[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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