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on today's report from Washington, Senator Smathers discusses domestic and foreign problems of interest to the people of Florida and the nation. Now here is the first question. Some of the matters you have have, as usual, your regular morning breakfast meeting with the president this past week.

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Just how is he holding up underneath this, uh, severe pressure that he's under? I think he's holding up excellently. He's very active, energetic man, as I've said previously, has never been a body who came to this job. He was quite as well prepared for it. The Congress, as you know, as with the meetings in January 3rd of this year with hardly any really long, even long weekends and most everybody's irascible, tired wants to go home.

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So now we've got this fella who's giving us considerable pressure. But let's get a lot of work done here in the next week or so, and it's rubbing us a little bit in some instances. But frankly, by virtue of his position and his knowledge ability about how to get things done, we're going to finish.

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I think most of the important legislation it's possible to finish this year before we go Well, now you say important legislation. Obviously, the tax problem is extremely important. You confer that we're going to finish that we will have finished the public hearings of this past week.

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As you know, we started on the executive sessions. We have started voting on amendments. Uh, we will, however, not have the bureau ready for final consideration until in January. After all, it's involves the 294 different changes in the tax laws. There are many people drastically affected by this tax measure.

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They've never had an opportunity, really, to say not too much about it. And it takes three weeks of drafting the technical aspects of it to get it even drawn up. But we would have gotten about as far as anybody could humanly expect us to get by the time we quit to take a Christmas vacation.

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What about federal aid to education and various education bills? We're going to finish, I hope, before December the 20th. We're going to finish most of these educational bills, particularly the bills that have to do with loans and particularly construction grants and loans, and areas of that character, which are most essential if we are to keep moving forward in this field of education as we should.

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Incidentally, it's very interesting just this week that we had a briefing secret briefing from the C I A. And various secretary of state and the defense secretary. And one of the matters which was pointed out, is how much of the total amount of money which the government spends here is put into education.

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How much of the total amount that having the Soviet Union's put into education and they put over there 9% of their gross national product, where we put 4%. So as a matter of fact, they're putting 2.5 times as much money in their educational problems down are we?

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I would indicate that they're looking at the long range view point. They're they're looking very much at the long range view point, they believe, as Francis Bacon once said, knowledge is power and that they're trying to develop their best brains over there, not only to compete with us in the matter of military.

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Uh huh, armaments and things of that character, but they're competing with us in space, but they're also trying to learn how to run their economy as well as we're running heart, which they obviously now are not doing well. English discussions with the president. Of course, I'm sure the question of when he was majority leader came up, and how we used to have the long sessions to get his legislation through was an indication that we would ask this Congress to have such long sessions.

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Yes, we're going to have some other long sessions in these last couple of days, and as always, they result in a lot of arguments. And, as I say these the average age of the Senate, I don't know what it is, but it's about 60 and these people have worked hard, and I don't really know what benefit will come from long sessions, except that we are going to finish the appropriation does on the education bill and possibly one or two other bills before we finally quit on December 20th.

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Thank you, Senators matters. I trust you'll be with us next week at the same time, one again we report from the nation's capital. Senators matters. I think probably Florida is the one state in this country that has a continuing interest in the affairs of our Latin American neighbors.

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Now, you recently recommended that we immediately recognize the Dominican Republic. Would you expand on that? A little force? Well, they had a coup. As you remember in the Dominican Republic, they first had the government of Juan Bosch. After the assassination of Tra Helio, He was he.

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Juan Bosch was terribly bright man, great port, great writer. But he had had no experience in the administrative part of running a government. And the first thing he did when he got in, he devolved his own political party so that it left him without any support in the legislative branch of the government.

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And then thereafter he worked very hard himself. But he because of the lack of capable men in this administrative field, he had to do so much himself to the point where finally became evidence that he was not really running a very good government. That on top of it, of course, the Communists were moving in rather in a rather substantial numbers.

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I am informed, and he did not want to make a real definite break with the left and the extreme left, believing that he could convince them that the righteousness of his position, with the result that finally the government became rather chaotic and the majority of the people decided that they didn't like the above government of Juan Bosch.

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They were accustomed to stronger leadership, and so the military moved in and took over. We don't like military crews and sent to the South America, and we don't want to encourage them. So we didn't immediately recognize this new government, even though the military installed a civilian government which became very pro American and was very pro American and guaranteed the reestablishment of constitutional rights and in a democratic election, just as soon as the conditions would settle, we did not recognize that government and have not until the day, and that's now been quite some time.

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What I'm very fearful of is that this government, which is pro American and totally anti Communist, that if we don't recognize it and begin to give it some, at least prop it up in some respects that it'll fall and when that falls, then you're going to get even a worse situation.

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And so I think the time has long since passed when we should recognize this new government of Santa Domingo. Now the organization that's probably doing the most organization of American states. Melissa Morrison was the ambassador or whatever his title would be. But he's running for governor in Louisiana, I believe.

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Do you feel that we should immediately have someone appointed to take his place? I think this is a vacancy that cannot long be left unfilled. We need the Organization of American States has, frankly not been a particularly strong organization, and it's even less strong without a strong man from the United States giving it leadership and coming up with affirmative ideas and affirmative programs.

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And since the Lesseps Morrison has resigned and now become the Democratic or one of the demo he's leading in the race for governor in Louisiana, Uh, we have had a vacancy. So it's imperative that we get a strong man in this job, and quickly, the better.

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Now, one more question on civil rights. It looks like the petition that was being circulated is not going to get the necessary signatures. Does that mean now that the civil rights bill will not come to the floor of the house until January? Well, that I think that's correct.

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They've only got as of this time, they've only got about 135 signatures. They need 218 now, as I understand it, and the leadership of the House tell me that after Christmas they'll be able to get considerably more than they would today. The problem that's involved is whether or not the Rules committee, which is sort of a traffic cop in the House of Representatives, headed up by Senator Congressman Smith of Virginia, whether or not he's going to hold lengthy hearings and thereby delay a consideration by the House of the so called civil rights bill.

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So the discharge petition is to try to get around the Rules Committee now, Smith wrote. A letter said that he would bring it up early in January, so that immediately got a lot of fellas who were prepared to sign a discharge position, willing, not decided in the on the promise of Smith that he would bring it up early in January, so there will be a civil rights bill considered in January in the House of Representatives.

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Thank you very much, Senator George Smathers. I'll return you now to your station announcer