[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 11, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  INTRODUCING THE ``BUILDING SECURE AND HEALTHY FAMILIES ACT OF 2003''

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 11, 2003

  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the ``Building 
Secure and Healthy Families Act of 2003.'' This legislation amends 
existing welfare law to provide alternative programs to the Republican 
marriage proposals. It would also improve provisions concerning family 
violence, childcare, care-giving, and teen pregnancy prevention.
  I'm thankful to Senator Murray for working to pass companion 
legislation in the Senate. I am also grateful to the more than 80 
poverty, domestic violence, and children's groups that have endorsed 
this legislation.
  As the current Republican marriage proposal demonstrates, even when 
Republicans correctly identify a societal problem, they administer the 
wrong remedy due to their blind allegiance to their Christian right 
wing ideology. Of course families with one income are likely to be 
poorer than families with two incomes. However, simply getting poor 
people married does not address any of the underlying causes of poverty 
such as domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness. In fact, 
encouraging marriage may exacerbate those very problems. Thus, the 
Republican solution is at best naive and simplistic and at worst 
dangerously harmful and intolerant.
  In contrast, the Building Secure and Healthy Families Act of 2003 
provides evidence-based solutions to help families overcome problems 
such as: lacking sufficient income, suffering from family violence, 
facing teenage pregnancy, being without child care or care-giving 
skills themselves, or suffering from physical and mental disabilities.
  My bill provides an alternative to the marriage promotion provisions 
of the Republican plan by creating a $100 million per year competitive 
grant to states to be used for one of the following programs:
  Income enhancement programs (like the Minnesota Family Investment 
Program);
  Programs that provide education, opportunity and support to teens to 
reduce first and subsequent births; and
  Programs that provide services to build family stability by securing 
employment and child care, and providing other services such as mental 
health and substance abuse counseling.
  One of the key programs encouraged in my bill is the Minnesota Family 
Investment Program or MFIP. This innovative program allows welfare 
recipients to keep more of their welfare check while they work. It is 
structured to raise incomes, MFIP is the only welfare program in the 
country that has created more stable marriages and improved outcomes 
for child well-being.

  In fact, Wade Horn, the Assistant Secretary for Administration for 
Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services, 
agrees that MFIP works. In a November 2000 Washington Times editorial 
Horn wrote, ``These results [of MFIP] provide dramatic new evidence 
that changes in welfare incentives can increase the likelihood that 
single parents will get married and that married parents will stay 
married.''
  Unfortunately, the Republican marriage plan in their welfare bill 
does nothing to encourage MFIP-type programs. Instead, it narrowly 
focuses on providing education programs that deal with inadequate 
relationship skills, unrealistic expectations about marriage, and the 
inadequate meaning of marital commitment. It ignores other economic, 
social and cultural issues relating to marriage instability.
  Unlike MFIP, there is no evidence that the Republican-backed marriage 
programs work. But, maybe they don't care. Their proposal fails to 
require grantees to meet any criteria of experience, competence or 
fiscal soundness to get these grants. Also, there are no evaluation 
standards in their grants. Therefore, it is apparent that the 
Republican program is more an effort to appease its political base--the 
religious right--than it is to stabilize and make poor families secure 
and healthy.
  Besides its competitive grant program, my bill encourages parental 
care-giving and seeks to protect children from the dangers of poverty. 
Specifically, the bill:
  Prohibits states from kicking children off welfare for parents 
failure to meet TANF requirements;
  Disallows states from sanctioning parents on welfare who cannot meet 
their work requirements because they have no available child care for 
their children age 13 and under;
  Requires states to count care-giving as work for parents who have 
children that are age I and under;
  Gives states the option to count as work care-giving for a child up 
to age 3;
  Deems care-giving for one's sick or disabled child or other family 
member as a work activity and stops the welfare work clock for care-
giving for one's sick or disabled family member
  Finally, this bill extends the current Family Violence Option by 
requiring that states:
  Coordinate with domestic or sexual violence coalitions in the 
development of policies and procedures to have trained caseworkers 
identify survivors of domestic and sexual violence, refer them for 
services, and modify or waive welfare work requirements as necessary.
  Provide notice, confidentiality, and pre-sanction review to ensure 
that individuals are not being sanctioned under the welfare law when 
domestic or sexual violence is a significant contributing factor in 
noncompliance.
  Unfortunately, studies show that even local welfare offices of states 
that have domestic violence provisions may not fully inform individuals 
who disclose domestic violence of all their rights. Approximately 75 
percent of welfare recipients who identified themselves as victims of 
violence were not informed about available services, including 
counseling, housing, or the possibility of using work time to seek 
help.
  To have a secure and healthy America requires having secure and 
healthy American families. This bill helps develop those healthy 
American families by broadening the use of the Republican marriage 
promotion funds to fund proven programs we know that have accomplished 
this goal. Please join me in enacting the ``Building Secure and Healthy 
Families Act of 2003.''

                          ____________________