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.In August, he complained to news commentators about congressionalfoot-dragging on urban programs needed to prevent riots.In September,he told newspaper publishers that $6.8 billion in pending urban programsrepresented the most comprehensive package on cities ever presented toCongress. Much of what Johnson did in behalf of domestic advance, however,masked a less ambitious agenda a commitment to reform programs thatcould fit into a war economy and would more or less stay in place until an A Sea of Troubles :: 277end to the fighting freed resources for a renewed crusade against domesticevils.Johnson was usually less direct about his intentions.In the summer of1967, for example, the President s task force on education recommendedstepped-up efforts to help poor urban and rural students.Johnson fearedthat the report might create pressures for greater spending.Normally, hewanted task force recommendations held in strict confidence until hedecided their fate.Premature leaks would alert opponents to administration thinking and help them prepare the ground for effective counteraction.On this occasion, however, Johnson instructed Califano to leak thereport without any clue that the story had come from the White House.After the New York Times published a front-page article, Johnson gaveDouglass Cater a tongue-lashing for the leak, which reduced him almostto trembling. Johnson s action mystified Cater, who learned of the leak from Califano.Johnson s deviousness served two purposes.The story allowed him to scrapthe recommendations and blame the failed hopes for more educationspending on Cater and liberals, or those who would complain most loudlyabout cutbacks in education programs.He was not proud of what he haddone.When Califano showed the Times story to the President, asking if hehad seen it, Johnson grunted yes, and never mentioned it again to me, orCater, or anyone else. Johnson also reined in liberal impulses to respond aggressively to urbanriots and the crisis in the cities. In July, after Newark and Detroit explodedover rumors of police brutality against inner-city blacks, Johnson askedHumphrey to chair a Cabinet working group on the crisis.He made clear to Humphrey that proposed remedies should not includenew legislation or new funding.But Humphrey, who saw the riots as ademonstration of widespread rejection of our social system, urged thePresident to announce his determination to avoid cuts in existing programsaffecting the cities.Moreover, despite the President s admonitions, the VicePresident asked the secretaries of labor and commerce to work on a majornew job program that, Califano warned Johnson, would entail significantspending. Califano recommended that the President follow Budget Director Schultze s suggestion that they tactfully disband the Vice President sgroup. After Humphrey issued a final report on August 23, Johnson put hiscommittee on ice. Johnson wished to mute the fact that current budgets neither matchedpast gains nor even kept funding abreast of inflation.But he couldn t hidethe fact that Vietnam spending now made him an ally of domestic budget 278 :: lyndon b.johnsoncutters in Congress.In May, for example, when Henry H.Wilson, Jr., aprincipal White House congressional liaison, tried to inform Johnson thatthe House was reducing model cities money to $12 million for planning andwas deleting all funds for rent supplements, the President wouldn t take hiscall.It was a far cry from Johnson s involvement of just two years before.In August, as the reality of a potential $30 billion deficit and no taxincrease became a distinct possibility, Johnson s budget office laid plans tocut heavily into Space, HEW, Agriculture, HUD, and OEO. In November, when Johnson accepted the need for across-the-board cuts of 2 percentin personnel and 10 percent in controllable domestic programs, Califanowarned that Cabinet officials will take cuts of this nature.very hard. But with no tax increase and ever more spending on Vietnam on tap, Johnson saw no escape from substantial cuts in Great Society programs. :: crime and politicsNothing signaled the waning of liberal influence and freedom to carry forward the reform agenda of 1964 65 more clearly than the emergence ofcrime as a major domestic issue in 1966.By March Johnson had felt compelled to send Congress a special message on the rise in murders, rapes,aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, and car thefts that had sparked anepidemic of fear in the nation and was costing the country some $27 billion a year.A law enforcement assistance act in 1965 had established a federal program to help local police agencies combat crime.But it was timenow, Johnson said, for a coordinated campaign by local, state, and Federalauthorities to reverse the trend and strike at the roots of the problem.Though Johnson s call to action produced four minor bills, they did littleto satisfy the national desire for substantive and symbolic responses to thecountry s growing lawlessness.Johnson s administration was seen as more the cause than the solutionto the problem.Crime increased six times faster than population duringthe Kennedy-Johnson presidencies, Richard Nixon asserted in 1966
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