[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5109-S5110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE DOLE AMENDMENT

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am not going to talk about the amendment 
that I do want to offer at the appropriate time, providing we continue 
with this bill. But I would like to talk for a moment about an item 
that is in the underlying bill. I understand the underlying bill is the 
House bill which has been amended by the committee amendment, by the 
Daschle amendment, and by the Dole amendment. So there is a complicated 
stream here, but I am addressing my comments to the underlying bill and 
to the Dole amendment itself.
  One of the things that we have heard the most discussion about in 
Washington, indeed in the country, is the problem of violence in our 
streets and the problem of our young people. I do not think there is a 
Republican or a Democrat who has not run for office talking about 
values and the importance of trying to transfer values to the young 
people of this country.
  The real test of this country, certainly of the U.S. Senate and the 
House, will be our ability to keep faith with the American people and 
translate the rhetoric into some kind of substantive approach.
  Now I do not come to the floor with the notion that the Government 
has all the answers. I think we have been sobered up and learned a lot 
in the last years. And I do not come to the floor with the notion that 
the only way to try to deal with the values issue is to have a 
Government incentive or a Government program, but we have to be honest. 
At the same time as we admit that reality, we ought to also admit that 
there are programs that make a difference; that there are certain 
things that the private sector will not do for itself; that there are 
certain kinds of initiatives that only get started by virtue of the 
leverage provided by the public sector which empowers the private 
sector or nonprofits to be able to make a difference in the lives of 
other human beings.
  One of the cuts that takes place in the underlying Dole amendment, 
which I must say, I do not know if it is intentional. I do not know if 
the Senator from Kansas, who I know to be somebody genuinely concerned 
about these matters, is aware that this slipped in there or is in 
there.
 But the effect of the Dole amendment is to cut one of the most 
significant programs of accomplishment in this country and it runs 
completely counter to the talk of returning responsibility to the local 
level, because this amendment takes resources directly out of the 
communities and out of the private entities, the self-started entities 
of communities, and strips them of their ability to make a difference 
in the lives of our kids.

  Mr. President, the amendment that I am referring to, or a portion of 
the Dole amendment, takes $38 million from one of the most successful 
programs of community investment that we have in this country, a 
program called Youth Build.
  Last night, I had the privilege of being in Boston attending the only 
dinner of its kind in the country about Youth Build. Youth Build is a 
program that began 5 years ago. It began in Boston, but it is now in 40 
cities in America. There are 105 units around this country that seek 
funding from HUD for Youth Build. Mr. President, there are only two 
staff people at HUD managing this program--two staff people. So this is 
not a bureaucratic boondoggle. This program provides money directly to 
local communities. It does not go to the State. It is not chewed up in 
the administrative process. It goes directly to local communities. 
There is no bureaucracy here. There is no waste here.
  There is a tremendous record of success. Last night, I saw a film 
about graduates of this program. One of these graduates was not too 
long ago in prison. Another graduate was a member of a gang. Another 
graduate was a drug addict. Today, they are employed in the private 
sector. They are leaders in the community; they are in college; they 
are managers of our Boston Harbor project; they are involved in 
engineering; they are in carpenters unions; they are apprentices. For 
the first time in their lives, they are making it, and they are making 
it because this program reached out into the community to these kids 
and took kids who had dropped out of school, who have no family 
connections, and gave them a purpose in life and a skill.
  What Youth Build does is take these kids and puts them into 1 week of 
high-school equivalency and 1 week on a site in an old abandoned home 
donated by the city, labor donated by the architects of the city, the 
carpenters union donating the skill, and all of those are married in a 
synergy that brings those kids into the first-time environment they 
have ever had that gives them a sense of purpose, a sense of 
responsibility and accountability, not just to society around them but 
to themselves--each and every one of them.
  That is values. That is values transfer. Mr. President, it just does 
not make sense to take the few hundred bucks per person that you are 
stripping away and leave them with the possibility of our spending 
$30,000 to $50,000 a year to house them in a prison somewhere down the 
line.
  In Boston alone, there are 10 kids applying for this program for 
every 1 that gets into it. Mr. President, I do not hear people running 
around the Nation saying this is where the waste is. I do not hear 
people saying cut those programs that put kids into a useful 
environment. I do not see some great hue and cry in the country saying, 
``We're going to throw you all out of office if you don't cut the money 
for Youth Build.'' But we are cutting it, and the 
[[Page S5110]] question has to be asked, why? What is the rationale?
  We all understand we have to cut somewhere, but does it make sense to 
be cutting this program and then turn around and spend a huge amount of 
money on the Market Promotion Program, for instance, where we give 
money to McDonalds and a whole bunch of big companies to sell their 
goods abroad, companies that can afford to advertise on there own?
  Mr. President, we have some $85 million, I think it is, in the Market 
Promotion Program. The Market Promotion Program gives Tyson Foods 
$937,000; International Foods, $179,000; Gold's Gym, $226,000; Mott's 
International; Pepperidge Farm; Tropicana; Entenmanns; Tootsie Roll; 
Beer Nuts; Ocean Spray; Friendly's; Gortons; Perdue; Giant Food; 
General Mills; Pillsbury; Ralston Purina; M&M Mars; Campbell Soup; 
Haagen-Dazs; R.W. Frookie; Snapple; Chichita; Borden; Hershey; Brach's 
Candy; Miller beer--they all get money, but Youth Build is not going to 
get money.
  It does not make sense, Mr. President. I think what the American 
people said last November is, ``We want you to express some common 
sense on our behalf,'' and, for the life of me, I do not understand why 
we would want to be cutting a program like Youth Build which has been 
proven to work.
  Last night, I listened to a young man by the name of Robert Clark. 
Robert Clark was in prison. Robert Clark is now a full-time student at 
a well-known university on the east coast of the United States. He is 
doing well. He has testified before committees in the Congress. He has 
done an extraordinary job of explaining to people the connection 
between a program like Youth Build and his capacity to rejoin society 
as a productive member. It just seems to me that if you are going to 
talk about investing in the future of this country, we ought to 
remember what makes a difference, Mr. President.
  Robert Kennedy spoke of this in 1968 in a high school in Scottsbluff, 
NE, and he talked about the sense of community that we ought to be 
celebrating in a choice like this with respect to Youth Build. He said:

       At every critical mark in our history, Americans have 
     looked beyond the narrow borders of personal concern, 
     remembering the bonds that tied them to their fellow 
     citizens. These efforts were not acts of charity. They sprang 
     from the recognition of a root fact of American life that we 
     all share in each other's fortunes, that where one of us 
     prospers, all of us prosper, and where one of us falters, so 
     do we all.

  He said in 1968, and we ought to think about it again as we make 
these choices in 1995, that:

       It is this sense, more than any failure of good will or 
     policy, that we have missed in America.

  Mr. President, in the course of exercising choices in this 
legislation, it seems we are perhaps about to again miss that in 
America, and I hope we will not. I hope we will recognize that perhaps 
this is an oversight, and we should make a different judgment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LOTT. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NUNN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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