[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 142 (Wednesday, September 13, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13524-S13539]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                      Unanimous Consent Agreement

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the following 
amendments be in order tonight, in the following sequence, and that 
following the conclusion of all debate, the Senate proceed to votes on 
or in relation to each amendment at 10 a.m., in the order in which they 
were debated, that there be 10 minutes of debate equally divided in the 
usual form before the first vote and the debate between the remaining 
stacked votes be limited to 10 minutes equally divided in the usual 
form, and all votes in the voting sequence after the first vote be 
limited to the 10 minutes: Wellstone, 2584; Faircloth, 2609; Conrad, 
2528; Jeffords, 2581; Dorgan 2535; McCain 2589; Exon 2525; Nickles 
2556.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Reserving the right to object, I ask the majority leader 
if we could add as the next amendment an amendment by Senator Dodd, 
which may or may not be offered? But he would like to be added to the 
list. Obviously, it will be subject to our ongoing negotiation. But if 
we could add Senator Dodd?
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. To the list for tonight?
  Mr. DASCHLE. To the list for tonight.
  Mr. DOLE. I have no objection to that. That would follow disposition 
of the Nickles amendment, which is the last one on this list, if we do 
not have some agreement by then. But I would not be able to enter into 
a time agreement.
  Mr. DASCHLE. That is right, and I do not know that Senator Dodd will 
even be interested in offering the amendment, but it was at his request 
that we add his name. I think that would satisfy the needs on our side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the majority leader modify the request?
  Mr. DOLE. Yes, I modify my request, if in fact the Senator from 
Connecticut, Senator Dodd, wishes to offer an amendment, he be 
recognized following the disposition of the Nickles amendment No. 2556.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modified request? 
Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, my view is we are trying to reach an 
agreement on about four major issues. Hopefully, we will have that 
determined by the time we complete voting on these tomorrow. If, in 
fact, we can reach an agreement, I hope all the other amendments would 
go away, at least nearly every other amendment go away. If we cannot 
reach agreement, then we would have a cloture vote sometime tomorrow 
after consultation with the Democratic leader.
  It is still my hope to dispose of this bill tomorrow night because we 
have six appropriations bills to do. We would like to start 
appropriations bills on 

[[Page S 13525]]
Friday and then complete action on the appropriations bills on the 30th 
of September. If we can do that, there may be an opportunity for us to 
have a week's recess.
  So I hope all of our colleagues would help us on the appropriations 
bills. To get to the appropriations bills, we have to finish welfare 
reform, and we are only going to have one cloture vote. If we do not 
get cloture, that is it. It will go in the reconciliation and all these 
amendments that are pending will be pending forever, I guess.
  In any event, there will be no more votes tonight and the votes will 
start at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2584 on 
behalf of myself and Senator Murray.


                           Amendment No. 2584

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has called up amendment No. 2584, 
which is the pending question.
  The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  If the Senator will suspend a moment? If those Members who are having 
discussions in the aisle could please retire to the cloakroom?
  The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for gaining order in 
the Chamber.
  Mr. President, I will speak for a while and then I really would like 
to defer to my colleague from Washington, Senator Murray. Then I will 
complete my remarks.
  Mr. President, could I have order in the Chamber, please?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Those Members who are still in the aisle, 
please retire to the cloakroom so the Senator may be heard.
  The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, last year the Congress made a 
commitment to fight the epidemic of violence against women and children 
when we passed the historic Violence Against Women Act. This commitment 
must not be forgotten as we debate welfare reform. Yet, the bill that 
we have before us does not contemplate even for 1 minute that many 
women are on welfare because they have escaped violence in their homes. 
Some of the studies that have been done show that as many as 60 percent 
of welfare mothers are women who were battered, women who have left a 
very dangerous home.
  The last thing we want to do is force those women back into those 
homes. For many of these women, welfare is the only alternative, for 
some support it is the only alternative, for some public financial 
support for themselves and their children is the only alternative to a 
very dangerous home.
  Domestic violence is one of the most serious issues our country 
faces. I wish I did not have to say that on the floor of the Senate, 
but it is the case. It knows no borders, neither race, gender, 
geography nor economic status shields someone from domestic violence.
  Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by a husband or a boyfriend every 
15 seconds. Over 4,000 women are killed every year by their abuser. 
Every 6 minutes a woman is forcibly raped. The majority of men who 
batter women also batter their children. A survey conducted in 1992, 
Mr. President, found that more than half of battered women stayed with 
their batterer because they did not feel they could support themselves 
or their children. We do not want to put women in a situation where 
they have to stay in an unsafe home where their lives are in jeopardy, 
where their children's lives are in jeopardy because of a piece of 
legislation we passed.
  Mr. President, this amendment allows an exemption for women who come 
out of these kinds of homes who have had to deal with this kind of 
physical violence, and it allows States to exempt people who have been 
battered--it could be a man; usually it is a woman--or subjected to 
extreme cruelty from the strict new rules that we have within the 
welfare system without being penalized for meeting the participation 
rate.
  Mr. President, this amendment allows States to modify or to exempt 
women from some of the requirements in this bill. Monica Seles, the 
tennis player who was stabbed took 2 years before she could get back to 
playing tennis. Just imagine what it would be like for a woman who had 
been beaten over and over and over and over again and finally left that 
home with her children. How long does it take her to mend? Do we want 
to say she has to work or she is out? Two years and she is out? It may 
take a longer period of time.
  This amendment says we ought to establish at the national level some 
overall standards so that States will exempt from some of the 
provisions of this piece of legislation women and children who come out 
of these circumstances.
  Mr. President, the term ``battered'' or subjected to ``extreme 
cruelty'' includes physical acts, sexual abuse, neglect or deprivation 
of medical care, and extreme mental abuse. But we leave it up to the 
States to define those terms. But what we are saying is this is an 
epidemic. We made a commitment last year. We do not want to force a 
woman and her children because of their economic circumstances back 
into a brutal situation, back into a home which is not a safe home, but 
a very dangerous home. We have to provide some protection. That is the 
reason for this general guideline that we establish at the national 
level and then allow States to go forward. And it is extremely 
important that States be allowed to do so. Otherwise, they will be 
penalized for not reaching their employment goal.
  Right now a State has no incentive to exempt a mother who is faced 
with these kinds of conditions because that State is trying to meet 
that work participation rate.
  This amendment says States ought to be allowed that exemption or 
modifying it. For example, maybe a mother can meet the 2-year 
requirement. Maybe she cannot.
  It is shocking, I say to my colleagues, because they go into a job 
training program they have trouble with their abuser. So maybe she 
cannot do that or maybe she can. Maybe the 5-year requirement does not 
work. We are talking about women and children who have lived through, 
if they are lucky enough, to have lived through nightmare 
circumstances.
  So I certainly hope the Senate will have the compassion, and the 
Senate will have the commitment to women and children to allow this 
very, very important amendment to pass with this very important 
exemption.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am very proud to join my colleague from 
Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, in offering this extremely important 
amendment. And I commend him on his very eloquent statement and 
appreciate his work on this very difficult and very important issue of 
battered individuals. He has committed a lot of time and energy to 
that. I want him to know how much I appreciate that.
  We all know that America's poor face many obstacles as they try to 
get back on their feet and become productive, contributing members of 
our society. However, the women who have been victims of abuse and the 
children, frankly, who have witnessed this abuse, or were abused 
victims themselves, have even more barriers which impede their ability 
to move on and move up.
  I would hope that this Senate steps back from the rhetoric of the 
past few days and the technical terms that we are using, and think for 
a few minutes about some of the people that this welfare reform bill is 
going to very directly affect as we pass it, in particular battered 
women and children.
  These abused women and children have lasting scars that will take 
many years to heal, and they are often forced to live in fear that 
their abuser will find them and hurt them once again.
  This amendment is important because we must recognize that women on 
public assistance who were battered confront unique obstacles and 
circumstances as they make the very difficult move from dependency to 
self-sufficiency. As we attempt to fix our troubled welfare system and 
help rebuild America's families, let us not make it harder for these 
women and their kids to get ahead and put there troubled past behind 
them.
  Domestic violence and the impact that it makes on those who suffer 
this abuse is a very real and a very serious problem. In my State, a 
survey of 

[[Page S 13526]]
women on public assistance found that over half reported being 
physically abused by a spouse or a boyfriend.
  Throughout this debate on welfare, I have come to the floor several 
times to talk about June, who is a welfare recipient in my State, and 
who is my partner in the Walk-a-Mile Program. That is a program that 
began in the State of Washington. It has gone across the country. That 
matches a welfare recipient with an elected legislator. We have talked 
on the phone. We have shared experiences. I shared mine with her. She 
has shared hers with me. So that we have gotten to know what it is like 
to live in each other's shoes. And I will tell you that hearing her 
story has really enabled me to better understand the everyday 
challenges of a young mother trying to make it on her own and to take 
care of two young kids. It has been difficult for June to share some of 
her stories with me because she was in a very abusive relationship. Her 
children witnessed their mother being beaten and verbally abused. In 
fact, June told me her most vivid memory of that time was hearing her 
frightened 3-year old daughter's pleading voice saying, ``Daddy, are 
you going to kill my mommy? Please do not kill my mommy.''
  That is what this woman came from. And I can tell you as a mother, 
and as a former preschool teacher, memories like that have an 
everlasting and dramatic effect on the lives of children who 
experienced such pain and torment in addition to the emotional trauma 
that confronts both the woman who suffered abuse and the children who 
are exposed to it. There are many practical problems which prevent 
these women from succeeding that we have to consider as we look at this 
welfare debate.
  First, these women who are abused survivors often have problems 
holding a job.
  Second, women who have lived with a batterer often lack skills 
because their abuser did not allow them to go to work or to attend 
school.
  And third, a woman who has left her abuser often faces the extreme 
danger of being stalked. And she may not be able to leave her house to 
go to job training classes or to work. And the same woman who has 
finally decided that enough is enough may live in fear that her abuser 
will come after her and to get their children and to take them away. Do 
we think that this woman is going to be a productive worker? Do we 
think she is going to leave her kids out of her sight? I can tell you 
the answer is no. These are difficult problems that these women have to 
overcome.
  This amendment takes those factors into account and offers the 
flexibility States need to help women who have been abused to 
successfully improve their lives and that of their children.
  We cannot ignore these problems that these women will face, and we 
have to make some exceptions for them. Believe me, and frankly believe 
June, my Walk-a-Mile partner. It will be hard enough for these families 
to make it. But let us not make it impossible.
  As Senator Wellstone has so eloquently stated, we do not want to 
force these women back into the home of their abuser because welfare is 
not available for them.
  I urge my colleagues to send the women and children of our Nation the 
right message: We care about you. We respect you. We want you to 
succeed.
  Please cast your vote in favor of this amendment.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I have much more to say, but I believe my colleague 
from North Carolina wants to speak now and I will wait and follow or 
respond to him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. I thank the Chair.
  I call up my amendment No. 2609, and I ask for its immediate--
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thought my colleague was here to 
debate my amendment.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. I am sorry. I had an amendment. I thought the Senator 
was through.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. No. I am sorry.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. BROWN). The Senator from Minnesota is 
recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  I apologize to my colleague from North Carolina. I thought he was 
here to debate my amendment, and I did not want to keep him waiting.
  Mr. President, let me just read a few examples that I think tell the 
story. Linda Duane from Edison, NJ.
  Linda is a 38-year-old mother of five. Her ex-husband was a police 
officer. He was abusive toward her. In 1982, the abuse led her and her 
husband to separate. ``At that time,'' she says, ``domestic violence 
laws were not set up to protect women; they protected him.'' She was 
forced to move into her mother's home and she started to receive 
welfare. She had married right out of high school and never worked 
outside her home. When her divorce came through she paid back all the 
welfare payments.
  For five years she was alone and on her own, but she did not get any 
counseling for her previous abuse. She became involved in an even more 
abusive relationship. She later separated from him but he continued to 
stalk her. He came to her place of employment and she was subsequently 
suspended from her job for a week. He hung himself the next week on her 
porch while her children were inside the house. She lost her job the 
next day because she was told she needed to receive mental help before 
she could return to work. She lost her home and ended up in a battered 
women's shelter and again began to receive benefits. She is currently 
in transitional housing where she is trying to put her life together. 
She just finished some college classes and hopes to return to school 
this fall.
  Mr. President, another woman from St. Paul, MN, Fran Stark.
  Fran, who I must say is quite a success story, is currently the 
office manager for TRIO and tutor coordinator for Student Support 
Services at the University of Minnesota. She married the year after she 
graduated from high school. But after 16 years of an abusive 
relationship she divorced her husband. That left her with two children 
and very few job skills. She went on welfare. She enrolled her son in 
Head Start and became involved with parent training courses there. She 
has since enrolled at the University of Minnesota and is almost done 
with her course work to get her bachelor's degree.
  Lisa Yost from Wilmington, DE.
  Lisa is a single mother. She has been on welfare since her daughter 
was born. The father of her child was unemployed and very abusive. 
After 3 years she could not take it any more. She had him arrested in 
1993 and went to a shelter. She went on welfare and started to take her 
life back. She started school to get her GED. She testified that,

       Without welfare I would not be able to maintain my 
     apartment or provide day care for my child. Food stamps help 
     feed my family and we relied on Medicare while I am attending 
     school. The abuse I suffered lowered my self-esteem which 
     kept me from achieving any goals for myself and my child. 
     Healing took time, counseling and a lot of effort from myself 
     . . . Without the financial assistance of AFDC I would not 
     have been able to get my life back on track.

  Mr. President, what this amendment says one more time is let us not 
have a one size fits all welfare system. Let us at least make some 
commitment that there will be some compassion built into this piece of 
legislation.
  Again, I say to my colleagues, all you have to do is spend some time 
with families that have been through this violence.
  Monica Seles took 2 years to go back to the tennis court because of 
what she had to deal with. Imagine what it would be like to be beaten 
over and over again. How long does it take to heal? What we are saying 
is that this piece of legislation does not take into account any of 
these circumstances for women and their children.
  What we are saying is that we set at the national level an exemption 
to the rules. Then we let States decide how to implement this and we 
make sure that no State, loses sight of this kind of an epidemic that 
we are faced with in this country and, no State is penalized for making 
sure that we do not take women who have been receiving some assistance 
and force them back into violent homes.
  If this amendment does not pass, that is precisely what we are doing 
with this piece of legislation.
  Again--and my colleague from Washington did a very fine job of really 
stating the case--it just takes time. If you 

[[Page S 13527]]
go to visit shelters, many of the women and men that work in the 
shelters will tell you that over 60 percent of the women who try to 
find shelters have to be turned away.
  You are now on your own. You have been beaten. You suffer from the 
equivalent of post-traumatic stress syndrome. You are frightened. You 
are scared. Almost all of your confidence has been beaten out of you or 
you feel like a failure.
  And I again remind my colleagues, every 15 seconds a woman is beaten 
by a husband or a boyfriend. Over 4,000 women are killed every year by 
their abuser. Every 6 minutes a woman is forcibly raped and over 60 
percent of welfare mothers come from these kinds of abusive situations.
  We have to have some exemption. So my amendment specifically says,

       Notwithstanding any other provision of this bill, the 
     applicable administering authority of any specified provision 
     shall exempt from (or modify) the application of such 
     provision to any individual who was battered or subjected to 
     extreme cruelty if the physical, mental, or emotional well-
     being of the individual would be endangered by the 
     application of such provision.

  That is legalese. What we are saying is that a State can establish 
the criteria of what is abuse or extreme cruelty. But States must not 
be penalized when they make exceptions for the victims of domestic 
violence. They do not have to count these victims in their calculation 
of participation rates.
  Mr. President, there was a study of a training program in Chicago 
that found that 58 percent of its participants were current victims of 
domestic violence, and an additional 26 percent were past victims.
  So what happens, to give an example, when a mother now tries to go 
into a job training program to move into the work force, but the 
confidentiality she needs to be safe from her husband is breached, or 
for her boyfriend who is fiercely possessive and angry because she is 
now in a job training program. And many women get beaten up because 
they go into these job training programs.
 We are going to have to take some kind of an allowance. There has to 
be some sort of an allowance for these kinds of special circumstances.

  Mr. President, do we want to say after 5 years no more assistance and 
you have got to go back into this kind of home regardless of the 
circumstances? What happens if a woman cannot find a home? What happens 
if she cannot go into a job training program, no fault of her own? What 
happens if her children who were also beaten or who saw their mother 
beaten over and over and over again and are emotionally scarred and she 
needs to spend more time at home with those children? What happens, Mr. 
President, if she has to leave the State to get away from her batterer 
because she is not safe in that State, which means she has to 
essentially uproot herself, go to another State, start her life all 
over again, which makes it much more difficult, we all know, to find a 
home, to find a job, to get back on your own two feet?
  Mr. President, if we were going to say that a young mother under 18 
years of age should not automatically assume that she can set up a 
separate household and receive full support. She should stay with her 
family. Fine.
  But what if she is in an abusive home? What if she herself has been 
battered? Do we want to force her back into that home? Do we want to 
say that is the only place she can be?
  Mr. President, there are many other examples that I could give. But 
as we search for solutions that will help women and children escape 
poverty, we must understand the violence that exists in the lives of 
many economically vulnerable women and their children. And this whole 
debate on welfare reform that we have had is just one more glaring 
example of the lack of awareness, I think on our part, unfortunately, 
and understanding of domestic violence. The whole community has to be 
there to support these women and their children. Otherwise, they are 
not going to have the opportunity to become safe, and then to become 
strong and independent and healthy families. But the burden cannot just 
be put on the mother.
  It seems to me that this debate is the same old ``it's not my 
business'' excuse. But it is our business. We must all be involved. 
Domestic violence is a root cause of violence in our communities, and 
we must do everything we can to end the cycle of violence. And I will 
tell you right now, this will not be real welfare reform if it is one-
size-fits-all, if we do not at least set some sort of national 
standard, giving States maximum flexibility to make sure that there is 
an exemption for women and children who come from such families, or at 
least some modification.
  I say to my colleagues, do not put women and children in a situation 
where they have no other choice but to go back into a home where their 
very lives are at risk.
  Unfortunately, that is not melodramatic. I know this. I know it from 
the work that Sheila, my wife, and I do in Minnesota with so many women 
and children who have been victims of domestic violence. We just lost 
sight of this.
  Last year we passed the Violence Against Women Act. In one short 
year, has so much changed that we are no longer willing to look at 
these special concerns and circumstances of the lives of these women 
and these children?
  Mr. President, this is an amendment that deals with the protection of 
battered individuals. Usually they are women and children; sometimes 
men. This is an amendment that I think builds into this piece of 
legislation an extremely important exemption. It is an amendment, if 
passed, which will be nationally significant because the U.S. Senate 
will be saying that we understand the magnitude of the problem of 
domestic violence, of family violence in our Nation, that we understand 
that in this welfare reform bill there ought to be some sort of 
allowance set at the national level with States having maximum 
flexibility so that we do not lose sight of the fact that all too many 
of these welfare mothers having come from violent homes, having been 
battered, they may not be able to adhere to all these requirements. And 
we need to allow for that. We need to have either an exemption or some 
kind of modification, letting States administer it.
  And, Mr. President, if we do not pass this, we are unwittingly going 
to put many women in a situation where they are going to have to return 
to that violent home, to that dangerous home, because they have no 
other alternative. We are cutting them off the welfare. And the welfare 
was the only alternative they had to that abusive relationship. We 
cannot go backward in that way.
  Mr. President, I do not see anybody here on the floor that seems 
interested in debating me on this. For tonight, I will take that as a 
sign of unanimous support. But I leave the floor full of optimism that 
I will get good bipartisan support for this amendment.
  I would yield the floor to my colleague from North Carolina.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 2609

  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2609 and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, amendment No. 2609 now 
becomes the pending question before the Senate.
  The Senator from North Carolina is recognized.
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, I have heard a number of my colleagues 
remark today that there is no evidence which connects welfare with 
illegitimacy. And I would say first that not even President Clinton 
agrees with this. President Clinton believes there is a link between 
welfare and the collapse of the family.
  I ask unanimous consent a list prepared by the Heritage Foundation of 
19 recent academic studies on the link between welfare benefits and 
out-of-wedlock births be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the studies were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  Studies of Welfare and Illegitimacy

       The following is a list of nineteen studies conducted since 
     1980 on the relationship of welfare to illegitimacy. Fourteen 
     of these studies found a relationship between higher welfare 
     benefits and increased illegitimacy.
       1. Bernstam, Mikhail S., ``Malthus and Evolution of the 
     Welfare State: An Essay on the Second Invisible Hand, Parts I 
     and II'', working papers E-88-41, 42, Palo Alto, CA, Hoover 
     Institution, 1988
       Research by Mikhail Bernstam of the Hoover Institution at 
     Stanford University shows that childbearing by young 
     unmarried 

[[Page S 13528]]

     women may increase by 6 percent in response to a 10 percent 
     increase in monthly welfare benefits; among blacks the 
     increase may be as high as 10 percent.
       2. Hill, M. Anne, and O'Neill, June, ``Underclass Behaviors 
     in the United States: Measurement and Analysis of 
     Determinants'', Center for the Study of Business and 
     Government, Baruch College, February 1992
       Dr. June O'Neill's research has found that, holding 
     constant a wide range of other variables such as income, 
     parental education, and urban and neighborhood setting, a 50 
     percent increase in the monthly value of AFDC and Food Stamp 
     benefits led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-
     of-wedlock births.
       3. Fossett, Mark A., and Kiecolt, K. Jill, ``Mate 
     Availability and Family Structure Among African Americans in 
     U.S. Metropolitan Areas'', Journal of Marriage and Family, 
     Vol. 55, May 1993, pp. 288-302.
       This study of black Americans finds that higher welfare 
     benefits lead to lower rates of marriage and higher numbers 
     of children living in single parent homes. In general, an 
     increase in roughly $100 in the average monthly AFDC benefit 
     per recipient child was found to lead to a drop of over 15 
     percent in births within wedlock among black women aged 20 to 
     24.
       4. Winegarden, C.R., ``AFDC and Illegitimacy Ratios: A 
     Vector-Autoregressive Model'', Applied Economics 20 (1988), 
     pp. 1589-1601.
       Research by Dr. C.R. Winegarden of the University of Toledo 
     found that half of the increases in black illegitimacy in 
     recent decades could be attributed to the effects of welfare.
       5. Lundberg, Shelly, and Plotnick, Robert D., ``Adolescent 
     Premarital Child Bearing: Do Opportunity Costs Matter?'', 
     discussion paper no. 90-23, Seattle: University of 
     Washington, Institute for Economic Research, 1990.
       Research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert D. Plotnick of the 
     University of Washington shows that an increase of roughly 
     $200 per month in welfare benefits per family causes the 
     teenage illegitimate birth rate in a state to increase by 150 
     percent.
       6. Ozawa, Martha N., ``Welfare Policies and Illegitimate 
     Birth Rates Among Adolescents: Analysis of State-by-State 
     Data'', Social Work Research and Abstracts, 14 (1989), pp. 5-
     11.
       Research by Dr. Martha Ozawa of Washington University in 
     St. Louis has found that an increase in AFDC benefit levels 
     of $100 per child per month leads to roughly a 30 percent 
     increase in out-of-wedlock births to women age 19 and under.
       7. O'Neill, June, ``Report of Dr. June O'Neill'' (affidavit 
     in lawsuit concerning the New Jersey family cap policy.)
       This study using data from a controlled scientific 
     experiment show that the New Jersey ``family cap'' limit on 
     AFDC benefit significantly reduced out-of-wedlock births 
     among mothers on AFDC. The cap was shown to reduce the 
     monthly value of aggregate welfare benefits for an AFDC 
     family by 4 percent and to result in a 19 to 29 percent 
     reduction in the number of illegitimate births to AFDC 
     recipients.
       8. An, Chong-Bum, and Haveman, Robert, and Wolfe, Barbara, 
     ``Teen Out-of-Wedlock Births and Welfare Receipt: the Role of 
     Childhood Events and Economic Circumstance'', The Review of 
     Economics and Statistics, May 1993.
       This study finds large effects of welfare on illegitimacy. 
     A 20 percent increase in welfare benefit levels across all 
     states would increase the probability of teen out-of-wedlock 
     births by as much as 16 percent. (However, the authors state 
     that these findings should be treated cautiously because they 
     were not proven to be statistically significant.)
       9. Murray, Charles, ``Welfare and the Family: The U.S. 
     Experience'', Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 11, pt. 2, 
     1993, pp. 224-262.
       This study finds positive effect of welfare on 
     illegitimacy.
       10. Plotnick, Robert D., ``Welfare and Out-of-Wedlock 
     Childbearing: Evidence from the 1980's'', Journal of Marriage 
     and the Family (August 1990), pp. 735-46.
       This study finds positive effect of welfare on 
     illegitimacy.
       11. Schultz, Paul T., ``Marital Status and Fertility in the 
     United States'', The Journal of Human Resources, Spring 1994, 
     pp. 637-659.
       This study finds higher welfare benefits significantly 
     reduce marriage rates.
       12. South, Scott J., and Lloyd Kim M., ``Marriage Markets 
     and Nonmarital Fertility in the United States'' Demography, 
     May 1992, pp. 247-264.
       This study finds a positive relationship between welfare 
     and the percentage of births which are out-of-wedlock.
       13. Robins, Phillip K and Fronstin, Paul, ``Welfare 
     Benefits and Family Size Decisions of Never-Married Women'', 
     Institute for Research on Poverty: Discussion Paper, DP 
     #1022-93, September 1993.
       This study finds that higher welfare benefits lead to more 
     births among never-married women.
       14. Jackson, Catherine A. and Klerman, Jacob Alex, 
     ``Welfare, Abortion and Tennage Fertility'', RAND research 
     paper, August 1994.
       This study finds higher welfare benefits increase 
     illegitimate births.


  studies which find no relationship between welfare and illegitimacy

       1. Acs, Gregory, ``The Impact of AFDC on Young Women's 
     Childbearing Decisions'', Institute for Research on Poverty, 
     Discussion Paper #1011-93.
       This study finds a small relationship between higher 
     welfare benefits and total births to white women, but no 
     significant relationship between welfare and illegitimate 
     births. The study does, however, show that being raised in a 
     single parent home doubles the probability that a young woman 
     will have a child out-of-wedlock.
       2. Duncan, Greg J. and Hoffman, Saul D., ``Welfare Benefits 
     Economic Opportunities and Out-of-Wedlock Births Among Black 
     Tennage Girls'', Demography 27 (1990), pp. 519-35.
       This study finds no effect on welfare on illegitimacy.
       3. Ellwood, David and Bane, Mary Jo, ``The Impact of AFDC 
     on Family Structure and Living Arrangements'', Harvard 
     University, March, 1984.
       This study finds no effect on welfare on illegitimacy.
       4. Keefe, David E., ``Governor Reagan, Welfare Reform, and 
     AFDC Fertility'', Social Service Review, June 1983, pp. 235-
     253.
       This study found no link between welfare and illegitimacy.
       5. Moffitt, Robert, ``Welfare Effects on Female Headship 
     with Area Effects'' The Journal of Human Resources, Spring 
     1994, pp. 621-636.
       This study does not find that higher welfare benefits lead 
     to higher illegitimacy.

  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Fourteen of these studies found the relationship 
between higher welfare benefits and increased illegitimacy. Five 
studies do not. The most interesting of these is the study by Dr. June 
O'Neill, Director of the Congressional Budget Office.
  This study shows that a 50-percent increase in the monthly value of 
AFDC and food stamp benefits leads to a 43 percent increase in the 
number of out-of-wedlock births.
  A 50-percent increase in monthly benefits leads to a 43 percent 
increase in out-of-wedlock births. My pending amendment modifies the 
provision in the Dole bill which allows welfare funds to be used for 
cash aid to unmarried teenage mothers. The amendment is designed to 
disrupt the pattern of out-of-wedlock childbearing that is passing from 
one generation to the next.
  My amendment seeks to stop giving cash aid that rewards 
multigenerational welfare dependency. I believe the Federal Government 
should never have been in the business of saying to a 16-year-old girl, 
``Have a child out of wedlock and we will mail you a check each 
month.''
  Earlier I offered an amendment which would have prohibited Federal 
funds to be used for cash aid to unmarried teenage mothers unless a 
State legislature specifically voted to use Federal funds in that 
manner.
  Under my previous amendment, Federal funds could be used for in-kind 
benefits or vouchers and State funds could be used for cash. But 
Federal funds could not be used for cash to teenage mothers unless the 
legislature of that State so voted to do so.
  I think that is a fine amendment. But some people feel that even this 
is too great a restriction on State flexibility. So I present another 
amendment which allows Federal cash aid to teenage mothers but only 
under certain circumstances.
  The amendment I am now offering is a modification of the provisions 
in the Dole bill on giving Federal cash aid to minor mothers.
  Let us be clear about what the Dole bill currently does. The bill 
says you can use Federal funds to give vouchers and in-kind benefits to 
an unmarried teenage mother, or you can use funds to put the mother in 
a supervised group home. That is fine, and we all agree. But the Dole 
bill goes on to say, however, that you can use Federal funds to give 
cash benefits to unmarried teenage mothers if that teenage mother 
resides with her parent. If she resides with her parent, she can 
receive Federal cash benefits.
  Let us be very clear what type of household we are putting cash into. 
In this household, there will be three people: First, the newborn 
child; second, the unmarried teenage mother of that child; and third, 
the mother of the teenager, the adult who is the grandmother of the 
newborn child.
  The problem with this scenario is that the adult woman, the mother of 
the teenager and the grandmother of the new child, the woman upon whom 
we are counting for adult supervision of the unmarried teenage mother, 
is very likely to have been or be an unmarried welfare mother herself. 
It is very likely that this adult mother gave birth to the teenager out 
of wedlock 

[[Page S 13529]]
some 15 years ago and raised her, at least in part, on welfare. This is 
the grandmother.
  The young teenager, in giving birth out of wedlock, is simply 
repeating the pattern and model which her mother gave her.
  Let me provide the Senate and the public with a few statistics:
  A girl who is raised in a single-parent home on welfare is five times 
more likely to have a child out of wedlock herself than is a girl 
raised with two parents and receiving no welfare--a girl raised in a 
single-parent home on welfare is five times more likely than a girl 
raised in a two-parent family.
  Roughly two-thirds of all unwed teenage mothers were raised in broken 
or single-parent homes--two-thirds of all unwed teenage mothers.
  What we have here is a pattern of illegitimacy and a pattern of 
welfare dependency which passed from one generation to the next. The 
amendment I am now offering is intended to break up this lethal and 
growing pattern of multigenerational illegitimacy and multigenerational 
welfare dependency.
  The current amendment follows the same basic rule on teenage mothers 
as the Dole bill, which says you cannot use Federal funds to give cash 
aid, a check in the mail, to a teenage mother unless that teenage 
mother resides with her parents or another adult relative.
  My amendment maintains that same basic rule, but adds one limitation. 
The limitation states that an unmarried teenage mother cannot receive 
Federal cash aid, a check in the mail, if the parent or adult relative 
the teenager is living with herself had a child out of wedlock and has 
recently received aid to families with dependent children. The whole 
approach here is to break the cycle of children born out of wedlock.
  The teenage mother cannot get cash aid, cannot get a check in the 
mail if she is residing with a parent who herself has had a child out 
of wedlock and was a welfare mother. The teenager in these 
circumstances could receive vouchers or federally funded in-kind aid, 
but she could not get a federally funded check in the mail if she is 
living with an adult who has had a child out of wedlock and then been a 
welfare mother herself.
  This restriction applies only to Federal funds. A State can use its 
money to send a check in the mail to anyone it wants. But what we are 
doing is trying to break the cycle. American communities are being torn 
apart by multigenerational illegitimacy and multigenerational welfare 
dependency. In some communities, the out-of-wedlock birth rate is now 
reaching 80 percent. We need to disrupt this pattern of out-of-wedlock 
births from one generation to the next.
  But instead of disrupting the pattern, the Dole bill reinforces it, 
even sanctifies it. It pretends the answer to teenage illegitimacy is 
to have the teenager reside with her mother who, in many cases, was the 
source of her problem in the first place.
  If you vote against this amendment, you are voting to give cash aid 
to multigenerational welfare households. If you vote against this 
amendment, you are voting to subsidize and promote multigenerational 
illegitimacy. If you vote against this amendment, you are voting to 
continue the very policies that are destroying and ruining lives of 
young women and children and condoning and promoting multigenerational 
dependency, illegitimacy, not welfare reform. And what we are here for 
is to reform welfare.
  No society has ever survived the collapse of the family within that 
society. No nation can survive the death and destruction of its 
families. Families in America are on the brink of collapse. Let us not 
push the American family into its grave with this type of welfare 
program.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition? The Senator from 
Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am going to withhold for a moment. I 
see my friend and colleague from North Dakota with whom I am 
cosponsoring the next amendment coming onto the floor. It is 
appropriate that he call up the amendment and begin the debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 2528

  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut. I 
call up the Conrad-Lieberman amendment No. 2528.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is now the Conrad 
amendment.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, this amendment promotes a comprehensive 
strategy to prevent teen pregnancy. If there is one problem I think 
Senators on both sides of the aisle recognize is right at the center of 
the problems of this Nation, it is the dramatic increase in teen 
pregnancy. I have talked to my colleagues before and shown a chart that 
shows that in 1992 there were more than a half million births to teen 
mothers, and 71 percent of those births were to unmarried parents. I 
have also shown my colleagues, in the past, a chart that demonstrates 
that our Nation's teen birth rate is now more than twice as high as in 
any other industrialized country.
  The Federal Government, we believe, has a responsibility to assist 
States in developing effective teenage pregnancy prevention strategies, 
and that will help prevent the cycle of poverty that results.
  The Conrad-Lieberman amendment does the following: It provides $300 
million, over 7 years, for States to develop adult supervised living 
arrangements. I call them ``second chance homes.'' They are places 
where young, unmarried mothers can get the structure and supervision 
that they need to turn their lives around.
  Second, the Conrad-Lieberman amendment retains the requirement added 
to the Dole bill that teen parents live with their parents or another 
responsible adult and that they stay in school. There are a lot of 
things we do not know. But we do know that for a teenage parent to have 
a chance, it is critically important that they be in an adult-
supervised setting and that they stay in school. If there is one thing 
that is clear, it is that.
  Mr. President, the Conrad-Lieberman amendment also establishes a 
national goal to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies to teens by 2 
percent a year. It encourages communities to establish their own 
teenage pregnancy prevention goals. It establishes a national 
clearinghouse to share what we learned about what works to prevent 
teenage pregnancy. It establishes a 5 percent set-aside for teen 
pregnancy prevention strategies to be developed by the States.
  Finally, the Conrad-Lieberman amendment calls for the aggressive 
prosecution of men who have sex with girls under the age of 18.
  Mr. President, there is compelling evidence that two things have an 
enormous impact on long-term welfare dependency: teenage pregnancy and 
lack of a high school education.
  According to the General Accounting Office, in 1992, teen mothers 
comprised 42 percent of the welfare caseload. We also know that 63 
percent of those on welfare for more than 5 years have less than a high 
school degree.
  Mr. President, if you start analyzing the problem of welfare 
dependency, you have these two factors, and they are very, very clear: 
teenage pregnancy and lack of a high school education.
  If we are really going to reform welfare, we absolutely must confront 
both of these issues. We must reduce teen pregnancy, and we must 
require that those teen parents get an education to equip them to care 
for their children. The Conrad-Lieberman amendment does both.
  Mr. President, I want to highlight our provision related to second-
chance homes. The second-chance home provision is supported by a 
significant sector of the religious community, including the U.S. 
Catholic Conference. Second-chance homes are commonsense responses to 
the teen pregnancy crisis.
  I want to acknowledge the tremendous work of the Progressive Policy 
Institute, and specifically Kathleen Sylvester, in developing this 
recommendation. Second-chance houses are innovative, adult-supervised 
living arrangements that should be available to teens who are unable to 
live with a parent or other responsible adult. Communities can use 
second-chance homes to create a structured living environment that 
provides education and training, early childhood intervention and 
development, case management, and family counseling. 

[[Page S 13530]]

  We have a bipartisan agreement that States should provide adult-
supervised living arrangements. The requirement in this bill, however, 
could unintentionally place teen parents at risk of being forced to 
live in abusive households.
  Mr. President, if we are not going to force young girls with infants 
of their own to live in households with abusive parents, then we must 
provide appropriate alternatives to be available.
  As currently written, the Republican bill acts as a disincentive to 
States serving these young girls at all. Why? First, when the authors 
of the Republican bill added the adult-supervision requirement, they 
failed to add any funding to make it work. Second, because it costs 
money to develop structured environments like second-chance homes, 
States are much more likely to use the very limited funds in the bill 
for other purposes.
  Therefore, the most vulnerable teenage girls with their own children 
will simply not be served by most States. This is why the U.S. Catholic 
Conference, Catholic Charities, and the National Council of Churches 
support my proposal. In fact, last Friday, Catholic Charities sent a 
letter to every Member of the Senate supporting my approach. Their 
letter said:

       The first principle in welfare reform must be: ``Do no 
     harm.''

  The letter went on to say:

       We support Senator Conrad's amendment, which not only would 
     require teen mothers to live under adult supervision and 
     continue their education, but it would also provide the 
     resources for second chance homes to make that requirement a 
     reality.

  The majority of teenage mothers will live with their parents, with 
legal guardians, with relatives, or foster parents. In some cases, 
however, there will be no place for the teen mother and her child to 
go. That is the reason and that is the purpose for second-chance homes.
  Teen mothers are extremely difficult to place in foster care. Most 
foster families simply do not want them. Go to any foster-care agency 
and ask them what is the most difficult placement they have. Other than 
the severely disabled, there is nothing more difficult to place in a 
foster-care home than a young mother with her own child.
  Certainly, none of us want to deny needed aid to a teen mother and 
her child when no suitable adult is available to look after them. We 
must provide the means for States and local communities to create 
structured living environments for these teens. It takes money to 
develop the kinds of structured settings that will be needed.
  The Conrad-Lieberman amendment provides funding for States to develop 
such settings--these second-chance homes--where teenage mothers can 
have the attention, the discipline, supervision, and structure that 
they need in order to have a second chance.
  Our Nation simply cannot sustain a system that locks millions of 
children into a lifetime of poverty because their parents were 
teenagers when the children were born. Confronting teenage parenthood 
requires a comprehensive approach, with maximum flexibility for States. 
That means providing the resources to enable States to prevent teenage 
pregnancies, including the development of second-chance homes.
  During the debate on the Coats amendment earlier today, there was 
much discussion of the need to capitalize on community resources. Many 
local institutions and individuals do a remarkable job of instilling 
positive values in teen mothers and others in need. One of the best 
examples that I have seen is Covenant House. Covenant House is a 
Catholic-based charity that provides an excellent model of what second-
chance houses can be. When Covenant House takes young mothers under 
their wing, those mothers seldom experience a second pregnancy until 
they are ready to provide for that child.
  The strategies in the Conrad-Lieberman amendment can provide a 
significant boost to our national attempt to combat teen pregnancy. I 
hope our colleagues will support it.
  In closing, Mr. President, let me just say that among the most 
compelling testimony before the Finance Committee was the testimony of 
Sister Mary Rose McGeady. The sister came before the Finance Committee, 
and she described to us what they have experienced at Covenant House, 
taking in hundreds and hundreds of young mothers, unmarried, and their 
children.
  She said over and over, our experience has been if you provide 
structure, if you provide supervision, if you give these people a 
vision, that they can lift themselves beyond their current 
circumstances and have a chance to succeed in life.
  If they can make the best of the opportunities that they have, if 
they see a path through education to make something of their lives, 
they will not have a second child until they are ready to care for that 
child.
  I wish my colleagues could meet this sister who runs Covenant House, 
see the sparkle in her eye and see the spring in her step and see the 
vision that she has of what we can do to really achieve results in 
combating teen pregnancy.
  She has been there. She has been in the trenches. She has fought the 
fight. She has done it successfully.
  We ought to make certain that model is available in every State in 
this Nation. That would do something serious about combating a problem 
that I think all of us understand to be one of the critical problems 
facing this Nation.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from 
North Dakota for his outstanding statement and for the work that we 
have done together to fashion this amendment. I am proud to be his 
cosponsor of it.
  Mr. President, there has been considerable talk in this debate about 
the problem of babies born out of wedlock, particularly babies born out 
of wedlock to teenage mothers, as well there should be. It has a direct 
and powerful effect on the welfare caseload.
  The fact is that although teenage mothers themselves make up only a 
small percentage of the welfare caseload today, only 8 percent in 1994, 
the fact is over half of the mothers on welfare today had their first 
children when they were teenagers.
  The problem of teenage pregnancy is central to the problem of 
welfare. To state the obvious, but sometimes it is important to do so, 
this has been constructed as a program of aid for dependent children. 
More than half of the mothers on welfare have dependent children 
because they had babies when they were teenagers and there is no father 
around.
  Obviously, we are focusing on this problem of babies being born out 
of wedlock and babies being born to teenagers out of wedlock because it 
is a more broadly threatening social catastrophe that is affecting our 
country.
  Take a look at the statistics with regard to prisoners in our jails 
today and you will find a startling number of them were born to mothers 
out of wedlock and grew up with no fathers in the house.
  In trying in this bill to do something about teenage pregnancy and 
babies born out of wedlock generally, I think we are trying to do 
something not only to reform the welfare system but to make ours a 
safer society, and in the process to save some of these children born 
to poor teenage mothers, born to a life which in most ways is without 
hope for the mother and for the child.
  Senator Conrad and I are thinking of fashioning the broadest approach 
to this problem of teenage pregnancy that will be part of this debate. 
I hope our colleagues on both sides will look at the details of this 
proposal and join in trying to create, really, a national crusade 
against teenage pregnancy.
  A national crusade which can be directed by a Federal official which 
will feature a national clearinghouse so that States and private and 
philanthropic charitable institutions can share ideas about programs 
that have to cut the rate of teenage pregnancy. A national campaign 
which will set national goals and give each State the goal of reducing 
their teenage pregnancy rate by 2 percent a year. It does not sound 
like a lot, but today it is skyrocketing in the other direction.
  Create a goal of involving 25 percent of the communities in America 
in teenage pregnancy prevention programs. Then to put some money behind 
all this to take the existing title 20 program which covers a host of 
social programs for the poor, and mandate that each State use 5 percent 
of the money they receive under title 20 for teen pregnancy prevention 
activities.
  It is that critical a problem facing our country. Mr. President, the 
birth 

[[Page S 13531]]
rate for single teenage parents has tripled since 1960 from 15 to 45 
births per 1,000 unmarried girls age 15 to 19.
  More than a third of the babies born in America today are born out of 
wedlock. It is a startling change in sociology in the family and 
reflects a startling change in values.
  We spend a lot of time talking about why it has happened. I will come 
back to this in a while. Some of it has to do with the messages that 
the media are sending our kids as they grow up. Some of it clearly has 
to do with an increasing sense of sexual permissiveness which we see by 
these stunning numbers is not without its consequences and its victims. 
Its victims are the poor babies born to poverty with a teenage mother 
without a father in the House.
  What kind of hope can that poor child have to make something decent 
of his or her life. I think the change in values has had its 
consequences here.
  I fear that the welfare system has all been part of the problem. I do 
not say it has created the problem. It is much more complicated than 
that. There is no question in my mind based on reading I have done, 
based on conversations I have had with young women who have had babies 
out of wedlock when they were teenagers, that the existence of the 
welfare system has in some measure facilitated, enabled, made more 
likely, the birth of babies out of wedlock to teenage girls.
  We all pay the price for that consequence. That is why dealing with 
the problem of teenage pregnancy, dealing with the problem of babies 
born out of wedlock, has to be a central part of our effort at welfare 
reform.
  Each year about 1 million teenage girls become pregnant and confront 
the consequence of that pregnancy. About half of those girls have their 
babies. Half a million babies, roughly 40 percent have abortions, and 
another 10 percent of those teen mothers miscarry.
  Well over 60 percent of the teenage mothers are single. They are not 
married. For those single mothers who raise their babies, the 
consequences are obviously grim, particularly if the mother does not 
have at least a high school education. Of course, many who are below 
the age of 17 or 18, who have their babies, do not have a high school 
education.
  As William Raspberry, columnist, noted in the Washington Post, 
children born to parents who had their child born out of wedlock before 
they finished high school and reached the age of 20 are almost 
guaranteed a life of poverty. Bearing a child in your teens as a single 
mother is simply wrong, and our society must give that message to men 
and women who are responsible for the birth of those babies to single 
teenage mothers. It is contrary to our values. It is contrary to our 
interests. It is contrary to the interests of those young women and the 
children they bear.
  Unfortunately, our current welfare policies too often send the 
opposite message, and that is why they need to be changed. We need to 
require teenage parents who receive welfare to live at home with their 
own families or, if that is not appropriate, in adult supervised group 
homes, some of the Second Chance Homes that Senator Conrad has 
described so well, that will be enabled by the amendment that we offer 
tonight.
  In my conversations with young women who gave birth to babies out of 
wedlock when they were teenagers, and I asked them, ``Why did you do 
it,'' I must say, first, I was impressed by the overwhelming percentage 
of these young women I spoke to who said, ``Senator, I love my baby, 
but I wish I had not had the baby when I was so young.''
  I would say, Why did you do it, as you look back at it?
  Some said the obvious: ``I did not protect myself when having sex.''
  Others said, ``I did it in part because I knew if I had a baby I 
would be able to go on welfare, and that welfare check would enable me 
to move out of my house and to become independent.''
  Any of us who have raised teenage kids know that they all want to be 
independent. The idea that these young women would have incorporated a 
value system, or lack of such, that would lead them to want to have a 
baby to get the welfare check to move out of their houses, that is a 
sad commentary on where we are. And that is why it is so critical to 
require, and send a message, that that is not going to be the way out 
of the house anymore. If you are a teenage mother and you want welfare, 
you have to live at home or you have to live in a supervised group home 
setting, such as the superior Second Chance Homes that Senator Conrad 
has described. We ought to require them to stay in school and to take 
parenting classes. It is no excuse, and it ought not to be an excuse, 
for young women who have babies to drop out of school.
  The amendment that we have proposed tonight builds on this foundation 
by establishing the national goals that I have talked about and the 
clearinghouse. Let me briefly discuss these provisions.
  I think if we want to make significant progress on this issue, we 
have to set national goals. That is what Senator Conrad and I have done 
in this amendment. We have to be able to measure our progress toward 
those goals. This amendment establishes that goal, reducing out-of-
wedlock teen pregnancy rates by 2 percent a year.
  The purpose of the national goal is to galvanize the efforts of the 
public and private sector to address this problem. As President Clinton 
said on August 9 when he visited North Carolina, ``Teenage pregnancy is 
not a problem that we in Government alone can fix.'' How right he was. 
President Clinton said he is working to get all the leaders of all 
sectors of our society involved in this fight. I think we, in this 
welfare reform legislation, can add momentum and support to his effort 
by establishing clear national goals that both private and public 
sector organizations can aim at and rally around. We have to put our 
energy where it is most likely to make a difference in children's 
lives.
  In shaping policies to achieve the goals we are setting out here, I 
think we have to keep in mind some of the terrible facts about pregnant 
teenage girls. As Kathleen Sylvester of the Progressive Policy 
Institute said in a recent Washington Post op-ed, ``Most teenage 
mothers come from poor, dysfunctional families. Many have been 
neglected or abused.'' This is the cycle of poverty and dysfunction 
that continues from generation to generation. Ms. Sylvester reported 
that as many as two-thirds were victims of rape or sexual abuse at an 
early age. And, sadly, the abuser was often a member of their 
household. That is why we are talking about Second Chance Homes 
tonight. As a consequence, teenage mothers start out extremely 
vulnerable to the sexual advances of older men.
  Mr. President, there was a recent study done by the Alan Guttmacher 
Institute that produced results that we have discussed here on the 
floor before, but I found them startling. Bringing together a number of 
studies, they reported that half of the babies, at least half of the 
babies born to teenage mothers, were fathered by an adult man. I must 
say that my vision of this problem was that these children being born 
to teenage mothers were the result of casual, irresponsible sex with 
two teenagers. Not so, according to this study--in most cases, in more 
than half the cases. The younger the mother, according to the study, 
the greater the age difference between her and the father of the baby.
  Among California mothers, in one study of mothers aged 11 to 15--
between the ages of 11 to 15--women, young girls, who would carry the 
baby to birth, 51 percent of them said that the fathers of those babies 
were adults, were over 18.
  There are studies we could go on and on with. But the point is that 
these are appalling findings, and they cry out to us to try to do 
something to protect these young women.
  When we talked about these statistics a few days ago on the floor, 
the senior Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, stood and made a 
point that I found very provocative and also, I think, insightful, 
which is that, tragically, too often we are dealing here with girls 
growing up in poor families without a father in the house, and part of 
what that means is that there is not an older man in the house to 
protect his daughter from the unwanted advances of another older man, 
one of the roles--a role so primal that we tend not even to think about 
it--that the father in an intact family normally will play. 

[[Page S 13532]]

  So part of this amendment that Senator Conrad and I have introduced 
tries to begin to get at this problem by expressing the sense of the 
Senate that the States, which are the main enforcers of criminal law in 
our society, have to look again at laws that we barely ever mention 
these days that used to be very much a part of our lives and the life 
of the courts, which is to say laws against statutory rape, to say it 
is a crime for an adult man to have sex with a woman who is a minor.
  Perhaps, again, as part of the sense that consenting people should do 
whatever they want sexually, the general tone of sexual permissiveness 
in our society, these laws have either been amended down or out of 
existence, or if they are in existence, they are rarely enforced today.
  I suggest to my colleagues that Senator Conrad and I include in this 
appeal to the States raising the question of whether it might not just 
be one deterrent to an adult man--who, in this case, could well be a 
sexual predator, an aggressor with a younger woman--to think twice if 
that man knows that the statutory rape laws are going to be enforced 
once again in that State.
  In trying to put some money behind the general program that we have 
outlined, I mentioned the use of title XX funds. The amendment would 
require that 5 percent of the title XX social services block grant be 
committed by the States to teenage pregnancy prevention programs, and 
that is not a small sum. That equals $140 million a year to begin to 
help the States try a multitude of responses to this social disaster 
that is occurring in our society and that is affecting every one of us, 
whether we see it or feel it immediately--certainly affecting us in the 
increasing rate of violent crime among young people.
  Mr. President, a second and final word about the idea of a 
clearinghouse which the amendment would establish at the Department of 
Health and Human Services.
  We are dealing here with a profound, complicated, difficult social 
problem. There are a lot of ways to go at it--law enforcement, and 
statutory rape is one. But we need to encourage the widest array of 
experiments with dealing with this problem at the State level. And the 
aim there is to then share that program with programs that work with 
other States and philanthropic and private charitable groups around the 
country.
  The fact is that we are beginning to know something about what works. 
The Henry Kaiser Foundation several months ago published a monograph 
that reviewed the effectiveness of 123 sex education curricula programs 
and their policy implications. Their work was supported by a diverse 
group of organizations, including the American Enterprise Institute, 
the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, and the Population Council. And the study's key findings 
include the following:
  Sex education in school-based health centers do not increase 
frequency of sexual activity among high school students or reduce the 
age when they first become sexually active. Some school-based clinics, 
but not all, actually delayed the age of first sexual activity, and 
increased contraceptive use resulting in fewer pregnancies.
  Programs that are effective focus on three behaviors: One is to 
protect oneself sexually. The second is abstinence. And the third is 
how to resist the pressure--peer pressure, or pressure from an 
individual, a man--to have sex.
  To be effective, the school-based sex education programs have to be 
tailored to the populations they serve.
  That was the message of those studies.
  Finally, and very critically, the studies concluded that sex 
education programs should not be value neutral. Those that gave 
students sexual information and told them to make their own judgments 
were not effective in changing behavior.
  In other words, we have to stop our sense of neutrality, a sense that 
anything goes in this society, because there are consequences when 
anything goes, and they are terrible for our society. We have to preach 
and teach a very clear message. Sexual activity at an early age, 
activity that results in teenage pregnancy, is simply wrong. It ought 
not to happen. It is unacceptable. It is a disaster for the mother 
involved, for the baby involved, and for our society.
  That is the kind of information that I believe can be shared through 
the clearinghouse that would be set up under this amendment.
  Mr. President, let me say a final related word, and that is about the 
role of the media. I think the media has had generally a negative 
effect on values in our society. And I think they could have an 
extremely positive effect because their impact on our kids is so 
powerful.
  A growing body of evidence, in my opinion, supports the conclusion 
that the pervasiveness of sexual messages on television, in the movies, 
and in music has contributed to the dramatic rise in the number of 
teenagers having sex, and in turn the rise in teen pregnancies.
  Mr. President, I need not belabor this point. But I saw a recent 
study about the number of sex acts that one can see on an average day 
watching soap operas, the number of sexual references that one can hear 
and see in prime time on television, and the number of sexual topics 
that are discussed, usually not normal behavior, on TV talk shows. I 
think the cumulative effect of all of that, as Senator Moynihan has 
said so well, is to define deviancy down to the behavior that was not 
only not done much in earlier time but certainly not talked about, and 
hold it up as a kind of standard of normalcy; at worst, something to 
giggle about. We are paying the price for that. I think it is time that 
those who put shows on television and who run the networks appreciate 
it.
  The most compelling evidence in this connection is a poll that was 
taken of children themselves by a group that I believe was called 
Children Now, a survey of children aged 10 to 16. And when asked the 
question 62 percent of them said that they believe that what they saw 
on television encouraged them to have sex earlier than they should 
have. I hope that those who put those shows on television will begin to 
think more seriously about the consequences of what they are putting 
on. It is exactly these concerns that were part of what led Senator 
Conrad and I to introduce the amendment on the telecommunications bill 
that passed with a strong bipartisan support that would call on TV set 
manufacturers to put in what we call the ``choice chip,'' to let 
parents choose what their kids will see and that requires TV networks 
to rate the programs that they put on.
  Mr. President, the electronic media have enormous influence, and they 
could use it for good, and in many cases they have used it for good. 
One of the best known examples I think is the way the entertainment 
industry embraced the campaign against drunk drivers through a 
conscious effort to weave portrayals of designated drivers into a 
number of TV shows in addition to the outright commercial messages 
against drunk driving. The entertainment industry and television 
particularly played a critically important role in helping to reduce 
the number of alcohol-related fatalities.
  There is simply no reason that they could not make a similar 
commitment on behalf of the campaign against teen pregnancy.
  I think another way we can encourage the media to become allies is in 
the use of direct advertising such as was done in the campaign against 
drunk driving. And the Maryland State government provides us with an 
excellent example of the potential that lies in this approach. In 1988 
it embarked on what might be called a media blitzkrieg to combat teen 
pregnancies. The State was saturated with advertisements on television, 
radio, billboards, buses, as well as videos, brochures, and special 
lessons that were distributed in schools. More than $7 million was 
spent on the TV and radio spots alone. In the first 3 years of the 
campaign, birth rates and abortions dropped. And by 1991 the State 
reported a 13-percent decrease in teen pregnancies, which in this field 
is startling, and in this case very encouraging.
  The media campaign could not singlehandedly account for those 
changes. But it is clear to me--and I think most who have looked at 
this study--that it played a very significant role in that reduction. 

[[Page S 13533]]

  Perhaps the best indication of its effectiveness was the fact that in 
a followup study 94 percent of the students and teachers at five middle 
schools in Maryland knew about the campaign, and could repeat the 
campaign slogans verbatim.
  So we have a real problem on our hands here, and we are all suffering 
the consequences of it.
  This amendment that Senator Conrad and I have put forward tonight is 
a an attempt to put our Nation on the course of an urgent, intense, and 
comprehensive campaign to cut down the rate of teenage pregnancies.
  I thank my colleague from North Dakota for the partnership that we 
have once again established. It is always a pleasure and an honor to 
work with Senator Conrad, particularly, as is normally the case with 
us, in a good cause.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Vermont, Senator 
Lieberman, who has been a real leader in the whole challenge of dealing 
with what is happening with respect to teenage pregnancies.
  I, first of all, want to apologize to him. I moved him from 
Connecticut to Vermont. I was just in Vermont. It is a beautiful place, 
a wonderful setting, and I am quick to identify Senator Lieberman with 
places that are pleasant. But in fairness, he belongs in Connecticut. 
And Connecticut is lucky to have him.
  I have enjoyed our partnership on this challenge because I think of 
teenage pregnancy as really a tragedy for America. It is a tragedy for 
the children, it is a tragedy for the young women and girls, and it is 
a tragedy for the entire country.
  Mr. President, one in three children being born in America today are 
born out of wedlock. In some cities in America, two out of three 
children are being born out of wedlock. Tonight, we are in the Capital 
City of the United States. In this city, two out of three children born 
this year are being born out of wedlock.
  What chance do they have? What chance do their mothers have? We know, 
according to the GAO, that 42 percent of the welfare caseload in this 
country is teenage mothers or girls or women who had babies when they 
were teenagers. It is central to the problem we face.
  I wish to share a couple of vignettes from an example of a second-
chance home before I end because I think these vignettes are important. 
They are real life experiences. This is what is happening to the people 
about whom we are talking. This is a story about Sherice.

  Sherice, now 20, has a 2-year-old daughter and no one to help out. 
She, too, was trapped early in the cycle of welfare dependency.
  Sherice grew up on welfare, and was made responsible for caring for 
her ten younger siblings by her alcoholic mother. At 17, she dropped 
out of high school when she became pregnant with her daughter Jamila. 
She was forced to take her daughter out of the family's overcrowded 
apartment to live with reluctant relatives. Sherice's options ran out 
when this living situation also proved inhospitable, and she found 
herself with no one to turn to and became homeless.
  Sherice and Jamila were referred to an American Family Inn in Queens, 
NY. After obtaining her GED through the on-site high school and 
completing a 4-month job training apprenticeship in food services, 
Sherice found a place to live and set out to find a job. With the help 
of the American Family Inn's employment specialist, Sherice entered the 
New York Restaurant School with a partial scholarship in order to 
follow her dream of becoming a chef.
  She recently completed her demanding cooking classes and soon will 
begin an externship in a local catering company. She plans to use the 
skills she learned to form her own catering company after she graduates 
in October, 1995.

  Mr. President, this is someone who, because of a second-chance home, 
has her life together, who is a productive member of society because of 
the structured, supervised setting she was able to experience in a 
home.
  A final vignette.

  Elena. Elena is an 18-year-old single mother with a 2-year-old son, 
Andrew. She has never been married, has never lived independently, and 
she receives public assistance. She represents a typical mother 
residing at American Family Inn.
  Elena has a fractured and unstable past. She shuffled between her 
mother and father until age 5, when she was placed in the first of 
three foster homes due to physical abuse from her mother. At age 14, 
Elena moved in with her boyfriend and his parents and at age 16, 
dropped out of high school to give birth to her son. Her relationship 
with her baby's father deteriorated as he continued and increased his 
drug use. She left with her son and moved back in with her mother until 
her stepfather forced her to leave.
  Elena had no other choice but to enter the shelter system. Prior to 
arriving at an American Family Inn in Manhattan, Elena had lived in an 
emergency assistance center, a short-term shelter and a welfare hotel. 
The day after she enrolled in the on-site programs, including the 
alternative high school where she is working toward completing her GED, 
the licensed day care center where her child is being socialized to the 
norms of education and the independent living skills workshops where 
she is learning topics such as parenting, budgeting, nutrition, and 
family violence prevention.
  Elena has also begun intensive job readiness and job training. Each 
afternoon she fulfills her internship requirement as a teacher's aide 
in the on-site day care center. She is expected to complete the program 
in the next several months, move into her own apartment and either find 
full-time employment or a enroll in a community college to pursue 
higher education.

  This is Elena's statement, and I quote:

       I feel this is a place where I can get my life together. 
     I'm getting my education and learning to work. My mother 
     never cared if I went to school and she never told me about 
     having babies or being a parent. The people here and the 
     programs here are helping me. I'm learning to be a teacher's 
     assistant so that I can go to college and start my own 
     business and get off of public assistance. I needed this 
     chance.

  Mr. President, I do not think there is a Member in this Chamber whose 
heart is so cold that they are not moved by a story like that one--
somebody who grew up in an abusive home, had a child at much too early 
an age, forced into homelessness, and who now, because of a second-
chance home, is getting an education, wants to start her own business, 
wants to get off public assistance and make something of her life.
  That is the promise of what we can accomplish by focusing on this 
critical challenge to America's future. We can make a difference. We 
can do something that will lead to a different result than a life of 
poverty and dependence, and we can do it by action tomorrow. That is 
when the vote will be held.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Conrad-Lieberman amendment.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.


                           Amendment No. 2581

  Mr. JEFFORDS. I ask to call up amendment 2581 for immediate 
consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That amendment is now the pending question. 
The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I am here to try and undo what I think is a very 
unfortunate area of the bill which attempts to do something which we 
would all agree with, and that is to reduce the number of illegitimate 
child births in this country and to hopefully reduce the number of 
abortions. I think it was one certainly sponsored with all the hopes 
and dreams of being able to do that. However, I oppose it because I 
find that it would be most counterproductive and would result in an 
entitlement being created which would in effect not establish any 
policy that will really accomplish the goals for which it was 
conceived. Thus, I have sponsored an amendment to strike the so-called 
illegitimacy ratio from the welfare bill.
  Last night, we heard from Senator Domenici and others about how 
conservative social engineering is no better than liberal social 
engineering. We all know that Federal strings often do 

[[Page S 13534]]
not produce the desired behavior modification and can even produce 
unintended negative results. I hope my colleagues will join me in my 
opposition on those grounds.
  Throughout this debate, we have discussed frequently the importance 
of ending entitlements. It may surprise some of my colleagues to learn 
that this provision creates a new entitlement and will be funded by the 
terms ``such sums as necessary.''
  Now, CBO has scored the costs at $75 million over the 7 years. I 
think their estimate may well be very, very conservative. Because of 
the way I read the provision, I calculate this new entitlement could 
cost as much as $1.6 billion per year by the year 2000, if all our 
States reduce their out-of-wedlock birth rates without reporting higher 
abortion rates.
  This gives me pause, especially for reasons I will outline about 
unreliable statistics.
  But let me point out also just to verify that figure, which may seem 
to be outlandish to start with, the reason for that is that all you 
have to do is one time go below the 1995 base, and for the rest of the 
period, providing you do not go back up, you will get this bonus which 
is in it. And if each State does that, we will have the figure I gave 
you of about $1.6 billion per year.
  The provision entitles States whose proportion of in-State--I 
emphasize ``in-State''--out-of-wedlock birth rates have decreased 
without an increase in their State abortion rates to either an 
additional 5 percent of their block grant if the birth rate has 
decreased by 1 percent or 10 percent if the birth rate decreases by 2 
percent or more. And it only has to do it once providing it stays below 
the baseline. So if a State's out-of-wedlock births decrease as a 
proportion of their total births, they can receive as much as 10 
percent more than their base cash assistance and child care block 
grant.
  I do not understand why we want to create a new entitlement, 
especially for States that need the dollars less. In other words, if 
you have decreased your problem, you end up with more money for perhaps 
as much as the term of the whole bill, of our period which we are 
covering here on the budget. We all know that out-of-wedlock birth 
rates show a strong acceleration with the rate of welfare dependency. 
If there are more children born to single parents, there will be more 
need for State and Federal assistance. And that is part of why we are 
so concerned.
  But rather than try to construct, actively work toward, lower out-of-
wedlock birthrates, this ratio seems completely backward since it sends 
more money to States that need it less. And States that for whatever 
reason experience higher out-of-wedlock birthrates and need it more, 
they cannot tap into the newly created entitlement.
  Mr. President, I have here a letter from Catholic Charities USA in 
opposition to this illegitimacy ratio. There are some who tried to get 
this into the pro-life, pro-choice area here. I would just point out--
and I will read this letter now into the Record because I think it is 
so helpful in letting everyone know that this is a group which 
obviously is a pro-life group. This is addressed to Senator Dole.

       Dear Senator Dole:
       Catholic Charities USA is deeply concerned about the 
     proposed illegitimacy ratio bonus being put forward as part 
     of welfare reform legislation in the current Congress. The 
     proposal is another speculative venture being imposed upon 
     the entire country and its poorest families without test, 
     trial, or experiment.
       Our fear is that State governments, in a time of drastic 
     funding cuts and escalating human need, will resort to the 
     family cap, teenage mother exclusions, and other drastic 
     measures, all in the illusive hope of garnering additional 
     millions of dollars of funding. (The funding itself will have 
     to be cut from other needed programs or services in our zero-
     sum budget situation.)

  I would emphasize that. There is no provision for the funding in this 
bill. It will have to come from existing sources otherwise, and it is 
an entitlement, meaning that it must come. I will continue with the 
letter.

       Those measures, while as yet unproven to cut birth rates, 
     are far more likely to produce increased abortions, as the 
     failed New Jersey family cap experiment already has shown, 
     and to hurt poor children and families. And the proposed 
     illegitimacy ratio bonus contains no penalty for increasing 
     abortion rates in States which experiment with the lives and 
     well-being of their poorest families.
       No church community has been as vigorous as our own in 
     support of human life or of sexual abstinence outside of 
     marriage. And no community has as broad experience as our own 
     in Catholic Charities in working with women who are pregnant 
     and unmarried and with their children. We urge you to remove 
     the proposed illegitimacy ratio from the pending legislation 
     in the interest of sound family policy.

  Signed by Father Fred Kammer, president of Catholic Charities USA.
  I ask unanimous consent that letter be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                       Catholic Charities USA,

                               Alexandria, VA, September 12, 1995.
     Senator Robert Dole,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Dole: Catholic Charities USA is deeply 
     concerned about the proposed illegitimacy ratio bonus being 
     put forward as part of welfare reform legislation in the 
     current Congress. The proposal is another speculative venture 
     being imposed upon the entire country and its poorest 
     families without test, trial, or experiment.
       Our fear is that state governments, in a time of drastic 
     funding cuts and escalating human need, will resort to the 
     family cap, teenage mother exclusions, and other drastic 
     measures, all in the illusive hope of garnering additional 
     millions of dollars of funding. (The funding itself will have 
     to be cut from other needed programs or services in our zero-
     sum budget situation.) Those measures, while as yet unproven 
     to cut birth rates, are far more likely to produce increased 
     abortions, as the failed New Jersey family cap experiment 
     already has shown, and to hurt poor children and families. 
     And the proposed illegitimacy ratio bonus contains no penalty 
     for increasing abortion rates in states which experiment with 
     the lives and well-being of their poorest families.
       No church community has been as vigorous as our own in 
     support of human life or of sexual abstinence outside of 
     marriage. And no community has as broad experience as our own 
     in Catholic Charities in working with women who are pregnant 
     and unmarried and with their children. We urge you to remove 
     the proposed illegitimacy ratio from the pending legislation 
     in the interest of sound family policy.
           Sincerely yours,
                                              Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ,
                                                        President.

  Mr. JEFFORDS. We all know that out-of-wedlock birth rates show a 
strong correlation with the rate of welfare dependency. If there are 
more children born to single parents, there will be more need for State 
and Federal assistance. That is part of why we are so concerned. But 
rather than try to constructively work toward lower out-of-wedlock 
birth rates, this ratio seems completely backward.
  Mr. President, I also understand, as well as reading the letter from 
the Catholic Charities, that the Catholic bishops oppose a similar 
provision in the House. They are concerned, as I am, that rather than 
effecting positive behavior change by decreasing out-of-wedlock 
pregnancies, this new entitlement would encourage out-of-wedlock and 
out-of-State--I emphasize that for your memory later on when we talk 
about how these things are worked--out-of-State abortions. And I would 
also add that this may well mean back-room abortions or some of those 
that we will not be able in any way to take note of in the requirement 
for statistics here.
  Because States do not qualify for the funds by showing an increase in 
their in-State abortion rates, there are a few ways to influence those 
numbers. The most obvious is underreporting. According to the Centers 
for Disease Control, several States currently have inaccurate, 
incomplete, or even completely estimated abortion rates. I think 
California is one of those.
  So here we are going to establish a baseline which will be used for 
the length of the bill that will allow States to collect on figures 
that are totally or may be totally inaccurate. As we might expect, it 
is difficult to encourage, particularly without a mandate to report, 
complete reporting of abortions. We will be looking at situations which 
will already be in being which have had no reporting requirements. That 
is, that we use a base year of the year 1995, which is almost over with 
and will be by the time all of this gets into being. So we are setting 
up a base year here for which we have no reliable statistics whatsoever 
and using that to determine an entitlement program. Women who receive 
abortions want to maintain their confidentiality, and abortion 
providers, particularly in the face of recent violence, may want to 

[[Page S 13535]]
maintain their anonymity. So the current numbers are not accurate. We 
have no adequate baseline to compare to, and we have no uniform 
reporting system in place.
  If we mandate reporting without providing significant funds for the 
States to do this, we will be sending an unfunded mandate to the 
States.
  Another way to influence these statistics would be to toughen State 
requirements for obtaining an abortion. In some States--this is 
important to remember--in some States as many as 40 percent or more of 
their in-State abortion rates are from people who reside outside the 
State. So if you know you are going to maybe get millions or hundreds 
of millions of dollars here by getting abortions performed across the 
borders, there is going to be tremendous incentive to accomplish that. 
Making abortions more difficult to obtain could obviously help to lower 
the abortion rate. This provision would offer a cash incentive to 
States for tougher abortion laws possibly resulting in unreported 
abortions or more abortions out of State or more abortions under 
improper conditions.
  All in all, accurate abortion statistics will be extraordinarily 
difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. We must struggle with what 
constitutes an abortion or an induced pregnancy termination. Does the 
so-called morning-after pill count? What about a routine D & C that may 
or may not have involved a pregnancy? How will we know if women take a 
large enough dose of oral contraceptives to induce menstruation? It is 
an off-label use but expels any pregnancy that may be there and induces 
menstruation. How are we going to count those? Are we going to require 
women to report that?
  There is currently no standard definition, nor accurate or agreed-
upon reporting procedure, especially for what we will have to use as 
the baseline year.
  Currently, States define their terms and define how they report. Some 
States only report hospital procedures, and public health officials 
extrapolate the other numbers. In the case of at least one State, the 
most recent figures available are completely estimated and are not 
based upon any report. States that currently report high numbers or 
broadly drawn definitions stand to gain, while States that have been 
underreporting will have no alternatives but to continue.
  We are setting up something here which was well-intentioned I am 
sure, but is so open to manipulation or intrusion into the personal 
lives of people that I cannot believe it can be supported by anyone 
that has examined it, notwithstanding the wonderful intentions.
  Mr. President, I believe this new entitlement is illogical and 
unwieldy. It could potentially cost quite a bit of money, but the 
criteria for qualification are unclear and difficult to quantify 
accurately. In this provision, we are attempting the very kind of 
social engineering that we have railed against and tried to prevent. I 
hope my colleagues will join me in voting to strike this illegitimacy 
ratio.
  As I said earlier, I know it was well-intentioned, and I would be 
willing to work with those who are behind it to see if there are other 
ways that we could reduce teenage pregnancies in particular. I know 
that from studies that show there are many things that we could do and 
also enhance our educational system by increasing the school days and 
more child care, all the kinds of things that can try to bring about 
the kind of society that does not seem to promote or to enhance the 
ability for young people to have pregnancies out of wedlock.
  Mr. President, I am ready to yield the floor. I do not see anyone 
present at this time. 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. ABRAHAM. 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. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise tonight in support of an important 
element of the Dole welfare reform package. This provision--known as 
the illegitimacy ratio bonus--will help, I believe, the fight against 
the chronic problem of illegitimacy without increasing the tragedy of 
abortion. I urge my colleagues to vote against striking it from the 
reform package.
  We now know, Mr. President, that the dramatic increase in out of 
wedlock births is a chief cause of welfare dependency and a chief cause 
of a number of other social pathologies.
  Children brought up without the benefit of two parents are six times 
as likely to be poor and to be poor longer than other children. They 
are two to three times as likely to have emotional and behavioral 
problems, more likely to dropout of school, become pregnant as 
teenagers, abuse drugs, commit crimes, and even commit suicide.
  This makes illegitimacy a driving force behind welfare dependency and 
that is doubly tragic because our welfare system is a significant cause 
of illegitimacy.
  Welfare, as currently constituted, creates a vicious cycle of 
dependency. Children have babies and turn to the welfare system in a 
failed attempt to become ``independent.'' Then their babies, in turn, 
too often end up on welfare.
  And illegitimacy has reached epidemic proportions in America. By the 
end of this decade, 40 percent of all-American births will take place 
without the benefit of marriage.
  Mr. President, I believe we must stop the spread of this epidemic. It 
is destroying our cities and more importantly, it is destroying far too 
many lives.
  One problem we face in fighting out of wedlock births is that no one 
here in Washington really knows what constitutes the total solution to 
the problem. Circumstances in our various States and localities vary 
too widely for any single one size fits all Washington strategy to 
succeed in lowering illegitimacy.
  Thus, I believe our best course is to encourage the States to 
implement their own strategies to lower out of wedlock births. This 
provision, by giving bonuses to States that lower illegitimacy ratios, 
would do just that.
  Mr. President, reducing illegitimacy is just not a function of the 
welfare system. The States must look beyond welfare reforms; they 
should pursue educational reforms, tax reforms, such things as 
enterprise zones and others to create jobs and economic opportunity, 
things of that sort. They should explore ways to set up counseling 
centers to encourage, among another things, responsible behavior and 
discourage out of wedlock births. All of these need to be part of the 
solution, not just changes in the welfare system. And that is why we 
think this bonus provision is the right approach, because it will 
encourage creativity on the part of the States in pursuit of reforms in 
all of these areas.
  Some have expressed concern about the abortion language in this bonus 
provision. But I just point out the following:
  One, this provision does not affect any abortion laws.
  Two, it does not take a position, pro or con, on the issue of 
abortion.
  Three, it does not penalize or punish any State in terms of their 
Federal funding.
  Four, it brings about no changes in the requirements as to the 
reporting of names of individuals having abortions, or anything along 
that line.
  Now, as I have talked to Members of the Senate, both those who are 
pro-life and pro-choice advocates, I have not found anyone who wants to 
see the rate of abortions go up. Indeed, pro-choice advocates tell me 
they want abortions to be safe, legal, and rare. And I believe them. To 
me, ``rare'' means as many, or fewer, abortions than we have today--not 
more. Therefore, no one should find this bonus provision objectionable. 
It is designed to encourage States to experiment with various new 
strategies to reduce illegitimacy, except the strategy of encouraging 
more abortions.
  I know some think that somehow that would produce new restrictions at 
the State level and, in some way or another, on abortion. All I can say 
is this, Mr. President. In this country, the abortion debates have been 
raised in the State Houses for 20-plus years. If there were going to be 
restrictions, they would be imposed on the basis of the debates we have 
already had. I do not believe the potential availability of these bonus 
dollars--only available if somehow this remarkable increase in 

[[Page S 13536]]
illegitimacy were reduced--would be the final factor in causing a State 
to take action to change, in any way, or make their abortion laws more 
restrictive.
  In my judgment, this provision gives us a constructive means by which 
to attack a serious problem. By giving goals to the States, and rewards 
for meeting those goals, we will encourage them to develop strategies 
for fighting out of wedlock births. By leaving to the States the 
formulation of particular rules and programs, we will encourage 
experimentation in a variety of strategies aimed at addressing a 
variety of circumstances.
  Without increasing abortions, this provision will reduce 
illegitimacy, and thereby reduce the welfare rolls and increase 
opportunity for everyone.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against striking it from the bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from Michigan for 
his excellent statement, and there is little that I disagree with in 
what he said.
  However, I point out that he has not, in any way, answered any of the 
questions I raised about how this would work and that the figures I 
gave were inaccurate. That is, very simply, that if a State, one time, 
reduces its rates in order to comply with the bill and never does 
anything more, but holds them where they are, they would be able to get 
the full 10 percent bonus for the full term of the bill, which could 
mean as much as--totally, if all the States did it, $1.6 billion a 
year; and that there is no provision in the bill for that money, other 
than it is entitlement and therefore it would be taken from other areas 
in order to fund it. I think that is one area that ought to be 
remembered.
  Secondly, also, the base year--there was no correction in the facts I 
gave about the fact that there is no accurate data available for the 
1995 base year, which would be used for that. Nor was there any 
contradiction to my statement that by shifting out of wedlock births to 
other States, or Canada, or wherever else, it would not be possible to 
reach that ratio with no real decrease in out of wedlock births; nor 
the fact that there is no definition here for abortion, so that the 
results of what would happen for a State could well be determined 
entirely upon abortion definitions, which are nowhere included, and 
vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
  I would like to join my good friend from Michigan in trying to find 
ways that we could provide workable and appropriate incentives to be 
able to reduce the out of wedlock births, especially among our young 
people. But I just urge my colleagues to realize that this one has some 
serious problems, and I hope they will remove it from the bill with my 
amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, the Senator from Vermont and I are good 
friends and are in large agreement on most of this I see, but obviously 
there are certain things that we do not have full agreement on.
  Let me comment on a couple of the points that were made. First and 
foremost is that before any benefits or bonuses are going to be 
realized, we really do have to produce something that has not been 
produced in this country in a long time. That is a decrease in the 
number of out-of-wedlock births.
  Now I think I am probably one of the Members of this Chamber who has 
voted time after time to make sure we do not spend the taxpayers' money 
unwisely and have tried very hard here to establish what I think are 
priorities for spending.
  I, too, am concerned whenever we spend money here, even if it is $75 
or $80 million here and in a budget of $1.5 trillion.
  The reason that I am supporting this so strongly is because I can 
think of very few spending priorities that we could possibly establish 
that would be more important to the future of our Nation and would more 
directly address the problems we confront than the priority of 
encouraging a nationwide effort to reduce illegitimate births.
  I think in the long run there will be more savings than spending 
because to the extent that we end this problem, we reduce this problem, 
there will be benefits for many.
  Separately, when we set priorities here I do not disagree with the 
Senator from Vermont when we talk about job training and education and 
so on. I think this priority is one that Americans across the board 
agree on ought to be at the top of our list. These dollars only get 
spent if we succeed in addressing the problem. They do not get spent if 
we fail.
  I think at least in my State most people would say that establishing 
this type of incentive system is the step in the right direction of 
trying to bring attention to this problem and trying to give States the 
kind of encouragement I think they need to change and to adopt a broad 
set of policies--not just welfare policies but education policies. As I 
said in my remarks, perhaps changes in tax codes, perhaps inviting 
private entities to play a greater role in helping teens at risk and so 
on.
  I think this will be the outcome. I hope that our colleagues who have 
talked, and many, many have talked about the out-of-wedlock birth 
problem will come to see this.
  I do not think anybody has the perfect solution. The reason I so 
strongly support this one is that it does not dictate to any State what 
it can or cannot do. If a State does not want to collect the data, if a 
State does not want to try to deal with the problem, it is not under 
any mandate to do it. It will not be punished.
  If States take up the call, if States join the effort, if States make 
positive progress, if States actually reduce the rate of illegitimate 
births, I think a reward of the sort suggested here is a step in a 
positive way in terms of setting our priorities.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I end by saying that I agree what we 
should do is have help in the States on ways to change behavior such 
that we no longer have out-of-wedlock births.
  I am afraid what this will do which States are good at, that is, in 
fact, very innovative in the ability to fiddle with statistics and 
records and gain billions of dollars. That, the States have always been 
very, very good at.
                           Amendment No. 2625

  Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Children's 
Fair Share Amendment, which has been offered by my friend and colleague 
from Florida, Senator Graham.
  As we debate ways to reform our welfare system, we should constantly 
remind ourselves that what we have before us is more than just words 
and rhetoric, more than just political points to score, more than just 
sound bites for the next town meeting. What we have before us in 
reality, Mr. President, is the quality of life of the children who live 
in poverty in United States of America.
  These children did not make any mistakes, Mr. President. They did not 
lose a job or miss a house payment or have their marriage crumble 
around them. By and large, they do not have the capacity to fix the 
economic problems their families struggle with each day--even if they 
wanted to and tried.
  They were just born poor--or their families became poor. And they are 
our future, Mr. President.
  This amendment is a valuable addition to this debate because it is 
based on a simple premise which I believe is fair and unassailable. It 
takes the money we have decided as a nation to spend on poverty 
programs and it allocates that money to our fifty states based on where 
poor children actually live.
  The only variations from this premise is the inclusion of a small 
state minimum allocation, and the inclusion of a 50-percent annual 
transition period.
  Otherwise, our Federal dollars go to where poor children live. 
Funding allocations are updated annually and based on census data 
reflecting the 3 previous years numbers of children living in poverty.
  Mr. President, without this amendment, block grants are frozen in the 
underlying bill at fiscal year 1994 funding levels. While this 
advantages high benefit, low growth States, it severely disadvantages 
low-benefit, high-growth States, like Virginia. I am extremely 
concerned that the supplemental funding included in the bill, while 
helpful, will simply not be enough to enable my fast-growing State to 
responsibly meet the needs of our most vulnerable children.
  I served as Governor of Virginia, between January, l982 and January 
l986. 

[[Page S 13537]]
 During that time, the Commonwealth increased its AFDC benefit twice--
once in l984 and once in l985--and it has not increased its AFDC 
benefit since. Between l970 and l994, Virginia's AFDC benefit lost 58 
percent in value when adjusted for inflation.
  To me, locking in enormous funding disparities between States is bad 
public policy. It disadvantages poor children in many States, Mr. 
President, children who deserve a better quality of life, children who 
should expect to receive one from this Congress.
  Mr. President, we can argue welfare reform on ideological grounds. We 
can argue over how much money we should spend. But Mr. President, when 
we argue about where that money should go, that is an easy one. It 
should go to the children.
  I urge my colleagues to support this important amendment.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to 
the proposed fair share amendment to change the amount of Federal funds 
States receive for welfare reform.
  I cannot stand here today and vote for a formula that will penalize 
my State of Maryland in order to reward other States that have been 
unwilling to help themselves over the past decades.
  Our current welfare system says to States that if you are a poor 
state, we will give you more Federal dollars. We do this through a 
Federal match. Some States are told that for every dollar you spend, we 
will give you a dollar. That is what Maryland is told. Other poorer 
States are told that for every dollar you spend, we will give you two. 
That may seem unfair, but we have done that because we know some States 
are less well off. Even under this system, States must still decide 
just how much they want to spend. Some States, including Maryland, I am 
proud to say, have placed a high priority on ending poverty.
  The amendment before us will take all the Federal dollars we 
currently spend and give more to States that have a history of little 
commitment to welfare reform. We do that by taking from States that 
have made a great effort at ending poverty. This is not an approach 
that will create welfare reform. Instead we will force States to fight 
each other for limited resources.
  Mr. President, changing the funding formula in a bad bill is a lot 
like moving around the furniture on the deck of the Titanic. We need to 
do more then that. We need real welfare reform. One step in that 
direction is to vote this amendment down.
    COMMUNITY COLLEGE PARTICIPATION UNDER WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT ACT

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the original Workforce Development Act 
provisions contained in the bill before us made dramatic changes to the 
Federal role in job training and vocational education. Initially, I had 
some serious concerns about the insufficient attention that the bill 
paid to the importance that community colleges play in the delivery of 
those services. I had two major concerns. First, that representatives 
from community colleges should actively participate in the development 
of the work force education plan. Second, I submitted that the head of 
the State's community college system should be included as a member of 
the collaborative process that the Governor must work with while 
writing the State strategic plan.
  Mr. President, today I am pleased to say that due to the cooperation 
and collaborative efforts of my colleagues on the Committee on Labor 
and Human Resources, those concerns have been addressed.
  Mr. President, I would like to enter into a colloquy with Senator 
Kassebaum to clarify the modifications to the work force training 
provisions of the bill.
  Mr. President, community colleges are one of the major providers of 
adult job training and postsecondary vocational education in this 
country. These institutions have close and positive relationships with 
secondary schools, elected officials, and local business and industry 
leaders. There are over 1,200 of these institutions, located in every 
corner of each of our States including over 30 from my home State of 
Michigan. As you know, these institutions are extremely concerned about 
their ability to continue to provide high quality education and 
training services that will be beneficial to the community, in light of 
the consolidated work force system created by the bill reported out of 
the Committee on Labor and Human Resources.
  With this in mind, I would like to get a clarification of the role 
that community colleges will play in the new job training system. I 
would like to ask my distinguished colleague from Kansas, the chair of 
the Labor and Human Resources Committee, Senator Kassebaum, what role 
do you envision for these institutions in the new job training system?
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. This legislation is clearly intended to provide 
Federal financial support for the education and training of all 
segments of the work force in each State. The bill provides States the 
flexibility to set up structures that best serve their citizens and I 
expect that States will continue to use the community college as a 
primary resource, due to their past successes.
  Mr. LEVIN. I believe that postsecondary vocational education is a 
very important aspect for economic growth in our society. Postsecondary 
vocational programs allow an individual to build on the education he or 
she received in high school, provide higher level skills, and equip the 
individual with a foundation for promoting a more constructive future. 
Because of the advancements of technology, community colleges are a 
necessary force for training and retraining individuals who could 
become displaced workers. In Michigan, community colleges are the major 
educators for high-skilled, high-waged workers. The average annual 
earnings for an individual with an associate degree is over $5,000 a 
year higher than that for someone with only a high school diploma.
  Because of the importance of postsecondary vocational education, I 
must ask if this bill will alter the course of postsecondary education? 
And, if so, how will this bill affect postsecondary vocation education?
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. This legislation consolidates programs that have 
provided support for both secondary and post secondary educational 
programs. The legislation is designed to expand, improve, and modernize 
quality vocational education at both the secondary and postsecondary 
levels. As in current law, however, States will remain free to choose 
the percentage of funds they will allocate to secondary and 
postsecondary vocational education.
  Mr. LEVIN. The State planning process for the overall strategic plan 
and the State education plan will guide the State's work force 
development policy. The major stakeholders should have input into this 
process. Because of the strong involvement that community colleges have 
had across the country in providing education and training, community 
colleges should play a pivotal role in the development of the State 
work force plan. Is there a role for the community college system in 
this regard?
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. The State work force education plan is to be 
developed by the elementary and secondary agency of the State. That 
agency must collaborate with the postsecondary agency of the State, 
including community colleges. I expect this to be meaningful 
collaboration, leading to appropriate support for secondary and 
postsecondary education programs in the State. In addition, State 
officials responsible for postsecondary education and community 
colleges are members of the collaborative process the Governor must 
work with on the State strategic plan.
  Mr. LEVIN. I thank my colleague from Kansas for her support and 
attention to this matter.
                 Welfare Reform, Let us Tread Carefully

  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, today, as I stand here in the U.S. 
Senate, the winds of change swirl around the dome of the Capitol, and 
surround the body of the House and the Senate. Do not let the winds of 
change, however, cloud our judgment and prevent us from carrying out 
our duty to protect life and liberty.
  The Republican call to harness these winds of change is refreshing. I 
agree that there are many issues which need to be addressed. There is a 
vicious cycle of impoverished parents who raise children in poverty. 
Those children who do not have adequate access to quality education, 
which would break the cycle of dependency, continue to spin a wheel of 
poverty, and 

[[Page S 13538]]
languishing there for the remainder of their lives.
  In fiscal year 1994, there were over 5 million families on aid to 
families with dependent children (AFDC), over 14 million individuals. I 
ask you how many of those do you surmise were children; 9.5 million 
children were on AFDC in fiscal year 1994. Two-thirds, two-thirds were 
children, a truly disturbing number. You will hear these numbers again 
and again as we debate welfare reform. I reference these figures to 
impress upon your conscience that we are dealing with individual people 
and not numbers. We must understand the links of poverty in order to 
understand and break the chains of poverty. According to the U.S. 
Census Bureau, you are below the poverty line when income falls below 
three times the cost of an inexpensive, yet nutritionally adequate food 
budget for a nonfarm family. For a family of three in 1994 the figure 
was $12,320. How many of us could provide decent clothing, food and 
shelter for ourself and two children for $12,320?
  We need welfare reform, but we first need to address the root 
problems of poverty; lack of education, lack of affordable and adequate 
child care, and access to upward social and economic mobility and 
stability. A successful society allows its citizens the opportunity to 
educate themselves, to increase their opportunities and knowledge. It 
is of no benefit to society to remove welfare recipients and place them 
into jobs with no upward mobility. Without the prospects of advancement 
they can only maintain the status quo at best and as history has taught 
us the cycle possesses a powerful habituation to welfare.
  We need to find good jobs for able bodied people in our society. Yes, 
the United States can assist its poor and offer them a helping hand, 
but we cannot continue our present pace of entitlement spending. To 
become competitive with the world market we must educate all in our 
society. There needs to be interaction between the States and the 
Federal Government to work in a complementary partnership to solve 
these problems. Packaging our problems in a nice box and ribbon and 
passing them onto the States with no accountability and no direction 
will not make them disappear.
  Over these past years in Oregon, the Governor's office, county 
commissioners, and the Oregon Workforce Quality Council are just a few 
of the many people who have worked together to enact job training 
legislation in Oregon, which has been one of the most successful States 
in the Nation in moving people from welfare dependency to work. Oregon 
has chosen to link public assistance functions with welfare-to-work 
services, providing a seamless link amongst the differing human 
resource agencies. Oregon has made landmark progress with the 
integration of education, employment and training programs, but the 
Federal Government also must be a part of restructuring the system. 
That is why I am pleased to see that my Workflex Partnership 
Demonstration project has been included in the underlying Dole 
amendment. This demonstration project allows the Secretaries of 
Education and Labor to designate up to 6 States in which Federal 
authority will actually be transferred to the State so that the States 
may make waivers of Federal law in the job training and education 
arena. Given the decline in discretionary dollars in the budget, State 
and local flexibility which promotes performance over paperwork is an 
integral ingredient for success. Mr. President, we are making progress 
in Oregon and I do not wish to be set back in our efforts.
  What about the States which are not as progressive as Oregon? How do 
we ensure they care for their poor? I agree with the underlying 
performance measures in the Dole amendment which sets Federal standards 
in the form of performance-based outcomes and provides States guidance 
not mandates. This will provide an incentive to States to be innovative 
in their State programs by rewarding them with a performance bonus. 
There are those who argue that it is perverse to reward those States 
which reduce the number of people on their welfare roles, but I think 
it just as perverse to reward those States who do nothing to reduce 
their welfare roles. In all areas, our Federal system penalizes States 
that are progressive and reduces them to the standards of the lowest 
common denominator. Our citizens expect better, they deserve better.
  Mr. President, I want to make it clear that I am committed to working 
with all interested parties in reforming our welfare system. I believe 
those that can work should work. As chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee I have directly experienced the struggle we face to allocate 
funds for our complex array of domestic programs. This discretionary 
funding pays for the operation of all three branches of the Government. 
It pays for the roads and bridges of our transportation infrastructure, 
the loans that go to provide public housing, student loan assistance 
and small business assistance, our national parks, and many more 
purposes which have nearly universal support. These funds have been 
drastically diminishing over the years, while the entitlement programs 
have grown. These entitlement programs put further pressure on the 
Appropriations Committee to make difficult funding decisions. While 
entitlement programs continue to grow, less and less will be available 
for discretionary programs.
  Our commitment to bettering the standard of living for those in 
poverty must not waiver. The Federal Government should encourage not 
impede innovation and creativity in the States and private sector. I 
look forward to working with my colleagues to fashion a bipartisan 
solution that addresses these goals.
                           Amendment No. 2488

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, unfortunately, because of a lack of 
time yesterday, I was unable to give my entire statement regarding 
Senator Breaux's partnership amendment. I feel strongly on this issue 
and would like to have my entire statement on the importance of 
maintenance of effort submitted for the record. I know that earlier 
today, a modification was accepted on this issue. While I strongly 
preferred adoption of the Breaux amendment, I am glad to see some, 
meaningful progress on this key point.
  Anyone who argues for welfare reform talks a lot about 
responsibility. This Senator does, too. Welfare should not be a hand-
out for people in search of a free lunch and a way to avoid work. 
Welfare reform should change the rules to turn government help into 
something that steps in for just as long as it takes to get a job or 
back into the workforce.
  But welfare is also about the responsibility of states and the 
Federal Government to be honest partners. States and the Federal 
Government have always shared the responsibility for the poorest 
families and children who exist everywhere in America. Unfortunately, 
the bill before the Senate is an invitation to States to back out of 
their end of that responsibility. When that happens, when States are 
released from their financial role in welfare, some tragic results may 
be in sight.
  One reason debating welfare reform is so frustrating is that we find 
ourselves immersed in terms and language that do not exactly roll off 
the tongue. It is also a topic where it is far too tempting to simplify 
life, and attempt to divide the country between good people and bad 
people. But we all know that is not how life works. And we should know 
and acknowledge on this Senate floor that a welfare reform bill should 
deal honestly with the realities of America--not just the stereotypes 
or the examples that do offend all of us.
  I say that because this amendment raises an issue that does not leap 
into a sound-bite. It tries to preserve a concept called ``maintenance 
of effort'' that is clumsy in wording but very clear when it comes to 
responsibility for welfare's future. The purpose of this amendment is 
to continue a genuine division of labor among the states and the 
Federal Government for poor families and children. It tries to prevent 
an abdication by State governments from their role in keeping a safety 
net under children and deserving parents.
  A welfare reform bill should free up states from needless bureaucracy 
and micro managing, no question about it. But welfare reform should not 
egg on states to back out of their commitment to their poor families 
and children. This amendment is the answer. It very clearly says to 
states, ``you keep your end of the bargain, and the Federal Government 
will keep its end.'' 

[[Page S 13539]]

  As a former Governor, I sincerely doubt that the Governors who might 
like the welfare bill before us just the way it is--- which frees them 
from the obligation they have always had--would ever propose the same 
deal when they help communities in their States. Matching requirements, 
cost-sharing, burden-sharing, whatever you want to call it--this is a 
basic part of making sure that responsibility is spread around for 
government's functions.
  The majority leader introduced some modifications to the Republican 
welfare package just before the recess, and one involves the claim that 
he added a ``maintenance-of-effort" provision. It is very weak, too 
weak--we can and we must do better.
  The majority leader's so-called compromise lasts for exactly 3 years, 
and asks States to put 75 percent of a portion of their AFDC spending 
in 1994 back into their future welfare reform system.
  In fact, the Dole provision adds up to asking all states to invest 
$10 billion a year for just the first 3 years, with no basic matching 
requirements whatsoever for the last 2 years on this bill. This leaves 
a gaping hole in the state's share if compared to the current 
arrangement across the country. The result could be that $30 billion 
disappears from the safety net for families and children.
  What is worse is the cleverness attempted in how a state's share is 
calculated. The Dole bill would allow states to ``count'' State 
spending on a whole bunch of programs simply mentioned in this bill--
states would be able to get credit essentially for their spending on 
food stamps, SSI, and other programs that help low-income people toward 
meeting the requirement; that means that money for programs not 
specifically directed to financing basic welfare for children could 
easily count towards the so-called ``maintenance of effort.'' Again, 
this is an invitation to States to back out of keeping up their basic, 
historical responsibility for children.
  Remember, it is the children who are two out of every three people 
who get basic welfare. It will be the children who will be hurt when 
states back out of their spending on welfare because Congress passed a 
bill that invites them to do just that.
  Our amendment does not ask States to raise a penny more for welfare. 
Federal-state partnerships and matching arrangements are common sense--
they promote accountability, and they are used to finance Medicaid, 
highways, clean water efforts, and education programs. And on this 
topic of welfare, here is a bill that now says Uncle Sam will write the 
billion dollar checks, but Governors can write all rules. If that means 
backing out of the States' responsibility for poor families and 
children, be our guest.
  Right now, State revenues represent about 45 percent of the resources 
spent in America on welfare. If the Federal Government is about to send 
almost $17 billion a year to States in a block grant with tremendous 
flexibility, we should ask States to contribute their fair share. This 
is the way to promote fiscal accountability and responsibility.
  Mr. President, we should simply correct this part of the bill with 
the Breaux amendment--an amendment that requires States to maintain 
their historical responsibility for millions of children and families.
  The stakes are high and serious. We know that when children are 
abandoned, the future of the rest of America is dimmed.
  In other words, there are real consequences to rejecting this 
amendment. Without States maintaining this investment, there will not 
be enough money--not nearly enough--for child care for parents to move 
to work or for the job placement and training that some parents need to 
get into real jobs. A few years from now, we will be on this floor 
wondering how a bill packaged with such bold promises of change and 
reform resulted in so little--and perhaps we will be here trying to 
repair the damage of backing the country out of an honest, direct 
commitment to children.
  The Breaux amendment calls for the preservation of a solid, honest 
Federal-State partnership for the long-term. We must change the welfare 
system and the rules. We are all ready to be tougher about who gets 
welfare. That means giving States much greater flexibility. But it is 
irresponsible to send checks to states accompanied with an invitation 
to back out of their own commitment to families and children.
  Personally, I believe that taxpayers are willing to help feed and 
shelter the children who are not the ones to blame for their parents' 
unemployment or poverty. Surveys even show that 71 percent of Americans 
believe needy families should get benefits as long as they work. Time 
and time again, it is clear that work and responsibility are what the 
public cares about. They are not asking us to solve problems with 
slogans and gimmicks.
  Real reform is what we should deliver. Let us be serious about 
welfare reform, let us be honest, and let us deal in the real world of 
America. We should make some necessary changes to the Dole bill to 
ensure that every parent who can work, does. We should keep needy 
children in our hearts, and keep compassion for them in this bill. And 
we should preserve the basic idea that states must do their part.
  This should be a bipartisan amendment, and it deserves support. This 
is exactly when and where the political rhetoric should be put aside, 
and where the bill should be changed to continue into the future a true 
partnership between states and the Federal Government that will help 
determine what kind of country we will be.


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