[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
MORNING BUSINESS
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, there
will now be a period for the transaction of morning business not to
extend beyond the hour of 10 a.m. with Senators permitted to speak
therein for not to exceed 5 minutes each.
The Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Wofford] is recognized to speak
for up to 20 minutes. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
Mr. WOFFORD. Mr. President, this Congress is ready to move forward on
proposals to change our Nation's welfare system as we know it. It has
been a long time coming. For years, I have been pressing the idea that
the current welfare system is not working. We have had too many well-
meaning but costly and ultimately ineffective social programs--programs
that too often promote dependency, not responsibility; complacency, not
initiative; make work instead of real work.
In my first speeches as a Senator I said it is a scandal that a
society with so much work to do is paying able men and women to sit
idle--that people on welfare deserve the dignity of a job. For at the
core of what we are as people is the dignity of work--the independence
and self-respect that come from having a job, doing it well, supporting
a family.
I am glad to say that we have finally reached a point when almost all
of us--Democrat and Republican, people of all races, colors, and
economic circumstances--agree: The welfare system is broken. It is not
working for those who are trapped in it. And it is not working for
those who have to pay for it.
The incentives in the current system are wrongheaded. Instead of
encouraging families to stay together, it rewards them for splitting
apart. Instead of encouraging work, it rewards idleness.
A lot of people in Washington--on both sides of the aisle, in the
White House, and the Congress--now are talking about how to achieve
welfare reform. That is an important development. As someone who has
already put into action the principle of moving people from the welfare
rolls to the job rolls, I intend to bring the Pennsylvania experience
into the thick of this debate.
For over 4 years before I came to the Senate I was Pennsylvania's
Secretary of Labor and Industry in Governor Casey's cabinet. One of my
key efforts was to turn upside down the very idea of the State's
unemployment offices. We turned them into a network of one-stop-shop
job centers.
The point was not just a change in name, but a fundamental change in
direction. We did not want a bureaucracy that was satisfied with
maintaining people on unemployment. We wanted to create one-stop shops
that brought together in one team under one roof the many Federal and
State job training, job search, and placement programs. A team that
would not be satisfied until they helped a person achieve one goal: a
new job. And as a result, we helped a lot of people keep off welfare.
We applied the same idea in moving people already on welfare into the
world of work. Three different State agencies came together to form a
Single Point of Contact Program. You would think it was common sense to
bring all the needed services together in a single office. But I cannot
even count the number of people who told me about having to go from one
government office to another, waiting on line, filling out forms and
using up valuable time that they could have used looking for a job.
The program is an important model for producing real success in
helping people move from welfare to work.
So when I got to Washington, one of the first things I did was go to
my colleague from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Senator
Moynihan, who is our creative and experienced leader on welfare issues
in the Senate. I told him that I wanted to be an active partner in
taking the next critical steps on the road Congress began when it
enacted the 1988 Family Security Act.
Since then, Senator Boren and I have also worked together--with
bipartisan support--to create a pilot program that provides work for
welfare recipients and keeps others from ever going on welfare. We
built on one of the most successful work programs this country has
every known: Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps. At the
height of the Great Depression, the CCC took millions of unemployed
young men off the streets and put them to work in our parks and
forests, building facilities we still use and enjoy to this day.
Senator Boren and I want to enable young people today get the kind of
rigorous work experience that provides skills, training, personal
responsibility, and self-respect, while at the same time meeting our
most pressing community needs. That is the National Civilian Community
Corps just now being launched as part of the new national service
program we enacted last summer.
That is another key pilot program that helps keep people off of
welfare. But the purposes of a pilot light is to ignite the whole
furnace. Now, as we prepare to reform the welfare system as a whole, it
is essential that we use these working models to guide us; to lead us
back to what should have been the first principle of welfare all along:
work.
Over the past several months, I have been consulting my former
colleagues on the front lines. And learning from the experiences of the
welfare recipients themselves. Both from those who have succeeded in
lifting themselves off of the dole, and from those who have not.
Experience teaches me that effective reform rests on five basic
propositions:
First, welfare must be changed from long-term income support into job
preparation and placement. Second, whenever possible, the work should
be in the private sector. And any public service work must be
disciplined and well structured. Third, we have to turn upside down the
current incentives that discourage work and that especially means
health care reform. Fourth, we have to upgrade the education and job
training programs. And fifth, we have to insist that parents take
greater responsibility for themselves and their children.
Let me start by going back for a moment in history:
When President Roosevelt created aid to families with dependent
children as part of the Social Security Act in the 1930's, it was to
help widows and orphans. The program was intended to provide temporary
relief--not to create a permanent way of life.
But today the majority of long-term welfare beneficiaries enter the
program not as widows and orphans, but as teenagers. And, for far too
many of them, it is not a short-term transitional program, but a long-
term income support program. That has to change.
So the first change is make jobs, not benefits, the focus of welfare.
Intensive job training and job search should be the expectation, not
the exception. And after a reasonable period--the two years President
has proposed--people who are able to work should be required to work.
Better yet, from the day anyone applies for welfare, we must
emphasize that the period on welfare should be as short as possible,
preferably much less than 2 years. That is the kind of new direction we
took in our Single Point of Contact Program in Pennsylvania.
Before we created the Single Point of Contact Program, the main
concern of our State's welfare system was giving out benefits. It was a
bureaucracy geared to determining who qualifies for the program and
writing out checks. It was, in a sense, a benefits factory whose
byproduct was dependency.
The purpose and culture of our single point of contact effort is
totally different. From the moment participants enter, they know they
are there to prepare for and find work--not just to receive a benefit
check.
And we have had measurable success at training and placing in jobs
those who are often the most difficult to employ. It is still on too
small a scale, but we have proven that we can achieve the second key
goal: moving people into private sector jobs.
Yet the hard fact is that even with vastly expanded job training, not
every welfare recipient will be able to get a private sector job in 2
years. Our economy still is not creating enough of those jobs. But
those who cannot find one should be called on to do well-organized
public service work. There is certainly plenty and badly needed work to
do.
One caution: I also know from experience that public service work can
degenerate into make work. As Pennsylvania's Secretary of Labor and
Industry, I saw how well-intentioned efforts like summer jobs for youth
can pay young people to kill time in local government offices doing
little more than moving around meaningless files.
At the same time, I have also seen rigorous, team-based public work
in the nonprofit, independent sector that is both worthwhile in meeting
community needs and useful in developing not only job skills, but also
the discipline, responsibility, and initiative that is essential for
success in work and in life.
An effective public works program has to achieve a careful balance.
It has to require more than simply putting in a certain number of hours
to get a welfare check. It should be a job for which the former welfare
recipients are paid by the community agency or service corps where they
work.
The work should be structured. Whether it is out in the community or
inside an office, the tasks should be challenging, the rewards well-
earned. A pay check, not a welfare check, is essential if people are to
see themselves--and be seen as--moving from welfare to work.
Third, we have to get rid of the disincentives to work that exist in
the system today. To put it simply, we have to make work pay. We have
already taken an important first step by increasing the earned income
tax credit. This enables families with low earnings to gain tax credits
for each dollar that they earn themselves. Only those who work get the
credit. And, up to a limit, the more they work, the more they get.
The earned income tax credit is exactly the opposite of welfare.
Welfare penalizes people who go to work by cutting their benefits. So
it encourages them to stay at home. But the tax credit rewards work. As
a result, it is estimated that over half a million low-income
Pennsylvania families will qualify for some $808 million in additional
earnings.
That is only a start. What I hear over and over again all across our
State--from employers and workers, from welfare recipients and social
workers--is that the single most powerful incentive to stay on welfare
is the health care benefits available while on welfare.
As secretary of labor and industry, I found that the biggest obstacle
to our effort to move people from welfare to work was how many poor
single mothers were afraid to take job training opportunities because
the entry-level jobs they could get did not include the health benefits
that staying on Medicaid gave them and their children.
As long as people are afraid to leave welfare because they are afraid
of losing their health care, people will stay on welfare when they
could take jobs. And what is even worse, some people will actually quit
jobs that lack health benefits and go on welfare in order to qualify
for Medicaid.
Last fall at a Small Business Committee hearing I held in
northeastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia businessman Samuel Kuttab told
how it broke his heart, and hurt his bottom line, to have dedicated,
productive workers quit their jobs and go on welfare when what they
really needed was health insurance.
At a Labor Committee hearing I held earlier this year in Chester, PA,
I heard from Kathleen Lawson of Lester, PA--a mother who has worked all
her life. Her job does not provide health insurance. Recently doctors
found a lump in her breast. She is concerned that she may be forced to
quit and go on welfare--so that Medicaid will pay for the treatment she
needs to fight breast cancer.
Marguerite Jones of Sharon Hill, PA, had a similar story. A mother of
three, Ms. Jones used to work in a mental health group home. Her job
provided health insurance for herself--but not for her children. One of
her sons has severe asthma. She couldn't afford his medication--so she
was forced to give him only half of the dosage he needed. She went to
the local welfare office to see if she could get medical assistance for
her son--but was told that she was over the income limit by $5 dollars.
Five dollars.
After struggling for years, Marguerite Jones left her job and went on
welfare. Now her son is able to take the full dosage of his medication.
And she is unemployed. Why do we force people to make that kind of a
choice between their independence and their children's health?
The head of a county welfare office told me that more than half the
people who come to the welfare office seeking assistance are actually
looking for medical assistance--not cash benefits. These are working
people without health care. And far too often, they, like Marguerite
Jones, become unemployed people on Medicaid.
This is unacceptable. Clearly, health care reform that guarantees
every American private health insurance is an essential prerequisite to
reforming welfare. If anyone thinks that we can do one without the
other then they don't understand the problem.
Some believe that we cannot accomplish both health care reform and
welfare reform this year, in this Congress. I disagree. The fact is, we
cannot end welfare as we know it unless we reform health care. And to
those who say that Congress cannot move forward on both tracks at the
same time, these stories tell us that we cannot afford not to.
That leads me to the fourth key part of the puzzle: preventing people
from going on welfare in the first place. That means improved job
training, education, and job search programs for those who are laid off
through no fault of their own. As we did with our Job Center Program in
Pennsylvania, we have to turn our Federal unemployment system into a
reemployment system.
When I was secretary of labor and industry, at one point we counted
22 separate and uncoordinated Federal job training and placement
programs. I am proud that the one-step shop idea we pioneered in
Pennsylvania is providing a model for Secretary Reich and the Clinton
administration for how to combine, simplify and streamline job
training, and placement services.
For those who have not yet joined the work force, we need to expand
the kind of school-to-work transition and youth apprenticeship programs
that are also working in Pennsylvania. We know that in learning-by-
doing, young people gain not only the job skills, but also the
discipline, initiative and personal responsibility required to succeed
as workers in a competitive world economy.
In recent years, only half of our high school graduates enter
postsecondary education or training programs. Of these, only half have
completed their degrees. Too many of these young people move from one
low-skill job to the next, with periods of unemployment and sometimes
welfare in between. It is estimated that 50 percent of adults in their
late twenties have not found a steady job. We simply cannot afford to
waste their productivity, talents and skills.
The Career Pathways Act Senator Simon and I introduced last year--now
incorporated in the School-to-Work Transition Act, will help the half
of high school students who do not go on to college prepare for good
jobs, for real jobs in the private sector.
The average stay on welfare is under 2 years--but a third of those
who enter welfare as teenagers stay on welfare for over 10 years. So it
makes sense to focus intensive services and requirements first of all
on those who are most likely to stay on welfare for a long time--the
young, and those with the most barriers to employment.
That is what we did in Pennsylvania with the Single Point of Contact
Program. We targeted those who have never worked before, those without
a high school diploma or GED, and those who are illiterate: 80 percent
are under 30 years old.
And despite the tough odds, we achieved results. One success story is
Donna Russini of Swissvale, PA. Donna went onto welfare after her
divorce. She had some work experience, but few marketable skills. She
had trouble finding a job that would support her and her son. She
entered the Single Point of Contact Program in 1987. She said ``my goal
was to have my son, Tony, look at me with pride.''
The program gave Donna the direction and the job skills she needed.
She graduated from a secretarial program and attended Allegheny
Community College part-time. Ms. Russini now has a good job at Integra
Bank--but she does not forget how far she has come. She says, ``I keep
one food stamp in my wallet to remind me where I come from.''
Like so many people in our State and across the country who have been
forced by circumstances onto welfare, Donna Russini knows the value of
independence and importance of taking responsibility for herself and
her family. She wants to set a good example for her son. And the system
does not make it easy for her.
And that leads to the fifth point, the system seems to make it easy
for parents who don't take their responsibilities seriously. It is a
scandal that only a small fraction of single mothers get any child
support at all from absent fathers today. Of the $55 billion in child
support that is owed, only $11 billion is collected.
Bringing children into this world is a serious responsibility. For
fathers as well as mothers. No one can doubt that our American society
seems somehow to have devalued that responsibility.
Hard economic circumstances are something we all understand. Most
Americans have felt hard-pressed in the pocketbook over the past few
years. But that is no excuse for deadbeat dads skipping out on the
obligations they owe to their own children.
That is why I am a cosponsor of Senator Bradley's legislation to
improve and strengthen the collection of child support--especially
between different States. We need to do a better job of establishing
paternity and determining and collecting child support payments in this
country--because an ever-increasing number of America's poor are
children. And the more children who grow up poor, the more young adults
there are who are likely to fall into the same welfare trap.
Our job, in Congress and in our country, must be to break that cycle
of dependency that all too often continues from one generation to the
next. I believe we are ready to do it.
Republicans in Congress have offered a serious proposal for reform. I
do not agree with every detail of their plan. But their approach shares
a number of elements I have been proposing and the President is
proposing.
We have the opportunity now to build on that common ground and find a
consensus for action.
The vast majority of Americans want a system built on reciprocal
responsibility. And few dislike our current dependency system more than
those who are in it and struggling to escape it. We owe it to them and
to our country not to lose this opportunity to end welfare as we know
it.
Just a few months before I came to the Senate, I spoke at Rosemont
College's Centennial Symposium on the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum.
To prepare for it, I went back to Pope Leo's 1891 document. Of course,
there were elements in it that no longer apply to our modern society;
as well as ideas for workers' rights that have been adopted in our laws
and are part of our new reality.
But my primary reaction was how much truth he spoke. And how he still
speaks to us today with unfinished agenda for action.
For many years in public affairs, I have seen how governments are
big, slow, lumbering bureaucratic steeds that need to be stung into
action by gadflies. Pope Leo was far more than a gadfly when he wrote
of the scandal of the wretched condition of the century working
classes. Looking at today's problems, I called my talk, ``The Scandal
of the Nonworking Classes.'' I said:
We need a new encyclical which looks at the one-fourth of
our people, more or less, who are without work--who are born
into a class that is programmed not to work or who have
fallen into that class. They have fallen into the safety net
of our so-called welfare system and been entrapped by it.
The principle to guide our action was stated by Leo himself. ``Work
for all who are able to work is `necessary; for without the result of
labor a man cannot live.''' He went back to the Biblical authority:
``In the sweat of thy brow thou shall eat thy bread.''
In short, work is the essential way to make life more human. That's
why our challenge today, as we take action to end the scandal of a
welfare system which is failing the very people it was meant to serve,
is the same challenge Leo put to all governments over a century ago:
Everyone should put his hand to the work which falls to his
share, and that at once and straightaway, lest the evil which
already is so great become through delay absolutely beyond
remedy.
Mr. President, the evils of our current welfare system are already
great, but they are not beyond remedy--not if we in this Congress put
our hands to the work which is our share; and if we do so without
delay.
Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr.
Lott], is recognized.
Mr. LOTT. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Lott pertaining to the introduction of S. 1955
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. LOTT. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BRADLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The Senator is recognized for 10 minutes.
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