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How do you do, ladies and gentlemen, 1st may I take this opportunity to thank these television stations and radio stations for making it possible for me to report to you my constituents each week about developments here in Washington which directly affect you in Florida? I think these programs will be most informative from time to time.

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We'll have some of the outstanding and interesting personalities here in Washington as guests on this program, and I do hope that throughout the year you will continue to look in. Congress got off to a very slow start this year. At the beginning of the 88th Congress, the House of Representatives found itself all tied up in a fight on the size of the rules committee.

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It took about a week to get that resolved, and then the Senate, as has been it's custom, regrettably, immediately went into a long debate on the question of changing the rules changing Rule 22 so that only 60 senators could bring about an end to a debate rather than the present number, which is now which is 67 that has occupied in the Senate.

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Some 3.5 weeks of our time. You can actually say we have accomplished nothing except just to talk and loosen our vocal cords. I'm happy to report that that matter was finally settled this past week when we had two big votes, and it was evident that at least not enough members of the Senate felt that the rules should be changed.

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So now we're going forward with the regular work. I was re elected as the secretary of the Democratic Conference. You will remember that I served in this capacity for the past four years for two years. Uh, this is a job which I did not seek in the first instance and tried to get out of.

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Even in this instance, however, the Southern Senators, 18 and number passed a resolution in their Southern caucus asking me to take this position of leadership so that the total leadership of the Senate would be geographically represented. And this I agreed to do by virtue of being the secretary of the Democratic Conference.

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I now sit on the Policy Committee and the Steering Committee. The steering committee is a very important committee in the United States Senate because that is the committee which selects the personnel that make up all the other committees. And on that committee, which numbers 15. There are now some seven Southerners.

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An effort was made by Senator Joe Clark of Pennsylvania to increase the size of that committee to 19 in the recent Democratic caucus, but that motion of his was defeated. So the steering committee goes to work early next week and as a member of it will sit down with the other 14 members.

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And we will select the other members of the Senate who will constitute the various members of the committee, such as the foreign relations, the banking and currency, the armed services and so on. I hope to change my committee this year. I have previously been on the Finance and Taxation Committee, which handles all fiscal and monetary problems and tax problems.

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The other committee on which I have enjoyed sitting has been the Commerce Committee, and you're the fact that to Florida, its geographic location so much involved in the affairs of Latin America, particularly in view of the President Cuban crisis. It seemed to me that I could have a better forum from which to talk about these matters.

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If I moved from the Commerce Committee to the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. So I am at this moment a candidate for a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. I don't know how it will turn out. I do hope that I will be put on the Foreign Relations Committee because I think it will give me some additional influence and thereby give to your voice in Florida a greater meaning in greater worth and particularly in these matters of Cuba in Latin America.

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The other committee, the Finance Committee, will quickly and soon begin to consider the president's tax proposals, which, of course, as you know, are far reaching in the extreme. I think everyone would agree we should do something about getting the economy stimulated. On the other hand, we recognize in the face of this great deficit, we do not wish to destroy the fiscal integrity of our government.

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These are momentous problems. We're going to have to consider them and will consider them closely in the upcoming weeks. Well, I see that my time is up. I thank you very much for looking in, and I hope you look in again at the same time. Next week.

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Would you explain that? Well, yes, I I have long felt that the best way to improve the numbers of young people in colleges, as well as to prove the caliber of our education and the minds of all of our young people is to let the parents do it.

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Rather than tax, the parents have the government tax them and then take the money, so to speak to Washington and then redistributed through some government agency in the form of scholarships or things of that character. It seems to me much to be desired, to have the federal government encourage parents to pay for their own Children to go to school by giving to those parents the opportunity to deduct from their income federal income tax a certain proportion of the tuition, which they pay for their Children to go to some accredited university or college.

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That way, we keep it in the hands of the parents and the family, and we'll get as many people in college that way, or probably more than we would the other way. Well, not as the federal government dictate as to where you shall send your child or what location or What school?

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No, the federal government under this program, which I envision would have absolutely nothing to do with it. The only thing the federal government would do would be willing about. Action of the Congress would require the federal government to give to the parents a credit in return for the tuition, which the parent pays at an accredited college or university for their child to get this education.

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Senator, I understand you recently wrote a letter to Senator Harry F. Byrd, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Could you tell us the purpose of this letter? Well, I've written two letters to Senator Byrd. Natalie, the first letter had to do with the one I know you have reference to is asking him to have Mr Mortimer Caplin, who is the head of the Internal Revenue Service, come before a Finance and taxation committee and explain to us in detail what the Internal Revenue Service is doing with the law, which we passed last year with respect to the deduction of expense items.

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Now, this is very important to Florida. For example, uh, the Internal Revenue Service has issued a bulletin which says that if you go to a convention from Will say in New York or Chicago is somewhere down into Miami or Jacksonville or ST Petersburg or somewhere like that.

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But if you go to convention, which lasts just three days, the internal revenue will allow you to deduct the cost of your trip down and back. But if the convention last five days or as long as seven days or a week, then you can only deduct 3/4 of the cost of the trip.

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And if you happen to stay down there for 10 days or two weeks, you can only deduct half of the cost of the trip. And if you stay there over two weeks, you can only deduct a third and so on. Well, this seems to me a little bit ridiculous.

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And I know being on the Finance and Taxation Committee that we passed the law tightening up deductions with respect to business expense. We did not anticipate the internal revenue would go that far. We think there's a little bit ridiculous. If you're going to a legitimate convention in Florida while you're at the convention, that's obviously business deduction.

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The trip should be deducted. They're both going down and returning. And then if you wanted to stay an extra week and pay your own expense and have a vacation, that's your own problem. Yes, So anyway, I'm we're going to have a Kaplan up to to explain to us this and other items regulation, which has put in which has been very tough on the businessman.

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One quick answer, Senator. A lot of our business people in the South and particularly in the Florida areas where we're dealing with space engineers, scientists working and so forth are much worried about some of this work being stolen away from Florida. Is there a possibility we will lose much of it?

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I don't think that we're going to lose very much. There's no question, Bob, as you suggest that there's great competition for these contracts. California today gets 41% of the total number of defense contracts that are let we in Florida are getting just about 4% so we have to battle for that which we're getting.

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But I do believe as we increase the caliber of our education as we increase the the comforts of areas in which I live for these scientists and these people, I Bel. And if we are aggressive in going out trying to secure these contracts, letting the main contract, you know what we have and what we can do I think we will get our share.

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I see my time is up. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for listening in. I hope you're listening again at the same time next week.