Explanation: The changes would increase the minimum allocation to any State to 1 percent of total funding, and to any territory to 11⁄2 of 1 percent, in lieu of the one-half State minimum, and one-fourth territory minimum, in present law. This would prove a large enough program in any State or territory to lend itself to efficient administration. 5. Section 908, rewrite as follows: There are hereby authorized to be appropriated $100 million for fiscal year 1976, $150 million for fiscal year 1977, and $200 million for fiscal year 1978, provided that of such sums appropriated, the first $35 million for fiscal year 1976, the first $45 million for fiscal year 1977, and the first $60 million for fiscal year 1978 shall be allocated to national contractors as stipulated in section 903 (d). Explanation: The indicated funding levels would be sufficient to assure continuation of the nationally contracted Operation Mainstream programs at present levels, and provide funds for involvement by State and local agencies. This concludes my statement. We will be happy to respond to any questions, and to provide such information which might be helpful to you. Thank you. Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much. Mr. Barton. I might say, before I put a couple of questions to you, I just received a letter from the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Brennan, in which he responds to my invitation to him to testify before this subcommittee on the Older Americans Community Service Employment Act. It says, and I quote: Hon. JOHN BRADEMAS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Washington, D.C., January 30, 1975. Chairman, Select Education Subcommittee, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: I am pleased to respond to your letter of January 27, 1975, inviting testimony before your Subcommittee on the Older Americans Community Service Employment Act. I regret that present circumstances preclude the Department of Labor from testifying at this time. The Department and the Administration are, as you know, very concerned with the problems which are addressed by the Older Americans Community Service Employment Act. In the near future we will be able to communicate our views to the Congress. Thank you for your interest in the views of the Labor Department on this matter. Sincerely, PETER J. BRENNAN, In view of the fact that the President of the United States some days back complained there is too much dawdling up here on Capitol Hill with respect to major legislation, I respect fully suggest that the Department of Labor had better start to labor on matters that are so directly affecting the lives of so many millions of people in this country, especially during a recession. Mr. Barton, I wonder if you can comment a little more fully on the question of the efforts that you have made through State CETA prime sponsors. There have been difficulties, as I understand it, in getting CETA funds from the State sponsors. Mr. BARTON. Yes; that is true, Mr. Chairman. Assistant Secretary Kolberg was at our Farmers Union National Convention last March in Milwaukee. He of course, explicitly requested that we do our best to work through the CETA prime sponsors. We have certainly been doing that. I mentioned in my testimony that we made a report to Secretary Kolberg on August 6, and we updated that report for this testimony with phone calls to all of our States as to what they are being able to do there. The only time that we have been able to get any money through the CETA prime sponsors, and get it tied down in a seemingly workable way, is a small $60,000 grant in the State of Michigan. Otherwise, there is a small amount that is in the works I think, in North Dakota. But other than that-and the North Dakota situation is not in any sense brought down to a workable basis as yet-we have not been able to break into money through the CETA prime sponsors. There are all kinds of legal entanglements as you would expect. In addition to that we wouldn't claim that our State Green Thumb people would be aware of all elderly people that are somehow involved in manpower programs under CETA, but we find that generally it is not just Green Thumb. Generally, elderly people have not been brought into the employment programs that are administered to date by the prime sponsors. This is, of course, nothing new. The elderly have always been ignored in these employment programs. In other words, there are two things here, it seems to us. One, we in particular have not been able to get moneys to continue the Green Thumb type of program through the prime sponsors. Second, to our knowledge, in general, the elderly have not been, except in a very token fashion in some of the States, included in the employment programs through the CETA prime sponsors. Mr. BRADEMAS. That is very helpful indeed, Mr. Barton. I, for one. welcome your concern to make these programs effective in terms of employment opportunity, particularly in view of the recession through which we are going. I would assure you that the subcommittee will give very careful attention to the specific proposals that you set forth for strengthening the operation of the act in that respect. Thank you very much, Mr. Barton. Mr. BRADEMAS. The Chair would like to thank all of the witnesses who have come today. But as the Chair indicated earlier, we have a new phenomena here with all of the new members of this committee and subcommittee on board and they have been very faithful and diligent in their attendance. That has simply meant the questioning has been longer than in the past. So therefore, we are not going to be able to hear the other three witnesses scheduled today, all of whom are widely recognized authorities in this field, and from whom we are very anxious to hear. They have been kind enough to agree to come back to this room tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, when we shall begin the testimony with Mr. William R. Hutton, and then follow his statement with a statement by Jack Ossofsky, and Mr. John B. Martin, accompanied by Peter Hughes. The subcommittee is adjourned. [Whereupon at 12:30 p.m., the hearing was recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Tuesday, February 4, 1975.] COMPREHENSIVE OLDER AMERICANS SERVICES AMENDMENTS OF 1973 AND RELATED PROGRAMS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1975 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SELECT EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10:00 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Brademas (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Brademas, Jeffords, Lehman, Miller, Quie, Beard, Pressler, and Bell. Staff members present: Jack G. Duncan, counsel to the subcommittee; Robert Agee, staff assistant; and Charles W. Radcliffe, minority counsel. Mr. BRADEMAS. The Subcommittee on Select Education will come to order for the purpose of continued hearings on the operations of the programs supported under the Comprehensive Older Americans Act Amendments. I believe it fair to say that the record we have been building these last several days indicates a situation in which public witnesses have expressed grave concern-as have members of this subcommittee on both sides of the aisle with respect to the attitude of the administration on the proper funding and administration of this legislation. I think it also fair to suggest that the most pressing cause for that concern can be found in the President's suggestions that we cut the appropriations already approved by Congress for 1975 for the programs supported by the 1973 amendments by the sum of $79 million, and that in 1976 we continue at the lower 1975 appropriation levels which the President is now requesting, which in effect means another cut of $79 million. So it proved to be fortuitous that we are conducting these hearings at the time when both rescissions and the new budget have come out. Today we are going to have several witnesses who are widely respected as outstanding advocates on behalf of older Americans. We look forward to hearing Mr. Hutton and Mr. Ossofsky and Mr. Martin, and again the Chair would hope they can summarize their statements to enable the members of the subcommittee to put questions to them. The first witness is an old friend of the subcommittee, William R. Hutton, executive director of the National Council of Senior Citizens; and Mr. Hutton, we are very pleased to have you with us. ( 291 ) STATEMENT OF WILLIAM R. HUTTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS Mr. HUTTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In line with your suggestion that we might try to summarize our testimony this morning, I will do just that. That is with the understanding that the testimony will, with your permission, be put in full in the record. I am William R. Hutton, executive director of the National Council of Senior Citizens. Our national headquarters office is in Washington at 1511 K Street NW., Washington, D.C. The National Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of over 3,000 older people's clubs in all States. We are the country's largest organization of older people's clubs. The National Council is proud of its history-an organization initially built to gain passage of medicare-and we are equally proud of our sustained efforts to build a better life for the old and the young of America. Our members are primarily those people who have worked hard all their lives to support themselves and their descendants, and have a continuing sense of community and national pride. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to say that older people today, particularly in the last few weeks and months, as we hit this crisis, are in a great state of dieting. They have been suffering through attacks of the social security system by those who would try to put up social security as the place on which to pin the future hopes of national health security. Now, we see further attacks on social security going into the future because of its apparent slight imbalance in the year 2030. A lot of people are talking about social security who do not really understand social security and who don't realize that it is a living, changing thing, and this Congress has moved with changes in social security to meet the changes, or economic changes of our lives. Many older Americans find that their meager social security or SSI benefits do not afford them decent food and shelter. These people, however, do not really wish to collect welfare if they can possibly avoid it. They would rather work several hours a day to provide for themselves like they have in times past before their age became an artificial barrier to their obtaining work. These elderly Americans-particularly those who have read reports of senior citizen community service programs under Title IX or Óperation Mainstream-would like to have such a program to provide opportunities for working in their own hometown. I have to report that the National Council has over 1,200 formal requests from communities in all 50 States for a senior AIDES program. Requests from individuals fill several feet of filing space in my office. Many older people who write for jobs do not belong to the National Council and are consequently not aware, for example, that only a few communities in our country are able to provide some work opportunities to older people. The National Council of Senior Citizens is, therefore, extremely concerned with title IX of the Older Americans Comprehensive Services Amendments of 1973. Two years ago when this title, the Older American Community Service Employment Act, became law, the National Council had high hopes that, at last, many older poor Americans would have a choice— a choice between welfare and a job, a choice between loneliness and involvement, a choice between worthlessness and usefulness, a choice between desperate poverty and making ends meet, a choice between hopelessness and hopefulness. Title IX, which is modeled after the very successful Operation Mainstream older workers program, was viewed by us as the title that could have an impact on many problems in the aging field. Title IX would offer an opportunity for able-bodied older people to help themselves. It would give them a chance to keep their dignity because they were working for a living, as most good Americans must do to keep their place in society. Art Buchwald's recent comment on our country's work ethic rings true. We've been told for such a long time that the only people in this country who are unemployed are those who are lazy, shiftless, and don't give a damn. In America not having a job makes you an outcast This has been felt by many more than just the older people today. Title IX would be a useful tool to breaking down the barriers and myths that keep senior citizens from being treated as part of our society. The vast array of jobs that could be initiated under title IX would put seniors in contact with all ages of people in their communities. The older person would be portrayed in an active role. The stereotype older person rocking away the last years, or dozing off in the park, or lying incoherent in a nursing home, would be replaced by a truer picture of a senior citizen-a person who can think, talk, walk, dream, learn, teach, love, hate. A person rather than an old thing. And that is not all that title IX could do. It could provide your communities with an experienced and talented resource. This resource would help your communities to extend and to better the services they provide to shut-ins, to children in day care centers, to the infirm in nursing homes and hospitals, to the clients at health clinics, legal aid offices, housing projects, nutrition sites, community centers, employment offices, tax offices, the local Y, or the Red Cross. Title IX could help an unemployed older person come back to the mainstream of our society. It could help that person regain a sense of usefulness; it could help him keep his health and his mental alertness; it could reverse the downhill slide from being a drain on society to returning to helping us build a better place for us to work and play. We had visions of how title IX could really play a huge role in helping America relearn the value of the individual before the number, the statistics, the polls took all of us and put us in neat columns. I am not saying we want to return to the "good ol' days," but just possibly if we could work out a way to recognize people's needs and desires, individually as well as collectively, we might end up with a nation of people more dedicated to building a country than to taking advantage of it. Unfortunately almost 2 years after title IX was signed into law only $10 million has been allocated to operate this good program. That amount of funding limits the program to only providing approximately 3,300 older unemployed people 55 years and over, with the opportunity to work part time for 1 short year. That number combined with the Operation Mainstream older workers program only gives older workers a total of 12,674 part-time job opportunities for the whole Nation including Puerto Rico and the trust territories. |