[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 27, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S2917]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              AMERICANS CONDEMNED TO FUTURES WITH NO HOPE

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I want to echo and underscore the 
remarks of my good colleague from Arizona. I do not know of any issue 
in the country for which there is more unanimity or agreement than the 
current status of our welfare programs. You can go to any community, 
any State, any region, any city, and, as I said, there is a unanimity 
that this program has failed.
  Sometimes in the discussions, we fail to acknowledge what that means. 
What that means is that hundreds of thousands of Americans have been 
condemned to stunted futures with no hope, no real education, no real 
prospect for opportunity in a life as we have come to know to be 
synonymous with being an American.
  You can do anything as long as it is different and it would be 
better. Every statistic that we have endeavored to improve with these 
massive welfare programs, with the exception of one piece of data, is 
worse today and not just a little worse, but dramatically so. Every 
condition of the target of the welfare programs is worse, not better. 
We have higher teenage pregnancies, we have more single-member 
households, we have less scores in our education programs. It is all 
worse.
  What makes it even more difficult to comprehend is that we have spent 
more of the Treasury of America on the War on Poverty than we spent on 
the Second World War, the First World War, Vietnam, Korea, and the 
Persian Gulf combined. We, essentially, prevailed on those battles, but 
we have lost the war on poverty. That means that there are millions of 
Americans today for whom the future is bleak, and we owe our fellow 
citizens more than this condemnation that we have created in our own 
country.
  To put in context a response, a contemporary response, the President 
of the United States went to the American people in 1992 and, in his 
successful bid for the Presidency, said, ``This condition must stop. 
This condition must come to an end. Welfare as we know it will not 
continue.''
  He was elected President. He had a majority in the House and the 
Senate, and in the 103d Congress, the Clinton Congress, nothing 
happened. Welfare, as we know it, is as it is--unchanged.
  Then we come to the 104th Congress and this new majority, and an 
extensive Welfare Reform Act was passed in the House and in the Senate 
and sent to the President, the President who had promised the American 
people that he would end welfare as we know it. Instead, what he ended 
was welfare reform in the dark of the evening when he vetoed the 
Welfare Reform Act, which he has now done twice.

  So you have to begin to get the picture that if you did not do 
anything when you were in charge of the Congress and then you vetoed 
welfare reform twice subsequently, there may be a lack of interest in 
true welfare reform.
  He is running political advertising as we speak today in the Nation's 
capital, and that advertising says that he is for welfare reform. I 
only suggest to the American people, at least to this point, there is a 
massive difference between the rhetoric and the words of the campaign 
and the actions and the deeds of governments, because we are today 
going into the final year of this administration, and there is no 
welfare reform, there is only a record of blocking and stopping.
  The bill that went out of the Senate had over 80 votes, Republican 
and Democrat. He claimed it should be bipartisan. It was, but still 
vetoed, stopped.
  At the end of the day--and I am going to yield in a moment to the 
Chair--at the end of the day, this is all about American citizens. I do 
not think history is going to look very kindly on America for what it 
did to these people across our land, mostly in our large cities. They 
are virtual ghettos, prisons from which escape is almost impossible, 
and that should guide our actions. These programs should be changed if 
we care about our fellow citizens.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I will be able to take your post 
for a moment. I know you want to make some remarks as well.
  Mr. INHOFE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coverdell). The Chair recognizes the 
Senator from Oklahoma.

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