Senator ARMSTRONG. Miss Crawford, thank you for your testimony this morning and, more than that, for what the Junior League is doing. I am very familiar with some of the good work that the Junior League has done and we are grateful to you for that. I was especially glad that you mentioned the contribution to this effort that my friend Eunice Fine of Greeley, Colo. made. I didn't know that was in your testimony until I read it, but that is great.

I want to ask one question, and then in some version or another I may ask each of the witnesses that question. Our time is limited, but I would be interested to have you comment briefly on the question of whether or not this is an abstraction and we are really just sort of shoveling smoke here, or whether or not it is a serious problem to people who would otherwise be more willing to take part in volunteer activity? Obviously, volunteers are making a tremendous contribution to the life of the country. But is it a real hardship for them or is it mostly an abstraction or a status symbol or something of that kind? What do you find among the people you are in contact with?

Ms. CRAWFORD. I think there is no question that it is a problem, that there are programs that truly are in jeopardy because it is difficult to recruit and keep volunteers or to keep volunteers on the same regular schedule that they have had before. Volunteers are rich and poor. Volunteers cannot all afford unlimited out-of-pocket expenses, and there are often other expenses related to volunteer work in addition to the cost of transportation, such as child care, and telephone costs, meals away from home, whatever. So volunteering isn't free. It is very important that volunteerism doesn't become a luxury in our country. It has been, as pointed out, part of our country from the very beginning. Those programs are valuable in all of our communities, and I think many of them would be in jeopardy if they start losing volunteers, and eventually could be a financial burden on the public sector to replace those services.

Senator ARMSTRONG. Aside from this legislation and the specific problem that it is addressed to, do you sense that, in general, there is a greater willingness on the part of Americans today to serve in volunteer activities a declining willingness or about the same? In other words, well, let me be more specific. Sometimes people tell me that we are just not as willing to undertake barn-raising kinds of activities. I have forgotten who used that expression, but back in the frontier days when we were all very close together, when we were all neighbors, and we all knew when somebody had a problem and we would pitch in and help, and that today we are more isolated, and our communities are more impersonal, and there is less willingness to do that. How do you find that? Are people still willing to participate? Is it going up, down, staying the same, or what do you think?

Ms. CRAWFORD. I would think people are very definitely still willing to participate. It may be that some of the ways they can participate in terms of time, they may need to do volunteer activities in the evenings or on weekends or from their homes, as more women are now employed, as it is more expensive. But I think very definitely that the spirit of volunteerism is very strong in this country.

Senator ARMSTRONG. I thank you. I hope you are right. I believe that you are. But as I said earlier, it appears to me that the contribution made by volunteers cannot be adequately measured in money; that the spirit that they contribute to the life of communities and to our national life far exceeds even the large dollar value of it.

Mr. Miller, I was glad that you included in your statement some of the specific activities that the American Legion takes part in, and has shown great leadership, too. I was glad that you included in your statement at page 4 your disputation about the estimates by the Treasury Department, which I also have some reservations about. And I was especially glad that you included in your closing arguments about the essential fairness question, which, in my view, is probably the most important reason why we ought to enact this legislation, even more than its literal effect on the financial status of volunteers. I thank you for doing that. Let me ask this question. Do you find that members of the American Legion—and I am really putting the same question that I put to Miss Crawforddo you find that members of the American Legion are affect in a serious practical way or is this mostly an abstraction with them? Are there people who you know in the American Legion membership who would be more willing to actually go out and perform volunteer activities in the community if they could overcome some of the costs of transportation?

Mr. MILLER. Oh, I don't think there is any doubt about that, Senator. I think what we need to do is look at the current volunteer mileage deduction for a second in terms of its reality. The Treasury made a statement that people can deduct their actual cost of gas and oil if that is more favorable. What Treasury failed to mention was that option is only available to people who itemize. A great many volunteers on fixed income-retirees-no longer itemize deductions. For them to go into that whole procedure would be, again, costly. Currently, volunteers are allowed to take 9 cents a mile, but there are some limitations on that. One, the maximum tax deduction that a non-itemizing volunteer can take is only $100. Of that amount they can take one-quarter this year. Next year, I believe, it is going to be 50 percent. That means if a volunteer only drove 1,200 miles, their volunteer mileage alone would total their full allocation of charitable contributions, according to the IRS. Now if they are only allowed to take 25 percent, that means they are spending $100 for gasoline but being reimbursed $25, or actually achieving a reimbursement of $25 on the $100. So they are actually sustaining a financial liability to volunteer. I think that that cannot help but affect the amount of miles driven, the kinds of uses to which a vehicle will be put. In the letters that we received, one woman, to give you an example, put in 5974 hours of volunteer work driving 4,924 miles. This woman happens to be, as I understand it, in her 50's. This woman is concerned because she can no longer afford to drive that many miles. In fact, her auxiliary unit offered to give her $5 to help defray her costs, and she said no, because the auxiliary unit could use that $5 for another program. Senator ARMSTRONG. I appreciate you personalizing it in that way.

I say I appreciate your personalizing it in that way. That is very useful. So many of my colleagues—and it is a natural thing-tend to look at overall trends, and look at an issue such as this as if they were statistical phenomena rather than real life circumstances.

Mr. Chromy, I especially appreciated your sharing the observations about your family in Minnesota, and how they would react and how they would be affected. That was very useful. I really don't have any questions to ask. Your statement was excellent. We would like to put the whole statement in the record. Your observations were very good and we appreciate your sharing them with us.

Mr. CHROMY. Could I share on that last question that you did ask: does it really affect people? I watched it affect, in special Olympics, for example, when we asked parents to volunteer to drive a group of mentally retarded athletes to a Saturday competition 40 miles away, and they are thinking in terms of their Chevrolet, and 40 miles back and forth is almost a half a tank of gas. And if you recall when you pull into a gasoline station what a half a tank of gas costs nowadays. That is a $10 bill, or close to that, going out of your pocket. You can just see people trying to wince when they have to think in terms of that extra half a tank of gas and that $10 bill, that it really does make a difference to people. They still put it out, and they still do a lot of it. But it is hurting and I think it is an important issue, sir.

Senator ARMSTRONG. Thank you very much. Thank you all. There will now be a brief period for the changing of the guard. [Pause.]

Senator GRASSLEY. We now want to proceed to consideration of S. 108. I am the originator of S. 108, and I have a statement that I am going to put in the record rather than reading it at this time, in explanation of my legislation and support of it.

Our next list of witnesses as Congressman Ron Wyden, from the State of Oregon; Gary Conkling, director of government relations, Tektronics, in Beaverton, Oregon; Wayne Newton, trustee for Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a constituent of mine, I might point out; and Dr. Richard Greenfield, chancellor of St. Louis Community College, St. Louis, Mo., and ask you all to come. I would like you testify in that order. Congressman Wyden, if you are in a hurry and you have to leave before the panel is done, would you please tell me as I have one or two questions that I want to ask you.

Representative WYDEN. That would be most helpful, Senator.

Senator GRASSLEY. All right. Then we will proceed with you and I will have a dialogue with you before we go on to the remaining members of the panel. Would you proceed?

STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

Representative WYDEN. Senator, thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to be here and testify in support of your legislation, S. 108. It is also a pleasure to be seated on the panel with Mr. Gary Conkling of the Tektronics Corp., a gentleman of considerable talents. Tektronics, our largest employer in the State of Oregon, has

done a tremendous amount to promote educational reform. I have to admit not being unbiased with respect to Mr. Conkling. He is my former administrative assistant. My loss is Oregon's gain, and I am very happy to be here with him.

Senator, I wholeheartedly support this legislation. I am convinced that by enacting this bill, Congress will take a major step toward making available to our young people the training that they are going to need for tomorrow's jobs. For the last several months, as a member of the House bipartisan task force studying the concept of merit pay, I have been deeply involved in the issues of educational reform. At hearings that were held in Washington, D.C., as well as one that I just held in Oregon, one witness after another said that any effort to reform education in this country simply must address the prospect and the need to beef up vocational education in the United States. That is why I am very glad to be able to support this legislation that helps answer some of the concerns that I have heard witness after witness raise around this country. In particular, we have got to look at new ways to figure out how vocational schools and community colleges can get the instructors and the equipment that is needed to train workers for the changing job marketplace.

I think it is pretty clear that tomorrow's jobs are going to require expertise in technical knowledge. The Task Force on Education for Economic Growth wrote in its June 1983 report: "Jobs which offer upward mobililty will increasingly be those which require the use of technology."

To meet this challenge, we need vocational training programs that are as modern as the job market. That means schools with new textbooks, skilled teachers and state-of-the-art equipment. Tight budgets everywhere, especially in education, mean that we need to develop a new, mutually beneficial partnership between the parties directly affected: business, government, schools, and parents. I think that S. 108 offers an opportunity for the Federal Government to promote that kind of partnership. S. 108 achieves this by recognizing the great importance of how our community colleges train workers. With more than 1,200 of those colleges across the Nation, they are in the position to train students in a short period of time in a particular vocation, and to work with local businesses to provide employer-specific courses. Their track record is impressive: Community colleges train more than 11 million workers every year. But I think there is room for improvement. To maximize the potential for training students for the advancing job market, our nation's community colleges need to have the correct tools: state-of-the-art tools such as electronic engineering technology, computer software, and new medical equipment. They also have to have the teachers who know how to use this equipment and who know about current developments in these

areas.

I think your bill, Senator, gets right to the root of the problem. It will provide tax incentives to industries which donate equipment for vocational education programs, as well as tax credits to companies which allow employees to teach vocational programs without compensation or which employ temporary full-time vocational education instructors.

In my own home State of Oregon, as in many States, the budget for higher education has been increasingly hard-pressed. Appropriations for higher education have fallen 3 percent in the last 10 years as our State legislature, like so many, has looked for ways to hold down spending. At the same time, Oregonians have been-and are-reluctant to pay additional taxes, leaving school levies in Oregon with very, very tough prospects for approval.

With money short, one of the first things to be cut from a college or vocational school's budget are the funds to purchase expensive equipment. I think we all realize that computers aren't cheap.

Your legislation would help cover some of the expense of modernizing that equipment with a very modest cost to the Federal Government. It would also provide incentive for industry to donate personnel to help teach student about new technologies so they will be ready to come out of training and take up a job quickly, thus furthering our competitive standing in the international marketplace.

Again, in Oregon, Senator, the economy is just beginning to recover from 3 years of serious recession. Unfortunately, most of the equipment in our community colleges is 5 to 10 years behind the times, seriously outdated, and the need for new equipment has been simply too great for either the colleges or the businesses to meet. I think it is a need we have got to meet. We must train more students to work in high technology fields. To do that, the people and the tools have to be made available to vocational schools.

I have often said that to keep pace with our foreign competitors, we must have an educational system which is committed to keeping our human capital as rigorous as our investment capital. S. 108 would help us to achieve that goal. I very much urge your support and congratulate you for all the leadership that you have brought to this issue, Senator.

Senator GRASSLEY. Well thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony. I think you have answered my first question because it was in regard to whether or not you felt that the bill provided an appropriate Federal role in meeting the equipment and staff to develop a means for our community colleges by encouraging greater private sector investments. I think your enthusiastic support of your testimony indicates that. Did I interpret it right?

Representative WYDEN. Absolutely. And I think what your legislation does, Senator, is carve out a modest and yet still very meaningful role for the Federal Government to play in promoting vocational education. I think you and I would both concur that with a $200 billion deficit staring us in the face we cannot go out and start enormous, new programs and just spend money indiscriminately. What your bill does is it gives us a chance to target a specific problem, a very real problem, in my State and throughout the country. And for that reason I think it does carve out a modest and yet still very meaningful role for the Federal Government.

Senator GRASSLEY. Yes. Could I ask your view-it is somewhat related to the bill, but not totally related to it-whether or not you see a need for more Federal support for technician training programs as opposed to professional engineering and science programs?