[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 104 (Friday, June 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8994-S8996]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             AT-RISK YOUTH

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, this Congress and the American people are 
now engaged in a historic debate about welfare. I would like to talk 
this afternoon about the people we need to focus on in that debate.
  Mr. President, when I was in Youngstown, OH, a couple of months ago, 
I visited a church that ran a program for what is termed ``at-risk 
youth.'' The kids that I saw that evening were seated in a circle 
talking about their lives, talking about their problems. One of the 
teenagers was asked this question: ``Why do you get up in the 
morning?'' That is a simple question. This young man responded: 
``Because I don't want to be dead.''
  Mr. President, people that were there that evening thought he might 
have missed the meaning of the question and misunderstood it. So they 
asked him his goals for the rest of the day. He said, again, that he 
did not want to die.
  That was his objective for an average day.
  Mr. President, that teenager, that young man, is growing up in a 
different country from most of the rest of us--a country most of us 
would have a very difficult time recognizing.
  Now, the sociologists call that teenager at risk. That is kind of a 
strange term. As parents, we know that, in a sense, all children are at 
risk at all times. But these children are at risk in a different sense, 
in a different way. They are in grave danger of living very sad, very 
unhappy, very tragic lives.
  By the term ``at-risk,'' we mean children who are not learning the 
skills they need to really participate at all in society; children who 
are more than a grade behind in school; children who drop out; children 
who are abused, assaulted and live in constant danger of violent crime; 
children who are homeless or who run away from home. By at-risk, we 
mean children who are having children, children who are juvenile 
offenders themselves, already experiencing the justice system because 
of the crimes that they have committed.
  By at-risk, we mean children who live in neighborhoods where work is 
more the exception than the rule, children who do not have any 
responsible adults playing a meaningful role in their lives--no role 
models, no one to look up to, no one to trust.
  These young people are growing up so far outside the mainstream that 
they are going to have really very little chance of ever joining what 
you and I know as the American community.
  They will certainly have very little chance to ever participate in 
the American dream.
  Mr. President, these young people do not share in the values of 
America. It is not so much that they reject our values. It is not that 
they are protesting against our values. Rather, they never learned 
these values to begin with. This group of young people is, 
unfortunately, tragically, growing.
  Since 1965, the juvenile arrest rate for violent crime has tripled. 
Children are the fastest growing segment of the criminal population.
  Mr. President, since 1975, homelessness has been on the rise, and it 
has increased faster among families with children than among any other 
group. Every year, nearly one million young people between the age of 
12 and 19 are themselves victims of violent crime.
  Mr. President, too many young people are not getting the education 
they need either. Since 1960, we have spent 200 percent more on public 
schools, in real dollars. But the quality of education is not 
improving. A 1988 study found that of all the nations tested, the 
United States finished dead last in science.
  In my home State, the State of Ohio, the Ohio Department of Education 
says that they really do not have complete statistics on graduation. 
But the statistics they do have suggest that of the children who enter 
Ohio high schools, only 75 percent graduate 4 years later. But that 
statistic really sugarcoats the much more dismal reality in many of our 
cities. In Youngstown, OH, for example, the reported figure is that 
only 46 percent graduate after 4 years; in Columbus, only 44 percent; 
and in Toledo, only 37 percent. I suspect that these figures would not 
be different in any major city in this country today.
  Mr. President, these children are really not being educated. We all 
know what not educating a young person leads to. According to the 
educational testing service, half of the heads of households on welfare 
are dropouts. That should not be a surprise. The Ohio Department of 
Rehabilitation and Corrections--our State prison system--reports that 
at least 25 percent of the inmates in Ohio prisons are dropouts.
  I would say, Mr. President, based on my own experience as Lieutenant 
Governor in Ohio and being in charge of our prison system and working 
with the Governor in this area, that figure is probably a lot higher 
than that.
  Mr. President, these young people are falling behind every day. They 
are falling behind too far and too fast. Almost 5 million children are 
growing up in neighborhoods where the majority of men are unemployed 
for most of the year.
  And certainly too many children are having children. Since 1960, the 
rate of unmarried teenagers having children has increased almost 200 
percent.
  Since 1960, the percentage of families headed by single parents has 
also tripled. You hear a lot, of course, about single-parent families. 
But I feel that too many people really are missing the point. They are 
missing the point about why this is really an important issue and what 
all of the ramifications really are.
  Let me point out for the Senate, Mr. President, one reason why that 
statistic, that figure, is so very important. It is important because 
children growing up in single-parent families are poorer than children, 
on the average, who live with two parents.
  Children who do not have fathers around are five times more likely to 
be poor. They are also 10 times more likely to be extremely poor, to 
live in the kind of grinding poverty which is very hard to escape.
  Mr. President, it is hard to escape this poverty because it is more 
than economic poverty. It is a poverty, really, of the spirit, the 
poverty especially of young men who are growing up with no role models.
  It is a basic fact of human existence that when boys grow up without 
fathers, they become men without knowing what mature manhood really is 
supposed to be. That is really what fatherhood is all about, giving 
young people an adult male, a role model, to learn from. Young people 
need to have strong adult role models around if they are going to break 
out of the cycle of dysfunctional behavior.
  All the social pathologies I talk about in this speech really 
reinforce each other. Only the involvement of strong, caring adults in 
children's lives can ever truly break this vicious cycle.
  Consider another fact: 54 percent of all females who drop out of 
school are either pregnant at the time or already have children. Mr. 
President, the early, decisive intervention of a strong adult role 
model can certainly prevent a lot of problems. The young people I am 
talking about many times lack fathers. They lack role models, they lack 
education, they lack hope. That is why America today is losing these 
young people.
  The class of young people I am talking about who are seriously at 
risk is growing, and it is heading toward an explosion, right in the 
middle of what is and what should remain the richest, greatest, the 
most powerful country in the world.
  Mr. President, that is simply wrong. We, as a society, cannot afford 
to lose more and more young people to social trends that hurt people 
and destroy lives. We simply cannot let this problem continue to grow. 
We have to do

[[Page S8995]]

everything we can to roll back that tide of what really is a social 
collapse.
  Now, this is not going to be an easy tack. It will be an extremely 
difficult task. It will take a lot more than Government programs to get 
America through what amounts to a full-scale social crisis. We need 
churches, businesses, labor groups, and, indeed, all of American 
society to reach out to these young people in a way that is truly 
effective.
  This past Wednesday, the Labor and Human Resources Committee reported 
out the Work Force Development Act. This is, of course, the Senate's 
job training bill. Mr. President, as we shift responsibility for job 
training to the States, because I think we should, there will be a 
temptation to focus the job training effort to a relatively--I say 
``relatively''--easier task, like assisting the skilled and educated 
workers who are temporarily out of work. They certainly need help.
  I think that our Nation must have a different primary focus. I 
believe we must target America's No. 1 problem and tackle it head on. 
There are millions of young people in this country who are growing up 
in an environment that really all but guarantees their failure. If our 
job training legislation does not make a difference in the lives of 
these young people, we will be sacrificing not just an entire 
generation, but because these kids are having kids, we will be 
sacrificing the generation to follow.
  We will sacrifice more than that, really, because this is an issue 
not just about these children's future, it is about who we are as a 
people. These young people are really not strangers among us. They are 
us. We will not be able to rest until we have brought the young people 
back into the American mainstream--a mainstream of work, a mainstream 
of responsibility, and a mainstream of opportunity.
  That is why, Mr. President, during Wednesday's hearing, I proposed an 
amendment that would establish, as part of the Senate job training 
block grant, a $2.1 billion fund for programs to help these threatened 
young people.
  My amendment passed the committee by a vote of 12 to 4. I believe 
that our committee's intent could really not be more clear. We must 
have a national focus on at-risk youth.
  Mr. President, I held a job training field hearing in Ohio a few 
weeks ago. I heard from people on the front lines, the people who get 
up every morning and try to make a difference by helping train some of 
these young people. I also heard at that hearing from some of these 
young people themselves. It is pretty clear from what we heard that 
their needs are not being met by our current system.
  In fact, State job training programs many times simply do not focus 
on this very difficult but crucial task. If we, as Americans, want to 
do something about this problem, I believe that we have to have a 
national commitment.
  Now, it remains as true as ever that Federal mandates are not--let me 
repeat, are not--an effective way to tackle social problems. That is 
why it is essential we not try to prescribe particular solutions from 
Washington, DC. We do not need more micromanagement out of this 
Capitol.
  However, I do believe what we should do is make a national commitment 
to target this at-risk youth population. At the same time we make this 
national commitment, we must match that national commitment and a 
national setting of priorities with a commitment to give the States the 
maximum amount of flexibility to design their own programs to target 
this group of our young people.
  Mr. President, the history of the last 30 years proves that the 
Federal Government does not have the answers. We have to give the 
States the funding and the flexibility they need to design and support 
programs that will, in fact, work.
  I also believe we must, as a nation, as a people, say that the saving 
of this group of young people is, in fact, a national priority. Even 
now, as we speak today, a number of communities are pointing the way to 
possible solutions. They are doing it with programs that may be 
partially federally funded, may not be federally funded at all, may 
have some State money in them, or some of the programs I have seen have 
no government money. A number of the communities I have visited are 
really leading and pointing the way.
  The Youngstown church, for example, which I mentioned earlier at the 
beginning of my remarks, is a place where kids can go between the end 
of school, when they get out of school, and bedtime. It is a place 
where they have things to do and a place where they are safe.
  Being safe from physical violence is a good start. In Cleveland, OH, 
Charles Ballard started a program 13 years ago that helped teach these 
young people how to be fathers. His organization, the Institute for 
Responsible Fatherhood, is making a big difference; 2,700 men have 
participated so far, and 97 percent of the program's graduates are, in 
fact, supporting their own children.
  Last week, Mr. Ballard announced he will be expanding his program to 
five new cities. I had the opportunity to see him last week when he 
stopped by my office here in Washington.
  In San Jose, CA, there is a project called CET that provides 3 to 6 
months of vocational training to disadvantaged young people and adults. 
A study of this local San Jose program indicates that the young people 
who participate in it end up doing substantially better many years into 
the future. Their annual earnings increase by more than $3,000 a year. 
That is one of the best results ever achieved by such a youth training 
program.
  Their success in San Jose is really because the program is tied 
closely--very closely, intimately--to the local labor market. The CET 
program's staff keeps in close touch with local employers so they know 
what jobs really exist in the community, so that they are training 
people for jobs that really exist. CET emphasizes practical job 
training over more rigid, classroom-focused instruction.
  Mr. President, Cleveland, OH, has a program called Cleveland Works. 
This program provides training, day care, and health care for welfare 
recipients. Each welfare recipient receives some 400 or 500 hours of 
training, and then gets placed with one of the 630 employers who 
participate in that area in the program. These workers get full-time 
wages and health care benefits for themselves and for their families. 
Cleveland Works has tracked all of its clients over the last 9 years 
and about 80 percent of them --80 percent--never go back on welfare.

  Cleveland Works breaks down the barrier between the two cultures of 
work and welfare. It can be done. Cleveland Works is a success story 
that is already being replicated by dedicated people in six other 
American cities.
  At the other end of the State is Cincinnati. In Cincinnati's Over-
the-Rhine district there is a program called Jobs Plus, which I 
personally visited, which gives intensive training and counseling to 
at-risk individuals. All Jobs Plus clients are enrolled in a 90-day 
program, a crash course in the values and skills that are required in 
the working world. But the Jobs Plus program does not stop when the 
client gets a job. The client is then encouraged to join the Jobs Plus 
Club, to get moral support for what can be a very tough transition to a 
life of work and responsibility.
  Should we mandate any of these programs nationally? No. I do not 
think so. But they look like good programs, and I think it would be 
wise for local communities across the country who are concerned about 
their at-risk youth to consider programs such as these.
  The bottom line is that we have to keep on looking for the answers. 
There is no one right answer. We have to keep the focus on this 
problem. We have to keep the focus on this challenge. We have to do 
that. We have to keep reminding ourselves about the problem because 
there is simply too much of an incentive for us to forget these kids. 
There is a wall between these children and the rest of America, a wall 
every bit as real as if it were the stone wall of a prison or a 
jailhouse. We need to bring that wall down.
  That is why, as we discuss the job training legislation and the 
welfare reform bill that will certainly follow, we must not lose sight 
of these particular children who have simply been forgotten for too 
long.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Ohio for 
his

[[Page S8996]]

very thoughtful and indepth statement on the job training programs and 
how they should be adjusted to better deal with the issue of actually 
training people versus just creating bureaucracy. I think his proposals 
are excellent and I hope this Senate will take heed of what he has said 
and follow them closely. As a member of the Labor Committee, I have 
certainly tried to do that relative to his recommendations.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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