operation and competency from the people in our Vermont social security offices, far above that of most government or nonprofit agencies or private sector firms.

I have also seen indications of careful study and especially of concern for women who are too often ignored. Since women usually get less income at any age we like minorities need special attention to give us any break we can get.

I have only one criticism of social security-the handling of disability insurance, which has already been mentioned. It is now so rigid that I know for sure Vermont people are having trouble. Raising the retirement age would be a disaster at this particular time, and probably as long as the standards are holding.

It is my understanding that you cannot be considered disabled if you are physicially able to do any job that exists anywhere, in I believe only the continental United States, whether said job is available or not, or whether you can get the said job or not.

One of the realities of disability as far as employment is concerned is whether somebody will hire you. That I realize is hard to implement. But believe me, it is important.

This is arthritis country, where people can sometimes do things for a short time, but cannot keep it up all day or even for more than an hour, if then. There should be some leeway for this kind of disability, especially, for example, for the woman who has been a waitress or who has been a clerk in a store, or for the man who has stood on a concrete floor since he was maybe 16 working with machine tools to fine tolerances. If you hurt all over and scream in certain joints, you are not going to be able to work to fine tolerances. That should be recognized and allowed for.

As far as rehabilitation and reeducation are concerned, it is now Federal policy to forget it.

To my way of thinking, social security is the last thing this country should give up as we go into a really new type of economy and sociology. Without it too many people would be plunged into destitution, drastically overburdening any State or local agencies which might help them.

The final report, "Social Security in America's Future," of the National Commission on Social Security Reform, on which we find a familiar name, Mr. Myers, dated March 1981, states that:

"The financial difficulties the system faces arise from economic conditions outside its control. The problems of the economy are deep-seated and serious." Now remember, this was 1981 this was published. "They included a rate of inflation that has doubled the cost of living in 8 years, an inability to reduce unemployment”— they said it then-"and a rate of productivity increase that has averaged on 2.2 percent usually in the last 10 years, well below that of most other industrial nations. Unemployment reduces the flow of taxes into the social security trust funds. Inflation that is not offset by increased wages into the trust fund still further cause benefit payments automatically to increase with rising prices. Impaired productivity aggravates the effect of both inflation and unemployment."

I recommended this book and suggest you read this on page 7. This leads one to believe that mere consideration of social security rules is not enough. You are all right as far as you go, Jim, but

you need to go further. We as a nation must address the deepseated changes now going on.

I suggest your committee propose some sort of framework for getting the various sectors of the economy and society together and share thinking.

In the first place, there is no reason to believe that today's large number of working adults, necessarily competitive, will all be able to save enough for their own old age. They have more competition. In other words, the people who are now around 42 came in at the end of the depression. They were in position to get promotions earlier simply because there were not too many people immediately ahead of them.

But those that came in on the far end, the 30-year-olds now, are appearing to be in excess supply, and the teenagers are definitely in excess. And they are just not going to show up with any better record on savings for their old age than our generation has. And we started out in the depression, and we had all those kids to support and build schools for. So I seriously doubt their record will be any better than ours.

First look at the figures. At the present time, by social security's own figures, over half the social security retirement beneficiaries have no more than 10 percent of their income from other than social security checks. Also, at present the average retirement check is below poverty level as stated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Burlington Social Security Office gave me $379 a month as the average check for a retired worker. That, of course, will go up to $406, or something like that, next month. Poverty level for a one-person, nonfarm household is $390. So the average social security check is well below the poverty level. This is Health and Human Services' poverty level as of April 1982. There are a lot of elderly, especially widows, who get well below the average.

In this State we supplement the supplemental SSI checks from State money. So a single person on SŜI will have his or probably her check go up to $331.50, which is more than they will be getting in a lot of States. But we have more cold weather.

Out of $331.50, how many minimum loads of fuel are you going to be able to buy? Just about one.

Without old age benefits, the number of aged poor would triple to about 10 million, close to half the aged population according to a social security estimate cited by Mollie Orshansky at the Western Gerontolic Society. Middle-age, male policymakers-bless you, you are not to be scolded for this-seem to look at figures for couples, just naturally failing to see that the oldest and poorest are always women, usually women no longer married or never married.

I urge you to look at figures and not interpretations. It is very easy for people to think that all the elderly are like their own parents. After all, where would Richard Schweiker or someone like him ever encounter a bunch of very poor old women? He just does not run with the shopping-bag-lady set or the single-room-occupancy people struggling along with a sneaked hotplate in a single room in a fleabag of an old hotel.

Now, about the economy. All is not totally lost. Just lately I have been noticing the amount one hears about corporations working on

improvement of productivity through communication between workers and lower and middle level management. It seems to be going on rather quietly. But they are finding it very cost effective. We also need to look at places where services to the elderly could cost less. At the White House Conference on Aging, Committee on Maintenance of Wellness, we voted many things that might prevent costly hospitalization. Health Care Finance Agency has a list of the major causes of medicare hospitalization. Quite a few of them, doctors tell me, could be alleviated by early-on expert counseling and therapeutic diets. That applies to the heart people, kidney people, diabetes people, and most certainly the old age with the broken hips, who might very well have kept their bones in better shape if they had been able to and could afford to buy the necessary calcium-containing foods.

We also voted to ask for the elimination of Federal subsidy of toxic things like tobacco-that is the subsidy for tobacco-and monitoring of many toxic materials, including insecticides.

Some costs could be saved if the Government were to pay fair interest rates for trust funds it holds and uses. That has been going on I gather for a long time. I heard about that at a hearing in Boston. Some unemployment might be cut if firms were discouraged from making up products outside the country and shipping them into the United States. We are seeing more and more of the expatriate runaway shop. Labor is very unhappy about it, as you have probably already heard. They don't like it at all.

These are just two small suggestions. There are a lot of ideas out there. There has to be some way of gathering them up.

This country has survived some dramatic changes. We can survive this one. It might be good to note even if not employed, the elderly are making tremendous contributions to their own communities as volunteers or ridiculously underpaid town officers, using the skills of a lifetime for the good of others.

I suggest that the Government stop scaring all the aged widows to death. And it was that $40 billion savings out of social security that has us absolutely white. Let's face it, that was an act of cruelty.

I urge you to use this report right away, since it is already here. And do not trust the introduction of the final report of the White House Conference on Aging, because those are assumed unsubstantiated figures and opinions.

Thank you.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Thank you very much, Faire.

You are certainly an excellent advocate for the senior citizens. There is a bill coming up next week on the House floor, Mr. Pickle's bill, H.R. 6181, which will try to deal with some of the problems of the disability situation.

A number of us on the Aging Committee are trying to see if there might be some amendments to take care of some of the problems referred to.

Frank, please proceed. It is a pleasure to have you here. I am looking foward to your testimony.

So the rest of the panel can be thinking, as soon as Dan is finished I will allow each of you to ask at least one question of Mr. Myers.

STATEMENT OF FRANK LUCCHIN

Mr. LUCCHIN. Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. I want to thank both Congressmen for the opportunity to participate in the panel.

I have wondered since I received the information why I am sitting on this panel. I don't have the expertise that my fellow panelists do in the area. But I do have an interest of long standing.

I guess I was covered by the act from day 1. I am now eligible for social security, although I am still occupied in my own pursuits, so I am not collecting it.

My interest goes back, however, not only to the earliest day of social security and what it meant to us as contributors, later participants, but because 29 years ago I got myself into the life insurance business. I want you to know that the life insurance business is as much at fault, in my opinion, as is the Congress of the United States-not the current Congress necessarily, but all the Congresses since 1936 that have used the act as a political football, to be kind.

Both sides of the House and Senate have played games with this so important act, in my opinion. And through most of those years, I was working in an industry that was in the best position in the United States to help put it on a good footing, and did little or nothing about it except to fight it.

Of all the elements that from day one were against the act, social security, the life insurance business was in the best position to help and also to throw every roadblock in its place. So that we cannot thank my industry, for instance, for what it didn't do.

The actuarial seat of the United States cannot be thanked for anything pertaining to social security. We don't owe anything to them, and no one is in a better position in my mind than, whatever their formal term is, the United States Association of Actuaries, or whatever.

I want to get this behind me, because I have lived for 19 years as something of a curmudgeon, something like the lady to my right who has done her homework, and was well-prepared to make the remarks she did, and like me she has lived obviously through these same years I am talking about.

There have always been enough people in all walks of life throwing doubts and roadblocks in the way. Very few, including the Congress of the United States-I think one administration after another has been faulted with what they have done or not done with social security in their time. I don't know that one was any more detrimental to the system than any other. But every Congress has failed to do anything substantial with it any more than to use a band-aid from time to time when it needed some serious study and serious work in order to assure people, both young and old, that social security was going to be here for all of us.

I have never gotten a satisfactory answer from the Congress as to why they are not included in social security. I think if they were, there would be a better shot at getting something done finally to safeguard. It can't be such a mysterious item that it cannot be corrected, that it cannot be put on sound financial footing.

I don't mean, because I have had this opportunity to speak, to fault the Congressmen present. It is not their fault for what has gone on before, but hopefully, because of their activity even today, we have to assume that they are interested. And most of the Congress has not ever been tremendoulsy interested except to use it one way or another, I am afraid.

Now, with all the rhetoric going on, I became all the more interested in the past year for this reason.

For the past 3 years, since I took early retirement, and I am still representing the industry as a general agent, selling life insurance and securities, so that I am somewhat aware of the problem for Americans to make it in old age, based on income that they may be receiving from social security, plus anything that they have done on their own. Unfortunately, those people among you that are now on social security or close to it don't have the opportunities, have not had the opportunity that younger people have today.

I have been selling a great deal this year, without looking for it, a great deal of IRA programs. In every case where I am involved, it has to be securities. I don't think the life insurance industry deserves to get any of the business because they have not solved any of the problems attendant to it.

Neither have the banks, for my money.

I just wanted to give you my opinion, because I think that anybody that is now working that does not take advantage of what is available in the way of an IRA program to substantially do something about their old age is a damned fool, because never has the Government done anything through tax laws to give the opportunity to young working people to prepare for their old age. And of course it is so far down the track for young people they cannot see it for what it is, unfortunately.

I am deviating a little bit, because I want to get to an important place.

About 3 years ago, I was asked to head up a panel, as a volunteer, to get around to addressing senior citizens in the State of New Hampshire. I have talked to about 37 or 38 senior groups made up of, in numbers, maybe 45 to 130 senior citizens, that came to meetings that they called for and asked our panel to address the question of "medi-gap," so-called, covering what medicare does do for you, what medicare does not, the differences being the medi-gap that they could fill, with one form or another of the many types of supplements to medicare that are made available by private insurance companies.

In doing this, up until about a year ago the questions addressed to our panel after each session were right to the point. They had a lot of questions about medicare, the problems that they see in it, and what we might suggest to supplement what they have, what they have to avoid, what they have to look for.

But a year ago something else started to happen. We would get to a senior citizens group, and it didn't matter whether it was a group of people that the only thing they had in common was the fact that they lived in a luxury apartment, to people in a very poor situation, especially in the north country, and they had different problems. But all of them addressed themselves to the question of health.