[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 96 (Thursday, July 1, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8073-S8075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WELFARE REFORM

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise today because I am concerned 
that there is a growing national crisis in America. Although we do not 
know its exact dimensions, the early evidence is extremely troubling.
  Nearly three years ago, against my objections, Congress passed and 
President Clinton signed the welfare reform law. The stated purpose of 
the law was to move people off welfare and toward economic self-
sufficiency.
  By now, we all know that the welfare caseloads have dramatically 
declined. The welfare caseloads are at their lowest point in nearly 30 
years. Since welfare reform became law, 1.6 million families have left 
the welfare rolls. Approximately 4.6 million are no longer receiving 
cash assistance. Clearly, the law has been successful at moving people 
off welfare. On this basis, nearly everyone is jumping at the 
opportunity to proclaim welfare reform as a ``success.'' But, Mr. 
President, I have my doubts. How can we call welfare reform a success 
without knowing what has happened to these people after leaving 
welfare? How can we call it a success without knowing how people are 
doing? Mr. President, declining caseloads do not answer the 
fundamentally important questions. They don't tell us if families are 
moving toward economic self-sufficiency. They don't tell us if people 
have been able to escape poverty. They don't tell us if mothers have 
been able to find work. They don't tell us if children have food and 
are covered by health insurance.
  Mr President to be honest, the declining welfare caseloads tell us 
very little. We should not be trumpeting the success of welfare reform 
before we know about the living conditions of the people who have been 
moved off welfare. And right now, no one seems to know. Over and over 
again I have asked my colleagues if they know of any research 
demonstrating that the decrease in the number of families receiving 
assistance means that people are escaping poverty, but no one has 
produced such a study. No one!
  My fear is that these people are simply disappearing.
  Mr. President, we've got a similar problem with the recent reports 
about Food Stamps. Lately we've been hearing a lot about the plunge in 
Food Stamp participation. Over the last four years the number of people 
using food stamps dropped by almost one-third, from 28 million to 19 
million people.
  Some want to interpret this decline as an indication of diminished 
need. But, just like the decline in welfare rolls, there are important 
questions that are left unanswered. I hope that the drop means that 
fewer people are going hungry. But, I have my doubts.
  If people are no longer needy, then how can we account for the fact 
that 78 percent of cities surveyed by the United States Conference of 
Mayors for its Report on Hunger reported increases in requests for 
emergency food in 1998?
  If people are no longer needy, then how can we explain why Catholic 
Charities USA reported early this year that 73 percent of dioceses had 
increases of as much as 145 percent in requests for emergency food 
assistance compared to a year before.
  Mr. President, how can we account for these findings without 
questioning whether the reformers' claims of success are premature?
  What is going on here? A story from the New York Times suggests one 
troubling explanation:
  ``[One welfare recipient was told] incorrectly . . . that she could 
not get food stamps without welfare. So, though she is scraping by 
raising a family of five children and sometimes goes hungry, she has 
not applied [for food stamps]. . . . `They referred me to the food 
pantry,' she said. `They don't tell you what you really need to know. 
They tell you what they want you to know.'' (4/17/99).
  Mr. President, I am here today to propose an amendment. It is an 
amendment that I hope will receive widespread support. It is simple and 
straightforward. It will help us find out how people who have left 
welfare are doing. It will provide us with the information we need in 
order to properly evaluate the success or failure of welfare reform.
  Mr. President, the 1996 welfare law sets aside $1 billion for ``high-
performance'' bonuses. Currently, the money is awarded to states using 
a formula that takes into account state effectiveness in increasing 
employment among TANF recipients. My amendment would add three more 
criteria:
  Food stamp participation among poor children,
  The proportion of families leaving TANF who are covered by Medicaid 
or child health insurance, and
  The number of children in working poor families who receive some form 
subsidized child care.
  In other words, states would have to provide this information in 
addition to the job entry, job retention, and earnings data they 
already must provide in their high-performance bonus applications.
  Mr. President, some of my colleagues might suggest that these 
additional requirements will be too difficult for the states to meet. I 
will address this issue in detail in a little while. Right now, let me 
just reassure everyone that no state will be required to conduct any 
new surveys. In fact, no state will have to collect any new data. All 
that my amendment will require is that states report data they already 
have.
  Mr. President, as I have already suggested, I am here today because 
of my deep concern for the millions of Americans who struggle each day 
to get by. These are the people who worry about:
  How to keep a roof over their families' heads, How to get food in 
their children's stomachs, How to earn a wage that pays their bills, 
and How to obtain medical help when they are sick.
  I am especially concerned about our nation's children who all too 
often are the innocent victims of poverty.
  Mr. President, we live in the richest country in the world. We live 
in a country that has experienced what many call ``an unprecedented 
period of prosperity.'' But Mr. President, this prosperity has not 
extended to all families and their children. While our country is 
supposedly doing so well, we've got about 14 million--That's one in 
five--children who live in poverty. And, 6.5 million children live in 
extreme poverty. Their family income is less than one-half the poverty 
line.
  This poverty has profoundly terrible consequences on the lives of 
these children. On the basis of research, we now know that poverty is a 
greater risk to children's overall health status than living in a 
single parent family. A baby born poor is less likely to be alive to 
celebrate its first birthday than a baby born to an unwed mother, a 
high school dropout, or a mother who smoked during pregnancy.
  Mr. President, poor children must walk a gauntlet of troubles, that 
begin even before they are born and often last a lifetime. Not only are 
poor children more likely to die during childhood, they are:
  More likely to have low birth weights and be born premature; More 
likely to be deaf; More likely to be blind; More likely to have serious 
physical or mental disabilities, and More likely to suffer from stunted 
growth.
  Mr. President, I am worried that welfare reform is making these 
problems worse. I think that we really need to pay attention to the 
quality of people's lives not just to the numbers of people on 
assistance.

[[Page S8074]]

  Mr. President, the purpose of my amendment is to help us to 
understand at a national level what is happening in our country in the 
wake of welfare reform. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure this 
out and have come to the conclusion that what we currently know is not 
sufficient. I am not alone in this belief. One of the organizations I 
work is called NETWORK. It's a National Catholic Social Justice lobby. 
The people at NETWORK wrote the following in their recent report on 
welfare reform:

       Even though government officials are quick to point out 
     that national welfare caseloads are at their lowest point in 
     30 years, they are unable to tell us for the most part what 
     is happening to people after they leave the welfare rolls--
     and what is happening to people living in poverty who never 
     received assistance in the first place.

  Mr. President, although we lack a national portrait, some of the 
research I read about what is going on in the states deeply concerns 
me.
  For example: In Alabama, a professor found that intake workers gave 
public assistance applications to only 6 out of 27 undergraduate 
students who requested them, despite state policy that says that anyone 
who asks for an application should get one.
  In Arizona, after holding fairly steady from 1990 to 1993, the number 
of meals distributed through Arizona's statewide food-charity network 
has since risen 50 percent.
  In California, tens of thousands of welfare beneficiaries are dropped 
each month as punishment. In total, half of those leaving welfare are 
doing so because they did not follow the rules.
  In Florida, more than 15,000 families left welfare during a typical 
month last year. About 3,600 reported finding work, but nearly 4,200 
left because they were punished. The state doesn't know what happened 
to almost 7,500 others.
  In Georgia, nearly half of the homeless families interviewed in 
shelters and other homeless facilities had lost TANF benefits in the 
previous 12 months.
  In Iowa, 47 percent of those who left welfare did so because they did 
not comply with requirements such as going to job interviews or 
providing paperwork. And in Iowa's PROMISE JOBS experiment, the 
majority of families punished for failure to meet welfare-to-work 
requirements told researchers that they didn't understand those 
requirements.
  In my own State of Minnesota, care managers found that penalized 
families were twice as likely to have serious mental health problems, 
three times as likely to have low intellectual ability, and five times 
more likely to have family violence problems when compared with other 
recipients.
  In the Mississippi Delta, workfare recipients gather at 4 a.m. to 
travel by bus for two hours to their assigned work places, work their 
full days, and then return--another two hours--home each night. It is 
no surprise, therefore, that they are having trouble finding child care 
during these nontraditional hours, and for such extended days.
  In New York, a September 1998 survey found that 71 percent of former 
recipients who last received TANF in March 1997 did not have any 
employer-reported earnings.
  In a rural Appalachian community in Ohio, there is a lack of jobs at 
decent wages that has resulted in dramatic increases in requests for 
food. The Congressional Hunger Center tells us that, ``As people are 
being moved off of the rolls in rural areas, there is very little 
support structure to help them become self-sufficient--government 
programs are unavailable due to time limits, there is little private 
industry in the area, and neighbors struggle to get by on their own.''
  And then there is the so-called success story in Wisconsin. Only one 
in four families that permanently leave welfare have incomes above the 
poverty line. The typical recipient actually lost income during the 
year after leaving welfare. Only one in three of those who left welfare 
increased their economic resources. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, the number 
of children sleeping in Salvation Army homeless shelters shot up by 50 
percent between 1994 and 1996. In contrast, the number of homeless 
men--a group that is largely unaffected by welfare changes--rose by 
only one percent during the same period. And, a recently released study 
by the Institute for Wisconsin's Future says that the number of 
families in extreme poverty jumped from about 1,700 in 1989 to 11,200 
in 1997.
  Mr. President, clearly we need to be careful about pronouncing 
welfare reform a ``success'' simply because the caseloads are down. 
People are continuing to suffer and struggle to meet their basic needs.
  Mr. President, I have already discussed the dramatic decline in 
welfare caseloads. Let me remind everyone that the caseload decline has 
not been matched by a similar decline in poverty indicators.
  I think we need to know, on a national level, what's going on. The 
research we do have suggests that moving people off of welfare is not 
having the intended effect of putting them on the road to economic 
self-sufficiency.
  The NETWORK study reports that people continue to experience severe 
hardship. For example:
  Nearly half of the respondents report that their health is only 
``fair'' or ``poor.'' 43% eat fewer meals or less food per meal due to 
cost. 52% of soup kitchen patrons are unable to provide sufficient food 
for their children. Even the working poor are suffering as 41% of those 
with jobs experienced hunger.
  Mr. President, NETWORK is not the only group out there trying to find 
out what is going on. In another study, seven local agencies and 
community welfare monitoring coalitions in six states compared people 
currently receiving welfare to those who stopped getting welfare in the 
last six months.
  The data show that people who stopped getting welfare were:
  Less likely to get food stamps; Less likely to get Medicaid; More 
likely to go without food for a day or more; More likely to move 
because they couldn't pay rent; More likely to have a child who lived 
away or was in foster care; More likely to have difficulty paying for 
and getting child care, and; More likely to say ``my life is worse'' 
compared to six months ago.
  The National Conference of State Legislatures' analyzed 14 state 
studies with good information about families leaving welfare. It found:

       Most of the jobs [that former recipients get] pay between 
     $5.50 and $7 an hour, higher than minimum wage but not enough 
     to raise a family out of poverty. So far, few families who 
     leave welfare have been able to escape poverty.

  And then there is the recent study by Families USA, which presents a 
very troubling set of findings. It reports:

     over two-thirds of a million low-income people--approximately 
     675,000--lost Medical coverage and became uninsured as of 
     1997 due to welfare reform. The majority (62 percent) of 
     those who became uninsured due to welfare reform were 
     children, and most of those children were, in all likelihood, 
     still eligible for coverage under Medicaid. Moreover, the 
     number of people who lose health coverage due to welfare 
     reform is certain to grow rather substantially in the years 
     ahead.

  Mr. President, sometimes with all these numbers and studies we lose 
sight of the fact that they are based on the lives of real people--
people who want the best for themselves and their children. But, we 
must not forget this reality.
  Here is the story of one family that one of the Sisters in the 
NETWORK study workeed with:

       Martha and her seven year-old child, David, live in 
     Chicago. She recently began working, but her 37-hour a week 
     job pays only $6.00 an hour. In order to work, Martha must 
     have childcare for David. Since he goes to school, she found 
     a sitter who would receive him at 7 a.m. and take him to 
     school. This sitter provided after school care as well. When 
     Sister Joan sat down with Martha to talk about her finances, 
     they discovered that her salary does not even cover the 
     sitter's costs.

  The Families USA Report tells us the following story:
  Terry (This is not her real name)

     had been on welfare for about two years when she got a job at 
     McDonald's. Working 30 hours a week, Terry earned $600 a 
     month. When she told her welfare caseworker about her new 
     job, Terry and her 5-year-old son, James, were cut off of 
     cash assistance and Medicaid. Her Food Stamps stopped, too, 
     although she was promised they would continue. When Terry 
     left welfare for work, no one told her that she was eligible 
     for Transitional Medicaid. And her son James should have 
     continued to receive Medicaid until Terry earned at least 
     $1,200 a month--twice as much as she made at her job at 
     McDonald's.
  Mr. President, these three cases I just mentioned are about families 
where a parent is working. There is an even scarier situation--families 
that neither receive government assistance

[[Page S8075]]

nor have a parent with a job. We don't know for certain how large this 
population is, but in the NETWORK study 79% of the people were 
unemployed and not receiving welfare benefits. Of course this study was 
focused on the hardest hit and therefore overestimates the overall 
percentage of former recipients who are unemployed. But, it still 
represents a 50% increase over the level it found before welfare 
reform.
  How are these families surviving? Mr. President, I am deeply 
concerned and worried about them. They are no longer receiving aid and 
they don't have jobs. They are literally falling through the cracks and 
disappearing. I call these families, which are composed primarily of 
women and their children, The Disappeared Americans.
  We must find out what is going on. That is why this amendment is so 
important. It will provide us with valuable information we need in 
order to be responsible policymakers.
  Mr. President, this is not the first time I have come to the floor of 
the US Senate to offer an amendment designed to find out what is 
happening to poor people in this country. Last month I offered a 
similar amendment and it lost by one vote. Although 50 Senators voted 
against it, not one spoke in opposition. Not a single Senator rose to 
debate me on the merits of the measure. At that time, I promised and I 
would return to the Senate floor with the amendment, and today I am 
fulfilling my promise.
  Since I first offered the amendment, we have received some valuable 
input about the best way to gather the kind of data we need to 
understand on a national level what is going on. In the original 
amendment, states would have been required to conduct new studies to 
track all former TANF recipients. In the version of the amendment I 
offer today, states can simply rely on administrative data that they 
already collect. For example, in order to provide Medicaid and child 
health insurance data, states would just have to do a match between 
their TANF and Medicaid/CHIP computer systems. And, if states choose 
not to apply for the TANF bonus money, they would only need to provide 
data on a valid sample of former recipients, not the entire population.
  In other words, Mr. President, we have reworked the amendment to make 
it significantly less burdensome of the Secretary of HHS and the 
states. Frankly, with these changes, I don't see a reason why anyone 
would vote against this amendment. If there is going to be opposition, 
I expect that we will have a debate. Let's identify our differences and 
debate them.
  Mr. President, let me wrap things up by reminding us all that it is 
our duty and our responsibility to make sure that the policies we enact 
for the good of the people actually are doing good for them. Evaluation 
is one of the key ingredients in good policy making and it does not 
take a degree in political science to realize what anyone with common 
sense already knows: When you try something new, you need to find out 
how it works.
  As policy makers--regardless of our ideology or intuitions--it is our 
role to ensure that the programs we enact to provide for American 
families' well-being are effective and produce the outcomes we intend.
  We need to know what is happening with the families who are affected 
by welfare reform. We need to know whether reform is, in fact, 
effectively helping low income mothers and their children build a path 
to escape poverty and move toward economic self-sufficiency.
  As I have already explained, the data we do have does not provide us 
with all the information we need. We need to go beyond simply assuming 
that welfare and food stamp declines are ``good'' news.
  The Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal once said, ``Ignorance is never 
random.'' Sometimes we choose not to know what we do not want to know. 
In the case of welfare reform, we must have the courage to find out.

                          ____________________