[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 49 (Thursday, March 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3318-H3325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           SAVE THE CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for yielding. And I 
am sorry the prior gentleman would not yield to me, because I had 
several things that I thought would have been a very interesting 
discussion.
  I heard what he said about State and local government and that is 
where the money is raised, but he is asking us to raise it at the 
Federal level and then give it back to them to spend however they want 
with no strings attached.
  And so I think I am the one standing here as the real conservative. I 
figure if they want to spend money with no strings attached, they ought 
to raise the money. Why in the world are we going through this system 
and then going up and down the elevator?
  I think if we are raising the money here and we are giving it to 
localities to spend, we should be saying there should be nutritional 
guidelines. We should be saying to farmers who get subsidies from us 
that they ought to have a buy crop insurance rather than wait and if 
there is a disaster, the Federal Government bails them out.
  If the State and local government want total say in how they spend 
money, then they have the right to go raise that money and they are on 
their own. So I found that really amazing.
  I also wanted to point out to him, he was citing Governor Engler of 
Michigan. And on the wire service at this moment there is a story about 
Governor Engler saying that conservative micromanagement is just as bad 
as liberal mircomanagement. And he is pointing out that between the 
prison bill and the Republican welfare bill and many other things, they 
are micromanaging, but only they are micromanaging in their way. So let 
us clear the air of some of this politics.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to rise and say a few things. No. 1, I have on 
this Save the Children scarf. A lot of us are going to be wearing these 
next week. We never thought we were going to have to wear them for 
saving American children, but that is what we are doing. We are going 
to have to wear them to save American children because all of the 
sudden we are watching all sorts of programs that were their safety net 
being totally dismantled in the name of all sorts of political smoke 
and rhetoric that is blowing everywhere. And I think that is very 
unfair.
  An awful lot of the cuts we pass today, and the things we will be 
doing next week, are going to go--and I am a Democrat, so I do not have 
as fancy a chart as he does--they are going to go for tax cuts. They 
are going to go for tax cuts, and these are supposed to be great things 
for America's families.
  Yes, they are great if you make over $100,000. If you make over 
$100,000, this tax cut is going to mean $1,223.23, on an average, per 
person. That is great.
  However, if you make less than $100,000, guess what? It is going to 
mean $26.05. So for most Americans, I think this is a real distortion 
of what is happening.
  I think too, when you look at where this comes from, again, what you 
see is 63 percent of the cuts that we are talking about are coming from 
only 12 percent of the programs. This is not across the board.

                              {time}  1530

  They are not cutting DOD. They are not cutting the space program. In 
fact, there are programs in the space program that went up as much as 
400 percent. They are not cutting those programs. No, no, no. You are 
cutting children. Obviously children caused this debt. I do not 
remember that. I do not think children had anything to do with this 
debt. And I think to jeopardize their future is positively outrageous.
  When you look at low income programs, you again see that when you 
break it down to discretionary low income programs, they got 15 percent 
of the cuts; other discretionary programs only got 1 percent of the 
cuts. Now, tell me how that spells fair? I do not think it spells fair 
at all.
  I had a few other things to say on this 72d day of the contract. I 
know the gentleman from California wants to talk too. I will be 
yielding to him very shortly. But here we are on day 72 of the 
contract. We are seeing all sorts of ethics violations piling up in 
front of the Committee on Ethics. We are seeing all sorts of 
legislation that has not 
[[Page H3319]] really been thought out, coming down a conveyor belt 
like a bunch
 of cream pies hitting us in the face. They look like they were written 
by interns. They are admitted to have been put together by pollsters. 
No one knows how it is going to happen. It is stalled over on the 
Senate. They are busy ironing their togas and seeing if they can get 
around to dealing with this stuff, and everybody is hoping on them 
bailing us out.

  This very day from my congressional district I am very sad to say 
that by the vote we passed today, we cut out all summer jobs for kids. 
Now, if we are going to go around and tell kids what to say no to, we 
better have something to say yes to. Last year we had 4,200 kids in the 
summer job program, and we had the safest summer we have seen in 
Colorado in a long time. Well, bye-bye. It is gone. and it is now 
March. Kids are going to get out of school in 2 months. I think that is 
outrageous.
  We also lost training programs for 2,300 adults and another 1,500 
youth programs that went all year-round.
  The Denver public schools tell me what we did today, the Goals 2000 
cuts are unbelievable. They will affect 35,000 elementary school 
children in Denver alone. And what will they affect? They are going to 
take away the science-related teaching. Oh, that is great. We are going 
to live in the 21st century without science-related teaching? That is 
terrific. Well, today we did it to 35,000 kids in my district in 
elementary school. If I sound mad, I am mad.
  Let me tell you what else they did. In the Eisenhower Grant cuts they 
cut the math and science training for 2,000 teachers in my districts. I 
think if anything we need more math and science teachers in K through 
12. We know if America is going to be competitive, that is one of the 
areas we are very weak in. So what do we do? We cut it.
  I cannot understand this war on kids. I absolutely do not understand 
this war on kids, except they do not have political action committees 
to donate money to people running. They do not even vote, so I guess we 
figure they are the most vulnerable. But when you look at America's 
kitchen tables, they do everything they can to hold children 
economically harmless as long as possible. Here we put them in harm's 
way, rather than touch ourselves or touch some program that we are 
trying to preserve.
  Now, many people will say oh, she is a liberal, she wants to vote for 
spending, and on and on and on. I will put the spending I voted against 
up against anybody else's spending, any day. One of the things I voted 
against over and over again was a thing called the super collider. 
Well, guess what? We were told we will never find the 8th quark, you 
are part of the flat earth caucus. This is absolutely terrible. We got 
to have a super collider.
  Well, you know what? They found the eighth quark and we defunded the 
super collider. We found it without that massive program. Meanwhile, we 
are going to cut science teachers for our kids so we will not even have 
scientists to look for that type of thing in the future if we keep 
going down this path.
  We have heard all sorts of nostalgic talk about what is happening and 
where we are going. This session was begun with the Speaker throwing 
out the first orphan. Today we see him talking about how we are 
returning to Victorian values.
  I remind people that those are beautiful pictures of Queen Victoria 
in her castle. But unless you were part of Queen Victoria and her 
family, the Victorian era was not such a good time. When you look at 
Dickens in his Tale of Two Cities, he talks about it was the best of 
time, but it was the worst of time; it was an age of wisdom, but it was 
also an age of foolishness; it was an age of light, and it was an age 
of darkness. I think we all remember that great novel, that reminded us 
that there was a Victorian underworld; that belief in the family was 
also accompanied by a high incidence of prostitution and all sorts of 
other things.
  So what really happens is in the good old days we tend to only 
remember the good old part and we forget some of the bad old part. I do 
not think the Speaker or anyone in this body wants to go back to those 
kind of days. We have made a lot of progress in this country. We have 
said that our young children have the right to be safe, to be fed, and 
a right to dignity and a right to an education, and that should depend 
upon their citizenship, and not who their parents were. If our new 
message is to the kids, too bad, you should have picked richer parents, 
then we are in real trouble.
  I know the gentleman from California wants to speak, and I am just 
about ready to yield to him, but I just want to remind everybody that 
the basic difference between what America was about and what
 other countries were about is we always said that in America you were 
what your children became, and in other countries you had no choice. 
You were what your parents were. So there was no option for you to grow 
out of that class or grow out of that rut that you were born into.

  Here, the great American dream was the dream of your children 
becoming, your children doing bigger and better things that you than 
you were ever able to dream about. But they cannot do that if they are 
not well fed.
  I want to tell you if I vote for money for nutrition programs, I want 
them to be nutritional. I do not want to give them to 50 States and say 
spend them any way you want, have a nice day. We collect it and send it 
to you.
  I think most States do a good job, but some would rip it off. That is 
true with every other thing. If we have the responsibility of raising 
it, we have the responsibility of seeing that it is spent sensibly and 
correctly. And whenever there is any fraud, waste or abuse, we ought to 
attack it.
  The gentleman from California has some fancier charts than I do. He 
got his made, so let me yield to him at this time, and I thank him for 
waiting patiently.
  Mr. TUCKER. I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado for yielding. I 
would submit to her that no matter how fancy my charts are, they could 
not in any way overcome what she has already said to this body, because 
you have been so accurate in your depiction about what is going on 
here. I would like to just take a few moments to really just dovetail 
on what you have said.
  There is an attack on our children. If I have to wear one of those 
scarves, I guess I will too, certainly to make the point that there is 
a very insidious attack on our children right now.
  So many talk about the Contract With America. But obviously there 
must be a contract out on our young people. That is why I want to talk 
this afternoon and this day about some of these attacks, and 
particularly in the wake of what we are going to be dealing with next 
week as it relates to what some call welfare reform, or as it is 
related in one of the plans of the Contract on America, the so-called 
Personal Responsibility Act.
  I rise in strong opposition to this so-called Personal Responsibility 
Act. For many years now, Mr. Speaker, Democrats and Republicans alike 
have talked about the fact that there are welfare recipients and 
Americans on opposite ends of the political spectrum and have all 
agreed on two things: No. 1, the welfare system is broken. We 
understand that. But No. 2, Mr. Speaker, and most importantly, we as 
Americans must change welfare as we know it and we must change it 
fairly.
  The bill, as I read it, Mr. Speaker, fails in several ways to address 
the real problem. First, the bill erroneously assumes that the problem 
with welfare is that the people on welfare, the welfare recipients, 
just do not want to work. They are a bunch of lazy, shiftless, no good 
people who just do not want to work. That is what they want America to 
believe.
  The reality, the reality is, Mr. Speaker, that 70 percent of those on 
welfare who receive welfare benefits, oh no, they are not welfare 
shyster fraudulent mothers. They are not crooks. They are not ripoff 
artists. They are children. They are our Nation's children. Seventy 
percent of them, I am going to say it again, because it is worth 
repeating, 70 percent of all welfare benefit recipients are children.
  I have one of these charts just to illuminate this point. You can see 
there that the lion's share, and I think that is a good term since the 
kids like the Lion's King, I will throw that in, that the lion's share 
of welfare recipients are our children. Seventy percent. And that is 
significant. It is more than significant, because as we started talking 
about the facts, we need to dismantle 
[[Page H3320]] this notion that it is just a lot of adults bilking the 
system. Somebody has to stand up in this House and in this well to 
protect America's children.
  My colleague, the gentlewoman from Colorado, has said it so aptly and 
so appropriately, that it is a battle to protect our children.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. We still have child labor laws as I remember, right? 
So the gentleman's point would be if we wanted everybody on welfare to 
work, we better quickly repeal the child labor laws.
  Mr. TUCKER. I appreciate the gentlewoman's point. The remaining 30 
percent are the mothers of these children and disabled persons. Second 
and most importantly to this body, and this body, as it has done in the 
past, is attempting to base new policy
 on the same false premise, and that premise is that if we cut these 
people off of welfare that will encourage them to work. We give them 
more pain, we give them more punishment; that will encourage them to 
work.

  The reality, Mr. Speaker, is that the problem with welfare is this 
body's total abdication of its responsibility to deal openly and 
forthrightly with the cause of welfare. Once again, we run around here 
so often talking about the problems of America and what we have to do 
to solve them, but very infrequently do we get down to the real root 
causes of the problem. We put Band-aid solutions on things and we try 
to in some way shift the burden and say that now it is the States' 
problem, not our problem, but we never get to the root cause of the 
problem.
  Well, what are we talking about? The problem is that these people, 
the recipients of welfare, need a job, need a livable wage, and that is 
something that is not in the Contract With America. That is something 
that we are not addressing ourselves to.
  If we did address this problem openly, Mr. Speaker, we would find 
that what most welfare recipients want to do is they want an 
opportunity to work. They do not want a welfare check. They want to 
work. There is dignity in work. There is self-sufficiency in work. 
There is no shame in work. They just want an opportunity to work.
  Now, this bill, Mr. Speaker, that is coming up next week does nothing 
to offer that. It does nothing to empower people. But it does 
everything to cut them off. It does everything to turn their backs, our 
backs on them. It does nothing to address those very important 
secondary impediments to welfare, mothers going to work. That is the 
need for day-care for their children, so they can go to work.
  This past weekend I was home in my district, and I was talking to a 
young woman who had had a serious struggle with crack addiction, 
cocaine addiction. And one of the things that she said in one of these 
encounter groups, and she was recovering and realized that years of her 
life had been taken away, she had three kids and through some programs 
out there, very needy programs, programs that are in jeopardy because 
of the kind of rescissions we made this week on the House floor, 
through these programs she had an opportunity to pick herself up, she 
had an opportunity to finally have some straps to pull her boots up by, 
and she said that it was very important that she had child care. 
Because without child care, she could not realize her dream of one day 
becoming a nurse. She thought her dreams had all turned to nightmares, 
but she needed some support.
  Child care is not in this Personal Responsibility Act; it is not in 
that bill. So without child care, once again, we are not getting to the 
root causes of the problem. We are merely sweeping the dust under the 
rug.
  There is another thing that is not in this bill, and that is health 
care. We need health care for these welfare recipients, if we are going 
to make people whole. Yes, we had a debate last year about health care 
and some people said we were doing too much, some people said the 
Government was too involved in it. But one thing nobody could deny was 
that at least 37 million Americans did not have health care, and 
millions more were under-insured.
  There are a lot of Americans out there. Some of them might be your 
relatives, your cousins, your friends, your family. They do not have 
health care. It is very difficult to survive. It is very difficult when 
something, God forbid, should happen to you or your loved one, and 
there is a choice between actually working, living, and being able to 
get some type of treatment.
                              {time}  1545

  Further, Mr. Speaker, the bill fails to invest the resources in job 
training and education necessary, vital to equip welfare mothers to 
compete for the jobs that are available.
  So what we are saying is, in essence, this; that if we are going to 
have a serious, comprehensive, effective and a real and a valid 
Personal Responsibility Act, then let's give people something that they 
can be responsible with. Either we are going to provide them with jobs 
or we are going to provide them with the job training that will help 
them get the jobs that are already out on the job market. It has got to 
be one or the other, because you can't just cut people off and not 
provide them with something that they can get onto.
  It reminds me so much of the debate that goes on about drugs and this 
whole notion of how we are going to get our young people to get off 
drugs and get away from crime, which we know that so many of our crimes 
are drug related, and that is, it is not just a question of what we are 
telling our young people to say no to. It is a matter of what we are 
telling them to say yes to.
  The same people who take this House floor telling our young people, 
say no to drugs, drugs are bad, say no to them, but yet they are the 
same people who will cut AmeriCorps, who will stand on this floor, 
punch that machine and cut a program that will allow our young people 
to go out and to move into higher levels of education by being able to 
collateralize that with giving back to their community with community 
services, teaching and working in community centers. It is double 
minded and it is double tongued.
  We cannot have it both ways. Either we are going to invest in America 
and invest in Americans or we might as well just be honest and say that 
we are not our brother's keeper and we do not care about our fellow man 
anymore.
  We have got to provide this means of jobs or this means of job 
training. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the only thing that the Personal 
Responsibility Act as a bill guarantees to our children is that once 
their parents have used their allotted benefits, that is it, it is 
over, no mas. There is no other safety net for these families or their 
children and my colleague spoke about that so readily.
  This is what we are talking about. Someone has to stand up and be 
responsible. If we are talking about the Personal Responsibility Act, 
doggone it, the U.S. Congress has got to take some responsibility first 
and we have got to lead by example. We have to take responsibility for 
our Nation's children.
  So no matter what happens to the Nation's economy or the economy of 
any particular State, no matter what happens with your personal 
circumstances, regardless of your efforts to secure employment, it 
doesn't matter. That is it, no more benefits. When you are cut off, 
your are cut off that is no kind of way to have a responsible 
government.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill would abolish the entitlement status of those 
essential programs that protect our children from hunger and from 
homelessness. We talk all the time about wishing that we had less 
homeless people, but the reality is that with every action, there is a 
reaction. With every act, there is a consequence, and Mr. Speaker, if 
we pass this Personal Responsibility Act without child care, without 
health care, without jobs and without job training, without some type 
of entitlement status and guarantee for these people who, for whatever 
reason, on a temporary basis can't do better, then what we are doing 
is, we are just turning our backs on them and we are advocating and 
promoting homelessness.
  Now, we all do not see it right now, but the streets will be flooded 
with people without a job, without a home, languishing and laying in 
the streets, and where does the responsibility for that Responsibility 
Act lie? It lies right here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  What this means, Mr. Speaker, is that no longer are poor children 
guaranteed that they will grow up with a 
[[Page H3321]] roof over their head and food in their mouths. Oh, yes, 
America, land of the free and home of the brave. We are going to take 
care of our little ones, take care of our elderly, and yet with this 
Personal Responsibility Act, with one fell swoop, we send these young 
children without a roof over their head, without clothes on their back, 
and without food on the table.
  Somewhere I remember some great man once said, ``suffer the little 
children and forbid them not.'' What we will do if we pass this act, we 
will push those little ones aside. We will push them out. We will turn 
our backs on them. In fact, what our children are guaranteed, Mr. 
Speaker, in this bill is that their basic health care and nutrition 
needs will now be subject to individual State priorities at each new 
Congress' view about their mothers and their willingness to work. No 
guarantee.
  What we will do in this bill, Mr. Speaker, is decide that welfare and 
single mothers and their children are the root of all evil in society, 
and if we are to ever balance the budget, we must get these pariahs off 
the road. No guarantee.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I want to thank the gentleman for his very, very, 
wonderful statement, and I thought his point about child care was 
excellent.
  When I was one of the cochairs of the Congressional Caucus on Women's 
Issues, back when we were allowed to have those, back when we were 
freer, I guess, we asked the Government Accounting Office to look at 
what happened in programs that gave women, the mothers you are talking 
about, the 30 percent, a 100 percent voucher for child care 
reimbursement, did it affect their work. Guess what--158 percent of 
them on their work. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure 
this out, but the gentleman is absolutely right.
  Those mothers, most of them would like to go to work, but you can't 
leave your children at home, and if you would give them a child care 
voucher, then they can. But your point is, they are not, so you beat on 
them for staying home, and yet, they let the children home alone, you 
beat on them for doing that. There is nothing they can do that is 
right, and I thank you for pointing this out. You are doing a great 
job.
  Mr. TUCKER. I thank the gentlewoman for pointing that statistic out 
because certainly this Congress, though it might be cutting conscious, 
though it might be conscious of making the budget leaner, it should not 
make Government meaner.
  We have a responsibility to Americans and we have a responsibility 
particularly to our children. When the gentlewoman was talking earlier 
about the assault on America, the assault on our children, the assault 
on lower- and middle-income programs and people, and she was mentioning 
with quite a bit of dexterity the cuts that came down on this floor, I 
would like to, in one of these charts, show another example of some of 
the cuts that happened.
  The same people who talk about the Responsibility Act, the same 
people who talk about that word responsibility, this is what is being 
done to America. It is not a Contract With America. It is a contract on 
America. It is Robin Hood in reverse. It is taking from the poor and 
giving to the rich. We all know what it is all about. Yes, I would like 
to have a tax cut. Everybody would like to have a tax cut, but not on 
the backs of the needy and the poor people in this country who can ill 
afford, who can least afford to be burdened any further.
  Look at the kind of cuts that we are talking about. We are talking 
about programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a 
program whose function was pure in its concept. It was to help low-
income people who could not afford to pay their energy bill, who could 
not afford to pay that heating bill in the cold months of the year, 
these people on fixed incomes who just need a little help. Not welfare. 
They just need some support. A $1.3 billion cut. And what is the 
consequence of that? Low-income elderly people freezing in the 
wintertime. America, land of the free, home of the brave.
  What about this cut? Job training programs, oh, yes, there is another 
wasteful welfare program. Let's not train our people to work. Let's not 
train our people to be prepared for the 21st century, as the 
gentlewoman from Colorado pointed out. We talk about the supercollider, 
but yet we do not want to teach our young kids basic science. Look at 
this cut, $2.3 billion cut, and the consequence of that cut, what is 
the consequence? Almost 800,000 youth, once again, an attack and an 
assault on our young people, almost 800,000 youth, adults, will be 
displaced, and displaced workers will not get job training and summer 
jobs.
  Do not blame the Democratic Party when you see all these young people 
out there in the streets and you want to know why somebody is stealing 
the hubcaps off your cars, why somebody is burglarizing your house, why 
somebody is putting graffiti all over across town and your property 
values are going down. Do not blame us because your young people in 
your community do not have anything to do this summer, do not have any 
training and cannot get a job, because of the $2.3 billion cut that 
just cuts job training programs and disallows these young people or 
displaced workers, and you might be some of those displaced workers. I 
had a lot of them out in California from the aerospace industry trying 
to find a job, trying to redirect their careers.
  Third one, look at this one, a $1.6 billion cut of the safe and drug-
free schools, Goals 2000 and School-to-Work Programs, all laudable, 
well worthwhile programs, meritorious programs, what happens? A $1.6 
billion cut. The consequence? More drugs in our schools and fewer 
dollars to fight crime and drugs.
  Nobody likes to see the deficit balloon. Nobody likes to see the debt 
go up, but at some point we have got to take responsibility about the 
things that are important for this Nation. These programs are not 
throwaway programs. These programs are programs that say, if you don't 
pay me now, you are going to have to pay me later. It is just that 
simple, and I don't know where anybody gets off thinking for one moment 
that just because you cut, that this problem goes away. The problems go 
away; they come back compounded. You are going to pay 10, 20, 30 times 
more trying to clean up the mess.
  Mr. Speaker, the reality of welfare is not only that 70 percent of 
all welfare recipients are our Nation's children, but the reality of 
welfare is that 70 percent of all welfare recipients are off of welfare 
in 2 years and only 12 percent of all welfare recipients stay on 
welfare for more than 5 years, and I happen to have a chart to 
elucidate this.
  As you can see, 50 percent of all the recipients leave welfare in 1 
year. Of all welfare recipients, 70 percent get off of welfare in 2 
years, and 88 percent, far above the majority, leave welfare within 5 
years. What are we saying? These declarations, these representations 
that say that all these people, it is just a lifelong thing, they are 
bilking the system, it is a career, these people are career rip-off 
artists, this is a program that not only deals with our young people, 
but it also deals with people who have hit some hard times, and I 
believe that everybody out there is just one step away from hitting 
some hard times, or at least most Americans are.
  Most Americans live from paycheck to paycheck. At some point in time, 
those who are lower and middle income have some hard times. Yes, they 
may need 1 year; yes, they may need 2 years; yes, they may need a few 
years, 5 years, but the reality is that welfare is a transitional 
program.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I am so glad to see the gentleman's chart, because I 
think every one of us who have been trying to discuss this issue gets 
so frustrated by the misinformation and the disinformation floating 
around, and it reminds me of last week when we were all trying to deal 
with the product liability bill and people kept talking about the Girl 
Scouts, the Girl Scouts, how the Girl Scouts wanted this, and if you 
remember, the Girl Scouts were in the Wall Street Journal day after day 
saying, no, no, no, no, no; that is all being made up.
  We need like a truth squad on this floor. So I am glad that the 
gentleman from California is being a truth squad and pointing it out. 
That is not to say there are not some people who abuse it, but it is a 
very, very small percentage. It is not like a huge largess spraying out 
there.

[[Page H3322]]

                              {time}  1600

  Most people are embarrassed to be on welfare, cannot wait to get off 
welfare, and want to do everything they can to improve themselves.
  Mr. TUCKER. I thank the gentlewoman for her contribution. Certainly 
she is correct, that we have to set the record straight. There has been 
so much. If there is an abuse here, it has been the abuse of 
information, it has been the abuse of the truth to the American public; 
people telling others welfare is just the biggest ripoff there is.
  The reality is that, yes, there are those in our society, in segments 
of our society, who are in need and who need transitional help. This 
shows us just how temporary the transition is.
  Mr. Speaker, why would this body base welfare policy on the 12 
percent of people who go over 5 years? If 88 percent of the people are 
off by 5 years, there are only 12 percent of the people who stay on 
welfare over 5 years. Why this body would base welfare policy on that 
12 percent of the people is beyond me.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill, the Personal Responsibility Act, would 
require, or, as we like to say in Washington, it would mandate that 
States deny AFDC permanently to families where the children were born 
after this bill's passage to unmarried mothers younger than age 18. 
States would also have the option to deny assistance to children born 
to unmarried mothers younger than 21. What that means is that the 
States would have an option to punish the children, to punish the 
children, just because a mother had them under age.
  Once again, Mr. Speaker, as my colleague indicated, the children do 
not have a right to pick when they come into this world. They do not 
have a right to pick who their parents are. However, because of the 
distorted and perverse notion of responsibility that my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle are proffering, the children, once again, 
will end up having to pay for the pregnancy of their parents.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill would allow States to eliminate all cash 
benefits to families who have received aid for 2 years, and would 
permanently bar such families from any future aid if the parent had 
participated in the work program for at least 1 year, so they can dance 
around this. They can give them a work program for 1 year, and after 
that they can forever and ever bar them from any future participation 
or future benefits in the program. It is just a loophole to getting 
them off the basis of support.
  Such families would definitely suffer. After 5 years, States would be 
required or mandated to terminate permanently the family from cash 
assistance. The State, even if it wanted to continue cash payments, 
would be directed by Washington to deny the benefits.
  In both of these cases, the contract on Americans would allow 
children and families to be left without any cash help or a public 
service job, even when the parent was willing to work but unable to 
find work in the private sector.
  There is an interesting situation and an interesting scenario. Here 
is a scenario where someone is willing to work, cannot find work, but 
they are still going to be cut off and still going to be punished by 
this new wonderful Responsibility Act.
  An even more omnious provision in this assault on America's children 
would take the savings generated by denying assistance to the unmarried 
teens and their children and use those same funds to build orphanages
 for those children, or group homes for those children and their teen 
parents rendered destitute by this bill.

  So many people talk about what is going on in Washington: the 100 
days, we are moving forward, we are moving fast. Yes, we are moving 
fast. We are moving nowhere fast. As my colleague said, it was the best 
of times.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Maybe we are moving backwards fast, back to the 
Victorian age.
  Mr. TUCKER. That is right, we are moving backwards fast, because 
backwards is nowhere, it is a place called nowhere. We are moving so 
fast that we do not realize that we are moving backwards, and backwards 
is nowhere to be. It is nowhere we want to be, because it is where we 
have already been, and that is why we left it.
  Mr. Speaker, we know what happened in the days of orphanages. We have 
these people who take the floor and somehow try to glamourize Dickens, 
somehow try to glamourize Boy's Town, somehow try to glamourize the 
concept of an orphanage. That is like trying to glamourize a 
whorehouse; it is nice, it is a place of comfort and refuge.
  No matter what words you put on it, no matter what semantics you use, 
no matter what window dressing you use, an orphanage is still an 
orphanage. Why can we not, as a country, wake up to our responsibility, 
to our children in this country, and realize, yes, we have to cut the 
deficit.
  The argument that our colleagues use for cutting the deficit, do you 
know what the argument they use is? It is always our children, ``We 
don't want to mortgage this debt on our children. We don't want to have 
the ignoble responsibility of going down in history as that generation 
that left a multi-billion dollar deficit and multi-trillion dollar debt 
to our children. We are mortgaging our children's future.''
  That is what we hear on the floor of Congress every day. Therefore, 
if they are so concerned about our children, why don't they show it?
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman is going right to 
the core of it. What we are doing in the name of the children, we are 
also doing it to the children. You have a financial deficit, and to 
deal with that, we are going to create a human deficit.
  We are into this very mean thing where the adults are saying, ``We 
are not going to give up anything we have, thank you very much, take it 
out on the children.'' Hey, where is that fair? These kids did not 
create that deficit.
  There is no one in this country, I think, that feels we can compete 
in the 21st century without more education and without kids that are 
healthy and well fed. We know if they are healthy and well fed they do 
better in school. We can go on and on and on.
  Yet, what are we doing? They are the first out of the budget, the 
first out of the budget. Again, that is why we are wearing ``Save the 
Children'' scarves. I know we have a tie for the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Tucker], so we will tie one on you and get you enlisted 
on this.
  Mr. TUCKER. Thank you. I will wear it. I think the gentlewoman 
expressed the point so aptly, that our children do not have the big 
lobbying firms. They are not this powerful special interest that can 
come up here and fight. That is why we have to be a voice for the 
voiceless; that is why we have to talk about this, because it is our 
Nation's children that are being exploited.
  Mr. Speaker, is it not interesting that when we talk about that kind 
of deficit, what we are talking about is the fact that we cannot only 
be concerned about being economically bankrupt as a government, but we 
also have to be concerned about being morally bankrupt. If we turn our 
backs on our Nation's children, this Nation, this great Nation, will 
not progress and will not fare well.
  In closing, Mr. Speaker, as we talk about the fact that it is open 
season on the poor and on our children, and in fact those who sent many 
of us here to Washington to protect them, we must understand that this 
welfare is not about long-term bilking the system, it is not about 
people who do not want to work.
  In fact, another important point, setting the record straight about 
welfare, and as is the case so often with our colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle, they have a tendency to bring up and to proffer 
these race-baiting wedge issues. Welfare is not a black issue. It is 
not just a woman's issue. It is not a black issue. It is not just a 
white issue. It is an issue that relates to Americans in need.
  Let us set the record straight on this. The
   racial composition of AFDC recipients: 18 percent are Hispanic, 37 
percent are African-American, and 39 percent are non-Hispanic white 
Americans. It is interesting, though, that every time you see the 
images and you see the ``stereotypical welfare recipient,'' it is 
somebody black, it is somebody brown.

  Therefore, this issue is not a black issue. This issue is not a 
welfare fraud mother issue. This issue is 70 percent, once again, the 
recipients are children, the recipients are poor, the recipients are 
needy. The recipients are not lazy. 
[[Page H3323]] The recipients are people who want to work.
  Unless we are going to take the kind of responsibility that we should 
take as leaders of this country, to be honest with the American people, 
to be truthful with the American people, and then to be responsible for 
America's children, then we should not be serving here in the House of 
Representatives.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this time to give America what I feel is an 
honest assessment and an honest appraisal of what the welfare system is 
and what kind of reform we need in this system. I thank my colleague, 
the gentlewoman from Colorado, for joining me, because certainly I will 
wear that tie and I will wear it proudly.
  I hope that before it is all over, we can tie some responsibility, 
some real responsibility onto Republicans who stand on this floor and 
tell us that the best way to solve our problems in this country is to 
punish and to cut off. No, the best way to solve our problems in this 
country is to reach out.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not so much that these people need a handout. What 
they need is a hand, and not just in money. They need us to reach out 
to them and to let them know that this America is for them, too. That 
is why they need health care, that is why they need child care, that is 
why they need job training, and that is why they need jobs, so they can 
realize their dreams, just like everybody else in America wants to 
realize theirs. Then we will not have to worry about wasting so much 
time talking about who is ripping off the system.
  It is interesting how my colleagues always talk about eradicating or 
bringing down the deficit or the national debt. Maybe if we did more to 
empower some of our welfare recipients, they would become working, 
empowered American citizens who would be putting more into the 
government till, and thereby raising our revenues and bringing down the 
deficit and bringing down the national debt.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to say what a privilege it is to 
yield to the gentleman from California, because there is some good news 
today. I think we are going to have to keep doing these kinds of 
things. The good news is that I think we had a meltdown on meanness. 
When we voted on the rescissions, although we did not win, we had 200 
votes. We got six Republican votes with us.
  Often I wondered if they had an MRI and could not have a heart bigger 
than a swollen pea, but apparently they do not have an MRI machine. 
Apparently that is not part of the membership. I think people are 
waking up and finding out what these issues are that are coming at us 
very fast. I think that is part of the strategy, send them so fast they 
cannot find out.
  The gentleman staying here late in the afternoon to talk about this I 
think is very important, and I think by having gotten 200 votes more 
than we have gotten all this time on day 72 says that people are 
beginning to wake up and say ``Not our children. Hands off our 
children,'' and we will wear these scarves, even though we thought they 
were for other countries, but we now find out they are for ours. Maybe 
we can make a change.
  Mr. TUCKER. If the gentlewoman will yield, I want to applaud her for 
her consistent and long-standing fight, not only to protect our 
children, but to protect the interests of those who are in need. 
Certainly, your point is well taken, that when America wakes up to the 
reality of what these rescissions have done, the people will start to 
understand that it is not just your neighbor that was cut, it is not 
just your friend or it is not just the person in the other State that 
had a devastating impact from these cuts, but that indeed, these cuts 
are across the board.
  When we look at things like the School Lunch Program, this goes all 
over the Nation. It is across the board. When we look at things like 
welfare, they are people that you know that will be affected. When you 
look at the job training programs, people you know will be affected.
  When America wakes up from its wild night partying and having a good 
time, it will find out that the hangover was not worth it.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Tucker].
  Mr. Speaker, Newt Gingrich wants to move America back, back to the 
fifties--back to the 1850's.
  Earlier this week, the Speaker announced that America needs to be 
more like Victorian England, whose heyday was in the mid-1800's.
  I have a difficult time believing that the Speaker wants to take us 
back to another age, much less another country--the one we waged our 
revolution against.
  But it is more difficult for me to believe that the Speaker, who 
prides himself on being a futurist, who claims to be a surfer of the 
third wave of information, who by his own admission was a free thinker 
of the sixties, and continues to use the tactics and language of the 
sixties, actually prefers to reinvent Victorian England here in 
America.
  As Dickens spoke of that age in his opening paragraph of ``A Tale of 
Two Cities'' in 1859:

       It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was 
     the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the 
     epoch of belief, it was the epic of incredulity, it was the 
     season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the 
     spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had 
     everything before us, we had nothing before us.* * *

  The Victorian Age was great for the privileged few and awful for just 
as many. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, ``There was always a 
Victorian underworld.'' Belief in the family was accompanied by a high 
incidence of prostitution, and in every large city there were districts 
where every Victorian virtue was ignored or flouted.
  But I do not think Speaker Gingrich  literally wants to go back to 
Victorian England. He just wants to get back to the good old days of 
America.
  The good old days. What were the good old days of the late 1800's 
like in America?
  Otto Bettman in his book, ``The Good Old Days,'' points out:

       The good old days were good, but for the privileged few. 
     For the farmer, the laborer, the average breadwinner, life 
     was an unremitting hardship. This segment of the populace was 
     exploited or lived in the shadow of total neglect, and youth 
     had no voice.

  And that is why I took this time today, to remind people that we 
don't want to go back to the days of orphanages, chronic diseases, 
polluted air, unsafe food, and unremitting hardships.
  The 1990's more than any other decade of our history has to be one of 
hope, opportunity for all, and prosperity.
  But as soon as Speaker Gingrich began this new means season of 
politics by throwing out the first orphan when he floated his idea of 
Federal orphanages for children of the poor, I know that this was going 
to be rocky years for those of us who have put into place in America an 
infrastructure for America's kids.
  Over the past 20 years, our Federal Government has made a commitment 
to our young children that they have a right to be safe, a right to be 
fed, and a right to dignity.
  We have been able to put teeth into those promises. We put into place 
a school lunch program. We made child abuse treatment and prevention a 
national priority and committed resources to that end. We put in money 
and standards for children in childcare programs whose mother must 
work.
  We made great strides for kids. And still, the amount of Federal 
dollars and resources we dedicate to them in paltry. In the 1980's 
budget commitments for kids were dwarfed by our investments in defense, 
highways, you name it.
  But now the Republican rescissions threaten these modest gains as 
well as other progress our country has made for kids.
  The majority of these rescissions are aimed at children and the 
elderly. The Republicans slash the women, infants, and children program 
that provides basic food and nutrition to pregnant women and children--
even though this program saves more than three times its cost by 
eliminating the need for crisis health and prenatal care.
  This move becomes even more unfair when you compare it to the risk-
assessment legislation Republicans have passed so that their wealthy 
supporters can get out from regulations they don't want. If the 
principle of cost-effectiveness is good enough for their rich friends, 
why isn't it good enough for America's children?
  The Republicans also cut programs to increase safety and reduce drug 
abuse in our schools. The Republicans eliminate more than 100,000 
college scholarships and more than 600,000 summer jobs for young 
people.
  The cuts against the elderly are just as bizarre, to use the 
Speaker's terminology. They cut housing for the elderly. They totally 
eliminate a heat assistance program for the elderly.
  But batten down the hatches, folks. Just wait to you see next week's 
grotesquery. Under the Republican Welfare Reform Act, we are going to 
block grant our kid's lives away. We are folding programs that help 
battered, beaten, and neglected children into one grant, cutting that 
money, and shipping it off to the States. America is telling our kids: 
you are not 
[[Page H3324]] our problem. Our Federal guarantee to you is null and 
void, superseded by the Republicans' Contract for America.
  If the Welfare Reform and Consolidation Act is enacted, funding will 
be cut by an estimated $2.5 billion over 5 years. At that rate, in the 
year 2000, families of over 350,000 children will be without Federal 
child care assistance.
  The Republican welfare bill is tough on kids and poor on work.
  The Democrat proposal is great on kids and tough on work. It's a 
program where people work and one that honors children.
  Welfare reform cannot happen without parents ability to work. The 
Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, which I cochaired last year 
and this Republican Congress has since killed, released a GAO study 
last year that demonstrates the importance of child care subsidies in 
determining whether or not low-income mothers will participate in the 
labor force.
  The GAO found that given a 100 percent child care allowance, low-
income mothers' work participation could increase by 158 percent. These 
results show that if we expect mothers to successfully leave welfare, 
we must be prepared to guarantee adequate child care subsidies. The 
best catalyst for getting women off welfare is good child care.
  But this Republican bill goes the direct opposite way. It decimates 
child care. It removes requirements for minimum health and safety 
standards for child care assistance. This at a time when all the 
research and polls show that safe child care is a top priority for 
American working parents.
  Not only are they hurting children's safety by doing away with such 
standards, but as a taxpayer, I don't want to spend precious Federal 
dollars on unsafe child care.
  In addition, there are no funds for States to use to improve quality 
and no funds for school age child care.
  The bill ends the guarantee that children in child care centers, 
family child care homes, Head Start, and before and after school 
programs will receive nutritious meals. The new Family Base Nutrition 
Block Grant cuts funds by close to $5 billion over the next 5 years.
  The result will be: More children suffering from poor nutrition; 
costs for parents and providers will soar; and less incentives for 
family child care providers to become license or registered.
  So now, Mr. Speaker, I am beginning to understand why you would like 
to go back to Victorian England where shame ruled the day. Because 
under your Contract With America, shame will rule the day. But the 
shame will be Congresses.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say that I found the comments 
by the gentleman from California also very interesting. I think an 
important part of this debate as we move toward welfare reform, I 
certainly learned a lot just from listening to him the last few 
minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, the Clean Water Act, which I would like to discuss at 
this point, has brought us very far since its inception in 1972. It is 
particularly important in my district, because many of the 
municipalities that I represent are on the ocean or on the rivers or on 
the bay, in my case, the Raritan Bay.
  Yet if we look at the Clean Water Act and we look at an overall 
report card about its effectiveness, we would still have to say that it 
is incomplete; that it would achieve a grade of incomplete, over the 
course of its inception in 1972. We still have a long way to go.
  Today I have introduced the Clean Water Enforcement and Compliance 
Improvement Act Amendments of 1995. This is an act or a bill that I am 
reintroducing from the last session. It targets what I call bad actors, 
those corporations or municipal authorities that have consistently 
violated their water quality permits. The bill rights the Clean Water 
Act enforcement wrong in the States that allows permit violators and 
the States that overlook these violations to reap economic benefits 
through their misbehavior.
  Basically, we are trying to send a message with this bill that it 
does not pay to pollute. The problem is that too often, because of 
noncompliance or because of insufficient penalties, it is easier to 
pollute and to violate your water quality permits and pay the fines, 
rather than try to achieve compliance with the Clean Water Act.
                              {time}  1615

  The key to the penalty structure that is introduced in my bill is 
that civil penalties will be required to recover, at a minimum, the 
economic benefits of Clean Water Act violations. Regulations for 
calculating this economic benefit would be established by the EPA. It 
should be noted that both the Government Accounts Office and the EPA 
Inspector General have reported that current penalties do not reflect 
or recover the economic benefits of Clean Water Act noncompliance. My 
bill will correct this crucial flaw in present enforcement procedures.
  I should also point out that we have introduced and passed in New 
Jersey an enforcement act that was very similar on a State level to 
what I am trying to do with the Clean Water Act on the Federal level, 
and those enforcement amendments have been very effective in upgrading 
water quality and bringing about better compliance in the State of New 
Jersey.
  The bill sets up a mandatory penalty for serious violators that 
exceeds pollution effluent limitations by a specific percentage. If the 
frequency of these violations increase, the penalty also increases.
  Finally, penalties collected are placed in a clean water trust fund 
to be established within the U.S. Treasury. These moneys would be 
available for use by the EPA administrator for better inspection and 
enforcement.
  We have found that inspection also is something that we need to do a 
better job of. My bill deters Clean Water Act noncompliance not only by 
penalizing violators but by helping to stop violations before they 
occur through more rigorous inspection and reporting procedures. 
Frequent self-monitoring and reporting have been shown to help 
facilities achieve and maintain compliance with the Clean Water Act.
  Again, if we look at the State of New Jersey we can see that the 
increased enforcement and inspection have had an effect on compliance 
and has increased this goal within my home State. As the bill provides, 
the worst violators are the ones subject to the most stringent 
inspection. Minimum inspection standards to be established by EPA and 
random inspections would be required.
  Finally, the bill promotes more rigorous enforcement by empowering 
citizens to enforce the Clean Water Act. Many of my colleagues I am 
sure know that much of the enforcement of the Clean Water Act is done 
by private citizens, or grass roots citizen organizations. Since 1988 
citizens have recovered for the U.S. Treasury over $1 million in 
penalties and interest from environmental law violations. This bill 
gives citizens access to permanent compliance information. It also 
establishes posting provisions which increase citizens' awareness of 
water quality standard noncompliance as well as the resulting 
environmental and health effects and any fishing or shellfishing bans, 
advisories, or consumption restrictions.
  Most importantly, the bill expands citizens' abilities to bring 
actions for violations, including past violations.
  As a result of the bill I am introducing today, Clean Water Act 
violations would not longer be allowed to sabotage our efforts to 
achieve water quality goals, especially not at the expense of those 
States and facilities that act responsibly. We cannot continue to turn 
a blind eye to bad actors. To do so is to essentially turn our backs on 
years of effort and hundreds of billions of dollars spent to improve 
the quality of the Nation's water resources.
  Again, we have made great strides with the Clean
   Water Act but there is no question we need better enforcement and 
better inspections.

  The bill ensures efficacy in enforcement and equality in compliance. 
Moreover, it would bring us that much closer to achieving our water 
quality goals.
  I know in this Congress there have been a lot of efforts to make some 
changes in our environmental laws. Some of the legislation we have 
passed in the first 100 days in my opinion has actually sent us far 
back, if it is ultimately enacted into law, in terms of dealing with 
environmental quality and environmental enforcement. We hope that in 
the next 100 days of the Congress that we would seek to turn that 
around and achieve better enforcement not only with the Clean Water Act 
but with many of our other environmental laws, and I think this bill 
will go far toward improving water quality and improving the Clean 
Water Act.
  [[Page H3325]] I again thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. I must say as I wind down this hour that I think on 
day 72 we have had a very interesting discussion here about some of the 
things that happened in those first 72 days. The gentleman's attempt to 
try and get things back on course as we attain clean water, and the 
attempt that we have been talking about here to try and get things back 
on course in our commitment to children I think is very, very critical.
  This is going to be a very exciting weekend. I think that going home 
on day 72 with the fact that we finally got up to 200 votes because 
enough members said no, those rescissions went much too far, you should 
not take from the poorest to give tax cuts to the richest; that is 
wrong, it gets us in a much better frame of mind to work on all of the 
issues that will be in front of this Congress next week when we will be 
dealing with very tough issues on welfare and nutrition issues that we 
have been discussing.
  I think more and more people around the country are talking about it. 
As I said, this Sunday there will be many Members serving a lunch here 
on Capitol Hill, thousands of children are coming in, we are going to 
try to encircle the Capitol, we are going to be talking about these are 
our future, these children are our future, and if we do not care about 
them we are in real trouble. We often talk about natural resources 
being timber and coal and oil; well, yes, they are, but there is no 
natural resource as important to the sustenance of this country and the 
future as our children. They are our greatest natural resource.
  So there will be that great event going on here this Sunday. And as I 
say, the Members serving will be wearing these and wearing ties and we 
are hoping to also go back to our districts, as I will be. We will be 
talking to the local people there and we hope to only keep building 
that number. If we can get it from 200 to 219 we can say stop, stop 
this war on children, let us go back and let us look at where we ought 
to be cutting.
  Yes, we should have cut the super collider a long time ago. We put a 
lot of money in that hole in the ground and they found the quark 
without it.
  Yes, we can cut an awful lot of programs in America's space program. 
We put a 400-percent increase in some of the things. Nobody in the 
world can spend a 400-percent increase efficiently.
  Come on; get a clue. No, we do not need to do star wars and some of 
the other commitments that people have made, not when the Berlin Wall 
has come down and we are living in an entirely different generation.
  The issues in defense are what is the threat out
   there, and if we are spending more than almost the whole rest of the 
world combined is on defense and we cannot find a way to defend 
ourselves spending that much money we are in real trouble.

  Those are the kind of debates we should have rather than this 
meanness and this attitude of picking on those who are least able to 
fight back.
  I think there is a lot of anxiety in this society right now, anxiety 
about where they are going to go in the future, what kind of job are 
they going to have, will their lives be better. I understand that and I 
think every single American has some degree of that anxiety.
  But being mean to kids is certainly not going to lessen America's 
anxiety. We ought to be looking at what we can do here to make people's 
lives better.
  I introduced a bill I think would help, and that is to allow 
Americans to be able to bid off the same health care program we have. 
Why should they not be able to bid off of that same menu that every 
Member of Congress, every Federal employee, Federal retiree, the 
President, every one else bids off of? That says to them you can have 
our choices. It allows them to stop.
  We have been reading this week about Members putting folks on their 
payroll for 1 month out of the year for $100 so that person gets the 
option to bid off our health care benefits. Well hey, we cannot do that 
for everybody in America, we cannot put them all on our payroll. That 
does not make sense. This ought to be available.
  Think of what creative energy that would free up for Americans and 
some of the tensions it would take off Americans who feel locked in 
their job because if they quit their job they are afraid they will lose 
their health care insurance, or locked in their job because they have 
health care now but if they went somewhere else they would have what is 
now called a preexisting condition, or someone who cannot quit and 
become self-employed because they know that if they are self-employed 
they will not have health care.
  Think of that harness that absolutely stymies the creative energy in 
this country. It does not allow people to go where they think they 
could make the best contribution to society or make the most money for 
their family. Health care is a real anchor around their necks.
  We did not deal with it last year. This is a way
   we could deal with it. It would alleviate only some of the anxiety 
families have. But it is that kind of anxiety we ought to be analyzing 
and trying to address, because when we allow it to build and build and 
build, then what we end up doing as a society is becoming Bosnia, where 
we are looking around trying to find who we can blame, who we can yell 
at, who we can throw radio epithets at over talk show hosts, how we can 
energize people to go hate. And I tell you, if we keep doing that this 
society comes apart.

  But those who attack a child are shameless. Attacking a child and 
attacking a child who has no way to fight back is absolutely wrong.
  When you look at every other part of the Western world, they do so 
much more for their children, it is embarrassing. I only hope we begin 
to look at that, we look at the mirror, we talk about what we are 
doing, and we also take our mind off our ingrown toenail and start 
looking at the horizon ahead of us and saying what are these programs 
to do as we march this country toward the future.
  So I thank all of you for tolerating us in this interesting 
discussion we have had about children, the future, where we are going. 
I also must say I do end on a more positive note than I thought I would 
because I think the votes came out a lot better, and it says educating 
and talking is beginning to work.
  Let us only do more of it.

                          ____________________