Congressional Record, Volume 141 Issue 138 (Thursday, September 7, 1995)

[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 138 (Thursday, September 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12805-S12830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACT

The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
Mr. DeWINE. 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the quorum call be rescinded.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. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss three amendments
that I intend to propose later in regard to this bill we are engaged
today, this week, and probably into the next week with one of the most
fundamental reforms of the welfare system in over a generation. It
really is a debate of great historic importance to not only the people
who are on welfare, but to all Americans.
The millions of Americans who are trapped in the cycle of welfare
dependency need a way out. As we work on this bill, I believe that we
have to make absolutely sure that as we do this, we do, in fact, give
them a way out and not just put them into another revolving door.
The purpose of the first amendment that I will offer will be to make
sure

[[Page S 12806]]
that the States tackle the underlying problem of the welfare system.
Quite frankly, Mr. President, too often welfare ends up being quicksand
for people instead of a ladder of real opportunity.
The underlying bill that we are working on will certainly help change
that and helps change it by creating a work requirement that will help
boost welfare clients into the economic mainstream of work and
opportunity.
We need to help people get off welfare. One very important way we can
do this is by helping them avoid getting on welfare in the first place,
and that is one thing that sometimes we miss in this whole debate about
welfare. We do need to worry about how to get people off welfare. But
if we can take action as a society that keeps them from ever going on
welfare, that is a great accomplishment as well. It will not only do
society a lot of good, but it will be very important to the individual
who we are talking about.
So this brings me to the specific proposal contained in my first
amendment.
This amendment would give States credit for making real reductions in
their welfare caseload, not illusory reductions based on just ordinary
turnover.
What am I talking about? Since 1988, 14 million Americans have gone
off welfare--14 million. Yet, during that same period, there has been a
30 percent net increase in the welfare caseload. What this tells us is
there are a lot of people going on, a lot of people going off, but we
are getting more people coming on than are going off.
So we have to make absolutely sure that we keep our eye on the ball
and, really, the ball that we are trying to keep our eye on is the
objective of keeping people out of the culture of welfare dependency.
Under the bill, States will have to meet a work requirement, and that
is good. But I think this policy will have an unintended side effect, a
side effect that I believe my amendment will help cure.
If there is a work requirement, States certainly will have an
incentive to try to meet that requirement. If States face the threat of
losing Federal funding for failing to meet the work requirement, I am
afraid that they could easily fall into the trap of judging their
welfare policies solely--solely, Mr. President--by the criterion of
whether or not they help meet just that work requirement.
I believe that what we have to remember is that the work requirement
is not an end in and of itself. Our goal must be to break the cycle of
welfare dependency, and we have found that helping people stay off
AFDC, never going on, through tools used by the Government--job
training, job search assistance, rent subsidies, transportation
assistance, and other similar measures--is a cheaper way of doing this
than simply waiting for the person to fall off the economic cliff and
become a full-fledged welfare client. It just makes common sense. If we
as a society can intervene early, it is going to be cost-effective and
it is going to work and it is going to make the difference in people's
lives.
Under the bill as written, States are really given no incentive to
make these efforts to help people. If anything under the bill, there
really is a disincentive to do this. If a State takes an active,
aggressive, successful effort to help people stay off welfare, then the
really tough welfare cases will make up an increasingly larger
proportion of the remaining welfare caseload, and that will make the
work requirement much tougher for a State to meet.
Under this bill as written, there is incentive really to wait to help
people, to wait, to wait until they are actually on welfare. Then the
States can get credit for getting people off welfare. That really does
not seem to me to be the right way to do it or the right incentive.
If States divert people from the welfare system by helping them stay
off welfare in the first place, then the people who stay on welfare
will tend to be more hardcore, more hard-to-reach welfare clients, and
that will make it more difficult for States to meet the work
requirement.
That, Mr. President, really is exactly the opposite of what we should
be trying to do. My amendment would eliminate this truly perverse
incentive. My amendment would lower the work requirement that States
have to reach by the very same amount that the States have reduced
their welfare caseload.
Helping citizens stay off welfare is just as important as making
welfare clients work, just as important as moving people off welfare.
Indeed, the reason we want to make welfare clients work in the first
place is, of course, to help them get off welfare. But--and this is a
very important provision in my amendment--we cannot allow this new
incentive that I propose for caseload reduction to become an incentive
for the States to ignore poverty.
Under my amendment, States will be given no credit for caseload
reductions achieved by the changing of eligibility standards. Ignoring
the problem of poverty, Mr. President, will certainly not make it go
away. Arbitrarily kicking people off of relief is not a solution to
welfare dependency, and States should not--I repeat, not--get credit
for changing their eligibility to meet this objective.
Welfare reform block grants are designed to give States the
flexibility they need to meet their responsibilities. They have to have
more flexibility. But they must not become an opportunity for the
States to ignore their responsibilities. States do need to be rewarded
for solving the problem. Giving States credit for real reductions in
caseload will provide this reward.
I believe this amendment will, in fact, yield another benefit. It
will enable States to target their resources on the more difficult
welfare cases: the at-risk people who need very intensive training and
counseling if they are ever going to get off welfare.
It will not do us any good as a society to pat ourselves on the back
because people are leaving AFDC, if at the very same time an even
greater number of people are getting on the welfare rolls, and if the
ones getting on are an even tougher group than the ones who got off.
The American people demand a much more fundamental and far-reaching
solution. They demand real reductions in the number of people who need
welfare.
Reducing the number of people on welfare is certainly going to be a
very tall order. Since 1988, only half a dozen States or so have really
managed to reduce their caseload. One of them, Wisconsin, has managed a
very significant reduction. It is going to be tough, but it is
absolutely necessary.
This issue simply must be faced, and it will be faced with all the
creativity at the disposal of the 50 States, 50 laboratories of
democracy.
How are States going to do it? There are probably as many ways of
doing it as there are States. I think that is one of the positive
things about the underlying bill.
There is no single best answer. That is the key reason why we need to
give the States the flexibility to experiment. In Wisconsin, for
example, the Work First Program, with its tough work requirement, has
reduced applications to the welfare system. That is a promising
approach. We have to do other things, such as reduce the number of out-
of-wedlock births and get rid of the disincentives to marriage.
The bottom line is this, Mr. President: We have to solve the problem
and not ignore it. States should be encouraged to take action. But they
should be encouraged to take action early to keep people off of
welfare, to help them before they drop into the welfare pit. I believe
this is the compassionate thing to do. I believe it is the cost-
effective thing to do.
My staff and I, Mr. President, have spent a considerable amount of
time talking to the people who run Ohio's welfare operation, both at
the county levels and at the State level. One of the problems that they
have continued to talk to me about is just what I have talked about,
and that is, that what we really need to do is keep people off of
welfare. We do not want to be in the situation that I used to find
years and years ago when I was practicing law and when I was county
prosecuting attorney, where we would have situations where people were
having problems, where people needed help--either job training, or
education, or just a little help to tide them over--and they could not
get that help. What the welfare department would have to tell them is,
wait until you get the eviction notice, wait until they start putting
your clothes and everything else out on the street, then we can help
you, then you

[[Page S 12807]]
can get on welfare. And once you get on welfare, all these things will
happen and you will get all these benefits. Our director, in the State
of Ohio, of welfare, Arnold Tompkins, makes an analogy to a light. He
says you go up with the switch or down, and you are either on welfare
or you are not. If you are on it, you get all these benefits. If you
are not, you do not get the benefits. We have a difficult time giving
people some help to stay off of welfare.
I think what we must make sure we are doing when we pass this bill--
which is a very, very good bill, and one of the reasons it is a good
bill, it has a realistic work requirement in it. One of the things we
have to make sure we are doing is allowing the States the flexibility
and giving them some incentive to try to take the actions early on
which will prevent someone actually from ever going on welfare. We must
make sure that we, as we write this bill, give the States credit for
having done that.
Let me turn to the second amendment that I intend to propose. It has
to do with a rainy day fund. This amendment is a very simple one. It is
a recognition of economic realities. When a State faces a recession, a
number of things happen. One of them is that the welfare caseload goes
up. The other thing that always happens is the revenues going into the
State go down.
It is as simple as that. When States are in the middle of a serious
recession, they are reluctant to borrow from a loan fund because they
are, frankly, afraid they will be unable to pay the money back. I do
not blame them. I believe that we need an unemployment contingency
grant fund to make sure that when a recession hits, the Federal
Government will remain a partner in the process of taking care of the
welfare population. You will notice I say ``partner.''
It should be just as clear, Mr. President, that this rainy day fund
must not become a back door to the re-Federalization of welfare. The
threshold for disbursements from this fund, I believe, has to be tough.
And the threshold in my amendment is, in fact, tough. It has been
described as follows: A State, under my amendment, will not qualify if
it has a ``cold.'' It will only qualify if it has ``pneumonia.''
It is my hope that this amendment will not be controversial. I
believe it is a necessary precaution for the inevitable downturns in
the economic cycle. Under this amendment, the State has to meet two
conditions to qualify for aid from this fund. First, it has to maintain
its welfare effort at the fiscal year 1994 level. And unemployment has
to be two percentage points higher than in the previous year. States
will then have to match these Federal funds at the same rate as the
matching formula for Medicaid. And they will have to maintain their own
effort. This is a tough requirement, but I believe it is fair, and I
believe that it will be of immense help to the States.
Mr. President, we need this rainy day fund, and we need to make sure
that it is not abused.
Let me turn to the third amendment I intend to offer. It has to do
with a subject that has troubled me in this country for many, many
years, and that is the issue of child support and child support
enforcement. When I discuss this issue, I again have to go back, in my
own mind, at least, to my experience as a county prosecuting attorney.
One of my jobs, of course, was to try to enforce the child support
enforcement laws. Mr. President, the third amendment really is an
attempt to make it easier for States to crack down on deadbeat parents.
We are all aware that one of the key cost causes of our social
breakdown is the failure for parents to be responsible for their own
children. The family ought to be the school for citizenship--preparing
the children for responsible and productive lives. When the parents do
not do that, it is very difficult for society to step in and fill the
gap.
We need to reconnect parenthood and responsibility. We need to help
States locate these deadbeats, establish support orders for the
children, and enforce the orders.
My amendment attempts to address this problem in two ways. First, it
provides for a more timely sharing of information with the States.
Today, the Federal Parent Locator Service, in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, gives the States banking and asset
information about potential deadbeats on an annual basis, only once a
year.
Mr. President, talk to the people who have to track down these
deadbeats, and they will tell you and other Members of the Senate how
difficult that process is. As I mentioned, I used to do this when I was
a county prosecutor. If you have to wait a whole year to get
information about a deadbeat, there is a pretty good chance that that
deadbeat is going to flee your jurisdiction. The information that you
get may be up to a year old--or even more--and will simply not be
information that will do any good.
My amendment is simple. It would change that reporting requirement
from an annual basis to a quarterly basis.
Mr. President, these child support enforcers are involved in a very
difficult but a very important job. I believe that we should cut--by 75
percent--the amount of time they have to wait for this very important
information.
Mr. President, I look forward to the debate on these and the other
amendments offered by my colleagues. I believe that we have a great
opportunity in this year's welfare reform bill--an opportunity to
change the direction of welfare and to really change the direction of
this country.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, first, I would like to compliment my
friend and colleague from Ohio, Senator DeWine, for an excellent
statement. His experience as a Congressman, his experience as
Lieutenant Governor of the State of Ohio, as well as a Senator, gives
him a perspective that may be better than most because he has been
involved in administering these programs. I think he has had some very
constructive, positive ideas that are really invaluable. I hope our
colleagues will pay attention. I compliment my friend for his remarks.
I would also like to say at this time that we requested a list of
amendments, and the numbers were floating around, whether there was 50
amendments, 60 amendments, or 70 amendments.
We are very willing to take up those amendments, see if we can
incorporate those amendments into the substitute bill that will be
offered tomorrow, or have people offer their amendments. They can
debate them. We will set aside the amendment and vote on the amendment
tomorrow.
If colleagues have amendments that they would like to be considered
and disposed of, and frankly I think we are going to be more favorably
disposed tonight than we will be later on Friday and certainly on
Monday and Tuesday. I encourage colleagues if they have amendments to
please bring those to the floor and we will try to assist in any way we
can as far as disposing of them.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I understand there is a pending
amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 2469 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To provide additional funding to States to accommodate any
growth in the number of people in poverty)

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein] proposes an
amendment numbered 2469 to amendment No. 2280.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

Beginning on page 17, line 16, strike all through page 21,
line 3, and insert the following:
``(3) Supplemental grant amount for poverty population
increases in certain states.--

[[Page S 12808]]

``(A) In general.--The amount of the grant payable under
paragraph (1) to a qualifying State for each of fiscal years
1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 shall be increased by the
supplemental grant amount for such State.
``(B) Qualifying state.--For purposes of this paragraph,
the term `qualifying State', with respect to any fiscal year,
means a State that had an increase in the number of poor
people as determined by the Secretary under subparagraph (D)
for the most recent fiscal year for which information is
available.
``(C) Supplemental grant amount.--For purposes of this
paragraph, the supplemental grant amount for a State, with
respect to any fiscal year, is an amount which bears the same
ratio to the total amount appropriated under paragraph (4)(B)
for such fiscal year as the increase in the number of poor
people as so determined for such State bears to the total
increase of poor people as so determined for all States.
``(D) Requirement that data relating to the incidence of
poverty in the united states be published.--
``(i) In general.--The Secretary shall, to the extent
feasible, produce and publish for each State, county, and
local unit of general purpose government for which data have
been compiled in the then most recent census of population
under section 141(a) of title 13, United States Code, and for
each school district, data relating to the incidence of
poverty. Such data may be produced by means of sampling,
estimation, or any other method that the Secretary determines
will produce current, comprehensive, and reliable data.
``(ii) Content; frequency.--Data under this subparagraph--
``(I) shall include--
``(aa) for each school district, the number of children age
5 to 17, inclusive, in families below the poverty level; and
``(bb) for each State and county referred to in clause (i),
the number of individuals age 65 or older below the poverty
level; and
``(II) shall be published--
``(aa) for each State, annually beginning in 1996;
``(bb) for each county and local unit of general purpose
government referred to in clause (i),
in 1996 and at least every second year thereafter; and
``(ccb) for each school district, in 1998 and at least
every second year thereafter.
``(iii) Authority to aggregate.--
``(I) In general.--If reliable data could not otherwise be
produced, the Secretary may, for purposes of clause
(ii)(I)(aa), aggregate school districts, but only to the
extent necessary to achieve reliability.
``(II) Information relating to use of authority.--Any data
produced under this clause shall be appropriately identified
and shall be accompanied by a detailed explanation as to how
and why aggregation was used (including the measures taken to
minimize any such aggregation).
``(iv) Report to be submitted whenever data is not timely
published.--If the Secretary is unable to produce and publish
the data required under this subparagraph for any county,
local unit of general purpose government, or school district
in any year specified in clause (ii)(II), a report shall be
submitted by the Secretary to the President of the Senate and
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, not later than
90 days before the start of the following year, enumerating
each government or school district excluded and giving the
reasons for the exclusion.
``(v) Criteria relating to poverty.--In carrying out this
subparagraph, the Secretary shall use the same criteria
relating to poverty as were used in the then most recent
census of population under section 141(a) of title 13, United
States Code (subject to such periodic adjustments as may be
necessary to compensate for inflation and other similar
factors).
``(vi) Consultation.--The Secretary shall consult with the
Secretary of Education in carrying out the requirements of
this subparagraph relating to school districts.
``(vii) Authorization of appropriations.--There are
authorized to be appropriated to carry out this subparagraph
$1,500,000 for each of fiscal years 1996 through 2000.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment
that would provide additional funding to States to accommodate growth
which may occur in their welfare caseloads.
Legislation which provides the basis for this amendment is included
in the welfare reform bill already passed by the House of
Representatives entitled H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility Act.
Title 1 of that bill includes a supplemental grant to adjust for
population increases. In the House version, the grant is $100 million
annually for each of fiscal years 1997, 1998, 1999, and the year 2000.
In the Dole bill, the supplemental grant is $877 million over 5
years. The House supplemental grant is distributed to States based on
each State's proportion of the total growth. However, the Dole bill
handles this formula in a very complicated manner which only benefits
19 out of the 50 States.
Frankly, by providing zero funding for growth, it does in the State
of California. I have got to make that very clear.
The amendment I am proposing today takes the same approach, as the
legislation that passed the House of Representatives, with respect to
growth, and would apply it to the Dole bill. California, which is
projected to experience a significant growth in its poor population
over the next 5 years, under the present draft of the Dole bill, would
receive zero--zero.
There is no additional cost associated with this amendment. In fact,
there is some reason to believe that this method of accommodating
growth equitably and objectively among all States might result in some
cost savings when compared to the underlying bill. In any event, the
authorization of appropriations, for the supplemental grant for each of
the fiscal years, remains the same as in the Dole bill, and
distribution of the additional funds is capped by those amounts which
total $877 million over 5 years.
I would add another point. All States will be held harmless under
this legislation. That is to say, no State's grant will be reduced if
the State experiences a decline in its poor population. But each and
every State which experiences an increase in its poor population will
receive a corresponding increase in its Federal grant to help them
carry out the mandates of this legislation.
Let me briefly contrast this with the approach in the underlying
bill. As I said, only 19 States, meet the definition for use of this
money under the language of the Dole bill, and that is irrespective of
their actual growth of in poor youngsters. And, it excludes many States
that will experience growth in their caseloads.
Under the Dole bill, 19 States receive automatic additional funding,
2.5 percent of the fiscal year 1996 grant in each of the years 1997 to
the year 2000 if, first, their State's welfare spending is less than
the national average level of State spending and, second, population
growth is greater than the average national population growth.
In addition, for reasons which are unclear, certain States are deemed
as qualifying if their level of State welfare spending is less than 35
percent of the national average level of State welfare spending per
poor person in fiscal year 1996. As I understand it, only two States
qualify. Mississippi and Arkansas are the only two States that would
qualify under that portion of the drafting.
This formula penalizes States which have traditionally had higher
levels of State welfare spending. So, in other words, if you have been
a high benefit State, you are actually penalized by the bill. And, it
rewards States, irrespective of their projected, or actual, population
growth or decline.
I must say I am astonished that many States which are projected to
have significant increases in their poor populations do not meet the
definition required by the Dole bill. It leads me to conclude that this
supplemental grant is not necessarily to accommodate growth at all.
Federal taxpayers are being asked to spend almost $1 billion over 5
years in the name of growth. But, in fact, the result is that States
which, until now, have spent less than the average in assisting the
poor will now be subsidized. So, until now, they have not spent much,
and, now, they are going to be subsidized by the taxpayers of all 50
States. What kind of a bill is that?
Let me take a moment to review for you what some of the benefit
levels have been from some of the States who will be beneficiaries of
this so-called growth fund. In Mississippi the maximum monthly AFDC
benefit for one-parent families with two children has been $120. That
is $120 in combined Federal-State AFDC grants. In Alabama, the combined
maximum has been $164. In Texas, the maximum benefit has been $188. In
Tennessee, $185. Louisiana, $190. Arkansas, $204. Kentucky, $228.
Let us look at one or two States with similar benefit levels. In
Indiana, the monthly benefit is $288. In Missouri, it is $292. But even
though these levels are similar to other States, they will receive
nothing, zero, zip--nothing--to accommodate any increase in their poor
populations. Why? Who would draw this kind of growth formula?
Let us look now at some high growth States. Let us see what they
get--Washington, for example. While the

[[Page S 12809]]
Bureau of the Census projects a general population growth of almost 10
percent, the Dole bill provides zero funding for growth. Idaho is
projected to experience a general increase in its population of almost
11 percent, Mr. President. Is it a growth State under the Dole bill?
The answer is no. Finally, let us take a look at California, the most
populous State in the Nation and one which is projected to grow by 6.25
percent over the next 5 years. It, too, receives no additional funds to
meet the anticipated growth in caseload.
Clearly, the growth fund in the underlying bill is, as I have said,
not a true growth fund. It is a fund for some other reason, but I do
not think anyone in this body should call it a growth fund. I believe
this is a fundamental flaw in the Dole bill, as compared to the House
version of the welfare reform bill.
None of us in this body knows what the future holds for our States--
whether it is economic recession in a rust belt State, regional
downturn in a sunbelt State, natural disaster in any part of our
country, or even Federal base closures. What we do know is there will
be unanticipated regional economic conditions and corresponding
fluctuations in the incidence of poverty. Any State is susceptible to
these circumstances. This amendment, the amendment I am proposing,
simply uses the same approach as in the House bill, applies it to the
$877 million, and says that you receive additional funding for growth
proportionate to your numbers published by the Bureau of the Census. If
your poor population goes up, you will get the corresponding
proportional share of that fund.
This, to me, is the fair way of doing it. No gimmicks, you use the
census figures. If you are a growth State, you get extra funding to
carry out the mandate. Frankly, most of the States, the overwhelming
number of States, are projected to benefit, and also States with no
growth, or actual declines in population, are held harmless. And,
finally again, it costs no more money.
You will have proposals before you that use a little sleight of hand.
Some will reduce the base funding level currently in the Dole bill and
then add to it. This amendment does not alter the initial grant in the
Dole bill. This takes the initial grant level, applies the poverty data
supplied by the Bureau of the Census, and simply says, as the House in
its wisdom did, that that data is used objectively to determine any
additional funds which are provided to each and every State. So, Mr.
President, your State would benefit from that. My State would benefit
from that for sure. That is what this amendment does.
Let me conclude on this amendment by saying that this is not a matter
of ``winners'' and ``losers.'' It is a matter of accuracy and fairness
involving the distribution of Federal funds. I think it is very
difficult for anyone to argue against that.
I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be temporarily set aside.
Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator from California will yield, I appreciate
her amendment, and I want to thank her for coming to the floor and
offering her amendment. I see other colleagues, as well as the Senator
from Illinois. I again urge other Senators, if they have amendments, I
think we will be lot more receptive and also it will expedite the
consideration of those amendments for tomorrow or on Monday.
I do not know that this--as a matter of fact, I doubt that allocation
amendments are the ones that will be readily agreed upon because some
States win and some States lose. Allocation formulas are always
contested in almost any type of bill like this, whether it is a highway
bill or a welfare bill or other allocations. The allocation formula the
Senator is proposing under her amendment would be identical to the one
now currently in the House bill.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. It is the same basis. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. The amendment is directed toward States that have
increases in welfare population.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct any and all States.
Mr. NICKLES. Welfare population being defined as welfare children, or
just total welfare population of the States.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. It is defined as increase in poor populations
measured by current census data.
Mr. NICKLES. The information that the Senator handed out, the
distribution formula that she is recommending and the impact on the
States is on actually the second page of the handout but recorded as
page 4.
Is that correct?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I did not bring those with me because we are making
charts, and we were called, and we came down before the charts were
ready, I am afraid.
Mr. NICKLES. I have a couple of charts. I want to make sure. I will
confer with my colleague and friend.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. There are four charts. If I can take a look at them
when we finish, I would be happy to.
The Senator is absolutely correct. I know the formula is going to be
difficult to change. If it looks like a growth formula, if it is named
like a growth formula, it ought to talk and walk like a growth formula.
That is all I am saying.
More States are benefited by this. I think 27 States fare better than
in the underlying bill are clearly benefited by this, and States which
do not experience an increase are held harmless.
Mr. NICKLES. If my colleague will yield further, she has 27 States
that would presumably do better under the great portion of the bill,
not the entire bill.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. The Senator's amendment is allocating the money set
aside for growth States, and under her proposed distribution it would
increase benefits under that portion of the fund to 27 States as
compared to 10 States. In other words, under the Dole proposal.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. As compared to 19 States. The Dole proposal, as we
understand it, benefits only 19 States. My amendment benefits all
States. I would be happy to debate it. If I am wrong, I would be happy
to admit it. This is our belief. Our formula would benefit 27 States,
beyond those in the Dole bill, and would hold everybody else harmless.
So nobody would go below what their 1996 level is.
Mr. NICKLES. Let me further try to clarify so I will know and maybe
just help us tomorrow when we are considering these amendments.
Under the proposal of the Senator from California, it benefits 27
States. You do not change the amount of money. So you spread it out
over a few more States. Senator Dole's proposal would have additional
for the growth States that have large increases in poverty. It would
benefit 19 States. So presumably they would do a little bit better. So
you are dividing up the same amount of money as compared to your growth
proposal. We will have charts to make an analysis or comparison under
both proposals.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. They are not necessarily all of the growth States
that are benefited.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my colleague. Senator Dole's
proposal, I believe, is directed toward States that have significant
increases in growth in poverty. And my guess is--I have not studied
these charts--but he talks about the growth funds for States that have
significant increases in poverty. Yours maybe is a little broader
distribution.
I will tell my colleagues that there is a dispute on both sides of
the aisle. This is probably not a partisan amendment as such because
people wrestle with distribution formulas, and trying to come up with
most equitable formula is not always the easiest thing to do,
particularly if they have a lot of inequities in past distribution
formulas which we have had with different programs.
But I, again, want to thank the Senator from California for offering
her amendment and sending it to the desk.
Does the Senator also have another amendment?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct, for tonight.
Let me just say what I understand the Dole does in this area. Then if
I am wrong, I would be happy to know that.
These funds apply, if two things are met: one, the State's welfare
spending is less than the national average of State spending; and,
second, population growth is greater than the national population
growth. That does not necessarily relate to welfare population growth.
That is one problem that I have with it.

[[Page S 12810]]

Amendment No. 2470 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To impose a child support obligation on paternal grandparents
in cases in which both parents are minors)

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. If I may, I now send the second amendment to the desk
and I ask for its consideration
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the pending amendment is
temporarily set aside, and the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein) proposes an
amendment numbered 2470 to amendment No. 2280.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 654, between lines 15 and 16, insert the following:

SEC. . ENFORCEMENT OF ORDERS AGAINST PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS
IN CASES OF MINOR PARENTS.

Section 466(a) (42 U.S.C. 666(a)), as amended by sections
915, 917(a), 923, 965, and 976, is amended by adding at the
end the following new paragraph:
``(17) Procedures under which any child support order
enforced under this part with respect to a child of minor
parents, if the mother of such child is receiving assistance
under the State grant under part A, shall be enforceable,
jointly and severally, against the paternal grandparents of
such child.''.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, as I have listened to the debate,
there has been a lot of talk about teenage pregnancy, youngsters
impregnating youngsters, walking away from their responsibility, and
really young children becoming pregnant, becoming teen mothers often by
teen fathers. I have heard many Senators say we must stop this. I
believe we have a way to send a major message to a constituency, and it
is contained in this amendment.
What this amendment would do is say that every State must have in
effect laws and procedures under which a child support order can be
enforced, where both parents are minors, and, the mother is a minor
receiving Federal assistance for the child, against the paternal
grandparents of the child.
So if you are the mother and father of a boy child, and your boy
child goes out and impregnates a minor girl who ends up on welfare as a
result, you will be liable for a child support order against you as the
parents of that young boy.
What I find increasingly is that child support is a growing crisis.
This has also been debated--and, frankly, the lack of child support is
one of the major causes of children living in poverty in my State; that
is, the absence of child support--a parent, usually the father, not
always, but usually it is the father that just walks off and does not
support his child.
Well, if this is going to be a tough welfare bill, let us address it.
Let us say, ``Parents, you are responsible for the behavior of your
adolescent son. If your adolescent son is going to go out and get a
young girl pregnant, you are going to have to pay for the uprearing and
the child support of that offspring.''
I think the time has come for this kind of amendment. It is strong.
It is an amendment that attributes family responsibility. It is an
amendment that says parents of minors have responsibilities and one of
those responsibilities is to see to it that their sons do not enter
into this kind of conduct and then walk away from their responsibility.
So, I would now ask that that amendment be set aside.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
amendment will be set aside.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, while my colleague from California is
here, I have not had a chance to totally review her second amendment. I
am very interested in this amendment. It is a tough amendment. If I
understand it correctly, if my colleague from California will correct
me if I misunderstood her statement, but the Senator's amendment would
basically, if you have a minor with a child, a single parent--the
paternal grandparents would be liable for what expense?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. For the child support. A court order would be
obtained and the parents of the male child would be responsible for the
child support of that offspring.
Mr. NICKLES. Let me talk out loud or think out loud. So if you have a
teenage mother, if you have in this case an unmarried single mother,
and if there is a court order placed against the father for child
support, if that is not collectible from the father, then the parents
of the father in this case would be liable for the child support?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct where the father is also a minor.
Mr. NICKLES. The primary responsibility would still be the father.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. But if the father is delinquent, if the father is not
available or unable to pay, for whatever reason, unemployed, you name
it, then the parents of the absentee father in this case would be
liable?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. That is correct for minor fathers. And I would
certainly welcome the Senator from Oklahoma looking at this. If there
is any way he thinks it could be made better, I would be delighted.
Mr. NICKLES. I compliment my colleague from California for offering
the amendment tonight. I appreciate that. I am interested in the
amendment. It looks good from what I have seen. I will study it further
and see if we can support it.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator.
Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Oklahoma.
Senator Feinstein's second amendment, I think, is a positive amendment
and one that maybe we can work on and get it accepted on both sides. I
think it is a good amendment.
I am not as enthusiastic about the first amendment. In defense of
Senator Hutchison, who really did an outstanding job on this side of
the aisle in working on the issue of formulas and trying to bring some
compromise into a very difficult issue, nobody is happy with
allocations of formulas, as the Senator from Oklahoma said. There are
States that win; there are States that lose. What we tried to do is
hold at least everybody harmless. We did under the formula that is in
the Dole bill and then provided some reasonable amount of money for
growth. I guess what is really the bugaboo here is how we determine
what growth is and what is fair.
I suggest to you that if the Senator from Texas [Mrs. Hutchison],
were here, what she would say is what is fair should not be based on
what is--a system that you receive money from the State based on how
much money you put up, not on how many poor people you have but how
much money you are willing to give to the poor people in your State. So
if you are a State like California, which is a high-benefit State and
puts up a lot of money, you get more Federal dollars. It is a match.
The more you put up, the more money you get. And so as a result, States
like California and, I would say, Pennsylvania where I am from, which
is above average--not as high as California but above-average State as
far as welfare dollars--get more money from the Federal Government
because we are willing to put up more State dollars to match the
Federal funds.
Now, that is an equitable system the way it exists today, but we are
changing the system. Effective as a result of this bill's passage there
is no more Federal match. There is no more every dollar we put up or
every--I think it is roughly 50-50--every dollar we put up, you put up
a dollar and we go on together.
What we do now is send a block grant to the States. Every State gets
a block grant. What is that? It is an amount of money irrespective of
anything else. Irrespective of how much you are contributing, we are
going to give you an amount of money that you will be able to spend on
AFDC to help mothers with children. It is not dependent anymore on how
much money you put up. It is just a block grant.
Now, if we were going to design a block grant program from the start,
if we did not have the existing AFDC program in place, how would we
distribute that money? Well, let me tell you how it is distributed
under the bill. It is distributed based on how much money you got last
year.
Think about this. Now we are giving a block grant to take care of a
population of children and in most cases mothers and we are basing it
on last year's amount of money that the State got, which, of course,
from last year,

[[Page S 12811]]
was based on how much the State was willing to pony up to get Federal
dollars and match it. It has no relation again to how many more persons
but to how much the State was willing to spend.
So what happens, there are many States that are high-benefit States
that are getting a lot more money per child than low-benefit States are
getting per child. If we were going to design a program today from
start--let us say we did not have an AFDC program, we had no poverty
assistance program at the Federal level; we were going to start a
program today--how would we design a model for helping children?
I suggest that what we would do is exactly what the Senator from
California suggested. We should figure out how many poor people there
are in the State, people eligible for welfare, for AFDC, and allocate
so many dollars per person on welfare. We would take the number of
people on welfare in the country, we would say here is how many dollars
per person each State will get for that person on welfare and divide it
up among the States. That would be a fair allocation formula. No child
in California is worth more than a child in Mississippi or Vermont or
Oklahoma.
But that is not what we did. We did not start out and say everybody
is going to get the same irrespective. What we did was say children in
California actually get more money because the State in the prior
legislation, the current AFDC law contributed more so children in
California get $200 per month per child and a person in Mississippi may
get $50.
Now, what the Senator from California says is that, well, we are
subsidizing these bad States like Mississippi that did not contribute a
lot of money to help the people in their State.
I hear a lot from the other side of the aisle about we should not be
punishing children--except, of course, if they happen to live in a
State that is not a high-benefit State in this example because that is
exactly what we do with the Feinstein amendment. We punish children who
live in low-benefit States that continue to get low benefits under the
current program.
What Senator Hutchison did was say, look, let us look at, since we
now no longer require in this bill any kind of matching State funds--
there is no maintenance-of-effort provision in this bill. California
can completely pull the plug on every dollar of welfare spending that
they are now required to spend to get the Federal match. They do not
have to contribute a cent anymore and they get all the money. And they
get two or three times as much per child as Mississippi. But now,
again, California does not have to spend the money to get that money.
Now, how is it fair to say that California should get, because they
are increasing in population, even more money per child than
Mississippi which maybe is not growing as fast? If you look at it from
the perspective of not what has been but what a fair allocation formula
should be now based on a completely new model, you would suggest that
States having low-benefit levels that are growing should be the
recipients of the increasing growth funds to have their children come
up to parity with States like California and Pennsylvania and New York
and others.
That is what the Senator from Texas is suggesting. I would also
suggest the Senator from California is doing her duty. She represents a
mega-State, a State that has been very generous with welfare dollars,
and under her allocation formula of the pot, I think California--I
think it is about $1.5 billion, money that would be allocated over the
next 7 years for these programs. They get roughly half the money in
California under this program. It is a big chunk. California is a big
State. It has one-eighth of the population of the country but they get
about half the increase under this formula allocation.
If I was from California, I would design a program that got me half
the money, too. I understand that. But it is not fair when you consider
the new rules that we have put in place. No longer do we require match.
That is the key here. California does not have to put up a penny to get
this money anymore.
What we are saying is because we do not make them put up a penny
anymore and because they are getting much more per child than I think
any other State, with the possible exception of New York, we are not
going to give them even more money because they happen to be growing.
We are going to take care of the States that do not get a lot of money
and that are growing also.
So that is the basis for this discussion. And so while it may, to the
virgin ear on this subject, be a very appealing argument from the
Senator from California that this is only fair, I mean we are growing
and therefore we deserve more money, I would suggest that if we are
looking at it for the sake of the child and not looking at where that
child lives but looking at what the Federal Government's obligation is
to a child under a new system where State matching dollars are
irrelevant, then I would suggest that growth fund should be targeted to
those States where the Federal contribution per child is the lowest.
And that is what this amendment does.
I speak against my own interest in this case because Pennsylvania is
not as high a benefit State as California but it is an above-average
benefit State that is not going to receive any growth dollars according
to the estimates. We are not going to receive a penny, and we would
receive a small amount of increase under the Feinstein bill.
So it would be in my interest for Pennsylvania to vote for, I think
it is $6 million. It is not a whole lot of money for Pennsylvania, but
it is a little bit of money under the Feinstein amendment. That might
be my benefit, but I do not think it is fair under the new allocation.
I think it is fair to focus on the child, not where that child lives,
in what State.
As the Senator from Connecticut said earlier in the day, this is a
Federal problem and we should have a Federal solution. I did not agree
with the second part. It is a Federal problem. We do not need Federal
solutions, we need local solutions. But the dollars that come from
Washington should be equitable across the country. That is what this
growth formula attempts to do, to bring other States with lower
benefits up to meet the average.
I know it is going to be a difficult vote. I happen to be from one of
those States that does not benefit under the current growth funds but
would under the Feinstein growth fund. You would be very tempted, and I
know many Members will be, to jump on for your parochial interests.
No. 1, I think it would be very damaging for the long-term interests
of this bill. I think it is absolutely unfair when you look at the
child, not where the child lives and how much the Federal Government is
paying per child. I think that should be the fundamental test of
whether this formula is fair.
I know this is going to be a very heated issue. It is one that is
going to be talked about tomorrow, and I know the Senator from Texas
will be far more eloquent than I have been in defending her formula. I
just want to commend the Senator from Texas, Senator Hutchison, one
more time, for the tremendous work she did in putting together an
allocation formula which no one thought could be done. We did not think
we would be able to work this one out. This was the issue that was
bogging us down.
When it comes to money, everybody gets real tightfisted around here.
We were able to work out something which I think is defensible, not
only from a political standpoint of folks being able to explain back
home, but I think it is very defensible from a fairness perspective of
what this bill actually accomplishes.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

Amendment No. 2471 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To require States to establish a voucher program for
providing assistance to minor children in families that are eligible
for but do not receive assistance)

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Ms. Moseley-Braun] proposes an
amendment numbered 2471 to amendment No. 2280.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the

[[Page S 12812]]
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 12, between lines 22 and 23, insert the following:
``(G) Assess and provide for the needs of a minor child who
is eligible for the child voucher program established under
subsection (c).
On page 15, between lines 19 and 20, insert the following:
``(d) Child Voucher Program.--
``(1) Eligibility.--
``(A) In general.--A State to which a grant is made under
section 403 shall establish and operate a voucher program to
provide assistance to each minor child who resides with a
family that is eligible for but not receiving assistance
under the State program as a result of any reason identified
by the State, including--
``(i) the time limit imposed under section 405(b);
``(ii) a penalty imposed under section 404(d); or
``(iii) placement on a waiting list established by the
State for recipients of assistance under the State program.
``(B) Periodic assessments.--The State shall conduct
periodic assessments to determine the continued eligibility
of a minor child for a voucher under this subsection.
``(2) Amount of voucher.--
``(A) In general.--The amount of a voucher provided under
the program established under paragraph (1) shall be equal
to--
``(i) the number of minor children in the family multiplied
by
``(ii) the per capita assistance amount determined under
subparagraph (B).
``(B) Per capita assistance amount.--For purposes of
subparagraph (A), the per capita assistance amount is an
amount equal to--
``(i) the amount of assistance that would have been
provided to a family described in paragraph (1) under the
State program; divided by
``(ii) the number of family members in such family.
``(3) Use of voucher.--A voucher provided under this
subsection may be used to obtain--
``(A) housing;
``(B) food;
``(C) transportation;
``(D) child care; and
``(E) any other item or service that the State deems
appropriate.
``(4) Delivery of items or services.--A State shall arrange
for the delivery of or directly provide the items and
services for which a voucher issued under this subsection may
be used.
On page 15, line 20, strike ``(d)'' and insert ``(e)''.
On page 24, line 24, insert ``(including the operation of a
child voucher program described in section 402(c))'' after
``part''.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I attempted earlier today to speak
to this issue in general, and now, I would like to speak to the issue
of welfare reform and the legislation before us generally as well as
file several amendments.
At the outset, I would like to say that, quite frankly, I am very
pleased with the way this process is working. In spite of all the
slogans and the political speeches and the hot buttons and the wedge
issues, the fact is that because of this debate, we are undertaking a
conversation among ourselves as legislators and, again, indeed with the
country around the issue of welfare generally, welfare reform and the
appropriate response to the challenge our current system poses to this
nation.
Mr. President, I submit to you that this is an issue that, as the
French would say--there is an old expression--``plus ca change, plus
c'est la meme chose,'' the more things change, the more they remain the
same.
Quite frankly, I brought to the attention of the Finance Committee,
on which I serve as a member, an article that had appeared in the
Chicago History magazine in their spring issue. The article was
entitled ``Friendless Foundlings and Homeless Half-Orphans.'' The
caption of the article said:

In 19th century Chicago, the debate over the care of needy
children raised issues of Government versus private control
and institutional versus family care.

The article goes on at great length and, indeed, I have some pictures
here from the article that showed the condition of poor children in
turn of the century Chicago sleeping in the gutters and the, turned
over by their parents to orphanages, unable to be cared for because of
the poverty of their parents. The homeless half-orphans title refers to
women who during the turn of the century struggled to raise children
alone and because of their economic circumstances could not afford to
do so and were often called upon, compelled even, to turn their
children over to halfway houses and orphanages and others in order to
provide just for the basic sustenance of those children.
I raise this not to inflame this debate because I, again, very much
appreciate the way and the tenor this debate has taken, certainly this
evening, but really to begin talking about my amendment which calls on
the States to establish a safety net for children, and to put that
amendment in context.
Essentially, the amendment itself says that when all is said and
done, if you will, at the end of the day, after the States, under the
primary legislation, have made all their rules, that in the final
analysis, no child--no child--in America will be left to fend for
themselves, will be left without subsistence, will be left homeless,
will be left hungry.
Bottom line, this amendment calls on us to make an affirmation of our
commitment to provide for the children and to make certain that welfare
reform does not become a subterfuge or outlet for punishing kids for
the sins of their parents or the misfortune, indeed, of their parents
to be born into poverty.
I think it is important for us to talk a little bit about welfare in
the context of poverty as an issue, because really that is what it is.
Welfare is not a stand-alone problem, it is not something you just say
exists over here in a vacuum by itself. Welfare is not, and never has
been, anything other than a response to poverty. It is a system, a set
of rules that calls on a Federal-State relationship and cooperation,
and we can debate, as no doubt we will and will continue to, what that
relationship must be. But it, essentially, is a relationship between
Government that calls on our national community to care for the welfare
of poor children so that we do not have to go back to the friendless
foundlings and the homeless half-orphans that plagued so many of our
communities at the turn of the century in America.
So welfare reform then should, at a minimum--at a minimum--ask the
question, and answer in the affirmative the question: What about the
children? We must always have an answer that says that no State, no
locality, no community, no part of our national community will allow
for children to go homeless and to go hungry.
So this amendment requires the States to establish a child voucher
program to provide services to minor children who reside in families
that meet the State's income and resource criteria for the temporary
assistance to needy family block grant, which is the name of the block
grant in the underlying bill, but who are not receiving assistance. The
amount of the voucher will be based on a pretime limit, per capita
rate, and would be a total amount for each child.
The State would be called on, therefore, even if the parent did not
qualify for failure to live up to the rules or for cutbacks or whatever
reason, to assure that the children would be entitled to essential
services through a voucher system.
The voucher would be paid to a third party that would provide the
service. So a child living in a family which no longer qualified for
assistance would still be assured of essential services. This amendment
would assure that children, are not punished for their parents'
behavior.
Let us talk a little bit about welfare for a moment. I think it is
important to go back to the big picture issue--welfare as a response to
poverty.
Right now, in this country, Mr. President, 22 percent of the children
live in poverty. This is higher than in any other industrialized
nation. One in every 5 children in America lives in poverty. That means
that 15 million children live in poverty--40 million Americans total
overall, but 15 million children live in poverty. That, Mr. President,
is greater--frankly, it is 40 percent more than it was even in 1970.
To talk about what we mean in terms of poverty, for families of
three, the poverty rate is $12,320 a year. A family of four is
considered to be poor if they have an income of $14,800 a year. Mr.
President, 53 percent of female-headed households in this Nation are
poor, and 23 percent of American families overall are headed by women.
So this becomes a problem of particular urgency for poor children, and
particularly for poor women.
Our child poverty rate here in the United States is two times that of
Australia and Canada. Our child poverty

[[Page S 12813]]
rate is four times that of France, Sweden, Germany, and the
Netherlands. And so we can see that child poverty is a particular
problem here in the United States. It is a problem that has been
addressed somewhat by the existence of what is known as welfare, the
AFDC program. Again, AFDC is simply a response to poverty.
I have a chart, Mr. President, of child poverty rates among the
industrialized countries. This is the most recent data available. As
you can see, here is Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland. It goes
from 2.5 percent up to the United States, which is 21.5 percent. We
have a higher rate than Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom, Italy,
Germany, France, The Netherlands, Austria, Norway, Belgium,
Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
Child poverty is a particular problem here in the United States. The
gap between rich and poor children is greater in our country than in
any other industrialized country. Affluent households with children in
the United States--the top 10 percent in terms of wealth--are amongst
the wealthiest children in the 18 industrialized countries that have
been surveyed. Of the poorest, the bottom 10 percent of children in the
United States in terms of wealth, we are the third poorest among the 18
industrialized countries surveyed.
So the disparity in the children of the wealthiest in the world and
the children among the poorest is greater in this country than in any
other industrialized nation.
I have another chart here. This depicts poor households with
children. Here is the United States with $10,923. Affluent households
average almost $65,536 annually. The length of the bars represent the
gap between rich and poor children. As we can see, here in the United
States, this gap is greater than anywhere else in the industrialized
world.
So, as we approach the issue of welfare reform, we are approaching an
issue of dealing with our response to a problem that is unique in the
industrialized world and a problem that has been getting worse, not
better.
The issue of welfare inflames passions in the United States. Without
getting into the passions, I want to talk a little bit about the facts
in terms of the AFDC program or what is known as the welfare program.
As the Chair is no doubt aware, AFDC has been a response to poverty
that has been with us for a while. The system has come under great
challenge, and that is really why we are here right now, to debate the
direction that we are going to take in terms of reforming this program.
What we generally refer to as welfare is Aid to Families with Dependent
Children, which was established under the Social Security Act of 1935.
States obviously play a major role in operating this program. States
define eligibility, the benefit levels, and actually administer the
program. So, again, while we will talk further and in greater detail
about the level of State involvement, the fact is that the States
already make a huge determination about who will participate in the
AFDC program.
Mr. President, presently there are some 14 million people receiving
AFDC in the country. That is a lot of people. The fact of the matter is
that that is about 5.3 percent of our total population. But I think a
more stunning and compelling fact is not just that 14 million Americans
receive some sort of assistance under the Aid to Families with
Dependent Children, but that 9 million of those 14 million people are
children; 9 million of those people are children. So we hear the
discussion about folks not pulling the wagon and in the wagon having to
be pulled and about whose fault all of these problems are and the like.
I think it is important that we remain mindful of the fact that fully
two-thirds--9 million out of 14 million--who will be the subject of
what we do here, are children. Only 5 million of those people receiving
AFDC are adults.
Of those 5 million adults, Mr. President, states reported that some
3.6 percent of their caseloads were disabled or incapacitated. That
encompasses the people who are not able to work. So, really, of the
folks we are talking about in terms of welfare reform, some 4.1 million
out of the 14 million are able bodied and able to work. Certainly, we
start this debate with the notion that anybody who can work should
work, and anybody who can take care of themselves should be able to do
so. The question becomes, however, what about the children? What do we
do about the children?
I daresay, Mr. President, that right now the way this legislation
before us is constructed, the children will lose out. There is no
guarantee or commitment by our national community that the children
will be protected by the decisions that get made at the State level. On
the one hand, I think we can all agree that State flexibility is
something that is a positive change, and States ought to be able to
make decisions about how they handle their local population.
At the same time, legislation that does not provide a safety net for
the children essentially penalizes those children and makes any child
living here in the United States really at the mercy of their location
or geography. So a child who lives in New York may well find himself in
the presence of a benevolent State legislature and Governor and find
himself cared for and not having to sleep in the streets, as in the
original picture I showed you. A child in New York may benefit, and in
another State a child may not. So the children, once again, become
victims to fortune and victims to the accident of geography and the
accident of their birth and of their address. It seems to me, Mr.
President, that that is not a result that we as a national community
should allow to happen.
By the way, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the
article ``Friendless Foundlings and Homeless Orphans'' be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Chicago History magazine, Spring, 1995]

Friendless Foundlings and Homeless Half-Orphans

(By Joan Gittens)

Editor's note: The debate over the care of dependent
children is not new. In the following excerpt, Joan Gittens
explores nineteenth-century attitudes towards child care in
Illinois and Chicago.
There is perhaps no greater catastrophe for children than
when their families, for whatever reason, no longer functions
for them. Not only must they contend with emotional upheaval;
they are left without caretakers and must look to the broader
society for sustenance and protection. If they are fortunate,
relatives or friends will step in and fill the gap--if not
emotionally, at least on a practical level. The children
unlucky enough to have no surrogate parents must look to the
society at large to take an interest in their well-being.
That this is at best a tenuous situation for a child is
demonstrated by the prevalence of the pathetic and mistreated
orphan in folk and popular culture.
Yet folklore could scarcely exaggerate life's hazards for
children dependent on public bounty in Illinois. Despite the
citizenry's occasional intense regard--usually when a
particularly brutal story hit the newspapers--dependent
children have been generally isolated, remote from public
consciousness, and without natural allies. ``Their very
innocence and inoffensiveness leads to their disregard,''
wrote one observer bitterly. ``They make no loud outcry and
menace no one. Since there are so few voices raised in their
behalf, it is not surprising that the persons charged with
their care should be ignorant of any problems they present,
and blind to their real interests.''
Besides being easy to ignore, dependent children have
historically been costly to the state, requiring years of
expense before they could become self-sufficient. How much
the issue of their poverty has shaped their prospects the
State Board of Charities noted late in the nineteenth
century, citing the telling fact that as early as 1795 the
territory of Illinois had created an orphans' court to deal
with the estates of children who had lost their parents. The
children most desperately in need, children without means or
property, had no court to watch over their interests. They
had instead the overseer of the poor, who could apprentice
children from destitute families even over their parents'
objections.
Another territorial law underscored the inferior protection
accorded to dependent children. The law provided that
apprentices and masters could take grievances to a justice of
the peace to rule on, thus enforcing on the one hand the
master's right to obedience and hard work and on the other
the apprentice's right to decent treatment and competent
education. The law specifically excluded from protection
children apprenticed by the local poor law officials.
The conscious separation of ``the state's children'' from
those with parents continued in the Poor Law of 1819, the
social welfare law passed the year after Illinois attained
statehood. But revisions of apprenticeship and poor laws in
the next fifteen years reflected a growing sense that the
state owed a more even-handed treatment to the vulnerable
children who looked to them for support. The Apprenticeship
Law of 1926 and the

[[Page S 12814]]
Poor Law of 1833 made it the concern of the state that dependent
children's apprenticeships be monitored to some extent by the
probate judge, who was charged to keep the bonds of indenture
in his office and to investigate indentured children's
situations from time to time. The laws also articulated some
of the expectations that the children might have: the right
to decent treatment, adequate education, a new Bible, and two
suits of clothes (suitable to their station in life) at the
end of the apprenticeship. Masters still had great discretion
to decide what was fit and proper treatment, but there was at
least some sense that children dependent on the state had a
right to proper care.
The Apprenticeship Law of 1826, in addition to voicing some
concerns about the protection of dependent children, gave a
further indication of an increasing sense of state
responsibility by expanding the definition of children
requiring state attention. This law gave wide latitude to the
overseer of the poor in indenturing children whom he deemed
to be inadequately cared for, like the children of beggars,
habitual drunkards, and widows of ``bad character.'' This was
the first recognition that the state might need to intercede
even in families who had not turned to the overseers of the
poor for help. And it was the first articulation that the
state had an interest in doing more than warding off
imminent starvation, that it also had an interest in the
proper rearing of children and an obligation on some level
to step in if such proper rearing was not going forward.
This concern about proper child rearing was a nineteenth-
century phenomenon all across Western culture, but in the
United States it was especially tied to the republican
experiment that must have been very much on citizens' minds
in 1826, that fiftieth-anniversary year of the Declaration of
Independence. The adequate raising of children was a
humanitarian concern, but it was also a practical matter for
the survival of the noble but risky political enterprise that
was the focus of so much anxiety and so much international
attention. In the 1840s, the Illinois Supreme Court gave this
rationale for the state's presumption to interfere in family
life:
The power of chancery to interfere with and control, not
only the estates but the persons and custody of all minors
within the limits of its jurisdiction, is of very ancient
origin, and can not now be questioned. This is a power which
must necessarily exist somewhere in every well regulated
society, and more especially in a republican government,
where each man should be reared and educated under such
influences that he may be qualified to exercise the rights of
a freeman and take part in the government of the country. It
is a duty, then, which the country owes as well to itself, as
to the infant, to see that he is not abused, defrauded or
neglected, and the infant has a right to this protection.
To some extent the laws dealing with the adult poor
reflected increased humanitarian concern as well--Illinois
outlawed the practice of auctioning off the destitute to the
lowest bidder in 1827, for example--but it is striking that
in its increased concern about neglected children, the state
paid little or no heed to the rights of poor parents. Earlier
poor laws had given the overseer of the poor the right to
indenture children without parental consent if the family had
become a charge upon the state, even if their poverty was
only a temporary catastrophe. The 1826 law expanded the
overseer's discretionary powers to decide on the fitness of
parents, and while on the one hand that showed an increased
concern for the well-being of children, it also reflected a
callousness toward the civil rights of poor parents that had
always pervaded American poor laws.
This cavalier approach toward destitute families remained
characteristic of those engaged in child welfare right
through the nineteenth century, a striking anomaly in a
society where the sanctity of family ties was a paramount
value. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century
that some child welfare theorists would begin to argue for
the rights of poor parents and to insist
that the best care society could offer for children was to
support them in their homes rather than removing them.

urbanization and the growth of the child welfare problem
The growing awareness of children in need was a key
characteristic of nineteenth-century social welfare
endeavors. In Illinois, as in other areas of the country,
this concern had its roots in a mix of philosophical, social,
and practical considerations. The years before the Civil War
saw an outpouring of reform efforts on all levels, and
because of their vulnerability and dependence on adults,
children were prime subjects of this heightened humanitarian
sense. They appealed further because during the course of the
nineteenth century the concept of childhood as a special
stage of development grew apace, drawing the attention of
everyone from popular novelists to learned theologians.
Nineteenth-century culture celebrated childhood's intuitive
goodness and innocence, in contrast to the gloomy assessment
of earlier centuries, which had seen children at best as
profoundly ignorant and at worst as little bundles of
depravity. Another reason for the attention to children's
needs was the abiding concern that they be trained to be
independent, responsible citizens, not merely for their own
sake but for the health of the republic. Finally, attention
turned to dependent children because their numbers swelled so
markedly with the rapid growth of urban centers during the
nineteenth century.
Chicago, a frontier outpost at its incorporation in 1833,
grew in the next sixty-seven years to be the second largest
city in the United States, an industrial center that
attracted immigrants from all over the world. According to
the national census, the population of Chicago was 4,470
people in 1840; 298,977 in 1870; and 1,698,575 in 1900. The
rapid growth of the city brought great wealth to some, but it
brought in its wake much suffering as well. Immigrants who
came to the city seeking a better life sometimes found
Chicago to be a place of opportunity, but many found
themselves enmeshed in a web of poverty, depression, and
squalor, and the devastating effects of urban life were
particularly visible in children. In 1851 the city charter
noted a group that greatly concerned officials: ``children
who are destitute of proper parental care, wandering about
the streets, committing mischief, and growing up in
mendicancy, ignorance, idleness, and vice.'' These children,
popularly called ``street arabs,'' were viewed as potential
trouble makers and therefore received official attention
early.
In addition to these children there were others affected by
the disruption of city life. The legislature had made minimal
legal provisions for illegitimate children, for example, in
the early years of statehood; the presumption was that the
mother would keep her baby and the town would support her and
her child at subsistence level
(and with the most grudging of attitudes) if the father
could not be held to account and she could not manage for
herself. But in the vast, anonymous city, a desperate
mother could simply abandon her baby on the streets
without busy neighbors discovering the desertion, as they
would inevitably have done in a small town or rural
setting. The increase of this phenomenon of deserted
children, little ``foundlings'' as they were called, was a
gruesome measure of the hazards that the city could hold
in store for young women and their unwanted children.
Orphans as a group grew in number as well. All the dangers
of disease were compounded by crowded city life, by filthy
tenements and equally filthy and dangerous work places.
Children could lose one or both parents to a host of diseases
such as cholera, small pox, and tuberculosis. The United
States suffered through three cholera epidemics, in 1832 and
again in the 1840s and 1850s, and the fact that the disease
was waterborne insured that the poor, crowded into tenements
and using the foulest of water, were among the hardest hit by
the recurring plagues.
``Half-orphans'' (the standard term for children who had
lost one parent) also claimed the reluctant attention of the
state. If the mother died, the children might come to the
attention of the larger society because they stood in need of
care and nurturing. It was possible that they would turn into
some of the little ``street arabs'' about whom Chicago city
officials expressed such concern. But a father's death, on a
practical level, was even more catastrophic. Most poor
families patched together their meager income from money
brought in by fathers, mothers, and children; working men,
although they were paid very little, were routinely paid more
than women and children, and they made the largest
contribution to the family income. Widowed mothers, ill-
equipped to provide for their families, might find themselves
turning to the city or county for help to support their
children. Children were also left ``half-orphaned'' in fact,
although not in law, by their father's desertion of the
family. Sometimes this desertion was absolute; but Hull-House
resident Julia Lathrop wryly noted ``the masculine expedient
of temporary disappearance in the face of nonemployment or
domestic complexity, or both,'' contending that ``the
intermittent husband is a constant factor in the economic
problem of many a household.''
Natural catastrophes like the Great Fire of 1871 were
another cause of dependency in children, and family problems
and the stresses of urban life were compounded as well by the
labor unrest that characterized the last twenty-five years of
the century. In addition, the country experienced a financial
panic approximately every twenty years: in 1819, 1837, 1857,
1873 and 1893. In Chicago, the Panic of 1893 was delayed for
a time by the Columbian Exposition, but with the close of the
exhibition, jobs disappeared and all the severity of that
worst of nineteenth-century depressions was visited on the
city. The year 1894 was in many ways a terrible time for the
poor of Chicago. Compounding the depression was the violence
and bitterness of the Pullman Strike, and the ultimate defeat
of organized labor in the prolonged struggle. A small-pox
epidemic struck the city; and the winter was one of the worst
on record. The dependency rate soared. Families who had never
been able to save enough to have
a cushion against disaster were utterly destroyed by such
compounded misfortune and had to turn to the city and
country for help.

The State Response to Dependent Children

Although the vicissitudes of urban life and economic
instability throughout the century greatly expanded both the
number and types of children in need of help, public
officials resisted innovation in dealing with the needs of
dependent children, lumping them with the rest of the
dependent population rather than addressing their particular
needs as did the private organizations that began to

[[Page S 12815]]
flourish in Chicago in the 1850s. In downstate Illinois, dependent
children were still primarily indentured through the middle
years of the century. An 1854 revision of the apprenticeship
law manifested some special attention to children's needs,
strengthening their right to basic education and protection
by Poor Law officials who were to monitor their treatment and
to ``defend them from all cruelty, neglect, and breach of
contract on the part of their master.'' An 1874 law further
defined the child's rights to proper care, specifically
forbidding ``underserved or immoderate correction,
unwholesome food, insufficient allowance of food, raiment or
lodging, want of sufficient care or physic in sickness, want
of instruction in their trade.'' Such bad behavior on the
part of the master gave the state sufficient cause to end
indentures. These revisions of the original apprenticeship
law reflected the state's ambivalence about parental rights.
The 1854 revision deleted the clause authorizing the removal
of children from parents whom the overseer of the poor deemed
unfit. But the 1874 law restored intervention to some degree,
allowing the overseers of the poor to apprentice without
parental consent any child ``who habitually begs for alms.''
Although the basic concept of apprenticeship for dependent
children was shortly to reappear in social welfare parlance
as the innovative notion of ``free foster homes,'' the whole
system of formal, legal apprenticeship as a means of caring
for dependent children was beginning to die out in
nineteenth-century America. In northern Illinois counties,
particularly Cook County, poor law officials instead placed
children in the poorhouse, and this trend became state-wide
by the end of the century. Most often children were in the
poorhouse with their mothers, but a few orphans and
illegitimate children ended up there as well.
The presence of children in the almshouse was an enduring
affront to reformers. In 1853 a Cook County grand jury found
the almshouse to be grossly inadequate, noting with
disapproval that ``the section devoted to women and children
is so crowded as to be very offensive.'' The physical
conditions of this particular poorhouse did improve somewhat
over time, but those who concerned themselves with child
welfare universally accepted the maxim that the poorhouse was
no fit place for children. Forty years and much reform
agitation later, the situation was not significantly better.
Julia Lathrop, who toured the Cook County poorhouse many
times as a member of the State Board of Charities, wrote this
description of the children there in 1894:
There are usually from fifty to seventy-five children, of
whom a large proportion are young children with their
mothers, a very few of whom are for adoption. The remainder,
perhaps a third, are the residuum of all the orphan asylums
and hospitals, children whom no one cares to adopt because
they are unattractive or scarred or sickly. These children
are sent to the public schools across the street from the
poor-farm. Of course they wear hideous clothes, and of course
the outside children sometimes jeer at them.
These children, as part of the poorhouse population, were
among the most stigmatized and outcast members of nineteenth-
century society. Nobody went to the poorhouse if they could
help it. These institutions were deliberately set up to be as
unattractive as possible, a meager social mechanism intended
merely to sustain life in the dependent population. The poor,
who could pay with no other currency, were expected to pay
with their dignity for their board and room. Lathrop spoke of
``the absolute lack of privacy, the monotony and dul[l]ness,
the discipline, the enforced cleanliness.'' Nor was enforced
cleanliness always the problem. The poorhouse superintendent
in Coles County reported in 1880, apparently without
embarrassment, that he could not remember one bath having
been taken in his sixteen years in charge. The institution's
surroundings reflected his laissez faire approach to hygiene.
It was still possible for poor families to receive some
measure of ``outdoor relief'' in most counties of the state
in the mid to late nineteenth century, but such support was
very limited. Nineteenth-century economic theory, reinforcing
the already parsimonious attitude of Americans, posited that
handouts merely increased dependency and led to the
``pauperizing'' of families, destroying their initiative and
drive to do better. Poorhouses were set up to replace most
outdoor relief, created with the notion that they must not be
too attractive or they would be crowded with shiftless types
simply trying to live on the bounty of the town. In reality,
authorities need not have feared such a thing. Anyone who
could possibly manage it stayed out of the poorhouse. Those
who entered were the unfortunate souls who had no one to
protect them or find them a tolerable situation in the
outside world. Children shared the poorhouse with the
chronically sick, the elderly poor, the insane, and the
mentally and physically disabled, as well as the ``paupers''
who simply could not make an economic go of it on the
outside. In Cook County, and elsewhere on a less grand scale,
the essential misery of the poorhouse was compounded by
corruption. The staff jobs were filled by patronage, and
those in charge of the various wards were thus unlikely to be
much exercised about the humane care of inmates.
One of the most critical voices raised against the abuses
of the poorhouse and the presence of children there was that
of the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities,
established by the legislature in 1869 to monitor and
coordinate the various social welfare efforts throughout the
state. The board's power was originally very restricted.
``The duties required of the commission are quite onerous,''
the First Biennial Report stated ruefully. ``The powers
granted are very limited. The board has unlimited power of
inspection, suggestion and recommendation, but no
administrative power whatsoever.'' Still, the State Board
could and did register vigorous disapproval, and it made
enough impact so that a bill to dissolve the new
monitoring agency was introduced into the legislature
almost immediately. The bill failed, but hostile
legislators were able to limit inspection dramatically at
one point by cutting off all travel funds for the
commissioners.
Despite such constraints, the State Board fulfilled an
important function as the first official agency in the state
to collect and tabulate information about the actual living
conditions of dependent members of society, including
children. For example, the board reported that in 1880
Illinois almshouses housed 386 children; forty were assessed
as feebleminded, twenty-four diseased, fourteen defective,
and eighty-three had been born in the almshouse. Of that
eighty-three, seventy-nine were illegitimate, a fact pointed
to by almshouse critics to illustrate their concern about the
inadequate separation of the sexes in the institutions. Some
poorhouses had schools or arranged that children should
attend the public schools in the vicinity; but in many county
almshouses, the children did not go to school at all. Still,
there was no doubt in anyone's mind that these children were
getting an education, a thorough grounding in the seamier
side of life.
In 1879 there was a movement in Cook County to get children
out of the almshouse and into private child care
institutions. This effort revealed the prevailing attitudes
of reformers toward the parents of children who were
dependent because of poverty. Much negotiation was necessary
to settle which orphanages were to take the children, since
religious groups insisted that the children's religious
affiliations be respected. Yet in all the negotiations, no
one considered that the poorhouse mothers might have an
opinion about the removal of their children. The private
institutions involved required the termination of parental
rights before they would take the children. When the mothers
in the Cook County poorhouse learned that their children's
well-being was to be bought at the expense of their
parenthood, they protested vigorously but without success.
Some reformers, in fact, expressed the view that the mothers'
unwillingness to give up their children demonstrated their
lack of affection for their families. But in the end, the
mothers succeeded in making an eloquent statement about these
high-handed methods. When the officials from the child care
institutions arrived to pick up the children, they found that
most of them were gone. To prevent their removal to the
orphanages, the mothers had managed to find places outside
the poorhouse for all but seventeen out of seventy-five
children. The Cook County poorhouse had a rule that no
parents who refused to give consent to the adoption of their
children could enter the poorhouse, but in 1880, the county
agent objected to the rule as inhumane and cruel. He refused
to enforce the policy, and his stance meant that children
began to enter the Cook County poorhouse again, with and
without parents, less than a year after the ``rescue
operation'' of 1879.
The concern that children were growing up in such a
wretched setting did not disappear, despite the limited
success of the Cook County effort, but it took another forty
years for the Illinois legislature to close almshouses to
children. In 1895 a law provided that orphan children could
be removed from the poorhouse and placed in private homes,
but only when a private charity or individual would assume
the expenses connected with such placement. By 1900 a dozen
states, beginning with Michigan in 1869, had ended the
practice of putting children in the poorhouse, but Illinois
proved more resistant to thoroughgoing reform. Finally, in
1919 the legislature passed a law limiting the time in the
poorhouse to thirty days for girls under eighteen and boys
under seventeen, after which other arrangements would have to
be made for them. This effectively ended the use of the
poorhouse as a child welfare institution. By that time the
number of children in Illinois poorhouses had shrunk
considerably: to 171 children in 1918 compared to 470 at the
peak, 1886.

child care institutions under public auspices

Although the county poorhouses provided most of the public
care of destitute children in nineteenth-century Illinois, no
one made much of an argument to counter the accusations
leveled against them of pinch-penny meanness and spiritual
demoralization. In reality, they existed as the most frankly
minimal of offerings for children in need, with a policy set
far more by a consciousness of county expenditures than of
children's welfare. Noted social welfare thinker Homer Folks
remarked in 1900 that ``the states of Illinois and Missouri,
notwithstanding their large cities have been singularly
backward in making public provisions for destitute and
neglected children.'' In fact, Illinois had only two child
welfare institutions under public auspices during the
nineteenth century, both far more specialized than the catch-
all poorhouses provided by most counties. These

[[Page S 12816]]
institutions were the Soldiers' Orphans' Home and, until 1870, the
Chicago Reform School.
The Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home founded in 1865 in
Normal, Illinois, was a state-funded institution for the care
of children whose fathers had been killed or disabled in the
Civil War. An institution with a limited purpose, the
Soldiers' Orphans' Home was meant to close once its original
population had been cared for. But in the 1870s the
eligibility for care was broadened to include children of all
Civil War veterans, an act that established the institution
on a more permanent basis. Frequently the children were half-
orphans whose mothers simply could not feed them any more. In
1872, for example, 532 out of 642 children had living
mothers. In 1879, the superintendent gave this description of
the newly arrived children for that year: ``The class now
entering are, for the most part, young and in particularly
destitute circumstances--those whom their mothers have
struggled long and
hard to keep, but who now find themselves, at the
commencement of winter, without the means for support, and
know they must either send them away to be cared for
elsewhere, or permit them to remain at home to suffer. The
state must now take these burdens of care and
responsibility where the weary mothers lay them down.''
The separation of children from mothers unable to provide
for them financially was a tragic constant in nineteenth-
century children's institutions. At least at the Soldier's
Orphans' Home there was some connection maintained between
children and their families; mothers were not required to
terminate their parental rights when they placed their
children there, and it was not uncommon for the children in
the institution to spend time, sometimes whole summers, with
their mothers. The population of the home fluctuated with the
season and with the economic climate of the times.
This enlightened aspect of the place, however, was not
typical of the administration. The Soldier's Orphans' Home
was often plagued by scandals and investigations, and the
treatment of the children was very harsh. The fact that it
was a publicly funded institution meant that it was
scrutinized fairly intensively by the State Board of
Charities, and the board found little to praise in the
orphanage. The quality of administrators varied widely, since
they were appointed by the governor. The first
superintendent, Mrs. Ohr, was a Civil War colonel's widow
with small children but no business capacity and a rapacious
appetite for elegance, furnished at the expense of the state.
In 1869, early in her tenure, both the Springfield Register
and the Chicago Times voiced accusations about serious
mistreatment of the children. Although Mrs. Ohr and her staff
were exonerated, one steward was dismissed on the grounds
that he had made sexual advances to a number of little girls
in the institution. Mrs. Ohr weathered this upset, kept on
because she was ``a mother to these orphans,'' in the words
of the investigating committee. But eventually she went too
far; a combination of totally ignoring the trustees'
instructions, keeping the children from school in order to
perform chores around the institutions, and thoroughly
profligate spending finally ended her career at the Soldiers'
Ophans' Home some twenty years after she had launched it.
The two superintendents who followed Mrs. Ohr were more
business-like in their approach, but they had no training in
the care of children, orphans or not; they were strictly
political appointments. The most difficult regime for the
children up to the turn of the century was that of a
Republican politician named J. L. Magner, who was nicknamed
``the cattle driver'' by some of the Bloomington/Normal
locals because of his harsh treatment of the children. There
was consistent criticism that the children were made to work
too hard, at tasks that were sometimes beyond them, and they
were often kept home from school to work. One particularly
distressing instance of work beyond the children's capacity
was the scalding death of a three-year-old child, burned
while being bathed by some of the older children of the
institution.
Nor were the superintendents and their policies the only
difficulty. The building, planned by a board of trustees with
a poetical turn, was gracefully adorned with turrets and
``crowned with a tasteful observatory.'' But Frederick Wines
secretary of the State Board of Charities, assessed the
building as a thoroughgoing failure on a practical level.
There were no closets, no playgrounds, only two bathrooms for
over three hundred children, no infirmary, and no private
quarters for the superintendent's family. Perhaps worst of
all, there was no deep wellspring to supply water. The well
went dry after the first year, and water had to be brought in
by railroad. The Soldiers' Orphans' Home, beset by scandals
and mismanagement, conjured up the worst fears of Illinois
citizens about public institutions run badly because of
patronage appointments.
The Chicago Reform School, also a public institution, won
approval from most critics for efficient management and
humane treatment of its inmates. But the school's involvement
with pre-delinquent boys ended with the noted O'Connell
decision of 1870, and the institution closed shortly after
this. With the exception of the inadequate provision of the
poorhouse, the responsibility for dependent children in
Chicago, from 1871 to the end of the century, was under
private auspices.

the Growth of Private Institutions in the 19th Century

The state's minimal response to dependent children was an
obdurate problem in the nineteenth century. An equally
disorganizing feature of child welfare in Illinois resulting
from state reluctance was the proliferation of private
agencies to care for children. These institutions mushroomed
in the state (particularly in Chicago) in the last half of
the nineteenth century, offering a wide variety of services
to children, based in part on their religious and cultural
identification and in part on the variety of needs that the
complex crises of urban life created. These agencies,
originally meant to fill the gap left by the inadequacy of
state responses quickly because entrenched in the public life
of the city. Their presence contributed to the fragmentation
that would plague child welfare efforts in Illinois through
the twentieth century, resulting in a lack of coordination
that left many dependent children unserved. By the end of the
nineteenth century, critics in Illinois and around the
country began to see the dominance of private agencies as a
negative and talk in terms of a stronger state organization;
but in the mid-nineteenth century, the private child welfare
institutions were autonomous, both organizationally and
financially, not always by their own choosing.
The Chicago Orphan Asylum, founded in 1848 to respond to
the crisis of the cholera epidemic of that year, was the
first orphanage in Cook County. It was followed in 1849 by
the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, which aimed to serve
Catholic
children and keep them out of the Protestant Chicago Orphan
Asylum. This carving out of religious turf, begun so early
in the history of child care institutions was to be a
major factor in the development of orphanages in Chicago.
In addition to a competition among religions for the care
of children, a strong sense of ethnicity motivated
founders of these institutions. Chicago had institutions
representing all nationalities; there were German
orphanages, Irish orphanages, Swedish, Polish, Lithuanian,
and Jewish orphanages, as well as institutions founded by
``native Americans'' of English stock.
Besides motives of religion and ethnicity, institutions
developed to respond to a variety of needs among children.
Many of them took in the children of the poor but insisted
that parents relinquish their rights to the children before
they were accepted. A few, like the Chicago Nursery and Half-
Orphan Asylum, were founded to offer support to working
mothers who could not keep their children at home, yet wanted
to preserve their families. The children lived at the
institution, but mothers were expected to visit them
regularly and contribute something toward their children's
support. The Chicago Home for the Friendless originally took
in homeless and battered women as well as children but soon
revised its mission to focus on only on children. The Chicago
Foundling Hospital specialized in caring for the abandoned
infants found with such appalling regularity on the streets
and brought by the police to the institution for what care
and comfort it could offer. The mortality rate in foundling
hospitals was always shockingly high; the babies had
frequently suffered from exposure, and feeding them
adequately and safely, in the days before infant formula and
pasteurized milk, posed a major problem. The desertion of
infants was a disturbing and highly visible form of child
mistreatment, provoking an 1887 law that made such
abandonment a crime resulting in automatically terminated
parental rights. But not all children left at the foundling
hospital were abandoned on the streets. Dr. William Shipman,
founder of the hospital, witnessed a poignant scene in which
a mother and her little boy said a heartbroken farewell to
their baby before placing it in the champagne basket used as
a receptacle outside the foundling hospital. In typical
nineteenth century fashion. Shipman sympathized with a mother
pushed to such lengths, yet his assistance took the form of
only taking the baby, not of investigating ways that the
family might stay together.
One development among private institutions that especially
reflected the growing awareness of children and their needs
was the Illinois Humane Society, which began its child saving
work in 1877. By the time the population of Cook County had
begun its phenomenal growth, going from 43,383 people in 1850
to 607,524 in 1880. Both the stresses of city life and its
anonymity provoked child abuse, according to Oscar Dudley,
director of the Illinois Humane Society, who observed that
``what is everybody's business is nobody's business''; and
thus children could be terribly treated
by parents and guardians even though there were laws in
effect to protect them. The Humane Society originally
began as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, but in 1877, Director Dudley transferred the
society's attention to cruelty against children by
arresting an abusive guardian. There was, he wrote, ``no
reason that a child should not be entitled to as much
protection under the law as a dumb animal.'' The Illinois
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals changed
its name to the Illinois Humane Society in 1881,
recognizing that over two-thirds of its investigations
involved cruelty against children rather than animals.
Dudley asserted that from 1881, when the Humane Society
began to keep records, until the time that he was writing
(1893), over ten thousand children had been rescued.

[[Page S 12817]]

The rescue operations were broadened from cases of abuse to
the protection of children exploited by their employers,
particularly when children were forced to beg or were
entertainers or victims of the infamous padrone system.
Dudley reported great success in finding asylums and homes
for these children, a situation receiving tacit approval from
the state, which did not at this point assume responsibility
for neglected or abused children or supervise private child
placement activities.

State Involvement in the Late 19th Century

The only real state or city involvement with private
institutions originally was that the mayor, acting as
guardian for dependent children, had the power to place them
in child care institutions. The city of Chicago (where most
of the children's institutions flourished), the surrounding
countries, and the state of Illinois all proved very
reluctant to contribute financially to private institutions.
The city did give very occasional assistance, in times of
real crisis like the cholera epidemics or the Great Fire of
1871, but it was limited in quantity and very episodic. The
most the city would do for the Chicago Nursery and Half-
Orphan Asylum, for example, was to provide that the city
could buy or lease the land upon which the asylum would be
built. For the Englewood Infant Nursery, the assistance was
even more meager: in 1893 the city provided ten tons of hard
coal and burial space for dead babies. For the children who
managed to survive, the funding had to come from other
sources.
The state did make one major concession in funding when it
agreed to provide subsidies for the industrial schools that
developed in the last years of the century. The schools were
modeled after English institutions made famous by the
renowned English reformer Mary Carpenter, who in the 1870s
and 1880s enjoyed considerable influence in the United
States. The primary point of the schools, reflecting the use
of the word ``industrial,'' was to train children to earn
their own living in later life, although in fact the training
tended to be geared much more toward a traditional
agricultural economy than toward anything having to do with
industry. Boys learned farming, some shoe and broommaking,
woodcarving and academic subjects. Girls were primarily given
a common school education and taught domestic skills.
The willingness to fund the industrial schools was
traceable to their mission: they were founded to deal with
older, predelinquent street children who threatened the
public order by begging, consorting with objectional
characters, or living in houses of ill-fame. The law
establishing industrial schools added that children in the
poorhouse were proper subjects for the schools, which meant
that in practice there was a mix of younger veterans of the
street. The State Board of Charities, which inspected the
schools, objected to this mix, but the industrial schools
survived this criticism, as well as a series of court
challenges ranging from civil liberties concerns to
objections that the schools were sectarian institutions and
therefore not appropriate recipients of state funds.
The development of the subsidy system, the state funding of
private institutions on an amount-per-child basis, was a
phenomenon noted by Homer Folks in The Care of the Destitute,
Neglected and Dependent Children, his end-of-the-century
assessment of child care trends in the United States. Neither
Folks nor other observers of current philanthropic trends,
groups like the national Conference of Charities and the
Illinois State Board of Charities, really approved of such an
arrangement. They urged Illinois to move in the direction of
states like Kansas and Iowa, which had converted veterans'
orphans' homes similar to the Illinois Soldiers' Orphans'
Home to state institutions that served all dependent
children, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or parental
status. These states and others around the country were
moving toward a point where the state
assumed primary responsibility for dependent children, not
by warehousing them in local poorhouses but by placing
them in state-run, central institutions from which they
were placed out into foster and adoptive homes. This
system of central state control was known as the
``Michigan Plan,'' after the first state to enact the
policy. Illinois's neighbors Wisconsin and Minnesota, as
well as Michigan, had state institutions for dependent
children, winning the approval of child welfare theorists
who applauded such centralization. It was, they argued,
more efficient and economical, providing children with far
better, more consistent care than Illinois's system, where
a child might be placed with a superb private agency but
might also be made to endure the grim inadequacies of the
poorhouse.
``The real contest, if such it may be called,'' wrote Folks
in 1900, ``will be between the state and the contract or
subsidy systems. To put it plainly, the question now being
decided is this--is our public administration sufficiently
honest and efficient to be entrusted with the management of a
system for the care of destitute children, or must we turn
that branch of public service over to private charitable
corporations, leaving to public officials the functions of
paying the bills; and of exercising such supervision over the
workings of the plan as may be possible? ``Illinois was seen
as nonprogressive in its increasing use of the subsidy
system, allowing private agencies to dominate the field while
the state remained relatively uninvolved in the care and
protection of dependent children.
This minimal level of state involvement offended against
another philanthropic tenet, the idea that the state should
have a monitoring function over all agencies, public and
private, as well as keeping in touch with children who had
been placed in families. The State Board of Charities did
visit the industrial schools, which got public funds, but it
was not until the Juvenile Court Act was passed in 1899 that
the State Board was given responsibility for inspection of
private as well as public agencies for children.
Another significant change from an earlier view, at least
among the more ``advanced'' thinkers, was a rejection of
institutions as the best substitute for a child's family. In
the nineteenth century, institutions and asylums of all kinds
had sprung up, not only in Illinois but all across the United
States. Asylums were not intended to be a dumping ground for
society's unfortunates, as the county poorhouses were, but
were rather supposed to be a specialized environment in which
the needs of a particular dependent population could be met
most effectively. But it was not long before a set of critics
arose who stressed the negative effects of institutions and
urged that institutional life should be resorted to only
under special circumstances or on a very temporary basis. For
special cases, like the handicapped, perhaps institutions
could provide resources and training that they would not
receive elsewhere, these critics agreed; but for children
whose greatest problem was that for one reason or another
their families were not functioning, the negative effects of
institutions far outweighed the positive aspects.
According to the anti-institutional analysis, the
regimentation in institutions was destructive of
initiative and individuality. The qualities that brought
rewards in an institutional setting--mindless obedience,
dependence, obsequiousness--were the very traits that all
agreed were destructive to the forming of a healthy,
independence adult citizen. Furthermore, institutions by
their nature seemed to foster abuse and bad treatment.
Exposes and investigations of various institutions
featured accusations of physical cruelty and psychological
debasement.
Institutions were expensive, physically and psychologically
barren, and downright unnatural for children, according to
Charles Loring Brace, a minister who worked for the
Children's Aid Society of New York. Brace began a program
that took the street children of New York City and sought to
improve their lives not by placing them in the highly
controlled environment of an institution but by resettling
them in homes in mid-western and western states such as
Illinois. He was convinced that the best solution for
children in need of placement was to provide homes in the
simplest and most direct way, relying as much as possible on
the basic goodness that he believed informed the souls of
most Americans, especially those who still lived away from
the corrupting city in the virtue-producing agricultural
heartland of the nation. The methods of the Children's Aid
Society reflected the simplicity of Brace's moral equation.
Brace and his associates would arrive in a western town with
a trainload of children, and using the medium of the local
churches, would call upon citizens to give these needy young
people a home. The entire plan of ``free foster homes'' was
really only an updated version of apprenticeship, in which
the child agreed to work in exchange for care and training,
except that this child-placing organization, aided by such
technological developments as the railroads, reached much
farther afield than the overseers of the poor had done in
earlier times. Free foster homes differed further in that
they were no legal bonds struck at all between the child and
his foster family. Brace firmly believed that a child who
brought a willing pair of hands to a family would be valued
accordingly and could safely count on good treatment in his
new home.
This notion proved, not surprisingly, to be overly
sanguine, as the Children's Aid Society came to discover when
the accusations began to grow in the later years of the
century that New York was not really solving children's
problems by the use of its ``Children West'' program but was
merely dumping one of its troublesome populations onto other
states. At various times the Children's Aid Society conducted
surveys and studies of its ``alumni,'' claiming a very high
success rate for the program, but critics questioned the
quality of these studies, and oppositions to Brace's program
continued. The 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Act forbade any
agencies to bring
children unaccompanied by their parents or guardians,
without the approval of the State Board of Charities. This
was partly a protection against the importing of child
labor in Illinois, but it was a response as well to
organizations like the Children's Aid Society. The law
included the provision that any child who became a public
charge within five years of arrival in Illinois should be
removed to his or her home state.
The notion of placing children in families and the belief
that normal family life was a far healthier situation than
institutions was firmly entrenched in child welfare thinking
by the end of the century. But the earlier, more naive,
notion that foster families could be trusted to care for
dependent children without supervision had been replaced in
philanthropic thinking by a belief that it was important for
an outside agency regularly to check on the child and act in
his behalf. Coupled with this was the beginning of

[[Page S 12818]]
a move away from ``free'' foster homes to the belief that boarding
homes, foster homes in which a family got payment for keeping
the foster child, were most productive of humane treatment.
Child welfare theorists and practitioners worried that if a
family's greatest inducement to take a foster child was the
child's potential economic contribution, there might be a
strong incentive for them to over-burden him with work, at
the expense of his academic education, which reformers were
coming more and more to see as the true and proper occupation
of childhood.
One final change in philanthropic theory that saw little
reflection in practice but was to bring about a revolution in
twentieth-century social welfare was the growing conviction
that the best thing that could be done for children was to
keep them with their families whenever possible. Students of
society came increasingly to regard poverty as a result of
faulty economic and social structure rather than of personal
failings of feckless or lazy individuals, and they
disapproved of the kind of casual invasion of poor families'
lives that could demand the sacrifice of parental rights in
return for assistance. This belief in the preservation of the
family became a basic underpinning of the social welfare
faith as it was articulated in the next fifty years, and the
state of Illinois, with its experiment in mothers' pension
programs, was to be in the forefront of progressive practice
in this area.
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, through, the
innovations that would make Illinois notable a few years
later were nowhere in sight. Surrounded by vigorous
neighbors, Illinois was considered conservative in its
reluctance to deal with its child welfare functions and in
its willingness to relinquish the charge to private agencies.
In fact, the state's attitude toward dependent children had
changed very little in the course of the nineteenth century.
The first laws and provisions for dependent children had
reflected a lack of
ardor bordering on indifference, and at the end of the
century, the state's engagement in child welfare, despite
the crisis engendered by rapid growth and economic stress,
was tepid at best. The combination of fiscal conservatism
and ethnic and religious tensions meant that state action
was regarded with suspicion in many quarters and kept
efforts fragmented and inadequate to the need. There was
also a fear that the patronage and corruption for which
Illinois was already famous might make state
administration of programs for dependent children less
effective than privately run efforts. Ironically, it was
in part this very disorganization and inaction that would
lead to the founding of the Juvenile Court and bring
Illinois, however briefly, within the pale of reformers'
approval.

For Further Reading

The Historical Society Library has numerous pamphlets,
annual reports, and other materials from institutions such as
the Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan Asylum, the Chicago Home
for the Friendless, and the Chicago Foundlings' Hospital. For
a broad historical perspective on the United States's care
for needy children, see Joseph Hawes's The Children's Rights
Movement: A History of Advocacy and Protection (Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1991) and James Leiby's A History of
Social Welfare and Social Welfare and Social Work in the
United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). To
learn more about child welfare reform between the Progressive
era and the New Deal, see Mina Carson's Settlement Folk:
Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-
1930 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990) and
Robyn Muncy's Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform,
1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Marilyn
Irvin Holt's The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America
(Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1992) discusses
one nineteenth-century solution to the plight of urban
orphans.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. So, Mr. President, in order to make certain that
we do not have this accident of geography become the difference between
children sleeping in the streets or children provided for and given
sustenance--food and shelter--I have proposed this amendment, which
says that the safety net will, in any event, be there for the children.
And that child poverty, which is a national issue for us as Americans,
will not then become balkanized in terms of the response that is given
by the Government, that our national community recognizes that child
poverty is a national issue, and child welfare, in the final analysis,
has to have at least a national safety net. And that is what this first
amendment provides.
Mr. President, with regard to this amendment I understand that these
amendments will be taken up tomorrow. Let me say also that there are
tables that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
showing the number of children who will be denied or who are in
jeopardy of being denied assistance by virtue of the operation of the
underlying legislation.
There being no objection, the tables were ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE OF THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN DENIED AFDC DUE TO THE 60
MONTH TIME LIMIT IN THE SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percentage
Number of of
children children
Projected denied AFDC denied
number of because the AFDC
State children on family because
AFDC in received the family
2005 under AFDC for received
current law more than AFDC for
60 months more than
60 months
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama........................... 122,000 37,000 30
Alaska............................ 30,000 8,000 27
Arizona........................... 170,000 46,000 27
Arkansas.......................... 63,000 20,000 32
California........................ 2,241,000 807,000 36
Colorado.......................... 101,000 28,000 28
Connecticut....................... 136,000 41,000 30
Delaware.......................... 28,000 8,000 29
District of Columbia.............. 56,000 21,000 38
Florida........................... 605,000 156,000 26
Georgia........................... 348,000 116,000 33
Hawaii............................ 48,000 15,000 31
Idaho............................. 17,000 4,000 24
Illinois.......................... 598,000 203,000 34
Indiana........................... 177,000 56,000 32
Iowa.............................. 82,000 25,000 30
Kansas............................ 73,000 22,000 30
Kentucky.......................... 187,000 59,000 32
Louisiana......................... 235,000 81,000 34
Maine............................. 55,000 19,000 35
Maryland.......................... 185,000 59,000 32
Massachusetts..................... 256,000 82,000 32
Michigan.......................... 553,000 217,000 39
Minnesota......................... 155,000 50,000 32
Mississippi....................... 153,000 53,000 35
Missouri.......................... 218,000 73,000 33
Montana........................... 28,000 7,000 25
Nebraska.......................... 39,000 12,000 31
Nevada............................ 30,000 9,000 30
New Hampshire..................... 24,000 7,000 29
New Jersey........................ 302,000 100,000 33
New Mexico........................ 72,000 19,000 26
New York.......................... 917,000 303,000 33
North Carolina.................... 281,000 88,000 31
North Dakota...................... 15,000 5,000 33
Ohio.............................. 597,000 171,000 29
Oklahoma.......................... 111,000 37,000 33
Oregon............................ 97,000 30,000 31
Pennsylvania...................... 517,000 194,000 38
Rhode Island...................... 52,000 16,000 31
South Carolina.................... 135,000 37,000 27
South Dakota...................... 18,000 6,000 33
Tennessee......................... 246,000 75,000 30
Texas............................. 670,000 185,000 28
Utah.............................. 45,000 12,000 27
Vermont........................... 22,000 7,000 32
Virginia.......................... 166,000 50,000 30
Washington........................ 237,000 75,000 32
West Virginia..................... 93,000 33,000 35
Wisconsin......................... 205,000 61,000 30
Wyoming........................... 14,000 4,000 29
Territories....................... 173,000 47,000 27
-------------------------------------
Total....................... 12,000,000 3,900,000 33
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HHS/ASPE analysis. States may not sum to total due to rounding.
The analysis shows the impact at full implementation.
It assumes States utilize a 15 percent hardship exemption from the time
limit as permitted under the bill.

Child poverty rates among industrialized countries

Percent
Finland.............................................................2.5
Sweden..............................................................2.7
Denmark.............................................................3.3
Switzerland.........................................................3.3
Belgium.............................................................3.8
Luxembourg..........................................................4.1
Norway..............................................................4.6
Austria.............................................................4.8
Netherlands.........................................................6.2
France..............................................................6.5
Germany (West)......................................................6.8
Italy...............................................................9.6
United Kingdom......................................................9.9
Israel.............................................................11.1
Ireland............................................................12.0
Canada.............................................................13.5
Australia..........................................................14.0
United States......................................................21.5

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, in my State of Illinois, quite
frankly, it suggests some 34 percent of the children may be denied AFDC
or may be denied subsistence if the family violates the time limitation
rule, which would translate, Mr. President, in some 203,000 children
being at risk of homelessness, being at risk of hunger.
I do not believe, Mr. President, that we can take the kind of chances
to allow our children to once again end up as homeless half-orphans and
friendless foundlings. We have to assure our national commitment is to
child welfare, and that the safety of our children is a paramount
concern and one that will not be abrogated without regard to what we do
with regard to this legislation overall. It is for that purpose that I
file and submit this first amendment.

Unanimous-Consent Agreement

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I make a unanimous consent agreement
request. I ask unanimous consent that all amendments to H.R. 4 must be
offered by 5 p.m. tomorrow; that if cloture is filed in relation to
H.R. 4 or an amendment thereto that the vote not

[[Page S 12819]]
occur on that cloture motion prior to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, September
13; that no amendment be given more than 4 hours equally divided; and
the two leaders have up to 10 relevant amendments that would not have
to be offered by 5 p.m. tomorrow.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend and my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle.
I announce that there will be no further rollcall votes until
morning. There will be votes tomorrow morning, votes starting at 9:30.
We may have as many as three or four amendments we will be voting on,
for Senators' information, so we ask them to be prompt. Again, no more
votes tonight.
We will stay here for some additional time if Senators have
additional amendments they wish to have considered. We will be happy to
consider those. We have taken up a lot and we are setting those aside
and so I think we are making some good progress on the bill.
Again, no further rollcall votes tonight, and we will have rollcall
votes stacked tomorrow morning beginning at 9:30. I thank my friend and
colleague from Illinois for allowing me to interrupt.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I want to submit all of my
amendments at this time. I want to make certain that I have enough time
to discuss and file my amendment this evening.

Amendment No. 2472 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To prohibit a State from imposing a time limit for assistance
if the State has failed to provide work activity-related services to an
adult individual in a family receiving assistance under the State
program)

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, my second amendment speaks to the
issue of State responsibility. I call it a State responsibility
amendment. I send the amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Ms. Moseley-Braun] proposes an
amendment numbered 2472 to amendment No. 2280.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 40, between lines 16 and 17, insert the following:
``(4) Failure of state to provide work-activity related
services.--The limitation described in paragraph (1) shall
not apply to a family receiving assistance under this part if
the State fails to provide the work experience, assistance in
finding employment, and other work preparation activities and
support services described in section 402(a)(1)(A)(ii) to the
adult individual described in paragraph (1).

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. The second amendment I call the State
Responsibility Act. Essentially it says that States shall not just
knock somebody, a family, off for failing to meet the work requirement
unless they have helped them to try and find a job.
It is kind of basic. I will read it:

The limitation described . . . shall not apply to a family
receiving assistance under this part if the State fails to
provide the work experience, assistance in finding
employment, and other work preparation activities.

Mr. President, the underlying legislation, has a cutoff for
assistance and rules regarding work. For individuals who do not go to
work, they will not receive any support.
That is fine, Mr. President. I think we can all agree again, anybody
who can work should work and anybody who has children ought to be
responsible in the first instance to take care of them.
However, Mr. President, it is also a reality that there are parts of
this country in which frankly there are not the employment
opportunities available that people can even take jobs.
The absence of jobs in some areas I think is a major problem and
frankly defies some of the suggestions made here that the problem with
people receiving public assistance is that they just do not want to
work. The fact of the matter is that the problem in very many instances
is that there are no jobs for people to work at. Even if they wanted to
work there are no jobs.
In fact, in my own State, we have areas of my State in which
unemployment ranges from 20 to 40 percent. The statistics indicate that
80 percent, frankly, of African-American males between the ages of 16-
and 19-years-old in the city of Chicago are currently unemployed.
Mr. President, 55 percent of the 20- to 24-year-olds are out of work.
It is not possible to move recipients into permanent private-sector
jobs if there is no effort to provide or create those jobs and if the
jobs are not there and if individuals have not been given some
assistance in terms of transitioning.
Under the bill that we have before the Senate, the number of people
participating in the work/job preparation activities is estimated to
increase by over 161 percent by the year 2000. Again, that means that
States like Illinois will receive some $444 million less in AFDC funds,
but on the other hand be required to increase by 122 percent the number
of people participating in work and job preparation activity.
Those numbers just do not fit. Eight into three will not go. The
numbers do not add up therefore, I think it really is a real concern
that States not be allowed to just kick people off without having done
what the bill says they should do in providing people with transition
to work.
The text of the legislation says that the State has to outline how
they intend to ``provide a parent or caretaker in such families with
work experience, assistance in finding employment and other work
preparation activities and support services that the State find
appropriate.''
Now, that is fine language. I have no problem with that. But the
question becomes what if the State does not do this? What then happens
to the families? What then happens to the children?
Again, this amendment simply, I think, seeks to clarify that in the
event the State has not done that, has not provided work experience
assistance in finding employment or the work for the work preparation
activities, that the individual then will not be penalized for
circumstances frankly that then are legitimately and, in a way that can
be documented, beyond their control.
So that is the second amendment that I submit for consideration of my
colleagues.
Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate the Senator offering her amendments
tonight. Would the Senator please give us a copy of the amendments? I
have a copy of your first amendment and comments or questions I might
ask. If the Senator would like to go ahead, if we could have copies of
both the second and third amendments, that would help.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Absolutely. I thought I had provided the Senator
with a copy, but I will give it to him right now.
This is the third amendment and this is the second.

Amendment No. 2473 To Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To modify the job opportunities to certain low-income
individuals program)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no objection, the previous
amendment will be laid aside.
The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Ms. Moseley-Braun] proposes an
amendment numbered 2473 to amendment No. 2280.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 122, between lines 11 and 12, insert the following:

SEC. 111. MODIFICATIONS TO THE JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR CERTAIN
LOW-INCOME INDIVIDUALS PROGRAM.

Section 505 of the Family Support Act of 1988 (42 U.S.C.
1315 note) is amended--
(1) in the heading, by striking ``DEMONSTRATION'';
(2) by striking ``demonstration'' each place it appears;
(3) in subsection (a), by striking ``in each of fiscal
years'' and all that follows through ``10'' and inserting
``shall enter into agreements with'';
(4) in subsection (b)(3), by striking ``aid to families
with dependent children under part A of title IV of the
Social Security Act'' and inserting ``assistance under the
State program funded part A of title IV of the Social
Security Act in the State in which the individual resides'';
(5) in subsection (c)--

[[Page S 12820]]

(A) in paragraph (1)(C), by striking ``aid to families with
dependent children under part A of title IV of the Social
Security Act'' and inserting ``assistance under the State
program funded part A of title IV of the Social Security
Act''; and
(B) in paragraph (2), by striking ``aid to families with
dependent children under title IV of such Act'' and inserting
``assistance under the State program funded part A of title
IV of the Social Security Act'';
(6) in subsection (d), by striking ``job opportunities and
basic skills training program (as provided for under title IV
of the Social Security Act'' and inserting ``the State
program funded under part A of title IV of the Social
Security Act''; and
(7) by striking subsections (e) through (g) and inserting
the following:
``(e) Authorization of Appropriations.--For the purpose of
conducting projects under this section, there is authorized
to be appropriated an amount not to exceed $25,000,000 for
any fiscal year.''.
Redesignate the succeeding sections accordingly.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I am actually delighted that the
Senator from New York is on the floor at this moment, because this next
amendment essentially makes permanent a part of the Family Support Act
that establishes what is called the Job Opportunities for Low-income
Individuals Program.
The JOLI Program--that is what it is called, JOLI, Job Opportunities
for Low-income Individuals--is to create job opportunities for AFDC
recipients and other low-income individuals. Grants can be made to
private, nonprofit corporations to make investments in local business
enterprises that will result in the creation of new jobs. This
amendment authorizes appropriations for a program that is already in
place as a demonstration program. This would make it permanent.
The rationale for the amendment is that the underlying bill does not
provide any support at all for job creation. Even though S. 1120
requires some kind of work activity within 24 months, and eligibility
for assistance ends after some 60 months, whether the individual has
found a job or not. So, there is no question but that we will need to
see a great creation of thousands of private-sector jobs in order to
absorb the influx of new workers.
So the JOLI Program actually helps. It is working. It helps
individuals to become self-sufficient through the development of
microenterprises for economic development and other kinds of job
training. The really good news about JOLI is that this is not
reinventing the wheel. It is already in place. It was authorized under
section 505 of the Family Support Act of 1988.
Under a recent evaluation of JOLI, the first 20 JOLI intermediaries--
that is, community-based organizations that are the grantees--have
assisted some 334 individuals to start or stabilize their own
businesses, and it has assisted an additional 535 people to secure
employment in jobs paying an average wage of about $8 an hour, which is
really quite remarkable. Of the 869 low-income individuals benefiting
from the demonstration program, most of them had become economically
self-sufficient within a year of their involvement or interaction with
the program.
So the JOLI Program addresses the scarcity of jobs in many urban as
well as rural communities and recognizes the need to ensure that
welfare recipients and other low-income people have access to
employment opportunities in the private sector. It utilizes the
capacity of community-based organizations and the private sector to
develop jobs so individuals who right now are mired in poverty will
have some options and have some hope, and will have the ability to take
care of themselves and their families.
Again, we are talking about the 5 million people who are adults who
are presently receiving public assistance and who will, therefore,
hopefully, be given a hand up as opposed to a handout--will be given
the ability to work, will be given the ability to care for themselves
and their children. I think job creation is an integral part of any
honest welfare reform that we undertake to have in this session of the
Senate.

Amendment No. 2474 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To prohibit a State from reserving grant funds for use in
subsequent fiscal years if the State has reduced the amount of
assistance provided to families under the State program in the
preceding fiscal year)

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I have a last amendment I send to
the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no objection, the pending
amendment will be set aside.
The clerk will report the amendment.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Illinois [Ms. Moseley-Braun] proposes an
amendment numbered 2474 to amendment No. 2280.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 25, strike lines 13 through 18, and insert the
following:
``(3) Authority to reserve certain amounts for
assistance.--
``(A) In general.--A State may reserve amounts paid to the
State under this part for any fiscal year for the purpose of
providing, without fiscal year limitation, assistance under
the State program operated under this part.
``(B) Exception.--In any fiscal year, a State may not
exercise the authority described in subparagraph (A) if the
State has reduced the amount of cash assistance provided per
family member to families under the State program during the
preceding fiscal year.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, this last amendment--again, this is
one of these efforts to keep the worst from happening. Again, we all
hope it does not happen, that the States are not less than responsible
in their execution of the underlying bill. This amendment is designed
to serve as a buttress against what has been characterized as the race
to the bottom.
Essentially, if a State decides to cut its cash assistance benefits,
to cut the amount that it spends to address the issue of poverty within
that State, then that State will be prohibited from carrying forward
unused block grant funds.
This is called--I call this the race-to-the-bottom amendment. The
notion is, if we send the States this money in a block grant, there is
nothing to prohibit that State from saying we do not want to have
assistance for poor children. We are not going to address the issue of
job creation. We are not going to train people to go back to work. We
are not going to provide the children with any assistance. We are just
going to further squeeze the amount of resources devoted to the whole
issue of poverty in our State and we are going to take the money we get
from the Federal Government and use that to go from year to year to
year to year and not maintain our own effort.
If one State does it, then the next State would be incentivized, if
you will, to do as much, which will then start--hopefully not, but
might well start, if you will--a race to the bottom and a cycle of the
States trying to underbid one another in terms of the amount of
assistance that they provide for poor people who live in that State.
I think that would be a real tragedy. As a result, this amendment
simply says that a State may not carry over funds from one year to the
next if they have reduced the amount of benefits that are available for
poor children and for poor families in that State.
Again, this stops the States from penalizing poor people in ways that
would be inconsistent with the legislation. So it is, in that regard,
simply a preventive, protective, prophylactic amendment, if you will.
The other reason for this legislation, just to be real candid in
terms of the dollars, frankly, is that this legisla- tion--because of
the level of appropriations, it has been estimated that the States
will, overall, have to cut. They will not have enough money, frankly,
to do what is required of them in the legislation. CBO has already
advised that most States will not have the money to provide for the
kind of job training, the kinds of transition services--or certainly
child care in this legislation. So, that being the case, there should
not be any money left over. But in the event there is, I think we
should put a buttress and a stop that says we are not going to allow
States to engage in this race to the bottom, engage in this effort to
see who can be the most punitive with regard to poor people in that
State.
So that is the last amendment.
Mr. President, I want, in closing--and I have wanted to give my
colleague a chance, so I kind of rushed through a little bit to try to
speed up so he would

[[Page S 12821]]
have the opportunity to present his amendment--to talk about this issue
in another context.
I had occasion, back in my State, to meet with and work with a task
force members came from all sectors--from the business sector, from the
community activist sector, people who were advocates, actual welfare
mothers served on the panel--to talk about the issues having to do with
our response to poverty. I started my conversation this evening saying
welfare is not and has never been anything other than a response to
poverty; a response that engenders strong feelings, certainly, but that
is what it is. We must not lose sight of the underlying issue as we
approach the question of how well the response works.
The point is that I believe we have, when all is said and done--we
can talk about differences in philosophy about block grants and whether
or not there is too much Federal bureaucracy. Although, frankly, the
numbers, by the way, do not support the notion that a whole lot of
money that is presently dedicated to the AFDC Program goes into
administration on the Federal level.
In fact, most of the administrative expenses take place at the State
level. I think it is important that we make that point.
I think it is also important--and I am digressing here--to point out
that because most of the administration takes place at the State and
local level, it is likely that by operation of this new law, should it
pass, the States will in fact be stuck with what has been called a huge
unfunded mandate in that they will be called on to administer and to do
things that they do not presently have the resources to do. And they
are going to have to find the resources to do that from places other
than the Federal Government. We will not be there to help out with
State efforts to create jobs. We will not be there to help out with
child care. We will not be there to help out with the administration of
whatever the State response is. That is a fundamental problem I think
with the underlying bill.
But the point that I really want to make is one that the Senator from
New York I think has eloquently spoken to, and it does go to the
fundamental issue of debate in all of this. That is the question of
common ground. That is the issue of whether or not we have a commitment
as a national community to address the issue of poverty, to address the
issue of child welfare, or whether or not we are prepared to balkanize
as a country into 50 different welfare systems, into 50 different
responses to poverty, into 50 different approaches to child welfare,
and whether or not the welfare and the well-being, the possibility of
potential for hunger, the possibility of the potential for homelessness
of a child in this country will depend on an accident of geography. It
is bad enough that a child who is born into poverty suffers the
accident of having been born poor. As a friend of mine once said, ``It
is your own fault for being born to poor parents.'' I could not
disagree with that point.
But the fact of matter is, we have to make sure that the accident of
being born to poor parents is not exacerbated by where that took place.
The question is whether or not, as Americans, we will have the
foresight to recognize that through this as the very central issue of
the nature of our Federal Government, the nature of Federalism and the
nature of our Nation and the kind of country that we will have. Will we
have a country in which everyone recognizes that the welfare of a child
in Oklahoma, in Nevada, or Iowa is as important to the Senator from
California and the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from New York
as the welfare of a child in his or her own State, or will we have a
situation in which by virtue of the balkanization provided by this
underlying bill, the only children about whose welfare you or I can
have a say about are the children in the State from which we are
elected?
I do not think, Mr. President, that is a direction that the American
people want to see us fall off to.
As we talk about the devolution in Government, the devolution that we
ought to consider to welfare work better, making it work efficiently,
giving people opportunity, giving people an opportunity to go to work,
giving children the kind of care and the kind of safety net that they
need to have so that they will have opportunities, so they possibly
will not have to be born to poor children, and their children, whether
or not they will have to be born to poor parents, that their children
will have a chance to do better.
That is, it seems to me, consistent with the American dream and is
consistent with the whole concept of what this Nation is about.
I therefore hope that a direction that this bill takes in the final
analysis, when all is said and done, and the amendments are put on it,
that we reaffirm and not reject and walk away from our national
commitment to address the issue of poverty and to provide for the
welfare of all of our children.
Thank you.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
I compliment my colleague, one, for her interest in her State, her
constituents, and also for the fact that she has I think four or five
amendments, and she was waiting to offer those tonight and discuss
those. I have not had a chance to review all of them. I have looked at
a couple of them.
I know my colleague from Pennsylvania has an amendment he wishes to
offer. We may have other amendments. So I will be very brief. I will
review these amendments a little more in detail over the night and talk
about them possibly tomorrow.
But the first amendment that the Senator has is a big one. It is an
important one. Our colleague should be able to understand it. So I ask
this question: I am reading under ``eligibility.'' This is talking
about the underlying bill. But also I might mention under the Daschle
bill, there was a time limit for welfare payments from the Federal
Government, 5 years. Under the amendment of the Senator from Illinois,
it says after the 5 years should expire and a welfare recipient still
has a dependent child, the State would be mandated to provide a voucher
program to provide assistance to the minor child.
Is that correct?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. The Senator also mentions that she did not want to have
unfunded mandates in one of the other amendments but this would be--
correct me, if I am wrong, you do not fund this program. You just
mandate that the States after 5 years would have to provide a voucher
program to provide assistance even though we do not give them any
money?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. We will not give them the money. In fact, if
anything, the welfare of those children in those families, if anything,
should have first dibs on the block grants that we at the Federal
Government level are providing the money that goes to the States that
is calculated to, and the whole idea is to provide for the welfare of
minor dependent children.
So if that minor dependent child has a parent who does not comply
with the work requirement or misses some other test that is set up,
that child will still be provided for first.
So, if anything, I call this the child voucher, but really, if
anything, it should be called the Child First amendment.
Mr. NICKLES. I wanted to make sure, though, that we understood.
Because this has a benefit, it would not have been provided under the
Daschle substitute.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Yes, it would have. This particular safety net for
children was provided for in the Daschle substitute.
Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to review it. I appreciate my colleague.
I just looked at the other amendment. She has one amendment that says
you want to have a pilot program and you wanted to authorize $25
million for the job opportunities for certain low-income individuals.
Is that correct?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. That is a program we have ongoing now.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. That is correct.
Mr. NICKLES. How much are we appropriating for that program at this
point?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. We are right now at about 5.6. So $5.6 million.
Mr. NICKLES. Just for my colleagues' information, according to

[[Page S 12822]]
CRS, we have 154--I have heard now 155--various employment and training
programs. This is one program that you would like to maybe take out of
the block grants and increase its funding by fivefold. Is that correct?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. This is a demonstration. This is not just about
training. There is a demonstration program that is already in existence
for micro-enterprises development, for a variety of approaches to
economic development and job creation for low-income individuals. This
already exists. Yet the increase is $5.4 million in fiscal year 1995.
Yes, there is a fivefold increase in the funding for this job
training and job creation program for low-income individuals. It is
that increase.
But I would point out to my colleague that there is no question--
again, in the eyes of what we are with doing here--that there is a
suggestion that you cannot do welfare reform and put people to work on
the cheap. You are going to have to make investment in those counties,
in those States such as Wisconsin where there is a successful welfare
reform experiment under way. There is no question that to transition
people from welfare to work requires that we give them something to
work at, give them skills, training, and micro-enterprise loans to
start businesses or whatever. But there is some assistance required to
leverage human capability to provide that they get back into the
private sector and to get back to work.
There are two counties in Wisconsin in which there have been work to
welfare, a work transition pilot program. There is no question but that
the investment is made on the front end to give individuals the ability
to transfer off of welfare and to transfer from dependency to
independency.
The JOLI Program has done that. It has done it successfully. It was
initiated as a part of the Family Support Act. It works. It is not like
trying something brand new. It has worked.
It seems to me that in light of the fact that job creation is not
addressed at all in the underlying legislation--and it is not. There is
no ability for creating jobs in the bill without this amendment.
Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield on that?
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Let me finish my point. In light of that fact that
there is no effort to leverage private activities to create jobs, this
amendment says let us take something that works and let us expand it so
that since the States have to have, since individuals who live in these
various States will have to comport and comply with work requirements,
let us give the States some assistance in providing job creation and
private sector entrepreneurial activity.
Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I will just make a brief statement, not
necessarily continue the colloquy.
I appreciate the commitment of my friend and colleague from Illinois.
Just a couple of comments pertaining to this amendment.
This second amendment we have been discussing is rather small. It
says we would have a $25 million pilot program to continue a program we
already have and quadruple its costs or multiply it by five.
That is directly contrary to what we are trying to do in this bill.
As I mentioned before, according to CRS we have 154--I put this in the
Record earlier today--Federal job training programs, some of which--and
I know my colleague from New York is the author and sponsor of some--
some of which have probably done some good. A whole lot of them
probably have not. And so to think that we have 155 and my colleague
from Illinois has picked out one----
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Will the Senator yield for just a comment?
This is not a job training program. This has nothing to do with job
training. The JOLI Program is job creation. It gives poor people the
opportunity to access money, equity capital in order to start their own
businesses and start their own jobs. It is not job training.
That is why it was distinct from the job training debate. That is a
whole other debate. If you take a look at what the Family Support Act
language that created the JOLI program you will see that it is not a
job training program. This amendment says let us give poor people the
opportunity to create their own jobs.
Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. If I may just respond to my colleague, since we
are in a colloquy, some of the initiatives under JOLI have come from
other parts of the world. There has been a famous experiment that
started actually in India, I say to the Senator from New York, in which
poor people were given tiny loans called microloans to start their own
businesses.
So it is not job training, and it is to be distinguished from the job
training debate.
Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma has the floor.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I again appreciate my colleague's
initiative, her commitment to her cause. I will just state that this
Senator is going to vote against it, and this will probably be one we
will have a rollcall vote on tomorrow. It does increase the
authorization of this program by fivefold. One may not call it a jobs
program. I would have to look and see if it was included on the list
according to CRS as a Federal employment and/or job training program.
Maybe it is a lending program. I am not sure it belongs--if it is a
lending program and financing program, maybe it should or should not be
in this bill. I do not know that I want to multiply programs by that
kind of multiplier at this point.
The overall scope of this bill says we are going to be saving--if we
pass this bill, we are going to be saving $70 billion. Now, we are
talking about big money. I will go back to the amendment that our
colleague from Illinois raised before, but I wish to be really brief
because I know our colleague from Pennsylvania has an amendment.
But the initial amendment is a very big amendment. And I will have to
compare it--and I appreciate her statement that it was in the Daschle
substitute, but as I understand it, it is a bill that would basically
waive the 5-year requirement or time limit.
President Clinton said that he wanted to have a time limit, and we
are talking about Federal payments--have a time limit on how long an
individual or family can receive money from the Federal Government. If
we are to end welfare as we know it, we are going to have to have some
limitations. As I read the first amendment, as long as there is a
dependent minor child, you would continue to have assistance.
Now, the assistance from the Federal Government would be terminated
after 5 years, cash assistance. Under the Senator's amendment, the
State would provide vouchers for supplemental assistance. That is an
unfunded mandate. Maybe the States could take it from other savings in
the program. I will try to study that a little more. But the essence of
it is the family can be on welfare forever if they continue to have
children. And that is not the thrust of what we are trying to do in the
bill which is to have real incentive to get off welfare, to break the
welfare dependency cycle and to make some improvements.
I do appreciate my colleague's introduction of the amendments and her
statements and also her dedication to some of the things she is trying
to do. But at least as far as this Senator is concerned, I do not think
we will be, at least I will not be able to accept the first amendment
as well. I will look at the other couple of amendments that our
colleague introduced and will consider those. So again I would like to
inform my colleagues tomorrow morning at 9:30 my guess is we will have
several rollcall votes. And again I thank my colleague from Illinois
for introducing her amendments.
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. I wish to thank my colleague from Oklahoma, except
I would just say one thing. I do not mind the Senator taking issue with
the amendment one way or another, but I think it is real important not
to misrepresent what the amendment is about. It is not about keeping
families on welfare forever. It is a child-first amendment. It has to
do with children. If the State decides to have a shorter time limit
than the bill or the family is cut off because the parent will not go
to work, then we have to I think maintain some kind of a safety net for
that child.

[[Page S 12823]]

I do not believe the President of the United States or any other
Member of this body wants to set up a set of rules that would leave us
with 6-year-old children sleeping in streets homeless and hungry. I do
not believe anybody wants to do that. But we do not have any guarantee
in the underlying legislation, and that is what this amendment seeks to
fix.
I yield the floor.
Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair. I rise to offer an amendment. Before
I do that, I just want to make a couple of comments about what the
Senator from Illinois stated and characterized the Republican
leadership bill, which I am very hopeful will be adopted by the Senate.
She says that the bill balkanizes welfare reform into 50 separate
programs and that this is bad, that everyone should be treated the
same.
I happen to believe that that is the problem with this system, that
everybody is treated the same and not particularly well, and the
balkanization into 50 separate programs is a bad idea. But
balkanization into a million individual efforts to help poor people in
our society is a good idea. And that is what this bill does.
Sure, it gives a lot of flexibility to the States, but there are many
provisions in this bill which tell the States and direct the States and
encourage the States to go farther; to go down to the local level and
to the community level and make this a program that is a program that
talks about communities and neighborhoods helping neighborhoods and
friends helping friends. And that is the dynamism that is in this bill
that has never been tried from a Federal perspective before.
So, yes, it is balkanization but not to 50 but to 50 times 50 times
50 and more. And that is the excitement about this bill. That is why we
are so committed to seeing this happen.
The Senator from Illinois also said that there is nothing in this
bill about job creation, and I have heard this over and over and over
again. And I feel like a broken record getting up and responding to it.
But I will say several things.
The Senator from Illinois said there is nothing about job creation.
What she is referring to, I assume the Senator is referring to is that
there is no Federal dollars to place people in employment. There is no
specific pot of Federal dollars to say we will pay for employment slots
and for supervision and for paying their stipend while they are
working.
What I would say is that the Governors of the States, the Republican
Governors of the States, I believe 29 out of 30 of the Governors have
said that this bill is an acceptable bill to them; that they do not
need a big pot of money if they can run their own program; that they
can do it cheaper and better, put more people to work, get more people
off the rolls if they have the flexibility to run their own program
without all the tripwires and redtape that is involved in the Federal
system.
That is Governors, as I said before, Republican Governors, who
represent 80 percent of the welfare recipients in this country.
Republican Governors are from States that represent 80 percent of
welfare recipients and they say this is a good deal; they can live with
this; they want this. And they can create the jobs to put the people to
work as required by this legislation.
I would also say that we eliminate, in the Dole bill we eliminate the
provision in current law, which was maintained in the Daschle bill,
we eliminate the provision that says if you are a city or State or any
other kind of municipality, you can no longer fill a vacancy with a
welfare recipient. That is current law. You cannot fill a vacancy with
a welfare recipient in a courthouse or school or any other municipality
or government entity.

What we say is, if there is a vacancy there and you want to give
someone on welfare a chance, you can fill that vacancy with someone. I
used the example earlier today, when we talked about this, of folks on
a road crew standing there with that sign: ``Slow,'' ``Stop.'' You
cannot fill that vacancy, if it occurs, with a welfare recipient.
You can today under the Dole provision. That is creating jobs. You
want to talk about creating job slots, that creates a lot of job slots
in communities across this country that are illegal today. So we do
expand the opportunities for people on welfare to get jobs under this
piece of legislation.
Mr. President, one other comment. The Senator from Illinois said that
children should not suffer because of being born accidentally into
poverty. Unfortunately, in this country and every other country in the
world, poverty exists. The difference between other countries and this
country is that when you are born into poverty, you are not frozen into
poverty by the Government which does not allow you to rise in society.
There are many cultures and civilizations in this world that doom you
to the life in which you were born, but we do not have a caste system
in this country. We do not have levels of classes in this country. The
greatness of this country is that the grandson of a coal miner who
lived in a company town outside of Johnstown, PA, can be a U.S.
Senator, as I am.
That is the greatness of this country, that we still offer
opportunity, and that is what is lacking in the current system. We
disincentivize people from getting off the welfare roll by providing,
as Franklin Roosevelt said, the subtle narcotic to the masses of
welfare. We are going to get rid of the subtle narcotic and turn that
into Powerade, into a system to give them the energy and the
opportunity to move forward and rise.

Amendment No. 2477 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To eliminate certain welfare benefits with respect to
fugitive felons and probation and parole violators, and to facilitate
sharing of information with law enforcement officers, and for other
purposes)

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending
amendment be set aside, and I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
pending amendment will be set aside. The clerk will report the
amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum], for himself
and Mr. Nickles, proposes an amendment numbered 2477 to
amendment No. 2280.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 42, line 2, insert ``, Social Security number, and
photograph (if applicable)'' before ``of any recipient''.
On page 42, between lines 21 and 22, insert the following
new subsection:
``(e) Denial of Assistance for Absent Child.--Each State to
which a grant is made under section 403--
``(1) may not use any part of the grant to provide
assistance to a family with respect to any minor child who
has been, or is expected by the caretaker relative in the
family to be, absent from the home for a period of 45
consecutive days or, at the option of the State, such period
of not less than 30 and not more than 90 consecutive days as
the State may provide for in the State plan;
``(2) at the option of the State, may establish such good
cause exceptions to paragraph (1) as the State considers
appropriate if such exceptions are provided for in the State
plan; and
``(3) shall provide that a caretaker relative shall not be
considered an eligible individual for purposes of this part
if the caretaker relative fails to notify the State agency of
an absence of a minor child from the home for the period
specified in or provided for under paragraph (1), by the end
of the 5-day period that begins on the date that it becomes
clear to the caretaker relative that the minor child will be
absent for the period so specified or provided for in
paragraph (1).
On page 130, line 8, insert ``, Social Security number, and
photograph (if applicable)'' before ``of any recipient''.
On page 198, between lines 14 and 15, insert the following
new section:

SEC. ____. DISQUALIFICATION OF FLEEING FELONS.

Section 6 of the Food Stamp Act of 1977 (7 U.S.C. 2015), as
amended by section 319(a), is further amended by adding at
the end the following new subsection:
``(o) No member of a household who is otherwise eligible to
participate in the food stamp program shall be eligible to
participate in the program as a member of that or any other
household during any period during which the individual is--
``(1) fleeing to avoid prosecution, or custody or
confinement after conviction, under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, for a crime, or attempt to
commit a crime, which is a felony under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, or which, in the case of the
State of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of
such State; or

[[Page S 12824]]

``(2) violating a condition of probation or parole imposed
under Federal or State law.''.
On page 302 after line 5, add the following new section:
SEC. 504. INFORMATION REPORTING.

(a) Title IV of the Social Security Act.--Section 405 of
the Social Security Act, as added by section 101(b), is
amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(f) State Required To Provide Certain Information.--Each
State to which a grant is made under section 403 shall, at
least 4 times annually and upon request of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, furnish the Immigration and
Naturalization Service with the name and address of, and
other identifying information on, any individual who the
State knows is unlawfully in the United States.''.
(b) SSI.--Section 1631(e) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1383(e))
is amended--
(1) by redesignating the paragraphs (6) and (7) inserted by
sections 206(d)(2) and 206(f)(1) of the Social Security
Independence and Programs Improvement Act of 1994 (Public Law
103-296; 108 Stat. 1514, 1515) as paragraphs (7) and (8),
respectively; and
(2) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
``(9) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the
Commissioner shall, at least 4 times annually and upon
request of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(hereafter in this paragraph referred to as the `Service'),
furnish the Service with the name and address of, and other
identifying information on, any individual who the
Commissioner knows is unlawfully in the United States, and
shall ensure that each agreement entered into under section
1616(a) with a State provides that the State shall furnish
such information at such times with respect to any individual
who the State knows is unlawfully in the United States.''.
(c) Housing Programs.--Title I of the United States Housing
Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. 1437 et seq.), as amended by section
1004, is further amended by adding at the end the following
new section:

``SEC. 28. PROVISION OF INFORMATION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AND
OTHER AGENCIES.

``(a) Notice to Immigration and Naturalization Service of
Illegal Aliens.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law,
the Secretary shall, at least 4 times annually and upon
request of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(hereafter in this subsection referred to as the `Service'),
furnish the Service with the name and address of, and other
identifying information on, any individual who the Secretary
knows is unlawfully in the United States, and shall ensure
that each contract for assistance entered into under section
6 or 8 of this Act with a public housing agency provides that
the public housing agency shall furnish such information at
such times with respect to any individual who the public
housing agency knows is unlawfully in the United States.''.
At the appropriate place, insert the following new section:

SEC. ____. ELIMINATION OF HOUSING ASSISTANCE WITH RESPECT TO
FUGITIVE FELONS AND PROBATION AND PAROLE
VIOLATORS.

(a) Eligibility for Assistance.--The United States Housing
Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. 1437 et seq.) is amended--
(1) in section 6(l)--
(A) in paragraph (5), by striking ``and'' at the end;
(B) in paragraph (6), by striking the period at the end and
inserting ``; and''; and
(C) by inserting immediately after paragraph (6) the
following new paragraph:
``(7) provide that it shall be cause for immediate
termination of the tenancy of a public housing tenant if such
tenant--
``(A) is fleeing to avoid prosecution, or custody or
confinement after conviction, under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, for a crime, or attempt to
commit a crime, which is a felony under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, or which, in the case of the
State of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of
such State; or
``(2) is violating a condition of probation or parole
imposed under Federal or State law.''; and
(2) in section 8(d)(1)(B)--
(A) in clause (iii), by striking ``and'' at the end;
(B) in clause (iv), by striking the period at the end and
inserting ``; and''; and
(C) by adding after clause (iv) the following new clause:
``(v) it shall be cause for termination of the tenancy of a
tenant if such tenant--

``(I) is fleeing to avoid prosecution, or custody or
confinement after conviction, under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, for a crime, or attempt to
commit a crime, which is a felony under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, or which, in the case of the
State of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of
such State; or
``(II) is violating a condition of probation or parole
imposed under Federal or State law;''.

(b) Provision of Information to Law Enforcement Agencies.--
Section 28 of the United States Housing Act of 1937, as added
by section 504(c) of this Act, is amended by adding at the
end the following new subsection:
``(b) Exchange of Information With Law Enforcement
Agencies.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, each
public housing agency that enters into a contract for
assistance under section 6 or 8 of this Act with the
Secretary shall furnish any Federal, State, or local law
enforcement officer, upon the request of the officer, with
the current address, Social Security number, and photograph
(if applicable) of any recipient of assistance under this
Act, if the officer--
``(1) furnishes the public housing agency with the name of
the recipient; and
``(2) notifies the agency that--
``(A) such recipient--
``(i) is fleeing to avoid prosecution, or custody or
confinement after conviction, under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, for a crime, or attempt to
commit a crime, which is a felony under the laws of the place
from which the individual flees, or which, in the case of the
State of New Jersey, is a high misdemeanor under the laws of
such State; or
``(ii) is violating a condition of probation or parole
imposed under Federal or State law; or
``(iii) has information that is necessary for the officer
to conduct the officer's official duties;
``(B) the location or apprehension of the recipient is
within such officer's official duties; and
``(C) the request is made in the proper exercise of the
officer's official duties.''.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, the amendment that I sent to the desk I
hope is going to be a noncontroversial amendment. I believe it is one
that should get broad support, hopefully unanimous support, of this
body. It is an amendment that is very similar in nature to one that was
adopted in the House of Representatives on their bill offered by
Representative Blute of Massachusetts having to do with fugitive felons
who receive welfare.
Yes, that is right. There are people who are fleeing the law, felons
in which warrants are out for their arrest, who are hiding from the law
on the welfare rolls. You say, ``How does that happen?'' Someone has
been convicted of a felony and has escaped or violated parole or has
been issued a warrant for their arrest on a felony charge and is
eluding the law. While eluding the law, they sign up for welfare to
support their eluding the law.
You say, ``Well, how can this happen?'' It is very easy to happen,
because in most States in this country, if you are on the welfare rolls
and the police department wants to find out if you are on the welfare
rolls and they have a felony warrant for your arrest, the welfare
department cannot tell the police department that you are receiving
benefits. Why? Because your rights to privacy are protected. If you are
on the welfare rolls, you have a right of privacy.
You may be a murderer. In fact, one of the reasons I offered this
amendment is just last year in Pittsburgh--I have a July 29, 1994,
article about a man who was on the welfare rolls. When they found this
guy in Philadelphia, they found him and searched him, obviously, and
they found a welfare card with his photo on it, his correct name. He
did not even bother to lie about what his name was. He was protected by
privacy. You say this must be an odd occurrence. This was a murderer,
fleeing the law for years and collecting Government benefits.
In Cleveland, they did a sting operation, and they rounded up a lot
of felons at this sting operation and searched them, and they found out
that a third of the people they caught in the sting operation that had
existing warrants were on welfare.
I visited the police department in Philadelphia and talked to their
fugitive task force. They have a fugitive task force in the police
department in Philadelphia. They have some 50,000 outstanding fugitive
warrants in the city of Philadelphia. Historically, what the police
officers have said is anywhere from 65 to 75 percent of the felons they
catch are on welfare of some sort, whether it is food stamps or AFDC,
SSI, you name it, they are collecting money while eluding the law. Not
having to sign up for legitimate work where they might be caught, they
can stay home and run around with their buddies at night and collect
welfare. So you support them while the Federal Government and the State
and local counties try to track them down. This is absurd.
So what we are suggesting is that the welfare offices, when contacted
by the police department, must give the police department, if they have
a warrant--I am not talking about people just wanting to search who is
on the welfare rolls, but if you have a warrant

[[Page S 12825]]
for someone's arrest, a felony warrant, that you can contact the
welfare office and say, ``Has such and such signed up for welfare?''
You can give the name and address. And you will find, at least the
police told me, when it comes to receiving welfare benefits, they give
the correct address to receive those benefits. They do not lie about
what address those benefits go to. So you get the name, the address--we
have the name--the address, the Social Security number and a photo
because a lot of these folks just have police sketches. You might have
what their name is, but you may not have a good photo or it may not be
a recent photo.
So what we do is give police a tremendous advantage, at least
according to the police departments I have talked to and the research I
have done, in tracking down fugitive felons.
As I said before, I do not think this is a controversial measure. I
think this is something that can and should be supported by everyone.
There is an additional provision in the bill that deals with another
problem on AFDC, and that is the term ``when a child is temporarily
absent from the home.'' What happens there? This is a separate issue
than the fugitive issue, but it is included in the amendment.
We have situations where you have a mother and children or a child
who, unfortunately, may be sent to prison or sent to detention, or
whatever the case may be, but be out of the home for a period of years.
Under the laws in most States, because the Federal law does not define
``temporarily absent,'' what happens is that mom continues to receive
welfare benefits for that child, even though the child has not lived in
the home for years or months because they are in jail.
We think that is sort of a silly idea. If the child is being
otherwise detained because of incarceration as a runaway, whatever the
case may be, we should not continue to pay the mother the benefits for
the child who is no longer living there. That, you would think, is
pretty much common sense, but under the Federal law today, that is not
common sense. So we define what ``temporarily absent'' is.
Again, I am hopeful this amendment will be agreed to and adopted, but
I am going to ask at this point for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to compliment my colleague from
Pennsylvania. I think this is an excellent amendment. It is kind of
bothersome to think that there might be thousands of fleeing felons
receiving welfare, and maybe because there is a lack of coordination
between law enforcement and welfare agencies and offices, they are able
to get away with it. I do not doubt my colleague's homework. It is
probably quite accurate. To think that that is happening, it needs to
be stopped. His amendment would go a long way toward stopping it.
I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor, and I hope my
colleagues support it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
pending amendment be temporarily set aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 2469, As Modified

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I want to modify a prior amendment and also introduce
two additional amendments. I will try to be brief. I call up amendment
No. 2469 and send a modification to the desk. Once the amendment has
been modified, I ask unanimous consent that it be laid aside in the
previous order of consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is so modified.
The amendment (No. 2469), as modified, is as follows:
Beginning on page 18, line 22, strike all through page 22,
line 8, and insert the following:
``(3) Supplemental grant amount for poverty population
increases in certain states.--
``(A) In general.--The amount of the grant payable under
paragraph (1) to a qualifying State for each of fiscal years
1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 shall be increased by the
supplemental grant amount for such State.
``(B) Qualifying state.--For purposes of this paragraph,
the term `qualifying State', with respect to any fiscal year,
means a State that had an increase in the number of poor
people as determined by the Secretary under subparagraph (D)
for the most recent fiscal year for which information is
available.
``(C) Supplemental grant amount.--For purposes of this
paragraph, the supplemental grant amount for a State, with
respect to any fiscal year, is an amount which bears the same
ratio to the total amount appropriated under paragraph (4)(B)
for such fiscal year as the increase in the number of poor
people as so determined for such State bears to the total
increase of poor people as so determined for all States.
``(D) Requirement that data relating to the incidence of
poverty in the united states be published.--
``(i) In general.--The Secretary shall, to the extent
feasible, produce and publish for each State, county, and
local unit of general purpose government for which data have
been compiled in the then most recent census of population
under section 141(a) of title 13, United States Code, and for
each school district, data relating to the incidence of
poverty. Such data may be produced by means of sampling,
estimation, or any other method that the Secretary determines
will produce current, comprehensive, and reliable data.
``(ii) Content; frequency.--Data under this subparagraph--
``(I) shall include--
``(aa) for each school district, the number of children age
5 to 17, inclusive, in families below the poverty level; and
``(bb) for each State and county referred to in clause (i),
the number of individuals age 65 or older below the poverty
level; and
``(II) shall be published--
``(aa) for each State, annually beginning in 1996;
``(bb) for each county and local unit of general purpose
government referred to in clause (i),
in 1996 and at least every second year thereafter; and
``(cc) for each school district, in 1998 and at least every
second year thereafter.
``(iii) Authority to aggregate.--
``(I) In general.--If reliable data could not otherwise be
produced, the Secretary may, for purposes of clause
(ii)(I)(aa), aggregate school districts, but only to the
extent necessary to achieve reliability.
``(II) Information relating to use of authority.--Any data
produced under this clause shall be appropriately identified
and shall be accompanied by a detailed explanation as to how
and why aggregation was used (including the measures taken to
minimize any such aggregation).
``(iv) Report to be submitted whenever data is not timely
published.--If the Secretary is unable to produce and publish
the data required under this subparagraph for any county,
local unit of general purpose government, or school district
in any year specified in clause (ii)(II), a report shall be
submitted by the Secretary to the President of the Senate and
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, not later than
90 days before the start of the following year, enumerating
each government or school district excluded and giving the
reasons for the exclusion.
``(v) Criteria relating to poverty.--In carrying out this
subparagraph, the Secretary shall use the same criteria
relating to poverty as were used in the then most recent
census of population under section 141(a) of title 13, United
States Code (subject to such periodic adjustments as may be
necessary to compensate for inflation and other similar
factors).
``(vi) Consultation.--The Secretary shall consult with the
Secretary of Education in carrying out the requirements of
this subparagraph relating to school districts.
``(vii) Authorization of appropriations.--There are
authorized to be appropriated to carry out this subparagraph
$1,500,000 for each of fiscal years 1996 through 2000.''
Amendment No. 2478

(Purpose: To provide equal treatment for naturalized and native-born
citizens)

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and
ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from California [Mrs. Feinstein] proposes an
amendment numbered 2478.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
On page 274, lines 23 and 24, strike ``individual (whether
a citizen or national of the United States or an alien)'' and
insert ``alien''.
On page 275, line 5, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.
On page 275, line 10, strike ``individual's'' and insert
``alien's''.
On page 275, line 11, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.
On page 275, line 14, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.
On page 275, line 20, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.
On page 275, line 21, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.

[[Page S 12826]]

On page 276, lines 2 and 3, strike ``individual (whether a
citizen or national of the United States or an alien)'' and
insert ``alien''.
On page 276, line 14, strike ``individual'' and insert
``alien''.
On page 278, line 1, strike ``NONCITIZENS'' and insert
``ALIENS''.
On page 278, line 8, strike ``a noncitizen'' and insert
``an alien''.
On page 278, line 13, strike ``a noncitizen'' and insert
``an alien''.
On page 278, line 16, strike ``a noncitizen'' and insert
``an alien''.
On page 278, line 22, strike ``a noncitizen'' and insert
``an alien''.
On page 279, line 4, strike ``a noncitizen'' and insert
``an alien''.
On page 279, line 6, strike ``A noncitizen'' and insert
``An alien''.
On page 279, line 8, strike ``noncitizen'' and insert
``alien''.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, the Dole bill requires that income and
resources of an immigrant sponsor be deemed as available to the
immigrant when determining eligibility for all federally funded, means-
tested programs. This is the case, whether or not the immigrant is a
United States citizen. In other words, it creates two classes of
citizens. A naturalized citizen, under the Dole bill, could not be
eligible for any form of assistance. I believe this is unprecedented
and, as I said, creates two classes of American citizens, which will
surely be challenged in the courts on constitutional grounds.
So I rise today to offer an amendment to this bill to provide equal
treatment for naturalized and native-born U.S. citizens. This amendment
is cosponsored by Senators Kohl and Simon. It is supported by the
National Governors Association, the National Conference of State
Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, the National League
of Cities, the United States Catholic Conference, and the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights, as well as several other organizations.
The amendment simply removes any reference to citizens in all places
in the underlying bill that require deeming, and leaves in place the
deeming requirements for benefits to legal aliens.
I think the question before the Senate is this: Does the Constitution
of the United States of America provide for two distinct classes of
United States citizens--those who are naturalized and those who are
native-born? I know of only one benefit which is denied by the
Constitution to citizens of our country who were not born in this
country, and that one thing is the Presidency of the United States.
Article II, section 1 of the Constitution expressly states that ``no
person, except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United
States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be
eligible to the office of President.'' That is where the line is drawn
for me.
I do not believe that, absent a constitutional amendment, the
Constitution gives this body the authority to deny outright any
benefits, save that one, to naturalized citizens. Article I of the
Constitution does contain one other distinction with regard to
naturalized citizens and their qualifications to be Members of
Congress. It says, ``No person shall be a representative who shall not
have attained the age of 25 years and been 7 years a citizen of the
United States.'' That is whether they are native-born or naturalized.
It also says, ``No person shall be a Senator who shall not have
attained the age of 30 years, and been 9 years a citizen of the United
States.''
I do not believe our forefathers necessarily foresaw the specifics of
the debate which is before us today. But I do believe they considered
what distinctions should be made between naturalized and native-born
citizens. And the result of that consideration is reflected in the
Constitution.
The Department of Justice has expressed serious concerns about the
constitutionality on the proscription of benefits as applied to
naturalized citizens in this bill. In a letter to Senator Kennedy,
dated July 18, a copy of which was also provided to me, Assistant
Attorney General, Andrew Fois states:

The deeming provision, as applied to citizens, would
contravene the basic equal protection tenet that ``the rights
of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized
person are of the same dignity and are coextensive.''

The letter goes on to say:

To the same effect, the provision might be viewed as a
classification based on national origin; among citizens
otherwise eligible for government assistance, the class
excluded by operation of the deeming provision is limited to
those born outside the United States. A classification based
on national origin, of course, is subject to strict scrutiny
under equal protection review, and it is unlikely that the
deeming provision could be justified under this standard.

At this time, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full
text of the letter from the Justice Department be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:

U.S. Department of Justice,

Office of Legislative Affairs,

Washington, DC, July 18, 1995.
Hon. Edward M. Kennedy,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Kennedy: This letter follows your question to
Attorney General Janet Reno regarding the constitutionality
of the deeming provisions in pending immigration legislation
at the Senate Judiciary Committee's oversight hearing on June
27.
You have asked for our views regarding the ``deeming''
provisions of section 204 of S. 269, Senator Simpson's
proposed immigration legislation. Our comment here is limited
to the question raised by application of section 204 to
naturalized citizens.
We have serious concerns about section 204's
constitutionality as applied to naturalized citizens. So
applied, the deeming provision would operate to deny, or
reduce eligibility for, a variety of benefits including
student financial assistance and welfare benefits to certain
United States citizens because they were born outside the
country. This appears to be an unprecedented result. Current
federal deeming provisions under various benefits programs
operate only as against aliens (see, e.g., 42 U.S.C. Sec. 615
(AFDC); 7 U.S.C. 2014(i) (Food Stamps)) and we are not aware
of any comparable restrictions on citizen eligibility for
federal assistance. As a matter of policy, we think it would
be a mistake to begin now to relegate naturalized citizens--
who have demonstrated their commitment to our country by
undergoing the naturalization process--to a kind of second-
class status.
The provision might be defended legally on the grounds that
it is an exercise of Congress' plenary authority to regulate
immigration and naturalization, or, more specifically, to set
the terms under which persons may enter the United States and
become citizens. See Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67 (1976);
Toll v. Moreno, 458 U.S. 1, 10-11 (1982). We are not
convinced that this defense would prove persuasive. Though
Congress undoubtedly has power to impose conditions precedent
on entry and naturalization, the provision at issue here
would function as a condition subsequent, applying to
entrants even after they become citizens. It is not at all
clear that Congress' immigration and naturalization power
extends this far.
While the rights of citizenship of the native born derive
from Sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the rights of the
naturalized citizen derive from satisfying, free of fraud,
the requirements set by Congress, the latter, apart from the
exception noted [constitutional eligibility for President],
becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of
a native citizen, and standing, in the view of the
constitution, on the footing of a native. The constitution
does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those
rights. The simple power of the national Legislature, is to
prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise
of this power exhausts it, so far as respects the individual.
Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163, 166 (1964) (internal
quotations omitted) (statutory restriction on length foreign
residence applied to naturalized but not native born citizens
violates Fifth Amendment equal protection component).
Alternatively, it might be argued in defense of the
provision that it classifies not by reference to citizenship
at all, but rather on the basis of sponsorship; only those
naturalized citizens with sponsors will be affected. Again,
we have doubts about whether this characterization of the
provision would be accepted. State courts have rejected an
analogous position with respect to state deeming provisions,
finding that the provisions constitute impermissible
discrimination based on alienage despite the fact that they
reach only sponsored aliens. See Barannikov v. Town of
Greenwich, 643 A.2d 251, 263-64 (Conn. 1994); El Souri v.
Dep't of Social Services, 414 N.W.2d 679, 682-83 (Mich.
1987). Because the deeming provision in question here, as
applied to citizens, is directed at and reaches only
naturalized citizens, the same reasoning would compel the
conclusion that it constitutes discrimination against
naturalized citizens. Cf. Nyquist v. Mauclet, 432 U.S. 1, 9
(1977) (``The important points are that [the law] is directed
at aliens and that only aliens are harmed by it. The fact
that the statute is not an absolute bar does not mean that it
does not discriminate against the class.'') (invalidating
state law denying some, but not all, resident aliens
financial assistance for higher education).
So understood, the deeming provision, as applied to
citizens, would contravene the basic equal protection tenet
that ``the rights of citizenship of the native born and of
the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are
coextensive.'' Schneider, 377 U.S. at

[[Page S 12827]]
165. To the same effect, the provisions might be viewed as a
classification based on national origin; among citizens
otherwise eligible for government assistance, the class
excluded by operation of the deeming provision is limited to
those born outside the United States. A classification based
on national origin, of course, is subject to strict scrutiny
under equal protection review, see Korematsu v. United
States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), and it is unlikely that the
deeming provision could be justified under this standard. See
Barannikova, 643 A.2d at 265 (invalidating state deeming
provision under strict scrutiny); El Souri, 414 N.W.2d at 683
(same).
The Office of Management and Budget has advised that there
is no objection to the submission of this letter from the
standpoint of the Administration's program.
Sincerely,
Andrew Fois,
Assistant Attorney General.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, to a great extent, we are a Nation of
immigrants. There are very few of us in this body who could claim not
to have been a product, in some way, of immigrants.
My mother was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She left that country
hiding in a hay cart during the revolution. They crossed Siberia on
their long journey to California. My grandmother was widowed shortly
after arriving in this country, left with four small children. My uncle
was a carpenter. My mother did not enjoy good health as a child and was
hospitalized for many years. There was no widow's pension then, no
AFDC. And I am not one that believes that immigrants should come to the
United States to get on the dole. But we do have a naturalization
process which, after the designated waiting period, and after meeting
certain requirements, immigrants take an oath, they become citizens of
the United States, with all of the privileges and benefits accorded to
native-born citizens, save the one spelled out in the Constitution that
I have read today.
This bill essentially says that even if naturalized--even if a
naturalized citizen for 20 years, your sponsor's income will be deemed
as yours, and you will not be eligible for Federal benefits.
Even if that sponsor is dying from cancer, and no matter what happens
to the naturalized citizen, that naturalized citizen is exempted from
coverage under this bill.
I believe that violates the equal protection clause of our
Constitution and jeopardizes the fairness of the legislation. So the
amendment that I am submitting is essentially equal treatment for
naturalized and native-born citizens.
Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes.
Mr. NICKLES. I will be brief. I think I understand the amendment. The
Senator is saying that immigrants to the country should be able to
receive welfare benefits just as any other citizen can, is that
correct?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Only if they have become United States citizens. In
other words, the deeming provision does not apply if you are
naturalized.
In this bill, the deeming provision extends even to naturalized
citizens. Therefore, they would not be eligible.
Mr. NICKLES. If an immigrant comes into the country and goes through
the processes to be a naturalized U.S. citizen, they are required now
to have a sponsor, a sponsor that states that they will make sure that
they will not be a ward of the Government for some period of time.
Does the Senator know what that period would be?
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I did know and I cannot remember what it was.
Mr. NICKLES. I will review that.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. This is not just a legal immigrant, but a naturalized
citizen too.
We are not talking here about removing that requirement for legal
immigrants in this amendment. This is just for naturalized citizens.
Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to have the Senator's amendment. I have not
seen it before. I will be happy to review it and we will take it up
tomorrow morning.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma very much.

Amendment No. 2479 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To provide for State and county demonstration programs)

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I send another amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The previous amendment shall be laid aside.
The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from California, [Mrs. Feinstein], proposes an
amendment numbered 2479 to amendment No. 2280.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading
of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 69, strike lines 18 through 22, and insert the
following:

``SEC. 418. STATE AND COUNTY DEMONSTRATION PROGRAMS.

``(a) No Limitation of State Demonstration Projects.--
Nothing in this part shall be construed as limiting a State's
ability to conduct demonstration projects for the purpose of
identifying innovative or effective program designs in 1 or
more political subdivisions of the State.
``(b) County Welfare Demonstration Project.--
``(1) In general.--The Secretary of Health and Human
Services and the Secretary of Agriculture shall jointly enter
into negotiations with all counties or a group of counties
having a population greater than 500,000 desiring to conduct
a demonstration project described in paragraph (2) for the
purpose of establishing appropriate rules to govern
establishment and operation of such project.
``(2) Demonstration project described.--The demonstration
project described in this paragraph shall provide that--
``(A) a county participating in the demonstration project
shall have the authority and duty to administer the operation
of the program described under this part as if the county
were considered a State for the purpose of this part;
``(B) the State in which the county participating in the
demonstration project is located shall pass through directly
to the county the portion of the grant received by the State
under section 403 which the State determines is attributable
to the residents of such county; and
``(C) the duration of the project shall be for 5 years.
``(3) Commencement of project.--After the conclusion of the
negotiations described in paragraph (2), the Secretary of
Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Agriculture
may authorize a county to conduct the demonstration project
described in paragraph (2) in accordance with the rules
established during the negotiations.
``(4) Report.--Not later than 6 months after the
termination of a demonstration project operated under this
subsection, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and
the Secretary of Agriculture shall submit to the Congress a
report that includes--
``(A) a description of the demonstration project;
``(B) the rules negotiated with respect to the project; and
``(C) the innovations (if any) that the county was able to
initiate under the project.

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, throughout the welfare debate it has
often been stated that people closest to the problem know how to best
deal with it.
In fact, many States assign administration of Federal welfare
programs to counties. As a former mayor, and a former county
supervisor, that certainly is the case in California.
Many of the innovations and successes currently under discussion have
been initiated at the local level. In my earlier remarks on welfare
reform, I mentioned several of them--initiatives made by counties to
put people to work, to devise programs to really run their programs
with efficiency, and appropriate for their local communities.
This amendment affirms that there will be no limitation on the
ability of a State to conduct innovative and effective demonstration
projects in one or more of its political subdivisions.
It empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to jointly
negotiate with any county or group of counties having a population
greater than 500,000 to conduct a demonstration project where the
county would have the authority and duty to administer the operation of
the welfare program covered by this bill.
In essence, what it is saying, for large counties, or a group of
small counties, like in Wisconsin for example, the Secretary would have
the authority to be able to negotiate so that the grant would go
directly from Washington to the counties.
What does this mean? It means you take the State out of it. Why do I
want to take the State out of it? Because I know what States do. They
charge a cost, they set up a bureaucracy, and therefore a portion of
the money will end up in the State. The State can often not send that
money to the counties, or find a reason not to send it, and even use it
for other purposes.
So in this amendment, the State in which the demonstration county is
located would pass directly to the county the portion of the grant
determined by

[[Page S 12828]]
the State as attributable to the residents of that county.
The duration of the demonstration project is 5 years, after which
time the Secretary is directed to report to the Congress on the
description, rules, and innovations initiated under the project.
Essentially, the block grants of the large counties could go directly
to the counties, thereby I believe, based on my experience, it would
save money and be more efficiently used.
This was in the bill, my understanding is, as it was originally
drafted, and it was removed. We would by this amendment place it back.
It is similar to an amendment which was in the prior Daschle bill.
I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask that the pending amendment
temporarily be set aside so I can offer two amendments which I expect
will be ultimately accepted.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the amendment will be set
aside.
Mr. FEINGOLD. The first relates to a study of the impact of changes
on the child care food program on program participation and family day
care providers.
I have worked with the majority and minority on the Agriculture
Committee on the language of the amendment, and I expect it will be
accepted by the floor managers.
Mr. President, This amendment is very simple and it addresses an
issue of great concern raised by my constituents in Wisconsin.
A few months ago, the House of Representatives repealed the
entitlement status for the Child and Adult Care Food Program and placed
its funding in a block grant of other child nutrition programs. The
10,000 family day care home sponsors in the United States worried the
program would be swallowed up by the larger, more well-known programs
such as the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and
Children.
The Family Day Home sponsors, who administer aspects of the CACFP
knew the House proposal effectively meant the end of this very
important program. Mr. President, the CACFP is a relatively small
program that affects a very large number of children in this country.
In addition to providing reimbursements to providers for meals served
to low-income children in child care centers, it provides a blended
reimbursement for meals served in all participating family day care
homes--those with six children or fewer. Most children in the United
States that currently receive day care are cared for in small family
day care homes. Even more significantly, according to Congress's Select
Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, pre-school age children
receive about three-quarters of their nutritional intake from their day
care providers. Those two facts emphasize the importance of ensuring
children receive nutritious meals while they under the supervision of a
family day care home provider.
Early this year, the operator of Wisconsin's smallest non-profit
sponsor in my State, Linda Leindecker of Horizon's Unlimited in Green
Bay, met with me to discuss her specific concerns about the proposals
to modify the program she helps deliver. The CACFP, she pointed out,
has greater benefits than might meet the eye. While the clear goal of
the program is to enhance the nutritional status of children receiving
care by family day care homes, it has many less obvious benefits. Linda
pointed out that the program provides a strong incentive for small
family day care homes to become licensed by the State. A recent survey
of over 1,200 day care homes in Wisconsin found that over 70 percent of
those surveyed became licensed because of CACFP benefits. That means
children are more likely to be in day care homes that provide a safe
and more healthy environment with more nutritious meals than
unregulated day care homes. These so-called ``underground'' homes are
not only operating without health or safety standards, but they are
also better able to evade compliance with income tax laws as well.
Not only must family day care homes participating in the CACFP comply
with State regulations, they are also subject to random inspections of
all their homes by the CACFP sponsors. CACFP care providers must also
undergo extensive nutrition education and training programs conducted
by sponsors to ensure that the children in participating homes are
eating nutritious meals as required by the program. In total, Wisconsin
family day care providers are serving nearly 12.5 million healthy
breakfasts, lunches, suppers and snacks annually.
Mr. President, the message I have heard loud and clear from Linda and
other Family Day Care Home sponsors in Wisconsin is that while the
primary benefit of the family day care home portion of the CACFP is the
enhanced nutritional status of children in small day care homes, the
second most important benefit is the role of this program in creating
more licensed and regulated family day care homes. That benefits
parents, taxpayers, and children alike.
Mr. President, I am pleased that the Senate Agriculture Committee did
not take the drastic approach endorsed by the House. In particular, I
am pleased that the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Lugar] and the Senator
from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] recognized how important CACFP is to this
Nation's children by maintaining the identity and entitlement status of
the program in S. 904 as approved by the Agriculture Committee
However, the legislation before us, which incorporates the
Agriculture Committee's bill S. 904, does make some fundamental changes
to the reimbursement structure for family day care homes. The bill
establishes an area-wide means test for full reimbursement, tier I, of
meals served in family day care and provides a much smaller
reimbursement for meals served in homes that do not fall within a
qualifying geographic area, tier II. The Democratic alternative to the
majority leader's bill also provides for geographic based means testing
for CACFP but provides a slightly higher second tier reimbursement.
Wisconsin's day care home sponsors are alarmed by the small tier II
home reimbursement and worry that this lower level of reimbursement
will eliminate the incentive for family day care homes to become
licensed and approved by the State. As some homes drop out of the
program and operate underground, even fewer will enter the program at
all, making regulated day care less accessible and less affordable to
parents of young children. Sponsors are also worried that the
nutritional quality of meals served in tier II homes will decline as
well. Fifteen cents, they point out, doesn't buy much of a healthy mid-
day snack.
I share those concerns, Mr. President. I am concerned that the
marginal benefit of day care home participation may no longer justify
the cost of being regulated or licensed by the State. If that is the
case, I am concerned that not only the quality of day care will
decline, but that the quantity of affordable day care will fall as
well. While we are debating a bill that proposes to send more low-
income parents to work, it is important that there be an adequate
supply of safe and affordable day care for their children.
Mr. President, my amendment tries to address those concerns by
requiring USDA to study the impact of the changes to CACFP made in this
bill on program participation, family day care home licensing and the
nutritional quality of meals served in family day care homes. Since the
impact of these changes will likely be felt within the first year or
two following enactment, my amendment calls for a one-time study of
this matter, rather than an annual review.
I think it is critical that Congress have access to the information
they need to conduct proper oversight of Federal programs. While the
changes made to the CACFP in S. 1120 are intended to maintain program
integrity while achieving fiscal responsibility, it is important that
Congress find out whether the legislation actually achieves those
goals.
That is the intent of my amendment. It is simple and straightforward
but it is important.
The second amendment, Mr. President, relates to authority to allow a
housing project in Madison, Wisconsin to conduct a demonstration
project that waives the current take-one, take-all section 8
requirement that requires a project which accepts a single section 8
resident to take any other section 8 applicant.

[[Page S 12829]]

The unfortunate result of this policy, Mr. President, is that
sometimes it is meant that a project will not accept any section 8
residents at all. This demonstration program would not entail any
Federal cost.
I understand that neither the administration nor the authorizing
committee has any objection to this amendment and that they support
moving in this direction in order to provide greater flexibility for
these types of housing programs.
I offer this amendment along with my senior colleague from Wisconsin,
Senator Kohl. The amendment would provide an opportunity for Madison,
WI, to demonstrate an innovative and emerging strategy in the operation
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development assisted housing
program by eliminating the take-one, take-all requirement.
That provision requires the manager or owner of multifamily rental
housing to make all units available to residents who qualify for
section 8 certificates or vouchers under the National Housing Act as
long as at least one unit is made available to those residents under
the terms of the long-term, 20-year section 8 renter contracts.
The availability of low-income housing is being seriously threatened
across this Nation. This is especially true when private property
owners are considered who are increasingly choosing to opt out of the
HUD section 8 program for a variety of reasons, as their long-term
contracts expire.
The situation in this case in Madison is typical of these problems
that are being experienced nationwide. HUD itself recognizes this and
has actually proposed, Mr. President, that we eliminate the take-one,
take-all language.
They project an elimination of the requirement will provide an
incentive to attract new multifamily low-income housing developer
owners and also retain existing ones.
Local government officials, private institutions, residents and
apartment owners in Madison in this case, Mr. President, have agreed to
a plan for the Summer Society Circle Apartments that will reduce the
concentration of low-income families and densely populated in
circumscribed areas.
They believe it will reduce crime and drug and gang activity and
stabilize development in neighborhoods by encouraging a mix of low- and
moderate-income families. We believe the amendment provides an
opportunity to demonstrate that public-private collaborative planning
can result in increased, Mr. President, increased availability of
quality housing for low- and moderate-income families.
Accordingly, we urge the support of the body. There is no additional
cost associated with this demonstration project, which simply allows
this community to have greater flexibility in operating in housing
projects which meet the needs of the communities.
As I understand the parliamentary situation, it is the desire of the
managers to have as many of these amendments offered tonight as
possible, and they will be disposed of in due course.

Amendment No. 2480

(Purpose: To study the impact of amendments to the child and adult care
food program on program participation and family day care licensing)

Mr. FEINGOLD. As I said, I expect both of these ultimately to be
accepted, and to expedite consideration I now send the first amendment
to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Feingold] proposes an
amendment numbered 2480 to amendment No. 2280.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 283, after line 23, insert the following:
(f) Study of Impact of Amendments on Program Participation
and Family Day Care Licensing.--
(1) In general.--The Secretary of Agriculture, in
conjunction with the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
shall study the impact of the amendments made by this section
on--
(A) the number of family day care homes participating in
the child and adult care food program established under
section 17 of the National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1766);
(B) the number of day care home sponsoring organizations
participating in the program;
(C) the number of day care homes that are licensed,
certified, registered, or approved by each State in
accordance with regulations issued by the Secretary;
(D) the rate of growth of the numbers referred to in
subparagraphs (A) through (C);
(E) the nutritional adequacy and quality of meals served in
family day care homes that--
(i) received reimbursement under the program prior to the
amendments made by this section but do not receive
reimbursement after the amendments made by this section; or
(ii) received full reimbursement under the program prior to
the amendments made by this section but do not receive full
reimbursement after the amendments made by this section; and
(F) the proportion of low-income children participating in
the program prior to the amendments made by this section and
the proportion of low-income children participating in the
program after the amendments made by this section.
(2) Required data.--Each State agency participating in the
child and adult care food program under section 17 of the
National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1766) shall submit to
the Secretary data on--
(A) the number of family day care homes participating in
the program on July 31, 1996, and July 31, 1997;
(B) the number of family day care homes licensed,
certified, registered, or approved for service on July 31,
1996, and July 31, 1997; and
(C) such other data as the Secretary may require to carry
out this subsection.
(3) Submission of report.--Not later than 2 years after the
effective date of Sec. 423 of this Act, the Secretary shall
submit the study required under this subsection to the
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities of the
House of Representatives and the Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask the pending amendment be set aside
so I may offer my second amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending amendment is set aside.

Amendment No. 2481

(Purpose: To make an amendment relating to public housing)

Mr. FEINGOLD. I send my second amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Feingold], for himself and
Mr. Kohl, proposes an amendment numbered 2481 to amendment
No. 2280.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

At the appropriate place in title X, add the following:

SEC. 10 . DEMONSTRATION PROJECT FOR ELIMINATION OF TAKE-ONE-
ONE-TAKE-ALL REQUIREMENT.

In order to demonstrate the effects of eliminating the
requirement under section 8(t) of the United States Housing
Act of 1937, notwithstanding any other provision of law,
beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, section 8(t)
of such the United States Housing Act of 1937 shall not apply
with respect to the multifamily housing project (as such term
is defined in section 8(t)(2) of the United States Housing
Act of 1937) consisting of the dwelling units located at
2401-2479 Sommerset Circle, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Amend the table of contents accordingly.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from California
wished to speak.
I was mistaken. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask the pending amendment be laid aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending amendment will be set aside.

Amendment No. 2482 to Amendment No. 2280

(Purpose: To provide that noncustodial parents who are delinquent in
paying child support are ineligible for means-tested Federal benefits)

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

The Senator from California [Mrs. Boxer] proposes an
amendment numbered 2482 to amendment No. 2280.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.

[[Page S 12830]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

On page 712, between lines 9 and 10, insert the following:

SEC. 972. DENIAL OF MEANS-TESTED FEDERAL BENEFITS TO
NONCUSTODIAL PARENTS WHO ARE DELINQUENT IN
PAYING CHILD SUPPORT.
(A) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of
law, a non-custodial parent who is more than 2 months
delinquent in paying child support shall not be eligible to
receive any means-tested Federal benefits.
(b) Exception.--(1) In general.--Subsection (a) shall not
apply to an unemployed non-custodial parent who is more then
2 months delinquent in paying child support if such parent--
(A) enters into a schedule of repayment for past due child
support with the entity that issued the underlying child
support order; and
(B) meets all of the terms of repayment specified in the
schedule of repayment as enforced by the appropriate
disbursing entity.
(2) 2-year exclusion.--(A) A non-custodial parent who
becomes delinquent in child support a second time or any
subsequent time shall not be eligible to receive any means-
tested Federal benefits for a 2-year period beginning on the
date that such parent failed to meet such terms.
(B) At the end of that two-year period, paragraph (A) shall
once again apply to that individual.
(c) Means-tested Federal Benefits.--For purposes of this
section, the term ``means-tested Federal benefits'' means
benefits under any program of assistance, funded in whole or
in part, by the Federal Government, for which eligibility for
benefits is based on need.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I believe this amendment is quite
straightforward. It basically says that, if a noncustodial parent is
delinquent on child support payments and gets into arrears extending
beyond 2 months, that individual, that deadbeat dad or deadbeat mom, as
the case may be, will not be entitled to means-tested Federal benefits.
I think it is very important that we do this. I do not think we
should be in the business of giving benefits to people who are
neglecting their children. Many families go on welfare because
noncustodial parents are not paying their child support.
What we do in this amendment is we give people a second chance. We
say if they agree to sign a schedule and commit themselves to the
repayment of the arrears and continue the payments on time, then they
can get these benefits. But if they fail again, they will have to wait
2 years before they get a chance at those benefits again.
I hope we will have broad support for this amendment.
Only about 18 percent of all cases result in child support
collections across this Nation.
And we have to remember we have 9.5 million children counting on AFDC
for support. We could really take people out of poverty quickly if the
deadbeat parent, be it a mom or a dad--usually it is a dad but
sometimes it is a mom--came through with their child support payments.
This amendment is just another way for us to stand up and be counted
and say: Look, you are not going to be entitled to get job training,
vocational training, food stamps, SSI, housing assistance, and the
other means-tested Federal benefits if you are behind on those child
support payments. But we are ready to help you. If you will sign a
schedule of payments and you live up to that schedule, we will make an
exception.
It is interesting to note that America's children are owed more than
$34 billion in unpaid child support. Talk about lowering the cost of
welfare, collecting unpaid support would be one of the quickest ways to
do it. Welfare caseloads could be reduced by one-third if families
could rely on even $300 a month, or less, of child support. Mr.
President, $300 a month would add up to more than $3,000 a year.
So my amendment would crack down on the deadbeat dads or the deadbeat
moms, and basically say you have to pay support or you are not going to
get the Federal assistance you would otherwise be entitled to.
So, Mr. President, I do not think I need to continue this dialog with
my colleagues. I think at this point I can rest on what I have said. I
think the Boxer amendment sends a tough message that we will have
little tolerance for people who fail to meet their child support
commitments. And we should be tough on these people because they
jeopardize the health and well-being of their children by failing to
pay support, and they are making the taxpayers pay money that they, in
fact, owe to these children. So I rest my case on this amendment. I
look forward to its being voted upon.
I ask my friend from Oklahoma and my friend from New York, is it
necessary to ask for the yeas and nays at this time, because I
certainly would like to have a vote on the amendment?
Mr. NICKLES addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I will be happy to respond to my
colleague from California. Certainly she has a right to request the
yeas and nays. I will support that effort.
I have a couple of comments. I had not seen the amendment. I may well
support the thrust of it. Others may as well. We are going to have a
couple of rollcall votes in the morning and then have some debate over
Senator Moynihan's proposal, have the rollcall vote on his, and we may
have several other rollcall votes. It will certainly be the Senator's
opportunity, if she wishes to ask for the yeas and nays tomorrow. And
that will also give her the opportunity to modify the amendment if it
would make it more agreeable and more acceptable. That would be my
recommendation. But, certainly, if she wishes to ask for the yeas and
nays tonight she has that opportunity.
Mrs. BOXER. I thank my friend for his honest answer. I appreciate it.
I will withhold because I do believe this is an excellent amendment and
if there are small technical problems I will be happy to work with my
friends to straighten them out.
So I will withhold, but I look forward to voting on this as soon as I
can and I will be back in the morning to debate that, discuss it, at
what time my colleague thinks is appropriate.
Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague from California doing that.
Mr. President, I know of no other Senators having amendments, and my
colleague from New York as well. I suggest the absence of a quorum. It
will be my intention that the Senate stand in recess until tomorrow
morning shortly. But I will withhold for that for the moment. I suggest
the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________