Memorandum Regarding Cabinet Meeting Discussions

ARCHIVES *NATIONAL RECORDS AND 177 : CONFIDENTIAL connect July 6, 1951 S/S: The Secretary said that the Cabinet today discussed the controls bill in some detail. The bill is to come up in the House on Monday. It was feared that the Administration might take a licking on the Bill. The strategy of the opposition will be for Jesse Wolcott to offer a "clean bill", which will incorporate all of the amendments, or the worst onee. If the House accepts the "clean bill" as a substitute for the Committee bill, the Administration is then faced with the necessity for devising strategy to cut out the amendments. This would be a somewhat less satisfactory position for us to be in than an acceptance of the Committee bill. The Secretary said they were reasonably sure this would be the first maneuver. Mr. C arroll of the White House said the Administration must work and work hard all this weekend. The President has directed that each of the Cabinet receive a copy of a list of Congressmen and Senators broken down into three categories. First will be those who are on our side on the bill; second will be the doubtful ones; and third will be the hopeless group. Each member of the Cabinet is to pick out those on the doubtful list with whom he has contact or knows personally and get to work on this. Mr. Acheson will be glad to do some of this calling, but he wants others to assist on it. He suggests that Mr. McFall's office, reinforced with Mr. Linder, Mr. Thorp and any others we can think of who are good at this sort of thing, work on this matter. The Secretary wants a list of the compelling points from our point of view which could be brought to the attention of the various Congressmen. He wants a sort of agreed talking paper for use of all those who will be working on this. He said that we might want to assume that prices would rise without controls and start from there. He then said that it was reported at Cabinet today that some of the people on the Hill were not convinced that DECLASSIFIED CONFIDENTIAL E. O. 11652, Sec. 3(E) and 5(D) or (E) 5.12.76 Dept. of State letter, Augo 9, 1973 By NLT- HC NARS Date 6-25-76