[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 206 (Thursday, December 21, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S19140-S19144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK ACT OF 1995--CONFERENCE REPORT

  The Senate continued with consideration of the conference report.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, again I want to restate my admiration 
for the Senator from Delaware and for the members of the Finance 
Committee staff for their tremendous work in this legislation and for 
hastily preparing Members for this debate this evening that was not 
expected until tomorrow.
  I want to also thank Senator Chafee, who really worked diligently 
during the conference between the House and the Senate on behalf of 
points that the 

[[Page S19141]]
Senate stood very strongly in support of--things like the maintenance 
of efforts provision, which there was a lot of concern on both sides of 
the aisle, and child care funding and the SSI provisions. Those three 
points could have, I think, caused significant problems had we not held 
very closely to what the Senate provisions were, and I think we have 
done that in all three cases. I think Senator Chafee should be 
commended for his work.
  I also want to congratulate Senator Domenici for not just his work on 
the welfare reform bill, but in all the conferences that he had to deal 
with and his action on the welfare issue when Senator Chafee helped the 
resolution of the bill move toward the Senate bill. That is probably 
one of the most important things I wanted to stress about this bill.
  It may sound like you are lauding yourself here, but in a sense the 
Senate did a very good job of arguing for its positions in the welfare 
conference. I think most folks who look at this from the outside will 
see that, of the two bills that went in, the one bill that came out 
looks a heck of a lot more like the Senate bill than it does the House 
bill. I think that is a wise course to take.
  The Senate bill is a more moderate bill, but it is still a very 
dramatic reform and one that I think will set this country on a proper 
course of putting the ladder back down, all the way down, to allow even 
those at the lower social strata of our country today and income strata 
of our country today, to climb that ladder up to opportunity and 
success and change the entire dynamics of welfare from one that is 
looked upon by those now who are in the system and who pay for the 
system disparagingly.
  Welfare is not a word, when it is uttered, that is given any kind of 
respect. Nobody says the word ``welfare'' and thinks, ``Wow, what a 
great system.'' Or, ``Gee, this is something that is really necessary, 
that works.''
  That is sad. It is sad for the people who have to pay the taxes to 
finance it. It is also sad for the people who find themselves caught in 
it, to be stigmatized by this system that has failed. It may not have 
failed them particularly. In fact, many people have gotten onto the 
welfare rolls and come off stronger and better. But those cases happen 
not as often as we would like to see. We would like to see the changing 
of the stigma of welfare to a program that, when you look at it, you 
can be proud of it. When you see your dollars invested in it, you see 
dollars invested in a system that truly does help people and that is 
marked with more successes than failures.
  While there have been successes, they simply do not match up. I think 
we can look at the overall decline in our poor communities as evidence 
of that.
  I want to debunk a couple of myths here to begin with, and then go 
into the specifics of the legislation, because as I said before, the 
point I wanted to make here, more than anything else, is if you were 
someone who voted for H.R. 4 when it passed the Senate, you have to do 
a pretty good stretch to vote against this conference report. You have 
to think up a lot of reasons that, frankly, do not exist to vote 
against this conference report. Because the bills are very similar and, 
in fact, there were things adopted in the conference report that even 
moved more toward the Democratic side of the aisle than were in the 
original Senate-passed bill.
  That is why I am somewhat at a loss and I am hopeful--I should not 
say that. I am not hopeful. I would like to think that the President, 
when he takes a second look at this legislation in its entirety and 
matches it up with H.R. 4 that passed the Senate, which he said he 
would sign, that again he would have a big stretch to find some fatal 
flaw in the conference report that did not exist in the bill that he 
said he would sign.
  Let me debunk a couple of myths. No. 1, that we are cutting welfare. 
We are not cutting welfare. This is the same idea that is being 
perpetrated on the American public with ``We are cutting Medicare.'' We 
are not cutting Medicare, Medicare increases over 7 percent a year for 
7 years. It is a mantra that comes out. I do not even think about it. 
It spews forward because we are constantly defending the ``cuts in 
Medicare.'' We will be charged with cutting welfare, leaving people 
homeless and not providing support.

  I refer my colleagues to this chart, which shows that welfare 
spending from 1996 to the year 2000 will go up under current law at 56 
percent, that is 5.8 percent per year. That is almost three times the 
rate of inflation. Under the Republican bill, this bill that some will 
label draconian and mean-spirited and not caring about children and all 
the way--it goes up 34 percent over the next 7 years, or 4 percent a 
year, almost twice the rate of inflation.
  So you do not think that the increase is based on an increase in the 
amount of people going on welfare programs, you will see that the per 
capita increase in welfare spending--what we are spending on what is 
estimated to be the welfare population --also goes up over the next 
several years and continues to go up. That is in spite of the fact that 
we have a very sharp disagreement between the Congressional Budget 
Office, whose numbers this is based upon, and the Department of Health 
and Human Services, as to what the welfare caseload will be over the 
next several years.
  These numbers are based on the Congressional Budget Office, which 
suggests that the welfare caseload will, in fact, remain constant over 
the next 7 years. Even though with changes in SSI, with other changes 
in AFDC, with the block-granting, with the work requirements, we have 
seen a dramatic drop in States that have implemented these kinds of 
work requirements--Wisconsin and Michigan, for example--in welfare 
caseload. CBO does not account for that. They say it is going to be 
constant.
  The Department of Health and Human Services, by the way, suggests 
that the welfare caseload over the next 7 years will drop by 50 
percent. This is getting ridiculed for one thing but getting scored for 
the other. You get ridiculed by the White House for cutting welfare 
rolls by 50 percent over the next 7 years and therefore cutting off 
children and women and all these things, yet for the purposes of 
determining how much money you are spending per child the Congressional 
Budget Office says that welfare caseload is going to remain constant. 
So you lose on both ends in this situation, which is unfortunate for 
this debate.
  But I think it points out that there is certainly room to believe 
that welfare caseload will go down, and with the programs that we have 
in place, the block granted programs with finite dollars, that the 
spending per family will actually increase more than this, that there 
will be more money for States to do the things that those on the other 
side, who oppose this bill, want--because there are many who voted for 
the original Senate bill who say there is not enough money for child 
care or there is not enough money for work.
  As I suggested to the Senator from Massachusetts, we are not cutting 
child care in this bill. We are increasing child care above what is in 
current law, as we should. We are requiring work, which we have not 
heretofore. So we are increasing child care almost $2 billion over the 
next 7 years to compensate for those who will have to work to receive 
welfare benefits.
  I will remind Members here that, under the current provisions in this 
bill, no one will be required to work unless the State opts out of this 
formula for 2 years. So, most of the child care burden and the 
participation rate starts out at, I believe, 30 percent and phases up 
to only 50 percent of the entire caseload. So we are not saying 
``everybody this year.'' In fact, under the bill the block grant scheme 
does not go into effect until October of 1996. That is a change from 
the Senate bill. As I said, there are certain things in the bill that 
will be attractive to the other side of the aisle. One of them is that 
the block grant does not go into effect immediately, as it would have 
under the Senate bill. It does not go into effect until October 1. So 
we keep the Federal entitlement for another three quarters of a fiscal 
year. And it does not go into effect until October 1. So that is a 
plus, I would think, for some Members on the other side.

  The child care money that is there, and the work money that is there, 
we believe is more than sufficient to cover the anticipated caseload 
given the participation rates, the delay in people having to work, and 
the delay in the program itself, of 2 years, before anyone even in the 
program has to work. 

[[Page S19142]]
 That is why, with respect to child care, we have backloaded the money. 
The reason we backload the money is because that is when more people 
will be required to work and that is when they, the States, will need 
the money for day care. We think that is a logical way to accomplish 
it. Some would suggest that we are skimping a little bit in the early 
years. The Senator from Massachusetts thinks that is wrong. I think 
that is a very wise allocation of resources on the part of the 
proponents of this legislation.

  With respect to the work requirements, we have cut work requirements. 
One of the things that many Members on the other side of the aisle 
supported in this bill and were a bit dismayed about with the original 
Finance Committee bill was that it did not have tough work 
requirements. We have those same tough work requirements in this bill.
  We believe with the evidence of other States, Michigan as I said, 
before, Wisconsin, and others, that caseload does decline when you 
require work. Many people who would otherwise get on the rolls who know 
that they have to go to work opt to go to work instead of getting on 
the rolls. We have seen that happen.
  We believe there will be more than enough money. Again, we do 
something that we think is very important. We allow for fungibility. We 
allow for flexibility of States to move money from one area to another 
where the States determine where their greatest need is, with the 
exception of child care because we have seen that is a very crucial 
item. So we do not allow that money to be used for other purposes. We 
in a sense have a one-way battle. Money can come in for more child care 
but no more money than was originally dedicated for child care can go 
out. Again, it is a concession to the other side of the aisle for their 
paramount, and I think legitimate, concern for child care.
  Another thing we did different than the Senate bill, I think many 
Members on the other side of the aisle would appreciate, is we separate 
child care out into a separate block grant. In the original Senate bill 
it was included with the other block grants. There was some concern 
about the long-term integrity of that fund if it was included. So we 
have now separated out child care as a separate block grant unto itself 
which again is something that many Members on the other side of the 
aisle wanted. As I said before, we put more money in child care.
  The Senate bill that passed here had $15.8 billion in child care for 
5 years. Our bill had $16.3 billion for 5 years--more money in 5 years, 
and more money for 7 years; $5 billion more; again, almost $2 billion 
more than current law.
  Another big thing that the other side of the aisle took sort of a 
last stand on was the idea of maintenance of effort, maintaining the 
States' contribution to their welfare program--the fear that some would 
argue, its legitimacy. But I side with them. I think there is 
legitimate fear here that States would race to the bottom. They would 
take the Federal dollars, eliminate the State contribution, and really 
squeeze their welfare program down to just where the Federal dollar is 
contributing and no State contribution.
  What we have said is in the Senate bill that passed that States would 
maintain 80 percent of their effort for 5 years. The Senator from 
Louisiana, Senator Breaux, called for an amendment that increased it to 
90 percent. The reason he said that is because he was afraid in going 
to conference with the House, which had a zero maintenance of effort 
provision--they did not have any maintenance of effort provision--that 
we had to get to 90 percent simply to go to conference so we can 
bargain because we probably only would end up with a 45 percent--
halfway, or 50 percent--maintenance of effort. We came out of the 
conference not with 50 percent, 60 percent, or 70 percent, but a 75-
percent maintenance of effort which was the original request of those 
who were working on the provision here in the Senate in the first 
place. They only went to 80 because they wanted a negotiated position. 
It succeeded. They ended up with 75 which is what they wanted in the 
first place. So maintenance of effort is as Members wanted it in the 
Senate bill.

  So, again the two major provisions that caused acrimony in dealing 
with this bill--child care and maintenance of effort--one was solved in 
conference to the benefit and even more generous than came out of the 
benefit, again the Senate bill. The other is exactly where the Senate 
wanted it in the first place, 75 percent over the term of the bill.
  So, again I wonder where the problem is or may be found for Members 
on the big issues because on the big issues, on the real hot buttons, 
we are in sync with where the Senate was when the bill passed. All the 
same requirements are there. The 50-percent participation standard by 
the year 2000, something the other side wanted and we wanted; no family 
can stay on more than 2 years.
  Remember, ending welfare as we know it, requiring work after a period 
of time, and then cutting off benefits after a period of time, 
something candidate Clinton campaigned on when he ran in 1992 as the 
new Democrat, is in this bill as passed by the Senate.
  We allow States to exempt families with children under 1 year of age 
from working, something that was advocated by the Democrats and kept in 
in the conference. States that are successful in moving families into 
work can reduce their own spending. We do allow for flexibility. But 
the more people you get into work the lower you can reduce your 
maintenance of effort because you have obviously accomplished the goal 
of the program, which was to get people working.
  As far as money is concerned, a lot of concern about growth funds and 
contingency funds, loan funds--the loan fund is the same as it passed 
the Senate. The contingency fund is the same as it passed the Senate. 
And the population growth fund is roughly the same as passed the 
Senate. The transferability of funds is the same as passed the Senate. 
And, again with the exemption of the child care block grant which you 
cannot touch, the same as passed the Senate. The State option on unwed 
teen parents, the illegitimacy provision, the same as passed the 
Senate, a very contentious issue, one that was fought here on the 
Senate floor, one that was demanded by the House. They had to have the 
illegitimacy provision as the Senator from North Carolina stated, 
Senator Faircloth. They conceded to the Senate position to allow an 
option to the States to do that. The one concession that we gave--and 
it is a minor one--is on the family cap provision which is, once you 
have gotten onto the welfare role, any additional children you have 
while on welfare you do not get additional dollars for additional 
children. Several States have implemented that program. What we have 
said in this bill is that there is an opt out.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Chair for his indulgence.
  We allow the States to opt out of the requirement of a family cap. 
That may sound tough. We say that you have to have a family cap 
provision in your welfare. But you can pass legislation in your 
legislature signed by the Governor that would remove you from that 
requirement. In actuality, what this provision does, since, as a result 
of the Brown amendment legislatures and Governors have to pass bills to 
implement and spend this money, what we in a sense require is a vote on 
this provision in the legislature. Since the legislature is going to 
act anyway, all we say here is that the legislature has to make a 
decision whether to allow a family cap or not, and, if they say no 
family cap, the family cap goes out. If they want it, it goes in. All 
we do is force the decision. That is hardly a burdensome addition to 
this legislation.
  We have all sorts of terrific reforms on child support enforcement 
and maternity establishment and absentee parents. All were in the 
Senate bill. All were heartily supported by both sides of the aisle. 
All are in the conference report.
  Nutrition programs--in the Senate bill we had a block grant option 
for States for food stamps. That was not very popular on the Democratic 
side of the aisle. Many Members did not like the option for food stamps 
that passed the Senate and objected to it. We have 

[[Page S19143]]
reduced the opportunity for States to get into a block grant by putting 
up very stringent accountability requirements for fraud and error 
rates, tough error rates than frankly most States will be able to meet. 
So the open ended allowance for block granting food stamps has been 
really drawn back;
  Again, it is something that moves to the Democrat side of the aisle 
on this bill.
  In return for that, the House did not want to block grant the food 
stamps, but they wanted to block grant nutritional programs for 
schools, a hotly debated topic. So what we did there is allow a seven-
State demonstration project for block granting school lunch programs, a 
very narrow block granted program with very tough requirement on the 
State.
  We added back, I might add, in response to the Senator from 
Massachusetts, who said that we dramatically reduced nutrition 
funding--and, again, this is where maybe the haste in bringing this 
bill to the floor resulted in faulty information getting into the hands 
of Senators. We added back $1.5 billion to nutrition programs, the 
exact amount that many Senators who had been negotiating on this 
welfare bill on the Democratic side of the aisle asked for--$1.5 
billion was asked for; $1.5 billion was put in the nutritional 
programs.
  SSI. This was an interesting area of debate for me because I have 
worked on this issue now for close to 4 years and was a very 
contentious issue when Congressman McCrery from Louisiana and 
Congressman Kleczka from Wisconsin and I broached this situation in the 
Ways and Means Committee, and we have come a long way since then. In 
fact, we came so far that the SSI provisions that are included in this 
bill were the same SSI provisions that were included in the Democratic 
alternative welfare bill. There was not an amendment in the Chamber 
discussing the reduction of the number of children, drug addicts, 
alcoholics who qualify for SSI.
  I have heard in some of the reports, criticisms from some now saying 
that we cut children off SSI. I would just suggest that the same 
children that are removed from the SSI rolls under this bill were the 
same children that were removed from SSI under the bill that I believe 
every Member of the other side of the aisle voted for, their own 
substitute--same language.
  So there is no argument there, I do not believe, unless there is a 
newfound argument. Very legitimate change in the SSI Program due to a 
court decision which we have discussed on the floor many times. We 
have, in fact, loosened the provisions in this bill from the provision 
that passed the Senate just a few months ago.
  We said with respect to noncitizens in SSI that they would never be 
eligible for SSI until they had worked 40 quarters and would be 
eligible through the Social Security System. We now allow for people 
who are noncitizens, legal noncitizens to qualify for SSI benefits if 
they become a citizen.
  So citizenship, something many Members on the Democratic side of the 
aisle voted for in an amendment that was here that was narrowly 
defeated in the Chamber, we have now conceded the point that they lost 
here on the Senate floor and loosened the eligibility requirements for 
SSI, another reason we have moved more toward them as opposed to away 
from them in this bill.
  One thing that we did add is we added to the SSI requirement for 
legal noncitizens--I should not say requirement, the SSI ineligibility 
for legal noncitizens, the State has an option as it did in the 
original bill to eliminate cash welfare, Medicaid and title 20 services 
if they so desire.
  If you look at probably the last argument that Members of the other 
side will have in searching for reasons not to vote for this 
legislation, it will be that we end the tie between welfare, people on 
AFDC and Medicaid. For the clarification of Members, if you qualify for 
AFDC, you automatically as a result of your eligibility for AFDC become 
eligible for an array of benefits--food stamps, Medicaid, potentially 
housing.

  What we have done, since we are block granting Medicaid to the 
States, we are going to say to the States that they will be able to 
determine eligibility for their program. And that includes whether they 
want to make people who are on AFDC eligible for their program.
  Obviously, most Governors will tell you that they will. But even if 
they do not, which I think is unlikely, but even if they do not, the 
Congressional Budget Office has scored this provision, this decoupling 
of AFDC and Medicaid, have scored this provision on the following 
assumption: that all the children who now are on AFDC and qualify for 
AFDC will qualify for Medicaid under some other provision in law other 
than AFDC.
  So all of the children that are now qualified under AFDC will qualify 
anyway under some other avenue, and it is so scored. So when you hear 
the comments over here that all these children will be cut off of 
health care, not true, not according to the Congressional Budget Office 
and not according to at least many of the Governors' understanding of 
the current law.
  And again according to the Congressional Budget Office, slightly over 
half of the women in this program will automatically qualify for 
Medicaid from some other avenue other than AFDC. The rest will have to 
qualify under the new State standards. And as I said before, and I 
think Senator Hutchison from Texas said it very well, even though the 
Governor from Texas went to Yale and not the University of Texas or 
Penn State, I am sure the Governor of Texas and Governor of 
Pennsylvania have concern for their citizens and mothers trying to 
raise children in very difficult circumstances and recognize the need 
for the State to provide adequate medical attention. And to suggest 
otherwise I think goes back to the days of thinking of Southern 
Governors standing in front of the courthouse not letting people in 
because of the color of their skin. Those days are gone, and I would 
think that hearkening back to those kinds of days in this kind of 
debate does not lift the content of the debate to a credible level.
  That is it. Those are the differences between H.R. 4, as passed by 
the Senate, and H.R. 4 as before us now, hardly startling differences 
that would send people rushing to the exits to get away from this 
horribly transformed piece of legislation.
  This piece of legislation was crafted to pass the Senate with a 
margin very similar to the margin that passed originally, with those 
who would examine the content of this legislation and vote for it on 
its merits not because of pressure from the White House due to an 
expected veto.
  On the merits, this bill matches up very well with what passed just a 
very short time ago. On the merits, this is a bill that all of us can 
be proud of, that is going to change the dynamic for millions of 
citizens to put that ladder all the way down, to create opportunities 
for everyone in America to climb that ladder, as my grandfather and my 
father did, who lived in a company town, Tire Hill, PA, right at the 
mouth of a coal mine, got paid in stamps to use at the company store, 
and in one generation, in one generation in America lived to see their 
son in this Chamber. That is the greatness of America. That is what 
this whole welfare reform bill is all about. I can tell you because I 
was in those discussions. I have been in those discussions on the House 
floor 2 years ago. I was in those discussions here during the Senate 
debate, in the back rooms where we worked on all the details of this 
bill; we crafted the compromises, every step of the way from the 
original introduction of the House bill 2 years ago to the final 
compromise in the conference.
  I can tell you with a straight face that when we made decisions on 
what to put in this legislation, not just the principal, but the sole 
reason for changing the welfare system from what it is to what I hope 
it will be was not the dollars that were saved but the people it would 
help and the lives that would change for the better.
  This is not about balancing the budget. This is about creating 
opportunity and changing the face of America, changing the word 
``welfare'' from that disparaged term to one that we can all be proud 
of, that we can all say, yes, America can work to help everybody reach 
up for more.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  
[[Page S19144]]


                 ADJOURNMENT UNTIL 10:15 A.M. TOMORROW

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate stands 
adjourned until 10:15 a.m., December 22.
  Thereupon, the Senate, at 9:56 p.m., adjourned until Friday, December 
22, 1995, at 10:15 a.m.

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