PUBLIC WELFARE AMENDMENTS OF 1962

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1962

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON WAYS ANd Means,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in the committee room, House Office Building, Hon. Wilbur D. Mills (chairman of the committee) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please be in order.

We are privileged this morning to have as our first witness our colleague from Iowa, the Honorable Neal Smith. Mr. Smith, please come to the witness table; and you are recognized, sir.

STATEMENT OF HON. NEAL SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IOWA

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be as brief as possible. First of all, due to the fact that I am going to say some things that may sound rather critical of the program, I want to make clear that I think the ADC program is needed and that it has been a needed program in spite of the shortcomings.

As a background I would mention this: In 1955 and 1956 I was chairman of the Polk County Welfare Board in Iowa. Polk is the biggest county in Iowa, and we distributed about $3 million a year through that board so I, through this and through the fact that my wife was a welfare worker before we were married and I had previously been a State's attorney assigned to the board, have been interested in and had an opportunity to see this program administered on the local level. In the years that I have been interested I have noticed that the vast majority of ADC cases actually do not involve abuse.

However, there is a percentage-it may be 10 percent, it may be 15 percent of the people that are on the program have been freeloaders. The problem is how to get rid of the freeloaders, because it is these freeloaders that take the money from the ones that need it.

In all this time, in Iowa at least, and I know this is the case in many States, we have never had enough money for the people that need it and it has been drained off by some of these freeloaders who should have become self-supporting.

This bill deals with rehabilitation and this is good as far as it goes, but about half of these freeloaders do not want to be rehabilitated and I cannot see that anything would be done in this bill to solve this situation. This is fine as far as those people are concerned that would like somehow to get off of the relief roll and become self

80118-62-28

supporting, but I think something should be done about those that do not want to do anything to become self-supporting.

The first thing I would mention with regard to this is that enforcement is very important. Most States have laws that we call child desertion laws, or they are criminal laws of some kind, that make it a felony to desert the family. I found back when I was working as State's attorney assigned to the welfare board that some men that were in another State really were in close contact with the family: yet the wife would go down and make her application for ADC claiming the husband had deserted and she would get it and know that there was no danger of the husband being thrown in jail because the State would not extradite him.

I would point out in many States, and I found this through the national welfare conferences we had at that time, the Governors will pay for the extradition of a fellow that wrote a bad $10 check, but they usually won't extradite a child deserter even though the family is drawing a couple thousand dollars a year from the county, State, and Federal Governments.

In 1951, we extradited three deserters that were in other States and almost immediately a couple dozen women came down and said they no longer needed ADC and that their husbands suddenly had returned. We know in many of these cases the husbands just went to the other State and got a job and the wife applied for ADC because they knew they would get away with it. In our case, extradition seemed to work all right until one day the Governor looked at his extradition costs and saw that that account had been reduced. He stopped extraditing child deserters-and this is not unique to Iowa-the invitation was again extended to those who wanted to cheat.

This is going on in many States, so the first thing I think should be done in this area is to work with the States to encourage extradition of child deserters that go across to other States. Extradition and child desertion proceedings are purely within the police powers of the State. It has to be a cooperative venture of some kind and I do not think you can just pass a Federal law and that is the end of it. It has to be something cooperative with the States. But something should be done to encourage better enforcement of child desertion laws.

Another thing that helps is to have an attorney assigned to the board where you have a very large caseload. At least where there are 500 or 600 or more cases there should be an attorney assigned to the board to work day to day with the welfare workers to try to enforce the law on a case-to-case basis.

We had this for a while in Iowa, but then the State board of social welfare decided they did not want to do it any longer and as soon as this attorney was taken away from the board and these full-time services were not available, the caseload shot up again.

I think that a key word in the law has been the word "need," whether or not these families need the help. I would point out that under existing law quite a lot can be done with regard to rehabilitation if you properly interpret the word "need."

In 1959 when I was on the board, we started a program whereby we reserved some of the jobs in the courthouse and some of them in the welfare office for people that were on ADC that said they could not

get a job, and when the welfare worker on an individual case basis, not across the board, but taking an individual case basis, thought that no harm would come to the child or children if the parent was to work we would give them a job. If they said they could not get a job, we would give them a job, and after they worked with us a while in either the courthouse or county welfare office, we found that they acquired a work habit and they wanted to get out and get a job on their own.

As an example, a fellow who had been, due to a back ailment, on ADC for 10 years got started again as a maintenance man at the welfare board and got the work habit, he found a job elsewhere and he is not on ADC today, and he and his family had been for 10 years on ADC.

This worked all right until one of the girls that we offered a secretarial job to refused to take it. She said, "I just do not want to work, period. This case was a case where the girl had one child and her sister lived with her, with a child the same age. The sister did not work and so there was no doubt about the child being taken care of.

She said, "I just do not want to work." After we said she would have to work for us or be dropped from the roll, she appealed, and the State board said, "If she does not want to work, she does not have to." In effect they said that if the statistics show income is less than the standard, payment is automatic. They said, "You are eligible and there is nothing the welfare board can do about it." Later, we found she had another job under an assumed name.

Now, when you have this kind of a situation you are not going to get, I do not think, any rehabilitation. In dealing with those people that do not want to be rehabilitated, if the State board does not want to do anything about it, if they view these welfare workers merely as statisticians, there will not be anything done under this bill or any other bill.

I would point out that, while some people say what we need is more welfare workers, in many, many States the welfare workers they have are not permitted to really be welfare workers. They could just as well be statisticians or computing machines. They send them out to find out how much income there is in the family, how many children they have, what they pay for rent, and they compute it down at the bottom and see how much the family has coming and that is the end of it. They are prohibited from doing anything else, or if they do do anything else or try to rehabilitate the family, the family can appeal to the State board and the welfare worker will be overruled; so, more than welfare workers, what we need is a State board to let the welfare workers be welfare workers, instead of being mere computing machines.

Another thing I would like to mention is that under the law as it is now from the very beginning day the Federal Government pays 50 percent and the State and local agency pays the other 50 percent. In Iowa and many States I think the State and the local governments split this half and half. This makes 50 percent for the Federal, 25 percent for the State, and 25 percent for the county.

The natural tendency is for people that are administering these funds to want to get people on to ADC as fast as possible because 50 percent is paid for by the Federal Government. As far as the local agency is concerned they have only a 25-percent stake instead of a

100-percent stake, and therefore if somebody comes in that is eligible they want to get them on ADC immediately instead of carrying them perhaps, if it looks like a temporary case for a month or two, on a local program.

In addition to this, the law at the present time seems to require this. It says that if eligible they immediately must be placed on ADC. That is not changed in this bill as far as I can see. I think that you ought to explore the possibility, at least, of requiring that before they are eligible for Federal funds they must have been carried on the State and local rolls at the amount that they would receive from Federal funds for perhaps a couple of months. I think that in many cases this will cause the local administrators and State agency to work harder during the first 2 months to get them rehabilitated and to see what they can do to help them.

I think that this would be a good thing, especially in view of the fact that we are now including families under the legislation where both the husband and wife are healthy but out of work. I would also like to suggest to the committee that a study be made, and I think that this has to be done by Congress. It should not be left to the administrative agencies, but we need a study of some kind by some committee of Congress to see just what regulations and interpretations have been made in these State and local agencies that prevent the carrying out of the law as it is intended and that, in fact, have caused the diversion of too many of these funds by a few, that do not want to be self-supporting. We need to know the extent to which State agencies have prevented local boards from properly administering these funds. The Intergovernmental Relations Commission is considering some aspect of this, but I think it needs a thorough investigation to the end that improvements can be obtained.

It seems to me that this kind of a study is very important and it must be done by some committee of Congress because you cannot expect the administrative agencies that have been administering the law to look at it the way that the Congress would.

Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. We thank you, sir, for bringing to the committee this discussion of the matter before the committee.

Are there any questions of Mr. Smith?

Thank you, sir.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is Mr. Tompkins. Mr. Tompkins, although you have been before the committee on previous occasions, we will ask you to once again identify yourself for this record.

STATEMENT OF PATRICK A. TOMPKINS, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC WELFARE FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

Mr. TOMPKINS. My name is Patrick A. Tompkins. I am commissioner of public welfare for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The CHAIRMAN. You are recognized, Mr. Tompkins.

Mr. TOMPKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wish to bring to the attention of the chairman of the committee that I am devoting my presentation to the general principles of the bill and not dissection of the individual sections.