the economic which is so important. The economic is important in the sense that it gives security to the person who has no place in the community. What is harmful at the present time to American life is that these people who have no security of self, get only the security of dependency, and they live in a terrible vacuum. The children that they bring up, I feel, and other very distinguished people that I have spoken to feel the same way, that the vast production of these children can, in a sense, represent a legitimate threat to American institutions; that there can build up almost seemingly overnight a great number of children who have no responsibility to society, who are, in a sense, what I call a moral, who can be called upon to take any kind of action that would satisfy their anger toward a community. Senator TALMADGE. The problem you have mentioned here today, as I recall, is costing the U.S. taxpayers about $1 billion annually now. If you can think of some suggestions that would be helpful in discouraging that, this committee, I am sure, would appreciate your giving us some ideas for a remedy. Thank you very much. Mr. HORWITZ. Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Horwitz. (The following was later received for the record :) SUPPLEMENTAL STATEMENT BY JULIUS HORWITZ, NOVELIST, AUTHOR OF "THE INHABITANTS," OF TESTIMONY GIVEN ON THURSDAY, MAY 17, ON PUBLIC ASSISTANCE BILL H.R. 10606 I feel it is necessary and important for Congress to undertake an investigation of public assistance programs in the United States in order to determine their impact on community life. Public welfare officials, social caseworkers, and the recipients of public assistance are burdened and overwhelmed by the frightening conditions now prevailing in our major cities and rural areas. These people do not have an opportunity to express either their indignation or knowledge of conditions and several important studies have been severely critical of the secrecy and lack of important information regarding public assistance programs that is made available to the public. Welfare today is a national problem and requires the immediate and profound attention of the Congress. I feel that public hearings on public assistance, conducted by the Congress, will have the effect of cleansing the awesome guilt that now characterizes public assistance and will make it possible for constructive programs to be carried out in an entirely new atmosphere. The CHAIRMAN. The next witness is Cora T. Walker of New York, N.Y. Take a seat, please, and proceed. STATEMENT OF MRS. CORA T. WALKER, SPECIAL COUNSEL TO NEW YORK STATE JOINT LEGISLATIVE SUBCOMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WELFARE Mrs. WALKER. Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, I am Mrs. Cora T. Walker, an attorney in New York City. I have actively practiced law for 15 years. I was formerly the president of the Harlem Lawyers Association, formerly vice president of the National Bar Association. I have worked actively in every civic and community activity in my area. 84071 0-62-29 I have served as counsel for the New York State Joint Legislative Subcommittee on Public Welfare. I am the mother of two children. I appear before you today gravely concerned about the underlying human aspects of the public welfare program as it is presently administered. The tragedy of the current welfare program, in spite of its vast budget, is the welfare recipient. My observations are based upon 15 years of professional and civic work in an urban city in which the largest percentage of welfare recipients reside. Aside from the effect of the increasing welfare problem upon the governmental budget, it has had a deteriorating consequence upon the community and the outlook of the youth of the welfare family. Due to the increasing heavy tax burden, there are proponents of drastic measures to reduce welfare services, and there are also groups who feel that the solution to the problem is to give more and better without regard to costs. I undertook the position as counsel to the New York State Legislative Subcommittee on Public Welfare because I, as a citizen, civic worker and mother, was gravely concerned as to the results and the effects of this vast welfare program upon a large segment of our population. I appear here with respect to H.R. 10606 because a vital part of any proposal to interject change into such a sensitive area as public welfare should seriously take into consideration the human aspects of the current problem. During the course of my investigation I interviewed a cross section of welfare recipients in New York City, and interrogated them as to where they expected to go and what they wanted out of life. Many of them presented a tragic picture of human beings with no place to turn. Those who had uttered a spark of hope of becoming self-supporting were confronted with a mass of redtape in order to do so. There are a great number of recipients who do not want relief, but they do need some guidance and assistance in areas such as rehousing, enforcement of laws against deserting fathers and husbands, job training in some form, and day care centers for minor children in order to find their place once more in society as a self-supporting citizen. At present, only the strong willed are able to make their way back into the mainstream of society on their own. It has become a way of life to a large segment of them. They have lost all hope or desire for anything better than looking to the investigator for their every need. This group needs rehabilitation, either in the form of psychiatric treatment, medical care, or some other assistance to convince them that their present way of life is abnormal. Many of them are housed in the worst slum areas, occupied completely by other welfare recipients, with the same philosophy toward life. There is an infinitesimal effort to make a change of this condition. Communities, as a whole, are being affected by this mounting problem. Because of citizens permanently affixed to the welfare rolls, having degenerated themselves into a blot on many of our urban cities and causing the more stable citizens to flee to the suburbs, many of the problems such as increasing crime rates, deficient schools, health, cleanliness, increasing slum areas and decline in real estate values can be directly linked to our present welfare problems. Who can expect a group of individuals who have lost their desire to care for their own personal needs and problems to have any interest in more efficient government services or any community pride? The prospective change in the aforestated conditions is completely hopeless under the present administration of public welfare. As Mr. Horwitz said, the direct link between the welfare client and the welfare program is the investigator. An investigation and conference with many of the staff members in New York City revealed a condition which was shocking. You encountered a group of dedicated professional workers, but in a state of panic. They felt that they were not serving the needs and were not being of service. The vast turnover that has arise in personnel was because of their dissatisfaction with the administrative procedure and the feeling of hopelessness of the staff that they cannot meet the welfare clients' needs. I submit to your committee that I agree and concur with the principles of H.R. 10606, but I further submit to you that under the present plan of establishing rigid rules and regulations as to implementing the principles from a top administrative level will make it absolutely impossible for these fine principles to function on the grassroots level. We must, of necessity, take into account the already tremendously incumbent rigid rules, regulations, and procedures which presently hamper the efficient functioning of public welfare. The tendency to follow rigid rules and procedures and the failure to permit the individualization of the welfare program to meet the clients' needs has already caused the present crisis. The social investigator must follow rules and procedures made up by those who have no contact with the recipients. Everything must fit into a category, and an investigator is precluded from dealing with firsthand problems in any form, other than these procedures, even if it means keeping children out of school for months in order to get a clearance on clothing, or keeping a family on welfare for 8 years at a cost of approximately $25,000 because the expenditure of approximately $200 does not fit into a category or an established rule. This should bring about, and I urge, an immediate change in the rules and regulations which hamstring individualization of welfare on all levels of the program beginning with the policymaking level. If a man needs assistance for a week, this should be possible without reducing him to a status of permanent poverty, thereby and therefore making it impossible for him to regain self-dependency. We must understand that the administering of money grants to lengthy prescribed rules without considering the importance of returning the recipient to self-supporting dignity will be fatal to our Nation. I thank you for this opportunity of being here. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Walker. You have made a clear statement. Senator Talmadge? Senator Morton? Senator MORTON. Mrs. Walker, as I get your point, the redtape, the operation is so prescribed with a certain formula that either we have written into the law or the department has put in the form of regulation, that the workers who, as you point out, are dedicated people, feel they cannot rehabilitate these people. All they can do is just go on and say, "yes, you are in need." Is that what is the matter? Mrs. WALKER. Yes, Senator. It goes a little further than that. At the present status of our rigid procedure, unless a person fits into a category or comes within a prescribed rule or regulation, even though that person, with the expenditure of a small sum of money can get off of welfare, they are kept on welfare. Senator MORTON. Is part of this due to the fact that we require plans to be statewide? You may have a difference between Auburn, New York, and New York City. The problems, of course, vary as you get into the heavy metropolitan areas as against a semirural area; is that part of the problem? Mrs. WALKER. Yes, very definitely. If I can give you an example of one particular incident that came to my attention during the course of our investigation in New York City, this out-of-wedlock mother had been trying for 8 years to get an approval of an expenditure which would have amounted to about $400 in order to become self-supporting and get off welfare. Because that expenditure did not come within an approved category she was kept, she and her child were kept, on welfare, and it was a fact and established that because there was no established rule for this expenditure of $400, we had spent approximately $25,000 in tax money. Senator MORTON. Of course, it is difficult to take a taxpayer's money and just turn it over to the States without having some guidelines and rules. Mrs. WALKER. Very definitely. Senator MORTON. That is a problem that we face as legislators. I am sympathetic with the position you have expressed here. Our problem is to amend this bill, if we can, so that it meets the need more realistically, and I hope we can get concrete suggestions as to how we might accomplish that end, because all the members of this committee and, I think, all the Members of Congress, want to see, of course, the maximum benefit from any Federal funds or any other funds that are spent for welfare purposes. You have that contact with these people who have left, you talk about the rapid turnover in workers. What do they do? What else can they go into? Are they leaving because of frustration or are they leaving because they can find a better economic opportunity in some other line of endeavor? Mrs. WALKER. No, they are not leaving, the majority of them are not leaving, because of the economics of it. They are leaving because of having been trained to help the people, they feel that administering checks, seeing that they had food, clothing, rent, without trying to help these people is not being of service, and it is because they are completely frustrated with the required rigid procedure that is necessary in order just to pay out the money grants, and they do not have an opportunity to sit down or to spend any time at all in working with rehabilitating and making these families become self-supporting. Senator MORTON. Thank you very much. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Walker. The CHAIRMAN. The Governor of Alabama has just arrived, and I will ask him to come to the stand and take a seat. I want to say to you, Governor, we are very proud and glad to have you here. Governor PATTERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here. The CHAIRMAN. Governor John Patterson. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN PATTERSON, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF ALABAMA Governor PATTERSON. I am John Patterson, Governor of Alabama and chairman of its State board of pensions and security. The department of pensions and security is responsible for the administration of the public assistance and child welfare service programs authorized by the Social Security Act, as amended. The pensions and security program in Alabama is primarily State-federally financed and is administered by the 67 county department under the supervision of the State department. I appreciate the opportunity of appearing before you today and will not take up your busy time to describe the details of the public welfare amendments, nor shall I comment on all of them. Instead, I would like to emphasize the importance to Alabama of the provision for more favorable Federal matching for the aged, the blind, and the permanently and totally disabled (from four-fifths of the first $31 with a maximum of $66 now to $29 of the first $35 with a maximum of $70). I urge that this provision be retained as passed by the House because it would do much to help Alabama provide more adequately for this group of its citizens. of its citizens. În fact, it would enable the department of pensions and security to raise average payments for these recipients by about $4.50 a month. We would like very much to see this more favorable matching extended even further for these categories and to see some upward adjustment in Federal participation for needy children. I should like to make it clear that we in Alabama have demonstrated our concern over the inadequacy of payments. Since I became Governor, the appropriation from the State general fund has increased from $4.5 million to $8.6 million a year. In addition, certain revenues earmarked for pensions and security purposes have increased. We are not unmindful of the fact that you authorized a variable grant formula in the 1958 amendments to the Social Security Act. We also take cognizance of the temporary dollar increase which you made |