PBOBLEM OF STORAGE AND INTERNAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD

Monsignor SWANSTROM. There is one point I would like to make on it, though, which is right to this point. Many times in countries of greatest need, say, some of the countries in South America, Bolivia, and the like, and some of the countries in Africa, one of the biggest problems is the warehousing and inland distribution of this food. Senator HUMPHREY. Yes.

Monsignor SWANSTROM. The indigenous government itself, even though it expresses a will to put money into it, finds out many times that it does not have the money to do it, you see. I can see the possibility of voluntary agencies being helped through counterpart funds in warehousing and internal distribution. It is one of our biggest problems in areas of greatest need, because the counterpart agency is just as poor as the government, and despite their will and desire to do so, they have not got it.

I know places where our counterpart agencies are using large sums of money that they could well use for other purposes for this warehousing and inland distribution job.

I think in meeting the need in areas of greatest need sometimes that is one of our greatest weaknesses, you see, and I do not know of any voluntary agency that would have any objection to that.

Mr. G. E. BLACKFORD (Church World Service). It comes from this language, sir, that these costs, the ocean freight provisions, are that the United States can pay ocean freights, but the inland freights in the overseas areas are something quite different.

Now, if the inland freights of the area, the distance is excessive, then the freights amount to so much, and mount so high that the recipient country cannot afford to pay those rates. That is true if it is a very poor country and, therefore, it is prohibited by its own poverty from getting the foods which the Congress wants first to go to the most poverty-stricken people.

Senator HUMPHREY. I see.

STATEMENT OF DR. R. NORRIS WILSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHURCH WORLD SERVICE, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

Mr. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, there may have been misunderstandings or misreading of the language of the bill because some of us supposed that in addition to the administrative costs of these programs to the voluntary agencies, and the matter to which Mr. Blackford has just alluded, that there would under certain circumstances be available foreign currencies that have accrued from the sale of title II commodities to voluntary agencies for financing relief and rehabilitation projects undertaken following disasters and a whole list of things.

Senator HUMPHREY. That is in the present law?

USE OF FOREIGN CURRENCIES

Mr. WILSON. Yes; that is in the present law.

And the amendment which you are making provides that these moneys can be used without direct appropriation from Congress? Senator HUMPHREY. Yes.

Mr. WILSON. That is the thing that I think is the nub of the matter, because these moneys become accessible to the voluntary agencies and are claimed for use, say, in India, Korea, and so on for rehabilitation projects, self-help projects of various kinds, because the agencies are involved, as you know, in a very wide range of different kinds of activities. That is the kind of use of these moneys to which, in principle, I, as representing the Church World Service and the National Council, would have to object to along with Mr. Empie because we would say that this is the very heart of the church's program, and if it is known that this program is financed with U.S. Government money, it really distorts the whole notion of voluntary service. Senator HUMPHREY. Where is that in the bill?

Mr. WILSON. I have got it before me.

Senator HUMPHREY. You have the full bill as amended?

Mr. WILSON. As amended by inserting after paragraph et cetera, et

cetera.

Senator HUMPHREY. I have it.

Mr. WILSON. The original provision providing for congressional approval for each grant did give opportunity for hearings and fullblown discussion before it was done, and I personally feel they ought to be allowed under any circumstances. But at least there was some assurance that we have a chance to look at it.

Senator HUMPHREY. Please just step over here and see if you can help me on this. I see nothing about this relief about which you are talking. Do you think that applies to voluntary agencies?

Mr. WILSON. In the language of the bill I thought it did. As I said, maybe this is a misreading of it.

Mr. BLACKFORD. It applies to nonprofit organizations.

Monsignor SWANSTROM. Mr. Humphrey, Mr. Leavitt would like to talk to the point.

STATEMENT OF MOSES A. LEAVITT, AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE

Mr. LEAVITT. May I come in, Mr. Chairman, at this point, because there is, it seems to me, a situation where we are cutting some very fine lines here.

There has been a tremendous amount of help on the part of governmental and intergovernmental agencies to the voluntary agencies, religious and secular.

We go back to UNRRA, we go back to IRO; we have at the present time the ICEM, and the USEP, all governmental U.S.-financed agencies, that have been helping the relief agencies tackle the problem primarily of refugees.

HELPING PEOPLES TO BECOME SELF-SUPPORTING

To me the importance of S. 1711 is the fact that for the first time there is your thinking beyond what would be, let us say, a primary objective to save lives.

It is enough to keep a man, and it is enough, and it is an end in itself to keep a man alive like feeding him if he is hungry. But if you can make that means to an end of making him self-supporting, I think

you are going beyond your original concept, and it is this use of the surplus for trying to build self-support in the population, and the feeling that we are making a first step in getting these people on their own feet that I think is the most interesting and the most challenging part of the new bill.

Now, I think we are worrying too much about language and not enough about the practical application of what would ensue in the field.

At the present time counterpart funds are utilized by the Government of the United States in agreement.

ROLE OF RECIPIENT COUNTRY

Now, counterpart funds, if given in a sense, not given, but placed at the disposal of the agency to work out with the recipient government, programs of rehabilitation, programs of self-help, cooperative work, setting up of artisan shops, of pilot plants and all of the things that agencies are doing with their own money, I see no reason why the gift coming from the recipient government would be received with the gift from the giving government, and would become an unholy gift from the viewpoint-and I respect the conscience of every agency in this respect.

We are also a relief or religious agency. But at the same time we feel that if we can cooperate with the governments in the countries in which we work and get help from them, we welcome and solicit that kind of support.

Senator HUMPHREY. Do you get that presently?

Mr. LEAVITT. Well, you get-counterpart funds; no.

Senator HUMPHREY. Let me just see if I understand this. You are working in a particular country and the host government decides they want to work with you in a program of physical rehabilitation. Let us say that you put up a hospital and you come in and manage this hospital.

Mr. LEAVITT. That we do. That kind of cooperation and partnership goes on all the time.

Senator HUMPHREY. Well, who pays the bills?

Mr. LEAVITT. Sometimes we pay the bills; we do not pay all the bills. We pay a part of the bills, pay a small part of the bills or we just manage and pay none of the bills. It just depends on the country. Senator HUMPHREY. And the host country sometimes foots part of the bill?

Mr. LEAVITT. That is right.

Senator HUMPHREY. What you are saying is that what goes on now is what you are describing, and what makes it wrong by putting it on the other end of the line.

Mr. LEAVITT. That is what I am trying to say.

Mrs. TOUROVER. As a matter of fact, it would increase the possibilities of the kind of service of which Mr. Leavitt spoke if additional funds were made available from the soft currency reserves.

Senator HUMPHREY. I think what you are running into here in opening all this up clearly is the feeling on the part of different religious groups as to the separation of government or state from church activities.

I think this is the difference to which Mr. Empie is directing his attention; is that right?

RELATIONSHIP OF GOVERNMENT AND VOLUNTARY AGENCIES

Mr. EMPIE. What I am trying to point out, Mr. Chairman, is that we see a real difference between a voluntary agency being a partner of government and retaining its own program and character and everything else, and being an instrument of government by, in effect, being subsidized for a large part of its program.

We are not presuming to say where this line is drawn. I have said here we do not have the answer.

Senator HUMPHREY. Yes, I understand.

Mr. EMPIE. But there certainly is a point past which we could not go, and we are not convinced it is desirable for the door to be thrown wide open without very great thought given to this point.

Furthermore, I am not convinced that this is the only answer to the problem.

As I say, if I thought that this would deprive people of the help, and that was the only way they could get it, then it would be the kind of an emergency which I said would justify it.

But it seems to me that there are other ways in which it can be done by government-to-government negotiations or through united agencies, the voluntary agencies, continuing to do what they have done, but not necessarily getting into the expanded field.

All I am pleading for, sir, is that the issue be very carefully examined.

To us it is a serious one. If it is not serious to anyone else, then the examination probably will disclose that. To us it is a very real

one.

Senator HUMPHREY. I see.

Mr. KINNEY. Mr. Chairman, may I simply say that there is not a question of confidence in the other religious agencies who are confronted with the precise same problem. I am confident that no one of the sponsored religious groups which wants to be wholly subsidized by Government exists, and that none of the agencies would want to be known as an arm of the Government. It is not their derivation, it is not their motivation or their purpose, and I believe each agency has a conscience in that respect, and I believe each agency has principles in that respect, and I also believe that each agency can be expected to follow its principles and is entitled to the confidence that one agency should place in another.

To that end I see no particular problem in whatever opportunities for self-help this particular legislation involves, and I must say that we have not studied it in that respect.

Senator HUMPHREY. It is paragraph 16 on page 11 of the bill, line 10 that you are talking about.

EXTENSION OF LINE OF DELIVERY

You see this is limited to the end by the controlling phrase "For the relief of chronic hunger and malnutrition."

We will look into this. It seems that there may be instances where the job to be done requires almost what you would call an extension of

the line of delivery. This is what I am getting at. It is something like the highway program. It involves how far you extend Federal aid. Does it get into the county and township road to meet the point of contact with the problem?

As I said earlier, I have not had any requests from any agency in the preparation of this legislation or in any of the hearings where somebody would come in and pay for office help or where somebody would come in and pay for the rent or the telephones or the stationery or the field service or the supervisory staff.

For example, the request we have had relating to this, is indicated in the problem of Haiti, where it was almost impossible to get to the northwestern corner province of Haiti with food supplies.

You could deliver the food supplies to a port, but to get beyond it was more than could have been undertaken at that time by a voluntary agency.

So you had two choices: either to assist the voluntary agency to complete its mission or to say to the voluntary agency, "This is beyond your scope, we will have to do this vis-a-vis government." In that instance it might have cost a great deal more because of the lack of administrative machinery, and having to set up a whole new administrative establishment.

You may want to extend the line of the delivery system rather than have just the ocean freight to the port. But I do think there is a point of cutoff.

I am perfectly willing to accept this, because my feeling is that the value of the voluntary agency is that it is voluntary basically, and the value of it is also the spirit which motivates it, the philosophy, the enthusiasm, the personality of it, and this is where we get ahead of the Government agency in the main.

We ought to preserve this voluntarism which is characteristic of these agencies. I believe this is what we are talking about here; isn't that right?

Mr. EMPIE. That is correct.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT

Monsignor SWANSTROM. Mr. Chairman, I have heard it said in the State Department, in discussion with various people over there, that the U.S. Government has no responsibility to feed hungry people; that it is the responsibility of the local government.

But the thing that I keep insisting on is that in many of these what you might call pagan governments that have not got the same Christian philosophy that we have, they do not feel that responsibility toward many of their people.

You can go down into the slaughterhouse district in Karachi and the Government officials could walk through there every day of the week, and those boys could die on the street, and they feel no responsibility to them.

The only one who is going to come in there and teach them that they have a responsibility is somebody like a voluntary agency with help from our own Government.

I think if we ever lose sight of that fact, if we can say, "Yes, we have no moral responsibility to people in other lands," I think that