[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 5 (Monday, January 31, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 31, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      EDUCATION IN WELFARE REFORM

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, last week, when I introduced a bill to 
expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to all of the Americas, 
I had an opportunity to talk about trade promotion and job creation.
  I had an opportunity last week, when I introduced a crime bill to 
imprison predator criminals, to talk about the fact that for 9 years 
the Congress has talked about getting tough on crime, but yet during 
those 9 years, although we adopt tough bills in the Senate and often 
adopt tough bills in the House, those tough and effective measures are 
not enacted and nothing ever happens.
  Last week I had an opportunity to talk about health reform, first on 
a consensus package that contained the five provisions of health reform 
that have been contained in every one of the major health reform 
proposals that has been introduced or discussed. I also introduced and 
spoke on a comprehensive health care reform proposal that builds on the 
strengths of the current system and that attempts to remedy the 
problems we have in health insurance and health care without destroying 
the private practice of medicine, without having Government take over 
and run our health care system.
  Another subject that will be debated in Congress, and that I did not 
have an opportunity last week to talk about, is welfare reform, and I 
would like to devote my time today to that issue. The President has not 
yet proposed a bill, so what I would like to do is simply give one 
Member's thoughts on the subject and, hopefully, in the process not 
only clarify my own thinking but suggest to the administration and 
others how we might move ahead with welfare reform.
  First of all, Mr. President, I believe that when the American public 
talks about welfare reform, they envision a dramatic change in the 
current system. I think that when most Americans talk about welfare 
reform, they mean spending less money on welfare and instituting 
reforms which ultimately mean fewer people riding in the wagon and more 
people helping to pull the wagon.
  My frustration in the past with what Congress has called welfare 
reform is that it has almost always meant more spending, has generally 
meant more people qualifying for more benefits, has almost always meant 
larger bureaucracies, and has more often than not been the exact 
opposite of what most Americans would think of as welfare reform.
  Here are my thoughts on the subject and areas that I intend to work 
on and push as we debate this important subject.
  First of all, Mr. President, I believe everybody drawing public 
assistance ought to either work or go to school. I do not think anybody 
ought to be drawing welfare and doing nothing.
  Let me talk about going to school. One of the problems that we have, 
obviously, is the cost involved in educating people. Another is that 
mothers with young dependent children have difficulty getting out of 
the house. I wish to make public today an idea that I have been working 
on which I think is vitally important and can be an important element 
in what ultimately will be our welfare reform bill this year.
  When I was going to college, at the end of my freshman year I ran out 
of money and went out and looked for a job. In order to qualify for the 
GI bill, I had to maintain a certain number of hours of credit, which 
was very difficult while going to night school and working during the 
day. One of the things I did was to take correspondence courses. 
Basically the old correspondence course was a system whereby you signed 
up and you were sent lessons. You had to complete them and send them 
back to the university. They graded your lessons, sent them back to 
you, and then at the end of the term you went in, generally to a local 
community college, took a final exam, and they then gave you a grade.
  We have the capacity today to offer every welfare mother in America 
an opportunity to visit nearby test centers, take a test, which could 
be graded by computer and which in 1 hour, could allow us to assess 
exactly what improvements were needed in reading, writing, calculating, 
and reasoning. We could design a course of work that would be targeted 
toward her particular needs, so that we would literally have thousands 
of different levels of learning that would be present in these home 
correspondence courses.
  We could mail the material to the welfare mother. She would get the 
material and a little punch card that she would simply mark with a lead 
pencil. We have the capacity to administer a tailormade course to every 
welfare mother in America to provide her with the wherewithal to 
improve her reading, her calculation skills, her reasoning skills, and 
we could grade that correspondence course material and make the payment 
of the welfare check contingent on participation, in and completion of 
this course work. This work could be done in the home. It would not 
take time away from child care. This is something the mother could do 
while she was actually in the home with the child.
  I think that is something at which we ought to look.
  In terms of general job training, we have tried Government training 
for a long time, and our experience has been almost uniform; that is, 
we end up training people to do things for which there is no market.
  I strongly believe we ought to use welfare payments as a vehicle to 
provide subsidies to private businesses to train people who are drawing 
welfare to do real jobs and to do, in fact, real jobs in their own 
businesses.
  I think it is very important when we adopt a welfare reform provision 
that the training provision be based in private industry. What we 
should do for those companies that are willing to train and hire people 
currently in receipt of public assistance is pay the company the 
welfare benefit; they in turn pay a training wage to the worker; and 
the welfare benefit ought to phase out as they complete training to 
help us make it possible for people to get into the private sector and 
for people to acquire real job skills.
  I believe everybody in America on welfare who does not have young 
dependent children ought to be working. I have always been stunned at 
these welfare reform bills that have a provision that makes it 
illegal--and that will be, I would be willing to predict today, in the 
President's welfare submission, if it is anything like the past; there 
will be a provision that makes it illegal for us to use welfare 
recipients to do work that we are currently paying somebody to do. I do 
not understand that.
  If the objective is to get positive public benefit, why can we not 
take welfare recipients and require them to work the number of hours 
that their check would require them to work at the minimum wage, and 
have that work substitute for work that we are now paying for so that 
we can save the taxpayers' money?
  I believe that there are literally thousands of different things that 
the recipients could do. They could pick up paper along the streets. 
They could help us clean up our parks. They could wash windows on 
public buildings. We could take maintenance personnel that we now pay 
and use them as supervisors, and in the process clean up our parks, 
clean up our highways, clean up our cities, and get positive benefit in 
the process.
  I believe there are many people receiving public assistance who, if 
they had to get up every morning and go to work for the city cleaning 
up parks, would have increased incentive to go out and look for jobs in 
the private sector at a real wage if they have to work anyway. I think 
we would have a greater incentive for people to take real jobs.
  Finally, I think the time has come to reform a system that now 
encourages welfare mothers to conceive children out of wedlock. I do 
not think it makes any sense that a society should have positive 
economic incentives that encourage such behavior. I think we should 
have a serious debate as to whether we ought to increase the assistance 
for the first child born to a welfare recipient. But I think there 
ought not to be much debate about the second child. I do not think we 
ought to be encouraging people to have children in order to receive 
increased welfare payments.
  I will speak about these proposals again as the welfare reform debate 
continues.
  I thank the Chair for his indulgence.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

                          ____________________