[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 111 (Thursday, July 25, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8929-S8930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WELFARE REFORM

 Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, 2 days ago I voted against the so 
called welfare reform bill which passed the Senate. I wish to explain 
my reasons for that vote.
  The time has come to change the Nation's welfare system. We should 
enact much-needed, workable reforms, such as requiring all able-bodied 
recipients to work, turning welfare offices into employment offices, 
providing adequate child care and requiring strong child support 
enforcement. While the bill just passed by the Senate achieves some of 
these goals, it does so in a way that I believe will ultimately end up 
doing more harm than good. And the damage will be done not only to 
innocent children but to State and local governments and to taxpayers, 
who may end up bearing even more of the burden than they currently do.
  Last fall, I voted for welfare reform legislation in the expectation 
that we could develop a better bill. A good bill would encourage adults 
to work without threatening the well-being of children or unduly 
burdening the States that need welfare assistance most. It would enable 
flexible planning at the State and local levels, without dismantling 
the social safety net.
  Unfortunately, the highly political environment in which we find 
ourselves has not permitted the development of such a bill. The forces 
of reaction in our country have persuaded many that the main cause of 
our problems is welfare cheats and the current election campaign has 
spawned a competition between politicians to prove their machismo by 
getting tough.
  The conference report that emerged on HR4 last fall was a worse bill 
than what the Senate had previously passed.

[[Page S8930]]

I joined over a quarter of the Senate who voted for the Senate welfare 
reform bill but rejected the changes made in the conference report. I 
said then that we should not trade in an admittedly imperfect system 
for one that is certainly not better, and perhaps may prove much worse. 
The same is true today.
  I have been persuaded by the process of debate and projections on the 
likely impact of this bill on my State that this welfare bill will do 
far more harm than good. It will cause hardship to State and local 
governments, throw more than a million more children into poverty and 
hurt rather than help the Nation's efforts at true welfare reform.
  The bill will clearly increase the burden on States and local 
governments. Poor States will, as always, be particularly hard hit. For 
example, the bill requires progressively more hours of work, from a 
greater percent of each State's case load every year, with States 
losing cumulatively more funding each year they fail to hit their 
targets. While I am a strong proponent of work requirements as an 
integral part of welfare reform, I am skeptical of this approach. And I 
am not alone. The National Governors' Association [NGA] feels it will 
be very hard to meet these targets, especially because the bill allows 
few exemptions for those who will have the hardest time finding work. 
And if a State fails to meet these difficult targets they lose funding 
for the next year's program. The irony of this penalty is that the 
punishment assures that the violation will occur again and again, as a 
State has less and less Federal money each year to try and meet their 
employment targets. This leaves states with two choices--use state and 
local funds for education, training, and child care, or throw more 
people off the roles so it will be easier to hit their percentage 
targets.

  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that, over 6 
years, this bill falls $12 billion short of the funding needed to meet 
the work requirements of this legislation, and about $2.4 billion short 
in child care resources. New Mexico is particularly at risk if this 
bill does not live up to its promise. It is one of the few States in 
which the welfare caseload is currently increasing, even though the 
benefits paid are below the national average. Who will be forced to 
pick up the shortfall? State and local governments will.
  Further, last year in New Mexico, 239,000 recipients in 87,000 
households relied on food stamps. About $28 billion in savings realized 
by this bill will be in food stamps. Such cuts to funding benefits 
erode the integrity of the safety net. I say again that we are trading 
in an imperfect system for one that may prove much worse.
  Legal immigrants are clearly among those who will be hurt by passage 
of this bill. I support the immigration bill now in Congress and its 
effort to make immigrants and their sponsors responsible for 
immigrants' welfare. But this bill goes far beyond those provisions. 
There are over 3,000 aged or disabled legal immigrants receiving SSI 
benefits in New Mexico who may abruptly be cut off if this bill becomes 
law, and thousands more immigrants who have no sponsor for any number 
of reasons who may also lose benefits under this bill.
  In the course of this debate, the Senate rejected an amendment that 
would have permitted States to use funds from their Federal block grant 
to offer vouchers to maintain basic non-cash benefits such as food, 
clothing, and shelter for children if their parents' benefits expire 
after 5 years. The refusal of the Senate to allow States to provide 
such vouchers will hurt New Mexico, where one third of the children 
less than 6 years old--almost 50,000--live in families with incomes 
below the poverty level.
  Ours is a great Nation, enjoying low unemployment and real 
prosperity. Our common goal is to ensure that all Americans willing to 
work hard have the opportunity to share that prosperity. We all want to 
eliminate public assistance as a way of life while preserving temporary 
protections for those truly in need of help. But we must figure out a 
way to do this without denying the basic needs of innocent children for 
food, clothing, and shelter, and without driving State and local 
governments further into debt.

                          ____________________