However, I am also a member of the Missouri Federation of the Blind and one of the local chapters there entitled Real Independence Through Employment, in St. Louis. This title indicates the philosophy of our local organization and of our State organization. The Missouri Federation of the Blind is a statewide organization of blind people formed in 1914. With the help of many of Missouri's fine citizens this organization succeeded in obtaining one of the Nation's most advanced and most successful aid to the blind programs. We call this program successful because of the number of persons it has helped to obtain self-support since its passage in 1922. The Missouri Legislature originally recognized that the public concept of the unemployable character of blind people was their major handicap. It was concluded that self-help and self-support through rehabilitation and self-employment would be the most meaningful and the least expensive way of helping its blind citizens. Missouri, therefore, established a flat payment of $20 a month to each blind person who had limited amounts of property and earnings of not more than $600 a year. This exempt-earnings provision was the first of its kind in the United States. It proved so successful that Pennsylvania followed suit and finally so did the Federal Government in 1950, almost 30 years later. Until the Federal Government recognized the deficiency in its own program, Missouri was not eligible for matching Federal funds. Rather than abandoning the blind citizens of Missouri to the "charity handout" system of the Federal Government, Missouri insisted on financing the total cost of the program alone. In 1950 the Congress adopted the concept of exempt earnings at the level which had prevailed in Missouri 30 years earlier, and it permitted Missouri to continue its State program with the provision that only those cases in Missouri which would have been eligible under a regular Federal-State program should receive matching funds. Missouri was still not in complete conformity for it had recognized the rise in the cost of living since 1922 and had raised its exempt earned income level. In 1960, Congress also raised the level of exempt earnings but still not so much as that permitted in Missouri. As a result, Missouri still had a substantial number of people who were being helped exclusively from State funds, no Federal, no county. In Missouri a person who is not entitled to receive $65 a month under the Federal-State program will receive this amount from strictly State funds. It is felt by the legislature and the State welfare board that this flat amount helps all persons to meet the extra costs of blindness, costs incurred for services which a sighted person would ordinarily perform for himself. Because these costs vary for each individual, and are unforeseeable in the life of each individual, a statewide average is taken and added to the basic and well-recognized needs for food, clothing, and shelter. However, an aid program designed only to meet the costs of sustaining life would be meaningless and would be self-perpetuating. The Missouri program is versatile. It provides comfort to the incapacitated, help to the unemployed, and assurance to the lowincome worker that he may receive help on his climb toward a normal life and total self-support. The 1950 compromise with Pennsylvania and Missouri has received several extensions. Considerable time and effort has been spent by the blind people of Missouri and its many responsible sighted leaders to have this compromise extended. This year in H.R. 10606 in section 136, a permanent settlement has been proposed and passed by the House of Representatives. If the Senate can see its way clear to pass this same section in its present form it will be possible for Mr. Proctor Carter, head of the Missouri Department of Public Welfare, who also supports this provision, to concentrate on administering his program, the Missouri legislature, which has steadfastly refused to abandon blind persons in the midstream of rehabilitation, can return to other pressing problems, and the blind people of Missouri can continue their fine efforts to help improve themselves. As one example of what has already been accomplished let me tell you of one man who is deaf and blind. Ordinarily, such people are confined to a life of helplessness and loneliness. Rehabilitation for these people is just now getting underway in other States under exclusive Federal programs. But in Missouri through its programs of assured assistance despite his handicaps, many years ago he was able to open a small business, to marry, and have several above-average children in mental and physical health, who are now entering upon careers as professional and skilled people. It has often been said that only in America can a child of the very poor aspire to social and economic success and achieve it. Let us hope that soon it will not be only in Missouri that the child of the severely handicapped person can also hope to have a happy home and an adequate education. We only ask for the State's right to be more generous with its people, more farsighted in its programs than the minimal requirements set by the Federal Government. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Kirton. Any questions? Senator KERR. No. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir. The next witness is Mr. Henry G. Hotchkiss, of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. Take a seat, sir. STATEMENT OF HENRY G. HOTCHKISS, PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES Mr. HOTCHKISS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, my name is Henry G. Hotchkiss and I am president of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. This federation is the central coordinating agency for Protestant health and welfare agencies in the Greater New York area. I am filing with my statement a list of the agencies which for brevity's sake I will not read. 84071-62- -25 Senator KERR. It will be made a part of the record. (The list of agencies referred to follows:) MEMBER AGENCIES OF THE FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES, INC. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. Community Center Adventist Home, Inc. Alma Mathews House American-Russian Aid Association, Inc. Armenian Welfare Association East Side House, Inc. Edwin Gould Foundation for Children Episcopal Service to the Aged Five Points Mission Association for the Relief of Respect- Flushing Bland Community Center Inc. able Aged Astoria Child Care Center Augustana Lutheran Home for the Bank Street College of Education Baptist Fresh Air Home Society Forest Neigrborhood House, Inc. Friends' Home Association George Washington Carver Child Care German Society of the City of New York Baptist Home for the Aged in the City Girls' Friendly Society of the Diocese of of New York Big Sisters, Inc. Boys Harbor, Inc. Braker Memorial Home Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People Brooklyn Home for Children Brooklyn Music School Brookwood Child Care-Orphan Asylum Society of the City of Brooklyn Brownsville Boys' Club, Inc. Camp Sloane, Inc. Children's Village Christ Presbyterian Church House New York, Inc. Girls' Home Society Goddard-Riverside Community Center Greater New York Conference of Greenwich House Greer, A Children's Community Hamilton Grange Day Care Center, Inc. Heartsease Home for Women and Hermitage of Our Lady of Kursk House of Friendship Community Center Industrial Home for the Blind Inwood Nursery Isabella Home Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement Church Charity Foundation of Long Jamaica Child Care Center Church of All Nations and Neighbor- Colonial Park Day Care Agency Danish Home for the Aged, Inc. East Calvary Nursery, Inc. East Harlem Protestant Parish James Weldon Johnson Community Jennie Clarkson Home for Children Kirkside, Inc. (affiliated with the Re- Neighborhood House of the City of New Stuyvesant Community Center, Inc. York New York Baptist City Society New York City Mission Society New York City Society of the Methodist Church New York Colored Mission Sunshine Day Care Centers, Inc. Swiss Benevolent Society of New York New York Congregational Home for the Trinity Chapel Home for Aged Church Aged Women New York Deaconess Association of the Union Settlement Association, Inc. Methodist Church New York Diet Kitchen Association New York Port Society United Presbyterian Home United West Side Parish of the Broadway Congregational Church New York Protestant Episcopal City Urban League of Greater New York, Mission Society North Queens Child Care Center Norwegian Children's Home Association, Inc. Inc. Utopia Children's Center, Inc. Victoria Home for Aged British Men and Women, Inc. West Side Day Nursery, Arthur A. Barr Western Queens Nursery School, Inc. and Queensbridge Play School Women's Prison Association of New Woodfield Children's Village YMCA Central Atlantic Area Council Young Men's Christian Association of Young Men's Christian Association of Young People's Baptist Union of Brook- Young Women's Christian Association of Brooklyn Young Women's Christian Association Youth Consultation Service-Church Youth Consultation Service of the Dio- Mr. HOTCHKISS. The Federation's membership is composed of 221 voluntary health and welfare agencies. Reluctantly, and solely because of the inclusion of section 107, we oppose the enactment of H.R. 10606, the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962 passed by the House of Representatives and now before your committee. We reach this conclusion with regret because we warmly support all major objectives of the bill-particularly the increased appropriations for extending and improving State and local child welfare services; increased appropriations for training personnel; appropriations for setting up day care centers; the emphasis of the bill on rehabilitation; and the extension of the inclusion of unemployed parents in the program for aid to families with dependent children. Section 107 of the bill is unnecessary. To cover cases where making payments to the relative would be contrary to the welfare of the child, section 108 creates a carefully safeguarded method for protective payments within the framework of an approved State plan. No showing has been made why this protective payments provision is not adequate, or why it should not be given a fair trial. No showing has been made why States also need the blanket permission of section 107 to operate outside an approved State plan and under no safeguards at all-except a prohibition against denial of payments while the child is in the relative's home, or a requirement for adequate care and assistance pursuant to a State statute. Section 107 of the bill is dangerous. It abandons the long-established requirements that, in order to obtain matching Federal funds, a State must adopt a plan which meets 12 specific Federal standards; that the plan must be approved by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare; and, that if the State plan or its administration does not continue to comply with Federal requirements, the Secretary after hearing shall make no further certification of Federal funds. Section 107 of the bill bypasses these sound provisions of the Social Security Act (secs. 402 and 404) and remits Federal policy and Federal funds to determination and disposition by State law. Notwithstanding the many substantial improvements which the bill would make in our public welfare laws, we believe that, in view of the drastic deterioration to be brought about by section 107, the bill as passed by the House would on balance do more harm than good. |