hundred and eighty six billion dollars that the president wants to play out next year the budget calls for expenditures on national defense of about eighty billion dollars it's about forty three percent of the total budget across the war in vietnam was about twenty six billion dollars of this eighty billion dollar total and expenditures for national defense next year up about three and a quarter billion dollars over the shear quoting an increase of a bit in the quarter for vietnam apart from vietnam there other important developments in the
defense program for example the budget proposals that we begin to buy the hardware for the sentinel anti ballistic missile system which is designed as a safeguard against the predicted chinese nuclear capability also on top of our former half billion dollar civilian space program the defense budget calls for a substantial expansion our military space program the budget anticipates expenditures for social security medicare and other social insurance programs of about thirty eight and half billion dollars up about for a quarter billion dollars over this year they defended years ago for another twenty one percent of the budget next year's increase results from a growing number about a fisheries from a higher benefits which take effect this year and the rising cost of medical care next interest on the national debt accounts for expenditures of fourteen a half billion dollars up nearly a billion over the preceding year spending and landing on agriculture including food aid don't involve countries will come about
seven billion dollars of about half a billion over the shear this account for about four percent of the budget not you stop right here remarkable facts then sell when you have a forty three percent of the budget which represents national defense for the twenty one percent which represents social security and related programs to the eight percent which represent interest on the national debt the four percent which represents agriculture related programs you find that you've already accounted for three quarters of the total federal budget has another remarkable fact carol outlays next year will be ten point four billion dollars higher than that here if you add together the increase in defense the uncontrollable increase in social security and related programs the uncontrollable increasing interest payments and the increase in agriculture and related programs you get a total increase in these categories alone about nine billion dollars if you add to that the billionaire half dollar pay increase for civilian and military government employees which is already been voted by congress you know total of about ten and a
half billion dollars which is just about equally overall increase in the budget therefore the rest the budget passed to consist of offsetting increases and decreases their relatively modest increases of two hundred million dollars for education five hundred million for health of the medicare two hundred million for labor and men are training programs a hundred million for the poverty program hundred million for housing and community development your car balanced by number proposed reductions for example cuts in merchant ship construction subsidies construction of new government buildings small business loans housing loans in the space program so much for the details if we step back from the budget and privacy as a whole what can we say about the senate alongside our gross national product it's pretty clear to me that the budget doesn't over strained economy just as obviously however put great strain on the present this program was caught between the upper millstone of high and rising defense expenditures and major
uncontrollable cost increases and another millstone of the house of representatives stridently demanding a rock bottom budget as it's praise for consenting to the tax increase with which the president seeks to combat inflation and strengthen the balance of payments in between were some of the high priority domestic programs which have the misfortune to be control these include aid elementary secondary in higher education poverty program the attack on air and water pollution not a lever cut back but neither really boosted significantly other urgent domestic programs were raised by larger amounts but by less than the gravity of the problem the man's for example men are training programs the reconstruction of our urban slums it would've been a better budget my judgment if another two or three billion dollars could have been found to invest in this sector of course total plant expenditures might've been raised by this but there's a better way
the better way is to run the programs in the budget which are not worth what they cost often because they long outlived their usefulness there many set deadlines on the budgetary tree they can be found on the programs at the defense department agriculture terrier labor veterans and other federal agencies president johnson and other presidents before him have tried to get rid of some of these obsolete activities or at least to trim them back sharply but they have been singularly unsuccessful the clientele would benefit from these programs are very comfortable with things as they are and they have strong allies in congress next year's budget again proposes cutbacks in several such programs in addition the president again asks that the barge lions which use our inland waterways the heavy trucks would use our highways and the business and pleasure aircraft which use our airways services be required to bear their fair share of the cost of providing these very expensive
facility on past performance the likelihood is that all of these reform recommendations will sink without a trace when they read coverage and this is the great misfortune of this budget and every recent budget our inability to divert funds from a low priority uses to make more fully the vital needs of the urban society in crisis deciding how to spend depends a great deal on how much money is available we asked for answers about your professor of political economics at harvard to evaluate the economic thinking behind the nineteen sixteen on budget as kermit gordon pointed out the budget does only in part a program for spending money on public tasks it is also the president's plan for avoiding boom and bust for keeping total public plus private spending for goods and services is growing in step but the potential of the economy to produce goods and services there are two important ideas here potential output and
totally match potential output is the maximum output of goods and services the economy is capable of producing at in the fishing business like level of operation with factories operating at about ninety percent of capacity and with unemployment at a little below four percent about what it is now the figures are interesting in nineteen sixty seven gross national product or actualize but was seven hundred and eighty five billion dollars some thirteen thousand five hundred dollars per household potential out was even though she'd great during the last few years after correcting for potential output has been growing at about four percent to hear the result of the growth in the labor force and factories and machines and research and development at this rate i'll put them real national income can dabble in a little over
eighteen years in nineteen sixty seven real output was in fact somewhat more than twice what it was eighteen years ago the second concept we must focus on his vocal the map or total spending for goods and serve it it is to some spending for personal consumption us business investment and equipment and inventory of the spending on a house building less government purchases of goods and services in real terms as measured in nineteen fifty eight prices global demand in the last twelve years has a haven like this a major objective of the budget is to make double demand come as close as possible to potential help if total demand for sharp we were suffered the ways of idle factories and machines that waste and tragedy of idle men and loss of billions of dollars worth of wages and profits
during the late forties and early sixties we squandered in this way as much as forty to fifty billion dollars per year potential in the depth of the depression in nineteen thirty three total demand and i'll put felt less than seventy percent of potential with twenty five percent of the labor force after work if totally man runs ahead of potential output we'll have too much money spending chasing not enough good with little extra output and the much faster rising prices and trouble with the balance of the central and politically hopeless proposal in the president's budget is for a temporary ten percent surcharge on the perfect axis of corporations and the income taxes of individuals with an exemption for the lowest income family for sixty eight everyone would calculate his taxes on the old faces a band at ten percent of the result on pop actually seven point five percent for individuals since
they're starting date would be a pro the judgment that lies behind this recommendations fully spelled out in the economic report of the president and of his council of economic advisors that judgment is that during the next year and how global demand will run radio ahead of potential but with a strong pull on prices unless we increase taxes but all these mr budgets and economic report also telling me about these proposals and assuming some easing of credit by the federal reserve the total private and public demand will grow between sixty seven and sixty eight by about sixty billion and that this increase will be just enough to keep up with potential all but with unemployment remaining a little under four percent and factories operating just a little closer to capacity than today but not so much as to accelerate inflation whatever one's judgment about the rightness of
this i myself think that by and large it is the reasonable and prudent package in terms of the overall impact on global demand app stat i'd make the tax increase of a little smaller makeup one's mind it is important to distinguish between three quite separate kind of question first questions about the underlying forecast and how the economy is likely to move if the president's proposals are adopted second questions about tactics and shared value judgments about the underlying goals and by art on the forecast it's a highly technical business it is enough to say that while the future is uncertain and good forecasting calls for both technical skill and judgment the economy as a whole and like the stock market from day to day moves slowly and regularly enough for us to make reasonable
judgments about the prospects for the next six to twelve month given of course are working assumptions about the budget and monetary what's in this instance having gone through the evidence i would not want to bet much money against the forecast the president's economists certainly no one should do so without carefully studying their reasoning and if we're not ready to bet that their forecast israel we have no choices a community but that without as regards to forecast if not necessarily their particular prescription there is no way we use or the government panel voted playing the future when deciding on spending and tax the question is only are we going to do so blind or with our eyes open on the basis of careful analysis oran hot as a community we have no way to send it out on tactics important clue is to stay on our
toes in ways on the lookout for new evidence for instance it is quite possible especially if the congress acts on the pack tax increase so that by late sixty eight or early sixty nine the risk of overheating of too much in the past and that the need will be for stimulus rather than the strict for a tax cut and we're more spending and were much easier monday this does not mean that there is no need for a tax increase now the moral is rather that relatively small changes in tax rates which cannot change the distribution of the tax burden should in fact we thought of the government taking an easing of credit and even small changes in spending as the brakes and the accelerator of a car they should not be locked in place but it just didn't quite frequently according to certain extent that leaves the third and most important set of questions involving judgments about goals and priorities the government is aiming
at an increasing global demand of some sixty billion dollars between sixty seven and sixty eight is that the right argot the expectation is that that thirty five billion of that will reflect that throughout the rest will reflect the rising prices of some three plus percent some might say how can the government except that much inflation the answer has to do with the alternative we could put a much tied the lid on prices from steele high attacks raids and neurologic cutting government spending and much tighter money but we would pay a heavy price in terms of less salt ion employment low a real wages and profits and the risk of stalling the economy and the recession one can dislike inflation here prefer the three percent rise in prices especially since they resumed reason to hope that with a tax increase the present burst of inflation largely a
hangover from the period of excess the nineteen sixty five and sixty six will slow down by the end of the year but this does involve a question of value important point is that we must make up our minds in terms of the two choices and consequences it is easy to be against zimmerman forward to but it usually begs the question as has recently been said about another much more painful problem the color of truth is gray a second issue touching on values concern is the argument about low spending as against higher taxes some will say we can have a target for doggie man without increasing tax rate by cutting much more of government spending the premise is true but the usual conclusion that cutting government spending is better than raising taxes it's very much a matter of priority a natural dislike for paying taxes
not enough to settle the issue taxes and spend being our instruments not good or bad in themselves when we decide about them we're in effect deciding not only the balance between global demand incapacitate but also about how much of our resources to develop such public pass defense education cities and to helping the poor and the old and the sick and how much to leave for private investment and the personal consumption of people were able to help themselves these choices are among the most important of the music community must make year by year people will disagree about proper balance should be we have no alternative but to compromise these differences to our politics but one thing is pie and we have to make these choices wisely we must not be governed by arbitrary rules about what the government can afford it existing tax rates or bike cliches about the evils of taxes and public spending and government
inefficiency rather we must debate the choices for what they are the dividing up of scarce named among various important public uses on the one hand and private use has on the other as a footnote in the face of complaints about high taxes it is important to point out that the president's program does not call for an absolute reduction impersonal after tax income or in private consumption or private investment correcting for inflation rio out with an income will grow between sixty seven and sixty eight by about thirty five billion dollars and that the government's proposal about retiring for a billion of this thirty five would be absorbed by extra federal purchases some four point nine billion by extra state and local government purchases this would leave some eight billion for extra private investment and nineteen billion for extra personal consumption despite the increasing tax rates personal income after taxes
would increase over sixty seven by just under twenty one billion dollars in realtor with real after tax income more than twice what it was twenty years ago and some thirty percent higher than in nineteen sixty twenty seven percent higher per capita we could well afford to significantly larger expansion in various public programs and the president has proposed to avoid an excessive growth in total demand this would require still larger increases in taxes it didn't matter matter what we can't afford rather it is a maduro we as a very rich community with a minority that is still very poor want and need for a decent and a humane life he continues with
sort of these reports dozens of new york's upstairs downstairs you know video resumes with the point of view of edward p morgan in
washington the administration maintains we are fighting in vietnam among other things to preserve a first line of defense against the cops convulsive current events indicate we may not have our eye on the proper ball for example the advisory commission on governmental relations warns our national security is deeply threatened at home by something that has nothing to do with comics it reports the american system of government as on the verge of paralysis virtually unable to cope with the country's towering internal problems on assignment in chicago last week this report lives two aspects of the domestic crisis wraps and water pollution some valiant officials federal state or local are wrestling with these problems but bureaucracy politics the shocking lack of public outrage plus the massive diversion of attention and resources to the violence of vietnam are withering their effort so they may be getting farther than normal
but they are certainly not getting anywhere fast enough take chicago's rat patrol the city began an extermination program in nineteen fifty two when he didn't get off the ground until the summer of nineteen sixty five when angry residents of the slums and civil rights militants threw dead rats at city hall chicago now spends two billion dollars a year on rodent control but the key figure is this the city has collected a total of only fifty nine thousand dollars in fines from landlords for a building code and cleanup violations why because in chicago has nearly everywhere it's harder to punish away word landlord and the light his tenants supper which translates as far as the protection of private property is still more important than the protection of people this unfortunate action could hardly be more clearly reflected within the fall turgid waters of lake michigan on an inspection cruise aboard the
coast guard cutter arango even my untrained eyes the nostrils could detect a poison into of the lakes most polluted spots helmut an indiana hovers between chicago and they're there for years due on those oil refineries and municipalities and dump their waste into the lake control has barely begun under new federal anti pollution laws interior secretary you'd alcala for state enforcement conference in chicago it opened last wednesday the only governor to show up was otto kerner of the loan or the hopes michigan's governor romney was on other urgent business indiana's governor running and had local commitments wisconsin's governor knowles went off to israel back now used to belatedly to appear to answer charges that wisconsin under pressure from paper mills and the dairy industry has been dragging its feet on the whole pollution problem the conference nevertheless has already been an eye opener experts
not gratify lake erie as that lake michigan is on the verge of but can be saved though dr donald baumgartner of government specialist testified that if all pollution of lake michigan stop tomorrow it would take one thousand years to make it really sweet the johnson administration is not without full year its policies had been touting its funds have not matched the promise is to help states and cities get on with a staggering job coupled with other problems it makes the situation awfully night for a gi from vietnam to come home to that the shape of this observers point of view is our ally thank you
i did as
cc now to washington for a report on the progress of truth in lending legislation from real reporter elizabeth former that very important person the consumer won a surprise victory this week over the lobbies of the merchants and bankers the house of representatives passed a truth in lending bill without loopholes if the senate let's expand the result will be the most important consumer legislation since the federal food drug and cosmetic act of nineteen thirty eight today the cost of borrowing money or buying on time is described in
bewildering variety credit charges need not be stated in percentage for him many buyers don't even know how much they're paying for financing if the bill just passed by the house requires that merchants and lenders include a statement of finance charges at a true annual rate the rate on money actually in use the way businessman and bankers express the price of money it's pretty hard to beat the proposition that borrowers and shoppers should be told the cost of borrowing in plain language the senate did except that general proposition last summer when it passed its truth in lending bill but with two big exceptions the first is called the long tracking poll by its opponents it examines long's an installment purchases where the finance charges a ten dollars or less bankers argue that finance charges in small short term loans are so high one hundred two hundred three hundred percent a year that lenders might drop those loans rather than describe charges that way and so the money lenders argued for people would be deprived of the loans they need but support for the exemption came not from poor people or from
welfare workers it came from the bankers the loan companies and retailers who profit by selling and lending and small amount set high rates and the senate gave them their way the second special exception the senate made was for a revolving charge account credit the big retailers who offer it maintained that their credit charges are better expressed at a monthly rate usually one and a half percent rather than add the equivalent annual rate a whopping eighteen percent amy on a provision designed by senator bennett of utah a former president of the national association of manufacturers two examples revolving credit plans which require the buyer to pay up very fast and the senate passed this special exception to but in the house representatives sullivan submitted a tough bill and when you poll amendments were tacked on to it she took the fight to the floor of the house and defeated them she won partly because of her own zealand the competence of her supporters but partly because the merchants and bankers opposing her didn't present a united front for
example furniture dealers who sell on the installment plan didn't want a big retail stores to get a special deal on revolving credit and at the last minute even a big mail order houses fell into disarray jc penney stuck to its support of the revolving credit new poll but montgomery ward and sears roebuck decided that their credit plans would not fit the standard set by senator bennett and wide mr sullivan that if all plans would not go through the loophole then there should be no new poll better known loophole in one which would apply only to the jc penney plans washington insiders have noted the curious coincidence that penney's washington representative a senator bennett son but there is no reason to suspect impropriety here it's just that father and son have come to perfect agreement that penney's is a model credit the house voted down both the exception for revolving credit and the loan sharking poll the next move is the senate's when it receives the house bill the senate can either accept it or call for a conference where they could put their loopholes into a joint senate house truth in lending bill
if you have a view about what the senate ought to do you might make it known to the chairman of the senate banking and currency committee senator john sparkman of alabama the gilbert says evidence this whitson music and company from the reviews dark horses edition like many other american cities oh yeah i o now
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only yeah i like to be either spoken the rollout of martina powdery snow fall yeah i know that real life is by the color of their union and always have that knock out why the data on every time the line he
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god there's another chair over there oh no thank you i don't hear the dates of the not my boyfriend when our human my boyfriend here beyond when i was i don't want him to have to look for me and this is not their day to day you probably don't recognize me i was on the cover of
popular mccain our left me it means that anybody else in the country and although there's no shortage my goodness there's loads of that was out there just waiting to get their all participants was so darn particular you know well yeah first date excuses himself and then you just disappear is one that
shows me that there's something very wrong somewhere and it's not the old clean house mm hmm ah wow i remember mother used to always say to me he'd say it's not going to be easy
there something very unusual about you you know i think it's a kind of a bright green the fire of like to smokers with at the most me and overheats just too much for him oh no i can't keep up with these computer gadgets we never know when mr wright hispanic turnout in twenty ten is all we'll get together carter lives in the right place this is a relationship thats been very angry
about her the key and franco zeffirelli so when you have already gotten a in my day that bubble on me that one big iran iran got rid of warren they are really knew it do we
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conference room symbolizing the emptiness he leaves behind in government email begins an interview portrait of john bellinger gardner a man for all seasons the johnson administration has suffered bubble ball almost simultaneously with the loss of two of its strongest and most influential members of the cabinet yourself and defense secretary mcnamara do you feel guilty about the circumstances well i really didn't feel i had any choice in building a thing that seemed a proper appropriate for me at this time i feel very strongly that i can continue to be useful the president is for the administration is fully american people a useful in a different way and i don't believe any man as indispensable and i'm really very strong even in the vitality of this department its capacity to move ahead i believe very strongly in maine programs which we've started and i feel that
many years from the day people will look back at some of those programs and say that significant things began here in a way you tell about the punch of this decision to leave the government in our previous conversations when you told me that a man in your position should only remaining and a limited time for a share of losing air fresheners your ideas and your inspiration what would be your recipe for a man thinking seriously about going into government well i think that every individual differs in the jobs that are in it to make a rule but i think it's a current health aid approach to have to say that the willingness to leave one year of usefulness appears to be diminishing is almost a part of the contract with the american people if you're going into a hijab you ought to be willing to get out of it and my
simple about the fall in love with her letters mr secretary feel at the status and general attractiveness of the job and should get in the way of your basic decisions about what you can do usually for the nation security secretary why has john gardner the most successful secretary of health education and welfare ever resigned at such a crucial time he had no raul with president johnson over budget or bullets he is increasingly disturbed about vietnam and the war is a ravenous diversion a vital energy from the urgent job of realizing that legitimate american dream a great society so he returned to the carnegie corp clearly feeling at this point he could be more useful outside
government than in it ranging from the campus of gallaudet college in washington a government school for the deaf through his big and distinctive office and back home the beales conversations with secretary gardner began some weeks ago you've got more than four hours in all this reporter as long felt that casual camera conversations with people in high places that often be more valuable and bagging them so to speak in a headline hunt for hard knew the picture on the tv cameras begins to unfold now in the limousine do well mr secretary as you move to work everyday through traffickers were doing this morning do you ever get the impression that our society is over mechanized well i think we have
a lot of a clearly does not serve the purposes of a better life and he could we do it this technological civilization we can make it work for the american people really want they can achieve but we have never really wanted until very recently to make this a local so we wanted to make a successful society we're striving for greater and greater technology a way to develop large scale organizations we have done everything to move ahead without thinking very much an impact on the individual when you're saying that and i think that this
mailing is just below the surface of the very large number of americans and a great many people are recognizing that the next great challenge is to make the society in which individuals flourish which is a level in which the quality of life that something that your ground ball and that we really keep an open society but it's becoming more and more about how you maintain it i don't know but it's a civilization and technology not only way it poses certain kind of informally but another dimension they didn't have modern manners are more
well you could travel anywhere in the world you can turn on the elevation seven they all kinds of sites and found nothing more you can see more people need more people choose among a much greater range of friends if you want a document written in the sixth century ahead and you can get it from the vatican library a very short time on my home and i have a microphone all kinds of possibilities are open the wire the same technology producing bombs and other dimensions so that we have to have to see that as a characteristic people argue
that it is a necessity is the mother of invention is that otherwise might well i think that certainly this aside a mobilized to sell vast underwater another kind of crisis i don't happen to believe that war needs to be the crisis that mobilize you probably know remember william james's essay on the morally or some kind of moral equivalent of this excitement this challenge this call to action that brings out the qualities and i share that it completely and i happen to believe it only arrived here earlier you said that our society can do anything we really want to do but that poses the question how can two hundred million people but they
themselves and then really get to solving the problem is well it's the i don't really believe you manipulate people into work with motivation there the american people weren't already didn't already have some of these motivations motivations but i believe that the american people really really are prepared to tackle with my job the job that it is the job of the next twenty five years has been a massive effort to to organize our society in a flash allow a great believer in massive effort because you know the man has a problem require any problems than it needs challenges and it needs to want the nation has to want
to be a great civilization want something for the worthy of the things that made that were beginning to see now is that the other well worthy of the efforts of redesigning our feelings reconstructing reviewing this kind of thing now gardner often closets himself behind the door at the end of this hall just to think once months ago after deep reflection he burst outspent the pentagon to report his private worry about the war in vietnam to his friend bob mcnamara recently he hurried the selective service headquarters secretly lectured gen hershey the punitive drafting of protesters was raul a psychologist he is concerned with people there's something quite hopeful when you are insistent belief that people cannot be manipulated
yet ironically enough a lot of rugged individualists believe the government particularly the department are engaged precisely in doing just that if you're manipulating citizens from the cradle to the grave health education welfare and bear they say first of all government impinges on the life of individuals this is the very essence and it runs from traffic lights and speed laws to taxes and everything else you can't have government without some measure of interference in individual lives in the hope is that that interference will first will be minimal and that the extent that it's necessary that it will be designed to give that population generally greater freedom it's a cliche almost a threadbare cliched to say this country is in the turmoil of spastic
social revolution with neat rows reaching out and demanding first class citizenship an ugly war and commitment in southeast asia nobody sees the end of that are we really in a cul de sac for which there is no exit should we stop and strike a perspective you were born about the time of world war one and live through it but what is your perspective well it make me feel like the ancient mariner you'll let me talk like the ancient mariner nato i'm interested in this because my childhood in california saying that made looking back such a peaceful marvelous unrestrained and that's a real existence that one day i talked to my undersecretary about
putting together the social statistics for the period from nineteen ten the nineteen twenties i wanted to see what life was like then in terms of the things that i have to do and now secretary of health education and welfare and well i think that when i was born women were allowed to vote privilege of the american citizen an american citizen and the fame and the challenger was widespread or the rate of industrial accidents was a level of with absolutely shocking any modern corporate executive the death rate from tuberculosis was very very high and now it's a almost like an infant mortality was very
high your chance of surviving your first year of life at that time was was very limited compared to the day are you saying mr gardner part of the pay to play omar says social turmoil today is due to the fact that we are closer to the problems in terms of the necessary solving one of recognize no question about one of the most striking characteristics of our situation today is a greatly heightened awareness of the problems that we face where all acutely conscious of our problems this is certainly true of racial discrimination this is certainly true of poverty certainly true of every field and i do think that they owed at the education of disadvantaged children a dozen years ago very few people working very few people paying attention now i have a very
large number of people concerned worrying about a working on it and they're all frustrated because they can't get more and why we have so much trouble communicating we can both the radio and television signal off of satellite from asia to anaheim california children learn and who buy tv teachers we've got new methods volumes of books yet everywhere i turn as a journalist people say the problem is communicate what's the matter what's the problem well wherein it may just be this big marvelous channels of communication that means that everybody using them and everyone's talking at the top of his voice everyone's bickering and there are a fair number of semi professional computers around and
for a lot of reasons why it's harder to be heard above the elbow but i think there's another and deeper reason and that is that in a time of very rapid change in how one all the landmarks are changing and our whole life situation is changing the technology is moving us in the new world into their vastly different kinds of assumptions behind the messages that create this how people are talking from different premises opponents would say john gardner is what he's really saying is that he's trying to brainwash years and make his ideas supply of our ideas i'm a teacher aren't i think a lot of people who are trying to get something done or teachers of course i want to get my conception of the cross that i wouldn't be a good leader this department if i didn't want to get across to people as badly
and eloquently as possible what we think are doing i wouldn't be a good member the president's cabinet if i were pressing very hard to persuade a lot of people to accept a vision of what america might be that seems to be supremely important what's going to be the effectiveness well education in itself isn't either good or rather mainly you know you can learn to be a crop and you can learn to be a murder or you can learn all kinds of things and intellect unless it's link two character that has the values and the motivation really is and isn't anything there that's going to make a better world out you do link educated count
to motivation and the values then you have something is there a point at which government at whatever level have to stop and say this person is a permanent he can't be educated he can't get useful job is going to remain all his life a burden on society and he thinks it has that casualty and most society since the beginning of man so try to take care of it society insists more and more yes we'll take care of them and we'll take care of these people in more humane way but by its very first of automation is creating more casualties among the very people its pledge to take care how do we break this vicious circle if you list the problems we face you will find that some of the problems on the list of ones that we're creating
as we go out and have problems in relation to artificial organs for example that wouldn't exist if our technology so advanced that we in fact can transplant hartson transplant other organs if we learn to perfect genetic attributes as is suggested by some of the recent experiments this is going to present even more severe problems so when i ran around our problems are in a question that the number one problem long list of peace and this problem will exist whether or not the vietnam war is subtle because we still have the problem of nuclear warfare and a divided world and a very serious question as to how we will get through these years ahead it's not a problem of abolishing tensions between people because those will always exist is a problem of finding the means
love resolving those tensions resolving those conflicts before they said before they destroy everything you come down strong lock on the observation that the american society cannot be manipulated but after observing this town for many years it seems to me that a lot of people come here with high hopes and actually manipulated by the capital itself somehow once upon a time i saw a movie starring jimmy stewart gene autry called mr smith goes to washington it was a story about a midwestern senator coming to town confronting the bureaucracy he had a terribly difficult time to move through a scandal but finally survived and triumphed and presumably live happily ever after nevertheless it seemed to me that an awful lot of people come here with a crusading the field and they got run down by the very bureaucracy itself what's your recipe for avoiding
well it's a first the intimate comment on the jimmy stewart movie and the pattern that that presents obviously artistic their requirements force the movie of focus around one great conflict that the bales and gets resolved in the course of the movie or play or a novel or whatever it is much more a characteristic of washington is an endless series of complex overlapping complex interweaving complex thousands of them every week dozens everyday crises every day so that there is rarely one single confrontation that there's a mixed up with a thousand others this is a town full of purposeful people they all want their way and a lot of other purposeful people fly into town every day and
leave before nightfall and i see most of my impression anyone mom i think one formula for staying fresh earth is too is to lend it about time that you have to stay in the top job at this or i'm not a believer in long terms for people in my position i can speak for any other position in government but i would say that my ear pads that they do have an impact on the department would be increasingly limited as time goes beyond simply because the center later the year the problems that get beyond do or you're impatient with them your patience runs our tolerance or air fresheners are you suggesting something which might be called the platoon that football platoon system of government that when people grapple with a crisis after given like the time a new team should be brought in with fresh ideas
it is certainly true of me that many people i know i know that maybe others with far more in terms of but i believe that if you want to if you want to if you value the resilience and the imagination and the freshness great job you had better assume that that after a while he moves on to something else an iowa and a new person comes in and just make sense to me you want your property three points one for the very heart of the problems of our society one was the revolution of greater expectations seized by the negroes and other minority groups making it necessary to close the gap between desire and fulfill then there was the question of leadership and then you said there
was the problem of the sophisticated prop up what a sophisticated drug used to be that the people who ignored are most serious problems as a nation or who played no role as citizens were people who lack the education or the advantages that would make them more of an informed citizens but today we have a whole new group of people who are in effect not playing any role in not playing any role quite deliberately and i will leave this investigative dropouts in effect what they're saying is that the society is so corrupt that there's no use are even trying and quiet girl patients with this point of view it seems to me the key the world's failings have always been the reason for serious man to go into action and now for people to
say that the world's failings of the reason the dropout the reason to relinquish any effort is really a very ironic and it now the universities today are producing the most brilliant and articulate sidewalk superintendents the country that recently i mean they're great now they just they're in their korean analysts they're marvelous craftsman in their fields but almost to a man there and willing to get out into the vast plenty of action and take the kind of turmoil without which a free society simply will never run as they're unwilling to get out into the situation in which are orchestrating conflicting purposes which are dealing with a given play
a great variety of people none of whom is wholly right amount of whom is really wrong i have the greatest crucial enthusiasm for a bait for the challengers that existed in this country in the early days all my life i've heard california history and the history of the westward expansion with particular interest to perhaps because i'm a westerner and i said it was a very exciting thing much simpler clear or more manageable challenge for human beings nature the danger was clear the nature of the test to be gun was clear the hardships were severe but they were hardships that were understandable understandable and the kind of hardships that did not create inner conflicts
the toughest problems to saar the problems that exist in our own minds you know it's a it's it's easier to do it's easier to fight the wilderness then to fight the ap that prejudice and hatred that you have inside your own and one of the problems to date is that we are coping with these inner problems the problems of relation of man the man that are complex and probably don't really want to face the havoc that long central domestic problem just as peace is there one central problem of all and certainly on the foreign front the one central domestic problem is to do justice to negro americans now this
is a challenge that has been handed our generation and there is no way to escape everything in our founding documents the words on the monuments everything that we say about what they believe says that every person is of value and our ways of dealing with negro americans have said something quite different now that was bound to be a confrontation and it has come has come in our generation and we have to face it will not be solved by hatred or by police suppression it will not be solved by violence in the streets that will not be solved by bitterness it'll only be solved by patient determined effort on the part of the great politically moderate majority negroes and whites who decide that they're going to resolve this problem but again it's a problem inside of this problem in our hearts and minds and that's a much tougher
problem than the people of seventy and seventy six other people are making seventy six had things loving ornate about john gardner is modest home in chevy chase including a live or he seems to write almost as much as he re enjoy simple pleasures babysit for his grandchildren he and his wife are guatemalan avoid the washington cocktail circuit as much as the sect or another were out of the office when you're reviewing a professional secret how do we live i take a kind of statistical view of irritating people in this world are so many of you have to meet your chair and i don't really want to know what i do get tired his sheer volume of dealing with people when i've gone through a working week i've had enough of people and i want to get away from this a very strong feeling that
it's very important to me to get away get some reading done some writing down through some quiet homework and how to recharge my batteries and then i can cope with the puritans of the world from a week an awful lot of people are trapped and read yuri or at least think the grand jury and that's the same thing how the week bring the other fellow around who has been trapped by circumstance and the drudgery joe opened them up and turning law my job a lot of drudgery and hand it to say you're happy in your job happiness isn't really quite the word it's a mean miserable run in kind of a plane ended this year have many times when you're at the end of your patients are
at the end of your rope and what it i think the word is satisfying more than they have been unhappy and i think you can get into a job really that doesn't involve a kind of love if it is then if it is worthwhile of those involved drudgery that involve irritating term things and i have times on the one i really wonder what the answer is i wonder particularly for example in my state our inability to get attached to rise and you know quite frankly that history won't deal kindly with a nation that won't tax itself to curate song misery is a rich nation that one that won't tax itself to cure clare and president ales but they are when you stop to think that this rich and powerful nations
have ranks about thirty in the list of infant mortality rates in the world or twelve nations with lower infant mortality rates than our lowest being almost half ours and our high rate is due to conditions in the poverty stricken segments of our population almost a third of our children live at or near the borderline of poverty now these i can go on citing statistics there are real you can count them the data is available and these problems are there now turning from the pessimistic side and i asked him well what where do we go from here i have to say that the most hopeful sign is that right many americans are now beginning to be acutely aware of the gravity of the problem if we really if we really mobilized the talent and
resources of the society to tackle these problems i've been talking about we can make a tremendous that we could alter the character of our cities it's a delicious temptation to make historical analogies and i have no real basis and in do you think we think of danger we are harrowing declined full of older solutions from which was wrong for him i think that the chief thing that concerns me very deeply the chief thing that worries me that they are the patriots that we talked about on the cleavage of this and this is the this is the thing that upsets me about violence and upsets me about the riots i have had good liberal
friends say to me well of riots in all brought attention of the problem which is true but a very considerable price and further about violence will exact its price to there isn't any possibility of a world without trouble for us for you and for me and probably for our children it was a good kind of a problem of that kind of band a kind of trouble comes from over heels all the major problems of refusal to admit there are problems stagnation dying institutions that won't change people writing their fate in the end insisting on looking backward rather than forward the good kind of trouble comes from too many people being aware they're problems everybody talking at once everybody trying solutions and many of which don't work everybody bickering about what the solutions are and this describes our state of
mind that day where am i very serious permanent and as i've indicated the very worrisome aspects of it but i don't believe that its liking and vitality and in that there is tremendous possibilities if we can keep our heads that we have the stamina and the spying powers of people there's a tremendous possibility we have that that the potentialities better human life that are open to us are so much greater than those that are open to our fathers grandfathers and great grandfathers it would be tragic if we didn't stay the course and it and realize those pensioners back at the huge department of health education and welfare gardner makes it plain he plans even as a private citizen to stay the course with his commitment to society impact on the government had a big impact on the country what do you
think is the most important thing that you can concentrate on the line in these problems are facing in the cities of this country to pollinate discrimination the other numerous problems of our city's problems that it will take many years to resolve but that must be gotten out in a very convincing way immediately because we've got to get a turnaround in the mood of the people i'm terribly interested in the problems of how this nation governs itself i've been right to know that i helped just a reasonably close to it i'm marla never convinced that we need all kinds of grassroots leadership in this country it's perfectly clear that one level of leadership is not going to do the job we need leadership in every city every community in the country we need leadership in all areas of our national life
what about elective office what about as has been speculated that you might be president of some big universally like stanford your alma mater well i mean i will never run for elective office and i've gone too long as a private citizen and that's something that you're getting too early and learn the trade and it's not my trade and i'm i wanna contribute were around really effective hours or universities i really can honestly tell you my information has not been in that direction and i have had a number of friends who have been very strongly urged me otherwise and virginie not making that transition point on nothing looks very bright anywhere in the world today are you discouraged well as a
great saying it's attributed to a gold mine around the west and old timers said they discussed and that never discouraged and i think that said i think it's pretty vague rule i am not discouraged ever once while i'm disgusted but i feel very strongly that this country has the vitality we have the talent we have the resources we have to bring their owners of uneasiness today an incapacity on the part of the country who were playing together on some of its problems but if we welcome can you talk to each other not permit this breakdown in communication which is occurring on the national scene in which everyone so mad and everyone else they want paul communique will keep our tolerance of other points of view and recognize
that there are some things that are so important to all of us but we've got to rise above our differences i think we can see this thing through fact than nominal miscarriage and you're going oh that jimmy stewart's movie mr smith goes to washington might've been an oversimplification of american political life it never was that worries people upstairs of the posters have a different view they say oh i'm sorry me and a poet maybe
see you cme line oh no nineteen eighty nine dave
davies wyoming would be a lie this is it it is our life wayne will you will run in the
fifties it's been it has been the ponies before the prize but he's been
saying it is bad phoebe also of public television station wypr tv in san juan puerto rico celebrating its ten year earlier this week we'll hold the tension the forceful member of the national citizens' gold and what have you are eight eleven and forth committee chairman thomas he has announced that liking as
we reported has been
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Series
Public Broadcast Laboratory
Episode Number
112
Episode
Last Reflections on a War
Contributing Organization
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/516-m61bk17q79
NOLA Code
PPBL
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Description
Episode Description
This episode features segments titled "The President's Budget", an examination of President Johnson's record-setting budget; "Edward P. Morgan's Point of View"; "Truth in Lending", about lending by banks, department stores, and finance companies; "Tom Lehrer Sings 'Pollution'"; "Upstairs at the Downstairs", a live show from New York; and "A Conversation with John W. Gardner", an interview with the Sec. of Health, Education and Welfare.
Broadcast Date
1968-02-04
Asset type
Episode
Rights
Published Work: This work was offered for sale and/or rent in 1972.
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:49:27
Credits
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049747-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Color: Color
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049747-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049747-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2049747-4 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
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Citations
Chicago: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 112; Last Reflections on a War,” 1968-02-04, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 13, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-m61bk17q79.
MLA: “Public Broadcast Laboratory; 112; Last Reflections on a War.” 1968-02-04. Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 13, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-m61bk17q79>.
APA: Public Broadcast Laboratory; 112; Last Reflections on a War. Boston, MA: Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-m61bk17q79