[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 106 (Thursday, July 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H8003-H8010]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            FAMILIES FINISH LAST IN GOP WELFARE REFORM BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today we passed the Republican majority's 
welfare reform bill, H.R. 3734. I think this triumph of the Republican 
majority again proves what we have said all along, that Democrats put 
families and children first, Republicans put families and children 
last. The Republicans are at least open and consistent, I appreciate 
their honesty. They are open and consistent in their extremism. As 
Speaker Gingrich has said, politics is war without blood. The 
Republicans have declared war on families and children and they do not 
hide it. They have declared war on working people. They do not hide it. 
They are consistent. The American people will have a clear choice in 
November. There is no camouflaging of their intentions. The Republicans 
have done more than they said they would do but they clearly have laid 
out a pattern which shows that they are not for families, they are not 
for children. They use the rhetoric, they use the slogans, but the 
proof is in their actions. Today's welfare reform legislation certainly 
proves that.
  I am all for welfare reform. I am in favor of reforming any program 
and any function of government, in fact. That is part of our vital 
function here, to keep the process of reform going. There is not a 
single government program or a single function of government that 
cannot stand improvement. The process of reform should be a permanent, 
ongoing process, and welfare certainly needed reforming. It did not 
need reforming because the poor people have ruined it because poor 
people do not administer anything. Poor people have no power. Poor 
people have no say in how we have administered any program, and 
certainly they have had no vital function here in the administration of 
the welfare program. If the welfare program needs reform and needed 
reform, and I think it did, it is because the people who are running 
it, including the policymakers in our Congress and our various State 
legislatures and city councils, it needed reform because we have not 
operated properly. Did it need such extremism as we have seen

[[Page H8004]]

today, in today's Republican welfare reform bill?
  It can best be described, I think, and I will read this little 
description from the Democratic whip notice. I think it describes it 
quite well and summarizes some of the problems quite well. The Welfare 
Budget Reconciliation for Fiscal Year 1997 is what the title of the 
bill is.
  It creates a welfare block grant to replace the current Aid to 
Families with Dependent Children and three other related programs. The 
bill is tough on kids and weak on work. More than 1 million children 
will be pushed into poverty, and in 70 percent of these families, one 
of the parents is working. According to the Congressional Budget 
Office, the Republican bill provides $10 billion less than what States 
need to meet its work requirements. The bill has certain requirements 
for work but there is a need for funding for those requirements and 
they have $10 billion less than what is needed by the requirements of 
the bill according to the Congressional Budget Office. This bill makes 
it less likely that child support orders will be updated regularly. It 
actually weakens current law on deadbeat parents while increasing 
Federal costs. In addition, emergency funds for use during a recession 
are inadequate.
  There was also an amendment to the bill which passed which Members 
ought to know about which limits the lifetime use of food stamps. There 
is a lifetime limit of 3 months for the use of food stamps. 
Individuals, families who have fallen into hard times for a brief 
period and need to eat, something as basic as food will be denied. You 
have got 3 months for your lifetime, regardless of your circumstances, 
the Federal Government will help you eat and stay alive for only 3 
months. We do not say we have 3 months, or that there is a limit on the 
amount of earthquake assistance we give. If people live in zones where 
they have earthquakes, no matter how many earthquakes you have, the 
Federal Government will always rise to the occasion and there will be 
aid for people who suffer from disasters that are natural disasters, 
like earthquakes. No matter how many hurricanes or tornadoes come, 
there will be Federal aid for people who are in the path of a hurricane 
or tornadoes. There will be Federal aid for people who are in flood 
plain zones. Even if they have had floods there before and people know 
the danger, and they continue to build houses there, there is still 
Federal aid. There is no limit on the amount of Federal aid you can 
get.
  Over the last 3 years, we have paid out quite a bit of Federal aid 
for natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes. But 
individual disasters, family disasters, which are economic and which 
will come, we all admit. We have a fluctuating economy, an economy 
which is constantly in motion, and there will be temporary losers. That 
is a certainty. But the temporary losers now will have a limit on how 
much you can get in food stamps. The most elementary and the least 
thing that the Federal Government can do for you is to give you an 
opportunity to eat. That is going to be limited. That is what this bill 
does.
  I am not going to spend all my time talking just about this bill. I 
want to bring a commonsense perspective to the whole welfare debate. 
This great triumph of the Republican majority today which will 
certainly be repeated in the Senate, and we can expect this bill to go 
the President's desk. He has said he will veto it as it is, but the 
perspective that should have been brought to the discussion and the 
debate today, we could not bring it there because there was so little 
time to debate the bill.
  I have had a lot of comments from people who watch these special 
orders, and there are a lot of good people out there who watch them. I 
am always surprised at the number of people who say that they do watch 
the special orders. They want to know why you are talking in an empty 
room.

                              {time}  1830

  Why bother to talk to an empty Chamber? Two things: They do not know 
for most of the time debate is going on and during the regular session, 
the Chamber is almost empty.
  But more important than that, this is an institution, a special order 
institution, which allows us to bring some perspective to the debate, 
to talk in terms which will allow the American people to understand 
what is going on here. It is an opportunity for those of us who care 
about making commonsense decisions and making reasonable decisions with 
the best information that we can get.
  We take advantage of this opportunity to give real information to 
people. We do not talk about the things that are really important in 
this country. We do not give the time we need to the life and death 
kinds of public policy decisionmaking.
  People think that food, clothing, and shelter are the three 
necessities of life, and that is the way it is and that is the way it 
always has been. Well, food, clothing, and shelter are three basic 
necessities, but information to make informed decisions is as vital as 
food, clothing, and shelter.
  In a democracy, the public policy decisions made will often determine 
whether you will get food, clothing, and shelter. Certainly nothing 
offers a better example of that than the bill that passed today, which 
deprives people who are in desperate circumstances of food stamps.
  So I am here because this is an opportunity to help bring a 
perspective to the situation that I could not bring otherwise.
  Why did I not talk during the debate? I talked during the debate for 
2 minutes. I had to beg for 2 minutes. That is the best I could get. 
You can understand if there are 435 Members of the House, and seldom do 
435 Members of the House all want to speak on the same subject, let us 
say 200 Members of the House want to speak, and they are given 1 minute 
apiece, that is 200 minutes.
  I think we should have the 200 minutes. Maybe we should all get 5 
minutes apiece. You need at least 5 minutes to make a decent statement. 
We cannot get 5 minutes apiece if 200 people want to speak on a 
subject.
  In fact, you might be interested to know that on this very important 
topic of welfare reform, where we are making vital decisions about the 
entitlement to subsistence, this is a matter that was decided in the 
1930's under Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, when the Social 
Security Act was passed. We gave people an entitlement to help when 
they are in desperate need. Families were given this entitlement.
  The Aid to Families with Dependent Children is an entitlement which 
in essence says children in need must be helped and the Federal 
Government is going to stand behind you and guarantee that help. The 
States are obligated to make their contribution in this process.
  So the entitlement is taken away by this legislation. Something as 
vital as an entitlement is gone. I am happy to report that the 
entitlement for Medicaid, which they are trying to steal also, the 
Republicans are quite honest, they do not pretend to care about 
families and children. They put families last. Democrats put families 
first. And they have not camouflaged their intentions. They wanted to 
take away the entitlement for Medicaid as well as take away the 
entitlement for Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
  When we take away the entitlement for Aid to Families with Dependent 
Children, we begin to chop away at the substance and foundation for 
Medicaid, because if you are not deemed eligible for Aid to Families 
with Dependent Children--and the States have a block grant, they have a 
great deal of freedom and leeway in making the decisions about who 
actually gets designated as a person in need--then they will be able to 
lower their Medicaid bill by refusing to certify that people are 
eligible for AFDC.
  The families are eligible for help. So we have already begun to chip 
away at Medicaid, which is the first and most important step this 
Nation has ever made toward universal health care.
  So, as I say, we had 2 hours of debate allotted for this, 1 hour for 
the Republicans and 1 hour for the Democrats. Two hours allotted for 
debate, in a Chamber which has 435 people. So you can see how important 
this institution is of special orders. When 435 people are there, there 
is no time to actually give a discussion which makes sense.
  I think we should allocate more time for debate on the floor. I do 
not know why we cannot spend more time in session. You might be 
interested to know that Roll Call, the newspaper here

[[Page H8005]]

which is focused primarily on the coverage of activities in the 
Congress, Roll Call does periodically a little chart called Congress at 
Work, and they give the work load figures for the first half of the 
year.

  Here is a comparison of Congress' effort so far this session against 
the same period in 1994. To compare the Senate and the House, they have 
the number of days that we have been in session, the House of 
Representatives, with 435 people who need time to deliberate and speak.
  The House has been in session for 82 days this year, from January 3 
to June 30, 82 days in session. The Senate with only 100 people has 
been in session for 90 days. The House, with 435 people who have to 
have time to deliberate and to debate, has spent 615 hours in session 
from January 3 to June 30 with its 435 members, while the Senate has 
spent 651 hours, more hours with only 100 members.
  So just that little item tells you that something is very strange 
about the way we operate. Are we afraid of debate? Are we afraid of 
discussion in the House? Why can there not be more time allotted on the 
floor for an issue as vital as life and death matters related to food 
stamps, related to children, aid to families with dependent children.
  That is just what it says, it is aid to families with dependent 
children. No matter how many stereotypes we have thrown at us about 
welfare mothers, and there are excesses and abuse, it is primarily a 
program to help children. If they do not have children, they do not get 
AFDC. The money is really there for children.
  We have taken away the entitlement, the Federal Government's 
participation guaranteeing that everybody will get it. We left it to 
the States and the localities to decide who gets it, who does not, and 
how much.
  We have made a radical change. This is an extreme change. We could 
have had welfare reform without such extremism. We did not have to go 
to that extreme, but we have taken an extreme step, and we only had 2 
hours of general debate on the floor.
  There was another hour to debate a Democratic substitute, 30 minutes 
on one side and 30 minutes on the other. So you have these far-reaching 
public policy decisions which will mean life and death for numerous 
families, numerous individuals in the future. If not life and death, 
for many others it will mean a lot of suffering that cannot be relieved 
in some reasonable way. And all we had was 2 hours to debate. So we 
need an opportunity to set this thing in perspective.
  I would like to put it in the context of other developments in this 
104th Congress. Let us take a look at this great triumph of the 
Republican majority today. They passed a bill which is going to hurt 
families and children.
  They put families and children last, as they have done from the very 
beginning. We had the same phenomenon in the fall when the school lunch 
programs were being discussed. They started with their attack on school 
lunches, and, to some degree, they relented because we exposed them. 
They started with their attach on education programs, title I. They 
wanted to cut it by $1.1 billion. Head Start they wanted to cut by 
$300,000. Many other education programs are wiped out completely, a 
total of more than $5 billion in cuts.
  But we took that case to the American people, and the voters out 
there in their districts let every Member of Congress, regardless of 
their party, know that those education cuts were not acceptable. So 
they backed down and they did not cut it. But they did make the attempt 
in their war against families, in their war against children. They had 
to capitulate.
  Even Hitler's Wehrmacht had to capitulate in a few cases in its early 
days. They thought they had victory after victory after victory, and 
when they invaded Russia, it looked as though they were going to march 
all the way to Moscow. But because of the resistance in certain 
pockets, they had to capitulate and yield. Finally you had the 
counterattack at the doors of Moscow, which sent them into a whole 
series of defeats and left them in the Russian winter.
  But despite this capitulation temporarily on education, the are back 
again this year with more cuts on education. The war on children, the 
war on students, the war on education continues. They are not saying 
anymore, the Republican majority is not as extreme as they were when 
they started at the beginning this 104th session. If you recall at the 
beginning of the 104th session, the Republicans proposed to abolish the 
Department of Education, eliminate it, wipe it out, send a signal 
across the country that the Federal Government has no role in 
education.
  Then there was the assault on workers. In the Contract With America, 
the Republicans never said that they were going to assault workers. 
They never said they were going to go after the Occupational Safety and 
Health Administration. OSHA was never attacked in the Contract With 
America. But the minute they gained power the attack on OSHA began, to 
wipe out the safety regulations and the agency responsible for the 
safety and health of workers all over the country.

  The the attack on Davis-Bacon, which calls for prevailing wages to be 
paid on Federal construction programs underway in any neighborhood, any 
city across the country, to pay people what the local wages are. There 
is nothing unreasonable about Davis-Bacon, but they attacked Davis-
Bacon.
  They attacked the National Labor Relations Board, which is 
responsible for guaranteeing that there is a collective bargaining 
process and it moves along smoothly.
  Finally, they have recently attacked the overtime pay you get. The 
Republican want your overtime pay. The Fair Labor Standards Act, they 
want to change in order to force people to accept compensatory time in 
private industry instead of a cash check. The Republican want your 
overtime. They have come for your overtime.
  So they have been very consistent. The attack on families, the attack 
on children, has been very consistent. Republicans put families and 
children last, and they have not hidden that fact.
  Who do they put first? Well, you have got evidence clearly in the 
budget. They have not attacked spending for defense. They increased 
that by $13 billion, at a time when they were determined to balance the 
budget and were making all of these cuts in education programs and 
school lunch programs, in Head Start.
  They were making these cuts in the name of fiscal responsibility. 
They wanted to balance the budget in order to eliminate the possibility 
that we would continue to have a rising national debt. The pace of the 
national debt started by Ronald Reagan in a Republican administration, 
they wanted to end that.
  We are all in favor of that. We do not want to continue to do what 
Ronald Reagan started. The deficit was about $60 billion in the last 
year of Jimmy Carter's administration. In the last year of Ronald 
Reagan's administration, it was up to $400 billion. That is the annual 
deficit. This means under Ronald Reagan all those years, the deficit 
kept increasing.
  The national debt, of course, goes up as a result of each year's 
deficit. So we are all in favor of ending that. But do you have to 
attack children and do you have to attack families in order to end the 
increase in the national debt?
  Why not cut the defense budget, or at least leave it as it is. Why 
add $13 billion to the defense budget, as we are doing in the present 
budget that recently passed? Why go after families in the name of 
cutting the budget, when you do not go after farm subsidy programs, 
farmers home loan mortgages?
  Billions of dollars have gone down the drain in farmers home loan 
mortgages. Nobody bothers to collect them, it is just a gift. Billions 
of dollars have been given to the farmers, and nobody is out there 
trying to collect them anymore in the farmers home loan mortgage 
program.
  Farm subsidy programs, paying farmers not to plant crops, not to plow 
up the soil, and various other little subsidy programs, have given 
farmers across the country a handout for years. We do not propose to 
cut those handouts drastically.
  But Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which is about 1 percent 
of the total budget, has been under attack. There is a hysteria that 
has been generated about welfare and giving aid to families with 
dependent children. So we rushed into scapegoating, we rushed into 
persecuting the poor. Welfare reform was needed, but you did not need

[[Page H8006]]

to persecute the poor. You did not need such extremism.
  Let us look at this matter again in context. Welfare reform has been 
touted as a way to put the bums to work, take people off the dole and 
put people to work. That is a big lie, because most of the people on 
welfare are not able to go to work.

                              {time}  1845

  The whole theory behind Aid to Families with Dependent Children is 
you are giving the aid to the mother who is there to take care of the 
child. If you did not have a mother to take care of the child, you 
offer day care for those mothers who go to work while they still have 
young children. Well, you have to pay for the day care then. You offer 
job training. You have to pay for that.
  The important thing is that the whole notion that people are out 
there on the dole and they are there because they do not want to go to 
work means that there are jobs out there and that they should use those 
jobs, or that they are able to go to work and it is cheaper for them to 
go to work. Leave the child with a day care program and we, the public, 
will pay for the day care program and go into a training program if you 
do not qualify for a job now. The public will pay for the training 
program.
  And finally you get a job. The question is, Will there be jobs there 
when you go through the training program, make the arrangements for 
your child's day care? Will there be jobs? No, we do not have jobs in 
the places where we have the largest concentrations of people on aid to 
families with dependent children.
  Let us assume we did have the jobs. If the Republicans cared about 
families, if they did not put families last, they would not be opposing 
the minimum wage. We would like for the jobs to pay enough for the 
mother to be able to go to work, put the child in a day care program an 
pay part of that, I guess, and be able to take care of the family.
  I suppose if they do not have health benefits on the job, they have 
to pay for their health benefits. But in order for this to happen, they 
have to have something above the minimum wage pay.
  The current minimum wage pay will give an individual about $8,400 a 
year if you work every hour of a 40-hour week of the year. Never lose 
time. Never lose pay. You work every hour for a 40-hour week every week 
of the year, and you come out with $8,400. That will not support a 
mother and child. That will not support a mother and child.
  We propose a minimum wage which would help matters a little bit more, 
where an individual would be making, instead of the $4.25 an hour, 
which produces $8,400, an individual would be making $5.15 an hour, a 
90-cent increase, which would be granted over a 2-year period. which 
does not improve things that much but it is one small step forward. You 
would be making a little more than $9,000 a year if you worked 40 hours 
a week every week of the year.
  So minimum wage makes sense if you really are sincere about wanting 
to provide work opportunities for people who are on welfare. Minimum 
wage makes sense. Minimum wage coupled with health care makes even more 
sense. Really, we need to give that combination of the minimum wage 
plus a guarantee of health care in order to really make sense for 
families that are poor with children to take are of.
  Aid to Families with Dependent Children makes a person automatically 
eligible. If the receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children, they 
are automatically eligible for Medicaid. If they are not receiving 
AFDC, they are not eligible for Medicaid anymore. They lose their 
health care benefits.
  Are you going to get a minimum wage job that also has a health care 
benefit? Most of them do not have health care packages. Most minimum 
wage jobs are the ones that are rudimentary and not in a structure 
which would provide for a minimum wage plus a health care package. So 
many people find ways to stay on welfare just to hold on to their 
health care.

  The Republicans have made it clear that they do not really believe in 
work because they are not willing to pay a minimum wage. They are not 
willing to reward work. Work at the very bottom at least deserves a 
minimum wage as a reward.
  Now, the majority in this House finally capitulated to common sense. 
The people out there have a lot of common sense. If more of that could 
be communicated in a more intense form, we would have a great 
improvement of what happens here in Washington. But the problem is 
America's common sense does not come through often.
  When it came to the minimum wage, people clearly understood that, if 
we care about people and care about work and if we want to promote the 
work ethic, then the guy on the street, the person on the street out 
there understood that the least we could do is raise the minimum wage 
from $4.25 an hour over a 2-year period to $5.15. That is a minimum. 
That is the least we could do. That is a tiny improvement, to go from 
$4.25 an hour to $5.15 an hour.
  Most American workers are making more than that, but there are more 
than 10 million who are making minimum wage only. That number is 
growing, of course, as we move from more people into a service economy 
where minimum wage is more likely to take place.
  So America's common sense was communicated up through the focus 
groups, up through the public opinion polls. It was so strong and so 
clear and so consistent that even a Republican Party that had sworn 
that it did not want to pass the minimum wage had to relent. So we 
passed a minimum wage bill here in the House after some people said it 
would never happen. Some Republican leaders said over their dead bodies 
would we even put the bill on the floor.
  But America's common sense and pressure and communication of their 
common sense to the Members of Congress resulted in the passage of a 
minimum wage bill here on the floor of this House. And the Senate 
finally got around to it. They passed a minimum wage bill also.
  But what is happening now? During the same period where we are waging 
war against families by reducing food stamps, by taking away the 
entitlement for Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the 
Republicans are holding the minimum wage bill hostage. It has passed 
the Senate and it has passed the House. They are determined it will not 
go unless we pay ransom for it.
  Let me just read from the communications from our leader, Dick 
Gephardt. It is called Outrage of the Week. And I agree with the 
communications leaflet that comes from our Democrat leader's office:

       When you're losing the game, change the rules: Republican 
     leaders ignore majority vote, put stranglehold on minimum 
     wage.
       Republicans proved this week that they will go to any 
     length to stop 12 million American workers from getting a 
     modest raise in their wages.
       After the Senate voted overwhelmingly 74 to 24 to pass a 
     bill increasing the minimum wage by 90 cents, one month after 
     the House had approved a similar bill, Senate Republican whip 
     Don Nickles intervened to stop the bill dead in its tracks. 
     Nickles told reporters Tuesday that he wouldn't allow the 
     minimum wage bill to proceed to the next legislative step 
     until he got his way on a health insurance bill that's 
     currently bogged down by Republican attempts to add a special 
     perk for the Golden Rule Insurance Co.
       Said Nickles: ``My intention is to see that we don't have 
     conferees appointed on the minimum wage bill until after we 
     have conferees appointed to the health bill.''
       Republican leaders made good on their threat Thursday, 
     blocking the minimum wage bill from going to conference by 
     trying to attach unacceptable strings like the controversial 
     health bill.

  Now, the health bill is one item on the agenda which has a lot of 
good pieces in there. Everybody is in favor of a health bill which 
allows you to move your portability of your health care package and 
plan from one place to another. The end to discrimination on people 
with preexisting health conditions.
  There are a number of good things in there. But in that health bill, 
when they talk about a perk for the Golden Rule Insurance Co., they are 
talking about the medical savings accounts, medical savings accounts 
which will allow certain healthy people to opt out of the Medicare 
system as it is now and receive a reward for being healthy.
  That is good, receiving a reward for being healthy. But the whole 
principle of the Medicare insurance is based on a pool of people being 
there. If we take the people out of the pool that are the

[[Page H8007]]

healthiest and leave only the sickest people, it means that the pool is 
going to be paying money to take care of the sickest people and the 
pool is not supported by the insurance premiums paid by the people who 
are healthiest. The whole principle of the insurance pool collapses.
  If we would allow that in other insurance situations, we would find 
insurance companies would go out of business. But we are going to 
destroy Medicare. The same people who said they want to save it will 
destroy it by placing this special item in there, and that is one 
insurance company which specializes in medical savings accounts. That 
is Golden Rule Insurance Co.
  So Senator Nickles wants to hold the minimum wage bill hostage 
because he wants to make room for the Golden Rule Insurance Co. to 
capitalize on a provision to have medical savings accounts.

       Why is Senator Nickles so determined to sink this minimum 
     wage bill?

  I am continuing to read from the Democratic leader's communication.

       Why is Senator Nickles so determined to sink this minimum 
     wage bill? Here's a countdown of the three key reasons:
       He's mad because he lost a key vote on the Republican 
     amendment to gut the minimum wage bill, by denying the 
     increase to millions of otherwise eligible workers. A similar 
     amendment had also been defeated in the House in May.

  What Senator Nickles had proposed is the elimination of small 
businesses. A large number of small businesses would be eliminated. And 
that is where we have millions of the people who earn a minimum wage, 
no higher than minimum wage. They are working in small businesses. He 
wanted to eliminate the requirement that small businesses pay minimum 
wages and trap all of these people in a situation where they would not 
be covered by the minimum wage. He lost that vote in the Senate.
  Another reason that Senator Nickles is upset is, Republicans don't 
believe in the minimum wage. They just do not believe in it. As I said 
before, they do not hide their feelings. They do not hide their 
policies.
  They have been quite clear to the American people that they are 
against families and children, they are against poor people, and they 
are against working people. They do not hide it. They started the year 
by saying we do not want the minimum wage, and some people said over my 
dead body will we even put the minimum wage bill on the floor.
  So the Republicans do not believe, as the Republican Senate aide said 
to the New York Times on Tuesday, ``Republicans don't believe in 
raising the minimum wage. We voted for it because it was killing us.''
  As I said before, common sense was killing the Republicans, common 
sense that was communicated by the people out there back to the 
Senators, back to the Members of the House, which said we see the 
minimum wage as being a fair proposition. If you care about work, you 
want to reward work. If you want to encourage the work ethic in 
America, then you have to pay a higher wage and have that wage be 
rewarded. So they had to respond. It was killing them.
  And finally, Senator Nickles is determined to sink the minimum wage 
for the following reason:

       Special interest money is just too good to pass up. Senator 
     Nickles' strategy is directed at two special interest groups, 
     both of which gave big bucks to the GOP. The first is the 
     Golden Rule Insurance Co., which would reap huge profits from 
     the medical savings account provision Republicans want to add 
     to the health bill. The second is business and industry 
     lobbyists, who loathe the minimum wage bill as much as 
     Republicans do. The New York Times confirmed this, reporting 
     Wednesday after the vote on the Republican amendment to gut 
     the minimum wage bill that Republicans said they hoped to use 
     yesterday's vote to win donations from small businesses.

  They are referring to the vote that took place in the Senate, which 
would have exempted small businesses, and one of the reasons was to win 
donations from the small businesses.
  This is a communication from the Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt, 
called ``Outrage of the Week.'' It is an outrage. It is outrageous the 
position that consistently is taken by the Republicans against 
families, putting families last, and against children.
  If we are going to set this welfare vote that took place today in 
perspective, what do we want poor people to do? If we are not going to 
help them by giving aid to children, then we need to provide jobs and 
job opportunities.

                              {time}  1900

  The first step is not there. There is no provision to increase the 
number of jobs. Let us assume that jobs are there. The jobs need to pay 
a living wage. A living wage is really above the present minimum wage 
plus a health care package. A health care package is a vital part of a 
living wage. A job is not a job of any substance for a family unless in 
addition to providing the minimum wage, it also provides the health 
care package. The Republicans are determined that neither one of those 
will be there.
  The welfare reform needed to take place. We needed to reform welfare. 
We needed to make better use of the dollars spent to help children. We 
needed to make better use and end waste in the way we handle our food 
stamps. There are a number of things about welfare reform that had to 
take place. But this welfare reform bill is an extremist bill.
  It starts with the very extreme step of eliminating the entitlement. 
Poor people are no longer guaranteed that the Federal Government will 
be there to give you help when it is needed. The Federal Government 
will be there to give you help if you are a victim of an earthquake. 
The Federal Government will be there to give you help if you are the 
victim of a flood. The Federal Government will be there if you are the 
victim of a hurricane, some other weather, which is proper, altogether 
fitting and proper that the Federal Government should be a participant 
in the process.
  Maybe the States should do more in helping hurricane victims 
themselves. They do not have any State or local provisions for that. 
Maybe the States should do more in being responsible for their 
earthquake victims. Maybe the States should do more to be responsible 
for their flood victims. The Federal Government should participate. 
Right now it is the primary participant in providing relief for people 
who suffer from natural disaster. So people who suffer from economic 
disaster deserve at least some help from the Federal Government, and we 
have taken away the Federal Government's participation.
  In perspective, this is consistent with what the Republicans have 
been doing. In perspective, their attack on education is another part 
of the problem. Educational opportunity must be provided to poor people 
if you want to guarantee that they do not have to ask the Federal 
Government or the State government or the local government for help.
  Let us provide some fishing lines. The statement that if you really 
want to feed a person, you do not keep supplying them with fish. You 
buy them a hook and line and teach them how to fish. Let us teach 
people how to fish.
  Let us follow the evidence that is clear that everybody who has an 
education in America is able to make a contribution back to both 
himself and the economy. Certainly when it comes to college graduates, 
this evidence is quite clear and overwhelming. Most college graduates 
are able to support themselves and also to pay income tax, which 
supports their government, pay income taxes and other taxes.
  College graduates, graduation up to now almost guarantees that you 
are going to get some kind of job. So why not have the Federal 
Government play a greater role in education instead of a lesser role? 
From our House Democratic leadership there is another communications 
which bears out my oft stated hypothesis that Republicans are the 
enemies of public education.
  Republicans are consistent, though. This is the way to help families, 
this is the way to help children. They do not want to do that. In this 
communication we call it the Republicans' raid on education.
  Republicans in Congress get an F. The GOP fails to meet growing 
educational needs of America's children. While the needs of our 
children and schools are increasing, the GOP Congress has failed to 
grasp this important reality. Indeed, at the end of the 1995-96 school 
year, the GOP Congress has failed America's children and has earned an 
F once again for failing the American educational system.

[[Page H8008]]

  Specifically, the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution narrowly passed 
in the House and Senate and the fiscal year 1997 Labor-HHS 
appropriations bill that the House will vote on this week, just the 
same old song from last year. This was a week ago, cutting back on 
programs important to educating our Nation's children when we need to 
be moving forward to meet their growing educational needs. Only this 
time it is a little better disguised than the cuts were in the previous 
budget.
  While Republicans claim to have moderated their course, the 
performance of the GOP Congress on education in 1996 is consistent with 
the extreme cuts in education that they voted on in 1995. Indeed, many 
of the education programs the GOP is proposing to cut, freeze, or 
eliminate this year are the same priority education programs that they 
tried to last year.
  Indeed, the record of the GOP Congress shows that rather than working 
to expand the access to a college education and to maintain Federal 
support for local schools, the GOP Congress continues to move in 
exactly the opposite direction. They have flunked in every aspect of 
meeting America's educational needs. While Republicans claim to freeze 
spending on education in the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution, the 
reality is that they do not understand the fundamentals of math. The 
fiscal year 1997 GOP budget resolution freezes spending on education 
and training programs below the fiscal 1996 level for the next 6 years 
and cuts spending on education by 21 percent in real terms by the year 
2002. Such a large 21-percent cut in real terms will result in deep 
cuts in services to children and education.
  Furthermore, the resolution provides no allowances for helping 
schools meet the challenge of projected enrollment increases of 12 
percent over the next decade.
  Republicans put families and children last. Republicans are against 
public education being used as a way to help people out of dependence 
on government at any level.
  There is a rumor that there is going to be a new initiative taken by 
the Republicans on education, that the Republican candidate for 
President is going to announce his new initiative next week or this 
weekend. I hope so. I hope that the Republicans will take the 
initiative on education and the attack on education, because we used to 
have far more bipartisan cooperation on education.
  There were differences in many areas but when it came to education, 
we sort of came together and understood that probably more important 
than any other function of our Government's local, State, and Federal 
governments is the function of education. Education has become even 
more important now that the world has changed and the competition in 
the world does not revolve around military strength and military 
hardware, military preparedness.
  Competition in the world revolves around the quality of education the 
population has, which enables that population to compete and be 
productive, which enables that population to understand the 
complexities of world trade and the complexities of modern life so that 
people themselves do not become a burden on their society because they 
are overwhelmed by the complexities.

  The only answer to that being overwhelmed by the complexities of 
modern life and the only avenue and instrument for being able to make 
yourself productive for yourself and make yourself productive so you 
can make a contribution to the society is education.
  Education was always the answer. Among the newly freed slaves, it was 
clearly understood in the African-American community that education was 
the answer. From the very beginning slaves understood that if the 
slavemasters had passed legislation that it was bad to teach them to 
read, prohibited the teaching of reading to the slaves, then it must be 
indeed a powerful weapon, this reading must be a powerful thing. 
Education must be a powerful thing.
  So it was understood by all that they wanted to have a piece of this 
education process, and it has been of value in the African-American 
community since then. The African-American community believes strongly 
that education is important. The problem is that there is a lot of 
confusion about how you guarantee that their children get an education. 
There are a lot of battles that have to be fought with the bureaucracy, 
especially in our big cities like New York, to guarantee that children 
are given an education which is going to be relevant to guarantee that 
children are given course work which makes them feel that their 
education is relevant.
  To guarantee that children are given some kind of course work and 
built into the curricula are items which will motivate those children, 
build up their self-esteem and make them feel that they are important 
and feel that they have some hope and feel that education is going to 
be important so that they themselves will contribute more than half of 
what is needed in that education process, regardless of what teachers 
do or what kind of equipment you have or what kind of schools you have. 
If the children are motivated, they will overcome, they will move 
forward.
  The big problem is that we do not have an education curriculum in 
most of our big cities that motivates children to begin with. Just as 
important as the motivation, of course, is the need for concrete 
opportunities to learn by providing a decent building, conducive to 
learning. The lighting in the school classroom has to be proper. The 
atmosphere in the school has to be safe. The water has to be free of 
lead and not poison the children.
  The ceilings have to be free of asbestos. We have a situation now 
where schools across the country are in serious trouble. Half the 
schools across the country have some kind of health hazard. The health 
of young people who attend these schools is jeopardized by the fact 
that an asbestos problem or lead in the water problem or a problem with 
the way the lighting is and the ventilation.
  The President recently announced an initiative, again, I hope the 
Republicans will join this initiative, an initiative to begin to offer 
some Federal help on school construction. It is long overdue. Half the 
school buildings in America need help, not just with repairs; a lot of 
them need to be torn down and rebuilt.
  The President before that announced an initiative in the State of the 
Union Message. In the State of the Union Message the President talked 
about wiring all the schools in America by the year 2000. He first 
talked about by the end of the year 20 percent of schools in California 
were going to be wired and they are using volunteers to accomplish a 
lot of this in the wiring process. I think that that objective and that 
estimated goal of the President with respect to California has proven 
true. They have gone on and done that. Twenty percent of the schools 
are wired.

                              {time}  1915

  But the big problem of wiring all the schools in America so that they 
can receive the kind of help that you get with the Internet going into 
the classrooms, the classrooms being able to have the latest 
educational technology, all of that is still to come. And we see on the 
horizon in many of the inner-city schools, like the schools in my 
district, no hope that that is going to happen unless you have more 
help from the Federal Government.
  Yes, volunteers may help to some extent, but I am not sure that in 
the context of a big city you are going to get enough of that to have 
any significance whatsoever in overcoming the problems faced by our 
schools that do not have proper wiring to be able to install the 
computers and be able to have the Internet and the educational 
technology that is needed to keep pace and guarantee that our children 
will get the benefits of the best and the latest in education.
  All of these things can happen only if you have some help with the 
construction and the physical environment that our schools exist in, so 
the President's initiative is welcome. I hope the Republicans will join 
the initiative.
  I do not think it is enough because it is talking about Federal 
Government picking up the interests on part of the cost of construction 
of schools. I think we need a grant program to jump-start our schools 
across the country and rebuild the infrastructure by giving maximum 
help instead of the minimum.
  But at least this is a start. The construction program offered by, 
proposed by, President Clinton begins the process, and I hope the 
Republicans will join us.

[[Page H8009]]

  Today we had our first planning meeting for National Education 
Funding Support Day. We joined last year in conjunction with the 
National Commission for the Education of African American Children. We 
had a National Education Funding Support Day last November. Today we 
launched the first planning meeting, and the effort will go forward 
this year.
  The date for the National Education Funding Support Day is October 
23. October 23 has been chosen because we want to have a whole month of 
activity, and October 23, National Education Funding Support Day, will 
kick it off. Citizens will be encouraged to go right through to 
National Education Week, which takes place in the middle of November. 
You have a month of activity designed to raise the level of awareness 
of the average American, the person out there on the street who is not 
a part of the education family.
  Yes, last year we had participation by the teachers, we had 
participation by the teachers' unions, we had participation by the 
companies that do business with schools. People who are in the 
education family responded to our initial effort in National Education 
Funding Support Day, and this year we want to go beyond that. We want 
to make certain that the churches are involved. We want to make certain 
that the fraternities and sororities and religious organizations of 
various kinds are involved. Civic organizations.
  The need is to communicate again to our decision makers the way you 
have just communicated on the minimum wage bill. The public understood 
the vital necessity of increasing the minimum wage. The public 
understood that the man on the street, the women on the street, 
everybody understood that if you got a paycheck and you are getting 
$4.25 an hour and a proposal is made to raise that to $5.15 an hour, 
that makes sense. So the public supported raising the minimum wage.
  We want the public to understand that education needs Federal help, 
education needs more resources, and regardless of what you hear, money 
comes first, resources come first. There are a lot of problems that 
have to be solved in education reform. There are a lot of problems, and 
they will be there for a long time, and we have to work at them, but 
before you can get those problems resolved, you are going to have to 
have resources, you need money.
  The favorite statement of people who want to oppose funding social 
programs or funding nondefense programs is you cannot solve the problem 
by throwing money at the problem. They throw money at the Department of 
Defense all the time. They constantly throw money at the Department of 
Defense because they know you cannot solve a problem in the military 
unless you do have money. They make a lot of errors, and a lot of gross 
boondoggles take place there, a lot of errors that have cost people, 
cost the American people as much as $2 billion and $3 billion on weapon 
systems that never got developed. Even when they say they developed 
certain smart weapons like the ones used in the gulf war, later 
evaluations showed that the smart weapons which cost a great deal did 
not prove their value. I mean they did not perform at a level to 
justify their cost.
  So they throw money at the Defense Department. And I do not like the 
phrase: throw money. But that is what they do in the case of defense.
  In education they do not throw money; they never throw money at 
social programs, they never throw money at education. The amounts of 
money that any social program has received has always been compulsory 
in connection with the need, and in the case of education the Federal 
Government's participation at this point is less than 7 percent. You 
know, the total education bill, which is above $360 billion now 
annually, that bill is borne mostly by the States, that cost is borne 
mostly by the States and local governments. Local governments fund and 
support most of the expenses for public schools. State funding supports 
most expenses for public schools. For public higher education 
institutions, States are the primary funding sources.
  So the Federal Government's participation is all too small already, 7 
percent. At least it will be increased. At least it will be increased 
at every level. We need more money for day care, we need more money for 
elementary and secondary school, we need more money for higher 
education. It will never be the overwhelming part, the funds spent for 
education. You will always have local control, and local governments 
will always pay most of it or State governments will always pay most of 
it. But why can we not raise the Federal participation and funding for 
education from 7 percent over the next 4 years to 25 percent? Why 
cannot we go between now and the year 2000 up to 25 percent of the 
total cost of education? The States and localities will still be funded 
at 75 percent. If they have 75 percent of the funding power, they will 
have 75 percent of the control. The control will still remain with the 
States and local government. But we will be providing the kind of 
resources necessary to carry us into the 21st century on education.
  So what I am saying is that the President's proposals, whether you 
are talking about wiring schools or providing new funds for 
construction, they are welcome, they are necessary, they are all too 
inadequate. We need more. And in order to have the public understand 
this, we need to have ways to communicate to the public the importance 
of common sense getting involved here. If common sense gets involved, 
if the average person out there begins to understand what the costs are 
for providing education at a level necessary to go into the 21st 
century, and they communicate that to the congressmen, they communicate 
that to the Senators, we will get some action.
  So National Education Funding Support Day on October 23 is designed 
to get down to the street level and have people understand that you 
need to communicate to your government at every level, and certainly 
the Federal Government is key because the Federal Government, despite 
its small percentage of the funding for education, sets the tone. We 
need to set the tone so that the cuts that are taking place at the 
State level in education and the cuts that local governments are 
perpetrating on education, like New York City has had a 5-year string 
of cuts in education, New York State now has had dramatic cuts in 
education; they take their clue from the Federal Government. The 
Federal Government starts making cuts, then the importance of education 
seems to go down on the priority agenda of the Governors and of the 
mayors.
  So we need to start first at the Federal level. So in order to get 
the Federal Government moving, they need to hear from the very bottom.
  National Education Funding Day, then, is like the National Night Out 
Against Crime. We took our cue from the National Night Out Against 
Crime. Citizens put together a National Night Out Against Crime where 
on a single night, Tuesday night I think it is, in August, everybody 
across the country demonstrates that they care about what is going on 
in their neighborhoods in terms of crime and protection, and they want 
their police departments and their district attorneys and all the 
people who are professionally responsible for the criminal justice 
system to understand that they are upset. They want some new action. 
They want some new resources. They want to make certain that we do not 
continue the way we are.
  That National Night Out Against Crime effort has been very 
successful. Communities all over the country do turn out. They show up.
  So we want to capture that same spirit in a National Morning Out For 
Education. A National Morning Out For Education on October 23 means 
that whatever can be done, whatever activities that take place which 
send a message to your government, your city government or the State 
government, or send a message to the Federal Government, do it. If it 
means buying some gifts for the children in the school, they are 
publicizing that so that they have in schools like the ones in my 
district who do not have crayons, who do not have erasers, they have a 
problem with Xerox paper; they will get some gift which highlights the 
fact that they are not being supplied properly by the government. If it 
means that day care centers are brought to the attention of local 
merchants so that occasionally they will help the day care centers in 
some way, then let that be the way we do it. If it means the police 
department and the various law enforcement agencies are going to 
guarantee the safety of children going to school and they

[[Page H8010]]

want to highlight their support for education, schools that way, let 
them do it. There can be a thousand ways to show your support for 
education and, in this process, send a message to both the Republicans 
and the Democrats that education is important.
  And finally it makes sense in the context of everything I have said 
before. Education, minimum wage, all that has to play a role if you 
want to move people from welfare to sufficiency in a humane way.

                          ____________________