Now, I have typed up some copies of my bill that show how this could be done. I will pass this around to the committee so they can follow my statement here.

This change would add in parenthesis following the word "clinic" the words "(including air medical service to remote areas)". The addition will in no way alter the purposes of the bill before the committee but will encourage air medical service which will be a valuable adjunct to civil-defense operations.

Administratively, it will not present problems since such service would have to qualify by showing financial responsibility, good management, skilled air personnel to maintain and operate craft, and professional medical men as a part of the operating organization. Officials now administering the disposal program recognize air medical service as being in harmony with the general purposes of existing law and that an expression by the Congress would remove any question as to the eligibility of such organizations.

The enactment of H. R. 7227 will make civil defense more effective and could result in the saving of thousands of lives at some future date. It has great merit and will provide fine utilization of surplus to a service where materials are badly needed. In the course of its deliberations, I trust that the committee may consider these facts carefully as well as the inclusion of the amendment which I have suggested in my bill, H. R. 7425. I anticipate favorable action by the Congress on such proposals as the committee may recommend to the House.

Now, I would like to explain that in suggesting that 7227 be amended as I have suggested, it looks as if where I am asking you to include a lot of additional language. Actually, the only thing my suggested amendment would do would add that one parenthetical statement regarding including air medical service to remote areas.

But in order to do it with language as simply as possible my suggestion is that if you decide to include this medical service, that it can be done easiest by merely doing as I have suggested, typing in the few words in my bill and substituting that for section 2.

Now that makes your bill consistent, because the first section of your bill restates the section of the law and the amendment.

The second section of your bill amends existing law by inserting some words. Well, I just pick up the words you insert and restate that section also. I hope you follow what I mean by that.

I

All I am doing here is precisely what you have done in the first section of your bill, in order to get in a very few words, namely, the words "including air medical service to remote areas." In other words, am not asking to broaden your bill by putting in a lot more words. I am just trying to get in one short sentence, but to do it, the method I suggest. I think would be the simplest.

Mr. BROOKS. We certainly appreciate your coming down, Mr. Ellsworth, and I wonder if the members have any questions.

Mr. YOUNGER. I have just one, Mr. Ellsworth. On these mercy flights, how widespread is that organization now?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Well, it is limited almost to southern Oregon. Mr. YOUNGER. I never heard of it before.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. As far as I know it is the only one of its kind in the country.

Mr. YOUNGER. And it is operating now in southern Oregon?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. It has been operating for several years, headquartered at Medford, Oreg., and their flights have gone out over two or three or four hundred miles at one time or another. They have done some rather remarkable things. They have written up in the national magazines. It is a voluntary

Mr. KRUEGER. Is it privately operated?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. It is privately financed with donations, and the pilots are volunteer, but on call.

They are paid their traveling expenses, their out-of-pocket expense when they make a flight, but they receive no pay for their time.

It is supported by contributions from people of the several communities, both on a lump-sum basis and on a continuing monthly contribution basis. It is a very interesting idea.

Mr. KRUEGER. I would like to correct you a little bit on this idea that you have the only one. We have had it in North Dakota for many years, mercy flights during snowstorms where stricken families probably got sick and couldn't get to the doctor because of snow—we have vast territories there and no roads, and we have a little Japanese boy from my hometown who was a flyer in the service, and he is operating two planes on mercy flights, and that is donations. Commercial clubs and so on donate money for him to take care of these isolated cases.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. This is sort of the reverse idea of ambulance service. They take actually to the location of the accident or the illness the equipment very similar to what that patient would find if he went to the medical center in town.

Mr. KRUEGER. He has got his airplanes equipped with skis to land most any place, and go from there.

Mr. Moss. What is the nature of the organization? Is it nonprofit? Mr. ELLSWORTH. Nonprofit.

Mr. Moss. Incorporated?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Yes, I believe it is incorporated.

Mr. Moss. They own the equipment, but the services are volunteer or on a very limited basis of reimbursing for actual expense. Mr. ELLSWORTH. That's right, the corporation collects the money necessary to pay the expense of operating the aircraft and flying the aircraft.

Frankly, this suggestion now is that they be donated an aircraft out of surplus for that use and for that use only as a part of their corporation equipment.

Mr. Moss. You would almost have to require, would you not, in some place in the language of the bill that it be nonprofit?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. I think that is covered in the existing law.

Mr. GARBER. The existing law very clearly states in the first part of the bill that the Congressman introduced, which repeats the language in section 4, subsection 2, sets out the tax-supported institutions which may receive such property.

Then it drops down to the tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, and this paralleling closely the service that you get at a clinic, it is essentially the same thing except that the clinic goes to the patient instead of the patient coming to the clinic.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. I have taken this matter up with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the people down there very freely admit that this medical organization should qualify, but the

language of existing law just does not let it, and they just feel they cannot proceed with the language now in the law.

But they equally concede that this institution has fully as much right to have this. Of course, it didn't exist at the time this other law was passed.

Mr. BROOKS. I want to thank you for coming down. We appreciate your statement. We will look into it and try to make an effort to correct this situation, if it is possible.

Mr. REUSS. I have one question, if I may.

Mr. BROOKS. Oh, yes, Mr. Reuss, I don't mean to cut you off.

Mr. REUSS. Your bill 7524, Mr. Ellsworth, do I understand that all the language in there is in the existing law except the parenthetical "including air medical service to remote areas"?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Yes, that is right.

Mr. REUSS. I just heard you say how you have explored the matter with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and they said they didn't see how they could wangle the existing language to cover this.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. They couldn't do it.

Mr. REUSS. I am wondering, however, if the proposition has been formally put to the Internal Revenue Department, whose task it is to define what is a nonprofit medical institution, a nonprofit clinic.

I am hopeful that maybe in this legislation perhaps we can include this. If not, however, it would seem to me that it is not stretching the language too far to call this a nonprofit medical institution.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. We have tried to have them do that. How does Internal Revenue feel about that?

Mr. GARBER. I took the matter up with Mr. Needham, who is the head of the Tax Exemption Section of Internal Revenue, and he pulled the entire file on mercy flights, for instance, and he said that this exemption was granted before the revision of the code, under section 151 (6) which is now section 501 (c) (3), and they determined down there from the nature of the activities of the organization the way its financial budget is handled, and whether or not the services are charitable in character.

This happens to be exempt under the section that applies to charitable medical institutions, and they make that determination.

Now, the fact that they make that determination does not, although the Health, Education, and Welfore people say yes, that is definite, it is a charitable medical institution, so as far as the Internal Revenue people are concerned, our law is not written in such a way as to give us the ground to donate the property to them, because no service like that was in existence at the time, and we can't assume that Congress intended that property be donated to such services because the services are specifically listed, and there is no comparable listing.

Mr. REUSS. With all due respect to the lawyers of the Department of HEW, and without in any way wanting to prejudice the fate of 7425, it does seem to me that the mere fact that the flight was not in existence when Congress passed it, is neither here nor there, if the language is broad enough.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. We thought, and the mercy flights people thought, that there was no question about their eligibility.

In fact, this matter started with me by them calling me up and asking if I could do anything to keep the aircraft that they had in mind

from being disposed of before their papers were processed, and I said, well, you are sure that there is no question about it, and they said no, there is no question about the grant, but it will take 30 or 40 days to get the papers through the necessary formality, and we just don't want to see this airplane sold before then.

Well, then when we got into it we discovered that although their papers were in order, the Department was not able to interpret the law so that they could get it.

Mr. KRUEGER. Is this aircraft surplus?

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Yes, part of the surplus. I don't know what type it is, but apparently it is one of those spotter planes.

Mr. REUSS. Thank you very much.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I realize that you are not going to want to load your bill with amendments that come in like this, but I would like to have this committee give consideration to this problem.

If the existing law language could be touched up a bit in your report, or if you could see fit to give this separate bill consideration later, we would appreciate it. Or if you should decide to include it in this bill, why, of course, I would be very happy.

Mr. Moss. I have one further question.

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, sir; Mr. Moss.

Mr. Moss. I was wondering as to the need for the words "to remote areas," including medical services, if that is to be part of a civil-defense program, and air medical units were organized, is it not unnecessarily restrictive to include the language "to remote areas"?

Mr. BROOKS. He is defending these city folk.

Mr. GARBER. Getting the comments from the people who administer this problem, they have many applications from a wide variety of groups, people that are organized rather loosely, and some group will organize something and they want something to do, and they set up an emergency service of some sort, a rescue service, and it is voluntary and nonprofit and so on, and in some instances even partially tax supported.

They say that the language of the existing law does not permit them to do anything with such groups. They have an administrative problem because the shades of difference between so many of these organizations as to eligibility, they just have trouble in finding out who is eligible and who is not, and so they have turned those down.

Mr. Moss. Of course, that is a difficulty that they have had to resolve to a great extent in dealing with educational institutions of various types.

Mr. GARBER. That's right. Now then, they have no objection, I am sure, and your civil defense provisions here would take care of a great majority of those cases where there are local groups who could go in with civil defense and perform services of this sort. They would be eligible anyhow.

This amendment deals with a specific medical service, and assumedly such service would not be particularly pertinent in your more populous areas where you had hospitals available in 40 or 50 miles travel distance.

Mr. Moss. As emergency evacuation for civil-defense purposes, though, it might be most important.

Mr. GARBER. Well, that is possible. This section, or suggestion here would make eligible such organizations at all times, regardless of the civil-defense situation, and would be available, of course, in an emergency for civil-defense work.

It would not stem as a branch out of civil defense, but would be a service that would be available for coordination with civil defense. Mr. ELLSWORTH. Thank you very much.

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Ellsworth. Thank you, Mr. Garber. We appreciate your testimony.

Gentlemen, I would now like to present Mr. Miles Kennedy froin the American Legion.

STATEMENT OF MILES D. KENNEDY, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, THE AMERICAN LEGION

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the subcommittee, I am pinch-hitting for Mr. Niel R. Allen, of Grants Pass, Oreg., who is chairman of our civil-defense committee.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. I heard you mention the name of my very good friend Niel Allen. He is one of my constituents, and I am glad to hear you speaking here for him.

Mr. BROOKS. Good. We wish we could hear him, too.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Allen unfortunately is not able to appear here this morning. He asked me to appear and represent him and read his statement into the record. It is a short statement, and I will read it.

Mr. BROOKS. You may paraphrase it, if you wish, and we can incorporate the whole statement."

Mr. KENNEDY. I will be glad to submit it for the record.

(The prepared statement submitted on behalf of Mr. Allen is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF NEIL R. ALLEN, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL CIVIL DEFENSE COMMITTEE, THE AMERICAN LEGION

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, on behalf of the national organization of the American Legion I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for permitting us to appear in support of the bill H. R. 7227.

The American Legion, since early in World War II, has continued to recognize the vital role of civil defense in our Nation's defense planning. We, along with many of this Nation's top military and civilian leaders, regard civil defense as an equal partner to the military, both in deterring war and in rebounding from an attack should war become a reality.

The weight which we place on civil defense was again evidenced in the resolution adopted at our 1954 national convention. In addition to urging our members to exert greater effort to their local civil defense programs, we recommended that the Federal Civil Defense Administration be constituted as an executive department of the Federal Government.

Resolution No. 131 contains our recommendation on the distribution of surplus properties for civil-defense use. In summary, this resolution recommended that legislation be approved which would make Federal surplus properties available to State and Territorial civil-defense organizations.

In preparation for a concerted civil-defense effort which the American Legion will launch in August or September 1955, our national security division sent letters of inquiry to all State civil-defense directors. We, very frankly, were quite pleased with the replies on the one hand and distressed on the other.

Those directors replying-and nearly 75 percent replied by return mail-sincerely solicited the American Legion and its auxiliary's assistance in this vital defense program. They, as well as the Federal Civil Defense Administration in Battle Creek, Mich., pledged full support in our planned program.