[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 52 (Tuesday, March 21, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3334-H3335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gene Green, is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we had a member from the 
majority side a few minutes ago talking about joining the debate on 
welfare reform. I would be more than happy to join the debate with him, 
talking about the fallacies of both the original H.R. 4 that was 
introduced but also the H.R. 1214 that we are considering today and 
this week and which reminds me, since last year I heard from so many 
talk show folks about, I wonder how many of those people have read H.R. 
1214 who are now talking about it as the greatest thing since sliced 
bread?
  It is not as big as some of the bills we have considered but it is 
almost 400 pages and I hope that some of the proponents who talk about 
how great it is have had a chance to read it, like some of us have who 
were on the committees who dealt with it.
  The school nutrition program will be hurt if we pass the, what is now 
H.R. 1214. The Republicans' shell game continues with our children 
hanging in the balance. As this flier states, ``When It's Budget 
Cutting Time, You Always Shoot at the Easiest Target.'' You can see how 
the impact of that will be when you talk about the WIC program, or you 
talk about the children's nutrition program.
  Your argument should be that we do need to reform welfare, and I 
agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but this bill 
that came out of both the Committee on Ways and Means and out of the 
committee I serve on was not a debate, it was just, ``We have a plan 
and we are going to run over you as Democrats. We're not going to agree 
with you that we need to address children's nutrition through the 
School Lunch Program. We're just going to block-grant it. We're going 
to do what we want to do.''
  So there was not a debate. It was the majority saying we are going to 
do it the way that we want instead of really making it a bipartisan 
effort.
  When I came to Congress in January, I thought that welfare reform 
would be a bipartisan effort, but I do not think we are going to see it 
today or this week because it has not been.
  I agree we need to reform welfare. We need to take away the incentive 
of someone or the tragedy of a person being on welfare. But we do not 
need to cut the programs that provide the most effective safety net 
that we have for our children. We should require people to work. We 
should require a time limit about how long they are on there. We should 
require them to go to job training. We should require them to do all 
sorts of things. But when you take the school nutrition program and you 
say we are going to increase the authorization, whereas now a child 
shows up in school, they have a guarantee of that lunch if they are 
qualified and say we are going to authorize 4 percent more but next 
year in the Committee on Appropriations it may be cut and then we are 
going to let the State take 20 percent and spend it on something else 
because of the block granting. That is why this poster is so relevant: 
``When it's budget cutting time, the easiest target is a child.''
  Last week a colleague of mine from Texas talked about some of the 
highway demonstration projects in the rescission bill that were 
untouched. Yet we cut AmeriCorps, we cut job training, and most of 
these projects were 
[[Page H3335]] not even requested by our local highway departments or 
transportation department.
  How is it equitable that we cut school lunches but not highway 
projects? The chief financial officer for the State of Texas has 
estimated that if this welfare bill passed today, this H.R. 1214 
passes, it will cost the State of Texas over $1 billion in our next 
biennial, 1996-97. The Department of Human Services estimates that if 
this bill passes, it would cost the State of Texas $5.2 billion. The 
CBO has said that with growth in population and inflation, this 
reduction would be $2.3 billion.
  I know I am throwing out lots of numbers and some of them may 
disagree, but no matter how you cut it, the people who are going to 
pass this bill this week really do not know what it is going to do 
because all they are doing is running that train and saying we are 
going to pass a welfare reform bill, even if it does cut WIC or school 
nutrition, or it cuts a lot of other programs that are really important 
and have a great deal of support.
  If any of these are reduced fundings, particularly the one from the 
Congressional Budget Office estimates for savings and administrative 
costs, we are talking about stopping children from having a hot lunch. 
Yesterday I was in my district at J.P. Henderson Elementary School in 
Houston trying to show that the claim of the welfare reform is missing 
the point. Those children are eating that hot lunch and that is at a 
school that has easily 80 percent of the children have a reduced and 
free lunch.
  We should not continue to be playing games with our children's 
future. We need to do welfare reform. We can take school nutrition 
programs out of the welfare reform just like the majority took the 
senior citizens nutrition out of welfare reform 3 weeks ago. It is just 
that again it is too often popular to hit the easiest target and not 
the senior citizens.
  We do not consider buying text books, computers, or desks as welfare. 
We should not consider school nutrition welfare.


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