WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1965 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AID EXPENDITURES, Washington, D.O. The subcommittee met at 10:05 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 3302, New Senate Office Building, Senator Ernest Gruening (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Senator Gruening. Also present: Mary S. Glotfelty, clerk, Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures; and Laura Olson, special consultant on population problems. Senator GRUENING. The meeting will please come to order. At this time I direct that the photograph taken today of our distinguished witnesses be made part of the hearing record. As their biographic sketches will indicate, these men have superior qualifications for making contributions to this population dialog. We welcome them, and look forward to hearing of their experiences and analyses of this situation. Witnesses who testified on S. 1676 before the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures, September 15, 1965: Mr. Wallace Kuralt, Mr. Harold O. Swank, and Representative John Brademas. Mr. George Wyman was not present when the picture was taken. (Left to right: Senator Ernest Gruening, chairman, Mr. Kuralt, Mr. Swank, and Representative Brademas.) The Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures is about to start. its 14th hearing on the population explosion. We have learned a great deal from these hearings, and we expect to learn much more as we make our way along the population dialog path. Today we look forward to hearing Representative John Brademas of Indiana present his personal, firsthand report on the first PanAmerican Assembly on Population. Many thoughtful and thoughtprovoking recommendations came out of that conference. This is to be expected because thoughtful men and women around the world are becoming increasingly aware of the population explosion. I will not detract from Representative Brademas' report further except to note that the President of the Pan-American Assembly was former President Alberto Lleras Camargo of Colombia, who testified before this subcommittee on July 9, 1965. Representative Brademas is fluent in both English and Spanish so his report today will have increased perspective. When the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures opened these hearings on June 22, 1965, it was my privilege, as chairman, to make the opening statement. I recalled, for the record, a letter which Thomas Jefferson had written to his friend James Madison 178 years earlier in which Jefferson had penned his belief that giving information to the people "is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government." And so it is. And that is why we are here and why the Senate Government Operations Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures is holding extended hearings on my bill, S. 1676, which proposes to coordinate birth control information and to make it available upon request in this country and overseas. NEW IDEAS, NEW SOLUTIONS SOUGHT Four times this year President Johnson has spoken publicly about the population dilemma. In his state of the Union address before Congress, January 4, 1965, he said: I will seek new ways to use our knowledge to help deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity in world resources. Again, on June 25, 1965, in his address at the 20th Anniversary of the United Nations in San Francisco, he said: Let us in all our lands-including this land-face forthrightly the multiplying problems of our multiplying populations and seek the answers to this most profound challenge to the future of all the world. Let us act on the fact that less than $5 invested in population control is worth $100 invested in economic growth. At the time of the swearing-in ceremony of John W. Gardner as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Rose Garden at the White House on August 18, 1965, the President said: This administration is seeking new ideas and it is certainly not going to discourage any new solutions to the problems of population growth and distribution. And most recently on August 30 in a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations at the second United Nations World Population Conference in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, he said: The U.S. Government recognizes the singular importance of the meeting of the second United Nations World Population Conference and pledges its full support to your great undertaking. As I said to the United Nations in San Francisco, we must now begin to face forthrightly the multiplying problems of our multiplying population. Our Government assures your conference of our wholehearted support to the United Nations and its agencies in their efforts to achieve a better world through bringing into balance the world's resources and the world's population. In extending my best wishes for the success of your conference, it is my fervent hope that your great assemblage of population experts will contribute significantly to the knowledge necessary to solve this transcendent problem. Second only to the search for peace, it is humanity's greatest challenge. This week, the meeting in Belgrade carries with it the hopes of mankind. MAN'S RIGHT TO KNOWLEDGE I raised many questions in my June 22 opening statement. I suggested that during the course of these hearings the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures would attempt to find the answers. We are continuing our search because our purpose is knowledge and the dissemination, upon request, of that knowledge. What are the fundamental rights of man? Should not every man have a heritage which includes the development of knowledge and the right to develop it? Who has the responsibility to insure such fundamental rights? Private sources, public sources? Both? What are the social, economic, and administrative problems? Have we already mortgaged the future of our children? What is the role of government? Do we allow, unwittingly, the Government through its welfare regulations, for example, to implement a pronatalist role? Is not the health of the mother and the children important? Is not the health factor a part of responsible family planning? With us today are nationally known experts in social welfare who will help us answer some of these questions. They come to us from the East, the Midwest, and the South. One man has served as a director of welfare for a great Western State so I think we may say, for the record, that they are prepared to be national in their response. Many weeks ago, on June 29, one member of this subcommittee, our amiable, industrious colleague from Montana, Senator Metcalf, expressed his concern as to the allegations by some that present welfare programs in the United States contribute to the population explosion and that the poor are having children in order to increase their aid to dependent children benefits. I, too, have heard such allegations. No one I know wants to subsidize poverty, nor, on the other hand, do we wish to penalize children because of the actions of their parents. QUESTIONS FOR SOCIAL WELFARE EXPERTS The subcommittee would like to know the State welfare stories: 1. Is family planning information sought? 2. Is family planning information made available? 3. Can the requests for family planning information be met? 4. What safeguards exist to prevent any possibility of coercion? 5. Ought these safeguards to be improved or do they work properly now, when properly used? To answer questions such as these the subcommittee has invited the commissioner of the New York State Department of Social Welfare, Mr. George Wyman; the director of the Illinois Public Aid Commission, Mr. Harold O. Swank; and the director of the Mecklenburg County, N.C., Department of Public Welfare, Mr. Wallace Kuralt, to contribute to the population dialog this morning. RECIPIENTS OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE RETAIN INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM The subcommittee hopes that if there are areas to be improved, the improvements can be effected as soon as possible. The subcommittee would like the discussion today to include a definition of "money payments" to persons receiving public assistance and an explanation as to how such payments are made by the Social Security Administration recognizing that "a recipient of assistance does not, because he is in need, lose his capacity to select how, when, and whether each of his needs is to be met." It is my understanding that this provision of the handbook is not based on an administration determination, but is a requirement of the Social Security Act as originally passed 30 years ago. There will be included in the transcript of these hearings a copy of the opinion of the General Counsel of the Federal Security Agencythe predecessor agency to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare-setting forth an explanation of the term "unrestricted money payments" and the actual language from the handbook which appears in part IV as "section 5120-Interpretation." (The material follows:) EXHIBIT 196 "LEGAL INTERPRETATION OF THE TERM 'MONEY PAYMENTS' AS USED IN THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT" (Memorandum From A. Delafield Smith, Assistant General Counsel, Federal Security Agency, to Jane M. Hoey, Director, Bureau of Public Assistance, Social Security Board, Sept. 2, 1943.) [Prepared by Office of the General Counsel-Reprint of appendix to Bureau Circular No. 17 of the Bureau of Public Assistance: "Money Payments to Recipients of Old-Age Assistance, Aid to Dependent Children, and Aid to the Blind," Federal Security Agency, Social Security Board, Washington, D.C., June 1944] APPENDIX Titles I, IV, and X of the act contain specific, limiting definitions of the type of categorical public assistance contemplated thereunder. Thus old-age assistance, under title I, is defined as follows: "When used in this title the term 'old-age assistance' means money payments to needy aged individuals." Title X contains a definition in substantially similar terms: "When used in this title the term ‘aid to the blind' means money payments to blind individuals who 1 Social Security Act, sec. 6. are needy."" Title IV defines aid to dependent children as follows: "The term 'aid to dependent children' means money payments with respect to a dependent child or dependent children."* Each one of these definitions contains the phrase "money payments." Under titles I and X, such payments are to be made to a particular individual; under title IV they are to be made "with respect to" a particular individual. However, the addition of the words "with respect to" does not in any way alter the fundamental meaning which must be accorded the term "money payments” as used in each of these definitions. The Social Security Board has defined the term "money payments," as used in the Social Security Act, to mean only those payments which are made "in cash, checks, or warrants immediately redeemable at par *** with no restriction in the use of the funds by the individual." This definition is founded upon a legal interpretation of the Social Security Act considered, in the light of judicial precedents, from two interrelated aspects. In the first place, the very objectives which the act seeks to accomplish, the methods provided for the achievement of the desired goals, and the specific language used to describe both the ends and the means, all provide a sound legal basis for the Board's conclusion. In the second place, judicial determinations interpreting the term "money payments," or words of similar import, indicate clearly that an obligation calling for the payment of a certain sum of money must be interpreted as requiring the unconditional and unrestricted transfer of that money to the person to whom such payment is due. The individual words comprising the phrase "money payments" have clear and well-settled meanings in the law. The word "money" has been defined as a "general, indefinite term for the measure and representative of value.” As a generic term, it is used to include every description of coin or bank notes recognized by common consent as a representative of value in effecting exchanges of property or payment of debts." "In its strict, technical sense, 'money' means coined metal, usually gold or silver, upon which the governmental stamp has been impressed to indicate its value. In its more popular sense, 'money' means any currency, tokens, bank-notes, or other circulating medium in general use as the representative of value." In the case of W. J. Howey Co. v. Cole the court stated: "Money" is defined to mean anything that does not circulate at a discount or represent less than the standard value of coin, dollars and cents, at par." 10 In its broadest sense, "payment" means the fulfillment of a promise or the performance of an agreement. It has also been defined in a more limited sense by the courts as the fulfillment of a promise or the performance of an obligation by the transfer of money." If the essence of this latter, limited definition is to be clearly understood, the term "payment" must be distinguished both from a transfer of goods or services from the transferor to the transferee in accordance with the precise terms of the original obligation and also from a compromise 2 Ibid., sec. 1006. Ibid., sec. 406(b). 12 Social Security Board, Guide to Public Assistance Administration, Bureau Circular No. 9, sec. 211, Aug. 11, 1941. 5 Black's Law Dictionary (3d ed.), p. 1200. Hopson v. Fountain, 24 Tenn. (5 Humph.) 140 (1844). Black's Law Dictionary, p. 1200; McGovern v. U.S., 272 F. 262, 263 (C.C.A. 7th, 1921), 280 F. 73 (C.C.A. 7th, 1922), cent. den. 295 U.S. 580 (1922); Bennett v. Bank of Commerce, 220 F. 950, 953 (D.C. Miss. 1914); U.S. v. Williams, 282 F. 324, 325 (D.C. Wash. 1922); Cook v. State, 130 Ark. 90, 196 S.W. 922, 924 (1917); Kent v. State, 143 Ark. 439, 220 S.W. 814, 816 (1920). $ 219 Mo. App. 34, 269 S.W. 955 (1925). Black's Law Dictionary, p. 1340. 19 Roach v. McDonald, 187 Ala. 64, 65 So. 823 (1914). "Ordinarily, the execution and delivery of negotiable paper will not constitute "payment" unless accepted by the parties as such. it is well settled that, in the absence of special agreement to that effect, acceptance of a check does not operate as payment of a debt, unless the check itself is paid." Cleve v. Craven Chemical Co., 18 F. (2d) 711, 712 (C.C.A. 4th, 1927). Reid v. Topper, 32 Ariz. 381, 259 P. 397, 399 (1927); People v. Davis, 237 Mich. 165, 211 N.W. 36, 37 (1926); Morrison v. Chapman, 155 App. Div. 509, 140 N.Y.S. 700, 702 (1913); Seaman v. Muir, 72 Or. 583, 144 P. 121, 123 (1914); 48 C.J. 595 et seq. 12 A "compromise" has been defined as "an arrangement arrived at, either in court or out of court, for settling a dispute upon what appears to the parties to be equitable terms, having regard to the uncertainty they are in regarding the facts, or the law and the facts together. Black's Law Dictionary, p. 382. Bouvier's Law Dictionary (3d rev.), p. 574. |