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mm. The Governor's Mansion Tallahassee, Florida It's late at night, but not the end of Governor Bob Graham's day. It's where you can usually find him at this hour. Burning the midnight oil for Florida Grams Dedication to public service began at an early age. He was raised on a Florida farm in a family where public service was a way of life.

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I grew up in a family of love and strength of family that gave me values, including the value of public services being the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy. It's been just 13 years since I was here. In fact, it was 13 years this fall that, uh, we started together.

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13 years ago. The teachers of Carol City High School invited there, then state Senator Bob Graham to spend a semester working side by side with them in the classroom. The experience proved so valuable that Graham developed it into work days, his program of working with the people of Florida to learn more about their life and work.

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I don't know, a substitute for the kind of experience that you get through workdays. You not only learn a lot about how people earn their living. Most important, you learn how people live. It's a way in which you go to a person's turf. They're comfortable. They're familiar.

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Uh, you're the outsider. People will warm up. There'll be more candid. They'll tell you about what's happening to their Children in school. What are the kind of problems with their parents in a nursing home? Or what type of job experiences they've had, what's happening in their life, which is a tremendously important part of understanding the people of this state if you want to serve the people.

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Mhm, mhm. Some politicians say that the United States Senate is no longer able to deal with our great national problems. Bob Graham thinks they're wrong. If you make that statement, I think you say the United States of America is an insignificant nation. The United States Senate is one of the most important institutions in our American government.

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It is the place in which our founding fathers felt that you would bring, uh, the ablest of our people in order to better understand, have a sense of vision over a six year term in office, to deal with the most fundamental questions that faced our nation if you think America is over the hill, If you think that we're on the down slope of our nation's history, that the great years of America have already been written, then I think you can say the United States Senate is a trivial, insignificant institution.

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I don't agree that that's the history of America. I don't agree. That's the position of the United States Senate in 1986. Bob Graham, of course, has balanced the Florida budget every year as governor. He thinks that's a lesson Washington needs to learn because he's worried that the federal government is placing a mortgage on our Children's future.

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If we continue to have this deficit, what we're doing is for every dollar that's being spent. We're raising about 78 cents and borrowing 22 cents. Who do you think is going to pay the 22 cents that's being borrowed? Why do you think you're gonna be the ones to pay the cost of this deficit?

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We're the new generation, so we're going to be when we get older, the deficits probably gonna still be there. It's off to pay it off because last generation did it, so we'll have to work to get it. They don't. My parents didn't leave me this kind of debt to carry.

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And because they didn't, we've been able to do a lot of great things as families. And as a nation, you're not going to have that opportunity because you're gonna spend so much of your life paying off the debt that were accumulated. Do you think that's fair for one generation to leave that kind of debt to the next?

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You know it's not mhm, right? You know what Bob Graham has done as governor? Think what he could do in the United States Senate. Yeah, I intend to go to the United States Senate to be an advocate for Florida because if you're an advocate for Florida, you are an advocate for the future of America.

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The things that we're experiencing today are going to be the things that other states will be dealing with 5, 10 or 25 years from now. So how well the the United States Senate and the national government is able to relate to the relevant issues for Florida will have a tremendous impact on the quality of our life today and on the quality of lives of all Americans in the years in the future.

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Bob Graham, Florida's answer to Washington