NEWS CONFERENCE 653

Q. Governor, Mr. Hobson, to do him justice, made it clear at the
hearings that he [fade out]....

A. He did? I am delighted to hear it. I have no personal criticism of
Mr. Hobson. The only thing that I am afraid of is that the alarm that
was generated by the deficit may cause a certain unrest upon people
who are depending upon welfare assistance to live. Some of them are
being told by certain areas that seem to thrive on inflaming people
that they may not have any money to live on and that the State has
taken the welfare away. This is not the case.

Loan Law Legislation

Q. Governor, that same paper is carrying a column today in which
it is pointed out that a commission that you appointed under the
chairmanship of Senator George Hughes to study the loan laws made
no recommendations for the legislation coming into this session simply
because it never met.

A. Yes, I saw the article today and I would comment very simply
by saying that when I appointed that particular commission I made it
completely clear to Senator Hughes that I wanted no report this year.
I didn't think that they could get ready — with the other responsibili-
ties that the members had — to give me a report for the year, and I
requested a report for the 1969 session. If they haven't been too rapid
in their gettings together it's because I have not given them a time
limit of being ready for this session. As a matter of fact, I specifically
requested that they not be ready for this session — that they wait until
next session so that they could take the necessary time to correlate the
many agencies concerned in this interest problem.

Q. There are a number of bills, however, that the Legislative Coun-
cil has passed out that deal in this field.

A. Yes there are, and as a matter of fact I have asked my staff to at-
tempt to persuade the sponsors of those bills to delay them until this
particular committee can make a complete analysis. Now there may
be some in certain areas that could be favorably considered, and I
don't find as a matter of fact at this moment that there are not some
that I can't support. But my idea was a comprehensive look at the
problem to the end that again a package could be introduced to
handle the impact of interest rate changes, on the Small Loan Ad-
ministration and every other particular State agency involved — the
Banking Commissioner, and so forth.

Q. Would this include the increase in the mortgage rate to 7 percent,
Governor?