[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 106 (Thursday, July 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H7992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WELFARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about welfare reform, because 
the action today taken by the House I think is very significant. In 
both bills that were debated today there were common elements.
  Both bills created a single welfare block grant, a cash block grant, 
to replace the traditional AFDC, aid to families with dependent 
children program. Both bills limited the spending for the block grant 
at $16.4 billion for this next fiscal year. Those bills created a $2 
billion contingency fund for States to use to meet their needs in time 
of recession. Both bills require work of welfare recipients, and both 
bills have a cutoff from welfare after 5 years.
  So what is the difference between the Republican leadership bill and 
the bill that I supported, the bipartisan Republican and Democrat 
compromise, the Castle-Tanner bill? The difference in the bills is 
very, very important.
  I supported a bill that requires work for all welfare recipients. I 
supported a bill that would limit the spending for welfare. I supported 
a bill that provides help to States in times of recession. I supported 
a bill that was better for kids but strict on their parents. And I 
supported a bill that met the Republican budget requirements to cut $53 
billion from the existing welfare program.
  While the Republican bill and the bill that I supported both had 
common elements of work, of limitation of spending, of assisting States 
in time of recession, there are some important differences in these 
bills, because the Republican bill requires work but does not provide 
the resources. Indeed, the CBO estimated that many States would not be 
able to comply with the work requirements. That becomes very important 
in a State like West Virginia with rural areas with high unemployment, 
where we want people to work but if we cannot provide the jobs for 
them, they are not able to work.
  I also supported a bill that says that after they cut somebody off--
because the bill that I supported has a lifetime period, they can only 
collect welfare benefits during their entire lifetime for no more than 
5 years--the bill that I supported, though, would still say that the 
children in those families could receive vouchers for their most 
important needs: diapers, for instance, nutritional supplements, those 
kinds of things. The Republican bill would not do that, would not 
permit the Federal funds to pay for that.

  The bill that I supported had help during a recession far more than 
the Republican bill, so that if this country goes into a recession and 
they have their caseload pickup, they are able to deal with it.
  Also, the Republican bill had an unfunded mandate estimated to be as 
high as $12 billion. That is saying to States, ``This is what we want 
you to do but we're not providing the resources.'' The bill that I 
supported put in resources for work, put in resources for job training, 
put in the resources necessary for child care.
  In West Virginia there are almost 37,000 families presently receiving 
aid to families with dependent children, the monthly check. There are 
115,000 people receiving food stamps who are on public assistance. 
There are another some 190,000 that are not on public assistance but 
receiving food stamps, for a total of 308,000 out of about 1.8 million.
  The fact is that in the Republican bill there were not adequate 
resources for the work requirement that everybody agrees ought to be in 
there. And for a rural area with high unemployment, requiring work but 
not supplying the resources so that people can work I think is not 
fair.
  There were no vouchers in the Republican bill. That means that when a 
family that has been on welfare for as long as 5 years, and that is the 
cutoff period, when that family has been on welfare for 5 years, there 
is no assistance for the children afterward and there is no help in a 
recession.
  Mr. Speaker, I supported a bill that very simply says that they have 
to work, requires work for welfare recipients. I supported the bill 
that says that they receive benefits for no more than 5 years, and 
after that they are cut off. I supported a bill that provides help to 
States in recession. I supported that bill that is better for kids, 
because it says that yes, they can continue to get vouchers even after 
their parents may have been cut off. And I supported a bill that meets 
the Republicans' own budget requirements that we cut $53 billion out of 
welfare.
  All of this was done in our bill. The only difference is, in our 
bipartisan compromise bill we were much kinder on kids, we were 
stricter on parents, we were tougher on requiring work. We actually put 
the resources in there. We saved the same amount of money that the 
Republicans said they wanted to save, but we did it in such a way that 
we were not being unnecessarily mean.
  I think that people want reform in welfare, I think that they want 
people to be working whenever possible, but I do not think they want 
this to be a war on children, either. So I hope that those issues come 
back to this House and we have another chance to vote again another 
day.

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