[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 127 (Wednesday, August 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11190-S11191]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           WELFARE IN AMERICA

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you for this opportunity to address the Senate, 
as I have done on 3 or 4 previous evenings. I am here to talk again 
about a topic which will confront the Senate very dramatically later 
this week. It is the topic of welfare reform.
  It is time for the Senate to begin to focus not only on the cost of 
welfare reform in terms of dollars and cents, but the cost of the 
welfare tragedy in terms of the human cost--not numbers, but lives.
  In each of the previous evenings when I have had an opportunity to 
address the Senate on this topic, I have talked about specific 
individuals. Individuals who have a story; individuals who were tragic 
victims of our welfare system.
  The story I want to talk about tonight is the story of Jack Gordon 
Hill, Jr., of French Camp, CA. Mr. Hill's story is not a particularly 
uplifting story, for it is yet another story of human suffering at the 
hands of the welfare system.
  Mr. President, I believe that Mr. Hill's story is the personification 
of a system that has replaced responsibility with rights, and has 
replaced opportunity with entitlement.
  This picture beside me is one bright spot in Mr. Hill's welfare 
legacy. About a year ago, Mr. Hill credited the Federal Government's 
Supplemental Security Income Program with saving his life, and all the 
indications seemed to support his assertion. He was physically strong. 
He was mentally prepared, and ready once again to accept a place in 
America.
  Mr. President, Jack Gordon Hill, Jr, had a serious problem with drugs 
and alcohol his entire adult life. His cocaine and whiskey cost him 
everything he had. Years ago he lost his job, and shortly thereafter he 
lost his family. He and his wife divorced. He gave up an infant son for 
adoption. Most tragically, he abandoned his two small daughters in 
Baltimore, unable or unwilling to take care of them.
  In short, Mr. Hill was rushing ever faster toward rock bottom and 
almost hit, he claims, when he discovered SSI, which provides special 
payments for addicts. In his words, ``It is like I've been falling in a 
bottomless pit all my life, and all of a sudden there was this one thin 
branch sticking out. I grabbed it. Now I am climbing out.''
  It turns out that the branch of SSI did not save him. It accelerated 
his fall. Mr. Hill's branch was a $458 a month governmental check, with 
which he was able to enter a drug and alcohol treatment center and get 
away from the street corner he had haunted.
  In an interview with the Baltimore Sun last July, he sat in his room, 
in the California rehab center, playing with his kitten, Serenity--its 
name represented a new-found state of peace in his life. This world of 
contrived contentment was built on a foundation of sand.
  Six months after that interview, the Baltimore Sun found Mr. Hill 
back on the same corner where he had begun, drunk and doped up. His 
Federal funds were now being used to support his renewed addiction to 
cocaine.
  His use of these funds is far from exceptional. The system under 
which he got them spends $1.4 billion per year of taxpayers' funds. 
Unlike Mr. Hill, however, most of the individuals who received these 
funds--hundreds of thousands, according to the Baltimore Sun--never 
enter treatment centers, or seriously try to beat their addictions. The 
$458 a month they receive only speeds their inevitable demise.
  One drug counselor at a health clinic for the homeless told the Sun 
that drug dealers flock around the recipients of these Government 
checks whenever the checks come in. Speaking of his patients who had 
died from drug overdoses, the drug counselor said, ``All the dealers 
came circling around the patient of the day like vultures. A week later 
he would crash from whatever dope he was doing and feel terrible.
 Those were the times he would go looking for help. The problem was 
that we could never find help for him when that check came in the mail 
on the first of the month, and the whole cycle started over again.''

  This cycle of abuse, funded by the Federal Government, this welfare 
system which provides funding for the maintenance of these habits, is a 
tragedy which is costing us a tremendous toll in terms of human lives. 
When our welfare system clearly and openly supports a policy which runs 
contrary to every law and principle in our Government, we cannot be so 
blind as not to see the immediate and overwhelming need for an overhaul 
of the welfare system.
  I have come before this body repeatedly to relate the personal 
stories of real Americans, stories which demonstrate how bankrupt our 
current welfare system is, how it enslaves its beneficiaries, how it 
traps them and robs them of their independence, their hope, and their 
futures. It is hard enough to break out of the cycle of poverty and 
dependence which the welfare system creates economically, but when the 
welfare system buys drugs for addicts, it virtually guarantees they 
will not escape and they will never be anything but wards of the 
Federal Government.
  Mr. Hill did not only find himself abused, but he tried to do 
something. Mr. Hill did more than most of the SSI substance abuse 
recipients. He tried to get treatment. Yet, because Washington, DC, 
perceived the solution to his problems to be a wad full of Federal 
money--because the helping hand of Washington extends money to those 
who are in need and does not do much else--it destroyed his capacity. 
True charity cannot come from the Federal Government, it must come from 
concerned citizens who know the problems of their own communities, know 
the citizens in those communities, and truly want to solve the 
problems. And Federal money, money alone, cannot solve the problem. We 
need to involve the communities. We need to involve the States. We need 
to involve people--people who have the chance to introduce those on 
welfare to opportunities that lift them out of welfare.
  Federal money should be administered to the States directly, allowing 
them the freedom to direct funds where they are needed. Federal funds 
should not be administered from a distant Washington bureaucrat and 
directed in ways that are not meaningful on the local level. Welfare, 
as it is currently practiced, simply provides a means for Mr. Hill and 
others like him to continue their self-destructive behavior. This 
behavior costs not only Mr. Hill, it costs us--not only in terms of our 
resources but it costs us productivity and lives. It has cost his three 
children an association with a father. It has been a tragedy, not just 
in financial terms, but in personal terms. It provides a means for Mr. 
Hill and others like him to continue their destructive behavior.
  This is not a time for us to engage in half measures of welfare 
reform, and it is not a time for silence. Unfortunately, silence is 
exactly what we are getting from the Democrats who are making proposals 
which they call welfare reform. Every Republican plan 

[[Page S11191]]
that has been proposed eliminates the drug addiction and alcoholism 
disabilities from SSI. The Democrats are silent. President Clinton is 
silent on this issue. On issues as important as these, silence is 
death.
  We have been down the road of half measures before. It was called the 
1988 Family Support Act. It made big promises. It was going to put 
people to work. We had hoped, with the so-called Welfare Reform Act of 
1988, that the devotion of additional resources, that additional 
Washington management, that additional one-size-fits-all solutions from 
the Nation's Capital would somehow provide a solution to the problem. 
But if we take a good look at what has happened in terms of welfare 
spending, we did not solve the problem in 1988. The problem skyrocketed 
in 1988. Half measures, the rearrangement of the deck chairs on the 
welfare Titanic, will do no more than provide a basis for taking the 
line on this chart right off the page.
  We need to have real reform. We need to understand that welfare that 
is simply the Federal Government's handing individuals a wad of money, 
like the welfare reform proposal made available to Mr. Hill, is not 
welfare reform. That is welfare entrapment. We need to be involved in 
welfare replacement.
  We must do more, we must ask for more, we must involve more people in 
the program. We must ask that civic groups and nongovernmental 
organizations be allowed to work with States. We must send the 
resources to the States to give them flexibility. The idea that there 
is a single solution in Washington that will provide the opportunity 
for everyone everywhere is an idea that has been proven to be a 
failure.
  My family has an average size. If we were to try to buy pajamas based 
on the average size, one-size-fits-all would translate into one-size-
fits-none.
  When the Government in Washington, DC, tries to have a one-size-fits-
all solution, it frequently fits none. It is time for us to turn the 
opportunity over to the States, States that can involve institutions 
that care for people, States that have the courage to make basic 
reforms, States that will have the courage to say to those on drugs and 
alcohol, ``We will not continue to support your habit.''
  The real costs of welfare are not just the costs that we face as a 
result of the budget crunch. They are the costs in terms of human 
tragedy, costs like those endured by the Hill family as a result of the 
fact that, as a Government, we have chosen to fund one's addiction 
rather than to provide the kind of care that would help an individual 
leave the welfare system and become a productive individual.
  This Saturday we will begin the welfare debate. We will have the 
opportunity to make a decision to pull together the information which 
will lead us to an inevitable conclusion that the one-size-fits-all 
Washington system has failed. We will have the opportunity to give the 
States, which have been begging for decades now, the flexibility to do 
what works, to give them the resources through block grants, to allow 
them to make the kinds of changes and to have the kinds of conditions 
and requirements that will lift people by enlisting nongovernmental 
organizations and others in their communities to help individuals on 
welfare become productive members of our cities and towns.
  It is with this in mind that we need to understand that welfare 
reform cannot be tinkering around the edges. It must be substantial. It 
must be real renovation and reformation, for without renovation and 
reformation in the system, we will not have a new opportunity for the 
citizens of the land. Indeed, that is what citizens who now are on 
welfare desperately need.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. FORD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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