Angel Vallillo, Legislative Director of Representative McCrery’s staff;

Kim Hildred, Staff Director of the House Sub-Committee on Social Security;

Raymond Smietanka, Chief Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law;

Alexander Vachon, Chief Social Security Analyst, Senate Finance Committee, Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy;

and the offices of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Representative McCrery was instrumental in passage of the SSI childhood legislation. Debi, Jeff and I discussed the Finance Committee Hearing on SSI for Children scheduled for March 10, 1998. Angel felt strongly that NADE needs to provide testimony and we agreed to prepare a statement. After conferring with Kim Hildred, she suggested that we talk with Alexander Vachon. Mr. Vachon was on his way to another meeting when we stopped by. However, in his words, “I heard you were here and I couldn’t not see you.” He also asked that we provide written testimony for the March 10 Hearing. We had originally planned to see Raymond Smietanka to discuss HR 1544, the Federal Compliance Act. However, on Friday (February 27), we had learned from Webb Phillips, Social Security legislative Representative, that the bill had already passed the House. Consequently, our visit to the House Judiciary Committee was essentially to touch base and discuss the status of the Senate companion bill. Mr. Smietanka was very pleasant but did not seem entirely sure of where this bill stood in the Senate. We did learn from the staff at the Senate Judiciary Committee that the bill (S1166) was still in Committee. On Wednesday, while attending the Childhood Training, we spoke with Bill Hutchinson and Cindy Bascetta from the General Accounting Office, discussing their study which showed inconsistencies in the childhood mental retardation listings and also discussing the two hearings scheduled for the following week.