else. I don't know how we can draft workable legislation that would pool all services together, but we sure ought to give such an approach very careful consideration.

Incidentally, at one point in time, Mr. Chairman, we had at least three programs for home insulation. They all had different guidelines for who qualified-and all three were run by different agencies. That is a mess for anybody trying to explain to people

Senator EAGLETON. It sure is. Thank you, Senator, very much.

Our final witnesses are Mr. Donald Reilly, Deputy Commissioner on Aging; Mr. Steve Dietz, Mr. Ray Steinberg, and Mr. Howard White.

Good morning, gentlemen. Mr. Reilly? Could you give us a highlight summary of your 16-page statement?

STATEMENT OF DONALD F. REILLY, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER ON AGING, ACCOMPANED BY STEVE DIETZ, WESTAT STUDY; RAYMOND M. STEINBERG, STEINBERG STUDY; AND HOWARD WHITE, CHIEF OF EVALUATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

Mr. REILLY. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would be glad to. I will submit my full statement for inclusion in the record at the end of my testimony.

Senator EAGLETON. And not that we want to put anything in concrete, but if you care to comment on some of the observations that have been made here this morning by the witnesses or myself or Senator Kennedy, we would appreciate having that, too.

Mr. REILLY. Well, it's obvious right at the outset that there is going to be no shortage of interesting ideas relative to amending the Older Americans Act, and the Administration on Aging expects, when the Commissioner-designate gets officially in office, that the administration bill will be put together in final form, and we think we may have some rather exciting suggestions, too.

A couple of comments perhaps. One, the discussion about home repair here, in terms of congressional priorities, putting it lowest is not really, I think, the correct context to look at it in. In effect, that ranking of home repair on the list of services which get Older Americans Act money is the result of the addition of decisions made by all of the area agencies across the country, prodded by the four congressionally established priorities.

Senator EAGLETON. But when Congress got around to appropriating money-we appropriated 172 million for title 3; then when they got around to handling the money out there, they sort of some of those out there sort of put home repair lower down on their list. Mr. REILLY. That's correct.

Senator EAGLETON. Rhode Island had it No. 1 on its list.

Mr. REILLY. Right. Well, I would make two points in relation to that, that I think bears considerably on the two studies that we are here to talk about today. One is that these decisions that are made at the local level by the area agencies are based on inputs from the older people in the community; they are also based on the judgments made by those area agencies in terms of what other

organizations, which have funds to invest, are putting funds into particular areas, so there is in effect sort of a cross-rift between what the complex of agencies that are funding into various service areas are doing, and then the area agency-the ones that are functioning well-attempting to get them to do more, which is what the studies focus on, relative to success in that in the first 2 years.

And then investing their own funds where there are gaps left by other agencies.

Senator EAGLETON. Let me see if we can do this, Mr. Reilly-and you have been very patient, I think you have been here all morn

ing

Mr. REILLY. It's been instructive.

Senator EAGLETON. Well, we hope you have enjoyed it. Why don't we do this because your statement is certainly worthy of more careful analysis than we would be able to give it right away. Let me pursue with you some of these sort of general philosophical ideas, and let's conclude today's hearing, for the moment-but set another day for you and your associates to come, so that we can go through these things in greater specificity, because your recommendations are too valuable and too important to us than to just sort of gloss over them. And I know you put a lot of work into prepar ing this and you don't just want it filed somewhere never for me to hear it or to see the words. I think that would be treating you too summarily.

But why don't we philosophize for a few minutes on some of these we have Dr. Binstock here--just general observations, and then we will set up a full morning for you so we can go into this in some depth. I think that's fairer to you and will be more educational and informative for me.

Mr. REILLY. That's fine, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to put one thing out front on the record, and that is that since we are still working on the administration bill and sorting out options within the administration, there may be some things I may not feel at liberty to comment on. If so, I will say so.

Senator EAGLETON. Yes, that's understandable. Without picking a specific hour and a specific day, give me a rough estimate as to when we can expect the administration's bill? Are we talking 4. 5, 6 weeks or what?

Mr. REILLY. The third or fourth week in February.

Senator EAGLETON. Well, that would be fine. If it takes you another week-not that we want you to delay it, that would be sc ceptable. We don't want a hasty concoction; you don't want to submit such to us. So that is fully understandable.

Well, let me propound to you this nagging lingering doubt that I have expressed repeatedly today-and you have heard it-spreading too little money doing too little rather than having more money better targeted and trying to do more of an in-depth job on an im portant area, or two important areas. And I think Dr. Binstock even went so far as to say we should earmark 80 percent-let Albu querque target 80 percent, or make it 70 percent-I don't know.

Just ruminate with us-we won't make this binding on the administration.

Mr. REILLY. Well, I come at this maybe through a somewhat different lens-and I would put it back to you this way, that there

is tremendous diversity in this country, as you are well aware— State to State, area to area, and within the areas. And there is tremendous diversity in the need of older persons.

And I am a bit concerned that, first blush, though we will want to look further at it-at the single-priority or two-priority approach. The reason for that is that-it bears on the question that you asked Dr. Binstock, which was something along the lines of what about the people who may not be heard in this, or what about the people with very severe needs that may not fit into the single category or the two categories that get selected.

And that is a very considerable concern to me.

The principle on which the current title 3 of the Older Americans Act is based is really this one of local analysis of needs-the whole range of needs; local analysis of services available; and a combination of working with the other agencies to try and bring them together and get them to commit more for the elderly, and spotshot the money that the area agency has under the Older Americans Act to fill the priority gaps.

I submit that the one- or two-priority way to go has a certain attractiveness to it, and it is a lot easier to get your hands on what is happening as a result of the program.

But if you believe, as I do, that it is possible to get most of the area agencies doing a serious job of priority setting, then I think it may be premature to go that way. And I am struck by the fact that individual older persons have problems that relate to them as individuals. You can aggregate problems to a considerable degreebut most problems aren't dealt with by a single service; in effect, most problems have to be dealt with, ideally, by a package of services. If you focus on a single service, you are meeting part of the need of many people-perhaps a greater volume of people-but you are not meeting the package of needs of people that I would be particularly concerned about, the severely impaired elderly, for example.

So that's an initial reaction.

Senator EAGLETON. Well, that's a worthy observation. [The prepared statement of Mr. Reilly follows:]

31-813 079-24

on such issues as tax relief, special housing, medical

and mental-health services, and public transportation,

to county and city government, Councils of Governments and
Economic Development Districts.

The planning role, plus the managerial and program development role with regard to service delivery development with AoA funds could take up all of the time of Area Agencies. The advocacy role is challenging because of the wide range of specialized issues to be dealt with. Persuading other agencies to change policies, change their funding patterns, and to give up some degree of autonomy in order to improve the coordination of services delivery to older persons is perhaps the most difficult role of all, for the Area Agency, which has a limited number of tools available. Since amounts of money larger than those

provided under the Older Americans Act flow through other systems

which could benefit older persons more than they do, this latter role

is of critical importance.

The information I will be sharing with you for the remainder of this

testimony was obtained primarily from two major studies.