
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 8, 1995                   TAG: 9511080070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

MILLIONS BEING SPENT TO SELL CASH BENEFITS TO POOR

Just as Congress prepares to push tens of thousands of people out of the largest federal cash welfare program, the government is spending millions trying to persuade poor people to apply for the very same benefits.

Supplemental Security Income is one of the government's fastest-growing entitlement programs. It has also run into fierce criticism in recent years because its monthly benefits, targeted chiefly for the elderly, blind and disabled, also go to drug addicts, alcoholics, immigrants and jail inmates.

Since 1990, the Social Security Administration has provided $33 million for promotion of SSI, with advocacy groups using government grants to go from door to door and buy ads on television, bus benches and grocery sacks.

Now, amid Republican promises to rein in SSI as part of a larger welfare overhaul, one Senate subcommittee wants to spend an additional $6 million to bring more elderly people into the program.

By contrast, welfare legislation already passed by the House and Senate would make tens of thousands of current recipients ineligible.

The Senate Appropriations Committee added the outreach money to Social Security's 1996 budget earlier this year, as part of a $264 billion spending bill that funds federal health, education and human services programs. The Social Security Administration, however, did not request it.

Margaret Camp, spokeswoman for Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Social Security, said the panel ``chose to maintain the current level of funding.''

The issue is far from settled, however, since the House set aside no outreach money when it passed Social Security's budget.

Congress launched the outreach effort five years ago amid concerns that potentially eligible Americans were not aware of SSI. At the time, only about 60 percent of eligible elderly people were receiving benefits.

According to a June 1995 study of the early outreach, done by Sociometrics Corp. for Social Security, many Americans were reluctant to sign up because of the stigma of receiving public assistance and mistrust of government programs.

Dozens of groups, including the American Association of Retired Persons and the American Bar Association, won grants to promote SSI, targeting the homeless in Hawaii, Chinese immigrants in New York, American Indians in Arizona, elderly blacks in rural Mississippi and migrant farm workers in Virginia.

Announcements in English and foreign languages were posted in newspapers and on television, radio, grocery sacks, bus benches and church bulletins.

Canvassers went door to door and called on inner-city barbershops, beauty salons and boutiques. One campaign sent a van with a loudspeaker rolling through southwestern Illinois neighborhoods.

The General Accounting Office says SSI's costs have grown 20 percent a year for the last four years. In 1994, more than 6 million recipients collected almost $22 billion in federal benefits, which were matched by an additional $3 billion in state aid. By comparison, Aid to Families With Dependent Children for 1993 totaled about $25 billion, with the federal share amounting to about $14 billion.

by CNB