12—Friday, June 21, 1974
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Joseph
Democrat for
Public trust in our elected represen-
tatives is essential. A candidate for
public office can help create that
trust by being candid and, therefore,
believable.
Candor and job effectiveness re-
quire a realistic statement of what a
Congressman can do and what he
cannot do. To try to change the world
is to end up changing nothing.
As a Congressman, I see three major
opportunities.
First, I would be an "ombudsman,"
a representative of my constituents
confronted with the vast federal
bureaucracy.
Second, I would concentrate on a
few legislative areas. To play a deci-
sive roll in obtaining passage of
creative legislation by a majority of
435 Congressmen, 100 Senators and
the President requires years of care-
ful preparation and persuasion.
Third, I would seek to vote soundly
on the hundreds of questions upon
which Congressmen vote every year.
Some of the major areas of concern
in the years ahead are:
NATIONAL SECURITY
All other issues will pale into insig-
nificance if we fail to avert world-
wide war.
We must explore, tirelessly, every
opportunity for a balanced reduction
of arms and arms controls.
In the Middle East, we must provide
Israel with the arms her people need
to survive against the much larger
mass of Soviet arms and Soviet-
trained troops still dedicated to the
practical annihilation of her people.
The United States should continue
its uniquely constructive role of
moving Israel and her neighbors to
the conditions of a just and stable
peace.
In the less developed areas of the
world, we need to accelerate our ef-
forts to help reverse the process by
which the economic gap between
the less developed nations and the
rest of us is growing instead of
narrowing.
INFLATION
No post-World War II Administra-
tion — Republican or Democratic —
service and construction industry
manpower training programs.
" FOURTEEN .MILE R1Y.
FRANKLIN
BEVERLY HILLS
LATHRUP
VILLAGE
FARMINGTON
TWP.
FARMINGTON
SOUTHFIELD
EIGHT MILE RD.
CC
CC
1.1.1
17th
CONGRESSIONAL
DISTRICT
N. WEST DETROIT
REDFORD
TWP.
W. WARREN RD.
has been able to avoid some inflation.
The Nixon Administration has mis-
takenly dropped some programs of
the last Administration tending to
reduce inflation, e.g., job training
programs pinpbinted to increase the
labor supply in the labor-short and
highly inflationary service and con-
struction industries.
Instead of employing such specific
programs, this Administration has
tried to depress the demand for
goods and services generally by, for
example, generating repressively
high interest rates — themselves a
contributing factor to inflating costs
of doing business.
Instead of using such economic
scatter-guns, we should aim more
narrowly at the most inflationary
areas of the economy through such
specific measures as lower interest
rates on new construction loans and
WELFARE
Many people on Welfare (for ex-
ample, the handicapped and the
aged) are not able to work.
But we must encourage those people
on welfare who are able to work, to
either work or suffer economic con-
sequences.
Incentives to work must be inserted
into our welfare system if the system
is to earn the support of a majority
of the American electorate. President
Nixon has made an important contri-
bution to resolving this problem by
proposing a work-incentive Family
Assistance Program currently pend-
ing before the Congress.
CAMPAIGN FINANCING REFORM
We have learned very little from our
"Watergate" experience if we think
it is the product of one man or group
of men. It is the imperative obliga-
tion of the Congress to enact cam-
paign financing laws requiring the
disclosure of every contributor and
every contribution and effective and
enforceable limitations on the
amounts of contributions and total
expenditures in a campaign.
•
"The culture in which we have been
nurtured has assumed that the corn-
forts, the securities, the satisfactions
and achievements of life could be
expanded and multiplied without
limit, and that nations and individu-
als could hope for more and more
power and privilege."
"Now we have come, as a whole
nation, before some hard realities of
life which all nations have faced • be-
fore us. ' Very few Americans are
willing to admit that all these expe-
riences are due primarily to a corn-
bination of historical circumstances
which no statesman could have
created or deflected. '"
"One of the most important lessons
for our whole nation is therefore to
learn how to live within the limits of
our epoch's possibilities . . .The more
we can do this with patience and se-
curity, the more we will be able to act
with resolution." (Reinhold Niebuhr)
Joseph Levin for Congress Committee, 1000 Detroit Bank & Trust Bldg., Detroit, Michigan 48226, 962-5909