As part of the effort for this week's cover story on President Reagan's sweeping economic proposals, TIME correspondents fanned out across the country to test the mood of citizens about the proposed budget cuts. The goal: to look at some of the programs most affected, examine what they had been achieving at the local level and assess how much they might be missed. Says National Editor John Elson, who edited the story: "We found a wide range of responses, including some that were not anticipated by the Administration. It is already clear that Reagan is going after a whole herd of sacred cows. The battle brewing in the Congress will be fascinating."

At Bates College in Lewiston, Me., Correspondent Joelle Attinger came across two students who voted for Reagan because they felt he was best equipped to cut federal waste. Says Attinger: "Now both may have to leave Bates because of pending cuts in the student loan program." In Denver, Bureau Chief Richard Woodbury visited a food stamp center, only to find that some people were too embarrassed to talk to him. Says he: "For many aid recipients there is a deep stigma attached to obtaining handouts." Traveling to Erie, Pa., to report on proposed CETA cuts, Correspondent Robert Geline found residents ready to make do-- "but nobody could say how."

Correspondent Steven Holmes, a native New Yorker, learned that a city slicker faces a language barrier in Benton County, Iowa. Says he: "When a farmer told me it cost him $10,000 to tile, I thought he was talking about his kitchen. He meant field drainage tiles." After several companies declined to discuss a possible reduction in Export-Import Bank funding, Correspondent Patricia Delaney approached J.I. Case, a construction-equipment manufacturer in her native Racine, Wis. "When Case executives tried to refuse, I asked them how they could turn down a request from a home-town girl," says Delaney. "I had an interview with the president of Case the next afternoon." Correspondent Christopher Redman visited the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to discuss arts-funding cuts and came upon it rehearsing excerpts from Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung (Twilight of the Gods). Says Redman: "The music seemed painfully appropriate."

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