[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 54 (Thursday, March 23, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3700-H3701]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   PUTTING AMERICA'S CHILDREN AT RISK

  (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker,
   I submit to my distinguished colleagues in this chamber that the 
lives and well-being of some 21.6 million of our nation's children are 
at risk if we are to allow the proposed welfare reform bill to pass.

  I do not believe there has ever been any disagreement on both sides 
of the aisle of the need to reform our welfare programs. But to do so 
with such haste as if there is no tomorrow, or that because the 
Contract With America must be signed, sealed and nailed to the cross 
within the 100-day period--literally begs the question of why all the 
rush? Thank God for the U.S. Senate.
  Some of my friends across the aisle have repeatedly said the best way 
to administer these welfare programs is to let the States do it. And 
without question some States have been very successful at getting 
people off the welfare rolls, and give them productive jobs and add 
more meaning to their lives.
  The problem, Mr. Speaker, is that not all States operate with the 
same efficiency, and I can just imagine that with 50 different 
bureaucracies, with 50 different sets of laws and regulations, with 50 
different state court rulings, with 50 different budgetary priorities--
will result in what I suspect will be utter chaos and confusion--and if 
I'm correct Mr. Speaker, when you block-grant a federal program to a 
state, that state does not necessarily have to spend the funds for what 
Congress had intended--and if that is the case, Mr. Speaker, my heart 
goes out to those 21.6 million children that are not going to receive 
the full benefits of such federal programs.
  Let us reform our welfare system, Mr. Speaker, but let us do it like 
we are flying like eagles, and not run around doing so like a bunch of 
turkeys.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record newspaper editorials on this 
subject, as follows:

                         What Special Interest?

                            (By Bob Herbert)
       March 22, 1995, NY Times.--On Sunday more than 1,000 
     people, many of them children, rallied outside the Capitol in 
     Washington to protest cuts in the school lunch program, which 
     is just one of many excessive and cruel budget proposals the 
     Republican majority in Congress is trying to hammer into law.
       The theme of the rally was ``Pick on Someone Your Own 
     Size,'' which was another way of saying that the G.O.P. bully 
     boys might consider spreading the budget-cutting pain around, 
     rather than continuing their obscene offensive against the 
     young, the poor, the crippled, the weak and the helpless.
       The Republican reaction to the rally was interesting. 
     Amazing even. Spokesmen for the party denounced the protest 
     organizers as exploiters of children and defenders of special 
     interests. Exploiters of children! What an accusation from a 
     party that is trying to throw poor children off the welfare 
     rolls; a party that would eliminate Federal nutritional 
     standards for school meals; a party that would cut benefits 
     for handicapped children; a party that would reduce 
     protection for abused and neglected children, even though 
     reported cases of abuse and neglect tripled between 1980 and 
     1992.
       Please, a reality check.
       And ``defenders of special interests''? A Republican in the 
     era of Newt can say that with a straight face? On Monday, 
     Richard L. Berke wrote in The Times:
       ``Indeed, many Republicans are seeking to punish groups 
     that did not support them in the past to insure that they are 
     never again abandoned. While Democrats have never been timid 
     about hitting up lobbyists, Republicans are going even 
     further, to the point of dictating whom business groups 
     should hire.''
       The cold truth is that the Republicans currently in 
     Congress are raising the phenomenon of special interests to 
     dangerous new heights. The lead paragraph on a Washington 
     Post article on March 12 said:
       ``The day before the Republicans formally took control of 
     Congress, Rep. Tom DeLay strolled to a meeting in the rear 
     conference room of his spacious new leadership suite on the 
     first floor of the Capitol. The dapper Texas Congressman, 
     soon to be sworn in as House majority whip, saw before him a 
     group of lobbyists representing some of the biggest companies 
     in America, assembled on mismatched chairs amid packing 
     boxes, a huge, unplugged copying
      machine and constantly ringing telephones.''
       The eager lobbyists had wasted no time in taking up Mr. 
     DeLay's offer to collaborate in the drafting of legislation 
     that would scrap Federal safety and environmental rules that 
     big business felt were too tough. When the bill and the 
     debate moved to the House floor, the Post story said, 
     ``lobbyists hovered nearby, tapping out talking points on a 
     laptop computer for delivery to Republican floor leaders.''
       The mind boggles at the very idea of a Gingrich Republican 
     criticizing anyone as a captive of special interests. 
     Republicans in the era of Newt aggressively hunt down special 
     interests and demand to be taken captive. If, of course, 
     those interests have lots of money.
       And when it comes time to make sacrifices to bring the 
     Federal deficit under control, those interests are spared. No 
     pain inflicted there. The Republican zeal for budget cuts 
     comes to an abrupt halt in the face of the real special 
     interests. The so-called Contract With America is actually a 
     contract with big business. Keep in mind the lobbyists 
     writing legislation in Tom DeLay's office. They weren't 
     representatives of the American people, poor or middle class. 
     They represented the real beneficiaries of the contract.
       According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 
     24 percent of all American children under the age of 6 are 
     poor. Under the twisted values of the new Republican 
     majority, these children become like wounded swimmers in 
     shark-infested waters. Their very vulnerability is a signal 
     that they should be attacked.
       James Weill, general counsel of the Children's Defense 
     League, said, ``They are taking that part of the American 
     population that is in the deepest trouble to begin with, the 
     group with the highest poverty, the greatest vulnerability, 
     and because they are so politically powerless they are 
     attacking them the most. That, to me, is the worst aspect of 
     what they are doing.''
                                 ______

        House Takes Up Legislation To Dismantle Social Programs

                            (By Robert Pear)

       Washington, March 21.--The House of Representatives today 
     took up sweeping legislation that would dismantle many 
     elements of the social welfare systems put in place by the 
     Federal Government over the last 60 years.
       There was little suspense about the outcome; Republicans 
     predicted that the bill would be approved late this week on a 
     party-line vote.
       ``Based on the hysterical cries of those who seek to defend 
     the failed welfare state, you would have thought Republicans 
     were eliminating welfare in its entirety,'' rather than just 
     slowing its growth, said Representative Bill Archer, the 
     Texas Republican who is chairman of the Ways and Means 
     Committee.
       Mr. Archer, declaring that ``the Republican welfare 
     revolution is at hand,'' said the Republican bill sought 
     ``the broadest overhaul of welfare ever proposed.''
       For their part, Democrats acknowledged that their 
     substitute measure had little chance of passage but predicted 
     that they would make political gains in the debate by 
     attacking the Republicans as cruel to children. 
     Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, for instance, 
     infuriated the Republicans when he said their ``onslaught'' 
     on children, poor people and the disabled was reminiscent of 
     crimes committed in Nazi Germany.
       [[Page H3701]] Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., Republican 
     of Florida, said the comparison was ``an absolute outrage.''
       The Congressional Budget Office said this week that the 
     Republican bill would cut $69 billion, or 6 percent, from 
     projected spending of $1.1 trillion on welfare, food 
     assistance, child care, Medicaid and other programs over the 
     next five years. The cuts appear larger--about 11 percent of 
     projected spending. If Medicaid is omitted from the 
     calculations, as Democrats say it should be. The bill makes 
     only minor changes in Medicaid, the health program for low-
     income people.
       The outlook for the bill in the Senate is murky. Senators 
     of both parties have expressed doubts about the House 
     Republican plan to give each state a lump sum of Federal 
     money to help the poor, with few Federal standards or 
     guarantees. Many senators say the Federal Government
      must retain more responsibility for the use of revenue 
     raised through Federal taxing power.
       Representative Harold L. Volkmer, Democrat of Missouri, 
     attacked the Republican bill as ``very mean-spirited, very 
     radical.'' Much of the money saved by cutting aid to the poor 
     would be used to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, he said.
       The welfare bill, a cornerstone of the Republicans' 
     Contract With America, would replace several programs, like 
     Aid to Families With Dependent Children and the school lunch 
     program, which guarantee benefits to anyone who meets the 
     eligibility criteria, with direct cash payments to states. 
     The states could then use the money in any way they chose to 
     assist low-income people.
       Republicans are still wrestling with the concerns of anti-
     abortion groups and some Republican lawmakers who say that 
     provisions of the bill would encourage abortions. Those 
     provisions would prohibit use of Federal money to provide 
     cash assistance to children born to unmarried women under 18 
     or to women of any age already receiving welfare.
       House Republican leaders said the ban on cash assistance 
     for those children would probably remain in the House bill. 
     But they said they might accept amendments allowing such 
     families to receive assistance in the form of vouchers, which 
     could be used to buy diapers and clothing for the children.
       Representative Bill Goodling, Republican of Pennsylvania, 
     said current welfare programs had ``enslaved'' the poor. And 
     Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon, Republican of upstate 
     New York, asked, ``What is compassionate about welfare 
     programs that encourage dependency for two, three or four 
     generations?'' Democrats said they were not defending the 
     current welfare system.
       In its report on the bill, the Congressional Budget Office 
     made these points: The proposed work requirements for welfare 
     recipients are unrealistic. The bill says that half of single 
     parents and 90 percent of two-parent families on welfare must 
     work. Based on experience with work programs in the past, the 
     office predicted that no states would meet those 
     requirements.
       The Federal Government would save more than $5 billion a 
     year by making legal aliens ineligible for Government 
     benefits that they now receive. The budget office said 1.7 
     million aliens would lose Medicaid coverage, while 1.1 
     million would be denied food stamps.
       The bill would cut $20 billion, or 14 percent, from 
     projected spending on food stamps over the next five years. 
     About 800,000 of the 27 million people now on the rolls would 
     lose their benefits because of work requirements, which 
     stipulate that able-bodied people 18 to 50 with no dependents 
     must work at least 20 hours a week.
       Of the 5 million families now receiving Aid to Families 
     With Dependent Children, 2.8 million would lose some or all 
     of their benefits. The number of disabled children receiving 
     cash benefits under the Supplemental Security Income program 
     would be reduced to 538,000 from 900,000.
       Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, told 
     the Republicans, ``You use a meat ax against handicapped 
     children and their parents.''
     

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