[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.''
____________________