The state of Fred Dimebank

The Constitution of the United States makes this quaint demand on a president: ''He shall from time to time give to the Congress information on state of the Union. . .'' After he informs the Congress what is going on, he must also give them advice on what action they should take. Congress then tells him what he can do with it. It is all neatly worked out.

In his first state of the Union message, President Reagan introduced some plans he terms ''new federalism,'' which is really just the same old federalism the country started with. The message caused a lot of flak, so we have taken an unofficial poll as to how the message was received by the person in the street.

The results were encouraging. Fully a third of those polled are in favor of the President's proposals. Another third are totally against them. A final third , it seems, were under the impression they were watching a rerun of an old Ronald Reagan film and were critical that there were no Indians or horses.

We were also interested in what the people at the so-called poverty level thought of the President's tax reduction plan. Town officials directed us to an area back of the local dump and transfer station, where we were able to get an accurate sampling. Again, the results were encouraging.

Here we can quote one jobless person, Fred K. Dimebank, who has solved his economic distress by finding unused coins left in pay telephones, and whose opinion was indicative of the entire community.

''I am highly in favor of the President's tax cut program,'' he stated, ''even though it benefits the rich more than me. That's what makes the economy work. A wealthy person will take the big amount of money he saves on taxes and buy an expensive Cadillac and thus help put General Motors back on its feet. But what good would my tax cut do? I'd have only enough money to buy a cheap, Japanese import - which would hurt not only General Motors but jeopordize America's balance of payments and weaken the dollar. What's good for General Motors is good for America.''

As fellow Americans we can all be proud of Fred K. Dimebank, and wish there were more like him.