[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 140 (Monday, September 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13183-S13199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Senator be good enough to yield 
5 minutes?
  Mr. HATCH. I will be happy to yield 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, I just want to put in the Record some of the comments 
from some of the leading church and legislative and active groups that 
have been focusing on the welfare debate. I will include all of the 
statements in the Record. But I would like to refer at this time to 
individual sentences and comments that summarize their position.
  One was from the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the 
USA. It said:

       The religious community is a major provider of center-based 
     child care. Throughout the nation, millions of children are 
     cared for every day in church-housed child care. Our churches 
     have long waiting lists of parents seeking quality care for 
     their children. We are not able to accommodate the demand 
     because the resources to expand the supply are so scarce. We 
     know this problem first hand, because the desperate parents 
     are in our congregations, as are the overworked providers of 
     child care services. Their facilities are in our buildings, 
     and our congregations are enriched by the lively presence of 
     their children.
       We believe that it is not responsible public policy to 
     require parents to work without providing adequately for 
     their children's safety and nurture while the parents are at 
     their jobs. If the government is going to insist that mothers 
     of young children leave them to go into the workplace, then 
     the government must make it possible for the parents to do so 
     in the confidence that their children are in a safe, 
     wholesome environment. To do otherwise puts our children at 
     risk and almost guarantees that parents, preoccupied with 
     concern for the well-being of their youngsters, will not 
     perform to the best of their ability.

  That is an excellent statement of the National Council of the 
Churches of Christ.
  The National Conference of State Legislatures:

       NCSL has been concerned about the lack of coordination of 
     existing child care funding streams. We are interested in 
     working with you to consolidate these funds. Child care is an 
     essential component to support welfare recipients moving from 
     welfare to work and is critical for low-income working 
     families. Our experience suggests that a renewed commitment 
     to work by welfare recipients will require additional child 
     care funds above current levels.

  That is the National Conference of State Legislatures; that is, 
Republicans and Democrats.
  The American Public Welfare Association:

       Current proposals in the Senate do not create a separate 
     state block grant for all child care programs. APWA supports 
     a separate child care block grant, in the form of an 
     entitlement to states, not as a discretionary spending 
     program subject to annual funding reductions. States will not 
     be able to move clients from welfare to work without adequate 
     and flexible funding to provide essential child care 
     services.

  Catholic Charities:

       We are very concerned that the new work requirements and 
     time limits for AFDC participation will leave children 
     without adequate adult supervision while their parents are 
     working or looking for work. The key to successful work 
     programs is safe, affordable, quality day care for the 
     children. The bill before the Senate does not guarantee or 
     increase funding for day care to meet the increased need 
     associated with the work requirements and time limits. 
     Please, support amendments by Senators Hatch and Kennedy to 
     guarantee adequate funding to keep children safe while their 
     mothers try to earn enough to support them.

  The Governor of Ohio:

       I would like to see the child care and family nutrition 
     block grants converted into capped state entitlements. In the 
     House bill, funding for these block grants is discretionary. 
     Key child care programs currently are individual 
     entitlements. The need for child care only will grow as 
     welfare recipients move into the workforce.

  The National Parent Teacher Association:

       The potential for success of welfare reform depends on 
     former recipients becoming employed an being able to meet 
     basic needs for shelter, food, health care and child care. 
     Subsidized child care for low income working parents is 
     crucial.

  Every single organization that has responsibility and which has 
studied this is and which are out on the front lines on the issue of 
welfare reform has understood the importance of providing child care, 
and the Dodd-Kennedy amendment provides it.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these documents be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA--Statement on the 
               Importance of Child Care in Welfare Reform

(By Mary Anderson Cooper, Associate Director, Washington Office, August 
                                9, 1995)

       As the Senate works to overhaul the nation's welfare 
     system, we urge Senators to make the well-being of those who 
     are impacted by that system their primary concern. As people 
     of faith and religious commitment, we are called to stand 
     with and seek justice for people who are poor. This is 
     central to our religious traditions, sacred texts, and 
     teachings. We are convinced, therefore, that welfare reform 
     must not focus on eliminating programs but on eliminating 
     poverty and the damage it inflicts on children (who are \2/3\ 
     of all welfare recipients), on their parents, and on the rest 
     of society.
       Further, we support the goal of helping families to leave 
     welfare through employment, because we believe that those who 
     are able to work have a right and a responsibility to do so. 
     However, we also recognize that just finding a job will not 
     necessarily mean either that a family should leave welfare or 
     that its poverty will end. Since full-time jobs at minimum 
     wage yield a family income that is below the poverty line, 
     and since such jobs often do not provide health care 
     benefits, employed people trying to leave welfare may still 
     need some government subsidy in order to become self-
     supporting.
       Key among the kinds of help such people need is child care. 
     The Children's Defense Fund tells us that one in four mothers 
     in their twenties who were out of the labor force in 1986 
     said they were not working because of child care problems 
     (high cost, lack of availability, poor quality or location, 
     lack of transportation, etc.). Among poor women, 34% said 
     they were not working because of child care problems.
       The Government Accounting Office tells us that increasing 
     the supply of child care would raise the work participation 
     rates of poor women from 29 to 44 percent. For near-poor 
     women, the rates would rise from 43 to 57 percent. Thus, 
     increasing the supply of safe, quality, affordable child care 
     would help some women escape poverty while helping others 
     avoid falling into it in the first place.
       The religious community is a major provider of center-based 
     child care. Throughout the nation, millions of children are 
     care for every day in church-housed child care. Our churches 
     have long waiting lists of parents seeking quality care for 
     their children. We 

[[Page S 13184]]
     are not able to accommodate the demand because the resources to expand 
     the supply are so scarce. We know this problem first hand, 
     because the desperate parents are in our congregations, as 
     are the overworked providers of child care services. Their 
     facilities are in our buildings, and our congregations are 
     enriched by the lively presence of their children.
       We believe that it is not responsible public policy to 
     require parents to work without providing adequately for 
     their children's safety and nurture while the parents are at 
     their jobs. If the government is going to insist that mothers 
     of young children leave them to go into the workplace, then 
     the government must make it possible for the parents to do so 
     in the confidence that their children are in a safe, 
     wholesome environment. To do otherwise puts our children at 
     risk and almost guarantees that parents, preoccupied with 
     concern for the well-being of their youngsters, will not 
     perform to the best of their ability.
       The issue of child care has been nearly absent from the 
     congressional debate on welfare reform. Consequently, we are 
     particularly grateful to Senator Daschle for making child 
     care a key feature of his legislation. We commend him for 
     raising the visibility of this issue and look forward to 
     working with him to assure that adequate provisions for child 
     care are included in any welfare bill that is approved by the 
     Congress.
                                                                    ____

                                            National Conference of


                                           State Legislatures,

                                     Washington, DC, May 16, 1995.
     Hon. Bob Packwood,
     U.S. Senate, Russell Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Packwood: We are writing to thank you for your 
     public commitment to state flexibility as a principle in your 
     welfare reform legislation. The National Conference of State 
     Legislatures (NCSL) is especially pleased by your recognition 
     of the critical role of state legislators in welfare reform 
     and other programs that serve children and families. We 
     appreciate your confidence in our ability to design programs 
     that best serve the needs in our states and urge you to 
     consider our views as you finalize your welfare reform 
     legislation.
       We are encouraged by your endorsement of providing more 
     discretion to state decisionmakers and rejecting provisions 
     that micromanage and limit state authority to determine 
     eligibility. However, state legislators are concerned about 
     several provisions under consideration that have the 
     potential to limit state authority, shift major costs to the 
     states and violate NCSL's policy on block grants. The balance 
     of this letter specifies our concerns in six major areas. In 
     summary, we urge you to reconsider the consolidation of open-
     ended entitlements for child protection services, work 
     requirements in the cash assistance block grant, denial of 
     benefits to legal immigrants, the absence of real protection 
     for states to respond to economic change, the consolidation 
     of child care funding, and timing to successfully implement 
     revised programs.
       I understand that your are still considering a block grant 
     for child protection funds. State legislators believe that 
     foster care maintenance and adoption assistance payments and 
     administrative funding under Title IV-E must be maintained as 
     an open-ended entitlement. Children in danger cannot be told 
     that the government ran out of money to protect them. We must 
     respond to those who turn to us as a last resort. The demand 
     for these services has not been predicted well at the federal 
     level. No one predicted the damage that HIV infection, crack 
     cocaine and homelessness would do to children's security 
     within their families. No one anticipated the resulting 
     increase in state and federal costs. Courts will decide to 
     remove children from unsafe homes and states must respond to 
     these decisions. We urge you to reject the child protection 
     block grant.
       We are disappointed with the prescriptive work and 
     participation requirements in H.R. 4. State legislators are 
     interested in creating our own programs, not running a 
     uniform program with federally-determined program details and 
     fewer funds. We oppose federal micromanagement in the 
     definition or type or work, the role of training, minimum 
     number of hours a recipient must work, and participation 
     rates. These are precisely the decisions each state should 
     make based on local needs. We do support measurement of 
     outcomes and performance data to ensure that program goals 
     are being met.
       NCSL strongly opposes the denial of benefits to legal 
     immigrants. The federal government has sole jurisdiction over 
     immigration policy and must bear the responsibility to serve 
     the immigrants it allows to enter states and localities. The 
     denial of benefits will shift the costs to state budgets. 
     Eliminating benefits to noncitizens or deeming for 
     unreasonably long periods will not eliminate the need, and 
     state and local budgets and taxpayers will bear the burden. 
     Denial of services to legal immigrants by states appears to 
     violate both state and federal constitutional provisions. We 
     continue to support making affidavits of support legally 
     binding.
       NCSL supports the development of a contingency funds to 
     assist states to respond to changes in population and the 
     economy rather than a loan fund. The absence of adequate 
     protections for states with population growth, economic 
     changes and disasters is a barrier to state support of a cash 
     assistance block grant. We believe that a loan fund is not 
     sufficient assurance of federal assistance. The federal 
     government must participate as a partner in a fund that has a 
     mechanism for budget adjustment so that states are not overly 
     burdened by increased demand for services.
       NCSL has been concerned about the lack of coordination of 
     existing child care funding streams. We are interested in 
     working with you to consolidate these funds. Child care is an 
     essential component to support welfare recipients moving from 
     welfare to work and is critical for low-income working 
     families. Our experience suggests that a renewed commitment 
     to work by welfare recipients will require additional child 
     care funds above current levels. A consolidated child care 
     fund should stand alone.
       Finally, state legislators will need adequate transition 
     time to successfully implement revised income security and 
     related programs. States will have to modify their laws to 
     comport with new federal legislation, restructure their 
     administrative bureaucracies and revise their FY96 and FY97 
     budgets that have been enacted on the basis of current law 
     and federal spending guarantees. We urge inclusion of a 
     provision giving states no less than one year of transition 
     time and consideration for additional time for states that 
     meet biennially.
       We look forward to working with you throughout this 
     process. Please contact Sheri Steisel or Michael Bird in 
     NCSL's Washington Office to further discuss our views.
           Sincerely,
     Jane L. Campbell,
       President, NCSL, Assistant House Minority Leader, Ohio.
     James J. Lack,
       President-elect, NCSL, Senator, New York.
                                                                    ____

                  American Public Welfare Association

 (By Gerald H. Miller, President, and A. Sidney Johnson III, Executive 
                               Director)


                Serious Shortfall in Child Care Funding

       By increasing the number of participants required to work 
     and maintaining child care funds at the FY 94 level, current 
     welfare reform proposals in the Senate would significantly 
     hinder states' efforts to move welfare recipients into the 
     workforce. There is clear congressional intent to require 
     states to meet higher participation rates, which cannot be 
     met if child care is unavailable. CBO estimates, presented in 
     testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, indicate that 
     the child care needed to meet proposed participation rates, 
     will cost approximately 5 times the current proposed 
     allocation. Based on those estimates, states will face a 
     serious child care funding crisis.
       Current proposals in the Senate do not create a separate 
     state block grant for all child care programs. APWA supports 
     a separate child care block grant, in the form of an 
     entitlement to states, not as a discretionary spending 
     program subject to annual funding reductions. States will not 
     be able to move clients from welfare to work without adequate 
     and flexible funding to provide essential child care 
     services.


                                Analysis

       The amount of money allocated for child care is not 
     adequate given the work participation requirements in the 
     bill. Welfare reform legislation, in outlining work 
     provisions and requirements, should recognize and address 
     both programatically and financially the distinct role of 
     child care in clients' ability to obtain and retain 
     employment. Child care is an essential component for 
     successfully moving people to self-sufficiency. Moreover, no 
     work program can succeed without a commitment to making 
     quality child care available for recipients.
                                                                    ____

                                      Catholic Charities, USA,

                                                   August 4, 1995.
       Dear Senator: As the Senate takes up welfare reform, we 
     urge you to adopt provisions to strengthen families, protect 
     children, and preserve the nation's commitment to fighting 
     child poverty.
       Across this country, 1,400 local agencies and institutions 
     in the Catholic Charities network serve more than 10 million 
     people annually. Last year alone, Catholic Charities USA 
     helped more than 138,000 women, teenagers, and their families 
     with crisis pregnancies. Because Catholic agencies run the 
     full spectrum of services, from soup kitchens and shelters to 
     transitional and permanent housing, they see families in all 
     stages of problems as well as those who have escaped poverty 
     and dependency.
       This broad experience, along with our religious tradition 
     which defends human life and human dignity, compels us to 
     share our strong convictions about welfare reform.
       The first principle in welfare reform must be, ``Do no 
     harm.'' Along with the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National 
     Right-to-Life Committee, and other pro-life organizations, we 
     have vigorously opposed child-exclusion provisions such as 
     the ``family cap'' and denial of cash assistance for children 
     born to teenage mothers or for whom paternity has not yet 
     been legally established.
       We are also convinced that the idea of rewarding states for 
     reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies is well-intentioned but 
     dangerously light of the fact that the only state experiment 
     in this regard, the New Jersey family cap, already has 
     increased abortions without any significant reduction in 
     births. The ``illegitimacy ratio'' may well encourage states 
     to engage in similar experiments that 

[[Page S 13185]]
     would result in more abortions and more suffering.
       We also support Senator Kent Conrad's amendment, which not 
     only would require teen mothers to live under adult 
     supervision and continue their education, but also would 
     provide resources for ``second-chance homes'' to make that 
     requirement a reality.
       The second principle should be to protect children. We are 
     very concerned that the new work requirements and time limits 
     for AFDC participation will leave children without adequate 
     adult supervision while their parents are working or looking 
     for work. The key to successful work programs is safe, 
     affordable, quality day care for the children. The bill 
     before the Senate does not guarantee or increase funding for 
     day care to meet the
      increased need associated with the work requirements and 
     time limits. Please, support amendments by Senators Hatch 
     and Kennedy to guarantee adequate funding to keep children 
     safe while their mothers try to earn enough to support 
     them.
       The third principle should be to maintain the national 
     safety net for children. We oppose block granting Food 
     Stamps, even as a state option, because the Food Stamp 
     program is the only national program available to feed poor 
     children of all ages with working parents as well as those on 
     welfare. On the whole, the Food Stamp program works well, 
     ensuring that children in even the poorest families do not 
     suffer from malnutrition.
       We are encouraged by the fact that Senator Dole's bill does 
     not seek to cut or erode federal support for child protection 
     in the child welfare system. Proposals to block grant these 
     essential protections are ill-advised and dangerous to 
     children who are already abused, neglected, abandoned, and 
     totally at the mercy of state child welfare systems. Federal 
     rules and guarantees are essential to the safety of children.
       The fourth principle should be fairness to all citizens. 
     Certain proposals before the Senate would create a new 
     category of ``second-class citizenship,'' making immigrants 
     ineligible for most federal programs, even after they become 
     naturalized Americans. We urge you to reject this and other 
     proposals that would leave legal immigrants without the 
     possibility of assistance when they are in genuine need.
       The fifth principle should be to maintain the national 
     commitment to fighting child poverty. In exchange for federal 
     dollars and broad flexibility, states should be expected to 
     maintain at least their current level of support for poor 
     children and their families. We understand that Senator 
     Breaux will offer such an amendment on the Senate floor. 
     Please give it your support.
       In our Catholic teaching, all children, but especially poor 
     and unborn children, have a special claim to the protection 
     of society and government. Please vote for proposals that 
     keep the federal government on their side.
           Sincerely,
                                                  Fred Kammer, SJ,
     President.
                                                                    ____

                                                    State of Ohio,


                                       Office of the Governor,

                                                   March 27, 1995.
     Hon. Bob Dole,
     Majority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Dole: As you know, the House of 
     Representatives has completed its consideration of welfare 
     reform legislation. While I strongly support the decision 
     made by the House to convert welfare programs into block 
     grants, I am concerned that the House bill fails to provide 
     states with the flexibility needed to set our own priorities 
     and conduct innovative experiments to promote responsibility 
     and self-sufficiency. Many of my fellow Republican Governors 
     share a number of my concerns.
       I was disappointed with the allocation formula established 
     through the Temporary Family Assistance Block Grant. It is 
     the position of the National Governors' Association that any 
     formula should allow states to use either a three-year 
     average or 1994 spending levels in determining base year 
     allocations. While the House formula includes this choice, it 
     then applies a 2.4-percent reduction factor to each state's 
     allocation. The reduction factor leaves Ohio with a base year 
     allocation of $700 million annually, which is lower than what 
     we would have received using either formula without a 
     reduction factor. Speaker Gingrich assured states he would 
     support eliminating the reduction factor. We would like to 
     work with you in the Senate to make this correction.
       Although allowing each state to receive its most favorable 
     allocation without a reduction factor requires funding for 
     the block grant to be increased by approximately $200 million 
     nationally, it is important to remember that states are 
     making a significant financial sacrifice in supporting capped 
     block grants. If states are disadvantaged in determining base 
     year allocations, it becomes even more difficult to make the 
     increased investments in work programs necessary to move 
     individuals off welfare.
       The House bill also does not include sufficient protections 
     for states in the event of an economic downturn. If Congress 
     replaces open-ended individual entitlements with capped state 
     entitlements, states are placed in an extremely vulnerable 
     position should the welfare-eligible population increase 
     significantly. The state and federal governments should be 
     partners in meeting the needs of expanded caseloads in 
     recessions. The House bill contains a $1 billion rainy day 
     fund designed to provide the states with short-term loans,
      repayable with interest in three years. A loan fund does not 
     represent a partnership; instead it is a cost shift.
       Ohio would be particularly disadvantaged in a recession due 
     to aggressive steps already taken to reduce welfare 
     caseloads. Today, 85,000 fewer Ohioans receive welfare than 
     in 1992. States that have not been aggressive in reducing 
     their welfare rolls will be better able to accommodate 
     increased caseloads. Ohio's streamlined base makes it very 
     difficult for us to absorb increased recessionary demands.
       As part of our efforts to reduce welfare caseloads, Ohio 
     has developed the strongest JOBS program in the nation. Ohio 
     leads the nation with 33,911 recipients participating in 
     JOBS. Only California comes close to matching Ohio's 
     performance with 32,755 recipients enrolled in JOBS, and 
     California has three times as many ADC recipients as Ohio. 
     Our success with the JOBS program reflects a strong 
     investment in training and education programs. Regardless of 
     the extent of our investment, however, no work program can 
     succeed without a commitment to making quality child care 
     available for recipients. In Ohio, the state provides non-
     guaranteed day care to families with incomes up to 133 
     percent of the federal poverty level. The program currently 
     has an average daily enrollment of 17,800. The State of Ohio 
     is doing its part to provide child care to those in need. The 
     federal government also must meet its responsibility.
       I would like to see the child care and family nutrition 
     block grants converted into capped state entitlements. In the 
     House bill, funding for these block grants is discretionary. 
     Key child care programs currently are individual 
     entitlements. The need for child care only will grow as 
     welfare recipients move into the workforce. My comfort level 
     with the House package would increase significantly if states 
     were guaranteed to receive a specified level of funding for 
     child care and for child nutrition services for the next five 
     years. That guarantee can only come through a capped state 
     entitlement.
       Excessive prescriptiveness is a problem throughout the 
     House legislation. The bill's work requirements are a perfect 
     example. The federal government mandates how many hours per 
     week a federally defined percentage of cash assistance 
     recipients must participate in federally prescribed work 
     activities. In a true block grant, states would be free to 
     choose how best to allocate resources to meet goals developed 
     jointly by the federal and state governments. The 
     recordkeeping requirements in the House bill also are 
     extraordinarily prescriptive. States remain concerned that 
     our computer systems lack the capability to provide the 
     information required by the House.
       A true block grant should also give states the ability to 
     determine their own program eligibility standards. The House 
     legislation includes a number of specific eligibility 
     restrictions. For example, cash benefits will be denied to 
     unwed minor mothers and their children. Additional children 
     born to mothers on welfare will be denied benefits. Decisions 
     like these should be left to the states. By federally 
     mandating these restrictions, the House is interfering with 
     successful state reforms. For example, in Ohio we have 
     developed a program designed to encourage minor mothers to 
     remain in school. The LEAP (Learning, Earning, and Parenting) 
     program supplements or reduces a teen mother's ADC cash grant 
     based on her school attendance to teach her that there is a 
     real value to completing her education. LEAP has led to a 
     significant decrease in the drop-out rate for this vulnerable 
     population. If the House prohibition on cash benefits remains 
     in place, the LEAP program will have to be discontinued.
       As the Senate begins to consider welfare legislation, I 
     would be grateful for your assistance in addressing my 
     concerns. Like many other Governors, I strongly support the 
     broad outline of the House proposal, but it is important that 
     these issues be resolved successfully. As a Governor, it will 
     be up to me to implement welfare reforms in my State. I would 
     like to work with you to ensure that block grants give the 
     states the flexibility we need to implement innovative 
     reforms designed to meet the specific needs of our 
     communities. Without this flexibility, I cannot support this 
     welfare reform package.
       While Ohio watches federal welfare reform developments with 
     tremendous interest, we have been actively pursuing a 
     statewide reform agenda. I have enclosed a summary of Ohio's 
     history of welfare reform innovation for your information.
       Thank you for your personal consideration of my concerns.
           Sincerely,
                                              George V. Voinovich,
     Governor.
                                                                    ____

         National Parent Teacher Association, National Association 
           of Elementary School Principals, National Association 
           of State Boards of Education, National Association of 
           State Directors of Special Education, National 
           Education Association, and the Council of Chief State 
           School Officers,
                                                   March 20, 1995.
       Dear Representative: The undersigned organizations, 
     representing parents, educators, principals, and state 
     policymakers, support improvements to the welfare system. We 
     believe such reforms must address the 
 
[[Page S 13186]]

     fundamental quality child care needs of working as well as 
     unemployed parents.
       We have several concerns about the impact of H.R. 999 on 
     the issues of access to and the quality of child care in this 
     country:
       The plan reduces funding even though programs already have 
     long waiting lists of eligible families.
       Welfare reform will increase the need for child care by 
     requiring participation in training, education, or employment 
     by mothers who currently take care of their children.
       The potential for success of welfare reform depends on 
     former recipients becoming employed and being able to meet 
     basic needs for shelter, food, health care and child care. 
     Subsidized child care for low income working parents is 
     crucial.
       Recent data show that quality in centers and daycare homes 
     is low, especially for infants. Cutting funding for quality 
     and eliminating standards would threaten to erode the quality 
     of care even further.
       We know that the quality of child care for all children has 
     a significant impact on the ability of children to learn in 
     the first few years of school. When children experience 
     success in responsive, high quality programs, they learn 
     essential skills and knowledge, and their parents learn to be 
     confident partners with teachers and schools.

                           *   *   *   *   *

  Mr. KENNEDY. Finally, Mr. President, I would just mention what we are 
really talking about in terms of child care. We have talked about 
figures. We talked about statistics. We talked about flow lines. We 
talked about entitlements. What we are talking about is really the 
issue of children being home alone. This is not a joke or a big screen 
comedy. It is a real life tragedy for American families pressed to the 
wall. Just listen to the horror stories from families that have been 
put in this awful position--and paying an unbelievable price.
  Think about 6-year-old Jermaine James of Fairfax County and his 6-
year-old friend Amanda, who were being cared for by his 8-year-old 
sister Tina. When a fire broke out in their apartment, Tina ran for 
help, inadvertently locking the younger children in the burning 
apartment. They died before the fire department could get to them. 
Sandra James and her husband needed two jobs to support their family 
and still could not afford child care. They tried to stagger their 
schedules but did not always succeed.
  Think about 7-month-old Craig Pinner of San Francisco who drowned in 
the bathtub while his 9-year-old brother was trying to bathe him. His 
mother was working part time and participating in job training. She 
usually left the children with her family, but her car had broken down 
and she was no longer able to get them there. She was trying to find 
affordable child care but was unsuccessful.
  Think about 4-year-old Anthony and 5-year-old Maurice Grant of Dade 
County. While home alone, they climbed into the clothes dryer to look 
at a magazine in a hiding place, pulled the door closed, and tumbled 
and burned to death. Their mother was waiting for child care assistance 
and generally left the children with neighbors. But sometimes these 
arrangements fell through and she had to leave them home alone for just 
a few hours.
  This did not happen in Hollywood--but in Virginia and Florida and 
California and elsewhere. We must do everything in our power to avoid 
putting families in this kind of a situation in the name of reform.
  Mr. President, I will include in the Record, if my friend and 
colleague, Senator Dodd, has not, the waiting lines that exist in the 
States at the present time.
  The States face large unmet needs for child assistance, waiting 
lists, clothes, and the list goes on all the way--Alabama, 19,000 
children; Alaska, 752 children; Arizona, 2,600 children; California, 
250,000 children; Delaware, over 1,000 children; Florida, 19,000; 
Georgia, 21,000; Hawaii, 900 children are on the waiting list; Idaho, 
1,000 children waiting; Illinois, 20,000 children waiting; Indiana, 
7,900 on the waiting lists; Kansas, 1,270 on the waiting list, 
Kentucky, 10,000 on the waiting list; Louisiana, 4,600; Maine 3,000; 
Maryland, 4,000; Massachusetts 4,000 statewide waiting for child care 
for working poor families; Michigan, 12,000 last year; Minnesota, 
7,000; Missouri, 6,500; Montana, 200 children; Nevada, 7,000; and the 
list goes on; New Jersey, 24,000; New Mexico, 6,300; New York, 23,000; 
North Carolina, 13,000; Pennsylvania, 7,700; Rhode Island, 972. The 
list goes on and on with Wisconsin, 6,800; West Virginia, 13,000.
  Mr. President, the fact of the matter is that under this particular 
bill, the Dole bill, without the Dodd amendment, we will be requiring 
the States to have over 1 million new slots. They are not doing it 
today. They do not have the resources today. They do not have the money 
under the Dole program today to do it. The Dodd amendment will provide 
them with the resources to be able to meet that obligation, that 
obligation that is there in the States today and that will be created 
by this bill. That is what this amendment is all about and why it 
should be supported.
  Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me pick up on the last point that the 
Senator from Massachusetts raised. He may have made it before I walked 
onto the floor. He pointed out the waiting lists that exist in the 
States for child care slots today, before we pass a welfare reform 
bill. There is just tremendous demand today. What we are talking 
about--this bill, of course--is taking anywhere from 1 to 2 million 
people and moving them over the next 5 years from welfare to work.
  If we do not provide additional resources, then there will be 
increased pressure on existing dollars that go to those who are getting 
the child care today. It is worthwhile to point out that the people who 
get child care today under the child care development block grant, that 
Senator Hatch and I passed in 1990, are working poor. Those are people 
at work right now. That child care assistance makes it possible for 
them to stay in the work force and not slip into a public assistance 
category.
  The fear that many of us have here, is that without some additional 
resources, as we move people who are on welfare today to work, the 
people out working today and staying at work, getting some of that 
assistance, those resources are going to have to be shifted in the 
State
 in order to accommodate the demands of this bill or face the penalties 
the bill imposes on the States if the States do not move the 25 to 50 
percent of the welfare recipients on their rolls to work.

  So you are going to have the almost bizarre effect of taking people 
who are doing what we are encouraging people to do, and that is stay at 
work, who are marginally making enough to stay off the welfare rolls 
and pushing those people back on the rolls as we accommodate the 
demands of the legislation to take people on the welfare rolls to work.
  So it seems we ought not to be jeopardizing the small amount of funds 
we have today out there assisting those families presently at work.
  Let me emphasize a couple of points here if I can. What we are 
talking about with this proposal is not an entitlement. This is a pool 
of resources. It does not entitle anyone to it. It merely makes the 
funds available to the States.
  So there are those who have said they do not believe in an 
entitlement for child care. We might otherwise disagree about that, but 
this amendment does not create an entitlement. It merely says to Ohio, 
Connecticut, Massachusetts, divide it up based on the block grant and 
what it takes to make it work. Here are some additional resources to 
make it possible for you to meet the demand, the mandate, of the 
Federal law.
  The mandate of the bill we are about to pass says to Ohio and 
Connecticut, you must move the following percentages of your welfare 
rolls to work. And what we are saying is rather than ask Ohio and 
Connecticut to pay a penalty because they did not meet that criteria 
because they could not come up with the resources to pay for the child 
care, here as a result of our mandate are some resources on the most 
critical issue facing any State with its welfare recipients: How do you 
take a parent that has infant children and no place to put them and get 
them to go to work?
  Sixty percent of all welfare recipients have children age 5 and 
under, Mr. President. So it is unrealistic to assume those children are 
going to find some setting in the neighborhood or with a grandparent. 
Ideally that would be the best case, but realistically that 

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is not going to happen in enough instances. So it is finding and 
affording child care that's the issue. The child care settings may 
vary--church-based programs, community-based programs. There is a wide 
variety of things the States have done creatively in the child-care 
setting area. I do not have any difficulty with that kind of 
flexibility at all. But here are resources.
  In the absence of that, we are told that we are looking at an 
additional cost, above the amount set aside from the block grant, which 
is the $5 billion over 5 years. In fiscal year 2000, in the State of 
Ohio, the additional amount is $190 million, in the State of 
Pennsylvania--I see my colleague and friend from Pennsylvania here--
$171 million; for Connecticut, $48 million; Massachusetts, $89 million. 
These are the numbers the States, it is estimated, will have to come up 
with. They can cut spending. It does not mean necessarily a mandate to 
raise taxes. But that is the pool they will have to come up with to 
provide for the child-care needs of the population that moves to work.
  If we are mandating that--and we are; we are mandating work--why not 
provide the States with some help to do it? That is all we are saying 
here, a pool of money over 5 years, $6 billion.
  Now, it is a lot of money. I know that. But if we all appreciate 
keeping our mind on the goal of getting people to work, then we ought 
to be trying to do this in a bipartisan way.
  Mr. President, I am not exaggerating. If we get this amendment 
adopted or something like it--and I think on the issue of the formulas, 
which is, I think, a minor point--and a few other areas, you could pass 
this bill 95 to 5. We could have overwhelming, strong support coming 
out of here for a welfare reform bill, because I think all of us share 
the common goal of getting people from welfare to work.
  Whether that is cost savings or an investment, the value of it, I 
think all of us appreciate, to the family, the neighborhood, the 
community, is tremendously enhanced. And if child care is one of the 
major obstacles to moving an individual to work, because they do not 
know where to put that child, then trying to find the way for them to 
do it, assist the States in that process ought not to be an ideological 
battle here. We have enough battles on that stuff. This ought not be 
one.
  So I am urging in these next 40 minutes or so that are remaining that 
people take a good look at what this is. Understand, it is no 
entitlement, not a guarantee to anybody, merely assistance to these 
States to be able to achieve the goal as laid out in the majority 
leader's bill, and that is to get people to work.
  People will tell you even with adequate child care, it is going to be 
hard. You talk about some pretty heavy numbers to move from welfare to 
work, and given the economy and downsizing and a lot of other things 
happening, good jobs, and so forth, are not expanding in our economy. 
We ought to be talking about that, I hope, one of these days, but 
nonetheless under the best of circumstances, it is going to be hard.
  It seems to me we ought to be trying at least to make it possible to 
move those people to work and not have the kind of burden on the States 
that is laid out here with the particular costs associated with child 
care. And as I said in response to the point that was being made by the 
Senator from Massachusetts, we have already got people really trying 
hard to stay off the welfare rolls and stay at work. It would be a 
tragedy, in a way, to then have some of these people taking some of the 
resources they get, plowing them into this area and moving some of 
these people at work and trying to stay off welfare back on those 
rolls.
  Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Utah, who was here, who 
allocated me about 5 or 10 minutes of his time to make this point. I am 
grateful to him for that.
  At this point, I will yield the floor. We may have some additional 
Members who show up on this issue. But I urge my colleagues in these 
next remaining minutes here, this is a chance for us, Mr. President, to 
really put together a bipartisan bill on welfare reform. I honestly 
believe that if we could adopt this amendment, and a few other things, 
we would be looking at an overwhelming vote in favor of this welfare 
reform package.
  That is how this body and this Congress ought to be functioning. 
People want us to come together. They do not want to see bickering and 
partisan battling. They would like us to find common ground. Here is a 
way for us to do it on an issue that most people really want to see us 
focus our attention on. Here is a chance to achieve that goal in the 
next 45 or 50 minutes. It means doing the right thing. It is truly 
doing the right thing in terms of welfare reform and eliminating a 
major obstacle that people face here of moving from the rolls of public 
assistance to the independence and self-reliance of work and helping 
them out with their kids. And those children's needs, as I said a 
moment ago, Mr. President, ought not to be the subject of a partisan 
debate here. We ought to be able to find the means by which we can 
assist the families to eliminate at least that question in their mind, 
assist the States as they move into this process in a way in which we 
can do it. Resource allocation is simple enough to accommodate.
  I again urge my colleagues to take a good look at this and come to 
this floor, hopefully in the next 50 minutes, and cast a vote in favor 
of what I think would build a strong, strong vote of support in favor 
of the majority leader's welfare reform bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, may I inquire of the Chair of the time 
remaining on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has 50 minutes 
remaining. The Senator from Connecticut has 1 minute 42 seconds.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I wanted to congratulate the Senator from Connecticut for his very 
persuasive case on behalf of the need for child care and making 
workfare or welfare to work.
  I do not think anyone on this side of the aisle disagrees with the 
basic premise of his amendment, which is if we are going to have people 
go to work, then we are going to be in some need of child care for 
working women, single mothers. The question is, How much money are you 
willing to put up? What will be the impact?
  Again, we go back to the start of a lot of these programs, the 
welfare programs back in the 1960's when they really mushroomed, and a 
lot of these programs were very well intentioned, but what happened? 
What were the consequences of these--I am careful not to use the word 
entitlement because I know the Senator from Connecticut says this is 
not an entitlement. I agree. It is not an entitlement.
 But there is enough money in his bill to fill all the day-care slots 
that are anticipated to be needed.

  Well, it is not an entitlement, but it takes care of everyone who 
needs the service. So while you know it is sort of taking away with one 
hand, saying it is not an entitlement, it is giving with the other by 
giving all the money necessary anticipated to have the need. You can 
say it is not an entitlement, but it is, in fact, almost a guarantee of 
child care.
  So, what are the consequences of this guarantee? And we talked about 
this in some dialog on Friday. And you know, I have some concerns about 
people on welfare getting a guarantee of sorts of child care where if 
someone who is a working mother gets no guarantee at all of having any 
kind of child-care support. In fact, as the Senator from Connecticut 
pointed out on numerous occasions, accurately, there is a shortage of 
day-care slots available for working mothers in this country.
  So to suggest we should provide some sort of quasi-guarantee for 
those on welfare and not for those who are working mothers, I think, 
sets up a bad precedent, No. 1; and with the law of unintended 
consequence you may encourage welfare dependency, at least initially, 
in some cases.
  There are several other points I want to make. One is the money. I 
know we sort of gloss over that around here. Mr. President, $6 billion 
is not a whole lot of money, at least if you sit on the Senate floor 
most days you would think $6 billion is not a lot of money. But it is a 
lot of money, and it is given the fact that if you look at what is 
being proposed in the Republican bill that we are now amending.
  The Republican bill over the next 7 years will allow welfare to grow 
at 70 percent over the next 7 years--70 percent. Welfare programs will 
grow from 

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the year 1995 to the year 2002, 70 percent. There will be an increase 
of 70 percent in these programs. And what we are saying now is that is 
not enough. We need another $6 billion more. Just so you understand, 
you say, well, how much was it going to grow if we did not cut it back, 
because this bill does have some reduction? Well, it would have grown 
at 77 percent. So we are taking a program that was supposed to grow 
over the next 7 years and grow by 77 percent; cut it back to 70 
percent. There are those on the other side saying, that is too tough. 
We need to add another $6 billion more back to this fund of money.
  If you are serious about day care, if you really think child care is 
that important, well then, I would suggest that you confine it to the 
70-percent growth that is going to be experienced over the next 7 
years, $6 billion to offset the money you want to spend, not another 
quasi-guarantee or almost entitlement for child care.
  I just think you have to pass the straight-face test around here. If 
you really are serious about solving problems--I think we all are. We 
want to solve the problem of child care in this bill. And I think we 
have done some things with the Snowe amendment that goes a long way in 
doing so. So it is now in the Dole modified bill. I think we made a 
major step forward.
  If you are serious about providing and funding more dollars, do not 
say we need to spend more. That is how we got to where we are today. 
This bill has to fit into a reconciliation package which, by the way, 
it does not right now. It does not right now. It is over what, I think, 
the Budget Committee wants to see in reductions in welfare. We are 
going to have to get more.
  When we go to conference this bill is going to come back with less 
money, I suspect. The House bill was substantially under this bill. So 
it will be under this. The House bill had a 5-year year timeframe when 
they passed the bill. And on their 5-year timeframe they had welfare 
expenditures growing at 42 percent.
  Now, that is at a slower rate than our 70 percent over 7 years. So 
you are going to see we are already going to have to pull back funds. 
And to suggest that we should come to the floor and we can get a 
compromise spending more money, that is how we got there and how we got 
to what the welfare system is. We have always done that, come to the 
floor and said, ``OK. We will compromise and spend more.'' And 
everybody will be happy and pass a bill 96 to 1, passing a bill 96 to 1 
that perpetuates the same thing--maybe makes everybody feel good, but 
it does not solve the problem. It does not solve the problem.
  So what we are suggesting here is that you know, we are, and I think, 
continuing in a dialog. I know Senator Hatch has an amendment on day 
care that I think is a serious amendment. And we are trying to find 
some ground to make all of our Members, not just on the Democratic 
side, but I know myself and others, I know Senator Jeffords is going to 
speak here. We are concerned about the child care aspects of this.
  I know Senator Jeffords supported the Snowe amendment which is now in 
the leader's bill. I know he would like to go further. And I know there 
are other Members who would like to go further. But we have to 
understand we have budget constraints.
  This is not a stingy bill that we are dealing with. Welfare spending 
will grow by 70 percent over the next 7 years. That is not stingy. That 
is not uncaring. And to suggest that we can solve the problem and get 
everybody happy by spending another $6 billion--I suggest if we got 
that in there there would be another $6 billion to spend in another 
program.
  I would also add that Republican Governors, almost every one of 
them--I know the majority leader has come here and said I think 29 of 
the 30 Republican Governors in the country have come out and supported 
the Dole substitute. They comprise roughly 80 percent of the welfare 
recipients. The Governors of those States have within those States 80 
percent of the Nation's welfare recipients. And what they have almost 
unanimously said to us is ``You give us the money you allocated under 
this bill and we can do the job. We can, in fact, put people to work.''
  You would think from the comments of some on the other side that we 
are going to require every mother who has a child under 5 to go to 
work. I would remind the Senators who are debating this amendment that 
when this bill goes into effect, the initial participation rates are 
only 30 percent. That means only 30 percent of all the welfare caseload 
has to be in a work program. It only goes up to a maximum of 50 
percent. So the State always has discretion to take mothers with young 
children and not require them to work. In fact, many Governors have 
already told me that is exactly what they would do in most cases 
because of the cost, and because of the difficulty with day care.
  But we provide that flexibility in the law. We already provide that. 
We already say they can adjust. And the Governors say they can do it. 
And if you look at some of the plans that have been tried under the 
1988 act--I mentioned on several occasions the Riverside, CA, example, 
where what we have seen is a 14-percent reduction in food stamps, a 20-
some reduction--I do not have numbers in front of me--20-some percent 
reduction that goes out on AFDC, aid to families with dependent 
children, and a 25-percent reduction in caseload.
  Now, that saves money. Why? Why do they save money? They require 
people to go to work. So you can save money to provide some of that 
work. And it was a successful program at a time when Riverside, CA, was 
experiencing a 9 percent-unemployment rate. So it is not that there are 
no jobs. There are no jobs. Well, there are jobs, if we do some things 
like the Dole bill does which allow you to fill some vacancies in 
cities and counties and local governments, State governments which you 
cannot under current law. If there is a vacancy in the State government 
or local government, you want to fill it with a welfare recipient, you 
can do it. You are not allowed to hire somebody who is a welfare 
recipient for an open position. Why? That is to protect the union 
membership at the State and local level. They do not want people on 
welfare to get some of those jobs. I think that is a crime. That would 
change under the Dole bill.
  So I mean we are doing a lot of things that will encourage--will 
create more job opportunities which will cause savings as we have seen 
in examples in the past, where if you have a work requirement, the 
welfare rolls will go down. Ask Governor Thompson, Governor Engler, and 
ask others who have tried it. The caseload will go down. People will 
get to work because of the requirement that is there. And they will 
save money. And that money can be used to provide for support services 
for those who have to remain in the program and go to the work program. 
That is the whole basis behind what we are suggesting here.
  I would suggest that what we have provided for again with the 
Governors, Republican Governors lining up behind this bill, is adequate 
to fund this program, to fund the child-care programs that are 
necessary. We have the flexibility of the States with the 50-percent 
work participation requirement to exempt certain difficult-to-place 
mothers with young children. I mean there is a lot of flexibility in 
this program to be able to deal with the problems. I think what we now 
have to do is make the fiscally responsible vote. Welfare has gotten 
itself in the problem it has because we have been reluctant in the face 
of harming children or these horrible things that are going to occur, 
if we do not provide all the money for everything, all these 
entitlements. If we do not provide all these entitlements children are 
going to suffer.
  All I would suggest is we provided entitlements for 25 and 30 years. 
Children are suffering at historic levels. So if it was just money and 
entitlements there would be no suffering today. There are plenty of 
entitlements and plenty of suffering to go with it. So let me suggest 
that maybe what we need is instead of guaranteeing everybody child 
care, why do we not require work and say that we have to look to 
families and to other kinds of networks of support to look for child 
care, just like we have done in this country historically?
  One of my real concerns--and this gets to be more of a philosophical 
concern, if we--as I know the Senator from Connecticut will say we are 
not guaranteeing, but we darn near are guaranteeing it--if you provide 
all the money for all the slots, if you do that, you run 

[[Page S 13189]]
into the problem where the Government day-care option is the first 
resort;
 that getting Government support for that day care slot is now the 
first choice, not the last resort. The system as it works today works 
well. I know there are shortages of day care, but it works well in 
targeting the mothers who need day care the most. It works well in that 
you have to go through a very rigorous qualification procedure to be 
able to qualify for Government-assisted day care. That would probably 
not be the case if we fully funded all these day care slots.

  Mr. DODD. Will my colleague yield?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Yes, I will yield.
  Mr. DODD. I note the point about the entitlement issue. I think my 
colleague from Pennsylvania mentioned over the next 7 years there would 
be a 70-percent increase. I believe it is flat. I do not think there is 
a penny more. This is $48 billion. It is for 7 years. There is no 
inflation factor built in. I think I am correct on that, but I stand 
corrected if I am wrong.
  Mr. SANTORUM. The Senator is right, the AFDC dollars remain flat. 
When I talk about the 70-percent increase, I talk about all the means-
tested entitlement programs included in this bill.
  Mr. DODD. As far as the AFDC----
  Mr. SANTORUM. The AFDC program is block granted at a flat level, the 
Senator is right. But, obviously, there are a lot of other support 
services and means-tested programs that will continue to grow.
  The point I tried to make is that with respect to AFDC, you have the 
flexibility within that program the Governors desire, saying, in fact, 
they can save money and have money, because of the savings, available 
to support the work program.
  In addition, you have a 50-percent work participation requirement 
which would give the States the flexibility to exclude a lot of the 
people that you mentioned who have young children or maybe multiple 
young children, from having to go to work and the work requirement. We 
do provide a lot of flexibility there. We think that flexibility goes a 
long way in solving the problem.
  I am hopeful we can look at the past to see what the future holds. 
Looking at the past and seeing all the entitlements we put in place and 
seeing all the money that we spent trying to make sure nobody is 
harmed, what we have done is make sure that nobody has been helped. 
What we have not done is challenge people to do more, to move forward.
  I believe this program, with the work requirement and the 
participation standards we have and the flexibility given to States, 
will do just that: challenge people to go out and work and find ways to 
provide for themselves and their families. I think, in the long run, 
that will be the best for everyone concerned.
  At this time, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Vermont.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, we all are having a hard time with this 
amendment and with this bill. We all want to see welfare reform. We all 
want to see child care provided, and, thus, I rise in support of this 
amendment because I think it will help us move in that direction.
  We all agree that we want to see more welfare recipients in the work 
force. We all agree that the welfare cycle must be broken. I believe 
giving kids a good start through safe and healthy surroundings is 
essential to breaking the welfare cycle.
  In order to become productive, self-sufficient members of society, 
kids need quality care from the very beginning of their lives, either 
from their parents, in the child care setting or elsewhere. And a 
quality education must be provided from the beginning of their lives. 
What we are talking about, though, are the resources that will be 
available and should be available.
  We are all tied up with the problems of the deficit and the need to 
reduce the deficit. But there are things we must consider when we go 
about providing resources, that if we do not make resources available 
for those things that will break the cycle, for those things which will 
allow our young children to have the possibility of breaking out of the 
cycle, sort of give the parents of the children the ability to provide 
the child care necessary, then one important segment of breaking that 
cycle will not come about.
  Let us take a look at the macro picture that we must have and what we 
have to deal with so that we can recognize what the savings are from 
improving the education of our society and, most importantly, from the 
beginning of life, in child care to be sure these young children have 
the opportunity to have the surroundings that will allow them to learn.
  This chart gives us an idea of what we are losing now because we have 
serious educational problems in our country. One-half of a trillion 
dollars in GDP is lost per year because we fail to educate our people. 
The cost to our economy is more than $125 billion, in addition to lost 
revenues; $208 billion is lost from the result of the problems of 
welfare. So when we are talking about $1 billion a year or more to try 
and get enough money available for child care, to give to the children, 
weigh that against what is lost.
  In addition to that, I will have an amendment that says, hey, we have 
a demand here, an important demand that says every person in training 
must have a GED, must have a high school equivalent education. There is 
not money for that either. So what we are going to be doing is either 
creating a huge mandate upon the States that is unfunded or going 
forward with expectations which will not be fulfilled.
  Let us take a look at the relationship of education to productivity, 
what is happening to those who do not have a good education.
  The only people who have increased their income over the past few 
years are professionals. This is over the last 20 years. In the last 20 
years, the only people who have increased their standard of living is 
at the level of master's, doctorates, and professionals. Others have 
either stayed at the bachelor level or gone down. Then take a look at 
the comparison of what is earned by those who do not finish high 
school: $12,800 per family. That is incredibly low and is going down in 
the sense of percentage of income.
  How do we break out of this? How do we provide those resources? It is 
stupid to cut back on those things which is going to increase your 
deficit. If we do not provide the amount of money that is necessary for 
child care, there is no chance that we are going to raise this level 
up, until you get to the area where you have a high enough standard of 
living to survive.
  So what this amendment tries to do is to say, ``Look, we are going to 
make sure that our children will have an opportunity to have the kind 
of income that will bring them out of the welfare cycle, to place them 
in a position where they can earn what is necessary, to get us out of 
the position of losing all this money we do with the welfare 
situation.''
  So when we talk in terms of $1 billion a year over the term of this, 
as compared to the $208 billion we are losing by the problems we have 
with welfare, it means we are just being, really, penny wise and pound 
foolish, and we must not do that.
  I recognize that my time has expired. May I have an additional 2 
minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for an additional 2 
minutes.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. So as we go forward with this welfare reform, let us 
keep in mind some things. I do not think there is a person here or the 
House who does not want welfare reform, including the White House. The 
question is, how do we reach a consensus?
  That is not going to be easy, there is no question about it. We have 
some people at the extremes of the process from no welfare to all 
welfare. But what we have to do is to try and reach that middle ground. 
We have to make some areas where we can have a consensus, and certainly 
one of those ought to be the provision of child care.
  There is not anyone in this body who does not believe there ought to 
be adequate child care. This amendment is the only thing which will 
bring us close to that. So, if we are going to have consensus on the 
issue of child care and if we really want to do what we are supposed to 
do here, and that is to break through the cycle of welfare, if we are 
going to give the children of those in the most desperate economic 
situations in this country the ability for them to have the education 
which is necessary, all the studies show if they 

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do not get the early preschool education, they start out at a big 
disadvantage.
  Let me just end up by saying one of my most unusual experiences when 
I came to the Senate was I had a group of CEO's come into my office 
when I was first elected to the Senate. John Akers was the head of the 
group, the Business Roundtable. I expected them all to say, ``We need 
to get capital gains tax relief,'' blah, blah, blah. What happened? The 
first thing they said was, ``We need to fully fund Head Start. We need 
to make sure there is preschool education for every one of our kids if 
we are ever going to get our society in a position where we can be 
economically sound.''
 Just recently, this IBM president said at the NGA, ``This Nation is in 
a crisis, and if we do not start the educational process we need, this 
Nation is not going to be the Nation it is today in the next century.'' 
I leave those words with you.

  Here is an opportunity to make sure the young kids will have the 
opportunity to get out of the welfare cycle.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I am proud to be one of the co-sponsors 
of the Kennedy-Dodd child-care amendment to the Republican welfare 
reform bill. No issue more clearly defines the differences in this 
welfare debate than child care. Both sides have said that the goal of 
welfare must be to move people to work, but Democrats have maintained 
that it is not just about moving them to work, it is is about keeping 
them on the job.
  We want to provide welfare recipients with the tools to stay on the 
job. What the facts prove time and time again is that the most 
necessary tool is child care for children. Child care is the No. 1 
barrier keeping mothers out of the work force, and one in four mothers 
between the ages of 21 and 29 are not working today because of child 
care. Among welfare mothers, 34 percent are not working because of 
either inability to find reliable child care or inability to afford 
child care.
  No single parent can look for or keep a job without child care, and 
single parents make up 88 percent of the AFDC caseload. Without child 
care, we will have no success in moving people to work and keeping them 
there.
  But child care is costly, and the average middle-class family spends 
9 percent of its income on child care. However, the average poor family 
spends almost 25 percent of its income on child care.
  The Republican plan will leave four million children under the age of 
six home alone. Today, almost 650,000 of them receive child care with 
assistance that would be eliminated under the Dole plan. In fact, the 
plan would repeal the child care guarantee passed by the Senate in 
1988.
  If the States implement the proposed welfare reform plan, the need 
for child care will increase by more than 200 percent by the year 2000. 
States will need over $4 billion more a year. In Maryland, the unfunded 
mandate will amount to more than $1 million a week that Maryland 
taxpayers will pay to cover child care costs.
  This child care policy proves that the Republican bill does not look 
at the day-to-day lives of real people. Welfare recipients who we send 
to work will not have high-paying jobs, and will not be able to afford 
child care.
  Suppose a mother lives in suburban Maryland and decides to do the 
right thing. She gets an entry-level, minimum-wage job in the food 
service industry. With this job, she is making almost $9,000 a year, 
but gets no benefits. After taxes and Social Security, this mother 
takes home $175 a week, but her child care costs her $125 a week. How 
is she going to pay for rent, food, clothing, and transportation costs 
with only $50 left over a week?
  Our Democratic Work First plan recognizes that child care is the 
vital link between leaving welfare and going to work. Our plan 
consolidates four current programs into one expanded child care block 
grant, eliminating duplicate paperwork and reporting requirements, and 
reducing bureaucratic structure.
  This block grant will help provide child care for welfare recipients, 
those transitioning from welfare to work, and the working poor. Under 
our plan, a family of four making less than $15,000 a year will be 
eligible for child care.
  On the other hand, the Republican plan forces States into an 
impossible position. Either the State does not provide child care and 
welfare reform fails, or they do provide child care by raising taxes 
and cutting other State programs.
  States also can divert aid from the working poor to pay for welfare, 
but in doing so send a perverse incentive--if you go on welfare, you 
get help; if you go to work every day and barely make ends meet, you 
never get a break.
  Welfare reform is about ending the cycle and the culture of poverty. 
Ending the cycle of poverty is an economic challenge, but Democrats are 
providing the tools to overcome this challenge. The Republicans have no 
plan.
  Ending the culture of poverty is about personal responsibility. 
Democrats have proposed a tough plan based on tough love. It is a hand 
up, not a hand out. But Republicans have proposed a punitive plan based 
on tough luck. It aims for the mother, but hits the child.
  This debate should be about ending welfare as a way of life, and 
making it a step to a better life. That means real work requirements, 
with the tools to get the job done. If we are to have a bipartisan 
framework for welfare reform, we must address the work challenge in a 
way that is real, and deals with people's day-to-day needs.
  We must adopt the Kennedy-Dodd amendment and fix the Dole home alone 
child care policy.

               the need for child care in welfare reform

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I think we can all agree on the 
fundamental goal of welfare reform. We must create a program that moves 
recipients from welfare to work to economic self-sufficiency as quickly 
as possible. We must help replace their welfare checks with paychecks.
  One obvious way to transform a system which encourages dependency is 
to eliminate its inherent disincentives. How? Fundamentally, you must 
make support services--the cornerstone of long-term success in the 
workplace--more available to low-income people who want to work. The 
linchpin of successfully transitioning people from welfare to work is 
child care. And the bill before us today is woefully deficient in 
providing funding for child care services. In fact, the Dole bill does 
not guarantee that one cent of the block grant will be spent on child 
care.
  That is why I strongly support the Dodd-Kennedy amendment. It 
recognizes that no welfare reform proposal can be successful without 
providing child-care services. And it is willing to invest in those 
services to ensure a successful outcome.
  Most working families feel the pinch of child-care costs. Low-income 
families, which are often headed by single parents, feel the greatest 
pinch, spending a quarter of their income for child care. In North 
Dakota, it costs a family about $3,400 a year for child care. If a 
family is just scraping by at poverty level wages--$14,763 for a family 
of four--that's an awfully big chunk of your income going to pay for 
child care.
  This situation is all too prevalent in our society. There are too 
many working poor families, and too many mothers trying to move from 
welfare to work who are forced back onto the welfare rolls because 
their child care is too expensive or unreliable.
  While the Dole bill does contain child-care provisions, it falls far 
short of what is needed to help these families achieve true self-
sufficiency and economic independence. It fails to guarantee child-care 
assistance to recipients who are moving to work, and most importantly, 
it fails to provide additional funding to meet the work requirements 
contained in the bill--it provides less than half of current child-care 
spending and doesn't even begin to address the increased need for child 
care created by the bill's work requirements. In short, it just doesn't 
put its money where its mouth is, and it is a recipe for disaster.
  The ability to secure affordable child care is a decisive factor in 
determining whether low-income mothers can get off and stay off 
welfare. If we want to move parents with children off of the welfare 
rolls and into work, we must pass a welfare reform bill that will 
ensure that the 10 million children on AFDC will be cared for while 
their parents look for jobs and begin employment. 

[[Page S 13191]]

  The Dodd-Kennedy amendment achieves that goal. To help welfare 
recipients get and keep a job, this amendment creates a direct spending 
grant to States with the funding levels set at HHS cost estimates of 
$11 billion over 5 years so that the child-care needs created by the 
Dole work requirements are met. This grant is fully paid for--by 
earmarking $5 billion from the title 1 block grant and by cuts in 
corporate welfare.
  The amendment guarantees that no child will be left home alone while 
their parents are working, looking for work, or participating in an 
education or training program. And it ensures that families aren't 
punished for failing to participate in job training or work programs if 
child care is unavailable.
  It also requires States to maintain current spending on child care--
without requiring them to match additional child-care spending.
  Perhaps most importantly, the Dodd-Kennedy amendment means that 
critical child-care services for low-income families will continue to 
be provided under the child care and development block grant.
  Parents who are able to work must be given the tools to do so. A 
critical component of getting families off welfare--and keeping them 
off--is ensuring safe, adequate and affordable care for their children. 
The Dodd-Kennedy amendment does just that, and I hope that my 
colleagues will support it.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am proud to be a co-sponsor of the Dodd-
Kennedy child-care amendment to the Republican leader's welfare bill. 
This amendment backs up the work requirements in this bill with the 
child care assistance necessary to meet them.
  Caring for our children is not an issue that affects only the poor--
all working parents need child care. As we debate the issue of how we 
are going to change the dynamic of the welfare system, it is absolutely 
crucial that we do all we can to protect children.
  We are trying to agree on the best way to get welfare parents, 
generally single mothers, into jobs and how to keep them there. A 
single mother should not be forced to choose between properly caring 
for her children and going to work. And if parents are not working, 
they cannot support their families. If my wife and I wanted to see a 
movie, but were unable to find a babysitter for our three children when 
they were young, then we did not see the movie. How can we expect 
parents to work when there is no one to care for their children? We 
need to be realistic in our effort to reform the welfare system.
  Welfare reform is not only about adults--it is about children who 
live in poor families. These children are poor at no fault of their own 
and the U.S. Congress is punishing them by forcing their mothers out 
the door, leaving them home without a parent or babysitter.
  If we are going to break the cycle of poverty and change the future 
of poor people in this country, children need to be at the top of our 
list of priorities. We need to guarantee that children will be cared 
for in healthy, safe, supportive environments that help them to develop 
and build their self-confidence. If we do this, if we help children get 
good child care, we can help parents keep their jobs, and then and only 
then, will their children learn the importance of working.
  Watching their parents come home from work at night will allow 
children to see the self-confidence that results from bringing home a 
pay check and being self-supportive. If Congress denies low-income 
families the child care assistance they need to work, then kids will be 
left home alone. Do we want television to take over as the caregiver 
while parents are at work?
  If we can give children some structure, a place where they can learn 
the skills and values they need to stay interested in school, perhaps 
they will work their way out of poverty and we can start breaking the 
demoralizing cycle of poverty that has affected millions of Americans.
  Anyone who has ever sought child care knows that it can be difficult, 
stressful, and time consuming. For many families, child care is 
unavailable and unaffordable and those that lack the economic 
resources, the time, and information, have fewer options. In many small 
towns in Vermont, neighbors, friends, and family rely on each other to 
help out with each other's children. There is usually someone around 
who can watch the children for a few hours. But not every family lives 
in that kind of supportive environment. We all need to share the 
responsibility in meeting the needs of the children of this country. 
Children growing up in secure, supportive environments benefits us all.
  The Republican leader's bill will make child care even more 
unaffordable for low-income families. As it is, working poor families 
spend 33 percent of their income on child care. In sharp contrast, 
middle-class families spend only 6 percent of their income on child 
care. A single mother of two living on welfare can probably expect to 
earn about $5 an hour once she is able to find a job. Child care will 
cost about $3 an hour or more for her two children which leaves her $2 
an hour, at most, to live on and support her family--$2 an hour is not 
even enough to support one person.
  In addition to child care, a single mother must then pay for 
transportation to work, clothes for herself and her children, rent, 
food, and medical costs depending on how much assistance she receives 
from food stamps and Medicaid. Nobody could cover those expenses on $2 
an hour. Nobody. Welfare is the price our country pays to keep 
families, single mothers and their children, together. If this Congress 
fails to require States to guarantee child care, the consequences for 
many of these families, women and their children, will be tragic.
  We must also remember that single mother's did not have their 
children alone. I certainly hope that strong child support enforcement 
will decrease the need for Federal assistance, and move single mothers 
and their families toward self-sufficiency. These efforts alone, 
however, may not be enough for some families.
  Child-care assistance for low-income working parents and those 
working their way off of welfare is essential. I urge adoption of this 
amendment.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the pending 
amendment and commend Senators Dodd and Kennedy for addressing one of 
the most critical issues related to welfare reform.
  Child care is the linchpin for achieving comprehensive welfare reform 
because parents must know that their children are supervised and safe 
in order to go to work. That is just common sense.
  But the Dole amendment falls short here. First, it repeals the 
guarantee that child care must be provided in order for States to take 
welfare recipients out of the home and put them into the workplace.
  Second, the Dole proposal mandates that parents work, but does not 
provide any additional support for child care. In fact, the plan 
repeals all existing child-care funding specifically for this purpose.
  Mr. President, we all agree that welfare recipients must be required 
to work. However, if quality, affordable child care is not available 
parents will be faced with the unacceptable alternative of leaving 
children at home alone or in unsafe situations. That is really no 
choice at all.
  I have often spoken about the success of the Iowa Family Investment 
Program. After 22 months, the Iowa welfare reform program is showing 
good results. More people are working, the caseload is declining and 
the cost of cash assistance is going down.
  These results happened because the State has been investing in 
education, training, transportation, and, of course, child care.
  I often meet with welfare recipients, caseworkers, and other in Iowa 
regarding welfare reform. The most common concern I hear is the need 
for child care and the need to provide more resources for this purpose. 
We must make sure that resources are available for child care or 
welfare reform will fail. This is a most fundamental issue.
  The average annual cost per participant in Iowa's PROMISE JOBS 
program is $1,920, including $987 for child care. It is clear that 
child care is a critical part of moving welfare recipients into the 
work force.
  Mr. President, I commend Senators Dodd and Kennedy for addressing the 
important issue of child care and welfare reform and urge adoption of 
the amendment.

[[Page S 13192]]

  Mr. SANTORUM. 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.
  Mr. KENNEDY. 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. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Hollings be added as a cosponsor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises Senators that the Senator 
from Massachusetts has only 1 minute and 42 seconds, and the Senator 
from Pennsylvania has 14 minutes and 52 seconds. Therefore, there is 
insufficient time for the elapse of a quorum call.
  Does the Senator from Pennsylvania yield time?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I yield such time as I may consume. I 
want to go over this amendment again and discuss it specifically for 
Members who may be torn, as I think many are, in wanting to support 
work and see the potential need for day care.
  Focusing on what the amendment does, we have heard a lot of 
discussion from the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from 
Massachusetts of the concern for mothers with preschool children, that 
we cannot allow mothers who have children 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years of age--
and I have three children all under the age of 5 and I am keenly aware 
of the need for care for young children.
  However, this amendment does not just pertain to young children. This 
provides funding so that every welfare parent with children under 12 
years of age--12 and under, under 13--you can have an 11-year-old or 
12-year-old and you still get a funded day care slot. That is what the 
amendment says. This is not just focused on children under 5.
  We talk about being concerned for them. This is a much more expansive 
program. It is not just part-time child care, it is a full-time child 
care program. It is 12 and under, full time, not just for single moms, 
not just for single moms or dads who have children, but for married 
mothers and fathers who may be on welfare and have children. This is 
for two-parent households as well as single-parent households. That is 
what the amendment says.
  You could have a situation where you have a 12-year-old child at home 
with two parents, and under this bill, you would get a full-time day 
care slot paid for by the Federal Government. Would that not be nice if 
every American who was working, the Government would pay your full-time 
child care, and you could not even have to work under this bill.
  So you do not have to work. You can be married, have a 12-year-old at 
home, do not work, and the Government will pay your child care full 
time. That is what this amendment does.
  Now, you hear a lot of compassion on the other side about the single 
mom with the 2-year-old, but you do not hear that this is another well-
intended bill that focuses on the hard problem. And then when you 
realize this is a brandnew big-time expansive program, day care for 
everybody on welfare, whether you are married or not, whether you are 
working or not.
  I do not think that is what is being sold here on the Senate floor. I 
think we have to look very carefully at what is in this amendment and 
how much money it costs--$6 billion, fully funded day care slots for 
all children of married and unmarried parents, single and married 
parents, up to 12 years of age. Not the preschool kids, but up to 12 
years of age.
  I think this is a real Pandora's box we have opened. This is not the 
amendment that is being talked about. This is a very broad, expansive 
program.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Is the Senator familiar with how many parents are 
waiting for child care in the State of Pennsylvania?
  Mr. SANTORUM. I think the number is around 9,000.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, 7,779 children now are on the child care 
waiting list in Pennsylvania, many are single parents, waiting to get 
off welfare or stay off welfare.
  I am wondering, does the Senator believe that for those who want to 
work and can work, that there ought to at least be some help and 
assistance, either full or part time, as was included in the bill 
passed in 1988 and providing at help and assistance for hundreds of 
thousands of families?
  Mr. SANTORUM. If I can reclaim my time, I say the answer is yes. I 
think we do that in this bill. In the Dole modified bill, we believe 
there are ample dollars available. Within the AFDC block grant, there 
will be money available for child care.
  You have the additional child care block grant, which is appropriated 
at $1 billion for this year and as necessary for future years. We will 
have this debate every year, Senator.
  We are going to have a debate on the floor of the Senate over how 
much money we will provide in the appropriations process for people on 
welfare who need day care assistance. I may be back here with you, 
joining with you in having started this program in place and having 
seen the needs and heard from the Governors that we may need to 
appropriate more money in the years ahead. There is nothing that 
prohibits us from doing that.
  But to lock in--you do not call it an entitlement, but it might as 
well be one--to lock in a program of $6 billion right now, not just 
again for young kids, for children under the age of 5, but for children 
up to the age of 12, for parents who are single and married, I think 
that just goes too far.
  I hope that my colleagues will look at the expansiveness of this 
amendment, the cost of this amendment, and I think the unfairness of 
this amendment when juxtaposed to the working family in America.
  We are telling the working family in America that, if you want to 
raise children, fine. But you are on your own. But if you go on 
welfare, even if you are married, we are going to provide a full-time 
government day-care slot for you. I think that goes too far.
  I hope we will reject this amendment, that we will continue to work--
as I know the Senator from Utah [Mr. Hatch] has talked about, and I 
know the Senator from Vermont and others who are looking at this issue 
will--we will continue to work to see what we can do to make sure that 
people are not disqualified from working because of the unavailability 
of day care. That is what the Snowe amendment----
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield further?
  Mr. SANTORUM. If I can finish--that is what the Senator's amendment 
does. It focuses in on the problem areas. It says, if you cannot find 
day care, and if you can show that day care is unavailable, whether it 
is just too costly, given the amount of money you receive on welfare, 
or it is not proximate to where you live, or whatever the case may be--
and there is a laundry list of things that you can use to show the 
unavailability of day care--under the Snowe amendment that is included 
in the Dole package now, if you can show that day care is unavailable, 
you are exempted from the work requirements.
  That is a very important measure. Because what that does is it says 
to the State--which, I remind you, has to have, when this program is 
finally phased in, half of the people in the program in the work 
program. Those people who cannot find day care remain in the 
denominator but not in the numerator. So they are part of the base of 
100 percent, but they do not go toward the 50 percent you need for work 
participation. If you have a sufficient lack of day care, that is going 
to have a big effect on your ability to meet your 50 percent work 
participation standards.
  We believe that will be adequate impetus, in fact more than adequate 
impetus, to get the States to provide day-care services that are 
necessary to get younger mothers, in particular, into the workplace. We 
think that kind of flexibility and dynamics are better than creating 
out of the box a fully funded entitlement--or guarantee, it is not an 
entitlement--guarantee that you are going to have day care if you are 
on welfare: You get day care if you have children under age 13 whether 
you are married or not, whether you are working or not. I just think 
that is too big of a loophole, too big of a grant. 

[[Page S 13193]]
And I think it is an unwise move by the U.S. Senate.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Is that what the Senator understands the Dodd amendment 
will do, provide day care for all children? The Senator just said that. 
Is that what the Senator understands it to do? You said it. Of course--
--
  Mr. SANTORUM. If I can reclaim my time, I will be happy to answer the 
question. It says on page 4 of the amendment, eligible children are--

       For purposes of this section, the term ``eligible child'' 
     means an individual, who is less than 13 years of age and 
     resides with a parent or parents who are working pursuant to 
     a work requirement contained in section 404 of the Act.

  So I think it is clear that those who are eligible are under 13 years 
of age, can be with a single parent or parents, which I assume means 
married.
  Mr. KENNEDY. And what percent in the Dole proposal would be included 
under that requirement? What percent in the Dole proposal will not be 
so included?
  As the Senator knows, half of those will be required to work in order 
for the States not to be penalized. They are going to have to find 
their child care outside of these requirements.
  The Senator understands that?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Right.
  Mr. KENNEDY. When the Senator says this amendment is effectively 
saying to every parent that all children will receive child care, that 
is not a fair characterization of the amendment. I mean, I think that 
is what we ought to do--but that is one fact that the Senator is wrong 
on. And second, how does the Senator understand the discretionary block 
grant? Who is eligible for that?
  Mr. SANTORUM. My understanding, if I can respond to the first point, 
is that the Senator from Connecticut has repeatedly said the formula 
was calculated based on fully funding every welfare parent who is 
required to work with children under 12. That includes single parents 
and married parents. So there will be parents who will not have to work 
because only one of them will be required to work that will, in fact, 
get day care. I think that is a little much.
  Mr. KENNEDY. As the Senator knows, the Dole proposal requires that 
half of all families on welfare participate in the work program. HHS 
estimates that half of these families will find their own child care. 
The Dodd amendment is focused on those families that will need child 
care assistance in order to move from welfare to work.
  So it is not all of those. It is those that they believe--50 percent 
of the adults that otherwise would need the child care under this 
proposal.
  Let me just ask the Senator----
  Mr. SANTORUM. If I can reclaim my time, the 50 percent participation 
standard means that 50 percent of the people in the welfare program are 
going to be required to be in a work program. The other 50 percent are 
not required to be in a work program and therefore the need for day 
care, I would assume--there would be no need for day care because they 
would not be in a work program.
  So, what the Dodd amendment does is provide funding for those who 
have to work. That is my understanding.
  Mr. KENNEDY. First of all, I am a strong supporter of the need for 
child care to move people off of welfare into work. But second, how 
does the Senator understand the block grant program? Who is eligible 
for the discretionary block grant program?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Under the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut?
  Mr. KENNEDY. No, just under the existing program, the $1 billion that 
is existing under the discretionary program. Who is eligible for that?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Before I answer that question, how much time is there 
remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania has 2 minutes 20 
seconds. The Senator from Massachusetts has 1 minute 24 seconds.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I think we have another 15 minutes.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I will put a unanimous consent in, and then I will be 
happy to respond.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the vote on or in relation to 
the Dodd amendment occur at 5:15 p.m. today, notwithstanding the 
previous order, with the time between now and 5:15 equally divided.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANTORUM. My understanding is, under the current proposal, that 
money is a block grant to the States with the States' discretion to 
provide those funds.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The existing discretionary block grant program, who is 
participating in that program today? The program originally created by 
Senators Dodd and Hatch.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I do not know the answer to that.
  Mr. KENNEDY. See, this is part of the problem, Mr. President, using 
these characterizations loosely. That program is targeted to low-income 
working families. It provides $1 billion and 700,000 families 
struggling to make ends meet and stay off welfare. It has been 
supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. The idea, under these 
proposals, is to assist those who are making the minimum wage, who 
still receive the $13,000 for the family and still cannot afford the 
child care they need to get by.
  The Senator mentioned earlier that he is concerned about trying to 
provide some help and assistance to working poor families. I hope then 
he opposes diverting these essential resources away from working poor 
families as is encouraged by the Dole bill.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, if I can reclaim my time, I just think, 
within the existing AFDC block grant, there are funds available, that 
are currently available under the AFDC program, for child care. Those 
funds would continue to be available if the State should so desire to 
create a program to provide assistance for people on welfare in 
addition to the block grant funding. So what we do is provide State 
flexibility to be able to use those funds as the State sees fit, which 
is in keeping with what this side of the aisle was trying to do, which 
is for the States to be able to design, we believe, better programs 
than a Washington-based program.
  Again, I think throughout this dialog we found that, in fact, this 
program is an expansive, new--I will not use the term ``entitlement'' 
because there is not an entitlement in the law --but it fully funds 
every slot that is necessary. I know that is not an entitlement because 
you cannot go in there and go to court and say I am entitled to this 
money. But the money is there. Anyone who has a child under the age of 
13, one or two parents, will be able to get fully funded government day 
care, a full-time day-care slot.
  Again, it is the option of first resort, not last resort. If you look 
at the money the Senator from Massachusetts was just talking about, the 
block grant funding, and he talks about how many working families are 
waiting for this assistance, it is not the option of first resort. You 
have to look at family and neighbors and friends. That, I would think, 
would still be--it is harder. But I think we have done enough to say 
that families are not important in this country or that fathers are not 
important in this country, to continue to provide money to replace 
existing social networks and just say the Government will do it. You do 
not need the father's money.
 You do not need a father around anymore. We will pay the father's 
money. That is what AFDC is for and all these other programs. You do 
not need grandparents or cousins. We will have a fully funded 
Government day care slot for you. We do not need family support. What 
does that mean? That is not necessary. We will continue to isolate you 
from your surroundings. I think that is harmful. I think guaranteeing 
something up front is harmful in the long run. It may sound good, but 
it will continue to destroy the fabric and culture of our society where 
we used to be interdependent. And because the Government is now coming 
in and doing everything for you, you have become this island unto 
yourself.

  I think it is a very sad state in our communities. And we will only 
add to that with this program.
  I hope we do not accept this amendment.
  Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time remains? I see the leader 
on the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Massachusetts has 
9 minutes remaining.
  Mr. KENNEDY. May I have 3 minutes? 

[[Page S 13194]]

  Mr. President, I have listened to my friend and colleague from 
Pennsylvania. I listened to him describe the Dodd amendment. I have 
difficulty understanding his interpretation. There are 60 percent of 
welfare mothers today who have children 5 years of age or younger. 
Under the most recent modification, they would not be sanctioned for 
failure to participate in the work program. It is clearly better for 
parents to stay home than to leave their children home alone, but what 
about the great number of those individuals who want to work, would 
like to work, could work, will work, and are just looking for the 
opportunity and the child care they need to enable them to work. The 
Senator from Pennsylvania says, ``Well, we are not going to be punitive 
to them.'' Well he is right, the most recent modification is better 
than the original bill, but it is not enough.
  The final point that I want to mention again is what the National 
Council of Churches says with regard to this. I have read it. They 
believe we need increased access to child care. The National Conference 
of State Legislatures, bipartisan, believes that we need additional 
child care. The American Public Welfare Association thinks we need 
additional child care. The Catholic Charities talk about it. They think 
we need additional child care, and the list goes on. The National 
Parent-Teachers Association agrees.
  These are groups that are operating programs for children every 
single day, talking with parents and listening to their concerns. They 
are on the frontlines, and this is what their conclusion is.
  Our amendment will promote work and protect children. It will improve 
the lives and the livelihoods of millions of American families. That is 
why I think the amendment is needed.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I will use my leadership time for 
whatever time I may consume to speak in behalf of the Dodd amendment.
  Mr. President, let me begin by thanking the distinguished Senator 
from Massachusetts for his excellent comments and for the leadership 
that he has shown on this issue throughout this debate, and certainly 
the Senator from Connecticut, the senior Senator, Senator Dodd, for his 
work in bringing us to this point this afternoon. His leadership and 
the effort that he has invested in this issue for many years is 
illustrative of the contribution that he has made on a number of issues 
relating to children. And this is perhaps the most important 
contribution of all.
  As the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts has indicated, you 
simply cannot have welfare reform if you do not address the issue of 
child care adequately. There can be no doubt that it is the linchpin 
between welfare and work. Why? Because 60 percent of AFDC families have 
children under 6. Why? Because, in many cases, those same families 
cannot find adequate day care, cannot afford day care even if they can 
find it, and have great anxiety about leaving their children 
unattended.
  I do not care whether it is one parent or two parents. If we want 
them to go out and work, if we want them to go out and get the skills 
necessary so they can work--time after time they have told us, and time 
after time virtually every social organization has indicated--you have 
to find a way to take care of their children. That is what this 
amendment does. It says in a meaningful way we are going to create a 
partnership. We are not going to tell you who to take your children to. 
We are not going to create some new governmental system to do it. We 
are simply going to give you the means by which you can find the best 
way to take care of your children.
  This will affect every single welfare family. You have to have a 
child to be on welfare, period. You do not meet the definition if you 
do not have a child.
  Child care enables mothers to go to work, to have the confidence to 
leave their home. Parents cannot accept their responsibilities as 
parents if they leave their children at home alone without any 
supervision, without any care, without any knowledge of what is going 
to happen to their children, especially at those early ages.
  Let me address another point that was raised in this most recent 
colloquy. It is not just the child who is under the age of 4 or 5 and 
not yet ready to go to school that we ought to be concerned about. What 
happens to those children who are going to school, who come back in the 
mid to late afternoon to a home without a parent, without anybody to 
take care of them through the end of the day? What happens to them? 
What kind of supervision, what kind of care, what kind of nutrition, 
what kind of attention are they going to get? This amendment addresses 
that concern. It is not just a concern for those who are under the age 
of 6 and not able to go to school. We have to be equally as concerned 
with those children who come home in the afternoon and have no 
supervision, especially in those early ages.
  Families below poverty spend almost 30 percent of their income on 
child care, Mr. President. Nonpoor families only spend about 7 percent 
of their income on child care. There is no secret why low-income 
families are not capable of addressing the need for child care in their 
own families.
  Child care costs in the District of Columbia can run as high as $150 
to $175 per week. The average monthly benefit for an AFDC recipient is 
less than $400. So we are asking many parents today to spend more in 1 
month on child care alone than they receive in AFDC. Obviously, Mr. 
President, it is an incredible impediment for many people.
  So what happens is that most people today are relegated to finding 
other ways of ensuring that their children are cared for. They depend 
on relatives who may or may not be reliable or informal arrangements 
that may or may not work on a daily basis. A job requires reliable 
child care, and often that is very hard to find.
  So in many cases, Mr. President, parents are simply forced to make 
do. And all too often, unfortunately, they do not make do. All too 
often they are forced to rely on low-quality care.
  We believe that quality child care is too important to child 
development to leave those children home alone or to make a way somehow 
on a day-to-day basis with relatives or families or people in the 
neighborhood to care for their children. Studies show that the first 3 
years of life in some ways are the most critical of all. Quality care 
can clearly change the lives of children today. Quality care can truly 
give kids a head start. Quality care can relieve parental stress and 
give people the confidence they need to walk out of that door and go to 
their job, go on and achieve meaningful job skills, and do so with the 
knowledge that they can be a productive, cohesive, and successful 
family when the work is done.
  Mr. President, that is all we are asking. Let us give families an 
opportunity to be families. Let us give them the opportunity to be 
strong families. Strength is defined in part by how strong the children 
are, by how nourished, how educated, how guided, how attended, and how 
cared for they are.
  The Republican plan, frankly, is nonexistent in this regard. It is 
nice to have all the nice sounding rhetoric, but the fact is you have 
nothing if you do not put resources next to it. There are no resources 
in the Dole bill. It is estimated that the Dole bill in its current 
form is underfunded by almost $11 billion in the area of child care.
  So there is no assurance that the children of single mothers will be 
adequately cared for. As the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts 
has said over and over, the Home Alone bill is not what this piece of 
legislation ought to be.
  The modification made by the majority leader last week does not 
address this concern. In fact, it only exacerbates the problem. As the 
Senator from Pennsylvania has alluded to, the bill prohibits States 
from sanctioning mothers with children under 6. That may be good in 
some cases. But that is not the real issue. That does not help mothers 
become self-sufficient. It is a de facto exemption from the work 
requirement.
  We do not want to exempt mothers, and we do not want to exempt States 
that do not provide the resources. We want States to provide the 
resources so that mothers will have the tools and the opportunities 
they are going to need.
  Mr. President, the Dole bill in its current form will exempt 60 
percent of those who are eligible for welfare today. Why? Because 60 
percent of AFDC mothers have children under 6. 

[[Page S 13195]]
As the Dole bill is written, it will exempt any mother among that 60 
percent that cannot find or afford child care.
  States already had to pay for day care. It was an unfunded mandate, 
but they were required to pay it or exempt mothers and take a 5-percent 
cut in the block grant. The likelihood now is even greater that the 
bill has virtually no value in terms of putting people to work or 
providing child care.
  So that is why this amendment is so important. This amendment says a 
number of things. First of all, it says we cannot expect parents to 
walk out that door, achieve the desired goals of this bill--that people 
either acquire skills or acquire a job--if they have to leave their 
children at home alone.
  Second, it provides the resources necessary to make this happen. We 
ensure, not only that States are going to establish the mechanisms by 
which to provide those services, but that States are going to have the 
resources to see that that happens.
  Third, the Dodd-Kennedy amendment is tough on work but not on kids. 
We require able-bodied adults to work or to prepare for work. We ensure 
that when they do, we are going to enter into a partnership with them 
to see that their children are cared for. We guarantee that child care 
assistance is provided, and we do so not by exempting the mothers with 
children who cannot find day care, but by helping them find the child 
care they need to allow them to work in the first place.
  It is very clear. The adoption of this amendment is the linchpin to 
welfare reform. We are not going to get it without child care. We are 
not going to get it without the level of resources required to provide 
meaningful child care. We are not going to get it simply by exempting 
mothers who have no other recourse but to stay at home because child 
care is not available.
  There has been a lot of rhetoric in this debate. The most important 
thing we can do to change rhetoric to real action is to pass this 
amendment, to provide the resources, to provide the mechanisms, and, 
most importantly, to provide mothers the confidence that they can be a 
family when they come home from work at night. This investment in 
children is as important to kids as it is to mothers, as it is to the 
system itself. It deserves our support, and I hope Republicans will 
join us in the passage of it as we take up the vote momentarily.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is all time yielded back?
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, what time is remaining on both sides?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania controls 5 
minutes, 45 seconds.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Their time has expired?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Seven minutes and seven seconds on the 
minority side.
  Does the Senator from Massachusetts yield back all of his time? Is 
that correct?
  Mr. DODD. The Democratic leader just spoke. Does anybody on that side 
wish to be heard on this?
  Mr. SANTORUM. I would like to recognize the Senator from Washington 
for 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I just want to say that the abstractions 
with which we deal with issues like this here are very different from 
the reality on the streets.
  On my way back here from Seattle today, I read a long and fascinating 
article in the New York Times about the cultural differences among 
various kinds of gangs in the city of Los Angeles. The reporter reports 
on the particular ethos of black gangs, of Asian gangs, and of Hispanic 
gangs. In Los Angeles, the Spanish gangs account for most of the street 
murders, in the number of hundreds every year, but they do have a 
strong sense of family. And the principal part of the story is about a 
15-year-old gang member with a 17-year-old girlfriend who has a 1-year-
old child by this gang member.
  If I may, I will share the last two paragraphs of that story with 
you, Mr. President.

       ``He's always staying home now,'' Tanya said hopefully. 
     ``He doesn't want to miss nothing. He's saying, `Can't you 
     just leave the baby with me. I'll watch the baby and you go 
     to school.''
       Dreamer is still only school age--

  He is 15.

     Tanya acknowledged, but the young family expects to be 
     financially secure. Her mother receives Federal assistance to 
     care for her through Aid to Families with Dependent Children. 
     And now, Tanya said, she will also receive AFDC assistance to 
     care for her own daughter, who is named Josefina.

  So here we are subsidizing gangs and gang warfare in Los Angeles. 
That is why we need to pass this bill. That is why we need to deal with 
reality.
  Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  In closing, I just want to remind Members what this amendment does. 
This is not an amendment targeted at preschool children, to provide 
single mothers support for preschool children. Children aged 12 and 
under are eligible for a full-time guaranteed day care slot under this 
proposal, under the Dodd amendment including two-parent families. Not 
just single mothers but two-parent families also qualify for a full-
time day care slot. It also has a 100-percent maintenance-of-effort 
provision in this bill on the States.
  This is a throwback to some of the ideas that we were debating for 
the past 2 decades. This is not in a new direction. This is not the 
direction we should take if we are going to reform the welfare system 
and get people back to work and get back to self-sufficiency.
  I urge my colleagues to defeat the Dodd amendment.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, very briefly, first of all, just in response 
to my friend from Pennsylvania, we say with regard to children that 
they should not be penalized if there are two parents. In fact, we 
ought to be encouraging that. And second, for after-school programs, it 
does not mean all-day child care, people in school. Obviously, it does 
not apply in those cases.
  However, let me get back to the central point, Mr. President, if I 
can, in conclusion. We all want to see people move from welfare to 
work, and assist in that process. Every survey that has been done over 
the last decade has indicated that one of the major obstacles of people 
moving from welfare to work is the absence of child care.
  Sixty percent of all AFDC recipients have children age 5 and under. 
If we are truly committed to moving people from welfare to work and we 
want to assist States in that process, we must provide adequate funds 
for child care. Because this bill mandates a 25-percent work 
requirement in 2 years, and 50 percent by the year 2000--we set that as 
a mandate in this bill--we should assist States in making that happen. 
All this amendment does is provide the assistance in a pool of money.
  It is not an entitlement. It does not guarantee anybody anything. 
Merely on a proportional basis based on the block grant, it says to the 
States, ``Here is a pool of money to assist you in providing those 
families that you are moving from welfare to work with child care.''
  Everyone knows that any effort to go from welfare to work, with 
infant children, that does not provide for child care will fail. And 
all of us do not want to see that happen.
  So, Mr. President, I urge that we come together. This is an 
authorization--authorization. Money will have to be appropriated. If 
the numbers are less, then appropriate to less. But let us not try to 
divide over this issue that has united us in the past. Let us see if we 
cannot here find some common ground.
  I happen to believe, Mr. President, we would pass welfare reform 95-5 
if we would adopt the Dodd amendment on child care. We could end the 
acrimony. We could have a good welfare reform bill. We could assist our 
States. And we could move people from welfare to work. Let us not miss 
this opportunity, for once, to come together in this Congress on an 
issue this critical and this important to the American public.
  Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I urge a 
``yes'' vote on the amendment.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I move to table the Dodd amendment and 
ask for the yeas and nays. 

[[Page S 13196]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is now on the motion to table.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm] and the 
Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] would vote ``yea.''
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 48, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 406 Leg.]

                                YEAS--50

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dole
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Packwood
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--48

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Gramm
     Simpson
       
  So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 2560) was agreed 
to.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The question recurs on the amendment of the 
Senator from Kansas, Mrs. Kassebaum.
  There are 4 minutes of debate, evenly divided.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may we have order.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senate will be in order.
  The Senator from Kansas, [Mrs. Kassebaum], is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 2522

  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, first, I would like to ask for the 
yeas and nays on my amendment.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I will reiterate why I believe this 
amendment is important.
  Mr. President, I, too, feel strongly about the importance of child 
care. In order to make our welfare reform effort successful, I could 
not support the measure that we just voted on because I felt it was an 
amount of money that could not be sustained and was not offset in a way 
that I felt would be successful.
  The rationale for my amendment is briefly three parts. It creates a 
unified system of child care at the State level, with one State plan. 
It is not an effort to, in any way, intrude on the infringement of one 
committee over another. It is my idea that a consolidation of these 
efforts is important, and it provides one set of regulations, rather 
than a two-track system. So it does not transfer jurisdiction of the 
Senate Finance Committee child care program to the Senate Labor and 
Human Resources Committee. But it does set up a single system through 
which child care is handled. It prevents families from experiencing 
disruptions in their child care since their eligibility is no longer 
tied to specific program requirements, that is, AFDC. Instead, 
eligibility is based on a family's income, through a sliding fee scale 
that the State determines. As parents earn more, they make a greater 
contribution for child care assistance.
  I feel it is very important that low-income families can be able to 
move off of welfare rolls and yet still be able to maintain some 
support for child care. It preserves the limited funding for child care 
for low-income working families, many of whom rely on this assistance 
to stay off of the welfare rolls. For example, for a family of two 
earning minimum wage, average yearly child care costs consume 47 
percent of the household gross income. That is a significant amount, 
Mr. President. I believe families do need some support because it is 
the children that we do have to protect in this process.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The question is on agreeing to the amendment. The yeas and nays have 
been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm] and the 
Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] would vote ``nay.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Faircloth). Are there any other Senators 
in the Chamber desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 76, nays 22, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 407 Leg.]

                                YEAS--76

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Craig
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Grams
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Warner
     Wellstone

                                NAYS--22

     Ashcroft
     Brown
     Coverdell
     D'Amato
     Dole
     Faircloth
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Inhofe
     Kyl
     Lott
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moynihan
     Nickles
     Packwood
     Roth
     Smith
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Gramm
     Simpson
       
  So the amendment (No. 2522) was agreed to.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.


                           Amendment No. 2523

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question--the Senate will please be in 
order.
  The question is on the amendment No. 2523, offered by Senator Helms. 
There are 4 minutes evenly divided. Who yields the time?
  The distinguished Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I do not believe I can talk over the 
various discussions going on.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order. The Senator is 
right. He is entitled to be heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will please be in order.
  Mr. FORD. The Chair can call names.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from North 
Carolina.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, instead of making remarks, I have prepared 
a sheet that is on every Senator's desk that explains, or refutes in 
one or two cases, suggestions about what this amendment does or does 
not do.
  Let me go down the list. First, the question and then the answer.
  How much of the taxpayers' money will this amendment save? 

[[Page S 13197]]

  CBO says it will save $5.68 billion over 7 years.
  What are the work requirements under the Helms amendment? And by the 
way it is cosponsored by the distinguished occupant of the chair, Mr. 
Faircloth, and Mr. Smith of New Hampshire, Mr. Grams of Minnesota, and 
Mr. Shelby of Alabama. What are the work requirements under the Helms 
amendment?
  Food stamp recipients must work a total of 40 hours over a 4-week 
period before receiving benefits.
  Question. Are temporarily unemployed people denied food stamps?
  No, community service will count as work.
  Are work requirements in the Helms amendment stronger than in the 
Dole amendment? And, incidentally Senator Dole supports the Helms 
amendment.
  Yes. The Dole amendment allows recipients to receive food stamps for 
a full year and requires only 6 months of work to qualify.
  Will pregnant women be denied food stamps?
  No, there are millions of pregnant women who went to work this 
morning. But if and when they are unable to work they can and will get 
food stamps when qualified.
  Will retired people be denied food stamps?
  Of course not. Citizens over 55 are exempt from the work 
requirements.
  How many individuals does the Helms amendment target?
  It targets the 2.5 million able-bodied individuals who refuse to 
work.
  Exempted by this amendment are children under 18, parents with 
children, parents with disabled dependents, mentally or physically 
unfit, and all who are over 55.
  Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Who yields time?
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I would like to speak in opposition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, the dilemma with the Helms amendment is 
very simple. That is in many communities throughout the country there 
are not volunteer programs. There are not work programs that people 
could take up. In some cases, there are not jobs.
  Frankly, the problem is the amendment affects able-bodied people who 
are temporarily laid off, as people sometimes are in this country, 
during recessions or during closing of factories or economic change. It 
does not really give a very good opportunity for those people to 
qualify for food stamps.
  USDA estimates 700,000 people would be affected. By and large, these 
are people, often with long work records, who temporarily have bad 
luck.
  In my judgment, the amendment has the merit of trying to tighten up 
the food stamp situation but it does so at the expense of able-bodied 
Americans who should not be penalized.
  I encourage the Senate to defeat the amendment.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is true that this amendment by itself 
would save money. But you could also say that if we had an amendment 
that totally did away with the food stamp program that would save even 
more money.
  Basically what this says is you could be somebody who has worked in 
the plant for 15 years, you paid your taxes, you are an upright citizen 
who paid for the programs and everything else, and if that factory, the 
largest employer in the area, should suddenly close, and you cannot 
find a job within 30 or 31 days later and if you are looking for food 
stamps you are not going to get them because you have not worked in the 
last 30 days. This is far too punitive. It is going to make it 
extremely difficult, as the senior Senator from Indiana said, for those 
who have been employed who because of a disaster or a plant closing or 
something else are out of a job. It goes much too far.
                       food stamp work amendment

  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with Senators Helms 
and Faircloth to offer this amendment to the welfare reform bill. This 
amendment is based on the simple notion that recipients of public 
assistance should give something in return for their benefits. To not 
require work for welfare, is to promote irresponsibility, which is 
ultimately harmful to the recipient.
  This amendment is straightforward. It states that those recipients of 
food assistance, who are able-bodied, do not have any dependents, and 
are between the ages of 18 and 55, must work for an average of 40 hours 
per month in order to receive their food assistance.
  Some critics might point out that the Dole amendment already has work 
requirements for Food Stamp recipients. However, those work 
requirements do not begin until 6 months after the person begins 
receiving food assistance. Workfare programs should resemble the 
private sector to the greatest extent possible, and I do not know of 
any business which pays its employees for 6 months before the employee 
ever begins working. Our work requirement is structured identically to 
private sector employment: wages--or benefits in this case--are paid 
after the service is rendered. This will promote personal 
responsibility and self-sufficiency.
  Finally, one of the main benefits of work requirements is that they 
are a humane way of screening people off of welfare who do not belong 
on the rolls. Many people receiving benefits which are now free, will 
opt to pursue other options they currently have in the private sector 
if they are faced with even a minimal work requirement. If they have no 
such options, they will be able to continue to receive benefits in 
exchange for community service. However, CBO has estimated that this 
work requirement will save taxpayers $5.5 billion over 7 years, due to 
a decrease in the food stamp rolls of more than 1 million individuals. 
This will free up money to be used on people who are in genuine need, 
who have small children, and who have no employment options in the 
private sector.
  Again, this amendment does not affect anyone with small children, or 
anyone who is disabled or elderly. It is carefully targeted at those 
who are the most likely to be able to move into the private sector.
  Mr. President, this is a responsible amendment, and one I hope my 
colleagues will support.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak out against the 
amendment offered by the senior Senator from North Carolina.
  Let me be clear. I am for reform of the Food Stamp Program. I am 
willing to toughen up work requirements. I am for elimination of fraud. 
That is why Democrats included reforms in our welfare reform.
  We include increased civil and criminal forfeiture for grocers who 
violate the Food Stamp Act. We require stores to reapply for the Food 
Stamp Program so that we make sure that fraud is not taking place. We 
disqualify grocers who have already been disqualified from the WIC 
Program. We encourage States to use the electronic benefits transfer 
program and we allow them to require a picture ID. We require able-
bodied people who are between 18 to 50 to work after a period.
  The fight here is over food, not fraud. This amendment would say to 
workers in my State and States across this country that if you are a 
victim of a plant closing, you won't get any food stamps unless you go 
out and work. This amendment is tough on new mothers. Under this 
amendment, if you are about to have your first child and for some 
reason you lose your job, you are cut off from food stamps unless you 
work. Cut off at the most critical time in life for good nutrition. 
This amendment doesn't recognize that some areas are hit by high 
unemployment. This proposal fails to realize that we do have 
recessions.
  In a time when we denounce mandates to the States, this is exactly 
what the proposal does--it mandates further costs. This amendment 
offers no funding to help these workers find work or create jobs. It is 
assumed that State and local governments can do this on their own. 
State and local governments will have to enforce these new Food Stamp 
requirements at the very time they are reinventing their welfare 
program.
  Mr. President, I am for welfare reform including the Food Stamp 
Program. I am not for denying help to those who truly need it and that 
is what this amendment does. I urge my 
 
[[Page S 13198]]

colleagues to vote this amendment down so we can get on to real reform.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time on the amendment has expired. The 
question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from North 
Carolina. On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered and the 
clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm] and the 
Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] are necessarily absent.
  I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from 
Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] would vote ``yea.''
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
who desire to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 32, nays 66, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 408 Leg.]

                                YEAS--32

     Abraham
     Brown
     Coats
     Coverdell
     Craig
     Dole
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Smith
     Stevens
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                                NAYS--66

     Akaka
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lugar
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Snowe
     Specter
     Thomas
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Gramm
     Simpson
       
  So the amendment (No. 2523) was rejected.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I will ask unanimous consent as to how we 
may proceed. It has been worked out and cleared by the Democrats. There 
will be no more votes tonight.
  Unfortunately, we could not get anybody to offer an amendment, but we 
do have an agreement the Senator from California and the Senator from 
North Dakota will offer amendments and votes will occur tomorrow.


                 Orders for Tuesday, September 12, 1995

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate 
completes its business today, it stand in recess until 9 a.m. Tuesday, 
September 12, 1995, and the Senate immediately resume consideration of 
H.R. 4, the welfare bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I ask unanimous consent that at 9 a.m. there be 10 minutes 
for debate on the pending Conrad amendment No. 2529, to be followed 
immediately by a vote on or in relation to the Conrad amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I further ask that following disposition of the Conrad 
amendment, there be 4 minutes equally divided in the usual form on the 
Feinstein amendment No. 2469, to be followed immediately by a vote on 
or in relation to the Feinstein amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I further ask that following disposition of the Feinstein 
amendment, Senator Breaux be recognized to offer his amendment 
concerning maintenance of effort; that the time prior to 12:30 p.m. be 
equally divided in the usual form and a vote occur on or in relation to 
the Breaux amendment at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, let me indicate to my colleagues on both 
sides, I think there are a couple hundred amendments pending. We did 
not dispose of very many today. It is my understanding there are about 
19 cleared on this side. And we hope we might be able to dispose of 
those this evening if they can be cleared on the other side. They are 
both Democratic and Republican amendments, and not controversial, as I 
understand it.
  I have not seen the amendments myself. But I think we have 
indicated--at least I have indicated, and I think the Democratic 
leader, the distinguished Senator from South Dakota, Senator Daschle, 
agrees--we ought to complete action on this bill Thursday, that on 
Friday take up the State, Commerce, Justice appropriations bill, and 
either complete action on that Friday--the chairman would like it 
Friday or Saturday, that bill, because we do need to complete action on 
the remaining appropriations bills and go to conference and send them 
down to the President before October 1.
  And so there is a lot of pressure on us to get the work done. We 
still have the six appropriations bills to do. Two or three will take 
some time. A couple of them may go rather quickly. So I would suggest 
that we have got a lot of work to do in a rather short time.
  I know that some of my colleagues will have problems in the first 
week in October because of religious holidays. And we want to 
accommodate everybody, try to accommodate everybody, as we should. But 
hopefully we will have the appropriations bills done, so it will be 
easier to accommodate those who have particular concerns in that area.
  So I would urge my colleagues to cooperate with the managers on each 
side so we can complete action on this bill on Thursday evening.
  I will be sending a cloture motion to the desk. In fact, I will do it 
right now.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Will the majority leader yield?
  Mr. DOLE. I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Illinois.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. I have three pending amendments that I would be 
prepared to take up after the Breaux amendment has been disposed of, 
and if it is appropriate, if you would amend your unanimous-consent 
request to take up the three 4Moseley-Braun amendments thereafter.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Did you want 1 hour?
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. An hour would be sufficient.
  Mr. DOLE. For each one?
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. One hour for all three.
  Mr. DOLE. I think now that we have two Democratic amendments pending, 
our hope would be that we take up the Ashcroft amendment, the Shelby 
amendment, and then the amendments of the Senator from Illinois, if 
that is satisfactory.
  I do not know how much time they are going to take. So we would be on 
your amendments by about 4:30.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Is there time on the Aschroft amendment?
  Mr. DOLE. One hour on Ashcroft; 1 hour on Shelby; and 1 hour on 
yours, if that is satisfactory.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Why do we not ask for that now?
  Mr. GRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Florida.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I would request, immediately after disposition of the 
amendments from the Senator from Illinois, an amendment offered by 
Senator Bumpers and myself be the next Democratic amendment. And we 
have agreed to a time agreement of 2 hours equally divided.
  Mr. DOLE. I want to first make certain we satisfy the Senator from 
Illinois.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. If I may, I would like an hour on my side on my 
three amendments. And if that would mean an hour--that would be 2 hours 
total on the three amendments that I have.
  Mr. DOLE. OK. Let me just make this consent request, that following 
the disposition of the Breaux amendment--the vote will occur at 2:15--
then we consider the Ashcroft amendment, 1 hour equally divided in 
reference to food stamps; followed by a Shelby amendment in reference 
to food stamps, 1 hour equally divided; followed by three amendments by 
the distinguished Senator from Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun, 2 hours 
equally divided; followed by----
  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  
[[Page S 13199]]

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. If the Senator from Florida would be understanding, I 
do not know that we could get a time agreement at this point. But in 
the sequence, he would come after the Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I would modify my request for unanimous consent just to 
be in sequence after the Senator from Illinois and settle at a later 
date the question of time.
  Mr. DOLE. I think the only point I would make--I am not certain we 
could do that. We do not want to get to one amendment at 5 o'clock 
tomorrow and be on it for the rest of the day.
  If I could get consent, before I move to the Graham amendment, on the 
previous three amendments, Ashcroft, Shelby--no time agreements.
  Mr. FORD. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President. And I say to 
my friend, the majority leader, there are some that are very involved, 
and the floor manager here understands that very well. We have not been 
able to check about the time limits on food stamps.
  If we could do sequence, then work out the time agreements after 
that, I think that would be best. But as far as agreeing to a time as 
it relates to these amendments, it would be very difficult for us to do 
it at this time unless we could get all of those Senators that are 
involved and interested in the particular amendments that are going to 
be brought forward.
  We are talking about basically six amendments here, and one of them 
you cannot give a time agreement on; one you have the time agreement 
for an hour on the three; but then that does not include time in 
opposition, so 2 hours. I would be put in a very untenable position to 
having to object.
  I see the minority leader is here, the Democratic leader is here now.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. DOLE. That is OK.
  Mr. President, I will just modify my request.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I withdraw my request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. DOLE. Again, I must say we still have a couple hundred amendments 
pending. I do not want to get carried away that we are making progress 
if we take up four amendments, five.
  Mr. FORD. They are major, though.
  Mr. DOLE. I would ask the following sequence: Following disposition 
of the Breaux amendment, Senator Ashcroft be recognized to offer an 
amendment on food stamps; following disposition of that amendment, we 
hope to get a time agreement, and that the Senator from Alabama, 
Senator Shelby, be recognized to offer an amendment on food stamps; 
following disposition of that amendment, the distinguished Senator from 
Illinois, Senator Moseley-Braun, be recognized to offer three 
amendments with a 2-hour time agreement, 1 hour on each side; followed 
by the Graham-Bumpers amendment on formulas, as I understand it.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. That is right.
  Mr. DOLE. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DOMENICI. Reserving the right to object. Might I ask the majority 
leader a question?
  Mr. Majority Leader, there is no time agreement yet as to when this 
bill has to be disposed of, is there?
  Mr. DOLE. No. But it is my hope, and I hope the hope of the 
Democratic leader, that we finish it Thursday. Otherwise, I think we 
will go the reconciliation route. We could be here on this for the next 
3 weeks, and we have six appropriations bills to pass. We have got some 
people pressing for a recess in October. And we want to try to 
accommodate people, but sometimes we have to accommodate the work at 
hand. And there is a lot of work at hand.
  For 49 hours we have been on this bill. It is a very important bill. 
But this will take us into tomorrow evening, even this agreement--one, 
two, five, six, seven, eight, nine amendments, which will get us to 
sometime tomorrow evening. That would still only leave 200 left. That 
may be progress; not in my book.
  I will send a cloture motion to the desk.
  First, I will yield the floor.
  Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the minority leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I share the view just expressed by the 
majority leader. I think we have made some progress. We have a long way 
to go. I know that some of the amendments that have been offered are 
duplicative amendments, so there is probably a much shorter list than 
200.
  I think we can make a real good-faith effort tomorrow and see if we 
cannot accommodate both sides in not having votes on all of these. I 
think if we can work with the managers and accept some of these 
amendments, it would be very helpful as well.
  There are two other amendments, at least I will just put our 
colleagues on notice, on the Democratic side. I would like the 
Lieberman amendment and the Kennedy amendment having to do with work as 
our next two amendments, regardless of whether they are part of the 
unanimous-consent agreement or not. I think it would be helpful for 
Democrats on our side at least to know what the sequencing will be.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Yes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. This is the amendment to strike the training aspects of 
the welfare proposal; basically, the Kassebaum training programs that 
deal with dislocated workers, the workers that would be covered under 
NAFTA, GATT, defense downsizing, corporate restructuring, environmental 
considerations, an amendment that would be used to strike those 
provisions from the Dole bill.
  Mr. DOLE. Any time agreements?
  Mr. KENNEDY. We would be glad to work out a reasonable time, and I 
will be glad to talk with others who are the cosponsors and Senator 
Kassebaum and make a recommendation to the leaders tomorrow and try to 
get that in prior to the time of the cloture vote.
  Mr. DOLE. I will just say for my colleagues, we have two Republican 
amendments, and then we have three amendments from Senator Carol 
Moseley-Braun and then the amendment of Senators Graham and Bumpers. I 
assume following that there would be a Republican amendment, and then 
we can accommodate.
  Mr. DASCHLE. The next two Democratic amendments following those would 
be the two I just mentioned.
  Mr. DOLE. I also want to say, as I indicated earlier, since the 
leader is on the floor, there are a number of amendments that have been 
cleared on this side, and if they can be cleared on the other side--I 
think there are a total of 19--that would be a sign of progress, too. 
As I understand, they are amendments from Republicans and Democrats. 
They are not controversial. They probably would not have been cleared. 
That would be a sign we are making progress, too.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the majority leader's 
request?
  Mr. DOMENICI. I wonder if the Senator will add Senator Domenici's 
amendment on family cap to the sequencing when he is finished.
  Mr. DOLE. Following the Graham-Bumpers amendment, how much time?
  Mr. DOMENICI. At least an hour on my side; maybe an hour on the other 
side.
  Mr. DOLE. They may want to check that. I can seek agreement but not 
give a time agreement. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Domenici be 
sequenced in after Graham-Bumpers, but we cannot get an agreement on 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request? Without 
objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________