[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 28 (Monday, February 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1682-H1687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bonilla). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the gentlewoman from Hawaii [Mrs. Mink] is 
recognized for 33 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. I thank the Speaker for affording us this 
opportunity to address a subject which is extremely important and 
critical.
  We have seen this week the opening of the markup in the subcommittee 
on the House Committee on Ways and Means of the welfare reform bill. We 
have had a lot of discussion about the issues surrounding welfare 
reform. Last week we saw the Republican version of their Contract With 
America with regard to family responsibility, and we saw also the 
response on the Democratic side with respect to what they would like to 
see in terms of a reform measure.
  We are here tonight because we believe that voices of the women and 
children who will be primarily affected by what this Congress does in 
reforming welfare have not been heard and probably will not be heard 
from during the course of this debate. It is imperative that as we 
consider this legislation, we think of it in terms of the women and the 
children.
  I am very happy tonight, at this very late hour, to be joined by my 
distinguished colleague, the gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. 
Clayton], who has been a great leader on this subject and whose voice 
continues to be heard for the women and children of this country. I am 
happy to yield to my friend.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Hawaii for 
yielding me the time and thank her for arranging this special order.
  I would just like to enter into a discussion with you and raise a 
couple of concerns that I have and perhaps have you to explain your 
knowledge of the Personal Responsibility Act.
  If the block grant goes, and it appears that we are going to have 
that structure for a number of programs that are going to be put in a 
basket called welfare reform that will allow different ways of 
providing services. I am particularly concerned about the nutritional 
part.
  Let me first say, I support welfare reform. I think our welfare 
system does not work well. It does not encourage self-sufficiency and 
we need to make sure the system works well for the recipients as well 
as for the government itself. So we need welfare
 reform. But we do not need welfare reform just for change sake itself. 
We need it for a better system, for a system that is improved, a system 
that is obviously going to serve people better.

  In the areas of nutrition, we are not necessarily perfect but those 
are areas where we help people. We have food stamps, the school lunch 
program, we have the WIC program, the commodity program, the senior 
citizens program, all of those programs which speak to the needs 
certainly of people who are in need but also speak to needs of people 
who may be working.
  For the food stamp program, 20 percent of the food stamp program is 
received by persons who are working families. My concern is if we 
block-grant that program, not only do we drastically reduce the amount 
of moneys that will be available but also we put the States themselves 
into the business of setting national nutritional standards. These 
programs have worked well to make sure children are fed and are 
prevented from disease.
  If now we block-grant it, does that not mean that each State would 
have the responsibility of setting nutritional and dietary standards 
for the implementation of those programs.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. The gentlewoman is absolutely correct. Not only 
will the States be given the responsibility of setting up the criteria 
and the eligibility standards, but indeed they could move the moneys 
around within that category and, as I read the legislation, even take 
out 20 percent from one block grant to put into another program.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. So it is possible that all that money would not go to 
feed the hungry, feed children or seniors, they could do other things 
with it.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Exactly. They could do other things with it. It 
seems to me that in the area of nutrition in particular, Congress has 
been very, very careful in looking at the needs of specific groups of 
individuals in our society, children in the schools for school lunch, 
senior citizens in their centers, in congregate dining programs and 
[[Page H1683]] meals on wheels and for the tiny infants, the women-
infant-children's program has been established for that specific 
targeted group of people.
                              {time}  2300

  And the commodities program has been a kind of a consolidated 
farmers' surplus interest program together with matching up the needs 
of the poor in our society, and food stamps, we all know, has been a 
Godsend to millions of families whose nutrition for their families has 
been supplemented because of their ability to exchange their earnings 
or money in exchange for a greater value of food coupons.
  So of all of the block granting that has been recommended under the 
Contract With America, it seems to me the one that is least justified 
is the suggestion of putting all of these groups together and allowing 
the States to pick and choose which programs they want to support and 
which ones they do not. I think it would be a real tragic mistake, and 
I hope that the committee ultimately will not do that.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. One of the things we want to emphasize is that those 
nutritional programs are not only there to speak to the need, because 
people are poor, but also to speak to their dietary deficiency and, as 
a result of that, they have found that they have opportunities to 
address diseases, they have opportunities to address deficiencies of 
growth and development, and if you remove that, some of the nutritional 
achievements we have made, WIC, for pregnant women and mothers who are 
nursing, those achievements, I think, will be lost. We will retrogress; 
rather, we will have a system, one system in North Carolina, another in 
Mississippi, another in Hawaii. Now we have some uniform standards 
where we are moving all Americans to a standard that perhaps can 
improve their health.
  For one thing, I think that is a tremendous benefit that we can move 
in that area.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Our reluctance in not supporting the block grant 
is not because we do not have confidence in local officials in their 
being able to perceive what the needs are of their constituents. Their 
constituents are our constituents.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Absolutely.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. So I have full confidence in my State and local 
elected officials to know what is appropriate for our community. But I 
also believe that the Congress of the United States has an important 
responsibility in establishing the priorities, understanding what the 
needs are of Americans all across the country, and coming up with 
programs that match surplus commodities and requirements of our farming 
communities. That is how the Food Stamp Program got started.
  I was here when it happened. Congresswoman Lenore Sullivan was the 
one who put it all together, from the great State of Missouri, and it 
has worked, and it has been a boon to the farmers of this country, and 
it has met a tremendous need in all of our poorer communities.
  So it is tragic that in formulating this concept of welfare reform 
that they have sought to pool this money and disregard the initial 
intent of Congress in formulating these targeted special programs. Our 
concerns are concerns, I am sure, that are shared by most of the 
Members on the minority side, and I hope that when this debate reaches 
the floor, we will have opportunities to debate this issue fully, to 
offer amendments to correct this major oversight.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. I am receiving a tremendous amount of mail both in the 
areas of school lunch and in the areas of senior citizen programs.
  We know the value of having it with young children and pregnant women 
in terms of those areas, so I would hope, as we debate that, we will 
have people on both sides of the aisle seeing the value of this 
deliberation and trying to salvage this program and protect the 
nutritional value of this program as well as the integrity of these 
programs, because the nutrition programs by and large have worked, and 
we ought to celebrate those things that have worked, correct those 
things that have not, and reform where we are improving the system.
  I want to commend the gentlewoman from Hawaii for her fine work and 
leadership.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. I thank the gentlewoman for participating this 
evening in the special order.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my distinguished colleague, the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Kildee], who is the ranking member of one of my 
subcommittees, the Educational Economic Opportunities Committee of the 
House.
  Mr. KILDEE. I support the gentlewoman on her position on nutrition. 
School lunch, school breakfast are extremely important programs. They 
will all be apparently put into this nutrition block, although we have 
not been given the information as to how this will be done. They say it 
will be somewhat separate, but we know we have so many needs in that 
School Lunch Program. We have different students, those that get the 
free lunch, the reduced lunch, the paying students, and we have just 
finished and completed a deep study of the nutritional values of those 
lunches.
  I am afraid this will be lost in this block grant also, because they 
have not shared with us yet what they intend to do with the School 
Lunch Program.


             the persian gulf war: we voted our consciences

  But I came over here tonight primarily to speak on another subject 
very briefly, and I really appreciate the fact that the gentlewoman has 
yielded to me.
  While I was sitting in my office listening to the monitor, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham], my good friend, and he is a 
very good friend of mine, I have great respect for him, from San Diego, 
stated that the Democrats, the majority party, had turned their back on 
our troops in the Persian Gulf. That really hurt me, particularly 
coming from a friend like the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Cunningham].
  The gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] and I voted 
differently on that war. We both voted our consciences. The position I 
took was shared by
 Gen. Colin Powell, a great American. I voted my conscience, as the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] voted his conscience, and by 
voting my conscience, I was not turning my back on our troops.

  As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, when the war began in Iraq, the 
first person who stood at that podium right there the following 
morning, the first person was Dale Kildee from Michigan saying that 
while we had disagreed on policy, now that the war had started we 
should give our troops our full and complete support. We were not 
turning our backs on our troops.
  I took particular offense, because that statement came from a friend 
of mine, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham]. I took another 
offense, too, Mr. Speaker. I have two sons who are lieutenants in the 
U.S. Army. My one son is beginning Ranger training. When he finishes 
that, he will go to Korea.
  My votes on the policy of how we deploy our troops do not make me 
less concerned about the safety of our troops, and I would hope that in 
the next 2 days as we debate the defense of this country that we not 
question the patriotism of one another or the support of our troops.
  The 440 Members of this House, 435 voting Members and 5 nonvoting 
Members, are loyal Americans who want nothing to happen to our troops. 
I want all the sons and daughters of America who serve in the Armed 
Forces to be treated as I would want my own two sons to be treated, 
with full support.
  But because we may disagree, as we disagreed on the Persian Gulf war, 
does not make one less loyal or less American or less supportive of our 
troops.
  Now, I know the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] did not 
realize the full ramifications of his statement, but that debate we had 
was one of the best debates, no, not one of the best debates, the very 
best debate that I have heard in my over 18 years in the Congress of 
the United States, and that is why this is a deliberative body.
  Because someone may vote one way and another another way should not 
call into question the patriotism or loyalty or support of the our 
troops.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. I thank the gentleman for his very strong 
refutation of our colleague from California, because I was here on the 
floor and heard those statements likewise.
  Resuming my special order, which is to bring to focus some of our 
concerns 
[[Page H1684]] about the welfare debate, I do so tonight even though 
the hour is late, because tomorrow is a very special day. There is to 
be a special program on the Hill, Welfare reform with a heart, children 
speaking for themselves.

                              {time}  2310

  This will occur on Capitol Hill. It will be first initiated by a 
press conference at 9 o'clock in the morning in the Rayburn Building, 
followed from 10 o'clock until 2:30 with children and youth from the 
District of Columbia coming in and participating during those several 
hours, and what they will be doing is reading letters and speaking out, 
presenting testimony about their own experiences as children in a 
welfare family.
  One of the real tragedies in a very esteemed institution like the 
Congress of the United States in the hearings that we call in our 
various committees, and this is not unique to the current majority 
because it was also a situation when the Democrats were in the 
majority, that we have these hearings called, and experts from various 
fields are called: economists, professors, physicians, doctors, 
psychiatrists, lawyers, whatever, are called to testify, and we very 
seldom ever have the opportunity to hear from the very persons who are 
affected by the programs that we are debating, and in this case we are 
talking about welfare families and the children, about 5 million adults 
and 9 million children, and I am here tonight to speak specifically for 
the women and children.
  There are 49 women Members of the House of Representatives, but very 
few of us are on the committees that will be making these decisions, 
and therefore it is important to focus our attention on some of these 
matters.
  Today there was a press conference which was called by the Council of 
Presidents, which is a bipartisan coalition of the leaders of 
approximately 100 national groups, and they have formulated a position 
on welfare which I would like to take the time tonight to read and 
explain. Heidi Hartman, who leads the Institute for Women's Policy 
Research, was the guiding force in putting together the coalition on 
this subject. We heard from the NOW Legal Defense Fund. We heard from 
Eliza Sanchez, who was the president of Manna, an organization that has 
been working pay equity. There was a representative from Planned 
Parenthood, from the National Women's Law Center, and from Wider 
Opportunities for Women. These were some of the groups of the 100.
  And this is important because women have come together to put 
together what they believe ought to be
 the central points of any discussion having to do with welfare reform, 
not the myths, not the stereotypes, not the punitive aspects of trying 
to moralize and change human behavior, but what is truly the 
responsibility of the Federal Government with respect to poor families. 
Poverty in America is a condition which affects all peoples across the 
country, and we need to focus this issue on the question of poverty.

  Let me read for my colleagues what the Coalition of Presidents said 
today at the press conference. It said, and I quote:

 National Women's Pledge on Welfare Reform, Principles for Eliminating 
                                Poverty

       We support welfare reform that will do more than maintain 
     families in poverty. It should help them make a permanent 
     escape from poverty. The vast majority of adults who receive 
     assistance from AFDC are women. As leaders of women's groups 
     in the United States, we state unequivocally that women who 
     receive welfare benefits have the same rights as all women 
     and have the same goals for their families. We cannot allow 
     their rights to be curtailed because they are poor, nor their 
     values impugned because they need help to support their 
     families. Welfare has served as an essential safety net for 
     poor women and their children. Many women use welfare at 
     various points throughout their lives because they have few 
     other resources to tide them over during one-time or 
     recurring events such as illness, unemployment, childbirth, 
     domestic violence, or divorce. We cannot allow the guarantee 
     of minimum survival assistance to be removed or reduced by 
     caps on spending, time limits, child exclusion policy, or 
     other means. We cannot allow the Federal Government to 
     abandon its commitment to a basic safety net for poor mothers 
     and their children. We oppose punitive measures that assume 
     the behavior attitudes and value of women on welfare are the 
     problem. Welfare mothers have not abandoned their children. 
     They are struggling to hold their families together with 
     extremely limited resources. Many are already working or 
     looking for work in order to raise their families' incomes. 
     We believe the problem lies rather in the labor market where 
     the women face enormous barriers, including gender and age-
     based discrimination that limits their opportunities, 
     unstable jobs that pay low wages and the lack of health and 
     retirement benefits, inaccessible jobs, and no jobs at all. 
     In addition, lack of educational opportunity, inadequate 
     support services and benefits, lack of child support from 
     fathers and punitive welfare regulations have made it 
     impossible for poor women to get ahead.

  That is the end of their opening paragraph outlining their principles 
for eliminating poverty and the basis upon which the debate on welfare 
reform, in their view and mine, should be considered.
  I think it is very important to recognize that, when this debate 
started over a year ago, and the Republican Party offered their 
proposal, and the President offered his, we were not in this debate to 
try to find ways to cut the funding, to address the issue at another 
level in terms of deficit reduction or trying to reduce the debt. As a 
matter of fact, the Republican proposal at that time for welfare reform 
included some $12 billion of additional funding which in their program 
was required in order to meet the requirements of education, training, 
counseling and, most importantly, child care provisions in order for 
women to go to get an education or training, and, in the final 
analysis, to hold a job child care is essential.
  The President's proposal also had very strong ingredients of funding, 
I believe at the level of around $7 billion to provide for education, 
training, counseling and the important element of child care.
  The strangest thing happened over the last year. Now we are looking 
at proposals which eliminate the concept of Federal responsibility for 
providing educational opportunities and training, counseling, helping 
to find a job, and when they do, to have the necessary child care 
provisions in the programs. The Republican proposal leaves it out. The 
Democratic proposal has not yet formulated exactly how they are going 
to fund the additional needs. They have said, well, the States say they 
can do it all, and, therefore, let us see what the Governors can come 
up with. It seems to me that, unless we deal with the subject of 
welfare reform with the seriousness and earnestness of trying to help 
these families and not punish them and push them off as if they do not 
exist, then there is no possibility that we are going to be able to 
reduce funding as is currently being proposed by the Republican bill in 
the Committee on Ways and Means.
                              {time}  2320

  What is required is an honest, deliberate decision, that women on 
welfare first of all want to work. There is all kinds of evidence and 
empirical statistical studies that show that women on welfare want to 
work. The problem with the system right now is that when they are in 
need and apply for welfare, there is no one there to meet them at the 
door and to help them try to solve their family situation, find them a 
job, take them into training or education. They are simply accepted 
into the system, given assistance, and more or less left to their 
devices.
  Furthermore, the system also punishing women on welfare, because if 
they have the initiative to go out to work, to find a job, then they 
are immediately cut off from cash assistance, frequently they have to 
lose food stamps, and perhaps even get off of Medicaid health care.
  So the burdens on welfare families are tremendous and the government, 
the State, and Federal Government has not offered them the support.
  Now for the first time it seems to me at least a year ago that both 
sides of the aisle looked at this honestly and said we are going to 
change the welfare system, we are going to change the way that the 
Government deals with welfare families by initiating an offer to help 
for education and training and job counseling, and we are going to 
provide child care. And this has to be done with an understanding it is 
going to cost additional sums of money in order to implement.
  So what do we find today in the Republican proposal? We have a 
notion 
[[Page H1685]] that they will also do away with entitlements. There 
will no longer be a requirement that the Federal Government will 
guarantee some level of cash assistance to a child whose parent is 
without work and in poverty.
  Under the current system, for the past 60 years Congress and this 
country have said no poor child should be left hungry, without food and 
shelter and clothing and medical care. A country as great as America 
cannot afford to let a child die in starvation and in ill health and in 
disease. This is a fundamental responsibility of the Government.
  So 60 years ago we established this program of aid to dependent 
children, and we guaranteed that every child in America that met the 
eligibility criteria of poverty and being in a family where there was 
no person able to work, that the Government would find same way to 
assist that family with a cash assistance and other supportive 
programs.
  We do not have a national program under which a set figure of money 
is given to every family pro rata for every child in America. It is 
instead a collaborative program with the States, with the States 
participating in a 50-50 matching situation.
  So we have States like mine that come up with a cash assistance 
program well above most of the other States in the country, somewhere 
around $600 per family of three. At the lower end of the 50 States is 
Mississippi, where the contribution by the Federal and the State is 
$120 for a family of three. So there is this huge range of difference 
in terms of what the welfare program means in the different States.
  The States have provided this range of difference. So we are not 
saying at this juncture that the Federal Government ought to require a 
certain set figure. I wish we could. But certainly we should not at 
this juncture be removing the entitlement assurance guarantee that 
every child in this country has from the U.S. Government. But that is 
precisely what the Committee on Ways and Means subcommittee is now 
considering, and I think that that is a very, very grave mistake.
  If they adopt this block grant approach, taking the average of 
spending for the program back to 1991 to 1993 and averaging it out and 
saying this is the amount of money that the States are going to receive 
based upon the prior experience, then it makes no adjustments for 
increases in numbers of families or changes of the economy, recessions, 
greater unemployment, closures of companies and major corporations in a 
certain area that would increase the numbers eligible for assistance.
  So I think that one of the fundamental issues that this House will 
have to face is the question of whether we retain the idea of an 
entitlement or whether we go the way of a block grant, which will 
create enormous burdens upon the States, and eventually I think come 
back to the Congress for supplemental support and supplemental 
assistance.
  It seems to me we ought to decide right now that one of the basic 
virtues of the current program is the fact that there is this entitled 
notion and it ought to be retained.
  There are other proposals that are in the wind
   with respect to the Committee on Ways and Means proposals. They have 
to do with cutting off families after 2 years if they are not able to 
find work. There is no support program to help individuals find a job, 
no support program for education and training that is specified in the 
legislation, and I think that it would be very, very harmful for many 
thousands of families who will find themselves without assistance 
unless we provide that kind of help.

  There is this notion that is very, very difficult to refute, and I 
hear it from my constituents, as I am sure most of my colleagues do 
from theirs, and there is this impression that people on welfare stay 
there for enormous lengths of time and that this is a problem that must 
be rooted out, and one way of doing that is to make a work requirement 
that is short, as in this 2-year proposal by the Republicans, and on 
the Democratic side, where they are required to come in with some sort 
of a work strategy.
  But I think that what is so difficult to deal with is this impression 
that people have that people on welfare are in for enormous lengths of 
time.
  The truth of the matter is, and when you look at the data and 
statistics, persons that come on welfare are out of there, at least 
half of them, are out of welfare after only 11 months.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bonilla). The time initially allocated 
to the gentlewoman from Hawaii has expired. However, because the 
majority leader has not designated a person to be recognized for the 
balance of the time remaining, the gentlewoman from Hawaii may proceed 
for up to 27 more minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. The statistics are there. The census data has 
been evaluated. All the records of the department have been researched, 
and we find the outstanding conclusion that the majority of parents who 
come into welfare are there less than a year. Eleven months is the 
average. This means they are there for temporary assistance, the vast 
majority of them. And if the Government had been more ready to assist 
them, provide them with some assistance in locating a better job that 
paid higher wages or helped them with medical care, which in many cases 
is the reason for families coming on welfare, the place that worked 
that provided perhaps just a bare minimum wage salary did not include 
health care provisions, so the moment when a child became sick, they 
had to quit work and come back on the welfare system. But the moment 
that the illness passed and the family was together again, that parent 
would be out there looking for work.
  The idea that is out there which is so pervasive that people on 
welfare are unwilling to work simply is not true. So I therefore 
support the idea of a work oriented system, because I believe that that 
truthfully meets the needs of people on welfare. They need assistance, 
they need education, they need training, they need job counseling. 
Somebody has to go out there to help them obtain a job which can 
support their families beyond what they were getting on welfare in 
terms of cash assistance.
                              {time}  2330

  We see that the vast majority of families, actually 80 percent of the 
families on welfare, are out of the welfare system in a 2-year period, 
more than 50 percent in 11 months and 80 percent in the 2-year period.
  Therefore, we are dealing with a highly transitional group of 
individuals. There are some that find it very difficult to find a job, 
or because of their lack of education and training and having no job 
skills, have extreme difficulties in locating work. However, the vast 
majority of individuals on welfare, roughly about 80 percent, from the 
figures that I have seen, are in the system only for a short period of 
time, 2 years and less, and have, on the average, 4 years of work 
experience.
  Because that is the reality, it seems to me that the Federal 
Government, with a strong, integrated, personally adaptive work 
training, work counseling kind of strategy, can help these families get 
off of welfare even faster and into a job that pays more than the 
welfare support check was paying them.
  Mr. Speaker, this leads me to the other issue, and that has to do 
with the minimum wage question. It is vital, Mr. Speaker, that we deal 
with the minimum wage issue part and parcel to the welfare discussion. 
I know that the Republican leadership has discarded the whole idea of 
getting into minimum wage. However, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to be 
realistic in terms of doing something to change the whole system of 
welfare, we have to be willing to look at exactly what the minimum wage 
situation does. It just oppresses single-family situations far greater 
than families that have two working parents. But in the single family 
situation, working for a minimum wage dooms that family to perpetual 
poverty. That is the tragedy.
  Mr. Speaker, when we look at the statistics, we find that over 60 
percent of the people who are working today for minimum wage or less 
are women. There are about 4 million persons in America that work at 
$4.25 or less, and of that number, 2,603,000 are women; 1,000,078 of 
these women are wives or single-parent heads of families. Therefore, 
increasing the minimum wage by 90 cents over a 2-year period will help 
[[Page H1686]] tremendously the women and children of these families, 
well over 1 million families where both parents work, or the single 
family situation.
  Mr. Speaker, of the total number of women who work for minimum wage 
or less, 80 percent are white women. Twelve percent are black women, 
and 8 percent are Hispanics. Contrary, again, to the myths of most of 
our thinking, Mr. Speaker, the families that would be most benefitted 
by an increase in the minimum wage are the white, Caucasian families in 
this country. Eighty percent of the total number of women are white, as 
I said.
  Mr. Speaker, if we raise the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour, where 
families now only earn $8,000-plus a year, the increase of 90 cents an 
hour would raise the annual earning to $10,300-plus dollars, an 
increase of $1,714. That is a tremendous increase. Forty-five cents 
each year for 2 years, raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15, 
will lift millions of families out of poverty, and will be one of the 
important steps that we could take to help ensure that families on 
welfare will not come back onto welfare because their earnings are 
insufficient to sustain their family.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the ironies is that in the early deliberations of 
the whole welfare discussion, we adopted the notion that if a welfare 
family went
 out and got a job, they would immediately lose all their benefits. It 
was a disincentive to work.

  We want to make sure now that when we are talking about welfare 
reform, that such disincentives are removed. We want to make sure that 
there are enough incentives there to make it attractive for women in 
particular to go out and hold a job, and to support their family on 
this self-sufficiency model which has been discussed.
  I am all for that, Mr. Speaker. I want to see opportunities made 
possible to these families all across America. That is what this debate 
ought to be about, enlarging opportunities, not in punishing and 
establishing all of these negative restrictions in terms of who can 
receive a benefit and who cannot.
  Mr. Speaker, the AFDC has also another very, very difficult myth out 
there. A lot of attention has been placed on the factor of women coming 
onto welfare and having another child while on welfare.
  One of the punitive suggestions is to deny that child born to that 
parent while she was on welfare from any cash support whatsoever. I 
cannot think of anything more cruel and inhuman than a suggestion to 
punish a child.
  The statistics reveal again, from the Census Bureau, from the 
Department of Health and Human Services, from all the people who 
collect data, that the number of children born to these families on 
welfare is no different than the average family in America.
  As a matter of fact, most families on welfare have two children, and 
that is it. Very, very small numbers of persons on welfare have more 
than two children. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, an even smaller percentage 
of individuals on welfare have a child while on welfare.
  The suggestion that welfare mothers will be encouraged to have 
another child because they can increase their cash benefits is 
ridiculous, because the average additional cash assistance ranges 
around $45 to $65 across the States. I cannot imagine any person 
deliberately deciding they should have another baby for that amount of 
money. In point of fact, that does not occur.
  Mr. Speaker, the other aspect which is in the Republican plan is to 
make it impossible for teenagers who have children to receive any 
welfare assistance unless they live at home with their parents or with 
another qualified adult, or if they subsequently get married to the 
father of that child.
  Such a prohibition of cash benefits aimed at the child, because it 
was born out of wedlock, is simply a concept and principle that I 
cannot understand or accept.
                              {time}  2340

  Furthermore, in looking at studies, many of the lawyers and others 
who have studied this issue maintain that it is unconstitutional 
because it creates a category within a benefit situation which clearly 
has no justification whatsoever.
  And so I am hopeful that even if the Congress should put such a 
provision in, that the case will be taken to courts and the Supreme 
Court decisions which have been rendered on this subject, starting from 
1973, case in New Jersey, the New Jersey Welfare Rights Organization 
versus Cahill held that the denial of such rights was a violation of 
the 14th amendment, the equal protection clause.
  The court in 1972 in Webber vs. Aetna Casualty said,

       The status of illegitimacy has expressed through ages 
     society's condemnation of irresponsible liaisons beyond the 
     bonds of marriage, but visiting this condemnation on the head 
     of an infant is illogical and unjust. Moreover, imposing 
     disabilities on the illegitimate child is contrary to the 
     basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear 
     some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing. 
     Obviously no child is responsible for his or her birth.

  There is a series of other cases that relate to this point.
  So I feel quite confident that the legal scholars who have brought 
this matter to the attention of the Congress know what they are talking 
about, and so if this provision which denies a child from birth to age 
18 from receiving any benefits whatsoever under the welfare system, 
then surely someone will take it to court and will prevail and such a 
harmful provision will be stricken from this bill.
  Let me in closing call the Members' attention to a very important 
report that came across my desk. It is produced by the Center on 
Hunger, Poverty and Nutritional Policy at Tufts University. I believe 
all Members received this booklet. It is appropriately in lovely pink 
color for Valentine's Day. It was published by J. Larry Brown and it is 
a review of evidence on welfare reform.
  He points out in his book that they collected a very large number of 
people to collaborate on this study and made some very, very important 
conclusions which I would like to briefly outline.
  The 1995 Tufts University center report which is entitled ``Key 
Welfare Reform Issues, the Empirical Evidence.''
  The report presents scientific data that, one, welfare benefits do 
not cause the growth in single parent families and single parent 
families are not the major factor of the growth of poverty in America. 
It urges that Congress avoid the tragic mistake of adopting pseudo-
reforms that stem from political ideology rather than empirical 
evidence. It advises that if we wish to break the cycle of poverty, we 
not be guided by the wish to punish poor women whose behavior we wish 
to chastise.
  In 1994, 76 researchers and scholars in the field of welfare issued a 
policy statement regarding the empirical facts that they found in their 
research which challenged the political leaders in terms of the 
assumptions that they were making in presenting their legislation.
  Fact No. 1. Growth in the number of single parent families has been 
primarily among the non-poor.
  From 1970 to 1990, the number of female-headed households increased 
from 6 million to 11 million, mostly among the non-poor. Sixty-five 
percent of the increase in single parent families were not living in 
poverty. For instance, in 1993, there were 3.5 million unmarried non-
poor couple households and one-third of them had at least one child. 
This family would fall under a single parent definition. Changes in 
welfare laws will not affect the mores and lifestyles of these 
families. In fact the Contract of America will give these families a 
$500 tax credit for each child regardless of their marital status.
  Fact No. 2. The Census Bureau found that economic factors such as low 
wage jobs accounted for approximately 85 percent of the child poverty 
rate. A 1993 Census Bureau study showed that the poverty rate was due 
mainly to changes in the labor market and the structure of the economy. 
Bureau of Labor statistics data from 1973 to 1990 revealed that the 
proportion of persons employed in service industries grew from 70 to 77 
percent. And this is the lowest wage sector of our economy.
  Between 1960 and 1980, the proportion of women in the labor market 
increased from 40 to 61 percent ages 16 to 34.
  The desire to have women work is limited to only poor women with 
dependent children to teach them
 responsibility. For non-poor women, the need to remain in the home to 
nurture their children to wholesome maturity is still 
[[Page H1687]] the social ethic of our times. Forcing women to work is 
destructive of family values.
  That is the essence of the report of the Tufts University which I 
commend to my colleagues to read. It has been delivered to your offices 
sometime in late January.
  There are many issues that need to be discussed. One that I have 
championed almost my entire political career is the need for child 
care. When I was in Congress in the 1960's and 1970's, we did put 
together a comprehensive child care bill which passed both the House 
and the Senate, but it was vetoed by President Nixon. Since that time, 
there has not been a major effort to insist that there was a government 
responsibility for child care. But now that we are again debating this 
issue of welfare, it seems to me that we cannot succeed in this area of 
welfare reform requiring work as a criteria for continued participation 
in the system unless we systematically and with full intent and 
knowledge subscribe to the understanding that women cannot be asked to 
go to work if they have small children unless we have child care 
provided to that family. It is unrealistic, it simply is unworkable.
  And so the idea of work for welfare is a great concept. The idea of 
education and training in order that people could work to get off 
welfare is a marvelous idea. But none of these things can work unless 
that family has support in terms of someone to take care of their 
children while they are at work.
  Women's work at home is a valuable contribution to our society. 
Women's responsibility in the home has always been accorded a place on 
the pedestal of our society at large. It continues to be debated as to 
whether some women ought to work or ought not to work. But the issue 
has always been a matter of choice. Women choose to work. Women ought 
to have equal opportunities to work. And when they do work, they ought 
to be accorded the same privileges of advancement, promotions and so 
forth and their pay ought to be the same, and there should be no gender 
discrimination. That is the ethic which has evolved up to the present 
time.
  But when we are dealing with the welfare community, we are adopting a 
new frenzy of requirement to work. I can support a requirement to work, 
but it must always be in addition and connected with a concept of child 
care.
  That brings me to the final concluding thought that I want to leave. 
Welfare reform is about children. It is not about punishing adults. It 
is about how this Nation is going to care for its children. It is going 
to provide the support, health care, housing, food, nutrition, clothing 
and a loving family environment. That is what poor children should 
expect as the policy and principle that guides this government.

                              {time}  2350

  And so as we look at this legislation, I prevail upon this House to 
put aside all of these myths, all of these things that have brought us 
to this point of discussing welfare reform, and never forget that the 
people on welfare that were thought of, that created the AFDC program 
in the first place 60 years ago, were the children.
  America was concerned about the fate of these children in poverty, 
and they established the entitlement program where every child could at 
least have some assurance of care and food and nutrition and a family 
environment, and I hope that as we move on this debate that the 
children will be the primary concern that we have.
  If we are successful in keeping our eye on focus on the children, I 
believe that the legislation that we will put through will be of 
benefit to these families and will lift them out of poverty and will 
make their situations far better than what they are enduring today 
under their current conditions.
  I urge this House to remember tomorrow is Valentine's Day and that 
the welfare children will be here, will want to have someone to talk 
to. Please, stop by the give them your loving attention and concern.


                          ____________________