base programs. We simply admit that there are those difference, and then we go forward to equalize a grant as best we can. Women's Lobby does not feel that $4,200 is any decent figure.

In the jobs component, we want to emphasize that we think that a full employment program would indeed be a solution preferable, if we have to choose one or the other, but it has been our experience that men are the recipients of the full employment programs, and it is assumed that women will be kept on this dole, which is the AFDC, and that then that dole can be the butt of the community's repression, when it thinks about who, in the society, is getting money without working. That has been the basic reason that Women's Lobby has supported from the beginning a jobs push in this program, because we think it is the only way that poor women are going to effectively break into the job market.

We have seen the bad consequences of a number of the programs, the WIN program and the rest, but, on the other hand, we have also seen the value for women in having the opportunity to get a foot in the door of the whole job process, and as Ms. Duncan has just said, there are opportunties for women to enter the arena where there are CETA jobs, which at the present time pay $7,800, more certainly than they are ever going to get, especially in a State like Nevada, on welfare.

We see a number of problems in the plan which our testimony describes. Many of them have already been covered before this subcommittee. The main difficulty we see in the jobs section is that there is no guarantee of jobs. Mr. Corman has spoken from time to time the last few days about an entitlement to jobs, and that certainly is what we would like to see. We feel that there are problems about the differentials between the public jobs and the private jobs, and the earned income credit that accrues to the private jobs, which does not accrue to the public service jobs.

We think that there are real problems in relating the public service jobs to those jobs which are now held both by CETA in many communities and are held by the public service union people, where 37 percent of AFSCME's membership are women, many of those low-income hospital jobs, clerical jobs, and so forth. Women's Lobby hates to see women being pitted against women at the lowest levels. We are pleased to see the antidiscrimination clause in the jobs part of the bill, but we are not sanguine about the implementation. There is now a 7-year backlog in challenges to antidiscrimination

cases.

However, overall, Women's Lobby wants to say that we are not despairing of this bill at the moment. We think it has heavy sledding ahead. We hope that you are going to go forward to mark it up, and we would like to be included in that process and give you our views as you go along.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement follows:]

STATEMENT OF MAYA MILLER, WOMEN'S LOBBY, INC.

I am Maya Miller, Work & Welfare Project Director for Women's Lobby. Women's Lobby is a national organization which works solely on legislation pertaining t women. We are glad to be sharing with you our ideas on H.R. 9030. For the past two

years we have lobbied the Congress on issues bearing on welfare reform,-food stamps, minimum wage, full employment, medicaid-funded abortion, national health insurance, affirmative action in public works and public service jobs, pregancy disability, tax reform. We have studied the developing ideas and plans for comprehensive welfare reform, and have been pleased with this subcommittee's formation and review.

Women's Lobby has a driving sense of urgency that welfare reform be brought to pass in this Congress, because women collectively suffer out of all proportion the failure of the American economy to provide jobs and income to all its people. And they also have suffered disproportionately the failure of our patchwork welfare system to pick up the pieces. Women, especially women caring for children alone, have suffered too much too long from the anomally of poverty in rich America. Women's Lobby supports the two main thrusts embodied in H.R. 9030: Wiping out the categories, and assuring a federal floor for children and their caretakers, as we have already given through SSI to the old, the blind, and the disabled; and acknowledging poor women's need for jobs outside the home as well as in, their need to cover child care as an integral cost of work, and their need for part-time jobs as they seek entry into the labor market.

But we are outraged by the continuing discrimination against women and children. They are left by this bill deep in poverty, while the other categories of old, blind and disabled are assured at least the poverty level. 35% below the poverty line is a disgraceful mark of our national indifference to children and the poor women we force to bear them by our denial of medicaid abortions.

FEDERALIZING AFDC-CASH ASSISTANCE

Federalizing AFDC, as H.R. 9030 provides, will do a number of good and important things for women: simplify an incredibly complex system, bewildering to recipient and bureaucrat both; make nationally uniform eligibility and assets tests; give some protection from local harassment and political manipulation; and offer at least a base nationwide cash support. Moreover, it will save a family head from making several trips to different offices applying for food stamps and AFDC.

AFDC, that part of welfare most frequently described as "most expensive, most controversial", needs federal protection if poor women, especially poor black and Spanish-speaking women, are ever to be free of the racism and sexism of state governments.

The Social Security Act of 1935 set up Aid to Dependent Children (later, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC) to give some federal help to states and local governments then giving "Mothers' Pensions." But the program was slow to grow, especially in the Deep South and Frontier West where states showed from the beginning a pattern of discrimination that left mothers and children far behind highways and dams in states' claims on federal assistance.

In 1940 Texas had a total ADC caseload of 85 people; Mississippi, the poorest state, had only 104 ADC families; Nevada had none at all. Legislatures did not naturally think of "women and children first." By 1960, 25 years after the program began, only 803,000 women and children participated in the whole country. But in the midsixties, by 1966, there were 1.3 million mothers and 3.5 million children receiving AFDC benefits. And with the work of the National Welfare Rights Organization, mothers themselves began to spread the word. By 1972, in spite of state governments' efforts to cut back, the rolls had grown by 2 million mothers and 4.5 million children, to a total of 11 million AFDC recipients.

Precisely because of this impressive expansion AFDC has become the most visible and controversial welfare program. Women's Lobby sees this growth as positive good, indeed as award to mothers for their work sticking with and caring for children even through poverty. The gross inequities stem chiefly from the wide differences between states. In the past few years the federal food stamp program has been an important partial equalizer, and eliminating the purchase requirement will make that help even more accessible. Still, after all government transfers, there remain millions of women bringing up children in poverty. Women's Lobby wants these valiant women with their children to be the first priority for welfare reform. In evaluating the cost of the program, we will have to take into consideration the geometric increase in this population by reason of the denial to poor women of the right to choose abortion over raising a child in poverty. Any welfare system reformed at the same time as this denial starts taking effect can do nothing less than gear up for the increased expenditures involved.

Women's Lobby cannot support the grant level of $4200 (at 1978 figures), for a

family of four. In only 10 states will families be financially better off than they now are by reason of H.R. 9030's cash grant. But we can't minimize the value of that budgetary help to families who live at the lowest level. Even at H.R. 9030's level, approximately 680,000 families now on minimal AFDC grants in the poorest-grant states will have more to live on, with increases ranging from $332. Yearly in Missouri to $1,244 in Mississippi, and 300,000 families not now receiving AFDC would be newly eligible for the same increases.

A gaping hole in coverage for these families remains, however, because the medicaid which now covers all AFDC recipients will not be provided to those families newly eligible. (This omission is based on an assumption that National Health Insurance will have passed by the time welfare reform is in place, a precarious piece of wishful thinking it seems to us.) We urge the inclusion of medicaid from the beginning.

Women's Lobby also urges that the grant be brought at least to the poverty level, thus including the 810,000 female-headed families which CBO identifies in its Background Paper on Welfare Reform.

SUMMARY OF STATES WHERE MOTHERS ARE HELPED BY FEDERALIZING AFDC

The sources for these figures are HEW's Public Assistance Statistics, March 1977 and HEW's Aid to Families With Dependent Children, July 1975. The figures are based on participation in AFDC at one point in time rather than yearly participation. The latter method tends to exaggerate over all numbers. Also, these figures will naturally vary from year to year with fluctuations in the economy.

H.R.9030-THE JOBS COMPONENT

Women's Lobby supports enthusiastically the jobs thrust of the welfare reform proposal, because poor women left to care for children expecially need help in connecting with the labor force. Poor women are tired of being consigned to the backwater dependency of a paternalistic welfare system.

We appreciate the language in the bill which seems to target some jobs, though not nearly enough, for these poor women who have previously had to depend on AFDC, that welfare program most consistently perceived as a “dole.”

We especially like the 300,000 part-time jobs, because, until there is a quantum leap in child care facilities or a radical change in societal expectations about who cares for children, women need part-time work as they start entering the labor force after bearing and caring for young children.

We like the child care disregard with its recognition that a single parent must have child care covered in order to work outside the home.

We are glad to see the non-discrimination provision in the jobs section, although we are not sanguine about enforcement.

On balance, however, Women's Lobby sees the jobs part of the bill as seriously flawed by inadequacy, by complexity, by sexist attitudes, and by cost.

There are simply nowhere near enough jobs to answer need: 1.4 million is a drop in the unemployment well-and that is only a target figure. No provision has been made for the additional women eligible for AFDC and needing job training and jobs because of the ban on Medicaid abortions.

The wage scale is too low, is grossly inequitable. It will force the poorest to compete against one another, and will drive down wages to their lowest levels, where most of the employees are women. Jobs should be provided at the prevailing wage rate, and public service employees should be given the same benefits as other publicly employed Americans.

Too few jobs are slated for women. Over 90% of AFDC families are headed by women. Approximately 1.3 million AFDC recipients will be eligible for the 602,000 jobs slated for them under the Better Jobs and Income Plan. Thus, only 4% of eligible AFDC recipients will get jobs. The 300,000 part-time jobs fall far short of need.

There is no guarantee of any jobs for women, only hopes and aims and intents-and we find it hard to believe even the estimates advanced. Neither is there a guarantee that once women secure jobs, they will be able to "flip-up" to private-sector jobs. It seems to us a cruel jest to give a bonus to the private sector which has traditionally discriminated against women's employment without assurances of vigorous affirmative action.

Promised job search and training are unclear for women. We want to see strong affirmative action language in the bill mandating that training and public jobs slots go to women. Affirmative action must be a concern to both the federal government and to the state and local prime sponsors.

The anti-discrimination provisions are not strong enough. The CETA sanction referred to in the bill does not guarantee adequate enforcement mechanisms or affirmative action. The plan should provide for speedy processing of discrimination claims through the existing enforcement system of the Department of Labor. There must be time limits for determinations and clear rules and regulations for these hearings.

SOURCES

Aid to Families With Dependent Children, July, 1975. Dept. of HEW Social and Rehabilitation Service.

1975 Handbook on Women Workers. U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau. Time of Transition, The Growth of Families Headed by Women by Heather Ross and Isabel Sawhill, 1975.

The Time Poor, a New Look at Poverty by Clair Vickery, Dept. of Labor, Jan. 1976. Public Assistance Statistics, March, 1977. Dept. of HEW, Social Security Admin. Welfare Reform: Issues, Objectives, and Approaches. Congressional Budget Office, July, 1977.

Welfare Reform Issue Brief #IB 77069, by Vee Burke. Library of Congress, 8/8/77. Statement by Joseph Califano, Secretary of HEW, before the Subcommittee on Welfare Reform. Sept. 19, 1977.

Statements of Henry Aaron before the Task Force on Distributive Impacts of Budget and Economic Policy. Oct. 13, 1977.

Statement of Robert Reischauer, Assistant Director of Human Resources and Community Development. Oct. 13, 1977.

Mr. NOLAN. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Corman.

Mr. CORMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me focus in on this benefit level. Presently under AFDC the Federal Government pays half the benefits-pays more than half in some very low States-but roughly half in most of the States, with

no minimum, and now we are proposing a $4,200 base plus. I think we need to focus in on that plus and decide whether there is enough incentive there to get the States to keep benefit levels reasonable.

I must tell you, and we may share the view, that I would like to see a uniform benefit level that is adequate. We are not going to get it in this bill nor out of this Congress at this time. I hope we can move as far as we can in that direction, but I think at least for the moment the regional differences are going to be determined in State capitols. I would like us to do the best we can to see that there is encouragement in those State capitols to keep the benefit levels reasonably high; that we give the States enough Federal dollars toward that objective so that they get some fiscal relief. Although that is a secondary objective in this legislation, I think it has to be included.

Is that a reasonable approach to what we are doing?

Ms. MILLER. Well, Mr. Corman, that is the issue of supplementation, and that has not been a big issue to us. I understand the schedule, what right now the States pay, and it has seemed to me that one of the things that was done well by the planners is to make the fiscal picture better for every State. I think that is an incredible accomplishment. So that there is no State which would, on the base grant, not be covered more adequately than they are now.

I don't know what the process is when you get into the jobs part of that and the earned income, the consequence of the benefit reduction, which I guess brings you into some of that 52-percent disregard that New York is worried about. I haven't worried about that, because we are most interested in those Southern States and those bad frontier Western States from whence I come, which have left women and children in really the cruddy, low State that they have been in, and I think that therefore bad as $4,200 is, I don't want to let that be lost in the process of the whole bill going down.

Mr. CORMAN. As you know, we pay the $4,200 and on the supplement we pay 75 percent of the next $500 and 25 percent above that to the poverty level. I can't be certain if that is the magic formula we need.

I do know that the formula makes it possible for all the States to keep their present benefit levels and save a lot of money, and in some cases they might want to use that money to increase supplementation.

As I recollect, in the State of California we go from contributing about $2,100 to only contributing about $1,100 of the cash grant plus food stamps for a family of four.

We are pretty modest with our families, as you know, but with that extra thousand dollars, the State might decide to increase the supplementation. But I would like to be sure that we maximize the Federal dollars in encouraging them to do that. Think about that and also if the 75-25 percent is a good approach to it, or if we need to alter it.

I would be interested in your views on this.

Ms. MILLER. We have been trying to keep up with the computers, but that is not easy.