[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 5 (Tuesday, February 3, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S300-S301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            WE CAN DO BETTER

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I speak from the floor of the Senate as 
a Democrat but really to all of my colleagues, and to the President, as 
well.
  I think that President Clinton's State of the Union Address was, 
indeed, an important step forward for our country in some of the 
initiatives that he outlined. When the President talked about education 
and talked about child care and talked about health care, I think what 
he said resonated with people throughout the country. I think it has a 
lot to do with the fact that people are less interested in denunciation 
and more interested in enunciation. They really want to know what it is 
we stand for and whether or not we are thinking seriously, all of us, 
even if we have disagreement on some of these issues, about where our 
country needs to be.
  In that sense, what the President talked about was an important step 
forward. First, a response to what some of my colleagues had to say on 
the floor of the Senate, and then a response to some of the President's 
initiatives and to Democrats. On the Republican side, I think the 
argument that has been made, that I have heard colleagues make on the 
floor of Senate--and I summarize what any number of different 
Republican colleagues have said--in many ways amounts to the argument 
that when it comes to the most pressing issues of people's lives, there 
is nothing the Government really can or should do. This is not an 
appropriate role for the Government to play--to assure that there is 
affordable child care for working families, to assure that there is 
affordable health care, to invest in more teachers in our schools, 
reducing class size, and so forth. Quite frankly, that argument is a 
great argument for people who own their own large corporations or are 
wealthy, but it doesn't work for most of the people in the country. 
Most of the people in Minnesota and most of the people in the country 
are very focused, as I have said on the floor of Senate, as to how they 
can earn a decent living and how they can raise their children 
successfully.
  The President's proposals speak to that, at least part of the way. 
But what concerns me about what the President said, and I give credit 
where credit is due, what concerns me about the way in which Democrats 
are speaking about these proposals, is I think that we can do much 
better. This is our opportunity. The business cycle is up. We all talk 
about economic performance. This is the time where we can really make 
some of these critical investments.
  Mr. President, what I worry about is that we give the speeches, there 
is a lot of hype. We talk about the importance of early childhood 
development, we talk about the importance of education, we talk about 
health care, but we do not invest enough resources to put this on a 
scale where it is really going to make a significant difference. If we 
don't do that, if we have such a downsized politics and policy that we 
only reach a tiny fraction of those people that we are talking about, 
those children, those working families, then I think it invites mutiny 
because it becomes just symbolic politics.
  Let me give a few examples. Mr. President, as far as I can determine 
when we talk about child care, without going into all the statistics, 
and we think about families with incomes of $35,000 a year and under, 
we will probably reach, with the amount of resources the President has 
talked about investing in early childhood development, about 2 out of 
10 children who could benefit--2 out of 10 children. If it is so 
compelling, and if the evidence is irreducible and irrefutable that we 
have to get it right for these children by age 3 otherwise many of them 
will never do well in school and will never be prepared for life, then 
why are we only investing in 2 out of 10 children?
  After-school program. Again, an important initiative, but as I look 
at the number of children who could benefit from this, and I think 
about my travel in some of our inner-city communities and rural 
communities, much less the suburbs, we will be reaching, with the 
President's proposal, about 1 out of 10 young people or children that 
are eligible. If it is important to have good positive things going on 
for young people in our communities after school, why is it only 
important to reach 1 out of 10 young people or children that would be 
eligible?
  Now I know what I am saying is counterintuitive because in a way I'm 
in the tiny minority on this, but I think we can do much better. I will 
introduce child care legislation and I will talk about 5 out of 10 
children, that we can at least reach half the children that really 
deserve to have nurturing child care, that deserve to have the highest 
quality child care. Why are we only talking about affordable child care 
that is only affordable for about 20 percent of the families that need 
the assistance? Why are we not making sure that every child in the 
United States of America, when he or she goes to kindergarten, knows 
how to spell her name, knows the alphabet, knows colors, shapes 
and sizes? Why can't we make sure that we make the investment in the 
public sector, private sector and volunteers and communities, that 
every single child comes to kindergarten, ready to learn? The 
President's proposal is a step in the right direction but we can do 
much better. We can do much better.

  A second example, health care. Mr. President, I'm all for expanding 
Medicare, but the current proposal that the President has outlined 
makes it impossible for most citizens between the ages of 55 and 65 to 
be able to afford the premium. Most won't benefit. Second of all, I 
don't know why--I guess I speak more to Democrats, my party--why have 
we abandoned the idea of comprehensive health care reform, universal 
health care coverage? Why are we not talking about a strategy for our 
country whereby the next century, next millennium, each and every 
citizen will be able to benefit from dignified, humane, affordable 
health care? Why, Democrats, have we backed away from this?
  I'm going to introduce legislation that will have a national 
progressive framework, a defined package of benefits. Remember, 
colleagues, remember what we talked about a few short years ago, that 
every citizen should have health care at least as good as what Senators 
and Representatives get? I believe that. I think all of us should 
believe that. It will also make sure that States agree that it will be 
affordable and it will also have strong consumer protection, but then 
it leaves it up to States as to how to get there. There will be Federal 
grants for each and every State that agrees to reach, within the next 5 
years, universal coverage. Different states can do it different ways. 
We can decentralize it. But we ought not to give up on the goal of 
humane, affordable, dignified health care for each and every citizen in 
our country. The American people believe in that. It might be that the 
insurance industry, which has so much clout here, doesn't believe in 
it, but the majority of people in our country do, and Democrats and 
Republicans, we ought to be on their side. We ought to be on their 
side.
  The third example, Mr. President, which is near and dear to my heart, 
call it counterintuitive politics because we don't talk about it very 
much but I think we should. I have traveled all across the country. I 
have had a chance to meet with a lot of people in poor communities. I 
want to raise the minimum wage. I think we should do that. It is a 
matter of elementary simple justice. I am proud to join Senator Kennedy 
in this fight. We will raise the minimum wage 50 cents a year for the 
next 3 years and then index it. If people work full time 52 weeks a 
year 40 hours a week they ought not to be poor in America. If you had 
health care and child care, you really would be making a difference in 
terms of family income.
  Mr. President, I also visited communities, be they rural or urban, 
where there are no jobs, even with the economy being where it is, even 
with official unemployment at record low levels. I go to inner-city 
Baltimore or inner-city Chicago or Minneapolis, I can go to Appalachia, 
rural Appalachia, I can go to rural Minnesota, and

[[Page S301]]

in all too many cases the jobs are not there, or the jobs at decent 
wages are not there. Why don't we make a commitment to making sure that 
people find employment? That is dignity.
  We have communities where there are compelling needs--there is elder 
care, there is child care, there is housing rehab, there is community 
crime prevention, there is teacher's assistance, there is environmental 
cleanup, all sorts of work to be done and people who can't find any 
jobs. I will introduce a bill that will provide people--we have now a 5 
million job gap between people that want to work and jobs vacant--
provide people with a transition whereby they have a job for a year at 
a decent wage with these benefits, and then can transition to private 
sector. We need to get more private capital in these communities. But 
when you have people in our rural areas, our ghettos and our barrios 
who have worked and worked on community-building jobs and have the 
dignity and build up some of the skills, then private sector gets more 
interested in these communities. But right now in a lot of communities 
in our country, people are crying out, where are the jobs?
  Mr. President, we can do much better. We have to make these 
investments. I am saying to my colleagues today on the floor of the 
Senate that as we go into the next century there are some 
contradictions we cannot live with. There are some contradictions in 
this city, Washington, DC, right here in this city, and all across the 
country. We have to make sure that we are investing in communities. We 
have to make sure we are investing in children. We have to make sure we 
are investing in education, and not just in education for some 
children, not just affordable child care for some children, not just 
health care for some citizens. If we are going to argue that these are 
priorities, then we have to back the rhetoric with the resources. We 
have to make the investment.
  Mr. President, I worry that at the very time where we have the best 
chance to make this investment--at a time of real optimism, at a time 
when I think people in the country feel good and know that we can do 
better, that justice, fairness, opportunity, building communities and 
building leadership are things that we can do--we are going to miss the 
opportunity by making speeches but not following up the speeches, by 
not really meaning what we say, and not really making the investment.
  President Clinton, thank you for pinpointing some of these 
initiatives. Republican colleagues, maybe in areas like child care we 
can come together. I hope we can. But for the President and all my 
colleagues, we can't outline problems and say we are committed to 
making a huge difference and then not make the investment that is 
anywhere near the scale of what needs to be done to make a difference. 
We can do much better than what the President outlined in his address 
for children, we can do much better for education, we can do much 
better for health care, and we can do much better when it comes to 
tackling problems with race, gender, poverty, and children in America.

  I appreciate what the President has outlined as a first step, but we 
ought to be doing much better here in the Senate and in the House of 
Representatives. We ought to be doing much better. This is our chance 
to make an enormous difference.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________