[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 130 (Thursday, September 19, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10965-S10969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WELFARE WAIVER

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, most of my colleagues are well aware that 
I have introduced legislation to rescind the portion of the DC welfare 
waiver that was recently enacted by President Clinton, because it went 
directly in opposition to the welfare bill that was passed 
overwhelmingly by this body and the House of Representatives and was 
signed by the President and is now the law of the land.
  What a lot of people didn't know--I didn't know it--is that when the 
President signed the welfare reform bill that had 5-year time limits 
for everybody in America, where no longer could you get cash assistance 
for the rest of your life--and President Clinton campaigned on 5-year 
limits, on limitations of cash benefits, and also on work 
requirements--what I didn't know is that the District of Columbia was 
granted a waiver, which the President signed a couple of days before, 
that allowed the District of Columbia to have a 10-year waiver from 
time limits. So there is a 5-year limit in Michigan, a 5-year limit 
everywhere else in the country, but not for the District of Columbia, 
and there are no work requirements for the District of Columbia.
  Frankly, I find that to be very deceitful and misleading by the 
administration--to go out and tell everybody,

[[Page S10966]]

hey, we have ended welfare as we know it--and every time I have heard 
that line, I applaud, because I know the present welfare system hasn't 
worked. It has hurt a lot of people who it tried to help. You don't 
need anymore evidence than to look at the District of Columbia. If 
anywhere is in need of welfare reform, it is the District of Columbia.
  Why in the world would the President, at the same time he is signing 
welfare reform for the rest of the country, and bragging about it, 
getting great accolades--and it helps his rise in the polls and his 
move back toward the political center--suddenly decide to support a 
bill that had already passed Congress twice? He vetoed it the first 
time. The third time was a charm. He decided to sign it the third time. 
But at the same time he signs it, he exempts the District of Columbia 
from welfare reform, from time limits, and he exempts the District of 
Columbia from work requirements.
  Unbelievable. Misleading. Deceitful. All of the above apply to 
President Clinton's position on welfare reform. Guess what? He got 
caught. I didn't know about the DC waiver when he signed the welfare 
bill. Somebody started to tell me about it, and I looked at it and I 
said, ``I can't believe it. I can't believe that the same 
administration that has said, yes, we are going to have real time 
limits, real limitations, real work requirements, would totally exempt 
the District of Columbia where 1 out of 6 people is now on welfare. 
That is so misleading, it is unbelievable.
  Now, I am very pleased that the Department of Health and Human 
Services has withdrawn the waiver today. I have a letter that I will 
have inserted into the Congressional Record, signed by Mary Jo Bane, 
Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, stating that DC's waiver 
approval as it pertained to work requirements and time limits has been 
withdrawn by HHS.
  Why did they decide to do this? I think because they got caught. I 
know the House was interested in legislation I introduced, with time 
limits that would apply to every State and the District of Columbia. We 
were going to pass that. I think the administration realized they were 
going to be embarrassed politically for trying to be on both sides of 
welfare reform, saying they are for welfare reform and, at the same 
time, exempting the District of Columbia. They realized that that 
wasn't politically defensible. They figured they better cut their 
losses and repeal the waiver. That is my guess.
  It is interesting to note--and I will put this in the Record. I 
received this. This waiver that protects the District of Columbia from 
potential welfare reforms is getting a cool reception from some members 
of the city council. Linda Cropp, a DC council member who chairs the 
subcommittee on human services, announced Tuesday, at a September 30 
hearing on the Federal waiver, that she was concerned that welfare 
waiver would make the city a ``welfare magnet'' since there are tougher 
standards in nearby jurisdictions.
  She is exactly right. If you have tougher restrictions in Virginia 
and Maryland, and in every other State, but you have no restrictions 
and no limitations on welfare in the District of Columbia, it would be 
more than a welfare magnet, it would be receiving welfare recipients 
from all around. DC council member Harold Brazil said the waiver 
``encourages dependency and ruins initiative.'' He is exactly right. I 
will enter that in the Record as well.
  I have a couple of articles that dealt with this issue. One was an op 
ed piece that was in the Washington Post on September 15, 1996. It is 
entitled, ``Welfare as Usual in D.C.; The bureaucrats Conspire to Block 
Reforms,'' by Matthew Rees, as well as an op ed article by Naomi Lopes 
and Michael Tanner, entitled, ``Welfare Reform Bypass for DC,'' and one 
final op ed piece from Investor's Business Daily, ``Will Clinton Undo 
Welfare Reform?"
  I ask unanimous consent that all of the material I have referenced be 
printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 15, 1996]

 Welfare as Usual in D.C.; The Bureaucrats Conspired To Block Reforms 
                                  Here

                           (By Matthew Rees)

       It doesn't really matter how you measure the District's 
     social conditions, because by nearly every standard they are 
     appalling. The infant mortality rate is the highest in the 
     nation, the percentage of the population receiving benefits 
     through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is 
     double the national average, more than one-third of the 
     children are living in poverty and more than two-thirds are 
     born to single mothers. With the District leading the nation 
     in so many of the wrong categories, it could be an ideal 
     place to gauge the effectiveness of the welfare bill 
     President Clinton signed last month. Unfortunately, some 
     last-minute collaboration between the District and the 
     federal government means the nation's capital will be 
     experiencing little in the way of genuine welfare reform.
       To better understand why the prospects for reform are dim, 
     you have to go back to Aug. 19. That was the day the Clinton 
     administration's Department of Health and Human Services 
     (HHS) issued a landmark announcement, telling the District it 
     was free to make cash payments to welfare recipients for up 
     to 10 years so long as the recipients ``made a good-faith 
     effort to find employment.'' The announcement also declared 
     that the District would be granted a relatively liberal 
     definition of what constitutes ``work.'' According to top 
     District officials, obtaining a driver's license, or 
     attending self-esteem classes, would meet the work standard.
       The net effect of this decision was obvious: It undermined 
     the welfare legislation the president was about to sign. The 
     District would have no real obligation to comply with the 
     bill's five-year time limit on cash welfare benefits, and the 
     requirement that 50 percent of each state's welfare caseload 
     be engaged in strictly defined work activities by 2002 would 
     be considerably watered down. ``If you wanted to send a 
     message to the District that `we're not serious about welfare 
     reform,' a 10-year waiver was a pretty good way to do it,'' 
     intones Mickey Kaus, a neoliberal commentator who's written 
     extensively on welfare.
       Some see nothing wrong with the HHS exemption, known as a 
     ``waiver,'' because it gets the District out from under the 
     new law's mandates and allows for local flexibility. That 
     would be an attractive argument if the District had followed 
     the lead of states with pioneering welfare reform projects, 
     such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Unfortunately, just the 
     opposite has been the case: The District maintains a welfare 
     system that is viewed by many welfare experts as one of the 
     country's least demanding, and least oriented toward reform. 
     The results speak for themselves.
       That's why allowing the District to opt out of major 
     provisions of the new welfare law is such a grave error. Even 
     when confronted with scenes straight out of Dickens, the 
     District government has chosen to maintain the infrastructure 
     supporting these conditions. The genius of the federal 
     welfare bill is that while it gives states the freedom to 
     craft their own public assistance programs, it also gives 
     them positive and negative incentives to get people off 
     welfare before five years and require them to go to work 
     after two years. For the District to even come close to 
     complying with these demands would require trying new and 
     innovative approaches to old problems. With the waiver, 
     however, it's unlikely such approaches will be considered.
       The pro-waiver arguments rested on a simple belief: The 
     District would suffocate under the new rules. It was, 
     therefore, preferable to preserve the old ones. HHS 
     spokeswoman Melissa Scolfield justified the waiver with the 
     explanation that ``we are, of course, sympathetic to the 
     special situation of the District.''
       The shortcoming in this paternalistic approach is self 
     evident. Given the option of doing nothing versus 
     implementing reforms that result in some short-term pain for 
     some greater long-term gain, it's all too easy to choose the 
     former. The Clinton administration was in a position to 
     remove this option by denying the waiver request. But far 
     from discouraging it, top HHS officials saw the District as 
     an opportunity to subvert Clinton's stated intentions of 
     ending ``welfare as we know it.'' The waiver was originally 
     needed because of the welfare reform legislation approved by 
     Mayor Marion Barry in August 1995. Among other things, that 
     legislation instituted a ``family cap,'' which meant mothers 
     on welfare who had additional children would be denied 
     increased AFDC payments. Teen mothers could also be required 
     to attend school and live with a parent, guardian or adult 
     relative. While these are steps in the right direction--
     though they appear to have substantial loopholes--they are 
     not the sweeping reforms the District desperately needs. 
     Nonetheless the District needed a waiver before it could 
     proceed because parts of the legislation conflicted with 
     federal law. Financial constraints meant the waiver 
     application wasn't submitted to HHS for nearly a year, and it 
     only happened then because President Clinton announced the he 
     would sign the Republican welfare bill.
       The president's July 31 announcement set off a flurry of 
     activity at the upper echelons of HHS. Many of the agency's 
     welfare analysts opposed Clinton's decision--three of them 
     have resigned in protest--and they immediately set out to 
     soften the bill's impact, on the District in particular. Top 
     welfare officials in the District government were alerted to 
     the consequences of the legislation by Wendell Primus--one of 
     the HHS officials who has since resigned--and Robert 
     Greenstein, an influential private welfare analyst.

[[Page S10967]]

     HHS helped fill out the waiver and put it through the ``fast 
     track'' approval process.
       Most striking was the waiver's approval time. Republican 
     governors such as Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and John Engler 
     of Michigan have been highly critical of waiver delays, 
     charging that HHS bureaucrats have taken forever to approve 
     changes that have already been approved by their state 
     legislatures. Some have been held up for years, yet the 
     District's sailed through in just 13 days. Mary Jo Bane, 
     another of the HHS officials who resigned, was one of the 
     lead staffers who decided that the D.C. waiver--and seven 
     others--would be granted at the last minute.
       This incurred the wrath of Bob Dole, the Republican 
     presidential nominee and congressional Republicans such as 
     Representative E. Clay Shaw, chairman of the congressional 
     subcommittee responsible for welfare legislation. Senator Don 
     Nickles, an Oklahoma Republican, has gone so far as to 
     introduce legislation seeking to repeal the waiver, charging 
     that the administration had approved it only because the 
     president was ``trying to placate some liberal people who did 
     not like him signing the welfare reform bill.'' The House 
     Ways and Means Committee will also be holding hearings on the 
     matter this week.
       Certainly there are reasons for concern about how the 
     District would fare under a more restrictive system. HHS 
     officials were sure that the District wouldn't be able to 
     meet the legislation's work participation rates. Stephen 
     Fuller, a professor at George Mason University, points out 
     that the District had a net loss of 15,000 jobs over the past 
     12 months and has lost 60,000 job over the previous five 
     years. While there's been healthy employment growth in 
     Northern Virginia over the past year (25,000 new jobs), 
     nearly all of this growth has occurred outside the Beltway, 
     and it's been in sectors such as engineering and business 
     services.
       Another factor is the District's unique demographics: 
     Welfare populations tend to be concentrated in the inner 
     cities, but each state's overall percentage of welfare 
     recipients levels out once it's balanced against the lower 
     percentage found in rural and suburban areas. The District 
     has no suburbs within its rapidly declining population of 
     560,000--the only state with fewer people is Wyoming--and 
     most of the recent population loss has come from those not on 
     welfare. In other words, there's good reason to expect the 
     proportion of District residents receiving AFDC--currently 
     about 13 percent--to remain stable or increase.
       Yet some of these concerns may be exaggerated. The work 
     participation rates, for example, are nowhere near as 
     demanding as many analysts have claimed. Indeed, the 
     District--and all 50 states--have considerable flexibility in 
     determining how they meet the rates. Because the law contains 
     an array of loopholes, a state could have work participation 
     as low as 20 percent--as opposed to the 50 percent rate 
     spelled out in the legislation--and still be in full 
     compliance.
       When the federal welfare legislation is viewed in this 
     light, the District's situation doesn't look so dire. The 
     current work participation rate among District welfare 
     recipients is 6 percent, and the District program is 
     recognized as one of the most poorly run in the country. Once 
     the new rules went into effect, as much as 10 percent of the 
     caseload could be expected to stop asking for welfare 
     (studies have shown this has happened elsewhere, probably 
     because some portion of welfare recipients are already 
     working in underground jobs). And at least some of the rest 
     would presumably respond to the threat of having their 
     benefits cut off and go to work. But extending the waiver for 
     such a long period of time ensures only that the status quo 
     will be preserved.
       Or, it could get worse. One long-term effect of the waiver 
     could be that it attracts the poor of nearby states such as 
     Virginia and Maryland, which do have tough reforms in place. 
     In Virginia, for example, welfare recipients must go to work 
     within 90 days of beginning to receive public assistance.
       ``We want to make sure the District doesn't become a 
     welfare magnet,'' says D.C. Council member Linda W. Cropp (D-
     At Large).
       The fear grows out of the District's past experience with 
     providing relatively generous benefits to the homeless, only 
     to see the homeless population rapidly expand. The situation 
     with welfare is similar: The District's 1994 AFDC benefits 
     were $428 per month for a parent and two children (the 18th 
     highest when compared to the 50 states). This was $55 a month 
     higher than in Maryland, and $137 a month higher than in 
     Virginia, according to a recent study by the Washington-based 
     Population Reference Bureau. When these figures are mixed 
     with the generous time limits on the receipt of cash 
     benefits, and liberal regulations on work, the magnet effect 
     begins to look plausible.
       District and HHS officials emphasize there was nothing 
     extraordinary about the waiver, which they claim was similar 
     to those granted other states, such as Wisconsin. But the 
     Wisconsin waiver is part of a strongly reform-oriented plan, 
     where the District's is not. The District will allow welfare 
     recipients to continue receiving cash benefits for a decade 
     or more, with minimal threat of being cut off. That 
     guarantees the District will have little or no real incentive 
     to begin the welfare-to-work experiments found in so many 
     other states.
       At a time when the District's social conditions so clearly 
     scream out for major changes, it seems tragically misguided 
     to declare that the nation's capital will be not the first 
     place where there's welfare reform, but the last.
                                                                    ____


                        [Briefs from Washington]

       Washington.--A waiver that protects the District of 
     Columbia from stringent welfare reforms is getting a cool 
     reception from some members of the city council.
       Council member Linda Cropp, who chairs the committee on 
     human services, announced on Tuesday a September 30 hearing 
     on the Federal waiver.
       Cropp said she was concerned the waiver will make the city 
     a ``welfare magnet'' since there are tougher standards in 
     nearby jurisdictions.
       Under reform legislation passed by Congress, most welfare 
     recipients who do not find work cannot continue to receive 
     benefits for more than five years.
       The waiver backed by President Clinton and Mayor Marion 
     Barry gives the city a 10-year exemption.
       Councilman Harold Brazil said the waiver encourages 
     dependency and ``ruins initiative.''
       The council members aren't alone. Some Republicans in 
     Congress have already voiced their opposition to the waiver.
       At a hearing Tuesday before the Human Resources 
     subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, 
     Congressman E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fla., said if the city plans 
     to use the waiver to exempt more than 20 percent of its 
     current caseload, he will move to repeal the exemption.
       Democrats countered by saying Idaho, Michigan, 
     Massachusetts and Washington state have all been granted 
     similar exemptions.
                                                                    ____


                   Will Clinton Undo Welfare Reform?

       Having shifted right by signing the Republican welfare-
     reform bill, President Clinton is now doing all he can to 
     assure the left that he will ``correct'' the new law. 
     Machiavelli would be proud.
       We can see why Clinton would like political cover on 
     welfare: the left is dead certain the new law will cause 
     untold suffering. And the media seem to feel obliged to give 
     heavy play to anything--instant studies, predictable 
     resignations--that feeds those fears.
       Why is the hue and cry so much greater after the fact? Some 
     on the left no doubt were surprised when the president signed 
     the law. Others may think the suffering they expect to see is 
     necessary, but still feel guilty about it. Now that it's too 
     late to change matters, they can safely stand on principle--
     and demonstrate their purity, too.
       Such mixed motives are natural to any large group. Much 
     stranger are the conflicting signals that come from a single 
     man: our president.
       Clinton has already promised that, if he can't get the 
     members of Congress to revise the law in the ways he wants, 
     he'll enforce it as if they had.
       Thus, he signed a bill into law, but he's actually going to 
     implement something else. It's an incredible bait-and-switch, 
     even for Bill Clinton.
       But this is just the culmination of his welfare politics. 
     In 1992, ``New Democrat'' Clinton vowed to ``end welfare as 
     we know it.'' But in 1993 and 1994, when his own Democrats 
     ran Congress, he dropped the ball.
       After voters handed Congress to Republicans, the GOP called 
     Clinton's bluff by sending him a welfare-reform bill not 
     wholly unlike the one he just signed. Clinton vetoed it. 
     Congress sent up another: He vetoed that, too.
       Enter '96, a campaign year. Republicans drafted a third 
     welfare-reform bill. Bob Dole prepared to bash Clinton for 
     delivering three vetoes where he had promised reform. So the 
     president finally, reluctantly, signed.
       As he's done so often before, Clinton thus signaled to the 
     voters that he'd learned his ways, that he'd moved 
     permanently to the right. Yet he knows full well that he'll 
     turn left after the election. With welfare reform, though, 
     he's signaling left at the same time. Clinton has his hazard 
     lights on.
       The welfare backflip exposes what's fundamentally wrong 
     with this White House: It governs by fraud. What's more, it 
     has no shame.
       Take Vice President Al Gore's comments on a recent Sunday 
     talk show:
       The vice president admitted the welfare system is ``cruel'' 
     and needs to be changed. Yet, seconds later, he pointed out 
     that the welfare act's changes do not go into effect until 
     July 1, 1997--leaving plenty of time for Clinton and a 
     Democrat Congress to scrap the law.
       And if Republicans maintain control, Gore added, Clinton 
     would use the line-item veto to fix things Clinton and 
     liberals don't like about the bill.
       What things are those? Ask the first lady. Interviewed in 
     Chicago, she said she didn't like the limits on food stamps 
     or on payouts to legal immigrants. She said she'll speak out 
     next year to ``correct'' the welfare-reform bill that her 
     husband signed.
       If the bill was so flawed, why sign it in the first place? 
     No one held a gun to the president's head. Why not work to 
     fix it, and sign it later?
       The questions are obvious. But such logic doesn't work with 
     Clinton. Stand on principle? Avoid shame? This politician 
     never shoots straight: Everything is a bank-shot, or worse.
       It's no wonder polls show a majority of us do not trust our 
     president. How can we? Not only can we not trust him to do 
     what he says. We can't even trust him to do what he

[[Page S10968]]

     does, because he undoes what he does. Next thing, he'll be 
     telling us that's not what he did.
       Accepting the GOP nomination, Bob Dole spoke scornfully of 
     leaders ``unwilling to risk the truth, to speak without 
     calculation.'' he went on: ``All things flow from doing what 
     is right.''
       Reforming welfare is right. Now we just need a leader who 
     will do what is right.
                                                                    ____


                      [From the Washington Times]

                     Welfare Reform Bypass for D.C.

                    (By Naomi Lopez/Michael Tanner)

       ``Welfare as we know it'' has been ended, right? Well, not 
     in the District of Columbia. Even as President Clinton was 
     signing the new welfare reform bill with one hand, with the 
     other he was simultaneously granting the District, a 10-year 
     waiver exempting it from most of the requirements in the new 
     welfare bill, including time-limited assistance and certain 
     work requirements.
       The waiver for D.C.'s ``Project on Work, Employment, and 
     Responsibility'' (POWER), submitted in early August, was 
     rushed through the Department of Health and Human Services' 
     ``fast track'' waiver approval process just three days before 
     Mr. Clinton signed welfare reform into law. As a result, 
     welfare reform will have only a minimal impact on welfare 
     dependency in the District and an even smaller impact on D.C. 
     welfare spending.
       For example, the welfare reform bill calls for a five-year 
     lifetime limit on welfare benefits. Not under the District's 
     waiver; there would be no cutoff of benefits for any D.C. 
     resident who could not find a job that pays more than welfare 
     benefits. The most unfortunate aspect of this exemption is 
     that the District, aided and abetted by the Clinton 
     administration, is sending a message that the rules will not 
     apply to its residents and that cash assistance is still an 
     entitlement.
       While one of the big selling points of the new welfare 
     reform law was its requirement that welfare recipients work 
     in exchange for benefits, the District's waiver defines work 
     activities so liberally as to be meaningless. Attending a 
     job-training program or engaging in job search (i.e., looking 
     for work) will be enough to satisfy the District's work 
     requirement. Thus, welfare in the District will remain pretty 
     much as we know it. Yet few welfare systems are as badly in 
     need of reform.
       Despite the fact that 1 in 6 District residents are on 
     welfare, more than a third of District children still live in 
     poverty. Out-of-wedlock births have reached alarming 
     proportions. Of the District's more than 50,000 children in 
     welfare families, 83 percent were born out of wedlock and 10 
     percent come from broken homes. Only a mere 1 percent of Aid 
     to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) households contain 
     two parents. * * *
       While one of the big selling points of the new welfare 
     reform law was its requirement that welfare recipients work 
     in exchange for benefits, the District's waiver defines work 
     activities so liberally as to be meaningless. Attending a 
     job-training program or engaging in job search (i.e., looking 
     for work) will be enough to satisfy the District's work 
     requirement. Thus, welfare in the District will remain pretty 
     much as we know it. Yet few welfare systems are as badly in 
     need of reform.
       Despite the fact that 1 in 6 District residents are on 
     welfare, more than a third of District children still live in 
     poverty. Out-of-wedlock births have reached alarming 
     proportions. Of the District's more than 50,000 children in 
     welfare families, 83 percent were born out of wedlock and 10 
     percent come from broken homes. Only a mere 1 percent of Aid 
     to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) households contain 
     two parents. Long-term dependency is increasingly the norm as 
     is second- and third-generation welfare dependence.
       D.C. has followed the liberal route of trying to solve its 
     welfare problems with money. On a per capita basis, the 
     District has the highest federal social welfare program 
     spending in the nation. Of the 50 states and District, the 
     District ranks:
       First in per capita federal spending on AFDC, food stamps, 
     Medicaid, housing assistance, job training under the Job 
     Training Partnership Act, and community development.
       Second on Medicare and state employment services.
       Fourth on compensatory education for disadvantaged 
     children.
       Fifth on Supplemental Security Income and the social 
     service block grant.
       Twelfth on child nutrition programs.
       The value of the full package of welfare benefits in the 
     District (including cash assistance, food stamps and 
     nutrition assistance, housing assistance, Medicaid and so on) 
     totals more than $22,745 per year for a single mother with 
     two children. Because welfare benefits are tax-free, a 
     working person would have to earn nearly $14 per hour to take 
     home an equivalent paycheck. Indeed, the District's welfare 
     package is the fifth-most-generous in the nation. Is it any 
     wonder that so many recipients make the rational choice of 
     welfare over work?
       The welfare reform bill fell far short of what is necessary 
     to truly end welfare as we know it. But the District, with 
     the complicity of the Clinton administration, seems unwilling 
     to make any change in the status quo.
       The District government is setting up a social time bomb 
     that the rest of the nation will, most likely, be responsible 
     for defusing. In 10 years, the District's waiver will expire 
     only after it will have promoted and perpetuated a failed and 
     reckless system. And at that time, the federal government 
     will be called upon to bail out the District again. By that 
     time, the damage may be irreversible.

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, the Washington Post today had an 
editorial that was critical of me. Basically, it said, wait a minute, 
we granted waivers to other areas. Why would you try and take away 
parts of the waiver--they actually said we were repealing the entire 
waiver. They were wrong. Why would you do this just for the District of 
Columbia if not for other areas?
  The legislation I introduced, frankly, did not apply just to the 
District of Columbia. It says a 5-year time limit applies to everybody 
in the country. There won't be a single waiver to exempt someone from 
the 5-year limit. That was the guts of the bill. There would not be a 
waiver that would undo work requirements. Those were the two major 
elements of the bill. It just so happens that the District of Columbia 
was the only waiver request that went directly away from welfare 
reform.
  There are 30 States, plus the District of Columbia, who have received 
welfare waivers. Guess what? All 30, except for the District of 
Columbia, moved toward work requirements, toward time limits--most of 
which had shorter time limits than 5 years. But not the District of 
Columbia; it was a waiver away from welfare reform, a waiver for the 
status quo, and it was a waiver, basically, where President Clinton and 
the Clinton administration was saying: District of Columbia, you are 
exempt from welfare reform. We don't think you need to do it.
  I am pleased I finally hear that HHS has rescinded the order. I 
believe they did it because it is the political season, and they knew 
they were going to take some heat. They made a serious mistake. But we 
have to make sure they are not just postponing it for 2 months. We want 
to make absolutely sure that there is no way that sometime after the 
election, in November or December, they would go ahead and grant a 10-
year waiver. We want to make sure that is not up their sleeve. If we 
have to pass legislation to make sure of that, we will do it. There is 
no reason in the world why we would work as hard as we did for real 
welfare reform for everybody in the country--to end cash assistance as 
an open-ended entitlement, a perpetual way of living--and not do it in 
the District of Columbia.
  I might mention, Mr. President, I think there are some games that 
were played. This waiver request by the Clinton administration was 
granted in 14 days. I might tell my colleagues that some areas have had 
waiver requests pending before the administration for months, some for 
years, some for 2 years, all of which were trying to have a waiver from 
the old law, which would not allow time limits. Most of the waivers 
that States wanted to enact, like Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, and 
others, wanted to have time limits and work requirements. They wanted 
people to get off welfare and go to work. They wanted to have learnfare 
requirements where children of welfare recipients would be required to 
go to school, like every other child. If they didn't have their kids in 
school, they would lose welfare payments; or they have to make sure 
their kids receive vaccinations, or they might receive penalties.
  States have had great initiatives. So this administration has been 
very slow on many of those States. As a matter of fact, the President, 
in May, made a nationwide radio address complimenting Wisconsin on 
their welfare reform and talked about granting their waiver, and this 
is great. Guess what? He hasn't granted the Wisconsin waiver yet. That 
was months ago. But he granted the DC waiver in 14 days. That was 
granted right before signing the welfare reform bill. And the DC waiver 
had no time limits. It has a 10-year exemption. How is that fair to the 
people in New Hampshire? They are going to have a limitation on how 
long they can receive cash payments. The State of Hawaii had a waiver 
request granted by the administration in just the last couple of 
months, since signing the bill. But the State of Hawaii had a 5-year 
limit. Indiana got a waiver request signed, but it was a 2-year limit, 
not a 5-year limit. But the District of Columbia comes up and, in 14 
days--unbelievable speed for the Department of

[[Page S10969]]

Health Human Services--they get a waiver signed by the President that 
says you are going to have a 10-year exemption--10 years, no limit, and 
no work requirement. What a sham. What a shame. What a shame that this 
President and this administration would be so deceitful as to try to 
pull that over on the American people.

  I am pleased that the Department of Health and Human Services 
realized their mistake. My guess is that the political people said, 
``Hey. This could come back to hurt us, or haunt us. Therefore, let us 
withdraw it.''
  I am pleased that the District of Columbia City Council, which never 
requested a 10-year waiver on work requirements, never requested a 10-
year waiver on lifetime benefits--I am pleased that some of the council 
members realized that this is terrible. This would be a disaster for 
the District of Columbia. So I am pleased that evidently not only are 
they going to have some hearings but some Members think it would be a 
serious mistake, and they don't want the District of Columbia to become 
the welfare capital of the United States.
  So I am pleased with the announcement of HHS today. I think the 
administration got caught in trying to have it both ways on welfare 
reform. To say ``Yes, we need welfare reform with time limits and work 
requirements'' while at the same time trying to undo welfare reform--to 
exempt work requirements, to exempt time limits--they should be ashamed 
of themselves. I am pleased they reversed themselves for about the 
fourth time on this issue.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

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