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one. Take 1 86 24. Smathers In today's report to the people of Florida, Senator George Smathers will answer some of the many questions he receives from his constituents in the state. Now here is Senator Smathers, as is my custom. From time to time, I answer letters over the television which have been written to me, which later I answered through the mail, give you an idea of the variety of questions that are sent into us.

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Here's a letter from a lady in Key West, Florida, which says, Dear Senator, I see where the Republicans have hinted that the United States is considering giving up the Guantanamo naval base. Please confirm or deny the accuracy of this statement. Well, well, right to this lady.

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And tell her, Of course, this is not the case. There is no plans. There are no plans now, and there will not be any plans for our giving up Guantanamo naval base. We have that base in perpetuity originating from an agreement. It was made with the Cuban government when it first came in way back in 1800 about 99 we expect, and we intend to preserve our position at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

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Here's another letter from a lady I want to know about the debt ceiling. I talked a little bit about this last week, she says. I wish you would vote to preserve the debt ceiling of 305 billions of dollars because that's the only way that we can bring about economy and the government.

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Well, I will have to write that good lady and tell her that I disagree with her on this matter. I do believe in economy and government, but the way they were going to get economy and government is to stop voting for appropriations. It doesn't make a lot of sense to have the Congress and members of the Congress votes for large appropriations and then give to the government a too low debt ceiling so that they cannot legally spend the money which the Congress has appropriated and voted.

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And actually, if we keep the debt ceiling as low as this lady would suggest, in point of fact, it would begin to cost the government money, because what happens is the Department of the Treasury takes this money, which they get from social security payments and other investment and trust funds, and they turn around and buy government bonds with that money.

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And those government bonds are considered a debt. And if the debt ceiling is sufficiently low where that money cannot be invested, then that money sits there. And the Social Security fund is not as big as it should be, so that when people retire, there isn't enough money with the result yet then the Congress will have to appropriate money to make it up.

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So while we talk about economy, the only real way to get economy is to have each senator in each congressman and, for that matter, each local chamber of Commerce and each group be willing to vote against sums of money not only for themselves and for their districts and for their states, but to vote against these large sums in foreign aid, which where there can be brought about a substantial savings.

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Here's a letter from a lady up in North Florida, which says I recently read where state representative carry Matthews of Miami is going to introduce a bill to abolish the Electoral College by calling a constitutional convention. What is your opinion of this legislation? Well, frankly, I think that's excellent legislation.

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I have myself supported this idea for many, many years. I don't believe the Electoral College itself is a very democratic way of our electing the president. We actually, when you go to vote in November of the election years, you don't vote for the president directly. You vote for electors in the state of Florida.

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If it goes, for example, for Kennedy or Nixon by 1000 votes or one million votes or even one vote, whichever party wins, they get the entire number of electoral votes. Which means that if all the other people who happen to have lost the election but still 600,000 of them have voted, their vote counts for nothing.

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And I think this electoral colleges entirely outmoded in archaic, it leads to a lot of abuses. I think we should go to a system of direct voting where every individual voter is permitted in the general election to vote for the man whom he thinks should be president.

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And that vote is counted irrespective of whether the state goes for the individual that he choses or not. That way, every vote counts. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I see that my time is up. I wish I had more time to answer more questions. I hope you'll look in again at this same time next week.

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And his sharp instrument, I can tell that brought out of time. Uh huh. Uh huh. Right like this. So here's a letter from a lady in Kissimmee, Florida, which says, in essence, I'm becoming increasingly disturbed over the high price of sugar. What is Congress doing to look into this matter?

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Well, we're all disturbed over the high price of sugar, and we're hoping shortly to have the solution to the problem. Frankly, the financing Well, first, the Finance Committee of the Senate, of which I'm a member. I started this past week an investigation as to actually what has brought about the shortage of sugar and the high price of sugar.

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I'm satisfied that we're going to discover that the basic reason for the high price and the shortage is the fact that we no longer find Cuba aligned in the Three World column, and we are thereby unable to carry on the sugar business with Cuba. Cuba was, of course, the largest producer of sugar in the entire world.

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up until the advent of Fidel Castro they supplied us with. They were our major supplier of sugar during World War Number two. As a matter of fact, we went down, encourage them to plant more sugar in the early part of World War Number Two and agreed that if they did plant to something the neighborhood of six million acres and produce something a little close to something close to eight million tons of sugar, that we would buy all of it at a premium price.

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Fact that matter was that during World War Number two, we were able to get to sugar from Cuba under the government of Batista at a price less than the world price. So it turned out to be a very wise investment for us. After World War Number two, the sugar growth was not quite so favorable in Cuba, but nonetheless, they were our major supplier.

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They produced the neighborhood of seven million tons of sugar, and we bought over half of that which they produced and of course, gave a premium price to them. Actually, the premium price was not so much to give to them, but to protect protect the domestic sugar producers are beet sugar producers and the cane sugar producers of Florida who could not grow sugar quite as cheaply as they could in Cuba and in order to keep have one price, why we paid to the foreigner or sort of attacks and a premium price to keep the price up so that the foreign sugar would not undercut that which was sold and produced, sold on our market and produce bar domestic sugar producers.

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We're going to find, in addition to the fact that Cuba is no longer source for us, that there has been a shortage throughout the world and particularly of beet sugar. We buy a great deal of beet sugar, and we raised a great deal here in the United States.

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But because of the unseasonably cold weather which we had last year, and that which they had throughout Europe, the beet crop has not been what it has ordinarily been, with the result that there is at this time a shortage of beats and thereby a shortage of beet sugar.

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This all has together resulted in the high cost of sugar. Now Mr Myers, who handles the sugar for the Department of Agriculture tells me and he's going to tell our committee here next week. I'm certain that he has made arrangements in the Philippines and in Puerto Rico and other places to get additional sugar, and he's very satisfied that there will be more than a necessary amount of sugar for we in the United States within the next six months.

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Actually, in Florida last year, we were able to get a higher allotment to grow sugar cane sugar in our state and we've had some three new mills built and we have put under cultivation a great deal of additional land out there in the Lake Okeechobee region.

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And of course it takes about 15 months to get a crop of sugar planted and then refined and ready to be eaten. And we will not get this the benefit of this increased acreage until another about a year. But in another year we're going to find that we have more sugar than actually will be able to consume, so this is a temporary problem.

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It's an unfortunate problem, but I don't think it will be with us much longer. Here's a letter from a businessman in Pensacola who criticizes various is very severely seriously the foreign aid bill and says, I hope you will vote against it. I noticed you voted against it last year, and I hope you will continue to vote against it.

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Well, as a matter of fact, I did vote against it last year primarily because I didn't like the way it was being administered in many of the countries. I must, in all candor, say that there's certain parts of the foreign aid program that I think are desirable.

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I do believe that the program we have in South America, if administered properly, will be of great benefit to us and help keep those many, many countries and the column of the free with us. On the other hand, I do agree with the clay report that it needs to be tightened up the whole program greatly and that we can make sizeable cuts in it.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I see that my time is up. Thank you very much for listening in. I hope you're listening again at this same time next week.