[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 30, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H2060]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            CHILD CARE FUNDS DROPPED FROM WELFARE REFORM ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bob Schaffer of Colorado). Under a 
previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands 
[Ms. Christian-Green] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CHRISTIAN-GREEN. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House passed H.R. 
1048, to make technical corrections to the Personal Responsibility and 
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, otherwise known as the 
Welfare Reform Act. While I support H.R. 1048, I rise today to express 
my strong disappointment about the fact that a Clinton administration 
proposal to set aside one-half of 1 percent of mandatory child care 
funds for allotment among the territories was dropped from the bill 
during the markup in the Committee on Ways and Means because the 
Congressional Budget Office scored the provision as having a cost to 
the Federal Treasury.
  I am disappointed, Mr. Speaker, because when the Welfare Reform Act 
was enacted, no mandatory child care funds were provided for over 4 
million U.S. citizens residing in the United States non-State areas, 
even though residents of my district and the other territories have 
been operating child care programs under section 402(g) of the Social 
Security Act.
  Mr. Speaker, welfare reform is intended to promote self-sufficiency 
through work. As a result, securing adequate child care funding will be 
one of our more pressing needs if we are to be successful in our goal 
of moving former welfare mothers from dependency into our work force.
  During the markup of H.R. 1048, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Shaw], chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the Committee 
on Ways and Means, stated that there were several provisions that would 
be dropped from the bill because they were scored as having a cost and 
not purely technical in nature. The chairman went further to state that 
his subcommittee will go back and take a look at those issues that were 
left out of the bill as it came out of the subcommittee markup.
  It is my intention, Mr. Speaker, to work with the gentleman from 
Florida [Mr. Shaw], the chairman, and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Levin], the ranking member, to ensure that low-income parents in the 
U.S. territories receive adequate child care to enable them to be able 
to go to work to support their families.

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