[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 136 (Tuesday, September 5, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S12624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ON FAMILIES AND VALUES

   Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the economic leaders in 
this Nation, with whom I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, but 
for whom I have always had great respect is Herbert Stein.
  Herb Stein is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise 
Institute, and recently had an article in the Brookings Institution 
publication titled, ``On Families and Values.''
  His comments puncture some of our balloons and bring us back to 
reality in a very practical, wholesome way.
  I ask that his comments be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

                         On Families and Values

                           (By Herbert Stein)

       O, Family Values, what wonders are performed in your name! 
     In your name some political leaders propose to give a tax 
     credit of $500 per child to every income-tax-paying unit 
     except the very richest. I use the expression ``income-tax-
     paying unit'' because no particular family relationship is 
     required. There may be a couple, married or unmarried, or 
     there may be a single tax-payer, male or female, and the 
     children may have a biological relationship to both adults, 
     to one, or to neither. At the same time, also in the name of 
     family values, it is proposed to reduce federal benefits to 
     mother-children units if the mother is young and poor.
       We do not have a family problem in America, or, at least, 
     that is not one of our major problems. We have a children 
     problem. Too many of our children are growing up uncivilized. 
     The family deserves attention today mainly because it is the 
     best institution for civilizing children. We shouldn't get 
     too sentimental about that, however. Through most of history 
     the family that reared children was not our idealized Poppy-
     Mommy-Kiddies group but a much more inclusive relationship. 
     The first family was the scene of a fratricide. The most 
     famous families in literature, the Montagues and Capulets, 
     were obsessed with fighting each other, with fatal 
     consequences for their children. Long before Freud we knew 
     that the family could be a nest of vipers.
       Despite its blemishes, perhaps exaggerated in literature 
     because they are exceptional, the family is the best 
     institution we know for rearing children. It is the best 
     because it is most likely to be governed by certain values--
     love, responsibility, voluntary commitment to the welfare of 
     others, including those least able to fend for themselves, 
     who are, of course, the children. That is what family 
     values are.
       In the rearing of children there is no satisfactory 
     substitute for the well-functioning family. We should try to 
     strengthen such families by private example, public policy, 
     and in any other way we can. But even families that function 
     well need supplementation by other institutions. Some 
     families do not function well, for economic or psychological 
     reasons, and they need even more assistance. In modern 
     societies it is recognized that other institutions have a 
     responsibility and capacity to contribute to the raising of 
     children. These institutions include government, whose wide-
     ranging functions, from education to preventing child abuse, 
     are generally accepted.
       Moreover, there are really no such things as ``family 
     values.'' What we call family values are simply human values 
     that also exist and are desired in relationships outside the 
     family although they are probably less dominant there.
       Our need now is to bring what institutions, resources, and 
     values we can to bear on the problem of our children. From 
     that standpoint the current trend of policy seems perverse. 
     The ``child credit'' has little to do with the welfare of 
     children. Very few of the children in the tax-paying-units 
     that would receive the credit are part of the children 
     problem in America, or if they are it is not because the 
     after-tax incomes in the units are too small. Little of the 
     income that would be provided would go to the benefit of 
     children. Presumably the additional income would be used for 
     purposes that the taxpayer had previously thought were of 
     lowest priority. Any need of a child that a taxpayer with 
     an income of, say, $60,000 would meet only upon receipt of 
     a tax credit of $500 could not be a very important need.
       Neither is it reasonable to think that reducing government 
     cash and food benefits to poor children who are themselves 
     the children of poor child-mothers will help to civilize our 
     children, although it may reduce somewhat the number of them 
     born in the future. More care, nurturing, counselling, and 
     education will be needed, in the home, in a foster-home, in a 
     school, perhaps even in an orphanage. The drive to cut costs 
     in the name of family values provides none of that.
       When I say that ``our'' children need to be civilized, I do 
     not refer to my biological children and grandchildren, or 
     yours either, dear reader. I refer to America's children. 
     When the bomb exploded in Oklahoma City we all went and 
     prayed for the children. We did not say that they were only 
     their parents' children or Oklahoma's children. They were 
     America's children.
       The children growing up in wretched families, in unsafe 
     schools, and in vicious streets are also ``our'' children. A 
     decent respect for family values calls for more concern with 
     them and more commitment to them than is shown by most of 
     those who now wave the flag of family values.

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