of some of our major universities on the rehabilitation problems of the disabled, we can bring about better and faster results than could otherwise be obtained through the regular project approach.

The potentials of these centers have been very evident in carrying out the recommendations of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and

Stroke.

Citizens Advisory Committee on Vocational Rehabilitation.-Last year in reporting the appropriation bill for fiscal 1966 the Committee authorized the use of $100,000 of the funds available under the R. & T. appropriation for the establishment and operation of an advisory body to give broad consideration to the future development of vocational rehabilitation.

The first meeting of the Committee is tentatively scheduled for March. The enactment of the 1965 amendments to the Vocational Rehabilitation Act had to be taken into account as plans were made for the work of the Citizens Advisory Committee, since the amendments change the nature and scope of the total program which the Committee would have to consider. One result is that the Committee, to properly carry its mission, probably will have to continue its work well into the fiscal year 1967.

Special Foreign Currency Program

The $4 million requested for this program in fiscal year 1967 represents an increase of $2 million as compared with this year. This appropriation is used by VRA to "purchase" foreign currencies already owned by the U.S. Government abroad and which are excess to known needs. The $4 million will maintain the program at about the same level as in 1966 even though there is an increase in appropriation. This results from the fact that these funds remain available until expended and VRA entered 1966 with about $32 million to its credit in equivalent foreign currencies. These will be fully utilized in 1966 so that we will be entering 1967 without any prior years' balances. The 1967 program will be operating in eight countries. We expect to develop 18 new projects in 1967 with 20 new projects this year. This will bring the total foreign currency projects to about 100 in operation.

Next year we expect to bring between 40 and 50 experts from overseas to this country to observe and study research in the area in which they are working and similarly to send about the same number of American experts overseas to exchange the U.S. experiences with the foreign experts. The interchange of experts is having a profound effect on the development of this specialization, both in the overseas countries and in the United States.

Correctional Rehabilitation Study

The request includes $800,000 for the second year of the 3-year study on manpower needs in the field of correction authorization by the Congress in Public Law 89-178.

The need for additional professional personnel in this area, for upgrading the personnel now engaged in this work, and for solving numerous related problems, is extremely urgent. The VRA is very much concerned with this field, as you know, and we have been working closely with the Department of Justice, its Bureau of Prisons, and other agencies in developing demonstration projects and service programs to show what can be done in vocationally rehabilitating disabled offenders.

The Correctional Rehabilitation Study Act authorized a National Advisory Council on Correctional Manpower and Training to recommend the actual recipients of the grants. This Council is now being established and we expect to make the first grant soon. The grant support under this section of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act will go to finance part of the costs of about 15 different subgroups which will study various aspects of the manpower field.

Salaries and Expenses

All of the operating expenses of VRA are financed out of this one appropriation. The $5,381,000 requested for 1967 includes $299,000 to be transferred from OASI trust funds. In total there is an increase of $1,331,000 and 63 additional positions for next year.

The increase stems, in the main, from the additional responsibilities and workloads which arise from the new legislation enacted last year and the tremendous

increase in responsibilities which the VRA has assumed. About one-fourth of the increase (15 positions) would go to strengthen our regional offices who are in direct contact with the State agencies and the nonprofit organizations relating to both the old programs and those which are just getting underway.

This year we have been able to staff only one-half of the regional offices with regard to the new authorized program for rehabilitating OASI beneficiaries. Nine jobs are included in the request for staffing the other half of the office.

The increase also includes 15 jobs for beginning work on 2 programs which were authorized in the amendments-the intramural research program and the planning for a National Data Center. The intramural research program is needed to tie together a number of projects working in the same field such as mental retardation and rehabilitating the disabled on public assistance. With regard to the Data Center, this will be vital to the success of the State planning efforts in pinpointing the gaps in services and the identification of the resources which are needed to make real our goal for rehabilitating all disabled persons who need these services. The balance of the increase is related to the additional staff needed to handle the larger workloads on the newer programs in workshop and facility construction, training service grants, workshop improvement, and the increased technical consultation that is needed by our State agencies and the nonprofit groups in the program.

The additional staff requested are a key factor in our ability to reach the goals envisioned by the new legislation enacted last year.

GENERAL STATEMENT

Miss SWITZER. This is a historic budget because it really is the light in the clearing to reach the goal that you have over the years been urging us to reach. Because of our new amendments and the broadened financing, the availability of social security trust funds to rehabilitate disabled beneficiaries and various other aspects of the legislation, we really think in 1967, the fiscal year that this estimate covers, we will reach the 200,000 mark. This will be a great day.

We also feel confident that we can do this, because even though the bill did not go through until quite late in the session, and we did not get our authority to operate on the deficiency appropriation until quite late in the year, we have been very much encouraged by the speed with which the States have been able to organize and use their resources and speed up their rehabilitations.

GRANTS TO STATES

The first and most important part of our program, of course, is section 2, the support titles for the grants to States. The appropriation has been retitled, as you have undoubtedly noticed. It is an enlarged version of our old grants to States.

The new appropriation includes sections 2 and 3. It also has grants for the new programs authorized by the 1965 amendmentsprojects to expand rehabilitation services and to construct rehabilitation facilities, and to improve the workshop projects. In other words, it has sections 2 anud 3 of the act, section 4 (a) (2) and section 12 and 13. It is a much more comprehensive appropriation than it used to be.

1965 AMENDMENTS

The new act, as you recall stipulates authorizations for various programs. In 1966 the authorization for section 2 grants was $300 million; and for 1967, $350 million. This, in effect, is the same device that the old allotment base was for dividing the available Federal money.

We are requesting a total this year of $259,060,000, for grants for rehabilitation services and facilities which is an increase of about $88 million over fiscal 1966. The increase is due to two factors-the higher allotment base, the higher authorization in the bill, and the increased Federal matching. We are matching at 75 percent, and 1967 is the first full year of operation under that. The Federal share changes very radically the availability of funds in a great many States.

It is for that reason-all of this new money going into the program—that we are confident that the goal of 200,000 can be reached.

1966 SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATION

This estimate also indicates a need for supplemental appropriation for 1966 which recognizes the increased availability of Federal funds under the new act, at a rate halfway between the 1965 marketing rates in the States and 75 percent: It is estimated $39 million additional is required for 1966.

There will be almost $79 million available in State funds for section 2, the basic support grants. This will require the $236 million in Federal marketing funds we are asking for.

NUMBER AND KINDS OF REHABILITATIONS

If things go as we anticipate, and as the States seem certain they will, we probably will go over the 200,000 mark in rehabilitations in fiscal year 1967 and have about 40,000 more rehabilitations next year than this year.

The new amendments not only made the financial basis of the program much more generous and provided a greater spread of available resources, but also made provisions that broadened the program sharply in many ways, and made it possible for us, in the revision of our regulations and the design of the standards for the new program, to emphasize the inclusion of people rather than the exclusion, putting the emphasis on all types of disabilities and all age groups.

The new regulations contain absolute prohibitions against making any exclusions on these two bases-which most of the States did not do anyway. Thus emphasizes again the importance of getting at young people as soon as possible. Many of our research projects have demonstrated how effective this is. We aim also to get at the older group and keep up the pressure to work with the older handicapped citizens. After all, we have a program for the aging which you were so responsible for accomplishing, Mr. Chairman. We want to keep our program beamed to this group as well as to the other groups. In other words, an inclusive program.

LIBERALIZED PROVISIONS OF 1965 AMENDMENTS

In addition, the new amendments include a most important provision, enabling a State agency to undertake a period of evaluation for a case before the final determination of a vocational objective is made. This has the effect of broadening the whole base of intake so people can be taken into the program and given services, and a

better evaluation can be made of their rehabilitation potential. This period can be up to 6 months for any case that needs this, and up to 18 months for severely disabled people.

The mentally retarded are specifically mentioned in the act. Our regulations include additional groups like heart disease, stroke, and cancer victims, paraplegics and other groups that need a great deal more study than can be given in the usual diagnostic period.

MENTALLY RETARDED

We feel the mentally retarded continue to be an outstanding example of what can be done when you concentrate your effort both in terms of research projects, and translating findings into service, and making it clear that a great deal is expected. It is not too long ago that we had just a handful of mentally retarded. In 1967 we hope we will have as many as 19,000.

The employment of the mentally retarded in the Federal Service is also very encouraging. With the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, Mr. Macy, working along with us and being more and more flexible in the way the regulations can be modified, we feel that this is a very encouraging development.

REDUCING DEPENDENCY THROUGH REHABILITATION

Another emphasis which is more and more important as we go ahead into the rehabilitation of the more severely disabled and dependent group, is the emphasis on taking people off public assistance. We have had a consistent record in this. We have tried in every way we know to dramatize the importance of vocational rehabilitation in reducing dependency. We expect that in 1967 this will continue and our estimate is that we will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 37,000 rehabilitants who are receiving public assistance or are supported from some other tax supported institution at the time they are accepted for rehabilitation.

This is an important economic gain. This morning you recall in the paper it was said we have the lowest unemployment figure in our history. Many now say that faster economic growth and getting the benefits of our fast-moving economy, and the accelerating defense spending is often impeded by the lack of available skilled people. We think the record of the vocational rehabilitation program in providing trained manpower is one of the important contributions it makes to the economy.

VARIETY OF OCCUPATIONS

The rehabilitants are in a wide variety of occupations, ranging all the way from professionals to unskilled. Based on last year's experience, the 1967 rehabilitants are likely to have 9,000 teachers, engineers, and professional people, 23,000 skilled workers, and 32,000 clerical and sales persons. This is a real contribution in places where it really counts.

MATCHING GRANTS BY PRIVATE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

The $236 million included in the request for section 2 provides $5 million for matching funds contributed by private nonprofit organizations to establish rehabilitation facilities and workshops. This is the same amount that is in the 1966 appropriation. We have not had too much experience yet in charting the need for this, whether the limitation is right or not, but we are encouraged by the kind of projects this is bringing forth.

PROVISIONS FOR FINANCING IN SOCIAL SECURITY ACT AMENDMENTS

You will also notice that the amendments to the Social Security Act authorize expenditure from the trust fund for the cost of rehabilitating disabled beneficiaries. Last year we had about 4,000 in this group. Next year we hope that with the additional resources, and with the priority that can be given by the States to this group, we will have possibly 7,500 or more. The amendments to the Social Security Act limit the program to 1 percent of the previous year's payments to disabled beneficiaries. So probably in 1967 there will be about $15 million available for this program. In any other year this would have been a major change, both in social security and in vocational rehabilitation, but getting medicare and all the other activities that the social security program got in the last Congress, and our comprehensive amendments, make this just one of many. But it is significant and cannot be overestimated, because it deals with a group that are hard to work with, and our experience has demonstrated they need special priority consideration.

CATASTROPHIC DISABILITIES

Section 3, the former extension and improvement program, is changed in its emphasis. The emphasis is being placed now on serving catastrophic disabilities and trying to concentrate on innovation in this area. We are asking for $3 million, the same as we had for section 3 last year, and it will be distributed to the States on the same basis as under the old act. The matching is changed. It is now 90 percent for the first 3 years of a project and 75 percent for the next 2 years to give an inducement to the States to go into these new fields. We hope this will add significantly to the number of people served.

EXPANSION GRANT AND STATEWIDE PLANNING PROGRAMS

The new legislation particularly authorized a number of new programs which are very interesting and fascinating, in their implications for the future. The reenactment of a very popular provision under the original Public Law 565 which expired after 2 years, section 4(a) (2), is an expansion grant program. It is contemplated under this authority that expansions to programs, State and local, can be carried out for the express purpose of serving more people and getting more disabled rehabilitated.