[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 33 (Monday, March 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S2381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SHRINKING WELFARE ROLLS

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I came to the floor last week--maybe it 
was a week and a half ago--with an amendment that called on my 
colleagues to be willing, as responsible policymakers, to take a close 
look at what was happening around the country, to mainly women and 
children, as a result of the welfare ``reform'' bill that was passed in 
1996. When I came to

[[Page S2378]]

the floor, I marshaled evidence as to the need for us to know more, as 
to the need for some kind of study. What the amendment said was that we 
should call on States to provide data to Health and Human Services as 
to how many of the families that were no longer on the welfare rolls 
were reaching economic self-sufficiency, what kind of jobs people had, 
what kind of wages, and what about child care for children?
  Mr. President, that amendment I think received about 43 or 44 votes. 
Maybe the reason the amendment was not agreed to was because I put that 
amendment on the highway bill, or the ISTEA bill, because I wanted to 
call attention to what is happening around the country as, from some of 
my own travel, I have seen it.
  Today we have two front page stories, colleagues. I want to announce 
my intention on an amendment. One, in the Washington Post, ``Sanctions: 
A Force Behind Falling Welfare Rolls,'' and the other, in the New York 
Times: ``Most Dropped from Welfare Don't Get Jobs.''

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that both these articles be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 23, 1998]

Sanctions: A Force Behind Falling Welfare Rolls--States Are Cutting Off 
         Tens of Thousands Who Won't Seek Work or Follow Rules

                (By Barbara Vobejda and Judith Havemann)

       Governors across the country are boasting that welfare 
     reform is successfully moving millions of people off the 
     rolls and into jobs. But closer scrutiny of state and federal 
     records shows that tens of thousands of families are being 
     forced off welfare as punishment for not complying with tough 
     new rules.
       Federal statistics show that in one three-month period last 
     year, 38 percent of the recipients who left welfare did so 
     because of state sanctions, ordered for infractions from 
     missing appointments with caseworkers to refusing to search 
     for work.
       These and other sanction numbers gathered by The Washington 
     Post from welfare offices nationwide are among the earliest 
     statistics available on how the states are implementing the 
     1996 federal welfare law, which triggered a dramatic revision 
     of public assistance programs.
       In some states, sanctions have become a significant part of 
     declining caseloads. More than half of the 14,248 cases 
     closed in Indiana in a three-month period last year, for 
     example, were a result not of people finding work but of 
     sanctions, according to federal records. In Florida, state 
     officials report that 27 percent of the 148,000 cases they 
     closed in the second half of 1997 were because of sanctions.
       In the first year of Tennessee's new program, 40 percent of 
     the families leaving welfare--nearly 14,000--lost benefits 
     because they did not comply with regulations, compared with 
     29 percent who left for employment, according to a University 
     of Memphis study.
       Nationally, caseloads have fallen by 18 percent in the past 
     year, attributable both to a healthy economy and welfare 
     reform efforts. But the sanction statistics provide a 
     fuller picture of what has generally been cast as the 
     success of welfare overhaul: Not all of those leaving the 
     rolls are converts to the work ethic; a sizable number 
     either are refusing to cooperate or are so hampered by 
     serious problems that they are unable to comply with the 
     new requirements.
       State officials say that the high rate of sanctioning is 
     evidence the new law is working as intended, smoking out 
     people who already had jobs but weren't reporting them, or in 
     other cases impressing upon recipients that they can no 
     longer receive aid indefinitely without preparing themselves 
     for work.
       But advocates for the poor warn that many states are 
     imposing severe measures that end people's benefits with no 
     assurances that their children will be fed or their houses 
     heated.
       Valerie Watson, a Memphis mother who says she has recurring 
     back problems, was cut off welfare last fall for missing 
     training classes and showing up late for an appointment with 
     her caseworker. She gradually sold her belongings as she grew 
     more desperate for money.
       ``We went through the whole winter with no utilities,'' she 
     said. ``This is a story you wouldn't believe because it has 
     been so rough.''
       Watson is part of the hidden story behind the tale of 
     welfare success being told across the country. Until the 
     passage of welfare reform legislation, states were hampered 
     from cutting off families for failure to work. Now, 30 state 
     legislatures have given caseworkers the authority to 
     eliminate welfare grants when families fail to cooperate with 
     several new rules, including requirements that recipients 
     search for jobs, volunteer or attend job-preparation classes.
       ``Sanctions are the spur for people to make the move from 
     welfare to work,'' said New Jersey welfare commissioner 
     William Waldman. ``To have a program that wasn't serious, 
     that didn't have consequences or sanctions for not taking a 
     step up in life, was very bad public policy that served to 
     trap people on the rolls. I don't minimize the impact of 
     sanctions, but the alternative is worse.''
       During the national debate over welfare reform two years 
     ago, many assumed that the moment of truth would come years 
     from now when recipients reached time limits that would end 
     their benefits. But the widespread use of sanctions has moved 
     up that moment.
       Energized by their welfare reform programs, states are 
     moving swiftly to put their new sanction power to use. But 
     social service advocates argue that in many cases, states are 
     making bad judgments.
       Bill Biggs, a former welfare administrator from Utah, wrote 
     in a recent publication that under a pilot program in his 
     state, half of the sanctions ordered were done in error, 
     often when a caseworker didn't detect that a recipient 
     suffered from mental illness or some other problem.
       Nothing illustrates individual states' new discretion--and 
     how that produces widely divergent policies--more vividly 
     than their approach to sanctions.
       New York, for example, prohibits caseworkers from taking a 
     family's entire check for failure to work. In Georgia, 
     families who receive two sanctions are banned for life 
     from receiving assistance, although this has happened in 
     only a handful of cases.
       In Alabama, clients can lose their benefits for failing to 
     show up for a single appointment without a good excuse, but 
     they can reapply the next month.
       No matter what the state policy, women like Valerie Watson 
     represent a common problem facing caseworkers. In welfare 
     parlance, she is what's known as a hard-to-serve client--
     somebody who hasn't worked in a decade, who tangles with her 
     landlord and the mailman, who lacks transportation and has a 
     history of back problems that she says flare up almost every 
     time she is asked to show up for an appointment or meet a 
     deadline.
       A few years ago, during an earlier effort at welfare 
     reform, her caseworker threatened to cut off her welfare 
     check if she didn't go to work. The caseworker ``said it was 
     the law that I had to get a job,'' said Watson, 42. ``I asked 
     her to show it to me.''
       The caseworker gave up.
       But in 1996, welfare reform got serious in Tennessee. 
     Watson, who lives in a rented house with her 18-year-old son 
     and a 20-year-old daughter, was soon called in to the Memphis 
     welfare office and handed a ``personal responsibility'' 
     contract requiring her to attend classes to prepare for work. 
     She was offered the choice of signing the form or losing her 
     check right then. ``I signed, but I knew I couldn't attend 
     classes because of my back injury,'' she said.
       Her check was docked 20 percent after she failed to attend 
     any of the eight weeks of daily classes. She appealed, citing 
     her back injury, but missed the hearing; she said she was 
     ill. Eventually, she lost all benefits. When she tried to 
     reopen the case, she was a ``little late, about five 
     minutes,'' she said, and officials sent her home to wait 
     until she heard from them again.
       Months passed, with Watson trying to get by without her 
     $142 monthly welfare check. She haunted food pantries and 
     churches, borrowed $1,200 from friends and acquaintances, 
     lost her phone and had her electricity cut off.
       Soon she started selling everything she owned: her 
     refrigerator, three gas heaters, the dining room table, her 
     ladder, fans.
       Eventually, she sold her stove. She cooks on a grill in the 
     back yard, even in winter. All along, she couldn't comply, 
     she explained, because of her back injury.
       She sought legal help, tried to qualify for disability 
     payments, fought eviction and recently got back on the rolls 
     by signing a new personal responsibility agreement.
       But Watson said she is already worried: Back pain may once 
     more prevent her from complying.
       Classes start at 8 a.m. today.
       The problem for caseworkers is how to know whether Watson 
     and other recipients like her are disabled or only in need of 
     a strong push to become independent. In a city where each 
     caseworker handles a minimum of 150 active welfare cases--
     plus an additional 100 miscellaneous clients for food stamps 
     or other benefits--it is hard to get to know each recipient 
     well.
       ``On any given day we can have a 40 to 60 percent no-show 
     rate'' said Anola Crunk, a program supervisor in Memphis. 
     Each missed appointment requires a follow-up.
       Caseworkers say that even in face-to-face interviews, 
     clients are not always forthcoming about their problems.
       State officials and welfare experts say they believe that 
     those who do get cut from the rolls represent the two 
     extremes of the welfare population. At one end are people 
     who are able to find jobs, or have other income, and 
     simply choose not to comply. Officials say they are 
     unlikely to be in desperate straits.
       At the other extreme are those unable to meet requirements 
     because they are the most troubled families--plagued by 
     mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence or such 
     low reading levels that they have difficulty understanding 
     the new regulations, much less finding work.

[[Page S2379]]

       A Minnesota study of sanctioned families found they were 
     twice as likely as other welfare recipients to report mental 
     health problems and four times as likely to report substance 
     abuse.
       These are the families that authors of welfare reform 
     assumed would be lingering on the rolls for years, the people 
     most likely to be affected by a five-year lifetime limit on 
     benefits included in the 1996 federal law. Instead, they are 
     often the ones being kicked off the rolls now, because they 
     are unable or unwilling to meet requirements.
       At the same time, sanctions have worked for some 
     recipients.
       Margaret Simpson, 22, a mother of three in Cincinnati, lost 
     her welfare check for seven months after she failed to show 
     up at her state's job readiness program.
       ``I wasn't paying attention,'' she said. ``There was a 
     letter with my check. Who pays attention to a letter with a 
     check? You pay attention to the check.''
       But eventually, when the check quit arriving, Simpson 
     complied with the rules by helping her caseworker track down 
     the father of her children to collect child support, working 
     on her high school equivalency test and attending a job-
     preparation course. A new check is on the way.
       ``If I would have been under the old law, I would still 
     just be getting a check,'' she said.
       A number of states, including Tennessee, are beginning to 
     track what happens to those who are sanctioned, but only 
     fragmentary evidence is available.
       A study of Iowa families who lost their benefits found that 
     about half were working after they left the rolls. University 
     of Memphis researchers found that 80 percent of Tennessee 
     recipients who had lost aid because of sanctions said they 
     had other sources of income.
       In Utah, a researcher found that most sanctioned families 
     had income from other sources, but a small group was so 
     disadvantaged she wondered how they would ever land jobs and 
     become self-supporting.
       Although states have always closed some welfare cases 
     because of clients' failure to comply, the numbers are 
     increasing and many of the sanctions are bigger and more 
     permanent than ever before.
       Rosie Saunders, a 29-year-old mother of twins in Columbus, 
     Ohio, is frantically applying for jobs to avoid being 
     sanctioned.
       ``I have asthma real bad,'' she said. ``I have two children 
     on [disability]. I had an industrial accident. I have to take 
     pills for depression.''
       But, ``I still have to get a job or they are going to cut 
     me,'' she said. ``They told me there was no excuses.''
                                                                    ____


                    [New York Times, Mar. 23, 1998]

 Most Dropped From Welfare Don't Get Jobs--Critics of Work Rules Cite 
                             New York Study

                         (By Raymond Hernandez)

       Albany, March 22.--A vast majority of people who have 
     dropped off New York State's rapidly shrinking welfare rolls 
     have not obtained legitimate jobs, a state survey indicates.
       The survey found, among other things, that of the legions 
     of people who came off the welfare rolls in New York City 
     from July 1996 through March 1997, only 29 percent found 
     full-time or part-time jobs in the first several months after 
     they were no longer on public assistance.
       The survey, which has been circulating among policymakers 
     statewide and has been obtained by The New York Times, has 
     raised questions among welfare experts about a bedrock 
     premise of the nation's new welfare laws: that tougher 
     restrictions move people from government dependency into 
     jobs.
       The survey, by the State Office of Temporary and Disability 
     Assistance, compared lists of people whose benefits ended 
     during a given quarter of the year against records of wages 
     that were reported to the state by employers in later 
     quarters. Employers are required to file wage reports to the 
     state each quarter.
       Of the families in New York City who dropped off the rolls 
     from July 1996 through September 1996, 32.7 percent showed 
     earnings in the next quarter, according to the report. Of 
     those who disappeared from the rolls from October through 
     December, 32.2 percent showed wages in the next quarter. And 
     of those who left the rolls from January through March 1997, 
     22.1 showed wages in the next quarter.
       For the purposes of the study, anybody who made $100 or 
     more in three months after leaving the rolls would have been 
     counted as employed. The report does not distinguish between 
     those who found full-time permanent jobs and those who found 
     only part-time or occasional work.
       The numbers were generally better statewide, where slightly 
     more than one-third of families on average who left the rolls 
     from July 1996 through March 1997 showed earnings at or 
     above the $100 threshold.
       The research provides a rare peek into the fate of those 
     who leave welfare, though an imperfect one. It does not take 
     into account people who are self-employed, work off the books 
     or move out of New York. It also does not include those whose 
     employers fail to report wage data promptly or are not 
     required to report wages at all, like farm owners.
       But the survey represents the first statistical attempt in 
     New York to determine what has happened to the 480,000 people 
     who have left the rolls of the two main welfare programs--Aid 
     to Families With Dependent Children and Home Relief--across 
     the state in the last three years, 350,000 of them in New 
     York City. It also calls into question claims by state and 
     city officials that the steep reductions in caseloads are 
     strong evidence that their welfare initiatives are working.
       The figures are especially useful because the 
     administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has resisted 
     requests to release records that would allow an independent 
     survey of former welfare recipients. The administration has 
     also declined to conduct such a survey itself.
       Dan Hogan, the executive deputy commissioner for the State 
     Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, warned against 
     drawings too many conclusions from the state survey. He said 
     that the disparity between the number of people reporting 
     wages from one quarter to the next was one indication of the 
     survey's imprecision.
       He added that the state intended to develop more precise 
     ways of determining the fate of former welfare recipients, 
     including cross-checking the names of former recipients 
     against labor statistics over a longer period than officials 
     currently do. That change, he said, would make up for 
     employers who do not report employee wages to the state on a 
     timely basis and thereby make it seem as if some former 
     recipients are unemployed when they actually have jobs.
       ``Are we satisfied that these numbers tell us enough? No,'' 
     Mr. Hogan said. ``We want to know more.''
       But Marcia Meyers, an assistant professor of social work at 
     Columbia University who specializes in welfare policy, said 
     the survey provided a singular opportunity to gauge the 
     overall impact of the changes in welfare policy championed by 
     Mr. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki. The changes include 
     cutting off aid to recipients who fail to comply with 
     requirements to work for their benefits, commonly known as 
     workfare.
       ``Up to now,'' she said, ``there have been claims and 
     counterclaims about the success of welfare reform, but there 
     has been no data with which to evaluate those claims. This 
     really gives us the first glimpse of life after welfare, and 
     it is alarming.''
       Experts and advocates for the poor say that despite the 
     limitations of the study's methods, its income threshold was 
     so low--a mere $100 over three months--that poor people 
     should have shown up in the labor statistics if they indeed 
     had jobs. They say the state's research provided the 
     strongest evidence yet that people were being knocked off the 
     welfare rolls by a host of new sanctions and rules even 
     though they had no prospect of legitimate employment.
       The advocates say that numbers help confirm what they have 
     long suspected: that the stringent policies of the Pataki and 
     Giuliani administration are driving thousands of former 
     welfare recipients into deeper poverty, not self-sufficiency.
       ``The more people you require to be in workfare, the 
     greater the opportunity will be to sanction them for failing 
     to comply,'' said Shelly Nortz, a policy analyst and lobbyist 
     for New York State Coalition for the Homeless. ``That policy 
     is just going to drive more and more people off the welfare 
     rolls even though there aren't enough jobs for them.''
       The situation will only get worse, advocates say, because 
     new welfare rules enacted in Washington require the state to 
     both place greater numbers of recipients into so-called 
     workfare assignments and cut off assistance to those who 
     fail to comply with those assignments.
       Among the other interesting findings in the survey is one 
     that deals with childless single, able-bodied adults who 
     received aid under the state-financed program called Home 
     Relief. Those who support making the welfare system more 
     restrictive have often pointed to this group, made up mostly 
     of men, as the most employable and therefore the least in 
     need of public assistance.
       But the study appears to support an assertion by welfare 
     advocates that many people on Home Relief are drug addicts or 
     mentally ill, or suffer from other problems that make them 
     difficult to employ.
       The study showed that about 20 percent of the people who 
     left Home Relief in New York City from July 1996 through 
     March 1997 had reported earning at least $100 in the 
     immediate months after they stopped being on the rolls. 
     Statewide, the average was about 23 percent.
       The state, however, fared much better when New York City 
     was not factored in, with an average of 30 percent of the 
     people who left Home Relief showing incomes a few months 
     after their public assistance was stopped, the report showed.
       Anne Erickson, the legislative co-ordinator for the New 
     York Upstate Law Project, an advocacy group for the poor, 
     said the numbers were particularly distressing because they 
     come at a time when a good economy has allowed the most 
     employable people to get jobs and leave the welfare rolls.
       ``The true test will be when the economy takes an 
     inevitable down-turn and the people who remain on the 
     caseload are less-skilled and harder to serve,'' she said. 
     ``It's troubling.''
       But Mr. Hogan said the state was using the money it had 
     saved from caseload reductions and reinvesting it in creating 
     more child-care slots, job-training programs and other 
     initiatives aimed at getting people into jobs.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me quote a few relevant paragraphs 
from both pieces.
  The Washington Post piece:

       Governors across the country are boasting that welfare 
     reform is successfully moving

[[Page S2380]]

     millions of people off the rolls and into jobs. But closer 
     scrutiny of state and federal records shows that tens of 
     thousands of families are being forced off welfare as 
     punishment for not complying with tough new rules.
       Federal statistics show that in one three-month period last 
     year, 38 percent of the recipients who left welfare did so 
     because of state sanctions, ordered for infractions from 
     missing appointments with caseworkers to refusing to search 
     for work.

  The article then goes on:

       During the national debate over welfare reform two years 
     ago, many assumed that the moment of truth would come years 
     from now when recipients reached time limits that would end 
     their benefits. But the widespread use of sanctions has moved 
     up that moment.
       Energized by their welfare reform programs, states are 
     moving swiftly to put their new sanction power to use. But 
     social service advocates argue that in many cases, states are 
     making bad judgments.
       Bill Biggs, a former welfare administrator from Utah, wrote 
     in a recent publication that under a pilot program in his 
     state, half of the sanctions ordered were done in error, 
     often when a caseworker didn't detect that a recipient 
     suffered from mental illness or some other problem.

  I go on:

       State officials and welfare experts say they believe that 
     those who do get cut from the rolls represent the two 
     extremes of the welfare population. At one end are people who 
     are able to find jobs, or have other income, and simply 
     choose not to comply.

  That is less of a problem, I say to my colleagues. They are working, 
they have a job, they are OK, their children are all right.

       At the other extreme are those unable to meet requirements 
     because they are the most troubled families--plagued by 
     mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence or such 
     low reading levels that they have difficulty understanding 
     the new regulations, much less finding work. . . .
       Rosy Saunders, a 29-year-old mother of twins in Columbus, 
     Ohio, is frantically applying for jobs to avoid being 
     sanctioned.
       ``I have asthma real bad,'' she said. ``I have two children 
     on [disability]. I had an industrial accident. I have to take 
     pills for depression.''
       But ``I still have to get a job or they are going to cut 
     me,'' she said. ``They told me there was no excuses.''

  End of the Washington Post piece.
  Just to emphasize one point, I say to my colleagues, what may very 
well be happening right now is that, yes, we are reducing the rolls. It 
is happening State by State, but the sanctions are invoked on people 
who are not working, and many of these people are not working because 
they are unable to work, because they struggle with mental illness, 
they struggle with substance abuse, or you have women who have been 
battered over and over and over again, and they are not able to take a 
job right away.
  Don't we want to know what is happening to these families? Just 
because they are poor, does that mean they matter any less than any 
other family in our country?
  The New York Times piece, ``Most Dropped From Welfare Don't Get 
Jobs'':

       A vast majority of people who have dropped off New York 
     State's rapidly shrinking welfare rolls have not obtained 
     legitimate jobs, a state survey indicates.
       The survey found, among other things, that of the legions 
     of people who came off the welfare rolls in New York City 
     from July 1996 through March 1997, only 29 percent found 
     full-time or part-time jobs in the first several months after 
     they were no longer on public assistance.

  That is a long piece, which I have had printed in the Record. Let me 
just simply say that I think the key point in this article is that many 
are now worrying that these welfare reforms, rather than enabling 
families to reach self-sufficiency, are driving many of these families 
into deeper poverty.
  Mr. President, when I brought this amendment to the floor last week, 
I quoted from a speech that Secretary Shalala had given on February 6. 
At one point in her speech, she says:

       Today, fewer than 4 percent of Americans are on welfare. 
     What we don't know--

  And this is a direct quote--

       is precisely what is happening to all of those former 
     welfare recipients.

  Mr. President, I say to colleagues, I am going to be back with this 
amendment this week, and I am going to take a lot of time to talk about 
it. If it is not this amendment, it will be another amendment which 
will be an effort with Senator Moynihan. I had a chance to talk with 
Senator Moynihan this morning, someone for whom I have a tremendous 
amount of admiration and a great deal of respect. He has done more work 
in this area than any of us. I think I have done a lot of work in this 
area as a teacher and as a community organizer before ever becoming a 
Senator, but I think Senator Moynihan has, without a doubt, the most 
intellectual capital and has probably done some of the most important 
work dealing with welfare policy that has been done in our country. I 
look forward to joining efforts with Senator Moynihan.
  But I want to say to colleagues today, I will be back with this 
amendment. I came to the floor and I said the reduction in caseload--
and let me just be real clear, the same message goes to the 
administration. The President has touted the reduction of the caseload 
by 4 million people. That is only reform if it is a reduction in 
poverty. We need to know what is happening. As a matter of fact, as you 
travel around the country and you go to State after State, there is no 
information available.
  Mr. President, is it true that in all too many cases people didn't 
show up for the initial job interview or job training because there 
were problems with mental illness in the family, problems with 
substance abuse, women who came out of battered homes and weren't able 
to do it, and now we are cutting them off all assistance and, even 
worse, we are cutting their children off assistance? Is it true that 
many of these recipients are now in workfare programs where they work 
minimum-wage jobs with no benefits and they are told that if they 
should leave the job because the conditions are horrible--they are 
never allowed to take a break to go to the bathroom, they have a 
ruptured disk in their back, or it turns out there isn't good child 
care for their children--that they never again will receive any welfare 
benefits? That is happening around our country, I say to my colleagues.
  We ought to know what the situation is with these families. I just 
say to colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans alike, that I think 
the problem is we don't want to know. I think the problem with the 
administration is they don't want to know. Everybody was talking about 
how great this ``welfare reform'' was, about how we saw all this 
reduction, 4 million fewer people receiving benefits, and everybody was 
cheering.
  Then I came to the floor and I said to colleagues--I thought I would 
get 100 votes--how about we know exactly what is happening, how about 
at least we call for all of the States to provide to Health and Human 
Services every 6 months a report on these families--are they reaching 
economic self-sufficiency?--and then Health and Human Services would 
pull that data together and give it to us as responsible policymakers. 
And it was voted down. It was voted down.
  Mr. President, I have a GAO report that just came out dealing with 
Health and Human Services, noting that HHS missed the statutory 
deadline for implementing the high-performance bonus program. This was 
going to be a program where there would be bonuses for States that were 
doing real well in placing people in jobs. The idea is we would see 
more of that. That is what it is supposed to be about:

  While the law required HHS to implement this program by August 1997, 
HHS is still writing regulations that will define specific measures 
against which States are to be assessed. So on and so forth. The point 
is, finally, now we are coming around with the regulations.
  Mr. President, I recommend both of these articles to colleagues. This 
is a most serious problem. We don't know what is going on around the 
country, but now we have two front-page stories which suggest that a 
whole lot of people are being cut off assistance, but it is not because 
they are working.
  I have other studies that I can refer to today. I won't. I see other 
colleagues have now come to the floor to talk about the supplemental. 
But let me just conclude this way: I brought this amendment to the 
floor a week and a half ago. I said, ``Don't you think we at least 
ought to study this?'' I was arguing that the reason we needed to have 
the study is that eventually--in some States it will be a year and a 
half from now; in other States, 3 years; it depends on the State--there 
is going to be a drop-dead date certain where everyone will be 
eliminated from assistance.
  We ought to know whether people are working. We ought to know whether

[[Page S2381]]

they have jobs. We ought to know whether the children are all right.
  Now what we find out is a whole lot of people who we thought would be 
in the most trouble, children who have children--and they don't have a 
high school degree, they don't have the job training, and they don't 
have the skills development--we were worried about whether they would 
be able to obtain employment and whether their children would be better 
off. We worried about people struggling with mental illness. We had an 
amendment out here on the floor called the ``family violence option,'' 
and the administration still has not made clear to States that they 
should be able to get a good-faith waiver for those women who come out 
of battered homes and that wouldn't be counted against their work force 
participation requirements.
  We worried about all these people. We didn't want women to be driven 
back into very dangerous homes because they were going to be cut off 
assistance, because they couldn't work, because they were being 
stalked, they couldn't go to job training, they had been traumatized, 
they suffered from posttraumatic stress syndrome from being beaten up 
over and over and over again. We didn't want them forced back into 
dangerous homes. A lot of that is happening around the country.
  I am coming back with this amendment, I say to my colleague Senator 
Stevens, not on this emergency supplemental bill, but on the first 
vehicle that is out here, I am going to come back with this amendment 
which essentially says to all of us as responsible policymakers, 
``Please, let's find out what's going on around the country; let's make 
sure that families aren't going hungry.''
  By the way, there has been a dramatic increase all around the country 
in demand for food shelves, a dramatic increase of families needing 
basic nutritional assistance, and you have to wonder whether or not 
part of the reason is people are getting cut off welfare assistance, 
but they are not being able to get the jobs, they are not finding the 
employment, and they are worse off.
  Mr. President, we ought to know, and I know that this is a critically 
important question. I am very pleased that I know Senator Moynihan will 
be a part of this effort, and I hope one way or the other I can get 100 
votes so that all of us can get the data that we need and we know what 
is happening around the country. That is what we should do as 
responsible policymakers. I will be back with this amendment as soon as 
there is an appropriate vehicle. I thank the Chair.

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