November 30, 1979
Page 34307
WHO HAS THE GREATEST NEED FOR FUEL ASSISTANCE?
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the debate over the proper level of fuel assistance for low-income families across the country was an arduous one. It is safe to say almost no Senator is completely satisfied with the program we have fashioned. Regional difference in climate, income levels, and local energy made conflict unavoidable and will color our discussions about Federal energy policy for the foreseeable future.
In the case of low-income fuel assistance, there are other questions which the Federal Legislature has not been able to — and probably cannot — answer.
Chief among them is this one: Will the assistance the Federal Treasury can afford to provide go to the people most in need? That question occupied the Maine Legislature at a recent special session. What emerged was a standby plan to go into effect if the Federal Government did not act.
What also emerged was a fundamental difference of opinion about where the need for fuel assistance is greatest.
Mary Adams of Garland, Maine, offered one answer in an eloquent analysis of how our energy ills have affected the poorest of her neighbors in Maine. Ms. Adams' conclusions may surprise some of my colleagues. I remain convinced that a compassionate Federal response is proper and absolutely necessary. I am also convinced that the key to making a fuel assistance program work lies in making certain the program is administered not just correctly, but also wisely.
To share Ms. Adams' column with my colleagues, I ask that it be printed in the RECORD.
The article follows:
THE OVERTAXED MIDDLE CLASS AND THE SPECIAL SESSION
(By Mary Adams)
Ma Bell's latest advertising message to the American public is "Reach out, reach out and touch someone."
This is a phrase which the Maine Legislature ought to heed when it deals in special session with underwriting fuel allowances for the poor and deciding which level of government should administer the program.
The first thing the Legislature should define is, who is poor? In my opinion, the "poor" is fast becoming the middle class, a besieged group which is finding itself in the bewildering situation of being forced to "save" everybody but itself.
I took a day recently to go visiting friends around town choosing people who I knew would be considered "poor" by every bureaucratic standard.
What I found in my personal survey is that fuel prices went beyond the purses of the poor years ago; it's the middle class which is now having trouble with high fuel bills, on top of loss of buying power caused by inflation and taxes.
I hope the Legislature refuses to get carried away with a giveaway program that will further crush the middle income group which will have to pay for whatever is done and which, in many ways, is not as well off as the people it is supporting.
Whatever the Legislature appropriates for this program, it should be administered at the local level. Town officers know generally who's needy and who isn't. General Assistance run by the towns is the place to funnel money if it's appropriated so that there won't be a raid on the treasury. In fact, our town can probably take care of any fuel aid within the $1,700 for welfare raised at town meeting.
If the Governor and Legislature would add up the dollar value of services given the poor and then consider that inflation is draining the middle income group and business in this state to the breaking point, they would find that the special session should deal with capping government spending instead of extending it.
The group that is paying for the transfer payments to others has to pay its own way. No cut-rate mortgage loans or subsidized housing for them, no free meals or free rides, The middle class (often with both husband and wife working) pays its own medical insurance and health care services, gets little or no help in educating its young beyond high school, pays its own food bills, insulates its homes without aid, buys its own eye glasses and pays for its own dental care.
This group gets no help with property tax relief and will continue to pay (even after this session) its own fuel bills, completely support its children (including paying for school breakfasts and lunches) and watch with dismay when a stupid Legislature decides next spring (that's what I predict) that it needs to increase taxes to pay for what it does this fall because of declining general revenues. Or it may decide to raise the corporate income tax, because it's politically easier, in spite of the fact that rising energy costs and the beckoning of the South give them every reason to court business rather than beat it to death. Unless they want everyone to work for CETA.
Just as most legislators were out of touch in the case of the state property tax repeal, they are out of touch now. The needy can be provided for within existing funds and mechanisms with no need for a special session to spend more money.
The overburdened and desperate taxpayers of this state should reach out and get a hold of their legislators before Oct. 4 or they'll get nailed again.
The legislators are going to spend more tax dollars. Are we going to let them get away with it?
In my town, typical of rural Maine, we have a high percentage of people who don't have a lot of cash income, but who, thanks to 100 percent valuation of property, sit on inherited land which presumes wealth. It's the resulting high property taxes which give them the most trouble, a trouble which has been created in part by legislatures similar to our current one who presumed to know what's best for people.
After visiting half a dozen households, I realized that the wise "poor" have already seen what's ahead and made appropriate arrangements.
For example, one couple on a high hill bought and installed two windmills three years ago for a combined cost of around $1,000. The energy is stored in their abandoned chicken house in some old telephone batteries.
The initial investment has already paid off and the retired school janitor who did this installation of his inhouse electrical plant told me, nodding toward the windmills, "They don't owe me nothin." (Multiply your monthly electric bill times 36 months and you'll see what he means.)
None of the people I talked with are asking for this special session. I also realized that they are better off in many ways than those who are going to have to finance whatever aid the Legislature decides to earmark for fuel aid.
There were common threads in the fabric of their lives; some receive aid for dependent children, one receives two pensions because he is retarded, some receive social security. In fact, all but one are in receipt of some form of monthly income.
By good use of their land, they have cellars full of canned goods and freezers packed from summer gardening, with enough room set aside for the deer which is essential to many of their diets.
Because of their income levels they receive free medical and hospital care, free school breakfasts and lunch for their school-age children, free dental work, free eye glasses, free food stamps and free insulation.
They burn wood, not fossil fuel (and have done so for a long, long time) and the wood is donated or bartered. (In that range of $500 to $3500 annual income, like the elite of Boston used to say about their hats, "We don't buy our wood, we have our wood.")
Unlike the middle class, they don't "charge" anything (a third of them don't even have telephones) because they have no illusion about being able to pay later: They couldn't.
If former Federal Reserve Board chairman William McChesney Martin is correct in his prediction that the U.S. is due for a depression in three to five years (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 17), the people I visited will never notice the difference.
Yet their quality of life is good. Without romanticizing too much, I found that the best of natural Maine talents blossoms in these practical people. Without venturing too far afield, I would even say that we should learn from them how to look after ourselves and to "make do." They battened down their hatches long ago and know how to live well on little cash.
The idea of "neighboring" in towns like ours is strong because one reason for the good quality of life that many enjoy is that they help one another and enjoy a closeness known only to those who share a mutual dependence.
In our community, my husband and other men have an annual ritual of getting wood for a widow. She has no electricity, no running water, no telephone, but she lives in a style of graceful frugality and pride which has been a guiding light to us all.
If I could address the Legislature face to face, I would ask them: "Aren't you sitting in special session primarily because you are now feeling the pinch and are allowing yourselves to transfer your anxiety to the poor?
(NOTE.— Mary Adams, a Garland housewife, was the leader of a grassroots movement that successfully overturned Maine's uniform property tax in 1977.)