Senator George Smathers Radio Broadcast 201

run over 10 seconds. Scene one, take 1 to 2 to two. Senators. Now to to mhm today's report will be an interview with Senator Smathers. And I'm thankful that you had time to come to the studio, Senator. The people in the country, I think, are very much interested in what's going to happen in regard to calling up the reserves and possibly increasing right over again.

That that Why did you do it that way? Because I was a little bit described above using the tape out there. Just start over. All right. Well, you have to use the tape, Jim. There's a tape intro which says, Yeah, I think you have it there she edges on his vacation to and I was trying to make it a little easier for just be a minute.

I like it. Where were, you know, from Washington. And you use one voice and another. This is to give yourself why this is so can and so Pat. Okay. Just trying to make it easy. Our client. Yeah, well, I could I get better for me to introduce it.

If that's the case. Well, I'm happy to be questioned by one of the questions. You know, I think it's better the way we do it. I think with your voice. Well, I didn't know whether you like that. No, we don't even do it for 16. But often on.

Maybe we'll change it every now and then. But only when I've got a particular guest on her. I'm going to talk by myself. Mhm. Are you going to put on Thurgood Marshall as a guest? Yeah. Yeah. You're going to put on young Marx. He's a nice guy.

Makes a good program. Lettered. Barks. Yeah. He's going to be the head of U. S A. I don't know. I don't ask. Awful nice guy. How sad. I've known for 20 years. Ever since you get out of college, he's gonna tell it. Don't like it very much.

Well, he doesn't know. Doesn't know any favorite because I don't see him breath anymore. Since he's up in the higher echelons, he's a lawyer and, yeah, he had a way, You know, Lindsay, Lady birds. Yeah, Well, I'll tell you the truth. In some ways, I'd rather I would say this.

I think that we have I think Edwin Murrow was good that he thanks. Yeah, but we have that. I don't think Rohan did anything the best while they had last moments. Who was running the voice? Yeah. Good man. I didn't know him well, but I read a lot and they lost to help with that.

Yeah. Have more people leave that say, Well, ruin him in a time was in than in the whole life of the organization. Yeah. Address the trouble about the people who are not and have in positions of responsibility. If they don't know, they don't know how to run an office here in your nation's capital.

Is Senator George Smathers reporting to the people, Of course. Possible to work for Bye. Yeah. Yeah. They can't Possibly What? Hearing blood. Okay. Mhm. No, no, I thank him. I just thank him that. So I said, Well, thank you very much for that matter without our time.

Just like just like Thank you, Mr President. You know, same thing, right? Hit my thumb and that there's nothing hurts worse than Trapattoni, um, and just sort of rip it halfway off, man. Going to Florida tomorrow? Yeah. Really, Like, happened. What are you going to spend?

I've been looking at. I feel it's my I feel I feel it is your place. Caroline team to take one Mhm here in your nation's capital Is Senator George Smathers reporting to the people of Florida? This takes the form of an informal discussion. Let's join the discussion.

Senator Smathers. The president has indicated that we may have to call the reserves up and increase the draft. The people are very much interested in that. What's your opinion? Well, I really don't know. Of course, that's a decision for the president to make. I would say comparably speaking, I think we can expect it to war to get bigger in Vietnam, the situation to get worse before it gets better.

I think we ought to remember that the British have been fighting the Communist in Malaysia now for a number of years, and they have had in Malaysia more men and we have had in South Vietnam, so I wouldn't be a bit surprised. And I think this that we've got to be the United States must take the position that we're not going to lose that war.

We can't go out there and afford to lose it, and we're not gonna lose it. So we're going to call up the numbers of men that are needed in order to get the job done. Hopefully, it will not be too many, but it could well be up 50,000 or maybe 100,000 more than we now have.

We're now at about a really 100,000 people. Well, Senator, isn't that going to mean more dollars from the taxpayer? Thus far? There's what we appropriated is, you know, $750 million extra above that which the president has originally asked for. However, the president and Secretary McNamara have been doing a really remarkable job in cutting down the expense of the military and other areas so that up to this point, the military budget is below what the military budget was actually two and three years ago.

But of course, as that budget is, as as it gets finally down to bare bones and we need more manpower and more equipment, we're going to have to ask for more money. But in this area, I'm sure the taxpayer don't mind paying. It's the area of waste and foreign aid that the objective they're still in conference on this foreign aid bill.

That seems to be sort of a roadblock. The Senate had two years, I think, in the House. One. Do you think that that will be resolved shortly? I hope so, And it should be. We should get on with that. And we're very much interested in this housing matter, which has to do with the federal government paying rents for a certain class of people.

Some people seem to be very much opposed to that. Are there many of them for it? Well, what we have been hearing from lately here in our congressional offices are those who are pretty much opposed to it. However, it's interesting interesting to observe that the National Association of Real Estate Dealers, they're all for it.

The home builders, of course, are for it all the construction industries for it, the American Association of Mortgage Bankers for it. I believe that bankers American Banking Association itself is for it, and all of them are for it because they believe it's the one way to get rid of finally large public housing.

And the people who have previously objected to public housing is subsidized housing and socialized housing. Look on this particular rent subsidy type thing as a way of getting rid of a greater evil, which is, uh, in their view, public housing. So I think we're going to see this rent subsidy bill passed, and we're going to see the housing bill passed pretty much in the form that the president recommended it.

You're one of the conferees between the House and Senate on the Medicare matter. How soon will that be resolved and be signed by the president? Well, we hope soon, of course, there were some 75 differences which the Committee on Finance added to the House bill and we adopted considerably more.

As a matter of fact, we raised the amount of the bill by roughly some fantastic, about $3 billion. It started off at roughly 4.5 billion, and we got up to 7.5 billion before we could cut off the tap, so to speak. So we've got a lot of pairing to do in the conference, and we've got a lot of cleaning up to do and tidying up to do, and I think we'll come out with the bill in about another two weeks, which will be in the cost of the neighborhood of about 7, 6.5 billions of dollars, and but most of important provisions will still be in it.

There's still nothing to take care of. Catastrophic illness, though, is there? Well, in the Senate bill, we have a provision now which will allow catastrophic illnesses. There is a limit, however, after 120 days, Thank you very much. Senators, Matters board Catastrophic illness. Well, what we've done as distinguished from the House bill as first, we extended the 60 day period in which a person could stay in the hospital and we added in the Finance Committee, we did this, but we merely stated that they would have to call a coinsurance.

They would have to put up $10 or a day for the additional 60 days. And if they don't take the hospital while then we worked out a formula where they could take additional days in a nursing home care if they didn't need to stay in the hospital now on the floor.

When we were on the Senate floor, when we were debating this particular bill, I was the manager of the bill at the time, and I accepted an amendment that had been offered by Senator Hart Key of Indiana, which provided that people could go into the hospital and, if they had to stay if they were classified as a catastrophic illnesses.

And, of course, there is a utilization committee of doctors, which supervised and determined whether people are properly staying in the hospital or not. But if the utilization committee determined that this person was did have a terminal illness or was a catastrophic case, as you put it, why then, under the heart key amendment, they could stay there indefinitely?

There is no limit to the time which they could stay, but they would have to contribute 5 $10 a day in the hospital, and they would have to contribute $5 a day in the nursing homes Now, actually, it's interesting to look at the figures in this and observe that, according to the statistics that were presented to us and from all over the country at the average hospital, stay of people who were 65 years old and older is actually something in the neighborhood of seven days out of seven days or a week, and that the longest period of time.

There's a heavy period, which was from five. Actually, it runs out to 15, but the heaviest part is seven now. There are very few people have to stay longer than 15 days, and that's why the house first put in 20. And then we got up to 60 and so on.

But we believe that the only people who will need this catastrophic no limitation, which hockey put in will be less than 1% of the elderly people who will require medical attention at all. It would be something less than I think the actual figure is 380 oh, elderly people who might be so in need.

What about your amendment, for example, that allows the continuation of 100% deduction of medical expenses from your income tax? Do you think that will stay in there? I think that's going to stay in there. I have long been fought, actually, while I was the first sponsor of it this time, Senator Mansfield put it in.

But I was again acting as the leader, and we accepted. That was one that I was four a long time ago, but in any event, I believe that will stay in. I don't think the house will cut it out. I think as long as we're going to make this pitch with respect to medical care for people that it doesn't make a lot of sense to have them not be able to deduct what is a legitimate medical bill.

Even though it does not total more than 3% of their gross income, which is what the law presently is. I think it'll stay in senators matters. This, of course, is still in conference. How long is this conference going to continue and how adamant are you going to be to retain the Senate version?

Well, we're this. We will be as adamant as we think we can and still come out with a good bill. But my judgement is it'll take about two weeks more on the senator. I'd like to ask you something about Florida. Do you think there's any possibility of Florida getting this $280 million for the Atomic Energy Commission?

Well, certainly lab, we hope so. This Florida The Florida Development Commission is making a presentation for five areas in the state and actually the criteria which we have to meet, indicate that Florida does have a good chance. And, of course, the bids have gone out for every state in the union to make a presentation.

We are hopefully awaiting the passage of the criteria by our first presentation because it will mean a tremendous future for Florida and for the area in which this lab is located. Thank you very much. Senator George Smathers. Yeah.