[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 131 (Monday, August 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11735-S11784]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of H.R. 4, the welfare reform bill, which the 
clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 4) to restore the American family, reduce 
     illegitimacy, control welfare spending and reduce welfare 
     dependence.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

       Pending:
       Dole amendment No. 2280, of a perfecting nature.


[[Page S 11736]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I have a unanimous-consent request that 
has been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that only 
debate be in order on the welfare bill, H.R. 4, until the hour of 3 
o'clock p.m. today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, ``The lessons of history, confirmed by 
the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued 
dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration, 
fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in 
this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human 
spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is a 
violation of the traditions of America.''
  So spoke Franklin Roosevelt in his second annual message January 4, 
1935, the year that welfare, as we currently refer to it, was passed. 
As a matter of fact, we are almost 60 years to the day. One more week 
and we would be there. August 14, 1935, we passed the Social Security 
Act.
  The act had two components. One was Social Security pensions and the 
other was welfare for widows and orphans. Both of the above, the 
pensions and the welfare for widows and orphans, were intended to cover 
really the same group of people at that time, in 1935. But they were 
covered for different reasons.
  Social Security, the pension, was to be yours, of course, if you 
worked until age 65 and collected a pension for the rest of your life. 
But support for widows and orphans, enacted in the same bill, was to be 
yours if the breadwinner died.
  This was done in 1935, Mr. President. In most cases in those days, 
women did not work outside of the home for money. They stayed home, and 
they raised the children. The breadwinner was normally a man.
  So the Social Security Act said, all right, if the man works and he 
works until he is 65 and he retires, he gets a pension, and with the 
pension he will still be able to take care of his wife; his children by 
that time presumably would have been grown and off working on their 
own. If by chance, however, the breadwinner died before 65, then who 
was left to support the widow and the children? For that purpose, in 
the same act as Social Security, we passed what we now call Aid to 
Families With Dependent Children. We then simply called it welfare. It 
was presumed that the widow would have no more children unless she 
remarried, in which case she would not need welfare support any more. 
And in those days, almost all welfare, that is, as we now call it, AFDC 
[Aid to Families With Dependent Children], over 90 percent of welfare 
went to widows and orphans.
  It was not until 1939 that what we call survivor coverage was added 
to Social Security. And we now said if the breadwinner--and this was 
still presumed to be the man--died prior to age 65, and if the 
breadwinner had a widow with children, the widow would get 75 percent 
of the pension benefits that the breadwinner would have gotten had he 
lived until 65 and in addition got 75 percent for each child that she 
had up to a capped amount. You could not have 20 children and get 75 
percent each, but most people do not have 20 children.
  I emphasize again, in 1935 we passed the Social Security Act. It has 
a pension part and a welfare part. And the two were really separated.
  Then in 1939, 4 years later, we added this survivors coverage to 
Social Security, and an interesting thing happened after we added it. 
Because by and large the survivors pension to the widow and the 
children under Social Security was larger than welfare, and gradually 
from 1939 on, first as more people worked in the system and then as we 
added by statute more and more people to the system and covered more 
and more people--I think probably the biggest single coverage expansion 
coming in 1953 or 1954 under President Eisenhower--by the time we had 
gotten to 1960, most people were covered by Social Security, and 
therefore had Social Security survivor benefits for widows and 
children.
  So the original purpose of welfare, to provide for the widows and the 
orphans, was supplanted by Social Security. And from 1960 onward, maybe 
1970 onward, in a rapidly accelerating pace, welfare, Aid to Families 
With Dependent Children as we now call it, started tilting toward the 
support of unwed mothers and children who had never had a breadwinner 
in the house.
  This was not a substitute for the deceased husband. For the first 
time, we began to see the welfare system turn toward a different 
concept from that upon which it was founded. The concept upon which it 
was founded was, if the breadwinner dies, there is money for the widow 
and the child.
  As Social Security replaced and supplanted welfare, therefore, I 
sometimes wonder--I do not really say this with any assuredness--but I 
sometimes wonder if the bureaucracy that administered the old welfare 
system thought to itself, ``We will soon be out of a job,'' Social 
Security having taken over the job, and, ``We need to find some other 
function.''
  It happens in private enterprise all the time. A classic example, of 
course, would be the March of Dimes. Franklin Roosevelt started the 
March of Dimes. We eradicated polio, and the need for the March of 
Dimes could have gone out of existence. If you look at it in the phone 
book, it is now referred to as the March of Dimes, Birth Defects. The 
organization--I do not mean this any way critically--needed another 
cause after our having successfully conquered polio. I do not say this 
is what happened with the welfare bureaucracy from 1960, and certainly 
1970 onward. But instead of welfare now being emergency financial 
support for an absent, deceased breadwinner, it began to become a 
lifetime support system for somebody that never had a breadwinner.
  Then, unfortunately, it became not just a lifetime support system, 
but a generational support system of a woman, then a child, and then 
the child's child, and then the child's child's child, all on welfare. 
And, therefore, what we could presume at the start with welfare, we 
could no longer presume from--I will just pick the date--1960 onward.
  When we gave money in 1935, 1937, 1938, and on up until Social 
Security took over the principal function of survivors' benefits, we 
were presuming, one, the woman would have no more children, or if she 
got married she may have more children but she would marry a 
breadwinner and be off welfare, and, two, if it was a widow's pension 
with a child, the child grew up and the woman had her pension until she 
died. And society could humanely justify and support that, because we 
knew that this was not going to be massive in cost. Most breadwinners 
do not die. And we knew that, as a matter of conscience and humanity, 
we could afford it.
  But as we got into a situation where we were looking at lifetime 
support or generational support, we had to attempt to shift welfare 
from emergency support because the breadwinner died to an effort to 
teach and train people to get off of welfare. We did not intend welfare 
as a lifetime and generational support system.
  So for a quarter of a century, the Federal Government has tinkered 
and tried to remedy the problem of work. Mr. President, the Federal 
Government has failed. It has not worked. Welfare, as the Federal 
Government hoped it would work, would be a trampoline. People would 
spring back to work. Instead of a trampoline it has become a hammock. 
And it is not working at all.
  Let me ask you, Mr. President, has it failed because we have not 
spent enough money? This is often the argument. ``All we need is a bit 
more money and we could take care of the problem.''
  Mr. President, I do not know how much ``a bit more'' is, but I do 
know that we have spent an increasing amount of money on welfare by any 
measure over the last half century. If we hoped that by spending more 
we would reduce the welfare caseload and get people off of welfare, we 
have failed. The Social Security Administration puts out a publication 
annually on what they define public aid. The Social Security 
Administration takes the various programs that we might generically 
call aid to the poor, not just aid to families with dependent children, 
but all the programs--Medicaid, food 

[[Page S 11737]]
stamps, anything that would go to the poor--and have added up how much 
we spend. They have done it using what we call constant dollars, 
current dollars, and per capita dollars. I will define what I mean by 
these.
  ``Current dollars'' means what you spend today. It does not 
necessarily mean a dollar of the same value. Let us say you spend $100 
on welfare today, and $100 will buy you a certain basket full of 
groceries. Let us say you have 100 percent inflation, and in order to 
buy the same basket of groceries the next year, you would need $200. So 
we spend $200 on welfare. That is called current dollar spending. 
Basically, it is just what we spend now and takes no account of 
inflation. The $200 does not buy you any more than the $100 did before 
the 100 percent inflation. That is one way to measure things.
  If you take all of the programs that Social Security counts as public 
aid in terms of current dollars, in 1947 we spent $2 billion in this 
country, including what the States spent--$2 billion. We now spend $180 
billion on roughly the same programs. Some programs have dropped by the 
wayside and others have been added, but on balance it's roughly the 
same types of programs.
  A better test is what we call constant dollars. You assume that the 
value of the dollar has never changed, there has been no inflation. You 
adjust the spending backwards so you know what you would have spent 
based on today's dollars as if there were no inflation for 50 years. On 
a constant dollar basis, in 1947 we spent $10 billion, not $2 billion 
but $10 billion. Today it is $180 billion. We have gone in uninflated 
dollars from $10 billion to $180 billion.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?
  (Mr. THOMAS assumed the chair.)
  Mr. PACKWOOD. No, not until I finish, thank you.
  Have we fixed the welfare problem? We have not even come close. Maybe 
the best figure, though, is per capita spending. How much do we spend 
per person in this country on a constant dollar basis? In 1947, we 
spent $70 per person in this country; in 1991, which is the last year 
we have figures for, we spent $713 per person. This assumes the dollar 
has never been inflated. The $70 has risen to $713, and the welfare 
problem is getting worse.
  Last figure. What percent of our total gross domestic product do we 
spend on what Social Security calls public aid? In 1947, 0.7 percent of 
our entire gross domestic product of all the goods and services in this 
country was spent on public aid. We now spend over 3 percent.
  So by any measure of money we have spent on welfare, we have spent it 
in spades. We have doubled and redoubled and redoubled and redoubled 
and redoubled the money we have spent on welfare. I would suggest, Mr. 
President, it has not solved the problem.
  Next, has it failed then because of insufficient regulation? I have 
here in my hand the 1935 section of the Social Security Act for 
welfare. It is about two and a quarter pages long. That is it. That was 
the welfare law. There were no regulations. There was a little pamphlet 
that could not have exceeded 30 pages that sort of explained what this 
two and a quarter pages of law meant.
  You know what we have today? Let me show you this. This is what an 
Oregon caseworker has to go through to make sure that they are meeting 
the eligibility standards of a potential recipient.
 This is not for all of welfare. This is only for welfare eligibility, 
not the administration of the program once you are on it. This is what 
we have come to.

  Do you wonder why the States are asking us to give them a block grant 
and saying, ``Let us try it.'' Can you imagine what it is like for a 
caseworker, who is a decent person who would like to help somebody, who 
would like to spend the bulk of his or her time working person to 
person with people who are deprived and genuinely entitled to welfare? 
That is what this caseworker would like to do. The caseworker does not 
want to spend time reading these kinds of regulations and filling out 
forms to make sure that what they are doing comports with the Federal 
regulations which are equally thick. And that is what we have come to 
year by year, year by year, year by year.
  There was a wonderful example yesterday. It is unrelated to welfare. 
It involves the Drug Enforcement Administration. This tells you the 
folly of federal rules.
  Portland has a drug-sniffing pig. It is a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, 
and it can sniff out drugs better than a dog and it is cheaper than a 
dog. Here is the picture of Harley. People keep these things for pets.
  The Portland police bureau applied to the Drug Enforcement 
Administration for funds for Harley and the Drug Enforcement 
Administration said, ``No, only dogs, not pigs.''
  The Portland police bureau said, ``But the pig can smell better, the 
pig is cheaper.''
  ``No, only dogs.''
  We finally got them to admit that the pig was all right. This is the 
kind of thing that States have to go through to do perfectly normal 
things.
  I realize we are not all used to drug-sniffing pigs, but they work. 
We ought to let States try it.
  Here is the best statement I could find. This is from Duncan Wyse, 
who is the former executive director of the Oregon Progress Board 
monitoring welfare. This is his statement. Oregon comes very close to 
being the best, probably the best State, in terms of trying innovative 
welfare and Medicaid approaches. It has been like pulling teeth to get 
the Federal Government to give us waivers and to cooperate. This is 
what Duncan Wyse says:

       Almost all of the Oregon option undertakings require the 
     use of Federal funds and, in many cases, the waiver of 
     Federal rules and restrictions on how the money is used. We 
     need the Federal Government as a partner. But Federal 
     programs that provide money tend to be so severely 
     prescriptive and riddled with redtape that stifles 
     innovation. In the biggest area of Federal aid--welfare--at 
     least 20 percent of our administrative time and money costs 
     have been spent on Federal paperwork.

  Twenty percent is spent on Federal paperwork. When people say, what 
happens if we give welfare to the State, will the State be able to 
administer it well and compassionately, to begin with, Oregon can save 
20 percent off the top if they do not have to cross every ``t'' and dot 
every ``i'' of the Federal regulations.
  So where are we after 60 years, 60 years this year, of Federal 
welfare almost divided in two with the dividing line coming maybe 1960, 
maybe 1970 when it moved from widows and orphans as survivors of the 
deceased breadwinner to what welfare as we know it now? I thought 
Senator Carol Moseley-Braun from Illinois phrased it best at the 
Finance Committee markup on May 24, 1995: ``In this $7 trillion 
economy, we still have 40 million people living in poverty; some 14 
million of those people are in the welfare system in the States and 9 
million of those people are children.''
  Mr. President, that is welfare as we know it. This is the welfare as 
we know it that President Clinton has said he wants to end. This is 
welfare as we know it that has been fostered, foisted, and directed by 
the Federal Government. Do we have any reason to assume after 60 years 
of toying and tinkering with the system that the Federal Government 
will do any better if we tweak it here, twist it there and hope that 
this beast will fly? It is like a hippopotamus, Mr. President. No 
matter how long you make his ears or how long you screw up its tail, it 
is not going to fly.
  Every now and then, you run across a little pamphlet. I say to 
Senator Moynihan, this was written 20 years ago, ``To Empower People--
The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy.'' Jack Kemp would 
like the title.
  I mention Senator Moynihan because almost 20 years ago--he came to 
the Senate in 1976, so it is not quite 20 years ago--he and I tried to 
get tuition tax credits for parochial, private school students. I think 
we would have settled for vouchers if we could get vouchers.
  This book--book is the wrong word, pamphlet is better--is only 42 
pages long. I do not know the two gentlemen who wrote it, but I was 
intrigued with their opening page statement:

       Two seemingly contradictory tendencies are evident in 
     current thinking about public policy in America.

  Do not forget, this is 1977.

       First, there is a continuing desire for the services 
     provided by the modern welfare state. * * * The second 
     tendency is one of strong animus toward Government 
     bureaucracy and bigness as such. * * * We suggest the modern 
     welfare state is here to stay, indeed that it ought to expand 
     the benefits it 

[[Page S 11738]]
     provides--but that alternative mechanisms are possible to provide 
     welfare state services.

  There are a number of us who would quarrel with whether or not we 
want to expand the services or not. What I was intrigued with was the 
authors' suggestion. They almost bypass States and local governments. 
What they refer to as the role of mediating structures in public policy 
they define as neighborhood, family, church and voluntary associations. 
They go through what could be done if we were willing to attempt to 
administer our welfare programs through these organizations, and they 
have any number of quotes. I am not going to quote them all, but there 
is one I find interesting:

       If a policy furthers a legitimate secular purpose, it is a 
     matter of legal indifference whether or not that policy 
     employs religious institutions.

  How many of us have been to a Salvation Army workshop or Goodwill 
workshop, or any of the sheltered workshops where private charities are 
doing a sensational job beyond anything that we seem to be capable of 
doing? And yet, in many of these areas, we have run up against the 
argument, ``Well, it's a religious institution.''
  Mr. President, the time has come when institutions should not be 
prohibited from trying to help us, the Government, solve our welfare 
problems simply because they have a cross on the wall or a menorah in 
the hall. That does not disqualify some of the most extraordinary 
organizations in America from being able to help.
  Lastly, and then I will go on to the bill itself, I will quote just 
very briefly from a speech that I made also in the same year, 1977, to 
an annual Republican conference in Oregon called the Dorchester 
Conference,
 in which I was attempting to delineate major differences between 
parties. I said I do not find overwhelming differences on foreign 
policy or on transportation, or on a number of areas, but I said there 
were two where they were significant differences.

  One was in the providing of social services. And, on average--
speaking generically because it is not of every Republican or every 
Democrat, but on average--Democrats would prefer that Government rather 
than private entities--be that business or religious entities, 
neighborhood associations, or anything else--deliver those services, 
whereas Republicans prefer private entities to deliver the services. 
The other was the feeling that if government had to deliver the 
services, the Democrats would prefer that the Federal Government did 
it. Republicans would prefer that State and local government did it. I 
am not sure that, generically, those two differences--Government versus 
private sector--and in the private sector, I include all kinds of 
nonprofit charities, let alone business--and central Government versus 
State and local government--have changed.
  In that March 5, 1977, speech, I said:

       In considering this difference, we first must get over our 
     hangup about which government the taxpayers' money belongs to 
     --local, State, or Federal. The money does not belong to any 
     government. It is the taxpayers' money, and government--be it 
     local, State, or Federal--simply holds it in trust for a time 
     after collection and before disbursement. The argument that 
     money collected by the Federal Government is Federal money 
     and, therefore, the Federal Government has not only a right 
     but a duty to say how it is spent is poppycock. But even 
     assuming the Federal Government does have a right to say how 
     it should be spent, there is nothing obtuse about saying that 
     the Federal Government policy on spending money will be: Give 
     it back to the State and local governments with minimal 
     strings. Let them spend it as they like. We don't need dozens 
     of housing, health, urban, and other kinds of programs, let 
     alone 50 to 100 categorical grant education programs. If a 
     local government doesn't know better whether it needs a park 
     block or a fire engine or a day care center or a school 
     librarian, then how can those in Washington, DC, possibly 
     know better?

  I want to get to the outline of the bill now, Mr. President. I want 
to emphasize once more what I just said and what Professors Berger and 
Neuhaus would say. In essence, we are saying that you cannot run this 
country well from Washington, DC. It is interesting that we are finding 
the same philosophy existing in some of the major businesses of this 
country. They realize they can no longer run their business well from 
corporate headquarters. Businesses are devolving, giving regional 
managers more authority than they ever had, giving plants more 
authority to organize than they ever had. You are seeing this 
devolution outward from the center in all areas of this country except 
the Federal Government.
  The Federal Government has preempted one of the best sources of 
raising money and that source is, of course, the income tax. Some 
States have high income taxes. My State is one that has a high income 
tax as compared to other States. One of the reasons we have a high 
income tax is because we have no sales tax in Oregon. All States are 
pikers in comparison to the amount of money the Federal Government gets 
from the income tax. It is a progressive source of revenue from 
everybody, and we collect most of it.
  There is nothing wrong with our saying we want to see if we can solve 
this welfare system. ``We,'' being collectively the States, the local 
governments, Salvation Army, and the Catholic Church. We want to see if 
collectively we can solve this problem. We have failed to solve the 
problem since we first got into this area in 1935, and we have 
progressively failed in the last quarter of a century. We have 
geometrically failed.
  Is there a possibility--just a scintilla of a possibility--that State 
and local governments, if we let them experiment and innovate, might 
come up with solutions that we have been incapable of thinking of, or 
if we have been able to think of them, for whatever reason we were 
incapable of administering and achieving? That, in essence, is what the 
bill before us today attempts to do.
  First, I will describe the bill's provisions on what we call welfare, 
aid to families with dependent children. This bill has a number of 
sections to it of which this is one.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for one question?
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Not until I finish. Thank you.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I hope later on we will have time for questions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon has the floor.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, AFDC or welfare, as most people call it, 
is a section of this bill. I am going to take it section by section, 
but I will take this one first.
  The bill takes the seven AFDC programs--they are, one, cash 
assistance; two, administration of the program; three, the so-called 
JOBS Program; four, emergency assistance; five, child care for the JOBS 
Program; six, child care for transition to work; seven, child care for 
at-risk families--we take those seven programs and consolidate them 
into one program called a block. We say to the States, we will 
eliminate these programs as we now know them, and we will give you the 
money instead, and you must spend this money on the needy, not airport 
tarmacs, or rebuilding piers for their port, but to spend it on the 
needy as you see fit.
  Here you have a battle, a philosophical battle, because we have put 
some strings on this bill. The ultimate would be to say to the States, 
here is the money, you spend it on welfare as you want to define it. 
But because we did not want to be that broad and did not know what they 
wanted to do, there have been two very tough restrictions put in the 
bill.
  The first one is work. Welfare recipients must go to work. They must 
go to work no later than after they have been on welfare for 2 years. 
But the States can make that much shorter if they want. If the State 
determines that somebody is work ready, then they have to go to work 
then.
  The States have to have 50 percent of their total number of adults 
who are on welfare in work by the year 2000. Today, we do not even 
approach that. On occasion, people will give you a percentage that 
seems quite high, but that is because, under the present law, there are 
all kinds of exceptions to those who do not have to work at all. So say 
you had 1,000 people on welfare, but you say 200 do not have to work 
because they have a child under 3; another 100 do not have to work 
because they are disabled; and another 100 for another reason. You get 
down to 500, and then you say of the 500, 250 are working. That is 50 
percent. Well, that is 50 percent of 500. It is 25 percent of a 
thousand. This bill says by the year 2000, 50 percent of what 
caseworkers would call your adult caseload, your welfare caseload, must 
be working. Second, we say that 

[[Page S 11739]]
you can only be on welfare for a maximum of 5 years in your lifetime, 
cumulative period, total. You run out the 5 years, it is zip, finito, 
gone. Those are the two major strings that we put into this bill.
  The States and the Governors, by and large, find this acceptable, but 
there are some Governors who do not agree with what we have done. Most 
like what we have done because we have said to the States, this is no 
longer a Federal entitlement program as we call the words 
``entitlement,'' which means we determine who is eligible for welfare.
  We are saying to the States, ``Here's the money; you determine who is 
eligible, but you have to put a certain percentage of those you 
determine as welfare-eligible to work. That is basically all we are 
requiring of you.'' They cannot be on welfare for more than 5 years. 
That is the broad outline of the welfare portion of the bill.
  We have a second section called SSI, supplementary security income. I 
do not find a great deal of dissent with what we have done to SSI. This 
is another welfare program, often for the elderly, but not always for 
the elderly. We have said that there will be three categories that will 
no longer be eligible. SSI is totally a Federal program. No State money 
and no State administration is involved in this at all. The bill says 
that you will no longer be eligible if you are disabled because of a 
drug addiction or an alcoholism addiction. You may be an alcoholic or a 
drug addict, and you may be eligible for this program for other 
reasons, but you are no longer going to be eligible solely for drug 
addiction or alcoholism. Noncitizens will no longer be 
eligible unless they do work and pay taxes for specified periods of 
time, and children with modest disabilities will no longer be eligible. 
I do not find overwhelming argument with the SSI provision of the bill.
  The third part of the bill is child support enforcement. Here we have 
strengthened the Federal role, and the States agree. By ``child support 
enforcement,'' we are talking about custody orders. The child's parent 
is ordered to pay $100 a month, $500 a month, $1,000 a month, and the 
parent moves to another State. The parent may not even disguise their 
name, but it is almost impossible to enforce child support orders 
between States. It costs more than it is worth. This particular 
provision of the bill significantly beefs up the interstate, between-
State, enforcement of child support.
  Next is food stamps. This part of the bill is somewhat controversial. 
I have to give great credit to the Agriculture Committee. They came 
forth with reforms of the program in their committee that were 
extraordinary in terms of both the reforms and saving money. The bill 
includes all of their reforms.
  We have added a particular wrinkle to food stamps. We have given 
States the choice of taking a block grant for food stamps. The way food 
stamps work now is that the Federal Government determines if you are 
eligible, then you get food stamps and take them to the grocery store 
for groceries. You give the grocer food stamps, you receive groceries, 
and the grocer turns the food stamps in to the Federal Government, and 
we pay the grocer money.
  Some States under experimental programs with waivers are doing what 
is known as cashing out food stamps. In some cases they are doing it 
statewide, and in some cases only in counties. What they do is take the 
money that a recipient would otherwise give for food stamps, use it as 
a subsidy with an employer, and put the person to work. Almost 
invariably the person has more money from working than they get from 
the food stamps and welfare. The food stamp money is used as a wage 
subsidy. You can only do that now if you get a waiver from the Federal 
Government. This bill would make it easier for States to do this.
  As I said, the bill also gives States the option to take a block 
grant for food stamps. We have put a limitation in it. I would go 
further and say the States can cash out totally and use the money as 
they see fit. I recognize there are not the votes to go this far. 
Instead, this bill allows States to cash out food stamps, but at least 
75 percent of the money must be used for food for the poor and the 
remaining 25 percent can be used for wage-subsidy programs which, if we 
are trying to get people off of welfare and into work, probably are a 
better use of the money than anything else that we might suggest.
  On the child nutrition programs and the commodity distribution 
programs, we have included in the bill the Agriculture Committee 
reforms exactly as they reported them without change. They are good 
reforms. I think they are relatively noncontroversial reforms.
  We have taken from the Labor Committee, Senator Kassebaum's 
committee, her child care and development block grants. She 
consolidates three Labor Committee child care programs into a single 
program, and we have put it in this bill with a minor modification. We 
have also included another bill that the Labor Committee reported which 
takes 90 different job training and education programs and consolidates 
them into one block.
  Then we have taken suggestions on housing with relatively modest 
changes in rent subsidy eligibility rules and housing assistance rules. 
Again, I think there is no controversy. Those provisions came 
principally from the Banking Committee.
  Then we have changed the rules on noncitizens for what are called 
Federal means-tested programs. Means-tested programs are those that 
determine eligibility based on how much income and money you have. If 
your income and resources exceed a certain level, you can not qualify 
for the program. The bill provides a uniform rule for noncitizens who 
apply for Federal means-tested programs. I believe there is some 
controversy about this provision in the bill.
  But, Mr. President, I think the overwhelming bulk of the controversy 
falls in two or three areas of the bill and not most of the latter ones 
I talked about.
  Then lastly, we have called for a reduction of 30 percent in Federal 
employees who administer the AFDC welfare programs and the work force 
job training programs.
  Mr. President, that is it. It is not very often that we have a 
genuinely philosophical debate in this Congress. This is a genuinely 
philosophical debate. Do you prefer that the Federal Government 
continue to fund and administer the welfare programs in this country 
and the food stamp programs? If yes, in essence, you are saying you 
like the way they are working. Or do you say, I am not happy with the 
way the welfare programs are working, and try as we might, well-
intentioned as we may be, the Federal Government has failed to make 
them work and we would like to let the States experiment?
  Mr. President, the problems of the States in this country are 
difficult. A State that has immense immigration has different problems 
than a State that does not. A State that has a disproportionately large 
number of poor has a different problem than a State that does not. One 
size does not fit all.
  This bill, as we debate it, and as we finally vote upon it, is going 
to be a touchstone showing the difference between the parties and 
between those who prefer a Federal system, no matter how badly run, to 
a State system which we cannot guarantee will work but I think we can 
guarantee it cannot work any worse than it is now working.
  Is it worth a try? You bet it is.
  Over the next 2, 3, or 4 days, or however long we debate this, keep 
in mind a few objectives: Federal versus State, and work. Those are the 
issues that we are talking about.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to continue the debate from this 
side of the aisle, but first to congratulate and, as always, to express 
appreciation to my colleague and friend, the chairman of the committee, 
for his thoughtful, persuasive arguments--not all of which have 
persuaded me; I am sure there are those who will feel the same way--and 
in particular to thank him for citing this, I will call it a booklet, 
``To Empower People, The Role Of Mediating Structures In Public 
Policy.'' This was the work of Peter L. Berger, who is a professor of 
sociology at Rutgers, and Richard John Neuhaus, who is the senior 
editor of World Review. He is a theologian, and a much-respected one.
  This is a product of a research group the American Enterprise 
Institute had started. Nathan Glazer, my colleague 

[[Page S 11740]]
and friend, headed the section on welfare and social services.
  Mr. President, once again I am proud and happy to report that this 
important social analysis was sponsored by the National Endowment for 
the Humanities. I cannot think of a more trenchant argument for 
securing its future and that of other such matters.
  I thank my friend for having brought it to our attention. It is, 
curious--what they argue is the extension of the analysis by Professor 
Putnam of those communities in Italy over the last 700 years that have 
been successful and those that have not, and the degree to which 
empowering activities locally, a choral society in Tuscany or a 
volunteer fire department, characterized----
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Or a local soccer team. I am indebted to the Senator 
for calling to my attention this book by Professor Putnam in which he 
studied all the provinces of Italy which had identical charters given 
to them in 1920. Professor Putnam discovered that the provinces 
governed themselves differently, although the charters were identical. 
And after extensive research and evaluation, Professor Putnam concluded 
that local and civic traditions was responsible for most of the 
differences and the charter did not make much difference at all. And 
the best example we have of that is the Soviet constitution, which 
hardly had a peer in the world as a Constitution.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. As a youth in New York City, I had more than one 
occasion to study the Soviet Constitution and see that this, obviously, 
had to be the finest society on Earth because it had the best 
Constitution.
  I will try to argue that the outcomes of our efforts with dependent 
children and families will, in fact, depend less on statute and more 
upon the local energies and enterprise which either rise to the effort 
or do not. I will argue that in some cases we see there are dimensions 
of size that overwhelm individual effort. And I will argue that we did 
very well in 1988. We are beginning to see results with exactly this 
theory in mind.
  With those facts in mind, on May 18 I introduced the Family Support 
Act of 1995, a bill ``to enable each State to assist applicants and 
recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in providing for 
the economic well-being of their children, to allow States to test new 
ways to improve the welfare system, and for other purposes.''
  The measure was referred to the Finance Committee. It was taken up on 
May 26, and failed on a 12 to 8 vote, whereupon the committee, by a 
similar 12 to 8 vote, adopted the predecessor of the Work Opportunity 
Act of 1995, the bill which Senator Dole has introduced as a 
substitute.
  But, first, let me describe the thinking behind an earlier, quite 
significant revision of welfare law, the Family Support Act of 1988, 
basic legislation which I propose now we build on.
  In his State of the Union Address in February 1987, President Reagan 
pledged his support for what he called ``a new national welfare 
strategy.'' Democrats and Republicans in Congress saw a window of 
opportunity to redefine our welfare system, to replace the half-
century-old AFDC Program with a program designed for the social 
realities of the last part of the 20th century.
  The Governors led the way. Governor Clinton, chairman of the National 
Governors Association, and then Gov. Michael Castle, of Delaware--now 
Representative Castle--was chairman of the Welfare Prevention Task 
Force, a bipartisan effort, and they presented the Governors' concerns: 
improve enforcement of parental child support obligations; permit 
flexible State-designed employment programs--include remedial 
education, training and work experience; mandate participation in such 
programs for parents with children over age 3, and create a ``social 
contract''--I say once again a social contract--to obligate State 
agencies to provide opportunities to become self-sufficient while also 
obligating recipients to take advantage of these opportunities.
  The Family Support Act of 1988 sought to turn the existing welfare 
system on its head. And we used that term conscious of the historical 
reference. Rather than beginning with a public assistance payment that 
is supplemented with sporadic child support payments and occasional 
earned income, it placed the responsibility for supporting children 
where it belonged: With parents--both parents. And the focus was to be 
on the long-term dependents--not the divorced woman who needs some help 
while she puts her life back in order, but the teenage mother who has a 
child and is at risk of spending most of her life on the dole.
  On September 29, 1988, just this side of 7 years ago, the Family 
Support Act passed the Senate. We had 63 cosponsors and the vote was 96 
to 1. It went out the door 96 to 1, a bipartisan judgment the like of 
which is rarely seen in this body and which, unhappily, evidently has 
now disappeared.
  I was the manager on our side, and I recall the atmosphere, the 
emotion. At a Rose Garden ceremony that followed were Senators Dole, 
Bentsen, and Brown, Speaker Foley, Mr. Michel, and Governors Clinton 
and Castle.
  President Reagan, on signing the bill, told the assembled company 
that:

       They and the members of the administration who worked so 
     diligently on this bill will be remembered for accomplishing 
     what many have attempted but no one has achieved in several 
     decades, a meaningful redirection of our welfare system.

  It may seem unimaginable to us today. But the Family Support Act of 
1988 was not a partisan political measure. Democrats and Republicans 
alike joined in near unanimity to do what needed doing, a good half a 
century into the experience of what we have called welfare under the 
Social Security Act of 1935, a history the chairman has set forth very 
ably and very accurately.
  The Governors had asked for flexibility in designing State programs 
to help poor parents overcome their dependence on public assistance, 
and they got it. With the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Program, 
JOBS, States were free to offer a variety of education, training and 
work activities. States were directed to involve the private sector in 
designing their JOBS Programs and to coordinate with other work-related 
programs, such as the Job Training Partnership Act.
  The Family Support Act brought the statute in line with a new 
reality. Again, as the chairman has said, the original Social Security 
Act of 1935, adopted in the midst of the Depression, provided aid to 
dependent children wherein the Federal Government took over the widows 
pensions that had been adopted in almost half the States by this point. 
Those States were under severe economic stress in the Great Depression. 
The Federal Government assumed the responsibility for children.
  In 1939, the mother of the children was included as well. So it 
became Aid to Families With Dependent Children, and it was expected to 
be a bridge until widows with their children were entitled to old age 
and survivors insurance, and, indeed, it was a bridge in the time that 
survivors insurance matured.
  Then something new happened. In 1960's, Samuel H. Preston, in his 
address to the American Demographic Association in 1964, put it that 
``an earthquake shuddered through the American family--an earthquake 
shuddered through the American family.'' Family structure began to 
change. Out-of-wedlock births surged.
  We now have a ratio of births of children in single-parent families 
that has reached an estimated 33 percent. By 1992--I have a table here. 
Can I bring that over?
  Mr. President, this will give you some sense of what we are dealing 
with. These are the ratios in the 20 largest cities in the country: 
Baltimore, 61 percent; Boston, 48; Chicago, 56; Columbus, 41; the 
District of Columbia, 70; Indianapolis, 40; Milwaukee, 58; New York, 
46; Phoenix, 42; San Antonio, 20.
  These are numbers unknown to social conditions of the north, west, 
east, or southern man or woman. So far as I know it is without 
precedent in human experience. I have said this before and have been 
saying it for 15 or 20 years. And no one has ever contradicted this.
  Early in the century, an anthropologist named Malinowski, who 
practiced and worked and lived in London, set forth the universal law 
of human society, which is that in any society, every society that has 
ever been known, ever examined, ever studied, ever recorded, all 
children knew who their male parent was. That was the first law of 
anthropology. And everyone agreed. Once it was said, it was obvious.
  It no longer is, Mr. President. The ratios, Baltimore is 61 percent, 
Detroit 72 

[[Page S 11741]]
percent. They are without precedent. And the thing to know is that we 
are not alone in this. Something like the same phenomenon has overtaken 
the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. We find it difficult to explain 
what has happened here. But they find it difficult to explain what has 
happened there. What we cannot do is deny the reality.
  We think this increase is largely a matter of demography.
  In the 1950's, the child-bearing population was flat or even declined 
a bit.
  Then starting in 1989, the caseload began to rise.
  What I am trying to say, Mr. President, is that this obviously has 
led to increases in the Aid to Families Dependent Children Program of 
late. In the aftermath of our 1988 legislation, the number of children 
on the AFDC rolls has gone up again. It went from 3.5 million cases to 
almost 5 million in 4 years. You can see this right here. Here is where 
we passed the bill. Then, seemingly, after we passed the bill, things 
get out of control again.
  You have to start this discussion, if it is going to be in any way 
honest and open, with acknowledging the fact that if anyone had 
supposed in 1988 the number of AFDC cases would go down--and we never 
said that, but if anyone thought that might happen--they would have 
been wrong. Indeed, they went up. We think we know why they went up.
  The Congressional Budget Office has established that about 60 percent 
of the increase is simply the increase in the number of single-parent 
families. The demography of persons in that population, the number of 
people coming into the reproduction ages, suddenly bumped up. It will 
happen. It happens all the time--up, flat, up, and sometimes indeed 
declining, as was the case in late 1930's or late 1940's.
  The thing is, we know very little about this. We know a certain 
amount about the duration of benefits. More than a quarter of new 
entrants onto the AFDC rolls remain there less than a year. Almost half 
are gone in 2 years. Data are elusive. The Federal Government has never 
collected systematic time series data on this information. And we would 
do well to remind ourselves of the maxim that you should never really 
do anything about a problem until you first learn to understand it.
  Annual unemployment rates did not appear in the United States until 
1948. We used to take the unemployment rate from the census. We took it 
in April 1930 and April 1940, and there was no Great Depression. We 
learned sampling and we did it by counting everybody. We learned to 
sample and get numbers. It was a development in the late 1930's and 
matured in the early or mid-forties.
  We have not done this at all with respect to welfare dependency 
because we have not seen it, in part, as the problem it has become. By 
1948, we knew unemployment was a problem.
  I might say last year, in 1994, Congress enacted the Welfare 
Indicators Act.
  It is a measure I had been seeking for many years, an annual report 
comparable to the Economic Report of the President which deals with 
unemployment or employment and which has begun long-term analyses of 
trends, disaggregating large numbers and finding significant 
subsectors.
  The act specifies that with respect to welfare indicators, the 
following subjects be addressed: indicators of the rate and degree to 
which families depend on welfare income; predictors of welfare receipt; 
an assessment of the adequacy of existing data resources; and an annual 
report of welfare indicators.
  For the moment, Donna Pavetti at the Urban Institute has compiled 
this distribution, one of the few things we seem to have. Note we get 
it from the Urban Institute, not from the Department of Health and 
Human Services.
  This chart depicts ``Distribution of Total Time on Welfare.''
  This is important, Mr. President, because both the bills that the 
distinguished Republican leader and the chairman of the Committee on 
Finance have introduced, the bill that our able and distinguished 
Democratic leader has introduced, have 5-year time limits.
  I am sorry to turn this into a statistics expose, but we are talking 
about numbers here, and we never learned to do anything about 
unemployment until we got hold of those numbers. And the numbers are 
simply that half the AFDC population who enter the system leave it 
within 24 months. We do not know who they are. There is no account 
kept. There are no samples taken. But we have a pretty good idea. These 
are mature women whose marriages have come apart, have been dissolved 
in some way or other. For them, AFDC is a form of income insurance just 
as unemployment insurance protects those persons working. They need it 
for a while, then they need it no longer and they leave.
  We knew this much in 1988. We said not to worry about this group. It 
takes care of itself. You simply have a simple income insurance--as 
Social Security is income insurance--and let them be.
  The Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. had established with great 
clarity that you can train such folk, you can educate such folk. They 
do not need the training or the education. They just need to get their 
affairs together, and they do.
  On the other hand, sir, three-quarters of the recipients, adults and 
children, who at a given point in time are on welfare are on for more 
than 5 years. The mean duration is 13 years. That means half below 13, 
half above 13. The mean is 13--12.9 it says here.
  So let it be clear. You are putting at risk an enormous population, 
about which we know very little in terms of what works and which we 
have only begun to attempt to know. Three-quarters of those who are on 
the welfare rolls at any one time are going to be there for more than 5 
years, and half will be there more than 13 years. That is why this is a 
social crisis which we had best get hold of or who would want to be 
sure of the future of this society. And that is why, sir, in this 
Senator's view, and in the view of the whole Senate, not 7 years ago 
there was a national response.
  The fact is that, as I said, divorce is one source of dependency and 
separation another. These are the people up here in the first two 
lines. But there is a much greater cause, and that is nonmarital 
births. In the State of the Union Message of January 25, 1994, 
President Clinton included this passage:

       We cannot renew our country when within a decade more than 
     half of our children will be born into families where there 
     is no marriage.

  I repeat:

       We cannot renew our country when within a decade more than 
     half of our children will be born into families where there 
     is no marriage.

  To my knowledge, no President in our history has raised this issue in 
a State of the Union Address, nor very possibly in any address. On the 
following June 14 in Kansas City, the President unveiled a new welfare 
reform proposal and his address contained this passage.
  We also have to face the fact that we have a big welfare problem 
because the rate of children born out of wedlock where there was not a 
marriage is going up dramatically. The rate of illegitimacy has 
literally tripled since this Senator first called it to our attention 
30 years ago. At the rate we are going, unless we reverse it, within 10 
years more than half our children will be born in homes where there 
never has been a marriage.
  Unless we reverse it, within 10 years more than half our children 
will be born in homes where there has never been a marriage.
  These things happen, Mr. President, in a sometimes sort of random 
way. In 1993, I happened to see the nonmarital birth ratio for 1991 and 
said, ``You know, that looks like a straight line going back to 1970 or 
so.'' And we took it and we plotted the actual ratio. And then we saw 
what would be the correlation with a straight line, and as I said on 
``Face the Nation'' yesterday morning, anyone watching this, if you 
have a daughter or a son in high school, they will explain correlations 
to you. Otherwise, you have to take it on faith. Senator Wellstone can 
handle it, I am sure.
  The correlation is 0.99. That means it is almost a straight line. The 
perfect correlation is 1.00. Well 0.99 does not happen in statistics. 
You reel back. And then you say, ``Do it again; that cannot be.'' But 
there it is. And the slope is 0.86, which is almost 1 percent a year. 
We figure now we are almost at 

[[Page S 11742]]
one-third. But we figure--I say we figure because no one else figures, 
Mr. President, not the Census Bureau or the National Center for Health 
Statistics.
  None of them does this. They have avoided this. And this is where we 
have gone. That is what avoidance will do for you. The President was 
citing that 50 percent ratio in a State of the Union Message. He got it 
in a conversation from me. In the main, Presidents have better sources 
of data. But that is how we have avoided this issue.
  Let me show you something that ought to chill us all. What you are 
seeing here, sir, is that part of an exponential curve, when it begins 
to take off, is like a jet plane. Here we go back to 1940. In 1940, we 
had a ratio--here again we fit a curve, and we have come up with 
something almost as remarkable as our straight line. I said that 
correlation was 0.99. This correlation is 0.98. Again, things like that 
do not happen in statistics. But with this correlation, a slope of just 
about 0.5 percent per year. You start out a ratio of 4 percent, and 
like any of these curves you get very slow impact, but then it 
accumulates. Keynes referred to ``the magic of compound interest.'' You 
did not have much. Nothing seemed to happen. Then suddenly you are 
soaring.
  This curve right in here, if I showed you a straight line, that is 
when you start going steadily upward. If you followed this curve you 
would, in fact, be at 50 percent in the year 2003. Now, that makes me 
uneasy. It probably would make you, Mr. President, uneasy. But, sir, we 
are going to be at 40 percent within a decade. We are at 33 percent 
now.
  I will put it this way. If, in 1970, when we had a ratio of 10 
percent, someone had come along and said that by 1990, they thought it 
would be 30 percent, people would have said, ``You are loony. Are you 
crazy?'' No. Well, we did. And the thought that we will go further and 
reach 50 percent--I do not want to say 50 percent. I just do not think 
that is possible. I think something awful will happen in the country 
before we do. But we will get to 40 percent. We are not that far now. 
If we go on at the rate we have gone the last 10 years, we will be at 
44 percent by the year 2000. It is as simple as that.
  I want to acknowledge this work was done by Jack Fowle, a scientist 
who was on leave from the Environmental Protection Agency. He did this 
with a great deal of clarity and consistency, as you can see.
  Mr. President, we have had this recent increase in the caseloads. In 
July 1993, the Congressional Budget Office issued a staff memorandum 
entitled ``Forecasting AFDC Caseloads With an Emphasis on Economic 
Factors.'' What they found in brief is that the increase that followed 
from 1989 to the third quarter of 1992 is basically due to the increase 
in single-parent families. About two-thirds is that, and the remainder 
is economic. And the economy has an effect. We begin to see that. It 
particularly has an effect where you would expect, with AFDC-UP, which 
is aid for two-parent families which began in the 1960's. CBO found 
that 70 percent of the increase in the two-parent family caseload 
during the period is explained by the economic downturn.
  That is exactly what you would predict. And it is somewhat 
reassuring. But the caseload of regular AFDC families responds to the 
change in family structure, and little else.
  Now, sir, what did happen even as the caseload was going up? I want 
to say that in this Senator's view, what happened was exactly what we 
hoped would happen. The States were told to experiment. The States were 
told to innovate. The States were encouraged to think up things on 
their own. And they did. There is a basic fact which is that Aid to 
Families With Dependent Children, welfare, is not an entitlement to 
individuals. We have allowed it to be seen as such. A lot of waivers 
and regulations accumulated at the Federal level, and people thought it 
could be such. But it is not.
  AFDC is an entitlement of States to have the Federal Government match 
funds States spend on this population. The matching rate varies, but if 
Wisconsin spends $1, the Federal Government will give $1, and $2 will 
be spent on the program. But States do not have to have AFDC. As a 
matter of fact, Wisconsin, at the end of 1997, will not have AFDC at 
all. Or a State may have AFDC, and what you pay individuals is $1 a 
month, $1 a day, $100 a month. It is a State option entirely. The 
notion that it is an entitlement of individuals gets us off into 
discussions which I do not think are very helpful.
  Let me see if I cannot just talk a little bit about the kinds of 
waivers that the States have requested and have been granted by the 
Federal Government. The President, I think very properly, makes the 
point that he has been saying yes. President Bush said yes. There are 
various Secretaries that are very encouraging. Look at this. Thirty-
three States have asked for waivers that increase the earnings 
disregard. That means you say to a mother, ``The first $30 a month you 
earn, you do not lose any welfare benefits,'' or the first $50. This is 
encouraging people to get to work. For if you earn $1 and you lose 50 
cents, that does not encourage work, obviously.
  To me, a very important thing is that 31 States have asked for an 
increase in asset accumulation. This is a subject which is painful but 
necessary. One of the conditions we placed--and it is a Federal 
condition--one of the conditions we placed upon receipt of AFDC 
benefits, Federal moneys, in 1935 was that the child be a pauper--not a 
pleasant word, very much not a pleasant reality. The families can have 
$1,000 in assets, plus a car worth not more than $1,500. And there are 
places in the country where you cannot work without a car.
  A worker who was laid off when a plant closes is not suddenly a 
pauper. I mean, there is a good car around. The house is around. There 
are some savings, some pension--not always, but normally. The welfare 
department is under these rules. I have a mother in one State that will 
come to mind--I think she was found to have secreted some $9,000 away 
in a bank account to help her daughter go to college in Connecticut.
  They discovered it. They confiscated the money, and I do not suppose 
they sent the mother to jail. You cannot save. If you save, you are 
breaking the rules.
  Another 29 States have asked to ease up on eligibility for unemployed 
parents [UP].
  Time requirement. JOBS participation. Deny aid for failure to attend 
school--some 24 States have been allowed to say, ``If your kid is not 
in school, you lose something.''
  Family cap: 16 States have applied, 11 States have been given the 
waiver, so that if you have an additional child while on welfare, you 
receive no additional benefit.
  Further down the list we have: Deny aid for child support 
noncooperation, and teen parent residency requirement. Seven States 
have applied to do what I think we are going to do this week, which is 
to say that teenage children must stay with their parents.
  Senator Conrad has a proposal for maternity homes. Senator Packwood 
has a provision which provides second-chance homes, if you like, for 
very young women with children who do not themselves have a home that 
is a promising place to raise a child. I think this is a point we have 
reached agreement on. There was disagreement for a while, but now we 
are reaching agreement.
  All this innovation and experimentation at the State level which is 
being carried out under current law is finally starting to show 
results. Six weeks ago, we received the first numbers from the national 
evaluation of the Family Support Act being conducted by the Manpower 
Demonstration Research Corp. Of those placed in a program emphasizing 
rapid job entry, the number of cases dropped by 11 percentage points, 
employment rose 8 percentage points and expenditures dropped 22 
percentage points.
  If you recall, Mr. President, in 1988--1987 when we introduced the 
bill--we based our bill on the findings of the Manpower Demonstration 
Research Corp. based in New York, a very professional group trying to 
estimate what worked, what did not. Mostly nothing worked. Hence, this 
statement. They said the results they are finding from the Family 
Support Act programs ``exceeds the savings achieved by experimentally 
evaluated programs of the last 15 years.''
  They have never before seen such results. Spectacular results? No. We 
did not tell anybody to expect anything 

[[Page S 11743]]
spectacular in the face of this demographic change. But real? Yes.
  Moreover, of the two large States whose programs have been evaluated 
rigorously, California and Florida, earnings are up and caseloads down. 
In Riverside, CA, there was a 26-percent increase in the share of AFDC 
recipients working, a 49-percent increase in average earnings, a 15-
percent decline in welfare outlays, all of which helped the program 
return to taxpayers almost $3 for every $1 spent.
  Recently, Prof. Lawrence Mead of New York University, now visiting 
professor at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Center, who has been a 
conservative critic of the welfare system, certainly, looked at the 
growth in the AFDC caseload between 1989 and 1993, the period during 
which the JOBS Program began to come into play.
  He concluded that for every 1 percent of the caseload enrolled in 
JOBS, caseload growth was 1 percent lower, even when total caseloads 
were going up. For every percentage point that JOBS participation grew 
during this period, caseload growth was three-quarters of a point less. 
Not spectacular, but real and in the right direction, in the directions 
you had hoped for.
  Again to say, States can do what they want in the system. They ask 
for a waiver, they get it. Just 2 months ago, George Allen, Republican 
Governor of Virginia, announced such an effort. He called it ``the most 
sweeping and I think the most compassionate welfare plan anywhere in 
the Nation.'' It is 2 years and you are out, and President Clinton 
approved the waiver and said he approved of the program.
  In any event, AFDC rolls are now coming down. Over the last year, 
caseloads have declined by 240,000 cases or 4.7 percent. It breaks out 
to 4.4 percent for the single-parent families and 9.4 percent in the 
two-parent families. You see that drop, Mr. President. I will say the 
old adage, if you turn the rudder on the battleship, it is a long while 
before you see the bow turn. I cannot prove it, but I do think we have 
seen this program taking hold.
  Now, something we did not know, and we may have stumbled on new 
information--when we look at the numbers by State, where have these 
declines taken place? It is very important. It is a pretty rash person 
who suggests he has learned anything about welfare, but we may have 
done it.
  In this period of decline, May 1994 to 1995, the decline for AFDC-R--
which is what we call regular--in California and New York was zero. 
AFDC-UP was up a little bit. Not important. The two big States with a 
quarter of the caseload had no effect. There were good programs in 
Riverside, things like that, but nothing changed.
  You go to a group of middle-sized States--Texas, Florida, 
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio--AFDC down 6 percent; AFDC-UP, down 20 
percent. We are not used to numbers like that. Mr. President, I have 
been with this 30 years, you do not see numbers like this.
  Then you go further down to the many States that have small 
caseloads--anyway, small numbers. They are down 9 percent for AFDC and 
19 percent for the AFDC-UP Program. The real problem here is the 
regular caseload, as AFDC-UP is, again, a form of unemployment 
insurance.
 This is what matters: Zero in the big States, 6 percent in the mid-
sized, 9 percent in the small States.

  My friend, Dr. Paul Offner, who is with me on the floor today, was 
head commissioner of welfare in Ohio and who will shortly be the head 
of the health care financing agency for the District of Columbia, would 
say you go out to the small towns or cities in Ohio and you would go to 
the welfare offices and a kind of culture had developed. Yes, they knew 
who their clients were, the recipients and they knew what you might be 
able to do and they were doing it and feeling pretty good about 
themselves.
  In New York City, about 23 years ago, the very able and distinguished 
head of the human resources administration with a million persons on 
welfare and a quarter million in her employ, put on a wig and an old 
coat, went around to four welfare offices and said she was applying for 
welfare and they handed her papers to fill out. She was their 
commissioner. They never once suggested that she might be interested in 
taking a job.
  The contrast between welfare programs in big cities and elsewhere is 
something worth keeping a hold of. Last spring, as my friend, the 
distinguished chairman recalls, the Committee on Finance had a retreat 
down in Maryland in which we talked about welfare, among other things, 
and we discussed this question of whether teenage mothers with children 
should be required to live at home, or should receive welfare benefits 
at all. There is a movement to stop their benefits, and groups like 
Catholic Charities say do not do that, that is God's child, too.
  One of our Members, a Senator from a Midwestern State, was back home 
and he was interested in this, so he called the State officials 
involved and he said, how many such cases do we have in our State? Let 
him identify it if he chooses. Cases of teenage mothers with children, 
living on their own? He said, yes, that is what I mean. Well, there is 
Mary Ann, she lives down there. And there is Sue Mary, and there is 
Alice, and then there is Florence. The last two just moved in from, 
like I say, West Virginia. They had four, and they knew them by name. 
In that State they have four.
  The population on welfare in New York City is almost as large as the 
entire population of one of those States. So you have a problem of 
scale which I do think we begin to see. I make the point, Mr. 
President, that we know so little. There has been so little inquiry.
  Here I would like to make a final point on nonmarital births. Senator 
Gramm, my friend with whom I was debating this matter yesterday, along 
with a number of other Senators, notably Senator Faircloth of North 
Carolina, has raised the issue of the connection between the present 
welfare system and the extraordinary rise of nonmarital births over the 
last generation. I said to him yesterday privately that this certainly 
was an issue. I said it then and I will say it again--the most 
important thing to know about this subject is how little we know about 
it. Candid officials within the administration will grant that for much 
of the 1960's and 1970's and into the 1980's, the subject was taboo. 
Forces from the traditional left and traditional right, if such terms 
are meaningful in this context, simply did not want the matter raised.
  A mode of denial was obviously in place. In this regard, Mr. 
President, may I say that the one honorable exception is the annual 
report entitled ``Kids Count Data Book,'' published by the Annie E. 
Casey Foundation. It puts the annual laments of the other advocacy 
groups to shame. The Annie E. Casey Foundation comes out and tells you 
what they found about this central fact of being a child in the United 
States. The work is called ``The Kids Count Data Book.'' It is the 
first time we have had an advocacy group that could speak up and deal 
with the reality of the problem of single parenthood.
  However, if the argument that higher levels in welfare produce higher 
levels of illegitimacy cannot be proved, neither can it be disproved. 
Thus, the State of Texas ranks 50 in combined AFDC food stamp payments 
to welfare families, as of July of last year. At the same time, it has 
an overall illegitimacy ratio of 17.5 percent, which is half the 
national average. States with high benefit levels have twice that 
ratio.
  For example, California had 34.3 percent, and New York had 34.8 
percent. It would not be fair to say that the burden of proof is on 
California and New York to demonstrate that higher levels of welfare 
produce higher levels of illegitimacy. You cannot prove it but you 
cannot dismiss it.
  On the other hand, if Texas, with its low level of welfare support 
has a low illegitimacy ratio, Mississippi, with equally low payment 
levels, has the highest illegitimacy ratio. I will read some more.
  The lowest ratio, as you might suppose, is Utah, at 15 percent, which 
is four times the 1940 ratio, but 15 percent. Texas was 17.5; Idaho, 
18.3. But now we get to South Carolina, 35.5; Arizona, 36.2; New 
Mexico, 39.5; Louisiana, 40.2; Mississippi, 42.9.
  Mr. President, we have not got a purchase on this issue yet. We know 
that there is great variation and when there is variation, there are 
explanations. Some would say it is the weather. Well, 

[[Page S 11744]]
we can check that out. Longitude, altitude, Mormons. But you can begin 
to find out about these things. Unemployment was a mystery, a baffling 
mystery until we began to break it down to aggregate, correlate and 
learn.
  I hope that we do that. I make the point, Mr. President, that we are 
beginning to see the effects of the Family Support Act of 1988. That is 
why I have sponsored the Family Support Act of 1995. The matter that I 
have proposed is a serious effort to continue and build on the base 
that we have now established. I hope that the Senate might understand 
the enormous value of continuing a bipartisan program,
 involving various levels of government, national and State, which is 
in place and appears to be working.

  Remember, we did not promise a rose garden. We did not say it would 
be easy. I think we can find in our descriptions in the debate warnings 
that it will be worse before it is better. But it begins to seem like 
it may be taking hold. That is by far the most promising thing I have 
seen with this subject in 30 years.
  I repeat one point. Examining the specific programs, Riverside, CA, 
and others, 6 weeks ago, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. said 
they are seeing the strongest results they have seen in 15 years. We 
seem to be getting the hang of working with the problem. We seem to 
have defined it reasonably well.
  I hope we do not give this up, Mr. President. It would be a prelude 
to bitter political division and, far more importantly in my view, to a 
bitter experience for millions of dependent children throughout our 
country.
  Mr. President, I am not through with the remarks I had intended to 
make this morning, but the morning has come and gone. I see the Senator 
from Texas is on the floor. He has been very patient. He is even 
smiling. Senator Wellstone was up earlier regarding questions on the 
opening statement.
  Given this attractive choice on either side of the aisle, it might be 
prudent for me to yield the floor, unless the Senator wished to address 
a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would like to ask a few questions of 
the Senator from New York, if I could.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Please.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. First of all, Mr. President, I wanted to ask my 
colleague from New York, in talking about the whole question of birth 
out of wedlock, is it not true that roughly speaking 80 percent of 
welfare families, AFDC families have two or fewer children?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, sir, I believe the number of children--Mr. 
President, you have to forgive statistics--it is unlikely, but the 
number of children is 1.9 children. Actually one, two, or three 
children averaging out to 1.9.
  These are not large families.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me just go on and let me get a 
response from my colleague from New York.
  As I understand the premise that Senator Packwood is proposing--and 
Senator Gramm probably has, I argue, a more extreme version--there are 
two premises here.
  One argument is that in most cases it is single parents, women, who 
do not want to work. That is the first argument. The second argument is 
welfare causes women to have more babies. It seems to me that is the 
case, if I had to get to the essence of it, unless you just sort of 
hate welfare mothers, and I doubt that is what is going on here.
  Could I ask my colleague to just very briefly respond to each of 
these arguments. Let me take the first one. Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
in 1935 said, ``I hope to be able to substitute work for relief 
altogether.'' He talked about the importance of work. Then we went to 
the family assistance program. In 1970, we had the WIN Program by 
President Ford. We had the Better Jobs and Income Program by President 
Carter. We have had any number of different programs. We had the 
Senator's important program in 1988.
  I am trying to be empirical about this. Let me take the first 
argument. Does the Senator believe that, as a matter of fact, welfare 
prevents women from working? Is it not true that roughly speaking, 70 
percent plus of AFDC members go to work within a 2-year period? The 
problem is that many then come back to welfare because they cannot 
afford child care. The job does not pay enough to support a family.
  Is it true that welfare is the reason that women do not work?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. We certainly have never demonstrated that in any 
serious way.
  Sandy Jencks, at Northwestern University, has done some case 
histories which argue that welfare is a mode of optimizing income when 
you both work and get welfare.
  I give you my view, which is that this is all falling from nonmarital 
births to young people.
  As we say, about half the people coming on welfare are on for less 
than 2 years. They are mature people whose marriages are in trouble one 
way or another. They do not need your advice or help. What a 
steelworker needs is a monthly check. And then they go away. It is 
income insurance.
  The other group is more problematic. I said three-quarters of the 
children will be on for more than 5 years--not consecutively but 
intermittently. The median now, the mean duration is 13 years. Imagine 
that.
  We cannot demonstrate--and one of the reasons we cannot demonstrate, 
surely, we have not tried to find out. Most of the data I have been 
presenting here will be found from Manpower, from the Urban Institute, 
or places like that.
  I would not in any way dispute what I believe to be what you imply, 
that there is no evidence that people are on welfare because they do 
not wish to work, no.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. If I could ask another question, is there any evidence 
of higher payments--understanding that there is not one State in the 
country that provides an AFDC benefit up to what we define as poverty, 
am I correct?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Understanding that point, is there any evidence that 
higher payments--that is, any correlation, much less causation, between 
higher payments and larger welfare families, women having children?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. No, none, zero.
  Higher payments are not hard to explain. States with higher per 
capita income have higher per capita benefits. They just have higher 
everything, including higher cost of living.
  If you adjust for cost of living, New York State has the sixth 
highest poverty rate in the Nation, but you would not know it from our 
numbers of dollars.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Just looking at this comparatively for a moment, in 
other countries that have more generous, if you will, more broadly 
defined welfare payments, do we see more children born out of wedlock 
in those countries?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I will ask you to let me evade that question 
because I simply do not know. You can see the ratio of nonmarital 
births as being much higher in those Nordic countries which have high 
benefits, but I make this point, that in 1960--the Senator is very 
generous with his time, but I ask him to hear me--in 1960, in the 
United Kingdom, the illegitimacy ratio was 5 percent; by 1992, it was 
31 percent. In Canada, in 1960, it was 4 percent; in 1992, it was 27 
percent. In France, in 1960, it was 6 percent; in 1992 it was 33 
percent.
 So you go from 6, 5, 5, 4, to 33, 31, 30, 27. You see the same change.

  If I were to speculate, I would say in France, which began big 
programs of child support in the late 19th century--they thought they 
were dying out and they would have no soldiers to fight Germans, 
Prussians, literally--there was a pronatalist policy. It made it very 
suspect in Protestant circles in the United States, but the payments to 
familles nombreuses, the ordinary child allowance--the more children 
you have, the more you get--they had that in place in 1960 enhanced 
from 1930.
  But they, even so, went from 6 percent to 33 percent.
  I do not know how much of this is simply the absence of marriage, 
formal marriage, in what are nonetheless stable relationships. I do not 
know. I wish you could go and write a book and tell me.
  I can say the Netherlands went from 1 percent to 12--that is 12 
times. And the Netherlands had very generous benefits in 1960.
  Italy, however went from 2 to 7--not high. Switzerland, 4 to 6.
  We were entertaining the hypothesis that the critical variable might 
be distance from the Vatican. But then we 

[[Page S 11745]]
noticed Japan. Japan was 1 percent in 1960 and 1 percent today.
  That was a joke.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). Does the Senator yield? Is the 
Senator yielding the floor?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator yields the floor. May I say I understand we 
will alternate speakers. I hope Senator Wellstone might be the next 
speaker on our side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the Chair's understanding.
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me begin by saying I always find it 
informative to listen to our distinguished colleague from New York. 
Nobody in this country, in the last quarter of a century, has had more 
reasonable things to say about this subject than he has. I feel very 
strongly about this issue, and I know that he feels just as strongly as 
I do. And, while we have very great differences on this issue, even 
among Republicans, I think everybody should know that in my mind, and I 
think in the mind of any reasonable person, everybody who is debating 
this issue is sincere. Everybody understands what profound consequences 
await the Nation in this area. In fact, yesterday, as the distinguished 
Senator from New York and I discussed this issue, the one thing we 
agreed on was that a continuation of the current trend means a profound 
change in our country and the loss of the America we know.
  I think, as we start this debate, it is important to begin it with 
this fact in mind. The Senator from New York and I are far apart as to 
what the remedies are in dealing with this problem, but we are in total 
agreement that a failure to deal with this problem means the end of 
America as we know it. It is from this premise that I want to start the 
debate today.
  In the last 30 years, if you take all the means-tested programs in 
America--that is programs where money is allocated, directly or 
indirectly, or is spent on behalf of people who are poor--if you take 
all those programs and add them up, you find that over the last 30 
years, in fighting this war on poverty, as Lyndon Johnson deemed it to 
be in 1965, the American taxpayer has spent $5.4 trillion on programs 
aimed at helping poor people.
  Mr. President, nobody here, I believe, really knows what $1 trillion, 
or even $1 billion, is. I have a constituent from Dallas named Ross 
Perot who knows what $1 billion is. But I readily admit that I have a 
hard time fathoming what it means. But let me take a couple of cracks 
at what it means and why it is a very big number.
  No. 1, the newest estimate by the Heritage Foundation of the value of 
every building or plant in America, the whole physical capital of the 
United States of America, the greatest economy in the history of the 
world--if you add up the value of every building and improvement, every 
factory and all the tools of all the workers in America, it is roughly 
$5 trillion in value. So, one measure of the commitment of the American 
taxpayer to fight and win the war on poverty, is that in the last 30 
years we have spent slightly more than the total value of all the 
buildings, all the plants, all the equipment and all the tools of all 
the workers in our country. The net physical wealth of the Nation is 
roughly equal to what we have expended over the last 30 years in our 
efforts to try to help people help themselves.
  A second figure which I think is equally revealing is that, if you 
simply look at the burden of the welfare program as it exists today--
not how much we spent in the last 30 years but the amount we are 
spending today--and you distribute that whole burden among all the 
families in America that file a Federal income tax return, that burden 
adds up to $3,357 per family filing a Federal income tax return last 
year.
  Most working Americans do not know what $1 billion is, but virtually 
every working family in America knows what $3,357 a year is, and that 
is what we are talking about in terms of our annual commitment, as 
compared to the number of families in America that filed an income tax 
return last year.
  The point I am trying to make here is no one can say the American 
people have not made a legitimate effort to deal with this problem. In 
fact no society in history has ever made a similar effort over such an 
extended period of time. Never in the history of the world has a 
society taken more away from the people who are pulling the wagon and 
given more to people riding in the wagon; and, as I will argue later, 
in doing so has made both groups worse off.
  If we look at what have been the fruits of this massive expenditure 
of money, I do not think anyone would find the results to be anything 
but disappointing. We have seen, under this program, the illegitimacy 
rate explode--from 5.3 percent in 1960 to almost a third today. Last 
year, in our big cities, about one-half of all the children born were 
born out of wedlock.
  And nationwide, almost one out of three children born in America was 
born out of wedlock. And we might debate what, under the current trend, 
the illegitimacy rate is going to be at the end of the century. Is it 
going to be 40 percent? Is it going to be 50? We can debate how that 
will break down across various identifiable groups in America. But 
nobody can dispute the fact that under the current system the trend in 
illegitimacy is up, and no one can argue that we have seen, from this 
massive and unprecedented expenditure of money, tangible results in 
terms of people becoming less dependent, nor in terms of people 
breaking the cycle of poverty. That is not to say that you can spend 
$5.4 trillion without helping somebody. But when you look at America I 
think it is very, very difficult, if not impossible, to argue that 
after spending $5.4 trillion on welfare programs over the last 30 years 
that America is better off today than it was when we started. I 
believe.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. GRAMM. Let me finish my statement and I would be very happy to 
yield.
  I think that, by any definition, people are more dependent on 
Government today than they were in 1965. We have more people who are 
poor today than we had when we started. I think if you look at the 
quality of life in those areas where you have high concentrations of 
poor people, especially in our inner cities, by any definition of the 
quality of life, people are worse off today than they were when we 
started this program.
  The first point that I want to make is that this is not the kind of 
debate--and we have many debates on the floor of the Senate that I 
think would qualify under this heading--where we are talking about 
whether to undertake an activity; where there is real debate about 
whether or not the problem would get better more quickly if we left it 
alone. This is not a marginal kind of debate. I think there is a 
consensus--whether you are a moderate Member of the Senate or more 
conservative--that this is an issue where the future of America is on 
the line, that our house is literally on fire. And I would argue--and I 
think the evidence is convincing on this argument--that what we have 
done in the last 30 years has not only failed to put this fire out, but 
rather has made it burn even brighter. The time has finally come for a 
dramatic change in public policy.
  In a series of amendments today and for the next few days I, and 
others, will offer proposals that are aimed at dramatically changing 
the system.
  Some will argue that if we can do anything that is an improvement on 
the current system, we ought to do it. But I would like to remind my 
colleagues that we have reformed welfare on numerous occasions. In 
1988, we had what was touted as a dramatic change in welfare. The 
Senator from New York today announced that there may be a glimmer of 
hope that positive results are being produced and, obviously, I hope 
that he is correct. But again, let us look back at what the world 
looked like in 1988 in terms of poverty, and let us look at what it 
looks like today. I think that when we look at the numbers we cannot 
help but be discouraged.
  Between 1988 and 1993, welfare spending in America has risen by 
roughly 50 percent. The poverty rate has risen from 13 percent of the 
population living in poverty in 1988 to 15.1 in 1993. So, in other 
words, as spending has risen by 50 percent, the percentage of the 
population living in poverty in America has actually gone up by almost 
2 percent. During this 5-year period, from 1988 to 

[[Page S 11746]]
1993, 95,000 new bureaucrats have been added to the welfare system.
  So we reformed welfare in 1988. But we clearly did not make any 
dramatic changes. And while the Senator from New York may see some 
glimmer of hope, I think his hope is very, very difficult to see in 
these statistics.
  But the point is that these statistics represent a very small part of 
the cost of the failure of the American welfare system, because there 
is a human face behind each of these numbers--because not only have we 
spent record amounts of money, but we have made people more dependent 
and in the process we have changed behavior.
  I was talking to my mother the other day about welfare, something 
that anyone who wants to be a leader on this issue would be well 
advised to do. My mother made the point that the problem today with 
welfare is that young people do not have the same pride that she had 
when she was growing up. And I argued. ``Well, mother, I am not sure 
that is right. I am not sure that young people are so different today 
than they were when you were growing up. But I will tell you one thing 
that I know is different; the system is different.''
  I tried to explain to my mother that if we had back then, when she 
was young, had two little children, and was working at the mill, if we 
had then the kind of welfare system we have now, she would have 
probably taken it. And my mother argued she would not have taken it. 
She said that she would have starved to death before she would have 
taken it. I said, ``Well, mother, you would have been better off taking 
welfare than you would have been working. Everybody you would have 
known would have been taking it. There would have been no stigma 
involved, and people would have made fun of you for not taking it.'' To 
which my mother responded by saying, ``I would not have taken it, and 
if you ever say I would have taken it, I will go on television and 
denounce you.''
  Maybe my mother would not have taken it. But the point is that a lot 
of people have. We started out with the idea of helping people. We 
started out to build a social safety net. But what happened somewhere 
along the way, during these past 30 years, the social safety net 
instead became a hammock. We started to change people's behavior, which 
is not surprising because under the current system, generally, if a 
welfare mother takes a job she loses her welfare. If she marries 
somebody who has a job, she loses her welfare. But if she has more 
children, she gets more welfare.
  So not surprisingly in spending this massive amount of money, $5.4 
trillion, we have not broken the cycle of poverty. We have not helped 
people produce independence. But what we clearly have done is changed 
the way people behave.
  The other day, in debating this issue, one of my colleagues said, 
``We are not going to solve this problem until we find a way to change 
how people behave.'' I would argue, Mr. President, that we have found 
the way to change how people behave. It is our current welfare system. 
Not only have we made people more dependent, not only have we taken 
away their initiative and denied them access to the American dream, but 
we have affected their spirit and their pride in themselves. Because, 
as people have turned more and more to Government to take care of them, 
to fix their every mistake, they have turned away from self-reliance, 
turned away from their family, and turned away from their faith in 
themselves.
  How do we fix it? The Senator from New York says the plain truth is 
that we do not know. And I think that no one can definitively disagree 
with that statement. The question is, however, having traveled one road 
for 30 years--a road that is littered with the wreckage not only of the 
expenditure of $5.4 trillion but with the lives of people who were 
caught up in this whole crisis--is it not time for a dramatic change?
  Let me try to define the debate, if I may. And I know that any time 
you try to define your position relative to somebody else's, almost by 
the very nature of the debate, you are unfair. But let me, at least as 
I see it, try to define where we are.
  We have basically three proposals that are going to be discussed and 
voted on in the Senate. We have the Dole-Packwood bill, which is an 
effort to try to institute marginal change.
  First of all, it deals with only 13 percent of means tested programs, 
even if you do not count Medicaid. And even within the areas where it 
provides block grants, for example, Aid to Families With Dependent 
Children, despite all the talk of removing strings, in truth the 
strings are still present. I will just give you an example.
  According to the Dole-Packwood bill, if under the block grant of AFDC 
my State wants to require welfare recipients to wash windows on public 
buildings, but is currently paying State employees to wash these same 
windows, then they cannot use welfare workers because it would displace 
State employees.
  Mr. President, clearly, when you are looking at this kind of 
restriction, you are looking at a focus being put on the interest of 
someone other than the taxpayer.
  Let me run down other problems with the Dole-Packwood bill and how a 
group of some 24 Senators that I will be working with on this issue 
will try to deal with them. First of all, the Dole-Packwood bill fails 
to establish a real mandatory work requirement. There is clearly a 
consensus in the country on a mandatory work requirement, but right at 
the final stage of the bill's work requirement--when a decision is made 
whether or not to actually terminate somebody's welfare if they refuse 
to work--the Dole bill leaves the decision up to the States. The House, 
in contrast, has a real pay-for-performance provision that basically 
says if somebody shows up to work half time, they get half their 
welfare benefit; if they do not show up, they get none.
  I do not believe the District of Columbia will terminate welfare 
benefits for people who refuse to work and I am not sure what other 
States will do. I do know that there are some people who say, well, let 
us just turn this whole thing over to the States.
  I, too, want to give the States a massive expansion in independence, 
but there is an absolute consensus in America that able-bodied men and 
women riding in the welfare wagon should get out of the wagon and help 
the rest of us pull.
  We will offer an amendment later today, or sometime this week when we 
have the opportunity, that would put a pay-for-performance provision in 
the bill. Members of the Senate can vote either for or against having a 
real pay-for-performance provision which will simply say that whether 
or not somebody gets AFDC--and our goal will be to expand this 
provision to food stamps and housing subsidies--depends on their 
willingness to work. If people refuse to work, we ought to cut off 
their benefits.
  That is how it works in America. That is how it works in the real 
world, where families and businesses operate every day; if you do not 
show up for work, you do not get paid. So that is the first change we 
will institute, and it is a fundamental change. I believe that unless 
we are willing to have a real mandatory work requirement, not only are 
we not fulfilling the commitment that Republicans made in the election, 
I think we are not doing what has to be done in order to deal with this 
problem.
  Let me remind my colleagues that we claimed in 1988 that we had a 
work requirement, but what happened was, when it finally went into 
effect, there was an outright exemption for 57 percent of the people 
receiving welfare. When you finally get down to the bottom line, less 
than 7 percent of the people ever complied with the work requirement. I 
want everybody in America who is on welfare to understand that able-
bodied men and women are expected to work, and if they do not work, 
they are going to lose their benefits.
  But the most serious problem with the bill before us is that it does 
not deal with illegitimacy. If there is one underlying problem in 
American welfare today, if there is one self-perpetuating quality to 
poverty, it is the explosion of the illegitimacy rate. This is not an 
easy problem to deal with, and the proposal that I and others will make 
is not a proposal that is easy to accept. What we are going to propose 
is that we stop giving people more and more money to have more and more 
children while on welfare. 

[[Page S 11747]]

  A discussion occurred earlier in which someone pointed out that 
Western Europe has the same illegitimacy problems we have. I would 
argue that it largely has the same welfare program we have. We have 
tried for 30 years with a system that provides monetary reward for 
having more and more children on welfare. I believe the time has come 
to terminate that monetary reward. I think the time has come to say to 
people on welfare that we are not going to give you more and more money 
to have more and more children while on welfare.
  This is a tough decision to make, but I believe that without this 
change, we are not going to fundamentally change the poverty problem in 
America. I am very proud of the fact that the House made the change, 
and they made it in two important ways. No. 1, they stopped giving 
direct cash payment to children who have children. The House bill ends 
the absurd system which allows a 16-year-old to escape her mother and 
her family by simply having a child; at which point she qualifies for 
AFDC, food stamps, and housing subsidies, and can immediately qualify 
for enough benefits to leave her family. I believe that the current 
policy basically represents a national policy of suicide. It is one 
that has to be changed.
  We will offer two amendments. One will deal with teenage mothers, and 
the other will deal with a provision whereby we will deny additional 
cash payments to people on welfare who have more and more children.
  We have had on occasion debate about how many children people on AFDC 
have, but I think the facts are pretty clear. First, people on AFDC 
have children at a younger age than do people in the population as a 
whole. And on average, if you look at the age groups roughly through 
age 34, the fertility rate among people who are receiving a financial 
reward for having children is about 25 percent higher than those who 
are not.
  How outrageous is our current policy where we have working families--
families that are saving money and delaying having children they want--
paying taxes to encourage and even reward other people to have more 
children while on welfare.
  I think clearly this policy has to be changed. The House bill has a 
bonus for those States that reduce the illegitimacy rate through their 
programs. It also has a provision--and we will add and strengthen that 
provision--to see that nothing we do encourages States to promote 
abortion in order to try to qualify for these bonuses. But I believe, 
and many people in America believe, that the solution to the poverty 
problem lies in trying to deal with illegitimacy.
  I also believe we need to promote marriage. I believe there are only 
two things that can prevent or eliminate poverty: work and family. No 
great civilization has ever risen that was not built on strong 
families. No great civilization has ever survived the destruction of 
its families, and I am fearful that America will not be the first.
  We need some clear incentives for the formation of strong families. I 
would like to eliminate the marriage penalty for moderate- and low-
income families. Under the current system, if two working people fall 
in love and get married, they pay a higher tax rate than they would pay 
if they had stayed single. Clearly that cannot be good public policy. I 
want, as we promised in the Contract With America, to have a tax credit 
for families that adopt children, something we desperately want to 
promote. I would like to have favorable tax treatment for families that 
take care of parents in their own home.
  We are trying to figure out now how to deal with these issues in a 
bill that is not a revenue bill from the House. And that is something 
that we are working on. But I think it is fundamentally important that 
in the last 30 years we have tried everything to deal with welfare 
except work and family. And I think if we are going to solve this 
problem, we are going to have to make that change.
  I believe that the paternity provision in the Dole bill is a weak 
provision. It basically requires the unwed mother to cooperate in 
trying to identify the father, whereas the House language is very, very 
strong so that except in very extreme circumstances, if the mother does 
not identify the father, she does not get the benefits. I believe that 
is a change that has got to be made.
  Probably the first amendment that we will offer will have to do with 
people coming to America to get welfare. I think most Americans are 
shocked to find that someone can come to America today and qualify for 
welfare tomorrow. I think we have room in America for people who want 
to come and work. I am not in favor of tearing down the Statue of 
Liberty. New Americans are often the best Americans. They bring new 
vision and new energy. And we have got room in America for people who 
want to come and work. But people ought to come to America with their 
sleeves rolled up, not with their hand out. We do not have room in 
America for people who want to come in here and live off the fruits of 
someone else's labor.
  I want to make it clear that our amendment is going to be 
prospective. So what we are going to say is, as of the adoption date of 
this bill, from that day forward, anybody who comes to America comes 
here understanding that they cannot immediately qualify for welfare. 
Now, if they come here, and are productive members of society, and if 
in 5 years they meet the citizenship requirement, once they become 
citizens, obviously, under the Constitution they have the same rights 
as anybody else. And that is how it should be. But I do not believe 
that we ought to continue to provide incentives for people to come to 
America to look for welfare.
  I want to see us block grant more programs. I think it is important 
that we vote on block grants for food stamps. I would also like to vote 
on block grants for housing subsidies. I would like to see us give the 
entire welfare program back to the States and set the States free to 
come up with a tailored program that will fit their individual needs.
  A final major point in the bill which I think just defies logic is 
that, while we eliminate AFDC as a Federal program and give the money 
back to the States, the bill will eliminate only 30 percent of the AFDC 
positions in the Federal bureaucracy. In other words, in AFDC and in 
those training programs that will be block granted under the Dole bill, 
70 percent of the Federal bureaucrats that are currently working for 
those programs which we are going to be eliminated at the Federal level 
will stay on the Federal payroll.
  I believe that we need to eliminate those Federal bureaucracies when 
we eliminate the programs. I mean, is the only thing in life that is 
immortal a Government job or a Government position? It seems to me that 
it is impossible to justify keeping 70 percent of the bureaucrats that 
are running a program in place when we are going to eliminate the 
program.
  Now, we are working, we hope, to negotiate a compromise where you 
might keep 10 percent of the people to help monitor the program. I 
would prefer to do that through a contract with some private accounting 
firm. But there is no way that I can be supportive of a bill in which 
we eliminate a program but we keep 70 percent of the people who were 
running it.
  In short, the Dole bill does not live up to the commitments that 
Republicans made in the election. It will not solve the problem. It 
does not have a binding, mandatory work requirement. It does not deal 
with illegitimacy, and it continues to provide the resources to give 
people more and more money to have more and more children while on 
welfare. It continues to invite people to come to America, not with 
their sleeves rolled up but with their hand out in order to get 
welfare. And for even the programs it eliminates, it keeps 70 percent 
of the Federal bureaucrats in place with no other job, it seems to me, 
other than to interfere with the State's ability to truly reform the 
program.
  The choice we must make, is to dramatically strengthen the Dole bill. 
With all due respect to my Democratic colleagues--and I have no doubt 
as to the sincerity of their position--when you get down to the bottom 
line, their position is basically that we can still make this thing 
work, that after spending $5.4 trillion if we could just spend more 
money, if we could just start a new entitlement we can fix the current 
system. They are going to propose, it is my understanding, that we 

[[Page S 11748]]
start a brandnew entitlement to give child care to welfare recipients. 
This will be a massive and expensive entitlement. But basically their 
argument is--not that they are going to make it, but when you get down 
to the bottom line--is that what is lacking in the welfare system is a 
greater commitment, that if we simply had more benefits, if we simply 
had more money, that we could make this whole thing work. I believe the 
American people passed that view 15 or 20 miles back down the road.
  The tragedy, it seems to me, in this debate in the Senate is that the 
American people are far beyond us in terms of the proposals that they 
are ready to accept. The American people are ready to dramatically 
change welfare. The American people understand that our house is on 
fire, and they are willing to put the fire out. They are willing to 
make dramatic change.
  I have no doubt that if the amendments that I and others will offer 
could be voted on by the American people, if you took the three bills 
that in essence we are going to be debating in amendment form, and you 
reduced them down to an agreed-upon, two-sheet summary of each, and put 
them on every kitchen table in America, I do not have any doubt about 
the fact that 80 or 90 percent of the people in America who do the 
work, pay the taxes and pull the wagon would be in favor of the changes 
that will be proposed by those of us who believe that the Dole bill is 
not strong enough.
  This is not an issue where cutting a deal in Washington, DC, is going 
to solve our problems. We need, on this issue, to stand up and fight 
for a change because the future of America is on the line and we are 
going to lose our country as we know it if we do not make the necessary 
changes.
  Finally, there are a lot of people who have worked in trying to put 
together an alternative that reflects the will of the American people. 
But there are two people that I want to talk about before closing. One 
is John Ashcroft, our new colleague from Missouri, a former Governor, 
who understands the functioning of welfare in the States, who probably 
has as much practical experience as any Member in the Senate with 
welfare, who certainly has administered a major welfare program more 
recently than any other Member of the Senate.
  I think his contributions, in terms of wanting to change the system 
where we have the Treasury allocate the funds to the States and where 
the Federal Government gets out of the way and where we eliminate the 
Federal bureaucracy, are vitally important. I intend to follow his 
leadership on this issue, and I am very hopeful that the amendments he 
will offer will be adopted.
  Finally, our relatively new colleague, Lauch Faircloth, has probably 
been more courageous on this issue than anybody else. It is often easy 
in party meetings, regardless of which party, when people are trying to 
talk about supporting a bill to simply nod and hold your tongue.
  I think the willingness of Lauch Faircloth to stand up and say no, 
especially on this issue of illegitimacy, has been vitally important. I 
think it has awakened conservative Republicans to the fact that this is 
something that is worth fighting for.
  I think if we pass a good bill, and I am hopeful we will, and when 
the dust settles--and I do not know when that is going to be--when we 
finally enact a bill, that we will have strengthened the bill's 
provisions on illegitimacy, we will have strengthened its provisions on 
work, and we will have strengthened its provisions in terms of denying 
benefits to people who come to America and get welfare. I think in the 
end, probably none of our colleagues will be due more credit for making 
that happen than Lauch Faircloth.
  So we will have a series of amendments. I am hopeful we reduce the 
number, though I have to confess, as of right now, we have about a 
dozen. Some of them will be very controversial, such as the 
illegitimacy reduction amendments. Some of them, I hope, will be 
accepted. I think we will see a split. Members on both sides of the 
aisle will vote for and against some of these amendments, but I think 
we have an opportunity to make history. I think we have an opportunity 
to write a welfare reform bill that will live up to its name. What we 
really ought to be debating is not simply reforming welfare but 
replacing it. I think the amendments that we will be offering represent 
a major step in that direction.
  I want to thank my colleagues who have worked on this effort, and I 
yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President. I have tried this morning to 
engage my colleagues and put some questions to them, and I know later 
on we will have time for debate. They wanted to get through with their 
statements. So I am going to do the same thing. I think that is 
unfortunate because, frankly, I think rather than a series of speeches 
we ought to have a real debate about this.
  Mr. President, as I was listening to my colleague from Texas, I heard 
a lot of apples and oranges, kind of mixed up together. I heard $5.4 
trillion, and then I heard a lot about the AFDC Program. One would 
think we have spent $5.4 trillion since 1965 on Aid to Families With 
Dependent Children. Hardly the case.
  In another point in time, because I am not going to yield my time, I 
want to put questions to my colleague later on--we will have time for 
debate--I simply have to say, it will be very interesting to find out 
what has been lumped together in this $5.4 trillion. I am sure it is 
financial aid for students and all sorts of different programs that are 
means tested. Let us not confuse the issue and spend 90 percent of our 
time on the floor bashing away at AFDC, welfare mothers and their 
children, and then every once in a while talk about $5.4 trillion, 
because I am afraid people who are listening to this debate will get 
the impression that that is what we have spent on the AFDC Program. 
That is hardly the case.
  Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will not yield for a question now. I tried to get 
colleagues to yield for a question all morning. I intend now to lay out 
what I think is a different perspective.
  One would think from listening to some of my colleagues that we have 
seen an explosion in the number of children born out of wedlock within 
welfare families. That is not the case. As a matter of fact, we see 
smaller families. We see, over the last several decades, the typical 
welfare family is a smaller family. The average size now is less than 
two children: One mother, two children. One would think from listening 
to my colleagues that what we have is an explosion in the number of 
children in welfare families. That is not the case--that is not the 
case.
  Mr. President, one would think that the reason for that is that we 
have seen a dramatic increase in welfare benefits, although the AFDC 
benefits have been cut in real dollar terms. I heard my colleague from 
Oregon earlier on--I wanted to put a question to him--talking about 
increase of benefits. But the AFDC benefit, in real dollar terms, has 
gone down about 40 percent or so since 1970.
  But we only know, I say to my colleague from New York, we only know 
what we want to know and sometimes we leave out inconvenient facts. Mr. 
President, one would think, listening to my colleagues, that the reason 
for the $4 trillion-plus of debt, the reason for the budget deficits, 
the reason for the crime, the reason for the unemployment, the reason 
for difficult lives for all too many children in this country is the 
AFDC Program. This is just preposterous scapegoating. That is what this 
is all about. Scapegoating: Drive the cheaters off the rolls and the 
slackers back to work, and we can eliminate the total debt of the 
country and eliminate all the budget deficits.
  Mr. President, who are we talking about? Let me just say at the 
beginning, when I listened to my colleague from Texas--and I am sorry 
to speak with some indignation, I will try to keep it to quiet 
indignation--speaking about the American people and what they are for, 
the American people do not want us to be reckless with the lives of 
children. The American people do not want us to be reckless with the 
lives of children. And, Mr. President, there is a big difference 
between reform and reformatory. 

[[Page S 11749]]

  Let me tell you what reform is. The Senator from New York has been 
prophetic on this issue forever. I am almost embarrassed to be speaking 
while he is out on the floor, because I have so much respect for his 
work over the years. But at the very minimum, if we are going to be 
talking about welfare reform, we have to be talking about several 
things. The Senator's bill in 1988 talked about that. There is nothing 
new here. The Senator talked about the need to have education, talked 
about the need for job training and to focus on jobs and, as I 
remember, it had a transition period of time where you did not get cut 
off from Medicaid.
  That is what it is all about. When we are talking about welfare 
recipients, the 15 million recipients including 5 million families, and 
we are talking about driving the slackers back to work and cheaters off 
the roll, 9 million are children under the age of 18, and the rest are 
overwhelmingly single parents.
  Interestingly enough, and I will get to this later on in my comments 
when we talk about the States and leaving it up to the States, actually 
all too few States have been willing to have the AFDC-UP Program. Too 
few States have been willing to have that, if we want to talk about 
what quite often encourages the breakup of families.
  But, Mr. President, I have to say to you today that there is a 
tremendous amount of scapegoating that is going on here. If you want to 
have welfare reform as opposed to reformatory, No. 1, what Minnesotans 
will say is, ``Look, we think it's important, work is important, to be 
able to have a decent job is dignity.'' That is what all of us desire.
  By the way, I might be one of the few Senators who spent 20 years, or 
thereabout, organizing with welfare mothers. I might know this 
community better than some people here. Maybe I do not. Maybe that 
means I do not have any objectivity.
  But on the other hand, at least I do not perpetuate a lot of 
stereotypes. At least I have some examples that I can give based upon 
some personal experience. Most welfare mothers that I know want nothing 
more than to get out from under the thumb of the welfare department and 
work.
  My colleague from New York wrote in his book, ``The Politics of the 
Guaranteed Income.'' To be poor in America is one thing, but to be poor 
and dependent is all too often to be despised. There is a tremendous 
amount of stigma. We all want to work.
  Mr. President, it is very difficult to work. If you want to have real 
welfare reform and not reformatory, No. 1, there has to be affordable 
child care. What are you going to do?
  What are you going to do if you have small children and you are going 
to work? Is there going to be a way you can afford child care? By the 
way, Mr. President, that is not just an issue for welfare mothers. It 
is also an issue for many working families in this country. In this 
Congress, we have cut investment in child care. So at the same time 
that we say what we need in America is more workfare and less welfare--
I say to my colleague that we have heard that for a long time--we are 
cutting money and we are retreating from an investment in resources in 
child care.
  What are we saying? I thought we valued family. I thought we valued 
children. We are saying to welfare mothers, you take a job, and if you 
do not take a job, you are cut off from assistance. But if that mother 
cannot afford child care, if she loses her Medicaid coverage and the 
job she gets is $5 an hour, or thereabouts--which is exactly the job 
opportunity structure that many welfare mothers face--she is worse off.
  I say to my colleagues, where in their alleged reform proposal is 
there any funding for child care? There is no increase in funding for 
child care. In fact, we are cutting child care assistance. So if we are 
going to speak for the majority of people in the United States, let us 
make a distinction on the floor of the Senate right now. People want to 
see reform, yes. People would like to see less welfare and more 
workfare, yes. But people do not want to see children punished. They do 
not want to see legislation in the name of reform which is degrading 
and punitive. They do not want to see us being reckless with the lives 
of children.
  By the way, just because a child is in a welfare family, just because 
a child is low income and of a single parent, does not mean that child 
is a boy or a girl of any less worth or substance than any of the rest 
of us. These proposals--especially the proposal of the Senator from 
Texas--is not reform, it is reformatory.
  It is based upon a tremendous amount of scapegoating. And you know 
what, Mr. President, there is not one former welfare mother on the 
floor of the Senate. Welfare mothers do not have the money to buy ads 
on CBS, NBC, and ABC to fight some of these cultural stereotypes. I 
have heard my colleagues come to the floor and give examples.
  Are we going to now govern by anecdote? I have examples, too, Mr. 
President. I say to my colleague from New York, ``There Are No Children 
Here'' is a wonderful book. The title is troubling. Here is the basis 
of the title. The basis of the title is that a journalist from the Wall 
Street Journal is talking to a mother. He has come to know this family 
who lives in a housing project. He wants to write about the children. 
The mother says to him, Mr. President, ``Well, if you want to write 
this book, you can, but there are no children here.'' What she is 
saying is, given the brutality of their lives, there are no children, 
there is no innocence; they do not have the chance to be children.
  But, Mr. President, for all of these stereotypes about these welfare 
mothers, my God, we have heard it forever. ``They have Cadillacs.'' You 
would not think that the maximum benefit in the median State is $366 a 
month, which is what it is. You would not think in every State the 
welfare benefits are way below poverty--in the State of Texas, not even 
20 percent of poverty. From listening to my colleagues speak, you would 
think welfare mothers are receiving huge amounts of money, living high 
on the hog, all of them having tons of children. You would think that 
the average size of a family was 10. But that is not true. The average 
size of the family is one mother and less than two children.
  Seventy percent of welfare families have one or two children. You 
would think welfare mothers do not want to work. But I raised the 
question with my colleague from New York earlier. As a matter of fact, 
about 75 percent of AFDC mothers go to work. But within 2 years, quite 
often, they return back to welfare. And then they go to work again. I 
will tell you exactly what happens, because I know some of the people 
we are talking about. It does not make me better than anybody else in 
the Senate, but at least, for God's sake, I am not operating on the 
basis of vicious stereotypes.
  You have a mother and she goes to work and tries to make it, and it 
is a $5.50 an hour job, or whatever the case is; and then she tries to 
work out a child care arrangement and is able to do that for a while. 
But pretty soon she is further behind. So she goes back to welfare. 
Then she finds another job and she is doing pretty well at that job, 
but her child gets sick and she has to stay at home, and this time 
around, she loses that job. And then she seeks employment again. As a 
matter of fact, that is the pattern, that is what is so dangerous about 
the 5-year cutoff. That is the pattern. But this does not represent the 
pathology of welfare mothers. This represents a group of citizens--
women--who are trying to work and support their families.
  Mr. President, I have not heard one of my colleagues on the other 
side talk about how it is that in many of our large cities, small 
children go to school, all too often crossing through gunfire, and get 
home and graduate from high school, and some go on to college and some 
have rewarding lives. Do you know who takes them to school? Do you know 
who takes them home? Do you know who organizes against the drug 
pushers? All too often, they are welfare mothers.
  I have not heard any stories on the floor of the Senate about any of 
those women. No, no, no. We only want to know what we want to know. 
Better to have all of the cruel stereotypes; better to do all of the 
scapegoating. That is the way we are proceeding right now on the floor 
of the Senate.
  This is not reform, this is reformatory. Some of these proposals are 
very reckless with the lives of children. We should not be so generous 
with the suffering of other people. It is a great hot-button issue; you 
can push it and you 

[[Page S 11750]]
can get a lot of support. But I will tell you something, there is a lot 
of goodness in this country. When people see some of these proposals 
for what they are, people will be furious and they will object.
  I know a woman in Minnesota, a welfare mother. I say to the Senator 
from New York, do you know why? Actually, she had a middle income and 
lived in a middle-income family. She was doing fine. She was full of 
hope. She had children. Everything was going right. There was only one 
problem: Her husband battered her.
  For many women, like it or not, the welfare program, the AFDC 
Program, is the only alternative to an abusive relationship. That is 
correct. So she left her husband, and now she has small children and 
receives aid to families with dependent children. I do not hear any of 
my colleagues talking about such examples. I know another mother, and 
she has two small children. You know what, I say to my colleague from 
New York, it reminds me--boy, I am going to get in trouble politically 
for saying this--but it reminds me of the book entitled ``Let Us Now 
Praise Famous Men.'' It should have been ``Men and Women.''
  I would not praise all welfare mothers. I can give examples of abuse. 
But this woman should be famous. She is an AFDC mother. Her husband 
left her. He is not taking any responsibility for supporting the 
children. She has two small children that she takes care of. She goes 
to community college, and she works at a job, as well. She is trying to 
be independent. She takes good care of those children. She is amazing. 
I do not know how she does it. She is a welfare mother, folks. She is a 
welfare mother. I have not seen any of my colleagues out here with her 
picture. I have not heard any of those stories.
  Mr. President, it is time to maybe talk about the basic facts on 
welfare. Let us not base public policy on the basis of stereotypes.
  Mr. President, I remember a study by Gilbert Steiner, an institute 
study that quoted FDR. He gave a speech and said, ``I hope soon to 
abolish relief altogether.'' Then he moved forward and talked about the 
WIN Program. Leonard Goodwin, of Brookings, wrote a piece in 1970. He 
was doing an analysis and found that what happened was very 
interesting. A lot of welfare mothers, rather than saying they heard 
about this work incentive program now, said they could not wait to 
work. The problem is we only ended up placing 2 percent of them in jobs 
that put them in a better position than they were in when they had 
welfare.
  Does anybody want to look at the job opportunity structure in 
America? Do any of my colleagues have children in their twenties? I do. 
Have you taken a close look at the jobs that are available right now 
for people? Has anybody looked at that? Then I hear this wonderful 
argument on the floor of the Senate, and the argument goes as follows: 
What is going on here is welfare is causing poverty. And you get all 
these statistics. I think my colleague from Texas does this. You get 
all these statistics on the rise of poverty in America. That is true. 
The statistics about the state of children in America should shame all 
of us. One would think that welfare is the cause of the poverty.
  Not a word about the political economy of the country. Not a word 
about the minimum wage of $4.25. Not a word about increasing minimum 
wage. Not a word about an expanded job opportunity structure. Not a 
word about the huge number of people today in our country who work 52 
weeks a year, 40 hours a week, only to make poverty wages. Not a word 
about any of that.
  The argument that welfare causes poverty is tantamount to arguing 
that Social Security causes people to get old.
  Come on, colleagues. Get your independent and your dependent 
variables straight. This is the kind of argument that is easy to make 
when there are a group of people that you can bash because they are not 
the big political campaign givers. They do not make the big 
contributions. They are not the heavy hitters. They are not the 
players.
  But that is still no excuse for bashing people and then basing policy 
on these myths.
  Then we have the Family Allowance Program. Back then, maybe I made a 
mistake. I think my colleague from New York certainly would say I did. 
I thought it was equity within inadequacy. But I do not know. At least 
President Nixon and his chief urban adviser, now Senator Moynihan, I 
think that they were right. They are trying to say, ``Let's have some 
kind of income floor. Let's have some real reform.'' That was defeated. 
Certainly we lost that opportunity.
  Then Jimmy Carter came in and he said welfare was a disgrace. He had 
his Better Jobs and Income Program. Ronald Reagan pulled hundreds of 
thousands of people off the rolls in the early 1980's. He thought it 
was encouraging people to get out of work and stay on welfare, and 
there was abuse there. But it actually did not lead to anything good 
for children. Not at all.
  My colleagues talk about all of this discussion about illegitimacy 
and family caps. My colleague from New York, correct me if I am wrong, 
as I look at the New Jersey experience, Rutgers came out with a study 
recently and what they found was that, frankly, it did not seem to make 
any difference one way or the other in terms of the cap. The only 
difference it made was it took some food off the tables.
  Am I correct?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator is correct. The study done at Rutgers 
University showed that.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. This was a study, for the information of my 
colleagues, a study of the family cap; to have an additional child, 
there will not be any more assistance.
  Initially, there were, as I remember--I am kind of going by memory--
there were initially proclamations and claims that, as a matter of 
fact, this had cut down on the number of welfare children and the 
number of people who were obtaining welfare.
  I think probably what happened, it was underreported. I think 
probably a lot of mothers just did not report it.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Reasonable persons learned there would be no additional 
money when an additional child was born; they did not report it, and in 
time these numbers got resolved and there appeared no effect of any 
kind.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. For the record, the best known study of the effects of 
the family cap was the Rutgers study of the New Jersey plan. Here is 
the principle investigator for that study who recently reported that 
during the first year of the program, ``There is not a statistically 
significant difference between the birth rates in the experimental and 
control groups. We find a 6.9 percent rate for women subject to the 
family cap, and a 6.7 rate for those in the control group.''
  As a matter of fact, Mr. President, there is not one bit of research 
that I know of that suggests policywise we are going to be able to do 
anything to stop out-of-work wedlock births.
  Does the Senator know of any research that suggests we can do that?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I ask unanimous consent to address the Senator 
directly.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Sir, I do not. I wish I did. I prepared for this debate 
by canvassing acquaintances around the Nation. Did they know? No, they 
did not.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, we are talking about, we should listen 
to the foremost expert, not just among people in the Senate but in the 
country on welfare, Senator Moynihan, if we want to base our policy not 
on stereotypes, some of them crucial stereotypes, but on whatever 
evidence there is.
  As a matter of fact, I heard the Senator from Texas proclaiming we 
will do this all in the name of helping children. The only thing that 
happened was there was less money for food.
  Senators, that is the only thing that happens. And we are profamily? 
And we are going to take food out of the mouths of hungry children?
  Senators, if you have some studies that you can bring to the floor of 
the Senate, if you have some empirical evidence that these proposals 
will, in fact, make a difference in terms of reducing the rate of out-
of-wedlock children, fine. If you have some evidence that a family cap 
or other harsh proposal will reduce the rate of ``illegitimacy,'' fine. 


[[Page S 11751]]
If you do not have evidence, please understand on the basis of what 
studies have taken place so far, a family cap is no help whatsoever.
  Also, remember, that over 70 percent of welfare mothers have one or 
two children at the most. But what you will do is you will, by this 
kind of change, make sure that these families--and, Senators, there is 
not one State in the lower 48 that has a welfare benefit up to the 
poverty level income--will have less income to feed their children.
  Is that what we are about? Is that what we are claiming to be reform? 
That is not reform. It is punitive. It is degrading. It is reformatory. 
It is hot-button-issue politics. That is all it is.
  It is not a policy based upon evidence. It is not sound public 
policy. We are being very reckless with the lives of children in the 
United States of America.
  Mr. President, who receives AFDC? Eight percent of all AFDC families 
are headed by teens. The vast majority, 81 percent, are young families 
headed by mothers in their twenties and thirties.
  How many people receive AFDC? Nine point five million children. Who 
are we talking about? These cheaters we want to drive off the rolls and 
the slackers we want to drive back to work, who are we talking about? 
Mr. President, 9.5 million of the 14 million AFDC recipients are 
children.
  A little less than 5 million are mothers, and many of them are 
mothers of small children. And you do not have any additional funding 
for child care at all. You do not want to raise the minimum wage for 
working families. You do not want to have additional assistance for 
child care.
  Some of you, I ask the Senator from Oregon, I assume that Medicaid is 
carried for an additional 2 years? I do not want to give up the floor, 
but let me say that I assume--I ask unanimous consent to ask the 
Senator from Oregon whether or not in his proposal there is a 
transition period of time, 2-year period of time, where a welfare 
mother is able to keep her Medicaid? Under the unanimous consent, I ask 
the Senator from Oregon, and I keep my time on the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. One year.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Family Support Act, 1 year.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, how many children do AFDC families 
have? I went over this, but we should be clear. The average family 
receiving AFDC has two children, about the same as a typical nonwelfare 
family; 73 percent of the families receiving AFDC in 1992 have only one 
or two children.
  The average number--for my colleague from Texas--the average number 
of children in an AFDC family has actually dropped 33 percent since 
1970. You would think, from what my colleagues are proposing, that we 
are having this explosion of additional children to welfare mothers. 
Quite to the contrary. But do not let the facts get in your way, 
because it is easy to bash these people. It is easy to bash them.
  Are AFDC families mostly white or black? I tread on some sensitive 
ground here. But I have noticed all too often, when my colleagues come 
out with their pictures, we have African-Americans, usually. So let us 
be clear about this. Recipient families are about as likely to be white 
as black. In 1992, 39 percent of the families were non-Hispanic white, 
37 percent non-Hispanic black, and 18 percent Hispanic.
  Mr. President, are you ready for this? This is an important piece of 
information. How much do AFDC families receive each month? The maximum 
cash grant for a mother and two children in a typical State is $366 a 
month.
  Now, my colleague from New York pointed this out earlier when he was 
talking about entitlements--actually, the State defines the benefit. 
The Federal Government is willing to make a contribution, but the State 
defines the benefit. And there is a tremendous variation. Mississippi, 
which is the least generous State, provides $120 per month. By the way, 
I am not picking--before my colleagues from Mississippi come out here, 
let me be clear. I think, and I would be willing to be corrected by the 
Senator from New York, usually what happens here is it is the per 
capita wage that sets the level of AFDC benefits. Those States which 
have lower working wages, those States that are poorer States have 
lower benefits, by and large.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Plus food stamps.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Plus food stamps. I am going to talk about food stamps 
in a moment, I say to my colleague.
  AFDC--I will get from my colleague in a moment the 1995 figures. In 
1992, the AFDC payment programs cost the Federal and State Governments 
combined $22 billion; 1 percent of the Federal budget, and the States' 
share was about 2 percent. One percent of the Federal Government.
  Now, the Joint Tax Committee, in talking about corporate welfare, 
says we have $425 billion a year in tax expenditures. We have a total 
of welfare for the poor, Federal and State, of $22 billion, or a little 
more now. One percent of the Federal budget. And now we have an all-out 
attack.
  I am all for reform, by the way. But reform means affordable child 
care and reform means there has to be a job so a parent can support her 
or his children. That is what reform is all about.
  You would think from the way in which we see this bashing of welfare 
that we were spending huge amounts of money. Mr. President, that 
average $366 per month is, roughly speaking, $4,392 per year. I do not 
know what the Federal poverty line is, it must be $13,000 per family of 
four?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Fourteen.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, about $14,000 for a family of four. We 
can get into a long debate about poverty. We will not today. We have a 
definition of poverty, first defined by Molly Orshanski--who I think 
regrets some of the ways in which it has been used--but we have a 
definition of poverty. Our definition of poverty is, we say this is the 
definition of what a family needs to purchase the minimum amount of 
needed goods and services. We are talking about children here. Now, 
when we define poverty, we say this is the income a family needs to 
purchase the minimum amount of goods and services.
  The next piece of evidence is there is not one State in the United 
States of America with welfare payments and food stamps combined that 
even equals what we say a family needs to purchase a minimum amount of 
goods and services. And we are going after these mothers and these 
children.
  Mr. President, from hearing my colleague from Texas speak especially, 
one would think we have seen this dramatic increase in welfare 
benefits. The Senator from Texas combined all the programs in this 
statement earlier. But, again, I do not think we can be talking about 
all the programs. If you wanted to have a debate about the welfare 
state broadly defined, let us have that debate. But do not keep mixing 
apples and oranges and throw out a $5.4 trillion figure here and talk 
about increases here. With the AFDC program, which is the program we 
are talking about, benefits have decreased 47 percent since 1970 in 
real dollar terms.
  It is pretty amazing to me. You have an average benefit of $366 a 
month for a family of three, and then I think the maximum increase of a 
benefit for another child in a typical State is $72 more. We make 
$130,000 a year as Senators. Think about this for a moment. Think about 
what it costs to raise your child. Do you really believe that, with a 
typical benefit being $377 per month, and you get an additional $72 a 
month, that that is why women have children? Do you think they are 
further ahead? Do you think that is a good deal, with what it costs to 
raise a child?
  There is no evidence of that. No evidence supporting that. No 
evidence for that whatsoever. And if you are honest with yourselves and 
you think about your own family, you will know that it costs much more 
than that to raise a child.
  We have heard a lot. I will conclude just with a little bit more 
factual information. This is just an average monthly AFDC benefit per 
family, in 1992 dollars. From 1970 to 1992, the real value of the AFDC 
benefit fell 45 percent. If anybody wants to dispute me on the floor of 
the Senate, do so. Does anybody want to? Good. We have established that 
fact.
  Mr. President, AFDC and food stamp benefits as a percentage of 
poverty line for a family of three, from 1980 to 1993--AFDC only, 
average benefit is now 38 percent of poverty line; AFDC and food stamps 
is 67 percent of poverty line. It was 83 percent in 1980, 74 

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percent in 1985, 72 percent in 1990. It is now down to 67 percent of 
poverty. So I guess we have not seen a dramatic increase in benefits. 
Not even on the average 67 percent of what we say it takes a family to 
purchase a minimum amount of goods and services; 1 percent of the 
Federal budget. And this is where we are targeting all of our guns. 
Right?
  Mr. President, here is a chart called ``Percentage Spending for AFDC 
as a Percentage of Total Federal Outlays, 1970 to 1992.'' In 1970, it 
was 1.40 percent; 1975, 1.5 percent; and 1992, 0.88 percent. Is it 1 
percent now? Is there any dispute about that?
  Mr. President, now we are going to talk about just block granting; 
cut child care, tell people they have to work, no affordable child 
care, do not even talk about the job opportunity structure, do not try 
to raise the minimum wage--not just for welfare mothers but for working 
families, and Medicaid for 1 year. Then what happens after 1 year, 
given the job opportunity structure, and how do you afford decent child 
care?
  I am going to make a child care point. I am going to make a State 
point. And then I am going to sit down. But I cannot wait for us to get 
into some real debate on the floor of this Senate, because if there is 
any role I can play, it is to make sure that nobody gets away, with 
just impunity, with coming to the floor with all these stereotypes. 
Senators can disagree, and that is fine. I am all for that. I just want 
to make sure when the final policy is enacted it is not based on myths 
about many of these women who cannot fight back.
  By the way, we are talking about women and children in the main. 
Women and children.
  On the child care part--I will not go into child care. We will wait. 
We will have that debate.
  Mr. President, let me just give you a feel for the AFDC benefits in 
States. I see my colleague from Texas. Texas--but I will not pick on 
Texas. I will talk about a lot of different States. The maximum monthly 
AFDC benefits, as of January 1994, was $184. That is for a family of 
three--$184. That is 19 percent of the poverty level.
  Mr. President, the decline in the monthly benefits for a family of 
three, after adjusting for inflation, in the State of Texas was 67 
percent, a decline.
  In Alabama, it was $164. That is 17 percent of the Federal poverty 
line.
  In Maryland--I am going through this at random--$366, 38 percent of 
the poverty line.
  Minnesota, $533, 54 percent of the poverty line.
  New York, $577, 60 percent of the poverty line.
  This is just welfare benefits. This is AFDC, not the food stamp part.
  New Jersey, $424, 44 percent of the poverty line.
  Vermont, $638, 67 percent of the poverty line.
  Arkansas, $204, 21 percent of the poverty line;
  Mississippi, $120 per month, 13 percent of the poverty line.
  Mr. President, let us just finish up this way. Quite to the contrary, 
people are not living ``high off the hog.'' Quite to the contrary, 
people are trying to obtain work. Quite to the contrary, most welfare 
mothers and most policy analysts I know are for reform. But you have 
affordable child care, and I think the biggest job we have is job 
opportunity, to be able to get the job, to be able to support yourself. 
Look at the jobs available.
  Let me say this to my colleague from New York. With regard to this 
whole notion of ``get off your duff and get a job'' mentality, a recent 
study on the availability of jobs in the fast food restaurants found 
that for each job, there were 14 applicants. As the study's authors put 
it, ``In short, it is simply not the case that anyone who wants even a 
low-wage job can get one.'' This is the study ``The Job Ghetto.'' This 
was in the American Prospect, summer of 1995.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, if I may say, the Senator is correct. 
That was the article.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will conclude with the following poem 
that was just given to me. It comes from Julia Dinsmore, a welfare 
mother in my State of Minnesota.

       My name is not ``those people.''
       We always call them ``those people,'' and we had a Member 
     on the floor of the House refer to animals-- ``wolves and 
     alligators,'' a shameful debate.
       My name is not ``those people.'' I am a loving woman, a 
     mother in pain, giving birth to the future where my babies 
     have the same chance as anyone. My name is not 
     ``inadequate.'' I did not make my husband leave us. He chose 
     to and chooses not to pay child support. While society turns 
     its head, my children pay the price. My name is not 
     ``problem'' and ``case to be managed.'' The social service 
     system can never replace the compassionate concern of loving 
     grandparents, uncles, fathers, cousins, community. Oh, the 
     people who need to be but are not present to bring children 
     forward to their full potential. My name is not ``lazy, 
     dependent welfare mother.'' If the unwaged working parent's 
     home making, community building was factored into the gross 
     national product, my work would have untold value.

  By the way, Mr. President, this is really counterintuitive where this 
debate is going, and I do think it is very important to have jobs with 
decent wages. I want to remind my colleagues that being at home and 
taking care of children, whether you are a woman or a man, is 
important, vitally important, productive work.

       My name is not ``ignorant, dumb and uneducated.'' I live 
     with an income of $621 with $169 in food stamps. Rent is 
     $585.''

  This is from Minnesota. Our benefits are much higher than most.

       That leaves $36 a month to live on. I am such a genius at 
     surviving that I could balance the State budget in an hour. 
     Never mind that there is a lack of living-wage jobs. Never 
     mind that it is impossible to be the sole emotional, social, 
     and economic support to a family. Never mind that single 
     mothers can work another job outside the home and lose their 
     children to the gangs, drugs, stealing, prostitution, social 
     workers, kidnapping, street predators. Forget about putting 
     money into our schools. Just build more prisons. My name is 
     not ``lay down and die quietly.'' My love is powerful and my 
     urge to keep my children alive will never stop. All children 
     need homes and people who love them. All children need safety 
     and the chance of being the people they were born to be. The 
     wind will stop before I let my children become a statistic. 
     Before you give in to the urge to blame me, the blame that 
     lets us go blind and unknowing into isolation that 
     disconnects us, take another look. Do not go away, for I am 
     not a problem but the solution. And my name is not ``those 
     people.

  I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I want to make sure the Senator from 
Minnesota does not misconstrue. In the play ``Man for All Seasons'' 
where Thomas Moore is being tried--and I will paraphrase the best I can 
recall--for he would not assent to the king's divorce, he never said 
anything about it. He just did not assent to it. But he would not sign 
on it. And in the trial they accused him of opposing the divorce. He 
said, ``No. I said nothing about the divorce.'' And the prosecutor said 
something about the law and presumptions, and Moore says, in that case, 
it is not to presume that silence assumes assent. He said nothing.
  I do not want my silence--in response to his papers when he is 
holding them up saying ``anybody here disagrees''--to be assent. He 
said nothing.
  I do not want my silence--in response to his papers when he is 
holding them up saying ``anybody here disagrees''--to be assent. At the 
appropriate time, I will respond to those. But I do not want to leave 
you with the impression that I agree with everything or barely anything 
that he said.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, for the first time in 30 years or more, I 
believe the Senate is beginning a broad range of debate over a system 
of welfare, not a single program such as AFDC or Medicaid or any of 
half a dozen or more others, but a system of welfare.
  During that period of at least 30 years, the debate over particular 
aspects or programs that are a part of that system has always been on 
what additional program, what additional help the Government can 
provide to deal with what was a serious problem of family breakdown, of 
dependent single parents, of illegitimacy and occasionally 
homelessness. During the course of those three decades, AFDC, 
supplemental Social Security income, subsidized child care, job 
training, Medicaid, and other programs have all been debated as a part 
of the solution to our Nation's social pathologies. And, in most cases, 
these programs have either been brought into existence or 

[[Page S 11753]]
have been expanded in an attempt to alleviate social conditions. But 
each one of those additions, each one of those increases, has been 
accompanied by not by a decrease in welfare dependency--both in terms 
of families and illegitimacy, but an increase in those terrible social 
challenges.
  So it is appropriate that we debate this issue at this time. I must 
say that simply the fact that increases in the challenges and 
pathologies which have accompanied increases in programs does not 
create an irrefutable inference of cause and effect.
 But it certainly does state the proposition that at the very least, 
these increases, these new programs, these new requirements have not 
alleviated the conditions at which they were aimed at the time of their 
creation or increase.

  Each liberal attempt at reform which was offered as a way out, or as 
a partial solution to the way out, has proved at the very least not to 
have provided that way. So what we have today is a system elaborate in 
its complexity, requiring a huge Federal bureaucracy to establish and 
to enforce rules related to welfare here in Washington, DC, mirrored by 
huge State bureaucracies designed to administer and to enforce those 
rules and, of course, in the case of each State, to add to them.
  The total, the net result is a set of programs and of benefits that 
clearly provides at a certain level a disincentive to entry-level work, 
and as a consequence or as an accompaniment, the social pathologies 
continue and grow.
  And so we are now presented with roughly three alternative proposals 
for reform. Maybe there is a fourth. In listening to the extended 
statement by the Senator from Minnesota, the clear implication is that 
we simply need to do more in the way of programs to provide a greater 
degree of income and comfort and benefits for those on welfare. But I 
do not believe that implied solution--and I put the word ``solution'' 
in quotation marks--finds much support either in the American people or 
even on that side of the aisle in this debate.
  The proposal which seems to have the most support over there is 
essentially more of the same thing masquerading under a set of work 
requirements and limitations on the time during which an individual can 
draw AFDC benefits. But these apply to only a modest handful of the 
total beneficiaries.
  The second alternative presented eloquently by the senior Senator 
from Texas an hour or so ago was to substitute for the detailed liberal 
requirements somewhat less detailed but nonetheless significant 
ideological requirements from the conservative side of the spectrum on 
the ground that rules which limit benefits going to teenage unwed 
mothers and single parents will reduce the rate of illegitimacy.
  The third alternative is the alternative proposed by the majority 
leader, building on the proposal from the Finance Committee and from 
its distinguished chairman, the Senator from Oregon. While it includes 
significant work requirements and significant limitations on the amount 
of money and time an individual can draw these various welfare 
benefits, its philosophy is that far more experimentation should be 
permitted on the part of individual States; that we should not have one 
centralized system but allow 50 different systems for dealing with 
welfare.
  I imagine that the goals of each of these proposals are to try to see 
to it that there is less dependency, to provide fewer incentives for 
illegitimacy and single-parent families, to provide relatively greater 
incentives for work, provide more effective requirements of support on 
the part of the absent parent--almost always the father--and to 
terminate or limit the misuse of the SSI disability policies.
  I think with respect to some of these, particularly absent parent 
responsibility and SSI, there may not be too great a difference among 
these various proposals. It seems to me, as one of the sponsors of the 
third proposal, that identified by the Senator from Oregon and the 
majority leader, that it has at least the virtue of modesty--modesty, 
that is, in the sense of our saying that we are not certain what 
program, what reforms will work to reach the goals that I and others 
have outlined. We can be, I think, reasonably confident, maybe 
overwhelmingly confident, that what we have now has not worked, and we 
can be reasonably confident that not only has it not worked but it has 
actually exacerbated the very situation, the very set of conditions it 
was designed to alleviate in the first place. Of that we can have a 
fair degree of confidence.
  I submit that I do not have a great deal of confidence in attempting 
to outline a system that I know will work. The Senator from Minnesota 
seems to be very confident without much evidence that all we need to do 
is more of what we have been doing in increasing amounts for the last 
30 years. I submit that he will find relatively little agreement with 
that position.
  If it is the case that none of us, not only U.S. Senators but all of 
the panoply of professionals and so-called experts and academics in 
this field, cannot be certain of how we can deal successfully with 
these social pathologies, then this third alternative, the Dole-
Packwood alternative, is clearly the way in which to go because it is 
clear that if we pass this proposal, 50 States will engage in 50 
different experiments.
  It is doubtful that any two States will pursue the quest for a better 
welfare system in exactly the same way. There is a fear that some will 
not engage in a maintenance of effort. That may indeed happen. But if 
there are failures, we will learn from those failures and have a 
clearer idea of what works and what doesn't work.
  It is true that some States will incur severe penalties, at least 
when we compare it with the present system, for illegitimacy and for 
teenage births, and we will determine whether or not that works as 
against more liberal States that retain something like the present 
system.
  It may be, Mr. President, in 5 years or 6 years or 10 years of such 
experimentation, we will have learned that certain State welfare 
systems work--that is, if the conditions they are designed to alleviate 
are, in fact, alleviated. Others will not have worked--they will have 
increased the amount of dependency. Others, finally, will have had no 
impact at all. And it may be that we here in this body, or our 
successors here in this body, will, with that experimentation, be able 
to have a greater degree of confidence in how we should design a 
national system.
  But, Mr. President, we cannot claim that confidence here today. We 
only know that what we have done cumulatively over the last 30 years 
has been a disastrous failure, not only for the public Treasury, but 
even more so for the American social condition.
  So, Mr. President, let us take the great advantage that a Federal 
system like ours offers to us, the ability to have different solutions 
in different parts of our country, the ability to use the 50 States as 
a laboratory for experiment, the ability under those circumstances to 
determine what may help us to solve this tremendous social problem and 
meet this social crisis, and what may not.
  And it is for that reason, Mr. President, that while the history of 
the last 30 years has shown us that the liberal prescription for 
welfare has been an almost unmitigated disaster, so perhaps may be the 
conservative prescription for welfare. Let us exercise our voices and 
our votes with a degree of modesty, a degree of uncertainty, a degree 
of the point of view that we are not quite certain what the answer is, 
and in doing so, accept the amendment that is before us at this point, 
allow for experimentation and innovation and see how, through our 
Federal system, we can learn what will work to solve the problem of 
welfare.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I think from the debate that we have heard so far on 
this issue, that we see clearly the fundamental differences about what 
welfare should be and how we make it what we want it to be. We are 
taking up a reform of historic magnitude. We have laid the framework 
for a revolution in the way our country goes about giving help to those 
who have been told for too long that they are incapable of helping 
themselves.
  Over the past 30 years, our welfare system has become an agent of 
despair 

[[Page S 11754]]
for those who are trapped in its coils. And if we know one thing about 
our current welfare system, it is that we are not getting our money's 
worth. There are two constituencies that we must serve in this reform--
the taxpayer and the welfare recipient. Neither the taxpayers, who foot 
the bill, nor the beneficiaries themselves are getting fair treatment 
under the present welfare program. You do not help anyone by 
encouraging self-destructive behavior.
  The original intent of welfare was something very different from what 
we have in place today. In the 1930's Americans wanted to open our 
hands and our hearts to the most desperate victims of the Great 
Depression, indigent widows and their children. Then beginning in 1965, 
our War on Poverty attempted to nudge those on the bottom rung of the 
ladder in the direction of middle-class security. But we have failed 
miserably.
  The percentage of Americans living in poverty has risen steadily at 
the same time that our welfare apparatus has grown. What we have 
created instead is a self-perpetuating monster that sustains the most 
distressing ills of our society--illegitimacy, the disintegration of 
the family, weakening of the work ethic, and crippling dependency. 
Indirectly, it feeds ever-rising levels of functional illiteracy, 
violence, and juvenile crime.
  The American people are demanding to know why, after an expenditure 
of $5 trillion, there are more people living in poverty today than ever 
before in our country. A partial explanation is the growth of the 
welfare delivery sector of the Government and the private sector 
hangers-on. It is in their interest to make sure that more and more 
money is spent on poverty programs without regard to whether we are 
reducing the number of people living in poverty.
  The American people also wonder, after spending $5 trillion, that 
anyone could think a continuation of the present system with more money 
could be even a step in the direction of solving this problem. The fact 
is, those who administer these programs and those who advocate them 
have no incentive to encourage welfare beneficiaries to move forward 
with their lives. Dependency is presented as acceptable and inevitable. 
Individual responsibility and all it implies is discounted. This is 
neither beneficial nor benign.
  We have lured those in need down a dead-end street. The welfare 
reform measures we are considering today would short circuit the 
bureaucracy which the Federal Government has created and hand most of 
the responsibility over to the States. This will free each State to 
experiment with new strategies for welfare, new approaches to giving 
beneficiaries incentives to work and contribute to the American 
economy.
  This State involvement with the welfare apparatus is a pivotal 
element of our reform plans. Unless the Federal Government steps aside 
and lets the States go forward, we will lose the innovation that the 
States have put into the system. That is where the creativity has been. 
And in many instances this has happened in part because the States, 
unlike Congress, are required by their constitutions to come up with a 
balanced budget every year. Because they are closer to the people and 
can respond to changing conditions more quickly than the Federal 
Government, the States have been able to come up with effective, 
innovative programs in their reform efforts.
  Nearly 30 States have requested waivers from the Federal Government 
to enact reforms. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson says the welfare rolls 
in his State have dropped 19 percent while the national rate has 
increased to 32 percent. Here are some of his innovative programs: 
learnfare, which requires welfare teenagers to stay in school; 
marriagefare, which creates incentives to marry and have no additional 
children while still on welfare; and workfare, which ends cash 
assistance after 2 years and requires work in return for other 
benefits.
  Because of forward-looking programs like these, the States have 
earned the reputation for being laboratories for innovation. Passage of 
the bill we have under consideration today will encourage the States to 
achieve reform quickly and give them the freedom to continue their 
experimentation. It is time for the Federal Government to step aside 
and let the States run with the ball. Mr. President, the American 
people are entitled to know that we mean business here today. The 
Republican welfare reform bill we are debating will:
  End welfare as a way of life by limiting the amount and time of 
assistance that can be made available.
  It will require able-bodied recipients to work, not enrolled in an 
endless series of job training programs, but begin to work, showing up 
every day like the rest of us do, no later than 2 years after the 
assistance begins.
  Reinforce families and cultivate personal responsibility. States will 
be able to deny cash payments to teenage mothers but instead require 
single teens to stay in school and live with adult supervision, 
preferably their parents or grandparents. Applicants for benefits will 
be required to cooperate in establishing the paternity of their 
children. Deadbeat parents will be confronted with the painful 
consequences of their irresponsibility.
  That is how our bill will affect welfare beneficiaries. But it has 
other ramifications as well. No State will lose its present Federal 
allotment, and growth States will have an increase each year to help 
with growing needs. I am going to talk about this later in the debate 
when there will be an amendment on allocation of Federal dollars. I 
have worked very hard on a formula that I think is fair, fair to the 
States that are not growing, fair to the States that are growing, and 
fair to the States that get more in the beginning and fair to the 
States that get more in the end. It is a good formula. It takes into 
account each specific State's unique problems.
  The Federal welfare bureaucracy will be reduced by 30 percent. 
Federal welfare spending will drop by more than $65 billion below 
current projected levels over the next 7 years. We must not lose sight 
of the goalpost. We are actually going to reduce the cost of welfare in 
this country for the first time in a long, long time.
  This bill will empower the States as never before. What is more, 
moving the responsibility for these programs to the States will give 
taxpayers more direct say in the targeting of welfare assistance.
  Last, and perhaps most important, Mr. President, I, like most 
Americans, believe that no one should have an unrestricted right to 
live off the toil of others. The crucial element in this welfare 
legislation is its work provisions. Under this bill, work means work as 
most Americans understand it. It means participants will have to go to 
work every day and, yes, maybe do things they do not particularly like 
to do. We have all had that experience in life.
  The decisions of welfare beneficiaries, like ours, will have 
consequences. A welfare recipient whose assistance is reduced for 
failing to work will no longer be able to turn around and get a handout 
from another source in the form of food stamps or housing assistance 
increases. States will be able to require welfare applicants to look 
for a job before they ever get a welfare check. That will be their 
option.
  This bill requires 25 percent of each State's welfare caseload to be 
working by 1996 and 50 percent to be working by the year 2000. The 
States can exceed these requirements if they choose, and we hope they 
will. The bill imposes a 5-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits.
  Mr. President, when we have enacted this legislation, we will be able 
to look the American people in the eye and tell them that we have made 
a difference, that we are trying to make things better for both 
constituencies: The taxpayers who are footing the bill and the welfare 
recipients who we want to give a hand up to. We want the welfare 
beneficiaries to have the dignity that comes with making a 
contribution, with giving an honest day's labor for the money they 
receive. They will be better off and their children will be better off 
if we can make individual responsibility a part of this country once 
again.
  If everyone would work together on a bipartisan basis, we can have a 
bipartisan victory, a victory for the recipients who will know the 
pride of earning a living, paying their own way in society, and a 
victory for the taxpayers who are working people who are trying to meet 
their own family responsibilities. 

[[Page S 11755]]

  Mr. President, that is what this bill is all about. I hope that at 
the end of this week, we will be able to go back home and tell the 
American people that we have made a giant step forward for both the 
recipients of welfare and the taxpayers who have carried a heavy load 
and know it has not worked.
  Thank you, Mr. President, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased--very pleased---that we are 
finally debating a very important issue: The issue of welfare reform. I 
am happy for two reasons.
  No. 1, I think if there is any issue I heard over a long, long period 
of time the constituents have asked us to do something about, it is the 
issue of welfare reform, and also from the standpoint of those who are 
on welfare, to give them a better opportunity and a better environment 
to move from welfare to work and to move from Government dependency to 
being independent.
  We all know that the President needs credit for highlighting this 
issue. I suppose maybe every President has had welfare reform to some 
extent in his platform. But this President in 1992 made it a very 
important issue, because he said, ``We are going to end welfare as we 
know it.'' Probably it is his ability to use words, to use them well 
that brought attention to this issue that maybe other Presidents before 
were intending to bring as an issue and could not. There was also the 
necessity of a Democratic President to highlight it, because you 
remember in that 1992 campaign, he was going to run as a new Democrat, 
not the typical tax-and-spend Democrat. We were going to have a whole 
new Democratic Party approach to Government.
  So the President was elected, and I suppose the American people found 
out he was not a new Democrat, more the typical type of Democrat. Maybe 
that is why it took another election in 1994 to show the President's 
inaction and to question whether or not he was really serious about 
dramatic change of welfare.
  The people demonstrated in 1994 that they wanted change, and they 
have not seen it from the Democratic President and the Democratic 
Congress on the issue of welfare reform.
  So the American people have now placed their confidence in our party 
and given us an opportunity, as well as a responsibility, to change the 
system, to end welfare as we know it, as the President said he wanted 
to change it.
  So we have taken the people's challenge expressed in the last 
election, and we Republicans bring this bill to the floor.
  As our good friend, Senator Moynihan, discussed this morning, in 
1988, we passed welfare reform with 96 votes, one person opposing.
  Unfortunately, I believe that it failed our hopes and expectations. I 
know there are a lot of people in this body who would disagree with 
that point, and I would be happy to speak at great lengths as to why I 
feel it has not met our hopes and expectations. In doing that, I do not 
in any way express resentment toward those who feel it has been very 
successful. It is probably a difference of opinion of what was supposed 
to be accomplished by that bill.
  But one of the ways I measure it is that we have more people on 
welfare today than we did then. I do feel that one positive thing that 
did come out of the 1988 Family Support Act was the movement toward 
more experimentation at the State level, which I think the Republican 
bill today is a fulfillment of the ultimate goal that has been 
expressed here for a decade.
  Under the 1988 bill, the States took the initiative to try new ideas 
in welfare reform. It was 20 years since the States had that sort of an 
encouragement, or if they had the encouragement, a willingness to do 
it. In spite of the need to come, as they must, hat in hand on bended 
knee, for permission from the Federal Government, the States still 
tried new ideas. That spirited example of the States is what spurred 
some of us toward giving States maximum flexibility in addressing the 
crisis in our current welfare system, as we do through the Dole-
Packwood legislation.
  Last year, Senator Kohl of Wisconsin and I introduced a bill to give 
States a block grant for the AFDC JOBS Program and for the AFDC Food 
Stamp program. We introduced that bill back then because we believed 
the States had shown the initiative to reform the current welfare 
system. Leaders in States like Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and some 
might be surprised that Eastern seaboard States like New Jersey and 
Massachusetts, where generally you think there is a more liberal 
political philosophy, all of these States were coming up with the best 
ideas to change the system and to move people from welfare to work. I 
think the State of Iowa has demonstrated the great benefits of a system 
designed with the citizens in mind.
  Two years ago, my State legislature proposed a bill to totally revamp 
the welfare system. State leaders, after it was passed, came to the 
Federal level, HHS, to receive the waiver necessary to implement their 
ideas. Yes, the State of Iowa wanted to very dramatically reform 
welfare, move people from welfare to work, and save the taxpayers 
money.
  They could not do that on their own. They could only do that within 
the Federal law, and then they had to come, as I said, on bended knee 
to the officials at HHS to get permission to do what I think everybody 
recognizes is working so very well, not only in the State of Iowa, but 
in several other States.
  To the President's credit, he has granted these waivers more 
expeditiously in late months than in early months, and he has granted 
waivers to several States--I do not know whether every State, but I 
think well over 20 States have requested waivers.
  But why, when dealing with a subject like welfare reform, should 
States that want to move people from welfare to work and, hopefully, in 
the process, save the taxpayers money, have to get the permission of 
some lowly bureaucrat at HHS? We even had to make some modifications to 
satisfy the Federal bureaucracy. It took several months to get the 
waiver approved. But my State of Iowa began the implementation of its 
program in October 1993. In the last 2 years, the number of AFDC-
employed recipients has increased from 18 percent of all welfare 
recipients to 34 percent--I believe now the highest of any of the 
States--as a percentage of welfare recipients who are working.
  I think this dramatic increase shows the ingenuity of people at the 
State level. Specifically, in my State--but not to any greater degree 
than other States--you hear about them trying to do these things, to 
move people from welfare to work. I think it also shows the importance, 
though, of providing much greater flexibility for State leaders, so 
more of this reform of welfare can be accomplished where people seem to 
be willing to accomplish it. Because, you see, we passed legislation in 
1988, but here it is, 7 years later, and we are just now talking about 
welfare reform. In the meantime, there are 3.2 million people on 
welfare.
  It was the creative approach of State leaders like Governor Branstad 
and Director of Human Services Chuck Palmer that allowed for such a 
dramatic increase in the number of people working. It was not here in 
Washington. We did not get any encouragement out of Washington. It was 
almost like fighting the bureaucracy to do this very modest reform. 
They had to negotiate changes in our claim to get the permission to do 
that.
  Now, that is micromangement from the Federal level. It is the type of 
micromangement that this Republican bill will eliminate, so that the 
people of our 50 States, through their own State legislatures, can 
prescribe their own welfare system if they want to meet their own 
unique ways and needs, moving people from welfare to work, moving 
people from dependency to independence.
  I think it is impossible, Mr. President, with a country that is 
geographically as vast as our country, a population that is so 
heterogeneous, for us to pour one mold in Washington, DC, and say you 
have to take care of your welfare people in New York City the same way 
you do in Des Moines, IA. No, because of the differences of our people, 
because of the geographical vastness of it, I think it dictates that we 
not try to do this from Washington, DC, not only from the standpoint of 
saving the taxpayers' money, but also 

[[Page S 11756]]
from the point of building on the ingenuity of our local people, closer 
to the grassroots.
  So the whole idea behind the proposal that I spoke about just 
recently of Senator Kohl and mine, which we introduced last year, and 
also, I think, the bill before us--although, quite frankly, the bill 
goes much further than anything that was anticipated by any political 
party in either House a year ago--that says something, that the people 
at the grassroots are making changes faster than we are willing to make 
them.
  The bill before us, as well as the one Senator Kohl and I introduced 
last year, is to block grant these programs to the States so that the 
States can change the system in ways that fit the culture of that 
individual State.
  In the leadership bill, we remove the need for permission from the 
Feds before States can experiment to help the people of their State.
  It is amazing to me when I hear that if we give authority back to the 
States that children will be left starving in the streets. Somehow, 
many have brought into this debate the idea that we, at the Federal 
level, know best and that we are the only ones who can fix a social 
problem.
  Frankly, I think it is very arrogant to assume that only Federal 
leaders are compassionate toward the needs of those less fortunate in 
our society. It is a way of saying that we in the Congress have more 
compassion toward the needs of the people than our State legislators 
do. I say that for each of our 50 State legislators that I do not think 
that that is an accurate assumption.
  Clearly, it is not the basis for this legislation, because this 
legislation gives so much flexibility. If there is going to be 
compassion, and there will be, it will be demonstrated at the State 
legislatures. I can say that there is compassion--probably more so--in 
the State plan of the State of Iowa than anything we have had on the 
books for the last 40 years in Iowa.
  Clearly, as I have pointed out, States have already demonstrated 
their ability to creatively manage welfare programs. Unfortunately, in 
40 years of Federal control, all we have seen is the ongoing 
destruction of the historic and traditional American family under the 
programs that we have had at the Federal level.
  If we as Republicans and Democrats agree on anything, it is that the 
current system must be changed. It must be changed dramatically.
  Now, in this body of 100 people, 46 Democrats and 54 Republicans, 
there still may be a legitimate debate about whether the welfare state 
is worthy of our time and consideration and an instrument for 
delivering public policy. There is no disagreement that the welfare 
system within the welfare state is broken and needs to be fixed.
  The statement of the President of the United States in both State of 
the Union Messages and in his own campaign rhetoric as a Democratic 
leader demonstrates that better than anything a Republican can 
demonstrate.
  The way, then, to make the necessary change is to give the authority 
back to the ones who have been coming up with the most innovative ideas 
in recent years, the ones who have demonstrated that they are worthy of 
our trust--the people at the State and local level. I believe that 
States will live up to that trust. They will meet the needs of the less 
fortunate in ways that are compassionate and as caring as anything we 
can do, and yet require and enable people toward independence.
  This is the American way. It says that we, as a society, now more so 
under the State legislatures than under the Federal Congress, if you 
have a need, we are going to extend a helping hand if you need it. We 
will help you over a period of trial and tribulation in your life. We 
are not going to help you forever if you have the capability of helping 
yourself.
  We hope that when you move from welfare to work, when you have been 
helped over the hump, that you then will be in a position to give back 
to the community by helping others as they have helped you.
  I think the leadership bill meets three of four chief goals that I 
want to accomplish in legislation: To provide for a system that meets 
the short-terms needs of low-income members as they prepare for 
independence; next, to provide for much greater State flexibility; 
next, to prevent the incidence of out-of-wedlock births; finally, to 
save the taxpayers some of their hard-earned money.
  The leadership bill provides for a block grant for the AFDC Program 
to the States so they can meet the needs of low-income Americans in the 
most community-oriented, cost-efficient manner. That is good. It also 
gives the States greater flexibility in designing their programs to 
meet the needs of their individual citizens. It also saves the 
taxpayers some of their hard-earned money.
  The one goal that I had that still needs some work is the issue of 
reducing out-of-wedlock births. The House bill set a clear goal for the 
States of reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births. In my judgment, 
however, the House bill goes too far in telling the States how they had 
to reach this goal.
  I do not support exchanging liberal prescriptiveness for conservative 
prescriptiveness. It is just as wrong to have conservative 
micromanagement in the future as we have had 40 years of liberal 
micromanagement of welfare programs.
  The whole idea behind the leadership bill is to set clear goals for 
the States and to give the States the flexibility to reach the goals in 
ways that work best for those States. I support that approach in 
getting more people to work. I also support the approach of reducing 
out-of-wedlock births. I will promote efforts to strengthen this 
portion of the bill without mandating prescriptive approaches.
  Mr. President, the real difference here is not between those who want 
strings attached or do not want strings attached in this welfare block 
grant, as some of the media has wanted to concentrate on a few minor 
differences between Republicans; the real difference here is between a 
philosophy that has dominated welfare reform debate for the last 40 
years, and a new approach.
  The old approach is micromanagement from Washington, DC, versus State 
flexibility. That real difference of liberal micromanagement came from 
Federal control that came through the welfare system being an 
entitlement program. There are still a lot of people, particularly on 
the other side of the aisle--the more liberal Democrats--who do not 
want to give up that Federal control and that Federal entitlement. It 
is that side versus those who want to give control to the States.
  It is interesting to me that many Members will oppose this bill 
because they say it will hurt children. Yet they fail to admit that the 
current welfare system hurts children, as well. The research shows that 
children born into families receiving welfare are three times more 
likely to be on welfare when they reach adulthood. How, then, is the 
current system good for children? If we truly care about these 
children, we will reform the current detrimental welfare system.
  What about the children, then, who are not on welfare? We have equal 
responsibility for all children. What about them? Are we concerned 
about these children?
  With our current budget debt of almost $4.9 trillion, each man, 
woman, and child owes $18,000 toward that debt. A newborn babe right 
this minute owes $18,000. If we do not reverse the deficit crisis, our 
children will pay 80 percent of their lifetime earnings in taxes.
  What do we do about these children? Are we concerned about them? It 
is appropriate for us to be concerned for the children of low-income 
members. Frankly, I think we should be concerned for all the children 
of America. That means that we have to reduce the deficit while we 
change the welfare system to free those currently trapped in 
governmental dependence.
  If we take steps to move people from welfare to work, if we give more 
flexibility to the States, and if we reduce illegitimacy, we will, in 
the long run, save the taxpayers money. This will be the natural result 
of positive changes to the current system.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the distinguished leader is on the 
floor. I know he wants to speak. I will not delay him but 90 seconds, 
perhaps, to thank the Senator from Iowa for his remarks about the 
energetic new program that has been developed in Iowa, 

[[Page S 11757]]
which was done in the context and under the rules of the Family Support 
Act. It is exactly what we looked for. Federal money is involved. They 
had to get a waiver. It took a few months. They got it. What more, I do 
not know, could be asked of a level of government that is participating 
in the financing.
  I wish we did not have to have this rhetoric of liberal 
micromanaging. The AFDC Program has been in place for 55 years. During 
those 55 years, we have had a Democratic Presidency for 27; a 
Republican Presidency for 28. It is about even.
  The Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program--the programs are 
set by the States, not by the Federal Government. You can have a large 
and generous program, you can have no program. Wisconsin, at the end of 
1997, will have no program. That is its right.
  Finally--I do not want to keep the majority leader waiting--a certain 
touch of reality here. We have heard all day long about this 
suffocating, all-embracing, ever-expanding Federal bureaucracy that 
runs the welfare programs. Mr. President, I have here a letter from 
Mary Jo Bane, the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families. It 
reports that in the 55 years of the AFDC Program, the monster Federal 
bureaucracy here in Washington running that program has reached 92 
persons--92 persons--the JOBS Program, 26 persons. In the regions, AFDC 
is 144 persons; JOBS, 65 persons.
  In the entire Nation there are 327 Federal employees dealing with 
what we generically call welfare; 327. That is not a staggering number. 
There are 327 elevator operators in the U.S. Capitol and we have 
automatic elevators--or some such number. It is being said of the 
majority leader's bill that he only cuts this bloated bureaucracy back 
30 percent. If you cut it back 30 percent, Heaven help us, that might 
mean 100 people. If we cut it in half, that could mean 150.
  I do not know what we need do, but we surely need not begin a serious 
debate like this with such little respect for data, which data is not 
difficult to obtain.
  I have also heard at some length this morning about how little we 
know about so much of this problem. The Senator from Washington made 
that point with great clarity, I thought. But we do know how many 
people are working on AFDC in Washington and the Department of Health 
and Human Services. The number is 92. They are dealing with 15 million 
people. I leave it there.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter from the 
Honorable Mary Jo Bane be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

         Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for 
           Children and Families,
                                   Washington, DC, August 7, 1995.
     Hon. Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Moynihan: As you requested, the following 
     table shows the number of staff, expressed as full-time 
     equivalents (FTEs), who work with the AFDC and JOBS programs 
     in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     Central                            
             Program                  Office      Regions       Total   
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFDC.............................           92          144          236
JOBS.............................           26           65           91
                                  ======================================
      Total......................          118          209          327
------------------------------------------------------------------------

       This table includes employees in the Office of Family 
     Assistance here in Washington, D.C. and in the ten Regional 
     Offices.
       Thank you for your attention. If you need additional 
     information, please let me know.
           Sincerely,

                                                 Mary Jo Bane,

                                           Assistant Secretary for
                                            Children and Families.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The majority leader is present. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I know there are a number of people who 
desire to speak. I will not take but a few moments.
  I had a chance to speak briefly on Friday, and I have listened to 
both Senators Moynihan and Packwood and others today. It is my hope 
that in the end we will end up with welfare reform, or whatever we want 
to call it. We call ours--the word ``work" is in ours--Work Opportunity 
Act of 1995. On the other side, the Democratic bill, the first word is 
``work.'' So that is where the emphasis is. That is where 62 percent of 
the American people say they have the deepest interest--they want to 
find work for the people.
  I felt the same way back in 1988. I offered, with Senator Armstrong, 
at the time a workfare amendment. It was the first time we had one. 
There was an effort to table the amendment. The vote was 49 to 41. It 
failed, and the first workfare amendment was adopted in 1988. It also 
dealt with participation rates.
  Some people opposed work, and it has not worked that well since, I 
might add. But at least there was an effort made. It turned out to be 
bipartisan effort after the initial skirmish. Now everybody is focused 
on work 8 years later. Maybe we should have been focused on it before. 
I offered, along with Senator Long, in 1979, a block grant on AFDC--in 
1979.
  So, some of us have had these ideas for a long time. But I hope in 
the end we have a bill that will have enough support to get out of the 
Chamber and, hopefully, support on both sides of the aisle. We have had 
bipartisan support. The vote was 96 to 2?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Ninety-six to one.
  Mr. DOLE. It was 96 to 1, with three absent.
  This is, really, the first day of debate. I have listened to most of 
it carefully. I think there is probably enough debate to last for 
another 2 or 3 hours, and I hope we can continue the debate. But before 
that, I do want to modify my amendment.
  I send the modification to the desk. I do not need consent to do 
this, it is simply a modification. I will explain what the modification 
does.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has a right to modify his 
amendment. It is so modified.
  The modification of the amendment (No. 2280) is as follows:

       On page 32, line 19, strike ``and''.
       On page 33, line 3, strike the end period, and insert ``; 
     and''.
       On page 33, between lines 3 and 4, insert the following:
       ``(F) vocational educational training (not to exceed 12 
     months with respect to any individual).
       On page 33, strike lines 9 through 10, and insert the 
     following:
       ``(1) reduce the amount of assistance otherwise payable to 
     the family pro rata (or more, at the option of the State) 
     with respect to any period during a month in which the adult 
     so refuses; or''.

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me explain what the modification does. 
It modifies the bill to include the House provision regarding sanctions 
on those who refuse to work. While our amendment does require the 
States to sanction, it leaves it up to the States as to the actual 
reduction, and some suggest this leaves in doubt our commitment to 
work. There is not any doubt about our commitment to work. I have had 
one since 1988. But to clarify it, we say at a minimum, the States must 
reduce the benefits by at least the amount not worked.
  We have also heard from a number of Governors with reference to the 
second modification, and I talked this morning with Gov. Mike Leavitt, 
of Utah, who says we were shortsighted in this in excluding vocational 
education in the list of those activities permitted under our 
definition of work. That concern has been expressed by a number of my 
colleagues.
  Our view was, some people get in these vocational education programs 
and they never do work. They are in it for a year, 2 years, 3 years. So 
we tried to strike a balance because of the interest of many of the 
Governors and many of our colleagues, by permitting vocational 
education for up to 1 year. We do not expect it to be a career. But I 
do believe that some of the Governors believe they have very good 
vocational education programs in place and they would like to keep 
them.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. That makes sense.
  Mr. DOLE. It made sense to me, so we have made that change.
  I heard my friend from Texas refer to this bill as ``the Dole bill.'' 
This is the leadership bill. This is a bill sponsored by every 
Republican Member of the leadership and 28 other Republicans, and we 
hope to have more. We hope to have 54, and we hope to have some 
Democrats.
  And I believe there is some opportunity here because I am getting hit 
by 

[[Page S 11758]]
the White House on the one side and my friend from Texas on the other. 
The White House says that ``the Dole bill,'' which is the leadership 
bill, is unacceptable. And that is pretty much what the Senator from 
Texas, Senator Gramm, said: It is unacceptable; only his is acceptable, 
which I have not seen.
  So maybe if that is the case, there is some room for adjustment here.
  I read here from a press release from conservative Governor Branstad 
of Iowa who said that conservative micromanagement is just as bad as 
liberal micromanagement. So the Governors are concerned, and we have 30 
Republican Governors. We are very fortunate to have 30 Republican 
Governors. I am very proud of it. They represent States that have 70 
percent of the population in those States, 70 percent. Every Governor 
supports the leadership effort, the Republican leadership effort. Every 
State, every Governor, including the Governor of Texas, including the 
Governor of New Hampshire, including the Governor Iowa, including the 
Governor of Arizona, to name a few early primary States.
  So this is an important matter that we are debating. I hope we can 
resolve it this week. This is not about Presidential politics. It is 
about welfare, about work, about opportunity, and about changing a 
failed system. And I want to mention what this debate is not about.
  I do not think this debate is about which party cares the most for 
those in need. It is not about which party has the biggest heart, 
because every Senator knows there are some Americans who need help.
  I do not care what bill we pass. Some Americans are going to need 
help, and they ought to have it. Every Member knows, and you probably 
know of someone in your hometown or neighborhood right here, who is 
struggling every day to keep their head above water. Some of us know it 
because we have watched our parents and our grandparents and others go 
through it--to do everything they possibly could to make ends meet. And 
I will bet half of the Members--maybe not half--I will bet a fourth of 
the Members in this body are in that category; not now, but when they 
were growing up.
  So it is not about which party has the most compassion. It is not 
about which party wants to do the most to hurt someone who finds 
themselves in a condition where they have to have help. It is not about 
that either.
  In my view, I think we are all pretty much in agreement around here 
that the system has failed.
  I remember being in North Carolina with the Senator from North 
Carolina--now a Senator, but he then was a candidate--that was his 
total, No. 1 issue in his campaign: welfare reform. And he has not 
changed his commitment. He has not changed it, and it should not 
change. And I know other of my colleagues who have done the same.
  We all know the system has failed. It has failed American taxpayers, 
and it has failed the Americans who we tried to serve. I think we made 
every good effort, and maybe we have not given the 1988 bill enough 
time to work. But there are a lot of people out there with no hope. 
That is what this debate is all about: How do we change the system? It 
is not how many people we dump on the street and how many children we 
left to go to bed hungry, or how much more we spend.
  I carry around in my pocket a copy of the 10th amendment. It is only 
28 words in length. It simply says:

       The powers not delegated to the United States by the 
     Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
     reserved to States respectively, or to the people.

  That is what this debate is all about, as far as I am concerned--
giving power back to the Governors and to the State legislatures, 
Democrats or Republicans, in either case--on the theory that they are 
closer to the people.
  There are some who think we can fix the system by just tinkering 
around the edges here and apply a Band-Aid here and a Band-Aid there. 
It is not going to work. And I think that is a prescription offered, 
frankly, by the distinguished Democratic leader, Senator Daschle. The 
American people want to go forward, far beyond fine tuning.
  So I am proud to be joined by at least 32 of my colleagues, and I 
hope more, in the process, and by every one of our Republican Governors 
in supporting, along with Senator Packwood, S. 1120.
  We have been criticized because we could not get a tough bill in the 
Finance Committee. You have to count votes when you have tough bills 
around here. I have learned from experience. The bottom line is, how 
many votes do you have? It is not how many speeches do you make or how 
many times you criticize somebody else; it is, how many votes do you 
have?
  This is a legislative body. I cannot stand up and say, ``This is 
going to pass.''
  I happen to believe that S. 1120 will change the very principles and 
values on which the system is based. It is going to change that 
attitude that ``Washington knows best.''
  So what we are trying to do in our approach--certainly it can be 
changed, it can be improved, it can be strengthened by what the words 
may be, and some people may interpret those words differently and have 
a different idea about what improvement or strengthening or whatever 
might be. But we are going to combine AFDC, child programs under AFDC, 
and job training programs under AFDC into one block grant, and the 
States are free to spend the money as they see fit.
  I, for one, advocate food stamps as a block grant. I said that 
publicly in the Senate Agriculture Committee. We did not have the 
votes. I think it is a great idea. It would also go a long way in 
solving some of our formula problems in this bill, and there will be 
some debate on it. It may not have the votes, but we will find out.
  As a result of the work of the Senate Labor Committee and my 
colleague, Senator Kassebaum, we will consolidate and put into another 
single program 88 job training and training-related educational 
programs, including the Job Training Partnership Act and the Carl 
Perkins Vocational Training and Education Program.
  For some reason, returning power to the States makes President 
Clinton nervous. And he has been a Governor. Maybe he learned from 
other Governors who are nervous because they do not believe the 
Governors or the States can handle it. I hope that is not the case. But 
he said giving our States control will incite a ``race to the bottom.'' 
I do not know which States he has in mind. I hope not Kansas or 
Missouri or any other State represented here.
  I have asked the President in Burlington, VT, and would question him 
today, which States--rhetorically, because he was not there at the 
time--which States will participate in such a race? Not my State, not 
New York State, not Arkansas.
  And I want to thank the Senator from Arkansas, Senator Bumpers. He 
voted for Work Fair in 1988, one of a number of Democrats who joined 
us.
  Which Governor does he think does not care about the people in need? 
I do not know of any, Democrat or Republican.
  And which State legislatures cannot be trusted with the welfare of 
their people? I do not know of any. Maybe there are some out there. 
Maybe they would take this money and spend it for bridges and highways. 
That is not going to happen. It cannot happen.
  So I would also say that in our bill, the leadership bill, the Work 
Opportunity Act of 1995, that we want to reduce the very disturbing 
number of children born out of wedlock just as much as everybody else, 
and there are no magic solutions out there that this Senator knows 
about. We do not believe the best way is to do it through more Federal 
control.
  Our bill recognizes that States are better able than the Federal 
Government to determine what programs will best reduce illegitimacy.
  S. 1120 recognizes the importance of the family. It recognizes that 
families that stay together are far less likely to be on welfare than 
those that do not.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator be willing to yield?
  Mr. DOLE. I want to finish my statement. This is the first statement 
I have made except a brief introductory statement.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. DOLE. But I would ask unanimous consent that we continue debate 
on the bill without amendments until 5:30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

[[Page S 11759]]

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, it takes the commonsense approach of 
requiring that single teenaged parents receiving welfare must stay in 
school and live under adult supervision.
 I know this is a breaking point with some of my colleagues on this 
side. I am not certain about that side.

  In S. 1120, we give the States authority to deny benefits to teenage 
mothers and to place family caps. Again, I believe the Governors can 
make that choice. Many will make that choice. Others, for reasons that 
they feel are justified, and maybe better than ours, just want to do it 
at the Federal level. They want to mandate that you have to do it. We 
want it so the Governors can do it without asking Federal approval. 
Give them a little flexibility, give them a little freedom.
  S. 1120 also requires that welfare applicants cooperate with 
paternity establishment of their children and requires the States to 
achieve a 90 percent success rate. Now, if some mother out there 
identifies the father and the search is begun, they cannot find the 
father, should we go so far as to say she cannot have any benefits even 
though she cooperated? I do not think so. Others would deny benefits 
until the father is apparently located.
  One of the reasons the present system has failed is it provides no 
time limit for receiving welfare. And it offers in effect motivation 
for recipients to leave the welfare rolls for a payroll. We have long 
fought to put work back in. As I said, in 1988, with the former Senator 
from Colorado, Bill Armstrong, we made a number of modifications to the 
Family Security Act which many of my colleagues and then the chairman, 
Senator Moynihan, accepted because he was just as genuinely sincere as 
we were in trying to make changes.
  So there was a feeling back then by the American people and by the 
Members of Congress in both parties that work was important.
  We also introduced at that time what we now know as participation 
standards that required States to make certain a percentage of their 
population was actually engaged in work.
  S. 1120 goes further. With no exceptions, every adult recipient must 
start working and stay working. In our bill, work means work--no year-
long job searches, no graduate degrees, no moving from one training 
program to another. And as I said, in the modification I just made, you 
cannot stay in vocational education forever either. There is a 1-year 
limit. I assume some Governors would find this to work because that 
would satisfy their concerns.
  And then there is the question about whether we have strong work 
requirements in S. 1120. The bottom line is that S. 1120 contains the 
same provisions that are in the House bill with respect to the number 
of hours that must be worked, and it actually contains tougher 
participation requirements because States must sanction beneficiaries 
who refuse to work. And we have made a modification in that area, too. 
But I would just say that the general thrust is hopefully we can work 
out any differences on this side. As I have said, let us have a jump 
ball. We will throw it up in the air, and whoever gets the tip wins, 
and we are all still in the game. We do not say, well, if I lost, I am 
out of the game. Some will win and some will fail.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office--and I think Senator 
Packwood mentioned this--we will save in S. 1120 over the next 7 
years--and these are estimates, CBO estimates which could be off either 
way--$70 billion. That is a lot of money. The House saves--they do not 
have a 7-year figure; they have a 5-year figure--$65 billion. So I 
would assume they save much more in 7 years, at least according to 
assumptions.
  The point I wish to make today is this is the first day of the real 
debate. I would like to complete action on this bill this week. I do 
not see why we cannot. We will only have one or two distractions. We 
are still trying to work out an agreement on the DOD authorization 
bill. I think as we speak Senators are meeting to see if they can 
modify a couple of things that might permit us to complete action on 
that. If not, that will not be taken up.
  But we will have 5 long days here, and maybe--I said Saturday we 
would not have a Saturday session, but if it meant completing action on 
this bill Saturday, obviously that would be different. I am not trying 
to threaten anybody. I say we ought to finish this before we leave. I 
am not saying if we just stall it until Friday we are out of here. That 
is not what I am saying. We ought to finish it before we leave, and 
that can be interpreted differently by different Members.
  I hope we do not become overly partisan in the debate. As I said at 
the outset, it is not about compassion. It is not about generosity. It 
is about a system for some reason that is not working, despite all the 
good efforts by many and some in this Chamber now. I think it is our 
duty to fix it.
  It is our duty to fix it. We ought to get it fixed this week. We 
ought to get it fixed before we leave here for what may be left of the 
August recess, so we will be in a position to go to conference with the 
House.
  I must say, in the White House release that I referred to earlier, 
one thing that was encouraging, Mr. McCurry, the White House spokesman, 
made it very clear that they were not threatening a veto. ``A long way 
from a veto'' and ``wants to cooperate with Capitol Hill.'' Their 
biggest objection is that ``It does not require States to offer child 
care opportunities for welfare recipients going to work.''
  That is the big objection the White House has apparently at least 
today with the so-called leadership bill, the Work Opportunity Act of 
1995. And I might say there are some on this side who have the same 
concern.
  That is what it is all about. How do you get enough people together 
with different views to pass it? You cannot pass it with 23 votes. You 
cannot pass it with 33 votes. You cannot pass it with 43 votes. We 
might have to have 60 votes, though I am told, at least by inference, 
there will be no effort to filibuster or cloture will not be necessary 
on this bill, because I believe everybody wants us to come up with some 
change.
  If that is the case, it is out there somewhere. There are 51 or 61 or 
71 votes out there somewhere. And that is what this debate is all 
about. It is not about the toughest. It is not about the easiest. It is 
about substantial, meaningful change because the system has failed.
  I hope as we continue the debate we will have a coming together of 
ideas. The leadership does not suggest S. 1120 is perfect. I might say 
there are one or two provisions that divide the people on this side of 
the aisle like cash payments to teenage mothers. That is opposed by the 
Catholic bishops and by the Catholic Charities and the National Right 
to Life Organization but supported by the Christian Coalition, and you 
have the same lineup on family caps; also opposed by the 30 Republican 
Governors.
  So it is not a question of--I mean I assume those groups are viewed 
as conservative groups. In this particular instance, they do not agree 
with one another, just as we do not agree with one another on some of 
these provisions. Hopefully we can work those out, plus others that are 
of particular concern to my friends like Senator Faircloth and others 
on this side of the aisle.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a brief question?
  Mr. DOLE. Speech or a question?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Question.
  Mr. DOLE. Sure.
  Mr. KENNEDY. We will have the chance to debate the different features 
of the Senator's proposal, but I wanted to have the Senator's response 
to one of the primary areas of concern, and that is in the area of day 
care for children. As the Senator is familiar, the Finance Committee 
put approximately $1 billion of the child care program, day care 
program into the AFDC, and the budget has reduced the approximately $1 
billion in the child care program, made 30 percent of it to be 
available to the States. So that means that there is only about a third 
of the total funding for the child care program.
  Today there are 400,000 children under AFDC that receive any kind of 
child care. We have 10 million children 

[[Page S 11760]]
and 4 million adults under AFDC. If half of the adults are going to 
have to go to work and their children are going to have to go to day 
care, it means there will be 4 million more slots that are going to be 
necessary for day care programs, as there will be 2 million of the AFDC 
parents that will go to work.
  I am just wondering and asking the Senator where the funding is under 
the Dole proposal for the child care proposal, whether he is willing to 
try to find ways--perhaps it is already there. The Senator might be 
able to respond to the question or at least try to designate ways that 
issue could be addressed.
  Mr. DOLE. Let me just respond this way to the Senator from 
Massachusetts. I said just a few moments ago--I do not think the 
Senator was on the floor--that was an area of concern today raised by 
the White House, the same general area. As I said, it is a concern 
raised by a number of my colleagues on this side of the aisle.
  We had our first meeting on Friday. And Senator Kassebaum, the 
chairman of the committee, who did a lot of work in that area, was 
present. So I can say to the Senator in all candor, it is something 
that we are looking at. We know there is a problem, and we are looking 
at it because under the present provision of S. 1120, it would be block 
granted to the States. But there is a great deal of concern expressed. 
I can only say that we are going to sit down, I think, again either 
tonight or tomorrow morning, to try to address that on this side.
  We will be happy to discuss it with the Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I just say that I appreciate that, 
because as the Senator has pointed out, the initial block grant program 
was worked out on a bipartisan basis with Senator Dodd, Senator Hatch, 
Senator Kassebaum, and others, and in the Finance Committee, Senator 
Moynihan and others. The Republicans worked out the $1 billion program. 
The concern that many of us had is that the $1 billion program, which 
was used for the 400,000 day care slots for children, has gone into the 
AFDC. That figure, of course, is capped at the 1994 level.
  The other block grant program, a third of that is no longer going to 
be necessarily designated for child care, which only leaves about $600 
million. That is to go not to welfare parents, but to low-income 
working families. So this is an area of considerable concern.
  We will look forward to try to work with the majority leader because 
it is an area of great concern.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mr. DOLE. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry.
  I thought we were going to alternate one side to the other side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is not the Chair's understanding.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is no order for that.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. There is no order, but that has been our agreeable 
practice throughout the day. There was an informal agreement, and the 
chairman of the Finance Committee would so attest.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there any advice from the chairman of the 
Finance Committee?
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I was not informed of the rule.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. The Chair is correct. There is no rule.
  Senator Moynihan and I agreed we would try to go back and forth. I 
must say, in fairness, we have had four or five speakers on our side. 
The Democrats had none on theirs. Just to the extent we are on the 
floor, we are going back and forth on the floor informally. If no one 
is on the floor, we will recognize who is there to speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I was not aware.
  The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the President and the chairman of the committee 
and the ranking member.
  Mr. President, it is about time, at long last we are debating welfare 
reform on the floor of the U.S. Senate. This is a debate welcomed by 
this Senator, and I know by others on this side of the aisle and on the 
other side of the aisle. It has been a long time coming.
  Reform of the welfare system is a serious issue. It is my hope that 
we will have a serious, thorough, and thoughtful debate, a debate that 
rises above partisanship, a debate that says let us not make politics 
as usual, business as usual, especially with this issue. The American 
people want us to work together to make welfare work for America.
  Of course, there is disagreement about how to achieve that goal. But 
there is also a lot of common ground. All of us agree that today's 
system is broken. It discourages work, it rewards dependence, it 
cripples opportunity, and it wastes tax dollars. I have said many 
times, Mr. President, that the present welfare system is unfair. It is 
unfair to the people who are on it and it is unfair to the taxpayers.
  But for too long, that is just about as far as it has gotten. 
Politics as usual has crowded out good ideas and practical solutions. 
And what has been the result?
  Families on welfare have been stuck in the dependence trap and 
taxpayers have been stuck with the bill. So how do we escape it? Well, 
the key to real reform is to start with the basic questions--not what 
makes the best sound bite, not what pushes the most hot buttons, but 
what makes common sense and what works.
  My work on welfare reform over the last several years has led me to 
five fundamental conclusions about how to not just reform welfare, but 
how to once and for all say really farewell to welfare as we know it. 
And I would like to go through those five conclusions.
  Conclusion No. 1. Welfare reform must be built on a foundation of 
responsibility. We must stop looking at welfare as a Government 
giveaway program. Instead, it should be a contract demanding mutual 
responsibility between the Government and the individual receiving the 
benefits. The contract should outline the steps a recipient will take 
to become self-sufficient and a date certain by which they will be off 
of welfare. Responsibility should start on day one with continued 
benefits conditioned on compliance with the contract's requirements 
and, I might add, continued benefits conditioned on the compliance with 
the contract's requirements by both sides, by both the State and the 
recipient.
  Conclusion No. 2. The goal is self-sufficiency. We have to have a 
shift in our thinking about welfare, that somehow it is going to be 
welfare to work, or welfare to a job. I think we have to now begin 
thinking about welfare to self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is a term 
different from a job. Maybe in the past, we could have the luxury of 
training someone for a job, giving that person a job, and maybe they 
could have it for 20 or 30 or 40 years. We know right now that the 
average worker in America changes jobs, I think, seven times during his 
or her lifetime. For those at the lower income of the economic scale, 
it is probably twice that many times.
  So I believe that we have to stop thinking about just getting someone 
a job. We have to prepare people to be self-sufficient. And that 
encompasses a whole different concept than just training someone for a 
job.
  We do not want just to get families off of welfare and a job, we want 
to keep them off permanently. That means providing incentives that 
encourage work and savings, but it also means not just issuing empty 
promises about child care, but building up people's skills, assisting 
with child care, education, job training and other basic skills that 
welfare recipients need to find and keep good jobs. I mean, it could be 
everything from how to interview, how to keep a budget, how to shop, 
how to dress, language skills, how to communicate. All of these things 
need to be built into this concept of being self-sufficient.
  So the bottom line in welfare reform is not in short-term budget 
savings. But the bottom line is the number of families who are able to 
climb up that ladder of opportunity and escape for good, knowing that 
they have the necessary skills and fundamentals so that, if they do 
lose a job, they can go out in the marketplace and find another one.
  Mr. President, I also, just as an aside here, want to say that in 
Iowa--I will refer to this periodically throughout my remarks, and I 
know the majority 

[[Page S 11761]]
leader said something about hoping that we could have a good bipartisan 
program of welfare reform. That is possible. We did it in Iowa. I might 
just add as a preface to some of the other things I am going to say, we 
passed a welfare reform bill in Iowa 2 years ago. It has been in effect 
for 1\1/2\ years. It got the support of, as I have always liked to say, 
Pat Robertson conservative Republicans and Jesse Jackson liberal 
Democrats.
 Only one person in the Iowa House voted against it. It was signed into 
law by a conservative Republican, Governor Branstad. We were able to 
work in a bipartisan fashion. But the way we did it, I think, was the 
right way, rather than just throwing a bill out and having an 
ideological debate about welfare.

  Back in the 1980's, the legislature, again working in a bipartisan 
fashion in Iowa, established some pilot programs around the State to 
find out what would work. They were demonstration programs to see what 
would and would not work. This went on for a few years. As a result of 
these programs, the legislature took up the bill 2 years ago and passed 
a welfare reform bill based upon those demonstration programs. And it 
has been in existence for a year and a half, and I will talk more about 
that in a few minutes.
  Iowa's Governor, Terry Branstad, said last December, ``There has been 
much recognition that welfare reform requires an up-front investment 
with long-term results.'' Even Governor Thompson of Wisconsin echoed 
the same words when he said, ``Welfare reform requires cash investments 
up front. But that investment eventually turns into savings.''
  Conclusion No. 3 is that one size does not fit all. An inflexible 2-
year time limit on welfare benefits, as I have said before, is too 
permissive. If put in place, a 2-year maximum becomes a 2-year minimum. 
Time limits should be based on individual family circumstances, not 
some cookie-cutter approach. The plain fact is that many require far 
less than 2 years on welfare to achieve self-sufficiency. States also 
should not be strapped with a welfare Federal straitjacket. We should 
cut Federal redtape and leave the States with the option of choosing 
the policies best for them. After all, what works in Brooklyn, NY, may 
not work very well in Brooklyn, IA.
  But we also should not abandon the basic national framework that 
assures protection for children and demands responsibility from all 
recipients. Without that, we risk trading in one large failed 
dependency-inducing system for 50 smaller varieties of the same thing. 
I will repeat that. If we do not keep our basic national framework that 
assures protection for children and demands responsibility from 
recipients, if we are going to turn this back to the States, we are 
going to have 50 varieties, basically, of what we have right now.
  Conclusion No. 4. The private sector must be a full partner in fixing 
welfare, not in the end but in the beginning. Too often, we have put 
people through welfare programs, training programs, and then at the end 
we say, ``OK, go out to the private sector and get a job.'' I believe 
that what we have done in Iowa has shown that to be absolutely the 
wrong approach. The private sector must be pulled in up at the 
beginning when a person is on welfare and when they have signed the 
contract and they begin that process for self-sufficiency. There must 
be ways for the private sector to be involved right from the beginning.
  Also, instead of creating costly and inefficient Government make-work 
jobs, the focus ought to be moving people into permanent jobs in the 
private sector and not some dead-end, make-work job in the beginning.
  Mentoring programs by the private sector must be encouraged. They 
work great in Iowa. And microenterprise development--and I will have 
more to say about that in a few minutes--must be enhanced and promoted. 
Businesses should be encouraged with whatever we have to encourage them 
to do so, to get in on the ground floor of welfare reform and work with 
clients in the beginning.
  I mentioned microenterprise development. Look at the work of the 
Institute for Social and Economic Development in Iowa. It has been 
helping low-income individuals start their own businesses. While most 
small businesses fail within the first year in America, most businesses 
established with the assistance of ISED, since this program started in 
1988--and this is a program where with a very little amount of money, 
welfare recipients who have the ability and desire to establish their 
own businesses through microenterprises are given intensive training 
periods in accounting, bookkeeping, buying and selling; setting up a 
business. This lasts for about 3 months, and they are then given low-
interest loans, very low-interest loans, to help start that small 
business.
  Guess what has happened? While most small businesses fail in the 
first year, this program has had a 72 percent success rate. Think about 
that. Since 1988, for every 100 businesses started under this program, 
72 percent are still surviving today, providing former welfare clients 
with a business of their own and providing them with self-sufficiency. 
That is better than SBA can ever hope for--72 percent. And yet, under 
the bill we have in front of us--I will say more about this later--that 
funding is taken away for microenterprise development. That is one of 
the most successful things we have seen.
  I had an example here of some of the people who were involved in this 
program. Jo Sires, owner-operator of Again and Again Consignment, buys 
clothes from garage or yard sales. Some of it she gets on consignment 
and resells. She has owned and operated that business for 5 years. She 
started in June of 1990. She was laid off from Rath Packing Company due 
to plant closure. She had been on and off AFDC for 4 years. She is a 
divorced mother with three children. She started working with the 
Institute of Social and Economic Development in July 1989. She opened 
her store in 1990. Right now, she has pursued her business and has 
relocated her store after the first year to a place with twice as much 
floor space. Her sales range from $3,000 to $6,000 per month. Here is a 
person who was on welfare, AFDC, for almost 4 years. Now she is totally 
self-sufficient.
  I have a lot more cases here of people that have started their own 
small businesses and how they have gone on to operate those businesses 
with their families and become successes. We ought to encourage more of 
this and not pull the rug out from underneath them. We have a success 
rate of 72 percent, and that is something to crow about.
  Conclusion No. 5. Bipartisanship is essential. Neither political 
party has a corner on the market of good ideas. We can learn from each 
other and come together on a plan that includes the best ideas of both. 
I was proud last year to have joined with Senator Kit Bond of Missouri 
to introduce the first bipartisan welfare reform legislation last year. 
It encompassed much of what we did in Iowa and much of what Missouri 
had done also. As I said, no party has a corner on the market of good 
ideas.
  Mr. President, I have worked to develop an approach that is rooted in 
these five core principles. The centerpiece is the family investment 
agreement, which requires all families on welfare to enter into an 
individualized contract with the State. Under the plan, each family 
will sit down with a case manager and chart a course to self-
sufficiency. Basically, it means taking people who are on welfare now, 
putting them through the family investment program, having them sit 
down with a case manager and getting an assessment, a thorough 
assessment of that individual--background, capabilities, test scores, 
whether they have disabilities, what their family is like, how many 
children, do they have disabilities in the family, do they need 
transportation, and where they live.
  You need a good profile of people so that you can come up with a 
contract that individualizes the approach, as I said earlier. One of my 
conclusions is that one size does not fit all. We have proven that in 
Iowa. When you individualize a contract, when you have a case manager, 
when you do a good profile of an individual and of her or his 
situation, then you can draw up a contract that is realistic and that 
provides that person with a pathway up and out of welfare and into 
self-sufficiency.
  Flexibility is critical in welfare reform. We should be inflexible 
when it comes to one bottom line: We must demand results. 

[[Page S 11762]]

  Under the legislation that Senator Bond and I introduced, 90 percent 
of the recipients would be required to sign agreements and find work. 
This plan may sound unrealistic.
  The fact is those ideas are based on reform that has actually worked. 
Under Iowa's revolutionary bipartisan welfare reform plan, which 
adopted the family investment agreement 1\1/2\ years ago, the number of 
welfare recipients holding jobs has grown by 93 percent.
  Mr. President, here is a chart that illustrates what has happened in 
Iowa, through June 1995, starting in September 1993. Actually, I said a 
year and a half, and you might say, well, you have been on the program 
almost 2 years. Most things did not go into effect until January of 
1994. We took this as the starting point of that fiscal year and the 
beginning of the next fiscal year.
  At that time, we had 6,553 families on welfare in Iowa who were 
working. We now have 12,351. That is an increase of 93 percent. That 
has happened in Iowa. People might say, well, you have low rates of 
unemployment, and maybe the economy has gotten better. Maybe there are 
things to account for that.
  Mr. President, because we had to go to the Department of Health and 
Human Services to get a waiver for our program, they demanded we set up 
the control group. There are people in Iowa who are not under this 
program, they are operating under the old program. So we are able to 
see whether or not they have been able to do the same thing as this 
group.
  Guess what? Under the old group, looking at this chart, right in the 
beginning we had 18 percent of our families working who were on 
welfare. That is now up to 34.8 percent. In the control group, it is 
still operating under the old system. They are still down at 18 percent 
working. Under the new system, we have almost doubled it--93 percent 
increase. You cannot say it is just because the economy has gotten 
better or low unemployment, because we have the control group there 
under the old system. We are able to compare. We know under the new 
system we have almost doubled the number of people on welfare who work.
  I am proud to say that right now Iowa leads the Nation, we have a 
higher number of our people on welfare who work than any State in the 
country. Iowa leads the Nation in moving recipients from welfare to 
work. The costs to taxpayers are steadily going down and welfare 
caseloads are declining.
  Since the program began on October 1, 1993, the number of Iowa 
welfare recipients who are working and earning a paycheck, as I said, 
has almost doubled. Since more welfare recipients are working and 
earning income, the average size of the welfare grant has declined from 
$373 down to $336.
  Mr. President, here is a chart showing what has happened to our 
average grant, $373, now down to $336. Again, keep in mind, we have 
almost doubled the number of people on welfare who work and we have cut 
the average size of the grant from $373 to $336.
  Now look at what has happened to our caseload. The number of families 
on welfare has declined. Now, Mr. President, I said earlier, to echo 
Governor Branstad and even Governor Thompson, sometimes it takes 
investment up front to get long-term investments. We knew in Iowa--
Republicans and Democrats alike--that when we made the changes the 
number of people on welfare would blip up in the beginning, but we had 
confidence that because of what we had seen on some of the pilot 
programs in Iowa earlier, we knew after the initial blip up they would 
start to come down. That is exactly what has happened. This chart 
proves it.
  We started out our caseload with 36,404. Immediately, up until May of 
last year, it boomed up. Once we worked through the system, we got 
these people because of the transportation, and things like that, it 
leveled off, and since that point in time, it has dramatically come 
down, and we are down now to 34,806. This is what we have to keep in 
mind.
  Sometimes an investment up front will yield long-term investments. We 
are so concerned around here about cutting this, we want to see what 
will happen in the first year. Cut everybody down the first year. What 
will happen is it will boom up later on because people simply will not 
have the wherewithal, the training, to be self-sufficient.
  That is what we have done in Iowa. We took the long view. We said 
maybe in the first few months it may cost a little bit more. We may get 
a few more people on welfare. But we know what will happen, and what 
happens statewide is what happened in every pilot program that we had 
before that.
  So it is working. I urge my colleagues, keep in mind the long term, 
not just the short term, but the long term. We know what has happened 
in Iowa.
  Lastly, what has happened on the macro scale to the State of Iowa 
with this program? Total cash payments have declined by 20 percent from 
$13.8 million per month to $11.7 million per month. Two million a 
month, $24 million a year--that is not bad for the State of Iowa.
  Here, this chart shows it. The blue line is fiscal year 1992. The 
green line is fiscal year 1993. The yellow line is fiscal year 1994, 
total expenditures on welfare grants in Iowa. Here is what happened 
after we instituted our welfare reform program--the red line. It has 
been coming down constantly. Compared to just here in 1994, we are down 
to about $2 million a month.
  Let me sum it up. What have we done in Iowa? We doubled the number of 
people on welfare working. We cut the number of total caseloads on 
welfare. We have cut the cash grant to families. We have cut the total 
expenditures that the State of Iowa has to come up with. It is working.
  I have said many times, we in Iowa did it right. We are sort of the 
Rodney Dangerfield of welfare reform. We did it right, but ``We don't 
get no respect.'' We have done it right in Iowa. As I said, it got the 
vote of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, and they put it 
through.
  It has worked. It has worked well. Taxpayers have saved money, 
welfare recipients have gotten jobs, fewer families are on the welfare 
roll. I call that a triple play.
  I had some editorials I was going to read. Mr. President, I will have 
printed an editorial about the mentoring projects in Iowa, where we 
bring in private businesses to mentor people who are working on 
welfare, and how good a program that is. I ask unanimous consent that 
be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       Mentor Project a Good Idea

       The Iowa Invests Mentors Project aims to pair people who 
     have made it with those who want to.
       The basic idea is to help people on welfare by providing 
     guidance from those who have learned how to survive in the 
     methods and skills of job hunting and job retention.
       The program is not designed to provide a cheerleader, but 
     someone who can give practical, real-life advice.
       But there is more to the program. Participants are required 
     to sign a contract agreeing to obtain training and get jobs 
     with phased-out assistance payments.
       This is an Iowa program that grew out of a 1988 pilot 
     program, giving state jobs to former Polk County Aid to 
     Families with Dependent Children recipients.
       In 1993, the project expanded into the Family Investment 
     Program-Promise Jobs, an outgrowth of a bill passed by the 
     Iowa Legislature in response to Iowa Commission on the Status 
     of Women requests.
       This is the kind of program which critics of the welfare 
     system have been demanding for years.
       Now it has arrived. But, ironically, there has been little 
     response from the community.
       According to program managers, there are as many as 2,000 
     eligible people in the eight-county southwest Iowa area, yet 
     no more than 25 to 30 volunteers are expected by the most 
     optimistic organizers.
       We might be forgiven for suspecting that opponents of 
     welfare are not putting their time and money where their 
     mouth is.
       We are sure that in our area there are many who could give 
     substantial guidance to those seeking self-sufficiency.
       For women who have faced the humiliating need for public 
     assistance, often after being abandoned by a spouse, this 
     first step is critical toward establishing self-esteem and a 
     secure economic future.
       We think they deserve our support.
       For those unable to mentor, there will be the opportunity 
     to offer pledges to those who will be ``rocking'' in a 
     rocking chair marathon Saturday at WalMart, 3201 Manawa 
     Center Drive, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
       It is of no use to complain about state-sponsored welfare 
     and then refuse to participate in programs that provide 
     grassroot support for those among us who need our help to 
     establish themselves.

  Mr. HARKIN. A good editorial from the Cedar Rapids Gazette entitled, 
``Take Good Ideas and Run With 

[[Page S 11763]]
Them.'' I might point out this was in last year in December.

       As the reins of power in Congress are passed to new hands 
     over the next month, the incoming Republican majority should 
     not only take note of the voter unrest that made this change 
     possible, but other circumstances outside the Washington 
     beltway.
       For instance, Tom Harkin, heretofore a well-positioned 
     Democratic member of the United States Senate, and Terry 
     Branstad, the Republican poised to set a longevity record for 
     Iowa governors, find themselves on the same wavelength about 
     a traditionally dicey issue--welfare.
      Both have had good things to say about efforts in Iowa to 
     reform welfare programs. Both regard the Iowa experiment 
     as a potential model for Federal welfare overhaul.

  Anyway, it went through what happened in Iowa and concluded by 
saying:

       That's how government is supposed to work, of course. 
     Forget the partisan sideshow and concentrate on making good 
     public policy out of good ideas regardless of their origins.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this be printed in the Record, 
also.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   Take Good Ideas and Run With Them

       As the reins of power in Congress are passed to new hands 
     over the next month, the incoming Republican majority should 
     not only take note of the voter unrest that made this change 
     possible, but other circumstances outside the Washington 
     beltway.
       For instance, Tom Harkin, heretofore a well-positioned 
     Democratic member of the United States Senate, and Terry 
     Bradstad, the Republican poised to set a longevity record for 
     Iowa governors, find themselves on the same wavelength about 
     a traditionally dicey issue--welfare.
       Both have had good things to say about efforts in Iowa to 
     reform welfare programs. Both regard the Iowa experiment as a 
     potential model for federal welfare overhaul.
       Iowa has instituted a plan in which recipients of public 
     assistance must agree to gradually re-enter the work force, 
     thereby easing themselves off welfare. Some don't like this 
     imposition of deadlines, complaining that life doesn't 
     necessarily mesh with such mandates. True, but absence of 
     specific targets merely encourage the status quo.
       Other gaps probably exist, too. But though the Iowa plan 
     isn't perfect, the system it replaces has long since become 
     inefficient. And in the relatively short time the new program 
     has been in place, results have been encouraging. Greater 
     numbers of assistance recipients are able to share in their 
     own support through earnings.
       Never will society be entirely free of an obligation to 
     help the less fortunate who cannot help themselves. But 
     neither should it be burdened with supporting those who will 
     not contribute to their own well-being.
       What Iowa policymakers crafted for this state shows 
     promise, and under Harkin's guidance, could become a pattern 
     for federal welfare reform. He's losing chairmanship of a key 
     Senate committee, by virtue of being relegated to minority 
     status, but Harkin is shrewd enough about the ways of 
     Congress to know how to get a good idea considered. He and 
     Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, will reintroduce 
     legislation next year on welfare reform.
       That's how government is supposed to work, of course. 
     Forget the partisan sideshow and concentrate on making good 
     public policy out of good ideas regardless of their origins.

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this is an editorial more recently, on May 
11, from the Des Moines Register, which is titled ``A Welfare Winner--
Iowa's Family Investment Plan Could be a National Model.''

       With a solid year's worth of experience behind it, Iowa's 
     innovative new welfare program looks like a winner. If the 
     numbers hold up over time, the state's Department of Human 
     Services will have succeeded where the nation and practically 
     every state have either feared to tread or have tried and 
     fallen short.
       As Senator Tom Harkin has pointed out, the Iowa idea could 
     be a model for the Nation. But rather than looking at Iowa, 
     congressional GOP leadership is focusing on block grants to 
     states, with no guarantee that they won't use Federal tax 
     money to perpetuate formulas for failure that have 
     characterized welfare from its inception.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent this editorial be printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Des Moines Register, May 11, 1995]

  A Welfare Winner--Iowa's Family Investment Plan Could Be a National 
                                 Model

       With a solid year's worth of experience behind it, Iowa's 
     innovative new welfare program looks like a winner. If the 
     numbers hold up over time, the state's Department of Human 
     Services will have succeeded where the nation and practically 
     every state have either feared to tread or have tried and 
     fallen short.
       As Senator Tom Harkin has pointed out, the Iowa idea cold 
     be a model for the nation. But rather than looking at Iowa, 
     congressional GOP leadership is focusing on block grants to 
     states, with no guarantee that they won't use federal tax 
     money to perpetuate formulas for failure that have 
     characterized welfare from its inception.
       There remains a very long path toward a complete weaning of 
     Iowa's poor from the dole. It will never be complete; a core 
     of hard cases is inevitable. And the Iowa reform plan, known 
     as the Family Investment Plan, has yet to make a serious dent 
     in Medicaid, the welfare health program that costs seven 
     times as much in Iowa as do the cash grants to the poor to 
     pay for necessities. (Besides serving young, needy families, 
     much of the Medicaid expense goes to the elderly poor in 
     nursing homes.)
       But the welfare that hits the public's hot buttons--Aid to 
     Families with Dependent Children--involves cash grants given 
     to women who have babies instead of jobs. In that area, Iowa 
     is making progress by substituting the Family Investment 
     Plan.
       The March 1995 welfare caseload in Iowa is down 9 percent 
     from March 1994.
       The cost of welfare grants for the month of March '95 is 12 
     percent lower than for the same month a year ago.
       Before Iowa began phasing in the Family Investment Plan 
     program in October 1993, fewer than one Iowa welfare family 
     in five had any earnings from a job. By March '94, the number 
     was roughly one in four. By March '95, it was one in three.
       ``Getting that first job is the big step,'' said Ann 
     Wiebers of Iowa's DHS.
       To make getting that job more attractive, the state allows 
     welfare recipients to keep more earnings than they did under 
     AFDC. Welfare grants decline as earnings increase, but they 
     don't fall as fast as under the old AFDC formula. That means 
     giving more bucks to beginning wage-earners--but the 
     investment pays off for taxpayers.
       The new Family Investment Plan includes penalties as well 
     as rewards. Those who refuse to sign a contract to get a job 
     or get training, or sign a contract but refuse to abide by 
     it, can lose their cash grant.
       For the first three months, non-cooperators continue to get 
     full benefits; for the next three, benefits for adults in the 
     family go. After that, it's over, and as of April 1, the DHS 
     had canceled grants to 1,112 families. They continue to get 
     health care, and food-stamp allotments actually increase. 
     Iowa public-health officials visit families to make sure the 
     children are getting along.
       The program is not yet fully implemented. The Family 
     Investment Plan has replaced AFDC in 90 counties, and has 
     taken much of the caseload in the other nine.
       The only valid rationale for having maintained 50 separate 
     state welfare programs through the years is to enable states 
     to improvise and innovate. Iowa has sought reform through 
     increased incentives, and it works. But as Harkin told a 
     Senate Finance Committee hearing, ``No one seems to be paying 
     any attention.''
       They should be. And the lack of attention makes one wonder 
     if congressional leadership is less concerned with successful 
     reform than with who gets the credit.

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, at the end of my 
statement, at the end of my time, a series of other editorials in 
support of the Iowa program be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, let me comment a little bit about the bill 
we have before us. I guess it is called the Dole-Packwood bill, S. 
1120.
  I think, basically, this bill strikes out. As I have said, the Iowa 
program is a triple play. This bill strikes out. It fails the test of 
moving people from welfare to self-sufficiency. Again, do not take my 
word for it. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 44 of the 
50 States will not meet the work requirements as outlined in the bill.
  We need a welfare system that empowers people and promotes 
independence. Today's system fails to do it and, I believe, so does the 
bill before us. The Dole-Packwood bill merely changes the means of 
delivering welfare programs but will not affect the end. Families will 
remain trapped in a cycle of dependency and poverty. The pending 
legislation replaces this one failed dependency-inducing system we have 
with 50 varieties of the same. It boxes up the problem and ships it off 
to the States. It will not ensure reform. Nor will the pending 
legislation provide opportunity, real opportunity for welfare 
recipients, the real opportunities to become self-sufficient. That 
should be our goal. If you do not have an education and skills, you 
will not get a job. If you do not have transportation, you cannot get 
to a job. And if you do not have child care, you cannot keep a job.
  That is the reality for most families on welfare: No one to take care 
of the 

[[Page S 11764]]
kids, no way to get to work, no skills, no education. And, to them, the 
bill before us, the Dole-Packwood bill, says ``No way out. No luck. No 
exit.'' That is not welfare reform, that is welfare fraud.
  What we did in Iowa--I might add, some of the things that increased 
the caseload, that made this caseload up in the beginning, is we let 
people keep more of their earnings. We raised the ceiling for 
automobiles. Under Federal law, a welfare recipient getting AFDC cannot 
have a car valued at more than $1,500. What do you get for $1,500? You 
get a car that breaks down all the time. So the welfare client, they 
have a car worth $1,000 or $1,200, it breaks down, they cannot get to 
work, they lose their job, and go right back on welfare.
  We in Iowa raised that to $3,000. Now people on welfare can have a 
little better car and be assured they can get to work.
  If you think that is liberal you ought to try Utah. Utah raised the 
value of the car, I believe, if I am not mistaken, to $7,000 or $8,000. 
You can have a car valued at that much and still get AFDC, still 
qualify for AFDC.
  So these up-front investments are necessary to move people out of 
welfare and achieve real, long-term savings. I am afraid the Dole-
Packwood bill is nothing more than just shifting the costs onto the 
State and local taxpayers.
  In talking with people in Iowa in town meetings, especially with 
boards of supervisors, they know what is going to happen. It is going 
to fall in their lap. This is just going to be a shift down to general 
relief. Since people will be at the county level, they know these 
people, then it is going to mean an increase in property taxes. The 
Dole-Packwood bill, I think, if nothing else, means that. It is going 
to increase property taxes for people in this country at the local 
level and it is not going to provide for any pathway to self-
sufficiency.
  Again, to repeat, the goal of reform should be self-sufficiency, so 
people can get off of welfare and stay off of welfare. The Dole-
Packwood bill will not do this and it should be rejected. But we should 
work together to try to change, to modify, to make sure that we have 
legislation that I believe is more in keeping with what we did in Iowa. 
The bill that Senator Daschle has come up with, I think, takes a 
different approach--realistic, forward-looking, profamily, and prokids. 
The Work First proposal requires a contract between welfare recipients 
and the State similar to that in the Iowa Family Investment Plan.
  Now the Dole-Packwood bill also has a contract in it, but it does not 
say what the contract has to do. The bill over here, the Work First 
proposal, does set that out. The Work First plan also offers the Iowa 
plan as one of three models that States may adopt in their effort to 
reform the current system and move recipients from the welfare rolls to 
the job rolls. In other words, under the Daschle bill, the Work First 
bill, if a State wants to adopt the Iowa plan, it can do so and not be 
burdened with any Federal regulations, Federal rules. They do not have 
to come under the other purviews of the welfare bill.
  As I say, it is one of three: That; the Oregon plan; and I believe 
the Riverside, CA, plan.
  So this may be someplace where both sides can work together and that 
is to make sure at least the contract is one that is realistic, that is 
binding, that holds the recipient to be responsible from day one, but 
also holds the State responsible. What we have done in Iowa, under the 
contract, once that initial assessment is done and a contract is worked 
out, the recipient signs it and the State signs it. The State has to 
live up to its side of the bargain, too; in other words, to provide 
child care, transportation, we provide education, tuition--that type of 
thing. Whatever is the best for that person, to get that person through 
the program and into self-sufficiency.
  As I said, we found in most cases it does not take 2 years. I think, 
if you have 2 years, as I said before, the maximum becomes the minimum. 
But every contract, every contract in Iowa, has a time limit. And every 
contract should have a time limit--whatever time it requires to get 
that person through and into self-sufficiency.
  There are always going to be the hard cases. The 18-year-old girl who 
has two children and has no high school education. One of her kids is 
severely disabled. She may have a disability herself. And she may have 
no family support anywhere. To think that that person may get through 
in 2 years is foolish. It may take 4 years. It may take 5 years. Those 
are the hard cases. But the vast majority of cases will take less than 
2 years. That is why I say it has to be individualized and not ``one 
cookie-cutter plan fits all.''
  So instead of simply slashing welfare and dumping all the 
responsibility and all the bills onto the States and local taxpayers, I 
believe the Work First plan represents real reform and real change.
  Like the Iowa plan, the Work First plan demands responsibility from 
day one, not after 2 years. And it ends the ``something for nothing'' 
system of today with one that truly turns welfare into work. The Work 
First plan is built on the concepts of accountability, responsibility, 
opportunity, and common sense. It will liberate families from the 
welfare trap and it will strengthen families and help today's welfare 
recipients finally walk off this dead end of dependence and on the road 
to self-sufficiency.
  Mr. President, I close by urging all my colleagues to please take a 
close look at the Iowa plan, what the Iowa plan has done, the success 
it has had. I hope we can work together in a bipartisan fashion. We 
have two bills out here now. I am sure amendments will be offered and 
debated. They should be.
  What we are talking about here is nothing less than perhaps the most 
profound change in social policy that we have had in 20, 30, 40 years, 
perhaps--maybe more. We should not take it lightly. We should not rush 
to judgment. But we should not be stampeded into making changes that 
are not based upon sound data and experience that we have had.
  We should not be making decisions just based upon anecdotal stories 
or ideology or what feels good or what makes a sound bite or what 
scores the most political points. This is a very serious debate long 
overdue. It should be thoughtful and thorough. Amendments ought to be 
offered. I have some that I will offer maybe to both--I do not know--
that will incorporate a lot of what the Iowa plan does because I think 
it does make common sense. There are some other provisions that other 
people have worked on that, quite frankly, I like, some that are on the 
other side of the aisle.
  So I am hopeful that we will do this in a thoughtful and thorough 
manner. I do not know if we can get it done this week or not. I do not 
intend to filibuster it. I have never heard anybody talk about a 
filibuster. But I do believe it ought to be thorough and thoughtful and 
take whatever time is necessary. If it takes more than a week, maybe it 
ought to take more than a week. I do not know. I hope we have our 
debates and have our amendments, and vote them up or down. Hopefully, 
we can come up with a welfare reform program that truly is 
revolutionary. I do not think that this Congress could do any better 
for the American people than adopting what we have done in Iowa to move 
families off of welfare.
  I thank the Chair.
                               Exhibit 1

          [From the Burlington Hawk-Eye (Iowa), Feb. 8, 1995]

                      Welfare Reform Shows Promise

  (FIP program: More welfare recipients getting jobs under new rules 
              designed to get people off the public dole)

                            (By Roger Munns)

       Des Moines.--Welfare recipients in a test group who still 
     get benefits under Iowa's old law are much less likely to 
     have jobs than the majority who get benefits under a reform 
     law, according to state officials.
       Only 18 percent of a test group of families who get Aid to 
     Families with Dependent Children have members with part-time 
     jobs.
       ADC was replaced last year with the Family Investment 
     Program in which recipients must sign a contract detailing 
     how and when they'll get off the dole.
       The 18 percent compares to 33 percent of FIP recipients who 
     have jobs.
       ``To me, this says that the families under the old policy 
     are continuing to behave in the way they always did,'' said 
     Deb Bingaman, welfare reform waiver coordinator for the 
     state. ``That percentage isn't increasing.''
       When Iowa switched to the new law last year, some 
     recipients were deliberately selected, at random, to be part 
     of a control 

[[Page S 11765]]
     group that still receives AFDC. There are 2,158 families in the test 
     group, all from nine counties: Polk, Black Hawk, Clinton, Des 
     Moines, Jackson, Jones, Linn, Pottawattamie and Woodbury.
       Of those families, only 390 had a member with a part-time 
     job in January. That's the same percentage of AFDC recipients 
     who had jobs before the reforms went into effect.
       By comparison, almost exactly a third--33.4 percent--of the 
     vast majority of cases who are getting benefits under the new 
     law have outside income. In December 37,925 Iowa families 
     were getting FIP grants, and of those, 12,667 had family 
     members who had jobs.
       Bingaman said state officials are encouraged by the 
     numbers, since more and more welfare recipients are getting 
     work experience that will help them become self sufficient.
       The key reason for the disparity is that the new law has an 
     incentive for work. Recipients get to keep higher amounts of 
     outside income before benefits start to decline.
       ``This encourages people to become involved,'' said John 
     Kneeland, director of welfare services in the Ottumwa region. 
     ``The old system sort of gave things to you with one hand and 
     took them away with the other.''
       Charles Bruner, director of the Institute for Social and 
     Economic Development in Des Moines, said there hasn't been 
     enough evaluation to determine the success of the new law. 
     But he said the early numbers are encouraging.
       ``I think Iowa is pretty much a model. It's one of the best 
     efforts to create a ladder out of poverty, and it's showing 
     positive results,'' said Bruner.
       ``More people are working and more are on welfare, but 
     average grants are less, and it's not costing us any more 
     than the old system. So overall, it looks good.''
       In addition to the outside income allowances, there are 
     other differences between the old and new laws. Recipients 
     are allowed higher assets without being disqualified, it's 
     easier for two-parent households to qualify, and recipients 
     must sign agreements on how they'll become self sufficient.
       Those who don't play by the rules have benefits cut off.
       When the program began, the caseload shot up dramatically, 
     up to a peak of more than 40,600 last April, and has been 
     dropping since. Last December, there were 37,925 families 
     receiving welfare.
       The average grant was $344.64 in December, and it, too, is 
     declining as people earn more money in their jobs, Bingaman 
     said. By comparison, the average AFDC grant in September 1993 
     was $373.75. FIP recipients also receive food stamps and 
     medical care.
       Bingaman said there is no data on the test AFDC group other 
     than the percentage of those with jobs. The state has hired a 
     Washington, D.C., group to conduct research on the test 
     group.
       Bruner said one factor that might skew the results is 
     Iowa's robust economy.
       ``Obviously, welfare reform is going to be far better in 
     areas where there's a lot of demand for workers. We're 
     looking at this in a climate of a fairly healthy economy,'' 
     he said.
       Bingaman concurred, but said the robust economy didn't 
     increase the percentage of those in the test group with jobs.
                                                                    ____

             [From the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Apr. 17, 1994]

                          This One's Different

       Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is teaming up with conservative 
     Missouri Republican Sen. Christopher Bond to introduce a 
     ``Welfare to Self-Sufficiency Act'' that would limit benefits 
     more than the welfare proposal espoused by President Clinton.
       Clinton's plan would stop paying benefits after two years. 
     But the Bond-Harkin plan would provide full benefits for 
     three months, reduce them for three months and then stop 
     them.
       And listen to Harkin's rationale for such a short term: It 
     requires welfare recipients to take responsibility for 
     themselves and their families ``from day one, not year two.'' 
     Harkin said he is concerned ``that a two-year limit on the 
     welfare rolls will actually become a two-year minimum. If 
     people aren't encouraged, or in some cases required, to help 
     themselves, many simply won't.''
       Key to the plan is a contract between the government and 
     participants that outlines the steps recipients would take to 
     resume self-sufficiency. The plan also allows families to 
     keep more of their earned income and to save money, according 
     to Associated Press. The plan is based on reform already in 
     Iowa and Missouri.
       Of course, such plans depend a lot on employers creating 
     jobs that people in these circumstances are able to fill. 
     Also, this plan, introduced last Monday, joins a growing list 
     of welfare reform efforts. But it could stand out both for 
     its conservative provisions and its sponsorship by the 
     liberal Tom Harkin.
       That last point alone could make a difference. It's like 
     that line, ``Only Nixon could go to China.''''
                                                                    ____

           [From the Waterloo Courier (Iowa), Oct. 17, 1994]

                      Welfare System Finally Works

       Iowa taxpayers who have long demanded accountability from 
     welfare recipients started getting it.
       Under reform legislation enacted last year, welfare 
     recipients must sign Family Investment Agreements that detail 
     how and when they will become self-sufficient. . . .
       Failure to sign pulls the plus on public assistance. . . .
       But the triumph of the program is not necessarily in who 
     will not benefit. Instead, praise and support should go to 
     the vast majority or recipients who are cooperating, and the 
     people making the program work.
       The Family Investment Program is a shining example of 
     responsible, responsive government.
       The law's passage last year made it clear that there are 
     limits to the public's patience and obligation for 
     individuals. . . .
       It sends an irrefutable message that Iowans will help those 
     people in need who show the desire and responsibility to help 
     themselves. And, especially important, the new policy tells 
     that small group of free-loaders who are unwilling to better 
     themselves that they are--finally and deservedly--on their 
     own.
                                                                    ____

            [From the Ottumwa Courier (Iowa), Oct. 3, 1994]

                  Program Helps Iowans Get Off Welfare

       Iowans don't mind lending a hand now and then.
       Unfortunately, our state welfare system has become more 
     than a helping hand to many families. It has become a way of 
     life, a culture, an expectation, a cycle of dependence that 
     has been passed from one generation to the next.
       The state decided to do something about that cycle last 
     year, and the results are beginning to take hold. About 250 
     families have been cut off from welfare benefits because they 
     refused to take part in a new program that forces families to 
     take specific steps to wean themselves from welfare.
       Many taxpayers believe it is long overdue. Some welfare 
     recipients believe it is unfair--particularly to children.
       At the beginning of this year, most Iowa families that 
     receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children were forced 
     to sign contracts called Family Investment Agreements.
       The agreement spells out steps that families must take to 
     leave welfare and enter the workforce. In return, families 
     will be able to keep more of their earnings and accumulate 
     more assets without hurting welfare payments. To assist, the 
     state is spreading a safety net that includes such support as 
     child care, job training, education and health insurance.
       For years, critics have argued that one of the main flaws 
     in the welfare system--not just in Iowa, but nationwide--is 
     that it provides too many incentives to stay on welfare, and 
     makes it too difficult to get off of it.
       The Iowa program is designed to provide incentives to leave 
     welfare.
       In addition, the new program provides welfare recipients 
     plenty of opportunities to enroll. They receive written 
     notice before payments are trimmed, then cut off. And people 
     who lose benefits may apply again in six months.
       But the philosophy seems simple enough: Take steps to find 
     work and the state will help you. But if you won't do 
     anything to help yourself, why should the state be expected 
     to take care of everything?
       It only seems fair.
                                                                    ____

               [From the Omaha World-Herald, May 5, 1995]

                   Welfare Contract a Worthwhile Idea

       The idea that welfare should involve form of social 
     contract continues to deserve attention.
       Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has introduced a bill in the 
     Senate that reflects ideas from a welfare reform plan enacted 
     by Governor Branstad and the Iowa Legislature. One idea is 
     that welfare isn't run automatic entitlement. A recipient 
     must sign a contract with state government. The contract 
     spells out the services the government will provide, and it 
     contains specific steps to be taken by the recipient to 
     become self-reliant.
       A similar provision has been included in the welfare reform 
     program under consideration in Nebraska. Jerry Oligmueller of 
     the State Department of Social Services said that recipients 
     would sign a ``self-sufficiency contract'' charting a two-
     year course to self-sufficiency.
       Emphasis on personal responsibility, he said, is part of 
     the state's effort to recognize and encourage a change in 
     attitudes about welfare.
       The idea of changing society's thinking about welfare is 
     all to the good. In the case of people who have no physical 
     or mental ailments, welfare should not be an open-ended 
     arrangement. It's not fair for the government to take money 
     from tax-paying citizens to provide for the permanent support 
     of an able-bodied person. State and federal officials who are 
     trying to re-establish welfare as a temporary, rehabilitative 
     program are doing the right thing.
                                                                    ____

            [From the Waterloo Courier (Iowa), Oct. 3, 1994]

          Changes in Welfare Rules Fulfill Will of the People

       Iowa taxpayers who have long demanded accountability from 
     welfare recipients started getting it on Saturday.
       Under reform legislation enacted last year, welfare 
     recipients must sing Family Investment Agreements that detail 
     how and when they will become self sufficient. The agreements 
     can include education, training, community service and other 
     options.

[[Page S 11766]]

       Failure to sign pulls the plug on public assistance.
       Benefits stop this month for the first 286 families who 
     failed to take steps toward self sufficiency as required by 
     the state's welfare reform law enacted last year. Not 
     surprisingly, some have reconsidered and now want to get into 
     the Family Investment Program, as welfare is now known.
       But a state official said benefits for those people would 
     not be restored until they actually signed a contract with 
     the state. That could take at least a month, according to 
     Gloria Conrad, bureau chief for the Family Investment Program 
     division.
       Those who made no effort to sign the self-improvement 
     contract by Friday will have their benefits shut off for a 
     minimum of six months.
       Benefits are being stopped only for people who were in the 
     first wave of recipients contacted six months ago and who 
     have refused to participate in the reform law.
       The cutoffs will not come as a surprise to any of the 
     affected recipients. Those who failed to respond were given 
     numerous changes--including in-person visits by state Human 
     Services workers whenever possible--to change their minds.
       ``There aren't really very many who have simply ignored the 
     program,'' said John Newland, a welfare administrator of a 
     10-county area based in Ottumwa. ``But we have had some 
     people who have simply said no, they won't choose to do any 
     of this stuff. The feeling, I guess, was that we were 
     intruding on their own business, that we didn't have the 
     right to tell them what to do. That's their decision to 
     make''
       Those people have to right to feel that way if they wish, 
     but they don't have a right to expect taxpayers to continue 
     carrying them.
       But the triumph of the story is not necessarily in who will 
     not benefit. Instead, praise and support should go to the 
     vast majority of recipients who are cooperating, and the 
     people making the program work.
       About a third of the state's welfare cases have gone 
     through the system and most--more than 12,000--have signed 
     the agreements.
       To encourage recipients to take jobs, they are now allowed 
     to earn higher wages and still get partial benefits. For the 
     same reason, the average monthly grant is now lower than a 
     year ago--$348 in August compared with $373 in September 
     1993.
       The Family Investment Program is a shining example of 
     responsible, responsive government.
       The law's passage last year made it clear that there are 
     limits to the public's patience and obligation for 
     individuals.
       Its implementation reflects the fact that the General 
     Assembly and the governor are capable of hearing--and 
     delivering--on the values and policies desired by the 
     ``silent majority'' that pays the bills.
       It sends an irrefutable message that Iowans will help those 
     people in need who show the desire and responsibility to help 
     themselves. And, especially important, the new policy tells 
     that small group of freeloaders who are unwilling to better 
     themselves for the common good that they are--finally and 
     deservedly--on their own.

  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, could I make a request that those on the 
Republican side who wish to make opening statements offer them so we 
can get them in order.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, we have begun today in the U.S. Senate a 
historic debate. My colleague and friend from Iowa has just said it is 
a debate that is, frankly, long overdue. It is a debate about an issue 
that deeply troubles the American people. As I have traveled in my home 
State of Ohio over the last few years, I have not been able to find 
anyone who thinks that our current welfare system works very well or 
that it cannot be improved. I have talked to people on welfare. I have 
talked to people who have been on welfare who are now working in the 
private sector. I have talked to other taxpayers. No one, Mr. 
President, thinks our current system works.
  This is truly a monumental task that we have begun today. The tragic 
fact is that there are too many people in this country who are 
literally trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency.
  Mr. President, America simply cannot afford to continue in this 
direction. It is fundamentally, morally wrong that a sizable portion of 
Americans, a sizable number of Americans, should be excluded from what 
most of us consider the American mainstream.
  Mr. President, let me state what I do not mean by ``mainstream.'' I 
am not talking about a narrowly defined lifestyle or conventional set 
of values on controversial issues. That is not what I am talking about. 
What I am talking about is the bare essentials of participation in 
American life, holding down a job, being responsible for your own 
children, and living in the reasonable expectation of physical safety 
for you and your loved ones.
  Mr. President, I strongly support the current welfare reform effort 
that is being undertaken, for one simple reason. I believe it has the 
potential to help rescue a whole generation of Americans. It will give 
them the bare essentials of American life, a chance at the American 
dream.
  If we are to succeed, I believe we must tackle the welfare system in 
a truly fundamental and comprehensive way. As we know, Americans on 
welfare today may get, in addition to AFDC, cash payments and a whole 
host of other benefits--housing, food stamps, job training, education, 
child care, and other services. These are things that, as we discuss 
the issue, most of us just lump together and refer to as ``welfare.''
  Mr. President, some would have us focus our welfare reform efforts 
just on AFDC or just on a few of these programs. I think to limit 
reform just to that would be a mistake because it really does not go 
far enough. It would not go far enough to solve the problem. To solve 
the problem that we face, we need to tackle the welfare system in its 
totality.
  The welfare reform approach I am supporting would block grant as much 
as is prudently possible of the Federal welfare responsibility back to 
the States. I believe that we should end the decades-long practice of 
dictating welfare policy from the Federal level. Why? Because, if you 
look at the welfare debate today, one key fact becomes astoundingly 
clear. We just do not know the answers. We know what does not work. We 
have seen that for over 30 years. But we really do not know what works 
nor what will change things.
  We have heard on the floor, and we just heard from our colleague from 
Iowa examples of what his State is doing. We have heard examples of 
what other States are doing. And many of these, I think, are great 
ideas. But we have not been about these changes long enough that we in 
Congress should feel confident enough that we should turn to a State 
and say, ``This is the one way to reform welfare. This is how you have 
to do it. This is what we know works.'' Because the truth is, Mr. 
President, we do not know for sure what will work. We have had 30 years 
of experience in knowing what does not work.
  We as a nation are only just beginning to come to grips with the 
collapse of this decades-old experiment with welfare. Most people 
concede that this experiment has failed, but we have not developed a 
new consensus on what kind of system should take its place.
  Mr. President, as a Senator who has served in State and local 
elective office for a number of years, let me say that I do not--I 
repeat, I do not--believe that it is bad. I do not think it is bad that 
we do not yet have a consensus, because the lack of a new consensus 
gives the States a great opportunity to experiment; an opportunity to 
experiment, though, Mr. President, only if we allow them to do that.
  Mr. President, welfare today is an area which we know does not work. 
Our current policy does not work and has not worked for decades. But 
what we do not know is what works. We do not have the answers on how to 
get people off welfare onto work and into the American mainstream with 
a chance at the American dream.
  Some States, as we have discussed, have experimented on welfare, but 
we do not have enough history on these experiments to totally judge 
their success. As we used to say when I was a county prosecutor and we 
were waiting for a jury to come back with the verdict, the jury is 
still out. We just do not have the experience level to give us enough 
confidence to impose on the States mandates. To impose these programs 
on all States, to impose Federal uniformity of programs we are not sure 
of would be, I think, a serious mistake and would not be true and 
meaningful welfare reform. It is not the way to change the direction of 
this country.
  That is why, Mr. President, this is exactly the kind of problem that 
ought to be turned back to the States. By focusing on federally written 
programs and forcing State welfare policy to conform to a mold shaped 
in Washington, DC, Congress in the past has seriously weakened the 
ability of States to adapt, to experiment, to find out what 

[[Page S 11767]]
really works to solve their own problems in their own way and maybe to 
point out useful directions for other States.
  It is very important to note that in the kind of block grants I 
support, we stop telling the States step by step how to do welfare. We 
want to tell the States, this is what we should do; here is the purpose 
you can spend the money on; but we in Washington will no longer dictate 
the means you can use to achieve that purpose.
  In some of the block grant proposals that are before us, there is 
even some additional flexibility. States can take up to 30 percent of 
the block grant and use it for any welfare purpose at all, still 
serving people but giving the States that needed flexibility.
  Make no mistake about it: Welfare needs are different from State to 
State. They are even different from county to county. The needs of my 
Adams County, OH, and Cuyahoga County, OH, are fundamentally different. 
They both have needs; they both have people on welfare; but they are 
fundamentally different counties with different problems.
  Some counties may need more child care, some may need more child 
welfare service. I favor an approach that gives Governors the 
flexibility to solve problems. I think that would be a huge step 
forward.
  Let me summarize it this way. I think our goal should be not to fund 
programs. Rather, our goal should be to solve problems, to get people 
off welfare and into the work force. That should be the goal in any 
welfare reform bill that this Senate adopts.
  As we move forward in this debate, we must be careful not to succumb 
to the desire to tell States how to meet the goals in these block 
grants. We must be vigilant and avoid a refederalization of welfare 
through the back door. We cannot on the one hand say the States have 
this flexibility and then on the other hand tell the States what to do. 
We cannot on the one hand say that a problem in the past has been that 
Washington has mandated too much, and now that the complexion of the 
Senate and the Congress has changed, we who happen now to be in the 
majority party know best and we should write the dictates and mandates 
from Washington. That, in my opinion, would be a mistake.
  I find some of these mandates that have been discussed to be quite 
troubling. We are just beginning to unburden the States from a Federal 
system that for too long has prevented States from making changes, 
trying new approaches. It would be a serious mistake to move from that 
system to a system in which we force States to implement various reform 
measures prescribed by the Congress.
  Let me give you a couple of examples. I think we all agree that when 
a large portion of the children in society do not have two parents, 
society is going to be a lot worse off. We agree that America would be 
a better place if there were fewer out-of-wedlock births. When two-
thirds of the children in some of our major cities--two-thirds, Mr. 
President--are born outside of marriage, we are ensuring permanent 
poverty and hopelessness for a very large group of young Americans. The 
result will be extremely dangerous not only to those children but to 
American society.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, half of all teenage 
unwed mothers are on public assistance within 1 year of having their 
first child and within 5 years, 77 percent are on public assistance--77 
percent. Children who do not have fathers around are five times more 
likely to be poor than children who do. Those are the facts. They are 
10 times more likely to be extremely poor, to live in the kind of 
grinding poverty from which it is very hard to ever escape.
  Do we have a Federal cure for illegitimacy? Are we in this Chamber 
certain enough about whatever that cure might be that we are prepared 
to mandate it and to say every State has to impose it?
  Let me tell you, I know one Senator who is not so sure of what that 
answer is.
  In this context, let us talk for a moment about the proposed family 
cap. In New Jersey, they have experimented with denying additional 
welfare benefits to mothers who have more children on welfare. An 
initial study released late in 1994, which has been referred to on this 
floor, seemed to indicate the New Jersey family cap had caused a 
serious decline in the birth rate to welfare mothers, somewhere between 
19 and 29 percent.
  So the family cap is a great idea, right? Well, hold on a minute. We 
have another study, and this study has been referenced in the Chamber 
today as well. This study, based on a more complete sample, was 
conducted by Rutgers University. This study indicated that the denial 
of benefits made very little difference in the births, very little 
difference in behavior of welfare mothers. It found the drop in the 
birth rate was roughly the same among a control group, women who were 
exempt from the family cap law, as it was among those who were subject 
to the cap.
  There is also some indication that the New Jersey cap might have led 
to an increase in the number of abortions. This Senator is deeply 
concerned about that, as I know a number of Senators are. I think it is 
a concern that we should not just dismiss.
  Clearly, we do not yet know what works in this area. Therefore, now 
is not the time to impose Federal uniformity based on guesswork. We are 
in the middle of a controversy that is far from resolved, and what we 
need more than anything else is facts. State experimentation will help 
us find these facts.
  Mr. President, are we certain enough about the wisdom of the family 
cap at this time, at this place to write it into Federal law? Are we 
certain enough to make every single State live by it? I know one 
Senator who is not.
  Let me turn to another issue, and that is the work requirement. If 
there is one thing that will change welfare more than anything else, it 
is getting people to work. The statistics are overwhelming, that if an 
individual can get a job and hold that job for any reasonable period of 
time, the odds are that person then becomes a part of the mainstream. 
Part of them has the opportunity for the American dream. And that 
person may not have that same job in a year, year and a half, but if 
they get the first job and are able to hold it, it makes a fundamental 
difference.
  So there is more we can do. Debate has already indicated Senators on 
both sides clearly agree about the necessity of work. We all agree that 
work should be a condition for receiving public assistance. But I 
believe--I want to put out one cautionary comment at this time as we 
begin this debate--it is important we make the work requirement 
achievable by the States.
 The work requirement will have to be tough, but it will also have to 
be believable and achievable. In short, a strong work requirement has 
to work.

  Mr. President, I think one way that we can encourage work, the most 
effective way, is through the block grant proposal that is in front of 
us. By doing this, States will clearly have a direct incentive to get 
people off welfare and to allow them to become workers. This pressure 
will make a difference. Mr. President, tough choices on how to divide 
up a no longer unlimited stream of Federal dollars will cause the 
States to become innovative, to become bold, to experiment, and, I 
think, ultimately to learn from the experience of other States as well. 
And that will make a difference.
  Mr. President, when you are a government with limited welfare 
dollars, and you are trying to reduce your welfare caseload, you are 
going to start looking at the people who are able-bodied and refuse to 
work. And by necessity, States will have to have a strong work 
requirement.
  I think the spending cap will also help us reduce the tide of out-of-
wedlock births as well. Mr. President, fiscal pressure caused by the 
spending cap is going to do a great deal to focus people's attention on 
this tremendous problem of illegitimacy. As I mentioned before, the 
Federal Government does not know how to make people act responsibly, 
but we do know this, a State with limited resources and a serious 
poverty problem will have to make the wisest possible use of its 
limited resources.
  What is the best way, Mr. President, to balance our two goals, the 
goal of the need to help children who are born out of wedlock, help 
them, and the need at the same time to discourage people from having 
children born out of 

[[Page S 11768]]
wedlock? I am not sure any of us really know. But I believe that 
capping the block grant proposal with a tough, yet achievable, work 
requirement will set the States on the road toward finding out.
  Let me talk about a positive Federal role, Mr. President. There are 
some areas in which the Federal Government can play a very helpful 
role. And I would like to talk about one such area right now.
  We are all angry, as the public is, about the men who father children 
and then run off without paying child support. Fifteen, 20 years ago in 
the late 1970's, when I was a county prosecuting attorney in Greene 
County, in the southwestern part of Ohio, I learned about this problem. 
I had to spend a lot of my time, my staff's time, chasing after these 
bums, trying to locate them, trying to get them to live up to what 
should have been their obligations. I had some very aggressive 
assistant prosecutors who helped me in this and who learned a great 
deal, as I did, about this problem. Nancy Nevins, Susan Goldie, they 
headed up our child support enforcement unit. And we found, as we 
delved into this problem, how big a problem it was and how oftentimes 
these absent fathers were individuals who had taken off across the 
State line, almost as if they knew, and I guess many of them did, that 
if they could get across the line and they could go into another State, 
that it was going to make it much more difficult to get them to live up 
to their obligations.
  Today, Mr. President, the statistics are staggering. I am told that 
40 percent of the unsolved paternity cases nationwide are unsolved 
because the fathers have left the State. In Ohio that figure is closer 
to 45 percent. Clearly, a nationwide paternity data bank would be a big 
help to the State officials who are trying to track down these 
deadbeats. And we might even go further, Mr. President. We might even 
want to consider a national collection system to collect back child 
support from these deadbeats. Mr. President, clearly this is an area in 
which Federal coordination would actually help the States and not 
hinder their efforts to reform.
  But I do believe it remains generally true that the Federal 
Government does not have the answers on welfare reform. The Federal 
Government, Mr. President, needs to be honest about the real lessons of 
its three decades of failure. The welfare policy of the Federal 
Government is intellectually bankrupt and the U.S. Senate needs to put 
it into receivership. The receivers in this case are the 50 States, the 
50 laboratories of democracy, 50 laboratories of reform. Many States, 
as we have already discussed today, are already showing terrific 
leadership in reforming their welfare systems.
  Mr. President, instead of taking the glimmerings of success of any 
single State and then imposing a rigid, absolutely uniform model on 
every other State, we need to make sure all States continue to 
experiment. Ohio, to take a single example, has been a leader in the 
drive for experimentation. Let me just give a couple examples. In 1989 
Ohio received a waiver to try the LEAP program. LEAP stands for 
learning, earning, and parenting. The LEAP program created incentives 
for welfare clients to continue and then to complete their high school 
studies. And that program has met with modest success. In 1991, another 
example, Mr. President, Ohio received a Federal demonstration waiver 
for the Parents Fair Share program. That State program made 
noncustodial parents, parents who do not live with the child, either 
work or receive job training with a view toward supporting the child. 
It targeted those individuals.
  We have had success. Ohio, another example, received a Child of 
Opportunity waiver to help keep the children in school by punishing 
parents for the child's absenteeism. Another program, the Communities 
of Opportunity waiver allowed us to exchange AFDC and food stamp cash 
payments for employment subsidies. We were able to use this waiver to 
get private-sector jobs for welfare clients across the State, 
Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Cincinnati.
  Another example, 1994, we wanted to decrease the penalties for moving 
from welfare to work. We received a micro-enterprise development waiver 
so we could remove some of the limits on the assets, the income of 
welfare recipients. Early on in the debate I heard the distinguished 
Senator from New York talk about that as being a problem, people not 
being able to keep enough of their assets. We encouraged them to move 
into the work force.
  Mr. President, what is interesting about all of these examples that I 
have given, and the Senator from Iowa and my other colleagues have 
given today, is not that they are good ideas, though I believe probably 
most of them are. What is notable is that each State has had to 
petition Washington, DC, for the right to try any of them.
  The President is now talking about speeding up the waiver process. 
And that is a good idea. President Bush, and now President Clinton, 
have granted waivers. That is absolutely true. And I think that the 
leadership from the top has been to try to get as many of these waivers 
granted as possible. But I believe that we still have a basic problem. 
And that is, the basic problem is, that these waivers are required at 
all, and in a time when we need to encourage not discourage State 
experimentation in solving problems.
  I asked one time, Mr. President, our director in Ohio, Mr. Tompkins, 
about what percentage of the waivers we asked to have granted were 
granted by the Federal Government? And he told me something very 
interesting. He said, ``The percentage will be relatively high. The 
problem is that we generally only ask for a waiver if we have a pretty 
good indication we are going to get it.'' It does not tell you or does 
not tell the reader of those statistics how often we wanted to do 
something, how often in our own experience we felt, we knew that some 
program would work or had a good chance of working and yet we were told 
off the record by the Federal bureaucracy that, ``No, look, don't ask 
us for that because we are just not going to give you that one.'' And 
so when we look at the statistics of waivers being granted, it does 
look good and it does look high. But what it does not show is the many 
times when the State was told, ``Just don't ask about that one because 
we are not going to grant it.''
  Now, earlier this year, Mr. President, the Ohio General Assembly 
passed a major welfare reform bill. That bill contains a provision 
saying that a welfare client who gets a job can keep the first $250, 
plus one-half of the additional income earned for 1 year after starting 
work--an incentive to ease people off welfare. The goal, again, Mr. 
President, is to avoid penalizing the welfare client for trying to work 
in the real economy. To do this, we now need Federal permission. In 
fact, there are 15 other provisions in Ohio's newly passed welfare 
reform package, 15 other ways Ohio wants to experiment to see what 
works, for which we are awaiting the Federal go-ahead.
  Mr. President, we have to let the States be more flexible. Arnold 
Tompkins, who I referenced earlier, Director of Ohio's Department of 
Human Services, says he is frustrated by a system that really is too 
much like an on/off switch. Our department in Ohio, as is true in other 
States, is only allowed to help people when the people go on welfare.
  If you are ``on'' welfare, all kinds of benefits are going to be 
available to you. If you are ``not on'' welfare, many times nothing is 
available to you.
  Mr. Tompkins says that we need an approach that is more like a dimmer 
switch--a system that allows the human services officials flexibility 
to intervene in helping people to keep them off of welfare before they 
go on welfare. Maybe helping someone find other resources, Mr. 
President, like helping pay their rent or electric bill for a couple of 
months, will do a lot more good than waiting for them to be evicted and 
only then being able to sign them up for the full welfare program. I 
think it will be more cost-effective, and I think it will work.
  Mr. President, the States need to stay focused on the overall goal of 
keeping people off welfare. That is why we should, in addition to 
rewarding States that reduce their welfare case loads, reward States 
that help their citizens avoid having to go on welfare at all. I intend 
to return to this question later on this week, as the amendment process 
begins.
  Mr. President, for 30 years, Congress has created programs and 
trusted the 

[[Page S 11769]]
programs to work. It is time to move the focus from programs to people.
  Mr. President, this is the whole welfare reform debate microcosm: Do 
we want the Congress to write yet another program? Or do we want States 
to come up with solutions?
  I think the American people do not want another program. They look at 
the problems of poverty in this country and they want answers. That is 
something the Federal Government really just does not have.
  Mr. President, I am proud to be a participant in the Senate's very 
historic welfare reform debate. It offers some real hope for a solution 
to America's social crisis. That is why I intend to work over the next 
few days with my colleagues on the floor to ensure that the bill we 
pass does as much as it possibly can to let the States succeed in truly 
reforming welfare.
  Mr. President, thank you very much. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise, first off, in support of the 
Dole substitute. And I want to congratulate the leader, the leadership, 
the leadership of the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator 
Packwood, and many others who contributed to this bill and taking what 
was, by all accounts in the newspaper, an issue that was dead and gone 
for the summer and maybe for a long time after that and resurrecting 
that issue and bringing it to the floor with, I think, a very solid 
base of support on the Republican side of the aisle, and I am hopeful a 
very strong base of support on the Democrat side of the aisle.
  I think we have a good bill here, one that can attract bipartisan 
support, one that, the majority leader has said, is not veto bait--at 
least yet--at the White House.
  I hope that is a good start, and I hope over the next several days we 
can work in a bipartisan fashion to structure a bill that will truly 
make substantive and great reform in an area that probably needs it 
worse than any other single area in Government--not just for the 
taxpayers, who we hear so much about, but for the people in the welfare 
system.
  I have been fortunate enough to be able to work on this issue quite 
some time now--at least quite some time in my career here in the 
Congress. I worked 3 years ago in crafting a bill that came to the 
Republican position in the House of Representatives in the House Ways 
and Means Committee, and it became the basis for the bill that passed 
the House, which I am very proud of. It was a good bill.
  I think what we have done here in the Senate is a very good bill. In 
some respects, it goes farther. It is more dramatic than what the House 
Republican measure has done, particularly in the area of food stamps. 
Food stamp reform here is at least as tough--the reforms themselves. 
But we in the Senate in this bill give the States an option to take 
block grants. It is their option. In the House bill, they cannot do 
that unless they have electronic benefits transfer.
  So, in a sense, we have gone one step further here in the Senate than 
they have in the House bill. The AFDC work requirement--the standards 
are tougher here in the Senate bill than they are in the House bill. 
The work requirements are equally as tough as the House bill.
  So you could even make the argument that the AFDC provisions of this 
bill are tougher than the House bill. I think that is a very big plus. 
It is a look at certain areas and to say we have come out, after 
reviewing what the House has done, and think we can go a little 
farther. In some areas we do not go as far as the Senator from Texas, 
Senator Gramm, and Senator Faircloth from North Carolina would like to 
go; frankly, as far as I would like to go. I think we can go farther, 
and should, in doing block grants.
  Child nutrition programs, school lunch programs, and the like--I 
think the reforms done in the House were good, solid reforms, well 
thought out, and actually better targeted the resources at the people 
who need them. But they turned out to be very controversial measures. 
One that elicited, I think, a public outcry and one that, I think, we 
determined in putting this bill together was better left to maybe the 
next round of welfare reform, which may not be too far in the offing, 
but to focus in on the things that we can accomplish, hopefully, in a 
bipartisan manner, and that is focusing in on AFDC, what most people 
consider welfare.
  It is only a part of the welfare pot. Some would say it is 7 percent. 
Others would say it is a little bit more than that. But it is a very 
small portion of what we spend on means-tested programs, in other 
words, programs that are directed toward low-income people. The biggest 
single program is Medicaid. That is the largest welfare program, means-
tested entitlement program. Most people think AFDC is second. It is 
not. The second largest means-tested program is SSI, which I will talk 
in somewhat detail about during my opening statement.
  Then we get down to programs like food stamps; on down the list is 
AFDC. But AFDC is considered welfare because it is the program that was 
designed in 1935 to help mothers with dependent children. It is the 
program that gets the most publicity. It is important to reform that 
program. But it is no less important to look at the other means-tested 
entitlement programs and appropriated accounts and reform those 
programs, too, and to make the reforms work together.
  One of the good planks in this bill is the fact that States can work 
together with housing benefits and food stamps and Medicaid and others 
to make sure that when you cut off AFDC benefits, if, in fact, someone 
is cut off, that their food stamp benefits do not go up to compensate 
for the reduction in the AFDC. So they can work with those two programs 
together to make sure one is not offsetting the penalties of the other.
  Another very good part of this bill, something the Senator from 
Missouri, Senator Ashcroft, has brought to the table and I think is a 
very good idea, is how the private sector can get more involved in 
providing welfare; for the States to be able to contract to community 
providing organizations, including churches, who are in there in the 
community right now doing the work that is necessary to help the poor 
in their community. Why not have them be the local agency that helps 
that community and the people in that community solve their problems of 
poverty? Why not give them the resources and the responsibility to help 
people in the community? That is a great idea. It gives flexibility to 
the States which they have never had before.
  We know historically in this country what works to help poor people 
get out of poverty. It is not just passing a check. I think, if there 
is anything that we can all agree on, it is that just handing a check 
over to someone does not solve the poverty problem. What helps people 
get out of poverty is not a guaranteed income from the Government, but 
an opportunity to go out and work and earn it for themselves.
  We know that check does not encourage what we know works, which is 
work. That guaranteed income does not encourage work. What does 
encourage work is people who care, people who care about that 
individual and know that they are going through the trouble to take the 
time to listen. This is no fault of the caseworkers in the welfare 
system. They are processing thousands of checks a day. They cannot 
afford and do not have the time. The caseworkers do not have the time 
to sit one on one to go through the life history of the person, whether 
it is a problem with their husband, whether it is a substance abuse 
problem, or satisfy a problem with their parents, or whatever else; an 
illness. They do not have the time to sit and care. They do not have 
the resources to do it. We need a system that is more friendly to 
people who need help, not just saying, ``Well, here is your check. 
Leave us alone. You should be OK. You have been provided for.''
  Actually, we should start turning this program, this welfare 
bureaucracy, over to the people who live in that community, who see 
that neighbor at church, who walk past them in the aisle in the grocery 
store, and who care because a better person in their community means a 
better community and a better life for them. Let us use what we know 
works, and that is people helping people. 

[[Page S 11770]]

  That is what we are saying in this bill--let us get it back to the 
folks who care the most, and it is not us. We say we care a lot. But I 
do not consider it particularly compassionate on my part to take your 
money--the people who are out working in America--and then give it to 
somebody else who is not working. It may make me feel good that I am 
helping someone who is poor, who maybe cannot work, who maybe is having 
problems and needs to get their life together again. That may make me 
feel good. But that certainly is not compassionate.
  A lot of people around here will define the terms in this debate on 
how much money we take from some people to give to other people, that 
the more we take from workers to give to other people, many of whom do 
not work, the more compassionate we are. I would say, that is not a 
very good judge of compassion on my part. To know how much money I give 
out of my salary to my church or to the community group--that is 
compassion. That is money otherwise I could spend. But taking other 
people's money is not compassion. That is how we have measured 
compassion in this country for a long, long time. I find it absolutely 
unbelievable that we do.
  I tell you, it would be very easy for me to just hand out all the 
money that I can get my hands on around here. It is fun. We enjoy doing 
that. But it is not compassion. More than anything else, it is not 
helping anybody. I think we, hopefully, have come to that determination 
in this body; that just handing it out makes a bunch of people who pay 
for the program very resentful and the people who receive the money 
very dependent. It does not help either.
  Let us get back to something that we know works--getting it back to 
the local level, getting it back to the people who care. And that is 
what this program is all about. Some will say, ``Well, it is just 
passing the buck.'' My initial response to that is, if the buck is 
being misspent here, let us at least give someone else a try. Maybe 
passing the buck in this case is the best thing to do because we know 
what the current system is doing.
  The Senator from New York, who knows more about welfare than anyone 
in this Chamber, having studied it for years and years, presented the 
case very well for why the system does not work. I mean, the statistics 
do not lie about the problems that we have in poverty in America today 
and the growth in illegitimacy and the lack of work in the inner cities 
where welfare is the highest, the destruction of communities, the 
increase in crime, the destruction of the family, lower rate levels of 
education among the poor. I mean the scenario is very clear what is 
going on here. We know it is not working.
  The question is how much courage do we have to say that what we have 
tried has failed? What we know historically in this country that has 
worked has not been given a chance, at least from the Federal 
perspective, in a long time. Let us try that.
  You will hear this quote often throughout the discussion on welfare. 
In fact, I have heard it many times already in this body. But I think 
it is so appropriate. It is such a good codification of the American 
spirit and what the greatness of America is all about in solving the 
problems of the people who are of lesser means, and that was de 
Tocqueville's analysis of America.
  When he came to this country over 100 years ago and looked at the 
private sector, the institutions, the volunteer organizations, the 
people who went out of their way to help their neighbors, the sense 
that Americans cared for each other and supported each other, there 
were not the Government programs--there was no AFDC Program when de 
Tocqueville was here, no SSI Program. There was none of that. Not to 
say those programs are bad, but none of that was here. It was private 
charity, people helping people. And de Tocqueville commented that 
``America is great because it is good.'' And when America ceases to be 
good, it will no longer be great.
  We need to draw on the goodness of people. We need to entrust the 
people to be good. That is what this bill is all about. It says that 
we, standing on high, are not going to dictate what is good for 
everyone but in fact put the resources back into the community so those 
people can determine what is good for themselves and their neighbors.
  It is a very dramatic turnaround in policy in this country. It is one 
that will frighten a lot of people because a lot of people think, as 
the Senator from Kansas, the majority leader, said, there will be a 
race to the bottom; that States will race to the bottom and they will 
cut benefits on everybody, as if Governors and State legislators have 
little care about the welfare of the poor in their State but we in 
Washington care supremely for them.
  I do not think anybody truly believes that, but that is the comment 
you are going to hear many times repeated here, that States simply will 
not provide for the poor; that we cannot trust them; that they will try 
to export them to another State, which will in turn try to export them 
to another State, and they will go to another State. I do not know what 
all is being suggested, but that is pretty much how it is going to play 
out.
  I do not think that is going to happen. I think there are a lot of 
States--the Senator from Iowa got up and talked about how wonderful a 
job Iowa is doing in reforming the program. And I would say there is 
nothing in the bill the Senator from Oregon and the majority leader 
have put forward to stop Iowa from doing it. In fact, it would provide 
more flexibility to Iowa. I do not understand what he thinks the 
trouble is, but it would enable Iowa to do more that works.
  I think this is the mentality. The problem is we know, or I know that 
this works in Iowa, and therefore I am going to tell everybody this is 
what they have to do. Well, just because it works in Iowa does not mean 
it is going to work in Alaska or Pennsylvania or anywhere else. And it 
has been working in Iowa for 1 year, so now we should take the Iowa 
experiment and tell everybody to do this?
  What if Pennsylvania has a good program, and we have some good things 
in practice, and what if we made Iowa do that? What if we told Iowa: 
You cannot do what you are doing anymore because we in Washington now 
think something works in Pennsylvania and we should make you do that. 
The Senator from Iowa, I am sure, would have objection to that. And you 
know what? He would be right in objecting.
  So I do not think that is a very serious objection to this bill. This 
bill is one that I would think Members who come from States that like 
the welfare program they have, that have popular support for it, would 
embrace it, would embrace this bill as an idea whose time has come. We 
do a lot in this bill. We reform AFDC. We require work. We have some 
illegitimacy programs, not as far as I would go, but we will have 
amendments and we will have good debates on that here on the Senate 
floor.
  It provides the flexibility that I discussed, which I think is so 
important to States and communities, to deal with it. It ends the 
entitlement to AFDC; allows States to determine who is eligible for 
those benefits. I think it is very important to do that.
  We reform the school lunch programs and nutrition programs, child 
nutrition programs. We block grant job training and day care, and we do 
it, as I think everyone will agree, with a substantial amount on child 
support enforcement, including interstate enforcement of child support 
orders, which, as the Senator from Ohio commented earlier, is 
absolutely essential if we are going to get our arms around the problem 
of over $50 billion in uncollected child support.
  Let me repeat that: $50 billion are owed mostly by fathers to support 
their children and is simply uncollectable because we do not track 
that.
  I want to move on to another area where I hope we can have agreement, 
an area of welfare that as I mentioned before is the second largest 
single welfare program in America, and that is the SSI Program.
  The SSI Program was created back in 1974. It is the Supplemental 
Security Income Program. As I said before, it is the second largest 
means-tested entitlement program, second to Medicaid. In 27 States, the 
average child SSI payment is greater than the AFDC payment for a family 
of four. So if you have a child on SSI, you get more money in 27 States 
than a family of four on AFDC. This is a big dollar program, and as you 
can see, it is growing, particularly since the late 1980's, at a 

[[Page S 11771]]
tremendous rate, close to $30 billion--in fact, as of 1994, it is over 
$30 billion this year.
  AFDC payments, as we have discussed here, in 1994 figures, are around 
$17 billion; SSI, as you can see there, almost $28 billion. Federal 
outlays in the year 2000, if we do nothing, for AFDC are projected to 
be $20 billion. That is $3 billion more than today. On the other hand, 
SSI is going to go up to about $43 billion--a much faster growing 
program, and SSI does not get a lot of the ink.
  An individual cannot receive SSI and AFDC simultaneously, but members 
of an AFDC family may receive SSI benefits. That results in a situation 
that was quoted in an article here earlier, the Rivera family of 
Boston. Eulalia Rivera has 16 children, 89 progeny, and they collect in 
benefits from the Federal Government between $750,000 and $1 million a 
year in means-tested welfare benefits. Most of that benefit, by the 
way, is not AFDC. It is SSI, supplemental security income.
  What is this program, SSI?
  Well, the program was created back in 1974, which was intended to be 
a work supplement for people who were disabled and could not work but 
did not work enough quarters to be able to qualify for Social Security 
disability. I want to differentiate in the discussion here between SSI, 
which is supplemental security income, and SSDI, which is disability 
income out of the Social Security trust fund. SSI is not out of the 
Social Security trust fund. It is out of the general fund. People do 
not have to have any work history to be able to collect.
  Who qualifies for SSI? Well, the disabled, the elderly, the blind, 
drug addicts and alcoholics, children. You might ask: Well, wait a 
minute. Why are children covered under an act that was created to 
supplement income for people who are not able to work? Children 
obviously do not earn income anyway, so why do we have a program here 
in place to support children who do not earn income?
 That is a good question to ask. I do not think there was ever a good 
answer to it at the time it was created.

  But it has evolved over to say, well, it is used because parents of 
people with disabilities cannot work, and so it indirectly supplements 
their income. Of course, you lose that point because a lot of parents 
do not work anyway, at least second parents do not work where the 
mothers or fathers do not work if you have a primary income earner.
  Nevertheless, that is in place. You can use the argument it is there 
because there are medical needs for the people who are disabled and you 
need the cash to pay for that, except for the fact that if you qualify 
for SSI, you also qualify for Medicaid, which, of course, pays your 
medical benefits. So, in a lot of cases SSI is a nice chunk of change. 
And it is, in fact, a $458-a-month Federal benefit per child.
  Now, we have reforms in this bill that address three areas of SSI: 
children on SSI; drug addicts and alcoholics; and immigrants, aliens, 
sponsored aliens in particular.
  Let me first talk, if I can, about children. It is a controversial 
area to talk about, one that a lot of folks do not like to address. 
Most people do not like the fact of targeting disabled children and 
say, ``Why do we want to cut off benefits to children who are 
disabled?'' I would suggest to you that the leader's proposal does not 
cut off benefits to children who are truly disabled. In fact, that is 
the whole point.
  If you look at what has gone on in the past few years with the number 
of children receiving SSI, in 1990 there were 300,000 children on SSI. 
That number was fairly flat from the 1970's through 1990, I mean, 
increasing gradually but not substantially. In 1990, 300,000; to 
900,000 by 1995, which is this year, and they expect another 200,000 
people on the caseloads. You will have 1.1 million kids, estimated, by 
the year 2000, 1.4 million on SSI.
  You say, ``Wait a minute. What has happened here that we have had 
this explosion of children on SSI rolls?'' There was a decision made by 
the U.S. Supreme Court in the Zebley decision, which changed the 
criteria for which children could be eligible for SSI. This is sort of 
an amazing little thing that was not well known and is becoming more 
well known. That is why you see these numbers go up. Before, you had to 
have a severe disability to be able to receive these benefits. You had 
to be mentally retarded, you know, or have cerebral palsy or some 
debilitating disease or illness or condition that would require the 
Government to support this child.
  No longer. The new criterion is called an individual functional 
assessment. And what is an individual functional assessment? They 
actually go in and talk to the child and try to figure out if their 
behavior is--this is the standard--age appropriate. So if you have age 
and appropriate behavior--who here has not?--but if you have age and 
appropriate behavior, you now qualify for $458 a month. That is true.
  So, what is happening? I am sure this will not be a surprise to a 
whole lot of people here. What teachers and pediatricians and social 
workers are saying is that SSI puts marginally disabled or nondisabled 
children on the dole for their life, hides children's real problems, 
such as abusive or neglectful parents, and results in creating a class 
of people who are at a very early age determined disabled when their 
disability is not such that they should be labeled disabled.
  Are we helping these children? Most of the people who look at this 
program say, no, we are not. We are not helping these children at all 
by labeling them as ``disabled.''
  Most of these people that have come on since the Zebley decision in 
1990, two-thirds of them, in fact, have come on because of a mental 
impairment. Learning disabilities; a learning disability qualifies you 
for $458 a month; attention deficit syndrome, $458 a month.
  Let me tell you a couple of comments from school administrators. This 
is a school administrator in New York Central Park East Secondary 
School. ``Parents whose children have minimal handicaps try to get 
their children into special education classes so they can qualify for 
SSI.''
  Here is a student at one of the schools in a New York City elementary 
school. She is acting out her tale with dolls. This was a play-acting 
thing that she was going through in the school. She described a mother 
of four who had adopted two more children. Although the new siblings 
were not working out, the mother planned to keep them anyway, the girl 
explained, because she wanted the extra money in SSI payments that they 
were bringing in. ``[The child who described this] is a special 
education student. She doesn't understand much,'' says school 
psychological aide, Beth Mahaney, ``but she understands how the system 
works.''
  Disability checks are there to help replace lost earnings. And what 
have we turned it into? Again, parents do not need this money for 
medical supplies. Attention deficit syndrome does not require medical 
supplies, and a lot of these mental conditions do not require it. And 
if they did, again, Medicaid is there to provide for it.
  This is a program that harms children. One of the ways mentioned 
earlier that it harms is that it masks abusive and neglectful parents. 
A lot of the problems--and we have a caseworker or a psychologist who 
has done a lot of work with SSI for kids come in and talk to me. She 
cannot give me any of the names of the kids because of confidentiality, 
but she has given me a list of examples of abuse, horrible abuse of 
these children. As a result of the parent's abuse, the parents get $458 
a month because their child is so messed up because of them.
  Is that not a great reward for parents who abuse their kids? They get 
a check. In fact, a Philadelphia psychiatrist, Kenneth Carroll told the 
Washington Post,

       Many of the problems these children manifest are largely 
     traceable to parental neglect or abuse. Behavior and 
     emotional problems or conduct disorders are directly 
     attributable to inadequate parenting and have often been 
     called disabilities. And the parents are receiving a cash 
     award for having achieved the problem.

  What the Packwood bill does, Dole bill does, in fact what the Gramm 
bill does--same thing--it says we are going to eliminate individual 
functional assessments. We are going to get back to giving benefits to 
children who are truly disabled and stop disabling another generation 
of Americans for all the wrong reasons at a big, big expense of 
taxpayers' dollars and of children's lives.
  The next area we are going to get into in SSI reform is expenditures 
on 

[[Page S 11772]]
drug addicts and alcoholics. Yes, believe it or not, if you are so 
addicted to drugs and alcohol that you can no longer work, you can get 
a check from the Federal Government, $458 a month in benefits because 
you are so addicted to heroin or alcohol that you can no longer work. 
These are the numbers.
  See, in dollars spent, we spent $14 million in 1985 on drug addicts 
and alcoholics. In 1990, it was $84 million. In 1994 it was $433 
million, and climbing. You might say, what is the reason for the 
dramatic increase in these numbers? There are a couple. Let me give you 
probably the biggest. This started under the Bush administration, so it 
has bipartisan blame, but it has been continued, in fact expanded, 
under the Clinton administration.
  What is this program that I talk about that is responsible for this 
dramatic growth in this program? You see the dollar growth. Let me show 
you the number of people. We were at 5,000 drug addicts and alcoholics 
in 1985 in this program, 5,000. Ten years later 120,000 people are on 
this program. Two years from now it will be almost 200,000 people on 
this program. And you can see numbers going up and up.
  You may say, what is causing this? Is alcoholism and drug addiction 
going up? No. That has not gone up dramatically. If you look at some of 
those numbers, the numbers have leveled off and, in many cases, gone 
down. So why the increase? Well, it is because of a program that was 
instituted by the Bush administration on a pilot basis, but has now 
become a program that is all over the place in the United States and 
most of the major cities already.
 It is an outreach program. You say, an outreach program? Yes, an 
outreach program. We now spend Federal dollars to go out to the 
communities, to go into the homeless shelters, to go into the clinics, 
to go into the streets and the alleys and find drug addicts and 
alcoholics so that we can give them money.

  It is working. The program is working. We are finding them, and we 
are giving them money. Now, you could say, OK, what is the next logical 
question one would ask? We are going to go out and find them and give 
them money.
  What would be the next thing you would ask? I would ask, are you 
helping these people? Is it working? Are people being helped by being 
on this program? Well, let me give you the opinion of one person who 
testified before the Aging Committee this year. In fact, he has 
testified in the past. A person, by the way, who has done a lot of work 
on this issue and whose ideas are partly reflected in this bill by 
Senator Cohen of Maine. It is Bob Cote, who runs a drug and alcohol 
halfway house in Denver, CO, says:

       Our compassion literally kills them. I know of 41 
     individuals who received SSI checks and died from the binge 
     they went on. Others just go on drinking it month after 
     month. They call the first day of the month ``Christmas 
     Day,'' because it is when the checks come. They take those 
     checks directly to the bars, and when the money is gone, they 
     are back in my shelter. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing 
     addictions.

  There is an article--a series of articles, in fact--by the Baltimore 
Sun, about this program. Not only, again, is it a fast-growing program, 
but what is the impact on the people in the program? Bob Cote will tell 
you people are dying. What will Shirley Chater say? Shirley Chater is 
the Administrator of the Social Security Administration. When she 
testified before the Ways and Means Committee last year on this subject 
and I asked her, ``In the history of the drug addicts and alcoholics 
program under SSI, how many people have you documented that have been 
cured, have received the check, gone in and got the required treatment, 
gotten off the program, stopped the checks, and have gone on to 
productive lives?'' Do you know what her answer was? ``In the 20-year 
history of the program, documented cases of recovery are zero.'' Zero 
documented cases of recovery.
  Now, does this program work? Are we helping drug addicts and 
alcoholics? Let me give you a couple of examples of people.
  This is from a Baltimore Sun article, and I ask unanimous consent 
that this article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

Addicts Squander Checks on Drugs, Alcohol--Your Cash Supports Abusers' 
                                 Habits

                  (By Jim Haner and John B. O'Donnell)

       They found Delmont Williams' body in an alley off Harlem 
     Avenue, lying under the bald branches of a withered willow 
     tree, staring up at the afternoon sky through dead eyes on 
     ``check day.''
       He had enough alcohol and heroin in his veins to intoxicate 
     three men.
       And you paid for it.
       The homeless Army veteran overdosed with money from a 
     Social Security program that doles out monthly checks to 8 
     million people who are too old or disabled to work. But 
     250,000 of them are believed to be hardcore substance abusers 
     who routinely squander the cash on drugs and alcohol.
       Beginning Jan. 27, the new Republican-led majority in 
     Congress will examine the problem in hearings on Capitol 
     Hill. Some are already vowing to give addicts the ax.
       But they will soon learn that it's easier said than done 
     because of one little-known fact: Most of the addicts and 
     alcoholics on the rolls--perhaps as many as three out of 
     four--are retarded, blind, crippled or suffer from some other 
     disability that would still entitle them to the $458 monthly 
     checks.
       And Congress has refused for two decades to provide 
     treatment for addicts in spite of a chronic shortage of even 
     the most basic rehabilitation. Fearing that any appearance of 
     coddling drug abusers would invite voter backlash, the 
     nation's lawmakers have ignored social workers and drug 
     counselors who say that intensive long-term treatment is the 
     only answer.
       ``The first reaction of right-wing conservatives will be to 
     gut the program completely,'' says Dr. Sally Satel, a Yale 
     psychiatrist. ``And the real liberal types won't want it 
     touched. But either of those courses would simply perpetuate 
     this crisis.''
       Says Pam Rodriguez, a Chicago drug counselor: ``We have 
     never seen a population like this before. For years, Social 
     Security saw its
      job as to simply write checks. Now, we're getting [people] 
     and they're ruined. We don't even know where to start.''
       Checks for the drug abusers are costing taxpayers $1.4 
     billion a year. Most are alcoholics. The vast majority are 
     men. Almost half are black. Their average age is 42. And few 
     ever kick their habits. Rather, they usually end up dead or 
     in prison within seven years of receiving their first check.
       The case of Delmont Williams is typical.
       A bearded father of two who drifted from North Carolina to 
     Baltimore, his medical records show that Social Security knew 
     he was a hard-core alcoholic when it mailed him his first 
     check in 1987.
       His liver was swollen from years of heavy drinking. His 
     heart was congested. Half his teeth were missing. And his 
     skull--bashed in years earlier in a drunken brawl--was webbed 
     with cracks like a piece of glued-together pottery. He 
     suffered from seizures and mental illnesses.
       There could be little question that he wasn't capable of 
     holding a job, or that he would squander the money Social 
     Security gave him for his fractured skull and manic 
     depression unless he got off drugs and alcohol. But the 
     agency offered him no help. Just a check.
       ``Delmont knew he was dying,'' says Curtis Mann, a drug 
     counselor at the Health Care for the Homeless free clinic on 
     Park Avenue. ``All the dealers came circling around him on 
     check day like vultures. A week later, he'd crash from 
     whatever dope he was using and feel terrible.
       ``Those were the times that he'd go looking for help. The 
     problem was that we could never find it for him before that 
     damn check came in the mail on the first of the month and the 
     whole cycle started all over again.''
       In a city with some 2,400 addicts on the disability rolls 
     and the highest per capita rate of hero-in-related emergency 
     room admissions in the country, there is not even short-term 
     treatment available
      for nine out of 10 addicts, the nonprofit Abell Foundation 
     found last year.
       And the kind of in-patient care that removes hard-core 
     addicts from their drug-infested haunts long enough to learn 
     a new way of life is not available at all in Baltimore.
       Time and again, Delmont Williams was confronted by waiting 
     lists of up to a year, then headed back out onto the street 
     to blow his aid money on blinding binges that ended in trash-
     strewn alleys, jail cells and hospitals all over the city.
       On the afternoon of June 1, police came upon his corpse in 
     a West Baltimore alley wrapped in a filthy red polo shirt. 
     Just four hours earlier, he had picked up his $446 check from 
     a small drop at the clinic and cashed it at a nearby liquor 
     store.
       Delmont Williams died homeless, stoned and alone at 49.
       ``With his history, there's no way he should have been 
     walking around with that much money in his pocket,'' says 
     Lauren Siegel, a social worker at the free clinic. ``But they 
     gave it to him anyway. Every month, no strings attached, the 
     check would come and Delmont would spend it on drugs and 
     alcohol. Until it finally killed him.''

[[Page S 11773]]

       The money came from a program known as SSI, for 
     Supplemental Security Income--a plan set up by Congress two 
     decades ago with little deliberation or debate. The idea was 
     to provide food, shelter and clothing to disabled poor 
     people.
       It is one of two such programs for the disabled run by the 
     Social Security Administration. The other is called DI, for 
     Disability Insurance. Since 1956, it has let workers who have 
     paid into Social
      Security's retirement trust fund draw benefits early if they 
     become injured, ill or addicted.
       Both programs are in trouble.


                           Contradictory law

       Envisioned as modest proposals to help a few million aged 
     and disabled Americans, SSI and DI now cost $65 billion a 
     year--fueling the national debt and sappling the fund that 
     retired Americans rely on to pay their bills.
       Both are covered by the same set of 1972 disability rules.
       Even then, thousands of recipients were known drug addicts 
     and alcoholics. But the rules placed few controls on how they 
     spent the money--except that they could not use it to buy 
     drug treatment until they first paid their rent, utilities 
     and living expenses.
       In a glaring contradiction written into the law, Congress 
     deemed that letting handicapped addicts spend their checks on 
     treatment would violate the philosophical underpinnings of 
     the aid program: to provide for the basic needs of those who 
     couldn't work.
       That decision set blind, retarded and mentally ill addicts 
     adrift in lives of despair because it effectively cut them 
     off from private clinics, where treatment is generally 
     available to anyone who can pay for it. And the prohibition 
     has remained unchanged for more than 20 years. Further, 
     tucked inside the law was one sentence that said addiction 
     alone could qualify as a disabling disorder, making it 
     possible for virtually anyone hooked on dope or booze to get 
     a monthly check even though they have no other disability.
       Before then, an addict or alcoholic had to prove that his 
     substance abuse were so severe that it had caused disabling 
     brain or liver damage, conditions that usually took decades 
     to develop.
       But under the 1972 rules, an addict has only to prove that 
     his drug abuse is bad enough to keep him from holding a job--
     opening the door for thousands of young substance abusers who 
     aren't physically disabled and who probably never would have 
     qualified for aid under the old rules.
       They are men like Ernie Hernandez.
       The 34-year-old heroin addict and father of two sits in the 
     brown grass outside the San Joaquin County drug clinic in 
     French
      Camp, Calif., a desolate farm town east of San Francisco.
       He fidgets with his beefy hands as he describes his six 
     years on SSI.
       A one-time cannery worker and farm laborer, he has no 
     apparent physical problem that would keep him from working. 
     He is lucid in conversation. And at 6 feet tall and 225 
     pounds, he's built like a weight lifter.
       ``I admit it,'' he says. ``I don't look sick.''
       But he's collecting $458 per month in SSI, which qualifies 
     him for a $200 supplemental payment from the state, bringing 
     his tax-free monthly take to $658--about the same amount that 
     the average retiree gets from Social Security after a 
     lifetime of labor.
       ``The money definitely changes you,'' he admits. ``I just 
     ain't going to risk losing that money by working at some 
     minimum-wage job. Next thing I know, I get too stoned, I lose 
     the job. Then what am I gonna do to feed my kids?''
       ``You can tell them congressmen, if they stop SSI, the 
     crime rate around here is going to go through the roof. It's 
     all a lot of us have.''
       And Ernie Hernandez knows about crime. He says he's been 
     using heroin and cocaine since he was a teen-ager, landing in 
     prison at least nine times.
       He'd like to get himself clean and back to work--if for no 
     other reason than to get his family off his back and to ``be 
     able to spend a weekend in the mountains without having to 
     come home early because I ran out of dope.''
       But he has never been able to rehabilitate himself. Even 
     when he wants it, there is little in the way of intensive 
     treatment available.
       On this sweltering day in July, he wants it in the worst 
     way.
       Jittery from a dose of black tar heroin he shot into his 
     leg the night before, he considers his options as he fingers 
     a small, gummy ``booger'' of heroin in his pocket.


                        `i'm really gonna kick'

       Cheap and plentiful, black tar has spawned a plague of 
     addiction in the cities and towns along Interstate 5 that has 
     helped make California--with at least 34,000 addicts on the 
     aid rolls--the ``Disability Capital'' of the nation.
       ``You back again, Ernesto?'' asks Floyd Brown, the chain-
     smoking assistant director of the clinic.
       ``Yes, sir,'' Ernie Hernandez replies, hoisting himself up 
     from the grass. ``I want to get on the waiting list. I'm 
     really gonna kick this time.''
       Both men know his chances of getting off heroin are nil. 
     Since he's been on SSI, he's been in and out of the clinic so 
     many times that they've both lost count.
       He is one of 6,000 heroin addicts in the valley who rotate 
     on and off the out-patient treatment program throughout the 
     year. In a region that has become a hotbed of disease, many 
     of them suffer from
      tuberculosis and AIDs. Three out of every four are getting 
     disability checks, according to a recent county survey.
       ``They'll test positive for heroin and we'll flunk them out 
     of the program,'' Mr. Brown says. ``Then they'll sign back up 
     on the waiting list and the whole thing starts all over 
     again. I can honestly say that in my 21 years in this 
     business, I have never had a disability recipient 
     successfully complete the program.''
       When Congress first decided to let addicts like Ernie 
     Hernandez get aid for merely being addicted, it ordered 
     Social Security to herd them into treatment as a condition of 
     their getting checks.
       Any addict who refused was to be cut off--except for DI 
     addicts, because Congress deemed that they had ``earned'' 
     their benefits when they were working and should be free to 
     spend them as they saw fit.
       The treatment rule was supposed to keep poor addicts on SSI 
     from simply using the money to feed their habits. But former 
     agency officials and legislative aides say they warned 
     Congress as early as 1969 that there were nowhere near enough 
     in-patient treatment slots for them. And no one expected out-
     patient treatment to work.
       But the nation's lawmakers were less interested in 
     accountability for addicts, the aides say, than they were in 
     insulating themselves against outraged taxpayers should the 
     program go wrong. Then-Sen. Russell B. Long, the legendary 
     Louisiana Democrat, was the prime mover.
       ``He told us there was no way in hell he would support 
     giving checks to dope addicts without at least making it look 
     like we were getting tough with them at the same time,'' says 
     Tom Joe, a Washington social policy analyst who helped write 
     the disability rules. ``Everybody knew that they probably 
     wouldn't be able to actually find treatment.''
       Then or now.
       Today, a minimum of 3.2 million addicts and alcoholics need 
     help, according to federal, state and private estimates. But 
     there are slots available for less than half. And at least 
     100,000 people are on waiting lists for those slots at any 
     time. For others, there are no lists.
       Consider North Carolina, a state with 6,200 addicts on the 
     federal disability rolls and few publicly funded in-patient 
     treatment slots.
       In Asheville, a small town in the pine-blanketed foothills 
     of the Great Smoky Mountains, a downtown Social Security 
     office draws scores of disabled people from the surrounding 
     countryside. Many are illiterate, hobbled by years of hard 
     labor in mines and lumber mills, and suffering from addiction 
     to rot gut wine and moonshine.
       ``We're basically telling them to get treatment when there 
     isn't a treatment facility within 200 miles of here,'' says 
     Sharon DeLong of the American Federation of Government 
     Employees, who represents local caseworkers.
       ``We try to push them to Alcoholics Anonymous or something 
     like that. But how long can they last when all they're 
     getting is a couple of hours of group therapy before they 
     head back out to sleep in the woods with a dozen other 
     alcoholics? It's utterly demoralizing.''
       Her frustration is echoed by caseworkers and drug 
     counselors from Baltimore to Seattle who say Congress and the 
     Social Security Administration have never been serious about 
     rehabilitating addicts--or in understanding how treatment 
     works.
       Counselors surveyed by The Sun say programs like the San 
     Joaquin methadone clinic and Alcoholics Anonymous that bring 
     addicts in off the street for a few weeks of detoxification 
     of a few hours of group counseling every day are the least 
     likely to succeed with hard-core substance abusers.
       ``It amounts to drive-by therapy,'' says Dr. Satel, a 
     professor of psychiatry at Yale and the University of 
     Pennsylvania who has worked with addicts for seven years. 
     ``It may work fine for the early stage addict who still has a 
     home, a family and a job. But that's not who you see on 
     disability.
       ``These people are seriously debilitated drug abusers, and 
     they need months of heavy-duty residential care that cuts 
     them off from their addict friends and their old hangouts, 
     and teaches them a new way of life.''
       And it is precisely this kind of treatment that Congress 
     has refused for 20 years to provide to the destitute 
     substance abusers on federal disability. Today, there are 
     only 68,000 federally funded in-treatment slots in the entire 
     country.
       ``It's one of the terrible ironies of the disability 
     program,'' says Dr. Satel. ``Congress tells addicts, `You 
     have to be in treatment, but we're not going to give it to 
     you--and you can't use your check to buy it on your own.''
       Under the rules set up by Congress, Social Security is 
     required to stop checks to addicts who are caught spending 
     them in a residential program.
       Adding insult to injury, counselors say, Congress ordered 
     Social Security last summer to carry out a plan to cut off 
     addicts' checks after three years. The agency says the move 
     will trigger $275 million in notification processing and
      legal costs--enough to buy residential treatment for 35,000 
     addicts.
       ``Instead, we're spending it to shove these people back out 
     onto the street in 36 months,'' says an exasperated Jack 
     Gustafson, who represents state rehabilitation directors in 
     Washington. ``We'll buy their 

[[Page S 11774]]

     drugs for them for three years, but we won't give them 
     inpatient treatment. It's insane.''
       Nor will the crackdown achieve the results that Congress 
     promised to taxpayers when it vowed to purge addicts from the 
     rolls. That's because most of them suffer from other physical 
     or mental disabilities that will still qualify them for aid.
       ``The fact is that drinking and drugging is usually just 
     part of the problem,'' says Joe Manes, a Washington mental 
     health activist. ``They usually have a complex of ailments 
     that may or may not be related to their substance abuse.''
       Willard Redpaint is a walking illustration.


                         `pints away from dead'

       Most mornings, the 42-year-old Dakota Indian can be seen 
     stumbling down Larimer Street on the graffiti-scrawled 
     industrial fringe of downtown Denver, a bottle of Wild Irish 
     Rose wine in his trembling hand and a glassy film across his 
     bloodshot eyes.
       At 10:30 on a bright, clear morning in August, he is 
     already drunk. So drunk that when he blows into a 
     Breathalyzer at a nearby homeless shelter he registers a 
     potentially lethal .42 blood alcohol level--four times the 
     amount to be considered legally intoxicated.
       ``God almighty, Willard!'' blurts Bob Cote, director of the 
     shelter. ``You're about two pints away from dead!''
       He breaks into a heated lecture, brow-beating, accusing. He 
     reminds Willard Redpaint that at least 41 men have killed 
     themselves on Larimer Street with disability aid money in the 
     past few years.
       ``You knew a lot of those guys, didn't you?'' Mr. Cote 
     demands. ``You want to end up like them?''
       ``I like my wine,'' Willard Redpaint replies sleepily. ``I 
     like to drink.''
       Reeking of urine and garbage from four nights of sleeping 
     in an alley, he says he can't remember how long he has been 
     getting disability checks. Court records show it has been at 
     least since 1985.
       But alcoholism is far from his only problem.
       Willard Redpaint is mentally retarded. And his brain is 
     damaged from a car accident that sent him hurtling through 
     the windshield of a pickup truck when he was a child. He 
     signs his name with an ``X'' because he cannot read or write.
       When he was 4, a gang of thugs strangled his father during 
     a robbery. A few years later, his mother was taken away to a 
     mental institution. By the time he was 15, he was drifting 
     the Western high country alone.
       His earliest notice in Denver is recorded in court files at 
     age 25, when police found him stumbling drunk down the center 
     of a six-lane interstate in the middle of the night. Since 
     then, he has been arrested 16 times in alcohol-related 
     incidents.
       In 1988, he beat another homeless man to death with a slab 
     of concrete over a stolen radio. Convicted of manslaughter, 
     he served three years in prison, feeding his habit with 
     homemade potato wine.
       ``It gives you a hangover in the morning,'' he says of his 
     drinking. ``And I'll end up dying. but that's the only bad 
     part.''
       Each morning, he goes to a homeless aid station where 
     social workers dole out his monthly check to him in $10 
     installments.
       ``I can buy four bottles of wine with that much,'' he says. 
     ``That's a lot of wine.''
       Left without treatment, counseling or supervision, Willard 
     Redpaint receives just enough money every day from U.S. 
     taxpayers to drink himself to the edge of death.
       And the crackdown launched by Congress last summer with 
     much election-year rhetoric will do nothing to stop him. If 
     Social Security cuts off the checks because of his 
     alcoholism, all he will have to do is reapply, citing mental 
     retardation and brain damage.
       Nor do drug counselors and social workers expect any of the 
     other measures Congress passed in August to have much effect. 
     Among the mandates were orders for Social Security to force 
     addicts into treatment programs that don't exist and to hire 
     special inspectors to make sure they don't misuse their 
     checks.
       But the agency has had inspectors in 18 states for years. 
     And they say they have been consigned to failure by a lack of 
     funding.


                           little supervision

       In California, Social Security monitored addicts so poorly 
     that it continued to send checks to 119 of them while they 
     were in prison, the state attorney general found last year. 
     And in Illinois, a Chicago firm lost track of 7,000 more 
     because Social
      Security never provided a list of their names.
       And Social Security does not expect to be able to tighten 
     supervision with the money Congress wants to spend on the 
     job. Rather, private firms will be paid roughly $600 per 
     addict to monitor their whereabouts and make sure they are 
     signed up on waiting lists until their checks run out in 36 
     months.
       ``Obviously, one long-term goal is to rehabilitate 
     people,'' says Commissioner Shirley S. Chater, the agency's 
     head. ``And the way we do that is to have these monitoring 
     agencies encourage the addict's sense of individual 
     responsibility to find treatment for himself.''
       But Social Security estimates that the majority of 
     substance abusers on disability--perhaps as many as 200,000--
     will continue to get checks and go untreated long after the 
     three-year cutoff because of loopholes in the law.
       As many as three out of five are exempt because they have 
     other disabilities. And another two out of three are 
     collecting DI checks that can't be cut off until three years 
     after they are actually accepted into a treatment program 
     because Congress decided that they ``earned'' their benefits.
       Meanwhile, new addicts continue to pour onto the rolls. 
     Social Security estimates that the number drawing checks 
     today will almost double by the turn of the century.
       ``It's insane to go on giving them cash,'' says Dr. Satel, 
     the Yale psychiatrist. ``But it also makes no sense to just 
     take that money away and plow it into some other program. 
     Congress has to wake up to the fact that we need hard-nosed 
     treatment to interrupt this cycle of addiction, crime and 
     punishment that is costing taxpayers a fortune in more ways 
     than one.''
       Estimates by the National Association of State Alcohol and 
     Drug Abuse Directors are that every dollar spent on drug 
     treatment saves $14 in police, court, emergency room and 
     prison costs.
       But so far, Congress and Social Security have been 
     unwilling to spend the money--even in the case of men like 
     Delmont Williams who desperately want treatment and will 
     surely die without it.
       ``It's not our job to solve the problems of the addict 
     population,'' says Deputy Social Security Commissioner Larry 
     Thompson. ``Our job is to write checks.''

  Mr. SANTORUM. This is about 34-year-old Ernie Hernandez. This part of 
the article says:

       The 34-year-old heroin addict and father of two sits in the 
     brown grass outside the San Joaquin County drug clinic in 
     French Camp, CA, a desolate farm town east of San Francisco.
       He fidgets with his beefy hands as he describes his 6 years 
     on SSI.
     A one-time cannery worker and farm laborer, he has no 
     apparent physical problem that would keep him from working. 
     He is lucid in conversation. And at 6 feet tall and 225 
     pounds, he's built like a weight lifter.
       ``I admit it,'' he says, ``I don't look sick.''
       But he's collecting $458 a month in SSI, which qualifies 
     him for a $200 supplemental payment from the State, bringing 
     his tax-free monthly take to $658--about the same--

  States supplement the SSI benefits, California being one, with an 
additional $200, in addition to being eligible for Medicaid, food 
stamps, and other programs.

       --about the same amount that the average retiree gets from 
     Social Security after a lifetime of labor.
       ``The money definitely changes you,'' he admits. ``I just 
     ain't going to risk losing the money by working at some 
     minimum-wage job. Next thing I know, I get too stoned, I lose 
     the job. Then what am I gonna do to feed my kids?''

  Are we helping Ernie Hernandez? Well, Ernie is one of 6,000 heroin 
addicts who rotate on and off in the outpatient treatment program 
provided in French Camp throughout the year. In a region that has 
become a hotbed of disease, many of them suffer from tuberculosis and 
AIDS. Three out of every four are getting disability checks, according 
to the recent county survey.

       ``They'll test positive for heroin and we'll flunk them out 
     of the program,'' Mr. Brown says. ``Then they'll sign back up 
     on the waiting list and the whole thing starts all over 
     again. I can honestly say that in my 21 years in this 
     business, I have never had a disability recipient 
     successfully complete the program.''

  That is Floyd Brown, director of the drug treatment center in French 
Camp, who said, ``If SSI was around 20 years ago, when I was trying to 
get straight, I would probably be dead right now.''
  Is this a program that is helping people? The answer is, obviously, 
no. We get rid of it. Under this bill, there are no checks for drug 
addicts and alcoholics anymore for this program. We are not going to 
continue to subsidize people who break the law by consuming illegal 
drugs.
  Finally, the issue of non-citizens. This gets to be a very touchy 
issue for a lot of people. I want to associate myself with the remarks 
of the Senator from Texas when he says that most non-citizens who come 
to this country--immigrants--come here with their sleeves rolled up 
ready to work, to provide for themselves, their families, and the 
opportunity to live the American dream. I stand here as a product of 
that.
  My father is an immigrant. He came here during the Depression. His 
father worked very hard in the coal mines for many, many years. It is, 
in fact, the American dream that the son of an immigrant can stand on 
the floor of the U.S. Senate, as many have before me.
  No one wants to deter people from coming to this country, no one 
wants to take away the opportunities that come with living in America, 
nor do we want to be the beacon of the world for the handout. We want 
to say to people, 

[[Page S 11775]]

if you want to bring your mother here, who is 70 years old, to come and 
live with you, and you sign a sponsorship agreement that says you will 
provide for them--which you do under current law--then you should 
provide for them, and not as many do, turn them over to the SSI 
Department or the Social Security Administration through the State, in 
some cases, turn them over so they can collect Government benefits 
because they are out there and therefore qualified for SSI.
  Here are the numbers of non-citizens. In 1982, about 125,000 non-
citizens received SSI. We were up to 700,000 as of 1993, and that 
number is growing fast.
  It is a serious problem and one that we have to address. It is a 
philosophical decision, one the House made in favor, and I am hopeful 
we will make it here, too. People who come to this country should come 
for the opportunities provided to them and not for the benefits that 
could inure to them because of welfare. So what we say is, simply, reap 
the benefits of the fastest-growing economy in the world over the past 
many years--jobs and opportunities--but not for welfare benefits.
  If you are a sponsored immigrant--let me finally explain the 
difference between other immigrants and sponsored immigrants. We are 
not talking about refugees, people who were in a war-torn country, like 
Bosnia, who come on the shores or who are fleeing the former Soviet 
Union.
  Now, those people would not be affected by the change being proposed 
here in SSI. Only people who come to this country who are sponsored to 
be here by--in almost all cases--a family member; where the family 
member signs a document saying that they will provide for this person 
if they come here, and the person signs a document that says, ``I will 
not be a charge or ward of the State'' when they come here.
  We are saying, we should enforce this agreement. If families want to 
be reunited on American soil, fine; but it should not be the role of 
the American taxpayers to be the retirement home for millions of people 
who want to bring their parents to this country to retire with them. 
That is what is going on, if you see the numbers of seniors, in the 
vast majority of these numbers. That is the problem.
  What we are suggesting is, the door is open to reunite families, but 
it should not be at the expense of the taxpayers of this country, given 
the fact that these seniors have contributed nothing and worked, in 
many cases, not at all in this country and paid nothing in taxes.
  Mr. President, I wanted to focus on the issues of SSI as, hopefully, 
issues that by and large can bring us together in this debate. I think 
they are issues that we can find consensus and agreement. I will remind 
people again that this is the second largest of all the means-tested 
entitlement programs, one that needs dramatic and sound reforms that 
have been put forward by the Finance Committee and the leadership bill 
as well as Senator Gramm's bill. I am hopeful we can work together on 
this particular area.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
continue with debate only on the pending welfare bill until 6:30 this 
evening.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Consistent with our informal arrangement to go back and 
forth between the sides, I yield now to the Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. BREAUX. I thank my colleagues who have been participating in this 
debate this afternoon.
  Let me start by commenting on the comments of the Senator from 
Pennsylvania about the SSI Program and to commend him for pointing out 
what he has, in fact, stated. The problem is severe and it is serious.
  Also, I want to point out that there is no disagreement, essentially, 
between Democrats on this side of the aisle and our Republican 
colleagues on that side of the aisle about this issue.
  President Clinton appointed our former colleague from Kansas, James 
Slattery, to a commission to study in detail this very problem that the 
Senator spoke of, the problem of some parents in some parts of the 
country utilizing SSI programs in order to qualify children who, in the 
minds of both experts, should really not be considered to be disabled 
and entitled to benefits. They made some strong recommendations about 
how those determinations should be made in order to protect children 
who are legitimately disabled, who have mental disabilities, who have 
physical disabilities, who truly qualify as disabled.
  There is no argument that those children deserve our care and those 
children deserve our help and assistance. Those recommendations, I 
think, are in the Republican proposal. They are in the Democratic 
proposal.
  The question of SSI benefits, cash benefits, going to people who 
somehow get qualified because of being a drug addict or an alcoholic, 
there is no basic disagreement in the provisions of both bills. The 
Dole bill and the Democratic alternative clearly says that a person 
will not be able to be eligible for cash benefits because they are a 
drug addict or because they are an alcoholic.
  That is not to say that they should not get medical attention. Drug 
addicts and alcoholics and drug abusers who do not get medical 
attention, I suggest, become a much more serious problem to society if 
they are not treated, if they do not receive medical help and medical 
care. That is different from giving them cash benefits.
  Our legislation clearly says that they would be entitled, if they 
qualify, for Medicaid assistance but not for any cash benefits. I think 
in those areas we are in substantial agreement.
  Let me talk about the basic proposals that are pending before the 
Senate dealing with so-called welfare reform. I do not think there is a 
Senator in this body, whether he or she be a Republican Member or a 
Democratic Member, who would argue that welfare as we know it and see 
it and experience it today is not broken and does not need fixing. 
There is no disagreement on that.
  There is no one on this side of the aisle who says that we should, in 
fact, not make any changes, that everything is working perfectly, when, 
in fact, we all know that welfare does not work very well for those who 
are on it, nor does it work very well for those who are paying for it. 
There is no disagreement with regard to that proposition.
  We all agree that major changes should be made. How we go about 
bringing those changes are where some may have differences, which is 
the subject of legitimate debate on this floor.
  I am concerned that it seems that the argument portrayed by some is 
an argument that suggests who should be responsible for solving the 
problem. Some would suggest that, well, the States ought to solve the 
problem because the Federal Government has not done a very good job. 
Some may suggest, although I have not heard that, that, no, the Federal 
Government should do it, because we know best.
  In truth, the argument and the real question that I think should be 
before this body is not whether the Federal Government should do it or 
whether the State government should do it, but rather, how do we both, 
working together in a true partnership, solve this problem.
  I suggest that this problem is too big for the Federal Government to 
solve it by ourselves. We cannot know what is best for every State in 
the Union here in Washington. I do not know what works best for States 
I may never have been to or where I have not spoken to welfare 
recipients or welfare administrators in that particular State. Being 
here in Washington does not give me some type of intelligence that is 
better or smarter than anybody on a State level.
  I reject the argument, if anyone would make it, that welfare reform 
should be a Washington program. I also reject the argument that the 
States should do it by themselves, because I think the States do not 
necessarily have the financial ability to do it by themselves. And if 
you are going to have major Federal contributions to the programs, 
there should also be substantial standards on how those national 
Federal dollars, in fact, will be spent.
  Therefore, I argue and I suggest that the answer is not the Federal 
Government versus the State government but truly a partnership between 
the Federal officials and the State officials in trying to craft a 
program that puts the best of both together and comes up with a program 
that truly solves the 

[[Page S 11776]]

problem and ends welfare as we know it today.
  Now, for 60 years we have had a partnership. For 60 years the Federal 
Government has put up some of the money, and for 60 years we required 
the States to put up some of the money. That has always been the 
partnership arrangement that has existed.
  It is like that in every other program, Mr. President, if you think 
about it. In the highway program, the Federal Government puts up some 
of the money, the States put up some; on water projects, the Federal 
Government puts up some of the money, the States put up some of the 
money.
  There is a reason for that. It binds and ties the concept that it is 
a partnership. It reinforces the fact that both of us have to work 
together to solve the problem.
  What disturbs me in the Dole proposal, in the Packwood proposal, is 
that it breaks that partnership for the first time in 60 years,
 because for the first time it says the Federal Government will put up 
the money and the States, if they want, have to put up nothing. That is 
not a partnership. That, if anything, is the Federal Government being 
responsible for all of it.

  The Republican plan eliminates the requirement that the States 
contribute. How many times have we heard proposals from the Republican 
side of the aisle that have talked about copayments in health care 
being extremely important because copayments from a person who has 
health insurance establishes in that person's mind that he is 
contributing or she is contributing to the solution, and therefore they 
are going to be more careful in how they use their health insurance? 
Without any kind of a copayment requirement, they do not have a 
connection with the cost, they do not have a connection with the 
solution to the health care problem.
  Therefore, time after time I have heard Republican colleagues argue 
about the necessity of even increasing copayments. But for the first 
time--for the first time in my years in the Congress, in this body and 
in the other body, we have a proposal from our Republican colleagues 
that eliminates the requirement that the States put up their share to 
solve problems that their citizens and their partners are experiencing 
by being on welfare assistance. We have called it the maintenance of a 
State effort, a State maintenance of effort to get the States to do 
something so they can see that this problem is not one that can be 
solved without this partnership. I think that is wrong.
  Poorer States have always had to put up less. My State of Louisiana 
is probably one of the lowest, but we contribute, I think it is, about 
28 percent. The Federal Government puts up 72 percent, my State of 
Louisiana contributes 28 percent for the welfare program in my State. 
In some States the State has to put up as much as 50 percent, where it 
is dollar for dollar; the Federal Government puts up a dollar, the 
State puts up a dollar. But there has always been this partnership 
requirement.
  The States who are helping to solve the problem also have to be 
responsible for contributing financially to that solution. We all know 
it is a lot easier to spend somebody else's money. I am concerned this 
will happen if the Republican proposal is adopted. If all of a sudden 
they see a pot of gold coming down from Washington and we say, ``Here, 
spend it pretty much like you like, and, by the way, you do not have to 
put up anything; you can use the money that you used to put up for 
anything else you want because the Federal Government will continue to 
send the same amount,'' States, for instance, could take the 50 percent 
or the 28 percent they had to put up in the past and say, ``All right, 
if the Federal Government tells us we are not going to have to do it 
anymore, I am going to take that money I was putting up for welfare and 
I am going to use it to get maybe more highway funds. I will use the 28 
percent of the dollars that I raise on the State level to do the 
welfare program, and I am going to use it instead to match to get more 
highway funds, to build more bridges and more roads. Let the Federal 
Government take up the entire tab for welfare in my particular State.''
  An even worse example than that, what about a State that says, ``All 
right, if I do not have any maintenance of effort, if I do not have to 
do anything, if this partnership is terminated, I will take the money 
that I used to put into the welfare program and, guess what, I am going 
to use it to build a new building so the Governor will have a new set 
of offices. Or, better yet, I am going to use it to give raises to all 
the State employees. Let me use the money for that.'' Is that really 
solving the welfare problem as we know it? Of course not.
  Some States may even think like this. Listen to this example. The 
Food Stamp Program is 100 percent federally funded. When a person's 
income goes lower and lower, they qualify for more and more food stamp 
assistance because their income is less. So if a State decides not to 
make a contribution to the welfare program, reducing the amount of 
money an individual gets, the Federal Government is going to have to 
increase the amount of food stamps that the same family gets.
  Is this what our Republican colleagues want? Is this what they are 
trying to establish in their proposal? Are they seeking to make the 
Federal Government spend more money than we are spending now on the 
Federal Food Stamp Program?
  I suggest that is not a good idea at all. Therefore, what I am 
arguing for is a partnership between the Federal Government and the 
States. Give the States a great deal more flexibility, absolutely. I am 
not suggesting that not be done. I support that. Give them the maximum 
degree of flexibility that they can.
  But I, as a taxpayer in Louisiana, want to know that when my citizens 
are taxed for this program that people in New York and people in Oregon 
and people in all the other 49 States are going to spend my tax dollars 
with some degree of national responsibility, some degree of national 
goals and guidelines in partnership with the other States that will be 
receiving money from my State as well.
  One of our colleagues, I think it was Senator Faircloth from North 
Carolina, when he testified before our Finance Committee, made a 
wonderful point which I agree with.
  ``If you want to block grant the Federal welfare program to the 
States and just give it to them with no strings attached,'' he said, 
``you ought to cut any Federal assistance going to that State. If there 
is not a national interest in how we spend welfare dollars on this 
program, if there is not a Federal interest, then there is no Federal 
need or responsibility for the Federal Government contributing any 
money to the State.''
  Let me repeat that, because this concept came from Senator Faircloth 
from North Carolina, and I agree with him. I am not disagreeing at all. 
I am complimenting him for pointing out something I agree with. Let me 
say one more time what he said.
  He said, ``If you are going to give it all to the States with no 
strings attached, there is no reason why the Federal Government should 
give them anything. Let the State raise the money if they want to spend 
it any way they want.''
  And I agree with that. But I think there is a national responsibility 
when we start paying the tab to make sure that there are some national 
parameters and national goals and national standards that are going to 
be followed, with a maximum degree of flexibility to the States to 
devise the program that best fits the needs of their State. It should 
not be written in Washington, but it should be a program that has 
national goals and national standards. That is what we are talking 
about.
  Therefore, my point No. 1 is that: If we have a Federal program, we 
ought to have a partnership, a State maintenance-of-effort requirement 
that the States also contribute something to be partners in this 
program and not just to be receivers. A partnership is absolutely, 
incredibly important.
  I think we ought to work together. Let me tell my colleagues 
something. We cannot pass this by ourselves. But you cannot pass it by 
yourselves. You do not have the votes to pass it without us, and we do 
not have the votes to pass it without you.
  So we have a decision to make as to whether we are going to cooperate 
and work on this together--or make political points and get nothing 
done. That is an option. But if that option is exercised, I suggest the 
real losers are the 

[[Page S 11777]]
American public and the American taxpayer. We will make short-term 
political points for short-term political gain. But in the long run, 
the real losers will be the taxpayers and those who are on welfare who 
will not have had an opportunity to have a program passed in a 
bipartisan fashion.
  One of the things about the Republican plan, the second thing that 
gives me a great deal of concern, is the question of mandating to the 
States that they double the number of people who are on welfare that 
are working. That sounds great. But talk is cheap. Talk is cheap. You 
cannot just say we are going to tell the States that they are going to 
double the number of people in their State who are now on welfare who 
are going to be working without helping them create those jobs and pay 
for those programs that create those jobs.
  Recently we passed an unfunded mandate bill. Everybody on both sides 
of the aisle, really, talked about how wonderful it was. No longer are 
we going to tell the States to do something and not help them pay for 
doing it. This legislation, when it tells the States that they have to 
double the number of jobs for people that are on welfare in their State 
boundaries under this program and does not give them financial 
assistance in order to do it, is the largest and biggest unfunded 
mandate that this Congress will have ever passed. We will be saying to 
all of the States that Washington is going to tell you to put people to 
work.
 But we are not going to help you provide the money to put those people 
to work. Does anybody think that is somehow going to happen with magic? 
There has not been a Governor that has come before this Congress 
through our committee systems that has ever said that goal can be 
accomplished without additional financial help from the Government here 
in Washington or from a greatly increased tax burden on their citizens.

  Without the partnership that I talked about, the Republican plan is 
the largest and biggest unfunded mandate to have ever been adopted, if 
it were to be adopted, in the history of this Congress. The ink is not 
dry on the legislation outlawing unfunded mandates, and this bill hits 
the floor with the largest unfunded mandate I think in the history of 
this Congress.
  You cannot require States to double the number of people working and 
do it by freezing the amount of money they get at the 1994 level. That 
is what this bill does, and that is the second reason why I think it 
needs to be changed and modified.
  The third reason that I have great concern with their proposal is 
what it does with child care and what it does for children. Children 
cannot be punished for the mistakes of their parents. There are 
innocent victims in this country who did not ask to be born into this 
world but are here in many cases because of mistakes of their parents 
and perhaps, yes, they were unwanted children. But they are here. They 
are alive and they are humans, and they deserve the attention of this 
Congress and this Government.
  I have heard our colleague from Texas, Senator Gramm, talk about, 
``Well, you know, it is just time that the people who have been riding 
in the wagon get out of the wagon and start helping to pull the 
wagon.'' And that is great rhetoric and everybody has a little mental 
picture of what that must look like. But his proposal takes innocent 
children and babies and throws them out of the wagon into the street 
because it is clear that without help a 3-year-old or a 12-year-old or 
a 4-year-old little boy or little girl cannot pull the wagon. They are 
not old enough. They are not strong enough. They are not smart enough. 
And this is America which has a concern about innocent children.
  The legislation to say that when a child is born to a teenager who is 
not married and we are somehow going to deny that child the benefits of 
what that child needs to survive is un-American, it is unfair, and by 
and large it is totally absolutely unworkable. That proposal punishes a 
child who did not ask to be born. That proposal is misdirected in that 
it does not do what we should be trying to do, and that is to punish 
the parent.
  Our bill, on the other hand, says the parent has to live at home; if 
there is no home--which is the case in many cases--that teenage mother 
has to live with adults in adult supervision, that teenage child who 
had that baby has to go to school, has to be in a work program, and 
there are requirements against the parent but not requirements against 
the child.
  The Dole bill treats it a little differently. The leader's bill says, 
``Well, the State can have an option to do that if they want.'' That is 
back to the national responsibility, the national partnership, that we 
should be concerned about if we are raising the money for the program.
  I cannot believe that our colleagues would agree that it is perfectly 
acceptable to have the benefits cut off to the child. That is one 
option that I think States should not be able to do when they in fact 
are using tax dollars that have been raised throughout this country.
  Having said what I have said, I also want to repeat that we are not 
going to be able to pass a welfare reform bill unless we work together.
  I will say here today that I think that can be done. The differences 
that I have outlined I think, while substantial, are not that 
complicated to fix. I think the requirement that States have to put up 
their share, a maintenance of effort by the States, can be fixed--and 
should be fixed--came close with an amendment that I offered in the 
Finance Committee of fixing it. We still can fix it. The work 
requirements requiring people to work and helping the States to pay for 
that work can be fixed.
  Finally, I think treating the child, who is an innocent victim, 
fairly also can and must be fixed.
  There are some other things that need to be addressed. The SSI that I 
mentioned I think we are very, very close, and almost substantial 
agreement with what needs to be done in that particular area.
  So, Mr. President, my colleagues, I look forward to engaging our 
Republican colleagues in debate. I hope that our ``Work First'' 
legislation, which has been put together with a number of our 
colleagues working very, very hard, drawing on the experience of our 
distinguished ranking member of this committee, the Senator from New 
York, Senator Moynihan, who has probably forgotten more about this 
issue than most of us know. We have drawn on his experience and his 
knowledge and his legislation that he has put forth in the past on this 
effort, and we are delighted to have him and proud to have him managing 
this bill. I know that it is going to be a better product because of 
his involvement.
  But now is the time for us to be involved together in an effort that 
is going to affect every single American for a generation to come. I 
hope we can do it. I am confident we can.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
continue with debate only with the pending welfare bill until 7:30 this 
evening.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to make 
some comments on the question of welfare reform. We have awaited this 
discussion for months, weeks. We are finally confronting the issue of 
welfare. And there is much agreement, and there is much disagreement.
  My colleague on the other side of the aisle just said that one of the 
reforms we have will put children in the street. Mr. President, the 
reason we are concerned about reform is that children's lives are being 
ruined. The real tragedy of welfare is not the tragedy to be found in 
numbers. It is not the tragedy to be found in how much this system 
costs. It is not a tragedy about the share of the Nation's output that 
welfare occupies or how much money the various competing welfare reform 
bills would save. This debate properly understood is not a debate about 
numbers. It is a debate about lives. It is a debate about the lives of 
individuals that have been trapped in a web of a ``Washington-knows-
best,'' ``one-size-fits-all'' welfare system. The lives of people are 
welfare's casualties.
  Mr. President, in the first 8 months of this Congress we have 
accomplished an extraordinary amount of work. We passed a balanced 
budget resolution which signals to the public the right 

[[Page S 11778]]
message about integrity and responsibility. We have advanced the 
telecommunications bill that brings our laws in line with the 
technologically advanced times, a bill that makes laws apply to 
Congress itself, and previously we have been enacting legislation to 
which we did not adhere, and many other achievements.
  As important as these achievements are, I believe they will be 
seriously compromised if we fail fundamentally to dismantle and replace 
the current Washington based ``one-size-fits-all" welfare system with 
direction from this capital to the State capitals, and foot dragging on 
the part of this city in terms of allowing innovation and creativity at 
the State level.
  Our efforts and our ability to replace welfare will be viewed by the 
American people and by history as a measure of our commitment to the 
American people--a bright line in our public life between cheap talk 
and real action. It is easy to call for a revolution, more difficult to 
achieve the purposes of a revolution. But that is the difference 
between administration and leadership. People want real leadership 
here.
  Across the world, our enemy for nearly 50 years no longer exists. It 
is not a result of someone conquering the Soviet Union from without, 
but it was a defeat from forces within. What communism did to the 
Soviet Union is not unlike what welfare threatens to do to America. It 
stifled her spirit, it lulled her into dependence, and it compromised 
her greatness.
  Our danger today is not to recognize the threat. Our danger is to 
believe that doing anything so long as we do something is sufficient. 
If that occurs, we will have failed, the welfare state will have 
survived, our pathologies will metastasize, and an America which now 
stands on the brink of chaos will tomorrow be thrown into the abyss of 
mayhem.
  Today, we have a welfare system that was designed with the best of 
intentions but, frankly, the poor have received the worst of all 
worlds--a world of despair, where a future is not seen, a world of no 
opportunity where advancement is not conceivable, a world of no family 
for support, to nurture or care.
  A couple years ago, it was my privilege to chair a task force on 
America's urban families. I was shocked, going into America's cities 
and meeting with children who did not know who their fathers were, but 
really appalled to know they lived in neighborhoods where no child knew 
his or her father and some of these children had no acquaintances who 
knew their fathers. It is a world with which many of us are unfamiliar 
but a world in which success is very difficult and a world from which 
escape is almost impossible. It is a world in which people are raised 
by welfare, fed through food stamps, but starved of nurture and 
deprived of hope. Results of this kind of system are frequently tragic.
  During the past week, I have come to this floor to talk about some of 
the stories, to talk about and highlight this human side of the welfare 
system. Some of the cases are of children who have been killed or 
neglected, some are testimonies of people trapped in the system, but 
each one of the stories was real. They have all been documented. They 
all appeared in the mainstream press. They are tragically true. They 
are all stories which we should remember as we debate the welfare 
reform issue.
  For 30 years and more, we have been told that all we need to do is 
spend more money and we would be able to solve the problems we face. We 
have been told that Government had all the answers, that Washington 
knew best how to help.
  Good intentions have carried us to a sorry state. Today, all the 
evidence points to the fallacy of that argument. Today, there are more 
people in poverty than ever before. There are more children being 
abused and killed. There is less hope, less opportunity. We must 
reverse the consequences of the actions we have taken.
  Today, again, I wish to make this point and by way of doing it I just 
relate another one of the case histories of a child who paid the full 
price of our welfare system. His name was Jason Allen, Jr. He was only 
2 months old at the time of his death in September 1994, just last 
year. Born in Bakersfield, CA, to an unwed mother who had two other 
children besides Jason, her main source of income was $723 a month she 
received from the Federal Government through AFDC. Also, she had a drug 
problem, and the Federal funds helped her maintain that, too. Ms. 
Henderson was addicted to a methamphetamine drug known on the street as 
``crank.'' In fact, by the time she became pregnant with Jason, it is 
suspected she was using a significant portion of her welfare check just 
to finance the drug addiction. Unfortunately for Jason, his mother used 
crank regularly throughout and after the duration of her pregnancy.
  As the New York Times reported in September of last year, 3 days 
after Jason was born, he had to be hospitalized for withdrawal from the 
methamphetamines his mother had taken. As Jason recovered, his mother 
continued to use crank--later claiming that the high she got from 
taking the drug helped her cope with the demands of motherhood. But 
when Jason was released from the hospital and his mother began to feed 
her son naturally, Jason took a turn for the worse. As the New York 
Times wrote last year, ``Ms. Henderson awoke [one day] to find her son 
lying still in his crib not breathing, his lips blue. Throughout the 
subsequent criminal prosecution of Ms. Henderson, prosecutors 
maintained that 2-month-old Jason died on his way to the hospital from 
his mother's drug-laced milk.''
  Mr. President, there is no happy ending to this story. Ms. Henderson 
is currently serving a 6-year sentence on a felony conviction of child 
endangerment after the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 on the more serious 
charge of second-degree murder.
  The life of little Jason Allen, however, is tragically lost forever. 
In truth, he did not have a chance. His is the face against which our 
reform must be judged. The reform that we pass need not be perfect, but 
it must be substantially better than the system we have today, a system 
that finds us with individuals trapped on welfare and a system which 
projects the abuse from one generation to the next.
  The Senator from Pennsylvania spoke just a short time ago in this 
Chamber, and he talked about the intergenerational problems of welfare, 
and he cited a case that was recounted in the Boston Globe of a 
generation on welfare that began just a generation or two ago and the 
family now consumes almost $1 million annually. It is an 
intergenerational problem, a web of dependency that has entrapped 
almost all of those who are a part of the family. We must make sure 
that we change this record of failure.
  For 30 years and more, the Federal Government has determined it would 
tolerate a welfare system that allows this kind of dependency, that 
says you do not have to work to earn benefits, and it takes no action 
to discourage irresponsibility. We have, as a matter of fact, said if 
you are irresponsible, we will continue to write the check. As a matter 
of fact, we have said worse than that. We have said the more 
irresponsible you are, the bigger the check we will write.
  That has really found us in the validation of irresponsibility and 
impairing survival values which are essential to the well-being of 
Americans.
  So when this debate concludes on welfare, be it Wednesday or Thursday 
or Friday of this week, or whenever it concludes, what will be the 
earmarks of what we have done that can assure us we have been 
successful in pursuing genuine reform? Let me suggest to you a five-
part test.
  First, I believe we must end welfare as an entitlement, the notion 
that people should receive Federal welfare benefits even if they do not 
work, even if they abuse their children, even if they are more and more 
irresponsible. It is a pernicious notion. It is a notion which 
reinforces the wrong values, that underscores the wrong commitments. 
Real reform would end welfare's entitlement status. It will free people 
from the shackles of governmental dependence, and it would allow them 
to embrace the responsibility and opportunity that are the hallmarks of 
America's survival values. It is essential that we reinforce a system 
of responsibility, and an entitlement does not have regard for 
responsibility. 

[[Page S 11779]]

  Second, we must radically limit Washington's intermeddling, 
micromanaging, counterproductive control of welfare. I spent 
8 years in the Governor's office of the State of Missouri--the great 
privilege of my life--to shape the future, along with the citizens of 
the State of Missouri. A number of things we sought to do in welfare 
reform, ways in which we sought to change the system, an effort to 
upgrade what we were doing to make it more efficient, to make it more 
productive, to make it consistent with our values, having to come for 
each change hat in hand to Washington, DC, and being badgered, being 
argued out of one position or being slowed down in our progress, saying 
we will not tolerate real change; we will only allow you to do a pilot 
program. We will only allow it if it begins this way or that.
 It really curtailed our ability to serve the people that had elected 
us and to chart a new course that would break the web of welfare 
dependency instead of reinforcing it with unbreakable strands of 
reliance on the Federal Government.

  Even now I look this year to the department of social services in 
Jefferson City and they talked about Medicaid and how inefficient 
Medicaid is as a result of this intrusive control from Washington. The 
Medicaid director who works under my successor--and my successor is not 
a Republican, as am I--but the Medicaid director said that if the 
Federal control were out of the system so that they did not have to 
comply with this micromanaging, counterproductive demand for the way 
things are done, that for the same amount of money that they are caring 
for 600,000 people on Medicaid, they could care for 900,000 people on 
Medicaid.
  The productivity penalty, the service penalty of this invasive, 
micromanaging control system of Washington, the Washington-knows-best, 
the one-size-fits-all system, is cheating 300,000 Missourians out of 
medical care, according to the director of social services in the State 
of Missouri.
  It seems to me if we are really interested in helping people, the 
bureaucratic tax against the poor, of robbing them of that resource by 
having this control mechanism and by being unyielding and being stingy 
about what we want to do in terms of allowing for States to exercise 
responsibility and develop procedures whereby real efficiency could be 
managed--that is counterproductive. We do not want to do that. We 
should put it behind us.
  For 30 years our welfare system has been premised on the belief that 
Washington knows best. Well, there is a fallacy that is underlying the 
belief that anyone could know best. Because it suggests that there is a 
best solution for the entirety of America.
  Mr. President, I suggest to you that there is not any single best 
solution for America. I suggest to you that a variety of communities 
could come up with different solutions that might be best in the 
instance of their community and that we need to move forward in an 
evolution of thought on this matter. I think it was understandable that 
at one time it might have been thought by well-meaning individuals that 
Washington did know best, that we simply ought to figure out what was 
best, and then make the rest of a less-enlightened country comply with 
our demand. I think the effort to do that has met with substantial 
failure.
  So the next step in the evolution was to think that, well, maybe we 
should have had pilot projects that we could put around the country and 
we could learn what would be best. Then we would take the information 
from the pilot projects, having learned what was best for everyone, and 
we could impose it on them because they were less enlightened than we 
would be, having had the benefit of all those wonderful pilot projects 
and studies that were mandated every time a State wanted to have a 
waiver or do something creative.
  But the truth of the matter is that there is not a single strategy, a 
single pilot project that would work in Baton Rouge or Bangor. The 
truth of the matter is, there are various strategies that will work in 
various ways around the country. For us to presume even from our 
immense data base and from all the information and statistics that 
might be available in Washington, DC, that we could know best what 
would be appropriate for everyone, is an assumption that is false. It 
also ignores the fundamental component of our human existence; and that 
is, that we tend to believe whenever we are trying to work things best, 
we participate in the formulation of the strategy.
  Why do we not adopt a system which allows States to be invested in 
the formulation of strategy, allows them to participate in developing 
the ideas that they then put into practice, and we get the additional 
vitality and additional energy in the system that comes from people 
participating and shaping the strategy which they will employ to solve 
their own problems? Really that is what freedom is all about.
  One of the reasons freedoms flourish and societies of freedom 
flourish is they tap that special energy. We need to tap it in this 
system and the welfare debate.
  This afternoon, the Senator from Iowa stood on the floor here and did 
an interesting job of talking about how Iowa had a special program that 
encouraged even small businesses from individuals who were on welfare, 
and how the number of people on welfare that went into business had, I 
think, doubled in just the last couple years. I think that is a 
marvelous thing to think that we could have a system that would allow a 
State to do that.
  Iowa went through a pretty substantial process of asking the Federal 
Government for waivers. Why should we ask States to come here and beg 
for waivers? Let us provide a system where States have the authority to 
move right into these creative responses.
  But to say, if it worked in Iowa, it has to be done in Indiana or 
that it has to be done in Idaho or that we must mandate that system in 
New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas, or Georgia, is to again make a 
bad decision. It is a decision of imposition. It is not a decision of 
innovation.
  We need to allow the States to be involved in rejecting this idea 
that one size fits all. It is like sending off to the catalog and 
saying, ``The average weight of a person in my family is 120 pounds. 
Send us five pairs of pajamas to fit a 120-pound person.'' Well, I tell 
you what, there is no 120-pound person in my family. All five of us 
would be ill-fitted with the pajamas. But the one-size-fits-all 
mentality makes you think you can take the one-size-fits-all type 
mentality and make it fit everywhere. We need to provide for tailoring. 
Let us let these States make investment in their future, and let us let 
them tap that creative energy that comes from participating in the 
design process of those investments.
  I think it is a real chance for us to succeed. Some on the other side 
of the aisle have complained, well, the States will not be asked to 
contribute as much as they previously contributed. The truth of the 
matter is, we should hope that the States are so successful they will 
not have to contribute all that they previously contributed.
  The idea, the mandate from the people of America, is not that we 
should maintain welfare or not that we should grow welfare. The idea is 
that we should employ innovative and creative strategies to reduce the 
caseload.
  The idea of copayments was brought up. As if there is some analogy 
between a block grant which is limited in terms of its expenditure and 
an insurance policy which allows people to consume health care 
regardless of the amount expended. Nothing can be further from the 
truth than to think that a limited block grant and an unlimited capless 
health care policy are the same things. As long as there is a limit in 
a block grant, States will have an incentive to work within that limit, 
copayments are unnecessary in that sort of setting.
  So I really believe that we must end entitlements. There are benefits 
to doing so. But, second, in addition to ending entitlements, we have 
got to free States to work effectively within their communities to 
develop these plans which will help us get the job done and get it done 
well.
  Bureaucracy has levied a sort of tax on the poor, taking up money and 
preventing it from reaching those in need. Every time there is a need 
for a report in Washington, someone has to generate it in the State. So 
the report reader has a drain on the system and the report generator 
has a drain on the system.
  Who should be the real judges of welfare and welfare reform? Who do 
we 

[[Page S 11780]]
really want to satisfy? Is this a game in which we satisfy the U.S. 
Senate or the U.S. Congress? Is this some sort of exercise in which we 
should seek to satisfy the bureaucracy in Washington, DC? I do not 
think so. I think we really are trying to satisfy the people of 
America. I do not see any reason why we cannot trust them to make 
judgments about the success or failure of what is being done in their 
own jurisdictions where they are up close, where they see on a daily 
basis, where they walk past and work with individuals who are involved 
with the system. No one will know better than the group of individuals 
we call citizens.
  Incidentally, if we are looking for the boss in America, if we are 
looking for the final authority, let us go no further than to read the 
words, ``We the people.'' If we want to design a welfare system and we 
want to set up a jury to judge the welfare system as to whether it 
works or fails, let us not try to set up a jury so that somehow the 
system has to come to Washington to please the Congress or the system 
has to come to Washington to please the bureaucracy.
  Let us put a system in place that gives the people the opportunity to 
shape the future in which they live. That is the definition of freedom. 
And let us put them in as judges and arbiters of whether what they are 
doing is successful. The beauty of a free society is not just that you 
make decisions in the first instance; the beauty of it is if those 
decisions do not suit you or are not working effectively, you change 
the decision.
  Let us give the States the opportunity to make decisions which will 
result in the kinds of graphs that Senator Harkin brought in for his 
State and proudly presented. Let us give States that opportunity, and 
let us not make them come here to act as if what a State is supposed to 
live for is to get the approbation and ``attaboy'' and a pat on the 
head from the Congress or the bureaucracy. But let us be consistent 
with the real purpose of Government and allow these jurisdictions to do 
what is important and what can succeed in their jurisdiction, so that 
the people can assess whether or not this has been done well. And if it 
has been done effectively, they will stick with it; if not, they will 
reject it and build a different bridge.
  First, reject entitlements. We cannot go on with entitlements that do 
not have a relation to behavior and activity. Second, empower States 
through block grants. Third, we must encourage a national debate on an 
epidemic of illegitimacy in America. Illegitimacy has robbed so many in 
this culture of a future, and, indeed, unless it is reduced--not just 
contained, but reduced--it will rob this country of our future.
  Most of the problems surrounding welfare can be tied, in one form or 
another, I believe, to this epidemic. It is at the root of the family's 
breakdown in the inner city. It is tied to everything from educational 
noncompletion and failure to crime. It is the lifeline of dependency.
  Now, much progress has been made. I think our society and our country 
has made a lot of progress in the last couple of years in just learning 
that we can talk about it and that we can confront the issue and we can 
say about it what we believe to be the truth about it. There were 
people who did so long ago, some in this Chamber, and for whose voice I 
am grateful. But it is only in the last couple of years that our 
country has decided that it is fair to talk about this as a threat to 
our future, and talk about it we ought.
  Much progress has been made, but we must encourage further debate and 
discussion, and we must expect States and communities to take positions 
and to deploy strategies which they believe will help curtail this 
epidemic. I was encouraged to see that even here in Washington, DC, 
which is not thought to be necessarily mainstream, but the city council 
of Washington, DC, has voted to deny certain benefits to individuals 
who continue with illegitimacies while they are on welfare. There is a 
recognition at all points on the political spectrum about the threat 
that illegitimacy makes to the future of this country, and, frankly, 
the disastrous impact it has on individuals.
  The fourth test, I believe, is a test that should reflect our 
understanding that laws alone will probably not solve this problem. As 
much as it is gratifying, rewarding, makes one feel good to stand in 
the Chamber and debate policy and to think about shaping the tomorrows 
in which we live, I believe that we have come to an understanding from 
our experience that Government probably will not alone solve this 
problem. Government will not alone solve this problem at the State 
level. Government alone certainly has not solved this problem at the 
Federal level. We need to develop a strategy which will elevate 
substantially the participation in this challenge by nongovernmental 
institutions, by charitable organizations, by religious institutions. 
We not only need to have these institutions involved, but we need to 
have the average citizen become involved. I believe that there is a 
different character in governmental programs than there is in the 
programs of nongovernmental and charitable institutions. When 
volunteers get involved with individuals, they have a way of saying, 
``I love you,'' by the fact that they are giving their lives to 
participate beneficially in the lives of others. That is not the 
message of government. It cannot be the message of government. It will 
never succeed as well, because it is not.
  It is time for us to emphasize the opportunity and to encourage the 
participation by the private sector, and I think we ought to do that by 
recognizing individuals not only who give money to charities but who 
also give their time and energy. We need, for the citizens of America, 
to come together, some on welfare, some not on welfare, but the 
interchange and interface between them can provide the connection which 
directs some over the bridge from dependence to independence. The 
people who are working jobs, we need to find ways for them to be in 
contact with people who need jobs, and that is part of the solution.
  Lastly, I think we must realize that it is unlikely that we will have 
unanimity when we decide on a form. We cannot try to be all things to 
all people. We have seen that when we do, we are detrimental to all. It 
is as unlikely to be all things to all people as it is to have one size 
that fits all. People are different, and there may be disagreements 
here, but these differences and genuine efforts--a resolution of these 
differences deserve our best efforts. We must work together in order to 
achieve a positive result.
  Well, today, we have a lot of work to do if we are going to get a 
bill that meets these tests, a bill that does more than just tinker at 
the margins and embrace the label of reform. We cannot allow just 
tinkering at the margins and labeling to satisfy us.
  We must call the Nation to greatness. We must signal that ideas and 
principles are more powerful than Washington's politics and pragmatism. 
We must refuse to compromise our struggle without ever trying to retake 
our city on the hill. We cannot settle for being rhetorically 
impressive while simultaneously being substantively lacking. Half 
measures which tinker with the margins are predestined to fail.
  And most importantly, let us never forget that they fail the very 
people that they need to help the most, and they are the people who 
find themselves in the system. They are the population which is more 
pervasively trapped now on welfare than there has been for quite some 
time.
  We can do better than we are doing. We can do better, and we must. 
And so we will work hard to achieve real reform that, in fact, 
eliminates entitlements and empowers the States with the opportunity 
for real creativity, that in fact makes it possible for reform which 
will shape the way in which we live, that will challenge the epidemic 
of illegitimacy and reduce this pathology which shakes at the very 
foundation the potential of the success of our Nation.
  With that in mind, I think we have an opportunity to be of great 
service. I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I am actually anxious to engage in 
this debate on reform of our welfare system. I was reminded earlier 
today of a time several years ago. I was in 

[[Page S 11781]]
Paris, and I was walking down the street with a friend. We were talking 
about issues having to do with poverty, and at some point in the 
conversation, my European friend made a remark the following remark: 
``You Americans are so Calvinist in your viewpoints.''
  First I was a little mystified and then angry that he would make that 
kind of a statement. He went on to say there was a tendency in America 
to blame the poor for their problems. I pointed out to him that was not 
the truth; indeed, on the contrary, this country has had a welfare 
system in place since the 1930's.
  There are obviously problems that we need to work out, but the issue 
of addressing poverty is bigger than any welfare program. It is a 
larger issue than that. Welfare is just a response to poverty. It is 
not the cause of poverty. It is not the cure to poverty. It is a 
response to poverty.
  The Senate is now engaged in a debate regarding the future of welfare 
and how we address the system that we have put together to respond to 
poverty. I submit, Mr. President, however, that the American sentiment 
regarding this issue, both in the larger sense as well as the specific 
one, is still a very noble one.
  We start with the notion that everybody who can work should work. But 
that those who cannot work should be provided subsistence so they can 
live in some dignity. At the heart of that sentiment, Mr. President, 
and at the heart of the sentiment--I know Mr. Moynihan for years has 
tried with the Family Support Act and the like, which has not been 
given the chance to work in the way the potential would allow it to 
work--at the heart of the sentiment we should provide subsistence so 
people who cannot work can live with dignity. I think is a very logical 
analysis.
  That is, how we will deal with poverty in our midst. How we deal with 
poverty in our midst does, in fact, is not just a local issue. It is 
not an issue of States rights versus the Government in Washington. It 
is how we define our national character, the quality of life in our 
country as a whole. Frankly, it reflects the health and vitality of our 
economy as a whole.
  Most people, I believe, instinctively recognize that this is not just 
an ``us versus them,'' the taxpayers against the dirty welfare cheats, 
in spite of the efforts, frankly, of some, for political or otherwise, 
reasons to blame the poor for the anxieties of working people. The fact 
is that all taxpayers have a vested interest in seeing a system that 
works and that reflects the best of American values.
  Mr. President, I believe among those values, an important value, is 
the recognition that children are our future. We recognize the 
importance of providing the children with subsistence with dignity, and 
support and hope for a better tomorrow.
  No 5-year-old is responsible for being born poor. So at the outset, I 
believe that the measure of any proposal for Welfare reform: How does 
it treat children? Does it provide a means for their parents to care 
for them? Does it provide a safety net for those parents who are 
unwilling or unable to care for them?
  Mr. President, some 22 percent of American children today live in 
poverty. That is 15 million children, one in five of our children--of 
our children--live in poverty. Our child poverty rate is two times that 
of Canada and Australia. It is four times that of France, Germany, the 
Netherlands, and Sweden. Nine million of those fifteen million children 
are currently the object of public assistance or AFDC; what we are 
talking about is welfare. Nine million of those children.
  So the fact of the matter caring for children should really be the 
subject of all of the words flowing around this Chamber--two-thirds of 
those on welfare are children. We must never let go of that fact.
  Many of those children are in female-headed households. In fact, 90 
percent of the AFDC children live in families headed by just a mother. 
Mr. President, 53 percent of the families in poverty are single female-
headed households.
  Senator Moynihan has spoken authoritatively about the phenomena we 
are facing. Quite frankly, as he points out, nobody quite knows why 
that is the case, and nobody quite knows what we should do about it.
  The point is that I believe a second objective that should command 
our attention is providing for an environment, a climate, for family 
creation and family maintenance as an anecdote or response to our 
objective of resolving and alleviating child poverty.
  That is to say, the welfare of the child is not just a woman's 
problem, it is a parent's problem. It is a male and a female problem. 
It is a mom and dad problem. It is not simply a problem of ``the war 
against illegitimacy'' in the abstract. It is a real problem with a 
real face.
  The fact is, Mr. President, when both parents are in a household, the 
likelihood that a child will be in poverty is diminished. That has been 
demonstrated time and time again.
  However, I think as we all know and without speaking to it, by 
perverse operation of practice over time, frankly, in all too many 
instances, the men are too often seen as an impediment to providing for 
the welfare of that child. That is something, clearly, that we have to 
face.
  What we have now, though, in the context of this debate is the 
beginning of a debate of historic implications, one which I submit will 
shed more light, hopefully, than heat on this issue. That has been the 
subject of conjecture and stereotypes and myths which do not help the 
debate very much.
  I submit, Mr. President, that S. 1120, the Work Opportunity Act, the 
Dole bill, does not in my opinion address the reforms that we need to 
have in ways that are reasonably calculated to combat child poverty. I 
want to tell Members why.
  First, it maintains that child poverty is a local and not a national 
problem or an issue. Federalism, seems to be how this debate is being 
characterized. The fact is, that by handing over the problem to the 
States, by way of block grants, while it gives the States flexibility, 
which is a good thing, the fact is it gives the States so much 
flexibility as to be formless in terms of our national interests. It 
shifts the costs of addressing the problem to the States. It caps the 
Federal assistance at 1994 levels, and that is one of the reasons why, 
frankly, we are going to continue to hear bickering over the allocation 
formula.
  The high-growth States worry they will lose money. High child poverty 
States are afraid they will lose money, stuck with a formula developed 
at a time when there was a national commitment to help resolve child 
poverty.
  In the absence of a national commitment with regard to child poverty, 
what we will have, Mr. President, is a race to the bottom among the 
various States to see who can come up with the most punitive measures, 
who can save and pennypinch the most, the welfare of the children 
notwithstanding.
  I raised the question in the Finance Committee during markup of the 
committee bill--What about the children in other States? I live in 
Illinois. What if I look up and discover in some State a Governor has 
decided on a plan that leaves children homeless and hungry? That a 
situation arises like Brazil. The answer that I got back was if that 
happens, we will just have to come back in a couple of years and fix 
it.
  Mr. President, I do not think that is the right response. The fact 
that the system needs to be fixed and there needs to be reform should 
not mean that we just give up, that we just say the Federal Government, 
the National Government, our people, Americans across this country, 
have no interest in the welfare of a child who happens to live across 
an artificial border of a State. That is what this bill does.
  It says that people who live in Illinois have nothing to say at all 
about the welfare of children in New York, or the welfare of children 
in Iowa, or the welfare of children anywhere else in this Nation.
  I believe that turning our backs on a national commitment to children 
is an error of the gravest proportion and one that we should not allow 
to happen.
  The second issue, Mr. President, that I think may be defective in 
this legislation is that it does not provide a safety net for children. 
The fact is that the kids will be punished for the conduct of their 
parents.
  Ask yourself the question, ``What if''--what if the parents are so 
irresponsible, or alternatively so unlucky that they do not jump the 
proper hoops 

[[Page S 11782]]
that get created by the States. We have already said in this bill the 
States can decide what they want to do, so if the States say you have 
to tap dance three times with one foot tied behind your back, 
theoretically there is nothing on the national level we can do about 
it. Assume for a moment some child's parents do not meet the rules, do 
not make the cut, and get thrown off. What happens to the children in 
that situation?
  What if a child's parents are teenagers? Does that mean that child 
then starves because their parent is underage? The fact is, Mr. 
President, it is one thing to tell single mothers that they should not 
have a child, and it is quite another to tell that child that their 
mother should not have had them.
 And that is what this bill calls on us to do. The children are left 
with no safety net whatsoever. Whether you want to use the hot-button 
phrase of calling it an entitlement--we are not talking about an 
entitlement to States. We are not talking about an entitlement to 
parents, for that matter. What about the children? Are they not 
entitled to a guarantee from all of us, all Americans, that they will 
not be left to starve, that they will not be left homeless, that they 
will not be left to such grinding poverty that any hope of a future is 
extinguished when they are yet 5, and 4, and 3, and 2 years old? I do 
not think so, Mr. President.

  Third, and I think this is another significant flaw in this 
legislation, clearly the bottom-line issue for parents is that they 
should support their own children. I cannot imagine anybody who would 
argue with that proposition. A person who brings a child into this 
world should take care of that child.
  But to do so, since we are talking about poor people here, to do so 
they have to work. The reality there, of course, is people can only 
work when there are jobs to be had. Frankly, the absence of any job 
creation is one of the dirty little secrets of S. 1120. The Field of 
Dreams, I call it. It is legislation that says, ``If you kick them off 
the rolls, they will find jobs.'' Mr. President, I believe that is an 
assumption that has less relation to reality than most of the fictions 
we hear around here.
  What jobs, I ask you? In some communities, even communities in my own 
State--and I am sorry to say that--we have areas of the State in which 
there is 1 percent private employment, 1 percent. If you can imagine 1 
percent private employment anywhere, that is not a recession, that is 
not a depression, that is economic meltdown in those areas--whole 
communities in which our economy does not work.
  I heard one of my colleagues talking a moment ago about the breakdown 
of the family in the inner city. Frankly, if I hear that one more time 
I think I am going to get sick on this Senate floor. The fact of the 
matter is, it is not a matter of breaking down the families in the 
inner cities. The inner cities still have strong families, as least as 
strong as they can manage under circumstances where there are no jobs, 
under circumstances where men who want to work cannot work and the only 
employment is the drug trade. Let us make honest statements on this 
floor about what is going on in America as we address what Americans 
can do to rise to the occasion, to fix this problem.
  Fourth, Mr. President, I think this debate--we know there will be 
amendments and alternatives. But that gets to another point I would 
like to make, and that is I certainly hope that part of the 
contribution that this debate makes, the debate here on the Senate 
floor, is that we will begin to dispel some of the myths about welfare. 
The face of welfare in this country, unfortunately, is that of a black 
woman with several children by different fathers who stays on welfare 
because she is just too lazy to go to work.
  Mr. President, that is not the truth and it never has been. The 
statistics--I know everybody here has staff to go and pull up numbers-- 
the statistics do not bear that perception out. That is not reality. 
Frankly, to use the examples--and I am sure we can all find them--of 
the welfare cheat, is not the real story. There are always examples. We 
can find somebody to be an example. I heard Members on the floor 
talking about, yes, and here is a case of so-and-so-and-so and she had 
these many babies and she got welfare and she is addicted to welfare, 
et cetera.
  To throw those kinds of inflammatory statements out here on this 
floor is the equivalent of saying that every mother of two children, is 
going to be like Susan Smith and run them into the river and drown 
them. It is an illogical analogy, it is a false analogy, it is an 
analogy which I believe distorts the important nature of this debate.
  Let us strip this debate of the myths. Let us dispel the stereotypes 
and the preconceptions, and let us have a debate in honest terms, about 
real numbers and about real people. Let us address this debate in a way 
that says that we want to provide a safety net, if you will, for 
children; that we want to treat fairly with the States in the 
development of this system; that we are not going to just turn over to 
the States what has been called the grand-daddy of all unfunded 
mandates. Because, frankly, I think it can be said with pretty much 
certainty under this bill, most States will probably have to increase 
State and local taxes to deal with the issue of poverty in their midst.
  What you will have is another set of burdens foisted on local 
governments that they will not be able to pay for and they will not be 
able to handle. In any event, that will shift the burden from being one 
that is shared by all of us to one that is shared just by a few. 
Frankly, it will put additional pressures on already fragile 
communities.
  I believe we need to help communities to create gainful employment 
for poor people; for poor parents, to help them to break the cycle of 
dependency. We have the wherewithal to do that. We are a rich nation. 
We have a $7 trillion annual economy. The budget of this United States, 
the Federal budget that we make decisions on here in this Chamber, is 
$1.2 trillion annually. We have the means to help people to work, to do 
for themselves, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and to 
provide for their children. But it is not in this legislation. It is 
not in this bill. And, frankly, it is the dirty secret of this entire 
debate. ``We are going to kick them off, and when we kick them off they 
are going to find jobs, but we do not know where they are going to find 
them. But if it is broken and the children start dying in the streets, 
we are going to come back in a couple years and fix it.''
  That is not the response the American people expect from us regarding 
this very serious problem. To do so, I think we will have to put 
aside--and I want to associate myself with the remarks of the Senator 
from Louisiana a few minutes ago--we are going to have to put aside 
partisanship and phony inflammatory rhetoric and try to address this 
critical issue in the spirit that, as Americans, we are indeed all in 
this together.
  We are not a mean-spirited people. We want to do the right thing. We 
want to be able to provide for our children in a way that gives them 
hope. We want to give parents hope and to encourage families and to 
encourage personal responsibility.
  But, Mr. President, S. 1120 does not do any of those things, and for 
that reason I believe it should not pass.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWINE). The Senator from Iowa is 
recognized.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, this unanimous-consent request has been 
cleared on both sides.
  I ask unanimous-consent that the Senate remain in status quo with 
respect to the pending welfare bill until 8 o'clock this evening.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, before coming to the Senate I spent 45 
years in the private sector, meeting a payroll as a businessman and a 
farmer. Every year I watched as the Congress went into session and 
adjourned, leaving it more difficult for working taxpayers to make ends 
meet because of the out-of-control Government spending programs that 
have put our country on the path to fiscal disaster.
  Of all the spending programs implemented by the Federal Government, 
none has been a bigger failure than 

[[Page S 11783]]
those programs collectively known as welfare. President Johnson's ``war 
on poverty'' was launched with good intentions, but it has been a 
miserable failure. And in many ways, it has made the plight of the poor 
worse instead of better. The current welfare system has become a 
national disaster.
  The problem is not a lack of spending. Welfare spending has cost 
taxpayers $5.4 trillion since 1965 when the war on poverty began. 
Currently, the Federal Government runs approximately 76 means-tested 
welfare programs at a cost, in 1994, of $350 billion. This amount is 
projected to reach $538 billion by 1999, if current trends continue.
  A simple, commonsense principle has gotten our Nation and the poor 
into the present fix. That is, you get more of what you pay for. And 
for the past 30 years, the Federal Government has subsidized and thus 
promoted self-destructive behavior like illegitimacy and family 
disintegration. Almost one in three American children is born out of 
wedlock. In some communities the out-of-wedlock birth rate is almost 80 
percent.
  What is needed is a dramatic change; a reversal of the trends of the 
last 30 years, and not another failed Federal Government program, like 
the Family Support Act of 1988, which perpetuates the problem of 
welfare dependency, and created 95,000 welfare bureaucrats; that is, 
State and Federal.
  I know from first-hand experience in the private sector that if you 
have a problem with your business you have to fix it immediately.
  If you tinker around the edges and do not address the problem you 
will be out of business. Unfortunately, far too few of my colleagues 
have had the benefit of that sort of business experience. For many here 
in the Senate, there is no problem that can not be fixed with a future 
Federal spending program, or a continuing resolution for a future 
appropriation for another program.
  Mr. President, these people may mean well and they may think that 
they are being humane, but the way to solve a problem is to address the 
root cause. And the root cause of the tragedy of welfare dependency is 
illegitimacy, the rise in out-of-wedlock births. Only by seeking to 
curb the rise in out-of-wedlock births can we possibly hope to reform 
welfare.
  That is why I have consistently urged the leadership, including 
Senators Dole and Packwood, to include provisions in this bill to take 
away the current cash incentives for teenage mothers to have children 
out of wedlock. Only by taking away the perverse cash incentive to have 
children out of wedlock can we hope to slow the increase in out-of-
wedlock births, and ultimately end welfare dependency.
  Senator Packwood made it clear in a meeting with me and other 
Senators that he would not include in his bill any provisions to curb 
the rise in out-of-wedlock births because he was opposed in principle 
to anything that would infringe on a woman's reproductive rights.
  Mr. President, I do not know of anyone who wants to infringe on a 
woman's reproductive rights to have as many children as she pleases, 
but as I said in that meeting, the working taxpayers of this country 
should not have to pay for them.
  It is unfair for the working taxpayers of this country, and I mean 
people who drive a truck for 14 hours a day, wait tables all night, or 
make beds all day; it is unfair to ask these people to send their hard-
earned tax dollars to support the reckless irresponsibility of a 
teenage mother who has children out of wedlock, and continues to have 
them.
  If you really want to see the working taxpayers of this country mad, 
just stand in line at the grocery store and watch the reaction of 
working people.
 I mean people that work, people that work in chicken dressing plants, 
people who run sewing machines, and leave 35, or 40 percent of their 
paycheck with the checkout counter in the grocery store and see men who 
obviously have not struck a lick and they know have not struck a lick 
in years, walk out with a $100 cart of expensive groceries paid for 
with their tax dollars.
  Mr. President, middle-class American families who want to have 
children have to plan, prepare, and save money because they understand 
the serious responsibility involved in bringing children into the 
world.
  But welfare recipients do not prepare or save money before having 
children because they know they will get money from the Federal 
Government, and that the taxpayers of the country will take care of 
their children.
  They do not take responsibility because they do not have to. We will.
  And what is even worse is the same middle class families who are 
saving money and working two jobs in anticipation of having children 
are seeing their own tax dollars go to support the irresponsible 
behavior of welfare recipients having children out of wedlock. That is 
wrong any way you look at it and it must stop.
  Individual States can gladly raise their own tax dollars and 
subsidize this irresponsible behavior if they so choose, but those of 
us in the Congress have a responsibility to all the taxpayers in this 
country, and I can not believe that the American people think that we 
should subsidize the very cause of welfare dependency, illegitimacy, by 
paying teenage mothers to have children out of wedlock.
  There are some who argue that federalism would be infringed if the 
Federal Government does not continue to subsidize out-of-wedlock births 
with direct cash payments to unmarried teenage mothers. However, that 
is not the case. States would still have the freedom to subsidize out-
of-wedlock births if they want; the only restraint is that they can't 
use Federal tax dollars. Let the taxpayers of the individual States 
decide if they want their hard-earned money going to subsidize this 
behavior.
  Let the State legislatures say to the people within that State we are 
going to tax you to continue to subsidize out-of-wedlock births.
  Mr. President, welfare should no longer be a one-way handout which 
destroys the desire of able-bodied people to work. Real reform would 
transform welfare into a system of mutual responsibility in which 
welfare recipients who can work would be required to contribute 
something back to society in return for assistance given. We need 
workforce, not welfare.
  There is no substitute for the discipline and responsibility that 
work instills in people, particularly young people who have lacked 
attention from their parents or have never seen their parents work. 
Real work means you do not get your benefits unless you work, this is 
called pay for performance work. If you do not do the work, you do not 
get paid.
  In the private sector, in business, if you do not work, you do not 
get paid--why should welfare recipients be treated differently?
  Mr. President, one of the worst aspects of the welfare system is its 
destructive effect on the family. Our welfare system tells a young 
woman, in effect, that she can collect over $15,000 per year in 
benefits as long as she does not work or marry an employed male. Under 
such conditions, it makes more sense to remain unmarried. Welfare has 
transformed the low-income working husband from a necessary breadwinner 
into a financial handicap.
  When the Great Society antipoverty programs were instituted in 1965, 
the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States was 7 percent. 
Thirty years later, the rate has jumped to 30 percent. As I said 
earlier, you get more of what you pay for. At this rate of growth, the 
out-of-wedlock birth rate is projected to reach 50 percent by the year 
2015, a prospect that President Clinton correctly pointed to with 
alarm, although he offers no plan to prevent this looming disaster, 
which threatens the very existence of our country.
  The breakdown of the family contributes to a number of other social 
problems. Children raised in a single parent home are six times more 
likely to be poor than those raised by two parents. They are twice as 
likely to commit crimes and to end up in jail. Girls raised in a single 
parent home are 164 percent more likely to become teenage mothers 
themselves. That is why we have two and three generations on welfare 
living in the same household.
  Mr. President, the Senate should follow the lead of the House of 
Representatives and deny unmarried mothers under 18 years of age direct 
cash benefits for children born out of wedlock. Only by denying this 
current cash incentive can we alter the self-destructive behavior of 
those trapped in the vicious cycle of welfare dependency.

[[Page S 11784]]

  I especially want to thank my friend, Congressman Jim Talent, for his 
strong leadership on this issue and the rest of the leadership in the 
House of Representatives for having the courage to directly confront 
illegitimacy by including provisions in the House welfare reform bill 
to end the cash incentive for teenage mothers to have children out of 
wedlock.
  Here in the Senate I wish to thank my friend Phil Gramm for his 
strong leadership and willingness to stand firm in helping to stop the 
tragedy of illegitimacy, and it is a tragedy.
  We all recognize the need to reverse the corrupting incentives in our 
current welfare system. Welfare recipients must work for their benefits 
and must not have children they cannot afford. This is the foundation 
on which real welfare reform must rest.
  As the Senate now takes up welfare reform, we must be willing to make 
the kinds of tough decisions necessary to reduce illegitimacy and 
promote work or we will condemn yet another generation to the crippling 
effects of welfare dependency. The state of our welfare system demands 
that we take immediate action because if trends continue as they are, 
our situation, especially regarding crime and illegitimacy, will get 
dramatically worse before it gets better.
  That is why I have grave reservations about the bill in the Chamber 
as it is now written. Senator Dole has himself said that real welfare 
reform requires more than tinkering around the edges, and I 
wholeheartedly agree. But the Packwood bill will do nothing to address 
the root cause of welfare dependency, the growing rate of out-of-
wedlock births.
  Real welfare reform demands more than mere tinkering with the status 
quo. It requires a whole new approach, and that is what we need.
  By simply giving States the option to deny cash benefits to women who 
have children out of wedlock, the Packwood bill does nothing more than 
reinforce the status quo, the status quo that has given us a 30-percent 
illegitimacy rate. It is time to change it. In business, people do not 
get paid for work they do not do. They are paid for work they perform 
and perform well. Under the Packwood bill, welfare beneficiaries who 
refuse to work in return for their benefits will now have them reduced 
on a pro rata basis. If you only work 1 day a month, then you only get 
1 day's pay. I applaud this change in the bill. It is a dramatic 
improvement, and I was delighted when Senator Dole came to the floor 
this morning to amend the bill so that this would be the case. Without 
such pay for performance standards, welfare work requirements are 
virtually meaningless and a national joke.
  Mr. President, it is my intention to amend this bill and try to make 
it live up to its name of welfare reform. I plan to offer a series of 
amendments to address the root cause of welfare dependence--
illegitimacy. I hope my colleagues will support my efforts to stop this 
national tragedy that is fueling the fire of welfare dependency.
  Mr. President, the American people clearly want welfare reform. I 
hope the Senate will have the courage and the fortitude to attack the 
welfare problem at its source. If not, then the Senate will repeat the 
mistakes of the past and produce yet another failed big Government 
program that results in a Rose Garden ceremony where politicians can 
pat themselves on the back and take credit for something they failed to 
do.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant 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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