This country did not hesitate to spend billions of dollars to rebuild Japan, to rebuild West Germany, and so today there are no slums in West Germany. There is no unemployment in Japan.

It seems to me if this country can do this for people in a country who were our former enemies, who helped to kill American people and I think they should have certainly they should do it first for the people in the slums of our country, they should do it for black people who have fought and died on the side of America in every war. They should do it for Mexican-Americans, for Puerto Ricans. And our plea is that the charity begins at home, and the best example of the viability of American democracy ultimately will not be in the size of our defense budget but in making that idea work and work right here at home, and today we can't hide the fact that it doesn't work. And everybody knows we have the resources.

The issue is the will, and I am convinced this kind of legislation if expanded and amended so that it becomes meaningful can be a step in that direction.

I would like to ask Mr. Lourie to comment on the social insurance, and then I will wind up with just a couple of minutes.

STATEMENT OF NORMAN V. LOURIE, PAST PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS

Mr. LOURIE. Both of our organizations take the position that we look upon the social security system as the basic underpinning. It ought to be the basic underpinning of an income-maintenance system. And I think, as your committee probably knows better than anyone else, the amendments to the social insurance program over the years have helped to keep many millions of people out of poverty and the 1967 amendments, we understand, kept nearly 10 million people out of poverty.

Our suggestion is that the committee consider doing the same for the 7 to 8 million people who are beneficiaries under this system but who still live under the levels of poverty as defined by the Federal agency.

I think that you are probably well aware of the fact that 58 percent of the people in this country who receive old age assistance are receiving it because their social security payments are too low. And, while we agree with the forward thrust of the President's proposal to set a $90 base under an older public-assistance recipient, as a matter of fact, for any adult public-assistance recipient, to have that kind of base on public assistance and not to set the same kind of a base on social insurance, which we look upon as the basic programs, seemed to us to be in

consistent.

Now, we are not experts in insurance mathematics. We don't retain actuaries. But, again, we are not unrealistic. We are not suggesting that this can be done overnight. We lean toward the proposal that a 4 or 5-year phase-in be started to reach a poverty-level base in social insurance.

We understand that this would probably mean raising the wage base to somewhere around $15,000 and that it would be possible to keep the tax on the individual at 6 percent and also probably exempt lower income people.

We very much support the President's proposal for an $1,800 ceiling on early earnings and $1 reduction for each $2 that a person receiving social insurance benefits would earn.

We do also want to comment very briefly on the fact that we favor a broadened health insurance plan that would cover all Americans. We do not have a specific plan. We haven't worked out the details of a plan, but as a matter of principle we wanted to express this to you. We also would like to say that so long as we do have the medicare program, we would like to suggest that the part (B) premium be eliminated and paid for out of the insurance tax and out of general revenue. We think that items like drugs ought to be covered across-the-board for all the people rather than only for older people when they are in the hospital.

With respect to the Family Assistance Act of 1969, as Mr. Young has said, we very much applaud the comprehensive approach that it raises and its direction. We think that it addresses the basic problems and that it creates a climate for some new directions for us in America to consider in public social policy. We don't think it went far enough. We think it has some administrative errors, and we would like to make some recommendations which we think will strengthen and better attain the declaration of purpose and to expedite the achievement of the stated goals.

I will go through these very briefly.

First, we think that the basic Federal income floor ought to be established at some kind of an objective and regularly revised standard. $1,600 for a family of four is not enough, and there are very few of the States that really have a level that is adequate.

We think that there ought to be one place where the program is administered, and we do favor the direction that is taken. It is a partial direction, but we favor Federal administration because experience has shown that the States simply do not have the resources. The arrangement that is proposed is extremely complex, and we think it would make it more difficult. While the bill does provide for both upstream and downstream administrative arrangements, we think that we go through a few years under this bill of very complex arrangements where a person would have to go to at least two places to get his eligibility determined.

Third, we think that the adult categories ought to be transferred to the social insurance program with requisite financing in the Social Security Trust Fund being supplied from general revenues. We have spent some general revenue for people over 72 on one or two other occasions, and we think that if we did this, it would leave the working poor which could be merged with the general-assistance population and those who were remaining as eligible for public assistance, and it would be a much smaller group than we have now and under one administration.

With national standards I think we would have a much simpler problem.

With respect to work, Mr. Young mentioned what our recommendation would be. We don't think any single parent family ought to be under a requirement to work, because we think that if we mean what we say about our devotion to family life as an important American institution that we ought to be willing to underpin it and to strengthen it.

I would like to say one other brief thing about the question of women and work. You know, the American work force is already made up of about 40 percent of women, and when you get the women of childbearing age, depending on what color the women are, it is roughly somewhere close to 50 percent of white age that are already in the work force without any adequate means of substitute child care. And we think that is quite a frightening figure.

The other thing I would like to say about work is there is quite a myth about public assistance and work. I have looked at some figures in my own State, and I have looked at some figures that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare gathers, and a very substantial number of the people who come and go from aid to families with dependent children and general assistance in this country come from employment and go to employment. And very much like unemployment compensation, we would like to submit that in a great many ways the public assistance program is as much a subsidy to seasonal and low-range employers as it is a grant to families with children or to an individual.

Our fifth recommendation is that for those recipients who are required to work, and we do believe that ablebodied people who do not need to stay home and take care of children who come for assistance ought to be required to work, we think that there ought to be some wage standards built in. Aside from the fact that we ought to have some public service to stimulate many of these people who ought to get trained and then cannot find a job, we think there ought to be some wage standards so we can get rid of this business of having public assistance subsidize so much substandard employment.

On day care, many of our women, as I said, do choose to work, and perhaps more would choose to work since so many American women already choose to work. Forty percent of the work force is made up of women, and these women are choosing to work, and we want more to choose to work. I think we ought to produce a day-care program on the same basis as we have begun to subsidize on the Federal basis construction of hospitals, mental health, mental retardation, vocational, and rehabilitation facilities.

We haven't put any Federal money into construction of day care facilities as we have in education, for instance, and all these other fields. While this bill does allow for renovation and remodeling of physical facilities, we don't think it is enough. We think if we want day care, we are going to have to put some Federal dollars in the bill.

Eight, on food stamps, and commodities, and other such programs we would like to submit to you that we think they should be looked on transitory and supplemental and in no way a substitute for an adequate income maintenance system.

Mr. Young mentioned the general attitude of many people around the world, and in our view the continuance of the giving of the food stamps in a money economy is really kind of an unsound approach. Nine, the Federal leadership, we think, and matching funds at the same level as now ought to be continued to develop a comprehensive program of social services and rehabilitation, because many of the people that we are talking about that come for public assistance, the business of money alone isn't going to help. A lot of these families need help in pulling themselves together socially, personally, psycho

logically, and the only way we are going to do that is by providing social and rehabilitative services.

We think a good deal of effort ought to be put on family planning education and also on family planning services, on child development services, and on counseling and family guidance, and that type of thing.

Finally, we think that the present provisions of the Social Security Act for education and training opportunities for the staffs of social and rehabilitative programs in the States ought to be continued and, indeed, perhaps enhanced. We are very aware of the fact, as Mr. Young has pointed out, there are so many community service jobs that ought to be filled. We would like to see them filled not only by professional people.

We don't think professional people alone are going to do this job. We think we can get people from the present welfare recipient group, and we can give you many examples how welfare recipients with the use of training provided with Federal funds have turned out to be good civil servants doing fine community work in many of our institutions and agencies, and we would like to see this strengthened.

Now, for a summary, I would like to turn this over to Mr. Young. Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Mr. Lourie.

Mr. Chairman, there are just a couple of more points I would like to make.

One, we hear a great deal these days about how giving people welfare, giving people money, assistance directly, encourages slothfulness and discourages initiative. We hear a lot of talk about chiselers and deadbeats.

Our profession, social work, our urban league agency, does not accept this. We believe that people basically want to be independent, that people want to stand on their own if given the opportunity. A society can make a person dependent. A society by giving so little, giving it so late, giving it in a manner that is demeaning and demoralizing to the human being, can make him lose his self-respect and reach the point where he in fact becomes a demoralized person and will make dependency a way of life.

Our effort is to try to give people help when they need it in a way that will prevent the continuance of it generation after generation, giving it to him in such a way that he maintains his self-respect, that he feels he is a victim of economic changes and cycles of employment and unemployment, not that he is a criminal and an inferior kind of

person.

Our society has a strange way of making it appear that the only people who get help from the Government are welfare clients. We don't think welfare clients will be corrupted any more than corporations who get defense contracts, and they call them subsidies when it goes to business. They don't call it "welfare." They call it a "subsidy" when it goes to the farmers not to grow things, or they call it "research grants" when it goes to universities. It is only "welfare" when it goes to the poor.

We don't think that welfare clients will be any more corrupted by giving them an adequate living wage than I think defense contractors or farmers are corrupted by giving them 10 times as much. I would like to, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, point out the great

dangers that are inherent in considering this legislation. Your committee is inundated with all kinds of page upon page of testimony. You are provided with masses of statistics and actuarial tables and cost estimates and numberless charts and graphs. This is all well and good.

There is danger in it, though, because a statistic or a chart or a graph does not have eyes, and you can't see the individual behind it who actually cries. And I think sometimes that is why people prefer to deal with statistics than with people.

But in this kind of setting it is all too easy to forget that behind these statistics are human beings, people like you, members of this committee, and myself, who are in need, people whose souls cry out in despair, people whose basic, elementary needs for dignity and selfsufficiency must be answered.

It is not enough to tell these people that they must cut corners. As a woman told me the other day, she had not learned to cut corners. She just learned to do without.

While we talk, there is a child sitting in a Harlem classroom whose stomach aches with hunger. To her the favorite subject in the school is lunch. While we talk, there is a man walking the streets of Watts looking for work, agonizing over the rent that was due last week. While we talk, a mother in Mississippi, tears in her eyes, is trying to discover how she can feed her child on the monthly check for $9.50 she has just received from the State.

These are not statistics. They are people. It is within the power of this committee to enact legislation, and I know the power of committees is highly exaggerated by the press, and you gentlemen would be the first to deny such powers, or the power of Mr. Mills as the chairman. Probably you would say it is highly exaggerated. I think in this case it is true.

I really think this committee and Mr. Mills as its chairman, and most singular powerful man, can make a real impact. And this is why I want you on this committee to forget all the statistics and then try to think about the people involved.

These are not statistics, as I said. They are people. You have the ability to enact legislation, to recommend legislation to the Congress, that will restore independence and dignity to these people and the millions like them in this great Nation.

This "other America" can no longer be ignored, despised, and rejected. The ultimate security of all Americans is dependent upon the success of our efforts to end poverty. The poor have placed their faith in the American dream. They have died in our wars they are bleeding now in Vietnam. But the promise of America has not yet been fulfilled. It is time for that promise to be delivered. It is time for the adoption of a universal system of social security directed at the prevention of poverty. It is time to hear the cries of the poor, both black and white, and to bring our country together again.

Thank you.

(The prepared statement follows:)