PROBLEMS OF THE AGED AND AGING

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1962

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:45 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 429, Old House Office Building, Hon. Cleveland Mr. Bailey, presiding. Present: Representatives Bailey, Hansen, Frelinghuysen, and Quie. Also present: Robert E. McCord, subcommittee director; Dr. Deborah Padgett Wolfe, education chief, Committee on Education and Labor; and Ted Ellsworth, special consultant on aged and aging to General Subcommittee on Education.

Mr. BAILEY. The subcommittee will be in order.

We have as our first witness this morning Mrs. Eone Harger of the New Jersey Commission on Aging.

You may further identify yourself to the reporter and proceed with your statement.

STATEMENT OF EONE HARGER, NEW JERSEY COMMISSION ON

AGING

Mrs. HARGER. I am Mrs. Eone Harger, I am chairman of the Commission on Aging and also Director of the Division on Aging of the State of New Jersey. This is the first permanent State agency on aging that was established. It has been in operation a little over 4 years, and I am going to speak from my own experience from the State level. I have no experience with the Federal Government as an employee or anything but just a person who has a citizen interest. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee to comment on the various pending bills pertaining to an agency in the Federal Government which shall be concerned with the aged and aging.

My agency in New Jersey has been charged with the same responsibilities which are listed as the objectives of all the bills now pending before your committee for consideration. All of the bills call for a strengthened organization for the aged and aging, especially within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

I wish to endorse the intention to give the maximum importance to an agency on aging in the Federal Government. Because of my personal experience I would like to speak in favor of the bill introduced by Mr. Fogarty, House bill 10014, which establishes a U.S. Commission on Aging independent of any existing department of the Federal

Government and directly responsible to the President, reinforced by an_advisory council and interdepartmental committee.

I was not aware until last week that there was so much difference of opinion about the desirability of the organizational provisions of this bill. There was little disagreement about the objectives or program aspects of it, but there seems to be considerable disagreement as to the desirability, whether it should be a commission or something within the HEW structure.

At a conference of State executives for aging here in Washington last week an address was delivered by Assistant Secretary Wilbur Cohen in which he expressed an objection to a provision for an independent commission. I would like to talk to this point because I think the Assistant Secretary, like others, is speaking from the point of view of a general administration principle without considering whether the generalization is appropriate in this specific case.

My experience and that of most other States argues against placing the overall responsibility for programs for older persons within an operating department. The division on aging in New Jersey was originally in the department of health, but is now located in the department of state, where we can work more effectively in the broad context of programs on aging.

We want to keep it that way. From what I know of the operation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare I have tried to envision what might happen if the responsibilities and grant programs in these bills were placed in that Department. To get real emphasis such a program would have to be in the Office of the Secretary, and since apparently operating programs are not usually in the Office of the Secretary it would probably not be left there, and if it did it would probably get very little attention because it is one segment of the Department which already operates about half the Federal domestic programs.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mrs. Harger, may I interrupt you on this? Is it your impression that there is going to be a transfer out of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of the operating responsibilities if this legislation should be enacted?

Mrs. HARGER. No; not at all.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Then why are we concerning ourselves with this as a problem?

Mrs. HARGER. I am concerned with this because my impression is that you have a special staff on aging in HEW, as I am going to explain later on, that I don't think focuses enough attention.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Why do you say that? Why is it of any concern to you at the State level? I am still very concerned about just what we are so critical of within the existing organization and whether that could not be corrected by the Secretary of HEW or somebody down here. Is it that you feel that there is something that the Federal Government could be doing that it is not doing and it is for that reason that we need any kind of an organizational change? Mrs. HARGER. Yes, I think this is true.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. What could we provide to our State of New Jersey, our mutual State, if we had this new commission that cannot be provided now?

Mrs. HARGER. We would have an underlining and a chance to really coordinate within the State of New Jersey.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Surely you can coordinate in your own State whether or not we have a different structure down here. I do not see how there is any direct relationship, even, between the two problems. Mrs. HARGER. There is a great deal of relationship.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Why is there any more relationship than what our interest is in how New Jersey tackles this problem of the problems of the aging?

Mrs. HARGER. Because actually the way the Health, Education, and Welfare is operating their vertical programs is undermining our attempts to coordinate within the State of New Jersey.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. We are not going to change the way that HEW is operating its program. If that were the case, I might be more sympathetic to what is being proposed, but as it stands now it seems to me that this commission is going to do nothing except possibly set up a superagency to look over the shoulder of Cabinet officers because, in effect, we do not trust them to operate their own departments, and I am not sure why that is any business of a State commission on the aging, with all due respect to you as a witness, and I am sure if we give you the chance you will be able to explain just why at the State level you are concerning yourselves with a reorganization of this kind.

Mrs. HARGER. Well, I am interested actually in a special grant program that will give some programs that are not segmented into special areas and I think that at the State level we should be treated as a coordinating agency in which we are given a legal responsibility for New Jersey.

As it is now, we get recognition from the State itself, but we are constantly being bypassed by the Federal Government in the grant programs they use so that directly we have a grant program in health that is not related to another one being given in a welfare program.

We have a great many Federal moneys going into housing which, if they were related to the health programs before they were started, there could be a better integration of overall planning.

Actually, what is happening is we have lots of pieces of good things going on, but no communication and relationship relating them to an overall plan annd forward-looking plan.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There is no relationship at the State level, or are you talking about the Federal level?

Mrs. HARGER. As we see it at the State level from my office, directly there has been no consultation at the Federal level by various departments. At the State level we directly get these in pieces because it is not coordinated because of the vertical channels to the State. This is actually what I have to denote in my testimony.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. This is not going to change the programs of assistance, as I understand it. I do not see how what you are saying is going to result in smoother flowing dollars, if it is dollars you are talking about, or any less strings on what the Federal Government provides to the State.

Mrs. HARGER. I don't think it is going to change any of those programs, except as they have a look at what is going to happen. I think one thing that concerns me perhaps is tremendous amounts of money for housing, for example, going into sections of our State. This is housing for elderly people. It is money from a number of sources.

Some of it is public housing money. Some of it is FHA money. When this comes in it has tremendous implications on what health facilities should be provided in our State, but these apparently, as far as we can find out, are not considered when there is overall planning for the health facilities.

What I am asking for is to have an overall group that would bring together a great many aspects of the program and then help people see where to plan in relation to other departments. This apparently does not go on.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. You mean we should not provide housing money unless we provide certain other moneys?

Mrs. HARGER. Oh, not at all, Mr. Frelinghuysen. I think that we should provide them and we need more probably, but I think at the same time we provide them there should be an understanding of the need to have health programs in relation to them.

The housing provides shelter needs. Housing for the elderly needs a great deal more because you begin to have needs for an overall kind of health and welfare program for older people when they are congregated in housing.

Many of our housing people have problems in this area. I think a group that can look forward and point to this would be helpful to the agencies that are working with this. These people are not doing it deliberately. This is something that when you are busy in a program and you are scrambling to adminster it, you are looking at how the pressures come on you for your immediate program, but sometimes just from the pressure of time people in other places are not aware of the tremendous other implications, and I think an overall group with an awareness of the many problems would be helpful.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I would just like to say, Mrs. Harger, that I share your interest in getting a more orderly expression of Federal interest in the programs at the State level, but I think perhaps there is a misunderstanding about the functioning of this U.S. Commission because it is not going to revise the way in which housing money is provided to the State of New Jersey. It is not going to insure that if the housing money is forthcoming, and perhaps on a more liberal basis as you suggest, there also is going to be provided money to combat the health problem that may result.

It may well be that there are no substantial changes except the bypassing, which you have already expressed fears of, by the Federal Government of what is being done at the State level. To the degree in which there is a focusing of attention and a feeling of responsibility at the Federal level about what are appropriate solutions, there may be and this is what worries me an ignorance of what is being done in a very constructive way in your own outfit, a feeling that Washington knows best, that will be undesirable rather than desirable.

The witness from Michigan yesterday, Mr. Odell, expressed the hope that any increased Federal activity would not result in a short circuiting or bypassing of the State responsibility, and I assume that you would feel that same way yourself.

Before I leave I would just like to state for the record that there has been a quorum call. The House is in session and I would like to ask the Chair whether we have permission to sit while the House is in session and debate on this appropriations bill, and if we have

authority I regret very much that I shall not be able to return because I am very much interested in the bill on the floor.

Mr. BAILEY. We have permission to sit.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I regret this, Mrs. Harger. It is no intentional discourtesy to you, but I am obliged to go to the floor to answer my name and I feel also obliged to stay there.

Mrs. HARGER. May I say that I think I am not communicating with you very well because I do not think there is a bypassing at the States. I am trying to get a focus.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I jotted down what I thought you said, that our State was constantly being bypassed by the Federal Government. I wrote it down. Maybe I wrote it down incorrectly, but I thought I had heard that expression used by you at an earlier point. Mrs. HARGER. I may be using the word incorrectly because I am jumping off the way I had tried to think out that I wanted to present this. I feel that it is a matter that when we have asked, for example, the region in HEW to correlate through us for planning for even an aging program, they won't do it. They invite people on a vertical basis and then they go and they sit and talk health with the health people in the State, welfare with the welfare people, and they don't sit and talk together about the problem from their various points of view. This is in the regional offices.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. There is no organizational reason why they should not sit down and reason together.

Mrs. HARGER. This is a matter where there have been many requests to do it and I have had explained to me from the region that they are obliged to do it on the vertical because of their obligations and so apparently there is a feeling that there is an organizational reason. Mr. BAILEY. The Chair would suggest that you proceed with your testimony.

Mrs. HARGER. Thank you, Mr. Bailey.

I would like to go back and just point out two things that I think are necessary that I perhaps have indicated in my exchange with Mr. Frelinghuysen.

I think first that we need to do some real special focusing of needs of the aging which the entire population is going to have to face because of the increasing number of older people, proportionwise and actually, in our population.

There are small groups at the municipal, county, and State levels that are giving a great deal of attention to this need for a national focus on this, but despite the January 1961 White House Conference on Aging we have not managed to get the great bulk of our population to understand.

I could illustrate this by something that happened in my own State this last year. The group that was terrifically aware of the needs of older people had moved to have housing for the elderly in one of our large cities. This was to be attached geographicwise to an existing public housing group and it looked as though the units were going to be approved by the Federal Government, and then there came a great petition on the part of all the other people of the public housing against this because they didn't want to have any older people in their neighborhood.