[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 27 (Friday, March 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    WELFARE REFORM; THE GENDER ISSUE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Johnson of South Dakota). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentlewoman from 
Hawaii [Mrs. Mink] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. I thank the Speaker for allotting me this time 
and I thank the majority leader.
  The matter I would like to introduce tonight in a series of special 
orders that I hope to take, by engaging my fellow colleagues in the 
House to join me, is a discussion of the whole welfare reform issue. 
Welfare reform has become a topic that has been linked with health care 
reform. It is linked to budget deficit considerations, and it has risen 
to prominence in terms of the Clinton administration's priorities.
  Therefore, I believe it is incumbent upon us as Members of this House 
to put this issue in proper perspective. So much of what has been said 
and what we have seen in the press and elsewhere is extremely negative 
criticism of people, who though no fault of their own, have come to 
difficult circumstances and have, therefore, had to ask for Government 
assistance.
  If the subject matter were simply to be dropped at that point, 
perhaps it would not be necessary to take special orders to discuss 
this issue with greater compassion and clarity.
  But the point that I wish to make in this hour that I have taken is 
that the brunt of our criticism, the brunt of our attack, the brunt of 
the burden of this debate is being heaped upon women in this society. 
It is grossly unfair to put this kind of criticism on the people of our 
society who are already in a highly difficult situation.
  We all know the statistics as women: Women have the greatest 
difficulty in finding jobs that pay decent wages; they have the 
greatest difficulty in finding jobs that have even the slightest amount 
of upward mobility. We speak about being locked into a job situation 
that barely pays enough to stay above the poverty line let alone to 
survive and provide for a family of two or three children.
  The statistics are there. The comparisons in terms of wages earned by 
women at the lowest end of the work force prove this time and time 
again, that despite all progress which we have made in terms of gender 
equity in this society, that there are still monumental problems with 
respect to women being able to earn a decent living and to be paid 
according to their talent and ability.
  We only need to look at the statistics to bear this out. Women are 
still at the level of 60 cents to 70 cents on the dollar, based upon 
equal educational background and equal experience when it comes to men 
holding the same position.

  Talk about the glass ceiling, the glass ceiling is often discussed 
for the higher levels, ``Why don't we have more judges, more people 
heading corporations, more people in the professions?'' The glass 
ceiling that we need to be concerned about is the one that keeps women 
in our society at the lowest level of earning, at the most menial jobs, 
the jobs which have the least potential of being able to lift them up 
to the ability to sustain their families.
  It is under these circumstances that we are now debating this whole 
welfare reform issue.
  Most of these families are on public assistance because they have 
nowhere else to go. I cannot believe that this great Nation is going to 
forget its history of compassion and concern for those in our society 
who are unfortunate, who have come to unfortunate circumstances, and 
abandon them with such harsh rules as 2 years and you're out. It sounds 
something like ``three strikes and you are in a lifetime prison 
situation.'' I cannot believe this Nation is going to move forward to 
place those kinds of harsh consequences upon these families.
  The most important point that the country needs to know when we are 
talking about people on family assistance is that the vast majority of 
persons on family assistance are children. We are talking about some 10 
million children, perhaps, who are on AFDC rolls. If we adopt a policy 
that says that the single parent can receive assistance only for 2 
years, what is to happen to these children? What is to happen to the 
support mechanism for these children?
  I believe that we need to look at some of these harsh recommendations 
for the stark reality that they will present to America.
  All of us join with our concerns about the homeless: What do we do 
about the people on our streets who have no home, about families that 
are living in vacant lots or in car bodies or are pitching a tent on 
the mountain or on the seashore because they do not have the 
wherewithal to pay the rent and to take care of their families?
  What will happen if we adopt a 2 years and you're out rule is that 
there will obviously be more families who will be forced to take to the 
streets and to fill our homeless shelters and to depend upon the 
private charitable organizations of the country.
  One of the reasons I believe the welfare reform debate is heating up 
is because of the expenses that have been mounting under one of the 
entitlement programs called Medicaid, because poor families have a 
program which entitles them to receive health care when they need it. 
And of course in discussing the health care reform issue, one of the 
major areas that people are concerned about is the mounting cost, not 
only of Medicare but also of the Medicaid population.

  So, in order to come to grips with this rising cost of entitlements, 
we need to do, they say, something about the welfare aspects. And it is 
true. So I believe that one of the fundamental responsibilities that 
this Congress has is to come forward with a health care reform package 
that will make it possible to offer, finally, universal health care 
coverage for everyone in America regardless of their status, their 
economic ability, their family situation, or whatever.

                              {time}  1540

  So that will take us one tremendous step in the direction of helping 
to take care of some of the problems.
  I have heard many families on public assistance saying that they have 
to, in order to make sure that their children's health care needs are 
met, that there is no other way for them to provide for this health 
coverage, and so they maintain themselves with all the restrictions on 
welfare in order to protect their children. So, if we enact the health 
care reform proposals that are before us and assure the country of 
universal coverage, the part of the problem with reference to those on 
public assistance will be met.
  The AFDC program is a program that costs about $11.8 billion in 
Federal benefits. Basically AFDC is a matching program where the States 
come up with roughly about 50 percent of the costs, and the Federal 
Government comes up with 50. It is not a federalized program in the 
sense that there is a minimum established for child assistance 
throughout the country. There is a wide disparity. It depends upon the 
decisions at the local level.
  So, Mr. Speaker, it is very much a program that depends upon what the 
States feel they want to contribute to the support of a family.
  In my own State the support figures that go back to January 1991 
indicate that the support, maximum support, grant is $695. By contrast, 
Mr. Speaker, we have States like Alabama at $124, we have Mississippi 
at $120, we have California at $694. We have Alaska at $891, Arizona at 
$293. The States vary tremendously in the amount of money that is 
provided to each of these families.
  I have long felt that one of the solutions is to perhaps put all of 
this under the Federal Government and to provide a uniform support 
basis for the children all across America rather than to leave it 
dependent upon where they happen to live, and this might provide some 
substantial support for children throughout the country.
  There are today, according to the latest Census Bureau memorandum 
which I just received the other day dated March 3, in America 36.9 
million Americans living below poverty, and this is a 1992 statistic. 
This figure has increased since 1991. At that time it was 35.7 million. 
In 1989 it was 31.5 million.
  So, Mr. Speaker, this is a very high number of persons living in 
poverty. It is the highest number since 1962 according to the Census 
Bureau.
  Fifty-four percent of the mothers between 18 and 44 years of age in 
1992 who had born a child in that year were working. Fifty-four percent 
of the women. In 1982 it was 44 percent. In 1976 it was 31 percent. 
More women are in the work place today contributing to the commerce of 
this country, finding employment, providing for their families and, in 
many cases, at the lowest wages that that community offers. It is 
difficult for the families, and if something should happen to disrupt 
those families, divorce, death, separation or whatever, many of them 
have no other recourse than to seek assistance under the AFDC program.
  There have been societal changes, too, in the last 10 or 15 years. 
Twenty percent of the preschoolers whose mothers worked in 1992 have 
fathers at home as the primary care giver, and this is up from 15 
percent of the preschoolers being cared for by their fathers in 1988. 
The statistics in 1992 show 16 percent are cared for by their 
grandparents and 8 percent by other relatives. Thirty-one percent of 
recent mothers who had a child in 1992 had high school educations--
excuse me--31 percent had less than a high school education as compared 
to 72 percent that had graduate degrees, and so we see a changing 
situation among the working mothers. In 1993, Mr. Speaker, the Census 
Bureau advises that 80 percent of Americans 25 years and older 
completed high school. That is a remarkable number of people.

  So, Mr. Speaker, we are succeeding despite all the naysayers in our 
society. Most Americans are continuing high school and finishing high 
school. They still have difficulty finding a job.
  We have millions of people that are unemployed. It is not only the 
welfare recipient who has no job or cannot find one. There are millions 
of other Americans who have, because of downsizing of industry or 
whatever, lost their jobs despite having good education, good 
experience. They are unable to find work. Yet we find the policymakers 
who are talking about welfare reform stressing the fact that the 
solution to AFDC is job training, job search and, ultimately, a job.
  Mr. Speaker, I wish that it were that easy. I believe that the vast 
majority of single parents, women who are on welfare, would be eager to 
take a job to support their families, if they could be assured that the 
income they earned would be sufficient to support their families and 
that they would have the health care support that went along with that 
job. And to prove that, that this is not a new idea, it is important to 
know the history of where we are in the whole discussion of aid to 
dependent children.
  Aid to dependent children was established by Social Security in 1935 
as a cash grant program to help families that were having difficulties, 
whose fathers were absent and not at home. The program provided at that 
time cash, welfare payments, for needy children who did not have a 
mother or a father at home, or who was incapacitated, had disease or 
was unemployed. So, it has always been a child oriented program, a 
program designed to help families with dependent children. That is 
exactly what AFDC is.
  The myth out there in talking about welfare is this myth that there 
are all these adults out there, five million perhaps, who are receiving 
government assistance and not doing their best in terms of going out to 
locate a job, and that, of course, is not the situation at all

  In order to try to develop a new direction and a new structure for 
the AFDC program, Mr. Speaker, in 1988 the Congress, in its wisdom, 
enacted Public Law 100-485, which is the Family Support Act, 1988. It 
revised the whole idea of AFDC by putting in education and training 
requirements. As of October 1, 1990, States were required to have job 
opportunities and basic skills programs. For short, we call it the jobs 
program. The new program is designed to help needy families with 
children avoid long-term welfare dependency.

                              {time}  1550

  The Jobs Program replaced the Job Incentive Program that was referred 
to as WIN, and other demonstration programs that had been supported by 
previous administrations.
  The Jobs Program was required to have an educational component. The 
States were required to enroll those individuals receiving AFDC, 
provided the youngest child was at least 3 years of age, to have some 
sort of an educational program. They were automatically included in 
Medicaid, and under the Family Support Act, it required the States to 
guarantee child care if it was decided that child care was necessary 
for the individual's employment or participation in education and 
training activities.
  So the major components of the administration's policies or 
recommendations for welfare reform changes are already part of what the 
Congress included in the Family Support Act of 1988. First, is that the 
States should have a job training and education component, and, second, 
in order to take advantage of the job training and education component 
child care was necessary. The State was required to provide that child 
care.

  Under the Federal law, AFDC mothers were required to assign their 
child support rights to the State and to cooperate with welfare 
officers in establishing the paternity of the child and in obtaining 
support payments from the father.
  That is already law. Yet we hear this proposal coming from all 
quarters as though it was a new discovery. It is already part of the 
Family Support Act of 1988, that by receiving AFDC, you assign to the 
State government the responsibility to locate the father, to establish 
paternity, and to try to receive support payments.
  If the State is successful in receiving these support payments, those 
support payments are assigned to the State in order to help meet its 
contributions or matching rates under the welfare program.
  So that is an ingredient that is already with us under the Family 
Support Act. One might ask, well, what is wrong with the Jobs Program? 
Why did it not work and can we not make it work?
  I believe that we could. The problems arise because of the lack of 
funding. The Congress has not given enough money. The States have not 
been able to provide enough resources and assets to make it work.
  So my suggestion to this Congress is to take a hard look at the Jobs 
Program and to see what ways we might improve it and make the ultimate 
result, which was already stated in the enactment of that bill, to try 
to reduce the number of persons on welfare by enabling them to find a 
job.
  That is not a very easy thing to do. You can do all the job training, 
and we have heard so much criticism about the 100-plus job training 
programs that exist now in the law for this, that, or the other kind of 
person in our society and what the administration is arguing, that we 
should consolidate all these training programs to better assure their 
success.
  The difficulty with job training is that we do not necessarily target 
the training to a job availability. As a consequence, the job training 
expenses are forfeited, and the person still has no job there that can 
provide the income and the self-sustaining ability for that family.
  So we have to be careful when we are talking about some sort of 
miracle work, such as training and education, as though it could 
immediately result in a job opportunity that can transfer to a family 
that has been on public assistance. It is very difficult. It needs 
counseling, it needs matching, it needs job searching, it needs a 
considerable amount of resources, far more than we are now willing to 
put into the AFDC Program or any Jobs Program.

  I am fully in support of the notion that we have to do more to help 
these families, and I embrace all of the suggestions that have been 
made thus far, that we should provide more money for education and 
training, counseling, and go out there to look for jobs that these 
families could fill.
  But the difficulty is it is not that simple, and it is a very costly 
enterprise. My guess would be that while we spend about $11 billion for 
AFDC currently as cash benefit payments to these families, if we embark 
on a full-scale education, training, job search, job location program, 
it will certainly cost at least that much more for it to be successful.
  Now, the proposals almost confess that they may not succeed. And the 
may-not-succeed part of the proposals suggest that if a job cannot be 
found, that it will be the responsibility of the Government to look for 
a community service job in the private sector, in the nonprofit sector. 
And I think that is fine. It is already part of the law. It is part of 
the family support assistance law. It is a provision called community 
work experience.
  Let me read you a short synopsis of the community work experience 
part of the law.
  The purpose of the CWE Program is to provide experience and training 
for individuals not otherwise able to obtain employment. CWE programs 
must be designed to improve the exployability of participants through 
actual work experience and training, and to enable individuals employed 
under CWE programs to move them into regular employment. CWE programs 
must be limited to projects which serve a useful public purpose in 
fields such as health, social service, environmental protection, 
education, urban and rural development and redevelopment, welfare, 
recreation, public facilities, public safety, day care. A State 
electing to operate a CWE Program must ensure that the maximum number 
of hours that any individual may be required to work under a CWE 
Program is no greater than the number of hours derived by dividing the 
total AFDC benefit by the minimum wage.
  So, what we have done in the 1988 statute under community work 
experience is to make people work for the AFDC benefit that they 
receive. So that is already part of the law. But now we are moving 
ahead, with education, training and trying to get them a job. If they 
do not have a job the plan is to put them into a community service job 
supported either by the local government, the State government, the 
Federal Government, or a local entity, with a guarantee of at least 
minimum wage.

  The problem with that solution is that it is not going to bring that 
family out of poverty. Minimum wage is likely to produce about an 
$11,000 or $12,000 income for that individual, hardly enough to support 
a family, unless the Government has already assured them housing 
assistance, and has assured them child care.
  That is another element which the Family Support Act of 1988 also 
took cognizance of. You cannot have employment and training and all of 
that which leads to the work ethic, unless you have child care 
provisions for young children who are not of school age and, for those 
of school age, some after school program that will enable that child to 
be protected and safe and not on the streets being tempted or otherwise 
subjected to abuse and violence by the elements on the street.
  Child care is already at about a $1 billion level in terms of Federal 
support to AFDC families in job training under the JOBS Program. There 
is a transitional day-care program for 1 year for AFDC families that 
are moving off welfare, and another $300 million program for at-risk 
families. So we are already providing support in the child care area.
  If we move to a policy which says everybody must find something in 
terms of work, either in the public or the private sector, because 
after 2 years there will be no more assistance, then there will be this 
great issue of what happens to child care for the remainder of the 
time.

                              {time}  1600

  Is this going to continue to be a Government responsibility? If it 
is, that is going to add another considerable amount of money for child 
care.
  The discussion of welfare reform is not a simple one. I have 
attempted to get answers from the Congressional Research Service for 
many of the questions that are asked of me constantly. I know that the 
search for information is only just the beginning. Let me give you a 
few of the bits of information that CRS has provided me, based upon 
questions which I posed to them recently.
  The No. 1 point on welfare reform is to remember that when we are 
talking about welfare, we are talking about 10 million children. This 
is data dated November 1993: 9.6 million children are in the program; 
5.4 million adults, 700,000 of them from two-parent families.
  The two-parent families were added recently, called the AFDC 
Unemployed Parent Program, where to-parent families are entitled to the 
AFDC if, because of unemployment, they are now in a difficult 
circumstance. Prior to that amendment, AFDC was reserved only to the 
single-parent situation.
  The CRS says that their data indicates that 43 percent of mothers who 
first receive AFDC before age 24 were short-term cyclers who used the 
program for a total of fewer than 24 months, that 32 percent were 
longer-term cyclers who used it for a total of 25 to 54 months. And 
then about 24 percent used it for longer periods.
  Increasingly, the data, which is being provided me by various 
research organizations, suggests that any concerted effort that the 
government may make at the local, State or Federal level to help 
individuals find jobs will ultimately be successful, if there are jobs 
to be found, because these families are eager to work.
  If you look at their cycle of in-and-out of AFDC, the kinds of jobs 
they took, hoping that it would lead to a better circumstance for their 
family, it clearly suggests that for at least two-thirds of these 
families on welfare, a job for them is a better way to go. They are 
anxious to do whatever they can to make that so.
  Would that we could make America to be a mirror image of ourselves. 
Would that we could make America into a completely homogeneous all-
alike society, everybody having equal potential to earn, to work, to be 
successful. But that is not the condition of any civilized society. 
There are always in our midst people who are less fortunate than we 
are, less able to be productive and find themselves in difficult 
circumstances.
  I think that it has been the tradition of this Nation to not turn our 
backs against these individuals but to find ways in which we could help 
them be better off and provide better circumstances for their family, 
and I believe that no matter what the debate may be on this issue of 
welfare, that the vast majority of Americans would support such a 
policy still today.
  The CRS tells us that of the current 5 million families who are on 
AFDC, it is estimated that 2.275 million or 44.5 percent have been 
enrolled in AFDC continuously for about 2 years. So we are talking 
about half of the persons on welfare who are already within that 2-year 
limit. And we know perfectly well that if we have an augmented job 
policy, job search, counseling and great efforts to find jobs, that 
that percentage would easily fall. So that is a note that offers me, at 
least, great optimism for the future.
  In fiscal year 1991, CRS says that the States, in their reports, 
indicated that 337,000 persons left AFDC because of earnings. So that 
statistic would suggest, that a large body of individuals on welfare 
are working and are in and out of the welfare situation.
  In a sample month of fiscal year 1992, according to the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 274,000 AFDC 
parents in the JOBS Program that I just described were attending high 
school, were getting a GED certificate, or were engaged in higher 
education or engaged in some vocational training.
  The budget, as I recall, the budget figures in debate on the budget 
resolution suggested there are about 500,000 families that currently 
benefit from the JOBS Program. So it is a program which I hope will be 
augmented with greater financial support in keeping with this current 
insistence that these individuals get training which, hopefully, will 
lead to a job.
  AFDC recipients are also going to college. Of the number who are 
going to college and receiving Pell Grants, Pell Grants are for those 
coming from low-income families, according to the statistics provided 
me by the CRS for the school year 1991-1992, there were 448,643 
students receiving Pell Grants going to college and who were on AFDC. 
That is another indication of tremendous drive and commitment to 
improve themselves and to improve their family conditions.

  The basic AFDC program is a matching one, as I indicated. There are 
no restrictions in terms of whether the States must make specific 
allotments for numbers of children. But all the data that I have seen 
indicates that the average number of children on AFDC is two, that that 
is the typical family size. So we are not facing a situation, as some 
have suggested, that people go on welfare to have children because that 
can lead to additional sums of money.
  In fact, the additional sum that most States pay for additional 
children while you are on welfare is minuscule sometimes as low as $60 
or $70 a month.
  The great issue out there that needs to be juxtaposed to this whole 
question of whether job training and education for the welfare 
recipient is going to lead to a job, is that we have to recognize, 
because of the recent recession, job losses, plant closing, defense 
closings, corporate downsizing, that there is an average of 9 million 
jobless workers out there in our society looking for work whose 
unemployment compensation benefits perhaps have already expired. And 
they are still unable to find a job. That is the fact of America today 
upon which we are trying to shove more people into the job market, 
where the jobs for which they qualify are absent. So the success of the 
program that is being suggested here is almost totally dependent upon 
whether we can match the training and education to a job that is 
available in the community.
  We cannot talk about trying to move these people around to a job that 
may exist in Texas, when the family is living in New York or in Boston. 
That is unrealistic. We have to talk about fashioning training programs 
for jobs that actually exist in the communities in which these families 
live, and we have to bear in mind that it is not simply a minimum wage 
job. We are talking about women here who deserve better. Millions of 
women across the country already hold down the jobs of the least pay in 
our society.

                              {time}  1610

  That is a condition that is intolerable. Therefore, when we talk 
about gender equity and economic equity and employment equity, we have 
to bear in mind that our society has not yet solved that problem, so 
the very people that we are dealing with in this dimension of welfare 
reform are the very women that we are going to victimize again with low 
pay, unless we are careful and open up job training, job opportunities, 
educational opportunities that will lead them into job situations which 
will afford them a greater opportunity to earn more money.
  In 1992, an estimated 9 million single parents cared for children 
below the ages of 18. In fiscal year 1991, about 416,000 infants were 
born into AFDC units.
  One other statistic which I think is very instructive in trying to 
picture this situation, the Congress has consistently insisted that we 
fully fund the WIC Program. WIC, the program for women, infants and 
children, is a feeding program to help mothers across the country.
  One could infer that most of the mothers and infants and children in 
the WIC Program are AFDC, or fall in the poverty category, but the 
statistics given me by CRS indicate that only 29 percent of the infants 
under WIC are AFDC, just 29 percent, which indicates the scope of real 
poverty in America where some 70 percent of infants and children and 
mothers qualify for WIC.
  It suggests to us that we have an endemic problem of poverty in our 
country, and that really, when we are talking about welfare reform, we 
ought to be talking about poverty, what are we going to do about 
poverty, the conditions of poverty in our society. Truly, that is the 
direction we ought to be going.
  So many of us, in debating the budget, debating economic recovery, 
have argued that the one course that we have not taken in any of our 
programs and deliberations is a dynamic jobs program, opening up the 
possibility of job creation through the injection of Federal funds into 
various kinds of programs. We have failed to do that. We tried to do an 
economic stimulus package in the early months of the Clinton 
administration, and it failed. I believe it is still important for the 
Congress to consider that.
  If we did that, we could provide jobs for the millions of people who 
are unemployed; we could provide job opportunities for those on 
welfare, where it would be a meaningful opportunity for their families.
  This whole issue is one that I am sure is going to raise a lot of 
discussion and debate in the ensuing months. I hope to engage this 
House on some of the issues, knock down some of the myths about this 
program, and to try to deal with it in a meaningful way.
  One of the first things we have to do is get rid of this idea that we 
have to put these constraints on these families, that they cannot earn 
anything or they will lose their opportunity to receive any Government 
support. That is idiocy. On the one hand, we are saying, ``You must go 
to work,'' but if you do, you will lose the support that is so 
necessary to keep the family together. So we have to find some way to 
enable a family to try to do better, to try to improve their condition, 
and not punish them in the process.
  I have heard suggestions, and I believe there is a bill which also 
says that if you are below 18 years of age, no welfare assistance. It 
seems to me that that, again, is punitive. There are not very many 
welfare recipients in this category, and I cannot imagine any teenager 
becoming pregnant to have a child merely so that there can be some 
financial assistance under the welfare program.

  Mr. Speaker, I hope that in the course of the debates we can discuss 
the real issue facing America that has faced us for many generations, 
and that is what can we do about poverty. When I first came to the 
Congress in 1965, under the Johnson administration, we inaugurated a 
war against poverty. Many of those programs have been retained.
  Head Start, for instance, has become a word that almost everybody in 
our society understands. It has brought great benefits to the children 
of this country. It is here to stay, hopefully, and it is going to be 
fully funded one day, and it is for the children that come from the 
impoverished communities all across this country. It is going to make 
America better, because the children will have a better opportunity in 
their future.
  I am hoping that the war against poverty that we started in 1965 has 
not been lost, is not falling upon deaf ears, but as we begin the 
debate on welfare reform, that we turn it into a meaningful discussion 
about poverty in America and what this country needs to do to eradicate 
it, rather than to punish the poor.

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