[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 143 (Thursday, September 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13578-S13579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        ABANDONING A COMMITMENT

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, early today--well, at 10 o'clock this 
morning--we were to have commenced a series of votes that had been 
agreed on yesterday. There was, necessarily, a delay as Members on the 
other side were at a meeting with their House counterparts on, I 
believe, Medicare. We had a half an hour in which to talk about 
whatever came to mind.
  I took the occasion to read a passage from the first page of the New 
York 

[[Page S 13579]]
Times which described the White House as ``exceedingly eager to support 
a law that promises to change the welfare system,'' which is to say 
abolish title IV-A, Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
  It went on to say the White House was ``sending increasingly friendly 
signals about the bill.''
  This is a bill which three professors at the Columbia School of 
Social Work, including the revered Alfred Kahn, said would recreate the 
turn-of-the-century era in which the children of single mothers were 
referred to as ``half orphans'' and sent to orphanages.
  In reaction, 40 States established mothers' pensions, the forerunner 
of aid to dependent children. The 1935 legislation created aid to 
dependent children. In 1939 the mother was entitled to a benefit, hence 
family with dependent children.
  They said, ``It is our hope that 100 years later the Nation might be 
spared another such misbegotten and shameful era.''
  Mr. President, I spoke this morning not only about the New York Times 
this morning but rather of yesterday's statement, a statement by Rahm 
Emanuel, a White House spokesman, who said as the bill headed toward a 
vote on final passage, Rahm Emanuel, a White House spokesman said it 
was ``moving in the right direction.'' ``Moving in the right 
direction,'' is moving in the direction of the misbegotten and shameful 
era which took place at the turn of the century from which we gradually 
recovered our senses.
  I have since been in touch with the White House. I have talked to 
persons there and asked, can it be that this is the disposition of the 
White House? I am told that, yes, Mr. Emanuel, who I believe was the 
fundraiser for the 1992 Presidential campaign of Mr. Clinton and then 
was political director in the White House, that he is in charge of this 
matter now and that it is his view that the Democratic Party should 
abandon its commitment 60 years in place--a commitment Republican 
Presidents have been just as firm in--to a Federal provision of aid to 
dependent children.
  Mr. President, Rahm Emanuel is of that view, and obviously he is, he 
does not disguise it. I wonder about what other political advice he is 
giving in the White House.
  I will not speculate. I will state my alarm. No one can foresee the 
future. I do not. Yet we have seen something like this happen before. I 
can say again, when Irwin Garfinkel, Alfred Kahn, and Sheila Kamerman 
refer to the possibility that ``100 years later the Nation might be 
spared another such misbegotten and shameful era before regaining 
senses,'' they say that hope grows dim.
  If this is the advice the President is getting, that hope is dim, 
indeed. I say this with great reluctance, Mr. President, but something 
of great importance, in my view, is at stake. I yield the floor.

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