If decided on that basis, proposal No. 1 wouldn't stand a chance. It's potential is staggering. In addition to the obvious, one can imagine a quality control error charged because a mother stopped nursing her child and failed to notify the agency. Or think of the wonderfully complex regulations USDA could promulgate defining how often a mother must nurse her child to be categorized a nursing mother.

To carry this one step further the following are what I understand to be the possible coupon allotments for a mother under age 55 and one child: $66, $68, $70, $74, $76, $78, $80, $82, $84, $88, $90, $92, $96, $100, $102, $104, $106, $110, and $114.

There ought to be bingo in there somewhere.

SECOND PROPOSAL SAME AS FIRST

Proposal No. 2, USDA's second alternative, is even more complex than the first. It is exactly the same as proposal No. 1, but also "grandfathers" the December 1975 caseload. Grandfathering, though sometimes necessary and even desirable, inevitably complicates the administration of the program involved. In this case, not only would the eligibility worker have to go through the extra step of computing the coupon allotment at each review, but in addition compare it each time with the December 1975 allotment and select the more advantageous of the two.

Proposal No. 3 is much like the present food stamp coupon allotment system. While it does nothing to simplify program administration, neither does it further complicate it. Of the three USDA proposals, it is clearly my choice.

I would be shirking my responsibility to Vermonters if I did not at least briefly note how these proposals will impact on benefits in Vermont.

An elderly Vermonter living alone, whose sole income is the State. supplemented supplemental security income benefit, receives $187 a month.

He or she now pays $36 per month to receive $18 worth of food stamps-a bonus of $12.

Under proposal No. 1, this elderly person-if a woman-would pay $39 for a reduced allotment of $44. Her bonus has been reduced $7 per month. Any elderly woman who also receives social securitythereby increasing her monthly income to $207-loses all entitlement. Currently we have approximately 900 "one-person" households certified for participation with incomes in excess of $170 per month, that is, 900 "upper income" participants. The great majority of these are SSI recipients and each one of them who is an elderly woman recipient faces a benefit reduction or complete loss of benefits under proposal No. 1.

While recognizing that the "official" concern of this committee is the aged, let me give you one more example-the young mother with one child living solely on public assistance. In Vermont today, this mother could receive a maximum monthly grant of $250-$265 in our one more urban county. This mother now pays $68 for $92 worth of food stamps. Under individualized allotments, this mother with one. child under age 1 would only be entitled to a $66 allotment at a purchase price of $68-thereby losing all benefit entitlement.

Clearly, none of these proposals get at the root problems of the food stamp program, nor were they meant to. There are, however, several bills before the Congress which have as their intent some basic restructuring of the program. I welcome these initiatives and believe that feeling is shared by all welfare administrators across the Nation.

LITTLE ABUSE AMONG ELIGIBLE RECIPIENTS

Senator PELL. I would like to ask each of you, in connection with this program, and obviously, this committee, and I as one of the members strongly support the concept of the food stamp program, but what is your own estimate of the number of people who are receiving food stamps-the percentage in each of your States who are not qualified, in your mind, and who should not receive them?

What would be your view in the State of Missouri, what would be your estimate?

Ms. MCGUIRE. I do not believe that I could give you percentages. Senator PELL. Roughly.

Ms. MCGUIRE. I think I could cite examples.

Senator PELL. I would rather have from you-you are sort of an authority on what happens to Missouri-your estimate of percentages, because that is what the Federal Government is concerned with. If there is an abuse to the concept of helping the neediest, what would be your guess, your estimate?

Ms. MCGUIRE. I think there is really very little abuse among food stamp recipients who are eligible.

The problem occurs because many people are eligible who in my own opinion should not be considered eligible.

Senator PELL. What would that percentage be roughly in your mind?

Ms. MCGUIRE. Well, I would just have to pull a percentage out of the air. Many of these people are eligible for a short period of time. For example, students and strikers. I would have to say, approximately 15 percent.

Senator PELL. Fifty or fifteen?

Ms. MCGUIRE. I would say about 15 percent, because included in that group, I would have to include the public assistance households, in which the income limitations and resource limitations do not apply.

In other words, for any person who is not receiving public assistance, there is a maximum income limitation in that household, and if their income exceeds that maximum income limitation, they are ineligible for food stamps.

If they are receiving public assistance, then those maximum income limitations do not apply, so that we have persons in the State of Missouri who are receiving food stamps and also receiving public assistance, who have a higher income than perhaps the neighbor next door who is ineligible for food stamps.

Senator PELL. I understand. Let me ask you that same question, pulling it out of the air a bit, for Vermont.

Mr. PHILBROOK. Senator, on the basis of fraud, willful fraud. I would put that number at under 5 percent.

Senator PELL. I am not talking about fraud. I am talking about eligibility.

Mr. PHILBROOK. Let me start again. If you put it on the basis of how many people would be eliminated from the food stamp program, if it were restructured as I would choose to restructure it, it probably would be somewhere between 10 and 15 percent.

Students today, they get exemption from the work requirement, for example.

STUDENTS SHOULD USE SAME WORK REQUIREMENT

I would continue students in the food stamp program, but I would subject them to the same work requirement as is expected of everybody else and thereby a number of students would obviously be dropped from program eligibility.

I would not advocate dropping strikers from the food stamp program.

Senator PELL. Would you oppose these regulations? It seems to me that they not only go right across the board, knocking out and harming equally, the old, the defenseless, and the people who should get it, as well as it knocks those out who should not get it. This new proposal also greatly complicates the present regulations, which are complicated enough. Would that be a correct statement?

Mr. PHILBROOK. Absolutely. No question about it.

Senator PELL. It would mean a multitude more of administrative work.

I have tried to understand the regulations, and I found them very complicated to understand.

Mr. PHILBROOK. Senator, in my State, I am afraid the result would be trying to figure out the more complicated regulations with the same number of administrators, and with the same number of eligibility staff, and there I think is one of the real problems.

Senator PELL. Do you know if your group, that is, your group of State administrators of these programs, has submitted your idea on the optimum regulations to the Federal Government?

Mr. PHILBROOK. There is indeed that kind of group and it is my understanding that that group will be coming up with a proposal for the Congress of what we as administrators would like to see as the optimum package, if you will.

Senator PELL. I hope you have more generous treatment for those such as the witnesses who were here this afternoon and less generous for those who abuse the program, and with greater simplicity to administer.

I think those should be the three goals of such a program, and you might even say it would cost less.

Mr. PHILBROOK. Yes, Senator.

Senator PELL. I thank you both very much indeed for being with us. Mr. PHILBROOK. I thank you.

Senator PELL. We will now hear from our final panel of the day. Daniel Quirk, director of public policy, National Council on the Aging: Clavin Fields, member of board of directors, National Causus of the Black Aged; Cyril F. Brickfield, counsel, American Association of Retired Persons; and Diane McMahon, executive assistant to the director, National Council of Senior Citizens.

Let me say that we will keep the record open on all of these questions, so that questions submitted by Senator Church and by other members of the committee will be answered within a timeframe by November 20.

I understand these witnesses each have a short prepared statement. You may proceed in any manner you wish.

We will go in the order of the witnesses as listed on the witness list, so Mr. Quirk, you will please go first.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL QUIRK, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THE AGING

Mr. QUIRK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. I am Daniel Quirk, director of public policy of the National Council on the Aging. As you are aware, the National Council on the Aging is a private, nonprofit organization whose membership consists of individuals and organizations throughout the country who serve the Nation's older citizens. For 25 years, NCOA has provided leadership in the field of aging to public and private agencies at the national, State, and local levels. We continue to be a national resource for planning, information, and service in those areas affecting the lives of the Nation's elderly population.

Mr. Chairman, we welcome this opportunity to appear before your committee to comment on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's proposed food stamp coupon allotment regulations which were published on September 19. NCOA is convinced that these regulations are a clear threat to the well-being of millions of older persons. We commend this committee's efforts today to provide a forum which will highlight the potential danger of these proposed regulations to the Nation's most vulnerable population-the elderly poor.

Mr. Chairman, the facts are irrefutable. The Department of Agriculture's proposals which calculate a household's monthly food stamp coupon allotment on the basis of the age and sex of each household member will severely increase the food costs of elderly couples and elderly women living alone. Millions of older people who take advantage of the program will have benefits substantially reduced and in many cases eliminated.

Other speakers this afternoon have detailed for the committee the potential impact of these proposals on the already meager incomes of older participants in the program. NCOA is chagrined at the seeming disregard the Agriculture Department has shown for the plight of the elderly who in this period of rampant inflation are too often forced to decide between a meal and required medicines.

"GLARING INCONSISTENCIES"

We are further concerned at the glaring inconsistencies in the administration's recent remarks and actions on the food stamp program. In his food stamp message to Congress in July, the President said: "In fairness to those truly in need, we must focus food stamp assistance on them." Testifying on October 20 before the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Secretary Earl L. Butz spoke of "concentrating benefits on the most needy." At the same time, the Agriculture

Department issued their proposed regulations which directly take food off the table of millions of those Americans most in need of food assistance-the elderly poor living on fixed incomes.

Certainly, the Department's third proposal, which basically continues the program in its present form, is the best of the alternatives offered. Yet in maintaining the present system of coupon allotment, this proposal will also maintain millions of older persons on diets which are nutritionally inadequate.

It seems to us that the Department is capable of devising a plan which takes into account the nutritional needs of the elderly-a plan which would provide all recipients with the "nutritionally adequate diet" guaranteed them under the Food Stamp Act. There is no question that we have the capability of designing such a plan—what is seemingly lacking is a commitment to move in that direction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity to present NCOA's views on these proposed regulations. Senator PELL. Our next witness will be Mr. Clavin Fields, member of the board of directors, National Caucus of the Black Aged.

STATEMENT OF CLAVIN FIELDS, MEMBER, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, NATIONAL CAUCUS ON THE BLACK AGED

Mr. FIELDS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Clavin Fields. I am a member of the board of the National Caucus on the Black Aged, Inc., and the director of the Institute of Gerontology at Federal City College. I want to thank the committee for its invitation to present a statement on the Department of Agriculture's proposed rulemaking on food stamp allotments. The National Center on Black Aged is preparing comments* which examine those regulations in greater detail. I would appreciate it if those comments could be included in the record of this hearing.

Senator PELL. They will be included in the record in full.

Mr. FIELDS. What is happening with the proposed food stamp regulations is not difficult to understand, the proposed regulations seem to be part of a larger effort by the administration to strip the food stamp program. The U.S. court of appeals, in its decision in Rodway v. USDA, found that the current food stamp allotment system provides food stamp households less than they need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet. USDA was required to develop new procedures to correct the deficiency. The Department has responded with three alternative proposals, none of which comply with the Rodway decision.

LITTLE RELIEF PROVIDED BY PROPOSALS

The first two of USDA's alternative proposals will result in substantially lower benefits, not only for elderly individuals and couples, but also for women with children. Moreover, at the same time that benefits are decreased, the greater complexity of the first two proposals will cause administrative costs to increase.

The third proposal does little more than adjust upwards the coupon allotments. It too fails to comply with the decision of the court of

*See appendix, item 3, p. 47.