One consequence of this safeguard, however, is that it tends to inhibit innovation and experimentation. This bill would permit States, under prescribed and limited conditions, to obtain Federal matching funds for the support of research and demonstrations and pilot projects designed to promote the objectives of the program without the usual restrictions in this general area.

Projects of this kind should be encouraged. The proposal in the bill seems feasible and desirable and holds promise of contributing to the improvement of public assistance administration.

The proposed option to States to combine the three adult public assistance categories into a single category is a step in the direction of integration and unification in a situation where the tendency has more often been in the other direction. Perhaps the ultimate consequence of this option cannot be foreseen in detail, but there is every good reason why States should be permitted to follow this organization if they prefer.

Among the obvious advantages would be the need to prepare only one State plan, and the consolidation of all reporting for these several categories. This option would also provide for the equalization of Federal matching for medical care by extending the OAA formula to include the other two categories.

The American Public Welfare Association is deeply interested in the efforts of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam to improve the opportunities for their people. The removal of the annual dollar limitations on Federal participation for these jurisdictions would contribute materially to those efforts.

We, therefore, commend this as a measure worthy of your approval. This would not result in any great increase in costs, and it would enable at least one of these jurisdictions to come closer to meeting the assistance needs of its public assistance recipients.

Every effort must be made to insure that the public welfare programs are responsive to the needs of the people they are designed to serve, and that at the same time they stand accountable to the general public.

The hearings conducted by your committee, Mr. Chairman, are fundamental in carrying out this purpose. Other studies and reports of advisory groups are available to the Department and to your committee. We believe it would also be desirable, however, for a broadly representative citizens' group, such as the proposed Advisory Council on Public Welfare, to be appointed periodically to conduct ✯ careful review of the major purposes and directions of the public welfare programs. The Advisory Councils on Public Assistance and Child Welfare authorized by Congress in 1958 amply demonstrated by their studies and by their reports the values that can be derived from such advisory groups.

Mr. Chairman, the American Public Welfare Association has long urged the adoption of most of the measures contained in the bill now before your committee. The objectives of the association have consistently stressed the need for developing services and resources for the prevention of dependency and for the rehabilitation of those who become dependent.

On the basis of our officially held positions, therefore, we are pleased to support the principles and objectives and general means embodied

in H.R. 10032. We also recognize that the attainment of these objectives is a long-term undertaking, in which further experience will be gained as to the best way to proceed.

We commend these proposals for the favorable consideration of your committee and pledge to you our best efforts in carrying out their purpose.

(The Federal legislative objectives of the association, referred to in the foregoing statement, follows:)

FEDERAL LEGISLATIVE OBJECTIVES, 1962

(American Public Welfare Association-Prepared by committee on public welfare policy-Approved by the Board of Directors, November 27, 1961) The American Public Welfare Association believes that the States and their political subdivisions have the primary responsibility for developing and administering effective public welfare services in the United States. The Federal Government has the obligation to develop nationwide goals and guides for program content and to use its constitutional taxing power to equalize the financing of public welfare so that public welfare services may be available on an equitable basis throughout the country. The States, their political subdivisions, and the Federal Government, in cooperation, must provide the leadership and the professional and technical personnel to carry out these obligations. The association's legislative objectives are based on these premises and on the recognition of the important role of public welfare in preserving and strengthening family life, encouraging self-responsibility, and assuring humanitarian concern for all individuals and families.

To accomplish these purposes the association believes in the following basic principles:

(a) A democracy has the special obligation to assure to all persons in the Nation full and equitable opportunity for family life, healthful living, and maximum utilization of their potentialities.

(b) Contributory social insurance is a preferable governmental method of protecting individuals and their families against loss of income due to unemployment, sickness, disability, death of the family breadwinner, and retirement in old age; and against health cost of OASDI beneficiaries.

(c) Public welfare programs should be family centered and should provide effective services to all who require them including financial assistance and preventive, protective, and rehabilitative services, and these services should be available to all persons without regard to residence, settlement, citizenship requirements, or circumstances of birth.

(d) The benefits of modern medical science should be available to all; and to the extent that individuals cannot secure them for themselves governmental or other social measures should assure their availability. These general principles are amplified in other policy statements approved by the board of directors of the association. The committee on public welfare policy of the association has reviewed all of these statements in the light of current needs and has developed specific legislative objectives for 1962. While the following list does not include all of the association's policy positions, it presents in condensed form those immediate and longer range legislative objectives which are most likely to be of current significance in improving public welfare services.

Scope of program

PUBLIC WELFARE PROGRAMS

1. The comprehensive nature of public welfare responsibility should be recognized through Federal grants-in-aid which will enable the States to provide not only financial assistance, including medical care, and other services for the aged, the blind, the disabled, and dependent children, but also general assistance and services for all other needy persons.

2. Federal financial aid should be available to assist States in carrying out public welfare responsibility for preventive, protective, and rehabilitative services to all who require them, irrespective of financial need.

The Federal Government should participate financially in State and local projects which would encourage, extend or establish programs for self-support,

self-care or the rehabilitation of persons receiving or likely to need public assistance.

To carry out these objectives State and local public welfare services should be strengthened by provision for reduced and specialized caseloads, homemakers and other specialized personnel.

3. The Federal Government should participate financially only in those assistance and other welfare programs which are available to all persons within the State who are otherwise elegible without regard to residence, settlement, or citizenship requirements.

4. Federal financial participation for medical assistance should be available to all needy individuals on the same basis.

5. The Federal Government should continue to participate financially in assistance to needy dependent children only if such assistance is available to all needy children living in the home of a relative. The circumstances of a child's birth or the suitability of the family environment should not be factors in determining eligibility for assistance, but should be dealt with through appropriate social services and judicial processes.

6. Federal financial participation in assistance and other services for needy children should be extended on a permanent basis to include both parents when in need and living in the home.

7. Provision for Federal financial participation in the maintenance of children in foster care should be continued and strengthened.

8. Child welfare services should be broadened in scope and should specifically include services for the delinquent child and provisions for day care. Federal funds authorized and appropriated should be increased sufficiently to extend, improve, and support adequate child welfare programs.

Federal financial assistance to the States to stimulate and support programs for the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency should be provided. This should include research and the training of personnel.

9. Federal financial participation should be available to the States for assistance to needy disabled persons without regard to any age requirement or any requirement that a disability be permanent and total.

10. Specific provision should be made for Federal financial assistance to States to stimulate and support services and facilities to promote the health and welfare of aged persons irrespective of their financial need.

11. The Federal Government should participate financially in the costs of any State and local civil defense welfare services.

12. Federal legislation should continue to provide funds for American nationals who are repatriated from abroad and in need of assistance and other services.

13. The Federal Government, in cooperation with the States, should study: (a) the costs and policy implications of and the alternatives to removing the restrictions on Federal financial participation in assistance payments to, or in behalf of individuals living in mental hospitals, tuberculosis hospitals, and public nonmedical institutions; and (b) the costs and policy implications of exemption of income earned by public assistance recipients.

Methods of financing programs

14. The continuation of the Federal open-end appropriation is essential to a sound State-Federal fiscal partnership in all aspects of public assistance. Since it is not possible to predict accurately the incidence and areas of need, flexibility and comprehensiveness are necessary in financing public assistance programs. 15. Federal financial participation should be on an equalization grant basis provided by law and applicable to financial assistance, including medical care, for all needy persons; welfare services, including child welfare; and administration.

16. Any maximums on Federal participation in public assistance, including medical care, should continue to be related to the average payment per recipient and should be increased sufficiently to assure for all needy individuals reasonable standards of maintenance, comprehensive medical care of high quality and ap propriate quantity, and the preservation and strengthening of family life.

17. Federal participation with respect to dependent children should be increased to a level which will assure treatment of such children equitably with that accorded other public assistance recipients.

Provisions should be made so that children with earnings from employment may be allowed to retain all or part of such earnings.

18. No changes should be made in the Federal matching formulas which would result in a reduction in the Federal share of State and local administrative costs. 19. Federal aid for public assistance should be on the same basis for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam as for other jurisdictions. The annual dollar limitations on Federal participation for these jurisdictions should be removed. Administration

20. States should have the option to administer Federal funds for assistance and services by categories, by a combination of two or more of the present categories, or by a single comprehensive progam covering all needy persons. 21. Adequate and qualified personnel is essential in the administration of public welfare programs. Administrative and service costs of State public welfare pograms should be identified separately and Federal financial participation in such costs should be sufficient to enable States to provide for the adequate administration of all public welfare programs, and the rendering of appropriate services.

22. Adequate Federal funds should be appropriated to assist States in training State and local public welfare staff.

23. All public welfare programs, including financial assistance, medical care for needy persons, and other services, in which the Federal Government participates financially should be administered by a single agency at the local, State, and Federal level.

24. Federal, State, and local public welfare agencies should participate in and assist in the administrative coordination of all related programs in which there is Federal financial participation.

25. The Federal responsibilities relating to financial assistance and welfare services should be closely interrelated at an effective operating level.

SOCIAL INSURANCE PROGRAMS

OASDI

26. The contributory old-age, survivors, and disability insurance program, as a preferable means of meeting the income-maintenance needs of people, should be strengthened. Among the needed improvements are making benefit payments more adequate; increasing the amount of earnings creditable for contribution and benefit purposes in line with current earning levels; broadening the scope of disability insurance protection, especially by eliminating the requirement that the total disability be of long-continued and indefinite duration; and extending coverage to earners and their dependents still excluded.

27. Health costs of old-age, survivors, and disability insurance beneficiaries should be financed through the OASDI program. The health costs of aged. surviving, and disabled individuals and their dependents who are not insured OASDI beneficiaries should be met through an effective governmental program. Arrangements for achieving this objective should take into account the priority needs of the groups to be served; availability of facilities, personnel and services; and protection and encouragement of high quality of care, including the organization of health and related services to effect the most appropriate utilization of services and facilities.

28. The funds of the insurance program should be available to help restore persons on the OASDI disability rolls to gainful employment since such expenditures would result in a net saving to the fund and increase the number of persons rehabilitated.

29. To the extent that changes to improve the OASDI program increase the cost of the program, contributions should be increased to insure the financial stability of the program.

30. The membership of the Advisory Council on Social Security Financing should include representation from public welfare. Unemployment insurance

31. The unemployment insurance program, as a preferable means of meeting the income-maintenance needs of unemployed people and as a means of keeping the need for public assistance to a minimum, should be strengthened. Among the needed improvments are: establishing Federal standards which would assure more adequate benefit payments including benefits for dependents; extension of coverage to earners still excluded; provision for a minimum duration of benefits, provision for more equitable eligibility conditions; provisions for less restrictive disqualification requirements; and an increase in the amount of

earnings creditable for contribution and benefit purposes in line with current earnings levels.

There should be Federal provision on a permanent basis for extended benefits during any period of extended unemployment.

Other social insurance

32. The Federal Government should provide leadership, funds, and research in order to give more effective aid to the States in the improvement of State workmen's compensation programs. Study should be given to ways of improving and extending, on a sound social insurance basis, temporary disability insurance benefits and workmen's compensation programs, with emphasis on planning for effective medical care and vocational rehabilitation.

PLANNING, RESEARCH AND DEMONSTRATION

33. An advisory council on public welfare should be appointed periodically to study and report on all aspects of public welfare, with particular emphasis on keeping the program in line with changing social and economic conditions.

34. The Federal Government should provide leadership and adequate funds for research and demonstration and for special projects directed toward the reduction of dependence, and the strengthening of family life.

RELATED PROGRAMS

35. The Federal Government should provide leadership, funds and research for the promotion of health and the prevention of sickness and disability contributing to dependency. Federal health programs should establish guides to encourage and enable State and local health departments to make a more effective contribution to broad programs of physical restoration. The amounts authorized and appropriated for maternal and child health and crippled children's services should be increased.

36. Public welfare has a responsibility to assure that comprehensive rehabilitative services are made available to persons who require them. Adequate funds should be available to public welfare agencies to carry out their responsibility to restore individuals to self-care and independent living and to strengthen family life. Public welfare agencies are concerned with the availability of, adequate vocational rehabilitation services for individuals who can benefit from them.

Since many eligible individuals still are deprived of vocational rehabilitation services, such services should be strengthened so that all vocationally handicapped persons who present reasonable possibilities of attaining a vocational objective would be served. States should be permitted to designate the State agency which can most effectively administer the vocational rehabilitation program.

37. Federal programs should provide more effective aid to help meet the needs of mentally retarded and other handicapped children.

38. Federal programs should provide more effective aid to help meet the needs of migratory workers and their families.

39. Federal leadership and provision for appropriate financial assistance for urban renewal, the revitalization of communities where unemployment is heavy and persistent, and the retraining of unemployed workers should be strengthened. 40. Work opportunities at prevailing wages, not competitive with regular jobs in private or public employment and with other appropriate safeguards to protect the health and dignity of the worker, should be available to able-bodied recipents of assistance for whom jobs cannot be found within a reasonable time and for whom such work opportunities are desirable. Such work should, where possible, provide training and be directed toward the preservation and development of work skills. Federal financial participation should be extended to include payments to recipients assigned to such projects.

41. A program with Federal participation should be established for the training and the employment of youth through projects for the conservation of natural resources and the provision of community services.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions of Dr. Winston?

Dr. Winston, we thank you for bringing to us the views of your association. We always welcome you to the committee.

Dr. WINSTON. Thank you.