[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 8 (Monday, February 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S502-S504]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH WELFARE REFORM?

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, there were two articles today, one 
article in the New York Times, a front page story: ``Pessimism Retains 
Grip on Region Shaped by War on Poverty,'' Booneville, KY, eastern 
Kentucky, Appalachia. At the same time, there was also an editorial in 
the Minnesota Star Tribune. I ask unanimous consent that both the New 
York Times piece and this editorial be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                  (From the Minneapolis Star Tribune)

                  States Must Ask the Right Questions

       From Maine to California, governors are celebrating a 
     plunge in the nation's welfare rolls. Some 2 million families 
     have gone off benefits since 1994, and caseloads have fallen 
     to their lowest level in 27 years. But few officials are 
     asking what seems an obvious question: What became of these 
     families after they left public assistance?
       That's exactly the question posed by seven Midwestern 
     welfare administrators who have banded together in 
     implementing the landmark 1996 federal welfare-reform law. 
     The seven, including Ann Sessoms of Minnesota's Department of 
     Human Services, recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to 
     unveil a new framework for measuring the success of state 
     welfare experiments. They're asking the right questions, and 
     they deserve support from the Clinton administration and 
     their colleagues.
       Once upon a time, the fate of families leaving welfare 
     might have been an afterthought. The system was self-
     regulating, in that clients who fell on hard times after 
     leaving public assistance could simply re-apply. Cash 
     assistance to families, known as AFDC, was an 
     ``entitlement''--if you fell below certain poverty 
     thresholds, you were entitled to benefits.
       But since Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and 
     Work Opportunity Act of 1996, better known as welfare reform, 
     that self-regulating feature has vanished. States can kick 
     families off assistance for many reasons--failing to find 
     work, breaking administrative rules, or simply exhausting 
     their benefits ``clock,'' a time limit as short as 18 months 
     in some states.
       The federal law requires states to submit lots of data on 
     the number of clients who receive benefits and who find jobs, 
     but it is almost silent on the issue of family well-being 
     after clients leave welfare. As federal bureaucrats draft new 
     reporting requirements, there's a danger that Washington and 
     the governors will define ``success'' as merely cutting 
     caseloads.
       Sessoms and her colleagues have a more robust definition. 
     They'd like to know if clients are earning enough money to 
     rise out of poverty, if they're finding safe day care, 
     whether their children are seeing a doctor and attending 
     school, whether marriages are

[[Page S503]]

     holding together or breaking apart. Minnesota's Department of 
     Human Services has decided to track many of these questions 
     for its own clients. But the nation needs comparable 
     measurements, so that governors have the right incentives and 
     so Washington can compare results of the 50 state welfare 
     experiments.
       This is an ambitious, even intrusive, list of questions. 
     But then, these were the very questions that prompted welfare 
     reform in the first place. It's worth remembering that 
     Congress didn't tackle welfare reform because caseloads were 
     rising--they were already falling by 1996. It wasn't because 
     assistance costs were climbing--cash welfare to families has 
     been stable at less than 2 percent of the federal budget 
     since Richard Nixon was in office. It was because welfare was 
     seen as a failed program that fostered other social 
     pathologies: idleness, drug use, broken marriages and 
     neglected children. Having blamed welfare for these problems, 
     it seems only fair to find out whether welfare reform is 
     solving them.
                                                                    ____


                [From the New York Times, Feb. 9, 1998]

               Pessimism Retains Grip on Appalachian Poor

                         (By Michael Janofsky)

       There is an area of Booneville that some residents call Ho 
     Chi Minh City for its third world appearance. It is not 
     large, just a few winding gravel roads. But many of the 
     houses look like shanties, heated with wood or coal. Children 
     walk around with dirty bare feet. Many people lack telephones 
     and cars.
       In many respects, this little corner of Appalachia looks 
     much as it did 30 years ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson 
     declared a war on poverty, taking special aim at the rural 
     decay in places like Owsley County, here in eastern Kentucky, 
     and other distressed areas in the 399 counties of 13 states 
     that make up Appalachia.
       Federal and state agencies have plowed billions of dollars 
     into Appalachia through economic development programs, 
     highway construction and job-creation initiatives to help 
     residents overcome the economic and psychological isolation 
     caused by poverty and the rugged terrain.
       But a tour of Booneville offers ample evidence that money 
     and countless programs have had only marginal effects on 
     breaking a cycle of poverty and despair that continues 
     throughout many parts of Appalachia. And conditions could 
     grow worse before they improve.
       With state welfare regulations forcing recipients to find 
     work and with the Federal Government reviewing the 
     eligibility of children who receive disability benefits, many 
     Owsley County residents could lose vital monthly checks that 
     they have relied on for years. More than half of the people 
     in the county who receive those benefits are children.
       Viewing those prospects, some residents sound much like 
     people who have criticized entitlement programs for 
     stagnating inner cities.
       ``The war on poverty was the worst thing that ever happened 
     to Appalachia,'' said Denise Hoffman, 46, who runs a small 
     farm here with her husband, Neil. ``It gave people a way to 
     get by without having to do any work.''
       By many measures, Appalachia remains mired in poverty. In 
     about one-quarter of the highland region's counties, 
     according to data from the 1990 census, 25 percent or more of 
     residents live below the poverty level as defined by the 
     Federal Government. That rate is nearly double the national 
     average.
       Owsley County, with a population of 5,400, is one of the 
     most distressed areas. To many residents, the booming 
     national economy is something they hear about only on 
     television.
       More than 46 percent live in poverty, as defined by the 
     Government. The median household income of $8,595 is one of 
     the lowest in Appalachia. Almost half of the adults are 
     unemployed. About two-thirds of the people in the county 
     receive Federal assistance, 30 percent of county families do 
     not have telephones, and 20 percent do not have cars.
       More than half the adult population is illiterate.
       But perhaps most critical of all, with the coal industry 
     long gone as a major employer and job creation minimal and 
     sporadic, feelings of hopelessness have become so deeply 
     entrenched that many residents have long forsaken any 
     expectation of bettering themselves.
       Even a generous new program to encourage savings is 
     struggling to win participants. Through a foundation grant to 
     finance a $6-to-$1 match, residents can deposit up to $15 a 
     month for two years, a total of $360, and receive back 
     $2,520. The program began in May to encourage low-income 
     people to set aside money for home improvements, a new 
     business or school.
       Eight people are participating.
       ``The overriding theory of the program works against the 
     mentality that is deeply set within people who live in 
     poverty,'' said the program administrator, Jennifer Hart. 
     ``They don't think they have a future. If they did, they 
     would think about it and delay instant gratification. But 
     they have no reason to. And they can't. They can only think 
     about how they are going to feed the children this week and 
     pay the rent this month.''
       Even many of the 70 seniors at Owsley County High School 
     this year sense the inevitability of spending their lives in 
     poverty, unchanged from their parents' situations.
       The Hoffmans' 17-year-old daughter, Megan, a top student 
     and an athlete who has been accepted to four state colleges, 
     thinks of her classmates with chagrin.
       ``Many of them think things are never going to get any 
     better,'' she said. ``It's pretty sad. Kids feel, `I don't 
     think I can make a difference.' They don't seem to want to 
     change or care.''
       When the senior class voted on the message to print on 
     their T-shirts this year, an annual custom, they chose: ``I 
     came, I slept. I graduated.'' Megan said fewer than 25 
     percent plan to attend college.
       As elsewhere in Appalachia, the feelings of hopelessness 
     prevail despite energetic efforts by Government and private 
     groups like the Mountain Association for Community Economic 
     Development, a 21-year-old organization in Berea that helps 
     community groups in 49 counties around the state.
       In Owsley it provides a ray of hope through self-help 
     programs like job-training classes, courses on starting a 
     business and agencies that make low-interest loans. It also 
     aids in recruiting companies into the area, a mighty 
     challenge in Booneville, with its remote location and lack of 
     services. The town has two restaurants, three groceries and 
     one dentist. And while it has three doctors the nearest 
     hospital is an hour away.
       To attack the worse of rural poverty, the association 
     created ``action teams'' six years ago for the most 
     distressed counties, Owsley and Letcher. In each, officials 
     work closely with local leaders to convince residents that 
     they can lead more productive lives.
       The efforts take many forms. In Booneville, the team helped 
     bring Image Entry, a data-entry company that created 58 jobs, 
     onto a site that local leaders hope will become an industrial 
     park. Team members helped start associations for goat 
     breeders and vegetable growers, to increase their profits. 
     The team also helped set up a secondhand shop that employs 
     welfare recipients so that they can fulfill new state 
     regulations that require them to find a job in two years or 
     lose benefits. Next to the shop is a credit union that offers 
     low-interest loans and a generous matched-savings program.
       The state welfare agency has set up a pilot program for 
     recipients that teaches ``job readiness skills,'' including 
     how to write a resume and how to fill out a job application.
       Yet every initiative pits the action team and Government 
     agencies against an intractable pessimism built on decades of 
     depressed conditions that are visible everywhere: piles of 
     garbage heaped into creeks and ravings because people cannot 
     afford the $12 monthly fee for trash removal; landscapes of 
     rusting cars, some from the 1950's, and the crumbling shell 
     of the Seale theater, which last showed a movie, ``Silver 
     Bullet,'' in 1985.
       But many residents say the prevailing attitude in the 
     county, particularly among those receiving state and Federal 
     entitlement benefits, is that no amount of help and 
     instruction is going to make a difference. According to the 
     most recent state statistics, 14.3 percent of Owsley 
     residents receive welfare benefits, 20 percent receive 
     benefits through the Federal assistance program for disabled 
     people known as Supplemental Security Income and almost half 
     receive food stamps.
       Mr. Hoffman, 47, a member of the action team, grew almost 
     angry, talking about the conditions in much of Appalachia. 
     ``Poverty is not about money,'' he said. ``It's in the mind. 
     It's a way of life. Once you're in that cycle you think you 
     can't break out of it. I don't know why people think that 
     way, but they become a prisoner of it. It took us three 
     generations to get into this mess, and it's going to take us 
     three generations to get out of it.''
       Members of the team say many parents urge their children to 
     try to go to special education classes at school as a way to 
     prove that they are eligible for disability benefits.
       ``That shows how creative people are when there are no 
     jobs,'' said Jeanne Gage, the director of the sustainable 
     communities initiative for the Mountain Association. ``You 
     learn how to work the system.''
       But as the system is changing, that could have a 
     devastating effect on Owsley County without more jobs.
       Pam Barrett, 32, a divorced mother of a 17-year-old 
     daughter and two sons, 11 and 10, is beginning to feel the 
     pinch. Living with her 38-year-old former husband, who 
     receives $438 a month in disability benefits for bad nerves 
     and a spine injury, she began working 20 hours a week at the 
     secondhand shop two months ago. She plans to use some of the 
     money for her daughter, Jennifer, who expects to receive an 
     athletic scholarship and start college in the fall.
       ``She has the chance I passed up to have three young'uns,'' 
     Ms. Barrett said. ``I quit school in the eighth grade to get 
     married. I was 15. He was 21. I've regretted it ever since. 
     And young'uns having babies is going on right today. But I 
     tell you what, you learn from your mistakes.''
       Farmers like the Hoffmans, who rely on tobacco as their 
     leading cash crop, are enduring another anxiety, waiting to 
     see how the litigation between cigarette companies and 
     Federal and state governments might affect small growers.
       Action team members and government officials working to 
     turn around the fortunes of Owsley County all say their 
     efforts are paying off, even against an enormous tide of 
     negativism that now touches some of those who are succeeding.
       Megan Hoffman said, ``I have really enjoyed growing up 
     here.'' But asked whether

[[Page S504]]

     she planned to return after college, she said: ``No. There is 
     nothing here. There is nothing to come back to.''
       The president of the Mountain Association, Don Harker, said 
     that attitude would be difficult to change any time soon.
       ``We have an immense amount of work to do to bring up the 
     prosperity levels of Appalachia,'' Mr. Harker said. ``To give 
     people hope, we have to change the whole dynamic. To give 
     people a reason to believe things can be different than they 
     are, we have to change their expectations.
       ``I know we can do it,'' he said. ``But I don't think it 
     will be done in my lifetime.''

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I just want to read one part of the 
editorial today in the Star Tribune:

       But since Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and 
     Work Opportunity Act, better known as welfare reform, that 
     self-regulated feature has vanished. States can kick families 
     off assistance for many reasons--failing to find work, 
     breaking administrative rules, or simply exhausting their 
     benefits ``clock,'' a time as short as 18 months in some 
     states.

  The context for this piece was that seven Midwestern welfare 
administrators have banded together, and they want us to ask questions 
about what is happening with the welfare bill in the country.
  I just want to say to colleagues that we would be making a mistake if 
we assumed that 2 million fewer families on welfare meant also that we 
had 2 million fewer families that were poor in America. What the New 
York Times front page article points to--and I had a chance to visit 
Letcher County, KY, this summer--what this editorial speaks to, I 
think, is a really important question.
  I am going to have an amendment that I am going to offer on the first 
bill that is appropriate which essentially says this: We cannot 
automatically equate reduction in caseload with reduction in poverty, 
and what we need to know as responsible policymakers is what is 
happening with these families.
  When I say ``these families,'' I am really talking about, in the 
main, women and children. I know that in my travels around the 
country--and I do no damage to the truth, I don't think I exaggerate at 
all--I met too many families where, as it turns out, 3- and 4-year-olds 
were home alone. The single parent is working now, but the child care 
has not been worked out. Or it is a very ad hoc child care arrangement, 
hardly what any of us would like for our own children, not really good 
developmental child care.
  In addition, too many first and second graders, I said before on the 
floor of the Senate, are now going home alone because their single 
parent, the mother, is working, but there is nobody there to take care 
of them when they are home. First and second graders are going home 
sometimes in some very dangerous neighborhoods.
  It is also true, Madam President, that wherever I travel, when I am 
told in any given State we have reduced the welfare rolls by X number 
of families, the question I have is, where are they? What kind of jobs 
do these mothers now have? Do they pay a living wage? Where are the 
children? Is it decent child care? And the interesting thing is that 
hardly anywhere in the country do we have the data. I can't get answers 
to those questions.
  So, the amendment that I am going to have on the floor of the Senate 
soon will essentially call on States to provide to Health and Human 
Services data, let's say, every 6 months as to how many families are 
actually reaching economic self-sufficiency.
  I am not trying to bias the conclusion one way or the other, but 
since, depending on the State 3 years from now or 2 years from now or a 
year and a half from now or 4 years from now, there is a drop-dead date 
certain where all these children--women and children--will be removed 
from any assistance, we ought to know what is happening. That is all I 
am saying to colleagues, let's have the data, let's make sure we know 
what is happening to those families. That will be an amendment I will 
bring to the floor soon.
  The second amendment I want to mention today is, I think, very much 
within the same context and, I think, important. Around the country, as 
I travel, I cannot believe how many women who are in a community 
college, who are on the path to economic self-sufficiency in school, 
are now being told that they have to go to work. It may be a $5.50-an-
hour job, but they are essentially told they can no longer be in 
school.
  Madam President, I would argue that this is very shortsighted. This 
is very shortsighted. As a matter of fact, if these women can complete 
their 2 years in the community college or even get a 4-year degree, 
they and their families will be much better off.

  So the second amendment I am going to offer will essentially call for 
a student exemption. It will say, let's let these welfare mothers 
pursue and complete their education. They and their families will be 
much better off. I hope that the community colleges and the 
universities will speak up for these families, because they know what 
is happening. This is, I think, a profound mistake.

                          ____________________