Since I was a young boy the thrust of my prayers — at least when I was trying to make a good impression on God — has always been that I not fail to u… - Jimmy Carter

I still have complete confidence that the United States, if given time, will resolve its problems. We have always been able to do that in the past, whenever we faced difficult questions. The United States still has that innate strength.

Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.

The reason that the agencies compartmentalize your clients is because the agencies are compartmentalized in Washington. And there's no way to make it possible at the community level to have a client-family deal with one key person who can take care of the needs, without running all over the community, unless we have some coordination coming out of Washington. This is what we are trying to do with our reorganization proposal. When I became Governor of Georgia, we had this same problem. We did an analysis and found that in some poor families we had seven different State agencies going to that one family. Every one of those agencies had a separate file on that family. And there was no way for the poor, sometimes ignorant people in the family that didn't have a telephone and didn't have an automobile to find the right agency when they had a problem. But we had what we called a one-door policy that we established. We brought all those agencies together in a human resources department, and we arranged it so that in every community there was one place where a family could go for advice or counsel or even services, themselves, and for financial assistance. And we tried to make sure that one lead agency person it might be a mental health worker, it might be a social worker, or others-would go into that family and get to be friends of theirs. And that family had that person's telephone number. And if an aged person had a problem, and the social worker that worked with that family happened to be a specialist in mental health, they could call that person in the middle of the night, and that person would know who the aged counselor might be. But we now still have a grossly disorganized Federal Government. At the regional office you have the same thing. But we're working on that. And the Congress gave me early this year authority to reorganize the structure of the Government. I'm going to do it, and I need for you to help me reach this great goal. I believe we can do it together.