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they didn't lend any support to my efforts. All I was getting were the letters from the black organizations denouncing me, and I just decided that discretion was the better part of valor and that I ought not to pursue it. I mean I'm not a nut running into a threshing machine. I think I'm correct on the issue. And I also remember when the matter was brought before the full committee and we lost Henry Reuss saying (it was so stupid of him) in discussing this amendment when I pressed for a vote there and lost (he said this publicly): “Shame, shame, shame, Ed Koch!” I thought to myself, “What a hypocrite!” He's a multi-millionaire. He doesn't need any money. Some poor Italian, some poor Jew, some poor Ukrainian who wants to apply can't, and the idiocy was as I found out (because the Small Business Administration happens to be on the floor of the building in which we now are, 26 Federal Plaza, and I took the matter up with them) that they had given one Hasidic Jew a loan. Why? Because he happened to have a Spanish surname, so he got the loan because of his Spanish surname, whereas others who were equally poor but didn't have Spanish surnames did not. It was just crazy.

Now we have gotten a change indirectly -- and I can't even tell you how they have managed to do it -- but I got the Small Business Administration here to include the Hasidic Jews in some form. I can't even tell you whether they are totally included or not but we have worked it out that they are helping the Hasidic Jews, which are basically in the Williamsburg community -- they're not even in my Congressional district.