Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 116 (Thursday, August 1, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 116 (Thursday, August 1, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9322-S9334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT OF
1996--CONFERENCE REPORT

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now
proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompanying
H.R. 3734, which the clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the
two Houses on the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R.
3734) to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section
201(a)(1) of the current resolution on the budget for fiscal
year 1997 having met, after full and free conference, have
agreed to recommend and do recommend to their respective
Houses this report, signed by a majority of the conferees.

(The conference report is printed in the House proceedings of the
Record of July 30, 1996.)
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, as I understand it, there are 10 hours
equally divided. I hope we do not use 10 hours, and I will not take
very long. I will yield rather quickly to the chairman of the Finance
Committee. If he would permit me to give just a quick oversight, I will
yield on our side. But I do wish to announce there are a number of
Senators who want to speak. I hope we do not have any lag time between
speakers. The Senators who have asked to speak are Hatch, Gramm,
Specter, Hutchison, Simpson, Coats, and Gorton. Some have indicated
they want to speak as much as 10 to 20 minutes. I am clearly going to
have plenty of time to accommodate them. I hope they will be watching
here so that we do not have big periods of time when we are in a quorum
call.
Mr. President, we come to the end of a long journey today to reform
our Federal-State welfare programs. We take this final step today to
send to the President of the United States for his announced signature
the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996.
As vice chairman of the welfare reconciliation conference, I wish to
first thank the people who did the bulk of the work to bring this
conference to a quick conclusion. On our side, I thank in particular
Senator Roth, the chairman of the Finance Committee, who sits here.
Without his diligent work and that of his excellent staff, we would not
be here. I also thank, Senator Lugar, who chairs the Agriculture
Committee. For some it is not quite understood why a welfare bill can
include agriculture issues. Of all of the nutrition programs that are a
part of this package, most of them come within the jurisdiction of the
Agriculture Committee, from food stamps on down. Obviously Senator
Lugar and his very dedicated staff must be given very high praise on
our side of the aisle for their work.
These two distinguished chairmen and their staffs, from what I
understood, worked tirelessly this last week. I was with them some of
the time. I know of no other budget reconciliation conference in our
history that was completed as quickly as this--less than 1 week.
Now, obviously, the House and Senate have passed bills that were
somewhat similar--we have been at this a number of times. In fact, we
have heretofore sent to the President two bills that passed both the
House and Senate and he vetoed them. So, completing the conference
report in 1 week seemed to us to be an achievable goal. And, indeed,
they have exceeded our expectation and finished in slightly less than a
week.

I believe part of the reason why this conference was completed so
quickly is because the work on this issue has been in progress since
the beginning of the 104th Congress, which began almost a year and a
half ago. Welfare reform was one of the top legislative agenda items of
this Congress. The former Republican leader, Senator Bob Dole, our
candidate for President, made welfare reform a centerpiece of our
broader effort to reform the Federal Government and return power back
to the States and communities. For that, I want to indicate my great
praise for our candidate for President, and our former leader. He had a
lot to do with us being here today.
In addition, the national Governors, both Republicans and Democrats,
have worked over the last year, both with the Congress and the
administration, to help us make as informed judgments as we can.
This legislation truly represents and reflects the beginning of an
open partnership with the States. This openness will be critical to its
long-term success. We finally have decided what we should have decided
a long time ago, that the States should not be our junior partners: who
we tell how to do everything, do not listen to, and do not let make any
innovative changes or do anything different from State to State. For
too long we have assumed that one shoe fits all and that the States
better do as we say because we are paying some or most of the bill.
We have decided that the States and Governors and legislatures out
there in America are as concerned about the poor as we are. They are
concerned about their well-being and as concerned, if not more so,
about the status of welfare in their States--a program that was built
upon and built upon over the past 60 years, but never contained any
elements which were truly an incentive to go to work, or to improve
your own personal responsibility and take better care of yourselves,
and thus of your children. It had become as if people were locked in
poverty, kind of waiting around for the next minimal cash benefit check
and whatever else went with it. The rewards were not great. The money
was not very much. But of those who got on it, many of them stayed on
it forever because there were no tools to help them get their
educations and look for jobs. There were not job placement approaches.
All of that will change when this bill becomes law. The essence of
the new welfare will be more like workfare. Welfare offices will turn
into work placement offices, into job training offices, into places
where people can go to find out how to improve their skills and what
help they can have while they are doing that, such as enhanced child
care. We put a great deal of resources in here, because we want many of
the people who are single heads of households, who have a couple of
children, to be able to become trained and educated. So we have
provided about $14 billion over the next 6 years in this bill, in order
to help parents who want to go find jobs with those things that they
need to take care of their children in the interim.
The spirit of bipartisanship is here today also. The President's
statement yesterday indicates he would sign this legislation, after
having vetoed two previous attempts at welfare reform.
Our Senators may describe what we have done differently, but from my
standpoint I describe it in five simple ways:
First, we want to encourage and make people work. We believe work is
the best thing to make people feel more self-esteem. It builds personal
responsibility--which is precisely the opposite of the ethic we have
built into the welfare program heretofore. Able-bodied persons who seek
assistance should seek work and employment, and only after failing to
find employment should they turn to the taxpayer for assistance.
Second, simple as it sounds, we ask parents to take care of their
children. We stress personal responsibility and create incentives for
families to stay together. We reestablish one simple rule, parents
should take care of their children first. Accordingly, we track down
and punish deadbeat fathers and mothers. Third, we change the culture
of welfare. This is a culture that has

[[Page S9323]]

dominated and poisoned our good intentions for the last 61 years. We do
away with the concept of an entitlement to a cash benefit. Welfare will
have a 5-year time limit for any recipients. No longer will welfare be
a way of life. It will be a helping hand--and not a handout.

Fourth, we cut endless, unnecessary Federal regulations and
bureaucracies and bureaucrats by turning power and flexibility over to
the States and communities. That is where help for those in need can
best be determined and best be delivered, and where innovation will
flourish. Better ways to do things will be found.
Fifth, and finally, this is a budget reconciliation bill, and these
reforms will slow the growth of Federal and State spending for these
programs. Spending on the programs in this bill: the new temporary
assistance for needy families block grant--temporary assistance for
needy families block grant, I repeat that--this is a new program, and a
new child care block grant program, and the reformed food stamp, SSI,
child nutrition, foster care--all of these, along with the earned-
income tax credit and other programs will increase from $100 billion
this year to nearly $130 billion per year 6 years from now. Total
spending over the next 6 years for these programs will exceed $700
billion.
For those who say we are not going to provide for those in need that
were heretofore on welfare, let me repeat: The combined programs will
increase from nearly $100 billion this year to $130 billion per year in
6 years, hardly a reduction in expenditures. Let me repeat, the total
programs that I have just described, food stamps, SSI, child nutrition,
foster care, the block grant program for child care, the new block
grant to take the place of AFDC, which we will call temporary
assistance for needy families--all of those programs will seek, from
the taxpayers of America, $700 billion over the next 6 years.
Nevertheless, our taxpayers should know that we will save, we will
save them, about $55 billion. This program in its reformed and more
efficient mode will cost $55 billion less than it was assumed to cost
if we had left everything alone and kept the entitlements wherever they
were.
I believe much of these savings are going to be achieved because we
are making the programs work better. We are going to be pushing people
to do what they should have been doing all along--get off the rolls
into work, off dependence into independence, off looking to somebody
else for responsibility and looking to themselves. And everywhere we
turn, in this bill, there are provisions for those who just cannot do
it. There are emergency set-asides, emergency allowances, there are
provisions, where it just cannot be done, to provide some of what must
be provided in addition to the basic program.
I would like to quote one of our very distinguished Senators, Senator
Rick Santorum--for whom I also extend my great appreciation for his
help on the floor on many occasions during the debate on welfare. He
stood here in my stead and he did a remarkable job. He came to the
Senate well informed on this subject. He, at one point, said: ``Welfare
reform has been and will continue to be a contentious issue. This
legislation is tough love.''
I concur. And I do not believe there is anything wrong with that
either. I have some concerns about provisions in this legislation.
Other Members will have their particular concerns, and the President
has expressed his. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your
philosophy of governance, it is possible and probable that even with
the President's signature we will not have seen the last of welfare
reform. When he has signed it, we will probably see a completed law and
we will carry it out. In due course, we will see there are some areas
that need some repair, some fixing. But I believe, under any
circumstance, with a bill that is as much on the right track as this--
although perhaps imperfect in certain areas--we should proceed. We
should let the reform move along.
For today, I believe, that the best hope we have to fulfill the
promise we all made to the American public to change these programs as
we have known them--is to pass this bill overwhelmingly.
Making such fundamental changes to programs, some of which are 60
years old, will surely require adjustments and additional tuning as we
begin to see how this legislation unfolds. But for those who seem
frightened of this change, and for those who want to find the areas
where they have concern and that might need some repair in the future,
I merely ask, is it possible that this welfare reform program can be
worse than what we have?
I cannot believe that it is; because in a land of opportunity with
untold chances for people to succeed on their own and move ahead with
personal achievement and responsibility, in a land with plenty of that,
one thing that stands out as a testimonial to failure on the part of
our legislative bodies and the executive branch is the welfare program
of this country. This program, for the most part, moves people in the
opposite direction of mainstream opportunity in America, and for many
it locks them there. We must unlock their opportunity potential.
For today, I believe this is our best opportunity to change the
culture of welfare and, once again, I repeat, to provide in every way
possible a hand up, an opportunity up, not a handout. I believe these
Americans who are locked in welfare as we know it today are anxiously
waiting in their minds and in their hearts for a better way of life.
What we are saying, is we hope we are providing that for you. We hope
we are giving many of you an opportunity to get out of welfare and get
into something that is more like what most Americans have the
opportunity to be a part of.
In short, I believe this legislation is the best hope we have today
to provide some real hope for a future for those families and children
in our society who, in many, many instances, are totally without hope.
But we need to be honest and sober. I believe proponents and opponents
may be overstating the results, but I believe the overwhelming
consequences of this bill will be positive. The legislation represents
a fundamental change in social policy. We elected officials should not
assume that this legislation is perfect. The one thing the last 61
years should have taught us is that no one can be all-knowing.
So let us be proud of this significant accomplishment today. I
believe it is the right legislation for the future. But let us also
remain vigilant and sober. Many people's lives will be affected by this
critical legislation, and we hope for most of the overwhelming
percentage it is for the better.
Again, I congratulate the Members of the House and Senate who have
worked to help bring this legislation before us today. I am hopeful
that we will put an end shortly to welfare as it is.
Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Faircloth). Who yields time?
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. I thank the manager.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, let me start off by saying that I
greatly respect my colleague on the other side of the aisle, the
manager and the chairman of the Budget Committee. I listened to him
carefully, and I know that he is a man of compassion and concern. I
have seen it manifested in many ways: his interest in the mentally ill,
his interest in the disabled. This is someone who cares about people.
So when I talk about my difference in view, this is my personal
perspective and, by no means do I intend to criticize the distinguished
Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. President, I take this opportunity, acting as the minority
manager on this conference report, to make my remarks, and they reflect
my opinion. This is not a consensus view that I have mustered; this is
the opinion of the Senator from New Jersey, who has been on the Budget
Committee for some time and draws on some experience from my corporate
world, as I discuss my perspective.
This is a historic and peculiar time for the U.S. Senate. The body is
on the verge of ending a 60-year guarantee that poor children in this
country might not go hungry. I salute the attempts to solve the
problem. I am right with all the others, including the President of the
United States, in wanting to solve the problem.

[[Page S9324]]

The question is not whether one wants to solve the problem; the
question is, how do you solve it? This is going to be a test not only
of our pocketbooks and our resources, but of our hearts as well. Though
I have heard it described as bleeding hearts, I am willing to accept
the nomenclature that has applied, because having had my life
experience when in the Depression years my family was, to use the
expression, dirt poor, and my father had to go to work on a WPA
program, it was a humiliating experience for him to have to go to work
on a Government program. But he buried his pride for a moment, and he
did what he could to support his family.
I don't know many people who want to humiliate themselves standing in
a line waiting for their welfare check. Yes, there are some cheats out
there and there are druggies and there are drunks. They are out there,
there is no question about it, but a lot of those people are simply
people who have not yet discovered a way out of their misery and their
poverty.
Women with children, many of them unwed--I do not approve of that
condition, but that is life. The punishment should never exceed the
deed, and that is what I fear, Mr. President, we are about to do in
this body of ours, in our beloved country. For 60 years, we could rest
easier at night and be sure American children had a minimum safety net.
The bill before us takes away this peace of mind and throws up to
1,100,000 children into poverty, according to a study by the Urban
Institute.
I agree, the welfare system is in need of repair, and I believe that
it needs to promote work and self-sufficiency, pride and dignity. That
is going to make the difference.
I think it should also, however, protect children and, unfortunately,
I am not certain at all that this so-called welfare reform does it.
First, the Republican bill does not promote work. It asks for work.
It demands work. I heard the distinguished chairman of the Budget
Committee say we can make people work. That is a requirement for
welfare recipients. But it does not require the resources to put people
to work.
In fact, CBO said that most States would be unlikely to satisfy this
work requirement for several reasons. One major reason is that this
bill cuts funding for work programs by combining all welfare programs
into a capped block grant.
Second, the Republican bill hurts children. It would make deep cuts
in the Food Stamp Program, which millions of children rely on for their
nutritional needs. It would also end the guarantee that children will
always have the safety net. Under this bill, a State could adopt a 60-
day time limit, and after that the children would be cut off from the
safety net entirely.
The State would not even be required to provide a child with a
voucher for food, clothing, or medical care. When you take all of these
policies together, this bill will put an estimated approximately 1.1
million children into poverty. And this is a conservative estimate. It
could be higher.
Mr. President, my conscience does not permit me to vote for a bill
that will likely plunge children into poverty.
I had an experience some years ago when I was at the Earth summit in
Brazil with the now Vice President of the United States and other
Senators, Republican and Democrat. We were dining at a restaurant,
facing a beautiful harbor in Rio. The restaurants were separated by
rows of shrubs--beautiful places, a marvelous atmosphere. I saw a light
brown hand reach through the bush and take food off the table. Children
starving, thousands of them, sometimes chased by the police, sometimes
shot at because they crowded the doors.
Mr. President, a child who is hungry will go to any means, as will an
adult, to satisfy their hunger. I am worried about that. I cannot vote
to leave our children unprotected. I was one of only 11 Democrats to
vote against the original Senate welfare bill that would have put 1.2
million children into poverty. I voted against the conference report on
this bill that would have doomed 1.5 million children to the same fate.
I will vote against this bill for the same reason. We dare not abandon
our children.
Mr. President, I hold a different vision of what the safety net in
this country should be. I am concerned, frightened, that this bill will
leave children hungry and homeless. I am afraid the streets of our
Nation's cities might someday look like the streets of the cities of
Brazil. Walk around there and you see children begging for money,
begging for food, and even at 8 and 9 years old engaging in
prostitution.
Tragically, that is what happens to societies that abandon their
children. When we don't protect our kids, they resort to their own
means to survive. I do not want to see that happen in this country. I
want to see this country invest in children.
I think we should invest more in child care and health and nutrition
so that our kids can become independent, productive citizens. I want to
give them the opportunity to live the American dream like I and so many
in this room had the good fortune to do. If we do not, we will create a
permanent underclass in this country. We will have millions of children
with no protection, and we are going to doom them to failure.
Mr. President, as a member of the Budget Committee, I also want to
comment on the priorities that are reflected in this reconciliation
bill. Despite the fact that this bill is only limited to safety net
programs, it is still considered a reconciliation bill. The bill
receives the same protections as a budget-balancing bill, but there is
no balanced budget in it. This reconciliation bill seeks to cut the
deficit only by attacking safety net programs for poor children, for
legal immigrants.

There are no cuts in corporate loopholes or tax breaks, despite the
fact that the tax expenditures cost the Federal Treasury over $400
billion a year. There are no such savings in this bill. There are no
grazing fee increases, no mining royalties, no savings in the military
budget or NASA's budget.
The only cuts in this bill come from women and children. This
reconciliation bill gives new meaning to putting women and children
first.
Mr. President, I realize that this bill is going to pass. I
understand the President clearly has indicated that he is going to sign
it. However, as the distinguished Senator from New Mexico mentioned,
the President and many of us are determined to examine a package of
changes next year to soften the blow of the harsh provisions in this
bill.
Mr. President, we have seen the reaction of people regarding this
bill. When you hear from the mayor of one of the world's most
distinguished cities, New York City Mayor Giuliani, he is worried about
where they get the money in the block grants to supply the job
training, the child care support. He is concerned, as are many mayors
across the country we have heard from.
Mr. President, I will, for a moment, just relate an experience that I
had when I ran a corporation, a big corporation. When I left to come to
the U.S. Senate, we had over 16,000 employees, a very successful
company. We were a company, founded in New Jersey, that tried to work
within our community. The company still has its headquarters in New
Jersey and employs almost 30,000 people today.
I always tried, since I came from a poor background of hard-working,
honest people who always wanted to keep their heads high and always
wanted to do the right thing and not ask anybody for anything--but
there were times when we needed help. If I did not have the GI bill,
Mr. President, I doubt that I would be standing in front of the U.S.
Senate and the American people today. So, we were very conscientious,
my partners and I, about trying to understand what was happening around
us. We began to hire people, or we attempted to hire people, who were
literally unemployable with job after job, short-term employment, and
then back on the streets.
We brought people into the computer room, not into the factory. We
did not have a factory. I was in the computer business. We brought them
into the computer room, and we had one startling success among several
people that we worked with. The reason for that success was very
interesting. The reasons for failure were obvious, because though we
would give these people a job, and they would be enthusiastic about it
for a couple days, as soon as they got back into their environment and
as soon as they were faced with

[[Page S9325]]

poverty and despair and drugs and crime, they fell right back in the
trap. They were useless as employees in very short order.
But the one person who succeeded so well, we got an apartment for
her, and we moved her, helped her move from her ghetto area to a more
middle-class area. The success was astounding. This woman, when we
hired her, she was 25 years old. She had very limited education. She
became a computer room supervisor--a good job--and went on to become a
part of management in the company. It was a startling success, because
it was not that we said, you have to go to work and have to show up on
time. We said that to everybody. You say that to all of your employees.
All of them do not do it. It needs training. It needs commitment.

Mr. President, I hope that this bill that is being considered today,
this reconciliation bill, will not be the first step toward larger
problems than we can understand today, toward the kind of situation
where America turns its heart into stone and says, OK, we are here as
accountants, we are here to cut the budget.
I want to cut the budget. I have programs to cut the budget to arrive
at a balanced budget. I know what happens in the corporate world when
your expenses get too high and your revenues too low. You make changes,
make them selectively. We did not just cut every department if we had
to reduce expenses. Maybe it was time to cut the marketing department
or the production department or the products design department. But I
always thought about the long term. We are abandoning the long term.
What we are doing is giving a lot of people political satisfaction,
those who work here and those who are outside who hear us on TV and the
radio.
Mr. President, I make my remarks in the full context of the
realization of where we are. This bill has lots of support. I am not, I
promise you--not--attempting or trying to influence people to vote
against it. I am stating the case as I see it. I hope it will in some
way encourage others to think very deeply about their decision to vote.
I thank you and yield the floor.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, how much time does the distinguished
Senator from Delaware desire?
Mr. ROTH. Ten minutes.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Delaware,
Senator Roth.
Mr. ROTH. First of all, let me thank the distinguished Senator from
New Mexico for his gracious remarks about me and my staff. I just point
out that we would not have been able to complete the reconciliation
within a week if it had not been for his leadership, for the assistance
and help that he provided at any time when it became necessary in the
difficult negotiations that had to take place. I want to publicly thank
the Senator for his contribution.
Mr. President, this day is a remarkable turning point in the lives of
millions of American families and generations to come. This is the day
we will reorder our confused and confounding system of welfare. A world
spinning out of control will be brought back into proper course. It
will return to order not through the power of Washington but through
personal responsibility and work opportunity, the very title of this
important legislation.
I say to my distinguished friend from New Jersey that what we seek to
do here is to provide the same kind of opportunity that was given to
him, through help to go to college, but particularly as he tried to
help that lady into the mainstream of life by giving her meaningful
work. I think that is what we are all seeking to do together.
Mr. President, this is the third time welfare reform will have passed
in the 104th Congress. The issue of welfare reform has been frequently
and passionately debated over these past months, and rightly so. The
effects and consequences of the welfare system in some way touches us
all.
During this time, the Finance Committee has held 19 hearings and
taken testimony from 90 witnesses. We have found that the current AFDC
program, as it was designed in the 1930's, abandoned many families long
ago as a statistic of long-term dependency in contemporary society. The
current welfare system has failed the very families it was intended to
serve.
If the present welfare system was working so well we would not be
here today. I think that is a point well worth underscoring because the
fact is, as the record shows, that this current system has not been
good for children. For anyone who believes that it has, I recommend you
read the findings section of this legislation. I have yet to hear
anyone defend the present system as good for children.
I point out that in 1965 there were 3.3 million children on AFDC; by
1992, that had risen to over 9 million children. In 1992, 9 million
children were on welfare, AFDC, despite the fact that the total number
of children in this country has declined. Last year, the Department of
Health and Human Services estimated if we do nothing, 12 million will
be on AFDC in 10 years.
I reemphasize once again that the present system is not good for
children. But the record clearly demonstrates the contrary--that
instead of being good, we find more and more children being trapped in
a system and into dependency on welfare.
As I said, to do nothing is absolutely unacceptable. Mr. President,
90 percent of the children on AFDC live without one of their parents.
Only a fraction of welfare families are engaged in work. The current
welfare system has cheated the children of what they need most--among
these is hope, the necessary condition of liberation from dependency.
The key to their success will not be found in Washington but in the
timeless values of family and work.

Opponents of welfare believe that the States lack either the
compassion or the capacity, or both, to serve needy families. They are
wrong. We promised welfare reform and we have kept our promise. Our
legislation is built upon the original principles from which we have
never waivered. This is a bipartisan bill. Half of the Senate
Democratic Members who served on the conference voted for the bill when
it passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin. Yesterday, this
conference report passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 328
to 101. Half of the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted for
this bill. I believe that demonstrates the bipartisan spirit upon which
we have approached welfare reform.
A number of people deserve our thanks and credit for giving us this
opportunity today. First, let me give credit and thanks to Senator Bob
Dole, our former majority leader. Even after welfare reform had been
vetoed twice, Bob Dole insisted that we could and should remain
steadfast in our fundamental principles and achieve welfare reform. Bob
Dole introduced a welfare bill before he left the Senate which was,
frankly, the benchmark of our conference report before us. His last
advice to me was to make sure this job gets done this year. I have to
say, Mr. President, today's action reflects his work, reflects his
vision, reflects his leadership.
Our Nation's Governors, most especially the lead Governors on welfare
and Medicaid reform, people like John Engler, Tommy Thompson, Mike
Leavitt, Tom Carper, Bob Miller, Lawton Chiles, and Roy Romer deserve
our thanks and credit for their work to make welfare reform a reality.
I look forward to working with them again to face the challenge of
Medicaid reform.
Even though Senator Moynihan does not support our legislation, I want
to thank him for his work and insights into this extremely complex
world of welfare. Perhaps no one has done more over the past three
decades than Senator Moynihan to bring the alarming growth in welfare
to the Nation's attention.
President Clinton has announced his support for this hard-won
conference report and he is to be congratulated for that decision. It
is the right thing to do.
Mr. President, while the present welfare system is full of excuses,
the welfare reform legislation being presented to the American people
today is indeed a bold challenge. And while the present system quietly
accepts the dependency of more than 9 million children, our proposal
speaks loudly to them and insists that they, too, must be among the
heirs to the blessings of this great Nation.
Welfare reform is about helping families find the freedom and
independence we take so much for granted.
Mr. President, this legislation clearly points the way to that
independence.

[[Page S9326]]

But the road to independence does not begin or end in Washington.
Independence begins with living up to one's responsibilities. This is
echoed through the legislation with the provisions on work, time-
limited benefits, limits on benefits for noncitizens, and strong child
support enforcement reforms.
Mr. President, I urge adoption of the conference report.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WYDEN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I yield myself 15 minutes. Mr. President,
there is a concrete reason for voting for this less-than-perfect bill.
For millions of Americans, this legislation can be a tool for turning
the welfare check into a trampoline for opportunity and independence. I
know this because my home State of Oregon has achieved it.
Once more, the State of Oregon has marked a path for the Nation. By
putting in place our welfare reform program, known as Jobs Plus, we
have shown the Nation that it is possible to be both tough and
compassionate. With our Jobs Plus Program, we have been able to have
strong work requirements and critically needed child care and medical
care for folks coming off of welfare. The plan is working for both
taxpayers and those coming off of welfare. And as the President said
yesterday, today's legislation can spark more States into going with
the kind of approach we have at home.
Mr. President, a few years ago, an Oregonian approached me on the
street and said, ``You know, for me, welfare is kind of like `economic
methadone.' You guys send me a check. The checks always come, but you
people never let me do anything to break out, to get off welfare.''
This legislation provides the way to break out--a real key for
unlocking the riddle of welfare dependency. I think it is an
opportunity to remake this system that doesn't work for those who are
in it and doesn't work for the taxpayers who pay for it.
Take child care, for example. Child care is an absolute prerequisite
to changing welfare. I chaired hearings looking at the child care
issue, and we heard heartbreaking accounts of how, again and again,
women would get off of welfare, they would be doing well in the private
sector, but their child care would fall apart just as they were getting
back on their feet.
This bill provides $3.5 billion more than current law for that
critically needed child care. That increase of $3.5 billion in child
care is going to be absolutely critical to helping folks get off
welfare.
In addition, as several of my colleagues have noted, child support is
strengthened. I am also pleased that Medicaid is protected as a
guarantee for all of our Nation's children.
Now, at the beginning of this Congress, there was a lot of talk about
orphanages. A lot of us did not particularly think that all of these
orphanages were exactly Boys Town, and nobody seemed to zero in on the
question that if an orphanage was Boys Town, it would come with a big
price tag for taxpayers. So a lot of us thought that we ought to do
something better. I worked very hard to develop a new approach known as
``Kinship Care.'' What the Kinship Care amendment says is that the
Nation's grandparents--the millions of loving grandparents--would get
first preference when a youngster from a broken home needs help.
Instead of sending the children away, the grandparents, if they met the
child custody standards, would get first preference. Along with
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congressman Clay Shaw, and Senator
Dan Coats, on a bipartisan basis, we all worked together on this
kinship care amendment.

Now, as we look to the 21st century when, as a result of the
population trends and demographics, there are going to be many more
grandparents, we have an opportunity to keep families together, to use
a new model known as kinship care to provide loving care for youngsters
in a cost-effective way.
Mr. President, this legislation doesn't meet my definition of
perfection. I will say that I, frankly, detest a couple of these
provisions--particularly, what was done with the food stamp shelter
deduction and the legal immigrant provisions. So this legislation
doesn't meet my textbook standard of what would constitute perfection.
I, like a number of our other Senators, am going to fight very hard to
make changes in this area. As I think it is critical to do, we ought to
be constructive and we ought to look at useful ways that Senators can
work on a bipartisan basis for changes.
For example, there has been a lot of talk in this Congress about the
idea of a lock box, the idea of special accounts so that when the
spending is reduced, those funds are protected for deficit reduction. I
have supported that concept. I think the lock box makes sense. Frankly,
I think we ought to look at a new idea, and we can call it the lunch
box. We could make sure that when you eliminate some of those tax
loopholes, when you go after wasteful spending, some of those funds
could be put in what I call the lunch box, and we could use these
savings to try fresh approaches to ensure that all Americans have
access to good nutrition. I think there are a number of new, innovative
approaches that we ought to try and that are going to be needed, even
after this bill is enacted and signed into law.
At the end of the day, Mr. President, the question, to me, is
straightforward: Is this legislation better than the status quo? Is it
better than the system that an Oregonian told me was like economic
methadone? I think that when you look at the child care provisions, at
the Medicaid guarantee, when you look at the opportunity for States to
follow the path that Oregon has followed with our Jobs Plus Program, I
believe you see the case for supporting this legislation. I intend to
vote for it.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, as manager of the time on this side, I
want to indicate that Senator Gorton will be recognized to take my
place, and he will have up to 15 minutes, and then he will indicate
thereafter the sequence until I arrive back on the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Washington State.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I greatly admire those who, during the
course of this debate over the last year and a half, expressed great
confidence in the consequences of the passage of this bill or of its
predecessors. I expressed that admiration both for those who are as
confident that the bill will end a culture of dependency as for those
who view with alarm what they believe will vastly increase poverty
among the people of the United States. While I admire their certainty,
I cannot join in it.

I must say, Mr. President, that I am not at all certain of what the
consequences of the passage of this bill will be. I hope and I am
inclined to believe that they will primarily be positive, but I cannot
be certain. In that regard, Mr. President, I agree fully with the views
expressed yesterday in the Washington Post by Robert Samuelson, and I
will quote three sentences of his review:

The exercise aims to promote self-reliance by making it
harder for people to rely on government. Without the threat
of extra suffering, people would have no reason to change.
What can't be predicted is how the good and bad will balance.

Mr. President, I find that entire column to be so persuasive--and not
at all, incidentally, to be so similar to my own views--that I ask
unanimous consent that the entire column be printed in full at the end
of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, on the other hand, what I do know and what
I feel confident in stating is that our present welfare system is a
tragic and destructive failure. At the very least, the present system
has been accompanied by a massive increase in the very conditions that
it was designed to alleviate: illegitimacy, family breakup, a negative
attitude toward work, a culture of dependency. At most, our present
system has been a contributing cause to those conditions.
I should also like to observe, Mr. President, that those who oppose
this bill, by and large, are those who individually--or whose
philosophy--have guided and managed the system that this bill in large
part dismantles. These people, these ideas clearly represent the
conventional wisdom, a conventional wisdom that has guided and produced
every change in welfare policy in

[[Page S9327]]

this country, or almost every such change, for at least the past 30
years. Their present advice is to view with alarm these changes, to
attempt to preserve the status quo, except to ask that we do a little
bit more of what we have been doing with these last several decades.
Mr. President, that conventional wisdom is bankrupt and ought to be
abandoned, not only for the sake of our society as a whole but for the
sake of the supposed beneficiaries of these welfare policies.
Those of us who support this legislation, these changes, hope with
some reason that this bill will increase incentives to work, some of
those incentives being positive and some negative. We hope, with some
reason, that it will result in strong disincentives for teenage
pregnancy and illegitimacy. We are convinced that it will require
greater male parental support for their children.
But the heart of this bill--not with total consistency, after all,
with the compromises that have entered into it--but the heart of this
proposal is consistent with my own uncertainties about specific
consequences resulting from specific policies. That central feature is
to end the absolute entitlement to welfare, to end the detailed Federal
regulation of the way in which welfare policies are administered by
the State, to end the massive bureaucratic interference with every
detail of welfare policy, and to encourage--for that matter, to
require--a wide range of experimentation in welfare policies among our
50 States.

I suppose that States which really want to pay for even more generous
welfare systems than they have at the present time will be able to find
a way to do so, and that there may be a handful of such States. Perhaps
more significantly, those States that want to adopt tough work
requirements will be able to do so. Those States that want to provide
for greater training and child care will be able to do so. Those States
that want to impose strong disincentives against dependency will be
able to do so.
In fact, in a relatively short period of time after the passage of
this bill, we will have 50 distinct and different systems of welfare in
the United States. We will learn just how much private sector charities
can and will do in the welfare field. We know that in certain areas
they have been magnificently successful at much lower cost than any
government-run program. How much that private sector effort can be
increased we simply do not know at the present time, but we will learn
as a result of this bill.
As a consequence, 5 years from now or 10 years from now, I believe
that we will know far more about which welfare policies work and which
do not. Perhaps we will even know enough to lead us wisely to a more
centralized system of adopting those policies which seem to have worked
well. I suspect, I hope, and I think this 50-State experimentation will
probably be successful enough so that our successors will wish it to
continue.
Mr. President, I am gratified but not at all surprised that a poll-
driven President of the United States has agreed to sign this bill.
That agreement means that we are talking here, debating here, something
real--real changes in policy with a real impact on our society and on
our citizens.
It would be very difficult to do worse than we have been doing over
the course of the last several decades. We have a marvelous opportunity
to do far better. The time has come to act. The day is at hand on which
we will act.
I commend this magnificent new experiment to my colleagues.

Exhibit 1

[From the Washington Post, July 31, 1996]

For Better or Worse?

(By Robert J. Samuelson)

We are now hearing a lot about the promise and peril of
``welfare reform.'' To its champions, the legislation nearing
congressional approval would destroy the ``culture of
dependency.'' Critics see it as further impoverishing many
poor families. Both are correct. The exercise aims to promote
self-reliance by making it harder for people to rely on
government. Without the threat of extra suffering, people
would have no reason to change. What can't be predicted is
how the good and bad will balance.
I have put ``welfare reform'' in quotes, precisely because
``reform'' is a term of art. It is automatically attached to
any scheme for social change, from ``campaign finance
reform'' to ``school reform.'' In debates about these
proposals, the protagonists act as if they can easily
foretell the effects, for good or ill. As often as not, this
convenient fiction spawns ``reforms'' with many unintended
consequences. The process is now in full swing with ``welfare
reform.''
The combatants regularly issue confident predictions and
shrill denunciations that depict a fixed future. Last week,
for example, the Urban Institute, a research group, released
a study estimating that the House-passed welfare bill would
increase the number of people in poverty by 2.6 million
people, including 1.1 million children. Naturally, opponents
of the legislation seized upon this to emphasize how bad it
is. But a close look at the study shows that its conclusions
ought to be highly qualified.
The House and Senate bills would give states great
flexibility to run their welfare programs within broad
federal guidelines. Total lifetime federal benefits would be
limited to five years, though states could exempt 20 percent
of their caseloads. States would be pressured through complex
regulations to move most mothers into some type of ``work''
within two years. After making some assumptions about state
programs, the Urban Institute study estimates that the loss
of benefits would outweigh the increase in earnings from
jobs.
This could happen. The study's assumptions aren't
implausible. But uncertainties abound. First, the full rise
of people in poverty would occur only in 2002 after all the
bill's provisions took effect. Between now and then, Congress
(or the states) could make changes if things went badly. This
is especially true of one of the bill's worst provisions: the
denial of many benefits, including food stamps, to legal
immigrants. That alone accounts for about two-fifths of the
bills' benefit cuts.
Second, the increase in the poor would be much less--only
800,000 and not 2.6 million--if the Urban Institute had used
the government's official definition of poverty. I cite this
difference not because I think the Urban Institute
deliberately inflated the impact of ``welfare reform'' but
because it shows how perceptions can be shaped by somewhat
arbitrary statistics.
(For numbers freaks, the difference arises because the
government definition counts only cash income to determine
who falls below the poverty line: $15,141 for a family of
four in 1994. Excluded are benefits such as food stamps that
substitute for cash. The Urban Institute counts many of these
benefits. As a result, the Urban Institute finds many fewer
poor people; but if welfare reform cuts non-cash benefits,
the impact on recorded poverty is greater. Still, the number
of poor by the Urban Institute's count--even after adding 2.6
million--would be almost 25 percent lower than under the
government count).
Statistics aside, what matters are people. Would more be
made better or worse off by ``welfare reform''?
Unfortunately, we can't answer that, because we can't predict
all of ``reform's'' effects. The Urban Institute examines one
aspect of change: the shift from welfare to work. The study
assumes that two-thirds of mothers who lost welfare would get
jobs--many part-time--paying about $6 an hour. That wouldn't
offset all the lost benefits. But this may miss some other
favorable effects. Stingy welfare would discourage some out-
of-wedlock births and prompt some parents to marry. ``The
main route off welfare for good is marriage,'' says Douglas
Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute.
How large might these changes be? Neither Besharov nor
anyone else knows. But the social climate is shifting, and
``welfare reform'' is simply a part of the change. Harsher
welfare may reinforce the message that many teens are hearing
elsewhere; and the impact may be amplified by tougher
enforcement of child support payments and more prosecution
for statutory rape of older men who prey on young girls.
Teens account for 29 percent of out-of-wedlock births; the
worst aspects of the ``welfare problem'' would diminish if,
somehow, these pregnancies would drop.
The case for the present ``welfare reform'' is that,
despite many flaws, it would disrupt the existing system. As
Mickey Kaus argues in Newsweek, we may discover what works
and what doesn't. Some states would emphasize job training
and child care for welfare mothers; others would impose harsh
time limits. All could be forced to examine how charities,
churches and self-help groups can best aid vulnerable
families. This process is already occurring through
``waivers'' granted to states to modify existing federal
rules; the legislation would give change further impetus.
We ought to be sober about the possibilities. We are
dealing with the most stubborn problems of poverty--family
breakdown, low skills and human relationships. Changing how
people behave isn't easy. Indeed, new government figures show
that out-of-wedlock births continue to rise, as Charles
Murray notes in the Weekly Standard. In 1994, they were 32.6
percent of all births, up from 23 percent in 1990. These
numbers are an argument for assaulting the status quo and a
reminder of how hard it will be to change.
The remaining drama over the welfare bill is mostly
political: Will President Clinton sign it? And who then--a
Republican Congress or a Democratic president--will get the
credit or blame for enacting or killing ``reform''? However
the drama ends, the welfare dilemma will endure. It is this:
How can a

[[Page S9328]]

decent society protect those who can't protect themselves
without being so generous that it subverts personal
responsibility? No one on either side of this bitter debate
has an obvious answer.

Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I am here to speak, but out of deference to Senator
Moynihan, who is ranking member of the Finance Committee and, more
importantly, who has shown an intellectual and personal public policy
commitment, probably unlike anyone in the Senate, I will suggest the
absence of a quorum so we can see whether or not Senator Moynihan wants
to speak now. If not, I will speak.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, while we are waiting, I wish to insert
into the Record an op-ed piece today by Frances Fox Piven in the New
York Times called ``From Workhouse to Workfare.''
This is a very powerful piece. It concludes with the statement that
the ``facts don't seem to matter'' in the debate over this welfare
bill. ``We may have to relive the misery and moral disintegration of
England in the 19th century to learn what happens when society deserts
its most vulnerable members.''
That is the conclusion of this article.
I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Congressional
Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the New York Times]

From Workhouse to Workfare

(By Frances Fox Piven)

If Bill Clinton, as an Oxford student, had studied the
history of the poor in early 19th century England, he might
not have decided to sign the welfare reform bill.
Eminent English social thinkers developed a justification
for an 1834 law that eliminated relief for the poor. Learned
arguments showed that giving them even meager quantities of
bread and coal harmed both the larger society and the poor
themselves.
Never mind the rapid enclosure by the rich of commonly used
agricultural land; never mind the displacement of hand-loom
weavers by mechanized factories; never mind the decline in
the earnings of rural workers. The real causes of poverty and
demoralization were not to be found in these large economic
changes, the thinkers said, but rather in the too-generous
relief for the poor. The solution was to stop giving relief
to people in their own homes; instead, survival for the
family meant entering prison-like workhouses.
The misery and reduced life spans that ensued were well-
documented not only by historians but ultimately by
Parliament, which investigated the workhouses and the riots
against them. England came to learn that the theory that
relief itself caused poverty was wrong, and replaced the Poor
Law with a modern system of social assistance.
No matter what England learned, the United States
Government is eagerly following the 1834 script by ending
Federal responsibility for welfare and turning it over to the
states. The arguments are the same: welfare encourages young
women to quit school or work and have out-of-wedlock babies.
Once on the doll these women become trapped in dependency,
unable to summon the initiative to get a job or to raise
their children property. Welfare, in short is responsible for
the spread of moral rot in society.
Never mind low wages and irregular work; never mind the
spreading social disorganization to which they lead; never
mind changes in family and sexual norms occurring among all
classes and in all Western countries. The solution is to
slash welfare. ``Tough love,'' it is said, will deter young
women from having babies and force those already raising
children to go to work.
But slashing welfare does not create stable jobs or raise
wages. It will have the opposite effect. By crowding the low-
wage labor market with hundreds of thousands of desperate
mothers, it will drive wages down.
The basic economic realities of high unemployment levels
and falling wages for less-educated workers; guarantee a
clamaity in the making--and not only for welfare mothers
It is true that the United States has a higher proportion
of single-parent families than other Western countries. But
since other rich countries provide far more generous
assistance to single mothers, this very fact suggests that
welfare has little to do with it.
Other facts also argue against the welfare-causes-
illegitimacy argument. Most obvious, welfare benefits set by
the states have declined sharply since 1975, while the out-
of-wedlock birth rate has risen nationwide. In addition,
there is no discernible relationship between the widely
varying levels of benefits provided by the states and the
out-of-wedlock birth rates in the states.
But fact don't seem to matter. We may have to relive the
misery and moral distintegration of England in the 19th
century to learn with happens when a society deserts its most
vulnerable members.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, yesterday, after the President announced
he would sign this legislation, I said: ``The President has made his
decision. Let us hope that it is for the best.''
Today, I continue to hope for the best, even if I fear the worst.
As I have stated on this floor many times, this legislation does not
reform aid to families with dependent children; it simply abolishes it.
It terminates the basic Federal commitment of support for dependent
children in hopes of altering the behavior of their mothers. We are
putting those children at risk with absolutely no evidence that this
radical idea has even the slightest chance of success.
In our haste to enact this bill--any bill--before the November
elections, we have chosen to ignore what little we do know about the
subject of poverty. Just 2 days ago, on July 30, 11 of the Nation's
leading researchers in this field issued a statement urging us not to
do this. Among them were seven current and former directors of the
Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin
established in the aftermath of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.
Scholars of the stature of Sheldon Danziger of the University of
Michigan; Irwin Garfinkel of Columbia University; Eugene Smolensky of
the University of California at Berkeley; and Edward Gramlich of the
University of Michigan. They write:

As researchers who have dedicated years to the study of
poverty, the labor market, and public assistance, we oppose
the welfare reform legislation under consideration by
Congress. The best available evidence is that this
legislation would substantially increase poverty and
destitution while doing too little to change the welfare
system to one that provides greater opportunity for families
in return for demanding greater responsibility.
Real welfare reform would not impose deep food stamp cuts
on poor families with children, the working poor, the
elderly, the disabled, and the unemployed. It would not
eliminate the safety net for most poor legal immigrants,
including the very old and the infirm. It would not place at
risk poor children whose parents are willing to work but are
unable to find unsubsidized employment. It would not back up
work requirements with the resources needed to make them
effective.
We strongly support an overhaul of the nation's welfare
system. But the pending legislation will make a troubled
welfare system worse. It is not meaningful welfare reform. It
should not become law.

I repeat what these social scientists have concluded: ``The best
available evidence is that this legislation would substantially
increase poverty and destitution.''
What is the evidence? Dr. Paul Offner, the distinguished Commissioner
of Health Care Finance for the District of Columbia, summarized it
nicely last week. Respected research organizations such as the Urban
Institute here in Washington, and the Manpower Demonstration Research
Corporation in New York have, over the years, undertaken careful
evaluations of various welfare reform demonstration projects. As Offner
recounts, they found that welfare caseloads were reduced in only 4 of
the 23 welfare demonstrations they studied.
Dr. Offner points out that even the program in Riverside, CA, which
is regarded by many experts as the most successful ever, has achieved
caseload reductions of less than 10 percent.
This should not surprise us; it is not easy to change human behavior.
Notwithstanding this fact, the premise of this legislation is that the
behavior of certain adults can be changed by making the lives of their
children as

[[Page S9329]]

wretched as possible. This is a fearsome assumption. In my view. It is
certainly not a conservative one.
If we acknowledge the difficulty in bringing about the transition
from welfare to work, we must recognize that putting people to work on
a large scale would require a large-scale public jobs program, and that
would require a great deal of money.
Let me say that Democrats were the first to fail in this regard. In
the company of Sargent Shriver and Adam Yarmolinsky, I attended the
Cabinet meeting in the spring of 1964 where we presented the plans for
a war on poverty. Our principal proposal, backed by Secretary of Labor
Willard Wirtz, was a massive jobs program, along Works Progress
Administration lines, to be financed by a cigarette tax. President
Johnson listened for a moment or two; announced that in that election
year we were cutting taxes, not raising them. He thereupon picked up
the telephone attached to the Cabinet table, called someone, somewhere,
about something else, and the war on poverty was lost before it began.
This legislation is even worse.
In fact, this legislation provides some $55 billion less over the
next 6 years. There are work requirements in the bill, but we seem
tacitly willing to admit they will never be met. Dr. June O'Neill,
Director of the Congressional Budget Office, has been most forthcoming
on this subject. The CBO report on this bill bluntly states that

Given the costs and administrative complexities involved,
CBO assumes that most states would simply accept penalties
rather than implement the [work] requirements.

What else does the evidence show? It shows quite clearly that the
central feature of this legislation, the time limit, will affect
millions of children. CBO estimates that ``under current demographic
assumptions, this provision could reduce cash assistance rolls by 30 to
40 percent'' within the decade. I should say that again: 30 to 40
percent of the caseload will be cut off in less than 10 years' time.
Let me put that in terms of how many children will be cut off.
According to the Urban Institute, 3,500,000 children will be dropped
from the rolls in 2001. By 2005, 4,896,000 children will be cut off.

The Urban Institute has also estimated, in a report released just
last Friday, July 26, that this bill will cause 2.6 million persons to
fall below the poverty line; 1.1 million of those impoverished will be
children. To say nothing of those persons already living in poverty.
They will be pushed even further below the poverty line; The average
loss in income for families already below the poverty line will be
$1,040 per year. I note that the Urban Institute's estimates are based
on quite conservative assumptions, so the actual impact could well be
even worse than predicted.
I cite this evidence because it is important that we cast our votes
with full knowledge of the consequences. This information has been
widely available, and I have made these arguments on the floor
previously, so I believe we are all on notice of the implications for
children.
The implications of this legislation for our State and local
governments are another matter. These are not widely known, but they
will be very real indeed. On Thursday of last week, 2 days after the
Senate passed its version of this legislation, I received in the mail a
four-page letter from the Honorable Rudolph W. Giuliani, mayor of the
city of New York. He wrote of his concern that the major provisions of
the bill would impose huge new costs on New York City totaling some
$900 million per year. The mayor listed the added costs to New York
City as follows: $380 million for child care for welfare recipients;
$290 million for aid to legal immigrants; $100 million to support
persons dropped from Federal rolls due to time limits; $100 million for
work programs.
Mayor Giuliani wrote that the bill's ban on Federal assistance for
legal immigrants was of particular concern to New York City, where 30
percent of the population is foreign-born.
The sum of $900 million a year is a lot of money. New York City's
total annual budget is $33 billion. And other, smaller local
governments will also be hit hard.
The total additional cost to New York State will be in the
neighborhood of $1.3 billion per year. We estimate the loss of Federal
funds to some of our larger counties as follows: Albany County $15
million; Erie County $75 million; Monroe County $60 million; Onondaga
County $30 million; Westchester County $45 million.
These are sums that New York State and New York City simply cannot
afford. It will be ruinous for us. In March of this year, the New York
State Financial Control Board reported that ``the city's finances
continue to deteriorate.'' The board said that over the next 4 years,
the growth in New York City's spending will be more than double the
growth in its income. Spending will grow by approximately 2 percent per
year, while revenues will grow by less than 1 percent. In the absence
of this welfare legislation, the gap between the city's outlays and
revenues will increase by $400 million annually. With the new
additional costs imposed by this bill, the annual increase in the
shortfall will more than triple.
New York will not be alone in this, of course. Senator Feinstein said
on the floor last week that the bill will cost California $17 billion
over 6 years, or about $3 billion annually. Other States--Illinois,
Texas, Florida--will also bear immense new burdens. I wonder if they
are ready for what is coming.
More importantly, I wonder if the Nation is ready for the social
change this legislation will set in motion. There are great issues of
principle at stake here, as leaders of the religious community have
said with such clarity and force. Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, president of
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to the President on
Friday to urge that this bill be vetoed. Quoting St. Matthew's Gospel,
Bishop Pilla wrote that ``the moral measure of our society is how we
treat `the least among us.' ''

I know what the outcome will be today, but before we cast our votes,
I hope Senators will ask themselves how this legislation will treat the
least among us.
I began these remarks with a comment on language. The conference
report before us is not welfare reform, it is welfare repeal. It is the
first step in dismantling the social contract that has been in place in
the United States since at least the 1930's. Do not doubt that Social
Security itself, which is to say insured retirement benefits, will be
next. The bill will be called the Individual Retirement Account
Insurance Act. Something such. John Westergaard points out that this
legislation breaks the social contract of the 1930's. We would care for
the elderly, the unemployed, the dependent children. Drop the latter;
watch the others fall.
Fred C. Ikle has coined the fine term ``semantic infiltration'' to
describe the technique in international relations whereby one party
persuades another to use its terms to discuss the issues being
negotiated. We now have its domestic counterpart in egregious display.
Recalling George Orwell's essay, ``Politics and the English Language,''
we would do well to be wary. Henry Friedlander has reminded us recently
of the stages by which genocide evolved from the soothing and
supportive notion of euthanasia.
And so to one other matter of language. We are told that this
legislation is a defeat for liberals. We are assured in private, and it
is hinted at in print, that many of the President's most liberal
advisers opposed this legislation. Liberals are said to have lost.
This is nonsense. It is conservatives who have lost.
For the best part of 2 years now, I have pointed out that the
principal--and most principled--opponents of this legislation were
conservative social scientists who for years have argued against
liberal nostrums for changing society with the argument that no one
knows enough to mechanistically change society. Typically liberals
think otherwise; to the extent that liberals can be said to think at
all. The current batch in the White House, now busily assuring us they
were against this all along, are simply lying, albeit they probably
don't know when they are lying. They have only the flimsiest grasp of
social reality; thinking all things doable and equally undoable. As,
for example, the horror of this legislation. By contrast, the
conservative social scientists--James Q. Wilson, Lawrence Mead, John
DeIulio, William

[[Page S9330]]

Bennett--have warned over and over that this is radical legislation,
with altogether unforeseeable consequences, many of which will surely
be loathsome.

All honor to them. They have kept to their principles. Honor on high
as well to the Catholic bishops, who admittedly have an easier task
with matters of this sort. When principles are at issue, they simply
look them up. Too many liberals, alas, simply make them up.
Mr. President, I thank the Senate for its courteous attention. I
thank my friend from Minnesota for reserving this time for me, seeing
to it I was able to speak, and I yield the floor.
Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, under the assumed rotation, I now yield
10 minutes to Senator Ashcroft of Missouri, and then I assume we will
go back to the other side.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I am not sure that I am managing the
time. I am ranking member of finance here. I yield, in sequence, the
Senator from Minnesota as much time as he requires.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, before the Senator proceeds, might I
just say to Republican Senators, we have a very long list of those who
would like to speak. It seems now that you can kind of judge that in 25
minutes or so we will need another Senator. I hope you can contact us
and see if we can arrange it so there are no big lulls on the floor and
we can get our work done as soon as possible.
Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator from New
Mexico for yielding me the time.
Our responsibility in acting on a failed welfare system is as
profound a responsibility in responding to the people of this country
as we have ever had. The fundamental role and responsibility of
Government is to call people to their highest and best, not trap them
at their lowest and least.
In spite of the good intentions of the welfare program, which we have
poured billions of dollars into, hundreds of billions of dollars, we
have ended up trapping people at their lowest and least rather than
calling people or prompting people to their highest and best.
The real objective of our legislation here ought to be to change the
character of welfare. We need to change it from a system which has
provided careers and conditions that lasted a lifetime to a system that
instead of providing a condition provides a transition, that moves
people from poverty into opportunity, that moves people from indolence
into industry, that moves people from welfare into work. No longer can
we afford a system that not only provides people a condition or a
career, but goes beyond trapping individuals and goes to trapping
generations.
One of the real problems of our welfare system is that we have
children who are trapped in welfare and they become welfare careerists
themselves, and their children are then trapped in welfare. The truth
of the matter is that the prisoners of war in the war on poverty have
been the children of America. There are more children in poverty today
than there were when we started the war on poverty, and it is a clear
indication that the system is a tragic failure as it relates to human
beings--children who have lost their lives, children who have lost
their opportunity, children who have lost their spirit, children who
fall into a net which was designed to save them, but instead becomes a
net to ensnare them.
A good industrialist friend of mine says that your system is
perfectly designed to give you what you are getting. I do not know
anyone in America who believes that what we are getting is the right
thing. We are getting higher rates of illegitimacy. We are getting
higher rates of dependency. We are finding ourselves with individuals
staying on welfare longer and longer periods of time. Is that what we
want? Is what we are getting what we need? Absolutely not.
The system may not have been intended to give us what we are getting,
but the design of the system is what causes us to get what we are
getting, and it is our responsibility, it is a sacred charge of ours
given to us by the American people, and they have made it fundamentally
and unmistakably clear that they want different outcomes, they want
different results. They do not want more dependency, they do not want
more illegitimacy, they do not want more careers and generations on
welfare.
They want less, because they want people to be free. They want
children to have an opportunity to look toward the U.S. Senate or
toward the Presidency or toward being a captain of industry or
developing their own business. They do not want people trapped in an
intergenerational net of ensnarement, rather than a net of safety.
So it is incumbent upon us to make fundamental changes, fundamental
changes in the way this system treats people.
We can no longer allow Government to be the instrument of
ensnarement, of entrapment. We must make Government an instrument of
liberation, of opportunity, of industry and development. That is why it
is so important that we end this one-size-fits-all Washington approach
which says that everybody will respond the same and all the systems are
to be uniform, and move welfare programs back to the States and allow
them to experiment and do what works.
I often laugh when I think of the one-size-fits-all term. We have
almost come to believe it. Can you imagine if we were to send off for a
catalog and get a catalog that said, ``One size of pajamas fits all for
your family''? I know what would happen in my family. We would get five
pairs of pajamas. They would be one size but they would fit none
because we are pretty different.
The great family of America is different. States and communities have
different characteristics and attributes, and they need to be able to
shape, to tailor, to fashion what they do from a block grant that gives
them broad discretion and authority. Yes, they need for the block grant
to be limited. They need to have the energy of limited resources to
drive the creativity of solving the problem.
No one ever solved a problem when the supply was infinite. No one
ever works to conserve energy as long as it is free. You start to pay
the heating bill and you learn to close the door, you learn to shut the
windows, you learn to caulk the cracks. And when we put limits on the
amount of money we are going to spend on welfare, we will start
caulking the cracks and start stopping up the places where we have
leakage. And it is not a leakage financially. We are talking about
leakage of the great human resource of America.
We are looking at the Olympics. Boy, they are inspiring. But how much
chance would we have in basketball or volleyball or baseball if we did
not send our full team onto the field, if we told some of them,
``You're to sit over there on the side and not to be productive. We'll
call you the welfare reserves''? We would not win. And we will not win
as a Nation if we do not get all of our players into the operation of
being what this Nation is all about. That is being capable of helping
yourselves and helping others and being so good at what you are doing
that the world beats a path to your door.
That is why we need these block grants where States will tailor their
programs to meet the needs in their own States and do what is necessary
to move people out of conditions, lifelong conditions of welfare, to
signal that this is a transition, not a condition. You are to be moving
out of here. And fundamental, one of the acts of genius in this bill,
in addition to the block grant, is the fact that there is a 5-year
limit.
We say to people, it is an insurance policy, so that when you have
trouble you can fall into the welfare net but you cannot live there,
you cannot stay there. It is not a place for you to be forever because,
once 5 years is used up, that is a lifetime limit. We really should be
saying to people, do not ever be on there for more than 2 consecutive
years, ever. Frankly, our welfare system should never be a place where
you are not preparing for the next stage of your life. Welfare becomes
a transition instead of a condition, a fundamental characteristic. The
block grant is important about that.
The senior Senator from Missouri, Kit Bond, is a personal friend of
mine.

[[Page S9331]]

He has a phrase, ``experience is what you get when you expected
something else.'' Over the last 30 years, I think we expected something
else from this so-called War on Poverty and Great Society program, but
we got something different from what we expected. We got children
without fathers and we got homes without discipline and we got streets
without safety and we got generations locked--locked--out of
opportunity, without education.
We expected something different. But our experience is what we got.
And our experience has not been very positive. But I want you to know
that there have been a few bright lights over the last 30 years that
signal to us how we could make changes, how we could actually change
the behavior of people, how we could help them move from being
dependent to being independent, the glorious state of liberty and
freedom, what America is all about.

Those bright lights have been in the nongovernmental sector
primarily. They have been the Salvation Army, the Boys and Girls Clubs,
the missions, and homeless shelters that have been run by the
nongovernmental entities who are energized by a calling which is beyond
the calling of duty that comes from government. It is a calling of
humanity that God stirs in our hearts.
One of the primary features of this bill is that States will be
allowed to contract with organizations like the Boys and Girls Clubs
and the Salvation Army and charitable organizations that specialize in
hope and opportunity and who care, who care for the people trapped on
welfare, not just as welfare statistics, but care for them after they
leave the condition of welfare. These groups have a lifelong interest
in helping people make it all the way to the top, not just over the
threshold.
I have to say that our experience tells us that not everyone in the
welfare system has wanted to see everyone leave the system. Sometimes
we have had too much interest in how many people we could have on
welfare instead of how many people we could move off welfare.
Significantly, the provisions of this bill would allow charitable and
even faith-based operations to compete for contracts or to participate
in voucher programs to help people. It does it with safeguards, so that
if a person is offended by virtue of being involved with a faith-based
organization, they would be free to get their assistance from some
other provider.
These faith-based organizations have in the past--many times the
smaller ones who did not have large legal departments--have been afraid
of accepting governmental funds in order to help the poor. They have
been afraid of being sued. I know the Salvation Army, in one setting,
was sued and had to settle for a quarter of a million dollars, a matter
which absolutely undermined and eroded the capacity of the Salvation
Army to help the poor. We know they do as good a job as any.
I just want to say that this bill is the kind of change that America
has been asking for. Is it perfect? No. At least the way I was raised,
in order to get perfection you had to die and go to Heaven. I want to
go to Heaven. But I had not planned on going today. And since we ought
to do what we can while we are here, let us take as good as we can get
and shape it and fashion it, but not assume we have all the answers in
Washington. Send it back to the States, give States the opportunity to
tailor it in ways that will help people simply move from dependence to
independence, from careers of welfare and the condition of welfare, the
intergenerational things of welfare, to a transition of welfare that
moves from welfare to work.
I believe that it is fundamentally important that we carry through
and pass this measure. And I thank the President of the United States
for his willingness to sign this measure. I believe this measure will
help save the lives of children and it will help save the lives of
individuals for generations to come.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair. I observe the absence of a quorum.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, may I ask of my colleague if he would
consent that after he finishes I be recognized?
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, that would be fine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator from Missouri
that arrangement has been made, and the Senator from Minnesota is
recognized.
Mr. BOND. I thank the Chair.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent
that a representative sample of editorials on this subject be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Star Tribune, July 31, 1996]

Welfare Bill--It Deserves a Forthright Veto

For most of his presidency, Bill Clinton has tried to have
it both ways on welfare. He's curried favor with both
welfare's tough-talking reformers and its defenders. He's
argued both for changes, such as work requirements and time
limits, and for preservation of welfare's protections for
poor children.
It's understandable that congressional Republicans would
want their final-offer, election-year welfare bill to force
the president to show his true stripes. They've crafted a
bill that ought to do just that.
The bill that's moving toward the House and Senate floors
is one Clinton might be tempted to sign for political
reasons. But he should veto it, for moral reasons. If he
doesn't, he will have put the lie to all his claims of
concern for the well-being of the nation's most vulnerable
children.
For all its reformist window-dressing, the bill that
emerged from conference committee Monday is too hard on
America's poor. It doesn't spend enough money to hold the
line against hunger, or to make workable the requirement that
a job take the place of welfare within two years after
benefits start.
The bill's goal of quickly replacing welfare checks with
paychecks is something most Americans support. But making
that happen in a way that gives poor families lasting self-
sufficiency takes more than the hammer of a time limit. It
takes job training, counseling, public-works jobs where
private employment is unavailable, child care and
transportation. Those tools cost money. This bill doesn't
provide it.
As a result, in the name of overcoming poverty, this bill
would likely push some of America's least employable adults
and their children into more desperate circumstances.
And, because of the bill's big cuts in food-stamp spending,
that desperation could well include hunger. Admittedly, the
food-stamp provisions in the final bill aren't as extreme as
earlier versions. A guarantee of food-stamp eligibility--
though not of food-stamp amounts--was preserved for families
with children. No so for unemployed adults without
dependents. They'd be cut off from the government's food
lifeline after six months.
The welfare bill is especially punitive toward legal
immigrants. Under this legislation, the nation's official
message to its legitimate newcomers would be, ``You are
welcome only as long as you remain gainfully employed.'' A
down-on-his-luck immigrant could get no cash assistance
whatsoever from his new country.
Had Clinton more boldly taken sides in the nation's welfare
debate earlier in his presidency, a bill this harsh might not
be heading toward his desk a few months before an election.
He should have been calling all along for more realistic and
compassionate reform, the kind that spends more in the short
term in order to redeem lives in the long term.
Here's hoping Clinton has learned that presidential
equivocation carries a high price--and that his equivocation
on welfare ends with a forthright veto of the bill Congress
is about to send him.
____

[From the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 22, 1996]

Reform on the Cheap

Who'll blink on this latest shot at changing welfare? And, in the long
run, who'll wind up paying for it?

Voters liked Bill Clinton's promise to ``end welfare as we
know it.'' So Republicans are aching to show he didn't mean
it. The result is a game of political chicken that's far more
likely to hurt poor Americans than to uplift them.
The Republican Congress is about to dare the President to
veto a wrong-headed bill that would cut welfare spending,
toughen the rules, and shift a lot of decision-making to the
states. Since this would be his third straight veto of a so-
called welfare reform bill, Mr. Clinton may blink. It's
possible he'll sign a bill that pretends the feds can turn
welfare into a helpful, job-oriented network even as they
squeeze about $10 billion a year in savings from the system.
That's a pipe dream.
Unfortunately, if he does veto it and a better, bipartisan
plan doesn't emerge, Mr. Clinton will have to follow through
on a promise that he made last week to give himself political
cover on this emotional issue. Absent a bill, he vowed to
issue an executive order letting states cut off benefits
after two years.
The terms of this order are still in the works. But it
could let penny-pinching states give welfare recipients far
too little help toward employment and self-sufficiency.

[[Page S9332]]

That's the basic problem with what Congress is cooking up.
It pretends that helping poor people become self-sufficient
doesn't cost more money in the short term. But it does cost
more, for child care, for training, for government-created
jobs for those who can't find work in the private sector.
Committed reformers such as Gov. Tommy Thompson, the
Wisconsin Republican, are up-front about this.
Chances are, the public will respond positively to major
parts of the GOP package, such as a two-year limit on
benefits before work is required, and a lifetime limit of
five years. But work requirements are meaningless if there
aren't enough low-skilled jobs available. If politicians are
serious about breaking the cycle of dependency, government
has to be an employer of last resort.
By promising to act on his own, Mr. Clinton was trying to
show Republicans that--politically--they need a welfare bill
more than he does. He was trying to coax Republicans toward
compromise.
The House did consider a bipartisan plan sponsored by Reps.
Mike Castle (R., Del.) and John Tanner (D., Tenn.)--a plan
whose spending cuts weren't so extreme. But it died when only
eight House Republicans were willing to buck their leaders
and line up with Mr. Castle.
Since Republicans seem uninterested in a sensible,
bipartisan reform, Mr. Clinton should get his veto pen ready.
As for the executive order he promised--every bit the
political gimmick that Republicans charged--it should be
loaded with conditions to protect poor families from
politicians peddling welfare reform on a dime.
____

[From the Washington Post, July 25, 1996]

A Children's Veto

``I just don't want to do anything that hurts kids,''
President Clinton said as the Senate passed its supposed
reform of welfare the other day. Why did the sentence strike
us as yet another cynical manipulation of the welfare issue
for political purposes? Because if Mr. Clinton were
determined not to hurt children, he would have indicated days
ago that he intended to veto this legislation or any bill
remotely like it.
Instead, he, the Senate's Democrats and moderate
Republicans continued to try to prettify the bill around the
edges. A couple of the amendments that they succeeded in
making were consequential, and they may yet make more in
conference. But mainly these are marginal and cosmetic
changes. They are sops to conscience meant to justify a
regressive vote that for political reasons these politicians
are afraid not to cast. They are determined to vote in this
selection year in favor of a bill that bears the label
``welfare reform''; it doesn't matter that the label is not
deserved.
The president and his followers are the prisoners of four
years of sloganeering on the subject that he himself set off.
It was he who, in an effort to preempt the welfare issue and
show himself to be a different kind of Democrat, famously
promised in the 1992 campaign to end the system as we know
it. He set off a process that he could not control, in part
because he has been unwilling to take the tough and unpopular
positions necessary to control it.
No one--or very few, anyway--would argue that the current
welfare system is a good one. Mr. Clinton was and remains
right to try to change it. But his original position also was
right--that the change should involve equal amounts of added
pressure on welfare mothers to go to work and additional
resources to help them make the move successfully. The
current bills fail to provide the resources; they walk
away from the second half of the strategy. They would
dismantle the federal welfare program, limit future
federal aid and shift to the states a financial burden
that many states will find hard to meet. An eighth of the
children in the country now are on welfare. No one can
know for sure how many would be affected adversely by the
legislation, but the best guess seems to be that at least
a million more children would end up living below the
poverty line. A fifth of the children in the country
already are there.
The bills would disestablish or greatly weaken the food
stamp program as well, while basically cutting off federal
benefits to legal immigrants--people who are legitimately
here and theoretically welcome but have not become U.S.
citizens. Technically, this is budget-balancing legislation,
a reconciliation bill. The noble-sounding legislation, a
reconciliation bill. The noble-sounding budget-balancing
process of a year ago has come down to a bill that would cut
only programs for the poor, and programs on which people who
are black and brown particularly depend.
This legislation can't be fixed. Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle, who opposed it the other day, said that even though
there were only 25 votes against, he was sure that a veto, if
it were cast, would be sustained. We have no doubt that's so.
It is another way of saying that if only the president would
take the lead and provide the political cover, instead of
joining in stripping it away, he could--and should--defend to
the voters. If instead he signs the bill, he no doubt will
claim it as a triumph, but in moral and policy terms it will
be the low point of his presidency.
____

[From the Buffalo, NY News, July 23, 1996]

Don't Let Rush to Welfare `Reform' Leave Some of Needy Without Help

What if time limit is reached and there's no job to get?

In his eagerness to outflank Republicans on the welfare
issue and sign almost anything billed as ``reform,''
President Clinton should resist the urge to abandon the long-
established concept that there is a national interest in
helping the poor become self-sufficient.
That is the chief danger now as Washington's warring
factions undertake a mad scramble to produce some sort of
welfare legislation before taking time off to go into full
campaign mode.
The Republican-led Congress made sensible welfare
legislation a little more possible last week by dropping
plans to attach Medicaid reform to the welfare bill and to
turn Medicaid into a block-grant program controlled by the
states.
Ending the guarantee of medical care for the poor never
made any sense because the impoverished deserve health care
as much as they deserve help with life's other basic
necessities.
But it also doesn't make any sense to end the federal
guarantee of food and other aid for those who play by the
rules and whose only offense is that they're impoverished.
Nor does imposing time limits on welfare recipients make
sense except in cases where they refuse to work even though a
job is available. The poor--and their children--should not be
blamed for economic cycles that may well make finding a job
impossible at any given time.
Those are bedrock principles that the nation--and the
president--should not forsake amid an understandable distaste
for the small percentage of welfare recipients who are
slackers.
Unfortunately, the House the other day cast aside those
principles by passing a reform plan that ends welfare as a
federal entitlement program that takes care of all who
deserve help. Instead, the House bill would slash funding and
turn the reduced money over to states in block grants.
The states could then structure programs largely as they
please, ending the national safety net and competing with one
another in a ``race to the bottom'' as they cut benefits and
drive out the poor.
That's no way for an enlightened nation to lift its most
vulnerable people. But the final bill that emerges from
House-Senate negotiations seems sure now to take that tack.
The other failure of the GOP approach is its time limits
regardless of job availability. Clinton, too, recently
endorsed time limits, saying the White House will
administratively impose a two-year limit but that his action
would be unnecessary if Congress could produce an acceptable
reform plan.
Details of the new White House initiative--such as how to
protect children whose parents get cut off--have yet to be
worked out. But in addition to safeguarding kids, the new
rule should safeguard those who simply can't find work
through no fault of their own.
These basic safeguards should be part of whatever reform
bill ultimately reaches the president's desk. If they are
not, he should use the same veto pen he's waved at other
times--regardless of what the calender says about the
election season.
____

[From the Atlanta Constitution, July 28, 1996]

Welfare Bills Suffer From Politics

The welfare system must be reformed, and the goal of that
reform must be twofold:
It must reinforce a work ethic that has faltered among some
welfare recipients;
It must protect the children of poor Americans from hunger
and deprivation in an increasingly fickle economy.
Unfortunately, the reform effort making its way through
Congress focuses too much on the first goal and too little on
the second.
That's not surprising. From the life experience of
prosperous, middle-aged, college-educated white males--which
describes most of the members of Congress--the rewards of the
work ethic seem obvious. It gives you a six-figure salary, a
taxpayer-provided staff and free parking, among other things.
But from the perspective of an unemployed mother trying to
raise two kids on welfare, the case can seem a little
cloudier.
Usually, the family lives in an inner city or isolated
rural area, where jobs are scarce and transportation
difficult. If the mother overcomes those obstacles and gets a
job, and if she works 40 hours per week, every week of the
year at $5.10 an hour--which is 20 percent above the minimum
wage--she stands to make a grand total of $10,608 a year. In
the process, she may also lose health insurance for her
family, because most low-wage jobs do not include a benefits
package.
Imagine trying to raise two children on $10,000 a year in
today's economy. Child care alone would take a huge chunk of
her pay. She has the option, of course, of choosing not to
pay for child care, to leave her children on their own while
she's working. Given our problems with juvenile crime, that's
not a choice to encourage.
If welfare reform is to work, it has to make work a viable
option. It must subsidize child care for that working mother.
It must extend health insurance coverage for the working
poor. And it must offer training and education, so that
she has at least the hope of rising out of that $5.10-an-
hour job into something better.
Some of those steps cost money, at least in the short term.
In the long term, such reform will benefit the mother;
benefit her

[[Page S9333]]

children, to whom she is a role model; and benefit society,
which is currently losing the value of her labor and
incurring the expense of supporting her and her children.
The House and Senate have passed separate but similar
welfare bills, and are trying to resolve their differences
and send a measure to President Clinton for his signature.
Their effort is fatally flawed, however, because in addition
to the goals listed above, Congress is using the legislation
to pursue two less admirable goals.
It is trying to balance the budget on the backs of the
poor. Even though true welfare reform will cost more money in
the short term, and even though entitlement programs for the
middle class are far more expensive than welfare programs,
deficit cutters have focused on the poor, cutting $60 billion
from food stamps and other programs over the next six years.
The bill is calculated as an election-year dare to Clinton.
He has made clear his uneasiness with the bill's impact on
poor children, but has nonetheless indicated a willingness to
consider signing the Senate's more reasonable approach. But
Republicans seem intent on forcing him to veto the
legislation. As Bob Dole grumbled on the campaign trail,
``He's not going to get that bill. He's going to get a
tougher bill.''
And as House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it, ``I believe we
win from this point on no matter what happens.''
Welfare reform is important, but apparently less important
than election-year politicking.
____

[From the Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1996]

Playing `Gotcha!' on Welfare Reform

The House passed a new welfare bill Thursday, and the talk
afterward was not of what the bill would mean for the
children and adults who depend on the kindness of the
taxpayers, but of a political calculus.
``In the end,'' said House Majority Leader Dick Armey,
``the president is going to have to make a determination
whether or not he's going to sign this bill and satisfy the
American people while he alienates his left-wing political
base, or if he's going to veto the bill in order to satisfy
the left wing of the Democrat Party and thereby alienate the
American people.''
In other words, ``Gotcha!''
And that pretty much captures what's been wrong from the
beginning with the effort to legislate welfare reform.
Clinton has exploited the issue to establish his bona fides
as a ``new Democrat.'' The Republicans, suspecting
insincerity on Clinton's part, have used it to bash him and
back him into a corner.
Suffusing the entire debate have been two notions, one
simply wrongheaded and the other both wrongheaded and
pernicious.
The first is that reforming welfare is a way to save money.
It is not, at least initially. Done properly--that is, with
the purpose of getting welfare parents into the work force--
reform will actually cost more money, for job training, child
care and so forth. (And whatever else the 9 million children
on welfare suffer from, it is not from having too much money
spent on them.)
The second notion, which partisans on neither side have
done enough to counter, is that welfare reform is about
getting black layabouts off the public dole. In fact, most
welfare recipients are not black. But that continues to be
the accepted stereotype and, one suspects, a substantial
motivator of the welfare-reform push.
In its broad outlines, the newly passed House bill differs
little from the measure that Clinton vetoed earlier this
year. It ends welfare as a federal entitlement and converts
it into a program of block grants to the states, which would
be free, within very broad limits, to devise their own
programs of poor support.
This devolution is a good idea. Clinton has acknowledged
that implicitly by granting numerous waivers for state
welfare experiments over the last 3\1/2\ years. Perhaps the
most promising such experiment, Wisconsin's W-2 program,
which substitutes private and public jobs for cash assistance
and ought to be the paradigm for all welfare, is awaiting
waiver approval even now.
But eliminating welfare's entitlement status is a grievous
error of historic proportions. Indeed, Sen. Carol Mosely-
Braum (D-Ill.) did not exaggerate when she called it an
``abomination.''
That the world's richest nation would not guarantee help
for poor children--and Aid to Families With Dependent
Children is nothing except a vast childcare program--is
outrageous. It represents not progress but regression. And
while Dick Armey may be convinced that that's what the
American people want, we are not.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I do want to talk about this piece of
legislation. I have heard some discussion about doing good. Let me
start out with what is a very important framework to me as a Senator
from Minnesota. It is a question. Will this legislation, if passed,
signed into law by the President, create more poverty and more hunger
among children in America? And if the answer to that question is yes,
then my vote is no.
Mr. President, we were discussing welfare reform several years ago,
and we said that we should move from welfare to work, that that would
include job training, education training, making sure the jobs were
available that single parents--mostly mothers--could support their
children on, and a commitment to child care.
Just about every single scholar in the United States of America has
said that this is what reform is all about. You have to invest some
additional resources. Then, in the long run, not only are the mothers
and children better off, but we are all better off. That is real
welfare reform. Slashing close to $60 billion in low-income assistance
is not reform, colleagues. It is punitive, it is harsh, and it is
extreme.
Mr. President, we have been focusing in this Congress on the budget
deficit. I think, today, what we see in the U.S. Senate is a spiritual
deficit because, Mr. President, I know some of my colleagues do not
want to look at this. They push their gaze away from unpleasant facts
and an unpleasant reality. Sometimes people do not want to know what
they do not want to know.
Mr. President, the evidence is irrefutable and irreducible: This
legislation, once enacted into law, will create more poverty and hunger
among children in America. That is not reform.
Mr. President, we have here about $28 billion of cuts in nutrition
assistance. I believe when the President spoke yesterday he was trying
to say that does not have anything to do with reform, and he intends to
fix that next Congress. But I worry about what will happen now. Mr.
President, 70 percent of the citizens that will be affected by these
cuts in food nutrition programs are children, 50 percent of the
families have incomes of under $6,300 a year. Our incomes are $130,000
a year.
Mr. President, there will be a $3 billion cut over the next 6 years
in food assistance, nutrition assistance, even for families who pay
over 50 percent of their monthly income for housing costs. So now we
put families in our country--poor families, poor children--in the
situation of ``eat or heat,'' but they do not get both. At the same
time, my colleagues keep wanting to cut low-income energy assistance
programs. This is goodness? This is goodness?
Mr. President, I was involved in the anti-hunger struggles in the
South. I saw it in North Carolina, and I remind my colleagues, maybe
they want to go back and look at the exposes, look at the Field
Foundation report, look at the CBS report, ``Hunger USA.'' Where are
the national media? Why are we not seeing documentaries right now about
poverty in America?
Mr. President, the Food Stamp Program, which we dramatically expanded
in the late 1960's and early 1970's, with Richard Nixon, a Republican,
leading the way, has been the most effective and important safety-net
practice in this country. As a result of expanding that program, we
dramatically reduce hunger and malnutrition among children in America.
Now we are turning the clock back, and some of my colleagues are
calling this reform. Mr. President, how did it get to be reform, to cut
by 20 percent food nutrition assistance for a poor, 80-year-old woman?
How dare you call it reform. That is not reform. How did it get to be
reform to slash nutrition programs that are so important in making sure
that children have an adequate diet? How dare you call it reform. That
is not reform. How did it get to be reform to essentially eliminate all
of the assistance for legal immigrants, people who pay taxes and work?
How dare you call that reform. That has not a thing to do with reform.
The Urban Institute came out with a report several weeks ago. Isabel
Sawhill, one of the very best, said this legislation will impoverish an
additional 1.1 million children. We have had these analyses before. The
Office of Management and Budget had a similar analysis. So did the
Department of Health and Human Services. How dare you call a piece of
legislation that will lead to more poverty among children in America
reform?
Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund is right: To
call this piece of legislation reform is like calling catsup a
vegetable. Except this time it is more serious, because many
more children, many more elderly, many more children with disabilities
will be affected.

[[Page S9334]]

Mr. President, the evidence is really irreducible and irrefutable.
Bob Greenstein, who has won the MacArthur Genius Award for his work,
crunched the numbers about what it means in personal terms, real terms
for the most vulnerable citizens in America, but my colleagues are too
worried about polls. They are too worried about the politics of it, and
they turn their gaze away from all this.
Mr. President, I do not particularly care about words like
``entitlement.'' But I do think as a nation we are a community, and up
until the passage of this legislation, if signed into law, we as a
nation said, as a community we will make sure there is a floor beneath
which no child can fall in America. Now we have eliminated that floor.
We are now saying as a Senate that there will no longer be any floor
beneath which no child can fall. And you call that reform?
Mr. President, we had a proposal out here on the floor of the Senate
that said, if you are going to cut people off from work, if you are
going to cut people off from welfare, at least require the States to
provide vouchers. The CBO tells us we do not have the money for the job
training slots, and people will not necessarily find work, and then you
will cut the adult off work. So we added an amendment that said, ``For
God's sake, at least make sure there are vouchers for Pampers, for
health care, for food for the children.'' That amendment was rejected.
So we have no requirement that at the very minimum, even if you are
going to cut a parent off of welfare, at least make sure the law of the
land says that every State from Mississippi to Missouri to Minnesota to
California to Georgia, that at least there will be vouchers for
Pampers, for food, for medical assistance, and you vote ``no'' and you
say there will be no vouchers. And you call that reform?
Mr. President, in the Senate, I introduced an amendment, and it was
accepted. It said in all too many cases, too many of these women have
been victims of domestic violence, they have been battered, and welfare
is the only alternative for too many women to a very abusive and
dangerous situation at home. So every State will be required to have
services for these women and not force people off the rolls if, in
fact, there needs to be additional support.
It took Monica Seles 2 years to play tennis again after she was
attacked. Imagine what it would be like to be beaten up over and over
again. That amendment was knocked out in the conference--no national
requirement, no protection. Maybe it will be done in the States and
maybe it won't.

Mr. President, I had a safety valve amendment. It was defeated.
Senator Kerry from Massachusetts had another one which was watered
down, but important. It was knocked out in conference committee. It
said, why don't we at least look at what we have done, and if in fact
there is more poverty and hunger, then we will take corrective action
in 2 years. That was knocked out in conference committee. You call that
reform?
Mr. President, let me be crystal clear. You focus on work, you focus
on job training, you focus on education, you focus on making sure that
families can make a transition from welfare to work, and that is great.
Eliminating services for legal immigrants, draconian cuts in food
nutrition programs for children and the elderly, deep cuts in
assistance for children with disabilities--none of this has anything to
do with reform. This is done in the name of deficit reduction.
When I had an amendment on the floor that dealt with all of the
breaks that go to some of the oil companies, or tobacco companies, or
pharmaceutical companies, that was defeated. When we had a budget that
called for $12 billion more than the Pentagon wanted and we tried to
eliminate that, that was defeated. But now when it comes to poor
children in America, who clearly are invisible here in Washington, DC--
at least in the Congress--faceless and voiceless, how generous we are
with their suffering. And you dare to call that reform? You dare to say
that, in the name of children, when you are passing a piece of
legislation that every single study says will increase poverty and
hunger among children. Vote for it for political reasons, but you can't
get away with calling it reform. It is reverse reform. It is
reformatory, it is punitive, it is harsh, it is extreme. It targets the
most vulnerable citizens in America--poor children.
Mr. President, in this insurance reform bill we are going to be
dealing with, late last night someone inserted a 2-year monopoly patent
extension for an anti-arthritis drug, a special interest gift to one
drug company, because then you don't have the generic drugs. Late last
night, someone put this into the insurance reform bill. There you go.
There is some welfare for a pharmaceutical company. But they are the
heavy hitters. They have the lobbyists. They are well-connected. We do
just fine by them. But for these poor children, who very few Members of
the Senate even know, we are all too generous with their suffering.
Mr. President, I had an amendment that was passed by a 99-to-0 vote
that said the Senate shall not take any action that shall create more
hunger or homelessness among children. Now we are slashing $28 billion
in food nutrition programs with the harshest effect being on children
in America. Can my colleagues reconcile that for me? I would love to
debate someone on this. I doubt whether there will be debate on it,
because the evidence is clear.
Mr. President, President Clinton said yesterday that he will sign the
bill, and he said that he will work hard, I presume next Congress, to
correct what he thinks is wrong. He pointed out that these draconian
cuts in food nutrition programs and in assistance to legal immigrants
are wrong, they have nothing to do with reform. He is absolutely right.
Personally, it is difficult for me to say, well, with the exception
of these draconian cuts in food assistance programs for children and
the elderly, with the exception of these draconian cuts for children
with disabilities, and draconian cuts for legal immigrants, this is a
pretty good bill otherwise. I can't make that argument. But I will work
with the President because, clearly, this is going to pass, and, quite
clearly, corrective action is going to have to be taken next Congress.
But, for myself, Mr. President, I am a Senator from the great State
of Minnesota. As Senator Hubert Humphrey said, the test case for a
society or government is how we treat people in the twilight of their
lives--the elderly; how we treat people at the dawn of their lives--the
children; and how we treat people in the shadow of their lives--the
poor, and those that are struggling with disabilities. We have failed
that test miserably with this piece of legislation.

Mr. President, I come from a State that I think leads the Nation in
its commitment to children and its commitment to fairness and its
commitment to opportunity. As a Senator from Minnesota that is up for
reelection this year, there can be one zillion attack ads--and there
already have been many, and there will be many more--and I will not
vote for legislation that impoverishes more children in America. That
is not the right thing to do. That is not a Minnesota vote.
Mr. President, in my next term as a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, I am
going to embark on a poverty tour in our country. I am going to bring
television with me, and I am going to bring media with me, and I am
going to visit these children. I am going to visit some of these poor,
elderly people. I am going to visit these families. I am going to visit
these legal immigrants. I am going to have my Nation focus its
attention, and I am going to have my colleagues, Republicans and
Democrats alike, focus their attention on these vulnerable
citizens. And, if in fact we see the harshness, the additional poverty,
and the additional malnutrition, which is exactly what is going to
happen, I am going to bring all those pictures and all of those voices
and all of those faces and all of those children and all of those
elderly people back to the floor of the U.S. Senate, and we will
correct the terrible mistake we are making in this legislation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

____________________