[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 34 (Thursday, February 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2991-S2992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 HUNGER

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the other evening in a meeting in North 
Dakota with a couple hundred North Dakotans, mostly farmers, I asked to 
do something different. I asked if those who came to the meeting to 
participate would spend a little time talking about what is right, what 
works, which Government programs are good and address real needs in the 
right way?
  It was an interesting exercise. The sport in America, the pastime in 
our country that consumes the minutes of virtually every town meeting 
of every Member of Congress, is talking about what is wrong. I 
understand that. We should figure out what is wrong and make it right. 
But it is also important to understand that there are a lot of things 
done in this country that are good, that are worthwhile, that make this 
country better.
  There is, it seems to me, a requirement from time to time for us to 
stop and think about that. What is it that works? What is worthwhile?
  We have in this country today something called a Contract With 
America, which was offered by the majority party in the House of 
Representatives. In the last election, when the American people decided 
who would govern, 20 percent of those who were eligible to vote cast 
their vote for Republicans, 19 percent of those eligible to vote cast 
their vote for Democrats. In other words, the Republicans won 20 
percent to 19 percent, and 61 percent decided they would not bother to 
vote at all. That was the score. The 20-to-19 victory produced was 
called a mandate by some. This 1 percent mandate in the House of 
Representatives then provided us with something called a Contract With 
America. The Contract With America has some things in it that I support 
and some things that we on the Democratic side of the aisle have 
brought to the floor of the Senate previously. There are things in it 
that I think are bipartisan and that will enjoy bipartisan support. 
There are other things that cause me great concern, which is where I 
think we are going to be in some public policy aggressive discussions 
later this year.
  We are now discussing the constitutional amendment for a balanced 
budget on the floor of the Senate. Consuming a substantial amount of 
time in that debate is the notion that there are some people in this 
Congress who want to spend a lot of money and there are others who are 
conservative that do not.
  Something happened last week that once again belies that general 
notion. In the House of Representatives, the majority party, the 
conservatives, the ones who push the Contract With America, said they 
wanted to add $600 million in defense spending to a bill. The Secretary 
of Defense said, ``No, we do not want that. We do not need that. We do 
not support that.'' The conservatives said, ``No, no, no, we insist. We 
want $600 million more for you to spend.''
  The question is, Who is conservative and who is liberal? We have 
conservatives saying the Defense Department should be given more money 
than they want or need because that is where they want to spend money. 
Where did they get it? They said, ``We will not increase the deficit. 
We will take the money that's in an account for improvements for 
schools in low-income neighborhoods and we will use that to give the 
Defense Department money it says it does not need. We will cut job 
training for disadvantaged youth in order to give the Defense 
Department money the Defense Department says it does not want.'' This 
coming from conservatives.
  So, who is a liberal and who is a conservative? Who are the big 
spenders? Are the big spenders people who want to stuff another $600 
million over to the Pentagon when the people who run the Pentagon say, 
``We do not want it, we do not need it, we did not ask for it, do not 
give it to us?"
  I take from this lesson the general notion that is there is really 
not a plugged nickel's worth of difference between Republicans and 
Democrats, conservatives and liberals, in their appetite for spending 
money. Everyone wants to spend resources. The question is, on what? One 
wants to build star wars, another wants a feeding program for children. 
But both want to spend money.
  I think a century from now one will be able to look back at this 
society, at this country, at this group of people and make a reasonably 
good judgment about who we were and what we were about and what kind of 
people we were by how we decided to spend public resources.
  One will be able to look at the Federal budget 100 years from now and 
decide: Here is what the American people felt. Here is what they 
thought was important in the year 1995, because the Federal priorities 
on spending, the priorities of the Federal and State governments and 
the other uses of public funds establishes what our country and its 
people thought was important.
  There are some things in this country that are of national 
importance, that we have decided were important over 20 and 50 years. I 
have worked on one of these issues a great deal for many, many years. 
It is that issue--hunger--which persuaded me to come to the floor for 
just a couple of minutes today. I have traveled to refugee camps around 
the world. I chaired a task force on hunger with the chair of the 
Hunger Committee, the late Mickey Leland, when I was a Member of the 
House of Representatives. We have the winds of hunger blowing every day 
in every way in every country around the world--killing 40,000 to 
45,000 people a day, most of them children. And yet it is not a 
headline anywhere. It is just a persistent, chronic problem that 
imposes massive suffering on millions and millions of people. Hunger is 
not some mysterious disease for which we do not have a cure. We know 
what causes it. We know what cures it. Hunger is a very serious 
problem, and there is a national responsibility and a national 
requirement to respond to it.
  The national priority to respond to hunger has been manifested in 
things like the school hot lunch program, the WIC program, the Food 
Stamp Program, a whole range of programs that invest in those who find 
themselves with the misfortune of being poor and hungry, particularly 
in young people.
  We are told now in the Contract With America that the new way to 
respond to these issues is through block grants. Substantially cut the 
total amount of money for a number of programs, especially programs 
that affect the poor, the vulnerable, and the hungry. Substantially cut 
the money in the aggregate, roll it into one block grant, move it back 
to the States, and say to the States, ``Use it as you wish. Address 
these problems as you will. It is your choice.'' Presumably, the State 
governments are more efficient and more effective than the Federal 
Government.
  I will admit that there are many areas where the delivery of services 
by State governments can be more efficient and more effective. I also 
would say that, just because people talk about wanting to create block 
grants and use them as the device to save money, this does not in any 
way obliterate urgent national needs. Hunger and poverty are among 
those urgent national needs.
  Block grants will create a system, to ask the poor and the most 
vulnerable--and, unfortunately, especially the hungry and the 
children--to compete against a range of other urgent needs because, if 
we say we are going to roll all of these programs into a block 
[[Page S2992]] grant, there then is no national priority that says we 
are going to feed hungry kids. It becomes a decision by 50 different 
States about how much money they have to feed hungry kids versus the 
needs of all of other interests that are at their doorsteps asking for 
funds. Block grants themselves are not, in my judgment, the answer.
  Yes, we use block grants from time to time, and, yes, they can be 
effective in some cases. But, frankly, I am pretty unimpressed with 
some of these new Governors who are busy cutting taxes at the State 
level and puffing out their chests, walking around holding their 
suspenders, and boasting about what a great job they are doing cutting 
taxes back at home. Then they come here and walk through these doors 
with a tin cup asking if they can have money, no strings attached, in 
the form of block grants which eliminate the kind of things we have 
targeted as national needs, things that effectively respond to hunger 
in children. If they can get their hands on that money with no strings 
attached, then they have the resources to respond to the problems they 
have caused by their own tax cuts. I say, if they want resources, let 
them raise them.
  If you want to cause maximum waste in government, just decide to 
create a government in which you disconnect where you raise money from 
where you spend it. Decide to raise it here and spend it there, I 
guarantee you it will be free money in the eyes of those who spend it. 
You can look at program after program for examples. Go back to the Law 
Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAA) and ask yourselves if some of the 
most egregious wastes of Federal money did not occur under its block 
grants. I have some specific examples I could use, but I will do that 
at a later time.
  The point I want to make today is that it might be out of fashion to 
be poor. It might be out of fashion to be hungry. There may not be a 
lot of high-paid lobbyists around supporting the interests of the 
hungry, but that does not mean that they are not people with compelling 
needs, and that does not mean that we do not have a responsibility as a 
nation to respond to their needs.
  The young boy named David Bright came to Congress one day. He was 10 
years old, living with his mother and a brother and a sister in a 
homeless shelter in New York, lost, troubled, living in squalid 
poverty. He talked about the rats in the shelters. Then he said 
something I have never forgotten. He said, ``No 10-year-old boy like me 
should have to put his head down on his desk at school in the afternoon 
because it hurts to be hungry.'' No 10-year-old boy should have to put 
his head down on his desk at school in the afternoon because it hurts 
to be hungry.
  If anyone in this Chamber or in the House Chamber or elsewhere can 
look in the eyes of 10-year-old kids who are hungry because their 
family does not have enough money to buy groceries, their family does 
not have a home, their family does not have enough to eat and say that 
there is not a national need, not an urgent priority, you do not rank 
up here, you go down and compete someplace for some block grant that we 
gave to a Governor who talks about cutting taxes back home, then this 
is a debate I am anxious to have on this floor.
  We need to debate what our national priorities are. Yes, we need 
incentives to tell people who are down and out, ``Here is a stepladder 
to get up and going again.'' We need incentives to say, ``You go from 
welfare to work.'' We need all of those things. I will be one 
supporting others on this floor who say, ``Let us change the welfare 
system.'' But I will not be part and parcel of that discussion and 
decide, as some have, that this is a kind of a survival-of-the-fittest 
society where, if you are poor, you do not matter, and if you are a kid 
who is hungry, you are not a national need.
  When I see what happens over in the House, where they say, ``We are 
conservatives. We think that the Government wastes too much money, and 
so here is 600 million bucks we want to stick into the Pentagon,'' and 
the Pentagon says, ``We do not want it and we do not need it and please 
do not give it to us,'' and the House says, ``Sorry, but we are going 
to give it to you anyway, and we will take the money from a program 
that helps poor kids,'' then I think something is wrong with the 
thinking around here. That's why I hope we can have legislation and 
substantial debate about what this Nation's urgent needs and priorities 
are.
  As we do that, I at least hope all of us will understand this 
country's kids deserve to have a prominent place in the array of 
national needs that this Congress decides to establish. We have spent a 
long time looking at this country's problems and trying to address 
them. No one here, I think, has decided to do that in any other manner 
but with good will and with their best judgment. We have made some 
mistakes along the way. There is no question about that. But we have 
also done some good things, and I would hate very much to see this wave 
of emotion about the Contract With America sweep out the door with some 
of the inefficient things that we certainly should change a set of good 
programs and a set of urgent national priorities that respond to the 
interests of the most vulnerable in this country, our children.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
recognized to speak for 10 minutes as if in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, before I begin the substance of my 
remarks, I would like to comment briefly on the comments of the Senator 
from North Dakota. In case he missed an election last November 8, the 
American people want to do things differently from what was just 
espoused by the Senator from North Dakota. It is not old fashioned to 
want to have a change in the way that we address the problems affecting 
America. It is not old fashioned to recognize that the programs so 
greatly espoused and seeking to be continued by the Senator from North 
Dakota have failed.
  I would urge him to consider the words of our new Congressman from 
Oklahoma, Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr., who said, ``We don't measure 
compassion by the number of people who are on welfare. We measure 
compassion by the number of people we can get over the welfare.''
  The spirited defense of the status quo and business as usual just 
articulated by the Senator from North Dakota is ample evidence to me 
that he has not gotten the message of November 8 as the American people 
want things done differently, not business as usual. I believe that, if 
the Senator in North Dakota would check around, he would find that the 
overwhelming majority of Americans want the Contract With America 
passed.
  They want the Contract With America because they lost confidence in 
the way that the Senator from North Dakota and the leadership on the 
other side of the aisle was running America. They are totally 
dissatisfied. They want change. They are going to get change. I am 
proud of the job that is being done by my colleagues in the House and 
the courage that they are showing in taking on some sacred cows.
  If the Senator from North Dakota thinks this old line about being 
cruel to poor people and depriving food from people's mouths is going 
to work, my message to him is, it ``ain't'' going to work.
  I also look forward to a spirited debate and discussion with him 
because we have to find new ways to attack old problems, rather than 
going back to the old ways of spending more money on programs that have 
failed to fulfill our obligation to those in our society.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. McCAIN. I only have 10 minutes. I will be glad to yield to the 
Senator from North Dakota at the expiration of my time, if I have any 
remaining.

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