1. Florida... 2. New Jersey.. 3. Nebraska.. 4. Rhode Island.. Nursing Home Council, subject to review by State Board of 5 nha's of 9 members. nha/1 board, but the State Board of Control appears to have Department of Health with 3 member board "for purpose of 7 nha's of 9 members.1 nha/l board, but major functions assigned to Department of 5 nha's of 5 members. Health. 1 New Jersey-1 physician and 2 nurses who are also nursing home administrators. "Real" nursing home administrator licensing boards, composition not specified in law: 1. Montana.. nha/l board 2. Pennsylvania....... 5 members appointed from a list of 9 names (including nha's and rep's of university units) submitted by MNH Association (and 2 nonvoting members). nha/l board, w/AC Composition not specified, refers to nha/l board as "departmental administrative unit in Department of State". "Real" nursing home administrator licensing boards with less than a majority of nursing home administrators as members as specified in the State law: "Real" nursing home administrator licensing boards with a majority of nursing home administrators as members, as specified in the law : 5 nursing home administrators of 9 members until July 1, 1975, then 7 of 11. 5 nursing home administrators of 9 members. 7 nursing home administrators of 13 members. 3 nursing home administrators of 5 members. 5 nursing home administrators of 9 members. 7 nursing home administrators of 9 members 3 nursing home administrators of 5 members. 1 Ohio-the board as appointed has 5 nursing home administrators out of 7 members. 2 South Dakota-1 nurse who is administrator or director of nursing services in a nursing home (Appointed a nursing home administrator with an R.N. degree). TABLE II Rank order of boards on which there are by law a majority of nursing home administrators, by number of "others" on board: Rank order of boards on which there are by law a majority of nursing home administrators, by percentage of board which is nursing home administrators: STATEMENT OF NELSON H. CRUIKSHANK, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SENIOR CITIZENS (REPRESENTED BY WILLIAM R. HUTTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR) Mr. Chairman, Members of the Senate Finance Committee: I take special pleasure in presenting testimony before you today in a new role. On many occasions during past years, I have had the privilege of appearing before this Committee as Director of the Social Security Department of the AFL-CIO. Today, I present testimony as President of the National Council of Senior Citizens, an organization which has 2,500 clubs and over two and one-half million members. After long years dedicated to the promotion of the interests of our working population, I am proud to now have an opportunity to devote my efforts to the interests of our older citizens. These are mutual interests, especially with respect to Social Security, and I have needed only to shift focus, not goals. With your permission, I would like to provide just two examples of recent actions by the National Council of Senior Citizens that indicate a broad concern and sense of responsibility going far beyond self-interest. On June 11-13 here in Washington, more than 1,500 delegates to our Ninth Annual Convention formulated-out of their vast experience, wisdom and wholehearted conviction--a well-rounded package of resolutions on matters of urgent national concern. I take pride in reporting that these delegates conducted themselves as responsible citizens first, as seniors secondarily. As a consequence, many of the resolutions adopted were aimed at a better society for all our people, not just for the elderly. Included, for example, were resolutions for reordering our national priorities, for pollution control, and for extension of the voting rights act to our younger citizens aged 18 to 21. My other example relates to the position taken by the National Council on the specific question of the retirement test in Social Security. As Members of the Congress know all too well, this is the least understood and most criticized feature of a program that has earned wide acceptance and support by the American people. It would have been easy for the National Council to choose the popular path of advocating elimination of this test. Our members are active and vigorous and many of them need whatever earnings they can get in order to eke out inadequate Social Security benefits. But after careful study, the National Council endorses retention of a liberalized test because complete elimination would significantly increase the Social Security taxes paid by our working population. The Council believes that increased taxes could better be used to raise benefits for those unable to earn. This position demonstrates the National Council's keen awareness of the pressures on the pay check of today's worker-his obligations to his own family plus his costs for supporting the older population so that he in turn will be supported in his old age by that working population. Our members take their responsibilities as grandparents seriously; they would unhesitatingly defer to the claims of the oncoming generations were our national resources so limited as to make a choice necessary. And as mothers and father, they want a much better old age for their children than they themselves now have. Their own demands are modest, far more modest than will be the expectations of future generations of retirees. But they know too that economic gains made by older people today are gains for the retirees of tomorrow. I believe that much of the strength of America derives from this strong sense of family responsibility. And I believe that a strong Social Security system strengthens, rather than weakens, family responsibility in its best sense. This is the message that I attempted to convey in a working paper entitled "The Stake of Today's Workers in Retirement Security," which I prepared for the Senate Special Committee on Aging as part of its study of the "Economics of Aging: Toward a Full Share in Abundance." With respect to economic security and the modern family, I said: And the time has long since gone when the grandparents in each family lived with and were supported by the parents of that family. Support of one generation by another is now provided, not within families, but between one whole generation and another. The generation now in the labor force supports the generation of retirees so that it in turn can be supported in retirement by those then productive. This transfer of incomes between generations is now achieved primarily through governmental and institutional arrangements rather than within family units. Payroll deductions and social insurance are simply the mechanism by which an industrial society implements these transfers. In this working paper I stressed an important fact-frequently overlookedthat "Social Security is family security," saying: Too often we forget-or have never realized that the payroll taxes we pay for Social Security are providing not just assurance of income in old age but also current protection against loss of earnings through death or disability. I need not detail the facts set forth in this working paper-some of which I shall use with specific reference to the bill now under consideration-facts which justified my conclusion: Bold new steps are long overdue, steps that would immediately enable today's retirees to share in the abundance they helped to create and that would assure to future retirees-today's workers-an income that is adequate in relation to their standard of living prior to retirement. Such assurance can be provided only through major improvements in our timetested Social Security system. The Senate Finance Committee now has an opportunity to take the bold new steps that not only would immediately provide real economic security for over 20 million people who are already old, but would strengthen the current protection of today's workers against disability or death and their future protection in old age. In commenting specifically on H.R. 17550 in relation to these objectives, I shall first direct my testimony to the cash benefit provisions. SOCIAL SECURITY CASH BENEFITS H.R. 17550 falls far short of the bold reform needed in order that our Social Security system can be a truly viable method of assuring both present and future retirees of a fair share in the economic abundance they have helped to create. The changes proposed by H.R. 17550 are essentially of two types. There is what I consider the "patchwork" type: a five percent increase in benefits, a widow's benefit equal to the primary benefit, removal of the inequity in the computation of early retirement benefits for men, and liberalization of the retirement test. With the reservation that the five percent increases is inadequate even for purposes of "catching-up", there are badly needed improvements which we support. H.R. 17550 also includes desirable innovative features aimed at reform: automatic adjustment of benefits to recognize increases in the cost of living; automatic adjustment of the wage base that is taxed and credited for future benefits; and automatic upward adjustment in the amount beneficiaries may earn without loss of benefits. We wholeheartedly endorse the principle of automatic adjustment but urge that such adjustment be pegged to a higher benefit level and a higher maximum on the wage base. The shortcomings of H.R. 17550 can be briefly summarized. First and this is of tantamount importance to today's aged-it fails to provide the substantial increase in benefit levels that should precede automatic adjustment. Second, by not raising the wage base significantly, it fails to assure future retirees that their benefits will be reasonably related to their previous earnings-failing, at the same time, to provide more income to the system and to reduce the regressivity of the tax. Finally, H.R. 17550 fails to take the bold step of using general revenues as a more equitable basis for sharing the costs of Social Security. It is to these failings of H.R. 17550 that I shall direct my testimony. The National Council of Senior Citizens urges that the Senate, building upon the many desirable features of H.R. 17550, take this opportunity to make the other major improvements that are long overdue in a dynamic economy. I would like to preface my specific comments by including at this point excerpts from the resolution in Social Security Cash Benefits, adopted unanimously at the 1970 Convention of the National Council of Senior Citizens. I ask that the complete text of the resolution be included in the record of this hearing. This resolution, framed against a recognition of the progress that had been made since the Convention a year earlier--the 15 percent increase in benefits and the proposed improvements in the bill passed by the House-reads in part: Whereas, despite this progress, an estimated 5-7 million Social Security recipients still remain impoverished, a situation that can only be remedied by the Gilbert-Williams bill with its proposals for substantially raising minimum benefits and an across-the-board increase of another 35% in Social Security benefits, phasing in of an increase in the wage base up to $15,000, and a contribution from the general revenues that would eventually provide for one-third of the cost of the benefits; now, therefore, be it Resolved. That this Ninth Convention of the National Council of Senior Citizens HEREBY expresses its appreciation to the Members of Congress for the action taken in this 91st Congress with respect to increased benefits and other improvements in Social Security; be it Resolved, This Convention considers the 15% increase of January, 1970, and proposed increases as a down payment on those benefits proposed in the Gilbert-Williams bill and reaffirms its support for the Gilbert-Williams bill which provides for a further 35% increase in benefits by 1972 for present and future retirees and utilization of general revenue funds to finance a portion of the cost, thus avoiding undue burden on workers with low incomes. This Convention supports the inclusion of an automatic cost-of-living adjustment as a principle so long as it is recognized as a matter of public policy that there also be adjustments in future benefits to recognize rising productivity and standards of living." The benefit level I will first address my comments to the benefit level proposed in H.R. 17550 and consequences of adopting the specific cost-of-living escalation provision the bill proposes. The level for today's aged. Automatic adjustment would start in 1972 at today's level of benefits plus 5 percent-and I need not point out that the 5 percent is less than the annual rate of increase in prices we have been experiencing. In simplest terms, the consequence is this: just as many beneficiaries will remain just as poor as they now are. They are trapped by a guarantee of poverty. Their financial condition may get worse indeed, it is likely to, as advanced age and deteriorating health deplete whatever resources they may have in addition to their benefits; it will not get better. They are literally frozen into poverty. Let's look at the level of income at which H.R. 17550 would freeze our elderly beneficiaries-and I use "freeze" advisedly because I take little comfort from the statements by the Administration to the effect that once automatic adjustment is legislated, the Congress will be able to give full time and attention to the question of benefit adequacy. According to the Social Security Administration's 1968 Survey of the Aged, 44 percent of all people over 65 had income below the poverty level in 1967; for another 11 percent, incomes fell below the "near-poor" level. Even of the couples receiving Social Security benefits, more than one-fifth (22 percent) had total incomes of less than $2,020 and would therefore have been classified as poor on the basis of the 1967 income thresholds developed by the Social Security Administration. Nearly three out of every five nonmarried beneficiaries had incomes below the poverty threshold of $1,600. In round numbers, this amounts to almost 61⁄2 million elderly beneficiaries—an appalling total in a nation that takes pride in its Social Security system! Admittedly, benefits have been increased since 1967, but these increases have done little more than catch up with price rises. Admittedly too, not all of these beneficiaries live in poverty. Manyespecially the widows and other nonmarried beneficiaries-reside with adult children, thereby escaping poverty albeit at the price of dependency. Dependency. Desirable as such living arrangements may be, maximum mutual satisfaction can be achieved only if free of economic necessity. Our older people have a right to enough income to enable them to live in dignity and financial independence. Furthermore, new evidence shows that the number of aged people living in poverty actually increased from 4.6 million in 1968 to 4.8 million in 1969. And there are indications that the rise in poverty among the over-65 population now reflects more aged men who are poor-possibly because they had to claim reduced Social Security benefits before reaching age 65; (in the past the increase has been concentrated among aged women living alone and was attributed to their desire for independence even if purchased at the price of poverty). In urging that the Congress now enact a meaningful increase in the level of Social Security benefits, I would suggest that we reexamine the basic premise upon which the Social Security Act was formulated more than a third of a century ago when the nation was acutely suffering from a gigantic depression. At that time, our economy had no place to go but up! Benefits were purposely designed to provide only a bare subsistence of living because it was assumed that beneficiaries of the future would have significantly more income than did those already old. Except for people with greater than average needs and lower than average resources, the social insurance benefit would in due time eliminate the need for public assistance. How does the present situation stack up against these expectations? National economic growth has vastly outstepped our most optimistic hopes. But the aged population's share in the nation's prosperity has lagged far behind. The Social Security benefit remains the major source of income for most retirees today. One-fourth of the aged couples on the Social Security rolls at the end of 1967 and two-fifths of the nonmarried beneficiaries depended on Social Security for almost their entire support-for all but $300 per person for the year. And, significantly, there had been little improvement in this respect since the incomes of aged beneficiaries were surveyed a decade earlier. What does H.R. 17550 do to raise these benefits that are the lifeblood of our aged citizens? The 5 percent increase-in combination with other improvements, would raise the average benefit for retired workers to $129 a month, for aged couples to $218 and for aged widows to $123. The new minimum for unreduced benefits would be raised to the munificient amount of $67.20, and this minimum is all that many workers have been able to qualify for—as many as one-sixth of all the retired workers on the rolls at the end of 1969 were receiving the minimum or less. Benefits for workers now coming on the rolls average somewhat higher than these amounts. These present retirees are also more likely to have income from other sources-a private pension plan, for example, or income from assets that have not yet been exhausted, or from part-time employment after retirement. Benefits level for future retirees Any complacency about great improvement in the income position of the elderly for the immediate future is quickly shattered by the following findings reported in the working paper, "The Economics of Aging: Toward a Full Share in Abundance," which launched the Senate Committee on Aging's study of the retirement income crisis: Projections to 1980 indicate that about half the couples and more than three-fourths of the unmarried retirees will receive less than $3,000 in total pension income. And these projections use relatively liberal assumptions with respect to increases in private and public benefit levels. |