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How do you do, Ladies and gentlemen, At the beginning of this year, the Congress was charged with being a spendthrift organization, particularly made up of people who had no responsibility with respect to our national budget. At that time, I tried to tell most of the people of Florida that that was not the case, that on the contrary, over the course of the years, we had voted less money than the executive branch of the government had actually asked for.

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I also predicted at that time that even though the president had asked for a large amount of money this year, and while he claimed that it was the minimum figure which he could get along with, nonetheless, we would still vote less money than he asked for.

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Well, here we are at the end of the session, and I'm happy to report to you that once again, the Congress has voted less money than the president had asked for. Here. This year is a chart which evidences how much we have reduced the president's budget for the year a billion 900 millions of dollars.

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I had originally predicted that we would reduce the president's budget by a billion and a half. I'm happy to say we have even exceeded that. We cut the foreign aid program by some $700 million. We cut the military construction program by 199 millions of dollars. We reduced the agricultural program, and this could have been reduced a great deal more.

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Unfortunately, it was not what we reduced it. By $110 million we reduced the Independent Offices Appropriation Bill by $82 million. That's the appropriation which runs the agencies of the government that was reduced. The employment actually was reduced. Can the government agency we reduced the Treasury and post office appropriation by 45 millions of dollars, and all the other various agencies of the government were reduced by some 740 millions of dollars.

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The only appropriation bill, which was increased over that amount requested by the president, was for the Health, Education and Welfare department, and that was increased by about 260 millions of dollars. I voted for this increase because it had to do with providing money for researching the causes and cures of cancer, arthritis, all types of diseases which are today taking a heavy toll of our population.

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It seemed to me that this was a very constructive appropriation, and I was delighted to vote even for more in that field than the president had asked for. So once again, I would like to demonstrate to you that despite the continued charges which unfortunately are made against the Congress by the press and by this administration, but on the contrary, rather than being spending, I think we're very thrifty people.

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In so far as running, the government is concerned. Let's look at this chart for just a minute. It shows the years from 1955 to date, how much the Congress has decreased the amount of money requested by the president. In 1955 we reduced to six billions of dollars.

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1956. We cut the president's request by a straight $2 billion 1957. We cut a 257 millions of dollars 1958. We cut it a whopping figure of some five billions of dollars 1959 $617 million. And then, of course, this year by a billion $900 million giving us a total of $12.5 billion cut 1955.

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I thought you would be interested in actually seeing these undisputed figure as to what the Congress has done and to let you once again know that the members of the House and the Senate are not irresponsible spenders. We well understand the dangers of inflation. We well understand the cost of this indebtedness to the government and what it means to our government.

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We will appreciate the necessity of having a real integrity and our financial and fiscal policy in the government. We're not going to destroy our government by spending too much money. And it's evidenced by this figure of a cut of $12.5 billion since 1955. Thank you very much for looking in on this rather dry subject.

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