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The Blairs and I gave a dinner for him on the 18th of May.

This is in Washington?

In Washington, at the Blair's house, and we had a long conversation with him. He was very, very cautious about what he was planning to do. He seemed a little bit optimistic that something could be done. However --

You mean in terms of appropriations?

Yes. However, the House added an astonishing amount of 208 million dollars to the National Institutes as a whole. See, the budget as a whole has been very much dampened down, the national budget, by the Budget Committee, but the House added 208 million dollars, and this made Magnuson feel that the House had done pretty well.

As a matter of fact, Magnuson is thinking about his political future in 1980. He's now the Chairman of the full Committee on Appropriations, and the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health, Education and Welfare, and he wants very much to win and come back and continue to do that. He's the third ranking government official in the United States.

How many terms has he had in the Senate?

Oh, he's been in the Congress since 1936. So you can imagine, he wouldn't know what to do with himself. However,