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How do you do? Ladies and gentlemen, may I first say that wherever you are in Florida, you're lucky because the weather is sure miserable here in Washington. And it's miserable all over the Northeast. Well, the Congress is actually finally getting underway. We had, as you know, quite some debate with the rules change, and we finally got that out of the way much sooner than we expected.

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And now the committees of Congress are getting organized. It's always quite a tortuous affair, getting the Congress off when we first meet at the end of the beginning of a new session because some people want new committees and there's much jockeying for positions on important committees.

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Both Senator Holland and I decided to keep our old committees. He's on the Appropriations Committee, as you know, which is one of the most, if not the most important committee in the Congress. He's also on the Agriculture Committee and thereby can protect the interests of our Citrus people and farming people all over the state.

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I decided to remain on my two major committees, the interstate and foreign commerce, because, of course, it's most important to our people. It handles all transportation matters. Also, all aviation matters, all communications matters as well as most matters having to do with the sea lanes. So I knew that's important to our state, and I've decided to view of the fact that I'm getting somewhat senior on that committee to remain on it.

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I also decided that it was best for me to remain on the Finance and Taxation Committee. That's the committee would sets all of our fiscal policies. It votes taxes, of course, At the same time, it passes on all treaties. Chairman Harry Byrd of Virginia has not yet called that committee and discretion yet, but we expect to get moving on tax matters very shortly, just and certain he's going to give us the word.

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I hope soon. While the Congress has been slow getting underway, I can assure you that the constituents with respect to writing us, they have not. We've begun to get a lot of mail already. We're now averaging about 5 to 600 letters a day. I think that's a little lower than what we were averaging at the end of the session last year.

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But undoubtedly, as these important matters come before the Congress the mail will pick up. Most of this male has to do with just ordinary request, you know, as the federal government reaches further into people's lives, why naturally, more requests are made to us to help them with the federal government.

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I would say 50% of the mail which we get today had to do with ordinary housekeeping chores, such as transferring young men from various bases around the country and from overseas. Many letters are requests for help on pensions. Many letters have to do with farm problems and particularly farm bulletins and things of that nature.

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However, some of them are coming. The nature of opinion letters, some of them are a little bit critical from time to time about things we've done. And then every now and then we get one that's even favorable. But we have a number of them here which ask us, Here's one, for example, from a housewife in Jacksonville who asked us whether or not we think the federal budget can be violence.

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Well, I may I must say this, that I hope that it can. All of us do. I think everyone recognizes that this fight that we have against inflation is almost the most important fight that we have next to our fight to maintain our military posture. The president submitted a balanced budget, but it was very precariously balanced.

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Actually, in order for it to be balanced as he's recommended, we must have exactly the worst weather that it's possible to have so that we do not have too many farm surpluses. If we do have good weather and we do have big crops by then of course a lot of money will be paid out in the budget will be out of balance.

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At the same time, he's depending upon us passing an increase in taxes. For example, he recommends that we raised the tax on gasoline by a cent and a half and also the tax on jet fuel very questionable whether the Congress will do this. We have always looked upon the tax on gasoline is essentially a state tax and whether or not we should move further into the state field, I don't know that will have to be debated.

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Actually, last year, the president or two years ago, the president missed his estimate by $13.5 billion so I would venture to say that this year we will be very fortunate if we can have a balanced budget. My guess is that we will not have. But I hope it will be not far out of balance.

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We're going to have to adopt some building programs for the United States. This will, of course, cost more than the President has anticipated. Well, my time is up. Thank you for looking in. I hope you're looking again at the same time next week.