[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 119 (Thursday, September 19, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6384-H6386]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SENSE OF HOUSE THAT CONGRESS SHOULD COMPLETE ACTION ON LEGISLATION 
      EXTENDING AND STRENGTHENING SUCCESSFUL 1996 WELFARE REFORMS

  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House 
Resolution 527, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 525) expressing the 
sense of the House of Representatives that the 107th Congress should 
complete action on and present to the President, before September 30, 
2002, legislation extending and strengthening the successful 1996 
welfare reforms, and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of House Resolution 525 is as follows:

                              H. Res. 525

       Whereas the 1996 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193), 
     approved by large bipartisan majorities of the House of 
     Representatives and of the Senate, has delivered dramatic 
     results by promoting record increases in work and earnings 
     among current and former welfare recipients, reducing the 
     number of children in poverty by nearly 3,000,000 and 
     achieving record low rates of child poverty among African-
     American children and children raised by single mothers, and 
     lifting 3,000,000 families from welfare dependence as part of 
     a decline in national welfare rolls of more than 50 percent;
       Whereas despite these unprecedented gains, 2,000,000 low-
     income families remain dependent on welfare, challenging the 
     Congress to build upon that success by putting even more 
     Americans on the path to self-reliance;
       Whereas changes to the law are needed to better promote the 
     creation and maintenance of strong two-parent families, 
     including healthy married families, in order to enhance child 
     and family well-being;
       Whereas further changes are needed to improve the quality 
     and availability of child care, since the experiences of 
     young children greatly affect their success in school;
       Whereas the House of Representatives, on May 16, 2002, 
     passed H.R. 4737, the Personal Responsibility, Work, and 
     Family Promotion Act of 2002, which includes needed 
     enhancements proposed by the President and extends and 
     strengthens reforms for the coming five years;
       Whereas H.R. 4737 would provide a total of $170,000,000,000 
     in Federal and State funds to support work, child care, 
     education, training, and other family needs;
       Whereas the Senate has yet to approve legislation to extend 
     the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, 
     the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and Title V 
     Abstinence Education State Block Grant programs as required 
     by September 30, 2002; and
       Whereas the failure of the 107th Congress to extend the 
     TANF or child care programs by September 30, 2002, would 
     threaten the opportunities currently available for low-income 
     families and create fiscal uncertainty for States: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of 
     Representatives that the 107th Congress should complete 
     action on and present to the President, prior to September 
     30, 2002, legislation extending and strengthening the 
     successful 1996 welfare reforms.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 527, the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Cardin), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), and the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) each will control 15 
minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as 
I may consume.
  Twelve days, 12 days. In 12 days, the welfare reform legislation 
expires. Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious matter. This House passed 
reauthorization of the welfare reform legislation on May 16. The Senate 
has not acted. We have 12 days, yet welfare reform has been an 
unprecedented success.

[[Page H6385]]

  Never have we passed a reform of a program that has resulted in a 
decline in child poverty. This bill has resulted in the largest decline 
in child poverty ever, and in not just 1 year but in consecutive years; 
and the most dramatic decline in child poverty has been among African 
American children. Nearly 3 million children have left poverty since 
welfare reform, and this is not just because we had a good economy.
  During the good economy of the Reagan years, when hundreds of 
millions of jobs were created, welfare roles increased about 12 
percent. It is the result of welfare reform that children are leaving 
poverty, that there has been a substantial reduction in the number of 
children living in poverty several years consecutively.
  Secondly, the most exciting and wonderful news about welfare reform 
is that of the women on welfare, 33 percent are now working. The 
percent of those on welfare and working has tripled. It has gone from 
11 percent to 33 percent.

                              {time}  1215

  Many of those women are still receiving some welfare benefits as they 
make the transition to complete independence, but 33 percent are 
working. That is incredibly good news and it will strengthen those 
families economically and emotionally. But that also means that 67 
percent are not meeting the State definition of working, which does not 
include complete independence from welfare benefits.
  So we do have a lot more work to be done, and I am proud to say that 
the reauthorization passed by this House recognized that those women 
who were not meeting the standards of work need more education. They 
need more training, and it creates tremendous flexibility for the 
States to not only help women get into that first job, but enable them 
to have the time they need for the education, the skill development to 
deal with all those problems that we know from our research which 
represent barriers to women getting into the workforce and barriers to 
their rising up the career ladder so that the salary that they earn is 
a salary that can honestly support a family with children.
  The reauthorization bill represented a giant step forward, building 
on what we learned from the old program, enabling the new program to be 
far more powerful in the lives of the women and children in America who 
are on welfare and basically living on extremely low incomes, if not in 
poverty.
  Mr. Speaker, I am proud that the House acted. The Senate has not 
acted. I call on my colleagues to lay out to the other body the 
importance of reauthorizing welfare today as it expires in 12 short 
days. That is not even 2 weeks. In 12 short days, this program expires.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, this is what we call filler because the majority, the 
Republicans, do not want to bring up legislation that is important to 
enact before the end of the fiscal year.
  If I had been told that on September 19 as one of the last bits of 
business before we adjourn for the week and come back on Tuesday of 
next week, not Monday, with not acting on in this body 8 of the 13 
appropriation bills, that we would be taking up a meaningless 
resolution in order to kill time, I would not have believed it; but, 
that is what we are doing.
  The gentlewoman from Connecticut is right. There are 12 days left 
before the end of this fiscal year. The Republicans have only scheduled 
4 more legislative days before the end of this fiscal year. In 4 
legislative days funding for education, for veterans affairs, for 
environmental issues, for law enforcement, and for housing will all 
expire. This body has not even taken up those appropriation bills; yet 
we have time for this meaningless resolution.
  Yes, I am concerned about the end of this fiscal year and getting 
work done. It is important that we reauthorize the welfare reform bill, 
TANF reauthorization. I have been working for 2 years to try to get 
reauthorization of TANF.
  This body missed an opportunity to get that done when it chose a 
partisan route rather than a bipartisan route which we could have 
passed when the bill was originally before us, a missed opportunity, 
making it much more difficult for this Congress to send to the 
President a meaningful TANF reauthorization bill.
  Mr. Speaker, we should have built on the success of the current 
welfare reform bill. We should have built the success that provides 
flexibility to the States, but instead the legislation that passed this 
body took flexibility away from the States and made it more difficult 
for them to do their programs on welfare. Education and training are 
important, but the bill that passed this body says it is important for 
everyone but the mother on welfare with a child; that person does not 
need education. That is the wrong message.
  The bill that passed this body says we do not want welfare recipients 
to have real jobs. We want makeshift employment, even though every 
study has shown that will not lead to people leaving poverty.
  The bill that passed this body is an unfunded mandate on the States 
requiring them to spend billions of dollars more and not providing the 
necessary resources. This resolution states that changes are needed to 
improve the quality and availability of child care. I agree. We have 
not done that in this body. We need to do it.
  Mr. Speaker, there is still time. I urge my colleagues to join in a 
bipartisan effort. We introduced a proposal that I authored along with 
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Woolsey) that builds on the current welfare system, 
providing the flexibility and the resources to the States. It took 
welfare to the next level to get families out of poverty. It had the 
support. We put in the proposal that the national Governors wanted and 
that the welfare administrators thought were necessary in order to 
build on the current welfare system, and it is consistent with the 
bipartisan effort of the other body.
  There is time if we are willing to work in a bipartisan way to get 
TANF reauthorization passed, but we cannot do it the way that the other 
side of the aisle did it when this bill first came before this body.
  Mr. Speaker, I regret that today is another missed opportunity.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as 
I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I remind the body, the Senate has not acted. We must go 
to conference. We can conference this bill and get it to the 
President's desk in 12 days. The Congress owes that to the American 
people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Herger), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the 
Committee on Ways and Means.
  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, 4 months ago the House passed a 5-year 
welfare reform extension bill. Yet now, just 11 days remain before the 
successful Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program expires. The 
1996 law lifted nearly 3 million children from poverty. It resulted in 
a dramatic increase in the employment and earnings of single mothers, 
all while reducing welfare dependence by 9 million people.
  Still, we know we have more work to do in the next phase of welfare 
reform. Some in Washington seem to be willing to allow the program to 
run out at the end of this month. They seem to believe a simple 
extension would suffice, but a simple extension of this program will 
not help the nearly 60 percent of the adults on welfare who are doing 
nothing now to engage in activities that will lead them on the road and 
the path from poverty to self-reliance. A simple extension will not 
provide $2 billion in increased child care funds to support more 
working low-income families, and a simple extension will not invest 
more in families by promoting healthy marriages and preventing the 
millions of children born out of wedlock from growing up without the 
benefit of their father.
  We must act now. So join us in supporting H. Res. 525. It is my 
sincere hope that we will soon get to a conference with the other body 
so we can work out our differences on this important legislation. More 
than 2 million low-income families in America are depending on us for 
help.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HERGER. I yield to the gentleman from California.

[[Page H6386]]

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I guess I am just a little bit confused on the basis of initial 
remarks by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) because the 
arguments that he just made were exactly the ones he made when we had 
the welfare debate on the floor of this House, and I know that he would 
have rather had his position prevail than the one that did, and that is 
the bill that we passed and sent over to the Senate. And what it 
sounded like was he wanted to revisit the debate that occurred in the 
House prior to House passage of our legislation, and what I would urge 
him to do is, if he wants to have another chance at that debate, would 
be to vote for this resolution which says it is ``the sense of the 
House of Representatives that the 107th Congress should complete 
action.''
  If the House has passed legislation to complete action, we have to 
get the Senate to pass legislation, and I would hope that that 
impassioned speech that he just made to us, those of us who debated and 
already voted on the welfare bill, could be made to his colleagues in 
the Senate so that they would move a bill off the floor, we could go to 
conference, and he would then hope that his position would prevail in 
conference. But to say that he is opposed to urging the Senate to 
complete action is to basically say that wonderful and impassioned 
speech he made is not going to go anywhere because we cannot get the 
conference to try to get his position to prevail. And so moving this 
resolution hopefully will nudge the other body along so that his 
position can be presented in conference and the House and the Senate 
can resolve their differences.
  So I do not understand how folks are arguing that they want to be on 
both sides. One, this is meaningless, and, two, his impassioned plea 
ought to be heard again; and the only place it can really be heard 
again by the House is in conference.
  Vote for the resolution, and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) 
I will see in conference.


                announcement by the speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The Chair would make the 
following advisory: that as recently as December 19 of 2001 in response 
to a point of order, Members are reminded to confine their remarks to 
factual references to the other body and avoid characterizations of 
Senate action or inaction, remarks urging Senate action or inaction, 
remarks urging other Members to urge the Senate to take action or 
inaction, or references to particular Senators.
  The Chair would also note that there have been remarks during the 
course of debate where praise has been heaped upon the other body, and 
just as criticism is not appropriate, neither is praise as a 
characterization.
  Mr. CARDIN. I thank the Speaker for that clarification.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds just to respond to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the chairman of the Committee 
on Ways and Means.
  Mr. Speaker, it is just regrettable that we did not follow a 
bipartisan action in this body like some others have done on the other 
side of the aisle. I think that is regrettable because that has made it 
much more difficult for us to reach an agreement with so few days left 
in this session, and I still say this is a meaningless resolution. It 
does not do one thing, and I think Members can vote any way they want, 
and they will be surprised to learn that this is not a Special Order.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Levin), a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
  (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I am glad the chairman of the committee 
spoke, and I want to respond and also to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), because I think this resolution is an 
effort to shift the blame. The bottom line is, okay, the Senate should 
act. But why are they having trouble acting? It takes 60 votes. A major 
reason is because the House started this debate on the wrong foot 
including the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson). They started 
on a partisan approach. There was no effort to work with those of us 
who worked on welfare reform in 1995 and 1996, including the ranking 
member of the subcommittee. Zero effort. And that included the 
administration. It came forth with a proposal that in the judgment of 
the administrators, the vast majority of State administrators, was the 
wrong way to go. They said it was going to create flexibility. Also, 
there was the problem of poverty, that such a large percentage of the 
people who were moving off of welfare to work remained in poverty, and 
the studies show that the average income for people who have moved from 
welfare to work is something like 2,000 bucks a quarter. So we said let 
us build on welfare reform and its successes, let us acknowledge where 
it has had shortcomings and move on from there.
  But you said no, you are going to proceed like you did on 
prescription drugs on a partisan basis, and the administration was part 
and parcel of that strategy. So now you are reaping not the benefits 
but the downsides of that approach, and you say to the Senate act after 
you got this off on the wrong foot, and the administration continues to 
insist on its bill which cannot receive 60 votes in the Senate.

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