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How do you do, ladies and gentlemen, Well, the pace of Congress is rapidly stepping up as we approach major votes on major legislation. Congress at the present time is involved in the nomination of Admiral straws. I continue to get a lot of mail from people who want to know why we don't go ahead and vote on it.

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As far as I'm concerned, I've been ready to vote for the past three weeks. As a matter of fact, I announced my position as long as a month ago, however, unfortunately, even though the majority leader, Lyndon Johnson, continues to ask for unanimous consent agreement that we vote within the next 24 hours or so in the next 48 hours.

00:00:44.140 - 00:01:04.270

For some reason, certain political issues have gotten into this nomination, and it's now believed by the other party that it's to their advantage to continue this debate on Mr Straw's nomination because the people of the country are getting tired of the debate and they're putting all the blame on the Democrats.

00:01:04.280 - 00:01:25.120

Unfortunately, I think this is true. I do hope, however, by the time that you see this film, we will have voted on his nomination, the male continues to come in and ever increasing numbers. I have here a letter from a man, retired gentleman from over here in ST Petersburg, he says.

00:01:25.120 - 00:01:52.980

Why don't you people in Congress do something to keep down this government spending? I'm sick of paying for a lot of missiles and atomic bombs and so on. I'd like to point out to this gentleman, as I will in the letter that I write him that actually, already this Congress has cut the president's request by four of money by 896 millions of dollars what it will be at the end of the year.

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I don't know. There's about $7 billion worth of requests made by the administration yet to go. I cannot help but feel that looking at the past record of the Congress, that we're going to reduce the budget request of the president substantially, and I believe by the end of this year we will have reduced it by at least a billion or a billion and a half dollars.

00:02:17.340 - 00:02:41.260

One of the things that I've never been able to understand is how it was that the Congress has somehow acquired a reputation of being great spenders. You look over the record for the past seven years and you'll find that, for example, in the 83rd Congress in 1955 the budget request was some 16 billions of dollars.

00:02:41.740 - 00:03:10.060

We only appropriated, however, 57 billions of dollars, and there was a net reduction close to $3 billion. In 1956 we reduced the president's request for money by some to billions of dollars. 1957. We reduced it to $257 million 1958. We reduced it $5 billion in the fiscal year 59 which we voted on last year.

00:03:10.740 - 00:03:31.550

We reduced his request 617 millions. I believe we're going to reduce it, I said this year by two billions, so you can see that there is no justification for pointing to the Congress saying that they're great spending. On the contrary, we have consistently reduced the budget request of the administration.

00:03:32.340 - 00:03:49.250

Now here's the letter. I won't answer that letter quite that length that gentleman, but I thought I'd better say that as long as I got started, here's the letter wants to know what we're going to do about this travel tax. But as you know, we took off the 10% travel tax last year.

00:03:49.250 - 00:04:18.560

That is, the Senate did. However, when we got to the house, the House refused to go along with this particular bill, which I had introduced. I'm going to propose it again in the Senate within the next two or three weeks. I'm hopeful that once again, the Senate will take this 10% off because I believe that actually, it's a restricted tax, that it hurts business, that of course, it limits travel, and it hits those people who have to travel in connection with their work.

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For that reason, I believe that the loss of revenue to the Treasury, which only amounts to about $200 million a year, I think it will be more than made up by the spark to business, which will result and the greater revenue going back to the Treasury by reason of better business on the part of the transportation company.

00:04:40.240 - 00:04:57.140

Here's another letter. If somebody wants to know, how about these self employed pension plans? Well, we have that up now. I think we have some good prospects of passing it? Certainly. I hope so. My time is up. I wish I could visit with you longer. Thank you very much for looking and listening in.

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I hope you're looking again at the same time next week.