[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 100 (Wednesday, July 27, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: July 27, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
LESSONS WITHOUT BORDERS
Mr. SARBANES. Madam President, last month I had the honor of
participating in the launching of the U.S. Agency for International
Development's Lessons without Borders Program series at Morgan State
University in Baltimore. At that event, city officials, community
leaders, and USAID professionals came together to initiate a dialogue
on some of the problems that affect developing countries and U.S. inner
cities alike, with the goal of sharing methods and solutions.
The program demonstrated not only that we can learn from the
experience and creativity born of hardship in other countries, but that
together we can develop common approaches that result in greater
benefits to everyone. In areas such as providing preventive health care
services, making credit available to small mom-and-pop businesses,
eradicating preventable diseases, and lowering childhood mortality,
there is much to be gained by taking advantage of some of the cost-
effective and broad-based solutions that have been applied in the
developing world. By sharing directly the ideas, information, and
techniques that have been used in their respective areas, community
service professionals and development experts are multiplying the
impact of investments in domestic revitalization as well as in
international development.
I would like to commend USAID Administrator Brian Atwood, Vice
President Al Gore, Jr., Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, and all of those
USAID and the city of Baltimore who made the June 6 event possible, and
I would ask unanimous consent that the attached articles about the
program, along with the Vice President's speech, be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Lessons Without Borders
(By Vice President Al Gore)
I've just come from a ceremony commemorating D-Day. We
remember the actions fifty years ago today--not only of the
allied soldiers--but also those who sacrificed at home.
But anniversaries of famous battles aren't just the cause
of celebration. For while they remind us of the heroes of
freedom and democracy they also remind us of the grim horrors
of war--destruction and loss. They make us renew our effort
to prevent future wars.
After WWII, it was the Marshall plan which aimed at
revitalizing the economy and communities in Western Europe.
And it was a success. We helped Western Europe build a
self-sustaining system which embodied participatory
democracy, protected the free market and unleashed their
productive energies.
And the Marshall Plan's success led to other foreign aid
efforts. Like President Kennedy's Foreign Aid Act of 1961
which extended aid to Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He said soon after entering the White House that the
developing world is ``The great battle ground for the defense
and expansion of freedom.''
Since that time, we have learned many lessons in our
efforts to aid developing nations. Lessons about housing,
nutrition, vaccinations, prenatal health care and disease.
Now it's time to bring the lessons we have learned abroad
home, for these are ``lessons without borders.''
That's why we're here today. To continue a dialogue between
development experts and those here at home who are working to
solve economic and social problems in the United States.
I am particularly pleased that USAID has taken the lead on
this.
Under Brian Atwood, the Agency has taken on the task of
redefining its mission to meet the needs of the post-Cold War
world. USAID has been a leader in the program I chaired, the
National Performance Review, and it has made itself an
official reinvention laboratory.
Those who may think reinvention is just another word for
shuffling around bureaucratic boxes should look at what USAID
is doing here. Since the Foreign Assistance Act became law
thirty-three years ago, thousands of Americans have become
involved in the rebirth of nations. They're agricultural
experts, advising on soil conservation, cattle breeding and
crop management.
They're teachers--helping communities establish schools
where children are now learning to read, and technical
facilities, where adults learn the skills they need to
compete in a changing world.
They're water and waste experts, helping to set up clean
water supplies and develop efficient, affordable ways to
recycle waste.
They're public health officials--setting up clinics where
expectant mothers and their children can receive health care,
and whose effect is felt long after they have left.
They are precisely the kind of people who can help us solve
problems within our borders.
Whether it's developing vaccine programs in Mali and
Manhattan, or treating dehydration in Bangladesh and urban
areas in the U.S. such as right here in Baltimore, some
lessons are universal.
Let me give you some examples:
immunizations
A few weeks ago we recognized Immunization Week at the
White House. We pledged to keep working on developing new
immunization strategies until children cease to die
needlessly from diseases which are easily prevented.
In 1990, only 39 percent of inner city children in the
United States were immunized against measles.
In Mali, infant mortality rates are among the highest in
the world: over two-thirds of childhood deaths could be
prevented by vaccination.
The University of Rochester is currently working in
partnership with the Columbia University in Mali to improve
child immunization levels among the poor, urban populations.
dehydration
Dehydration kills 3 million children every year. In the
United States it kills up to 600 children and hospitalizes
thousands every year.
USAID has found that feeding children a mixture of water,
sugar, and salt prevents diarrhea from causing dehydration.
This treatment costs pennies a day.
It now saves more than 1,000,000 lives a year.
social marketing
USAID is using marketing techniques all over Africa, much
like Colgate toothpaste, to ``sell'' socially important
products like condoms, or messages stressing the importance
of breastfeeding.
They pretest, package and promote the materials and launch
the products just like a business would. This cause-related
marketing is another example of something we can use within
our borders.
community based services
USAID identifies credible people within the community and
forms a network between these groups--in places like Kenya,
Nigeria, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The groups then serve as actual service providers--going
door to door to identify children with diarrhea or pregnant
women. They then pass along their knowledge so the people can
``help themselves.'' This is an excellent example of
community empowerment and we can use this same idea right
here at home.
pest management
Alley farming is a technique used in Nigeria to control
crops without pesticides.
Rapidly growing trees are planted in bean fields, becoming
an artificial host for parasites. The beans are allowed to
grow quickly. The Nigerians then plant corn, and the pests
feed on the beans. We can use this cheap, environment-
friendly technique in Georgia and the Carolinas.
microenterprise development
Credit and loans are now within reach of the poor.
A commercial bank in La Paz, Bolivia now gives loans solely
to low-income people. The average loan is about $400. This
bank makes more loans than the entire banking sector in
Bolivia combined.
In the United States, there are 200 microenterprise
programs just getting started--and here's a technique that
can help.
The underlying solution we see from these examples is
cooperation. Development comes from communities and
individuals working together. It is a natural outcome of
empowerment.
The community activists in this room know all too well that
the problems on the table are severe and require considerable
personal responsibility. But they also know that they are
made worse by hopelessness.
The mother who doesn't get prenatal care, who doesn't know
about nutrition or when to have her children immunized--her
situation is made worse by a feeling of powerlessness.
The young man who wants honest work but lacks the means to
start a business--his situation is made worse by a reasonable
lack of hope.
We can't ``develop'' people, or make them assume
responsibility for their own lives if they don't want to.
This is as true here as it is overseas.
But we also know that we can use cooperative approaches to
give people a sense of control over their futures--that they
matter as positive contributors to society--not just as
victims.
The federal government has a role to play and that's the
basis of our community empowerment program. But the
government can't do everything.
This is why I'm especially eager to see programs of
microenterprise and community banking flourish in our poor
neighborhoods. In developing countries, these programs have
given tens of thousands of poor people the means to begin
small, informal businesses that give them the strength to
live lives of purpose and hope.
In neighborhoods where no one is literate--in homes where
most infants are expected to die--in nations torn by violence
and hunger and despair. Yet even in such environments, they
have learned how to bring hope.
Now they're bringing those lessons home.
As the programs of Accion International and FINCA have
demonstrated in Latin America, the real strength of
microenterprise and neighborhood banking is empowerment at
the grassroots level. It helps people take control of their
own lives. It creates bonds among strangers. It helps to make
a neighborhood from a bunch of buildings.
USAID, along with other development agencies and private
voluntary organizations have learned how to achieve things in
environments that have few resources, if any,
It reminds me of an old story about the business man who
went to the oracle and said his abacus counters couldn't keep
up with the workload--but couldn't afford to hire any new
workers. What should he do?
``Each abacus counter must grow another finger on each
hand,'' said the oracle.
``That's very wise,'' said the businessman. ``But how do I
get them to do that?''
``Ah,'' said the oracle. ``I only make policy. Implementing
it is your job.''
We must remember that when it comes to implementing--we all
have a role to play whether in the public or private sector,
or through volunteer groups.
Eric Sevareid once told President Kennedy that:
``It doesn't make much sense when two people are sitting in
a boat for one of them to point a finger accusingly at the
other and say `your end of the boat is sinking.'''
We know that we are all in the boat together. Only together
can we formulate solutions which will put an end to poverty
and ensure economic and social freedom for all--both
overseas, and in our neighborhoods.
The time and opportunity are upon us. It's always been easy
for Americans to lend a helping hand, but far more difficult
to accept one.
On this day when we remember how Americans lent a helping
had to Europe, let's dedicate ourselves to a continuing
effort abroad, but also renewing our commitment within our
own borders.
Yet here we are--truly helping ourselves--bringing the
lessons we've paid for to our own doorstep. It is a hard
path, but a necessary one. can traverse it best by traveling
it together.
____
[From the Washington Post, June 11, 1994]
Foreign Aid Comes Home
The ``Lessons Without Borders'' program launched by Vice
President Gore in Baltimore this week is supposed to be a
winning proposition for all. The idea, generated by the U.S.
Agency for International Development, is to bring to
America's poor communities some of the lessons AID has
learned while operating programs in the developing world.
Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke volunteered his city to be AID's
opening act. His reasons for doing so were candid and telling
about America today.
``It is an unfortunate fact of life,'' said Mayor Schmoke,
``that we have in certain parts of our city health problems,
housing problems, that resemble those in Third World
countries.'' Those words, could have been spoken by any big-
city major in America.
The similarities of conditions in the developing world and
American inner cities and rural communities are mortifying.
There are poor neighborhoods around the country with infant
mortality rates that rank right up there with countries where
Peace Corps volunteers and American aid workers are being
dispatched to work. We think of children who die from
diarrhea as being only found in countries like Bangladesh or
Burkina Faso. In America's inner cities and in rural
communities, however, hundreds of our own children are dying
or being hospitalized each year from disease.
Vice President Gore noted that only 39 percent of inner
city children were immunized against measles in 1990. Stack
that up against poverty-ridden Egypt, where AID reports a 90
percent immunization rate, or India's 80 percent or the 88
percent immunization rate achieved in the Philippines. The
sad fact is the some of what ails the most devastated
countries on earth also afflicts communities within our own
borders: illiteracy, poor nutrition, little or no prenatal
care, disease, joblessness and, ultimately, hopelessness.
The Agency for International Development can't be expected
to solve problems on American soil; the law prevents AID from
doing that. But perhaps the agency--take a page from the
developing world--can lend a helping hand by advising hard-
pressed U.S. communities how they can use techniques from the
Third World to address their own problems. After decades of
work abroad, AID has learned many lessons. This experiment
can usefully teach Americans another lesson: Images of Third
World deprivation are universal; they can be even found on
U.S. soil.
____
[From the Baltimore Sun]
Lessons from the Third World
For more than three decades, the United States has been
sending small armies of people to poor countries to aid
economic development efforts. Now, when Americans have plenty
of reason to be concerned about their own economic well-
being, many voters are beginning to look askance at the money
spent on foreign aid. The partnership inaugurated this past
week between Baltimore and the U.S. Agency for International
Development is aimed at finding ways to apply the lessons
learned in development efforts overseas to some of America's
urban ills.
The lessons abound: Haiti may be poor, miserable and
desperate. But in many areas it does better in immunizing its
children against common childhood diseases than some parts of
Baltimore. Could we learn something from their approach?
Bangladesh also has enormous misery and deprivation. But
through its innovative Grameen Bank it has found a way to
provide capital to millions of poor people, particularly
women. In this country, poor people are caught in a credit
bind, vastly limiting their ability to capitalize on their
own initiative. Without money or other assets, it is hard to
qualify for a loan.
The Grameen Bank has found that loans of even $10 and $20
enable women to invest in spinning wheels or other equipment
necessary to begin very small businesses, or ``micro
enterprises.'' By helping these people tap into their own
energy and initiative, the bank enables them to magnify their
household income and improve their family's standard of
living. Programs modeled on the Grameen Bank have given
similar chances to poor people here; how can we expand these
efforts?
Anyone familiar with the lives of very poor people, whether
in inner cities or rural areas, knows their problems
transcend national borders. Their problems reach far beyond
the daily challenge to maintain adequate food and shelter.
From unanticipated pregnancies, infant mortality and
unhealthy children to lack of jobs or no access to credit,
the problems of poor people in Maryland look a lot like those
faced by the poor elsewhere in the world.
It is refreshing to see that a federal agency charged with
funding development programs in other countries can also
recognize the importance of finding ways to share what it
learns with people in this country. That not only enriches
efforts to help poor Americans; it also helps to inform
taxpayers about the vital role foreign aid can play in a
dangerously unstable world.
____
[From the Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1994]
Baltimore to Try Third World Remedies
(By Scott Shane)
For decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development
has sent Americans into the Third World to attack the
problems of developing countries: infant mortality and
childhood illness, unplanned birth and sexually transmitted
diseases, poverty and chronic unemployment.
Now AID wants to teach at home what it has learned abroad.
In Baltimore and elsewhere, the agency wants to share
remedies for the ills of urban America--infant mortality and
childhood illness, unplanned births and sexually transmitted
diseases, poverty and chronic unemployment.
Because Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke put aside boasterism and
responded to AID's offer with a candid acknowledgment that
the city needs help. Baltimore is the first U.S. city to be
targeted by AID's ``Lessons Without Borders'' program.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that we have in certain
parts of our city health problems, housing problems, that
resemble those in Third World countries.'' Mr. Schmoke says.
``And, if there are some techniques that AID has used
overseas that can be used here. I'd like to apply those
problem-solving techniques.''
``Lessons Without Borders'' will debut today with a
conference at Morgan State University that will bring
together Baltimore officials and staff members from AID, the
major distributor of foreign aid. Vice President Al Gore will
be the keynote speaker.
By law, AID is not permitted to fund programs in the United
States. But, by offering advice and cheerleading, the agency
is seeking to be midwife at the birth of a new generation of
U.S. social programs.
AID officials acknowledge that they hope ``Lessons Without
Borders'' will help them sell skeptical American taxpayers on
the value of foreign aid. But, budgetary motives aside.
American specialists in Third World development say the
initiative is a long-overdue recognition that creative
programs being used to attack stubborn social problems in
Africa, Asia and Latin America could be useful on U.S. soil.
Whether it is immunizations in Haiti--where in some
desperately poor neighborhoods the rate of childhood
inoculation is far higher than in Baltimore--condom
distribution in Central Africa or small enterprise
development in Bangladesh. Third World social programs have
much to teach U.S. policy makers, say Americans who have
worked abroad.
``A lot of us who've worked overseas have been waiting a
long time for this to happen,'' says Julie Convisser, who
runs an AIDS preservation project in Portland, Ore., based on
a similar effort in Zaire. ``As Americans we sometimes
believe no other country has anything to teach us. We're
wrong.''
Portland's Project Action, the first U.S. effort of
Population Services International, which operates in 24 other
countries, is among a handful of successful transfers of
Third World programs to this country. In Zaire, the battle
against AIDS incorporated television soap operas promoting
safe sex and condoms on sale for 2 cents apiece in every
roadside bar or shop. In Portland, Project Action has
produced MTV style television shows for adolescents and
placed 185 vending dispensing condoms at 25 cents each, Ms.
Convisser says.
``Lessons Without Borders'' was born of a conversation late
last year between AID Administrator J. Brian Atwood, 51, who
was a few months into his job, and Marian Wright Edelman, the
longtime head of the Children's Defense Fund.
As Mr. Atwood described AID's work abroad and Ms. Edelman
recounted disheartening statistics on child health and
poverty in the United States, they saw an opportunity, Mr.
Atwood said last week by telephone from Geneva. He was
returning from a tour of African famine areas undertaken at
the request of President Clinton.
In a November appearance on C-Span, Mr. Atwood said, he
``blurted out'' the idea that AID hoped to consult with U.S.
cities. Among the viewers was Schmoke aide Lee Tawney. He
passed the word on to the mayor, who decided Baltimore should
be part of the collaboration.
Mr. Atwood said AID has not previously sought to apply its
expertise in the United States partly because the agency long
felt beleaguered, a pawn in superpower politics that came
under fire for dubious spending.
``During the Cold War, we did waste a lot of money to buy
influence overseas,'' Mr. Atwood said.
The agency's budget peaked in the early 1980s at about $12
billion, much of it directed to fighting communism in Central
America and elsewhere. Today, the budget may be less
vulnerable to political pressure to steer the aid to allies,
but it is down to $7 billion. ``Lessons Without Borders''
could protect that spending by providing visible evidence to
Americans of the effectiveness of programs developed by AID.
Other developments make AID's initiative timely, public
health experts say.
The debate over health care reform has given new urgency to
cutting medical spending and one way to do it is to get away
from the high-cost approach traditional in this country.
``We Americans like the idea of being rushed to a high-tech
hospital,'' says Dr. William B. Greenough III. professor of
medicine and international health at Johns Hopkins. ``A great
many things can be done at lower cost and with equal efficacy
in the community and not in the hospital. In countries with
very limited resources, you have to save the patient and save
money at the same time.''
A striking example is treatment for dehydration caused by
diarrhea, says Dr. Greenough, who worked for eight years in
Bangladesh before returning to the United States in 1985.
For many years, doctors in Third World countries have
treated the condition with ``oral rehydration therapy'' a
packet of a few cents worth of salts and sugars that can be
mixed with water and drunk by the patient. If such a packet
is not available, chicken and rich soup is a fine substitute,
as Hopkins physicians have long pointed out
Yet the United States severely dehydrated patients
generally are hospitalized and hooked up to an intravenous
drip at a cost hundreds of times greater than the low-tech
alternative. Indeed, because diarrhea is dismissed as a
triviality, Dr. Greenough says, it often goes untreated,
leading to many unnecessary deaths, particularly among
nursing home patients.
Remedies that can be administered at home ``lack TV
appeal'' and are not considered real medicine by Americans,
who have an almost superstitious belief in costly machinery.
``Basically, our witch doctor's mask is a lot more
expensive,'' says Dr. Greenough, who welcomes AID's push to
bring in low-tech methods.
Elizabeth Holt, an assistant professor of international
health at Hopkins, is another public health professional who
has worked on both sides of the great divide between domestic
and international programs: in a poor urban community outside
Port au Prince, Haiti, and in Baltimore and elsewhere in
Maryland.
In the Haitian community, Dr. Holt says, the rate of
complete immunizations by 1 year of age reached 85 percent in
the late 1980's. In Baltimore, while nearly every child is
immunized by school age, the rate at 2 years of age is only
55 percent, says Dr. Peter Beilenson, Baltimore's health
commissioner.
The problem, Dr. Beilenson says, is not a shortage of
facilities for immunization and other preventive care. It's
the failure of people to take advantage of what's available.
That's why Baltimore's Healthy Start program, which seeks to
reduce infant mortality and the incidence of low birth-weight
babies, hires community residents to do outreach work,
identifying pregnant women and bringing them in for early
prenatal care.
Healthy Start may have something to teach AID, says
Margaret Neuse, deputy director of the agency's office of
population. ``Lessons Without Borders'' should be a two-way
street, she says.
In Latin America, Africa and Asia. Ms. Neuse says, she has
faced difficulty in getting people to use health services.
``I just came back from a place in Ethiopia with a population
of 30,000, where a program serves just 10 clients a day. We
had a case in Nepal where you couldn't pay women enough to
get them to go to a clinic.''
Joe Bock, a former Missouri legislator who has worked for
two years for Catholic Relief Services, says he sees great
potential for transfer of programs outside the area of health
care to U.S. soil.
Many programs in the U.S. war on poverty have ``failed
miserably.'' says Dr. Bock, who will soon take over Catholic
Relief's operations in Pakistan. ``We're looking around for
new ideas.''
One such idea, he says, is what development professionals
call microenterprise: tiny, family-based businesses started
with minimal capital. The Grameen Bank (``rural bank'') of
Bangladesh, which has served more than 1 million poor women,
has inspired a number of fledgling U.S. programs.
As the United States grapples with welfare reform,
microenterprise offers an alternative approach to fighting
poverty, one based on poor people becoming small-time
entrepreneurs rather than cashing monthly checks.
``Unfortunately, we've had the idea of the U.S. riding in
as a knight in shining armor to teach these countries.'' Dr.
Bock says. ``In fact, we can learn a lot from what they're
doing.''
____
[From the Baltimore Sun, June 7, 1994]
Gore Launches U.S. AID's Help for City
(By Richard O'Mara)
Vice President Al Gore launched a partnership yesterday
between Baltimore and the U.S. Agency for International
Development designed to apply here the agency's expertise in
helping people mired in poverty.
Speaking at a conference titled ``Lessons Without
Borders,'' at Morgan State University, the vice president
referred to the efforts of the tens of thousands of health
workers, literacy teachers and small business advisers sent
abroad since 1961 to focus America's attention on the plight
of the Third World.
``It is time to bring this knowledge back home,'' he said.
``The idea might sound strange but it's not,'' he added.
``Whether developing a vaccination program in Malawi or
Manhattan, some lessons are universal.''
The partnership is the first of its kind, but other
cities--Chicago, Atlanta, Boston--have expressed interest in
drawing on AID know-how.
J. Brian Atwood, AID adminsitrator, said, ``It is people
like those in Baltimore who invested in the foreign aid
programs. Why shouldn't they benefit from it?''
The suggestion by Mr. Atwood, made on C-Span television
late last year, was seized upon by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.
The vice president spoke to about 250 health and
socialworkers and community activists at the Morgan
conference, plus as many guests.
After that he visited the Family Place on Ashland Avenue--
which provides services to needy families, such as literacy
training, prenatal care, nutritional information and
vaccinations--and was shown around an immunization bus that
roams Baltimore's neighborhoods inoculating children.
At Morgan State, Mr. Gore pointed out that in 1990, only 39
percent of American children were immunized against measles.
(In Baltimore, fewer than half the city's two-year-olds are
up to date with their immunizations, said Charlotte Crenson,
a city health program adminsitrator, who was on hand for the
vice presidential visit to East Baltimore.)
Because of AID's skills abroad at propagating the
importance of inoculations, a lot of developing countries are
doing much better in immunization, he said.
AID marketing techniques also are effective at spreading
the word in foreign countries about the protection against
infant illness that breast feeding provides.
The agency encourages and underwrites banks in Third World
countries to lend small amounts of money to poor people who
have no collateral, but do have an idea for a business, or
``microenterprise,'' Mr. Gore said.
AID also trains and deploys local community volunteers to
assist professional health workers and community activists
abroad.
The vice president called the use of volunteers ``an
excellent example of community empowerment, a technique we
can use here. Something developed to help nations elsewhere
can help here.''
And the reverse can be true. Baltimore can teach AID a
thing or two, agency officials said. For example, workers at
Healthy Start, a prenatal care program, have devised
strategies for dealing with substance abuse among the people
it helps.
Healthy Start was founded in 1990 to help lower infant
mortality rates in certain Baltimore neighborhoods that had
reached Third World levels--19 deaths per 1,000 live births
in Harlem Park and the area around Johns Hopkins Hospital,
according to Daisy Morris, who runs Healthy Start.
``When we began we found that substance abuse was a
tremendous problem, between 30 and 35 percent of [expectant]
moms'' had it, Ms. Morris said. The experience in dealing
with this, Ms. Morris believes, is ``what gave us the edge on
a lot of cities, because we understood our moms.''
Margaret Neuse, deputy director of AID's Office of
Population, who has visited Healthy Start, said, ``We have a
lot to exchange with Baltimore. We have met different
problems.''
Everyone who addressed the Morgan State conference stressed
that the partnership would be more than a rhetorical one, a
friendly gesture from a Democratic president to a political
ally in a nearby city. They insisted this was the case even
though AID is prohibited by law to operate within the United
States.
Other speakers included Mr. Atwood; U.S. Sen. Paul
Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat; and U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-
7th District.
Mr. Atwood announced that a working group would be set up
with representatives from AID and the city to decide on
reasonable expectations for the partnership.
Mr. Slater listed several likely AID initiatives. It would
send field directors just returned from abroad to Baltimore
to lecture and hold seminars; provide access to AID's
enormous library to Baltimore health and nutrition workers;
create internships for social workers from the city; and send
people in the local helping professions to visit foreign
development programs. Later in the day, Mr. Gore went to the
Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn and
continued a theme that he raised at Morgan State: the benign
intervention of government.
``Twenty-five or 30 years ago, more than 70 percent of the
American people felt that government would do the right thing
in solving national problems. Now only 20 percent believe
that,'' he said.
``We have to put the customers (citizens) first,'' he
emphasized.
____________________