[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 124 (Friday, July 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10862-S10864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WELFARE REFORM

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, after listening to my colleague on the 
subject of welfare reform, I hope that in the coming days we can have 
an interesting, thoughtful debate about welfare reform on the floor of 
the Senate. Much of what he described as a remedy I would support. It 
is, I suppose, useful to describe the failure of the welfare system 
through the image of a casket, a symbol of a system that does not work.
  There are many pictures that one can use to describe the current 
welfare system. The only disagreement I have with the previous speaker 
is the notion that somehow the difficulty with this system is that it 
is administered by the Federal Government. As most of us in this 
Chamber know, the current welfare system is largely administered by the 
States and locally. There is plenty wrong with it. That's why we have 
on our side of the aisle in the Senate constructed a welfare reform 
plan that I think makes a lot of sense. It is called Work First.
  I say to all those who come to the floor to talk about welfare reform 
and the need for a crusade against teenage pregnancy and a whole series 
of other reforms that we must embrace in the Congress, that we should 
also understand our responsibilities when the appropriations bills come 
to the floor of the Senate.
  Yesterday, I saw the results of a bill which would cut nearly one-
third of the funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Bureau of 
Indian Affairs is an agency of the Federal Government that can learn a 
few things about good administration and effective use of taxpayers' 
dollars. But as a result of where I think spending cuts have been 
proposed in some of the appropriations bills, especially with respect 
to native Americans, we will see some of the most vulnerable people in 
this country suffer some of the largest budget cuts.
  I can bring a picture to the floor today of a young woman from Fort 
Yates, ND, who at age 3 was placed in a foster home by a caseworker who 
was handling 150 separate cases. She went to a home which had never 
been previously inspected by the caseworker and, as a result of going 
to a home where alcoholism and parties were the norm, this young girl 
during a drunken party was beaten so severely that hair was pulled out 
of her head by the roots. Her arm was broken. Her nose was broken. This 
is a 3-year-old young girl consigned to a foster home by a caseworker 
who was handling 150 cases and could not bother or did not have the 
time or the money or the resources to check the homes she was sticking 
young children in.
  I say to somebody who wants to talk about reform in this system, to 
somebody who believes that one caseworker ought to be able to handle 
150 cases, you are consigning the children in those cases to the kind 
of harm that occurred to this 3-year-old, physical harm from which she 
will probably never fully recover.
  Look into the eyes of Tamara someday and see what was visited upon 
this young lady, because there was not enough money to hire the two, 
three, or four caseworkers to check the houses in which they were going 
to put these kids.
  When we talk about welfare reform, we talk about our obligations to 
people and then say we do not have enough money for social workers to 
take care of kids, that is not much reform, in my judgment. We say we 
cannot afford to enroll kids in Head Start, and that we cannot find 
enough money for WIC. Part of reforming this system is also to 
understand our obligation to kids and our obligation to some of the 
most vulnerable people in this country.
  I can show you an office in this country where there are stacks of 
paper on the floor this high of reported abuses against children, of 
sexual and physical abuse, that have never been investigated--not even 
investigated. There are reports that a 3-year-old or a 5-year-old or a 
7-year-old has been sexually abused that have not even been 
investigated. Why? Because they do not have people to go out and 
investigate.
 And so, today, a 5-year-old is probably at a home where a previous 
report has been made of sexual violations against this child or of 
physical abuse against this child. This child is at risk today and 
every day because somehow there is not enough money to pay a social 
worker to go out and investigate the reports.

  Any country as good as this country, that can afford to find the 
resources to have caseworkers and investigators to help protect 
children who are living in the grip of poverty in this country and who 
are living in the saddle of fear, and in some of the circumstances that 
I have seen and I think others have seen, has something wrong if its 
priorities do not include full protection for these children. In any 
discussion about reform of our welfare system and in any discussion 
about our obligations as they relate especially to appropriations bills 
that come to the floor, I hope will include a full discussion among 
those of us who have different thoughts about our obligations. I hope 
to be an active participant, because I have some very strong feelings 
about what is wrong in this country. We will find many areas of 
agreement. But to talk about reform and then deny the basic resources 
necessary to hire caseworkers to protect the lives of children who are 
gripped by fear and poverty and live day-to-day fearing for their 
safety is not a priority that I share. I believe the priority must be 
for us to decide that it matters, we care, and we will do something 
about it.
  Mr. President, we will soon begin discussing specific proposals on 
how to reform the Medicare system. I do not know exactly when we will 
discuss them. I heard the majority leader discussing the schedule a few 
moments ago. I intend to say to him in a meeting with my colleagues 
soon that I am not very impressed with the schedule. He has an 
enormously difficult job, and I understand that. But if you are trying 
to raise a family and work in the U.S. Senate and find that at 8, 9 
o'clock every night, you do not know whether there are going to be more 
votes, in my judgment, there is a better way to do things. I hope we 
can find a schedule that allows us to do our work in the Senate and 
still participate in family life, as well. That is a subject for 
another time and one that a number of us hope to talk to the leadership 
about on both sides of the political aisle.
  When we talk about the issue of Medicare in the coming days --I was 
noticing today, on the 30th anniversary of the Medicare bill, that the 
newspaper, USA Today, has an ad by the Republican Party in it. It says, 
``Too Young to Die.'' There is a tombstone on the ad. ``Medicare 1965-
2002.'' It has a Medicare pledge called The Republican Pledge to Save 
Medicare. It says, ``If Clinton lets Medicare go bankrupt, you can keep 
your existing coverage, but only for 7 years. If Clinton lets Medicare 
go bankrupt, you can keep your own doctor for only 7 years.'' It goes 
on at great length. This from a party, 97 percent of whom did not 
support Medicare in the first place. They always opposed Medicare. They 
fought to the death here to try and prevent a Medicare Program from 
becoming a part of our law in this country. Now, on the 30th 
anniversary, most of them want to love it to death.
  Thirty years later, has Medicare worked? You ask some 75-year-old 
person who has new knees, or a new hip, or who has had cataract surgery 
and is not consigned to blindness or a wheelchair, or who has had open 
heart surgery. Ask them whether Medicare has worked and if they are 
free from the fear of whether they will have health care when they grow 
old.
  Ninety-seven percent of our senior citizens are covered with health 
care coverage. I am proud of that. Before Medicare, less than half of 
the senior citizens had access to health insurance. Now, almost all of 
them do. Is that an accident? No, it is not. It is because people in 
this Chamber in years past had the vision to say we ought to put 
together a system that frees senior citizens from the fear of when they 
reach the advancing age of lower income and more health problems, frees 
them from the fear that they may not be able to get medical help 
because 

[[Page S 10863]]
they do not have the money. We put together a Medicare Program. I was 
not here then. But I salute those who led the fight for it in the face 
of opponents that called it socialism, total socialism.
  Well, it is not socialism that the Republicans say they now support 
Medicare. It is a Medicare Program of which I am enormously proud.
  This country spends too little time celebrating its successes. We 
have had a lot of successes. We spend most of our time talking about 
failures and what is wrong. The Medicare Program is a success. I am 
proud to be a part of the political party that fought for it in the 
face of enormous opposition to create it, and I am proud to be a part 
of the party that this week celebrates its 30th birthday. Does it have 
some problems? Yes. There are 200,000 new Americans who become eligible 
for Medicare every single month. That is the graying of America. There 
are more elderly in America every month. Health care costs are 
increasing for everything, including for Medicare.
  So, there are some financial problems. But the majority party in 
Congress has, coincidentally, said in their budget plan for this 
country this year that they want to have a substantial cut in Medicare 
funding that is almost equal to the cut they proposed in taxes. Now, 
they propose that we have what is called a middle-income tax cut of 
roughly $270 or $250 billion. They propose almost an identical cut for 
the Medicare Program. The so-called middle-income tax cut is an 
interesting one. The only details we have of the tax cut comes from the 
House of Representatives. It goes like this--and it would not surprise 
anybody, I suppose--families under $30,000 a year get $120 a year in 
tax cuts; families over $200,000 a year get a tax cut of $11,200 each 
year. It looks to me like that is kind of a ``cake and crumbs'' tax 
cut--cake to the rich, crumbs to the rest. That is not surprising. We 
have seen that year after year from the majority party.
  But it seems to me that if you have a program that works, that is 
successful, for whom we now celebrate 30 years of success, like the 
Medicare Program, to suggest substantial cuts in Medicare funding that, 
coincidentally, equal the proposals to cut taxes, mostly for the 
wealthy, we do not do this country any major favor.
  It seems to me that what we ought to do is evaluate our successes and 
find ways to strengthen them, not weaken them. There are those who say 
Medicare turns 30, but it may not live to see 37, and the Republicans 
are the ones who will save Medicare. I say: Look at the record. Who 
created Medicare? Who has supported Medicare? Who will nurture Medicare 
well into the future as a safe, solid, and financially solvent program?
  I have a piece of copy from something called Luntz Research Companies 
by the Republican pollster, Frank Luntz. It says, ``Everything You 
Wanted To Know About Communicating.'' It was not sent to us. It was 
sent to the Republicans. It is about a 10-page missive on how they 
should communicate to our country about Medicare. It says, ``Seniors 
are very pack oriented, and are very susceptible to following one very 
dominant person's lead.'' And then for page after page it says, ``You 
must appear to be bipartisan.'' It does not say you should be. It says, 
``You must appear to be bipartisan.'' Page after page is instructing 
Republicans how to deal with this Medicare problem. What problem?
  The problem is they are proposing a very substantial cut in Medicare 
that is almost exactly the same size as the tax cuts they proposed for 
the wealthy. It is a problem because senior citizens, I think, in most 
cases, are scared to death that a program that they think is successful 
and they have relied on, that has freed them from fear of growing old 
and not having health care coverage, is about to be dismantled by some 
who carelessly tell us their real interests. We have some around here 
who still say that we ought not have the Medicare Program, that we 
should go back to the ``good old days'' when half of senior citizens 
had no health care coverage at all. They do not quite say it that way, 
but that slips out from time to time. That is their philosophy. They 
think Government, essentially, should not do anything.
  Again, there are 10 pages or so of discussion about exactly how to 
talk your way out of this situation. It says, ``For too many seniors it 
will be the last word that ultimately sways them.'' So make sure you 
are the last person who talks to them, because that is who they will 
believe. You know, all of us have stories about our constituents--
senior citizens who we have met, and whose life is substantially 
improved by this program of which I am very proud.
  I recall a woman from Mandan, ND. I was at a town meeting in that 
small community in my home county. She stood up, and she must have been 
in her midseventies. She said, ``I have a new knee and a new hip. I had 
cataract surgery. I want to tell you, I feel like a million dollars.'' 
Somebody else in the crowd said, ``Well, maybe you cost $1 million.''
  Not quite. These medical procedures are not that expensive. I thought 
to myself, is it not remarkable? If this woman had even come to a 
meeting 50 years ago, she would have been there in a wheelchair and 
would not have been able to see much because her knee was gone, her hip 
was gone, and she had cataracts. Now, through the modern miracles of 
medicine, she feels like a million dollars.
  First of all, this is a remarkable case of breathtaking achievement, 
attributable to the men and women of vision in our country in the 
medical field who produce these miracles--things that we had never 
before expected to be done. Then the Medicare Program provides access 
to that new treatment for America's senior citizens. It is remarkable.
  I think most would agree that what we have done in this country in 
medicine, generally, and for senior citizens through the Medicare 
Program, is an extraordinary thing. We ought not decide at this point 
to weaken those kinds of things that represent successes in America.
  I want to say again something I have said, I suppose half a dozen 
times, that people are tired of hearing. It is important. We have so 
embraced in this country talk about failure and talk about what does 
not work and what is wrong and scandal, that we just are not willing to 
talk about success.
  It is why, for days, I have talked during the regulatory reform 
debate about air and water. The air and the water in this country is 
cleaner than it was 20 years ago. We now use twice as much energy in 
America than we did 20 years ago. We doubled our use of energy. Yet, we 
have cleaner air, cleaner rivers, cleaner streams, cleaner lakes.
  Now, why would that be the case? Would it be because those who were 
polluting America, the big polluters, decided one day to just turn off 
their chimneys and to stop throwing chemicals into rivers, and to stop 
blowing pollution into the air because they just decided it would be 
good business? No, that is not why.
  It is because we put in place regulations that say you cannot 
pollute. Clean air and clean water are important to Americans. It is 
important to our health. It is important to this Earth. You have to 
stop polluting. That is what we said.
  Maybe we ought to celebrate a bit that we are successful after 20 
years. Go back to the 1970's and the first Earth Day, and what you 
would find is a notion that we are consigning ourselves to a future of 
increasingly dirty air and increasingly dirty water, and there is not a 
darned thing anybody can do about it.
  The Hudson River was set on fire, so we had the prospect and the 
sight of a river burning. Why? Because it was so terribly polluted that 
you could set it on fire. You could light the water.
  Back in the 1970's, the notion was that things are so bad, they will 
get worse, and there is nothing we can do. Twenty years later, we 
doubled our use of energy, and those rivers are cleaner and the air is 
cleaner.
  There are those who stand up and say, ``the Federal Government cannot 
do anything right. We hate the Federal Government. Turn it all back to 
the States.'' Some say, ``let's block grant the food stamp program. 
Send it back to the States.'' Apparently, hunger is not a national 
priority anymore for some. Some of what the Federal Government has done 
has been enormously successful. We ought to understand that.
  One part of that is Medicare. That is why I came to the floor today, 
to talk about the Medicare Program. We will 

[[Page S 10864]]
have a fight. That is what democracy is about--debate. We will have a 
debate about the future of these programs, including Medicare. It is a 
debate I look forward to.
  We must fix Medicare with respect to its financial solvency for the 
long term. That is not a fence that you cannot get over. It is, in my 
judgment, not a difficult thing to do. But we should not, in ways that 
some suggest, continually try to weaken a program that works so well.
  No one, in my judgment, should lament the fact we are having this 
kind of debate about whether we spend money on the Medicare Program, 
whether we give a tax cut to Donald Trump, whether we build star wars--
all of which are proposed. No one should lament that. The political 
system is constructed to have that kind of a debate in our country.
  President Kennedy used to say, ``Every mother kind of hopes that her 
child might grow up to be President, as long as they don't have to get 
involved in politics.'' The irony is that the political system is a 
system in which we debate these issues of the day for our country and 
its future.
  I look forward to the coming weeks as we debate the future of 
Medicare. I hope that this full-page ad in USA Today, with a tombstone 
for Medicare, in which the Republicans pledge to save Medicare--a 
political party that opposed it with every bit of their breath and 
energy 30 years ago--I hope this represents a determination by the 
Republicans to join us and say Medicare should be available for the 
long term for America's elderly who need it, not with less coverage and 
higher costs, but instead with good coverage at modest cost, with a 
program that celebrates America's success.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. 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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