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President Reagan won from Jimmy Carter by asking the voters during the last week of his campaign for the oval office,  "If they were better off that year than they were the year before". And since the time was ripe for an answer of NO, the American people responded saying they wanted a change because Reagan said he would cut taxes, balance the budget and build up the American Arms forces.

The President did not tell the folks however that he intended to do this by attempting through law and Executive fiat to turn back the clock on a great segment of the American people.

The president forgot to say in front that he intended to come up with a plan which he called new federalism -- in short the exact reversal of anything that had gone on for the last four decades since Franklin Roosevelt led another bunch of American out of a great depression.

The president during his first year asked for and got the Congress of the United States to push his tax reform program and to go along with his military program. And now he is on the threshold of attempting to balance his budget.

President Reagan proposed to balance his budget by returning all government expenditures which has sustained the American poor, elderly and incapacitated to the 50 American States. In this swap -- the states, and cities would take care of all problemms which were financed by our taxes to the Federal government back to us -- but without federal help. Say I can't figure out this double talk -- but maybe you can.

All I know is that as a youth living in the Harlem ghetto of the thirties, I was helped when a college recruiter from a Negro college, many of whom are now threatened with extinction due to the president plans, despite what Toni Brown says, sold me on the idea of getting a college education by going to Morehouse College on a scholarship. I was sustained there by Mrs. Mary McCloud Berthume who was the head of a government program called the N.Y.A. which paid me $14.00 a month to teach at the Episcopal Church in Atlanta. N.Y.A. was defined as National Youth Administration which was financed out of funds coming from the federal government. And the students Black & Whites came from all over the land to be educated this way.

Well down through the years aid to student and dependent children were redefined by new rules on eligibility but students and children were aided by our government for four decades until last year, when Ronald Reagan began his program to bring us back to a new plato of efficiency by ordering the stoppage of aid to dependent students and telling dependent children that they will now
have to shift for themselves and make it the best way they can. Maybe you can tell me how a poor crippled five year old child can go out and get a job. Or maybe you can tell me how a mother who wants to work but can't because she must take care of that child, can make it or exist without aid.

When I was a young man -- a lot of young men were helped by something called the WPA a Work Progress Administration. I can name a host of folks who were helped by the Roosevelt WPA program. All of them went on in life to become preachers, teachers, actors, lawyers, doctors, dentist, business people, federal employees, Judges, Ambassadors to foreign countries and politicians, including Borough Presidents, Mayors and even a United States Senator as well as our representatives at the United Nations.

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