I have two items for my write-up today on volume 2 of Richard Nixon's memoirs.
1.
For my first item, I'll use as my starting-point something that Nixon
says on pages 288-289. The topic is President Nixon's controversial
impounding of federal funds, his refusal as President to spend all of
the money that the U.S. Congress had appropriated for certain programs:
"The
major public battles in the executive-legislative conflict were also
being fought on the issue of the impoundment of funds. Presidents since
Thomas Jefferson had considered it their prerogative, and indeed their
responsibility, to withhold the expenditure of congressionally
appropriated funds for projects that were not yet ready to begin or if
inflation was especially severe and putting more money into the economy
would make it worse. This is known as impoundment. In fact, as of
January 29, 1973, I had 3.5 percent of the total budget impounded;
Kennedy impounded 7.8 percent in 1961, 6.1 percent in 1962, and 3
percent in 1963; Johnson impounded 3.5 percent in 1964 but increased
steadily to a high of 6.7 percent in 1967. The Democratic Congress had
not challenged my Democratic predecessors for their heavier use of the
practice, so I saw the 1973 impoundment battle as a clear-cut partisan
attack on me."
I first learned about the impoundment issue in a
college course on American government. The professor was telling us (if
I recall correctly) that the articles of impeachment that were being
drawn up in Congress against Nixon dealt with more than Watergate, for
they included a criticism of Nixon for impounding funds, that is, for
not spending all of the money that Congress had appropriated for certain
programs. As a Republican at the time, I somewhat admired Nixon for
this. Here was a President who was unilaterally taking the initiative
to control government spending. Of course, he went over Congress' head
to do this, but how often do checks-and-balances stand in the way of
doing the right thing? How I feel about this sort of thing nowadays,
I'm not sure. I admire President Barack Obama when he goes over
Congress' head by issuing executive orders that advance his progressive
agenda. At the same time, I think that checks-and-balances are
important in terms of the United States being a republic of laws, rather
than a country that is ruled by the whims of human beings.
Nixon's
reference to the impoundment issue occurs within the context of his
larger discussion of the importance of controlling government spending.
One reason that Nixon wanted to control government spending was that it
was inflationary, presumably because it put more money into the
economy, plus it could lead to tax increases. Another reason
was that he thought that the government was wasteful. Nixon gives a
variety of examples of this waste on pages 279-281: the richest 7
percent of farmers received 42 percent of the farm subsidies; there was a
surplus of teachers, yet a federal program was encouraging students to
enroll in teaching programs; the government was still subsidizing the
construction of hospitals, when there was a surplus of hospital beds;
and 85 percent of the money for the Office of Economic Opportunity went
to "salaries and overhead before it ever reached the poor" (page 281).
Third, Nixon thought that there were too many government bureaucrats,
and that most of them were Democrats or liberals. In retrospect,
however, Nixon felt that he undermined morale when he demanded the
resignations of all of the White House staff and members of the Cabinet
(even though he did not accept many of the resignations).
This
discussion was interesting, since elsewhere Nixon brags about his role
in increasing government spending for certain programs. Perhaps Nixon
would say that, yes, he did that, and he was right to do that, but he
sought to do so while regulating the overall government spending.
Something else that enters my mind is a statement that Nixon made on
page 640 of volume 1 of his memoirs: "The budget I submitted in January
of 1971 was set to be balanced at full employment and run a deficit to
help take up the slack when unemployment was high." That tells me that
Nixon may have thought that there was a time for deficit spending, and
there was a time for greater austerity. My impression is that
Paul Krugman feels similarly: when unemployment is fairly high and
people are not spending much money, that is not the time for the
government to cut its own spending, for the government needs to put
money into the economy to stimulate growth; when more people are working
and spending, however, that's an opportune time for the government to
cut back and pay off its debt, and the government would be adding
inflationary pressures by putting more money into the economy. But what
does one do when there is stagflation----high unemployment and inflation?
2.
I have said in previous posts that Nixon did not have too much of a
problem with dirty tricks. Nixon regarded many of them as pranks, plus
he noted that Democrats did them, too. An example of such a prank would
be Donald Segretti of the Committee to Re-Elect the President sending
out fliers "inviting people to an open house with free lunch and drinks
at Humphrey's headquarters in Milwaukee" (page 292). Nixon does seem to
draw the line somewhere, however, or at least that's what Nixon tries
to imply: "But [Segretti] crossed the boundaries of pranks when he sent
out phony letters on stationary from different Democratic campaign
offices claiming that two of the Democratic candidates had records of
sexual impropriety and that another had a history of mental instability"
(page 292).