Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 478: The Fall of Bob Packwood (Part 12) The Oral History on Bob Dole (A) - Dole 19

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Episode 478: The Fall of Bob Packwood (Part 12) The Oral History on Bob Dole (A) - Dole 19 · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, this is Randall Wallace, your host for uh Randall Wallace Presents Podcast.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is we've been looking back at the fall and uh career of Bob Packwood, who was the senator from Oregon.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a senator that I admired, and and his fall when I was in my 20s was a real shock to me.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and um he was a person of it was extremely extremely uh bright man, uh intellect, bar none.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was a V go-to guy on the uh the uh finance committee, later its chairman, but he knew the budget backwards and forwards.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've told people you could listen to him on C SPAN and uh he would do the uh tax policy and it would be mesmerized, it would be so interesting.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've been using throughout this uh documentary, it'll probably kind of go out now, um, but Bob Packwood's oral history.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of what you're gonna hear over the next two two shows or things you have heard snippets of throughout our series.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been doing this now.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is our sixth year on the air, and we're getting close to the end of our run with the World War II generation and this era of politics.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I've listened to a lot of oral histories, uh, whether they were on uh Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon or obviously uh uh Reagan or Bush or or Dole.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the best one.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Packwood just he's a great interview.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it just it just when you listen to this interview with this oral history, or you listen to him talk and you remember his abilities on the floor of the Senate, um it just seems such a shame that it ended the way that it did.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: He went on to uh uh to do uh I think he was a lobbyist for a while, and he's done some other things, and um you know, we we you know he had a great career, a a great third career perhaps.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it's kind of sad the way that his Senate career ended.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've said this probably in in in this series already, that I thought the jobs for Georgie stuff was nonsense, the doctrine of the diaries was nonsense, he didn't really do anything outrageous or wrong there.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The the situation with the women, um, he has blamed that on his drinking issues, and I, you know, I wouldn't question that.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just um it was a sad ending.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you all to listen to this because this is some of the most insightful uh oral history about Bob Dole, about the U.S.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Senate, about the the history that he saw.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we thought here as we as we look back on his fall, the scandal that brought him down, and then uh those 24 hours uh that began my journalism career covering that for a little Scottish newspaper that I had been asked because it was the chair of the of the of the College Republicans at the time.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was just fascinating, and I thought no better way to end this mini-series within our season uh on Bob Packwood than from here to hear him talk himself.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now he won't be talking much on the scandal, but to hear him talk about the U.S.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Senate, which he clearly loved, and Bob Dole, he was Bob Dole's right-hand man on the finance committee.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is just a fascinating oral history.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so here's Bob Packwood with Richard Norton Smith for the University of Kansas and the Bob Dole Institute of Politics, uh, looking back on his work with Bob Dole and uh in the United States.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And here's Bob Packwood.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: But in his insistence, it's about more than Senate at all.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, when we're done, we hope we'll have a mosaic that will really amount almost to a history of the modern Senate, and in a still larger sense of the political process as it has evolved since Bob Dole came to his town in 1961, for better or worse, and that's a debatable point.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um let me begin by uh uh say something that Senator Warner said in yesterday's post.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think he came to the Senate in 78.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And what what year did you 68.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: He talked about it's interesting, he talked about, in effect, the good old days, as he remembered them, when freshmen were seen but not heard, when you waited till your second year to give your maiden speech, and when you had a handler to sort of guide you through the initiation.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Does that ring a bell with you?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh somewhat true.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I I think John may have overemphasized it, but there was a a maiden speech concept in which other senators came to hear your maiden speech, and so you worked on it and worked on it and worked on it, and and and and probably it was a terrible speech, but but certainly your your fellow senator from your state came.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: And uh but you'd always have at least uh seven or eight that would show up, you know, you're giving it in the afternoon when there's no business of any kind, you're not really commenting on the hottest issue of the day that's going on.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: But what I do remember, first day I got there, like in the parking lot, I pulled, I'd parked in the Senate courtyard, and pulling up next to me to park is Gene McCarthy.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, uh, morning, Senator.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I thought, wow, he called me Senator.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: And uh he said, I'm glad you're with us.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know he abandoned me.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it didn't took me just a minute to understand.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: I beat Senator Wayne Morse.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: And Morse had promised to support McCarthy in 68 and had endorsed Bobby Kennedy.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: And McCarthy had not forgotten that.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: He says, You know, he abandoned me.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I'm on the floor in John Stennison and Senator Packwood, good to have you with us and whatnot.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: Took me about eight months before I realized when they call you Senator, you'd earned it, you got there.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: But only when they call you by your first name have you arrived.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it uh How long did that take?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it took eight or nine months before the the seniors-I mean, the younger ones called you by your first name, so your contemporaries.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: But the Russell Longs, the John Stennises, uh the uh the Alan Ellenders of that era.
• 7:27
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this uh he seems to be a nice young man.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: We'll see how he does.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: And was it a much more hierarchical place?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hierarchical in the sense, first it was still when I got there, an era when Southerners controlled almost all the committees.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they were still Southern Democrats.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when I say Southerners, I John Tower had been elected in about 61 or two, and he was the first Republican from the South.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in the longest period of time, uh I think we elected Ed Gurney from Florida in 68, but Florida was already trending away from what I'd call a Southern state in the normal sense.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: But when you looked at the uh chairman appropriations, as I recall, was Alan Ellender, I think, and he died.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I can't remember the sequence, but Jim Easton was judiciary, John Stennis was Armed Services, Bill Frulbart was foreign relations.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: You can just go right down the list.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they were all Sundars.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: And as opposed to now, Russell Long was chairman of Finance Committee.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't have the leadership strength that you had.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't overru if you were a leader, you didn't overrule a committee chairman, you didn't take a bill out of committee, you didn't cross a committee chairman.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I sense gradually the power is shifting, both in the House and the Senate, to the leaders and the and the leaders coutre.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you know, a good example, Nancy Pelosi is trying to do an energy bill in an ad hoc committee to go around John Dingle.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that would not have happened uh you and it may not happen this time, I'm not sure.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: But but no one would have thought of doing something like that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: The uh minimum wage bill that passed was basically taken away the the finance parts of it and taken away from Max Baucus because Harry Reid and Max don't get along.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: But so that that has been a change.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting, you you mentioned Senator Stennis.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Senator Doles told us that Frank Carlson's advice to him, almost his only real advice, was when you get to Washington, be sure to look up Senator Stennis.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And in effect, uh one had the sense that you almost should attach yourself to John Stennis, and he's a kind of model senator.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: What why do you think why do you think that was?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think uh John Stennis was so revered, liked by everybody, modest.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I'm surprised that that would have been Senator Carlson's advice to Bob.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, Bob came in 68, so that would be fair enough.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Richard Russell was still alive.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, he was the patriarch, but he was then sick and he died seven or eight months after that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: But but you're right.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: Coming in 68, 69, I think probably the advice to C.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: Stennis was correct because it was clear Richard wasn't gonna Russell wasn't gonna last much longer.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and that was notwithstanding his attitude on racial matters.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that didn't enter into the respect with which he was regarded.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh f first race was never John's big issue.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, did he vote with the South?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: You bet.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: But did as opposed to Eastland, did he make an issue out of it?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he just he was a man that you just you could not help but respect.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And on some on critical issues, on on uh armed services issues, he was bipartisanly good for seven or eight votes, apart from what you get from committee and what you get anyway.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: He could influence seven or eight votes like Dick Luger can on foreign relations.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and seven or eight on a close vote is a lot of influence.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And what what are the sources of that influence?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: One is you know your subject very well.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_03: You don't spread yourself thin.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: Sam Nunn was another one.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: You don't spread yourself thin, you don't shoot your mouth off on a lot of other subjects that you don't know too much about.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: You're not a publicity hound, and people will listen to you.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And presumably part of that is you're you're uh uh what would in London be called a House of Commons man.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're someone who has a real identification with and loyalty to the Senate as an institution.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a factor?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: I uh very obviously, and you know, it's it's the old show horses and go horses.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think it's probably not much different, though, in in uh the board of directors of the YMCA or the PTA.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: The one that is forever seeking publicity or who comes out of a meeting and immediately goes to the press uh is not as powerful on the inside as the publicity on the outside would give you the impression.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: When you factor in, I mean we're jumping ahead here, but and I'll go back to Senator Dole, but w when you factor in all of the elements over the last 30 or 40 years, particularly the the media and the Internet and the 24-7 news cycle and cable and all of this, is it harder for people not to be publicity house?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems as if there's there there are more folks in the in the in Congress today who are playing as much to the to the cameras as they are interested in in legislating.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: They are.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: And on occasion it can work in terms of influence on a limited issue at a limited time.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: But that's if you're able, by going to the press, to stir up enough public opinion around the nation on your side that the pressure on the other senators to bend doesn't mean they like what you've done.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't mean you can do this on another issue.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: You if you're gonna go that route, you better get the public with you.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the Senate has deteriorated in the for example, um debate mattered 30 or 40 years ago.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't it?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: One of the great one of the great debates.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Bob was there, but it's not in the congressional record because it was on a sensitive matter.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'll kind of describe it to you.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's the best debate I've ever seen in my life, politics or out of politics.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's the summer, I think, of 1969.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: We're voting on whether or not to authorize the ABM, the anti-ballistic missile.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: Nixon wanted to trade it away in negotiations, but he couldn't trade it away if he wasn't authorized to build it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: And also it became sort of a flashpoint for Hawks and Dobbs on the Vietnam War.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: So finally we have a closed session of the Senate.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: No press, nobody there.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: The only outsider is a guy that's doing this, and taking the notes.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Ninety-nine senators.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the two, and there's maybe ten that had not announced, and everybody knew it was going to be a close vote.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: And the two senators that were doing the proponent, and the opponent were both Democrats.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: The proponent of the ABM was Scoop Jackson of Washington.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Opponent was Stuart Symington, both on the Armed Services Committee, both bright, both reasonably good speakers, both access to the identical information.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: And 99 senators were there for debate because with ten hours of debate, equally divided.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: And Symington opened first and he had some charts showing Russian SS missiles of some kind.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes for an hour, not many notes, and damn good.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, wait at the end of that, but I said, that's gonna be the end of the ABM.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: You cannot debate that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Then Scoop got up and he went for an hour.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Let me take you just a few charts further.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: My good from sorry, he says, Here's the Russian SS-19 or something like that.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he says, And these are the multiple warheads.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he finishes, and I thought, that's it, we're gonna have the ABM.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Then they ask questions of each other, and it was like watching two great fencers.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: They knew the answers to the questions, each of them trying to pin the other.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: And this goes on for almost an hour, so they've now occupied three hours.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then other people got to ask questions, and about the fourth one in was uh Senator Fulbright.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, you you in those days they did address to the chair, uh Mr.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: President, well, the senator from Washington yielded to a question.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't turn to the senator and say it, you addressed to the chair.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Or I'm saying, Mr.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: President, well, the senator from Washington yield to a question.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: And Fulbright would have a tendency on occasion to do things like I don't know if my colleague has had a chance to read the Chinese translation of the Russian copy of the treaty.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: But if not, let me tell you what it says.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you think because you know he was an academic.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: A little bit of showing off.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, and he was president of the University of Arkansas at one time.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so Scoop says yes.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh Fulbright goes uh, I don't know if my good friend from Washington has had a chance yet to digest the remarks of sworn Soviet Foreign Minister Grumiko in Warsaw three weeks ago, in which he indicated that uh Soviet Union wanted to reach a new era of detente, new era of friendship, new era of cordiality with the United States.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: And doesn't my friend from Washington think that before we rush pell mail into this unproven missile system, we should give just some little credence to the words of the Soviet foreign minister.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: You have to picture this.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: They're standing, you stand, you know, and then they're not ten feet apart.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Scoop points at him like this, and he goes, Let me call a memory for the Senator from Arkansas.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: Then he moves his finger all the way around the semicircle.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: He says and to the others who weren't here that day.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: The morning in October of 1962, when President Kennedy called Foreign Minister Grumiko into his office and asked if the Soviets had any missiles in Cuba?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: Had any Warsaw Pack country missiles been transported on Soviet ships to Cuba?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: Were there any Soviet soldiers on the ground in Cuba assembling missiles from any place?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: Then Scoop gestures like this.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: Then the president opened the drawer of his desk, and Scoop opened, took some papers out.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Then the president opened the drawer of his desk.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: They got the pictures from the U-2 showing the Russian ships, showing the missiles on the decks.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Pictures so clear you could see the Soviet soldiers on the ground and the chevrons on their sleeve.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes, and Andre Gromyko left that room an acknowledged liar.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then Scoop goes like this.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I wouldn't ask anybody to sleep safely tonight based upon the believability of Andri Gromyco.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: When the vote eventually came, it passed by one vote.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: And the answer to that question was what probably brought two or three people over.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now you go look at the congressional record on this.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: First, there's still big blanks in it because of security.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Secondly, you get to this question, and there's a question by Fulbright, an answer by Scoop, and it's not this question and the answer.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so I talked to Dorothy Falstack, who was Scoop's person on this.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Dorothy, what happened to this question and this answer?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: And she kind of smiled.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: She said, Well, afterwards, Senator Fulbright's staff came and asked if we minded if the record could be corrected.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: Now, you were always in those days entitled to correct your comments.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: You can't correct somebody else's.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: But Scoop had won.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: He was generous, so he agreed.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: So the question and answer is not the question and answer.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: So unless you were there and heard it, there's no record of it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: We mentioned Senator Stennis, very different.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Was Margaret Chase Smith sort of a conscience of the Senate?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, did she have that kind of aura?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Probably because of the McCarthyism and her independence.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because of her sp- because of her speech about McCarthy, I was sorry, initially started.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And she did have that.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: She was not a powerful senator, but she did have that aura.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: And part maybe a part of it's the fact you're a woman, uh the only woman in those days in the Senate.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she did have that reputation.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: And she was she was admired.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: She was not a powerhouse.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: The um let me go back.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So so you really you come into the Senate at the same time as Bob.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um how did you make his acquaintance?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I can't remember how you would the whole freshman class got to know each other pretty quick, but I can't remember how I made his acquaintance.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, and you also you were, I mean, obviously from different parts of the country, but in those days there were liberal Republicans.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was a Liberal Republican caucus.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I was one of them.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but yes, by the time in those days, even Dick Schweiker was regarded as a liberal.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: He had Jack Jabitz and and you had Ed Brooke and you had Mark Hatfield.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: He had a fair he had a fair number that were liberal.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the uh Ev Dirksen was leader uh until his death in the matter of fact, that's where Bob and I first worked quite closely together.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: We worked to elect Howard Baker to that position in 1969.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't win.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: But Bob and I worked together and we'd be on the phone with each other constantly.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Have you talked with Marlo Cook and what did you get?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we were reporting back and forth to each other.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how much of that was generational?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost totally generational.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: Howard had only been there two and a half years or something like that, although he was the son-in-law of Everett Dirksen.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: But and he was much more conservative than Hugh Scott.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: But the older Republican conservatives could not abide the thought of somebody with only two and a half years' seniority becoming leader.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: And we even use the argument of Lyndon Johnson, who became the whip in just two years and became leader in four years.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: But that didn't seem to walk.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's fascinating because what you're saying is, at least then, uh perhaps contrary to what the public might think, ideology doesn't trump generational loyalty.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: Philosophy, by and large, I you know I don't know what it's like right now.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: But philosophy then did not trump blood and friendship.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what kind of leader was Hugh Scott?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um nice guy.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, he's leading in the minority all of the time.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: Of all the leaders I served when re with Republican and Democrat, the ones that had the first the problem of a leader, poor devil.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's got a situation like this.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: One guy says, Don't vote till four, I'm coming back from Los Angeles, don't get in till four.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Another guy says you gotta vote poor three, I'm leaving for you know Seattle.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't have the you don't get my vote, you know, he's they're just uh it's almost impossible for any of them to think of long term strategy.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: They're just bedeviled.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're traffic cops?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the and but the one who I thought had a greater perspective than all the ones I served with was Mike Mansfield.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Part of it, he'd been a history teacher.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking with him one time, he says when he was in the military, he says, I was yes, I was in China, and I'm thinking World War II he met in the twenties.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he'd been there.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: And he he had a demeanor and a longer view and and a patience that no other leader had, and and nor did he have it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: He would was a nice guy.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: But of all the ones, who was the most natural leader of men, and I'll say men, there's no question Bob was the in terms of a natural leader.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: Who would you follow into battle?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: I I often said, if I'm ever stuck in a barroom fight and have to fight my way out, I want to fight out back to back with Bob Doell.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and what were the qualities that contributed to that?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_03: Either you've got it or you don't.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: Bob had it.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Did he always have it?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because there is a sense that he's evolving, in many ways he's evolved, like hopefully all of us do.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean that you know the the the the sheriff of the Senate was in many ways a very different figure from the well-regarded chairman of the Finance Committee and and a decade later, you know, the would-be president.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there was a sense that Yes, but even among the freshmen that came in, if you were to say who would have been the natural leader among us, it would have been Bob.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And who were some of the other members of that class?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: Marlo Cook was one, Ed Gurney from Florida.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'd have to go back myself, uh, but there's more than the four of us.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I honestly can't remember.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: But but he was clearly very much a Nixon man.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: That was obvious at his funeral.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh at Nixon's funeral.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You now did did you on on the Haynesworth and Carswell nominations?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: We where were you I voted against both of them.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: You did?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh that that was a that was a tough one because it comes in the summer, as I recall, of 69 for Haynesworth.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_03: Here I'm a freshman center.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: Bob at least had been in the house and he had a little more graze than I did.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he was a little older than I was.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: I was only 36.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Even though as a freshman, I'd been down to the White House a couple times to meet with the president, but it was in a group and it was usually kind of a pep rally kind of thing.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: But I got a call from Bryce Harlow.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Could I come down and see the president about Haynesworth?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: I said, yeah.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm met by a young staffer, Lamar Alexander, and uh takes me in.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just the president and me.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now I can't recall whether Harlow sat over in the corner or not, but if he did, he didn't say a word.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so the president says, Well, thank you for coming to Bobby.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: I want to talk with you about Haynesworth.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: The problem is that people on the Supreme Court are not following the law, they're voting their own philosophy, and we've got to put, and therefore, we've got to put people on the court who share our philosophy.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Mr.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: President, I agree with you, but I don't share the philosophy of Judge Ainsworth.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And Nixon goes, let me try a different tack.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: We went for about 45 minutes.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And at the end of it, he stands, so I assume I stand, if he stands.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we walked at the order and he puts his arm around my shoulder.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Well, Bobby said, I admire the strength of your arguments, but I would hope, as a personal favor to me as your president, as the leader of the party, that you could see your way clear to vote for Judge Hainsworth.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: I thought, oh, that's as much pressure as I'm likely to be under.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: And um I voted I had not announced, and I did not announce until it was quite close.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, there was a lot of pressure on that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: Carswell was easy.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Carswell was not qualified.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in retrospect, do you think Haynesworth maybe got a raw deal?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, a couple of things that were brought up.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he owned a house with a racial covenant in Virginia.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: All the houses had racial covenant.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: If you bought a house in the 30s or 40s, there was a racial covenant, or he didn't buy a house.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Charges like that are just unfair.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: How how how well did you get to know No?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, very, very well.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and how?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what were the I what I'm getting at, I guess, through the back door here is you get a sense now that there are fewer real friendships in the Senate.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm I'm curious to know why you think that is.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: What what is different about the body now from then that uh makes that harder?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: One, believe it or not, it's a lot easier now to get home quicker than it was.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: When I went, there was no nonstop flights to Portland, for example.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: You had to fly sometimes you had to do two stops.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you just didn't go you didn't go out for a day and come back.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's easier.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_03: Two, you used to have therefore lots more on weekends, bipartisan family parties, two or three members from Republicans and Democrats and their wives get together.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: That that that hasn't done much anymore.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they still do it now, but it was common for us to go into uh Dirksen's office, even when I'm a freshman, for drinks at 5 30 or 6, and there'd be Democrats there, Republicans.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: I don't don't know if they do that anymore or not.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure they don't.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: It was um it was a heavier drinking place in those days.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but but even the drinks cause a certain fraternity and conviviality.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did you also spend less time raising money in those days?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, although I I never spent any time raising money.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: I I was just so fortunate.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh other people raised it for me.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't know what I would do now.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: Whether I would have to raise it, I could find others to raise it for me.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: But I never spent n uh n next to from 1980 onward, I was able to raise a lot of money by direct mail.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't take much time.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: Gotta look at the letter and make sure it doesn't say something terribly embarrassing.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I raised in my last race I raised about eight and a half million dollars, and about four and a half of it was direct mail.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that didn't take me an hour a month uh to do that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um most senators couldn't do that though in those days.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: I had duck I could do it on a couple issues and that I'd taken leads on.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't spend any time raising money.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Were you on the finance committee from the beginning of your career?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: No, I went on uh in 1973 after I've been there four years.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, in those days, and here's a change, you went on on straight seniority.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: There was no deviation, there was none of this exception in the the leader gets to appoint somebody.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is why Voinovich can never get on the finance committee.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: Because every every time there's a new Congress, the leader gets to appoint either one or two, I can't remember.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: And McConnell hates Voinovich.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: So unless there's enough spots open that after the leader has made his appointment, uh Boinovich can get on as the senior person wanting it.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: But again, that in those days it was straight seniority.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is fascinating because what you're telling me really flies in the face.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I'm learning things I didn't know, but it flies in the face of this popular notion that one leader after another has espoused about how powerless they are, about how they have no, you know, no tools at their command.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds to me like they have maybe more tools than than they went on.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: They do.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you're seeing one of the frustrations for leaders in both sides is the filibuster.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't used very much.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_03: It was mainly a civil rights tool when I was there at the start with the first three years.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: And you didn't have, I'll take a guess, ten, twelve votes on a filibuster in a year.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe ten or twelve votes of which four or five may have been on one issue.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and now it's just a common parliamentary procedure, which makes it infinitely more difficult for for a leader.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so that tool has changed.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: But if you mean are we aggregating more power, House and Senate, in the hands of the leadership, the answer is yes.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember there was a vote, um critical vote when Nelson Rockefeller was vice president, which which reduced the cloture from 67 to 60.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the circumstances surrounding that?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because that was pretty controversial.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was very controversial.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: It had to do with, as I recall, with whether or not at the start of a new Senate, a new year, the old rules bound or whether a majority could vote to change the rules.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And we just about went through that last year on the judges when the Republicans were getting close to do we have the right to change the rules.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so I remember very well.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's very controversial.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And his rulings from the chair were frankly directed toward lowering.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and that upset a number of Southern Republicans who didn't forget it.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that he ex he exactly made the rule that basically you could change the rules at the start by in essence, I think he was saying a majority vote.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh whereas it would have you know, and the w the interesting part, when I went there, the the rule on filibuster was still two-thirds.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they only changed it to to sixty votes.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh maybe in the first year I was there, and there was a senior senator from from Delaware named John Williams.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: He, in fact, he was just there two years, the last of his two years.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: He was opposed to the change.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: He used a wonderful expression, and I think in retrospect he was right and we shouldn't have changed.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: He said, You know, I'm opposed to uh I'm opposed to the to the change for this reason, he said.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: This by and large, Congress is a grassroots body.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: He said, if the public really want something, they'll get it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: It may take three or four Congresses.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a long time in the history of the Republic.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: But he said, the filibuster prevents us from making mistakes.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: He said, I've come to the conclusion that we make more mistakes in haste than we lose opportunities in delay.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty good advice.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Conservative with a a large and a small C.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the Finance Committee and its centrality uh in these years in terms of uh public policy.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: It i it was, of course, everybody thinks their committee is the most important committee.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so when I got on it, I thought so too, even though I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for a while before I was chairman of finance.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, was finance regarded as a plum assignment?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there there was the big four, really big three finance appropriations, foreign relations.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: Armed services, at that time, people were poo-pooing armed services.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And oh, Bill Saxby was another of our freshmen, by the way, from Ohio.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Who had some unkind things to say about uh Bob Dole, remember?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm surprised, is that right?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he he he was the one who who was credited with the line that um Dole couldn't sell beer on a troop ship.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Or it was an ass on a troop ship.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting because it's like the governor line with a it's not worth a uh picture of Worm's pen.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: But but that's that's the line that got printed anyway.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um was was that a was that just kind of a personal animosity?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: Saxby was you know, he only served one term, didn't run again.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: And he used his whole first term to go to funerals in India and things like that.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: He loved it.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: He just traveled around the world and uh he was he was the one this one time when we violated seniority and Carl Munt was the senior member on the appropriations committee, and he had a stroke.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: He was out for about six months.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: He couldn't perform his duties.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: He was a motion was made to take his seniority away, and I mean he couldn't perform, he wasn't there.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and even this now is almost an I mean almost an unheard of thing to do this, but they went ahead.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so Saxby was detailed to go out and tell Mrs.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: Munt.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: And he went out and told her and he got back, and somebody said, How did she take how'd you say he's about as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's safe to say he was a plain-spoken.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: Was he attorney general?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: He was attorney general for a brief period.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: And this is where they asked him to do something Watergate, and he said I told him to go piss up a rope.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that was on live television.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well Yeah, he was very colorful.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: So but but but it but finance was a was a real plum.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was a plum.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: And to say arms, and the reason I said armed services, for a while it was not a plum.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: And when we went around on seniority and everybody picked the committees they wanted, there were still two spots on armed services.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, finance and appropriations were the plums.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Foreign relations, if that if that was your interest.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_03: But if you meant the other two.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and it has become infinitely more powerful.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Gordon Smith, one of the current senators, could have gone on appropriations or finance two years ago, and he chose finance.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason is even in those days it had jurisdiction over taxes and over trade and and social security.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: But also, just a few years earlier, we had had added Medicare and Medicaid to its jurisdiction.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, in 1973, those had not those two had not become overlooming issues yet.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: The costs were vastly underestimated, and we were just into it.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: But as the years went on, it got tougher and tougher and tougher.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody would leave.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: It got tougher and tougher to get onto it.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: And and now today, when you when you add Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to it, let alone taxes and trade.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, was Russell Long chairman throughout until until the Republicans took over, yeah.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and how did Long run the committee?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: I assume he ran the committee.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: He ran the funniest guy.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Did he ever talk about his dad, by the way?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to him very briefly once about his dad.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: And because Richard Russell, before he had died, had said to me, he said, Huey Long was the smartest man he ever met, and that Russell was not half a step behind.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: And Russell would cover it with sort of a buffooneries.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but he was no buffoon, this was an act.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, here's a here's a typical guy.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: He would never, never, never, never go on those Sunday morning talk shows.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is he was an insider.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: He would not go on those shows.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the committee, when I first went on it, the senior Republican was Wally Bennett of Utah, the father of the current Senator Bennett.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: There was no partisan staff.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: Nor did he, did Senator Bennett want a partisan staff.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was it was a very small staff.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think there was half a dozen professionals altogether for all the subjects they had.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: And of necessity, therefore, because Russell insisted that the majority staff, the staff serve everybody.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: And if a minority member wanted something and the staff didn't get it, Russell would would raise hell.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: That you're not the Democratic staff, you're everybody.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: When when uh I was working with President Nixon on a bill that he was going to introduce that was mandated health coverage, employer mandated health coverage.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was carrying the bill for him in the Senate and working on it.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the two of the professionals on the committee were detailed by Russell Long to work with me in a for an extensive amount of time and period on drafting this bill because for two reasons.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: One w Russell wanted to make sure uh that we got served, too.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: He wanted to make sure it was drafted in the way that the finance committee got the bill.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't want this thing slipping over to some other committee.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you had to you have to be careful.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh if you got a bill that covers a number of things, the parliamentarian will send it to the committee that has the most of in it.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's it, you what is the role of the parliamentarian?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_03: Very in those days, it was Dr.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: Riddick, and it was very powerful.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you you did not challenge his rulings.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he was scrupulously nonpartisan.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: It it it is very powerful.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: I I sense as we're going along, though, you're gonna start to see more and more challenging of the ruling of the chair.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the parliamentarian will say uh uh uh whisper that the motions out of order, and the the presiding officer will chair rules the motions about order, and some I appeal the ruling of the chair.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: You've got 51 votes, and you can overturn the chair, but you've now set a precedent, and this which the Senate is very uh uh wary of precedents.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Quick introjection here.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned about Rockefeller, I'm writing a biography of Nelson Rockefeller, and um he ha Dick Parsons was his guy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Dick Parsons, throughout this whole debate, Dick Parsons Rockefeller, of course, was dyslexic, so he loved charts.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: So Dick Parsons and the you know the arcane rules of the Senate would have you know baffled anyone, and and a new vice president.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Dick Parsons did two things.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, he made a chart that Nelson took Nelson through the entire you know and he was so impressed with it, he took the chart to the White House to show the president.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, actually had a little more experience on capital that he did.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then Parsons sat in the gallery and signaled the vice president basically how to rule throughout this debate.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when it was over, Strom Thurman was in particular unhappy about this.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he's in the quakroom, Mr.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Vice President, you know, I want to talk to you.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he was cordially but you know unmistakably expressing his dissatisfaction.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Rockefeller said, Well, Strom, I tell you what, why did you talk to my counsel?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's here right here.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in those days, Dick Parsons, you know, great big guy, had a big afro.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Strom, let me introduce you to my and Thurman took one look at and that was basically uh the end of the conversation.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: Strom's the guy one time in our Tuesday luncheon, the flip and saunder horses had been here.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: They're born black and they turn white.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Strom says, wouldn't it be wonderful if people did that?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think Thurman did Thurman ever change in his in this sense?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: He was one of the early ones to sort of have from the blacks on his staff and wooing the backs.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: And in his last campaigns, he did relatively well for a Republican with blacks.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, he changed in that sense.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Were they without naming names, were there out and out segregationists?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, Eastland was.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh no question about it.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think pr I think probably both Alan Ellender and uh John McClellan from Arkansas were uh Did people wonder.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: I remember when Eastland, I was in as in one of those sessions having drinks in the leader's office, although maybe in Hugh Scott's at this time the trend kind of the that theory continued.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: Eastland was there.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: And Mac Matthias, which is another one of the class of 68, and somebody else introduced a bill that all members of Congress have to live in the district.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: And Eastland says never passed.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody said, why not?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_03: He goes niggers.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: The um what do you sense about the dole uh long relationship?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's the famous story that Dole tells after the 80 uh election.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, up until that point when Republicans were in the minority.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how did they how did they work together?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: And how did the minority?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: As I recall, Bob did not become ranking member till 79, didn't he?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: Car wasn't Carl Curtis uh so in that sense, at least Russell didn't have to deal with him as the ranking member until the last two years.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: But Russell got along with everybody.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: He ran of course in those days no sunshine law, everything was run in secret.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: It still is, as a matter of fact, even with sunshine laws.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: You meet in the back room, you don't you don't have votes that count, you just have votes that count.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then you go out and have a formal vote.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: But uh Russell, I I found, got along with everybody.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I I don't know what the special relationship may have been between the two of them.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I don't want to overlook now 74.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: You were you were both up for re-election in 74?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, he had a very, very tough fight.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was against that Roy, wasn't it?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, against Bill Roy, and of course the the the pardon comes along in the middle of it.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean take it describe the political atmosphere of that.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: unique year and w what did you face and say I faced the the same thing but I faced it fortunately in a slightly different situation.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: Believe it or not interesting history.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: In 1966, Mark Hatfield was elected to the Senate, running against a very competent Democrat named Bob Duncan.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Duncan had been a two-term Speaker of the House in Oregon, then a two-term congressman, and he's running against Hatfields in 1966.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Hatfield is a dove at the National Governor's Conference is the only governor to vote against supporting Lyndon Johnson on the war and he was a hero to the anti-Vietnam people.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: Duncan was a hawk, World War II fighter and rather fight them on the banks of the Mekong than the banks of the Columbia.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: Wayne Morse crosses party lines and supports Duncan.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or rather supports Hatfield.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean supports Hatfield supports Hatfield which irritated lots of Democrats would help me when I ran.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: So now in 68 I beat Morse.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: Believe it or not in 1972 when Hatfield's up for election Morris runs against him.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hatfield is not anti-war enough and Mark just clobbered him.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: In 1974 he runs files to run against me.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: Now he's now 74 and he's our poll said that us way ahead and he's he's but in midsummer he dies.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: So the Democrats have to pick a new nominee.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: And they pick a woman who state center who had run for governor but had lost the primary slightly and so and she was still in the state senate.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: And they picked her and she didn't have a lot of money and it was only three months to go and she was totally out of her depth on national issues.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: And just so much so that when we had a a debate at the Jewish community center and somebody asked a question about Israel, if you picture somebody saying this at the Jewish community center, she says, oh that's not a front burner issue for me.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: You just don't do things like that.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: That so my race was a different race in that sense.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: But the same issue was there the pardon was there although I had opposed the pardon so it that helped a bit um when when did you think of Dole as a national candidate?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I very early on.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean of course he'd he'd already run for vice president uh well he he would in 76.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah yeah um uh but just to me he was just a natural leader.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: It though the the the one thing and you could see it could hurt him and then it hurt him terribly when he ran against Clinton because he didn't keep doing it.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: He had that wonderful tart tongue.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: And most of us enjoyed it.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: On occasion it could cut the wrong way.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so in ninety six I guess he was just told to shut up and not and and then then you didn't see the real Bob Dole.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: But I you know this is one of those where you can have nine outrageously funny things and the tenth one bombs and the nine are forgotten.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: The bomb is remembered.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Would Democrat wars uh fit in the uh the the the category of things you wish you could take back?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yes oh yeah every every war in this century?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah I mean first when you're talking about World War I you know who knows?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah when you're talking about Korea ever everybody knew but I don't I don't think they really blamed it on Harry Truman per say we did in 1952.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: But I just by by and large the public is pretty supportive.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: By that time we're out of Vietnam the public's pretty supportive of America when it's in war.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think they took kindly to that kind of a remark.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus And that that brings up this this large issue that's sort of dog dole for for much of his career.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think he's long since put it behind him.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: But this notion that there's almost this Nixonian dark side how do you how do you assess that?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Wrong and I I I knew Nixon you know slightly had he had to deal with me a fair amount and there was a a dark side to him.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: I I would say Bob's was more a tough side I did not dark.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't sense Bob was devious and you you you don't you you have no sense that he would put a knife in your back or abandon you or something when I was going through my ethics problems in the Senate he stuck with me to the very end.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so I d but he did have a tough side and on occasion an unforgiving side.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: How how how would that manifest itself I remember one time I don't know what the issue was but but Jack Danforth was on the other side and uh we're having a meeting and uh Bob said to me who's coming I said Dan Forth will be here and he says do you have any real Republicans coming?
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can hear him say but but that's it's a flash comment.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the that's the kind of thing that can hurt if he say says that publicly Yeah were you uh well were you surprised on election night nineteen eighty you're up again and um it's a Republican year.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm were you surprised uh that you were going to be in the majority?
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely I could see a chance to get there but I didn't think it would happen in 1980.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: 1980 was the reverse of of last November.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: We won every close race uh in November last night we lost every close which also meant that you you brought in some fairly weak oh god I mean you talk about you talk about Roger Jepsen and and Admiral Denton and Paula Hawkins oh god one term wonders that's the same that's the same year I think that I think that Steve Sims came in.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes beat Frank Church.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah but he you know Sims was amazing.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well and and Larry Presswork didn't he beat George George McGovern.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: No Jim Abner another weak one I mean but Sims you know here's a funny guy Idaho only has two congressmen and the Idaho's is really divided north and south the north is anaconda mining union tough the south is Mormon boisey gentle conservative but anybody who knows those hard rock union miners these are hardly liberal people they may vote Democrat but you are they liberal the answer is no Sims is a congressman from that district from this tough district and in 1980 he's running against church and you know one of the one of the issues in Idaho is always guns and one of Steve's slogans was America was made great by three boxes the jury box the ballot box and the cartridge box and he says and if the first two fail you should use the third Idaho loved it the um and Sims won in 86 and I remember what happened it's another we're in session until maybe mid-October 86.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: We got all these weak candidates that are there Steve Sims goes home at Labor Day and he says to Bob you need me send a plane I'm going home to campaign he got re-elected the um that night I get I mean it dawns on all of you I mean beginning with Howard Baker that you're gonna be in the majority um we you were surprised?
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh yes I just you know you could start to see some numbers and you thought you know we we could get pretty close to majority.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: We I don't think any of us thought and all of us professional politicians that we could win every close race.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we did and suddenly Bob Dole is chairman of the Finance Committee.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean I've because I was around then and I I remember hearing him uh talk about the difference between being in the minority when all you had to do was put out press releases and now all of a sudden there's this kind of sobering reality that sets in that you're responsible.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought Bob made w one major mistake in 1981-82 on the original tax bills.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_03: He excluded the Democrats by and large it was a Republican effort.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Trevor Burrus And was that a deliberate choice really and why do you think that I don't know why and I thought it was a mistake and I told him at the time I thought it was a mistake because first we didn't have that big a margin uh and so I recall the committee made me 119.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I said you know Harry Byrd before Russell Long never did it and we ran on a bipartisan basis and you you can get an awful lot out.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean the Democrats on it were not liberal when you start going down the line you had Russell you had David Boron uh trying to think Max Baucus who was not uh at all that liberal I mean you had any number of people you could get on things but he he excluded them and uh the final not so much on the hearings but kind of the way the Democrats in the House excluded the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee for years and years.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: How did by the way how did Dole and Russell now that the roles were reversed how did Dole and Russell Long work together he always very wisely treated Russell practically as if Russell was still chairman uh and that was a very smart thing to do.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: That suggests that the perks didn't matter I mean the the you know the trappings of of his new power oh yeah no but uh in that sense Bob uh Bob cared much more about real power than the trappings of power which probably makes you all the more powerful now he was not a supply cider.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_03: No neither was I at the time.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and I can remember Bob on balance budget, balance budget, balanced budget I mean was there any there must have been some sort of maybe if only a creative tension internally between the kind of the Orthodox faith and this new religion uh being brought in by although you recall as soon as the recession started we ended up raising taxes again that next well the next year.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah the next year yeah which which is not something Jack Kemp uh wanted to do that but the supply siders were just starting to to gain control and they just they literally they had been academics during the Democrat reign and during the Carter reign.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they didn't they didn't have a stronghold.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: I can remember Kemp coming to me long before he went to Roth and wanting me to co-sponsor his camp whoever was going to be with him Camp Roth had ended up or as Roth would call it the Roth Camp bill but the supply siders hadn't yet gained the the the credence and maybe wrong credence haven't gained the credence that they did subsequently.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: That 81 bill um first of all how much I realize it's speculative the impact of Reagan the the assassination attempt on Reagan and and the the the aura that grew out of that how much did that increase the president's power?
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: Tremendously especially the way he handled it you know saying to the doctors I hope you're all Republicans I mean you could not dislike Ronald Reagan.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is one of his great strengths and I also and he's the president I dealt with more than anybody else because I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for the first four years of that administration and in that area we deregulated a great many industries and then I was chairman of finance for two years when we did the tax reform bill in 1986.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I dealt with him more than any other president.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I've come to the conclusion that he understood the presidency better than anybody else.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: And he regarded the function of the presidency to was to inspire the country and you hire people to run the government.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so you get you get some bad eggs on occasion but he was never the detail man that Jimmy Carter was or almost any other or Bill Clinton who I dealt a little bit with or anybody else you've ever seen but y you'd go to these meetings in in the cabinet room leadership meetings and I was in the leadership all during that time either as a committee chairman or chairman of the senatorial campaign or the Republican conference or something like that.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: So you go to these meetings and I'm sure the the president saying why do we have to have these meetings and his data saying because the members of Congress want to be included and they want to be able to say that they've advised you and you've got to it's just useless.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure every president must think that so the meeting will start out you go and you all have your assigned table about this size and you all have your assigned place when you go in there's a name tag and the president comes in after you're all there and we all stand up and he goes around shakes hands.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: Now this meeting's gonna last an hour.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: He goes around he shakes hands and comments that takes maybe five or six minutes and then he sits down he sits right in the center just like you see the pictures of the President Bush.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he actually has a three by five cards and he says now the things I'd like to talk about today and he goes through and just kind of reads them say that takes him five or six minutes.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say it's now it's a bipartisan meeting so you've got Tip O'Neill and whoever the the number two person for the Democrats was at the time over there and then you have Bob Michael a Republican leader in the House and his number two and then you had the Senate leaders and their numbers.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: So now you got eight people and the president said Tip do you have anything to say and Tip would say something and then he turned to Bob Michael Bob do you have anything to say?
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: Hell by the time these eight had finished saying something there's not 15 minutes left in this 45 minute meeting and and the president said any other any other comments or questions and there might be one or two and one time Jack Camp asked him a very good question and and he goes Jack that is a very very astute question and I see Jim Baker here and I'm gonna ask Jim to answer that question.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: And by this time the meeting's over and we all go out and you know the press is out there how was the meeting what are you going to say waste of time waste of his time waste of our time oh it was a very significant meeting I think he really you know and I think he understood that's what the function of this meeting was and and he was he was such a personable guy you could not dislike him.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: Was he underestimated?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yes including by some on his own side oh yes oh yeah remember that there's he he was driven by lower rates I mean if he had anything of all the things whether it's the evil empire what drove him was lower rates.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: At his zenith in Hollywood the top rate was 91%.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think he had an accountant I think he must have paid 91% on his whatever his last hundred thousand dollars of income was so from that time on he was driven by lower rates.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: When he came in the rate was the top rate was 70% we cut it to 50 and then in 1986 we cut it to 28 but in 1986 he may or may not have been a supply cider but his insistence in the 1986 tax bill is that it had to be revenue neutral.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_03: So the only way you could get there would be by closing billions of dollars of loopholes.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: But he never wavered but it wasn't a question of his telling us how to get there.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: His goal was lower rates.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now you figure out how to get there as long as you get to lower rates he I want to say I don't care how you get there.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: What did you sense his relationship was with Dole?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was pretty good you know Dole becomes becomes leader the last uh four years yeah but I sense it was pretty good with Reagan.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: But it was hard to have a bad relation with Reagan.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know he you might have irritated him on things or voted against him but if you mean uh monoimano it would have been hard to have a bad relation.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course there is that school that says it would be hard to have a relationship with Reagan that that he was remote that he was you know detached all those euphemisms love this joke.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well the trouble is you go into the grocery store you got these food stamps and you get money back and you buy a fifth of gin and he tells stories like that.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah or he said as George Murphy said when he and I were in Hollywood you know he'll do things like that but I I think this is deliberate.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't this this was not a this was not a dumb guy.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember so in 81 apparently I mean a bidding war breaks out in terms of tax cut oh god yes oh how did that evolve?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know first you got the president the house makes the president's bill worse or more the Senate now makes it more than the House and now we go to conference and damn near make it more than everything put together.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: That was that was the bidding war.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean we we had one bill I don't uh it was called 1053 I don't think it passed I mean in that form depreciate buildings over ten years cars over uh equipment over five and cars over three depreciate them to zero.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean buildings last more than ten years.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: But that was one of the this was the big capital formation was critical.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_03: We need to increase our savings rate and we need to increase our investment rate.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the big push so then in 82 with TEFRA is this attempt to take some of the ornaments off the tree.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: You got it and apparently the president was not happy.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct how did that and and Dole was is clearly pushing this right he was not a supply cider as were most of the people that came up in that era were not supply siders.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: The academics of that didn't start till the the Paul Craig Roberts and the others of the late the late 70s really and I don't know what the Dole's relation with the president was at that time but I I don't sense I don't sense that the president intruded himself that much.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_03: He I didn't find I'm trying to remember if I had any calls from him where he and I would be at cross purposes but I don't find he interfered a lot with Congress.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_03: Every year on the anniversary of Roe vs Wade he would speak by phone to the right to life people by phone.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't recall that he ever involved himself in any of those battles are we going to cut off Medicaid funding for an abortion and I I don't recall he ever said a word or called anybody or sent a letter and he obviously would have done more on taxes but I don't recall any pressure on me and I was supporting Bob how difficult was that I mean in 82 I mean to in effect you're reversing yourselves to some degree you're you're all but saying we're we went too far yeah we went too far I think we knew we went too far in 1981.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: Danny Rosankowski had just become chairman of Ways and Means.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_03: Bob has just become chairman of finance.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you got these two both of them pretty powerful guys and each of them going to prove their man manhood uh uh if necessary at the expense of the other what was that relationship?
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know mine was sensational with Danny when I became chairman but uh uh Danny he first he excluded all the Republicans for all practical purposes on ways and means so you don't need to worry about having to deal with the senior Republican you're gonna have to deal with the chairman.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean this is how powerful Danny was that just because that's how they did it in Chicago?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_03: Damned if I know whether the I don't know if that's the way Wilbur Mills ran the committee or not when Wilbur was chairman but but interesting little I'm told that Wilbur knew the tax law backwards and forwards and I don't know but it's and that they really didn't have votes in the committee Wilbur said I think we should do this and that and the committee went along and up until the Watergate year when the rule was changed up until that year the Ways and Means Committee was also for the Democrats the committee on committees.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_03: So Wilbur Mills not only was chairman of ways and means he decided who got to go on all the other committees.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_03: That is power here's an example of of Danny from time to time there's been a provision in the tax code that the employer provides prepaid legal benefits like health insurance that they're not taxable as income to the employed just like health insurance is not taxable.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: There was a couple of unions that had some prepaid legal contracts with employers.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: And this law would normally expire every two or three years.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't a permanent one and they always wanted to get it exp extended and I would help them although it was a union issue.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: But it wasn't one that divided us with employers it was just the employers didn't care because it was deductible for them no matter what we did.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: The issue was is it taxable to the employee and I got it extended a time or two and finally the unions came to me and it would always have to be in a Senate bill.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: Danny would never put it in a House bill and I finally said to them listen you're union guys why can't you get some Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee to support this issue so so that it doesn't have to come here because then I've got to go to conference and in order to keep this I've got to give something up and I said Okay they got Charlie Wrangell to agree.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: So we're in conference and I Danny is chairing it and I go Mr.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_03: Chairman on this prepaid legal I really I really think it's fair provision.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_03: Employers don't oppose it these unions want it doesn't cost much and I think the House ought to recede to the Senate and accept our provision.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_03: Charlie Wrangle raises his hand and goes Mr.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_03: Chairman I I think Senator Pack was correct.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think probably it is a good provision and I think the House ought to recede.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_03: Danny goes all right everybody on this side who wants to recede raise their hand Charlie doesn't raise his hand that's how powerful he was this now fifteen seconds after he said we ought to recede