rounding States, urging this committee to take over the Schick General Hospital at Clinton, Iowa, for veterans.

This committee passed that legislation and also the Medford, Oreg., legislation.

But, getting back to the hearing in the Senate, I was setting in the audience, when Dr. Hawley and Dr. Magnusson, both of whom were in the Veterans' Administration, were opposing quite strenuously a hospital for southern Oregon. The statement was made that nobody could find out why a hospital had been recommended for that area and I got up and suggested to the chairman that I might perhaps answer the question, because it had come up when I was still with the Veterans' Administration.

I pointed out that there was not a hospital, a Federal hospital, between San Francisco, Calif., and Portland, Oreg. I did not know the exact distance between those points and I make the guess that is was something like 700 miles and the Senator supplied the information that it was 57 miles further. So that we had a situation there where veterans living in that area were, many of them, over 300 miles away from the nearest hospital.

That is the reason I recommended while I was still in the Veterans' Administration, no specific point, but a hospital for northern California or southern Oregon. Later this Medford, Oreg., hospital became available and met the requirements. But they tried to place these hospitals where the families of the veterans could not get to the veterans who were in the hospitals and where the families would have been put to the expense of going over 2 or 3 State lines in order to make a visit to their boys.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions?

Mr. HAGEN. I would like to ask one of you gentlemen your reaction to the action of the Appropriations Committee in slashing the request for supplemental appropriations for the Veterans' Administration. They recommended $15 million, as these other organizations did. I notice that that supplemental request was cut by about $9 million.

I believe that will come up for action on the floor this week and they have only $5 million earmarked for services for hospitals. I am wondering what that is going to do with the hospitalization program for the balance of the year.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it will hurt very much. I was talking with some people yesterday and they advised that instead of having an attempt to restore some of these items on the floor of the House it would be better to wait until the bill got over to the Senate.

Mr. COTHRAN. We think $15 million is the absolute minimum that they need for the hospitals alone.

Mr. KETCHUM. May I explain that the supplemental appropriation which was submitted by the Veterans' Administration does not cover the request that we are making. As a matter of fact, they have very little in the total supplemental deficiency appropriation that they requested to do the job that we are talking about. Actually they only put about $5 million in there and that is mostly to open up new . hospital beds not to open up the beds that were closed and to get back again the services that were lost as a result of inadequate appropriations last year.

We suggest $15 million immediate supplemental appropriations for the medical program to restore the lost beds and the services lost as

a result of inadequate appropriations. We believe that is the very minimum for operation for the balance of the current fiscal year and if that appropriation is not granted within a reasonably short space of time, it is not going to do any good to get it, because you are going to run into the next fiscal operation of the Veterans' Administration. That is why we are making that specific request.

We realize that your committee does not recommend deficiency appropriations. But I am afraid, if the Appropriations Committee should take the bull by the horns, so to speak, some group in the Congress has got to bring this matter to the attention of the leadership and insist on getting this extra $15 million for the hospital program.

Mr. HAGEN. This outpatient program has sort of folded, has it not? Mr. KETCHUM. It is practically at a standstill because of a lack of funds.

Mr. HAGEN. Would that be difficult to restore if you had this supplemental money?

Mr. KETCHUM. No. We can get busy on that right away, particularly dental treatment. That is one of the biggest lacks in the whole program at the present time.

Mr. EDMONDSON. Mr. Hagen, do you not agree with me-I think the commander will also agree-that if a priority is to be given on appropriations either for the purpose of completing new construction or of restoring services that have been shut down-that that priority should be placed on putting back into operation these closeddown wards?

Mr. KETCHUM. That is right.

Mr. EDMONDSON. That is, before new construction?

Mr. KETCHUM. That is right.

Mr. TEAGUE. Last year a number of the members of this committee very carefully questioned the Appropriations Committee as to what these cuts were going to do. We were assured that it would not hurt the medical program. We found out later that about $31 million was cut off the medical program.

I think the Appropriations Committee ought to come up with exact statements of where this money was used, if it was not used in the medical program, or they ought to put the money back in. So far as I am personally concerned, I expect to try to do something to put the money back in unless the Appropriations Committee can show us where the Veterans' Administration used this money that was supposed to have gone into the medical program. Admiral Boone is coming up tomorrow and we ought to be able to find out.

Mr. KETCHUM. I agree with you, sir, that tomorrow morning this committee ought to find out from the Veterans' Administration whether there were adequate funds appropriated for the medical program and, if so, why have we had this loss of beds and services.

Frankly-and I do not think this is any secret-when the Veterans' Administration submitted this supplemental appropriation that you are talking about, the reason they did not put in that $15 million is because they were ordered by the budget not to put it in.

Mr. TEAGUE. Either this committee was misinformed last year, or the Veterans' Administration used this money somewhere else and, if so, we ought to find out where it was used.

Mr. KETCHUM. Either they fumbled the ball or the committee did. not give them enough money.

Mr. TEAGUE. It is one or the other.

Mr. KETCHUM. That is right.

Mr. TEAGUE. Have any of your people made any attempt to investigate this?

Mr. KETCHUM. The Rehabilitation Service I think has gone into it. That is not in my sphere.

Mr. TEAGUE. I do not want to put you on the spot, but would you mind telling this committee, Which do you think is the right thing to do?

Mr. IJAMS. It is my honest opinion that the Appropriations Committee failed to appropriate a sufficient amount of money to allow the Veterans' Administration to give all the services particularly to the service-connected cases that they were entitled to receive. The outpatient-care program had to be abandoned to some extent. As to the matter of dental treatment, I have received more complaints about the failure of the Veterans' Administration to provide dental care for veterans who have just come back from Korea, than any other one item and inpatient care has been curtailed because of the closing of wards which Admiral Boone said was made necessary by the failure of Congress to appropriate a sufficient amount of money.

The terrible thing about it is that we all say that service-connected cases must be given first priority on everything, but when this action was taken by the Congress in cutting back the appropriation, the damage fell on the service-connected cases.

Mr. KETCHUM. Undoubtedly, there could have been, Mr. Teague, some maladministration, let us say, in the Veterans' Administration. We are not saying that they have no responsibility whatever for this. There might have been a lack of good management on their part. But the cold fact remains that due to inadequate appropriations, this situation has come about, or it has been created because of maladministration in the VA. But, in our opinion, it has got to be corrected. I think it is tragic. That is why we recommend that for the balance of this fiscal year a supplemental deficiency appropriation of $15 million be made directly for the medical program to restore the lost beds and the lost services, and the outpatient treatment.

Mr. HAGEN. May I ask Mr. Teague a question? This could be amended on the floor of the House, when it considers the supplemental appropriation bill?

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes.

Mr. KETCHUM. That is right. That may be our only chance. Mr. HAGEN. Do you have any statistics by States on this problem? Mr. KETCHUM. We do not have them here at the moment. I do not know whether we could get them quickly or not.

Mr. IJAMS. We have some field directors' reports; reports of field directors who are here, which I will be glad to make available. But I have not had an opportunity in the last few days to analyze anything. Mr. TEAGUE. I believe that the question of hospitalization should be reconsidered by the Congress. It does not seem right to me to try to govern that merely by appropriations; that is, to curtail the number of beds available by appropriation. I do not know whether that is the right way to get at it. Perhaps we ought to spell out very carefully how a veteran may get into a hospital. Perhaps that ought to

be done by Congress; I do not know. But I do not think it is the right thing to do merely to cut the appropriation so that they cannot staff the beds that are available. The Congress ought to say how they are going to be used and whether they are going to be used, and by whom. It seems to me it should not be a matter merely of appropriating a certain amount of money for a certain amount of beds.

Mr. KETCHUM. In other words, not to use a left-handed method of trying to drive out the non-service-connected cases, by making inadequate appropriations.

Mr. TEAGUE. That is exactly right.

Mr. KETCHUM. If they want to cut them out, they ought to do so frankly and in a forthright way.

Mr. TEAGUE. That is correct.

Mr. IJAMS. I would like to make one observation, if I may. If, for any reason, Congress determines upon a policy that non-service-connected cases, no matter how serious, cannot get into a Veterans' Administration hospital, then I think you had better alert every governor of every State in the Union to start building.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; the situation is very serious now in Michigan and in other States. I would like to say this to those of you who are present. I do not know how many of you know it, but there are 50 members of the Appropriations Committee. Out of a total of 435 Members of the House, 50 Members are on the Appropriations Committee. Our great danger is that we legislate through the Appropriations Committee. They are legislating instead of merely appropriating. They have a very large staff of investigators who go out and make investigations and then come back and report on what they find, and what they think ought to be done. But I maintain that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs is the committee that was created to take care of the veterans and that they ought to do the investigating and make the reports to Congress as to what the needs are. Other committees, too, have expressed themselves as being jealous of their jurisdiction and of the tendency of the Appropriations Committee to legislate in their field.

Mr. KETCHUM. That is why we stressed this problem of cost, because I believe that is what this committee will be confronted with no matter what you do. No matter how sympathetic you may be, and no matter how many of the facts you have before your committee, the question is going to come up continually about what these things are going to cost. Whatever you bring before the House leadership, in the way of legislation, they are going to ask how much it is going to cost and then they are going to say that "We can only afford to spend so much money."

That is what we are up against. I believe that what you are saying is fundamentally true that the Appropriations Committee to a large extent, because of the element of cost that is involved, is legislating for the other committees.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; and now that the wars are over, and the Korean war is on, some people seem to want to forget and seem not to want to pay for the care of veterans. At least, some people do. I was at a reception for Mrs. Eisenhower yesterday afternoon at the Congressional Club and a great many people talked to me about taking care of the Korean veterans. I believe that the public is interested, but they are not sufficiently alerted to the problem.

Mr. IJAMS. It has been my experience that the families in this country who have boys are becoming quite exercised, for this reason. One boy comes back from Korea with a disability and there is no place for him to go and they have another boy who is about to be drafted. How do you think that family feels about that second boy going?

Mr. TEAGUE. Colonel, do you really believe that statement?

Mr. IJAMS. Yes; I do.

Mr. TEAGUE. Do you mean that a service-connected case cannot get into a hospital?

Mr. IJAMS. We have many service-connected cases that are not in the hospitals. I had two psychiatric cases within the last month, one of them out at Rockville, Md., a 40-percent service-connected case for an NP disability. He blew up mentally and attacked his wife. We immediately called the police, which was the only protection that she could get and they took him down to the police station where they could hold him only 24 hours.

They contacted our office in Washington, the regional office. I attempted to get a bed for this service-connected case and they said, "We are awfully sorry, but we cannot put that man in a hospital right now." That man was turned over to a Maryland State institution, a very inferior place. I am sorry to say that, as a Marylander, but the same thing is true in nearly every State of the Union. They kept that boy for 21 days before we could get him into Perry Point.

We had another case over here in Arlington. That man was 70 percent NP service-connected. He attacked his family. They called the police and the police kept him in the lock-up for 12 days-a serviceconnected case-before we could get him to the hospital.

When Senator Pepper was holding hearings on that cutback away back in 1948-he was the chairman of the subcommittee-he wired to Florida and he testified himself that there were 36 Florida veterans in police stations and jails, put there for the protection of themselves and the public, who were service-connected but whom they could not get into a veterans hospital.

Mr. TEAGUE. What about cases other than psychiatric and TB cases? Do you have any trouble with those?

Mr. IJAMS. We have had trouble, and I wish you could see some of the pitiful cases that we get, if you could see these youngsters who come into my office-last Christmas a year ago I had two cases, which I would like to mention briefly. The department commander of one of our departments phoned me from Maryland and told me that this boy had been a guard in a penal institution in Maryland. They gave him a periodic chest examination and discovered that he had advanced pulmonary tuberculosis. This boy was not serviceconnected at that time but we have since established service connection. I wanted to get the boy into the hospital. I called the boy on the phone he was at home; he had been discharged from his position because he was endangering the lives of the inmates of this institution. I called him on the phone and asked him what he had done. He said he had been to the Washington regional office and they were very sympathetic, but they said that they could not find a bed anywhere especially for a non-service-connected case.

He said that he had then gotten his wife to drive him up to Martinsburg, W. Va., because he knew that there was a big hospital up there