Voice of the poor
VOORHIS, JERRY
Legal Services Corporation VOICE OF THE POOR CAN NEEDED ADVOCACY BE SAVED? THE LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION is fighting for its life. The Reagan administration wants it killed. Con-, gress does not...
...Yet the House, while cutting the appropriation by twenty-five percent for Legal Services, passed a bill that would virtually forbid it from engaging in "legislative advocacy" on behalf of its clients...
...It would be astonishing if the Senate were to deal with Legal Services any better than the House has done...
...And there is danger that even this hamstrung continuation of Legal Services may be denied should President Reagan decide to veto any bill that keeps it alive...
...Some three hundred thousand of what were the working poor face a high likelihood of being unable to support their families-unless they can qualify for welfare-thanks to the abolition of their jobs in the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act...
...Legal Services Corporation was established by Congress in 1974-to provide legal help and representation for the elderly and the working poor who cannot afford the costly fees lawyers normally exact...
...All of this is downright mean, especially the prohibition against "advocacy...
...He served five terms as a Congressman from California before being defeated by Richard Nixon in 1946...
...In simple terms, what this means is that Legal Services may not do any lobbying or present testimony to congressional or state committees when the rights or livelihood of the elderly or the poor are at stake in pending legislation...
...But almost...
...The House language also forbids Legal Services from bringing any class action or any suit against the government on behalf of its clients...
...JERRY VOORHIS (Born in 1901, Jerry Voorhis was a factory hand, a railroad freight handler, a Yale Phi Beta Kappa, a schoolteacher, and the organizer of homes for homeless boys...
...Here are just a few of the things that have been done to these politically vulnerable Americans...
...It isn't hard to understand why the administration or the majority in the Congress do not want to give any opportunity to Legal Services to testify...
...Almost one million needy people are to be denied the help of food stamps in their struggle against inflation of the cost of food...
...Obviously these people cannot lobby on their own behalf...
...Indeed the Judiciary Committee of the Senate has moved to accept the . House language...
...Con-, gress does not appear likely to go quite that far...
...Those poor and near-poor people are the only ones Legal Services has ever been permitted to help...
...Never have the elderly or the working poor needed advocacy on their behalf as they need it now...
...Hundreds of thousands of their children will be denied school lunches unless they pay a full price for them-which again most of them simply cannot do...
...From 1947 to 1967 he was executive director of the Cooperative League of the U.S.A...
...For these attacks on Legal Services are being made by the same administration and Congress which have listened with more than attentive ears to numerous requests of powerful special economic interests...
...Some witnesses might point out the callousness of the actions that have been taken...
...Access to medical care through Medicaid is to be reduced by $1 billion a year for three years...
...written ten books...
...Indeed the three hundred independent local legal services programs throughout the country have been supplying almost all the legal assistance that people with incomes of less than 125 percent of the absolute poverty line can hope to have...
...Special milk rations for severely undernourished children of the poor-are to be abolished...
...So are summertime out-of-school lunches for hungry kids...
...He has written ten books...
...This is one reason why the American Association of Retired Persons is doing all it can to preserve the Legal Services Corporation...
...As a result, many programs protective of the livelihood of the elderly, the poor, or indeed all the people as consumers have been crippled if not destroyed...
...Those who care about legal justice in our country should raise their voices...
...It may not be too late...
...Which means that great numbers of the elderly will simply go without the medical care which they cannot possibly pay for out of their own pockets...
Vol. 108 • December 1981 • No. 22
