[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 159 (Tuesday, December 13, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13469-S13471]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TANF PROGRAM

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to urge our colleagues in the 
Senate to instruct the conferees to the budget reconciliation bill to 
reject the House provisions dealing with the Temporary Assistance for 
Needy Families, TANF, Program.
  Like several of our colleagues, I have a long history of working to 
improve our Nation's welfare policies to, first of all, make them more 
effective for States, but also more effective for families.
  When I was privileged to serve as Governor of the State of Delaware, 
I also served, at the same time, as cochairman of the National 
Governors Association's Welfare Reform Task

[[Page S13470]]

Force, along with then-Governor John Engler, and played a lead role in 
helping to craft welfare reform legislation for Delaware and for our 
Nation.
  As Senator, I have pushed, for the past 3 years, for welfare 
reauthorization legislation that emphasizes work while also providing 
help to welfare participants with respect to childcare and educational 
opportunities.
  Because of my extensive involvement with welfare reform for more than 
a dozen years and my belief that the program can work for both States 
and families, I am troubled that the House of Representatives has 
chosen to include its welfare reauthorization bill in the budget 
reconciliation package. Doing so gives the Senate no opportunity to 
debate the needed changes in this important program.
  The TANF provisions included by the House would reauthorize and make 
significant policy changes to our Nation's welfare program. Those 
changes include far more stringent work requirements than under current 
law while failing to provide sufficient childcare funding or other work 
supports to help participants meet those new requirements. The House 
bill would dramatically increase requirements on States without giving 
them additional resources. And the House language would make it more 
difficult for TANF recipients to make the successful leap from welfare 
to work.

  The budget reconciliation process is not the right place to 
reauthorize our country's welfare program. Instead, we should take the 
opportunity to reauthorize welfare through the regular legislative 
process, using the bipartisan bill reported out of the Senate Finance 
Committee as our guide.
  Earlier this year, you may recall, the Senate Finance Committee 
reported out a welfare reform bill--it is called the Personal 
Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone Act, lovingly 
known as the PRIDE Act--on a bipartisan basis. This legislation would 
make commonsense changes and reauthorize the welfare reform program for 
the next 5 years. The measure would also provide long overdue stability 
to States and beneficiaries who have been waiting since 2002 for us to 
provide long-term reauthorization, a path forward.
  I would like to commend this afternoon Chairman Grassley and Ranking 
Member Baucus, their Finance Committee colleagues, and their staff for 
their hard work in crafting the bipartisan PRIDE Act. That legislation 
is a testament to their dedication and their commitment to enabling 
Americans to move off welfare and, most importantly, be better off. 
That committee was able to find consensus on issues that can be both 
complex and, at times, controversial.
  The PRIDE bill can and should be taken up by the full Senate and 
debated on the Senate floor early next year. This is not a debate that 
should consume weeks but, rather, a debate that should consume at most 
a few days. I pledge today to work closely with my colleagues on our 
side and the Republican side of the aisle to ensure that the bill does 
not get bogged down in the Senate and that we move it along.
  A full debate, though, on the issues would give the Senate, not just 
a few Senate conferees to a reconciliation bill, the opportunity to 
have a real discussion about the future of welfare and what policies we 
should accept or reject during reauthorization. That is what we need to 
do. And I believe it need not take weeks to develop a consensus and 
pass a bipartisan bill by a wide margin.
  In my view, the House welfare reform bill, called the Personal 
Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2005, is, 
unfortunately, decidedly partisan. The bill was reported out of both 
subcommittee and committee by party-line votes and was then dropped 
wholesale into the budget reconciliation bill.
  While I am opposed to the inclusion of the House TANF provisions in 
the reconciliation bill, I encourage my Senate colleagues to oppose 
including it for a number of other reasons as well.
  I fear that the House's inclusion of a welfare reauthorization bill 
in a budget reconciliation bill sets up two likely possibilities: No. 
1, that the conferees will simply recede to the House TANF provisions; 
or, No. 2, differences between the House TANF provisions and the Senate 
PRIDE bill will have to be worked out during a hurried conference 
committee, in which a few conferees will be faced with tough choices on 
an incredible array of other issues. Neither scenario is acceptable. 
Welfare will likely be overshadowed in this context and is not likely 
to get much thoughtful review.
  The work-first approach to welfare reform has enabled States to 
reduce caseloads dramatically over the last decade or so, while helping 
members of low-income families to move into jobs and toward financial 
self-sufficiency. We should build on these successes, not jeopardize 
them. By giving welfare the proper legislative consideration in both 
the House and the Senate, we can do just that.
  The House TANF provisions differ greatly from the Senate's, and I 
believe a number of the House provisions are flat out unacceptable. The 
House bill would dramatically increase, for example, the number of 
hours that welfare recipients must work. You may recall, under current 
law, welfare recipients must work an average of 30 hours per week. 
However, under current law, mothers with young children under the age 
of 6 must now work at least 20 hours per week. The House bill, by 
comparison, requires that all welfare recipients--if you have a child a 
week old or a month old or a year old--even mothers with young children 
must work 40 hours per week. That is a doubling of the required hours 
for single parents with young children.
  I have been supportive of increased work requirements in the past, 
but the House bill increases work hours while failing to provide 
adequate funding for badly needed childcare.
  My friends, we can do better than that. To me, it is just basic 
logic, basic common sense that in order to move parents off welfare 
into work, we have to give them access to decent childcare. The House 
bill provides only $100 million per year in additional childcare 
funding to meet a doubling of work hours. Spread out over 50 States, 
that does not come close to meeting the needs of families. In fact, 
over 5 years, this level of funding is $500 million less than what has 
been included in previous House-passed bills, and $5.5 billion less 
than what the Senate would provide. What is more, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, it is $4.3 billion less than what is 
needed to keep pace with inflation and almost $8 billion less than the 
amount needed to offset increased demand for childcare caused by the 
increased work requirements.
  Again, when I was privileged to serve as Governor of my little State, 
I saw firsthand that parents cannot move to work successfully if they 
do not have an answer to this question: Who is going to take care of my 
children and how will I pay for it?
  If we want to help parents find jobs--and I know we do--we need to 
help them secure childcare. It is just that simple.
  In addition to what I feel are inadequate provisions surrounding work 
and childcare, the House bill also limits the ability of welfare 
recipients to participate in educational activities such as vocational 
education, allowing participants to participate in that activity for 
only 3 months in a 2-year period instead of the current 12 months.

  The Senate bill, on the other hand, continues to allow 12 months of 
vocational education and also establishes something called a Parents as 
Scholars Program, which allows welfare recipients to go on to higher 
education, not forever but for at least a limited period of time.
  In my view, the House bill is not friendly to States either. It asks 
States to make dramatic changes to their programs. Yet it gives them no 
additional funding to accomplish those changes and little time to meet 
those requirements before they would be subject to harsh penalties. The 
Senate bill, on the other hand, gives States time to meet new 
requirements. If States make improvements but for some reason are not 
able to immediately ramp up to the strenuous new targets, penalties 
will be temporarily waived--not permanently, temporarily. Perhaps some 
of my Senate colleagues on the other side of the aisle could find 
common ground with the House provisions. Perhaps some believe we could 
improve upon the House provisions in conference to

[[Page S13471]]

come up with something that is more workable.
  I argue, however, that no matter what my colleagues think about the 
House proposal, we can all agree that the Senate should have the chance 
to consider welfare reauthorization under regular order, and soon. If 
we are allowed to debate welfare reform in this body, I am confident we 
could come up with a bipartisan agreement that truly advances our 
shared goal of making work pay more than welfare.
  The motion I will offer tomorrow would urge conferees to give the 
Senate a chance to do just that, by rejecting provisions related to the 
reauthorization of TANF. Instead, the motion I will offer would urge 
that the Congress enact freestanding legislation that builds on the 
bipartisan Senate Finance Committee PRIDE bill.
  I cannot emphasize enough that the Senate bill was reported out of 
the Finance Committee on a bipartisan basis. The House bill, on the 
other hand, has consistently enjoyed the support of only one party. 
Further, welfare reform should not be considered in the whirlwind of 
budget reconciliation. Reform should be based on sound policy, and we 
should seek to find bipartisan consensus on this most important issue, 
something I am confident we can do.
  Tomorrow, when the motion to instruct is offered, I urge and invite 
my colleagues, both Democratic and Republican, to support it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 30 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator is recognized for 30 minutes.

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