Statement Urging Senate Action on the Family Assistance Bill.

THE MOST important piece of domestic legislation proposed by this administration is the family assistance act. It has properly been described as the most important piece of domestic legislation of the past 35 years, one of the dozen or half dozen such bills in the Nation's history,.

I have emphasized the need for this welfare reform on repeated occasions since this proposal was made 1 year ago--in a speech to the National Governors' Conference, in a speech before the White House conference on hunger, nutrition, and health, in the State of the Union Message, and in my remarks in St. Louis at the 50th annual convention of the Jaycees. Most recently, I have spoken about it privately to several members of the Senate Finance Committee.

I am gravely troubled by the fact that the remaining days of the 91 st Congress are fast running out and congressional action has not been completed on welfare reform. The present legislation is too far advanced, the need for reform is too great, for this to be permitted to happen.

The House of Representatives passed the family assistance act on April 16, but the bill has been delayed by the Senate Finance Committee ever since. We have made numerous proposals for modification in the plan to meet the objections of Committee members. But ultimately the Senate as a whole must be given the chance to work its will on this issue and this bill. I urge this great and conscientious Committee of the Congress to get down to the hard business of marking up a bill as expeditiously as possible.

The House of Representatives, in its detailed and meticulous examination of the administration proposal, made a number of changes which were clearly improvements, and which have been wholeheartedly accepted by the administration. The Nation is much in the debt of Congressmen Wilbur D. Mills and John W. Byrnes who led this inquiry, and who are the authors of the legislation which passed the House overwhelmingly in April.

There is every reason to think a similar process will take place in the Senate, and every reason to welcome this prospect. Thus it has been proposed that nationwide operation of the family assistance program be preceded by a period during which the program would be field-tested. This testing period would begin January 1, 1971, in a number of areas chosen by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Thereafter the program would go into effect on a nationwide scale on January 1, 1972•

With time running out, and an historical social reform at stake, I have consulted with several cosponsors of the bill including Senators Hugh Scott, Robert P. Griffin, and Wallace F. Bennett, and we have agreed that, if the Senate accepts this modifying amendment, it will be acceptable to the administration.

The Nation needs this legislation. The House of Representatives has acted. The Senate now must act. I have every confidence that it will.