[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 137 (Wednesday, September 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12680-S12686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the pending business.
  The bill 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:
       (1) Dole further modified amendment No. 2280, of a 
     perfecting nature.
       (2) Daschle amendment No. 2282 (to amendment No. 2280), in 
     the nature of a substitute.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise to correct a statement which I 
made on the floor in the course of our previous 2 days of debate, the 
beginning of debate, on this legislation. I rise to not only correct my 
statement but to offer an apology to the Senate if I have misled 
anyone, which I certainly did not intend, nor did anyone.
  On that occasion, I offered a chart, as you see here, indicating the 
proportion of children who received aid to families with dependent 
children in 1992.
  This data was prepared for us at the Department of Health and Human 
Services, Mr. Wendell Primus is responsible there, and mistakes were 
made. He found those mistakes and called them to our attention.
  In the meantime, the Washington Times had written a very fine 
editorial pointing to this data, saying, ``My God, if there is ever 
evidence this system is failing, it will be found in these tables.'' 
These bar charts are easily translated into tables. Then we had to 
inform the Washington Times that the numbers were scrambled. At one 
point, it was no more than a simple typing error in a computer 
printout.
  But we now have the correct numbers, and I would like to introduce 
them to the Senate at this time, as against the data I presented on 
August 8. The new figures are the corrected numbers for 1993.
  The data are the estimated proportion of children receiving AFDC, 
that is aid to families with dependent children, title IV of the Social 
Security Act, in 1993, which is our last count. As you can see, Mr. 
President, if you were to recall the numbers originally, the city of 
Los Angeles was recorded as having almost two-thirds of its children on 
welfare at one point or over the course of a year. That involved a 
mistake between the city and the county, not something I am sure 
happens frequently. Los Angeles drops to a point where I can almost 
say, Mr. President, that in 1993 only 38 percent of the children in Los 
Angeles were on AFDC at some point or other in the year.
  Think what it means to say ``only'' 38 percent, which is to say quite 
literally, by Federal regulation--and my friend, the distinguished 
chairman, will be talking about some of those regulations. I see he has 
some stacked on his desk. I am reminded, those are historic desks. If 
they were to collapse under the load of Federal regulation, the 
historical society would have something to say about that.
  But the idea under AFDC regulations, there are not too many 
requirements of the AFDC Program. One is a limit on assets, and the 
limit on assets is $1,000; $1,000 for households, which is to say these 
are households that are paupers and have to stay paupers as a condition 
of staying alive. If you said only 38 percent of the children in our 
city were paupers during the course of the year, 20 years ago the 
public would say, ``What?''
  In Detroit, it is 67 percent. Those figures were adjusted. We found 
that Los Angeles went down. New York went up; 39 percent of all 
children at one point of the year. New York is our largest city with 
about 7.5 million persons. We have at any given time rather more than a 
million persons on welfare, which is AFDC plus home relief, numbers not 
known in the depths of the Great Depression. During the Great 
Depression, in 1937, when you probably had about as much as 30 percent 
unemployment, there were half a million persons receiving home relief 
in New York City. Today, in the aftermath of 50 years of economic 
growth, we look up and there are more than a million. And 39 percent of 
our children are on AFDC at one point or another in the course of the 
year.
  In Philadelphia, it is 57 percent. In San Diego, it is 30 percent. 
The San Diego figures and the Los Angeles figures are close in that 
range. Texas has, generally speaking, a low rate--San Antonio, 20 
percent, and Houston, 22 percent. There is a certain uniformity there. 
The city of Phoenix, AZ, has as prosperous an appearance as any city on 
Earth. It grows, I have been told, by a square mile a day. The southern 
Arizona project brings in water. Barry Goldwater provides a welcome and 
people cannot wait to move out there. There are green lawns where I 
think there should not be green lawns. That is desert. But that is 
another matter. In Phoenix, 18 percent of the children are paupers at 
one point during the year.
  These numbers can be elaborated. To what exact purpose, I would be 
hesitant to say. But we do know that Senator Daschle's legislation, as 
well as Senator Dole's and Senator Packwood's, does address this 
question of putting children on supplemental security income as a mode 
of welfare benefits.
  If you combine AFDC with SSI in 1993, you get yet higher rates. You 
get 67 percent for Detroit. You see that it goes from 54 percent AFDC 
when you add SSI. It is a large number. I think it is the case that the 
number of children receiving SSI has grown by about 400 percent in the 
last decade. This is not because there are 400 percent more children 
disabled. We have had administrative interpretations of statutes which 
increase the number of children in this category. Philadelphia gets 59 
percent; San Diego, 30 percent; Los Angeles, 38 percent; Baltimore, 56 
percent; New York, 40 percent. And so it goes.
  These are horrendous numbers, and they ask for--they demand--some 
level of interpretation. The Washington Times, in a perfectly fair-
minded editorial--to my mind, a fair-minded editorial--had commented on 
these numbers that are overstated in the case of Los Angeles and 
understated in the case of New York. It had this in its editorial, 
``Welfare Shock.''
  I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, that this be printed in the 
Record at this point, without the table.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Times, Sept. 1, 1995]

                             Welfare Shock

       Having spent the better part of the past four decades 
     analyzing the statistical fallout of the welfare and 
     illegitimacy crises enveloping our great cities, Sen. Daniel 
     Patrick Moynihan never has needed hyperbole to describe the 
     dreadful consequences of failed social policies. Perhaps that 
     is because the New York Democrat possesses the uncanny 
     ability to develop or cite pithy statistics that shock even 
     the most jaded welfare analyst, case-worker, senatorial 
     colleague or reporter.
       Several weeks ago, Sen. Moynihan, appearing on one of the 
     ubiquitous Sunday morning interview shows, shocked his 
     questioners (and, undoubtedly, his television audience) by 
     revealing that nearly two-thirds of the children residing in 
     Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city, lived in 
     families relying on the basic welfare program, Aid to 
     Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). To illustrate that 
     Los Angeles was not unique, he observed that nearly four of 
     every five (!) Detroit children received AFDC benefits.
       The accompanying chart details the extent to which 
     residents in the 10 largest U.S. cities have become dependent 
     on AFDC--and the government. After about three decades of 
     fighting the War on Poverty, during which time more than $5.4 
     trillion (in constant 1993 dollars) has been expended, 
     perhaps no single statistic offers more proof of the war's 
     unmitigated failure than the fact that federal and state 
     governments provide the financial 

[[Page S 12681]]
     support of 38 percent of all children living in the country's 10 
     largest cities.
       How does one begin to address such a horrendous problem? 
     for all the talk among Democrats, particularly President 
     Clinton, about the need for increased spending for education 
     to help underwrite welfare reform, it's worth recalling that 
     real (inflation-adjusted) spending for elementary and 
     secondary education has dramatically escalated since the 
     federal government declared war on poverty. Indeed, some of 
     the highest per pupil expenditures occur in the largest 
     cities. Unfortunately, as spending increased, test scores 
     plummeted.
       In a more serious tone, Mr. Moynihan approvingly cited the 
     1966 report on the Equality of Educational Opportunity (the 
     Coleman Report), which ``determined that after a point there 
     is precious little association between school resources and 
     school achievement. The resources that matter are those the 
     student brings to the school, including community traditions 
     that value education. Or don't.''
       Sen. Moynihan has offered his own welfare-reform plan, 
     which, unlike any Republican plan in the House and Senate, 
     would retain AFDC's entitlement status without placing any 
     time restrictions on recipients. Despite the underwhelming 
     success of federal job-training and job-placement programs, 
     his plan places great emphasis on more of the same. Attacking 
     the Republicans' proposals to cancel welfare's entitlement 
     status and enforce time restrictions, Sen. Moynihan frets 
     that ``we don't know enough'' to design programs that attempt 
     to influence the behavior of poor people.
       Take another look at the figures in the chart provided by 
     the senator. They represent a small fraction of the 
     statistical indictment against the failed welfare policies of 
     the liberal welfare state. Tinkering around the edges of such 
     failure without seeking to change the behavior that three 
     decades of the War on Poverty have produced, will surely not 
     solve any of the many social problems that accompany 
     dependency on the scale depicted in the chart. That much we 
     do know.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the point of the editorial is, good God, 
what happened to our children? Can the present system be as bad as the 
data depict? If so, let us be rid of that system directly. I wrote to 
them informing them that we had new data, and it was not significantly 
different. Well, in the case of Los Angeles, it was; that should be 
made clear. Otherwise, it was in this range. I wrote a letter in which 
I simply made the point that--well, first of all, I submitted the 
correct new data, which took a slightly different view from the 
editorial. It was a very different view from the editorial in the 
Washington Times.
  I ask unanimous consent that my letter and the subsequent editorial 
with the corrected data be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Times, Sept. 5, 1995]

             The AFDC Numbers: Bad Enough, But Not That Bad

       Regarding the Sept. 1 editorial ``Welfare shock,'' The 
     Washington Times is entirely correct in stating that the 
     information on AFDC caseloads I presented in the August 
     welfare debate in the Senate was mistaken. We received the 
     data from the Department of Health and Human Services on Aug. 
     4. I found the numbers hard to believe--that bad?--and called 
     the deputy assistant secretary responsible to ask if he would 
     check. He did and called back to confirm.
       On Aug. 23, however, with the Senate in recess, Mr. Wendell 
     E. Primus, the deputy assistant secretary who provided the 
     data, wrote to say that there had indeed been a 
     miscalculation. It was a perfectly honest mistake, honorably 
     acknowledged and corrected. I will place his letter in the 
     Congressional Record today.
       The new numbers are sufficiently horrendous. The proportion 
     of the child population on AFDC or Supplemental Security 
     income in the course of a year in Los Angeles is 38 percent. 
     In New York, 40 percent. In Chicago, 49 percent. In 
     Philadelphia, 59 percent. In Detroit, 67 percent. My 
     contention is that things have gotten so out of hand that 
     cities and states cannot possibly handle the problem on their 
     own. Thirty years ago, certainly. No longer. Mr. Hugh Price 
     of the National Urban League suggests that we will see a 
     reenactment of deinstitutionalization of the mental patients 
     which led so directly to the problem of the homeless. I was 
     in the Oval Office on Oct. 23, 1963 when President Kennedy 
     signed that bill, his last public bill signing ceremony. He 
     gave me the pen. I have had it framed and keep it on my wall. 
     Premium non nocere.

                                      Daniel Patrick Moynihan,

                                                     U.S. Senator,
                                                       Washington.
               [From the Washington Times, Sept. 5, 1995]

                     Charting the State of Welfare

       Even by the appalling standards and results of U.S. welfare 
     policy, the chart that appeared in this space last Friday 
     exaggerated the depths of the situation that prevails in some 
     of this nation's largest cities.
       Last month Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat, 
     appeared on the floor of the Senate citing statistics showing 
     that nearly two out of three children in Los Angeles and 
     nearly four out of five children in Detroit lived in 
     households receiving the government's basic welfare grant, 
     Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). At the 
     request of The Washington Times' editorial page, Sen. 
     Moynihan's office faxed a copy of a chart listing the 10 
     largest U.S. cities and the percentage of each city's 
     children relying on AFDC, which was developed by the U.S. 
     Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Regrettably, 
     the information was incorrect.
       Nearby is a chart with updated, expanded, and presumably 
     correct, information that HHS subsequently sent to Sen. 
     Moynihan's office, which then forwarded it to the editorial 
     page. The revised chart offers both a snapshot of welfare 
     dependency of children in our largest cities (at a ``point in 
     time'') and a more expansive statistic incorporating all 
     children whose families relied on AFDC during any portion of 
     an entire year. Clearly, neither classification places Los 
     Angeles or Detroit in nearly as dreadful a position as 
     conveyed by HHS's initial, incorrect tallies. It should also 
     be noted, however, that the earlier chart understated the 
     problem of pervasive welfare dependency in other cities: New 
     York and Philadelphia, for example. The revised chart offers 
     no solace to anybody intersted in the future of our great 
     cities and the children who live in them.

                    ESTIMATED RATES OF AFDC CASELOADS                   
                      [In major cities (Feb. 1993)]                     
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Percentage   Percentage
                                                of children  of children
                     State                       on AFDC at    on AFDC  
                                                 a point in    within a 
                                                    time         year   
------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York......................................           30           39
Los Angeles...................................           29           38
Chicago.......................................           36           46
Detroit.......................................           50           67
Philadelphia..................................           44           57
San Diego.....................................           23           30
Houston.......................................           18           22
Phoenix.......................................           15           18
San Antonio...................................           14           21
Dallas........................................           16           20
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Department of Health and Human Services.                        

       It's been 30 years since the federal government initiated 
     its so-called War on Poverty. During that time more than $5 
     trillion was expended fighting it. What has been 
     accomplished? As the Senate reconsiders the various welfare-
     reform proposals during the next few weeks, let us keep in 
     mind that anything less than revolutionary in scope is likely 
     to have little long-term impact on these depressing 
     statistics and the numerous pathologies and deviancies that 
     derive from them.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, here is the point I made, and some will 
not agree--probably most will not agree. Yet, I have been at this long 
enough to recognize this. The Times takes the view that any system 
which has produced this result is so bad it must be profoundly changed, 
dismantled, and done away with. Indeed, the legislation before us on 
this side of the aisle--the majority leader's legislation--would in 
fact put an end to this system. It abolishes title 4(a) of the Social 
Security Act of 1935. It makes a block grant which is sent down to the 
States, based on their present Federal benefit, and leaves it that the 
States are free to do what they will. I will not get into it at this 
moment.
  But the States are not free to do what they will, anyway. No State 
has to have a welfare program. No, you do not have to have a welfare 
program. You do not have to provide more than--you can provide $1 a 
month per child or $1,000 a month per child. The idea that there are 
big Federal regulations is mistaken. It is not that the Federal 
Government has not sought to do a lot of regulating, but the statutes 
are relatively spare. With a waiver, you can do virtually anything you 
want. And to say it is your job, now that this system has failed, to 
take it over, what that does is disengage the Federal Government.
  No child is entitled to welfare benefits. The State can provide that 
a child receives benefits, or it can do otherwise. But under the Social 
Security Act, if a State provides welfare benefits, the Federal 
Government provides a matching grant. It will match 50 percent, up to 
about 79 percent, at this point. It used to be as high as 82 percent in 
the Southern States.
  My point is that 30 years ago, when we first picked up the onset of 
this extraordinary demographic social change, you could have made the 
case: Let the States do it; let the cities do it. You could have made 
that case. You 

[[Page S 12682]]
cannot make it today, in my view. This is too much. This is beyond the 
capacity of State governments and city governments. They will be 
overwhelmed, and soon we will be wondering, what did we do?
  Mr. Hugh Price, the relatively new, recently appointed, director of 
the National Urban League, made an important comment on the ``Charlie 
Rose Show''--not a pronouncement, just a comment. He said if we do what 
is proposed and put time limits--the President, at Georgetown 
University in 1991, when he began his Presidential campaign, put out a 
2-year time limit--he said that we will have an effect similar to the 
deinstitutionalization of our mental institutions that began in the 
1950's and culminated in Federal legislation in 1963.
  I am going to take a moment, if I can, just to talk about that, 
because I think Mr. Price hit upon a brilliant analogy--the appearance 
on our streets of homeless persons sleeping in doorways, sleeping in 
bus stations. You do not have to do more than walk down Constitution 
Avenue from the Capitol, not four blocks from here, and you will find, 
in the dead of winter, people sleeping on grates. It has happened 
everywhere. It has happened, I dare to say, in Portland, OR. I say to 
my friend, the chairman of our committee, that Portland, OR, will not 
appear on this list. It is a very interesting story, and it is a very 
powerful cautionary tale.
  I was present at the creation, 1955, in the spring, in the State 
capitol in Albany, N.Y. Averell Harriman was being introduced to the 
person who was to be nominated as the commissioner of mental hygiene, a 
wonderful doctor named Paul Hoch. He had been head of the New York 
Psychiatric Institute, a great research analyst. He had been chosen by 
the late Jonathan Bingham, then secretary to the Governor, later Member 
of the House of Representatives.
  As has happened before in history, the Governor was playing a role in 
a little drama that had been preconceived. Present also was the 
director of the budget, Paul H. Appleby, the eminent public servant of 
the New Deal era, deputy director of the budget under President Truman. 
Also present, notetaker, if you will, was the Senator from New York. I 
was an assistant to Mr. Bingham.
  The Governor greeted Dr. Hoch and said how pleased he was to learn 
that he was willing to come and do this job, and Jonathan Bingham has 
recommended him most particularly, as indeed Jack Bingham had done.
  The Governor asked how were things going in that field. Doctor Hoch 
said, well, down at Rockland State Hospital, which is in Rockland 
County in the lower Hudson Valley, Dr. Nathan Kline had been working 
with a chemical substance that had been derived from the root rauwolfia 
serpentina, used in medicine for 5 millennium. It calmed people down in 
the Hindus Valley. German organic chemists had succeeded in reproducing 
it, and it was used on patients in Rockland State, and it had real 
effects. It was our first tranquilizer. It would come to be known as 
reserpine. The doctor said he thought it should be used systemwide.
  At that time in the 1950's, mental health was one of our most visible 
public issues. Every State legislature proposed every year, 
appropriated another bond issue to build another hospital. We projected 
the time when half the population of New York State would be in a 
mental institution and the other half would be working in a mental 
institution--97,000 persons.
  Today, Mr. President, there are about 6,000. We wanted them out, but 
we did not care for them after they left.
  I came to Washington in 1961 in the administration of President 
Kennedy, who was much interested in this subject. A report of a joint 
commission established by the Congress was waiting for us. In effect, 
it said, go with medication and deinstitutionalization.
  The last public bill signing ceremony that John F. Kennedy conducted 
was on October 23, 1963. He signed the Community Mental Health Center 
Construction Act of 1963. He gave me a pen. I was present. I had worked 
on the legislation, having had something in the background from Albany. 
We were going to build 2,000 community mental health centers by the 
year 1980, and one per 100,000 population, as the population grew.
  We wanted our mental institutions, but we did not build the community 
centers. We built about 400, the program got folded into another 
program, shifted around, and pretty soon people were thinking about 
something else and it quite disappeared from our minds.
  Then the problem of homelessness appeared. With the unfailing 
capacity for getting things wrong in my city of New York, an advocacy 
group grew up saying we have a problem here of a lack of affordable 
housing. That is not what it was at all.
  Schizophrenia--we knew in the 1960's there would be a constant 
incidence of that particular disorder in large populations. We did not 
have quite the genetic information we have now. I do not speak beyond 
my knowledge, but the statistical data was sufficient to say this is 
something that happens in Patagonia, it happens in Alaska, it happens 
in Bucharest, it happens in Los Angeles, all at about the same rate. 
There it is. A puzzle, a great public failure.
  My friend from Oregon will remember that during the brief interlude 
in which I was chairman of the Committee on Finance, the last New 
Yorker was in 1849, and it may be another century and a half until the 
next New Yorker was, but there were 2 years, not necessarily a shining 
moment, but there it was. We were dealing with health care matters, as 
the chairman will not soon forget. I had two things on our wall. One 
was a small portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the 
Treasury, that great New Yorker. The other was the pen certificate 
which had the pen that President Kennedy gave me on that day in October 
1963, when we signed the Communities Mental Health Center Construction 
Act of 1963.
  As I just said, ``Be very careful what you do.'' To cite Hippocrates, 
primum non nocere. It is my contention, Mr. President, it would be my 
argument, I cannot demonstrate, I can simply make the case with numbers 
this large, proportions this large, we dare not disconnect the Federal 
Government from this problem of our children.
  The connection we made in 1935 when our resources were vastly fewer 
than they are today, they will be overwhelmed. In a very little while 
as the time limits comes into effect, I estimate a 5-year time might 
put half a million children on the streets of New York City in 10 
years' time, and we will wonder where they came from. We will say, 
``Why are these children sleeping on grates? Why are they being picked 
up in the morning frozen? Why are they scrambling? Why are they 
horrible to each other, a menace to all, most importantly to 
themselves?''
  Well, this is what will have happened, in my view. I can say that 30 
years and more of association with this subject makes me feel it would 
happen.
  Mr. President, once again, with apologies to the Senate for having 
provided somewhat misleading data on August 8, without intention, it 
was received from the Department of Health and Human Services without 
any purpose to mislead, and was corrected by the Department. Having 
placed the incorrect data in the Record, I ask that the correct table 
be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              PROPORTION OF CHILDREN RECEIVING AFDC (1993)              
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                       Percent   Percent
                        City                          at point  within a
                                                       in time    year  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago.............................................        36        46
Dallas..............................................        16        20
Detroit.............................................        50        67
Houston.............................................        18        22
Los Angeles.........................................        29        38
New York............................................        30        39
Philadelphia........................................        44        57
Phoenix.............................................        15        18
San Antonio.........................................        14        21
San Diego...........................................        23        30
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Department of Health and Human Services, August 23, 1995.       


  Mr. MOYNIHAN. With great thanks for the courtesy and attention of the 
Chair, I yield the floor. I see my distinguished friend has risen, and 
I am happy to turn to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Mr. President, I never cease to learn from my good 
friend from New York. In the quarter of a century I have been in this 
Senate, 

[[Page S 12683]]
there have been a number of memorable Senators, none that I have 
learned more from than Pat Moynihan. I count him as a friend, a 
teacher, a mentor.
  It is interesting how we sometimes take the same facts, however, and 
reach different conclusions. I went to law school at New York 
University in the center of Manhattan in the mid-1950's. And much as I 
love New York and Manhattan and find it an exciting borough, when I 
finished law school I had no desire to stay there. I went back to 
Oregon and started to practice law and kept my home and roots there 
ever since.
  But I remember public housing in the mid-1950's in New York. The 
Federal Government dictated what public housing would be, and we knew 
best. Our philosophy was that, if people had a decent roof over their 
heads, all else would flow and follow. Education would follow, crime 
would disappear; so long as you had a decent shower and a bed. So we 
built, not 5- and 10-story public housing projects, 20- and 25-story 
public housing projects. And we clustered them together; not one 
building, but three or four, with concrete parks, barely any grass for 
the kids to play, and thousands and thousands of roughly similarly 
economically situated poor people clustered together.
  What we ended up with were 20- and 25-story slums, crime-ridden, 
drug-infested slums. It did not work. I do not mean this as critical of 
the thinkers of the mid-1950's. That was the best thought in the 
fifties.
  Now the Federal Government thinks the best thought is what we call 
scatter buildings. We are not going to put up 25-story buildings; we 
are going to put 60 units in Queens and 30 units in Westchester County 
and some more in Staten Island. We are going to scatter them about. It 
may be a better decision. It may not be. I am not sure. Yet it is 
another example of where the Federal Government now says the philosophy 
of 40 years ago was wrong and this philosophy is right.
  I offer this only to say there is no guarantee that any public policy 
you adopt will work out exactly as you hope it will work out. It does 
not mean that you are malevolent in your thoughts or deliberately 
ordaining that it would not work out. It is just things you thought 
would happen do not. How often I heard my friend from New York talk 
about the law of unintended consequences.
  So, with that background, I want to go back into the history of 
welfare in the United States, starting in 1935; what we hoped would 
happen, what has happened. I think we can say this. If our hope of 
welfare was to get people off of welfare, if welfare was to be a 
trampoline so that you could spring back useful to society, it has not 
worked. It has become not a trampoline, but a hammock. And that I think 
we can say with assuredness.
  I am not sure we had any witness that appeared before the Finance 
Committee as we were having hearings on welfare reform that defended 
the present system as working. Some wanted to simply jettison the 
entire thing. Some wanted to tinker with it but keep it a Federal 
system. Others wanted to devolve more power and authority to the 
States. But nobody defended it as it was. So how did we get to where we 
are?
  Go back to 1935. My good friend from New York talked about the 1935 
Social Security Act. It was passed in 1935. And Social Security, the 
act, had two parts to it. One was the pension that we are well familiar 
with. The other was a welfare component for widows and orphans. How 
often has the Senator from New York referred to it colloquially, but 
correctly, as a pension for the miner's young widow and the miner's 
young child.
  Both provisions, in essence, covered the same people but for 
different purposes. In the mid-1930's if you are the breadwinner--it is 
basically men that are working--if you lived to 65, you took care of 
your wife, and probably by that time your minor children had grown up. 
If you died at age 45 however, and you were the breadwinner, there was 
no survivors' benefits in the original Social Security Act. Suddenly 
the widow and the child are thrown out onto the street. So the welfare 
provision of the 1935 Act was designed to take care of the widow and 
the orphan child. And it was presumed, I think, that if the widow got 
married again, she would no longer need any public support, and if she 
did not get married, she at least got this income while the child was a 
minor and she was a widow. And almost all welfare at this time--1935 
onward for a fair number of years--was for widows and orphans.
  Then in 1939, we amended the Social Security Act to include 
survivors. The breadwinner dies at 45. It was still usually a man in 
those days. He has a 40-year-old widow and three children, ages 16, 12, 
and 9. There were survivors' benefits under Social Security. If you 
were a widow with children, you got 75 percent of what the person who 
died would have gotten had that person reached Social Security age, and 
you got 75 percent for each child, though it was capped. You did not 
get 75 percent for every child if you had 15 children.
  After World War II, we rather rapidly expanded the coverage of Social 
Security. My hunch is the biggest single group may have come in in 1953 
or 1954 under President Eisenhower, when we brought in an immense 
number of people: Agriculture----
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Self employed.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. Self employed. We brought in an awful lot of people.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. State and local.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. State and local. We brought them in and, by 1960, most 
people were covered by Social Security and that included survivors. So 
if the breadwinner died, the widow and the orphan were taken care of. 
Therefore, welfare--I am not talking about Social Security survivors 
insurance, I am talking about welfare as we knew it in the 1930's; when 
the breadwinner dies there is no Social Security survivors' benefits--
welfare as we knew it began to disappear because Social Security 
benefits, survivors' benefits, were usually more generous than welfare 
would be, and survivors' benefits supplanted what welfare had initially 
been for widows and orphans.
  From about 1950 onward, maybe a little earlier again--the Senator 
from New York would know more specifically than I would--aid to 
dependent children, as we now call it aid to families with dependent 
children, AFDC, started tilting toward support for unwed mothers and 
children who had never had a breadwinner in the house. It was no longer 
the concept of the widow and the orphan. There never was a breadwinner. 
And, instead of emergency financial support for a widow who was 
suddenly deprived of her breadwinner, AFDC, aid to families with 
dependent children, gradually and then overwhelmingly became a lifetime 
support system for many people. And in many cases it became a 
generation after generation support system.
  Today, only 1 to 2 percent of welfare is because of the death of a 
breadwinner. That is how much it has changed from what it was 
originally intended.
  Now, from 1935 onward, but especially from 1960 onward, as we have 
seen this movement toward welfare being for unwed mothers, people who 
never had breadwinners, the Federal Government has tinkered and tried 
and toyed to make this system work. If the woman dropped out of high 
school in the middle of her junior year and had a baby and did not go 
back, to try to educate her, to try to help her get a job--and we have 
attached more baubles and geegaws to the Federal welfare system in 
efforts to make it work than the mind can comprehend.
  But it has not worked. If it was meant to stem the rise of 
illegitimacy, it has not worked. If it was meant to get people back to 
work, it has not worked. If it was meant to somehow break the 
generational cycles, it has not worked.
  Has it failed because we did not spend enough money? Let us go back 
and take a look over the years of what we have spent. I am going to use 
the year 1947 as a base for this reason. What we spent in the 1930's 
was minuscule. During World War II, we did not spend anything for all 
practical purposes. But during the war, from 1944 to 1945, believe it 
or not--we talk about the defense budget now--the defense budget was 40 
percent of our gross domestic product and 90 percent of our total 
budget. We did not do anything else. We were a war machine. We were 
borrowing to do it. And we were willing to spend that much on defense 
because we 

[[Page S 12684]]
thought it was necessary for the preservation of Western civilization. 
I am inclined to think that was a correct decision.
  So when I hear people say we cannot afford to spend for our defense, 
just as an aside, a great nation can afford to spend. We are now 
spending 4 or 5 percent over gross national product on defense. We can 
argue, can we afford 4 or 5 percent? Yes, we can. But it did mean in 
those years we were not spending money for anything else of any 
consequence except on the war. And the first real budget year, fiscal 
year, after the war was 1947; 1946 was midway through when the war was 
still going on.
  I am going to use the term ``constant dollars'' rather than ``current 
dollars'' because current dollars can be illusory. I will define the 
difference.
  A current dollar is $1 today. I spend $100 on a Federal program. Let 
us say you have 100 percent inflation. Next year we spend $200 on the 
Federal program. You have not spent any more money. You have 100 
percent inflation. The person that gets it has not gotten anything more 
to spend. That is why we have COLA's on Social Security. That is called 
current dollars.
  To put it in comparison, in current 1947 dollars we spent $2 billion 
on what the Social Security Administration basically called welfare. 
This is 10 or 12 programs. In 1947 we were spending $2 billion. In 1991 
we were spending $180 billion. Even if you put it in terms of constant 
dollars--because current dollars does not take into account inflation--
the figures are still dramatic. If you assume that the value of the 
dollar today was the same as the value in 1947, and there has been no 
inflation in that period of roughly 45 years, then in 1947, in today's 
dollars, we were spending $10 billion on all of these programs. Today, 
we spend $180 billion. On AFDC alone, in 1947 we were spending in 
constant dollars $697 million, today we are spending $18 billion, about 
a 2500-percent increase.
  You want to take a last figure. These programs in the Social Security 
Administration count as programs for the poor. In 1947, they were 0.7 
of 1 percent of our gross domestic product. Today, they are slightly in 
excess of 3 percent. So they have grown dramatically.
  Welfare has not failed because we did not spend money. We have spent 
more money by any measure.
  Has it failed because of inadequate regulations? The 1935 bill when 
it passed was 2\1/2\ pages long. This is the section relating to 
welfare, 2\1/2\ pages.
  There were no regulations initially. The bill really had six 
requirements of the States as follows:
  First, the program had to be in effect in all political subdivisions 
throughout the State. That is an easy enough requirement.
  Second, there had to be some financial participation by the State. 
That is easy enough to figure.
  Third, it had to be administered by a single State agency. That is 
easy enough to figure.
  Fourth, there had to be an opportunity for a fair hearing for 
somebody if they had been denied benefits. That is not too difficult to 
figure.
  Fifth, although this one becomes a little more ephemeral, the State 
had to provide such methods of administration as would be necessary for 
an efficient operation of the plan.
  As I say, I am not quite sure what that means exactly, but I will 
show you what it means in just a moment.
  Then lastly, the State had to file reports that would assure the 
correctness and verification of basically what they were intending. 
That was relatively simple.
  From that has grown what we have in welfare today.
  The Senator from New York referred to this stack on this desk which I 
shall attempt to lift. These, Mr. President, are the regulations that 
an Oregon caseworker must be familiar with in order to determine just 
two things: No. 1, the eligibility of a recipient for welfare; No. 2, 
how much shall that recipient get. That is what you have to go through 
in order to determine just whether you are eligible. How much do you 
get?
  Follow me to this chart back here. Here is the eligibility process.
  You come into the welfare office. ``Hi, I am Johnny Jones. I would 
like to apply for welfare.'' Initial application. All right.
  The caseworkers says, ``Give me your proof of identity, age, 
citizenship. I want your driver's license, Social Security card for 
each person, birth certificate for each person, alien registration, or 
arrival and departure record, or any other identification from any 
other agencies or organizations.''
  This assumes a person coming in for welfare actually has these things 
or knows how to put their hands on it. Assuming you have proved your 
identity, we now go to proof of relationship and child in the home. 
Signed and dated statement from friend or relative naming each child 
and residence, birth certificate or other documents stating parent's 
name.
  Assume you have that. Then we go over to proof of residence and 
shelter costs.
  ``Give us your electric bill, paid or unpaid; give us your gas or 
fuel bills, paid or unpaid; rental or lease agreement; rent receipt; 
landlord statement; landlord deed to property; proof of housing 
subsidies.''
  No wonder this stack is getting thicker and thicker as you go through 
giving us all of this information. Now we come down to proof of family 
after you have gone through all of this.
  Death certificate for deceased parent; divorce papers or separation 
papers showing date, if separated; a statement from a friend, neighbor, 
or relative proving marriage certificates; if in prison, date of 
imprisonment, length of service; if pregnant, a medical statement with 
expected delivery date; if disabled, name of doctor, name of hospital 
and a doctor's statement.
  This is just starting to prove eligibility.
  Does anyone here have any income? No. You have no income.
  I want you to think about proving a negative.
  ``No, I do not have any income.''
  ``Let me see your bank account and savings account.''
  ``I do not have a bank or savings book. I do not have any bank 
account.''
  Well, you have to prove you do not have a bank account. Current 
checking account statements and real estate documents.
  I want you to picture Johnny Jones coming in asking for welfare.
  ``Where are your real estate statements?''
  ``I don't have any.''
  ``What do you mean, you do not have any? Can you prove it?''
  ``No. I don't have any.''
  ``Prove you don't have any.''
  ``I do not have any.''
  Payment books or receipts for all mortgages and land sales.
  Do you know how much land Johnny sells? He is not really involved in 
big time in real estate sales.
  List of all stocks and bonds and current market value; title of all 
motor vehicles and bill of sale; bank payments or agreement; documents 
showing life insurance and estate or trust funds.
  Name me welfare recipients who have trust funds. If they have trust 
funds, they are not welfare recipients and they will not be in this 
office at the first stage.
  Insurance policies? They might have insurance policies.
  Now, if you have done all that, you make an eligibility decision. 
However, this is if you have no income. But if you have income, now we 
come down here.
  Proof of income.
  Uncashed worker's compensation or other benefit check; latest Social 
Security or VA benefit award letter; court order stating amount of 
support or alimony; notice of unemployment benefits, record of payments 
received, or uncashed check; records of income from self-employment, 
farm income or business income, tax records, profit and loss 
statements, or income producing contracts; wage stubs or employer's 
statement of gross wages for the last 30 days.
  You have to prove all that. But interestingly, what counts as income 
and what does not count as income?
  Count adoption assistance if not for special needs. That counts as 
income.
  Do not count as income adoption assistance for a child's special 
needs.
  Now, you are poor Johnny Jones getting these questions, trying to 
figure it out. You count as income payments under the Agent Orange Act 
of 1991. You do not count as income benefits 

[[Page S 12685]]
from the Agent Orange Settlement Fund if it is given by Aetna Life. I 
do not know why it is limited to Aetna Life.
  Well, Mr. President, I am not going to go on with the rest of this. 
This is what welfare has become. It is no wonder that caseworkers are 
frustrated beyond belief. The caseworkers I have met are perfectly 
decent people who would like to help the poor.
  Now I will give you a quote from the former executive director of the 
Oregon Progress Board.
  ``Almost all of the Oregon Option undertakings''--Oregon Options is 
the welfare plan that we have gotten authorization to try--``require 
the use of federal funds and, in many cases, the waiver of federal 
rules and restrictions on how the money is used.'' As Wyse said,

       We need the federal government as a partner. But federal 
     programs that provide money tend to be severely prescriptive 
     and riddled with red tape that stifles innovation. In the 
     biggest area of federal aid--welfare--at least 20 percent [20 
     percent] of our administrative time and money costs have been 
     spent on federal paperwork.

  My classic example, however, does not deal with welfare per se. It is 
Harley, Harley, the Vietnamese potbellied, drug-sniffing pig. This pig 
can smell drugs like dogs do, so the Portland police bureau applied to 
the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, for Federal funds that 
they allocate for drug-sniffing dogs. The DEA, Drug Enforcement 
Administration, said no, it only applies to dogs. It does not apply to 
pigs. To which the Portland police bureau said: ``This pig can smell 
better than a dog, and it is cheaper than a dog.''
  Now, I have to give Vice President Gore credit. He worked this out by 
declaring Harley an honorary dog. That solved our problem. There is 
Harley, the honorary dog, right there. That is the frustration of 
dealing with the Federal Government. Did the DEA mean to be obtuse and 
mean? Of course not. Of course not. It is just that big things of 
necessity have to be pigeonholed. It is not true just of Government. It 
is true of big institutions. It becomes more and more difficult, the 
bigger you get, to deal with individuality. You have to fit the 
pigeonhole whether you are a university with 25,000 students or General 
Motors. It is one of the reasons why small and often family-held 
companies are able to do much better and compete against giants that 
are 100 times their size but immobile.
  About 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago now, there was a story in one 
of the nationwide business publications on who sets the price of 
plywood in the United States. Weyerhaeuser is a big producer. Georgia 
Pacific is a big producer. But the article concluded that it was set by 
Ken Ford of what was then called the Roseburg Lumber Co. That is now 
Roseburg Forest Products. It was a family-owned company and still 
privately held, as I recall. They have about 3,000 employees in an area 
of about 15,000 to 20,000. It is the dominant employer.
  The article said as Mr. Ford's plywood is moving across the country 
on the railcars, he can call Chicago and say, ``Cut it 50 cents a board 
foot,'' and it is cut. And Weyerhaeuser and Georgia Pacific immediately 
follow suit. But they cannot take the lead because it is a corporate 
board decision of some kind. They do not have anybody in the 
organization that can say to cut it 50 cents a foot.
  So Mr. Ford sets the prices for plywood. He is still alive and the 
company is still going. And he is still a dominant force in his 
business.
  You see it in the electronics business today. How many companies are 
there? Have you ever seen that wonderful list of companies? There are 
over 20,000 or 25,000 companies that did not exist in 1968, either just 
did not exist or were just getting founded in the 1960's, electronics 
or otherwise.
  You look at just one facet of communications, personal 
communications, the little hand-held phones you use. In 1982, when AT&T 
and the Federal Government agreed to a consent decree breaking up AT&T 
and creating what we now call the regional Bells--seven--it was a very 
inclusive agreement. The Justice Department and AT&T tried to think of 
everything they could to include. Do you know the one thing they left 
out? Personal portable telephones. There was no future in that. There 
were 18,000 in the country. There are 25 million now. By the end of the 
century--there might be 125 million in 10 years. We will have as many 
of those as we have telephones.
  It is not AT&T, MCI, and Sprint that are dominating that business. 
Those are long-distance carriers. But the companies that have moved 
into this business were small, sharp, quick companies that can compete 
with Bell Atlantic, compete with AT&T. And they move rapidly. They find 
a niche. They are good at it. They are small.
  So when we get to this bill, it is an interesting difference in 
philosophy, on average--I am generalizing here--on average, between 
Republicans and Democrats to this extent. On average, Democrats in the 
provision of social services have a mistrust of it being done by 
private enterprise, whether that be a profitmaking private enterprise 
or not. I want to emphasize, I am generalizing. They have less mistrust 
if it is done by Catholic Charities or Goodwill, but they feel more 
comfortable if the Government is doing it. Republicans are a little 
more inclined to say let us let the private sector do it or let us give 
some grants or help with the private sector, but let them take the 
lead.
  The second difference is that if it must be done by Government, there 
is still a general feeling among most Democrats that it should be done 
or at least directed by the Federal Government. Republicans feel pretty 
much the converse, that it should be done and directed by State or 
local government.
  I am delighted we are debating this bill outside of what we call 
reconciliation. Reconciliation is going to be this big-budget bill that 
will come to us in 2 months--6 weeks, I would say. It is going to have 
everything in it--Medicare, Medicaid, earned-income tax credit, and tax 
cuts--and it is limited under our rules to 20 hours of debate, 10 hours 
on a side. Welfare, if put in that bill, would get half an hour's 
debate. Medicare, I will bet, gets 8 hours of 10 in the debate, and 
this subject deserves more debate than that because it is an honest 
difference of opinion. I emphasize ``honest difference of opinion.''
  The Republicans want to do what we call break the Federal 
entitlement. We are saying we will give to the States as much money as 
they are getting now--but not as much as they would otherwise get if we 
did not change the law. And in exchange, we will say to the States, we 
are going to remove most of the strings that have been hampering you 
for the past if not 50 years, certainly 30 years. We are going to give 
you certain outlines and guidelines, and you cannot use this money for 
airport tarmacs. You have to use it for the poor.
 But you decide, New York, whether your problems are different than 
South Dakota's. You decide, Oregon, whether your problems are different 
from Ohio's and attempt to shape your welfare program with the limited 
amount of money we give you to what you think your needs are.

  Mr. President, they are different. If you are Florida or Texas or New 
Mexico or Arizona and have an immense immigrant population and, in any 
case, a Hispanic-speaking population--New York has it--virtually you 
have a problem just of language for many young people. That same 
problem, but to a much lesser degree, exists in Oregon. My guess would 
be, I do not know, that it exists not at all in South Dakota. I am 
taking a guess there is not an immense Hispanic-speaking immigrant 
population in South Dakota.
  So right away, the problems are different.
  (Mr. ASHCROFT assumed the chair.)
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will my friend yield for a question?
  Mr. PACKWOOD. I will.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Because he is making an important point. Does he recall 
the occasion on which the Committee on Finance--of course he recalls--
held a retreat in Maryland, and the Senator from North Dakota learned 
about the proposal to deny welfare benefits to mothers of children who 
themselves were under 18. He returned to his State and checked that out 
to see just how much of a problem it was in North Dakota. Mr. 
President, you would be interested to know that there are four such 
families, two of whom had just arrived from West Virginia.
  Mr. PACKWOOD. There is a slight difference in the problems. When the 

[[Page S 12686]]
  Dole bill passes, and I hope it will--I think the amendment of the 
Democratic majority leader will fail--I hope we go forward with this 
not in a spirit of, ``Well, the Republicans have won'' and cheer.
  I want to close with what I said at the start. There is no guarantee 
that if we pass this bill, as the Republicans are talking about, there 
is no guarantee we will solve the problem. There is a guarantee that if 
we continue as we have been going, we will not solve the problem. We 
have not solved the problem and there is no hope we will solve the 
problem continuing on the line of Federal regulation and control as we 
have gone.
  My guess is that many States will experiment with this and will find 
their experiments fail. Many others will experiment with it in a 
different fashion and find they succeed. And then some of the successes 
will be taken to other States and found it does not work in that State 
yet does work in other States. The States are going to become labs over 
the next 5 years and, by and large, most of them are going to hit upon 
what will work in their State with the limited amount of money that we 
give them, and they will be much quicker to jettison programs that do 
not work than we are.
  The last thing we have put in this bill--and I see the Senator from 
Missouri is in the chair and it was his suggestion--we have put in this 
bill, to the extent that it is constitutional, that it is permissible 
for this money to be given to religious organizations to carry out 
social welfare purposes.
  There is nothing wrong with that. Just because Catholic Charities is 
Catholic should not mean that it is incapable of administering to the 
poor. Just because the Salvation Army may have a cross on the wall does 
not mean that it cannot run a good sheltered workshop. It will run a 
better sheltered workshop than anything the Government might run.
  As I say, we cannot by law make something constitutional that is 
unconstitutional. I know the fear and the argument: Not only are they 
going to minister to the needs of the poor, they are going to try to 
proselytize them, make them Catholics or make them whatever.
  Mr. President, I think that risk is worth it. I think the risk is 
worth it. If a person goes to a Salvation Army sheltered workshop or a 
meals program run by a charity that happens to have a menorah in the 
hallway, I am not sure that is going to be so offensive to what we are 
trying to achieve that it should be prohibited. I will leave it to the 
courts--and there will be suits--to decide whether or not it is 
constitutional.
  I will say this to my good friend from New York, he and I now almost 
20 years ago, not quite, introduced bills to allow tuition tax credits. 
In the interim, Wisconsin has tried it and now I see the courts have 
declared it partially unconstitutional. But it is working. These inner-
city kids are getting a good education. We simply wanted to say to the 
parents--by and large, it liberates the poor. It does not liberate the 
rich. They are going to private schools anyway and they are going to 
parochial schools. It was a modest credit.
  We say a parent can put their child in a religious school and they 
can deduct part of their cost off of their income tax. For 18 years he 
and I have tried to get that. We have been unsuccessful so far.
  Every now and then, he will send me a clipping when another inner-
city Catholic school has closed or perhaps the whole diocese has 
closed, I do not know, and say, ``They didn't listen to us, they didn't 
listen to us.''
  It was touching when we had hearings on this to have some of the 
poorest women come and testify. These were single mothers working for 
the Federal Government, often in relatively modest positions, making in 
those days, the late seventies, $15,000, $16,000 a year, putting their 
children in private school, paying for it themselves, religious 
schools, not even of their religion because they wanted an alternative 
to public school.
  This bill is going to try to permit all of that, not because we want 
to intrude religion on people, but because we do not want to preclude 
religion having the opportunity to serve people.
  Mr. President, over the next 4 or 5 days, we will debate the 
philosophy of this bill. I suppose we will debate lots of itsy-bitsy 
details. But the philosophy is infinitely more important than itsy-
bitsy details.
  This bill, if adopted, is a watershed, is a turning point from the 
concept that the Federal Government is be all and know all. I hope we 
are daring enough to take the step. I do not promise it will work, but 
I do promise that with what we are trying now, we will continue to 
fail.
  I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Since there are no other Senators seeking recognition on 
welfare reform, was leader's time reserved?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, it was.
  

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