[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 14, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  THE PRESIDENT'S WELFARE REFORM PLAN

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I want to discuss with my colleagues the 
welfare reform proposal that President Clinton unveiled this afternoon 
in Kansas City. I think it is a very thoughtful and creative package 
that will provide us with a critical framework for reform either in 
this Congress or in the next.
  Let me, at the outset, commend the President and his staff for 
launching us on what I hope will prove to be a constructive and 
fruitful debate of how to change the present welfare system in this 
country so that we may put people to work and inject responsibility 
into the lives of each and every citizen. In fact, for me, the entire 
debate over welfare reform orbits this one word, ``responsibility'': 
the responsibility of teenagers not to bring children into the world if 
they cannot care for them; the responsibility of parents not to walk 
away from the children that they create; the responsibility of adults 
to work and to earn a paycheck; the responsibility of the private 
sector to try and create more jobs and job opportunities; certainly, 
the responsibility of each and every one of us in the public sector to 
help people on welfare find their way to those jobs.
  It is time for all of us to meet these responsibilities. It is time 
for all of us to save the children who are suffering today because, 
frankly, we have not.
  When I think about the importance of responsibility, I think about 
the young woman I met in Bridgeport, CT, when I was touring the Private 
Industry Council job training program there. I spoke with this woman, 
who was sitting behind a computer terminal, trying to learn this new 
trade. I asked her why she was there, why she was working so hard to 
find a job rather than simply staying on welfare.
  She paused for a short period of time as I asked the question, and 
then looked me straight in the eye, and said, ``Mr. Politician'' --
because she had no idea about what position I held. She said, ``Mr. 
Politician, I've got a 4- and a 5-year-old at home and I want them to 
see their mother going to work in the morning. That is something that I 
never saw growing up and I want my children to see it in their 
mother.''
  This woman understood the word ``responsibility,'' understood the 
meaning of it, and was determined to become a responsible parent and 
adult.
  She was taking responsibility for her life, and she was taking 
responsibility for her children's lives.
  As we embark on this process of welfare reform, I hope that we will 
remember that welfare reform should not just be a campaign slogan or 
the title of an issue brief. Welfare reform should be about people and, 
in the case of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, most of 
those people are children. In fact, AFDC was created almost six decades 
ago for the principal purpose of assisting needy children without 
fathers.
  While our society has changed dramatically since that time, the 
purpose of the program has not. Two-thirds of welfare recipients today 
are children in this country. If the system fails, Mr. President, it 
fails their parents, but far more important, it fails someone else: It 
fails their children.
  That is what is happening today in every part of this country. We--
all of us--are failing our children. This point has been driven home in 
recent months with the release of a couple of studies that painted a 
rather devastating portrait of young America. A report that I requested 
from the General Accounting Office showed that the number of poor 
children under the age of 6 in America increased by more than 25 
percent during the 1980's. This was during a decade we are told was one 
of great prosperity and growth.
  These numbers are worse in urban areas. Forty-seven percent of young 
children living in the capital of my home State of Connecticut are 
poor, making Hartford the American city with the second-highest child 
poverty rate in the country, after Detroit; 33 percent of the children 
in New Haven between the ages of 0 and 3 are growing up in poverty. 
Another study by the Carnegie Foundation found that 1 in 4 children 
between the ages of 0 and 3 are growing up poor in the United States.
  I do not know of anyone who can look at statistics like these and not 
recognize that something is seriously wrong in our Nation and that our 
children are being punished for it. It is time, Mr. President, for 
everyone to stop pointing the finger of blame at someone else for this 
state of affairs. Liberals should stop blaming everything on society, 
which they so conveniently point to; conservatives have to stop blaming 
the mythical individuals called ``welfare queens'' for everything that 
is wrong; and people on welfare have to stop blaming others for 
circumstances that they can personally take the initiative to change 
and correct.
  I want to emphasize, if I can, that the President's announcement 
today does not represent the end of a process, but only the beginning. 
This is a highly complex issue, and we do not want to leap before we 
understand entirely what we are about to do.
  With that caveat in mind, I think the President's plan includes a 
number of valuable provisions: Work requirements, time limits, and 
better linkages to job training programs are all ideas worthy of 
serious and careful consideration.
  I am especially pleased about the strong child support enforcement 
component of the President's plan. The poverty rate for single-parent 
families headed by women is nearly 33 percent in this country. This 
compares to a poverty rate of under 8 percent for two-parent families. 
The lack of child support is a major cause of poverty among single-
parent families in this Nation and, too often, those families going 
without support end up on welfare.
  The link between the lack of child support and poverty is clear and 
overwhelming, as the Census Bureau illustrated when it estimated that 
between 1984 and 1986, approximately half a million children fell into 
poverty after their fathers left home. The President's proposal 
contains, I think, some valuable tools to change this situation and to 
demand that absent fathers step up to the plate and take responsibility 
for their children. I was pleased that the President incorporated a 
number of provisions from child support legislation that I introduced 
earlier this year.
  The President's initiative also recognizes that reducing teen 
pregnancy is integral to cutting into welfare dependency. Between 1960 
and 1988, the percentage of births in America to unmarried mothers rose 
from 5 percent to 26 percent, and the poverty rate for children raised 
in such settings is terrible. For children of single Hispanic mothers, 
the rate approaches 75 percent. We must state, Mr. President, in clear, 
unmistakable terms to teenage boys and girls, that they best not create 
a life unless they are willing to take responsibility for that life. 
The President envisions a concerted national campaign to achieve that 
end, and I applaud him for it.
  Finally, the President's plan contains a modest child care component. 
The lack of quality affordable child care is often the most serious 
obstacle to young women's efforts to enter the work  force and to stay 
in the work force once they get there. I am pleased that the 
administration recognizes this fact by including child care in its 
proposal and by making provisions of the child care and development 
block grant that I authored in 1990 the standard for Federal child 
care. But I am concerned about the modest scope of this provision. By 
including only a very limited expansion of child care for the working 
poor, the President's plan may very well be pennywise and pound-
foolish. We may save money in the shortrun by not providing more 
generous child care benefits but lose money--serious money--down the 
road if women who have successfully made the transition from welfare to 
work go back to welfare after a year due to the lack of affordable 
quality child care.

  I do understand the daunting fiscal pressures the administration 
faced in drafting this plan, and I want to reiterate that, taken as a 
whole, I think it is a creative and constructive proposal. In the 
months ahead, we will be carefully examining each part of this 
proposal, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this 
exciting endeavor.
  This country, Mr. President, so great and strong, the most productive 
economic power in the world, surely has the will and the know-how to 
end welfare dependency. When we are finished with this process, I hope 
we will demand more of everyone in this country. I hope we will demand 
that each and every American accept responsibility for his and her 
actions. And I hope we will demand that our children not be raised in 
intolerable conditions.
  I know one thing: The American people are demanding that we reform 
welfare and that we do it right. We have a responsibility as elected 
representatives to respond to that demand, and I am eager to roll up my 
sleeves along with my colleagues to get started on this project.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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