Mr. BRADEMAS. The Chair

[Applause.]

Mr. BRADEMAS. The Chair notes that the third member of our panel this morning has just arrived and wants to ask Congressman Pepper if he will present him to the subcommittee and we'll hear him at this time, and then continue our questions to the panel.

Mr. PEPPER. Mr. Chairman, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to recognize and present to this distinguished panel a very eminent American and a very devoted acquaintance. We were colleagues in the U.S. Senate, he from Washington and I from Florida. I've always admired his great ability, his deep dedication to any cause he espoused. The Greater Miami area, indeed, the State of Florida is fortunate that he chose to come and cast his lot with us. He's not only an esteemed and highly regarded citizen but he has been a valuable contributor to the welfare and progress of our area and our State. He has been particularly dedicated in his activity and leadership in the cause of senior citizens, has been president of the Senior Centers of Dade County, and no one has worked as hard as he has to do something that would be meaningful to the senior citizens of our area. I am very pleased to present, Mr. Chairman, a friend and the distinguished fellow citizen of our greater area of Miami and Florida, the Honorable Harry Cain. [Applause.]

Mr. BRADEMAS. Senator, I'm not sure if Congressman Pepper was introducing you or nominating you. We're delighted to have you here and we'd be pleased to hear from you at this time.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARRY P. CAIN, ACTING PRESIDENT, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, SENIOR CENTER OF DADE COUNTY, INC.

Mr. CAIN. Well, sir: I would make mention of the fact that Senator Claude Pepper obviously becomes more eloquent with the passing of time. I sat here and just enjoyed every word he said. We have been friends for many years which is by way of being a fair complement because that friendship has withstood and survived many an assault, but it has become so firm that nothing will ever diminish its worth to me, and as always, I am pleased to be in his company and with you. I apologize for being late.

My assumption is really, in having a considered respect for your time, that after you have heard from Mr. Simson and Mrs. McGill, there isn't anything I need to say. These are members of the staff of the Senior centers. They are not only conscientious and faithful but they are extremely able. I had prepared a small two-page, doublespaced statement, dealing with the philosophy of what we're trying to do and I'm not certain I need to read that.

If it sufficies, and if you have any questions for me, you will forgive me if I lean over to either one or both of my two associates and ask them to provide me accurately with substance to respond to your inquiries. I am entirely at your service and so pleased because of what I know to be your interest in these matters that you have found it possible to come and be with us in the Greater Miami area.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Senator Cain. I think we'd be pleased, if it's no longer than that, to hear from you. It's not often that we have a couple of Senators appearing before our subcommittee

and we look forward to hearing from you. Why don't you go ahead? Perhaps you would like to summarize your statement?

Mr. CAIN. I'd like to thank you, sir. I think it happens less often, to use your own phrase, that one who has been in your business, that always had a great pride in it, to be perfectly willing to cease_and desist without saying the first word. That's probably, Senator Pepper, something of a record, but let's see how this goes. There might be something of value in it for all of us.

When poor nutrition exists, and it does persist in the older adult, it serves to further intensify the severity of other conditions which accompany the processes of aging. By an inadequate diet in the elderly, the downward spiral of chronic diseases, and physical and psychic disabilities are virtually assured; parenthetically, gentlemen, we have proven that to be the fact in these years during which low-cost meals have been available, end of parenthesis.

But to move our eyes out somewhere else, it is probably safe to say or reasonable, anyway, that 8 million of our 20 million elderly Americans are at any one time consuming diets inadequate for optimum health. The particular vulnerability of the aged to poor nutrition is related to the following facts in their lives:

First, the income situation; it is one of the relative deprivations and it increases more so as one grows older. There is little doubt that the quality of diet is positively correlated with fixed income.

Second, the aged sustain progressive losses socially, and physically, on which we can all agree, and psychologically, which is equally as important. The stress produced by these very real losses and isolation in most cases results to a very great degree in reduced motivation and capacity to provide food for their own needs.

Third, it is estimated that over a third of the aged live in central city, metropolitan areas. The dilapidation and high population density of these environments and struggle of neighbors to survive, produce hazards for the older person in their proportionate measures.

Two issues arise from such a visible confrontation with reality. The aged poor are hidden too often. And the aged poor of any color are equally vulnerable; to be black and poor is, of course, double jeopardy.

I hope during the time that you are here that you have some opportunity to confer with and exchange views among those black elderly who are participating members here.

Fourth, social custom and the need for psychological continuity with the past, lead the elderly to adhere to diets inappropriate to their age or disease status.

Five, it is suffice to say that we have accumulated a large collection of research about the elderly with regard to poor income status, health problems, psychological stresses, and life styles; all of this is, naturally, available to your committee. Unfortunately, little of this valuable information is used or has been used in the developments of programs to meet the needs of the aged.

One of the exceptions to the rule has been the establishment of the senior centers of Dade County and its hot lunch program. It is the continuation of this program which concerns us here. You will pardon my saying this, please, I believe that it is somewhat immoral to develop and publicize a 5-day weekly demonstration group dining program for the elderly if it is not to be perpetuated.

The elderly, like the rest of us, Senator and gentlemen, need to eat every day. We know that the aging need dietary assistance; planning is only one phase. Actually, providing the food at a price the elderly can pay is another. Assuring them, the elderly, that the program will continue will give to them the hope that they need to help them fulfill their needs in their latter years. It will serve as a blessing, but even more, it is an obligation which all of us who are gainfully employed and strong and, by some measures, are relatively young, owe to them. In addition, we ought to make every effort to provide the elderly with more cash income to make better food accessible to them. They cannot live on one hot meal per day as many of them do here. Our one hot meal is all they get. Further, they must have the price to pay for their hot meal or meals as well. We must never forget or we shouldn't, anyway, that the major reason that the elderly do not eat well is that they cannot afford to purchase the food they need and ought to have daily.

I firmly believe that coordinated Federal, State, county, and community support is urgently required for these food services not alone in Greater Miami or Dade County but in innumerable places elsewhere throughout our Nation.

I am pleased to be in the company of this committee and I most earnestly congratulate those in and out of public life who are making every effort to continue more and better food service for the elderly here and everywhere. And thanks for permitting me this brief opportunity to be heard.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Senator Cain. Before I call on Congressman Pepper and Mr. Hansen, to put any questions to you that they may wish, I have one question that stems from the last observation that you made.

You said that you felt it important that there should be coordinated Federal, State, county, and community support of programs like that which you are operating here at this center?

Mr. CAIN. Right.

Mr. BRADEMAS. And, vet, earlier witnesses have testified to the effect that very little support has been forthcoming from State funds in the State of Florida. Would you like to make any comment on that aspect of this problem?

Mr. CAIN. I think what you have been told is correct. My hope is that as time passes there will be that coordinated effort and a fuller measure of cooperation in providing what our aged population needs from coast to coast. Everybody is concerned with financial structures and problems these days, but in this area we are never asking nor will we ever need very much in terms of money.

I think with respect to title III under which we have some hope of, you know, getting a renewed contract, that it's incumbent upon us here at the local level to not only provide the matching percentage required but to do so with enthusiasm and some expression of appreciation for the opportunity to play a part in these great endeavors. Mr. BRADEMAS. Well, I can appreciate, Senator Cain, the force of your other statement in your testimony in which you observed, as I recall it, that it was in a sense immoral that the Federal Government should begin to subsidize a program of low-cost hot meals and then not continue that support. I should have thought that you would prob

ably not be in disagreement with the conclusion that it is perhaps still more immoral in a State like this for no funds whatsoever to be forthcoming from the taxpayers of the State of Florida to support programs of this kind.

Mr. CAIN. Mr. Congressman, I agree with you, sir, on both points. I ought to make clear, I guess, though I have been so lucky as to be a part of this process since a handful of us got our charter without a dime 10 years ago, when I use that word "immoral" I did so advisedly as an individual and do not ask anyone else with whom I associate to share the vehemence and the strength of my conviction in these matters. Mr. BRADEMAS. I appreciate that.

Congressman Pepper?

Mr. PEPPER. Senator Cain, we're all very grateful for the splendid statement you made here today. I'd just like to ask you two questions. One, out of your experience with senior centers and with the lowcost meal programs which we have had in Dade County, what is your observation and your testimony to this committee as to the need for such a program in the Greater Miami area initiated and primarily sponsored by the Federal Government? Is there a dire need?

Mr. CAIN. The blunt fact of the matter, Senator, from where I sit, is that you're not only totally correct in that abbreviated statement, but the need for the kind of food services we here, in six senior centers, extend to roughly 500 fine people a day, is a need that if we can ever find a practical way in which to do it, and the moneys with which to support it it must be extended in Dade County, sir. With its last population count of a million hundred-odd thousand, I would hesitate to try to give you an accurate figure, but I would say that those senior citizens in need of better food in Greater Miami number today; this afternoon, in the tens of thousands.

Mr. PEPPER. Now, the last question, Senator, is this: You are vice president of a large Federal savings and loan association in the South, I believe, and the oldest chartered institution of that character in the country, so you are a businessman associated with and a part of a great financial institution. Do you say now, as a businessman, that you still think that this is a good thing for the Government of our country to initiate and for our State and local interest to support?

Mr. CAIN. Senator, I would say to you as a director of a highly respected competitor savings and loan association that you know exactly what I do for a living. And now in having set down, and I was pleased by the opportunity to compliment your associates, I do not know of a finer, or more compassionate, humanitarian act that our Federal Establishment and the subordinate or lower level government could do. For the desired tranquility and satisfaction which ought to come from being an American of any age, that our Government coud hardly do anything where the returns in term of better health, lowering hospital costs, and more satisfaction in the last-in the declining years of senior citizens could be accomplished than by making more meals available to more people.

Mr. PEPPER. Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Hansen.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me join my colleague in extending to Senator Cain a very warm welcome to these hearings. I'm sure the Senator will not recall, but I

上

recall very well the pleasure of meeting him many years ago when I was a law student and working as a staff assistant to your colleague and our beloved late Senator Henry Dworshak of Idaho.

Mr. CAIN. May I say that you are correct on all counts, so you're refreshing my memory, but your use of the phrase "many years ago" as applied to me could not be more accurate.

Mr. HANSEN. I would make the further observation, Senator, that time has treated you very kindly and I see no lessening at all of the strength and vigor, and the leadership that you furnished in the Senate and the leadership that you are now furnishing in this extremely important area. We are indebted to you for

Mr. CAIN. Well, I was nibbling for such contribution. You have done it superbly well.

Mr. PEPPER. Mr. Chairman, our distinguished colleague's good health is due to the climate in Florida.

Mr. CAIN. It has done for me what it has done for countless thousands of others; that blessed thing that comes from He on high called the sunshine. And I say that because one of these days many years from now, Mr. Hansen, you and the others may think of retiring, but you'd better hurry. At the rate people are coming, there might not be enough room for you, but we'll bid you welcome under any

circumstance.

Mr. HANSEN. It seems to me that we must also address ourselves to another major problem and take the steps that are necessary to make certain that we can still see the sun even though it happens to be shining up there. If we don't deal with some of the environmental problems, we won't enjoy much of the sunshine.

Mr. CAIN. Without being an authority, I would give Florida an increasingly high mark in its political subdivisions in their somewhat new, but increasingly more effective efforts in this area of controlling and protecting the environment.

Mr. HANSEN. Let me also congratulate you for a very fine statement and the perspective into which you have placed this problem.

It seems to me that so much of what we enjoy in this country: it's affluence, the remarkable progress we have made, is in a large measure due to the efforts of those who are now the senior citizens. And now, just at the time when all of us are reaping the benefits from that earlier investment of time and energy and resources by these senior citizens, somehow we're unable or maybe unwilling to let them enjoy some of the benefits that they have created.

Mr. CAIN. If I might say so, Mr. Hansen, I am convinced that we have never been unable. We sometimes have been unwilling, distressingly, because of a lack of involvement and a lack of information. I think you're going to the heart of something, that time does not permit any of us to press today, which is the real reorientation of our national priorities. And when the time comes, and I hope it's soon that we get around to that, the problem we are talking about here today will be somewhere high on that list, and hardly aside from the better health and all the rest of it, an awareness and acknowledgment that the senior citizens of today were the producers, largely, of yesterday which made our affluence possible, and they have not enjoyed any reasonable measure of that affluence because they were brought up in a different day and time where retirement systems and all the rest of it had not come

1