Nixon: The Beach and the Budget

TECHNICALLY it was a "working visit to the Western White House," but there was a leisurely air to President Nixon's stay in San Clemente last week. The California sun deepened the presidential tan, and his spirits seemed to lift by several degrees. He piloted his fringe-topped golf cart, dubbed Cushman One, through the cool morning mist from his home to the office complex. He left his desk in midafternoon to stroll on his beloved beach, where the waves break far out and roll in parallel white lines to the shore. After the long and tumultuous spring, Richard Nixon was recharging.

His biggest preoccupation last week, aside from preparing for a press conference, was the state of the economy and the prospects for the federal budget. His chief fiscal adviser, George Shultz (see box, following page), arrived laden with his budget papers, agendas and reports. During three days of discussions between the President and a circle of top aides, the tone was philosophical but the omens inauspicious. In the fiscal year just ended, the federal budget slid from the $1.5 billion surplus predicted in February to a $2.9 billion deficit.

Political Specter. The Administration's efforts to slow the economy led to a downturn in receipts from corporate income taxes, which helped vaporize the hoped-for surplus. The current fiscal year looks still worse. "If everything goes wrong," as one Administration official put it, the deficit could climb as high as $15 billion. Some Administration experts conclude that a $7 to $10 billion deficit may be necessary to stave off a serious recession.

What happens to the economy is the principal political specter haunting Nixon now. A Gallup poll gave Nixon a 61% overall approval rating last week, highest in six months, but Nixon has been regularly getting his lowest popularity marks for his handling of the economy. If the economy does not turn around sufficiently in the second half of 1970, great numbers of Nixon's newfound blue-collar supporters could well vote Democratic in the November congressional elections.

Nixon and his men came to no firm conclusions about federal budgeting for the future, though a total figure in the neighborhood of $225 billion was discussed for next year. In any case, the budget for the fiscal year that begins in July 1971 need not be submitted to Congress for six months. It presents serious problems. By the most dire Administration estimates, the projected deficit for that year could reach $23 billion--uncomfortably close to the highly inflationary $25 billion deficit that Lyndon Johnson ran up in 1968.

Nixon's press conference at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles reflected more his California cheer than his fiscal problems. Half of his questioners were from California papers, and Nixon carefully explained his aim: "I think this whole program of bringing Government to the people can be served by having the White House go to the country from time to time."

He expressed his hopes--fulfilled the next day--that Israel would join Egypt and Jordan in accepting the American proposals for a truce in the Middle East (see THE WORLD). He defended the U.S. military posture vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, and he assured his questioners that the U.S. and South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu share a common policy of opposition to a "negotiated or imposed" coalition government in Saigon that would include Communists. He discomfited some of his national audience by explaining that the number of federal aides sent to the South to advance school desegregation would be determined by requests from Southern officials. There was some confusion later over whether the President had stated Administration policy accurately; he was obviously trying to make a conciliatory gesture toward the South.

At just one point did the presidential calm seem strained. In a report made public by the White House two weeks ago, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Alexander Heard chided the President for failure to listen to the complaints of the nation's college students. Asked his reaction, Nixon answered testily: "For university presidents and professors and other leaders to put the blame for the problems of the universities on the Government primarily I think is very shortsighted." In a startling echo of a Black Panther slogan, now widely popular among U.S. radicals, Nixon contended: "We're reforming Government to make it more responsive to the people, more power to the people rather than more power in Washington, D.C." Even if that is done, Nixon believes that "the shallowness, the superficiality that many college students find in college curricula" will still be a campus irritant.

Is That All? Nixon ventured a couple of touches of wry humor, something he rarely does in a press conference. "I do not accept the proposition that the Vice President represses people. It seems to me that people are very free in speaking up about the Vice President. Many of them do to me." And: "I recall once having comments about the press in California when I was here,* and that didn't seem to get me very far. All I can say now is that I just wish I had as good a press as my wife has." The President seemed to be enjoying himself more than usual. When Earl ("Squire") Behrens of the San Francisco Chronicle offered the traditional "Thank you, Mr. President" at the end, Nixon inquired somewhat plaintively: "Is that all?"

That was all for then, but when the President returns to Washington this week, he will have to confront some difficulties that have surfaced in his absence. The Congress has faced him with a dilemma by passing a $4.4 billion education appropriation that is $453 million more than he requested. He wants to insist on keeping spending down, and spoke at the press conference of a possible veto, but he will have even more trouble making a veto stick than he did with the $19.7 billion labor appropriation last January. The congressional votes were overwhelming on the education bill, 357 to 30 in the House, 88 to 0 in the Senate. He will also confront another serious challenge to further deployment of his Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system. While his supporters contend that at the very least ABM is a vital bargaining counter in the arms-limitation negotiations with the Soviet Union. Senate opponents of Safeguard plan to mount a heavy attack on it during debate over the $19.2 billion military-procurement authorization bill.

* After he lost the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Nixon announced to reporters: "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

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