6. Insert at the end of section 512 (b): "Provided, however, That for each of the three fiscal years beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1947, out of the sums appropriated pursuant to section 511 for each fiscal year the Secretary of Labor shall allot to the States $16,650,000 (in addition to the allotments made under subsection (a), according to the financial need of each State for assistance in carrying out its State plan, as determined by him after taking into consideration the number of crippled children in such State in need of the services referred to in section 511 and the cost of furnishing such services to them." PART 3. CHILD WELFARE SERVICES 7. Insert at the end of section 521∙ (a): “Provided, however, That there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each of the three fiscal years beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1947, the sum of $20,000,000." PART 4. ADMINISTRATION 8. Insert at the end of section 541 (a): "Provided, however, That there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for each of the three fiscal years beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1947, the sum of $5,000,000." EXPLANATION OF A PROPOSAL FOR THE ADOPTION OF A HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION TO AUTHORIZE THE APPROPRIATION OF ADDITIONAL FUNDS DURING THE NEXT THREE FISCAL YEARS UNDER THE PRESENT PROVISIONS OF TITLE V OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT, "GRANTS TO STATES FOR MATERNAL AND CHILD WELFARE" Under title V, parts 1, 2, and 3, of the Social Security Act, Federal grants-inaid are made to the States for the purpose of extending and improving1. Maternal and child-health services. 2. Services for crippled children. 3. Child-welfare services. The maximum annual appropriations authorized under the present law are as follows: Maternal and child-health services__ Services for crippled children__. Total $5, 820, 000 3,870,000 1,510, 000 11, 200, 000 The purpose of this proposed House joint resolution is to authorize the appropriation of additional funds for these existing programs-without any change in the law-in order to provide sufficient funds for State health and welfare officials to proceed with a 3-year program to extend and improve essential health and welfare services for children. For this purpose, it is recommended that for the next three fiscal years Congress authorize the appropriation of the following sums: Maternal and child-health services_. Total $50, 000, 000 25.000.000 20, 000, 000 95, 000, 000 In addition, it is recommended that during this 3-year period, the appropriation authorized for administering the provisions of this title be increased to $5,000,000. This would enable the Federal agency administering these grants to make and aid the financing of studies, demonstrations, investigations, and research to promote the efficient administration and operation of these programs. SECTION BY SECTION EXPLANATION Section 1: The annual appropriation authorized under title V, part 1, of the Social Security Act is $5,820,000 "for the purpose of enabling each State to extend and improve, as far as practicable under the conditions in each such State, services for promoting the health of mothers and children ** It is proposed that this amount be increased to $50,000,000 during each of the next 3 years. Sections 2 and 3: Under the present law, funds appropriated pursuant to section 501 are allotted to the several States-part of which must be matched dollar for dollar and the balance is granted solely on the basis of need and is not matched by the States. Under this proposal, if $50,000,000 were appropriated, $16,500,000 could be allotted to the States on the grants-in-aid basis and the balance on the basis of need with no matching. Section 4: The annual appropriation authorized under title V, part 2, of the Social Security Act is $3,870,000 "for the purposes of enabling each State to extend and improve, as far as practicable under the conditions in such State, services for locating crippled children, and for providing medical, surgical, corrective, and other services and care, and facilities for diagnosis, hospitalization, and aftercare, for children who are crippled or who are suffering from conditions which lead to crippling." It is proposed that this amount by increased to $25,000,000 during each of the next 3 years. Sections 5 and 6: Under the present law, funds appropriated for the crippled children program are allotted to the several States-part of which must be matched dollar for dollar and the balance is granted solely on the basis of need and is not matched by the States. Under this proposal, if $25,000,000 were appropriated, $8,350,000 could be allotted to the States on a matching basis and $16,650,000 on the basis of need without matching. Section 7: The annual appropriation authorized under title V, part 3, of the Social Security Act is $1,510,000 "for the purpose of enabling the United States, through the Children's Bureau, to cooperate with State public-welfare agencies in establishing, extending, and strengthening * * * public-welfare services (hereinafter in this section referred to as 'child-welfare service') for the protection and care of homeless, dependent, and neglected children, and children in danger of becoming delinqent." It is proposed that this amount be increased to $20,000,000 during each of the next 3 years. Section 8: Under the present law, the annual appropriation of $425,000 is authorized for Federal administrative expenses in administering the provisions of this title. It is proposed that this amount be increased to $5,000,000 during the next 3 years in order to enable the Federal agency administering these grants to make and aid the financing of studies, demonstrations, investigations, and research to promote the efficient operation of these programs. Mrs. MEYER. Gentlemen, why should you, why should our State officials, why should so many of us, have to spend time to consider the ambitions of the Children's Bureau, when the needed extension of child welfare, which we all desire, can be achieved by a simpler and more orderly procedure? In fact, I am convinced it would, in fact, be an advantage to the Children's Bureau if it should be relieved of its administrative functions rather than have them augmented. As an administrative agency the Children's Bureau has felt insecure and has had difficulties with the State governments because it has always been an anomaly, a fifth wheel, among the Federal social agencies. The child cannot be separated from the family. The family can only be protected in a well-organized community. The State governments exist to help local communities achieve this organization in education, health and welfare. We must keep our minds fixed on those points to see the administrative functions of the Federal Government with clarity. The duty of the Federal Government in these fields is to fortify the State governments. Two Federal-State-local health and welfare systems, one for the child, one for the family, is not only unmanageable; it would be a fantastic waste of money, time, and energy. If we allow the Children's Bureau to administer child health and welfare, we should logically have State and local children's bureaus. The prospect from an administrative point of view is ludicrous. The aim of all State and local governments now is to achieve an integrated health and welfare program. The Federal Government cannot help in this desirable end, unless there is a new Federal agency and eventually a new Federal Department empowered to coordinate health, education, and security. The Children's Bureau has always had a disruptive and exasperating effect upon State governments, because it has no clear-cut position in the Federal, State, local machinery. It stands to reason that order demands the absorption of its administrative powers by agencies which have counterparts in the State and local governments. Gentlemen, the Children's, Bureau is marshaling all the friends it has to telegraph the President, and to write the press that its powers must never be touched. It spreads around itself a romantic halo as if it and it alone had the welfare of American childhood at heart. This is sheer nonsense but few people are in a position to say so. In reality, the Children's Bureau is behind the times in its whole orientation toward the difficult problem of arousing the country to the wisespread neglect, the crass inequality of opportunity from which almost half of our children are suffering, Only consider, gentlemen, that at this very moment 5,000,000 American children go to no school whatsoever. Wherever the schools are inadequate, health and welfare provisions are also lacking. In the face of such a situation, the Children's Bureau is bogged down in what social workers are pleased to call techniques. It fusses about impossible high standards of child care, while the States have a mass problem on their hands which they must cope with realistically as best they can. The elimination of Federal administrative responsibility from the Children's Bureau would also have the desirable effect of persuading that agency to concentrate upon its original and its main responsibilities. Under the act of April 9, 1912, establishing the Children's Bureau, the Bureau is charged with the responsibility to investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people, and shall especially investigate the question of infant mortality, the birth rate, orphanages, juvenile courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accident and diseases of children, employment Thus the Children's Bureau has a great role to play in our national life. If it does not lose itself as it is doing now more and more in administrative programs and small ineffectual experiments, it could devote its whole energies and knowledge to the development of an over-all program of child care. Instead of being concerned with a comprehensive Nation-wide program utilizing all the facilities of Federal, State, and local governments, it has concentrated on details which proved worrisome to State and local agencies and made it impossible to work out with these agencies a cooperative attack on the forces that impede our social progress. As a result it has not promptly taken the initiative in investigating and suggesting measures for solving the most acute Nation-wide problems of childhood. Not until March 1945, 2 months before VE-day, did Miss Lenroot ask the House Appropriations Committee for $95,000 to find out what was happening to children in the war centers. Not until this May, months after the Attorney General launched his Nation-wide study of juvenile delinquency, did Miss Lenroot ask for funds to make similar studies. To arouse the public to the needs of childhood as a whole, to lift our concept of responsibility toward children, to lead the States in formulating protective legislation, to improve the lamentable care of delinquent and dependent children in State institutions, to focus all our education, health, and welfare facilities toward the well-being of the child-these are some of the all-important functions of the Children's Bureau. It is a high and sacred role to be the protectors and the protagonists of childhood. It is a role that can only be fulfilled by an agency of government that has no ax to grind, no desire for power. The minute the Children's Bureau fights for its own personal aggrandizement, its motives are suspect. Its aims should be the welfare of children, not the authority of the Children's Bureau. Only if it is above the battle and holds aloft the highest objectives for all children, can it keep its role in our national life constructive. But such a role conceived and carried out with disinterested vigor, would make the Children's Bureau the pivot of progress in the new coordinated Federal health and welfare program. The purpose of Senator Pepper's bill, as I understand it, is to salvage some sort of health program for children in a Congress that failed to support the Murray-Wagner-Dingell bill. These objectives we all share. But they can be achieved more simply, as I pointed out, by a joint resolution of Congress for a temporary increase of the grant-in-aid for child care under the Federal Security Administrator. Such a step would not tie the hands of the Federal Security Administrator at a time when he is confronted with the important task of reorganizing and coordinating the education, health, and welfare functions of the Federal Government. Insistence that the Children's Bureau shall remain sacrosanct and untouchable for all eternity would tie his hands from the outset. You need only imagine, gentlemen, what a chaotic situation we would be facing, if every Federal agency should not claim for itself the same immunity from coordination to which the Children's Bureau aspires. Such resistance to progress would endanger the President's constructive Reorganization Plan No. 2 to meet our postwar obligations not only to the child, but to the veteran, the migratory families, and to our many rural inhabitants that suffer from lack of decent schools, hospitals, and general welfare facilities. Let us keep in mind that the patience of our people with such conditions is not what it used to be. I have just come back from a trip and have seen it first hand. The returned veteran particularly is unwilling to put up with frightful social handicaps which he recognizes as unnecessary in a country as rich as ours. We are forced now to realize that our finest public institutions and even our enormous systems of voluntary welfare have not reached the mass of the people. We have built up a democracy based upon extensive poverty, frustration, and injustice. Our goal now must be an orderly community life throughout the country in which the individual can secure his rights and perform his duties to the general welfare. Gentlemen, it is because I have seen in State after State the neglect of children who represent the future of our country that I have devoted all my energies for the last 3 years to furthering what the President now recommends in Reorganization Plan No. 2. It is the beginning of a new, more comprehensive vision of our grave social responsibilities. Should the Congress follow the establishment of the new Federal Welfare Department with a bill establishing the new Cabinet position which the President has recommended, we could look forward, Senator, to the future with new hope and a new confidence, in the flexibility and effectiveness of our democratic structure. I thank you very much. I think I have just about 15 minutes to catch my train. Senator PEPPER. We thank you most heartily. We want to hear you, and we are very thankful for your coming here. Mrs. MEYER. I am deeply grateful to you, Senator. Senator PEPPER. Thank you so much Next, we have Dr. Samuel Penner of Temple B'Nai Jacob of the District of Columbia. Is Dr. Penner here? (No response.) Senator PEPPER. Dr. Penner is not here, therefore, we will proceed to Mrs. Stanley G. Cook, legislative chairman, National Congress of Parents and Teachers. Mrs. Cook, we are very pleased to have you here. We will welcome any statement that you will be good enough to make. STATEMENT OF MRS. STANLEY G. COOK, NATIONAL CHAIRMAN OF LEGISLATION, NATIONAL CONGRESS OF PARENTS AND TEACHERS Mrs. Cook. Thank you, Senator Pepper. I appreciate your telegram asking me to come here on this very important question. The National Congress of Parents and Teachers with a membership of nearly 4,000,000 men and women in the 48 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii is the largest organization in the world working with the one objective: the welfare of children and youth. The National Congress of Parents and Teachers wishes to go on record in support of the general purposes of S. 1318 which will enable States to make more adequate provisions for the health and welfare of mothers and children and for services to crippled children. We believe that the health and welfare of this Nation's children determines, to a great degree, the economic well-being as well as the security of the Nation. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the Federal Government, the States, and the local communities assume a greater responsibility for the health and well-being of our children. Through our local organizations, State congresses, and as a national body, we have constantly sought to extend services to children with the stipulation that these services not only be provided for all children, regardless of race, color, creed, economic status, or place of residence, but that these services be adequate and of the highest type. One of the purposes of S. 1318 is to correct some of the discriminations and inequalities in health care and welfare services for children which now favor children born in cities over those born in rural areas; |