[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S115]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE PRESIDENT'S VETO OF THE WELFARE REFORM BILL

  Mr. DASCHLE. The majority leader talked about his disappointment at 
the decision of the President to veto the welfare bill. Let me say, Mr. 
President, that I am very pleased with the action taken by the 
President yesterday.
  The majority leader characterized the conference report as virtually 
similar to the Senate-passed bill. The majority leader did not note 
that the President said he could support the Senate-passed bill prior 
to the time it went to conference. He did not mention that there was a 
significant level of bipartisan support for that bill as it left the 
Senate, controversial in many ways as it was.
  We all recognize the need for reform. We all recognize that we have 
to build upon the reforms that we enacted over the last 10 years. We 
all recognize that we want to find ways to make work pay. But we also 
ought to recognize that we should not be punishing children as we 
attempt to do that. We also ought to recognize that in the name of 
flexibility we should not simply give carte blanche to States to renege 
on the responsibilities that every State must have to ensure that there 
is a welfare system that works.
  No mention was made in the majority leader's remarks of the fact that 
there was no requirement in the conference report on welfare for the 
States to actually use for welfare purposes the Federal dollars that 
they are being provided for welfare. Under the provisions in the 
conference report, if they wanted to use them for infrastructure, they 
would be able to do that. If they wanted to use them for any other 
purpose they might have in their State budgets, there would be no 
prohibition on doing that.
  You can talk about maintenance of effort. We actually reduced the 
level of maintenance of effort with no other requirement. By 
maintenance of effort we are simply asking the States, in coming years, 
to live up to the level of benefits they now provide.
  Not only are they not required to live up to 100 percent of the 
benefits that they are now providing, the help that they are providing 
in whatever ways to children, the people who are attempting to break 
out of poverty, out of welfare, but the conference report would 
actually give them a license to drop from 100 percent down to 25 
percent with no expectation in the future of how they will meet the 
requirements that they already have noted and have accumulated in their 
welfare budgets today.
  There is no requirement in the conference-passed version of the bill 
to tell a welfare recipient who is waiting for some form of assistance 
that they will be receiving assistance at a certain time. In current 
law that time limit is 45 days. A State or county has to respond within 
45 days. There is no such requirement in the current bill.
  A prospective recipient of some form of assistance would have to wait 
6 months, maybe have to wait 9 months, a year, 2 years. There is no 
limit on the extent to which recipients would have to wait for help.
  So there are a significant number of very major differences between 
what we proposed in the work-first legislation, what we even passed in 
the U.S. Senate, and what came back as a conference report.
  We want to make work pay. We want to ensure that children are not 
punished. We want to ensure that there is adequate funding for the 
kinds of things that we know we must do. Frankly, the higher we go in 
welfare savings, the more concerned I am that all we are really doing 
is creating the pool of resources necessary to pay for the huge tax cut 
that Republicans continue to insist be a part of any budget.
  I do not know how we can do more in all the areas that we have agreed 
upon in the budget negotiations, whether it is in child care, whether 
it is in providing adequate nutrition, whether it is in providing real 
skilled opportunities for those who are on welfare today, job skills 
and training skills and the things that would make them more 
employable, how we can do all of that, and still save $60 billion, 
which coincidentally just happens to be an amount that would be very 
helpful in creating the pool necessary to make the tax cut work in 
current budget deliberations.
  So, Mr. President, what the President vetoed is a far cry from what 
Democrats had proposed. It is a significant departure from what the 
Senate had gone on record in support of. I must say, were we to bring 
the bill back in its current form, we would have more than enough votes 
necessary to sustain the veto the President demonstrated yesterday.
  So we are prepared--because we are not satisfied with the status quo 
either--to go back to work to find ways to address the significant 
deficiencies that currently exist in this bill. Let us make sure that 
we can find a bipartisan way to address welfare reform prior to the end 
of the year. But let us do it right. Let us ensure that the guarantees 
for children are there. Let us ensure that we find a way to make work 
pay. Let us ensure that we are able to provide the child care necessary 
so that parents can leave their homes for work. Let us ensure that--as 
much as we want to provide flexibility to the States--that they are not 
going to renege on their responsibility they have to make sure we have 
the infrastructure in place to ensure that this is more than just a 
piece of paper that we all feel good about on the day we vote again.
  I yield the floor.

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