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(SINGING) That cash is our cash, we don't want cutbacks. We'll lose our day care and you don't care. That's into our need instead of your greed. This land belongs to what you see.

ARNE CARLSON: The rotunda of the Capitol this morning more resembled a circus tent than the dignified marble halls of government as hundreds of balloon-carrying daycare children, their mothers, and teachers rallied to focus attention on the Nixon daycare cutbacks. Rick, president of the greater Minneapolis daycare Center Association said the new Nixon guidelines will eliminate about half of the 4,000 Minnesota children now included in the program forcing many working mothers to go back on welfare after they become ineligible for daycare on April 1. Speakers included Lieutenant Governor Rudy Perpich, Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman, and Minneapolis representatives Republican Arne Carlson and Democrat James Casserly who made it clear that daycare is not going to escape being a political football, even though everybody's apparently for it. Arne Carlson is first author of the Child Care Facilities Act, which is up for this year. Here's Arne Carlson.

ARNE CARLSON: Really this is probably the greatest display of support for daycare and for young children that this capital has ever seen.

[APPLAUSE]

But one of the things that I think we should understand is that the battle in Washington is a legitimate one. It's a question of whether we're going to do what Robert Kennedy campaigned for, what Adlai Stevenson campaigned for, what Barry Goldwater campaigned for, and what Richard Nixon campaigned for. You can tell when the Democrats are at work, and that is bringing power back to the communities and back to the people.

[APPLAUSE]

I have never seen-- and I don't care whether the administration is Democrat or Republican-- any guidelines from Washington that ever made any sense. The truth is in order to get guidelines out of Washington, we have to go through the Southern part of our country, and that is reprehensible to us. I want the state of Minnesota to fund its own day care, to set up its own guidelines, and its own regulations. We were given by the federal government $45 million already. I say that 10% of that 4.4 can go to fund day care in Minnesota.

[CHEERING]

Now President Truman always said that the buck stops here. Let's turn this rally into a buck-stopping rally right here. We in Minnesota will run our own ship. We'll set our own guidelines, our own eligibility standards. And I'll tell you one thing, we're going to win. This is our day. Let's go out and win it.

[CHEERING]

DULCIE LAWRENCE: The Children's Lobby is asking the Minnesota legislature for $4.4 million, a partnership between parents, local, and state governments and private matching funds. As the daycare question comes to a head, the heat on the state legislature is obviously going to be kept up by the Children's Lobby and by those who are most affected, the working mothers. I'm Dulcie Lawrence.